The first bullet struck the man in the shoulder. Thick red blood exploded outwards. Even with that, Wayne knew it wouldn’t amount to more than a bruise in terms of actual effect upon his ability.
But the sheer kinetic force was enough to interrupt his movements long enough for a second bullet to hit him in the stomach. A third and a fourth followed. Before long, the man filled with enough lead to sink a ship.
Still he did not fall. Not until his head snapped to one side, brain matter exploding out both the entry wound and exit wound.
The sharp crack of a high-caliber sniper rifle’s report split the air as his body slumped to the ground.
Wayne frowned as he continued to watch the situation, wondering just what their plan was. The man might be on the ground, but sunrise was several hours away and bullets wouldn’t
The guardsmen ceased firing, but kept their weapons trained on his body while reloading in shifts. One of them reached over to a radio attached to his shoulder.
Less than two minutes later, Wayne saw it. A jeep rolled up alongside the fence. All the guardsmen backed off, weapons still on the downed man, as a man with a gas mask jumped out the back of the vehicle. He carried three tanks on his back, all connected to a hose.
Once up to the fence, he jammed the nozzle partway through the chain fence.
A stream of fire erupted from the end, flew the twenty feet gap, and buried the man in napalm.
Already in torpor, the vampire didn’t even scream as he turned to ash.
As the flames ate the corpse, the guardsmen exchanged their spent magazines for fresh ones at the jeep and promptly resumed their patrols.
No one bothered to extinguish the flames.
That explained the charred woods at least.
“I wonder what the brass told the grunts?” Wayne grumbled to himself. The year two-thousand idiots were right about one thing, it was the end. Not of the world perhaps, but there was no chance of covering up this disaster.
“Ah well,” Wayne said as he replaced the caps on his binoculars, “had to happen sometime.”
Really, it was surprising that the supernatural world hadn’t been outed long ago. With the way technology moved, someone had to be out there recording something they shouldn’t.
Well, they were. Wayne had seen plenty of the supernatural in mundane news reports.
It helped that such things were typically dismissed as hoaxes without much investigation. Some, like the Cottingley Fairies, fell under much harsher scrutiny. In the end, even those had been dismissed as fakes.
Wayne had no idea what those fae were thinking when they allowed themselves to be captured on camera.
But this was a bit bigger than a few girls in the woods and a grainy camera. This was a city. A capital city at that. It wasn’t the most populated city, but it was big enough to demand answers. Real answers.
Shaking his head, Wayne jumped back into his Impala and slammed the door. Such concerns were for people in power. The scope of his goal was far smaller.
“Sarah, you better be alright.”
—
One of the grunts at a checkpoint built up in the middle of the highway a short distance from the prefab command center waved Wayne down.
Though he kept a hand on his tome for any emergencies, Wayne wasn’t really up to testing his reaction time against the eight guns trained on him. And those were just the ones he could see. Even with the few seconds of time dilation provided by his pyrokinesis enhancing his mind, it was far too easy to get hit by a bullet from somewhere he couldn’t see.
So Wayne pulled over at the checkpoint, keeping his motions as innocent as possible.
A young grunt, a private by the single chevron he sported on his uniform, stepped out of the small guardhouse and right up to the driver-side window.
“City is under quarantine,” he said as he waved his flashlight over the passenger seat and rear seats before stopping at the book on Wayne’s lap. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn around.”
Without a word, Wayne held up an identification badge and a set of papers.
The private took the forged documents and glanced over them. He spent a good two minutes looking between the identification and Wayne. “Major Lurcher?” At Wayne’s nod, he turned his attention to the papers.
Wayne had to fight to keep the smile off of his face as the private’s eyes went wide.
“I-I think I need to call this in.”
“Then get to it, Private Mhenlo,” Wayne snapped, taking his name from the tape above his left breast. “I don’t have all–”
A crackle of distant gunshots cut Wayne off.
Wayne made a vague gesture off towards the direction it came from. “Make the call, private. And make it quick.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” The private gave a sloppy salute as he half ran into his little guardhouse.
Before the door could slam shut, Wayne extended a small thaumaturgical shield out, catching the door and keeping it from closing fully. He then watched through the window as the private picked up a phone.
“Sir,” his voice came through the crack in the door, “I have a Major out here requesting entrance.”
