Herb’s thoughts darkened. Sooner or later, as they lurched from one confrontation to the next, never really knowing enough about their enemy, constantly being surprised, their luck was bound to run out.
Maybe it will be this time, he thought, glancing at the shadowy building once more.
There was no sign of movement inside.
“Well, fuck it,” Mancini snarled. He pulled a grenade from the sash looped over his shoulder, but Dan shot a hand out to stop him.
“No,” he hissed. “I need it alive. I need its mind.”
Mancini looked confused.
He missed all that stuff about the river, Herb thought, and his eyes flicked back to Dan. Was he right about the river? He’d been wrong about most other things, but on that one issue he had been so certain. Could it be true? A creature which controlled the vampires across the entire world?
It seemed farfetched, but what other choice did he have but to hope that Dan was right?
Time was already slipping by too fast. If things were bad now in America, they would get a whole lot worse in just a few hours, when the sun dipped below the horizon.
Once that happened, the vampires wouldn’t need to cower in gloomy buildings like the one in front of Herb now. They would be out on the streets, stalking the land, spreading death with every step. A thousand horsemen of the apocalypse.
Destroying Dan’s black river could well be the key to humanity’s survival. Assuming it wasn’t a product of his imagination.
Assuming he’s not insane.
Herb frowned.
Is he?
“Is there any other way out of that building?” Dan whispered, snapping Herb’s focus back into the moment.
Mancini shook his head, aiming his weapon at the door. Herb saw the barrel trembling.
“That’s the only one. It’s just a supply shed. It’s where they keep tools for the garden.”
Dan unsheathed his machete.
“I’m going in,” he said quietly. “If you don’t hear from me in twenty seconds, throw in a grenade. All the grenades. If anything comes through that door that isn’t me, don’t look directly at it. Just run.”
Dan didn’t give them time to respond.
He marched toward the open door, brandishing the machete like a sword.
And disappeared into the dark room beyond.
Twenty seconds, Herb thought, and he began to count.
One.
Two.
We don’t know enough about them, he thought. His mind lingered on the conversation they’d had back in the meeting room; on all the assumptions—some correct, many incorrect—that had led them to that very spot.
There was something wrong with their understanding of the creatures right now, Herb decided. He could feel it, ringing in his mind like a distant, barely heard alarm. One vampire? If they knew Dan was here at the ranch, why only send one?
Yet another damn puzzle. More guesswork.
Three.
Four.
Herb’s nerves began to sizzle. The supply shed looked relatively large, but it shouldn’t take long to ascertain that there was a damn vampire sitting inside it. What the hell was taking Dan so long?
Five.
Six.
Was Dan in the vampire’s head at that very moment? Sitting there in the dark, drooling? Losing whatever was left of his mind?
Seven.
Eight.
Sitting in the dark, Herb thought dimly, and a faint awareness teased at the corner of his mind. The rest of the garden area was sunny. It was afternoon in Colorado, now. Late October, and the sun burned a rich shade of amber, but the garden was brightly lit. The vampire was sitting in one of the few places without light.
Hmm.
Nine.
Te—
They’re not afraid of the light.
Conny’s words popped back into his mind suddenly, and Herb’s jaw dropped as his mind finally solved a different puzzle. One he hadn’t even really been aware of struggling with until that very moment.
Light didn’t kill vampires. They weren’t afraid of it. It didn’t seem to affect them in any meaningful way that Herb could see, and yet they always clung to the shadows. Back at the hospital in London, he had seen first-hand how a vampire had chosen to take out the building’s lighting before it chewed its way through a group of sickly patients who had surely posed no threat to it at all. Why had it bothered?
That detail had stuck in his mind like a thorn, and it had seemed important at the time, though he hadn’t known why.
Now, he did, and the truth, when it hit him square between the eyes, was unmistakable.
Light didn’t affect them in any way that Herb could see. It affected them in a way he couldn’t.
Their psychic ability, he thought. They can only take minds if they are in the shadows. That’s why they disable lights as a matter of priority. Because without darkness, they are just teeth and claws.
That’s why the vampire on the Oceanus talked to me rather than just taking my mind and snapping it in two. Because the room was lit up by fire. Because it couldn’t take me.
Things were obviously different for Dan, whose human eyes had already taken minds in broad daylight more than once, but as the revelations rolled through Herb’s mind, he knew they were true; knew it down in his marrow. The vampires hadn’t disabled America’s electrical grid just to destabilise the country. They had done it because light was the way to defeat them. To take away their greatest power and level the playing field. In the shadows, they were kings. Virtually untouchable. Their inhuman eyes somehow required the darkness; it enabled them to use their most deadly weapon.
Light.
As the vampire myth had been twisted, told and retold across the centuries until the creatures within no longer bore any resemblance to fact, one constant had remained: the vampires came out at night. In the myths, of course, vampires were said to be afraid of sunlight; eventually it even became the means to kill them. But the truth was that vampires didn’t fear the light, they just had no use for it. They came out at night because they could use the darkness.
That’s why they struck the Underground system in London first. That’s why virtually every daylight attack we’ve heard about so far has been carried out by puppets. They are hiding out in dark places, taking minds and using them out in the open because that’s all they can do for now.
Because in the light, they are vulnerable.
He blinked, and focused on the building ahead. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he had forgotten to keep counting. How long had Dan been inside the building now?
His gaze switched to Mancini, who was just about to pull the pin on a grenade.
Herb opened his mouth to say something, though he had no idea what it might be, but there was no need.
A frustrated shout came from inside the supply shed.
Dan’s voice, loud and clear.
“Shit,” he yelled. “It’s clear!”
*
Herb stepped across the threshold cautiously, and almost lost his balance as his foot slipped on the gore inside the building.
There must have been at least half a dozen people in the supply shed, and the vampire had dealt with them explosively. It was near-impossible to separate where one set of remains ended and another began.
The bodies that confronted Herb as he entered had been torn to pieces: limbs and organs tossed around the room like confetti. Blood spattered up the walls; stringy flaps of skin and meat clung to the ceiling, dropping a slow red rain down on his and Mancini’s heads. Herb doubted the place would have looked much different if Mancini had tossed a grenade inside.
The walls were lined with racks of garden tools: pickaxes and pitchforks; trowels and shovels. Herb’s gaze hovered on a pitchfork with something that looked very much like a piece of a human brain impaled on the tines, and a wave of nausea rolled through him.
He felt the world tilt a little, and he tried not to breathe in the stink of the room for a m
oment, holding his breath to keep the metallic stench of blood at bay as he attempted to compose himself.
Hold it together, Herb, he thought, blinking hard.
He glanced across the room at Mancini, who appeared to be having an equally difficult time keeping his last meal down. Mancini had seen war; he must have seen plenty of death in his time. The worst shit that humanity had to offer. He had almost certainly never seen anything quite like this. Most of the room was gone, buried beneath wet human wallpaper.
It was almost like standing inside something organic, rather than a man-made structure.
Like opening up a body and climbing right inside.
Herb couldn’t hold his breath any longer.
He inflated his lungs.
Drew in the smell.
Bending double, he retched violently, tasting the liquor he’d downed back in the meeting room.
He gasped at the pain as his empty stomach tried to evacuate food that had long ago been fully digested. He’d eaten no more than a few chocolate bars and some peanuts in the past couple of days.
He would, he decided, never eat again. Not ever.
He spat out rum and acidic bile and straightened, blinking away hot tears as the stinking gut-room swam back into focus.
Dan was standing in the doorway directly ahead of him, the entrance which led to the second of the supply shed’s two large rooms. His expression was impassive, like he didn’t even see the same horror that Herb and Mancini saw, and for a moment it was all Herb could do not to throttle the guy until he coughed up an explanation of just what the hell was wrong with him.
Herb took a deep breath through his mouth, doing his best to ignore the odour and almost succeeding, and tried to force his mind to think clearly.
There was nothing like this outside, he thought, and his brain finally started to play ball, piecing together the events that had transpired in the supply shed.
Because it didn’t want to go outside. It refused to go out in the light. It couldn’t take minds out there.
The vampire had remained in the shadows offered by the windowless building, taking the minds of those who strayed too close; pulling them in and spitting them back out into the garden to kill for it. Killing those who didn’t carry weapons; who served no strategic purpose.
“It’s...gone,” Dan said, his tone tinged with irritation. He gestured at them to follow him into the adjoining room, and turned away.
Herb glanced behind him. The three remaining clerics were gone. He felt a bitter grin twist the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t blame them for fleeing. He wondered if it was the sight of the supply shed and the prospect of coming face-to-face with a vampire that had spooked them, or whether they had decided to run even before that. Maybe they had taken the chance to flee from Dan before he got a chance to send them to their grisly deaths.
Smart kids, after all, Herb thought, and he set his jaw, refusing to dwell on the nightmare of the room around him any longer. He marched forward, following Dan.
Into the second room.
There was precious little light in there: barely enough to see at all. With no windows, Herb guessed the room had previously been illuminated by overhead electric lights which had, of course, been smashed.
Yet even through the thick shadows, he saw what Dan pointed at immediately: the floor of the entire building was wooden, thick planks elevated a few inches off the ground by stubby stilts. In this room, the wood had been punched through from beneath. The vampire had literally exploded into the building, and had torn apart everybody who had the misfortune to be inside, probably before any of them even had time to react.
Herb leaned over the ruined floor, peering down.
Beneath the vampire’s entry point, he saw a tunnel carved into the soft earth.
“It’s gone,” Dan said again.
Herb nodded. At least this room was relatively clear of blood. This was probably where the initiates had kept seeds and other supplies: he could just about make out the shape of huge sacks lining the walls.
“We need to follow it,” Dan continued.
“What?” Mancini sounded incredulous. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Bellamy. We don’t even have flashlights.”
“But—,” Dan started to say, but Herb held up a hand to stop him.
“Mancini’s right, Dan,” he said. “First time in his life, probably, but he’s right about this. It’s too dangerous.”
Herb leaned deeper into the hole, his nerves racing, trying to look and trying not to look simultaneously. It was almost impossible to see without light, but it appeared that the tunnel below ran off to the left and the right. The supply shed was an intersection.
He saw visions of the monster sitting in the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel, just yards away from his face, and stood upright quickly, shaking his head.
“We don’t even know which direction it went. You really want that thing creeping up behind us in the dark? In a space so tight you can’t even turn around to look at it?”
Dan opened his mouth.
Shut it again.
His shoulders slumped in defeat.
“I need to get into one of their heads, Herb.”
“I know you do. And you will. But not like this. We’ll find another way.”
Herb gestured at Mancini.
“Drop a couple of those grenades down there, Mancini. Seal it up.”
The American started to pull the pin on a grenade, and Herb turned away. Through the open doorway in the supply shed’s front room, he could just about see the roof of the main ranch house in the distance, towering above all the other structures around it.
His heart skipped.
“No, wait!” he cried, whipping back around.
Mancini froze, the pin halfway pulled.
“Christ, Rennick, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
Herb darted back to the hole in the floor and squatted, squinting warily into the tunnel beneath it, trying to judge its general direction.
He looked up at Mancini, his eyes wide, and pointed down.
“That heads straight for the main ranch house.”
Before Mancini could respond, Herb pulled the radio from his pocket and depressed the transmit button. The tiny green on light flickered, casting an unnatural glow on Mancini’s confused face.
“Conny? It’s headed your way. If you’re still at the house, you have a vampire incoming. Get the hell out.”
Herb dropped the radio back into his pocket. There was no time to wait for a response.
“We need to go back,” he roared. “Now!”
13
“Get the hell out!”
Herb’s disembodied voice echoed in her ears, and Conny’s nerves blazed. She was still standing near the expansive porch, still ushering kids through the house toward the basement exit. She had just started to believe that things might turn out okay after all when Herb’s voice had rattled from the radio she had clipped to her belt.
Vampire incoming, she thought numbly. Like a torpedo.
All of a sudden, it felt like her mind was sinking into quicksand. She had sent Remy away. Her early warning system.
Idiot.
Her eyes lifted to the gate, a hundred and fifty yards farther down the main dirt track, at most.
There were still people coming through it, and many of them required Conny’s help. Minutes earlier, she had left her position on the porch itself and had begun to shuttle to and from the house, half-carrying those who had sustained the worst injuries, determined to get them all out. Every last one.
The majority of those she saw approaching were injured now, and their numbers were thinning fast, but if she turned and ran, she would be leaving them to die. Leaving children to die. Most were moving gingerly, pushing forward through the terrible pain of gunshot wounds or cradling limbs that looked to have been broken in the stampede, where their friends had trampled over them in their unbridled terror. Some had collapsed to the ground, reduced to crawling forward. Othe
rs were trying to carry their broken friends.
None were moving quickly enough.
Leave them.
You have to.
Conny turned away, sickness rising in her gut, and froze.
She couldn’t flee and leave the exit in the basement open behind her for these kids to use, not if a vampire would follow them down into Craven’s escape tunnel. Andrew Lloyd had said the entrance to the bunker in the mountains was at least three miles away from the ranch. Plenty of room for the monster to chase her down, along with everyone else. Even Andrew, Logan and Remy—the first of those to leave—wouldn’t have the time they needed to reach safety. If she left the steel door downstairs open, they would all die out in the wilderness. Nobody would reach the bunker. It wasn’t an option.
Lock the door and kill these kids, or leave it open and maybe kill everybody.
The scale of the choice she had to make locked her mind in place, like an engine without oil seizing up. Tears blurred her vision.
Only the sudden outbreak of frantic screaming ahead of her kicked her back into motion, and took the decision out of her hands.
Conny watched, aghast, as the vampire erupted through the open gate in the distance like a sinewy missile, lashing out with its fearsome limbs, tearing and rending, carving a path through the stream of fleeing teenagers like a combine harvester. Blood exploded into the air, great gushing fountains of it, and the line of kids heading toward the ranch house shattered apart.
The monster raced after the nearest of them, scooping him up before disappearing behind one of the buildings that lined the right side of dirt track. Conny heard a scream of despair that turned her blood to ice in her veins. The cry ended with a wet snap.
She stumbled backward, into the house.
Unable to take her eyes off the horror unfolding outside, lifting the grenade launcher she had taken from the weapons locker, cradling it in arms that felt sluggish.
Her finger on the trigger felt numb, barely her own at all.
She took aim at the building, praying that the monster was inside, hoping that the kids nearest to the structure would be far enough away from the blast.
The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy) Page 67