Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (11 page)

She could see the interior now
and, while it was still mostly cast in shadow, it appeared
perfectly normal. She saw a number of dark patches on the floor
where the waning sun could not reach and she imagined the terrible
toll that the passage of time would have wrought on the bodies.
Flashes of desiccated faces, pulled into horrible masks of terror
by their violent deaths swam through her mind. She imagined their
accusing stares, forever frozen in death, for leaving them to rot,
forgotten and abandoned despite their grand sacrifice so that
others could survive.
Was it even safe to enter this building?
Wouldn’t disease be rampant?

She shuddered as she imagined
what horrors the rats would have inflicted on the rotting corpses
but she forced her feet over the threshold despite her fear. These
people deserved to be buried with honour and she resolved to do
that much, at least. No matter how belatedly. She was still not
certain she could actually live here again but she would make that
decision after she had paid her respects to the dead. Having made
the decision, and feeling a little better about herself, she
entered the room.

Her eyes slowly grew accustomed
to the gloom and she saw the closest mound on the floor in more
detail. Where she expected to see an arm or a leg she noted that
the mound was merely a rumpled piece of carpet. Another mound to
her left was far too angular to be a body and she finally made out
the sharp corners of a broken desk. The damage in the room was
shocking but something was missing…something…and then she had it.
Emotion flooded through her and she was almost overcome with the
strength of her feelings towards Harris.

Even with all that had been
happening over the last few months - with the constant patrols and
internal squabbling, he had remembered them. Even when everyone
else, including herself, had forgotten. He had not. Even with all
his responsibilities and the terrible things people accused him of,
he had been the only one who had remembered the dead. She leaned
against Harris and kissed him briefly on the cheek, ignoring his
winch of pain from the wounds across his face.

“Thank you,” she whispered and
he shrugged and squeezed her hand. Sandra felt another rush of
emotion flood through her. With all that had happened in the last
few days, with the whole community shunning him and banishing him
despite his actions being for their own good, and with the death of
his closest friends, Harris had still somehow managed to come back
here, clear away the bodies and give them a decent burial.

She realised with a sudden flash
of understanding how deeply everyone’s death affected Peter Harris,
how he blamed himself for each of their deaths, and, for a moment,
she wondered how he kept going with all that guilt bottled up
inside him. None of this was his fault, but no matter what she said
to him she didn’t seem able to stop him taking all of the
responsibility.

She wondered how he could
possibly cope with the fact that those he had rescued had turned
against him. He hadn’t said a word to her about it since they had
left the community the night before and she worried that he would
continue to internalise his feelings. She would have to work on
that. But for now they had a lot of work to do. She looked around.
The room seemed somehow brighter now that she knew that the dead
had been laid to rest. Even the air seemed fresher. Harris hadn’t
been able to hide the bulk of the damage, of course, but at least
she had not had to face the rotting bodies of her friends.
God
, she thought,
it must have been horrific clearing
away the dead.

She came to the torn metal doors
that led to the lower levels and shuddered. They had been peeled
back like wet cardboard and she wondered again at how powerful the
vampires truly were. Humans were like mosquitoes to them. What hope
did they really have against such power? Especially now that they
knew that the free humans existed.

She felt a heavy weight begin to
press in on her as the reality of their situation hit her hard.
They had all lost so much since they had first overcome the serum,
the sacrifices they had all made in order to eke out a paltry
existence, constantly under threat from their former inhuman
masters. She had almost given up; especially when their blood and
sacrifices had resulted in their being banished by those very
people they had bled and died to rescue.

She was fairly sure she would
have given up at that point if Harris hadn’t kept them all going.
She had felt like shouting and cursing at the community for their
disloyalty. Didn’t they realise that they would be dead now if she
and her friends hadn’t risked their own lives constantly to rescue
them? Ungrateful bastards. She felt a surge of anger toward the
people of the community, and she had to take a number of deep
breaths in order to regain control.

She didn’t know how Harris kept
going. She had once thought that he was driven by an irrational
need to put himself in danger, a death wish to somehow make up for
the fact that he had survived when others hadn’t. But as she had
grown to know him she realised that he was driven more by a strong
sense of humanity rather than his own selfishness.

He was far more focused than she
had first thought. Quite simply, he cared deeply about all of their
futures and knew that the only hope they all had was by saving
sufficient numbers to be able to survive in this new world. He
might be too focused at times, and he was certainly blind to how
his actions affected others, but his outlook was still more
refreshing than that of those who acted only out of self-interest.
It was this innocence and purity of motive, she supposed, that she
had fallen in love with.

Oh, he wasn’t stupid - naïve yes
- but he knew that their only chance to survive as a race was to
gather together in sufficient numbers so that their community could
survive. They would all die if they stagnated and remained a small
community. But he cared deeply about those who were still helpless
in the hands of the thralls and the vampires and she knew that the
community’s banishment had hurt him more deeply than he cared to
acknowledge.

She then remembered the faces of
those they had saved as they had come out of the effects of the
serum and she began to feel her resolve harden. The vampires were
vicious bastards; their cruelty and complete disregard for their
prisoners were repulsive. The fact that they had once been human
themselves only made them more abhorrent. She would fight them with
her last breath no matter what the others thought. The people they
had saved were scared and easily manipulated by ruthless people,
and they would deal with those later. For now, they had a job to
do. She took a deep breath and walked past the ruined door and back
into the Cave with a resolve that filled her with a purpose she had
not felt in some time.

Chapter 7

Tanya Syn woke to the worst
hangover she could ever remember. For a moment the pain seemed to
be all that there was. Somehow everything else seemed to be
missing. Memories, thoughts and feelings - all of them were gone.
But the pain was there, demanding her attention and overpowering
her senses. She knew it must be a hangover and that it must be the
worst she had ever had, but other than that, there was nothing. Her
brain wasn’t working properly. It was as if someone had steeped it
in treacle overnight and all her thoughts were stuck in the thick
syrup. She opened her eyes and quickly shut them again as light
stabbed at her and burned through her skull.

She brought a hand to her aching
temples. At least, she thought about bringing her hand up, but she
couldn’t feel any movement. She felt panic begin to build within
her and her heart began to thump faster.
What the hell is going
on,
she thought with rising despair?

She forced herself to calm down.
She had drunk too much, that was all. In a few minutes the pain
would ease and she would be able to get up and take something for
the pain. Her heart began to slow a little as her logic began to
penetrate the fog of pain. All she had to do was wait a little
longer. Suddenly, there was a scream to her right and she jumped
and opened her eyes in shock. Light flooded in again and seemed to
burn like hot lasers but she kept them open regardless. At first
all she could see was an out-of-focus blur, as if she was looking
through a window streaked with rain, but, slowly, it began to
clear. The pain didn’t relent at all but now she used the pain to
force her brain to work.

The first thing she noticed was
that she was lying on hard tarmac.
Why would I be lying on the
ground? Where am I?

Suddenly a flood of memories
gushed through her bruised head and her heart stopped in shock. She
remembered the vampires, the killing and panic in Los Angeles as
the city prepared for the inevitable attack that had already swept
through the rest of the country. She finally remembered her own
name, and then she remembered her children and she felt a scream
build within her like a volcano.

Pain flooded through her but the
scream would not be denied, and she unleashed a cry as forlorn and
filled with despair as the one she had heard moments ago. As she
screamed she was dimly aware of more screams beginning around her.
She tried to move, to search for her children, but her body would
not move and she was forced to look down at the ground as her body
convulsed with pain and despair, helpless as the last few months
began to play out like a movie reel.

As her mind began to slowly
shake off the effects of the serum her overriding thoughts were for
her two children. Jillian and Mark had been with her when the
vampires had come but she had no memory of them after she had been
taken prisoner. She tried to force her mind to remember but the
pain threatened to send her back into oblivion. She felt her hand
move slightly and she closed her fingers into a fist, relishing the
pain as her nails cut into her palms and gave her something to
focus on.

She forced herself to remember,
searching for a clue as to her children’s fates. But there was
nothing. She did, however, remember other parts of the last two
years. She remembered the abuse by the thralls, the blooding when
she had been so drained of blood that she had been cast aside and
left to either die or recover by herself.

She was dimly aware of bodies
being cast onto huge pyres by laughing thralls as those who had not
survived were disposed of in the easiest way possible. Her numbed
brain began to remember the stench of burnt flesh and faeces and
despair began to roll over her in waves so large that she felt tiny
and insignificant under their assault. There was only one thing
that saved her from spiralling back into numbed bliss.

Her children needed her.

She never entertained the fact
that they might be dead. They were alive, they had to be. And they
would need her strength.

She forced her hand tighter into
a fist and cried out as her nails bit deeper into her flesh. But
this time she did not cry out in despair, this time there was an
anger and hatred in her cries. She felt some of the lethargy in her
mind ease as adrenaline gushed through her. She forced her head to
the side so she could see around her. Light blinded her as the sun
burned into her eyes but she welcomed the pain and forced a grim
smile onto her face. She had no idea why she was coming out of the
serum’s effects but she felt a cold hatred begin to form deep
within her and she used the warmth of that hatred to force her body
to move and her mind to clear.

She screamed again, using the
release to vent the effects of the serum. She cursed the thralls
for their cruelty, she cursed the vampires for their black
appetites, and she cursed God for letting it all happen. Her mind
continued to remember scenes from the last two years. None of it
was pretty and her body seemed to burn from remembered pain and
shame, but she used it all to stoke the fires of hatred in her
belly.

There was a memory deep in her
tortured mind that she somehow sensed she wasn’t ready to face yet
- she didn’t know how, just that it would be too much for her in
her fragile condition. But thoughts of her children forced her on.
Anything she could use to drive the last of the effects away might
help her find her children so she pursued the memory relentlessly
until, finally, she felt something give and the memory flooded
through her. Her hand unconsciously went to her stomach.

“You bastards!” she screamed and
her throat felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper. The
thralls had used her for their depraved fantasies countless times,
and from that she had become pregnant. They had let her carry the
child almost to full term and then they had ripped her unborn child
from her womb for their masters’ vile hungers. Tears streaked down
her cheeks and, in her shame, they felt like twin streams of acid.
She felt her tenuous grip on sanity loosen a little and, for a
moment, she feared she had gone too far.

She dug deeper into her flesh
and screamed again. Her tortured throat burned and she used all the
pain to focus on the memory of her children. She felt as though a
truck had hit her, adrenaline surged through her and seemed to burn
the hated serum as it purged through her. Her mind cleared a little
more with every second she remained conscious. Already she could
feel a tingling in the rest of her body as feeling returned like
molten fire. Someone would pay, she promised herself. But first she
had to find her children and God help anyone who stood in her
way.

Von Kruger relished the feel of
the wind on his face but it did little to calm his mood. He was
surrounded by incompetents. He had managed to subdue an entire
state of vampires still loyal to the deceased Wentworth in just a
few weeks, and in that same time his Lieutenant had not been able
to find any sign of the damned humans who had embarrassed him so
badly.