The Rising - Chapter 5: Flashlight

The vampire that used to be Captain Stein was lying in the corner of a dark, empty room many floors below the entrance to the base. His body was doubled over and he was weeping in agony. His insides were on fire and the hunger that burned in his stomach was like nothing he had ever felt before.

He would have screamed out if he thought any one of the soldiers who walked past the door and peered through the window would have helped him.

They all want to kill me. Would that be a better fate than what is in front of me?

Familiar and unfamiliar thoughts pierced through his brain. One thought remained constant; the same thought that came first to anyone who had been wronged.

Revenge.

If I ever see that cop again, that devil who made me this way, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to rip that fucker limb from limb.

There was a metallic clunk and the door that kept Captain Stein from following his new instincts opened. He was faced with General Graham, who was holding a pistol in his right hand and a flashlight in his left.

Stein looked up at him and tried to get to his feet, but thanks to the detective, he no longer had any feet. All he had were bandaged, bloody stumps at the ends of his legs. The stumps were slowly growing, which provided Stein with a mixture of emotions; happiness that he would soon be able to walk again but also anger because it meant he was turning into a vampire and there was nothing he could do about it.

‘Stay where you are,’ General Graham said, his voice booming around the stone walls.

‘Help me,’ Stein pleaded, ‘You have to help me. Get me the treatment.’

‘The primary treatment?’ General Graham smirked, knowing it would kill him.

‘No, the cure the doctors were working on. It can make me human again.’

Stein’s voice was almost unrecognisable from the way he had spoken when he was human. He had always been assertive and authoritative, but now he was desperate.

Every fibre in his being wanted to be relieved of the curse that had been cast upon him the second Detective Ryder sank his teeth into his neck. Stein no longer cared about the priorities of The Brotherhood. He paid no mind to the work he had done to sabotage the research into a cure for the virus that was now coursing through his veins. He wanted it.

He needed it.

‘I can help you,’ said the general without any emotion in his voice, ‘but first you have to tell me what happened.’

‘No, you have to give me the treatment!’

General Graham holstered his pistol and took the flashlight in his right hand. He turned it on and a violet circle appeared on the wall next to him. He shone the light directly in Stein’s face.

After a second, Stein screamed and tried to crawl away from the corner of the room. The general turned off the flashlight and looked at Stein’s face. It was bright red.

‘Tell me what I want to know. It’s only going to get worse.’

Stein groaned in pain again and conceded that he was in no position to negotiate.

‘Agent Simpson brought him to us.’

‘Detective Ryder?’

‘Yes. He had been bitten after we picked up Doctor Owen. Jane disobeyed her orders and brought him to the doctor to use as a test subject.’

‘That was before the attack on Hartley House?’

‘They were evacuated and came here. One of the men on the recovery team was one of them and brought infected bodies into the base. They broke out of the morgue and killed everyone.’

‘So where are they now?’

‘Ryder, Jane and the doctor escaped with one of my men, Skinner is his name. On the way out Ryder killed the commander and did this to me.’

‘Shit. I’m sure you know what happened the last time one of the doc’s guinea pigs escaped. Do you know where they were going?’

‘No.’

‘What about the other doctor?’

‘We couldn’t find him. I was going to send a search party out for him tomorrow.’

‘Why couldn’t you find him?’

‘There were no leads. We couldn’t find any family or friends.’

‘Thank you, Captain Stein.’

General Graham turned to walk out of the room.

‘Wait!’ Stein shouted, ‘What about the treatment?’

‘What about it?’ the general asked, ‘there’s nothing here. If you help us get the doctor back, you’ll get your treatment.’

He slammed the door behind him as he left. Stein’s muffled screams were only just audible from outside the cell.

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The Rising - Chapter 4: Funeral Pyre

Present Day

The full moon shone through a gap in the clouds, touching the edges of the landscape with white light. The snow-covered tips of the mountains shone like beacons in the distance. It was a beautiful scene that didn’t last long.

General Graham looked up into the sky and saw the clouds gathering together. Darkness descended on the regional headquarters. He stood in a clearing at the end of the tarmac, looking over the edge of the cliff at the deep chasm below.

The small gang that had caused this unholy mess were on the run. His men were tracking their helicopter from the control room inside the base. He knew they wouldn’t go very far. After all, they had at least one vampire with them, maybe two if their suspicions were correct from what they’d seen on the surveillance tapes. Sooner or later, they’d have to find shelter before sunrise.

There was only the sound of wind in the air until an electric whine cut through the tranquillity. General Graham turned on his heels and saw one of his men driving a white buggy up the ramp out of the base. It stopped at the helicopter pad where he was standing.

The buggy was piled high with body bags, mostly uniformed soldiers, victims of the attack just hours earlier. It had been a long time since there was a vampire attack on a base belonging to The Brotherhood. Now they were cleaning up the mess of the second in less than twenty-four hours.

‘This is as good a place as any,’ said General Graham and the driver of the buggy hopped out, ‘The wind’s blowing away from the base so they shouldn’t stink up the place while we finish off inside.’

‘Good job.’

He helped the driver unload the body bags onto the ground. Even though the victims were sealed inside their zippered caskets, he could feel the softness of their bodies. Blood was washing around inside the body bags and there was a loud squelch with each body they threw onto the growing pile.

Pools of blood formed at the bottom of the mountain of bodies as it grew. Streams of red followed the imperfections in the surface of the ground and trickled in every direction.

One body bag felt a lot lighter than the others. The soldier knew exactly which poor soul was inside. Newly reborn vampires often struggle to control their hunger and unfortunately for the soldier who had been guarding the morgue, the whole squad had a taste for flesh as well as blood.

Within hours of the attack, some of the men who suffered at the hands of the vampires had already turned and were found lurking in the depths of the base, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. They were despatched quickly and all that was left of them was their clothes, which were being thrown in with the rest of the bodies.

The soldier reached inside the front of the buggy and lifted out a can of petrol and flare. He opened the can and threw the contents evenly over the pile of bodies, then handed the flare to the general.

‘Is there anything you want to say first?’ asked General Graham.

The soldier shrugged and shook his head.

The general lit the flare. Everything surrounding them was bathed in red light, like they were standing in the pits of Hell. He threw the flare onto the mountain of dead bodies. Within seconds the funeral pyre was ablaze.

He saluted the burning soldiers and the soldier next to him followed his lead.

Is this another random attack or is it something bigger?

Is this the beginning of the Rising?

General Graham lowered his arm and his thoughts turned to the one remaining witness of the massacre who was locked in a room deep inside the base.

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The Rising - now available in print!

I'm very pleased to announce that The Rising is now available in print from Lulu.com, with distribution via Amazon and other online retailers to follow soon. It contains all 119 chapters that will be published here, along with the incredible cover art by Gabe Powers, so if you can't wait to read the whole thing online, you can pick up a copy now by following the link below...

Click here to pick up your copy of The Rising

The Rising - Chapter 3: Excerpt from 'Ghosts, Vampires and Zombies: Fiction vs Physics Reality' aka 'The Costas Report'

Anyone who has seen any of the host of vampire films is already quite familiar with how the legend goes. The vampires need to feed on human blood. After one has stuck his fangs into your neck and sucked you dry, you turn into a vampire yourself and carry on the blood-sucking legacy. The fact of the matter is, if vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted to in the movies and folklore, then the human race would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared.

Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption given any Hollywood vampire film. Now two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one. Let us suppose that the first vampire appeared in 1600 AD. It doesn’t really matter what date we choose for the first vampire to appear; it has little bearing on our argument. We list a government website in the references [US Census] which provides an estimate of the world population for any given date. For January 1, 1600 we will accept that the global population was 536,870,911.3 In our argument, we had at the same time 1 vampire.

We will ignore the human mortality and birth rate for the time being and only concentrate on the effects of vampire feeding. On February 1st, 1600 1 human will have died and a new vampire born. This gives 2 vampires and (536, 870, 911−1) humans. The next month there are two vampires feeding and thus two humans die and two new vampires are born. This gives 4 vampires and (536, 870, 911−3) humans.

Month	Vampire Population	Human Population	Month	Vampire Population	Human Population
1	1	536870911	16	32768	536838144
2	2	536870910	17	65536	536805376
3	4	536870908	18	131072	536739840
4	8	536870904	19	262144	536608768
5	16	536870896	20	524288	536346624
6	32	536870880	21	1048576	535822336
7	64	536870848	22	2097152	534773760
8	128	536870784	23	4194304	532676608
9	256	536870656	24	8388608	528482304
10	512	536870400	25	16777216	520093696
11	1024	536869888	26	33554432	503316480
12	2048	536868864	27	67108864	469762048
13	4096	536866816	28	134217728	402653184
14	8192	536862720	29	268435456	268435456
15	16384	536854528	30	536870912	0

Table 1: Vampire and human population at the beginning of each month during a 30-month period.

Now on April 1st, 1600 there are 4 vampires feeding and thus we have 4 human deaths and 4 new vampires being born. This gives us 8 vampires and (536, 870, 911 − 7) humans. By now the reader has probably caught on to the progression. Each month the number of vampires doubles so that after n months have passed there are

2 × 2 × . . . × 2 | {z } n times = 2ⁿ

vampires. This sort of progression is known in mathematics as a geometric progression — more specifically it is a geometric progression with ratio 2, since we multiply by 2 at each step. A geometric progression increases at a tremendous rate, a fact that will become clear shortly. Now all but one of these vampires were once human so that the human population is its original population minus the number of vampires excluding the original one. So after n months have passed there are

536, 870, 911 − 2ⁿ⁺¹

humans. The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically.

Table 1 lists the vampire and human population at the beginning of each month over a 30-month period. Note that by month number 30, the table lists a human population of zero. We conclude that if the first vampire appeared on January 1st of 1600 AD, humanity would have been wiped out by June of 1602, two and half years later.

All this may seem artificial since we ignored other effects on the human population. Mortality due to factors other than vampires would only make the decline in humans more rapid and therefore strengthen our conclusion. The only thing that can weaken our conclusion is the human birth rate. Note that our vampires have gone from 1 to 536,870,912 in two and a half years. To keep up, the human population would have had to increase by the same amount. The website [US Census] mentioned earlier also provides estimated birth rates for any given time. If you go to it, you will notice that the human birth rate never approaches anything near such a tremendous value. In fact in the long run, for humans to survive, our population must at least essentially double each month! This is clearly way beyond the human capacity for reproduction.

If we factor in the human birthrate into our discussion, we would find that after a few months, the human birthrate becomes a very small fraction of the number of deaths due to vampires. This means that ignoring this factor has a negligibly small impact on our conclusion. In our example, the death of humanity would be prolonged by only one month.

We conclude that vampires cannot exist, since their existence contradicts the existence of human beings. Incidentally, the logical proof that we just presented is of a type known as reductio ad absurdum, that is, reduction to the absurd. Another philosophical principle related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence, then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence.

Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi

arXiv:physics/0608059v1 [physics.soc-ph] 5 Aug 2006

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608059v1

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The Rising - Chapter 2: Going In

‘Okay,’ said Will, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to talk Agent Clarkson into aborting her mission, ‘If you’re going in, I’ll do all I can. I’m looking at the satellite feed now. The marks are all positioned close together so you shouldn’t have to get up close to take them out.’

‘But that’s part of the fun,’ Becky smirked.

‘Have you got your equipment ready?’ Will asked, ignoring her attempt to wind him up.

Becky drew her pistol from the holster on her right hip and checked it was loaded with silver bullets. She drew the silencer from a pocket on her left thigh and screwed it into the barrel then clicked the safety catch off. To round off her arsenal she put her left hand in her pocket and gripped a set of silver-plated spiked brass knuckles.

‘Ready to go,’ she announced.

She glanced around the tree and saw two figures walking towards the truck from the warehouse. The other two were heading towards the warehouse, carrying wooden boxes from the truck. When they disappeared into the darkness of the warehouse doorway, Becky knew that was her best chance.

‘I’m going in.’

She saw the two figures walk round the opposite side of the van and knew that was the moment to make her move. She covered the ground quickly but knew they would eventually hear her feet squelching on the soft muddy ground.

As Becky reached the tarmac, the two figures became alerted to her presence and turned to face her in shock. One started to run towards her and the other jumped in the air, far higher than humanly possible and dropped to the floor just behind her.

Without thinking twice, Becky fired off a single shot from the pistol in her right hand that hit the target in front of her directly between the eyes, then elbowed the figure behind her in the stomach with her left arm. As he doubled over, she swung her left arm up and caught him square on the nose with her spiked knuckles, which drew blood instantly. She left her hand there for a few seconds, just long enough for the reaction to silver to take hold, and watched the two bodies around her dissolve. The ash pouring from their wounds soaked into the soggy ground. Were it not for two piles of clothes left on the floor, there would be no evidence they were ever there.

Two down, two to go.

‘Good work, Agent Clarkson. Get ready; the other two are on their way out,’ said Will.

Becky ran to the side of the truck and crouched down. As soon as the two men emerged from the doorway, she popped up and fired two shots, just like she was doing target practice at the firing range at headquarters. The bullets both hit their targets in the chest. The impact sent them reeling backwards, their bodies dissolving as they hit the ground.

‘Nice shooting,’ she heard in her ear, ‘now do you mind telling me why you did that?’

‘Give me a second,’ she said, not wanting to give anything away. If her suspicions were correct, she didn’t want this going over the airwaves back to headquarters.

She walked round to the back of the truck and saw that apart from the small number that had been removed just moments before, it was stacked high with wooden boxes. Her suspicions were correct. They were all labelled with the brand name ‘Virex’.

After removing the silencer, she holstered her pistol. Taking the spiked knuckles in her right hand, she punched a hole in the wooden box in front of her. Inside she saw what she feared she would find. Small plastic packages containing syringes pre-filled with yellow liquid fell out of the hole in the box onto the floor.

This is wrong. This is so wrong.

‘Will, did you say that you got the information about Doctor Forrest from The Brotherhood?’

‘That’s correct, Agent Clarkson. It came through verified channels.’

‘Are you still watching the satellite feed?’

‘Yes, there’s no movement. Wait a minute…’

‘What?’

‘I’ve just lost the feed.’

‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, ‘This channel isn’t secure. Someone’s listening to us. Maintain radio silence for now.’

The world Becky thought she knew had shifted around her in a matter of seconds. She was quickly piecing the parts of the puzzle together. It made sense but she didn’t want to believe it.

How could they do this? Everything we’ve been told is lies. Nothing but lies.

Somewhere in the distance, Becky could hear a low whirring noise and it was getting louder. It was getting louder very quickly.

Fight or flight.

They’re coming for me.

Get the hell out of here.

She grabbed a handful of the syringes and ran back the way she came as fast as she could, over the hedge, through the field, then back onto the road. All the while she heard the whirring get louder and louder and started to feel the breeze around her turn into a gale.

Don’t turn round, she told herself, Don’t slow down to look at what you know is there.

The moment of relief at reaching her motorbike and putting her helmet on was interrupted by a voice from a loudspeaker above her.

‘Stay where you are, Agent Clarkson. We are here to take you for debriefing.’

She turned her head round to look through her black visor at the gunship above her. She could make out four men in military uniforms on board. One was sitting behind a machine gun that was pointing directly at her.

She turned the key in the ignition and a patch of tarmac ahead of her exploded into dust.

‘That was just a warning shot, Agent Clarkson. I repeat: stay where you are.’

There’s no way I’m getting out of this alive if I stay, she thought.

‘Will, are you there?’

‘Will has been removed from his post, Agent Clarkson,’ a female voice said in her ear.

‘Who is this? Where is Will?’

‘My name is Jane, Agent Clarkson. Will has been taken away by security but they didn’t say why. I have been told to tell you that you must go with The Brotherhood. They need your help.’

‘Have you worked there long, Jane?’

‘A little while. Why?’

‘I have a piece of advice for you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Trust no one. This is the last any of you will hear from me.’

With that, Becky gunned the accelerator as hard as she could and sped down the road ahead, narrowly avoiding the flurry of bullets raining down from the gunship. The helicopter above her gave chase but the winding roads made targeting difficult and she made it to the freeway before they could take her out.

Looking in her rear view mirror, she breathed a sigh of relief as the helicopter disappeared into the distance. She knew they wouldn’t risk a public attack.

But they’ll be coming for me.

I have to disappear again.

I’m nobody.

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The Rising - Chapter 1: Bad Feeling

Two years ago.

Agent Becky Clarkson had a bad feeling about her mission. She’d had a bad feeling about it ever since the manager of the emergency response team had woken her up in the middle of the night. Without giving her a chance to gather her thoughts, he gave her the details of the next crisis only she could deal with.

Here’s the address. Our intel says they’ve got the doctor. You’ll need to move fast.

Trying to put the unease to the back of her mind, she gripped the accelerator and dodged her high-powered Kawasaki motorbike around the traffic that dotted the freeway. The rain had stopped falling but the road was still wet and her back tyre sprayed water behind her like a shark’s fin cutting through the ocean.

She loved riding her bike before a mission. High speed got her adrenaline pumping, which gave her the edge she needed to get the job done.

To get the job done and stay alive.

She saw her exit coming up and slowed down. As her bike drifted down the off-ramp, she heard a fizzing in her ear.

‘Agent Clarkson, come in.’

Becky recognised the voice. It belonged to Will, the young guy who worked for the team that provided support for World Health Organisation agents in the field.

They had never met but Becky was pretty sure that Will had a thing for her. She found it odd that he could be attracted to someone just by the sound of their voice but that didn’t matter. She made the most of it and used their relationship to get him to do things and find out information that was far outside his job description.

A bit of digging had revealed that he was twenty-five years old, only four years younger than her, and was pretty good-looking. Maybe they could have met for a drink if things had been different, but as it stood, Becky’s life didn’t have any room for a man.

Well, it did once but never again. I learned that lesson the hard way, she thought.

‘Yes Will, I’m here,’ Becky said into the tiny microphone in her helmet.

‘Are you there yet?’

‘Nearly. I’ve just gone off the freeway and I’m heading out of the city.’

‘What’s your ETA?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Okay, I can see you on my screen now. The truck is heading towards the warehouse as well. You should be there a few minutes before it. The truck’s coming from the north so make sure you get in position first.’

‘Understood. Any hostiles on site?’

‘I’ve checked the satellite feed and I can only find two. They’re real movers though, so watch your back.’

‘Thanks, Will. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to intercept.’

The road leading Becky from the freeway into the countryside was endlessly winding and dark but when she was within a mile of her destination she turned off the headlights.

I can’t alert them to my presence.

The horizon opened up and half way up a hill ahead of her, hidden among the thick trees that filled the landscape, she spotted an old abandoned warehouse. At the bottom of the hill, Becky stopped her bike and hid the heavy machine in the bushes that lined the road. She was always amazed how easily it moved at a hundred miles an hour but when she needed to quickly stash it out of sight, it became an albatross round her neck.

By the light of the moon she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror as she removed her helmet. Clad in a black Kevlar combat suit with cropped hair, she realised it was a far cry from the floral dress and long flowing blonde locks in her graduation picture. Every morning her parents looked at that picture and wept. They wept for the passing of their only child.

For eight months they had lived under the impression she was dead. Every Black Ops agent had to disappear when they took the job. The safety of the agents and their families depended on them cutting all ties to the outside world. Agent Clarkson knew she would have to live outside real life as long as the vampire threat remained and not a day went by that she didn’t question her decision to take this direction.

There’s no turning back. Get the job done and stay alive.

She hopped over the bushes into an empty field and started to run towards the warehouse as fast as she could while keeping her head down.

‘Will, come in,’ she said.

‘Go ahead, Agent Clarkson,’ he replied.

‘I’m almost there, what’s the latest?’

‘Still just two of them on site as far as I can see. The truck is almost there. You should be able to see it.’

Becky looked up the hill and saw a pair of bright headlights rise over the summit.

‘Affirmative. How many on board?’

‘Two. Driver and passenger seat.’

‘No one in the back of the truck?’

‘Negative.’

‘So either they haven’t got the doctor with them or the driver is holding him at gunpoint. I thought you said he was taken by them in this truck an hour ago?’

‘That’s the information we got from The Brotherhood.’

The Brotherhood. I can’t remember the last time they provided us with any useful information, she thought to herself as she jumped over the last hedge and hid behind a tree.

All she cared about was tracking down Doctor Forrest. He had gone missing again. He had a habit of disappearing without notice and strolling back into his lab as if nothing had happened a few days later, but now no one had seen him for over a week. If they couldn’t find him then all of their work would be in jeopardy. He held all the knowledge, all the secrets that gave the human race a fighting chance against the vampires.

Investigations had led them to believe he was in the vampires’ custody and he might be at this location. Becky had never met the doctor but she had a nagging suspicion that there was something odd about the way he conducted himself.

She peeked round her hiding place and saw the truck stop outside the warehouse. The doors opened and two men in black stepped out onto the tarmac. The blanket of soggy leaves squelched beneath their feet. They walked round to the back of the truck and opened the doors. Two more figures dressed in black appeared from the large open doorway in the warehouse and joined them.

‘The doctor’s not here,’ Becky said.

‘What’s the call, Agent Clarkson?’ Will asked.

Becky was about to tell him she was aborting the mission when the four figures on the other side of the trees started to unload wooden boxes from the truck. Wooden boxes that looked familiar to her but felt terribly out of place in this setting.

‘Agent Clarkson, are you going to abort?’ Will asked again.

‘Negative. There’s something else going on here.’

‘Becky,’ he said, trying a personal approach to get through to her, ‘the primary objective is to recover Doctor Forrest. He is not on site. I strongly urge you to abort the mission.’

‘No, Will. I can’t tell you what’s going on here yet but I have to investigate it. I’m going in.’

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