“Stoneheart,” said Fet. Eldritch Palmer’s league of fellow travelers, who since his demise had transferred their allegiance to the Master when the Master assumed control of Palmer’s corporation’s vast industrial infrastructure. Strigoi sympathizers and—in terms of the new food-and-shelter-based economy—profiteers.
“Hey!” yelled Fet. The man did not respond but only lowered his head and moved more quickly.
Eph ran his eyes along the walkway to the corner. Mounted on a wide, triangular platform—both an observation post and a sniper’s perch—was the long barrel of a machine gun, tipped toward the ceiling, awaiting an operator.
“Get low!” said Fet, and they scattered, Gus and Bruno running back toward the entrance, Fet grabbing Nora and running her to the corner of the henhouse, Eph hustling toward the sheep shelter, Joaquin heading for the gardens.
Eph ducked and ran along the fence, this bottleneck being the very thing he had feared. He wasn’t going to perish by human hands, though. That much he had decided long ago. They were open targets down here in the serene, brightly lit interior farmstead—but Eph could do something about that.
The sheep were agitated, bleating too loudly for Eph to hear anything else. He glanced back at the corner and saw Gus and Bruno racing toward a ladder to the side. The Stoneheart reached the perch and was fooling with the mounted repeater, turning the muzzle end down toward the ground. He lashed out first at Gus, strafing the ground behind him until he lost the angle. Gus and Bruno started up the left-side wall, but the ladder did not run directly beneath; the Stoneheart might have another chance at them before they reached the catwalk.
Eph threw off the wire loops holding the sheep inside their shelter. The gate door banged open and they went bleating into the enclosure. Eph found the hinged section of fence and vaulted over it, working the outside catch. He grabbed the fence and raised his feet just in time, riding it open in order to avoid being trampled by the escaping sheep.
He heard gunfire but didn’t look back, running to the cowshed and doing the same, throwing up the rolling door and turning the herd loose. These were not fat Holsteins but rather cows in the dictionary definition of the term only: thin, loose-hided, walleyed, and fast. They went every which way, a number of them galumphing into the orchard and knocking into the weak-trunked apple trees.
Eph went around the dairy, looking for the others. He saw Joaquin far right, behind one of the garden lamps with a tool in his hand, using it to aim the hot lamp up at the corner shooter. A genius idea, it worked perfectly, distracting the Stoneheart so that Gus and Bruno could charge up the exposed section of ladder. Joaquin dove for cover as the Stoneheart ripped at the lamp, exploding the bulb in a shower of sparks.
Fet was up and running, using one wayward heifer as a partial shield as he broke for a ladder on the near wall, to the right of the shooter’s perch. Eph edged around the corner of the dairy, thinking about making a run for the wall himself, when the dirt started popping before his feet. He bolted backward just as the rounds chewed the wooden corner where his head had been.
The ladder shivered under his weight as Fet climbed hand-over-hand toward the catwalk. The Stoneheart was swung all the way around, trying to angle his fire at Gus and Bruno, but they were low on the walkway, his rounds clanking off the intervening iron slats. Someone below turned another lamp on the Stoneheart, and Fet could see the man’s face locked in a grimace, as though he knew he was going to lose. Who were these people who would willingly do the vampires’ bidding?
Inhuman, he thought.
And that thought powered Fet up the last few rungs. The Stoneheart was still unaware of his blind-side approach but could turn at
any time. Imagining the long barrel of the gun swinging his way made him run faster, drawing his sword from his pack.
Inhuman motherfuckers.
The Stoneheart heard or felt Fet’s pounding boots. He swung around, wide-eyed, firing the gun before he had completed the sweep, but too late. Fet was too close. He ran his sword through the Stoneheart’s belly, then pulled it back.
Bewildered, the man slumped to his knees, appearing as shocked by Fet’s betrayal of the new vampiric order as Fet was by the Stoneheart’s betrayal of his own kind. Out of this offended expression vomited bile and blood, bursting onto the barrel of the smoking weapon.
The man’s agonal suffering was wholly unlike any vampire’s. Fet was not used to killing fellow humans. The silver sword was well suited for vampire killing but completely inefficient for dispatching humans.
Bruno came charging from the other catwalk, seizing the man before Fet could react, grabbing him up and dumping him over the low edge of the perch. The Stoneheart twisted in the air, trailing gore, landing headfirst.
Gus grabbed the trigger end of the hot weapon. He swung it around, surveilling the artificial farmstead below them. He tipped it up, aiming it at the multitude of lights beaming down on the farm like cooking lamps.
Fet heard yelling and recognized Nora’s voice, finding her below, waving her arms and pointing at the gun as sheep trotted past.
Fet grabbed the tops of Gus’s arms, just below his shoulders. Not restraining him, just getting his attention. “Don’t,” he said, referring to the lamps. “This food is for humans.”
Gus winced. He wanted to light up the place. Instead, he pulled away from the bright lamps and fired straight out across the cavernous building, rounds punching holes in the far wall, ejected cartridges raining onto the perch.
Nora was the first one out of the indoor farm. She could feel the others pulling on her to leave; the pale light would fade from the sky soon. She grew more frantic with each step, until she was running.
The next building was surrounded by a fence covered with opaque black netting. She could see the building inside, an older structure, original to the former food-processing plant, not vast like the farmstead. A faceless, industrial-appearing building that fairly screamed “slaughterhouse.”
“Is this it?” asked Fet.
Beyond it, Nora could see a turn in the perimeter fence. “Unless … unless they changed it from the map.”
She clung to hope. This was obviously not the entrance to a retirement community or any sort of hospitable environment.
Fet stopped her. “Let me go in first,” he said. “You wait here.”
She watched him start away, the others closing around her like doubts in her mind. “No,” she said at once, and caught up with him. Her breath was short, her words coming quietly. “I’m going too.”