The Regulators - 02 (42 page)

The vampire fell to the ground instantly. I crawled slowly
over to him as he looked at me in fury, and I slashed the Achilles tendon of
his other foot as well. The Master could no longer walk, but he slowly began to
crawl away from me.

I was finished. I could no longer move. Cutting his Achilles
tendons took the last of my strength. My breathing was wet and sloppy.
Something was rattling inside my chest. I wanted to crawl after him, but I just
couldn’t will myself to do it. I even wanted to scream out my frustration, but
I lacked the ability to do even that. I was dying.

In the end, I followed my plan and used my last available
option. I raised my arm and pointed my index finger into the sky.

Dudley

I felt that the final
interview on the Battle of the Sun Bowl should be conducted by someone other
than the General. I wanted to hear what it was like to watch the fight between
Jaxon and the Master and not be able to interfere. I also wanted to know what
happened to the rest of the team after they had left the church. I chose to
speak with Dudley.

I wasn’t disappointed
.

It sucked.

“
What sucked
?”

Every single bit of it. From the fight at the church, all
the way to the end; it just sucked.

“
Tell me about it
?”

Where do you want me to start?

“
Start at the church,
if you’d like
.”

The dirty bastards started throwing in zombies to set off
the traps and attack us. It was a cheap move, but it worked. Before any of us
knew what was happening, the battle was being fought inside the sanctuary. They
had broken through our defenses and were putting a serious hurt on us.

I remember the screams.

I remember all the blood. We were fighting zombies, then
vampires, then zombies. It was too much. We were losing. We were failing, but
we never gave up. There was no reason to give up. One way or the other, we were
all going to die. So we may as well go out fighting.

I still get the shakes when I think about that night. Every
now and then, I would catch sight of a team member. They had that look in their
eyes. You know that look? Probably not, but it’s a nasty look. When you see it,
you know the situation is hopeless.

Then the voice came.

Everything came to an abrupt stop. That was fortunate, but
then the voice began to ask Jaxon to come outside. He didn’t want to. I don’t
blame him for that, but when the voice promised to spare everyone’s life if he
agreed to its demands, well, Jaxon had no choice at that point.

He gave me a look when he walked out. He didn’t think he was
coming back, but that didn’t stop him. Nothing stops my uncle.

The funny thing is, I don’t think the Master wanted to come
inside the church. I always heard that vampires had an aversion to churches. I
think that there may be something to all that.

“
Didn’t the other
vampires enter the church easily enough
?”

I’m not sure how easily. They seemed to move pretty
sluggishly. We were even able to kill the first three that tried pretty easily.
Then again, maybe I’m just imagining things. We still don’t know a great deal
about vampires, but I did find it odd that all the survivors were sent to the
Sun Bowl. My guess is that the Master wanted them away from the church to make
slaughtering them easier.

“
What happened after
the General came back inside
?”

He told us how the Master wanted to fight him and then we
helped patch up all the wounded and gather up all the bodies. I was against
Jaxon fighting the Master from the very beginning.

When we went into the office, Javie, Nick and I tried to
come up with a plan, but we were pretty much screwed from the get go. We didn’t
have enough cars to drive everyone from the church out of the city and walking
out of El Paso is way too dangerous with all the zombies. We also couldn’t
abandon them because the vampires would continue their attack with a vengeance
in our absence.

As we talked, Jaxon sat alone with Merrick. When he finally
spoke up, he had a plan. I hated the plan. It involved him fighting the Master.
There didn’t seem to be a way to avoid that, but I stopped bitching when he
reminded me that the vampires still held Hardin, Miriam and Ivana.

Shortly after Georgie came back and Jaxon began to sew his
Ti-lite inside his shorts, Jaxon revealed his next idea. It was a pretty decent
idea, but I wasn’t really sure we could make it work. Fortunately, Javie had
some experience in plumbing.

After the plan was set, everybody got really quiet. It was
almost like we couldn’t really believe that we were going to go through with
it. To me, it felt like I was throwing my uncle to the wolves. He had to
survive long enough for the plan to work.

“
Tell me about the
guitar
.”

It was funny to see the smile of embarrassment on Dudley’s
face.

Javie found a guitar and he and Jax started singing. That’s
what started everything. The rest of us just joined in because it would have
been rude to let them tackle the entire song all by themselves.

“
What song was it
?”

“God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by Johnny Cash. A song like that
causes the adrenaline to start pumping. I merely brought out the Jack to calm
everybody back down. Obviously it didn’t work. We just got louder and louder,
but it was nice. We were finally able to relax a bit. It reminded me of the
early days back at the Safe Zone.

The survivors joined us, of course. Even Father Monarez
began to unwind just a bit. Before any of us knew it, we had ourselves a pretty
decent party going on. A crowd had even gathered around Jax, since he was
finally behaving like an approachable human being. He was telling them some
pretty humorous stories about his younger days. I swear I almost fell off my
chair laughing when someone actually asked him why he was so rude all the time.

“
What did Jaxon do
?”

He was laughing right along with me. I don’t remember him
answering the question. I think he just laughed it off. Then we laughed even
harder when Georgie asked Javie to play some Rascal Flatts and Javie stopped
strumming his guitar and tried to throw Georgie out of the church.

“
What’s wrong with
Rascal Flatts
?”

Boy bands don’t belong in country music. Georgie was lucky
Nick didn’t pelt him with another bottle. Anyway, the party was great. It was
unexpected, but it was needed. Father Monarez even led us in some toasts for
the lives that we had lost.

Then he had to screw everything up and ask Jax if he’d like
to have his last rites. Jaxon of course had a fit. He stormed off, and when the
little priest tried to go after him, I stood in his way.

“You need to let him calm down now Father,” I said.

“I’m not sure what I did that was so offensive,” he said.

“You can’t confront a man like Jaxon with the possibility
that he might lose,” I answered. “He can’t think along those terms. He needs to
believe that he will win. You basically just told him that you expect him to
lose.”

“My son,” he said. “Do you expect anything different?”

I didn’t answer the man. I walked away. I didn’t want to think
about it either. That’s when I noticed that the party was over. Everyone looked
as if they were ashamed to be having a good time after all that had happened.
Or maybe they were ashamed to be having a good time when Jaxon was about to
have a battle to the death to ensure everyone’s survival.

I didn’t sleep that night. I’m not sure that anyone slept
that night. Instead, I parked myself outside the office door in case Jaxon
needed anything during the night.

Shortly before sunrise, everyone was up and getting ready
for the team’s departure. They gave us a nasty station wagon since we would
need something to carry supplies in. I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a
truck around to spare. A truck would have suited us much better than a station
wagon.

Jaxon gave us a quick pep talk and went over all the details
once more before we left. He was counting on us. If we failed, everyone would
die. When he was finished up and everyone was hopping into the car, Jax pulled
me aside.

He handed me his tomahawk.

That gesture almost brought me to tears. He had already
loaded up his guns and backpack into the station wagon, but he made sure to
hand the tomahawk to me. I looked at the weapon and actually saw it for the
very first time. It was simplistic in its design, but in the correct hands it
was an incredibly dangerous weapon. Jaxon probably bought it, played with it
for about a week and just stuck it somewhere in his house when he grew bored.
He couldn’t have known at the time that he would someday become famous and that
simple tool would become his primary weapon.

The blade was hair-splitting sharp. The black paint over the
metal was faded and scratched heavily, but not a ding could be seen on the
edge. The once pale wood of the shaft was stained an odd tan color from sweat,
blood and hard use. The weapon damn near screamed in my grip when I thought
about all the killing it had done in my uncle’s hands.

“Don’t let them die,” Jaxon said. “If I fail, you need to
succeed. Don’t let them die.”

It was hard not to get emotional.

“What about Skie?” I asked. “What do I tell her if things go
bad?”

My uncle just stared at me. He tried to say something but
couldn’t find the right words. Instead he gave me a quick hug and nudged me
towards the station wagon. I watched him turn his attention to Merrick for a
bit before he also led her to the station wagon. He wanted her well away from
his fight so she wouldn’t be hurt.

Nick drove us away.

We had a job to do and failure wasn’t an option. The plan
had two parts. For the first part, we had to search the inside of the stadium.
It took about three hours before we found the maintenance room we were looking
for. It was a relief that the room still existed. Javie studied the controls
and figured out what we would need.

It was going to require a lot of work. He wasn’t even sure
everything would still function, but we had to try. We had to make it happen.
Lives were depending on us. My uncle was depending on us.

We drove to the hardware store.

This took time as well. Before we could gather up any supplies,
we had to clear the parking lot and store of all the shamblers. There were a
lot of them, let me tell you. After the area was cleared, we backed up the
station wagon and loaded up.

When we got back to the stadium, Javie worked his magic with
Georgie and Nick and I got started on the second part of Jaxon’s plan.

“
I’m a little bit lost
.”

You should be, I’m leaving out all the key parts, but I’ll
dig in deeper when the time comes, so don’t worry your pretty little head. Just
know that we worked the entire day in an effort to set things up. That was the
plan. It would have been a lot easier if the stadium still had real grass, but
that kind of luck wasn’t on our side.

When all was ready, we crossed our fingers and locked Javie
and Merrick in the maintenance room and went outside. It was beginning to snow
harder and that was a good thing. It made finding a hiding place just a bit
easier though not very comfortable. You see, the snow was blowing down in a
certain angle that kept the field from being filled with snow but was still
piling up mounds of it about midway up on the bleachers.

Georgie, Nick and I buried ourselves in the mounds. Each of
the three of us took a side of the stadium leaving only the entrance we were
hoping Jax would walk through free. To say the least, we were freezing our
asses off. I think we shivered in our respective mounds for at least two hours
before the foot soldiers led the survivors into the stadium. I was glad when
they finally showed up for two reasons. One, it wasn’t pleasant listening to
Nick bitch and moan through our ear radios while we all turned blue in the
cold; the arrival of the survivors finally shut him up. Two, the survivors came
through the entrance we were hoping they would be using. They were led to the
immediate side of the field and situated behind a couple rows of large PVC
piping that marked the out of bounds line. The foot soldiers placed themselves
on the opposite side of the field behind another couple of rows of PVC piping
as if they were supporting an opposing team.

The waiting game was almost finished.

An hour after sunset, the Master arrived. It wasn’t some
type of grand entrance like I had been expecting. He simply walked through the
same entrance everybody else had and strolled rather casually to the middle of
the field.

My entire body was shivering uncontrollably in the cold
while the Master was barefoot and shirtless as he stood in the middle of the
field and waited patiently. I was afraid that my shivering would make the mound
of snow above me vibrate and give away my position. Fortunately, the Master
never even looked my way.

I never saw the other vampires, but I knew they were there.
Jaxon warned us about that. He said they were predators and wouldn’t want to be
out in the open. He figured that they would stay hidden until the final moments
of the fight. Then, they would appear somewhere high in altitude since they
seem to like being above their prey.

Time began to slow down after the Master had taken his
position. I felt the adrenaline surge rampaging through my veins as I waited
for Jaxon to make his appearance. Or maybe it was fear. In fact, yes, it was
fear. I didn’t want to see my uncle walk into the stadium. A part of me was
hoping that he suddenly grew a brain and decided to run off and hide. I knew it
would never happen, of course.

Jaxon was coming to fight.