Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3)

by Derek Gunn

  He knew that they must be coming in from the East but his patrols had been run ragged over the last two weeks as they followed tracks that led nowhere. Someone in this human group knew how to track and to lay false trails, and it was driving his men mad. He even had one situation where two of his own patrols had opened fire on each other thinking the other force to be the force they were tracking. It wasn’t good for morale, either.

  His men knew that there was an uneasy peace with the vampires but that no agreement had yet been reached, so they constantly scanned the skies in the night as if expecting death to rain on them all for their daring to declare independence. He might rule now but it was a precarious position that could lead to his own death if he couldn’t show his own forces that he was capable of securing all of their futures. Added to this threat was the fact that prisoners were still disappearing regularly, as if by magic, and it was making his men very nervous.

  Carter finished his beer and pondered his next move. He wondered idly why the vampires did not simply find the human rebels now that they knew of their existence, but could not come up with any answer to that one either. He shrugged and called for his aide. He had the beginnings of a plan in the back of his mind but he was too tense. He had seen a particularly pretty female in the holding cages on his way in and she would provide some much needed entertainment before he had to get back to work.

  Chapter 3

  Jake Warren strode over to the consol and cursed. That was the second time today that the core had registered a temperature spike and he was damned if he knew what was causing it. Atkins would have known, of course, but the thralls had grown tired of his repeated demands for more workers at the plant and he had been thrown back into the pens to join the line of serum-induced zombies and wouldn’t be passing on any of his vast knowledge anymore. Damn him, Warren cursed as he flicked the switch up and down and prayed for the temperature to go down again. Warren had no idea what he was doing but this had seemed to work the last time. He sweated heavily as he waited for the needle to move away from the red markings on the gauge.

  “What is it?” the thrall on duty asked from across the room and Warren prayed the bastard would stay where he was and not come over to investigate.

  “Nothing,” he lied and prayed his voice didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. He knew very little about nuclear power plants and had only managed to work here at all because he knew computers and, as the plant had the only working computer left in the area, it made sense that he would work there. He had moved here before the vampires had taken over and had lied to the human council in power at the time about his abilities to get himself and his ten-year-old son into the state. He had assumed that the plant would be filled with technicians who knew the plant inside out so he had not thought that his indiscretion would harm anyone.

  Then, of course, the vampires had taken over and many of the humans had been thrown into the pens and had been injected with the serum. It had only been later when the vampires had realised that they needed humans to run the plant that they had begun to search through their prisoners for people capable of running the systems. He had been lucky to have been still wearing his white lab coat because the thralls had weaned him off the serum first. When asked if he could run the plant he had, again, lied and told them that of course he could. He had been allowed to take his son from the pens as well and had been tasked with finding seven other technicians capable of helping him.

  This had been where he had encountered his first problem. He hadn’t really paid attention in his short time he had spent in the plant and did not know the people well enough to pick them out of the huge numbers in the pens. He had remembered Trevor Atkins, as the man had been a virtual dynamo and always had time to pause and explain details to the other workers, but many of the other senior managers did not seem to be in the pens and could already be dead. He had picked as best he could and the thralls had placed him in charge of the plant.

  He had felt guilty at first. What right did he have to choose who lived and who died? But it wasn’t just his own life that he had to consider. His son would not last long in the pens, he was far too frail and his asthma had to be controlled or he would die. He had also heard that the vampires had a particular fondness for young children, and most had already been drained and cast into the large burial trenches that had been dug to the north of the plant. He had also heard terrible rumours of forced breeding so the vampires could replenish the quickly diminishing stocks of young flesh. He might have felt guilt but he was also fairly certain that the vampires would kill him if he gave them any cause to believe he was not all he had said he was. So, he had ignored his inner recriminations, kept quiet and accepted the position.

  Atkins had been the obvious one to run the plant and Warren had quickly told the man that he would, of course, defer to him, but Atkins suggested they keep things as the thralls had organised them, lest they throw any of the people and their families back into the pens. Atkins was a genuinely nice man who could not stomach to see anyone suffer. Atkins, too, had a family, though no matter how much he had searched he had not been able to find his youngest son and the loss gnawed at him constantly. He had been delighted that he had found his wife and two older sons, of course, but every time he passed one of the pens his colleagues would see him searching the faces of those wretched souls lining the wire fences in the hope of finding his youngest. Atkins had spent most of his free time, which wasn’t much, pestering the thralls to allow him to check the pens again and again in the vain hope that he might have missed him before.

  While Atkins was happy to support Warren in the plant, he did, however, have a major problem with the people Warren had chosen, none of whom were actually capable of running a nuclear plant. The plant might be automated but it still required a number of skilled technicians to make sure that the myriad controls and gauges were monitored and adjusted at the correct time to ensure the safety of the entire area. He had tried constantly but had been unable to get the thralls to add to the small group. The thralls were not stupid and knew how many technicians it took to run the plant. Atkins could not insist too strongly in case the thralls found out the truth and condemned all of them to death. Warren suspected that it had been Atkins’ failure to find his youngest son that had made him so desperate to save any others he could in the pens.

  He had, therefore, begun to train those around him as best he could but had continued to pester the guards to allow him to pick more workers from the pens whenever he got the opportunity, claiming exhaustion and stress for the small number of technicians for such a large plant. Atkins could not argue that the plant needed seven people who actually knew what they were doing and his persistence had eventually been his downfall; the thralls had grown tired of him and had thrown him back in the pens.

  Warren had pleaded that Atkins be allowed to come back but they had refused and he had had to choose someone else or join him in the pens. Again Warren had had no idea who to choose. He had been reminded of collecting foil-wrapped cards he had bought as a child. It was a matter of picking one and hoping the pack contained the card you wanted. He had chosen a man he thought he had recognised and then waited anxiously for a week while the serum was flushed from his system and he could find out what he had. Unfortunately, the man had turned out to be a country singer, and one of some note, as it turned out. That was probably why he had looked familiar. But he would not add to their knowledge base at all, unless you considered listening to country music worthwhile.

  Now he had a major problem. If they didn’t get some people who knew what they were doing to manage the core, then there was a real chance that the whole thing would blow and kill them all. But he couldn’t tell the thralls that they had made a mistake in picking the man either - he and his son would be killed instantly for his deception, as would the other six ‘technicians’ and their families. Whether by blind luck or design, the plant had continued to run smoothly despite Atkins’ removal, but these temperature spikes were worrying. T
hey hadn’t happened while Atkins was at the plant so something had definitely changed.

  He had quietly questioned the rest of the staff over the last few days and had found nothing to raise his spirits. They, like him, were all technical to some extent, just not in any way that would help keep the plant running safely. Atkins had managed to train some of them in the more menial tasks and they continued to do these constantly, however, none of them actually understood what their actions actually did, only that Atkins had told them that they were necessary to the continued running of the plant. He watched the temperature needle withdrawing from the red line as it began to slowly return to normal.

  “Thank God,” he muttered and grimaced at Angela Wallace, who worked the consol beside him. Angela had been an excellent dietician in her previous life but had not succeeded in taking in all Atkins had told her, so, while she continued to press buttons and turn dials in the exact sequence she had been shown, she wasn’t entirely certain whether the sequence should ever change to take into account any anomalies such as these temperature spikes. They all knew that they were sitting on a time bomb but there was no way any of them were going to admit their lack of knowledge to the thralls. While they were all aware that there was a chance the plant might explode, it was a certainty that they would all die if the thralls discovered their deception. Besides, it may never blow. Fear and worry for their own lives and the lives of their families tied each of them into the lie together.

  Warren’s heart began to slow in time with the descending needle and he wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Whatever had caused the spike had seemed to have abated for now. Probably just a blip, he decided. Such things probably happened all the time. The fact that he couldn’t recall such blips when Atkins had been in charge might just be because Atkins had handled them without worrying the others. He had a sudden image of Homer Simpson at the controls of his Nuclear Plant in Springfield and almost giggled insanely. God, talk about life mimicking art. And he didn’t even have any doughnuts.

  Peter Harris rolled his shoulders in the narrow space to relieve the cramp in his back and wiped the dust away from his goggles. The patrol was only a few feet from him and the dust their vehicles created as they lumbered past threatened to choke him. He checked his XM8 Heckler and Koch to take his mind off his physical discomfort and sighed, stifling the cough that threatened to escape from his dry throat. They had set up this action in a hurry but the very fact that the patrol was here at all had him very worried. The patrol passing him was only three vehicles in strength but, significantly, they were the first of Carter’s forces to cross the border into Nero’s territory and a white flag flew in plain sight on all three vehicles.

  What was happening? Were the thralls trying to deal with Nero? Were they sending similar envoys into all their neighbouring states or was this the only one? Had the thralls figured out where they were hiding? The questions reeled through his mind, almost making him dizzy. He realised, of course, that it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that all the attacks were limited to a relatively small area along the border with Nero’s territory, but he had hoped for more time than this.

  It was, after all, a huge border and he had always been mindful that they were very limited in the distances they could travel safely for the raids they conducted. To this end he had made sure that each raid was spread as far from the last one as was possible but there was a limit to the distance they could travel with serum-addicted prisoners on their return from a raid. If someone were to take the time to plot each raid there would be a definite concentration around the towns within a hundred miles along the border with Nero’s territory. There was nothing Harris had been able to do to prevent this but he had always tried to be careful. Unfortunately, it seemed that he had not been careful enough.

  He had taken a huge risk recently when they had attacked a small town much further away than ever before. It was almost two hundred miles south and under the rule of another vampire he did not know the identity of, but who he knew was marshalling his own forces since word of the battle of three months ago had spread. It had been a gigantic risk, and now he wondered if that risk had been for nothing after all. It had taken them two days of dangerous travel to make the raid and three on the way back due to the increased patrols in the area. He really had thought that the diversion would sufficiently confuse anyone looking for them. They had lost ten prisoners on the way and he had hoped that their sacrifice would have at least bought them some more time.

  Unfortunately, though, it seemed that the new thrall commander was far cleverer than those who had previously handled the job and it looked like he had seen through his ruse. Or maybe he was reading too much into this patrol. Was it just part of a larger hands-extended-in-friendship ruse by the new commander to ensure neighbouring states did not think they could merely cross the border after such a violent and costly civil war?

  Another problem was that his team was not even trained for this level of combat. They had trained hard in guerrilla tactics against armed, stationary targets who might be aware that an attack might come at some time, but they could not remain at high alert constantly. This attack, however, was on a fully armed patrol that was obviously well trained and actively expecting a surprise attack. But he really didn’t see another choice. The fact that this patrol had crossed into Nero’s territory and had not yet been challenged would expose the fact that Nero no longer controlled this territory, and that would invite a much closer inspection, if not an all-out invasion. They had to ensure that this patrol did not report back or they would risk losing everything.

  He really had thought that they would be able to stop this type of hit and run tactics when he had sent Steele to the vampires to tell them of the danger of the serum. But something was going on that just did not make sense to him.

  Since their rescue of the prisoners three months ago the entire landscape had changed dramatically. The thralls had taken their destiny into their own hands and had split from the vampires. In the confusion resulting from each side consolidating their own positions, Harris and his team had been able to continue rescuing prisoners, though on a far smaller scale since they had their own troubles in the community.

  A deep sadness threatened to overwhelm him but he forced it back savagely. He understood the community’s motives even if he didn’t agree with their methods. But it had been three months now and the prisoners they had rescued were still being given the serum. It didn’t make sense. Didn’t the vampires know that they would die as well if they continued to drink the blood of serum-saturated humans? He knew that the message had reached Von Richelieu because Steele had confirmed it before he had killed himself.

  God! He thought as his depression grew. There had been so much death already. Good friends had died during their last mission. Their faces swept in front of him as if using the thick dust as a movie screen, Steele, Carlos Ortega, Dee Ratigan, and Rodgers. The list was far too long. It seemed that there would be no end to this struggle, after all. Their sacrifices had been for nothing. Maybe he shouldn’t have told the vampires about the serum, it certainly didn’t seem to have done any good. And now that they knew that free humans existed they would continue searching for them until they were certain they were completely wiped out. Even with Adam Wilkins’ wireless protection it was unrealistic to think that they could remain hidden indefinitely. Had he doomed everyone after all? Had it really all been for nothing?

  Here he was again, lying in wait for thralls in a hastily prepared trap, but what did it really matter? Even those who they had rescued had turned against them or failed to stand with them when the committee had passed judgement on him. He still found it hard to believe that fellow survivors had actually cast out their own people. Well, it had been only him that had been banished, but the many of his team had stood with him and had shared his fate because of it. On one hand, it had been somewhat encouraging to see how many people had actually stood up and wanted to come with him, but, in the end,
he had not been able to accept their sacrifice. Some he had had to force to stay. Men like Pat Smyth and Father Jonathon Reilly would serve everyone better if they stayed where they could continue their work. But others he had accepted gratefully.

  He had been shocked when the verdict had come in. It had been just after Steele had paid them a visit as a vampire. The fact that he had been able to just appear inside their community so easily had shocked everyone and Phelps had used this fear to force through the emergency meeting that had led to his banishment. Phelps had argued that if Steele could just simply waltz in among them, so too could an army of vampires. Of course, it had all been Harris’ fault. He had told the vampires where they were.

  There had been those who stood and tried to explain that Harris hadn’t told anyone where they actually were but Phelps had driven home his point by displaying Steele’s body, and there had been little coherent thought after that. The fact that a thrall patrol from Von Kruger’s territory had been seen patrolling along the border under a white flag a few days previously, had only caused more panic and Phelps had skilfully heated the fires of fear that raged through the small community.

  He had argued that it wouldn’t be long before these patrols actually crossed the border and discovered that Nero was dead. The people had all been terrified and grasped with both hands Phelps’s assurance that, by forcing Harris out, the vampires and thralls would leave the rest of them alone. Their quarrel was with Harris, after all, not with the rest of the community. In their fear, the people had accepted this and Harris had found the vote going against him, albeit by a narrow margin.