The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro

  It happened almost all at once. The girl—or whatever she was—lay desiccated on the filthy floor of the basement.

  Vasiliy stared. Horrified wasn’t even the word. He completely forgot about the one coming off the stairs until the guy moaned, reacting to the light. The guy backed away, stumbling near the property manager, then regaining his footing and starting for the stairs.

  Vasiliy recovered just in time to go underneath the stairs. He jabbed the rod through the step planks, tripping the man, making him fall back down hard to the floor. Vasiliy went around him, his poker raised, as the man got to his feet. His formerly brown skin was a sickly jaundiced yellow. His mouth opened, and Vasiliy saw that it was not a tongue but something much worse.

  Vasiliy cracked him across the mouth with the rebar. It sent the man spinning and dropped him to his knees. Vasiliy reached forward and grasped the back of his neck, as he would a hissing snake or a snapping rat, keeping that mouth thing away from him. He looked back to the rectangle of light, swirling with the dust of the annihilated girl. He felt the guy buck and fight to get away. Vasiliy brought the rod down hard against the thing’s knees and forced it toward the light.

  Fear-maddened Vasiliy Fet realized he wanted to see it again. This slaying trick of the light. With a boot to the lower back, he sent the guy flailing into the sun—and watched him break and crumble all at once, shredded by the burning rays, sinking into ash and steam.

  South Ozone Park, Queens

  ELDRITCH PALMER’S limousine eased into a warehouse in a weedy industrial park less than one mile from the old Aqueduct Racetrack. Palmer traveled in a modest motorcade, his own car followed by a second, empty limousine, in the event that his broke down, followed by a third vehicle, a customized black van that was in fact a private ambulance equipped with his dialysis machine.

  A door opened on the side of the warehouse to admit the vehicles, then closed behind them. Waiting to greet him were four members of the Stoneheart Society, a subset of his powerful international investment conglomerate, the Stoneheart Group.

  Palmer’s door was opened for him by Mr. Fitzwilliam, and he stepped out to their awe. An audience with the chairman was a rare privilege.

  Their dark suits emulated his. Palmer was accustomed to awe in his presence. His group investors regarded him as a messianic figure whose foreknowledge of market turns had enriched them. But his society disciples—they would follow him into hell.

  Palmer felt invigorated today, and stood with only the aid of his mahogany cane. The former box-company warehouse was mostly empty. The Stoneheart Group used it occasionally for vehicle storage, but its value today lay in its old-fashioned, precode, underground incinerator, accessed by a large oven-size door in the wall.

  Next to the Stoneheart Society members was a Kurt isolation pod on top of a wheeled stretcher. Mr. Fitzwilliam stood at his side.

  “Any problems?” said Palmer.

  “None, Chairman,” they replied. The two who resembled Doctors Goodweather and Martinez handed over their forged Centers for Disease Control and Prevention credentials to Mr. Fitzwilliam.

  Palmer looked in through the transparent isolation pod at the decrepit form of Jim Kent. The blood-starved vampire’s body was shriveled, like the form of a demon whittled out of diseased birch. His muscular and circulatory features showed through his disintegrated flesh except at his swollen, blackened throat. His eyes were open and staring out of the hollows of his drawn face.

  Palmer felt for this vampire starved into petrifaction. He knew what it was for a body to crave simple maintenance while the soul suffers and the mind waits.

  He knew what it was to be betrayed by one’s maker.

  Now Eldritch Palmer found himself on the cusp of deliverance. Unlike this poor wretch, Palmer was on the verge of liberation, and immortality.

  “Destroy him,” he said, and stood back as the pod was wheeled to the open door of the incinerator, and the body was fed into the flames.

  Pennsylvania Station

  THEIR TRIP TO Westchester to find Joan Luss, the third Flight 753 survivor, was cut short by the morning news. The village of Bronxville had been closed off by New York State Police and HAZMAT teams due to a “gas leak.” Aerial news helicopter recordings showed the town nearly still at daybreak, the only cars on the road being state police cruisers. The next story showed the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner building at Thirtieth and First being boarded up, with speculation about more people disappearing from the area, and incidents of panic among local residents.

  Penn Station was the only place they could think of guaranteed to have old-fashioned pay telephones. Eph stood at a bank of them with Nora and Setrakian off to the side as morning commuters moved through the station.

  Eph thumbed through Jim’s phone, the RECENT CALLS list, looking for Director Barnes’s direct mobile line. Jim rolled close to one hundred calls each day, and Eph kept scrolling through them while, on the landline, Barnes answered his phone.

  Eph said, “Are you really going with the ‘gas leak’ gambit, Everett? How long do you think that’s going to hold in this day and age?”

  Barnes recognized Eph’s voice. “Ephraim, where are you?”

  “Have you been to Bronxville? Have you seen it now?”

  “I have been there…we don’t know what we have quite yet…”

  “Don’t know! Give me a break, Everett.”

  “They found the police station empty this morning. The entire town appears to have been abandoned.”

  “Not abandoned. They’re all still there, just hiding. Come sundown, in Westchester County it’s going to be like Transylvania. What you need are strike teams, Everett. Soldiers. Going house to house through that town, as if it’s Baghdad. It’s the only way.”

  “What we don’t want is to create a panic—”

  “The panic is already starting. Panic is an appropriate response to this thing, more so than denial.”

  “The New York DOH Syndromic Surveillance Systems show no indication of any emerging outbreak.”

  “They monitor disease patterns by tracking ER visits, ambulance runs, and pharmacy sales. None of which figures into this scenario. This whole city is going to go the way of Bronxville if you don’t get going on it.”

  Director Barnes said, “I want to know what you have done with Jim Kent.”

  “I went to go see him and he was already gone.”

  “I’m told you had something to do with his disappearance.”

  “What am I, Everett—the Shadow? I’m everywhere at once. I’m an evil genius. Yes I am.”

  “Ephraim, listen—”

  “You listen to me. I am a doctor—a doctor you hired to do a job. To identify and contain emerging diseases in the United States. I am calling to tell you that it’s still not too late. This is the fourth day since the arrival of the plane and the start of the spread—but there is still a chance, Everett. We can hold them here in New York City. Listen—vampires can’t cross bodies of moving water. So we quarantine the island, seal off every bridge—”

  “I don’t have that kind of control here—you know that.”

  A train announcement broadcast from overhead speakers. “I’m in Penn Station, by the way, Everett. Send the FBI if you like. I’ll be gone well before they arrive.”

  “Ephraim…come back in. I promise you a fair shot at convincing me, at convincing everyone. Let’s work on this together.”

  “No,” said Eph. “You just said you don’t have that kind of control. These vampires—and that’s what they are, Everett—they are viruses incarnate, and they are going to burn through this city until there are none of us left. Quarantine is the one and only answer. If I see news that you’re moving in that direction, then maybe I’ll consider coming back in to help. Until then, Everett—”

  Eph hung the receiver up on its hook. Nora and Setrakian waited for him to say something, but an entry on Jim’s phone log had piqued Eph’s interest. Each one of Jim’s contacts was entered last
name first, all except one. A local exchange, to which Jim had made a series of calls within the past few days. Eph picked up the landline and pressed zero and waited through the computer responses until he got a real Verizon operator.

  “Yes, I have a number in my phone and I can’t remember who it connects to, and I’d like to save myself some embarrassment before placing a call. It’s a 212 exchange, so I believe it is a landline. Can you do a reverse lookup?”

  He read her the number and heard fingers clicking on a keyboard.

  “That number is registered to the seventy-seventh floor of the Stoneheart Group. Would you like the building address?”

  “I would.”

  He covered the mouthpiece and said to Nora, “Why was Jim calling someone at the Stoneheart Group?”

  “Stoneheart?” said Nora. “You mean that old man’s investment company?”

  “Investment guru,” said Eph. “Second-richest man in the country, I think. Something Palmer.”

  Setrakian said, “Eldritch Palmer.”

  Eph looked at him. He saw consternation on the professor’s face. “What about him?”

  “This man, Jim Kent,” said Setrakian. “He was not your friend.”

  Nora said, “What do you mean? Of course he was…”

  Eph hung up after getting the address. He then highlighted the number on the screen of Jim’s phone and pressed send.

  The number rang. No answer, no voice-mail recording.

  Eph hung up, still staring at the phone.

  Nora said, “Remember the administrator for the isolation ward, after the survivors left isolation? She said she had called, Jim said she hadn’t—then he said he just missed some calls?”

  Eph nodded. It didn’t make any sense. He looked at Setrakian. “What do you know about this guy Palmer?”

  “Many years ago he came to me for help in finding someone. Someone I was also keenly interested in finding.”

  “Sardu,” guessed Nora.

  “He had the funding, I had the knowledge. But the arrangement ended after only a few months. I came to understand that we were searching for Sardu for two very different reasons.”

  Nora said, “Was he the one who ruined you at the university?”

  Setrakian said, “I always suspected.”

  Jim’s phone buzzed in Eph’s hand. The phone did not recognize the number, but it was a local New York exchange. A callback from someone at Stoneheart, maybe. Eph answered it.

  “Yeah,” said the voice, “is this the CDC?”

  “Who is calling?”

  The voice was gruff and deep. “I’m looking for the disease guy from the Canary project who’s in all that trouble. Any way you can put me through to him?”

  Eph suspected a trap. “What do you want him for?”

  “I’m calling from outside a house in Bushwick, here in Brooklyn. I’ve got two dead eclipse hysterics in the basement. Who didn’t like the sun. This mean anything to you?”

  Eph felt a tingle of excitement. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Fet. Vasiliy Fet. I’m with the city’s pest control, an exterminator who’s also working a pilot program for integrated pest management in lower Manhattan. It’s funded by a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant from the CDC. How I have this phone number. Am I right in guessing that this is Goodweather?”

  Eph hesitated a moment. “It is.”

  “I guess you could say that I work for you. Nobody else I could think to bring this to. But I’m seeing signs all over the city.”

  Eph said, “It’s not the eclipse.”

  “I think I know that. I think you need to get over here. Because I’ve got something you need to see.”

  Stoneheart Group, Manhattan

  EPH HAD TWO STOPS to make on the way. One alone, and one with Nora and Setrakian.

  Eph’s CDC credentials got him through a security checkpoint in the main lobby of the Stoneheart Building, but not past a second checkpoint on the seventy-seventh floor, where an elevator change was necessary to gain access to the top ten floors of the Midtown building.

  Two immense bodyguards stood upon the massive brass Stoneheart Group logo, inlaid in the onyx floor. Behind them, movers in overalls crossed the lobby, rolling large pieces of medical equipment on dollies.

  Eph asked to see Eldritch Palmer.

  The larger of the two bodyguards almost smiled. A shoulder holster bulged conspicuously beneath his suit jacket. “Mr. Palmer does not accept visitors without an appointment.”

  Eph recognized one of the machines being dismantled and crated. It was a Fresenius dialysis machine. An expensive piece of hospital-grade equipment.

  “You’re packing up,” said Eph. “Moving house. Getting out of New York while the getting’s good. But won’t Mr. Palmer need his kidney machine?”

  The bodyguards didn’t answer, didn’t even turn to look.

  Eph understood it then. Or thought he did.

  They met up again outside Jim and Sylvia’s place, a high-rise on the Upper East Side.

  Setrakian said, “It was Palmer who brought the Master into America. Why he is willing to risk everything—even the future of the human race—in order to further his own ends.”

  “Which are?” said Nora.

  Setrakian said, “I believe Eldritch Palmer intends to live forever.”

  Eph said, “Not if we can do anything about it.”

  “I applaud your determination,” said Setrakian. “But with his wealth and influence, my old acquaintance has every advantage. This is his endgame, you realize. There is no going back for him. He will do whatever it takes to achieve his goal.”

  Eph couldn’t afford to think in big-picture terms or else he might discover that he was fighting a losing battle. He focused on the task at hand. “What did you find out?”

  Setrakian said, “My brief visit to the New York Historical Society bore fruit. The property in question was completely rebuilt by a bootlegger and smuggler who made his fortune during Prohibition. His home was raided numerous times but never more than a pint of illicit brew was seized, due, it was said, to a web of tunnels and underground breweries—some of those tunnels were expanded later to accommodate underground subway lines.”

  Eph looked at Nora. “What about you?”

  “The same. And that Bolivar bought the property expressly because it was an old bootlegger’s pad, and because it was said that the owner before that was a Satanist who held black masses on the rooftop altar around the turn of the twentieth century. Bolivar’s been renovating that building and combining it with the one next to it on and off for the past year, constructing one of the largest private residences in New York.”

  “Good,” said Eph. “Where did you go, the library?”

  “No,” she said, handing over a printout featuring photos of the original town house interior and current photos of Bolivar in stage makeup. “People magazine online.”

  They were buzzed in and rode up to Jim and Sylvia’s small ninth-floor unit. Sylvia answered the door in a flowing linen dress befitting a horoscope columnist, her hair pulled back with a wide headband. She was surprised to see Nora, and doubly shocked to see Eph.

  “What are you doing—?”

  Eph moved inside. “Sylvia, we have some very important questions, and we only have a little time. What do you know about Jim and the Stoneheart Group?”

  Sylvia held her hand to her chest as if she didn’t understand. “The who?”

  Eph saw a desk in the corner, a tabby cat snoozing on top of a closed laptop. He crossed to it and started opening drawers. “Do you mind if we take a quick look through his things?”

  “No,” she said, “if you think it will help. Go ahead.”

  Setrakian remained near the door while Eph and Nora searched the contents of the desk. Sylvia apparently received a strong vibration from the old man’s presence. “Would anyone like anything, a drink?”

  “No,” said Nora, smiling briefly, then getting back to the search.

&nbs
p; “I’ll be right back.” Sylvia went to the kitchen.

  Eph stood back from the cluttered desk, mystified. He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Jim working for Palmer? How far back in time did this reach? And what was Jim’s motive anyway? Money? Would he have turned on them like that?

  He went to ask Sylvia a delicate question about their finances, leaving the room to find her in the kitchen. As Eph turned the corner, Sylvia was replacing her wall phone. She stepped backward with a strange look on her face.

  Eph was confused at first. “Who were you calling, Sylvia?”

  The others came in behind him. Sylvia felt for the wall behind her, then sat down in a chair.

  Eph said, “Sylvia—what’s going on?”

  She said, without moving, and with an eerie sense of calm behind her wide, damning eyes, “You’re going to lose.”

  PS 69, Jackson Heights

  KELLY USUALLY never turned her mobile phone on in the classroom, but now it sat to the left of her calendar blotter, set to silent. Matt had stayed out all night, not unusual for overnight inventories; he often took the crew out to breakfast afterward. But he always called to check in as well. The school was a no-cell-phone zone, but she had sneaked a few calls to him, getting his voice mail each time. Maybe he was out of range. She was trying not to worry, and losing the battle. Attendance was low at the school.

  She regretted listening to Matt and giving in to his arrogance about not leaving the city. If he had somehow put Zack at risk…

  Then her phone lit up and she saw the envelope icon. A text message from his mobile.

  It read: COME HOME.

  That was it. Two words, lower case, no punctuation. She tried to call him right back. The phone rang and then stopped ringing as though he had answered. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Matt? Matt?”

  Her fourth-graders looked at her strangely. They had never seen Ms. Goodweather talking on a phone in class.

  Kelly tried their home phone, and got a busy signal. Was the voice mail broken? When was the last time she’d heard a busy signal?

  She decided to leave. She’d have Charlotte open the door to her classroom next door, keep an eye on her students. Kelly thought about packing it in for the day and even picking up Zack at the middle school, but no. She’d shoot home, find out what was wrong, then evaluate her options and go from there.