Dominant Species Read Free Page A

a low profile and not to cause any problems to the vampires that now ran New York City. In return they found they had been mainly left alone. But things were changing.
                  The community was now around seventy strong and they had already created an impressive infrastructure including a council to make decisions, a church for much needed prayer and a school for the children.
    T he school was Megan’s idea and passion and she taught there daily. In fact it was Megan that had been the driving force in setting the school up in the first place. It was situated in the remains of a small neighbourhood primary school right in the centre of what they considered to be ‘their area’. But it hadn’t been easy. At the start, Megan had needed to fight to get the Council’s agreement, even though Megan’s father was the Council Chief. The Council had been split, concerned that large gatherings were dangerous and preferring children to be schooled a home. One or two had even the queried the importance, questioning the value in a world where the most important skill was simply staying alive, a world where they were now the outsiders looking in.
    But Megan had won out, arguing strongly and pervasively that they needed the structure, needed to learn social skills and needed to learn what had gone before the death and destruction that was all some now knew. She has said that it was essential if they were to have a future, lest they all become animals themselves. Finally, after much arguing, the Council agreed and she had worked tirelessly ever since to deliver not only a safe environment that their children could learn in, but also a structured curriculum that balanced academic subjects with the practical lessons needed to survive in the world they lived.
    The Council was where all major decisions were now made. It had been set up to manage their small, but growing, society and to try and stop the endless arguments about what was, and what wasn’t important, arguments that had seemed to define the early days of their lives. It was made up of a small elected committee, consisting of five members, of which Jake was now one. But times were becoming more strained and Jake new it. There was a rift that was beginning to grow between its members, and the feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo was becoming stronger by the day.
                  Security continued to be a major issue, not only had they to remain hidden from the vampires, a task that had become more and more difficult over the past months due to a dramatic increase in what were known as search and destroy parties, but there were other risks too. Perhaps the most disappointing were the ad hoc raids carried out by other survivors from the other groups and clans that had grown up on the outskirts of the city.
    Food had become a scarce resource. So there were only limited choices: steal from the vampire’s in the city, with all the associated risks, or find a way to grow your own, something that was easier said than done in the inhospitable landscape created by the Great War.
    However, against the odds, t his is exactly what Jake’s community had managed to do. Together they had recently started a small food production facility in an old abandoned warehouse. The output provided much of what they needed and the rest was obtained from the insurgent attacks on the vampire stronghold where they stole the rest of what they needed. But only what they needed.
    However there were others , as there had been for time immemorial, that decided there was a third option; one where it was easier to steal, by force, from those that had, rather than struggle to support their own. There now seemed to be an ever increasing number of bandits and lawless individuals that had grouped together to take the easy option of stealing and sometimes worse, rather than try and build a viable, sustainable community.
    Then there were the dangers that lay further out. Although