Every gun the military had in this section of town was firing. None of them were firing towards the river. Trees and the buildings of a marina were the targets of choice.
Serena stood silhouetted against the white floodlights of the military. One hand held Wayne’s binoculars up to her eyes while she held the other out extended. One finger pointed out with the thumb up in a facsimile of a gun. As she mimed her finger-gun firing with recoil, a black beam shot out of the binoculars, aimed at one of the sniper towers.
Flame started spouting from the mounted turret, all aimed away from the river.
She repeated the action for the other tower, which also started spewing impotent fire, before turning to face the oncoming boat.
After giving a half-salute half-wave, Serena jumped.
“Shield down,” Wayne shouted.
Just in time for her to land on the bow of their boat.
Wayne immediately reapplied his own shield over their boat.
“Thirty-seconds,” Serena shouted over the engine.
Sarah shouted back. “For what?”
“Until they stop thinking that every vampire in the city is charging their outpost.”
“We’ll be clear by then,” Wayne said. Probably too quiet to be heard over the engine and the gunfire, but he didn’t care.
He was too busy dragging the flamethrower’s flame across the net. It was much easier than conjuring flame from scratch, but still required concentration. Doubly so as he was both driving and maintaining a shield at the same time.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t burning fast enough.
“Hold on!”
The front of their boat hit the net, most of it catching on their shield.
Weakened from the flames, it tore.
Wayne let out a sigh of relief as their boat sped through underneath the bridge. The rope hanging off of their shield quickly burned away with a smidgen of extra effort on Wayne’s part.
He had to slow down for another turn of the river, but that turn carried them well out of sight from the sniper towers.
—
“We have with us today a very special guest.”
Wayne blinked his eyes open, yawning as the last vestiges of sleep left him.
“He wishes to remain entirely anonymous, but felt it was his duty to report what actually happened during the tragedy at Lansing.”
Wayne rolled his eyes as he glanced over at the hotel television set.
Lansing was all
This time, however, was slightly different. Rather than talking over pictures of the crater, the journalist sat in a chair on one side of the screen. The other side had been covered with opaque glass. Only the barest hints of a shadow could be seen on the side of it.
“So,” the anchor said, “what can you tell about Lansing?”
“Thank you for having me.” His voice had been garbled to the point where it was barely intelligible. Luckily for anyone viewing, whatever news station this was had hired a quick transcriber to add subtitles to the screen. “Everywhere else turned me away as crazy.”
“Of course, Mr. Blank.” She actually said the word ‘blank.’ “We’ll let the you speak and the viewers will decide.”
“My detachment had been rounded up for emergency containment of a biological threat. Initially, that’s what it appeared to be. A strange one, to be sure, but nothing unimaginable.”
“Can you tell us the nature of the biological threat? Effects and transmission vectors?”
“Transmission, we didn’t know. None of us had been issued NBC suits–that’s nuclear, biological, chemical suits–and none of the soldiers ever came down with the ‘illness.'” The shadow moved as the man put quotes around his word. “As for the effects,” he coughed, “some seemed to turn into zombies while others turned super-human.”
“Zombies, Mr. Blank?” Despite the way she phrased her inquiry, there was no mocking in her voice.
“Sounds crazy, but when you hear what I have to say later, it’ll be the sanest thing you heard. There are certain chemical cocktails that can turn a person towards a more brain-dead state while still leaving motor functions, so it isn’t too absurd to believe that someone would have weaponized such a thing.
“For three days and three nights, we fought off the zombies and the people who took a few extra bullets to put down–”
“Did these super-humans ever attempt to communicate?”
“Never allowed them to get that close. Our orders were clear. We couldn’t allow the threat to spread.”
“I see.”
He shook his head, ignoring her slightly accusatory tone. “On the third night, things started to change. If some people who took a few extra bullets to put down counted as super-human, these things counted as absolute monsters. They would charge the fences,
“You called them monsters, but were they human? Or actual monsters.”
