Liars - Sierra Aguirre-Stoker

The truck’s engine roars, sand flies from under the tires, and the rope behind it snaps taut.
Sierra raises her rifle to her shoulder, but it’s much too late.
The heavy plywood silhouette slams into her, knocking her backward into the sand.
“Too slow,” A voice as rough as the gravel under her snaps. “This isn’t poppin’ coyotes in the backyard anymore.”
Sierra sighs. “Point made.” The cardboard prop she was using to simulate a rifle is now a crumpled mass in the dust next to her hand. A similar stake is resting next to it. Neither of them had reached a deadly position before she was bowled over on her ass.
Every new recruit, she’s told, is put through the same test.
Choose a weapon. Face down the silhouette vampire on its track, pulled by the pickup that simulates the speed at which they might be facing down a rush attack.
And see whether they’d live or die.
Sierra’s first two choices of weapon were no good. And she’s never shot a handgun in her life. Picking that would have been suicide.
“Now do you see why the rules of engagement are bullshit?”
Sierra pushes herself to her feet. “Because I’m standing out in the open in the middle of a track where even if I did get my finger on the trigger or my stake in position, my spotter would never see it in time to tell the driver, and even if the driver put the brakes on right then, I’d still get bowled over by the momentum?”
Weaver, her de facto instructor, gives her an approving, if frowning, nod.
“You’re pretty sharp, kid.”
“I grew up with street racers. I’ve been driving with them since I was tall enough to reach the pedals. I know when something is designed with the sole intent of frustrating and pissing off the newcomers.”
She’s not stupid.
She is angry.
But not because of this rigged training exercise.
“When is someone going to tell me what I actually came here to learn?”
“When you’re ready to do something about it.”
Weaver’s giving her an odd look. There’s something no one in this compound is telling her. When she told them about the journal and the date of the last entry, it was like she’d dropped a match in gasoline.
Someone knows something about her dad’s death. And it’s something big. She has no intentions of waiting patiently for it, but these people don’t keep records of any kind. Whatever they know, it’s locked up in someone’s brain.
Weaver’s in on the secret, from the way he’s been watching her.
“You promised you’d ask around. Said someone here ought to know something. I just want some answers about the vampire who killed my father.”
“That. Not who.”
Sierra nods. “The vampire that killed my father.”
“Right there is why you’re not ready.” Weaver leads her over to a table full of weapons. “You still don’t see those things for the monsters they are.”
“My dad is dead because of them. I think I understand just fine.”
“You ever killed something wearing a human face before?” Weaver asks.
Sierra shakes her head.
“I did. Used to work for those spineless shills that call themselves hunters. But I learned real fast we were losing too many people because we weren’t fighting these things on their own terms.” Weaver picks up a silver-loaded shell and flips it through his fingers. “What don’t you see on this table?”
Stakes. Knives.
“Close combat weapons.”
Weaver nods appreciatively, again with that unreadable look.
“Forget everything you've seen or heard about fighting these things. Stakes just finish the job and make sure they stay down, but that's never going to be your first strike. The vampire is an ambush predator. Ambush is the only way to hunt them back.” He picks up a modified rifle. “If they see you first, you’re as good as dead. But no one at the agencies understood that. Waved that baseless treaty in my face when I tried to make them see reason. It’s a sham. Can’t make an agreement with something that ain’t even human. Or alive. It’s as stupid as making a treaty with a damn virus.”
Sierra can’t argue with that.
She picks up a rifle of her own. Lighter, leaner than Weaver’s, but with the same complex night-vision scope bolted to the top of the barrel. “Did you know my dad?”
“Knew a lot of hunters. That journal wasn’t exactly a gold mine of clues.”
Sierra already knows that. The most she could gather was that her father had worked for some sort of vampire hunter organization in Amarillo. He hadn’t mentioned names, aside from his sibling and teammate John, but that name is a dime a dozen. Mostly, the journal was a scattering of clumsy poetry, random musings and observations on life, and first drafts of what appeared to be press responses to vampire incidents that must have been big enough to hit local news. Cover stories to keep people from learning the truth.
Maybe it’s inevitable, once you get wrapped up in this shadow world, to tell lies and obscure the realities.
Because Weaver, and half the people here, are lying to her.
Telling her they’ll ask around to see if anyone knows something. That she’ll get answers when she earns them. While dragging her around on a short leash because for some reason, they want to hang onto her.
Maybe it’s just because if she went lone wolf, she’d get in the way of their own operations. It’s probably good tactical sense to keep all the vigilante vampire slaying in the area under one umbrella.
She doesn’t believe that’s all it is, not for one second.
But this is still the most likely place for her to find the answers she needs. She’s hit dead ends everywhere else. So for as long as it takes to get the truth out of someone, she’ll stick it out here.
Even if it means putting up with their heavy-handed training tactics.
No matter how many vampires she needs to kill before she gets to the one she really wants.
She highly doubts she’ll just happen across her father’s killer. In fact, he might be long gone by now. But maybe she can stop someone else from sharing her dad’s fate. She might as well be doing this as spending another night trying to drown the knowledge she can’t just box away again with adrenaline and alcohol. With the pedal to the metal on an empty street or a stranger’s hands tangling into her hair.
And unlike her racing, it’s not even illegal.
Or at least, she doesn’t think it is. It can’t be murder if the thing you’re supposedly killing isn’t even alive in the first place.
“Remember, those parasites will show no mercy, so don’t feel bad pulling the trigger.” Weaver adjusts Sierra’s grip on the rifle so her finger rests along the guard, then nods toward the practice range where a set of printed targets with comically exaggerated fangs are set up against bales. “They ain’t human, after all.”