Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (16 page)

“
Steele did
not tell Von Richelieu of our existence. He knew already.” Reilly
paused as he let the impact of his statement sink in. “Someone in
this community had been passing information back to him long before
Harris sent Steele on his mission. It is my belief that that person
is responsible for this atrocity.”

“
That’s
farcical,” Phelps snapped. “If the vampires knew where we were,
they would crush us. Why would they leave us here while we grew in
numbers?”

“
To be
honest, I have no idea,” Reilly admitted. “That’s one of the
reasons we did not tell anyone. Harris…”

“It’s always comes back to
Harris, doesn’t it?” Phelps interrupted again. “My God, that man is
always in the thick of it, ruining it for everyone else.”

“
That is
enough of that.
” Phelps stopped as if
slapped and Phil Regan moved to the centre of the room. Everyone
was shocked that Regan would interrupt his own man. Everyone in the
room was aware that Phelps was quickly growing out from Regan’s
shadow but Regan was still leader of the community and had the
final say on everything. For now, anyway.

“
Father,”
Regan began as the small room seemed to press in on them all. “We
have not always agreed on things, but what you have said is very
worrying. I have kept my own council about a number of matters
recently as, I must admit, the sheer impossibility of our position
here has overwhelmed me. I do not hold Peter Harris in the esteem
that you do, but I also did not wish him ill. His banishment was
based on the fact that he had made our position more precarious by
telling the vampires we were here. If this is not the case, why
then did he not offer this information at the time?”

“
He did not
feel that he would be believed in light of Steele’s presence in the
community and the raw emotion of the night.” Reilly paused as Regan
had the good grace to drop his eyes. “Besides,” Reilly continued,
“keeping the knowledge that we had a traitor in the community was
our only way of trying find out who they were and what their agenda
might be.” Reilly paused again as he swept the faces of the others.
“He was prepared to be sent away in order to try and make the
traitor more confident in the hope that they might slip
up.”

There was a silence in the room
that made them all uncomfortable.

“
But why
would the vampires leave us here to grow in strength? That makes no
sense,” Phelps insisted as he tried to regain some
momentum.

“
We don’t
know,” admitted Reilly with a sigh, “but it would seem that Von
Richelieu had known about us for some time and is happy to let us
scratch out a living as long as we don’t threaten him directly. But
he must have an agenda, and our hope was that, if we found who it
was who passing information to him, we might be able to figure it
out. He must need us for something.”

“But how could anyone pass
information to such monsters?” Lucy Irvine shuddered as she
spoke.

“
We don’t
know, I’m afraid we don’t even know how the information even gets
to him at this time.”

“
No.” Lucy
shook her head
violently. “I mean how
could they? This bastard has signed all our death warrants. Who
could do such a thing and why?” Everyone was stunned into silence.
Lucy Irvine was a quiet woman, hard as a rock but quiet
nonetheless. And she never cursed.

“
I imagine
the why is easily answered: they obviously feel that the promised
reward, whatever it might be, outweighs any moral objection.”
Reilly scanned the faces in front of him.

“But who could do that? We have
children here.” Regan was white with shock.

“
Well,”
Father Reilly looking uncomfortable as, for the first time, he was
unable to look into the eyes of the person he spoke to, “we had
thought that it might be you.”

“
My God,
Father,” Regan spluttered as his face grew red, but not from anger.
He was visibly shaken. “I am not a monster. I will admit to
opinionated, crude and even selfish, but this
is…unthinkable.”

“
The fact
remains, though,” Reilly continued as he dragged his eyes back to
Regan, “we do have someone who is willing to betray us all for
their own gain. And this,” he swept his hand around the room, “only
goes to show that, whatever their agenda might be, it has
escalated.” There was silence as the committee members considered
this.

“
It’s worse
than that, Father.
” Regan suddenly went
white again as a thought struck him. “The food storage areas are
not easily accessed. Miss Irvine came to me a few weeks ago,
worried that if the general populace knew just how bad our stocks
were that there might be a panic. She suggested a few changes to
the security arrangements. I agreed and they were implemented last
week. I had not gotten around to informing the committee as I did
not see that it really mattered to us as a group, and we’ve had
such a lot on our plates recently.” He paused as he looked around
at the others.

“
No one here
would have known it, but, as of last week, the only people who had
access to this area were members of the committee. You may not have
seen anything different than before, but there is a guard posted
out of sight twenty-four hours a day near the entrance. They are
under orders to let no one but authorised personnel into this
section and to remain out of sight at all other times. We did not
want it to be obvious.” He paused as he looked at the faces of
those around him. “Whoever did this has, unwittingly, narrowed the
field somewhat. I’m afraid our traitor is standing among us at this
very moment.”

Chapter 10

Harris looked out over the room
and took a deep breath before beginning.

“
Okay, we all
know the potential impact of the patrol we hit. Either the
thralls
now know that we are here in this
general area and they sent that last patrol to suck us in or they
are testing a theory. Either way, they are beginning to think along
the right lines and that’s dangerous. That last patrol nearly took
us apart. They were far better trained than we are in tactics and
we were lucky to survive.” He paused as he looked out over the
faces of the people he had nearly led to their deaths.

“
Before this
we survived by doing the unexpected and by blind luck, I have to
admit. Steele knew what he was doing and always managed to add
something to any plans I came up with, but now things have changed.
Whoever is leading the thralls knows what he is doing. He might not
know exactly where we are, but he is narrowing the options far too
quickly for my liking. When that patrol fails to report in they
will have narrowed it even further.”

“They might think it was Nero’s
forces, Peter,” Denis Johnson spoke from the back of the room.

“
They might,”
Harris agreed, “but there’s only one way for them to be sure and
that’s to send a larger force over the border next time. One which
we cannot hope to attack.”

“
But if they
do that they’
ll see that there are no
thralls patrolling the border,” Benjamin Franklin
interrupted.

“Exactly,” Harris agreed, “and
once they do that it won’t be long before they find the
others.”

“So what do we do?” Delilah
Franklin asked.

“
Well, that’s
why we’re having this meeting, Delilah,” Harris sighed. “I’m afraid
I’m not sure what the best course of action is. If the next patrol
is any bigger than the last one then they’ll wipe the floor with
us. They’re just too well trained and will be expecting an attack.
We can’t let them come across the border either though. The only
thing keeping them in their own territory is the fear of reprisal
from Nero. Once they discover that he is no longer in control they
will sweep through this territory until they come across another
vampire colony.”

“
We need to
divert them somewhere else.” Ricks sounded almost apologetic and he
had to repeat himself before everyone heard him.

“Yes,” Harris agreed, “I agree,
however, we tried that by attacking further south and they seem to
have ignored that.”

“
Maybe we
just need something bigger to get their attention, then,” Ricks
persisted.

“
What do you
mean, son.
” Benjamin turned in his chair
and regarded the young boy.

“
Well,” Ricks
began and then dried up as he saw all their faces suddenly staring
at him intently.

“
It’s all
right, Ricks, no one will laugh. We’re all in this together,”
Harris encouraged him.

“
I was just
thinking that, at the moment, we seem to be their top priority and
they’re throwing lots of resources into finding us. If they needed
those resources for some other emergency then we might have more
time to prepare.”

“
Good idea,”
Johnson agreed and then sighed. “But we’re high on their list for a
good reason; we’re siphoning away their only bargaining chip with
the vampires. It would have to be a pretty big distraction. Have
you anything in mind specifically?”

“
I’m not
sure,” Ricks began and then shrugged as if he had just made a
decision. “I grew up north of here, close to Fort Wayne in Indiana.
We moved down here just before the war. My dad reckoned that it
would be too cold with the fuel shortages and all.”

“
That’s all
very interesting, son, but we really do need to stick to the
agenda,” Franklin interrupted, frustration adding an edge to his
voice that he did not intend. His face softened almost immediately.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair.”

“
We’re all on
edge.” H
is sister laid a hand on his arm
and then leaned toward Ricks. “Go on, love,” she grinned at the
red-faced Ricks. “I’ll keep this angry bear in check for you from
now on.”

Ricks glanced
around at the others and, seeing encouragement in their faces, he
continued. “Well, as I said, we used to live near Fort Wayne, and
that was a pretty busy place before the war what with the Nuclear
Plant and all.”

“
Excuse
me,
did you just say nuclear plant?” Al
Warnback exclaimed in shock. Warnback was one of the men who had
joined the group when Ben Franklin and his sister had come across
and had proven himself a useful, if somewhat petulant addition to
the group. It was obvious that he was here because of Delilah, and
that he really hadn’t thought through what he was signing up for
when he joined them. “What do you plan on doing, blow up the
fucking plant? Jesus, kid, are you crazy?”

Ricks stopped as if struck and
went bright red.

Sandra
Harrington gasped, ignoring Warnback’s outburst. “I had forgotten
about the plants. Jesus, are they still running?”

“
They must be
or we’d have seen a few mushroom clouds on the horizon by now.”
Johnson rubbed his chin. “But who’s looking after them now? Shit,
if we survive the fucking serum, are we all going to die in a
nuclear winter when the plants blow from neglect?”

Harris put
his hand up to halt any further conversation. He did not know the
area particularly well and had not known that there was a nuclear
plant so close to them. He knew, of course, that the thralls still
had power, but he hadn’t really considered where it was coming
from. God, there was just so much to consider and he felt more and
more inadequate as time went by. “Ricks,” he began, “was that your
plan, to blow the plant?”

“
Of course
not,” Ricks said under his breath, “if the Dade plant went up it
would kill us all.”

“
Even this
far s
outh?” Johnson asked in
shock.

“
Most of the
country’s nuclear plants are in the east of the country. With the
exception of a few in Southern California and Arizona, the western
states are nuclear free. We happen to be in the worst possible
place if they start to blow.”

“Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

“How likely is it that they
would blow?”

“
Well,” Ricks
considered his response before answering. “The plants are built to
run pretty much self contained, but they do need maintenance, and
if the thralls don’t have the right people looking after them, then
who knows? I do know that the reactor heads in the Dade plant were
scheduled for replacement just before the war, so it’s only a
matter of time before erosion takes its toll.”

“
But if the
thralls have the right people in there, it should be okay, right?”
Warnback asked eagerly.

“The Dade facility was forced to
close for three years due to safety concerns a while ago.” Ricks
replied.

“But they fixed it, right?”
Warnback insisted.

“Not according to a veteran NRC
structural engineer who stated at the hearing that there were not
enough safety procedures in place at the plant.”

“Jesus!”

“The NRC reduced the plants
safety rating because of the report,” Ricks continued, warming to
his subject.

“
But they let
it reopen?” Harris asked.

“
Yes, they
did. The plant also uses a complicated system using feedwater pumps
to cool the reactor which is much slower than the NRC normally
advises. A number of experts have gone on record stating that this
cooling system would not be good enough to cool the core in an
emergency. Dade is the only plant in the country with an inferior
cooling system.” Ricks sighed.