Trail of Tears

by Derek Gunn

  Tears began to well in her eyes and drip down her cheeks. She wanted to lash out at him, to attack him with cutting words but she couldn’t find the words. Suddenly Josh’s face softened and he pulled her to him. She fought him off, pushed against him but he forced her to him in a strong embrace. She thumped his back but he held her tightly. She screamed into his shoulder and then the sobs came, racking her body as the emotions she had suppressed for so long finally gushed to the surface. Her screams turned to sobs. Her hands stopped hitting and gripped Josh tightly, desperately. And all the time his voice spoke quietly, soothing her pain. Despite the cold, despite her anger and her shame, the rocking of the truck and her exhaustion soon overcame her and she fell into a deep sleep. For once the dreams didn’t come and she slept until the truck rolled into the cave.

  Chapter 9

  Chandler Flynn listened to the reports with growing impatience. His entire existence had become a litany of reports. Reports of food stocks, reports on the number of humans who had died during the day—either from natural causes or from too heavy a hand by their guards— reports of what that fucker Warrick was doing in the south, more reports of what Von Kruger was up to. How many times had he flown over his borders now? He had lost count. Reports of the weather and which way the wind blew to determine if the nuclear cloud was a threat to his food supply. The thrall’s voice droned on and Flynn looked irritably at the remaining sheets of paper in the thrall’s hands.

  Jesus! He was sick of reports. Was this what being a vampire was all about? Was this what he had clawed his way through carnage to emerge as the undisputed master of his territory for? His mind wandered to the time when the vampires had come.

  He had been wasting his life, drifting from job to job. Two tours in Afghanistan had left a naïve, small town boy a highly trained killer but bugger all use for anything else, especially with a dishonourable discharge. He had been the ‘go to’ guy in the army. If you wanted anything in Afghanistan it was Flynn that the soldiers went to. He had a knack for sourcing anything. When the newbies arrived with their brand new uniforms and kit it wasn’t long before they came to him for the kit they would actually need to survive. Everyone came to him eventually to increase their chances of surviving by supplementing the kit that a bankrupt country couldn’t afford to issue to its own soldiers. Flak jackets had a tendency to be issued with only one plate of Kevlar in the front—leaving soldiers vulnerable to a bullet in the back, weapons quickly became clogged with desert sand without the correct sheaths, not the shite they were issued with. The list went on and on.

  Flynn hadn’t started out to make money; it had just happened. Of course, making money over there tended to attract attention. He had been shocked to find that his superiors took a dim view of him siphoning from what they considered their retirement funds. It appeared that those who issued the kit were not always as innocent as they professed. Perfectly good kit came in but was adapted or replaced with sub-standard kit and issued to the unsuspecting newbies forcing the soldiers to look to the Black Market to complete their kit. The Black Market in this case being his immediate superior. Flynn hadn’t been as greedy as the official Black Market so he had quickly become the main route to augment the platoon’s requirements.

  It hadn’t taken his superior long to pin a trumped up charge against him, and he had been quietly removed from active duty and discharged. The army had flown him home and left him at the airport to pick up his life. Luckily Flynn had been too quick for his superior and had managed to send his money back to the states before he had been arrested. He had enough money to live quietly for a few years, but he had come home with a bitterness that began to eat away at him. He hadn’t noticed at first. Yes, he was quicker to anger and tended not to stay anywhere too long, but he put that down to being lost. He would find himself again.

  Only he didn’t. An argument in a small town bar led to one of his attackers ending up dead. Four men had attacked him and his training had taken over. He knew no one would listen to his side of the story so he had run. A dishonourable discharge and a murder rap were hard to run from. It became more expensive to remain free and his money quickly ran out. By the time the vampires came, the bitterness had taken over. None of it had been his fault. He had been the butt of other people’s greed but he was the one living rough and running. He had joined the army because he had believed in his country. He had been happy to serve and had been proud of his unit. The previous two years had shattered his life, his beliefs, and tempered his bitterness and hatred to a point where he was unrecognisable from the boy who had proudly joined the army. When the vampires offered him a way out, he accepted immediately. His life had changed again from that moment.

  The vampires had been totally disorganised. They had never had to manage so many of their kind over such large areas before so they had no systems, no processes, and no control. They had sheer power but power was easily deflected if it was not grounded. Flynn became that grounding. He used his skills to provide a secure base for the vampires’ operations. He quickly became central to organising the thralls, the food supply, and the logistics of getting the vampires’ forces to the places where they were most needed. In this role Flynn worked closely with the thralls and it was to him that they owed their first loyalty. The other vampires dismissed the thralls as muscle and half breeds. Even the modern vampires, those who had become vampires recently, were too caught up in their new positions to even consider the thralls as anything more than a necessary nuisance.

  It had been easy during the chaos of the last days, before the serum had taken the fight from the humans, to ensure his position as second in command to Goitlip. Goitlip had been an ancient vampire from Germany who’d been amazingly proficient in tactics and unbeatable in hand-to-hand fighting. He was a titan, so filled with natural charisma that others accepted his lead without question. Of course, his skills had not helped him when he had been helpless in his coffin and the thrall Flynn had bribed had removed his head. During the same night three other vampires had been slain in their sleep and Flynn had emerged as the undisputed heir.

  The fact that the vampires who had been killed had been those who posed the most threat to his ascension had been noted by those who had survived. Flynn had, of course, slaughtered the thralls responsible, in a suitably violent fit of outrage over their heinous crime. Of course, the fact that their death also assured their silence was noted by those who survived. The vampires learned a lesson that had stayed with them from that moment. Whoever controlled the thralls controlled the fate of vampire and human alike. Flynn emerged victorious to enjoy the spoils. In this case the spoils of war appeared to be reports. Lots of reports.

  His Kingdom was mostly in good shape. There were a few areas which concerned him though. The thralls had reported quite a lot of deaths of their human charges over the last month. Each morning more and more bodies were being discovered. None of them had any obvious signs for their demise. There had always been deaths of course. Sometimes the thralls were too rough, a vampire might occasionally bypass the controlled bleeding and take a human the old fashioned way, but these occurrences were rare. Sometimes a human just gave up, but the number of deaths recently was greater than anything he had seen. Two hundred bodies in the last week and a half.

  They had thought a virus was loose in the community but extensive tests had ruled that out. One of his Lieutenants had suggested a viral attack from neighbouring cabals but his medical experts had ruled that out too, as well as any poisoning of the food or water. Something else was happening. If the deaths continued at this rate the vampires’ food supply would not last the year. There had been no pregnancies in the breeding pens either for three months now so these deaths were significant. As much as he hated dealing with his neighbours, he would have to contact Warrick and Von Kruger to see if they were experiencing the same problems.

  Of course this wasn’t his only concern. There had been increasingly violent altercations between the vampires as well. This week alone there
had been three vampires killed in fighting and two more executed for killing their kin. He had expected frustration. Von Kruger was a bad influence. He had disregarded the Council’s laws and had taken control of Wentworth’s territory, slaughtering Wentworth and his vampires like cattle. And now he flaunted himself on Flynn’s borders, flying into his territory and taunting his vampires. Frustration was rife. His vampires urged him to allow them to retaliate but Flynn was biding his time. He was convinced the Council would act. Ever since he had been made a vampire he had heard of the Council in whispered, fearful tones. Surely they would act to restore their authority?

  He had found that he was losing his own temper more often as well, over-reacting to the slightest provocation. He could feel something inside him coiling, an urge that threatened to wash away his reason and enticing him to lash out. To Kill. He felt the urge grow within him now. He longed to attack this thrall with the droning voice, to rip and gorge… He dug his nails into his palms and the sharp pain restored his reason. What was happening to him?

  There were too few ancient vampires left to ask if this was a vampire ‘thing’. Was it like puberty? Was that all it was? Did he have command of a thousand pubescent vampires with raging hormones? How long would this last? It might be as simple as that. Maybe a good fight was what they all needed after all. Surely the Council could not blame him for protecting his legal territory? He smiled. Maybe it was time to teach Von Kruger a lesson. He rose suddenly and the thrall stopped talking in mid-sentence.

  “Gather a patrol of your best thralls and send out messengers. I want every vampire within a two hundred mile radius within the hour.” If Von Kruger came over his borders tonight he would find The Flynn Cabal more than willing to accommodate them.

  * * *

  At some level Von Kruger knew something was wrong. But it was too easy to ignore the feeling. He looked out at the horizon where, within the hour, he would see his fourth dawn in centuries. His body was suffused with energy, the way he remembered feeling after gorging on blood. It had been so long since vampires had truly gorged. The last time he remembered was the fall of Constantinople when the vampires had walked freely through the streets of the sacked city. He remembered the fear that hung over the area, almost palpable in its intensity. And he remembered the blood. He remembered his senses being swamped with the scent of blood. It had been everywhere. He and his cabal had not been able to move for days after. He remembered lying in their underground cabal feeling the blood rage through his veins in a way that he had almost forgotten. The vampires had lain in their hovels experiencing euphoria akin to drug inducement. But this was different. This was better. He felt none of the lethargy of blood gorging. And, he could walk in sunlight.

  But not all his vampires had been chosen. He dared not send more of his cabal into the flames at this time. They had all watched their five colleagues slowly die from the radiation. Their much vaunted healing abilities merely prolonging their agonising deaths. He shuddered as he remembered the last day when the flesh literally fell from the bones of those who the flames had not chosen. He had noticed the looks from those who had survived, their thinly veiled stares showing their uncertainty. The deaths of his cabal members had shaken him also and he needed to regain their trust.

  They still feared him so his leadership was not in question, but he had expected them to be so filled with the promise of their new abilities that they would idolise him. That was not about to happen anytime soon. There were seven of them changed by the flames, but the others of his cabal would have to be convinced if they were to take the next uncertain step. The fear of the heavy toll the flames demanded had swept through the others. There were too few who would follow him if he led them to the flames now, and he could not afford to lose face. He would have to offset their fear by the lure of the power they could achieve. When they had to run from the battle in fear of the dawn he and his chosen would remain and show them how true immortals made their own destiny.

  “Lord,” Tomas Ventredi interrupted his thoughts, “would it not be better to attack with the dawn when they are weakest?”

  “Yes, from a purely strategic point of view,” he turned to his Lieutenant, “but I want to see their faces when we press the attack and hold them to burn in the dawn. That is the only way to convince them to abandon their flawed leaders and join us. And, of course, there are still those of our brothers who need to see what it means to be part of the Von Kruger cabal.”

  “But surely we are not…”

  “Yes,” Von Kruger smiled, though the action was more feral than amused. “We will need to swell our numbers in light of the nuclear fires’ high cost. There is no room for the past in our future. The blood vampires are our past, not our future.”

  Ventredi looked shocked at his callous words. Tomas had always been cautious. But his caution was his strength; it ensured that Von Kruger was grounded. Ventredi was a good sounding board for his more enthusiastic cravings. Von Kruger knew that he had been losing his control for some time now. At times he had even worried that something was wrong. His memory was developing large gaps and he was quick to anger. He had lost whole periods of time where he had woken with no memory of where he had been or what he had done. Losing one’s past, to a creature hundreds of years old, had terrified him. Did vampires grow senile? Was he so ancient that he would become a doddering fool? The fear had been a major part of him for some time. Now, though, he just didn’t care.

  “It is time,” he said.

  * * *

  “They won’t come now, sir.”

  Chandler Flynn paced along the border with his cabal around him. He could see the pale tear on the horizon that signified the oncoming dawn and sighed. It was disappointing that Von Kruger had not come. He felt his rage burning like a packed fire in his belly, threatening to break free. Many times in the night he had almost given the order to cross the border, to seek out Von Kruger and show the ancient vampire that his time was over. But he had not. Fear of the Council was only one tether which rooted him in his own territory. The other was the realisation that he was slowly losing his ability to think rationally.

  It was frightening to think that his mind was slipping. He had always been a thinker, relying on his wits rather than his strength to achieve anything. He felt…

  “They’re coming.” The aide shouted, his voice trembling a little in confusion.”

  Why would they attack with the dawn so close? Were they mad? A sudden flush raced through him. Was that it? Suddenly the rage in his belly escaped and the fires of hate and madness flared, swamping his thoughts with a blood lust he had not experienced since the first time he woke as a vampire. He surged into the air without another thought, his cabal following closely behind.

  * * *

  Tomas Ventredi did not remember much of the battle. He remembered the surging of Flynn’s cabal to meet them in the air. There were so many of them that it had appeared as though the ground itself had suddenly heaved upwards, spewing its contents. The air was suddenly filled with shouting, screamed taunts, bellows of rage, pleasure and pain. Talons raked flesh and blood poured down like rain to the ground below.

  Monstrous shapes morphed and lashed out. Some vampires grew so large that they plummeted to the ground only to continue their attack among the trees and fields of wheat. Flynn had amassed far more vampires that Von Kruger and at first the battle was one sided. He had three or four vampires to every one of Von Kruger’s and they took a heavy toll on Von Kruger’s forces.

  Ventredi faced three vampires and, as he lashed at the first, another vampire came at him from below. He was too slow to react and a talon tore into him, ripping upwards from his stomach towards his chest. He lashed out, morphing his arm into a sharp blade of bone and tore the vampires arm from his body. The vampire screamed as blood gushed from his appendage and he fell to the ground.

  Ventredi continued fighting the other two, but no matter how much he taunted them or threw himself at them they danced out of his reach, their ey
es wary and fearful. It was only when he looked down at his wound that he realised that he was not bleeding and that the flesh was already knitting back together.

  He laughed at his enemies and surged forward, catching them by surprise and quickly sent them reeling to the ground. The radiation might be healing them quicker than the blood ever had. But they were still terribly outnumbered. Already he could see a number of their own vampires torn to pieces on the ground. He could see at least seven blood vampires but there were two of the radiation fuelled vampires as well. Flynn’s vampires were learning. Even radiation could only knit flesh if there was something to knit it to.

  He could see Von Kruger laughing as he threw himself among a group of five vampires, losing himself in the violence. He knew that Von Kruger was mad; he suspected that he was a little more than mad himself, though the radiation seemed to have purged his mind somewhat. They were losing this battle though. He was about to fly to Von Kruger’s aid when he was attacked by four others. They were cautious, morphing their bodies to accommodate long-reaching weapons. He felt the tears in his flesh, the pain was every bit as bad as ever but his body soaked up the punishment and he pressed the attack, cutting, tearing, and gauging. He lost himself in the moment.