Julius watched as the runners formed a circle, shoulder to shoulder. They were surrounded on all sides. He knew then that they were going to be overwhelmed. Killed before he had the chance to find out what they knew about Warren.

25

There is a certain irony to hunting the hunter, especially these beasts Vampires are arrogant and cruel, so distanced from their humanity that killing them brings me no guilt. As a society, we stand quite ready to put rabid dogs out of their and our misery. Why not these foul abominations as well?

– 

Martin de Vries, Shadows at Noon. posted to Shadowland BBS. 24 May 2057

Rachel stood shoulder to shoulder with Sinunu and Truxa. At their backs were Flak and de Vries. Her legs felt like dead weight and she could barely stand from the fatigue. I will not let it end here, she thought.

Firing as quickly as she could aim, Rachel watched as the line of vampires advanced on them. The first of them was an old man. He was dressed in a tattered suit that showed recent bloodstains running down its front. His left arm was a clunky piece of cyberware left over from the Desert Wars, and the right side of his head was plate metal. Just behind him came a trio of women. They were all brown-haired and slim, but the middle one was missing her right arm from the shoulder, and the simple dress she wore still smoked near the neck. The arm had obviously been taken off by a laser, but she just as obviously didn’t seem to notice.

Flak’s voice came over the tacticom. “Sandman, it looks like this is it. They got us pinned down. Is there anything you can do?”

Sandman’s voice was strained. “Just hold on. I’m going to try to get control of the perimeter defenses.”

Suddenly, the night was lit up again, this time by the mini-guns on the roof and fence. Sandman’s aim wasn’t as good as a security rigger’s would have been, but it wasn’t half bad. Hot lead tore into the vampires, separating the wave that was advancing on them, opening a tiny hole in the middle of the line.

The runners were just about to move when the first of the miniguns fell silent. Rachel looked up just in time to see small knots of vampires, heedless of the damage being done to them, tearing the miniguns from their housing.

“Good, but not good enough.” said Flak over the tacticom.

Suddenly, there was a screaming roar from in front of Rachel, in the direction of the Fratellanza trucks. Out of the darkness, a huge form rolled forward, looking like some deformed locomotive. Scattering vampires like chaff, its wedge-shaped scoop cutting white flesh and dragging vampires under, the huge vehicle plowed through, bearing straight for them.

Just behind the monster truck, Rachel could make out the van that had transported them there.

“That more like it? Seems the military-type boys want to get you out almost as much as I do.” Sandman’s voice held a note of triumph that Rachel hadn’t heard before.

The huge truck turned at the last moment, catching a male vampire under its massive front tire. The man screamed with anger and pain, his pale flesh splitting over his abdomen and spilling his intestines on the ground.

The vampire, crazed with pain, tried to bite the wheel holding it down.

“All aboard, this is the last train leaving,” said Sandman over the tacticom.

At the side of vehicle, a wedge-shaped door fell forward, making a ramp.

Two men in battle gear stood to both sides of the doorway, firing into the vampires at Rachel’s back.

She ran, barely reaching the ramp when a scream and the sounds of Flak cursing came from behind her. She and Sinunu turned simultaneously.

It was the vampire that had been trapped under the wheel. Rachel had thought it out of the action, but she hadn’t looked close enough. The man was unaugmented, and even though his guts still hung from the ragged hole in his stomach, the thing had obviously turned to mist and escaped the weight of the huge vehicle.

Rachel watched in horror as the small, slim vampire, who could barely hold itself upright, took bold of Truxa by the back of her neck, and hauled her away from the group.

Flak and de Vries were too busy trying to hold off the vampires advancing from the rear to do anything. By now the vampire had dragged Truxa deep into the midst of the surging mass of infected flesh.

Sinunu moved like a blur, leaping off the ramp and plunging toward the waiting enemy. Quick as she was, de Vries was even faster.

As he moved, he shouted a word and cast his hands into the air. tn front of him, a fire elemental sprang to life and descended on the vampires. The old man was set on fire and flung ten meters into the air. He landed among his cohorts, setting several of them ablaze, and scattering the rest.

Like a tornado, de Vries descended on his own kind, following the elemental, and tearing into the horde like some insane thresher in a field of fetid wheat. Ripping the lesser vampires apart, he cut a swath through their ranks, and he seemed to swell with each of the vamps he killed.

De Vries’ bellow of rage was a terrible thing to hear, and Rachel found herself flinching from the sound. The vampires standing against him tried to fight back, but they were no match for de Vries’ power and fury.

Behind him, Sinunu had his back, so when a small group of vampires tried to flank him, she was there. flring with blinding accuracy.

Still, it was no use. The vampires were passing Truxa’s limp body over their heads, each of them taking a small chunk out of her, until Rachel could see the white of bone beneath her blood-covered skin. The elf’s sling hung from her broken arm like a bloodied flag of truce.

Rachel knew Truxa was dead, and even if she wasn’t, she was certainly infected. Still, de Vries fought on.

Behind Rachel, the two men who were guarding the door of the huge truck came down the ramp and ushered her into the vehicle. She turned to find herself face to face with an older man, sweat running down his face, his silvering hair plastered to the side of his head.

From pictures she had seen, she knew instantly that it was Warren’s father.

“Rachel, we’ve got to go. There’s no way we can hold them back any longer.” Even as he said that, his hand shot out, pushing Rachel down and firing over her head.

Rachel didn’t even bother to look and see how close the vampire had come. Over the tacticom, Flak’s voice, choked and nearly unintelligible, said, “Pull back. She’s… she’s gone.”

Out in the center of the vampires, de Vries and Sinunu fought on, but now, even de Vries was threatened with being overwhelmed.

A commotion to the duo’s left caught Rachel’s attention.

The elemental, which had been destroying vampires left and right, faded suddenly and was gone.

There seemed to be a communication between Sinunu and de Vries. As one, they turned back toward the vehicle, fighting their way through the vampires separating them from the men who had come to rescue them.

A team of men in battle armor came from the right, led by a big, redheaded ork who had lost his helmet somewhere in the fray.

Using lasers and heavy-caliber rifles, the men cleared a path back, and the two groups met in the middle of the fray. Firing as they ran, the group covered ground in long strides and made the vehicle before the vampires could regroup.

Rachel, standing on the platform and firing into the crowd of vampires to help keep up the confusion, watched as Sinunu climbed up beside her.

Sinunu wasn’t crying, though Rachel knew her own eyes were stinging with tears. Instead, the other woman’s eyes had gone dead, and Rachel shuddered at what she saw behind those lifeless pink orbs.