Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2)

by Derek Gunn

  Success would bring with it rewards undreamt of and failure would bring death. The thunder of the wings of over a hundred vampires around him filled his head, and the power running through his veins was intoxicating. The border suddenly appeared before him and he could see the many fires of broken and burning tanks and vehicles stretching along a line that disappeared into the distance. Bodies lay everywhere, and dark shapes swooped around the carnage, diving and attacking any forces still left alive. Wentworth’s vampires were busy gorging and did not see them. This would be easier than he had thought. He signaled to the others and then dropped from the sky, his attention focused on his prey.

  “Should we not attack now, sir?” the vampire asked and cringed as Wentworth loomed over him.

  “Let them fully commit first,” Wentworth explained more calmly than the aide expected. “They have more forces than we do so we have to even the odds with guile. We will attack when they cannot pull out of the attack.”

  Caine tore into the back of a vampire and felt the sudden spray of blood splash over him. The vampire screamed and twisted around to face him but Caine ripped at its face with his talons before it could fully turn. Caine shouted with joy and pressed in for the kill. Would he be the first vampire to kill another in this new war? The honor filled him with pride as he brought his talon down in a sweeping arc.

  It wasn’t to be that that easy though. His victim had just fed and his wounds were already healing as soon as Caine’s talons left its skin. His surprise attack may have given Caine first blood but the other vampire was recovering far too quickly for his liking. Caine ducked as the other vampire suddenly swiped back at him and narrowly escaped damage to his eye. The vampires moved at a ferocious speed, each movement merely a blur to any thrall or human, but each feint and attack was countered easily by the combatants as each sought for the upper hand. Caine brought his feet into play and raked at his enemy’s exposed chest and stomach. The two figures fell to the ground with Wentworth’s soldier taking the brunt of the fall.

  Caine pressed his attack and brought his talon down viciously along the vampire’s chest. Skin peeled back and blood shot out from the wound, spraying into Caine’s face and driving him wild with bloodlust. He was so intent on the blood that he did not see his opponent begin to morph. New vampires were not able to change their shape, except for the all important flying bat-shape. No one knew why this was the case but it took years of practice to form any other shapes. He realized with a terrible sinking feeling that the screams that filled the night around him were mostly those of his own men. They had caused a huge amount of damage initially, some of Wentworth’s vampires already lay motionless on the ground, but now he realized that their targets had all been well fed and most of them had survived the first assault. They had easily soaked up the punishment and were even now fighting back. All around him he saw figures begin to shimmer as the vampires took on new, terrifying and wickedly efficient shapes designed for close-quarter fighting. His cabal began to falter.

  His opponent cried out in pleasure as his own transformation was completed, and then Caine felt himself driven back against a nearby tank with enough force to send his body deep into the metal. The vampire leapt at him, ripping and tearing the metal around him as if it were paper. Caine fought back but his razor-sharp claws grazed harmlessly off the creature’s hard carapace that now covered his chest and lower regions. Only its face and its evil red eyes were uncovered. The vampire’s mouth had grown so wide and its teeth so numerous that Caine was not prepared to go anywhere near it. His arm could disappear into that maw far too easily.

  He ducked under the next blow. The creature was just a little slower than before with its heavy carapace making him more sluggish and Caine managed to scramble to his feet. He could not get a good look at his opponent in the dark as the many bright fires splashing light over the carnage around him ruined his night vision. The bastards had planned this, they had set a trap. Wentworth did not have a lot of older vampires—most of the mature vampires tended to gravitate to a master that was at least as old as they were. Von Kruger had by far the greater number of ancient vampires than any of the surrounding states, but Wentworth had used those he did have to set this trap. He had to report to Von Kruger. Caine jumped and spread his wings as he surged upwards. For a moment he felt elation at having survived, but this was quickly tempered by the view he got of the battlefield below. Many of his strike force lay dead or dying with pathetically few of the enemy dead to balance this. He had failed. But surely Von Kruger would understand that he had been against a superior force?

  He shouted an order for retreat and then looked upwards only to see the night sky descend towards him. It was strange, the darkness seemed to be alive as it shifted and undulated. It was only when the first teeth tore at him that he realized that the sky was filled with vampires.

  “That evens the odds,” Wentworth laughed as he watched his men tear into those vampires that remained. For a moment he shuddered as he thought about what was happening. Vampires had not fought like this ever before. They were a race that survived by working together in secret, but something fundamental had changed, and now over a hundred vampires lay dead on the ground before him. He imagined that he should feel different, frightened even that such a change could happen so quickly, but he was surprised to feel nothing at all. Just an eagerness to start the next round.

  There was a loud explosion to his left and the chatter of machine gun fire erupted. The thralls were still fighting over the border but it really had no bearing on the overall outcome. Whichever vampire was triumphant would have little trouble decimating the forces that were left. The thralls would obey whichever vampire was in control. He turned away from the noises and shut them from his mind. He had another trap to set.

  Harris looked out over the square. As Dee had reported earlier the cage now filled the entire town square and there were nearly a thousand humans by his reckoning held in the prison. The cage was a very temporary affair, and so large that the thralls had not used walls at all in many cases but instead had used the buildings around the square itself to complete the prison. There were lines of fencing strung between these buildings to complete the closed in structure. It would be a simple matter of breaking a window or even opening a door to get out of the prison, but none of the glassy-eyed humans in the cage were capable of doing even that to save themselves. He felt anger boil through him as he watched two thralls laugh as a group of humans walked repeatedly into a door in a vain effort to escape, each of them aware how close salvation was but completely incapable of simply turning the handle.

  There was no room for any trucks in the square itself so they would have to get their charges to walk quite a distance to the waiting vehicles. That complicated matters as it was like herding sheep, and not something that you wanted to be doing if you had thralls shooting at you. They had come in one truck and Sherman, Flemming and Mitchell had all gone to see if they could liberate some more transport. He knew he could not take all the humans in the cage but he was going to take as many as he could. If they could get a few more trucks then they could squeeze nearly twenty people into each, pathetically few, he knew, but if there was any other way he couldn’t think of it.

  The vampires were really escalating things without any thought to the future. If they used the number of humans here to sustain them during the fighting then they would not have enough food to carry them through the next few months unless they found a new supply. He had never known the vampires to do anything without extensive planning. Their very existence over the last few centuries demanded such preparation. It seemed that Pat’s theory was on the money. Something was definitely changing them.

  He checked his ammunition pouch, counting the magazines and ensuring that the ones marked with red tape were within easy access. They would use normal ammunition on the thralls but, for the vampires, they had Pat’s special bullets. These bullets were still in short supply because each one had to be individually coated in the e
xtract that Pat had developed and then re-loaded in to the magazines. It was a time consuming process, and one that was becoming more and more difficult to get a resource for with the changing priorities back at base.

  Harris and his men had had to coat and pack their own ammunition for tonight’s raid, and the six magazines he had seemed pathetically few in light of the number of vampires that would be abroad tonight. Hopefully, they would be too busy killing each other to notice them, though the way things were going, recently, it probably wouldn’t be that easy.

  There were five thralls in the square, and at his signal all five would die with a bullet in their brains. He hesitated another moment as he surveyed the square. Once they started there was no going back. He jumped as a large explosion filled the night. They were still at it then. Good. He hoped that they kept killing each other all night. That way they might remain undisturbed. He raised his hand and a moment later the five thralls collapsed to the ground.

  It had begun.

  Sherman held up his hand to hold the others in position. The motor pool was outside of town, moved there obviously for easy access to the border for the ongoing conflict. The main force was already engaged in frantic fighting about two miles away but there was a command post with at least twenty thralls in the camp doing various chores from patrolling to moving or fixing equipment.

  Too many for them to take out without a fire fight, and any such activity so close to the border would only run the risk of attracting reinforcements. On the bright side he could see over fifteen vehicles in the pool—obviously these were the ones used to transport the humans to the front. Some had obviously been sent back to get more supplies as there was no way a thousand humans could have been transported so quickly in so few vehicles.

  There was also a train, still hissing and spitting steam like an exhausted dragon, toward the back of the camp. Trains were still used for transport in many states, but the more modern diesel and electric trains were now only used for scrap. Steam had made a comeback. With plenty of trees available for their insatiable appetites and, with no bleeding hearts around to warn of global warming, the thralls merely chopped the trees that were handiest along their route.

  The train was old, more like a museum piece, but it obviously still worked. The cars that it pulled, however, looked more like something from a western movie. They were made from wooden slates on an iron bed and contained no seats at all. They had obviously been used to transport livestock before the vampires had come, maybe a long time before they had come Sherman amended—say around the late 1800s—and it seemed that that was exactly what they had been used for now. The captive humans could be packed into those cars, almost two hundred in each car if they really packed them in. It would be freezing, of course, but they would survive.

  Harris had briefly considered using trains before but they were far too big. It didn’t help that they sent a huge plume of smoke into the air like a giant finger pointing to their position. On the other hand, they did take a lot of passengers.

  Sherman lay on the cold ground as the snow fell around him and ran through a number of scenarios. He was aware of the other two shifting nervously beside him and blowing constantly on their exposed fingers, but he ignored them. A track ran from here all the way to their own base—at least, it went to within ten miles their camp. They used it themselves as a navigational tool, many times. If they took this train they couldn’t just park it close to their base, but there was a fairly large train station only twenty or so miles away where they could keep the train under cover of the huge station roof. Once it cooled down no one would be the wiser.

  It would be crazily dangerous, of course, but it was just the kind of mad scheme Harris would love. And just the kind of thing that might just get him killed. They could still use the trucks to get a smaller number out but they could use the train to take the majority. Of course, he would lead the trucks and slip away quietly while Harris could take all the chances with that noisy behemoth.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to kill him, after all. Sherman pulled back from the edge and began to lay out his plan to the others.

  Falconi watched the vampires arrive from Von Kruger’s side of the border and watched in amazement as the dark figures swooped, gauged and tore at each other at amazing speeds. He found it almost impossible to track them with his binoculars but he could see enough to know that his worst fears had been realized.

  He had hoped that there might be a brief battle, and that they would come to their senses after Wentworth had had his revenge for Von Kruger’s unprovoked attack on his thralls. But that had not happened. Wentworth’s vampires had torn Von Kruger’s thralls to pieces all along the border and then Von Kruger’s vampires had arrived and now hundreds of bodies lay strewn about like so many rag dolls.

  It had gone way too far now for there to be any other result than full and total annihilation of one side. The vampires fought each other in the air and on the ground but the decimated forces of the thralls, those still alive at least, tried vainly to scramble out of their way. Many were snatched and sucked dry as the vampires needed more and more blood to heal from their horrendous wounds. This was the moment he needed. The first phase of the vampire attack was winding down and Wentworth had scored a huge victory. Now was the time to drive home the advantage before they could recover.

  He shouted orders to his men and there was a flurry of activity as men picked up equipment, started engines and formed ranks. He would have to leave most of his tanks behind as he did not have the fuel for them, but still his organized forces should easily be able to handle what was left of the enemy thrall forces.

  It wasn’t as if many of them had survived the vampire attack.

  Carter watched the enemy thrall forces move relentlessly closer. They stretched out over almost a mile of border so, while they looked impressive, there was little substance behind the first two ranks of men. They had little or no heavy armor either. From his vantage point he could only see three tanks and two of them were too far away to pose any problems for now, though he would have to keep an eye on them.

  He had organized his forces in three heavily manned phalanxes that allowed him to concentrate his firepower on one point. This type of focused attack, on a point where the enemy was spread thinly, would allow him to punch right through them and come at them from behind before they knew what was happening. There was one tank coming directly towards them, though and he had sent a team with their only remaining explosives to take it out. The tank was running slightly ahead of its support forces and it should give his men the time needed to lay in wait in a hollow, fix the explosives and get out before it blew. Of course, whether they got away or not was not really his concern. Blowing the tank was his only worry.

  He had placed his flame-throwers at each end-point of his forces and slightly forward. The bulk of his forces lay prone and hidden behind the darkness and the smoke that swirled across the battlefield. Fires still lit large areas in pulsing flashes but he had placed his men as far from these as he could. He had also ordered as many bodies dragged into the area in front of them as possible so the enemy would assume that there had been few survivors. He would let the thralls come deep into his trap before he opened fire, and then the flame-throwers would seal his trap from the rear.

  His main problem was ammunition. He simply did not have enough to kill all of the soldiers that were approaching. Von Kruger should be here soon with the bulk of his forces but he would be far too busy to help, even if he was bothered to do so. What he needed was a diversion, something to make the enemy commander split his forces. Unfortunately miracles were rare for the forces of evil.

  Sherman finished planting the explosives and retreated back to the meeting point. He was taking a big risk but he hoped that the main forces would be too busy to react. They had planted explosives along the far end of the motor pool and close to the command camp. He always was a believer than if you cut off the head, that the body would run around without any cohesive strategy f
or quite some time before somebody organized a response. In that window he hoped to put his plan into effect.

  They would take two trucks to Harris in the centre of town and Flemming would drive the train. They had lucked out a little on that. He had overheard two thralls talking about the train going back out tonight to pick up more humans so its departure would not raise any undue attention. Their only problem lay in knowing when exactly it was due to leave. The last thing they wanted was the real driver running after the departing train and raising the alarm.

  If he didn’t come soon then they would have to leave without him and hope that the resulting confusion was sufficient to keep its departure from the thrall’s notice. The explosives were set to go off in ten minutes so they had that long. Flemming was confident he could handle the old engine, and he was busy stoking the furnace at this very moment.

  Nine minutes.

  Flemming straightened his back and wiped the sweat from his face. God, it’s hot, he thought as the heat blasted from the furnace. He kicked the door closed and ran his eyes over the controls. He had told Sherman that he could handle the train, but its controls seemed far more complex now that he was looking at them. He had driven a train before, one of the diesels that his uncle had worked on. It had been years ago, a lifetime, it felt like, but it had been fairly simple. There was a knack to easing the power into the wheels as you released the brake slowly but he had been confident that he could do it. But the controls that faced him now did not look anything like those he had used before.