The Regulators - 02 (25 page)

I wasn’t anywhere near stupid enough to let him get that
close so instead I started to try and close the door. I’m pretty sure that I
began to mutter some weak excuses as to why I couldn’t pick him up, but they
seemed to fall upon deaf ears.

The boy looked hungry.

His little hand shot out and grabbed the door. He was strong
enough to prevent me from closing it any further.

“Why do you smell so good?” the boy asked.

“I just need to close this door while I get your Mother,” I
answered.

He began to moan. It sounded as if he was in pain and his
dead eyes were locked on mine. I tried to calm him down. I once again don’t
remember what I said. I just remember the way his moaning got louder and his lower
jaw began to distend.

I reacted when I saw the fangs that filled his little mouth.

I kicked him straight in the chest. It was a hard kick. It
probably would have sent an adult male to the hospital with a broken sternum.
Being that he was so small, the kick actually sent him flying back against the
cabinets under the sink.

He cracked the wood of the cabinets and lay very still for
just a moment before he popped up onto all fours and snarled through the fangs.

“I’m thirsty,” he whispered before leaping on top of me.

He was so fast; I barely had time to raise my arm to defend
my face.

Scalp had fortunately reacted much quicker than I had. The
minute the boy sprang from the floor, Scalp was swinging his long knife. The
blade caught the vampire child right on the side of the head. The impact, as
hard as it was, didn’t get him off of me. The knife was even dislodged from
Scalp’s fingers and left hanging from the side of the kids head.

It worked out in my favor regardless. I was able to use the
knife to keep his head pried away from my neck. The child was in pain from the
wound. It didn’t make him any weaker, but a black blood began to ooze from the
wound as he screamed and screamed.

Suddenly, he let go of me and dropped to the floor. I backed
away immediately. He was glaring at Scalp. The hatred in his stare filled the
room like a venomous shadow. I found my own knife, which I had dropped onto the
floor while I was struggling to get the kid off of me.

It was a grotesque sight when the vampire, still glaring at
Scalp began to remove the knife from his head. I almost don’t want to describe
the back and forth motion he used to try and remove the knife, but it wasn’t
easy to watch. Maybe that’s why I chose that particular moment to finally get
in the game.

As the child was distracted with the knife in his head, I
swung my own blade as hard as I could into his tiny little neck. Surprisingly,
my blade didn’t go through. Yet, I did enough damage to cause his head to flop
at an unimaginable angle. These creatures were denser than a normal human
being. I figured that out when Scalp’s attack didn’t slice off the top of his
head. For that reason, I was able to retain my grip on my knife.

The kid turned in my direction as his black blood began to
spurt all over the room. He once again began that awful moan. The moan was
different this time, though. It was filled with anger as well as pain, and it
ended in a shrill scream as he rushed towards me.

Scalp grabbed at his knife when he turned his back on him.
He twisted and yanked at the handle until it came free from the boys head. I
swung at the child’s neck as soon as Scalp was out of the way. It wasn’t until
my fourth strike that the head finally separated from the body. The black blood
was everywhere. I was literally drenched in it.

The creature was finally finished. We should have been
happy. We figured out how to kill them, and we actually survived the
experience. We weren’t happy at all. The experience sickened us. Regardless of
what that boy turned into, he used to be a child and we had just committed an
unspeakable act of violence upon him.

However, we were on our feet immediately when the door broke
off its hinges.

In the doorway was the man of the hour himself, the famous
General. Things had gone from bad to worse.

“
You weren’t thankful
to receive help
?”

We would have been thankful if we were actually receiving
some real help. We wanted trained professionals, instead we received a
liability. As far as I was concerned, keeping this guy alive had just been
added to the list of things Scalp and I needed to do. Like I explained earlier,
we had zero respect for the man and being face to face with him only made
things worse.

Let me describe my first impression and maybe you will see
what I’m talking about. As far as appearances go, the General isn’t as tall as
I would have expected, he’s probably a shade less than six feet, but he has
pretty large shoulders. He looked like he could fight. The man was dressed head
to foot in bite suit protection, including the vest and high collar. So the
only difference between us was the different colors. Our suits were black while
his was a sort of olive drab and on the chest of his vest was a large skull
with a western bandana around its mouth crossed with old timey pistols. He
wasn’t wearing a helmet. Instead he had a backwards Harley Davidson cap on his
head.

It wasn’t the way that he was dressed that made me really
doubt him, though; it was more about his mannerisms. His hands rested on top of
his mp7 instead of holding the weapon in a ready position. He had a surly
expression on his face as he sized up the room. He also seemed too calm, too
assured of himself. It was as if he was mentally taking control of the
situation without saying a word. That sort of arrogance could get a man killed.
He didn’t act like a professional.

“You boys having a rough night?” he asked in slight drawl.

It was the wrong thing to say to guys like us. We’re not
used to needing rescue. We normally act alone without anyone around to pull our
asses out of the fire if things get hot. We especially don’t want someone that
we have no respect for acting like he’s doing us a favor.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

I didn’t like the way he sized me up and grinned when I
asked him a question.

“The nerds lost communication with you,” he answered. “We
figured you might be in trouble.”

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

“Loose board on a window out back,” he answered in a tone
that suggested I was an idiot.

I walked past him to close the door. I didn’t want any
unexpected visitors joining our little chit chat. As I did, I noticed for the
first time that he wasn’t alone. Behind him was an extremely large man with a
boyish face making sure nothing attacked from the rear.

I motioned them both inside immediately, and then Scalp and
I set about propping the door back onto its frame and barricading it with the
weight of the bed.

“Isn’t that going to make things a bit difficult for us to
leave?” asked the General. “Or do you plan on having a slumber party?”

I ignored his jabs and continued barricading the door. It
wasn’t great and it probably wouldn’t keep anything out without us pushing up
against it, but it was all that we had thanks to that idiot kicking in the
door.

When we were finished, I finally turned to have a few words
with the General.

“Let’s get something straight right off the bat,” I said. “I
don’t buy what you’re selling. I’m not sure how you got up here without being
attacked, but now you’re my responsibility, and I don’t appreciate it. From now
on, you don’t move or speak unless I tell you to. Pay attention and stay behind
us and maybe we can get the two of you out of here in one piece. Jeopardize us
in any way and we’ll leave you behind. Got it?”

He didn’t actually ‘get it’. He wasn’t actually even paying
me the slightest bit of attention. Instead, he was kneeling over the body of
the vampire child that we had just killed.

“How many of them are there?” he asked.

“Are you listening to me?” I demanded.

“Not really,” he answered. “How many of them are there?”

“There’s about thirty to forty from what I could count,”
Scalp answered.

“Rotten luck,” the General said with a sigh. “You boys are
lucky to be alive.”

“You’ve dealt with these things before?” Scalp asked.

“Just one of them,” the General answered. “It was an adult
though, nasty customer.”

“Alright, enough of this,” I said. “You need to radio in for
a rooftop extraction so we can get out of here.”

The man moved across the room impossibly fast. He might have
been as fast as those damn vampires for all I knew. I didn’t expect it. I also
didn’t expect the slap he landed on the top of my helmet. I’ve been hit many,
many times but never that hard. There were stars in my vision as I watched
Scalp go for his weapon to back me up.

Scalp was too slow, or maybe the General was too fast. He
had a Sig leveled at Scalp’s face before the man could raise his weapon.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot here, boys,” said the
General as he re-holstered his sidearm. There was a smile on his face.

The meanings behind his actions were crystal clear. He could
have killed both of us in an instant if he had desired to do so. I have to
admit, I was impressed. I think he got lucky and caught us with our pants down,
but I was still a bit impressed.

Even his backup guy was ready. He had what looked to be a fireman’s
axe in both of his hands, and he certainly looked like he was ready to swing
that thing at us and not regret it in the morning.

“Listen,” I said. “You guys don’t have the training…”

“Let me stop you right there, before you make a bigger ass
out of yourself,” the General said.

He then motioned for his pal to turn around and after
fishing in his backpack for awhile, he came out with two spare earpieces which
he promptly tossed to me and Scalp. As soon as we had them on, the General
tapped his own.

“Hardin,” he said. “I’m taking control over the Downtown
team. Make sure they know who the boss is.”

It was only a few moments before the Colonel was relieving
me of command over my team and placing the General in charge. I wasn’t happy
about it, but in the military you learn to follow orders.

When the General saw the look on my face, he actually
chuckled.

“Now now,” he said. “Don’t go pulling a stomp and pout. I
have no interest in hanging out with you a minute more than I have to. I just
don’t want you getting all chewed up on account of me.”

“What do you mean on account of you?” I asked.

“Some vampire bitch is after Jaxon,” the big guy said. “He
probably dated her or something.”

“Yeah,” said the General. “I might have dated her once upon
a time, but anyway, she’s set up a lot of booby traps around the city. Normally
it’s a bunch of homes filled with zombies, and when we turn the doorknob or
something like that, all the zombies get released and fill up the street. This
is a bit different, but it’s still her work.”

“So what are your plans for getting out of here?” I asked.

“Getting out won’t be the problem,” the General said. “I’m
more concerned about leaving a bunch of little vampires alive. How long will it
be before they decide to leave this building? I’m thinking our best chance is
to deal with them all while they are still in one place. In addition to that,
I’m looking for a missing teammate, and I want to make sure he’s not stuck in
this building somewhere.”

“We lost more than half our team not very long ago because
we tangled with those things,” Scalp said. “They aren’t like zombies. Zombies
go down with a headshot. These things are hard to kill.”

“Yeah,” the General said. “I agree with you, but it also
looks like you guys figured out the winning formula.”

The General walked over to the headless body and nudged it
with his boot.

“Not many things can keep kicking without a head,” I said.

“Exactly, so let’s put away the pop guns and get ready to
handle things up close and personal.”

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “It took both of us
to take out just one of these things with our blades.”

“I don’t doubt that,” the General replied. “You’re using
some piss poor pig stickers.”

“It’s not that,” I retorted. “These things are plenty strong
and their bodies are dense. It was hard to cut through.”

“Well,” the General said. “I guess I’ll just swing extra
hard.”

The General had no problems moving the bed out of the way of
the door. After that, he was in the hall with us behind him. I’m not sure when
the noises of the playing vampires had stopped, but I’m guessing it was when
the General entered the building. It was completely silent.

“Why are the lights so dim?” the big guy asked.

“I think the electricity is faulty,” Scalp said.

The General walked over to the nearest wall sconce and
unscrewed the bulb. It wasn’t easy for him to do, he was wearing fingerless
gloves and he kept burning his fingers on the hot bulb.

“Low watt bulbs,” the General said as he bounced the hot
object from hand to hand before screwing it back on the sconce.

“This place was prepared then,” I said. “Someone must have
gone around and replaced all the light bulbs.”

“Yeah,” the General said. “I don’t think vampires are overly
fond of bright light. Let’s start in that hallway where all the bodies are, and
then we’ll go door to door and see what happens.”

“That’s where we were attacked,” I said.

“We noticed,” the big guy said.

The light was still blinking on and off as the General
searched for his missing friend among the bodies. The hallway smelled horrible.
Human and vampire blood was splattered all over the walls. The bodies of my
fallen teammates were almost unrecognizable.

“He’s not here,” the General said. “Let’s start kicking down
some doors.”

“I have a better idea,” I replied. “I can pick the locks. I
can do it quick, and it’ll make a lot less noise.”