Part sixteen
Every town had an engineering station. This was basic fact. Humans needed Plants. To use Plants, one needed the proper hook-up to water and power. And in order to connect the Plants to a town – no matter where the actual Plant was located – one needed an engineering station. For example, December City had three Plants. But those Plants provided power to more than twenty neighboring towns and villages, with a station in each town to monitor power outputs, fluctuations, and general maintenance.
Due to Salem's size, Vash had assumed that the town was hooked up to a larger city. That was a grave error on his part. One that had gotten the sheriff and who knew how many others killed.
Well, not anymore.
The station was located along the western edge of town, an unimpressive one-story building built from rusting aluminum siding. The windows were dark and grimy, layers of dust suggesting that it had been lying fallow for some time. The door stuck a bit when he pushed on it but finally gave way with a protesting shriek. The interior was too dark to see by twilight alone and he groped along the wall for a light switch. He fumbled around a familiar shape and flicked it on.
The ceiling lamps flickered on as computers, long unused, lumbered to life. A light, pungent breeze touched his face from cooling fans created to prevent the equipment from overheating. He stepped forward, looking to the nearest terminal, hoping to find some measure of output.
He was vaguely aware of Meryl and Liam's presence behind him, cautiously following his lead and searching the equipment. Meryl frowned. "It looks like this place hasn't been used in years. Why isn't anyone here?"
"Plants run pretty autonomously," Vash murmured absently, typing commands into the keypad under the monitor. "If there wasn't a problem, they probably didn't need to be here."
"I guess." Meryl rubbed her arms. "Is anyone else cold?"
Liam shrugged, absorbed in a manual he'd found. Vash barely heard her, as he stared at the results of his system search. Despite the long period of neglect, the Plant monitors still operated. He just didn't like what they told him.
"She's in trouble."
Meryl tilted her head, curious. "What do you mean?"
Vash bit his lip, cursing the minor slip. He covered quickly. "The Plant. Something's wrong with h-it." He pointed to a graph displayed on screen. "Power has been dropping for the past few months. Not enough yet to cause alarm, but it's consistent. It – it may be dying."
A half-truth. He could feel her beneath them now, just barely at the moment, but the pull was nevertheless there. There was no "may be" about it. And that frightened him.
He tried to hide that as best he could from Meryl but she still shuddered. Even without an empathic connection like his own, he knew she would be worried. The fear of Plant failure had been drilled into the head of every child born within the last century and a half. They remained the first and last defense against the desert's harsh, unforgiving environment.
He placed a hand on her arm. "C'mon. Let's find the ship and get out of here."
She nodded, giving him a half-smile. Liam glided up beside her. "About time. Where to?"
Vash closed his eyes, opening his mind further to the pull, allowing the Plant below to guide him. The tug grew stronger and he opened his eyes. He pointed towards a door at the back of the room. "That way."
He led them back into a smaller room, something that appeared to have once been an office of some sort. Along the far wall, another door stood ajar, revealing a closet. He approached and looked inside. Rotted cardboard boxes were piled on the floor, along with scattered yellow papers and something that might have been a mop in another life. The tug came from beneath all of them.
He cleared the junk away, ignoring Meryl's squawk as old cardboard hit her. Underneath the dust, just barely visible, was the outline of a trap door. He wiped away the dirt as best he could before he tried the rusted handle. At first, the door wouldn't budge, so he braced himself, got a two-handed grip and pulled. His muscles objected strenuously to the attempt but it worked and the metal finally gave way with a disgruntled groan.
He poked his head into the corridor underneath. The main lights had long ago been destroyed but the emergency beacons still flickered, revealing what looked like a maintenance shaft. He felt Meryl sidle up beside him.
"What's in there?"
He straightened and turned to let his legs dangle over the opening. "Not much. Still has some working lights, though."
He dropped down to the corridor floor, raising small clouds of dust where he landed. The ceiling was low, forcing him to bend over uncomfortably. He looked back to Meryl. "Come on down, but watch your head."
Meryl nodded and slipped down beside him. A moment later, Liam fell nimbly through the door, barely making a sound as his feet touched the ground. Vash gave them enough time to catch their breaths before taking off again.
The shaft dead-ended at another door after about ten feet. Again, the hinges stuck but gave way after some effort, revealing a full-size hallway behind them. From there, the empathic call directed Vash to the right, his companions close at his heels.
"How do you know where to go?" Meryl asked, a derringer clutched tightly in each hand.
"It's similar to the last ship Wolfwood and I were in. Figure it can't hurt to go the same way." Another lie and at Meryl's sour expression, he wished he could take it back. At heart, he trusted her, even considered her something of a friend, a realization that constantly surprised him. But he couldn't tell her the truth about his knowledge or how he had come by it. Not yet.
Liam remained silent.
Their footsteps echoed through the ancient ship, no other sounds marking their passage save for their breathing. It appeared as though they were the only living beings there, an irony that was not lost on the outlaw.
"Are you sure they're here?" Meryl whispered, her words sounding loud in the dead hallway.
"They have to be," Vash answered just as quietly, though there didn't appear a need for either of them to lower their voices. "No where else for them to go."
Meryl sighed. "Maybe they all went topside tonight."
So, of course, that was when they turned a corner and came face to face with five vampires.
The two groups shared a moment of stupefied silence, before the vampires snarled and rushed their trio.
Two of them hit Vash, tumbling to the ground in a heap of limbs. As he kicked out, dislodging one of his attackers, he heard Meryl yelp and fire off a gun, the shot almost deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. Apparently, the vampires' hearing was more sensitive than his own because they all howled in pain in response. Vash took the momentary respite to shove his Colt into the gut of his remaining adversary and pull the trigger.
Another boom, more muffled by flesh, and the vampire stumbled back. Vash blocked out the agonized screams, keeping up a continuous mantra in his head: can't be killed, can't be killed, can't be killed…
It eased his conscience somewhat but didn't stop his stomach from twisting into knots. Nor did it give him time to prepare for the next attack, which threw him into a wall and knocked the wind out of him.
The brawl continued, driving both groups further down the hall. Vash lost track of Meryl and Liam in the melee, concentrated more on just keeping the vampires *down* without resorting to Alexis's final, deadly tactics.
A lucky blow with his metal hand slammed another vampire into the bulkhead with enough force to knock him unconscious. Two down, three to go.
Meryl's scream distracted him from his self-congratulations. He turned in time to see a female vamp clamp down onto the insurance girl's neck, eliciting another scream from the trapped woman. Blood spurted from the cut artery and splashed against her white cape.
"Meryl!" The word ripped from his throat, horrified and furious, the sight of that annoying, stubborn, tenacious woman slumping down, seriously injured, doing awful, unexpected things to his insides.
It wasn't *right.* This wasn't how their game was played. She wasn't ever, *ever* supposed to get hurt.
He allowed cool instinct to wash over him, took aim with his gun, and fired.
The vampire jerked back as the bullet sliced neatly through her left eye. She let go of Meryl and nearly flew into the wall, hands feebly scratching at the hole in her face. Vash was by Meryl's side before she hit the floor. Her skin was dead white, the puncture marks from the vampire's bite bleeding continuously.
"Meryl?" He held his jacket against her wound, warm blood staining the red a deeper scarlet. She remained unresponsive to his entreaty and he felt panicked tears pricking at his eyes. "Please, Meryl, you have to wake up. We can't stay here."
A hand came down on his shoulder, nearly causing him to jump and lose his hold. Liam hunkered down beside him, brown eyes serious but not unkind. Vash had almost forgotten the other man was with them and seeing that the remaining vampires were no longer there, had to assume he had taken care of them.
Liam placed a hand against Meryl's chest, frowning slightly. "Heartbeat's steady. She'll be alright but she needs medical attention."
Vash paled. "I don't even know where the town doctor is. And we still have to get her out of the engineering station."
Liam shook his head. "Sometimes you surprise me, Vash the Stampede. The sign for med bay is down the hall. Everything we need should be there."
Vash nodded, then started as his words truly sunk in. "Wait, how did you-"
"I know a lot more than you'd think. And talking about it is only going to waste time we don't have." Liam held out his arms, ready to gather Meryl up as soon as Vash let go.
The outlaw tightened his hold momentarily, the sudden mystery of the covered man sowing doubt in his mind. He would be entrusting Meryl's life to a man he suddenly realized he knew almost nothing about. A man who knew things he couldn't possibly know.
If he were human.
Angels with clipped wings…
Vash reluctantly released the girl, allowing Liam to sweep her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. He almost stepped after him when the pull suddenly flared up, greater than before, halting him in his tracks. Liam tilted his head, curious, then nodded in understanding. "You better go."
Vash bit his lip. "I should – she may-"
"I'll take care of her, I promise," Liam told him. "Go."
Vash spared one more glance at Meryl before giving into the cry and running onward, all the while hoping that whatever Rem had been trying to tell him had been right and the covered man could be trusted.
He couldn't bear to think otherwise.
***
Millie tried to count the number of vampires spilling into town but finally gave up.
There were *definitely* more than there'd been last night. She tried to show them that they didn't scare her, sticking out her chin defiantly, hefting her stungun with deadly accuracy. She just hoped they couldn't hear her knees knocking together.
As opposed to Alexis, who was not only utterly unfazed but actually seemed to revel in the battle, picking off targets with a grin spread across her face.
Another vampire burst into ash from her crossbow and as she reloaded, Millie frowned. "That's an awful waste of wood."
Alexis sighted a new target, pulled the trigger, and twang! One less vampire to worry about. "It's not wood."
"But I thought only a wooden stake-"
"It's an artificial synthesized grain, filled with holy water, designed to disintegrate on impact. Almost as good as the real thing." All this explained as she calmly killed two more vamps. "Only my stakes are wood and I never lose those."
"Oh." Millie nodded. "That's very clever."
Her admiration almost made her miss two vampires sneaking past Alexis's arrow line and she quickly turned her gun on them. With a well-timed shot, she managed to trap both of them underneath one baton, the specially designed rubber standing up to even their enhanced strength.
She noticed Alexis staring and blushed. "What?"
The Slayer pointed at her stungun and grinned. "I have got to get me one of those."
End part sixteen