In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.

I am, of course, indebted to Stephanie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.

Chapter 26, the story of the Medal and my first op (continued)

(Bella's POV)

This chapter continues Bella's recounting of her first rescue mission with the freedom fighters.

"A nurse quickly started the bag of blood without looking up to meet the doctor's glare. She must have known he was a jerk. With my limited exposure to boys and men, having grown up in an all-female population typical to the living death camp, I didn't know that 'jerkiness' was often a part of the typical male constitution.

'She may only have 40% chance of survival if her blood type doesn't match, but she has 0% without it,' I said again, trying to convince myself, while watching the shallow breathing of the unconscious girl. 'We will just have to wait to see if she survives.'

I moved the injured girl to one of the tents, laid her on a cot, and then sat down on the floor next to the cot to keep watch. I was exhausted, but I stayed awake. She survived the night, and at about 3:00 A.M., the nurse brought her more blood. 'One of the freedom fighters gave you part of his allocation of both blood and food, but I'm not supposed to tell you that,' she whispered.

Around 8:00 A.M., the girl finally woke up. The whole colony knew when she woke up, since she started screaming the moment she opened her eyes. I had some food, so I would take a bite, and then put the next bite up to her mouth. She would eat a little, then scream some more. She would say, 'No,no, no' or 'Why?' repeatedly, and then scream. And man, did she have a set of lungs. I was proud of her. She could have filled in for many of the lackluster heroines in the horror movies I so perversely loved to watch when I got the chance. Everyone kept asking, 'Why watch Bela Lugosi's Dracula, when you live in a world populated by the real thing?' But I loved my horror movies, and I still watch them every chance I get.

But as for my screaming friend, I just encouraged her. 'Get it out,' I told her. 'Just get it out; what you went through was hell.' Eventually I got her name out of her, it was Marsha. Such a nice name for such an awful world.

The doctor stuck his nose in the tent around 9:30 in the morning; he brought something to keep her quiet. 'Are we bothering you?' I asked.

He left without saying a word, leaving the sedatives and a bottle of water on the tent floor.

Then my c.o. arrived. I could see him outside, and watched the freedom fighters run to him like children, so eager to enumerate my screw-ups. He listened to them for a while, eventually motioning to them to go into a tent so he could sit down. I knew he was in a great deal of pain. He believed he had liver cancer, but refused to take pain pills or any other kind of medication, preferring to save the limited medical supplies for the young. For those who were going to survive this world, and live to see the return of human law, as he put it.

Eventually, he came over to our tent, stuck his head in, and motioned for me to come outside. I told Marsha I would be right outside, and I would leave the flap open so she could see me. I got a few screams in response, so I gave her thumbs up, telling her once again to get it all out of her system. "

We did a debriefing outside the tent. The freedom fighters had returned with twenty living colonists that they found locked up in the basement. There had been thirty-five people taken captive. Of the original thirty-five, ten had died last night in that dinner party. Four others had been taken upstairs in the days immediately after the hunter's raid on the colony, and were never seen again.

The other twenty had a terrifying tale to tell. They had been kept in the basement with the tiger. There were two cages in the lodge basement. The first cage covered half the floor, and the second cage sat inside the larger one in a back corner. The lock had been removed from the larger cage, so the door swung open at the touch of a hand. The smaller cage had a latch that could be used to close the door from the inside. It was a 5 x 7 holding cell. The tiger was allowed to roam loose in the open, uncaged part of the room at the foot of the stairs.

So the thirty-five people were not safe in the large cage, but they couldn't all fit in the 5x7 holding cell. When they all tried to cram into the holding cell at once, it was clear that the people closest to the outer bars could be reached by the tiger. They tried tying the door shut to the main cage with a shirt, and lodging a boot under it for further security, but they knew that this would not hold if the tiger actually made a real attempt to get in. And if they ran for the security of the interior holding cell, he would be able to maul at least a few between the bars.

But the tiger never tried to enter their cage. He just paced the length of the wall, and spent his time bounding up and down the stairs, trying to get out. The vampire hunter was clearly trying to turn him in to a man-eater, as he encouraged the tiger to enter the cell holding the thirty-five people, and dragged a few humans out by the hair and dangled them in front of the tiger.

However, it appeared that the tiger was not a willing man-eater. The hunter didn't feed him for a few days, to see if he would attack a human, but he hadn't. So the hunter pulled a man out, snapped his neck, dismembered him, and then fed the legs to the tiger. The tiger reluctantly tore into the dismembered legs, but did not try to hunt a live human.

I shuddered after hearing this story, no wonder Marsha was still screaming. She had endured the experience in the basement, and then had been sent up to be served for dinner. She had watched the other colonists, people she had known all her life, being killed before she was strapped to the table. The multiple bite wounds on her body were a grim reminder of just how close she had come to dying in that room as well.

My c.o. then asked for my report on the mission. I told him everything, mostly honestly, including how I had ditched the rest of the group. I told him that I was worried that my smell as a human teenage girl would attract attention, so I decided to use it to draw the hunters from the house and away from the freedom fighters. That way the men would have an opportunity to sneak up behind the vampires and take them by surprise. The c.o. clearly wasn't buying that part of my story, but he couldn't figure out what he was missing. My c.o. didn't know, nor did I feel he needed to know, how attractive my scent was so attractive to these bloodthirsty immortals. If he did know, he might not want to send me on any future missions.

He was very interested to hear about my experience in the woods with the tiger. 'So it just looked at you, then took off in a different direction?' he asked.

'Correct,' I replied. 'And since he wasn't going in the direction of the freedom fighters, I saw no reason to interfere. He hadn't hurt me, after all. Maybe he heard a deer or something.' Then I continued my report about entering the house, encountering the dinner party, and my return back to camp with Marsha.

When I got to the part about the doctor, the c.o. made a quick call. He asked someone over the phone if they could were available, as a girl had been traumatized. He apparently got an affirmative response, because he said thank you, and gave a coded response for our location.

A few hours later, a car arrived, and the c.o. went out to meet it. When he returned, he had a tall, willowy woman with him, whom he introduced her as a doctor. Too pale, too perfect. Had the c.o. just called in an f*ing vampire? Was he for real?

'No way. She's been through enough at your kind's hands,' I spat at her.

'Human doctors get tired, and they get frustrated with the lack of supplies. I do not need sleep, and I practiced in a time before modern medicine, so I am versed in the old ways as well as the modern. I will take on her care,' the vampress said quietly in her way too smooth voice.

I had my gun cocked and pointed at her. It contained bullets laced with Agent Orange. These bullets wouldn't kill a vampire, but they would burn them and cause a great deal of pain.

'I'm only letting you into this tent because my c.o. brought you here. If you come in here, you will do as I say regarding this patient until Marsha is strong enough to manage her own care. You understand?' I snapped at the vampress.

'Yes, young one,' she replied cooly.

The new doctor came in to the tent and walked up to the bed. Marsha, as I expected, immediately pulled away from her. I sat down on the other side of the bed by Marsha and put my arm around her shoulders. 'I won't let her do anything you don't want,' I said. 'That male doctor out there is looking after other patients, and my commanding officer brought this one here to treat you.'

Marsha didn't look totally convinced, who could blame her, but she slowly nodded her agreement, and I gestured for the vampress to approach.

The vampire doctor looked her over, and then looked at me. 'I will need to move her to my clinic, to complete her care. She has been through much, and she needs time to heal.'

I agreed that she needed time to heal and told Marsha we were taking her someplace else for a while. Marsha nodded again, but started to tense up at the thought of leaving.

Then that dumb-assed vampress leaned over Marsha, staring straight into eyes, and breathed on her. Marsha went quiet and fell back, limp. That vampire doctor had dazzled Marsh, right in front of me! So I shot the vampress in the butt.

The vampire doctor yelped in pain, and my c.o. came running into the tent. 'What the hell?' he yelled.

'Your good doctor just dazzled my friend here. She seems to have missed the part about any decisions on her care being made by me,' I replied.

'This doctor is a vetted ally; she left behind everything she owned in order to help us. She was even being tracked by the Volturi tracker Demetri because it was suspected she was using her skills to help humans in hiding,' he began.

But I wasn't buying it. 'Your Saint Vampire just dazzled this girl. She may be a volunteer, but she needs to understand that the resistance movement is about humans making their own decisions. Not some stupid vampire just doing as they see fit, for their own convenience. Does she understand that? Can she even comprehend that concept?' I yelled.

The vampress surprised me by nodding, while rubbing her butt, her face twisted in pain. She lifted her skirt and began the process of picking out the bullet with her fingernail, hissing and grimacing at the pain. Watching her was just plain gross, but I was proud of those bullets; they had been one of my more successful chemistry experiments. Vampires were so used to the concept that humans couldn't hurt them. Well, that just wasn't true anymore.

We bundled Marsha into a car, and the vampire doctor insisted on driving, as vampires always do. She continued to hiss and snarl at the pain in her hindquarters from my bullet, until I told her quietly that if she couldn't stifle the growls I would shoot her on the other side, as she was upsetting Marsha.

Eventually we reached her clinic in a small town that the vampires had not chosen to settle in after the Event. Her clinic was in a building which looked shabby on the outside but was pristinely clean on the inside. It had a calming vibe about it and was filled with soft lighting and plants. It was powered using generators, so that the location wouldn't show on a power grid to vampires looking for human colonists who might have moved into abandoned buildings. Marsha stayed there for quite a while, and ended up working with incoming patients instead of leaving and going to a colony once she regained her strength.

The vampire doctor and I eventually became friends, as unlikely as that might have seemed. The human doctor's reluctance to treat wounds such as Marsha's multiple bite wounds seemed mild compared to the general reluctance to treat the brothel girls I eventually made it my mission to rescue. Those girls were bleeding from internal injuries to their vaginas, rectums, and abdomen, and often also had broken kneecaps, shoulder blades, and even pelvises from the rough handling. Many would die no matter how many surgeries they went through. This woman vampire was the only one who would treat them.

Eventually it became a routine. Every time I went on a mission, I stocked up on medical supplies such as surgical supplies, sheets and medications, as well as gasoline for the generators. There were still plenty of warehouses stocked with medical supplies that weren't being used. Gasoline was harder to come by, but I managed.

When I arrived at the clinic with the girls, I also brought the supplies to treat them with. Many girls died as they were being transported from the brothel to the clinic. I was too late for them. I dug those who died graves en route if we had enough time, and if we didn't, we buried them in a quiet little area set aside for the purpose by the clinic. If the vampress couldn't heal a dying girl, she would hold her, rocking her as she died.

But all that was in the future. That night, back at the colony, the freedom fighters came up with a new toast in my honor: To Girls who Shoot Vampires in the Butt. Eventually a medal was struck for me with the letters GSVB on it and a promise to come up with a Latin phrase for those letters that would sound dignified and inspirational. The medal was delivered to me by an ally just before I got to Chicago back in July."

I looked up, and looked around the room. Leah was closest, and she nodded slowly. Emmett didn't laugh for once, and Carlisle was deep in thought.

Eventually, Rodrigo said that another one of the boys would be arriving at the house soon. He had flown one of the Home coven's Cessnas into the Forks airport, and they would be leaving to take Leah home. We said our good-byes, and after a few additional stare-downs and quiet snarls were exchanged between Jasper's group and Rodrigo's, they left.

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