The Savage Night

by P. T. Hylton

  “So let’s assume we can average half that. That means it would take six hours to get to Agartha.” Alex looked down at her watch. “It is currently ten a.m. local time, which means we have approximately two hours to figure out a way to get the rover functional. Let’s get to work.”

  The team spent the next hour brainstorming, pulling parts off the ship, and experimenting with any possible way to get the rover going. During this time, Alex ceded control of the team to Owl, and the pilot wasted no time in putting them to work.

  The most obvious solution would be to pull some batteries off the ship and use them for the rover. That presented a number of practical problems. First, the batteries themselves were bigger than the entire rover by half. But they would fit on the rover’s eight-foot trailer.

  The team got to work stripping the ship and lining the bottom of the trailer with two sets of batteries, enough to make the trip to Agartha three times, according to Owl. They weren’t taking any chances with one set of batteries. Patrick and Ed took some metal doors from the water-treatment facility and rigged them to sit over the batteries, giving the team a place to sit.

  Owl and Chuck wired the batteries together and rigged up a connection to attach them to the rover’s motor.

  When they’d finished, Owl stood back and put her hands on her hips. “Well, it looks like shit, but it’ll get us there.”

  Alex looked at her watch. “And with ten minutes to spare. Nice work, team. Let’s load up and head out.”

  Even though Alex knew the truth of their situation, she wasn’t about to say it out loud to the team: the odds of them making it to Agartha in the next six hours were low, and if they didn’t make it to Agartha in the next six hours, they would die.

  27

  CB stumbled from rooftop to rooftop, trying to make his way out of the Hub. The buildings were close enough together that he was able to easily leap from one to another, but he’d bled through his make-shift bandage and was leaving a trail of blood drips that even the worst badge in the Hub would be able to follow.

  How he’d gotten this far without being caught, he did not know. He also knew his luck wouldn’t last. The city was bustling below him as badges shouted and ran through the streets. He currently had a couple things going in his favor. The bright sun shone through the ship windows above him as it always did on New Haven; hopefully it would mask him a bit if someone below happened to glance up.

  But eventually someone would think of climbing up the ladder at badge headquarters. When they did, they’d find the trail of blood. Then finding him would be easy.

  He needed to go to a friend. But who? He would be putting that person in immediate danger. Not that his friends weren’t in danger already. If Kurtz had been on Fleming’s side from the beginning, that meant Fleming knew that Brian, Jessica, Alex, and Owl were all directly in on the plot against him.

  And then there was the most troubling question of all, the one that was gnawing on him like he was a mid-morning snack. Fleming had said the GMT was already as good as dead. That had to mean he’d somehow compromised their mission that morning.

  CB was still considering this when the screens mounted around the city lit up, displaying Fleming’s image. The camera was in close, and his toothy smile filled the width of the massive screens.

  “Hello, my fellow citizens,” he began. “Today I’m coming to you with some truly exciting news.”

  CB resisted the urge to stop and watch. This was his chance, he knew. Every eye in New Haven would be fixed to those screens. If he could make it to the edge of the Hub while Fleming was bloviating, he might be able to climb down to the street without anyone noticing. Then he could make his way to the agricultural district and hide while he figured out his next move.

  “We’ve had a rough go of it lately,” Fleming continued. “I’ve asked for sacrifices from each and every one of you. My engineering crews have dismantled non-essential systems, and we’ve all felt the impact of that in our lives. The first thing I want to say this morning is thank you. Thank you for believing in my vision for the future. Thank you for helping to make this day possible.”

  This day? CB wondered.

  “Before we continue, I do have one piece of disturbing news to report. Despite the overwhelming support for our mission, there are still a few people who haven’t been able to see our vision. They like their lives the way they are. They enjoy the privileged lifestyle aboard this ship that is the result of the hard work of the majority, and they don’t want to give that up. One of those people is Colonel Arnold Brickman.”

  CB had half expected his name to come up, but it was still jarring to have a face on a giant monitor declare him a traitor.

  “Colonel Brickman took action against our city today, storming the badge headquarters in an attempt to free General Craig, presumably so the general could help him stage a military coup. Colonel Brickman failed, and he was injured by a heroic badge, but he remains at large. Please, if you see him or have any information that could help us find him, contact a badge immediately. However, Brickman’s dangerous and violent actions will not stop Resettlement. Which brings me to my real reason for speaking with you today.”

  CB leaped over a gap and landed on the next rooftop, this one at the edge of the Hub. The buildings beyond this point were much shorter, and he’d have to climb down here. For the first time in his life, he was thankful that Fleming was so damn wordy.

  “The Resettlement preparations have gone even better than we’d expected,” Fleming said, “due in no small part to the heroic efforts of Captain Garrett Eldred and his team of Resettlers. Captain Eldred has overseen both the GMT and his civilian teams in clearing Fort Sterns of vampires and preparing it to be a safe and comfortable home.”

  “Overseen the GMT,” CB muttered as he stumbled across the next rooftop. “Like hell he has.”

  “Today is a day of celebration. Even as we speak, a group of one hundred Resettlers are already in Fort Sterns. A second group of one hundred is en route, and the third will be joining them shortly.”

  CB forced himself to keep running as the news washed over him. This was it. Resettlement was happening. Fleming had beat them.

  “Tonight, they will spend their first night on the surface. Captain Eldred has managed to keep Fort Sterns free of vampires for a week now, so I’m confident our Resettlers will be safe and secure. Any vampire who wanders into the perimeter outside Fort Sterns will be in for a nasty surprise.”

  CB reached the edge of the last building and began descending the ladder.

  A thought hit him, a thought that made him push aside his devastation, fight the pain, and keep moving. His GMT was in trouble, and Fleming had purposely put them there.

  CB couldn’t lie down and die. Not yet. He had to save his team. Or, if he couldn’t do that, he’d make sure Fleming paid the ultimate price.

  “This is truly…” Fleming paused, as if overcome with emotion. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly just the beginning of what we are going to accomplish together. The Resettlers in Fort Sterns are the tip of the spear that we are going to drive into the heart of the vampires. Humanity will take back the Earth. Not in ten years. Not sometime soon. Now. The Earth is ours, and we are going to claim it.”

  The screens went dark just as CB’s foot touched the street. He didn’t stop to see if anyone had spotted him. He didn’t look ahead to see if the way was clear. He just ran.

  Captain Garrett Elder sat at his desk in the administrative building of Fort Sterns. It was a simple metal desk, barely big enough to get a chair under, but it would do for now. They hadn’t been able to bring a lot of furniture down yet; they’d been afraid it would have led Alex and the GMT to guess Resettlement was going to happen sooner than they were letting on. But Fleming promised Garrett that he would requisition a desk more worthy of his station very soon.

  Shirley marched up, and stood at attention in front of his desk. The strain was clear around her eyes. He couldn’t blame her. She was part
of his inner circle along with Henry and Mario. He’d burdened the three of them with a lot of responsibility very quickly. He just hoped they could handle it.

  “How are we looking?” he asked her.

  “Good, sir. The first hundred are pretty well settled in, the second hundred have been given their essential supplies and weapons, and the final group is in the process of disembarking from the transport.”

  “Excellent.” He was pleased with the way things had been progressing so far. Granted, to the outside observer, it would have looked like chaos. With the way people were scurrying around, it resembled an anthill that had just been kicked. And yet there was order within the apparent chaos.

  One team was checking the daylights on the walls. Another was checking that all the backup batteries were charged and connected. Some of the former badges were checking the railguns on the walls to ensure they were ready for use. Still others were unloading food and weapons from the transport. Everyone knew their job and everyone was doing it.

  For all the times Garrett had doubted himself, and even occasionally doubted Fleming, he had to admit things were going smoothly.

  And this was only the beginning. Things weren’t going to slow down anytime soon, Garrett knew. When the people of New Haven found out how well things had gone on Fort Sterns, their faith in Fleming would grow even more solid than it already was and they’d demand other settlements be launched as quickly as possible. And Fleming would comply.

  If everything went according to plan, Garrett Eldred would hold the rank of major in a month’s time and general before the year was out. He’d be overseeing not just one settlement, but dozens.

  So why did he have this nagging feeling in his gut that made him want to run to the bathroom, close the door, and hide until the world disappeared around him?

  He knew the answer, though he didn’t want to think it.

  While he sat safely behind these walls, his old GMT teammates were out there alone, afraid, and waiting for night to fall.

  He told himself it wasn’t his fault. He’d given Alex every chance to join the good guys. He’d reasoned with her, coerced her, and practically begged. Yet she’d insisted on continuing down the dark path, working to undermine Fleming at every turn. And still, he’d given her one last chance at survival, as thin as that chance might be.

  Garrett pushed the thoughts of Alex and the GMT out of his mind. Not only did he not deserve to feel guilty, but he didn’t have time. There was too much to be done.

  He watched through the window as a group of Resettlers filed into the admin building carrying a crate of weapons. The admin building would serve as the hub and storage facility for the bulk of food and weapons.

  Garrett smiled up at Shirley and picked up the microphone sitting on his desk. “What do you say we try out this PA system?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” she said with a grin.

  He took a deep breath and pressed the button on the microphone. "This is Captain Eldred. Tonight we will make history and give hope to humanity. I know most of you haven’t been to the surface before today, so I wanted to take a moment to ease your minds. The lights in this base have kept vamps out for a week, and they’ll do the same tonight. They will keep us safe. But you have something even more important than that. Look at the men and women around you. These are our best assets. You are all part of the most important moment for humanity since the final wave. You will be remembered as heroes and legends. Each of you have a legacy that will ring through the generations, and that starts tonight. I need all of you to remain calm and focused. Our lives on the surface have begun. It’s time to start living them."

  He set the microphone down and looked at Shirley.

  “How was that for a first speech?”

  She smiled at him, tears standing in her eyes. “It was wonderful, Captain.”

  28

  Driving the rover through the streets of Denver was like trying to get to the bar at Tankards on a crowded Friday night: slow going. From abandoned cars to barricades to rubble from decaying buildings, it made for slow travel. The rover could go over almost anything, but with the trailer, it took a little more finesse.

  Alex, Owl, Wesley, and Chuck rode up front, with Ed and Patrick sitting over the batteries on the trailer. The rover was loud as it made its way over the obstacles in its way, and they had to keep a constant grip on the roll bars or risk being bounced from the vehicle.

  It was slow going, but it wasn’t until they’d been traveling for over an hour that they came to their first truly daunting obstacle.

  “Huh,” Wesley said when they saw it. “Owl, that twelve-and-a-half--miles-an-hour estimate accounted for giant piles of cars in the road, right?”

  “It did not,” Owl said hollowly.

  The road ahead of them was blocked by a massive pile of vehicles five cars tall and ten cars long. What it was doing there, Alex did not know. Perhaps the cars had been stacked there in an attempt to blockade the vampires. Whenever the original reason, it sure was a pain in the ass now.

  “Can we get over it?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah,” Owl said, the forced confidence clear in her voice. “We can get over it.”

  The rover slowly began to roll up the pile, and the passengers held on for dear life. It was bad up front, but Alex could only imagine how bumpy the ride was for Patrick and Ed on the trailer.

  The rover was almost to the top of the pile, crunching its way over car after car, when they heard a howl from directly beneath them. Then another and third.

  “Holy shit,” Chuck whispered. “This is a nest.”

  Alex’s pulse quickened as she realized he was right. “Owl, get us off this pile.”

  Owl’s voice was strained when she answered. “Doing my best, Captain. But unless you want me to flip this thing, we have to take it slow.”

  Everyone held their weapons at the ready as Owl kept them moving forward. No one spoke.

  Alex heard a strange creaking noise coming from a car to her left. “Nine o’clock,” she shouted to the team.

  A vampire burst up through a gap between cars, its teeth bared.

  Before anyone could fire, the creature burst into flames. If started wriggling back down between the cars, screaming in pain, but Alex put a bullet through its head before it could.

  The cries of the burning vampire were answered by howls from beneath their feet. The stack of cars shifted as the vampires moved around below them.

  “Hang on!” Owl called. She turned hard to the left, setting the front wheels on a more stable car. The trailer twisted behind them and almost tipped, but Patrick and Ed quickly moved their weight to the right, steadying it.

  The rover continued rolling forward, on the downward angle now, and soon they were back on solid ground.

  “Let’s not do that again ever,” Ed called from the trailer.

  The howls continued coming from the pile. Alex looked back and saw eyes staring out from the darkness underneath the cars.

  “You know what?” Patrick said. “Screw them.”

  With that, he tossed a grenade onto the stack.

  “What are you doing?” Alex shouted.

  The grenade exploded, send the husks of several ruined cars jumping into the air. The howls of hunger turned to howls of rage and pain.

  Ed laughed and high-fived his brother.

  “You morons!” Alex yelled. “We can’t afford to waste grenades like that.”

  The howls were coming from the buildings all around them now. Every vampire in that part of the city knew they were there.

  They drove on in silence for a while. The roads were becoming clearer as they went further from the center of the city, but they still had to work their way through, around, or over the occasional obstacle. And they were way behind Owl’s original estimated schedule.

  “What should we do to Fleming when we get back to New Haven?” Patrick asked.

  His brother was the first to answer. “I hear boiling in oil is painful.”

&n
bsp; “That could work,” Owl said. “What about throwing him out the hangar door? That way he’d have some time to think about what he’d done on the way down.”

  “Nah,” Patrick said. “I say we make him spar with the captain. She can put the hurt on him more effectively than any of that other stuff. I speak from personal experience.”

  They all laughed at that.

  “Everyone, I’d like to apologize,” Alex said. “It’s my fault we’re in this mess. Fleming wanted revenge on me for going against him. I’m sorry you got caught up in this.”

  “Are you kidding?” Wesley said. "I'm not mad that your actions got us stranded on the surface. I just wish you’d brought us in on it sooner.”

  “Agreed,” Chuck added. “You’re our captain. You have kept us alive and taught us how to survive on the surface. You showed us what the brotherhood of the GMT is all about. I think that I speak for everyone here when I say that we will back you over any politician. Right, team?"

  “Hell yeah,” the rest of them agreed.

  As the rover continued down the street, the howls in the buildings around them started to be less frequent. Soon they would be out of Denver and hopefully they’d be able to keep moving at a faster clip.

  “How we doing on time?” Alex asked.

  Owl checked the monitor in front of her. “Not great. But if things are clear up ahead, we should still be able to make it to Agartha by sunset. It’ll be tight, but we can make it.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Let’s make it happen.”

  29

  The GMT reached the edge of the city. There were a few more buildings cutting vertical lines in the horizon up ahead, but beyond that there was nothing but mountains and sky. The road beneath them was cracked and potted, and there were occasional gaps that Owl had to slow to traverse.

  The team sat in silence, taking in the beauty of the world around them.

  “You ever wished you’d lived down here back in the pre-infestation days?” Ed asked.