Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2) (19 page)

He had two more places to fill, but, as yet, no one
knew who they might be. The two empty chairs on either side of
Regan’s group were like a physical divide that separated them from
the rest of the members of the new government as they sat in closed
session to plan out who would take which area of
responsibility.

Each member of government who had been voted to a
position would receive a portfolio that gave him or her the final
say and responsibility for their designated area. Major decisions
would still need a vote by the entire committee, but the day to day
running of the community, supplies and resources, would be the
responsibility of the relevant member. There were only ten
portfolios so this session was crucial for how the government would
work together for the foreseeable future.

This would mean that whoever controlled Agriculture
would control all the details and decisions that pertained to
planting, harvesting and finding the resources required for a
year’s successful harvest. Someone else would control the storing
and distribution of this harvest, and someone else would control
all matters around the security of the planting fields and the
stored supplies.

Each portfolio would ensure each member of the
government would hold quite a lot of power in the community, but
some of these portfolios brought with them a lot more power than
others, and Harris was worried. The portfolios would be decided by
a vote. One member of the government would put a name forward for a
position, not his own of course, and then the others would either
ratify that vote or not by a majority vote. In the event of a tied
vote Regan would have the deciding call.

Harris knew that Regan would be trying to get his
people voted into the main positions of Administration, Resource
Management and Security. Administration would control the
community’s workforce. It was their decision who was assigned to
each sector and how many of the community’s scarce numbers would be
assigned to each work detail. Without the cooperation of whoever
controlled Administration it would be impossible to staff any other
area. Resource Management controlled all non-living resources. All
equipment, vehicles and weapons would be controlled by whoever ran
the resource management portfolio and the power they would wield
was obvious. Security was to be split into two sections, internal
and external. The internal security force would effectively police
the community. They would be the law in their community, and
whoever controlled the law had a huge say in what would be allowed
and what would not.

There were other areas controlling Housing, External
Security, Social Services, Food (excluding Agriculture), Foreign
Affairs (while there were no other communities as yet the position
was considered important enough that it would be assigned for a
future they hoped would someday become a reality) and Health.

There were five new faces that were a completely
unknown commodity to all sides. Harris didn’t know the two men or
three women who now sat with him on the government panel but he
hoped that they would give a much needed balance to the committee
rather than a further fracturing that would ensure that nothing
would ever actually get done.

The first of these was Ben Thackery. Thackery was a
brute of a man who used his sheer size and overbearing confidence
to bend others to his will. He was a man who could very easily
become a bully and Harris did not yet know enough to decide whether
he already was or whether it was merely his size and forceful
personality that made him appear so. He was a huge man with broad
shoulders that made even Warkowski look wimpy. His hands were
massive and were lined with the scars of a man who had used his
hands all his life to support himself. Thackery had been a farmer,
and a good one from what Harris had heard. He had supported his
family and had balanced the rising costs of modern farming against
the constant eroding of what he was paid for his hard work. Before
the vampires had come he had been close to bankruptcy, as most of
his fellow farmers had been, and he had been pivotal in organizing
these men into an effective union that had tried, with some limited
success, to ensure that they were paid a fair price for their
labor.

He was an obvious candidate from the start as many of
the men and women who had followed him in the old world had again
listened to his promises that he would look after their interests
in the new government. He had found his three children but his wife
was still missing, and the cynical among the electorate might have
commented that he had played the sympathy card a little too much
during the election. Though Harris respected any man who stood up
for his ideals. It would become clear over time whether Thackery
would be willing to work with others or whether he would use his
influence and power to look after his own agenda.

Amanda Reitzig was an anomaly. She was diminutive and
seemed to huddle in her chair as if the loud din of conversations
around her swept through her like physical waves. She seemed to be
too quiet and unimposing to have received even a single vote, but
her outward appearance was deceptive in the extreme. She was a
firebrand when it came to her area of expertise. She was the
community’s first real doctor, though she had yet to complete the
exams the old world had insisted on before she could officially use
the term physician.

While she appeared quiet outside of her surgery, no
one dared enter her hospital without paying her due respect. She
had fiery red hair that matched her volcanic temper if someone
tried to stop her doing her job. She had a line of freckles across
her nose like the trail of a small bird, giving her an impish look
that made her look far younger than she actually was. Her small
stature further added to this impression. She had plain features,
with a nose that was a little too large for her small, round face
and a chin that was a little too weak for her to be called pretty.
Her eyes, though, more than made up for any physical imperfections.
They were a startling green and they shone with an inner fire and
with such intelligence and fun that most people only ever
remembered her as beautiful.

Parents liked her and children adored her, and she
had been voted onto the government without even putting herself
forward. In fact, the first she had known of her involvement in the
election at all had been when she had been informed that she had
actually been elected. No one had thought to stipulate that a
candidate had to actually apply for candidacy so it was ruled that
the people had a right to elect whom they wanted.

Penny Arkwright was a widow, and her unfortunate
tendency to purse her mouth gave a severe, and in no way
representative, impression of her personality. She was a clever
woman of indeterminate age. If Harris had to guess he’d put her in
her late fifties—though he would not dare guess out loud.

She was a fair woman and had received her block of
votes from women, mostly mothers, who knew her from the small
school she had set up for the children of the community. She was
highly intelligent and well respected, and Harris had high hopes
that she would keep all of them grounded.

Philip Scholes worried Harris. His eyes never seemed
quite capable of meeting those of the people he spoke to. Harris
had always subscribed to the school of thought that only people who
had something to hide could not look you straight in the eye, at
least once during a conversation. It wasn’t as if the man was shy,
he had no trouble letting his views be known. In fact, it was his
views that Harris worried most about.

Scholes believed that the current situation should be
taken advantage of here and now. They should eat, drink and be
merry for now because there was no future anyway. They should enjoy
themselves while it lasted and not worry about anybody else. His
views differed slightly, though very importantly, from Regan’s.
While they both wanted to bury their heads in the sand and ignore
the larger issues affecting the human race, at least Regan did want
to build for a future by planting food, rationing supplies and
building their community with as little risk as possible. Regan did
see the need to rescue others; he was well aware that the community
still needed far more people in skilled positions to ensure that
harvests would be successful and that their health was adequately
catered for. Where he and Regan disagreed was in the timing and
methodology.

Scholes, however, didn’t care. He wanted them to
ignore the serum, ignore the dwindling supplies, and just enjoy the
time they had left. The fact that he had gotten elected at all was
worrying as it meant that there was a large enough section of the
community who agreed with him.

Paul Williams made up the last of the new faces and
Harris knew nothing at all about the man. Strangely, no one he
talked to knew much about him either, but he had developed a
committed following in the community by seeming to support
everyone’s view to an extent and failing to push forward any of his
own. He seemed to appeal to people because he came across as a
friendly brother, or in the ladies’ opinions, a favored brother’s
friend.

He was a handsome man standing just over six foot
tall. He had jet-black hair and a trimmed beard that seemed to
emulate his indecisive personality by hovering somewhere between a
goatee and a full beard. Nothing about the man was overly
memorable, and when Harris had introduced himself earlier he had
come away not knowing much about him. He was polite and nodded
amiably enough but never seemed to fully agree or disagree with
anything. Fence sitting was something they could ill afford with
the committee balanced as it was.

Regan laughed and Harris’s attention was drawn to
him, and for a moment Harris caught his eye. Something seemed to
pass between them and Harris was confused. It wasn’t that Regan was
a bad man, he just had his own ideas about how things should be
done and they didn’t always coincide with Harris’s or those of the
older committee members. His main focus was on what they had now
and ensuring that they could survive with what they had. He just
didn’t believe that the serum was as big a threat as Harris knew it
to be. Or if he did, he was not prepared to risk what they had for
the greater good.

It was in this that the man was defined. Some people
had a very strong sense of moral responsibility and it was these
kinds of people who had pursued the case for humanitarian ideals
all through history. Great leaders were those who were able to
balance the greater good against policies that were not always
popular. Unfortunately Regan wasn’t a great leader but the caliber
of his advisors was the biggest worry for Harris. They had their
own agendas and, without the correct focus, Regan could end up
leading them all to ruin despite his good intentions. Harris
wondered if Regan was aware just how far he could really rely on
his lieutenants.

Regan broke the eye contact with Harris and then
called the meeting to order. Harris’s thoughts, though, were not on
the meeting as they should have been. Harris, too, was not a great
leader. He was too easily distracted and too eager to save others
to really make the hard decisions that would be needed of them all
if they were to survive. It was a shame that the two most
charismatic people in the community were too blinkered by their own
agendas that neither could see that the best solution might just be
midway between the two. However, Harris at least recognized some of
his own failings, and he did try to surround himself with people
who could provide the balance that he himself lacked. Even as the
meeting came to order Harris was unable to fully concentrate and he
felt his thoughts shift towards the border as he wondered what the
impact of their last mission had been.

The sun began to slip behind the horizon and the
shadows raced over the land like greyhounds released from their
traps. As Falconi watched the advancing darkness he felt a
paralyzing sense of dread flood through him. Fires still burned on
the battlefield and thick smoke still clung stubbornly to the
ground, hiding the many grotesque and torn bodies that still
littered the landscape.

He had spent most of the day trying to gather and
reorganize his shattered forces, though why he was bothering he
really did not know. He had cleared away any bodies that he could
get to, but most of the carnage had occurred over the border and
Von Kruger’s thralls still patrolled there. He wondered idly why
they did not clear away their own dead. Maybe there were not enough
of them to clear away the bodies and still patrol the border. He
wasn’t in any position to take advantage of this and attack anyway
so it didn’t really matter.

He sighed. The situation had deteriorated badly and
far too quickly for anyone to follow. The vampires seemed to have
gone mad. He had never see vampires fight before. He had
volunteered to be a thrall because the family he had run numbers
for had been wiped out. He had been offered a simple choice: live
and have access to pleasures he had only dreamed of before or have
his throat ripped out. He chose survival. He was even able to admit
to himself that he would probably have chosen to be a thrall even
without the threat of death. The power was incredible, and now that
he commanded his own forces he would be able to live like a
king.

Of course, that was before this damned border war had
started. This wasn’t just a skirmish. He had been involved in
border crossings before, and every time there had been a few killed
on either side and things had returned to normal soon after. No one
could afford a protracted war with resources as limited as they
were. And the vampires had never become involved before, no matter
how badly it had gone for either side.