Several children at the back of the crowd took off running and didn’t look back. Confused shouts and warnings shot back and forth as the hideous fish came. It slithered and thrashed forward.
Everyone backed up except the woman on the end of the dock. She began to laugh.” You idiots! That is a razor-mouthed northern snakehead. It’s ugly, but you can outwalk it, for God’s sake!”
The burly man woke up. Confused and bleeding from the belly button, he crawled to his feet. The back of his head bled, too. He stumbled away without a word.
The woman reached for the small of her back and under her shirt. She pulled out a pistol and aimed it at the fish, but paused.
A moment passed without a shot fired. The woman appeared to be having a conversation, but there was no one there. Enfry leaned forward and cupped his ears, straining to hear, but the roar of aircraft engines and years of flying had dulled that sense.
The woman put her pistol back in the holster at the small of her back. She placed the toe of her boot under the body of the fish and flipped it back into the canal.
She shrugged and nodded and said something Enfry couldn’t catch. Then she turned to the plane, formed an X with her forearms and smiled.
That was the signal Enfry had been told to look for.
“Pilot!” the woman called. “If it’s all the same to you, we’ll take a dingy out and remain unchewed! I’m told we’re safe from the attack of the killer dino-fish, but those things freak me out, and staying unbloodied is my wish!”
The woman turned and shouted to a bald man wearing a dirty white suit. His arms crossed, he’d watched the scene unfold from up the shore road. He turned and pulled a small dingy out of the back of an old wood-paneled station wagon. The woman ran up the hill to grab two backpacks from the car.
“Who are these people?” Dr. Harper asked Enfry.
“The passengers the boy said to pick up.”
“Yes, but who are they?”
“I don’t know their life story. All I know is the bald guy in the suit is Gus Xavier. The crazy lady with the gun is Dahlia. I assume the fish were sent by the boy with mirrors for eyes.”
Dr. Harper put a shaky hand on George Enfry’s shoulder. “That wasn’t the boy she was talking to.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you see her?”
“It was a little Indian girl in a white dress. She told the woman not to shoot the fish.”
“Who was that girl?”
“Her name was Aasa. I don’t know how I know that.”
“I know how. It’s like I said, everything’s crazy. God’s on LSD and we are His crazy dreams. That’s the only answer there is to anything. Put it on a t-shirt to remember me by.”
Escape the scary, walk in sunshine
As night began to fall, Rahab flew the Citabria low over the Fort Sumter National Monument, the harbor and Castle Pinckney. “I thought we might spot humans in the fortifications,” Shiva said. “They do so like to cower behind walls. They don’t understand yet that we’re coming to liberate them.”
“Looks like all of Charleston is emptied out.”
“Pity. We need to make more Alphas. I can’t wait!”
Rahab checked his altitude and began to descend to the military airfield ten miles distant. “You’ll have to talk to Misericordia about that. The rule is only he makes more Alphas. We eat it all or we don’t eat at all.”
Shiva slipped her hand up Rahab’s thigh. Her hand lingered softly a moment before she gripped him by the crotch and squeezed too tight. “What have I told you?”
“New sheriff in town! New sheriff in town! Now stop it! I’m flying! I’m flying!” The plane’s nose dipped sharply as Rahab lost control of the aircraft. Blue sky disappeared and the city filled their view as trees and buildings became a green and white blur rushing up at them. Rahab struggled to maintain his focus but Shiva’s fist was a vice.
“What? You don’t think we’d survive a little plane crash?”
The wind roared and the engine whined and a red light flashed in the dashboard. A female robotic voice urged the pilot, “Pull up! Pull up!”
“The plane’s telling me to pull up, Rahab.”
“No!” He gasped as she squeezed even tighter and pulled up.
“Shiva, please!” Rahab squeaked. “I don’t want to find out if the crash will kill us! I’m sure it’ll hurt bad!”
She released him and steadied his hand on the wheel as he pulled the plane’s nose up. “Good to see you still have a sensitive spot. I suppose we wouldn’t be superior if that weren’t still sensitive, hm?”
Rahab gasped. “Yes. That still needs to work.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, my queen.”
“Bloody well right. If you want to test that equipment again, don’t forget my title. I don’t want to have to get pissy about it.”
The windows fogged so quickly as the plane passed from the cooler air at higher altitude into a wall of heat, Rahab had to focus on his instrument panel instead of the darkening field. “I miss my helo,” he said.
“Why don’t you have one? Plenty to choose from, aren’t there?”
“Misericordia uses it. He chose Vigilax for his pilot.”
“Vigilax?”
“You’ll see him. Many of us carry spears. He carries a scythe.”
“He fancies himself the Grim Reaper, does he? Boo! Scary!”
Rahab nodded. “We all stay together, but the chief goes off on missions sometimes. Before you, I’d hoped Misericordia would choose me as his bodyguard. Now I see it was fate. If I’d been the Chief’s pilot, I wouldn’t be yours now.”
“Fate is made, not a given, but I do appreciate the sentiment. Just be glad Misericordia named you Rahab. Vigilax sounds like a long-acting suppository. Plus, you got this nifty little plane.”
“I prefer big jet helicopters.”
“Once I sort Misericordia and the tribe out, you’ll be my pilot and we’ll take a helicopter wherever and whenever I like.”
Rahab nodded. “Brilliant, but in the meantime —”
Shiva’s eyes shone bright white. “I can see the landing strip fine, no landing lights necessary.”
Moments later, Rahab landed the plane and taxied through the shadows of immense, dark gray cargo planes. “C-17s from the 14th Airlift Squadron,” Rahab said. The military cargo planes dwarfed Rahab’s little Citabria as he and Shiva taxied past them at Joint Base Charleston. “Those planes are called Globemasters.”
Shiva smiled. “How appropriate! That’s my kind of airplane. All the better to spread the Sutr-A infection, my dear.”
“Yes, my queen.”
A delegation of four Alphas waited for Shiva and Rahab at the mouth of an immense hangar. They stood at silent attention. Each carried a wooden spear.
“Whatever happened to AR-15s? M-16s? RPGs? Gatling guns?” she asked. She studied the welcoming committee. “They’ve got sharp sticks. What next? Cross words and sending me to my room?”
“Misericordia is a purist,” Rahab said. “We are hunters. When we run together, hunting deer, or humans…persistence hunting is a pure thing. It’s — ”
“Yes, yes. Orgiastic. I get it. Commandant Caveman has gone native. But spears are just so…pre-Amish.”
Before Rahab shut off the engine he dared to ask, “My queen? Try not to kill another Alpha. Please?”
“Darling…look at me. Big preggo belly and all, I’m the Queen of Hearts.”
“So you’ll rule with love?”
“No, stupid. I mean it’s my prerogative to say, ‘Off with their heads!’ Love takes time, Rahab. Fear takes root in the second it takes to slap a child.”
“Purah was one of Misericordia’s favorites,” he explained patiently. “The tribe has rules. We aren’t supposed to kill each other. Humans and zombies, yes, but not even humans under the age of twenty. Misericordia killed the first vampire who questioned his orders. The Chief did it in a grisly way. Misericordia�
�s word is law.”
“Shiva doesn’t like rules,” she said. “They make her talk about herself in the third person. But don’t worry. Shiva can handle Mr. Misery.”
She smiled as she saw a flash of swampy viridescence shudder through Rahab’s aura. “Ah. The green-eyed monster arises. You’re the queen’s consort. I chose you for a good shagging. Adam Wiggins is my son, metaphorically speaking. Don’t be jealous. Just behave.”
“Yes, my queen. It’s hot and getting dark. Can we go uh…to bed now?”
“Patience. Only little locomotives have one-track minds.” Shiva stepped from the Citabria. She paused, stared at her honor guard and smiled at her pilot through the open door. “Lover, stay in the plane for a moment, will you? Mama has to have a private talk with the other kids.”
“Shiva? Is something wrong?”
She looked back and forth from his aura to that of the four Alphas. “No,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong that can’t be easily corrected.”
Shiva beamed a toothy smile and waved gaily as she approached the Alphas. Before the first could speak, Shiva grabbed the largest pair of vampires, one hand to the side of each of their heads. She pulled them apart slightly by their long hair. The Alphas instinctively resisted. Shiva used that momentum to crash their heads together.
They slammed together so hard their skulls shattered. In one terrible crack, the vampires’ brains intermingled as they collapsed to the concrete in one wet heap.
“Don’t feel bad for them,” Shiva said. “They aren’t victims. They’re would-be attackers.”
The next vampire, a muscular Amazon, thrust her spear at Shiva’s heart. Shiva sidestepped the weapon easily. Despite her obvious and advanced pregnancy, she moved with balletic grace as she smashed the spear in two. She swept the sharp spear in a winnowing arc deep through her attacker’s neck, lopping the head to the floor cleanly.
The last vampire wisely ran for his life. Unwisely, he dropped his spear before he sprinted away.
Shiva swept up his spear, drew back and threw the lance with the confidence of an ancient Spartan. The spear impaled the runner through the back and chest.
He fell to his knees, gasping for breath. Shiva was on him a moment later, twisting the spear’s shaft to intensify the Alpha’s agony. He screamed.
Her eyes blazed bright white and fierce. “So, you think you’re a hunter, hm? I’m a warrior. Big difference.”
He nodded.
“Good. You can learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll let you live. Tell me the truth and I’ll even give you a little nip and make you as strong as me. Would you like that? I bet you would.”
The vampire nodded.
“This is your test question: Shiva is to you as you are to…?”
“Hu-humans?” The vampire sputtered blood.
“Children. Bug children. You’re larva. But my pilot over there. I had sex with him and now he’s pretty strong. Would you like my happy little STD?”
The vampire nodded vigorously.
“Where is everyone? Where is the rest of your tribe?”
“In the basement of the big training building. It’s a hockey arena. We gather there to sleep.” Tears fell from the kneeling man’s cheeks. He would have collapsed to the floor if not for Shiva’s unforgiving hold on him through the weapon.
“Where’s Misericordia?”
“Tonight…he’ll be in the tower. He’s away on a mission.” He sagged and his forehead fell to the spear.
She twisted the shaft and the vampire screamed again and straightened. The flesh around the spear had begun to heal. Rent again, fresh blood wound down the length of the shaft.
“What mission?” she said in a conversational tone.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t told. I swear I don’t know.”
“I believe you. You are ignorant. Which tower?”
The vampire pointed to the airport control tower. “His bedroom. Every night, he returns there.”
Shiva watched the agony soak through the vampire’s nerve endings. She nodded, satisfied he’d told the truth.
But she was wrong. Shiva detected no deception in his aura because the dupe had only repeated what he’d been told, the truth as he knew it.
Since Shiva lied about letting her attacker live, that was a fair exchange.
Watch the woods, hide among the pines
Dr. Sinjin-Smythe, Desi and Brother Bob crouched on the flat roof of the training and rec centre at the Joint Air Base. Behind massive gray boxes that contained the building’s air conditioning units, the three men hid under a bank of solar panels.
Despite the heat, the rooftop air conditioners remained silent. The solar panels, however, continued to feed power to the massive building. Sensors signaled slow gears to tilt the face of the panels toward the punishing sun, feeding the great overhead lights in the basement arena.
The men had been on the base for three days, working furiously. Before the Alphas arrived, they’d succeeded in destroying the power feeds to all other buildings on the base. The lights were on in the Rec Center and nowhere else.
“Moths and flames,” Brother Bob told Desi and Sinjin-Smythe. “That’s the key.”
As night fell over the Joint Air Base, a cruel heatwave dropped over South Carolina. To the doctor, the policeman and the monk, the air felt like a heavy, wet wool blanket wrapped tight to their bodies. The heat had driven the Alphas indoors, into the basement of the Rec Centre beneath them.
From their hiding places, they had heard a brief fight but had not seen it. Only as the hot darkness stole over them did Desi dare to scrabble to the West edge of the building to reconnoiter.
Upon his return, his whispers ran out in a quick staccato. “I count four dead Alphas over by the big hanger. What do you suppose that was about?”
“Something wicked this way comes,” Sinjin-Smythe said.
“It’s Shiva,” Brother Bob said.
“What makes you so sure?” The doctor’s voice shook.
“Aasa said she’d come tonight. The little plane came. We made our preparations just in time.”
Sinjin-Smythe shook his head. “You’re sure the trap will work?”
“The lines are hooked up. The chains are on all the other exits.”
“I saw the movie The Dirty Dozen a couple of times,” Brother Bob said. “Should work.”
“Except the Alphas came in through the front, through doors wide enough to drive a truck through. Once it starts, how do you propose we keep the vampires in the building?”
“Slainte!” Desi raised his looted M-16 as if in a toast. The weapon glinted in the dim moonlight. “We’re in for a clatter.”
“Really? And what happens when the first magazine runs out?”
“That’s not the plan. That’s the back-up plan,” Brother Bob said, shouldering an identical machine gun.
“What’s Plan A, Bro Bob?” Sinjin-Smythe asked.
“Deus ex machina.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. It’s coming, loaded for bear and all kinds of crazy.”
“Dream Boy? Dream Boy’s coming here?” Sinjin-Smythe voice shook harder.
Brother Bob looked to the stars. With no city shine, the stars looked closer and brighter, leaning in for a closer look at what was about to unfold.
“No. He’s not here exactly, but I think Jaimie will be riding shotgun on this one. Everybody up. It’s dark enough.”
The men stood slowly, expecting white-eyed vampires to leap out of the darkness. Instead, they heard raucous laughter from deep within the Rec Centre.
“The party’s started,” Desi said. “Sounds like a big one.”
Brother Bob stalked to the edge of the roof and gazed toward the West gate of the Joint Air Base.
“What exactly are we waiting for?” Sinjin-Smythe asked.
Brother Bob pointed. “That.”
Far out, headlights wove through the darkness. “Deus ex machina.”
“Well…t
he pedal on the right works,” Desi said.
They couldn’t hear it yet, but they could see by its lights that it was a truck finding its way around obstacles on the road and coming quick.
“Desi and I will get to the ground and wave him in,” Brother Bob said. “Stand by the valves, doctor. If you turn it too early, the vampires might smell it and bolt.”
“I know my job.”
“Once we’re at the bottom of the fire escape, start cranking,” Desi said. “Then follow us down and get off the bloody roof fast.”
Desi handed the virologist his Walther 99c. Sinjin-Smythe hefted the pistol. “You get the machine gun and I’m supposed to fend off Alphas with this?”
“No, doctor. Stick to the plan and get to the truck and wait for us. If we don’t come — ”
“Run. I know. So what’s this for?”
“If you don’t make it to the truck, the gun isn’t for them.”
Sinjin-Smythe trembled, but he nodded.
“We can depend on you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good man, y’rself.”
“Thanks, Desi.”
“And doctor? We’re in America now, so when we tear out of here with our ass hairs on fire, drive on the right!”
Make a wish, crack a cervical spine
Shiva climbed the tower stairs. The baby kicked. It was a warning. She took her child’s agitation to mean she’d deliver soon.
The control tower was not what she expected. The tall glass offered a commanding view of the Joint Air Base, but all the air traffic control equipment had been ripped out. Instead, she stood in a vast room draped in thick red curtains with gold inlay. Dozens of candles lit a trail to a huge bed ringed in candlelight.
“This is Misericordia’s bedroom? Kinda kinky.”
“Bedroom, yes,” Rahab said. “Sometimes he holds meetings up here, too.”
Shiva’s gaze fixed on a four poster bed with a canopy in the center of the room.
“Heavy meetings with his harem, I suppose. Where’d he get all the curtains? His interior decorator? All these red curtains! Ha! Surely he’s got a wicked vagina fixation.”
Rahab laughed. “He travels sometimes. These tapestries came from a textile museum in Washington.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 82
