The Regulators - 02 (27 page)

We could hear the hungry moans and the sounds of the
vampires whispering to one another as we searched for the rooftop exit. We
could also hear the sounds of a helicopter coming from outside the building.
The sound of the chopper was a relief, but the childlike whispers of the vampires
were nerve wracking. The attack was coming. We just didn’t know when.

“
What were the vampire
children saying
?”

“Mother’s milk.”

“They don’t play right.”

“I hate them.”

“Let’s go find them.”

“That man hurt me.”

“I don’t like the light.”

“I’m thirsty.”

Simple things like that. They weren’t exactly capable of any
deep thoughts, but it was a relief when we finally started down the long
hallway. The sound of the helicopter was already fading into the distance which
meant that whatever they sent us had been delivered to the rooftop.

The General brought up the rear as our group rushed towards
the metal doors. It was good that he chose that position. The attack was fast.
Much faster than anything we had previously seen before. It came from an older
kid; possibly he was in his teens. I’m not really sure, but he was way too fast
and way too strong.

He crawled along the ceiling leaving claw marks in the
plaster as he rushed towards us. His bottom jaw was already elongated and that
black ooze was smeared all over his chin. The fangs were what really caught my
attention. They were much longer than those of the smaller children.

“Come back here!” the kid screamed at us. “Come back here! I
want to talk to you.”

When we reached the small set of stairs leading to the metal
door, the General told us to keep going as he turned to face the incoming
monster. I saw the tomahawk flash through the air and bite deeply along the
vampires back. I saw the vampire drop from the ceiling and land on top of the
General and then I was through the door and slamming it shut behind me.

Scalp was rushing towards our package. It wasn’t hard to
spot. The small black parachute was floating in the cold wind. Attached to the
parachute was a medium sized plastic box. Scalp cut the parachute free, and the
big guy opened the box.

It was cold in the open night air, but nowhere near as cold
as the dim hallways inside the building.

I stood by the door with my knife just in case the vampire
got past the General. I could easily hear the drama unfolding from behind the
metal door. The battle was furious. I could hear bodies slamming against the
wall. I could hear bones shattering as the tomahawk crunched against them. I
could hear the vampire screaming.

Then I heard the screams of others.

They weren’t the hungry moans. No, they were screams of
rage. More vampires had joined the fight. No doubt they were attracted by the
teenager’s boldness and the sounds of the fight. I knew that the General would
be overrun. It was an inevitable outcome.

I didn’t want to go back in there. I didn’t even like the
guy, but I wasn’t going to let someone like him die in a dim hallway when he
was capable of so much more. I was reaching for the doorknob when the big guy
was all of a sudden next to me and pushing a bunch of magazines into my hands.

It took me a moment to understand the situation. At first I
couldn’t understand why he would be giving me more ammo when we all knew that
normal ammunition was useless. The keyword there was ‘normal’. I saw a glimpse
of the ammunition in the mag before I slapped it into my rifle. The bullets
were a strange blue color. I’m not talking about the casing mind you. That was
regular brass, but the projectile that actually shoots out from the gun was
blue.

I had seen that type of blue before.

The big guy opened the door, and we saw a rather nasty
scene. The General had killed about five of the vampires, but they just seemed
to keep coming at him. There were also three more teenagers.

He was fighting them, but the sheer numbers gave them too
much of an advantage. They were trying to surround him, and he was attempting
to prevent them.

“Get down,” I shouted as loudly as I could.

The General took a quick look at us. I saw the confusion on
his face for a brief moment and then I saw a flash of teeth as he smiled and
dropped flat on the floor.

We unloaded on the vampires.

The effect was less than spectacular. The vampires barely
reacted to the bullet penetrating their bodies.

“Aim for their chests,” said a woman’s voice through my
earpiece.

I believe the voice belonged to the woman named Miriam, but
I never asked anyone. I just listened to her advice, as did Scalp Hunter and
the big guy. The results were instant.

I plugged one of the teenagers right in his center mass. For
a brief moment he tried to take a step towards us then came to a complete stop
and looked down at the wound in his chest. I shot him twice more just to be
safe. He face planted on the hallway carpet, and I found another target.

The next one was one of the smaller vampire children. I took
her down with only one shot. When the bullet impacted with her body, she just
sort of sat down, looked at me with the saddest eyes, and dropped over on her
side.

The vampires were falling.

For the first time we had the upper hand, and the three of
us turned that hallway into a slaughter house. The General was doing a rapid
crawl towards us when another teenager went for him. The big guy made a mistake
and drilled a hole in the vampire’s forehead instead of shooting him in the
chest.

The General couldn’t stand up and defend himself with all
the bullets flying over his head and the teenage vampire was rapidly gaining on
him. I was just about to take aim on the teenager, when the big guy finally
nailed him in the lower chest. The vampire took a step back and then roared at
the big guy. On his next step forward, the big guy shot him again.

“STOP THAT!” the vampire screamed. “It hurts!”

The black ooze started to leak from his eyes as he dropped
to his knees. The big guy shot him a final time and it was over.

When all was said and done, we brought down seventeen of the
vampires.

“What the hell kind of ammo did they give us?” the General
asked.

“I’ve seen it before,” I answered. “This coating was used to
make poison darts. It dissolves on contact with blood so after the dart was
injected into the body, the coating dissolved leaving only the poison to kill
the victim.”

The General then grabbed a single bullet and dipped it in
some of that black vampire blood. The coating dissolved immediately, leaving
behind a hollow pointed wooden bullet.

“You gotta be kidding me,” the big guy said. “A wooden
bullet won’t mushroom out, it will splinter.”

“I think that’s the idea,” the General said. “The splinters
puncture the heart in several places, and it drops the vampire. It might take a
few shots to get enough splinters in the heart, but apparently the old stake
through the heart trick actually works.”

“But a wooden bullet wouldn’t actually shoot very well,” I
added. “Therefore they coat it in that blue gunk in order to make it denser for
distance and to also keep it from breaking apart when it exits the barrel.”

“Load up then boys,” the General said. “We’re going back
in.”

It was when we walked past the dead vampires that we
realized they weren’t actually dead. They were frozen and immobile. They were
in obvious pain, but they weren’t dead. Some of them had even started a low
whimper. Others had started a low moan. A few of them had the black tears
running down their faces.

The General tapped his earpiece.

“Are you seeing this?” the General asked.

It was a private conversation, so the rest of us weren’t
privy to the details, but when it was over the General let out a deep sigh.

“Research indicated that wood through the heart was
effective,” said the General. “The research did not say how effective it was,
only that the heads were always removed after the staking.”

“I guess we now know why,” I added. “The stakes probably
just immobilized them and hurt like the devil, but they don’t kill them.”

“Sunlight and fire are also supposed to work,” the General
said as he once again pulled out his tomahawk.

It would have been easy to let him do the dirty work
himself. I really didn’t want to participate. Once immobilized, the vampire
children lost all aspects of their true nature and appeared only as terrified
children. In the end, all of us aided in the task. It’s something that I try
not to think about too much.

When we were finished, we broke down the rest of the doors.

We hunted down the vampires. There was no place that was
safe for them. We shot them down in closets. We pulled them out from under
beds. We found them in the shadows. We destroyed the nest.

One thing we noticed was that the older the child, the
stronger and more lethal they were as well. The oldest among them also required
a lot more bullets to the chest before they went down.

“You said that the vampire hunting you was an adult?” Scalp
asked after all of us unloaded our weapons on the last of the teenagers and
chased him down two flights of stairs before he finally dropped.

“That’s right,” the General answered. “An adult female, and
from what I can tell, she’s a lot tougher than these little ones.”

“I don’t envy you at all,” Scalp said with a laugh.

“That’s okay,” the General replied. “I don’t envy me much
either, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna kill her.”

After that it was more room searching and shooting. It took
a fair amount of time even with all of us firing, but eventually we cleaned the
entire hotel. We even went down to the basement. It was clear of vampires, but
it held some bodies, and Scalp and I found what was left of Voodoo. None of the
bodies belonged to the General’s friend.

I could tell he was worried, but he didn’t say much about
it.

Since the hotel was cleaned out, Scalp and I radioed in for
our extraction. We were leaving by way of the rooftop.

“
After going through
what you went through, you were still being extracted
?”

Those were our orders. The higher ups wanted none of the
special teams on the ground until the vampire threat was neutralized. I didn’t
have any ill feelings because of it either. The vampires we dealt with were
more than a match for us. I heartily agree with what Scalp said about not
envying the General. I’ll take human threats any day of the week and twice on
Sundays.

When the helicopter came, Scalp shook the General’s hand and
thanked him for the assist. After I thought about it for a moment, I realized
that I wouldn’t have made it out of the building without his aid and offered my
hand as well.

He shook it immediately, and I leaned forward to whisper in
his ear.

“
What did you say
?”

I told him that I still owed him for slapping my helmet, and
one of these days I was going to give him some payback.

“
What did he say to
that
?”

He said that I should feel free to look him up anytime I
wanted to get my ass kicked.

Jaxon

Jaxon was tired when I
next met with him. The entire team had started their morning on a long distance
run. As always, good cardio seems to be very important to him. After the run,
they worked on hand to hand combat and completed their morning at the shooting
range.

This isn’t anything
new to the team. Every member spends countless hours in training. If they
aren’t fighting, you can bet they’re busy training to fight. Most of them don’t
mind the long hours. They are working hard on skills that will save their life
or the lives of their teammates
.

“
So, I spoke to Snake
Charmer
.”

Wow, I’m shocked you were able to track him down. You must
have some important friends.

“
I’ve been meeting
some interesting people, that’s for sure. He said that you smacked him over the
head and then drew on Scalp Hunter
.”

Yeah, that’s true.

“
Can you tell me why
?”

He was acting like an asshole. I mean, I could have just
radioed in to Hardin and taken over his team, but he never would have respected
me. By proving that I could take both of them out let them know what I was
capable of. My actions made me credible.

“
You wanted to
intimidate him so that he would follow your orders
?”

Not at all. I wanted to prove to him that I was legitimate.
He didn’t believe in me; he thought I was a joke. I showed them that my
reputation was deserved and that I had even more right to be in El Paso than
they did.

“
What if one of them
had shot you
?”

I’ve been shot before.

“
Yes, I guess you
have. Well, what was it like working with highly trained fighting men
?”

I prefer working with the Regulators. Don’t get me wrong:
those guys have skills, and if I needed to rescue a hostage or take down a
terrorist they’d be the guys I wanted with me, but I fight monsters. I fight
nasty biting and scratching monsters that can disembowel a man with a simple
backhand. I want the boys that are most experienced with fighting monsters to
have my back. It just so happens that my team is probably the most experienced
in the world right now.

Guys like Scalp Hunter and Snake Charmer aren’t exactly
trained for the kinds of things we take on. To be honest, we aren’t always
trained for the kinds of things we take on. However, we adapt quickly. We
haven’t been rigorously trained in the regular methods of fighting. We make our
own rules. Sometimes it looks like we’re rather bumbling, but that’s the thing,
we go in loose and adapt to whatever jumps out at us from the closet.