are.'
'Plan?' she asked.
'I haven't figured that out yet. We can go in shooting. But if we do we might hit a steam line and cook us all, or we might hit the boiler and blow a hole in the bottom of the ship. Either way we're running out of time. We got another coded message from the French Hunters. The vamps are trying to break into their compartment-wait a second.'
I did not turn to look. I kept my muzzle on the door. We had a great position. Both groups of Hunters could fire with impunity into the doorway, and the angles were such that the chances of ricocheting a shot into the other team were virtually nil. Trip and Holly both squeezed around me so that they would have a shot as well. The injured Lee watched our backs and Julie stayed on the radio. The walls and floor vibrated slightly from the powerful engine nearby. The air smelled of diesel and rubber and rust and the faint copper smell of blood.
While we waited for Harbinger to get back to us, I could not help but ask, 'Did any of you guys know Roberts?'
'He was the tall, skinny, blond guy on the boat,' Trip said. 'Seemed like a good guy.'
'He was a great guy. Brave. A little crazy, but he was a dang good Hunter,' Julie told us. 'Roberts has been with us since we restarted. First batch of Newbies we had. He'll be missed. I think he had an ex-wife and some kids in St. Louis.'
Harbinger's voice crackled in my ear piece. 'Sam says that he found something on the schematics. We're directly under the main cargo bay. There's an escape hatch there that leads into that engine compartment. Sam says that we can put somebody through it, and they can pierce a steam pipe in the vamp's room, and then close the hatch before they get cooked. The steam will fry the undead, or at least flush them into the corridor where we can blast them.'
'Won't that kill the Frenchmen also?' Julie asked.
'Sam doesn't think so. Might raise the temperature a little, but judging from the schematics they should be fine. I'm sending Sam, Grant and Mead up to do it.'
'What about Boone's team?'
'My team's a little occupied, Jules,' Boone replied over the net. 'Your uncle Earl neglected to mention that we have at least two more of the bloodsuckers pinned down by the shafts. One of them is the son of a whore that bit Roberts.'
'Roger that.' She released her mike. 'Wait for the cookout.'
'I could place some claymores down the hall. Give them a surprise when they come running out,' Lee offered helpfully. Just like a former demo guy, always looking to blow something up.
'No, we're too enclosed.'
She was probably right. But judging by the number of projectiles these things could soak up, I sure was not looking forward to five of them heading our way at the same time. There had been an FN MAG machine gun brought on board from the Brilliant Mistake. I had left it behind since it was so long and unwieldy inside the tight confines of the ship. However, 200 rounds of belt-fed. 308 full auto firepower would have been great right about then.
'I've got some smaller stuff. It should do the trick with minimal damage to us, but it'll turn anything that comes through that door into hamburger.' For emphasis, Lee patted a pouch that was clipped to his webbing. 'I'm hurting pretty bad, so I don't think I could throw it far enough, but one of you guys could probably land it right outside that hatch. It's radio detonated.'
Julie thought about it for a moment and then nodded at Trip. Lee unclipped the pouch, opened it, made a few adjustments, zipped it back up and handed it over. Trip gently bounced it in his hands a few times to test the weight, then he underhanded it with perfect accuracy, landing it on our side, just in front of the targeted hatch.
'Good throw,' Holly said.
'I helped coach the girl's softball team too. Slow pitch.' All of us gave him funny looks. 'It was a small school,' he added defensively.
Time passed. Harbinger informed us that the captive French were sending more messages. The vampires were slowly battering their way in looking for fresh blood. Sam checked in to tell us that the three of them were almost in position. Boone's team was down to four, and two of them were injured, and they had problems of their own. Harbinger and Milo were in position, but since there were only two of them they were in for trouble if all of the vampires headed their way. We were spread awfully thin. It was going to be tight.
'This is Sam. We're in place. Main cargo bay appears empty. But there's a mess of Conex containers up here, it's hard to tell. We're gonna pop the hatch. You should know if this works. Over.'
'Go get them, Cowboy,' Julie whispered under her breath, while tightening the grip on her M14. We were positioned so that anything stepping into the hall was going to get a big surprise. A bit of high explosives and four of us that were able to provide direct fire. Julie and I were even pretty decent shots. Who was I kidding, I was pretty good, but from what I had seen up on the deck, she was amazing. I glanced surreptitiously her way. Her brown eyes were focused through the lens of her ACOG scope. Her gloved finger was resting easily just alongside the trigger guard. She was leaning against the steel hull to steady herself. Her features were strong, and somehow she was still attractive in her relatively unflattering green body armor despite the scratches and slime all over her face. Julie Shackleford was the girl of my dreams.
In the distance the sound of banging metal could be heard and then a rapid series of gunshots and another clang of metal on metal. Trip was prone on the floor, so he felt the vibration first. 'Here we go!' he shouted.
A metallic screeching tore at our ears, as a wall of white vapor poured out of the open hatchway. The noise was a bastardized version of the world's greatest and most terrifying teapot. Even from where we were, the temperature rose dramatically as the scalding mist began to fill the hallway. Just under the onslaught of noise could be heard other equally inhuman screams, this time from the engine compartment's resident vampires.
Something moved in the hatchway. First one, then two, and finally a third vampire stumbled into the corridor. The steam was boiling their fluids and peeling their flesh far faster than they could regenerate. One of them turned malevolently toward us with blind, molten eye sockets and screamed.
'Hit it, Lee!' Julie shouted. Our demolitionist librarian complied and compressed the clacker in his gloved fist.
The small charge detonated. The explosion was more of a muted thump than the expected fireball. In the open, Lee's little bomb might not have been very impressive, but in the narrow metal space, the energy of the C4 tore through the undead. Their bones were smashed into powder and their bodies were disseminated into their component materials. We were thirty feet away but we were still peppered with a fine mist of vampire.
Two more creatures spilled from the hatchway, just having missed the bomb. One moved in our direction, the other turned toward Harbinger and Milo. Six weapons opened fire. The creature heading our way was blind, burned, and torn. Some of its internal organs had expanded under the intense, wet heat, and the creature appeared lopsided and ungainly. Our bullets tore into it, rupturing through fluids and tissues, breaking bones, and spilling the vampire's unnatural life onto the floor. It fell to its knees under our onslaught, dragging itself inexorably toward us. One scalded claw was torn completely off by my last round of buckshot, and it still somehow continued trying to pull itself on its one functioning limb.
It fell silent as we ran our guns dry. My ears were partially protected by the high quality earpieces, but even with that my head swam from the barrage in the tight echoing chamber. No gunfire could be heard from the other Hunters' position.
'Earl. Come in, Earl. Are you okay?' Julie dropped her spent M14 mag, and inserted another, letting the bolt fly forward to chamber another round. 'Can you hear us?'
'Got it. Our vamp is down.'
'We're coming around the corner to finish ours. Hold your fire.'
'Roger that.'
The vampire was torn asunder, but already it was beginning to heal. This time Trip and Holly did the honors while I covered them. Holly put her boot down on the creature's spine, and slammed a stake through its back with a vengeance. This vampire was too damaged to scream. Trip grimaced as he pulled out his hatchet. I suppose that the correct term was tomahawk for the Vietnam-era weapon that he had picked out of the armory. My friend raised the little ax and brought it down swiftly. The vampire had been shot through the neck so many times that it did not take much effort. The tomahawk slipped through with enough force to raise sparks on the floor. Immediately the
