The Adrift Trilogy: The Black River

by K. R. Griffiths

  It broke her heart.

  “Logan, I—”

  A crash somewhere behind Conny cut her off, the noise followed immediately by screams of surprise. Conny spun around, her nerves blazing; expecting to see that one of the monsters had smashed its way into the building.

  She blinked.

  The crash had been the noise of someone kicking open a door labelled roof access. The someone was actually four men: two, who looked no older than twenty, carried a third—who appeared to be unconscious—draped across their shoulders. The last of the four men brandished a pistol as he moved out in front of the others.

  “Looking for a doctor,” he growled, waving people back from the exit and moving inside the hospital.

  Remy immediately began to snarl when he saw the firearm, and a space opened up around Conny as the people crowding into the corridor moved away anxiously, their eyes fixed on the gun. She grabbed the dog’s collar with her right hand, holding him back, and held her left arm protectively across Logan’s chest.

  The man with the gun stared down at the growling dog, surprised.

  “Remy, hold,” she said firmly. She glanced up at the man with the gun. “I could let him go,” she said evenly. “He’s dealt with firearms before. He’s fast. I’d rather it didn’t come to that, because people might get hurt. I need you to place that weapon on the floor. Now.”

  The man with the gun lifted his gaze to Conny.

  “And what? You’ll arrest me? You do know what’s happening out there, right? In fact, fuck it, throw me in jail. A steel cage would probably be the safest place to go right around now, anyway.”

  Conny frowned, confused, and felt her cheeks burn. In a way, he had a point. Was she even a police officer anymore? After abandoning several of her colleagues to die—and then killing another herself?

  I should be the one in prison.

  “We’re not here to hurt anybody,” he continued. “I absolutely do not want to have to shoot your dog. Please, I’ve had a rough couple of days. Don’t make me do that.”

  Conny’s eyes narrowed.

  “Then why are you here?”

  The man lowered the gun a little and beamed at her.

  “To save the world, of course.”

  27

  It was the burning bus that did it.

  One of those distinctive London double-deckers, painted a bright and cheerful red. It rolled along slowly, almost of its own accord, with fire and thick black smoke pouring out of the windows.

  Mancini stared at it, transfixed by the incredible spectacle and the grisly narrative it threatened to tell.

  Was it full of people when the flames took hold; all of them now just meat cooked in a giant metal oven? Were the blistered remains of the driver still hunched over the wheel, his charred foot still pressing the gas pedal?

  Mancini couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through his body at the sight.

  And he couldn’t stop watching.

  That was the trouble.

  If it hadn’t been for the almost hypnotic sight of the burning bus—if they had been just thirty seconds earlier or later; if they’d taken a different turn as they approached the River Thames—none of it might have happened.

  What did happen, in the first instance, was that everybody in the van was so transfixed by the eerie sight ahead of them that nobody saw the truck coming from their right, and they had time only to turn their heads at the last moment as it smashed into the side of the van.

  The world span like someone had dropped it into a washing machine.

  Inside the rolling van, Mancini heard someone yelling, and someone else loose a round from their weapon, before a lamp post abruptly killed their forward momentum.

  Along with Braxton.

  The van came to a rest on its roof, all windows smashed and most of the right side of the vehicle caved in. The driver’s seat had been all-but obliterated as the solid stone post drove half of the engine backwards into the cab. Most of Braxton wasn’t visible. He was smeared across the exposed engine like red paint.

  Mancini looked away from the dead driver and checked himself for injuries. His head was bleeding, and he was pretty sure the seatbelt had cracked a rib or two, but he’d been lucky. He unclipped the belt, grunting as pain arced through his chest, and fell out of his seat. He twisted awkwardly to see into the back of the van.

  “Everybody okay?”

  “Burnley fucking shot me,” Montero snarled.

  “Grazed you,” Burnley muttered. “Sheesh. And I didn’t shoot; the gun went off. If I’d ‘shot’ you, you’d be dead.”

  “Yeah, whatever, Burn—”

  “Keep your damn voices down!” Mancini hissed. “Pruitt?”

  The Brit hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt; he was crumpled at the rear of the van, looking pretty beaten up.

  “I’m fine,” Pruitt grunted. “The worst part is having to listen to Laurel and fucking Hardy back here.”

  Mancini grimaced.

  “Yeah? Try spending six hours on a plane with ‘em.”

  “Fuck you, Mancini,” Montero said. He lifted his voice. “Hey, nice driving, Braxton.”

  “Braxton’s dead,” Mancini said flatly. “Like the rest of us, if you don’t quit hollering.”

  He squatted low, peering out of the windows. The street outside the van looked quiet. In the distance, the fiery bus had come to a stop at last, crashing sedately into the side of a building and setting it alight.

  “I think we’re okay,” he whispered.

  “Tell that to Braxton.”

  Mancini flicked his eyes to Montero, letting his gaze burn some silence into the man. “We have to move,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “Quietly.”

  He reached into the rear of the van, helping Jeremy clamber over into the passenger seat as the others fumbled at their seatbelts, and crawled out onto the road through the side window.

  In the distance, he heard heavy weaponry being fired; a sound he hadn’t heard since his days in the military: helicopter gunships raining death down onto the city. No wonder a single gunshot hadn’t drawn much attention. Somewhere overhead, a jet engine shrieked, crossing the city in seconds. Mancini couldn’t see it.

  Jeremy hauled himself out of the window with a grunt, and pulled himself to his feet, refusing Mancini’s offered hand. Almost as soon as the Brit was out of the way, Burnley slipped through the window smoothly.

  Somewhere in the van, Montero let out a muffled curse.

  “I only grazed him.” Burnley shrugged.

  Mancini ignored her, turning to Jeremy.

  “How far away are we from Rennick’s apartment?”

  Jeremy scanned the streets, his expression thoughtful.

  “We’re not far from the London Eye,” he said, “so it’s just a couple of miles east, along the river. Maybe less.”

  “You know the way?”

  “More or less.” Jeremy glanced around fearfully. “It’s a good thing it’s quiet on this side of the riv—”

  He fell silent as an unearthly shriek split the night.

  Mancini span toward the direction of the noise. Somewhere near the giant Ferris wheel, he thought.

  Not only on the south side of the river, but probably in the next damn street.

  Montero finally hauled himself through the van’s broken window, still muttering curses. Mancini clamped a hand over his mouth and hauled him to his feet.

  He stared at Jeremy.

  Jeremy stared back blankly, his face twitching in terror.

  “Which way?” Mancini breathed, and Jeremy blinked, pointing down a dark street.

  “See that building?”

  He pointed at a skyscraper which loomed far above the nearby buildings.

  Mancini nodded. At least they would be moving away from the creature, he thought, and finally released his grip on Montero’s flapping jaw.

  “Move,” Mancini hissed. “Eyes open. Quiet.”

  Without another word, he turned and set off for the street
which Jeremy had pointed out. It looked dark and quiet, but with each stride forward, Mancini felt his nerves tightening. The others fell into line behind him, moving single-file, and even Montero looked focused.

  After about three hundred yards, Mancini stopped, hunkering down next to a parked van.

  “Which way?” he glanced at Jeremy.

  “Straight ahead.”

  Mancini gritted his teeth. They would be crossing a wide intersection, bathed in the glow of streetlights. Completely exposed. He scanned left and right, and then turned to shoot a glance behind. There was a vampire in that direction somewhere, but he saw no sign that it was following them. The road to the right would take them south, back in the direction they had just travelled, and though Mancini desperately wanted to head that way, it wasn’t an option. The road to the left headed toward a distant bridge.

  The British Army would almost certainly try to establish a beachhead along the river, but it wouldn’t do any good. At least one of the vampires was already south of the Thames.

  There was nothing for it. Going forward was the only option.

  Mancini waved a beckoning hand at the others and set off at a controlled run, cradling the MP5, his eyes open and alert for any movement. He was halfway across the intersection when he heard screaming to his left and he spun, raising his weapon.

  A small group of people were fleeing from the direction of the river, chased by another: a man wearing a peace is love T-shirt and brandishing a huge knife.

  Mancini lowered his weapon a little, gawping as the guy with the knife ran down a middle-aged woman, leaping onto her back and driving the knife into her head. Before Mancini could react, heavy gunfire rained down from above, and the guy with the knife damn near exploded.

  With a deafening roar, a large chopper swung low overhead, turning back toward the other side of the river and heading back into the city.

  Jesus, Mancini thought, they don’t even know what they’re fighting against. They think people are doing this.

  The vampires weren’t even showing up for the fight. They were staying in the shadows, turning humans on each other, revelling in the chaos. To the authorities, it probably looked like half of the city’s population had gone completely berserk. Throw in some far-fetched sightings of monstrous creatures, he thought, and you have a recipe for madness, and bad decisions.

  The British military was doing the work of the vampires for them, killing the wrong species indiscriminately. Yet every time they mowed down some poor bastard with a knife, the real enemy would simply take control of another puppet, and the wheel of insanity would continue to turn.

  He blinked as his thoughts reached a troubling destination.

  If one of the monsters’ puppets had been that close; no more than fifty yards away…

  “Move!” Mancini hissed, and took off at a panicked sprint.

  He had taken no more than five steps forward when he heard a shriek split the night behind him.

  28

  Darkness.

  Pain.

  The hands in the darkness have him.

  They carry him along helplessly, tossing and thrashing him.

  The whole world is cascading black water.

  Seeping through his skin.

  Poisoning his soul.

  And when it roars, he hears it clearly, and understands that it is not the sound of a river at all.

  It is the sound of a voice.

  Bellowing in the void, vast and incomprehensible.

  Beckoning him forward.

  29

  The journey in the helicopter had become bloated with pounding anxiety almost as soon as the vehicle reached the outskirts of London and the fuel low light began to flash.

  Herb had taken the pilot’s seat, not trusting either Lawrence or Scott with the task, and his rusty skill with the controls had made the journey interesting even before the fuel began to run out.

  When the warning light caught his attention, he had instinctively searched for a place to set down, but the city below seemed to be made of darkness and fire. Any landing could put them in immediate danger, and at the very least would mean that they would have to travel the rest of the way on foot. He had considered the prospect of carrying a comatose man through territory that was quickly becoming vampire country and dismissed the idea of landing. He didn’t fancy their chances of surviving long down on the streets. They would make it to the hospital; they had to.

  Besides, if the chopper was anything like a car, he thought, the fuel warning probably wasn’t urgent. The tank probably still had plenty of miles left in it.

  Apparently not.

  Their destination was in sight, silhouetted against the burning city to the north of the river, when the engine began to wheeze out its last breaths, and setting the chopper down became a matter of crashing rather than landing. The final descent, as the rotor blades began to stutter, had been steeped in fear that should have made his soul shrivel, but he had remained oddly calm. Herb had decided, as the roof of the hospital lurched toward him like an uppercut, that you knew you were having a bad day when crashing a helicopter into a building was only the second most frightening thing to happen.

  Or was it the third?

  He couldn’t be sure anymore.

  Now that he was safely inside the hospital, with a doctor checking Dan, the adrenaline which had kept him upright for more than thirty-six hours steadily leaked away, and a wall of fatigue collapsed on top of him. It felt like he had been terrified forever, and the constant, draining fear and lack of sleep was making his thoughts unstable and skittish.

  He hadn’t eaten either, he realised, not since before boarding the Oceanus. Increasingly, he was finding it hard to think straight.

  He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on what the woman who had examined Dan was saying.

  “It’s not his injuries,” the doctor said.

  Herb blinked slowly, switching his gaze from Dan to her.

  “Not,” he repeated dumbly.

  “That’s right. He has a lot of bruises and lacerations, and the wounds to his abdomen are deep, but not life-threatening. Not serious enough to render him comatose. I’ve stitched him up, though it was a rush job. He’ll need to get to another hospital in the next day or two to get his wounds redressed, and—”

  “Wait…it’s not his injuries? Then why isn’t he waking up?”

  She shook her head, looking a little irritated.

  “He is in shock, perhaps. A fugue state. Or he has a pre-existing psychological condition that I am not aware of. Look, I really—”

  “You don’t have his medical records?”

  The doctor shook her head impatiently. “I’d have to request them from his current doctor. That tends to take a few days when the world isn’t falling apart. He’s not dying, but he’s not waking up, either. I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do. Do you need me to take a look at your arm?”

  Herb blinked, and stared down at his bandaged arm. He’d forgotten all about it.

  “No, it’s nothing. You’re sure it’s not his injuries?”

  The doctor nodded curtly.

  “Quite certain. Now, please, I have other patients that I need to prepare for the evacuation…”

  Herb nodded absently, returning his gaze to Dan as the doctor left the room.

  Out cold yet again, he thought, and felt a stab of envy.

  He was so tired.

  He rubbed at his eyes once more. It felt like his eyelids were made of grit.

  Lack of sleep. An empty stomach.

  As problems went, they were so ordinary; so mundane.

  Yet, despite his exhaustion, Herb wasn’t sure he could ever sleep again. Certainly, if he had been forced to kill the police officer’s fucking dog on top of everything else, he was sure he wouldn’t sleep well. No, sleep was out of the question.

  But at least he could eat.

  He turned to leave Dan’s room, and flinched in surprise when he saw the policewoman leaning on
the doorframe with her arms folded across her chest. The dog sat at her feet, regarding Dan’s inert body with an expression that struck Herb as cautious interest.

  “Who is he?” she asked, as Herb made his way out into the corridor and headed for a vending machine a few rooms away. When he passed by her, she turned and followed. A moment later, the dog did likewise.

  “Nobody,” Herb said ruefully, “according to him, anyway.”

  He chuckled when he reached the vending machine, patting at his pockets. “No cash,” he said with a weary smile. “Would you believe I didn’t think I’d have to stop for snacks? Sorry about this.”

  The police officer frowned, and then her eyes widened in surprise as Herb pulled the gun from his waistband and blew a hole in the glass front of the machine.

  Somewhere further down the hallway, someone screamed, and Herb yelled an apology.

  He reached inside the vending machine and began to pluck out chocolate bars and tiny bags of peanuts. He ripped a pack of nuts open, pouring the entire contents into his mouth, and smiled happily at the policewoman as he chewed.

  And chewed.

  “Herb Rennick,” he said finally, swallowing the last of the nuts and tearing the wrapper off a Snickers. He took a large bite and stuck out his right hand.

  She shook it uncertainly, apparently disoriented by the sudden, formal gesture.

  “Cornelia Stokes. Conny,” she said. “You know what’s going on out there, don’t you?” Her eyes narrowed. “I can see it on your face.”

  “You must be a good cop, to get that just from looking at me,” Herb said with a chuckle as he reached back into the smashed vending machine to pluck out a juice box. He popped the straw and sucked on it noisily, nodding his head at the smashed glass. “You gonna arrest me for stealing?”

  “And vandalism, and threatening behaviour, and discharging a firearm in a public place, and being a shit pilot,” Conny said. “Yeah, maybe later. For now I’ll settle for knowing what you know.”