The New Night Novels (Book 2): Revelations (A New Night Novella) by Ashlei D. Hawley Page A

     Two companies means roughly four hundred Rippers. They may have once been human, but no vampire alone stands a chance of outrunning such a large group. Fighting through them would be guaranteed suicide. 
     “I’ll loop around to the eleventh from the fourteenth and hit the guard tower in the sixth,” I say as I plot the route in my head. There are towers in the first, third, fifth, and sixth sectors. Chancing the sixth is a gamble. We can’t see the eighth from any of the guard towers and having eyes on the ground is too risky. A commercial area, the eighth has groups of strip malls and large stores, perfect for massive groups of Rippers to wait out the day in. I could find myself running right into a battalion or worse. The number of Rippers inside those huge enclosures could easily get into the thousands.
     “I expect you back here in less than twenty,” Pharaoh tells me. “Stick to the shadows. Enacting radio silence.”
     The click that follows his statement sounds quite final. I pocket my radio after turning the volume all the way down, just in case. After visual stimuli, sounds are what most attract Rippers. 
     ‘Stick to the shadows’ is code, encouragement, motto, lifeline. It doesn’t just mean, “Be careful.” The mantra applies to our safest movement, and reminds us of our deepest selves. We are the shadows in the night. Just because there are more of them doesn’t mean we’ve lost our place.
     Rippers may do better in the dark than the humans they started out as, but prey moving through deep shadows still eludes them. I hate to think of myself as prey, but that’s what a Ripper will always see me as. I’m no different than any small, dark-haired, hazel-eyed human in the eyes of those turned by the Grissom virus.
     I slip out the door of the pharmacy I’ve been holed up in all day. Dr. Geisel has given me unusual requests before, and this one didn’t seem any stranger than the others that have come previously. He wants me to procure treatments the humans gave each other in the first wave. When the Grissom virus was first thought to be treatable, preventable, or even reversible. Dr. Geisel hopes to identify where the virus came from, what caused it to spread the way it did. Any lab-created antidotes or treatments could help him piece together clues of origin and mutation. He hopes to do what the humans couldn’t: find a cure.
     I’ve commandeered one of the few blue cases of medication left in the pharmacy to be used by survivors. It’s small, thick plastic, and fits in my coat pocket. The virus spread so quickly, I’m not surprised they were untouched. By the end of the first year, uninfected looters would have known the crap was useless, anyway.
     Almost at once, I spot the first company. At least a hundred strong. Probably closer to a hundred and fifty. Their clothes (
,
what few remain )
,
hang off of them in ragged strips. Each
of them
lurch about in various states of decay, though none are as progressed as they should be. Even those ten years old, from the first wave of infection, have the look of a corpse only gone from life for a week at most. Though almost all of them display wounds, some defensive, some the result of tearing or teeth, I can smell no blood. Thanks to the G-virus, bodily fluids dry up in the veins of the afflicted and leak out like brick-colored sand when their skin is opened up. I may not feel they are above me in the food chain, but the sight of such a large group does make me shiver.
     Time to go.
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     I begin to run, and the sweet scent of night has me lifting my face to the clean breeze. Regardless of the horde at my back, the night feels invigorating. 
     I press myself for more speed, but I’m about the slowest vampire out there. I can fight, and I can move when need be, but I’m never running the races in the vampire Olympics. Will we ever have