Fic: Exile

EXILE

It seemed early to be turning in, but one successful patrol later followed by one not so pleasant argument with a not so pleasant slayer after that, it was time to retreat to the solitude of his crypt to lick some not so pleasant wounds. Sure, it was small potatoes in comparison to their previous arguments, but he still had to tend to his wounded pride. Spike was sure he’d regret what he’d said in the morning. Hell, he regretted it already. But he knew she needed the evening to cool off before they could talk like rational adults. Until then, it was best to go back to the crypt and sulk. The soul made the brood all the more potent.

Pulling into the cemetery, he dismounted his motorcycle and rolled it toward a crypt hidden by an overgrown throng of cedars. He pushed the bike into the empty tomb and locked the doors behind it with a heavy chain and padlock, relieved he still remembered the combination. Things were vanishing left and right in the cemetery. He didn’t fancy some fledgling nicking his wheels.

Spike dug in his pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Retrieving the last one, he flicked open his lighter and took a long drag in, savoring the taste of the tobacco on his tongue before exhaling a puff of smoke. In the moonlight he could see his old crypt. Hadn’t slept there in nearly a year, but tonight seemed like an alone night to pout. It couldn’t be that late. Maybe Letterman was still on. A little telly before bed always sounded like a nice idea, provided some little wanker hadn’t swiped the antiquated television. He’d deal with his tumultuous relationship in the morning.

A shadow flickered in his periphery, and his predator instincts went into high gear. The hair prickled on the back of his neck as he heard the faintest hint of a twig snapping.  Instinctively he crushed out his cigarette and reached in his breast pocket for his stake. No way he was going to let some two-bit fledgling get the better of him.

“Viper one, this is Viper three,” he barely heard over the breeze.  “Target is sighted. Repeat target is sighted.”

Soldiers.

The chase was on.  Nausea crashed through him, and he broke into a sprint hoping desperately that could lose the soldier boys in the maze of tombstones and crypts.  Their presence could only meant one thing – the Initiative was back in town. He knew he didn’t stand a chance against their sheer numbers and nifty gadgetry. But that didn’t mean he was going down without a fight.

Spike didn’t know how many commandos were lying in wait, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around long enough to count. Vaulting over a weathered tombstone, he headed down the hill. If he could make it to the woods, he might have a chance of losing them in the overgrowth.

He knocked over an urn, spilling its tacky, artificial flowers in his wake as he tried to escape. At the bottom of the hill, three commandos were already waiting for him with tasers in hand. Turning directions in mid-stride, he ran toward the east wall, hoping he could scale the barrier before they could catch him. He knew the cemetery like the back of his hand. Unfortunately, he was sure they knew it as well.

Electricity crackled past him. A near miss. A foot more to the right, and he be a quivering mass of jelly on the ground. Packed a punch, those tasers did. Left your skin vibrating with a maddening numbness for hours.

“Hold your fire!” a voice barked. “It’s out of range for the stunners.  Herd it toward the wall, we’ll corral it there.”

Spike cut back up the hill. Unarmed and outnumbered, he didn’t stand a chance. He felt himself slip into gameface, a reflex honed from decades of self-preservation. He’d been their prisoner once. He didn’t want to make that mistake again.

Ducking into the shadows, he backtracked toward his old crypt. If he could just make it to the lower level, he might have half a chance sneaking into the winding maze of sewers that snaked below the town. It was his only chance. But they were waiting for him at the front door as if they had predicted his next more.

Town. No self-respecting soldier would ever want an audience.  The north side of the cemetery met Santa Clara Boulevard. Bar time wasn’t for a couple more hours, and the road would still be teeming with traffic in all four lanes.  The Initiative wouldn’t dare take him down with a handful of eye witnesses. If worse came to worse, he could always throw himself against an incoming car. Sure, it would hurt like hell, but it would guarantee that traffic would snarl. Those fucking wankers would have no choice but retreat.

***

“So tell me again why your sister’s boyfriend has a fridge in a crypt?” Dawn’s best friend Janice asked as she downshifted.  The gears ground a bit, and the car lurched forward as they turned right.

“He’s a vampire, duh. You’ve lived in Sunnydale long enough to know we’re crawling with ’em, right? Hell, I know you’ve run into some. Second base, wasn’t it?” Dawn said as she coughed around a puff of smoke. Jabbing her cigarette toward the intersection a block ahead she added, “Turn left at the light. The cemetery’s right around the corner.”

“You sure he’s gonna have beer?” Janice asked over the over-played pop tune crackling from the speakers.

“He usually does,” Dawn said. “And if he doesn’t, I know where he stashes his bourbon. It’s not like he’s gonna find out any time soon since he’s been shacking up at our place since last summer. Besides, he owes me big time. I’m so sick of them waking me up in the middle of the night going at it. Hello, it’s not like I can’t hear them. The walls aren’t that thick.”

The pulled the car into the ground keeper’s turnaround, ignoring the No Parking sign in the turn-around.

Dawn followed Janice out of the car and pointed toward Spike’s crypt.  “That one over there,” she said.

But Janice grabbed her just as she was going to head across the grass. “Hang, on!” she whispered and pointed at the figure in the shadows. “Cops!”

Dawn followed her behind a bush. “It’s not curfew yet,” she answered.

“You wanna explain to a cop while you’re hauling beer out of a grave?” Janice said. “Missy Andretti got an underage ticket and had to pay this mondo fine and do community service.”

“Shhh!” Dawn warned as the figure was joined by two more. The girls ducked into inky shadows.  When did cops start toting crossbows? Last she heard, patrolling for demons wasn’t part of the job description for Sunnydale’s finest. Jaywalkers were more their speed.

“Hostile is heading west,” a voice crackled on the cop’s radio. “Repeat, hostile is heading west.”

“Those aren’t cops,” Janice realized.

Someone sprinted by. Two more chased close behind. Dawn grabbed Janice and tried her best to pull them into an invisible ball as she felt the breeze stirred up from the footrace. Peeking through foliage, she him. His white blond hair stood out against darkened night. Before she realized what she was doing, Dawn was on her feet screaming a warning.

“Spike!”

***

His demon let out a roar of pain as something sharp jabbed into his thigh. Spike didn’t need to look down to know he was in trouble. Gripping the little missile, he yanked a dart from his leg. He stumbled a few steps forward before he felt the drug quickly rob him of his strength.  His vision blurred, and in the corner of his eye he could make out Dawn’s familiar silhouette shadowed against the mausoleum.

“Get outta here, Bit!” he slurred his warning.

He staggered forward, his gait drunken and wobbly. The world ground down to a maddening slow-motion pace. Turning his head, he shook it violently back and forth in a futile attempt to reduce all the double images he saw into one. He didn’t hear her cry out his name or scream a futile warning. Couldn’t hear much of anything for that matter. The world grew mute, and his vision began to tunnel down to a thin pinpoint.

He tried to stumble forward, take one more step closer to the road, anywhere but the cemetery. But his legs no longer wanted to follow orders. He couldn’t see the soldier boys. And as the drug filtered through his body, he no longer cared where they were.  Spike’s eyes rolled back, and before he could take another step, his legs turned to rubber and buckled beneath him as he crumpled to the ground in an unconscious heap.

***

One of the soldiers reloaded his tranquilizer gun and aimed it at the retreating girl.  Easy target, she didn’t stray from his gun’s sights, right between the crosshairs just where he wanted her.

Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, he felt a hand on barrel of the gun. “Stand down, soldier,” the voice of his commanding officer said. “Your orders were for the Sub-T. We’re to leave the civilians untouched. Save it for another day.”

In the distance, the two girls vanished into he shadows. Car doors slammed, tires pealed, and the unmistakable sound of a car screeching down the road cut the through the silence surrounding the cemetery.

Civilian threats dispersed, the soldiers swarmed around their fallen quarry. Vultures circling the dead. The beast was stilled; the tranquilizer had effectively paralyzed it. They worked quickly, binding its limbs so it couldn’t fight back once the sedative wore off.  As a precautionary measure, they strapped a piece of thick, gray duct tape across its mouth. Didn’t want to be bit by snarling fangs. Resourceful like a pack of boy scouts, they were prepared for everything.

“Viper Seven to Command: the target has been bagged,” the commando barked into the radio on his shoulder harness. “Requesting air transport.”

“Roger that, Viper Seven,” a voice crackled across the radio. “Blackhawk is in route.”

Within minutes, the trees dotting the cemetery danced in time to the swirling eddies created by the descending copter. Like a giant bat, it dipped from the blackened sky in search of its prey, finding level ground to land about twenty meters away.

The Blackhawk’s blades continued to cut through the air. Crouching low, a pair of soldiers lifted the monster and hauled it to an open door.  They unceremoniously tossed it in the waiting hold like a sack of refuse before backing away and giving the pilot the thumbs up.  A swirl of dust danced around the helicopter as the craft started its slow ascent above the trees. Pine needles and dead leaves danced in the air, and the copter screamed out of sight.

Mission accomplished.

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/208137.html