-Chapter 21, Alice: Have You Seen This Girl?-
It was extremely difficult to watch Bella run off toward the military base that had taken over the Forks High School campus. I knew it was a useless fear – an unfounded one, considering how strong she was – but I couldn't help it.
The sense of dread was compounded by the absence of my gift.
I didn't remember my human life at all. Where the rest of my vampire family members had chunks of their memories taken by the transformation and murky human memories throughout the rest, I was left with nothing. My very first memories – the first conscious thought I had, in my mind – was sometime in the later half of my change.
And my gift was my constant companion through my awakening into this eternal life. It showed me what paths to take and which ones to avoid, and it allowed me the confidence to know my family and I remained safe and sound. We relied on it to check for sunny days and to predict favorable stock in up-and-coming companies.
But with Bella and with the infection in general…well…there was nothing. Just a deep, dark pit of empty space where I knew my foresight had once lived. I had been terrified at being so blind when Bella came to Forks, and I'll admit I did blame her for my ability's malfunction. But Bella's story was just so…I don't know, tragic?
I knew there were pieces she hadn't told me – or any of us. Whatever Carlisle had talked to her about had devastated her so completely that she went off on a killing spree. We all forgave her, of course; there wasn't one of us, except Carlisle, who hadn't lost control. In a way – and I know it's horrible to think, considering how badly I knew Bella regretted it – her slip had brought her closer to our family.
Well, except for Edward.
The boy was too wrapped up in Angela to view Bella as anything more than another potential threat. Well…maybe that wasn't so true; he held her in higher regard than James and Victoria, for sure, and the Quileute wolves as well, but it was impossible to miss the way his eyes sharpened whenever Angela and Bella were in the same room.
Rosalie took a while to warm up to anyone. A long while. I didn't think she mistrusted her as much as Edward did, but she wasn't on friendly terms with her yet. Given enough time, I knew she would come around to at least liking the girl.
Emmett, Esme, and Carlisle were all generally welcoming to Bella. Emmett was more flamboyant and excited about her and her incredible abilities while Esme gave her her own space. She felt badly for her, I knew from Edward and from watching our mother figure wrench her hands whenever Bella's exploits in Phoenix were brought up.
So it was essentially impossible to remain calm and collected as I watched the girl that had quickly become family to us dispatch a sniper with the black and red blade that had replaced her arm, absorbing his organs and skin and blood inside herself. My fingers dug deep marks into the tree bark of the branch I was perched in as I watched her, disguised as the sniper, enter easily into the military base.
The doors closed after her and I was left staring at the school grounds, straining my ears to pick up her sturdy footsteps as she moved further and further inside. A routine caravan of soldiers rolled past the perimeter a little too close to my hiding spot and I was forced to duck around the tree trunk and out of sight. When they were gone and their voices began to meld into the hum of the armored vehicle they were riding in I resumed my vigil.
I was so focused on listening for any sign of Bella – be it her deciding to rip her way out of the building or the soldiers shooting at her – that I didn't notice the influx of soldiers steadily moving toward the large multipurpose building Bella had disappeared into. They weren't quite running but their hands were on their guns and they looked tense, like a monster could pop up out of nowhere at any moment.
The doors that Bella had gone through opened wide and the soldiers raised their guns as they entered swiftly in a two-by-two formation. I waited ten seconds staring daggers into the brick wall. Then another ten.
But Bella never came out.
There were no shots fired and I could only hear an incoherent amalgamation of voices from the inside. My stomach twisted in knots and if I wasn't a vampire I would have been hyperventilating from the stress.
She wasn't coming out!
I took a step forward, intending to jump out of the tree…and then took a step back. What could I do? If I tried to go in there, I would expose my kind. Bella had said that she could handle this by herself without any problems, but something didn't feel right. I clutched my head in frustration, feeling the tingle that was usually accompanied by a vision. Only nothing came of it and I was stuck between risking exposing vampires to the military or letting Bella fend for herself with an army inside a small space.
The thudding sound of an approaching helicopter rapidly enveloped the air, further drowning out most of the mutters and footfalls inside the building. I leaned out of the tree a way, holding onto the bark with my finger tips, and tilted my head up to get a better look at the skyline that the chopper was coming from.
It was definitely not one of the usual attack helicopters that had been frequenting Forks airspace. There were guns aplenty, to be sure, but the body was longer and wider and the rotating blades extended much further than the others. A soldier hanging out of the middle of the chopper aimed his rifle across the campus as the aircraft landed on the grass parallel to the parking lot.
A ramp extended from the back of the helicopter and four soldiers exited, all aiming their weapons at the door the others had gone through. It only took a glance to realize that they weren't planning on entering as well, though; they were set up as a sort of guard – a lane – between the multipurpose building and the helicopter.
Another soldier came out of the aircraft.
He was much taller than the others: six foot five or six for sure, and he walked with an uncharacteristic swagger. His barely-thinning light-brown hair and the worry lines running down his face made him look to be about thirty five or so, but the substantial black armor that wrapped around his body gave him an almost timeless appearance.
And then there was also the gigantic rifle attached to his back. I wasn't an expert on guns, since they were of little consequence to a vampire, but I knew that whatever he was carrying was stupidly overpowered. It was too stocky to be a long range weapon, but it had the wrong shape to be a rocket or grenade launcher. I had watched Emmett play enough of his war games to understand the basic types.
"You sure she's down?" the intimidating soldier shouted over the chopper to someone inside the building and out of my view. His accent was unmistakably Irish, though it wasn't as harsh as the locals when we occasionally went to visit the coven in Ireland. "I'm not havin' her wake up mid-flight, so you better make certain ya' were generous with the dosage."
"A full tank's worth," a voice replied, revealing a smaller man in a lab coat squinting his eyes in the direction of the helicopter. "Any more and we risk compromising the viral integrity."
"I would hesitate to wager an atom bomb could compromise the viral integrity, doctor," the soldier snarked and waved someone else on.
"No!" I hissed as four more soldiers marched out carrying a rigid stretcher with a severely burned body lying on it. My eyes darted between the body and the building, hoping that the person they were carrying onto the helicopter wasn't Bella, even though I knew in my gut that it was.
Was she dead? I asked myself. I couldn't be sure, and my senses were no help. Bella had no heartbeat to begin with, much like many of the infected creatures we had come across, and I didn't know for sure if she required oxygen to survive. The body wasn't moving, though, and I could not hear any breaths or movements at all from the scarred pile of meat that had to be Bella.
I launched out of the tree before I could consciously make the decision to, teeth bared as I landed soundly and flitted at full speed toward Bella and her entourage of humans. The Irishman's eyes widened and he took a step back instinctively as I flung his large body out of the way with little effort.
"What the fuck?" a masked soldier exclaimed, as he and the rest of the guards slowly acclimated to my sudden presence.
A part of my brain was screaming at me to think about what I was doing. This was wrong! Not only was I endangering the lives of anyone who saw me move – not that I very much cared what happened to these particular men – I was also risking my family's existence. If I didn't permanently silence these men, the Volturi would have more than enough justification to destroy me.
But I wasn't thinking predominately about that. I didn't care, even as the Irishman jumped to his feet and the other soldiers turned their rifles toward me.
"Well, now," he said, caution bleeding through his tone. "Who might you be?"
He must have caught my gaze flicker between him and the gurney that Bella was being carried on – which was now on the ground from the shock of my sudden appearance. His eyebrows rose and his back straightened as his blue gaze stayed locked on me.
"Friend of yours, perhaps?" he cocked his head in Bella's direction. I bared my teeth at him and the soldiers flinched. "Well I'd love t' have a tussle with ya', but we're on a bit of a schedule." He shrugged and half turned away, nodding to the men who had dropped the stretcher. They picked it up promptly and began carrying it to the helicopter.
"No!" I growled and lunged, ignoring the bursts of fire that were shot off as the soldiers flinched. The few slugs that hit me bounced off my skin harmlessly, obviously not designed to harm a vampire.
I plowed through those men who were directly in front of me, sending them tumbling away as the specific sound of crushing bone snapped through the air after them. I was so close to the panicked soldiers who were shouting at each other, rushing to get the stretcher locked in place.
And then something hit me. Hard.
It didn't hurt – it wasn't a strong-enough blow to do any damage to a vampire – but it did make me stumble. I hissed as I clawed the muddy ground and flung myself back into a crouch, spinning to charge again. The Irishman cracked his shoulder audibly and grunted.
"Sturdy girl," he licked his lips and brought out the gun that he had been holding on his back, aiming it at me as he flicked a switch near the trigger. "Tell the pilot to take off now!" He shouted louder to his men without taking his eyes off of me.
He took aim with his gun, but I wasn't waiting around to have a one-on-one fight with whoever – whatever – the hell this guy was. A blue flash blitzed over my shoulder as I dove in an arc, aiming to overtake the solider and reach the chopper that was rapidly winding up for takeoff as one of the grunts shouted at the pilot. The whining crack of whatever he had fired at me was followed up quickly by the distant crash of the projectile obliterating something.
"Stop that bitch!" the soldier shouted over the gunshots that were already flying through the air. They did less damage than a gentle caress and were little more than distracting as I blurred toward the closing hatch on the helicopter.
I backhanded one of the men who were guarding the departing aircraft and his head tore off with slight resistance, sloshing blood in a parabola as it sailed through the air. Two more soldiers survived my brute force attack, spiraling into the mud as I barreled into them. My hand crumbled the metal edge of the loading ramp as it had nearly closed completely and I snarled at the frantic men inside who were pelting me with bullets through the small sliver of space that separated them from me.
I had begun to peel open the ramp like a sardine can when I felt the helicopter lift off the ground. "No!" I screamed, and kicked my feet, keeping my hold on the chopper as I searched for anything to anchor onto. For all a vampire's strength, I could do nothing but hold on as I was lifted into the sky with the rest of the soldiers and Bella.
Bella.
I hissed and shoved my other hand through the metal, hugging the corner of the craft with my legs as I began to rip my way through to the girl I was trying to save.
"Shit, shit, shit!" one of the soldiers screamed from inside. "Shake her off!"
"We're not even above the treeline; fucking shoot it!" another screamed back.
But neither happened, because I was suddenly jarred backward as something gripped onto my left leg. I retreated back halfway out of the helicopter and looked at the Irishman in shock. He had leaped up at least twenty feet into the air and grabbed onto me. I flexed my leg, preparing to shed him off of me, when I heard the familiar cocking of a rifle and saw another blue flash out of the corner of my eye.
It didn't hurt, exactly, whatever it was that hit me. It was an odd sensation – one I hadn't encountered in my vampire life – and my body almost vibrated with the intensity of the blast. My ears rang and my vision narrowed and, against my will, my hand slipped from the sure and sturdy grip it had on the chopper.
I recovered almost instantly – it lasted barely a second – but as I reached back out to secure my hold, I snagged nothing but air. My arms flailed as the aircraft moved further and further away. My unwanted, attached partner and I dipped and fell the short distance to the ground.
I rolled away from the soldier and leapt to my feet, flitting after the rapidly-ascending chopper. It was so far away now, further than even a vampire could leap, but it wasn't faster. I could follow it all the way out of the state if I had to; and even swimming, I was strong enough to keep pace with it.
The cracking sound of the Irishman's gun reached my ears a moment before that same tingling sensation rocked through my body, causing my muscles to seize involuntarily. I dropped like a rock and lost sight of the aircraft as I skidded into the damp, moss-filled mud at nearly ninety miles-per-hour.
An angry hiss bubbled out of my bared teeth as I spun toward the piece of shit that had consistently kept me from saving Bella's life. I was shaking as I crouched about a football field's length from him, caught between my instinct to kill the human and my need to keep up with the chopper.
The choice was made for me, though, as another blue lightning-like projectile seared through the space I had just been occupying. I wasn't sure exactly what he was shooting at me, but I knew that they seemed to momentarily disable me. And the prick had excellent aim.
The Irishman leans his head back out of the sights of the lightning rifle and eyes me with…intrigue? His hands remain on the stock with a firm grip, but I could see the curiosity and excitement shining in his blue eyes.
I pushed off the ground toward him in a dead sprint, sig-zagging as he raised his rifle to fire. A blue blur crackled by me once…twice…and he adjusted his aim a third time as I closed in on him. He raised the rifle up to block me, but I was much too strong for him as I plowed into his body in a full-on tackle.
There was screeching and the satisfying sound of snapping bones as the two of us dug a deep ditch into the ground and part of the blacktop. His arms flailed as we came to a stop next to one of the military hummers, and I snaked my hands under his limbs to reach for his neck. He must have felt my arm, because he curled into a ball and kicked out, barely moving me a foot but sending him sliding away from me across the concrete.
My nostrils flared as I caught the scent of blood in the air and my eyes zeroed in on the abrasions on the soldier's cheek. The red oozed out in between the small rocks embedded in his flesh from the tackle and welled on the surface of the skin. My throat was beginning to burn from having human blood so close, coupled with the strong heartbeat that pounded away behind the Irishman's body armor.
The helicopter was further off in the distance now; too far to see, but I could still hear it faintly. I could also hear the heavy breathing of a multitude of guards running around to see what all the racket was. From their footsteps, I placed them somewhere near the History building, so they would only have to cross under the walkway and go around the multipurpose building before they made it here.
I didn't have much time before another group of humans would try and fail to kill me. I needed to make a decision.
Kill him and run after Bella?
Yes!
That's what I wanted to do, instinctually. Deep in my gut I wanted to just snap the smug soldier's neck and follow the chopper. However…I needed to face a few inconvenient realities.
There was a slim chance I wouldn't be able to follow after the chopper. While it couldn't match a vampire for speed, it could fly over places I couldn't go: military camps full of humans with guns, the reservation, or even another hoard of zombies.
We also had no idea what we were really dealing with. Bella explained as best she could what it was like in Phoenix – and we had firsthand knowledge of what the larger infected were capable of – but it was all still so unknown. How did it start? Was it manmade? If so, why was it unleashed?
There was no guarantee this man knew the answers to these mysteries, but at least he would have a solid idea where the chopper was going. And he would tell me, one way or another.
In the half second it took me to decide to spare his life in order to interrogate him, the other soldiers were still on their way, slowly but surely, and the Irishman was eyeing the strange gun he shot me with as it rested several meters from where he stood. In another half second, I was upon him, lifting his oversized body over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and blurring away into the dense forest that led away from our house.
Once I was sure we were far enough away that none of the soldiers at the school could hear us, I flung the Irishman off my back and watched in satisfaction as he tumbled and rolled to a stop into a sapling, demolishing the small tree with his sizable mass.
As he groaned and recovered, I fingered the tear he had made in my shirt with a knife he had stashed somewhere on his body. The blade had done no damage at all to me, of course, but it had left an obnoxious gash through what had been an expensive sweater. I would have been more upset if it hadn't already been ruined by the bloodstains that covered my sleeves.
"Where's Bella?" I spat through my teeth.
"Fuck me," he groaned and cracked his neck, heavily leaning against a nearby tree. "You're a strong bitch, ain't ya'?"
I blurred over to him and grabbed hold of his chest plate with one hand, lifting him off the ground with ease. He let out a breath as his legs kicked out involuntarily from the sudden lift, scraping against the top of some of the undergrowth, but he didn't utter a word. His blue eyes met my black ones in a silent contest.
"Where is she?"
"Long gone," he coughed out through a forced grin. I sneered back and tossed him over my head, getting minor satisfaction out of seeing his fragile body bounce and roll off the forest floor. "Is that her name, by th' way?" he laughed as he lay on his back, causing spittle to smear across his ruined cheek. "Nothin' more than a milk run for me, doll. But the white coats are probably back at their lab by now, strokin' each other off just cuttin' into her."
"Why?" I snarled, flitting over to him and kneeling on his chest to hold him down. I gave his shoulders a steady knock back onto the forest floor as I barred my teeth. "What the fuck did you do to her and where are they taking her?"
"Forgive me if I don't see the point in telling you a fuckinahgh –" he wheezed out as my knee cracked his armor easily and dug into his diaphragm.
"Because I'll break every bone in your body if you don't," my voice was calmer than I thought I could manage with the strengthening impulses to just tear out the man's throat. My hands searched the compartments on his armor, pulling out a generic keycard – plain white without a single line of text or photograph – and an old, worn-down silver dollar. I pocketed them both.
"You love it, then," he choked out as I released the pressure on his body. "Has to be. Ain't that somthin'…caring about a virus like it's a person. You know she's not, though, right? It's not anything more than the flu with an ego boost."
"You said you didn't know who she was," I stood up but kept close to the Irishman. He was disarmed – his big gun was back at the school – so I didn't see any harm in granting him the illusion of freedom and space if he was willing to talk.
"Oh…oh yes, I see now," he snorted and rolled onto his feet, hunching over as he stood – still towering over my height despite his stature. The man groaned and wrapped an arm around his chest where I had pressed through the armor. "Smarter Runner than I thought it'd be, that one. Buddying up to you and becoming your friend – telling you it loved you and pretending that it cared.
"I don't know what ya' are, girl, but you're clearly not a regular human being," he limped back over into another tree and leaned against it, half-supporting his weight on his left foot. "Convenient that she should make nice with you – a golem?" he guessed, looking at with lidded eyes that were almost giddy. "Is that what ya' are? Or maybe some sorta alien? Its affections for ya' last about as long as the face it wears. It's a farce – a ruse – it only cares about its own survival."
"You need to worry about your own survival if you don't tell me where they took her!" I clenched my hands, reminding myself that he couldn't talk if he was in pieces. I had to wait.
A twig snapping drew my attention behind me. I strained my ears and scented the air as I turned halfway around in a crouch. A chill ran up my spine as I realized that with so many infected creatures roaming about the wilderness, I was at a significant disadvantage if something or someone wanted to sneak up on me.
I hissed and backed up near the spot the Irishman was leaning, staring in shock at the group of wolves that descended out from among the trees.
As the group of seven moved closer, I realized I had been mistaken. These weren't wolves; not really. Their bodies were deformed and ragged, without hair, and they let out shrill shrieks in uneven intervals where there should have been growling and snarling. They smelled diseased and rotten.
These were…
"Infected!" the Irishman gasped from my side, staring at the creatures that looked so much like Bella's 'wolf' form. In another part of my mind, I wondered if Quileute wolves had been killed in order for these creatures to rise in their place.
The front of the pack split down the middle as footfalls moved swiftly toward us, bringing with it a familiar smell – wet carrion and infected blood. Two hunters, running on four legs like gorillas, rushed to the head of the group. Their skinless heads jerked toward us and their maws snapped furiously as their razor sharp claws dug trenches into the mud.
"No, no," a dead voice called, eliciting a snarl from each of the hunters. Another wolf beast ran through the divided pack and stood next to the hunters, but this one was carrying the girl we had fought before. Her pale hands dug into the bare flesh of the infected wolf to keep her balance, drawing rivets of blood that ran down the sides of the creature. Her eyes were just as black and desolate as they had been during our first encounter. "We need this to be a hunter attack."
With no further action or any sort of audible command, the hunters lumbered forward in a dead sprint toward us.
I reacted as quickly as I could and snatched the Irishman from his spot against the tree. Several of the bones in his arms snapped from the force and velocity, but I needed to get the hell out of there and I couldn't leave him to die. He was stubborn and explicit, but he was also the only real lead I had at finding Bella.
My left foot pivoted in the mud as I threw the soldier over my soldier and ran.