Will Hill - The Rising

Shaun Turner watched her for a split second, a huge grin on his face, then he and Jack Williams threw themselves at the four vampires who were still coming. They attacked with deadly precision, and teamwork that bordered on instinct; the vampires, who wore looks of desperation on their faces, desperation born of the realisation that they were outmatched, fought with a panic bordering on mania. They leapt and clawed and bit and spat as Jack and Shaun slid through them like knives through butter; the flashing claws and snapping jaws touched nothing but thin air.

Shaun pulled the metal stake from his belt, ducked neatly beneath the flailing swing of one of the vampires, a man in a Sunderland football shirt who looked to be about thirty, with a shaved head and arms covered in blotchy blue tattoos, then drove the stake upwards with vicious accuracy. The metal point crunched through the vampire’s breastbone, soaking Shaun’s arm with pumping blood, until it pierced the wildly beating heart and the vampire burst like a balloon, his insides splashing across Shaun’s visor and helmet.

He wiped them clear, in time to see Jack Williams sling his arm round another of the vampires, and drive his stake through the creature’s back. It exploded into putrid liquid, and Jack staggered backwards as the thing he had been holding tightly in his grip ceased to exist.

Behind him, a vampire snarled with anticipation, and reached for Jack’s shoulders, its fangs gleaming in the reflected light from the ship. Shaun, whose brain was capable of an icy precision that was at least the equal of his father’s, didn’t hesitate; he drew the Glock 17 from his belt and fired from the hip, like a gunslinger in an old Western. The bullets tore away the vampire’s head above his eyebrows, and the vampire went down to the cold concrete, his eyes rolling, his hands grabbing reflexively at nothing as his brain lay in pieces on the dock. Jack regained his balance, spun round and buried his stake in the chest of the twitching vampire, then leapt clear as it exploded.

Shaun watched his squad leader with a look of great pride on his face; he and Jack had been through so many fights together, so many battles in dark corners of the world, and there was no one Shaun would rather have at his side. Then he felt the movement of air at his back, and realised that something was behind him.

He lunged forward, away from it, turning as he did so, and saw the contorted, hate-filled face of a vampire barely an arm’s length away from him. It was a man in his fifties, wearing a dark blue suit and tie, and Shaun had time to crazily think how much he looked like the housemaster he had so hated during his time at boarding school. The vampire was reaching for him, its hand centimetres from his chest, its eyes blazing red, its fangs huge and sharp as razors. Shaun started to swing the Glock up from his side, knowing it was going to be too late to stop the vampire reaching him.

“Down!”

It was Angela’s voice, cool and calm through his earpiece. As he heard the word, he also heard a loud bang he knew as well as any sound on earth. He threw his legs out from beneath him, and let himself fall to the concrete of the dock.

Confusion passed briefly across the face of the vampire, as he looked at what appeared to be a bizarre act of surrender. Then the stake from Angela’s T-Bone blew clean through his chest, directly above where Shaun Turner was lying, and the vampire exploded in an expanding column of blood, the majority of which came crashing down on Shaun. The T-Bone’s stake whirred back into its barrel, as Angela appeared above him. She pushed her visor up, and gave him a mischievous smile.

“Naughty boy,” she said, reaching down and hauling him to his feet. “Keep an eye on your six, Shaun. You can’t always rely on me to bail you out.”

“Piss off,” he said, mildly, then smiled at his teammate.

Jack Williams arrived beside them, his eyes wide with the thrill of the fight.

“I staked the ones you torched,” he said. “Let’s help Jamie’s team.”

Angela looked across the dock, towards Squad G-17.

“I think they’re doing fine,” she said, the smile widening on her face.

Kate ran forward, drawing the stake from her belt as she did so. Jamie ran with her, his MP5 in one hand, his stake in the other. They reached the trio of wailing vampires that Kate had blown the legs out from under, and staked them without a second glance. Then they were moving again, in the direction of Larissa.

Three more vampires fell out of the sky, blood pouring from wounds that looked like the work of a wild animal, and Kate skidded to a halt.

“Go on!” she shouted. “I’ll clear up!”

Jamie nodded, sprinting after Larissa, who had dropped back to the ground and taken cover behind the nearest truck. Behind him, he heard three gargled screams and three thuds of changing air pressure, as Kate staked what was left of the vampires who had met Larissa in the air. A second later she was at their side, panting, her uniform splashed with blood.

“How many left?” asked Jamie.

Larissa lifted her visor back and sniffed the air. Her eyes were blazing red, the colour of boiling blood, and her fangs were gleaming white triangles beneath her upper lip.

“Five,” she answered. “The one you T-Boned is still alive, but only just. The other four are between the trucks. The scents are too close together – I can’t separate them.”

Don’t worry, thought Jamie. Four frightened vampires. Easy.

A noise began to swell from the direction of the freighter, and Jamie peered round the corner of the truck. The woman who had been the second to leave the ship was standing at the bottom of the gangway, surrounded by a small group of emaciated men and women; she was still holding the little girl with one arm, but with the second she was waving frantically up at the deck of the freighter. As Jamie watched, an elderly woman nervously poked her head above the railing at the top of the gangway, then slowly started down it. Behind her, a crowd of men and women followed, the metal creaking beneath them as they made their way towards dry land.

Movement blurred in the corner of Jamie’s eye, and he pulled back round the corner next to Kate and Larissa.

“At least one is on the other side of this truck,” he whispered, his voice inaudible to anyone but them, the noise cancelled by the dampening contours of his helmet. “Kate, work your way round the other end. Larissa, go over the top. We’ll corner him.”

The two girls nodded. Kate moved away silently down the length of the truck, as Larissa floated easily up into the air. Jamie took a deep breath, and stepped round the corner. The vampire who was standing between the two trucks looked almost pitifully frightened; he was twitching and turning in circles, nostrils flared, trying to look in every direction at once. Then Kate appeared beyond him, and the vampire saw her. He hissed, a low, terrified noise, and turned to run, only to find Jamie barring his escape route. He screeched, a look of pure dread on his middle-aged face, and turned his head to the sky, to the one way he might escape the fate that had befallen his colleagues.

“Hi,” said Larissa, sweetly. She was sitting on the edge of the truck’s roof, staring down at the vampire with her red eyes glowing.

The vampire let out a howl of despair, and ran towards Kate. Then the stakes from two T-Bones pulped his chest, and he exploded in a shower of blood. Larissa floated down, then suddenly accelerated past Jamie, a low snarl of pleasure emanating from her throat. One of the three remaining vampires, his instinct for self-preservation overwhelmed by the torrent of fresh blood that had been spilled on the other side of the truck, was careering round the corner, a look of primal hunger on his face.