PART FOUR

NOW

Later that after noon, Charlie pulled his motorcycle into a roadside gas station. He filled the bike up with gas, and went in to pay the cashier. He paid cash for the gas, a sandwich and a Coke. He leaned against the side of the building as he ate his lunch.

This place is so different from New York. Charlie thought, looking around at the small houses that dotted the back road here and there.

Even Baltimore was different from New York. Charlie thought, thinking of his mostly misspent youth in the New England state.

As he was getting back on his bike, Charlie remembered back to New York again.

THEN

After Charlie had walked several blocks from his encounter with the mystery men in the alley, he ducked into a corner pizzeria. He made his way to the back of the restaurant, sliding into a back corner booth. From his seat he could see the door, but couldn't bee seen from the sidewalk outside.

The waitress, whose name tag stated that her name was Joy, took his order and promised to be back soon with his drink. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed the wallet he had lifted from the man in the alley.

A Military I.D. stated that his name was Riley Finn. Under the branch of service field, the I.D. read "Specialized." The rest of the wallet was contained about a hundred dollars cash, a Visa card, and a folded picture.

Well, that confirms the Government man theory. Charlie thought.

Charlie pulled the picture out and unfolded it. The face of it was worn and creased doubtless from being folded in the wallet for quite some time. The picture was of a young, blond girl. She was pretty, and slim. The back read 'Buffy S.'

Weird, I would have sworn by his reaction that the girl from the alley was his. Maybe Mr. Finn has his rough and tumble commando girl at work, and nice normal chicky at home. Charlie was considering when the waitress brought his drink.

Charlie thought about the agents as he ate his pizza. He hoped that he had scared them off, but he somehow doubted it. They would most likely be back to cause more trouble for him.

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That afternoon Charlie was heading back to his room at the club to get ready to crash the vamp/wendigo rendezvous at the warehouse. He already had on his usual wooden stake and knife.

Charlie pulled a large green duffle bag from under his bed. The first thing he pulled out was a tomahawk. The tomahawk was the only tangible thing he had left of his Native American heritage. It had a large stone head, sharpened to a fine edge, and had several red stripes and a red cat paw painted on it. The stone head was strapped to a large wooden handle, which was sharpened to a point on the end. Charlie took the tomahawk and stuck it into his belt.

The next thing he pulled from the bag was a large battle-ax. It had a big curved blade that was attached to a thick wooden handle, which had dried leather over where his hands rested on the wood. Charlie slid his arms into a leather harness that was designed to hold the battle-ax on his back.

With that done, Charlie took the elevator to the first floor of the club. When he exited the elevator, he noticed Tom and Kevin playing cards at a table near the bar. Tom looked up and saw Charlie.

"We going to war?" Tom asked Charlie.

"Some of us are always at war." Charlie replied.

Tom gave him a questioning look. "What's that supposed to mean?" He asked Charlie.

Charlie shrugged. "I'll be at war until they're all dead."

Tom nodded. "Need some help? We could open late tonight."

Charlie shook his head. "You guys should be able to hold the fort here without me, you seemed to have done a pretty good job before I started here." With that, Charlie walked out of the side door without saying another word.

It was still daylight when Charlie reached the abandoned warehouse. He stood back in the shadows of a neighboring warehouse and studied the building that would house this evenings festivities. He was trying to determine where he would enter the building. He finally decided to enter the building he was standing next to, make his way to the roof, and jump to the roof of the warehouse where the meeting was going to be.

This warehouse was more desolate than the one he had been in two nights before. The only thing in the building was some trash and a few broken boxes. He found the set of stairs that led to the roof and made his way there. Once on the roof, he judged the distance between the buildings.

It would be an almost impossible jump for most normal humans. Charlie got a running start and made a running landing onto the next roof. He stood still for a few moments once he had landed to be sure that no one was moving about in the building.

He knew there wouldn't be any vamps yet, it was still daylight, even thought he sun was starting to dip behind the horizon. But wendigos didn't have an aversion to sunlight. He saw a set of large skylights in the middle of the roof. He made his way to them and peered into the building.

He saw two men, who he assumed to be wendigos, sitting on some boxes that had not been there the night before. Both men were smoking and talking to each other. Charlie saw that one of the panes of the large skylight was broken. There was a large support beam that ran horizontally the length of the building.

Charlie quietly moved to the broken pane and lowered him self onto the beam. He dropped to his belly and crawled as close to directly above the men as he could. Along with enhanced physical abilities, Charlie also had hearing that bordered on the superhuman.

'I'm just glad we're starting, I'm so tired of waiting." Charlie heard one of them said.

"Thing's this big take time." The other answered.

Charlie listened to the men talk for about an hour. They mostly discussed how easy it was to get vamps to agree to be grunts. But the conversation also wondered to other things such as how easy of a hunting ground New York was, to exchanging stories about their personal kills.

When the sun had finally disappeared, Charlie heard a vehicle pull into the alley next to the building. He heard four doors open and shut, and shortly he saw the man in the suit and three more men enter through a side door. They were soon under the beam he was on and out of his sight.

"Are we ready gentlemen?" The man in the suit asked

One of the men who had been there smoking answered him. "Yes sir. The weapons and armor are here. The diversions have been set up and the vamps stationed at them are just waiting on your signal."

Charlie hoped that he was far enough away that the wendigo in the suit wouldn't be able to sense him.

He heard the wendigo in the suit answer. "Good, tonight is the beginning of the end for humankind. I want two of you at the door, two of you here by the crates and two of you on stage with me."

Six voices all replied "Yes sir."

Charlie could see two of the wendigos move to stand by the big double-doors at the back of the building. He also saw the wendigo in the suit and two others to move to the stage at the front of building.

It didn't take long for the first of the vamps to show up. After about forty-five minutes, the spacious warehouse was packed with vampires. The wendigo in the suit stepped to the edge of the stage.

"Hello." The wendigo in the suit stated to the crowd. The vamps quieted down at the sound of his voice. "I'm glad you all decided to show back up."

Charlie decided that it was now or never, and threw himself off of the beam, aiming his fall towards the stage. He gave full-throated battle cry as he pulled his ax in mid-air. He landed on his feet at the front of the stage.

"This ends here!" He shouted at the wendigo in the suit.

The wendigo smiled at Charlie. "I'm afraid not warrior. I knew you would come. In fact, I counted on it." His facial features stretched as his jaws elongated and claws sprung from his fingertips. "The blood of a totem is required to begin my campaign." The wendigo in the suit looked to his compatriots on the stage. "He's mine, let no one interfere." The wendigos on the stage nodded as the one in the suit turned to face Charlie again. Charlie hefted his ax in one hand as he stared at the wendigo.

The wendigo lunged at Charlie, who side stepped and attempted to bring the ax around to bear on the wendigos neck. The wendigo brought his hand around and knocked the ax off of its mark. Charlie snapped his left leg out and caught the still bent over wendigo in the mouth, spinning him across the stage. The wendigo still managed to land on his feet, and he turned to hiss at Charlie.

The vamps in the crowd were cheering the wendigo on with shouts of encouragement. A few of the vamps had to be restrained from joining the fight by the wendigos on the stage and the others who had moved into the crowd.

Charlie lifted the ax over his head and jumped towards the wendigo. The wendigo leaned into Charlie's jump and struck him in the chest with an open hand, sending him back to the other side of the stage; his ax flew out of his hand and landed off stage somewhere.

Charlie quickly reached down and withdrew his tomahawk. It was a little better suited for one-on-one combat, while the ax was better against crowds. Charlie let loose with another battle cry as he threw the tomahawk with all of his might while he moved closer to the wendigo. The tomahawk found its mark, and buried itself deeply into the wendigos chest.

The wendigo doubled over for a moment. It wouldn't kill the wendigo, Charlie knew, but it would take him a second to recover. Charlie reached forward and grabbed the things head with both hands. He twisted so hard that the whole body flipped around as the neck emitted a loud snap.

The wendigo gave a shudder and then lay still. Charlie quickly reached down and retrieved his tomahawk with one hand, and grabbed the dead wendigos arm with the other hand. He flung the body into the middle of the crowd. The vamps gave him a confused look.

Suddenly the body erupted into white flames. Several vampires caught fire, and the building was consumed with chaos. At first Charlie thought it was because of the fire, and then he noticed all of the men in body armor with guns rushing into the building.

Charlie used the distraction to jump off of the stage and retrieve his ax as he stuffed his tomahawk back into his belt. He jumped back onto the stage and found the two of the wendigos still there. He gave a battle cry that could be heard over the sounds of the fight as he charged the two monsters. They both turned to look as he swung the ax. The blade was swung with enough might to behead both in one swing. Before the bodies could even fall to the ground, he pushed them into the crowd, setting even more of the vamps on fire.

Charlie paused long enough for it to register that the men in armor were shooting the vamps with their guns, and they were dusting. I wonder how in the hell they're doing that! Charlie thought. There was a mixture of smoke from the burning vamps and dust from the dead one's choking the air inside the warehouse.

Charlie suddenly felt a sharp pain in his leg. When he looked down, there was a hard wooden shaft about four inches long and about the same thickness as a pencil protruding from his leg. He turned the pain into anger and catapulted off of the stage into the crowd of vampires.

He preformed a steady stream of hacks, slashes, blocks, and dodges for about ten minutes. Finally, Charlie saw the last of the surviving vamps head out of the side door. He started to head after them, still worked up from the battle, when he noticed two groups of the armored men surrounding the remaining four wendigos.

The armored men were steadily firing the stake-guns at the wendigos. The wendigos were in pain; they were starting to look like wendigo pincushions. But Charlie knew they wouldn't kill the monsters. Charlie was going to intervene when two armored men stepped forward; each took aim with a weapon that was drastically different from the stake-guns.

The stake-gun looked more or less like a standard M-16. Charlie had even noticed the armor wearers replacing magazines like a regular M-16. But these guns he saw now looked like a metal sawed off shotgun. Both of the guns fired almost simultaneously as the group of armor wearers quickly backed away from the wendigos. They spewed what looked like several electrical arcs.

The wendigos were enveloped in the blue arcs, and fell to the ground shaking. An armor wear from each group kneeled next to the wendigos and administered a blue fluid from huge syringes.

The men with the electrical guns turned and aimed their weapons at Charlie. They were wearing black military looking fatigues and black mask with goggles that didn't allow the eyes to be seen. Over the fatigues they had some sort of black, plastic looking armor. The armor over the torso had a vest over it, which had several pockets and loops on it. The two that had their weapons pointed at Charlie also had side arms slung low on their thighs in nylon holsters.

First one, then the other, pulled the mask and goggles off.

I should have known. Charlie thought, as he looked at Finn and the girl from the alley.

"Mr. Finn." Charlie stated, as he surveyed the room, looking for a way out that didn't involve going through a platoon of armed men.

"That's Agent Finn to you, Mr. Proudstar." Finn replied with a smirk. "And I'd like to thank you for making my job easier." Charlie gave him a perplexed look, and Finn continued. "Well, first off I now have federal charges on you. You stole government property when you helped yourself to my wallet."

Charlie smirked. "You want charges? That I can give you."

Charlie started towards the two agents, forgetting all about the electric guns in their hands. Finn fired his weapon, and Charlie was instantly in agony. It felt like his skin and insides were on fire. He fell heavily to the ground.

He was still conscious, even if just barely. He couldn't move, but he could still see and hear. He saw the girl kneel over him.

"Time for you to join the other hostiles." She said as she shoved a syringe filled with the blue fluid into his neck. He lost consciousness almost immediately.