Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Book 1) (12 page)

At the end of the discussion
there was no argument and even less choice. They would have to
attack a major installation, on the enemy’s” home ground, to get
the things they needed to survive.

Chapter 10

It was still early evening but
the relentless advance of the dark was already heralding its
dominion as the sun began to slip slowly below the horizon. In
places, patches of light still flared valiantly though,
ineluctably, they too began to give ground with each passing
moment. Harris grinned wryly as he thought how fitting their
predicament was as he and his fellow survivors defended against the
oncoming hoard in their last remaining stronghold. He rated their
chances no better than the light that, even now, was relinquishing
its last tenuous grip on the barren cityscape before being swept
away by the darkness.

Harris watched the shadows
advance across the torn buildings that had once comprised the upper
east side of Boston and sighed. Broken rocks and piping lay
everywhere, spilling from ruined buildings like entrails from a
gutted corpse. Sharp angles and jagged peaks reached forlornly
towards the sky as if in final, silent defiance of the destruction
that had laid waste to everything else around them. They, like
Harris and his group, were all that remained in the path of the
oncoming destructive tide. Harris looked out over the ruined
remains of the once proud city and despaired.

He and his companions had held
out against all odds in the face of a far superior enemy. They had
fought a losing battle over the last few months, delaying the
thralls' advance and paying for it with their blood. But it had
worked. They had bought precious time for others to flee, though
where they might flee to he did not know. They had lost ground
continuously, though in fairness they had exacted a heavy toll for
each of their own losses and had frustrated the thralls for some
time now. The leaders of the thralls were not military men, in the
main, as those who had risen quickly in the Vampires” army tended
to be those who had abandoned their fellow humans early on in the
war, rather than fight and these tended not to be men or women of
honour.

As such their main strategy
tended to be restricted to rather blunt manoeuvres. They would
throw as many soldiers as they could at any obstacle regardless of
the costs and it tended to work eventually. Harris and his
colleagues had frustrated them continuously by striking hard and
fast and then disappearing before the thralls could organise their
defences, let alone organise a counter-attack. They had made the
thralls pay a heavy price for every mile they retreated. But
retreat they had and they had left many of their number along the
way in silent testament to the inevitable final conclusion.

Strangely, the thralls had not
called on their vampire masters for aid. Harris had never actually
seen a vampire up to this point. He had heard about them of course.
But the first part of the war had passed him by. It had all
happened so quickly. At first the stories of whole populations of
towns disappearing were ridiculed by most of the press that still
operated at that time and so the vampires had been allowed to
operate freely in an increasingly insular world.

The energy crisis had changed
life so radically that most communities existed in isolation. There
was no power to spare for running servers so the Internet had
closed down long ago. He had heard rumours that some servers still
existed, a last defiant bastion of man’s ingenuity and knowledge in
a world that no longer cared but most could no longer support such
excessive use of a dwindling resource. No-one could waste power on
computers anymore so most news travelled now by word of mouth.

When the vampires had come from
the darkness they had moved quickly, taking whole communities while
the world still continued on, blissfully unaware that their heart
was already infected by a rotting cancer that was eating steadily
away. By the time the world woke up to the threat, the vampires had
already gathered a sizeable army of men and women who they had
rewarded with strength and agility far beyond any normal human.

Thralls were difficult to kill
and many a platoon had been decimated as they had advanced past the
thralls they had killed only to find that the enemy they thought
dead suddenly rose after they had passed by and had attacked them
from the rear. Despite this though, the humans had still begun to
drive the vampire spawn back, but the cost had been so high. The
desperation of the time brought out the best in people and, as it
had been during world wars many years before, men and women formed
ranks, helped each other and fought back. What remained of the
government had begun to conscript men and women and, for a short
time, they actually seemed to be winning.

Despite the vampires” awesome
power they still had to sleep during the day and could not travel
too far from areas they considered safe. A number of them had been
caught and slaughtered early on in the campaign when the humans had
made particularly deep incursions against the thrall defences and,
ever since that, the vampires tended to sleep far behind the front
lines. The majority of the fighting had been done by the thralls
and this worked well for the humans who were better trained.

Unfortunately, there just had
not been enough time or resources to fully take advantage of this.
Men and women had flocked to help in the fighting but, with no
training and little equipment, they were merely cannon fodder who
had been given a weapon, if they were lucky, and sent to the front.
There was no coherent response against the vampire advance either
as many of the communications devices, satellites and wireless
technologies had been left to rot during the years of the energy
crisis. Without the power to keep the communications equipment
running these marvels of modern technology were just so much junk.
Every battle that was fought tended to take place in isolation and,
while they did have some victories, they were unable to take
advantage on a national scale. Any local gains, unfortunately, were
lost in the general confusion of the national campaign. And then
the vampires had poisoned the water supplies with their serum and
everything had gone to hell.

Harris had been living on his
own after the death of his father and had been conscripted late in
the war so had only arrived after the serum’s effects had made a
huge impact on the war. Already the front had collapsed and Harris
had found himself caught up with a decimated, demoralised and
retreating army. In fact it had only been when one man, Ricardo
Juarez, had managed to organise what remained of them into
something resembling a fighting unit that they had managed to turn
the tide and begin to fight back.

Juarez was dead now, killed by
an unfortunate ricochet during a raid, but his spirit remained in
the men and women who still fought in his name. They had retreated
for hundreds of miles slowing the thralls while those unable to
fight pressed ahead in the hope of making the coast and taking a
ship to somewhere where the vampires had not yet spread their
vicious rule.

In the last few months it had
become obvious that the thralls feared the vampires as much as the
rebels did. They would have been defeated long ago had the vampires
been called to join the fighting but, so far, the thralls had
resisted involving their masters. Most likely because they were
afraid of what their masters would do if they admitted failure
against such a paltry force. As long as they were advancing, no
matter how slowly, the thralls seemed to be keeping the vampires
out of it.

Now, though, there was nowhere
else to go. The families they had bought time for with their blood
had left on the ships. For better or worse they had sailed off in
the hope of finding somewhere they could live free. The ships could
still be caught though, so this final group had stayed behind to
ensure them the time they needed to get far enough away from land
so the vampires could not reach them. The men and women with Harris
were all without family; either they had lost children or spouses
in the conflict and were still filled with enough hate that they
wanted to exact their own retribution or they just had no wish to
start again.

Whatever the reason these men
and women had stayed and now they awaited their inevitable fate
together. Harris could have left with the others but he felt that
he was still needed. With Juarez dead there was a moment when
everything was about to fall apart but two men and one woman,
including him, had come forward and encouraged the others to
continue. Two of the others were dead and one had gone with their
family on the ship. Harris felt a responsibility for those he had
led to this point so he had decided to stay.

The serum had broken all
resistance and cities everywhere were falling under the oppression
of the advancing thralls and their vampire masters. The story was
the same all over the world. They still received some reports on
the long distance frequencies of small communities who still held
out but these communities were growing fewer each day. The time of
man had come and gone and now a new predator was confirming their
dominance.

Harris and his remaining group
numbered only fifty but they had chosen their stronghold well and
had prepared even better. Harris was not a military man but he had
enough people on the team to advise him. His strength was in his
ability to inspire and lead and he concentrated on that. The
surrounding buildings had all been mined with explosives and other
surprises that had tied up the thralls for the last three days. The
thralls had lost hundreds of soldiers as they tried repeatedly to
remove the humans from their positions.

In their preparations Harris and
his colleagues had blown out the surrounding buildings making it
almost impossible for the thralls to bring their tanks into play.
The thralls shelled the area continuously but were forced to do so
from long range and Harris and the others were spread out so well
that the shelling had been largely ineffective so far. They also
ensured that the thrall spotters who tried to give accurate
co-ordinates to the artillery paid a heavy toll each time they came
within range.

It was a stalemate at the
moment. This morning they had seen the main force retreat back out
of range and Harris could see that the troops had been ordered to
make camp. The thralls still surrounded Harris and his group but
through the day they made no attempt to attack. Now that the
darkness was beginning to fall Harris could see that the thralls
were getting ready. Not for an assault though. He could see the
thralls begin to move into positions that afforded them the best
view of the rebel’s stronghold. Obviously they were preparing for a
show and Harris shivered as he realised what this meant.

The thralls had either lost too
many men or they had run out of time. Either way it made little
difference, the vampires were obviously on their way. Harris looked
around him and he could see the fear that clouded each face but he
could also see a quiet determination, a knowledge that no matter
what happened they had won a victory. They had managed to gain
their friends enough time to make it out of the country and,
hopefully, to a place of safety. If they had to die then he was
glad that it would count for something.

The vampires came with the
darkness. It was hard to tell how many there were as the shadows
seemed to stretch towards them and wrap them in their embrace, but
it couldn’t have been too many Harris thought. They would hardly
consider fifty humans worth their attention, although it was a
testament to Harris and the others that they had been called at
all. He wondered idly what their involvement would cost the thrall
leaders but found he didn’t really give a damn. Hopefully the
bastards would suffer before their masters tore them apart.

A cold breeze blew through the
ruined building, whistling slightly as it passed through the gaping
holes of the shattered windows and torn brick that the shelling had
caused. Harris shivered. The dark had always fascinated him before.
He had loved the feeling of standing in the open staring up at the
sky and counting the myriad stars. The night had always been a
place of solitude and beauty for him. Now though, the darkness had
become something to fear. Something that now hid an evil that
threatened to devour them all, something that had come to embody
death and not wonder. He wiped the sweat from his hands against his
knees and then checked the magazine yet again. It was still as full
as it had been the countless other times he had checked. He wished
they would do something. The waiting was driving him mad.

When they came the attack was
both an anti-climax and an awesome spectacle. The first Harris knew
of the attack was the sound of machine guns chattering in a room to
his left. The sound was strangely muted, as if the air itself was
reluctant to carry the echo. He heard a brief burst of fire and
then a second joined in. Soon there were a number of weapons firing
and then they seemed to stop in mid burst and the first scream
filled the night. It was a terrible sound; full of terror and pain
and then it was joined by a second and then a third.

Silence descended over the
building as the last of the screams died away. Harris snapped his
head from side to side as he watched each doorway and bare window
for any movement. There were three others in the room with him and
he could see each of them shaking with fear. This wasn’t the noble
death they had sought. This was a slaughter.

Just then Harris saw something
move and he whipped his weapon towards the door, opening fire
before the weapon had tracked to the door. The vampire was already
on the other side of the room and Harris wrenched his aim towards
the far corner where one of his colleagues was already slipping to
the ground with their throat torn out. They were so fast, Harris
managed the brief thought before he saw a second body ripped apart
in front of him without a shot being fired. There was a strange
odour in the air. It was sickly sweet and old at the same time. It
smelt wrong somehow, as if something was decayed but was not quite
dead.