The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (93 page)

The Master sensed human intrusion. A strong heart, a swift pulse. A boy.

Out of the adjoining tunnel, Kelly Goodweather arrived with her son, Zachary, firmly in her grip. The boy stood trembling, crouched over in a posture of self-protection. He saw nothing in the darkness, only sensing presences, heated bodies in the cool underground. He smelled ammonia and dank soil and something rotting.

Kelly approached with the pride of a cat depositing a mouse at its master’s threshold. The Master’s physical appearance, revealed to her night-seeing eyes in the blackness of the underground chamber, did not confound her in the least. She saw his presence within Bolivar and questioned nothing.

The Master scraped some magnesium from the wall, sprinkling it into the basket of a torch. He then chipped into the stone with his long middle nail, a spray of sparks igniting the small torch, bringing an orange glow to the chamber.

Zack saw before him a bony vampire with glowing red eyes and a slack expression. His mind had mostly shut down in panic, but there was still that small part of him that trusted his mother, that found calm so long as she was near.

Then, near the gaunt vampire, Zack saw the empty corpse lying on the floor, its sun-damaged, vinyl-smooth flesh still glistening. The creature’s pelt.

He saw also a walking stick leaning against the cave wall. The wolf’s head caught the flicker of the flame.

Professor Setrakian.

No.

Yes.

The voice was inside his head. Answering him with the power and authority Zack suspected God might speak to him someday, in answer to his prayers.

But this was not God’s voice. This was the commanding presence of the thin creature before him.

“Dad,” Zack whispered. His father had been with the professor. Tears welled up. “Dad.”

Zack’s mouth moved, but the word had no breath behind it. His lungs were locking up. He felt his pockets for his inhaler. His knees buckling, Zack slumped to the ground.

Kelly watched her suffering son impassively. The Master had been prepared to destroy Kelly. The Master was unaccustomed to defiance, and could think of no reason why Kelly had not turned the boy immediately.

Now the Master saw why. Kelly’s bond with the boy was so strong, the affection so potent, that she had instead brought him to the Master to be turned.

This was an act of devotion. An offering borne out of the human precursor—love—to vampire need, which, in fact, surpassed that need.

And the Master did indeed hunger. And the boy was a fine specimen. He would be honored to receive the Master.

But now … things appeared different in the darkness of a new night.

The Master saw more benefit in waiting.

It sensed the distress in the boy’s chest, his heart first racing, and now starting to slow. The boy lay on the ground, clutching at his throat, the Master standing over him. The Master pricked its thumb with the sharp nail of its prominent middle finger, and, taking care not to let slip any worms, allowed one single white drop to fall into the boy’s open mouth, landing upon his gasping tongue.

The boy groaned suddenly, sucking air. In his mouth, the taste of copper and hot camphor—but in a few moments, he was breathing normally again. Once, on a dare, Zack had licked the ends of a nine-volt battery. That was the jolt he had felt before his lungs opened. He looked up at the Master—this creature, this presence—with the awe of the cured.

EPILOGUE

Extract from the diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Sunday, November 28

With every city and province around the globe—already alarmed by initial reports out of New York City—now afflicted by growing waves of unexplained disappearances …

With rumors and wild tales—of the vanished returning to their homes after dark, possessed of inhuman desires—spreading at speeds more scorching than the pandemic itself …

With terms like “vampirism” and “plague” finally being uttered by those in positions of power and influence …

And with the economy, the media, and transportation systems all failing throughout the globe …

… the world had already teetered over the edge, into full-blown panic.

And then began the nuclear-plant meltdowns. One after the other.

No official sequence of events or proper time line can, nor ever will be, verified, due to the mass destruction and subsequent devastation. What follows is the accepted hypothesis, though admittedly a “best guess” based mainly upon the arrangement of the tiles before the first domino fell.

After China, the reactor failure of a Stoneheart-constructed nuclear plant in Hadera, on the western coast of Israel, led to a second core meltdown. A vapor cloud of radioactivity was released, containing large particles of radioisotopes as well as caesium and tellurium in aerosol form. Warm Mediterranean wind currents scattered the contamination northeast into Syria and Turkey and over the Black Sea into Russia, as well as east over Iraq and northern Iran.

Terrorist sabotage was suspected as the cause, with fingers pointed at Pakistan. Pakistan denied any involvement, while a meeting of the Israeli cabinet followed an emergency meeting of the Knesset, viewed as a war council. Meanwhile, Syria and Cyprus demanded international censure of Israel as well as financial reparations, and Iran declared that the vampire curse was also obviously Jewish in origin.

Pakistan’s president and prime minister, believing that the reactor meltdown was an excuse for Israel to launch an attack, led the parliament to authorize a preemptive nuclear strike of six warheads.

Israel countered with their second strike capability.

Iran bombed Israel and immediately claimed victory. India launched retaliatory fifteen-kiloton warheads against Pakistan and Iran.

North Korea, spurred on by fear of the plague as well as an extended famine, launched against South Korea and sent its troops across the thirty-eighth parallel.

China allowed itself to be drawn into the conflict, in an attempt to distract the international community from its own catastrophic nuclear reactor failure.

The nuclear explosions triggered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Tons and tons of ash were injected into the stratosphere, along with sulfuric acid and massive amounts of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Cities burned and oil fields ignited, consuming many million barrels of oil daily, fires that could not be extinguished by man. These continuous chimneys lofted dark, blanketing smoke into the ash-saturated stratosphere, cycling over the planet, absorbing sunlight at levels reaching 80 to 90 percent.

This cooling soot grew like a cowl over the Earth.

It impacted every human settlement, bringing further chaos and the certainty of the Rapture. Cities degenerated into toxic prisons, highways became gridlocked junkyards. The Canadian and Mexican borders were closed and illegal U.S. citizens crossing the Rio Grande were met with decisive firepower. Though even these boundaries were not to last.

Above Manhattan, the massive radioactive cloud lingered, the sky turning crimson until the atmospheric soot blotted out the sun. The dusk was artificial, in that clocks said it was still daytime—and yet it was all too real.

At the shore, the ocean turned silvery-black, reflecting the sky above.

Later came a rain of ashes. The fallout wiped away nothing, only making things blacker.

Soon the alarms faded and hordes of vampires emerged from their cellars … to claim their new world.

North River Tunnel

F
ET FOUND
N
ORA
sitting on the tracks in the bowels of the tunnel beneath the Hudson River. Nora’s mother’s head was in her lap, Nora stroking her gray hair while the sick woman slept.

“Nora,” said Fet, sitting next to her, “come—let me help you, and your mother …”

“Mariela,” said Nora. “Her name is Mariela.” And then she broke down finally, crying, her body shuddering with deep, primal sobs as she buried her face in Fet’s shoulder.

Eph soon returned from the eastbound tube, where he had been looking for Zack. Nora turned to him, spent, empty, almost rising but for her sleeping mother, hope and pain expressed on her face.

Eph pulled off the night-vision monocular and shook his head. Nothing.

Fet felt the tension between Eph and Nora. Each of them emotionally ravaged, and beyond words. Fet knew that Eph did not blame Nora, that there was no doubt Nora had done everything she
could for Zack under the circumstances. But he also sensed that, in losing Zack, Nora had lost Eph too.

Fet retold the events leading up to Setrakian leaving with Gus for Locust Valley. “He told me to stay behind—to come here.” Fet looked at Eph. “To find you.”

Eph pulled a glass flask from his pocket, one he had found in the wheelhouse aboard the tugboat. He took a hard hit from it, then looked around the tunnel with an expression of angry disgust. “So here we are,” he said.

Fet felt Nora bristle next to him. Then a distant roar began filling the tunnel. Fet couldn’t track it at first, the sound distorted by the unceasing tone in his bad ear.

An engine, a motor, coming toward them—the noise a rumble of terror inside the long, stone tube.

Light approached. A train was impossible—wasn’t it?

Two lights. Headlights. An automobile.

Fet pulled his sword, ready for anything. The big vehicle came to a stop, its thick tires shredded from the tracks, the black Hummer rattling along on its rims.

The front grill was white with vamp blood.

Gus climbed out. A blue bandanna was tied around his head. Fet hurried to the opposite door, looking for a passenger.

The Hummer was otherwise empty.

Gus saw whom Fet was looking for and shook his head.

“Tell me,” said Fet.

Gus did. He told about leaving Setrakian at the nuclear power plant.

“You left him?” said Fet.

Gus’s smile showed a flash of anger. “He demanded it. Same as he did of you.”

Fet caught himself. He saw that the kid was right.

“He’s gone?” said Nora.

“I don’t see any other way,” said Gus. “He was prepared to fight to the end. Angel stayed, that crazy fucker. No way the Master got away from those two without feeling some pain. If only radiation.”

“Meltdown,” said Nora.

Gus nodded. “I heard the blast and the sirens. Bad cloud headed this way. The old man said to get down here to you.”

Fet said, “He sent us all here. To protect us from the fallout.”

Fet looked around. Burrowed underground. He was used to having the upper hand in this scenario: the exterminator, gassing vermin in their holes. He looked around, thinking about what rats, the ultimate survivors, would do when faced with this situation—and he saw the derailed train in the distance, its bloodstained windows reflecting Gus’s headlights.

“We’ll clear out the train cars,” he said. “We can sleep in there, in shifts, lock the doors. There’s a café car we can raid for now. Water. Toilets.”

“For a few days, maybe,” said Nora.

“For as long as we can make it last,” said Fet. He felt a surge of emotion—pride, resolve, gratitude, grief—striking him like a fist. The old man was gone; the old man lived on. “Long enough to let the worst of the radioactivity disperse up top.”

“And then what?” Nora was beyond burned-out. She was done with this. With all of this. And yet there was no ending. Nowhere else to go, but on, and on, into this new hell on earth. “Setrakian is gone—dead, or possibly worse. There’s a holocaust above us. They’ve won. The
strigoi
have prevailed. It’s over. All over.”

No one said anything. The air in the long tunnel hung still and silent.

Fet pulled his bag down off his shoulder. He opened it and rummaged through with dirty hands, then pulled out the silver-bound book.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or—maybe not.”

E
ph grabbed one of Gus’s strong flashlights and went off on his own again, following every trail of vampire waste to its end.

None of them brought him to Zack. Still, he went on, calling out his son’s name, his voice echoing emptily through the tunnel, returning back to him like a taunt. He emptied the flask, and then hurled the thick glass at the tunnel wall, where the sound of its shattering was like a profanity.

Then he found Zack’s inhaler.

Lying beside the track in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of tunnel. The prescription sticker was still affixed:
Zachary Goodweather, Kelton Street, Woodside, New York.
Suddenly, every one of those words spoke to him of things lost: name, street, neighborhood.

They had lost it all. These things meant nothing anymore.

Eph gripped the inhaler as he stood in the dark burrow beneath the earth. Gripped it so hard that the plastic casing started to crack.

He stopped then.
Preserve this,
he thought. He held it to his heart and switched off his flashlight. He stood still, vibrating with rage in the pure dark.

The world had lost the sun. Eph had lost his son.

Eph began to prepare himself for the worst.

He would return to the others. He would clear out the derailed train, and watch with them, and wait.

But while the others waited for the air to clear above, Eph would be waiting for something else.

He would be waiting for his Zack to return to him as a vampire.

He had learned from his mistake. He could not show any forbearance, as he had with Kelly.

It would be a privilege and a gift to release his only son.

B
ut the worst thing that Eph had imagined—Zack’s return as a vampire seeking his father’s soul—turned out not to be the worst thing at all.

No.

The worst thing was—Zack never came.

The worst thing was the gradual realization that Eph’s vigilance would have no end. That his pain would find no release.