Vampire Apocalypse: Trail of Tears (Book 4)

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-2-499

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-505

Vampire Apocalypse: Trail of Tears copyright © 2013

by Derek Gunn

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital Arts

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Contents

Dedication

The Attack

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

The Aftermath

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

The Trail of Tears

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dedication

To Aidan and Joan Gunn –

May they both rest easy.

To Alice,

without whom none of this would be possible.

The Attack

Chapter 1

Rain hammered down and water scurried through the ruins like miniature rivers growing darker. It sluiced through the dirt, groping blindly through the wasteland. Drops of water hit the ground so hard that they split into smaller droplets before joining the torrents. Above, the clouds roiled like an unsettled sea. The ruins of the once great city bore nature’s anger with stoic indifference.

The figures slipped through the darkness, their heavy boots strangely muted as they tramped through the ruins. There were seven in all and each figure wore heavy, black combat fatigues and bore ash on their flesh. The ash had run with the rain and their faces looked grey rather than black, as if they had been dead for some time. These figures, however, were not dead. They were not even undead. They were something worse.

They moved like liquid shadows despite the heavy weaponry they carried. They moved fast and yet no sound of scraped fabric or jostled weapons announced their coming. The rain slammed into them but none seemed to notice.

Ahead, the sound of music and the occasional squeal of laughter carried in the wind. A sudden rumble of thunder filled the night, shattering the silence and forcing the figures to stop and wait for it to fade. The leader listened hard until he could again hear the music in the distance and then motioned for the others to follow.

Harry Sinclair considered briefly reporting their discovery but then rejected it. Carter would no doubt rant at him for breaking protocol but once he presented the rebels’ heads to him he was confident he would be forgiven. In fact, his standing should benefit nicely with a job well done. These rebels had been a thorn in Carter’s side for so long he was sure to be well rewarded. Sinclair led only one of many such patrols in this area. Carter was pretty sure that the rebels were somewhere in this direction but was careful to search under the radar until he had proof. The situation with the vampires was fluid and dangerous.

After the mad slaughter of the last few weeks among the creatures the vampires were beginning to reign in their blood lust and wiser heads were beginning to emerge. Carter’s own position was tenuous at best, he had managed to unite the thralls but his continued supremacy was based on the fear of the number of thralls he could control. There was a whole sea of thralls under him that eyed his position with envy and the continued survival of the rebels weakened him. He had sent these patrols out with his best men in the hope that he could find and then eliminate the humans.

Once they were dealt with he could turn his full attention to the vampires crowding his borders. Of course, if Sinclair were to deal with the humans on his own he would show the other thrall commanders just how a proper commander can handle the situation and if Carter were to look less than supreme then that would be unfortunate, for him anyway. Sinclair smiled as he motioned for his men to spread out. This would be easy. After all, what could go wrong? From the sounds of things the community members were having a party. It would be a slaughter.

* * *

Father Jonathon Reilly watched the bodies moving on the makeshift dance floor and he smiled as people caught his eye. When they urged him to join them, he shook his head and pointed at his stomach and they nodded and returned to their dancing. His injuries had healed remarkably well but he wasn’t in the mood to join the revellers and using his frailty, while a little dishonest, was the path of least resistance.

His smile was fixed to his face but it did not reach his eyes. The image of Jack Pearson’s lifeless body was still burned in his memory and he looked at every smiling face in the community with a distrust that sickened him. He was meant to be their spiritual leader. He was the one who was meant to teach them forgiveness. But he couldn’t forgive the person who had killed Jack so callously and had destroyed the community’s only protection from discovery.

Adam Wilkins was still trying to fix the broken radio mast but it was slow going and all the time they were visible to any vampires who might pass overhead. He found his eyes constantly glancing upwards as if a silent winged death was already swooping towards them. But all he could see was the driving rain and the roiling clouds. The council had decided not to tell the rest of the community about their vulnerability for now. Why worry them? They had enough to worry about living in such a troubled world. Vampires, thralls, severe weather changes, and now they had the threat of a nuclear cloud which may or may not come their way. Were they truly alone in this world? Was everyone else a brainless source of food for the vampires, a source that was being poisoned by the very concoction that made them docile? What a world it had become.

The celebration was taking place under a large canvass roof that they had strung up between two of the buildings that made up the living quarters. They had had to move outside as there were now too many people to fit in any of the areas they inhabited. And yet they had lost so many. The faces of those who had died skipped through his mind. He tried so hard to balance their growing numbers against those that survived but the scales were ineluctably drawing to a point where the negatives would outweigh the positives. How many more would die?

His thoughts were interrupted as a hand touched his elbow and he turned to see Sandra Harrington offer him a glass of clear liquid. If the vampires didn’t kill them then surely Jonathon Price’s alcohol would. Price, like Pat Smith, had been a chemist before the vampires had come. However, his talents did not lend themselves to research. Show him a compound or a formula and he could replicate it but creating something new was beyond him. He did come with a formula for whiskey though and, to most of the community, that put him above Pat in the popularity stakes. He had quickly become the main distributor of alcohol after the bottled branded goods had been used up. Many people tried to make all kinds of hooch, beer and anything else that would nullify the pain or depression of their lives, but none were more popular than Price’s strange concoction. It kicked like a mule but warmed the stomach like nothing he had ever tried. He took the proffered glass and smiled. Sandra nodded but didn’t smile. She held his gaze for another minute then looked out at the rain.

He’ll come back, he said simply and she turned and forced a smile.

It’s been four days. Even he has to run out of luck some day.

Reilly shrugged not knowing what to say. He looked at Sandra, taking in her lean form. A bit too thin, he thought, but then she had travelled a long way with little food. Her clothes were clean but faded, almost threadbare. They hadn’t had the chance to return to where they had spent their exile as yet; they were still trying get the wounded settled and Regan had not allocated any quarters for them as yet. Regan had not been exactly subtle. He might have been forced to let the wounded in but he obviously had no plans to allow them to stay and wanted them to be left in no doubt about their refugee status.

Sandra still wore a pistol at her hip and the dark bulge seemed almost part of her in the dim light. The skin around her eyes was tight, her complexion ashen from tiredness and her eyes seemed to focus past him to a point above the horizon as she watched for any movement. The music swelled around them, people laughed, and shouted over the music but it seemed as though the two of them were set apart from the others. He wondered again at the validity of the reasons for having this celebration. He was well aware that it was essential to keep the community’s spirits up. On the surface the celebration was for the safe arrival of Sandra and the others from their mission at the nuclear plant, at least that was what Regan said it was for. Father Reilly suspected it had more to do with him facing down the thralls and sending them packing with their tails between their legs. Reilly seemed to be the only one worried that that particular threat was far from over. The thrall commander did not seem like one who would be easily dissuaded and Regan had done his best to embarrass the officer. If he had just left ... but that was Regan.

How could they have a celebration when they still had four unaccounted for? Or maybe that was Regan’s whole point. Or was Ian Phelps the one wielding the power now? Outwardly it appeared that Regan was still in charge but Reilly was no longer sure. Phelps had proven himself masterful at manipulation and preferred to operate in the shadows. Regan was a coward and thrived on dealing with people through others. He would do anything to avoid a direct confrontation and certainly appeared to bow to Phelps more often than before. It was the perfect partnership. Had they come to an arrangement?

There was no love lost between them and Harris. And what of the plant? They had all seen the cloud on the horizon. Was there any way that Harris could possibly have beaten the odds again? He looked over to where Sarah Warkowski sat staring in a daze at the revellers. She too waited on word of her husband. Sometimes we all forget that it’s not just Harris out there risking his life, he thought as he sipped his drink, grunting as the harsh liquid burned his throat. If they did come back, would they die a slow, terrible death from radiation? For that matter, were they all dying now from radiation or was the rain saving them? Too many questions and so few answers. He sighed and merely took Sandra’s hand and joined her in looking out into the rain soaked ruins. It was all so depressing. What once had stood for humanity’s resilience and ingenuity and now only reminded him how fleeting it all really was.

* * *

Emma Logan looked out into the sea of gyrating bodies as if she could penetrate each person’s skin and see what lay beneath. Her auburn hair was stuffed inside the baseball cap that was as much a part of her as her arms. She imagined a dark evil coiling in the pit of someone’s stomach, some ugly cancer gnawing away. If she looked hard enough she might just see some evidence. She sighed. All she could see were the smiling faces of a community long starved of anything to celebrate. The music flowed over her but she remained impassive.

Somewhere out in that crowd of people hid a killer. Someone who probably smiled at her every day. Someone who was able to work alongside them every day, to laugh and share and, when it suited their purposes, to kill anyone who stood in their way. Someone out there had killed Jack Pearson and that act above all their other betrayals filled her with a burning hate. She might be young but she did understand that there had to be a reason for this person’s actions. Something must motivate them. But, for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine anything that could justify this person’s actions.

She had just come from the infirmary where Conor Ricks was still fading in and out of consciousness. They had managed to transfuse blood into his starved body but it was still uncertain whether they had gotten to him in time. When Sandra Harrington and the others had brought him back her carefully crafted ice exterior had shattered. He had looked so frail on the stretcher. He had lost so much blood that he had looked as though he was already dead. In fact, her first thought had been that he had died and no one had noticed. She had started forward in a panic only to see his cool blue eyes peek from the sunken shadows of his face and she had almost collapsed in relief. He had managed a weak smile as he saw her. The rest was a bit of a blur if she was honest. She did remember that Regan had tried to stop the survivors from entering the community, saying they had made their choice. She even remembered the shocked confusion of everyone present that he could be so callous.

She didn’t remember kicking the man in the groin or the cheer that had followed as she had ordered the stretcher to the infirmary. She had pieced the story together afterwards from talking to a delighted Sandra Harrington, even Father Reilly had failed to keep a straight face when he came to visit Conor. He had told her than not even the vampires could have stopped her at that moment. She had since ignored the summons to Regan’s office to explain her actions; she would have to go at some stage she knew but she had more important things to do for now. Anyway, maybe the world would end and save her the trouble.

She snapped her head to the left when she thought she heard a sharp crack in the distance. The music was not too loud, as they had worried that it might carry too far, but the raised voices had no volume control and the noise washed over her battering her senses. She was about to shrug and return to her examination of the crowd when she remembered something Harris had told her. She couldn’t remember the actual words but it was something about trusting your gut. If something made you feel uneasy it was probably worth investigating.

She moved over to the edge of the area and sighed as the noise faded behind her. Darkness enveloped her and a fine spray of rain quickly covered her face. For a moment she lost herself to the feeling and then she heard the faint sound of stones tumbling down an incline. There was no one assigned to the north of her position, she knew. There was nothing out there but abandoned buildings and rubble. Until now. She grabbed at her rifle and shouted a warning behind her before disappearing into the dark.

* * *

Sandra Harrington heard the shout and saw Emma Logan blend into the darkness. She didn’t know what the girl had said but her tone had been enough. She didn’t waste time puzzling over the girl’s warning. Emma was not one for exaggerating. Someone was coming. Her heart lurched. Was it Peter? Had he made it back? No doubt Regan would make an issue of Harris returning but there had been a major shift in general opinion since that horrible night he had been exiled. Father Reilly and others who had stayed behind had worked hard under the radar letting people know the real story and the sacrifices that were being made in their names. It wasn’t a landslide shift by any means, but people were certainly more aware of what was happening. Many felt embarrassed that they had reacted the way they had so Regan would find it harder to whip up support the next time. That, of course, would only matter if Peter and the others made it back safely. She forced her excitement down. It could be Harris returning or it could be an attack.

One thing that Harris had made sure of before he had been exiled was that the community were well drilled for an attack. At the time everyone had cursed him for such unnecessary hardship. Everyone had to take part and most had ended up in the infirmary with sprained ankles and wrists, cuts and everything you could imagine from running over rubble as they fought off one imaginary attack after another. She had had more opportunity to curse him than most and he had merely shrugged and replied that she would thank him one day.

Today was that day. She offered up a silent thank you as she saw the people before her scatter for their weapons and take up their positions. They moved without knowledge of what was coming, without understanding of the threat and with a near perfect unison that would make Peter proud. Within seconds the area was empty. She looked out into the rain soaked night but could see nothing. Then the sound of gunfire erupted and spouts of flash-fire lit up the darkness.

* * *

Denis Jackson had spent most of the night staring out into the darkness. He knew that there had been no way he could have gone with Peter and the others back to the plant but that knowledge didn’t help ease his conscience or convince him that he hadn’t let his friends down. Delilah mingled with the others having finally given up on getting him to join her. He shifted his arm on the crutch he had been leaning on and stretched out his fingers. He was recovering well but couldn’t make it very far without the crutches. If he followed medical advice he would still be in a wheelchair, a fact that Delilah had not let him forget every time he grimaced when his stitches pulled at him. But he just felt so helpless that he was compelled to push himself, as if the constant pain was what he deserved for not going with Harris and the others…

He heard Emma’s warning and was already moving through the crowd looking for Delilah by the time the teenager had disappeared. People were streaming from the dance floor in an orderly and focused manner with only a few people looking lost. Delilah suddenly appeared beside him. To her credit she didn’t say anything when he began to tire and struggle as the crutches slipped on the wet, uneven surface but he could tell that she wanted to. Of all the nights for him to decide to go against their better judgement.

Go, he gasped in frustration and Delilah only hesitated a moment before nodding and disappearing into the crowd. Everyone had their assigned places in such an emergency and she couldn’t delay. He felt so helpless as he struggled towards the main entrance. Most of the people that passed him held their weapons ready and he cursed himself for leaving his behind. It kept getting tangled when it slid between the crutches. Shit, what a night. He kept moving doggedly on. Gunfire erupted close by and he forced himself not to stop and look. He was no good to anyone where he was. If only he could get inside he could help.

* * *

Emma felt her rifle slam back into her shoulder but she ignored the pain. She rolled to her left, splashing into a puddle left by the rain, and took aim again as bullets slammed into the area she had just vacated. She aimed at the muzzle flashes, and was already moving again before she knew if she had hit anything. She didn’t know how many there were; they blended in so well with the darkness and the rain. In fact, she had nearly missed them entirely and walked past them, but one of them had dislodged a small rock and the noise had sent her to the ground. She had only been saved by the fact that the music behind her had stopped suddenly when her warning had sent the community scrambling and the commotion had distracted the invaders.

Lights suddenly bloomed into life behind her and spears of light stabbed through the darkness splashing against the wasteland and broken buildings illuminating their stark desolation. A figure was caught in the glare of one of the beams and a burst of fire erupted behind her and slammed into the figure before it could move. A moment later a burst of fire erupted from in front of her and the lights shattered. She marked the flash in the darkness and sent her shots right at them, smiling when she heard a grunt of pain. She was moving again before the answering fire tore up the dirt around her vacated hollow.

* * *

Where are they? How many? Are they vampires or thralls? Regan spat the questions out as he approached the dugout where the shattered searchlight still fizzled as the rain ran into its shattered carcass.

We don’t know, sir, a voice replied in the darkness and Regan spun towards the man. Must be thralls though, otherwise we’d already be dead. There were four men in the dugout and the speaker was on the far right.

Regan nodded as he squinted through the rain into the darkness.

Why aren’t you firing, Taylor? He demanded.

We can’t see anything, sir, Taylor responded. Not since they took out the lights. Besides, Emma’s out there somewhere.

Is she now? Now isn’t that convenient? We can’t let them into the living area, Regan piped cringing as his voice cracked with nervousness. No matter who’s out there, he finished in a deeper tone. She’ll just have to keep her head down.

Sir, Taylor began, we can’t just shoot …

You’ll do what you’re told, Regan snapped. Do you want your family torn apart because you were afraid to protect them?

The man glared at Regan but there was enough truth in what he said to make him pause. He had two little girls himself and their safety meant everything to him. But it wasn’t right to spray fire when you had people in the same area either. By the time he had come up with a good enough argument the other men had begun to fire into the night, spreading their deadly hail across the landscape. He wasn’t certain but he thought that Regan smiled before turning and heading out towards the other dugouts.

* * *

Sandra Harrington forced her way through the crowds of rushing people. Everyone knew where they should be; it was just that the celebration had everyone out of position. Not only were they far from their normal positions but many had left their weapons in their rooms and everyone was rushing to get armed. The only way back into the dormitory area was a narrow corridor that was packed full of people trying to move in both directions. All that training reduced to nothing because they had been caught at the wrong moment. The sound of gunfire made everyone move more quickly and the general air was one of near panic.

She didn’t know who had found them or how many were involved in the attack but panic would only make everything fall apart. She had to do something. She drew her pistol and shot a single round into the air. In the cramped confines of the corridor the sound had an immediate effect and everyone stopped dead in their tracks.

We don’t have time for this, she shouted as people turned towards her. Everyone already inside continue on and collect all the weapons, not just your own. Get everything you can find and hurry. Those of you still outside move directly to your positions and someone will deliver a weapon to you. Don’t worry if it’s not yours for now. People continued to stare at her as if she had just told them the sun was pink. Move it people, she shouted and the first few moved to obey.

Once the pressure eased in the narrow corridor others realised the logic of the orders and they quickly moved to obey. Within minutes the traffic in the narrow corridor was moving steadily and Sandra sighed in relief. Of course, she had just sent half these people out to their posts unarmed with an attacking force of who-knew-what coming at them. Jesus, I hate command, she thought. She looked out at the horizon. Peter Harris, she whispered, get your ass back here or I will hunt you down and kill you myself.

Smiling wryly she headed back out into the rain to help with the placement of the people she had sent out to the pickets. Her pistol wasn’t much but it was better than what most of the defenders had to work with.

* * *

The bullets tore through the barriers with ease. In fairness the barrier was more a visual camouflage than a physical one, but the invaders had seen the humans arrive, backlit as they were by the lights from the dance floor. Sandra cried out in rage as she saw four men torn to pieces by the hail of fire. All four were unarmed and they jerked spasmodically each time a round hit. She emptied her clip out towards the flares in the