Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Book 1) (24 page)

The two figures crept through
the city and kept their eyes as much on the sky as on the streets.
They moved slowly, their packs heavy with explosives, and had to
change direction twice to avoid thrall patrols. Five minutes from
the hospital they heard a faint rustling in the air above them.
Both men dived for cover when a vampire passed overhead. Sweat
poured from the men as the creature passed mere feet above them and
continued on, oblivious to their presence.

“I thought they had a great
sense of smell, night vision and shit like that,” Rodgers said. His
relief was evident on his face.

“They do,” Scott answered, “but
luckily their arrogance gets the better of them. Most never really
achieve their full potential. Come on, let’s do this and get out of
here.”

Philip Warkowski was in hell. At
least that was what it felt like. It was easier to identify those
parts of his body that didn’t hurt than those that did. He had
awakened some five minutes ago and had been unable to move since.
Each movement brought a fresh wave of nausea and pain, so he just
lay there and tried to get his bearings. The room was dark and the
only sign of life was the incessant pinging of the monitor by his
bedside.

He tried to move his head. He
knew he was in a hospital, but whose? Were thralls caring for him,
so he could go on feeding their masters, or had someone brought him
back to the Cave? Did Sarah and Jill make it out safely? Questions
flooded his still muddled brain but there were no answers. The last
thing he remembered was the explosion, and then half the city had
fallen on him.

He gritted his teeth and slowly
turned to his right, and an immediate rush of relief flooded
through him. Sarah sat in the chair beside him, slumped in a half
doze. There was no way that the thralls would let her stay with
him. They both must be safe.

“Thank God,” he muttered. His
voice was low, but was so out of place in an otherwise quiet room
that Sarah stirred and opened her eyes.

“Oh my God, you’re awake,” she
exclaimed and rushed forward. She held his face and kissed him
repeatedly.

“Aaagghhh!” He couldn’t help but
cry out as his body screamed in pain.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. That bloody
serum wore off only this morning. I’m still a bit clumsy.” She
smiled delightedly, despite her obvious sincerity. Warkowski
understood. He had walked around for a whole week with a permanent
grin on his face when he first overcame the serum’s effects.

“It’s so good to see you,
Sarah.”

“God, but I’ve missed you,
Phil,” she answered. “They told me we were held for two years.
We’ve missed our baby growing up.” Tears sprang to her eyes and
gently rolled down her cheeks.

“I know.” Despite the pain,
Warkowski reached his hand to her cheek. “But we’re here now. We
have the rest of our lives to make up for the past and look to the
future. Speaking of Jill, how has she been affected by all this?
Has she recovered?”

“Daddy, you’re awake!”

The shrill scream came from the
doorway. The child sprinted across the room and launched herself at
the bed. Before either adult could stop her, she jumped up on the
bed and wrapped her short, stubby arms around Warkowski and hugged
with all her might. Tears flooded her eyes, too.

“I missed you,” she said simply
and buried her face in his chest.

Pains shot through every part of
his body and consciousness began to slip away. He fought against
the blackness to force his arms up and completely envelope his
daughter’s tiny body in his massive embrace. The pain still came in
waves, but Warkowski hadn’t been as happy as this in years. All the
pain, the sacrifice and the work which had gotten him here melted
away in that moment. He knew they would return, but it was enough
for now.

“I missed you too, honey.”

The two men slipped into the
hospital through the same window that Scott had used before. At
least this had been repaired. He briefly felt sorry for the poor
maintenance guy before smashing the window again and entering the
dark building.

“Okay, we’ll be quicker if we
split up. Set the charges every twenty feet or so on the far side
of the building. We’ll meet up back here in…” Anderson paused to
look at his watch, “…say, twenty-five minutes.”

Rodgers nodded and trotted off
down the corridor, his pack bouncing from side to side as he went.
He stopped at the end of the corridor to set the timer on an
explosive, and then he rose and moved on to the next target area
around the corner.

Scott had already laid most of
his charges when a thrall came through a fire door right in front
of him. He froze. His heart beat furiously in his chest, a cold
sweat broke out down his back, and his muscles tensed. The thrall
was distracted, reading a paper on a clipboard, and never saw the
figure launch itself at him. The knife slid easily through the
flesh under his chin, and the thrall collapsed into his arms,
already dead.

Scott let the body fall to the
ground. With only seven minutes left on the timer it was irrelevant
whether the body was found or not. Three minutes later he met up
with Rodgers again. They exited through the same window and hurried
back the way they had come. When they were just outside the
hospital grounds the explosions started. Both men grinned when the
night lit up.

“Let’s get out of here,” Scott
shouted above the roar of the explosions. “We can use the confusion
to cover our tracks.”

It took them an hour and a half
to sneak back to the Cave. Both men looked exhausted from the trip
and the stress of the night raid. The constant threat of discovery
by thralls--or even worse, by vampires--had taken its toll and they
almost fell through the door when they dialled in the code.

A hundred yards out from the
house a figure watched from the crook of a tree. The night goggles
he used gave him a clear picture of the entryway and the two men.
He leaned back and smiled, his grey eyes twinkling in the pale
light from the moon.

“Gotcha!”

Chapter 24

“Harris,” the words were
high-pitched with an edge of panic, “you better come quickly.”
Scott Anderson gesticulated madly to attract his attention. Peter
Harris looked up and frowned. Scott wasn’t usually prone to panic.
He excused himself from the conversation and headed over to
him.

“What’s up?”

“You’ll have to see for
yourself. Besides it’s not something I want to say here.” Anderson
shoved Harris through the door toward the stairs.

“But Scott …” Harris began, but
Anderson had already sprinted up the stairs ahead of him and
disappeared through the balcony exit. Harris shrugged and trotted
up after him, muttering all the time about boiling oil and certain
body parts.

The balcony was a small wooden
deck area connected to the second level of the upper house and gave
a good view of the surrounding approach to the facility. Harris
began to feel worried when he noticed that John Kelly was already
there, his attention riveted to the East and binoculars clasped
tightly to his eyes.

“Peter,” Kelly’s face was white,
“you better take a look.”

Harris took the binoculars to
look in the indicated direction. “Oh, Shit,” he said. What looked
like the entire thrall army were setting up camp about three
hundred yards from the house.

“They…they must have followed me
last night.” Anderson’s face was ashen. He couldn’t quite raise his
eyes from the floor. “God. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“Scott,” Harris put his hand on
the man’s shoulder, “we’ll probably never know for sure how they
found out. Regardless, we have to deal with it now, so don’t fall
apart on me.” He turned to Kelly. “Don’t start a panic, but get
everyone down to the Cave. Tell Reiss and Rodgers to join me here,
and you’d better get Crockett. This is more his territory.”
Harris rattled off the orders. “His idea of
flooding the area certainly seems to have worked.”
Crockett
arrived and Harris indicated the growing build up of thralls. The
two men saw the three tanks for the first time. All of them were
stuck fast and listed forward, making use of their heavy guns now
would be impossible. Two dozen thralls pushed, pulled and heaved on
lines without luck.

“Come on, they’re sure to try an
assault soon. Let’s get moving.”

The creature that had been Jack
Walton woke. He could smell blood and his stomach ached. He rose
fluidly from the bed and looked around at the two other beds in the
room. Only one was occupied and, with a lick of his lips, he
approached the other occupant. He looked down at Handsaw’s sleeping
figure and smiled. Without a moment’s hesitation he tore the man’s
throat out and blood poured into his mouth. Henshaw woke briefly
and saw the creature’s hellish face. The drugs he’d been given held
the pain at bay, but also made his muscles sluggish, so he managed
only a soft gurgling noise before he drowned in his own blood.

The creature swallowed and felt
a surge of power course through him. His senses tingled with the
hot fluid.

“Breakfast in bed,” he cackled
and moved on to the next room. The door was closed but the creature
could hear the high-pitched giggling of a young girl in the next
room. He smiled as he pushed open the door.

Young flesh, it thought and its
mouth watered at the prospect. The creature revelled in its
newfound power and didn’t bother to check if the door was locked or
not. Instead it just crashed straight through.

“Report!” General Evans barked
the order at his Lieutenant.

“Sir, we’ve set up a perimeter
around the facility. Nothing can get out.” The Lieutenant panted
while he recovered from his exertions.

“Having a spot of bother?” Evans
asked and indicated the hive of activity around the tanks.

“Oh…yes, sir. The entire
approach to the house is flooded. The tanks sank on us before we
knew how unstable ....” The Lieutenant didn’t finish as his voice
trailed off in embarrassment.

And well he might, thought Evans
as he glared at the young officer.

“I’ve already radioed back to
base to send up the long range artillery to flush them out.” The
Lieutenant brightened, as if this news would make up for his
previous mistake.

“That’s mighty efficient of
you,” Evans commented with a sneer.

The sarcasm was lost on the
Lieutenant, who grinned like a puppy and said, “Thank you, sir.
I’ve also given the order for a frontal assault …”

“You’ve what?”

The Lieutenant cowered from the
volume of the General’s outburst.

Evans reigned in his anger
before he continued. “Son, don’t you think that if these folks went
to all that trouble to flood this entire area, they might have a
few more surprises waiting for some idiot who walks up to the front
door?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t think
…”

“No, I don’t suppose you did.”
Evans threw his eyes up to heaven. Both men turned then to the
sound of gunfire and men screaming. “Come on, Lieutenant; let’s see
what we can salvage from this mess.”

The door burst open in a shower
of splinters, and Jill screamed when the creature appeared in the
doorway. Sarah pushed the child behind her and backed away but the
room was small and she felt the cold wall behind her far too
quickly. She looked frantically towards the other door but the
creature moved like a blur to cut off their retreat. A deep rattle
erupted from its throat. The creature was well over six foot and
blood covered its face and hospital gown. There was something
almost comical about such a creature wearing such an ordinary
garment but there was nothing comical about its maniacal grin or
the vicious tangle of teeth that dominated its features. The
rattle, Sarah realised, was laughter. The hairs of her neck
bristled when the creature approached.

“Get away from them, you son of
a bitch.”

The vampire whirled and tensed
its muscles for an attack. Warkowski managed to pull himself from
the bed, but was still using it for support.

The deep rattle came again. “You
have got to be kidding, human.” The vampire laughed and purposely
turned its back on him as it focused on Sarah and Jill.

The roar began deep in the pit
of his stomach; Warkowski was already halfway across the room
before it erupted from his throat. The creature barely had time to
turn before Warkowski tackled him and the two of them were sent
crashing against the wall.

With strength born of despair,
fuelled by a passionate love for his family, Warkowski laid into
the creature and showered blow after blow into its demonic face.
Muscles tore, bones crunched and sutures ripped, but he continued
to assault the creature. Blood began to pour from reopened wounds
at Warkowski's side, but he ignored it all. The speed of his attack
had caught the vampire unprepared and, caught in the middle of a
transformation, the relentless, vicious blows kept it off balance.
Its flesh still rippled over bone as it tried to complete the
change.

Adrenaline pumped through
Warkowski's body and dulled the pain while he pummelled the
creature. The vampire’s wickedly sharp talons flayed wildly around
him, but he was unable to aim or take the initiative as blow after
blow connected with its head. The vampire fell back further.
Suddenly it tripped over some furniture, fell heavily to the
ground, and crushed a chair in the process.

Warkowski didn’t miss a beat. He
straddled the creature and continued pummelling him. “Let me hear
you laugh now, motherfucker,” he panted, each word punctuated by
another blow. Warkowski gulped in air and finally paused in his
assault. His arms felt like lead weights and his head swam as
consciousness threatened to slip away; he couldn’t go on.

He looked down at the creature
but the vampire was already recovering, taking the precious seconds
it needed to complete the change. He looked around frantically for
a weapon, something that would inflict more damage than his
battered fists. Suddenly, he saw the shattered furniture and he
grabbed at the ruined chair. His hand brushed against one of the
upturned legs but his desperate lunge had caused him to overbalance
and he fell heavily onto the floor. The vampire cackled again as
its body seemed to grow more muscular and demonic as it finished
its transformation.