The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  Ramon nodded and addressed the group. “We don’t know why they’re here. They could be nobody, or they could be waiting for our target too. This isn’t the meticulous stealth rescue mission we’ve been planning, we never got the backup headquarters promised, and no, LPI didn’t send us out here for something like this. But that doesn’t mean we can’t handle it. We did it last month at that Dragon groceries place, yeah?”

  His dark eyes scanned the room, daring any of them to mention Michele and Alaric. Or to mention the lack of vampires at the Dragon Mart. No one said a word. “And, yes, it’s night this time, but that’s not going to matter. A scout is going down, and when the coast is clear, we ninja the factory from two sides before they even know we exist. We take out the guards if we have to, get grenades through the windows, and get out of there. Clean and simple and over in seven seconds. We’ve only got a few grenades left, but there’s a lot of firepower with the tanks on those factory machines. The explosion could be huge, so don’t anyone stick around to watch the fireworks. Get behind the parking lot walls, understand?”

  “Shit, son,” Other Joe muttered from behind Emily. “We’re gonna lose our diesel source.”

  Emily glanced around the room, then back to him. “Why does it matter if we can’t stay here?”

  Daisy made a kissy face at him. “You’re so cute when you’re stupid.”

  His cheeks bloomed red, and he dropped his gaze, scratching his sunburnt nose.

  “Lay off,” Sherice hissed at Daisy.

  “We regroup in the parking lot.” Ramon raised his voice over theirs. “And any of them that make it out of the fire, we snipe. Garima, Rosa, you’re our sharpshooters. Stay put on the wall no matter what else goes down. If we shoot anything that’s going to stand back up again, we get their heads before they move. Daisy, take Phuong, Andre, and Brion. You’re our hackers. We’ve got six targets, but if anyone catches a manly man, try to shoot to wound. They might not be working for the vampires willingly. We can sort them out afterwards.”

  Emily’s fists clenched. And then what? Invite these tough guys to join their unit? As if she knew her thoughts, Rosa’s hand covered Emily’s arm, and she shook her head. Emily let her breath ease out between tight lips.

  “Everything’s packed,” Ramon continued. “After we’re done, we grab and go. We take their trucks, we move north, and the mission is still on.”

  “Damn, if only we had a launcher,” Other Joe said. “We could blow the factory from the hill.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Ramon said. “We stick with our shift teams on the way down.”

  Daisy stepped forward. “Andre’s not on my team.”

  “Fuck that.” Andre spat on the floor.

  Ramon’s jaw clenched, but he looked away from them. “Fine, he’s with me. Joe, help them out.”

  “Yup,” said Big Joe as he traded his bomb sack for a machete.

  Ramon took the two charged radios from the dock on the otherwise empty shelf and stuck one in his belt. “Sherice.” He turned to her. “You’re on scout.”

  “No, no. No.” Sherice folded her arms and glared. “Oh no, I’m not.”

  Emily’s heartbeat quadrupled. “I’ll do it.”

  Ramon didn’t acknowledge her. He stared at Sherice, and then his arm snapped like a rubber band and he slammed the radio onto the table. “Just what do you think this is?”

  Emily jumped. Wide eyes filled the room. Ramon never snapped.

  “I think this is me not being on scout,” Sherice answered.

  “Ramon.” Rosa’s voice was soft, but the emphasis of her accent pointed. “Emily said she’ll do it.”

  Usually, if anyone could change Ramon’s mind, Rosa could. The other guys called it Dominican favoritism, but Emily knew Rosa had that effect on anyone.

  This time, though, Ramon ignored her as he continued to stare down Sherice. She stared right back. Finally, he gave her a disgusted look and turned away.

  When he addressed the group, his voice was even again. “I know it hasn’t been the same since we lost Michele, you guys. And I know I’m technically not officially in charge. But if we don’t do this together, it’s not gonna happen. Someone has to make decisions.”

  “And I’m making the decision not to be on scout,” Sherice said.

  “God, shut up,” said Daisy.

  “Screw you like you screwed Andre.”

  “Both of you, be quiet.” Ramon faced Sherice again. “Tell me, why are you here, then?”

  “To save the world,” Brion said from across the room, sharpening his machete. Garima elbowed him in the ribs.

  Ramon stared at Sherice. “It’s not ‘cause you’re getting paid, I know that.” He thrust his knife handle at the group. “No one made us. We’re doing this because it’s right, and we’re the ones who can. If we couldn’t, we’d be dead. We’re good at this. Maybe you didn’t know that when you joined LPI, but we haven’t had official contact in weeks, lost over half our company, and we are still here. Nobody wants out. I know it, and you know it.”

  Sherice threw down her arms. “And I’m not saying I do! I sat out there for the past hour. Alone. While you all lounged in here eating rice and beans.”

  Emily took a step forward. “Ramon?”

  “No,” Ramon said. “I mean it. Think about it. Right now. Why you’re here. All of you. Why you signed up. Why it’s not you out there who people like us have to save. Why nights like tonight are worth it.”

  Silence stifled the room. Beyond the shuttered windows, chirping insects harmonized with the distant moaning howls. Ramon might as well have said all this to Emily by the bonfire yesterday. It applied to her assignment ten times more than Sherice right now. Emily tried to catch his eye as his gaze swept the room, tried to show him she understood. Going out for scout now would be a comparably small thing, but it was a start. Let me do it.

  “We do this, and we do this smart. Emily,” Ramon said, tossing her the radio, “you’re my man.”

  She smiled. He almost smiled back.

  Clipping the radio into the holster on her belt, she grabbed the binoculars from the table. With them, her eyes would be as good as Sherice’s, and her attitude a hundred times better. This was her chance.

  Rosa hugged her before she reached the door. “Maybe this one’s for your mom?” she whispered.

  Emily’s momentary high crashed back to Earth, and she clenched her teeth. “No.” She glanced back at the team. “Not this one.”

  “Hey, Em?” Carlos stepped out from behind the others, rifle in hand. Red still rimmed his eyes, but his shoulders were straight. He’d sucked it up. He gave her a tentative, grateful nod. “Remember to watch out for snakes.”

  Emily rolled her eyes, but she laughed.

  Through the dark glass foyer back to the yard, she made her way along the path through the gate and cut down the north side of the hill, where she ducked into the brush.

  The radio slid into her palm like it was made to fit as she checked the channel. “Testing.”

  Ramon’s voice came back at her. “Hey.”

  She smiled and turned the volume down a few clicks. “Going around the bluff now.”

  Muscle memory guided her in the moonless dark to the jutting ledge on the hillside to the left of the cliff. As she peered through the binoculars at the factory, her hair blew over the lenses. She paused to twist it into a knot and shove it down her jacket collar. When she looked again, it took her a minute before she could distinguish the nature of the shadows lurking about the biggest building. Three moved with seeming-life. A light fixture flared on over a doorway, and Shadows One and Two became man-shaped. A handful of narrow windows along the factory’s first floor lit up as well. They had the generators going already. Good sign. Their guard was down.

  Emily watched the two men at the door converse. Their gestures appeared human enough. The same guys from earlier. After a minute, one strolled inside. The muffled thud of the door slam reached her a second later. The remaining man sl
ouched against the doorframe and smacked dust from his boots with a rifle.

  Emily radioed Ramon to describe the scene, then she moved along the hill’s curve to check out the factory’s other side. She avoided the dry bushes and made less noise than a gopher. As she slithered down the boulders to the lookout ledge, she thought she saw a lone firefly shoot past a creosote bush out of the corner of her eye. When she turned, it was gone. She studied the bush’s bony skyward fingers through the binoculars; its scraggly silhouette couldn’t have concealed anything. She waited, just to be sure. Nothing there at all. Carlos and his hallucinations seized her brain, and she shuddered.

  Clock’s ticking. The team was counting on her. She returned her attention to the factory to pinpoint Man-Shape Number Three. She found him pissing on the parking lot wall. Ha! Vampires didn’t piss.

  She called Ramon. “It’s clear. Two confirmed humans outside down there now. All’s quiet at the trucks. Everyone else is inside.”

  “Perfect,” he responded through a low fuzz of static.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Not yet. Stay there and keep an eye on us until we’re down low.”

  Emily’s lips twisted. She didn’t volunteer for scout so she could sit out on the action. But she nodded obediently at the radio. “Got it.” She fumbled to clip it to her belt but couldn’t find the holster and keep her eyes on the binoculars. She shoved it into the back of her pants instead.

  She could make out her team’s two snakelike shadows splitting off as they crept across the valley’s gullet. She checked on the guards at the factory again, then made one last call. “You’re good. They haven’t moved.”

  She didn’t receive a response but hadn’t expected to. When her team disappeared from her field of view, she decided she’d waited long enough and slid off the ledge to follow.

  Back on the hill, she scanned the valley one more time. She smiled to herself and lowered the binoculars. Now much closer to the creosote bush, she saw the firefly again, this time near a rock pile a few feet away. Strange, she thought. But why?

  In a flash, it came to her—fireflies were damp climate creatures.

  That was no insect. It was the glowing end of a cigarette.

  Emily froze.

  8

  Leif

  The odor was unfortunate, but it would simply have to be endured. Machine smells, grease and filth. Waste, decay. Leif could hold his breath, of course, as long as required. Some nights he went hours without breathing at all. But those were nights without anyone to talk to. Not that the dull creatures in this commune he’d joined merited much conversation. Their human pets merited even less. Those oh-so-discerning mortal servants who chose a dilapidated factory for camp. They might have found a more suitable, more charming building anywhere else at all, really.

  At least the factory had electric light, an improvement over their last stop. Although the great room where the fragrant mortal men arranged the commune’s caskets was ugly enough that Leif might have preferred the dark for a change.

  The cool satin lining of his deep coat pocket whispered against his knuckles as his fingers wrapped the little igniter chips within. The circuit-crossed things rattled against his palm like so many miniature dice. Last night, he calibrated them to his detonator application. The night before, he laced all the caskets but his own with the odorless spray explosive. Tonight, he would plant the igniters in the caskets. Then come sunrise, all he needed to do was press the boom button.

  Of course, it was his jolly luck the caskets now rested in the center of the factory floor in plain view of all within. Someone would be there all night, witness to any of Leif’s actions—unless something occurred to send them all out of doors at once. He might wait until tomorrow night, of course. But, oh, he was loathe to spend a minute longer with the commune’s dear, dear members and their wretched cargo.

  It could be done. Tonight. He would have no repeat of his failed efforts of last month, of yesteryear. A distraction of some sort. That was all he required.

  “Where are you going?” The one called Nadia narrowed her pretty, dark eyes as Leif turned to the door.

  “Oh, just to poke around. See what we’ve got for us here.”

  “Aren’t you going to feed?” A lovely young vampire, Nadia, with long sleek black hair Leif’s fingers might enjoy slipping through sometime. Perhaps in another life. He liked to imagine how she might look in a well-cut suit instead of the rugged clothing she preferred.

  “But of course, my dear.” He gave her a smile not far from suggestive. It was difficult to refrain from drifting toward the benches at the far wall where the others fed. The blossoming blood scent already overpowered the factory stench. “Would I miss it? But as you can see, it’s hardly my turn.”

  The two human fellows donating this night to the commune would be swallowed slowly. Each vampire would get his mouthful, a paltry portion indeed, but equal shares for all. They each drank human blood every single night, which was the glorious part of it. Dear Demos, their captain, worked it all out mathematically. Body weight, replenishment time, so on and so forth. Allowing Leif to join the commune earned Demos no small measure of displeasure from his followers in regard to all that, despite how Leif’s place in their precious pecking order fell at the bottom.

  He might have declined inclusion in the feeding share to ingratiate himself upon joining, offered to subsist on animal blood for the time being, as excruciating as that would be. But such an agreement would have been too convenient of him, wouldn’t it? Better to incur the commune’s animosity, let them think he needed them, think him desperate to share their human supply. None of them suspected now the fate awaiting them at dawn.

  Nadia shook her head, answered Leif’s smile with a hard look. “Don’t you touch any of the guards.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Leif made her a little bow.

  “Demos will evict you as fast as he let you join us.”

  It took effort to suppress his amusement at the idea of Demos challenging him. Hardly a fair fight.

  Although flexing muscle would be counter to his purposes, Leif was the eldest vampire in the commune now. His strength of age was the very thing that caught Demos’s interest, after all. But, of course, Demos wouldn’t attempt such a thing alone. And there was no sense in letting things get sticky. Not yet.

  “I’ve been with you five nights, my dear. I think I’ve shown I can follow our darling leader’s rules by now, hm?”

  Nadia turned her back, and he slipped out of the factory before anyone else might question him. The young man guarding the door jumped when Leif appeared beside him. Gathering himself quickly, he pressed his hand over his heart to await orders. Leif merely gave him a wink and strolled around the corner of the building.

  A balmy desert night, to be sure. But what, oh what, could be distracting enough to draw the others out into it all at once?

  Leif’s gait slowed as his gaze swept over the cargo trucks. Why—yes. That would be rather perfect, wouldn’t it?

  He chuckled and rubbed his hands together, then shot across the lot to the semitrucks in the twinkling of an eye. A flick of his fingers could break the trailer door locks, but would that be overly obvious? Well, everyone would surely be too distracted to notice for some time. And then it would be too late. This hour tomorrow night, Leif would be celebrating his first success and well on his way to start it all over again with the next commune.

  He’d just perched on the tailgate and grasped the latch when Demos’s voice cut through the night behind him. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  9

  Snakes

  The cigarette glow faded, and a man coughed. “Yeah, I see you,” he called to Emily. “And I got a nice fat gun pointed right at you. So you should, um, I dunno, stay still maybe?”

  When the cigarette brightened again, the outline of his features warmed into view as he came around the rocks. He looked obnoxiously amused with himself. The orange ember flicked
from his fingers and disappeared to the ground like the first.

  Emily’s hand crept for the holster on her thigh.

  “I said don’t move.” The brush crunched as his shape moved closer. “Give me your gun.”

  “No.” She dropped the binoculars to free her hand.

  “Hey. You’re a chick.”

  Emily squinted at him as he came near. She could make out dark bristly hair, a rough beard, and a crooked nose. Either his leather jacket was padded, or his shoulders were just that broad. He stood a couple inches taller than Emily, too, but the arrogant carelessness in the way he moved reassured her of her chances.

  He stopped two feet from her and held out his hand.

  “I’m not giving you my gun.” She kept her voice low.

  “Sure you are.” He coughed and cleared his throat, then he made a grab for her holster.

  Emily jumped back, and he stumbled over the binoculars. Her gun was out in less than a second.

  The man swore and kicked the binoculars down the hill. As his jacket flapped open, the sight it revealed stopped Emily in her tracks. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, his belly exposed to the night, and from the belt up, he was covered with hair, a double snake tattoo on his stomach, and countless tiny puncture wounds. The holes spread up both sides of his throat into his beard.

  Emily almost gagged. Sick.

  “Drop it.” He smacked her hand with the barrel of his gun. “Don’t make me have to shoot you.”

  Her knuckles screamed, and she jerked back, but she couldn’t stop gaping at his wounds.

  “Hey, are you stupid?” As he grabbed at her again, she snapped to attention and twisted away.

  She swung into aim but hesitated to shoot. The noise could raise the alarm at the factory before her team got the chance to attack. Or at least that’s what she told herself as the thought flashed through her mind.