Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (27 page)

The boy was
sheet white and already looked like one of those zombies she had
seen in the movies before the vampires had come and turned
Hollywood into reality. She had bandaged him up as best she could,
tying the wounds tightly to prevent further blood loss. She knew
she would have to loosen the bandages to allow the blood to flow at
some stage but she wasn’t sure exactly when. She would have to
listen more carefully next time she was given first aid training.
She had given Ricks some morphine so his thrashing didn’t reopen
the wounds, but their field dressings were used up now and she had
no idea where the others were or how their mission had gone. Was
she the only one left not wounded? Her head still throbbed but she
was fine other than that.

Now that the
trucks were still once more, she could see the road and the
vehicles of the convoy they had targeted. The jeep lay out past the
road in a ruined heap. She could see a number of bodies laying on
the ground around the wreck in such contorted positions that she
hadn’t bothered to check that they were dead – some things could be
assumed she had decided. The truck that had held the thrall guards
lay on its side just off the road, the driver lay slumped at the
wheel and two more thralls lay beside the wreck with enough bullet
holes in them to kill an elephant. It looked like
Jackson
had taken a few out before they got him. She
raised a small smile as she looked down at Denis
Jackson
.

She hadn’t
realised that she had such deep feelings for the man until she had
seen his still body and all that blood. Sure, she had flirted with
him - there really hadn’t been that many eligible men in the
community after all. There were even fewer in their new group. He
was quite a bit older than she was and neither of them had really
analysed what, if anything, might be between them. It was a new
world, she realised with a shudder, and there just wasn’t time to
waste when somebody you cared about could die at any time. He eyes
lingered over his sleeping form for another minute and then she
looked back toward the road.

The transport
lay on its side and three more thralls lay crushed beneath its vast
bulk. They had lucked out there, she realised. There was no way
they could have taken out three more thralls. When she had seen the
transport on its side her first thought had been that its dangerous
cargo might be cracked and was already leaking deadly radiation
into the air. She had agonised over whether she should try to move
the wounded and risk doing them more damage or stay where they were
and hope that the radiation didn’t kill them all. But, she soon
realised, it was already too late if it was leaking. She had
decided to stay put.

She felt
uncomfortable around such an invisible, deadly killer. She still
had reservations about this plan. Playing with radiation was just
too dangerous, but she could see that it might just give them the
respite they needed. She saw a swirl of dust on the horizon and
pursed her lips. Either this was Harris and the others, or it was
the thralls from the first convoy and her friends were already
dead. There was no way she could move the wounded and no way in
hell she was leaving them. She shrugged and rose to her feet to
greet the vehicle. She dipped into her pocket for a crumpled pack
of cigarettes and lit one. There weren’t many of these left, she
thought with a sigh as she savoured the smoke and then walked back
along the road toward the approaching vehicle.

Chapter 17

“But where did she go?” Danny
Wilkins piped in his high voice.

“
I don’t
know,” Emma barked with more anger than she had intended. She still
felt very conscious of the fact that it had been her that had lost
Lohan and not one of the younger members of the
team. She was meant to be better than that, damn it. “I
looked away for a second and then she was just gone. I looked
everywhere but the corridor was just too crowded.”

“
Do you think
she knew you were following her?” Father Reilly asked calmly as he
sipped on a cup of hot water laced with mint. They had run out of
proper tea and coffee a long time ago but they were able to grow
mint easily enough and the drink had become quite popular among the
community. It was just a shame it didn’t pack the same bite the
other drinks had.

“
I don’t
think so,” Emma replied quickly and then sighed. “I don’t know, to
be honest. If she knew I was there she never gave any sign of it. I
had just taken over from Danny so it wasn’t as if I had been behind
her for ages or anything.”

“What happened then?” Father
Reilly pressed as he moved the hot cup in his hands.

“
We looked
everywhere,” Danny jumped in, taking up the story. “Once Emma put
out the call on the talkies we all dropped our charges and
converged on that area.”

“All of you dropped your
assigned targets?” Father Reilly raised his voice in alarm for the
first time and the children suddenly dropped their eyes to the
floor as they suddenly realised what they had done.

“
Well,” Emma
spoke up sheepishly, determined to stand up for her team. “We
thought that, like, with Lohan disappearing and all, that she must
be the one who…”

“
Yes, well
now we’ll never know, will we?” Father Reilly sighed as he put his
drink on the table beside him. He had barely touched its contents
and steam rose like a coiling snake in the small room. He spread
his hands out and all of the children turned their attention toward
him. “This is my fault, really,” he began as he looked at each of
the children in turn. “Maybe I overestimated your ability
to…”

“
That’s not
fair,” Emma interrupted and stared at the priest with an icy glare.
“I made the mistake and I made the decision to converge on Lohan’s
last position. Blame me if you want, not them. They don’t deserve
it.”

Father Reilly
stared hard at Emma for a few seconds and the silence in the room
was almost palpable, but she did not give an inch and the priest
suddenly nodded. “Good,” he smiled suddenly. Dropping the
surveillance on the other targets had only exacerbated the error of
losing Lohan. Now they had no information on any of the targets for
a whole chunk of time, rather than just losing Lohan. However, the
children had performed admirably up until then and he was
particularly pleased with Emma’s ability to lead and protect her
small band of adventurers. He could teach them how to improve their
skills in surveillance but he couldn’t teach them
loyalty.

“
Okay, we may
have lost a day, but we can pick up from now. Do not,” he paused as
he intentionally caught the eye of each child as he pressed home
his point, “think that you have found our traitor. We are playing
for very large stakes here and I will not tolerate anyone assuming
guilt based on flimsy evidence. We do not know if Ms. Lohan
intentionally lost her tail or even whether she knew she was being
followed at all.”

“
But she
didn’t go straight to work as usual,” Danny piped up again. “In
fact, she was thirty minutes late. That’s very suspicious in my
book.

Father Reilly
paused as he considered Danny’s statement. “Yes, it is suspicious,”
he agreed as he turned to Danny and fixed him with a cold stare.
“However, this is a very serious business. We are talking about
someone who is intentionally leaking information to the vampires
about us. When we find this person, we will deal with them very
severely. I will not, however, jump to any conclusions - and
neither will any of you.” He paused again as he let that sink in.
“Besides, she could have merely been secretive because she was
meeting someone she did not want anyone else to know
about.”

“
But why
would she want to
…” Danny began and then
saw the looks the others gave him and suddenly realised what they
were thinking. He went red. “Oh, you mean…”

Father
Reilly’s face crinkled into a smile at the young boy’s
embarrassment. “Not all of us are necessarily comfortable with
everyone knowing our business. Ms. Lohan is within her rights to
keep her private life to herself - as long as it does not impact on
this community.” He stood and smiled at them. “You are doing a very
important and dangerous job here, but remember, we must be certain.
Pick up your targets again and continue as before. We must find who
is behind this and soon. But, most of all, please be
careful.”

Alfonso Corelli slumped back in
his chair, exhausted. Voices swept around him, some calm and
reasoned and others high-pitched and nervous. None carried the
surety or the confidence of a leader though and he despaired. He
had arrived back in the community over an hour ago and had spent
every minute since explaining first why he had abandoned his work
post and then trying to explain what he had seen and the
implications it raised.

The committee
had listened in silence and he had felt his heart leap with the
hope that he might have misjudged these people. Now that they were
presented with a challenge
, would they be
equal to it? After he had finished his explanations, though, his
confidence in the committee had been shattered as the communal
silence of before had turned into a fractal and totally
disconnected set of individuals all arguing against each other on
how they should meet this new threat.

Although
almost all of them disagreed with the specifics, most of the
members were leaning toward some form of passive response. In other
words, they were going to ignore the threat and hope it passed by.
There were various degrees of how they would achieve this, but, in
general, a policy of wait and see was slowly being
developed.

“
I don’t
believe that you can be so naïve,” Corelli suddenly lost his cool
and jumped to his feet. The committee members suddenly stopped
their arguing and snapped their attention toward him. Many of them
looked at him in confusion as if they were surprised that he was
still there. “There is a force of thralls on their way here. Don’t
you understand that?”

“Son,” Phil Regan began but he
was viciously interrupted.

“
I’m not your
son,” Corelli spat with more emotion than he had intended. The last
thing he wanted was for these people to dismiss him as an emotional
lunatic. He forced himself to calm down before continuing. “If
those thralls discover that Nero and his vampires are not in charge
in this state then they will come in their droves and find us in no
time. We have to convince them that Nero still rules.”

“
There is no
way we can do that,” Regan tried to project calm as he laid his
hands gently on the table in front of him. “We can’t just take on
that amount of thralls in a pitched battle…”

“
We don’t
have to attack them, we…”

“
Alfonso,”
Ian Phelps interrupted with a calm but insistent voice. “We really
appreciate you coming back to us with this warning, but, really, we
are better served letting this patrol see that there is no one here
at all rather than instigate a war that we cannot hope to win.” A
chorus of grunts and whispered agreement rippled around the
table.

“
The boy is
not suggesting we attack them, you fool,” Lucy suddenly
interrupted. “If you would just listen to him you might actually
hear what he’s saying.” Lucy Irvine was one of the only original
members on the committee, and she rarely spoke in meetings outside
of her administrative reports. Her sudden interruption, and the
very definite bard directed toward Phelps was so uncharacteristic
that everyone at the table stopped talking and turned toward the
matronly woman.

She stared
back defiantly at the other members before continuing. “If we do
nothing then they will come in greater force to determine what has
happened to the thralls and vampires who ruled here before. We
simply can not allow that.” A low murmur spread among the members.
“If you had listened to the boy instead of trying to talk over
him,” she continued, raising her voice and demanding their
attention by her tone, “you’d realise that he has a pretty good
plan.”

She paused as
her fellow members sat back and remained silent. “No one is
suggesting a pitched battle. All we have to do is convince this
patrol that thralls are still in charge of this state. There is no
reason to assume that this is an invasion force. There are not
enough of them for that. This is something else.

They are
expecting to be stopped by Nero’s forces and we should not
disappoint them. We have plenty of uniforms and weapons in storage.
Philip,” she turned her attention to Phil Regan and the man flushed
slightly unde
r her scrutiny. “This is
most definitely one time where you must listen to others who know
better. You are our Leader, for good or bad, and now you must start
to act like one. Sometimes you have to listen to others with an
open mind to do what is best for the community. All our lives are
affected by whatever you decide; make sure it’s the right
choice.”

Carter grew more and more uneasy
as the miles continued to pass uneventfully. His mind had imagined
so many sudden and devastating attacks over the last hour that when
the ambush finally happened it was almost a relief.

They were within a thousand
yards of the city limits when a wreck to the side of the road
suddenly erupted in a fireball. The sound of the explosion seemed
to arrive a moment later and his driver was already reacting as his
own brain struggled to catch up. The jeep screeched to a halt and
thralls jumped out of the back and took up positions of cover.
Behind him he heard the shouted commands and bustle of his forces
pouring from the trucks and taking up positions.