Panicked screams came from the third floor of the town house. When the elder vampire died, the spell that immobilized the children was lifted.
Bravo was there to comfort him. He may be big and have a scary face, but children had never feared him.
"It's alright. It's alright. You are okay now. Come with me and let's head downstairs. We are leaving this place." He said after he picked up the two spent high-voltage splicer picks. Tech like that couldn't be left behind.
Gerald dropped an incendiary grenade on the elder's corpse before he ran to Alpha who was coughing up blood and wheezing. He may have super strength for this mission but that didn't mean his body could take a blow of the same caliber. Gerald pulled him out of the wreckage and retrieved a syringe from his pocket.
While helping Alpha to stumble over towards the bus, he stabbed the syringe into the man's thigh.
Alpha was fading, but not from his wounds. He was going into a comma from the medicine that Gerald had administered. Before his eyes closed, Gerald was able to get him to the bus. The man then fell unconscious.
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
Crazed screams began to sound out from all corners of the restricted zone as the vampire spawns in the area were no longer under control.
A group of panicking children ran out of the town house, when they saw Gerald they came to a sudden stop.
Bravo was the last one out of the house. They knew that these kids weren't the only ones in the restricted zone, but they were the only ones nearby and they didn't have time to look for more.
"Keep going, keep going, get on the bus. This uncle will drive you back." Bravo said while motioning towards Gerald.
At the same time, Charlie and Dasher arrived on the street. Charlie ran towards Alpha to begin administering first aid. She was surprised to see that Alpha's wounds had already stopped bleeding.
The children were still not moving closer towards the bus.
"Come on, it will be alright. Uncle and aunty will drive the bus and I will be in the car right ahead of you."
"No." Cried a little girl while tugging onto Bravo's jacket. "Don't leave us big brother." She said while tears fell from her small cheeks.
"I will be real close, just in the next car over. Everything will be okay."
"No, I don't want you to go." Cried the girl while none of the other children moved forward.
Charlie had moved away from Alpha since she saw that Gerald had taken care of him. "Looks like you will be driving the bus." She said with an outstretched hand.
Bravo scowled and handed over the keys to the SUV. "Get a scratch on my ride and…"
"Don't worry, I am a great driver." She said while running off towards Dasher. The pair tore down the alley to where the SUV was parked.
Gerald removed himself from the driver seat since Bravo was now driving the bus. The little kids eagerly followed him onto the bus without hesitation.
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
"REEEEE!!!!"
The screeching of the vampire spawns was getting closer.
The bus was started and put into gear. It was soon booking it back towards the barricade. When the two vehicles arrived at the Fourth street defense line, the area was already filled with spawns. But unlike before, they were not suicidal monsters who were blindly following orders. When wounded they would get upset, but when it looked like they didn't have a chance, the vampire spawns would flee.
Charlie stopped in front of the blockade while Dasher fired the fifty-caliber. The officers opened the passage while Dasher defended. When the bus was through, Charlie followed.
The fighting continued for another five minutes before the situation changed.
"ROOAAARRRR!!!!!"
A loud bestial roar echoed through the restricted zone. The moment it sounded, the vampires spawns stopped. The next moment they began to retreat. A different elder vampire had taken control of them.
This actually pleased Gerald. It meant that the Elder had the capability to conscript them, which meant that its number of spawns was not at the maximum previously.
A few minutes later, a social worker from the command center came to pick up the children and try to find their families.
Bravo walked straight over to Charlie and took his keys back. He then began to circle the SUV while focusing his eyes like that of a hawk.
Charlie shook her head until Bravo suddenly called out.
"There! What is this? I warned you." He said while pointing to a small mark on the front bumper.
Charlie walked over and then licked her thumb and rubbed the mark till it disappeared. "It was just dirt. I didn't do anything to your precious ride." She said.
Bravo snorted but didn't say anything else.
*Ding*
Gerald checked his phone and found that Commander Jackson had sent him a text and an attachment through the secure app.
{I just sent you a list, but a handful of the people just had their sent trails disappear. I swear I am not trying to get you to do my dirty work.}
{I know, I just removed their master.} Gerald replied.
Gerald forwarded the attachment to Dasher. {A few more targets that need to be removed.} He explained.
{Understood.}
Charlie went to check on Alpha. She found that he was no longer unconscious. He was snoring and all his wounds had closed. She decided to leave him laying on the bus for now.
Gerald went to the private room his team had commandeered on the defense line and moved to the dining room table.
He knocked on the table twice before pressing down. A spring-loaded panel rose up half an inch. He lifted it up to reveal a well lit hidden space inside the table.
The space was filled with different firearms. He grabbed a set of small tools and his submachinegun and began to disassemble it and checked to see which parts could be saved.
Gerald didn't react when he heard another person enter the room. From the sound of the footsteps, he determined that it was Bravo.
The man walked over and looked at what was inside.
"Impressive." He remarked once he saw the spread. "I didn't even see these things available for purchase before we started."
"The weren't." Gerald replied. "I used several different rewards to make these guns. Combining what I liked and removing what I didn't want. It only cost a few points to bring these things from home. For someone like me, it's cheaper this way."
Bravo looked again. Besides another set of pistols there was also a shotgun, with several different types of shells next to it. There was also an assault rifle that had an undermount grenade launcher. Rows of knives and even a pair of swords. Tucked into the corner were several types of grenades and in a package were a few of the picks that Bravo had picked up earlier.
"Oh yeah, I grabbed these like you asked." He said while handing over the two spent picks.
"Thanks."
"Those are pretty neat. How does a guy go about getting some of those?"
"it's not easy. They can only be bought on mission in the Exoses worlds."
"Exoses?" Bravo asked.
"The places I go are all parallel worlds. But all the timelines once began on earth. The Exoses world was founded when aliens landed on earth back in the twelfth century and enslaved our race. A few centuries later, mankind overthrew their overlords and took over the planet they had been shipped too. That planet is Exoses. Don't worry, in our timeline the alien ship exploded when it entered the atmosphere, so we never had to deal with it."
"So you mean the place where we are right now, started out just like our earth?"
"Yup." Gerald answered while tinkering with his gun. "The divergent point for this planet was Alexander the Great. In our world he died of a mysterious illness at the age of thirty-three. Here, he recovered from the illness and went on to unify the planet. From that point on, our histories went down different paths."
"You would think that something like that would have made tremendous changes around the world. But the people, they are just like the people at home."
"That's true. The biggest difference about this place compared to where we came from is that there is one central government that rules the world. If that is better or worse than what we have, I couldn't really say. They still have war here, but instead of it being wars between countries, they are rebellions. Sometimes the rebels win, other times the rulers stay in power, but the world has always remained under a unified rule ever since Alexander the Great."
"I think it would be interesting to see how humankind developed on an alien planet. I think it must be very different. I hope I can see that one day." Bravo said.
"We'll see." Gerald remarked.
"I didn't mean it like that. I wasn't asking, I was just commenting. I have always been interested in aliens."
"Here." Gerald said, tossing a five pack of the high-voltage splicer picks to Bravo.
It wasn't like Gerald was short of them. Since a five pack only cost .5 reward points, he always spent his extra reward points on them whenever he went to Exoses. Or he spent them on visors or glasses. Exoses always had the great tech.
"Thanks." Bravo said to Gerald.
He didn't bother to explain to the man on how to use them since the five pack came with instructions.
"You know, I have seen an alien before." Bravo said while fiddling with the picks in his hand.
"Oh yeah?" Gerald asked while changing out a damaged spring.
"Yeah, I was even abducted when I was a child. A few people told me I was crazy. My parents sent me to a psych hospital for a few years, but no one ever believed me. I eventually learned to not bring it up. When I was a fresh recruit and the general came to recruit, I knew I had to join him after I heard him mention that his unit battled things that were out of the ordinary. I knew the training would be ten times harder than any other unit, but I figured it was probably my only chance to find out what really happened. You know, this is the first time I have mention this in the past ten years. Probably because you are the only one who won't think I am not crazy."
Gerald installed a new firing pin in the gun that was being reconstructed.
"Let me guess. Blue skin, three eyes, four arms, able to manipulate items with their minds. Happened twenty years ago when you were four or five."
Gerald could hear something fall onto the carpet behind him.
"You have seen them?" Asked a slightly panicked voice from behind.
"Not in person. But I have gathered that there was a secret war with them at that time. I once went on a mission where the divergent point was twenty years ago. When the divergent point is close to the present… those missions are always the weirdest. Everything is so similar but also different. It is such a weird feeling. But that mission I was on, the divergent point was that the war wasn't a secret. It was a full-blown invasion. That mission was actually the reason that I didn't kill General Dasher the first time he abducted me eight years ago. It was because I recognized him. In that world there was a statue of him in almost every major city. When the aliens invaded, he managed to hijack one of their ships and return to their mothership and blew up the thing from the inside. His sacrifice was the reason that the earth still stood. So, when he abducted me back in our home, I decided to hear him out instead of just ending him. It's a good thing I did, especially since I was a lot more irrational in those days."
"Ha, ha, and I thank you for that. Thankfully, in this life I didn't have to make that sacrifice." Dasher said as he walked into the room with the two others.
"General." Bravo jumped from the couch.
"You can ask your questions when we get home. It is rare that Mr. Acers here actually talks about his past experiences. You must know that not everything makes it into his books."
Bravo nodded and sat down but he was clearly excited and agitated.