Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 75

“The feed was hacked. We’re not sure who did it, and we’ve been trying to trace it for hours.” The ȧssistant used to wear glasses before she was turned, and she still had the habit of pushing them up her nose, despite not having them anymore.

Achak sighed and rubbed his nose.

“Is everything ready for us to leave? The elders will probably have troops here within the hour and we need to be long gone by then.”

“Everything is loaded in the last helicopter, but the pilot is warning me that he’s not sure we have enough fuel to get to your old lab.” She went to push her glasses up again, and stopped. It must be a nervous habit.

“That’s alright, we’re not going to my old lab. There a different one, that’s much closer. The elders know about my old lab, they would be heading there as soon as they see that we’ve left.”

Checking his office over, one last time, he smashed his computer with a single jab of his fist, then proceeded to pour fuel over the sparking mess. It caught fire immediately. His ȧssistant rushed from the room, probably heading for the helicopter. He watched long enough, from the hall, to make sure all of the other fuels he had scattered throughout the lab caught fire as well.

The elders would be ticked off, but he was done playing their little game. He had played it long enough, and was ready to take the reigns of the mess they had made.

Vampires all over the world had turned to drinking the contaminated blood of the people, because there hadn’t been enough blood from the mutations to feed them all. When they fed on the contaminated people, if they didn’t kill them properly, those people would then rise up as vampires themselves.

A side effect he had foreseen, and warned the elders of, was of the vampires picking up some of the mutagenic properties from the werewolves, and when mixed with a new virus that had been released less then two decades ago, the vampires were now starting to change into creatures themselves. Much deadlier than anything he had ever made. These new creatures hunted even the vampires themselves for nourishment.

He had told the elders to deal with this before it got out of hand, but they refused to listen. Now the mess was almost beyond control.

Pausing at the helicopter pad, he could see that both of his ȧssistants were continuously injecting the two werewolves and three females on board to keep them all asleep for the trip. Should he merely hide away with them for the next fifty years or so, let the new monsters kill everything off, then start fresh when they died from hunger? Shaking his head, he boarded the copter and slipped the ear protectors over his head. Watching his lab go up in flames, he shook his head.

That would be too annoying, and he didn’t have a wide enough genetic gene pool to satisfactorily bring humans back. With a sigh, he decided he would just have to fight this war with the elders and hope for the best.

“You didn’t seriously think we let those mutants roam around down here, without knowing about them, did you?” It was Lisa. She was standing with two of the guards on either side of her.

Rick and Willow looked at each other in confusion, but Hayden didn’t hesitate. He drew his bow, and had shot two of the guards before he ran out of arrows, and dived into the open room next to him.

With a shout, the guards went down, and Lisa jumped to the side with the other two guards. Rick and Willow jumped after him.

“You don’t think they were down here, just to bring us home, do you?” asked Hayden sarcastically, as he frantically searched the room for anything he could make into a temporary arrow.

“I thought it was my job to be sarcastic,” pouted Willow, crossing her arms for a moment, before jumping to help him look.

Rick stood, just beside the door jam with his sword, in case the guards or Lisa tried to barge into the room. A missile came flying in, hitting the floor with a ting, bouncing once, then rolling to a stop at Willow’s feet. She looked at it in shock, when it started spewing thick black smoke into the air. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she fell to the floor almost immediately.

Hayden wrapped his arm around his face, and tried to grab her arm, to drag her away from the can, but he too succumbed to the gas. Rick took his shirt off, his eyes burning, and wrapped it around his face. He took a deep breath of clean air, from by the door, and rushed over to grab them, while holding his breath. He managed to grab them, and started dragging them to the door, his throat and lungs burning.

As he exited the room, a hand touched his arm, and he turned to see one of the guards punch him in the face. Normally that would not have put him down, but after everything he had been through, he couldn’t handle much more. Hitting the ground hard, he watched as Lisa walked up, wearing a full-face mask, and kneeled by his face.

“Don’t worry, we have plans for your little girl friend. She’ll be well taken care of when the Slaver’s get here.”

Adrenaline began flowing through his veins, and Rick’s eyes bulged open. All traces of sleep and unconsciousness left as he roared and grabbed her by the ankle.

Fear was evident in her eyes as the two guards, who had been dragging the two unconscious kids away, rushed back to help her. They were too late, as Rick shoved his hand up, and grabbed her mask, while at the same time, grabbing that insane mess of hair and violently smashed her face into the floor. The guards tried to drag him away from her, but he turned to them, dragging their masks off and punching them.

The strength he had from his years training in the gym showed, as both guards hit the floor, and he was left standing in the hall, panting. Pulling the cloth away from his face, his eyes rolled up, and he fell.