Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (17 page)

“Lucky us,” Johnson cursed. “How
come you know so much about this?”

“
My
d
ad,” Ricks dropped his eyes for a moment
as he thought about his missing parents and Delilah squeezed his
hand encouragingly. “My dad,” he continued, “was heavily involved
in campaigning against the re-licensing of the plant so you kind of
pick these things up.”

“
Just how bad
would it be if the plant blew?” Sandra asked, still shocked at how
precarious their existence was.

“
Well,” Ricks
shrugged, “there’s a huge amount of stats on both sides of the
argument about what would actually happen and how far the radiation
would spread. To understand the full impact, it’s important to
understand a bit about radiation.” Ricks looked around and saw that
everyone was listening intently to him so he continued. “If the
Dade plant went up the initial explosion wouldn’t kill us all the
way down here but the fallout would pollute the whole area, air,
water and livestock.”

“But surely these things are
planned for?”

“
Yes, and in
most cases, a disaster at a plant might not actually cause a leak
into the environment. These plants are designed to prevent a
meltdown from happening and, even if they did happen, to contain
it. But in our case, we’re relying on safety features that are
flawed and on personnel who might not be there anymore. The biggest
problems we would have are the after-effects and the radiation
clouds.”

“How bad would that be?” Sandra
asked in a whisper.

“
Well, that’s
where the NRC and my dad disagreed. Dade stores its waste at
Palisades, on Lake Michigan near South Haven. There are 30 concrete
and steel silos containing irradiated nuclear fuel rods. There was
a court case around their placement so close to the lake as the
silos were not considered earthquake proof, but he lost that
argument. Whether an earthquake would have damaged them or not, a
core meltdown would be more than sufficient. Each silo contains up
to 320 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the
Hiroshima bomb.”

“Oh my God.”

“
We can’t
really deal with this at the moment,” Harris broke the silence that
had fallen over the room like a blanket. “If blowing the plant
wasn’t your intention, and I think we can all agree that that would
be bad, why bring up the plant at all?”

“The plant still generates
waste, even if they have it running at the lowest output, and that
waste has to be transported from the plant to the Palisades for
storage. We could hit the convoy.”

“
But wouldn’t
the fallout kill us as well?” Johnson asked, shocked at the
suggestion.

“No, not if we’re careful. We
could hit the convoy and then plant timed explosives to go off when
we’re clear.”

“But surely the convoy will be
heavily armed, won’t it?”

“
Why would it
be?” Ricks shrugged. “I mean, who would be mad enough to blow up
nuclear waste?”

Silence fell once again over the
room.

“
Well, you
did say bigger than us,” Ricks offered and grinned. “The thralls
would have to divert a lot of resources to clean up the spill or
risk the radiation spreading. They would also lose the use of the
power plant and that would leave them, literally, in the
dark.”

“How bad would such a spill be?”
Sandra asked.

“
Depends on
the weather,” Ricks pursed his lower lip. “It would probably be
pretty localised, say around a thirty mile radius. But, with the
current crazy weather patterns, the potential for it to spread
would be bad enough so that they’d have to throw a lot of resources
at the clean-up. The alternative would be to risk turning their
only power source into a health hazard for a few hundred years.
Either way, it should take the pressure off us for a
while.”

Chapter 11

Von Kruger stormed into the
room, trying to hide his delight as the vampires and thralls
already there jumped in fear. He was not in a particularly bad mood
but it was good to keep them on their toes. He was still wary of
using thralls though, but there was just no way he could leave
himself completely unguarded during the day. He kept them on a very
tight leash, though, and bit them each morning to make sure that
whatever elements that were passed between a vampire and their
thrall remained fresh in these thralls.

Unfortunately
, he had no idea if
this made any difference to the level of loyalty they felt, but he
had to do something. It had worked up till now, so there must be
something in it.

“Report,” he barked at the first
thrall he saw and settled into his chair as the thrall stumbled
through his report.

“
Master, we
have discovered over two hundred facilities that match your
criteria. I have discounted those that are at the farthest reaches
of your Kingdom as the distances are just too great to be
practical. We can look at these later, if needed, but for now there
are seventy registered underground facilities that are most likely
to be used as a practical base.”

Von Kruger
mulled the number around his head. It wasn’t as bad as he had
expected, but it was still too many. There was no way he could
afford the resources needed to search each one and guard his
borders as well as his internal bases. They had ignored anything
shallower than twenty feet as they knew for a fact that a vampire’s
senses could detect anything less than that. But there must be
something else they could do to bring the number down.

“
Fifty two
are military facilities, fourteen corporate and three privately
owned,” the thrall Captain continued and brought him out of his
thoughts. “I have rated them by size and matched them on the map
against the known areas of attack, though we are very light on such
information as previous attacks were against outposts where humans
were being held and these…”

“Yes,” Von Kruger snapped, “let
me guess, the thrall commanders were less than honest in reporting
their failings against such attacks.”

The thrall
decided not to comment and instead continued with his report. “With
the intelligence we do have I have indicated the most likely sites
in red.”

“Have patrols gone out?”

“
Eh, no,
Master, I did no presume to
…” the
thrall’s face drained and he opened his mouth and then closed it
with no further sound emerging.

Von Kruger, in a rare moment of
empathy, merely snapped at one of his Lieutenants. “Get this
information out to the patrols and get them to tear these sites
apart.” The Lieutenant nodded and disappeared. “Is there anything
else we can do to speed this up?” he snapped at the thrall beside
him.

“Well,” the thrall began and
then shut up as he thought about what he was about to say.

“
I will most
certainly rip you to shreds if you do not speak, Captain, you can
be assured of that.” Von Kruger’s tone was cold and flat but the
menace behind the words was all too apparent. “At least, if you
speak your mind, there is a chance I will let you live.”

The thrall Captain gulped and
went even paler than before. “I was about to suggest, Master, that
if you opened a dialogue with this thrall leader, Carter, you might
be able to use their intelligence on the attacks they know about
and narrow the field even further.”

Von Kruger
felt his anger rise and he could feel the saliva spurt into his
mouth as he thought about tearing the thrall’s throat to pieces,
but he forced his temper down. The thrall was right, and he needed
loyal thralls at this time, especially clever ones. There was no
way he could spare enough vampires to search all these sites,
anyway, so he had to do something.

“
All right,”
Von Kruger agreed, “send out a summons,” he paused as he
reconsidered – there was no point starting off on the wrong
footing. “Make that a request,” he amended, “for a meeting.” Von
Kruger spat the last word out as if it were a curse. He could not
believe that he was going to speak to a thrall as an equal and beg
an alliance. It galled him to even think it, but he had to get that
intelligence. Once he found these humans he could then turn his
full attention to this thrall upstart and his fate would be spoken
about in hushed tones down through the centuries as an example to
others as to the price of disloyalty.

The woman sat immobile on the
cold ground, in complete contrast to the crowds around her who
wandered restlessly and aimlessly or merely stood and shouted abuse
or cried and pleaded to their captors. She concentrated her
attention elsewhere. Despite the confusion and despair of those
around her, no one walked through her field of vision or tried to
talk to her. Even in their agitated states they could sense her
concentration and she was left alone.

There were
over a thousand people packed into the cage
, and all of them had, by now, flushed the serum from their
systems. Not all, though, were happy about finally being able to
think again. To some it brought with it the full impact of their
desperate situation and despair ran through the caged humans like a
wave that seemed to grow in strength as if it were a disembodied
parasite, feeding off their raw emotions. There were others who
just fell to their knees and sobbed, others still who merely stood,
almost returning to the catatonic state the serum had forced upon
them for the last two years.

And, finally,
there were those who raged and threw themselves at the walls, or
each other, as they sought something, anything, that they could
vent their frustration on. Some few, and they were mostly lost
among the sheer numbers in the cage, retained their cool and began
to look about them, to take note of their surroundings and began to
plan their next moves. They stayed purposely hidden among the
others, out of sight of the thrall guards during the day, and
especially from the vampires at night.

Tanya Syn had
long ago ceased to concern herself with the pain in her bottom. The
cold from the ground had seeped through her as she sat and numbed
the area hours ago. Her eyes looked through the fence and over to
the other compound, hoping to catch a glimpse of her children.
While outwardly she appeared to be almost catatonic, inwardly her
mind raced. She took note of the guards as they patrolled, where
they walked, how long they took to complete a circuit and, more
importantly, how often they disappeared into the warmth of the
barracks when they should be on patrol. This only happened during
the day, of course, while their masters slept. The colder it got
the more often they disappeared.

A few years
ago California had enjoyed far better weather and had never really
gotten this cold, but global warming had changed many things even
before the energy crisis had forced the world to adopt the
strategies everyone had avoided and procrastinated over. Even when
whole weather patterns had changed so completely as to be
unrecognisable and natural disasters seemed almost commonplace, man
had not heeded the warnings until, finally, the resources ran too
low to continue their rollercoaster run to their own destruction.
Now, winter hit the west coast hard with freezing weather that had
changed the lives of everyone years before the vampires had
come.

Energy came
from nuclear power plants that could not output enough power for
everyone, and so each plant had become a focal point of influence
in the new world. She remembered how travel had been the first
thing to be restricted and then it had become impossible as whole
communities began to grow evermore insular. Siege mentality reigned
and trade became something that only the richer communities engaged
in. Instead of growing together to overcome their problems, mankind
had decided to play to its own, baser, characteristics and the
world had changed in a very short timeframe.

Lack of
energy had not been the only reason that travel and communications
had become rare. The earth itself had seemed to turn against those
who had poisoned her for so long and the weather had grown worse as
the planet began the long process of healing itself. It was almost
like the planet was trying to reduce the impact humans could have
by restricting their ability to move freely. That, of course, had
made it easy for the vampires when they had come. Now, she thought
ironically, the weather might just work in her favour.

The thralls
still came to their cage and took their pick of the people, some to
feed the vampires and others for their own carnal lusts. Sometimes
they threw these unfortunates back, bruised and battered or
dangerously drained of blood. They did not particularly care
whether these people lived or died, they had plenty more to choose
from. She noted that victims were taken from all the compounds she
could see at different times, but it seemed that the cage that she
was in was the only one where humans were taken every time the
feeding bell sounded.

She knew that
something was up. Her cage was the only one where people were not
under the influence of the serum, the silence of the other cages
and the cries and despair emanating from her own cage was far too
obvious to miss. Many times thralls had passed close to her but no
one had pulled her to her feet and dragged her off. Some had come
close, but, at the last minute, something had seemed to stop them
and they had chosen someone else instead.

She looked
down at the numerous tracks in her arms where she had been violated
numerous times as her blood had been forcibly taken from her. She
had little or no memory of the last two years, but the number of
bruises and scabs on her flesh testified that she had been taken
many times during her captivity.