Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (9 page)

Harris had left in a daze that
night. He could admit to himself now that he had had no idea where
he and his small band of exiles could go as they left the city, but
he was certain of one thing: Ian Phelps had just risen to his
number one suspect for the traitor that threatened all their lives.
He had wanted to counter Phelps’s arguments with the revelation
that there was a traitor amongst them but it hadn’t been the time.
For one thing, he would have been asked where his knowledge came
from and, having to admit that a vampire had told him, even if that
vampire had been Steele, would only have made him seem petty. And
that would have only weakened his position further.

He could not even use the fact
that Von Richelieu had already known of their existence before
Steele had reached him because, quite simply, he would not have
been believed. It would have been seen as a desperate gamble and
one that would only have alerted the traitor that his own existence
was already known. No, he would have to take his defeat in this
battle and prepare for the next round. He must keep his knowledge
of the traitor a secret for now, especially when he still had no
idea what the traitor’s motivation might be or even why Von
Richelieu had allowed them to live all this time.

Only Sandra, Pat Smyth, Father
Reilly and Warkowski knew anything about the traitor and he planned
on keeping it that way. He would keep an eye on the community and
wait for the bastard to make a mistake, and then he’d pounce. The
community may have turned their back on him but he had no intention
of leaving them to their fate. There was something playing out here
that he didn’t understand as yet. Did Von Richelieu really want to
cull the numbers of vampires in the world and was he prepared to
let millions of humans die in agony to ensure this happened?

He wasn’t even sure if the
traitor had already given away their actual location or just their
existence. The community should move to be on the safe side but to
do so with the traitor still amongst them was folly. And Von
Richelieu obviously didn’t want them dead quite yet. He had
something planned for this community. Though what it might be was
beyond him at the moment.

God
, he thought.
What
a tangled web it had all become.
He and his small group had set
up camp just outside of the main city in a nearby suburb that was
still within the protection of the wireless network. He had spent
most of the night alone while the others got to know each other. It
wasn’t that he was rude to them, but all could see that he had a
lot of thinking to do so they had quietly introduced themselves to
the group and settled down while he had sat away from them and
considered his options.

Their first problem was shelter.
There were plenty of houses, of course, but the vampires would
sense them in no time if they merely moved into the first house
they found. They could not stay within the protection of the
wireless network either or they would risk some form of action from
the community. Harris had been over most of the state in the last
year both before they had defeated Nero and during their expansion
after his demise. There were many other settlements within what had
been Nero’s territory but they had left these alone up till
now.

While it had made some sense to
tackle these before moving into Von Kruger’s or Wentworth’s
territories he had decided that the situation they were in at that
time was both unique and time sensitive. He had thought that they
could save far more people if they could set the states against
each other, and he had been right, as it turned out.

There was, of course, the chance
that these other communities within Nero’s territory would, at some
point, attempt to contact their now dead leader, but their
extensive questioning of Nero’s defeated thralls had left Harris
and the others happy that there had been little contact between the
communities within Nero’s state when he had been in control. They
shouldn’t notice anything untoward with the current situation, at
least for a while yet.

But their existence did,
however, restrict Harris and his small group in how far they could
actually travel from the community before they ran the risk of
entering another vampire’s territory. His decision, therefore,
somewhat reluctantly due to the memories that would be there for
all of them, was to return to ‘The Cave’ where their last stand
against Nero had taken place.

The fact that it was underground
would shield them from the vampires’ senses and it would keep them
close enough to the community that they could return if they were
needed. It also had the benefit of hidden areas where gardens were
already ready for planting. It would take a huge cleanup effort
before it would be comfortable, but it did make the most sense.
Harris had already made a start on the cleanup of the Cave over the
last few months without the knowledge of anyone else. He had long
ago decided that their survival might very well depend on backup
plans being made, and he had a number of caches of weapons and some
small food supplies dotted around the city in case they were
needed, although, even in his worst nightmares, he had never
envisioned the situation he now found himself in.

The Cave was far too big for the
small team as it was, but it did give them somewhere to go while
they took stock and made some decisions.

The chatter of gunfire brought
him back to reality like a slap. The battle had begun.

Chapter 5

The lead vehicle was a pickup of
sorts, though with a few modifications. The basic chassis was that
of a pickup but someone had added a lethal-looking heavy machine
gun in the back which swivelled on an upright strut, and there were
heavy metal sheets surrounding the thrall who held tightly to the
trigger guard. Metal sheets also lined the sides and the rear. It
must have been hard on the engine but the thralls were more
interested in security than performance, it seemed.

The extra protection did little
to protect the occupants, however, when an RPG missile flew from
the small hillock to the right of the road. It struck the vehicle
through the front grill, where overheating problems had led the
thralls to remove the metal sheeting earlier. The vehicle slammed
to a stop in a fireball that nearly blinded Harris in the pale
light. Metal sheets were ripped from their supports and sent in all
directions with the force of the explosion.

Shrapnel tore through the air
and pinked loudly off the metal sheeting on the vehicle behind.
Harris stayed down for another moment as he heard the air above him
whistle with shards from the destroyed vehicle. He heard a few
cries and knew that some of the shrapnel had found its way into
thrall flesh. Then he leapt upwards and opened fire on the second
vehicle on the road. He heard supporting fire from further down to
his left as the rest of his forces joined him but he ignored this
as he focused on his mission. He launched the grenade loaded into
the attachment on his XM8 and then switched to machinegun and began
to fire in three-round bursts even before the grenade had exploded
under the stationary truck.

The thralls had reacted far
quicker than he expected, though, and the grenade lifted an almost
empty truck and turned it on its side as the last of its occupants
jumped to safety. The thralls spread out immediately to find what
cover they could, firing as they moved, and some of them rushed
back behind the overturned truck and used it for cover.

He saw one or two stagger and
fall but the majority of them made it to the relative safety of the
ditch which ran the length of the road. These thralls were very
well trained and moved as if they had expected such an ambush. He
pumped another grenade but it exploded harmlessly against the
overturned truck and Harris was forced to drop back into cover as
bullets stitched the air around him.

The trucks had not seemed to
have that many thralls in them when they had first spied the
patrol, but now there seemed to be far more thralls than seemed
possible to fit in the cramped vehicles. This was very definitely a
trap, though whether it had been intended for his forces or Nero’s,
he wasn’t certain. Either way, this did not bode well. Now that
Carter had control of the two states he had more time and resources
to mount more of these patrols, and Harris and his group did not
have enough people, trained or otherwise, to take on these
well-equipped patrols.

He was wrenched out of his
thoughts as the thralls began to advance. He had hoped that they
would stay behind cover and allow Harris to withdraw his forces,
but these soldiers were far better trained than that. In fact, they
were better trained then Harris and his men and already they had
begun to spread out along the ditch, forcing his assault group to
cover too large an area. Harris could see that his group were
already stretched too thinly and that the thralls had already made
it halfway up the slope and were unleashing blistering fire;
keeping his men down while others leapfrogged their way further up
the hill. Bullets sang in the air above his head and Harris was
forced to duck down again. He had just caught a glimpse of a few
thralls break from the cover of the third truck down and run along
the road but the barrage of fire had been too great to stop
them.

He knew instinctively that these
thralls would continue down the road and then come up behind them
in a few minutes, but there was nothing he could do about it. He
was positioned at the end of the ambush party and was probably the
only one to have seen the flanking party, but the thralls below him
kept up a withering fire on his position and he was forced to curl
up behind his cover and wait for the thralls to complete their
manoeuvre.

His group wouldn’t have a hope
if the thralls got behind them. The thralls would pick them off
easily in the crossfire and Harris couldn’t even signal the others.
They had stopped using radios quite some time ago when Sherman had
told them that the signal could be detected. They relied now on
hand signals, which had worked well when they had attacked targets
which were not expecting them.
Shit
, he thought as he cursed
Sherman yet again for betraying them.
They really needed someone
with Sherman’s skills and experience, someone who knew how to do
this
.

There were twelve in the ambush
party but not all of them were deployed as he would have liked. He
had put Ricks over on the far side with the RPG as it was flatter
there and gave the boy a clear shot at the road and had left April
with him. He still considered both of them far too young to take a
more active roll in the fighting.

Now, he wished he had put a few
bodies on that side as he would have had a good crossfire at the
thrall positions and they wouldn’t now be in danger of being
overrun. At the time, the relatively flat, open plain had seemed
too much of a risk as cover was sparse. Besides, if he was honest,
he had expected that the thralls would be as easy to handle as
before and he would not need to overexpose his men or add
complexity to what seemed to be a simple ambush.

He knew now that he should have
had a few of the men dig in and cover themselves with soil and lie
in wait. Instead he had deployed all his forces along the gentle
hillock which ran parallel to the road. Unfortunately, the very
slope that had hidden his group in the initial attack now offered
the same protection to the thralls as they advanced towards them.
And there were more of them.

Was this a trap?
He
wondered as he curled into a ball when a grenade tore into the
earth beside him and threw soil over him.
Or were they just
expecting trouble from Nero and had come prepared?
Harris
retreated back further behind the incline he had just come from as
the rate of fire increased. The last truck on the road still had
its heavy machine gun working and it was pounding the entire line
of the slope with heavy calibre fire, giving the thralls plenty of
time to advance further up the slope, and all the time the other
thralls were making their way around them. If this continued much
longer they would be trapped in the very crossfire he should have
set up.

Harris curled up smaller behind
his meagre cover and realised with a crushing blow that he just
didn’t have what it took to take on well-trained combat veterans.
This was an entirely different war. This time, the enemy were ready
and able to fight back, and his limited training just wasn’t
enough. Unless God himself intervened, he had just gotten his
entire force killed by being overconfident.

He heard a sudden thump that
nearly blew his eardrums and he risked a quick look over the slope
to see what had happened. The truck that had housed the last
remaining machine gun was in flames and he saw two figures cross
from the far side of the road and pour fire into the exposed rear
of the thralls sheltering behind the overturned truck before he was
forced back behind cover again by the thralls on the slope. The
level of fire on his position suddenly reduced without the heavy
machine gun pinning him down, and some of the thralls on the slope
turned their attention to the attack to their rear. Harris was
finally able to get to his knees and check the load in the
magazine.

He heard sporadic gunfire coming
from the positions of his own forces and knew that they too had an
opportunity to fight back now that the heavy machine gun was gone.
It would be a very brief rally, though, if he could not take out
the force that, even now, must almost be in position behind him. He
took a deep breath and popped his head around the rock he was using
for cover, trying to mark the positions of the thralls on the
slope. He then dodged quickly back as bullets tore into the side of
the rock and sent dust and shavings into his eyes. He hadn’t seen
the thralls on the slope but he had seen a small puff of smoke
before he dodged back behind the rock and he crawled to the other
side of the cover and pictured the position of the thrall in his
mind.