Chapter Ten.
Integra stood at a table she had set up in front of the APC. Before her was a row of automatic rifles and military issue .45 caliber pistols. Some had been collected from the armory, but most had been picked up from where they had been dropped by infected soldiers. Integra had finished breaking down and cleaning her third rifle while Zoey was finishing her first, watching Integra as she worked.
Zoey had been curious about the Hellsing family and its mission. Integra had been hesitant to explain, thinking it wouldn't do to have a civilian, much less an American civilian, knowing much more than she already did but something made her decide against it. Predictably, Zoey had little to say at first and Integra thought being attacked by monsters only to be saved by a vampire hunting vampire was a lot to digest.
Slightly less predictable was Zoey's enthusiasm.
"It can't be just family members, right? All those soldiers," Zoey said.
"No. We get assigned people from different branches of the military and sometimes police. Usually its the most capable ones who happened to have seen something supernatural and the best way to handle it is make them part of the solution. We hired some mercenaries once after a substantial reduction in personnel, but steps have been taken to prevent that from happening tw...never mind," Integra said.
"So what does it take to join?" Zoey asked.
"A military background," Integra said, knowing where she was going. "Normally, it's rather dull work. When it becomes exciting, it's like this."
"I see," Zoey said, snapping parts of the rifle back into place and setting it on the table. "How much longer before we go looking for Seras?"
Integra picked up one of the pistols and started to take it apart. "A while yet," she said, wondering herself just how long was too long for her to be gone without radio contact. Integra hadn't strayed far from the APC since Seras's last transmission, sending Zoey on small errands and making bathroom breaks rare and quick.
Seras had given her a general area of where she would be searching, but it was a lot of ground to cover, not to mention the fact that she could be inside any one of innumerable structures or even in the dark maze of tunnels beneath the city. Searching for a lost Seras was likely a fruitless enterprise and she hoped she wouldn't be forced to do it.
"I think we're out of cleaner," Zoey said, holding up a bottle of gun cleaning solvent. She turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out.
"There's more in the armory," Integra said.
"Give me the keys, I'll go get it."
"No," Integra said. "I've been cooped up in here too long waiting for Seras to radio in. I'll get the cleaner, you stay and see how many you can clean without watching me. Run and get me if Seras radios in."
"Okay," Zoey said.
Integra left the motor pool through a door next to one of the large garage bay doors. Once out, she reached into her pocket for a cigar, pulled one out and lit it. She was getting low on smokes and wondered if she wouldn't eventually ask Seras to grab a pack next time she was out. She'd probably get some speech on how she should quit, but she could ignore like she had before.
Her footsteps made flat patting sounds over the pavement next to a high maintenance and storage shed. The sky was a grayish purple and dawn would soon be on them. Sleep was something she needed and the sooner Seras radioed in or returned the sooner she would get it.
Her coughing sounded distant. Perhaps she was coming down with a cold. I mus need a nap, she thought. That cough sounded like it was from someone else.
"That's stupid," she muttered, looking around for Zoey, or perhaps some badly wounded soldier they had miraculously missed.
Coils of something thick and pink floated in front of her good eye and her arms were suddenly pinned to her sides. She looked down and saw that something had ensnared her with a wet, rubbery rope of some kind.
More hacking and wheezing and she was pulled off her feet and dragged towards the storage shed. Kicking her feet and squirming, she looked behind her and saw the rope was attached to something on the roof. It was a man with a bulging sack-like tumor dominating half of his face. What had wrapped around her was coming from the thing's mouth.
Smoker, Integra thought, remembering a creature Zoey had described in the makeshift dossiers. It ensnared victims with one of its many extendable tongues all while emitting some kind of noxious gas. Zoey had said something about wanting to call it a licker, but the name was copyrighted.
Her feet struggled to find purchase on the ground as the smoker pulled her towards the building. When she hit the wall, she was able to stand, but only for a moment. The smoker began to haul her up, causing the tongue to tighten around her body and arms.
She hated to do it, but there was no other option. Considering the situation, she couldn't risk being severely injured. "Zoey!" Integra shouted. "A smoker has me!"
Her feet were two meters off the ground and the smoker didn't seem to be able to pull her up any higher, but it was able to strain its tongue to constrict her further. She could hear it hack and wheeze as it struggled and she could smell the acrid vapor it produced.
There was a cracking sound and something whizzed past her forehead. More cracking sounds followed and the smoker began to make choking sounds as its tongue relaxed and Integra fell to the ground. She landed on her feet, sending bolts of pain up her legs but nothing that made her think she had been injured.
Zoey was still firing the assault rifle at the roof. "Damn it," she said. "I hit it, but it got away."
Integra examined her bangs and thought she noticed a few missing from the bullet that nearly took her frontal lobe out. She looked down at the severed length of tongue at her feet and kicked at it. "We can't have it running around the compound," Integra said, drawing her pistol. "Come with me and be careful where you shoot that damned thing."
"Sorry," Zoey said. Integra thought she heard her say "and your welcome," but wasn't sure. She decided not to press it as she led Zoey around the back of the shed to see where the smoker had gone.
Nick didn't think he had ever felt worse. First his legs had been sliced to ribbons by some kind of crying hell witch and now he had been nearly crushed by a half ton slab of meat with murder as its chief occupation. Where the vampire woman was, he didn't know, but he thought he might have preferred her to the large black man now dragging him across a small parking lot towards a clump of trees.
"On your feet, I can't drag you no more," Coach said, panting.
Thinking he could actually feel the blood being squeezed out of his wounds, Nick stood and used Coach as a crutch to cross the parking lot where they collapsed behind some bushes. Coach had killed a large number of infected directly out in back of the tenement building they had escaped, enough to give them a clear run for a while and find a place to hide.
You couldn't really hide from the infected, Nick knew. Sooner or later they found you, but being out of sight helped.
"Jesus," Nick said. "This is too damn much."
Coach sat on his rear, leaning back to keep his head out of sight. He was panting loudly, making Nick think their reprieve would be short lived. "You're tellin' me," Coach said. "Did I hear you say somethin' about a vampire back there or were my ears ringin'?"
Nick explained what he knew of Seras. As he spoke, Coach brow became more wrinkled. His eyes popped upon hearing how Seras had nearly eaten Nick, and once his story was finished he looked towards the tenement with a mixture of bafflement and fear.
"I've still got my suspicions, but she's our best chance out of here," Nick said. "Trust me."
"I don't know you, so the jury's still out on that," Coach said. "What next? Can she handle that thing she went tearin' off with?"
"She'll be fine," Nick said.
"What the..." Coach covered his head with his arms as something landed with a thud next to them in the grass.
"The hell," Nick said, getting to his knees and moving the grass aside. Lying there was a pair of legs attached to skirted hips. The lump of meat was covered in blood and was minus a boot.
"Holy shit," Nick said, then "HOLY SHIT!" as the legs began to kick.
"What is it...oh, dear lord," Coach said, looking over Nick's shoulder. "Is that..."
Nick put a hand over his mouth in an effort not to vomit up what little food he had eaten. He almost didn't notice a second bleeding pile of flesh land by the base of the nearby tree. When it began to gurgle and cry, he turned his attention to it.
It was the upper half of the vampire woman, minus an arm. She looked as though she'd been dipped in blood, her face a red mask of pain. Her eyes were rolling around in their sockets, focusing on nothing. Nick tried to look away, but he couldn't. He could smell her blood, there was so much of it. The metallic taste of it filled his nostrils and mouth, making vomit crawl its way up his throat.
Her eyes found their focus and he saw her irises go from bright blue to an evil looking crimson. "Run," she said, as blood welled out her mouth.
And then she started to melt. Coach shouted and stood up. "Come on, lets get the hell out of here!"
Nick, swallowing puke, got up and staggered towards Coach, but fell. Seras's body had lost its detailed features and had become a woman-shaped mass of black blood which began to roll in one direction like a bead of mercury.
He watched it join another puddle of blood that had to have been her lower legs. "Come on, let's go!" Coach bellowed again. "I'll leave ya', I swear."
And then they heard it, the roar from before. Nick looked across the lot to the roof of the tenement and saw the mass of muscle that shattered the lobby from before leap down like a suicidal gorilla. It landed, making a small crater in the pavement and let out another roar.
The blood puddle rose up and took the shape of a woman once more, only her left arm had fashioned itself into a wide blade reminiscent of a bird's wing. The dark shape sped across the lot, gliding rather than running, to meet the creature, which had lifted up a large slab of broken concrete and was preparing to hurl.
It threw the slab at the gliding figure, which dodged it by ducking at an impossible angle. The shadowy being sped up and made a slashing motion with the wing blade, faster than Nick's eye could follow. He knew what had happened when the monster slumped to its knees and its top half fell over backward, its mutated guts spilling out in a heap.
"You gotta be kiddn' me," Coach said. "It's this European food, messin' with my system. That's gotta be it."
"Oh, how I wish that was true," Nick said, watching the shadow at the end of the lot complete its transformation into a woman with all her arms and legs. She turned and began to walk towards them with her head bent down.
Neither moved, both too unsure of what they had just seen to act on their fear. When she was with them again, she looked up briefly. "Sorry," she said.
There was a long silence, broken by the distant warble of a thousand infected throats. "I'm gonna reserve judgment on this vampire business, but for now, you're alright," Coach said. "Thanks for savin' out asses."
"Yeah, good work," Nick said.
Seras picked her head up and brushed her hair back. "No problem. It's my job." She looked up into the morning sky and winced as she shielded her eyes. "Come on. We can't mess around anymore."
Both men nodded and followed her as she trotted over a guard rail and down a street.
To be continued...