Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) Read Free Page A

relieved as she pulled herself through and
surveyed the street.
    Surely the
whole point of having Forbidden Zones was because they were
dange rous and different. The last of the
group began to filter through and their silence spoke volumes of
their own disappointment with this ‘unknown and dangerous’
area.
    Ricks put it
most eloquently. “Hey man, this sucks. I thought it would be, like,
cool - you know.”
    She did know and she looked over
at Danny with a raised eyebrow.
    “Don’t worry; it’s just up the
street a little.”
    There was a
loud grunt followed by a curse behind them and then Seager suddenly
fell to the ground as he forced his way through the narrow gap. The
others laughed a little but they were far too nervous about being
on the other side of the wall so Seager was spared the full brunt
of his ungainly entrance. Danny took off up the street and the
others followed without a word.
     
     
    The further they walked the more
Emma Logan noticed the differences. They were subtle at first, the
buildings were completely devoid of life - they even seemed to have
somehow lost their colour and vibrancy. They looked abandoned. In
the city, on their side of the wall, buildings might be abandoned
but there was a different look to them, almost as if they were just
waiting for someone to come along to open their doors, roll up the
shutters and breathe new life into them. These buildings, however,
looked dead, if a building could be described as such. It was a
subtle difference but one which weighed heavily on Emma as she
continued walking. There were abandoned, rusted vehicles on the
streets, some crashed into each other while others lay crumpled
into the sides of buildings where bricks lay scattered around like
entrails around a fatal wound.
    The low cloud
seemed to linger around the cars and the buildings like a
magician’s cloak, hiding so much more than it was
revealing , and Emma shivered as she
strained to see into the distance. She looked back toward the
others and saw the same fears etched on their faces and in the way
they made their way carefully through the obstacles. Even their
footsteps seemed strangely muted on this side of the wall. In fact,
only Danny Wilkins seemed to be oblivious to the strange ambience
of the area they passed through.
    “ It’s just
down here,” Danny snapped his head back to check they were still
following and stumbled yet again as his foot found a loose brick
and he was forced to windmill his arms to steady himself. Despite
the subdued atmosphere the group managed a light snigger before
Danny managed to steady himself and continue on down the
street.
    When they did
finally reach Danny’s big surprise they stopped in awe and with
more than a little fear. Danny bounded right up to it with no fear
at all and Emma could tell that his standing in the little group
had just raised quite a few notches for his courage.
    “ It’s all
right,” he announced as he kicked the form at his feet, “he’s quite
dead.”
    The others
stared at the corpse but no one moved any further. Even in death
the Vampires were terrifying and demanded respect.
     
     
    “Are you sure it’s dead?” Peter
Atkins finally managed to ask. Atkins was a small boy of twelve,
though he insisted that he was thirteen so as not to be the
youngest. He had been in the same group that had been rescued with
the rest of them three months ago, but, unlike the others, no one
had found any other members of his family. He tried hard to be part
of the group but still looked rather shell-shocked at the loss. It
hadn’t helped that he had had to look through the unidentified
bodies of those who had died on the train.
    Peter Harris
himself had walked with him with his hand in his as he had gone
through the lines of the dead. There had been so many tears in his
eyes that, even now, he still wondered if he might have actually
seen his parents but had simply not registered their faces. He
still wasn’t sure if it was a good