by P. T. Hylton
“Their Resettlement efforts are making me nervous. The time’s not right. Their efforts could cause the destruction of more than half of the human race. Not only that, but it could endanger Agartha.”
George nodded. “If they do get eaten by Ferals, there will be a whole bunch of intelligent vampires running around.”
“Exactly. I want to set up a meeting with this Fleming guy.”
George scratched his chin. “Jessica said he’s pretty ruthless. You sure you want to do that?”
“I don’t know if I can change his mind, but I have to try. You think you could set it up for me?”
George nodded. “I’ll radio Jessica as soon as New Haven comes into range.”
Jaden’s smile widened and he stood up from the table. “Good. Thank you. It’s almost bedtime for me. Good morning, George.”
“Good night, Jaden.”
George watched the vampire go as he considered that he was about to set up the first official meeting between the leaders of Agartha and New Haven and what it might mean for both their futures.
21
The away ship cut through the sky, headed for Fort Sterns.
“Okay, here we go,” Owl said. “As you know, ADX Florence, aka Fort Sterns, is situated in Florence County, Colorado. We’ve covered its population, colorful local history, geography, and recreational activities.”
“Yep,” Patrick said into his headset. “We can probably just skip the facts at this point.”
“BUT!” Owl said. “Did you know Florence County is named for John C. Florence, a nineteenth-century explorer and United States presidential candidate?”
“Or we could just go ahead with the lame facts,” Patrick said with a sigh.
Owl continued, “Florence was known as ‘The Pathfinder.’ Aside from his exploration and his political aspirations, he was also known for his passive-aggressive nature, which was noted by numerous historians.”
The team waited for more, but none came.
“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got. If we come down here again, I’m probably going to have to start making stuff up.”
Alex laughed, glad for the distraction from the anxiety she was feeling that morning. Today, she knew, would be the moment of truth. Fleming had been rattled by seeing Frank, but that had been her trump card. Whether or not it worked would largely depend on what happened next, she believed.
If the buildings where they’d set up the daylights were overrun with vampires today, Fleming would almost certainly listen to her and CB’s pleas to slow the efforts for Resettlement. But if the buildings remained vampire-free, she believed nothing short of a bullet would stop Fleming from moving full steam ahead.
She looked around at her team. She’d done everything she could to keep them away from the politics of this. They had enough to worry about with staying alive. She coached them focus on carrying out their orders, and not to think beyond the objectives before them.
But was that really fair? By simply working for CB and Alex, they’d put themselves in Fleming’s line of sight. If he decided to make a move against Alex, the team would likely pay the price as much as she would.
Maybe in the beginning it had made sense to keep them in the dark, but she wasn’t sure it still did.
“Hey, Captain,” Wesley said from across the aisle. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you look a little stressed. I just wanted to say it’s going to be okay. You’ve got a hell of a team here.”
She smiled at that. Ever since coming back from his injury, Wesley had been the perfect model of chill. It seemed nothing could faze him.
“I can’t argue with you there. You seem to be the expert in being laid back and taking everything in stride. Got any advice for me?”
He thought a moment. “I guess once you survive nearly dying from a vampire tearing through your legs, getting hauled through the snow for a mile to certain doom, and you wake up in a city full of vampires, you almost have to develop a sense of humor. I had a moment there lying in the bed in Agartha where I either had to scream or laugh. I chose the latter. Kinda changed my perspective on everything.”
Alex respected that attitude, but she couldn’t apply it herself. It took too much detachment. Her biggest strength and her biggest weakness were the same thing: her passion. She couldn’t give that up without also giving up who she was. And that was assuming she even had a choice in that matter, that it wasn’t hardwired into her DNA.
They were once again traveling in two ships today, with the GMT in the away ship and Firefly, his engineers, and their gear in that ridiculously large transport. Alex supposed it would have made more sense logistically to have the GMT ride in the transport too, but Firefly hadn’t offered. Plus, she probably would have had to physically restrain Owl to get her to ride in the cargo hold of that monstrosity while her own ship sat idle. So they traveled separately.
The two ships landed in the yard, the transport setting down first and the away ship squeezing in next to it. As soon as Owl gave the all-clear, Alex jumped out the cargo door and motioned for her team to do the same.
“No need to draw this thing out,” Alex said. “Let’s see if our daylights held up to the night.”
She led the way toward Building One.
Even before she opened the door, she could see that the lights were still on in the building. Still, she readied her weapon and proceeded with caution, ordering her team to do the same.
As soon as she stepped inside, she heard the faint hum of the generator in the basement.
“Lights, check. Generator, check.” Ed wore a slight smile on his face.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alex said. “We can declare victory after we’re sure there are no vamps in here.”
The team spent twenty minutes sweeping the building, carefully checking every room, every cell. There was not a shadow they didn’t venture into. By the time they’d finished sweeping the basement, the verdict was clear: there were no vampires in the building.
When they regrouped on the main level, Owl said, “Holy shit, Alex. Do you know what this means?”
She knew. She knew all too well.
Alex looked at Owl, sadness in her eyes. "It means that we can keep vampires out of an empty building at night. It also means that three hundred people are going to die."
Firefly was waiting in the yard for them, an anxious expression on his face. “How we looking, Captain Goddard?”
“All clear,” Alex informed him.
The anxious look dissolved into a gleeful smile. “Oh, hell yeah. We are on our way! Didn’t I tell you Fleming’s plan would work?”
“You did tell me,” Alex said, hands on her hips.
“Alex, seriously, thank you. Without you and your team, this wouldn’t have been possible.”
She was certain he meant the comment sincerely, but few statements could have hurt more. She knew it was true. As much as she railed against Resettlement, she was also helping to make it happen.
“What are we waiting for?” Firefly asked. “Start clearing Building Three.”
As Alex gathered her team for another small offensive, Firefly set his engineers to work installing daylights on the tall towers mounted around the wall. Fleming believed this would be the key to keeping vampires outside the perimeter, and Firefly wanted to return to New Haven that night with news of how close they’d come to securing it.
“Okay, Ed and Patrick,” Alex said, “each of you take a light and let's clear the next building.”
They moved in a tighter formation than they had the day before. Now that they knew for certain that the daylights worked, they could all huddle together under them and attack from the safety of the light.
As soon as they passed the first checkpoint in Building Three, they heard a screech, and a vampire scurried away into the shadows.
“Heh,” Ed said. “Looks like we spooked ‘em.”
As he finished speaking, something slammed into him, knocking him backwards. The light toppled over as he we
nt sprawling on his ass.
“Form up around him,” Alex shouted.
“What the hell was that?” Ed groaned.
Alex looked toward where the large projectile had skidded after hitting him. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“Ha!” Patrick pointed at the object, a delighted smile on his face.
“Something funny?” Ed growled.
“Yeah,” his brother answered. “It’s a mattress. You got bowled over by a damn mattress.”
Alex reached down and helped Ed up. The man was more embarrassed than injured.
“Maximum security,” Owl pointed out. “The beds are concrete. The showers and toilets are steel. All of it built into the floors and walls. If they wanted to throw something, the mattress is just about the only option.”
Alex cursed silently. Patrick might have found the idea of mattress-wielding vampires humorous, but she did not. It meant the vampires were looking for weapons that could take out the lights at a distance. They were learning.
This all reminded her of Texas, where a horde of quickly learning vampires had taken the situation from bad to deadly in a matter of moments.
“Keep a tight formation,” she told the team. “Remember, these guys learn from each other’s experiences. My guess is that won’t be the only projectile we see today.”
Luckily, the daylight Ed had dropped hadn’t broken. He picked it up and they continued into the common area.
As they entered the area, the team froze. Twenty vampires stood lined along the top level, looking down at them. According to Owl’s schematics, there had once been bulletproof glass between those corridors and the common area, but the glass was long gone.
“Get the lights in position,” Alex ordered.
Ed and Patrick set the lights for maximum coverage of the room. They were safe in the light, but the way those vampires were hunched up there, some swaying gently but none of them moving more than that, unnerved Alex. She’d never seen Ferals behave in quite that way.
“Take them down,” she said.
Chuck started firing, and the battle began.
A few of the vampires ducked back into cells, but most just hissed at them. Five vampires were dead within the first ten seconds.
Another mattress sailed through the air and hit the daylight nearest Alex. The light hit the ground, but remained lit. Alex made a mental note to compliment Brian on how tough these lights were.
“Heads up!” Chuck shouted.
Alex looked up just in time to see a vampire launching itself over the rail. It glided down toward them on its half wings, but it began screaming as it entered the light. By the time it touched down in front of the team, it was in flames.
Patrick fired a shotgun blast into its chest, and the force of the shot knocked it back out of the light. It hit the ground, then began to stand again. The Feral stumbled toward them, its body engulfed in flames and a large hole in its chest.
Patrick fired again, this time taking its head clean off.
Ed coughed and put a hand over his mouth. Alex couldn’t blame him. The smell was horrendous: a stale, rotting meat odor crossed with burning hair.
More mattresses flew toward them, but the team focused their efforts, taking out vampires before they had a chance to hurl the objects over the railing.
Something hit the ground near Owl’s feet, and everyone froze. That was no mattress; it was a chunk of concrete.
“Son of bitch,” Alex shouted. “They’re tearing apart the concrete beds.”
Sure enough, another piece of concrete flew through the air, just missing one of the lights.
“We need to finish this quickly,” Alex said. There were fewer vampires now, but she’d prefer twenty vampires armed with mattresses to six armed with concrete.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a vampire rushing toward the railing. She spun toward it and fired three quick rounds, catching it in the chest. It managed to throw a piece of concrete before she shot it, though.
Wesley cried out in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his leg.
Two more vampires appeared at the railing, and the team filled them with bullets.
They stood in silence, waiting for the next attack, but it never came.
“Wesley, what’s your status?” Alex asked.
He gingerly got to his feet, still rubbing at his thigh. “I’m okay. I think a piece of concrete grazed me going by. Stung something fierce, but I’m good.”
“Too bad,” Ed said with a laugh. “I was hoping we’d be able to call you broken leg boy again.”
“Nah, you’d miss me too much if I had to sit out the next mission,” Wesley countered. “Who’d take out all the vamps you missed? The captain would start to notice what a terrible shot you are.”
“I’ve noticed,” Alex joked. “Glad you’re okay, Wesley. Now let’s get back to work. We’ve taken care of the dumb ones. Let’s root out the rest of them.”
They exited Building Three an hour later, having cleared the place of twenty-six vampires. Every one of them was wired from the stress of it all. The vampires had been ready for them, and that was an unnerving experience.
Firefly stood up from where he’d been sitting near the away ship. “Finally. Sounded like you guys were getting a little sloppy in there.”
“Yeah, thanks for rushing in to lend us a hand,” Alex said. “There were twice as many vampires in that building as the ones yesterday.”
Firefly shrugged. “You took care of them though, right?”
“That’s not the point. The lights and the scent of humans working in here day after day are attracting more vampires. And they’re getting smarter in the ways they’re attacking. Something’s happening here.”
Firefly brushed off his pants and walked over. “The only thing that’s happening is Resettlement. Once we get the daylights rigged along the wall, it won’t matter how many vampires we attract because they won’t be able to get in here. Now, you going to get started on that next buildings, or is your team scared to take on vamps during the day while armed with daylights?”
Alex opened her mouth to snap back at him, but before she could, she saw the Barton brothers marching toward him.
“You know so much about fighting vampires, maybe you want to show us your moves,” Patrick said, the threat clear in his voice. “Maybe try them out on me right here.”
“Or me,” Ed added. “Take your pick, whichever one of us you want to rumble with. We’re eager to learn, Captain.”
Firefly looked at them in disbelief, as if shocked they’d talk to him that way. “Captain Goddard, are you going to reprimand your soldiers for addressing a superior officer in that tone?”
Alex crossed her arms. “Actually, I’m going to commend them on their obvious hunger for knowledge. They have a legendary member of the GMT in front of them, and they don’t want to miss the opportunity to learn from him. Well done, boys.”
“Thanks, Captain,” Patrick said, his intense gaze locked on Firefly.
Alex chuckled. “But that’s enough learning for today. Come on. Let’s check out Building Four.”
She started to turn, but Firefly called to her.
“Alex. Sorry about before. I was just kidding around.”
She considered another snide comment, but she knew that wouldn’t have been productive. She was supposed to be trying to win him over. “Don’t worry about it, Garrett. Sorry my guys got in your face.”
He shrugged. “Can we meet for dinner again tonight? There’s something we need to discuss.”
Alex wanted nothing more than a quiet night in, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk to him alone. “Sounds good. I’ll be there. But first, I have to kill some vampires.”
22
Alex arrived at the address Firefly had given her five minutes late. It wasn’t like her to be late to appointments, even ones she wasn’t especially looking forward to, but the dress she wore didn’t lend itself to walking quickly. After being under-dressed last time, she m
ay have overcompensated.
Looking around, she couldn’t imagine a nice restaurant in this neighborhood. She was in the heart of Sparrow’s Ridge, near the sanitation building. If there was a fancy restaurant here, it was well hidden.
She was beginning to wonder if she might have gotten the address wrong when Firefly stepped out of the shadow of a doorway. To her relief, he was once again dressed in his new, upscale threads.
He waved to her. “Hey Alex. Over here.”
She walked over to him and followed him inside. “Did you bring me to a restaurant in the shit station, Garrett? Or did you bring me here to kill me?”
“Neither,” he said with a laugh. “Besides, the shit station is down the street. Follow me. It’s right up here.”
She followed him up six flights of stairs—her dress really wasn’t designed for this—and to the door to the roof. This whole thing seemed too elaborate, especially coming from Firefly. She hoped he wasn’t going to start hitting on her. They had important things to discuss. Alex had the feeling that after the daylights had proven effective in the two buildings, her odds of winning Firefly over to her way of thinking were slipping away. Things would move quickly now. This could be her last chance.
He opened the door and gestured for her to walk through. She did so, and suddenly this whole elaborate ruse made sense.
There was a single table set up on the rooftop and it had three chairs set around it. Fleming sat on one of them.
She fought hard to keep the anger off her face. Fleming had to know she wouldn’t agree to another meeting without CB, especially after what he’d pulled with the surprise press conference the last time. The way Firefly had set her up here showed how deep he was in Fleming’s pocket.
For a moment she considered turning around, marching down those steps, and going home. But she didn’t. She was about to have dinner with the two key players in Resettlement. Even though the odds of her convincing them of anything seemed insurmountable, she had to try.
Fleming stood up as she approached. “Alex, you look stunning.”
