Tchaikovsky just laughed louder.
“I said shut your mouth, bloodsucker!” Abbotts bellowed. “Enough of that jibber-jabber of yours!”
Tchaikovsky had no intention of complying. His throaty guffaws echoed to the rafters. “Oh, this is rich,” he said. “One man thwarts you. One lone man kicks the legs from under you. So much for your weapons and your armour and your unnatural strength. So much for your programme of assassination. One mere human makes a mockery of—grrkkk!”
Abbotts grabbed him by the jaw and neck and, before anyone could stop him, twisted hard. Tchaikovsky’s head rotated with a crackle of vertebrae parting, cartilaginous discs popping. His tongue shot out between his fangs. His eyes bulged.
Abbotts shifted his grip and pulled upwards. Skin ripped, muscle and sinew split, tendons were torn asunder. Tchaikovsky’s entire head came free in the soldier’s hands, and Abbots raised it aloft like some grisly trophy. The decapitated body sagged, now just so much dead weight for Giacoia and Child to support. They dropped it, and almost immediately it started the process of rapid atrophy, losing cohesion and becoming hot dust. The head Abbotts was holding did likewise, separately but simultaneously, and he cast it aside. It rolled along the floor, flinging off powdery clouds of decomposing matter, whittling to nothingness as it bounced and spun.
“That’s better,” Abbotts said, brushing dust off his gloves. A grin distended his ravaged face. “Now we can hear ourselves think again.”
Sirens skirled and honked outside, far off but getting louder.
“Get out of there,” Farthingale instructed Jacobsen. “Cut your losses and return to base.” He sounded deeply disgruntled, but nowhere near as disgruntled as Jacobsen himself felt.
“Everyone, quitting time,” Jacobsen said, circling a hand above his head.
The six remaining members of Team Red Eye began scrambling up the walls, making for the broken windows. Lim, with his bum arm, needed help from Child. Berger, too, had an injured arm, her elbow bruised from where she had been shot by Redlaw. Jacobsen offered her assistance, but she refused.
Jacobsen was last to exit the church. Outside, as he catapulted himself up over the eaves and onto the roof, he saw whirling flashes of red and blue light between two rows of nearby buildings. Police and fire crews, doubtless a SWAT unit as well. The vehicles were moving in a slow convoy, lightbars ablaze. They would have arrived a lot sooner if the driving conditions had not been so atrocious.
One man down, Jacobsen thought bitterly to himself as he ran across the snow-padded tiles. Three hurt.
And the mission itself had been compromised, its full remit not achieved.
Whoever this John Redlaw was, he had just gone straight to the number one spot on Colonel Jim Jacobsen’s shit list.
And that was not a good or wise place for anybody to be.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
TINA THREW ANOTHER piece of wood on the fire. Sparks arose, disappearing as they helixed towards the ceiling.
Around her, the vampires huddled. They sat singly or in pairs and their eyes gleamed a horrid crimson in the fireglow.
Redlaw was off by himself in a corner, arms folded across his chest, chin sunk to breastbone. Fast asleep. Snoring ever so slightly.
Old man needed his nap-nap. Tina couldn’t sleep, herself. Too much going on in her head. She was buzzing, a blare of nerves and exhilaration.
Plus, of course, the vampires. Eight of them, one of her, and it wasn’t so long since they’d been lining up to suck her blood. Redlaw had assured her that that had all changed. He was in charge of these vamps now. They wouldn’t dare attack her because she was associated with him.
But Redlaw wasn’t awake right now, was he? And some of the looks that were coming Tina’s way seemed distinctly avaricious. Or perhaps she was imagining it. The fire’s uncertain flicker. The dance of shadows across faces.
The group had taken refuge not in the subway after all, but above ground. Redlaw had changed the plan at the last minute. As they were approaching the tunnel entrance he had spotted the derelict old toothpaste factory and proposed setting up camp there instead.
“It’s a more defensible position,” he had said. “More access points and, crucially, more egress points. More options for retreat than being in a tunnel.”
“And so much cosier than a Holiday Inn,” Tina had said.
“I gave you the chance to quit, Tina. You chose this. Suck it up.”
“Hey, I can still gripe, can’t I?”
“No, you can’t. Not on my watch.”
Behind his back Tina had snapped off a salute at him and muttered, “Aye-aye, cap’n.”
“I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
The factory dated back to the ’thirties, the halcyon era of production lines and mass manufacturing. The interior was cavernous; you could easily picture overall-clad workers manning giant machines that churned out thousands of tubes of toothpaste per hour, dreary toil to create bright smiles. The roof was more or less intact, but wind whistled through cracks and missing panes in the high narrow windows, sending ripples across the puddles on the floor. Pigeons roosted on the ceiling joists, cooing and fluttering. Why no one had demolished the place and built condos, Tina wasn’t sure. She assumed some arcane piece of zoning regulation forbade it, or else campaigners had sued to preserve the factory as an example of heritage architecture or some such. Either way, the legal system, through inaction, had allowed it to fall into rack and ruin.
Several side-chambers adjoined the main central space, formerly offices for management and a cafeteria for the workforce, now stripped bare, débris-strewn. Redlaw had selected a room that was large and windowless and that had a back door which led directly outside, for a quick getaway if necessary. He’d got a fire going, using strips of wallpaper as kindling and slats from rotten pallets as firewood. He’d also instructed the vampires to blockade the factory’s main entrances with cinderblocks, rubble and a few leftover hunks of old rusting machinery. The vampires had done his bidding meekly and eagerly. Tina had had no idea how submissive these creatures could be. It helped lessen her fear of them, if only somewhat.
The more she looked at the vampires, the more fascinated she became. They were a mixed lot, a cross-section of the populace, all ages and ethnicities. One was little more than a child, and the man with her, who acted like her father but wasn’t old enough to be, was a puddingy Goth in a frock coat with frilly shirtcuffs and round blue-tinted spectacles. There was a woman whose Dior party dress and Louboutin slingbacks must have been gorgeous when new, although they were now as ragged and filthy as anything a bag lady might wear. There was a black guy whose slim-hipped figure and elaborate way with a gesture positively screamed gay. In so many respects they seemed like just normal people. Yet they weren’t, not any more.
As a means of distracting herself, Tina took out her camcorder and set about filming. Being behind the lens divorced her from the immediate situation. It provided the illusion of distance. She became objective, someone observing rather than participating.
Slowly she panned round the room, left to right. A rather neat establishing shot, she thought, showing the vampires’ faces, their hunched bodies in a circle round the fire. Capturing the atmosphere of respite and reprieve. Something almost primitive about it, a snatched moment of warmth in a cold, cold world.
“What are you doing?” one of them challenged. The Latino.
“Uh, videoing you guys.”
“You some kind of reporter?”
Tina almost said no, but then she thought, Fuck it, yes I am. She undoubtedly felt more like a reporter than she ever had before. If this wasn’t reportage—the gathering of facts to be relayed to others—then nothing was.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “I hope that’s not a problem. Redlaw’s cool with it. That’s why he’s letting me tag along. I’m kind of a documentarian. About you guys. Telling your stories. You’ve got a story—Miguel, is it?”
The Latino vampire nodded. “Miguel.”
“You’ve got a story, yeah? You all have. What it’s like being what you are. How you came to be that way. Who you were before. It wasn’t always like this for you—skulking, hiding from humans and daylight, living on, y’know, blood. You were people. Are people. You want to talk about that? Now you can. Into this.” She pointed at the camcorder. “To me.”
“Why should we want to talk?” Miguel said, but she could tell his interest was piqued. Whose wouldn’t be? It was a camera. The modern confessional. An opportunity to be recorded for posterity, to unburden yourself to the public, to be someone rather than no one—a view aired, an opinion heard.
“Put your side of things,” Tina said. “Everyone’s scared of vampires. I know I am. But we’re scared of you because we don’t know you, don’t understand you. Maybe if we did, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it’d help your cause, help people accept you.”
Maybe it’d make you think of me as something more than just a potential dinner.
“This is Tina Checkley,” she said, louder this time, narrating for the soundtrack. She would edit out the previous stuff and cut in right at this point. “I’m holed up currently with, like, ten actual, living, breathing vampires. Well, not living or breathing. That’s just a figure of speech. One of them, this guy you can see right now, his name’s Miguel and he’s—How old are you, Miguel?”
“Thirty-six,” said Miguel. “Least, I was two years ago when I got bit. I’ve been thirty-six ever since, I guess you could say.” A brief, wry smile. “Never going to have to turn forty. Never going to have to handle that. No midlife crisis for me.”
“So let’s do this,” Tina said. “Interview with a vampire. Several vampires. Tell me all about yourselves.”
And for the next hour, one after another, the eight of them did.
And Tina forgot herself, forgot the state that she was in—bedraggled, chilled to the bone despite the fire, her clothes and hair smelling like ass—forgot everything and focused exclusively on the job at hand. Collecting narratives. Gathering raw footage. Asking questions. Coaxing. Prodding. Prompting. Being a journalist.
This, for sure, was what she’d been put on earth to do.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ. USED to be a school bus driver. Loved the job. Loved the kids and their ways, their noise, their smiles. Precious cargo. He used to drive that bus like he had fragile porcelain aboard. That was what he missed most, those kids. He had looked on them as though they were his own, the family he didn’t have—would never have.
PATTI MARSDEN. MARRIED, mother of two. She’d been working a late shift at the grocery store one night last summer. She lived in a good neighbourhood. Walking back home was normally safe at any time of day or night. Sure, some dogs had been disappearing lately, there’d been an item in the local paper about it, but everyone assumed it was just a freak event. There’d been rumours of coyotes in the hills and it might have had something to do with that. What actually happened, as she made her way to her apartment that night, she still wasn’t sure. It was a permanent blur in her memory. She was passing the park. A figure leapt down from the trees overhanging the sidewalk. She could remember thinking, God, those teeth! Then pain. Then a period of foggy emptiness, of not knowing who she was or where she was supposed to be, knowing only that she must never see her husband and kids again. For their sake.
DIANE BERTORELLI. SHE’D been a girl who liked her luxuries. Her shoes, her shopping, her cocktails, her pamper sessions at the spa. She went out only with men who could give her those things, meals at the best restaurants, trips to the Hamptons for the weekend, skiing in Aspen, yachting off Cabo. No shame in that. What she was now, this wasn’t her. These old raggedy worn-out clothes, the things she had to eat to survive... This wasn’t her. And do you know what the worst thing was? The sun had become a deadly enemy. The sun she used to love. The sun she used to lie out in whenever possible, get that tan, look healthy...
ANU AHMED, SECOND-generation Muslim American. His father ran a dry-cleaning business. Anu had been at medical college but still helped out his dad at work during the vacations. The plan had been to become a doctor, an oncologist maybe, and earn enough money so that Dad could sell the store and retire and Anu could look after him and Mom. A good son. But not any more. He didn’t know what he was any more—except an unclean abomination.
Mary-Jo Schaeffer, and you know what? This reminded her of an AA meeting. “I’m Mary-Jo and I’m a vampire.” She’d done the twelve step. Done it so many times it was more like the twelve hundred step. Relapse after relapse. And so she guessed it was poetic justice that she’d been drunk, out back of a bar in Danbury, Connecticut, throwing up, when she got attacked and vampirised. Punishment from above or something, maybe. The higher power she was supposed to trust in had got a sick fucking sense of humour, that was all she could say. Making her trade addiction to one kind of liquid for addiction to another kind.
DENZEL LOMAX, THOUGH that was only his stage name. Theatre actor, scraping a living, just. Once, fresh out of drama school, he trod the boards with Pacino, doing Shakespeare on Broadway. Only a couple of lines in the same scene, but still. “You can call me Al,” Pacino said during rehearsals, but Denzel never did. Too in awe. It was always Mr Pacino. And then, coming home late one night after a show, he’d got pounced on. Thought it was an animal, some kind of rabid feral dog. He’d fought back, but... And so now he had another role. A part he had to play. Forever. It was the only way to think about it—that being a vampire was a guise he wore, something he was pretending to be—because otherwise, if he didn’t, he might go mad.
Andy Gregg, and this kid with him, this little girl, her name was Cindy. Andy had turned Cindy. According to the lore, this made him her sire, her his get, and so it was his responsibility to care for her and look after her. Andy used to love reading about vampires. His favourite vampire novelist was Anne Rice, although he liked King’s ’Salem’s Lot and George R.R. Martin’s Fevre Dream well enough. But not I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Too scientific, that one. No magic in it. Because vampires are supernatural creatures. They can’t just be reduced to facts, biological rationales, viruses, allergies and the rest. Where’s the thrill in that? The horror?
CINDY NEWTON. NINE years old. She missed her mom and dad, missed them bad, but she’d gotten used to the idea that she would never be able to see them again. Andy was her mom and dad now. She had her favourite bear with her, Jingle Ted. He used to have a bell inside him, that was how he got his name, only it had stopped making a noise for some reason. She liked the smell of Jingle Ted’s fur. He smelled of how she used to smell, and how her parents used to smell. Sometimes, when she was feeling sad, she’d hold him up to her face, like this, and breathe in. The smell of home.
“THANKS. THANKS, ALL of you.”
Tina switched off the camcorder, dizzy, even a little breathless. She turned round to find Redlaw at her shoulder.
“Been busy?” he said.
“You betcha. Filled up half the memory with just talking heads, but it’s all quality material. Want to see?”
“Another time. I’ve rested, so I think I should go out on patrol. Check the perimeter.”
“You reckon those soldiers could follow us here?”
“I don’t know. The snowstorm should be covering our tracks. But it’s best not to take any chances.” Redlaw turned to the vampires. “I’d like one of you to come with me. A vampire’s senses are far sharper than mine. You.” He clicked his fingers at Denzel Lomax. “You seem an alert sort of bloke. Up you get.”
Denzel Lomax followed Redlaw out of the room, and Tina stowed the camcorder away in her rucksack, no longer thinking of it as a mere item of electronic equipment. It was far more than that now. What she had in the can was something the world had never seen before. Vampires speaking about themselves, voicing their regrets and anxieties. Beneath the monstrous looks and appetites, they were still human. More than just vestiges of their old selves remained. They
were dead but had lives.
Earlier, when she’d told Miguel that vampires were people, she hadn’t exactly meant it. It had been a white lie, blowing smoke up his ass to get him to open up to her.
It seemed, though, that it might actually be the truth.
And it was a truth the public ought to hear, and Tina could hardly wait to get it out there.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
REDLAW AND THE vampire walked the perimeter of the factory site.
“Anything?” Redlaw asked. “Soldiers? Danger?”
The vampire shook his head. “Nothing, so far as I can tell. We’re the only ones for a ways around.”
“Good. It’s Denzel, isn’t it? I caught your name when I overheard you talking to Tina—to her camera.”
“Dennis, actually,” said Denzel. “Dennis is the name I was christened with. But Denzel’s way cooler, and besides, there’s already an actor out there called Dennis Lomax. I checked with Actors’ Equity. TV guy. Done character roles, bit-parts in a few shows, nothing you’d have heard of. We don’t look a thing like each other, on account of he’s old, fat and white and I’m not. He’d never be mistaken for me or me for him. But union rules are union rules.”
“Tell me, Denzel. Are you scared of me?”
“Well, that’s a question, isn’t it? I don’t know. I mean, you’re our shtriga now...”
“Am I?”
“I guess. You keep saying so, and you’re helping us, and you boss us about. Aren’t you our shtriga?”
“Maybe. I’m still adjusting to the idea. Trying it on for size. Would it bother you if I told you I used to police Sunless and hunt and dust rogue ones? Would it make a difference?”
Red Eye - 02 Page 15