Vampire's Day (Book 1): Epicenter (10 page)

39. Gus 3

“Left, he is coming from the left!”

“I see!”

Angel crouched low in his chair, and Gus made a sharp turn, but a burst hit him, adding new holes in the fuselage. One bandit in the cargo bay received a bullet to the head, but Angel doesn’t think about him. All that was important now was that Gus could still fly, despite the hail of bullets.

He had experienced bad luck this time at the end of the route. After dropping the first group, he successfully returned, flying low over the ground as usual. An alarm had already been sounded, and the enemy had raised their air interceptors and AWACS. They explored the boundary airspace with powerful radars, and had knocked many other planes out of the sky, and Gus was using an explored corridor. Flying at low altitude in this hilly terrain was difficult and dangerous even for an experienced pilot like Angel, but it was worth it - the same hills concealed Gus from radar beams, allowing them to remain unnoticed by the enemy. So he was able to return without incident and landed on the reserve base, since the home base had already been bombed. Gringos came around quickly, and understanding where the threat was, immediately started to work with heavy bombs on any airfield where aircraft could fly from. But Gus was so good that did not require an airfield.

He landed on the edge of a small village, where the old bus was waiting for him. In the bus was the new team of thugs, who were to be moved across the border, along with rockets and other weapons. While they hastily loaded boxes, Angel listened to the radio. His bosses had provided him with the latest equipment, so that he could stay aware of the military business. Listening to the radio, he realized that the first group had already created a stir with their missiles. Now gringos have to fights everywhere, without the opportunity to focus on a single point. It was a surprise that they were now shelling anywhere, including their own territory. His thugs had already downed three or four helicopters, and even managed to bring down an attack plane returning from Mexico. With a fresh batch of missiles, it would go even better.

They crossed the border unnoticed, and travelled most of the way without problems. And then they met with the police helicopter, which now hung on Gus’ tail, shooting its machine gun. Bandits in the cargo bay tried to shoot through the open hatch and portholes, but hitting the helicopter was almost impossible, because there was no tail turret. Angel threw Gus from side to side, but the helicopter stuck behind him as if with glue. It is good, that the cops had the M249, not an old heavy Browning M2.

“Land!”

“Where, moron, land on what? He will shoot us in the open field!”

Another burst broke Goose on the tail, and there were two more dead in the cargo bay, but now he saw shelter ahead – a massive abandoned farm, where Angel sent the wounded plane.

“Hold on!”

Gus entered the passage between the two cowsheds, ripping wires. The left wing was flung aside, bumping into a lamppost. The chassis broke and Gus fell on its belly, draw a long furrow in the ground with a loud screech. Even before the broken plane stopped, Angel jumped out of the cab, clutching a long IGLA tube.

“Well, where are you?”

The sudden maneuver had deceived his pursuers. They’d forged ahead and now returned to the place of Gus’ final landing. The roar of the blades approached, and the helicopter appeared above the roof. Angel shot at almost point-blank range, twenty meters, no more. The supersonic missile struck true, breaking the windshield and exploding inside, throwing the helicopter down in a burst of flames.

Angel didn’t return to his plane immediately, fearing fire and the detonation of fuel tanks, but he was lucky, Gus wasn’t lit. First, he got out the first aid kit, and handled a wide cut on forehead. Then he looked into the cargo bay. The weapons were not damaged, apart from a couple of bullet holes in the boxes, but all the passengers were dead. Those who were not killed by machine gun hadn’t survived the crash landing. It was time to use the emergency transmitter. The men on this side of the border would come to get their goods, and save him. And while he was hiding in the abandoned farmhouse, he took out an injection gun with small scarlet single dose capsules – thanks to the scent of blood the Hunger had awoken earlier than usual.

40. Jimenez in the operations center 2

Jimenez looked out the window at sun and the lengthening evening shadows, and then turned to Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.

“If I had not seen what I saw this morning and in the afternoon, I would laugh at your joke, but you're not joking. Real vampires, really attacking people and drinking the victims’ blood, I believe you. But what about this sun outside the window? I have met many of your vampires today, and none of them burnt like gunpowder in the sun. Vampires should die in the sun, should burn, isn’t that true?”

Smith laughed nervously.

“You see, miss, the reality is very different from Stephenie Meyer’s books. Vampires, who arrived in our city this morning by Flight 263 do not burn in the sun, they can’t even get skin cancer. These vampires don’t turn into bats, don’t stop to count spilled grain; garlic is just seasoning for them, and holy water the perfect remedy to quench their thirst. They can’t read minds, and they do cast reflections in mirrors.

“As you have seen, it isn’t necessary to use silver bullets and aspen stakes to kill them. Ordinary bullets give excellent results. And why? Because these vampires are not magical, they aren’t mythical creatures, or Satan’s messengers.

“We call them “vampires”, but the more accurate word would be “mutants”. They're all mutants. The virus struck their DNA, destroying their own blood and now they look for someone else’s blood. Getting blood is a matter of survival, and they will stop at nothing to get it. That's the truth, no romance.”

Jimenez was silent for a while. It seemed like a joke, but she didn’t want to laugh.

“So, they aren’t the living dead?”

“They are real people, modified by a virus. This gives us an advantage – it’s not difficult to kill them. All that would kill an ordinary man is also fatal for these vampires. Shoot, strangle, stab, break the skull with a baseball bat, or use poison in coffee - all work. In addition to blood, they need food, water, air and sleep. It's hot in the sun for them and cold in the winter, so, as you can see, they have a lot of weaknesses. All this makes them even more dangerous - weak people have to stay smart to survive.”

Jimenez remembered all the vampires she had seen today: civil, military, doctors, firefighters, police officers. Men and women, young and old, wounded and maimed.

“Wait, there's something that doesn’t make sense. You said that they are real people just like you and me, that they may die, and you can kill them in the usual way. Then why the hell don’t they die from blood loss?

“The girl with the camera, the first one I saw at the airport - her throat was cut from ear to ear. Anyone with such a wound would have died from blood loss in less than a minute; I remember that from my training courses in first aid. But she was not going to die, and attacked me with her bare hands. She only died when I hit her with three bullets. Why did the bullets kill her and not the blood loss?”

“That girl with the camera, do you remember how her dress looked?”

“It was a normal dress, just covered in blood, torn and hanging like a rag, too big for her. Wait…”

Jimenez raised her hand to prevent interruptions.

“I remember. The clothes on all of them hang, as if they are a dozen pounds thinner, and it happened almost instantly. Is this an answer?”

“You're right. When a hungry vampire attacks a man, he rips his throat. The blood loss is huge, and death from such an injury should occur very quickly, but this is not happening. The virus invader wants to expand its territory. It needs new carriers, and can’t let them die, so the virus takes care of their survival.

“We don’t know exactly how it happens, but when it falls into a new organism, the virus rapidly changes the body, modifies it. Fatty tissues begin to decay almost instantly, turning into what we call the "ersatz", a temporary blood substitute that starts flowing in their veins, quickly sealing the wound.”

“That is why they are so dramatically losing weight. The virus burns fat better than any fitness trainer, processing fat into ersatz. The main purpose of blood is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the brain, and ersatz can deal with that. It isn’t good for anything else, the virus isn’t able to consume this ersatz, so…”

“So they need real blood, and begin to search for it?”

“You’ve got it.”

41. Tiger

He slowly stood up, brushed broken glass from the girl, and looked her over - there was no blood. His ears were still ringing, but the shelling was over, and Tiger still lived. The cashier and his truck workers, too. They were saved by the concrete blocks which he’d brought here; they shielded them from the close blasts. He found this funny.

“Get up! You're not hurt?”

There was no more military camp, checkpoint or small rich town near the road. In their place were fires, shell craters, broken cars, and many dead and wounded. And there was shooting from there, from the city.

“What happened?”

“We were bombarded with our own ship.”

“Why did they do this?

“How should I know? Probably fucking friendly fire!”

Tiger called himself a motherfucker. He’d left his carbine in the truck, and now lost it – the truck cabin was broken, and spilt fuel began to burn.

“Quick, grab food, water, takes all the money too. Get out of town, on the highway. Take your family, find cars, motorcycles, even bicycles and leave.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the war.”

Pushing her from the looted store, and making sure that she was going in the right direction, Tiger moved toward the fence. He found a weapon almost immediately, taking a carbine from the hands of a dead guardsman and pulling out of his bloody pouch a pair of spare magazines. Better.

“Private!”

Not all the officers had been killed. Tiger found it a very good sign; he didn’t know what to do, he needed a clear order, and he got it. The lieutenant took him and a few soldiers forward. Bypassing the broken mobile hospital, charred remains of staff tents and burning convoy, they walked to the checkpoint. He could still hear machine gun bursts, the jackhammer sound of rapid-guns and grenade launchers, and the thunderous roar of tanks.

“Come on!”

Tiger’s position was in an overturned school bus. Behind the metal carcass hid three more soldiers, among them the tanker driver.

“After the shelling, the people in the traffic were attacked by a whole horde of crazies. There was a massacre. Now it’s your task to stop them. Soon tanks will be here, you must cover them from the grenade launchers. Some of our enemies are well-armed, they shoot from those high-rises, beware. Remember - everyone who is bitten becomes one of them, so no close-in fighting! Hold the position!”

The tank’s guns again fired against the high-rise buildings, and there was no return fire. For a short time it was surprisingly quiet, with only the occasional explosions from petrol in cars.

“Listen, when they run at us, will you be able to shoot? Among the rabid are many women and children, and they are indistinguishable from a normal person, as if we…”

“Shut up,” broke in Tiger. ”There.”

Ahead, behind a veil of smoke, were movements. From there came cries, double shots, and then people ran towards the overturned bus. Crazies chased them, and Tiger realized that distinguishing them isn’t that difficult - they moved differently, and were all seriously wounded in the neck area.

One of the rabid knocked down the old man and began stabbing him in the back, blow after blow. His head was shattered to pieces by Tiger’s single shot. The other soldiers shot too, they repelled this attack easily. Through the smoke someone fired a shotgun several times, making a dozen holes in the orange bus roof. The tanker driver fired back, using his grenade launcher, and killed the unknown crazy with the shotgun. Surviving civilians huddled close to the bus, knowing that they would be protected here.

“Fuck!”

“What it is?” Tiger turned to the tanker driver.

“I’ve been hit. Do you have a bandage?”

42. Juke Box

Ivanov didn’t understand what happening; no one in his crew understood. Ten minutes ago everything was quiet, and then the calm was broken by heavy shelling from their own ship. Around the Juke Box military trucks and civilian vehicles were burning, and the command center had been blown into the air. The local two-storey houses were destroyed, blast waves and debris killing people. But there hadn’t been any direct hits on his tank, so Ivanov and his crew safely survived their first real battle. The shelling stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and through the radio chaos Ivanov finally managed to get in touch with a superior officer. The officer ordered them to go to the fence and support the few surviving infantry with cannon fire. Juke Box moved, pushing aside a flashing National Guardsmen truck and shifting through some burning wreckage, probably a Ferrari, Ivanov thought. They arrived at the checkpoint later than the other tanks in the platoon, so they only took one shot - they sent a high explosive into the old hotel’s upper floor, where machine guns were firing on the checkpoint. The firing stopped.

“Cool,” a gunner muttered, looking at the results of their work.

“Yeah, it's great,” Ivanov replied. “Now it would be fucking cool to know who we shot!”

Where did these madmen get guns, and in such numbers? They were saying that the crazies attacked people with just their bare hands, but who was shooting? Ivanov made contact with the other tanks and asked about losses in their platoons. Apparently there were no dead; only David, the third tank commander, had been hurt by small fragments, but the wound was not dangerous.

“I didn’t have time to bandage the wound when they attacked us from the city. The helicopter pilot saw that crazies were being brought by trucks, and then dropped off after the shelling, like a dog unleashed from a chain.”

“Who brought them?”

“How the fuck should I know?! You hadn’t yet arrived, and the crazies were already attacking people in the traffic jam. It was like a slaughterhouse. Our marines began to shoot, but there were machine guns from the high-rises shooting us. I made four shots. I wasn’t ready for this when I went into the army.”

There were two minutes of tense silence.

“Listen carefully, its information about the enemy!”

“Quiet!”

“…the bulk of the enemies have been struck by an incurable virus, making them extremely aggressive. The virus causes them to attack other people and drink their blood. The infected don’t attack each other.”

“Damn, just like in the movies.”

“They can be killed, I repeat, use any weapon. The infected have a body temperature above ordinary people, so use infrared sight. Many of them are wounded, especially in the neck. Among the infected are women and children, shoot without hesitation, I repeat, don’t hesitate to shoot, they kill everyone they see. Don’t let them go down the highway!”

Ivanov tried to imagine how many residents had already been infected by this unknown, incurable virus. According to rumors, the infection was spreading very quickly, covering entire neighborhoods in just a few minutes. How many enemies did he have now?

“I have no relatives in this city, well.”

“Among the infected, there are those who can use guns. They are using poisoned bullets…”

“Poisoned bullets? For what?”

“They're coming!”

The Juke Box crew saw their enemies. There were a lot of them, pursuing civilians.

The marines opened fire, so there was no work yet for Juke Box. Then shooting began behind them, in the depths of the destroyed checkpoint.

“They’re coming from the rear!”

Now shooting was occurring all around them, and M2 Bradley was burning on the crossroads. The officers have fallen silent, and the first and second tanks were fighting with someone unknown. David wasn’t responding. Ivanov saw that soldiers were fighting against soldiers, and the infected now approached.

“Shrapnel grenade!”