Rebirth

Calling all online fiction writers

2008-08-06T06:36:00.001Z

I am looking for contributors for the *.fiction anthology volume 1. The anthology will provide a printed showcase for the emerging community of online fiction writers who publish their work on the internet for free. The plan is for the anthology to contain samples from 10-15 writers to allow them to promote their work in an accessible and cost-effective format.

All online fiction writers are invited to submit their work for inclusion in the first volume of the *.fiction anthology. This will be a community-focused publication and should be considered as a starting point in building awareness of online fiction. It will be made available for purchase at cost price and all contributors are encouraged to promote this work along with their own.

If there are more submissions than the number required for the first volume, additional work will be carried over to subsequent volumes. Please contact me at s.a.mckenzie@gmail.com for more information and submission guidelines.

The closing date for submissions for volume 1 is September 30th 2008.

The Rising Has Begun

2008-07-02T05:43:00.002Z

Chapter 1 of The Rising is now available at *.fiction:

http://stardotfiction.blogspot.com/2008/06/rising-chapter-1-bad-feeling.html

A new chapter will be published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

The Rising Begins on July 2nd

2008-06-21T11:38:00.001Z

The Rising, the sequel to the award-winning Rebirth, will be available online from July 2^nd 2008, with a new chapter published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Detective Tom Ryder and his new band of allies go deeper into the vampire underworld and discover that the plot to establish vampires as the dominant species is almost upon them. Can they thwart the plans of both the vampires and The Brotherhood before it's too late?

The Rising will be published at www.stardotfiction.com, a new blog I have set up to host this novel and future writing, so please visit the site, bookmark it and subscribe to be notified whenever a new chapter is published.

www.stardotfiction.com/therising

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

At last - some news about the sequel to Rebirth

2008-05-28T17:45:00.003Z

I'm very pleased to report that I can finally announce some details about the imminent sequel to Rebirth. It will be titled The Rising and the print edition will come with this incredible artwork designed by Gabe Powers...

The Rising will be published in blog form. Stay tuned for more information about when and where to find it...

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Vampires are proved to exist

2008-05-02T11:40:00.002Z

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/30-04-2008/105036-vampires-0

That remained a myth until 1963, when a British doctor Li Illis made a stunning announcement: vampire-werewolf is nothing more than a victim of a genetic pathology – porphyria.

This is a rare disease – only 1 in 20000 people suffers from it. The body doesn’t produce red corpuscles and thus a person’s blood lacks oxygen and iron and this leads to hemoglobin breakdown under the sunshine.

By the way, news about the sequel to Rebirth will be coming very soon...

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Merry Christmas and...

2007-12-25T21:25:00.000Z

Merry Christmas to everyone!

and...

The review option is now available at Triggerestreet.com so if you enjoyed reading Rebirth, I'd really appreciate it if you could post a review...

http://posting.triggerstreet.com/gyrobase/Submission?oid=oid%3A1246302

Have a great holiday and I'll see you in the new year with the next episode.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Download and review Rebirth at Triggerstreet.com

2007-11-17T16:16:00.000Z

Good news for those of you who were looking for a downloadable version of Rebirth!

I've made a PDF version of Rebirth available for download at Triggerstreet.com. If you want to download the whole thing, head over there and get your hands on it and don't forget to write a review. Even if you've already read it, please follow this link and write a review. Every review will help your favourite online novel rise up the charts...

http://posting.triggerstreet.com/gyrobase/Submission?oid=oid%3A1246302

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Let the proof-reading begin!

2007-11-01T16:56:00.000Z

That's right, I've finally got the sequel to Rebirth in a state that I'm happy for my proof-readers to take a look at. At the moment, it's an 80,000-word 119-chapter novel, although that may grow, shrink, or be consigned to the dustbin depending on the feedback!

Thanks to everyone who has contacted me and those of you who continue to visit the blog during this quiet period. I'm happy to see that people are still visiting and reading Rebirth from beginning to end. I'll be back when there's more news...

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Seems to me...

2007-10-15T19:16:00.000Z

Just thought I'd share something with those of you who have been asking me about the new novel to keep you interested as the waiting continues...

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Update

2007-10-09T20:50:00.000Z

Just checking in and letting all of you who have read Rebirth know that the sequel is well on the way. The first draft is done and I'm going to have it ready for my wonderful proof readers before long. I'm also having the cover done by a friend who is a graphic designer and I have to say the drafts I've seen so far are very cool! All this is hopefully going to add up to a bigger and better novel that's going to be published on a brand new site I'm setting up.

Until then, make sure you check out DVDActive and take a look at my most recent reviews...
Thank You For Smoking
Death Proof
28 Weeks Later

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Rebirth featured at Blooking Central

2007-09-05T20:58:00.000Z

Rebirth is the subject of an article on the definition of 'blooking' at Blooking Central, including an interview with yours truly...

http://blooking.blogspot.com/2007/09/rebirth-that-was-close.html

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Bat Breath Reveals The Identity Of A Vampire's Last Victim

2007-08-20T18:27:00.000Z

It appears that vampire bats have discovered their equivalent of fast food:

"Vampire bats that live in Latin America have switched to blood meals from cattle instead of from rainforest mammals, ecological physiologists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the University of Aberdeen report in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B. They say that the conversion of rainforests ecosystems into livestock producing farmland resulted in the expansion of vampire bat populations in Latin America."

Click here to read the whole article

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Free eBooks for US readers

2007-08-11T15:54:00.000Z

Publishers of thriller novels by some POD authors Breakneck Books are giving away eBooks of some of their top titles. All you need to do is follow the link below. Unfortunately the website is just open for US users at the moment...

http://www.wowio.com/users/searchresults.asp?txtSearch=%22breakneck%20books%22

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

The End... for now

2007-08-09T18:26:00.000Z

Tom Ryder will return.

I’d like to say thank you very much to everyone who has followed Rebirth as I have been publishing it. It started off as an experiment and I’ve made lots of good friends over the course of the last seven months. I’d love to hear from the rest of you who have followed my story but haven’t yet contacted me. My email address is s.a.mckenzie@gmail.com.

I am currently working on the sequel, which is going to be bigger and better than Rebirth but with the same horror/thriller mix. I’m about 50,000 words into the first draft and making quick progress. I will keep posting semi-regular updates and I’ve got a new online fiction site in the works so please subscribe using the links in the left-hand column to be notified of the latest news, including the publication date for the sequel.

If you enjoyed reading Rebirth, I’d like to ask a favour… I would be very grateful if you could post a short review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Lulu. You can find the links dotted around this page.

You can also nominate this blog in the creative writing category for the Manchester Blog Awards 2007. All you need to do is send the link to this page to mancblogawards@googlemail.com.

Thanks again

Until next time…

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 94: The Scientist

2007-08-09T17:50:00.000Z

Roxy ended the call on her mobile phone without an answer for the fourth time. There had been no contact from any of her allies at The Brotherhood’s regional headquarters. She feared the worst. All the vampires she had trained to infiltrate The Brotherhood must have been killed.

Either the doctor had been killed in the battle or he had escaped, which meant they were starting from scratch again. The vampire community couldn’t know for sure how much the humans knew about the biology of vampires.

Of course, the vampires were doing their own scientific experiments. They had their own agenda, something similar to the humans’ plan but it would be ready to test far sooner.

Roxy lifted herself out of her chair onto a pair of crutches and hobbled down the dark hall to the laboratory door. It would be another day or so before her legs would finish healing completely after such a severe injury. She opened the door and took a step inside, telling the scientist working in the lab not to let her disturb him. She sat down on a stool on the opposite side of the workbench to the scientist and watched him work.

The scientist had two racks of bullets, a pistol, a small paintbrush and a small glass bowl of blood in front of him. One by one, he picked up the bullets, dipped the paintbrush in the bowl and coated them with a thin layer of blood. He then placed each bullet in the second rack to let them dry. When he had finished coating all of the bullets with blood, he picked one up and loaded it into the pistol.

‘Let’s see if it works,’ he said and got to his feet. Roxy followed him out of the door and across the corridor, into the room facing the lab. The room they found themselves in was bare and well lit. The only furniture in the room was a wooden chair, to which a gagged and naked man was tied. His face was soaked with sweat and he was white with fear.

The scientist pointed the pistol at the naked man and pulled the trigger. He flew backwards and struck the wall behind him, falling into a heap on the floor, still tied to the chair. Neither the scientist nor Roxy helped him up. The scientist took a stopwatch out of his pocket and pressed the button to start the timer.

‘How long until he turns, Doctor Forrest?’ asked Roxy.

‘Hopefully under an hour but I’m working on making it more fast-acting,’ he said.

‘When will we be able to execute the next phase of the plan?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 93: Emily

2007-08-06T17:52:00.000Z

Emily Owen was lying in her private cell in the police station. She had been there for two nights in a row. Captain Nash came round from time to time to bring her food and water and to apologise for the broken air conditioning system.

It’s like a sauna in here, she thought to herself as she looked out of the window and wondered how it could still be so hot after the sun had set long ago. She got up and moved around, trying to generate movement in the air but it only made her feel worse. The only other option was putting her in the public cell with all of the recent arrests. She questioned whether that might be preferable, if only for a few minutes to cool down.

She was relieved when the Captain had told her that he had heard her husband was safe and well. She had feared the worst when she heard about the commotion downtown. Somehow she knew he was involved.

Andrew had told her that if she ever fell into the hands of the police then someone would try to collect her. According to him, she would be safer on her own than with the police but if there was no other option; she would have to re-join him. She had been very scared when the police arrived to pick her up but after two days of sitting around she thought her husband was probably just being his usual over-protective self and that she would be fine once he came to collect her.

She had been resistant to Nash’s questioning so far. He had only spent fleeting moments with her though. It seemed to her that he didn’t have a lot of time on his hands and was always rushing off to deal with something else.

There was a knock at the cell door followed by the familiar voice of Captain Nash. He opened the small flap in the metal door and peeked inside. ‘Emily, how are you doing in there?’

‘Same as before, still baking. I must be nearly done now.’

‘Again, I’m very sorry about this. As soon as we have a detective available to question you or we get rid of the suspects in the holding pen, we’ll be able to move you. I don’t think that’s going to happen for a while yet though.’

‘Can you bring me some more water please?’

‘Of course. I’m just going to get your dinner so I’ll bring plenty of water as well.’

Emily thanked Captain Nash and heard his footsteps move away from the cell door. Then she heard something else, something she wasn’t expecting.

The sound of glass shattering.

Then a woman’s scream.

Then a gunshot. Followed by another, and another.

The terrifying sound of gunshots, shouting and screaming seeped into the cell. Emily banged on the door.

‘Captain Nash! Captain Nash! What’s going on?’

There was no answer other than more screams.

She sat down on the bed and curled into a ball in the corner.

Something terrible is happening out there. It is anything to do with Andrew? Is this anything to do with me?

As suddenly as the noise had started, it stopped. There was silence from the corridor outside. The sound of footsteps made their way down the corridor and stopped at the door. The metal flap opened for a second, then slammed shut.

‘Captain Nash?’ Emily asked, her voice cracking with fear.

Again, there was no answer.

A key was placed in the lock and there was a loud clunk as the door swung open and hit the wall.

Emily didn’t recognise the man standing at the door with blood dripping down his face. He was dressed in black with a sword tied to his belt.

There was no one alive in the police station to hear Emily’s screams as he launched himself across the room and dragged her out of the cell.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 92: The Survivor

2007-08-05T14:17:00.000Z

Night had fallen by the time reinforcements arrived at the base. Three gunships glided in through the mountains and touched down at the entrance. The heavy figure of General Graham stepped out of the leading gunship. Six soldiers jumped out of each gunship, drew their weapons and ran down the ramp into the base.

General Graham marched down the ramp behind them. He had been playing the call he had received over and over again in his mind. Their most remote regional headquarters had been overrun with vampires. Twelve bloodsuckers had somehow got into the base and killed everyone in sight. The only survivor was Captain Stein, who had made the call to national headquarters.

At least, he was a survivor when he made the call. ‘Vampires have infiltrated the base. They killed everyone. Everybody’s dead. The doctor and the test subject are gone. I’m dying. Come quickly.’

That was three hours ago.

The soldiers scattered all over the base. Each soldier reported back on their radio whenever they found a body. The updates came through thick and fast.

A body was lying face down surrounded by a large pool of blood with a sprinkling of ash on top. General Graham had to do a double take as he approached it. The body would have been lying face down if it had a face, but this body’s head was missing. Turning the body over, General Graham saw the stripes on the uniform and instantly knew whose head was missing. Next to the body laid a pair of legs that had been cut off at the knee.

My God, this was a massacre, he thought. There hadn’t been an attack like this for a very long time. The vampires must be working towards something. Something bigger than this. But what?

General Graham picked up his radio and spoke into it. ‘Has anyone found the doctor or the test subject?’ All he got were negative responses, which meant they had either been captured or…

‘Two of the gunships are missing, sir,’ a soldier announced as he approached the general, ‘the inventory states they have three but only one is present outside.’

‘The doctor and the test subject must have escaped,’ said General Graham, ‘It is possible they are in some way responsible for this. The gunship has a tracking device on board. Find it.’

‘Yes sir!’ The soldier turned on his heels to march towards the communications office but noticed something on the floor. There was a lot of blood everywhere but the blood he saw in front of him was leading a trail into the office.

‘What is it, soldier?’ asked General Graham.

‘This trail of blood. I can’t believe I didn’t see it when we got here,’ said the soldier.

‘A survivor?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Lead the way,’ said General Graham, who followed the soldier into the office. The trail of blood went round the desks and stopped at a blood-soaked telephone lying on the ground.

‘This must be where the call was made from,’ said the soldier.

‘That’s right,’ said General Graham, ‘but if Captain Stein had been lying here since he made the call, you would expect there to be a big pool of blood. The floor’s dry apart from a few spots.’

They both scanned their eyes over the floor and around the room. Where was the body that had left this trail of blood? Then General Graham felt something lightly tap him on the shoulder. He turned around but no one was there. He wiped his shoulder with his hand and looked at it.

Blood. Where…

Very slowly, General Graham raised his eyes and looked to the ceiling. He took a step back and exclaimed ‘Oh my God!’ The soldier turned round and looked up.

There was Captain Stein, seemingly stuck to the ceiling, looking down at them with vacant eyes and a ghostly white face. He didn’t have any legs below the knees. Captain Stein opened his mouth to show his long pointed canine teeth and opened his arms out wide then dropped from the ceiling onto the soldier’s back, clawing at his neck with his long, sharp finger nails.

Before he could sink his teeth into the soldier’s neck, General Graham delivered a hard boot to the body of Captain Stein, who let go of the soldier and landed in the corner of the room. General Graham and the soldier both raised their guns and the vampire stopped moving.

‘Don’t move, Captain!’ the general shouted, ‘Are you okay, soldier?’

‘I’m fine. Should we shoot him?’

General Graham first instinct was to give the order, but he looked into the eyes of the vampire. Was there any sense in turning Captain Stein into just another pile of ash?

‘No,’ he said, ‘he was useless as a Captain but he may yet be of some use to us as a vampire.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 91: Escape

2007-08-02T05:38:00.000Z

Private Skinner hit the button to reverse the lock-down and we made our way out of the base. We ran across the summit of the mountain to a helicopter. I could feel my skin start to boil in the blazing sunshine as we jumped on board.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Agent Simpson exclaimed, ‘look at your skin!’

The doctor looked at my face, which felt like I had been lying in the sun all day. In reality I had been in direct sunlight for about thirty seconds.

‘Lie down, Detective,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘I need to give you another shot.’

Private Skinner sat down in the cockpit and started the helicopter’s engine. His face did not appear to have been affected by the sun as much as mine. We lifted off and the doctor plunged the needle into my arm. I wondered if the treatment would make any difference.

Have I gone too far down the path to turn back?

In a few seconds I felt the treatment start to take hold and the familiar burning started to spread all over my body. Trying to ignore the pain, I reflected on my actions.

I had new powers. I could fly through the air. I had super-strength. I had psychic abilities.

In the hangar, the human side of me had been unable to control my actions. I had become an unstoppable killer with a lust for blood. I didn’t want these powers though, not if it meant I had to feed on human blood to stay alive.

I realised the human community wasn’t much better. The Brotherhood had become corrupt and had an agenda of hate. The only chance I had was to stick with these three people. They were good people who wanted the best for me and the rest of the human and vampire races. I felt my new powers drain from my body and tried to be hopeful for the future as I drifted into unconsciousness.

But somewhere deep inside me, a new instinct remained. It wanted me to keep these powers. It wanted me to join my new brothers and sisters. It wanted me to complete my rebirth as a vampire and stay that way.

Forever.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 90: Mission Accomplished

2007-07-31T06:01:00.000Z

As the door closed and the siren stopped, two vampires immediately headed towards the armed soldiers, who both fired silver bullets but failed to make contact. The soldiers were lifted off their feet and carried high into the air before being dropped. They both hit the ground on their heads, breaking their necks with a loud crack, leaving their heads pointing at an unnatural angle.

Commander North was shouting obscenities and taking pot shots with his pistol. His shots hit one of them, then another, then a third. For all his apparent faults as a leader, he was a good shot. He was certainly a man to be feared, whether you were human or vampire.

The remaining two vampires flanked the commander and flew in a circle around him, making it difficult for him to aim. He fired shot after shot from his pistol but failed to hit them. Before long, he was out of ammunition.

As soon as he started to reload, the vampires swooped down and grabbed him, lifting him off his feet. Hanging in the air only ten feet above us, one vampire held the commander’s legs, the other held his arms and they fed on his aging body.

He screamed in agony and dropped his pistol, which shattered into many pieces as it hit the stone floor. Commander North’s blood poured from his body and collected in large pools on the ground. When there was no more energy left in his body, he stopped struggling and screaming but the vampires continued to feed.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Agent Simpson, ‘As soon as they’re finished with him, they’ll come for us.’

The pain in my stomach hadn’t subsided completely and my new instincts were telling me to join my brothers above and feed on the commander’s convulsing body but I knew deep down inside me that I had to protect our small band of resistance. The four of us were a mismatched group of humans and vampires but we all shared one motivation: to rid the world of the conflict between vampires and The Brotherhood.

I saw the commander’s silver sword hanging from his belt and knew I had to get up there. I had to kill the last two vampires and get us out of here.

I felt the blood drain all the way down my body to my feet. The muscles in my legs felt hot and tight, like they had been pumped up after months of training. I jumped into the air and immediately felt the blood rush back up through my body to my fingertips. I felt like I was flying. My body kept rising and rising. I reached the commander and drew the silver sword from his belt. The vampires looked up with shock on their blood-drenched faces. They didn’t expect to see anyone else up there with them.

In one fluid movement I spun round, slicing through their heads with the commander’s silver sword. They let go of the commander’s body but I caught him by his collar before he fell. The blood spread evenly throughout my body and I slowly descended to the floor through a flurry of ash falling from the burning vampires.

The commander was still alive when I touched down. He was struggling to breathe though, let alone talk. We looked into each other’s eyes.

Something struck me. If we were to leave this place and try to survive on the outside, we would need some leverage over the vampires and The Brotherhood.

I gripped what little hair the Commander had on the top of his head and swung my sword through his neck, separating his head from his body.

His body landed in a heap on the floor and I held his head in front of me, looking into his dead eyes.

Mission accomplished.

‘Tom, what have you done?’

‘I have an idea.’ I said as I walked over the doctor, still with Commander North’s head in my hand. I threw it to him and he caught it with both hands, splattering blood all over his coat.

‘Put it in the box, we’re taking it with us.’ The doctor looked scared and confused but he did as I said.

‘Trust me,’ I said. The look on everyone’s faces told me it would be a while until they trusted me again.

‘What are you going to do now?’ shouted Captain Stein, ‘You’ve killed a commander of The Brotherhood. There are almost certainly more troops on their way here now and it’s only a matter of time until they track you down. They will kill you all. You’re too dangerous now.’

‘I know,’ I said and walked over to Captain Stein, still holding Commander North’ silver sword. I swung the sword and cut off Captain Stein’s legs just below the knees. He sunk to the floor screaming in agony.

‘What are you doing, Tom? Stop it’ shouted Agent Simpson. Private Skinner ran over and grabbed me by the shoulders but I turned round and pushed him away.

I returned to Captain Stein and held him down. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘your legs will grow back.’ On that note, I opened my mouth to reveal my extended canine teeth and sunk them into his neck. Captain Stein screamed again. His painful cries satisfied my lust to inflict pain on him.

The blood pouring down my throat was warm and sweet. I had never tasted anything like it. I felt as if I could feed forever but it was short-lived. I felt many hands on my shoulders and I was pulled away from him. I wiped the blood from my mouth and I lay on my back on the cold floor of the hangar.

With the hunger of the vampire in me satisfied, the human in me started to talk to me again. I had killed four people in cold blood and cursed another with a terrible infection.

Dear God, what have I done?

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 89: Help Arrives

2007-07-28T07:43:00.000Z

‘Answer me, Captain,’ screamed Commander North as the soldiers grabbed the guns from our hands, ‘what’s going on? Why are there vampires in my base?’ His voice echoed around the massive stone hangar.

‘The vampires are casualties from the attack on Hartley House,’ said Captain Stein, ‘They were brought to the base by a vampire who had infiltrated the ranks.’

Commander North moved towards us but didn’t lower the volume of his voice. ‘And where are you going in such a hurry? Why aren’t you armed?’

‘The doctor, the detective and Private Skinner want to leave the base,’ Captain Stein answered.

‘The guinea pig? Not a chance.’ Commander North walked up to me and looked my directly in the eye. ‘Do you know how much pain we’ve been through to get to this point? Do you know how long we’ve waited for the doctor to complete his work?

‘There’s never been anyone like you, someone we can learn so much from so don’t think you’re ever going to get out of here. The contents of your body are more important than your life. The doctor is going to cut you up into as many tiny little pieces as it takes to find a way to kill these fuckers.’

The doctor stepped forward. ‘I’ll do no such thing.’

The commander moved over to stand toe-to-toe with the doctor. ‘Yes you will, because if you don’t, you’ll end up just like your lab assistant.’

I immediately knew what he meant by that comment. We had been completely wrong about who had killed Danny Johnson and destroyed the lab at Mantek.

‘It was you!’ I exclaimed. ‘You blew up the lab! Why?’

‘The secondary treatment, Detective. It was a pointless diversion that was wasting our time and money. We had to take extreme measures to get the doctor’s work back on track.’ Commander North talked about killing the innocent lab assistant like it was nothing. Just the means to an end.

I was starting to feel intense heat flowing all over my body. More than anger at the methods of The Brotherhood, I could feel something unnatural happening inside me. I was terrified that I would turn into a full-blown vampire in front of the Commander. Even though he wanted the doctor to experiment on me, I was convinced he wouldn’t think twice about turning me into ash if I became unable to control my urges as a vampire.

‘But why kill my assistant?’ the doctor asked.

‘An acceptable loss. Your work on the secondary treatment had to be destroyed to refocus your efforts. He happened to be there. It was unfortunate but necessary to cover our tracks.’

‘You’re crazy,’ said Agent Simpson, ‘this is not what The Brotherhood stands for. Doctor Owen’s work has shown that we can find a vaccine that will allow us to co-exist. That must be the primary treatment. The Brotherhood was formed by the need for the two species to co-exist.’

‘That is no longer the view of The Brotherhood and you know that, Agent Simpson. The directives come from the top.’

‘But you’re a Commander,’ she pleaded, ‘You have influence over the decision makers. Tell them what we are working on and once they see what we have learned and achieved so far, they will allow us to continue.’

‘I can’t do that, ‘ said Commander North, ‘it is the widely held view that the primary treatment can be developed a lot quicker and it will be more effective. I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you. You’re staying here and that’s the end of it.’

When it felt like all was lost, I felt a new sensation surge through my body. It was the warm feeling of belonging and it was getting stronger. I looked at the door that led down to the lab. Just as it was about to finish closing, five bodies flew through the gap.

My vampire brothers are here to help me.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 88: Wiped Out

2007-07-25T20:08:00.000Z

Things weren’t going much better for the squad trying to deal with the vampires deep in the heart of the base. They had managed to kill seven of the bloodsuckers, but now the remaining five had split up and each had headed in different directions down the maze of corridors. Instead of a full head-on assault, they now had to search the labs and pick them off one by one.

The soldiers’ numbers were also dwindling. There were bodies strewn all over the floor, some of them lying dead, their necks broken, others screaming in agony as they failed to pull themselves onto their feet with broken legs, arms and deep gushing wounds. The floor was awash with blood, which squelched under the feet of Colonel Evans as he edged his way along the corridors.

The attack had been swift and brutal. As soon as the first squad of soldiers had entered the morgue, they were wiped out almost immediately. The vampires had pounced on them from all angles, beating them with their newly discovered strength and flew out of the morgue to find their next victims.

The next squad to arrive managed to kill a few of them but didn’t last much longer. Once they had turned the corner of the corridor, they scattered in many directions.

Colonel Evans knew that splitting up would leave them vulnerable to attack. If the vampires made a move from their separate positions towards the summit of the base, a soldier could kill some of them but one or two might be able to get past them. If that happened, then they would be chasing them towards the senior officers at the surface rather than holding them below ground.

If that happened, it would spell the end of the base. Everyone would die and there would be five new vampires on the loose. It would soon be getting dark outside and the vampires would be able to make their escape back to the city.

Evans opened the door to another lab, pointing his rifle in every direction until he was satisfied there were no surprises waiting for him. He stepped back into the corridor and saw one of his men at the end.

‘This room’s clear,’ Evans announced.

‘All clear up here as well,’ the soldier said and waved to him. As soon as the words had left his lips, a vampire launched itself through the window of a lab further up the corridor. Before the soldier could fire a shot, his head had been turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees by the vampire’s powerful hands, which then picked up the soldier’s rifle and disappeared around the corner.

Colonel Evans gave chase. As he turned the corner, he wasn’t expecting to see the vampire immediately in front of him, pointing the rifle at his chest. Eight silver bullets penetrated Colonel Evans’ body before he hit the ground.

* * * *

The vampire felt the presence of approaching soldiers before it heard their footsteps. One was approaching from directly behind him but he could feel the presence of one of his kin in the same corridor. The sound of footsteps and a weapon being loaded was closely followed by a smashing window and a voice letting out its last scream.

That’s one less soldier to deal with.

Another soldier was running down the corridor, directly ahead. Before he could shoot, another vampire had jumped out from a corner and with one hand, cracked his head open against the wall. His body slipped down the wall, leaving a bloody trail behind.

More soldiers were killed to his left and right. One had his neck broken and the other blew his own brains out while pinned in a corner.

Humans are so weak, the vampire thought to itself. How could I spend so long as a human when I could have had powers like this?

With all of the soldiers in the area dead, the five remaining vampires gathered together and started to run in the direction of the summit. They could all sense the faint presence of more vampires. Their sixth sense was guiding them towards two of their brothers.

As they got closer and closer, a deafening siren sounded and heavy metal doors at regular intervals along the corridors slowly began to close. They darted around the closing doors until they saw the red glow of the outside world disappearing behind a closing door.

If they were quick enough, they could just make it.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 87: Reaching The Summit

2007-07-23T17:30:00.000Z

We ran as fast as our legs would carry us up the long sloping corridors of the base, working our way towards the summit. We managed to avoid all the soldiers running to help the squad trying to fend off the vampire invaders by ducking in and out of various rooms along the way.

As much as I didn’t want to believe him in the lab, Private Skinner was right. The pain in my stomach was starting to subside. The buzzing in my brain that told me vampires were nearby had relented but I didn’t know if that was because the virus was wearing off or if it was because we were just getting further away from the machine gun fire and screams behind us. The pessimistic realist in me suspected the latter.

‘You’re not going to get out of here,’ said Captain Stein, finally breaking his silence as we slipped into an empty dormitory to keep out of sight of another squad of soldiers going to meet their maker.

‘It’s only a matter of time until Commander North hits the button to lock down the base. Every security door will close and you’ll be trapped down here along with the rest of us.’

Captain Stein had been keeping far too quiet to not be hiding something from us. He knew the procedure all along and was biding his time waiting for the lock-down, but I suspected that we were close to the top of the base. We had been sneaking around for a while and I thought Captain Stein was trying to put us off as a last resort.

‘But won’t that trap your men in the same rooms as the vampires?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘That’s right. When they turn, they’ll feed on the soldiers but all we have to do is leave the doors locked and wait for them to starve. Then we can pick them off one by one.’ There wasn’t a hint of regret in Captain Stein’s voice.

‘That’s barbaric.’

‘That’s life, Agent Simpson. Can you think of a better option? Another more humane way of getting rid of them? God knows these guys won’t be able to kill all of them.’

Agent Simpson didn’t say anything. She just stared at Captain Stein like her eyes were burning a hole in his head. ‘I thought not,’ he snarled.

‘Come on,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘we’d better keep moving. We’re nearly there.’

Private Skinner picked up the pace and we kept up with him until we turned our last corner. We found ourselves in the main hangar, where we had entered the base only a matter of hours before. Ahead of us a cloud-filled red dusk sky peeked through the open door at the top of the ramp leading out to the summit.

Freedom.

With a metallic clunk, the door to the summit started to close and a loud repetitive siren started to wail.

‘There it is,’ said Captain Stein, ‘we’re now on lock-down. You may as well turn yourselves in now.’

I heard a gravely voice behind us bellowing over the siren. ‘Captain Stein, what the fuck is going on?’

We spun round to face Commander North, who was standing with two soldiers. All three of them were armed to the teeth and had itchy trigger fingers.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 86: Watching The Massacre

2007-07-21T07:57:00.000Z

Commander North stood in the operations room, his blood boiling as he witnessed the massacre of his men. With every scream he heard over the radio, he knew the vampires were making their way towards the summit of the base.

The two men in the operations team were trying to guide the soldiers around the corridors but the vampires were too fast for them. They would have sent more soldiers down into the base if there were any more to send. Within a matter of minutes they would all surely be dead.

Then North saw a small group running in the wrong direction. ‘Why are they coming back up here?’

‘They’re not soldiers, sir,’ said one frantic member of the operations team as he rubbed his eyes and stared at one of the many screens in front of him. ‘That’s Captain Stein, Private Skinner, Doctor Owen and the civilian male and female that arrived earlier, sir.’

‘Shit,’ North remarked, ‘why are they coming up here?’

‘Stein is unarmed, sir. It appears that Private Skinner is leading them towards the summit at gunpoint.’

‘How many men are left down there?’

‘Not many sir. There’s only two or three left and the vampires won’t take long to reach us.’

‘Has Private Skinner made contact?’

‘Negative, sir. He has not answered our attempts to contact him.’

Commander North weighed up his options and knew he had to take drastic action, even at the expense of Doctor Owen. The vampires must not be allowed to escape, but there’s something else going on here with Captain Stein and Private Skinner.

‘Lock down the base.’

‘Sir, are you sure? That means…’

‘I know what it means, soldier. Lock down the base then pick up your guns and follow me.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Beginning, Middle and End

2007-07-19T17:51:00.000Z

I've just done my first guest blog post for a very cool site called Novelr. They focus on blog publishing of novels and have a lot of good tips for aspiring writers.

I've thrown in my two cents about the need for everyone who is publishing novels in a blog to make sure they keep going to the end. Just follow the link below...
http://www.novelr.com/archives/beginning-middle-and-end

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 85: New Instincts

2007-07-19T17:49:00.000Z

‘You’re with them?’ Captain Stein shouted at Private Skinner, but the soldier and everyone else in the lab ignored him.

‘Have they been reborn?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘Yes,’ said Private Skinner, ‘they’ve just woken up and they’ve already fed on one of the men. A squad is holding them back down the hall but they’ll be on top of us very soon.’

Skinner looked at me, seeing something in me that the doctor and Agent Simpson hadn’t mentioned. ‘My God, you look terrible. Are you okay?’

‘I’ve felt better,’ I said.

‘You’re really starting to turn. We have to get you out of here before you’re completely consumed.’

‘Wait,’ said the doctor, ‘we need to take the samples with us.’

I yanked Captain Stein’s rifle out of his hands and pointed it at him. Doctor Owen removed the scalpel from his neck and started to work with Agent Simpson to put as many samples as possible into the steel boxes.

Private Skinner was standing at the opening to the lab where the door used to be. A squad of soldiers ran down the corridor to meet him.

‘What’s going on?’ one of them asked him.

‘Vampires in the morgue,’ said Private Skinner, ‘they sneaked in and now they’ve woken up.’

The soldier spotted me pointing the gun at Captain Stein and the tone of his voice changed. ‘What’s going on in here?’

‘The Captain is one of them. He smuggled the vampires into the base with the dead bodies from the attack on Hartley House. We’ve arrested him.’

I was sure the soldier didn’t buy it but more gunfire distracted his attention and he led the men down the corridor.

‘Have you got everything?’ Skinner asked.

‘We’ve got enough,’ said the doctor, ‘let’s get out of here.’

I took a step outside the lab and immediately saw the flashes of gunfire from the end of the corridor. Private Skinner led everyone away from the commotion. I saw the limp, bloody body of a soldier fly through the air, hit the wall and land in a heap on the floor, followed by another flash of gunfire.

A vampire soldier ran round the corner towards me. I looked closer and saw one of his arms was burning, leaving a trail of ash on the floor behind him. He was still running towards me as the burning took hold of his entire body. I raised my gun to shoot but his body had completely disappeared before I could pull the trigger and a cloud of ash hit me in the face.

A soldier appeared at the end of the corridor. ‘Where did he go?’

‘You got him. He’s dead,’ I shouted.

‘Thanks.’ He noticed the Captain being marched down the corridor by Doctor Owen. ‘Hey, what’s going on there? Where are you taking the Captain?’

‘He’s being arrested,’ I said, trying to look convincing again, ‘don’t worry about it.’

‘What do you mean, he’s being arrested? For what?’ He started to walk towards me.

‘He’s one of them. He’s the reason we’ve got vampires in the base.’

‘I don’t believe you. What’s going on?’ He pointed his rifle at me.

‘Look, we’ve got all this in hand. We’ll take care of the Captain and you take care of the vampires.’

Trying to give an order to a soldier isn’t a good idea at the best of times but it’s definitely not recommended if his squad mates are being taken apart by a team of invading vampires.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that, you little rat. Who the hell are you to be giving me orders? I want to talk to the Captain.’ He spoke into his radio. ‘Colonel, get another squad down here, the Captain has been captured by the cop. Something funny’s going on.’

‘We’re on our way,’ was the reply from his radio.

Private Skinner tried to back me up. ‘He’s right. Captain Stein has been showing the signs of becoming a vampire.’

All this time, Captain Stein was keeping his mouth shut. Either he was resigned to helping us get out of the base, or, which I thought was the more likely option, he had something else up his sleeve. After all, this was only one soldier against four of us.

I pointed my rifle at the soldier. ‘Get back to work, soldier.’

‘Don’t point that at me, you…’ I didn’t give him chance to finish his sentence before pulling the trigger and blasting his body with silver bullets.

‘Oh my God, Tom. What are you doing?’ said Agent Simpson.

I didn’t say a word. I’d killed three soldiers without thinking twice about it. I’d have no problems killing more of them if they stood between us and freedom. Doctor Owen had told me the future of the human race depended on both of us staying alive, and I believed him.

We have to survive. Whatever it takes.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 84: The Voice

2007-07-16T19:15:00.000Z

I was lying on the bed, strapped down and looking up at the armed soldiers who were frantically looking at each other, desperate for someone to tell them what they should do. They were shouting at the doctor, telling him they wouldn’t shoot him if he put the scalpel down. I heard Captain Stein shouting, saying we were all going to die anyway so the doctor may as well let him go.

Through the commotion, I heard the hushed voice of Doctor Owen. I couldn’t see him but I could hear his voice echoing in my mind.

‘You can break free of your bonds, Detective. You saw how the vampires channel their energy. Channel your energy to your arms and break free.’

I thought of the vampire the doctor had chopped up, then I concentrated on my arms. Do I have the same power? Can I break through the straps with the same ease?

I pictured my arms breaking free of the straps. As soon as I started to struggle, I felt a warmth flow through my arms. It wrapped around my bones and muscles and my arms felt like they were ready to burst with the pressure.

Without really struggling, the straps ripped like they were made from paper and my arms were free. I looked down at my feet and pictured them breaking free of the straps. The warmth moved from my arms, down through my body to my legs. The straps binding my legs also ripped apart.

‘Holy shit!’ exclaimed one of the soldiers, and turned his rifle towards me. No sooner had Stein shouted ‘Shoot him!’ than I leapt to my feet, snatched the rifle from the soldier’s hands and smashed him in the face with the butt. With one blow, blood sprayed from his mouth onto the wall and his neck made a loud crack. He fell to the floor unconscious, his legs and arms twitching.

The other soldier took a step towards me and before he knew what had happened, he had received a blow to the nose from the butt of my rifle. Following up with a kick in the chest, he flew backwards, crashing through the lab door. That just left Captain Stein to deal with.

I turned to him. His face was a contorted mix of horror and anger. ‘You won’t get out of here, Detective. You won’t even get down the hall. As soon as my men find you, they’ll kill you.’

‘That’s why we’re taking you with us,’ said the doctor.

I heard the sound of gunfire from outside the lab. Private Skinner appeared at the door. The look on his face told me exactly what he was about to say.

‘We have to leave. Right now.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Rebirth wins Book Of The Year award

2007-07-14T18:21:00.000Z

I am very pleased to report that Rebirth has been awarded the Unpublished Book Of The Year award by Spinetinglers.

"I am delighted to announce that the winner is Rebirth by Scott McKenzie. Rebirth is an excellent book, the type which draws you in from the very beginning and holds you until the very end. In fact if you manage to put it down at all you will be doing something which our reviewers couldn't do."

"Congratulations Scott on writing Rebirth and we'd like you to hurry up and write another book, so that we have another excellent book to read."

Don't worry, the sequel is well underway...

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 83: Feeding

2007-07-14T09:32:00.000Z

Private Skinner could sense the presence of vampires. They were very close. He heard a commotion from the lab as he turned the corner at the end of the corridor.

He considered turning round to go to his new friends’ aid but realised that he was the only person who had a chance of taking care of the imminent threat.

The heavy metal door to the morgue was open. Not only was it open, it was hanging from its hinges and the soldier that had been standing at the door was no longer there. Private Skinner raised his rifle and moved forward in small steps.

There were no other rooms near the morgue, no other doors lining the corridor. The vampires had been reborn and the morgue was the only place they could be. There was nowhere else they could have gone without being seen by everyone in the lab.

Light was spilling into the morgue from the fluorescent lights in the corridor, illuminating the room and casting a long shadow of Private Skinner as he reached the doorway. He looked into the morgue, trying to adjust his eyesight to the darkness from the clinical white glare that lit the rest of the base.

For a few moments, he saw nothing but his senses told him something was lurking in the shadows. He closed his eyes and listened for a sign.

There it is.

He heard the sound he had dreaded but all the time knew was coming. The sound of tearing flesh, the slurping of blood.

Someone, something is feeding in here.

Private Skinner’s eyes adjusted to the low light and he laid eyes on what he had heard.

Twelve vampires, all feeding on the body of the soldier that had been standing outside the morgue not five minutes ago, thinking that guarding dead bodies was the easiest job in The Brotherhood. The uncontrollable hunger of twelve newborn vampires meant that they had already reduced the body to almost a bare skeleton. Only a few pieces of dry flesh hung from the soldier’s bones.

It was only a matter of time before the new vampires felt something click in their minds. They were becoming aware of a new talent: the ability to sense the presence of their new brothers and sisters. All at once, the twelve of them turned their blood soaked heads around to look at Private Skinner.

They all got to their feet and started to take steps towards the door. One more new talent hit them: the ability to sense danger. Even though they instinctively knew the man at the door was one of their brothers, he was not to be trusted.

Before Private Skinner could squeeze the trigger of his rifle, all twelve of them had scattered around the morgue, heading for the darkest corners they could find. The machine gun fire lit up the room for a second and the bullets rattled off the metal fixtures but failed to find a target.

Private Skinner knew he wouldn’t be able to hold his own against these vampires with a rifle that was quickly running out of ammunition so he turned on his heels and made his way out of the morgue as quickly as he could. Unable to lock the door behind him, he kept peppering the doorway with bullets, hoping to keep the advancing vampires at bay but it wouldn’t be long before they broke out of the morgue and overran the base.

As he turned the corner, he met a squad of four soldiers coming the other way. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ one of them asked.

‘Vampires in the morgue,’ Private Skinner replied, ‘Twelve of them. If they get out of there, we’re all dead.’

‘We can’t let them get out then,’ said the soldier as he flicked his rifle’s safety catch. Private Skinner continued running in the opposite direction as gunfire behind him echoed down the corridor.

If he and his new friends in the lab were going to make their escape from The Brotherhood, it was now or never.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Man beats "vampire" peacock to death

2007-07-12T18:53:00.000Z

No joke...

"Police say they've collared the man they believe administered a fatal beating to a peacock because he thought it was a vampire."

http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/118337765847290.xml&coll=1

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 82: Strapped Down

2007-07-12T05:38:00.000Z

This is not happening. This is not happening.

First I get bitten by a vampire, then I get forced to join a fanatical group of killers and to top it all off, I’m going to be sliced open in the name of science.

One of Captain Stein’s soldiers held me down while the other strapped me to the bed. Stein was wide-eyed and manic, brandishing his gun, threatening to shoot anyone who tried to help me.

Private Skinner was still armed though, our man on the inside from the other side. He was our only hope.

‘What is your problem? Why are you doing this?’ I asked Captain Stein, not expecting a reasonable answer.

‘You’ve been bitten, Detective. You will turn into a vampire and I can’t take the risk. Just over a year ago I lost an outpost in a vampire attack. It happened again last night. I swear I will not let it happen again. All you are good for now is parts for the doctor to run tests on.’

I had resigned myself to that fact several hours ago but I didn’t want all my parts to be separated and experimented on at the same time. Dying wasn’t part of the plan. Not at this point anyway.

‘But the doctor can help him,’ pleaded Agent Simpson, ‘he’s working on the treatment and we have already used it to slow down the effects.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, Agent Simpson? The primary treatment is the only way forward and it is the only treatment the doctor should be working on. I will not rest until every vampire is turned to dust. Now use this man’s body to find a way for me to rid the world of this curse.’

Captain Stein was not going to change his opinion. He had already gone too far down the path of The Brotherhood and killing vampires was all he knew. His hatred was etched into his mind by ignorance and endless brainwashing by his superiors. It was too late for him to begin questioning his orders.

‘There has to be another way. Killing this man will not bring us any closer to any kind of treatment.’ The doctor tried in vain to bring a sense of reality back to the proceedings.

‘Chopping this man up will provide you with more samples. The more samples you have, the better your chance of finding the primary treatment. You said that yourself. I don’t want any excuses, Doc. Get to work.’

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, there was a series of loud bangs and a painful scream from outside the lab.

Is it the vampire soldiers? Have they been reborn before Private Skinner could dispose of the bodies?

‘What was that?’ exclaimed one of the soldiers.

‘I’ll go and check it out,’ said Private Skinner, and headed out of the door after getting the nod from Captain Stein. He gave me a passing glance as he walked past me. This vampire was our only chance of getting out of here and he had run away to look for his brothers. I hoped he knew what he was doing.

Captain Stein ordered one of his men to strip me. The soldier leaned over me and ripped my shirt open. Doctor Owen reluctantly leaned over me with a look on his face that told me he didn’t know how to get out of this situation. He looked into my eyes inquisitively and placed a finger on my lower jaw, opening my mouth. When he was sure no one else could see his face, he winked at me then reeled backwards.

‘What’s wrong, Doc? Stop stalling,’ said Captain Stein.

‘Look at his teeth,’ the doctor said, his voice trembling.

Captain Stein leaned over again, but before he could look into my mouth, Doctor Owen grabbed him by his shirt collar and held a scalpel at his neck, pressing it against the flesh next to his Adam’s apple. The soldiers gripped their rifles and pointed them in the doctor’s direction but the looks on their faces told me they had no idea how to handle this situation.

‘Get back!’ the doctor shouted at the soldiers.

‘You’ve no idea what you’ve just done,’ said Captain Stein in a cool, assertive voice that contrasted the predicament in which he found himself, ‘you can forget about your work now, Doc. You’re a dead man.’

‘That’s wrong and you know it, ‘said Doctor Owen, ‘you need me to complete the work on the primary treatment. If that’s what you want then that’s what you’ll get but I will not cut this guy up for no good reason. He doesn’t deserve it.’

‘Doctor Forrest’s still out there,’ said Captain Stein, ‘you’re not the only expert in this town. It’s not like you’ve produced anything useful anyway.’

‘How can you say that after all we’ve seen today? We have made giant leaps in understanding vampire anatomy. If that’s the way you feel then I quit. I’m getting out of here.’

‘You quit? You can’t do that. I won’t let you leave here. Agent Simpson, shoot the doctor,’ Stein ordered.

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ she said, ‘I agree with Doctor Owen. We should be focusing our efforts on the secondary treatment. I can’t go along with your methods any more either. We’re getting out of here right now.’

Doctor Owen turned to shout at the armed soldiers with a renewed sense of vigour in his voice. ‘Put your weapons down or the Captain dies! Put them down now!’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 81: Reborn

2007-07-10T17:21:00.000Z

The door to the morgue had been locked and the soldier standing guard outside thought nothing of the two piles of body bags lying in the cold darkness in the room behind him.

One pile of bodies was decomposing.

The other twelve bodies were regenerating.

The pool of blood that had gathered in each body bag was slowly reducing in size. Vampire blood was finding its way back into the open wounds of the dead soldiers, which closed and new skin grew over the top, sealing wounds within seconds and removing all sign of scars. To look at them, no one would know they had been bitten.

No one would know they were now servants of the undead. Even the soldiers themselves didn’t know why they had awoken. The last image in their minds was of a vampire bearing down on them and sinking its teeth into their neck.

One by one their eyes flicked open and quickly closed again as they gripped their stomachs with both hands and moaned in pain. Their insides were on fire. It felt like their internal organs were dissolving, sending intense heat to all corners of their bodies. The body bags shook as the newborn vampires writhed in agony.

They could sense each other’s presence. Each soldier lying in a zipped-up body bag knew he had eleven blood brothers in the room. They all ripped open the body bags with little effort and felt a powerful warmth spread down their legs as they struggled to their feet.

Each one of them was being driven by one desire. The need to ensure their survival.

They had to feed.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 80: Defection

2007-07-08T09:30:00.000Z

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Agent Simpson demanded, ‘Any dead bodies recovered from battle sites are treated so they will burn if they turn into vampires.’

‘The guy you chopped up is the one who treated them,’ said the soldier, ‘he was supposed to shoot the bodies with silver bullets but we switched the ammo with regular bullets.’

‘So why do you want to help us if you’re ready to set vampires loose in here?’ asked Doctor Owen.

‘I was carrying out my orders because I didn’t know any better. As a vampire, I didn’t think I had a choice. Now I’ve met you three and seen what you can do, I want to help. You’re not like everyone else here.

‘I had heard of Doctor Owen’s work but the message I got was different. We were told that you wanted to kill all of us. I always hoped there was someone out there that could help us and now that I know there is, I want to be part of it. I don’t want to be part of this pointless war any more.’

Agent Simpson thought to herself for a second and turned to Doctor Owen. ‘That makes two of us.’

‘I was hoping you were going to say that,’ he said, ‘I’ve had more than enough of these macho assholes.’

‘Okay,’ I piped up, struggling to get my words out, ‘now we’re all friends, what do we do? I’m lying here with my guts turning into mush, we’ve got masses of vampire bits to sort through and a squad of vampires in the morgue down the hall are starting to get hungry. How the hell are we going to get out of here?’

‘We need to take care of those vampires first,’ said the doctor, ‘Private…?’

‘Skinner, sir,’ said the soldier.

‘Private Skinner: go down to the morgue and finish off the vampires. I take it you can pilot one of the helicopters on the roof?’

‘Yes, I’ve got one fuelled and ready to go.’

‘Good. Agent Simpson and I will pack as much equipment and as many samples as we can fit into the steel cases we brought back from Hartley House. Detective Ryder: unless Private Skinner here tells us otherwise, you’re just going to have to ride it out for now.’

That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. The thought of getting an injection and waking up far away from The Brotherhood a few hours later was very appealing to me.

‘You said the pain would go away, didn’t you?’ I asked hopefully.

‘It certainly won’t get any worse. It’ll subside in a while. As soon as we get out of here, the doctor can give you a shot.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ I said, remembering last night’s dreams and questioning whether I would rather be unconscious or not.

Private Skinner checked his gun was loaded and made his way to the door, but was stopped by Captain Stein who bounded into the lab, followed by a pair of soldiers.

‘Where the hell are you going, Private?’ Before he could answer, Captain Stein spotted me perched on the edge of the bed clenching my stomach. ‘Jesus Christ, he’s turning, isn’t he?’

‘I can’t say for sure,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m just going to have a look at him now.’

‘Bullshit! Look at the state of him. He’s turning into a bloodsucker and you know it!’ Captain Stein’s rage knew no bounds. Only he really knew what he was capable of.

‘Then leave us alone to treat him!’ the doctor shouted.

‘Not a chance, Doc,’ said Captain Stein, ‘Strap him down.’

‘What?’ Agent Simpson exclaimed.

‘Detective Ryder is your next subject, Doctor Owen,’ said Captain Stein as he drew his gun and pointed it at the doctor, ‘The son of a bitch is a vampire. Chop him up.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 79: Hunger

2007-07-06T06:09:00.000Z

I fell to the ground and rolled over, trying not to scream or do anything to alert the soldiers outside the lab to my suffering. The pain in my stomach was excruciating. I had never been stabbed but I suspected that having knives thrust into my guts over and over would feel something like this.

Agent Simpson was the first to my aid. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s my stomach. I don’t know what’s wrong, it just started this second,’ I stammered.

‘It’s the hunger,’ I heard Doctor Owen say, ‘I feared this would happen.’

‘Give me another shot,’ I pleaded.

‘It’ll probably knock you out for a few hours again,’ the doctor said, looking very concerned.

‘I don’t care how long I sleep for. The longer the better. Just do it,’ I pleaded.

‘No, wait!’ shouted a voice that I didn’t recognise.

I looked up and saw the soldier who had been left in the lab by Captain Stein walking over to me. He lifted me up and sat me down on an empty bed.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘Fight through it, Detective. The hunger will subside,’ the soldier said to me.

‘What do you know about it?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘Listen to me, I know what I’m talking about,’ said the stranger.

‘You’re a vampire, aren’t you?’ said Doctor Owen, more calmly than the situation dictated.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I want to help.’

In a flash, Agent Simpson drew her gun and pointed it at the soldier, who raised his hands and took a step back. ‘Look, I just want to help,’ he said, without a hint on insincerity in his voice.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been a member of The Brotherhood for almost a year. I’m not the only one, you know.’

‘We know there have been infiltrators. How many of you are there?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve sensed another two or three here but we’re never told who they are. We have our missions and we carry them out, that’s all.’

I’ve sensed another two or three, he said. I cast my mind back to the line-up of eight soldiers and my suspicions about the vampire infiltrator.

Do I have the same power to sense the presence of other vampires?

‘What is your mission?’ she demanded as I screamed again. It felt like my insides were burning away to nothing. The doctor walked over to me, carrying the syringe that I hoped would take me away from this agony.

‘Don’t give him the treatment, Doc,’ the soldier said.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ I shouted, ‘I’m dying here. I know you want to help me but I can’t take it any more.’

‘This will hold back the effects of the virus,’ the doctor said, ‘why shouldn’t I give it to him?’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Agent Simpson, ‘he wants him to turn into a vampire.’

‘No, it’s not that. You said it would knock him out for a few hours,’ said the soldier.

‘So what?’ The doctor stopped to listen to the soldier for a moment. I really hoped everyone would get to the point so I could get the injection and go off to sleep.

‘If you want to get out of here, I can help you, but we have to keep him awake and leave now.’

‘How do we know we can trust you?’ shouted Agent Simpson, still pointing the gun in the soldier’s face.

‘I guess you can’t, not one hundred percent, but you have to have faith in me. I’ve already told you who I am. All you need to do is say the word and the Captain will come back in and force you to chop me up like you did to him. I take it you lot aren’t here of your own free will? Don’t you want to leave?’

Agent Simpson looked at the basins full of internal organs. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘the doctor will give Detective Ryder the treatment and we’ll get out of here after he wakes up.’

‘We can’t wait that long,’ the soldier said, raising his voice. He had an air of urgency that Doctor Owen and Agent Simpson weren’t picking up on.

‘Why not?’

‘Because any minute now, the dead bodies recovered from Hartley House will turn into vampires and they’re going to be just as hungry as your friend.’

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Chapter 78: Second Thoughts

2007-07-04T06:32:00.000Z

Private Skinner was shocked. Standing in the medical lab with the recovery crew, he had witnessed the death of one of his brothers, but for the first time he believed the death wasn’t in vain. He had witnessed the massacre of many humans and vampires, all of them killed for no good reason that he could fathom. Every battle was a futile exercise that resulted in a pile of dead bodies without any advancement for either species.

This time the death seemed to have some value. The people doing the experiments wanted to help everyone, not just the humans. They wanted what was best for all species. Private Skinner was a sworn enemy of The Brotherhood but these people weren’t like the others.

These people, Doctor Owen, Detective Ryder and Agent Simpson, weren’t bloodthirsty animals. They had a measured approach towards these experiments. Not once had they mentioned the primary treatment.

He had only been a vampire for a relatively short time and could still remember life before his rebirth. He hadn’t chosen this life. It had chosen him one drunken night when he fell over on the long walk home and passed out in the street. When he woke up in hospital he had a bandage on his neck and a splitting headache. The hunger set in and he fought it for a few days, thinking he was just suffering from the worst hangover of his life.

Then one day he had a craving. No amount of Alka Seltzer or full fat milk could quell the burning in his stomach. Without thinking, he went to the fridge, took out a large beef steak, ripped open the packet and started to feast on the raw meat. The old Skinner, somewhere in his head who liked his steaks well done, was repulsed at the thought of what he was doing. The new Skinner finished it off within seconds but the pain did not subside. He wanted more.

From that day forward, he had a compulsion to eat only raw meat, but while this felt natural to him, it failed to keep the hunger at bay. Visits to the doctor were fruitless: they couldn’t diagnose his problem. It had been the height of summer but he seemed to suffer from sunburn a lot more than he usually did and he decided to change his shift as a security guard and work nights instead. He stayed inside all day, either sleeping or searching the internet for people with similar problems.

Eventually he made contact with a mysterious character on a chat room who said she could introduce him to hundreds of people just like him and make the pain go away. He had no choice.

Roxy was her name and she was very welcoming. She showed him a new life with people of his own kind. She showed him the superiority of his brothers and sisters and he bought into the whole way of life. She had given him his first taste of human blood. Part of him had been repulsed but it was the only thing that could satiate his hunger.

The new Skinner had ruled his head ever since but in the past few minutes, the old Skinner had started to talk to him again.

Help them, said the voice in his head, you have to help them because they can help you. It’s what you really want.

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Chapter 77: 'Butcher Him'

2007-07-02T11:17:00.000Z

The vampire soldier’s eyes darted around maniacally in their sockets then locked onto mine. He opened his mouth to reveal extended canine teeth. The muscles in his arms and legs tensed but the straps tying him down were holding him to the bed. For now.

‘Jesus Christ! He’s woken up already, shoot him!’ Captain Stein exclaimed and the armed soldiers clicked the safety catches on their rifles.

‘No, wait!’ shouted the doctor as he reached across me, picked up a syringe full of anaesthetic and injected it into the soldier’s neck. Within a few seconds, the soldier’s eyes and mouth closed and his body lost its powerful energy.

‘This is too dangerous, Doc,’ said the Captain, ‘if that happens again, I will shoot him.’ The doctor turned to Captain Stein, ready to start an argument but soon realised that he wouldn’t have a chance of winning. Instead, he turned to me once again.

‘We’d better do as much as we can before he wakes up again. My original estimation of four to five hours of unconsciousness was way out. I now estimate around twenty to thirty minutes before he wakes up.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked.

The doctor thought to himself for a few moments. ‘We butcher him. As fast as we can.’ He turned to the soldiers. ‘Gather up all the basins and buckets you can find.’ They all turned to Captain Stein for guidance.

‘Don’t look at me,’ he said, ‘Do what he said. You heard him, we haven’t got much time.’

Doctor Owen leaned over the body of the undead soldier with a scalpel and reopened the chest cavity. As the soldiers ran around the labs gathering together all the vessels they could find, the doctor was dipping conical flasks into the chest cavity one after another, collecting as many samples as possible, and putting corks in the tops of the flasks to stop the vampire blood making its own way out. He knew this soldier would die very soon and wanted to get as much data for further examination as possible before our time ran out.

The basins piled up on the bench next to us and the doctor ordered me to stand by and hand him a new basin for each organ that he was going to extract. I held the first basin in front of me. In one quick move, the doctor yanked the soldier’s stomach out of his abdominal cavity and sliced it free from the rest of his digestive tract. It landed in my basin with a watery splat, followed by the order: ‘Get ready, here comes the liver!’

For the next few minutes I managed to catch all the organs that Doctor Owen threw at me. The organs were all drenched in blood and splashed drops onto me as they landed in each basin. The doctor stopped and we both looked at the organs lined up on the bench next to us. He had extracted the stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, heart and lungs.

‘Very interesting,’ he commented.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘If we assume that a vampire’s body turns into ash when it dies, we can therefore assume that this man is still quote-unquote alive, even though all of his vital organs are sitting over there. Look, the blood is still active.’

He was right. This was a very unsettling experience. In each of the basins, the drops of blood that had splattered around the organs were making their way back into their host. Every drop of blood was alive, with a mind of its own dictating its movements.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Captain Stein.

‘It means that this man has no use for his internal organs. The biological processes required to sustain human life cease to be relevant once the virus has consumed the body. It is safe to assume that the muscles are still required by the limbs in order for them to function but it appears this body runs almost solely on blood. That must be why vampires feed on human blood: nothing else provides them with the sustenance their bodies need. It is as if the virus has taken control of the blood completely and is using the body as a home.

‘When we saw the blood drain from the chest cavity, it must have been moving to the brain to provide the energy necessary to overcome the effects of the anaesthetic.’

Everyone in the lab stood in silence. Doctor Owen had just delivered a bombshell. As long as the human race had walked the Earth, vampires had always been the enemy and now, for the first time in recorded history, we had biological evidence of the differences between them and us. The first step on the path to rid them from our world.

Something else occurred to me. What if vampires are the superior species? Are we trying to rid the world of the next step in human evolution? The anatomy of a vampire seemed so much simpler, so much more elegant than that of a human body.

I looked at the body of the soldier and saw the blood start to drain away from his chest cavity. Just as it had before, the chest cavity closed like an invisible zipper was being done up.

‘Doc, he’s going to wake up again.’

Captain Stein picked up his gun but the doctor stopped him.

‘No sense wasting another bullet,’ said Doctor Owen as he picked a bullet up from the petri dishes and casually lobbed it into the soldier’s wound just before it closed completely. As the soldier’s eyes opened, smoke started to rise from his chest and the burning spread around the body.

The soldier screamed and tried to shake himself free. The bed rattled and he managed to rip one of the straps and release one of his arms but it was too late. As he tried to reach over to free his other arm, it turned to ash, along with the rest of his body. Within seconds, nothing was left of the soldier other than a thick layer of ash.

‘Good work, Doctor,’ Captain Stein conceded, ‘keep at it. Looks like you’ve got a lot of samples to get to work on.’ He marched most of the soldiers out of the lab, leaving one volunteer behind to keep an eye on us.

Doctor Owen, Agent Simpson and I looked at each other and assessed our surroundings. We were faced with a bed covered in ash from a dead vampire and a row of basins filled with live organs. The organs had not turned into ash. They looked exactly the same: fat, moist and full of vampire blood.

‘Very interesting,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘the organs haven’t died, even though the vampire’s body has died.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Agent Simpson.

Doctor Owen smiled. ‘To be honest, I’ve no idea. It feels like we’ve discovered penicillin, cracked the human genome and discovered the triple helix all on the same day. I think we’ve earned a five minute break.’

We all nodded in agreement. Unfortunately, it was that very second that I felt a burning in my stomach like nothing I had ever felt before but I instinctively knew what it was. I gripped my stomach with both hands and doubled over in agony.

Like the doctor had predicted and I had feared, I was suddenly unbelievably hungry.

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Chapter 76: Discoveries

2007-06-30T07:02:00.000Z

Doctor Owen quickly finished testing the blood of the four remaining soldiers. My mind had told me they weren’t vampires and I was right. Our focus then turned to the unconscious vampire tied to the bed. The doctor filled a syringe with anaesthetic and injected it into the vampire’s arm.

‘I’ll need your help,’ the doctor said to me under his breath, ‘this isn’t going to be easy.’

‘Why?’ I asked, ‘Haven’t you done experiments like this a hundred times before?’

‘I’ve performed autopsies and dissected plenty of infected animals but this is going to be very delicate. I need to examine the inner workings of his body in as much detail as possible without killing him but remember I’m a scientist, not a surgeon. If he dies, his body will probably turn to ash and I’ve no idea what Captain Stein will do next. We also need to make sure the soldier doesn’t wake up.’

For the second time today, the doctor appeared to not know what he was doing but like before, he was doing a good job of hiding this fact from everyone apart from me. He was quick to come up with a plan of action whenever necessary but I now realised that nothing we were doing had ever been attempted before.

Every time he performed an experiment, he was setting a precedent, like watching Walton and Cockcroft split the atom or being there under the tree to see the apple bounce off Newton’s head.

‘You’ve already pumped him full of anaesthetic. What’s the problem?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea what effect the anaesthetic will have, if any. For all I know, he’s still unconscious from Stein’s punch in the face. I’ve given him enough to keep a human out for four or five hours but we need to keep watching him for movement, in case he wakes up.’

The doctor had a point. After seeing Officer Myers leap from one vehicle to another and punch through the windscreen of my car, it occurred to me that the straps holding the soldier down might not keep him down for long.

I held the metal tray for the doctor again as he filled it with medical instruments. ‘Why me? Why don’t you get one of these guys to help out? Some of them must be trained medics.’

‘You’re the only one I trust,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘Agent Simpson, I need your help as well.’

She walked over to the doctor, who handed her a video camera. ‘I need you to film everything. It’s going to be fairly gruesome so if you’re squeamish and have to look away, just make sure you keep the camera pointing at what I’m doing. Blood doesn’t make you faint, does it?’

‘Not at all, I’ve seen far worse things in my time,’ she said, looking a little worried.

‘Good. Let’s get started,’ Captain Stein shouted, and clapped his hands together very loudly.

I stood next to the soldier’s perfectly still body, flanked by Doctor Owen and Agent Simpson. I felt like they were the only allies I had in a base that was supposedly the home of the good guys.

I agreed with the doctor: I didn’t trust anyone here that was part of The Brotherhood and I was surprised Agent Simpson counted herself as one of them. She didn’t seem as brainwashed as the others, maybe because she had been out there in the real world seeing how the vampire virus affects society instead of sitting in the headquarters waiting on the call to jump on a helicopter and shoot some bad guys.

She had come to tell us that Captain Stein was on his way and she had saved my life, running the risk of being thrown out of The Brotherhood or worse. I wondered if she was starting to question the legitimacy of the methods used to further their cause.

‘Are we filming?’ asked the doctor. Agent Simpson lifted the camera up and focused on the soldier’s bare torso. She pressed the record button and gave the doctor a thumbs-up with her free hand.

‘Where are you going to start?’ asked Captain Stein.

‘I’m going to check all the vital organs to see if there is any deterioration,’ said the doctor. He was back to sounding like he knew what he was talking about. ‘I suspect that vampires have some form of deficiency that necessitates the consumption of human blood. I want to see how the deficiency affects the internal organs.’

‘Okay, don’t let me hold you up,’ said the Captain as he looked on. He was a little too eager to see the soldier’s insides for my liking.

Doctor Owen started his commentary for the video camera as he pulled on his surgical gloves and waved at me to hand him a scalpel. ‘I will begin by making an incision in the chest cavity to examine the stomach and intestines.’

He took the scalpel out of my hands and looked at me. The look on his face told me he had no idea what to expect. As far as anyone in the room knew, we were about to witness the very first live vampire autopsy.

Very carefully, Doctor Owen leaned over the body and pushed the scalpel into the soldier’s skin just below the middle of his rib cage and started to cut him open, stopping just above his navel. Blood started to pour from the wound, which the doctor seemed be very surprised about.

‘There is an incredible amount of blood in the chest cavity: possible haemorrhage in one or more of the organs.’

The blood poured out of the soldier’s chest, onto the bed and started to drip onto the floor. The doctor continued, ‘Subject is losing massive amounts of blood.’

‘This is going to make a right mess,’ Captain Stein interrupted. Doctor Owen shot a dirty look in his direction.

‘If you want to help, get a bucket,’ he snapped. Captain Stein did nothing. ‘I’m serious. Get a bucket now! I have a theory.’

One of the armed soldiers put down his rifle, picked up a plastic basin and placed it under the bed, catching the dripping blood. At the rate the blood was gushing out of the soldier’s body, it wouldn’t be long until the basin filled up.

‘What’s the theory?’ asked the Captain.

Doctor Owen was fishing around inside the dark wet chest cavity. ‘All the organs feel larger than normal. I suspect they are filled with blood.’

‘Why isn’t that normal?’

‘This man’s stomach should feel like a small football, hollow and leathery on the outside. It feels more like a wet sponge, much bigger and heavier than it should be.’ The doctor squeezed the soldier’s stomach and commented on its quick return to a larger-than-normal size. His hands emerged, completely covered in blood.

Captain Stein was looking at the doctor in disbelief, the colour draining from his face.

‘Have a go if you don’t believe me,’ said the doctor.

‘I’ll pass,’ said Captain Stein, conceding that Doctor Owen knew more than he did, ‘So what does that mean?’

‘I suspect the virus breaks down the organ tissue. This man’s body is no longer the well-organised system that we are all blessed with. In our bodies, each organ has a purpose: one organ feeds the next in a specific order. Food reaches your stomach, which is broken down and processed through the intestines to transport energy to your muscles via the blood.

‘The walls of this man’s organs appear to be more permeable, meaning that blood can pass directly from one area of the body to the other, straight through the organs, bypassing the circulatory system. That will explain their incredible strength: blood can pass directly to the necessary muscles whereas our blood needs to travel through the complicated system of veins and arteries.’

‘But how is the blood directed?’ I asked, ‘The blood is pumped around our bodies by the heart. How can a vampire’s heart decide where to assign the blood?’

‘One step at a time, Detective.’

‘Doctor Owen,’ said Agent Simpson, sounding very concerned, ‘what’s happening to the blood?’

The drip of blood into the basin stopped. The stream of blood from the body to the basin hung in the air, defying the laws of gravity.

Then something even more unbelievable happened.

The blood started to pour upwards, out of the basin and back into the vampire’s chest cavity.

Frozen with shock, everyone in the lab watched as every drop of blood made its way from the basin under the bed back into the vampire’s body. Then the level of blood in the chest cavity dropped and the open wound in the vampire’s chest quickly sealed itself shut.

The doctor looked very concerned. ‘The blood must be moving to an area of the body where it is needed.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

I looked at the soldier’s face and saw his eyes open.

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Chapter 75: Blood Tests

2007-06-28T16:22:00.000Z

I heard the footsteps of the squad marching down the corridor outside the lab. Captain Stein led the way, almost knocking the door off its hinges as he barged into the makeshift lab. A line of eight unarmed soldiers followed him and lined up next to each other. More soldiers walked through the doors, their rifles trained on the procession that had just appeared.

My instincts told me this would end badly. I’d only known Captain Stein for a matter of hours and I’d already worked out that subtlety and tact were not his forte. This was a situation that could almost certainly have been handled more appropriately.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ demanded Doctor Owen.

Stein’s face had his determination written all over it. ‘In the attack on Hartley House, the first helicopter was destroyed by an infiltrator. A vampire got past our security checks so we’re taking steps to increase the security of the base.

‘I’ve decided that we can’t take any more risks. Everyone who leaves the base must be checked on re-entry. These men were on the recovery team that brought the bodies of the dead soldiers back from Hartley House this morning so they must be tested.’

‘How are you going to do that?’ the doctor asked.

‘You tell me,’ said Captain Stein, ‘you’re the expert.’

Doctor Owen knew that answer was coming. He thought to himself for a moment and came up with a plan.

‘Okay, I know what we can do. We all know that vampires have an adverse reaction to silver,’ he started, ‘We take a blood sample from everyone and test its reaction with silver. If the blood burns then we know it belongs to a vampire. Simple as that.’

‘Very good, Doctor. What are you waiting for? Start the tests,’ ordered Captain Stein.

The doctor handed a small metal tray to me and asked me to help him. I held the tray for him as he lined up eight syringes and eight petri dishes. I followed him as he approached one of the armed soldiers.

‘Hand me your gun,’ he ordered.

The soldier looked at Captain Stein, who nodded to him. ‘Do it, soldier. You heard the man.’

He handed the rifle over to the doctor, who removed the clip and ejected eight silver bullets, placing one in each of the Petri dishes. He then made his way over to the line of eight unarmed soldiers.

‘Roll up your sleeves. All of you.’ They all complied with his order.

I could see the doctor was relishing this brief period of authority. He picked up a syringe and grabbed the first soldier’s arm, tapping the top of his forearm to bring the veins to the surface of the skin.

‘Just relax,’ he said, ‘If you’re not a bloodsucker, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

Before he finished his sentence, the needle was in the soldier’s arm, drawing blood from his vein. The doctor removed the syringe and turned towards me. He looked me in the eye with the syringe poised over the petri dish.

Even if this soldier is a vampire, what will happen to him? Will the armed soldiers immediately blow him away or will he be locked away and prodded like me? Will he suddenly turn and start sucking our blood?

Very slowly, he pressed the plunger and the blood poured over the silver bullet into the petri dish.

Nothing happened.

‘Looks like you’re all clear, son,’ announced the doctor. The soldier breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was at this point that I realised the soldier was asking himself the same question I had been asking myself all day.

How do you know if you are a vampire?

I felt no different than I usually did but here I was, the bookie’s favourite to be feeding on human flesh by the end of the week. Or maybe even the end of the day.

As the doctor was taking a blood sample from the second nervous, sweaty soldier, I cast my eyes across the other six. They all had similar looks on their faces and moved around nervously on the spot, not knowing where to put their hands.

Apart from one.

The fourth soldier in line stood perfectly still. It probably meant nothing but he was conspicuous by his lack of reaction. Something was nagging in the back of my mind, telling me this soldier wasn’t to be trusted. It was more than a cop’s hunch, something I had absolute certainty of but I couldn’t explain the reason why.

‘Clear.’

The second soldier left the line-up of suspects and joined his other colleague behind the armed soldiers. As I suspected, the third soldier was clear as well and the doctor moved to the odd-looking one. He flinched just like the others when the doctor stuck the syringe in his arm to take his blood.

The doctor moved over to me and pressed the plunger on the syringe. The soldier’s blood poured onto the silver bullet lying in the petri dish. As soon as the blood touched the bullet, a small plume of smoke began to rise and flecks of ash settled in the dish. Everyone backed away from the soldier very quickly, apart from the armed men who moved a step closer to him.

Captain Stein moved forward. ‘So it was you, son. How did you make it through the trials? How many more vampires are there in the base?’

‘Fuck you, Captain,’ the vampire soldier said, ‘my job here is done.’

Stein looked at the men who had passed the blood test. ‘Hold him.’

They quickly approached the soldier, one grabbing each arm and the other holding his legs together so he couldn’t move. Stein punched him hard in the face, right on the end of his nose. As the soldier’s body slumped into unconsciousness, Stein grabbed him by his shirt collar and threw him onto the bed. He ordered the soldiers that had been given the all clear to tie the body down.

‘You asked me for a live specimen. There it is. Now finish testing these guys and show me some real results.’

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Chapter 74: Too Close

2007-06-26T17:51:00.000Z

Captain Nash slammed the phone down and shook his head. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t believe what Detective Ryder had just told him, the fact of the matter was that he had known exactly what was going on since the attack on Mantek. He just felt sorry for Ryder.

Don’t let an outsider take this investigation, they had said. Put one of your men on the case, someone who won’t be missed if he gets too close.

Ryder had got far too close and now he was in the middle of something that Nash had managed to keep hidden from outsiders within the police department for a long time but when this case came along, Ryder was all he had.

The poor, pathetic drunk. He gets results but no one round here likes him and no one will ask any questions if something happens to him.

Emily Owen was being held in a cell on her own and now that he had an update from Ryder to keep his superiors quiet for another few hours, Nash’s job was to baby-sit the doctor’s wife. She was a pleasant enough woman but she wasn’t in the mood for talking. Nash had tried all he could to break her down but he didn’t have much to threaten her with. He wasn’t planning to tell her The Brotherhood were keeping her husband safe. He’d let her sit in her cell and worry for another few hours then try talking to her again.

The vampires would surely know that the doctor had been safely returned to The Brotherhood and they were certain to attempt to recover his wife to use as leverage. Captain Nash knew he had to inform his brothers and sisters of the current status.

He took his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer under his desk. He fished around under a stack of papers for a mobile phone that he hadn’t used for a long time. He turned the phone on and dialled a number that was etched into his mind. A familiar voice answered.

‘Hi Roxy,’ said Captain Nash.

‘Nash, what is it?’ snapped Roxy. Always straight to the point.

‘The Brotherhood have Doctor Owen in their custody.’

‘I know. Anything else?’

‘I have his wife. She’s being held at the station. She’ll be released tomorrow unless we can find a reason to keep her here. I’m trying my best but in case she gets out…’

‘That’s good news, but don’t concern yourself with the details of her release. I will send one of my men down to get her.’

‘I won’t be able to release her to a stranger.’

‘You misunderstand me. I will send someone down to get her. You do not have to do anything.’

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Chapter 73: Call From The Boss

2007-06-24T17:08:00.000Z

The next few hours passed without incident. Doctor Owen continued to take blood from my veins and we talked a lot about anything and everything. He told me all about his wife and the life they shared. I felt sorry for him. As soon as he realised his work was so crucial, they made the decision to devote their lives to the cause. I thought his wife must be an incredibly strong woman to stand by him and sacrifice the things she always wanted.

The soldier had returned from his break and in silence, we continued to attempt to formulate a plan to get out of this base but the look on Doctor Owen’s face told me he was struggling to come up with options.

I had nothing. The base was heavily guarded and we were the VIPs. We couldn’t even step outside the lab without attracting attention.

Agent Simpson was busy in another part of the base debriefing her contacts within the World Health Organisation but she came into the lab from time to time to check up on me. I knew she felt guilty about what had happened to me but I couldn’t see how the things could have turned out any differently.

I flinched as I felt a rattling in my pocket. It was my mobile phone. I had completely forgotten about making contact with the outside world. I knew exactly who the caller would be.

‘Where the hell are you?’ shouted Captain Nash as soon as I answered, ‘you haven’t turned up for work and no one’s heard from you since your little car chase through downtown last night.’

I paused, not knowing where to start. How could I even begin to explain what I had been through in the past twenty-four hours?

‘Well?’ the Captain continued angrily, ‘Get your ass down here now or you’re fired! I’ve got the doctor’s wife here but no one to question her.’

‘I can’t,’ I protested.

‘Give me one good reason why.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ I said wearily, knowing that I’d have to tell him anyway. Typical Nash, always sticking his nose in. If we didn’t call in with an update every day, he thought we were bunking off.

Doctor Owen looked at me. He shrugged his shoulders and mouthed the words ‘Tell him.’

‘Try me,’ Captain Nash snapped.

‘Okay,’ I said and took a deep breath, ‘the murder you sent me to investigate was committed by a vampire. Mantek pharmaceuticals are working with an ancient group of vampire hunters called The Brotherhood to produce a vaccine that will rid the world of vampires. The vampires have taken exception to that plan and are fighting back.’

‘What the hell are you talking about, Detective?’ he shouted, ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

‘Wait, I haven’t finished,’ I continued, ‘Both myself and Doctor Owen, who was missing until he was rescued in the helicopter attack on the Expressway yesterday, are now at The Brotherhood’s regional headquarters. I am being experimented on because I was bitten by a vampire last night and they think I’m now the chosen one that will allow them to produce the vaccination they need to rid the world of vampires forever. I’ll call you back with an update in twenty four hours unless I’ve turned into a vampire, then I won’t be contactable for the rest of my undead life.’

Doctor Owen smiled at me as Captain Nash muttered something and hung up on me. ‘What did he say to that?’ asked the doctor.

‘He told me that I’m a disgusting drunk and I should take the rest of the week off to sober up,’ I said.

‘Are you an alcoholic?’ asked the Doctor. He looked concerned but I didn’t know if that was because he had my welfare in mind or if it was because it might screw up his experiments.

‘Not any more,’ I said.

‘How long have you been dry?’

‘Nine days.’

‘How is being sober treating you?’

‘To be honest, I haven’t thought about it until now. I’ve got more important things to worry about now.’

‘Indeed you have, Detective. I must say that’s a very good attitude.’

‘He mentioned your wife as well. Sounds like they’re holding her indefinitely until I go back there to talk to her.’

‘Don’t worry about her,’ he said, ‘I’ll let the Captain know and he’ll send someone along to pick her up.’

The door burst open and Agent Simpson ran through, looking very worried.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘It’s Captain Stein. He’s on his way down here and he’s not alone.’

‘What does he want?’ asked the doctor.

‘I don’t know but he looks very pissed off.’

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Chapter 72: Doctor Forrest

2007-06-22T19:00:00.000Z

Doctor Owen’s mobile phone rang and he looked at the screen before answering.

‘Oh my God,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s Doctor Forrest.’

Agent Simpson’s eyes widened and she had an expression on her face that was familiar to me. It was the look of someone who has just been informed that a missing loved one has been found. As a detective, it was very rare to recover a missing person, especially in this city, but the loved ones of a missing person always have the same expression of surprise and happiness that is unforgettable.

We stood in anxious silence as the doctors exchanged words.

‘Hello?’ said Doctor Owen, ‘Yes, it’s good to hear from you. How are you? Good. Where are you? Why not? I’ve got another subject here. He’s responding well to the secondary treatment. Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ll inform The Brotherhood, then we’ll recover the items and come and find you. What? Why? I don’t understand. Well, if you say so but it’s going to be very difficult. Okay, keep in touch. Bye.’

He had barely hung up when Agent Simpson spoke up. ‘What did he say?’

Doctor Owen looked very confused. ‘He said he’s safe and well but he wouldn’t say where he was. He suspected someone might have been listening and he doesn’t want to be found.

‘He said we have to recover our notes and samples from the labs around the city, all the stuff that wasn’t destroyed in the attack on Mantek. He has a plan for distribution. He didn’t say what it was but there’s something I don’t understand. He wants us to recover everything without the help of The Brotherhood. We can’t let them know he has contacted us.’

‘That’s very strange,’ said Agent Simpson, ‘he’s been a member of The Brotherhood all of his life. So have you, Doctor.’

‘Yes, he said he didn’t trust them any more. He said the plan is simple and we can achieve everything without their help if we can get out of here.’

I was caught in the middle of a situation I was struggling to understand but I felt I had to say something. ‘Well Doc, wherever you go, I go. How the hell are we going to get out of here?’

My question was met with blank looks.

‘Do you think we can trust the doctor?’ Agent Simpson asked. ‘What reason do we have to betray The Brotherhood?’

Looks like we’re going to be here for a while, I thought.

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Chapter 71: Alone In The Morgue

2007-06-20T17:24:00.000Z

Private Skinner had a lot of work to do. He stood alone in the morgue, looking down on a large pile of body bags. The leftovers from the battle of Hartley House.

This delivery was the largest Private Skinner had ever seen. The attack had been unprecedented in recent history and from the comments of the staff at the base and the recovery crew as they made the drop-off, everyone was still reeling from it. The vampires had now set the standard. Their numbers were significantly greater than The Brotherhood had anticipated. The humans would have to wake up to the threat the vampires imposed or they would leave themselves wide open to greater defeats.

Private Skinner’s usual job was to arrange the bodies of the fallen soldiers into two sections: bitten and just plain dead. For the bodies that had been bitten by vampires, he had to remove their dog tags and make a note of who they were before the silver bullets they had been treated with caused their bodies to burn when they turned.

Only this time it would be different: they had been shot with regular bullets. No one ever checked what type of bullets the recovery crew used. Once a soldier had gone through the acceptance process, it was assumed they were human. There were never any follow-up tests.

Private Skinner’s orders were to let the new-born vampires loose into the headquarters and allow them to run amok, killing as many members of The Brotherhood as possible.

This would cause a distraction that would allow him to capture the doctor and make their escape. He had a helicopter fuelled and waiting on the tarmac many floors above.

There had never been a successful attack on such a heavily guarded compound as this, but everything so far had been surprisingly easy. It made Private Skinner wonder why they hadn’t tried it before.

Then he realised all the work that had gone into getting him to join The Brotherhood and the necessity of the situation he found himself in. He had never known a mission to be carried out with so much urgency.

He had to return the doctor to his brothers and sisters. If he didn’t, Doctor Owen would continue his work and eventually discover a way of ridding his brothers and sisters from the world. Private Skinner knew Roxy wouldn’t allow that to happen and he wanted to be the one to make a difference.

But for now, Private Skinner was hungry. He had never fed on the blood of live humans. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, which is why he was happy to take care of the bodies in the morgue.

His canine teeth shifted in their sockets as he approached the pile of dead human bodies.

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Chapter 70: Enter The Angel

2007-06-18T19:15:00.000Z

Like an angel sent from heaven to bring light into my life deep within this stone fortress, Agent Simpson glided into the lab holding three cups of coffee.

‘I thought you could both do with a break,’ she said.

We both extended our eternal gratitude but the soldier standing guard in the corner was put out. ‘Hey, what about me?’ he protested.

‘Get your own,’ we all said in unison. A brief silent pause was quickly filled with laughter at the guard’s expense, who started to look less menacing and headed for the door.

‘Screw you guys, I’m going for a break,’ he announced and shouted to a colleague down the corridor as he opened the door, ‘Hey Steve, keep an eye on this lot in here for a minute.’

With that, the three of us were left without a chaperone.

‘So how are you two doing?’ Agent Simpson asked.

‘Pretty good,’ I said, ‘the doc was just filling me in on a few more details. There’s one thing I don’t really understand though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why is all of this happening now? If vampires and humans have been at each other’s throats, no pun intended, for the whole of eternity, why have things started to get out of hand now?’

Doctor Owen piped up. ‘We reached a critical stage in the development of the treatment.’

‘Primary or secondary?’ I asked.

‘Primary.’

‘I thought you weren’t working on it.’

‘Of course we are. The primary treatment is what we’re paid to work on but we kept working on the secondary treatment in the background.’

‘How do you keep working on both at the same time?’

‘The Brotherhood believe whatever we tell them. We are the scientific experts. About a year ago, we told Captain Stein that the next phase would take twelve months to complete, but we were only a couple of months away from completion. That bought us the time we needed to develop the secondary treatment on the side. If we hadn’t, you’d be in a lot of trouble.’

‘Well I thank you for that,’ I said, contemplating the choices that could have made the difference between my death and the state of delayed death that I found myself in. ‘So where are you up to with the primary treatment?’

‘The primary treatment is nearing completion. We have successfully developed a compound that breaks down infected blood much quicker than silver. The problem that faces us in the next phase is to find an application for the compound that is easily distributed so The Brotherhood don’t have to kill every vampire one by one.’

‘The same problem you have with the secondary treatment.’

‘Exactly. Our plan was to bring development of the secondary treatment to the same level as the primary then switch the compounds before distribution so the vampires will be cured rather than killed, but we’ve run into more problems with the secondary treatment.’

‘It only works for a limited time.’

‘Correct. At the moment, it’s only a treatment, not a cure. It’s going to become more and more difficult to work towards a cure with The Brotherhood breathing down our necks here.’

We all looked at each other with the same thoughts in mind but chose not to voice them. For now.

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Chapter 69: Bodies

2007-06-14T17:45:00.000Z

The sun was high in the sky as the recovery crew’s gunship landed at the regional headquarters, loaded with the dead bodies from Hartley House. A large white flatbed buggy whizzed up the ramp and stopped at the back of the helicopter. The recovery crew disembarked and started to transfer the body bags onto the buggy, some of which were tagged with red labels, some with blue labels.

The red-labelled bags contained soldiers that had been bitten by vampires. There were twelve of them. The process usually followed by the recovery crew is to shoot the infected bodies with silver bullets, bag them up, take them back to base and either let the bodies burn when they turn into vampires or slice them up to provide Doctor Owen with more samples to use in his experiments.

This time it was different. The bodies had been shot with regular bullets. The bodies in the red-labelled bags were starting to turn.

A member of the recovery crew was a vampire, but not a vampire in the way The Brotherhood knew. This vampire could withstand direct sunlight without incurring instant sunburn. Ash didn’t drip from his open sores. He was by no means a typical vampire and he wasn’t the only one.

It was Mother Nature’s love of diversity that helped the vampires infiltrate many levels of human society and it was the stereotypical view of vampires held by humans and the ignorance of The Brotherhood that allowed them to go unnoticed.

Once the buggy was full, the driver took it back down the ramp towards the morgue, deep in the heart of the base.

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Chapter 68: Questions

2007-06-12T17:51:00.000Z

Under the circumstances, I seemed to be getting on pretty well with Doctor Owen. He had me hooked up to various machines that beeped every few seconds and kept prodding and poking me but even so, with the exception of Agent Simpson, he was the only one treating me as if I was human.

I hoped I had enough blood left because he was taking a hell of a lot out of me and squirting it into test tubes. Everywhere I looked I could see my blood, labelled with the date and time.

He was explaining a lot to me but it surprised me how many gaps he was so far unable to fill. For example, no one knew where vampires got their powers.

How can they fly?

How do they absorb and process human blood?

Why do they have superhuman strength?

All these questions and more needed to be answered before the doctor could expect to find a cure for the virus.

‘It has been very difficult to conduct these kinds of experiments. The problem is that these guys are so twitchy, they never bring back a live specimen,’ he sighed.

Captain Stein walked into the room. ‘What would you have my men do, Doctor? Ask them to come quietly?’

‘There must be a way of capturing a vampire without killing it. Without a live specimen, my work remains in the realm of theory and speculation. That is the only reason that we know very little about vampires.’

‘What about our friend here?’ the Captain asked, pointing at me.

‘I am getting an incredible amount of data from Detective Ryder but there’s no guarantee that he’ll change. For all I know, I’m just filling this lab up with clean human blood.’ He was covering up the miraculous healing of my hand, which cemented my suspicion that he trusted Captain Stein as little as I did. I lifted the bandage to my neck again before Captain Stein could notice that the wound had healed.

‘This situation is tough for all of us, Doctor. We have to make do with what we’ve got so keep at it. I want you to present your findings to the Commander first thing tomorrow morning. Remember, he is expecting the primary treatment to be your main focus, same as me.’

‘What do you mean?’ he protested, ‘I’m still in the data gathering stage.’

‘You heard me, Doc. Give me results!’ said the Captain and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

I decided to ignore the soldier standing in the corner of the room and ask the Doctor the question that had been burning in my head since we arrived.

‘What are the primary and secondary treatments?’

The doctor glanced at the soldier as well and hesitated but decided to tell me anyway. He had been given one day to come up with results that were not physically possible. I suspected he was beginning to feel as much of a prisoner as I did.

‘The secondary treatment is what I gave you,’ he started, ‘The whole idea behind the secondary treatment is to remove the effects of the virus and to stop it taking over all bodily functions. This may then lead to a treatment that could reverse the rebirth process: to return vampires to their natural human state.’

‘So the secondary treatment is a cure?’

‘Eventually it will be, yes.’

‘And the primary treatment?’ I asked.

‘To develop a treatment that will cause a violent chemical reaction with the virus. The primary treatment will kill any vampire it is given to. The Brotherhood would rather have a poison than a remedy. They seem to think it will be easier to develop and deploy a formula that will kill all vampires without affecting humans.’

‘Are they right?’

‘Probably, but there’s no way Captain Stein or Commander North know anything about this research on a scientific level. They have no time for development and experiments. All they want to see are results but anyone who has worked in my field knows that once you start, tangible results may be years away, even for the primary treatment. Shouting louder won’t lead to results any sooner.

‘The secondary treatment would be the only true way of ridding vampires from this world. By immunising everyone at birth, within a generation there would be no vampires.’

To me, it sounded like an ideal solution. A vaccination for all would mean no more vampire rebirths and all the undead brothers and sisters could be returned to their natural state and start to live their human lives again.

I could see why this plan didn’t appeal to certain members of The Brotherhood. They weren’t exactly the most sophisticated bunch of people I had ever met. They had brand new expensive military hardware up to their ears and you can be damn sure they were itching to use it.

‘Hang on a minute, there’s a problem here,’ I said as something occurred to me, ‘Even if you could develop a vaccine, how would you distribute it? As soon as word got out, the vampires would just launch another massive attack and destroy the stock of any vaccine you had.’

‘I’m aware of this,’ said the doctor, ‘and if you can think of a way to do it, make sure you let me know.’

It was at this moment that I realised my job was to sit in this lab with a scientist who was learning everything from scratch. I felt like the zombie guinea pig from a horror movie I watched late one night while struggling to sleep. I guess I had to be happy that I hadn’t been chained to the walls. Not yet, anyway.

‘What about Doctor Forrest?’ I asked.

‘What about him?’

‘How is he involved in all of this?’

‘You mean does he know more about it than I do?’ the doctor asked with a wry smile on his face. He was right though, that was exactly what I meant. I was sure Doctor Owen would forgive me for wanting to have as many experts around me as possible.

‘You may be right,’ I said, ‘but can he help us?’

‘He’s a very old man,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘he’s been working on this pretty much his whole life without getting very far. Then we managed to make the breakthrough recently and came up with the experimental vaccine that I gave to you. After that he disappeared and I haven’t seen him for over a week. He goes AWOL from time to time so I just assumed he took a break.’

‘So now you think they’ve got him?’ I asked.

‘Well he’s been a member of The Brotherhood for all of his life. He’s not here and no one’s heard from him. All we can do is assume that he’s either gone into hiding or the vampires have him.’

‘Either way, you’re not going to see him again, are you?’

‘We should continue our work as if he’s not going to be found.’

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Chapter 67: Prisoner

2007-06-10T09:09:00.000Z

After the meeting, the doctor and I were escorted to a medical room by two soldiers sticking the barrels of their guns in our backs. My protestation was met with the comment: ‘The faster you move, the less it’ll hurt, asshole.’

More soldiers arrived carrying the equipment that we had managed to save from Hartley House. I wanted to ask the doctor about the primary and secondary treatments but the presence of the soldiers made me feel uneasy. Unless we were left alone or I got over my paranoia, it would be very difficult to speak candidly with someone watching me, ready to fill my body with silver bullets as soon as I started talking like a vampire.

‘We’ve only missed one interval,’ the doctor said as he looked at his watch, ‘we should still have manageable data.’

It was then that I realised how much I had been through. In just over two hours I had woken up from a vampire bite induced coma, discussed my future as a human pin cushion for experimental blood treatments and narrowly escaped another battle, this time on the side of The Brotherhood against a flock of hungry vampires.

Sitting in my unmarked car drinking coffee and feeling sorry for myself felt like a lifetime ago, but it was only twenty-four hours. I’d give anything to be back there right now, I thought to myself.

It was at this moment I realised what a horrible person I’d been without good reason. Okay, my wife had been killed but that was five years ago and I’d caught the killer. Her killer was in jail because I’d put him there. Everything bad that had happened in those five years had been blamed on Sarah’s death. The fact of the matter was that there was no one to blame anything on apart from myself.

I should have come to terms with the fact that I was on my own and I had to look after myself but I’d taken the easy route. I’d hit the bottle and the last five years were a blur. I felt like I had nothing to lose.

I had to get a grip and this was a better time than any other. Now I had everything to lose. If what the doctor was saying about me was true, then I owed it to him to stay alive. He had saved my life and now my life was in his hands.

Doctor Owen inserted a needle into a vein in my arm and took his sample. I winced and wondered how long it would take for me to get used to the injections. ‘How long will we be here for?’ I asked him.

‘They’ll probably keep us here for a while. The medical facilities are adequate and the outpost seems to be secure.’ Doctor Owen seemed to have more faith in The Brotherhood than I did.

‘You haven’t been here before then?’ I asked, ‘I assumed you followed these guys around and did all of their research for them.’

‘No, not at all,’ he said, ‘until now I’ve done all my work at Mantek. The turning point was when I made a breakthrough with the secondary treatment. I wasn’t expecting to reach that stage for another two or three weeks. Now that the research is out in the open, so to speak, only now is it necessary to continue the research behind closed doors.’

Looking around at all of the equipment, I realised I hadn’t seen any living quarters since we’d arrived. I turned to the one of the soldiers watching over us. ‘Where are we supposed to sleep?’

‘You’ve both got rooms,’ he said. ‘They’re across the hall. We’ll make sure you get all your meals, everything you need. There’s no need for you to leave this level.’

‘What about…’ I started.

‘You don’t understand,’ the doctor said to me, ‘they won’t let us leave here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’ve been bitten. They have to isolate you. Why do you think we were marched down here so quickly?’

The horrible reality of my future began to dawn on me. I hadn’t known what to expect but for some reason I didn’t think I would be locked away in a concrete bunker until the day I die.

‘So I’m a prisoner here? For the rest of my life?’ I asked, with desperation causing my voice to crack.

‘There’s only one way out of here, Detective,’ said the solider.

‘That’s if I find a permanent cure,’ the doctor said but I suspected the soldier would have finished the sentence in a different way if he’d been given the chance.

‘Well we’d better get cracking then,’ I said. I tried to do my best to sound upbeat. There was no point in throwing a fit. I was down here and we may as well do our best to make the most of it.

‘Okay,’ said the doctor, ‘tell me how you feel now.’

‘A little tired but other than that, I feel fine. If I start to turn, what should I expect? Do my teeth get longer? When do I start flying?’

‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ he said, ‘All vampires have their differences but they all have to feed after being reborn. One of the first symptoms you can expect is an insatiable hunger, like nothing you’ve ever felt before.’

‘For human flesh?’ I asked.

‘For blood, more specifically. Vampires crave human blood because theirs is deficient in a number of ways.’

‘Like what?’ I was no scientist but I had to find out all of the details. If something unnatural was going on in my body, I wanted to know everything.

‘The energy needed to sustain the undead life of a vampire is considerably more than the energy a human needs. If a vampire sustains an injury, it will heal itself very quickly, which requires an incredible amount of energy. The only way is to absorb more red blood cells into the body.’

I realised my hand had stopped hurting where it had been cut during the escape from Hartley House. I opened it and looked at my palm, expecting to see the bloody wound.

There was nothing. There was no trace of the wound at all. I held up my hand. ‘I cut this hand just before we got on the helicopter, now it’s completely healed.’

Doctor Owen took my hand in his for a closer look. ‘Very interesting,’ he said, ‘one attribute has shown itself but there are no other obvious signs that you have been infected.’

He removed the bandage from my neck and held a small mirror up for me to look into. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘your bite mark has gone as well.’

This made me feel very uneasy. My body thought I was a vampire and was starting to act like one. My thoughts turned to my impending desire to drink human blood.

‘How do vampires choose their victims?’

‘Vampires must feed on humans with the same blood type as them. Experienced vampires seem to be able to tell what blood type humans have. A new vampire will kill as many humans as it can before finding the correct blood type.

‘Needless to say, vampires with rare blood types don’t tend to last very long. For what it’s worth, I tested your blood type earlier and you’ve got a very common blood type, O positive. If you start to feel hungry, you won’t have to kill very many people to find a match.’

‘Thanks, Doc. That’s comforting.’

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Vampire sightings in Finland...

2007-06-08T12:06:00.000Z

Vampire moths, that is...

"No thanks to climate change, Finland is attracting species better-acquainted with warmer climes, including a moth that binges on human blood, according to a Finnish nature periodical."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/skin_piercing_vampire_moth_va.php

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Chapter 66: Silver Bullets

2007-06-08T06:27:00.000Z

The grounds of Hartley House were filled with the smoking remnants of the battle that had raged just two hours earlier. The repercussions were being felt on both sides and would continue to be felt for a very long time after the dust had settled on these once well-manicured lawns.

The wooden towers lay in splintered bundles, the remaining ultraviolet lamps still flickering over the blood-soaked bodies of the soldiers of The Brotherhood. The grass was glazed with a heavy sprinkling of ash and silver bullets. Swords, pistols and cloaks lay where the vampires had fallen.

In the remains of the carnage, a body was stirring. One soldier had survived. Keeping pressure on the gaping wound in his neck with one hand, he used his other arm to lift a reinforced wooden support off his legs and drag himself free onto an open patch of grass.

He thought back to the battle. He had killed at least five vampires before they climbed the tower and pounced on him and his squad mate. Fortune had smiled on him though. Just as a vampire had pinned him down and sunk its teeth into his neck, the vampires at the bottom of the tower had managed to loosen the tower from its foundations. The vampire let go and they all fell to the ground.

Then a thought occurred to the soldier. What happened to the vampire?

The soldier felt a powerful blast of air in his face. Dust particles pelted his eyeballs and shot up his nostrils when he drew breath. With his free hand he rubbed his eyes then looked through the criss-crossing remnants of his wooden tower to see a familiar gunship approaching.

It touched down on the drive and a small squad of soldiers jumped out. He knew what their job was: to recover the bodies and take them back to the regional headquarters for safe disposal. It was safe for The Brotherhood to assume that every dead soldier at Hartley House had been bitten and was about to turn into a vampire.

This soldier was still alive and he knew the doctor had been working on a cure. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank God his treatment is to cure vampires rather than kill them. If it worked on that cop, it must work on me.

He looked around him and saw one soldier leading the others, shooting silver bullets into the dead bodies and the others were zipping them into body bags.

Then he heard the clunk of wood on metal. The ruins of the tower were moving. An unholy scream tore through the air and in the shade of the ruins of the tower, the vampire that had attacked the soldiers at the top of the tower wobbled to its feet. It turned and looked at the soldier, who shouted for help.

The soldier that had been shooting the dead bodies ran over and pumped the vampire’s body full of bullets from his machine gun. The vampire didn’t fall to the ground and die though, and the soldiers looked at each other. The soldier lying on the ground knew something was amiss.

That vampire’s body is full of silver bullets but nothing happened. What’s going on?

‘Damn it,’ said the other soldier and drew his pistol. He pulled the trigger and the target reeled backwards. The vampire hit the ground and its body slowly dissolved. The soldier holstered his pistol and moved over to the surviving soldier.

‘You weren’t using silver bullets,’ the surviving soldier said, ‘all the soldiers here are going to turn, aren’t they? You’re one of them!’

‘That’s right, soldier,’ the soldier replied, then squeezed the trigger of his rifle and murdered the only human who suspected he was a vampire.

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Rebirth gets another great review - that's four in a row!

2007-06-07T14:42:00.000Z

Rebirth has received another positive review, this time from Horror World...

"With smooth writing that flows at break-neck speed from the first page, REBIRTH is a highly enjoyable horror adventure of epic proportions that demands to be read in one sitting. I highly recommend REBIRTH by Scott McKenzie for anyone looking for a great summer read that spotlights a rising newcomer to the horror genre."

To read the whole review, visit the following link and scroll down to the bottom of the page:
http://www.horrorworld.org/reviews.htm

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Chapter 65: Arrival

2007-06-06T05:36:00.000Z

An impressive formation of clouds hung above us in the blood red sky as the helicopter touched down. It was just after seven AM and we found ourselves on a landing pad on the top of a hill.

I looked around and saw a massive arsenal of military hardware. There was another gunship like the one that had picked us up from Hartley House and a wide range of other vehicles. Whoever The Brotherhood were, they were obviously well-funded but from what I’d seen in the last few hours, they could do with more experience in the field. They were well-trained to act like a military outfit but they had failed to effectively deal with the attack.

I saw a squad of soldiers running towards the other gunship. They piled in and it lifted off, heading in the direction that we had just come from.

‘What’s going on there?’ I asked Captain Stein.

‘That’s the recovery team,’ he replied, ‘Now the sun’s up, they’re going back to Hartley House to clean up the mess before anyone finds out. They’ve got a lot of work to do today.’

A squad of soldiers marched up a long ramp leading down into the mountain. A burly man in uniform, Commander North, led the squad, shouting ‘Left! Left! Left, right, left!’ and the soldiers all marched in time, their thundering footsteps breaking the silence that was left behind once the helicopter had been shut down.

They reached the landing pad and surrounded the helicopter, their hands resting on their guns but not aiming at us. I could see they were ready to blow away anything that looked like a vampire: it was written in the concentration on their faces. I wondered how many of these soldiers had seen as much action as we had seen in the last twenty four hours.

Not many, I bet.

Captain Stein got out of the helicopter and saluted Commander North. ‘Welcome home,’ said the commander.

‘Thank you, sir. It’s unfortunate there aren’t more of us.’

‘You’ve got the doctor, that’s what matters. Good job, Captain.’

I had been hoping the regional headquarters would have been run by someone with a bit more sympathy but it appeared to me that Captain Stein and Commander North were crafted from the same mould.

Agent Simpson and I got out of the helicopter behind Doctor Owen. Commander North took one look at me and turned to Captain Stein. ‘Who the hell is this sorry looking son of a bitch? He looks like he’s on his last legs,’ he said as though I wasn’t there.

‘This is Detective Tom Ryder,’ he said.

‘A cop?’ he said, continuing to ignore me.

‘Yes. His work helped us to track down Doctor Owen.’

Commander North moved over to me. We shook hands and the bandage on my neck must have caught his eye. ‘Jesus Christ, he’s been bitten. I hope you know what you’re doing, Captain.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Captain Stein, ‘the Doctor is going to work with Detective Ryder. We hope this opportunity will present us with the data he needs to finish his work.’

‘I hope you mean the primary treatment, Captain.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘He’s your responsibility, Captain,’ said Commander North, then looked me in the eye, ‘Son, if you start trying to eat my men, I’ll put you down in the blink of an eye. Got it?’

‘I’ll try my best not to.’ I said dourly.

The squad led us down the ramp towards the heart of the regional headquarters. As we descended, I saw more heavy military equipment including a huge array of firepower: cannons, racks of rifles and crates marked ‘explosive’. Most of the vehicles looked clean and new.

Has any of this equipment ever been used? Would any of these soldiers know what to do with it if there was an attack on the base?

‘How are The Brotherhood funded?’ I asked Agent Simpson.

‘How do you think?’

‘The government?’ I speculated

‘It’s bigger than that. The influence of the vampire community stretches all over the world.’

‘So there is a link with the World Health Organisation? Once this all kicked off, I assumed it was a lie to get us to work together.’ I said.

‘No, not at all. You’d be surprised at the other problems we have to deal with.’

‘One surprise is quite enough for now.’ As far as I was concerned, the other problems of the World Health Organisation could wait a little longer. I didn’t want to think about all the other monsters out there in the world that until now I thought existed only in the realms of fiction.

We were marched down long corridors, past many doors into the heart of the base. The place wasn’t decorated at all. The walls were bare grey concrete and there were no furnishings or signs anywhere. I wondered how long The Brotherhood had been based at this location: it felt like they could leave at any time and leave no trace at all. After seeing the attack on Hartley House, I could appreciate the need for immediate evacuation.

We were led through one of the blank doors into a cold, empty room. Commander North moved to the front of the crowd and everyone else in the room faced him, awaiting his address.

‘I would like to start off by welcoming the newcomers to our outpost. Some of you already know Agent Simpson and I’m sure you are all aware of Doctor Owen’s work.’

He turned to me. ‘Detective Ryder here was instrumental in rescuing the doctor from the hands of our enemies. I would like to thank him on behalf of The Brotherhood for all his hard work. Unfortunately for him, he was bitten in the course of his investigation.’

No sooner had the words left his lips than all the soldiers in the room turned to each other, murmuring in hushed voices and firing cautionary glances in my direction.

‘Quiet please,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘He’s okay now. I have given him a dose of the treatment I’ve been working on. As soon as we can have access to your medical facilities, we will continue the testing.’

Commander North looked troubled. ‘I take it you gave him the secondary treatment?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

Secondary treatment? I thought. What’s the primary treatment?

‘A soldier will be standing by wherever he goes,’ said Captain Stein, ‘The chances are that he will still turn into a bloodsucker. No offence, Detective.’

‘None taken.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 64: Regeneration

2007-06-04T05:25:00.000Z

Roxy hung up and Marcus took the phone out of her hand. She was lying on a metal operating table, with a team of her brothers and sisters clad in medical robes leaning over her mutilated body, preparing it for regeneration.

Two of her brothers lifted her body off the treatment table and carried her over to a small bath. They sat her down on a moulded seat on the edge of the bath and let her stumps hang down. One of her sisters picked up a hose that was hanging in a long loop on the wall, placed the end in the bath and turned a tap on the wall.

Within a few seconds, cool, dark blood started to pour from the hose into the bath, covering what remained of Roxy’s legs. The sticky blood worked its way up to Roxy’s hips and stopped. The medical staff cleaned themselves up and threw their blood-soaked robes in a basket that was taken away by a servant. As they left, one of them turned to Roxy. ‘You’ll be okay but try to rest. Conserve your energy. We’ll be back to check on you in an hour.’

‘Thank you very much,’ she said, her voice conveying a mixture of relief, disappointment and exhaustion.

Only Marcus remained in the room. ‘How do you feel, Roxy?’

‘I’ve felt worse,’ she said, ‘I’ve been in worse scrapes than this.’

‘Yes you have, haven’t you? What was the news?’

‘It was another one of our insiders. He’s going to make sure all of the bodies make it through the recovery process without being treated.’

‘So plan B is a go?’

‘Yes sir. One hundred percent.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 63: Skinner

2007-06-01T17:34:00.000Z

Another soldier finishing the night shift, another mobile phone taped to the back of his desk drawer.

Another vampire infiltrator at the regional headquarters of The Brotherhood.

Private Skinner had been working in the communications room and heard all the details of the attack on Hartley House. Private Lambert had done a good job but unfortunately the mission had not been completed. He had taken out one of the gunships and allowed a large squad of his brothers and sisters to almost completely wipe out an outpost.

But the primary target had escaped. The attack was all for nothing. His brothers and sisters had died for nothing. Private Skinner knew that now would be his time to join the fight.

Private Skinner called Roxy and she barked at him before he had the chance to say anything.

‘Where is the target?’ she asked, her voice laced with anger and pain.

‘On his way here. The helicopter is about twenty minutes away,’ he replied.

‘You know what you need to do. Our cause depends on you now.’

‘I understand. Is everything okay?’ he asked, but didn’t receive an answer. The line clicked and she was gone. Private Skinner turned his phone off and returned it to its hiding place.

Our cause depends on you.

Skinner was nervous and excited. He had trained for this moment for a long time. He was going to come face to face with the doctor. The primary target. He must not fail.

He already had his orders from The Brotherhood. He was part of the disposal team who took care of bodies that had been bitten or infected. The recovered bodies provided Private Skinner with all the human blood he needed to keep him going. He had never killed a human or fed on the blood of the living.

After a twelve hour shift, he felt the familiar pain in his stomach. He grabbed his stomach with both hands and sat down. His face contorted with agony and he fought against the hunger. The almost uncontrollable desire to feed on human flesh and blood.

The door opened and his room-mate, Private O’Brien, ran into the room, wiping shaving foam off his face with a towel. ‘Damn it, I’m late again!’ he cursed.

Skinner had got to know Private O’Brien well over the last two years. They worked opposite shifts and rarely saw each other, but when they did they got on like a house on fire.

O’Brien looked at his room-mate, who was still doubled over on the side of his bed. ‘Hey bud, are you okay?’

‘Just a bit of indigestion.’

‘Too right. It was that dinner last night. I’ve had dodgy guts all day.’

‘Yes, that must be it,’ said Private Skinner as he struggled to his feet.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 62: End Of Plan A

2007-05-30T17:23:00.000Z

Roxy was suffering in unbelievable agony. Even though her legs were sure to grow back in a day or so, it didn’t make the wounds any less painful. She wanted to stop flying to examine the severity of her wounds but she was in a race to get back to the clan before the sun rose in the sky behind her.

She had been in similar situations many times before. Fifty years ago, when attacks on the scale of the battle at Hartley House were commonplace, she had found herself leading a squad on a mission to infiltrate a building supposedly vacated by The Brotherhood. They had realised too late that it was a trap and Roxy found herself pinned in a corner with a filing cabinet crushing her right arm. Without even thinking about it, Roxy sliced off her arm and made her escape.

On that day, most of the vampires had managed to make their getaway. Now, Roxy was airborne, making her way back to her clan.

Alone.

Her squad had caused significant damage to The Brotherhood and they had displayed their new capabilities but the mission hadn’t been a success. After the fight with Captain Stein, Roxy knew she wouldn’t be much use as a leader without her legs so all she felt she could do was hide in a tree and watch the battle unfold.

The Brotherhood had managed to retain the doctor and now they were on their way to their regional headquarters. Long-term security of the future of the vampire race had been within their grasp and they had failed. Roxy already had a backup plan in place but she was worried about how Salazar would react to the outcome of the mission.

When the Deputy Lord Chancellor learned of the failure of their attack, he would feel the need to take action, no matter what the plan was from here on in. He would relish the opportunity to undermine Marcus’ ability to lead his clan and attempt to take over. He would report back to the Lord Chancellor in the least flattering way possible.

Roxy saw her destination: a deep, dark narrow valley ahead of her. The home of her clan rarely saw a speck of sunlight. The ideal place to hide away from the human world and plan their downfall. She flew over the edge of the valley just in time to avoid the day’s first rays of sunlight.

Huge thick wooden doors opened out onto a small ledge at the bottom of the valley. Two of her brothers were standing on the ledge, looking out for any late-comers before the sun rose completely in the sky and the doors were firmly locked until dusk.

Roxy hit the ledge in a heap, screaming in agony as the pain of landing on her bloody stumps shot through her hips and into her body. The two vampires standing guard ran over to her and picked her up. They carried her inside the clan’s lair and locked the doors behind them. Marcus and Salazar were standing in the main hall, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a victorious squad with Doctor Owen in tow.

They were understandably disappointed to discover Roxy wounded and alone.

‘What happened?’ asked Salazar, immediately trying to assert his authority on the situation. Roxy ignored Salazar’s question. Her eyes met with Marcus’s and she could tell from the look on his face that he was only concerned about her well-being.

‘What happened to you? Are you okay?’ he asked.

Roxy decided to answer her immediate boss. ‘We killed almost all of the soldiers. I got in a fight with the squad captain and was forced to do this to myself to stay alive.’

‘You did this to yourself?’ Salazar exclaimed. His face was filled with disgust and disbelief. Roxy and Marcus shared a look that told each other they both knew that he had never fought in a battle for his race or put his life on the line for one of his brothers.

‘I was cut with a silver sword,’ she said, ‘I had to remove my legs before the burning spread all over my body.’

Salazar didn’t take long to get to the point. He had obviously spent far too long pretending to care about Roxy. ‘What about the doctor?’

‘There were two helicopters. One was taken out by our brother on the inside but they managed to get the doctor out in the other one.’

‘I thought you said you killed all of the soldiers?’

‘She said almost all of them,’ said Marcus. Salazar immediately turned round and squared up to him.

‘What are you doing here, Marcus? I thought you were the leader of this clan?’

‘I am the leader of this clan,’ Marcus protested, ‘Don’t worry, we have this under control.’

Salazar pointed at the mutilated body of Roxy. ‘You call that under control? Look at the state of her, there’s only half of her body left and she’s the only one that survived.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Roxy, doing little to disguise her frustration at Salazar’s methods, ‘We have a backup plan.’

‘I don’t care about your backup plan. This clan is not being managed effectively so I am assuming control, effective immediately. Get her bandaged up and meet me in the dining hall. I am going to report back to the Lord Chancellor.’

Marcus was fuming and started to pace backwards and forwards, struggling to contain his anger. ‘Luca, wait. There’s no need for this,’ he pleaded, ‘Trust me, we will have the doctor back by the end of the day.’

Salazar stared straight into Marcus’ eyes. ‘Damn right you will, Marcus. I’m going to make sure of that. Excuse me,’ he said and turned to leave, taking his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket.

Marcus leaned down to examine Roxy’s body. Blood was still dripping from the wounds, just like Marcus’s power over his clan was ebbing away.

‘You can’t let him do this,’ she said, ‘He’s going to ruin everything. I know what you’re thinking of doing. I can’t see any other course of action.’

‘How will we explain it?’ he asked.

‘We’ll think of something but we can’t let him get away with this,’ she said as she lifted her pistol and handed it to Marcus, ‘Do it. It’s loaded with silver bullets. You and I are finished anyway; just don’t let this bastard screw everything up that we’ve worked for.’

He got to his feet and followed Salazar into the dining hall, where his six protectors were standing to attention. Roxy heard a succession of loud bangs and bright flashes lighted up the darkness in the lair. Marcus quickly emerged from the dining hall.

‘He wasn’t expecting it, was he?’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ Marcus said, ‘As I suspected, he wasn’t even trying to read our thoughts and his squad was weak.’

‘We’re all better off without him,’ said Roxy, ‘you’ve just got to convince the Lord Chancellor of that.’

‘That’ll be easier if plan B is a success,’ he said as he lifted Roxy to carry her to the medical room.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Competition winners

2007-05-29T18:10:00.000Z

The competition is now closed and congratulations go to Becky Clarkson and Jodi Carr, who will have characters named after them in the sequel to Rebirth. The good news for Becky and Jodi is that neither of their names sound evil enough to have vampires named after them so they're going to be good guys!

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 61: Getting Out

2007-05-28T07:49:00.000Z

Agent Simpson and I followed the doctor as he ran down the long empty halls of Hartley House to the medical room. He picked up some holdalls and threw them at us.

‘Fill them up with as much as you can,’ he shouted, ‘the helicopter will be here in a matter of seconds.’

I threw my arm around a desk full of equipment and papers and scooped it all into my bag. I zipped it up and threw it over my back. Doctor Owen carefully and swiftly closed his cases of test tubes and syringes and placed them into a sturdy metal box.

From deep inside Hartley House, I could still hear the carnage outside. I hoped all the screams were coming from vampires but I knew it would take an army bigger than the one we had to deal with them. This small bunch of well-meaning soldiers could only hope to hold them off for a short time. We couldn’t have been in the medical room any more than two or three minutes before Captain Stein burst through the door. He was dripping with sweat and looked like he’d been through a war, but the war was still right behind him.

‘Follow me,’ he ordered, ‘we’re getting out of here.’

‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

‘They’re dead.’

‘What, all of them?’

‘Almost. We’ll be joining them if you don’t stop asking questions. Come on!’

Captain Stein picked a hand grenade from his belt, removed the pin and threw it into the medical room. We followed Stein out of the medical room and back down the corridor, the stone floors amplifying our footsteps. The walls of the house shook as the medical room exploded with a deafening roar behind us.

As we passed the front door, it flew from its hinges and vampires started to flood in. Stein stopped to shoot at them.

‘Keep going!’ he shouted, ‘I’ll hold them off. Get to the roof.’

Agent Simpson knew this house well and led the way. She led us up a set of stairs and I heard the rattle of machine gun fire behind us. There was the sound of screaming for a few seconds, then gunfire again. The vampires were approaching but Captain Stein was managing to hold them off.

How long can he keep them downstairs?

We were led up another set of stairs, a stone spiral staircase much narrower than before. The bag on my shoulder was beginning to slip so I reached my hand back to lift it back onto my shoulder and felt a stabbing pain in the palm of my hand. I winced and realised that I had snagged it on a sharp stone sticking out of the wall. I rolled my sleeve down and held the cuff tightly over the wound, hoping to stem the bleeding while we tried to make our escape.

We pressed on and bundled through a wooden door at the top of the stairs, finding ourselves on the roof, directly below the helicopter full of troops doing their best to take down all the vampires trying to fly towards us. The combined sound of helicopter blades, gunfire and screaming vampires was almost unbearable and the downdraft from the gunship above us was making me very uneasy on my feet.

The helicopter descended and hovered just above the roof. If a gunship that size tried to land on this old house, it would surely have fallen right through it. Under the cover of gunfire, Agent Simpson, the doctor and I made a run for it and jumped aboard. Just as we were taking off, Captain Stein appeared from the door at the top of the stairs and waved for the pilot to aim his guns at the door.

A mass of vampires flew through the doorway, right into a barrage of silver bullets from the gunship. The ash from their bodies flew into the air with thousands of tiny pieces of wood and plaster. There must have been at least fifty vampires running up the stairs but the gunfire didn’t stop until they were all dead.

The helicopter lifted off and the troops on board continued to defend us against the handful of vampires still buzzing around us. When there were only two left, they decided to call it quits and flew away behind Hartley House.

‘Don’t worry, they won’t last long. Look,’ Captain Stein said, and pointed towards the horizon. I gripped my bloody hand and looked up to see the sun peeking over the top of the mountains in the distance.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 60: One On One

2007-05-26T07:46:00.000Z

Captain Stein took a deep breath and gripped his silver-plated sword with both hands. He completely focused his mind and body on the next few seconds. He blocked out his peripheral vision and stared directly at Roxy. No other vampires would dare attack him while he was fighting with their leader. She didn’t tolerate interference and wouldn’t hesitate to cut down her brothers and sisters if they got in the way of a fair fight.

With swords raised, Roxy and Captain Stein took a small step towards each other. They looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, then Roxy swung her sword at Stein’s body. He parried the blow but didn’t have time to swing at her before she came at him again.

It was like sparring practice with Private Brown again, only this time Captain Stein was on the back foot. He had fought vampires enough times to know he shouldn’t underestimate their strength. Female vampires were notoriously brutal but he was still surprised how much he was struggling. She was putting incredible power behind her blows. Stein was doing all he could just to get his sword between himself and Roxy’s.

Just when Stein thought he was done for, he got a chance. Roxy swung her sword and he blocked the blow with more force than he’d been able to muster until now. The sword flew out of her hands and clattered down the steps.

He had his opening. A flash of shock swept across Roxy’s face as Stein swung his sword at her with all his might. She just managed to dive out of the way and Stein’s blade narrowly missed her torso. She hit the ground and rolled away from the steps, then jumped to her feet and drew her silver sword in time to block Stein’s second attack.

Stein had failed to capitalise on the opening and Roxy was on top again, now fighting with more force and edging him backwards, towards the steps. One blow was too hard for him and he lost his footing. He landed on the steps on his side and painfully rolled down to the bottom, his head and joints banging into the edges of the steps.

He shook off the pain in his head and looked around him. Roxy’s steel sword was just within reach. Still with his silver sword in his right hand, he picked it up in his left and spun round in time to use it to block Roxy’s attack. As she moved forward again, he saw another opening and knew he had to take it. Her legs were exposed so he swung his silver sword with his right hand, slicing them open above the ankles.

Roxy fell backwards onto the steps and looked down at her legs. Ash was already pouring from the wounds. She turned over onto her front and quickly crawled up the steps towards the piles of ash and weapons where the vampires had attacked Captain Stein, looking for a steel sword. Even as her body was dissolving, she was cool and focused under pressure.

She found what she was looking for next to a decapitated soldier’s body and grabbed it with both hands. She turned over and raised just it in time to parry a blow from Captain Stein. Before Stein could swing at her again, she leapt into the air and quickly used the sword to chop what was left of her legs off above the spreading wounds.

Stein drew his gun and fired shots at Roxy, but failed to hit her as she flew into the darkness above him. He resigned himself to having missed his opportunity to take out a senior vampire but was happy to have made it through the fight alive. He quickly looked around to assess the immediate danger to him and his men.

He saw one of the wooden towers topple over. The soldiers in the remaining two were unloading their rifles on the vampires crawling up towards them. So much for the ultraviolet lamps: they didn’t appear to be doing anything to keep the vampires away from the soldiers in the towers. They had no chance of survival. All they could do was try to send as many of these devils back to hell as they could.

The soldiers in the field were all dead and a large crowd of vampires was advancing on Hartley House. The troops in the remaining helicopter were fending off a swarm of vampires as it made its way towards the house, but their ammunition would only last so long. The helicopter would reach the house in a matter of seconds.

‘Alpha Two, this is Captain Stein. Head for the roof,’ he shouted into his radio, ‘we’ll be there in sixty seconds.’

He looked around for the doctor and the detective.

Where the hell are they?

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Competition ending soon...

2007-05-24T16:52:00.000Z

There's only two chapters to go until the competition closes so if you want to have a character in the sequel to Rebirth named after you, make sure you do one or more of the following in the next few days:

1. Every verified email subscription to this blog will be entered - see the subscription box down the left-hand side of this page for details of how to sign up.
2. Tell a friend about the blog - just cc or bcc s.a.mckenzie@gmail.com into the email you send to them and I'll enter you into the draw.
3. Everyone who buys a copy of the novel will be entered as well. Just forward your order confirmation on to s.a.mckenzie@gmail.com and I'll add you into the draw.

Good luck!

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
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Chapter 59: Holding Them Off

2007-05-24T05:25:00.000Z

Private Brown frantically reloaded his rifle for the third time, fumbling with the clip in a desperate rush to continue shooting the demons that were trying to kill him and the rest of his squad.

From his wooden tower, he had a good view of the action below and had already ended the undead lives of at least ten vampires so far, but they just kept coming. He was amazed by the ferocity of this attack and the size of the clan. He had never heard of an attack of this size.

The soldiers on the ground were being slaughtered and it wouldn’t be long until the attack turned to the towers. The vampires attacked in waves, swooping down in long groups, cutting the soldiers to pieces. The men on the ground were desperately shooting at their attackers. Some vampires were taken down but still the attacks came. There were just too many of them for a small squad like this to deal with.

The supplies of ammunition in the tower were beginning to dwindle. At this rate they would run out within a matter of minutes.

Brown’s squad mate Private Hays was taking pot shots at the band of vampires approaching their tower. Brown’s rifle made a click to tell him it was reloaded and ready for action and he joined in the attack.

Looking over the edge of the steel-reinforced side of the tower, he counted at least fifteen vampires approaching them. Brown hit one and its body dissolved into ash. The remaining vampires spread out to make targeting for the soldiers in the tower more difficult.

‘Shit!’ cursed Private Brown, ‘we haven’t got long now.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead, only to wipe the sunscreen off his face, which made the heat from the ultraviolet lamps even more unbearable.

‘The chopper’s almost here,’ said Private Hays, ‘we’ve just got to keep them away from the house for a few more minutes.’

‘They’re flanking us,’ said Brown as the group spread out even further and began to surround the tower. He leaned over the side but before he could take a shot, the vampires all drew their guns and began shooting at the top of the tower. Brown and Hays hit the deck.

‘What are they doing?’ shouted Hays over the sound of gunshots, ‘I’ve never seen them using their guns before.’

I’ve never seen them before at all, Brown thought to himself.

They both looked up as they heard the ultraviolet lamp smash above them. Fear gripped the soldiers as the gunshots ceased and glass rained down as silent darkness descended on the tower.

Hays and Brown both jumped to their feet and drew their swords just in time to take the heads off two vampires who had leapt to the top of the tower. The ash from their bodies blew away in the wind and another two vampires appeared to replace them. Then another two. And another two. They all drew their swords.

Resigned to their fate, Hays and Brown stood in the middle of the tower, back to back, swinging their swords at the approaching bloodsuckers. They stood their ground with honour but it was only a matter of time before Brown presented an opening and felt a cold sharp blade penetrate his side.

Brown looked down and saw the red blade emerge from his chest. He sank to his knees and with his last ounce of strength, swung his sword through the legs of two of his attackers.

As he fell flat on his face and succumbed to unconsciousness, the last sounds he heard were the agonised screams of Private Hays.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Rebirth now available at Amazon

2007-05-22T17:49:00.000Z

I'm pleased to report that I've got an ISBN for Rebirth and it's now available to buy from Amazon and Barnes & Noble online. The links below will take you directly to the pages where Rebirth is on sale on the UK and US sites. The paperback is also available at other Amazon sites aroudn the world, just visit your local site and search for my name and the title.

The good news is that now you can get your hands on a copy of Rebirth without having to pay Lulu.com's high postage prices. If you're planning to pick up something else from Amazon, add a copy of Rebirth to your order and you'll get it delivered for free if you use the Super Saver delivery option.

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25

Chapter 58: Not A Chance

2007-05-21T18:03:00.000Z

Captain Stein couldn’t believe his eyes. All the intelligence available to The Brotherhood had suggested that the vampire community was relatively small, maybe only one hundred of them in the city but now there was at least that number attacking their outpost, maybe more. That intelligence had taken a lot of time and money to gather together and it was useless.

How many other fallacies do we believe without question?

He had only twenty or so men to mount a defence and keep the doctor alive.

We haven’t got a chance.

At least there were no surprises in the vampires’ armoury. They all carried guns but rarely used them. Their weapon of choice was a sword. When a vampire attacks, it rarely wants to kill you. Their motivation is survival: to feed and increase their numbers. Captain Stein was struggling to believe they had increased their numbers to such an unprecedented level.

If the vampires were to use their guns, all they would achieve would be a pile of useless dead bodies. By slicing everyone up with swords, they could immobilise the targets, feed on the bodies and turn them into vampires. Their favourite tactic was to chop your arms and legs off then come back later to finish you off. Once your rebirth is complete, you grow the missing limbs back anyway.

The vampire army was moving in waves. They had split up into five groups, each flying in a line of ten pairs. The vampires in front led their line in a long, graceful arc high in the air then down on top of the unfortunate soldiers below, slicing and chopping their prey with their long swords. Captain Stein watched in a state of amazed terror. It was an awe-inspiring sight: beautiful yet terrifying.

Four soldiers were positioned on the steps in front of Hartley House, taking shots at the closest vampires. The attack on the helicopters had spread most of the other soldiers out across the grounds, and they were being picked off one by one with embarrassing ease.

The men in the wooden towers were having more luck. Protected by ultraviolet light, they were able to shoot down many of the vampires as they flew past in waves. Stein knew it was only a matter of time until the vampires pulled the towers down. By that time, both he and the doctor had to be on the remaining helicopter, on their way to safety.

When he was satisfied that the men were in the best positions to keep their attackers at bay until the remaining gunship arrived, he lifted his rifle and started to fire silver bullets at the waves of vampires sweeping down on the men in the field. He hit one and it turned to ash before the body hit the ground. Then he hit another, and another, but they just kept coming.

A team of vampires swooped down towards the front steps. Some of them were caught in the crossfire and their burning bodies rained ash down on the soldiers. Two vampires touched down among the soldiers and drew their swords. In a flash, they had disposed of everyone in their path.

Captain Stein turned his rifle on one of the vampires but when he pulled the trigger, the only sound he heard was a disappointingly familiar click.

Damn, out of ammo.

He threw the rifle to the ground and drew his sword just as the vampire drew its sword and swung it towards his head. Their swords met with a clang and Stein immediately knew this wasn’t one of the strongest vampires he’d met. After two more parries, he found an opening and jammed his silver-plated sword into his adversary’s forehead.

The body was still burning as he moved across the steps to take on another vampire, who was now feasting on one of his men. The vampire noticed him approaching and looked up with blood dripping from his chin. It had no time to attack before Stein sliced its head off, bringing down the sword down in the same move onto the soldier’s neck. He took a step back and watched both heads roll down the steps.

Stein wished he didn’t have to kill his own men but he had no choice. It was either death or spend the rest of eternity as one of them.

He heard the thud of boots hitting the ground behind him and turned around to see a tall, female vampire dressed in black. He knew exactly who this was. They had met once before but had never fought each other.

With a cold, determined look on her face, Roxy stared Stein in the eye and drew her steel sword.

Chapter 57: Alpha One Down

2007-05-19T18:12:00.000Z

Helicopter Alpha One plunged out of the sky as if in slow motion, carrying a squad of doomed soldiers towards an inevitable fiery grave. As they fell, they were doing all they could to kill Private Lambert.

He had followed his orders with dedication and precision. Once Hartley House appeared in the distance, he had pulled the pin out of a hand grenade and thrown it into the cockpit. When it exploded, the fate of the squad was sealed. Private Lambert then clicked the safety catch off his rifle and began to unload it on his squad mates, who followed suit in a blind panic.

Silver bullets rattled around the helicopter, all of the soldiers desperately trying to stop Private Lambert escaping but receiving the gunshots themselves. Seconds before impact, Private Lambert made a leap for freedom and found himself outside the helicopter.

Then he felt a pain in his left foot. He looked at his leg to see his foot dissolve into dust and crumble away. His boot fell from his body towards the ground. One of the stray bullets had hit him. His body would completely disappear in a matter of seconds. There wasn’t much time to complete his mission.

He had already taken out one helicopter and had to try his best to slow down the second. If he kept it as far away as possible from Hartley House, the squad on the ground would spread out and be easier to pick off one by one by his brothers and sisters who weren’t far away. He could feel the mass of his body getting lighter as the ash blew away below him.

There’s not much time.

He looked down and saw a small swarm of soldiers spreading out across the grounds. They were firing their guns in his direction but the bullets were easy to dodge at this distance.

Private Lambert fired his rifle at helicopter Alpha Two, taunting all the soldiers that were trying in vain to kill him. When the forces on the ground started to scatter and fire their weapons in different directions, he knew his plan had worked. The forces at Hartley House were no longer working as a single cohesive unit.

Easy pickings.

A huge cloud of his brothers and sisters was descending on the small band of soldiers below. A hundred vampires, all with an uncontrollable bloodlust and a desire to demonstrate the true might of the species at the top of the food chain.

He almost felt sorry for the soldiers of The Brotherhood. From now on, things will only get worse for them and their kind. A bullet hit him square chest but didn’t feel any pain in his body or his mind. He knew he could leave his undead life the way he had always wanted: as a martyr to the cause.

Chapter 56: Live Each Day As If It Were Your Last

2007-05-17T17:31:00.000Z

The doctor and I stepped outside Hartley House to see many soldiers running around, stacking equipment into piles on the drive. Captain Stein was coordinating the efforts, shouting at anyone and everyone.

His coercive approach appeared to work. He gave the nod to approve the completion of the soldiers’ tasks then sent them off to stand guard over the patch of grass where the helicopters were expected to land.

I spotted three wooden towers, each housing two soldiers armed with rifles and swords. The sunscreen painted on their faces was illuminated by the ultraviolet lamps hanging above them.

‘How safe is it up there?’ I asked the doctor, ‘If any vampires attacked, wouldn’t they just chop the towers down?’

‘The vampires attack in small numbers,’ he said, ‘they’re fairly easy to pick off from up there and the UV light provides enough protection.’

‘Why do they attack in small numbers?’

‘All evidence points towards a small population. We suspect their numbers are low. There hasn’t been a large scale attack on a human population for over fifty years.’

I was still worried about the soldiers in the tower and it must have shown on my face.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘we’ll be out of here in no time. Look, here they come.’

In the distance I could see two helicopters flying towards us, the same kind of gunships that had picked up Captain Stein from the shootout earlier that day.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a friendly voice in my ear. ‘How are you feeling, Detective?’ I spun round and was faced with Agent Simpson. She was definitely a sight for sore eyes.

‘Not too bad, considering I might be one of the Lost Boys.’ Not the funniest line to emerge from my lips but it got a wry smile at least.

‘You’ve been through a lot today,’ she said, ‘once we get you back to regional headquarters, you’ll be able to get some rest. The compound is heavily guarded and very secure. You can feel safe there.’

‘You mean you don’t feel safe with those guys up there in the wooden sun beds?’ I asked.

‘They’ve fought off plenty of attacks before. Don’t worry, Detective,’ she said. I suspected she was lying about the level of experience these soldiers had, but she was only trying to ease my worries.

‘That’s what he said,’ I replied, thumbing in the direction of Doctor Owen, ‘And please, call me Tom. I’m not a detective any more, remember?’

‘So you’ve decided to stay?’ she asked, with a sparkle in her eye.

‘I don’t have much choice, do I Jane?’

‘You’ve always got a choice,’ she said, ‘they didn’t all decide to stay.’

‘Who’s they?’ I asked, knowing exactly who she was talking about.

‘The guinea pigs before you. There have been quite a few but not all of them decided to stay.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘We’re not sure but it’s safe to assume they either died or joined the vampire clan.’

‘And what about the ones that stayed? I take it they all made a remarkable recovery and are now living happy and fulfilling lives?’ I asked in a tone both hopeful and sarcastic.

Agent Simpson smiled. ‘As far as you know, Tom, yes they did.’

Her positive attitude made me think about the motivational speakers I’ve listened to down the years at police functions. Every story had the same moral: live each day as if it was your last. I had no option but to take that advice from now on.

If Doctor Owen was going to find a cure, we would need these soldiers and more to hold off all the vampires in the world for as long as his work would take. Having seen the vampires in action already, I hoped Captain Stein had enough new recruits waiting to sign up. If the vampires decided to attack, there would surely be a high turnover of recruits.

I watched the helicopters moving towards us, in anticipation of the secure environment we would soon find ourselves in. Then I noticed a bright flash from one of the helicopters.

Captain Stein ran out of Hartley House onto the front steps, shouting into a radio. ‘How many of them?’

‘Just one,’ was the frantic reply.

‘What’s the damage?’ he shouted.

‘He set off a grenade. They’re going down, Captain.’

‘What happened to him?’

The only reply was machine gun fire, which matched more bright flashes from the helicopter in the distance. Agent Simpson grabbed my arm and dragged me back inside Hartley House as one of the approaching helicopters slowly fell out of the sky.

Chapter 55: Agent Simpson

2007-05-15T17:56:00.000Z

Jane Simpson sat on a wooden bench in the grounds of Hartley House. It had been a hard day and she needed to take a few minutes to gather her thoughts together before they would be on the move again.

Poor Detective Ryder. Poor Tom.

He had no idea what lay ahead for him. Doctor Owen had sat him down in the medical room and was telling him how he was the future saviour of humanity but probably not going into the details of what would be expected of him when they all arrived at regional headquarters. Captain Stein was tough but she knew Commander North would be ten times worse.

He’s already expecting results. And he wants them sooner than is physically possible

It was a true shame. That morning, he’d just been another homicide detective, now he was kissing goodbye to his life in the name of science.

If only we’d met under other circumstances. Rough around the edges of course, but there’s something there.

She had enjoyed their short time working together. Their brief partnership had been very successful. He knew what he was doing and they got results. The Brotherhood now had the doctor but she couldn’t help thinking that if she’d been straight with Detective Ryder from the beginning, if she’d only told him that she was a member of The Brotherhood, he wouldn’t be looking at a life as Doctor Owen’s pin cushion.

Then there was Doctor Owen himself. Snatched from a motel as he made his half-assed escape.

How did the vampires know about his work and where he was staying? Who was he really running from?

The vampire community must have found out that he had reached a breakthrough stage in the secondary treatment at the same time The Brotherhood had found out, maybe even before. Sure, there were spies and double agents on both sides but only a select few knew the details of the scientific research.

Who really wants Doctor Owen to stop his work on the secondary treatment?

Jane Simpson shook her head, trying to rid the logical answer to that question from her mind. The very idea was preposterous and she refused to consider it.

Somehow the vampires had found out that a cure for their blood disorder was within reach and were taking the measures necessary to ensure their way of life could survive. If The Brotherhood could recover Doctor Forrest, they would have control of all the available intellectual capital and could move the research forward securely.

Then something else occurred to her and she kicked herself that she hadn’t thought of it before. Something that no one had mentioned since the attack on Mantek and she was certain that Brotherhood weren’t prepared for a large-scale attack.

If the vampires knew their way of life was in danger, they would surely do everything they could to protect themselves. If they’re willing to take drastic action to protect their numbers, how many of them are there?

Rebirth gets another good review: 8/10

2007-05-13T11:08:00.000Z

In keeping with the trend of great reviews for Rebirth, it has received another positive review at POD People, getting a rating of 8/10.

"Rebirth is an energizing story that remains long after reading it."

To read the whole review, click the link below:
http://podpeep.blogspot.com/2007/05/rebirth-by-scott-mckenzie.html

Chapter 54: Easy Shift

2007-05-13T11:02:00.000Z

Private Moore was sitting under a tree in the darkness, enjoying the easy shift. Every four weeks, the soldiers had to take the journey out to one of the dugouts hidden in the fields on the one-mile radius around Hartley House. Their job was to keep a watchful eye on the skies for approaching bloodsuckers but since there hadn’t been any vampire activity for a long time, everyone in the squad looked forward to the lookout shift as an opportunity to chill out and get some extra shut-eye.

The soldiers on the easy shift all kept in touch with each other on a different radio channel that wasn’t being monitored by their colleagues at Hartley House and took it in turns to sleep. Private Moore looked at his watch.

Time to catch some zees.

He picked up his radio and changed the channel. ‘Time’s up, dude. It’s my turn now,’ he said, expecting his squad mate Private Norris to answer him, but there was no reply.

‘Hey, are you there? Wake up you lazy son of a bitch.’

Again, all he heard was interference on the radio.

‘Is anyone else out there? Anyone seen Pete tonight?’

There was no answer again for a few seconds until he heard the friendly voice of Private Wilson. ‘Hey, it’s Mike here. I haven’t seen him or heard from him. Thinking about it, I haven’t heard from anyone for a while.’

‘Come on guys,’ Moore said into the radio, ‘no messing around tonight. Who’s out there?’

After another moment of radio static, Private Wilson answered again. ‘Looks like it’s just me and you. I wonder what’s going on. Oh shit, wait a minute.’

‘What’s going on, Mike?’

‘Look up. To the east.’

Private Moore grabbed his rifle and got to his feet. He looked to the east but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just a big black cloud.

Just a big black cloud that’s moving towards me.

‘What the hell’s going on, Mike?’ Private Moore shouted into the radio and got a one word answer that made his heart sink.

‘Incoming!’

He heard the sound of gunfire in the distance and ran into the middle of his field to make a stand against the dark cloud coming his way. Realising he had left his radio under the tree, Moore checked his rifle was loaded and flicked the safety catch, hoping to keep his worst nightmare at bay long enough to get back to warn everyone at Hartley House.

Who am I kidding? I’m a dead man, he thought.

He was right.

Chapter 53: The Only Difference

2007-05-11T20:05:00.000Z

The night air was still and cool, easing the heat within the soldiers’ uniforms as they carried out their tasks before the arrival of the extraction team. Captain Stein stood on the front steps, barking orders at everyone. Most of the soldiers were running around, gathering together as much of the outpost’s equipment as they could.

Far away on the horizon, two gunships were just visible, approaching from the mountains to collect the inhabitants of the outpost and take them to the regional headquarters where they would be better protected. Captain Stein and his contacts at the regional headquarters all suspected there would be an attack. The question was: could they get out of there in time?

Three tall wooden structures stood in grassy clearings. They were lookout towers, each holding a supply of ammunition and sun block, which every soldier hoped would be enough to deal with any attack.

The remaining soldiers were climbing ladders into the wooden towers with their rifles and silver-plated swords strapped to their backs. When each soldier reached the top, they pulled the cord above them to illuminate the protective ultraviolet lamps and adorned themselves with standard-issue wraparound sunglasses.

The fact of the matter was that with the exception of Captain Stein, no one else at Hartley House had participated in a major battle. A lot of them had never even seen a real vampire.

Private Brown stood at the top of his tower and checked that his rifle was loaded. Then he picked up a bottle of sunscreen, squirted a big dollop into his hands and rubbed it into every exposed area on his body. He then checked his rifle again.

Don’t worry, he told himself, this is an exercise just like any other. I’ve watched over dozens of extractions and they’ve all gone perfectly smoothly. There’s no reason why this won’t go according to plan.

Private Brown cast his eyes around the grounds and saw the one thing that made this exercise different. Doctor Owen appeared on the front steps of Hartley House.

Chapter 52: Plans

2007-05-09T17:45:00.000Z

Doctor Owen and I were left alone in the medical room to talk about his plans for me.

His plans for me.

Last time I had checked, I was a cop with a job that ran my life but I knew that any day I could just quit, go home and never set foot in a police station again.

Now I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be a guinea pig for different types of experimental medical treatment. I was going to be the right hand man to the scientist who would produce a vaccine that would rid the world of vampires forever. I can’t say I wasn’t a little excited about the whole thing. At this moment in time I was the most important human being in the world. The key to unlocking the secret of the vampires.

‘Don’t go getting delusions of grandeur,’ said Doctor Owen jovially with a knowing smile on his face, immediately bursting my balloon, ‘there have been people like you before. They all got a bit carried away with their place in the world and thought they were invincible. They took risks they shouldn’t have and we were back to square one.

‘The top priority in your life is to keep both of us alive. If you die then we’re back to square one again, and if I die, you die.’

Now who’s getting delusions of grandeur?

‘You may think of me as arrogant but they are the facts, Detective. It’s an unfortunate situation that you find yourself in but we must make the most of it. Okay?’

I nodded in agreement and that was it, my new life had begun. First thing in the morning I would call into work and quit. Just like that. One day a cop, the next day a scientific sample. My thoughts immediately turned to how I would pay the bills from now on.

‘You don’t need to worry about the bare necessities, The Brotherhood will take care of everything for you,’ he said, as if he was reading my mind. It seemed to me that he had answered all of these questions a thousand times before and knew exactly what I was going to ask before I opened my mouth.

It made me uneasy. How many guinea pigs have there been before and why aren’t they here any more?

The doctor continued. ‘They’ll give you a bed and three meals a day. If you rent your home, call your landlord and cancel the payments. If you own your home, put it up for sale.’

‘Okay Doc, what do you need from me?’

‘I need to take blood samples from you on the hour every hour until further notice. That means right through the night and all day tomorrow. During this time we have to gather as many samples as we can. It’s going to be hard work.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m used to sacrificing sleep for work.’ I tried my best to sound committed to the cause. If we were going to work together for the rest of my life, we’d better start off in the right way.

‘Good,’ he said and smiled sympathetically. The look on his face told me he was thinking he wouldn’t trade places with me for all the tea in China.

Time to ask the hard questions. ‘What’s going to happen to me? How will I know if I’m turning into a vampire?’

‘That’s a good question. We’ve never been able to identify all of the symptoms because the previous subjects have turned too quickly to allow them to tell us what’s happening to them. At the very least I hope the treatment can delay or slow down the virus so we can have time to see what it does to your body.’

‘That’s not very comforting, Doc.’

‘I’m not here to hold your hand and tell you everything’s going to be okay, Detective. I’m here to tell you the way it is. No bullshit.’ He was right, but it didn’t make the situation any better.

I looked at the television in the corner again, which was still showing clips of the damage inflicted on the tactical aid unit by my new hosts. I asked the doctor to turn up the volume so I could hear the reporter.

‘We’ve just had confirmation from the hospital,’ the female reporter began ominously, ‘that the only member of the tactical aid unit to survive this afternoon’s attack has just passed away. Other than varying eye witness accounts, the only law enforcer to see today’s events first-hand was Detective Tom Ryder, who is unavailable for comment.’

That’s an understatement, I thought.

‘However, we managed to speak to Captain Nash of the police department early today.’

Among the scrolling headlines and weather report icons, Captain Nash appeared, standing on the front steps of police headquarters. ‘The attack this afternoon was a targeted attempt to remove the capabilities of the police, who were just about to arrest the perpetrators.’

A number of reporters all asked if Nash knew who the attackers were. His reply was only ‘I’m sorry, I can’t comment on that.’

The news broadcast then returned to the reporter. ‘If the police know anything, they are keeping their cards very close to their chest. It seems to me that an investigation is underway and the police have their suspicions of who committed this terrible attack. After the lives lost and the damage caused on the freeway today, you have to ask yourself a question. Do the police have the firepower to counter another attack like this?’

‘Nash knows a hell of a lot more than that,’ I said, ‘why didn’t they mention the missing doctors?’

‘You have a lot to learn,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘Even though you’ve only just found out the truth, there are already many out there that know everything and work for The Brotherhood.’

‘What? You’re saying that my boss knows about all this?’

‘It’s likely he knows something. You can never know for sure. Only a few select people have access to the records.’

‘The records?’

‘The Brotherhood maintain a list of allies and their positions within society. The police, government, everywhere. This is a tactic also employed by the vampires though, so when you meet someone, you can never really tell which side they’re on or if they’re just a regular Joe.’

‘But what about the press? Not every journalist can be on your side.’

‘That’s right. Sometimes reports get through in the early editions or if the editor hasn’t spoken to the reporter on TV before they go on air. Those mistakes are few and far between and the network always manages to change its tune before anyone notices.’

There was no time to let this sink in before Captain Stein burst into the medical room. ‘Pack all that crap away;’ he bellowed, ‘we’re pulling out in five minutes.’ He left as quickly as he had arrived, slamming the door behind him.

Chapter 51: Awake

2007-05-07T12:30:00.000Z

A sharp pain in my arm awoke me from my nightmare.

I opened my eyes to find a man in a white coat and a mask sticking a needle into me. His brown eyes widened and he took a step back. I tried to sit up but couldn’t move: I was strapped to my bed very tightly.

‘Hello Detective Ryder, I’m Doctor Owen,’ the man in white said, and started to loosen my straps. I heard the click of a gun somewhere in the room. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ someone asked.

‘He’s perfectly fine,’ Doctor Owen said as he unbuckled my straps. Very slowly, I sat up and hung my legs over the side of the bed.

I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life. I could feel all the tell-tale sensations running through my body, only more intense.

‘How do you feel?’ the doctor asked.

‘Light headed. Thirsty. Very hungry. It feels like I’ve got pins and needles all over my body. And the worst headache I’ve ever had,’ I said, cupping my forehead with both hands.

‘Interesting,’ he said as he leaned over me and shone a light in my eyes. A sharp bolt of pain hit me like a punch to the head.

‘Damn it! What did you do that for?’ I shouted.

‘Sorry,’ he said and handed me two paracetamol tablets. I grabbed the bottle out of his other hand and knocked back a mouthful. I shuddered as the sharp chalky taste went down my throat. They can make pills that can take away headaches but why can’t they make them taste better?

He then opened my mouth and examined my teeth. He turned to talk to someone behind him. ‘I think the treatment has worked. He is still human for now.’

That’s when I remembered what had happened. I had been bitten by a vampire on the bonnet of my car. A vampire that used to be one of my only friends in the world.

I looked at the odd surroundings. I seemed to be in some kind of fancy room that looked like it belonged in a stately home or a palace; however the appliances and the doctor’s clothing would have been more appropriate in an operating theatre. A muted television in the corner showed a reporter at the site of the gunship attack.

‘How long will he stay like this?’ I realised who that voice belonged to. It was Captain Stein. I must be in the presence of The Brotherhood.

‘At least twelve hours,’ said the doctor, ‘maybe twenty-four.’

‘Okay, get him up. We’re not taking any chances though,’ said Captain Stein. Two soldiers appeared and pointed their rifles in my face.

‘What’s going on? What are they doing?’ I asked.

‘We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this. Don’t worry. It’s important you tell me how you’re feeling,’ the doctor said.

‘Very thirsty, can I have some water?’ I asked.

The doctor gave me a litre bottle. I swallowed the whole lot quickly in big gulps and asked for more. I then registered that my body was very clammy and the bed sheets I had been lying on were soaked through.

‘What the hell happened to me?’ I asked.

‘Your temperature went sky high,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘your body has been working overtime to fight the virus.’ My hand immediately went to my neck and I felt a massive bandage covering the wound.

‘You also lost about two pints of blood.’ As I took more big gulps from another bottle of water, more questions occurred to me about my condition.

‘So what’s the deal, Doc? Am I a vampire?’

‘It’s too early to say,’ he said, ‘The treatment I’ve been working on seems to have kept the virus at bay for now but you and I are going to be spending a lot of time together. I need to take samples from you on the hour every hour so we can see how the virus develops. From that data, we can work towards a cure.’

Data? Is that what I’ve become? ‘Hey, I’m not your lab rat, Doc.’

‘No, Detective Ryder, you are so much more than that. The chemical reactions currently taking place in your body may hold the key to eradicating vampires from existence. We have to work together for the good of mankind.’

He certainly did his best to make lying in bed getting stuck with needles sound like a noble cause. Needless to say, that wasn’t how I’d pictured my future.

‘Wait a minute, I’m a cop. This is my case and I’ve already worked out that the vampires blew up your lab. It’s going to be difficult to write that up in my report but I’ll manage. Case closed.’ I got up and started to wobble towards the door.

‘Twenty-four hours,’ the doctor announced, rather cryptically.

I stopped and turned round to look at him. ‘What happens in twenty-four hours?’

‘That’s how long you have left until you turn,’ he said.

‘You mean the stuff you gave me runs out?’

‘I believe it will, and twenty-four hours is almost certainly an optimistic estimate. It may be twelve hours, which means you need to be treated at least once a day. You can’t go back to your job. You’re too important to us and you have no choice.’

I didn’t want to agree with him but he was right. I couldn’t just close the case and walk away. My discoveries today had changed my life. I couldn’t just leave this war with the vampires and I definitely didn’t want to become one of them.

If I choose to leave, will I end up with silver bullets in my back like Officer Myers as soon as I walk through the door?

‘We need you, Detective,’ he continued, ‘you’re the best chance we’ve ever had.’

Do I really have a choice?

‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly, ‘what do we need to do?’