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walker-journal · 4 years

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Pantomime Patrol (POTW-Solo)

This is the shitty POTW solo I typed up during breaks at work, please don't hate me

Eluria Cemetery was one of those supernatural hotspots that needed constant patrolling to keep it from boiling over into neighboring districts. It was a death sentence to come here at night without superhuman powers or appropriate weaponry, and thus Adam Walker had entered with military-grade kevlar, specialized ammunition, and weapons that combined archaic superstition with cutting-edge Materials Science. Many of the original tombs reflected the eighteenth centuries neoclassical obsession. Arches with Doric detailing, blank walls, dramatic columns, and stark friezes loomed above the catacombs maze-like curves in the dusk’s gloom. Later additions from the Gothic Revival of the nineteenth century were dotted here and there. Angels, Hellenistic busts, pho-pagan temples, and cathedral-like crypts were silently juxtaposed, yet all eras decayed together under time’s relentless inertia.

All this decayed grandeur was part of what made the sprawling vamp-infested expanse of Eluria such a death trap. The architecture and winding catacombs allowed unhallowed things to breed and feed in shadowed nooks. Obscured sightlines and sheer corners meant that it was all too easy to get surrounded and drawn into engagements where the ravenous dead had the tactical upper-hand.

Thus Adam’s patrol had been complicated enough without an unexpected guest trying to slit Adam’s throat with a very familiar cold-iron tactical knife while the Hunter went bent over the remains of a woman who’d been gnawed down to nothing but a gnawed spine connected to an eyeless face. What followed was a cat and mouse game through the catacombs, each combatant ducking behind tombstones and romanesque outcroppings as silenced pistol shots were exchanged. Angels got their noses nicked in sprays of sawed stone as Adam and the stranger engaged in the constant dance of suppressing fire and relocation employed by those trained in urban warfare. When a homemade grenade sprayed cold-iron shrapnel across his position and opened several razor slices across his back, Adam realized that this assailant both had access to his weaponry and definitely didn’t give any shits about secrecy.

Adam eventually got his first full look at the guy when the catacomb maze opened up into a placid clearing surrounding a small columned dome that stood above the memorial statue of a girl holding a three-eyed skull. The assailment was dressed in a monochromatic mirror of Adam’s own equipment and overall looked like Rambo had gone to a Kiss concert in his cadet years.

Deciding to test a theory, Adam spoke up.

“Hey who gives the best head in the Gillian dorm?”

White lips curled in a smirk. The assailment pulled out a cellphone, swiped to a picture, and pantomimed exactly was that Sarah Flores did with her tongue that could make you week in the knees for hours.

Yup, that it was him. Clone. Damn.

Adam drawing his sword was following by the sound of another blade sliding from its sheathe. Not feeling any need to hold back, the mutants cut at each other with sword strokes that most eyes would’ve struggled to follow and delivered feinting kicks and underhanded punches that'd have snapped the sternums of purely human combatants. Yet, no matter how Adam varied his stance and switched fighting forms, the double followed with the counter-blow and opposing guard. Grave dirt churned as footing shifted and the superhumans jumped off crypt walls and bashed each other straight through tombstones in a fruitless quest to gain a decisive upper-hand.

Yet went the ringing sword-fight had accelerated to a skimmed of blade strokes and poisoned throwing knives amid to gothic steeples on top of a large ancestral mausoleum, Mime-Adam suddenly paused mid-throw and held a finger up to his lips. Adam froze in the act retrieving a shrapnel grenade of his own. Sure enough, distinctive gnawing sounds were audible over the Hunters’ heavy breathing. Paramilitary instinct kicked in, and both Hunters’ immediately fanned out across the rooftop, checking sight-lines. Adam snapped his fingers in a punctuated pattern, bringing the double to his side as quickly as if they’d always reversed such drills together as children.

Some Spawn hung down from the eves of a distant mausoleum, gorging on some joggers that had evidently decided that recording the sight on their phones had taken precedence over running. Three pairs of legs clad in top brand running pants dangled from the baroque overhand, swaying like fleshy windchimes with the motions of the Spawns’ feverish gnawing on the bloody spinal stumps where heads used to be.

Adam and his silent double looked at one another, and a moment of wordless understanding passed between them. Despite their difference in origin both young men were Hunters, both born with the savage instincts and prowess of predators but honed to be instruments of deliverance. Adam had no idea how deeply this doppelgänger mirrored him. However, when Mummer Walker gave him a slow nod and reached to a black Army tactical belt with white buckles to retrieve high-grade phosphorous rounds, Adam knew he and Quiet were on the same wavelength where Vams were concerned.

A rapid series of squad hand-signs later, mime and man moved to take up flanking positions on either side of the mausoleum. Settling into some cover that gave clear sight-lines but would screen him from any winged spawn drop down from above, Adam gave the signal. From the mouth of a far crypt came a gun discharge before the Spawn’s position erupted in an explosion of radiance. While the alchemical phosphorous rounds wouldn’t sear them like true daylight, the Spawn’s senses where poorly adapt to sudden illumination. It gave Adam all the opening he needed to start laying down a hail of crossbow bolts. When needed to reload, the Mime laid down suppressing fire, and Adam did the same for him in turn. The courtyard was a mess of unearthly screams, flashes of chemical light, and the whisper of blessed bolts zipping through the night air.

More Spawn flew in, however, and soon the Mime’s position looked like it was about to be overrun by a teaming mass of hulking Chiroptera bodies. Contemplation slows you down in combat, and Adam didn’t think as he sprinted across the courtyard of singed tombstones and several piles of fine-grained dust. He’d dropped the crossbow and lifted the small Seal of Solomon on a thin silver chain from under his sweat-soaked shirt. He shoved his way into the center of the mosh pit with a football tackle, thrusting out the sanctified seal while shouting the Hebrew prayer used in ancient days to ward off the nocturnal predations of Lilith.

Undead flesh charred, crisped, and flaked off as half-human forms flailed. Membranous wings were riddled with smile holes like a candle eating away paper. The moment of respite was all the Mime needed to leap forward, punching through the Spawn’s lowered guarded with a hawthorn stake, plunging it down over and over with a grin of euphoric madness that Adam recognized from the mirror. Yet the Mime rose from the dust piles only to be greeted by Adam’s pistol in his face.

But Adam didn’t see his own painted face looking at him with numb expectation, nor a simulacrum of his own body bleeding black instead of red. He saw James, gentle features frozen in shock, cold lips parted in a question. He saw Lucas, eyes pained and pleading. He saw Winn, bent over the unconscious body of Adam’s fraternity brother. He saw Ricky, lying there defenseless with a pained rueful smile. He saw the first vamp he ever killed, the running back of his football team that’d looked up at Adam with a blood-covered semblance of terror and despair.

The safety clicked on.

“The cops will be here soon and I’ve got another graveyard to patrol. Go get those bites cleaned up”

#POTW #Mime

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