He sounded very pleased with this piece of extemporising.
“But that’s it now,” he went on, stern again. “My last indulgence to you. No more. You shut the project down and you shut it down tight.”
“And what if there are foreign powers out there who’d be interested in my process?” said Farthingale. “Governments less scrupulous and sensitive? We live in a globalised economy. What’s to stop me tendering Porphyrian out to the highest bidder?”
“I would advise strongly against such a course of action,” said the President, deadly earnest. “Not unless you’re really keen to swap those bespoke Armani two-pieces for an orange jumpsuit—forever.”
“You’d infringe my right to trade freely on the international market?”
“Yes, as long as you’re infringing my right to drink my morning coffee without suffering acid reflux. I’ve made my feelings clear, Farthingale. I can’t put it any more plainly than this. Porphyrian is over. Go off and make a whole load more millions some other way. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr President.”
“Oh, and Farthingale?”
“Yes?”
“Lose this number. You ever call me on it again, you’ll be on a plane to Cuba so fast your feet won’t even touch the ground.”
Farthingale stared at the phone’s screen, which read Call Ended. His knuckles whitened. He hurled the phone across the room. It collided with the walnut vanity unit, rebounded and fell to the floor. Somehow, miraculously, it remained intact. He went over to pick it up and try smashing it again.
Before he could, the door opened and in walked Clara. She was wearing her Felix Fanger pyjamas, which Farthingale had commissioned to be made specially for her, since the Transylvanian Families clothing line did not normally cater for the adult market. The fabric had repeating patterns of Felix Fanger himself interspersed with his catchphrase.
“Morning, Howie!” Clara cried merrily. “Have you seen how much snow there is outside? We can make the most massivest snowman ever! He could be a giant, like a hundred feet tall.”
A wave of blind fury overcame Farthingale. Rounding on Clara, he roared, “Get out! Get the fuck out!”
His sister recoiled as though he had slapped her. “Howie...?”
“What part of ‘get out’ do you not understand?”
Clara’s lower lip began to tremble.
“You fucking freak!” Spittle flew from Farthingale’s mouth. He swatted at her. “You monstrous obese Mongoloid! I’m not building any snowman with you, not even a ‘most massivest’ one. God, you’re such an imbecile you can’t even speak English properly. Go on, get the fuck out of my sight. I can’t bear to look at you. Makes me sick to think I’m even related to you.”
Tears spilled from Clara’s eyes. She retreated from the room, bent and sobbing, and fled down the corridor. After a moment’s hesitation, Farthingale went after her, flooded with remorse. Clara ran fast, but he had a fair idea where she would be heading. So did Rozetta, who had overheard the altercation from her bedroom and emerged in nightgown and slippers to see what she could do to assist. Together, Farthingale and the Filipina nurse chased after Clara to the safe room.
The safe room lay at almost the exact heart of the house, more or less equidistant from the furthermost point of every wing and floor. It had ventilation, phone lines, toilet facilities, enough food and water to last three people a week, and a secret compartment containing a million dollars’ worth of American Gold Eagle coins, just in case. The walls were foot-thick concrete and the door was Kevlar-impregnated with reinforced hinges and lock plate. The room could, the architect claimed, withstand hurricane, terrorist attack, and brute-force entry attempt by burglar.
Opening up the safe room was a simple matter of slapping a pressure switch mounted on the wall outside. At one time, sealing yourself inside it used to be equally straightforward. Then one day Clara, mid-tantrum, had shut herself in the safe room and refused to budge. For two hours Farthingale and Rozetta had tried to winkle her out. It had taken the promise of heaps of candy, a spending spree at FAO Schwarz, and, ultimately, a trip to Disneyworld, before she finally consented to hit the door release switch. Since then, in order to avoid a repeat incident, Farthingale had had an alphanumeric keypad installed inside the room, operable by a code sequence only he knew.
Sure enough, Clara was sequestered inside the safe room now, curled up on the floor next to a stack of bottled water.
“Clara...” Farthingale began.
“Nooooo!” Clara screeched. She covered her ears.
“Clara, listen to me. Please. I don’t know what came over me. I was up late and haven’t slept well, and my ITP, my condition, it makes me tetchy sometimes, you know that. Howie Goat Gruff, remember? That’s who I am when I’m in a bad mood. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m under a lot of pressure. Work, that sort of thing. You understand?”
“Do you hear what Howie’s saying, honey?” said Rozetta. “He’s telling you he’s sorry for what he did.”
“Don’t care,” Clara snapped. “He called me horrid names. He tried to hit me. He said I’m a monster. I’m not a monster. He’s the monster.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” said Rozetta. “How about I make you a nice breakfast? Freshly cooked pancakes with syrup and Lucky Charms on top. Your favourite. How about that?”
But Clara just wailed with anguish, inconsolable.
“Clara,” said Farthingale sternly, taking a step across the safe room threshold. “Really, that’s quite enough.”
Clara lashed out at him with her foot. Farthingale clenched a fist, and might well have used it had not Rozetta intervened. Pushing him gently aside, the nurse knelt down beside Clara and enveloped her in a hug. Clara buried her face in Rozetta’s nightgown and howled as though her heart was breaking.
Rozetta made a gesture to Farthingale that was both reassuring and dismissive. I’ve got this. You go. Nothing you can do right now.
Reluctantly, Farthingale withdrew.
MINUTES PASSED IN the safe room. Then Clara looked up at Rozetta with a tear-streaked face and said, “Howie doesn’t love me.”
Rozetta replied, “He loves you very much, Clara.”
“But he was so mean to me.”
“People do mean things when they’re upset or angry. But not on purpose.”
“Yeah, but lately he’s been acting so weird. What’s wrong with him? Is it his blood thing? Is it getting worse?”
“I don’t know, honey. I don’t think so.”
But what Rozetta had noticed was that her employer was spending significantly more time at Far Tintagel these days than he ever used to. It wasn’t that he had become a recluse, exactly, but he was definitely not travelling as much as he had done before his ITP diagnosis. He was visiting his offices in Boston and New York far less often, and business trips abroad were almost a thing of the past. He conducted most of his work electronically.
It was as if Mr Farthingale didn’t feel safe out there in the big wide world any more, knowing that a blow to the head might lead to a fatal brain haemorrhage or an accidental gash might cause him to bleed to death. On the island there was less chance of anything like that occurring, so here, as much as possible, he stayed.
His home had become something like a prison. And that, surely, could not be good for the balance of a man’s sanity.
“The main thing,” she said to Clara, “is that you can find it in your heart to forgive him when he hurts your feelings. Do you think you can forgive Howie, Clara?”
Clara sniffed a gelatinous frill of mucus back up into her nose. “I don’t know. I think so. Maybe.”
“Good girl.”
But Clara’s blue-green eyes were hard. “I only said maybe.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“WE CAN’T STAY here,” Redlaw told the assembled vampires and Tina. “That much is obvious. The factory’s not safe any more. We need to find somewhere else.”
“Bu
t where?” asked Patti Marsden. A panicky hand clutched her Hi! I’m PATTI badge as though it were some kind of religious talisman. “Where are we going to go?”
“And how?” added Anu Ahmed. “We can’t just walk out. Not until nightfall.”
“True,” said Redlaw. “And we may not even have until nightfall. Sunlight poses a threat to our attackers, but not to the same extent that it does to true Sunless like you. That man out there has only been burned where his skin is directly exposed. Covered up from head to foot, he’d be fine. So it mightn’t be long at all before the rest of his comrades come after us.”
“What about the subway tunnels?” said Denzel Lomax. “They’re right below our feet.”
“How are you proposing to get to them? Dig?”
“Uh, no. I just thought...”
“Transportation. That’s what we need. Some sort of vehicle we can all fit in. Getting out of Manhattan is paramount. This city’s too small, too crowded, too confined. We’re too easily found here. Anyone know where we could find such a vehicle? I’m open to suggestions. Tina? Anyone?”
Shrugs. Blank looks.
“You talking about a van, a panel truck, an RV, something like that?” said Anu.
“Yes.”
“Going out and boosting one?”
“Borrowing,” said Redlaw.
Miguel raised a hand. “I think I might have an idea.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, you see, I used to be a bus driver. School buses.”
“I like the sound of this already.”
“I’m guessing there’s no school today. Snow day. So the entire bus fleet will be sitting doing nothing at the depot.”
“And where is the depot?”
“My runs were around Hamilton Heights, way uptown, and I’d pick up my designated ride from a place just off the Henry Hudson Parkway. But there’s one nearer than that, in the Meatpacking District, around the Gansevoort and Washington intersection, near that park they made on the old elevated rail track, the High Line.”
“How far?”
“Not very. A mile, as the crow flies. Reckon an hour on foot, allowing for the snow.”
“And what’s the security like there?”
“If it’s anything like uptown, then minimal,” said Miguel. “Wire fence. Supervisor in a hut. Maybe not even that, today. If drivers aren’t going to turn up, neither’s he going to turn up.”
“And where would I find the keys to one of the buses?”
“Inside the hut. It’s not what you’d call a sophisticated operation. Department of Education doesn’t go in for infrared alarm systems and such. Hasn’t got the budget, and anyway a school bus isn’t high on anyone’s list when it comes to grand theft auto.”
“And actually driving one? Is it hard? Anything I should know?”
“Nothing to it. They don’t exactly turn on a dime, and the gear ratios are for shit, but apart from that it’s straightforward enough. Temperatures like these, you’ll probably want to let her idle for a few minutes before moving off. If the engine isn’t warm she’ll stall on you every couple of hundred yards.”
“Thanks, Miguel,” said Redlaw. “Can you draw me a map? Quickest route to this Meatpacking District?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Tina. “I’ll take you there myself.”
“Okay.”
“But on one condition.”
“What?”
“I’m starving. Haven’t eaten since I can’t remember when. My blood sugar’s in the basement. So we stop off on the way for a meal.”
“Agreed,” said Redlaw. “I could do with a bite myself.”
“And, er, speaking of bites...” said Miguel.
“We’re hungry too,” said Diane Bertorelli.
“Crazy hungry,” said Mary-Jo Schaeffer.
“There are pigeons,” Redlaw said. “Catch yourselves some.”
“There’s also the guy.” Miguel jerked a thumb. “Out there. Not long dead. We could...”
Redlaw realised they were asking for his consent. And his connivance.
“All right,” he said, and headed outside.
The soldier lay twisted within his bonds. His head was a hairless ovoid, hard and black, petrified almost, like a chunk of coal, ears gone, nose a misshapen lump. His hands were brittle and spindly, bone protruding through a thin envelope of charred skin.
Redlaw grabbed him by his stockinged feet, wheeled him round and started lugging him back into the factory.
Halfway there, he detected a low moan.
The soldier’s rigid lips had parted. One set of eyelids cracked open to reveal a sliver of white sclera.
Redlaw paused only briefly, then dragged him the rest of the way indoors.
“He’s still alive,” he said to the vampires. “Somehow. Just. So you make sure you drain him fully. This is one person I do not want coming back.”
“Eight empty bellies?” said Miguel. “We’re going to drain him, all right.”
As Redlaw and Tina prepared to leave, Redlaw said, “We’ll only be a couple of hours. Sit tight. Lie low. Be on your guard.”
But the vampires paid him little heed. They had already begun loosening the soldier’s bonds and tearing off his battle fatigues. Soon, pale flesh was exposed, and the vampires bared their fangs and knelt down and started gnawing holes. As blood welled up they guzzled greedily and gratefully, tongues flicking in and out of the wounds. The soldier’s body trembled and shuddered, and something that could have been a groan rattled in his throat.
Tina managed to grab a few seconds of footage of the vampires at their banquet, before Redlaw stuck a hand over the camera lens.
“Aw, come on!”
“No. Give them some privacy,” Redlaw said.
“But it’s vampires eating...”
“Which is something the wider public doesn’t want to see.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Then it’s something I don’t want the wider public seeing.”
“Hey, this isn’t some puff piece I’m putting together, Redlaw,” Tina said. “I’m not doing PR for you. I’m out to show it how it is. Vampires in the raw. Red in tooth and claw and all that. Like your Sir David Attenborough and his BBC nature docs. You wouldn’t try to censor me if I was him.”
“But you aren’t. And these aren’t animals.” Redlaw took her firmly by the elbow. “Now let’s go and find ourselves a bus.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
UP ON EAST 84th, Team Red Eye’s five remaining members sat in stunned, dejected silence.
“So that’s the long and the short of it,” said the voice on the speakerphone. It was their employer, J. Howard Farthingale III. “The Porphyrian Project is being terminated, effective as of now. I can’t say I’m happy about this, and I’m guessing you people won’t be either. But it’s out of my hands. An authority greater than myself has spoken, and I must obey. We’ll begin the process of weaning you off the PP-66 straight away. This means a programme of increasingly weaker doses. That way there’s no likelihood of ‘cold turkey,’ and the physiological side-effects of coming off the formula, if there are any, will be minimised. The techs will give you all the support and assistance they can during the decommissioning process. Our estimate is that within a week to ten days you’ll be, for want of a better word, clean, at which point you’ll be free to leave. Are there any questions?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Giacoia. “I have one. Under the circumstances, what’s the pay situation?”
“If you check your contracts, you’ll find there’s a layoff clause. Each of you receives a very generous severance package, amounting to a lump sum in the region of thirty-five thousand dollars apiece, scaled according to rank. Any other questions?”
“Yes,” said Abbotts. “What about Larousse? He had an ex-wife and son down in Corpus Christi. The bitch was bleeding him dry with alimony payments but he coughed up ’cause he loved that kid. You going to give them a little extra
? Being as how Kyle was KIA and all.”
“Private Larousse’s relicts will be adequately recompensed for their loss, yes,” said Farthingale. “That, too, is in the contract. Is that it? Nothing else?”
Chief Warrant Officer Berger was hunched forwards, intently scraping under the nail of one index finger with the other. Of all the five soldiers seated around the table, she seemed the hardest hit by what Farthingale had had to say.
Scowling, she looked up. “I’d like to get something straight with you, Mr Farthingale,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Did I hear you right about Colonel Jacobsen? He’s dead?”
“I’m afraid that’s the only inference I can draw.”
“And”—Berger’s voice cracked ever so slightly—“he went off chasing after some vampires solo?”
“Correct. I advised him against it, mostly because—”
“Because the vamps in question have a human ally. This Englishman who got Larousse.”
“Indeed. And who also got the colonel.”
“Then, sir,” said Berger, thin-lipped, ice cold, “might I respectfully ask that we go hunt the bastard down and teach him who he’s messing with?”
“You’re entitled to ask that,” said Farthingale, “and a half-hour ago I’d have said yes, by all means, with my blessing. However, thanks to the aforementioned ‘authority greater than myself,’ I can’t actually allow anything like that any more. Porphyrian is terminated and that’s that. Whatever feelings you may have—and believe me, I share them—you cannot act on them on my watch. Payback in your own time, once the PP-66 has been completely flushed out of you and you’re no longer in my direct employ, is entirely your own business. If you’re willing to wait until then, you’ll hear no objections from me. None whatsoever. In fact, I’ll be cheering you on. In the meantime, though, you have no alternative but to hold your fire.”
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