Exodus » Sandra

DEFENDING BOARDWALK » RON

The assault of Boardwalk — was of course at night. This was a horrible time to assault us vampires, but apparently no one was willing to explain that to the assault team. So in the cover of darkness, the assault teams ran at the containers with breaching ladders. They probably had overwatch on the Sports Basement, but those snipers were hidden well enough we couldn’t see them with eyes or cameras. At least they were not shooting at us.

The ladders went up, over the wires, and stopped abruptly. We had made it so cow bell noises played whenever the energizers recharged the wires, and there was now a herd of cattle surrounding us. Admittedly, we hadn’t posted any signs warning about the electric fence, but they could have done a bit more recon before assaulting it with aluminum ladders.

Two teams had luckily used pairs of fiberglass ladders, and they scampered up on top of their containers athletically. Our soapmisters had been running for an hour, but now the fog machines kicked in too. The goal of the mist was to obscure the metal plates functioning as blinds protecting our vampires.

Most of the assault teams went down from the electric wires on the roof of the containers. A few cow bells in a row showed they weren’t initially convinced to vacate, but ultimately only three team members made it to the inner edge, the steel blind, and the vampire… who then turned into a bat… no… who then simply leapt up and tackled the assaulter onto their backs. The wires did the rest. One of the vampires was stunned as well, but the breach was over.

We pulled down the bodies from the roof, checked their pulses, and then laid them out front of the camp, to wake up (or be fetched) sometime after our doors shuffled close. Overwatch kindly didn’t fire a shot in the dark.

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SAFE HOUSES » MARK

Dialysis for ten thousand vampires — or more than a hundred thousand patients requires about two thousand ‘caves’.

There is no way we could hide two thousand caves in California. So we didn’t. We hid about 80. The exact number, I don’t know. They were set up without me even knowing who created them, let alone where they were. Maybe 100 in Texas. 60 in Massachusetts. 40 in Pennsylvania. 80 in New York. In total we had something about two thousand caves throughout the contiguous 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii had caves also, but because they required air or international travel, we did not consider them. The primary goal of the two thousand caves was to support the exodus of ten thousand vampire slaves to a safe refuge. They also supported the local communities’ dialysis needs.

Detailed design plans and purchasing information was available on both our ‘dark’ and ‘plain sight’ web sites. Any vampire could easily acquire the equipment needed to support a multi-shift dialysis clinic. They just had to provide the safe and sterile facility. And figure out how to get a base-level of patients. Enough to support a few vampires visiting for a while.

With the safe-house caves in place, we simply had to communicate where they were. Simple, except the complication of preventing anyone else knowing the location. Turns out this was trivial as long as our resistance wasn’t significantly infiltrated.

Vampire powers varied per person — but one skill was available to all of us. We had heightened visual acuity towards blood. About 100-fold better than the average person. Blood diluted one part to a hundred parts of water looked the same to us as obsidian-

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black ink looked to humans. We could paint signs with this diluted solution in plain sight to us, but completely invisible to the living. A few of these signs in succession and we had a treasure map that only a vampire could follow. Or an exodus plan.

An exodus plan is a balancing act — We need to get the vampires out of harms-way by moving them as quickly as possible, but at the same time we need to avoid visibility of the migration. The approach we picked was the simplest possible.

After each shift was complete, that vampire would simply leave the clinic and head for their safe house. The relationship of vampire to safe house was random: they simply knew where their first marker to the East was, and that marker could cause them to backtrack West or continue forward across the United States. The first marker varied by the time-of-day of their shift (earlier shifts had further markers) but were otherwise randomly assigned. Cohorts of vampires had an identifier and the marker would show which cohort should go where next. By the end, the vampire would be at their refuge.

At the end of each shift — a thousand vampires went into motion from a thousand different locations … heading for a hundred different markers … and would arrive at them sporadically throughout the day. Vampires would likely reach a particular marker at least 10 minutes apart from the previous and next vampire, but it they could possibly be spaced by hours.

There was no particular hurry for the vampires to progress along their trail: they could last a week without dialysis… as long as they allowed for how weak they would be near the end of that time period. Fortunately blood-sight improves with blood-loss, so the treasure map would always be visible.

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