Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (2 page)

Once they
finished their chores they were free for the rest of each day. It
had been a major victory for her. It had marked the group as
special and allowed them a freedom that none of the other young
people enjoyed. The group loved her for it and
it firmly cemented her place as the group’s
leader.

Of course
there was really very little to do in the community but at least
they had control of their own time. Today’s planned excursion, a
trip out to the West of the city’s limits to see if they could find
a shop that was reputed to have books and games and was still
relatively undamaged, had been set aside when Danny Wilkins had
come rushing into their club house, which was an old comic shop
near the centre of the city.

He had
refuse
d to tell them what he had seen;
instead, he had urged them to follow and see for themselves. They
had all groaned and grumbled but the truth of the matter was that
they had little else to do so they had followed him eagerly enough.
That had been twenty minutes ago and Emma was beginning to get a
little worried. They were fast approaching the limits of the
community’s territory.

“
Just where
exactly is this thing you want to show us, Danny?” Emma asked and
the boy whipped his head around and immediately stumbled again.
They were only a hundred yards or so from the large wall that the
thralls had built around the city before the original community
members had freed it. The wall had been repaired, somewhat, and now
marked the area within the city that was considered relatively
safe. No one had seen a vampire fly overhead or a thrall patrol
drive past the city in all the time since the city had been free.
There were no guards or adults past this mark but it had been
instilled in them since they woke from the serum that they were not
to pass this point.

The wall
loomed above them almost like a mountain and its shadow spread over
them as they approached. The day was warm for January, and
certainly warmer than it had been of late. Snow still covered the
majority of the roads that they passed, but the sun was finally
starting to melt the blanket that had seemed to have gripped their
city forever. Low clouds roiled above them like agitated, dirty
snakes and kept what heat there was in the city stagnant and stale.
Despite this, though, the air itself seemed to grow colder as they
walked into the shadow of the wall. The barrier itself seemed to
disappear into the clouds as if it continued on forever, though
they knew that vicious, sharp wire adorned the top of the wall. The
wall itself was dull and grey, almost boring in its monotonous
circle around the city. The occasional hole along its length or
blackened scorch mark were all that remained to remind them that
there was still a very real threat beyond the barrier.

“It’s not far now,” he insisted,
“just up ahead.”

“It
is
within the limits,
Danny, isn’t it?” Emma stopped and put her hands on her hips.

“
Well, sort
of,” Danny answered as he continued to walk until he
realised that the others had stopped following
and he was forced to halt and turn back towards them. “Oh, come on
guys,” he pleaded, “it’s just up ahead and it is so worth
it.”

“
We’re not
going past the limits, Danny. No way,” Emma insisted and most of
the others nodded their agreement.

“
How did you
find this thing anyway?” Seager asked dubiously. “Have you been out
past the limits on your own?”

Danny looked
down at his feet and flushed. “I overheard my dad talking about
some new device and that they were testing it out past the North
wall, so I followed him last night. You’ve really got to see this,
guys. Honestly. It really is so worth it.”

“
Just tell us
what it is and then we’ll decide for ourselves,” Ricks shrugged
with what he thought to be a perfectly acceptable
compromise.

“
No way,”
Danny insisted defiantly as he shook his head, “it’ll spoil the
surprise. Come on guys.”

“Just how far past the limits
are we talking about?” Emma asked as her heart began to beat a
little faster. The last few weeks had begun to grow boring as they
had finished exploring everywhere that was considered safe. The
chance of actually seeing something new and exciting was awfully
attractive, but to go past the limits was dangerous, not to mention
the trouble they could get into.

“
Oh, not
far,” Danny smiled as he began to sense victory. “You’ll still be
able to see the wall and all.”

The others all looked a little
dubious but then Ricks nodded. “What the hell, we’ve bugger all
else to do.”

Emma was about to object when
Seager, not to be out done by Ricks, shouted his agreement and then
the rest were swept along in the growing excitement of such a
radical trip. Emma knew she should say something but she could not
help feeling excited about the prospect as well.
What the
hell
, she thought,
it’s only a little way past the
limits
.
No one will know and we’ll be back before anyone is
any the wiser.
She nodded slowly and the others cheered and
headed on toward the wall.

It was if the very air around
them conspired with them to keep their transgression a secret. The
clouds that had hidden the wall’s upper reaches now seemed to drop
even lower and embrace the small group in its wispy tendrils,
hiding them from view. They walked cautiously but the noise of
their occasional stumbling and muttered curses were quickly muted
by the blanket of cloud that enveloped them. Emma shivered as the
air turned colder within the cloud’s embrace and she was about to
call a halt when Danny’s excited voice shattered the stillness.

“
It’s through
here,” he piped and urged the others
toward a small crack in the wall. “I found this last night
when I followed my dad. They used the gate down a little further
but there’s a guard on it so I couldn’t follow them. I was on my
way back when I saw light filter through this crack.” He pointed at
a small fissure in the wall and Ricks hunkered down and examined
it. It was far too small for an adult to squeeze through but
perfect for them. Seager might find it a little snug but the rest
of them should have no rouble.

“
Seems you’ve
thought of everything, Danny,” Ricks smiled and stood again. “Lead
the way.” He swept his hand toward the fissure with an exaggerated
bow. “It’s your show.

Danny leapt forward with a huge
grin on his face, turned slightly to his side and promptly
disappeared through the gap. For a moment it seemed that he had
simply disappeared through a portal to another world or dimension
and Emma felt her heart drop in her chest.
What the hell are we
doing?
The thought rattled around in her head and she was about
to speak when Ricks brushed past her and disappeared through the
gap without a word. As the others began to follow and she could
hear their hushed voices on the other side and her misgivings began
to relent. She sighed and followed them through.

She wasn’t sure what she
expected to see on the other side of the wall but she did expect
something to be different. Visions of
Stargate
with a new
world behind the shimmering void every week fuelled her imagination
and filled her with equal amounts of fear and excitement. As she
passed through the gap she saw that the city on this side of the
wall was pretty much the same as that on the other side. In
fairness, the mist did restrict her visibility to a short distance
but still, she felt disappointed and relieved all at the same time.
However, she was surprised to realise that she was more
disappointed than relieved as she pulled herself through and
surveyed the street.

Surely the
whole point of having Forbidden Zones was because they were
dange
rous and different. The last of the
group began to filter through and their silence spoke volumes of
their own disappointment with this ‘unknown and dangerous’
area.

Ricks put it
most eloquently. “Hey man, this sucks. I thought it would be, like,
cool - you know.”

She did know and she looked over
at Danny with a raised eyebrow.

“Don’t worry; it’s just up the
street a little.”

There was a
loud grunt followed by a curse behind them and then Seager suddenly
fell to the ground as he forced his way through the narrow gap. The
others laughed a little but they were far too nervous about being
on the other side of the wall so Seager was spared the full brunt
of his ungainly entrance. Danny took off up the street and the
others followed without a word.

The further they walked the more
Emma Logan noticed the differences. They were subtle at first, the
buildings were completely devoid of life - they even seemed to have
somehow lost their colour and vibrancy. They looked abandoned. In
the city, on their side of the wall, buildings might be abandoned
but there was a different look to them, almost as if they were just
waiting for someone to come along to open their doors, roll up the
shutters and breathe new life into them. These buildings, however,
looked dead, if a building could be described as such. It was a
subtle difference but one which weighed heavily on Emma as she
continued walking. There were abandoned, rusted vehicles on the
streets, some crashed into each other while others lay crumpled
into the sides of buildings where bricks lay scattered around like
entrails around a fatal wound.

The low cloud
seemed to linger around the cars and the buildings like a
magician’s cloak, hiding so much more than it was
revealing
, and Emma shivered as she
strained to see into the distance. She looked back toward the
others and saw the same fears etched on their faces and in the way
they made their way carefully through the obstacles. Even their
footsteps seemed strangely muted on this side of the wall. In fact,
only Danny Wilkins seemed to be oblivious to the strange ambience
of the area they passed through.

“
It’s just
down here,” Danny snapped his head back to check they were still
following and stumbled yet again as his foot found a loose brick
and he was forced to windmill his arms to steady himself. Despite
the subdued atmosphere the group managed a light snigger before
Danny managed to steady himself and continue on down the
street.

When they did
finally reach Danny’s big surprise they stopped in awe and with
more than a little fear. Danny bounded right up to it with no fear
at all and Emma could tell that his standing in the little group
had just raised quite a few notches for his courage.

“
It’s all
right,” he announced as he kicked the form at his feet, “he’s quite
dead.”

The others
stared at the corpse but no one moved any further. Even in death
the Vampires were terrifying and demanded respect.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” Peter
Atkins finally managed to ask. Atkins was a small boy of twelve,
though he insisted that he was thirteen so as not to be the
youngest. He had been in the same group that had been rescued with
the rest of them three months ago, but, unlike the others, no one
had found any other members of his family. He tried hard to be part
of the group but still looked rather shell-shocked at the loss. It
hadn’t helped that he had had to look through the unidentified
bodies of those who had died on the train.

Peter Harris
himself had walked with him with his hand in his as he had gone
through the lines of the dead. There had been so many tears in his
eyes that, even now, he still wondered if he might have actually
seen his parents but had simply not registered their faces. He
still wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that he had not found
anyone he knew or not. There would at least have been some form of
closure if he had found them. At least then he might have
b
een able to grieve and move on; now
there would always be uncertainty until he found his parents and
brothers one way or the other.

For now, he
lived with a family who had lost their own son during the war. But
their devastation for their own loss was smothering him and was not
at all what the young boy needed. He had been totally lost until he
had found the ‘Wolverines’. At twelve, he should still have been in
school, the committee had put certain restrictions on the group of
youths and an age limit had been one of the first, but, with no one
around to prove otherwise, his insistence of being thirteen could
not be contested.

“
Yep,” Danny
laughed and kicked the vampire in the ribs to emphasise his point.
Something moved beneath the corpse and caused the body to shift
slightly. All of them jumped back, and a few of the smaller ones
ran half way down the street before they realised that they weren’t
being pursued and returned sheepishly to the group. The vampire’s
head had rolled toward them and they could see a stream of dried
blood running from both ears down its cheeks and neck. Dried blood
also streaked from its eyes and nose and there was a huge pool of
blood around the body that had stained the bricks and concrete
around it like cancer corrupting flesh.

“
What killed
it?” Seager asked as he finally raised the courage to join Danny
beside the vampire.

“
Haven’t a
clue.
” Danny smiled as he moved aside to
let the bigger boy get closer. “I tripped over him last night when
I was following my Dad.”