Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos (Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

men
that had fought with him before; on the other, he could not strip
the camp of all of its best fighters, especially when they were
here without permission. To this end he had chosen Rodgers,
Warkowski and Steele. The others were all new to the group but very
capable, at least according to their own accounts.
    John Tanner had been a police officer before the war.
At fifty-two he had a slight paunch that bulged over his trousers,
though his massive six-foot-three frame went a long way to
disguising this. His hair was thinning on top in a small circle
like a monk but he had retained a thick mane of hair on either side
of his head that had grown down to his shoulders and now curled at
the ends, giving him the appearance of an aging rock musician. His
face was heavily lined and Harris imagined that every line told a
story of the many cruel scenes he had witnessed in his years on the
force. His eyes seemed to hold a strange distant look that seemed
to confirm Harris’s suspicion but Tanner kept a cool head under
fire, knew how to take orders and carried them out to the letter.
He had been among the last batch weaned off the serum and had
nearly been missed in the confusion of moving to a new base and the
sheer numbers of new additions.
    The survivors’ numbers had grown so large that many
of the jobs and positions had grown from individual placements to
whole departments of people looking after food, sanitation,
security and offensive operations. Most of the newly awakened were
still quite groggy when they were first interviewed and many found
themselves assigned to work details not necessarily appropriate
with their previous employments.
    The sheer volume of people meant that it was easier
to assign people and then reassign those that didn’t fit at a later
stage; this had led to some hilarious postings, not least of which
had been Tanner’s own case. He had commented dryly that he was used
to wet nursing others during his interview and the interviewer had
taken him literally and he had promptly been assigned to the
nursery where his six-foot-three build and gravely voice had nearly
sent the young children into shock. Harris had happened to be
passing the nursery on his way to visit Sandra in the hospital when
he had heard the commotion and had gone to investigate. He had
snapped the police sergeant up on the spot for his growing
offensive operations department.
    Dave Sherman was a different matter altogether. The
man was mean-looking, with a personality to match, but his
experience in the Marines for the last fifteen years made personal
feelings redundant, especially considering he had spent the last
five of those years in Special Forces. Sherman had a thin, almost
ferret-like face and had an abundance of body hair that seemed to
spill from his clothes at his neckline and around his hands. He had
obviously given up on the pointless exercise of shaving and he
sported a full, thick beard that served to soften his narrow
features somewhat. His hair was jet black but his beard, strangely,
was almost white and the contrast was quite startling. The man had
piercing blue eyes that shone almost fervently from the shadows of
his deep-set features, and he had a large, almost aquiline, nose
that was hard to avoid staring at when in conversation with
him.
    Harris still hadn’t quite figured out what made the
man tick but Sherman knew his weapons and had passed on invaluable
training on how to move in a combat situation, assault a heavily
defended target and how to report information under fire. This last
was particularly invaluable as Harris and his men had previously
relied upon split second timing before with no ability to signal
other groups once a raid had begun and this left them vulnerable if
the plan changed in any way. Sherman had educated them in how to
make signals without electronic means and without arousing enemy
suspicions. There was still, however, something about the marine
that didn’t sit well with Harris, but he