The Turned: A Horror Novella
Author: Derrick Ireland
Date: 2017-12-18 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Vampires
Description: They come out at night, the ones who have turned, hungering for the blood they crave. Controlled by the virus that is decimating America, its hosts are determined to take as many as they can to be like them. In the heart of "flyover country" those left behind must face what comes next. An embittered widow, a Sheriff who refuses to abandon the people he has sworn to protect, a Vietnam veteran who only sees opportunity where others see chaos, and a recovering alcoholic given the chance to finally repent for his sins. Survive or die, but don't be turned.

THE

TURNED

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

LEFTOVERS

1

Susan Chambers flitted across the bare floorboards of her bedroom, dashing from one side of the room to the other as she peered through the boarded-up windows. The young widow’s emaciated frame was drenched in sweat, soaking her jeans and vest, and making her long hair stick to her shoulders.

She made no noise as she moved, gliding effortlessly in her bare feet even as the temperature outside soared, and the baking heat in her pathetically fortified home doubled within. But the heat was the least of Susan’s concerns, as was her rumbling stomach.

She knew her dilapidated farmhouse was not going to be missed by the mob. Susan could hear them off in the distance, a shot or a scream reaching her ear as she upped her pace to try and check each of the windows of the generous sized corner room. The virus had turned people crazy, and by the sounds of it they had been busy all morning. She wasn’t sure of the time, maybe just after lunch, but the killing had been going on since dawn.

The plan had been to flee the previous night but unseen events had gotten in the way, so now all Susan had to do was hang on until dark to make good her escape. Running during the daytime just wouldn’t work, no cover, out in the open and with nowhere to hide. At least the night would shield her, and not just Susan. If she was going solo then Susan would already have ran, but she had the little ones to care for.

They were safe for now, as safe as anyone could be in these dangerous times, hidden away in the basement. Susan had given them strict instructions not to make a noise and to keep watch through the gaps in the boards on the half-windows, which were level with the ground. The un-kept grass had almost covered the dirty panes of glass, but that was now an advantage, in that an approaching threat might not see them, and give time for one of the children to alert their mother.

Susan just hoped they were watching, because the sounds of mayhem and murder were growing louder as the mob made its way. There was a chance they wouldn’t even bother with the Chambers farm, all knowing that it hadn’t been a working farm for years, its barren fields only producing weeds. But those fields that surrounded Susan’s home, with their broken down, dead corn, now allowed her an unhindered view of all around, which meant that it also gave everyone else the same view when looking her way.

The dead fields gave way to a dense forest, more or less wrapping itself around the small plot. In its time the land had expanded to fifty acres beyond the trees, but that had all been sold off to pay the widow’s debts, or at least some of them. Now Susan was left just with the five acres her broken down house sat within.

But she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself, or the hand life had dealt her, because Susan knew there was plenty of scorching daylight left, the high-summer kind that just didn’t want to die, and she had to get through it and to the night before she could flee with her babies. And the temperature just kept climbing, still not even at its mid-afternoon peak. Not that Susan was mindful of it, even as the sweat splashed from her and onto the floorboards as she kept darting between her windows, searching between the gaps in the pathetic fortifications for any signs of approaching nastiness.

They could come through the woods, which is the way Susan was intending to run with her little ones when night came, but the men out murdering, and it was mostly men, would almost certainly not come on foot. They might tear up the ground coming across the fields, but Susan was guessing that when they came, they would be in trucks. And when those trucks came they would be heading to her property up the intended route, the only route for anything on wheels, the dirt track.

Just like the house and fields surrounding it, the dirt track was rutted and in need of urgent repair, but it would still do the job in conveying any murderous convoy that hadn’t forgotten about Susan Chambers. Which was ironic, because that was exactly what everyone had done with the young widow until now, they had tried to forget all about her. Not that Susan cared, she’d stopped caring long ago.

To other people the virus ravaging America was the end of life as they knew it, to Susan Chambers it was just another day. People were turning into savages overnight, but as far as the young widow was concerned there wasn’t much difference, only now they were openly showing their true colours. Most people had shown their true selves to Susan already. She had learnt all too quickly that was how it was with the downtrodden, everyone put on an act for the normal folk, but they didn’t care with the broken souls.

If you didn’t matter, then what you thought didn’t matter either. So the virus was just another obstacle to overcome, as were the crazies roaming nearby. Just another day surviving in the world of Susan Chambers, the woman everyone had crossed the street to avoid. Just another obstacle to overcome.

Then she heard them.

Susan dashed to the window as her heart rate soared, peering through the gaps in the boards just as the first vehicle came into view, roaring up the dirt drive. She silently counted the mini-convoy, refusing to panic as she evaluated her options. One, two . . . six. Four pickup trucks, a tow truck and a land cruiser, and it was the land cruiser leading that made Susan tense her jaw.

Decked out in its police colours, the Sheriff’s ride skidded to a halt outside, stopping at the pathetic barricade Susan had erected the night before. The 4x4 could have easily crashed through the wall of broken wooden pallets and junk that the owner of the house had set up around her home, but at least Susan had tried to make a defence.

Not that it mattered now. The mob had come to visit and, in these times of craziness, even the town’s lawman wasn’t immune to its pull. But Susan wasn’t surprised, she had been let down by all the men she had ever met, so she saw no reason for the Sheriff to be any different.

As she peered down at them Susan counted again as the figures emerged from their vehicles, counting ten in all. They weren’t scrambling over the junk wall to break down her door, or screaming insanely as they charged forward with whatever weapons they had armed themselves with. Instead the calling mob merely gathered around as they leant up against their rides, guns in hand, to look over their latest victim’s lair.

Susan quickly ran to the landing to look downstairs, listening out for the children. She was relieved that they were doing as instructed, knowing to keep silent when the strangers came, although they weren’t strangers to their mother. She hurried back to the window, catching sight of one of the few remaining framed photographs still hung on her bedroom wall.

It was of a different life, a life that seemed like an enchanted fairy-tale compared to the life that had evolved for the smiling young mother in the picture. A life Susan had tried to forget about, as to recall it was to torture herself even more. Just to glance at it, even as danger loomed below, was painful. The handsome, loving husband. The pretty young mum, beaming a smile that showed only contentment for what she had.

And the laughing little boy, clasping hold of his mother’s finger as they all looked into the camera. All gone.

The thought of what she once had galvanised Susan’s protective instincts. She had lost all before, and it wasn’t going to happen again. Her little ones hiding in the basement needed their mother to stop the danger from finding them, and Susan wasn’t going to let them down.

But then she heard them, thrashing around in their hiding place just she had instructed them not to. Susan was going to run down to the cellar, to try and hush them, but instead she ran to the window to see if the reason for the commotion was the mob making their assault. And as she peered out, looking down at the Sheriff and the others still stood, still assessing their options, the reason for the breakdown in discipline in the cellar hit Susan.

It was the gentle breeze that had flowed through the woods and carried itself across the dilapidated farm and down into the depths of the house, as well as up to Susan’s boarded-up bedroom. And on that breeze was carried the scent of the people stood outside.

Above all it wafted the smell of the blood coursing through their veins, and smelling that blood was nothing short of torture for the Susan and the children she had acquired, all seven of them just as ravenous as their new mother.

She ran her tongue over her razor-sharp fangs, grimacing at the hunger-pains. Susan pressed her nose into the gap in the boards and breathed deeply, drinking in the scent as her stomach groaned. One of the lower boards splintered as her talons dug into it with longing.

It was all Susan Chambers could do not to burst from the window and tackle her callers, ripping each one apart as she drank them dry. But the sun had become her enemy. Were it not shining down, the young widow would have been feasting already.

2

Sheriff Wylett looked up at the Chambers house, certain he could see the young widow looking at him from behind the boards of her bedroom window. He knew he should have dealt with her before now, and it had nothing to do with the virus that had changed her into the creature she had become. Susan Chambers had changed a long time ago and, even though he didn’t like to dwell on it too much, Sheriff Jake Wylett had played a hand in her demise, albeit as an innocent party.

Travis Trent walked up to him, taking off his dirty baseball cap to mop his brow with an equally filthy handkerchief, which he then used to wave in front of his nose. ‘Smells like we us got some ripe petunias, boss.’

Wylett nodded, realising more than ever how desperate he was for helpers when the likes of Travis Trent had to be deputised to assist the law. As far as the Sheriff was concerned, Travis Trent was a full-time idiot. But needs must.

‘Wanna make us a hole?’ he asked, pointing at the corrugated iron and wooden slats Susan had heaped up as a lousy barricade.

‘Sure thing,’ replied Travis as he lumbered back into his tow truck.

Sheriff Wylett watched as Travis hoisted himself back into the seat. He was dressed in his usual look, his only look, of faded denim dungarees, with one shoulder strap undone. Steel toe-capped boots, beaten and worn with the metal tips showing through the broken leather. Under the dungarees was the standard dirty white vest, straining between Travis’s bulging gut and the outer garment, and all of it topped off with his ragged baseball hat.

‘Jesus H Christ,’ Wylett muttered to himself as he rolled a cigarette, just as his Deputy walked over to him.

‘Would it be possible to find a sorrier looking posse, Sheriff?’

Wylett smiled, despite the dire times. ‘I don’t believe it would.’

Out of the rag-tag group of Brentwood’s townsfolk he had assembled, Sheriff Wylett was just grateful that his official Deputy hadn’t fled like the rest of his meagre department. Deputy Jones had called in sick and fled the county, whereas Deputy King had told the Sheriff straight, he was heading to one of the safe zones with his family. Which left only Deputy Gribbin.

But out of the three, the only Deputy that hadn’t jumped ship, was the one Wylett would have picked every time to watch his back. Gribbin had the makings of a fine police officer, and one whom Wylett would have happily handed over the reins of power when he eventually hung up his gun.

Not that it mattered anymore. Just surviving another week was a lofty ambition the way things were going.

Just as he was lulling over the hopelessness of it all, Travis took to his task, ramming his battered tow truck easily through the defences. Sheriff Wylett couldn’t decide if the mechanic was hiding his fear of events, or genuinely without a clue as to the deadly seriousness of the pandemic sweeping like a wildfire across their country. Or maybe he just didn’t care, glad of the break to his monotonous existence. Whatever his mind-set, Travis Trent seemed to be having the time of his life, whistling as he demolished the barricade.

As he finished up the group gathered around Wylett. The Sheriff looked at his improvised task force, trying to appear positive, if only for their sake. The only other useful body apart from Deputy Gribbin was Wylett’s childhood friend, Hank Amis. Just as the lawman, Hank was into his sixty fifth year, and one of the finest taxidermists in the mid-west. He was also a man of steady nerve and dependability, which the Sheriff was appreciating more than ever.

That left seven other volunteers. A veterinary receptionist, an unemployed lumberjack, two school teachers and Travis, as well as Betty and Lou who owned Wylett’s favourite diner. There had been another four at the beginning of the week, but three of them had been killed by the infected, with the fourth calling it a day and leaving town.

Adjusting his Stetson, adorned with the badge of office, Sheriff Wylett looked at his watch. It wasn’t even noon, but the summer heat was savage and only climbing, and they still had plenty of work ahead. But the Chambers woman was going to be different, pure savage.

Wylett wasn’t sure if the virus was from nature or biblical wrath, but he knew that when it turned people, they took something of their old selves with them. For Susan Chambers that was all the hate and bitterness she had built up since the day he had turned up at her door to destroy her world.

But that was in the past, and Wylett had to deal with the thing she had become.

‘Okay,’ he said, trying to sound confident as he hitched up his thick leather belt which was struggling against his widening girth, whilst also carrying the mini-canon strapped to his hip.

‘Listen up, ’cause this is gonna be different. The two houses we cleared earlier were a piece of cake compared to this. Susan Chambers is in this one, and she’s been keeping busy since she turned. I know of at least a dozen people she’s taken down, all of ’em ripped to shreds, and she’s been collecting keepsakes.’

Wylett heard scampering in the Chambers cellar as he glanced over before continuing. ‘I think she’s taken seven children from those she’s killed, and we have to assume she’s turned all of them, and that they’re in there with their new mommy . . .’

‘I think it’s eight,’ Lou called out.

‘What’s that, Lou?’

Lou wiped his sweating forehead with the back of his sleeve. ‘The Kitners were killed last night. No sign of their little boy.’

Sheriff Wylett grimaced. ‘How old?’

‘Eight,’ answered Lou as he held his tearful wife’s hand. ‘They held a birthday party for him in our place three weeks ago. Sweet kid.’

‘We’ll have to assume he’s here now. And it’s not him anymore, remember that, none of them are. They’re all infected. We have to put them out of their misery, but we don’t wanna lose anyone else, so nice and easy, and everyone watch each other’s back.’

‘We going in?’ Travis asked.

Wylett shook his head. ‘No one’s going in. We take care of it from outside. That house and the things that used to be people in it are going to die where they are.’ He looked back at Travis. ‘Let’s get it done.’

The mechanic nodded as he jumped into his truck, reversing it as the rig’s lifting gear raised up with the chain and hook swinging from it.

As Travis manoeuvred his ride, Hank, dressed in his standard black suit, which made him look like an undertaker, walked up to Wylett as he hung a huge wooden crucifix around his neck, making his old friend smile.

‘They ain’t the undead, Hank.’

Hank shook his head as he eyed the Sheriff under the brim of his black fedora, brushing down his handlebar moustache. If The Sheriff was battling his expanding waistline, Hank was the opposite, stick-thin with hawk-like features, and twinkling blue eyes that missed nothing. Sheriff Wylett had never been more grateful of his loyal friendship.

‘Don’t be so sure, Jake,’ Hank smiled as he loaded up his Remington pump-action. ‘You need to make your peace with Jesus.’

Wylett nodded as he lit up his rolled cigarette, pocketing the tobacco pouch. ‘I’ll wait until I’m up there.’

‘Don’t sweat it. I been puttin’ in double prayer time for us both, and a sinner like you needs all the credit he can get.’

They both laughed, each savouring an old friend’s company in dire times as Travis’s lifting hook smashed into the side of Susan Chambers’ house, splintering the wood cladding like matchwood.

‘Careful now, Travis,’ Wylett called out. ‘We got plenty of sun, so don’t rush it. Nice and easy, that bobcat inside is just waitin’ to pounce. You hear me, boy?’

‘Loud and clear, boss.’

As the mechanic shifted the controls of the gear from within his cab, trying to hook onto something solid, Sheriff Jake Wylett couldn’t help but recall the day he had called at the property to deliver the news which he knew would destroy the lady of the house.

3

It had been a spring evening, still warm as the light was beginning to fade when the lawman had called at the Chambers house, two years past. It looked different then. The fields leading up to the house and beyond the forest were rich with produce, every acre taken up with the lush harvest being grown for market, and the family home itself was immaculately kept. Picture perfect.

From the clipped lawn to the freshly painted five bedroom two storey house, and everything else around and within, Ken and Susan Chambers kept a charming family home and slowly maturing business. Even the swing and slide out on the deck looked polished clean.

They were living the idyllic middle-class lifestyle, in perfect Middle America. The small mid-west town was pure apple pie and rodeo, with a good living for anyone willing to work hard and strive for better. The Chambers family slotted in perfectly.

But as Sheriff Wylett had parked and made his way up the front porch steps, dreading every footfall as he neared the front door, he still hadn’t composed what he was actually going to say. He had been expecting Susan Chambers to step out and meet him, but then he heard the music playing and looked through the side window.

There she was, singing along to a song he didn’t know on the radio, a spatula in one hand and an oven glove on the other as she took her freshly baked cookies and transferred them from the wire frame and onto a plate, all the while still singing along to the tune. It was the absolute picture of family bliss, the young mother waiting for her husband and little boy to return from their Sunday outing.

Only they weren’t coming back, not on that Sunday evening or any other evening, because Sheriff Wylett had just left their bodies at the morgue. Little Charlie, four years old and the absolute apple of his mother’s eye, laid out on the cold slab, next to his father. Another angler had found them in the afternoon, both floating face down in the lake, Wylett finding their upturned fishing boat an hour later.

And then he had to tell Susan Chambers. Not only that, she was also going to have to officially identify the bodies. Jake Wylett didn’t even know how to tackle that bit.

He had watched her for a moment, a woman totally at peace and being blessed with everything she could ever want, knowing he was going to end it all. As Wylett wrapped hard on the door, wanting but not wanting to be heard above the music, he had still been battling with his words.

He needn’t have worried. As a smiling Susan answered the door one look at the lawman told her something horrible had happened. A sentence or two later and she collapsed in his arms, howling that it couldn’t be true.

Sheriff Wylett had been a lawman all his life, becoming Brentwood’s Sheriff before he even hit thirty, carrying on the tradition just as his father and grandfather. In his time he had been shot, fought more fights that he cared to remember, and battled everyone from meth-heads to drug barons, and every type of lawbreaker in between. But that spring evening, telling Susan Chambers she had become a widow and lost her only child, was easily the worst of his forty year career.

And it didn’t end there. Susan Chambers held it together as best as anyone could, but once her family were in the ground she began her descent into self-destruction. First it was the booze, self-medicating to gain sleep until it became her staple diet. Not satisfied with that, she upgraded to any drug she could lay her hands on to keep herself from remembering. And with the new lifestyle came the new men, men attracted to those who are lost and vulnerable.

By the time it was a year gone since losing little Charlie and her husband, Susan the mother and wife was no more, replaced by a drug and alcoholic dependant mess. It was a pitiful sight, the damaged widow draping her arms around any man who would buy her what she wanted, in return for what they wanted.

She’d lost her family, she was in danger of losing her home, so losing her self-respect was just another add-on.

Sheriff Wylett did what he could, warning the male scavengers away, only for another to take his place. And once Susan Chambers turned her bitterness towards him, Wylett knew she was gone. The woman he would lock up for being a nasty and abusive drunk, was no longer the woman he had held that evening on her porch.

The last time Wylett saw her, as the virus was breaking, Susan Chambers was sporting a black eye and split lip from her latest waster beau, and jeans and a sweater that were in need of a wash, as was she. When he had offered words of advice, she had spat in his face.

That bitterness and longing went with her when the virus claimed the widow. Only now that damaged soul was equipped with razor-sharp talons, and elongated razor-teeth. Together with the enhanced strength and agility that the virus gave them, those infected like the widow posed a formidable and rapidly growing threat.

She was watching their every move from behind the boards, her infected brain recognising the Sheriff, but only in the sense that he was just another man who had let her down, but that was nothing to what Susan felt when she saw Travis Trent.

Her vision narrowed to a single point as she focused in on the sweating mechanic as he manoeuvred his tow truck. Certain memories were immune to the virus, and Travis was one such lingering image. It had been at the time when Susan was still clinging on as she battled her debts and demons, and somehow holding down a waitressing job, just to feed herself.

She had visited Travis’s workshop one lunchtime, desperate to get her junked ride fixed so that she could get to her job. Susan told him she couldn’t pay, but offered to do his admin and paperwork as payment if he could help her out and fix the car.

The smiling mechanic, dressed then as now in his oiled dungarees, told her there was another way to settle the bill as he pointed to a filthy couch in his office as he stared longingly at Susan’s chest, making his terms of payment crystal clear.

The tearful widow left her car and never went back, getting drunk to numb her pain, and losing the job she could no longer get to.

And now that sweating pig was ramming his tow truck into her home, scaring her new family as they hid in the cellar. But Susan wasn’t scared, she was just hungry. And she had no intention of letting history repeat itself.

Sheriff Wylett was dragged back from his painful reminiscing by the sound of Hank shouting.

‘Travis, you damn fool, get down from there!’

Wylett looked up, confirming his suspicion that Travis was definitely a full-time idiot. The mechanic had ignored his instructions to be careful, and was standing on the lifting gear of the tow truck as he tried to smash its hook into a suitable gap. He was at full stretch as he lifted himself tip-toe on the frame, reaching up to just below Susan Chambers’ bedroom window.

The Sheriff caught his breath, stepping forward as his hand reached for the chrome .44 magnum pistol sat on his hip and spitting away the roll-up. He called up to Travis, knowing he had to sound calm so as not to convey the imminent danger the man was in, hoping to avoid panic.

‘Best you come down, son. We ca . . .’

Susan Chambers head and shoulders burst through the boards of her bedroom window, plucking Travis off his lifting gear as if his three hundred pound bulk was nothing at all, and disappearing back inside with the screaming mechanic.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ hollered Hank as he unloaded his Remington at the hole Susan had made, peppering the boards with buckshot as he worked the pump-action.

Sheriff Wylett dashed forward as he aimed at the window. ‘Stop firing, Hank!’ he bellowed. ‘You’ll hit Travis!’

‘He’s already dead, Jake!’

4

Susan slammed Travis against her far wall, not even registering the several pellets of Hank’s buckshot as they sliced into her shoulder. The widow pushed the screaming mechanic’s face into the chipped plasterboard as she curled her talons into a fist, punching the centre of the rolled flesh on Travis’ back, easily snapping his spine with the power-blow.

Travis emitted an even higher scream as his legs gave out, but Susan easily held his bulk as she spun him around and cupped his whimpering face with her hands. The enlarged saliva glands in her throat, and the added tumour growths that ensured the blood she fed on travelled straight to her enlarged heart, together with the extended roots her new teeth were producing, all made it impossible for her to speak.

But Susan Chambers could still smile. Savouring the fear from her captive she held her face close to his, fluttering her eyelids as she smiled wide to show off the razor fangs she had acquired. Travis wept as he looked into her blood-red eyes, all of Susan’s capillaries haemorrhaged from the pressure produced by her maxed-out adrenal glands, knowing the human part of her was calling in the payback for his trying to take advantage of a bereaved woman at her lowest point.

Once Susan was satisfied that the stinking bully was as scared as it was possible to be, the virus in her took over, seeking its own satisfaction as she sunk her teeth into the sweating folds of his neck and drank.

Sheriff Wylett met Deputy Gribbin at the back of the police cruiser as she opened up the 4x4’s rear door. She knew he was already blaming himself for losing another of the group, another person he was responsible for, but there was only so much he could do.

‘I shouldn’t have let him near this place,’ Wylett began. ‘I knew he wa . . .’

Gribbin gripped his arm. ‘Hush now, Sheriff,’ she ordered. ‘We’re battling the end of times here, and this town would have fallen already if it hadn’t been for you.’

The Sheriff towered over his diminutive Deputy, knowing for the moment that she was in charge.

‘There’s only so much we can warn these folks if they want to play our game. Travis was an accident waiting to happen.’ Gribbin looked up at the scorching sun. ‘We got a full day ahead, and at least another ten properties down the road to clear, and it’s only gonna get nastier.’

Then she looked her boss in the eye. ‘So let’s hear no more about blame, and get this bitch put down.’

Wylett was silent as he nodded, knowing, as usual, that his Deputy was right. Theirs was an unusual bond, but an unbreakable one, although never spoken of. The feisty, twenty six year old Deputy, a gym and cross-fit addict, who only moved to Brentwood as that was where her wife wanted to settle down. Slap-bang in the middle of “flyover” country, Lisa Gribbin had been expecting the worst, having been brought up to believe the people in such places were the polar opposites of the hipster urbanites she was used to.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong, feeling like she belonged the first day in town. The locals certainly weren’t the townies she was used to, and that made for a pleasant surprise, with the new Deputy meeting characters every day. She was the shortest in the department, at barely over five feet tall, the only woman, and certainly the only gay officer, but Lisa Gribbin was made to feel right at home from day one.

When her short-lived marriage ended, it was the other Mrs Gribbin who moved away.

Sheriff Wylett told her he had no intention of losing his star Deputy, stating that the estranged wife’s loss was his gain. The veteran lawman didn’t have a paternal bone in his body, having never had children and himself divorced two decades earlier, but he would be lying to himself to think that he didn’t care for his young charge, and was happiest in her company.

Gribbin would often turn up on her days off when she knew the Sheriff was pulling an all-nighter, bringing him a casserole to make sure he ate. When they were out patrolling he did his awkward best to point out suitable females that he thought might be eligible for her to date, which only resulted in the both of them collapsing in hysterics.

They were an odd pairing, but one which worked, with neither prepared to give up on the other as they battled the infected that were rapidly overtaking their town, just as the dwindling numbers of others like them across the country were trying to resist the pandemic that was turning its people into vampires.

‘Did you leave anything for the National Guard,’ asked Wylett as he looked in the back of the cruiser at the small arsenal Gribbin had acquired from the army before they pulled out, laughably imposing Martial Law as they abandoned Brentwood to its fate.

‘Our need is greater, Sheriff,’ Gribbin replied as she picked up an M4 assault rifle and ammunition, handing the same bundle to Wylett. ‘Let’s get this done.’

Wylett nodded as he looked at his watch, just as Hank joined them whilst reloading his Remington.

‘Any idea where she is,’ asked Hank as the taxidermist glanced back at the house to make sure no one else was getting creative, which they weren’t. The remainder of the posse were keeping their distance as they pointed their rifles at the hole Travis had made.

Wylett shook his head as he shielded his eyes, looking down the dirt track. ‘No, but she’ll be here.’

Susan drank just enough from Travis to fire up her endorphins and keep her alert. The mechanic was still whimpering as she lifted up his dead-weight and carried him to the landing, throwing Travis over the bannister railing.

She looked over as he crashed on the stairs below, just as a speeding figure darted out of the gloom and seized Travis. Susan smiled again as she saw it was the newest of her darlings, the little Kitner boy. She had only just turned him and he was ravenous for the new food source that he now craved. As she looked down with pride, he was joined by the others as they fell on Travis, dragging the still conscious meal down the steps, along the hallway and down into the cellar.

The big man would easily keep them going for the time being, even with eight of them they could still sink into a bicep or a wrist, a thigh or a calf. The sound of her children squealing with delight as they drank filled Susan with joy, but then another noise drew her attention.

Racing back to the window, Susan Chambers hissed anger at she saw what was approaching up her dirt drive.

Daisey Hues didn’t let up on the gas as she tore up the track, knowing she was late for the party. But she still managed a wave and a smile for Sheriff Wylett as she roared past him. Daisey felt guilty at finding a crumb of happiness amidst all the horror that the two of them had finally rekindled their affair. It had been over a decade, but they both knew that nothing was guaranteed anymore, least of all time for regrets.

Then Daisey lifted up the front bucket of the industrial digger truck she was driving, aiming for the hole Travis had made.

Wylett waved back as she passed him. ‘Told you, Hank. You can always rely on our Daisey.’

The others in the posse ran out of the way as Daisey blasted her air horn, scattering them all ways as she ploughed into the widow’s house.

Susan Chambers lingered too long in her room, snarling at the incoming threat. As the bucket tore through the wood cladding a large chunk of it flew across the room and smacked into her forehead, concussing Susan as she staggered back and fell to her knees.

‘Same again, Daisey!’ called the Sheriff. ‘Open it up so the daylight can do our job!’

Jake Wylett still didn’t understand the mechanics of the virus, only its end result once people had turned, but everyone knew the infected couldn’t stand the sun’s rays. Daisey did a quick manoeuvre, handling the rig with surgical precision as she tore another hole next to the first, allowing the daylight to flood in.

Susan was still stunned by the blow to her head. Despite the enhanced abilities she had gained from being turned, the widow could still feel pain and concussion, even though she would quickly recover. Susan frantically crawled out of the shafts of sunlight filling the room as she ducked behind her bed.

As she did so Susan was expecting another charge from the digger truck, and she knew the children were in danger, but the sunlight was filling the doorway, and her exit from the bedroom. But the digger’s bucket didn’t crash through again, even though she could hear its engine close by. Realising she had to make her move, Susan seized her chance.

As she stood, ready to bolt, the widow stopped in her tracks. The digger bucket had returned, but was static in the air, hovering just outside the hole it had made. And stood inside was Deputy Gribbin, an M4 wedged into her shoulder as she aimed into the room and straight at Susan Chambers.

The widow lunged for the door, just as a burst of automatic fire lacerated up her side, hurling her through the doorway and crashing onto the landing.

She dug her talons into the floorboards as she shrieked in pain, just as an object rolled to her head.

Susan Chambers had only ever seen them on the television, usually in a war movie. But there was no mistaking what it was and, even in her pained state, and having never seen a real-life one before, the widow could see the pin was definitely missing from the hand-grenade she was now staring at.

5

Deputy Gribbin ducked down in the digger bucket as Daisey tilted it up to shield her from the blast. As she hunkered down the grenade exploded, with some of the shrapnel escaping back out of the hole and peppering her protection. But it had worked.

Gribbin looked over the back-side, giving the thumbs-up to Daisey, and the bucket tilted forward again as the deputy quickly scanned with the M4, prepared for the infected widow to jump out, but she knew, infected or not, Susan Chambers was done. Gribbin opened the cool-box nestled at her feet and grabbed one of the Molotov cocktails, snapping her lighter to life as she lit the protruding cloth.

‘All of you aim at that fuckin’ hole!’ bellowed Sheriff Wylett from below.

As Gribbin threw the flaming projectile into the bedroom, a hail of fire hit the splintered wood around the opening, insurance against any nastiness getting ready to bail. But nothing popped out as the flames took an immediate hold of the wooden framed room, just as Gribbin tossed another flaming bottle inside, followed by one more.

As Daisey lowered her to the ground the fire was already spreading through the top of the property. Wylett helped the Deputy out, the relief evident on his face as Gribbin squeezed his shoulder.

‘Told you it would be fine,’ she offered, smiling.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, looking tired, ‘but everyone’s stayin’ on the ground and outside until this place is ash.’

Daisey set to work, with Hank riding shotgun in the cab as she smashed the digger into the bottom of the house, opening up the cellar and exposing the little demons hiding down in there, and releasing the putrid stench of the cadavers they had been feeding on.

As she reversed out, the huge hole Daisey had punched through filled with sunlight, just as those within hissed and scampered out of the way.

‘They ain’t what they were before!’ shouted Wylett, knowing the children infected inside ranged from four to twelve years old, all too aware of the horridness of it all. ‘We’re just puttin’ ’em out of their misery.’

With that, he and Gribbin both opened up with their M4s’, spraying automatic fire into the cellar. As they emptied their magazines Betty and Lou tossed Molotov cocktails past them and into the infected hiding in the shadows, just as the other posse members lit more and handed them over.

Before long the widow’s basement was a raging fire-pit, with the squeals and screams of the infected children filling the air as they burned alive. Wylett and Gribbin didn’t need to shoot anymore, but they couldn’t let the children suffer, even if they were the turned. Reloading they emptied another magazine each, arcing automatic fire all around the flaming space, both wishing for the screaming to end.

It was too much for Betty. She put her hands over her ears and burst into tears, stumbling forward, unable to take anymore. She looked up just as a tiny, flaming figure burst from the cellar and scurried along the scorched grass.

Wylett dropped the M4 as he grabbed his magnum revolver, just as the flaming child launched itself at Betty, sinking its fangs into her face and throat as it manically snapped its jaw open and shut, the urge for blood still insatiable even as it burned. Lou grabbed his shotgun and started beating the tiny vampire, screaming incoherently as he desperately fought to save his wife.

Deputy Gribbin ran forward as she pulled a stiletto dagger from her belt, taking a split second to focus her aim before burying the blade into the youngster’s flaming head, ripping it from Betty and onto the floor. Sheriff Wylett fired into it until the magnum was empty.

He and Gribbin motioned for Daisey to carry on as the digger began ramming into each corner of the house, smashing it in on itself. Then they turned back to Betty and Lou, knowing nothing else was going to escape the flames as Wylett reloaded.

The female proprietor of the Sheriff’s favourite diner was already dead, her blood staining the scorched soil as her husband held her. Lou didn’t cry as he lifted his wife of thirty years and carried her over to a tree, gently laying her down in the shade.

He looked up at Wylett as Daisey continued to destroy the Chambers home, holding out his hand. ‘She’s gone, but I need to be sure there’s nothing left of her to turn, Jake.’

The Sheriff nodded as he handed Lou his gun, turning his back as a single gunshot sounded, Lou ensuring his wife would find peace.

Wylett looked over at Gribbin as the Deputy looked back at her boss, trying just as him to keep her emotions under wraps.

Mercifully, Daisey’s skill with the digger truck was finally rewarded. The house of bitterness and death collapsed in on itself, coming to rest in a flaming heap no taller that the town’s Sheriff.

Susan Chambers slowly opened her eyes, certain she could hear little Charlie screaming. She looked up at the flaming sun, only to realise that the blistering heat was not coming from the star but from the fire creeping across her ceiling, just as the roof caved in and crashed on top of her, destroying the home she had once so cherished.

Hank finished up his impromptu service of passing, saying a few words of condolence for Travis, and more for Betty. Once done the posse of vampire hunters looked at one another, but it wasn’t the Sheriff who spoke, it was the new widower.

‘I’ll be damned if that good woman died in vain,’ Lou drawled, the emotion rattling through his voice. ‘So let’s get this shit done.’

They all nodded, with no more words needed. Gribbin jumped into the police cruiser’s driving seat as she watched Sheriff Wylett in the rear view mirror. As he passed Daisey they held hands briefly, with his reacquainted old flame brushing the Sheriff’s cheek before she headed for the digger, and Wylett came over and climbed in next to his Deputy.

‘Hell of a crappy business,’ he said, turning to Gribbin. ‘Is there any point in me urging you to head to one of the safe zones, Lisa?’

Gribbin smiled, realising how lucky she had been to have had a mentor such as Jake Wylett. ‘Are you going?’

‘Nope. I’m the captain of the ship, and if need be, I’ll be sinking with it.’

‘Then I guess we’re stuck with each other up on deck.’

They both smiled as the Deputy floored the accelerator and led the convoy onto their next hunt.

As they raced back along the road, passing the smouldering ash pile that had been the Chambers house, Sheriff Wylett and his Deputy were silent as he drove, both knowing they weren’t going to make it. Gribbin looked over at where they had slain Susan and the infected children, in what felt like an age ago.

Now the sun was dropping, threatening to blink out before they could reach the safety of where they had started from in the morning. The Sheriff had only told her of the secret hideaway once he knew the pandemic was evolving into something that threatened their very existence.

Brentwood had been designated a satellite safe zone during the nineteen seventies, when all people had to worry about was the Cold War and nuclear annihilation, not this people turning into vampire stuff. Various secret locations were picked, strategically placed across the US, all ready to house local officials or senate members if caught off-guard in-country. If needed the secret bolt-holes could even house the American President, in the event he was away from the White House and unable to make it to a statelier bunker.

Underneath the two storey residence that housed Brentwood’s Mayor, a nondescript door in the back of the kitchen led down to the reinforced shelter designed to withstand the onslaught of a nuclear arsenal. With its filtered air supply and enough room to house twenty five people comfortably, more if needed, and with bunks and showers, the secret underground chamber had the potential to offer a relatively civilised safe haven. Mothballed in the nineties, it was still more than up to the job.

When Sheriff Wylett lost his two other Deputies, he showed Gribbin where they would hold out. Any doubts to their dire predicament were dispelled for the Deputy upon realising the lengths to which they would have to go to in order to survive.

And now they were racing to get there.

Lisa Gribbin reached across and squeezed the hand of Wylett as he gripped the wheel. ‘I’m sorry about Daisey,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have a choice, Jake.’

The Sheriff nodded, not taking his eyes off the road as he fought the urge to cry. He and his Deputy were covered in cuts, blood, soot and scratches, and reeking of the stench of death.

The convoy they were leading had grown, numbering over twenty people in anything that could drive, but they were all new. The rest of the morning’s posse were dead.

But Gribbin couldn’t afford herself the luxury of mourning, as her eyes locked onto the disappearing sun as it dropped below the treetops, jumping with a start as Sheriff Wylett’s bellowing voice ripped the Deputy from her observations.

‘Ambush!!!’

6

The police 4x4 skidded to a halt, smashing into the tree that had been laid across the road. Gribbin wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and shot forward, head-butting the dash and knocking herself out cold.

As Sheriff Wylett reached across to her, whilst at the same time shouting into his radio, scanning for the infected, and trying to grab for his gun, his prized Deputy slumped in her seat.

Oblivious to the ensuing panic and chaos, Lisa Gribbin’s concussed brain took the opportunity to digest the events of her afternoon.

The first four houses they had come upon were relatively easy, each one burnt to the ground as Daisey battered them down. The weary posse had kept their distance, learning the lessons from earlier. As the infected hiding in the homes shrieked and thrashed in the flames, Sheriff Wylett and his people stood back with their guns pointing, but none of the four premises emitted anymore escaping vampires, and the posse moved onto their next target.

The old schoolhouse had been turned into a homeless shelter, and seemed it would offer the least resistance of all. Single storey, with an aged wooden frame, the front double doors were open, offering a clear view of the entire space within. Even its large windows, evenly spaced down either side, were un-boarded and filling the space they were all looking at with bright sunshine.

But time was not on the vampire hunters’ side, and they still had properties down the road that Wylett knew to be infected. The decision was made to save time, avoiding the fire and destruction, instead they would just check the bathrooms.

Hank led the way as they inched towards the two rooms at the rear, all eager to clear the property and move on. The Sheriff and his Deputy laid out their map on the bonnet of Lou’s pickup, confident that Hank could handle anything inside, with Daisey at his side, cradling her own shotgun as Lou and the other three followed.

As Wylett planned their next move, a nagging thought had occurred to him. He stopped looking over the map as the nagging thought was joined by a subtle sound coming from somewhere close by, Gribbin hearing it too.

The two of them walked to the entrance, seeing the group moving stealthily forward, and then they heard the sound again, under the floorboards. And as that happened, the nagging thought crystallized in Sheriff Wylett’s head.

Basement!

The old schoolhouse had a big, deep basement.

‘Hank!’ bellowed Wylett, the sound of his voice instantly met by a mass of scurrying from beneath the aged floorboards as his friend and the others spun around. ‘Get out of there!’

Then the floor started to move, the wood splintering as it undulated. ‘Now!!!’

The posse took a step, realising they were in trouble, before they all froze, looking down as the ground beneath their feet gave way.

‘No!’ Gribbin screamed, drawing her Glock pistol as she rushed forward, only to be grabbed by the Sheriff as the floorboards just inside the doorway exploded upwards and a mass of bloodied hands, grabbing and flailing with their razor talons, reached up out of the darkness.

The two lawmakers emptied their guns into the infected snarling up at them, hitting one with every shot, the basement packed shoulder to shoulder with the turned.

As the two quickly reloaded they looked across to where the posse had stood, just as the dust from the imploding floor settled, offering both a heartbreakingly clear view. Lou and the three others had gone, down somewhere amongst the crazed horde who were fighting each other, ripping into their fellow infected as they all tried to feast on the warm bodies. There were so many vampires Gribbin and Wylett couldn’t even see their missing colleagues.

What they could see was Daisey and Hank.

The wily taxidermist was two thirds back, stood on a section of floorboards still intact, attached to one of the oak pillars, just big enough for him to move a pace in either direction and no more. He wasn’t trying to clamber up to the ceiling or blasting away with his Remington at the bodies reaching up and snapping at his boot heels.

Instead, Hank was motionless as he looked across at Daisey.

Gribbin swallowed hard, her fear of the massed pit cancelled out by Daisey’s plight, and the look of despair on the Sheriff’s face. Wylett’s lover was dangling from the next pillar over from Hank, no more than fifteen feet from him, and a good thirty feet from Wylett and Gribbin, but she may as well have been on the other side of the moon for their chances of reaching her.

Between Daisey, Hank and the other two there was a sea of bobbing heads, each snapping and snarling as they smashed into each other trying to reach their next meal. Gribbin imagined herself trampling across the tops of the infected to get to the desperate woman, trying to convince herself something could be done.

Jake Wylett was silent, staring at the woman he knew he should have made his wife, lost. It was the first time Gribbin had seen the bear-of-a-man scared. But Daisey wasn’t screaming. The floor beneath her had gone completely, and she had her legs wrapped around the splintered pillar as her hands gripped onto a rusty light fitting screwed into it, which was shortly to give way.

Hank was looking up at the ceiling, silent as he tried to work out how to shimmy up his pillar and across the rafters to get to her.

And still Wylett and Daisey were silent as they looked at one another, the Sheriff unblinking as he stood motionless. Gribbin realised the obvious. She had known the two had been lovers once, but she had been wrong. The two were still lovers, Wylett the rascal, keeping their relationship secret even from his Deputy.

But the Sheriff’s sweetheart couldn’t last out, her generous frame rapidly losing its fight against the creaking light fitting and gravity.

‘Jake, honey,’ Daisey called out, trying to be brave for her man. ‘I don’t wanna end up down there.’ She smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘You need to do it . . . It’s alright.’

Wylett nodded as he tried to smile back, his eyes wet as he raised up his magnum, taking his time to aim, and a last look into the eyes of the woman he clearly loved.

‘Sweet dreams, princess,’ he rasped, squeezing the trigger.

The bullet hit Daisey square in her forehead, ensuring she was dead before the reaching hands caught her, and she disappeared out of sight.

Deputy Gribbin tensed her jaw shut as tears rolled down her cheeks, but she still aimed steady with the M4 at the infected still reaching for Hank. Wylett turned away for a moment, wiping his eyes before turning back. He blew his cheeks out, stowing away what he had done for later, instead focusing on his friend.

Gribbin looked up at the ceiling, seeing a filthy skylight window, just back from Hank’s pillar. ‘I think I can climb up on the outside,’ she said, looking at Wylett, his eyes tear-stained. ‘Maybe drop a rope down to him. Maybe . . .’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, young lady!’ called Hank.

She and the Sheriff looked over at him. ‘If the roof’s anything like this floor,’ Hank called over as he pointed at the infected lurching up at him, ‘you’ll be down there before you know it. And I ain’t allowing that.’

He forced a smile as he switched his shotgun from hand as he took off his blazer, dropping it into the hole. Hank took a moment to smooth down his white shirt, surprisingly clean considering, before he tightened the silver wolf’s head clasp securing the thin, braided leather of his bolo tie. Next he took off his fedora, throwing it frisbee-style across the heads of the infected, laughing to himself as it somehow landed on one of them.

Finally, the award winning taxidermist and lifelong friend of Sheriff Wylett, brushed out his handlebar moustache, before securing his Colt.45 in his belt, checking his worn bible was in his back pocket and taking a last hold of his wooden crucifix.

Readying himself, he clasped the Remington with both hands.

‘It’s been a pleasure, missy,’ smiled Hank as he winked at Gribbin, before turning to Wylett. ‘Guess I’m done draggin’ your sorry ass out of anymore scrapes, Jakey-boy.’

Before Sheriff Wylett could find the right words, Hank gave a whoop of defiance and jumped into the basement, blasting away as he fell. The two law-keepers closed down their emotions as they aimed and fired, slotting the nearest ones’ going for Hank, but it was a short-lived battle as the infected swarmed over him, knocking the Remington from his hands.

Gribbin tried to ignore Hank’s white shirt turning red as he was bitten into, but he still managed to draw the Colt and down a few more, giving him enough time to press the barrel of the gun to his head and make good his exit.

Sheriff Wylett didn’t let up, reloading again and again as he shot into the vampires, until Gribbin reached across and gently pushed the magnum’s barrel down.

‘That’ll do,’ she offered. ‘We need to save our ammo.’

Wylett had looked at her, rage and sorrow in his face, but he still nodded, knowing she was right. ‘I’m done.’

Gribbin was about to suggest they call it a day and start heading back, just as the outside doors to the basement, set level with the ground, burst open and the horde charged forth, screaming in pain as the sun’s UV rays sank into them. But their maddening hunger propelled them on as they charged at the two remaining members of the Brentwood posse.

7

They fought back to back, shooting anything and everything that came at them. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the starved vampires were attacking in the daylight, Wylett and Gribbin wouldn’t have stood a chance at the massed attack. But the emaciated infected had become delirious, their predator stealth abandoned as they craved their food source.

The Sheriff and his Deputy managed to retreat to their 4x4, throwing the rear door open to keep a constant flow of ammunition as they fired their M4s’ relentlessly, each stopping only to bang in a fresh magazine as the other covered them.

But, even though the turned were slowed and pained by the sun, some still got through the bullets. Some even got close enough to slash the lawmakers with their razor talons before being cut down. Both Wylett and Gribbin caught a blow, on their legs and arms, even down Gribbin’s cheek and across Wylett’s chin, but they held their ground.

Finally the numbers eased, enough for Wylett to take over solo as Gribbin reached in and grabbed the cool-box of Molotov cocktails, lighting them up and pitching each through the air and into the basement. The flames caught the dry wood in seconds, filling the pit with fire and then creeping up to consume the entire structure.

And still they came, the infected leaping out from their lair in a final bid for survival, charging balls of flame with fired limbs flailing as they hurled themselves at their tormentors. Burnt hands and arms added to the injuries of Wylett and his Deputy as they still held their ground, fighting hand to clawed hand.

‘It’s about that time!’ Wylett had called out as Gribbin raced over to the digger, only for her to jump back out of the cab as she realised that Daisey must have taken the keys with her, probably shoving them in her jeans pocket through force of habit.

Gribbin didn’t say why she was racing over to Lou’s pickup, not wanting to remind Wylett of the pain of losing Daisey. She threw the truck in reverse and rammed it into the first corner of the raging inferno that had been the school house, speeding to the next as the flaming wood crashed in on itself.

Once the third corner had been smashed into the entire building imploded, coming to rest as a hissing, glowing pile of red hot coals, burying all within, including the late members of the Brentwood posse. Gribbin and Wylett slumped in the rear of the 4x4, exhausted and not even feeling the mass of expended shell casings they were sitting on. The Sheriff reached behind him and grabbed two bottles of water, handing one to Gribbin. They both drank greedily, quenching the first that the battle had given them.

As the Sheriff lifted up his Stetson to mop his brow, a bus pulled up on the dirt road, its air brakes venting as it came to a halt. Wylett and Gribbin looked at each other, both taking another gulp of water as they realised what a state they looked. Covered in sweat, soot, cuts and blood, neither had the energy to stand as a young black priest stepped down from the coach, carrying a bible in one hand and a revolver in the other.

He was followed by an assortment from his congregation, male and female, young and old and, pleasing to Wylett’s eye, they were all generously armed.

‘That’s a lot of guns for a man of God, Father,’ Wylett said, recognising the priest from somewhere.

‘That’s because we’re doing God’s work,’ replied the young priest, smiling.

The group was a good size, twenty one including the Father, and they were a useful mix. A Doctor, a retired nurse, together with a mechanic and a couple of personal trainers. But what pleased Sheriff Wylett and his Deputy above all was that the bulk of the group were military veterans, all with recent gun-time overseas, and all up for the fight.

Once a grateful Wylett and Gribbin had their cuts and scratches sterilised and bandaged, the decision was quickly made that the new group would join them, and all would head back to Brentwood. The secret shelter was more than enough to house everyone, and in the morning they could all set out with gusto to clear as many infected as they could.

But the bus had broken down. Several of the group were driving the pickups of the original Brentwood posse, as well as having three of their own, and two Harleys, but, all together it still wasn’t enough to take all the passengers from the bus.

They had to wait for the mechanic to fix it, as the sun began to dip.

As the coach’s engine finally came to life, the priest walked over to Wylett as his people piled into their seats.

‘Is it worth trying to find somewhere just for tonight. A barn or something?’

The Sheriff shook his head. ‘There ain’t anything in either direction that’s not filled with the infected, or that we haven’t burnt to the ground. It’s home or bust, Father.’

The young priest nodded, unfazed. ‘Then we’d best make haste.’

Maybe if they hadn’t kept to a slower speed to let the bus keep up it might have worked. But as Wylett drove at the head of the convoy, snaking its way through the forest as they double-backed on themselves, passing the smouldering property that had been the home of Susan Chambers, Wylett and his Deputy knew they weren’t going to make it, even though neither would say.

And that’s when they were ambushed.

Not wishing to leave the numbed bliss her unconscious offered, Deputy Gribbin stayed slumped in her seat, oblivious to the bedlam erupting around her. Then, as her ears started to filter the outside through to her brain, Gribbin became aware she was being dragged from her seat by one of the infected.

8

Lisa Gribbin snapped her eyelids open as her body was halfway out of the police 4x4’s passenger door, instantly regaining her critical faculties as she reached around with her Glock, which had never left her hand, ready to unload into the vampire gripping her.

She squeezed off a shot, only for the round to go wide as Sheriff Wylett knocked Gribbin’s arm away as he desperately tried to get her out of the cruiser.

‘It’s me!’ he bellowed at her.

In amongst the chaos of what was happening, Gribbin felt a brief second of pure relief, one part being it wasn’t an infected trying to take her, a bigger part even more relieved Wylett wasn’t dead.

He propped her against the rear tyre. ‘Ambush from all sides!’ He stood up, loosing off a couple of shots from his magnum mini-canon at something Gribbin couldn’t see, before hunkering back down. ‘Can you fight, Lisa?’

Gribbin nodded as she felt through her pixie cut hair, her fingers returning bloodied as she became aware of shooting all around. ‘I’m good. What happened?’

They both ducked at a burst of automatic fire nearby.

‘They laid a tree across the road.’

‘Who?’

‘The infected. They’ve ambushed us, it’s a coordinated attack. As soon as we crashed into the tree at the front they rolled a bunch in behind us.’ Wylett looked her in the eye. ‘They’ve pinned us in. Taken out our first and last vehicle . . . We’re trapped!’

Even in her concussed state, Deputy Gribbin knew what it meant. They had suspected the infected operated as a hive mind when they were in groups, all instinctively working together to secure their human food source. But this was off the scale, almost like vampire guerrilla warfare.

Maybe just like the new group she had teamed up with, with their veterans who knew military tactics, the infected had skills the same, carried with them even after they had turned. Whatever the reason, Lisa Gribbin knew it was game over.

But the Deputy wasn’t going down without a fight. Checking she had a full clip in her gun, she stood up and started firing.

Wylett left his Deputy, knowing she could handle herself. He ran to the centre of the convoy, his sense of duty to protect citizens still drowning out any fear. But what he saw coming out of the trees still made him catch his breath. Infected were streaming in from all sides, falling on the new group even as the veterans poured automatic fire into them.

It was the speed of them that was most astonishing. Sheriff Wylett knew they had enhanced abilities once turned. Superb hearing and eyesight, awesome strength, but he was still awestruck by how fast they could manoeuvre, literally at the speed of a racing cheetah.

And now they were using that speed and strength to overwhelm their human targets defences. The hive mind was propelling the speeding waves of infected forward from all sides, sacrificing themselves so as to purposely use up the group’s ammunition.

Wylett saw the young priest, crouching behind one of the pickups. He went to dash over, only to see an infected whizz past him and grab the Father, disappearing with him as fast as he had appeared. Next he saw the Doctor, blasting away on with a shotgun, only for a blur of a body to catch his eye and the Doctor vanished, followed by his agonised screaming.

The Sheriff stood up, knowing it was over. It was night, not like earlier. Earlier the infected were dopey from hunger, and slowed by the sun.

Now it was the night, and the infected owned it. The hail of fire started to ease as the group was slowly picked off, replaced by their screaming and the triumphant howls of the feeding vampires.

It’s time.

The thought clarified Wylett’s mind, knowing he only had to find the one person from the group that really mattered. And there she was, forcing a smile as she walked up to him, both ignoring the screaming and sounds of agonised death.

Lisa Gribbin held out her hand as Wylett gripped it, winking at his young charge.

‘I’d be grateful if you take me with you, Jake,’ she said, trying to be brave.

Wylett was determined that her passing would be painless, his last act as Sheriff, and his last act as her friend.

‘Hold onto me, darlin’, and we’ll go together.’

Lisa Gribbin held her chin up as she closed her eyes, still trying to be brave as Wylett brought up his magnum revolver. ‘Before you know it, Lisa, you’ll be naggin’ me on the other side.’

The quip worked, bringing the smile back to Gribbin’s face, just as her boss shot her through the head.

She immediately dropped to a dead weight, but Wylett didn’t let go. He wasn’t going to let go until he had joined his Deputy. Which would be imminent, because he was the only one left and the infected were closing in around him and about to feast.

But as he brought up the heavy barrel to just under his chin, the most blood-curdling shriek Jake Wylett had ever heard filled the air, making his ball-sack scrunch up.

The vampires about to pounce instantly stopped in their tracks, each hissing as they all took a step back, the Sheriff realising what that call meant and from whom, or what, it came.

The shriek was saying one thing: ‘He’s mine!’

And the thing emitting it was Susan Chambers.

Wylett kept his gun up as he forced himself to turn around, realising the infected surrounding him were the least of his worries. In the distance he could just about make out the glowing embers of the house where Travis Trent was taken, and the Sheriff could also see the blurred figure dashing through the rotted fields as it headed his way.

It was her, Wylett just knew it was, just as the beast knew the last of the group was the man who had murdered her little darlings. And if Wylett was being honest with himself, he never really thought Susan Chambers had perished in the flames. That much hate and bitterness wasn’t going to die that easy. And now she was coming to claim what was rightfully hers.

Even in his last moments Sheriff Wylett couldn’t help but stare in horrified awe at the speed at which Susan Chambers was tearing up the ground. Even by the enhanced abilities of the turned that he had seen, the widow was something else. She was running so fast he could hardly track her, straining to keep eyes-on, and the shrieking, getting ever nearer, ensured the Sheriff never lost sight.

Before Wylett knew it she was on the road, and heading straight at him. Even at distance she looked ghastly, her flesh charred black and steaming, naked apart from a few strands of clothing that had melted to her. The left side of her face was gone, melted by the fire, with the skull showing through at the top, glowing embers sitting on the bone replacing Susan’s curls. The other side of her face was intact, burnt and charred, but still there, with her red eye boring into her target as she shrieked forward.

Wylett grimaced at the sight. Some of Susan’s hair had survived on her right side, a few pathetic strands of the lush curls that had once flowed to her shoulders. Now they just reminded the Sheriff that the thing hurtling towards him had once been human, a woman he had tried to help, before she became a monster.

As Wylett was taking it all one of the turned came at him, obviously not interested in the widow’s command. Even though the man was snarling, with bloodied fangs and crazed eyes, Sheriff Wylett still recognised him from before. It was Bob Pritchard, one of the Brentwood Mayor’s civic staff, and a man Sheriff Wylett had never much cared for.

‘How you doin’, Bob?’ Wylett asked as he raised his gun, knowing he had two bullets left in the magnum. ‘You don’t look too good.’

The top of Bob Pritchard’s head blew away as Wylett fired. As he dropped to the ground Wylett could see the demon widow was nearly upon him. He turned his back on the howling banshee, not wishing the hellish thing she had turned into to be his last glimpse of the world.

Sheriff Wylett looked up at the night sky, still gripping his Deputy’s hand. He had always marvelled at the wonder of nature, ever since he was a boy, and in his final seconds it was no different. The stars never looked more dazzling, without a single cloud to spoil the view. Jake Wylett wanted to pick out the constellations, telling himself the name of each one, as he had done so on countless night-shifts as a lawman, but he didn’t have time.

Instead he stroked his thumb across the fingers of Lisa Gribbin, smiling at their friendship as he placed the magnum under his chin.

Jake felt the talons of the demon widow rake his back, but she was too late, and he squeezed the trigger.

Susan Chambers howled with rage as the gun went off and she was sprayed with the contents of Sheriff Wylett’s head, as his Stetson flew up in the air.

Too late to exact her revenge for what he had done, too late to visit sufficient horrors upon him that would be worthy of the pain she felt at yet again losing her loved ones. The disappointment in itself was almost as painful.

In frustration she picked up Bob Pritchard’s body and slung it into the woods. The other infected knew to keep their distance as the body flew above their heads and landed somewhere in the trees. Then the widow fell on Jake Wylett.

The Sheriff had landed face first in the dirt, and she began a frenzied clawing at his back, ripping away the flesh and muscle. Next she flipped him over, howling as she did so, and went straight at his crutch. Susan ripped through his trousers and in one scoop with her talons ripped off his Johnson and family jewels, howling even more as she threw them over her shoulder.

The evisceration just enhanced the widow’s bloodlust as she hacked and slashed at Jake Wylett’s body.

Next she went for his face, clawing it to shreds before ripping his head off and hurling it into the trees, but it still wasn’t enough for the creature that had once been Susan Chambers. She wanted Sheriff Wylett’s heart, she wanted to destroy it, crush it, just as hers had been crushed. She wanted his soul.

Ripping open Jake’s chest with her claws, hissing as she smashed through his ribs, the demon widow’s head disappeared into the bloody cavity, searching for what she desired with her snapping teeth.

9

Harry Trautman stepped out of the woods to see what all the commotion was about. As he stood watching the infected feed, Harry just managed to catch sight of Susan Chambers before her head disappeared into the chest of Sheriff Wylett.

Yuk, Harry thought to himself. That is gross as shit!

Not that he was surprised at the things people were doing now, people that used to be people, that is. And Harry was even less surprised to see it was the Chambers woman. She was charred from head to toe, still smoking from the fire she had crawled out of, but it was obviously her. Harry could see her property, just a glowing pile of ash on the floor now in the distance, but he’d been there when it wasn’t, when his wife had felt it her Christian duty to try and help a damaged soul.

Harry had asked her not to get involved, but she insisted. The retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant and Vietnam veteran knew a few things about life, and one was that people who didn’t want to be helped, weren’t going to be, no matter how much charity came their way.

So seeing the crazed widow hacking and slashing at the downed lawman merely confirmed Harry’s thoughts. And the veteran knew a thing or two about war, because everyone was at war. The war between the uninfected and the infected, the war between the uninfected amongst themselves, killing each other to save themselves. And the war between those turned into vampires, killing each other as they battled to feed on what they craved, human blood.

All in all it was a mess. But nothing Gunny Trautman couldn’t handle. He’d spent his entire military career bringing order out of chaos, the pandemic sweeping across his country and the world was just another obstacle to overcome. He was seventy one years old, but still weighed the same as he did at twenty one, lean and mean, with a full head of short white spiky hair, and a neatly clipped moustache, just as silvered.

Harry had even dressed for the occasion, donning his Marine Dress Blue Uniform, with a ridiculous amount of medal ribbon pinned to its chest. The only lax in regulations were Harry’s white tennis shoes, affording him more practical manoeuvrability in these strange times.

The one other minus point regarding Harry’s immaculate turnout was the dried blood covering the polished buttons of his tunic blazer and the medal ribbons, courtesy of the fact that he had just recently eaten.

Now he felt satisfied and ready to implement the next phase of his plan. As Harry flicked his tongue over his impressive fangs, and drummed his clawed fingers against his trouser leg, what he saw was not all bad, certainly the method of ambush used to trap Sheriff Wylett and his group appealed to Harry’s military brain.

Disabling the first and last vehicles in a convoy was text book, pinning the rest of the convoy in between to be picked off with ease. Gunny Trautman had used the tactic himself, as well as also being on the receiving end of the trap, so he knew just how simply deadly it could be. And sure enough, as he was taking it all in, a young National Guard soldier ran past him as she pounced on the priest from the group, dragging the injured young man away from another vampire as he screamed, and she fed.

Then Harry noticed more of the infected, working together as they pinned the dying survivors to the trees as they took turns to drain the last of their blood. He also noted how a large number of the night hunters had purposely offered themselves up as targets, ensuring the trapped group used up their ammunition before the other infected moved in for the kill.

Effective, Harry thought to himself. Crude but effective.

The veteran nodded to himself, knowing this group of infected were the ones he had been looking for, but that still left the problem of Susan Chambers. There were some people Harry just knew he wouldn’t be able to work with, and the crazed widow was one of them.

It had nothing to do with the fact she was infected, it had to do with her being damaged in a way that meant she couldn’t be reasoned with. Plus, Gunny Trautman didn’t care for the clear disrespect of the law she was showing, or the desecration of the dead. Sheriff Jake Wylett had been a good man, a drinking buddy on occasion, and the widow’s treatment of him now was unacceptable.

Just because Harry and the others were infected by a virus that changed them into vampires that craved blood to nourish their new selves, it didn’t mean they were savages.

So the Chambers woman would have to go, Harry was certain of that. He just wanted to take a little longer to analyse the people he was going to be working with, knowing the importance of preparation.

They were a mixed bunch, their number greatly diminished from the kamikaze ambush, but still workable. As well as the female soldier there was another National Guard Trooper, drinking from the priest as his colleague stood guard. The other infected were office types, farmhands, housewives, househusbands? Harry wasn’t sure, but he’d dealt with enough young men over the years as a Marine Instructor to see the potential in people, raw and untrained.

Gunny Trautman was planning to form a wolf pack, with himself being the leader. He knew it wasn’t the loudest or the fiercest wolf that led the pack, it was the smartest. It was the wolf who watched the others, analysing strengths and weaknesses, planning its strategy as it saw who it had to bond with to strengthen its position, and who it had to banish. The wolf that commanded the pack had to have the respect of the others, not because they were scared, but because they knew having that wolf as leader would benefit them all.

Gunny Trautman planned to be that wolf, because Gunny Trautman was different from the other wolves, different in one crucial way.

Gunny Trautman was different because he’d gone and gotten himself infected on purpose.

10

Harry and Linda Trautman had moved to Brentwood three years before the virus hit, finally succeeding in their dream of going back to a simple life, right in the heart of America, in the sort of town where it was still the norm to run the Stars and Stripes up a flag pole on your front lawn in the morning.

After fifty years of working and serving his country, paying taxes and risking his life, Gunny Trautman was all set for a new start. He and Linda had been as dedicated to each other as they were to their personal passions, Harry’s being the marines, and Linda’s the church.

They were high school sweethearts who married at nineteen, the week before Harry had shipped out to Vietnam. Over the next three years Linda Trautman saw her husband a grand total of five times, each time having to watch him leave and go back to the war. When Harry came home for good he was a changed man, but the marriage stayed strong.

If the start they had to their married life wasn’t challenging enough, a year after returning from Vietnam, Harry had to watch helpless as Linda came close to death during a stillbirth pregnancy, almost claiming her life as well as their daughter’s. Linda survived, but at the cost that they would no longer be able to have children.

So, by the time they had even reached their mid-twenties, Harry and Linda had already endured more than most couples would face in their entire lives. Rather than feeling sorry for themselves, the Trautmans’ only grew stronger as they built a life together. As Harry steadily rose through the ranks, Linda devoted herself to the church, working tirelessly to help those in need of help.

It was a combination that worked. Linda was a pacifist but knew how important serving their country was to Harry, and he in return could see how the church filled the unspoken void in Linda’s life, even though Harry had lost his faith along with the friends he’d left behind in the paddy fields.

Gunny Trautman became a career marine, travelling the world as he served. In the first years after the war Linda went with him when possible, but once they had bought a house, settling off-base in San Diego, she ceased her travels to make them a home.

Throughout his thirty years of service, Harry always felt blessed to have such a good sole as a partner, who would always be there to welcome him home. The last six years of his service were as a senior sniper instructor at the marine training base, so he was home every night for dinner, getting Harry ready for when he hung up his beloved uniform for good.

When it came, Gunny Trautman took it in his stride, just like everything else. Harry knew he’d done enough, serving in other wars and skirmishes, satisfied he’d passed his knowledge on to the next generation of marines. Some who retired from the life couldn’t handle the change, but Harry knew it was all about preparation. Preparation was the secret to Gunny Trautman’s success.

Prepare adequately for whatever, and the path ahead will be obstacle free. So, after his retirement party and a short holiday, Gunny Trautman settled into life as a middle-manager in the post office. He was done war fighting, and the seemingly mundane was just what Harry needed and, after a marriage fraught with worrying when he would be gone again, the choice was just as much to please Linda.

She’d stuck by the marine as he had followed his passion, now he was going to support Linda as she upped her workload with the church. And the veteran wasn’t leaving it all behind. He judged on civilian shooting competitions, and was always on hand for any event to support those still in uniform.

It was another twenty years of work and service, albeit of a different kind, and a time of enjoying life together for the Trautmans.

Harry’s final gift to Linda was suggesting they move to where she had grown up, and longed to return, the pleasant town of Brentwood. He had two decent pensions they could live off, plus Linda’s, and they both felt healthy and young at heart for a new challenge. The moment Harry pulled up in the town he felt at home. Clean air, clean living and good people. They moved into their beautiful new home, with land, and settled into the next chapter of their lives.

But Linda dying hadn’t been part of the plan. To think one of them wouldn’t be around, after all they had been through together, it just wasn’t part of Gunny’s meticulous preparations, and there was no warning.

Harry had risen early as always on the day it happened, just over a year after the big move, going down to make his wife breakfast. When Linda didn’t appear he took up her eggs on a tray, joking as he entered the bedroom about her continued slumber, before the veteran realised there was a casualty on his watch. Although Linda wasn’t, because Harry could see his beloved had already passed.

He laid the tray down and held her hand, shedding a tear for the first time since their daughter had left them, then he sat with Linda for a while. She looked at peace, and even though Gunny Trautman had stopped believing in a God long ago, he had always secretly believed his child was watching over them up in heaven. The smile on Linda’s face told him she was there too, finally with their little girl.

He took it all in his stride, ensuring a fitting send-off for his soul mate. Once the funeral was over Gunny knew he had to keep going, for Linda’s sake. He quickly made a wide circle of friends in his new town, volunteering at the local veterans association, as well as coaching and judging at several shooting ranges. If that wasn’t enough, Harry also offered his services driving for local community charities.

Within another year the ex-marine was constantly in demand, struggling to make time for himself, but Harry liked to keep busy.

In the end it certainly wasn’t loneliness that made Harry decide to kill himself, but the prospect of where he knew he was certainly heading. Thirty years of giving his all to the marines was catching up on Gunny Trautman. His hips were seizing up, his knees always felt as if they were about to explode, and his whole body was racked with arthritis.

Soon he would be the one in the back of the charity bus he was driving, singing or sleeping with the other old folks back there, slowly forgetting who they ever were. But Harry was a trier, so one day he hung around after wheeling one of the dementia ridden ladies back into the care home she lived in.

He was pleasantly surprised at how many of the other residents seemed to have full collections of marbles, and most seemed to be having a good time. But then he saw the recreation room. It was full of white haired old-timers, sleeping in their seats or staring into space, some were in animated conversation, only with people who weren’t there.

At least I gave it a try, Harry had thought to himself as he walked out.

‘Where you going, Gunny?’ called one of the more lucid residents. ‘We got bingo tonight.’

Gunny smiled at the man, appreciating the offer. ‘Maybe next time.’

The next day Harry saw his Doctor, finally admitting his mobility issues were getting the better of him. After the consultation the Doctor handed him not one but two walking sticks, explaining the importance of using both at all times until his double hip replacement.

That did it.

11

Just like everything else in Gunny Trautman’s life, he organised his suicide with exacting precision. His will was written out, with instructions for whom would get what, mainly nieces and nephews, with several charities also on the list. The house was cleaned, Gunny knowing Linda wouldn’t want strangers to find a mess when they finally discovered his body. Once he was set, Harry donned his best Marine Dress Blues.

He still got a tingle when he put them on. Just eyeing the Blues, with his medal ribbons loud and proud, put a smile on Harry’s face. And he always felt slightly smug that they were still a good fit.

Next he ate a steak dinner and settled down to watch television, satisfied he would know when to do it. The SIG 9mm pistol was next to the TV remote, loaded with hollow point ammunition.

Harry had intended to down a few a whiskeys, but he only got halfway through the first when he felt his hand going for the gun. Gunny Trautman didn’t fight it, he just tilted his head back as the barrel nestled under his chin. He began to take up pressure on the trigger, relaxed as could be, when something caught his ear.

Harry tried to ignore it, but it happened again, something on the news about a virus spreading.

‘Goddammit,’ he had muttered, resting the gun at his side. ‘I was all set.’ He turned up the volume on the TV. ‘Let me just see what this is all about and then we can get on with it.’

The first hour flew by, Harry’s curiosity peaked as he sat watching the news channels, all of them covering a virus pandemic that was sweeping across the US, turning people into savages.

After another two hours Harry struggled up, refusing to use the sticks, which were still in his car, as he changed into sweat pants and his favourite flannel shirt. Once he had settled back down, Gunny Trautman stayed there all night.

The next day Harry had listened patiently, waiting with his smartphone to his ear. Finally, a voice came on, making Harry smile.

‘Hello?’

‘How you doin’, Tucker, you sorry excuse for a marine?’

There was a roar of laughter at the remark. ‘Gunny Trautman, what in the hell do I owe this pleasure to?’

‘Nothing much, I was just wondering if one of you assholes are responsible for this cluster-fuck that’s rampaging across my country?’

More roaring laughter, twice as loud. Harry and Tucker had joined the marines together, then fought alongside one another in Vietnam. After the war Harry had made the marines his career, and Tucker had joined the Central Intelligence Agency.

‘I’m retired, just like you, but I’m pretty sure those boys ain’t got a hand in this one.’

‘Are you gonna make me call it in?’

‘Call what in?’

‘Call in that thing we never mention. That thing when I carried you through three miles of jungle after you went and stepped on a NVA hornets’ nest and got us both shot.’

More laughter, so loud a smiling Harry had to hold the phone away from his ear.

‘Well,’ Tucker started as he caught his breath, ‘it’s about time you pulled that ace out of your ass. You’ve had that hanging over me forever.’

‘Just keepin’ my powder dry, brother.’

There was a long pause as Tucker went silent. Harry jumped as the landline phone next to him rang. He sighed, annoyed at the interruption.

‘Hold on a second while I get rid of whoever this is, Tucker.’

‘It’s me, dummy. I don’t trust these things. Turn off your cell and take out its battery, then go and put the whole lot in your underwear drawer.’

‘Seriously?’ Gunny asked as his other phone shrilled next to him.

‘Seriously. Answer the landline once you’re done.’

As Harry had listened intently, scribbling notes on a pad, Tucker told him all he knew as Gunny Trautman fired off his questions he had written down.

Was it man-made, developed in a lab somewhere?

Tucker was almost certain it wasn’t.

Did anyone have a cure?

No.

Were the infected actually turning into vampires?

Yes and no. The virus either killed or turned you. If someone died they stayed dead. But if they survived the fever then they turned. The virus then controlled them, making people crave blood to feed and spread it.

What about the reports Harry had seen on the web, of people becoming stronger and faster once turned?

All true. The virus mutated the physical capabilities of its host. It wasn’t magic, just tapping into what was humanly possible in order to make the host a super-predator, and in doing so increasing its chances of spreading and catching its food source, human blood. It could even cure ailments.

That last part had made Harry press the phone to his ear.

‘What?’

‘Once a host is turned the virus flushes that person’s system. Cancer, Parkinson’s, whatever. It kills it off within days, ensuring the host is fit enough to operate to feed and spread the virus.’

‘Bullshit!’

‘No bullshit, Gunny. And that’s not all. It cures the mechanical stuff, too. Worn cartilage, torn muscle fibres, it’ll even reverse arthritis.’

Harry was about to utter another insult of disbelief as he heard a scream in the background, from Tucker’s end of the line.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘Nothin’ I can’t handle. My barricades are up and I’m packin’ some serious iron.’

‘For what?’

Tucker boomed laughter again. ‘I don’t know what it’s like in sunny old Brentwood, but here in DC it’s a warzone. The infected are rampaging, driven crazy by their hunger. I’ve already dropped a couple this morning. But now it’s dark, and the ones who have fully turned are coming out to play.’

Then Harry heard gunshots joining the screams. ‘But on the news they said it was being contained. They . . .’

‘Wake up, Gunny!’ Tucker bellowed down the phone. ‘Fake news! You should know better than anyone how well our government lies. It’s a hundred times worse than what you’re seeing on the TV. Martial Law’s been in since two days ago across all the major towns and cities. Have you seen anything about New Jersey on the TV?’

Gunny Trautman’s gut had done a flip as he realised he hadn’t. ‘Nope.’

‘That’s because it’s gone, the infected have taken over. Soon it’ll be the entire East Coast. Where I am is gonna fall in the next couple of days.’

Harry forgot all about his own problems as his marine brain kicked in. ‘I’ll get on the first flight I can.’

‘That’s what I love about you, Gunny,’ Tucker chuckled as another scream sounded in the background. ‘After all these years you’re still tryin’ to look out for me.’

Harry sat forward, pressing the phone to his ear. ‘The ones who are turned . . . They only come out at night?’

‘It’s the virus, something to do with the UV light affecting their contaminated blood. Once fully turned the sun burns ’em up.’

‘Tucker, you need to haul ass!’

‘Bigger picture, marine.’ A crash of wood and glass sounded close by. ‘Hold on while I get that.’

Harry listened in silence as he heard shouting and snarling, followed by three gunshots, so close that Harry jumped. He instinctively tucked his gun into his belt as he reached for his tablet to find a flight, shouting as he did so. ‘Tucker, Tucker!!!’

‘Sorry about that,’ Tucker had said when he came back on. ‘I got me a little project goin’ on.’

‘Tucker . . .’

‘The penny still hasn’t dropped, has it?’

‘What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you mean?’

‘We got a full moon here, and these fuckers’ are on a feeding frenzy, but I’m gonna make time for one more story for an old friend.’

12

Harry had assumed Tucker was in shock. His old friend was in as much of a physical decline as himself, riddled through with the arthritis, and just as stubborn in believing it wasn’t there. But Tucker didn’t sound like he was losing it, on the contrary he seemed quite animated as he spoke.

So Harry took the time to struggle out of his chair as he took the portable handset with him, slowly chucking a few essentials into a bag as he prepared to get going. If there wasn’t a flight to DC he could get on, then Harry was going to drive. His age and condition didn’t come into it.

As far as Gunny Trautman was concerned he was back in the jungle with Tucker, and just like back then he was going to get them both to safety.

‘My buddy from the agency told me what happened.’ Tucker began his story as Harry packed a spare gun and as much ammo as he could find, balancing the phone between his shoulder and ear as he listened.

‘They’re trying to see if they can synthesise the virus. Trying to get all the good stuff out, the super-strength stuff, and leave the other gunk behind.’

‘To one of those assholes behind a desk that probably sounds like a brilliant idea,’ Harry answered, just trying to keep Tucker on the line.

‘Yep, sounds peachy. Anyways, they get this retired Delta Force guy in. He’s in his late fifties and terminal with leukaemia, volunteers to be the lab rat ’cause he ain’t got nothin’ to lose. Had to wheel him into the lab on a stretcher.’

‘You got some real nice friends.’

‘Yeah, they’d sell their own children if they thought they’d get a pay rise out of it. So they’ve got this guy, real player in his day, but now he’s toast, literally got days to live. Then they shoot him up with the virus.’

‘What happened?’

‘Let me put it this way. You take an experienced war-fighter, a confirmed grade-A neck-snapper in his time, and you load up said neck-snapper with a wonder drug that’s going to cure all his ills, whilst at the same time give him enhanced abilities, and turn him into a blood sucking demon.’

‘Didn’t turn out too well?’

‘The body count got up to twenty four before they put him down, and only then with a firestorm of lead.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Ain’t nothing holy about it, brother.’

‘The virus helped him, I mean, it made him overcome his condition?’

‘Gunny, it cured his condition! Once they cut him open for the autopsy, the scientists completely freaked. Not only was his leukaemia in rapid reversal, but his arthritis was going the same way. This thing, whatever this thing is, cures the host of whatever they have in order to make them capable of healthy functioning in order to feed and spread itself. Word is that every cent of our Black Projects budget is being funnelled into seeing how they can use it to turn our troops into super-humans.’

‘That sounds just swell. Now just hang on until I get there, then we’ll figure out what to do.’

Tucker laughed again. ‘You still don’t get it, do you, Gunny? This isn’t a pandemic . . . It’s our salvation.’

BING!!!!

Harry had actually heard the light go on inside his head as he realised why his friend wasn’t running. He sat down heavily on the bed, dropping the sock bundle he was holding as he pushed the receiver against his ear.

‘You crazy bastard,’ Harry had rasped. ‘You’re gonna get yourself infected, aren’t you?’

‘You’re damn right I’m gonna get myself infected.’

Harry wanted to scream down the phone but he didn’t. He didn’t because the part of him that instantly knew his friend wasn’t crazy, the part of Gunny Trautman that didn’t want to kill himself, the part of him that wanted a miracle cure to his woes, took point.

‘You still there, Gunny?’

Harry sat silent. His body was crocked but his brain was sharp as ever, and it was analysing events at the speed of light. But Harry didn’t moralise over the dilemma, because there was no dilemma. He had planned to check out anyway, so what did he have to lose.

The insane decision Harry came to was the sanest decision for a fighter looking for a second chance.

‘Gunny . . . . Gunny?’

‘Wasn’t it you who persuaded me to join the marines?’

Tucker boomed laughter again. For a man planning to turn himself into a vampire, he had been surprisingly jovial. ‘I believe it was, and that turned okay for you, didn’t it?’

‘How are going to do it?’

‘That’s my boy, on mission already. Do you know where I am?’

‘In your house, and I only hope this thing is gonna cure your dementia.’

‘Nope.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not in my house. I’m in my neighbour’s house.’

Harry checked the caller number on his phone, which wasn’t Tucker’s. ‘Why are you in your neighbour’s house?’

‘He got turned yesterday, by his wife. I shot her and managed to lock him in his basement. Nice couple.’

Harry realised there was a scratching sound in the background, near to wherever Tucker had been standing. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘My boy’s gettin’ restless, so I’m gonna reel off the essentials for you.’

‘I’m listening,’ Harry had answered as he started making notes again.

‘First, you have to be bitten by a healthy one. I know what I said about how it cures, but that’s the host, so the one who bites you needs to be healthy, else you’ll turn into a Clacker.’

‘What the hell’s a Clacker?’

‘It’s the ones who are like trippin’ junkies. They’ve either been bitten by a diseased vamp, or they’ve taken bad blood. Once they go so far without a shot of healthy blood they go mad, drinking blood from anything, rats, road-kill, then they’re fucked. And so will you be if one bites you. They’re easy to spot, clucking and clacking just like a junky.’

‘But I thought you said the virus cures everything?’

‘It does to a point. Any biological condition will get zapped, but if someone has fucked themselves up with bad dope, then that nastiness is gonna get carried over.’

‘Got it.’

‘Okay. Now there’s a chance you won’t even make it through the turning, it’s about fifty percent fatal once bitten.’

‘Shit happens.’

‘The next thing is to only drink healthy blood. You have to drink fresh, oxygenated blood, from a healthy human whose heart is still pumping or just stopped. It’s the only way to retain healthy brain function.’

‘Will I be me?’ Harry asked, fully engaged in the insanity. ‘I mean . . .’

‘You’ll be you. You’ll be Gunny Trautman, only with fangs, claws and a kick-ass rejuvenated body. You won’t be able to speak, though.’

‘The teeth?’

‘Their roots. They grow right into your jaw, seeding extra teeth in case you lose any. You’re saliva glands will expand as well, along with a ventricle system that will grow in your throat, to pump the blood you drink straight down to your heart.’

Harry wrote it all down as he listened. ‘What about the claws?’

‘They’re like talons, the fingernails being replaced as the finger bones actually burst through and form razor sharp tips, intended to open up whoever’s on the menu. They’re self-regenerating, just like the teeth.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Only everything. Your hearing, eyesight, even the brain becomes enhanced, but only if you follow the rules, Gunny. And your heart. The ribcage thickens and forms solid tumours in the gaps, front and back, all for the purpose of protecting the engine.’

‘It all sounds good.’

‘But what?’

Harry had looked at the picture of Linda on the bedside table. ‘I’ve always been the sheepdog, guarding the sheep against the wolf. Now I gotta be the wolf to survive. I’m not sure I can do that.’

‘My boy’s just about ready to break through this door, but I need to tell you about this kid they’ve got working at the agency.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Don’t even know his name. He’s a twenty two year old genius, and I mean g-e-n-i-u-s. Everything he predicted about the virus has come true, and he’s got a theory about the whole thing.’

‘Keep on target, Tucker, and tell me what this kid thinks.’

‘I’m locked and loaded, and kind of excited. Anyway, this kid. He thinks this virus isn’t a virus at all. He thinks it’s an evolutionary quirk, thrown up by nature to set off human development in a different direction. A thousand years from now we’ll be living on Mars, clipping our claws and teeth as we fly rockets, and cultivating humanoids for food.’

‘Sounds plausible.’

‘Can you feel it?’

‘Feel what?’

‘That rush? Knowing you’re about to go into something that might kill you.’

‘Just like ’Nam.’

‘Just like ’Nam, brother.’

Harry could hear splintering wood and then a crash as Tucker’s neighbour broke down his basement door. ‘Guns up, Tucker!’ he had shouted down the phone.

‘My, my,’ Harry heard Tucker say as his voice drifted away from the phone the other end. ‘What big teeth you have, Grandma.’

13

Tucker hadn’t been exaggerating. A week later the pandemic had swept like a wildfire, engulfing the entire United States, as well as most of the world. Everybody was unprepared, not wanting or knowing how to deal with it. But Gunny Trautman had known exactly what he was going to do.

So he put his Dress Blues on again, only this time substituting his mirror polished shoes for white tennis trainers, a more practical option if all went to plan. Donning the uniform also helped Harry feel better about the madness he was about to embark on, seeing his years of service, putting himself in harm’s way, as some way to justify what he was about to do.

A pleasant spring had turned into a raging summer, so Harry smoked a cigar on his porch as he listened out. The night was drawing in and the turned were already roaming across the immaculate lawns of the residents of Brentwood. It was just the boost Harry needed. Never mind get juiced up by the virus, Gunny Trautman felt alive again just standing guard.

As he listened, hearing a scream or two in the distance, followed by gunfire, Sheriff Wylett had pulled up.

‘That’s some serious decorations you got there, Gunny,’ Wylett had called as Deputy Gribbin had leant across to wave. Everyone called him Gunny, even his late wife.

‘Yeah,’ Gunny answered as looked down at his medal ribbons, smiling. ‘I think one of ’em’s for needlework. You taking care of this old boy, Lisa?’

‘Trying my best,’ she had called back. ‘But he’s as stubborn as a mule. You not going to one of the safe zones?’

‘I ain’t never run from a fight yet, see no point in doing so now. But I think a young lady such as yourself shouldn’t be hanging around these parts.’

‘I’ve already had this conversation with her, Gunny,’ Wylett called, shaking his head as Gribbin punched him on the arm. ‘And she calls me stubborn?’

Harry smiled gain, nodding. ‘Just make sure the both of you keep your eyes open. Things are about to get a little frisky, Jake.’

‘Copy that. I’d appreciate you ridin’ shotgun with us if you’re staying. We’re gonna start clearing houses tomorrow, see if we can keep it contained.’

Sorry, partner, but I got other plans, Harry had thought as he smiled again. He didn’t like lying to Jake Wylett, or Lisa Gribbin, two people who he had become friends with, both knowing the value of having someone like Gunny Trautman around.

‘Just come get me when you need me,’ Harry called out as he held up a pistol grip Mossberg shotgun. ‘I’m good to go.’

‘A bunch of us are meetin’ up early, at Lou and Betty’s Diner in the morning. Breakfast’s on me.’

‘I never turn down a free meal. I’ll see you both there.’

And with that agreed the only two remaining Brentwood Police Officers drove off. Harry had decided he would probably go, just for the day, to see what he could find out. He still hadn’t actually met an infected person, so maybe breakfast at Lou’s wasn’t such a bad idea. Harry could postpone his conversion for a day or two.

Cigar smoked, he grabbed the two walking sticks and went to head inside. Harry had made himself start using the sticks as a way to reinforce his mind-set. Seeing what was his future, with a stick in each hand, had made him more determined than ever to go ahead with his crazy mission.

But before the veteran could close his front door, a rustling noise had caught his ear. As Harry spun back around, his arthritic hips protesting at the sudden movement, he’d gotten his first look at a person who had turned.

She stumbled out of the bushes at the side of his garden, making her way across Harry’s lawn. Even in her dishevelled state he recognised her. Harry didn’t know the woman’s name but did know that she owned an organic café, and that she was also a keen marathon runner.

Gunny Trautman had already purchased a Bite Suit, the same type the police used to train their dogs. It was padded, with a face guard, and would do the job. Harry had even cut off the left arm, intending to dangle that part of him to get bitten. The only problem was it had taken him an hour to get into it, and even more time to get out of it. He had visions of turning and being stuck inside the thing, so that part of his mission was abandoned.

But now he just couldn’t turn down a golden opportunity. Harry quickly rolled up his left sleeve as he called out. ‘Hey, darlin, where you been?’

The organic café owner’s demeanour changed in an instant as Harry stepped back out and into the light of his porch. She locked her red eyes with his, hissing as she did so. Even though he was prepared, it was still a chilling sight for the Vietnam veteran.

But there was no going back as Harry threw his sticks aside and gripped the shotgun. ‘Supper’s here!’

Then she did that thing he’d seen on TV. The woman dipped her chin as she eyeballed him, at same time crouching as she sniffed the air, then . . . charge!!!

Harry caught his breath in shock at the speed of the turned woman. Before he knew it she was on his porch and nearly on him, but it wasn’t the first time someone had come at Harry with the intention of killing him. He planted his feet, stabilising his aching hips as he squeezed the Mossberg’s trigger.

The first round of buckshot didn’t even slow the woman, and Harry pressed his back against the wood cladding behind him as he racked up the shotgun, blasting another two shells into the vampire’s midsection.

As she had stumbled forward, her snapping jaw inbound, Harry threw the Mossberg as he drew his SIG pistol, at the same time bringing up his bare left arm. He had actually heard the pop of his skin as the woman’s fangs sunk all the way to her gums.

The pain from the bite was negligible, partly due to the sharpness of her teeth, and partly due to Harry’s adrenaline rush, but it was the force of the woman’s jaw that made Harry realise how stupid he’d been. The infected café owner had been damaged by the three rounds of buckshot, but her bloodlust had taken over as she drank greedily, clamping her jaw ever tighter to ensure her meal didn’t flee.

Harry’s arm was going to snap if he couldn’t get her off. He managed to press the SIG against the bucking woman’s head, staring into her demon red eyes, knowing it was too late to change his mind.

‘Honey, you’re way too rough for a first date.’

He fanned the trigger, taking off the top of her head with the hollow point rounds. Even then she didn’t want to give up, but then her demon eyes rolled back and she slumped forward, landing on Harry as they both crashed through his doorway.

The dead weight was a struggle to crawl from under, but Harry managed it, knowing he had to move as fast as his aged frame would allow. The downstairs bathroom was prepared, with blankets and quilts lining the tub, with the door reinforced and the window boarded.

Harry’s heart was racing, convincing himself he could actually feel the virus crawling under his skin. He stopped, turning back to drag the dead woman inside, realising that if Jake Wylett saw an open door, he was bound to investigate. He locked up then headed into his fortified chamber. Sweat was dripping off him as Harry squinted against the mother of all headaches hitting him, but he still knew the importance of preparation.

As he collapsed into the tub Harry cleaned and sterilised the bite mark, blinking through sweat tears as his body went into transformation, or death.

Just as he was about to drop into unconsciousness Harry’s chest felt as if it was going to explode. He stared wide eyed up at the ceiling, panting frantically.

‘Oh shit!’ he had gasped. ‘I think I fucked up!’

14

Harry’s eyelids had snapped open. He laid still, not sure if he’d been dreaming it all, or if it had actually happened, and he was in fact dead. But he was alive, and felt great. The sweats and chest pains were no more, but then he felt a sharp stinging on the back of his hand. Harry looked down.

A chink of sunlight had made its way through the boarded up window, and was settled just under his knuckles. He pulled his hand away, intending to issue an obscenity, but the words stuck in his throat as a pain bolt shot up into his brain. Harry felt under his chin and around his windpipe. He could already feel the swelling.

Next he ran his tongue over his teeth, instantly drawing blood from the forming razor sharp Canines, already extended. Harry drew more blood as he felt over his Incisors, which were no bigger but sharper than a scalpel.

Need to watch that, he thought to himself, as something else caught his attention.

There was a scratching noise coming from somewhere. Harry smiled as he looked up at the ceiling and saw a spider walking across the paintwork. The sound he could hear was the spider’s feet, there delicate movement picked up by his enhanced hearing.

Working already!

Harry sprang out of the bathtub, keen to check himself in the mirror. His hand caught on one of the quilts, his newly formed talon hooking the cloth. Harry smiled again as he looked in the mirror. He would normally don a pair of reading glasses, but not anymore. His eyes were bloodshot but the vision they were sending back was crystal clear.

All in all it had gone to plan. Harry hadn’t died and the virus had done what it was supposed to, now his stomach was telling him he had to satisfy his end of the bargain. The hunger pains were hitting hard.

Harry cracked open the door of his bathroom, peering out. The sun spilling through the windows was across the other side of the room, meaning it was late afternoon. He stepped out, careful to stay in the shadows. The dead woman was where Harry had left her. He crept across his lounge and bounded up the stairs, dodging the light as he went.

Gunny Trautman was halfway along his upstairs landing when he stopped suddenly, smiling wider than ever as his new fangs poked out. He was standing upright, chest out, stomach in, marine style, and he was pain free, apart from his stomach. But the main thing making Harry smile was the fact he was moving with the grace of a gazelle.

Tucker, you crazy bastard. You’ve gone and cured me!

Harry had to wait until the sun had fully gone down before he could venture out to feed, and he knew exactly where to go. When the arthritis had kicked in Harry had tried to hold it at bay by visiting the gym, keeping mobile. The gym he had called upon was only a mile from his house, and it was all very snazzy, offering various blended smoothies to finish off whatever class had been attended.

Harry had visited once, only to notice the two young trainers sniggering behind his back as he struggled along on the cross-trainer. It was both humiliating and infuriating. A decade earlier he would still have been able to take them both on, but age had caught up with the veteran. He left and never went back.

But even if the two hipster trainers were disrespectful assholes, Harry assumed they’d make a first healthy meal. The payback would be an added bonus.

Gunny Trautman covered the distance in no time at all. The gym was boarded up, but he could see, and hear, movement inside. Harry’s tactical brain kicked in. He climbed up a drainpipe and onto the roof, silently opening up a skylight and dropping through. There were two people inside, hiding in the office, the two that had made fun of him.

They both edged their way out, hearing someone was inside, inching forward, each armed with a baseball bat.

One dropped his bat at what they saw. Harry was on the cross-trainer, the same one they had mocked him for using, only now he was cranking out the reps, smiling wide at them as he went, careful to show off his new fangs.

The two idiots bolted in opposite directions, but the upgraded Gunny Trautman was on them both in a second, drinking one dry as he pinned the other to the wall. The next meal screamed as he saw his friend perish, only to go the same way. Harry heard a noise as he finished up, realising a third man was trying to break the boards to get out. He pulled him back, drinking just as greedily as the third victim’s blood mixed with the others, all spoiling Gunny Trautman’s hard-earned medal ribbons.

Once finished up and fully satisfied Harry sat down onto a weights bench, letting out a long, low belch, accompanied by a blood bubble escaping from his lips.

Sweetest thing I ever tasted.

Harry spent the next couple of days getting his bearings, acclimatising to his new self. The loss of speech was easily worth it as the veteran constantly astounded himself at his enhanced strength and speed of manoeuvrability. He quickly learnt not to give in to the hunger too easily, only feeding when he had to, and always enjoying his meal.

The residents of Brentwood were fleeing on mass, but still as many thought they could stick it out, offering a steady menu. On the third day Harry watched from high up in the trees as Sheriff Wylett and Deputy Gribbin entered his house with guns drawn. He purposely kept his distance, still retaining his discipline, and not wanting to harm either. Tucker had been right again, what you were in life you carried with you when you turned.

As long as he followed the rules, Gunny Trautman was sure he could remain just that.

He purposely sought out other infected, healthy ones, to see how they reacted to another turned. Even when feeding they didn’t seem bothered by him, just keeping a demon eye on the visitor. On the fourth day, the day before the doomed posse had called at the widow’s house, Harry met his first Clucker.

It came up on him, shaking like a demented junky as it snapped its jaws at the air, clumsily clawing at Harry. He easily side-stepped the lunging arm of the thing that had once been a young man, knocking the Clucker to the ground before he drove his trainer heel down onto its head, killing the pitiful creature instantly.

Harry saw another killed an hour later, watching as three healthy vampires eviscerated the Clucker. It was obvious that they, like he, were turning into apex predators, refining their new species to abandon any impurities. Survival of the fittest.

Maybe the genius kid Tucker had told him of was right. Maybe the virus really was a bizarre next step in human evolution.

As always, Harry had been painstaking in his preparation, but he could do no more. His new teeth and talons were fully formed by the second day of turning, and he had even found how to form a fist, claws out, without ripping his palms open.

Gunny Trautman had quickly adapted to his new form, and knew what his next objective was going to be. It was time to form the wolf pack.

15

Looking out at Susan Chambers, there was still that part of Harry that felt anger at her lack of respect for the town’s Sheriff, and a clear lack of respect for a downed enemy. She wasn’t a Clucker, but something else, something demonic, taking all the hate and bitterness from her sad life with her as she turned.

But Harry saw no point in delaying any longer. It would be a mercy killing. He stepped forward, laying the brand new iPad he had purchased just before his turning into the rear of one of the ambushed pickups. Harry strode forward, noticing the two soldier vampires react to someone of his rank by standing to attention as he passed them.

At ease, people.

As Harry drew closer to Jake Wylett’s mutilated body, and the thing feasting on it, Susan Chambers popped her head out of the Sheriff’s chest cavity, locking her red eye onto the inbound Gunny Trautman.

Up close, even to a combat veteran turned vampire, the widow still made for a chilling sight. Her fire blackened frame, her destroyed face, and the remainder of her lush locks, trailing down by her demon eye, matted with the blood and entrails of Jake Wylett.

She hissed at Harry, crouching to launch herself at him, then exploded forward. But for a man tested in war, it was an amateur effort. Gunny Trautman dodged Susan’s flailing claws, cupping his hand under her chin as he spun the hissing widow around. Bringing his other hand up to the base of her skull, Harry snapped Susan Chambers neck so hard her head ended up facing the wrong way, Linda Blair style, as her red eye faded out.

He let her drop to the floor as the other infected stopped feeding as they all faced the Gunnery Sergeant. Harry was pleased who he saw feeding on Lisa Gribbin, grateful for the excuse to kill a man whom he had detested in the time before. Sheriff Wylett had pointed him out when they had been chatting outside his office, identifying the man as Danny Bridge, a small time drug dealer and wife beater.

It was the last item that had stuck in Harry’s mind, a man of the old-school, brought up to respect the opposite sex. Now the wife beater was making his move on him. But Gunny Trautman wasn’t the soft target that Danny was used to bullying, and he dispatched him as easily as the widow, tearing his throat out with one deft talon swipe, followed up by grabbing the domestic violence fan and slamming him down onto his knee, snapping Danny’s spine.

Then a third vampire rushed forward. Harry ducked the swing arm, recognising the man as an idiot drinking buddy of the wife beater, before popping back up and slamming his foot into the attacker’s leg, snapping it like a twig. As the hissing idiot dropped, Harry caught him with his talons, pushing his hand in and out through his chest, taking his heart as he did so.

Gunny Trautman quickly braced for more attackers but none came. Instead the group of infected all stood in a semi-circle, staring at him in silence. There were about a dozen left. One of nearest looked Harry up and down, then down at the wife beater. Harry recognised her as the widow of the petty criminal and, despite her flushed appearance from her recent feed, he could still make out the bruises on her face she carried from before she had been turned.

Now or never, Harry thought to himself, knowing if they all charged him he wouldn’t stand a chance.

He leant over the wife beater and began hacking at his neck with his talons. After only three hefty blows Danny Bridge’s head came free. Harry stood, gripping the severed head by its hair, looking out at the silent faces watching him. He stepped forward, carefully laying the head at the feet of the battered wife.

As Harry straightened up he placed his hand over his heart, knowing that in every culture and country he had ever experienced, the hand on heart gesture always helped. A universal sign of peace.

No one moved as they all stood ready. The wife looked down at the head then up at Harry, then back down at the head of the man who had caused her so much pain, smiling as she did so. With pause and grace she pulled her foot back and delivered a perfect kick, launching the head so high amongst the trees that they all had to crane their necks to follow its trajectory.

Looking back to Harry, she smiled again. Now he had to make his pitch. Walking back to the pickup Harry grabbed the iPad as they all gathered on the road, standing in the moonlight as Harry typed.

He had bought the device to hopefully use once he had turned, practising typing with a single claw since his successful conversion. If anything, typing with the pointed talon was actually easier, offering more accuracy when cranking out letters on the screen keys. Harry had selected the brightest white background, with the boldest, darkest text as contrast, all lit up on the biggest screen available. Once finished he held it up, slowly arcing so that they could all read.

WE MUST DRINK ONLY FRESH, OXYGENATED BLOOD

Harry lowered it back down as he looked around. His potential wolf pack were nodding.

IT MUST BE FRESH, FROM SOMEONE YOU HAVE JUST KILLED, OR YOU KNOW HAS JUST DIED.

More nodding.

YOU MUST NEVER DRINK ANIMAL BLOOD, NO MATTER HOW HUNGRY YOU ARE. ONLY HUMAN.

Harry wanted to future-proof his troops so he typed it again.

ONLY HUMAN AND ALWAYS FRESH

As they all nodded again, Harry knew he had their full attention, so he seized his chance and pitched for the top job.

TOGETHER WE WILL BE STRONGER. IF WE WORK AS A TEAM, LOOKING OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER, NONE OF US WILL GO HUNGRY

Harry quickly typed more.

IF WE HELP AND PROTECT ONE ANOTHER, IF WE FIGHT AND FEED TOGETHER, WE WILL SURVIVE

Harry had learnt that the infected, including himself, would sometimes make a clicking sound in their throats when in groups. He assumed it was the start of a new way of communicating amongst the vampires. Now he could hear multiple clicks, and he guessed that was only a good thing.

I HAVE COMMANDED TROOPS IN BATTLE. I KNOW HOW TO BE A STRONG, FAIR AND EFFECTIVE LEADER

He looked around at his captive audience, clicking his talon against the screen as he rapped out more words.

WE ARE A WOLF PACK. WE ARE ALL EQUAL, BUT WE MUST HAVE A COMMAND STRUCTURE AND A LEADER

More clicking. It was time for the money shot.

STEP FORWARD IF YOU WANT ME TO BE YOUR LEADER

Harry planted his feet firmly in the ground, bracing himself in case it went bad. But even before he had lowered the iPad the two National Guard Troopers stepped forward, standing ram-rod straight as they presented themselves to their new Commanding Officer. They were quickly joined by the liberated and empowered Mrs Bridge, licking her bloodied fangs as she still smiled at Harry.

Soon, nearly the whole group had moved towards Gunny Trautman to show they were happy to enlist, apart from two at the back. Harry recognised them immediately, knowing he was going to have a problem if they challenged his authority.

They were the Jix twins, towering lumps of farming muscle, almost as wide as they were tall. Harry had volunteered to judge the strongman contest at the local fair, soon after Linda had died, just to get himself out of the house. The Jix twins were only twenty years old, but they had beaten everyone hands down in every event.

Afterwards they had got talking to Harry, hanging on his every word once they discovered he was an ex-marine. They told him they had both applied to join the military but had failed the written tests. Gunny Trautman had instructed the two giants to keep trying, telling them that the two would excel once in uniform. But it never happened.

And the reason for being unsuccessful in their quest, was the same reason Harry realised why the Jix twins were holding back. Neither could read nor write. Jake Wylett had told Harry the twins’ father was a brute of a man who didn’t believe in school, putting his boys to work as soon as they could walk. They had inherited the farm, but at the price of no education.

But Harry didn’t see two idiots. To a man who had trained troops for battle, Gunny Trautman only saw untapped potential.

As the rest of the group watched, Harry walked over to the twins, craning his neck up as he stopped in front of the two. He knew they recognised him, hoping they remembered his words of encouragement, because Harry was going to grant their wish and make them soldiers. Even if the Jix twins couldn’t read, write or even count, none of them could talk anymore, anyway. But there was more than one way to communicate.

Harry raised up his uniformed arm, slicing off one of his brass cuff buttons with a talon, catching the gleaming metal. He stepped up to the first twin, who stood motionless as he looked down. Harry slipped the gleaming button, carrying the Eagle, Globe and Anchor of his beloved marines, into the shirt pocket of the first twin.

Next he sliced off another button from his opposite cuff, slipping it into the dungaree chest pocket of the second twin.

Stepping back, Harry dipped his head and lowered his eyes, bowing in respect to the twins as he did the hand over the heart thing again. As he looked back up the two farm boys were nodding as they both smiled.

Gunny Trautman had his wolf pack.

16

Walking through the woods, Harry watched as his troops moved amongst the trees, confident in what he saw. They were already working as a team, spreading out as they all looked around, each one constantly scanning for threat or food, but he still needed to make some refinements.

Harry did the clicking sound with his throat and the wolf pack halted. He motioned for the two National Guard Troopers to come to him, which they obliged. Harry read their name tags. The short female soldier, with her hair still tied back in the regulation tight back-knot, displayed herself as GARCIA.

Her colleague, tall and lanky, read as URWIN. Both in their early twenties, both obviously keen and eager to shine.

Harry began typing, holding the iPad for Garcia to read.

GARCIA, I WANT YOU TO TAKE POINT AND BE OUR SCOUT

Garcia beamed a smile at her promotion as she ran off to take the lead. Harry was expert in assessing those who wanted to serve, knowing how to bring out the best in them. Garcia was itching to prove herself, easily up to the task, whereas Harry could see Urwin needed a boost to his self-confidence.

URWIN, I NEED SOMEONE I CAN RELY ON TO BRING UP THE REAR AND WATCH OUR SIX

Urwin literally grew an inch at the endorsement, nodding eagerly as he bounded off to take up his position.

The Jix twins already had their roles, self-appointed and without argument. They were Gunny Trautman’s bodyguards, flanking the veteran on either side as they carried his token of loyalty and friendship with them.

Harry had recognised another member of his wolf pack as they made their way. He signalled for the young man to come to him. He was the teenage shop assistant who had set up his new iPad, only a week earlier. But, again, Harry saw untapped potential.

The virus cured all ills bar acne, which still dotted the youngster’s chin and cheeks. As he looked between the giant twins, Harry handed him the Tablet. ?

The boy looked frightened, even with his new fangs and claws, but then he realised the question, tapping his reply before handing the device back.

WILLIAM

Harry nodded, typing again. WILLIAM, I NEED A RUNNER. SOMEONE TO BE MY EYES AND EARS

William looked relieved as he nodded, smiling as he pointed to the small rucksack on his back. Harry patted him on the shoulder, knowing he had made the right choice as he slipped the iPad inside.

And on they went. Harry thought the idea of the virus being the next step in human evolution was more and more likely as he watched his wolf pack. The pandemic had tapped into their predator instincts, dictating how they moved and acted. Each one was scanning their surroundings as they moved, aware of any potential threat, and sniffing for any food.

Harry knew that it wouldn’t be too long before he could ditch the iPad as they would become like a hive mind, knowing instinctively what role each played in the pack. A throat click here, a hand gesture there, or just a look. Soon, Gunny Trautman’s wolves would be equal to any force they encountered.

But a good leader had to provide for his troops, knowing, more than ever now, that an army marches on its stomach. Brentwood was done, with only slim pickings left on the menu, and the pack knew it.

They were heading to the next town, to feed on the good people of Silchester.

Before Harry knew it, the night was giving way to his new enemy, the sun. But, as always, the veteran was prepared, and the route Harry had plotted through the forest not only had taken his wolf pack to the outskirts of their new feeding ground, it had also taken them to shelter. The abandoned coalmine was perfect. Deep, dark and nowhere an uninfected would dare to venture.

But as Garcia went in first, she was bowled over by a fleeing man, an uninfected. He dodged through the group, running for his life as a multitude of slashing talons missed him, only to be brought to the ground by Urwin.

Harry smiled at his rear-gunner, pleased with the junior soldier’s skill. Urwin pulled the screaming wretch over to the group, just as they rushed in to feed again, only to stop in their tracks as Gunny Trautman hissed.

The veteran noticed they had been joined several miles back by a youngster, the girl no more than nine or ten. She was wearing a ballerina costume, complete with tutu skirt, and she was fully turned. Harry parted the pack as he beckoned her through, taking the little girl’s hand. He could see she was ravenous with hunger, and so her need was greater than the others.

Harry gently pushed her towards Urwin and the whimpering catch, watching as she fell on the man’s throat and fed with a frenzy.

William knew to hand the iPad to Harry, and the veteran nodded his gratitude as he typed, holding up the device once finished.

IF ONE OF US HAS GONE WITHOUT FOOD, THEN THEY EAT FIRST. IF WE HAVE ONLY A LITTLE FOOD BETWEEN US, THEN WE ONLY TAKE ENOUGH SO THAT ALL CAN FEED. WE MUST LOOK OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER. WE ARE FAMILY NOW. WE ARE A WOLF PACK.

Everyone nodded as Mrs Bridge knelt by the feeding ballerina, stroking the girl’s ponytail as the little one drank.

NOW WE MUST SLEEP. TOMORROW NIGHT WE ATTACK SILCHESTER, AND WE WILL FEAST

As they slept, deep in the bowels of the mine, Harry organised sentries to keep guard, rotating them throughout the day to make sure the whole wolf pack rested in peace. Harry took the last watch, making his way up to a vantage point with a view of the mine’s entrance, and the now lethal sun beyond.

He was joined by the Jix twins, knowing it was pointless trying to stop them. They had become totally committed to their alpha wolf leader, following Harry everywhere, neither of them even sleeping at the same time, ensuring one would always be on watch.

From now on, wherever Gunny Trautman went, his twin bodyguards would be at his side. Even though he considered it overkill, the veteran couldn’t criticise the boys for being keen.

Harry took over the guard from Mrs Bridge, she and the ballerina now inseparable, wanting the two to get some rest. He still felt uneasy having the little girl as part of his pack, but his protective instincts knew she had to stay. Harry also wanted to get everyone up and ready as soon as the sun started to dip. He also wanted to check on his newest recruits.

They had sneaked into the entrance as the sun came up, Harry’s diligence in appointing guards paying off as the whole wolf pack sprang into action as Garcia and William started clicking out a distress call. Harry managed to reach the new vampires before the others ripped them apart, hissing for calm.

He sniffed them, three young women in their early twenties, knowing his wolf pack needed more numbers. Harry nodded to the others as he let the girls enter, leaving William to type out the rules of entry into the club.

As he roused them from their slumber, the three immediately bowed their respect to Harry, grateful for the safety of the group. Then he woke the others, preparing them for their mission as the night descended. Harry wanted to communicate without the iPad, knowing it wasn’t a viable long term solution. He lit a fire, using its light to show the plan he was drawing out on the dirt floor.

Just mapping out a battle plan took Harry back to his youth, making him salivate in anticipation of good combat and fresh blood. The pack looked spellbound as he drew out the town of Silchester, dragging a twig through the black earth as he mapped out their target and how to take it effectively.

They would probe the perimeter of Silchester, testing to see where the anticipated defences were. Harry had already adapted his tactical brain to think like a vampire and not a marine with a gun. He was going to coordinate lightning guerrilla strikes on all sides, probing and harassing the enemy until their weakest points were known.

Then they would attack on mass, taking one part of the town at a time, feeding as they went. As the wolf pack studied the plans, now with the three girls as equal members, they all took it in. Harry explained it all with throat clicks, pointing with his stick and demonstrating with his clawed hands. His audience nodded and clicked their apparent understanding.

But Harry knew the importance of prepping for battle, so he pointed to each of his wolves, showing each one where they would be on the plan. Then they were ready to go. The night had come and so they made for the entrance, with the head of the wolf pack leading.

As they stepped out into the cool night, twinkling under a star filled sky, the Jix twins rushed forward as another group of vampires approached them, shielding Harry with their massive bodies. Garcia and Urwin rushed the first one, knocking him to the ground, only to stop as Harry hissed loudly. They instantly drew back as their visitor picked himself up.

Harry pushed past the twins to see what they were dealing with. Four infected were stood back to back as his wolves surrounded them. They were dressed in lumberjack shirts, jeans, and steel-toe-capped boots, and all three carried the grime of manual labour on their faces. They had to be from the Silchester Steel Works, recently turned but obviously healthy.

The wolf pack was poised and one word from Harry would see them tear the four steel workers apart. But Harry knew he was still lacking numbers. Another four troops would take his wolf pack to twenty, large enough to mount an aggressive attack, small enough to command effectively. It all hung on Gunny Trautman’s next move.

But he’d already decided. Four strong, healthy vampires was something he couldn’t turn down. He quickly ushered them all back inside for an updated briefing, William showing the newbies the rules with the iPad as Harry hastily redrew his plans.

Once the new plan was briefed, Harry looked the four steel workers each in the eye, making sure each knew who was in charge. Then he took the device from William, typing two words.

NO MORE

They all nodded, knowing their wolf pack was complete. All and everyone would now be treated with extreme prejudice.

17

Harry looked at the iPad’s screen as they made their way through the trees to Silchester. Its battery was low but Harry felt he didn’t need the device anymore. He threw it like a frisbee, watching as the iPad smashed against a tree. William looked at him but Harry just smiled as he gave a talon thumbs-up, trying to reassure the ex-tech head everything would be okay.

The leader of the wolf pack was keeping an eye on the four steel workers, purposely spreading them out amongst the others, but they seemed to be gelling just fine. As he was watching a Clucker stumbled out of the bushes, hissing and snapping as it moved on the ballerina.

Mrs Bridge pulled the girl back as Garcia rushed over, but she was too late. One of the new girls pounced on the Clucker as a steel worker joined her, the two efficiently slashing it to death with their talons. They left the body on the ground as they both fell back into line, with a smiling Mrs Bridge clicking her throat in thanks.

Excellent, Harry thought to himself. They’re already watching each other’s backs. I think we’ll do just fine.

As they drew nearer to their target, Harry signalled for stealth. The wolf pack slowed, using the trees for cover as they got their first look at the town of Silchester. With a population of just under ten thousand, Silchester was smaller than Brentwood, and far more affluent but, crucially for Gunny Trautman, it had been hit later by the virus, and so had a greater number of uninfected left.

Some of them had fled, but a greater number had stayed, convinced their gated lavish homes could protect them. But now those homes had become like prisons, trapping those within who had left it too late to flee.

Harry eased his troops forward, seeing the excitement in all of them at the multitude of lights dotted across the town. He motioned for the pack to stop as he walked forward with the twins. Standing on the edge of a ploughed field as he scanned his target, Harry wondered if the residents of Silchester had even bothered to put up any defences at all.

This is gonna be too damned easy, Harry thought to himself with a smile on his face, just as a .50 calibre bullet smashed into the centre of his chest.

The exploding bullet blew a hole clean through Gunny Trautman, taking his ribs, heart and a section of his spinal column with it. Harry stayed on his feet for a second, bizarrely registering what an excellent shot had killed him. The wolf pack leader stayed that way for a moment longer before he swayed and pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground.

The Jix twins tried to pick him up, not realising, or wanting to know, their hero was gone. As the dungaree clad twin leant over Harry his head disappeared by the expert delivery of another exploding .50 bullet. The second twin looked up, only to be blown back off his feet as a third round slammed in just under his windpipe, taking his head as well.

A chorus of panicked clicking came from the trees as the wolf pack saw their leader killed. Garcia and Urwin rushed forward, neither clearing the treeline before they too were cut down by the invisible lethal sharp-shooter.

The crisp discipline that Gunny Trautman had forged within his wolf pack died with him. They bolted in all directions, some back into the forest, some clambered up into the trees, whilst some took their chances and sprinted towards the town, just as more gunfire filled the air.

18

His name was Billy May, and his name had become legend. As the ace defender of Silchester searched out more targets with his scope, laying down on the flat roof of All Guns ’N’ Ammo, Billy wondered at the bizarre circumstances life kept throwing up for him. He had been tracking the group of infected for the last twenty minutes, realising they were different from the other groups he had taken down.

They were well organised and, the most troubling aspect, clearly under the command of a military man, the white haired veteran donned in his uniform with more medal braid than Billy had ever seen. Taking the man down was necessary but not satisfying, especially as Billy recognised Gunny Trautman from a past life.

But Billy May wasn’t some Special Forces supremo, or a brave police officer defending his town. He wasn’t even a concerned citizen, paying his taxes and striving to better himself.

Billy May was a recovering alcoholic, and the recovering part had only been since people started turning into vampires. Whereas everyone else considered the terrifying pandemic as the end to life as they knew it, for Billy it was just the shock he needed to get him straight.

Maybe if there wasn’t something in him that wanted to turn sober, Billy would still be welded to a bottle, or dead. But the thirty two year old had fallen so far from the man he had hoped to be, that to claw back some of the old him from the clutches of disaster felt like he had been reborn.

Some men ran from adversity, whilst others embraced it. And Billy had put both arms, shaking from his body detoxing, around the challenge to stand his ground and fight the threat. It would be a valiant effort for anyone, to run into the flames as others fled, as many people were doing.

But Billy’s efforts in the resistance against the vampires had already cemented him into history, because Billy May had a gift. It was a skill that even thirteen years of hard drinking couldn’t destroy, such was Billy’s prowess in his speciality. A speciality that was now saving as many lives as it was taking, because Billy was a born rifleman.

Many could shoot, but a rifle in the hands of Silchester’s most prolific, although now very sober, drunk, was like a surgical instrument, cutting out the vampiric cancer invading the land.

It was a natural thing, Billy hitting the bulls-eye as soon as he could walk. By the time he was twelve years old Billy was state champion, with the only way up. At fourteen he won the junior national title, accepting the title with the applause of the crowd ringing in his ears.

Billy had tried to block out those golden years as to remember the happy times would only make him realise just how badly it had all gone so wrong. But lying down on his two storey vantage point which, as the store proudly proclaimed, ensured he had enough guns and ammo to see off several battalions of the infected, Billy had a memory spring into his head from that time, seeing a ghost from his past.

The hair and neatly clipped moustache were now white, and the wrinkles of age were clear to see, as was the effects of his turning. But Billy never forgot a face, and it was the face of Gunny Trautman.

Their first meeting had been at the event where Billy won the national title. Gunny Trautman had been one of the safety officers, standing over the youngsters to make sure the bullets only went into targets and not people. At the party afterwards the veteran introduced himself to Billy and his dad, congratulating the young man on his extraordinary marksmanship, and Billy had never forgotten the words that followed.

‘There’s an organisation called the United States Marines, young fella, and I just know a fine youth like yourself would do well in such an outfit’.

Billy had never even considered the military before, but to have a veteran like the Gunnery Sergeant think he was good enough made Billy’s mind up that was what he wanted to do. Gunny Trautman had given him his card, telling the young shooting whizz to let him know when he was old enough to apply so that he could point him in the right direction.

It never happened, and the nationals was the last competition Billy won. His parents divorced a month after he had picked up his trophy, and Billy went to live with his dad. But being a single parent meant no time for days out shooting, and Billy found other interests.

He left school and drifted from one job to another, still carrying Gunny Trautman’s card in his wallet, but never calling him. Then Billy discovered booze, and not too long after that he got acquainted with pot as well.

His dad had remarried and was going to another state to join his new wife and wanted the eighteen year old Billy to go with him, but the ex-shooting champ bailed out. Soon, work stopped completely and with no money to pay the rent, Billy ended up on the streets, and that’s where he’d been ever since.

He wasn’t a bad man, and certainly wasn’t a violent drunk, only putting himself at risk. Billy just liked being drunk. He liked the oblivion of it all, leaving his worries behind as the alcohol wrapped its familiar arms around him.

The years drifted by, with Billy becoming a regular in the doorways and park benches of Silchester, drinking his life away. He got word that his dad had died, and Billy lost contact with his mother. Being an only child meant he was now on his own. He was hurting inside, but the only thing that made Billy feel better, was the thing that had destroyed his life.

Then the virus hit. Billy had been on a particular rigorous drinking session at the time, passing out drunk every day for a week in the woods. When he finally ran dry the munchies kicked in, and Billy made his way back into Silchester in search of any clean bin that might have offered a half-eaten burger in it.

He hadn’t even noticed the National Guard units pulling out of town, not even registering they had been there in the first place. Even then he still went about his half-intoxicated business, prioritising scavenging for food, wherever it may be. Knowing the best places to find sustenance, Billy headed to his favourite Chinese restaurant at midnight, still not registering the screams and gunfire, as he knew the trash was soon to be thrown out, no doubt offering a hearty meal of discarded leftovers.

Bingo! As soon as the bags hit the dumpster Billy was ankle deep in chicken chow mein and stir-fried rice, all of it still warm. But still the committed alcoholic was oblivious to the vampires roaming the night streets of Silchester. Just as Billy was marvelling at how a whole crop of spring rolls could survive being junked, a dishwasher from the restaurant jumped into the dumpster with him.

The young man didn’t speak a word of English but, as Billy paused his feast, he needed no translation to see that his visitor was petrified of something outside, babbling incoherently to the homeless diner as he pointed to the street.

Billy stood up, still chewing whilst at the same time realising just how bad the dumpster stank as he looked out, right at the exact time a volley of shots blasted from somewhere. He dropped the roll, cursing as he ducked. Billy had stood back up as a National Guardsman dropped his rifle and ran. Then he saw what all the commotion was about, finally witnessing the thing that everyone else was desperately trying to defend against.

A group of infected were feasting on the restaurant owner. Billy had watched, his mouth dropping open as the woman’s blood spurt out from the infected clambering over her. Something took him over, making Billy jump down from the dumpster before he even knew what he was doing. Then his eyes fell on the M4 assault rifle that the soldier had left behind.

The moment his hands gripped the weapon Billy was transported to another place, and another him. The man he should have been. He didn’t care who the people attacking the defenceless female were, or cared. He also didn’t care of the consequences of taking the law into his hands to save her. Whatever the consequences, Billy May was going to finally be the man that Gunny Trautman had seen he could be.

He had never handled an M4, but Billy knew it was more or less an updated and compact version of the M16 he had fired as a youth, and taking charge of the rifle felt cosmic, ending his drinking career on the spot. But the infected were joined by more, now seeing another meal in the homeless drunk who had just emerged from the dumpster.

Checking the safety was off, Billy shouldered the M4, and returned to the craft he had been born for.

BANG, BANG, BANG!!!

He took out all three of the vampires feasting on the restaurant owner with a perfect head shot to each, before crouching to one knee in order to neutralise the others. Sensing the enemy in their midst the group of infected charged Billy.

BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG . . .!

And on it went until a mini-pyramid of deceased infected were stacked up at the rear of Billy’s favourite eatery. Every shot he fired had found its target, with not a single round going rogue. As Silchester’s Sheriff had rounded the corner, scanning with his shotgun, Billy had laid down the rifle and raised his hands, totally oblivious as to the reasons for the madness he had stumbled into.

He and Sheriff Vince were old acquaintances, the Sheriff having been an occasional landlord for Billy when he had been locked up for being a little too drunk.

‘Lower your hands, Billy,’ Sheriff Vince had drawled as he looked over the bodies, noticing the expert marksmanship that had dispatched each one.

‘Pardon me, Sheriff, sir,’ a shaken Billy had replied. ‘But what the hell is going on!’

‘Well, Billy,’ Sheriff Vince answered, ‘you just got yourself deputised.’

It had been a steep learning curve, helped by the fact Billy had suddenly become tea-total, and hindered by the withdrawal shakes that went with it. But, put a rifle in Billy May’s hands, and he was still a dead-shot, shakes or not.

Fully briefed and freaked out, Billy went to work. He got his all-time record a week into his new job, dropping over a hundred infected in one night. They had made their way from the Silchester Saw Mill, the town’s second biggest employer, attacking in one night, wave after wave of them, charging straight into the sights of Bill May, and turning him into a legend.

A week later Sheriff Vince and all his Deputies had been devoured when they got caught in an ambush. Once word spread that the official law were all dead, most of Billy’s fellow conscripts left, but not the ex-boy wonder. He had finally found his calling. The virus was like something sent by the Devil himself, but it was the thing that saved Bill May.

‘You’re not gonna leave us, are you, Billy?’ a young mother had called to him as she watched the other defenders pack up and leave, clutching her toddler’s hand.

‘No,’ Billy replied, resting the butt of his sniper rifle on his hip. ‘I’m right where I need to be.’

19

Climbing down from the roof of the gun shop, with the welcoming sun warming his back, Billy felt the tiredness hit him. It had been a long night, and he still couldn’t get his head right about finally running back into Gunny Trautman. But Billy knew the veteran would understand.

Seeing him again was karma, a sign that Billy’s past sins had finally been forgiven. Whatever the reason, fate or coincidence, the veteran was now at peace, and it was time for breakfast. Billy didn’t even have both feet off the ladder and onto the sidewalk before he was ambushed, but it wasn’t the infected, just some grateful residents of Silchester.

An old man slapped him on the shoulder, smiling with toothless gums. ‘How many face-suckers did you pop last night, Billy-boy?’

Billy smiled back, adjusting the sling carrying the .308 assault rifle strapped to his back. ‘About twenty, I guess.’ He knew the exact number was thirty one, but Billy didn’t like to brag.

As he walked more admirers called out to him.

‘Give ’em hell, Billy!’

‘Them vermin is toast if our Billy catches ’em!’

And on it went. Billy smiled and waved, still not at ease with his new status, and always a little embarrassed, knowing that some of those wishing him well were the same people who had probably stepped over his drunken carcass not so long ago.

Billy stopped as an elderly Silchester resident blocked his path, handing him a hand knitted jumper. ‘For the winter, Billy.’

‘Thanks, it looks warm. Did you make it?’ He could see the anguish in the woman’s face as he gripped onto the woollen garment, noting it felt like the itchiest thing ever. But Billy still smiled, grateful for the gift and the effort put into it.

‘Made it with my own hands, dear.’ Which she now placed on Billy’s arms. ‘You will be here, in the winter, I mean?’

‘I’ll be here, don’t worry about that.’

Relief instantly washed over her face. ‘God bless you, Billy May,’ she rejoiced. ‘The good Lord himself has sent you to guard our flock. God bless you, boy!’

Billy could feel himself blushing, which just got worse as more people gathered around, all trying to pat him on the shoulder or shake his hand. Finally he managed to get away, trying to navigate a route to the diner that was less busy.

Apart from the crazed blood-suckers attacking every night, Silchester still looked ordered and pristine. Most of the lawns Billy walked past had been mowed and there was hardly any trash on the streets, but then he would see one of the clean-up crews. Everyone had a job to do now, so if you couldn’t shoot then mopping up the dead infected was the next task at hand.

They were driving out the other end of Silchester, with several bodies in the back, on route to the fire pit that now never went out. Billy turned away too late, grimacing at the sight of Gunny Trautman’s corpse, half covered by a tarpaulin, his uniformed arm dangling limp. No one was sure what to do with all the cadavers left behind after Billy had finished and the sun came up, but burning them seemed the logical choice. At first they had been left out but the smell got too bad.

But now the smell of the fire burning them had become almost as gross. Despite Gunny Trautman’s hopes of a rich Silchester human harvest, in reality only about a thousand residents were left, and they were the most vulnerable. Families with young children, the disabled, and the elderly and infirm. The Mayor was dead, as was the entire Sheriff’s department, which left Fire Chief Hogan the most senior official in town.

Together with Doctor Porter, the two had organised an effective resistance with what they had. To the north was the fire pit, with football fields and scrub beyond them, which bent around to the east and west, which also meant that entire area was open and afforded no hiding place for the infected to attack from.

If they did come in numbers then the lookouts posted would have enough time to let Billy know he was needed. Until then Chief Hogan had installed various shooters around the edges of the town to keep any vampires at bay. He had enough guns, just not enough people to use them.

The one place to the east that was of real concern were the storm drains, and the Chief had installed an Afghanistan veteran on that side as an extra precaution. He was minus his legs, courtesy of a Taliban IED, but with a sniper rifle in his lap and his wheelchair to manoeuvre, the veteran was still a formidable defence, only not as good as Bill May.

No one was good as Billy, not even close. That’s why he guarded the front of town, with the forest and cornfields stretched out before it. The south of Silchester is where they came from, sneaking through the trees and uncut corn, springing forth at lightning speed as they attacked.

The south side, Billy’s side, was perfect for the infected. They could be in the trees before the sun even went down, shielded from its rays by the thick canopy, charging in as soon as the night fell. On all other sides it was too easy, even for the conscripted novices, all of them making easy kills as the less developed vampires, the ones who had not followed the same rules as Gunny Trautman, stumbled their way towards town.

The smart vampires, the ones who had followed the rules as they turned, and who were now apex predators, those ones always attacked from the trees and out of the corn, only to face an enemy defender as deadly as themselves.

God bless Billy May, ex-alcoholic, lethal marksman and saviour of the good people of Silchester.

Billy had almost reached the diner, trying his best to avoid any more fawning, when Sheriff Vince’s widow caught up with him. Billy had no idea of the state of their marriage before she lost her husband, but his widow seemed to be taking it all in her stride. Since his passing she had looked for any excuse to try and entice Billy into her home, and today she had come prepared.

A buxom woman in her late fifties, who obviously took pride in her appearance, she was clad in jeans and a denim shirt, with the top halfway unbuttoned and struggling to contain the impressive weaponry threatening to burst forth.

‘Well, hello, stranger,’ purred the widow, holding out a peach cobbler. ‘Made you your favourite.’ She leant into Billy, with her chest leading. ‘I know how much you love peaches.’

Billy took the cobbler with a smile, silently cursing his luck that he hadn’t made it to the diner without being intercepted again. ‘Thanks, that’s real nice of you, Judith.’

‘Anytime, sugar, and be sure to come over for coffee anytime when you’re free.’

Billy fumbled his words but managed to get away, finally making his destination. But as he entered the diner he was ambushed by well-wishers yet again, all wanting to be the one who bought breakfast for their hero.

Having eaten himself full, the only thing Billy wanted next was sleep. It wasn’t just the physical effort of fighting all and every night, or the mental energy to always be focused that went with it. The other taxing thing about Billy’s new job was the fact that he never could really forget he was killing people. Yes they had turned, and yes they were killing others, so yes he was killing to save, but it still made him feel awkward.

He had felt cursed since a teenager, and now Billy’s salvation was a different type of curse. He was gifted, but his gift was for taking lives. Maybe it was just God’s plan. Billy wasn’t so sure about God, but he’d be lying if there wasn’t a feeling of the divine in what he had been called to do. Whatever the reasons for his bizarre new life, Billy was committed to it, and determined he wasn’t going to let down the people now relying on him for help.

Billy made his way back up the ladder of his new home, pulling it up once he was safely on the roof of All Guns ’N’ Ammo. The actual owner had been one of the first to turn, but not before he had fortified his business. It had already been a steel box, with a brickwork covering, but the proprietor had welded steel shutters over all the windows, as well as cutting down the fire escape.

He’d also stocked it with enough food and water to see out even the lengthiest apocalypse, to compliment his hefty stock of firearms and ammunition. The only way in and out now was a steel hatch on the roof, which Billy had used to enter the first time he had visited and killed the infected owner. Now it was his very secure home.

But the recovering alcoholic was done churning it all over in his head. Sleep was needed because, when the night came, his gift would be called on yet again.

20

Billy woke with a jolt. He was sweating from being chased by Gunny Trautman, rotating through a succession of nightmares, all starting differently but all ending the same, with the marine veteran closing in on Billy as his legs felt like they were stuck in quicksand and he couldn’t get away, no matter how hard he tried.

He looked around the room. Billy never turned the lights off once he was entombed in the fortified gun shop, never wanting to be alone in the dark again. Laughing nervously as he realised he was still alone and safe, Billy headed into the shower as he cleaned his teeth. He didn’t know how much longer the water was going to stay on, so he savoured every second of the hot shower, foaming himself with sweet smelling soap.

For a man who had spent so long on the streets, sometimes stinking so bad he had made himself gag, Billy appreciated more than ever the things others took so easily for granted. It was his standard routine before heading up onto the roof to do what he did best. Next Billy dried himself off before wrapping the soft towel around his waist. His laundry was all taken care of, another perk of being the ace defender.

Billy looked at himself in the mirror. He was still sick-thin, with his ribs poking through his flesh, but at least he felt clean and healthy, and sober. Several of the ladies had offered to cut his hair, a couple of them had even suggested a shave, but Billy could only go so far.

He looked at his shoulder length hair and bushy beard in the mirror, happy to keep the things that stopped him from becoming complacent, a reminder of harsher times. Battling vampires was nothing compared to spending winter outside.

Looking over his folded up laundry, Billy selected a pair of jeans and a checked shirt, again savouring the smell of clean garments as he slipped them on. Next he looked over the various baked goods he had been given as an espresso brewed. Several of the strong brews were essential when pulling an all-nighter. Billy eyed the peach cobbler from the Sheriff’s widow before looking at the apple pie he had been given the day before. But he decided on a summer fruit strudel, cutting himself a generous slice.

Before Billy ate, he did the thing he had done every day since taking up residence in his new home, and before going up for his shift. There was a half drunk bottle of Jack Daniels on the shop counter, another leftover. Billy unscrewed the lid and sniffed deeply, taking in as bigger hit as he could of the liquor. In his old life, which seemed an age ago but in reality was just over a month, that smell would have fired off multiple signal flares, all commanding Billy’s mouth to warp itself around the end of that bottle and throw his head back.

But now? Nothing but revulsion and disdain, mixed in with hate. Hatred at all the wasted opportunities that bottle and all its friends had taken from Billy May. Sniffing his old friend was a test, a test to see if he wanted to go back. The world had become a very dangerous and uncertain place, but if Billy knew one thing for sure, absolutely and one hundred percent certain, it was that he was never going back. But hindsight was a beautiful thing, so Billy just screwed the lid back on as he smiled, placing the untouched booze back down.

‘Go fuck yourself.’

He ate on his feet, downing another two espressos after the first, anticipating another long night. Once the strudel had been polished off, Billy put a fresh battery in his radio and headed up the stairs. Opening up the steel hatch he climbed out onto the roof, squinting as the sun hit his eyes. It was still baking hot but not for much longer, and Billy knew the sun was already making its exit.

The roof space was just over fifty feet by fifty, with a sheer drop on either side, and the junked fire escape ladder was laying where Billy had left it, ready to lower if he made it through to the morning. The air was as fresh as it could be, with the winds mercifully heading towards the funeral pyres rather than the other way. It was a stink Billy doubted he would ever forget.

He looked down at his guns, not sure he was happy about the zing of excitement they gave him. The moralising about killing vampires that used to be people always came to Billy the next day, when he would run through the kills he had made. But as he prepped for war, Billy didn’t even try to pretend that battling the infected wasn’t the most amazing rush he had ever encountered.

Nothing could match the feeling he got from resting his cross-hairs on a target and making a kill. Nothing.

The .50 Barrett sniper rifle was there, the one Billy had used to take out Gunny Trautman, along with all the other guns from his newly acquired arsenal, all neatly laid out. Next to the Barrett was a box of the huge exploding rounds for the sniper mini-canon. Next was a longer version of the 308 Billy always carried, resting on its tripod and fitted with a scope.

He laid down the other 308 alongside as he checked on his M60 belt-fed machine gun, cranking the chamber to load and make ready. Billy also had a one-shot rocket launcher close to hand, but that was being kept in reserve for in case things got really bad.

There were other guns placed all over the roof, all for the personal use of Billy the shooting whizz, but he mainly liked to use the Barrett for far away stuff and the 308 sniper for the infected that managed to clear the trees and fields. There was a stack of magazines neatly gathered for it, all primed with twenty rounds each, and so far each and every round expended via Billy’s trigger finger had killed the vampire he had been aiming for, without exception.

He also had a snub-nose revolver stuffed into his belt at the front, and a Heckler & Koch P30 strapped to his hip. Billy had the snub-nose to use on himself should the occasion arise, loaded up with hollow point rounds for an instant exit if that was the only way out.

Having satisfied himself that his tools of the trade were all good, Billy felt more than prepared to go to work. He looked behind himself and could see the rear guard already positioning themselves amongst the rooftops of the ample deserted properties, the novice shooters having already smashed away the tiles to construct their sniper holes.

Billy looked over to his left and up at the water tower in the distance. Doctor Porter was already in position on top of the huge structure, scanning the trees with her binoculars. She had only agreed to carry a pistol as personal protection, but her professional eye had proved more than worthy in picking out targets for Billy.

He clicked the radio’s transmitter several times. Doctor Porter turned to him and waved, clicking her handset as Billy returned the hello. Next Billy checked over to his right, just in time to see a heaving Chief Hogan slump into his lawn chair at the top of the fire drill tower. Billy had supposed that the steps leading up to the top of the sixty foot steel framed tower wouldn’t be a problem for the man, seeing as he had trained his firefighters their trade on the thing, but Chief Hogan didn’t look like had had practised what he’d preached in a quite a while.

Fighting fires from behind a desk had obviously put some office weight on the Chief, which he was now burning off at a pace. But Billy liked him, and he could see the Chief was also struggling with the heavy burden of trying to keep the remaining residents of Silchester safe, as well as the physical one he was carrying around his gut.

The Chief saw Billy looking up as he mopped his brow. He smiled and waved, patting the barrel of the .50 calibre machine gun resting at his side. Billy had help rig up a pulley system to hoist the huge gun into place, as well as the crates of ammo it needed. Another gift left behind as the National Guard had abandoned them. The Chief had even been able to weld a tripod to the floor of his improvised gun tower, offering him a three sixty degree choice in his potential firing pattern with the lethal firearm now bolted to it.

All in all everyone was set to go to work.

21

All three of them knew something was wrong. No one had said a word over the radio, but they didn’t need to. It had been a good couple of hours since night had fallen and not a single infected had come. Billy would have been dropping them in numbers by now on any other night, but tonight there was nothing, not even one of the dopey ones, staggering along as it followed its nose. Nothing.

Billy was laying down, ready as always, but it all felt bad. He looked over to his left and right and could see the Chief and Doctor Porter with their binoculars wedged against their faces as both scanned for the expected incoming, but there were still no takers. Billy stood up as he keyed his radio.

‘Chief?’

Chief Hogan replied instantly. ‘I know. Something’s not right.’

Billy looked across at Doctor Porter and was relieved to see she had anticipated his request, watching as the drone zoomed off towards the forest. ‘Hey, Doc. Is the live feed working?’

‘Should be coming through, loud and proud,’ answered Porter, cool and calm as ever.

Billy switched on his monitor that relayed the drone’s video footage, knowing the Doc and Chief were watching the same thing. It was on night vision, ready to show up any heat sources as a white glow, but nothing was about, which just increased Billy’s feeling of unease.

The wildlife avoided the infected, just like everyone else, but he would still expect a bird calling or a racoon scurrying, but nothing showed up. Just a sea of black as the drone steadily made its progress across the treetops, beaming nothing back. Billy checked to his rear, making out the roof sentries.

‘Holy shit!’

It was the Chief, too often a master of the understatement. Billy snapped his vision back to the monitor, catching his breath as he did so.

He watched as the drone hovered over the forest as it beamed back its bounty. A sea of motionless white dots filled the monitor’s screen, showing more of the same as the drone slowly flew on. A sea of white dots, a mass of infected, all watching the town of Silchester.

‘I take it you two are seeing this horror show?’ It was Doctor Porter, still not revealing a hint of stress in her voice.

Chief Hogan came on. ‘Seems we’re popular all of a sudden. Billy?’

‘Nothing we can do now. Just point and shoot when they come,’ replied Billy, deciding he didn’t want to look at the monitor anymore.

He was about to lay back down, not really knowing what else to do but shoot at whatever was coming, when something caught his eye. Billy strained as he stared at the ploughed field to the edge of the town. It was the only clear space between him and the trees, about two hundred feet deep by easily four hundred across, bordered on either side by the tall corn, and had been where he’d taken down Gunny Trautman.

The churned, dark soil looked odd, like it was moving. The moonlight wasn’t enough so Billy grabbed a flare. He knew it was risky, the burning projectile more or less advertising his location, but something was telling Billy all was not well, and not just with the waiting horde in the forest.

He pointed the tube into the air and pulled hard on the tag, shielding his eyes as the flare whooshed into the clear night. Billy watched as the flare reached its height then followed the glowing mini-sun as its parachute gently drifted back to earth. He looked across at Chief Hogan, who was doing the same.

As the flare neared the ground Billy’s stomach lurched, seeing what wasn’t right. The entire field was covered in the infected, all crawling across the ground towards him and the town. Billy froze to the spot for a second, noting in slow motion that all of the crawling vampires were glistening in the flare’s light, each one of them smeared in wet mud to camouflage themselves.

‘Incoming!!!’

It was the Chief, and his words were immediately followed by the automatic roar of the fifty calibre as he opened up on the night crawlers.

Billy could just about make out Doctor Porter’s voice as she screamed over the radio.

‘The trenches, Billy. The trenches!!!’

Taking control of his fear, and the fact that it was a mass coordinated attack, Billy snatched up the .50 sniper rifle. He glanced at the drone’s screen, gritting his teeth as he registered the motionless white dots in the forest all surging forward.

‘The trenches!’

Billy ignored the mud camouflaged vampires as they all sprang to their feet and charged, oblivious to the automatic fire shredding into them. He steadied his breathing, resting the rifle scope’s cross-hairs on an oil drum sat on the side of a trench they had dug on their side of the field, running from the central main road and all along the edge of the field. It had taken a week of excavating with a digger truck, and a full day to fill with petrol.

The drum was filled with a mixture put together by Chief Hogan, the main ingredient being industrial fertilizer, and guaranteed by the fireman to go bang and ignite the fluid it was sat next to. It just needed a spark.

Billy aimed and squeezed his trigger.

KABOOM!!!

The explosive round smashed into the drum, turning night into day, just as the first of the infected reach the town, instantly incinerating them and covering those behind in flames. Even from his elevated position Billy felt the backdraft of heat, but he didn’t have time to marvel at the Chief’s pyromaniac skills.

He swivelled his hips to rotate his body on the second drum, resting on the edge of the second trench running in the opposite direction, and just as long and fuel-filled.

KABOOM!!!

A second false sun erupted on Billy’s left, lighting up the massed charge of the vampires as they broke from the trees, just as Chief Hogan’s gun fell silent. Billy looked up to the fire tower.

‘No!’

The Chief was buried beneath a group of infected who had sneaked past the three of them, climbed up the steel structure, and were now all trying to feed on Hogan. But the big man was still fighting. As more vampires clambered up, Billy grimaced as Chief Hogan bellowed out a dying war-cry and jumped off, taking three of the infected with him. He turned away before they hit the ground.

‘Bi . . .’

Billy snapped his body around towards the water tower as the Doctor’s cry for help was cut off. She was gone. Billy looked through the Barrett’s scope. On top of the water tower, where Doctor Porter had been standing, was a thick blood streak. Then an infected walked across the roof, on his own and in no rush.

The vampire pulled back the hood covering his head as he looked straight at Billy, smiling widely as he showed off his fangs. Billy dry-swallowed, knowing the infected was in no need of a scope to see him just as well as he himself was being viewed. He was bald, had teardrops tattooed down one side of his face, and was obviously relishing the fact that he knew his side were going to win. Billy watched as the ex-gangbanger flipped him a talon-clawed middle finger, letting out a war-shriek as he did so.

Billy aimed at the teardrops, registering the fact that every charging vampire seemed to turn their legs towards him. He fired. Billy thought for a second that the explosive round had blown the bald vampire off the water tower, but then he saw the smiling ghoul stand back up, relishing the fact he had dodged the ace shot.

It was the first time Billy May had missed.

Then the sky was bathed in red as the emergency flares went up from the rear of the town. Billy turned to see if the north side was doing any better. His heart sank as he saw it clearly wasn’t. The rooftops housing the rear-guard were already swarming with infected, dragging the Silchester defenders’ down for supper.

Billy grabbed his own emergency flare gun, popping the red star into the air to confirm what everyone else was about to find out.

Silchester was lost. The infected had won.

22

It wasn’t just the numbers that Billy knew they couldn’t defend against, it was the method of the attack that had brought them. Just from what Billy had seen he was guessing there had to be at least three hundred infected attacking them, more if the rear of the town had fallen already. But it was the organisation, the coordination between the turned, all working together to achieve their goal. That was the game-changer.

Billy had seen it only once before, that type of tactical stealth as the vampires worked as a team. It was the night Billy took down Gunny Trautman. He had tracked the veteran for a good twenty minutes, eerily fascinated as he watched the Gunnery Sergeant marshalling his people, pointing to where they all needed to be as they had prepared to attack.

Maybe the infected were becoming that way by design, working as a hive mind in order to secure their food source, their evolving predator instincts adapting as they grew in numbers, and their prey also joining together to defend themselves.

Whatever the reason, the result was effective, and Billy May knew his life expectancy had dropped down to minutes, if not seconds.

He snatched up the rocket launcher as the vampires swarmed into the town. Billy took a few deep breaths as he aimed at the school bus parked nearby, at the point where the road into town narrowed and created a funnel, which the infected were now streaming through.

He pressed down on the launch button, feeling the force of the mini-warhead as it shrieked forward. The bus was filled to the roof with another of Chief Hogan’s recipes, the final piece of their barricade.

KABOOM, BOOM, BOOM!!!!!!

The shockwave from the blast knocked Billy backwards off his feet, and rendered him deaf at the same time. As he laid looking up, momentarily in a void of silence, Billy watched as a mass of infected were thrown into the air, travelling up with the orange mushroom cloud. It was the most awesome thing the recovering alcoholic had ever seen, and it just made Billy want to kill some more before he himself checked out.

He rolled to the side and sprung to his feet, grabbing the M60 belt-fed machine gun, and let rip. The explosion had destroyed the entrance to the town, and blown a huge hole in the numbers of infected, but there were just as many ready to take their place. They were surging in from every angle, filling the streets as they hissed and screamed, all sprinting to be the first to feast on their captured bounty.

It just meant plenty of targets for Billy. He hosed them down, pivoting left and right as he worked the crowd, spraying the vampires with automatic fire.

‘Spray and pray, motherfuckers!!!’

A force of vampires broke off and made straight for him but Billy easily took them down.

‘Billy May, that’s my name!’ The battle adrenaline was pumping through Billy, and all he wanted was a little more time to ply his trade. ‘B-i-l-l-y May, you got that? You snaggle-toothed pricks!’

There wasn’t a piece of tarmac or lawn that didn’t have an infected foot thundering across it, and still they kept coming, and still Billy kept firing, slamming in a fresh snaking belt of ammo as he sprayed more death and abuse.

‘Supper’s cancelled!!!’

But, despite his out of control adrenaline, and the hordes of vampires racing below him, Billy’s heightened sense of being also registered the noise behind him as his hearing returned.

He spun around just as the little ballerina ducked under the barrel of the M60 and sunk her fangs into his shin.

‘Arghhh!’ Billy screamed as he brought down the butt of the M60, knocking the elfin vampire away.

She looked up at him with her blood-red eyes, snarling as she darted back in, too fast for Billy as he clumsily missed a second blow with the heavy gun, screaming again as the tiny dancer latched into his thigh, all the way to her gums.

Billy dropped the M60, partly because it was no good for close quarters fighting, and partly because of the excruciating pain signals exploding in his brain. He grabbed the girl’s ponytail, yanking back on it as he pulled the H&K pistol from his belt. But the girl was locked on and not about to give up what she craved, so Billy pressed the gun against the top of her head, careful so as not to shoot himself, and fired.

Billy’s hand gripping the hair flew back as the top of the ballerina’s head exploded. Even then he still had to pry her dead fangs away from his flesh, the tiny razors making a popping sound as he pulled them free, just as two more sets of clawed hands crested the roof.

They were the last of Gunny Trautman’s troops, William and Mrs Bridge. Billy put a round between William’s eyes as soon as the infected ex-tech worker looked over at him. Mrs Bridge peered over next, only to drop back down as soon as she saw her adopted vampire daughter was dead, emitting a howl of loss as she went. Billy went to move forward just as she popped back up, flying up and past the roof, then arcing her body straight at Billy.

He still couldn’t help marvelling at the speed and strength of those who had turned, but still managed to grab the small revolver with his free hand, unloading with both guns into the airborne vampire. Billy pumped both triggers, emptying the H&K as Mrs Bridge crashed into him. His revolver was trapped under her dead weight, but Billy knew she was no longer a threat.

He managed to crawl from under her, dragging his wounded leg as he stood. Billy limped over to the edge of the roof, gingerly peering over. The infected were strung out along the bottom of the shop, standing on each other’s shoulders as they climbed up. Billy staggered back as a multitude of infected hands gripped onto the lip of the roof, their talons scraping on the steel and brickwork as they hauled themselves up.

Billy took several steps before diving through the roof hatch, seeing just as many vampires breaching the opposite end of the roof as he flew. He crashed into the stairs, grimacing his teeth as he ignored the pain of the fall. More pressing matters were at hand. Billy frantically got back to his feet as he popped back up through the hatch, reaching for the steel covering.

The infected all surged towards him, but adrenaline helped Billy flip over the heavy steel lid, just as he was able to shoot through the closing gap, killing his last vampire as the hatch sealed shut. Billy slid the two dead-bolts across then slumped on the stairs. Even with their enhanced strength the infected wouldn’t be able to gain a hand-hold on the steel lid, it now laying flush with the steel roof, which was welded to the steel sides, with each window sealed and welded shut with a steel plate.

It meant Billy couldn’t get out but, more importantly, the ravenous vampires swarming over the roofs and up the walls couldn’t get in.

23

Billy staggered along the upstairs living space of All Guns ’N’ Ammo. The previous owner and proprietor had been a committed bachelor, dedicating the ground floor for his business, with wall to wall firearms and ammunition. Upstairs had been his private home, catering for the bare essentials.

A beer stocked fridge, widescreen television and an electric reclining Easy Chair were the main focal points, with not much else. Billy didn’t crave the beer anymore, and the TV had ceased receiving any signal before he had arrived, but the Easy Chair was a real find.

Grabbing the bottle of Jack Daniels, Billy slumped into the lounger, ripping his trouser leg to inspect his injuries. Tiny puncture wounds were weeping blood on his shin and thigh, and Billy found another on his calf, not even realising the ballerina had made a third hit. He unscrewed the bottle and tipped the entire contents over the teeth marks.

Billy knew it wasn’t going to make any difference. Cleaning the wounds was pointless in stopping the real problem, and Billy could already feel his heart rate increasing as the virus flooded into his blood stream.

In a way it made things a lot easier, knowing for certain what was going to happen, especially as Billy was going to be the one in charge. He picked up the snub-nose from the side table, clicking open the cylinder to check. One hollow point bullet left.

‘That’s all I need.’

Billy stood, limping over to the kitchen area, eyeing the baked goods he had been gifted. His eye settled on the glass dish holding the peach cobbler, frowning to himself that he never took up the offer of a home visit by the Sheriff’s buxom widow. He scooped a generous portion onto a plate as he popped the last espresso pod into the coffee maker. As he prepared his last meal Billy could hear the infected on the outside cease their scratching and banging. And he knew the reason why.

They could smell his blood through the brick and steel, and they could smell the virus coursing through it, signalling Billy would soon be joining their ranks. Avoiding friendly fire, they were leaving him to find fresh food.

Billy sat back down with the steaming brew and cobbler, taking a mouthful of the peach bake.

‘Wow, this is delicious.’

He managed to shovel the cobbler down before his hands started to shake. It was the virus, flooding his system as it prepared to tune him up. Billy steadied his hand with the other, bringing up the small cup to his lips, determined to finish his last espresso. It burnt Billy’s tongue but tasted better than ever. He tossed the cup over his shoulder then grabbed the revolver.

‘Under the chin or in the mouth?’ Billy asked himself, surprised at how calm and matter-of-fact it all was.

He placed the short barrel into his mouth, but Billy didn’t like the feel of it. He took it out and pushed it under his chin, much happier with how that felt. He could feel his heart rate soaring as the virus took charge, pumping the invader throughout his system.

Billy sat back, making himself comfortable as he closed his eyes and started to take up pressure on the trigger.

‘Wait!’

It was his own voice, but alien, as if controlled by another. Billy lowered the gun.

‘Why not?’ he asked himself.

‘Let’s just think about this, Billy.’ Answering himself, Billy laid the revolver down.

‘Go on then, I’m all ears. But you’d better be quick because this juice is jacking me up already.’

‘Would it really be so bad . . . I mean . . . really?’

The honest truth was that Billy wasn’t so sure that it would. He’d spent almost his entire adult life living in a world of pain. Pain from an empty stomach, pain when he couldn’t hustle booze and the pain that came from knowing he was nothing to nobody. All that time wasted. The only thing Billy had ever done that amounted to anything worthwhile was in these past weeks, defending the very place that had for so many years turned its back on him.

He’d only been barely surviving for the decade before, and had only truly lived since the night he notched up his first kill.

‘And don’t forget the old-timer, he looked like he was reliving his glory days.’

Billy couldn’t help but agree with Billy. He had tracked Gunny Trautman through his scope, watching the militarised vampire marshalling his troops, gesticulating with his talons as he organised and delegated. Billy had even seen the veteran smile as he patted his people on the back, clearly loving every second of his new life.

‘And don’t forget how strong they are, or how fast they can run. All that just for drinking a little blood?’

Billy snorted laughter as his vision started to blur and the shakes got worse, just as his throat started to throb.

‘Billy!’ It was the sensible side of him, making one last plea for sanity. ‘If you let this happen you’ll be going straight to Hell!’

‘Yeah,’ Billy nodded, ‘but I already spent most of my life there, so at least I know what to expect.’

He tossed the revolver across the room, his mind made up. The insane decision was the only one left.

Billy May, the recovering alcoholic who had finally made good, relaxed in the lounger as his eyelids became heavy, settling down for whatever came next.

THE END