A Town Called America (29 page)

“Dodge this,” Billy said, as he pointed his revolver at Ghost’s head.

With one shot fired at point-blank range, the final Ghost was dead. Robbie fell to his knees and grasped his throat in pain, as the shots continued to rain down upon them. Billy and Robbie ducked for cover. Billy crouched behind a horse trough, returning fire, as he pulled Chris’s body behind a burned car.

Billy and Robbie continued to fire at the rooftop.

“Billy, how many do you think are up there?” Robbie called out.

“Hell if I know, kid.”

“I’m almost out of ammo. Cover me while I grab Chris’s bag,” Robbie yelled through the gunfire.

Leaving the cover of the vehicle he’d been behind, Robbie raced into the street as bullets erupted all around him. After picking up the bag Chris had left on the ground, he turned back toward Billy and yelled that he had the bag just as four bullets struck his chest and lower torso. Stunned and barely able to breathe, he took two steps before he fell facedown in the street. Billy was now the only one of the trio still standing. He knew that given time Chris would be fine, Robbie on the other hand was a different story. He needed help or he wasn’t going to make it. He also knew that if he didn’t do something fast, the M.M. would overwhelm him. It didn’t matter how fast he was—enough people, and they would take him.

Billy took a deep breath and drew his second revolver. He wasn’t a vampire, but he was a Ghost, which meant that whoever was on that rooftop was going to pay. Moving as fast as he could, he stepped into the street as bullets flew toward him. He actually felt the air around him being disrupted with each shot fired. Ducking and rolling he dodged every shot until he was across the street. In one leap he jumped from the ground straight up, landing on the rooftop so hard that the wood beneath him buckled from the impact.

Two men wearing M.M. jumpsuits lay prone. After they rolled over, one attempted to fire his rifle at Billy, while the other struggled to remove his pistol. In one motion Billy moved to their position, picking up the one with the rifle by the ankle. Billy tossed him from the rooftop before he grabbed the second man. Holding him by the neck with one hand, he looked at him and asked who had sent them there. The man, who was struggling to breathe, refused to answer as Billy squeezed harder until he choked the life from his body. Billy then tossed his body off the rooftop.

Standing on the rooftop and looking down at the trail of blood that ran through the street, Billy followed it with his eyes. That’s when he saw Robbie dragging himself toward a building on the other side of the street. Billy leapt from the rooftop across the entire street, landing next to Robbie.

Robbie was grasping his stomach in pain, curled up in a ball, screaming; he felt as if every cell in his body were about to explode. For vampires the healing process sometimes hurt more than the actual wound.

Billy bent over and slung Robbie over his shoulder before carrying him across the street and inside the building. Inside, he laid Robbie down on an old table. He turned to walk outside but took only one step toward the doorway. As he looked to his left, twenty- soldiers in black M.M. jumpsuits were rushing toward him.

As soon as he made eye contact with them, they fired at him with automatic weapons. The bullets tore through the building as Billy dove for cover. The automatic weapons were just the beginning, as the entire street erupted with explosions. Smoke grenades hurled in front
of the building prevented Billy from seeing anything outside, while a tear-gas grenade tossed through the window burned his eyes.

Trying to look for an alternate exit, Billy, disoriented, grabbed Robbie by the foot and pulled him from the table to the ground. Moving through the smoke and tear gas, he made his way to the back door when a grenade exploded twenty feet from the exit. Billy’s ears were ringing, and he thought they were done for, when everything stopped at once.

After waiting for a few moments, Billy stood up and eased his way to the front door, where he tried to see through all the dirt and dust in the air. Unsure whether it was a trap, he slowly stepped through the door and into the street, which was completely void of people.

“Oh, shit. Chris!” Billy exclaimed.

He ran across the street to the car Chris had been behind. His worst fears had come true: she was gone.

FORTY ONE

T
hree weeks after Billy had lost Chris in America, an oil rig sat silently in the vastness of the never-ending Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Georgia. The oil rig once had tapped liquid gold for a population that didn’t care where or how they received it or at what expense it may come to others, as long as it was cheap, available and in abundance.

Standing nearly ten stories high, the massive structure was little more than a $3 billion mess of twisted steel and pipes. With no human maintenance in more than a decade, it was rusting away and becoming weaker with every year’s storms.

Four massive towers stood on each side of the square platform, reaching up and seemingly touching the sky at a height of nearly four hundred feet. Unmanned since the collapse, this structure was now beginning to have life breathed back into it, as its new occupants began to return it to operational status—not for oil or for a means to drill, but for M.M.’s new capitol building. After more than a decade of fighting, looting, and killing, the M.M. had its soldiers and slaves in full operational status. The new capitol was to be called New Britten.

The entire third floor of the oil rig was off limits to all personnel other than official security, as a very important meeting was about to take place. There was only one entrance to the large conference room,
and just outside that door was one staircase that led to a service elevator that went directly to a helipad.

With a tremendous buzzing and whooshing, the unmarked black helicopter moved through the night sky first as only a small blinking dot that then slowly increased in size as it made its way to the platform. After the helicopter landed, the side door slid open, and three people stepped out: first a tall man in his late sixties; followed by a shorter man in his early thirties; and finally a woman of immense beauty, with long, naturally red hair pulled back into a professional-looking bun. She wore business attire, just as the first two wore suits.

All three moved quickly away from the helipad to the service elevator, where a man in a suit greeted them. “Gentlemen, ma’am, thank you for coming on such short notice. Mr. Black and Mr. C. are waiting for you in the conference room below.”

“Mr. Rivers, is everything going as planned? And can I ask if we’re on schedule?” the woman asked him.

“Ms. Kala, I personally assure you we’re actually ahead of schedule.”

“Good.”

All four people stood in the elevator until it reached the third floor, where the doors opened to the staircase that led down one flight to the conference room.

Inside the conference room, a table large enough to accommodate fifteen people took up a third of the room. At the end of the room was a round, floor-to-ceiling window. It was massive, and through the window, the room’s occupants could see nothing but miles of open water, with a shoreline far in the distance. The only thing between the oil rig and the shoreline was an enormous cruise ship far off in the distance.

Mr. Black and Mr. C. stood in front of the window, quietly talking and paying no attention to the other four as they entered the room.

A few minutes later, all six sat at the table and spoke among themselves until the last two entered the room.

“This meeting is now in session. Hush up. We have a lot to cover.” Mr. Black, at the head of the table, spoke softly, but he had a certain tone that made those in the room pay him their undivided attention. “As you all know, we’ve made great progress in our endeavors moving
west. Our army, although human, is greatly expanding, and within the year, we believe we’ll no longer need new recruits. Although we’ve heard rumors of a growing resistance, our human generals assure me that the resistance is nothing more than a few groups that pose no threat to us.”

“Mr. Black, don’t you think it’s naïve and premature to assume there’s no threat? And why the hell do we have to meet on this floating deathtrap? I think I speak for all of us when I say—”

“Ms. Joshua, close your mouth! You know the order of the Nine, and your insubordination will not be tolerated! I’m the senior council member in this chamber,” Mr. Black shouted, as he stood up and slammed his hands on the table. “Why do you dare question me at my table?”

Ms. Joshua silently sat back in her chair.

“Mr. Black, I’m not sure why you requested that we meet all the way out here. I see you’ve put Ms. Joshua in her place, but I assure you I will be heard.” The last of the Nine had entered the room and stood in the doorway. Tall and thin, he glared at the other eight vampires seated at the table.

Mr. Black, caught off guard by Mr. Magnus, fought hard to find the right words. “Um…Mr. Magnus, what a pleasant surprise. Sir, I had no idea you were going to join us. Please, sir, can I get you anything at all?”

“Sit, you fool! Mr. Magnus said with a serious intensity. Looking at him one could see the fine lines on his face as he spoke, each one telling a story of its own. Looking at him one also immediately knew he was in charge. “I’ve done what you couldn’t,” he went on. “I see the entire picture, whereas you eight see only fractions.”

Mr. Magnus hadn’t moved from the doorway and continued to glare at all eight vampires before him. “The M.M. capitol is now under construction and will be ready within the year. Why have you idiots been fumbling around, trying to move west? You’ve spread our forces too thin. An army is threatening us, and their army isn’t weak. Their commanding general is a man named Rick Nolan.” The eight vampires looked at him with surprised expressions. “Ah, you do remember him. I ordered you all to neutralize him years ago, but you failed.”

All eight sat in silence, listening intently to Mr. Magnus as he continued to chastise them.

“After our lead Ghost defected to find his daughter, she herself was turned. He stayed with her and two others for several years, yet you did nothing. At that time they posed no threat to us or the M.M. I left you, Mr. Black, in charge in my absence, to correct these issues, but you pushed Rick and his companions until they had no choice but to fight back. Poor decision making on your part has now turned a potential ally into a bona fide threat. Now we have a real a real shit storm that I have to correct! In the end those four established a town, only wanting peace and a place away from fighting. Which of you ordered America destroyed?”

“Sir, I thought at the time we could eradicate—”

Before Ms. Joshua could finish her sentence, Mr. Magnus moved across the room in nothing more than a blur and struck her through the chest with a silver knife.

Mr. Magnus snapped his fingers. A moment later two men wearing M.M. jumpsuits entered and dragged Ms. Joshua out. The only words that broke the silence came from one of the jumpsuit-wearing men, who asked Mr. Magnus if he should place Ms. Joshua in a cage.

Mr. Magnus nodded as they pulled her out of the room. With a white handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, he wiped the silver knife clean of blood as he continued to speak. “Now what you all don’t know is that a few weeks ago all three of our remaining Ghosts were killed. I understand that the incompetent human generals you placed in charge haven’t reported this fact to you. After you destroyed America, Chris went on a warpath, intent on our destruction. Oh, and her friend Robbie has been turned too. Billy, our former Ghost, is now guiding Rick to find Chris, which I’m sure you can figure out will lead them straight here.”

“Sir, Rick Nolan died years ago,” Mr. C. said. “After he found out Chris was a vampire, she left him, taking their child with her. Sometime after that he left America and died a few years later.”

“You’re correct that he left America, but he didn’t die,” said Mr. Black. “Rick moved east and began to recruit soldiers, and since you’ve
all turned the public against us in a slash-and-destroy campaign, he’s found it all too easy to recruit humans. So to fix this myself, I’ve located and brought Chris here and offered her a place at our table. We now have a vacant seat, don’t we? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say.”

“Sir, if I may, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Mr. C said.

At that moment Chris walked into the room, stopping to stand next to Mr. Magnus. “Gentlemen, Mr. Magnus and I have struck a compromise that we feel will benefit all involved. I understand and agree to the arrangements.”

FORTY TWO

A
fter the M.M. had taken Chris, Billy stayed with Robbie. Reluctantly, he gave Robbie Chris’ blood. It hadn’t been his first choice, but Billy saw no other option that would allow his young friend to stay alive. Billy drug Robbie to a puddle of Chris’ blood, outside telling him to drink it, which he did just before Billy gave him the same guidance he’d given Chris so many years earlier when she had changed. In time Robbie had regained his strength, and when he did he traveled east with Billy to meet with the resistance had formed over the last few years. They traveled through Iowa and Illinois into Kentucky and Tennessee until they reached Georgia. Just a few miles from the Tennessee-Georgia border, Billy and Robbie met with the Second Fighting Regiment of the Army for the Free People of America.

After watching the troops train, Robbie immediately realized the soldiers weren’t only well trained but also were ready for war. They were all tired of the fighting, yet they were ready to fight, but only as a means to an end.

Inside a green army tent, Rick sat at a small table under the glow of an oil lamp, looking at a map of eastern Georgia.

“Sir, two people are here to see you.”

“Bring them in, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ricky, my God, it’s been forever and a day,” Billy said, beaming with a tender smile.

“Billy, I have no idea how you and Robbie found me, but I sure am glad to see you both.” Rick turned to the soldier in the tent. “Captain, get coffee for these two.”