Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (21 page)

These men
were promising recruits; Mendez had already gone through formal
training with the local detachment of the National Guard before the
war and then had been conscripted into the army, however, he had
not seen much action before the serum had defeated them all. He had
a good head on his shoulders though. Perkins had been an office
worker. He had worked in Marketing and wasn’t really all that
co-ordinated. He did make up for his lack of ability with a desire
to improve though and Harris couldn’t ask for much more than
that.

Al Warnback
sat a little to their left and he wore a frown on his weathered
face, he always wore a frown so that was nothing new. Warnback had
surprised Harris when he had joined their small party and it had
taken him a while to figure out why he had come. Sure, he was one
of the more promising recruits, but that really wasn’t enough
reason to throw his lot in with them. Warnback had come from
Chicago and his last memory had been that of his wife and
two-year-old child being torn apart by a vampire before he had been
taken prisoner by the thralls.

He was a
quiet man, but there was something disturbing bubbling under the
surface that worried Harris. Of course, he had every right to be
angry and to hate the vampires, but he was a borderline obsessive
who seemed to enjoy killing a little too much for Harris’s taste.
On the other hand, the man was brave, competent and Harris really
needed the manpower so he had welcomed him into the group. He would
just have to watch him carefully in case his zeal put anyone else
in danger.

Sandra sat
beside Delilah Franklin and they smiled as they shared a
confidence. The two women looked tired, with their hair pulled back
severely into tight buns. It saved washing constantly and getting
in the way at the wrong moment but did little to soften their
features. Their faces were pale and drawn, but they both sat
straight and alert. Their weapons lay across their knees, cleaned
and oiled but dulled to prevent reflections off the metal. Would it
ever end? Should they just forget everybody else and concentrate on
their own survival? Would life be any better?

The thoughts
tumbled through his head as he was afforded a rare
insight into those who followed him. He knew
they were all committed to the same cause, but was it his strength
that drove them? Would any of them be here if they hadn’t followed
him?

His
obsession, H
e was honest enough to
recognise that he was obsessed, driven. But why were they here? Did
he have the right to ask them to risk their lives and those of
their loved ones for his cause? The only thing they had achieved so
far was to be thrown out by those they had saved in the first
place. What was it about him that demanded such all-or-nothing
reactions from those who knew him? For that matter, why was he
himself so driven?

He knew his obsession had its
roots in his surviving when everyone else who had followed him had
been torn apart. But that didn’t explain everything. He had found
of late that he could not set his mind to anything else. He had
tried to concentrate on training recruits and staying quiet but
there was something inside him that drove him to rescue one more
batch of prisoners, and then another. He found that the thought of
thousands, millions of humans helpless in their captivity was too
much for him and he had to do something or risk going mad.

His dreams
were filled with
prisoners dying
agonising deaths as the serum burned them from within. He saw each
individual die horribly, their eyes locked with his in accusation.
He had no idea what was causing it, social conscience, guilt,
humanity - it could be any or all of them. But his dreams were so
extreme that he had gotten into the habit of sleeping less and less
in order to avoid them. It was as if he had to do something and
whatever it was that was causing these reactions would not go away
until he had fulfilled his task. Unfortunately he didn’t know what
his task was, so he was forced to go out again and again in the
hope that, one day, he would achieve whatever it was that was
driving him.

He caught
Denis Jackson’s eye and smiled wanly at him. The man’s white teeth
were like a beacon against his dark skin and his eyes seemed to
dance in the air, unsupported in the dark until the clouds moved
past the moon and they were all bathed by its pale silvery light.
Below them he heard a deep cough as an engine turned over and then
a raspy rumble of thunder as an engine roared to life.

“There’s some activity over
here,” Benjamin Franklin whispered and Harris moved over to his
position to have a look.

There were two large container
trucks in the open area behind the large reactors. The beds of the
containers looked like any other base that he had seen on the docks
when cranes lowered the huge metal containers like slabs of Lego
into place. On these containers, though, were strange concrete
dumbbells. One of the trucks was loaded and ready to go but the
other one was still empty.

“
That piece
in the middle is where the nuclear waste is housed.” Ricks bellied
up beside Harris and pointed down toward the loaded truck. “The two
ends are what they call ‘impact limiters.’ They’re meant to protect
the waste in the event of a crash.”

“
You don’t
seem too confident,
” Jackson said as he
looked over at Ricks.

“
Nobody
really knows.
” Ricks shrugged. “The only
tests they ever did were by computer simulation based on data from
the 1960s. My father argued that the parameters did not take into
account the higher speeds and the hotter-burning fuels we have
now.”

“Just how bad will this spill be
if it all goes wrong?” Harris asked as he began to realise the
reality of what they planned.

“
Based on the
stats my Dad was using,” Ricks paused for a moment before taking a
deep breath and continuing. “His stats estimated that one truck
could cause around 42 square miles of damage if left untended for a
few hours. Of course, there are also prevailing winds to consider
and the chance that rain could wash the waste into local streams
and travel further that way.”

Harris went
pale. This really was so far from their comfort zone. If they
managed to pull this off it would tie up a lot of resources for
months. The thralls would be forced to clean up the spill if they
wanted to continue to use the power station or risk losing the
station for a few hundred years. This was the best plan they had.
It was just blind luck that the thralls seemed to be in the process
of moving one of the trucks now.

Ricks had
suggested that they would have to transport waste at least once a
month to a holding facility which would be off site. The danger of
leaving the waste anywhere near the plant was too great and most
plants moved the waste to large silos where they waited for
transport to a more secure facility. He had no idea what level this
holding facility was at or how the thralls planned to empty these
silos. He wasn’t even sure if they even knew they had to be emptied
at all, but that wasn’t their problem at the moment. The important
thing was that they had planned for a long-term wait. They had been
pleasantly surprised to find that one truck was already loaded when
they had arrived so it looked as though they would not have to wait
too long after all.

As the growl
of the engine faded to a low rumble, Harris heard another engine
start up and then another until it seemed that the whole plant was
alive with roaring engines. A number of thralls suddenly appeared
from a door to the rear of the facility. They were all well-armed
and they crossed to the waiting vehicles and settled themselves in
the open trucks that surrounded the waste vehicle.

Another
thrall appeared, a huge man who dwarfed the two aides that
struggled to keep up with his long strides. The thrall eased
himself into a waiting jeep, brought his hands to his lips,
whistled sharply and then motioned for his driver to move forward.
The gates opened as the jeep approached and the level of noise
escalated as each of the vehicles followed one by one.

They were on.

April switched her view between
the speakers around her as if she were at a demented tennis match,
trying desperately to take in the conversation between them. She
understood that they couldn’t all sign and that it would take too
long to involve her fully, but it still made her feel like an
ignored, small child.

Her life had
changed that night when Sherman had attacked her. Not only had she
lost her innocence
, she had inherited a
mistrust of others that she had never had before. She had always
been different; she had learned to accept the furtive looks and the
sudden, awkward silence that almost always greeted her when she
entered a room. People had always felt uncomfortable around her, as
if her inability to hear made her a different species. She had
worked hard to involve herself by learning the craft of lip reading
until she was able to read and even make out partial words so she
could fill in the gaps. No matter how she reminded people, they
still tended to move their focus among a number of people as they
spoke, and she lost sight of their lips many times during a
briefing like this.

She had
caught the gist of what they were about to do but there were gaps
in her knowledge that could lead to problems later. She operated in
a vacuum during these missions. She couldn’t hear the gunfire,
shouted commands or even the radio, so she knew she could be more
of a liability than a help. Harris had spent some time last night
going over with her what was going to happen, but, now that they
were here and could actually see the layout, there were so many
things that could change once they began and no one would be able
to update her once the action began.

She wondered
again if she should be here at all. She felt as if the group, while
they were always nice to her, didn’t really see her as a part of
the team. She wondered if she was here only because Steele had
thought so highly of her. Was she really capable of contributing to
this team or should she be back in the community, minding children
or caring for the sick? She knew that she was more withdrawn than
before. She had noticed Harris looking at her at times with a
worried frown. He had tried to talk to her about Steele and about
how his death had affected her, but his ability to speak sign was
limited and his fumbling attempts had only reminded how much she
missed Steele.

She was
sixteen, a young woman, but what was there for her in this world?
Every member of this team contributed so much, and she felt
insignificant. She was desperate to fight the vampires. They had
taken the one person that she had felt safe with from her and his
loss had created a hole in her that she was not certain would ever
find substance. She had looked on Steele as a kindred spirit; they
were both outsiders, tolerated but never really fully accepted. She
had looked on Steele as a father figure or an older brother, and
when he had returned as a vampire her world had
shattered.

Even the fact
that he had fought against the vampiric nature growing within him
and saved her, taking his own like to save them all, had not been
enough to prove the goodness within him. Phelps had ignored
Steele’s sacrifice and used him to further alienate Harris from the
community. She had wanted to stand up in front of the community,
shout at them until they understood that the very people they were
turning against were the only ones who had stood up for them when
others were too selfish to see beyond their own pathetic greed. But
she could not. They would not hear or understand her though. In
fact, all she would achieve would be a feeling of pity. She didn’t
want their pity. She wanted their understanding.

She felt bad
about forcing her way onto the team, but there was something in her
that seemed to tug her in this direction. She felt that there was
something she had to do but she did not know what it was. She
couldn’t even try to explain it to the others. Not only did they
have limited sign but she didn’t even understand it herself. A
sudden overwhelming sense of impotency gripped her and she looked
out over the plant and studied the thralls below. She picked up the
binoculars Harris had left and studied the figures still in the
courtyard.

Her gaze
passed by the humans in the pen and she wondered again how the
thralls, who were still human on some level, could treat their own
with such abuse. She felt a deep burning inside her that as she saw
the thralls open the cage door and begin to push and shove the
prisoners around as they laughed. She caught the last few words on
a thrall’s lips as he turned towards her and a cold hand clenched
her stomach and squeezed hard.

She snapped the binoculars to
the other thrall and watched in horror as he replied. It was
difficult to see clearly but the lights from the nearby plant threw
just enough light for her to pick up the gist of the thrall’s
words.
Oh my God
, she thought. She dropped the binoculars
and ran over to Harris, tugging at his shoulder as she frantically
gesticulated with her other hand.

“
Calm down,”
she saw Harris say and he laid a hand on her shoulder in a gentle
motion. She shook her head violently as she saw that some of the
team were already leaving to their designated positions. She had to
get her message across before they left. They couldn’t use radios
in case their frequency was discovered and she had to warn
them
all before it was too
late.