by Joe Fowler
“Would you two be willing to do what Seth suggested?” The President asked with obvious hope in his eyes. Rosalyn looked at me with a sad look. I knew she didn’t want to but she was leaving it up to me.
“We will help. Too many people are dying.” I told them. Rosalyn took my hand under the table.
“Thank you. If the need wasn’t so great, I wouldn’t ask this of you.” The President’s demeanor changed as he continued speaking. He was obviously more upbeat with hope. “Miami is the worst. We can have you in these cities tonight if you can leave now. Tell us what we can do to help so we can have things ready.”
“Communication mainly. I would expect the vampires to be spread throughout, with some focal points. We need to know those focal points. After we clear out an area, we would need to know where to head next.” Seth stated.
“We will work on that. I will prepare the planes for takeoff. How soon can you be at the airport?”
“It won’t take us long, Mr. President. We will drive back to get Josh and pack some clothes to take with us. We could be on the plane in a little more than an hour, I would think.” Seth stood as he said it emphasizing his readiness to leave.
“Excellent. We will be waiting at the airport for your arrival.” The President stood to leave as well. “Seth, I will take you and Josh to Miami on Air Force One. We can discuss further strategies.”
“Yes sir. I am glad to help.” Seth said.
We were escorted to our car under a much more relaxed guard. Seth drove as fast as he dared all the way to Josh’s house. He was on the phone telling Josh to be ready to leave. We arrived to cheers of both relief and celebration. The pack had been worried about the trap possibility. Rosalyn and I rushed to the basement to gather some things. We were back at the front door quickly. Seth and Josh were right behind us. They took a few moments to kiss their wives goodbye before we left. Josh drove us to the airport while Seth was on the phone bringing the other werewolf packs up to speed on what was happening.
We were met by soldiers as we turned off the highway. They were waiting for us. They parked Josh’s car and took us to the doors where secret service guys became our escorts. The airport was buzzing with activity. Having Air Force One at one of your terminals could cause that. We were escorted through the x-ray and security without having to stop. That was where they split us up. Josh and Seth were being led to the President’s plane. They had arranged for a plane for Rosalyn and me. We had barely entered the plane when the pilot backed us away from the loading ramp. They weren’t wasting any time.
There were a few soldiers with us. One of them, Sergeant Davis, introduced himself as our go between. He would be the one handling our communications with the President and making sure we had what we needed. They would also provide our transportation. We would have an armored car to protect the soldiers as we drove through the city. The flight took three and a half hours. We landed just after two o’clock. We had time to do some damage before dawn.
All entrances and exits for the airport had a dozen or more armed guards which is the only reason there weren’t any vampires there. As we began walking through the airport in St. Louis, some of the people started to shout angrily at Rosalyn and me. They were upset to see two vampires, but seeing the soldiers escorting us made them even madder. Luckily someone recognized me from the video that aired. My name was shouted repeatedly and the anger turned to hope. One voice in the crowd rang out loudly asking if we were there to help. I looked in the direction of the shout and nodded. There were cheers for us then as we made our way to the armored vehicle waiting outside.
“There is a gathering of vampires not too far from the airport. It seems like a good place to start.” Davis said. He, with an ear bud and mouthpiece, was currently talking to the St. Louis authorities while showing us our destination on a map. “What will you need from us? Also, what do you need for sleeping arrangements?”
“As far as the fight goes, just drop us off and stay a safe distance away. We can handle the vampires. For the sleeping arrangements, we need a windowless room, or a room facing north with thick blankets covering the windows. We would prefer the room not be accessible to others. Sunlight is not kind to us.” Rosalyn explained.
“What about feeding?” The Sergeant swallowed nervously but managed to continue. “Will you need blood?”
“No. We will feed off the vampires. I don’t feed off of humans anymore.” I almost laughed at his visible relief. “You guys need to concentrate on getting us where we are needed and making sure we have a safe place to sleep out the day.”
“Yes sir. We can handle that.” Davis returned his attention to the phone trying to arrange for our sleeping quarters.
I looked out the small window at the quiet streets we were passing. Most people had taken our warnings to heart and were staying inside away from harm. The vampires had set fire to many places in the area to draw the people out. We were headed to one such fire. An apartment complex was under attack. Several fires had been set to make the humans come out to the vampires. I could see the smoke and flames already. We would be there in moments. We told the soldiers to make sure they parked a safe distance away since we didn’t want them to get hurt in the confusion.
The apartments were a series of two story buildings with eight to sixteen family units per building. Rosalyn and I darted through killing each vampire as we found them. It was mostly one or two vampires at a time until we approached the worst of the burning buildings. There was a crowd of maybe fifteen vampires feeding. Rosalyn beat me to them wiping out almost half before I could lend a hand. We separated so we could cover more ground and give the vampires less chance of escaping. I sped between buildings and the surrounding areas killing as I found them. It took us less than five minutes to completely clear the complex of vampires.
The soldiers looked at us in disbelief when we returned. They had watched what they could from their vantage point. After his initial shock wore off, Sergeant Davis called the authorities and reported the area secure and in need of fire trucks. Rosalyn and I were then taken to a nightclub known to be a gathering spot.
We entered the club and was confronted by around seventy vampires. The neon lights decorating the walls cast an eerie glow on vampire skin. Rosalyn and I spread out enough to give ourselves room to fight. We began mowing them down without any problems. Rosalyn reminded me to feed when we were down to only a few vampires left to kill. I was thankful for the reminder as I was very into the fighting and might have forgotten otherwise. We made short work of the club.
Our next area was a residential area that had some, not many, but some vampires looming about. We were limited in how much more time we had before sunrise. This area was close to where our hotel was, according to Davis. Rosalyn and I split up roaming the streets of this suburb killing what vampires we could find. I doubt I found more than a dozen but it was still time well spent. We headed to the hotel when we felt that neighborhood was as clear as we could make it. It was getting too close to sunrise to stay out longer.
“Do not enter this room. Wait for us to come out. Even after dark.” I was telling Sergeant Davis. “Understand?”
“Yes sir. We will post a guard to make sure you are not disturbed during the day.” Davis spoke with a mixture of fear and awe. He had witnessed enough from Rosalyn and me to know what we were capable of.
“Good. Get some rest Sergeant. Tonight will be exciting.” Rosalyn said smiling.
From what we had seen and been told, the downtown area of St. Louis was overrun with vampires. That would be our first destination when we woke. We lay in bed kissing and cuddling until the sun rose.
Chapter 13
My eyes opened to Rosalyn’s face. She had her chin resting on my chest with one of her devilish smiles letting me know what she was thinking about. I took my time making sure her perfect body had been properly taken care of. It’s too bad we had to go fight, because staying in the room all night was looking like it would be much more fun. Since we knew
how much we were needed, we dutifully took our showers and headed downstairs for deployment. Sometimes being the good guys sucked.
Davis and his team were waiting for us in the lobby. We didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Once we were loaded and on the road, Davis pulled a map showing us the layout of the worst part of downtown. Rosalyn and I decided to stay together at first since the vampires supposedly numbered in the hundreds. We doubted there would be a concentrated attack on us but we knew we should be together just in case. We were dropped off on a side street a few blocks away. No need for the soldiers to be put in danger.
We came across more and more vampires as we neared the area we had been shown. Approaching like this was better anyway. We were killing some vampires that would not have been anywhere near the fighting if we had gone directly to the heart of the problem. When we were still a block away we were fighting almost nonstop. The vampires there saw us killing their buddies and they rushed to join in trying to stop us from ruining their fun. Rosalyn was getting further away from me. She was moving to meet the vampires coming at us from her side as I was doing on my side. We were surrounded but still close enough that they couldn’t get between us to attack from behind. I moved to stay closer to her to make sure. This went on for an unknown amount of time. Since vampires don’t get tired, time spent fighting passes by unnoticed. Eventually we ran out of vampires to kill.
We held hands as we walked to what was supposed to be the worst area. True enough, there were hordes of them. Rosalyn gave me a quick kiss and we got started. After killing a few, the rest started to notice that something was wrong. They turned on us when they realized what was happening. There were two things that were hard about this fight. Staying close enough to each other that they couldn’t attack from behind was one. The other thing was all the corpses were making it hard to find footing. I figured out one helpful method after almost tripping over an arm. If I slid my feet forcefully, I would kick the body parts away allowing me to move without the danger of falling. There were some close calls where I struggled a little but overall it went well.
When I finished off the last of the attacking vampires, I turned to see Rosalyn standing at the ready. We looked around at our surroundings and saw scattered vampires staring at us with hatred. They could see that attacking us would not work. As I took a closer look, some of the buildings had vampires staring out of the windows at us.
“There are still a lot of vampires here. We will need to go through some of these buildings too.” I told Rosalyn.
“I know. I see them. It will take longer but I want us to do this together. They might try to set a trap. With both of us we should be okay.” Rosalyn made sense. I didn’t mind it taking longer if it meant she would be safer. I almost laughed thinking of how I was worried about her when she was the one who was almost unbeatable.
We darted to the sidewalk killing two vamps before they could run. The building we entered had a huge lobby. With a wink Rosalyn took off at full speed around the room. Three bodies hit the floor after she was back by my side.
“That was impressive!” I admitted.
“Just a little thing I do.” She said playfully.
We found the stairs and headed up. We did a floor by floor check. Some floors were empty while others held up to a dozen of them. None put up much of a fight. We made our way back to the lobby. And found a surprise just outside. There were another hundred or so vampires milling through the corpses we had left in the street.
They came at us as soon as we were out of the building. For this fight, the building itself was protecting our backs. As this fight progressed I faced off with some vampires who had some age to them. I was learning to recognize the ones who could pose a serious threat much faster now. I still was able to stand up to the challenges but it was teaching me not to relax. Overconfidence could get me killed. Rosalyn and I almost had to climb our way out of the mass of bodies before we could move on to the next building.
The night went on with many buildings being cleared and occasional groups of attackers. We made our way up and down the street trying to be thorough. I was shocked to look at a watch on a nearby body and see that it was four o’clock already. We decided to go ahead and call Davis to come and pick us up on the phone he had given us earlier.
“Holy shit! How?” The Sergeant was looking around at the corpses and couldn’t control his disbelief. “This is impossible. A hundred soldiers with guns couldn’t have done this. We were expecting this area alone to take three or four days and that was if we were helping you. This is incredible.”
“We would have been done hours ago if we hadn’t gone through all these buildings.” I told him. His jaw dropped even further. With a shake of his head he opened the door for us to get into the armored car.
We made the soldiers stop and buy us some beer on the way back to the hotel. Rosalyn and I had time to watch the news and see what was going on in other places. The President had listened to Seth it seemed. Many cities were being cleared by soldiers wearing night vision. They would shoot a vampire several times and cut off his head before he could recover. It was slow going and dangerous for the soldiers but it was working. The news anchors were happy to report that Miami’s streets had become much safer. The locals had awaken to hundreds of small fires marking where a vampire died. They didn’t know what could be killing the vampires at such an astonishing rate. I smiled at the thought of Josh and Seth making it look easy.
“I wonder what the news will say about St. Louis tomorrow.” I thought aloud.
“Unless the President tells them, they won’t know it was us. I don’t know if I am happy or sad about the people not knowing.” Rosalyn sounded like me on that subject. It had good points and bad.
“Personally, I think it would be good for us to be known. That way we won’t be mistaken for a bad vampire and killed.” I noted.
“You do have a point. I didn’t think about that.” Rosalyn shook her head in frustration. “I had everything down pat. No matter what situation came up, I had the answer. Being this old, there wasn’t any more surprises. Now everything is different.”
“Well, now you get to have some new experiences. Is that so bad?” I was too young to be set in my ways. I couldn’t understand what that would be like.
“There are some good parts.” She rubbed her hand across my chest. “You are making this a lot easier. I wasn’t expecting to ever love again. There had been infatuations and long term travel companions but there was no love with them. You are very different and I don’t just mean the speed and strength.”
“I didn’t have infatuations or anything long term. I was becoming cynical and crabby at the age of twenty-two. I was still human and I didn’t think love was a possibility. Now, I am a very powerful vampire who is in love with the most beautiful woman in the world.” I paused for a moment. “Change isn’t always a bad thing.”
We felt the sun’s approach then. She lay her head on my chest and we slept. My dreams were filled with Rosalyn. There was no doubt in my mind about her. I would have preferred to spend my nights with her peacefully doing what made us happy. The sooner we put a stop to the rampaging vampires, the better.
Chapter 14
When the sun set, Rosalyn and I woke to some loud banging on the door. I opened the door for Sergeant Davis. He must have seen the anger on my face because he took a step back with his hands raised. Rosalyn put a restraining hand on my shoulder. I looked at her and calmed down enough to listen to what the Sergeant had to say.
“We have a plane ready for takeoff but the airport is screaming at us to hurry. I would not have knocked on the door if it weren’t important, believe me.” Davis was stammering by the end of his explanation.
“Where are they sending us now?” Rosalyn asked.
“Baltimore. The vampires have overrun the wolves there. A lot of people are dying. It looks like they have many more vampires than St. Louis did.” Davis was calming down now that he saw we weren’t going to eat him.
“We will get our things.” I said and shut the door in his face. Rosalyn laughed and slapped my arm.
“Don’t be so grumpy. They need us, remember.” She reminded me.
“I know. I just wasn’t ready to wake up yet. I might have been grumpy without the banging on the door.” I said.
We packed our bags and were rushed to the airport. There were many more people there this time. The same thing happened with the crowd. Anger at seeing vampires turning into cheering when we were recognized. They quickly realized Rosalyn and I were the reason their city was much safer now. We got cheered by everyone after that. There were more soldiers waiting for us at the boarding ramp.
“I am Major Harley Wilder. I will be your escort while you are in Baltimore. I have been brought up to speed on you by Sergeant Davis. We hope you are as impressive as he said.” He offered his hand and as I shook it he continued. “If you will head this way we can get on the plane.”
The plane ride was relaxing. We were the only two passengers, other than the soldiers who sat well away from us so we could relax. The stewardess regularly brought us beer. I was beginning to dread landing. The stewardess filled us in on some of what was happening since we slept through the day and didn’t have access to a tv. Miami was safe again. Atlanta was a warzone between werewolves and vampires. Phoenix was a disaster. Most of the country was touch and go but things were gradually improving. Our destination of Baltimore was scary to her. It had become one of the most dangerous cities to be in. We reassured her that we would try to make it better.
We were surrounded by soldiers whose guns were pointed away from us. They appeared to be guarding us from an empty airport. We had gotten off the plane to what seemed to be a deserted area. There were no humans to be seen. I was about to ask what was going on when I smelled the vampires. Rosalyn and I looked at each other and dropped our bags.
