Full Moon Rising - 02 (12 page)

Oh, how the dark vampire hated these memories!  He had loved the young Rabbi…as a brother.  He had claimed to be the son of God, but he had also claimed that they
all
were the sons of God.  How could he have known he truly
was
his son? 

The Sicarii dropped from the window, his flesh smoking.  He fell to his knees as he had done so many countless times in the past and turned his eyes to the heavens, “How could you damn me for doing your will?” he cried.  He sobbed and poun
ded his fists against the stone floors of the cathedral until the stones fractured, then collapsed upon the stones in a heap.  “He begged me to do what the others could not…” he whimpered.  “Only
I
loved him enough to do it.”

As the dark vampire lie on the cold stone floor his flesh smoldering, more memories flooded his mind, as they always did when he allowed himself to remember.  How after his da
mnation, he taught his killing skills to others.  How he developed a secret society of the Sicarii to terrorize the Romans.  He always blamed the Romans for their part in Yeshua’s death, and it was their fault for being in the Holy Land.  How it was their fault that he had to be called to action…the very action that would damn him forever.

Well, if the God of gods would curse him so, then he would undo His creation.  He would turn every man, woman and child into livestock for His
worst
creation…vampires.  He would see it all burn before he would allow any of it to remain holy.  If he could not live in the sun, then none shall…none that were pure, anyway.

From the darkest corner of the courtyard, the little messe
nger watched the Sicarii scream to the heavens in anguish.  He truly had no idea what his dark master was so upset about or who he was screaming to.  Perhaps, God himself?  He shook his head and slipped as quietly away as he could lest he be caught spying on him.

11

“OpCom, this is Second Actual, we are on approach.  Landfall in two-zero minutes. Over.”  Apollo called over the radio.  The HH-60 was making excellent time with a tail wind helping to push them south of the border into north central Mexico. 

“Roger that Team Leader.  Be advised, cleanup crews are en route and will be at your twenty in approximately four-zero minutes, over.” Laura replied from the Command Center.  She was running a skeleton crew at the stations with a secondary crew on standby to work with Lt. Gregory in the event First Squad ran a third operation at the same time.

She heard Apollo laugh into the mic.  “You’re not allowing a whole lot of time for us to do our job, ma’am.  Twenty minutes to clean up a zombie horde?” he chuckled.

“Zombie horde, Apollo?”  Laura shook her head and had to stifle her own laugh.  “Intel shows less than a dozen slow-walkers.  If you and your group can’t handle that, I can send in the girl scouts to take care of it for you, over.”

“Negative OpCom.  I wouldn’t wish those cut-throat little bitches on anybody!  Those cookies of theirs will kill
anybody
!” he laughed.

“Roger that, Actual.” Laura laughed.  “We sent them early to test the corpses so we can determine the type we’re dealing with.  If we can find the root cause while you and your crew are there, neutralize it. Over.”

“Roger that OpCom.”

Laura punched up the satellite imagery.  It was still set for thermal and that wouldn’t help with the walking dead.  They would be the same temperature as their surroundings.  She tried to set it for actual, but it was too dark.  Microwave didn’t work well either.  Artificial IR worked best and at least showed activ
ity in the area.  The zombies were moving as a herd and as she panned out, she only spotted wildlife in the far fringes of the picture running from the dead.  She pulled the GPS location of the herd and their heading and forwarded it to the pilot.  Even if the herd should alter their course, upon hearing the craft come down to deposit the team, they would turn and head in that direction, bringing the two forces together.

Apollo turned to his team and hit the button on his lip mic.  “Remember, you may be inoculated against vampire bites, but
not
zombies.  If you let one of these bastards get you, you’re gone, baby.  Read me?”

He was talking mostly to Mueller, the new guy on the team.  “Roger that.  I’ve seen the movies, man.  Bites and bodily fluids, big no-no!”

“More than that, man.  Scratches can get you, too.  You really got to watch yourself around zombies, man.  They’re like a walking petri dish of nasty shit.” Popo added.

“Intel says these are first generation slow movers, so we should be good.  Moaners are real easy kills.  They like to a
nnounce their intentions.” Apollo was looking straight at Robert now.  “But you still gotta keep an eye on your six, okay?  Some of these dudes get their throat ripped out before they’re turned and they can’t moan and let you know they’re coming.  Plus, you get into a firefight and you can’t hear them coming anyhow.  Got it?”

“Got it.” Mueller gave him a thumbs up.

“All right, buddy.  Let’s make sure you get to go home and see your kid again.” Dom said, slapping him on the back.

“This is a small group, so it should be easy pickings.  O
pCom wants us to help the Mr. Clean Geeks figure out where these boys come from.  So once they do their shit with the microscopes and blood smears and whatever it is they do, we’re going to be hunting down the source.” Apollo announced.  He heard a few moans from the team, but he quelled it quick.  “We don’t want this shit to spread, now do we?  Last thing we want is for half of Mexico to turn into zombies.  Instead of jumping the border and taking jobs nobody wants, they’ll be shuffling across, moaning and biting ‘little Debbie the cheerleader’ and shit.  Not good.” That earned him a few eye rolls. 

The pilot came across the coms and informed them that they would be making landfall shortly.  Apollo barked at his team to lock and load.  When the Pave Hawk touched down the door slid open and the five man assault team hopped out, keeping their heads low.  The chopper remained stationary until all of the hunters were away from the draft wave then lifted off again until called back for evacuation.

Apollo checked his compass and took point.  His men spread out in a staggered ‘V’ formation behind him with Dominic checking their six from time to time.  They crested a dusty ridge and saw the herd of zombies making their way toward where the helicopter had landed, their moans increasing in intensity.  Apollo paused a moment and counted.  “OpCom, this is Actual.  Have we had any free-runners from the herd?”

“Negative Actual.  They’re still one group.” Laura replied.

“Affirmative.  We’re going to set up on this ridge and see if we can keep the carnage to this shallow valley below us. Over.”

“Roger that.  We’ll maintain visual.”

“Copy.”  Apollo turned to his men.  “Kill zone below.  Let’s spread out on this ridge here.  Remember, head shots
only
.  Anything else just splatters biologicals and the geeks don’t like it.”  He got a quartet of affirmatives from his men as they spread out across the ridge, most laying down along the spine of the ridge and setting up their weaponry.  The zombies were moving slowly so they had plenty of time, and their numbers were low, so this was literally like shooting zombies in a ravine.

Once his men were set up, Apollo held their fire.  The zo
mbies had seen them and were trying to climb toward them, but the sides were too steep.  “Let’s let the stragglers catch up a bit.  We want as small a group as possible.”  They could hear the other chopper with the cleanup crew approaching and the zombies all turned their heads at the same time at the approaching sound.  “Fuck.  Okay, fellers, drop ‘em where they stand!”

The fire from the P90’s and Mueller’s M4 echoed across the small ravine and the squad made short work of the herd of wal
king dead that had wandered into the kill zone.  Within seconds, everything without a heartbeat that had been standing lay upon the ground in a heap, holes smoking from their heads.    When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, nothing in the pile of bodies moved.

Apollo stood from where he had been laying along the ridge and stared down at the zombies.  Something wasn’t right about them.  Not one of them had shoes, and many of them…their clothes were sliced up the back.  Quite indicative of someone who had been processed and buried with a funeral.  He pulled a rope from his pack and tied off to a small mesquite tree nearby and used it to go down the side of the shallow ravine.  What he didn’t expect was the lack of stink.  Most zombies were pretty ripe after dragging their asses across the Mexican scrub all day, the sun causing their bodily fluids and microbes to expand and make some pretty noxious gases.  But these bodies appeared fresh.  Aged, but fresh, and that wasn’t right.

He pulled a camera from his pack and started snapping some digital pictures.  He uploaded them to his PDA and forwarded them to OpCom.  “OpCom, Actual.  I’ve sent you some pictures of the tangos.  Tell me if something doesn’t look a little ‘off’ to you. Over.”

“Retrieving them now, stand by.”

“What’s the problem down there, boss?” Dom asked. 

“I’m not sure, but these things look like they were dug up from a cemetery.” He said.

“Who would do that?” Mueller asked.

“Beats the shit out of me, brother, but I don’t like it.” Apo
llo said.

*****

Jack sat at the same table with Lamb and Jacobs.   The protective bomb suit had long since been stripped off and put away.  The three men sat studying the various pieces of the satellite phone Thompson had brought back with him from the island.

“From best I can tell, Chief, it’s just a phone.” Lamb said.  “There’s definitely nothing explosive in it.  There’s no tracking device that I can find.  The thing wasn’t even powered on when you gave it to us.”

Jack was scratching at his head.  “This isn’t right.  Nobody from the island knows the guy who supplied the phone.  The guy who
owns
the island says he didn’t send it for me.  There has to be a reason somebody slipped this to me.”  Jack felt that the phone was a key puzzle piece.  “But you’re absolutely sure that nothing is wrong with it?”

“Boss man, the phone is a standard issue satellite phone.” Jacobs insisted.  He picked up the motherboard, “Nothing added, nothing taken away.”

Jack sighed.  “Fine.  I trust you boys.  You’re more up to date on this stuff that I am.  I’ve been out of the electronics field for too long.”

Lamb’s eyes suddenly grew wide.  “Hey.  Wait a second.  We never turned it on!” he snapped his fingers.

Ing moaned.  “Oh my god.” He ran a hand down his face.  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“What?” Jack asked.

“Software!” they both said at the same time.

“Software?  I’m not following you.”

Ing leaned forward on his stool, “Chief, almost all phones these days have GPS built into them or it’s downloadable as an app or a software tool.”

“Like a program you can run on a PDA.” Ronald added.

“Okay, go on.” Thompson urged.

“So, if whoever it was wanted to know where you were, all they had to do was wait until you turned the thing on to make a call.  Whether you were calling from here… ‘hi honey, I miss you, kiss-kiss’ or you wait to call back in Texas and tell this dude you want to go back to the island…the phone saves the i
nformation.” Ing explained.

“So everywhere I’ve been, and everywhere I take it, the phone’s GPS tracks it and stores it in memory?”

“Bingo!” Lamb said, slapping his hand on the table.

“Even though it’s off the whole time?” Jack asked.

“Yup.  That little piece of software takes hardly no power to run and you can hack it to run even when the power is off.” Lamb said. 

“That’s why Al-Qaeda and other terrorist cells use the cheapest throw-away phones they can.” Ing added.

“No GPS.”  Jack nodded.

“And no way to hack into them and force them on.”  Lamb finished.

“Okay then.  So, now we have a pretty good idea of
what
, we just need to figure out the
who
.  Is there any way you boys can do that?”

Lamb and Jacobs looked at each other.  “Not really, Chief.  Even if we put this thing back together and you fired it up, it would likely allow whoever it is access to it, but it wouldn’t be from your phone.  I mean, it might be that your phone here sends it out as a text or maybe it sends some kind of GPS tracking si
gnal, but more than likely, the phone’s GPS is registered with some website and only the bad guy can log in and access it.” Ron said.  “Sorry.”

Jack rubbed his neck and stretched.  “I wonder if the IT guys here can do something with it?  Maybe put a fake GPS l
ocation on it or block the signal or…” he trailed off.

Ing shook his head.  “Honestly, Chief, I have no idea.  This one is beyond me.  If they had hooked a bomb to it, I could di
sarm it, but…”

“Or blow our asses up.” Lamb teased. 

“Yeah, or blow our asses up!” Ing gave a cheesy grin.

Jack chuckled.  “Okay.  Why don’t you boys box this thing up and hand it off to IT.  Let them take a look at it.”  Jack stood and stretched his back out.  “Give them the heads up on our su
spicions and tell them, do not, under
any
circumstances, fire that thing up, unless they know for a fact that they can either fake a signal or block the one that this one sends out.”

“Aye-aye, Chief.”  Lamb grabbed a small plastic tub and they scooped up the pieces to the phone and placed them in it.

“Thanks boys.” Jack said.  “I appreciate your efforts.” 

“All in a day’s work, Chief.” Ing gave him a wink.

*****

Foster tried to shake off the effects of the Elf blood.  He vaguely recalled the second goblet and the room spinning.  He had this foggy memory of a hot little piece of tail coming in with a parchment and quill.  Thorn and he both spilling their blood into the inkwell and she mixed it with saliva to prevent it from congealing.  Thorn recited the terms of the alliance and she wrote so fast…so damned fast, the feather on the quill fanning her face as she wrote.  She had the cutest eyes, he wanted to rip her throat out and drink of her.

What had Rufus said?  What was written in the alliance?  He remembered signing it.

“Oh, hell.” He moaned.  “The bastard.”  Foster knew he was screwed.  He signed the blood alliance and couldn’t remember a word of it.  He sat up from the floor and the goblet fell from his chest to the floor. 

He pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the window.  Slowly he pulled the heavy drapes back and saw that it was still dark out.  He had no idea the time.  He looked for a clock in the study and realized that Rufus had done this to him on purpose.  It was a setup.

On the table next to Rufus’ desk sat a copy of the alliance.  His copy, he presumed.  He sat down at the table to read through the single page document.  His eyes had difficulty focusing on the calligraphy, but he found himself reading through the hig
hlights.  He was to provide his familia to the Beastia for purposes of vanquishing the blah, blah, blah, if the Foster Familia and the Beastia Humanus fails to deliver the blah, blah, he is to be found liable and held by the blood bond, punishable by death, blah, blah, blah.  Basic boilerplate language.