Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2) (33 page)

He tried to concentrate on the faint light, and
suddenly his eye opened with a gooey pop, leaving faint trails of
some coagulated fluid at either end. Well looks like I’m alive,
then, he thought, and then he began to wonder. There was a strange
grey surface that seemed to stretch out from his body in an
unbroken line past his vision. Was he dead after all on some
strange otherworldly plain of existence, destined to remain where
the wounds inflicted from his life hampered him? He closed his left
eye again and saw only blackness. Was he blind in his right eye? He
opened his left eye again and tried to make sense of where he was.
The angle seemed to be askew and it took a moment for his brain to
make sense of his surroundings. Then it came to him. He was on the
road, face down with one eye in line with the road’s surface and
the other buried in the asphalt.

Great, he thought with a sinking feeling. I’m alive.
Alive and paralyzed in the middle of nowhere. At least there’s no
pain.

Just then, as if a cruel God had heard him and was
angered by his oversight, pain began to creep through him slowly
but relentlessly. His mind began to cloud as the pain became
unbearable and he felt consciousness begin to slip away. He
relished the oblivion and welcomed the dark again, but suddenly he
felt movement in his body and he struggled against the descending
darkness. The pain was cruel and terrible but it brought with it
something else, something worth fighting for. He used everything he
had to keep his grip on consciousness.

Nausea flooded through him and his body retched,
bringing a burning fluid up his throat and spewing it out across
the road. The smell assaulted his nose as droplets made their way
into his nostrils. He retched again but there was nothing left in
his stomach, and he dry-heaved until his body shivered with the
effort. He ignored it all as he concentrated on his hand. It lay
just in front of him on the road, but he had seen one of the
fingers move and now he tried to force it to move again. Nausea and
pain flooded his body but he cried with joy as first one finger and
then another moved. He felt a tear slide down his face, and then he
blacked out.

Falconi’s whole world was falling apart. Vampires
were killing other vampires, and thralls were no longer safe from
their masters. The weather was growing worse by the minute and his
face felt as if it had already frozen. They had already lost one of
their trucks to a hidden bomb on their way to the square, and
Falconi had felt very mortal as he realized that his own vehicle
had passed too damn close to the same device. He was about to
wonder if things could possibly get any worse when Angelo’s man
reached him and breathlessly informed him that the human prisoners
were gone. He had thought the thrall mad and had ordered his driver
to hurry to the square where he could see the empty cage for
himself.

It had taken a few moments for him to believe his own
eyes even when he saw it. Slowly, his mind began to cloud with a
numbing fear driven by one prevailing thought: If the humans were
gone then the vampires would turn on the thralls for food in their
current maddened state. He stood in the jeep as his hands grew numb
with the cold, and only snapped out of it when his driver tugged at
his arm. He looked at the thrall stupidly for a moment, and then a
thought slowly began to register on his shocked mind. Whoever had
taken the humans would never be able to transport that many easily.
Not only were a thousand prisoners difficult to move anywhere, but
also the damned weather would slow them down terribly. His forces
should be able to catch them if they hurried. He had a hundred
thralls with him, and seven vehicles, so he should be able to cover
all roads capable of carrying that many vehicles. He could still
catch them and save his skin if he acted quickly.

His driver was still tugging at his sleeve, and he
turned viciously on the thrall until he saw that the soldier was
directing his attention toward the far side of the square. He
reluctantly looked in the indicated direction and saw nothing but
the swirling snow. He was about to strike the driver when he saw a
dirty grey plume surge into the sky behind the buildings. What the
hell is…? His heart suddenly dropped as he made the connection. A
train! Shit, they’ve taken the train. His mind worked furiously as
he ordered all the vehicles forward. A train would not be slowed by
the weather and, once it got up to speed, would easily out-distance
his vehicles.

He had to stop it from leaving.

Harris pulled himself up into the engine of the train
and nodded at the others. Aidan Flemming stood at the controls and
constantly turned or pressed a complicated series of levers and
dials as they hissed and spat at him like a bed of snakes. Scott
Mitchell laid down his shovel and crossed the small distance to
help him lay Warkowski on the ground, and then pulled a medical bag
from the corner and began to tear at the large man’s clothes to get
at his wound.

“Where’s Rodgers?” Tanner asked as he threw another
log into the blazing furnace, and all of them stopped as he saw
Harris’ face. Tanner straightened as his face dropped and Sandra
caught her breath.

“Dee will be…”

“I’m afraid they’re both dead.” Harris dropped his
eyes to the furnace as he found he could not meet their eyes. The
sudden and brutal reality of death struck them all like a blow.
They had gone so long now without any injuries that to lose two of
their number in one instant was a shock. Harris felt weak. His
wound didn’t help but Rodgers’s death had hit him hard. He had been
with him since the start, and Harris had always considered the
young man to be the soul of their group.

Suddenly he heard trucks burst into the square and
bullets began to spark off the metal of the engine, one passing
close to Tanner as it ricocheted around the small cabin.

Harris shook himself as he grabbed his weapon.
“Flemming!” Harris shouted as he leaned out of the cabin and sent a
hail of bullets towards the trucks. “Get us out of here. Now!”

The young man remained motionless for a moment before
snapping out of it. Then he turned back to the engine and began to
turn his dials.

Bullets slammed into the last carriage and stitched
their way along the length of the train like shadows pushing back
the light. Harris shouted at Flemming again and nearly lost his
balance as the train heaved and stuttered. Flemming continued to
coax the dials and, slowly, the motion began to run more smoothly
as the chug-chug of the engine began to gain rhythm.

“Is there anyone in the last carriage?” Harris
shouted behind him as he fired at a jeep that raced towards
them.

Tanner climbed up into the coal and wood beside him
and began to fire at the chasing thralls. “No,” he answered over
the noise of the gunfire and the scream of the engine. “The last
two are empty but they’re really packed into the rest of them.”

Harris offered up a prayer for the poor prisoners as
bullets continued to slam into the wood of the carriages as the
thralls began to gain on them. One bullet could do a lot of damage
in such close-quarters, and the prisoners would not be able to
throw themselves to the ground for safety.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” he shouted at
Flemming viciously but knew that the man was doing everything he
could. It would take time for the engine to attain its full speed,
and until then they would have to deal with the fire from the
thralls as best they could.

They were gaining on them! Falconi felt his heart
beat faster as they passed the first carriage and continued to draw
closer to the engine. The jeep swerved to avoid a traffic light in
the road and Falconi nearly fell out. His driver shouted an apology
but Falconi ignored it. His driver was doing everything he could
but the road did not follow the train tracks exactly and he had to
improvise if they were going to stop the train before it reached
speed.

He looked back and motioned for one of the other
jeeps to pull alongside the train and board from the back, and then
he turned back and continued to fire at the cars. He was still too
far back to fire on the engine carriage but he continued to fire
into the carriages as he drew level. He would rather kill the
prisoners than let them escape.

Steele opened his eyes again and winced from the
pain. He groaned and looked again at his hand in front of him. It
was covered in snow and the cold had numbed it completely. For a
moment he thought that he was paralyzed again, but when he tried it
moved a little. He willed it to move again and almost cried with
relief as he saw his hand slowly form into a fist. The paralysis
was receding, thank God, but he would die if he stayed out here in
the snow. Of course, with the return of feeling came wave after
wave of pain, but he used that to hold on to conscious as he tried
to move the rest of his body.

Everything hurt equally and Steele almost laughed.
Either everything is broken or I lucked out with bruises. He raised
his head and stopped as nausea swept over him, and then pressed on
as he got used to the pain. It took another thirty minutes, but by
then he had managed to sit up and gingerly examine his body for any
obvious problems. He had bled quite a bit, but the blood had mostly
dried at this stage, and he had quite a few nasty cuts that really
needed attention.

His insistence of not wearing a helmet had been
really stupid as his cheek was badly torn, his right eye was still
puffed up pretty badly and he had an almighty headache. He pulled
himself to his feet slowly and paused to let the nausea pass before
he went over to check the bike. It was ruined. The front wheel was
buckled and the exhaust had been torn from its housing. He wouldn’t
be going very far now. He shouted his anger at the moon above and
then he saw a shadow pass across his vision.

He reached for one of the weapons under his arms but
he was too slow. The vampire appeared before him as if by magic and
grabbed his arm painfully.

“Meals on wheels, or off wheels as the case might
be,” the vampire smiled at him and Steele recoiled from the
creature’s stench. Vampires always smelled of decay no matter how
they tried to cover it up, and Steele tried hard to keep the bile
down. This vampire was larger than normal. He was obviously an
ancient. Steele had worked with vampires long enough to see through
the swagger and bluster of the newer vampires as they used their
new powers to impress. This one, though, was different. He was
completely at ease and had effectively immobilized Steele with very
little effort. He also did not fill in the silence with useless
banter so Steele felt the need to continue.

“Lord, I am on my way to Lord Von Richelieu,” Steele
managed before the pain in his wrist from the creature’s grip
forced him to kneel to the ground. He bent his head in subservience
to the vampire as he spoke. They all loved that no matter how old
they were, he thought as he tried to bring his other hand to his
second weapon without being seen. Just then three more vampires
swooped elegantly down from the sky and changed into human form as
they touched the ground. Steele cursed to himself and abandoned his
attempt to force his way free. He’d have to try and talk his way
out.

“I have grave news that must get to my Lord
urgently.”

“He must be Von Richelieu’s trained pet,” one of the
other vampires hissed as he examined Steele’s bike. “We were asked
to watch out for him on our way to Von Kruger’s.”

Steele felt the blood drain from his face. Why would
Von Richelieu send vampires to look for him? For that matter, why
would they be sent to Von Kruger? Surely word of the escalation of
the border war could not have reached the vampire so soon.

“Tell me and I will see if it’s important.”

Steele had little choice but to comply. There was no
way he was getting to Von Richelieu on his own.

“A war has broken out between Lords Wentworth and Von
Kruger,” he began, trying to inject just enough fear into his voice
to put the creatures at their ease. There was little chance of him
killing four vampires and surviving, but he had to cover all the
options in case the opportunity presented itself.

“We know that,” one of the vampires hissed as he
picked up Steele’s bag from his ruined bike. Shit, Steele thought
as he saw the creature begin to open the bag. There were items in
that bag that he did not want discovered.

“But did you know that it has escalated so that
vampire now kills vampire?”

“You lie,” the vampire with the bag dropped it as he
approached Steele and loomed before him.

“No, Lord,” Steele replied and forced himself to look
at the ground. “It was started by a community of humans living free
in the area.”

“That’s ridiculous.” The vampire laughed but the
vampire holding his wrist suddenly released it and pulled Steele to
his feet.

“Tell me.” The creature forced Steele to look into
its eyes and Steele felt compelled to respond. Ancient vampires
sometimes had the ability to coerce their victims, but it was a
talent that had not been used in so long that, while Steele felt an
urge to comply, he was able to retain enough of his wits to edit
his story.

He still revealed more than he had intended to but
the vampire seemed to be satisfied. He released Steele and he
allowed himself to fall in a heap where he was able to grip one of
his Uzi pistols. He held his hand though as he heard the vampire
give his orders.

“You two, bring this human with you and report back
to Von Richelieu. There may be more he can tell our Lord. We will
continue on and see for ourselves what has happened to our mad
cousins.”

If the vampires carried him he would be with Von
Richelieu before the night ended. Maybe the bike crash hadn’t been
such a bad thing after all.