Something of the Night (27 page)

“Let’s go,” Jacob said, and
he led the skinny vampire towards the line of trees.

They broke through the black
canopy and took the first tentative steps towards a deeper darkness. The woods
appeared to have shrunken within the last hour or so, drawing the shadows
closer, bringing the night almost within reach. Small twigs snapped under their
feet as they traversed a small incline, and the sound reverberated noisily
within this claustrophobic space. Jacob imagined claws – sharp claws – padding
closer under the cover of rotten foliage.

It took a couple of minutes to
find a suitable tree to work on. Most of the trees were tall, skeletal towers.
Now, after years of darkness, they had begun to rot and wilt, and they stood
bare like forgotten sentinels. Nevertheless, most had trunks wider than Jacob,
and he was forced to search deeper into the woodlands for a more suitable find.
The highway became a faint strip of light, way off in the distance.

“Here,” Jacob said, drawing
Pet’s attention.

The vampire stopped to stare
at the tracker.

“Let’s hurry,” he said, and
began to work at a tree.

They worked hard, quickly
making a large pile of timber between them.

“That should do it,” Jacob
said, as he wiped sweat off his brow.

Pet nodded and the hatchet
returned to his belt. They scooped up an armful of wood each and then began to
trek back through the dark woodland. For a second Jacob became disorientated,
the highway lost in the sea of trees. Then a faint flicker of light found its
way to him. He changed his direction slightly and headed towards the light.

They got within about fifty
yards of the highway when suddenly a short, sharp bark sounded from their
right. Both froze rigid. Another brief snarl sounded, but this one had found
its way from the left.

“Shit…” Jacob whispered. He
turned to Pet and saw terror in the vampire’s eyes. “Don’t move,” he breathed.
Shadows shifted all around them. A loud pistol shot sounded and the phantom
shadows froze, instantly becoming part of a greater darkness. The noise
revealed itself to be no more helpful than an exhaust back-firing. The tracker
felt his chest tighten with fear and the logs in his arms felt as if they
weighed more than a ton.

Another bark came, but this
one carried an element of desperation with it. Sleek bodies appeared all around
them, and Jacob understood why the last bark had not been secretive or masked.
The wolves were all in place. No need for secrecy anymore. The tracker’s legs
went weak with fear. There were at least a dozen of them. He quickly looked
from one to the next, in the hope of finding a large grey one out of the many.
But the pack consisted of nothing but dark, matted coats, which hung loosely
from scrawny torsos. They looked near starved to death and in much worse shape
than the first horde of wolves he had encountered.

There would be no chance of a
truce this time.

None whatsoever.

Chapter
Forty-Three

Bloodied fingerprints covered the keypad in a series
of crimson swirls and loops. The door to the underground stood ajar. Wind
whistled eerily through the shaft, from the surface above down to this, the
lowest level.

“Something’s in here,” the
soldier said.

Another soldier bent to
examine the keypad. It didn’t make any sense. Why would the door remain open?
Only a fool would leave it so. The second soldier used his rifle to push the
door fully open. He stepped inside the access shaft. A ladder climbed upwards
before disappearing out of view. Most of it was hidden in shadow, but a tiny
speck of light flickered at the very top. A ghostly breeze scraped cold fingers
across the soldier’s face.

“Let’s get out of here,” the
first soldier suggested, remaining in the main passageway.

“Wait,” the other said. “I
think I can see something.”

“What?”

The soldier squinted. What
was that? The flicker of light drew nearer, burning the shadows away as it
came. The sound of hollow footsteps dropped from above, amplified many times
over by the resonance of the shaft.

“Let’s go,” the other soldier
urged.

“In a second. I can almost
make it out.”

The second soldier looked
around the main passageway. The bulkhead lights above did little to improve the
gloom. Both ends of the passageway were shrouded in a deep darkness.

The two soldiers had been
part of the search party, intent on finding the old priest and the woman named
Sarah. The soldier shivered. Fifteen minutes earlier, the party of six had
stumbled upon what they concluded to be Father. Or rather, what was left of the
holyman. Not a lot. The corpse’s head was missing, and the only way of
identifying the body had been by its clothes – a long, dark cloak and a
red-stained dog collar. The rest of the party had disappeared, in search of
Major Patterson, ready to share the grisly news. Only two of them had stayed
behind, and their instructions had been to guard the corpse and be ready if the
killer returned. Not long after the search party had separated, the two
soldiers heard furtive footsteps coming from further down the passageway.
Against his better judgment, the soldier had followed his comrade, and now he
found himself trapped between two wedges of darkness.

“C’mon, time to go,” he said.

The scrape of a boot pulled
his attention towards the dark. Two faint lights glinted in his direction.
Flashlights and the return of the search party, maybe? The lights seemed to
hover at head height. They stopped tantalisingly close, but did not come any
nearer.

“Hello?” the soldier called.
A silent reply pulled him away from his companion.

The lights blinked out.

He froze.

The lights returned but they
had multiplied. Now, four bright orbs stared back at him. The soldier stepped
closer. What the hell were they? Another step closer, and another set appeared.
The two in the middle blinked on and off.

Suddenly, they made sense.

Eyes.

He was looking into eyes. Not
human eyes but… Vampires!

The soldier staggered back
and the gloom parted to reveal three ghastly faces: two male and one female.
The woman at the centre grinned and her smile was bright-red and horrific.
Blood dripped from the corners of her mouth. “Where are you going?” Sarah
asked.

The soldier backed further
away. He passed the open doorway and tried to warn his comrade. His words of
warning were barely audible. “Run … now …” he said, in a terrified whisper. He
continued to back away, but the terrible faces matched him step for step. One
of the bulkhead lights above him flickered out. It pulsed for a second but then
sputtered and died, dropping the passageway into near-darkness. Panic set the
soldier running. He tore through the pitch-black tunnel and raced blindly for
safety. The next corner offered the solace of light, and he whimpered with insane
glee. Under the bright canopy he staggered and lurched and put distance between
him and the three dreadful faces. He rounded a bend before running straight
into someone. Spinning almost full circle, he fell to the rock floor. The light
shifted and the soldier recognised the individual instantly.

“They’re overrunning the
underground,” he explained quickly.

The newcomer’s head tilted to
one side.

“We’ve got to go get help,”
the soldier said.

A hand reached out, ready to
help the soldier to his feet. He took it and climbed up off the rock. Footsteps
echoed eerily from the passageway. “C’mon, we need to get…” His plea was choked
short. The hand holding his felt wet and, as he looked down, he saw that the
fingers dripped with blood. He tried to yank himself free but the grip
tightened.

Daniel Harper smiled. It was
a dreadful parody of something caring. The weapon he carried slipped off his
shoulder. One of his bloodied fingers curled around the trigger. “Don’t worry,”
Daniel said. “I’ll save you.” He brought the weapon up and jammed the barrel
into the soldier’s eye.

***

The light inside the shaft intensified. The soldier
could almost hear the crackle of flames. Now, he could see nearly the whole
ladder as it stretched towards the surface. It was then he realised it must
have been one continuous light source. One long torch that started at the
summit and continued downwards, finishing less than thirty feet above him.

He tried to measure the
distance from the bottom to the top in an attempt to calculate how many lit
torches it would take to fill the length of the shaft. At least a hundred –
soldiers, he concluded. His brow furrowed. Where had they all come from? All of
a sudden he understood, and the blood drained from his face.

“Dear God,” he muttered.

He turned towards the
doorway, ready to warn his comrade of the immediate danger. Rather than the
expected face, he was instead confronted by the features of a woman. He opened
his mouth, but a burst of gunfire shocked him into silence. The woman seemed
either to miss the noise completely or simply chose to ignore it.

“What was that?” he asked.
The soldier smelt a coppery stench. He looked past her and saw two more faces.
They were anything but human. Sarah laughed at his fear and a rivulet of blood
ran from the corner of her mouth to the tip of her chin. The droplet hung for a
second, then dripped to the floor.

“Fuck you,” the soldier cried
in defiance. The weapon at his side rose, ready to fire at point-blank range.
Sarah moved in a blur. She sidestepped to her right and slammed the door shut.
A deep, hollow boom sounded which almost deafened the soldier.

Once his senses had returned,
he heard the rasp and hiss of something above. Terror steered his gaze upwards.
The light had finally reached him. Something that had no knowledge of heat or
warmth hung above. It reached out towards him with a cold, merciless hand.

Sarah turned away from the
door. A muffled scream of agony came from behind it. It lasted a mere moment
before falling silent. A second later a
thud, thud
of arrival sounded.
She punched the number into the keypad - the one that Daniel had shown her -
then stepped back to allow the first of a hundred soldiers to cross over the
threshold.

***

The sound of gunfire halted the group’s progress.
Major Patterson signalled for them to stop. The tunnel ahead flashed with a
strobe-like effect, and the sound of a weapon discharging echoed loudly towards
them.

“Hold here,” Patterson
instructed.

Lieutenant Farr and about a
dozen fully-armed soldiers gathered at the mouth of the dark passageway. Farr
played torchlight onto the walls, following the descent of the tunnel. It led
from the second level, where most of the civilians resided, to the lowest
level, where only shadows and darkness prevailed.

“Who’s down there?” Patterson
asked.

Farr clicked the flashlight
off. “Nobody. It’s empty. Only Jacob Cain strays beyond this point. It’s too
damp for anyone to sleep in with any real sense of comfort. And we haven’t used
it for storage in years.”

“So what’s down there?” the Major
asked.

Farr shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Think,” Patterson pushed, “there
must be something.”

“Wait a minute. There’s the
access shaft that heads straight outside. It leads to a small hatchway that
only the trackers use to slip out of the underground. It’s on the other side of
the hill, opposite the main entrance.”

“What about security?”

“Nothing top side, just the
hatchway, but there’s an automatic key code required to open the lower door.
Even then, the codes can only be entered from inside the complex.”

“Who knows the code?”

Farr paused for a moment. He
began to unconsciously count the fingers of one hand. “Jacob Cain, myself and
the Harper brothers.” He added a quick explanation as to why the list was so
short. “We never use it, not even in an emergency. It would be virtually
impossible to evacuate everyone via the shaft. It’s too narrow. It’d take hours
and hours.”

The short list seemed to pain
the old Major.

“What is it?” Farr asked.

“We know Jacob and Elliot
aren’t anywhere in the valley, and you’re here. That only leaves… ”

“Daniel,” Farr interjected,
wide-eyed.

Patterson staggered slightly,
the relevance of the information overwhelming. “No… ” he moaned. “Not Daniel.”

The Major’s pain spread to
Farr. He had seen too many good men – young men – fall at the hands of the
vampires. He took at step into darkness and the tunnel dared him to vent his
anger.

“No,” Patterson said, halting
Farr’s descent. “Lieutenant, what is done is done. If Daniel has fallen, then
God be with him. We must not let our feelings for one jeopardise the safety of
all others.” Farr stopped. He nodded and stepped back into the light.
Patterson’s hand fell onto his shoulder. The old man smiled. “We are both too
old to be acting foolishly. Now, we must lead the rest to safety.”

“Safety?”

The Major looked around the
carved rock and his face turned sad. “I fear this home of ours has been
compromised. It is time we said goodbye.”

“What are you saying?” Farr
asked.

Patterson held the
lieutenant’s gaze. “That we evacuate immediately.”

***

The wail of a klaxon jolted Rebecca out of her
troubled sleep. Her last hour had been spent avoiding the sharp claws and
terrible fangs of hideous creatures. One of them had worn the robes of a holy
man, and the other had a monstrous face hidden behind a veil of beauty. Scratch
lay curled up at Rebecca’s side. The sound of the klaxon caused his ears to
twitch slightly but failed to rouse the mutt from his slumber.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,”
Rebecca said, and nudged the terrier.

The dog’s head lifted from
his paws. He yawned and then looked at Rebecca sleepily, offering her an
unenthusiastic,
Woof.

“C’mon boy, something’s
happened.”

Another unenthusiastic,
Woof
followed.

Rebecca climbed from under
the table and stretched her back. Scratch padded to her side, the cobwebs of
sleep finally brushed clear. He looked around the canteen area as it began to
fill with anxious-looking people. Most were half-dressed, puffy-eyed and
confused.

“What’s going on?” a woman
asked a tall, near-naked man.

“Hell if I know,” he replied,
slipping his rifle from one hand to the next. He turned his attention towards
one of the exits, then strode purposefully away in just his under-shorts. More
and more people filed into the canteen. Some carried weapons, and others
children or belongings or both.

“It’s the evacuation signal,”
an old and bent man announced.

“Dear God,” a woman gasped,
her face ashen white. She crossed herself and then tore off in the same
direction as the semi-naked soldier.

The canteen appeared to act
like a human heart. People arrived confused and disorientated on one side, only
to disappear with purpose and determination on the other.

Scratch barked to get
Rebecca’s attention.

She followed him into a
passageway. It curved towards the surface. They passed a large group of soldiers
who were heading in the opposite direction. “Where are we going?” Rebecca
asked, as they climbed higher.

Yap
!
Yap
!

She followed him to the end
of the passageway and found herself at a wide-open junction. Three more tunnels
branched off in different directions. Almost a hundred people were packed into
the junction, filtering into the three different passageways. Some were armed
and they looked anxious as they readied for battle; others appeared calm as
they were shepherded away from the packed intersection.