Scott Anderson and his group kept to the shadows while they ran through the city. The area was completely deserted, but they could see an occasional building with lights on and decided that they'd play it safe. The sounds of fighting still raged behind them, and they had seen at least one patrol on their way to the battle. Their group was too small to successfully carry out an ambush, so they could only hide and watch helplessly while the patrol passed by.
They came to the hospital grounds shortly after that and entered over the wall to the east of the building. Scott led his group across the overgrown grounds to the main wing. The night was still full dark and dawn was some fifteen minutes away when he saw the glow of a cigarette by the door. He jumped to the ground and tackled his brother, who hadn't seen the sentry. Both of the men hit the grass hard.
"What?" Bill began, but stopped immediately when he saw his brother motion for silence and point to the hospital entrance. Two thralls stood in front of the main door.
"Oh shit," Bill whispered. "Not as abandoned as we'd hoped, huh?"
"There must be something mighty important in there for them to have stayed with that racket going on back there." Pritchard nodded towards the sounds of fighting behind them.
Scott nodded his agreement. "We'll have to find another way in."
The sound of breaking glass seemed to fill the night. Each member of the small group cringed at the noise and seemed to hold their breaths as they strained to hear any sound of response.
"Careful," Scott Anderson looked balefully at his brother who merely shrugged and pursed his lips.
"Do you want to take over?" Bill looked indignant, but he continued to remove the sharp fragments from the window frame and throw them onto the grass behind him. The two brothers were famous for their quick tempers, but everyone knew that the constant sparks that flew between them were purely cosmetic.
The group had spent the last ten minutes looking for an alternative entrance, but the building had proved to be more of a fortress than a hospital. Finally, they had come across a small window set below ground level in a small hollow and, as it was the only window that didn't have light coming from within, they had decided to make their entry from there. Even though the window was in a strange depression they still had to dig a small trench around the area just to get at it properly.
"Who the fuck puts a window below ground?" Bill asked no-one in particular as he ripped at the ground with his bare hands and cursed every few seconds as small stones tore at his skin.
"Not what you'd expect from an abandoned hospital is it?" Pritchard whispered. "We'll have to hurry; the sun is starting to come up."
Both brothers turned and gave Pritchard a withering look.
"You think?" the brothers replied with a sneer.
"Okay, I was just reminding you." Pritchard said defensively and then turned away as if uncomfortable with the brothers" stares.
Finally Bill finished and pulled himself through the narrow opening and into the room. The rest of the group waited nervously outside, all of them riveted on the small, dark opening. After what seemed an eternity, Bill Anderson's face appeared and he motioned for them to follow. The room beyond was tiny and it barely held the whole group as they assembled within. Scott was last in and immediately joined his brother by the door.
"Locked!" Bill Anderson spat out the word like a curse.
"Of course," Scott sighed. "This night just gets better and better. Next we'll find half the vampires in the city on the other side of the door."
"Don't tempt fate," warned Hackett as he pushed them aside and bent down to examine the lock. He grunted and then took a small wallet from his pocket and took two tiny metal tools from within and began to fiddle with them in the lock. The tools looked tiny in the grip of his huge hands but, within a few seconds, there was a muffled clunk and he suddenly stood up grinning. He looked sheepish when he noticed the others staring at him. "Result of a rather colourful youth, I'm afraid."
Scott smiled and opened the door just far enough to look into the corridor. "Well, at least the vampires didn't turn up," he said before he opened the door fully and stepped out.
"Not yet, you mean," Bill answered gloomily and followed him out.
"What are we looking for?" John Pritchard asked when the group had reached the end of the corridor.
Scott was about to respond when Jenny White interrupted.
"We used to keep the supplies in the basement before the vampires took over, so let's start there," she said and moved to take the lead. This was the first time she had made her presence felt within the group and Scott assumed that the familiar surroundings of the wards gave her confidence. The corridor was dimly lit by the first rays of the new dawn coming in through the window behind them. Scott felt very exposed in the open area and kept glancing around as if expecting company.
They passed numerous rooms, all of which were closed and locked. Scott paused to look through the glass partition of a few of the doors, but could see nothing other than empty beds stretching back into the darkness.
"This is getting weird," he thought. "Why clean up and lock all the rooms? Why are there guards out front?"
Every other building not used by the thralls had been left to deteriorate; even the ones where people still lived were slums. The serum ensured that the populace was kept in line, but it also ensured that people did not even have enough free will to make their surroundings comfortable. Scott shook himself back to reality and hurried after the group.
They reached a door emblazoned with a sign that depicted a stairwell. When they entered, they had to stop briefly and wait for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.
"Damn!" said Scott Anderson. "We have to hurry. We're due back at the wall in twenty minutes and we haven't found so much as a condom yet." He retook the lead and proceeded down the stairs. The enclosed space and the lack of light weighed heavily on the group. The short distance to the basement seemed to take an inordinate amount of time, but, finally, Scott felt the door handle and gripped it as a drowning man would a lifeline. He turned the handle slowly and opened the door.
The basement was illuminated so brightly that he was totally blinded when he opened the door. Spots swam in his vision and he closed the door rapidly and waited precious seconds as he waited for his eyes to recover.
"There's someone down here," he whispered. "There are more lights on down here than in Times Square."
The group readied their weapons and this time opened the door a crack to allow their eyes to adjust. Once they were ready they slipped out one by one into the corridor.
The door opened out onto a long corridor. To the left it continued on for another two hundred yards, with many rooms dotted along its length, and culminated in what seemed to be a dead end. All the doors were closed and dark. To the right there were double swing doors and, through these, a large open-plan room. The swing doors had small, in-built glass partitions, just like the wards. Scott Anderson crouched just below the partitions and peeked inside.
He could see two men in white coats. One was bent over a machine and the top of his bald head shone brightly in the fluorescent lighting. The second sat at a desk writing. Scott pushed the door open with the barrel of his machine gun and checked out the rest of the room.
The room's stark, neat efficiency was in total contrast to the rest of the city. The work surfaces were clear, except for neatly ordered rows of phials and bottles. In the far corner there was a large collection of cardboard boxes. Anderson leaned in further and caught a glimpse of three more people busily filling the boxes with bottles. The workers were obviously drugged. They shuffled from the boxes to the table where the bottles were stored.
The serum! The thought leapt into Scott's mind. Of course! That explains the security on the door. This is where they make it. We've hit the mother load. Without further delay Anderson motioned the others to follow and entered the room. "Okay, move away from the desks and put your hands behind your heads."
The loud voice startled the men in the white coats and they froze like deer caught in a car's headlights and stared at the armed group that entered the room. Scott moved toward the men and the other four spread out to look for supplies they could use.
John Pritchard approached the three workers who stood rigid with fear and tried to calm them. Jenny White raced around the room and pulled boxes and bottles into a bag, yelping with pleasure when she recognised certain items. Scott moved across to the cardboard boxes and looked down at the large, litre-sized bottles. The green liquid even looked evil. That was the only way he could describe it--evil.
"This bottle contains the single most devastating weapon against humanity," he said.
By the time the humans had accepted the real threat of the vampires, the creatures had controlled half the country. However, they were, and still remained, a creature of stealth. The vampires were devastating at night; they cleaved their way through flesh and armour with wild abandon. Bullets and grenades proved useless against their ever-increasing numbers. The military wasn't prepared for such an enemy and lost ground easily to the ravaging horde.
However, the acceptance of this threat, along with increasing public knowledge, finally began to hurt the vampires. A new type of war began to emerge: one of pitched battles with huge numbers on either side. And the humans had the advantage of a full twenty-four-hour day. The fact that the vampires were completely defenceless during the day had really begun to hurt them. Any advances they made at night were quickly lost during the day when they had to retreat to their darkened sanctuaries. Even the introduction of huge numbers of thralls only slowed down the inevitable and the humans had slowly begun to claw back their territory.
That was, of course, before the serum.
The vampires had introduced the serum into the food chain, infecting livestock, food-processing and water sources across the world. The humans never knew what hit them. In the space of a week the battle was over. Humans lost the ability to defend themselves and the vampires simply walled off the cities and carved up the territory between the different clans.
The world as we knew it ended and it was all because of the contents of this bottle. The thought burned inside of him, the anger grew until he couldn't hold it in any longer. "How can you help them?" he shouted the question and crossed to where the two white-coated men stood. "Answer me!" he shouted and lashed out at the bald man.
He had forgotten that he held the machinegun in his hands and Scott hit the man hard in the forehead with the barrel. The man flew backward and crashed into the boxes in the corner. Bottles smashed and the man cried out as broken glass pierced his skin. Still enraged Scott turned on the other man who cowered in the corner. He raised the weapon again.
"Easy," his brother's voice cut through the haze and Scott slowly lowered the weapon. "They're not worth it. Let's get what we came for and get out before someone comes."
"I'm afraid it's way too late for that."
The voice came from the doorway and everyone turned just in time to see the thralls enter the room.