by Derek Gunn
She began to walk forward again but her legs seemed to grow weaker with every step. She really didn’t know if she was up to removing the bodies of her friends. Too much had happened in the last few weeks. They had lost too many good friends on their last raid and, even though they had saved over a thousand prisoners and driven a wedge between the vampires and the thralls, they had also caused a split within their own community. She wondered which would prove the more damaging in the long run.
While there had never been any question that she would follow Peter Harris, she did wonder briefly if they were following the best path. Their effectiveness as a group was questionable at best with their small numbers, but Harris had insisted that they continue on and his drive and confidence had been enough for the others to follow. At least, for now.
As the time approached when Pat Smith had said that the serum would begin killing prisoners en masse Harris seemed to grow more frantic and bold, trying to save as many as he could. While she could understand that he wanted to save others, and while it was commendable, he also had a duty toward those he had already saved. Time was running out and Harris seemed to be growing more desperate. Their last ambush was a perfect example.
While she agreed that it was essential that they stop the patrol from reporting back, it might have been better to have taken more time to plan and hit the patrol on their way back rather than executing a poorly planned and hurried ambush. While they had not lost anyone this time, they had been too close to being overrun and either killed or captured for her liking. The thralls were no longer the pushovers they had been. Something had changed, and they would have to adapt or die.
Her mind swirled with these troubled thoughts as she drew nearer the house. Her stomach squirmed as she noted the dark stains still covering the walls where blood had splattered during that mad, violent attack. At first she had thought that the stains were still growing, seeping further through the shattered walls like a cancer spreading ineluctably inch by inch, corrupting everything it touched, but she shook the feeling away. Vampires might be real, but a ruined, haunted house was just too much. Her legs almost buckled as the small group approached their new home. She really wasn’t ready to face the desiccated corpses of her friends.
She felt guilty that she had forgotten them once they had found their new home. They should have come back here and given them the respect they had earned through their sacrifice. Suddenly she felt unworthy. She was about to turn back when Harris moved to the side and motioned for her to enter. The rest of the group looked at her expectantly and she looked at the door with more than a little trepidation. For a moment the doorway seemed to become pitch black, as if there was nothing past the threshold except a dark, cold void. She began to turn back, already forming an excuse in her mind, when the sun suddenly popped out from behind a cloud and the door transformed back into merely a door.
She could see the interior now and, while it was still mostly cast in shadow, it appeared perfectly normal. She saw a number of dark patches on the floor where the waning sun could not reach and she imagined the terrible toll that the passage of time would have wrought on the bodies. Flashes of desiccated faces, pulled into horrible masks of terror by their violent deaths swam through her mind. She imagined their accusing stares, forever frozen in death, for leaving them to rot, forgotten and abandoned despite their grand sacrifice so that others could survive. Was it even safe to enter this building? Wouldn’t disease be rampant?
She shuddered as she imagined what horrors the rats would have inflicted on the rotting corpses but she forced her feet over the threshold despite her fear. These people deserved to be buried with honour and she resolved to do that much, at least. No matter how belatedly. She was still not certain she could actually live here again but she would make that decision after she had paid her respects to the dead. Having made the decision, and feeling a little better about herself, she entered the room.
Her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the gloom and she saw the closest mound on the floor in more detail. Where she expected to see an arm or a leg she noted that the mound was merely a rumpled piece of carpet. Another mound to her left was far too angular to be a body and she finally made out the sharp corners of a broken desk. The damage in the room was shocking but something was missing…something…and then she had it. Emotion flooded through her and she was almost overcome with the strength of her feelings towards Harris.
Even with all that had been happening over the last few months - with the constant patrols and internal squabbling, he had remembered them. Even when everyone else, including herself, had forgotten. He had not. Even with all his responsibilities and the terrible things people accused him of, he had been the only one who had remembered the dead. She leaned against Harris and kissed him briefly on the cheek, ignoring his winch of pain from the wounds across his face.
“Thank you,” she whispered and he shrugged and squeezed her hand. Sandra felt another rush of emotion flood through her. With all that had happened in the last few days, with the whole community shunning him and banishing him despite his actions being for their own good, and with the death of his closest friends, Harris had still somehow managed to come back here, clear away the bodies and give them a decent burial.
She realised with a sudden flash of understanding how deeply everyone’s death affected Peter Harris, how he blamed himself for each of their deaths, and, for a moment, she wondered how he kept going with all that guilt bottled up inside him. None of this was his fault, but no matter what she said to him she didn’t seem able to stop him taking all of the responsibility.
She wondered how he could possibly cope with the fact that those he had rescued had turned against him. He hadn’t said a word to her about it since they had left the community the night before and she worried that he would continue to internalise his feelings. She would have to work on that. But for now they had a lot of work to do. She looked around. The room seemed somehow brighter now that she knew that the dead had been laid to rest. Even the air seemed fresher. Harris hadn’t been able to hide the bulk of the damage, of course, but at least she had not had to face the rotting bodies of her friends. God, she thought, it must have been horrific clearing away the dead.
She came to the torn metal doors that led to the lower levels and shuddered. They had been peeled back like wet cardboard and she wondered again at how powerful the vampires truly were. Humans were like mosquitoes to them. What hope did they really have against such power? Especially now that they knew that the free humans existed.
She felt a heavy weight begin to press in on her as the reality of their situation hit her hard. They had all lost so much since they had first overcome the serum, the sacrifices they had all made in order to eke out a paltry existence, constantly under threat from their former inhuman masters. She had almost given up; especially when their blood and sacrifices had resulted in their being banished by those very people they had bled and died to rescue.
She was fairly sure she would have given up at that point if Harris hadn’t kept them all going. She had felt like shouting and cursing at the community for their disloyalty. Didn’t they realise that they would be dead now if she and her friends hadn’t risked their own lives constantly to rescue them? Ungrateful bastards. She felt a surge of anger toward the people of the community, and she had to take a number of deep breaths in order to regain control.
She didn’t know how Harris kept going. She had once thought that he was driven by an irrational need to put himself in danger, a death wish to somehow make up for the fact that he had survived when others hadn’t. But as she had grown to know him she realised that he was driven more by a strong sense of humanity rather than his own selfishness.
He was far more focused than she had first thought. Quite simply, he cared deeply about all of their futures and knew that the only hope they all had was by saving sufficient numbers to be able to survive in this new world. He might be too focused at times, and he was certainly blind to how his actions aff
ected others, but his outlook was still more refreshing than that of those who acted only out of self-interest. It was this innocence and purity of motive, she supposed, that she had fallen in love with.
Oh, he wasn’t stupid - naïve yes - but he knew that their only chance to survive as a race was to gather together in sufficient numbers so that their community could survive. They would all die if they stagnated and remained a small community. But he cared deeply about those who were still helpless in the hands of the thralls and the vampires and she knew that the community’s banishment had hurt him more deeply than he cared to acknowledge.
She then remembered the faces of those they had saved as they had come out of the effects of the serum and she began to feel her resolve harden. The vampires were vicious bastards; their cruelty and complete disregard for their prisoners were repulsive. The fact that they had once been human themselves only made them more abhorrent. She would fight them with her last breath no matter what the others thought. The people they had saved were scared and easily manipulated by ruthless people, and they would deal with those later. For now, they had a job to do. She took a deep breath and walked past the ruined door and back into the Cave with a resolve that filled her with a purpose she had not felt in some time.
Chapter 7
Tanya Syn woke to the worst hangover she could ever remember. For a moment the pain seemed to be all that there was. Somehow everything else seemed to be missing. Memories, thoughts and feelings - all of them were gone. But the pain was there, demanding her attention and overpowering her senses. She knew it must be a hangover and that it must be the worst she had ever had, but other than that, there was nothing. Her brain wasn’t working properly. It was as if someone had steeped it in treacle overnight and all her thoughts were stuck in the thick syrup. She opened her eyes and quickly shut them again as light stabbed at her and burned through her skull.
She brought a hand to her aching temples. At least, she thought about bringing her hand up, but she couldn’t feel any movement. She felt panic begin to build within her and her heart began to thump faster. What the hell is going on, she thought with rising despair?
She forced herself to calm down. She had drunk too much, that was all. In a few minutes the pain would ease and she would be able to get up and take something for the pain. Her heart began to slow a little as her logic began to penetrate the fog of pain. All she had to do was wait a little longer. Suddenly, there was a scream to her right and she jumped and opened her eyes in shock. Light flooded in again and seemed to burn like hot lasers but she kept them open regardless. At first all she could see was an out-of-focus blur, as if she was looking through a window streaked with rain, but, slowly, it began to clear. The pain didn’t relent at all but now she used the pain to force her brain to work.
The first thing she noticed was that she was lying on hard tarmac. Why would I be lying on the ground? Where am I?
Suddenly a flood of memories gushed through her bruised head and her heart stopped in shock. She remembered the vampires, the killing and panic in Los Angeles as the city prepared for the inevitable attack that had already swept through the rest of the country. She finally remembered her own name, and then she remembered her children and she felt a scream build within her like a volcano.
Pain flooded through her but the scream would not be denied, and she unleashed a cry as forlorn and filled with despair as the one she had heard moments ago. As she screamed she was dimly aware of more screams beginning around her. She tried to move, to search for her children, but her body would not move and she was forced to look down at the ground as her body convulsed with pain and despair, helpless as the last few months began to play out like a movie reel.
As her mind began to slowly shake off the effects of the serum her overriding thoughts were for her two children. Jillian and Mark had been with her when the vampires had come but she had no memory of them after she had been taken prisoner. She tried to force her mind to remember but the pain threatened to send her back into oblivion. She felt her hand move slightly and she closed her fingers into a fist, relishing the pain as her nails cut into her palms and gave her something to focus on.
She forced herself to remember, searching for a clue as to her children’s fates. But there was nothing. She did, however, remember other parts of the last two years. She remembered the abuse by the thralls, the blooding when she had been so drained of blood that she had been cast aside and left to either die or recover by herself.
She was dimly aware of bodies being cast onto huge pyres by laughing thralls as those who had not survived were disposed of in the easiest way possible. Her numbed brain began to remember the stench of burnt flesh and faeces and despair began to roll over her in waves so large that she felt tiny and insignificant under their assault. There was only one thing that saved her from spiralling back into numbed bliss.
Her children needed her.
She never entertained the fact that they might be dead. They were alive, they had to be. And they would need her strength.
She forced her hand tighter into a fist and cried out as her nails bit deeper into her flesh. But this time she did not cry out in despair, this time there was an anger and hatred in her cries. She felt some of the lethargy in her mind ease as adrenaline gushed through her. She forced her head to the side so she could see around her. Light blinded her as the sun burned into her eyes but she welcomed the pain and forced a grim smile onto her face. She had no idea why she was coming out of the serum’s effects but she felt a cold hatred begin to form deep within her and she used the warmth of that hatred to force her body to move and her mind to clear.
She screamed again, using the release to vent the effects of the serum. She cursed the thralls for their cruelty, she cursed the vampires for their black appetites, and she cursed God for letting it all happen. Her mind continued to remember scenes from the last two years. None of it was pretty and her body seemed to burn from remembered pain and shame, but she used it all to stoke the fires of hatred in her belly.
There was a memory deep in her tortured mind that she somehow sensed she wasn’t ready to face yet - she didn’t know how, just that it would be too much for her in her fragile condition. But thoughts of her children forced her on. Anything she could use to drive the last of the effects away might help her find her children so she pursued the memory relentlessly until, finally, she felt something give and the memory flooded through her. Her hand unconsciously went to her stomach.
“You bastards!” she screamed and her throat felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper. The thralls had used her for their depraved fantasies countless times, and from that she had become pregnant. They had let her carry the child almost to full term and then they had ripped her unborn child from her womb for their masters’ vile hungers. Tears streaked down her cheeks and, in her shame, they felt like twin streams of acid. She felt her tenuous grip on sanity loosen a little and, for a moment, she feared she had gone too far.
She dug deeper into her flesh and screamed again. Her tortured throat burned and she used all the pain to focus on the memory of her children. She felt as though a truck had hit her, adrenaline surged through her and seemed to burn the hated serum as it purged through her. Her mind cleared a little more with every second she remained conscious. Already she could feel a tingling in the rest of her body as feeling returned like molten fire. Someone would pay, she promised herself. But first she had to find her children and God help anyone who stood in her way.
Von Kruger relished the feel of the wind on his face but it did little to calm his mood. He was surrounded by incompetents. He had managed to subdue an entire state of vampires still loyal to the deceased Wentworth in just a few weeks, and in that same time his Lieutenant had not been able to find any sign of the damned humans who had embarrassed him so badly.
He raged as he thrust his arms viciously through the chilled air. His swift victory over Wentworth’s forces, though, had left him with quite a dilemma. Two dilemmas, actually
. His position as head of the vampires in both the states formerly known as Michigan and Indiana was uncontested at this point, but his position in the greater theatre was very tenuous indeed. He had not heard from the Council, and that worried him, though he would not let anyone suspect it. He was very worried that their response, and he was certain there would be a response, could take it all away from him. While he had been fighting Wentworth, and then during the campaign afterwards, he had paid little mind to what the Council might do. In fact, he had not thought of anything at all except the thrill of battle. His mind had simply shut down and a mad battle-lust had taken over.
The lust had lasted for as long as it took to subdue Wentworth’s territory, and only then had his mind seemed to fight back to a dominant position and let him, finally, consider his actions. While, in one way, it had been glorious to finally shake off the old ways and cut loose against opponents who were worthy of the effort, he was still chilled by the fact that he had lost control to such an extent.
He wasn’t quite sure what had possessed him but he had been unable to stop himself once the smell of fresh blood had hit him. It had only been his savagery that had allowed him to win against the other vampires as he had not planned any strategy, had not been able to think strategically in order to plan anything. He had simply devoured his enemies through sheer force. That would not work against the council, however, and when they responded he worried that the battle-lust would again strip him of his keen intelligence and leave him at their mercy.
