The Savage World Box Set: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series: The Vampire World Saga Books 1-3

by P. T. Hylton

  Patrick shook his head in disgust. “I’m just saying, we’ve been exclusively going to Fort Stearns for the last three weeks or so. I was craving some fresh facts about a new location.”

  “By the way, shouldn’t New Haven be the Mile-High City?” Chuck asked.

  “Ah, that one I can answer,” Owl replied. “New Haven’s cruising altitude is twenty-seven thousand feet, which would make us the Five-Mile-High City.”

  Alex kept her eyes on the window as they approached Denver. Visiting old cities always made her feel nostalgic for a time she’d never seen, a time when humans had walked the surface.

  Places like the Colombian rainforest and Fort Stearns seemed so alien, like areas humans had once visited, leaving behind only some old buildings and tools when they’d gone. She could feel the mark of humanity upon them, but they didn’t feel human.

  Cities were different. Even after all these years, even though nature had reclaimed whole swaths, swallowing them in seas of greens and browns; even though the cars and buildings were so deteriorated, it was sometimes difficult to imagine what they’d looked like back when they were new, even with all that, Alex could always feel the deep humanity of the places. The cities wore it like a fingerprint cast in concrete. It was like an apartment whose residents had stepped out for the evening.

  Being in cities made the pre-infestation past feel real. These had been human beings, no different from her or the people on New Haven. They’d had families. Jobs. They worried about mundane, day-to-day stuff the same way she did. And most of them had died horrible deaths. Many of them were still out there experiencing the hellish half-life of a starved Feral.

  Seeing all this only built up her resolve. She wouldn’t let such a thing happen to her people again. When the time for Resettlement did come, they’d do it right.

  Owl set the away ship down in an open lot next to a dilapidated three-story building and the team got out. Chuck and Owl started preparing the rover while the rest of the team disembarked.

  The water-treatment facility was in what had once been an industrial area, so there were a lot of open spaces that had once been parking lots. Due to the dry climate, the city was not as overgrown as most Alex had encountered.

  They made their way to the front entrance of the building and discovered it was locked.

  “You want to find another way inside?” Ed asked, raising his gun. “Or should I use my key?”

  Alex considered that. “Time’s of the essence. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible and then get back to New Haven. Use your key.”

  “Excellent,” Ed said with a grin. He fired, blowing the door open.

  Through the doorway, they saw the dim interior. This place had windows, but not many.

  “Looks about as bright and cheery as our usual targets,” Wesley remarked. “Just once, could we go on a mission to a sunny rooftop or something?”

  Alex cracked a smile. “Where’s the fun in that? You want sun, you should have stayed airborne.”

  They were just about to step through the doorway when Owl spoke in their headsets, her voice tense.

  “Captain, we’ve got a problem. The batteries are missing from the rover.”

  Two minutes later, the team was back in the cargo hold of the ship. Alex frowned as she stared at the rover. “I don’t understand. How could this happen?”

  Owl shook her head. “Me, neither. Brian’s team has a checklist they run through before every mission. They should have made sure that the batteries were fully charged. If they’d done their jobs, they’d have noticed the batteries were completely missing.”

  “Maybe they were going to replace them and forgot to install the new ones,” Chuck guessed.

  Something clicked in Alex’s brain. “No. That’s not it.”

  Time seemed to slow as everything came into focus. Fleming hadn’t told Jessica about the water-collection problem. Last night, Alex had wondered why he’d called the GMT before Jessica, but she hadn’t given the question the consideration that it deserved. Maybe it had been her tired mind, or maybe Fleming had just done that good a job of selling it.

  She realized now what she should have realized then: there was only one reasonable explanation for why Fleming had called the GMT before the Director of Engineering.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the water-collection system,” she said softly.

  “Wait, what?” Wesley asked, confusion clear on his face.

  Alex looked at Owl. “We need to radio New Haven and tell CB it’s time for us to make our move. Fleming is sure as hell making his.”

  “Is someone going to tell us lowly peons what’s going on here?” Patrick asked.

  “Hang tight,” she said as she followed Owl to the cockpit. “I’ll explain soon.”

  Owl slid into the pilot’s seat and punched the radio to turn it on. Nothing happened.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” she muttered as she pulled the panel off the front of it. “Circuits burned out.”

  “Seems an odd coincidence,” Alex said.

  Owl hit another button on the control panel. Then she hit it again. And again.

  “Alex, we’re in real trouble,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “Why?”

  “Because that button is supposed to start the ship.”

  “So, we’re stuck?” Ed asked. “On the surface? With no way off?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Alex said. Looking at her team gathered, the shock on their faces, she had to fight the urge to be sick. It was her fault they were here. If she hadn’t been outmaneuvered by Fleming, if she hadn’t been goaded into hurrying the team out to a mission without doing her due diligence, this wouldn’t have happened.

  And now they were trapped. In the old state of Colorado.

  “Sarah must have been the one to do the pre-flight checks,” Owl said. “Damn it all, why didn’t we think of that? We should have seen it coming.”

  “With this many enemies, it’s hard to keep an eye on all them,” Wesley said.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” Chuck said. “If Fleming wants us dead, why not just rig the ship so it would crash? Or, hell, blow it up, like he did with the Council?”

  “Fleming’s an asshole, but he’s an asshole who’s strapped for resources,” Alex explained. “He wouldn’t want to lose the ship.”

  “Holy shit,” Patrick muttered. “So, he’s going to wait for us to die and then come get the ship? That’s cold.”

  “That, he is. I underestimated just how cold. The good news is, he underestimated us, too. We’re not done yet, and we’re not going to die tonight.”

  The team looked at her, surprised.

  “What, did you think we were going to give up? The way I see it, we have two possible outs. One, we wait here and try to survive the night. Maybe hide inside the ship. Then, tomorrow, when Fleming’s people come to retrieve it, we put the hurt on them and steal their ride back to New Haven.”

  “Huh,” Wesley said. “That would mean surviving the night and hoping the Ferals can’t find a way into the ship.”

  “And that Fleming will send the crew down tomorrow,” Chuck added. “Could be he’ll wait a few days, to make sure we’re dead.”

  “That’s exactly why I don’t like that option,” Alex agreed. “As for the other option… Owl, how far are we from Agartha?”

  Owl raised an eyebrow. “Too far to walk, that’s for sure.” She pulled out her tablet and began tapping at the screen. “Looks like about eighty miles.”

  “And how fast can the rover move when it’s fully functional?”

  “Twenty-five miles an hour. Assuming level terrain and clear roads. Which we won’t have.”

  “So, let’s assume we can average half that. That means it would take six hours to get to Agartha.” Alex looked down at her watch. “It is currently ten a.m. local time, which means we have approximately two hours to figure out a way to get the rover functional. Let’s get to work.”

  T
he team spent the next hour brainstorming, pulling parts off the ship, and experimenting with any possible way to get the rover going. During this time, Alex ceded control of the team to Owl, and the pilot wasted no time in putting them to work.

  The most obvious solution would be to pull some batteries off of the ship and use them for the rover. That presented a number of practical problems. First, the batteries themselves were bigger than the entire rover, by half. But they would fit on the rover’s eight-foot trailer.

  The team got to work stripping the ship and lining the bottom of the trailer with two sets of batteries, enough to make the trip to Agartha three times, according to Owl. They weren’t taking any chances with one set of batteries. Patrick and Ed took some metal doors from the water-treatment facility and rigged them to lay over the batteries, giving the team a place to sit.

  Owl and Chuck wired the batteries together and rigged up a connection to attach them to the rover’s motor.

  When they’d finished, Owl stood back and put her hands on her hips. “Well, it looks like shit, but it’ll get us there.”

  Alex glanced at her watch. “And with ten minutes to spare. Nice work, team. Let’s load up and head out.”

  Even though Alex knew the truth of their situation, she wasn’t about to say it out loud to the team: the odds of them making it to Agartha in the next six hours were low, and if they didn’t make it to Agartha in the next six hours, they would die.

  27

  CB stumbled from rooftop to rooftop, trying to make his way out of the Hub. The buildings were close enough together that he was able to easily leap from one to another, but he’d bled through his make-shift bandage and was leaving a trail of blood drips that even the worst badge in the Hub would be able to follow.

  How he’d gotten this far without being caught, he did not know. He also knew his luck wouldn’t last. The city was bustling below him as badges shouted and ran through the streets. He currently had a couple things going in his favor. The bright sun shone through the ship windows above him, as it always did on New Haven; hopefully it would mask him a bit if someone below happened to glance up.

  But eventually someone would think of climbing up the ladder at badge headquarters. When they did, they’d find the trail of blood. Then finding him would be easy.

  He needed to go to a friend. But who? He would be putting that person in immediate danger. Not that his friends weren’t in danger already. If Kurtz had been on Fleming’s side from the beginning, that meant Fleming knew that Brian, Jessica, Alex, and Owl were all directly in on the plot against him.

  And then there was the most troubling question of all, the one that was gnawing on him like he was a mid-morning snack. Fleming had said the GMT was already as good as dead. That had to mean he’d somehow compromised their mission that morning.

  CB was still considering this when the screens mounted around the city lit up, displaying Fleming’s image. The camera was in close, and his toothy smile filled the width of the massive screens.

  “Hello, my fellow citizens,” he began. “Today, I’m coming to you with some truly exciting news.”

  CB resisted the urge to stop and watch. This was his chance, he knew. Every eye in New Haven would be fixed to those screens. If he could make it to the edge of the Hub while Fleming was bloviating, he might be able to climb down to the street without anyone noticing. Then he could make his way to the agricultural district and hide while he figured out his next move.

  “We’ve had a rough go of it lately,” Fleming continued. “I’ve asked for sacrifices from each and every one of you. My engineering crews have dismantled non-essential systems, and we’ve all felt the impact of that in our lives. The first thing I want to say this morning is, thank you. Thank you for believing in my vision for the future. Thank you for helping to make this day possible.”

  This day? CB wondered.

  “Before we continue, I do have one piece of disturbing news to report. Despite the overwhelming support for our mission, there are still a few people who haven’t been able to see our vision. They like their lives the way they are. They enjoy the privileged lifestyle aboard this ship that is the result of the hard work of the majority, and they don’t want to give that up. One of those people is Colonel Arnold Brickman.”

  CB had half expected his name to come up, but it was still jarring to have a face on a giant monitor declare him a traitor.

  “Colonel Brickman took action against our city today, storming the badge headquarters in an attempt to free General Craig, presumably so the general could help him stage a military coup. Colonel Brickman failed, and he was injured by a heroic badge, but he remains at large. Please, if you see him or have any information that could help us find him, contact a badge immediately. However, Brickman’s dangerous and violent actions will not stop Resettlement. Which brings me to my real reason for speaking with you today.”

  CB leaped over a gap and landed on the next rooftop, this one at the edge of the Hub. The buildings beyond this point were much shorter, and he’d have to climb down here. For the first time in his life, he was thankful that Fleming was so damn wordy.

  “The Resettlement preparations have gone even better than we’d expected,” Fleming said, “due in no small part to the heroic efforts of Captain Garrett Eldred and his team of Resettlers. Captain Eldred has overseen both the GMT and his civilian teams in clearing Fort Stearns of vampires and preparing it to be a safe and comfortable home.”

  “Overseen the GMT,” CB muttered as he stumbled across the next rooftop. “Like hell, he has.”

  “Today is a day of celebration. Even as we speak, a group of one hundred Resettlers are already in Fort Stearns. A second group of one hundred is en route, and the third will be joining them shortly.”

  CB forced himself to keep running as the news washed over him. This was it. Resettlement was happening. Fleming had beat them.

  “Tonight, they will spend their first night on the surface. Captain Eldred has managed to keep Fort Stearns free of vampires for a week now, so I’m confident our Resettlers will be safe and secure. Any vampire who wanders into the perimeter outside Fort Stearns will be in for a nasty surprise.”

  CB reached the edge of the last building and began descending the ladder.

  A thought hit him, a thought that made him push aside his devastation, fight the pain, and keep moving. His GMT was in trouble, and Fleming had purposely put them there.

  CB couldn’t lie down and die. Not yet. He had to save his team. Or, if he couldn’t do that, he’d make sure Fleming paid the ultimate price.

  “This is truly…” Fleming paused, as if overcome with emotion. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly just the beginning of what we are going to accomplish together. The Resettlers in Fort Stearns are the tip of the spear that we are going to drive into the heart of the vampires. Humanity will take back the Earth. Not in ten years. Not sometime soon. Now. The Earth is ours, and we are going to claim it.”

  The screens went dark just as CB’s foot touched the street. He didn’t stop to see if anyone had spotted him. He didn’t look ahead to see if the way was clear. He just ran.

  Captain Garrett Elder sat at his desk in the administrative building of Fort Stearns. It was a simple metal desk, barely big enough to get a chair under, but it would do for now. They hadn’t been able to bring a lot of furniture down yet; they’d been afraid it would have led Alex and the GMT to guess that Resettlement was going to happen sooner than they were letting on. But Fleming had promised Garrett that he would requisition a desk that was more worthy of his station very soon.

  Shirley marched up and stood at attention in front of his desk. The strain was clear around her eyes. He couldn’t blame her. She was part of his inner circle, along with Henry and Mario. He’d burdened the three of them with a lot of responsibility very quickly. He just hoped they could handle it.

  “How are we looking?” he asked her.

  “Good, sir. The first hundred are pretty well settled in,
the second hundred have been given their essential supplies and weapons, and the final group is in the process of disembarking from the transport.”

  “Excellent.” He was pleased with the way things had been progressing so far. Granted, to the outside observer, it would have looked like chaos. With the way people were scurrying around, it resembled an anthill that had just been kicked. And yet, there was order within the apparent chaos.

  One team was checking the daylights on the walls. Another was checking that all the backup batteries were charged and connected. Some of the former badges were checking the railguns on the walls to ensure that they were ready for use. Still others were unloading food and weapons from the transport. Everyone knew their job, and everyone was doing it.

  For all the times Garrett had doubted himself, and even occasionally doubted Fleming, he had to admit that things were going smoothly.

  And this was only the beginning. Things weren’t going to slow down anytime soon, Garrett knew. When the people of New Haven found out how well things had gone on Fort Stearns, their faith in Fleming would grow even more solid than it already was, and they’d demand that other settlements be launched as quickly as possible. And Fleming would comply.

  If everything went according to plan, Garrett Eldred would hold the rank of major in a month’s time and general before the year was out. He’d be overseeing not just one settlement, but dozens.

  So why did he have this nagging feeling in his gut that made him want to run to the bathroom, close the door, and hide until the world disappeared around him?

  He knew the answer, though he didn’t want to think it.

  While he sat safely behind these walls, his old GMT teammates were out there alone, afraid, and waiting for night to fall.

  He told himself it wasn’t his fault. He’d given Alex every chance to join the good guys. He’d reasoned with her, coerced her, and practically begged. Yet, she’d insisted on continuing down the dark path, working to undermine Fleming at every turn. And still, he’d given her one last chance at survival, as thin as that chance might be.