The Homo Vampirous Chronicles | Book 1 | Legacy Of Ashes, page 1
part #1 of The Homo Vampirous Chronicles Series
The Homo Vampirous Chronicles
Book 1:
Legacy of Ashes
By
Sean Deville
First publication in Great Britain
Copyright (©) Sean Deville 2021
Visit the author’s website at www.seandeville.com
Acknowledgement is made for permission to quote copyrighted materials
Printed in Great Britain
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher or author.
This book is intended for entertainment purposes only, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Readers Advisory
This is a work of apocalyptic horror fiction. It thus has no basis in today’s reality and does not purport to support any of the thousands of conspiracy theories available on the internet. It is fiction, pure and simple. Please therefor treat it as such.
Please also be aware this work contains explicit depictions of violence and gore as well as profane language. While this can be classed as vampire fiction, these aren’t the romantic vampires some have become accustomed to. The vampires in this fictional world will rip your heart out soon as look at you.
Vampire
noun
a preternatural creature, commonly believed to be a reanimated corpse, that sucks the blood of sleeping persons at night.
a corpse, animated by an un-departed soul or demon, that leaves the grave and attacks the living, until it is exhumed and impaled or burned.
An almost extinct, near immortal race that once ruled the world of man.
Prologue
Liberia, two years ago.
The first thing David Collins noticed about the village was how deathly quiet it was, an unnerving stillness filling the arid landscape. Normally this collection of mud huts would be teeming with life, even in the scorching midday sun. Not today. Today, the air had an oppressive quality, the stifling temperature visibly thick all around him, barely countered by the car’s struggling air conditioning.
On the far edge of the village, vultures circled menacingly in the air, portents of the devastation that was about to be uncovered. David was certain he would find terrible evidence to answer the many mysteries that awaited him out there with the relentless flies.
Opening the door to his ageing Land Rover, the next thing he noticed was the smell. Scorched flesh, burnt hair, the thick acrid odour of plastic set to the torch flooding in with a wave of terrible heat. A flashback hit him, a memory of failure and loss that threatened to spill over into the present, but David held it at bay, refusing to surrender to his own damaged psyche.
A slender hand grabbed his arm, restraining but also comforting him.
“I don’t like this,” his companion said. Not just his companion, his lover, his saviour. Emmanuelle, the one who had seen something in him despite his best attempts to shield his damaged soul from the world. He had folded in on himself to protect against any more pain, but she had drawn him out, rejuvenating a joy he never thought he would feel again.
Knowing her was a risk he nearly hadn’t taken.
Normally her thick French accent filled him with undeniable desire, but in this moment, it mimicked his own building apprehension. Instead of exiting the car, he closed the door against whatever horrors lurked out there. Her nervousness was infectious.
They both knew something was desperately wrong here.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. This was her mission; David was just along for the ride. He was a man of unique skills, forged through war and conflict. But she was the doctor, the healer, here to do a follow up health check on the grateful people of the village. She had been here two weeks ago, giving vitamin shots to those who would accept her offering. Most of them had, although a few of the older villagers had refused with steely eyes. There were still too many who didn’t trust the pasty westerners who came with great promises.
The children usually were the most trusting, and they should have been swarming them with eager hands grasping for the treats they knew this angel would have ready for them.
There was a time when she would have risked coming here alone, but David had ridden her of that stubbornness. Now he insisted someone come with her and that someone was usually him. She was his light and he saw it as his job to protect her. This visit hadn’t been scheduled though, Emmanuelle insisting they come expectantly.
Today there were no children, none that were visibly alive at least. The only thing that greeted them was the ruinous stink of cremated death. Both he and Emmanuelle were acquainted with that odour and knew what it threatened and promised. They had witnessed too many deaths, but to his knowledge, David was the only one who had deliberately taken life.
David realised they should leave, but he also knew that Emmanuelle would insist they stay and investigate due to her own sense of duty. These were her patients, people she cared for. They trusted her, a trust that had taken months to establish. In a sense he knew she would feel indebted to them for offering that faith. Besides, she had her protector with her, a man who had been forged and had proven himself in battle. She would have been better not to put her confidence in him for it didn’t matter how good his training was, he was still just one man against unknown odds.
“We have to find out what happened to the villagers,” she said, rummaging in her medical bag. She brought out two face masks and handed one over.
“I can handle the smell,” he promised.
“It’s not for the smell.” To prove that, she then handed him nitrile gloves, donning her own. “Try not to touch anything.” Did she really suspect that of all things?
Pulling his satellite phone from the pouch on his belt he reported in, as was procedure. It was answered in three rings.
“It’s Collins.” A brief burst of static.
“Dave, you know I always get nervous when I hear your voice.” The man on the radio was Scottish, another employee of the drilling operation David worked security for. A good man when he wasn’t drinking, which was infrequent now. His name was Scott, but most of the men called him Jock at his own insistence.
“I’m with the doc at the village. The whole place is deserted.”
“You want me to send a team out?”
“Probably best. Something isn’t right.” There had been terrorist attacks in the past aimed at the drilling sites, making the surrounding population collateral in the vicious attacks. But that had been many months ago, before David and other mercenaries like him had been brought in to deal with the threat. David had helped fix a problem the Liberian government and international community had been unable to address. The terrorists picked easier targets now.
There was that slender hand again, beckoning for the phone. David handed it over.
“Scott, hold off on that. I think this might be our old friend.” Our old friend, the reason Emmanuelle had come to this retched country in the first place.
Marburg, or its Ebola variant. A terrible disease to try and survive.
“Shit.” An adequate response from Scott considering. If it was Marburg striking again, then that would not only threaten lives. It also risked shutting down the wells that were hunting for oil, and Scott was paid well for his presence in this country.
Mercenaries didn’t do well in civilian life.
“I’ll be in touch, out.” David broke the contact, replacing the phone. It was one of two things he never went anywhere without. The other was the Glock 17M on his other hip. Reliable, especially in his hands, three extra clips ready for the most desperate of times. Still, not much use if they were facing one of the deadliest pathogens known to mankind.
Warily, they both exited the vehicle. David might have been a veteran, but he didn’t believe in some innate invulnerability. Marburg was something to be feared and respected just like every enemy combatant he had ever faced.
In this heat the mask was stifling and the gloves were difficult to apply due to the moisture that formed on his hands. You got used to walking around in damp, stained clothes in these temperatures, but it was still uncomfortable, and cold showers were a rare blessing seemingly sent by angels. Personal protective equipment just added to all that burden.
David was no fan of the heat. Ironic, then, that most of his operational life had been spent in climates such as this. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, all pointless escapades that had seen too many people die on the orders of the corrupt and the incompetent.
It had taken David too long to realise that he was being used by those who sent him off to war. And yet here he was, once again in the thick of it, the threat of violence always there. At least now he worked for the money rather than the flawed notion of patriotism.
It wasn’t the same though. There was just something noble and unique about fighting for honour and duty, even if those words were abused and used to cruelly manipulate young minds searching for meaning and adventure.
The first hut they approached was clearly empty, the doorway uncovered but far from inviting. He looked inside anyway, hoping that they would find anyone alive fading. If Marburg had ripped the heart out of this village, maybe death would be a blessing for some. The most recent strain to hit this country had seen a fatality rate of sixty per cent, those infected suffering terribly. Vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, and mind crushing pain in the abdomen, joints, and muscles
Doctor Emmanuelle Macron hoped to one day help create a vaccine that worked. She had chosen to be an expert in it, dedicating her life to try and combat and eradicate the scourge of Marburg. It was her heart and sense of duty that had sent her here, courtesy of Médecins Sans Frontières. That David should meet such a beautiful, selfless, and courageous woman in a place like this was a miracle equalled only by the fact that she was also attracted to him.
When they had first met, he had felt mesmerised just being in her presence. It was the sort of love you could feel once in your life, of that he was certain. She was the kind of woman any true man would sacrifice their life for.
Their investigation continued. Five dwellings checked now and still no bodies. There was one thing worse than a whole village being infected with Marburg, and that was the already infected people fleeing the disease. If they found the village empty, then that could mean the people had fled a scenario that would normally fill any health official with terror, spurring any competent government into panic. Fear made people do selfish things, which was how diseases like Marburg spread so rapidly. Fortunately, the village was relatively isolated.
Emmanuelle, usually so calm and composed, became progressively more agitated the further into the village they passed.
That was all assuming this was Marburg. The book was still open on that page and in the back of David’s mind and alarm bells were ringing loudly. There was something he was missing here.
“I think we should leave,” he offered.
“Not until I know,” Emmanuelle insisted. He could have pressed the issue but chose not to. He was no supplicant in this relationship by any stretch, but his respect for her also let her have her way too often. David had never allowed a woman to have that power over him before.
Further into the village they found the first burnt-out husk of a hut. Emmanuelle didn’t have to step over the threshold, as the visible funeral pyre inside piled high with cremated remains. This was where the dead had been dealt with. A dozen or so of them at least.
“Jesus,” Emmanuelle exclaimed. Who had done this? Surely not the surviving villagers? “How can this be?”
“We should leave, it isn’t safe.” David grabbed her arm and she might have relented. But right then they heard the crying—a baby—somewhere deeper within the village.
Emmanuelle broke free and forged towards the sound. He had told her several times that she was too selfless, but David was also drawn by the sound.
“Hello,” Emmanuelle shouted. No response, except for more crying. They kept searching, David by her side. He owed her that, he owed her everything.
More destroyed huts now, more bodies. Accelerant had been used by David’s guess, gasoline or something similar. No heat remained, no smoke drifting up from these mounds. Their inferno’s long since expired.
At the centre of the village, they found evidence of prior panic. That was to be expected, but the spent shell casings weren’t. David spotted them scattered around, 7.62 by 39mm rounds, Russian made. What you would expect from AK47’s, the chosen weapon of the terrorists round here.
If the village had a central square, this was it. The ground was soaked dark with blood where people had been corralled. The shell casings were all found on one side of the slaughter, sustained fire used to kill the people here. Villagers had been gathered, lined up, and butchered along one of the larger buildings, riddled with bullet holes.
Maybe not Marburg then, just the evil that men did rather than an unforgiving force of mother nature.
The soil showed evidence that bodies had been dragged away, the marks all heading in one direction. David had his sidearm out now. You didn’t travel around these parts without some form of protection, not if you wanted to live a long and prosperous life.
“Over there,” Emmanuelle pointed. As they approached the hut, a woman suddenly broke from cover. She ran as best she could, a screaming bundle in her arms, terror taking her. Emmanuelle made to chase, but David restrained her. The woman’s eyes had been bleeding, a tell-tale sign of infection. Emmanuelle shouted after the mother, but this just spurred the diseased woman on, running with whatever strength she had left.
They watched as she disappeared from sight, knowing there was no way they could safely stop her. Just one touch from her skin, one speck of blood or saliva, risked passing on the horror that infected her.
The last survivors? They were able to hide out from the massacre only to now fear everyone as a potential enemy. Looking into where she had been hiding, he saw more dead. The smell the survivor had endured must have been terrible. He was about to call it in when David’s world got infinitely worse.
He heard the vehicles first coming in from the West, the same way David had driven here, the direction the desperate woman had run. They would see his vehicle and know that fresh souls were lurking among the corpses.
This was no rescue party. There was one reason those vehicles were here—predators returned to finish what they had started.
“Stay close,” David told her. “Seriously, we need to move. Now. No more arguments.” His urgency got through to her then, and Emmanuelle nodded in agreement.
Too late, though. The vehicles were getting closer, splitting up to flank the village. Hiding wasn’t an option because every building would just be a trap already filled with death. Neither was making a stand, the numbers against them too many.
There was a slim chance that David was misreading the situation, but he knew when to listen to his gut. It had saved him more times than he cared to remember. He tried to ignore the fact that his intuition had told him to flee this place.
David led the way, Emmanuelle clutching his hand desperately, her grip surprisingly like iron. They came upon it then, the source of the smoke, the pile of nearly a hundred bodies in total. Burnt out in the open, children among the remnants, faces and arms blackened by the conflagration. Slaughtered and disposed of like cattle. No, worse than that, for at least cattle were deemed to be useful in death.
This wasn’t the work of terrorists. This was something else, something far worse.
“My fault, all my fault,” Emmanuelle whispered.
“You can’t blame yourself,” David insisted. She just shook her head, the tears threatening.
A familiar sound rocked through the village. Familiar to David at least. Gunfire, no doubt aimed at the woman and her baby.
“Spread out, find them,” someone shouted off in the distance, the voice carrying through the thick air. German by the sound of it, a man of purpose and conviction, probably a former soldier. David knew there would be no comradery there though, for the killers of the village had returned for sure. In fact, perhaps they had never left. “Remember, none of the villagers can be left alive. The doctor comes with us.” And there was the proof he needed.
The phone. He had to tell the world what had happened here. He autodialled the number, still able to remain calm when it mattered. At least he hadn’t lost that ability.
“Dave, I…”
“Jock, just listen,” David said, cutting the Scotsman off. “We’re in the shit. Unknown number of combatants on our six. The whole village has been slaughtered.”
“Fuck.”
“We are going to try and make a run for it. Send the help for us but tell everyone not to touch any bodies.” He didn’t need to explain further. They were on the outskirts of the village now and still hadn’t seen the men hunting them. Ahead was open savannah with little in the way of cover except for a dry riverbed forty metres away. There was also a small hill and a collection of trees that David pointed to. Emmanuelle ran, David behind her, both keeping low. He gripped the phone and the gun, unable to talk and run at the same time, thrusting the phone into his pocket.
