When Carlos could see Day plainly didn’t know what he was talking about, he hung his head and gestured at the ground where his tears were falling.
“How come they knew?”
Into the silence Day felt himself compelled to ask: “Know what, Carlos?”
The shrivelled man raised his eyes again and, although he was still crying, there was a steely resolve in contradistinction to the terrible nature of his plight.
“Knew what I would choose. They said I could wait to die or serve . . . serve like the slave I was.” Carlos wiped his face. “I didn’t want to die, Day. The bastards knew it. They knew my weakness as good as if I told them. Maybe I somehow did?”
“Who knows?”
“I let them do this to me,” Carlos said.
“I understand,” Day said, knowing it sounded weak, but otherwise without any sensible let alone meaningful response to make.
They continued standing twenty feet apart. Slowly Day slid the pistol into his holster.
“You would be dead now. Everyone they imprisoned’s dead. I killed them.”
“You made it flood?”
“One way or another,” Day said.
“How’d you do it?”
“That’s a story for another time.”
“But they’re all dead?”
“The humans? I . . . I think so.”
“Even . . . ?”
“Kvelda escaped with me.”
Carlos looked away. “I might not have died then, if I had gone with you.”
Day scowled for a moment unseen.
“I wouldn’t have found you,” he said, not mentioning yet nonetheless implying he hadn’t tried.
“Oh.”
Day gestured at the stairs. “Come on. Day won’t kill you.”
“Day or daylight?” Carlos said.
They picked their way among the sandbanks, recognising now the scattered bones for what they had once been. At the steps Day found a rifle and he picked it up, brushing mud and sand from its barrel. He looked sideways and then handed the weapon over.
“You can kill a vampire. Can you kill a ghoul?”
“If I have to,” Carlos said soberly.
Eventually they came out into well-established sunshine. Day felt a sense of deja-vu, though his premonition was more like memory from afar as he stood on the tarmac and gazed across the water. The shore where Kvelda had been was empty. Beneath them, the turbines were silent, the water levels receded beyond the reach of the converters. Across the bay, the concrete wall was like a set of broken teeth with one huge gap, water still slowly spilling into it as the river assumed its new course.
“That’s a hell of an accomplishment,” Carlos said.
“Thank the ghouls.”
Carlos made a choking noise and looked away. Day moved on.
The service road continued on their left, moving past squat white fibro buildings on either side and then snaking upwards into hilly country and disappearing beyond. The road was ancient but much used by the ghouls, though it was still littered with roadside debris and dotted with rocks tumbled down from the dusty canyon wall above.
Day and Carlos began advancing towards the first buildings, neither of them with a coherent plan in mind. A voice called them from their task and, looking up suddenly into the glare of the canyon’s heights, they saw Kvelda descending, stripped to next to nothing and carrying a staff made of wood. Her eyes were aflame, but she neither indicated her happiness to see Day nor her distress at Carlos’s unexpected transformation.
“You have to see this,” she said.
They came to her by climbing up past the buildings which, like previous, more solid structures, backed right into the canyon’s rock-face. The last few metres they grabbed for purchase on the gutters of the building and then Kvelda, taking Day’s hand, led them to a path that made the climb easier further up.
They crossed a series of rocky plateaus that gradually bore them higher and higher until the familiar-looking wall they had seen from a distance was towering above them. Day, who had struggled with steel hooks and brute strength to scale the wood and metal planking a number of times, felt an almost religious sense of awe and purpose knowing he was approaching the barricades from the outside. Even from the distance they were at, the noise of the crowds carried clearly.
“The fields?” Day asked.
“There’s a way up. Here.”
Day stepped up onto the final level, a flat ledge of tundra-like grass, and then he turned to make sure Carlos was following. In the broad sunlight Carlos’s tanned skin was a sick yellow, the colour of week-old bruises. His eyes loomed large, the skin around them sinking so the orbit bones began to show. Sores identical to decay clustered at the edges of his mouth. Yet he carried the rifle with a strange air of satisfaction and triumph. His survival, however grotesque and unusual, was undeniable.
They walked along the wall until they came to the first of the inevitable concrete watchtowers. Kvelda didn’t need to explain the significance of the black iron rungs climbing the side nor the hatch halfway up from the ground. However Day shook his head, his gaze far away, and he led them on from the first tower.
Beyond the first watchtower the angle of the wall changed. As they trekked along it, they were standing over the entrance to the cavern in which Day and Kvelda and thousands of others had been kept as a living blood bank by the vampires. Directly across from them, now a half-mile away, the jagged curtain wall of the dam could be seen from the other side. River water continued to pour into it without much running over the edge. Yet looking down into the canyon floor between the dam and the cavern entrance beneath them, the area was under twenty feet of water and a few bodies of men and women floated, dislodged from manacles by the flooding. There were some voices calling from down there, but not many. Day couldn’t summon any appropriate response except to slowly shake his head at the terrible cost of his own escape.
“Climb the tower with us, Day,” Carlos called.
Day turned and saw the other two were already halfway up the next watchtower. Nodding to himself, he hurried after them and up the ladder. The hatch gave way to a short but familiar corridor unlighted except by chinks of day coming from the doorways above. Kvelda took the lead and, showing caution at the last moment, she opened the next hatch in such a way as to let Carlos cover the hallway beyond with the rifle.
Yet the corridor was thankfully silent. They moved out onto the creaking wire mesh and one after the other scrambled up onto the barbican overlooking the inner side of the fence.
It was not a field they had ever seen yet it was like all the rest, at least as far as they could tell from their vantage point. A thousand or so people were spread across the hex. Sporadic fires burned and the day, bright and clear, still carried winter’s chill at the level of the ground. The sound of people moaning suffused the air like perfume. Day marvelled at the sight with a suitable touch of disdain and looked between Kvelda and Carlos for encouragement.
Even more impressive were the tiers of hexagonal walls stretching on into the distance. In the long moments they stood there unobserved, Day counted thirty more fields and thought he identified the one that was his own point of origin.
“So many of us,” Day slowly said.
“More who will live now, Day,” Kvelda said.
“I . . . I guess so.”
Carlos merely nodded.
“There may be more ghouls about, but what the hell.”
Hefting the gun, Carlos fired several shots into the air. In the field before them, the effect was immediate. Twenty or more internees were close enough that their startled expressions were visible. They were pointing and calling between themselves and within seconds, another thirty captives had come closer. Others streamed from further away.
Carlos nodded to Day and stepped back, dropping down into the walkway once more.
“Give it a few minutes, Day,” he said. “Then you can tell these people about their freedom.”
“Gods.
Then we’ll have to figure out what happens next.”
Day chewed his torn lip and glanced speculatively across the battlement, uncertain he had the strength or the words needed. He took a deep breath and Kvelda squeezed his hand. Perhaps this is what the very first people had felt like, Day thought, as he contemplated the miracle of their freedom.
*
Your reviews are greatly appreciated! Please get in touch and let me know how you enjoyed Endless Night. For more from the author and to keep in touch with future books visit my Amazon page at http://amazon.com/author/warrenhately.
For alt.superhero book series Zephyr see http://amzn.to/17kwmJs, Zephyr Phase Two http://amzn.to/17kwmcy or Zephyr Phase Three at http://amzn.to/Zs2K5A.
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