Blood Apocalypse - 04 (17 page)

When Forest Foster had had enough of his own son, he threatened to disown him if he failed to act his position. Paul laughed in his father’s face and destroyed half of the family’s stock in the wine room in protest. Forest Foster pulled Rufus aside and signed a document handing over his entire estate and holdings to Rufus. He felt something was amiss with Paul and didn’t trust him not to kill him for the family fortune.

The very next morning, Forest Foster’s remains were found hanging outside his study window, ashed beyond recognition, the document entrusting the family holdings to Rufus missing. Paul immediately had the familiars escort Rufus from the property, adopted son or not. A formal accusation against Rufus was filed with the vampire council naming Rufus as his father’s murderer.

Vampire-on-vampire crimes are dealt with harshly. True death to a vampire calls for only one punishment. True death. However, the manner in which the true death is carried out is most…permanent. The victim’s familiar stands watch while the accused is staked on hallowed ground until sunlight. Once the vampire is ashed, the ashes are doused with holy water, mixed into a slurry and then tilled into the hallowed earth, never to rise again. Rufus knew better than to try and defend himself. Paul was just crazy enough to have all of his bases covered and any attempts he made to clear his name would only muddy his name further. He had only one choice. He fled to the new world.

Damien watched as the vampire named Thorn left his master’s quarters and departed their underground domicile. He could feel his master’s frustration from behind the closed door and knew that whatever had happened in there, Thorn was still in charge… for now. But no matter the circumstances, Damien’s biggest desire was to rip Thorn limb from limb, devour his centuries old flesh and make
his
power his own.

12

Tufo directed the technicians and work crews to lay out the cabling in the abandoned air traffic tower behind the bunker that was now home to the squads. The tower would act as the trai
ning command center for the administration to direct and control training missions. With its glass structure at the top, the building had a two hundred and seventy degree view, blocked only by the bunker behind it. The abandoned airstrip stretching out away from the dried lake bed gave a long distance view to the horizon.

His team scrambled to finish the training facility at its base with the obstacle courses, the Close Quarters Combat training house and the Live Fire Shooting Ranges. Many of the operators from the other teams had joined in off and on to get the training grounds up and ready throughout the day and three different IT geek squads hustled about hooking up the different cameras and computer terminal stations that would operate the popup targets.

Dominic stood in awe at the stamina of the much older Gunnery Sergeant who never slowed down or skipped a beat until the facility was completed. He approached the new XO and clapped him on the shoulder as the geeks went through the checkout of the electronics. “Gunny, I have to admit. I’m impressed.”

“It’s haphazard at best, Dom. But it gives us something to train you boys with,” he answered as his eyes studied the screens.

“I’m talking about
you
.”

Tufo turned and shot him an inquisitive glance. “Come again?”

“You haven’t slowed down since we started. You ain’t even augmented and you just keep going and going and…”

“Duracell for breakfast.” Tufo tapped a geek on the shou
lder. “Realign that camera. I can’t see shit out of it.”

“See? That’s what I mean. Sharp as a tack and you’ve been going for how long?”

Tufo shook his head. “I was a Marine, Dominic. We don’t stop until the job is done, or we’re dead.” He turned and looked at the man with a wry grin. “And last I checked, I still got a pulse.” Mark grabbed the much larger man by the shoulders and directed him to the door. “Go down to the CQB building and try to find a blind spot from the cameras. I need to make sure I have an eagle’s eye view of everything.”

Dom smiled at him and shook his head. “Yes, sir.”

“And knock off the ‘sir’ shit. I still work for a living,” Mark hollered after him.

“Yes, asshole,” Dom yelled back from the stairwell.

“That’s better!” Mark took his seat behind the control console.

The IT geek looked at him questionably. “Sir, did he just call you an asshole?”

Mark stared at the man with a stoic face. “I believe he said, ‘XO’, did he not?”

The IT geek sputtered, “Oh, um, yes, I suppose he did.”

“Back to work.” Tufo ordered, fighting the smile that curved at his mouth.

*****

Matt held a meeting of Team leaders. Major Sheridan of Team 1 sat with Jack, who was representing Team 4, and Captain Pablo Monteiro from the Brazilian teams sat up front with First Marshal Nicolo Adolfo from Team 2. Not present were the French representatives of Team 3 who covered Africa. Team 3 had only one squad of eight members who were entirely wiped out during the initial attacks more than a month prior. Their not being present only made the other teams losses felt that much more strongly.

“Gentlemen, we have a lot to do and a short time to do it in,” he began. “We have strong reason to believe that this Sicarii vampire will be striking on the full moon. That gives us precious little time.”

“What do we actually
know
of him, Colonel?” Sheridan asked.

Matt sat on the edge of the rail in front of the small group and crossed his arms. They were all seated in a large briefing room with stadium seating, a stage across the front with a large podium in the center. Since it was an intimate group, they opted to not use the sound system built into the walls.

Matt sighed heavily before he admitted, “Unfortunately, not enough. You’ll find in your briefing packet what little we do know.” He lifted a blue folder to indicate the packet. “We believe that he is the Biblical character Judas Iscariot. We also have reason to believe that he is immune to silver and that staking would do no good.”

“Forgive, please, Colonel,” Pablo interjected in his heavily accented English, “it sounds as though he is unstoppable.”

Jack turned back to address him, “Not exactly. We have a few tricks up our sleeve.”

“You mean the UV satellite, yes?” Nicolo asked, also in a
ccented English. “Is that enough to kill him?”

Matt shrugged and shook his head. “Probably, but our goal isn’t to kill him. It’s to
catch
him.”

There was a general murmur of shock and dismay among the team leaders and both Jack and Matt allowed them to vent a little of their pent up anger. They knew that each of them wanted a piece of the vampire responsible for the deaths of their fellow compatriots and they felt the same way, but they also believed Max’s argument against killing the monster.

After a moment, Matt raised his hands to silence the group. “Guys, look, I understand completely your desire to kill this asshole is pretty overwhelming. But there are other forces at work here, and their argument against killing him is pretty damned strong. We are basically to provide support for them while they deal directly with the Sicarii. We will utilize our own forces and some of theirs to hold his forces at bay. Once the head is cut from the snake, we mop up the mess.”

“How do we cut the head from the snake if he is not dead?” Pablo asked.

Jack answered that one as he stood. “We have a technical team, led by two very proficient vampires that…”

“Vampires?!” Pablo exclaimed. “You have them here on the base? And they are working
for
you?”

Jack dropped his head and groaned inwardly. “Yes, Pablo, we do. And one of them has been working with us for many years.”

“This is unheard of!” he argued. “We are chartered to
destroy
the undead!”

“And he’s helping us to do that,” Matt said firmly, coming to his feet. “Look, we are in an unparalleled situation here. We simply have to pool our resources.”

“This makes no sense,” Pablo argued. “How can you trust them to assist you in killing their own kind?”

“Because they don’t feed on humans,” Jack replied. “They decry the actions of the Sicarii and his ilk as much as any of us do.”

“Besides that, we are also working with werewolves to fight this threat,” Matt announced. Again there was a murmur of shock among the other team leaders, but not quite as strongly as when they first heard they weren’t to kill the Sicarii. “Their leader is the one who will deal directly with the Sicarii.”

“Yes. I will,” a strong voice declared from the back of the room. All eyes turned to see Max walking down the aisle of st
adium seating toward the front, an air of authority flowing from him. “My apologies for being late, Colonel.”

“Gentlemen, meet Claudius Maximus Veranus, or as he pr
efers to be called now, Maxwell Verissimo. He is
the
Alpha Wolf,” Mitchell introduced Max to the small crowd of Team Leaders. Maxwell nodded as he strode forward and stepped onto the stage.

“Thank you, Colonel,” Max began.

“Why are we listening to him?” Nicolo interrupted. He stood and pointed at Max with an outstretched arm. “We
hunt
monsters like him.” The others looked at him as if he were stupid.

“Have you not been listening?” Jack stood. “We need them and their numbers.”

“To do what? Chase the vampiro like a dog chases the post carrier?” Nicolo joked. Nobody laughed.

Max glared down at the smaller man before turning to Mitchell, “Are they ‘augmented’ as well, Colonel?” Mitchell nodded. “Do they know?”

“Negative.”

Max weighed the consequences of informing these
hunters
of their true nature, but felt better of it. He decided instead to continue on with his short introduction. “As the colonel explained, I am the leader of the wolves. It is our responsibility to deal with the Sicarii himself, but my people…well, my
wolves
will be at your disposal to act as attacking forces in dealing with whatever ground troops the Sicarii brings with him.

“Try to understand, the Sicarii is a force to be reckoned with. His strength lies not only with his age, but with his nu
mbers. The more of his people that you can lay waste to, the weaker he will become and the easier it will be for us to deal with him.

“Now, I am working with the leader of the
Lamia Beastia
to…” Max trailed off as he realized that the name meant nothing to the outside teams. With a slight sigh he explained, “The
Lamia Beastia
are the good guy vampires. They don’t eat people.” He looked for nods from the group. “Still with me? Good. Let’s carry on then. I’ve been working with their leader on different ways to deal with the Sicarii and our plan is to subdue him, trap him, chain him and entomb him. Hopefully forever.”

“Why not just kill the son of a bitch?” Sheridan asked. “He did kill off a good number of our teams. And no telling how many other humans over the centuries.”

Max nodded. “That is a good question, and one I wish I had a good answer for. Allow me to simply say this. There is one thing I’ve learned over the centuries that I’ve been alive. The universe
demands
balance. For every good, there is an evil. True?” Max noticed that most of the team leaders nodded in agreement. “Another thing that I’ve noticed is that nature abhors a vacuum. If you remove this evil, another will rise to take its place. And history has shown us, that most often, it is whatever force that is used to
remove
the original evil often
becomes
the new evil.” Max paused and allowed his statement to soak in. “I’m not ready to risk that, are you, gentlemen?”

There was a general round of agreement among the team leaders. “So whatever we do, we capture this son of a bitch and we keep him under wraps.”

“Fine. Let’s say you’re completely right in everything you just said,” Sheridan stated. “How are you going to accomplish this? From what I understand, this guy is damned near impossible to stop.”

Max smiled a slow, sly grin. “As Jack is prone to say, we have a few tricks up our sleeve.”

*****

The sun was beginning to set, and Barbara Mueller was e
xhausted. Catching only catnaps when she dared and providing for Bobby during the day, staying up all night to provide sentry duty was taking its toll on her. She called for him to come inside and rather than argue as was his normal behavior, he rushed to the door and quietly slipped inside.

She shut the door and locked it from within then slumped into her chair. With a heavy sigh she lifted her eyes to him and shook her head. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, baby.”

“Mom, I’m not a baby any more, remember?” he reminded her. He pulled the small survival knife from the sheath on his hip and flashed it at her.

She smiled at him and nodded. “I know, sweetheart, but this is different. If it were just people, I wouldn’t worry so much. But…”

“I know mom. These are monsters. That’s why you melted the bullet heads and put silver on my knife,” he replied. “You told me. And I sharpen it every night before bed.”

“I know you do, sweetheart.” She yawned and stretched in her chair. “And I’m proud of you for not playing with it when you’re not supposed to.”

“It’s a tool, mom. Not a toy,” he recited.

“That’s right.” She stretched out for a short nap. She knew she shouldn’t but her body demanded it. “Keep your eyes and ears open. I’m going to take a short nap before I start my watch, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He slipped the wool blanket up over her before he made his way to the front of the cabin. He stood diligently by the door, straining his ears to listen to every sound outside. He moved carefully toward to the window and stayed in the shadows so that he could see without being seen.

He glanced at his mom sitting upright in the chair, breathing softly as she slumbered. He remembered his dad telling him that most of his ‘missions’ were time spent waiting, sitting around doing nothing, trying your best to keep from going stir crazy as you waited. He did his best to imagine that he were working with his dad now, sitting in the dark, waiting for something, but hoping for nothing to happen. He did his best not to fidget, but that is always when you get an itch. It’s either your nose or your arm. Maybe your leg starts to tingle. Something always happens that makes you want to move, but a
warrior
like his dad doesn’t do it. And neither would he. He would sit like a rock, unmoving, his limbs made of stone, the only thing moving would be his eyes as they scanned the darkness outside for movement.

His little imagination played out numerous glorious battles where he would protect his mom and she would herald him as the hero, just like his dad. No longer would she look at him as a kid, but a man. A
short
man, but a man nonetheless.