"We've got incoming!" Mason grumbled, picking up his shotgun. A large, male lyca rushed toward them from the front on all fours. Neiland sized him up, aimed, and fired. The bullet struck the beast in the upper chest, but it kept coming. "Allow me," Mason said, stepping up and taking a shot. The left side of the lyca's face blew out and the creature yelped, crumbling to the pavement and rolling several feet before coming to a halt.
A howl rang out; a female stood atop a two-story business building to their left. Crumbler raised his rifle. Lined up his shot. He pulled the trigger; the beast clutched her chest and fell over, smashing to the sidewalk below.
Another male lept onto the crashed onto the top of the pickup to Neiland's right, his weight crushing the top of the cab and blowing out the windows and windshield. He raised a killing stoke--BLAM! The beast's eyes dulled. He fell backward outside the barricade. A figure stood in the distance, silhouetted by the full moon--
Alex. Smoking Kimber Eclipse in hand.
Neiland tried his best to suppress a smile, but wasn't completely successful. Kristen didn't even try to hide hers. Alex nodded, saluting with the gun. She dashed down a side street.
FORTY
It didn't take Alex long to find more lycas. Rounding a corner onto street on the outskirts of downtown, she encountered several who had overpowered the block, seemingly with the directive to cause as much property damage as possible. Lycas shattered windows, tore down light posts... One burst through a door into a small dentist's office. Someone was inside, however; a man screamed, promptly followed by gunfire--the front window blinking with muzzle flashes.
Alex pulled back the left side of her leather coat and removed the Kimber's twin from its holster on her hip. She thumbed off the safety and sauntered down the street. The lycas quickly spotted her and dropped what they were doing to attack. Alex never changed her gait as they raced toward her. Instead, she raised both guns and picked them off one by one, firing single shots into hearts, throats, or heads to preserve her ammunition--cutting down the infected beasts with sniper-like precision. The attacks came from all angles, but with her superior hearing, sight and smell, the lycas were unable to get the drop on Alex, and she could dispatch them before they got too close to pose any real threat.
Stepping into an intersection, something caught her attention out the corner of her eye. She turned to face down one of the streets--
Lucas stood on the sidewalk in front of a department store, a torn victim at his feet. He looked up at Alex and bristled, then glanced to the victim's pickup truck, parallel-parked on the street. He latched onto it and lifted it onto two wheels, working himself under it and hefting the vehicle over his head before chunking it at Alex.
She dodged to the side as the car slammed to the road and tumbled end over end--throwing out a trail of sparks as it skidded to a stop in the middle of the intersection. Alex rolled up to one knee--
Lucas charged, leaping into the air. Alex followed him with the Kimbers, squeezed off three shots. She threw herself forward to the pavement as Lucas' wounded body crash landed at her feet just inches away. She spring to her feet and walked over to him, gun trained on his skull. Lucas rolled onto his back, his massive body convulsing as the silver destroyed him from inside. She lowered her gun, but Lucas had enough fight left in him to rear up and slash at Alex. She avoided his claws, fired a single round into Lucas' skull. His head bounced off the pavement. He began to revert.
A howl sliced the air. It wasn't far. Alex spun in its direction--a trailer park at the far end of one of the connected roads...
FORTY-ONE
Alex strolled down the center aisle of the trailer park. She stopped and looked around, sniffed the air. She grimaced and walked to the side of the nearest trailer.
She pulled the clips from the Kimbers and checked them. There were two rounds remaining in one clip and none in the other. Alex made a mental note and slid the clips back into place. She took a deep breath, readied herself to return to action when--
"Oooooh!" The voice was young. Too young to be out at this time of night despite the horrors overtaking the town.
Alex peered around the edge of the trailer, looking deeper into the park. A little blonde girl, about four, stood at the corner of her trailer three rows down, just off the central path. She was looking at something across from her that Alex could not see.
"Psssst! Hey!" Alex hissed. The girl turned to her, flashed an angelic, gap-toothed smile. Alex returned the gesture, making sure her Kimbers were out of sight. "Do me a favor and go inside, okay?" The girl waved, then vanished. Alex dipped back behind her trailer. A few seconds later--
Something crunched. Alex poked her head back out. The little girl was there again, this time staring directly at her. "Little girl, get inside. Now," Alex said sternly, yet softly. Instead of obeying the fear-laden order, the girl giggled. Alex exhaled. Had she ever been this tough with her parents? "I mean it! There's monsters out here, and if they see you..."
The girl turned toward the back of the park. She pointed. "Look! Doggies!" Alex looked over the girl. Her face washed over in horror. A small pack of lycas, led by Travis, emerged from two rows deeper than the girl. They moved on all fours, their eyes fixed on her. Drool began to spill onto the dirt path. Two of them hopped onto the tops of trailers.
Movement out the corner of Alex's eye drew her attention to two more lycas across the central path and at the end of her own row as they hopped the fence that surrounded the park. A noise behind Alex made her turn up the central path from where she had entered. Three more lycas approached, their growls low and steady.
The little girl squealed with delight as beasts closed in. "Oooooh, more doggies!
Alex formulated a quick plan in her head and leapt into action. She sprang out into the open and fired single shots at two of the lycas approaching from the entrance. The bullets found their marks. She swung around and used the last of her Kimber rounds to punch holes in two lycas on either side of Travis. Alex shoved the guns into their hip holsters and pulled out one of the Walthers, racing for the girl. She squeezed off a shot that Travis barely dodged as she scooped the girl up and toted her to the door of her trailer. She opened it and heaved the girl inside.
"I wanna see the doggies!" she cried.
"Trust me, they wanna see you, too." Alex slammed the door closed, then picked up a random cinder block lying by the trailer steps. She wedged it against the door to keep the nosy little girl inside. Two lycas rushed her from her right; Alex aimed and got off a shot, but missed as they split in different directions.
Travis landed on top the of little girl's trailer and lunged at Alex, knocking her to the ground and jarring the Walther free. Alex rolled up, drawing her Bowie from its sheath on her right thigh. She ducked under Travis' claws as he swung for her chest--slicing him in the abdomen in the process. He staggered back as one of the lycas who had just tried to rush her charged in. Alex spun on him with a slash of the blade. She backed down, growling.
With her back exposed, Travis sprang at Alex, his razor-sharp claws cleaving the air as he came down for her spine. She was aware of the situation her positioning had put her in, however, and was anticipating the attack. She whirled and thrust the Bowie out--plunging it hilt-deep in Travis' gut. He yowled, and Alex twisted the blade, stepping back and sprawling the doubled-over beast onto his back with a kick to the the chest.
Nosy residents peered out of their windows as more lycas surrounded Alex. She pulled out her second Walther and blasted two of the monsters as she made a break for it's fallen twin--snatching it up and adding to her assault, thinning the pack with her arms strafed. She brought both guns to her front, cleared a path in the gnashing beasts, and sprinted through it.
A balding, middle-aged man stepped out of his trailer to see what the ruckus was. Alex raced by. "Get inside! Now!" The man scoffed, unware of the pack of lycas barreling toward him. He turned and saw them, but it was too late. As they passed, one sprang up--decapitating the man with
a single swipe. His head caromed off the side of his trailer and rolled back into the path as the lycas roared by.
Alex reached a dead end formed by three trailers. She turned as the lycas raced toward her and raised her guns. Given their number, and the speed with which they were closing in, she was forced to use more rounds per lyca than she wanted in an effort to stop the wave. One of the Walthers ran out and she simply hurled it at the pack, nailing one of the monsters in the head. She only got a few more shots off with the other before it, too, went dry. She ejected the clip, reached down and removed an extra from a holster strapped to her left thigh, and slid it into the bottom of the gun's handle. She aimed it at the pack, but something came hurdling over their backs, knifing through the still, night air, and landed with a soft thud before Alex--
Slasher. Alex trained her gun on him, but he slapped it out of her hand with lightning-fast reflexes, came for her chest with an upward slash. Alex narrowly avoid evisceration and turned, bolting for the trailer behind her. Slasher gave chase, but Alex ran up the side of the trailer and vaulted off, flipping back over Slasher as his claws shredded it's metal hide. He turned to face his foe, now trapped between himself and the lycas at her back. They closed ranks.
"That's it, closer," she muttered. The circle tightened.
Alex raised her right arm, squeezed the sleeve of her coat in a special spot between the wrist and forearm. Something mechanical clicked.
Slasher pounced. Alex ducked his assault, rolled forward to her feet, turned, and flung her arm out as he spun to face her--a silver kunai attached a thin chain exploded from her cuff. The blade embedded itself in Slasher's gut. He yelped.
Alex pulled two throwing knives from their slots on her bandoleer and hurled them at a pair of lycas, landing one in each with practiced precision. She went back to the well; two more knives found homes in the chests of two other lycas.
Slasher sank to a knee as poisoned blood coursed through his system. Alex grasped the chain and yanked back--freeing the kunai from Slasher's stomach. In the same motion she swung the blade over her head in a circle like a whip and "cracked" it, slitting Slasher's throat. He clutched the seeping wound and fell over.
The remaining lycas ripped the knives from their bodies and attacked. Alex lashed out at them with the kunai, swinging and cracking it--going under, around and between her legs like a ninja master--slicing arms, chests, legs, stomachs. Two of the beasts got caught got in the face as the blade found its mark. Lyca blood stained the sparsely-grassed path and splattered into the sides of trailers as Alex carved the monsters. She whipped the kunai back to her, snaring it out of the air by its base. The lycas, whimpering sliced to ribbons, collapsed.
Alex dropped the blade and squeezed her sleeve once more. The hidden mechanism kicked in and the kunai retracted back into her cuff.
She strolled over to the Walther Slasher slapped away and picked it up, moving amongst the wounded monsters and finishing them each off with a single round as she went to retrieve its brother. She left Slasher for last.
"I've been making my rounds," Alex said, walking over and kneeling next to his halfway-reverted form. "And I noticed somebody was missing from the party. Where's Tristan?"
Slasher looked up at her, his eyes glassy, distant. Corrupted blood drained from every wound and orifice. "Why don't you just sniff him out? You can do that, can't you, mutt?" He tried to laugh, but only wound up coughing, hacking up more of the black death. "Doesn't matter," he rasped. "We've already won. Humans have only survived this long because we were forced in the shadows and our own kind kept us there. But once word of this gets out, there'll be no more hiding, and the world will know the truth. We'll be pulled into the light and forced to unite. And once that happens, there'll be no way you, or any of your so-called hunter friends, can stop us."
"Maybe," Alex said, pulling a silver spike from the pouch up her left sleeve, "but I can stop you." She drove the spike into Slasher's left pec. He let out a blood-curdling, dying howl. Alex stood and headed for the entrance of the park, the tail of her coat billowing on the breeze as she traversed a sea of dying, rotting flesh.
FORTY-TWO
Alex navigated limbs, torsos, and pools of human blood as she made her way across Walker street and into an alley between two small businesses where she had left her Corvette. She had collected all her weapons from the trailer park--including her Bowie knife from Travis' gut, and was planning to reload before going back out. She pulled her keys from her pocket and pressed a button to pop open the trunk. She went around to the back of the car and paused, glancing up.
The full moon, framed between the tops of the two buildings. Beautiful. Sinister. Bewitching. Intoxicat--
Alex shook it off. She unholstered the Kimbers and Walthers, setting them in the trunk next to a custom-made gun case. She punched in a sequence on a number pad in the top of the case and opened it, extracting fresh clips for the Kimbers. She loaded the guns and set them back in front of the case, moving to the Walthers. Since one had already been reloaded in the trailer park, Alex took the second spare clip from her thigh and fed it's hungry partner. She went back into the case and pulled out two more spare clips. As she did, a large, black form dropped silently to the pavement behind her. It rose, standing tall, gleaming yellow eyes fixed on the back of her prey--
Lisa. Alex, holding the reloaded Walther, sensed her presence. She whirled around and fired. Lisa, ever ready, sprang into the air and bounced off the brick wall to Alex's left, spearing her to the ground--
The Walther bounced off the opposite alley wall as Alex slammed to the ground.
Alex kicked Lisa in the face and rolled over, scrambling to the gun. She snatched it up and turned, but Lisa pounced on her, grabbing Alex's wrist and throwing it into the concrete to dislodge the weapon. She snapped at Alex, but the downed huntress kept her at bay with her left arm, her right hand free to grasp at her right thigh. Her fingertips got on the handle of the Bowie and she slid it out--
Sank the blade into Lisa's ribs. The beast cried out. Alex seized on the opening and shoved Lisa off, kipping up to her feet. She turned to Lisa, dragging to her own feet. She grasped the handle of the knife and yanked it out with a yelp, tossing it aside. She charged.
Alex reeled off a standing kick to her face, followed by a spinning back heel kick, sprawling Lisa deeper into the alley and onto her back. Alex moved for the Walther, but Lisa sprang back to her feet, grabbing Alex by the back of her coat and throwing her, face first into the same brick wall her gun had bounced off of. Alex stumbled back from wall, dazed, and Lisa cut her down with a slash across her back. Alex screamed and dropped to a knee--her face again inches from the wall. Lisa swung to take her head off, but Alex just barely ducked as Lisa's claws tore chunks from the brick.
Alex scrambled toward the back of the alley and got to her feet. She reached behind her and felt the bloody grooves Lisa carved in her back--the stinging sensation made her wince. She watched as Lisa turned to her, dropping to all fours as she stalked toward her. Alex backed away, glancing at the open trunk of her car--and her choice of weapons that could finish the job. To her left, against the wall, were two metal trash cans overflowing with garbage. An idea ignited in her brain. She ignored the guns.
Lisa sized Alex up and made her move, leaping right at her. Alex snatched one of the trash cans and swung it into Lisa's snout, dazing her. She dropped hard and Alex brought the can down over her head, crushing it and spilling its contents all over the place. She smashed the can over Lisa's head once more as the beast staggered to her feet and turned for the street.
Alex refused to let her go. She tossed the trash can to the alley floor and hopped on the Lisa's back, wrapping her arms around the lyca's neck and cinching her in a headlock. She squeezed as hard as she could against Lisa's thick, corded neck, cutting off her air supply. Lisa, waning, stumbled back into the alley. She dropped back to a knee; Alex only pulled her arms tighter.
Lisa shot her arms over her head, grasping
blindly for Alex. Her hands finally got a hold of her, and Lisa threw her off. Alex hit the pavement, but rolled to her feet, spinning and unsheathing her last two silver spikes. She flung them at her target; each one found their mark in Lisa's chest. She bellowed and staggered to her feet. Alex pulled another throwing knife from her bandoleer, but Lisa had had enough. She turned tail and lumbered out of the alley.
Alex slid the knife back into place. She eased over to her car and leaned against it's side to catch her breath. It was only a moment's reprieve, however, and she grimaced through the pain as she pushed to her feet and trudged to the mouth of the alley.She looked into the street in the direction Lisa had retreated. Lying near the curb, tips coated in black, were her discarded spikes--
Accompanied by a steady trail of silver-poisoned blood leading into the night...
FORTY-THREE
Tristan was perched on his throne in the barren mill, his head bowed in meditation. Positioned out of one of the many pools of moonlight that streamed through the structure's windows, he had yet to succumb fully to the Change. However, the onset on the beast was imminent: Tristan's eyes burned with barely-contined fury and his canines had pushed significantly farther through his gums. The tops of his ears had begun to meld into points and a light smattering of gray-black fur was visible on his neck, face, and backs of his hands. He gripped the armrests of he seat with bulbed fingertips topped with nails on the verge of splitting. He raised his head just slightly. A wry smirk pulled at the corner of his thin lips.
BLAM! BLAM! Lisa staggered into the mill, still in her wolf form--sporting two fresh gunshot wounds to the head. She collapsed to the floor and bled out as she reverted. Alex strolled in, holding a smoking Walther.
"You know, I've seen some really shitty dens," she said, stopping by Lisa's corpse, "but this one's gotta be a top contender for all-time worst." She sauntered toward the throne. "That was real bitch move you pulled, sending everyone else out there to do your dirty work while you stayed back and...brooded."
The Huntress (Lupus Moon Book One) Page 16
