"You had automatic weapons, the element of surprise, and cover. You could have stopped them."
"Maybe you could have," snapped Roberta. "We aren"t soldiers. This wouldn"t have happened if you or the Angels had been here. It"s not our fault that Paul decided to send you all off with Compton to save the world."
"Paul just never got it," DeWitt remarked as he got to his feet. "Even after those a.s.sholes overran the compound, he tried negotiating with them like they could be reasoned with. A lot of good that did."
Robson felt his anger at DeWitt flow away. Roberta was right. They couldn"t have done anything to stop this. If they had fought back, at best they would have taken down a few of the gang members, and the end result would have been the same. Everyone would still be dead, including Dewitt"s team.
"When did this happen?" asked Natalie.
"Yesterday afternoon. They stayed about four hours, long enough to trash the place, and then left." DeWitt paused, as if trying to recall something. "We overheard one of them say something about wanting to get back before the sun set."
"Did you follow them?" she asked.
DeWitt shook his head. "We couldn"t keep track of them without being seen ourselves, so we decided to wait here and hope you"d return."
Natalie shook her head. "So we have no idea who they are or where they went."
"We know exactly who they are," Robson said. "DeWitt, you said there was a kid in the group saying he told them monsters would be here?"
"Yeah. We found Elena"s ashes outside her container. We a.s.sumed that when they dragged her into the sun, she burst into flames, and that scared them."
"I don"t get it," Natalie said.
"This is the same group we ran into outside of Barnston, the ones that Dravko and the others took care of. My guess is the kid went back to their camp, told them what had happened, and they sent out a search party to find us."
"And somehow they just stumbled across the camp?" asked Natalie. "That sounds unlikely."
"Not really," said Ari. "We left a pretty good trail of destruction on our way down to Site R. It wouldn"t have been too hard for them to follow it back here. It was pure luck that they found the camp."
"Bad luck." Robson grimaced.
A pause in the conversation ensued as everyone processed what they had heard. DeWitt"s eyes widened. "Good G.o.d, please don"t tell me this is all that"s left of you."
"The rest of us are waiting outside," Natalie said. "Should I call them in?"
Robson nodded.
"We can"t stay here," protested Ari. "The place is trashed."
"We have no other choice. We need to time to regroup, and this place is as good as anything out there."
"What are we going to do next?"
Robson walked away without giving her an answer. He couldn"t because he had no idea himself.
CHAPTER THREE.
Robson stood on the southern portion of the wall surrounding the compound, the side facing the Atlantic and overlooking a steep cliff that dropped one hundred feet to the water. The light from the moon reflected off the ocean, its image rippling in the waves. This used to be his favorite spot in camp. He could lose himself in the quiet, listening to the sound of the surf breaking against the sh.o.r.e, and reminisce about the vestiges of his old life. Now it brought back memories of his two lives that had been shattered: the one torn apart by rotters nine months ago, and the one violated by humans a few days ago. He could excuse the rotters because they were mindless creatures acting on instinct. What the humans did was malicious and cruel for its own sake.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a pack of Camel cigarettes. Even these brought flashbacks of the incident that led to this tragedy. It had been twelve days ago, and he had all forgotten about it in light of what had happened afterwards. It had taken place on the first morning after leaving camp. The convoy had raced through Dover, the first of many cities they would encounter infested with the living dead, and had stopped for breakfast west of Barnston along the Sunc.o.c.k River. He had been rummaging through a backpack he had stumbled across earlier in the trip when he found an unopened carton of Camels. A few minutes later, four gang members ambushed the convoy. Ambushed was not the right word. They had snuck up on the group because Robson had let his guard down, and that mistake almost cost everyone their lives. The gang had roughed up Sarah, and were about to shoot the men and bring the women back to their camp as s.e.x slaves when Natalie had the foresight to sucker them into checking out the back of the Ryder where Dravko and his team slept. The vampires took care of two of the team members, and the Angels overpowered the third. In his opinion, each of them deserved their violent fates. The fourth member, a teenager with long blond hair tucked behind his ears and held in place with a Yankees baseball cap, panicked and ran. Robson had wanted to hunt him down and kill him, but Colonel Thompson had advised otherwise; he wanted to follow the kid back to his camp so they knew what they were dealing with. Thankfully, Robson had listened to the colonel because the convoy would have stumbled across a rape gang held up in a self-storage facility a few miles ahead of them, and thus they avoided a confrontation. As it turned out, the teenager must have warned the others and, while Robson and his party proceeded south toward Site R, the gang set out searching for them, eventually coming across Fort McClary.
Removing a cigarette from the pack, Robson placed it between his lips. He struck a match and covered it with his hand, struggling to keep the flame going despite the breeze blowing in from the ocean. Eventually the tobacco ignited and the tip glowed red. Robson inhaled, sucking the smoke into his lungs. He relished the feeling. Sure, he knew smoking was dangerous for his health, although not as dangerous as fighting rotters every day of his life. Besides, it gave him a sense of self-punishment for failing to defend the camp. If they had come straight back from Site R along the route they had originally traveled rather than using the safer one that took them through upstate New Hampshire before cutting over to Maine, adding two days to their trip, then they would have been here when the gang attacked. The camp wouldn"t have been overrun and everyone ma.s.sacred. He could have changed....
Robson exhaled. The cloud of smoke dissipated in the breeze. Stop blaming yourself, he chastised himself. Every step of the way, he had made the decision that, at the time, seemed best under the circ.u.mstances. Sure, maybe if he had gone with his instinct and killed the teenager, none of this would have occurred; that didn"t mean he could blame himself for what happened to the camp. How could he be expected to know that this gang would be fanatical enough to track them all the way back to the fort?
Taking another drag on the cigarette, he recalled the past twelve days. It felt like an eternity since Doctor Compton arrived at camp claiming he had a vaccine for the virus at Site R, an underground military facility outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Paul had placed such importance on acquiring the vaccine and turning the tide of the apocalypse that he had stripped the camp of its protection in order to send both his recon team and the Angels on the mission. Thank G.o.d he had. Most of them had forgotten the horrors of those first few weeks of the outbreak and had grown accustomed to the splendid isolation of camp. None of them had been prepared for what they found out in the world: rape gangs, rotter-infested cities, a devastated country, and literally tens of thousands of the living dead. In hindsight, it was a miracle they made it to the facility; however, they lost a lot of good people along the way. Whitehouse. Sultanic. Rashid. Mad Dog.
Yet nothing they had faced on the drive compared to what awaited them once they made their way inside the underground facility. While Compton had been telling the truth about the vaccine for the Zombie Virus, he had never intended on sharing it with the vampires, and in fact had planned on infecting them with the virus and putting them down. When Robson and the others refused to murder their friends, Compton decided to sneak away on his own. To cover his escape, he released four hundred zombies onto the compound as well as a dozen swarmers inside the facility. The group had managed to stop Compton and Colonel Thompson and fight back the rotter horde at the cost of four of their number: Daytona, Tatyana, Caylee, and Leila. He didn"t count O"Bannon, who had betrayed them to side with Compton and never made it out of the facility alive.
Almost as bad as the human losses was the shattering of the Angels" fighting ability. Originally, they had been established as the camp"s zombie fighting unit, fourteen women self-trained as marksmen. While they had accompanied Robson"s recon team on every mission and kept them safe, nothing had prepared them for facing down those four hundred rotters inside the cramped confines of the underground facility"s access tunnel. The Angels had fought until they exhausted their ammunition, and then finished the task in hand-to-hand combat, losing Leila in the process. The confrontation had left them sh.e.l.l-shocked and stripped of their bravado. It was mostly because of their shattered confidence that he had decided to bypa.s.s their original route to Site R and take the one straight north that avoided major population centers. Given the Angels" inability last night to even man a defense perimeter against a minimal number of rotters, he knew he had made the correct decision.
Paul had usually made the strategic decisions, and had done well by the camp, leaving Robson to make all tactical decisions when on missions. With Paul dead, that left him in command. Truth be known, Robson would rather face a horde of rotters armed with a baseball bat. Now he had to face a dilemma he wished he could avoid.
After retrieving the vaccine, Compton planned on transporting it to Northern Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska where the president of the United States had set up his government-in-exile. The doctor had prepared numerous doses of the vaccine, including enough to inoculate every member of the group, as well as several copies of his notes to ensure it could be reproduced. With Compton and Thompson dead, Robson had no way of contacting the government-in-exile to come and collect the vaccine, which meant he had to find a way to take it to them, which promised to be next to impossible.
He also had to deal with the kidnapping of Windows. They had experienced these a.s.sholes firsthand, and Robson had a pretty good idea what the poor woman would be going through. He refused to leave her behind. At the very least, he had to attempt to get her out, although considering the compound"s fortifications and the limited forces he had available, he would be taking on another near impossible task. Though with this one, at least he would have the pleasure of bringing payback to the guys who ruined his life.
Robson tapped the cigarette, letting the burnt ash tumble to the stones. He had run through various scenarios all day, and kept coming back to the only one that made sense. It was far from perfect, but then neither were the circ.u.mstances his group faced. If he didn"t get the vaccine and notes to Omaha, all these deaths would be in vain. And if he didn"t go after Windows, he had forfeited his last link to humanity. He knew what he had to do. Now he needed to convince the others.
He went to take a last puff on the cigarette and paused. For some reason, it had lost its appeal. He flicked it toward the sh.o.r.e, watching as the wind carried it off to the left where it exploded in a shower of sparks on the rocks below. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the pack of Camels, crumpled it in his hands, and whipped them over the side.
Turning back to the compound, Robson went looking for the others.
CHAPTER FOUR.
Dravko knelt by the opening to Elena"s container. The door had been pried apart with crowbars so that it hung at an awkward angle on its hinges. A pile of gray ash sat in front of the threshold, the remnants of Elena, the mistress of their coven. Unlike the other containers in camp, this had not been ransacked and burned. Dravko a.s.sumed that once the gang had dragged her into the sunlight and she ignited, no one had the nerve to go anywhere near the container after that. It provided her resting place with some reverence, unlike the killing field for the humans.
Tibor stood behind him, his arms folded across his chest. Dravko could sense the fury emanating from him. They both had known something had happened that morning when, after arriving back at camp, no one opened the back of the Ryder and let them scurry into the more comfortable emergency dark room outside the main gate. Robson came to them after sundown and related what happened, how the camp had been destroyed by the gang they had run into outside of Barnston, and how Elena had been one of the victims. Robson appeared to be genuinely remorseful over the vampires" loss, an emotion he doubted the human would have had before they traveled through a living dead h.e.l.l to Site R. Dravko had appreciated the feelings. Tibor had not.
"Goodbye, Elena." Reaching out, Dravko placed his right hand onto the ashes and glided his fingers through the pile. "I"m sorry we let you down."
"We did let her down," said Tibor. "By not killing the humans when we had the chance."
Dravko glared at him, aghast. "You mean the one who got away outside of Barnston?"
"No, I mean Robson and the others."
Dravko rose to his feet. "How can you say that?"
"Deep down you know I"m right, but you"ve been devoted to Elena for so long you"ve lost sight of that. From the very beginning, none of us wanted to join up with the humans, not even you. Elena insisted, saying the only way for us to survive the outbreak was to have humans around to protect us during the day. We went along with it out of respect for her. And where has it gotten us?"
Dravko didn"t want to discuss this, not now. Elena had been murdered, along with everyone else in the camp, and he refused to debate the wisdom of her decisions. He attempted to walk away. Tibor raced ahead and cut him off.
"Every loss we"ve incurred has been because of humans."
"That"s not true," protested Dravko halfheartedly.
"You know it is. O"Bannon infected Tatyana with the Zombie Virus. And we lost Sultanic in Saratoga Springs because of them."
"Sultanic became infected trying to save Whitehouse from rotters," argued Dravko. "How many times did Robson and the others put their lives on the line for us?"
"Really? Do you see any corpses of humans who tried to defend Elena?"
Dravko averted his gaze. "No."
"When the gang murdered Paul, several of the humans attacked them and were gunned down. No one tried to stop them from killing Elena."
"We don"t know what happened here, so we can"t say for certain," said Dravko, trying to talk down Tibor. "You know the humans would never willingly harm us."
"Really?" Tibor sneered. "What about Vladimir?"
Dravko had forgotten Vladimir. The incident had occurred shortly after the coven had joined with the camp. Despite Elena and Paul agreeing to have their groups cooperate, hatred still existed between the two species and came to a head one night when Vladimir and two humans went after each other. To ensure discipline, Paul had sentenced the two humans to serve as blood cows for the rest of the coven for a month, giving up a pint a week to feed the vampires. In turn, Elena had banished Vladimir from camp, condemning him to almost certain death out among the rotters. Although the mistress made the decision to exile Vladimir without being asked to by Paul, it was not lost on the rest of the coven that not a single human had argued against such a harsh sentence.
"And consider this," added Tibor. "We risked our lives and lost half our clan to retrieve a vaccine that isn"t even effective on us. You know Robson is going to ask us to help him get that vaccine to their government-in-exile. What do you think our reward will be for that? Do you think the humans in Omaha will welcome us with open arms? Do you think they"ll accept us like Robson has? Or will we meet the same fate as Elena?"
Dravko found himself at a loss for words. Everything Tibor said made sense. Because of his efforts to coexist with the humans, he had never seen it that way before. If Sultanic and Tatyana had thought the same way, neither of them had expressed it to him. Dravko realized that by remaining loyal to Elena and her wishes, he had inadvertently betrayed the rest of the coven. He and Tibor were the only two vampires left. With the destruction of the camp, that left them in a precarious situation. They couldn"t stay with Robson"s team if they hoped to survive, yet their life expectancy if they set out on their own would be measured in weeks.
"I know Elena and I have put the coven in a tough spot," said Dravko. "There"s nothing we can do about that now."
"Yes, there is." Tibor smiled, his expression malicious. "We can rebuild the coven."
"What are you talking about?"
"There are less than twenty humans left. The Angels are useless as a fighting force. The only ones we really have to worry about are Robson and Natalie, and we could easily take them down. By this time tomorrow night, we could rebuild the coven to its original size."
Dravko took a step back, fearful of where this conversation was going. "What if you"re wrong and they fight back?"
"I"d rather die on my feet than live on my knees as pets of the humans."
"You"re serious about this?"
"I am. Without this camp, what are Robson and the others going to do? They"ll try to find a new place to live until they"re eaten by rotters. They have a much better chance of surviving as vampires." Tibor paused and laughed, as if he had thought of something humorous. "Come to think of it, it"s probably more humane to turn them."
"I won"t even consider it. It"s barbaric."
"Barbaric?" Tibor stared at him. "That"s how we survived for centuries. By turning humans and growing the covens. Now that we"re almost extinct, I"d think you"d want to rebuild our numbers. What changed?"
"Everything changed when we released the Zombie Virus on mankind." Dravko got directly into Tibor"s face, his human features morphing into the furrowed brow and fanged mouth of a vampire. "We brought this on ourselves. And you"re right, we do need to increase our numbers and start new covens. Not with Robson"s people. He"s played straight with us, and has protected us when others in the group would have left us overnight in the middle of a rotter-infested city."
"Okay," Tibor acquiesced. "If not them, who?"
Dravko did not have an answer to that. He didn"t need one. He headed the coven now, even if it only consisted of him and Tibor. Tibor would obey. "I will let you know when the time is right. Until then, you are to do nothing to harm Robson or the others. Is that understood?"
"Is that a threat?"
"No," snarled Dravko. "Threats are idle."
Tibor stepped back and bowed his head, acknowledging his acceptance of Dravko as the dominant vampire. Dravko morphed back into his human form, ending the confrontation. Inwardly, he sighed with relief because he doubted he could win a physical confrontation with Tibor.
Tibor started to walk away and paused. "Just remember one thing. If it looks like the end for us, I will make certain that you are not the last vampire to survive."
CHAPTER FIVE.
The group had built a large fire near the main entrance of the camp, as far away from the pile of bodies as possible in order to avoid the stench as well as the continuous drone from the flies that swarmed over the corpses. Tomorrow morning they would hold a memorial service and cremate the remains. Half the group huddled around the fire, as much for warmth as for protection from the horrors that inhabited the night. The other half stood watch on the perimeter wall. No one had seen Dravko or Tibor since they had been told about what had happened. Of those gathered around the flames, most had fallen asleep from exhaustion. Only Robson, Natalie, and DeWitt remained awake. The three sat in a small circle away from the others so as not to wake them.
"Are you sure we"ll be safe tonight?" asked DeWitt.
Robson nodded. "There are no rotters in the area. And I doubt that the gang will come back since they already trashed the place. Even if they do, the Angels will spot them in enough time for us to defend ourselves."
"We can"t live like this forever," added Natalie. "How are we going to repair the camp?"
"We"re not."
The other two stared at him.
Natalie spoke first. "Are you serious?"
"You remember how long it took us to set up camp the first time, and then we had twice as many people as we do now. And we no longer have the blockhouse. We don"t have the resources to start over here. Besides, whoever did this now knows we"re here, and I don"t like that idea of them coming back for a visit."
"Okay," said Natalie. "So what are we going to do?"
"You"re not going to do anything." Robson hesitated, knowing his next statement would not go over well. "I"m sending the Angels to Omaha with the vaccine."
"You can"t!" Natalie yelled so loud that some of the Angels stirred.