The Adrift Trilogy: The Black River

by K. R. Griffiths

  Dan kept swinging.

  Even when the vampire fell away from him, and its head separated entirely from its neck, rolling down the hallway with a liquid thump, Dan kept driving the blade forward, shredding the creature's lean torso until the strength leaked from his arms and the cleaver became too heavy for him to hold any longer.

  It fell from nerveless fingers with a clatter that Dan did not hear.

  The world came back slowly, riding the pain in his belly and the ache in his arms, until he stood, blinking down at the smear of gore that the vampire had become. None of it felt real.

  Dan had always been terrified of losing his mind. Ever since the knife attack had punctured his skull and his spirit, he had become acutely aware of the fragility of sanity. The everyday things that frightened him: everything from the phone ringing unexpectedly to the notion of stepping outside his front door alone, without Elaine to hide behind, revealed fragments of a darkness inside that he feared could claim him at any moment. The mind was weak and pliable. Easy to break.

  Ever since the knife attack, his mind had felt like it might break at any moment.

  He had always harboured a dark concern that one day he would come to his senses after one of his strange blackouts, to discover that while his mind had been tumbling helplessly on that awful black river, terrible events had unfolded in the real world.

  Maybe, one day, he would regain consciousness to find that Elaine was long gone, and that he had spent years in isolation and incomprehensible madness. Maybe he would wake to discover that his body had done something terrible while his mind took a vacation. For a moment, as he stared down at the lake of gore at his feet, Dan's worst nightmares were realised. His mind had snapped, and he had done something terrible.

  Blood everywhere.

  And Elaine was gone.

  He collapsed to his knees in the blood and torn flesh, and felt that terrible rushing sensation once more, like he was falling, and as he began to scream in despair he wasn't sure that it would ever stop.

  *

  "Holy shit," Edgar breathed in an awed tone. He had watched, stupefied, as Dan launched himself toward what had to be certain death. Edgar's mind had only just caught up to the notion that the screaming woman on the floor had to be Dan's missing wife when the man himself started swinging the cleaver.

  He took the vampire apart in a brutal display of insane rage and power, wildly throwing the blade around and cutting at everything that stood in his way.

  It was impossible.

  It defied everything Edgar's father had told him.

  And yet here it was, happening right in front of Edgar's eyes. One man, attacking a vampire with nothing more than a blade, and tearing it to pieces. Stinking black blood erupting in fountains as the vampire fell to the ferocious attack, almost as though it couldn't quite believe it was happening.

  They can be killed.

  Not staked through the heart or burned by sunlight. Nothing supernatural required. They could be killed just like anything else.

  It can't be true.

  When Dan dropped the cleaver and collapsed to his knees, Edgar stared suspiciously at the remains of the vampire. Dan had painted the walls with the thing; had taken its head clean off, but some part of Edgar still expected the creature to heal itself somehow; to regrow its lost pieces and retaliate.

  It had to. These were creatures of the night, for fuck's sake. Creatures of ancient darkness. Demons from the world beneath the world.

  The only thing that could kill them—the only fucking thing—was a stake through the heart, and Edgar had even been dubious about that until only minutes earlier. Everything Edgar had been taught suggested that fighting the creatures was impossible.

  That was why the selected families around the globe who had protected humans for millennia had to sacrifice people in their hundreds or thousands. It was Edgar's duty; his calling. The entire point of his whole existence.

  It was a pack of lies.

  Edgar saw it now, saw the naked truth, stripped down and smeared across the walls; hideous gobs of it that dripped from the ceiling like a foul rain.

  He hadn't been born to protect an ancient truce.

  The secret that Edgar and his family kept had nothing to do with paying a regrettable price to maintain peace for the greater good of humanity.

  What the Rennick family protected was not a truce at all.

  It was a surrender.

  Confusion and anger boiled in Edgar's mind. He had already lost two brothers, maybe three. He had murdered an innocent man with his own hands; had condemned thousands more to die, and all because he was certain that the vampires were an adversary that could not be faced. A supernatural force that man could only drop to his knees in front of and pray to for a merciful death.

  The truth was a black stain that pooled around Edgar's feet.

  If this man could fight them; could somehow resist the paralysis that the vampires used as their primary weapon, then others surely could too.

  His father's words came back to him abruptly, so often repeated.

  It's for the greater good, Edgar. We do what we have to do to keep the human race safe, no matter how distasteful our actions might seem. We're the good guys.

  A dark needle of suspicion lanced into his thoughts.

  Did his father know? Had he brainwashed his sons when they were young and vulnerable, filling their heads with the terrible lie?

  Or had his father himself been brainwashed? Was the lie that ran through his family, passed down across the generations, so old that the truth didn't even exist anymore?

  Were the noble families who had been tasked with 'protecting' the human race actually just butchers, delivering meat to the vampires on a platter?

  Are we their familiars?

  Every question led to dark answers, and every answer led back to the terrible black door in Brighton, and the woman who had chatted happily to Edgar in a bar, and who had clearly liked him. The woman he had let the vampire tear apart. He felt a surge of nausea wash through him.

  He had to find Herb; had to let him know that he had been right all along and that Edgar should have listened. Had to get his little brother off the ship.

  Edgar opened his mouth to speak, though he had no idea what he was about to say to the man who had just demonstrated that Edgar's entire existence had been a lie.

  And suddenly the silence was split by thunder, but Edgar knew immediately that it wasn't the storm returning. Felt it in the trembling of the ship under his feet. The ship that could crash through even the mightiest waves without unbalancing a single passenger shuddered and rocked. Edgar put out a hand, steadying himself against the wall.

  Somewhere on the Oceanus, several decks below judging by the noise, there had just been a mighty explosion.

  And another.

  This time, the ship did more than rock. It began to keel, and Edgar's mind raced to understand what was happening.

  The answer was as obvious as the lie smeared around his feet.

  Dad.

  37

  The vampire was only a few yards away from them, strolling casually through the fire that did not seem to burn its flesh, when the nightclub went up like a box of fireworks, and the enormous concussive blast lifted Mark and Herb off their feet.

  Herb felt his forehead connect heavily with the floor, and he rolled onto his back, seeing stars, and watched dumbly as a wave of fire licked the ceiling of the hallway above him before burning itself out. The fire moved like an animal, its flickering, fluid progress every bit as alien as the gait of the vampire stalking through the burning nightclub.

  The blast was beyond unexpected: Herb had assumed the fire would take hold slowly, and would spread throughout the ship at a steady pace, fuelled by the alcohol.

  He thought they would have plenty of time to get away. Hell, he thought they would have to toss the Molotov's liberally around the ship to ensure that it burned.

  Instead, the bar area had erupted in an enormous fir
eball that tore a hole in the side of the ship, letting the savage wind in.

  Even worse was the crater blown into the floor. The entire nightclub seemed to be collapsing in on itself, slowly melting through the floor toward the deck below.

  Herb smelled burning hair and sizzling meat, and realised dimly that his arm was on fire.

  His first thought was to roll, but then he noticed the flames licking at the bottle he still clutched in numb fingers. With a yelp, he tossed the Molotov away before it became a bomb in his hand.

  He started to roll as the bottle smashed, and another wave of fire rolled through the hallway.

  In ordinary circumstances, the sprinkler system would have kicked into life immediately: the company that had built the Oceanus knew all too well the dangers of fire spreading on a ship, and had placed sprinklers everywhere.

  Nothing.

  That, Herb realised, was his doing, too. Well, partly: the EMP must have crippled the safety systems on the ship along with everything else. No sprinklers, no alarm. Just howling wind that turned the fire into a raging beast that rampaged through the ship with horrifying speed.

  Herb hauled himself to his feet with a grunt, crying out in dismay when he saw that the fire had fused his jacket to the flesh of his arm. It didn't hurt—not much, anyway, but Herb knew that was very bad indeed. The fire had burned up the nerves in his arm. No pain; huge damage. Second degree, at least.

  But at least he was still alive.

  He turned back toward the nightclub and watched in open-mouthed astonishment as the vampire, still ablaze but now missing its left arm, took a step towards him.

  And the floor collapsed, and the monster fell from sight with a hideous shriek.

  Herb stood, immobilised, as confusion tore through his mind. It wasn't possible that a Molotov cocktail could cause so much damage, not unless he had thrown it directly into the fuel tanks.

  What the fuck happened?

  As if in response, another explosion tore through the ship, close enough to dump Herb on his backside once more. He felt the floor sway dangerously, and when it failed to right itself Herb had his answer.

  The Oceanus was sinking.

  Was being sunk.

  His father had given the order, and right now, the Russian black market missiles that he had installed on the Rennick's trawler—the absurdly-named Sea Shanty—were being unleashed.

  With the vampires still aboard.

  There was no way his father would break his beloved pact. He'd sacrifice every Rennick—including himself—before he let that happen.

  It made no sense to Herb, but it didn't have to.

  Whatever the explanation, it was happening, right now. In the distance, Herb heard another explosion, though this one sounded different: muffled; heavier somehow.

  That one landed below the waterline, he guessed. The fatal blow. The Oceanus would go down fast.

  Time had run out. If Herb was going to survive, he had to get off the ship. Now.

  His determination surprised him a little. He had been so resigned to dying that he only cared about ensuring that he got the best death possible. The quickest; the most painless. But once he came up with the plan to blow the ship, an ember of hope burned inside him.

  The realisation that his father had fired upon the ship confused the hell out of Herb, but it fed a little oxygen to that flickering hope. Somehow, all the plans made by the Rennick family had been derailed. In the ensuing chaos, there might just be a chance for Herb to escape with his life.

  He searched left and right, trying to locate the security guard, and finally spotted him further down the corridor. It looked like the initial blast had lifted him clear off his feet and deposited him fifteen feet away from the burning nightclub.

  Herb thought that was a good thing. By the look of it, the bottles the man held had smashed, dousing him with liquor. The slightest spark would have made a human torch of him.

  When Herb took a step toward the man, he froze in fear as he felt the floor cracking and buckling beneath him. The deck had taken catastrophic damage, and it felt like the whole thing was coming down.

  At least, Herb thought, we don't have to worry about trying to blow the fuel tanks.

  He could almost have laughed at that, if he hadn't been so focused on moving lightly, and trying not to put his full weight down with each step. The deck felt like wet sponge beneath his feet, and Herb tried to remember what was below him. The cinema level, perhaps. If the deck collapsed, it would be a long fall, and the fire was probably claiming the cinema at that very moment.

  And the vampire, Herb. Don't forget that.

  If the floor collapsed, death would follow swiftly.

  He reached the security guard's prone body and didn't hesitate. There wasn't time to check whether the guard was badly injured. He wasn't conscious, and Herb thought that there was a good chance that being catapulted down a hallway had done spinal damage. Moving him might only make the man's injuries worse, but it was the only option.

  Herb hauled him up, throwing him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift with a grunt. The guy was smaller than Herb; light enough that he could just about carry him, but he was also soaked in alcohol. The stench of it was overpowering.

  With fire pulsing all around him, carrying the man was like carrying a bomb.

  Herb grimaced.

  He seemed to be making a habit of carrying things that could get him killed. The sensible thing to do—the Rennick thing to do—was to drop the comatose security guard and leave him to burn.

  But then, the Rennicks were crazy bastards, and Herb had spent a lifetime doing what was expected of a Rennick.

  No more.

  Wincing at the way his jacket pulled on his melted flesh; feeling like at any moment it might tear his skin off, Herb started away from the burning nightclub fighting for each step as the floor bucked and crumbled beneath him.

  The ship was lurching backwards, dunking its expensive arse into the sea, and with each passing second the floor became a steeper gradient, threatening to send Herb sliding backwards into the fire.

  It took a few seconds to reach the distant doorway, and the network of staircases beyond. Once there, Herb grasped the banister for balance and sucked in a deep breath, coughing out a cloud of burning smoke.

  Somewhere nearby, something cracked and splintered, and the Oceanus groaned like a wounded animal.

  No time left.

  Herb hefted the security guard and began to pull himself up the stairs, using his free hand to claw at the banister and defy the gravity that wanted to pull him down.

  In his mind, he had envisioned setting fire to the Oceanus to be a straightforward task and one that would leave him plenty of time to consider his options for escape.

  In practice, it was nothing like that. The ship was sinking fast, breaking up more and more with each missile strike, and when the fire reached the fuel tanks, Herb wasn't sure the ship would even get the chance to sink. It would explode first.

  At least, he thought, the darkness wasn't a problem anymore; there was light everywhere.

  Light and clarity. No more confusion, no more worrying about the best way to proceed. Suddenly, the life of Herb Rennick was simple; more straightforward than he could ever remember it being.

  He had to go up.

  *

  "We have to go down."

  Edgar spoke the words aloud, but he didn't believe them; not really. The first explosion had been followed by another, and then another, and with each blast Edgar's sense of betrayal and abandonment had deepened.

  This was Charles Rennick's response to Edgar's radio message, and to the news that a vampire had been harmed. It had taken him all of five minutes to decide that the best course of action was to sink the Oceanus and hope the truth went down with it.

  The presence of his sons on the ship apparently didn't matter; not at all. Edgar didn't doubt for a second that even as his father gave the order to sink the ship, he reassured himself that he was doing the
right thing. Still trying to avert the war, unaware that it had been lost centuries earlier.

  Or aware, but indifferent.

  How much Edgar wanted to get his hands on his father, and to shake the truth out of him. To discover whether the Rennick family was a willing servant of darkness; whether Charles Rennick even believed the good guys brainwashing that he had unleashed on his sons as soon as they were old enough to think. The need to hurl his father to the ground and let him know what terror really felt like was overwhelming, but even as rage and revenge clouded Edgar's thoughts, one need rose above all the others.

  Herb had been right about their father all along. More than anything, Edgar wanted to find Herb and to beg his forgiveness, but if Herb was even still alive, he had to be somewhere far below Edgar's current position. Down there with the fire.

  Edgar found an open cabin door, leading into a room that looked like it had been tossed by a whole team of vandals, and leaned over the balcony.

  Flames everywhere, and great, gaping wounds torn into the Oceanus' flank. As he watched, Edgar saw tracer fire incoming from the boat that he couldn't see out there on the dark waves. Another missile, punching a terrible hole to the rear of the boat, near the waterline.

  The ship rocked, recoiling like a frightened animal.

  Going down, as much as Edgar wanted it to be, was not an option. If Herb was alive, Edgar had failed him, just as he had failed all his brothers. Led them to their deaths on the back of a lie that he had believed implicitly.

  The death of thousands on his hands, as unnecessary as it was horrific. Another issue that Herb had called right: the mission had cost Edgar his soul.

  Edgar thought once more about jumping, and letting the Atlantic have him. Bottomless despair made him shrivel inside.

  Suicide was too easy; not the Rennick way.

  He deserved to burn.

  But there was one man who did not, and ensuring his survival might be the one thing that could wash the blood from Edgar's soul. Maybe, somehow, Edgar's life would have some purpose after all.