The Twilight Saga: New Moon: An Unofficial Appendix.

By Zeptorem.

He breathed hard, forcing down a hack here and a wheeze there, the fire in his lungs promising a healthy serving of blood to come up later. He didn't care about this, nor did he care that beings perfectly willing and capable to tear him limb from limb were mere seconds from catching him. He was within reach of his objective, the abnormally-quiet footsteps of his enemies fast approaching were largely ignored by him. This is it, old man, he thought, lead them to the fight. He threw the front door of the garage open.



Outside a somewhat unremarkable high school in an extremely unremarkable Washington town, was a man; average-looking and unremarkable, of average height and average build. Possibly a drawback for other people, but a considerable boon for his chosen vocation. Nowadays, however, while in better shape than the vast majority of people, especially ones his age, his sinewy, jaundiced body threatened to fail him, chemotherapy having done to his liver what gin and bourbon couldn't accomplish on their own.

A loud ring from the school cut through the silence, and students started pouring out. Snapping to attention, the man turned his video camera, FLIR, and parabolic microphone toward the throng, and resisted the temptation to scribble down names and snippets of conversation as they came in—an old habit. He wouldn't waste this valuable opportunity doing what he could simply do later with recorded audio and video; it would just be time and effort that would be better spent capturing as much information as possible. He spotted his enemies easily, being significantly colder than their human counterparts, and turned his long-range mic to their tightly-knit group. Names, dates, and locations poured through his headset.

Well-concealed in the bushes outside Forks High School, an old man was thrown into a brief moment of happy reminiscence.

Rotor wash blew leaves all around him. It was an Air Cav helicopter, Saigon, 1972. He was finally leaving this place, after all those long-range patrols and ambushes. As an unequivocally skilled tracker, he worked with Rhodesian security forces during initial years of the famed Selous Scouts, as a Long-Range Recon Patrolman in Vietnam, and, more importantly, as the only human contribution to the controversial and renowned Vampiric LRRP Team; controversial and renowned, that is, to only a select few who served with the MACV-SOG. He remembered their speed, and toughness, and cunning. He remembered their weaknesses. As one of his nonhuman colleagues once put it, “We're only a rung up on the predatory ladder.”

All the easier to grab you by the ankles and yank you down, he recalled thinking.

He heard helicopter blades nearby. A KING5 news chopper flew overhead. It was October 8th, 2011. Time to exfiltrate, and pore over gathered intel back at his motel room.

A dull thud failed to echo around the musty basement the former patrolman was currently in. He dragged the gas can into the centre of the room, leaving it with the others. Four hundred and seventy-five pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, a slightly “wet” mix with a few bags of zirconium powder to (hopefully) incinerate what wasn't sufficiently atomized by the initial blast of ANNM. As he stood back to admire his handiwork, he felt what could faintly be described as contentment; between this and the quality intelligence he gathered just the day before, the thrill of the hunt coursed through him. He considered lighting a celebratory cigarette, though his presently volatile surroundings led him to choose otherwise. Instead, a small smile broke across his usually dour, bearded face.



His comparatively heavy, labourious footsteps stopped as he reached the locked and chained door at the opposite end of the garage, with any possibility of escape being immediately rendered hopeless. He could hear his enemies behind him, growling and hissing. Empty threats, he thought, turning to face them, but you don't know that yet, do you?



“Nice house.”

A few rocks bounced off the door of the secluded Washington home his two-day-old intelligence led him to. Three rocks, and he hurried off to a bush about forty meters from the front door. A pale, bland-looking teenage girl answered the door, looking around with a perplexed look on her face.

“You don't know the half of it,” he remarked quietly to himself.

The back of her skull exploded into a cloud of colourless mist, the satisfaction of blood spatter being disappointingly absent with the undead. Her confused look was frozen on her face as she collapsed in the open doorway. Forty meters away, a dust cover was closed on a KAC M110 rifle. She would only be unconscious for a few hours or so—vampires were alarmingly resilient—with the wound being fully healed after several days. More than enough time.

“And... like clockwork...”

A similarly-pale boy appeared at the girl in the doorway, sporting a similarly-bewildered look on his face. The man in the bushes let out a loud whistle.

“OI! IS SHE ALL RIGHT?” he laughed.

The gangly boy let out an angry hiss, and began a sprint toward the bushes. He made it all of three steps before he was thrown to the ground by a blindingly bright explosion.

Minutes passed before he could open his charred eyelids, and Edward found himself looking upward at a smiling, grey-bearded face looming over him.

“Hurts, doesn't it?”

He couldn't respond. Even if his throat were still intact, the incredible pain he was in would make speech impossible.

“White phosphorus. Perfect for suckheads like you.”

The old man stood up, admiring the carnage around him.

“Oof,” he said, covering his nose with a tigerstripe camo handkerchief, “Bit smokey ain't it?”

Edward looked around. It was, indeed, very smoky. He noted that much of the smoke came from his own body.

“I know you know everything I'm thinking, so I'm sure you're a little confused about why you're laying on the ground all crispy-like.”

He placed the toe of his combat boots onto the boy's groin, producing an audible “crunch”.

“Truth be told, I can't so easily tell you. Luckily for you, and believe me, you're in dire need of some luck at present, I don't need to.”

The Cullen boy looked into the mind of his assailant. He saw the hatred, the anger, the singular purpose and drive. What he didn't see was a shred of fear, or doubt. A brief look of terror flashed across his face; beard-man noticed this, and responded with a quick smile.

“Now, this part may hurt a little. Even in comparison to... well... recent events,” he said, popping open his bloop tube and inserting a cylindrical object.

Edward's expression of terror returned as he closed the grenade launcher and took aim at his chest. This man's a lunatic! he thought, panicked, He's going blow us both up!

His torso erupted into indescribable pain, his charred larynx even forcing out a scream as his lungs were obliterated. He tried to whimper, and couldn't.

“Buckshot. The yin to Willy Pete's yang,” the grizzled old man said, as he gripped the ruined vampire by what was left of his sternum and dragging him inside the smouldering home, leaving him laying motionless to a smoking Bella, her limbs bent at grotesque angles.

Edward felt a slight additional sting, barely perceptible over the torrent of pain coursing through him, as the man emptied a can of thickened gasoline on the couple, cigar in his mouth. He struck a match, lit his cigar, and held the match over them with an outstretched arm.

“Nice house,” he remarked, as he released it.



He answered their hisses and growls with a laugh. A nice, hearty laugh, that gave way to a short coughing fit. Suppressing a chuckle, he wiped the blood from his mouth, and began:

“Looks like the whole family is here! Well... except two.”

They hissed and growled again, as the man alternatively laughed and coughed. The Cullens advanced on their trapped prey, just as he raised an object in his left hand. The vampires stopped, stunned, as the man slumped against the locked door and let out a low but joyful chuckle. His eyes left theirs, and stared off into some unknown distance as he brought up a weak salute with his right hand.

“Even in death,” he said, still staring as he triggered the detonator in his left hand, “I still serve.”