Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3)

by Derek Gunn

  For some in this pen the despair had turned to anger and they had spent some time throwing themselves futilely against their cages. The guards ignored them, or sometimes stopped their patrols to laugh or spit at their charges. They had not, however, noticed that a small number of humans had slowly reigned in those who shouted themselves hoarse. They did so quietly, taking these demented individuals to the side, calming them and then using their growing numbers to calm the others.

  In the last day or so Kavanagh had not seen anyone shout or cry or throw themselves at their cages. Instead, the humans watched and noted how their guards patrolled, how long they stood and talked among themselves, and how cold it had to get for them to disappear into their barracks.

  Kavanagh was amazed. He would never have noticed this change if he had not purposely been looking at this cage. The guards had noticed nothing and continued their patrols oblivious to the scheming eyes that watched their every move and noted every characteristic. He should report this, of course. But Kavanagh still did not know why this cage had been taken off the serum and did not want others to know of his knowledge. He did, however, know one thing for certain. Anything that was not part of Von Richelieu’s plan could only benefit his own strategies. It would suit him far better if he kept this interesting development to himself for now.

  He had thought long and hard about this cage over the last two days. His time in prison had taught Kavanagh many things, but patience had been the hardest lesson of all. He had seen others go mad and become so violent that they had to be constantly restrained because they could not handle the hours of solitary confinement. He had entered prison for a relatively innocuous crime; he had made the mistake of agreeing to help rob a small local bank. ‘In and out,’ his friend, Carlos, had said. ‘Piece of cake,’ he had said. And it had been until the stupid guard had decided to become a hero and Carlos suddenly had a gun in his hand. Kavanagh still didn’t know where Carlos had gotten it, and then there had been a loud explosion and the guard and pitched forward and blood had quickly pooled around him.

  By the time the guard had stopped twitching the sirens had begun blaring and they had run. He hadn’t considered himself a criminal before that day, sure he stood on the corners acting as muscle for the guys who sold drugs, but he had never used them himself. His size made him popular and the money was good. He had only agreed to the robbery because he needed extra money because his brother had borrowed money from someone he shouldn’t have. For the first time in his life his size had worked against him and he had been easily identified and arrested. He had kept quiet as to the identity of his friends and the judge had sent him away for ten years.

  The early years had been hard; he had to constantly prove that he was as tough as he looked. He had survived being stabbed four times. It was so easy to be a target in prison, far too easy for anyone to walk past and stab a sharpened fork or tool into your guts before you knew what was happening.

  Kavanagh had never killed anyone before he had gone to prison, but that had soon changed. There had been a number of different factions inside the prison and he had tried to ignore them all. That hadn’t worked though and he had found that, to survive, he would need to throw in with someone. After the third stabbing, he had finally realised that he would also have to make a statement that there would be consequences if he was attacked again or risk the next stabbing being fatal.

  After he had recovered he had found the man who had stabbed him and broke both of his arms in plain view of everyone. Just to be sure his message was received; he had broken the man’s right arm at the elbow by smashing it over his knee and breaking the joint. The man would never use that arm again. Then he had calmly let the guards lead him to solitary.

  When he had come out he had been stabbed again as soon as he had re-entered the main populace. He had felt the knife drive deep into his side and the pain fuelled his anger. He had lost control. He had not wanted to rob the bank, had not wanted to work for the gangs in prison, but his life had gone to shit a long time ago and it was time to put a stop to others taking advantage. All of his frustrations had exploded in that moment and he had reached over and wrenched the man’s neck all the way around so that he was looking behind him.

  His rage had still been burning through him, though, and his fingers tingled with the urge to inflict pain. Someone should pay for all the pain he had endured. He saw another man look down at the dead assassin and his face went sheet white. The man looked at Kavanagh and Kavanagh saw the sharpened metal tool in his hand. They had sent two this time. The man began to run but Kavanagh had reached out with such speed that he caught the man before he had gone two steps. The man screamed in a high pitched yowl. Kavanagh could see the guards struggling through the throngs of prisoners toward him. The noise of the inmates rose as they packed around him, keeping the guards back. He didn’t have much time. He had to do something that would drive his message across.

  He had tried to remain aloof. He had tried to serve his time quietly, but it wasn’t working. He had to make a statement and gain respect. He grabbed the struggling man and pulled him closer. Just as the first of the guards finally managed to push his way through the wall of prisoners, Kavanagh had taken the knife, still imbedded in his side, and wrenched it free. He shouted in pain and triumph and then ripped the sharp edge so viciously across the man’s neck that he had nearly severed the man’s head from his body.

  The guards had quickly surrounded him. He could see the fear in their eyes and he had smiled. He dropped the dead assassin and the knife and he had calmly made his way back to solitary. He had received another fifteen years on his sentence but, when he had come out of solitary, he had never been attacked again. Since then, he had killed twelve more men who thought they could control him. Since that fateful day, though, none of the deaths had been laid at his door. By the time the vampires had come and offered the inmates the opportunity to join them he had already risen high in the ranks within the prison. When the vampires had made their pitch it was to him that the others looked before they answered.

  Now, he was in a similar situation with Von Richelieu. The master vampire did not want him here. If he had been just muscle then he would have been welcomed, as indeed he had been initially. But Von Richelieu had soon discovered that he also had a brain and ambition, and that was something that threatened the master vampire. Kavanagh was no longer happy to bow to others. He had worked his way to the top in prison and intended to do the same here.

  Von Richelieu was planning something with these humans that involved the serum. Kavanagh had noted that the humans who were taken from this cage for bloodletting were brought now to a different building than the others. Usually, he would have paid no mind to the process; he really didn’t care how his blood arrived. But after his last meeting with Von Richelieu, where he had lost his temper, he had begun to pay much closer attention to anything that might impact on him. He never lost his temper. It was his rule. Ever since that time in prison. He knew that there was no profit in losing control. It was always better to react after careful consideration, when your tracks could be covered.

  He had waited and watched and he had seen that these humans were used to supply Von Richelieu and a few of his aides with blood, but everyone else was fed from the other cages. While this might not have been overly significant on its own, Kavanagh had become convinced that this explained why many of the vampires were becoming more and more aggressive. There had to be something in the serum.

  Kavanagh had stopped drinking blood two days ago. He was starving, his stomach felt like someone had driven a knife deep into him, and his hands shook slightly. He felt very like he had when his body had first made the change to become a vampire, as if he was changing again. He had no idea what was going on but he did know that he could not drink the serum-tainted blood. But he did have to eat soon or he would die.

  Von Richelieu was playing a game, but one which was deadly serious. However, he might just have underestimated the resilience of the h
umans, and Kavanagh would have to keep an eye on them and ensure that they had every opportunity to turn the tables on the master vampire. With a little encouragement he might just be able to make these humans work for him. He now had to convince his own followers to stop using the tainted blood He would also have to secure his own supply of clean blood.

  And then he would see what he could do about Von Richelieu.

  Chapter 15

  Philip Warkowski lined up the approaching truck in the sights of his Barrett XM-109. The .50 calibre weapon could easily punch through the windscreen, even from this distance, but he left his finger outside the trigger guard. There were still a few minutes before the others would be in place.

  They had had to change the plan to take account of April’s revelations. God, if they had gone ahead with the original plan those poor prisoners would have been driven directly into the radiation and died horrible deaths. Not to mention the fact that they would have had a full platoon of thralls coming right up behind them undetected. They would have been sitting ducks.

  Now, though, they had had to adapt the plan and get into their new positions in a very short timeframe. They had considered putting off the attack, but it might be over a month before another convoy was put together and they couldn’t afford to wait that long. Luckily for them, travelling across country was far faster than travelling on the roads. The trucks had to travel a very long circular route to get to the main highway and the truck with the radioactive payload had to travel slowly. He scanned back toward the plant and could see two more trucks leaving with thralls and prisoners loaded into the back. They would catch up and pass the waste transport in fifteen minutes or so, he estimated.

  Harris had decided to hit the prison transport after it had passed the waste transport and had travelled on for another two miles past the convoy. This would leave them within earshot of the nearest town but that couldn’t be helped. It was still dark and that would help. Dawn wasn’t too far away though and already a thin line of light, like molten gold poured between the distant mountains and the horizon, threw a faint glow over the landscape and chased the shadows across the fields. They had to split their forces to hit both transports at the same time so if anything delayed either ambush they could be in trouble with re-enforcements from Fort Wayne.

  They hadn’t planned on rescuing anyone on this trip as they had such a long way to travel to get back home, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to move around undetected, let alone travelling with so many serum junkies. It would put them all in danger, but Harris had refused to leave the people behind. There was just too much chance of the radiation spreading on the wind, and leaving them behind would be a death sentence.

  Warkowski was practical enough to realise that every war resulted in civilian deaths but he knew that Harris hadn’t become hardened to that fact as yet. Warkowski was no leader but he had served under enough commanders and had been in enough wars to know that Harris would never become the leader they all needed him to be until he could divorce himself from the very humanity that gave him his strength.

  There was no place for uncertainty in war, not if you wanted to win. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, but Warkowski knew that Harris wasn’t there yet. He wondered briefly if Harris would get to that point before he died. It was ironic that Harris would have to lose, or suppress, that which defined him before he could become the leader they all needed him to be. Warkowski thought briefly of his wife, Sarah, and his daughter, Jill. Would he ever see them again? He made a point of telling them everyday that he loved them so that, one day, if he didn’t come back, they would know how deeply he cared for them. He hoped that they would find some comfort in that.

  There was no way he could have let Harris leave the community without going with him, and he knew that Sarah understood. She might not agree with him, and she had made her views very clear about that as they had settled into their new home in the Cave. But she also accepted that her husband would not be able to live with himself until he had paid in full the debt he felt he owed Peter Harris. Warkowski did not give his loyalty easily, but when he did you might as well try to stop a speeding truck than try to stop him. He smiled wryly as he thought of his family, and then he checked his watch again.

  Ten minutes.

  Dust hung heavily in the stagnant air as the transport continued its approach. From this distance it looked as though the vehicle wasn’t moving at all. For a moment its lights even appeared to be hovering higher than was normal between the road and the horizon. A blizzard of dust surrounded it, caught in the glare of the lights from the vehicles behind, and billowed behind like a huge wake marking its passing. The road’s surface was not used so much anymore and nature had a way of reclaiming that which had encroached upon her and, already, Denis Jackson could see that the road was already covered in a thick layer of dust.

  He had thought Harris mad to attempt to attack both convoys at the same time, especially with them being so close to the local garrison, but he now realised that they could have attacked the convoy a few meters outside the garrison and still not be seen with this amount of dust. Of course, the cover that the dust would afford them would also lead to its own set of problems. There could be no co-ordination, no possibility of reacting to anything that didn’t go to plan. They would have to operate in total isolation to each other and hope that everything went like clockwork - which, of course, it wouldn’t.

  Jackson settled himself behind his cover and checked, yet again, that the explosive charge was connected to the detonator. Harris had told him that they had learned over the last two years that radio detonators, lit fuses and even electronic pulses were all prone to failure at the most inopportune time and now, almost always, used wired connectors into a handheld detonator. It did mean that whoever set off the charges had to be closer than anyone would like, but it also meant that the charge would go off exactly when they needed it to. It was Jackson’s turn today and his hands were slick with sweat as he constantly passed the detonator from hand to hand as the truck and its cloak of dust slowly approached.

  He could just make out the outline of a much smaller vehicle in front of the transport and a slightly larger truck just behind, but it was difficult to be sure in the gloom. Both vehicles were dwarfed by the huge transport whose headlamps speared through the darkness like a lighthouse and nearly blinded him when the glare passed over his position. He imagined the truck’s squat, deadly cargo on the container behind those lights and, for a moment, it seemed that the truck had taken on the appearance of a deadly dragon with large, luminous eyes. He shook his head to clear the image and concentrated again on the vehicles’ positions. When the convoy had set off from the plant the truck carrying the thralls had travelled behind the transport, but the dust had obviously proved too heavy for the truck and they now travelled out in front.

  This suited Jackson as it meant that he could take out the transport’s protection with one blow, if he timed it right. He hadn’t believed Harris when he had said that both guard vehicles would end up in front. He hadn’t even noticed the dust on the road if he was honest, let alone factored it into the plan. It was just as well Harris had or their plan would already have become unworkable. He sighed as he passed the detonator from hand to hand.

  He had worried that with Steele’s death Harris might struggle. Harris had always had either Steele or Sherman to sanity-check his plans, and they had made the tweaks that were necessary to turn a daring, and sometimes quite dangerous, plan into one which was survivable. Of late, there had been a few close calls as Harris had struggled to adapt and had made numerous mistakes. He was finding it hard not to have someone with experience to walk through the plan with him. The last ambush had been very close and Jackson had worried that Harris had been too shaken after their close call to plan something so big so soon.

  The thralls were better trained than before and they were expecting trouble now. It was no longer a case of hitting soft targets. The rules had change
d and Harris would have to step up to the plate or they would all die. Jackson had read somewhere that throughout history battles had been won by commanders who had stood tall and given clear and confident orders. Those orders might not always have been the best, tactically, but their conviction and strength had infused their men with confidence and that, more often than not, had won the day. Harris’ plans may not have always been the most strategically sound, but he had always had an abundance of confidence that had bolstered those he led. Of late, though, he seemed to have lost some of that confidence.

  Harris had remained far more aloof than usual on this trip and he had poured over his notes of the plan incessantly on the way here, as if he himself did not trust the plan, and this had made everyone else nervous. Denis knew that Harris was the glue that held them all together; his humanity and drive had given them all strength in the last two years. The betrayal of the community and the setbacks of the last few raids had shaken their confidence though. Added to all of that, the second convoy was a curve ball no one had expected and Harris’s plan had had to change drastically to accommodate it.

  Jackson had no idea whether this new plan was a good one or not. It seemed a little desperate to him, but he really wasn’t qualified to judge. Having said that though, Harris wasn’t exactly qualified either. To the man’s credit, though, at least he was prepared to stand up and put a plan together. None of the others, himself included, were prepared to come up with anything remotely resembling a strategy.

  One thing that had given Jackson hope was that Harris had taken the new development in his stride and had laid out the changes to the plan confidently. Having to plan under pressure did not allow Harris the time to second guess himself, and he could see that Harris himself seemed more animated than he had been for quite some time. He just hoped that, this time, things went well. Harris could certainly do with the boost. And it wouldn’t harm the confidence of those who followed him either.