by Cat Thomson
"You cannot go back now, Tom," said Helmut. "The enemy has broken down the two main doors, and right now they're most likely searching the length and breadth of the shelter for us. That's where they're expecting us to be. It's bad enough that Sharon and Kylie may be in there; I'm not allowing you to also expose yourself to danger. And when they realise we're not in there, they're going to resurface at street level and come looking for us out here. We don't have any time to waste. Our one advantage is that there'll be a slight delay before enemy vampires join Nikolas's humans down in the shelter; they've only just awoken to the night."
Alex ran back to his van and started the engine.
"They'll sense her presence," said Tom.
"It is possible to avoid detection by a vampire. And the crucifixes in the shelter will hinder them, so they may leave the work of scouring the shelter to their humans," said Helmut.
"But their human supporters have guns! They'll kill her!" Tom tried to edge his way round Helmut, but Helmut's immense figure blocked his path yet again.
"Trust that she'll find some way to hide from them," said Helmut. "Sharon is no fool. And besides, I doubt they'd cold-bloodedly slaughter a baby."
"We can only hope that she'll be okay, Tom," said Ed. "Come on, let's go. We can't allow you to risk putting yourself in harm's way too."
Helmut and Ed gently encouraged Tom towards the van that Ed would be driving, and Tom hauled himself reluctantly onto the empty front seat, looking forlornly in the direction of the shelter as he did. Ed got into the driver's seat alongside him.
An eerie shriek pierced the car's solid exterior.
"Nikolas's vampires have begun arriving at the shelter and they've picked up our scent; they're following our trail now," said Helmut as he sat down next to Tom.
Alex suddenly pulled out from his parking space into the road, Draguitza following close behind him. Ed didn't hesitate a moment longer. He started up his van, then sped off down the street, accelerating until they were travelling way over the speed limit, and thus their journey began towards their unknown future.
***
Sharon had placed the sleeping Kylie on a couch in Grenville, before running to the toilet block. She was in the furthermost toilet cubicle and was about to exit it, when she felt a bewildering turbulence of wind surge all around her. She did not realise it, but at that moment Tom, Ed and the vampires were making their way towards the shelter's secret exit.
She wanted to cry out for help, scream for Tom to come and rescue her. But the distant, heavy thud of footsteps on the stairs leading down from the main entrance made her hesitate. Sharon had seen an OUT OF ORDER sign on the door of the toilet cubicle opposite hers, and she quickly slipped out of her cubicle, pulled the sign from the other door, and stuck it on hers, before retreating back into the cubicle and locking it again. With trembling hands, she closed the toilet seat and crouched on top of it. She waited. There was a flurry of movement in the tunnels. Someone came into the lavatory block, walked the length of it, then left again.
The minutes ticked excruciatingly slowly by, and in time Sharon felt as though she would soon lose control of her self-restraint and blow her cover; she couldn't sit dead-still for much longer. But then the noise of the intruders faded and she found herself enveloped in an atmosphere of deathly silence. She had left Kylie on the widest - and therefore safest - couch to leave a baby on, which was almost at the other end of the long Grenville tunnel. It would be too risky to attempt to run to her baby and retrieve her; she would highly likely be caught if the enemy was still out there, lying in wait.
Sharon began to cry, desperately attempting to stifle her sobs. She had no idea where Ed's new hideout was and even if she did manage to survive tonight, she had no idea how she would make contact with Tom. Ed had asked them all to hand over their technological appliances earlier in the day. He wanted them to have no access to the Internet or the Dark Web, to minimise the risk of the enemy locating them that way.
***
Nikolas had risen just before sunset and had wasted no time in getting to the shelter once it was dark. He now stood on the pavement outside.
"Well?" said Nikolas when one of his human supporters resurfaced from the depths of the shelter.
"Apart from a baby, there was nobody there. They've abandoned the place; we were too late," the human informed him.
"Baby? You're telling me they left a baby behind?"
"It's probably dead; it wasn't moving."
"Bring it to me!" Nikolas commanded.
The human disappeared back into the shelter and when he returned, breathless, he was carrying Kylie.
"Give it to me," Nikolas said.
The child was carefully placed in Nikolas's cold arms and he watched the peaceful expression on its face for a moment.
"Well, it's definitely alive. But there's something about their leaving this baby behind that just doesn't make sense."
Nikolas lifted Kylie up to look at her more intently and the upward motion roused her. She opened her eyes and fixed the azure of her hypnotic gaze upon him.
"Oh my, what beautiful eyes," he said. "You are an interesting little enigma, child."
Kylie's tiny fists broke out from beneath the blanket she had been swaddled in and beat the air in tiny movements.
"Delightful," said Nikolas "I will take it home with me; perhaps raise it as a pet."
He drew Kylie close to him and covered her little body with his coat.
***
Location: London
Saturday, 30 October 2027
Sunrise: 07:50
Sunset: 17:38
Sharon remained crouched on the toilet seat all night. She had never felt more uncomfortable in her life; she had also never felt more fearful for her life. The hours passed slowly for her, but there was no further commotion out in the tunnels. Sharon didn't usually wear a watch, but Tom had given her one and she was wearing it now. She glanced at it and saw that it was 07:57.
The vampires would be unconscious now; if she encountered any of Nikolas's humans out in the tunnels, she could always tell them that she was a traitor to the Resistance; that she had hidden when they had departed. Sharon shifted from the position she had been in all night and warily put her feet on the ground. She stood up stiffly, inched the lock on the toilet door open, and furtively peered out. The eerie emptiness and silence of the shelter contrasted sharply with its previous busyness. Sharon moved stealthily out of the toilet block and down the cross passage, before turning left into Grenville sub-shelter. She felt unsteady on her feet as she made her way down the tunnel towards the couch where she had left Kylie. It took incredible self-control to stifle her urge to break down and weep when she got there and saw that Kylie was gone. She knew it would be futile to look for her. Kylie could only have disappeared because someone had taken her. She hoped that it had been Tom and the vampires as they had made their getaway.
Sharon edged away from the empty couch and began to walk in the direction that would take her to the secret entrance, constantly scanning her surroundings for the presence of anything untoward. When she reached the steps leading to the secret entrance, she ran up them. Her hands trembled as she pushed the door slightly open, before slipping out onto the train platform.
The sun had been rendered invisible by dark grey clouds, and rain fell relentlessly when Sharon reached street level. She walked aimlessly, not having a clue where she should go. After wandering about for an hour, she saw a park and entered it. She sat down on a damp wooden bench. The rain still fell heavily and she was drenched. She didn't have an umbrella with her, or anything else - she had left her bag in the van when she had gone back to the shelter. If only she could contact Tom. The tears she had fought so hard to control back in the shelter now began to flow uninhibitedly as she felt a growing sense of futility, but her tears went unnoticed by anyone - she was alone in the park.
Sharon was hungry and exhausted. She would have to find a safe place to hide before nightfall and sh
e would need to think up a plan to ensure that she didn't get captured and end up just another one of Nikolas's vampires or slaves.
***
The very next morning following their arrival at their new country hideout, Tom set off in Draguitza's car shortly after sunrise. As he drove down the long, winding driveway that connected the farmhouse to the road, he absentmindedly ran his hand over his head, exploring the unfamiliar smoothness of his scalp. Layla had shaved off his locks shortly before his departure, as he had watched the sun rise beyond the fields through one of the farmhouse's large windows. Layla had also pierced his ear.
"Whatever it takes to make you less recognisable to the enemy when you're back in London," she had said.
Tom had no idea how he would go about finding Sharon and Kylie. There was no way he could risk returning to the vicinity of the shelter. But he knew that if there was one place he would find Sharon, it would be at the cafe where they had gone when they had first met, around the corner from Katie's flat. He planned to go there every day and wait for her. He could only hope that she would also think to go there, because if she didn't then their chances of reuniting were very, very slim.
***
Part 4: Five Years On
Undisclosed location in countryside
Sunday, 20 June 2032
Sunrise: 04:33
Sunset: 21:24
With her head tilted back, her lips slightly parted, Sharon took the strawberry into her mouth that Tom offered to her. She could feel the warmth of the midday sun on her face as she savoured the moist succulence of the strawberry.
"You know, I still think about her; every day," she said to Tom, before she went back to picking the ripe strawberries.
Tom didn't need to ask who she was talking about. He cast his eyes in the direction of the shed where James, Charlotte, Helmut and the other vampires lay in deep slumber, insensible to the heat and bright sunlight out of doors.
"I think about her too," he said.
Sharon stopped working again and felt a hint of hesitation as she looked at Tom.
"Do you think she's still alive?" she asked.
Tom didn't reply. Even if Kylie was still alive, she would most likely be just another one of Nikolas's slaves. They had no access to the Internet on the farm, or anything like it, not since everyone had handed over their tablets and other gadgets to Ed before they had left the shelter five years ago. Ed had wanted the Internet and Dark Web to be inaccessible to them on the farm, to make it more difficult for the enemy to trace them at their new location. At first everyone had had a tough time adapting to the isolation without their technological interconnectedness, but they had soon become used to it. In any event, even without access to the Internet, they knew at least that Nikolas had rapidly succeeded in building a worldwide empire, although on one or two occasions when they had gone to the nearest town for supplies, they had heard rumours that there were still pockets of humans that were staunchly anti-vampire, which the vampire-controlled press always attempted to downplay.
"I never told you, Tom," Sharon continued, "but I really resented Kylie because of her eyes. I felt suspicious of her and I feared that she was somehow evil because of that fucking antidote. And yet I miss her so much. Do you think she was evil?"
"Is Helmut bad?" said Tom. "Kylie may have inherited his eyes, but think about it, Sharon, he isn't all that bad so far as vampires go, so I doubt she would have turned out evil. Try not to think about it; focus on what's to come."
Tom placed his hand distractedly on Sharon's expectant belly.
"What if this one's also born with those eyes?" she said. "The antidote's still in our blood and it'll probably still be capable of having a detrimental influence on our baby."
Sharon recalled Dr Patel's explanation that the unusualness of Kylie's eyes had likely been the result of a change that the genetic makeup of her cells underwent when she was in the womb - vampire genetic material within the antidote had somehow spliced its way across the boundary of her human genes.
Tom sat down on the soil next to Sharon.
"What happened to Kylie may seem pretty grim to you and it may be irreversible, but Dr Patel's creation may still be our only hope against the vampire threat."
Sharon took Tom's hand in hers.
"Thank God we found each other when you came back to London to look for me, or we wouldn't be having this conversation now," she said.
"I went to that cafe every day, hoping you'd eventually turn up, and you did," Tom said.
Leopard brushed against them both, purring as he tottered to the porch, where he lay down in the sunniest spot. Today was one of the hottest days so far this year. Tom and Sharon could see Jay and Matt in the distance, working together in a field. Matt had effortlessly adapted to country life, gradually shedding his former homeless persona and evolving into a skilled farmhand. He swore he would never go back to London, not even if the vampires were defeated. For the first time in years, he had a purpose.
"Matt's really happy here," said Tom.
"He stopped using that cannabis vaping pen of his almost as soon as he got here," said Sharon.
Tom laughed as he said, "You would think we were living in some kind of utopia."
***
Undisclosed location in countryside
Thursday, 1 July 2032
Sunrise: 04:38
Sunset: 21:23
The vampires in the barn stirred to life with the arrival of night. Helmut rose swiftly from the ground and strode towards the barn door. There, he lingered to savour the sensation of the warm, humid air on his skin, before making his way from the barn to the caravan alongside the farmhouse where Dr Patel and his wife Amy lived. No sooner had he knocked on the caravan's door than Dr Patel opened it a fraction and slipped out.
Ed had insisted on both a curfew and a blackout after sunset, which meant that when Helmut and Dr Patel started walking towards the outbuilding that had been transformed into a lab, Helmut had to guide Dr Patel through the shroud of almost total darkness that enveloped the farm.
They reached the lab and entered it, and Dr Patel turned on the light and glanced cautiously at the windows. He was relieved when he saw that Amy had remembered, as always, to conceal them behind the thick, dark blinds when she had locked up for the day.
Helmut and Dr Patel went over to where vast quantities of antidote stored in vials were stacked on sterilised stainless steel worktops. The cool temperature of the antidote's vampire element meant that it didn't require refrigeration, and Helmut watched as the red element of the liquid constantly interweaved with the black element of it in the vials, before he and Dr Patel set to work carefully packing the fragile vials into a backpack.
Helmut and Dr Patel had been working together on this mission for about four years now and with the help of Helmut's vampire genius, they had found a way to create the antidote using a synthetic element, in far greater quantities and in a far shorter time than when Dr Patel had first started out. They knew it was a risk to administer the antidote without the standard testing that would ordinarily have been done on it prior to its becoming available on the market, and they realised the antidote would have to be administered on a worldwide scale to be truly effective, but nevertheless they continued to produce and administer it.
When the Resistance had first moved to Ed's farm, they had lived in hiding for a number of months, but then Helmut had begun his regular night time journeys into London to administer the antidote to oblivious humans. He had become the lover of several humans in London over the past few years and had often returned to Dr Patel's lab with vials of their blood for testing. The antidote's continued presence in the blood of all the humans they had tested was now proven.
And Helmut had also observed something that he and Dr Patel chose not to disclose to the others, for fear of upsetting Sharon: the physical appearance of all the children in London whose blood contained the antidote was normal. So far, Kylie was the only child who had been born with a hybrid physical
appearance.
***
Helmut darted rapidly from street to street, ever alert. He was at great risk of detection by Nikolas's vampires if they picked up his unfamiliar scent and the unusual smell of the antidote in the vials in his backpack.
London had changed drastically from the bleak, terrifying place it had been five years ago. The state of emergency was now nothing more than an increasingly hazy memory, as was the military presence that had been on the streets back then, and humans once again filled the pubs and restaurants, their exuberant laughter and conversation a constant rumble in the background. Helmut passed an image of Nikolas on a plasma screen as he walked. Nikolas's face was everywhere, now that he had become the highest ranking political figure in the country, and Helmut was in awe at the ease with which he and his vampires had infiltrated the ranks of government. The vast majority of humans didn't seem to even suspect his being a vampire and had never overtly questioned the drastic political changes that had taken place since the power struggle between vampires and humans had begun a mere five years ago. It seemed that most humans had mindlessly gone along with what was happening, with many falling for Nikolas's unique appeal on social media, to the extent that he had achieved cult status.
Helmut sensed an approaching vampire and retreated behind a recess in a wall that led to a department store's delivery door. He was motionless as he watched the busy street just ahead of him, waiting for the vampire to appear. It soon did - it was Nikolas and he was carrying a young human child on his shoulders. The child laughed, her eyes tightly shut and her head thrown back, as Nikolas told her jokes. When Nikolas and the child disappeared from view as they continued their journey, Helmut flitted a couple of blocks further along to observe them once more.
Nikolas came into sight again. The child on his shoulders was now quiet, enraptured by the people and goings-on in the street around her. Helmut immediately recognised that she was Kylie - it was plain to see from her untamed, long hair, which looked as though it had never been cut, that she had inherited Tom's golden curls. She unexpectedly glanced in Helmut's direction. It was as though she had actually sensed him, as her sharp, blue eyes were intently focused on his, even though he was well hidden in the dark shadows. It was astonishing to Helmut that Nikolas was not suspicious of Kylie's origins - the intensity of her eyes was undeniably vampiric.