Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (15 page)

He had to find these humans. He
had seen what their bullets had done to the vampires and he had to
have their secret. With those bullets he could sweep Von Kruger,
and any other vampire who troubled him, into the gutter where they
belonged. But where were they?

There was just no way the humans
could travel huge distances with his men patrolling by day and Von
Kruger’s vampires searching by night. As he had studied the map he
had drawn up he had noticed that the attack that had started the
war between Von Kruger and Wentworth, the attack where he himself
had discovered his men’s bodies and lied about them to his
superiors, was right in the middle of the circle he had plotted. He
realised with a shock that he now knew who had actually attacked
that small base. The humans had orchestrated the whole thing. His
estimation of their abilities rose significantly as he stared at
the map.

They had now rescued nearly a
thousand humans from his territory, and this would only allow them
to step up their attacks if he let it continue much longer. Where
could they hide so many? He had no idea how many they had started
with but there must be close to two thousand people at this point.
He had noticed that the attacks of late had been smaller than
before, as if they were fewer in number rather than greater
numbers, and that puzzled him.
Were they focusing their attacks
in a different area now that there was so much activity here? But
if that was true, why raid around here at all?
He really didn’t
have a handle on what drove them. He could do with pooling his
information with Von Kruger and working together to wipe them out,
but that was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The latest report of the tracks
along the border was interesting, though, as Bertrand was quite
close to the border with Nero’s territory and it would make sense
to operate from a safe haven where no one was searching for them.
He had tried to contact the local thrall commander in Nero’s
territory, but his men had not returned from their mission yet so
he was not sure if that meant they had been killed by the thrall
commander before they had gotten the opportunity to explain their
mission or whether they were merely delayed. Either way he was
becoming more and more certain that the humans were slipping across
this border before him. There was only one way to prove it, of
course, and that was to enter enemy territory and find them.

He could ill afford another war,
especially with Von Kruger running rampant and his other borders
filled with vampires and thralls ready and eager to press any
advantage. But this was the only territory without any visible
patrols. It was well known, of course, that Nero was unlike most of
the other vampire lords and that he was reluctant to talk with
anyone at the best of times. It could be that he was just
uninterested in what was happening and would swoop on anyone
entering his territory without mercy, but the lack of any patrols
at all along the entire border was more than strange. Even for
Nero.

He had to find these humans or
risk losing everything. He badly needed their weapons but also
needed to remove them as a threat. If they kept siphoning off the
vampires’ food supply then he would lose his main bargaining
advantage with Von Kruger. He had gathered a large force together
for this excursion, just in case. It could, of course, start a war
with Nero, but if they encountered Nero’s thrall army he would try
to negotiate first.

He did not consider for a moment
that Nero was not in control in his territory, only that his
relaxed attitude gave these humans the opportunity to use his state
as a safe haven. He didn’t have enough forces to spare to police
the entire border on his own so he would have to enlist Nero’s
thralls to help on their side of the border. He would offer them
aid against their own vampire masters if they were open to that. If
not, and if they fielded a large enough force to give him pause,
then he could always withdraw.

The very fact that they could
bring such a sizeable force to counter him in such a short time
would have disproved his theory anyway and he would have to think
again about where the humans might be. If they didn’t move to stop
him then he would see how far he could travel into this territory
before he met resistance. One way or another, he would find out
whether the humans were hiding there or not. As he looked at the
map he wondered where it would all end.

Chapter 9

Tanya felt as if her muscles
were seizing up like an engine without oil, but she forced herself
to keep moving. Her head hurt too and the moaning all around her
was driving her to dementia. Everyone just stood or sat on the
ground and moaned in pain and desperation - God, it was like being
in a zombie movie. She hadn’t slept since her memories had flooded
through her numbed brain and exhaustion plucked at her incessantly,
enticing her to lie down and sleep. She needed to sleep, she knew
that, her body couldn’t take this kind of abuse, but she had to
find her children. There would be time to sleep once she had found
them.

On one
level
, an insistent voice tried to raise
the possibility that her children were dead. But she suppressed
that thought savagely and pushed herself on. They were alive. They
had to be. She had searched through over half of the enormous pen
at this point and her desperation was growing with each face she
passed. There were very few children at all. In fact, there were
very few young adults either.

The vampires
obviously liked their victims young. Her hand unconsciously dropped
to her stomach and despair washed over. She faltered as the reality
of her position threatened to crush her. Was she truly alone? The
bastards had taken her unborn child for their unholy thirsts. Had
they taken her children as well? She stopped as the grief became
too much. Many of those around her had already given up and either
stood staring sightlessly ahead or sat on the ground and cried. She
felt her knees weaken. It would be so easy to rest, just for a
moment.

Surely it
wouldn’t matter if she just had a little rest. She felt herself
weakening, her legs did ache so and her back was burning with
strain. Her knees began to buckle but then her children’s faces
suddenly danced before her and she ignored the pain and forced
herself on. She could see them in her mind from a happier time
before the vampires had come. Her stomach felt empty, and not just
from hunger. There was an emptiness within her that she just knew
would always be there. They had taken a part of her, ripped it from
her and left behind an empty shell. Well, not completely empty, she
suddenly realised. A fire smouldered within her, a small kernel of
hate that had kept her going up till now. She stoked the fire with
her hatred for the vampires and forced one foot in front of the
other pushing those in front of her away as she continued her
search.

She would
find her children and then, somehow, she would make the vampires
pay. Somehow. She searched all day, ignoring the food that was sent
into the pen as she examined every face in the sea of people,
hoping to see someone she knew, anyone who might have seen her
children. But she found no one. Finally, as darkness began to crawl
across the horizon, she slumped to the ground at the far end of the
pen. At first she didn’t feel anything, just relief that she had
stopped walking, but it wasn’t long before her despair overpowered
her.

A sob escaped
from her and she could feel a tear drop from her eye and roll
slowly down her cheek. It was all too much; they had taken too much
from her. She had spent the day feeding the fire within her with
hate and hope and despair in equal measure, but now she was
exhausted. Her hope was shattered and hate could only take you so
far. Despair now ruled and swept over her like a giant wave. Great
sobs racked through her body and she looked out at a cityscape that
had once been so familiar and was now so alien. In the day’s final
gasp, as the last shafts of light were chased away by the oncoming
gloom, she saw the shadows envelope another pen some distance away.
It was like watching the huge enclosure fall into a hole as the
darkness swept over it in a slow, ineluctable march.

The people in
that pen all stood gazing sightlessly ahead and at some level she
noted that they, unlike the people in her pen, were still
controlled by the serum. She didn’t wonder at this, she was far too
tired, but she did notice it. Just then, as the last of the people
were swallowed by the dark and it began to crawl toward her, she
saw a small face surrounded by a mass of red curls. The face was
dirty and the hair was limp and matted, but her heart stopped
beating as soon as she saw it. She only had a fleeting moment and
then the darkness descended. But it had been enough. She’d know her
child in any circumstance. Jillian was alive. Hope flared within
her. She did not consider that an army of vampires and thralls lay
between them or that there was no hope of a reunion. All she
thought about was that her little girl was alive. If she was alive
then it was possible that Mark was with her. The fire in her belly
began to rekindle as hope flared and kept her warm. She slumped to
the ground in exhaustion and felt the tears flood down her
cheeks.

There were many who cried that
night in that lonely prison but no others cried tears of joy. She
finally slept.

Ian Phelps cursed as he looked
around the storeroom.

“
Is
everything ruined?” h
e asked as he kicked
at an empty box on the floor but felt no pleasure as it hit the
wall and bounced off.

“
I’m afraid
so.
” Lucy Irvine shrugged her shoulders
and sighed. “How could someone do this? I just don’t understand.” A
small sob escaped her as she looked at the ruined food in the
room.

“
Are you sure
it wasn’t accidental?” Penny Arkwright asked from the doorway. “I
mean…” she began but faltered as the rest of the committee members
turned toward her.

Father Reilly
placed a hand on her shoulder and sighed. “I’m afraid there’s
little doubt about it. Someone did this deliberately.” He knelt
down and picked up a water-soaked packet of rice and let the ruined
parcel fall back onto the wet floor. He paused for a moment as he
considered what he was about to say and then shrugged. “I’m afraid
I have to admit that this is not entirely unexpected.”

Reilly
watched the faces of those around him for any hint that what he was
saying was not a complete shock, but the committee members were so
spread out inside the room that it was impossible to watch them all
at the same time.

“What do you mean?” Phil Regan
spluttered. “Are you suggesting that you knew of this and did
nothing?”

“
No,” Reilly
answered emphatically, “I did not know that this would happen,
destroying our food affects our culprit as much as it does
ourselves. Either they are more desperate than we thought
or…”

“
What are you
talking about? What culprit?” Phelps crossed to him and stood
there, his face growing red with anger. “What exactly is going on?
And when you say ‘we’ who exactly are you talking
about?”

Reilly paused
for a moment before answering as he considered the implications. He
knew what their reaction was going to be, after all they had kept
this information from the democratically elected government, but he
really had no choice after this latest development. He took a deep
breath. “Harris…”

“
I knew it,”
Phelps spat the words as he turned toward the other members of the
committee. The water pooling around his feet splashed with the
sudden motion and sent ripples outward. “I knew he had…”

“
Before you
finish that sentence you will listen to what I have to say,” Reilly
interrupted with a voice long accustomed to authority and respect.
“You might be glad you didn’t say something that you can’t take
back later.” Reilly stared hard at Phelps, as if daring him - which
of course he was - and Phelps managed to stare back for almost
thirty seconds before he dropped his gaze.

“I’ll listen, Father,” his tone
was unmistakably derisive, “but then we will have to discuss your
reluctance to share important information with this committee.”

Reilly
nodded, he knew that Phelps had a good point and one which would
take some impact away from what he was about to say, but this
latest development had forced his hand. They had not had enough
food to feed the community before this disaster and the food in
this room was almost a quarter of their entire remaining stock.
With winter gripping them so hard and crops some months yet from
yielding anything, they were in real trouble.

“
When Steele
returned he may well have been turned as a vampire but his will was
such that he had not come to kill us.” Phelps snorted and Reilly
glared hard at him before continuing. “As you may have noticed, he
did come alone.” He paused as he searched out each person’s eyes
and spent a few seconds on each one before moving on. “Did no one
think it strange that we haven’t been overrun by vampires by
now?”

He could see by their reaction
that few of them had really given it much thought at all.

“
Steele came
to warn us,” h
e continued. “The thirst
was driving him mad but he held onto what was left of his humanity
long enough to save April from that monster, Sherman, and to tell
us some disturbing news before he took his life.” Reilly could tell
that he had everyone’s interest but he forced himself to pause
again. It was critical that these people believed him and took what
he had to say seriously.