Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (22 page)

She forced
herself to calm down and made her fingers slow their dire tidings
so that Harris could understand but the confusion etched on his
face made her feel more desperate. She saw Sandra come over and she
signed her warning again. It took a precious number of minutes and
Ricks and Warkowski were already gone from view, but she forced
herself to continue signing slowly.

Suddenly
Harris’s face dropped as he caught enough words to get the gist.
She saw him turn to Jackson but she couldn’t see his lips so she
did not know if he had gotten the right message or not. But at
least he was doing something. She saw Sandra ask what was going on
and she felt relief as she saw Harris’s lips move with the words
she had tried so hard to get across.

“
April saw
two thralls go into the pens and she read their lips. There’s
another convoy heading into town. They’re bringing the prisoners
along the same road where we plan on hitting the waste. If the hit
goes ahead then we’ll end up consigning those people to a horrible
death by radiation.”

“
Not to
mention having another twenty thralls coming up behind us when
we’re already engaged,” Jackson sighed as he laid a hand on April’s
shoulder. “Thank you,” he mouthed in exaggerated slowness. “It
seems you’ve saved us all.”

April barely
saw his last words as the tears welled in her eyes. Maybe there was
a place for her on the team after all. She saw Ricks and Warkowski
come back over the ridge and the news travelled fast as the group
settled down to adapt their plan. It was funny, she realised, but
this time she somehow felt more involved. This time no one moved
their heads too far so she could not see their lips. This time she
even found herself contributing. This time she was part of the
team.

Chapter 14

Crossing the border felt strange
to William Carter. It was as if he had passed into a different
world. The road didn’t look any different; the surrounding scenery
looked pretty much the same, maybe a little more overgrown than the
main routes in his own state, but still relatively the same. But
something had definitely changed. This was Nero’s territory and
Nero was a completely unknown factor. He may have been low down in
the ranks before his sudden, recent rise, but even he knew of the
respect and fear that everyone held for Nero.

He had heard
the stories of Nero’s cruelty and
his
genius. He had heard rumours of how Nero had forged his own empire
over the bodies of anyone who stood in his way; human, thrall or
vampire. The fact that he had disappeared from the scene once he
had his territory had been a relief to the council and, especially,
to those whose territories bordered his.

No one
had seen or spoken to Nero in at least a year
that he knew of, and invading with such a force might very well be
the worst mistake of his life. On the other hand, if he didn’t find
these humans he would almost certain lose everything anyway. He had
sent his ambassador but the patrol had never returned. Did Nero
know he was here already? Was there a huge force just over the
horizon waiting to tear them to pieces? He hadn’t been this scared
when he had led his campaign to join the two states together. It
wasn’t that he was frightened of action; he was terrified of the
legend surrounding Nero. The stories that surrounded the vampire
were incredible. Who knew what a true vampire was capable of?
Wentworth had only been a weak baby in comparison, and even Von
Kruger didn’t have anything like the reputation of Nero.

The very fact
that Nero had such a reputation had convinced him for some time
that there was no way that the humans could possibly live in this
state. Even Von Kruger had mocked him the night before for even
suggesting it. But too much pointed toward it now that he could no
longer ignore it. If he could convince Nero or his thralls to talk
before they moved against him then there was a chance he might just
survive. You never knew, he might even profit from this trip yet.
His main worry was whether the humans were here at all or had he
just fallen for a very elaborate trap. He knew that the humans were
well capable of laying such a trap, hadn’t they already set two
entire stats at each others throats?

Had the
humans laid a false trail that was even now leading him to his
death? He wished he could stop thinking completely. He preferred to
act rather than analyse everything
.
However, his new role as leader was forcing him to do a lot more
thinking than he was comfortable with. He just wasn’t a strategist;
he had never been able to see the whole picture before. He
preferred working to a plan that had been laid out for him. But if
he wanted to rule he would have to start planning ahead and
anticipating his enemies.

He knew that
he had to consolidate his position. Now that there was no hope of a
peace with Von Kruger it was more important than ever to remove the
threat that the humans posed. He also needed their weaponry to back
up his threat to Von Kruger and to ensure that his fledgling empire
could defend itself from all those who surrounded him. He had to
have something that would give them all pause. Something that would
make them think twice before committing their forces against him.
And the humans had what he wanted.

He was
probably the only one who knew of their weaponry and how
devastating it was. If he could steal this weapon then he would be
able to consolidate his position. In fact, with this weapon he
would be able to take the fight to the vampires and unite all
thralls under his banner. It wasn’t that he was noble, that he
wanted to make life better for other thralls. No, he wanted power
and the best way to achieve and hold that power was to annihilate
the competition. But he would need a lot of thralls if he wanted to
make a move against the vampires.

His meeting
with Von Kruger was still fresh in his mind, and, the more he
thought of it, the more he marvelled that he was still alive. Von
Kruger was mad, of that he was certain. Something had happened to
change the vampire. Whether it had been the battle-lust that had
driven them to attack the other vampires, he did not know. But
something had definitely changed. He had served under Von Kruger
for too many years not to know that. While the vampire had always
been hot-headed and impetuous, he was also incredibly cunning and
his performance last night was far from what he would have
expected. The problem now was that this madness would make Von
Kruger completely unpredictable, and that would make it virtually
impossible for Carter to plan effectively against how he might
react. He had to find these humans.

He looked out
over the bonnet of the jeep and saw the road disappear around a
corner in the distance. It was still strange to drive on a highway
completely devoid of any other traffic. There were abandoned wrecks
every few feet where the wreckage of the old world had been pushed
to the side at some time in the past and left abandoned. There were
even a few desiccated corpses still behind the wheel of some of the
vehicles just like a disaster movie he had seen from before the
war.

Nero
obviously wasn’t as interested in housekeeping as he was. He had
ordered his forces to clear away the corpses and the abandoned
vehicles so that they could travel quickly on the roads. Nero had
left everything just as it had been when the war had ended. Or were
the abandoned vehicles merely there to give that impression? God,
he hated this.

As he looked
at these husks he shuddered as he realised how fleeting and tenuous
the rule of man had turned out to be. They had ruled the earth for
so long and had even begun to stretch to the stars, and then, in
the blink of an eye, it had all disappeared. It was a sobering
thought. And one worth remembering before his own growing empire
fell into the same rut and went the same way.

The cloud of dusk could be seen
for miles, like the harbinger to a great storm. But this storm was
not created by nature. Alfonso Corelli watched the dust roil
upwards like the aftermath of a huge explosion as it began to paint
the horizon in lurid colours. His heart began to beat faster. The
sky was a beautiful clear blue but the air was freezing, causing
his breath to form small plumes of mist each time he exhaled. The
snows had gone for now but the temperature had not risen in weeks,
and it seemed to Alfonso that he had not been warm since before the
vampires had come. He was nineteen years old and seemed to belong
to neither group within the community he had just run away from. He
was too old to be a ‘Wolverine’ but still too young to be noticed
by the adults.

He had only
been ‘awake’
, as they now called it when
they were weaned off the serum, for six weeks or so. He had been in
that last batch that Harris and his team had rescued before he had
been thrown out, and he had never really gotten the opportunity to
thank him. He, and many of the hundreds who had just been rescued,
had still been too groggy from the serum to know what was going on,
let alone help. They had woken into a community that was already
fractured and reclusive.

The sudden
influx
of many hundreds of hungry and
confused refugees had caused a deep resentment to fester. Those in
the community resented their meagre supplies being shared further
and those who had just arrived reacted to this hatred with a hatred
of their own. Harris had become a focus for both sides, some blamed
him for the problems and others considered him the solution to the
problem. The committee wallowed ineffectively in the
middle.

Alfonso
still had a mother,
father and a sister that were still missing. They had not been
among the dead in the train but that did not mean that they were
still alive. However, it did mean that there was still a chance
that they could be prisoners of the thralls. It had been obvious
that no one in the community was prepared to organise any more
rescue parties. They promised to look into it, of course, but
nothing was ever done. They had told him that they just didn’t have
enough food or resources. There were many others among the
community that demanded that they continue to send parties out.
They needed closure if they were to move on. But the committee
refused. It was easy to see that none of them had missing family
members. Alfonso had seen the resentment grow in the community over
the last few weeks, but no one was actually doing anything. They
just complained and had meetings in secret where they grumbled and
groaned. It was all so frustrating and Alfonso had done the only
thing he could think of.

He had left
the community three days ago. It had been easy enough, as security
was not something they took as seriously as they should now that
Harris was gone. He had been assigned a position in the fields
where his youth and strength would be an asset in growing food and
that gave him plenty of opportunity to slip away. He wondered
briefly if they had even noticed that he was gone yet. They had
hardly noticed him when he was there.

He had set
out to find Peter Harris and join him and his group to help rescue
others, and hopefully find his family. But it hadn’t turned out
that way. He hadn’t found any sign of Harris and the others at all
and he had searched everywhere in the city he could think of. Now,
he was freezing and hungry. He had left with only the clothes he
had on, and had been lucky to find a light jacket in an abandoned
store along the way. It smelt a bit and the colour was awful but it
was warm. He hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since he had
left and his stomach hurt. More worrying was the fact that he had
begun to get dizzy in the last day or so. He really didn’t know
what he should do.

He had left
with little thought as to the reality of this new world. He had
thought that he would find Harris and be welcomed with open arms,
but the reality was much more frightening. He could actually die
out here. But could he really go back? Would they even take him
back? His youth and his burning desire to find his family had kept
him going up till now but the nights were so cold that he had had
to stay awake and keep walking just to keep warm.

He hadn’t
slept for two whole days now and he could barely manage to put one
foot in front of the other. He really wasn’t sure he could survive
another night. He had wandered out past the city limits and had
reached the summit of a large hill to the west of the city where he
had hoped to see some sign of Harris and the others. At some level
he had accepted that if he had not found some sign of them from
here that he would have to head back to the community or risk dying
of exposure. He had felt defeated as he reached the summit, and
then he had seen the dust in the distance.

Now he was
of
two minds. Was this Harris and his men
returning from another successful raid? But even as he thought that
he knew that it couldn’t be - Harris was far too clever to let
himself be seen from such a distance. That meant that it must be
thralls. A lot of thralls judging from the size of the dust plume.
They were coming from the west and that meant that they were
Carter’s army. He might be only nineteen but he certainly wasn’t
stupid; if Carter found out that Nero no longer ruled in this
state, then it wouldn’t be long before the whole state would be
crawling with thralls again.

He had to
warn the others. He wondered how much good it would do, though;
their policy of hide and hope the danger will go away just wouldn’t
work this time. It would be better to warn Harris, of course. He’d
realise the importance of turning back this force - but he couldn’t
find him so he would have to go back to the community and hope that
they could get word to Harris and the others.