Bitemarks 1.5

Sorry for delay. Life and whatnot.
Also, note. Dherroine. Deh-ro-een.

Bitemarks 1.5

Ed left the sleeping quarters and made his way down the final corridor. There was an eating area with two more corpses. Ed kept track mentally. This made seven. These two men had died the same way as the other civilians. Broken necks and then fed upon. Why would one vampire feed on seven men? There had to be more to this than meets the eye. Multiple vampires? But why here? There was another connecting corridor from here and Ed found the second solider. He was naked from the waist down and had his jacket pulled up over his head. The pool of blood around him was enough that Ed didn't want to see the damage under the jacket. There was a bullet on the floor near him. A fired bullet. Looks like he'd shot the vampire before it got him. He wondered what the army was going to make of this. He continued on and came into the lab room. Here were the final two civilians. He recognized one of them as Dr Keibler. There was a table in the centre of the room with chunks of ice upon it and more ice underneath. It had probably been a pool of water until the external doors had been left open, dropping the temperature throughout the complex. Ed wondered what the scientists had been up to. He checked his watch. There wasn't time for much research. He opened the nearest file cabinet and flicked through the most recent files. He couldn't make head nor tail of what he was seeing. He glanced around the lab some more and found a dictaphone laying on one worktop. He picked it up and rewound the tape then played it.
"Expedition: Arctic 3912: Dr Keibler. Tape 2. We managed to haul the specimen back to the lab though it wasn't easy. Thank god for those military guys. It'll be some time before the surface defrosts enough to allow a better visual of what we have here."
*click*
"The surface ice is melting nicely. Specimen seems in unusually good condition. Female, age difficult to discern. Under twenty possibly. I can't date our finding yet. The skull shape is hard to place. No clothing remains. All we can do is wait for now."
*click*
"The body is partially exposed now. I'm chipping away some surface ice carefully but it's slow work. I'm no longer sure what to make of this. Could it be a hoax?"
*click*
The tape ended there. Specimen? From the notes Alf provided these guys were supposed to be looking for a mammoth. What did they find instead? The evidence all pointed to a vampire. One frozen in the arctic wastelands? Ed didn't know enough about the subject. His work here was done. He put the dictaphone back and pulled a cloth from his trouser pocket. He wiped his prints off the recorder and the files and filing cabinet. With practiced precision he made his way back to the main door of the complex, wiping anywhere he'd touched. He hit his radio as he reached the main door.
"Wilbur, do you read?"
"Loud and clear Ed. No sightings yet. Everything is clear."
"Ok, bring her down. Let's get out of here."
Ed silenced the radio and cracked the door open, wiping his prints off afterwards. He left the door as he'd found it, swinging loosely in the breeze and looked out at the landing pad as the chopper came into view.


From her vantage point Skarletta watched the metal bird return. She had hidden herself here for now, covered loosely with snow some distance from the complex. She had seen the thing land nearby and seen one of them get out. The Dherroine. That was her word for them but now they called themselves something different. She could feel the blood of all those men pulsing through her veins. She still couldn't remember the specifics but she could feel the blood filling in the answers. Humans. She tried the word out on her lips, silently. How they had changed. The Dherroine of her time were so different. Slower, stupider, technologically backward. These Dherroine had strange ranged weaponry, devices with flashing lights that made crackling noises, odd clothing, a whole new language and that strange metal bird. She watched the first man clamber back into the thing and saw it take off. He would have seen the bodies. Skarletta needed a distraction. But first, she needed to find an area with more Dherroine. A heavily populated centre. Bigger than a simple tribal village. A small town or suchlike. She waited 'til the sound of the metal bird had left and then burst from her hiding place. She covered the distance to the helipad in seconds and reburied herself in the snow nearby. Sooner or later another would arrive. She could sense it and when it did, she would be free of this icy wasteland. Free to carry on. She couldn't remember what she was supposed to do but seeing the metal bird had been enough to remind her that there was an important task to accomplish. She lay down in the snow and shifted around until her face was covered too. She didn't feel the cold, especially with all that blood still inside her. She lay. And listened to its secrets. She played their voices back in her mind.
"What the fuck?!"
"No please, I have a wife, children!"
"Shit, she's coming!"
"Hold it right there. One more step and I'll shoot!"
"Dr Keibler, I heard scream..."
"No! Noooo!"
She smiled to herself under her snowy blanket.
"Helicopter." she said.