Adrift 3: Rising (Adrift Series) (12 page)

Forty-eight hours
, he thought, glancing back at Dan once more.

The end of the world moves fast.

*

Remy was still growling.

Conny stood at the window and watched as a small group of men—some of them wearing the all-black that denoted them as clerics of the Order—charged from the building below her, moving at speed toward a high wall that encircled the main ranch house and the buildings closest to it, separating them from the rest of the ranch. Mancini was out in front, moving with a practiced ease, checking corners and waving at the others to follow. Conny watched, her nerves racing, until they disappeared from view.

At least whatever was happening out there—and it was a vampire attack,
of course
it was—was happening on the other side of that wall. Yet Conny had seen one of the creatures run up the near-vertical side of the
Shard
building without slowing a fraction. No wall would stop them, no matter how tall.

Maybe nothing can stop them
, she thought, and dropped her eyes to her side. Remy was her only guide now, the closest thing she had to a radar. If his growl intensified, she knew the shit they were standing in was about to get deeper.

Remaining still was no longer an option.

“Good boy, Rem,” she muttered, darting away from the window and wrapping her hands in Andrew Lloyd’s ludicrous Halloween-costume robes. She yanked him from his seat, pulling his face just inches from her own.

“Time to snap out of it, Andrew. This is where you either start moving, or start dying. Do you hear me?”

Andrew nodded, his eyes wide and fearful.

“Good. Do you have some means of broadcasting to the whole ranch?”

“Y-yes. A loudspeaker system. We use it to announce—”

“Don’t care. You’re going to use it to announce that everybody here needs to
run
, got it? How many exits does this place have?”

Andrew’s eyes flickered before he responded.

“One. The main gate.”

“I was a police officer, Andrew.” Conny’s grip on the former Grand Cleric’s collar tightened. “I recognise the smell of bullshit.
How many exits
?”

“T-two. There’s one in the basement of this house. A tunnel. It leads out underneath the wall, toward the mountains.”

“Let me guess: Craven’s personal escape route, for her to use if the shit ever hit the fan in here.”

Andrew nodded, and Conny released her grip on him.

“We’re going to get to wherever you broadcast from, and you’re going to tell everyone at this ranch to head here immediately, got it?
Everyone
is using that tunnel, and we’re all going to the mountain.”

“
Initiates
aren’t permitted in the—,” Andrew began to splutter, but Conny silenced him with a look.

“One more word, and I let Remy do my talking for me. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday.”

Andrew dropped his eyes to Remy, who glared back at him, teeth bared. A throaty rumble still spilled from the dog’s lips, but so far he hadn’t given any indication that the trouble outside was moving any closer.

So far.

“We can b-broadcast from the ground floor,” Andrew said in a voice that shook wildly.

“Good,” Conny said. “Show me.”

Conny pushed Andrew out into the hallway and turned to face her son. His expression was still mutinous, still
so
resentful, but now his anger at her was mixed with fear.

It was the fear on Logan’s face that made her heart ache.

His safety was all that had ever mattered. Conny had raced through and below the burning streets of London with Remy, directly facing the vampires more than once, and all so that she could reach Logan at London Bridge Hospital; so she could ensure that he was safe.

And here they were.

The security of the ranch had only ever been a fleeting illusion, and it had been ripped away from her before she had even brought it fully into focus. Listening to the distant sound of gunfire, Conny could scarcely remember many times in her life when she had felt
less
secure.

Well, a couple.

Back in the tunnels.

Under the train carriage, waiting for them to see me and—

Remy pressed against Conny’s leg, snapping her back into the present. She blinked away the terrifying memory and dropped a hand onto his neck. The German Shepherd’s huge brown eyes flicked up to her for a moment, full of doubt, full of fear. He wouldn’t—or couldn’t—stop growling.

Remy had been utilised for crowd control back when the Metropolitan Police Force had existed; before it had been ripped apart in the dark tunnels of the London Underground system. Of all of them, the dog had probably been the least concerned about the sudden sound of gunfire and distant screaming. For him, that was par for the course. He wasn’t growling because he sensed violence in the air: he was growling because he sensed something far worse.

Conny scratched at his ears, the gesture as much to reassure herself as Remy. As long as she had the dog at her side, it felt like she still had a shot at keeping Logan alive. Remy had saved her own life more than once—and his ability to sense the presence of vampires nearby was the reason any of the passengers who’d flown through the night on the Gulfstream had made it out of London’s
Shard
building in one piece. Without Remy’s intervention, Conny would have died when she had first encountered the vampires. It was the dog that had saved them, and now Conny had led both Remy and Logan out of the frying pan and right into a bloody volcano.

I should never have allowed myself to get tangled up in this madness. We should never have ended up here.

Conny grimaced, pulling herself away from an abyss of self-recrimination. She had to get moving.

She focused on Logan once more. The teenager clearly didn’t want to, but in his fear, he still looked to his mother for guidance, and was still willing to accept that she remained in charge.

He still needs me
.

Some part of Conny was thrilled at that revelation; ecstatic even, but it was the selfish part. The part which for weeks had wanted Logan to let her back in, to stop blaming her for the terminal disease which was corrupting his cells. According to the initial diagnoses, Logan might still have ten good years of pain-free life left, but even if he had ten days or ten hours, Conny’s determination would not have wavered. Her son would not die at the hands of a bunch of brainwashed teenagers wielding rifles. He would not wind up being torn apart by the talons of a hideous monster which was supposed to exist only in some dumb horror movie.

She grabbed Logan’s hand, and for a brief, fleeting moment, a bright memory lit up her mind: the first time she had felt his fingers curl around hers, all those years earlier, at the hospital where she had given birth to him. The surprising strength with which his tiny digits had encircled her forefinger.

At that moment, she had understood that her only duty—her only point as a human being—was to keep this tiny person safe from harm.

He didn’t return her grip tightly now. Maybe his teenage pride wouldn’t let him. But he didn’t pull his hand away, either.

“Come on, Lo. We have to get out of here.”

She pulled her son out of the meeting room, his silence burning in her ears.

Once in the hallway, she spotted a door standing ajar and paused, peering inside. It didn’t lead to another room, as she had expected, but to a shallow closet lined with shelves and racks, laden with guns.

Be still, my beating heart
, she thought, and reached inside, pulling out an M4, a Glock, and something that looked for all the world like a damn grenade launcher.
Things are looking up.

By the time Mancini reached the open gate which led to the Outer Ring, there were already a handful of corpses strewn across the floor. A quick scan revealed that all appeared to have died as a result of gunshot wounds, but it didn’t appear that they had been shot
in situ
. It looked more like they had managed to get this far before succumbing to injuries sustained farther along the path. A steady breadcrumb-trail of crimson splatters provided grisly decoration to the dirt track ahead, confirming his suspicions.

He pressed forward.

Beyond the open gate, a couple of the figures who laid prone on the ground were still alive, clutching at open wounds, trying to hold their blood inside their bodies with trembling fingers. They stared up desperately as he approached, regarding him with wide, pleading eyes. With medical assistance, he guessed some of them might have been able to survive.

Too bad.

Mancini kept moving, following the trail of blood, but his pace was slower now; more methodical. He kept his rifle tucked against his collarbone, sweeping it across his field of vision continually, his teeth gritted.

Moving against the tide.

A steady avalanche of fleeing initiates had washed over him as he neared the Outer Ring, where the bulk of the freaks at the ranch lived. With the ranch’s main gate shut, and no way to escape other than attempting to scale the high perimeter wall—which he could see in the distance that some had managed, though broken legs probably awaited them when they dropped down on the other side—most of the kids at the ranch had snatched at the only escape route they could see. They charged away from the gun battle raging somewhere up ahead, surging inward, toward the centre of the ranch. Presumably, they believed that putting a wall between themselves and whatever was happening out there would save them.

Either way, the heaving mass of fleeing bodies slowed the group Mancini led down even further, and that was a good thing. Now that they were closer to the epicentre, and the air was crackling with unseen threat, rushing forward in the open would likely just get them killed.

Mancini made for the nearest building, planting his back against it and gesturing for Rennick, Bellamy and the clerics to join him. A total of four clerics had worked up the balls to tag along. Mancini recognised a couple of them as having been a part of Craven’s entourage back at the runway. He didn’t know their names, but if Craven had trusted them that much, they had probably been at the ranch a good deal longer than most. Maybe even long enough to know some part of the truth about why the ranch existed.

At least they look like they know how to handle their weapons
, Mancini thought, watching as the clerics backed up against the wall alongside him, cradling their rifles against their chests.

The real question was: what would they be shooting
at
?

Mancini shut his eyes, trying to block out the visual noise of running teenagers and focus only on his hearing. The chatter of gunfire had a rhythmic pattern to it. It sounded like a single shooter was involved in a battle with superior numbers, yet when the single shooter was taken down, the battle didn’t end. The rhythm died down for a moment, and then started up somewhere else.

He listened a few seconds longer, nodding to himself.

When he opened his eyes, he found Rennick’s face directly in front of his own.

“This is no time for a nap, Mancini.”

Mancini swallowed the sharp retort that wanted to spit from his mouth.

“About two hundred yards that way,” he whispered instead, nodding his head along the nearest thing the ranch had to a main street. On either side, the bloody dirt track was lined by low buildings. “Sounds like the vampires are using puppets. Making clerics their shooters.”

Herb’s eyes widened, but he nodded.

“How many?”

“Hard to say for sure. Gotta get in closer.” Mancini glanced around the others. At the mention of the word
vampire
, the four clerics who had joined the group exchanged looks of hesitation, maybe disbelief. “No time to explain,” Mancini said, glaring at them. “Follow my lead, or run away with them.” He nodded in the direction of the main ranch house, back along the path they had just travelled. Initiates and clerics were still streaming through the open gate, away from the battle.

None of the four clerics moved.

“Okay, good. Move fast, but steady. From here on, you treat
anybody
with a weapon as hostile, understand? Shoot first, ask questions later. Stay low, on my six. Don’t break cover unless I do.”

Without another word, Mancini took off at a steady jog, keeping his knees bent and his shoulders hunched. He shuttled from one building to the next, peering along the gaps between them before moving on. He didn’t bother to look back. If Rennick and the others had any sense, they would follow his path carefully. If not, well, at least they might provide a distraction for whatever horror was waiting for them up ahead.

Mancini set his jaw, tightened his grip on his rifle.

And kept moving.

*

“This way.”

Andrew Lloyd had picked up the pace a little as the cries of fear outside the main house grew louder. It sounded like the kids at the ranch were headed in roughly the right direction, but it also sounded like an out-of-control stampede.

They’re running blindly
, Conny thought.
Running for their lives
.

She had observed the same response in panicked crowds during her time as a police officer. In training videos, mostly. As the number of terrorist incidents involving guns had increased over the past few years, police had become used to the way that people in crowds generally reacted. They fled in all directions at first, streaming away from the perceived danger, but then fell to following the people ahead of them, forming a river of moving bodies. As terrorist organisations had become more sophisticated, they had begun to position second shooters strategically. Often, the people who fled from one gun were in danger of running directly into another.

The kids at the ranch might have escaped from the immediate danger, but they needed a safe direction of travel, and she was going to give it to them.

Andrew had led Conny, Logan and Remy down three flights of stairs, to a communications room that looked like it belonged on the bridge of some state-of-the-art battleship rather than in a ranch house out in the middle of nowhere.

After he had punched a four-digit code into a keypad to open the door, Conny stormed inside, still pulling on Logan’s hand.

She was immediately confronted by dozens of blinking monitors displaying closed-circuit camera footage of the compound, along with a bank of computer consoles which she guessed controlled all the facilities. The power was still on at the ranch: Craven had probably insisted on failsafes and redundancies. Backup generators were almost certainly humming in a building somewhere close by. For now.

Conny glanced along the rows of consoles, taking in a dizzying array of controls. On one, she saw a large button labelled
lockdown core sequence
, which she guessed had been engaged at night, when the Order erroneously believed the vampires were dangerous.
Steel shutters and UV lights
, she thought grimly, recalling Mancini’s recital of the ranch’s defensive measures. They were woefully inadequate; as useless as the walls that did nothing to stop creatures who happily tunnelled through the ground.

On another console, she spotted a switch marked
main gate override
. She moved to that one and flicked it to the
open
position.

Escaping into the Colorado wilderness wasn’t an ideal solution, but if there were any kids trapped out there near the outer wall, unable to make it to the ranch house, at least opening the front gate would give them another option.

For a moment, her gaze locked onto the array of CCTV monitors. Several showed people running, but one in particular caught her attention: it displayed people streaming away from what looked like a massive garden area. As she watched, she saw the muzzle flash of several weapons scarring the image. She stared for a moment longer, attempting vainly to spot a figure that she recognised, and then turned away. There wasn’t time. The chaos outside could be on top of her at any moment.

“Here it is,” Andrew said, motioning to a microphone on the desk in front of them.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Conny shoved him forward. “Do it.”

*

Mancini crouched low at the corner of one of the buildings, his presence almost entirely masked by bushes, his ears ringing to the sound of gunfire. He sucked in a deep breath, braced himself, and leaned out of cover, peering out at the battle that was raging less than fifty yards ahead.

He had brought the group to a halt near one of the huge vegetable gardens that newer initiates tended constantly.

It had become the site of a massacre.

Mancini saw dozens of bodies on the ground among the plants: most dead; some in the process of dying from numerous gunshot wounds. A couple were calling out for help, like they believed an ambulance might show up out of nowhere. One cried desperately for her mother. Mostly though, those who hadn’t yet succumbed to their injuries emitted low, gurgling moans that were punctuated by the flat chatter of automatic fire.

The area in front of him was roughly the size of a football field, bordered on all sides by buildings, many of which were half-built, lending them a skeletal appearance. Mancini’s line of sight was broken by piles of construction materials, and a number of fruit trees and bushes dotted around the garden, but he could see enough to determine that clerics were holed up in some of the buildings around the perimeter, firing out from dark doorways and windows, their guns aimed in all directions.

What a fucking mess.

He ducked back into cover.

Clearly, none of the clerics knew which side anybody was on any more. As things stood, the battle would end only one way: last man standing.

And then the last man gets eaten
, Mancini thought. The efficiency of the vampire strategy in situations such as this was almost enviable. In taking the mind of one of its enemies, it had the advantage of being able to launch a surprise attack, spreading instant panic and confusion through the ranks of its enemies.

The monster could sit back in the shadows and watch as the humans tore into each other, without ever revealing itself.

He pictured how it all must have started: with a single cleric apparently losing his mind and opening fire, scattering the rest throughout the garden. When others responded to the threat, and subdued what they had no doubt believed to be a lone shooter, gunfire had erupted elsewhere, and the wheel of insanity had started turning again. And it all led here: to a bunch of terrified teenagers taking potshots at anything that moved.

For the moment, neither the clerics nor the vampire—
or vampires
—that were out there seemed to have noticed Mancini and the others closing in on the bedlam. He didn’t think that sort of luck would hold for long. He waved a gesture at Bellamy to move alongside him.

“Shooters everywhere,” Mancini hissed, “But which ones are puppets? And where are the vampires?”

Before he could receive an answer, Mancini winced as his ears were assaulted by the shrieking whine of feedback, and the Grand Cleric’s voice flooded the ranch, blaring out at full volume from a hundred concealed speakers.

“Make your way to the inner circle. We are under attack. The way out is at the main ranch house.”

The message began to repeat on a loop, and Mancini stifled a curse.

For a beat, the gunfire abated, and the clerics hiding out in nearby buildings seemed to consider the Grand Cleric’s words. The ranch itself seemed to hold its breath.

And then movement erupted
everywhere.