Vampire's Day (Book 1): Epicenter (17 page)

64. Ark 4

“Halt! Halt!”

She didn’t want to stop, but the carbine, aimed at Ark, provided a strong incentive. She could try to gain speed and knock aside the guy with the carbine, but he could manage to jump aside, and shoot those on board. Miss Gloria stopped the bus.

“Good!”

The guy with the carbine slowly approached, turning to the ditch and shouting.

“Come here.”

Two children climbed out of the ditch, a boy and a girl of about eight years, both dirty and tearful. The man’s business suit was also not in the best shape.

“Open the door, we will go with you! We just need to get out of here!”

“It’s forbidden…”

“Open the door, you fool, they are here! They're coming for us!”

He gestured toward the hill where the road went, where Ark was going. Now, shielding her eyes from the setting sun, she saw a thin smoke column that rose over the hill.

“Faster, open the door!”

He immediately pushed the children inside, and then lifted himself.

“Yes, don’t stand here, go!”

“Where to, forward?”

“No, we barely got out of there! Turn around and go back!”

“We can’t go back to the city; the roads are blocked and there is shooting everywhere! We must go to the north, the radio said for us to do that!”

“To the north? We’ve already tried, there are ambushes everywhere, they destroyed our group. Vampires blocked the road with broken cars, and when we stopped to push it, they began to shoot… back, go back!”

He raised the rifle and shot straight through the broken windows. He shot a second time, and this time a bullet shattered the right side rear view mirror in return fire. Ark moved back, gradually picking up speed, Miss Gloria watching several men running from the hilltop. They ran fast, she could see their blood-soaked clothes and didn’t want to meet them. They couldn’t escape travelling in reverse, it was necessary to turn Ark. The man with the carbine made a few more shots, but he missed.

“Hold on!”

Miss Gloria turned Ark so sharply that the heavy bus nearly overturned. The fastest pursuers jumped on her door step, with one fist blow breaking the side window. There was a shot. At this distance the man with the carbine doesn’t miss. The attacker flew aside, and Miss Gloria completed the turn and pressed the gas. The people from the hill chased Ark a little further, but then fell behind.

“Have you a map?”

“What?”

“I said, do you have a roadmap? The satnav doesn’t work, and I don’t know these places. We need to get off the road and find a detour.”

“Get off the road, why?”

“Now we're going back to the city, where we barely got out. If there are road ambushes, we must find roads to bypass them that are not blocked. So, do you have a map?”

“No, I have it in my car.”

“Excellent. And how many rounds?”

“Two, maybe three.”

“Great. So, once again hold on!”

Ark left the road and rumbled along the track.

“Maybe we should hide and wait for help?”

“Hide and wait? We've tried it, it didn’t work!”

65. Operations Centre

New ammunition belt, two hundred and fifty rounds. Machine gun barrel shines dark crimson, but the PKM still works, shooting vampires. Enemies come close to the Center on all sides, shooting from the upper floors and roofs of neighboring houses. Burning smells become stronger, fire has been already inside the building.

“Second post, second post - answer! First post - send someone down, we have no connection. You are cut off? Hold on!”

Smith puts the carbine on the table and red burning eyes looks at the screen, to the man with a general's epaulets.

“What is going on? We stop our work, and not write to us paycheck to the next month. No, we have no more helicopters, all knocked down or left to refuel. Army helicopter is not needed, they don’t have time, no reason to risk crew and give vampires air transport. Breakthrough, where? We are surrounded on all sides, and can’t break...”

Smith takes the camera, crawling to the window and put it out, so the general could see what was happening around.

“Vampires threw thousands infected civilians on us, hiding behind them as a shield. No more organized resistance in the city, but still a lot shooting, we saw civilians trying to escape from the trap.

“First post! First post! We are alone.”

Jones and Smith alone lead the defense. The first reports of the attack on the arsenal of chemical weapons come.

“The attack on the arsenal confirmed? Clear. What? There was no alarm? Of course, no alarm, why vampires will launch alarm? Understand - vampires don’t capture the arsenal, they captured men carrying on it, made their own one after the other. That is why we know about the attack so late. Storage, they went there?”

Smith drew a flask from breast pocket and took a few hasty mouthfuls.

“Listen to me very carefully. I think I'm almost certain that this is the second stage of their operation - vampires just got a powerful weapon, which they didn’t have before. Attack on Los Angeles – this is just a cover operation; we have pulled all our forces here, and they struck elsewhere. Urgent change security codes on our bases and strengthen guards - vampires can repeat this attack. Be attentive to the personnel, especially civilians hired to work in the past three years, some of them may be a vampire. Don’t let them use captured weapons, they need panic! This is exactly what they need to spread... Jones!”

Jones falls with a bullet in the breast, Smith raises his gun.

”If you're ready to plan B - I recommend hurry. Do it now. Well, and this is for you, bastards!”

General called Smith, but heard only the machine gun roar.

66. Mr. Brown 5

The bullet pierced a mercenary’s head; Brown looked at him, unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the corpse overboard. No sense keeping a useless weight, especially when the helicopter was climbing rapidly, moving away from ground fire.

They didn’t shoot back, because they couldn’t see the target, couldn’t see anyone who so accurately hit a short burst in their craft. There was a lot of fire, thick black smoke and chaos on the streets – the shooter or shooters could be anywhere; they had to respond blindly. So, it was better to rise, climbing to an unattainable height for machine guns, and hoping that the vampires had no MANPADS. And if they had it, maybe they choose to spend an expensive missile shooting one of the Apaches circling around, which were also trying not to fall below a kilometer.

Work becomes really hard; apparently soon they have to close the company. In the early hours firing from the ground was rarely and inaccurately, they killed a couple dozen of these fools with guns, who saw a helicopter and imagines themselves Rambo. There was single attempt to capture the helicopter - they picked up a gold cargo from the bank roof, and an unarmed horde of crazies rushed to them, this attack stopped quickly and decisively.

And then vampires got the MANPADS missiles and experienced operators, so military helicopters started falling from the sky, like dead flies. Brown has seen stinger shot down one of the last TV helicopters; vampires took seriously for the air fleet murder.

Then vampires got gun trucks with heavy machine guns, which have spread around the city, like cockroaches. Gun trucks crew has also made progress in the fight against helicopters; Brown barely managed to escape from one of this battle chariot, when he pulled from the TV studio roof billionaire with a family, who traded his luxury villa on the Cote d'Azur for the place in a helicopter.

“Boss, this is Helen.”

“MI8 is back?”

“Yes, in the third flight they took twenty-five people, but they were fired by a machine gun as they withdrew, so two passengers are death, and three more wounded but will live. We lost the second chopper.”

“How, when?”

“They picked up the clients, and then reported a fight on board and the connection was lost. The military saw them fall. Apparently, one of the clients was infected.”

“Clear. Helen, how much do we have in the account?”

“We now have two hundred and eighty-five million dollars, plus or minus five hundred thousand; the amount is growing, along with the rise in prices for gold and diamonds.”

“Good. I am folding the operation. Get the third and fourth back immediately, and use MI8 to deliver clients to the military airfield. I'll arrive soon; get ready to evacuate the ranch.”

Giving this order, Brown continued to perform the last job, going to a skyscraper on fire, where on the roof another group of rich men and women waited with their servants. They would not be able to take them all, there were not enough seats, but four of them, the most valuable, would be evacuated - each of them would pay fifty million for the last tickets out of LA.

“Red smoke, there they are!”

“Wait for the signal!”

The mercenaries lowered the guns so that they could not be seen until the last moment. On the roof sixty people were crowded, and when they realized that there were only four places in the helicopter, machine-guns would fend off those wishing to get on board.

“Boss, this is from the military!”

“What else is there? Yes, yes, when? Understood. Fuck!”

Brown looked at the billionaires running to his helicopter, spat over the side and shouted to the pilot.

“Turn around, we're leaving. Immediately!”

After touching the landing pad concrete, the helicopter rapidly gained speed, rose ten meters, made the short turn and went east with maximum speed. Brown spent some time looking back at the two hundred million left on the roof. They needed only a few minutes to pick them up, but he was well aware that the generals would not wait, and needed to leave, before it was too late.

STAGE FOUR: CONTROLLED CHAOS

67. Plan B

Flash. No rumble, no roar, just an absolutely soundless flash, like all the cameras in the world had simultaneously been used. Then came the blow. Ivanov saw ocean-side condominiums fall as the blast wave hit them, tearing off roofs, knocking windows and uprooting trees. There was no fear at all; he knew that they would survive.

“Hold on!”

Juke Box faltered, and inside the tank all the loose items rattled. The blast wave rushed on.

“All alive?”

“Yes, everything is fine, the engine is running, the electronics are in order. I thought the electromagnetic pulse would shut down everything.”

“This electromagnetic pulse is just fucking rubbish.”

“That was what I thought it was?”

“It is. The city center was hit by a nuclear charge, our work.”

“It was necessary doing it before. From refugees I heard that no more humans in the city center. Only vampires.”

“Get up to the shed so ash didn’t fall on us.”

Juke Box stopped and Ivanov cautiously peeped out of the turret hatch to check how things were going in his group. This motley company came to his squad about an hour ago, after a short battle at the crossroads, where Juke Box defeated the vampire’s roadblock. There were two dozen civilians, two cops, a fireman, and a couple of street guys, bandits in the recent past. All were armed; it seemed they had expropriated weapons from the gun shop. They were treating it very seriously, these people looked like they’d been through hell in the last few hours. With them it was easier to defend against enemies, Ivanov admitted it, and vampires were no longer trying to shoot his tank with an RPG. Now, the group didn’t look cheerful.

“What is happening?”

“Have you not seen the explosion? We are going to die because your army just dumped a nuclear bomb on our heads! You have nothing to worry about; you're in a fucking tank!” said the young bandit angrily.

“Come on, tough guy. See that low mushroom?”

“Well, and what?” LJ spat on the pavement.

“It was a weak burst, a tactical bomb, fifty kilotons, no more. Twice more Hiroshima, and in that city were a lot of survivors. The explosion was ten miles from this area; we are covered by high-rise buildings, which took the brunt of the blast wave.

“We need to get out of the city as soon as possible, and then we don’t get a strong radiation dose. So you don’t have to worry about your dick, you can even shoot porn when it's all over.”

“Officer!”

A woman cop approached the tank.

“What we will do now? Can we do something to protect us?”

“When we get to the coastal highway, it will be necessary to find cars, or off-road trucks. In the meantime, listen carefully. Cover your head; take any helmet, if no helmet, then at least wear a piece of thick cloth or newspaper so ashes don’t fall on your hair. Dampen a handkerchief and put it on your face, instead of a respirator. If we find a grocery store - take the red wine and pomegranate juice. If you get a pharmacy - enough vitamins and iodine tablets. Don’t be afraid, all we need – get out of here as soon as possible, before the army can hit again. Be very careful – obviously, an explosion didn’t kill all the vampires, and now survivors will escape from fires on the outskirts!”

“Tankman!”

The soldier ran to Juke Box, the one who had saved them in street battle.

“What is it?”

“You have to see it.”