Free Vampire's Day (Book 1): Epicenter by Yuri Hamaganov Page A

further.
    The excited manager and a dozen workers were waiting for him at the warehouse. While workers loaded steel beams and cement bags, the manager ran up to him and asked, slightly stammering with excitement.
    “You know what's going on in LA?”
    “They say that a plane was shot down at the airport.”
    “And the shooting. What are all these materials for?”
    “Military secret.”
    On his way back, Tiger listened to the radio, trying to clarify what seemed an incomprehensible picture. His smartphone didn’t work, the radio still carried on, but Tiger couldn’t find any familiar urban radio station; it was as if they never existed. Other stations talked about the terrorist attacks, the North Korean army invasion, leakage of biological weapons and other extremely interesting things that were happening now in Los Angeles. Someone said something about a rabies outbreak, but Tiger did not realize who had this rabies.
    His destination was a small, rich town on a big road, with much more military than civilian residents. He had been ordered to leave the beams and cement here.
    “Go into the second flight, as soon as you finish unloading!”
    Tiger had already been to this town once. He came here with a girl on a motorcycle, and he would still be able to find a place on the shore, where they played. He would like to be there again, instead of sitting in a stuffy cabin, looking at the tall pillars of thick black smoke rising over the city. The fires were rampant.
    “What is happening?” he called his friend, a tanker driver.
    “Fucking Al-Qaeda! They’ve started a biological attack!”
    “Brilliant! And where are our fucking biological protection suits?”
    The unloading was finished, so he headed on a new trip, continuing to listen the radio. Now almost all the radio stations talked about rabies, reporting that people were attacking people in LA. It looked like the tanker driver was not mistaken about a biological attack.
    The second trip was faster and easier than the first, but on the third he had to wait for a while. This time Tiger had to take heavy concrete blocks and wait a long time before they were loaded, then again waited a long time at a crossroads, waiting for a long National Guard convoy to pass, heading to the same town.
    He watched helicopters and drones in the sky. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles drove on the next road, pillars of thick black smoke rising more and more. Working radio stations became fewer, their places on the airwaves holding harsh male voices declaring a state of emergency.
    The small rich town on the big road had changed during his absence, turning into a military camp. The highway was blocked - the military weren’t allowing anyone to leave Los Angeles. It seemed that the concrete barriers, like a gigantic dam, blocked the river of cars, clearly separating the place where order reigned to where chaos ruled. Tiger realized how lucky he was - if his leave warrant had been the day before, he would now be behind this wall.
    A couple of workers in red construction helmets began to unload the blocks, so Tiger decided to buy some beer at the store across the street. At the front of the store were some used bullets, the glass door was knocked out, and shelves with goods were overturned. There was a wicked girl cashier sweeping the floor.
    “Do you have a beer?”
    “Maybe.”
    The girl, who looked no older than seventeen, took a bottle of non-alcoholic beer from behind the counter.
    “I mean real beer?”
    “That’s all I have.”
    “What happened?”
    The cashier yawned and shrugged her shoulders.
    “Urban folks. They fled from Los Angeles. Your guys stopped them at the town border, and began to send them back behind the fence that you are building there. Well, they were upset and decided to stock up just in case with everything they needed, and so came to me. I think they also came to the conclusion that the state of emergency allowed them to not pay, so there was a massive