Jonathan Bond - The Terminus experiment

He stood almost two meters, and wore only a pair of synthleather pants. His upper torso was covered in spiked studs that had surely been implanted, making him look like some vampiric porcupine. She watched as two twenty-centimeter razors snicked from his forearms. He smiled, showing his fangs.

Just behind him, tiny by comparison was a vampire woman. A mishmash of scars lined her face, making her lips form a lopsided vee shape where the bottom lip had been crudely sewn back together.

Unlike the first vampire, she seemed completely unmodified until she held up her small hands and ten-centimeter scalpels slid from beneath her fingers.

“It’s time to play,” said the woman, and suddenly they were moving. Fast.

The man streaked down the hall, an inarticulate howl coming from his lips as Sinunu took aim with the crossbow. Three bolts flew, but the man deflected them with the spurs on his arms.

Sinunu started to roll backward, knowing that the vampire would overwhelm her before she could bring her machine pistol to bear.

The monster crossed the last few meters, leaping into the air to land on top of her, when a huge, gnarled hand flashed out of the hallway.

Flak snagged the vampire just below the left spur, at the wrist. Letting his weight act as a fulcrum Flak spun the thing face-first into the wall. There was a sickening crunch, and the vampire sank to the ground, leaving a trail of black ichor oozing down the wall.

The woman shifted her target, howling for Flak’s back, which was momentarily exposed. Sinunu yelled for him to look out, but she might have saved her breath. De Vries was there, standing tall between Flak and the leaping woman.

Just as the dog had tried to do outside the compound, the woman tried to change course when she realized she was up against one of her own kind. She screamed and slashed with ten scalpels.

Before she could complete the maneuver, de Vries’ hands shot out, gripping heron both sides of the head. Driving the hapless vampire back against the wall, de Vries rammed his thumbs into her eye sockets, burying them deep into the brain.

The female vampire howled, and Sinunu watched as the life seemed to drain out of her, along with the blood that spurted from her ravaged eye sockets to trail down her scarred face.

De Vries pulled his thumbs free and turned to look Sinunu in the eye. He wiped fluid and tissue from his hands on the female vampire’s skin as she sank to the floor.

He winked at Sinunu, then nodded to the vampire Flak had downed. “You might want to stick that one. He’s about ready to come back around.”

Head spinning from what she’d just witnessed, Sinunu nodded back and fired a bolt into the body of the prone vampire. She made sure to miss the spikes, which she could now tell were deeply imbedded into the man’s skin. He convulsed once, then was still.

There was silence in the hallway for the briefest instant, then Flak’s gruff voice came over the com. “All right, kiddies. Looks like the drek is going to hit the fan in a very serious way, so let’s keep things chilly and by the numbers.”

Without a word, everybody formed up again. Sinunu looked at the crossbow with disgust. She’d thought it would be the perfect weapon to use against vampires, but now it seemed more like a useless toy.

She tossed the bow onto the dead man’s body and was about to turn away, when a small hand touched her arm. It was Rachel.

“I don’t mean to tell you your business, but don’t you think you should keep that?”

Anger bled through Sinunu’s voice. “Why? It’s useless.”

Rachel nodded. “Maybe for direct confrontation, but if we’re going to get out of here alive, direct confrontation might not be the way to go. Besides, even if you just use it for sticking them once the vampires are down, you won’t have to get so close to them to do it.”

Sinunu looked at her for a moment, and then let out a shaky laugh. “Well, well, well. Being given lessons by a newbie.” She shook her head and reached down to retrieve the crossbow. “Looks like Flak was right about you.”

Sinunu watched as Rachel flushed slightly, her eyes lighting up with a strange gleam.

“Okay,” came Sandman’s voice over the tacticom, “now you’ve done it. You got enemy converging on you from all points. Take the right corridor as fast as you can.”

Sinunu grabbed Rachel and began hustling her down the hall. At the end of it was a doorway marked “Stairs.” She was just throwing it open, when a howl came from behind her.

“It’s party time!” yelled Flak, “Let’s show these bastards we’ve come with our boogie shoes on.”

The quiet corridor filled with roaring gunfire.

Sinunu pushed Rachel into the stairwell, then turned, letting the door close behind her.

At first guess, she might have estimated twenty vampires streaming down the hallway, but because of how fast they were moving, it could have been twice that number.

The vampires seemed to come in all shapes and sizes, most of them human, but she could make out two orks and a stubby dwarf who seemed to be having a hard time keeping up with the rest of their companions. If what she remembered was correct, vampiric dwarfs should look like goblins, and vampiric orks were huge, white-furred monsters. These, except for the cyber on some of them, still looked like orks and dwarfs. She just hoped they died the same way regular vampires did.

She had just started to move forward, when the vampires ran full speed into Flak and de Vries. The sound was like a small clap of thunder.

The first vampire was a gangly human boy, who looked fifteen at most, but who attacked with utter abandon, fingers curled into claws reaching for the troll’s eyes and driving Flak back for a moment. Catching both of the boy’s hands in one of his massive paws, Flak used his free hand to pull the kid’s head from his shoulders in a gout of blood that blinded the vampire coming up behind.

De Vries had managed to snag one of the two orks, a dark-haired woman with knobby, scarred skin. She had come to a stop just in front of him, and Sinunu could have sworn the creature was still trying to get off a spell when de Vries pulled out her heart.

Whatever the spell had been went off in the wrong direction, blowing the woman’s body apart, and sending a sheet of flame back toward the other vampires.

Vampire bodies began to come apart in the fire, but it didn’t touch all of them.

Sinunu watched as the dwarf stumbled through the flames and the dying vampires. He shook his grizzled head and tamped out the part of his red beard that had caught fire. He was past de Vries and Flak, who were playing clean-up, and in a moment, he focused on Truxa.

Roaring, he leapt for her throat, spurs pushing from his forearms and shins.

Sinunu fired her MP-5 and saw the leaping dwarf’s face come apart under the force of the blow. Truxa knelt gracefully as the dwarf, suddenly without direction, sailed over her head.

As the thing hit the floor, Sinunu stepped forward and kicked it in the side of the head with all the strength she had. The head snapped to the side and she heard the sound of its neck breaking, even over the noise of the fighting.

Sinunu was just about to head back to the fray when she heard shots in the stairwell. Cursing, she swung back to the doorway and crashed through it.

There were six of them, three vampires up the stairwell, three below. And they were advancing.

She saw Rachel standing with her back to the wall, the huge Manhunter in her right hand and the smaller LD-120 in her left. Her face was surprisingly calm as she sighted first on the closest of the vampires above her and fired the Manhunter, which roared in the enclosed space.

The bullet tore open the vampire’s throat, even as it tried to dodge.