The Regulators - 02 (43 page)

When I first saw him walk out of the tunnel and step into
the stadium, I almost didn’t recognize him. He was stripped down to his shorts.
I’m not sure how he had known that one was coming, but he had. He looked too
skinny, almost emaciated, like a fighter during weigh-ins after a huge weight
cut. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him eat. The scruff on his
face also looked a bit longer than usual. I had just seen him that morning and
yet he looked so different.

I was worried about him more than ever before. I began to
doubt the plan. I began to doubt everything. I wanted to jump out of the mound
of snow and join him on the field. I wanted to grab him and drag him away, and
if the Master didn’t let us leave, then we’d both fight him.

Almost in unison, every single survivor began to salute him.

It was an almost surreal moment. It was a way for them to
show respect to the man that was risking everything for their survival. Jaxon
of course, didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the Master. His head
was slightly lowered and his face was utterly frozen in a grim expression.

He really didn’t look like the Jaxon that I knew.

He began to walk to the Master. I could see his green eyes smoldering
in the darkness. It was a scary sight. The stadium was quiet enough to hear a
pin drop. That was the kind of tension and fear filling the air. When the voice
came, it literally pierced through the nighttime sky. It was a voice of pure
innocence, but it was loud and powerful at the same time.

It was a little girl. At first I thought she was shouting
something and then I realized she was singing. Her voice was amazing. I can’t
even begin to describe it. Her Mother tried to pull her back into the crowd,
but she would have none of that. She really got into it. She was even jumping
up and down and pounding her fists as she sang. She started things off
wonderfully, but imagine my surprise when every single human being, with the
exception of the foot soldiers on the opposite side of the field, began to sing
along with her on the chorus as Jaxon walked by. It was amazing. It was the
most incredible show of support I think I’ve ever seen in my life.

It’s funny: my uncle isn’t always a pleasant person, and he’s
normally somewhat awkward around strangers, but man oh man, do people support
him. He may not be good at talking, but his actions speak a thousand times more
than any words can convey.

I asked Mona what song
she was singing when I met with her. It was “ Lose Yourself” by Eminem.
Apparently she sang the song almost nightly to all the survivors at the church
and that is why they all knew the lyrics
.

I was proud of Jaxon. I was terrified for him. Each bit of
emotion began to fight and wrestle with the others until I was a wreck.

The snow was still falling. It drifted lazily past the
stadium lights as the song ended and Jax moved closer to the Master. The
vampire began to blab about something. It was hard to hear him under the snow,
but Jax wasn’t about to play the talking game. He hates talking smack. When
things are past the point of no return and a fight is inevitable Jax won’t
waste any time mixing words, he just starts punching.

Or in this case, he charged and I swear to God I saw him
smile when he did it.

The take-down he used on the Master was picture perfect. The
vampire never saw it coming, and despite being like a thousand times stronger
than Jaxon, he ended up on his back. The punches began to rain down upon the
Master.

For a brief and shining second, I thought Jax was going to
win right then and there. A normal human being would probably have been ready
for a trip to the hospital. The Master, on the other hand, easily backhanded
Jaxon away from him. I was devastated to see how easily he stopped Jaxon’s
attack. I was horrified to see how easily the vampire got back to his feet and
turned the tables on my uncle.

Jaxon was lifted straight into the air and brought close to
the vampire’s face. I don’t know what the monster said to him, but I’m sure it
was pretty nasty. It just wasn’t nasty enough. Jaxon opened up his neck with a
slice the Master never saw coming. The black blood shot straight up in the air
and poured all over Jax.

The fight to say the least was extremely brutal. The vampire
had strength on his side to be sure. He pummeled Jaxon mercilessly. Every
single strike that landed was life threatening. I could hear the sounds of his
fists colliding with skin and bone and I could hear the bones breaking.

I thought my uncle was going to die.

I was amazed that he kept getting to his feet. He wouldn’t
give up, and the cuts he landed on the vampire were nothing short of lethal. My
uncle knew how to fight. He knew the areas to attack. He reasoned that the
vampire would become weak if it lost enough blood.

The field had been covered with a light snowfall. The blood
of the vampire had painted the field black all around them. Every time he
seemed to grab a hold of Jaxon, Jaxon would cut the vampire again. It wasn’t
very long before the blood stopped gushing, and the vampire’s wounds were no
longer healing so rapidly.

The Master was fighting stupidly. He should have never met
my uncle in an open field. He should never have allowed my uncle to bring a
knife. The vampire had underestimated him. Jaxon was a Guardian. Guardians were
created to kill monsters.

Jaxon had weakened him, but the price for doing so was high.
My uncle had lacerations across his face and chest. His face was battered so
badly that he was unrecognizable. Each blow the vampire had landed had been
effective. When the Master punched his entire hand through Jaxon’s back and
lifted him bodily into the air by his spine, I knew that the end was near.

My uncle had lost.

The question now was how badly the vampire would torture him
before he put Jaxon out of his misery. I wanted it to be over. I didn’t want to
watch anymore. I couldn’t watch anymore. It was too much. To see a family
member go through so much pain, I just couldn’t bare it.

“This is your champion!” the vampire shouted. “This is the
man chosen to protect…”

He never finished his thought. Jaxon somehow turned and
slashed at the arm imbedded into his back. The vampire dropped him instantly,
but before Jaxon fell to the ground the knife lashed out again and opened the
vampire’s stomach. I saw grey organs begin to slide out through the wound.
Jaxon sliced his neck as the vampire bent over to hold himself together. The
last of the monster’s blood dumped onto the field.

The Master did the only thing he could do. He kicked the
heap that was my uncle away from him. Jaxon’s body rolled across the bloody
field. The vampire was no longer healing. With one arm holding his organs
inside his body he stumbled towards my uncle, reached out with his free hand
and crushed Jaxon’s fingers before throwing his knife aside.

Jaxon was defenseless, worse than that, he was barely even
moving.

“
I’m shocked that he
was even alive after the vampire grabbed a hold of his spine. I can’t imagine
what kinds of injuries that must have caused
.”

Be assured that the injuries were indeed fatal, but
Guardians are built differently. The can withstand a lot of damage and continue
to function. However, Jax was indeed dying. He could barely lift his arms in
defense as the vampire began to stomp his body.

I was crying and my tears froze to my face as I watched
Jaxons body being abused. I was sure that he was dead. He had to be dead. I
wanted him to be dead so the suffering would end. The plan had failed. The
other vampires never showed themselves, not even towards the end like we
assumed they would.

My uncle was no longer moving. He was nothing more than a
broken and bloody heap on the ground.

The vampire wasn’t much better off. His wounds were ghastly.
The organs began to slip out of his body and the loss of blood finally caught
up to him. He dropped to the ground. It took the Master a long time to find his
feet once again. He looked at my uncle, hesitated and then he motioned to his
foot soldiers. I saw them ignore his summons. In a rage, the Master turned his
back on Jax and took a weakened step or two in the direction of his foot
soldiers.

I knew he wanted the blood.

I simply couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Jaxon reach
down to the cuff of his shorts and pull free his backup knife. I was amazed
when he reached out and sliced through the tendon above the Master’s heel and
dropped the vampire to the ground. I was completely astonished when Jaxon
crawled after him and slashed apart the Achilles tendon of the other foot as
well.

The vampire began to crawl away, but Jaxon could no longer
follow. He was truly dying. What happened next was the moment I had been
waiting for. I only hoped that it wasn’t too late. Jaxon raised one hand into
the air and pointed his index finger towards the sky.

I radioed to Javie immediately and told him to turn on the
water main. You see, The PVC pipes that lined both sides of one half of the
field were one of the things we spent most of the day working on. Once upon a
time, the Sun Bowl had an actual grass field, but some time ago the real grass
was replaced with artificial grass. Yet the maintenance room that controlled
the water for the old living grass field was still inside the Sun Bowl. It
hadn’t been used in years, but all the right pieces were in place. All we had
to do was follow the old pipes they used to water the grass, find where they
had been blocked off and add our own pipes. When all was said and done, and
trust me it wasn’t easy because the stupid pipes kept breaking apart, we had a
working sprinkler system and a lot of water pressure.

Jaxon was right when he guessed that the vampire wouldn’t
know the difference. In fact, the vampire never gave our crappy watering system
a second glance. He probably just thought it was an outdated and removable
sprinkler system if he even thought anything at all.

His oversight was about to cost him dearly. Javie turned on
the water. The pipes on both sides of the field grumbled under the pressure,
but they held. Large jets of water sprayed out of the hundreds of holes we
drilled into the many pipes. The water jets shot high above the ground, met
their cousins on the opposite side of the field in midair, and came crashing
down upon the field with the falling snow.

We had created rain.

As the vampire crawled towards his foot soldiers in search
of the healing blood, we had just given Jaxon a continuous dose of healing
water. It was a beautiful thing to see. The black gore was rinsed from Jaxon’s
body almost immediately. He was instantly soaked, and the water would continue
to spray until I radioed Javie and asked him to turn it off.

Jaxon wasn’t moving.

I panicked. I broke free of my stupid snow igloo and stood
straight up on the bleachers. I shouted for Jaxon to stand up. The vampire was
getting closer and closer to his foot soldiers. They didn’t come to him, but
they were too afraid to back away.

I saw Jaxon’s arm move.

It wasn’t a twitch or anything. His arm simply slid to his
side and he used it along with his other arm to push himself to his knees. The
water was pouring over both Jaxon and the vampire. I saw Jax wipe his eyes. I
saw him look back at me and smile as he got to his feet.

The crowd of survivors began to roar and cheer.

I left my spot on the bleachers and entered the field. It
was a stupid thing to do. I left my position, but I had to see the end.

When I was close enough, I saw the drenched vampire look
over his shoulder. I saw his eyes go wide in fear as Jaxon slowly closed the
distance. The blade of the Ti-light was gleaming in his hand. The crowd was
still cheering. The foot soldiers were looking nervously from the Master to the
General.

The vampire began to scream as he crawled. He began to plead
for his life. Jaxon simply smiled. He was the monsters’ monster. Does that make
any sense at all?

“
He’s the thing that
monsters fear
?”

Exactly, he is the Guardian. He is the one man that can beat
them at their own game, and do you know what the vampire’s worst mistake was?
He thought he could go toe to toe with my uncle.

When I finally reached Jaxon, I realized that he was still
in pretty bad shape. He was having trouble breathing. He didn’t seem able to
keep his eyes open for long periods of time; he was hunched over awkwardly and
walking funny. Still, I didn’t interfere. He wouldn’t have wanted that. This
was his fight. It was his to end. I simply handed him his tomahawk.

“You can have this back,” I said. “It scares the hell out of
me.”

He barely even looked at me as he took the weapon. The
vampire screamed in fear, but after the first swing of the tomahawk, he began
to scream in pain. Four swings later, the vampire screamed no more.

The Master was dead.

The survivors were cheering and clapping. They stormed the
field despite the freezing water drenching their clothes. The mass of them
stood before Jaxon and gave him the salute one final time. Unlike the other
times however, Jaxon returned the salute, and then he collapsed.

“Dudley!” Nick shouted in my earpiece. “They’re here!”

I cursed myself for being an idiot and scanned the tops of
the bleachers. Five vampires were perched and looking down upon us. They were
on the same side of the stadium that the survivors watched the fight from.

I enacted part two of Jaxon’s plan. I pulled out my
detonator and set off the semtex underneath the bleachers they were perched
upon just as they rushed towards us. In case you’re wondering, my uncle got the
idea from Kingsley when we first left El Paso and Kingsley and some other guy
blew up that bridge. Ever since that day, Jaxon carried semtex in his backpack.
He just never found a use for it until that day.