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"OK, you're good to go whenever you want. Good luck."
"What about him?" asked Mike, gesturing at me with his thumb.
"Him too," said the lieutenant. He still didn't look at me. Some of the VET are fu
"Sure," said Mike. He lumbered over to face me. "There's something fu
"Actually, your plan sucks," I said calmly. "So I've decided to change it. You four should go down to the factory floor and take out the vampires there. I'll go up against the Ancient."
"Alone?" asked Je
"Nope," I replied. "It'll be out and unbending itself now. You'll all be too slow."
"Call this sl-" Mike started to say, as he tried to poke me forcefully in the chest with his forefinger. But I was already standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder, and as he swung around, ran behind him again. We kept this up for a few turns before Karl stopped him.
"See what I mean? And an Ancient Vampire is faster than me."
That was blarney. Or at least I hoped it was. I'd met Ancient Vampires who were as quick as I was, but not actually faster. Sometimes I did wonder what would happen if one day I was a fraction slower and one finally got me for good and all. Some days, I kind of hoped that it would happen.
But not this day. I hadn't had to go up against any vampires or anything else for over a month. I'd been surfing for the last two weeks, hanging out on the beach, eating well, drinking a little wine and even letting down my guard long enough to spend a couple of nights with a girl who surfed better than me and didn't mind having sex in total darkness with a guy who kept his T-shirt on and an old airline bag under the pillow.
I was still feeling good from this little holiday, though I knew it would only ever be that. A few weeks snatched out of…
"OK," panted Mike. He wasn't as stupid as I'd feared but he was a lot less fit than he looked. "You do your thing. We'll take the vampires on the factory floor."
"Good," I replied. "Presuming I survive, I'll come down and help you."
"What do… what do we do if we… if we're losing?" asked Je
"We fight or we die," said Karl. "No one is allowed back out through the cordon until after dawn."
"Oh, I didn't… I mean I read the brochure-"
"You don't have to go in," I said. "You can wait out here."
"I… I think I will," she said, without looking at the others. "I just can't… now I'm here, I just can't face it."
"Great!" muttered Mike. "One of us down already."
"She's too young," said Susan. I was surprised she'd speak up against Mike. I had her down as his personal doormat. "Don't give her a hard time, Mike."
"No time for anything," I said. "They're getting ready to power down the gate."
A cluster of regular police officers and VET agents were taking up positions around the gate in the cordon fence. We walked over, the others switching on helmet lights, drawing their handguns and probably silently uttering last-minute prayers.
The sergeant who'd wanted to give me a hard time looked at Mike, who gave him the thumbs up. A siren sounded a slow
whoop-whoop-whoop as a segment of the cordon fence powered down, the indicators along the top rail fading from a warning red to a dull green.
"Go, go, go!" shouted Mike, and he jogged forward, with Susan and Karl at his heels. I followed a few metres behind, but not too far. That sergeant had the control box for the gate and I didn't trust him not to close it on my back and power it up at the same time. I really didn't want to know what 6,600 volts at 500 milliamps would do to my unusual physiology. Or show anyone else what didn't happen, more to the point.
On the other hand, I didn't want to get ahead of Mike and co, either, because I already know what being shot in the back by accident felt like, with lead and wooden bullets, not to mention ceramic-cased tungsten-tipped penetrator rounds, and I didn't want to repeat the experience.
They rushed the front door, Mike kicking it in and bulling through. The wood was rotten and the top panel had already fallen off, so this was less of an achievement than it might have been.
Karl was quick with the flares, confirming his thorough training. Mike, on the other hand, just kept going, so the light was behind him as he opened the fire door to the left of the lobby.
Bad move. There was a vampire behind the door, and while it was no ancient, it wasn't newly hatched either. It wrapped its arms around Mike, holding on with the filaments that lined its forelegs, though to an uneducated observer it just looked like a fairly slight, tattered rag-wearing human bear-hugging him with rather longer than usual arms.
Mike screamed as the vampire started chewing on his helmet, ripping through the Kevlar layers like a buzz-saw through softwood, pausing only to spit out bits of the material. Old steel helmets are better than the modern variety, but we live in an age that values only the new.
Vamps like to get a good grip around their prey, particularly ones who carry weapons. There was nothing Mike could do, and as the vamp was already backing into the stairwell, only a second or two for someone else to do something.
The vampire fell to the ground, its forearm filaments coming loose with a sticky popping sound, though they probably hadn't penetrated Mike's heavy clothes. I pulled the splinter out of its head and put the stake of almost two-thousand-year-old timber back in the bag before the others got a proper look at the odd silver sheen that came from deep within the wood.
Karl dragged Mike back into the flare-light as Susan covered him. Both of them were pretty calm, I thought. At least they were still doing stuff, rather than freaking out.
"Oh man," said Karl. He'd sat Mike up, and then had to catch him again as he fell backwards. Out in the light, I saw that I'd waited just that second too long, perhaps from some subconscious dislike of the man. The last few vampire bites had not been just of Mike's helmet.
"What… what do we do?" asked Susan. She turned to me, pointedly not looking at her dead husband.
"I'm sorry," I said. I really meant it, particularly since it was my slackness that had let the vamp finish him off. Mike was an idiot but he didn't deserve to die, and I could have saved him. "But he's got to be dealt with the same way as the vampires now. Then you and Karl have to go down and clean out the rest. Otherwise they'll kill you too."
It usually helps to state the situation clearly. Stave off the shock with the need to do something life-saving. Adrenalin focuses the mind wonderfully.
Susan looked away for a couple of seconds. I thought she might vomit, but I'd underestimated her again. She turned back, and still holding her pistol in her right hand, reached into a thigh pocket and pulled out a Quick-Flame™.
"I should be the one to do it," she said. Karl stepped back as she thumbed the Quick-Flame™ and dropped it on the corpse. The little cube deliquesced into a jelly film that spread over the torso of what had once been a man. Then, as it splashed on the floor, it woofed alight, burning blue.
Susan watched the fire. I couldn't see much of her face, but from what I could see, I thought she'd be OK for about an hour before the shock knocked her off her feet. Provided she got on with the job as soon as possible.