Chapter 1

2009-08-30T11:07:00.001-07:00

Prologue

“I’m telling you,” the boy piped excitedly, “you just have to see this.”
He glanced back every few seconds as if to make sure that his audience was still with him and his inattention to his own footsteps caused him to slip and stumble repeatedly over the uneven ground.

“This better be worth it, Wilkins,” a boy, taller than the others, said with as much menace as his fifteen years could manage. The lead boy gulped and slipped again as his attention was distracted. The larger boy laughed. “Watch where you’re going, Wilkins, or you’re likely to break something and then we’ll never see this amazing discovery of yours.”

“Yeah,” laughed another boy, “like you were so busy before, Seager.” This boy was smaller than the larger boy but did not seem in the least intimidated by this. “Remind me,” he continued despite the scowl directed at him by Seager, “does fondling women’s underwear make you blind or do you have to actually take your dick out for that?”

There was a smattering of laughter from the others in the group, though most did not want to be seen to be laughing and looked away in case they were caught. Seager lunged forward with a growl of anger but the other boy easily sidestepped and Seager’s roundhouse punch swept past without making contact.
“I’m going to kill you, Ricks. When I get my hands on you …”

“Will you two stop it?” Everyone stopped at the sharp tone and Emma Logan glared at the two boys in front of her. Inside she longed to burst out laughing, Rick’s comment had been particularly funny, but she knew that if these two started at each other again then there was likely to be trouble. The two boys were like flint and stone and the resulting sparks were inevitable.

“Honestly,” she continued, “I’d swear you were both ten years old. Ricks,” she kept her face severe but it wasn’t easy as she watched his sheepish grin. “You know damn well that Robert was taking in the laundry for his mother.”

Emma looked sternly at Ricks, using all her self control to remain serious. He was also fifteen, of average height and athletic rather than muscular. His wiry frame was well defined from his work in the fields and muscles in his arms rippled when he moved. His brown hair flopped into his eyes, giving him the appearance of a cute animal peering out through a cage. He was a good looking boy who smiled easily but he delighted in mischief. Emma found it hard to be angry with him for too long, his smile was so damn infectious, and his eyes were like two dark pools that pulled her in and made her lose track of time.

“He sure looked like he was enjoying it way too much,” Ricks insisted and jumped out of the way of another swipe from Seager.

Emma shook herself from her thoughts. “One of these days,” she warned him, “you won’t be as quick and he’ll land one of those on you and knock you into next week. And as for you,” she turned her attention toward Seager who suddenly stopped grinning. “Stop bullying poor Danny. He’s likely to break an ankle if he doesn’t watch where he’s going and we’ll be in enough trouble as it is if we’re caught out here without having any serious injuries to content with as well.”

Seager nodded and flushed. Emma Logan was well aware that Peter Seager fancied her. Girls just sensed those things. He was good looking but was just too physical for her liking. He was a typical jock. Bigger than the other boys from an early age and he was used to getting his own way by using that size, in many cases unintentionally - but not always. He was nice enough when you got him on his own but impossible when there were others around that that he felt the need to impress.

Logan, for her part, had become the calming influence between them. Neither boy was capable of leading their small group; they were far too caught up with looking good and scoring points off each other to worry about the smaller details like how their actions affected the others in the group. And they couldn’t make a decision to save their lives. There were nine of them in the group, but most of the others were sheep, happy to be led and watch the fireworks that sparked anytime the two boys got together.

It wasn’t that they hated each other. Ricks just found it too easy to bait Seager, especially when Seager was trying so hard to use his size to intimidate the others. Seager also had the makings of a bully and this didn’t sit well with Conor Ricks, or herself for that matter. Seager wasn’t a bully quite yet but he was certainly at least half way there, and Ricks delighted in eroding his tough-guy image whenever he could.

Emma liked both boys, though, despite their problems. She was fifteen as well, with just as many raging hormones as the boys had to contend with, and she was the only girl of their age around, so it limited their options considerably. But she was used to taking charge. Before the vampires had come her father had left just after she was born and her mother had become addicted to booze. A string of bad male friends had left her mother with two more children and Emma with two brothers to look after. She had been forced to take charge then and again now. Boys were just so basic, she thought in frustration. They either wanted to fight or see you naked - there just didn’t seem to be any third option that she was aware of. She was well used to keeping order. It was just a pity that someone couldn’t look after her for a change.

She had come out of the serum’s effects to a world very different to the one she had known two years previously. There had been no sign of her mother or her two brothers and the sudden lonliness had felt like a terrible weight that she still had difficulty coping with. People were kind but everyone was far too busy to take care of her so she had to pick herself up and make her own way in this new world. Although she had hated having to have to look after her brothers and having to pick up her mother after she had been abandoned yet again, she longed for their company and eagerly examined the faces of all newcomers any time Harris and his team came back with more refugees. The thought that her mother and brothers might be dead was too terrible to bear so she had convinced herself that they were still alive.

She had grown more and more insular as the patrols began to bring in fewer and fewer survivors, until, finally, her mother and her brothers had been brought in, bedraggled and near death from starvation. She had been so happy when they had been rescued. Her life seemed to take on new meaning and she took it as a sign that things would get better from then on, despite their precarious position in this new world. Now that they were together they could be a proper family. Unfortunately, though, once they recovered, her life descended back into the same monotony that she had lived with before the vampires had come.

Her mother was still an addict. Even with the time she had spent under the influence of the serum and off alcohol she had slid right back into addiction as soon as she had been rescued. Alcohol was rare enough these days, though her mother still seemed to manage to find a bottle with alarming frequency. Emma suspected that she had a number of male friends who kept her supplied for special favours but she tried hard to see the good in her mother whenever she could.

Her life had been destined to grow more depressing until Father Reilly had taken her aside. He had seen how things were for her and had seen how much responsibility had been thrust onto her young shoulders. He couldn’t do very much about her mother, though he had promised to pray for her. However, he had been able to do something for Emma. He had introduced her to the other teenagers in the community. At first she had insisted that she did not have time with all her responsibilities, but Reilly had insisted. He had arranged for her younger brothers to be sent to the community school and had insisted that she take time out every day to be with others her own age. She realised now that that had been just what she had needed.

When she had met the ‘children’, as the adults referred to them, she had remained quiet at first; delighting in the ability to lose herself in anonymity within a larger group and let others make the decisions. The two boys seemed to have nearly equal support among the group and decisions were hard to come by. Seager would suggest something and Ricks would argue against it as a matter of course. This would generally continue until Seager lost his temper and lashed out at Ricks, who generally danced safely around the other boy until they both got bored and argued about something else. While it was fun in the beginning she had eventually lost patience. She had managed to remain quiet for nearly a whole week, enjoying the attentions of both of the boys, but, eventually, she had been forced to step in and separate Seager and Ricks.

They would never get anything done otherwise and she wasn’t one for just hanging around and arguing. She was a do-er. That had been the beginning of it. It hadn’t taken long before everyone in the group, including Seager and Ricks, looked to her for guidance and to make the final decision when there was no consensus, which was in most cases. Some things just never changed, she realised. There was something within her, a quality that others gravitated toward, that impelled her to lead. Eventually she decided not to fight against it and accepted her role and, if the truth be known, she now revelled in it. For the first time, others looked to her out of respect rather than circumstance.

She still had two brothers who conspired as often as they could to make her home life busy but now she also had the ‘Wolverines.’ The name had not been her idea but she had to admit that it did give their little group an identity that was all theirs. Up till now she had always been someone’s daughter or sister. For a time she had also been a prisoner of the vampires, but she remembered little of that. She shuddered as she thought of the vampires and how tenuous their existence was, even here in their little community. That was why she put up with the crap in the group. At least it was real and she had choices. The others in the group genuinely listened to her.

They had members as young as thirteen and even one as old as seventeen, though Jack Pearson was a little soft, ‘touched’ as they used to call them in the old world. He wasn’t handicapped, just a little slow. He adored her and never stood less than a few feet away from her. It wasn’t sexual by any means, not that she had any experience with boys in that way, of course. The vampires had come when she was still twelve and had effectively stunted her formative teen years. Though she had seen enough men around her mother to tell the difference between friendship and lust. Jack wasn’t quite as tall as Seager but his shoulders were far more developed than any of the others so he appeared bigger, and was certainly stronger than any of the others. He also had a quiet confidence about him that ensured the others afforded him a measure of respect and ensured they never made fun of the fact that he was simple.

There wasn’t really much to do in the community and they spent most of their days wandering through the community’s territory, at least those areas which were considered safe. Her brothers were in school but there were no teachers for her age group. Initially, when they had been originally inducted into the community, the adults had told them that they had to attend classes anyway, but there were no adults qualified to teach them and their classes had turned out to be a string of adult ‘babysitters’ who merely sat in a room with them. After a few weeks of that they had simply stopped going. There had been a few rumblings about punishment but she had offered a compromise and, to everyone’s delight, it had been accepted. She had offered the committee their services for chores around the community that the adults either did not have the time or the inclination to do themselves. This would mean that they would be contributing to the community rather than being merely a drain on scarce resources and the adults had happily accepted.

Once they finished their chores they were free for the rest of each day. It had been a major victory for her. It had marked the group as special and allowed them a freedom that none of the other young people enjoyed. The group loved her for it and it firmly cemented her place as the group’s leader.

Of course there was really very little to do in the community but at least they had control of their own time. Today’s planned excursion, a trip out to the West of the city’s limits to see if they could find a shop that was reputed to have books and games and was still relatively undamaged, had been set aside when Danny Wilkins had come rushing into their club house, which was an old comic shop near the centre of the city.

He had refused to tell them what he had seen; instead, he had urged them to follow and see for themselves. They had all groaned and grumbled but the truth of the matter was that they had little else to do so they had followed him eagerly enough. That had been twenty minutes ago and Emma was beginning to get a little worried. They were fast approaching the limits of the community’s territory.

“Just where exactly is this thing you want to show us, Danny?” Emma asked and the boy whipped his head around and immediately stumbled again. They were only a hundred yards or so from the large wall that the thralls had built around the city before the original community members had freed it. The wall had been repaired, somewhat, and now marked the area within the city that was considered relatively safe. No one had seen a vampire fly overhead or a thrall patrol drive past the city in all the time since the city had been free. There were no guards or adults past this mark but it had been instilled in them since they woke from the serum that they were not to pass this point.

The wall loomed above them almost like a mountain and its shadow spread over them as they approached. The day was warm for January, and certainly warmer than it had been of late. Snow still covered the majority of the roads that they passed, but the sun was finally starting to melt the blanket that had seemed to have gripped their city forever. Low clouds roiled above them like agitated, dirty snakes and kept what heat there was in the city stagnant and stale. Despite this, though, the air itself seemed to grow colder as they walked into the shadow of the wall. The barrier itself seemed to disappear into the clouds as if it continued on forever, though they knew that vicious, sharp wire adorned the top of the wall. The wall itself was dull and grey, almost boring in its monotonous circle around the city. The occasional hole along its length or blackened scorch mark were all that remained to remind them that there was still a very real threat beyond the barrier.

“It’s not far now,” he insisted, “just up ahead.”
“It is within the limits, Danny, isn’t it?” Emma stopped and put her hands on her hips.
“Well, sort of,” Danny answered as he continued to walk until he realised that the others had stopped following and he was forced to halt and turn back towards them. “Oh, come on guys,” he pleaded, “it’s just up ahead and it is so worth it.”
“We’re not going past the limits, Danny. No way,” Emma insisted and most of the others nodded their agreement.

“How did you find this thing anyway?” Seager asked dubiously. “Have you been out past the limits on your own?”
Danny looked down at his feet and flushed. “I overheard my dad talking about some new device and that they were testing it out past the North wall, so I followed him last night. You’ve really got to see this, guys. Honestly. It really is so worth it.”
“Just tell us what it is and then we’ll decide for ourselves,” Ricks shrugged with what he thought to be a perfectly acceptable compromise.
“No way,” Danny insisted defiantly as he shook his head, “it’ll spoil the surprise. Come on guys.”

“Just how far past the limits are we talking about?” Emma asked as her heart began to beat a little faster. The last few weeks had begun to grow boring as they had finished exploring everywhere that was considered safe. The chance of actually seeing something new and exciting was awfully attractive, but to go past the limits was dangerous, not to mention the trouble they could get into.
“Oh, not far,” Danny smiled as he began to sense victory. “You’ll still be able to see the wall and all.”

The others all looked a little dubious but then Ricks nodded. “What the hell, we’ve bugger all else to do.”
Emma was about to object when Seager, not to be out done by Ricks, shouted his agreement and then the rest were swept along in the growing excitement of such a radical trip. Emma knew she should say something but she could not help feeling excited about the prospect as well. What the hell, she thought, it’s only a little way past the limits. No one will know and we’ll be back before anyone is any the wiser. She nodded slowly and the others cheered and headed on toward the wall.

It was if the very air around them conspired with them to keep their transgression a secret. The clouds that had hidden the wall’s upper reaches now seemed to drop even lower and embrace the small group in its wispy tendrils, hiding them from view. They walked cautiously but the noise of their occasional stumbling and muttered curses were quickly muted by the blanket of cloud that enveloped them. Emma shivered as the air turned colder within the cloud’s embrace and she was about to call a halt when Danny’s excited voice shattered the stillness.

“It’s through here,” he piped and urged the others toward a small crack in the wall. “I found this last night when I followed my dad. They used the gate down a little further but there’s a guard on it so I couldn’t follow them. I was on my way back when I saw light filter through this crack.” He pointed at a small fissure in the wall and Ricks hunkered down and examined it. It was far too small for an adult to squeeze through but perfect for them. Seager might find it a little snug but the rest of them should have no rouble.

“Seems you’ve thought of everything, Danny,” Ricks smiled and stood again. “Lead the way.” He swept his hand toward the fissure with an exaggerated bow. “It’s your show.
Danny leapt forward with a huge grin on his face, turned slightly to his side and promptly disappeared through the gap. For a moment it seemed that he had simply disappeared through a portal to another world or dimension and Emma felt her heart drop in her chest. What the hell are we doing? The thought rattled around in her head and she was about to speak when Ricks brushed past her and disappeared through the gap without a word. As the others began to follow and she could hear their hushed voices on the other side and her misgivings began to relent. She sighed and followed them through.

She wasn’t sure what she expected to see on the other side of the wall but she did expect something to be different. Visions of Stargate with a new world behind the shimmering void every week fuelled her imagination and filled her with equal amounts of fear and excitement. As she passed through the gap she saw that the city on this side of the wall was pretty much the same as that on the other side. In fairness, the mist did restrict her visibilty to a short distance but still, she felt disappointed and relieved all at the same time. However, she was surprised to realise that she was more disappointed than relieved as she pulled herself through and surveyed the street.

Surely the whole point of having Forbidden Zones was because they were dangerous and different. The last of the group began to filter through and their silence spoke volumes of their own disappointment with this ‘unknown and dangerous’ area.
Ricks put it most eloquently. “Hey man, this sucks. I thought it would be, like, cool - you know.”
She did know and she looked over at Danny with a raised eyebrow.
“Don’t worry; it’s just up the street a little.”

There was a loud grunt followed by a curse behind them and then Seager suddenly fell to the ground as he forced his way through the narrow gap. The others laughed a little but they were far too nervous about being on the other side of the wall so Seager was spared the full brunt of his ungainly entrance. Danny took off up the street and the others followed without a word.

The further they walked the more Emma Logan noticed the differences. They were subtle at first, the buildings were completely devoid of life - they even seemed to have somehow lost their colour and vibrancy. They looked abandoned. In the city, on their side of the wall, buildings might be abandoned but there was a different look to them, almost as if they were just waiting for someone to come along to open their doors, roll up the shutters and breathe new life into them. These buildings, however, looked dead, if a building could be described as such. It was a subtle difference but one which weighed heavily on Emma as she continued walking. There were abandoned, rusted vehicles on the streets, some crashed into each other while others lay crumpled into the sides of buildings where bricks lay scattered around like entrails around a fatal wound.

The low cloud seemed to linger around the cars and the buildings like a magician’s cloak, hiding so much more than it was revealing, and Emma shivered as she strained to see into the distance. She looked back toward the others and saw the same fears etched on their faces and in the way they made their way carefully through the obstacles. Even their footsteps seemed strangely muted on this side of the wall. In fact, only Danny Wilkins seemed to be oblivious to the strange ambience of the area they passed through.

“It’s just down here,” Danny snapped his head back to check they were still following and stumbled yet again as his foot found a loose brick and he was forced to windmill his arms to steady himself. Despite the subdued atmosphere the group managed a light snigger before Danny managed to steady himself and continue on down the street.

When they did finally reach Danny’s big surprise they stopped in awe and with more than a little fear. Danny bounded right up to it with no fear at all and Emma could tell that his standing in the little group had just raised quite a few notches for his courage.

“It’s all right,” he announced as he kicked the form at his feet, “he’s quite dead.”
The others stared at the corpse but no one moved any further. Even in death the Vampires were terrifying and demanded respect.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” Peter Atkins finally managed to ask. Atkins was a small boy of twelve, though he insisted that he was thirteen so as not to be the youngest. He had been in the same group that had been rescued with the rest of them three months ago, but, unlike the others, no one had found any other members of his family. He tried hard to be part of the group but still looked rather shell-shocked at the loss. It hadn’t helped that he had had to look through the unidentified bodies of those who had died on the train.

Peter Harris himself had walked with him with his hand in his as he had gone through the lines of the dead. There had been so many tears in his eyes that, even now, he still wondered if he might have actually seen his parents but had simply not registered their faces. He still wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that he had not found anyone he knew or not. There would at least have been some form of closure if he had found them. At least then he might have been able to grieve and move on; now there would always be uncertainty until he found his parents and brothers one way or the other.

For now, he lived with a family who had lost their own son during the war. But their devastation for their own loss was smothering him and was not at all what the young boy needed. He had been totally lost until he had found the ‘Wolverines’. At twelve, he should still have been in school, the committee had put certain restrictions on the group of youths and an age limit had been one of the first, but, with no one around to prove otherwise, his insistence of being thirteen could not be contested.
“Yep,” Danny laughed and kicked the vampire in the ribs to emphasise his point. Something moved beneath the corpse and caused the body to shift slightly. All of them jumped back, and a few of the smaller ones ran half way down the street before they realised that they weren’t being pursued and returned sheepishly to the group. The vampire’s head had rolled toward them and they could see a stream of dried blood running from both ears down its cheeks and neck. Dried blood also streaked from its eyes and nose and there was a huge pool of blood around the body that had stained the bricks and concrete around it like cancer corrupting flesh.

“What killed it?” Seager asked as he finally raised the courage to join Danny beside the vampire.
“Haven’t a clue.” Danny smiled as he moved aside to let the bigger boy get closer. “I tripped over him last night when I was following my Dad.”
“You mean this isn’t what your Dad was coming out here for?” Emma blurted out.
“God, no.” Danny smiled. “If the adults knew they’d be all over it and we wouldn’t get a chance to see it.”

“Danny,” Emma took a deep breath to help calm herself before continuing. “We have to tell the adults. This might be important.” She snorted and threw her eyes up to heaven. “What am I saying? This is important. My God, it might just be the most important discovery ever.”
“But we’ll get in trouble,” Danny whined as he thought of the punishment he was likely to get.

“Danny,” Ricks moved forward and put his hand on the smaller boy’s shoulder. “Emma’s right. This is huge. Something killed this vampire and if we can figure out what it was then we might just be able to use it against the others. Your discovery might just be the biggest thing that has happened since these bastards came out of the shadows. You’ll be a hero, man.”

“Is that before or after my Dad beats the hell out of me for coming out here?” Danny sighed but was already thinking past his beating to the part where he was credited with making the discovery.
“After, of course,” Ricks laughed and tousled the smaller boy’s hair.

Chapter 1

“But what actually killed it?” Phil Regan asked with more urgency that he had intended. His voice squeaked excitedly and he cringed inwardly as he forced himself to calm down. It was important for him to appear in control, especially now that he was in charge. Such immature outbursts would not help him to cultivate the image of the competent and calm leader that he was desperately trying to portray.

“We’re not entirely sure,” Adam Wilkins shrugged as he fidgeted with the papers in front of him. Wilkins had never been in the council room before, let alone the sole object of their attention, and he found the experience far from pleasant. He looked over at Pat Smyth for support and Pat winked once and nodded encouragingly.

The whole community was buzzing with the news since his son and his friends had returned with news of their discovery. While he had been outraged at first that Danny had broken such an important rule, he had soon become caught up in the discovery itself. He had been among the last group rescued and had been one of the lucky ones who still had his entire family with him. Both his wife and son had been in the same group and, although they had been in different rail cars, they had all managed to survive the daring rescue of three months earlier. Many others were still missing their partners or children, though whether they had been left behind or were already long dead was anyone’s guess. Others still had had to come to terms with being told that their loved ones had been killed by stray bullets during the rescue itself. There had been a mass burial for all of these as soon as those mourning them had overcome the serum’s effects.

It had been a particularly heart-rending affair. The absence of refrigeration made getting the bodies buried a priority and many of those standing over the mass grave were really too confused to understand fully what was happening. It had been a tough time for many of them over the last few months as they tried to cope with their losses and the new world order. Many hadn’t coped too well and some had even had to be sedated to allow them more time to come to terms with the way things were. It seemed almost criminal to use more chemicals to try and heal them from the serum but their minds were just too fragile at this point.

For such a small community these people were a terrible drain on the resources and already there were grumblings from those who had to shoulder the extra workload. Although Adam was new to the community he could see that there were already too many cracks appearing in their fragile existence. And then on top of that, of course, there was the Harris issue.

It was hard to believe that only three months had passed since Harris and his team had brought them all back to the base. However, there had been so many changes since then, and not all of them had been for the best. He did not fully understand the situation himself, or even what had gone before that had caused it to get so bad within the community, but he really didn’t care too much. He owed Harris and his team his life and the lives of his family and would defend them to the last, but his work was of paramount importance and he couldn’t afford to get involved in the in-fighting that threatened to tear the community apart.

He looked around the table at the faces of the committee and realised suddenly how divorced he was from the workings of the community He realised with a shock that he didn’t even know the names of many of the people before him, except for Regan, of course. He didn’t like Regan, or maybe it was the people who surrounded him - he wasn’t quite sure. Regardless, he wished yet again that he had stood up when it had mattered and added his voice to those others who had tried to stop Harris and his team from being railroaded.

He hadn’t agreed with it at the time but he had been so caught up in his work that he hadn’t spared the time to make a stand. And now it was too late. He could see people looking at him with growing impatience as he blushed and pushed his thoughts to one side. He cleared his throat to try and hide his embarrassment and then continued.

“As you know I have been running tests with Pat around the use of high frequency wireless bands around the outskirts of the city.” He looked around at the people before him and sighed. There wasn’t even a flicker of understanding in any of their faces. They were interested now, of course - now that there had been a result - but none of them really understood what he was trying to do.

“My background is in communications, or was, I should say,” he paused for a moment. It was still difficult to take in the sheer horror of their situation. Before he had been numbed by the serum life had been very different. The vampires had emerged from the shadows, of course, but it had not seemed likely that they would, or even could, take over the world. Communications had not been as instantaneous as they had once been so news travelled slowly in a world without the resources to run many of the technological toys everyone had so relied upon before. But, even so, stories of vampires had still seemed unreal and divorced from their own, very real, problems of survival.

He had been one of the lucky ones. As a communications expert he had managed to ‘transfer’ from his home state to the state of Illinois where a power plant and stockpiled resources made them a very rich state. Some would have called it ‘jumping ship,’ he knew, but he had to think of his family’s future. He had ended up in Chicago, working to try and perfect old technologies to run on new power sources. They had been well protected by the army, in fact, many people in the city had even complained about the army’s presence; seeing it as constrictive to their daily comings and goings. There had seemed no way that such a large and prepared force could possibly be defeated, even if the vampires were as real a threat as some made out. It was entirely possible that would not even make it this far north.

There had been over ten thousand soldiers protecting the city of Chicago. Tanks and artillery lined every hill and elevated mound around the city and they stood ready to pour their terrifying ordinance on any thrall force that approached. Vast excavations had been dug around the city to house even more weapons of incredible power. Precious resources had been poured into these excavations and many of the city’s citizens complained bitterly of such waste. Surely this was an overreaction. He still didn’t really know what had happened. Smyth had mentioned something about the thralls poisoning the water supply with the serum. But the thought of a whole city taken without a shot having being fired was just terrifying.

This new world he had woken up to was even more frightening, though. They didn’t have the numbers for a knock-down one-on-one fight with the vampires so they would have to be cleverer than they had been during the war. To this end he had come to Pat Smyth with his proposal. Pat, to his credit had immediately seen the benefits but the council had refused to fund his ideas, citing limited resources as their main reason for doing so.

This had been around the time when the situation with Harris and his team had come to a head and the council had not paid any further attention to him. It had been Harris, despite the terrible pressure he had been under at the time, who had given him the resources, both in time and manpower, to turn his ideas into a reality. It galled him now that the council would take credit for the efforts of those very people they had abandoned. He shook himself from his reverie again and cleared his throat nervously again before continuing.

“My theory revolved around the fact that if the Vampires had such powerful senses that we might be able to use that against them.” He paused again as he saw confusion on the faces of some of the council and sighed inwardly. How can you run a community in the middle of a war with former accountants, lawyers and sales people?
“Because the vampires’ senses are so acute they rely totally on them and so have become lazy,” he continued. “Now that the vampires know that we exist, we have few choices…”

“We can thank Harris for that,” snorted Patricia Lohan from her position to the right of Regan.
“Miss Lohan.” Wilkins felt his anger grow as embarrassment for his own failure to act when he had the chance suddenly overwhelmed him. “Your comments are neither warranted nor welcome.” Suddenly all of the committee members straightened as Wilkins’ comments hit home. “As you are all well aware, this study would not have received any resources at all if it had been left to you. We would not even be here discussing it at all if Peter Harris hadn’t gone out of his way to ensure the safety of the very community that has shunned him and his team. I am shamed that I did not stand with him in his hour of need, as he has continued to stand for us all. But that is not the issue here today. I will not, however, tolerate any of these flippant and undeserved comments from people who have had little to do with the continued survival of this community.”

Silence descended over the room and Pat Smyth tried hard not to burst out laughing at the look of shock that was painted on Lohan’s face. Her auburn hair seemed suddenly very dark framing a face that had gone suddenly pale. Her eyes gleamed like flint and she seemed about to reply when Ian Phelps suddenly interrupted.
“I’m sure that was not Miss Lohan’s intention.” Ian Phelps had an annoying habit of licking his lips before he spoke and it meant that there was always an annoying pause between sentences. “Though I do think that your comments are overly harsh in this case. We are all in this together after all.” He smiled as he licked his lips again but his narrow features made him appear more feral than encouraging and Wilkins merely continued to stare at him defiantly. Phelps had lost a lot of weight in the last few months and his skin seemed ill-fitting on him. His face still bore the marks of a long addiction to alcohol, though he had insisted quite openly that he had not touched a drop since being freed from the serum. As the seconds ticked by, Phelps was forced to speak again. “Why don’t you continue, Mr. Wilkins?”

Wilkins shot one more hard look at Patricia Lohan and smiled inwardly as he saw the emotions running across her face like a waterfall before he nodded and continued his report. Pat Smyth wondered briefly whether Wilkins had been wise to antagonise this beautiful but dangerous woman.

“If we merely try to hide here in this city, the vampires’ amazing senses will eventually sniff us out, especially when they might now know what state to look for us in. They, the Vampires that is, are used to covering a vast area by flying overhead and relying on their ability to detect heat sources and their sense of smell to register any community of humans. This worked well for them during the war and in the aftermath. We humans generate quite an amount of heat when collected in one small area, and our scent is quite strong.”

“Judging from the amount of patrols recently they are certainly searching in this general area, though it appears to be part of a larger search pattern rather than one which is focused on this territory in particular. They are being very thorough though, and, given enough time, they would have found us long before now if we hadn’t been able to mess with their senses a bit. Luckily for us, the vampires in the neighbouring states are still reluctant to cross the border too often and, when they do, they are still convinced of their own infallibility and this over-confidence plays into our hands.”

Wilkins paused for a moment to take a drink of water and everyone in the room seemed to hold their breaths as they waited for him to continue. “They rely totally on their senses rather than physically searching each town and city. To this end we placed wireless masts around the city, though in reality many were already there from before.” He looked around him and saw many of the eyes glazing over - he was losing them again.

“We could move, of course, but the sheer scope of that project is beyond our capability. We just can’t move everyone in secret at this time. My experiment was to see if we could scramble the Vampires’ senses if they came too close to us. Nothing major, just enough to interfere with their long range scans and prevent them from sensing us if they flew overhead. It took quite some time to get the correct frequency, but with Mister Smyth’s help,” he paused here, wanting to tell the committee that, while they had sat on their arses and ignored the danger these patrols posed to them all, Harris and his team had risked their lives by carrying his bulky equipment across the border and testing it on vampires, at great risk to themselves. They had risked so much getting the equipment within range of live subjects that they deserved to be honoured. He felt as if he was betraying their courage in not extolling their involvement, but Pat had insisted that any mention of Harris would only work against them all at this time so he, reluctantly, had agreed to keep their continued involvement a secret.

“Once we found the frequency I set up an overlapping field around the city to hide us from the vampires. Of course, it wouldn’t stop them physically seeing us if we were caught outside but, as you all know, we have a number of ways of making sure that doesn’t happen. It was their ability to sense heat and their amazing sense of smell that I was targeting. Since it went in place, we have tracked quite a number of vampires passing overhead searching, but none seemed to have managed to detect us so far.”

“Yes, I’m sure that that’s all very interesting,” Phelps interrupted, tapping his pen impatiently on the table in front of him, “but what actually killed this particular vampire?”

Pat Smyth snorted and leaned forward. “Don’t you realise what a breakthrough this is?” he asked incredulously. “This device is the only reason why we are still able to live here unmolested by the vampires. We would all be dead right now, or scattered throughout the state, if this amazing experiment wasn’t shielding us.”
Regan coughed gently. “Yes, I’m sure that we are all grateful to Mr. Wilkins but I think we are all interested to know if we can use this new discovery more as a weapon. It’s one thing to hide behind this shield but what if the vampires manage to see through it or we run out of fuel to run it? I might remind you that the equipment is not cheap to run in terms of fuel and the amount of people resources that are required to keep it running. It does break down with alarming frequency, as well.”

Wilkins blushed. He was well aware that his project needed a lot more time to get it working efficiently. He just didn’t have the right equipment to set it up the way he wanted so the masts consumed far more resources than he would have liked. Unless he was able to convince the committee that, by spending more resources now that they would save resources in the long term, it was very likely that they might very well cut off all of his fuel supplies and leave them all completely unprotected from aerial detection.

“I’m not certain what killed the creature,” Wilkins replied slowly, “but, judging by the body, it seems that the vampire must have flown through a point where the fields overlapped each other and thus increased the strength of the waves bombarding it. I had no idea that the fields would have such an effect. It has no effect on humans so it must have something to do with their heightened senses.”
“Can you develop a handheld version?” Regan leaned forward on his elbows and fixed Wilkins with an intense stare.

“Out of the question, I’m afraid,” Wilkins answered and snapped his head toward Phelps who had just thrown down his pen in disgust.
“It’s not practical, considering the power requirements,” Wilkins continued despite the interruption, “the device would have to be far bigger than anyone could manage alone. I’m not even sure if we could recreate it if a force of them attacked the city. There are just too many variables.”

“So we’re still stuck here hiding, waiting for the bastards to die out,” Phelps sneered. “Oh, wait a minute, they’re not going to die out anymore, are they? Ever since Harris sent Steele to tell them that the serum was killing them and effectively saved the bastards so they could tear the state apart looking for us. It’s only a matter of time, you know, before they find us. Either your equipment will break down or we’ll run out of the fuel to power it and then they’ll descend on us like the wrath of God.”

Wilkins looked over at Smyth and saw the small chemist shake his head slightly. They could argue as much as they wanted that Harris had acted the way he had to save millions of humans across the world but none of that took away from the truth in Phelps’s words. The vampires were still out there, and now that they knew that a community of free humans existed they would continue to search until they found them. Whether Harris had acted for the best or not was immaterial at this point.

While there had been far fewer search parties than they would have expected after their presence was revealed by Steele, there were still enough vampires crossing the skies to make them nervous, and all that hid them was outdated equipment. Equipment that could stop functioning at any moment and leave them naked and exposed. Harris had done a lot of good but he had indeed stirred a major hornet’s nest when he had set about turning the vampires at each others’ throats.

He had rescued thousands, Wilkins and his family amongst them, but the city was straining to cope with the increased numbers; food and resources were already running far too low. On top of all their other problems, they were in the grip of a severe winter with snow drifts covering many of the smaller buildings in the old city. Global warming was still a major threat to them as the planet struggled to recover from decades of abuse.

If they ran out of fuel, then, quite simply, they would not make it to spring. All of their fuel was being used to heat the living areas, and even this had recently been restricted to certain hours of the day. The reaction he was getting each time he went to collect his ration for the upkeep of the network was becoming more and more aggressive, and all the time the stocks continued to decline alarmingly fast. Hiding was one thing but survival was something else entirely. And in the current situation, their continued survival looked very doubtful, indeed.

fallout

Chapter 1