try to find whoever’s alive and evacuate. You’re on your own, kiddo.”
He spotted a head peeking at them from behind a defunct but decorative antique card catalogue shelf. He rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder and fired. Poe jumped, grumbling that she was going to be deaf before her next birthday.
“We’ll try to meet at 6th and Olive three nights from now.” Again he glanced over her shoulder. “Hope to see you and Penny there.” Careful not to hurt the dog, Joseph stuffed five pieces of paper in her backpack and kissed the top of her head before resuming his double-handed blasting. “It’s the formula for Plasmacore, Poe. Spread it around.”
Before she could beg him to take her along, the question vanished from her mind as a small incendiary device rolled in her direction. Shit shit shit!
Hardly thinking, Poe kicked the explosive like a hockey puck toward the escalator where vamps dressed 195
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in paramilitary uniforms were pouring out. The device exploded after hitting metal stairs, spraying limbs on the walls and ceiling and forever disabling the escalator. There goes a Renoir, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, she thought. Poe fired at the remaining bodies flailing on the floor.
“Mom must really hate me now,” Poe gritted.
It was clear. Poe ran down the stairwell, encountering a vampire more or less bursting from excess. His maw was covered in blood and pieces of meat where he had taken a chunk out of his victims’
flesh. Apparently certain vamps became overexcited at the leeway given to them. Poe helped him out of his misery by shooting his engorged gut and spilling some of the load.
Downstairs she saw only litters of twice-dead corpses and human carcasses. It was so easy. The fighting had transferred to the other side of the library, and from the sound of gunfire and grenade blasts, the laboratory was the target. All she had to do was run out of the hole that used to be the front entrance of the library, and she would have been free. But stupidly she had second thoughts. Her feet turned toward the freight elevators at the rear entrance of the building. The level of noise and activity made it easy to find.
Her eyes squinted menacingly at the spectacle of Sainvire’s slumbering vampires being carried and tossed outside like garbage bags, the sun incinerating them slowly and painfully. Where are the clouds and rain now?
“Get the hell out of here,” Poe ordered herself.
“The more bloodsuckers dead the better.”
Poe’s jaw muscles tensed. Sainvire’s vampires hadn’t treated her that badly. In fact, they treated her fine with the exception of the humiliating incident in the cafeteria. There was Maple, Joseph, and…Sainvire.
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Knowing she would regret it later, Poe hoisted her Uzi and ran to the back elevator leading down to the basement where the sun-sensitive slept like stone.
Slick from gore she did not see, Poe nearly lost her footing around the bend. It was a wonder she did not crash into padded figures that took the horror out of vampires.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked the four outsiders covered in gray astronaut suits with tinted face shields to avoid the sun. “Drag those bodies under the stairs or I’ll shoot your stupid Darth Vaders and microwave you to a crisp.”
Once the vampires were safely under the stairs, Poe executed the four invaders anyway. It irked her that vampire slumber equaled truly dead for once.
When the elevator opened for another shipment of sleeping undead, Poe was waiting. Her jaw dropped as she recognized the man ordering the Pillsbury Doughboys about. His goatee and I’m-so-mean Jim Carrey face would always be in Poe’s Asshole Hall of Shame.
“Ambrose, you fucking snake!” she hissed, blasting the three suited up vamps in the elevator, saving the Judas parasite for last.
The only thing the man could say was, “Fuck me!” as he tried to press the close button.
Unfortunately the body of one of his bloated suit people blocked the elevator door from shutting.
“Hey, let me explain,” he started. “I’m innocent.
They forced–”
Poe shot off each of his kneecaps. Without taking a breather, she ignored his cries. She reached for the axe slung in her pack and hacked at Ambrose’s pleading arms. It only took four strokes to cleave the traitor of his limbs, bones and all.
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Convulsing from shock and the loss of blood, Ambrose cried, “Mercy. Please!”
“That’s for calling me a bitch at the lab,” she spat in his hysterical blood speckled face.