Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (10 page)

Without further thought he
rolled out from behind the rock and stitched a line of fire in the
general direction he thought the thrall to be. If he had chosen the
wrong position then he would be terribly exposed, but then, if he
had chosen incorrectly he would also be dead from the thralls who
were flanking him. At least this way, he had a fighting chance.

He weapon suddenly clicked on
empty and he realised with a curse that he had held his finger on
the trigger too long. All the training in using three round bursts
had gone out of his head when his fear had taken over. He was a
sitting duck where he was and he panicked as he groped for a spare
magazine. His heart hammered as he finally got the magazine in
place and slammed it home, expecting to see a thrall peek from
cover and pour fire into his unprotected position.

But no fire came. He scrambled
forward, remaining low to the ground, and saw the glazed eyes of a
thrall just left of where he had thought the fire had come from.
There was a neat hole in his forehead and, from what he could see,
no other marks at all. He had missed with every other shot.

Harris looked along the slope
and could see that his own forces were beginning to pour fire down
on the thralls along the slope, and the thralls were trying to
return fire up the slope and still cover themselves from the fire
from the road where Ricks and April continued to pour fire from
behind the overturned truck. Harris nodded in satisfaction and
moved back away from the fighting to try and see where the flanking
thralls were.

They were far closer than he had
expected and he actually came face to face with one of them as he
crawled around the cover. The thrall was as surprised as he was but
Harris recovered first as the thrall had not expected to find his
prey moving toward him. Harris rolled to the side and pulled the
trigger, his finger freezing on the trigger in shock and pouring
round after round into the thrall. The bullets tore into the flesh
of the thrall, spinning him around like a demented marionette. His
face was torn and shredded after the first few rounds but Harris
was still in shock and locked his finger on the trigger, empting
the magazine for a second time. His heart pounded in his chest and
he couldn’t hear anything else but the thump-thump of the blood
rushing through his system.

His hands shook as he thumbed
the magazine release and brought his hand down to his pocket to
pull another magazine free. Only there wasn’t another magazine. And
then he saw a second and then the third thrall rush from cover as
if in slow motion. The thralls were only thirty yards from him now
and their weapons jerked as they fired toward him. Luckily, their
movement as they ran caused their shots to fly wild but their sheer
strength kept their weapons steady enough that the shots were
getting closer. A bullet grazed his right leg and the pain seemed
to help him focus. Harris tucked his arms in and rolled back toward
the slope as the thralls closed the gap. Another bullet pinged off
a rock beside his face and something tore into his forehead.

Suddenly he rolled over
something hard and, for a second, he thought that a bullet had hit
him in the side. His hand was crushed painfully against something
hard and cold and, instinctively, he grabbed at it. He found he was
holding a thrall machine gun by the barrel and his heart skipped a
beat. Another bullet ploughed into the ground just beside his face
and dust flew into his eyes, blinding him. Suddenly the thralls’
weapons went silent and he heard a curse and the metal sliding as
they changed their magazines.

He did not have time to wipe his
eyes and check his newfound weapon so he merely reversed the
machine gun, pointed it in the direction he thought the thralls to
be, and pulled the trigger. His eyes were watering badly as they
tried to clear the dust and, by the time he could see vague shapes,
the machine gun was empty. He steeled himself for the bullet that
would strike his body but nothing came.

He wiped at his eyes and the
scene slowly came into focus. Both thralls lay dead in front of
him. His body began to shake uncontrollably as he realised how
close he had been to death. He could hear more fire behind him as
his forces still continued to fight for their lives, but he was
incapable of moving at that moment. He had never been so scared in
his life or so close to death, and he was totally unprepared for
the shock that racked his body.

He continued to see the muzzles
of the thralls’ weapons in his mind as they pointed at him. They
seemed to grow until the darkness within seemed to reach out to
him, as if it could swallow him whole. He wasn’t certain how many
thralls had made it behind them, he thought it had been three but
he couldn’t be certain. He tried to force himself to rise and check
for any more thralls, or at least to help his men, but he couldn’t
move.

He could feel the pain in his
leg and along his forehead, he was distantly aware that something
warm was seeping down his face. But he found he could not move,
despite the angry curses he directed at himself. In the distance
the gunfire reduced and then stopped completely. He lay there on
the grass and strained to hear voices, orders, anything that would
give him a clue as to who, if anyone, was still alive. Had they won
or was everyone dead? Tears of frustration poured down his cheeks
as he tried to roll over and get to his feet, but his body would do
nothing except shake.

Finally he heard movement behind
him but he had to wait until whoever it was came into his field of
vision. At one level he prayed that it would be one of his men,
but, on another, he did not want them to see him like this. He
heard the familiar high voice of Ricks and he felt relief wash over
him. They had won after all. But it had been too close. He had
wanted to protect the younger members of the team, and in so doing
had exposed the rest of the team to unacceptable risk. He had
nearly gotten them all killed today.

These thralls had been ready and
waiting for an attack and they’d been well trained on how to turn
the tide of the battle on their attackers. He had been
overconfident and his inexperience had been plain when the ambush
had gone wrong and he had had no backup to counter the thrall’s
response. Worse than that, though, was the fact that he had frozen
when they needed him most.

But who had these thralls been
expecting an attack from - Nero’s thralls or humans? Had the
thralls figured out where they were or was this just a coincidence?
Either way, they couldn’t afford to assume they were still safe on
this side of the state line. This new development would only make
their survival even harder now. He would also have to warn Phelps
and his community: the wireless protection wouldn’t stop the
thralls if they came looking for them.

These thoughts, and others,
continued to flood his mind as he became aware of raised voices
close by. He felt hands on his body as they searched for wounds but
then everything began to go black. He saw Sandra’s face swim before
him briefly, but whether this was real or imagined he wasn’t
sure.

And then the darkness washed
over him.

Chapter 6

Walking into the Cave was less
like a homecoming and more like returning to the scene of a great
tragedy. Sandra Harrington felt her hand grope for Harris’ before
she knew what she was doing and she ignored his glance as she saw
him turn toward her out of the corner of her eye. The house above
the complex had been completely destroyed by the thralls and the
vampires a few months ago during their assault. It looked empty and
desolate and yet it was still filled with memories. They had not
spent very long here before but, somehow, it seemed to retain the
very essence of those they had left behind. She could almost see
their faces among the ruins as she approached the main entrance to
the house.

She still wasn’t convinced that
this was a good idea. There were just so many memories here in
these walls. Her father had died here, along with too many of her
friends. But Harris was right about one thing, they had to stay
somewhere and, being outside the protection of Adam Wilkins’
wireless disruptor and with the vampires’ incredible senses to
consider, she had to admit that it certainly made sense to stay
here. Even if it tore her apart emotionally to do so.

The thoughts of her father made
her suddenly falter and Harris stopped beside her. To his credit,
he didn’t rush her. She had not known her father long in peace
time. His long estrangement from her mother had left a hole in her
life that she had not realised was there until she had begun to
spend time with him again. It had been just before the war that she
had visited him, and then events had overtaken them all. She still
had no idea what had become of her mother, and it pained her to
think of her in a cage somewhere, slowly dying of abuse and serum
overdose.

She remembered how her father
had told her one day, before the vampires had taken over
completely, that she must put the fear and worry for her mother to
one side if she wanted to remain sane. She had really tried to do
that over the last two years. But it was hard. She and her mother
had been so close, and she missed her guidance. In fact, she was
spending so much time lately trying to work out what drove Peter
Harris that she had pointedly ignored her own motivations and
feelings. In a rare flash of clarity she realised that her own
motives for continuing to fight were not a million miles away from
his, though hers were a little more selfish. She wanted to find her
mother, or at least remove the threat of the terrible death that
the serum threatened while she continued the search.

She tried to shake her maudlin
thoughts away but the house in front of her was so steeped in
memories that she found it hard to lift herself. She took a deep
breath and smiled briefly at Harris, who still waited patiently
beside her. The others of the group were less understanding and
they shuffled incessantly as they waited on her to move. Some of
them kept glancing up to the clear blue sky as if expecting to see
a plague of vampires rushing toward them. She wasn’t entirely sure
why they were all waiting on her but assumed Harris had instructed
them to allow her to lead them into the building.

She scanned the outside of the
building as she tried to convince her legs to move. She took in the
bullet holes that stitched along those few broken walls that still
stood, though they were pitifully few and looked like jagged
sentinels, lonely and forlorn, among the rubble. Through the
shattered windows she could see glimpses of the destruction that
had been wrought that day; furniture still lay overturned or
shattered around the rooms and windows gaped like toothless mouths
with the occasional shattered fragment still stuck stubbornly in
the frame.
Jesus, how did any of us actually get out of
there,
she wondered as she surveyed the damage.

She began to walk forward again
but her legs seemed to grow weaker with every step. She really
didn’t know if she was up to removing the bodies of her friends.
Too much had happened in the last few weeks. They had lost too many
good friends on their last raid and, even though they had saved
over a thousand prisoners and driven a wedge between the vampires
and the thralls, they had also caused a split within their own
community. She wondered which would prove the more damaging in the
long run.

While there had never been any
question that she would follow Peter Harris, she did wonder briefly
if they were following the best path. Their effectiveness as a
group was questionable at best with their small numbers, but Harris
had insisted that they continue on and his drive and confidence had
been enough for the others to follow. At least, for now.

As the time approached when Pat
Smith had said that the serum would begin killing prisoners en
masse Harris seemed to grow more frantic and bold, trying to save
as many as he could. While she could understand that he wanted to
save others, and while it was commendable, he also had a duty
toward those he had already saved. Time was running out and Harris
seemed to be growing more desperate. Their last ambush was a
perfect example.

While she agreed that it was
essential that they stop the patrol from reporting back, it might
have been better to have taken more time to plan and hit the patrol
on their way back rather than executing a poorly planned and
hurried ambush. While they had not lost anyone this time, they had
been too close to being overrun and either killed or captured for
her liking. The thralls were no longer the pushovers they had been.
Something had changed, and they would have to adapt or die.

Her mind swirled with these
troubled thoughts as she drew nearer the house. Her stomach
squirmed as she noted the dark stains still covering the walls
where blood had splattered during that mad, violent attack. At
first she had thought that the stains were still growing, seeping
further through the shattered walls like a cancer spreading
ineluctably inch by inch, corrupting everything it touched, but she
shook the feeling away. Vampires might be real, but a ruined,
haunted house was just too much. Her legs almost buckled as the
small group approached their new home. She really wasn’t ready to
face the desiccated corpses of her friends.

She felt guilty that she had
forgotten them once they had found their new home. They should have
come back here and given them the respect they had earned through
their sacrifice. Suddenly she felt unworthy. She was about to turn
back when Harris moved to the side and motioned for her to enter.
The rest of the group looked at her expectantly and she looked at
the door with more than a little trepidation. For a moment the
doorway seemed to become pitch black, as if there was nothing past
the threshold except a dark, cold void. She began to turn back,
already forming an excuse in her mind, when the sun suddenly popped
out from behind a cloud and the door transformed back into merely a
door.