The Adrift Trilogy: The Black River

by K. R. Griffiths

  As they made their way past the empty floors of the hospital, Conny kept dropping her eyes to Remy, and Herb watched her carefully. She was, apparently, satisfied that the dog sensed no immediate threat.

  Herb wished he could say the same of himself. To him, the hospital was alive with threat, and death lurked around every corner.

  The fourth and fifth floors were barren and stark; they looked almost as though nothing had happened there at all, save for a few beds which had been overturned, presumably as a result of the creature checking that nobody was attempting to hide beneath them. Those floors had been empty, according to Conny, with most of the hospital’s patients either having already been evacuated, or making their way down to the ground floor to await transport.

  Herb paused at each level as he descended, staring beyond the thick glass doors which led to consulting rooms and operating theatres, until he was satisfied that they were as quiet as they appeared.

  With each pause, he felt his tension increasing. It already felt like they were taking too long.

  Down on the third floor, the blood began to appear.

  Streaky spatters of it, winding up the stairs to meet them.

  Herb gestured at the others to halt.

  He peered over the rail, scanning the small section of the ground floor that he could see. Somewhere below, one weak light still flickered. The rest of the ground floor stood in darkness. Yet that one light was enough for Herb to see: it looked like there had been plenty of people down there when the vampire came through.

  It was exactly the same as it had been at the mansion: manmade light appeared to slow the creatures a little, but it didn’t stop them entirely—and they were intelligent enough to disable lights as a priority. The hospital’s reception area would surely have been brightly lit, but the vampire had come in regardless. Most likely, Herb thought, it had taken the lights out first, and then hurled itself into the crowd, ripping and clawing—

  His nerves jangled, and he pulled Conny close, breathing into her ear.

  “It’s a massacre down there. And it’s dark. You sure we can trust the dog on this?”

  Conny glanced at Remy, who sniffed at the smeared blood on the floor nonchalantly.

  “We can trust him.”

  Herb nodded, and lifted his voice a little for the others to hear.

  “Okay, we’re headed toward London Bridge Station. Once we get past it, we’ll be right at my father’s apartment. These things are burrowers. I’m hoping they won’t want to stray too far above ground level, and with any luck we can hold up there until morning. Just follow me, okay? And stay quiet. If we get separated, find somewhere to barricade yourself in. If you survive until sunrise, get the fuck out of London and keep running. Above all: don’t look at them. Got it?”

  They all nodded, their expressions fearful as they considered Herb’s words.

  If you survive.

  Herb decided that it was better not to let them dwell on that, and began to creep down the last couple of flights of stairs.

  Eyes straining at the stubborn shadows.

  Certain that he would see something looking right back at him.

  When he reached the ground floor, he got to see the catastrophic results of a vampire bursting into a crowded room up close, and was perturbed by how quickly he was getting used to the sight of human bodies which had been torn to pieces. He did his best not to look at the corpses littering the floor, focusing only on the exit. The hospital’s front door was propped open by the gore piled in the entryway, and Herb approached it in a half-crouch, gazing intently at the street.

  Beyond the slaughter outside the entrance, he saw no sign of army evacuation trucks, though he did see a few military uniforms dotted around the lake of blood and gristle. Perhaps other soldiers were, at that very moment, on their way back to the hospital to pick up another load of people, but Herb knew he didn’t have the patience to wait and see. Much of the hospital was glass and large, open rooms. No good hiding places.

  If his father’s apartment had been far, he might have suggested trying to find a secure room in which to lock themselves—maybe the hospital even had a basement—but they were only a few hundred yards away from a place that offered a real shot at safety. They had to keep moving.

  He stepped outside, his neck twisting left and right.

  In the distance to the right, somewhere in the direction of Southwark Cathedral, he heard screeching. He set off to the left at a fast trot, desperate to break into a run, but certain that if Dan Bellamy exerted himself too much more, the guy would surely pass out again—or worse.

  He aimed for London Bridge Station—one of the city’s busiest, and usually heaving with people; now just a hulking dark shape on the horizon.

  And rising above it—rising above everything—his destination loomed.

  *

  The Shard, Dan thought wryly, as he tried to keep pace with the others. Why am I not surprised?

  Herb was making straight for London’s tallest building. It figured that a family with the sort of wealth the Rennicks had accrued would opt for just about the most expensive apartment that money could buy, and not even bother to use it.

  He was falling behind the others as anxiety turned their trot into a jog, and then a run. He stumbled after them with every muscle in his body howling in agony.

  The Shard dominated the skyline; an arrowhead which rose more than a thousand feet above the ground to pierce the clouds that routinely hung low over the city. It wasn’t just the tallest building in London; it was one of the tallest buildings in the world. Dan recalled that he had read some piece of trivia which claimed that the smattering of apartments near the top of the Shard were the highest human living space in western Europe, as far away from the ground as it was possible to get.

  He wondered if it would be far enough.

  He tasted blood in his mouth again, and spat it out between gasps for air, feeling his vision start to swim.

  And suddenly, he wasn’t running after the others. He was chasing them. Desperate to taste their blood; to rip apart their pitifully weak bodies. To let them know what the top of the food chain really looked like. He sprinted after them, shrieking, lifting a hand, ready to tear at their flesh.

  Kill them all.

  The urge to tear human flesh was so strong in his mind that for a moment, Dan felt his consciousness flicker. He wasn’t aware that he was falling until he hit the ground hard, rolling into something solid that stopped him painfully and sent stars shooting across his vision. He felt a wrenching sensation in his gut, and knew immediately that he had reopened his wounds.

  All of them.

  His head felt like it was on fire, vast areas of his mind reduced to charred embers. His brain pulsed with a fizzing, unstoppable energy which he hadn’t felt since the months immediately following the knife attack. The black river, surging more ferociously than ever, as though it was trying to pull him to pieces. A sensation like endless falling.

  “I’ve got him.”

  Reality snapped back into place.

  Herb’s voice.

  Of course.

  He felt strong arms lifting him; someone throwing him over a broad shoulder and setting off at pace.

  Carrying him toward something terrible.

  *

  Dan Bellamy must have weighed roughly the same as the average teenage boy. Herb threw him over his shoulder with surprising ease, and caught up with the others as they reached the base of the Shard.

  The front entrance of the enormous building was all glass; lit like a diamond commercial. Herb had been there once or twice with Edgar, but mostly the city apartment was viewed by the Rennicks as a place to retreat if the need arose, and as a place to meet and conduct business with representatives of the Order.

  He remembered the way well enough.

  “Call the elevator,” he grunted, as he pushed through the revolving glass door, following the others into the lobby. Conny’s son obliged, and by the time Herb arrived, the
elevator was almost there.

  He turned to scan the street outside. Everything still looked dark and quiet.

  We might just get away with this.

  The elevator was on the tenth floor, descending smoothly. It hadn’t quite reached the ninth when Herb noticed movement in the corner of his eye. A dark shape approaching the front of the building.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The vampire out front threw itself into the glass wall of the Shard, and a spiderweb of cracks formed across it.

  The glass wouldn’t take another blow.

  Bing!

  Herb let out a yell of relief when the elevator doors slid open. The others threw themselves inside.

  “Thirty-three!” Herb yelled, and heard a cheerful beep as someone pushed the button.

  The monster crashed into the lobby.

  Herb stepped into the elevator, unable to turn around; knowing that the vampire was charging toward him, praying that the doors would close before the snapping jaws reached him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  And then, when Herb expected to feel talons puncture his back, tearing at his innards…soft, soothing music began to pipe into the elevator, and the ceiling—a huge display screen—started to cycle through pleasant, relaxing images of lakes and clouds and beautiful summer days.

  Conny let out an explosive gasp, and bent double, clutching her knees. Her son’s face was red with fear, and what Herb thought looked like shame. Doubtless, he’d pissed himself. Herb couldn’t blame him.

  “Everybody all right?” Conny said. “Nobody looked at it, right?”

  Everyone in the elevator shook their heads.

  She glanced at Herb, who still had Dan slung over his shoulder.

  “This apartment of yours. It’s on thirty-three?”

  Herb shook his head. “Thirty-three is where you have to cross over to one of the upper elevators. Once we get there, call them all. Soon as the first one arrives, someone hit sixty-three. We can lose it when we switch elevators. I hope.”

  With a grunt, he heaved Dan from his shoulder, setting him down on unsteady legs. “You okay, Dan?”

  Dan nodded shakily, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor and said nothing.

  “Nearly there, buddy.” Herb turned back to Conny. “It will want to keep coming, but this is a big building. Gotta be a thousand locked doors in here. Even if it does find us, the apartment is secure. It will hold until sunrise.”

  He checked the elevator readout. Just approaching level thirty.

  The vampires were fast, and verticality didn’t trouble them. The only question in Herb’s mind was how fast? The elevator moved quickly—surely too quickly for any living creature to keep pace—but still, as the readout ticked around to thirty-three, he expected the doors to open and reveal fangs stained crimson and eyes that would melt his soul.

  Bing!

  Herb’s heart hammered.

  The doors slid open.

  Empty.

  He let out a gasp of relief.

  “Go!” he hissed, and hit the button for the twenty-fifth floor, sending the elevator back down. With any luck, he thought, the vampire wouldn’t even realise that there was another set of elevators servicing the top half of the building. Maybe it would assume they got out on twenty-five. Maybe.

  The thirty-third floor was home to a lavish Chinese restaurant and a bar area, but also served as a junction between the upper and lower parts of the building. An artist’s depiction of the River Thames was painted on the floor, and it led around a corner to the next set of elevators. By the time Herb got there, Conny’s son was already inside the nearest of them, holding the chrome doors open and waiting impatiently to hit the button marked 63. He waved Herb and Dan inside, and stabbed the button with a relieved sigh.

  It took around three seconds for the door to close.

  Each one felt like a lifetime.

  The elevator lifted away serenely from the thirty-third floor, and Herb allowed himself to breathe easily at last. The apartment wasn’t the stronghold that the mansion was—or was supposed to be—but the windows and door had been fitted with the exact same electronically operated steel shutters as the mansion. Except that this time, there wouldn’t be a vampire inside with its hands on the controls.

  I hope.

  When the elevator announced its arrival with a cheerful bing once more, Herb stepped outside and hurried the others out. Once it was clear, he reached inside, and sent it back down to thirty-three.

  “This way,” he said, and led them to the right, along a wide glass-walled corridor, to a door which nestled alongside the exterior of the building, offering an incredible view across Canary Wharf and, on a clear day, as far as the east coast of England. Herb paid the dark panorama laid out before him no attention, and turned to face the apartment’s front door. He flipped open a panel next to it, revealing a palm scanner, and placed his left hand against it.

  The scanner was coded only to accept senior members of the Rennick household.

  Like Jeremy Pruitt, who Herb saw standing in the apartment when the door swung open.

  Behind a large man with a hard, bloodstained face, who aimed a stubby submachine gun directly at Herb’s forehead.

  35

  “Inside,” Mancini growled, shooting an anxious glance down the hallway toward a distant door marked stairs. He kept the gun trained squarely on Herbert Rennick’s forehead, and stepped aside, waving the small group at the door into the apartment with his free hand.

  Somewhere behind him, he heard a click. Burnley readying her weapon.

  Rennick was travelling with a woman wearing a police officer’s uniform, and what Mancini guessed was a police dog, along with a teenage boy and a man who looked like he’d just undergone a savage round of chemotherapy. Dan Bellamy wasn’t what Mancini expected at all; he looked frail and sick, his eyes ringed with blood. He didn’t look up; didn’t even seem to notice Mancini or the gun he held at all. It was like Dan Bellamy’s eyes were somewhere else, staring at some horizon that only he could see.

  He kept a watchful eye on the dog as the disparate group filed into the apartment, but the animal didn’t look like it would give him trouble; it seemed focused on the distant stairwell, just as Mancini himself had been.

  He closed the door and locked it.

  “Hi Jeremy,” Rennick said amiably.

  Jeremy Pruitt sighed heavily.

  “Hi, Herb.”

  “Better put the place on lockdown,” Herb said. “There’s one in the building.”

  Mancini felt the blood draining from his face, and glanced at Jeremy. “Do it,” he growled, keeping his eyes on Herb.

  “Weapons on the floor,” he said. “All of you.”

  Herb slipped a handgun from his belt and tossed it at Mancini’s feet.

  Mancini stared down at it, confused.

  “That’s it? One gun?”

  “Yeah,” Herb said with a smile. “Not even sure it has any bullets, but do feel free to check. Oh, and hey: who the fuck are you?”

  “I called the Americans, Herb,” Jeremy said heavily, and he popped open a panel near the door, punching a code into a keypad. Moments later, steel shutters began to descend, covering the interior of the windows and the apartment’s front door, erasing the view of the burning city.

  “Yeah,” Herb snapped bitterly. “Still working for Dad, huh?”

  Jeremy shook his head and started to reply, but Mancini had heard enough. He gestured at the couches in the open-plan living room, glaring at Pruitt until he closed his mouth.

  “Take a seat, Rennick. The rest of you, too. Burnley, keep your gun on Rennick. If you decide his mouth is too smart, do feel free to shut it for him.”

  Burnley nodded, her eyes never leaving Herb.

  “You don’t need to do that—” Jeremy said, but Mancini waved a hand to silence him, and stepped back to the front door. He put his ear against the metal which now covered it, listening intently.

  Nothing.

&
nbsp; The sheet of steel which had fallen over the apartment looked thin, but he didn’t doubt that it would hold. The vampires were strong and resourceful, but punching through tempered steel was a stretch, even for them. For the first time since he had arrived at the Rennick apartment—barely two minutes before Rennick himself did—Mancini allowed himself to relax. The vampires couldn’t get in. The only way harm could come to those inside was if the monsters found some way to take down the entire building. It didn’t seem likely.

  Mancini checked his watch.

  Still several hours until sunrise.

  He lost himself in thought. Craven only wanted Bellamy, and she would have no problem with him killing Rennick if he deemed it necessary. Hell, she’d probably applaud it.

  He shot a glance at Rennick. The guy looked like he was just itching to start talking again.

  Firing a weapon with a vampire somewhere in the building was asking for trouble—steel shutters or not. If Rennick was determined to cause problems, Mancini would have to find quiet solutions.

  Knifework, then.

  He glanced toward the distant kitchen.

  “Okay,” Herb said brightly, clapping his hands together and rising from the couch. “Who wants cocktails?”

  The policewoman grabbed his shirt, and hauled him back down into his seat, keeping her other hand firmly on the mutt’s collar.

  “Smart lady,” Mancini said, making his way into the living room. “I’m not here for you, Rennick, but I have no problem killing you, if that’s what you want. When you’re running your mouth, all you’re doing is making me change my mind about how I’m going to kill you. Capiche?”

  “I recommend slightly overfeeding me and ultimately inducing a fatal heart attack,” Herb said with a serene smile. “Should only take about forty years, and the police will never catch on. I eat plenty of junk food alrea—”

  Mancini darted forward quickly and swung a left hook, connecting firmly with Rennick’s flapping jaw, and the kid finally shut up.