Scott Mariani - Uprising

‘Acting a little strangely, Xavier,’ Alex murmured to herself. She had to know more.

‘Hey. Where do you think you’re going?’ Verspoor said as she stood up.

‘To catch the new Baxter Burnett movie,’ she told him innocently. ‘It’s playing at the UGC multiplex in town. Can’t miss it.’

‘You sit back down right now,’ Bates ordered, pointing at her seat.

‘Sorry, guys,’ Alex said with a smile, and punched them both simultaneously in the head. The blows would have killed humans. Verspoor and Bates flopped unconscious in their seats. ‘You were pretty boring company anyway,’ she muttered.

Nobody in the rows ahead of her had noticed anything. She hurried out between the seats, trotted down the sloping aisle and made it to the side exit unseen.

Just in time to see Xavier Garrett disappearing around a bend in the plush corridor. He was talking on a mobile, glancing at his watch again, hunched over with a secretive air.

‘Go,’ he was saying into the phone. ‘Go!’ He was flushed, quivering with excitement.

‘Hey, Garrett,’ Alex called after him, running to catch up. ‘What’re you so worked up about?’

Garrett turned to stare at her. He flipped his phone shut. ‘You’re not supposed to be out here.’

‘Who was that on the phone?’ Alex asked him. She could hear a noise in the distance. A steady, rapid-fire thump-thump-thump. Building fast, doubling in volume every second.

‘Nobody,’ Garrett said.

‘You were calling someone.’

The sound was rising like a violent storm coming up out of nowhere, getting ready to tear apart everything in its path. It was the unmistakable rapid beat and turbine roar of helicopter rotors, hovering over the building. The windows began to rattle in their frames.

‘I was calling my wife,’ Garrett whined.

Alex shoved him. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Don’t you touch me.’

The noise was getting even louder.

‘It was you who tipped Stone off about Venice, wasn’t it, Xavier? Nobody knew except me and Harry. Listening at the door’s a very nasty habit. And it’s my guess you’re the one who told them Rudi was my informant.’

He backed off a step. ‘You’re way out of line, Agent Bishop.’

‘What’s Stone paying you?’ She had to shout to be heard over the noise.

‘More than you can imagine,’ Garrett yelled. He stumbled away from her, pulling a 9mm Beretta from his jacket. Aimed the heavy automatic in her face. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over for you now.’

Alex stared into the pistol’s muzzle. Just four inches down that little black hole was the nose of the copper-jacketed bullet, hollowed out and filled with the Nosferol that she now was sure Xavier Garrett had helped the Trads steal from the Terzi plant.

One flick of his finger, and the bullet would cross the space between them in a tiny fraction of a second and bury itself in her brain. That would only be the start of her troubles.

A trained agent would have shot her without a flicker of expression. Alex knew that, because she was one of them, and had trained many of them herself. Xavier Garrett was not one of those. From the white of his knuckles on the grip of the Beretta and the crazed look in his eyes, she could tell he’d never pointed a pistol at anyone in his life before. And someone who’d never fired a shot always flinched first.

He flinched.

She moved.

The gun boomed in his hand and hot gases burned past Alex’s face as the bullet screamed by her ear. Before Garrett could even think about getting off another shot, she’d swiped the weapon from his hand. He stumbled away from her, his face full of terror.

Alex aimed the Beretta at him, debating whether or not just to gun him down.

She glanced at the ceiling. Everything was shaking from the tremendous noise of the helicopter.

‘What’s happening?’ she yelled at Garrett.

Then, suddenly, from the corridor leading to the conference hall, came the deafening blast of automatic gunfire and the sound of screams.

‘It’s over!’ Garrett brayed at her in triumph.

Or he would have done, if Alex had let him complete the sentence. He still had a syllable left to go when the 9mm Nosferol round made a third eye in his forehead.

No need to hang around to see the result. She turned and sprinted towards the conference room. Burst through the exit door she’d come from. And saw the lights of the helicopter gunship hovering over the glass dome. The glass was shattered. Twin 30mm cannons slung beneath the aircraft’s nose were raking and strafing the inside of the conference room, churning up everything in sight. Vampires were cowering, running, stumbling, falling, being blown into meat, convulsing and shrieking in their final agonies. Grotesquely mutilated corpses and burst-open body parts littered the remains of the auditorium like the floor of a slaughterhouse. The sharp acid stink of Nosferol in the air made Alex recoil.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she ducked between the shattered seats and punched the Beretta upwards, firing at the chopper, again and again, the pistol bucking in her hands. Her bullets pinged harmlessly off its armour.

Then the floor was erupting into pieces as a snaking line of gunfire raced towards her almost faster than she could move out of the way. She dived for cover and planking and bits of chair were blasted into pieces that rained down on her.

‘Alex!’ The scream came from just yards away. Harry Rumble’s voice. He was crawling on his hands and knees under the shattered remnants of a catering table. She made a dash towards him, slid to her knees on the broken glass and sprawled under the table next to him. Its flimsy surface offered as much protection from heavy machine-gun fire as a sheet of baking paper. But the chopper had acquired a new target and was distracted as a couple of vampires who had bolted for the main exit were sliced in half and their dark blood sprayed upwards in an arc. The machine guns pummelled their bodies into jelly where they lay.

‘This conference is over,’ Alex said. She grabbed Rumble’s wrist, dragged him out from under the table. Together they dashed for the side exit. The chopper turned its nose towards them like a predator. The walls exploded into plaster dust and wood chips as they dived through the door and out into the corridor. ‘Run!’ she yelled in his ear, still gripping his wrist. She led him at a sprint the way she’d followed Garrett.

Rumble let out a cry as he saw the body. ‘Xavier?’

‘He sold us out to Stone, Harry. Who do you think is doing this? Now keep moving. There’s got to be a way out of here.’ She checked her pistol. One round left.

She’d always enjoyed challenging odds.

They raced through the hotel, running blind. A door led into an empty kitchen, and she led Harry between the rows of steel worktops to an exit at the far end. Another narrow passage, another fire door that crunched off its hinges as she kicked it open.

The luxury lobby of the Grand Châteauneuf was now just yards away. She could see the dark sky through the entrance doors, and the flash of the gunship’s lights on the trees.

Alex smashed the last door open.

‘We’re going to make it!’ Rumble gasped.

‘Not quite,’ said a voice.

Alex turned to shoot, but a blow out of nowhere knocked her hard off her feet and sent the Beretta tumbling from her hand. She looked up as a group of vampires in black tactical clothing swarmed into the lobby around them. They were armed with short, curved sabres. Two grabbed Harry Rumble and forced him to his knees.

‘Nice try,’ said the heavily-built male vampire who’d knocked the gun away from Alex. He walked casually over and picked up the fallen weapon, ejected the last round and tossed the gun away in disgust. ‘We’ve no use for these things any more. It’s back to the proper old ways from now on.’