The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (112 page)

What now? They were trapped. Away from Fet, away from Eph. With no way out. Except the butter knife.

She took a final look at the shank. She would go to Barnes and use it and then . . . then maybe she would turn it on herself.

Suddenly it didn’t look sharp enough. She worked on the edge and the tip until dawn.

Sewage Processing Plant

T
HE
S
TANFORD
S
EWAGE
Processing Plant lay beneath a hexagonal red brick building on La Salle Street between Amsterdam and Broadway. Built in 1906, the plant was meant to keep up with the area’s demands and growth for at least a century. During its first decade, the plant processed thirty million gallons of raw sewage a day. But the influx of people delivered by two consecutive world wars soon made that rate insufficient. The neighbors also complained about shortness of breath, eye infections, and a general sulfurous smell emanating from the building 24/7. The plant shut down partially in 1947 and completely five years after that.

The inside of it was immense, even majestic. There was a nobility to industrial turn-of-the-century architecture that has since been lost. Twin wrought-iron staircases led to the catwalks above, and the cast-iron structures that filtered and processed the raw sewage had barely been vandalized over the years. Faded graffiti and a three-feet-deep deposit of silt, dry leaves, dog poop, and dead pigeons were the only signs of abandonment. A year before, Gus Elizalde had stumbled onto it and had cleaned one of the reservoirs by hand, turning it into his own personal armory.

The only access was through a tunnel, and only by using a massive iron valve locked with a heavy stainless steel chain.

Gus wanted to show off his weapons cache, so they could load up for the raid on the blood camp. Eph had stayed behind—needing some alone time after finally seeing his son, via video, after two long years, standing alongside the Master and his vampire mother. Fet had renewed understanding for Eph’s unique plight, the toll the vampire strain had taken on his life, and Fet sympathized completely. But still, on their way to the improvised armory, Fet discreetly complained about Eph, about how his focus was slipping. He complained in only practical terms, without malice, without rancor. Maybe with just a touch of jealousy, since Goodweather’s presence still could get in the way of him and Nora.

“I don’t like him,” said Gus. “Never did. Guy bitches about what he doesn’t have, loses sight of what he does have, and is never happy. He’s what you call a—what’s that word?”

“Pessimist?” said Fet.

“Asshole,” said Gus.

“He’s gone through a lot,” said Fet.

“Oh, really. Oh, I’m so fucking sorry. I always wanted my mother to stand naked in a cell with a fucking helmet glued to her fucking
cabeza
.”

Fet almost smiled. Gus was ultimately right. No man should ever have to go through what Eph was going through. But still, Fet needed him functional and battle-ready. Their corps was shrinking, and getting everyone’s best effort was critical.

“He’s never fucking happy. His wife nags him too much? Bam!! She is gone!! Now, boo-hoo-boo, if only I could get her back . . . Bam!! She’s undead, boo-hoo-boo, poor me, my wife is a fucking vampire . . . Bam!! They take his son. Boo-hoo-fucking-boo, if only I could have him back . . . It never fucking ends with him. Who you love or who you protect is all there is, man. Fucked-up as it may be. If my mother looks like the ugliest porno Power Ranger, I don’t care, man. That’s what I have. I have my mama. See? I don’t give up,” said Gus. “And I don’t give a fuck. When I go, I wanna go fighting those fuckers. Maybe because I’m a fire sign.”

“You’re a what?” said Fet.

“Gemini,” said Gus. “In the zodiac. A fire sign.”

“Gemini is an air sign, Gus,” said Fet.

“Whatever. I still don’t give a fuck,” said Gus. Then after a long pause, he added, “If we still had the old man here, we’d be on top by now.”

“I believe that,” said Fet.

Gus slowed in the darkened underground tunnel and started to unlock the padlock.

“So, about Nora,” he said. “Have you . . . ?”

“No—no,” said Fet, blushing. “I . . . no.”

Gus smiled in the dark. “She doesn’t even know, huh?”

“She knows,” said Fet. “At least—I think she does. But we haven’t done much about it.”

“You will, big boy,” said Gus as he opened the access valve to the armory. “
Bienvenido a Casa Elizalde!
” he said, extending his arms and showing a wide array of automatic weapons and swords and ammo of all calibers.

Fet patted him on the back while nodding. He eyed a box of hand grenades. “Where the fuck did you get these?”

“Pfft. A boy needs his toys, man. And the bigger, the better.”

Fet said, “Any specific uses in mind?”

“Too many. I’m saving ’em for something special. Why, you got any ideas?”

Fet said, “How about detonating a nuclear bomb?”

Gus laughed harshly. “That actually sounds like fun.”

“I’m glad you think so. Because I didn’t come back from Iceland completely empty-handed.”

Fet told Gus about the Russian bomb he had bought with silver.

“
No mames?
” Gus said. “You have a nuclear bomb?”

“But no detonator. That’s where I was hoping you could help me out.”

“You’re serious?” Gus asked. He hadn’t moved past the previous exchange. “A nuclear bomb?”

Fet nodded modestly.

“Much respect, Fet,” said Gus. “
Much
respect. Let’s take out the island. Like—right fucking now!”

“Whatever we do with it . . . we get one shot. We need to be sure.”

“I know who can get us the detonator, man. The only asshole that is still capable of getting anything dirty, anything crooked on the whole East Coast. Alfonso Creem.”

“How would you go about contacting him? Crossing to Jersey is like going into East Germany.”

“I have my ways,” said Gus. “You just leave it to Gusto. How you think I got the fucking grenades?”

Fet went silent, pensive, and then looked back at Gus.

“Would you trust Quinlan? With the book?”

“The old man’s book? The
Silver
whatever?”

Fet nodded. “Would you share it with him?”

“I don’t know, man,” said Gus. “I mean, sure—it’s just a book.”

“The Master wants the book for a reason. Setrakian sacrificed his life for it. Whatever is inside must be real. Your friend Quinlan thinks as much . . .”

“What about you?” asked Gus.

“Me?” Fet said. “I have the book—but I can’t do much with it myself. You know that saying ‘He’s so dumb, he couldn’t find a prayer in the Bible’? Well, I can’t find much. There’s some trick to it, maybe. We should be so close.”

“I’ve seen him, man—Quinlan. Shit, I’ve recorded that motherfucker cleaning a nest in a New York minute. Two, three dozen vampires.”

Gus smiled, cherishing his memories. Fet liked Gus even more when he smiled.

“In jail you learn that there are two kinds of guys in this world—and I don’t care if they’re human or bloodsuckers—there’s the ones that take it and the ones that hand it out. And this guy, man—this guy gives it out like fucking candy . . . He wants the hunt, man. He wants the hunt. And he’s maybe the one other orphan out here who hates the Master as much as we do.”

Fet nodded. In his heart the matter was resolved.

Quinlan would get the book. And Fet would get some answers.

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Most midlife crises are not this bad. In the past, it used to be that people would watch their youth fade, their marriage break, or their careers grow stagnant. Those were the breaks, usually eased by a new car, a dab of Just for Men, or a big Mont Blanc pen, depending on your budget. But what I have lost cannot be compensated for. My heart races every time I think of it, every time I sense it. It is over. Or it will be over soon enough. Whatever I had, I have squandered—and what I hoped for will never be. Things around me have taken their permanent, horrible final form. All the promise in my life—youngest graduate in my class, the big move east, meeting the perfect girl—all that is gone. The evenings of cold pizza and a movie. Of feeling like a giant in my son’s eyes . . .

When I was a kid, there was this guy on TV called Mr. Rogers, and he used to sing: “You can never go down / can never go down / can never go down the drain.” What a fucking lie.

Once, I might have gathered my past in order to present it as a CV or a list of accomplishments, but now . . . now it seems like an inventory of trivialities, of things that could have been but are not. As a young man I felt the world and my place in it was all part of a plan. That success, whatever that is, was something to be gained simply by focusing on my work—on being good at “What I did.” As a workaholic father, I felt that the day-to-day grind was a way to provide, to see us through while life took its final shape. And now . . . now that the world around me has become an unbearable place, and all I have is the nausea of wrong turns taken and things lost. Now I know this is the real me. The permanent me. The solidified disappointment of that young man’s life—the subtraction of all those achievements of youth—the minus of a plus that was never tallied. This is me: weak, infirm, fading. Not giving up, because I never do . . . but living without faith in myself or my circumstance.

My heart flutters at the notion of never finding Zack—at the idea that he is gone forever. This I cannot accept. I will not accept.

Not thinking straight. But I will find him, I know I will. I have seen him in my dreams. His eyes looking at me, making of me that giant once again, calling me by the truest name a man can ever aspire to: “Dad.”

I have seen a light surrounding us. Purging us. Absolving me—of the booze and the pills and the blind spots of my heart. I have seen this light. I long for it again in a world this dark.

Beneath Columbia University

E
PH
WANDERED
AWAY
through the subterranean tunnels of the former insane asylum beneath the former Columbia University. All he wanted to do was walk. Seeing Zack atop Belvedere Castle with Kelly and the Master had shaken Eph to the core. Of all the fates he had dreaded for his son—Zack murdered or starving in a locked cage somewhere—standing at the Master’s side had never occurred to him.

Was it the demon Kelly who had drawn their son into the fold? Or was it the Master who wanted Zack with him, and if so, why?

Perhaps the Master had threatened Kelly, and Zack had no choice but to play along. Eph wanted to cling to this hypothesis. Because the idea that the boy would freely align himself with the Master was unimaginable. The corruption of one’s child is a parent’s worst fear. Eph needed to believe in Zack as a little lost boy, not a wayward son.

But his fear wouldn’t let him slip into this fantasy. Eph had walked away from the video screen feeling like a ghost.

He dug into his coat pocket, finding two white Vicodin tablets. They glowed in his palm, made brilliant by the light of his battery-powered headlamp. He thrust them into his mouth, dry-swallowing them. One of them lodged at the base of his esophagus, and he had to jump up and down a few times in order to force it down.

He is mine.

Eph looked up fast. Kelly’s voice—muffled and distant, but distinctly hers. He turned around twice but found himself quite alone in the underground passage.

He has always been mine.

Eph drew his sword a few inches out of its sheath. He started forward, toward a short flight of stairs heading down. The voice was in his head, but some sixth sense was showing him the way.

He sits at the right hand of the Father.

Eph running now, furious, the light from his headlamp shaking, turning down another dim corridor, turning into . . .

The dungeon room. Gus’s caged mother.

Eph swept the room. It was otherwise empty. Slowly he turned to the helmeted vampire standing still in the center of its cage. Gus’s vampire mother stood very still, Eph’s light casting a grid shadow onto her body.

Kelly’s voice said,
Zack believes you are dead.

Eph drew his sword fully from its sheath. “Shut up,” he said.

He is starting to forget. The old world and all its ways. It’s gone now, a dream of youth.

“Quiet!” Eph said.

He is attentive to the Master. He is respectful. He is learning.

Eph thrust his sword in between two bars. Gus’s mother flinched, repelled by the presence of silver, her pendulous breasts swinging in the half light. “Learning what?” said Eph. “Answer me!”

Kelly’s voice did not.

“You’re brainwashing him,” said Eph. The boy was in isolation, mentally vulnerable. “Are you brainwashing him?”

We are parenting him.

Eph winced as though cut by her words. “No. No . . . what can you know about that? What can you know about love—about being a father or being a son . . . ?”

We are the fertile blood. We have birthed many sons . . . Join us.

“No.”

It is the only way you will be reunited with him.

Eph’s arm lowered a bit. “Fuck you. I will kill you—”

Join us and be with him forever.

Eph froze there a moment, paralyzed by despair. She wanted something from him. The Master wanted something. He made himself pull back. Deny them. Stop talking. Walk away.

Shut the fuck up—!
he thought, his rage louder than his voice. He held tightly to his silver blade at his side. He ran back out of the room and into the passageways, Kelly’s voice staying in his head.

Come to us.

He turned a corner, thrusting open a rusty door.

Come to Zack.

He kept running. With each step, he grew angrier, becoming enraged.

You know you want to.

And then her laughter. Not her human laugh, high and light and infectious, but a taunting laugh, meant to provoke him. Meant to turn him back.