like the one Reginald had stowed in his pack as well. They were shockingly effective. The wooden bullets either annihilated their targets in flames or did nothing. The gray bullets, on the other hand, seemed to slow the vampires but not kill them. When they were struck, they screamed in pain, they retreated if they could — before reinforcements arrived with more guns, silver nets, and UV grenades.
The war had begun. Reginald and Nikki, mission orders in hand, were tasked with leaving the city at the worst possible time.
So they waited, watching intermittently, feeling each wasted hour pass like a knife in the gut. Eventually the chaos exhausted itself and the street traffic thinned, most of the action presumably moving indoors or to other parts of the city. At first it seemed the AVT had won this quarter; human troops began patrolling the streets with their guns out, the beams of projected ultraviolet gunsights spearing the darkness in front of them. But even the patrols were a thin veneer on top of chaos. The AVT was heavily armored, but vampires had no real problem taking them out if they worked in groups. Human stragglers ran through the streets between the tussles from time to time, making chaos, drawing lone predators like roaches to bait.
Around the time Nikki and Reginald had waited as long as they could stand, a window of relative clarity opened. They said goodbye to Karl, and they ran.
Paris had changed overnight, becoming an apocalyptic battlefield. Things were strangely quiet. Cars were abandoned — some empty, some with their windows painted red from the inside. Traffic lights blinked, shepherding no traffic. Crosswalks were empty. Lone vampires skulked through the shadows. Armored Anti-Vampire Taskforce soldiers marched in formation, aiming their guns.
Once Nikki and Reginald were out of the city, things became easier.
In the countryside south of Paris, Reginald’s uncharged phone rang. They ducked into a ditch and took the call, and Maurice told them what they already knew — that chaos had erupted in Western Europe and almost immediately spread overseas. A state of emergency had been declared in most countries with the infrastructure and wherewithal to do so, and as a result, the humans, who controlled all of the transportation, had shut down traffic into and out of all major cities. No planes were flying, no trains were rolling, no busses or taxis were available for hire, and cars everywhere were subject to search. Transportation might resume in time… but with what new screening processes in place?
“Rest assured,” Maurice told Reginald, “they’ve had contingency plans in place for years, maybe decades. They’ll load vehicles in direct sunlight. They’ll scan all passengers’ hands under a tanning lamp. There will be armed troops waiting for those who fail the screenings.” Maurice’s face, on the tiny screen of Reginald’s phone, locked eyes with Nikki, who was the more reckless of the two. “Seriously,” he said. “Don’t even try it.”
None of this surprised Reginald. He’d run through scenario after scenario in his mind since the day Timken had let him go free, with Timken assuring Reginald that taking the planet from the humans was the only way to survive. And once Reginald began to think about the way things were unfolding, it had seemed that Claire was right: there really was an underlying order to everything. There really was a best logical way for the pieces of existence to have unfolded. He could imagine the preparations the AVT had made. He could see the weapons they inevitably would have developed. He could picture the ways the humans would use their armies, how large those vampire-educated armies may have grown, and how they’d institute triage to save the largest numbers of humans while being willing to sacrifice the least. Humans owned the day. They had their weapons ready and waiting. And now that the genie was out of the bottle, they’d be
The war had begun. Reginald and Nikki, mission orders in hand, were tasked with leaving the city at the worst possible time.
So they waited, watching intermittently, feeling each wasted hour pass like a knife in the gut. Eventually the chaos exhausted itself and the street traffic thinned, most of the action presumably moving indoors or to other parts of the city. At first it seemed the AVT had won this quarter; human troops began patrolling the streets with their guns out, the beams of projected ultraviolet gunsights spearing the darkness in front of them. But even the patrols were a thin veneer on top of chaos. The AVT was heavily armored, but vampires had no real problem taking them out if they worked in groups. Human stragglers ran through the streets between the tussles from time to time, making chaos, drawing lone predators like roaches to bait.
Around the time Nikki and Reginald had waited as long as they could stand, a window of relative clarity opened. They said goodbye to Karl, and they ran.
Paris had changed overnight, becoming an apocalyptic battlefield. Things were strangely quiet. Cars were abandoned — some empty, some with their windows painted red from the inside. Traffic lights blinked, shepherding no traffic. Crosswalks were empty. Lone vampires skulked through the shadows. Armored Anti-Vampire Taskforce soldiers marched in formation, aiming their guns.
Once Nikki and Reginald were out of the city, things became easier.
In the countryside south of Paris, Reginald’s uncharged phone rang. They ducked into a ditch and took the call, and Maurice told them what they already knew — that chaos had erupted in Western Europe and almost immediately spread overseas. A state of emergency had been declared in most countries with the infrastructure and wherewithal to do so, and as a result, the humans, who controlled all of the transportation, had shut down traffic into and out of all major cities. No planes were flying, no trains were rolling, no busses or taxis were available for hire, and cars everywhere were subject to search. Transportation might resume in time… but with what new screening processes in place?
“Rest assured,” Maurice told Reginald, “they’ve had contingency plans in place for years, maybe decades. They’ll load vehicles in direct sunlight. They’ll scan all passengers’ hands under a tanning lamp. There will be armed troops waiting for those who fail the screenings.” Maurice’s face, on the tiny screen of Reginald’s phone, locked eyes with Nikki, who was the more reckless of the two. “Seriously,” he said. “Don’t even try it.”
None of this surprised Reginald. He’d run through scenario after scenario in his mind since the day Timken had let him go free, with Timken assuring Reginald that taking the planet from the humans was the only way to survive. And once Reginald began to think about the way things were unfolding, it had seemed that Claire was right: there really was an underlying order to everything. There really was a best logical way for the pieces of existence to have unfolded. He could imagine the preparations the AVT had made. He could see the weapons they inevitably would have developed. He could picture the ways the humans would use their armies, how large those vampire-educated armies may have grown, and how they’d institute triage to save the largest numbers of humans while being willing to sacrifice the least. Humans owned the day. They had their weapons ready and waiting. And now that the genie was out of the bottle, they’d be
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