“Unless he wanted to protect someone he loved.”

Judy whirled on the reporter. “Excuse me?”

“The cops are keeping it quiet, but the evidence points to the same killer for both Jaffe and Kapsis.”

“I thought it was the nephew who got Kapsis.”

Mia shook her head. “There’s no way Nathan did it, he’s a vrykolatios. He doesn’t have the strength. I’ll bet real money that his lawyer uses that when he finally goes to trial.”

Shaking her head, Judy said, “I don’t get it, Mia, what —”

“It’s his mother. Marie Charles is the loup garou.”

For several seconds, Judy just stared at Mia.

Then she burst out laughing.

“Nice one, Mia. Marie’s a loup garou and I’m the queen of fucking England. Now I remember why I didn’t like you in high school. I’m calling security to haul your bony white ass outta here.”

Mia stood up as Judy reached for her phone. “Please, Judy, hear me out. I don’t like this either, but it fits. Marie doesn’t actually have an alibi for either killing, and the wolf that killed Jaffe weighs about the same as she does.”

Judy stared at her. “That’s all you got?”

“I told you I didn’t have anything solid. But I know him — and so do you. Look at what we do have, and think about how he feels about his maman. You really think he wouldn’t do all this for her?”

Instinctively, Judy wanted to say no. But she couldn’t. The woman sailed to New York from a violent country while eight months pregnant to save her son. And Big Charlie had always been one to repay his debts.

He’d try to avoid her being subject to the nightmare of press coverage of being the vampire mother of a politician. And he’d also try to fix it so that things were better for others of her kind.

“No wonder he wanted to run for senate so bad,” Judy whispered. “Jesus, he kept insisting, no matter how many people told him it was stupid. And it never made sense. But now —” She looked at Mia. “How sure are you?”

Mia just stared back. “How sure are you?”

Neither woman said anything in response.

— 24 —

Op-ed piece by Mia Fitzsimmons in the New York Daily News.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”

That was the thought that went through my head as I stood in front of Hugues Charles’ burning house two months ago. I had been on an errand in Manhattan when my editor told me that his house was on fire. I immediately hopped in a cab and high-tailed it to De Reimer Avenue only to watch Big Charlie’s home go up in flames.

Back in 1977, Howard Cosell said those words when he saw the South Bronx on fire from Yankee Stadium. A young Hugues Charles heard them and swore he would protect the Bronx to keep it from burning.

On a Tuesday night in September, he officially failed. The Reverend Josiah Mann — a so-called religious leader who has never set foot in New York City as far as I know — called for his head, and TV commercials called him a monster and a menace. The day before her tragic murder, Emma Jaffe, one of his opponents, aired a commercial that called a vote for him to be a vote for death.

All of them missed the point. Big Charlie was just trying to protect the people of the city he called home from burning down.

It’s been two months since that night that the Bronx burned, and while it was just one house on De Reimer Avenue, it was as devastating as those multiple fires were in October 1977. Big Charlie is still missing, with no sign of him or his maman. We can only assume that Marie Charles and her son are in hiding. We can only assume they’re okay.

Today, Mickey Solano is the new junior senator for New York State. When he is sworn in early next year, he will be expected to vote on legislation against the very virus that gave him his job. After all, if not for I1V1, Alex Kapsis would have finished his term and likely been re-elected, opposed only by the same Frank VanDerMeer who only managed 30% of the vote against Solano. If not for I1V1, Big Charlie would probably have not been opposed by Solano in the Bronx D.A. race, which raised his profile.

Now the Bronx will have an inferior D.A, New York has an inferior senator, and a good man whose only mistake was that he was powerless against a virus he couldn’t help contracting, has disappeared, leaving only ashes in his place. Worse, those who have I1V1, who had put their hopes in at last having representation in Congress, have gone even further underground, vilified even more by the Reverend Manns and Mickey Solanos of the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is still burning.

"EMBEDDED"

Jonathan Maberry

Near Harrowgate Park

Kensington, Philadelphia

142 Days after the V-Event

Luther Swann ran hunched over through the rotor wash, following the ten-man SpecOps strike team. He was one of two civilians with the team. The other was a televsion reporter, Baird Lang from Chicago, selected by lottery to accompany V-Team Eight on this mission.

It was Swann’s fifth raid.

He thought that by now he’d have become hardened to it, but it seemed that every time he deployed from a Black Hawk it was like tearing the scab off of a wound.

Swann knew this would be bad.

Behind him the Black Hawk dusted off and swung high and wide until the thwop-thwop-thwop of its blades faded to nothing. The soldiers of V-Team Eight — nicknamed V-8 by the press — came up to a row of burned-out cars and knelt. The last man on the team guided Swann and the reporter, Lang, to a safe spot behind an overturned UPS truck.

Beyond the row of cars was a no-man’s land of debris. This whole neighborhood was in ruins. Most of the blue-collar row homes were burned-out shells. The nearby Tioga elevated train station was in rubble, the train tracks twisted down to the ground. There had been five major clashes here in the last month. Two wins on either side, and one stalemate that had only ended when the vampires had slipped away under cover of darkness.

These vamps were part of the New Red Coalition. They were the kind of threat General May had predicted. Organized, armed, and highly dangerous, working like a terrorist cell. In the last several months New Red teams had made successful strikes against key targets. They’d destroyed over forty major railways and blown up nineteen bridges across the country. Nobody had yet counted how many miles of electrical and phone lines they’d torn down.

Baird Lang, sporting a fresh five-hundred-dollar haircut, had interviewed one of their organizers, a vampire who called himself “Orlok.” Cute, Swann thought, the name inspired by the silent film, Nosferatu. Many “out” vampires were taking so-called “V-names” from pop culture, like they were DJs. There was even one whose Twitter handle was “Count Chockula.” On good days, Swann thought that was amusing.

On days like today … not so much.

In the interview, Lang had asked Orlok what Swann felt was the most significant question anyone in the media had posed so far: “Do you speak for all vampires?”

Orlock laughed. “Yes, even though too many of my red brothers and sisters have not yet shaken off the chains of human domination. The New Red Coalition is small, we admit that, but like the heart which is only a small part of the body, so we are to our people. Small, but vital. Without us, our people will die. Without us, the humans will hunt us to extinction … as they did in the Dark Ages. We will not let that happen.”

Then Cooper asked, “Homeland has designated you as terrorists. What is your reaction to that?”

“We are not terrorists,” said Orlock, his tone hot with bitter rage, “we are people fighting for our lives.”

“But you’ve made many strikes against non-military targets.”

“Sure … how else are we going to get people to listen?”

Public opinion was split on the matter, and every time one of the major pollsters posted numbers, Swann saw how the non-infected were swaying. At first they were dead set against the vampires, then they swung the other way based on Swann’s appearances on Anderson Cooper 360, the Daily Show, and forty-two other shows. Now, with the New Red Coalition bombing trains and disrupting cell and cable service, the public was turning against the vampires.

Tomorrow it might be different.

And the day after that it might all change again.

Today, though …

Today, the public wanted blood. Knocking down telephone poles interrupted cable lines, and you don’t mess with cable. The public doesn’t forgive transgressions like that.

Swann crouched down and watched the soldiers of V-8 lock and load. He knew that a fleet of gunships armed with mini-guns and rocket pods were in a schoolyard four blocks away. The vampires in the row house across the street were all going to die.

It was just one cell. One of who knew how many, but from the pre-strike briefing, Swann knew what kind of message this was going to send.

General May had been crystal clear: “We’re not looking to take prisoners. Once you determine that there are no non-infected in that house, then by God it’s open season.”

The soldiers had cheered.

The reporter looked excited. This was ratings gold.

Swann felt his heart sink. There was no way to win this kind of war.

No way in hell.

The team commander yelled, “Go!”

And hell is what it became.

They breached the door with a heavy weight swung by two burly men. The frame splintered and the door flew inward. The men with the weights faded back and the V-8 shooters rushed inside. Hard-faced soldiers in black BDUs, with Kevlar padding and ballistic shields. M4s, combat shotguns and Glocks. Swann wore a full set of body armor. So did the reporter.

They’d been shot at before.

Swann had taken a round in the chest once, but as he ran to follow the team he could not remember where it had happened. Trenton? Newark? Or the raid at Coney Island?

The bullet had been a Teflon-coated cop-killer round. Swann couldn't remember the fight but he could remember that bullet. It had earned its name by punching through the bodyarmor worn by SWAT team member. It had killed the cop and passed entirely through him and though it lacked lethal force by the time it struck Swann, it still carried enough force to crack two ribs. And to paint his face with the officer's blood.