by Maxey, Phil
Joel looked at the sentry posts with sandbags which ringed the man building. He could also hear the chatter coming from the extra two on the roof.
“Good. When we’re in there I just want to know if he answers are true or not. Don’t let him know you’re in his head.”
Amos nodded.
They both got out and approached those near the entrance who immediately saluted to Joel, to which he nodded in reply. A soldier was waiting on the other side of the glass doors.
“Sergeant Halter, sir,” said the man, saluting. “I’ll take you both to the prisoner.”
“You got a room near where you’re keeping him that Amos can wait in?”
The soldier nodded.
Soon Joel was walking along a dark corridor. At the end two soldiers stood guard. They were the third set of guards he had walked past on his way down to the basement, although he wondered, if Tyror got free of his chains, would they be of any use in keeping him down there.
The two soldiers stood back, then one of them unlocked the door and pushed it open, not wanting to venture inside.
Joel could sense Tyror’s presence before entering, as he was sure the old king could do the same to him.
He walked inside and the door was closed and locked.
A single battery lamp sat on an old metal desk, and Tyror was standing against the far wall, covered in rusting chains.
“You got mind alterer… yes?”
Shit.
Joel wondered how Tyror knew Amos was there. Maybe the young man had already slipped up. But the hybrid’s voice was now his own. His special translation device which had been built into his suit, having been ripped from him. Still though, he was surprised Tyror had any understanding of English.
“Telepath?” said Joel.
Tyror smiled. “In my time they called ‘Mind Alterer’s’ but even very…” He looked down struggling to find the word. “Umm… low number… Rynon would kill them. Too powerful. Even hybrids such as we were powerless against them. But you have one. It’s… explain burning in my,” Tyror pointed to his head. “Allowed you to capture me. If no mind alterer… things different…”
“But things played out like they did, and here you are.”
Tyror frowned. “Yes… I happy to meet other hybrid… who… not brother… but wrong side…”
“I was told you had something to tell me?”
Tyror nodded then took a step forward. The only movement the chains restricting him would allow. “You must know… not end well for you, or…” He pointed upwards. “Food you have around in town?” His brow tightened as if he was examining the man in front of him. “You have seen battle… before, when you were just food.”
Joel turned around heading towards the door. “When you have something to say I’ll—”
“Fine, fine!… no…” He searched for a word again. “Fun… You listen now. I have message…”
Joel turned back around. He hid any surprise that Tyror could have had any communication while locked away in the bowls of the center. Like Amos said, the brothers have a bond. “Yes?”
“If you release me and all Alkrons…” He struggled for the correct term again. “All Alkrons go with me… and you… food… humans can… live.”
Joel walked closer to Tyror standing only inches from him. “Or you… your brothers… other vamps and humans come here and all die.” He smiled then turned and left.
A floor higher up he walked along a corridor. Amos was already standing outside the room he had been in for the past ten minutes.
“What you learn?” said Joel.
“Whatever he said to you, he was being honest.”
“Hmm…”
“What he say?”
“It’s what he didn’t say that bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“Considering where he is, he was too confident. His brothers are already close by and we don’t have long before they attack.”
*****
Galen stood in the command center in the Copeland complex, in front of a large display. He was the only human in the dimly lit room. He squinted, his expression more tight than usual and cleared his throat, then nodded to the hybrid technician at a computer keyboard nearby. The screen changed, and Rynon appeared, looking down at the webcam camera.
“This better be important, Galen, the humans and their friends are about to meet their end.”
“There was an incident at one of the blood farms, sire, but—”
“Incident?”
“Yes, a number of humans… and hybrids were killed.”
Rynon moved close to the camera, his face one of contained furry but his eyes revealed his rage. Galen resisted taking a step back. “Hyrbids?” Rynon said between gritted teeth. “Were we attacked?”
Galen let out a slight breath, being thankful that the king was a few thousand miles away. “We don’t think so. It… would appear there may have been a type forty-six at—”
The world became a blur on the display, then juddered to a halt. The view was now of a carpeted floor. On a sofa behind the boots of Rynon were two adults and two children, obviously all dead.
“Sire?”
“You are telling me you had a type forty-six and you did not realize it?”
“Umm sire, they are proving to be very difficult to designate. In them, more than any other human, the virus does not make itself apparent until the very last moment before they die. They are almost impossible to detect until it is too—”
The view shifted once again as the hybrid lifted the computer and looked too closely for Galen’s liking into the camera. “You do not have this type forty-six otherwise you would have already mentioned that. Am I correct?”
Galen nodded, being reluctant to look at the digital version of the hybrid directly in his eyes.
“Then I will give you twenty-four hours to find it.”
“Yes of course sire. I have other, better—”
The screen went black.
CHAPTER THREE
Marina reclined in the armchair and looked at Jess and Jasper playing with toys in the corner of the room. Flint and Shadow were at her feet. The general had allowed her to stay at the headquarters, and she had spent the last few days enjoying being a mother to the two children, and not having to worry about what monster might want to attack them when the sun went down.
Her extra audio abilities picked up a commotion in the lower floors and a bustle of people coming up the main stairs. She was sure one of them was Joel.
She looked over to Jess. “I’m just going to pop outside for a bit. Stay in here. Do not leave this room. Got it?”
Jess kept playing with an action figure.
“Jess?!”
“I got it. We’ll be okay.”
“Good.”
Marina got up and opened the door to the former office and looked outside. The guard that was permanently positioned there looked at her, then went to say something when she caught a glimpse of Joel with Amos at the end of the hallway. “Joel!”
Joel stopped and looked back, then jogged to her. “Everything okay?” he said.
“We’re fine. What’s going on?”
“Ma’am, you need to go back inside,” said the guard.
“She’s with me,” said Joel. The guard frowned and returned to his standing position. Joel leaned in closer to Marina. “They’re coming.”
Their eyes met. She didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were. “Do you think we’re safe in this town?”
He looked away asking himself the same question, then looked back at her. “I’ll tell you after I’ve talked to the general.” He walked back to Amos standing at the stairwell’s entrance, and before Marina walked back into the room, said at a volume so low that only a hybrid could hear. “Be ready to leave.” She glanced back at him, nodded then walked back to Jess and Jasper.
Moments later he and Amos were seated in Galloway’s office, with the general herself behind her desk. She shook her head. “Not hearing
anything from the scouts about any enemy movements within ten miles of our location.”
A knock came at the door, and Clement, the ex-cia officer peered around it. The general waved him inside.
“Tyror appears to think that an attack is imminent, but like I was saying to Joel and Amos, there’s no sign of the enemy.”
“Could they have like… jets? Aircraft?” said Amos. There was a pause from everyone in the room and he momentarily thought he had asked a dumb question despite his abilities to read their minds.
Clement rested his arm on a large filing cabinet. “That’ll be a problem if they do. We got limited ground to air defenses, and limited ordnance for the Apaches.” He shook his head. “I’m not hearing that they got access to that kind of hardware though. So far everything’s been ground based… well apart from the monsters they have.” He looked at Joel. “How sure are you that he’s not—”
“Feeding you a line of bullshit,” said Amos.
“Uh?” said Clement.
“That’s what you were about to say, and no he was not. He believed what he was saying.”
“Ah… you’re the mind reader. Could have done with a few of your kind when I was in the company.”
“You couldn’t see how they were going to attack?” said Galloway to the young man. Amos shook his head.
“My instincts is that it will be soon,” said Joel.
“Eight hours to sunup,” said Galloway. “You think it will be before then?” Joel nodded. The general looked at Clement. “Sound GQ. Be ready to repel borders.” He nodded then left.
Amos looked confused. “Can a town have general quarters?”
“This one does. We’ve been preparing for a large scale attack for some time, before we knew about the corporation.”
Images from earlier in the evening came to Joel. “What’s the locomotive for?”
She sighed. “That would be for plan B.”
*****
In the basement below Joel and the others, Evan sat at a desk in the computer lab. There were only two others in the room with him, each person being lit by a candle, and sipping on coffee, trying to force their brains to stay awake so they could keep on working. In front of him was a spreadsheet with the various symbol types from the ancient tablet. He had been tasked with expanding on his computer program using the headquarters extra computing power, but when he asked if he could see the artefact, he was told he didn’t have the clearance level. He looked at the florescent screen and images of his grandfather came to him. He had done his best to suppress them for the past few days but sitting there his mind began to drift and sadness returned.
He leaned back and promptly pushed his head into something that shouldn’t be there. “Uh?” He turned around then jolted back. “Hell!” he shouted at Sasha standing behind him. “Don’t creep up on me like that!”
She smiled. “I didn’t creep, I… sort of floated.”
He frowned and looked back at his screen. “Glad to see your abilities don’t freak you out anymore. Why are you still here anyway?”
“Just practicing, using what Amanda told me to do. She’s really good at her job. What’s that you’re working on?”
“Oh, it’s—” His hearing picked up the sound of boots and increased heart rates in the people on the floor above. He looked at the entrance to the basement, just as a disheveled looking Harold Huxley appeared, his trench coat open revealing a red Hawaiian shirt. Ignoring the four people in the room looking at him, Huxley walked quickly to a keyboard and typed in a password.
“What’s going on?” said Evan.
The computer scientist looked over the top of the keyboard, then looked around at the others. “You don’t know?” Evan shook his head. “Shit’s about to get real.” He looked back at the screen and typed some more.
Four miles to the north Carla looked out from the top of a metal cylindrical tower, one of two which made up the Fosters textile plant. A series of mundane warehouses, a processing plant and manufacturing facility sat below her just visible as dark green blocks within her night vision goggles’ view. Beyond them, in the fields and forests which bordered the small town was only a void, which even her technically enhanced vision couldn’t penetrate. She had already been warned of what may be coming her way fifteen minutes prior and with Keller and Bishop had jumped in a humvee and raced out of the northern gate to the chemical plant complex which acted as a forward base, joining the squad that were already there.
A cold wind blew past stinging her nose and cheeks but she kept scanning the landscape. She wasn’t ready to give up Jankle yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
Joel stood with Galloway and the other’s who were in charge of the small town in the conference room. Three monitors sat at the head of the room with soldiers manning computers attached to them nearby. Gus nodded to a young man who typed on a keyboard, and the central screen showed an aerial view of fields and forests bathed in darkness.
“This was recorded at the drones maximum rage, before we had to turn it around,” said Gus. “Look’s like there’s nothing out there, right?” Those around him nodded. He looked back to the soldier. “Switch it to IR and play it again.” More keyboard taps caused the screen to momentarily go black before returning with an image of various shades of gray.
Joel stepped towards the screen. “What is that?”
“And pause,” said Gus to the soldier then looked at Joel. “That would be vamps.”
Joel stood a few feet away from the screen, which looked like it was displaying white noise.
“Unpause,” said Gus. The video continued, and the view panned upwards until separation could be seen between the blood lusting hordes and the lighter sky. “We estimate around a hundred thousand. They don’t give much of a heat signature but we can still pick them up on the infrared.”
“You said the drone was at its maximum range. Which is what?”
“Twenty miles,” said Clement who was sitting on the edge of the conference table.
“They don’t appear to be in any rush,” said Gus. “So we think they don’t plan to attack by daybreak. They would get here just as the sun was coming up.”
Joel rubbed the hair on his chin.
“What is it?” said Galloway.
“They tried the same tactic at Westlands, and it didn’t work. I’m just surprised they are repeating what they did before…”
“Maybe they know what you did with the tablet was a one-shot deal,” said Clement.
“Maybe…” said Joel. He looked at Gus. “You got anymore drones in the air right now?”
“One, but we’re just using it to patrol a few miles out from the camp’s walls. Why?”
“Can you get its feed up on this screen?”
“Yeah.” Gus nodded to the soldier, who tapped away and the screen changed.
On the ground, a few hundred feet below were sparkles of light to the right side, while only black resided to the left.
“That’s the east wall. Heavily guarded. We got three Abram’s on each of the four walls, each one easily capable of covering the area outside the town, and that doesn’t include the Howitzer—”
As Joel watched the varying splotches of dark and dark gray slide below the small flying aircraft, Gus continued with his list of impressive military power which would be used to deter any attack.
“— And the Apaches can be in the air within minutes of first contact with the enemy…”
Joel looked at Galloway. “You got a problem.”
She looked bemused. “I grant you that’s a lot of vamps Joel, but—”
He looked back at the screen. “You don’t understand. The enemy is already in the camp. The vamps are a distraction.”
“How do you know?” she said.
He turned, looking directly at the general. “Because that’s what I would do. When was the last time a large number of your people were outside the camp?”
She looked at him scornfully. “We have small patrols, nothing…”
/> “What?”
“A few nights back, I had to take almost an entire platoon a few miles outside the south wall. Some of the young people had a party going on out there. They were attacked by vamps…”
Joel could see ideas forming in her mind.
“We brought back two of yours, Evan and Sasha.”
“Where are they now? I need to talk to them.”
“We gave them an apartment—”
“They’re both downstairs, in the basement. Working—” said Clement.
In a blur Joel was out in the hallway, and descending the stairs, until he got to the service elevator. Impatiently he waited for the rickety box to make its way into the bowls of the building, and was through the widening gap of the elevator door and into the computer lab before anyone apart from Evan knew he was there.
“Are they attacking now?” said Evan.
“The party, the other night?” said Joel.
“What about it?”
“Who told you about it?”
“Umm… what does this—”
“Think! Evan. How did you know about the party?”
“There was this soldier… never saw him before, or since.”
“Do you know his name? Where he is stationed? Patrolling? Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Didn’t get his name, but yeah, I think so… why?”
“Yeah, why?” said Huxley.
The door to the elevator opened once more and Clement walked out and into the lab. “I’m going to need you to look at our personnel files,” he said to Evan who nodded.
Huxley tapped away at his keyboard and profiles appeared, with portrait photos sat within personal details such as height, weight and rank. He swung the monitor around towards Evan. “What age was he?”
“Umm… he was young… maybe twenty-five?”
Huxley typed an age range into the database, promptly narrowing the results.
“Dark short hair, had a bit of a southern accent. I think he was a private or something, I don’t... him!” He pointed at the screen.
