The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (40 page)

Bertrand returned fire, causing some of them to run back into the cloud at the intersection. He wanted to pursue them but feared shooting at his comrades, so he used the respite to run farther along the tunnel looking for better cover. He needed to reload and breath and figure out how he could rejoin his people without getting his head blown off.

"Bert!" shouted Joyce's dim voice in his earpiece. "Where are you?"

"Way beyond the intersection. Anyone you see up there is a ripper."

"We're trying to get to you but they keep coming at the intersection."

For the first time since the fight began, Bertrand heard Bobs' voice. "Bert? That you I hear? Where are you?"

"Separated from Joyce." Then a thought occurred to him. "Joyce, Bobs, can you guys hear each other?"

Two voices responded, "No," one stepping on and partially cutting off the other.

He was on the cusp, right between them, the curve cutting off the signals between the two companies and leaving Bertrand as the bridge.

"Joyce! Jeff! I'm around a sharp curve and there're no rippers here. I can hear Bobs so she must be down tunnel. I'm going to link up with her. Follow when you can."

"Don't die, Bert!" It was Joyce's voice, and it thrilled Bertrand. Maybe she loved him as much as he loved her. Maybe that night in the bunker truly wasn't a one-of.

He turned and ran on alone, deeper into the heart of the mountain.

The florescent lights became fewer and more spread out the deeper he went, the white electrical wire hanging between them like laundry lines. Bertrand ran on, Bobs's voice growing more distinct as he hurried down the tunnel. It continued to twist, convincing him that this was the original mine. The shoring now was a mix of nineteenth-century timber and modern steel jacks; the latter would provide little cover in firefight.

A shout ahead also came through the walkie.

"Bobs! I can hear you. I'm coming down a tunnel," Bertrand called back.

"You're going to land in a natural cavern. If you're coming down the tunnel I think you are, you'll see us across the way. I'll wave my flashlight at you 'cause there's not much light down here."

Bertrand was just wondering how much farther he'd have to run, his throat parched from rock dust and a lack of water. Another mistake. He should have carried a water bottle. Suddenly the rock walls disappeared and Bertrand found himself in an underwhelming cavern, the ceiling barely double his height. Fat pillars of rock had been left by miners to hold up the roof, and many modern jacks filled in other spaces to make it look more like a dark forest that a cavern. He switched on his light and flashed it around. If he were a ripper, this was where he would have made his stand, but no muzzle flashes replied to his light. Instead, about half a baseball field away, another flashlight waved at him.

As he crossed the cavern, the detritus of human habitation spoke of suffering and confinement. One area stank of defecation and urination—a makeshift latrine. In other places, clothing, mats and sleeping bags littered the floor. An empty pot sat on a camp stove, and mugs were lined up, running away from it like place-holders in a line for food.

When Bertrand reached Bobs, he wanted to hug her in relief but knew that would send all the wrong signals. She stood with her AR-15 slung over her shoulder, gray dust coating her face and clothes, sweat streaks running down her forehead and neck. A cluster of her followers and the ever-present Terry stood with her at a steel door.

"Bert. Great. Is Joyce close behind, because we think we're going to have company in a minute? Come on in here and see."

She led the way through the door and suddenly they were in the twenty-first century. A bank of flat-screen monitors glowed on one wall, each showing a different security camera image: a sunny parking lot with their buses, the smashed helicopters in the background; a cloudy tunnel punctuated with muzzle flashes and men without armbands—rippers—fleeing a charge by Jeff and Joyce with Emile close behind; many rippers massing in a tunnel with one waving them forward; women and children pouring out a tunnel and into daylight, their clothing in rags and their skin stretched tight across their bones from starvation; a man sitting at a desk in a room looking at a laptop. He wore the cloak and the black leather, the mix of modern and medieval. Vlad the Scourge.

"That's the bastard." Bertrand pointed at the screen.

Vlad looked up from his computer and right at the camera—at them. He held up his gloved hand and crooked his finger to invite them to come in. He pointed to his left. Bertrand looked left and saw another steel door. He pointed to it and Vlad nodded.

"He's isolated," said Bobs. "Someone just needs to go in there and kill him."

Bertrand wanted to, but common sense prevailed. If Vlad was inviting him in, then it was a trap.

"We lock him in and deal with that first." Bertrand pointed to the screen that showed rippers moving along a tunnel. "And that. Where are they?

"The humans were here and I've got my people getting them out. I'll deal with the rippers, but I need you to kill Vlad."

"I'll wait for Jeff and Joyce. He's not going anywhere."

Bobs looked from Bertrand to the screen showing Vlad.

"Do you know what my mistake was at the community center, Bert?"

"Bobs, this is no time for—"

"I didn't plan how to motivate people beyond our escape. See, I motivated the whole neighborhood to band together there, and for a couple of weeks we were the safest place in the city, but then the rippers came in force."

"Bobs, you can tell me—"

"Let me fucking finish!" she shouted. "I motivated them to defend the center, even when guys twice my age were blubbering in the corner. I was the only one who believed we could not only get away, but kill a bunch of rippers doing it. I burned them alive and it felt great. But my fuck up was to have no plan for the next night. So there I was, stuck in the house with only Terry. I'd run around that day trying to convince people to move into a bunch of houses that could mutually defend each other, but most were trying to scatter out of the city, and so too late I was isolated and alone."

Terry and the others had shifted at a subtle hand sign from Bobs.

"What's going on here?"

"You don't know how scared I was that night. I literally nearly shit myself because I was sure I was dead. Then you came charging in." Bobs backed up toward the exit, and now Terry and several others had their guns leveled at Bertrand.

"I saved you," said Bertrand. It was an accusation. "I saved your goddamn life."

"Yes. And I need you to do it again."

"Bobs, we've won. Just wait for Joyce and the others to come up and we'll open this door and lob a hand grenade in and go in shooting. We could do it right now but I used mine up. You guys got any?"

"Bert, there's a long winter coming, and Father Alvarez showed me that religion can motivate people. They have to believe they're immortal in some way to hang together and fight. That's why religion doesn't work well in peacetime. People don't need it to give them courage to fight unless they've got cancer or something like that."

Bertrand pointed at the screen that showed Vlad. "We've won for god's sake! We kill this guy and everything goes back to normal."

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!" Bobs scream pushed Bertrand back a step in surprise. "The population of the planet is probably three-quarters of what it was last Christmas, and by next spring it'll be half, maybe even less! Right now there are millions of rippers just in America alone and they all need to feed—every fucking night. Millions more are going to die if they don't starve. Normal is over forever. I only came along on this stupid jaunt because I need to motivate people and for that I need a hero, preferably a martyr."

"What the—"

"I've built you into a bigger than life hero, Bert." Her eyes flashed. "I've made you a god, one that wouldn't give into the rippers like all the pussies in Washington and New York and on the west coast. We're going to have to fight their Daylight Brigades during the day too, you know. I've got a winter of starvation and civil war ahead of me."

"I'll be there. I promise we'll make this work. We've got all the Erics people—"

"I hate that shit. You know what he told me? I took his stupid test and it said I was the same soul as that evil monster in there." She stabbed a finger at the screen where Vlad sat, patiently watching them. "He said I'm the Believing General—a general so ruthless that he'll sacrifice anything to win. But that's not what I'm about. I just want to make sure that I'm never in the position I was that night that you rescued me, waiting for God to send a miracle. You were my miracle, Bert, but God helps those who help themselves. I won't be caught like that again. I'm not afraid to fight, but I'll never be trapped."

The monitor that featured the cavern showed flitting movement as rippers moved in. Bobs noted the movement. She put something down on the desk, but Bertrand was too busy studying her face to note what it was. All that was important now was to divert her from this course.

"Here comes the rippers into my trap," she said. "I'm going out to deal with them now. See my guys taking up positions? See Barry's guys coming down the tunnel behind the rippers. We've got them. Their only way out will be up toward Joyce's Raiders or up the tunnel after their slaves to the sun, and it's not even noon."

"Then lets lock him in and go mop up."

Bobs shook her head. "You go in there and kill that fuck or die trying, and if you try to come out this way Terry will shoot you, and I'll tell the world you died dragging Vlad into the sun. I need my martyr, Bert."

Gunfire sounded from the cavern. Terry opened the door and all of Bobs's young men backed out, their guns pointing at Bertrand. Bobs backed out last.

"Remember, Terry will be outside the door and he'll blow your head off if you come out. Go and kill that monster for me. Be my hero just one more time. You know you want to face him."

She slammed the door.

On the monitor, Bertrand could see Terry and three others with blue armbands take up positions on either side of the door to the security room. Vlad looked up at him from the other monitor.

Bertrand could just wait. He could sit with his Winchester pointed at the door, with Vlad on the other side and wait for cooler and friendlier people to come within range of his walkie, but the truth was that Bertrand burned for revenge. He wasn't afraid of Vlad. He wanted him dead.

Bobs was right. He wanted to face Vlad the Scourge.

Bertrand raised his shotgun and put a hand on the doorknob, acutely aware that Vlad could see everything that he was doing. He checked over his shoulder at the monitor but it showed that Vlad sat patiently in at his desk, looking up at the camera and thus out of the monitor.

Bertrand thought of hockey and decided a feint was in order. Attack was necessary. He had never felt so sure of anything in his life. Fear was buried. He had the gun.

He let go of the doorknob and turned in the little room to rush for the outer door as if he were running away to the door beyond which Terry lay in wait, but Bertrand turned at the last second back to Vlad's door, rushing in to open it with his Winchester raised and ready to shoot.

Vlad's room was much bigger. He actually sat at a desk on the far side with his back to Bertrand, something that hadn't occurred to him when looking at the monitor. In a flash, Bertrand took in the Ikea furniture that contrasted anachronistically with the rock walls.

Bertrand pulled the trigger, but just before the gun fired, a hand reached from beside the door and shoved the barrel in the air. A fist like iron took Bertrand in the side of his rib cage, shoving the wind from one lung even as the gun was ripped from his hand.

There had been another ripper who wasn't in view on the security camera.

How stupid could he have been to think Vlad was sitting there waiting to be shot?

Bertrand rolled on his side and looked up. The bartender from Goth Knights—Nicholas—was still dressed as if for the club, topless and showing off muscles and pecs and tattoos, his dog collar in place, although today it wasn't dragging a chain.

Bertrand sprawled on the floor, hitting his head on the rock, but he kept his senses and turned his Glock in the holster, pulling the trigger several times. Red holes bloomed in Nicholas's chest, and he fell back against the door. Bertrand rolled on the floor trying to yank the gun free so that he could turn it on Vlad but a fist grabbed a Bertrand by the hair and slammed his head on the floor twice, not with the force to kill, but to daze. Blood ran into his eyes, and for a moment his muscles wouldn't respond. He lay on the floor, his view of the room sideways, his left eye closest to the floor.

Nicholas sat against wall by the door.

"I'll be all right," he said, his eyes wide and frightened. "I can feel the healing, even in my heart I can feel them healing me."

Black boots and the hem of the cloak came between them, and Nicholas screamed. Suddenly the cloak moved aside to reveal a knife at Nicholas's throat and a gloved hand under his arm. Vlad dragged Nicholas across the floor to Bertrand and the knife bit deep, causing a geyser of blood to spray on Bertrand's face. A hand grabbed the back of Bertrand's neck and shoved his mouth over Nicholas's spewing artery.

Bertrand pushed back with his tongue in panic, desperate not to drink the blood, but his nose pressed so tightly against Nicholas's skin that he was being suffocated. Instinct won out over his brain, and Bertrand gasped in a mouthful of blood. He tried to spit, to hold his breath, to fight to the end not to be made into a ripper. The world hazed, his vision blurred and he drew gulping choking breaths. As he passed out he shook with a fear like no other. He swallowed blood.

It started in his stomach, a buzzing as if someone had released a swarm of fluttering insects. He was aware that he had been dropped to the floor, that he was free to move, that he could search for his gun and shoot Vlad, but his body barely acknowledged his commands, allowing him only to flip onto his side and come face to face with Nicholas's dead eyes. The young man was exceptionally pale, his blood coating his naked chest.