Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Book 1) (25 page)

Warkowski blanched when he saw
what the creature had become and he wrenched one of the legs from
the broken frame. The sliver of wood seemed pathetic in his massive
fist and he felt fear envelope him for the first time in his life
as the creature rose to its feet before him.

Red eyes glowed balefully down
at him in a face that was more wolf than human. Long, course hair
covered its features; an extended snout replaced the mouth and
nose. Long canine teeth sprouted from the upper jaws, and its
breath reeked of death and decay. The creature shot its arms
towards him and grabbed Warkowski by the throat, lifting the big
man easily as it brought him close to its face.

“I will enjoy eating the little
girl most of all. Young flesh is so much more tender.” The
creature’s mouth was not designed for speech, but the general
meaning was all too clear.

Warkowski couldn’t breathe. The
creature’s claws were like vice grips around his throat. Pain
wracked his body as blood seeped from a dozen re-opened wounds. His
vision began to fade. With one last, desperate effort Warkowski
gripped the chair leg in his hand and brought it up into the
creature’s body with all his remaining strength. The wood passed
easily through the creature’s chest and its eyes flew wide at this
unexpected turn of events. For a second it looked as if were about
to speak, and then Warkowski wrenched the weapon up further with
the last of his strength, driving the wood deep into the creature’s
heart. The red eyes glared widely for a moment and then dimmed and
the creature died with no more than a whimper. Warkowski fell to
the ground in a heap as the creature collapsed beside him.

“See?” Warkowski coughed
violently as he sucked air into his tortured lungs. He grabbed
blindly at a nearby table for support and tried to pull himself to
his feet. “A piece of cake.” He managed a smile before he collapsed
into his wife’s arms, and then everything went black.

Rodgers skidded to a halt just
inside the room and took in the scene in front of him. “Jesus, are
you okay in here?”

Sarah Warkowski knelt on the
floor with her husband’s head cradled in her lap. Her daughter,
Jill, stood just in front, as if standing guard over them both.

“We are now,” she smiled and
caressed her husband’s cheek.

Rodgers approached the
terrifying corpse in the corner, still unsure if it was dead. “Did
he do that?” he asked.

“Yes, he did.”

“How?” Rodgers stammered. “He
could barely move the last time I saw him.”

“It threatened us,” Sarah said
simply, as if that was explanation enough.

“Jesus,” Rodgers repeated. “I’ll
see if I can get someone to help you patch him up.”

Harris stood on the balcony and
watched the thralls” approach. “Must be at least thirty of them,”
he commented to Dan Reiss and Scott Anderson.

Before either of them could
reply, Rodgers raced through the door. “Sorry,” he panted. “Jesus,
you’ll never believe what I just saw. Warkowski's awake--”

“Thank God,” Harris sighed.

“No, that’s not it. You remember
Walton? Tall fellow, he was on the last assault?”

Harris nodded.

“Well,” Rodgers continued, “he
must have been bitten during the attack. He just turned all vamp
and tried to attack Warkowski's family.”

“Are they all right?”

“Yeah, Warkowski beat the shit
out of him with his bare hands. Fuck, I wouldn’t want to be on the
wrong side of that guy. What’s up here?” he finished as if he just
remembered why he had come to the balcony in the first place.

“They’ve found us,” Harris
replied

“Oh shit.”

“Crockett and his men are in
position,” Dan Harrington reported when he came up behind
Rodgers.

“That’s great, Dan, thanks.”
Harris turned to the others. “Okay, it’s time to kick some
ass.”

Chapter 25

Captain Pierce led his team
toward the house, or at least he tried to. Twenty-nine men spread
out to either side of him, armed with a vast array of weaponry. The
ruling thralls had tried many times to make the militia into an
army, insisting on uniforms and similar weaponry. Unfortunately,
with so many weapons available in this New World and with little in
the way of threat to keep the thralls busy, many of the dictates
were ignored. Most of the militia continued to carry those weapons
that were more suited to their personalities and, while this was
fine when they were guarding brain-dead humans, it was a totally
different matter when they were facing an enemy who had proved
their capability in fighting back.

The uniforms had started out the
same, but while they still retained a similar theme, these too had
been adapted. These additions included anything as innocuous as a
bandana tied to the left arm denoting different squads by colour to
headgear more suited to a ballgame than any theatre of war. The
ruling council had all but given up on disciplining these
transgressions when the vampires had cleaned house and the next
level had taken over. Up till now the new council had been too busy
to address this issue though they would have to do so.

The lack of discipline in the
way the thralls dressed was plainly visible to Pierce now in the
way his platoon approached their target. Pierce sighed as he looked
along the line and saw its ragged form. Some of the thralls were a
good fifty meters ahead of the rest of the platoon and others had
fallen behind as they stepped on cigarettes or finished their
conversations before they caught up. All of them walked with a lazy
inattention to what they were doing. He could see that the ranks
had taken full advantage of the current confusion of the leadership
purge and openly carried such diverse weaponry as bazookas and
chain-fed machine guns, none of which would be of any use for
close-quarter fighting inside the building ahead of them. He had
tried numerous times on the way here to impress on the men how
capable these humans were but it was hard to impress soldiers with
the strength and speed that these thralls had. They saw this
manoeuvre as a pleasant break to the tedium of guard duty and
nothing more.

The main downside to this was
that he had lost control of his force as an effective fighting
force. He had been a Captain in the National Guard and his rank had
continued in this new world, however, where discipline and the
army’s chain of command structures were enough before they counted
for nothing under the vampires. In this world he had to earn
respect and there had been no opportunity to do that up to this
point. He hoped that today he could prove his worth to his men and
his own superiors.

Dawn had come and gone, but a
slight mist still licked at the river’s surface and the edges of
the nearby forest. There was no sign of life from the house. He
whistled and signalled for the outer edges to take up positions on
either side of the complex and cursed as he saw the men ignore him
yet again. His cheeks burned red with embarrassment as he thought
what his superiors would think. His men looked more like a group
out on a Sunday stroll than a platoon about to go into battle.

Their approach was confident;
all the thralls walked upright, rather than sprinting in a crouch
to present a smaller target.

If it’s the last thing I do
I…

He heard a dull click and
stopped dead. He looked down at the thin metal line that lay on the
ground under his boot. His eyes flicked from side to side and he
noticed that the line ran up to a small clump of earth beside him.
As he looked now he suddenly noticed that there were many of these
mounds surrounded the entire approach to the house.

“Oh, shit!”

And then the Claymore mines
exploded.

Thousands of small metal
bearings shot from the mines at ferocious speeds. Projectiles
filled the area in front of the house; they shredded flesh and
shattered bones. Bodies jerked spasmodically in a grotesque dance
as the platoon was hit repeatedly by the flying shrapnel. Some of
the thralls managed to get a few rounds off, firing blindly, before
they were hit by the hail of death. The carnage was terrible; blood
flowed copiously and turned the whole area red. Some of the bodies
fell into the river, and red swirls eddied along with the current
while bodies floated by the bank.

When the smoke cleared the
grounds were littered with bodies and limbs. There wasn’t a sound.
The Lieutenant, ashen-faced, turned to Evans and swallowed deeply.
“Should I call off the second platoon, Sir?”

“What second platoon?” Evans
shouted.

The second Platoon had just
settled into position when they heard the explosions and the
screaming. From their location in the forest, behind and to the
east of the complex, they couldn’t see what was happening and had
no way of knowing who was screaming.

“Sounds like Alpha platoon are
really giving “em hell, sir.”

Captain Gilbert heard the words
coming from his Sergeant’s mouth, but he had to shake his head to
bring himself back into focus. “What’s that, Jim?” he said.

“I was just saying I hope they
leave something for us, sir.”

Peter Gilbert nodded and
prepared to launch his own attack. A loud squawk from the radio
delayed his order and he looked to the communications officer for
news.

“Sir, command has called off the
attack. We’re to wait for the artillery.”

“Oh, shit,” the sergeant cursed.
“We miss out on all the action.”

Gilbert nodded agreement. “Maybe
next time,” he consoled and the men began to back up from the
fringe of the trees.

Just then the whole forest
seemed to come alive around them. Branches that had been held
taught by strong rope were suddenly cut, and the whiplash sent the
limbs shooting toward the platoon. The thralls at the rear of the
column were the first to notice anything. The rustling of the tress
increased in volume until the first branches crashed through the
clearing and smashed into the retreating soldiers.

The thralls were picked up off
the ground and flung violently against the surrounding trees.
Bodies were wrapped brutally around tree trunks; bones were snapped
and crushed when they dropped to the ground. The other thralls
panicked and began to run in all directions. Two of them ran out
toward the complex. A solid wooden frame suddenly appeared from
above and slammed into the fleeing thralls. The frame was liberally
dotted with long, wickedly sharp spikes that impaled the thralls
with such speed they didn’t have time to scream. Three others ran
toward the river and the ground suddenly dropped from beneath them.
They disappeared from view, and then the screaming began when they
landed on the stakes set into the base of the hole.

Gilbert tried to regain control
by shouting orders, but the screaming from the injured and the
panicked shouting of those trying to escape drowned out his
commands. He pulled his M-16 from around his back and fired three
rounds into the air. The sudden crack of the gun was so out of
place in the forest that most of the platoon stopped and looked to
the sound.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,
but carefully…”

Before he had a chance to speak
further, there were a number of explosions around them. Everyone
looked frantically around to see what this latest trap might
be.

The trees began to fall; there
seemed to be hundreds of them. The noise was thunderous, like
standing under a waterfall. The trees fell, taking smaller trees
and branches with them when they dropped toward the platoon. Some
of the thralls stared, frozen in fear, while the trunks loomed
larger. Others bolted aimlessly, only to be hit by stray branches
or crushed by the falling trunks. Thralls were crushed or impaled
by the wood when the trees crashed to earth and completely
decimated the entire area.

After the last tree had fallen,
the only sound to come from the clearing was the occasional
creaking of wood. From the pit, at the edge of the clearing, the
radio, which had miraculously survived, squawked to life and
demanded attention.

“No answer, sir.” The
communications officer shook his head to emphasise the point, and
the Lieutenant turned to Evans.

“I heard,” Evans muttered and
saved the Lieutenant the embarrassment.

“At least the artillery will be
here within the hour. We’ll get them then.” The Lieutenant was
ashen faced and didn’t really look as if he had convinced himself,
let alone his stone-faced General.

Steele arrived at the scene
around mid-afternoon. By that time tents had been erected and
cooking fires lit. Steele sauntered into camp, where the smell of
roasted meat filled the air. Thralls stood miserably around, like
drunks at closing time. Bodies littered the lawn in front of the
house and added to the overall pall of despair that had descended
over the camp.

Steele whistled while he looked
about him and then made his way over to Evans.

“I see you found them, then.
Come to admire your handiwork, eh?” Evans indicated the
complex.

Steele reeled, pretending he’d
been shot. “General, you wound me.” Steele sobered and looked
directly at the General. “Actually, you’re half right. Yes, I did
find them; but no, I didn’t report it.”

“What…how?” Evans stammered.

“Looks like I don’t enjoy the
lofty level of trust I thought, huh?” Steele smiled while he
spoke.

“You might be right. You don’t
look too worried about it, though.”

“Worry is for those with
something to lose, General.” Steele dropped his gaze. “Still, it
looks as though our friends are doing quite well.”

Evans followed Steele’s gaze to
the complex.

“Yes, they haven’t fired a shot
yet, but they’ve taken out fifty of my men.”

Both men were distracted by the
noises of heavy machinery and looked over to see the artillery
beginning to arrive.