The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (138 page)

“Jesus,” said Fet, watching out the back window, past the tarp-covered nuclear bomb. “And that’s nothing compared to what we’ve got here.”

Eph gunned it past the vehicles in the road, some of the vampires rushing to get behind the wheel. He wasn’t worried about outrunning them. Only the Master.

Late-arriving vampires darted out into the street, practically throwing themselves into the path of the Jeep in an attempt to slow them down. Eph tore through them, seeing hideous faces for an instant in the headlights just at impact. The caustic white blood ate at the Jeep’s rubber wiper blades after a few back-and-forth swipes. A gang had gathered on the entrance ramp leading back onto Interstate 81, but Eph went right by that ramp, heading down the dark town road.

He followed the main road, handing the map back to Fet, watching for the Explorer’s headlights in his rearview mirror. He didn’t see them. He felt for the walkie-talkie, finding it on the seat near his hip. “Nora? You get out? You two okay?”

Her voice came back a moment later, adrenalized. “We’re good! We’re out!”

“I don’t see you.”

“We’re . . . I don’t know. Probably behind you.”

“Just keep heading north. If we get separated, meet up at Fishers Landing as soon as you can get there. You got that? Fishers Landing.”

“Fishers Landing,” she said. “Okay.” Her voice crackled.

“Run with your headlights off when you can—but only when you can. Nora?”

“We’re going to . . . up . . . onward.”

“Nora, I’m losing you.”

“. . . Eph . . .”

Eph felt Fet leaning up behind him. “Radio range is only about one mile.”

Eph checked his mirrors. “They must have headed down another road. So long as they stay off the highway . . .”

Fet took the radio, trying to raise her, but got nothing. “Shit,” he said.

“She got the rendezvous point,” said Eph. “She’s with Gus. She’ll be all right.”

Fet handed back the radio. “They have enough fuel, anyway. Now all we have to do is stay alive until sunrise.”

At the roadside, beneath a blank marquee sign for an old abandoned drive-in movie theater, an expressionless
strigoi
followed the Jeep with his eyes as it passed him by.

T
he Master reached out with its mind. Although it seemed counterintuitive, engaging many different perspectives at once served to focus the Master’s thoughts and soothe its temper.

Through the eyes of one of its minions, the Master watched the green vehicle driven by Dr. Ephraim Goodweather barrel through an unlit intersection in rural upstate New York, the oversized Jeep following the central yellow line. Moving ever north.

It viewed the Explorer driven by Dr. Nora Martinez driving past a church in a small town square. The criminal Augustin Elizalde leaned out the front window, and there was a muzzle flash and the Master’s view disappeared. They were also moving north, along the other side of the highway they had started out on—the interstate on which the Master was now traveling at a high rate of speed.

It saw the boy, Zachary Goodweather, seated in the helicopter crossing the state through the air, traveling northwest on a sharp diagonal. The boy looked out the window of the flying machine, ignoring the airsick Dr. Everett Barnes seated next to him, the older man’s face a bluish shade of gray. The boy, and perhaps Barnes, would be instrumental to the Master in distracting or otherwise persuading Goodweather.

The Master also saw through Kelly Goodweather’s perception. Traveling inside a moving vehicle dulled her homing impulse somewhat, but still the Master felt her closeness to Dr. Goodweather, her former human mate. Her sensitivity gave the Master another perspective with which to triangulate his focus on Dr. Goodweather.

Turn off here.

The town car swerved and zoomed down the exit ramp, the gang leader Creem driving with a heavy foot.

“Shit,” said Creem upon seeing the still-burning service station just up the road. The smell of burned fuel entered the automobile’s ventilation system.

Left.

Creem followed directions, turning away from the blast site, wasting no time. They passed the drive-in theater marquee and the vampire standing watch there. The Master dipped again into its vision and saw itself inside the black town car, hurtling down the roadway.

They were gaining on Goodweather.

E
ph roared along country roads, winding their way north. He kept changing routes to keep his pursuers guessing. Vampire sentinels stood watch at every turn. Eph could tell if he had been on the same road for too long when they put obstacles in his way, trying to slow him down or make him crash: other cars, a wheelbarrow, planters from a garden store. Driving upwards of fifty miles per hour on a pitch-black road, these things came up fast in his headlights and were dangerous to maneuver around.

A few times the vampires tried to ram them with a car or follow them. That was Fet’s cue to rise up out of the sunroof with the machine gun in hand.

Eph avoided the city of Syracuse altogether, traveling east around the outskirts. The Master knew where they were—but it still did not know where they were going. That was the only thing saving them right now. Otherwise it would mass its slaves at the shore of the Saint Lawrence River, keeping Eph and the others from getting through.

If possible, Eph would have just kept driving until daylight. But gasoline was an issue, and stopping to refuel was simply too dangerous. They were going to have to risk waiting for daylight at the river, potentially as sitting ducks.

On the plus side, the farther north they drove, the fewer roadside
strigoi
they saw. The lower rural population was in their favor.

N
ora was at the wheel. Reading maps was not one of Gus’s strengths. Nora was confident they were moving north in general but knew that they had occasionally gotten sidetracked a little too far east or west. They were past Syracuse, but suddenly Watertown—the last city of any size before the Canadian border—seemed so far away.

The radio at her hip had crackled a few times, but every time she tried to raise Eph, she received only silence in return. After a while she stopped trying. She did not want to chance running down the batteries.

Fishers Landing. That was what Eph had said, where they were to meet. Nora had lost track of how many hours it had been since sundown, how many more it would be until sunrise—all she knew was that it was too many. She wanted daylight far too badly to dare to trust her own gut estimation.

Just get there,
she thought.
Get there and figure it out.

“Here they come, doc,” said Gus.

Nora looked all around the street in front of her. She saw nothing, driving so intently through the darkness. Then she saw it: a hint of light through the treetops.

Moving light. A helicopter.

“They’re looking for us,” said Gus. “Haven’t spotted us yet, I don’t think.”

Nora kept one eye on the light and the other on the road. They passed a sign for the highway and realized they had drifted back near the interstate. Not good.

The helicopter circled toward them. “I’m cutting the headlights,” she said, which also meant slowing way down.

They drifted down the dark road, watching the helicopter come around, approaching near. The light grew brighter as it began to descend, maybe a few hundred yards north of them.

“Hold up, hold up,” said Gus. “It’s landing.”

She saw the light setting down. “That must be the highway.”

Gus said, “I don’t think they saw us at all.”

She continued to roll down the road, judging its margins by the black treetop branches framed against the less-black sky. Trying to decide what to do.

“Should we take off?” she said. “Risk it?”

Gus was trying to see through the windshield up to the highway. “You know what?” he said. “I don’t think they were looking for us after all.”

Nora kept her eyes on the road. “What is it, then?”

“You got me. Question is—do we dare to find out?”

Nora had spent enough time with Gus to know that this was not actually a question. “No,” she said quickly. “We need to go. To keep going.”

“It could be something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Why we have to look. I haven’t seen any roadside bloodsuckers for a few miles anyway. I think we’re good for a quick look.”

“A
quick
look,” said Nora, as though she could hold him to that.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re curious too. Besides—they were using their light, right? That means humans.”

She pulled over to the left side of the road and turned off the engine. They got out of the car, forgetting that the interior lights came on once the doors were opened. They closed them quickly without slamming them and stood and listened.

The rotors were still spinning but slowing down. The engine had just been turned off. Gus held his machine gun away from himself as he scrambled up the weedy, rocky embankment, with Nora just behind and to the left of him.

They slowed at the top, their faces rising beneath the guardrail. The chopper was another one hundred yards or so down the highway. There were no cars in sight. The rotors stopped rotating, though the helicopter light remained illuminated, shining off to the opposite side of the road. Nora made out four silhouettes, one of them shorter than the others. And she could not be sure, but she believed that the pilot—probably a human, judging by the light—was still inside the cockpit, waiting. For what? Taking off again soon?

They ducked back down. “A rendezvous?” said Nora.

“Something like that. You don’t think it’s the Master, do you?”

“Can’t tell,” she said.

“One of them was small. Looked like a kid.”

“Yeah,” said Nora, nodding . . . and then she stopped nodding. Her head shot up again, and this time she looked over the top of the guardrail. Gus pulled her back down by her belt, but not before she had convinced herself of the identity of the ragged-haired boy. “Oh my God.”

“What?” said Gus. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

She drew her sword. “We have to get over there.”

“Well, sure, now you’re talking. But what’s the—”

“Shoot the adults but not the kid. Just don’t let them get away.”

Nora was up and over the guardrail before Gus could get to his feet. She was running straight at them, Gus having to hustle to keep up. She watched the larger two figures turn her way before she had made any real noise. The vampires saw her heat impression, sensing the silver in her sword. They stopped and turned back to the humans. One grabbed the boy and tried to lift him inside the helicopter. They were going to take off again. The engine turned over, the rotors starting their hydraulic whine.

Gus opened up his weapon, picking at the long tail of the helicopter at first, then stitching up the side toward the passenger compartment. That was enough to drive the vampire carrying the boy away from the chopper. Nora was more than halfway to them now. Gus fanned out wide to her left, picking at the cockpit glass. The glass did not shatter, the rounds punching clean through until a spray of red went out over the opposite end.

The pilot’s body slumped forward. The rotors continued to speed up but the chopper did not move.

One vampire left the man he was guarding and ran at Nora. She saw the dark, decorative ink on its neck and immediately placed the vamp as one of the prison bodyguards—one of Barnes’s bodyguards. The thought of Barnes erased all fear, and Nora came at the vampire with her sword high and her voice at full yell. The big vampire went low at the last moment, surprising her, but she sidestepped him like a matador, bringing down her sword on his back. He skidded across the blacktop on his front side, burning off flesh, then hopped back up to his feet. Pale skin hung from his thighs, chest, and one cheek. That didn’t slow him down. The silver wound to his back did.

Gus’s gun rattled and the big vampire twitched. The shots stunned him but did not put him down. Nora did not give the powerful
strigoi
time to mount another attack. She treated his neck tattoos like targets and took off his head.

She turned back toward the helicopter, squinting into its rotor wash. The other tattooed vampire was away from the humans, circling Gus. It understood and respected the power of silver—but not the power of a machine gun. Gus walked up on the hissing
strigoi,
right up inside its stinging radius, and fired a cluster of head shots. The vamp went down backward and Gus advanced and shot up its neck, releasing the creature.

The man was down on one knee, bracing himself on the open door of the helicopter. The boy watched both vampires go down. He turned and ran toward the roadside, in the direction the helicopter light was shining. Nora saw something in his hands, which he held in front of him as he ran.

Nora yelled, “Gus, get him!” because Gus was closest. Gus took off after the kid. The skinny kid was fast enough but unsteady. He jumped over the guardrail and landed all right, but in the shadowy ground beyond he misjudged a step or two and got tangled up in his own feet.

N
ora was standing near Barnes beneath the whirling rotor umbrella of the helicopter. He was still airsick and on his knee. Yet when he looked up and recognized Nora’s face, he paled even more.

Nora raised her sword and was ready to strike when she heard four sharp cracks, dulled beneath the sound of the helicopter. It was a small rifle, the boy firing at them in a panic. Nora wasn’t hit but the bullets exploded awfully near. She moved away from Barnes and entered the underbrush. She saw Gus lunge for the boy and tackle him before he could fire again. He picked the kid up by his shirt, turning him toward the light, Gus making sure he wasn’t dealing with a vampire. Gus pulled the empty rifle out of his hand and threw it into the trees. The kid bucked, so Gus gave him a good shake, just violent enough to let him know what could happen to him if he tried to fight. Still, the kid squinted in the light, trying to pull away, genuinely afraid of Gus.