Shatterbones Page 13

  “I understand you were children just a short while ago. I realize also that many of your parents shielded you from the violence the world has to offer and would not let you even watch movies or read books that presented the realities and dangers of life. Shielding you from the truth was a mistake.” The woman speaking spreads her feathered-looking wings out before them in a manner that is both terrifying and comforting. She looks poised to attack, but her actions feel as though she wishes to embrace the small crowd before her.

  “Because of The Shattering that changed us and the evil actions of people like the one that controlled this city, your childhood is over now. All of our childhoods ended that first day, and this is what the world is now. You do not want to fight, and that lets me know you have decent hearts. You had good parents that loved you or love you still, and I must ask you this, where are they now?

  “We are fighting the vampires who worked with Dmitri and will torture and kill your families if they have the chance. Are you going to kneel here in the grass and cry like little children while the world around you burns and gets destroyed by monsters like him?” She points her arm and a wing to the body of the fallen.

  “Will you stay here and do nothing while your parents are out there and need your help? Your friends, neighbors, brothers, and sisters are locked up in buildings as we speak and need your help to achieve their freedom. You know who the bad ones are. You know where the innocent are locked up. You know better than any who needs to be stopped in this city and how to help those that need it the most.

  “Stand up and fight with us. Fight to free the people of this city. Fight to free yourselves from the evil deeds Dmitri forced you to commit in order to survive. It will be difficult. It will be terrifying, but your loved ones need you. We need you to be able to right the wrongs that were committed here. Join us and be the people your parents hoped you would become.”

  One by one, the huddled masses start peeling off from the crowd in the field and run into the city to fight. Cora, Lloyd and the three others that led their new army into Albany beat their wings and lift from the ground to rejoin the fight as well.

  The staccato rattle of gunfire is diminishing all over the city. More from the lack of planning than the spreading news of Dmitri’s death. The choices these changed children have made are firmly ingrained in their minds, and they won’t easily switch to liking humanity simply because a small battle is being won. The allies of Dmitri will fight to the death or try to escape. There is no common ground that can be reached with Cora and her soldiers. There is no pretending to switch sides while hiding true intentions with the mind-reading capabilities of some vampires.

  The war going on in the sky and ground around Albany is truly savage. Empty firearms are discarded all over the streets and building tops and the fighters are using whatever weapons they can pick up and use against their opponents. Concrete blocks are thrown, pulled up street signs are swung, manhole covers are smashed down over heads and all with the intended result of slowing the enemy enough to grab them and get in a lethal bite so their blood can be drained. The ground around the city is littered with the drained and discarded bodies of the fallen.

  Victory’s progress is with Cora’s troops. The former controllers of the city are realizing they are losing and many run or fly to the south attempting to escape. Their pursuers are too far behind to easily catch them and Cora calls them back before they get out of earshot.

  “Let them go, we know where they are headed.”

  “If we don’t catch them, we’ll have to fight them again in Corvallis.”

  “And if they reach Corvallis with news of their loss, it might demoralize the Clark brothers.”

  An explosion on one of the streets below has collapsed a building and set two others on fire. The group flies down to investigate and find the charred remains of a dozen soldiers. Limbs and torsos are burnt, scattered, and still moving in the rubble around the blast zone.

  In an urgent and frustrated tone, Cora calls her nearby soldiers to help. “Gather the body parts and bring them to me. I will tell you which ones to drain and which should be pieced back together.”

  *

  “How soon can we move out to Corvallis?” Cora looks at the leaders of her new army which has gathered for discussion now that the battle is over.

  “We could go in another hour, but we should wait until tomorrow. It will be dark soon and most of us don’t know the layout of Corvallis. I am still getting used to my enhanced night vision so I’m sure others are as well. We don’t need to put ourselves at a disadvantage going into a new place.” Lloyd looks at Cora with concern. “There is also an issue with our numbers. We freed more vampires from control here than we lost in battle, but we could still end up with fewer fighters moving on to Corvallis. This isn’t what most of us want to be doing and the brutality of it all is putting some of the kids into shock.”

  “I’ll be able to do something about that.” Cora stands and puts her hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. “Finish with this meeting and begin gathering whatever ammunition you can find for the next fight. I would like to move against the brothers tomorrow. We will need to find more swords, you were right to bring them. The firearms are largely useless and the ammo runs out too quickly.”

  “If we start using swords, you have to work on your thought-transfer ability. It takes a long time to learn swordplay the traditional way and would be much quicker to implant sword fighting skills into people’s minds.”

  She smiles at him and walks off, touching two other vampires that also have her abilities as she walks out of the gathering. The two she touched follow, with the silent remaining members watching them leave.

  “I’ve seen the kids that are in shock, will she really be able to help them?”

  “Cora gained some interesting powers with her change and she is still developing them. She has an influencing power that lets her affect emotions and behaviors. It’s the same thing Dmitri was using to keep people under his thumb here and probably what the brothers are using in Corvallis. The good news for us is the strength of the influence is relative to our individual desire. If we fly into an enemy city, the vampires controlling that territory can’t take over our minds and force us to join them because we don’t want to hurt the humans. Our goals are opposite.

  “That is also the reason there is no capture or trading sides in this war. If a vampire we are fighting wants to enslave humans but decides to join us to save his own life in a battle, they would be easily turned in the next city’s fight and couldn’t be trusted at any time in between.”

  “How many next cities do you think there will be, Lloyd?” The innocent and honest question is one that is on all of their minds.

  Lloyd looks around at the group and all eyes are fixed on him. He takes a moment to think and thoughtfully nods his head.

  “I was born and raised here in Oregon, in Springfield, actually. I had a great life, better than most. My dad was in politics and was popular. We had money and I got to do almost anything I wanted. It is a privilege to be my parents’ son. One thing they told me above all else, I had to give back for the things I had and hoped one day I could go into politics like my dad. I want to help people. I want to do what we are doing now, I want to free them. The problem we have is figuring out where our responsibilities end?

  “My goal is to make my family, my friends, and the people of my state safe. To do that, I can’t just clear out the Oregon coastal cities or free the people within our state boundaries. With each city we free, there will be two more that are still enslaved. I think what we are doing is going to continue until we have lost our battle, or we have cleared our nation of the evil our world contains. We are going to have to go town to town, city to city, until we have freed every last man, woman, and child within our country. Even then, we might have to do more.

  “There is no magic barrier between our country and Canada or Mexico. We will have to push on until we decide we would rather take a human life than save it.
Right now, I am in it to make America great again. After that, I will be in it to keep her great.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Future

  Oregon

  After a heartfelt but brief reunion, Lloyd walks with his parents to the campsite where the other winged vampires are beginning to land. Something is different in this arrival. There is a buzzing energy felt throughout the camp and everyone is gathering in the center to hear what’s happening.

  When the final flyers have landed, they organize themselves around Lloyd in what looks like a military order of protection. This group is regimental in their behavior and stance, and it makes the hair stand up on Greg’s neck even though the one they are protecting is his son. Greg and Evelyn step into the crowd and wait to hear what their son is about to say.

  “I can sense your fear and have to say that some of it is warranted. You don’t have to fear us, but there are those like us that you should fear. Cora has been traveling around the Willamette Valley gathering us together and organizing us for what is to come.

  “The devastation and death humanity has endured up to this point may only be the beginning if the wrong group of mutants ends up in control. While Cora, myself and a great many of the other vampires out there know we can coexist with non-mutated humans, there are those that want to enslave you in pens like animals and drain you dry for food.

  “Because of this, we have been organizing humans into protection zones that we can control to ensure the human race isn’t wiped out of existence. These zones will be guarded by those of us that are trusted and can protect you from capture in the coming war.”

  Murmurs begin throughout the camp at the mention of war and protection zones.

  “How close is this war?” a voice calls out.

  “Zones of protection sounds like internment camps to me,” another person calls.

  Lloyd raises his hand, stretches out his wings and causes his voice to unnaturally amplify. “I said your fears were warranted, but we are not the enemy. I only have a short time here before I must move on. Allow me to tell you what I know and you can ask your questions when I am done.”

  The grumbling has subsided but the fear of the people has increased with his show of strength.

  “Just as not every human is good, the same can be said of your children. Some of us have become the purest form of evil. They have a lust for power and domination. They have chosen to keep humans as slaves and play toys in blood sports. One of you asked how close this war is, it is here and going on right now. Cora and her forces have cleared the area around the Salem/Keizer area. There are current battles going on in Eugene and Portland as we speak.

  “I will be joining the Southern Forces later, and once we clear that area, we will move back in this direction and help in the fight to clear the Portland/Vancouver area if it isn’t already in our control. The ultimate goal is to increase our numbers through victories, and we will eventually be able to have a group head south to secure the region to the California border. Right now is the time to act while those with evil intentions are still disorganized. Their greed and lust for power is keeping them fragmented and fighting one another, while our desire to keep humanity safe is allowing us to join forces and work together.

  “We will need your help in organizing zones of control and will rely on humans to govern themselves with minimal input from us other than protection and food gathering. As we clear areas up and down the coast, we will then begin to move eastward in the hope that we will be able to eradicate this threat from our shores, east to west and north to south. This will take at a minimum a few months and could possibly last into a year or longer, depending on the level of organized resistance we receive as we move farther east.

  “That is all I have to say. What questions do you have?”

  “Why should we stay in zones of control? After you’ve cleared an area, why can’t we return to our normal homes and live there?”

  “Our hope is that most of you will be able to return to your homes, as that is the most natural way to set up the control zones. It will be best if people are living in areas and around other people that they know. For those of you at this campsite, it is a bit more difficult. We have to make sure the area you lived in before The Shattering is safe and under our control before you can return.

  “There will be instances where your homes or communities may no longer exist due to the destruction of houses and areas that have occurred because of fighting or unchecked fires. Another issue with returning home is there are still unchanged children in the world. It is believed that The Shattering occurs during puberty, and as you are all well aware, that is the most dangerous time for human contact with those like us.

  “Over the next few months, if things remain as they are now, there will be more children that go through the mutation and some of those children will agree with our enemy that you should be enslaved. Keeping our zones of control smaller, with about three to four thousand, will allow people to better know when a threat is among you.

  “There is also the final possibility that there may be losses on our part or incursions from the enemy into our territory, and it will be easier to evacuate and protect you if there are specific foot soldiers assigned to smaller groups. Very few winged vampires like myself will remain in an area once it is cleared, we will be needed on the front lines which will make you vulnerable.”

  “What if I want to join in the fight?”

  Lloyd smiles and nods his head.

  “I would welcome you to join us, but that would be a death sentence, and even if it were only my decision, I couldn’t in good conscience allow it. There is no way for one of you to kill one of us, at least no way that we know of at this point. If some way for you to harm us becomes known, we will welcome your assistance in the fight.”

  “That’s not true! When we were escaping Eugene, we killed a few by shooting them in the head.”

  “I am afraid you are wrong. Each side in this war has liberated firearms from armories and used them during our skirmishes and bullets are only a means to slow each other down. I have been hit over three hundred times so far, and the longer the battle lasts, the quicker I heal. The only way to kill a vampire is to drain them of their blood. Draining our enemies’ blood gives us increased strength and regeneration so we can keep fighting, but this regeneration works for those we fight as well.

  “With the speed and strength we have, there is nothing a human could do on the new battlefields but be crushed and killed in the onslaught or captured by the enemy and used as fodder to distract us.”

  “I can drive a tank,” one of the men calls back in defiance.

  Lloyd clasps his hands together in front of his mouth and makes a strange howling call into the air. Several seconds later, the ground begins to quake, and a rumbling noise is heard moving through the trees toward them. Out from the trees run five men and one woman who stop before the crowd and hover over them.

  “These giants are some of our soldiers.” The crowed peers up at them with an awed anticipation. “These five are big but not the tallest we have found. So far, the largest we’ve encountered stand fourteen feet high. It only takes two of them to tip a tank over. Four of them can pick up and toss a tank over twenty yards. If you still aren’t impressed, look at Peter.”

  Lloyd points to a winged vampire standing in the defensive line. He has one normal arm and the other looks shrunken and burnt.

  “Peter was shot by a tank projectile, and it tore him in half.”

  Peter removes his shirt to show that his chest looks shrunken and burnt in the center as well.

  “Even with his body ripped in pieces, he was able to pull himself together and begin to heal. Our regenerative abilities are amazing. His one arm was lost because one of our enemies drained it of blood before he could get it back, but as you see, a new arm is growing in its place. So I am sorry, there is no way for you to help us that won’t get you killed, and that is a chance we aren’t willing to take with the futur
e of humanity.”

  “I thought you were the future of humanity.”

  “We don’t know what our place in the future is yet. Right now, we are a bunch of children that are learning for the first time what our parents sacrificed to keep us safe, and we aren’t going to squander the lives that you gave us by allowing such evil to exist in this world. The greatest gift any of you could give us in this ongoing fight are your memories. As many of you know, some of our winged vampires like Cora can absorb your thoughts and memories. If you have tactical or military experience, those experiences of yours could help us win the battles that lay ahead.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Long Road Ahead

  Oregon

  Greg and Evelyn Cavanaugh help each other hang clothes on a line strung between trees in a clearing by their camp. This small community of people have worked together with minimal difficulty over the past few weeks. There are the common strains that occur whenever groups are forced to live together, but most of the issues were attributed to boredom and frustration and quickly subsided. This camping trip doesn’t have the jovial feel of an excursion from reality, however. All of the people here realize they are, in some form, captives of the vampires who control this area.

  While pinning one of the few remaining shirts, a gust of wind hits Evelyn from behind. With her son off at war, the silent arrival of an arch-vampire is a dreaded event for Evelyn. Each winged entrance fills her with a shivering fear that the worst news is being delivered by some unknown face. Her sense of foreboding is eased by the large grin on Greg’s face, and she quickly turns to see her son approaching them.