Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2) (2 page)

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 toward the far corner where
one of his colleagues was already slipping to the ground with his
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 odor 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.

There were only two of them left now and,
unconsciously, the two men drew closer together as they scanned the
room. The vampire seemed able to meld into the darkness so
completely that it seemed to disappear. It could merely have walked
in and torn them apart. Their bullets were useless against it
anyway. It was obviously playing with them, relishing their
fear.

Suddenly the man beside Harris shuddered and Harris
watched in terror as the man’s head simply fell to the ground with
a dull thud. He realized with a sudden thought before he felt the
impact that he still hadn’t actually seen a vampire. And then the
darkness washed over him and all was quiet.

The Present:

Peter Harris started awake and shivered, though
whether it was the cold or his dream that had caused his body to
shudder, he wasn’t sure. The memories of his time before the serum
had been plaguing him more often of late, and he was finding it
more and more difficult to get a peaceful night’s sleep. He still
had no idea why he had been the only one to survive and the guilt
he felt because of it made sure that he relived that night every
time he closed his eyes. His last memory had been of darkness
enveloping him, and then there were snatches of memories where he
had suffered terrible treatment by the thralls as they vented their
anger on him and then nothing until he had seen Sandra Harrington’s
face looking down at him when he had overcome the serum’s
effects.

He had told no one of his time before the serum.
Somehow it felt too personal…and what did it matter, anyway? He had
failed the people who had put their trust in him. He had survived
when they had died. He could do nothing about those he had failed
now, but he could make sure that it never happened again. And to
that end he would never rest as long as there was a human being
still in captivity.

He looked around with a start. How could I have
fallen asleep? Everyone was still in position and, slowly, his
heart began to calm. They had traveled for the last few days to get
here and he must have been more tired than he had thought. He
looked out over the valley below where the small town lay
slumbering. A cold breeze drifted from the north and brought with
it fingers of ice that teased their way through the heavy jacket he
wore no matter how he secured it. He lay along a rocky ridge, prone
on the frozen ground, suddenly aware that his body was numb with
the cold. He felt stiff as he stretched his muscles and winced as
he rolled to his feet and began stamping to speed the
circulation.

On the horizon he could see the faint, tentative
caress of the dawn as the sun peeked over the distant hills and
cast its weak glow onto the dark canvass of the ebony sky. For a
moment he watched the lazy flight of four shapes high in the sky as
the vampires returned from their final patrol, just ahead of the
dawn’s deadly caress. The vampires seemed to gather the remaining
darkness around them as if to shield them from the growing spread
of the light. They might be evil incarnate but they were
magnificent in the air.

He watched them riding the air currents as they
scanned the area surrounding the town. Winter had hit early this
year but the transportation problems they had suffered, the lack of
food and the myriad of other issues that had plagued Harris and the
others, had been alleviated somewhat by the discovery that the
vampires’ incredible senses were dulled to almost normal human
proportions by the cold.

No longer could they sense or smell their prey at
incredible distances. Their vision was unaffected, unfortunately,
but their patrols had been cursory at best since the weather had
changed. They might be immortal but they didn’t like the cold, and
the humans had been busy exploiting this over the last month.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when Harris and the
other survivors had pulled themselves from their destroyed
headquarters—but, in fact, it had only been two months. In that
time they had swelled their numbers to nearly three thousand
strong. There had been no contact with other vampires since their
victory. The vampires were very territorial and had little or no
contact between each settlement. This had left Harris and his group
relatively free to plan and prepare for their next foray.

They were under terrible time pressure though with
the knowledge that the serum the Vampires used to control their
human captives was, in fact, killing those who were forced to take
it. Their quandary, though, was that they could not simply take on
every settlement directly—there were far too many thralls and they
were far too well armed to even consider such an approach. And that
was without even considering the power of the vampires themselves,
even though many of the newly freed people campaigned for just such
action.

The knowledge that people would start dying of the
deadly mixture soon made everyone impatient to do something. Some
proposed that they tell the vampires of the serum’s deadly side
effects. Others argued that such an action would tip the vampires
off that a resistance existed at all, and they were simply not
ready for that. Their own survival was imperative, though it was
hard to reconcile that at the cost of so many others’ lives,
especially when many of those who would die were children. The
debates raged on with all sides beginning to drift further apart
and internal strife reaching critical levels.

While the debates continued, with no one really
offering any concrete alternatives, Harris and his team had
continued to plan. They had quickly rounded up the remaining
thralls. The loss of their vampire masters and the betrayal of
their commanding officer had left them reeling and easy targets. It
had also helped that a significant number of them had been
slaughtered in the attack on the base and the survivors had
regarded the humans with a new respect. Their new subservient
position, along with their fear of reprisals from the remaining
“cattle pool”, as they had labeled the food supply for the
vampires, had made them eager to provide information on their
former masters.

Harris and his team had discovered that the vampires
had a strange social structure, if indeed structure could be used
to describe it at all. A master vampire ruled each area, or cabal.
This designation of master had, in times when humans had ruled the
world, never been bestowed on any vampire with a life history of
less than three hundred years and, even then, only on the very rare
occasion of another master’s death. The fact that the vampires had
hid in the shadows had meant that they would only add to their
ranks in special circumstances, so the number of cabals had
remained constant and their leadership had remained unchanged for
centuries.

Many of the younger vampires had spent decades, even
centuries, conniving and jostling for these positions of power, and
this had ensured that only the very best ever attained the position
of leader of a cabal. Development came slowly to the undead; they
received their strength, senses and limited transformation
abilities immediately after their resurrection, but after that
their bodies took decades to develop further abilities such as
resistance to holy water, the cross and the ability to change into
other creatures.

Unfortunately for them, their rapid spread over an
unprepared world had left them with more cabals than they had
eligible candidates to lead them. Because of this, vampires had
been promoted or had massacred their way into the position of
master based purely on their successes during the war. This had led
to squabbling on a scale the vampire overlords had never before
experienced and had been completely unprepared for. They were used
to an existence in the shadows where their control over their own
cabals was paramount to their very survival. Respect was earned
over centuries and each cabal leader had always been mature and
well tested before they were raised to the position of master.

Now they had a nightmare of petty jealousies and
arguments over territory among young vampires who held positions of
immense power. But they had no experience and no respect needed to
control such areas. Many vampires had fought among themselves.
Vampires had been assassinated, their loyal thralls butchered, and
whole cities of precious human food destroyed in the aftermath of
their victory over the humans. The situation had deteriorated
rapidly with alliances being hastily forged and just as quickly
broken. A full-scale war loomed and threatened to tear them
apart.

Many of the older and wiser masters, not caught up in
the insane jostling for power, had banded together in the face of
their own destruction and had implemented a council where
territorial disputes were to be heard and ruled upon. These masters
had seen many centuries of warfare and still retained the respect
of the older vampires. They even commanded a certain level of fear
among the more recent masters. The various cabals, reluctantly, had
agreed to give the council a chance at restoring some order.

Council meetings were held once every six months, but
many of these new masters were reluctant to wait that long for a
resolution to their immediate problems, and didn’t always agree or
abide by any decisions that did come from these courts. The last
two years had seen vicious raids into rival territories, stealing
of scarce resources and kidnappings and assassinations of thralls
who excelled in key positions of power.

The killing of vampires had stopped abruptly after
the last vampire to be found guilty of such a crime had been staked
naked to the dawn by his peers. The council did provide some order
and many of the larger raids did stop, or at least became less
frequent as the cabals began to realise that the cost in terms of
lost thralls, resources and food was just too high. An uneasy truce
had finally limped into being with all sides mistrustful of the
other. This had led to the vampires becoming very insular over the
last year.

In a very short time each cabal had begun to develop
independently, basing their strength and power on those resources
that their own territory was rich in. Some areas were rich in food,
others in people, and others still in power sources or natural
resources. Their ability to defend these resources or steal others’
resources soon became the primary measure of true power. Tradition
and respect were ignored and each faction watched its borders and
protected its resources jealously. Mistrust grew and rivalries
increased until the entire country seethed with a barely contained,
but often violated, truce.

The only thing that had prevented a bloodbath from
engulfing them all was the power and fear of the last remaining
true master on the continent. Von Richelieu was an ancient vampire
from Eastern Europe, one of the few that had actually left their
ancestral country and sought to grow their influence in the new
world. His prowess in military matters had swept away the human’s
defenses. His political acumen and ruthless efficiency had quickly
removed any other vampire master during the chaotic closing stages
of the war with the humans that might have threatened his position
in the new power structure.

The remaining vampire masters were all mere youths
compared to him, and he had become the only thing that all the
others actually feared. None of the new masters were prepared to
confront him openly, and they were far too mistrustful of each
other to join together to challenge him, so the uneasy peace
remained. In the last few months, Harris had learned from the
thralls, things had settled down after a revitalized council had
put restrictions in place. Von Richelieu had finally decided to
take action and he let it be known that all vampires would answer
to the council if they continued their fighting.

The council had never had the power to enforce their
decisions before, but with Von Richelieu now supporting them,
things began to settle down. The fact that he sent out his own
lethal vampire enforcers to kill anyone who went against a council
ruling soon focused the younger vampires’ attention on the
council’s authority. Harris had not been able to find out exactly
what these restrictions had been but news had filtered down to the
thralls that no forays into other territories would be tolerated.
As a result, the thralls had all grown complacent over the last few
months and ruled their own areas in much the same way as the
fiefdoms of the Medieval Ages.

This gave a much needed reprieve to the humans and
allowed them to wean the new recruits off the drug and train them
for whatever might come their way. They were under terrible time
pressure with the serum’s fatal concoction, but it was also
incumbent on them to survive. With this in mind they had decided to
try to take advantage of the unrest among the vampires and try to
nudge the cabals back into more direct action by playing one
against the other.