Rotter Apocalypse (24 page)

After partaking of their first good meal in weeks, the coven had slept soundly all day. Everyone except Vladimir and Gabrielle, who had taken Linda into a spare bedroom and introduced her to the heightened carnal pleasures that came with being a vampire before falling to sleep around dawn. As was his usual custom, Vladimir had woken up an hour before sunset to use the time to plan out the night’s hunt. Gabrielle slept naked beside him, her head resting in his lap. Linda, also naked, had woken up half an hour ago. She nestled against his shoulder, running her fingers up and down Vladimir’s bare chest.

“You’re very pensive,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re my progeny. I know you better than you think.”

Linda hesitated. “Is there any way we can use Robson as the coven’s familiar?”

“Do you have a sentimental attachment to him, too?”

“I wouldn’t call it a sentimental attachment, but he did save me and the others from Price. I owe him my life.”

“As a human, you did.” Vladimir’s tone was soft yet firm. “You’re a vampire now, and your allegiance is to us. Robson doesn’t like us.”

“He seems to like Dravko and Tibor.”

“He tolerates Dravko and Tibor.” Vladimir cupped Linda’s cheek and raised her head so their eyes met. “Let me ask you this. After he rescued you from that camp, did he show the same level of concern with meeting Dravko’s and Tibor’s needs as he did those of the humans?”

Linda frowned. “No.”

“You see? He was friendly with them because he had to be, and because he wanted their strength to fight rotters. He never considered them as equals. It’s like the mobsters who hire thugs to do their dirty work, but never allow them to be made.” Having made his point, Vladimir let go of Linda’s chin. “If I made Robson our familiar, he’d stake us in our sleep.”

“She does have a point,” said Gabrielle, whose head still lay in his lap. “We’re very vulnerable here. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a familiar who can protect us during the day.”

Vladimir tried to hide his frustration. “The covens have had bad luck with familiars betraying us to hunters to save their own skin.”

“There are no hunters to worry about now. Only rotters.”

As much as he hated to admit it, Gabrielle had a point. They were exposed living in this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. So far the coven had been lucky. It would be irresponsible for him to assume that their luck would hold indefinitely.

“We do need a familiar, at least until we find a better place to live. It won’t be Robson, though.” Vladimir squeezed Linda’s shoulder. “What about the members of your group?”

Linda thought for a moment. “Yukiko and Magda might do it out of fear.”

“They’re weak and useless. I wouldn’t want to rely on them during a crisis.”

“Corey’s a possibility,” Linda continued. “He’s an opportunist. Promise him immortality and he’ll go along. You’ll never get any of them to join with us as long as James and Ed are around. They’re too hardheaded, and I’m sure they’ve teamed up with Robson to keep the others in line.”

While Vladimir would have loved to add James or Ed to the coven, he knew neither of them would agree to be a vampire. The smartest thing would be to get them out of the way first, and then maybe he could convince the others to join the coven. If not, they would make a pleasant meal.

Derrick lay prone on the roof of the gas station. He took a bite out of a 3 Musketeers bar and lifted the binoculars Andre had loaned him, scanning the intersection of Boul des Ecluses and Route 132. Hundreds of zombies meandered along the main road. Derrick wondered how Andre had survived so long in this gas station so close to so many of the living dead. Actually, Andre had told him last night. Derrick had only been half listening, even though Andre had talked for almost two hours. Sure, the poor guy had not seen another human in almost a year and was lonely as hell, if not a little bit nuts from being isolated, but that wasn’t Derrick’s concern. Still, Andre had been nice enough to offer him a place to hang out for the night, as well as some of his dwindling supply of junk food, so it would have been rude not to let the guy ramble on while Derrick pretended to be interested.

Andre had talked about escaping the outbreak and winding up here at the Shell station. Zombies had already attacked the rows of vehicles stuck in traffic, eating those passengers not lucky enough to escape in time and chasing after those that did. Andre had decided to hole up in the station, figuring he would be rescued in a few days once the military sorted out the crisis, and in the meantime he would have plenty of access to food and water. He had boarded up the place with lumber he had found in a contractor’s pick-up truck parked out back and had hunkered down for what he thought would be a week or two at most. At that point, Derrick had stopped paying attention because Andre had gone into agonizingly boring details about how he had run out of nutritious food and water within the first two months and, after that, had been surviving on bags of potato chips, candy bars, soda, and beer. When Derrick had asked Andre why didn’t he abandon this place and try to find something better, Andre had answered it would have been pointless. He didn’t want to head back north into the city, and he would never be able to continue south as long as zombies lined the road.

At first that answer had sounded like a copout until Derrick climbed up on the roof this morning to check out the situation. Now he understood what Andre had meant. From this vantage point, he had a view of a kilometer stretch of Route 132. Zombies shuffled between the abandoned vehicles. Several dozen stood and stared off into space. Only a few of the living dead had left the main road, even they had not wandered far, and the nearest one to the gas station was a good one hundred meters away. The good news for him was that none of the living dead were bunched together. By being spread out, it gave him a chance to get away without being swarmed if he moved quickly and got across the road before they realized what was going on. The mass of vehicles made that impossible.

Dereck took another bite of his candy bar and went back to studying the road, this time concentrating on the jammed traffic. The way the vehicles had been left, the only way across would be to zigzag between them. With four lanes of traffic as well as those vehicles abandoned on the shoulders, he would never make it. The zombies would be all over him before he got to the other side. He considered driving east or west until he found a break, ruling that out because it would attract attention. If he didn’t find a place to cross within a few minutes, he would have to head back into the city and find a place to hide out with a few hundred zombies on his ass. No way was that worth the risk. He saw only one possibility, slim as it might be. In the middle of the intersection was a thin break in the traffic, a gap about a meter wide that ran straight across Route 132 except for a dogleg at the rear bed of a pickup truck. He hadn’t noticed it at first because it was so small. If he could get to that gap before the zombies did, he had a better than even chance of making it across and out of Montreal. If not, then he would spend the rest of his existence wandering along the road with the rest of the living dead, assuming they left behind enough of him to reanimate.

Derrick checked his watch. 9:12. He considered going now, which would give him plenty of time to clear Montreal and find a place in the countryside to hide out, changing his mind at the last second. His leg still ached from the fall he took yesterday, and he wanted to give it another day to heal in case his plan went south and he needed to escape on foot. Plus, if he left before sunrise, he might be able to sneak up on the zombies without being seen, getting him closer to the gap and giving them less time to react. And, honestly, he needed an extra day to convince himself that this wasn’t the most fucked up thing he had ever done.

Derrick took the last bite of his 3 Musketeers and tossed the wrapper over the side of the roof. Crawling backwards, he went to the far end where he had set up a ladder out of the zombies’ line of sight. Once back inside the station, he would fill Andre in on what he planned to do and then get a good day’s rest.

Robson had spent the last twenty hours going over in his mind how tonight would play out. In every scenario, he won the moral high ground over Vladimir. In reality, he knew he had no chance of coming through this that did not end disastrously for both sides. So, when an hour after nightfall the coven approached the barn, Robson braced himself for the unexpected. The vampires unhooked the chain holding the barn door shut, and he propped himself up against the support beam, running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to look presentable. The others did the same, except for Corey, who still sat hunched over. The doors swung open and the coven entered, stepping over Caslow’s body. The kerosene lamps they carried cast a soft light inside the structure and threw long, eerie shadows across the floor and walls. Vladimir stopped in the middle of the barn, his coven spreading out in a circle around him.

“Here to offer us salvation?” taunted Robson.

Vladimir was unfazed. “Salvation is a religious word that implies holy deliverance from harm. I think we both agree that does not apply here. I’m here to correct a miscalculation that I made.”

“Vladimir the Great made a mistake.”

“I miscalculated. I assumed you’d be the only one in your group to reject joining the coven.” Vladimir addressed the others. “It appears there are others equally as stubborn.”

“You mean me,” said James.

“You and Ed.” Vladimir walked over to James and knelt. His gaze went back and forth between the two men. “That’s why I’m giving you both one final chance. You would both make excellent vampires and would be valuable in reestablishing our dominion on Earth. How about it?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Edward answered.

“I’d rather die,” said James.

“So be it.” Vladimir stood and backed away from James. He raised his hands like a messiah calling his flock to the fold. “Feast, my children.”

Morphing into their vampiric forms, the coven split into two groups and converged on James and Edward, except for Dravko who stood by the barn door. James rose to his knees, closed his eyes, and prayed. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy—”

The Psalm was cut off when Tibor plunged his fangs into James’ throat. Gabrielle and Sean each grabbed an arm and stretched it out, drinking from the arteries in his wrist, while Mia and Tamara fell to their knees and fed off of the arteries in his inner thighs. James’ grunts devolved into pathetic whimpers as the undead drained him of his blood and his life.

Edward opted to fight back. When the vampires approached, he climbed to his feet, propped himself against the wooden rails of the horse stall, and coiled the loose chain around his right fist.

Linda glided up to him, her movements enticing, her voice seductive yet threatening. “You wouldn’t hit me, would you?”

Edward slammed the bunched up chain into her face with all the strength he had left, spinning her around. The crack echoed through the barn. Linda’s left cheek had been gashed open, revealing the shattered hinge to the jawbone. Her mouth fell open at an obscene angle. Linda covered the wound with her hand and backed away. As she retreated, the other four vampires attacked. Edward uncoiled the chain and, holding it in both hands, strung it across Lewis’ throat to strangle him. Stamos swung around to Edward’s flank and side kicked his right leg on the torn Achilles’ heel. Edward cried out and fell to his knees, releasing his grip on the chain. In one rapid move, Lewis pulled the chain from across his throat, wrapped it around Edward’s neck, and looped it around the top slat of the horse stall, choking Edward and holding him in place. Edward kicked out with his right leg despite the agony of his wound, catching Lewis in the groin. Lewis snarled and butted the human’s forehead with such force that Edward’s skull fractured. His body slid down the stall until the chain grew taught, snapping his neck. Lewis used the chain to lift Edward’s lifeless body off of the ground and bit into his neck. Stamos, Jonathon, and Miles each took a limb, the four drinking quickly while his blood was still warm.

“Stop it!” screamed Yukiko, pounding her fists into the dirt. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

Magda closed her eyes and mumbled a silent prayer. Corey could not avert his terrified eyes from the horror taking place before him. Roberta looked to Robson for solace. All Robson could do was yell at Dravko.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”

Dravko lowered his head and exited the barn.

Vladimir chuckled, his back still toward Robson while he enjoyed the feeding frenzy that played itself out. “I hope you realize how futile it was to count on Dravko to intercede for you.”

“I thought he was our friend,” Robson confessed.

“You mistook his weakness for friendship,” Vladimir said. “Humans and vampires can’t be friends. You knew that when you banished me from your camp. Tibor always knew it. I’m sure Sultanic and Tatyana did, too. What you had was a marriage of convenience. That’s over, and things are going back to the way they should be.”

“You mean where humans hunt you down.”

Vladimir laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Robson said, trying to control his anger.

“I don’t see you humans doing any of the hunting.” Vladimir crouched in front of Robson. “When I say going back to the way things should be, I’m referring to vampires having dominion over humans.”

“You mean vampires keeping us as cattle.”

“Yes.” As if to emphasize the point, the rest of the coven joined Vladimir after having finished feeding off of James and Edward, their hands and mouths covered in blood. Vladimir snapped his fingers and motioned to the barn door. The coven exited, leaving behind the drained bodies to rot alongside Caslow’s and one lamp so the surviving humans could dwell on the fate that awaited them if they refused to join the coven.

Once the chain had been secured around the barn door handle and the vampires had left, Yukiko curled up in the fetal position and sobbed. Magda shifted her position so she did not have to face the corpses of her friends. Roberta moved as close as the chains would allow to Robson.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Things didn’t go as expected tonight.”

“Seriously?” Corey asked. “Do you fucking think? I hope you have a better plan for tomorrow night bef—”

Magda backhanded Corey across the face. “Knock off your shit. Give him time to think of something.”

“He should already have a plan.” Corey ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and spit a wad of blood at Magda’s feet. “Well?
Do
you have a plan, or are you just winging this?”

Robson said nothing.

“That’s what I fucking thought.” Corey lay dawn and snuggled against the wooden wall of the stall.

Roberta mouthed, “Do you have a plan?”

Robson closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the main support. He did have one, although he could not let the others know it.