Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2) (12 page)

Unlike his own previous prison, these humans were
kept in a large fenced area that took up most of what had obviously
been the town square. They lived in tents and were crammed
together, leaving the rest of the town empty and unused. Harris
felt his anger boil over at such cruelty. The human cattle could
not go anywhere with the serum suppressing their will so this
enforced deprivation was purely for the guards benefit so they did
not have to police a wider area.

One of the attacking guards stood up through the
car’s turret now that the defense had been broken and smiled as he
surveyed the humans in the cage before him. Once the car rolled
past, Harris threw the grenade into the open turret. The guard did
not realise what had fallen down the hatch until the screams of the
men below him reached his ears, and by then it was too late. There
was a loud thump as the grenade exploded and the car continued on
until it veered off to the left, hit a building and came to a stop.
The guard who had stood in the turret fell forward to the ground,
leaving his legs behind him in the car.

Harris heard the deep crack of Warkowski’s and Dee’s
rifles as they picked off any guards that roamed about the town.
The tanks had moved off towards another stronghold of enemy
resistance and he could hear the chatter of machine guns and the
explosions as the battle continued. The humans were a low priority
for the thralls right now and that suited Harris.

He whistled and Rodgers appeared to his left with
Ortega following close behind. The men raced towards the gate and
fired a quick burst into the lock. Harris pulled the gates open and
looked around for Sherman. Seconds ticked by and there was no sign.
In the distance the boom of the tanks had stopped and only the
occasional burst of machine gun fire split the air. The fighting
was winding down. They had to move or the attacking forces would
discover them.

Suddenly a large dun-colored truck appeared around
the corner. For a second Harris saw the green of a thrall uniform
at the wheel and he looked around for somewhere to hide. Then he
recognized Sherman at the wheel, wearing a thrall uniform, and he
felt relief flood through him. The truck wasn’t large enough for
all of the captive humans—they would only be able to take about
thirty or so, and that would be stretching it. There just wasn’t
time to get sufficient transport organized with the way things had
gone. The situation had deteriorated far more rapidly than they had
planned for and they were reacting ‘on the fly’ as it was. In any
case, they would have no hope of getting all two hundred captives
back to their camp even if they had enough trucks. They had to
think practically, no matter how mercenary it appeared to be.

He turned to the others. “Remember what we
discussed.” He kept his face calm but what they were about to do
still ate at him. “Take the youngest and the fittest, the rest we
have to leave.” The others merely nodded. They had argued about
this over the last day while they had watched the preparations for
the attack. They had no right to play God. How could they decide
who would survive and who wouldn’t? Just because someone was older
did not mean they could not contribute to the community.

Harris had found himself making more and more of
these types of decisions lately and his soul felt heavy with the
responsibility. He knew that it made more sense to take those who
could contribute most to the community but age and fitness were not
always a guarantee of the best contribution. He knew this but there
was no better way he could think of at this time and he had argued
until the others had agreed. But, as he passed through the faces of
those blank-faced men and women, he cried openly as he separated
those who would come with them from those they had to leave.

Some day, he promised each face silently. Some day I
will come back and free you all. But he knew as he looked at the
remaining wretches that it was unlikely that they would be able to
return here in time to save those that were left.

“There are only ten of them and they’re asleep,”
Rodgers pleaded as the truck raced through the back streets. “They
won’t even have set traps.”

“No,” Harris said emphatically. “We’ve talked about
this. There must be no evidence that anyone but the thralls were
here. And they would never kill a vampire.”

“But they’re so close,” Rodgers insisted.

“I know but we have to play this right or everything
will have been for nothing. When Wentworth hears of this he’ll send
his troops in force and we’ll get the war we need to hide our own
siphoning of resources. We have to be patient.”

The truck burst out past the town limits and raced
out towards the darkening horizon. It was still early morning but
an angry weather front was closing in from the North and already
the dark clouds roiled across the sun like oil across water and
threw long shadows out before them. The air grew noticeably cooler
and the men shivered as the adrenaline oozed out of their muscles.
They were careful to use one of the routes that the thralls had
used to approach the town so their tracks would not be seen. After
a few minutes snow began to fall and soon the truck was swallowed
up in the approaching storm.

The room was vast, that was the first thing Ralf
Falconi noticed. A spear of light blazed from behind him and
spilled into the room but it seemed to lose its luster as soon as
it hit the gloom. The feeling of space came more from a sense of
emptiness than from anything he could actually see. There was an
echo as his boots clicked on tiles that seemed to reverberate far
more than one would expect in a normal room. He could see the
outline of sharp angles in the dark that he assumed were pieces of
furniture but the light was too dim to be sure and the obstacles
seemed to wrap themselves deeper into the shadows as he opened the
door further.

There was a coldness in the room that defied the
waning heat of the early evening outside. The cold seemed to cling
to the room and suck at his very core as he entered further into
the darkness. There was a smell as well, a faint odor that left him
feeling nauseous, though it seemed to drift in and out of range.
The room reeked of perfume but that wasn’t what made his stomach
lurch. It was something else, something that hid behind the
stronger odor but was far more powerful. It seemed to tease him,
letting him catch a faint hint only to dissipate abruptly and hide
behind the heavy smell of perfume that saturated the room. He
couldn’t quite place it but it smelt like a mixture of spoilt fruit
and mould. It was as if something had decayed, become putrescent,
but had not actually decomposed. It was, he supposed, the smell of
living death. His hands shook as he closed the door and he stood
for a moment shaking more from fear than from the biting cold
before he summoned the courage to announce his presence.

“My Lord,” he croaked finding his throat dry and
brittle. He coughed and then repeated his greeting. His words
seemed to swirl around him, bounce against the walls and come back
to mock him as he stood and shook in the dark. He should not be
here, he kept telling himself. He was too junior an officer to
speak directly with their cabal master but he also knew that his
superiors were well aware of the likely reaction to the news he
carried. Wentworth was not known for his good humor at the best of
times. By all accounts he had been a bitter and petty man when he
had been alive and death had not done anything to improve his
disposition. In fact, all it had done was provide him with the
power to act on impulses he had never had the courage to entertain
before.

Falconi fully expected never to leave this room, but
it had been made clear to him that the alternative could be far
worse. As he stood in the room he imagined terrors in the dark
around him and he was no longer sure that he had made the right
decision. Someone had to tell Wentworth of the attack and he cursed
his luck that he had been the one that had brought the news from
the border.

“I assume you have a good reason for disturbing me,”
the words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. He had never
met, or even seen, Wentworth before, but his voice was not what he
had expected. It was high-pitched, almost whining, more like a
petulant child than a terrifying vampire. It had a nasal tone that
reminded Falconi of his cousin who always seemed to have a cold,
and he allowed himself to believe that their vampire master was not
as bad as…

He suddenly felt a vice grip his throat and he was
lifted off the ground. The hand that gripped him was far colder
than the room and the chill seemed to burn into his throat. He
tried to breathe but the grip was firm and his lungs began to burn,
a deep pain that felt like a hand had reached into his chest and
squeezed. His eyes bulged and his head throbbed but he still could
not see anything. It was like the hand that gripped him was part of
the darkness itself.

Just as suddenly as it had grabbed him the hand
released him and he fell to the ground where he frantically tried
to suck air into his starved chest but the sudden coldness of the
air hitting his raw throat made him retch. The darkness seemed to
loom around him and he felt consciousness slip from him for a
moment.

He wasn’t sure whether he had blacked out or not but
he found himself on his back and then the same voice snapped
again.

“Lights.”

A sudden flare of light burst in the corner, though
again its glare seemed to have trouble penetrating the darkness.
Falconi looked around and could see a deeper darkness looming over
him. There was a heavy musk in the air that reminded him of body
lotion but it was spoilt by the same smell of decay he had noticed
earlier. He was in awe of the figure above him. Was Wentworth able
to command light? Falconi’s eyes snapped over to the feeble light
and he could see the pale outline of a bed, not a coffin as he had
expected, and he saw something move under the covers.

He caught his breath as he imagined horrors borne in
darkness swirling beneath the covers but, as his eyes grew more
accustomed, he could make out a figure on the bed. It appeared
almost white in the glow of the light, almost ethereal, and he
slowly made out a tussle of long hair and delicate shoulders. It
was a woman, he realized suddenly.

He had heard that Wentworth liked to retain the
trappings of the old world. Vampires could not perform any sexual
acts, unlike the thralls who experienced far more pleasure than
when they had been merely mortal. The flesh of the vampire was dead
and so any pleasure that the flesh had been capable of before was
now denied them, though the reputed pleasure of fresh blood far
outweighed this loss.

Wentworth, however, still liked to surround himself
with female companions and expensive lotions and perfumes. Falconi
had seen some of the females he had cast aside. The women did not
last long as his companion and their pale and wretched husks were
only fit to be shot when he tired of them.

“Well?” the voice came again and Falconi felt the
fear pluck at him as he pulled himself to his feet.

“Sir,” he paused for a moment as the smell of
corruption assaulted him when he drew near the figure. “There was
an attack at the border.” He paused, bracing himself for a
reaction. He had imagined being struck, torn apart or at the very
least witnessing a demented rage, but the darkness remained silent
around him. He could not see Wentworth but the smell was strongest
just in front of him so he directed his attention there.

“And?” The voice seemed to float in the air from
nowhere in particular.

“And,” he began and faltered. He did not know quite
how to describe what had happened. He had not expected such a calm
acceptance of his news and had not prepared himself to deliver a
coherent report. Somehow this serene reaction was far more
frightening.

“Sir,” he continued though his body shook
uncontrollably, “we were attacked just after dawn by Von Kruger’s
men. They had tanks and armored cars and at least two hundred men.”
Falconi began to embellish his report as he began to see that there
might be a way to survive this meeting after all.

“Which probably means there were around fifty of them
but you want it to appear that you were vastly outnumbered,”
Wentworth chuckled and Falconi decided that to argue would be
pointless. There had been more than fifty but less that the two
hundred he had reported. However, he decided that it would be
unwise to contradict the vampire.

“You are sure it was Von Kruger’s men?”

Falconi nodded and then spoke as well in case his
motion could not be seen. “Yes, sir. No question about it. They
wore Von Kruger’s colors and the tanks sported the decals that we
know he uses. We’ve watched them parade in front of us for months,
flaunting their fuel and equipment.”

“Indeed,” Wentworth agreed. “I assume that my high
council is outside the door, too afraid to bring the news
themselves.”

Falconi did not know how to reply. Would it be
disloyal to agree or should he come up with an excuse for his
superiors that would ingratiate him to them? The decision was taken
from him as the door was suddenly wrenched open behind him. He
hadn’t heard any movement and had felt no displacement in the air
around him, but somehow Wentworth had moved past him and crossed
the distance to the door in the blink of an eye. The sudden flood
of light from outside blinded Falconi but he caught the brief
impression of two figures outside the door before Wentworth pushed
past them and called for Falconi to follow.

“Come, Captain we have work to do.”

Falconi walked to the door on legs that shook with
the relief of a reprieved man. He was still blinking as he reached
the door so he did not notice anything about his superiors until he
actually reached the door and stepped in their blood. His superiors
had been attacked so quickly that they were still standing when he
reached them. His immediate superior was on his left and the man
had only just realized that his stomach had been ripped open. The
cut had been so swift that it had taken a moment for the blood to
appear or even for the nerves to send the pain to his brain. The
man’s face grew suddenly pale and then grey almost instantly as his
blood poured from the wound in a torrent. The other man still stood
but his head leaned at a severe angle. Falconi watched in shock as
the man’s head fell forward and dropped to the ground. The body
remained standing for a moment longer and blood jetted towards the
ceiling in high arcs before the body folded to the ground like a
puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut.