Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) by Derek Gunn Read Free Book Online Page A

blow. Fear and worry for their own lives and
the lives of their families tied each of them into the lie
together.
    Warren’s heart began to slow in
time with the descending needle and he wiped the sweat from his
brow with his sleeve. Whatever had caused the spike had seemed to
have abated for now. Probably just a blip, he decided. Such things
probably happened all the time. The fact that he couldn’t recall
such blips when Atkins had been in charge might just be because
Atkins had handled them without worrying the others. He had a
sudden image of Homer Simpson at the controls of his Nuclear Plant
in Springfield and almost giggled insanely. God, talk about life
mimicking art. And he didn’t even have any doughnuts.
     
     
    Peter Harris rolled his
shoulders in the narrow space to relieve the cramp in his back and
wiped the dust away from his goggles. The patrol was only a few
feet from him and the dust their vehicles created as they lumbered
past threatened to choke him. He checked his XM8 Heckler and Koch
to take his mind off his physical discomfort and sighed, stifling
the cough that threatened to escape from his dry throat. They had
set up this action in a hurry but the very fact that the patrol was
here at all had him very worried. The patrol passing him was only
three vehicles in strength but, significantly, they were the first
of Carter’s forces to cross the border into Nero’s territory and a
white flag flew in plain sight on all three vehicles.
    What was happening? Were the
thralls trying to deal with Nero? Were they sending similar envoys
into all their neighbouring states or was this the only one? Had
the thralls figured out where they were hiding? The questions
reeled through his mind, almost making him dizzy. He realised, of
course, that it was only a matter of time before someone figured
out that all the attacks were limited to a relatively small area
along the border with Nero’s territory, but he had hoped for more
time than this.
    It was, after all, a huge border
and he had always been mindful that they were very limited in the
distances they could travel safely for the raids they conducted. To
this end he had made sure that each raid was spread as far from the
last one as was possible but there was a limit to the distance they
could travel with serum-addicted prisoners on their return from a
raid. If someone were to take the time to plot each raid there
would be a definite concentration around the towns within a hundred
miles along the border with Nero’s territory. There was nothing
Harris had been able to do to prevent this but he had always tried
to be careful. Unfortunately, it seemed that he had not been
careful enough.
     
     
    He had taken a huge risk
recently when they had attacked a small town much further away than
ever before. It was almost two hundred miles south and under the
rule of another vampire he did not know the identity of, but who he
knew was marshalling his own forces since word of the battle of
three months ago had spread. It had been a gigantic risk, and now
he wondered if that risk had been for nothing after all. It had
taken them two days of dangerous travel to make the raid and three
on the way back due to the increased patrols in the area. He really
had thought that the diversion would sufficiently confuse anyone
looking for them. They had lost ten prisoners on the way and he had
hoped that their sacrifice would have at least bought them some
more time.
    Unfortunately, though, it seemed
that the new thrall commander was far cleverer than those who had
previously handled the job and it looked like he had seen through
his ruse. Or maybe he was reading too much into this patrol. Was it
just part of a larger hands-extended-in-friendship ruse by the new
commander to ensure neighbouring states did not think they could
merely cross the border after such a violent and costly civil
war?
    Another problem was that his
team was not even trained for this level of combat. They had
trained