"Before Dawn"

Chapter 31: Rainfall and Bullets

Dawn drops to a knee and keeps her pistols leveled at the mob of charging ghouls. She waits until they get closer so that it's easy for her to engage her targets. Economy of firepower her father and Cat had told her when you're running low on ammo in precarious situations. The rain is falling impossibly heavier now but she is impervious to the downpour, only concentrating on when to let the bullets fly. What may very well be the final members of The Brood are closer now. Closer...closer...closer...

Dawn's Sig Sauer's light up. Ghouls fall as bullets rip through their skulls. Inertia sends their dead bodies sliding and rolling across the wet ground—dead. Some of the ghouls attempt to divert their path, trying to flank her, but Dawn's judgement of timing and distance is on-point, and her aim is true. Still, they're closing in fast, and Dawn—who manages a quick re-load of her pistols—is already running low on ammo. She's caught up in a storm of rainfall and bullets with no thought of what the next few moments will hold. She drops more ghouls, sending them to join the others. A flash of lightning shows her that the ranks of ghouls has thinned, and this gives her hope. "Aaaaaahhhh!" she war-cries at the remaining ghouls. Her bellow is so threatening that it causes her final adversaries to hesitate. Dawn sees fear embellish their golden irises now, but they attack anyway. She fires away until the attacks stop.

A brilliant flash of lightning cascades the sky. Dawn sees dead ghouls scattered everywhere before the rainy sky goes dark again. She waits and listens. Nothing.

Are they all really dead?

"Damn, baby-girl," Wesley Price said from a short distance away, startling her. "You got lucky."

Dawn didn't realize she had maneuvered herself so far away from him during her battle with the last—hopefully—of The Brood. One of the barrels of her pistols is locked to the rear. She sends the barrel forward. The other pistol is ready-to-rock and roll. She straps both pistols into her upper body-rig as she runs over to Wesley. She grabs him by his skinny ankles and starts to drag him toward the van. He's talking to her—rambling on about some nonsense—but she has completely zoned him out. Dawn periodically glances behind her to make sure danger isn't creeping up on them. It's quiet save Wesley's mumbling and the fading storm. Feeling a sense of foreboding, she expects Mortifer or The Master, having reached some twisted pact, to come bounding for them.

Moments later, Dawn is driving away from the factory with Wesley Price strewn in the cargo area. She's soaked, so wet that it feels as if rain had seeped through her pores and into the marrow of her bones. As she creates distance from the factory, weariness sets in. She's tired...so very tired.

She's finally at that proverbial bridge she's supposed to cross about how she's going to go about saving Wesley. Dawn pulls out her iPhone, noticing that it's 3:37 a.m. She has to make a phone call, but no way she's calling her father. She's tempted to call Cat in hopes that he's recovered—probably not. Besides, he'd probably dime her out to her father, not that he'd be in any position to meet her at Ground Zero. That left Martha Littlejohn. Dawn scrolled through her iPhone contacts with a thumb and selected HAG.

Martha's line rings for what seems like forever before she finally answers. "Hello?" she said, sleep in her voice.

Dawn swallows and takes a deep breath. "Martha..." she said.

A pause on the True Believer's end. "Dawn?" she asked, fully alert now. "That you?"

"Yeah," Dawn said. She hears the shakiness in her own voice.

"Aw, hell...what did you do?"

Dawn got right to it. "I got Wesley Price," she said. "I'm on my way to Ground Zero so you can help change him back."

"You what?"

"I have Wesley. We need to help him."

"How did you—"

"Too much to explain right now."

"'Too much', my old, wrinkly ass. Tell it," Martha said.

Dawn takes a deep breath and tells it—all of it.

It's so quiet on Martha's end that Dawn thinks she may have lost the signal. She pulls her iPhone away to check the connection. The connection is intact. "Martha are you there?" she asked anyway.

"I'll meet you at Ground Zero," Martha said and closes the call.

Dawn doesn't realize she was practically holding her breath until she set her iPhone on the center console and exhaled. She reflects on the conversation with Martha and wonders why the old lady didn't go ballistic on her. No way she's not in trouble with Martha. Must be the calm before storm, Dawn reckons. It's whatever. Saving Wesley is worth it. She craned her neck to tell Wesley, "I'm getting you help".

Wesley laughs. "I'm not the one who needs help. But you? Oh, you just wait until The Master gets his hands on you. And if you think that hellhound can save you then you'd better think again, baby-girl."

The Master...and Mortifer. What became of them? Either a demon is still hot on her trail, and a hellhound is on the lose—or both. In either case, Dawn is in trouble. A chill that she can't seem to shake creeps up and down her spine. Well, at least Wesley will be helped and this makes it all worthwhile—maybe.