Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3)

by Derek Gunn

  “Judging from the amount of patrols recently they are certainly searching in this general area, though it appears to be part of a larger search pattern rather than one which is focused on this territory in particular. They are being very thorough though, and, given enough time, they would have found us long before now if we hadn’t been able to mess with their senses a bit. Luckily for us, the vampires in the neighbouring states are still reluctant to cross the border too often and, when they do, they are still convinced of their own infallibility and this over-confidence plays into our hands.”

  Wilkins paused for a moment to take a drink of water and everyone in the room seemed to hold their breaths as they waited for him to continue. “They rely totally on their senses rather than physically searching each town and city. To this end we placed wireless masts around the city, though in reality many were already there from before.” He looked around him and saw many of the eyes glazing over - he was losing them again.

  “We could move, of course, but the sheer scope of that project is beyond our capability. We just can’t move everyone in secret at this time. My experiment was to see if we could scramble the Vampires’ senses if they came too close to us. Nothing major, just enough to interfere with their long range scans and prevent them from sensing us if they flew overhead. It took quite some time to get the correct frequency, but with Mister Smyth’s help,” he paused here, wanting to tell the committee that, while they had sat on their arses and ignored the danger these patrols posed to them all, Harris and his team had risked their lives by carrying his bulky equipment across the border and testing it on vampires, at great risk to themselves. They had risked so much getting the equipment within range of live subjects that they deserved to be honoured. He felt as if he was betraying their courage in not extolling their involvement, but Pat had insisted that any mention of Harris would only work against them all at this time so he, reluctantly, had agreed to keep their continued involvement a secret.

  “Once we found the frequency I set up an overlapping field around the city to hide us from the vampires. Of course, it wouldn’t stop them physically seeing us if we were caught outside but, as you all know, we have a number of ways of making sure that doesn’t happen. It was their ability to sense heat and their amazing sense of smell that I was targeting. Since it went in place, we have tracked quite a number of vampires passing overhead searching, but none seemed to have managed to detect us so far.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that that’s all very interesting,” Phelps interrupted, tapping his pen impatiently on the table in front of him, “but what actually killed this particular vampire?”

  Pat Smyth snorted and leaned forward. “Don’t you realise what a breakthrough this is?” he asked incredulously. “This device is the only reason why we are still able to live here unmolested by the vampires. We would all be dead right now, or scattered throughout the state, if this amazing experiment wasn’t shielding us.”

  Regan coughed gently. “Yes, I’m sure that we are all grateful to Mr. Wilkins but I think we are all interested to know if we can use this new discovery more as a weapon. It’s one thing to hide behind this shield but what if the vampires manage to see through it or we run out of fuel to run it? I might remind you that the equipment is not cheap to run in terms of fuel and the amount of people resources that are required to keep it running. It does break down with alarming frequency, as well.”

  Wilkins blushed. He was well aware that his project needed a lot more time to get it working efficiently. He just didn’t have the right equipment to set it up the way he wanted so the masts consumed far more resources than he would have liked. Unless he was able to convince the committee that, by spending more resources now that they would save resources in the long term, it was very likely that they might very well cut off all of his fuel supplies and leave them all completely unprotected from aerial detection.

  “I’m not certain what killed the creature,” Wilkins replied slowly, “but, judging by the body, it seems that the vampire must have flown through a point where the fields overlapped each other and thus increased the strength of the waves bombarding it. I had no idea that the fields would have such an effect. It has no effect on humans so it must have something to do with their heightened senses.”

  “Can you develop a handheld version?” Regan leaned forward on his elbows and fixed Wilkins with an intense stare.

  “Out of the question, I’m afraid,” Wilkins answered and snapped his head toward Phelps who had just thrown down his pen in disgust.

  “It’s not practical, considering the power requirements,” Wilkins continued despite the interruption, “the device would have to be far bigger than anyone could manage alone. I’m not even sure if we could recreate it if a force of them attacked the city. There are just too many variables.”

  “So we’re still stuck here hiding, waiting for the bastards to die out,” Phelps sneered. “Oh, wait a minute, they’re not going to die out anymore, are they? Ever since Harris sent Steele to tell them that the serum was killing them and effectively saved the bastards so they could tear the state apart looking for us. It’s only a matter of time, you know, before they find us. Either your equipment will break down or we’ll run out of the fuel to power it and then they’ll descend on us like the wrath of God.”

  Wilkins looked over at Smyth and saw the small chemist shake his head slightly. They could argue as much as they wanted that Harris had acted the way he had to save millions of humans across the world but none of that took away from the truth in Phelps’s words. The vampires were still out there, and now that they knew that a community of free humans existed they would continue to search until they found them. Whether Harris had acted for the best or not was immaterial at this point.

  While there had been far fewer search parties than they would have expected after their presence was revealed by Steele, there were still enough vampires crossing the skies to make them nervous, and all that hid them was outdated equipment. Equipment that could stop functioning at any moment and leave them naked and exposed. Harris had done a lot of good but he had indeed stirred a major hornet’s nest when he had set about turning the vampires at each others’ throats.

  He had rescued thousands, Wilkins and his family amongst them, but the city was straining to cope with the increased numbers; food and resources were already running far too low. On top of all their other problems, they were in the grip of a severe winter with snow drifts covering many of the smaller buildings in the old city. Global warming was still a major threat to them as the planet struggled to recover from decades of abuse.

  If they ran out of fuel, then, quite simply, they would not make it to spring. All of their fuel was being used to heat the living areas, and even this had recently been restricted to certain hours of the day. The reaction he was getting each time he went to collect his ration for the upkeep of the network was becoming more and more aggressive, and all the time the stocks continued to decline alarmingly fast. Hiding was one thing but survival was something else entirely. And in the current situation, their continued survival looked very doubtful, indeed.

  Chapter 2

  William Carter sighed as he lowered himself into the chair. He had spent all day patrolling his forces in and around Bertrand. Territorial lines had blurred somewhat in the last three months. Ever since the humans had successfully rescued thousands of prisoners under all of their noses and managed to set the vampires against each other, things had changed drastically.

  In fact, to say things had changed was an understatement. At least, within a four-state area anyway. He had no idea what was happening further than that, and really didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, life was good. He had moved from being a lowly Captain in an army subservient to the vampires to leader of all the thralls in two states.

  He remembered the last few months with more than a little pride as he kicked off his boots and brought a cold beer to his lips. He had moved quickly the night the humans had escaped. While the dawn
was still breaking overhead - in fact, he still couldn’t be sure if the dawn had been breaking at all or whether it had been the fires on the horizon that had lit his way but, regardless - he had gathered his forces in the dim light and marched toward his destiny.

  Falconi’s thralls had been in disarray and many of them didn’t know whether their leader was alive or dead. The last thing they had known was that a truce had been declared between the two leaders and they had taken his orders without question. He had driven immediately to Niles and had swept through the town without mercy. All senior officers had been taken and beheaded in front of everyone. No choices had been offered to these men. He had spent years under their command and he knew them for the petty, power-hungry bastards they were. He knew them too well to think that they would not plot against him as soon as they got the opportunity. His combined force had been too well armed and far too large to resist and the city had fallen easily.

  He also knew his fellow thralls in the middle ranks, and he knew what scared them most. He had delivered them from that fear. He had offered them freedom from the vampires. None of the thralls in Niles knew anything about what had occurred in Bertrand so he had brought a number of vampire corpses to back up what he was saying. He had, of course, left out the part the humans had played and had exaggerated somewhat his own role, but the result had surpassed even his expectations.

  The thralls in Niles were quick to see that his forces included thralls in the uniforms of Von Kruger’s army as well as their own, and they mistook this to mean that he had defeated their neighbouring enemies as well as removed the vampire yoke from their heads. He was immediately accepted as their new commander and his forces had swelled even further.

  From there he had quickly sent scouts ahead to all the major towns and cities announcing what had happened. Most of the thralls in these towns had woken that morning to find that their vampire masters had disappeared. The thralls on guard duty could only report that they had seen large numbers of vampires pass overhead during the night toward the border so the evidence worked for him.

  Rumour and fear spread so fast that, by the time word reached them of the new warlord in the North who had defeated their vampire masters, his legend had grown so much from each re-telling that many towns had already pledged their allegiance to him long before his forces reached them. In many of the towns he had seen a line of the town’s former thrall commanders already beheaded and laid out as a guard of honour to the city’s approach.

  It had taken him four weeks in all to subdue both states. But he hadn’t stopped there. He had sent emissaries to all the neighbouring states informing them of what had happened and how they too could shake off the vampire oppression if they joined together. This, of course, was far trickier to manage, as he could not afford to split his forces too thinly in case these other states decided to move against him.

  While there were still plenty of vampires remaining within his own states, they were fewer in number than before and were still focused on their own struggle for dominance. He wasn’t overly worried about them at this time. However, there were still far too many vampires in the neighbouring states to let those thralls merely decide not to obey their masters. He did hope, though, to plant a seed of what could be achieved in the minds of these thralls. His main worry was that the vampires in the neighbouring states would order their armies to cross the border and subdue him before he was ready. Anything he could do to delay such actions would work in his favour and if he could start a revolution in those states then so much the better.

  He still had too much work to do in his own territory to take advantage of the situation fully, though. Von Kruger, the most senior vampire in the state, had not been idle either while he had been busy building his own empire. Von Kruger was old school and relied upon sheer power and fear to subdue those around him. He still did not consider the thralls a real threat and had spent his time confirming his control over Wentworth’s surviving vampires and claiming the state as his own.

  To this end Von Kruger had rallied his own forces from every corner of the state and invaded Wentworth’s old territory. Reports had flooded into his command HQ from every corner of the state of vicious battles between the vampires but he had ordered his men to remain on the fringes and to take no part in this war. The more blood shed by the vampires amongst themselves the better it would be for him in the long run. It was safer not to take sides and to let the vampires reduce their numbers through attrition. These battles only took place during darkness, of course, so a strange truce, where the vampires fought at night and the thralls continued to extend their territory by day, began to shape the future of the two states. In the end, Von Kruger had emerged victorious among the vampires and now controlled the two states completely.

  Of course, in the time it had taken Von Kruger to achieve dominion over the vampires he had allowed Carter the time to gain full control of the thrall forces, forces that were far more numerous than the vampires and could not now be ignored. Von Kruger, fresh from his victory, had finally taken the time to take stock of his territory and had come to realise that his own vampire forces were far fewer than he had realised.

  His borders were under severe threat from neighbouring states as those vampires were slowly coming to terms with the knowledge that vampires were once again at war with each other. They had held off attacking him themselves so far only because they feared reprisal from the Council, but, with the council’s continued inaction to Von Kruger’s campaign, many of the neighbouring states were beginning to see this as a form of unofficial approval and were already beginning to marshal their own forces to take whatever advantages this new situation presented to them.

  The whole situation was poised to blow. Added to Von Kruger’s troubles were the further problems of a severely depleted food source and an army which was no longer under his control. In all, Von Kruger now found himself vulnerable from those of his kind manoeuvring around him and from within by the very forces he once controlled.

  While Carter was happy to see that his rival was distracted he still had problems of his own to contend with. On top of everything else he had heard recently that the rebels who had rescued the human prisoners three months ago had not been idle either while he and Von Kruger had been busy. His own attention had been focused on consolidating his position and this had meant either welcoming new forces into his growing army or subduing by force those who did not join him. This had left many of the human prisoners relatively unguarded as his campaign had pulled every available thrall to either guard the borders or bolster his conquering armies.

  He had decided at an early stage in his new position that he would have to deal with the vampires at some point and, to do this, he had to have leverage. The only thing he had that they really needed was live humans, so he had continued to keep the humans guarded throughout his campaign. This had been a drain on his forces as he had required most of his new army to bully those communities who resisted him and he had only been able to spare small numbers of guards to protect his precious resources.

  Many of his human prisoners had simply gone missing over the last few weeks. It had been surprisingly small numbers at first and had not worried him unduly, but it had begun to grow of late. In many cases the guards had not even seen the thieves. They had simply guarded through the night but, come breakfast time, had noticed that a number of their charges were no longer in the pens. No shots had been fired and no thralls had been killed. Carter suspected that the thrall guards had been taking shelter from the still freezing weather and had been less than honest in their reports of patrolling all through the night.

  An urban legend had begun to form around this band of rebels; he had heard whispered stories that they could spirit away prisoners at will, that they controlled the mist itself and that they could simply disappear at will. After all, if vampires could exist, why not humans with special powers? Cater had been forced to make an example of the last thralls who had lost their prisoners or face a situation w
hich would have left him without his bargaining chips. He had ordered the thralls stripped and left staked near a neighbouring vampire stronghold. Their screams had filled the night almost till the next dawn and the stories of the hideously torn thrall bodies that were revealed the next morning were enough to ensure that guard duty was again taken very seriously.

  The humans did not, of course, stop their daring rescues, but the last time he had lost any human prisoners, he had also lost every thrall guarding them. While he did not like losing thralls, he was somewhat pleased that his forces were now prepared to die rather than report further prisoner losses. However, he had to do something about those blasted humans.

  He had already sent three envoys to Von Kruger to arrange a meeting where they could agree terms and maybe help each other to address the growing problem of the humans. Unfortunately, each one of his ambassadors had been slaughtered and their bodies had been dropped by passing vampire patrols in the night.

  For his part, now that he controlled as much territory as he thought he could handle, he had sent his forces out to discover where the Vampires had set up their new lairs. Vampires were creatures of habit and still considered themselves far superior to their former slaves. To this end, their resting places had been relatively easy to find and Carter had ordered three vampires beheaded and returned to Von Kruger in retaliation for his three envoys.

  Von Kruger had not replied as yet to this latest show of strength, but he would, and soon. Either there would be a slaughter, or, more likely, a compromise. Neither vampire nor thrall could survive against the forces surrounding them unless they worked together. However, if he couldn’t supply Von Kruger with a guaranteed food source and protection during the day from the human rebels, then the vampires would be forced to attack Carter and his thralls for the food that they needed. And that would not be beneficial for anyone. He had to nullify this rebel threat before it threatened his new empire. The question was how?