Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2)

by Derek Gunn

  While the debates continued, with no one really offering any concrete alternatives, Harris and his team had continued to plan. They had quickly rounded up the remaining thralls. The loss of their vampire masters and the betrayal of their commanding officer had left them reeling and easy targets. It had also helped that a significant number of them had been slaughtered in the attack on the base and the survivors had regarded the humans with a new respect. Their new subservient position, along with their fear of reprisals from the remaining “cattle pool”, as they had labeled the food supply for the vampires, had made them eager to provide information on their former masters.

  Harris and his team had discovered that the vampires had a strange social structure, if indeed structure could be used to describe it at all. A master vampire ruled each area, or cabal. This designation of master had, in times when humans had ruled the world, never been bestowed on any vampire with a life history of less than three hundred years and, even then, only on the very rare occasion of another master’s death. The fact that the vampires had hid in the shadows had meant that they would only add to their ranks in special circumstances, so the number of cabals had remained constant and their leadership had remained unchanged for centuries.

  Many of the younger vampires had spent decades, even centuries, conniving and jostling for these positions of power, and this had ensured that only the very best ever attained the position of leader of a cabal. Development came slowly to the undead; they received their strength, senses and limited transformation abilities immediately after their resurrection, but after that their bodies took decades to develop further abilities such as resistance to holy water, the cross and the ability to change into other creatures.

  Unfortunately for them, their rapid spread over an unprepared world had left them with more cabals than they had eligible candidates to lead them. Because of this, vampires had been promoted or had massacred their way into the position of master based purely on their successes during the war. This had led to squabbling on a scale the vampire overlords had never before experienced and had been completely unprepared for. They were used to an existence in the shadows where their control over their own cabals was paramount to their very survival. Respect was earned over centuries and each cabal leader had always been mature and well tested before they were raised to the position of master.

  Now they had a nightmare of petty jealousies and arguments over territory among young vampires who held positions of immense power. But they had no experience and no respect needed to control such areas. Many vampires had fought among themselves. Vampires had been assassinated, their loyal thralls butchered, and whole cities of precious human food destroyed in the aftermath of their victory over the humans. The situation had deteriorated rapidly with alliances being hastily forged and just as quickly broken. A full-scale war loomed and threatened to tear them apart.

  Many of the older and wiser masters, not caught up in the insane jostling for power, had banded together in the face of their own destruction and had implemented a council where territorial disputes were to be heard and ruled upon. These masters had seen many centuries of warfare and still retained the respect of the older vampires. They even commanded a certain level of fear among the more recent masters. The various cabals, reluctantly, had agreed to give the council a chance at restoring some order.

  Council meetings were held once every six months, but many of these new masters were reluctant to wait that long for a resolution to their immediate problems, and didn’t always agree or abide by any decisions that did come from these courts. The last two years had seen vicious raids into rival territories, stealing of scarce resources and kidnappings and assassinations of thralls who excelled in key positions of power.

  The killing of vampires had stopped abruptly after the last vampire to be found guilty of such a crime had been staked naked to the dawn by his peers. The council did provide some order and many of the larger raids did stop, or at least became less frequent as the cabals began to realise that the cost in terms of lost thralls, resources and food was just too high. An uneasy truce had finally limped into being with all sides mistrustful of the other. This had led to the vampires becoming very insular over the last year.

  In a very short time each cabal had begun to develop independently, basing their strength and power on those resources that their own territory was rich in. Some areas were rich in food, others in people, and others still in power sources or natural resources. Their ability to defend these resources or steal others’ resources soon became the primary measure of true power. Tradition and respect were ignored and each faction watched its borders and protected its resources jealously. Mistrust grew and rivalries increased until the entire country seethed with a barely contained, but often violated, truce.

  The only thing that had prevented a bloodbath from engulfing them all was the power and fear of the last remaining true master on the continent. Von Richelieu was an ancient vampire from Eastern Europe, one of the few that had actually left their ancestral country and sought to grow their influence in the new world. His prowess in military matters had swept away the human’s defenses. His political acumen and ruthless efficiency had quickly removed any other vampire master during the chaotic closing stages of the war with the humans that might have threatened his position in the new power structure.

  The remaining vampire masters were all mere youths compared to him, and he had become the only thing that all the others actually feared. None of the new masters were prepared to confront him openly, and they were far too mistrustful of each other to join together to challenge him, so the uneasy peace remained. In the last few months, Harris had learned from the thralls, things had settled down after a revitalized council had put restrictions in place. Von Richelieu had finally decided to take action and he let it be known that all vampires would answer to the council if they continued their fighting.

  The council had never had the power to enforce their decisions before, but with Von Richelieu now supporting them, things began to settle down. The fact that he sent out his own lethal vampire enforcers to kill anyone who went against a council ruling soon focused the younger vampires’ attention on the council’s authority. Harris had not been able to find out exactly what these restrictions had been but news had filtered down to the thralls that no forays into other territories would be tolerated. As a result, the thralls had all grown complacent over the last few months and ruled their own areas in much the same way as the fiefdoms of the Medieval Ages.

  This gave a much needed reprieve to the humans and allowed them to wean the new recruits off the drug and train them for whatever might come their way. They were under terrible time pressure with the serum’s fatal concoction, but it was also incumbent on them to survive. With this in mind they had decided to try to take advantage of the unrest among the vampires and try to nudge the cabals back into more direct action by playing one against the other.

  Today would be the first step in their campaign. Harris did not actually have the full blessing of the newly formed government back at their base. He had tried many times to lay out the plan about how they hoped that they would be able to siphon off people and supplies from the neighboring territories while the other cabals were otherwise engaged. But, now that they had more people to cater for, they also had more representatives in the fledgling government and agreements were few and hard-fought. Harris had decided to present them with a fait accomplit and hoped that the resulting fallout would not be too bad.

  He was well aware that his own view was a blinkered one; he was focused only on the task of saving lives while others were just as focused on their own areas and commitments. He knew that he too would have to change as their community grew, otherwise there would be anarchy if everyone just went off and did what they felt was right. But the serum’s effects were non-negotiable—they just did not have the time for debate. If they did not act now then there would be no point in acting later.

  They had been lucky that Nero, the m
aster who had controlled their own area before Harris had beheaded him two months ago, had been a particularly singular vampire. He had not made contact with the other cabals for anything and expected the same in return. He had been quite a senior vampire during the war, and many had seen him as a direct threat to Von Richelieu himself. He had only come to America to satisfy a particularly insatiable appetite for carnage. He had already won large estates in the initial battles in Europe but quickly grew bored as territory after territory fell too easily. It was only in America that battles had been fought that satisfied his blood lust—at least until the serum had been used and the human defense had crumbled almost overnight.

  He was over four hundred years old but his ambitions and bloodlust had been satiated by the war. At least, this had been what he had informed the council when he had removed himself from the committee and also from the resulting carnage as the vampires fought over the spoils. It was understood by the thralls that Harris questioned that Von Richelieu had let him go mainly because his numerous attempts at removing him had failed. Nero had retained enough respect from the younger vampires so that they turned their greedy attentions toward easier and less established prey.

  The surviving thralls had been most informative as to the relations between the cabals. It seemed that the vampires had pretty much kept to the old state lines when carving up their territories after they had taken over. This was the easiest to administer and control, except for some notable exceptions where lines had been stretched to include certain advantages depending on the level of strength and political weight each vampire master could exert.

  Cases in point were their own neighboring cabals. The states, formerly known as Michigan and Indiana were now controlled by the Von Kruger and Wentworth Cabals respectively and bordered what had been Nero’s Cabal, in the old state of Ohio. It seemed that there had been a long rivalry between these two states that predated the vampires’ coming. At the centre of this rivalry was the Dade Nuclear Power plant that was situated just over the border in Michigan. Before the energy crisis this plant had powered all the surrounding states and the plant drew its employees from both sides of the state line. The plant had become a popular place to work and had always been seen as a shared resource by both states.

  As the energy crisis of the last few years had worsened, however, things began to sour between the two states. Michigan had stopped supplying power to her neighboring states and people had flocked to Michigan, leaving the other states, especially Indiana, with poor resources and too few people to manage what was left.

  When the vampires had come, Von Kruger, a two hundred year old vampire from Bonn, Germany, had used his seniority to redraw the map to include the power plant in the newly drawn Indiana state line. Wentworth, the former governor of Michigan, had ranted for over a year before settling down to his fate.

  The need for heating and power really only affected the thralls, as the vampires were nocturnal, so he really couldn’t argue too loudly. Von Kruger, as the elder vampire, could have demanded Michigan, as it was more generously populated, but had opted for the warmer state. Wentworth, with a much larger population to feed upon had relented and an uneasy peace reigned.

  Neither vampire had given a second thought to the thralls. Wentworth’s army, far bigger and better armed, began to grumble and complain about the arrival of an early winter. They had used up their entire stock of oil and fossil fuels last winter, convinced that they would be able to obtain at least a small feed from the power plant for the next year, but negotiations had broken down and they had been left with nothing. Their barracks were cold, their food was rapidly going bad without proper refrigeration—though the cold weather alleviated this somewhat—and the lack of power left them literally in the dark; they even had to light large campfires each evening to patrol their territory. This strain on their limited resources left the thralls irritable and difficult to control.

  Von Kruger’s thralls, on the other hand, had plenty of power; in fact, they particularly enjoyed lighting their state line to such an extent that the immediate area sharing the state line with Michigan was lit up like daylight. Their barracks were warm—however, their food levels were very low. They also had a surplus of fuel as they had stockpiles that they had hoarded before Von Kruger had annexed the nuclear plant which were not as critical now. They delighted in offering these supplies at exorbitant prices to their neighbors.

  Ever since the vampires had taken over, the thralls had lived off the huge food stocks that all the states had hoarded during the energy crisis before the vampires had come. The thralls did not see past their immediate needs and lusts and animals had been left untended, fields remained unploughed and all the time the stocks grew lower. Some of the more intelligent cabals had seen the potential disaster and had set their human captives to work, but, for most, it wasn’t until the stocks had become dangerously low that they had even thought of food production. Recently there had been a scramble to find humans who had knowledge of farming and animal husbandry that would be able to coax food from a neglected land, and a search had begun for any animals that may have survived in the wild.

  Indiana had a dangerously low human population. Von Kruger had to curtail their feeding habits to the extent that his vampires were complaining of being hungry. Many of the humans were tapped for their blood too often already, and many were dying from a combination of disease and exhaustion. A breakout of cholera last year had taken nearly a third of their already low human population.

  Von Kruger had been one of the few vampires to see the oncoming food shortages and had set his remaining human population to work some months before. They had already tilled fields and gathered a growing animal base to feed his thralls and his dwindling human food supply. They had quite a surplus of food now but a dangerously low population to maintain it.

  This left an interesting balance of power between the two cabals; Wentworth had an impressive army that could threaten the whole area but had no power, fuel and little food to feed his surplus of people while Von Kruger needed people badly to continue to safeguard and produce the food surplus he had developed. He also needed more humans to tend his power station or risk the plant shutting down or even becoming dangerously critical from a lack of careful attention.

  It seemed to Harris that if left alone both parties might come to an agreement that would cater to both their needs. However, Harris judged that it would not take a lot to nudge both parties along a more direct and physical confrontation and he and his team planned to make sure that peace and cool heads did not win out. The resultant fallout would be enough, he hoped, to allow the humans the chance to add to their own dangerously low supplies and growing requirements, and at the same time save as many people as they could in the resulting confusion.

  Chapter 2

  Once the vampires disappeared from view Harris rose to his feet and brushed the powdered snow from his clothes. The ten other figures hidden along the ledge struggled to their feet and rearranged their equipment in silence. They all wore Gore-Tex “Windstopper” fleeces and, although they were cold from lying on the ground, they remained dry underneath. Breath plumed out from all the figures and created a small fog that the early breeze swirled around them, creating an almost mystical vista as they stamped their feet and rolled their arms, trying to generate heat back into their frozen joints.

  Harris looked over the group. He had chosen this group carefully. On one hand he needed the experience of the men that had fought with him before; on the other, he could not strip the camp of all of its best fighters, especially when they were here without permission. To this end he had chosen Rodgers, Warkowski and Steele. The others were all new to the group but very capable, at least according to their own accounts.

  John Tanner had been a police officer before the war. At fifty-two he had a slight paunch that bulged over his trousers, though his massive six-foot-three frame went a long way to disguising this. His hair was thinning on top in a small circle like a monk but he h
ad retained a thick mane of hair on either side of his head that had grown down to his shoulders and now curled at the ends, giving him the appearance of an aging rock musician. His face was heavily lined and Harris imagined that every line told a story of the many cruel scenes he had witnessed in his years on the force. His eyes seemed to hold a strange distant look that seemed to confirm Harris’s suspicion but Tanner kept a cool head under fire, knew how to take orders and carried them out to the letter. He had been among the last batch weaned off the serum and had nearly been missed in the confusion of moving to a new base and the sheer numbers of new additions.

  The survivors’ numbers had grown so large that many of the jobs and positions had grown from individual placements to whole departments of people looking after food, sanitation, security and offensive operations. Most of the newly awakened were still quite groggy when they were first interviewed and many found themselves assigned to work details not necessarily appropriate with their previous employments.

  The sheer volume of people meant that it was easier to assign people and then reassign those that didn’t fit at a later stage; this had led to some hilarious postings, not least of which had been Tanner’s own case. He had commented dryly that he was used to wet nursing others during his interview and the interviewer had taken him literally and he had promptly been assigned to the nursery where his six-foot-three build and gravely voice had nearly sent the young children into shock. Harris had happened to be passing the nursery on his way to visit Sandra in the hospital when he had heard the commotion and had gone to investigate. He had snapped the police sergeant up on the spot for his growing offensive operations department.