Free Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse by Johnny B. Truant

Reginald reached down and flipped up a flap of fabric on one of the bodies’ sleeves, already knowing what he’d find.  
    “AVT,” he said, looking at the insignia. But of course, the armor had told him that. The Anti-Vampire Taskforce had many catchy slogans. Looking at the conjoined armor, Reginald thought of the one that said, Protect the neck.  
    “The human government sent in troops?”  
    “Apparently.”  
    “How can they? It’s an act of war.”  
    Reginald gave her a pursed-lipped smile. “Nik, the war is on.”  
    “Not officially.”  
    “Well then, if I had to guess, I’d say that this raid…” He waved his hand around the room. “… didn’t officially happen.”  
    They walked through the halls and corridors, feeling uneasy. There were dozens and dozens of dead AVT soldiers. How many had they sent in? Considering how well-armored the troops were, how many had run through, untouched by the clawed hands that must have swarmed them? Or had the vampires decided not to fight, but to run instead? Reginald and Nikki had spent months here; they even found their old room and snickered nervously at the holes in the walls that had been made during their over-the-top sexual antics. There had been scores of vampires living here, with room for hundreds. During the past uneasy months, those previously-empty rooms had probably filled with nomads seeking protection. The Chateau had likely made an appealing target for the AVT: hit the Council and wipe out a few hundred tag-along bloodsuckers in the bargain.  
    But had it worked? The answer to that question was less clear.
    Reginald saw a few telltale piles of ash that had probably once been the Chateau’s vampire residents, but there were, at most, about as many vampire piles as there were human bodies. The vampires had probably converged on the troops, ripping the rivets from their armor and shoving implements through the cracks. (Earlier, they’d seen a few humans next to their suits, having been scooped out like meat from the shell of a lobster.) After an initial showdown, however, Reginald guessed a lot of the vampires had probably just run. Most of them weren’t fighters, just as most of the humans being slaughtered weren’t fighters. But this was an extermination war, and in an extermination war — where ultimately only the ending numbers mattered — innocents made the best targets of all.
    Whatever had happened had happened untidily. Nothing had been cleaned; nobody on either side had come back to collect spoils or reclaim property. The fridge was still filled with blood pouches. The vampires, if they’d survived, had left behind everything they owned — and so had the Anti-Vampire Taskforce troops. Reginald picked up a weapon he’d never seen before and hefted it. It had the shape of a standard military weapon, but had several attachments mounted to it. The thing had two barrels that seemed to be fed by two ammunition clips, and it appeared to be operable via a multi-function trigger that Reginald was afraid to touch. He removed one of the clips and found modified wooden bullets, each with a hollowed tip jacketed with silver. The other contained smooth gray bullets with red lines running down their curved length. The attachments were all mysterious; Reginald was afraid to try any of them. Clipped to the belts of the soldiers were what looked like grenades, but they had LEDs near the top that pulsed green.  
    “What is all this?” said Nikki, watching him.  
    “The hidden component of centuries of military development,” said Reginald. “Apparently this is why military expenses have always seemed so stupidly high. They’ve had to report the spending… but only half of what they were spending on.”  
    “Anti-vampire weapons?”  
    “Makes sense,” said Reginald. “They’ve known about us since the beginning. They kept it quiet and shook hands, but humans aren’t stupid. They know they’re food. I guess they wanted to be