“He killed Oleg,” Marceau protested. “He deserves to die!”“You know the rules,” the same voice, a feminine one, replied. “No turning, no killing. We capture. We need them.”“Not this one,” Marceau growled through clenched teeth.“Even that one,” the female replied.Marceau looked back at Gabriel , eyeing him up and down as if considering going ahead with his plans. Growling, he let go and finally stepped back.Gabriel dropped to his hands and knees, too weak to stand up. With some effort, he managed to lift his head and surveil the newcomer for the first time.The first thing that he noticed was that she was stunningly beautiful.Most of the other vampires looked like, well, like people that had been living in a cave. They weren’t especially well groomed, their faces were hard, their hair was long and wild, and skin a sickly pale.But this vampire, this woman, was different. Her skin was porcelain white, her hair a silver waterfall cascading off her head. Her clothing was clean, and
It took him a long moment to get the shaking under control. He felt like his nerves were about to give out on him. He spent several minutes just taking long, deep breaths and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the horrible image in front of him. When his heart finally settled in his chest and his body stopped quivering, he rose.Doing his best to ignore the gruesome reminders of his enemies lying at his feet, Gabriel stepped back inside the cave.For a long time he wandered around the insides of the mountain. He looked for any trace of life or death or otherwise, but found nothing. The complex had truly been abandoned. Nothing remained to prove his theory beyond the gruesome scene with the two vampire guards that had played out just moments earlier.Finally he came back to the room where he had met the vampire queen. The room where, he knew, Jake had been tied up and still had managed to kill a vampire, dozens of zombies, and make it out of the room. The carnage was all still there.
He didn’t feel any pain.And there had been that strange whistling sound. And a few too many thumping sounds.Slowly, not really willing yet to believe, he opened his eyes.The zombies were all around him and on top of him, but they weren’t moving.Joe thrashed about, freeing himself from the zombies that had landed on him. They offered no resistance. They weren’t moving at all. Then he turned, looking behind him, and saw a tall man in a dark coat standing there.“Who…?” He started to ask.The man moved suddenly, raising something before him.A gun?“Wait!” Shouted Joe, raising his hands defensively.The whistling sound came again, followed by several more thumps. Joe turned back to the woods to see a second group of zombies falling one by one.Whatever the stranger was using, it was killing each zombie in a single shot. Which meant on top of being quiet and rapid firing, it had frighteningly deadly accuracy.When the last one fell, he turned again to see the stranger already offering
Mills smiled brightly as he accepted the cup, drinking deeply and letting out a sigh of contentment.“Thanks, Sara, you’re a life saver.”She rolled her eyes at his little “joke.” For nearly a year after they met, the sheriff had honestly thought her name was Sara, and she hadn’t corrected him. When someone else they both knew finally did, he briefly attempted to save face by pretending he knew all along what her real name was. So now it had become a bit of a joke between them.“I will never see the point of drinking decaffeinated coffee,” she said, ignoring his jest.“It’s full of delicious proteins.”“I don’t think that’s true.”He chuckled, “Guess you’re too smart for me, kiddo.”Zahra looked past the gate house and out to the part of the external fence that she could see from her position. All she saw through the chain links was what she always saw. More trees. “Any big news over night?”Mills shook his head and took another drink of his coffee. “All stations reported in this mor
Despite Nano’ s request, she didn’t break from her routine. The neighborhood nearest their own gated community was massive, stretching on for miles down the most major road of the area, and it was Zahra’s goal to explore every one of the houses for useful or entertaining loot.To do this, she had devised a way of dividing up the houses, a certain number every day, that gave her plenty of time to give each a thorough search.She came to her first house of the day and raised her walking stick defensively. She started out by making a quick search of the front and back lawns, checking to make sure they were clear, and that no doors were smashed open and no windows broken. Everything seemed safe enough, so she pulled out her lock pick set and went to work on the back door.When she had first found the lock pick set, it had taken her nearly two full days of trial and error to figure out what she was doing with it. That was six months ago. Now she was an old hand at it, and in just a couple
“Uh, yeah. Obviously. What of it?”He stared at her for a long moment. “Did anyone ever tell you, you have a serious attitude problem?”“There’s nothing wrong with my attitude. Maybe you just need to adjust your attitude.”He sighed and lifted the chain back over his shoulder. “Please move,” he said, and started forward again. She didn’t budge, and after a couple steps he stopped again. “What is it you want?” He demanded. “I want to know what it is you’re doing out here all alone. I want to know why your box there is all wrapped up in chains.”“So nobody steals my stuff.”“What stuff do you have that’s so nice that you don’t want people to steal it?”“It doesn’t matter. It’s my stuff, and I don’t want other people to have it.” He started moving again, angling past her. She moved in front of him and he threw his arms out in frustration.“Little girl!” he snapped.“Zahra,” she replied, cutting off his tirade.“What?” he demanded, a little louder than he intended. “My name is Zahra.”
“Nano, it’s okay. He’s not dangerous. If he wanted to hurt me, he had plenty of chances already.”“You don’t know that. You can’t know that! He could just be trying to trick you! Or maybe trying to use you to get in here. He could’ve been watching you for a long time. Maybe he knew you came out every day and wanted to use you to get in here.”“Or he could’ve just come to the door and asked to be let in,” said Zahra.“What if he’s not alone? What if there’s others? Maybe he was just working on a way to get inside so he could get them in. Like a Trojan horse!”“A what horse?” Asked Zahra.“It’s a little before your time,” said Kevin.“Nano, there’s pretty much no chance any of that is true. With the way I met him, there really couldn’t be any others. He wouldn’t even be here now if I hadn’t insisted.”“We can’t take that risk,” said Nano.“Um, if… I’m not invited in, might I suggest you lock the gate?” Kevin motioned to the still open entryway as he spoke, in case it wasn’t obvious what
Kevin nodded his head solemnly.“Nano?” Mills called, not taking his eyes off the stranger. “Open the gate.”Mills, Kevin, Jensen, and the rest of the group, minus Nano who stayed behind to continue monitoring his post, and Zahra, who Mills had demanded go home, rounded the corner of a building and came into one of the best views of the whole town.Mills waved his hand to indicate all that lay before them, like a salesman, and stated, “Welcome to our town.”“It’s massive,” said Kevin, simply. From the vantage point from the crest of the small hill you really could see quite a distance. The towering wall that contained the community stretched out past them until it almost managed to disappear in the distance, barely visible through the tops of trees along the horizon. At one point between here and there, though, the wall dove inward to a smaller, though still quite large gated area. This smaller area was a singular neighborhood, comprising, Kevin guessed, several dozen houses.No, not