The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  *

  Herb’s head felt like it was about to explode. The pain was one thing, but the presence of the vampire in his mind, like the residue of some terrible toxin, was something else entirely. It had only been in his mind for a couple of seconds, but felt like the inside of his skull was bruised and bleeding.

  Groaning, he twisted his neck, levering his eyes open through the thick blood which stuck the lids together like glue, and saw the vampire take off at a sprint, charging past Dan, heading for the window which ran alongside the pool.

  “Dan! No!” Herb tried to yell. The words emerged as a weak croak.

  Dan turned to face him, his expression curious, and the vampire skidded to a halt. It remained still, like a freeze frame, a few yards from the window which Dan had been about to make it jump through.

  Herb struggled to his feet, shaking his head in a vain attempt to stop the world spinning.

  “How long can you control it?” he gasped.

  Dan looked dubious.

  “I don’t know. Not long. Why?”

  “The others,” Herb grunted. “They’ll be coming.” He focused his gaze on the vampire once more. “We can use this one.”

  *

  The window on the east side of the fifty-second floor of the Shard exploded, and the monster hurtled out.

  But not to its death.

  It clung to the exterior of the building like a spider, racing up past the residential levels. At the sixty-fourth floor, it passed the public viewing gallery, and kept going. The top fifteen levels of the building were dedicated to utilities: a heat rejection system and power plants. It raced past them, making for the spire at the very top of London’s tallest structure.

  When it reached it, clinging to the narrow glass spike a thousand feet above the city, it bellowed out a screech.

  Calling its kin.

  40

  “Will they fall for it?”

  Dan tried to focus on Herb, but it was getting more difficult with each passing second. He felt his grip on the vampire’s mind weakening; his grip on reality beginning to break as he struggled to occupy two minds at once.

  He was staring at Herb, and seeing a dark city spread out far below him simultaneously; screeching in a language he couldn’t understand and trying to form words in one that he did.

  He felt a warm wetness running down his cheek, and knew that he was crying blood again.

  “I…think so,” he mumbled. “I think they’re heading up to the top. But I can’t hold it much longer. When I lose it, the game’s up, Herb. They’ll all know exactly where we are.”

  He felt the same warm wetness spring from his ear, and in his mind, the tumbling river became a cascading waterfall, threatening to tear his mind to pieces.

  “I…”

  He grunted, bending at the waist as an avalanche of pain crashed over him.

  “I’ll hold it as long as I can…think I’ll pass out—”

  He began to wobble on his feet.

  “Get away from the windows,” Dan slurred, “they’re coming up the outside of the buil—”

  He collapsed, and felt strong arms catch him.

  “Gotcha,” Herb grunted, and turned to face the others. “You heard him. Get down, get away from the windows. When they pass, we start running, everybody got it?”

  None of the others spoke, but they scattered at Herb’s words, moving away from the Infinity Pool’s huge window and ducking down behind exercise machines and a small drinks bar.

  Herb dragged Dan to a huge cross-trainer, ducking down behind the machine, praying that he was out of sight.

  Moments later, he saw the first of them, thundering up the exterior of the building. It was followed by another. Another. Herb counted eight in total. Judging by the speed they were moving at, it wouldn’t take them long to reach the top of the Shard.

  When he was sure that there were no more coming, Herb lurched to his feet, throwing Dan over his shoulder once more.

  “Go,” he roared at the others. “Run!”

  He broke into a sprint, barely slowed at all by Dan’s weight, making for the stairs. Taking them three at a time; almost falling down them. Almost immediately, Burnley hurtled past him, the American woman running like a seasoned sprinter. A few seconds later, Conny’s son also overtook him, his speed born of youth and terror.

  Herb glanced over his shoulder.

  The others were following: Conny and Remy close behind, the dog clearly matching its pace to that of its master. Behind them, struggling to keep up, he saw Mancini, and Jeremy even further back.

  Dan moaned; a low, sickly sound.

  “Hold on, Dan,” Herb yelled, “just hold it for as long as you can.”

  Dan coughed a mouthful of blood across Herb’s bandaged arm, painting it red.

  *

  At the top of the building, the first of the vampires arrived, shrieking in confusion at the one which had called it. There was no sign of the humans; no sign of the Hermetic.

  The others arrived, circling warily, staring at their kin with naked suspicion.

  And the creature at the top of the spire hurled itself at the nearest of them, driving it clean off the side of the building, its momentum carrying them both out into the night. The two vampires plummeted toward their deaths and, half a building below, Dan Bellamy’s mind, too, fell a thousand feet, and landed in darkness.

  *

  Herb felt Dan’s body go limp as he passed a sign which read 29th floor.

  “They’re coming,” he roared. He could no longer see Mancini’s partner or Logan in front of him; he figured at the speed they were travelling they might even be two or three levels below already. Conny and Remy had also passed Herb a couple of floors back. He hoped the policewoman, at least, could still hear him. “Find a vehicle,” he yelled, “get the engine running!”

  28th floor.

  Herb felt dismay rising with each stride, and when he heard a muffled screech, he knew.

  Not gonna make it.

  There was a good chance that the two women and the teenager would reach the ground floor, he thought, and maybe if he hadn’t been carrying Dan, he might have had a shot himself, but though the guy was light, carrying him down near-pitch black stairwells was slowing Herb down too much. As for Mancini and Jeremy, well, the two older men were both a little larger than Herb, both a little heavier and a lot slower. Neither of them would reach the ground floor.

  Leave them.

  Let them slow the vampires down for you.

  Herb gritted his teeth, and even as the thought raced across his mind, he knew that he didn’t have it in him, no matter that Mancini had been prepared to kill him barely half an hour earlier, or that Jeremy had lied to him and called in the Americans in the first place.

  Soft, his father had called him, more than once. Too concerned with the wellbeing of others; too willing to let feelings stand in the way of his sacred duty.

  His run began to slow even before he was aware that he had made the only decision he could make. For the men, outrunning the vampires on the stairs looked all-but impossible, but he could buy Conny some time to escape.

  He stopped, listening intently, and heard footsteps approaching fast. Mancini.

  The big American almost barrelled right into him in the dark.

  “Why have you stopped?” Mancini gasped.

  Another shriek somewhere above—somewhere far too damn close—provided a better answer than Herb ever could.

  “We won’t make it like this,” Herb panted, “not fast enough.”

  “Where’s Burnley? And the police officer?”

  “I lost sight of them about ten floors back. They’re fast. They might make it if we can draw the vampires away.”

  “Draw them away how?”

  “We’ve got almost thirty floors of office and retail space to lose them in. We can’t keep running in a straight line.”

  Mancini grimaced in the dark, but he nodded.

  “What about Jeremy?”

 
; Mancini sucked in a lungful of air. “I don’t know. He fell behind,” he shook his head. “He’s too slow.”

  Herb hoisted Dan on his shoulders, redistributing the weight of his limp body.

  “We need to wait for him,” he said, but the words had barely spilled from his lips when he heard a man screaming just a couple of floors above. The sound was terrifyingly close.

  “Too late,” Mancini said, and he kicked open a door which led into a wide, open-plan office space.

  With a stifled curse, Herb took off after the American, leaving the main stairs behind, and leaving the door wide open for the vampires to follow.

  He ran, pouring everything he had into the sprint.

  Praying that when Conny and the others reached the ground floor, they would wait for him.

  41

  Jeremy was a shower man; he hated taking baths.

  He couldn’t remember getting in this particular one—nor could he remember falling asleep—but he must have, because the water was freezing. He supposed it was time to get out.

  But he was so tired. It would be so much easier to just lie in the cold water and snooze a little longer.

  He shuddered at the temperature, and groaned.

  Better get moving.

  Strangely, he found that it was difficult to open his eyes. He must have been asleep for a long time, he thought distantly. His eyes were glued together by sleep. Even stranger, he found that when he tried to lift his hands to find the edge of the tub, they were almost impossible to move.

  Come to think of it, he couldn’t seem to move any part of his body.

  And since when do I take baths?

  His eyes flared open, and for a moment he saw only darkness, and felt the freezing bathwater chilling him all over.

  Got to get out, or I’ll catch a cold.

  He tried to lift his arms again. This time, there was a little movement, but also a strange pulling sensation, like the water didn’t want to let him go.

  What the hell?

  With an effort, Jeremy lifted his head, peering down the tub toward his feet.

  No tub.

  No feet.

  The darkness didn’t quite reveal the full horror, but it revealed enough.

  Jeremy’s muscles were not cold because he was lying in a bath of freezing water. They were cold because the skin which normally kept them warm had been peeled away. His body had been opened up like a ripe orange, revealing the glistening pulp beneath.

  He saw his own exposed ribs; pulsing organs beneath. It looked like a surgeon had expertly carved his torso from throat to groin.

  Was I in an accident?

  Why is the hospital so dark?

  Where are my fucking legs?

  Both of Jeremy’s legs were sheared off at the knees, like he’d been in some terrible car accident. Once, he had seen a motorcycle plough head-on into a car coming around a blind bend: the bonnet of the car had popped even as the bike rider flew over his handlebars, and the thin sheet of metal had cut his body cleanly in two. The biker hadn’t survived.

  He tried to summon up a memory, anything that might offer some indication as to what had happened, but his mind felt spongey and unresponsive.

  Come to think of it, his mind felt cold, too. How the hell was that possible?

  He rolled his eyes up in their sockets, hoping to spot a doctor, wanting to scream that the anaesthetic he had been given wasn’t nearly powerful enough.

  I’m awake, he tried to shout, but no words emerged from his mouth. In fact, he couldn’t even feel his jaw moving. It was almost like he didn’t have a jaw.

  Maybe the doctors had wired it shut.

  What kind of fucking hospital is this?

  His head lolled back, the effort of keeping it lifted suddenly too much for him.

  And he saw.

  Not a doctor.

  A nightmarish creature stood behind him, its fearsome red eyes narrowed in something that looked almost like concentration as it pulled back a long, sinewy arm. In its hand, a flash of something red and white; a terrifyingly enormous piece of bone, clutched between fingers that ended in long, curved blades.

  That’s my skull, Jeremy thought, and he had the strange, almost irresistible urge to laugh.

  The vision in his left eye suddenly just…switched off. Like someone had pointed a remote control at it and put it on standby.

  Jeremy’s one remaining eye worked long enough for him to see those wicked talons reaching for the top of his head once more, pulling on something grey and soft.

  Finally, as he saw the hideous monster’s maw opening—rows and rows of wicked teeth, worse than any shark—the darkness claimed him.

  *

  We’re going to make it!

  Conny rocketed down the last set of stairs and onto the ground floor of the Shard, just in time to see Logan pushing on a revolving door which spat him out into the night. She wanted him to wait for her; wanted to scream at him that it might not be safe out there, but she caught herself in time. Whatever was outside the Shard couldn’t possibly be any worse than what was inside.

  At the sight of the outside world, Remy picked up pace, pulling away from her easily.

  She barrelled into the revolving door a few seconds after the German Shepherd reached it, and together they pushed themselves out into the cold night air.

  The American woman whose gun Conny had taken was already outside, her hands on her knees, drawing in a deep breath.

  “Where are the others?” she panted.

  Conny turned back to the revolving door, breathing equally heavily, and shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I thought they were right behind me.”

  She gestured at Logan to move closer, and took hold of his arm, unwilling to ever let it go again. Her boy was dying, but he wouldn’t die tonight. Not if she had anything to say about it.

  “I heard Herb shouting to find a vehicle,” Logan said through rapid, shallow gasps for air. “They’re slower than us, that’s all.”

  Conny’s heart almost burst with joy at hearing her son speak. It was the first time she had heard anything other than the odd grunted word from him in weeks.

  And all it took was the end of the world.

  She almost burst out laughing.

  “Okay,” Conny said, casting her gaze around the street until she spotted a large black SUV, “anybody know how to hotwire a car?”

  “I do.”

  Conny’s jaw dropped as Logan spoke, keeping his eyes pointed guiltily at the ground.

  We’re gonna have to have a little chat about that, she thought, but she was already pointing at the SUV. “Go,” she said. “Get the engine running, bring the car over to the front entrance.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Conny turned to face Burnley.

  “You want to wait for them?” Burnley snarled. “They’re probably dead already. Do you have any idea how fast these things move? We have to get in the car and go.”

  In the distance, Conny heard glass breaking. Logan, her innocent little boy, stealing a car.

  She shook her head.

  “Feel free to leave,” she said, “but if you want to ride with us, you’re going to wait. I don’t care how fast these things move. I’m damn sure they can’t outrun a car. We’ll wait until the last minute. If we see them, we go. Otherwise, we wait, understand?”

  The American dropped her eyes to the gun which Conny still gripped in her right hand.

  “Try it,” Conny said, as the SUV’s engine roared to life.

  Burnley looked away, clenching her jaw in frustration.

  Conny turned back to face the entrance to the Shard, peering through the glass into the gloom beyond as Logan brought the SUV over. When he pulled up, she gestured at him to move to the passenger seat, and took the wheel, her eyes never leaving the revolving door leading back into the building. Remy jumped onto Logan’s lap, and the boy hugged him fiercely.

  Inside the vehicle, the radio was on at a barely audible volume,
repeating a looped message. It took a few moments for Conny’s brain to pick up on one vital phrase.

  “…twenty minute warning…”

  Keeping her eyes firmly on the windows, scanning for any sign of movement on the street, she reached down and inched the volume up.

  And felt her stomach drop.

  The recorded message was warning that the military had pulled out of London, and that in twenty minutes, the air force was going to employ what it hoped was a last resort.

  Dropping napalm onto the streets of London.

  She fixed her gaze on the entrance to the Shard, willing the revolving door to spin.

  Come on, Herb. Where the hell are you?

  42

  Sweat dripped into Herb’s eyes, making them sting, blurring his vision. The vampires had taken the bait, following the fleeing men into the office levels. Judging by the sound of the creatures tearing the rooms apart above, they were only a couple of floors behind, and were obliterating every possible hiding spot.

  And still closing on the fleeing men.

  Herb forced himself to creep along quietly, aware that if he made any noise that carried, his death would soon follow. He glanced at Mancini, and saw from the big American’s expression that he, too, knew that the plan to try and lose the vampires in the maze of offices was failing. They were simply moving too slowly, and there were too many vampires. Even with the creatures tearing the building apart as they went, it sounded like they were gaining ground.

  On each level, Herb searched in vain for something that might serve as a hiding spot, but so much of the Shard was glass that it seemed impossible. He passed numerous offices and meeting rooms—many of which offered furniture that they could hide behind, or even supply closets which they could lock themselves in—but it sounded like the vampires were leaving no stone unturned. The Shard suffered the curse of most modern architecture: flimsy walls, style over substance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, whoever had designed the building hadn’t foreseen that there might come a time when people needed to use the skyscraper to hide from monsters which had crawled out of the lowest level of Hell.