Vampire's Day (Book 1): Epicenter (8 page)

33. Tiger

Tiger was in a bad mood. Today he was meant to be heading on his first leave, so yesterday he and a few other guys from his platoon had decided to have a few drinks. They had a very good session, and then his leave was canceled so now he sits behind the wheel of his truck, suffering from a hangover. He is waiting for the loader which would remove the concrete blocks from the platform, so Tiger can go to the next ride.

The regiment was alerted at eight in the morning, when the radio is already screaming about the attack on the airport. The remaining units of his regiment received tasks and served in various ways, and he and three other drivers were issued personal orders. He had to go to a big construction warehouse in the country. It was not explained any further.

The excited manager and a dozen workers were waiting for him at the warehouse. While workers loaded steel beams and cement bags, the manager ran up to him and asked, slightly stammering with excitement.

“You know what's going on in LA?”

“They say that a plane was shot down at the airport.”

“And the shooting. What are all these materials for?”

“Military secret.”

On his way back, Tiger listened to the radio, trying to clarify what seemed an incomprehensible picture. His smartphone didn’t work, the radio still carried on, but Tiger couldn’t find any familiar urban radio station; it was as if they never existed. Other stations talked about the terrorist attacks, the North Korean army invasion, leakage of biological weapons and other extremely interesting things that were happening now in Los Angeles. Someone said something about a rabies outbreak, but Tiger did not realize who had this rabies.

His destination was a small, rich town on a big road, with much more military than civilian residents. He had been ordered to leave the beams and cement here.

“Go into the second flight, as soon as you finish unloading!”

Tiger had already been to this town once. He came here with a girl on a motorcycle, and he would still be able to find a place on the shore, where they played. He would like to be there again, instead of sitting in a stuffy cabin, looking at the tall pillars of thick black smoke rising over the city. The fires were rampant.

“What is happening?” he called his friend, a tanker driver.

“Fucking Al-Qaeda! They’ve started a biological attack!”

“Brilliant! And where are our fucking biological protection suits?”

The unloading was finished, so he headed on a new trip, continuing to listen the radio. Now almost all the radio stations talked about rabies, reporting that people were attacking people in LA. It looked like the tanker driver was not mistaken about a biological attack.

The second trip was faster and easier than the first, but on the third he had to wait for a while. This time Tiger had to take heavy concrete blocks and wait a long time before they were loaded, then again waited a long time at a crossroads, waiting for a long National Guard convoy to pass, heading to the same town.

He watched helicopters and drones in the sky. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles drove on the next road, pillars of thick black smoke rising more and more. Working radio stations became fewer, their places on the airwaves holding harsh male voices declaring a state of emergency.

The small rich town on the big road had changed during his absence, turning into a military camp. The highway was blocked - the military weren’t allowing anyone to leave Los Angeles. It seemed that the concrete barriers, like a gigantic dam, blocked the river of cars, clearly separating the place where order reigned to where chaos ruled. Tiger realized how lucky he was - if his leave warrant had been the day before, he would now be behind this wall.

A couple of workers in red construction helmets began to unload the blocks, so Tiger decided to buy some beer at the store across the street. At the front of the store were some used bullets, the glass door was knocked out, and shelves with goods were overturned. There was a wicked girl cashier sweeping the floor.

“Do you have a beer?”

“Maybe.”

The girl, who looked no older than seventeen, took a bottle of non-alcoholic beer from behind the counter.

“I mean real beer?”

“That’s all I have.”

“What happened?”

The cashier yawned and shrugged her shoulders.

“Urban folks. They fled from Los Angeles. Your guys stopped them at the town border, and began to send them back behind the fence that you are building there. Well, they were upset and decided to stock up just in case with everything they needed, and so came to me. I think they also came to the conclusion that the state of emergency allowed them to not pay, so there was a massive robbery. One of your soldiers drove them away. I gave him my last normal beer in gratitude. So, take it or leave it.”

“OK. And give me some chocolate if you have any.”

He handed her a bill, and she packed the beer and chocolate in a bag, giving him a small pack of hunting sausages as well.

“Why don’t you go away?”

“And where should I go? I live down the road, and I’m not allowed to go there by the military. It’s a good thing I wasn’t kicked outside the wall. I'll sit here, it's better than on the street.”

“And what is your boss saying?”

“I don’t know, the boss lives in the city. I tried to reach him while the phone still worked, but no one answered. I'll bet a buck that he had already been eaten.”

Tiger leaned over the counter and stared at the small TV, waiting to see the news. Instead, he saw some girl’s television series.

“There is no signal, this is a DVD. The urban radio also died, and we were ordered to lock up the house and wait for help.”

“Lock up because of the rabies?”

“Yes.”

The girl gave an evil grin.

“The soldiers said that in the city people are devouring each other, attacking just like in the movies. Only they’re not zombies, not the walking dead; they are alive, they can kill, and they can also be killed in response. Everyone is shooting each other, and the cops and doctors are preying on people. Cool, right?”

Tiger didn’t think that it was cool. He opened a bottle and went outside to see how long it would take to remove the last concrete blocks from his truck. The cashier came after him.

“Do you hear that?”

There was the sound of shooting from the fence side, first single shots, and then bursts.

“What is it? Over there – is it the ship?”

The girl gestured toward the ocean, and, looking there, Tiger saw the distant silhouette of destroyers, on which nose evenly flared and faded short white flame.

“Get down!”

34. Surgeon

“Who are you? Answer quickly!”

“I... I'm a doctor, a surgeon from the children's hospital.”

“Show me you’re ID!”

“In the left pocket…”

Black-gloved fingers tore a button from his pocket and took out the card.

“Okay, you are a surgeon. Stand up!”

He couldn’t stand, he was sick, he was dizzy, but the man in the black uniform was not interested. He grabbed the doctor by the collar, and lifted him to his feet, leaning against a wall pierced by bullets. Close by there were a lot of voices, and he gradually began to distinguish them. What a strange selection process!

“Policeman.”

“Left!”

“Counsel.”

“Right!”

“Unemployed.”

“Right!“

“Sales...”

“Right!”

His dizziness wore off; his weakness almost disappeared. On the contrary, he is full of energy, but he is suffering some double vision. What was wrong with him, dope? He had tried LSD once in his lifetime, back in school, but the feeling was different. Maybe he had been given something? But who did it and why?

“Don’t just stand there, let's go!”

The man in the black uniform dragged him along. They went down the long corridor full of people. Behind continued the same stupid selection.

“Broker.”

“Right!”

“Taxi driver.”

“Left!”

“Bandit.”

“Left!”

“Come here!“

The man in black kicked him through a side door.

“Wait here with the others!”

This used to be a classroom or a small meeting room. He fell into an empty plastic chair, beside some other people. It was stuffy here, and necessary to remove his shirt. He awkwardly removed it. There was a sticky substance on it – two hundred buck shirt had been spoiled. What was this, paint?

“Fuck!”

It was not paint, it was blood. He quickly felt himself - no injuries, but a wasp bite on his right leg. This was not his blood on the shirt.

“You two – come here!”

Again, there was a man in black and with him another one in the same uniform. They picked him up with another woman, wearing a green nurse’s uniform.

“Go!”

They again pushed him into the crowded corridor and quickly headed forward, until they ended up in the parking lot in front of a small truck.

“Climb in the van!”

He and the nurse were pushed into the truck that left for somewhere at great speed. He tried to talk to the nurse, but his voice was drowned by a jumble of sounds. Outside there was roaring fire, and shots, then the truck stopped so abruptly that they were cast against the front wall.

“Get out!”

They were in some hospital courtyard, standing next to a broken ambulance. There is a skyscraper burning in front of them, flames engulfing a dozen floors. He saw people jumping out of windows, but the man in black was not interested. He pushed him forward, putting in hands a cart from the supermarket.

“Where are we going? Why?”

“It’s necessary to take all the medicines. You must start work as soon as possible, we have many wounded. Come on!”

There were lockers filled with medications, and he began to throw them in the cart, as if making a purchase.

“Hey, I remember you. Yeah, you’re the doctor from some children's hospital. When I came there, you were talking to some girl. We came in the occupied car, and brought wounded, but the guard suspected us and started shooting. The cops were close by and we had to leave. I thought the cops had killed you. Hey, Doc, what are you doing, you don’t remember anything? Well, it happens sometimes after the first dose. Maybe you’ll remember later.”

He remembered, he remembered it all a moment ago when he picked up the package of disposable syringes. The same package was in his hands when he saw in the mirror a reflection of a man with a small pistol. The surgeon remembered his face. In the hospital, the guard was dressed in a tracksuit. He had portrayed a simple citizen, who brought in an injured woman. The surgeon remembered how his leg had stung like a hot needle, when the man fired. He remembered it and remembered everything that happened next. He remembered how the blood got on his shirt, and remembered who that blood belonged to.

“Doc, and where you've managed to get the blood, who...“

The man in the black uniform didn’t finish. Instead he grabbed his throat, which the surgeon had cut through in a precise scalpel move. Blood gushed through the black gloves.

“I remember. Her name was Dolores. She was eleven years, eight months and two weeks old. I had to operate on her, and she would have gone home today. I remember how I cut her throat, a few minutes after you shot me. I cut her in the same way I’ve cut you. I remember you.”

He walked over to the corpse, whose feet were still twitching, took the gun, and then turned vampire and put a hand into his inside pocket. Here it’s. The surgeon took a new injection gun and a tight package of thick plastic with capsules filled with blood, took one, looked around, read a small inscription – “12 hours”. Clear. He remembered this device - saw one of the vampires got himself a dose. Now he knew what it is and how it works.

“We're going back, are you ready?”

This is the second guard, and a nurse.

“Yes.”

He went out to meet them, pressing the machine gun to his thigh, like in the old war movies. He shot a gun for the first time in his life, but it was impossible to miss in the narrow corridor from a distance of two meters, and his hands were holding an AK-47 as confidently as he held a scalpel.

The nurse and the second guard fell to the floor, punched through by a dozen bullets. He was lucky - none of these bullets would have hit the capsules package, which he was sure the second guard was carrying. They were all are carrying such capsules. Forty-three capsules in two packages, enough for a long time. And here were the keys to the truck.

First, he decided to leave immediately, but then he changed his mind. It was necessary to return and get the medicines and tools.

Throwing medicines into the van, he thought about the vampires, one of which he became now. In one must they are right - during the fighting will be many wounded. Many wounded vampires, and many wounded people, who fight these bloodsuckers, these people need medical attention. They need his help.

He should try to help them at all costs, even if they killed him. This was the only way he could avenge the eleven-year-girl, whose throat he cut for the sake of her blood. This was the only way he could get revenge on them for what they did to him.