“Incidentally,” Serena said in a slightly angry tone, nodding towards a masked Sarah slowly making her way back to them, “your girlfriend–”
“Sister.”
“That’s wonderful news!” The anger vanished from her voice as if it had never been. “Your sister is an August. One of the ones who just woke up as a vampire, based on me never having seen her before. I don’t know if or how she is different from regular vampires, but it is something to keep an eye on.”
“Noted,” Wayne said as he watched his sister.
Sarah no longer clutched at her stomach. Her arm wasn’t quite back to normal, but it was visibly on its way. Vampires’ regeneration was something special. Despite her elbow being far more damaged than Wayne’s arm, he was willing to bet that hers would be back to normal first.
“You alright?” Wayne asked.
“Fine. I just…” Sarah shook her head. “Let’s just leave. What’s the plan.”
Wayne shifted his weight to one side.
“Wayne. What is the plan?”
He shifted again.
“Please tell me you didn’t charge into the city with no idea on how to get out.”
“I figured we could wing it. That normally works out for me.”
Sarah tried to rub her forehead only to hit the visor of her mask. “How have you not been caught already?”
“I’ll have you know that I’m very skilled at what I do. My forging skills got me in with no problem.”
“Wayne,” Serena said, aghast, “you’re a criminal?”
Keeping his attention on his sister, Wayne ignored the finger running down his chest. “Three ways,” Wayne said, “find some helicopter. Surely even a town this tiny has a hospital or news station with some flight capabilities.
“Second, we could try going out the way I came in. That relies on the checkpoint not having found out that my papers were forged. Additionally, finding a way to contact them and let them know that it is me without getting my head shot off might be a good idea.
“Lastly,” Wayne frowned at Sarah, “you tunnel us out.”
“Those are all terrible,” Sarah said with a huff. “Especially the last one.”
“Yeah, yeah. I had a fourth plan. Basically amounted to hailing the nuns and hitching a ride with them. A good number of them are trained to teleport.” He glanced between Sarah and Serena. “Probably not useful so much anymore.”
“Quite,” Serena said in a clipped tone, lacking all her previous banter.
“Do you even know how to pilot a helicopter?”
Wayne shrugged. “Can’t be that hard. There’s a stick right? Push it forward and the thing goes forward, back and it goes back.”
He’d seen a few movies involving helicopters. They didn’t look too impressive. Though they did have an unnerving tendency to explode. That shouldn’t be a problem here; during his scoping out of the military, he didn’t notice anything that looked capable of taking out air targets. With enough altitude, all the ground forces should be easily avoided.
“Right,” Sarah said. Her opinion of that plan was plain in every word. “That plan is off the table.”
“Oh? Through the military blockade it is. I hope they’re friendly.”
“Don’t worry Wayne,” Serena said once again in her husky voice, “I can handle anything mere humans can come up with.” After a playful wink, her tone turned serious. “But we should wait until nightfall. Unless the smoke extends well beyond city limits, your sister and I will have trouble in the sun.”
Wayne nodded. “I could use a nap.”
“Me too,” Sarah said with a long yawn.
Did vampires even need to yawn? A leftover trait of humanity or some idiosyncrasy with how she just woke up as one?
A moot point at the moment.
Zoe tugged on Serena’s shirt. Without even a word of communication between the two, Serena hefted Zoe up on her back. Once settled, Zoe rested her head on Serena’s shoulder.
Possibly mental tricks of the Blacksky vampire reading the younger kid’s mind. He suspected manipulation for a moment before remembering the vehemence with which she spoke of the ‘mindless’ thralls.
In retrospect, Wayne had probably left Zoe and Serena to their own devices far too much if he wanted to prevent any sort of attachment forming from the former to the latter. A kid wouldn’t understand the dangers of a vampire. Her mother might have been a mage, but that didn’t mean that she had any lectures on the creatures.
As Serena relinked her and Wayne’s arms, he realized that he might be suffering from a similar problem. He had killed that other vampire without hesitation or remorse, yet Serena hung off of his arm without retaliation. All because he had bought into her earlier sob-story about becoming a vampire. A story she had freely admitted was untrue.
If he didn’t need her for Sarah’s sake, would she still be here?
“I’ll keep on watch for any nuns, I suppose,” Serena said.
“I don’t know how you can stand to be awake,” Sarah said with droopy eyes. Whatever adrenaline had been keeping her alert was rapidly vanishing. “No torpor for you?”
“Being the pinnacle of vampires that I am, I can easily ignore the effects for a day or two. Maybe when you’re older.”
“Alright,” Wayne said. “Let’s find a place to hold up for a few hours.”
—
Wayne clicked the CB radio off.
“Worthless,” he mumbled as he hopped out of the truck he had been sitting inside of for the last hour.
“No luck?” Sarah asked, yawning despite sunset being within the hour.
Shaking his head, Wayne said, “I didn’t expect much. It’s an unmodified civilian-band radio. Mostly certain that it is illegal to modify it to drop to military frequencies.”
“And you don’t know how to modify it yourself?”
“Can’t say that I’ve ever studied radios. Wouldn’t know where to start.”
A sharp clap in the back of the truck had Wayne turning around.
“We’re going for the break out forcefully plan then, right?”
“Unless Sarah wants to tunnel,” Wayne said, turning to his sister with an eyebrow raised.
“Not unless you want to be buried. While alive. Permanently.”
“No. Not so much.”
Earth magic had never come easy for Sarah, despite it being her primary element. After graduating, she hadn’t even passed her third class exam. Wayne was still sure that she could tunnel them out. He could even help with his own meager skills.
Pushing her to do it wouldn’t help. Wayne knew his sister. She would get either angry or nervous. Both could easily lead to a cave-in.
“We need to find a weak point in their barricade. The roads all have heavy-duty checkpoints. Snipers, several soldiers, flamethrowers.”
“The river? We shouldn’t have a problem finding a boat at one of the houses along the Grand.”
“Not sure. I didn’t thoroughly scope out where their fence met the river. I assume they’re watching it.”
“Better plan than charging through with a car,” Sarah said with a self-affirming nod. “We can ditch the boat shortly after and find a car. Probably switch cars a number of times to hide from any followers.”
Experience had taught him that getaways were rarely so clean. He’d never tried fleeing from the actual mundane military before, but it probably wouldn’t be so simple. It was a better plan than nothing, though, and he had been winging things for long enough that he was sure it wouldn’t be that hard.
Using a bit of heat manipulation, he could probably hide them completely from any night vision equipment they may have. Then it was just a matter of losing them long enough to hunker down at a hotel. Preferably in Detroit. Being a big city–bigger, anyway–it would be easy to get lost inside.