Vampire's Day (Book 1): Epicenter

by Hamaganov, Yuri

  Tiger leaned over the counter and stared at the small TV, waiting to see the news. Instead, he saw some girl’s television series.

  “There is no signal, this is a DVD. The urban radio also died, and we were ordered to lock up the house and wait for help.”

  “Lock up because of the rabies?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl gave an evil grin.

  “The soldiers said that in the city people are devouring each other, attacking just like in the movies. Only they’re not zombies, not the walking dead; they are alive, they can kill, and they can also be killed in response. Everyone is shooting each other, and the cops and doctors are preying on people. Cool, right?”

  Tiger didn’t think that it was cool. He opened a bottle and went outside to see how long it would take to remove the last concrete blocks from his truck. The cashier came after him.

  “Do you hear that?”

  There was the sound of shooting from the fence side, first single shots, and then bursts.

  “What is it? Over there – is it the ship?”

  The girl gestured toward the ocean, and, looking there, Tiger saw the distant silhouette of destroyers, on which nose evenly flared and faded short white flame.

  “Get down!”

  34. Surgeon

  “Who are you? Answer quickly!”

  “I... I'm a doctor, a surgeon from the children's hospital.”

  “Show me you’re ID!”

  “In the left pocket…”

  Black-gloved fingers tore a button from his pocket and took out the card.

  “Okay, you are a surgeon. Stand up!”

  He couldn’t stand, he was sick, he was dizzy, but the man in the black uniform was not interested. He grabbed the doctor by the collar, and lifted him to his feet, leaning against a wall pierced by bullets. Close by there were a lot of voices, and he gradually began to distinguish them. What a strange selection process!

  “Policeman.”

  “Left!”

  “Counsel.”

  “Right!”

  “Unemployed.”

  “Right!“

  “Sales...”

  “Right!”

  His dizziness wore off; his weakness almost disappeared. On the contrary, he is full of energy, but he is suffering some double vision. What was wrong with him, dope? He had tried LSD once in his lifetime, back in school, but the feeling was different. Maybe he had been given something? But who did it and why?

  “Don’t just stand there, let's go!”

  The man in the black uniform dragged him along. They went down the long corridor full of people. Behind continued the same stupid selection.

  “Broker.”

  “Right!”

  “Taxi driver.”

  “Left!”

  “Bandit.”

  “Left!”

  “Come here!“

  The man in black kicked him through a side door.

  “Wait here with the others!”

  This used to be a classroom or a small meeting room. He fell into an empty plastic chair, beside some other people. It was stuffy here, and necessary to remove his shirt. He awkwardly removed it. There was a sticky substance on it – two hundred buck shirt had been spoiled. What was this, paint?

  “Fuck!”

  It was not paint, it was blood. He quickly felt himself - no injuries, but a wasp bite on his right leg. This was not his blood on the shirt.

  “You two – come here!”

  Again, there was a man in black and with him another one in the same uniform. They picked him up with another woman, wearing a green nurse’s uniform.

  “Go!”

  They again pushed him into the crowded corridor and quickly headed forward, until they ended up in the parking lot in front of a small truck.

  “Climb in the van!”

  He and the nurse were pushed into the truck that left for somewhere at great speed. He tried to talk to the nurse, but his voice was drowned by a jumble of sounds. Outside there was roaring fire, and shots, then the truck stopped so abruptly that they were cast against the front wall.

  “Get out!”

  They were in some hospital courtyard, standing next to a broken ambulance. There is a skyscraper burning in front of them, flames engulfing a dozen floors. He saw people jumping out of windows, but the man in black was not interested. He pushed him forward, putting in hands a cart from the supermarket.

  “Where are we going? Why?”

  “It’s necessary to take all the medicines. You must start work as soon as possible, we have many wounded. Come on!”

  There were lockers filled with medications, and he began to throw them in the cart, as if making a purchase.

  “Hey, I remember you. Yeah, you’re the doctor from some children's hospital. When I came there, you were talking to some girl. We came in the occupied car, and brought wounded, but the guard suspected us and started shooting. The cops were close by and we had to leave. I thought the cops had killed you. Hey, Doc, what are you doing, you don’t remember anything? Well, it happens sometimes after the first dose. Maybe you’ll remember later.”

  He remembered, he remembered it all a moment ago when he picked up the package of disposable syringes. The same package was in his hands when he saw in the mirror a reflection of a man with a small pistol. The surgeon remembered his face. In the hospital, the guard was dressed in a tracksuit. He had portrayed a simple citizen, who brought in an injured woman. The surgeon remembered how his leg had stung like a hot needle, when the man fired. He remembered it and remembered everything that happened next. He remembered how the blood got on his shirt, and remembered who that blood belonged to.

  “Doc, and where you've managed to get the blood, who...“

  The man in the black uniform didn’t finish. Instead he grabbed his throat, which the surgeon had cut through in a precise scalpel move. Blood gushed through the black gloves.

  “I remember. Her name was Dolores. She was eleven years, eight months and two weeks old. I had to operate on her, and she would have gone home today. I remember how I cut her throat, a few minutes after you shot me. I cut her in the same way I’ve cut you. I remember you.”

  He walked over to the corpse, whose feet were still twitching, took the gun, and then turned vampire and put a hand into his inside pocket. Here it’s. The surgeon took a new injection gun and a tight package of thick plastic with capsules filled with blood, took one, looked around, read a small inscription – “12 hours”. Clear. He remembered this device - saw one of the vampires got himself a dose. Now he knew what it is and how it works.

  “We're going back, are you ready?”

  This is the second guard, and a nurse.

  “Yes.”

  He went out to meet them, pressing the machine gun to his thigh, like in the old war movies. He shot a gun for the first time in his life, but it was impossible to miss in the narrow corridor from a distance of two meters, and his hands were holding an AK-47 as confidently as he held a scalpel.

  The nurse and the second guard fell to the floor, punched through by a dozen bullets. He was lucky - none of these bullets would have hit the capsules package, which he was sure the second guard was carrying. They were all are carrying such capsules. Forty-three capsules in two packages, enough for a long time. And here were the keys to the truck.

  First, he decided to leave immediately, but then he changed his mind. It was necessary to return and get the medicines and tools.

  Throwing medicines into the van, he thought about the vampires, one of which he became now. In one must they are right - during the fighting will be many wounded. Many wounded vampires, and many wounded people, who fight these bloodsuckers, these people need medical attention. They need his help.

  He should try to help them at all costs, even if they killed him. This was the only way he could avenge the eleven-year-girl, whose throat he cut for the sake of her blood. This was the only way he could get revenge on them for what they did to him.

&nb
sp; 35. Jimenez in the operations center

  She briefly fell asleep, leaning her head on the cold gray wall. She dreamed of shots, cars and shots again, and then she dreamed that she was sitting on a small metal chair in a narrow corridor of a strange building in the city center.

  Opening her eyes, she found herself sitting on a small metal chair in a narrow corridor. There were no people near, just a series of closed steel door, with one soldier in a black uniform and an opaque helmet on duty at the fire exit, occasionally glancing out the window.

  Jimenez slowly got up and went to the Japanese coffee machine, which seemed to still be working. The coffee in it no longer exists, but there is a tea that she usually can’t stand. Well, in an emergency, tea was good enough, especially with lots of sugar.

  Sipping tea, she asked the soldier.

  “Brother, how long should I sit here?”

  “I don’t know, officer, I don’t know.”

  “What's happening on the street?”

  “Fuck up.”

  “Can I see?”

  Los Angeles burned. Flames rose over private houses, burst from the windows of apartment buildings, smoke drifted through the streets. And there was screaming. And shooting, a lot of shooting. Ten floors below, on an empty parking lot in a semicircle, were five armored Humvees and military vehicles on tracks, similar to a small tank. Before it were a few burned cars and many bodies, four dozen or so.

  “How much time? Wow, I slept almost two hours.”

  She suddenly saw an Apache flying between the burning blocks. Rapid white line stretched to him from the burning houses, helicopter shuddered as if struck the wall and began to fall, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  “Fuck, the second in an hour! Get down!”

  The soldier threw her on the floor, as a short round hit the glass. Jimenez realized that this time she was not threatened – the armored glass was intact, although covered with small chips.

  “Coming closer, bitches.”

  “Who is coming?”

  “Smart vampires. They follow the crazies, as behind the shield. Looks like we already under siege. It is good what they don’t have an RPG. Still don’t have.”

  Behind the door opened, and in the corridor was a nervous girl in a uniform without insignia.

  “Officer Jimenez? Come here, they are waiting for you!”

  “At last!”

  She went into the headquarters, full of computers and people in uniform. On a separate table, there are two men, one white, one black, both in the same expensive suits.

  “Officer Jimenez? Very glad to see you.” The white man extended his hand. “I am Mr. Smith, and this is my partner, Mr. Jones, no need to know the real names We are very grateful to you for the rifle that you brought to us, no one else could do that. And now we have to ask you again for help - please tell us in as much detail as possible about everything that happened to you today.”

  “I've already said everything in the car when I drove here, and then a second time, when they brought me here. Why again?”

  “Some very important people will hear you now. Look.”

  Smith wasn’t mistaken about important people. On a huge screen military and civilian people were looking at her, many of whom she knew and had seen on TV. She had voted for one of them in the last election.

  “Miss Jimenez, as far as we know, you're the only police officer who managed to get out of the airport. You were in the midst of an attack from the first minute, but you managed to survive and even took an important trophy. We think it’s extremely important to know your opinion about what is happening, so tell the story of what you went through, we ask you.”

  “Well. My watch began at six o'clock.”

  She told the important people all that she remembered, hiding nothing and not exaggerating. Told how she heard the alarm, how she shot one of the attackers, who she first thought was just another crazy mass murderer. Told how she took an air rifle, told how she was attacked by civilians and shot three of them. How she got out of the passenger terminal, stole the car from the parking lot and went to the city, where the riots had begun.

  She managed to get to the station where they had already lost half the personnel, and the survivors didn’t know what to do. Crews who went to the city on the first panic calls reported riots, mass murder, arson, assault, and fire from air rifles. Reported it and then disappeared.

  Several wounded were brought in: a dozen civilians, cops and a nurse from an ambulance, which seemed to have suffered someone trying to chew off her head with teeth. It was the nurse who first attacked them a few minutes’ later, biting right and left. A rookie, who was on his first day, shot her. Ten minutes later they had to shoot him, because the nurse had managed to bite his hand. Soon Jimenez, several cops and civilians barricaded the doorway and fired into her former comrades.

  The first infected rushed at them with bare hands, but received a serious armed resistance, some of them returned with rifles and shotguns from the hacked arsenal.

  Jimenez didn’t expect to get out of there alive, but the police station defenders received unexpected reinforcements. Soldiers in black uniforms without chevrons attacked the rabid from the rear, killing them all in a couple of minutes with machine-gun fire and grenades. She couldn’t believe it, but they came just for her, for her trophy rifle. Her radio report about what had happened at the airport was heard by someone important. And here she was now, in an unknown government building in the city center.

  “I have nothing to say any more. I hope this helps, and you have already developed plans about what to do. I need to know now - someone must tell me what to do.”

  36. Personnel

  “Clean, the helicopters have moved!”

  “Second post – clean. Transport is provided.”

  “Roger, open the gate!”

  With a roaring engine and throwing out thick diesel smoke, the garbage truck, now modernized and turned into a giant improvised armored vehicle, pulled into the parking lot. Steel sheets of different thickness were on the sides, and there was a roof hatch, from which a thug with a machine gun peered. Before the former garbage truck stopped another homemade pickup with a heavy machine gun in the back, the crew ready to protect the armored vehicle and its valuable cargo.

  On underground parking is continuing a fast and efficient selection. Those who had the necessary skills were collected separately, given the first dose, and then sent under guard to the far exit. Many armored trucks and buses arrived here to take these selected to the outskirts, where the prisoner’s team now built shelters. Other trucks are heading to the shelters with equipment and machines - in the LA suburbs soon will be equipped workshops which will provide arms and ammunition for the first time.

  Realizing that they were rapidly losing territory, the military would soon begin to destroy the valuable objects with air strikes, so it was necessary to keep away from the factories all that may be useful. New workshops would arise in the midst of the suburbs in inconspicuous-looking apartment buildings – finding and destroying them all would not be easy.

  The second group, mostly young men and women, were a specific contingent, almost all of them from street gangs. They also received a dose, although not the usual one. With this dose, there was a high content of pure blood plus a synthetic drug designed specifically for vampires - this combination completely took away the survival instinct. The mixture would be very useful because the infected were easier to command, and could be sent to fight against the army and police. Many of them had their own weapons, and others were armed when three trucks with guns came into the parking lot. A variety of guns had been collected – from looted gun shops, stormed police stations and offices of security firms, trophies from numerous skirmishes.

  The third group was special. Infected doctors, firefighters, police officers, urban services engineers. They would not be sent into battle with the bandits, because they were too valuable for that. Doctors and engineers would be hidden on the outskirt
s of the city; police and firefighters, as well as ex-servicemen and the first infected soldiers would be formed into special battle groups to be applied where the bandits couldn’t cope. They were equipped with the best weapons.

  The fourth and last group is all those found unfit for purpose. They were already infected, but had no useful skills, so they could only be used in one way – by bringing their Hunger to such a point that they were ready to go into battle with just their bare hands.

  37. Number Three

  I didn’t see the shelling with my own eyes before. It sounded tremendous - a moment ago everything was quiet and calm in the enemies’ position, and then the shells generously sowed death and destruction there. And I didn’t believe that it would work! The sailors from USS Virginia worked perfectly, making shot after shot in the areas specified by us.

  A minute later the shelling stopped, the sailors realized that they had been deceived. But they had done enough to open our way north, almost completely destroying the military camp, which blocking the highway. Through my binoculars, I saw the burning tent city, wrecked National Guardsmen convoy, overturned cars, and scattered bodies. There was panic in a giant traffic jam in front of the military camp, although only two or three shells fell there at the most. Brilliant.

  A red rocket flew into the sky - the signal. I came down from the attic to the trailer and gave the go-ahead to the driver. He lowered the ramp, and the prisoners were revealed. There were many. I pushed them into the trailer without counting, pouring there two liters of fresh blood, which we took from the devastated hospital. They followed the blood into the trailer, and now climb outside. The bait was no longer needed – they could feel the blood of the dead and wounded after the shelling.

  They were very hungry, and that was good. Their strong hunger would drown fears and instincts of self-preservation, and they ready go to the fire of war. I can’t command them, they almost lost mind, so I have to rely on primitive reflexes. Like an officer of the First World War, in order to send the soldiers into the attack, I drove them forward using a police whistle. They all liked the whistle, I didn’t know why.