Red Eye - 02

by James Lovegrove

  “Ranking officer,” said Berger.

  “But in that case, I’ll be last. There won’t be anything left by then.”

  “Look at it another way. You get the privilege of delivering the coup de grâce.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Abbotts was mollified. “That’s true. Just make sure he’s still alive when my turn comes, everybody.”

  Giacoia lined himself up in front of Redlaw, fists clenched.

  Farthingale looked on from the terrace, hands braced on the balustrade. He knew then how it must have felt to be a Roman emperor at the Circus Maximus, watching the Games that he had laid on, suffused with pride and a sense of his own greatness. Below was a man—a Christian, no less—who had been thrown to the proverbial lions. His life was forfeit, and it was all Farthingale’s doing. Farthingale had brought him to this predicament. Farthingale was now going to preside over his slow, torturous death.

  All the money in the world couldn’t have made J. Howard Farthingale III feel any more sublimely powerful than he did at that moment.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  GIACOIA PLANTED HIS feet and landed three solid, chunky roundhouses on Redlaw’s cheek. The lieutenant had done a bit of amateur boxing as a kid, and his technique was still good—pivoting off his back foot, his arm a rigid L-shape, most of the force of the blows coming from the twisting of his upper body. Redlaw’s head snapped sideways with each blow.

  Giacoia stepped back.

  “Hit him again, loot,” Abbotts urged. “Harder. Like you mean it.”

  Giacoia came at Redlaw again and drove a fearsome uppercut into the underside of his jaw.

  Redlaw recoiled. He shook his head like a tiger clearing water from its whiskers.

  “Your colleague’s right,” he said. “Your heart’s not in it, lieutenant. You’re not comfortable with this at all. I can see it in your eyes. You think it’s wrong.”

  “Shut up.” Giacoia punched him again. “Shut your mouth.” And again. “That’s for Jacobsen.” Again. “And that’s for Larousse.”

  Redlaw spat blood. “Revenge is such a petty motive. So shallow.”

  “Sergeant Child, hold the rat-bastard still.”

  Child put an arm round Redlaw’s neck, and Giacoia thumped him repeatedly in the abdomen.

  Child let go, and Redlaw was left bent double, wheezing and gasping.

  With an effort, he raised his head once more.

  “After I’m dead, all you’ll feel is empty and guilty,” he said. He was starting to shiver with the cold, his lips turning blue. “And it won’t go away. It’ll never go away. You’ll feel like that for the rest of your life. All of you will.”

  “What does it take to make you stop talking?” Giacoia said.

  “More than you’ve got. I don’t mind being martyred. I’ve done what I believe is right and I can go to my grave secure in that knowledge. I wonder how many of you could say the same.”

  With a cross between a grunt and a scream, Giacoia slammed his fists into Redlaw a dozen times more. When the onslaught was over, blood was trickling from a cut to Redlaw’s forehead. One side of his mouth had begun to swell up. One eye was puffing shut.

  “Uh, if I could just say something...”

  All eyes turned to Tina. She had a hand tentatively raised, like an anxious pupil in class.

  “Hate to butt in when you all are having so much fun,” she went on, “but there’s something you ought to know.”

  “Can it wait?” said Berger.

  “Kind of not really. You see, Redlaw didn’t come here alone.”

  “Yes. You were with him.”

  “No, apart from me. Others. That’s why he’s so calm.”

  “Others?” said Farthingale. “What others?”

  “Who do you think? His vampire pals. The ones he shtrigas for. They crossed over the ice, too. Secretly. Behind us.”

  “What!? What for?”

  “Backup. Redlaw’s worked out this whole plan with them. He told them to follow behind us at a safe distance. In case something like this”—she pointed to the kneeling, beaten-up Redlaw—“happened. It’s his insurance policy.”

  “Judas,” Redlaw growled.

  Tina shot him an apologetic but defiant look. “I’ve started down that road. Might as well go the whole way.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Berger. “Vampires are en route to rescue him?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you only just thought to mention this fact?”

  “Yeah. So? I forgot.”

  “Hell of an important piece of information to forget.”

  “Look, lady, a lot’s been going on,” Tina said hotly, “including you holding a gun to my head when you didn’t have to. In all the confusion, it slipped my mind. I’m telling you now, aren’t I? You still have a fair warning.”

  “So how many of them are there?” said Lim.

  “Not many. A handful.”

  “What’s a handful?”

  “Six or seven, thereabouts.”

  “And are they dangerous?”

  “Of course they’re dangerous. They’re vampires. Probably not as dangerous as you, but still...”

  “Okay,” said Berger with resolve. “New intel, change of plan. Giacoia, Lim, go down and run a sweep of the island perimeter. Look for these vampires. Flush them out. Terminate on sight. Got that?”

  Giacoia could have resented having orders barked at him by a junior officer, but in the event he seemed relieved to be assigned a new task. Anything so as not to have to keep hitting a trussed-up, helpless human being.

  As he and Lim loped off down the hillside, Berger turned to Farthingale. “Sir? Maybe you should think about going indoors, bunkering down. At least until the vampire threat is negated.”

  “No,” Farthingale replied. “I have faith in you and your men. I feel perfectly safe. Shall we get on with teaching Redlaw the error of his ways?”

  “As you wish,” said Berger. “Guess I’m next.” She flipped the Cindermaker round, holding it by the barrel. “A pistol-whipping with your own sidearm,” she said to Redlaw. “That’s going to hurt in more ways than one.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-NINE

  DOWN AT THE shore, Giacoia and Lim scanned in every direction. Nothing but ice from here to the mainland.

  Behind them, up at the house, they could hear the repeated hearty smack of gunmetal striking flesh. Each blow was accompanied by a hollow, involuntary cry from Redlaw.

  “She’s giving the guy a pounding,” Lim remarked.

  “No wonder,” said Giacoia. “He killed her man.”

  “So Berger and Jacobsen, they were an item, huh? I never knew.”

  “Me, I suspected. Woman like that, all cute and fierce, she has to be boinking somebody. The colonel seemed as good a candidate as any. Also, sometimes I caught them giving each other these looks, you know? Like they were passing notes in class. Now, focus. I reckon we should split up. You go that way, clockwise round the edge of the island. I’ll go counterclockwise, and we’ll rendezvous on the other side. If you see something moving and it’s not me, shoot.”

  “Roger that—Wait.” Lim took a few steps along the jetty. “You hear that, loot?”

  “No.”

  “Movement. Not sure where it’s coming from. Somewhere out there.”

  Giacoia listened. “It’s just the ice cracking. Sounds like a goddamn bowl of Rice Krispies.”

  “No, I’m sure there’s something else.” Lim climbed down the jetty ladder, onto the ice. He unshouldered his rifle.

  “Be careful.”

  Lim moved out further on the ice, head cocked. Presently, Giacoia joined him. He thought that he had perhaps heard something too, buried in amongst all the glacial sounds. A kind of scratching. Claws scraping.

  The two soldiers trod warily, alert, making regular visual confirmation of each other’s position.

  “Anything?” said Giacoia.

  “No. Seems to have stopped. Maybe I�
�Whoa, there it is again. Still can’t pinpoint it, dammit. It’s like it’s close enough that I should be seeing what’s making it, but...” Lim’s voice trailed off.

  “But what?” Giacoia briefly glanced away, checking his six o’clock.

  “Oh God. It’s coming from—”

  There was a crack, a shattering sound. Giacoia whirled. Lim. Where had Lim gone?

  “Lim? Corporal Lim? Where the fuck are you?”

  Nothing. No reply.

  “Justin?” Giacoia said. “If you can hear me, answer.”

  It was eerie. Lim had just... vanished. There one moment out on this open ice field; the next moment, not there.

  And now Giacoia discerned the scraping again. It was loud and clear this time, emanating from very nearby. The noise a vampire’s talons might make when their owner was dragging them across ice.

  But if there was a vamp here, where in hell was it? He’d surely be able to see the creature.

  Then it dawned on Giacoia.

  He looked down at his feet.

  That same instant, the ice beneath him erupted. Arms shot upwards through it. Taloned hands clamped onto his legs. Giacoia was hauled down into freezing back water.

  It happened so fast, he wasn’t even able to squeeze off a round.

  The hands pulled him down deep. He resisted. He fought. But he hadn’t had a chance to draw in a breath before he was submerged. There was no air in his lungs, and already panic was taking hold, dread of drowning.

  The cold was shocking, too. Numbing.

  Above, a dim gibbous disc of light marked the hole in the ice he had been dragged down through. It was growing smaller and fainter.

  Vampires didn’t need to breathe. Giacoia did.

  His lungs were crying out for oxygen.

  His muscles felt weak. His struggles were getting feebler by the second.

  Now the hole was so tiny, it looked like a distant star.

  Giacoia opened his mouth. Inhaled reflexively.

  Icy darkness roared in.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Clara asked for the umpteenth time.

  She was growing restless and curious, and Rozetta knew this was just what Mr Farthingale didn’t want.

  “Let’s put on a DVD,” Rozetta said. “How about this one? You haven’t watched this one in a long time. It’s a Pixar. You love Pixar.”

  “No. Bored of TV.” Clara had been having a kids’ show marathon since four that afternoon, channel-hopping at whim between Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Farthingale had given Rozetta strict instructions. Clara could do what she wanted, eat whatever she asked for, stay up however late she felt like, as long as she didn’t move from the den. She was to remain in the den until further notice. By no means was she to roam through the house, and she was definitely not allowed anywhere near its landward sections, which included her bedroom.

  Rozetta hadn’t asked why. She didn’t want to know why. None of her business, just as it was none of her business that the rest of the domestic staff had been sent away and then those soldiers had arrived. Whatever her employer was up to, it wasn’t anything good, she could tell. The less involved in it she was, the less she saw and could be held accountable for, the better.

  But Clara was beginning to get suspicious. Rozetta was being so nice to her, letting her eat all the ice cream and candy she could manage, and it was way past bedtime and nobody had even mentioned pyjamas and teeth-brushing yet, and Clara obviously didn’t mind that at all, but it was also odd. It was a break with routine, and breaks with routine unsettled her.

  Something was up. She could sense it.

  “I think I’d like to stretch my legs,” she said, standing up. “I’ve been sitting on my butt for ages.”

  “No,” Rozetta said crisply, and then, more softly, again, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “How about some MTV, Clara? I think there’s a special on tonight about that boy band you like.”

  “Howie hates me seeing MTV.”

  “Howie will never have to find out. It’ll be our secret.”

  “But he says it makes me too noisy, because I sing all the songs afterwards. For, like, days. Drives him crazy.”

  “Then sing to yourself, in your head, not out loud,” Rozetta suggested.

  “Oh, okay. That’s a good idea.”

  Clara tuned the channel selector to MTV, and pounding music filled the den.

  Which was handy, because Rozetta was convinced she had just heard a cry of pain coming from outdoors.

  “Sandwich, Clara?”

  “Nah.”

  “‘No, thank you.’”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine. Full.”

  “I’m going to fix myself one, okay?”

  “’Kay.”

  “Stay put. Don’t move from this room.”

  “What if I need to make pee-pee?”

  “Hold it ’til I get back, then I’ll take you.”

  ROZETTA HEADED OUT to the kitchen, which lay just a short corridor away. It was at the eastern end of the house, part of a block that nestled against the slope of the hillside. On the way, she listened out. No further screams. Perhaps she had just imagined it. She hoped so. God forbid that her employer had gone completely insane.

  The moment she entered the kitchen, she realised something was amiss.

  A chilly draught.

  Her eye went straight to the windows.

  A broken pane.

  She sensed she wasn’t alone.

  A presence behind her.

  She turned.

  It was a man. He was dressed in black. Old-fashioned clothing. Like he was going to a funeral a hundred years ago. He was chubby, bordering on overweight. His eyes were deep scarlet.

  Rozetta’s hand darted to the tiny gold crucifix that hung round her neck. She was a good Catholic. She had complete, unswerving faith.

  She held the crucifix forward, a shield and a weapon.

  “I know you,” she said to the intruder. Terror was coursing through her, so much so that she felt lightheaded and close to fainting. Yet the Lord would protect her. The Lord would. “Aswang. Demon. Bloodsucker. Get away from me. I command you, in the name of Blessed Virgin, Jesus and all the saints, leave me alone.”

  The vampire, Andy Gregg, just smiled.

  “That shit don’t work on me,” he said. “I’ve lived in a church. I’m hardened.”

  Rozetta screeched and made a desperate dash for the knife block on the sideboard.

  Andy, for all his bulk, was faster. He beat her to it, standing in her way.

  “Our shtriga told us we should remember what we are,” he said. “Apex predators. He said there are times when we just have to be what we’re meant to be and take what’s ours.”

  Rozetta whimpered. “Please. No.”

  In the Philippines, she had been raised on stories of the aswang, a monster who stole babies from their cribs and drained men of their lifeblood, an evil thing with a special liking for foetuses and cadavers. She could recall the many bad dreams she had had as a little girl—nightmares about terrible, red-eyed undead beings sneaking in through her bedroom window and biting open her veins and drinking deep.

  The aswang was real. It was fact, not folklore. The whole world knew that now. What had once been dismissed as superstition was, after all, truth.

  Her entire adult life, Rozetta had prayed she would never actually meet an aswang—her childhood nightmare made flesh.

  Those prayers had held her in good stead—until today.

  Fangs bristled.

  So many. So wickedly sharp.

  THE DEN DOOR opened. Clara didn’t even glance round.

  Someone came in and sat down beside her.

  Only after the pop video she’d been watching ended did Clara take a look to her left.

  It wasn’t Rozetta, as she had expected. It was a girl. Clara didn’t know her. She had never seen her before. But she was pretty, in a pale sort of way, a
nd she had a cute, rather raggedy teddy bear with her.

  “Hi,” said Clara.

  “Hi,” said the girl.

  “Where’s Rozetta?”

  “I don’t know. Who’s Rozetta?”

  “My friend. She looks after me. Who are you?”

  “I’m Cindy.”

  “Hi, Cindy. I’m Clara. Who’s your bear?”

  “Jingle Ted.”

  “Cool name.”

  “Thanks. He doesn’t jingle any more, though. He used to, but he broke.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay. What are we watching?”

  “MTV.”

  “Is there anything else on?”

  “What do you like?”

  “All kinds of stuff.”

  “You like Transylvanian Families?”

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “I love it. It’s my best show.”

  “Let’s watch that, then.”

  “Sure. Why not? I’ve got a whole bunch of episodes TiVo’ed.”

  Clara pulled up the TiVo menu onscreen and started clicking through.

  Cindy nestled up a little closer to her. “That’s a great TV. You have such a cool house.”

  “I know. My big brother’s a billionaire. Oh, this is a good one. Felix Fanger’s Night Off. It’s the one where Felix bunks off school for the whole night, and the Deadmaster keeps on trying to catch him.”

  Cindy linked her arm through Clara’s, and together, companionably, the two of them settled down to watch the show.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-ONE

  BERGER WAS PANTING hard and, in spite of the cold, perspiring freely. The butt of the Cindermaker was drippingly slick with Redlaw’s blood.

  “You want I should take over?” Child asked.

  “Just need a breather, sergeant. I’ll be back to it in a moment.”

  “How about me?” said Tina.

  All three soldiers—Berger, Child, Abbotts—looked at her.

  “What you on about?” said Child.

  “Well... Can’t I have a go?”

  “Beating him?” said Berger.