Trail of Tears (9 page)

There were fewer bodies in this corridor but
the fact that there were any meant that the thralls had split their
main force. She increased her pace and began to hobble. Her leg
hurt where McAteer had stabbed her but she forced herself on. If
the thralls found Conor they would shoot him where he lay. She
heard a brief stutter of gunfire ahead and then silence. The sound
appeared to have come from just around the corner, about where the
infirmary was.

“No,” she whispered as she ran. The pain in
her leg shot through her and made her gasp. “No,” she said again
and then again, as if the litany would deny the reality. She ran
around the corner and almost straight into two thralls. They were
coming out of the infirmary laughing. She roared at them and began
to fire. Their bodies staggered back as the bullets slammed into
them, but they took the punishment and began to bring their own
weapons to bear. Her gun clicked on empty but she was far too close
now to look for cover. She leapt at them, screaming incoherently as
she dropped the machine gun and wrenched her knife from a scabbard
on her hip.

She slashed outward as she fell into the
thralls. Their weapons erupted but she was inside their range and
the bullets went wild. She fell hard, the wind rushing out of her
lungs and leaving her gasping for breath. The thralls were
scrambling around her, trying to get to their feet. She slashed out
at one of them and something warm splashed over her face. She
forced herself to her knees and ripped the knife upwards with a
strength born of desperation.

The butt of a weapon smashed into her
shoulder and the wound from McAteer’s attack flared in pain. Her
fingers opened involuntarily and the knife fell. She grabbed at the
weapon as the thrall brought it around. She gripped the barrel as
the gun fired and the heat seared her hands but she had done enough
to send the bullets wide. The thrall loomed above her.
Where was
the other one? Was the bastard smiling at her?
She roared her
pain, her frustration, and her loss and drove her hand into the
thrall’s groin, grabbing his balls and wrenching them down with
every ounce of strength her had left.

The thrall screamed; the pitch so high it
was almost inaudible. He dropped the gun and she scrambled for it,
rolling with the weapon and bringing it up firing. The bullets
stitched up the thrall’s body from his thigh to his neck. The last
bullet tore out its throat and he slipped to the ground with a
sigh— it almost sounded like relief—and Emma kicked at the thralls
head in anger. He should have suffered more. Her mind finally began
to think again and she whipped around, searching for the other
thrall. But he was already dead. His throat was neatly slit and he
had bled out in seconds. Her first attack had been a lucky one.

She dropped the gun and stumbled into the
infirmary, her body barely supporting her weight. Most of the beds
were empty but those that were occupied were shredded and blood
covered the white sheets. She screamed and fell to her knees,
bringing her hands to her face as the sobs wracked her body. She
was too late.

“Emma.”

She opened her eyes. She had left her
weapons in the corridor but she was too tired to fight anymore. Her
body hurt too much and it was hard to think through the pain.

She heard a scraping along the ground and
brought her hands down from her face. In the corner she saw
somebody move. He had been hidden behind a mobile curtain. She
squinted through her tears and hurriedly wiped at her eyes. Conor
slid towards her.

“Jesus,” he panted as he reached her and
took her sobbing body in his. “You look like you need this place
more than me.” She reached up and hugged him, both of them grunting
in pain. They laughed and then grunted in pain again as they hugged
each other harder.

* * *

Harris ran into the main plaza to the roar
of gunfire. There were bodies everywhere. Grenades had torn through
the defenders and torn bodies lay on the ground and behind hastily
erected cover. There were still some defenders still standing but
very few. He could see the thralls advancing into the plaza in a
tight formation that showed their training.
These aren’t normal
soldiers,
he thought and then he began to pour fire into them.
His first shot took one in head and the thrall dropped. The others
shifted to cover this new threat and their answering fire sent
Harris and Warkowski diving for cover.

There were five thralls left but they were
very well trained. A grenade was thrown straight at Harris and
there was nowhere to hide. Bullets slammed into the wall behind him
and around the floor pinning him down but the grenade was the
bigger threat. He launched himself to his feet and dived for the
grenade swiping his hand along the floor, scooping it up and
throwing it away from him. He would have liked to have thrown it at
the thralls but he didn’t have time to aim. The grenade flew up
into the air and then exploded. Harris felt the concussion sweep
over him and he tensed as he anticipated the shrapnel, but he was
lucky. Bullets flew around him and he pivoted and fired back
towards the thralls. He could hear Warkowski firing to cover
him.

This was getting them nowhere. The thralls
were still advancing and the number of defenders was reducing by
the minute. He shouldn’t have rushed into the plaza. He should have
picked the thralls off from the corridor. He was so outraged and
worried that he had flung himself into the fight. Again.

The gunfire lessened around him and he could
see that there was more gunfire coming from the corridor behind the
thralls.
Someone had outflanked them
. Harris took the
opportunity the shift and began to pick out his targets. He sent
three-round bursts into the tight throng of thralls. It was
difficult to aim accurately with the XM8 as the recoil lifted the
barrel, but Harris had had a lot of practise and he grinned
savagely as he saw another thrall fall.

They had them now. He continued to press,
firing into the thralls, seeing their bodies shudder as they were
hit but they didn’t always fall. He wished he had some of their
specially coated ammunition but their stocks of those were far too
low so they rarely packed them. He heard the dull click of the
firing pin hitting an empty chamber and reloaded as Warkowski came
up beside him firing single shots. Another thrall fell and the
remaining two suddenly stopped firing and dropped their weapons.
Bullets continued to slam into the thralls and Harris rushed
forward, screaming for the firing to stop. They needed to learn how
the thralls had found them and whether they had told anybody
else.

The firing continued as the remaining
defenders stood and walked towards the thralls. Harris watched
helplessly as the thralls fell to their knees. Bullets continued to
slam into them, jerking their bodies with each round. The guns
finally fell silent as the defenders ran out of ammunition. Most of
them stood over the thralls panting hard as their senses finally
returned.

Harris could understand their anger and
their fear. There was a time when he couldn’t have stopped firing
either. But they had lost so much intelligence. He turned away from
the slaughter and saw McAteer and two of his men emerge from the
corridor and he nodded at them. McAteer looked surprised as seeing
him and then he shrugged and disappeared back the way he had
come.

Harris began looking around the plaza. His
heart was thumping in his chest but he couldn’t see Sandra among
the survivors. He dropped his head and began to search those who
had fallen. He turned bodies over carefully, any who groaned he
signalled for help and then moved on, praying he wouldn’t find her
but petrified that he would. He saw a splash of auburn hair and
knelt beside the familiar figure. He rolled the woman over and saw
blood on Patricia Lohan’s face and side. He had never liked her but
she had stood tall for her community and he could respect that. He
felt for a pulse and detected a weak throbbing. He wiped the blood
from her face and examined her body for the wound. She had a bullet
in her arm and another in her left side but it wasn’t bleeding too
much.

“Hey, Patricia,” he said gently as he leaned
close to her ear. “You’re safe.” Her eyes fluttered and it took her
a moment to focus on his face. Suddenly her face contorted as she
tried to rise.

“Easy,” Harris said.

“But, I have…”

“They’re safe,” he told her gently. “Lucy
and Lizzy are fine,” he assured her. Her face relaxed immediately
and she lay back. Harris signalled for help and someone eventually
came over. “Stay with her,” he told the man. “She’s a brave
woman.”

Harris looked around at the bodies in the
plaza. Each one with someone kneeling by them signified someone
still alive. Jesus, there were so few. And Sandra was nowhere to be
seen. He looked down the corridor McAteer had disappeared down and
thought about continuing his search down there. Anyone still down
there was most likely dead already. He saw a figure move into the
plaza carrying a limp body. He recognised McAteer and then saw the
figure in his arms. He saw her hair first and then he was rushing
towards them. He looked into McAteer’s eyes but they told him
nothing.

“She’s alive,” he said. “Barely.”

Harris nodded and took her limp form from
him. He felt her cheek.
So cold. Jesus, she’s so cold
.
Warkowski came up beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He
looked up into his eyes.

“I know there are so many hurt but…” he
couldn’t finish.

“I will get Amanda to come to you. I think
you’ve both earned that.” He slipped away but Harris never heard
him.

“I’m here, love,” he whispered as he stroked
her head. He was still there when Amanda Reitzig gently eased him
away and began to examine her patient.

The pain was incessant. Waves pulsed through
him, each one worse than the one before. His body convulsed.
Someone had taken his head and pressed it in a vice and turned the
screw relentlessly until it seemed his skull would burst. It didn’t
though. Instead, just when he thought the pain could not get any
worse, a new wave reached a higher pitch.

He remembered falling and the intense heat
from the nuclear fire enveloping him. He no longer felt as if he
was falling but his body was so filled with pain that it was
impossible to tell. Von Kruger screamed but he couldn’t hear
anything. His throat burned though so he must be screaming. He had
not cried out in pain in three hundred years. In fact he had not
felt any emotion in those years. Now emotions suddenly raced
through him, painfully filling the void like air rushing into a
vacuum. Fear convulsed along with the pain, fear of his mortality,
fear of more pain, fear of the brightness that surrounded him. Hate
surged through him as well, hate directed at nothing and
everything. It filled him with a strength that he had not felt in a
long time.

He remembered feeling hate before as a
vampire but nothing like this. This hate brought with it a power
like molten silver, burning and searing as it pulsed. He screamed,
he roared, he cried. He revelled in the pain. He gloried in it. His
flesh felt like it was being torn from his bones only to re-grow
and be torn all over again. Was there to be no end, was this his
punishment? Eternal suffering. And yet, with all the pain and the
fear, he felt reborn. He had been asleep for hundreds of years;
feeling nothing. The only pleasure he had experienced had been the
blood, but it was a harsh mistress he now realised. It gave him
immortality but it demanded much in return. It demanded everything;
emotions, pleasure, everything the humans clung to their pathetic
lives to retain. The light grew brighter and the pain reached a new
high. He felt something burst within him and then, suddenly, the
pain stopped.

The sun seared down on him and he brought
his arm up to shield his eyes. The flesh on his arm was hanging in
thin ribbons, but he could see the skin already knitting into
place. Around him he could feel the flames burning hot and he tried
to launch himself into the air but he merely jumped a foot and
stumbled. He shrugged and began to walk through the flames. At some
level he was aware that his body was wracked with pain as the flesh
seared and fell away only to grow again before searing again. But
it was a distant pain now. He walked for what seemed an age until,
finally, he emerged from the fire. The wind whipped at him as the
tortured environment struggled to recover from the explosion at the
plant.

Ash fell like snow and his flesh finally
began to anchor to his bones. He kept walking, marvelling at the
sheer destruction the blast had wrought. Such destruction. Miles
from the centre of the blast and still all life had been burned
away. It was the perfect cleansing. Nothing remained. Except
him.

He wondered why he did not feel the familiar
terrible hunger, the yearning for blood that had defined him for so
long. He might be one of the most powerful creatures on the earth
but he was a slave nonetheless. He knew that his on-going recovery
had taken a huge amount of energy. This energy was normally fuelled
through gorging on blood but he had not fed in hours. He should be
ravenous. What was fuelling his recovery?

He looked upwards and saw the light
struggling to shine through the poisonous clouds. Daylight. He
brought up his arm and saw that it did not smoulder. It wasn’t that
he no longer felt the pain. The daylight still hurt him, but it no
longer burned him. He smiled and felt the sharpened incisors under
his lips.

Oh what a world he could rule. His only
weakness had been burned away, literally seared from him. He no
longer needed the blood. Finally he could follow his true
instincts. He may have preyed on the humans but his existence had
always depended on them. Before the war the humans had forced him
to live in the shadows as they lorded their freedom to walk the
earth. Even after the war, even with them imprisoned and wallowing
in their filth, he was shackled to them. Even with all his power he
was totally dependent on these vile creatures for his continued
existence.