Hunter of Vengeance

In under ten minutes, the three of us came out of the apartment onto the street each lugging a bag filled with weapons. If this was going to be the vamp’s endgame there was no way that they would leave it unprotected so we each felt it safest to over prepare. Holly said that with traffic the trucks would reach the reservoir in thirty minutes, with a decent vehicle we could catch up to them with time to spare…. But the Pacer was not going to cut it.

“Don bother with da rent-a-wreck, got sumptin’ much better in mind.” Lisa led us up the street a few houses. “This neighborhood has seen better decades but there are a few real weirdos who put all their cash into their cars and not so much in their curb appeal. She walked straight up to the garage of the house, pulling a pair of bolt cutters from her bag and swiftly snipping the garage’s lock. As she lifted the garage door the light poured in on an Astin Martin Rapide. I had barely even registered the car’s existence before she was behind the wheel and hot-wiring the thing. “Get a move on it, Huntie, the real owners probably won’t like us messing with their stuff.”

“You really okay with this, Mara, Grand Theft Auto is still a crime and all that.” I figured I would address the ‘Huntie’ issue when we had more time.

“I’m okay with it as long as I get to drive.”

“Alright, so now breaking into a man’s garage and taking his Aston Martin is okay in our book now.” Here I thought a man’s vehicle was at least still sacred in this world. Lisa looked pensive as she walked to the passenger side door.

“Well, there’s a McLaren F1 a few blocks away but it only sits two. You would have to walk. Besides, this car always makes me feel like James Bond.” She hopped into the seat with a delighted giggle.

“Why would I be the one walking?” I came over to the passenger seat. “Besides, Bond drove a DB5, now get in the back. There’s no chance for me fitting back there.”

“You would walk ‘cause gentlemen always give up their seat for ladies.” She squirmed her way into the back seat and I got in after her.

“If you haven’t noticed, Lisa, very little about our Hunter is gentle. Seatbelts darlings.” Mara wore a wide grin as she rhythmically revved the engine to the Aston Martin. Three guys with machine guns came bursting into the garage from the house swearing like mad people.

“I also may have failed to mention this car is owned by a drug dealer floor it!”

We peeled out of the garage among a hail of bullets and racial slurs, many of which weren’t even about anyone in the car. Mara let out a loud whoop as she pushed the car’s engine faster to catch up with the convoy.

“Let’s go catch some bad guys,” Holly called over the car’s radio, leading us through the streets to our target.

~ * ~

Ten minutes later we caught up with the caravan, eight tanker trucks just moving along with traffic after clearing a construction zone. People were driving right next to an instrument to deliver death to thousands and they hardly even looked up from their phones to see it. Mara sped up and tried to get alongside one of the trucks.

“Holly, do we have any backup on the way?” I looked at the driver of the truck, a normal blue-collar working guy who would look perfectly at home nearly anywhere in the world.

“I’m trying but police response is jam-packed with calls from the attacks this morning. Everyone seems to think their neighbor is a werewolf and needs assistance.” She sighed loudly over the radio. “I’ll keep trying.”

“Do whatever you have to, things may look ordinary now but I can guess there’s going to be more manpower than just the truck drivers. Call it in as a bomb threat, that should get some mobilization and it’s not completely false.” I took a deep breath to steady myself as Mara moved us closer to the truck. “Looks like we’re on our own, what do you think we say hello?”

Mara grinned the determination on her face making her look like a professional stock car driver. She edged closer to the truck as I leaned out the window, when he didn’t even spare us a glance she gave his side panel a little kiss. I gestured to him to pull over but all he did was roll his window down. Mara sized him up and moved close again but the driver was ready. He aimed a pistol out the window at us and snapped off a few shots, his eyes never leaving the road.

“Don’ look like he wants to be all social, like,” Lisa said, putting the last shell into a double-barrel shotgun and snapping it closed.

“Looks like we’re going to have to force the issue then.” If her first tap against the truck was a kiss, this one was a declaration of war. She veered off the road and slammed the wheel back towards the truck, the two vehicles grinding against each other in a shower of sparks. The vehicles bounced apart and then back together but the Aston Martin was no match for the sheer mass of the truck. The vehicles split apart to go around an SUV with three kids staring out the windows, gesturing for the truck to pull its horn. “Probably gonna need a better plan, Hunter.”

“Get me up alongside him, maybe we can talk face-to-face.” I climbed out the window so that I was sitting on the frame of the door. Mara pulled in close to the truck door quickly so as not to let the driver have too much time to react to what we were doing. As soon as I was within range I leaped for the truck landing on the runner holding desperately to the hand bar. As the driver sped up I had a momentary dream of a director calling cut and letting my stunt double take over. It wasn’t going to happen so I grabbed the front shirt of the driver and slammed his head on the wheel. That, it appeared, finally got his attention.

The driver’s gaze turned to me with a frightening look, it seemed as if the entire universe suddenly had narrowed for him to nothing but me. His fists lashed out with blinding speed as we exchanged blows wresting for the wheel. The truck swerved all over the road, causing some of the traffic to honk and flip us off. Some of the wiser travelers gave the truck room or even left the road but others… I grabbed the seat belt and pulled it tight on the driver’s neck. He struggled for freedom but not for breath, he seemed remarkably calm as he opened the truck door.

I swung out into open space, looping my arm through the window to keep from falling to the speeding pavement. The truck lurched as we bumped into a small hatchback in front of us, it fishtailed back and forth a few times before the driver, a rather angry-looking man, regained control and drove off the highway. Mara and the Aston Martin showed back up, apparently she and Lisa were trying to shepherd some of the traffic away from the truck. The driver pointed his gun at me once more as I tried to use the door for cover without falling into traffic.

“I got ‘im!” Yelled Lisa, leaning out of the car and aiming her shotgun. She fired the first barrel taking out a chunk of the truck dashboard and forcing the driver to drop his pistol into the street in his rush to retreat back into the cab. As she fired the second shot, Mara hit one of the great state of New York’s many potholes and the shotgun took out the side mirror next to my head. I fell with a yelp of surprise, hanging inches above the asphalt death by my fingertips clinging to the truck window. The metal holding the door to the truck creaked with the strain of my weight, this was nowhere near the originally designed tests for this piece of equipment. Mara saw my plight and pulled up, allowing me to carefully walk up the Aston Martin’s hood.

The driver turned the truck into the car, ramming it into the guardrail and tearing the door I had been holding right off the side of the truck. It fell between the vehicles and quickly vanished down the road behind us and leaving me holding to the windshield inches in front of Mara’s face. I got back to my feet, fighting to maintain balance with the wind buffeting me like a prizefighter going for the title. I uttered a small prayer to myself for Bruce Willis to play my part in the movie and launched across into the truck’s cab once more.

I grabbed the wheel steering the truck away from the car and the girls, we crossed the highway and bounced into the cement sidewall of the road. The driver fought back for all he was worth pushing my entire body away from him into the windshield cracking it. I angled a kick to the side of his head, bringing my legs in from where they had been dangling out of the cab. He punched me viciously in the gut repeatedly before tossing me into the passenger seat head first to clear his view. The truck had bounced back off the wall and was careening out of control back across the highway as I kicked him over and over from my awkward position, but only managed to turn him in his seat thanks to his safety belt.

I twisted quickly, snaking my arm out and unhitching the belt I pulled my legs up to my chest aiming a double-legged kick right at his head that sent him out of the driver’s seat. The seat belt hooked around his arm kept him from the pavement and he began climbing his way back into the cab. I righted myself in the seat and saw the trailer behind us fully jackknifing, trapping the Aston Martin against the guardrail. I grabbed at the wheel in desperation but never reached it. The screaming sound of bending and tearing metal rose up as the truck rolled. I groped for something to hold onto but came up empty. The world spun in a cacophony of noise and all went dark.

~ * ~

“Hunter”

The single word broke through the wonderful dream I was having. I was sitting on a beach, pure white sand as far as the eye could see. I lifted a beer to my lips, adjusting the huge umbrella overhead to take into account the sun’s new position. Kayle, my daughter, laughed and played in the surf a short distance away.

“Hunter, you have to get up.”

That voice again, there was no reason to get up. I was comfortable on the lounge chair, the sun warming my aching muscles. I stretched out, watching the sun trace its path slowly across the sky. There was a scream…

“Hunter!” I looked around; Kayle was gone, the beach fading away to nothing. “Hunter you have to move.” I could hear crashing noises, yelling… but they sounded so far away.

“Hunter move or you’re dead!” My eyes snapped open, the world was metal and fire and darkness. My vision narrowed quickly to the single point of a blade inches from my face coming straight for my life. I dodged instinctively to the side, the blade clashed against something metal behind my ear. I slapped the forearm holding the knife away, hearing the blade clashing to the ground behind me as struck out at the mass behind the arm, striking nothing. I staggered to my feet, legs wavering as if they refused to support my weight.

“Hunter, I can’t believe it. The truck crashed, there’s burning debris everywhere and the virus is spilli…”

“Mara and Lisa, are they okay?”

“I…I don’t know. The truck flipped the car over the guardrail and across the highway into the trees. I’ve got no visual on them and barely any on you through the smoke. The driver took even worse a hit than you but he’s moving around in that mess like nothing.”

Great, another alter. I thought through the fight in the truck cab again, thinking it through carefully, examining for any tell-tale sign of what I might be facing. No fangs, extra hair, oddly shaped ears… nothing to indicate he was anything other than what he appeared to be. That meant little in the world of alters but it narrowed it down slightly. Movement to my side registered to me as the driver leaped from hiding. I didn’t move, still looking deep in thought until the very last second. My hand lashed out and grabbed his neck, letting his momentum carry him past me and slammed him headfirst into the ground. He was barely even stunned a second before flipping over and glaring at me with blood-red eyes and a low hiss. The driver skittered away moving not like any human I’d ever known… gaunt, it was.

Gaunts were more of an accidental discovery of the vampires than anything. Normally a victim of vampires is drained, then fed a small amount of the vampire’s blood in order to change them into vampires themselves. Just draining the person, however, does not actually kill them which is why most vampire kills they will destroy the body completely when they’re finished. A gaunt is created when that drained person is allowed to drink a substantial amount of donor blood from a non-vampire. Getting a refill, some called it, this act functions like winding up a toy and makes a sort of automaton out of the former person. It can execute commands, the simpler the better, and function normally until the blood infusion runs out and it needs refilling again. The vampire’s idea of perfect, disposable troops. I would need a weapon.

The gaunt’s knife broke when it hit the remains of the truck behind me, and besides it wouldn’t be suitable to end the fight quickly. I searched through the ruins of the truck scattered around the highway, avoiding the bubbling puddles of green fluid spilling everywhere. I found a ruined GPS, spouting directions still likely in the gaunt creator’s voice to avoid confusing it. Then I spotted a piece of metal, I had no idea why one was on the truck but it would work perfectly for what I had planned. I hefted the crowbar in my hand testing its weight… It wasn’t an elegant weapon but it would do. Now to simply find my victim before he found me.

I turned towards a noise in the fire, readying my weapon but the attack came from behind instead. The thing had retained a sense of tactics, either it was particularly special or they were improving the process. Didn’t matter. I pivoted, driving the hook of the crowbar into its nose, making it stop short its charge, then the hook went around its neck pulling it towards me while it was off balance. I dodged aside as the thing stumbled past me and drove the other end of the crowbar like a dagger through the back of its neck. With a twist I separated two of its vertebrae, I didn’t care much which two as I used the crowbar then to forcibly lever its head off its body.

I left the twitching remains of the driver’s body and headed back along the highway to find the girls. I emerged from the disaster area to see several people exiting parked cars and coming closer to get a look at what happened. Dozens of phones flashed and clicked as I cleared the smoke. Some people came running forward yelling at me but I swung the crowbar menacingly at them.

“Stay back!” The two people, a man and a woman froze in place. I pointed at the green puddle oozing slowly over the pavement. “Very bad chemicals don’t touch it, don’t go near it. Holly, get some sort of containment people out here, if these people aren’t kept from their own curiosity we may be seeing the vamp’s plans go off earlier than even they expected.”

“I’ll take care of it, Hunter, find our ladies.”