Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Book 1)

Vampire Apocalypse:

A World Torn Asunder

Derek Gunn

Published by Permuted Press at
Smashwords.

Copyright 2010 Derek Gunn

www.PermutedPress.com

The Beginning of the End

The town slept. A shroud of
darkness lay heavily over everything like an impenetrable blanket
except for the occasional glow of dull light from oil lamps that
dotted the scene and seemed to mirror the pinpricks of light in the
sky above. The massive turbines that used to pump out power for the
whole state had ground to a halt more than a month earlier as the
last reserves of fuel had dried up. The few wind- or water-powered
plants were already overloaded and their use was rigidly restricted
to emergency and local authority use.

Jack Newton sighed as he watched
over his dying hometown. He had been born here, gone to school here
and, except for the time he had gone away to train for the Police,
he had always been here. He would most probably die here he
realised.

The town had been in decline
even before the war and way before the energy crisis but there had
always been hope before. Now even that seemed to be gone. States
with nuclear power stations fared much better of course, but they
no longer fed the power grids of surrounding states, unless those
poorer states were prepared to pay exorbitant prices. These power
states had already begun to grow more dominant, placing guards on
their borders to prevent mass migrations. It
wasn’t
that they didn’t allow people to relocate,
but that they wanted to choose those who would be allowed to do so.
The talented, those who would be useful in this new world, were
welcomed and all others were “encouraged” to leave and left to
scrape a living in the poorer, dying states.

The Central Government had
quickly lost its influence as local militia were called in to
protect each state’s assets. A once proud, united nation rapidly
fell into a feudal system where few were rich in the new source of
wealth: power. Or at least, power that did not require oil to run
its turbines, natural resources, and most importantly, a plentiful
supply of food. Many waited as other states were forced to give up
what valuables they had - their brightest people, fertile land or
mineral rights - in order to receive a trickle of power to keep
their people warm for the coming winter.

It hadn’t taken long for an
advanced civilisation to regress to such a state. A brief but
vicious war in the Middle East had laid waste to the world’s oil
fields and left what remained under a cloud of radioactivity that
would take decades to dissipate. Millions had died. Whole countries
had been wiped off the map, and agreements between countries had
stretched and then broken as accusations and blame were tossed
around in the aftermath.

Europe closed ranks against a
resurging Russia and a dominant China. America, fearful of loosing
its foothold in Europe, had sided with the new Franco-British
alliance, expending huge amounts of precious resources, both in
materials and manpower, in skirmishes that threatened to escalate
to total war but always seemed to stop just in time.

The massive drain on stockpiles
along with a change in public opinion at home as rationing became
widespread, eventually took its toll and America was forced to pull
back and allow the sheer numbers of the Russian/Chinese alliance to
swarm over a ravaged Europe. Six months it had taken, from the
first shot, to redraw the world map and change an entire
civilisation. Nations that were once poor because of their lack of
technical advancement now reigned supreme in a world where sheer
numbers again counted for more than technological advancements that
were no longer viable in a world without the power to operate
them.

Newton pulled his sheepskin
jacket tighter around him as the cold sucked greedily at his body
and left him shivering. He could see a glow on the horizon where
the neighbouring state still pumped power to its towns and cities
from their nuclear plant. The lines that connected his city to the
plant were still there, but the power that ran through them was
strictly rationed and paid for with everything of value that the
state had.

They had already sold off all
usable land around their borders in advance to cover themselves for
the minimum power requirements to see them through the coming
winter. But God only knew what they would do then. They had already
lost their top researchers in their chemical and steel industries.
He couldn’t really blame them; they had families to feed and the
offer of a guaranteed future in a richer state was hard to turn
down.

There were already rumblings in
the town meetings of using their own local militia to take the
power plant by force; they had provided most of the muscle and
resources in its construction anyway and only a few miles, and a
now contentious state line, separated it from their own control.
The plant was actually closer to this city than it was to their
nearest centre of population. In fact before the crisis most of
those who worked in the plant had come from this very town. There
had been a very close relationship between the two states and Fairs
had always been shared events between both states. In those days
there had been plenty of power for everyone’s needs. If the truth
be known there was still plenty of power in the plant but the
crisis had changed everyone in the country. Suddenly people began
to see that their own positions were far more tenuous than they had
realised. Geographical lines had suddenly begun to have a whole new
meaning and people quickly grew intolerant of others. Whole
communities were ostracised based on age, ability to work and
attributes that contributed to the growth of the community. The
states with more resources were able to choose those who could live
in their environs and they quickly rounded up anybody they did not
want and sent them to the poorer states that in turn, did not have
the resources to stem the flow. This sudden increase in refugees
put even more strain on these states” limited resources and the gap
between the states grew.

The fact that the resentment had
now come to a point where the townspeople were talking about taking
resources by force marked a worrying trend and Newton sighed
heavily as he looked out over slumbering town. They could talk all
they wanted but there was no way they would be able to take the
plant by force. On his last sweep of the border, Newton had noticed
that a new military camp had been set up around the Nuclear Plant
and armoured vehicles now patrolled the entire area. It seemed that
their former friends had been thinking around the same lines and
had put their own deterrent in place. A pretty effective deterrent
as well as far as Newton was concerned.

The crackle of the radio
startled him from his reverie and he turned reluctantly and leaned
into the patrol car, snatched at the radio and cursed as it got
tangled on the barrel of his shotgun.

“Go ahead, Lou,” he said as he
turned back towards the city.

“Chief, we’ve got another
one.”

Newton ran a hand over his face,
massaging his temples as he felt a headache throb at the back of
his eyes. Dear God, what is going on?

“Where?” he snapped.

“Over by the Grady’s place, I’ve
sent Phil and Jess over already.”

“Okay, I’ll meet them there,
out.” He tossed the radio into the passenger seat and climbed into
the car, taking a moment to rearrange his gun belt. He had had to
tighten the belt by another notch yesterday, and it was still a
little loose. The rationing did have at least one positive result.
He even felt more alive in the last few weeks than he could
remember in quite some time. As police chief it was his
responsibility to hold things together, and where he had grown lazy
before the troubles in a stagnant community where little happened,
he was now stretched far too thin in a town that was now falling
apart.

Increasingly he had reports from
parents that their children had disappeared; he dutifully
investigated but had never found anything. He really didn’t expect
to either. It was pretty obvious where they had gone. The lure of
the larger cities, those that promised food and power, were just
too much for some to ignore. Most of these kids wouldn’t have
wanted to face their families when they told them they were leaving
so it was easier just to slip away. Newton could understand it to a
degree. Dwindling food and resources and a total lack of prospects
for the future of the town were strong factors when those young
people were deciding their own futures. Those that had stronger
family ties tended to remain, but the community was populated
primarily with people older than would be needed for the hard times
ahead.

There had been ten
disappearances over the last two days. While this was certainly
more than even this town was used to there had also been three
riots, a few suicides and numerous gang fights as the youths that
did remain saw their opportunity to expand their own power bases.
With all this going on he really had little time to devote to what
he was sure was merely a pre-winter rush in the end of year
emigration figures. And now, on top of all that, he had a serial
killer to content with.

A particularly vicious killer
who was taking full advantage of the extended hours of darkness the
town’s lack of power resources afforded him. This would make the
fourth victim in as many nights. He shivered as he thought of the
previous victims and how they had been ripped apart.

He took a left into Wyndell
Road, slowing at the now darkened traffic lights at the crossroads
before accelerating through onto Fairfield. It was unlikely anyone
else was driving as fuel for vehicles had been rationed now for
quite some time, but it didn’t hurt to be careful; even small
accidents could be fatal now that the hospital was running so low
on supplies.

Pat and Jillian Grady lived out
by the mall on Route 40. They were a quiet couple, middle-aged with
a teenage daughter. He had had reason to caution Jennifer Grady
just last week when he had disturbed a late night party in the
local cemetery. He had caught a group of them defacing
gravestones.

It wasn’t that she had actually
been doing any of the damage but she had been unlucky enough to
have been caught with those who were. The kids that were left in
town had few outlets for their frustration. Their nice, comfortable
lives had been drastically changed with the rationing and most of
them had been recruited to work the land around the town, trying to
get it ready for spring planting. It was backbreaking work,
clearing trees and scrub and then burning them and raking the ash
into the soil for the nutrients, but it was essential to the whole
town’s survival. They hadn’t caused that much damage, but a few
headstones had been knocked over and two mausoleums had been broken
into.

Jennifer’s parents had been
shocked but Newton had played it down with them; kids needed some
outlets, and with no TV, no entertainment of any kind, and no
alcohol, it was no surprise that they were frustrated.

He saw the flashing lights of
the patrol car, pulled in behind it and made his way over to the
small group of people ahead of him. Officer Jess Walker saw him
approach and excused herself from a conversation with Peter
Hackett, the Grady’s neighbour and the town’s sole remaining and
now redundant computer specialist. All the other technical experts
had left for the states that still had power to run their machines,
but Hackett had been born in this town and at sixty-five was damned
well going to die in it, or at least that was what he had told Jack
when he had asked him about why he stayed after a particularly late
session of the local council. Nothing had actually been decided at
that meeting, nothing ever really was, but he did recall that all
twelve members of the council had passed out drunk, so it hadn’t
been a complete waste.