(The Push Chronicles (Book 2): Indefatigable (10 page)

"Well, I guess we can all hear it together," I said as I pushed open the door to the lab's front room.

Like any professional set-up, the front chamber was dedicated to decontamination.  While I had no personal knowledge of criminal forensics, some scientific principles were universal.  You can't use something as data to prove or disprove a hypothesis if it's contaminated by outside sources.  I could see through the observation glass that Duane, Ex, Archer, and Eye were hard at work, with Tank's cybernetic systems acting as a convenient portal nano-factory for whatever minor materials or chemicals they needed at the time.  I didn't really know how Mind's Eye had any experience with this sort of thing ... she had been an investment banker in her pre-Whiteout life ... but her breadth of knowledge was astonishing.  Ex had served stints as an arson investigator with the fire department, while Duane and Archer's knowledge base was obvious.

"Morning, folks," I said over the intercom.  "How is everyone doing?"

Tank was most enthusiastic in his waving, but everyone working gave a nod or raised a hand.

"Morning, Indy, things are going great even though I really don't know what all is going on because really I'm just here to make stuff that folks need but its still really cool to get to do that but I think Mr. Brooks probably can tell you what's going on best and oh, hey hi, Ms. Choi!"  Rachel smiled and nodded through the glass to Tank in reply.

"I think Tank forgot to add that we're all doing pretty good," Ex added.  "Even Sir Bow-a-lot here is being very helpful."  Archer actually gave a guffaw at the poke.  From pissing contests to locker room camaraderie in one night.  I wasn't sure if I should be worried or not.

"Excellent," Rachel said, "I'm glad to see we're optimizing our resources on this, considering the gravity of the situation."  Duane, having heard his name mentioned, looked up for a moment distractedly, but then went back to what he was examining.  Mind's Eye cast a blind glance at the detective, then looked in the general direction of the glass.

"Mr. Brooks wishes me to give a summary of our findings as he is currently quite occupied," the Indian seer pronounced.  "The first vital bit of evidence is perhaps the most important in the long term."

"And that is?" I found myself asking.

"In attempting to perform a general reading of past events on the site, there were numerous blockages.  Blank spaces in the psychic record, so to speak."  Eye pursed her lips.  "I am certain you know what that indicates."  There were only four people we knew of that caused Eye's oracular powers to blank out.  I was the first.  Epic and Reaper were both known quantities: one was in his Palace of Rocking Parties and the other was chained by anti-psychotic drugs in the body of Gerald Schuller.  That left one person: Ian Mackenzie.

"Wait, why would a human supremacist use something Pushed like these vampires for foot soldiers?"  The question was obvious, but not far behind in my mind was how he managed to create his little army in the first place.  There had to be an original vampire and he knew where to find it, a feat that only took him at most three months to do.

"That's a great question, Indy," Ex replied, "and one we'll be sure to ask him when we nail his ass to the wall."  Rachel and Duane nodded in agreement.

"Truly I do apologize," Archer interjected, putting down the documents he was reading through, "but who is this nameless chap we are speaking of?  Why does he generate such ire in the room?"

"His name is Ian Shane Mackenzie," Duane said, looking up from his work, "and he's a scum-bag traitor who has his arms elbow-deep in blood."

"Enlightening, but -"

"You have to excuse my partner's colorful phraseology, Mr. Archer," Rachel said, cutting off further questions.  "Let me explain in more detail and less color."  She gave Duane an apologetic glance before launching into her story, one I had already heard in detail months ago.

"Ian Mackenzie was one of our instructors at the FBI academy," Choi began.  "Already, at that point in his career, he was a respected and honored agent, combined with six years of solid work in the Army's military intelligence branch.  To Duane and I, he was a mentor, a best friend, and a continual source of inspiration to work harder."

"Hell, we had a barbeque at his place not a week before the Whiteout," Duane added.  Rachel smiled sadly at that and nodded.

"His specialty was cases of the unusual or the bizarre.  Cults, occult-related crimes, unusual disappearances, all the sorts of things that no doubt inspired so many television programs, but he worked with the real thing.  Ian had ... has an amazing mind, capable of seeing even the most easily overlooked detail and working it into a larger picture.  Not only that, he was amazingly open-minded."

"Which really makes this terrorist bull-shit even more shocking."  Rachel gave Duane another look to quiet him.

"I brought that up simply to explain how Ian was the obvious choice to head up the FBI's response to the Whiteout and why he immediately picked the both of us to investigate what he figured was the epicenter of the event, namely Atlanta.  That's how we met Indomitable and the rest of the Atlanta Five."

"Where is this betrayal you spoke of?" Archer said.

"Now," Rachel answered.  "When we came to Washington to investigate your master's scheduled political rally, I went to present our latest report to Ian in person.  What I wound up being in the middle of was an explosion in the records department of headquarters.  Ian had planted evidence to make it look like a Pushed terrorist bombing, but we learned the truth."

"On top of that, Ian not only manipulated the creation of the Humans for God, he was personally responsible for unleashing Reaper onto the rally in Washington.  In essence, Ian Mackenzie was responsible for the entire Battle of Washington.  He brutally murdered his colleagues and led to the deaths and injuries of who knows how many people both at the Battle and from Reaper's rampage before hand."  Rachel fell silent, eyes dancing with carefully managed anger.

"I see," Archer said softly.  "He wanted to destroy as many of the Pushed as he could in one fell swoop, and leave the populace so traumatized that all the governments on the planet would focus on eradicating the Pushed 'threat'."

"Thanks primarily to Indy and a last-minute moment of rationality by your leader," Ex pointed out, "we managed to keep that from happening, but we never even saw Mackenzie."

"No one has that we have found," Mind's Eye explained.  "His nature is similar to that of Indomitable's.  He is proof against my precognitive third eye and all of my mental powers as he is certainly proof against Epic's omnipresence."

"And despite all our efforts since then," Duane noted bitterly, "he's always stayed a step ahead."  With some tweezers, Duane held up a strand of something.  Thread or maybe hair?  "This time though, he may just be within reach."

"Is that -" Rachel began to ask.

"Yep, it is."  Duane put the hair into a plastic baggie.  "Ian's hair.  Recent too.  He had to have been there sometime that week, by my first guess."

"I've been reading through this pile of documents we gathered from their lair," Archer added, "and methinks, in veiled language, there is evidence of another safe location."  He looked at what from here seemed to be schematics.  "Most unusually, it seems to be secreted in among the water and sewer system of this fine city."

"Wait a minute," I said, raising a finger.  There was something I was forgetting but the mention of the water system brought it back.  "The beer!"

"The beer?" Ex asked, confused.

"In the bar, the barkeep poured me a beer and there was a reddish taint in it.  Some liquid that wasn't mixing with the beer.  I think -"

"- it was blood.  Not just any blood, but blood from the big vampire himself."  Crap, Ex was still doing that.

"Well what the heck are we waiting for because who knows what will happen if everybody in the city starts chugging vampire blood-water-nasty-pants-drinks and then what about all the bottling companies here that use purified tap water that winds up not being so purified because who knows if they've got vampire-blood-proof-filters?"  Tank's treads starting spinning in place, something that ceased with just one stern look from Mind's Eye.  Even so, I could see that infectious lust for action starting to spread from one Push Hero to the next.

"Hold on, folks," I said, raising my voice, "we can't just jump on this without a little preparation first.  Medusa needs to be back on our feet, her gaze is pretty effective against these jokers.  On top of that, we lack one vital weapon."

"What is that, Milady?"

"Stakes.  Lots of stakes."

Chapter 11 Stakes

"Do we really have time for thisss?" Medusa asked with a hiss of annoyance.  It was one of the few times I didn't agree with her.  As annoying as it was to be poked and prodded by Duane Brooks, EMT, yet again in the same week, considering this was going to be a 'fate-of-the-city' kind of encounter, having the final medical okay was wise, even if it was just to know our limitations.

"This would go faster if you'd stop squirming and just let me do my damn job," Brooks grumbled.  He had the bedside manner of an overprotective grizzly bear, but it got the job done.  He looked over the now scaled-over buckshot wounds and nodded slowly.   "Now was that so bad?"

"Ssso?"

"The new scales aren't hardened yet, so you're vulnerable on that side," he noted.  "Basically, don't lead with your left side for another day or two.  Otherwise, it's great to be Pushed."   She stuck a forked tongue out at him as she pulled back on her shirt.

"I'm going to go sssuit up then," Meds announced.  "Sssee you in the ready room, Irene."  With a waggle of fingers, she was gone.  I looked at Duane, sitting in one of those annoying, flimsy examination gowns.

"Irene,"  Duane started, then stopped with a sigh.  "I really think you don't need to be doing this."  He looked at his clipboard.  "Shit, in the past twenty-four hours, you've been hit with grenade shrapnel, thrown into stone walls by a super-strong vampire, backhanded by the same vampire, had most of your forearm's muscles crushed by a bite, shot with rubber bullets, and strangled."  He flipped through more pages.  "Let's not inventory the rest of the week for you."

"I can't do that, Duane."  I had the pain under control for now and everything seemed to be mostly working right.  My breathing still felt a bit tight, but I was sure I could manage.  "What if Mackenzie is there?  They don't really understand entirely how dangerous someone like me is to them, but I'm sure he does."

"I think you underestimate people too much, is what I think."  He put the clipboard into a wall holder and rubbed his eyes.  "I also know there isn't shit I can do to talk you out of anything, so I'm just wasting my breath."

"You're not," I tried to assure him.  "If this were anything else, I'd take a raincheck.  I'm ..."  I took a deep breath.  "I'm trying, okay?  I haven't taken a single pill since this started, I swear to God."  I was being honest.  I really believed in my heart that I would have sat out any other mission but this.  But Ian Mackenzie, no, there was no way I was sitting this out.

"When you make it a week, then we'll talk."  He shook his head.  "Which means you better make sure your ass lives through today, alright?"

"I will do my best."

"Get out of here, then, before I change your mind and have Ex ground you."  He made a shooing motion for the door.  I hopped off the bed and squirmed into my clothes, doing my best to make good on Duane's capitulation.

It was well into afternoon before everything was ready.  Our cadre met up with Captain Braxton in an innocent-looking Public Works enclosure erected for 'emergency sewer maintenance'.  The entire side-street had been closed off from the public and several undercover PART officers tried to look useful playing with some of Water & Sewers equipment.

"Here's the deal, folks," Braxton said, pointing at a sewer map with several highlighted routes, "there are unfortunately a lot of ways in and out of this area."  He pointed at what best we could figure was Mackenzie's hideout.  Blanchard's ramblings helped confirm that it was definitely Ian Mackenzie that had been at the bar.  Unfortunately, his encounter with the undead had blown the rest of the poor man's mind.

"So they have a lot of escape routes but, at the same time, we have a lot of entry choices," Ex replied.  "Here are four main arteries in that aren't filled.  We could do split up and hit them from all sides."

"That sounds risky," Hexagon said.  "No offense to no one, but we ain't exactly at one hundred percent, boss."  I shifted uncomfortably.  I didn't like being a hindrance to anything, my own plans or others.

"Good point, Hex."  He glanced at Mind's Eye.  "No luck, I'm guessing?"

"Your guess is correct," the blind psychic nodded in his direction.  "Between what I can only assume to be Mackenzie's presence and the lack of fate these undead creatures seem to carry, I can detect nothing but fog and smoke."  It was hard to foresee the futures of corpses, I imagined.

"I don't see much other choice than a single entry group effort," I offered up.  "Someone might get away, but it's better to have to hunt strays than for anyone to get killed with us separated."

"Unfortunately, heroes," Joe interjected, "I can't promise much in the way of support.  I've got a unit of SWAT on stand by, but I'm not sure they would be any kind of good against these blood-suckers Ex described to me.  The mayor isn't even buying the full story yet so that limits my resources a lot."

"Thanks, Joe," Ex nodded.  "I know you get your hands tied a lot and anything you've got is better than nothing."  He looked over at me.  "I can't think of any other options either, Indy."  He ran his hands through his short hair.  "I don't like it though.  It just seems too simple."

"Maybe we just got lucky and managed to finally get a jump on him even though we haven't had any luck for three months straight and now suddenly we're on Mackenzie's doorstep but you know I hear you can get lucky breaks all the time in police work, right, Captain?" the Human Tank observed.  Captain Braxton just nodded.  I doubted he entirely understood the question.

Personally, I couldn't help but agree with Extinguisher.  At the same time though, what choice did we have?  If there was even a hint of truth to the whole 'vampire-blood-water' plan, we couldn't wait around any longer.  We had to act.

"Okay, team," Extinguisher looked to each of us, "you too, Archer.  Let's get to it."

Navigating an active sewer system was one of many horrible experiences I would never have experienced if not for the Whiteout.  Our trip wasn't dangerous but slower than any of us would have liked.  Not that we didn't appreciate the stench of decaying sewage or the wonderfully claustrophobic environment, no.  It was the ticking time bomb of the sun's descent.

Even if we did make it while the sun was up, it was only a minor advantage.  I thought about my first encounter in the bowels of Underground and tightened my bandolier of wooden stakes.  At least this time I made sure to have that crucifix around my neck.  I was in the middle of the pack.  Hex was up front and Tank pulled up the rear as the two toughest people we had in our little group.

It was, by my watch, near four-thirty p.m. when we came to the home stretch.  This particular tunnel opened up a bit, letting even the mammoth Hexagon stand to his full height, and not a hundred yards ahead we could see dim lights that had to come from the chamber outlined in the Hogs' documents.

By now, we had all done this sort of thing a few times.  For all of our quirks, foibles, and invisible walls, these moments at the door to life and death had forged a certain bond.  There wasn't need for words, we fell into our assigned pattern easily.  Hexagon, Meds, and I ranged in a front arc, the very nature of what we could do forced us to the front, while Ex and Archer stayed at the back.  Mind's Eye kept as she usually did with Tank as he ranged in the space between our ranks.

As we got closer, there was barely a sound outside of the dripping water, our own footsteps, and ... I strained my ears ... Holst?  I could faintly hear the sound of
Mars, the Bringer of War
as we got to the edge of the chamber.  I could swear that I heard something else under the music but I just couldn't be sure.

This area was an old pumping station that had been put into disuse and, as often happens in government bureaucracy, forgotten about, with orders for renovation shuffled a dozen times.  Someone had apparently decided to do their own work to bring things up to speed, as most of the equipment looked new and well-kept.  Of course, the new owners felt the need to do some redecorating as well.  The thirty neatly arranged steel boxes, all about coffin-sized, really brought out the color of the sewer slime in the walls.  The music was louder now and came, rather obviously, from a CD player and speakers sitting on a folding card table, smack dab in the center of the room.  Numerous small tunnels and pipes led off to sub-chambers for pumping and storing sewage and water.

Something was very wrong, but nothing exploded or drenched us in fire as we entered the chamber.  This time, I wasn't the one to catch it.  Archer suddenly shouted from the back, as Hexagon was right at the table.

"Egads, my audio system is detecting numerous high-frequency sound sources," he reported.  "My friends, I think -"

The air erupted with screeching as we were surrounded on all sides by vampire Hogs, dressed in military garb.  They burst out of the water, formed out of rolling mists from connecting pipes, or suddenly sprang from the concealment of their coffins.  It was all rather obvious, in hindsight.  The music was just a cover to make it harder to detect the super-speed squeals of their coordination.  I wouldn't have been shocked if a misted vampire had been following us ever since we got within a half-mile of this place.

Stupid Irene, if only you'd thought of that sooner.

Under many circumstances, I would say that thirty Hogs versus the seven of us wouldn't have been a real fight.  Oh, we'd get hurt, but as long as one of them didn't get a lucky shot on yours truly, we would mop them up.  The vampire addition, however, turned the equation on its head.  Vampires on their home turf?  That further complicated things.

"Wagons, people!" Ex shouted out as he conjured up a semi-circle of solid ice to shield our rear.  That was the sign to, naturally, 'circle the wagons' and stick together.  A pack swept in towards us at the front as we tried to join ranks.  Hexagon grabbed the first two and began to pummel them with his hammer-like fists.  Medusa caught one with her gaze before being tackled by another.

Before Meds could be dog-piled, I ran right in, flipping a charging vamp over my shoulder as I moved.  A swift, sure motion and the beast on her sprouted a new wooden accessory.  I was getting kind of good at this.  Hexagon dashed one of his opponents into the stone floor, a delaying tactic at best, and staked the other.  Behind us, the chaos of open battle was making it hard to tell just what was going on.

"Thanks, Indy," Medusa shouted, driving a stake into the vampire caught in stony half-life from her gaze.  "We need to get back to the othersss."  I nodded then blanched as I saw one of the vampires level an assault rifle in our direction.

"Hex!"

"On it, ladies," Hex replied and hurled the now-inert corpse like a rather grotesque javelin.  It crashed into the gunman with extreme force, smashing into messy chunks.  The vampire flew off his feet and splashed into one of the water chambers.  Things could have been going worse, I thought.  That's when the grenades hit.

It's hard to track thirty opponents, no matter how fast your brain and reflexes are, in the swirling mass of Push combat, especially in the dark chambers of a sewer.  I didn't even see where the grenade came from, only the splash and bounce as it landed in the midst of us.

"Grenade!" I shouted as I dove away from the metal canister.  There was a tremendous clap of thunder and a bright flash from behind as I hit the deck.  Stun grenade.  At least I could see, though even the dive hadn't saved my hearing.  Focusing hard, I forced myself to stand, no matter how messed up my inner ear was.  Barely a moment on my feet and I felt cold dead arms around my waist.  The vamp had come in behind me, taking advantage of the cover of silence.

I threw a hard elbow behind me as the monster lifted me up and scored with the now-familiar sensation of bone and flesh caving from the strike.  Its grip loosened and I twisted free.  My balance was starting to return, even if my hearing wasn't, as I landed on my feet.  I spun around as the corpse's skull snapped back into place with a sickening crunch.  As I sidestepped its lunge, I noticed I was getting further away from my colleagues, who at least were holding their own.  I couldn't afford to be separated and swarmed, so I flung a wild stake at my current dance partner to make him keep his head down and sprinted for the team.

The first sign my hearing was returning was catching, at the edge of my hearing range, a sudden unintelligible command.  A good dozen of the vampire greeting party suddenly turned to mist in unison, completely obscuring my vision.  I couldn't see a foot in front of my face and my ears were still ringing hard from the flash-bang.  I started to slowly back towards the last wall I had seen.

The first vampire to come out of the mist at me I expected, as it came from where I had just thrown that stake.  Its mouth open and fangs bared, the corpse came straight at me, my stake still stuck in its shoulder.  Never underestimate the disorientation of having almost no hearing.  The ringing in my ears left my timing off, despite my readiness.  I had meant to take advantage of its over-extension to drive it to the ground with a hammer punch then stake it.  Instead, it buried itself into my mid-section, the only thing saving my ribs being its Pushed nature, and the impact sent us both to the ground.

Gritting my teeth and shifting the pain away, I simply started to pound away at the monster with my fists.  The first shot cracked open the top of the skull, the second smashed the right side of the cheek and jaw in.  I cocked back a hand for a third, but the creature recoiled up, still kneeling but no longer pinning me.  Bringing both of my legs up, I kicked out with my full body strength, shattering rotting bone and flinging the creature like a cannonball back into the mists.