He didn't understand what was happening...he had expected to die, cut to pieces by the people who's home he had invaded, but instead the rough hands of the men were gently carrying him toward the hut from which the old woman had emerged, and his vision blurred as his eyelids became too heavy to stay open.
Chapter 20
Lei and I walked back into the apartment and found Larson still arguing with Rogers, presumably about whether or not his theory concerning Zach was true or not. They went silent as we approached and looked at us with questioning eyes.
"We have visitors," I said with enough inflection to convey the message that our guests were most likely unfriendly.
"Where?" Rogers asked as he moved to the footlocker and unlocked the padlock.
"Pearl white, mud encrusted Range Rover less than a quarter mile down the road from here."
"Passengers?" Larson asked.
"None in the vehicle, so either they have business elsewhere or..."
"Or they're doing a recon on the property and looking for the best way to take us as we come out." Larson finished my sentence for me.
"Or the best way to get in," Lei said as she moved to one side of a window and peered out.
Rogers reacted to her, "You might want to keep away from the windows."
Lei turned to look at Rogers and a small piece of the window burst inward as a bullet whizzed past her, just nicking the flesh of her cheek and was immediately followed by the rest of the window glass, which shattered inward and rained all over her head.
Lei cursed, spinning away from the jagged shards in a vain attempt to protect her face. She fell to the floor, as the rest of us dove in all different directions. Larson rolled twice and then crawled to a different window, but stayed behind the cover of the concrete walls. Rogers had dropped behind his footlocker, swinging the top back and was reaching inside. He pulled out a futuristic looking machine gun and lobbed it over to Larson.
Larson caught the gun, flipped it around and chambered the first round to make the weapon ready to fire in one fluid motion.
I dove toward Lei, but before I stopped sliding I could tell she was all right. She had a multitude of small cuts from the glass shards on her face and neck while her cheek oozed blood from the bullet that had grazed her face. Still, she rolled as she fell and came up in a crouch with the most intense look of sheer ferocity that any human being could wear.
My fear for her well being turned into relief as I saw that she was not severely wounded, and noticed the two 9mm Browning semi-automatic handguns that Rogers had slid across the floor, which had come to a stop by her feet. Lei looked up to see Rogers digging into his footlocker again and produce an enormous .50 caliber Desert Eagle automatic handgun with a customized ammunition clip that extended four inches past the base of the grip. He slid the hand cannon across the floor to me.
Lei and I looked down to the guns, then to each other...and smiled ridiculously as we picked up our new arsenal and worked the slides in order to make the pistols ready to fire.
Rogers pulled his own AK47 out of the footlocker with an interesting looking scope perched on top indicating that the weapon had been customized for short-range sniper work.
He was about to take up his own position when the whole world seemed to explode. Outside multiple gunmen opened fire with weapons on full automatic. High velocity rounds blew through the walls like they were made of paper sending the deadly projectiles into the apartment and on through the opposite walls. Concrete dust billowed and swirled as more bullets tumbled through the residue clouds left from the previous volley of shots and impact driven shrapnel exploded in every direction.
The four of us hugged the floor as the various projectiles flew at supersonic speeds over us as the sound of the gunfire and explosions from the impact of their arsenal deafened us. Desperately we shifted our bodies to cover the windows and doors from our prone positions hoping that the gunmen didn't have the manpower for this barrage to simply be cover fire for an entry team that would be bursting in at any moment.
Then the gunfire stopped. I couldn't actually hear that it had ceased because, at that moment all I could hear was a high pitched whining as my ears fought to recover from the voluminous thundering. However I could see that no new plumes of concrete dust were bursting from the walls, and nothing more was being shot to pieces within the room.
Larson was already in action and flashing hand signals as he strained his head in order to peer out the window. I looked back and saw Rogers already perched on an exposed stairwell and sighting through the same window as Larson with his riflescope.
My God, I thought. When had he moved? Not to mention how had he moved without being perforated into a human Swiss cheese?
Larson sat and flashed three signals to Rogers who never looked up from his riflescope. Good snipers and sharpshooters keep both eyes open when they shoot their weapons as they are expert in absorbing different information simultaneously through each eye. In other words, Rogers was watching Larson's signals at the same time as he was concentrating on whatever he saw through his scope. It's a neat trick, that isn't really a trick. It is a learned skill that can take years to master, and apparently Rogers had mastered it.
He shifted his rifle slightly to the right and immediately fired three rounds. My hearing had returned enough to hear someone scream in shock and pain from outside the walls of the apartment. Larson rose to one knee and fired out the window. More screams could be heard as he ducked back down, but this time the sounds were men hollering instructions to one another in a language I didn't understand.
"They're going to use gas," Rogers called out, "try to force us out of the house!"
"Do you have a target?" Larson yelled back. "I've got one down, but I made two others who dug themselves in. No shots available yet."
"Crap!" Larson spat, "do you have any masks?"
"Just one and it's in the locked..." Rogers went quiet as a low-pitched BOOM sound came from outside. Rogers immediately fired again as something flew through the open window, struck the far wall and clattered to the floor while blowing smoke out each end.
The hissing of the container muffled the cry from Rogers' second target, the same one who had, only an instant before, fired the container of tear gas into the apartment. I gagged as the gas burned my eyes and throat and staggered toward the door. I felt a body drop on top of me and press me to the ground. I could have easily pushed myself off the floor with one arm and lifted whoever was lying on me with the other, but Larson's voice hissed into my ear, telling me to stay down, telling me that the last gunman was waiting for me to go outside. I heard the words, but the gas was getting to me even more and I couldn't think, couldn't see, and couldn’t breathe. I knew that I'd be dead before I took my first step outside the safety of the apartment, but my body crawled for the door anyway. A part of my brain that was still working wondered how Larson could be so rational while the gas swirled cloyingly around us. I tried to see through the burning, stinging tears that ran freely in torrents down my cheeks. Ever feel the sting of onions as you slice them? Well multiply that by about... oh... a million? and you'd only begin to understand what that gas was like.
I squinted and saw Rogers holding a box of some sort. He looked unhappy but otherwise undeterred by the gas that was leaking out the seams of the box, as the saturation of the gas within the air inside the apartment dropped from close to one hundred percent down to an almost passable level. Larson got off of me and moved to the window. His eyes and face were stained with as many tears as mine were, but he barely seemed to notice the pain.
Rogers went to the opposite wall and threw the box through the glass window. It burst through the glass with a crash, taking the box and its noxious contents outside. Lei moved to that window, she had recovered faster than I had, and took in a couple of breaths of the clean air that now was vented into the apartment.
Rogers had barely noticed the gas much in the same way Larson hadn’t, or maybe they just had learned to ignore
the pain in their training days, and had moved back to the stairwell in order to look through his rifle’s scope for the last target. He fired, but must have missed because whoever was outside began pelting the apartment again with another shower of bullets. Larson took cover again and I pressed myself to the floor and turned to where Lei had been sitting.
She was gone. Larson noticed it too, "where's the girl?!?"
I looked around the room, my eyes still screaming as they burned from the residual effects of the gas, I couldn't see any sign of Lei.
"She's outside!" I called back.
"What?!? What do you...?"
I ignored Larson, "Rogers! Pin that guy down!!"
Rogers responded immediately, "No shot!"
"I don't care if you have a shot or not! Open fire on him, make him take cover until Lei can get around the apartment."
"But..."
"Just do it Pat!" Larson screamed.
Rogers didn't hesitate another second and he fired the contents of the AK-47 in the general direction of the last gunman. His rifle was empty in a matter of seconds and Rogers expertly ditched the spent clip and was in the process of slamming a full magazine into the rifle when the sound of Lei’s twin Browning automatic handguns began firing in rapid, yet evenly spaced shots burst came through the broken windows.
We had given Lei the time she needed to circle around and get close enough to the last gunman in order to pin him behind whatever cover he had found. I knew Lei’s abilities, and how very deadly she was, so I also knew what was about to happen after her wild charge.
The gunman was already as good as dead... and she was angry... and this was going to get messy because Lei had little restraint at holding back her blood lust when she was in a killing frenzy.
I tried to distract Larson and Rogers, "Lei's got him," I yelled to the pair, "see if you can tell if there are any other hostiles."
Maybe it was because Larson had already seen us in action or perhaps it was because he simply thought it was a good idea, but whatever the case he did as I asked and began to scan the area away from where Lei was charging in, but Rogers, on the other hand, kept his eyes on target through the scope, with the now fully loaded clip inserted into his AK-47.
"I'll give her cover," he said, continuing to sight through the scope.
"Rogers!" I tried yelling to jolt him out of his concentration, but the man was an elite professional and stayed on target without even wincing in surprise at my voice.
I could see it all in my head as events unfolded outside. Lei would keep firing until she was within ten yards of the gunman and then, while still running at a full sprint, she would toss the empty guns aside and leap forward. The gunman would peek his head out at the last minute to see her literally flying toward him. Her fingers would be out, extended like claws and her teeth, barred like some feline predator. It would happen in slow motion for both of them. The gunman would try to raise his weapon, or maybe he'd simply raise his arms to protect his face, and Lei would land on him before he could accurately fire a shot. Her fingernails, extra tough from decades of rock climbing, as well as being reinforced by fiberglass and acrylics that literally made them into claws, would penetrate the flesh with little resistance. She would bury her fingers up to the second joint in the space under one of the gunman's armpits while restraining the man's gun hand with the other. He would scream in horror and pain and, as Lei's bodyweight pushed them to the ground, her teeth would sink into the man's throat, biting through mere inches of flesh that she would tear away with a twist of her neck.
The blood spray would be enormous and instantaneous, like the sudden violent eruption of a volcano, and the man would be dead in seconds from the arterial blood loss. In that moment, with a fresh kill and her adrenaline at maximum, Lei would drink. She would press her mouth against the torrent of outpouring blood and swallow mouthful after mouthful of the crimson fluid, trying to get in all in her stomach. Of course, she wouldn't be able to consume it all, and it would pour from the sides of her mouth and cover her face, clothes and body. When the gunman finally died she would stand over him and in every way resemble the demons that mankind has always feared my people to be.
I looked at Rogers as I heard Lei's battle cry when her guns stopped firing, and his eyes squinted. Clearly he thought he was going to have to save the day with a well placed bullet. Then his eyes shot wide and he jolted up from the scope. His face was a veil of confusion and fear. He looked at me, but didn't say a word, before quickly returning his eye to the scope.
There was a scream of pain from outside that was cut off to be replaced by a desperate, wet, choking sound. Animalistic noises, like grunts and snarls, filled the air and Larson called out, "What's happening out there?"
Rogers' mouth moved but no sound came out as he continued to look through the sniper scope.
"Rogers!" Larson yelled when he saw that Rogers was still peering through his scope, "Can you see them?"
Rogers was shaking, in all of his years (perhaps even decades), of training were no match for what he was witnessing through the lens of his scope.
"Rogers!" Larson tried again without response, "Captain!!!"
Rogers head twitched at the sound of his rank and said, "She...she jumped on the last man, and there's blood. A lot of blood, but they fell behind the wall and I can't see them now."
He was lying. I could tell. Larson probably could as well, but if the man wanted to deal with the situation by using personal denial, then I would be okay with it...for now.
From the sounds that I could hear I guessed that Lei hadn't finished with her kill yet and I tried to distract the two soldiers before the final surreal image of Lei covered in the blood of her victim could be burned into their minds for the rest of their lives.
"Larson, any other sign of hostiles?"
Larson was staring at Rogers and seemed a bit spooked at the man's reaction, but he answered me quickly, "No, we're clear. I don't think they expected any significant resistance."
I walked over to Larson and whispered, "You might want to go to Rogers and reassure him that we're all on the same side here."
Larson faced me and his eyes shifted to the window, "What did he see out there?"
"You'll see the aftermath of the body soon enough, but you might want to..."
"I've known Pat for ten years, he has seen some of the worst combat casualties a soldier can see and he's always held it together. What could he have seen that..."
"Robert," I said with extra calm and sensitivity in my voice, "it's not because she killed the gunman, it's the fact that how she did it is...well, it's the kind of thing that your parents told you as a child wasn't real."
Larson looked back at me as I said, "Rogers just learned that some childhood nightmares are real."
Larson turned to Rogers and took a step toward him before he hesitated and turned back to me, "What ARE you?"
I just looked at him with an apologetic look on my face. Despite all he knew, and all Rogers had just seen, he still wouldn't believe the truth...at least not right now.
"What Lei and I "are" is, we’re on your side, fighting alongside you, and subsequently, willing to die alongside you if necessary."
Larson simply shook his head and walked over to Rogers. I walked to the front door and went outside to check on Lei with more than a little concern about the heavily armed allies I had just left behind, inside the cover of the apartment.
Chapter 21
Lei was on her feet and stretching her arms out to the sides like a gymnast after a perfect dismount, before bringing her hands back in and gently caressing her body where the blood had saturated her clothes, wetting her to the skin.
Even I had to shake my head at the sight, "You couldn't have just killed him?"
Lei turned and smiled at me, "I've never been known for having a high level of self control. She took a step toward me and unfastened a button on her skirt. I didn't fall to my knees and swoon at her display, even though she was in full seductio
n mode, only because I knew it was coming. Blood, the real thing and not our serum, has that effect on us. The most obvious feeling is the overwhelming sense of well-being that follows the consumption, and the subsequent, temporary satiation of our condition's underlying symptoms. All of us react differently; I tend to laugh maniacally at the sensation. It's a strange, out of place and menacing sight to see me like that, but Lei goes into full sex kitten mode.
I went to her and held her close to me, more to prevent her from removing all her clothes, than because I was going to acquiesce to her sexual display. She tried to kiss me and I turned my head to the side and whispered in her ear.
"You've given the men inside quite a show already. Let's leave a little something to the imagination, shall we?"
My words were positive and I gripped her tightly to show that I wasn't rejecting her advances because I wanted to, but because I needed to.
Lei breathed her words back to me into my ear and her voice was deep and dripping with lustful need.
"Let them watch! Let them wish that they could ever have what we have. I can give them something to aspire to, the poor normal humans."
With her body pressed against me, I couldn't help but feel the outline of her breasts against my chest, and as she pushed her pelvis against mine I quickly realized my body was winning the self control battle it was having with my head, and my jeans began to grow extremely restrictive and uncomfortable.
"I brought my hands up to her face and made her look me in the eyes, "I think the image would be too much for these men who are most likely currently involved in watching us through their high powered rifle’s mounted aiming devices."
Lei hesitated and some rationality seemed to flow into her, followed quickly by remorse and concern.
"Can we still trust them then?" she asked.
I shrugged, "they haven't shot us yet." I said cheerfully, "What say we don't give them any additional reason to consider the possibility?"
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