I WAS STANDING IN the mist beside a dark canal. The pungent odor of burnt ammunition stung my nose. Curious and a bit afraid, I took one step forward. A metallic clink sounded from under my feet. I looked down. Spent brass cartridges surrounded my military boots. Desert camouflage fatigues covered my body. An M4 carbine weighed down my arms. A sudden familiarity overwhelmed me, a sensation that yielded to a great terror. I was back at the exact place where my fellow soldiers and I had ambushed and murdered the Iraqi civilians.
In the gloom before me lay four figures. Slowly they pushed up from the ground. In the meager light, I recognized them as the Iraqi family we had mistakenly gunned down.
Shouting in fright, I retreated several steps and readied my weapon to defend myself. But the carbine was gone. I lifted my empty hands to shield my face and glanced about for a way to escape.
The four figures advanced haltingly, as if struggling to balance themselves on bones shattered by bullets and grenades. A diminutive female in a pale dress led them. She was the girl I had shot. A dark blotch stained her belly, over the spot of her terrible wound.
A wave of paralysis froze my legs, and my lungs seized, damming the breath in my throat.
Coming closer, the Iraqis gave awkward smiles from faces ragged with torn flesh. The two women raised their arms, one of them offering just stumps, as our weapons had hacked off those limbs.
The little girl fixed her gaze upon me. Her eyes looked as big as they were the night I had shot her.
“Where are we?” My voice trembled.
Her tiny voice blossomed inside my head. “In the place between life and death. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting? Why?”
“Because our hatred for you is as strong as the guilt that torments you. If we are to proceed into Heaven, we must forgive.”
“Forgive me?”
“You are not responsible for what happened. Those sins belong to those who started the war. We forgive you.”
A red aura grew from each of them. My skin tingled. The envelope of an orange aura surrounded my body.
I held up my hands. My fingernails extended into talons. I started toward the Iraqis. “But I’m still a vampire.”
The little girl managed a smile. “We’ve done our part.”
All of our auras blazed, becoming brighter and brighter until I was engulfed in a blinding light like the center of the sun itself.
Then all went dark, and I was alone.
Deep within me, my kundalini noir stirred. This black serpent of vampire energy uncoiled, pumping strength and vitality into my undead flesh.
My eyes popped opened. The cool air swelled my lungs. Every detail in the shed seemed crisp and new. I smelled mare’s sweat on the blankets and tack. A hidden mouse nibbled from behind a sack of feed.
I clenched my fists and marveled at the intensity of my aura sizzling around me. The other vampires had been wrong. Human blood alone wouldn’t restore my powers. I had needed to expunge the curse of guilt from the carcass of my mortal soul. Wendy’s supernatural dryad blood had sent me to the edge of the afterlife, where I found absolution. I felt new and refreshed, like a reptile that had shed its old skin.
Wendy scooted away from me. Her green aura radiated distress. “Felix, are you okay?”
I straightened my legs and rotated upwards on my heels until I stood. “I feel better than okay, I feel like murder.”
“But your wound…”
I lifted the back of my shirt and touched the fresh scar that had formed over the bullet hole. “It’s just a souvenir now.”
Tucking the shirt into my trousers, I peered out the broken window at the frigid calm night. A layer of new snow covered everything. “How long was I out?”
“More than an hour.”
I read my watch. “It’s three-thirty in the morning. We’ve got time.” I pulled the blanket off the floor and draped it over my shoulders.
“Time for what?”
I grabbed a broom leaning in the near corner. “To highjack a convoy from the Department of Energy.”
Wendy followed me outside. “Don’t suppose I could talk you out of it? Maybe get help from the other vampires?”
“This is my investigation.”
The snowfall had turned our footsteps from the Dodge into a trail of shallow depressions. My feet sank into the snow. I levitated until the soles of my shoes barely scraped over the iced surface and then I started up the incline to my car.
A square hulk of an orange snowplow with flashing amber lights rumbled above on the road.
“If the state highway trucks are out,” I said, “then the roads must be clear.”
My Dodge Polara sat wedged against the guardrail. With the broom, I whisked snow off the car. “Wendy, get in and start the engine.”
She cranked the V-8 over. I discarded the broom and blanket, grasped the rear bumper, and lifted. I pulled backwards until the tires touched the pavement. Moving to the front of the Dodge, I gave the grill a hearty push. Wendy gunned the engine, and the car lurched back onto the highway.
I jerked open the driver’s door. “Let me drive.”
Though my vampire powers couldn’t enchant the Dodge, I drove as if they could. I kept the gas pedal flat against the floor and let the rear end of the car swing across the icy pavement and ricochet off the guardrails.
Wendy tightened her seat belt and braced her arms against the dashboard. “I thought this was a collectors’ item.”
Pieces of my car tore loose and clanged on the road. “Was,” I replied.
Her aura bristled with alarm. “And just how are you going to get into the trailer?”
“I’m not sure. But it shouldn’t be very complicated.”
“Just foolish and dangerous?”
“Wouldn’t be any fun if it wasn’t. I can drop you off someplace safe if you like.”
Wendy shook her head and grinned. “I haven’t been tagging after you all this time just to wimp out now.”
“Good. I could use a copilot on this kamikaze mission.” I turned off the interstate and proceeded to Highway 93. The road curved and rose up the hill and then straightened on the plain leading to Rocky Flats.
Far ahead, a confusion of flashing lights collected alongside the road.
“We’re just in time,” I said. “There’re marshaling the convoy. Wendy, unfasten the convertible top.”
She reached up and unsnapped the latches holding the convertible top to the windshield. The front end of the convertible top frame vibrated for a second against the windshield. The cold wind blasted in and ballooned the fabric. With a great rip, the frame collapsed backwards and banged against the trunk lid.
The oncoming lights grew brighter.
I willed my fingernails to lengthen into talons. Clenching the steering wheel, I pressed on the accelerator. The wind whirled into the driver’s compartment. The broken frame flailed violently, and one by one the metal struts broke apart. With a final rip, what was left of the convertible top tore free and fell behind us on the highway.
An unmarked white Suburban streaked past. Then a Humvee, with a bar of flashing lights fixed to the roof.
The next vehicle was as imposing as a locomotive, certainly a semi pulling the white trailer.
“Scoot your foot over and step on the gas pedal,” I shouted to Wendy.
She turned her body at an angle and her shoe nudged my foot off the accelerator.
With my hands remaining on the steering wheel, I drew my legs up and squatted on the driver’s seat. “Give it more gas.”
“Like this?” She flexed her leg. The engine grunted and the Dodge surged forward.
I held tight. “Yeah, like that.” I peeked over the windshield. Frigid night air blasted my face and hands. The headlights of the semi tractor fused into one brilliant comet flying at us. Adrenaline flooded my body. My nerves felt raw, as if my skin had been peeled back and sensations shot directly into my brain.
“Now take the wheel. Keep going straight, and as fast as you can.”
Wendy grasped the steering wheel. “Felix, you’re a goddamn menace.”
“At least I’m not boring.” With my left hand on the door and my right against the edge of the windshield, I cocked my body. The massive grill of the semi rushed at me.
“Don’t look back. Don’t slow down,” I shouted to Wendy. “The guards will be too busy with me to chase after you. Take care. I’ll see you later.”
Shoving back against the seat, I sprang through the air. For an instant I glided free and then smashed against the radiator grill, hitting hard with as much grace as a squirrel about to become roadkill. My brains rattled inside my skull. My feet scrambled to catch the lip of the front bumper. The truck swerved from side to side as if the driver had sensed my impact.
The Humvee preceding us slowed and closed the gap. Gravel kicked up by its tires pelted me. A roof hatch opened and a helmeted guard in combat gear appeared. He trained a spotlight on me. The circle of white illumination caught me splayed across the radiator grill. I was the center circle of a bull’s-eye. I clung to the radiator, glowing in the glare of the spotlight, my clothes rustling in the wind whistling past.
The guard in the Humvee took aim with a submachine gun. The red thread of a laser beam shot from beneath the gun and quivered on my face, like death’s finger tracing against my cheek.
I clambered over the hood just as a spray of bullets stitched into the radiator, venting jets of steam.
The driver of the truck and his guard became pie-eyed with shock at seeing me. The guard leaned to one side and flipped open a gun port in the right side of the windshield. I grasped the windshield wipers and hauled myself tight against the windshield, out of his line of fire.
The guard on the Humvee fired again. His bullets scratched the armored glass about me. I snaked over the windshield and lay atop the roof.
Two bullets punched from inside the roof and exited inches from my face. I stabbed my claws through the roof, tearing the metal, and peeled the roof back. A long burst of automatic fire shot through the void.
A pause. The guard had to be reloading. I looked into the hole I had made. The guard shrank away in terror and whimpered like a puppy. His hands clutched at a fresh magazine. I seized the guard by his collar, lifted him out of the cab, and tossed him screaming over my shoulder.
I slithered into the cab and bared my fangs to the driver.
He hollered into his radio microphone and groped for his holster. With my right hand, I grabbed him by the throat while my left hand twisted his wrist until he yelped in pain. The truck weaved across the road, left and right.
I reached around him, popped the door open, and shoved him out. Grasping the rim of the big steering wheel, I straightened the truck’s path. Waves of steam curled from the punctured radiator.
The guard in the Humvee let fly another burst that pinged harmlessly against the thick windshield.
Chortling with glee, I accelerated and rammed the rear of the Humvee. The Humvee careened back and forth across the highway. The guard flopped in the hatch like a sock puppet before dropping inside. I rammed the Humvee again. It swerved, tipped on two wheels, and rolled over.
The temperature gauge on the instrument panel sprang into the red zone. I had perhaps a minute before the engine seized.
Up ahead, the Suburban spun around. In my rearview mirrors, another Humvee raced closer to box me in.
I flicked off the headlamps and running lights. I veered to the right and smashed the darkened semi and trailer through a barbed-wire fence bordering the road.
Using vampire vision, I navigated around the largest of the big rocks littering the plain. The truck bellowed as it crashed over the treacherous ground. The trailer groaned on the fifth wheel. I dropped into low gear and flogged the engine, dragging us through the snow.
The transmission started to grind. The engine whined. The tachometer redlined. The truck bogged down and stopped with a wheeze and a grunt of steam.
I kicked open the door and stood on the running board. The Humvees were a half-mile away, picking their way around the stones that had pummeled my truck. Searchlights washed over the glistening snow.
I had but a few short minutes to find out what was hidden in the trailer. Unfastening a pick ax lashed to the back of the cab, I dropped to the snow and hustled to the trailer. A padlock the size of a clay brick held the rear doors. I jammed the thin end of the pick head between the lock and the hasp. I twisted the pick and turned until the handle broke.
A gentle tap-like the tripping of a bomb fuse-whispered from behind the doors. The stink of polyurethane and isopropanol farted into the air. I sprang upward and landed on top of the trailer roof. From under the rear of the truck, out shot streams of foam the size of railroad ties. The streams snaked on the ground and melted a swath through the snow. The foam set and hardened. To anyone caught in it, it would be like getting doused with instant-setting concrete.
Just to make sure that no more surprises waited, I stamped my foot on the roof of the trailer. Nothing happened. I jumped up and down once. Again, nothing happened.
Certain that this booby trap had run its course, I dropped from the roof and balanced on the knots of hardened foam. I grabbed the pick head with my bare hands and twisted again, grunting, and flexed my legs to get better leverage.
The padlock cracked apart. I flung the pieces aside and unbarred the doors.
A second metal door protected the cargo. The seal of the Department of Energy warned me not to proceed.
Stop me.
This door I grasped by the hinges and tore it loose. I stepped over the threshold and into the deepest secrets of Rocky Flats.