* * *
It was just like the good old days, except that in the good old days they’d been fighting zombies and they’d been allowed to kill them. Skylar thought she could probably shoot a couple of knee-caps without anyone dying, but that wasn’t what Truman meant. They weren’t supposed to fight back at all, and certainly not do any actual harm.
That was becoming a problem. The townsfolk had been following them for a couple of minutes. A steady jog had kept them ahead of the fastest villagers, but meant that the slowest ones had lost interest and headed back to the castle. If they wanted to hold all of the attackers, they had to make a stand. To make a stand, they’d have to hurt people. Thus, the problem.
“We stop here,” Truman said. Ah for the days when he’d been her equal instead of her superior. They’d had fun: her mocking his country and accent, him taking it all in good humour. Being in charge had drained all the fun out of Truman. He no longer acted like she was his Southern Belle or kid sister; no nicknames or levity; everything was work and work was serious.
“Do we have a plan?” she asked. They hadn’t brought tranquilisers or traps, nothing suited to subduing a group of people. They’d come to fight a war with lead bullets, not rubber ones.
“Not really,” he said. “But they can’t keep drifting away like they are.”
So they stood. They shouted warnings at the black-dressed crowd, then threw the last of their tear gas. That bought them another minute or so as the crowd coughed and rubbed their eyes, but did little to disperse them. When the smoke cleared, there seemed to be more there than before. And the new faces had all brought weapons: baseball bats and cricket bats and lengths of wood. Only a few of them seemed to have brought guns, so that was good.
“Orders?” Skylar asked.
“Hand to hand.”
Was Truman serious? He looked serious. Angry. Worried. Determined. He removed the ammo from his L85, stripped the weapon into bits, tossed the bits away, and balled his fists. Skylar kept her rifle on its strap; while there was always a chance someone would use it against her, she’d rather have it than not.
When the first of the red-faced, crying mob reached them, it became clear that Estikans didn’t get out much. The strikes of their brooms and – was that guy holding the metal rod from a vacuum cleaner? – had almost no force to them. She’d fought zombies stronger than this.
Individual strength wasn’t the problem, though. She could easily knock one man aside, disarm another of his tyre iron, and use that to discourage a third from trying to kick her by breaking his knee, but there was always more to take his place. About twenty more, actually.
Mitchell was annoyingly right: killing a few would stop the rest, maybe even disperse the crowd. Without using lethal force… they were buying time and nearly out of credit.
The first proper hit Skylar received was a shock. She’d been keeping two men at bay when another had hit across the right shoulder with a baseball bat. Actually, no, it was a softball bat: the foam type with a hard plastic bar down the centre.
That was the first hit that got through. The next followed shortly after, a golf club. Then another. She suspected they weren’t hitting as hard as they could – chivalry, perhaps – but it was enough to knock the wind out of her or flash red across her vision. The mob had closed in all around, less like a circle than a figure-of-eight with Skylar and Truman in the holes. There was always someone at her back.
And soon enough, that someone grabbed her. She slammed her elbow back and brought her foot down on the man’s toes, which was enough to shake him off, but then others were all over her: grabbing her arms and placing her in a headlock to stop her struggling. Not choking, yet, but holding her firm.
“Take her gun!” a woman yelled, and Skylar’s rifle was yanked from the strap around her neck and disappeared into the crowd.
Skylar stopped struggling. She couldn’t say she was confident they’d let her go, but perhaps she should have more faith in mob justice. Maybe they were all fine and reasonable people with genuine grievances to work through and if she cooperated they’d treat her well.
“Break her arm so she doesn’t try to escape again!” shouted a bloody-faced man in his mid-twenties.
So much for fine and reasonable.
Beside her, Truman struggled against his attackers, who had chosen the proven battle strategy of all tackling him at once. Truman was strong, but he couldn’t push back the sheer weight of the Estikans. Soon he, too, was taken.
There had to be a way out of this. Maybe she could reach one of her grenades, pull the pin; take them out with her. Not exactly a victory, but a spiteful final moment. She’d settle for that. She didn’t have the chance, though; they forced her arms behind her back until they threatened to dislocate and someone else had a steak knife near her throat.
“Ideas, sir?” she asked.
“Shut up!”
Someone hit her. Another knocked her onto her knees beside Truman.
“We did our best,” Truman said, with the conviction of someone who would die without regrets.
Regrets or no, Skylar would rather not die. Her prospects of life lessened with each second that civilians arrived with household weapons and that idiot held her gun. Once he worked out where the safety was, they were dead.
“No, you have to push the button on the left side, above the magazine,” someone said. Skylar couldn’t see the speaker; only the bottom of his trousers and his shoes. Black, of course. But not leather, for a change.
“Button?” asked the man with the gun.
“Turns off the safety so you can shoot them.”
No it didn’t. The safety was directly above the trigger. The button above the magazine was… Oh.
“This one?”
“That’s it.”
With a cnk and a clatter, the magazine fell out of the back of the rifle and landed in front of Skylar on the wet concrete.
“Huh?” said the man holding the gun.
“Yeah, I was lying.” The speaker twisted the rifle out of the man’s hands, spun it around, then slammed the stock into his face. “The safety is actually this switch.”
A single gunshot echoed into the night. Skylar waited for a collapsing body or a scream, but after the initial shriek of surprise no pained yells lingered.
“And don’t forget there’s still a round in the chamber,” said the speaker, before dropping the gun right in front of Skylar. Then he became a blur: in front of her, then in the midst of the crowd, then to her left. Everywhere he went, others fell. Some were thrown aside, others punched or tripped. A few tried to attack with knife or bat but the figure was too fast for them. Dressed in a finely-tailored suit, hair slicked back, he was a whirlwind for half a minute, after which he’d cleared the surrounding area of threats. The twenty or so who weren’t unconscious had retreated to the other side of the street.
Skylar grabbed her rifle off the ground, slapped the magazine back in place, pushed the bolt forward to chamber a round, and shifted to kneel in a firing stance.
“How you doing, sir?” Clarkson asked, offering a hand to Truman.
“Clarkson?” Truman asked.
“They’re aiming guns,” Skylar said and fired a warning shot past the mob.
“Get out of here,” Truman told Clarkson. “Help Paddington.”
“Yeah, about that,” Clarkson said as he ran toward the crowd. He leapt over one man as he shot a World War One revolver, twisted the man’s wrist, plucked the gun from the air before it hit the ground, and tossed it toward Truman. “I’m not comfortable with that whole plan, being that I’ve only had good relations with the girls these past years.”
“You’re sentimental?” Truman asked.
“Call it a conflict of interest. I don’t want all vampires to die.” A pile of unconscious forms was again growing at Clarkson’s feet, so he fought atop it. Skylar kept expecting him to twist his ankle or slip, but his balance was impeccable whether he was on the ground, a victim,
or the shoulders of someone still fighting. Not that he was ever still long enough for them to take a clean shot or swipe at him; Clarkson was faster than any Andraste and strung attacks together into an endless chain. Dodging one punch led naturally into kicking a different attacker, then – before he’d put his leg down – punching someone else and hurling the original attacker to the ground.
The fight didn’t take long. The group that had overwhelmed she and Truman had been single-handedly disarmed within two minutes, leaving the humans with a hoard of weapons Clarkson had stolen from the Estikans. Sixteen figures had been knocked unconscious and the rest had fled in a direction decidedly away from the castle, legs a-shaking and making girly sounds. Watching them try to run in high heels was particularly satisfying.
Clarkson let out a contented sigh. “That was fun.”
“Fun?” Skylar asked. They’d nearly died. They’d been at the mercy of a street gang. And not a proper, macho street gang. They’d been taken hostage by skinny teens and twenties with bad haircuts and low self-esteem. All because Truman wouldn’t give the necessary order. Some leader.
“Yeah. Oh, I could see you two were trying your best,” Clarkson clapped her on the back sympathetically, “but that wasn’t so hard.”
Shit. That had been one vampire. And they’d sent seven people to fight… how many of them? Nine?
Werewolves or not, that battle must have been a slaughter.