Chapter 28 – Wait for Someone



Just the person Buffy wanted to see on the other end of a rifle. She could hardly wait to beat him up, take away his rifle and shoot him with it. She hoped it wasn’t loaded with real bullets because she might feel bad after she shot him. Or, she might not feel bad which would make her feel really bad, that she didn’t. Feel bad, that is.

Buffy inched her hand towards a pocket of her combat vest.

“Don’t,” Riley said. “I’ll shoot you.”

“I just wanted to get out my Cheezee Whizee. See?” Buffy unzipped her vest slowly and opened it so he could see the aerosol can tucked in an inside pocket.

“Women. You won’t need any Cheezee Whizee where you’re going, which is to Leavenworth for stealing valuable government property.” Riley stepped between Buffy and the gurney where Spike was lying. He thumbed Spike’s eyelids open to see if he was sleeping and saw nothing but white eyeballs.

“Good. I don’t want to waste another tranq dart on Ass Face. Besides, I want him to be wide awake when I stake him when he attempts to escape. Let’s go.” He turned his back on Spike and pointed his remote control device at the ceiling. A wall slid open, exposing the hallway back to the laboratory.

Buffy gripped the front of her combat vest. While Riley played with his remote control, she slid her hands down the front of the vest, feeling for the plastic box she had tucked in her lower, front pocket with the Velcro flap.

Xander, hoping Buffy was getting ready to do something that involved hitting, kicking, head butting and other types of assorted and extreme violence, started talking. “So, Ri, where the hell are we? Buffy and I were pushing Dead Boy down the hall and the next thing we knew the walls were closing in and we were going in a circle …”

“Shut up,” Riley slashed his rifle butt at Xander’s head and cracked his skull. Xander dropped to the floor, dazed. Riley hit him again, and Xander passed out.

Xander’s distraction gave Buffy the opportunity she needed. She ripped open the Velcro strip on her pocket and whipped out the control box. The box wasn’t tuned to the exact frequency, but she hoped - she prayed - it would work.

She pointed the box at Riley. With any luck, she would deliver the same flaming zap to Riley’s skull that he’d given to Spike.

“Put the rifle on the floor and back away,” she said.

Riley laughed. “What are you going to do? Screw me to death with the Happy Vampire Ray Box? That thing only works on bloodsuckers like your boyfriend.”

“No, the box only works on people with chips in their heads. People like you.”

Riley lifted the barrel of his rifle and pointed it directly at Buffy. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I checked your file, Riley. Vampires aren’t the only ones getting behavior modification implants.” Vampires aren’t the only ones that need chips, either.

Behind Riley, Spike, who had been feigning sleep, shifted off the cart and raised it above his head. With his last ounce of strength, he heaved the gurney and crashed the metal wheels on Riley’s head. Spike wavered for a moment, exhausted by his effort, and crumpled to the floor.

Riley stumbled forward and stepped on the hardened glob of Cheezee Whizee. His foot skated out from under him and he slammed down.

While Spike and Riley were fooling around, Buffy fine-tuned the box and gave Riley a full-strength blast.

The box did not work the way she anticipated.

“Buffy, please baby, how about a little action? You’ve been teasing me for weeks, babe,” Riley said. He crawled across the floor and kissed the polished toe of her boot and her leg and licked her knee cap through her combat pants.

“Ewww,” Buffy said.

She shook Riley off her combat boot, which he was humping, and kicked him against the wall.

“That’s what’s wrong with this mission. It’s been way too Fisticuffs Free.”

She jerked Riley up to a standing position and gave him a left-right-left to his gut, a left hook that broke his jaw and a sharp, right punch in his nose, which made a satisfying crunch under her knuckles. Riley fell to the floor, dazed, but not knocked out. He got on his hands and knees and crawled towards her.

“Come on, Buffy, give me a little sugar.”

She grabbed his rifle as he crept toward her again. She checked to make sure the rifle was loaded with darts and not bullets, then blasted Riley in the butt. He wobbled and crashed and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

Buffy looked around the walled-in room at the three unconscious males. She handcuffed Riley’s hands behind his back with the excellent carbon steel, tactical hinge cuffs he’d used on her the night he vamp-napped Spike. Then, she splashed a couple of bottles of holy water on Xander’s face and sat down to wait for somebody to wake up.

***

The sun was edging up red and gold behind the mountains and glittering the white caps with color. As the regatta of smaller boats neared the Isla Vista docks, Giles turned the Boa Sorte back to Fuego, making a long arc back to the island.

Willow continued to signal Buffy on the walkie-talkie, though they were too far away. At a mile-and-a half out from the island, she received a responding squawk.

“Will, is that you?”

“Yes, Captain. What’s your situation? Are you at the pickup point? Do you need some more fog? I’ve got some of the lime green left.”

“Negative on the fog. We aren’t anywhere near the originally scheduled pickup point. We’re headed to the west loading dock. Estimated time of arrival two minutes. Can you intercept there?”

Willow checked with Giles.

He nodded and steered the boat towards the west side of the island.

“That’s a go, Captain, but we might need longer than two minutes. Did you locate the, er, targets?”

“Yes, both targets secured.”

“Thank you, Hecate,” Willow said.

“See you in three.” Buffy hit the squelch button.

Xander revived first, after Buffy splashed his face again with her last bottle of holy water. Together they lifted Spike back onto the gurney, which now rolled sideways on only three wheels. The front left wheel was bent flat from its contact with Riley’s skull.

Using Riley’s remote control, Buffy closed the hall back to the laboratory, opened a new aisle to the loading dock and closed all the panels to trap Riley into the same small cube they’d occupied.

They raced to the loading dock, pushing and dragging the gurney, dodging soldiers and using the remote to block off their path behind them and disable the shrieking sirens and security cameras. They reached the dock as the boat’s lights blinked into view. Buffy closed off the dock access door right before the batteries in the remote died.

A security camera whirred into motion and pointed in their direction. Xander boosted Buffy up on his shoulders and she squirted the last glob of her Cheezee Whizee over the lens.

Xander patched spots of cubanol over the control panels to the dock. He blew up the controls, destroying access to the dock from inside the compound. Soldiers banged and pounded on the steel door, but couldn’t get in.

By the time Xander and Buffy lifted Spike into the boat, daylight was approaching fast. The first rays of the sun streaked from behind the mountains behind Isla Vista as Willow cooked up one last fog to obscure their exit – golden-yellow this time – as the Boa Sorte sped for towards the coast.

They laid Spike down on one of the cabin bunks. Buffy sat down beside him and peeled off her combat cap. Her golden waves fell down in tangled, messy waves.

“I have hat hair, don’t I?” She ran her fingers through her hair to give herself something to do besides have Serious Romantic Discussion with Spike. “Sorry it took so long. I mean for us to come and get you.”

Spike smiled weakly and curled a strand of her hair around his finger. “I knew you’d come, luv. Told that wanker, Angelus you’d come for me.”

“I couldn’t leave my favorite vampire in the hands of the Initiative, could I?”

“Couldn’t leave me any longer with that magnificent poof, Angelus, you mean. He was getting cranky without his Nancy Boy hair gel.”

“He’s going to have something else to be cranky about. The doctor’s putting a chip in his head. Angel’s going on a Homo-Sapiens free diet.”

Spike laughed. “It was almost worth the trouble of being captured to get Peaches fixed.”

Buffy reached into her combat vest and brought out a set of military orders, the set she hadn’t used. “Speaking of chips, I have a present for you.” She handed him a set of orders authorizing Dr. Ekl to implant a new chip in Spike’s head.

Spike felt too tired to read the entire order, but he saw the important part. He was pleased she trusted him without his electronic leash, but wasn’t so sure he trusted himself.

“Why didn’t you?”

“You earned it. Not eating people for two weeks when you could have. That’s the second nicest thing that you did for me that anybody’s every done for me. Thank you.”

Spike turned his face away so Buffy wouldn’t catch him doing some poufter thing like crying.

She stroked his fingers, tenderly. “I love you, William.”

Whew. What a relief to have that off her chest. Telling Spike she loved him was tougher than busting him and fifteen other vampires out of the Initiative fortress. At least, telling him the first time was tough. Telling him the next two hundred times was bound to be easier.

He tugged the lock of hair entwined around his finger to bring her lips closer. “Give us a kiss, then. I’m starved.”

“Not so fast. Isn’t there something you want to tell me?” He wasn’t getting off that easy just because she was crazy in love with him. She wanted to know and he was going to have to tell her sometime.

“I love you? Told you already.” He was looking forward to telling her again, every day for the next fifty or sixty years.

“That, too. I meant your last name. What is it?”

It wasn’t possible for Spike to get any paler, but he did look worried. “Not a chance. You’ll have to marry me to get that information. If you’ll have me.”

Buffy didn’t want to wait quite that long, so she gave her bestest vampire a kiss.

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