Saving Daylight

John Hornor Jacobs and Fiona McDroll Johnson dared me to write a vampire story titled ‘Saving Daylight', so all fault lies squarely upon them. And I’ll probably die horribly if I don’t point out that the real Mses. Guidry and LaViolette are from Golden Meadow and not Cut Off.

Suckers weren’t very active during the summer, so we’d gotten a lot of rest before the Solstice. We were due to rise early, 1600ish, but I got the squad up and ready before Top could fuck up our day.

“BACON?! WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU FUCKS FUCKING GET FUCKING BACON?!”

Top was Reglur Army and hated wartimers. I washed down a forkful of bacon with coffee before answering.

Top had stopped asking about the coffee months ago.

“Feral pig.”

“WHAT?!”

Top was incapable of anything like a normal tone of voice.

“Feral. Pig. Escaped from a farm. Crossed our perimeter couple nights ago. Mongo clubbed it, Guidry and LaViolette boucherie-d it.”

I jerked a thumb across the squad bivouac at Mongo, Corporal Maurice Shaw, assistant squad leader, and our flamethrower team, nearly identical cousines from Cut Off, LA, both named Marie. Mongo blew a kiss and the Maries waved like the beauty pageant winners they were.

Top sputtered for a bit and then demanded to see our gear. We were so squared away we shat bricks, but Top made up something to gig us for. I thanked him and we cleared up breakfast and triple-checked our gear after Top stormed away.

The tough thing about fighting the suckers was sorting out fact from Twilight bullshit. Once we knew that vampirism is merely a virus (where ‘mere’ = ‘incurable, prehistoric retrovirus capable of transforming humans into long-lived, quick-healing, hemophagic, pointy-eared freaks’) it became a matter of finding their real weaknesses and exploiting them.

They healed fast, so doing heavy damage and making it stick was important. We used anti-materiel rifles and stakes for that. Sunlight, ultraviolet specifically, didn’t make them burst into flames, but it gave them a case of sunburn that made bursting into flame look enviable. UV spotlights and flashlights for that. Also, every squad had a dedicated flamethrower team to handle the downed suckers.

I had the squad quadruple-check the gear.

Mongo gave the high sign and we soldiered up for the LT. She was a right guy and always went to bat for us when HQ got all Army on us.

“Attention! Afternoon, Ma’am.”

She snapped back our salute.

“As you were.”

The squad as-they-wered and quintuple-checked the gear.

“Sergeant?”

“Ma’am?”

“Is this shambolic bunch ready?”

“Certainly, ma’am. Don’t let our contumacious demeanor fool you. You know us, all spit, no polish.”

She looked up.

“This might be the end, Sundance.”

“Maybe the beginning of the end, ma’am. I’ll believe it’s the end when I see my DD214 and I’m robbing trains again.”

The LT clapped my shoulder, and left me to make her way around the squad. After she left us we chilled, used our contraband phones to let our people know we weren’t dead yet, and waited for sundown.

At 2000 the big CEV mounted spots came on and we followed them into what used to be Iowa. The suckers were just beginning to stir and were easy to put down. We got a rhythm going; probe, shoot, stake, burn, repeat. The spots did their job, all the suckers we were putting down where covered in peeling skin and blisters, but their range is limited and as soon as the suckers are out of the light they begin to heal. But tonight’s surprise should take care of that.

The suckers seemed to realize something was up. Things got hairy for a while, but we needed to hold until full dark. We lost Big Ed, Villechaize (which really bit because he was short), and Surfer Zoë. Top also bought it, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Finally 2200 rolled around.

Most launching facilities were further south than suckers would willingly go and had been putting the sats up since the second year of the war. Now it was time.

Thousands of sats began to deploy nanomylar mirrors. Thousands of mirrors at 25000 miles was effectively one gia-fucking-norous mirror. The optically pure nanomylar reflected sunlight, ultraviolet specifically, with no loss. There was no place for the suckers to hide now.

The night vanished as the Large Orbital Mirror Array spread the saving daylight across the world.