The Starry Rift

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Is that . . . a cross?” asked Karl.

  I nodded.

  “That’s so hardcore,” said Karl. “Why didn’t you just have it tattooed?”

  “It probably wouldn’t work so well,” I said. “And I didn’t have it done. It was done to me.”

  I didn’t mention that there was an equivalent tracery of scars on my back as well. These two tau crosses, front and back, never faded, though my other scars always disappeared only a few days after they healed.

  “Who would—” Jenny started to ask, but she was interrupted by Mike banging on the rear window of the cab—with the butt of his pistol, reconfirming my original assessment that he was the biggest danger to all of us. Except for the Ancient Vampire. I wasn’t worried about the young ones. But I didn’t know which Ancient it was, and that was cause for concern. If it had been encysted since the drop, it would be in the first flush of its full strength. I hoped it had been around for a long time, lying low and steadily degrading, only recently resuming its mission against humanity.

  “We’re there,” said Karl, unnecessarily.

  The cordon fence was fully established now. Sixteen feet high and lethally electrified, with old-fashioned limelights burning every ten feet along the fence, the sound of the hissing oxygen and hydrogen jets music to my ears. Vampires loathe limelight. Gaslight has a lesser effect, and electric light hardly bothers them at all. It’s the intensity of the naked flame they fear.

  The fire brigade was standing by because of the limelights, which though modernized were still occasionally prone to massive accidental combustion, and the local police department was there en masse to enforce the cordon. I saw the bright white bulk of the state Vampire Eradication Team’s semi trailer parked off to one side. If we volunteers failed, they would go in, though given the derelict state of the building and the reasonable space between it and the nearest residential area, it was more likely they’d just get the Air Force to do a fuel-air explosion dump.

  The VET personnel would be out and about already, making sure no vampires managed to get past the cordon. There would be crossbow snipers on the upper floors of the surrounding buildings, ready to shoot fire-hardened oak quarrels into vampire heads. It wasn’t advertised by the ammo manufacturers, but a big old vampire could take forty or fifty Wood-N-Death® or equivalent rounds to the head and chest before going down. A good inch-diameter, yard-long quarrel or stake worked so much better.

  There would be a VET quick-response team somewhere close as well, outfitted in the latest metal-mesh armor, carrying the automatic weapons the volunteers were not allowed to use—with good reason, given the frequency with which volunteer vampire hunters killed each other even when armed only with handguns, stakes, and knives.

  I waved at the window of the three-story warehouse where I’d caught a glimpse of a crossbow sniper, earning a puzzled glance from Karl and Jenny, then jumped down. A police sergeant was already walking over to us, his long, harsh limelit shadow preceding him. Naturally, Mike intercepted him before he could choose whom he wanted to talk to.

  “We’re the volunteer team.”

  “I can see that,” said the sergeant. “Who’s the kid?”

  He pointed at me. I frowned. The kid stuff was getting monotonous. I don’t look that young. Twenty at least, I would have thought.

  “He says his name’s Jay. He’s got a ‘special license.’ That’s what he says.”

  “Let’s see it then,” said the sergeant, with a smile that suggested he was looking forward to arresting me and delivering a three-hour lecture. Or perhaps a beating with a piece of rubber pipe. It isn’t always easy to decipher smiles.

  “I’ll take it from here, Sergeant,” said an officer who came up from behind me, fast and smooth. He was in the new metal-mesh armor, like a wetsuit, with a webbing belt and harness over it, to hold stakes, knife, WP grenades (which actually were effective against the vamps, unlike the holy water ones), and a handgun. He had an H&K MP5-PW slung over his shoulder. “You go and check the cordon.”

  “But Lieutenant, don’t you want me to take—”

  “I said check the cordon.”

  The sergeant retreated, smile replaced by a scowl of frustration. The VET lieutenant ignored him.

  “Licenses, please,” he said. He didn’t look at me, and unlike the others I didn’t reach for the plasticated, hologrammed, data-chipped card that was the latest version of the volunteer-vampire-hunter license.

  They held their licenses up and the reader that was somewhere in the lieutenant’s helmet picked up the data, and his earpiece whispered whether they were valid or not. Since he was nodding, we all knew they were valid before he spoke.

  “Okay, you’re good to go whenever you want. Good luck.”

  “What about him?” asked Mike, gesturing at me with his thumb.

  “Him too,” said the lieutenant. He still didn’t look at me. Some of the VET are funny like that. They seem to think I’m like an albatross or something. A sign of bad luck. I suppose it’s because wherever the vampire infestations are really bad, I have a tendency to show up as well. “He’s already been checked in. We’ll open the gate in five, if that suits you.”

  “Sure,” said Mike. He lumbered over to face me. “There’s something funny going on here, and I don’t like it. So you just stick to the plan, okay?”

  “Actually, your plan sucks,” I said calmly. “So I’ve decided to change it. You four should go down to the factory floor and take out the vampires there. I’ll go up against the Ancient.”

  “Alone?” asked Jenny. “Shouldn’t we stick together like Mike says?”

  “Nope,” I replied. “It’ll be out and unbending itself now. You’ll all be too slow.”

  “Call this sl—” Mike started to say, as he tried to poke me forcefully in the chest with his forefinger. But I was already standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder, and as he swung around, ran behind him again. We kept this up for a few turns before Karl stopped him.

  “See what I mean? And an Ancient Vampire is faster than me.”

  That was blarney. Or at least I hoped it was. I’d met Ancient Vampires who were as quick as I was, but not actually faster. Sometimes I did wonder what would happen if one day I was a fraction slower and one finally got me for good and all. Some days, I kind of hoped that it would happen.

  But not this day. I hadn’t had to go up against any vampires or anything else for over a month. I’d been surfing for the last two weeks, hanging out on the beach, eating well, drinking a little wine, and even letting down my guard long enough to spend a couple of nights with a girl who surfed better than me and didn’t mind having sex in total darkness with a guy who kept his T-shirt on and an old airline bag under the bed.

  I was still feeling good from this little holiday, though I knew it would only ever be that. A few weeks snatched out of . . .

  “Okay,” panted Mike. He wasn’t as stupid as I’d feared but he was a lot less fit than he looked. “You do your thing. We’ll take the vampires on the factory floor.”

  “Good,” I replied. “Presuming I survive, I’ll come down and help you.”

  “What do . . . what do we do if we . . . if we’re losing?” asked Jenny. She had her head well down, her chin almost tucked into her chest, and her body language screamed out that she was both scared and miserable. “I mean, if there are more vampires, or if the Ancient one—”

  “We fight or we die,” said Karl. “No one is allowed back out through the cordon until after dawn.”

  “Oh, I didn’t . . . I mean I read the brochure—”

  “You don’t have to go in,” I said. “You can wait out here.”

  “I . . . I think I will,” she said, without looking at the others. “I just can’t . . . Now I’m here, I just can’t face it.”

  “Great!” muttered Mike. “One of us down already.”

  “She’s too young,” said Susan. I was surprised she’d speak up against Mike. I had her down as his personal doorm
at. “Don’t give her a hard time, Mike.”

  “No time for anything,” I said. “They’re getting ready to power down the gate.”

  A cluster of regular police officers and VET agents were taking up positions around the gate in the cordon fence. We walked over, the others switching on helmet lights, drawing their handguns, and probably silently uttering last-minute prayers.

  The sergeant who’d wanted to give me a hard time looked at Mike, who gave him the thumbs-up. A siren sounded a slow whoop-whoop-whoop as a segment of the cordon fence powered down, the indicators along the top rail fading from a warning red to a dull green.

  “Go, go, go!” shouted Mike, and he jogged forward, with Susan and Karl at his heels. I followed a few meters behind, but not too far. That sergeant had the control box for the gate, and I didn’t trust him not to close it on my back and power it up at the same time. I really didn’t want to know what 6,600 volts at 500 milliamps would do to my unusual physiology—or to show anyone else what didn’t happen, more to the point.

  On the other hand, I didn’t want to get ahead of Mike and company either, because I already know what being shot in the back by accident felt like, with lead and wooden bullets—not to mention ceramic-cased, tungsten-tipped penetrator rounds—and I didn’t want to repeat the experience.

  They rushed the front door, Mike kicking it in and bulling through. The wood was rotten and the top panel had already fallen off, so this was less of an achievement than it might have been.

  Karl was quick with the flares, confirming his thorough training. Mike, on the other hand, just kept going, so the light was behind him as he opened the fire door to the left of the lobby.

  Bad move. There was a vampire behind the door, and while it was no Ancient, it wasn’t newly hatched either. It wrapped its arms around Mike, holding on with the filaments that lined its forelegs, though to an uneducated observer it just looked like a fairly slight, tattered-rag-wearing human bear-hugging him with rather longer than usual arms.

  Mike screamed as the vampire started chewing on his helmet, ripping through the Kevlar layers like a buzzsaw through softwood, pausing only to spit out bits of the material. Old steel helmets are better than the modern variety, but we live in an age that values only the new.

  Vamps like to get a good grip around their prey, particularly ones who carry weapons. There was nothing Mike could do, and as the vamp was already backing into the stairwell, only a second or two for someone else to do something.

  The vampire fell to the ground, its forearm filaments coming loose with a sticky popping sound, though they probably hadn’t penetrated Mike’s heavy clothes. I pulled the splinter out of its head and put the stake of almost two-thousand-year-old timber back in the bag before the others got a proper look at the odd silver sheen that came from deep within the wood.

  Karl dragged Mike back into the flare-light as Susan covered him. Both of them were pretty calm, I thought. At least they were still doing stuff, rather than freaking out.

  “Oh man,” said Karl. He’d sat Mike up, and then had to catch him again as he fell backward. Out in the light, I saw that I’d waited just that second too long, perhaps from some subconscious dislike of the man. The last few vampire bites had not been just of Mike’s helmet.

  “What . . . what do we do?” asked Susan. She turned to me, pointedly not looking at her dead husband.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I really meant it, particularly since it was my slackness that had let the vamp finish him off. Mike was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve to die, and I could have saved him. “But he’s got to be dealt with the same way as the vampires now. Then you and Karl have to go down and clean out the rest. Otherwise they’ll kill you too.”

  It usually helps to state the situation clearly. Stave off the shock with the need to do something life-saving. Adrenaline focuses the mind wonderfully.

  Susan looked away for a couple of seconds. I thought she might vomit, but I’d underestimated her again. She turned back, and still holding her pistol in her right hand, reached into a thigh pocket and pulled out a Quick-Flame™.

  “I should be the one to do it,” she said. Karl stepped back as she thumbed the Quick-Flame™ and dropped it on the corpse. The little cube deliquesced into a jelly film that spread over the torso of what had once been a man. Then, as it splashed on the floor, it woofed alight, burning blue.

  Susan watched the fire. I couldn’t see much of her face, but from what I could see, I thought she’d be okay for about an hour before the shock knocked her off her feet. Provided she got on with the job as soon as possible.

  “You’d better get going,” I said. “If this one was already up here, the others might be out and about. Don’t get ahead of your flares.”

  “Right,” muttered Karl. He took another flare from a belt pouch. “Ready, Susan?”

  “Yes.”

  Karl tossed the flare down the stairs. They both waited to see the glow of its light come back up, then Karl edged in, working the angle, his pistol ready. He fired almost immediately, two double taps, followed by the sound of a vamp falling back down the stairs.

  “Put two more in,” I called out, but Karl was already firing again.

  “And stake it before you go past!” I added as they both disappeared down the stair.

  As soon as they were gone, I checked the smoldering remains of Mike. Quick-Flame™ cubes are all very well, but they don’t always burn everything, and if there’s a critical mass of organic material left, then the vamp nanos can build a new one. A little, slow one, but little, slow ones can grow up. I doubted there’d been enough exchange of blood to get full infestation, but it’s better to be sure, so I took out the splinter again and waved it over the fragments that were left.

  The sound of rapid gunshots began to echo up from below as I took off my T-shirt and tucked it in the back of my board shorts. The tau cross on my chest was already glowing softly with a silver light, the smart matter under the scars energizing as it detected vamp activity close by. I couldn’t see the one on my back, but it would be doing the same thing. Together they were supposed to generate a field that repulsed the vampires and slowed them down if they got close, but it really only worked on the original versions. The latter-day generations of vampires were such bad copies that a lot of the original tech built to deter them simply missed the mark. Fortunately, being bad copies, the newer vampires were weaker, slower, less intelligent, and untrained.

  I took the main stairs up to the fourth floor. The Ancient Vampire would already know I was coming, so there was no point skulking up the elevator shaft or the outside drain. Like its broodmates, it had been bred to be a perfect soldier at various levels of conflict, from the nanonic frontline where it tried to replicate itself in its enemies to the gross physical contest of actually duking it out. Back in the old days it might have had some distance weapons as well, but if there was one thing we’d managed right in the original mission, it was taking out the vamp weapons caches and resupply nodes.

  We did a lot of things right in the original mission. We succeeded rather too well, or at least so we thought at the time. If the victory hadn’t been so much faster than anticipated, the boss would never have had those years to fall in love with humans and then work out his crazy scheme to become their living god.

  Not so crazy, perhaps, since it kind of worked, even after I tried to do my duty and stop him. In a halfhearted way, I suppose, because he was team leader and all that. But he was going totally against regulations. I reported it and I got the order, and the rest, as they say, is history. . . .

  Using the splinter always reminds me of him, and the old days. There’s probably enough smart matter in the wood, encasing his DNA and his last download, to bring him back complete, if and when I ever finish this assignment and can signal for pickup. Though a court would probably confirm HQ’s original order, and he’d be slowed into something close to a full stop anyway.

  But my mission won’t be over till the last vamp is bur
ned to ash and this infested Earth can be truly proclaimed clean.

  Which is likely to be a long, long time, and I reminded myself that daydreaming about the old days was not going to help take out the Ancient Vampire ahead of me, let alone the many more in the world beyond.

  I took out the splinter and the silver knife and slung my Pan Am bag so it was comfortable, and got serious.

  I heard the Ancient moving around as I stepped into what was once the outer office. The big pot was surrounded by soil and there were dirty footprints up the wall, but I didn’t need to see them to know to look up. The vamps have a desire to dominate the high ground heavily programmed into them. They always go for the ceiling, up trees, up towers, up lampposts.

  This one was spread-eagled on the ceiling, gripping with its foreleg and trailing leg filaments as well as the hooks on what humans thought were fingers and toes. It was pretty big as vamps go, perhaps nine feet long and weighing in at around two hundred pounds. The ultrathin waist gave away its insectoid heritage almost as much as a really close look at its mouth would. Not that you would want a really close look at a vamp’s mouth.

  It squealed when I came in and it caught the tau emissions. The squeal was basically an ultrasonic alarm oscillating through several wavelengths. The cops outside would hear it as an unearthly scream, when in fact it was more along the lines of a distress call and emergency rally beacon. If any of its brood survived down below, they’d drop whatever they might be doing—or chewing—and rush on up.

  The squeal was standard operating procedure, straight out of the manual. It followed up with another orthodox move, dropping straight onto me. I flipped on my back and struck with the splinter, but the vamp managed to spin itself in midair and bounce off the wall, coming to a stop in the far corner.

  It was fast, faster than any vamp I’d seen for a long time. I’d scratched it with the splinter, but no more than that. There was a line of silver across the dark red chitin of its chest, where the transferred smart matter was leaching the vampire’s internal electrical potential to build a bomb, but it would take at least five seconds to do that, which was way too long.