Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2)

Vampire Apocalypse:

Descent Into Chaos

Derek Gunn

Published by Permuted Press at
Smashwords.

Copyright 2010 Derek Gunn

www.PermutedPress.com

Two Years Ago:

Boston

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 themselves 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 cityscape.

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 while they bought 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 extracted 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 usually military
men, 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. They were not men or women of honor.

As such, their main strategy tended to be to throw as
many soldiers as they could at any obstacle, regardless of the
costs. Harris and his colleagues had frustrated them continuously
by striking hard and fast and then disappearing before the thralls
could organize their defense, let alone 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.
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 had still somehow managed to operate 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 rumors that some servers still existed,
a last defiant bastion of man’s ingenuity and knowledge in a world
that no longer cared and could no longer support such excessive use
of a dwindling resource.

No one could waste power on computers anymore so most
news traveled by word of mouth.

When the vampires had come from the darkness they had
moved quickly. They took over whole communities while the world
still continued on, blissfully unaware that a rotting cancer was
already steadily eating away at their heart. By the time the world
woke up to the threat, the vampires had already gathered a sizeable
army of men and women who they 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 began 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. The
remnants of the government had even begun to conscript men and
women and, for a short time, they 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
when the humans had made particularly deep incursions against the
thrall defense, and ever since these safe areas tended to be far
behind the front lines. The thralls had done the majority of the
fighting though and this worked well for the humans. 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 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 so the overall gain was lost
in the general confusion. And then the vampires had poisoned the
water supplies with their serum and everything had gone to
hell.

Harris had been staying with his father and had been
conscripted late in the war so had only arrived after the serum’s
effects had become known. Already the front had collapsed and
Harris had found himself caught up with a decimated and demoralized
retreating army. In fact, it had only been when one man, Ricardo
Juarez, had managed to organize 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. 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 needed. After
Juarez was killed there was a moment when everything was about to
fall apart, but two men and one woman, including himself, had come
forward and encouraged the others to continue. Two of the others
were dead now 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 remained.

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 coordinates 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 realized 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, but 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 again. 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, the darkness was
something to fear. Something that 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.