Read Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) for Free Online Page B

red markings on the gauge.
    “What is it?” the thrall on duty
asked from across the room and Warren prayed the bastard would stay
where he was and not come over to investigate.
    “Nothing,” he lied and prayed
his voice didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. He knew very little
about nuclear power plants and had only managed to work here at all
because he knew computers and, as the plant had the only working
computer left in the area, it made sense that he would work there.
He had moved here before the vampires had taken over and had lied
to the human council in power at the time about his abilities to
get himself and his ten-year-old son into the state. He had assumed
that the plant would be filled with technicians who knew the plant
inside out so he had not thought that his indiscretion would harm
anyone.
    Then, of course, the vampires
had taken over and many of the humans had been thrown into the pens
and had been injected with the serum. It had only been later when
the vampires had realised that they needed humans to run the plant
that they had begun to search through their prisoners for people
capable of running the systems. He had been lucky to have been
still wearing his white lab coat because the thralls had weaned him
off the serum first. When asked if he could run the plant he had,
again, lied and told them that of course he could. He had been
allowed to take his son from the pens as well and had been tasked
with finding seven other technicians capable of helping him.
    This had been where he had
encountered his first problem. He hadn’t really paid attention in
his short time he had spent in the plant and did not know the
people well enough to pick them out of the huge numbers in the
pens. He had remembered Trevor Atkins, as the man had been a
virtual dynamo and always had time to pause and explain details to
the other workers, but many of the other senior managers did not
seem to be in the pens and could already be dead. He had picked as
best he could and the thralls had placed him in charge of the
plant.
    He had felt guilty at first.
What right did he have to choose who lived and who died? But it
wasn’t just his own life that he had to consider. His son would not
last long in the pens, he was far too frail and his asthma had to
be controlled or he would die. He had also heard that the vampires
had a particular fondness for young children, and most had already
been drained and cast into the large burial trenches that had been
dug to the north of the plant. He had also heard terrible rumours
of forced breeding so the vampires could replenish the quickly
diminishing stocks of young flesh. He might have felt guilt but he
was also fairly certain that the vampires would kill him if he gave
them any cause to believe he was not all he had said he was. So, he
had ignored his inner recriminations, kept quiet and accepted the
position.
    Atkins had been the obvious one
to run the plant and Warren had quickly told the man that he would,
of course, defer to him, but Atkins suggested they keep things as
the thralls had organised them, lest they throw any of the people
and their families back into the pens. Atkins was a genuinely nice
man who could not stomach to see anyone suffer. Atkins, too, had a
family, though no matter how much he had searched he had not been
able to find his youngest son and the loss gnawed at him
constantly. He had been delighted that he had found his wife and
two older sons, of course, but every time he passed one of the pens
his colleagues would see him searching the faces of those wretched
souls lining the wire fences in the hope of finding his youngest.
Atkins had spent most of his free time, which wasn’t much,
pestering the thralls to allow him to check the pens again and
again in the vain hope that he might have missed him before.
    While Atkins was happy to
support Warren in the plant, he did, however, have a major problem
with the people Warren had chosen, none of whom were actually
capable