Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (25 page)

Unfortunately, his practised
pumping on the break caused the boots to constrict around his
injured instep and agony shot up his leg. He lifted his foot
momentarily and then, realising what he was doing, he stamped it
back down again with far too much force. He had been driving
one-handed at this point as his left hand was still massaging his
injured head and the violent pull of the blown tyre wrenched the
wheel from his grasp. He shot his hand back to the wheel but the
transport was already too far gone. The vehicle shuddered and then
the wheels locked. The driver might still have been able to bring
the transport under control if the left tyre had still been whole
but the blowout had shredded it down to the metal of the wheel and
sparks flew as the bed of the truck went to the left and the heavy
stone of its cargo carried the bed of the transport past the cab as
the vehicle jack-knifed.

Jackson couldn’t tell what was
happening in the cacophony of noise that surrounded him. The light
of dawn was already beginning to chase the darkness away but dust
swirled everywhere and blinded him completely. He was pretty sure
that the transport had crashed, and they hadn’t wanted that. If the
stone container cracked before they were ready then they would all
die slowly from radiation poisoning. The rest of his team, Ricks
and the Franklin siblings, were crouched behind cover just behind
him. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. He knew
that he had to take out the truck while the thralls were still
bundled together in one place or they would spread out and
overpower them. He screamed for the others to follow him and then
he disappeared into the dust.

Ricks lifted his head and
slapped Benjamin on the shoulder.

“Come one, that’s the signal!”
he shouted and rose immediately and ran toward the road. He had a
bandanna covering his mouth and nose but his eyes were streaming.
No one had realised when they had set off that there would be so
much dust on the road, so no one had thought to bring goggles. Grit
and dust washed over him as he struggled to make out the scene
before him. From where he had been hidden he could not see the road
so he did not know what had happened, but, judging by the level of
noise from screeching breaks and tearing metal, the plan hadn’t
gone exactly as they had planned. What should have been a
relatively simple mopping up exercise was far from that, he began
to realise.

Already the sun had risen just
over the horizon and light began to flood toward them, but it was
still difficult to make out anything clearly with the dust hanging
in the air. As he approached the road he could see that the
transport wasn’t on the road where it should have been; it had
either driven through the ambush or it had gone off the road.
Either way that wasn’t good. He squinted through the dust that was
finally beginning to settle now that there were no vehicles moving
but he still couldn’t see anything clearly.
Shit! What was he
supposed to do now?

He heard a slide of metal just
in front of him and he dropped to the ground without thinking just
before bullets tore through the air above him. He brought his own
weapon forward and shot blindly back in the general direction of
where the bullets had come from. Another weapon began to chatter
and then another and he rolled away from his position back toward
where he had come from. Something had gone wrong and the thrall
guards from the truck obviously weren’t dead. He continued to roll
frantically away from the fire and, suddenly, he slammed into a
pair of legs coming toward him. The figure fell over with a yelp
and he felt someone land heavily on top of him. Bullets stitched
the air where the figure had stood only moments before and, unknown
to both of them; he had just saved Delilah’s life.

Benjamin saw his sister suddenly
disappear from in front of him, but before he could react, he felt
a searing pain in his shoulder as a bullet ripped into his flesh.
The force of the blow sent him sprawling to the ground where he
landed painfully on the wound. He tried to raise his own weapon but
his hand was numb and it wouldn’t obey his command.

He tried to change hands but the
strap of the weapon was caught under him and he couldn’t get any
leverage to move. His head began to swim as darkness threatened to
pull him down. He could see the dust settling and there were three
darker figures beginning to make their way toward him. He tried to
move again but the movement grated against his wound and the pain
swamped him before he lost consciousness.

Harris heard the explosion in
the distance as he waited for the second convoy to reach him. They
had taken a lot longer than he had expected, based on the speed
they had been doing. They must have slowed down for some reason
since passing the transport and that meant that they were now out
of position. If he had heard the explosion then…

The lead jeep began to slow and
Harris cursed as he saw the convoy come to a halt a few hundred
yards from the ambush point. These thralls were far more cautious
than the ones they had faced previously and it was really beginning
to piss him off that they were not falling blindly into his traps.
If Steele had been here he would probably have insisted on a backup
plan, but Harris had been so sure that his timing was right. For a
moment he froze. The thrall sitting in the back of the jeep pulled
himself out of the vehicle and began to walk back toward the first
truck, shouting orders as he went. Thralls suddenly spilled out
from the back of the truck and the soldiers took up positions
around the convoy.

Shit
, Harris cursed,
these guys really aren’t taking any chances.
Harris’ mind
went blank suddenly and his hands grew damp.
What do I do?
All of his recent failures flooded through his mind.
I am so out
of my depth.
He had taken a number of blows to his confidence
of late and doubt nagged at him constantly. He needed someone to
bounce ideas off, someone with a cooler head who understood what it
meant to wage war. It had been so easy at first. No one had died in
the beginning, except for vampires and thralls. And then, even when
one of their group had died, there had been others there who had
helped shoulder the guilt, others who had been involved in putting
the plan together. But more of his friends had died in the last few
months than were left in his small group, and each of their deaths
were on his shoulders alone. No one else had shared the plan; no
one else shared the blame. It was all becoming too much.

He had tried hard to shut out
the guilt, but every time a plan went awry the reality of their
position flooded back over him. What right did he have to lead
these people? They followed him because they trusted him, believed
in him. But it was all a lie. He wasn’t a leader. Not when things
kept going wrong. He didn’t have the strength to push his failures
aside and move forward. He was plagued with doubt, and his plans,
he could see now, reeked of conservatism and inexperience. He
hadn’t put a backup plan in place because he had wanted his people
out of sight well before the convoy appeared. There had been time,
he now realised, to place some of the charges further back along
the road just in case – but he hadn’t done it. And now they might
all die because of him.

He heard shouting from the road
and he shook himself from his thoughts. The dust had settled
quickly and two of the thralls had come almost level with his
position while he had been lost in thought. They had found the
explosives and were already shouting a warning back to the rest of
the convoy. Engines roared as the vehicles began to back away. They
were really buggered if the convoy made their way back to the
transport before the others were ready. If that happened, even more
deaths would be on his shoulders.

Without thinking, Harris rose
from behind his cover and took out the two thralls nearest him with
two three-shot bursts. The thralls dropped immediately to the
ground and remained still. The noise of the shots was drowned out
by the roaring engines but the thrall commander saw his men fall
and, suddenly, the air was thick with bullets and Harris was forced
to dive for cover.

Sandra Harrington cursed as she
saw the thralls stop short of the explosives. Harris had assigned
the majority of the group to this assignment, but, as there was so
little cover close to the road, they had been forced to deploy some
distance away from the now stationary convoy. Sandra was almost a
hundred yards from the road and the settling dust and the glare
from the sun made it difficult to make out anything clearly.

All she knew for certain was
that the convoy had stopped. She too had heard the explosion in the
distance, but the distant thump hadn’t seemed loud enough for the
thralls to hear over the roar of the engines. But, whatever the
reason, the thralls had stopped and they were too far from the
ambush to set off the explosives. This presented another problem.
If they just waited to see what developed and the thralls did
discover the trap then it would be too late at that point to circle
behind them and cut off their retreat.

Sandra looked around at the
others she could see. April crouched beside her behind a low mound
that, at one time, must have been excavated earth where workmen
before the war, maybe even before the energy crisis, had begun to
widen the road. Quite a lot of earth had been bulldozed into small
piles that ran parallel to the road for some miles, but the
exercise had long been abandoned and the earth had packed hard
under the sun’s relentless glare over the last few years.

The mounds offered great cover
for them but they were too far from the road for them to use them
for any attack. Joshua Perkins crouched behind another mound a
hundred yards further back and Carlos Mendez and Al Warnback were
positioned on the far side of the road in the light cover afforded
by the wild grass that still dotted that side of the road. On the
far side of the road there was a steep incline, again too far to be
of use to them from the road. The hill did afford the grass there
some shade and that area was thriving with lush growth.

Of them all, Sandra could only
trust Carlos to react to this new situation. The others took orders
well but had no idea how to react to a fluid situation. She sighed.
She would begin to make her way south and try and move past the
convoy and cut them off from behind. She could pick up Joshua as
she made her way back but they would be easily overrun if Carlos
and Al didn’t pull back also and add their strength to the attack.
Warkowski had positioned himself high above the road with his
rifle, but even with his skill, he wouldn’t be able to turn the
tide against the number of thralls in this convoy.

She tapped April on the shoulder
and signed for her to follow and to keep low. The young girl
slipped her weapon forward, checked the slide and nodded her
understanding. Sandra moved out. There was something very sad about
seeing such a young girl handle such a weapon with that level of
skill. Where had her childhood gone? She wondered briefly where it
would all end.

The sudden shout followed by the
quick three-shot bursts sent her plan the same way as the world.
She had only managed to barely reach Joshua’s position when the
thralls spotted her and began to spill from the middle truck firing
as they ran to cover. Their fire wasn’t accurate at this distance
but the sheer volume was enough to pin them where they were. There
was no cover at all from where they were for at least another two
hundred yards and there was no way they could get to where she
needed to be with the thralls lined along both sides of the
road.

The rear truck began to reverse
and roll back off the road while the driver struggled with the poor
grip in the undergrowth. Her heart thumped in her chest. If this
patrol made it back to the others, then they wouldn’t stand a
chance. She had already made her decision to come back to the rear
of the convoy, but in so doing, she suddenly realised that she had
left Harris on his own further down the road. Four thralls suddenly
split from those lining the roadside and began to make their way
carefully toward the head of the convoy where Harris was. Their
progress was slowed as Harris sent numerous well-aimed bursts
toward them, but, already she could see that they were splitting up
and approaching his position from different directions. It wouldn’t
be long before they outflanked him.

These thralls were far better
trained than any others they had faced before. She was already too
far away to help Harris. Besides, it was becoming increasingly
difficult to make out any detail as the vehicles had begun to turn
around and their frantic manoeuvres were throwing plumes of dust
into the air. The other thralls continued to scan the area on both
sides of the road as they protected the vehicles. The choking dust
would also affect the thralls’ vision of the surrounding area, but
the trucks would be turned and ready to go in the next few seconds.
Once that happened, they would escape back toward the other convoy
and all would be lost.

Suddenly she heard a deep boom
from behind her position. The rear truck’s windshield shattered and
the driver slumped over the wheel. Sandra had been hoping for a
break, and Warkowski’s shot set in motion a number of freak
occurrences that, for once, played into their hands.

The dead driver’s foot stayed on
the accelerator and the truck continued to crawl forward. His body
pulled against the wheel and the truck moved to the left toward the
thralls guarding the road instead of away from them. The truck
wasn’t going fast but it did move relentlessly forward and forced
the thralls to shift their positions to avoid the moving vehicle. A
sudden eruption of fire from behind the thralls on the other side
of the road caused them to lose their composure as all eyes shifted
suddenly toward where the gunfire originated.