I caught Ren and Tanaka watching them. Tanaka’s arm was around Ren’s shoulders hugging her close as she wrapped her arms around his waist. They had finally stopped hiding the fact that they were a couple. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Right then I felt like I needed to be held by my lover as well. I turned back to the couch and felt my heart sink.
Vicki was cradling her redheaded friend in her arms. They rocked back and forth as Vicki whispered in her ear. The redhead was shaking, and obviously in shock.
Can’t blame her. . . . Vicki is a nurse, she’s just doing her job and helping out the poor girl. That’s all. Isn’t it? I mean it couldn–
My thoughts were interrupted when every cell phone and radio suddenly burst to life. Every cop, agent, and emergency worker in the place was suddenly being paged. I fumbled in my pockets for my glasses as the crowd erupted in a frenzy. Something was seriously wrong somewhere.
* * *
Julie appeared beside me just as I found my glasses.
“There is a priority alert. Approximately twenty reanimated corpses are advancing on a residential area North of here. Casualties and property damage are escalating quickly. The local police have requested the assistance of the GCP and any available military intervention.”
“Reanimated corpses? You don’t mean zombies do you?” I had to ask even though I felt like an idiot actually doing it. A few months ago I would never have believed that zombies were real. But, I’d seen a lot of unexplainable weird shit lately. It was getting easier every day to believe just about anything.
“Affirmative.”
“Where?” Scott asked from across the room.
“Mudland Estates,” Julie replied with a flat tone.
“We’re going with you,” Ash declared. I started to protest but she stopped me. “I have cats there. I must protect them. With or without your permission.” The tone in her growling voice left no room for argument without a bloody fight.
Tanaka stepped up to us. “Zombies can infect any human with a single scratch. Shifters are immune. We could use their help.”
I took a moment to think it over, trying to decide if I wanted to drag anyone else into my messy life. Even with what had just happened everyone had a look of determination on their faces as they waited for me to give the order.
“Agreed. Get us there.”
***
Mudland Estates was a war zone. Ruptured gas lines spewed fire towards the heavens while the broken fire hydrants shot columns of water in all directions. Cars had been overturned and lit ablaze. In the middle of the street was a mob of fifty corpses attacking everyone and everything they could get their hands on.
“Our weapons are useless with those damn cheap shockgels. They couldn’t even slow down a chipmunk. Hell, not even headshots from the SWAT teams regular ammo are putting those things out there down for long. And for some damn reason none of our electronics are working once you get any closer than here. We’re still waiting on the National Guard to get here with those flamethrowers, and the evacuation is taking too long. It started out with only two of them. The damn things touch one of us and those poor bastards turn into one of them in just a few minutes.” The police Lieutenant wiped his forehead against the back of his sleeve and gave us a pleading gaze. He was trapped in a nightmare, and was looking for anyone to help wake him up.
Tanaka was the first to give the officer hope. “I’ve got heavy weps en route. We only need to keep them contained for a while longer. Have your men concentrate on securing the perimeter and helping with the evacuation. If we can’t hold them then we’ll have to fall back and take out the entire site with an air strike.”
Air strike?! Inside the city? Is he serious?
I looked out at all the fancy homes slowly being turned to rubble one at a time. Even with all the devastation it was hard to imagine dropping bombs in the middle of what was once a posh residential area.
“We can handle slowing them down. You evacuate the residents.” Scott patted Tanaka on the back and nodded to Ash.
Ash stopped and whispered into Vicki’s ear for a moment and walked away. Vicki dropped to her knees and covered her ears while she started to sing to herself at the top of her lungs. If I hadn’t of known her, I would have sworn she was insane.
Not that I was a good judge of sanity.
The weretigress leapt up on the roof of an ambulance with an effortless grace. She crouched down and inhaled a deep breath. Then she stood, throwing her head back, and let out a roar that tore through my entire being. I felt a tremendous urge to throw back my head and roar with her, and others did just that.
Scott tossed back his golden locks and screamed at the nearly full moon. It wasn’t a roar like the weretigress, but instead the same high-pitched shriek that I’d heard back at the house. The noise grew louder as he began to shift.
I’d seen a handful of shifts before, but this one was different. His back and shoulders convulsed and rippled, growing larger with each little twitch of muscle. The skin on his back and down his arms ballooned out to the point of breaking as the fur poured through his skin. His face morphed into something more animal than human with huge oversized ears. With a sickening ripping noise his skin gave under the pressure and split open. Down the sides of his back, arms, and legs, two enormous bat wings attached to his arms tore free of their flesh prison. When it was done he stood there, a nine-foot-tall man-bat. His wings flapped open to an impressive twenty-foot span. With a great screech he took off and flew into the night sky towards the zombie horde.
The werebat wasn’t the only one to answer the roar of the Den Mother of the House of Lesser Cats. All around us people started to shift. Cops and civilians threw back their heads and answered the call of the weretigress. To them Ash was like a master vampire to the normal vamps. They had no choice but to answer her call.
Vicki was rocking back and forth as she sung at the top of her lungs while pressing her palms against her ears hard enough her hands were turning white. She was shaking. The sweat poured off of her like she was sitting under a sprinkler.
When the great roar stopped, the fight was joined by nearly a dozen more shifters. Ash glanced at Vicki before jumping off the ambulance and rushing into the fight. Vicki, still in human form, dropped her arms and collapsed to the pavement. I rushed to her side only to find her sleeping like a child that had too much fun at the amusement park. I covered her with my duster and smoothed back her hair.
She exhausted herself by trying to keep from shifting. At least her secret is still safe. I wonder if any of those others were trying to hide that they were shifters. I have a feeling there may be a few divorces once all the smoke clears.
Tanaka gathered our group together. “In case you hadn’t noticed, were being jammed. Once you step past the perimeter your on you own. No communications, in or out.” He paused for us to let that sink in. “There are still people stuck in their houses, either afraid or unable to leave. We need them out of here. I was serious about an air strike. In under an hour the zombie plague grew from two to over fifty strong. If we don’t stop them here and now, the entire city could be gone before daybreak. Ren, stay here and take command of the locals. I’m giving you emergency authority over the situation. Julie is with me. We’re not human on the outside so there is no chance we could be infected. We will attempt to keep the zombies from leaving the area. Kieran and Darcy, start with that red two-story over there and sweep the houses on the North side of the street back to this point. We picked up a few faint thermal traces in those houses. If you run into any zombies, shoot them in the head and run. Humans and Vampires are not immune to their plague, so don’t touch them or let them touch you. A single drop of blood or saliva is also enough to turn you. Just be damn careful. Any questions?”
“I thought I was supposed to be the leader?” I asked him without thinking.
“You are, but right now this is something that is a little above your head. You’ve never dealt with something like this before.”
“Oh and you have!?”
He gave me a cold, lifeless stare. “Yes.”
***
Darcy marked the front door with a glowing green diagonal line from a paint pen.
“This way they know which doors we went in. We’ll put another line on it to make an X when we come out to show that we’ve moved on.”
I just glared at her.
What a waste of time. It’s not like anyone is going to come looking for us for a while anyway even if we do get into trouble.
“The firefighters do it,” she shrugged to me.
I shook my head as I tried the door again to make sure it was locked for the third time. We had already rung the bell and knocked without answer. It only took me a second to weigh my options before I lifted my gun and shot the doorknob. Half of the door exploded away under the ripper round. I used my boot to kick open the other half.
Darcy looked down at the paint pen in her hand and dropped it with another shrug.
One by one we cleared the rooms on the first floor as a team. When we entered the kitchen I worked my way around to the far side and looked out the window in the back door into the back yard for signs of movement. Darcy moved up beside me and took a look, then made her way for the open basement door.
She gave me a signal that she was headed down. I started to move into position to cover her from the top of the stairs.
Suddenly she dropped out of sight with a crashing ruckus.
“Darcy! Darcy you alright?” I called out as I ran to the top of the stairs.
I couldn’t hear anything. Even worse, it was pitch black in the basement. Before I would have relied on my shields or my glasses to see in the dark. Unfortunately, those weren’t options right then. My shields were gone, and the glasses were offline because of the jamming. I took a step back, intending on searching the kitchen for a flashlight, when I heard Darcy groan. It sounded like she was in pain.
That made up my mind and I headed down the stairs, guns first, just in case. On the fourth step down I found the first problem. The front half of the stair had been broken off. It took a few seconds of searching with my toes to find the next step down.
“Darcy? Hey, can you hear me? I’m comin’ down there. Just hold on.”
I got a groan as a reply. By the time I reached the last stair I was starting to see in the dark just fine. That’s when I noticed I could only see in the dark through my left eye. It had switched to a night vision mode.
I really need to ask just what in the hell all these new parts can do.
Darcy was face down in the dirt in the middle of the unfinished basement, not at the bottom of the stairs. I took three steps towards her and froze. The night vision in my eye let me see the dirt at my feet, as well as the drag marks from the stairs to Darcy’s body.
Something else is down here.
My guns came up and I started to walk into the room, making circles and trying to look all around me at once. The room was bare with the ceiling low enough that it brushed against the top of my head at each crossbeam. I could barely walk around without stooping. Stairs, dirt floor, concrete walls with tiny windows at ground level. There was nothing else in the room but Darcy and a few support beams. There wasn’t even another way out.
Nothing passed me, and nothing’s movin’. It’s still in here. Hiding. But what is it? And where?
I reached Darcy’s side and kept scanning the room as I nudged her with the toe of my boot. She answered me with another pain filled groan. I put the gun in my right hand away and snuck a light grenade out of my pocket.
Whatever’s down here isn’t making a move. So all I have to do is toss the grenade and make a run for it with Darcy while everything else is distracted. That should work, right? Darcy is supposed to be immune to sunlight. I hope that means that the grenade shouldn’t affect her any more than it does me.
I kept the small marble-sized grenade between my thumb and first two fingers as I gently placed my hand on her back. I could feel her breathing. Her chest moved with each shallow breath. My eyes scanned the dark room finding no trace of other life.
Darcy groaned again. A painful, wordless noise filling the room as her chest expanded out again.
Wait a minute! How could she groan like that when she was breathing in?
Another groan filled the room followed by a sickening smell of rot and death. I whipped the gun around searching for anything. The smell and sounds in the basement reminded me of the zombie movies I’d watched as a kid. I was expecting the darkness to erupt, spewing out dozens of flesh eating undead any second.
The room appeared empty. I forced myself to remain still as I focused on listening. The battle outside was growing louder every minute. It took several seconds before I heard the groan again. Darcy had been in-between breaths which proved it wasn’t her making the noise. That’s when I realized where the groans had been coming from.
I jerked my head up looking above me between the crossbeams. The skeleton-like smile widened as the Immortal filled my vision. He was using his arms to keep himself suspended on the ceiling between the crossbeams. The smile opened as it began to chuckle that deep wet laugh of theirs.
* * *
The Immortal let go of the beams and lunged towards me. I screamed a girly scream as I scrambled and crab walked back out of its reach.
My left arm raised my gun to fire, only to be slapped away by an incredibly strong hand.
A second Immortal – the one with the holes in it from Ash’s house – belched its gas in my face before I could react.
Gassed again!?! Fucking hell! Two of them!? Where was the other one hiding? Shit! I’m already freezing up! I can’t fight them both with only one arm!
The first Immortal had landed on all fours above Darcy. It dipped its head down as if to smell her. Then the head twisted from side to side in that unnatural way like the one I’d first met back in that apartment when this entire nightmare first began. It stretched out its neck and opened its mouth.
I half expected it to bite her, but instead it belched out the same puke-green gas in her face. There was no hope of her waking up and helping now. With no way to contact the others I was royally screwed. My mind began to race as I considered my options.
The creaking of footsteps on the basement stairs stopped me from thinking rationally.
Another one!?! I can’t fight three of them! No way can I live through another one of their dissections. I can’t let them take me . . . not alive anyway. . . . My arm can still move. All I have to do is place my fist under my chin, then with a thought my knuckle blades can slice right through my skull. It should kill me before they figure out what’s happening. Dead is better than being taken again. Surely everyone would understand that. . . .
“Big Sister! Don’t leave me! Don’t ever leave me!” Cassie’s words cut through my memories.
Suddenly I felt so guilty for thinking about killing myself and leaving Cassie alone. I knew that if I died it would break Cassie’s heart. Then she’d cry. Facing the torturous dissection of the immortals was nothing in my mind compared to knowing I’d made Cassie cry. I felt my own tears slide down my face at the thought.
“Shedding tears of fear? Now that is a beautiful sight. Hello Kevin. Miss me?”
My mind switched gears from suicidal guilt to homicidal rage as the figure from the stairs stepped into view.
Jacob! He is still alive! You did this to me! I’ll kill you, you fucker!!!
His sharp nose and narrow eyes dominated his face as the scar on his cheek ruined his perfect smile. He wore another tailored designer suit, with his straight black hair draping over his shoulders clear to his waist.
“Oh how I wish you could tell me what you’re thinking right now. It would be most interesting indeed. You have cost me a great deal Kevin. I never thought one person could be so much trouble. Look at the chaos I had to cause to get you to come out on your own. It wasn’t easy to get those zombies here. Of course, once they were set free it didn’t tak
e long for them to lure you to me. It was quite an expensive distraction, but well worth it.”
I tried to force the rest of my body to move, but if it wasn’t synthetic it didn’t budge. The grenade was still in my fingers. That made up my mind.
If I’m gonna die, I’m taking you with me!
I rolled the grenade in my fingers and pressed the activation button. It had a three second timer so I waited to throw it. The explosion would put out enough UV light to vaporize all but a master vampire. I knew that Jacob most likely wouldn’t die from it, but it would distract him. Hopefully it would be enough of a distraction for me to draw my other gun with my mobile arm so I could give him some new ventilation holes.
It was as good of a plan as I could come up with. So naturally Jacob screwed it up. Before I counted down to two he stepped out of my line of sight. He’d moved behind me so that I had no real idea where he was. My plan had been based on hitting him with the grenade just as it exploded, but I couldn’t hit what I couldn’t see. Once activated you couldn’t stop the grenade, and I was running out of time fast. I had no idea if the grenades would affect the immortals at all.
No getting around it, I need help!
As the final second counted down, I rolled the grenade in my fingers and used my thumb to launch it like a marble. The cybernetic synthetics increased my hand eye coordination and allowed me to hit my target with ease. Just before the grenade exploded, it shattered through the small window near the ceiling of the basement. Once it was on the other side of the glass, it exploded.
The deafening noise slammed into me with an almost physical presence as the light washed over the entire basement. My ears went deaf, and my right eye went blind, but my synthetic left eye compensated for the light and tinted itself like I was wearing sunglasses.
Immortal Death (Kieran Grey Psionic Hunter Book 3) Page 18
