The Pilgrims of the Damned: A Vampire Thriller, page 14
“Because right now it’s conjecture and guesswork,” Thomas said. “No one wants to go study the desolate. There’s no such thing as a safe distance from them. We tagged a few, monitored them for a short time, before whatever screws with the electronics in this place destroyed the chips.”
“Can they smell us here?” Amelia asked, looking around into the darkness that surrounded them.
“No,” Thomas said. “Not unless you’re wounded. Once they smell blood, they are like sharks. I assume Miles had experienced that firsthand.”
“More than once,” Miles said, making sure that his tone told everyone that not a single one of those experiences had been fun.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Amelia asked.
“We’ll be going in groups,” Thomas said. “My Blood Guard and I will take point, with the familiars staying back with the vehicles. Would you like to join me and my Blood Guard, Miles?”
Miles realised it would probably be beneficial to ingratiate himself with the House Idolator people, and nodded. “Love to,” he lied. “Church, we’re going hunting.”
Church bounded out of the woods a moment later, as Thomas went to get everyone else ready.
“This safe?” Amelia asked.
“Hell no. Put your stab vest on,” Miles told her. “Make sure the collar is up, covering your neck. Make sure you wear your jacket, too. Stay behind Church at all times; she’ll keep you safe. You see desolate, you hang back behind us.”
Amelia nodded once and reentered the Winnebago.
“You watch her like a hawk,” Miles told Church. “Whatever happens out there, she’s your primary care.”
Church barked once.
Amelia exited the Winnebago a short time later all geared up and ready to head off into danger.
“You okay?” Miles asked her.
Amelia nodded. “Been to war zones before.”
“This ain’t like that,” Miles said. “Desolate don’t much care about any credentials or conventions that say you should be kept safe.”
“Neither did the people who were shooting at the unit I’d been placed with,” Amelia pointed out.
Miles nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s go do something stupid.”
“You think this is stupid?” Amelia asked as they walked toward the gathered vampires.
“We’ll see by the end of the night, I guess.”
Thomas was busy explaining what was going to happen while the vampires on the pilgrimage all spoke with excited tones. They were given a machete each and told to use it to decapitate any desolate they came across.
“Can’t we just turn to our vampire sides?” one of the men—Jeremy—whom Amelia had introduced to Miles asked. Miles remembered that he’d had military experience.
“Some of the people here are young vampires,” Thomas said. “There’s a danger of too much blood making someone attack with their fangs. If you drink desolate blood, you die. It’s as simple as that.”
“And it’s nae a good death,” Miles said. “Weeks of slowly going insane as the desolate worms its way into, and eventually takes over, your mind. You’ll lose whatever part of you made you who you are. If you drink desolate blood, wait until the morning and let the sun take you. It’s kinder than what will happen otherwise.”
Whatever good-natured mood that had bubbled among the pilgrims changed in an instant.
“Seriously?” Maeve asked Miles, who nodded.
“You ever killed someone who did that?” Jeremy asked him quietly.
Miles thought back to Sara Bakos, who had fed from a desolate, who had become one and had aimed her need at vengeance towards him and those he cared about. He thought back to her dying scared of who she might kill next, in a moment of clarity brought on by Miles’s bloodline power to disrupt the vampire and human sides of a person. Or in her case, the desolate and human. “Yes,” he said without looking over at Jeremy. “Trust me when I tell you, you don’t want that.”
“Ummm, who are you?” the other man Miles had been introduced to asked.
“Travis,” Thomas said. “Miles here is an Arbiter, although he’s not here on official business, as you can see form the lack of torc on his wrist. He’s long since been someone who has excelled in hunting desolate. His words of warning ring true, but they are just that, a warning.”
There was a low-level murmur among the pilgrims, but Miles ignored it and walked by the group, pretending he didn’t see the stares they threw his way. He hadn’t wanted everyone to know he was an Arbiter, but apparently that had lasted all of a few hours. He continued on to the front of the line of vehicles, where Thomas and his Blood Guard stood, all three in something resembling a cross between modern military gear and plate armour, albeit made with Kevlar, steel, and silver. They all wore plain golden full-face masks, black mesh around the eyes.
“You scared them,” Thomas said without looking up, as he studied a paper map that had been laid out on the flatbed of the truck.
“Good,” Miles said. “They thought we were off for a jolly. They think like that, they aren’t all coming back. Where are we?”
Thomas placed a finger on the map, moving to the side to let Miles take a look. “We’ve come up that way,” he said tracing his finger along what had been I-295. Up ahead is the Fore River. We continue on, around Back Cove, across the bridge, and we stop to clear out the area. We can’t use the I-295 to go straight up to Falmouth as it’s partially destroyed, so we need to cut through Portland and go up, out the top of it. It’s an hour and a half walk, or it was before the desolate made the place their home. Takes closer to six now, and we’re all going to be working for that time. We tried not clearing it out for a few years and ended up losing people to the desolate. So now we thin their numbers every time we come here, like a deer cull.”
“What about going across the river?” Miles asked, pointing to the bridge that went over Presumpscot River.
“Bridge is destroyed about halfway up,” Thomas said. “We don’t know who did it—wasn’t us, wasn’t the humans who used it as an evacuation route. Our best guess is someone is living up on the other side and didn’t want visitors.”
“You ever checked?”
“Nope,” Thomas said. “No time to make the detour. We go up to Falmouth fort, which is, as the name suggests, a large walled fort, and has a number of our people inside. They help clear as much of Portland as possible, but they have their own issues with the desolate that come out of the park to the north. We rejoin the I-295 and continue up to Brunswick, which has a large settlement. Or large in Maine terms.”
“Okay, you let everyone know the plan, and we’ll get going,” Miles said as he studied the map. “You figured out where the desolate keep coming from?”
Thomas shook his head. “Best guess is they’re trapped underground and dig their way out over time. There are probably a few hundred, maybe a little more, under there. The idea of napalming the place gets brought up every few months, but no one wants to go down there and check what we’re dealing with, so while the desolate numbers are small, we just cull them as we find them.”
“I heard that there are people who think they don’t die.”
Thomas laughed. “Well, that’s just hyperbole, I imagine they do die. They’re desolate, not the Terminator.”
“Terminator still died,” Miles said. “That’s a maze of roads and streets, lot of alleyways, lots of places to hide. And we’re going to drive right into it.”
“We’ve done it dozens of times,” Thomas said. “Maybe this time there won’t be so many desolate there.”
“I think you’re playing whack-a-mole,” Miles told him. “The root of the problem is left alone; you’re just putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”
“I agree with you,” Thomas said, shrugging. “But this is what we do. We go there, we clear it out, and we continue on. It’s what we’ve always done.”
“Tradition.”
Thomas nodded. “Some of that, certainly. But also, it’s relatively safe there. Lots of those houses were destroyed in the cleansing after the fall of Maine. There’s a lot of open terrain, and since we actually started to clear it out every year, we’ve never had an issue. It might seem like busy work to you, or a pointless tradition, but it prepares these people for what we’re going to see the rest of the journey. Most have never had to fight a desolate, most have never had to deal with a horde of them. This is the safest way to ease them into what they might have to contend with the rest of their time in this state.”
Miles looked down at the map one last time. “Okay,” he said, looking up at Thomas. “We do it your way. But I want you to know that if at any point I think one of those people back there is a liability, I’m going to tell them.”
Thomas folded up the map. “Good,” he said. “Hopefully you won’t have to.”
Miles glanced back at the group. A bunch of vampires who had never seen anything like a horde of desolate, only one with actual military training. Miles closed his eyes and inwardly groaned. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter Thirteen
Miles, Church, and Amelia went back to their Winnebago and sat around the sofa as the House Idolator familiar, Arvid, drove to their destination. Miles watched out of the tinted windows at the landscape of partially destroyed buildings and the occasional piece of movement within the darkness.
“There are desolate out there, aren’t there?” Amelia asked.
Miles nodded. “It’s a bit weird that they don’t stop to clear out all of this but only do so in the towns. They have their prearranged tradition and they’re nae going to deviate from it. Thomas said that it’s safer across the bridge, but the desolate keep coming back, so I’m unsure exactly how safe safe is.”
“I’m going out with you,” Amelia said. “I didn’t come here for nothing.”
“I know,” Miles said. “Church will stay with you. You’ll be safe. Or as safe as anyone, witch or otherwise, can be out here.”
Amelia was quiet for a few minutes as they looked outside the window together. “Did you ever come to Maine before it fell?”
Miles nodded. “A bunch of times. It was, at least on the face of it, a sort of vampire-human paradise. I had no idea what was going on beneath the surface, so to speak. I’d like to think very few people did, and that’s why it caught everyone unaware. Experiments on humans, on the desolate. Trying to find ways to control the desolate. Trying to find out how they work, why they come about. It’s all a litany of horror stories, and it ends with the deaths of tens of thousands of people.”
“And the creation of the Magistrate,” Amelia said.
“Aye, the whole thing is a mess I’d rather nae see repeated.”
“You think it might be?”
“Repeated?” Miles shook his head. “I doubt it. Lots of vampire-
controlled cities all over the world, and there’s no problems there. At least, none we know about. Do I think there are still people out there who are experimenting on desolates, on humans, on vampires? Sure. I’ve met my share before and after Maine happened, but I’d like to think that whatever happened here has made a lot of people, especially the Houses and Assembly, pay a lot more attention to places where vampires are in charge.”
“When I spoke to First Lord Fuller, he was full of praise for what they wanted to do in Maine,” Amelia said. “How they wanted to return it to its former glory, how they needed to remove the stain of what had happened here. I got the feeling he’s passionate about it. If they can do it, if they can clear out Augusta, and stop the constant influx of desolate from wherever they’re coming from, it’s possible that Maine could be reclaimed.”
“Maybe.” It was a nice dream, but to Miles that’s all it was. Maine was gone. No matter what House Idolator, or anyone else, did to reclaim it, to remove the desolate, it wouldn’t really change anything. The stain of what had happened would always remain.
“You don’t agree.”
Miles shrugged. “I think there’s something weird going on in this state that no one wants, or has the capability, to investigate. The desolate should all be dead or at least decreasing in number by now. Even the ones we know are trapped under Augusta should have just been a few thousand in total. I know people who say they should just use drones to bomb it all, but drones won’t work because of the electrical interference, same reason they can’t just napalm it from the air. They would need boots on the ground. And there’s no guarantee it’ll work, even then. No one wants to be known as the person who sent his people to die in a lost cause.”
“It’s only a lost cause if you fail,” Amelia said.
“They might reclaim Maine, but the cost would be astronomical in terms of people. A lot of the desolate under Augusta have been stuck there for decades, just waiting. Probably cocooned down there. I fought a desolate which had been cocooned for only a few weeks or months, and it was the most terrifying desolate I’ve ever come across. It was practically a giant among them. Can you imagine how bad it would be to send a few thousand vampires down there, only to come across a few hundred desolate who had literally been feeding on each other, getting bigger, more dangerous?”
“So, Maine stays lost,” Amelia said. “Those responsible died in the initial attack, or were tried and executed by the vampires. And then everyone looked the other way and pretended like it wasn’t happening.”
The vehicle was beginning to slow down, and they soon turned off the interstate and started to move through what had been a residential area, although like everywhere else, the houses were falling apart with disrepair.
“It’s raining,” Miles said, unsure how to proceed with the conversation about Maine. It was lost; it would take too much to get it back. And if it ever came back, would anyone ever want it to be vampire-run again? The American political landscape changed a lot after Maine, and despite the fact that the Magistrate had been given a bloody nose after Seattle, they were still backed by rich, powerful opponents to vampire kind.
“I was told the weather changes quickly here,” Amelia said. “Even more so since the eighties. Any idea why?”
Miles shook his head. “Nae a clue. I don’t think that what happened in the eighties had any effect on the weather, but who knows. I’ve heard of weirder stuff.”
“Aren’t there vampires who can control the weather?”
“House Nebula,” Miles told her. “They can change the weather a bit, make fog, drop or raise the temperature, make it snow, make it windy, or have it rain, but it’s all in isolated areas. Not full-on storms hitting a whole town, or hurricanes or anything like that. Not that I’ve ever heard of. We’re vampires, nae the X-Men.”
The vehicle stopped just behind the large bus, and Miles remained seated for a moment, watching those inside the bus disembark. There was an aura of muted excitement in their mannerisms that Miles didn’t like. He wasn’t sure that excited was ever what people should be feeling before they went on a desolate hunt.
“You okay?” Amelia asked. She’d gotten to her feet and was busy making sure her vest was still okay as she zipped up a slate grey rainproof coat over it. She held her arms out to the side and moved them around. “This is a bit big.”
Miles stood and stretched. “You’ll be grateful for it if any of those desolate get too close.”
Amelia placed a microphone on her lapel and removed her phone from her pocket. “I’m going to film this. I’ve already checked with First Lord Fuller, and he okayed it. Everyone else had to sign a disclaimer to say that they might be in photos or footage.”
“I didn’t sign one.”
“You’re not going to be in any of the photos or footage,” Amelia said with a smile.
“Too handsome for your readers?”
Amelia laughed.
Miles smiled. “Well, that told me.”
“Yes, your obviously masculine charms might be too much for some of the people watching it,” Amelia said, a smile on her face the whole time. “I don’t want you to be the cause of a mass fainting.”
“Smart,” Miles said. “Vampires don’t need any more bad press.”
Amelia let out a chuckle. “You’re an Arbiter. Can’t have you on film.”
“Aye, I assumed as much,” Miles replied. “Though I prefer the idea of me being far too manly for the population of this world.”
“If you like, you can tell people that,” Amelia said.
Church let out a derisive snort.
“Don’t you start,” Miles told her.
Church made a huffing noise, and turned to Amelia, licking her hand.
“Nae appreciated in my own time,” Miles said. “That’s my problem.”
Church barked just as there was a knock on the door, which Amelia opened, letting in a slightly damp-looking Thomas.
“It’s raining,” Miles said.
“I can see why you’re an Arbiter, with observation skills like that,” Thomas replied with a good-natured grin. “We are ready for the hunt. Amelia, please do hang back far enough that you’re in no danger. One of my Blood Guard will be standing nearby.”
“As will Church,” Miles said.
“I think you’re probably safer than the rest of us put together,” Thomas told her. “If you’re ready, Miles.”
Miles rolled his shoulders.
“Be careful,” Amelia said to Miles as Thomas exited the Winnebago first.
Miles turned back to her as he descended the steps to the outside. “I’ll be fine. You two keep an eye on each other.”
What had started outside as a persistent drizzle was quickly turning into the kind of rain that Miles would best describe as pissing it down. The ground the vehicles were parked on was mostly broken tarmac, as it had been a main road back when such things had been needed in the town, but he knew that outside of the town the roads got less and less usable in bad weather, and he didn’t want to get bogged down—literally—in the middle of nowhere.
The pilgrims were all standing in a group, each having been given a machete of some kind or other. Two of the Blood Guard stood over to the side, their hands on the broadswords sheathed at their hips. The third Blood Guard stood at the front of the Winnebago as Amelia and Church exited, nodding toward them both as everyone walked a short distance down the ramshackle road toward the remains of what had once been a street of homes.
