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

“You mean this isn’t what your
Dad was coming out here for?” Emma blurted out.

“
God,
no.
” Danny smiled. “If the adults knew
they’d be all over it and we wouldn’t get a chance to see
it.”

“
Danny,” Emma
took a deep breath to help calm herself before continuing. “We have
to tell the adults. This might be important.” She snorted and threw
her eyes up to heaven. “What am I saying? This is important. My
God, it might just be the most important discovery
ever.”

“But we’ll get in trouble,”
Danny whined as he thought of the punishment he was likely to
get.

“
Danny,”
Ricks moved forward and put his hand on the smaller boy’s shoulder.
“Emma’s right. This is huge. Something killed this vampire and if
we can figure out what it was then we might just be able to use it
against the others. Your discovery might just be the biggest thing
that has happened since these bastards came out of the shadows.
You’ll be a hero, man.”

“
Is that
before or after my Dad beats the hell out of me for coming out
here?” Danny sighed but was already thinking past his beating to
the part where he was credited with making the
discovery.

“After, of course,” Ricks
laughed and tousled the smaller boy’s hair.

Chapter 1

“But what actually killed it?”
Phil Regan asked with more urgency that he had intended. His voice
squeaked excitedly and he cringed inwardly as he forced himself to
calm down. It was important for him to appear in control,
especially now that he was in charge. Such immature outbursts would
not help him to cultivate the image of the competent and calm
leader that he was desperately trying to portray.

“
We’re not
entirely sure,” Adam Wilkins shrugged as he fidgeted with the
papers in front of him. Wilkins had never been in the council room
before, let alone the sole object of their attention, and he found
the experience far from pleasant. He looked over at Pat Smyth for
support and Pat
winked once and nodded
encouragingly.

The whole
community was buzzing with the news since his son and his friends
had returned with news of their discovery. While he had been
outraged at first that Danny had broken such an important rule, he
had soon become caught up in the discovery itself. He had been
among the last group rescued and had been one of the lucky ones who
still had his entire family with him. Both his wife and son had
been in the same group and, although they had been in different
rail cars, they had all managed to survive the daring rescue of
three months earlier. Many others were still missing their partners
or children, though whether they had been left behind or were
already long dead was anyone’s guess. Others still had had to come
to terms with being told that their loved ones had been killed by
stray bullets during the rescue itself. There had been a mass
burial for all of these as soon as those mourning them had overcome
the serum’s effects.

It had been a particularly
heart-rending affair. The absence of refrigeration made getting the
bodies buried a priority and many of those standing over the mass
grave were really too confused to understand fully what was
happening. It had been a tough time for many of them over the last
few months as they tried to cope with their losses and the new
world order. Many hadn’t coped too well and some had even had to be
sedated to allow them more time to come to terms with the way
things were. It seemed almost criminal to use more chemicals to try
and heal them from the serum but their minds were just too fragile
at this point.

For such a
small community the
se people were a
terrible drain on the resources and already there were grumblings
from those who had to shoulder the extra workload. Although Adam
was new to the community he could see that there were already too
many cracks appearing in their fragile existence. And then on top
of that, of course, there was the Harris issue.

It was hard
to believe that only three months had passed since Harris and his
team had brought them all back to the base. However, there had been
so many changes since then, and not all of them had been for the
best. He did not fully understand the situation himself, or even
what had gone before that had caused it to get so bad within the
community, but he really didn’t care too much. He owed Harris and
his team his life and the lives of his family and would defend them
to the last, but his work was of paramount importance and he
couldn’t afford to get involved in the in-fighting that threatened
to tear the community apart.

He looked
around the table at the faces of the committee and realised
suddenly how divorced he was from the workings of the community He
realised with a shock that he didn’t even know the names of many of
the people before him, except for Regan, of course. He didn’t like
Regan, or maybe it was the people who surrounded him - he wasn’t
quite sure. Regardless, he wished yet again that he had stood up
when it had mattered and added his voice to those others who had
tried to stop Harris and his team from being railroaded.

He hadn’t
agreed with it at the time but he had been so caught up in his work
that he hadn’t spared the time to make a stand. And now it was too
late. He could see people looking at him with growing impatience as
he blushed and pushed his thoughts to one side. He cleared his
throat to try and hide his embarrassment and then
continued.

“
As you know
I have been running tests with Pat around the use of high frequency
wireless bands around the outskirts of the city.” He looked around
at the people before him and sighed. There wasn’t even a flicker of
understanding in any of their faces. They were interested now, of
course - now that there had been a result - but none of them really
understood what he was trying to do.

“
My
background is in communications, or was, I should say,” he paused
for a moment. It was still difficult to take in the sheer horror of
their situation. Before he had been numbed by the serum life had
been very different. The vampires had emerged from the shadows, of
course, but it had not seemed likely that they would, or even
could, take over the world. Communications had not been as
instantaneous as they had once been so news travelled slowly in a
world without the resources to run many of the technological toys
everyone had so relied upon before. But, even so, stories of
vampires had still seemed unreal and divorced from their own, very
real, problems of survival.

He had been
one of the lucky ones. As a communications expert he had managed to
‘transfer’ from his home state to the state of Illinois where a
power plant and stockpiled resources made them a very rich state.
Some would have called it ‘jumping ship,’ he knew, but he had to
think of his family’s future. He had ended up in Chicago, working
to try and perfect old technologies to run on new power sources.
They had been well protected by the army, in fact, many people in
the city had even complained about the army’s presence; seeing it
as constrictive to their daily comings and goings. There had seemed
no way that such a large and prepared force could possibly be
defeated, even if the vampires were as real a threat as some made
out. It was entirely possible that would not even make it this far
north.

There had
been over ten thousand soldiers protecting the city of Chicago.
Tanks and artillery lined every hill and elevated mound around the
city and they stood ready to pour their terrifying ordinance on any
thrall force that approached. Vast excavations had been dug around
the city to house even more weapons of incredible power. Precious
resources had been poured into these excavations and many of the
city’s citizens complained bitterly of such waste. Surely this was
an overreaction. He still didn’t really know what had happened.
Smyth had mentioned something about the thralls poisoning the water
supply with the serum. But the thought of a whole city taken
without a shot having being fired was just terrifying.

This new
world he had woken up to was even more frightening, though. They
didn’t have the numbers for a knock-down one-on-one fight with the
vampires so they would have to be cleverer than they had been
during the war. To this end he had come to Pat Smyth with his
proposal. Pat, to his credit had immediately seen the benefits but
the council had refused to fund his ideas, citing limited resources
as their main reason for doing so.

This had been around the time
when the situation with Harris and his team had come to a head and
the council had not paid any further attention to him. It had been
Harris, despite the terrible pressure he had been under at the
time, who had given him the resources, both in time and manpower,
to turn his ideas into a reality. It galled him now that the
council would take credit for the efforts of those very people they
had abandoned. He shook himself from his reverie again and cleared
his throat nervously again before continuing.

“My theory revolved around the
fact that if the Vampires had such powerful senses that we might be
able to use that against them.” He paused again as he saw confusion
on the faces of some of the council and sighed inwardly.
How can
you run a community in the middle of a war with former accountants,
lawyers and sales people?

“
Because
the
vampires’ senses are so acute they
rely totally on them and so have become lazy,” he continued. “Now
that the vampires know that we exist, we have few
choices…”

“We can thank Harris for that,”
snorted Patricia Lohan from her position to the right of Regan.

“
Miss
Lohan.
” Wilkins felt his anger grow as
embarrassment for his own failure to act when he had the chance
suddenly overwhelmed him. “Your comments are neither warranted nor
welcome.” Suddenly all of the committee members straightened as
Wilkins’ comments hit home. “As you are all well aware, this study
would not have received any resources at all if it had been left to
you. We would not even be here discussing it at all if Peter Harris
hadn’t gone out of his way to ensure the safety of the very
community that has shunned him and his team. I am shamed that I did
not stand with him in his hour of need, as he has continued to
stand for us all. But that is not the issue here today. I will not,
however, tolerate any of these flippant and undeserved comments
from people who have had little to do with the continued survival
of this community.”

Silence
descended over the room and Pat Smyth tried hard not to burst out
laughing at the look of shock that was painted on Lohan’s face. Her
auburn hair seemed suddenly very dark framing a face that had gone
suddenly pale. Her eyes gleamed like flint and she seemed about to
reply when Ian Phelps suddenly interrupted.

“
I’m sure
that was not Miss Lohan’s intention.” Ian Phelps had an annoying
habit of licking his lips before he spoke and it meant that there
was always an annoying pause between sentences. “Though I do think
that your comments are overly harsh in this case. We are all in
this together after all.” He smiled as he licked his lips again but
his narrow features made him appear more feral than encouraging and
Wilkins merely continued to stare at him defiantly. Phelps had lost
a lot of weight in the last few months and his skin seemed
ill-fitting on him. His face still bore the marks of a long
addiction to alcohol, though he had insisted quite openly that he
had not touched a drop since being freed from the serum. As the
seconds ticked by, Phelps was forced to speak again. “Why don’t you
continue, Mr. Wilkins?”

Wilkins shot
one more hard look at Patricia Lohan and smiled inwardly as he saw
the emotions running across her face like a waterfall before he
nodded and continued his report. Pat Smyth wondered briefly whether
Wilkins had been wise to antagonise this beautiful but dangerous
woman.

“
If we merely
try to hide here in this city, the vampires’ amazing senses will
eventually sniff us out, especially when they might now know what
state to look for us in. They, the Vampires that is, are used to
covering a vast area by flying overhead and relying on their
ability to detect heat sources and their sense of smell to register
any community of humans. This worked well for them during the war
and in the aftermath. We humans generate quite an amount of heat
when collected in one small area, and our scent is quite
strong.”

“
Judging from
the amount of patrols recently they are certainly searching in this
general area, though it appears to be part of a larger search
pattern rather than one which is focused on this territory in
particular. They are being very thorough though, and, given enough
time, they would have found us long before now if we hadn’t been
able to mess with their senses a bit. Luckily for us, the vampires
in the neighbouring states are still reluctant to cross the border
too often and, when they do, they are still convinced of their own
infallibility and this over-confidence plays into our
hands.”

Wilkins
paused for a moment to take a drink of water and everyone in the
room seemed to hold their breaths as they waited for him to
continue. “They rely totally on their senses rather than physically
searching each town and city. To this end we placed wireless masts
around the city, though in reality many were already there from
before.” He looked around him and saw many of the eyes glazing over
- he was losing them again.