“That makes sense,” Neko said. “It’s the only building that’s got a real kitchen, after all.”
On our way back to the church, we stopped by the general store so Natalie could send out replacements for the guards who were currently on duty. The townspeople probably all had experience with hunting, but I wanted to find out if any of them had ever been in the military. Anyone with eyes and a gun would do a decent enough job for tonight, but I’d really like some people with military experience to take charge of guard duty and training other guards, if it was at all possible.
After Natalie sent out the next shift of guards, the five of us headed back toward the church to check on James’ progress before we got some sleep. It looked like Val and Lily had worked fast, but it also looked like they had made enough noise that they cleared out all the pews closest to the couch. Now the only people still asleep in the sanctuary were on the far side, so we would have a little bit of privacy for our conversation.
James was hooked up to a blood bag and a bag of fluids, but he still looked like he was either asleep or unconscious. Catherine sat propped up on one end of the couch beside him, while Celia still sat in the chair with one arm in the air and a band-aid on the inside of her elbow. Val stood beside the couch as she studied her patients, and Lily handed Celia some crackers and a soda to help her recover from the blood that she’d just given.
“Nice work,” I said with a smile as we joined them.
“Thanks!” Celia said as she took a sip of her drink. “It took a few stabs in my arm, but they found a good vein before too long.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t too bad,” I said. “So, how does James look now?”
“I think he looks a little better!” Catherine said. “He’s less ghostly white and more just regular white, you know?”
“That’s pretty good, since it hasn’t even been that long,” Lily said. “I bet he’ll be a lot better by morning.”
“And that will probably be just long enough for him to wake up and start to feel all the pain he’s in,” Valerie sighed.
“Then it’s a good thing Sam got painkillers from the hospital, too,” Catherine said.
“Yep, we grabbed just about every kind of medicine there is,” I replied, “so we’ll pop him full of painkillers and antibiotics, and he should be able to hobble around on crutches in no time.”
“I can’t believe you found all this shit,” the farm vet said as she blew her dark-blonde bangs out of her face. “It’s fucking impressive.”
“I’m just glad it was all still there,” I said with a shrug.
“Still fucking impressive,” Val repeated.
I saw Natalie smile out of the corner of my eye, but she turned away before the farm vet could see her. I didn’t know exactly why she was smiling, but I had a feeling that it might have something to do with the fact that Valerie seemed suddenly unable to take her eyes off my body.
And I hadn’t even tasted her blood yet.
“So listen,” I said, “you’ve all done an incredible job with James and with all the fortifications, but we’ll have to do more tomorrow.”
“We figured,” Erika replied. “We’ve really only just gotten started.”
“I know, but it’s not just that,” I said. “I think the bloodsuckers downriver are even more powerful than we thought.”
“Shit,” Lily whispered.
“Fuck me,” Val groaned. “How do you mean? Didn’t we already know that shit was really bad down there?”
“Yeah, but they’re a few humans shorter than they were earlier,” I said. “We had to take a different route on the way back, so I saw them dumping a few bodies.”
“Ugh,” Celia shuddered and let her arm fall back into her lap.
“Maybe it’s just because they got some new humans in earlier today,” Natalie said, “so they got rid of some that weren’t, you know… fresh?”
“That’s grim,” Catherine muttered.
“Yeah, but it also means that they might start to move against Red House sooner rather than later,” I said. “I don’t like how little it seemed to matter to them, like they had plenty of humans to spare.”
“It probably means they feel strong,” Valerie said, “and if they feel strong, then they probably feel like they can take on anything.”
“Or anyone,” Erika added.
“It’s like bulls,” the farm vet said. “The young ones are aggressive and can’t think about anything except for how to expand their territory and claim more resources for themselves.”
“Then let’s make sure we’re prepared for when they try another raid,” I said.
“Do you think they’ll try to move in and take over Red House completely?” Brianna asked.
“I’m sure that’s their eventual plan, but I didn’t see anything to indicate that earlier today,” I said. “But that’s a good question, since it actually leads me to the next part of my plan.”
“That sounds exciting,” Celia said. “What is it?”
“Tomorrow, I want you all to keep doing what you’ve been doing here as far as fortifications and barriers go,” I said, “but I’m planning to run down to Black Betsy again in the morning so I can take more of a look around and see if I can find out anything else helpful.”
“But Uncle James can’t go with you,” Catherine said. “Can you find it again?”
“Yeah, I remember the way,” I said. “Plus, I can just use his compass and make sure I don’t get lost.”
“That seems fair,” Neko said. “Last time, you only got a chance to look at where they hold the human prisoners, but tomorrow, you might be able to look around at more of the town.”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
“We’ll take care of everything here while you’re gone,” Natalie said. “And we’ll take care of James, too.”
“Good, but if there’s nothing else we can do for him tonight, I think we should all try to get some sleep,” I said. “After all, tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth?” Valerie sighed.
We all picked a different pew close to James and curled up with some of the spare blankets that the townspeople had brought to the church. It wasn’t the most comfortable place I’d ever slept, but it wasn’t bad for just a few hours. I laid awake for longer than I would have liked, but eventually, I let my mind drift off to catch a little bit of sleep.
Somewhere outside the church, a rooster crowed right before sunrise and woke me up.
“That’s one way to come out of sleep,” I muttered as the creature continued to screech.
The girls looked like they were all going to sleep right through it, and I wondered if my vamp hearing had made the rooster sound louder than it actually was. It was possible, but all the same, it was still time to get up.
I pushed myself to my feet, stretched to restore the feeling in all my limbs, and then walked over to where James still laid on the couch. His eyes were open, his color definitely looked more normal, and he had his splinted leg propped up on a pillow. When he saw me coming, he smiled and relaxed back against the cushions.
“How do you feel this morning?” I asked. “You’ve had one hell of a last twelve hours.”
“Leave it to me to break my leg during the vampocalypse,” Catherine’s uncle sighed and then glanced at Val and Celia asleep in the chairs beside him. “Did you actually get Val to come out of hiding to help me? She’s not much of a people-person, you know.”
“I figured that out,” I chuckled, “but, yeah, she’s just about the only reason you’re not dead right about now.”
“And you,” James said. “I know that you’re the one who got me all this medicine and everything.”
“I bet you would have done the same thing for anybody in this town, if you had the chance,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know,” James said but smiled at the compliment. “Anyway, I feel a lot better, thanks for asking. I think those painkillers have really done the trick.”
<
br /> “Glad to hear it,” I said. “Let me wake up Catherine so she can see that you’re feeling better.”
I went over to where Natalie and Catherine were asleep on a pew beside each other, and I shook both girls awake but decided to let everyone else sleep some more. As soon as they blinked their eyes open, I nodded toward James, and Catherine shot across the sanctuary like a rocket.
I let her and her uncle have a moment together while I turned to Natalie.
“Can you handle things here while I’m gone?” I asked. “I shouldn’t be more than a few hours, but I want you here to take charge of things until I get back.”
“I can do it, Sam,” my gorgeous girlfriend replied.
“I know you can,” I said and then gave her a quick kiss.
I thought about taking her or one of the other girls with me over the mountain, but in the end, I decided that it would just be faster if I went on my own. I would be able to move at my full speed if I was by myself, and I wouldn’t have to worry when I left the girls in the woods while I went to scout out the town myself. I remembered how to get back to Black Betsy, and this time, I would just be careful to avoid any rabid bears on my way back to Red House.
After I told Natalie and Catherine goodbye and gave them final instructions for the morning, I took my shotgun, my pistol, my slugger, and my axe all with me as I set out in the same pick-up truck that I’d used last night. I paused at the south end of town so the human guards could open the barrier for me, and then I kept driving until I found the little road to turn onto that led me up the side of the mountain.
It took a little longer than I thought to make my way back through the woods all the way down to Black Betsy, but in the end, I didn’t even have to go all the way into the town itself to see how much trouble we were in.
When I reached the bluff that overlooked the bloodsuckers’ town, I immediately saw almost twenty vamps assembled outside a store across the road. They were all examining something in the back of several different pick-up trucks, and the moment one of them moved out of the way, I saw what was on display.
It was loads and loads of goddamn guns.
Chapter 17
I immediately exhaled into my own hand so that even my breath didn’t stir the grass around my hiding spot on the bluff. I was downwind of the vamps, so I could smell them, but they couldn’t smell me, but I still might have to get out of there a little faster than I’d anticipated.
I was now more glad than ever that I hadn’t brought any of the girls with me because I wouldn’t have been able to think about anything except for their safety. Still, even though it was just me, that was damn near all I could think about, anyway.
But for the moment, I forced myself to remain still and calm. I was already here, so I might as well find out as much information about the guns as I could, along with anything else that I could see or hear, and then I would head back to town with more information than I had before.
The bloodsuckers down the bluff and across the road seemed to all be picking out guns for themselves, so sometimes, they picked up one, examined it, set it back down, and tried another one. Other times, they picked up one, pretended to aim it, gave an excited whoop, and propped it up against their shoulders to claim it as their own.
Between Natalie and the apocalypse itself, I knew enough about guns to recognize the different kinds all on display below. I might not know the brands or the exact calibers, but I could tell that there were more handguns and hunting rifles than anything else. There were a couple shotguns, but not many, and several assault rifles, and it all made me wonder exactly what kind of weapons the people in Red House had to work with.
At least the Black Betsy bloodsuckers didn’t have any grenades, and we still had a few to spare inside the back of my armored truck. That was at least one thing that would work to our advantage, but I was way more concerned with what would work to our disadvantage.
It was bad enough that we were up against a town full of vamps who had a big-ass blood pool to keep themselves well-fed. Now, apparently, these vampires were also armed, and that would make it a hell of a lot harder to fight them off, let alone exterminate them.
Sure, we had made it past all the military vamps on the bridge to get out of Brooklyn, but that had been completely different. There had only been seven of us instead of about a hundred and seven, and we had also just been trying to get past them, not kill them all so we could stay where we were.
And above all, we wouldn’t have the assistance of a feral vamp horde this time, not unless there was a secret one hidden somewhere in the woods of West Virginia, and I somehow doubted that we would be that lucky.
As the vamps below all laughed and traded weapons with each other, they even dry-fired a few rounds just to test the feeling of the guns in their hands. Every time one of them pulled the trigger, I felt my stomach clench a little bit tighter. Part of me wondered if it was only a matter of time before they pulled out a human or two from the schoolhouse for target practice, and I hoped that I would be able to disappear back into the woods before then.
It was one thing to watch the vamps dump humans into the river when I knew they were already dead, but it would be a lot fucking harder if they decided to have a bit of fun and use a live one for practice. As much as I would want to, I wouldn’t be able to help them, and the thought that I might have to stand by helplessly was enough to make my skin crawl.
But I couldn’t, just like I couldn’t do anything to help the captives inside the schoolhouse. I hoped that I would be able to eventually, but right now, my priority was my six women, just like it always was, and if I charged down into Black Betsy right now, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Then all I would have accomplished would be to get myself killed, and my women, plus a whole town of humans who counted on me now, would be left to face these armed bloodsuckers on their own.
So I just kept breathing steadily into my hand as I laid on my stomach in the tall grass, and after a few minutes passed, the vamps’ conversation started to shift from how badass their weapons were to what exactly they planned to do with them.
“I bet nobody can stop us now,” one of the vamps laughed. “After we take over Poca, we’ll have so many humans that we’ll be damn near impossible to stop.”
“Yeah, then maybe we can take out those sons of bitches up in Red House that killed Paulie and all them,” another bloodsucker said as he examined one of the assault rifles.
“I just don’t get how they managed it,” a female vamp said. “We’ve never had problems on our raids to Red House before. They’re just humans, but then on one raid, Paulie just doesn’t come back?”
“It don’t make no sense,” another fanged fucker agreed.
“Maybe they left to form their own fiefdom,” the bloodsucker with the assault rifle said. “They could have got tired of Thaddeus and his rules or something and decided to strike out on their own.”
“Oh, yeah, because I’m sure Paulie would have left his own brother,” the female said with a roll of her eyes. “I think they got themselves killed somehow, and I think we should march right up there and find out how.”
“You know what Thaddeus said,” another vamp growled. “Nobody moves north without his say-so.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know,” the female grunted. “Too many unknowns until we’re stronger.”
“Psh, like these guns don’t make us strong enough,” the asshole with the assault rifle said.
“Like our vamp powers don’t make us strong enough, even without the guns,” the female said. “What can a town full of humans really do against us?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” another bloodsucker said. “Thaddeus says we just gotta be patient for a little while longer.”
“I want to bleed those bitches up in Red House dry,” one of the vamps growled. “It’s gonna be a good fucking day when Thaddeus gives us the go-ahead.”
“At least we finally got all the guns we wanted,” the female said. “It took us
long enough, but we finally raided enough houses and towns to get enough guns to arm us all.”
The conversation shifted back to the guns, so I just waited until the vamps wandered off with their new weapons, only to be replaced by another group of bloodsuckers who needed to arm themselves, too.
After I waited on top of the bluff for almost an hour, I felt the wind begin to shift and knew that if I didn’t get out of there soon, I would be upwind of the vamps below, and then it would only be a matter of time before they sniffed me out.
And since they hadn’t said anything else that seemed particularly helpful, I figured that I had been gone long enough. It was time for me to get back to my women and tell them everything that I’d heard, so maybe one of them would see a solution to our new problem… that the whole town of enemy vamps was now just as armed as we were.
I slowly started to low-crawl backward through the undergrowth at the edge of the bluff, but even when I had made it a few paces into the thickest part of the trees, I just kept crawling. I waited until I was completely sure that they wouldn’t be able to see me when I stood up, and then I finally pushed myself back up to my feet and hurried back through the woods as fast as I could.
I didn’t run into any rabid black bears or any other trouble on the way back to the truck, so even though it took me a while to navigate my way over the mountain, I made it back before too long. I took a deep breath behind the wheel of the car before I cranked it, decided not to say anything to the townspeople until the girls and I figured out what to do, and then started to drive back up toward Red House.
By the time I made it back, I had been gone for several hours, so the townspeople had really made some progress on the fence around downtown. The barbed wire was even thicker, and they had started to build a second row of stakes over the top of the first one, so the fence would be even higher.
“What’d you find out, Sam?” one of the townspeople called out when I hopped out of the truck.
“We have time to really get our fortifications in place,” I said, “so overall, pretty good news.”
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 27
