The Dome

Cal State San Marcos

          The Mountain Dew was starting to kick in, the sugar perking me back up. I had been lethargic all morning and Leticia had noticed that I wasn't the same. But thankfully I would be missing my daily dose of necessary aspirin by ditching my problematic women's studies course, which I always left pissed, to handle this meeting.

          I looked across the table at Derek Barnes. He could have been Detective Smith's younger brother, though obviously he wasn't; he did have an identical twin brother, Adam, who had supposedly killed himself, from Derek's provided backstory. According to Derek's story, he had taken up his brother's cause of paranormal investigation, along with a team of friends. That's why they'd contacted me. Somehow rumors about my involvement with Code Fives had gotten out, though Derek didn't know the half of it.

          "I am so not awake this morning," I said by way of explanation.

          "Late night?" Derek said, offering a smile.

          I nodded. "I was working with the LAPD on a homicide case."

          "Ouch."

          "Yeah. Anyway, you want to know about the Code Fives." I corrected myself. "The vampires." I was okay saying this because there was nobody around. Usually I kept my mouth shut, but Derek Barnes seemed to be a good guy. He nodded. I elaborated. "The official term is Code Five. The rules are different, throw them all out the window. They're emerging in London and a cell of them tracked one of the British government's agents here to L.A. We think we got them all, but we don't know for sure." That was, of course, the highly abbreviated version.

          "You've fought them though."

          "Yeah, twice. Both times I got pretty well beaten up for it." I took another long drink. "The thing you have to understand about this is that the rules that we believe – stakes, crosses, holy water – are all wrong. Well, except for the holy water. The hunter they tracked, Michael Colefield, he's a veteran, he knows the rules. I know him pretty well, and he taught me everything. It's not as easy as myths and legends make it out to be."

          "Tell me about it," he said, "I've discovered enough of that in my short time on the freaky side."

          "Michael hasn't told me much about the current status of things out here," I elaborated. "If you really want to get involved with this, I can try to keep you in the loop, but I'm not that much in it myself." This was true; Michael had kind of shut me out about the status of the invasion in L.A., presumably not to get me freaked out or to divide my focus. If there was instant action necessary I'd be there with my vampire-hunting gun just as quickly as I'd be on the CIA lines with my SigArm, but I think he was still trying to keep me out of that part of his world.

          "Anything we can do to help."

          "How long are you in town?"

          "Just a couple of days, taking a vacation. Lan wants to see some things in L.A. and Jason is determined to go back to Universal Studios, or something."

          "All right, well, you have my contact information. I'm actually on release to help on that homicide right now, so try my cell phone first. And I have your number so I'll call if I can find out anything. We'll meet again in a day or two." I checked my watch. "And I have humanities class in twenty minutes."

          We stood and shook hands again. Derek was much more my contemporary than anybody else I'd dealt with and it showed. He was only twenty-seven, although I think Detective Smith was only twenty-eight or twenty-nine. But the thing that stuck was the attitude that made him much closer to my age, except for a few tinges of haunted maturity. He was an unlikely candidate for involvement with the fight against the invasion, but I liked him. We said goodbye and I headed on my way to class.

          Still drinking steadily from my Mountain Dew bottle (the medium sized one as always), I walked into class and sat down next to Leticia at the end of the first row.

          "Feeling better?" she asked.

          "Yeah, I'll be okay."

          I leaned back in my chair as Professor Berghof walked in and said something about us watching another video. He had this thing for showing these videos from decades ago with a British lecturer by the name of James Burke who was downright annoying. When we had all been in class together the prior semester, Leticia, myself and a friend of ours, Sean, had spent the whole time mocking him. Sean did a pretty good impersonation of James Burke.

          The video was about industrialization, as had been the last one we had watched where he'd made us do some weird thing with circles (or "feedback loops" as he called them); we hadn't understood a damn word he was saying and just copied down what he wrote on the board. Thankfully there weren't any special instructions this time so I resorted to more caffeine and trying to keep my thoughts in line. If they wandered, I knew exactly where they'd go.

          Berghof was in the middle of saying something when I heard a slight clicking noise; I didn't know what it was but it made me a little nervous. I put my head down on my binder. I was tired and I probably just needed a nap.

          The sound of the single bullet barely missing my head probably sounded much louder than it was. It slammed into the white board in front of me, and I dove under the table on instinct, dragging Leticia with me, though everybody seemed to know to duck and cover, and ostensibly to quit screaming and shut up. Berghof examined the hole for a second out of shock, but then eventually he dropped for cover too. It was scarily like my nightmare from the previous day.

          I was searching my jacket, though I knew I wouldn't find my gun. I did, however, have my phone, and I grabbed for it desperately.

          "Everybody stay down!" a voice commanded, and I knew that voice. It was Sergeant Friday's voice. What the hell the cops were doing here I didn't know, but damn did they have good timing. I looked to Leticia and tried to insist everything would be okay, my back up against the inside of the table, my heart pounding. I felt trapped, and technically I was. I waited for responding fire…

          "Are you okay?" Detective Smith was suddenly kneeling at my side, still holding his gun. I hadn't even seen him show up, so when he put his hand on my arm and started talking I nearly jumped. Then I recovered and just slowly nodded.

          "Okay. We need to get you out of here. Stay with me." He grabbed my hand and pulled me up, I grabbed my backpack on instinct, and the two of us carefully advanced on the door. I had never been happier to see that door in my life. Sergeant Friday, who was covering us, slowly lowered his weapon. "It's obvious she was the target," he said. "They're gone."

          I nodded though I was scared, not liking being shot at. I'd never actually been directly shot at before, although I had been in some gun situations. As Sergeant Friday was telling everyone it was okay and they could get up now, Detective Smith lead me out the door and around the corner so I could lean against the wall and try not to hyperventilate. "It's okay," he kept repeating. "It's okay."

          "How did you get here?" I got out between scared breaths.

          "We were coming to get you because we found something. And we heard the shot." He was being extremely patient with me, an approach that I knew well because I'd been trained in crisis counseling myself. "Don't worry about that now. We're going to get you back to the precinct. Backup's on its way and they'll take care of everything. Is there anything you need?"

          I shook my head. Sergeant Friday emerged from the classroom and gave orders to some uniformed officers coming up the rear access way from the main university stairs below University Hall. Then he gave a silent nod to Detective Smith and the two of them began leading me toward the parking lot. I realized my cover was blown. You didn't just get shot at and claim it was because you had an overdue library fee. I would have some explaining to do. But right now I could barely stand to think of the consequences.

          I just wanted to close my eyes and have it all be over. But life is never that easy. Sometimes it is this hard.