by Will Hill
“I’ll take Kate and Larissa down there,” Jamie continued, pointing to a series of rusting metal containers that stood at the edge of the concrete dock, fifteen metres from the river’s edge. “Jack, why don’t you take your squad over there, behind that wall? That way they’ll have to come between us, and we can ambush them from both sides. OK?”
He turned away, ready to jog towards the position he had just described, when Larissa grabbed his arm, and he turned back. The three members of Squad F-7 were not moving, and Jack Williams was staring at him with a look of enormous apology on his open, friendly face.
“What’s the problem?” asked Jamie.
“I take my orders from Jack,” said Shaun Turner, a belligerent look on his face. “Not from you. Nothing personal.”
Temper flared in Jamie’s chest.
It bloody well sounds like it’s something personal, he thought. Does he just naturally hate me, like his dad does?
“Really?” asked Kate, her voice fierce. “You really think now is the time for this petty crap?”
Shaun’s face flushed, but he didn’t look away.
“Jack outranks Jamie,” said Angela, who had the decency to sound embarrassed as she spoke. “In terms of experience. We think he should take point.”
Larissa snarled, and her eyes flickered red. “This is complete bull—”
“Angela’s right,” interrupted Jamie. “Tell us what you want us to do, Jack.”
Larissa looked at him, her face pained on his behalf, but he shot her a tiny smile, pleading with her not to make a big deal out of what was happening. She returned it, and his heart swelled with fierce affection for the vampire girl.
Jack Williams gave him a brief glance, full of gratitude. “Positions as Jamie described,” he said. “Remember that we need at least one vamp alive for questioning. At least one. The new SOP doesn’t apply, which I’m sure we’re all very happy about, but let’s not get carried away. Dead vampires aren’t going to tell us where Dracula is. Let’s move.”
The six dark figures were crouched, ready to scuttle-run to their posts, when the air around them changed; it seemed thicker, as though something huge was altering the pressure. At the same moment, the six Operators realised they could hear something too: a steady thud-thud-thud, and the low rush of breaking water. They looked up the river, into the thick, swirling fog, as the vast, curved prow of the Aristeia burst into view, blinding them with its running lights, its enormous control tower looming far above them. The huge ship was slowing rapidly, slicing through the river parallel to the long concrete dock.
“Move! Now!” hissed Jack, and the six Operators scattered, hunkering low to the ground as they sprinted to the positions that Jamie had suggested. Then Larissa’s head was up, turned to the north, her supernatural hearing picking something up in the dark, sodden night air.
“What is it?” asked Jamie. He was standing with his back to the corner of the container nearest the dock, peering out at the incoming ship. Its size was boggling his mind; the deck was a football-field long, the hull a daunting, vertical wall of steel, the control tower the size of a large office building. It approached with eerie quiet; he could hear no voices, no sounds of any activity on the decks, or below them, just the steady thud of the engines.
“Trucks,” replied Larissa, then turned to look at him. “Three trucks inside the gate, heading this way.”
“Any idea what’s inside them?” asked Jamie.
Larissa nodded.
“Vampires,” she replied. “Lots and lots of vampires.”
12
INSIDE THE VOID
JEREMY’S 24HR TRANSPORT CAFÉ, NORTH OF KÖLN, GERMANY SEVEN WEEKS EARLIER
Frankenstein was jolted awake as the truck shuddered to a halt. He opened his eyes, and looked over at Andreas, the skinny, speed-addicted kid who had given him a lift out of Dortmund as the sun set on the previous day.
“This is as far as I go,” said Andreas. He twitched constantly, gnawing at his fingernails until they bled, but he had shared a flask of soup and some black bread with Frankenstein when they had stopped for petrol, and for that, as well as the lift, the monster was grateful.
“That’s fine,” said Frankenstein. “Thanks for bringing me this far.”
He unwrapped a grey-green hand from the moth-eaten blanket the kind lady at the homeless shelter had given him, and extended it towards Andreas, who shook it. Then he wrapped the blanket tightly round himself, grabbed the plastic bag that contained everything he owned and stepped out into the freezing night.
Frankenstein had woken up four weeks earlier, in the bowels of a fishing boat, without the slightest idea of who he was. When the ship’s captain, a weathered, salt-encrusted old man called Jens, had asked him his name, he had not been able to answer. Subsequent questions – where he lived, his family and friends, and how he had come to be floating adrift in the North Sea with the little finger of his left hand missing and a wound to his neck that should have killed him – were met with the same response: a panicked look of utter confusion. He had lain on the floor of the cabin, as he was too tall to fit into any of the bunks, and tried to remember something, anything, a place he had been, a conversation he had had, a person he had met, but there was a yawning void in the centre of his mind where his memory should have been.
He was weak from the hypothermia that had nearly killed him, that would have killed him had the crew of the Furchtlos not found him tangled in their nets as they drew in the first catch of their trip. The net, studded with orange buoys at regular intervals, had kept him afloat, and was the reason he had not drowned. His Department 19 uniform, made of heat-regulating material that acted in the same way as a wetsuit, was the reason he had not succumbed to the punishing cold of the water; without it the fishermen would have hauled in a corpse with their catch.
By talking with the crew as they ate their vast meals of meat and potatoes, he discovered that he spoke German, English, French and Russian, although he had no memory of having been to the countries where he was told these languages had come from. He talked for a long time with Hans, the boat’s first mate, a veteran of more than forty years’ fishing, and as he listened to the old man’s stories, of places he had been and women he had known, of the adventures of the man’s youth, occasionally Frankenstein had felt something tighten in his mind, as though he had almost been able to feel the edge of something solid, before it slipped away through his fingers.
The crew had sent him on his way when they reached port, with a jumper and a pair of overalls that were far too small for his giant frame. But he appreciated the men’s kindness, and their lack of suspicion; he was half-expecting to see the police and the coastguard waiting for him when the ship steamed into Cuxhaven harbour. But the only people on the dock to greet the boat were the crew’s wives and girlfriends, relieved to see their men home safely once more. The crew, who were fishermen born and raised, and had seen a lifetime of strange things at sea, had clearly decided that the huge grey-green man, whom they had hauled from the water as though he was nothing more than a grossly swollen cod, was none of their business.
Frankenstein had walked off the dock with no idea where he was, beyond the rudimentary picture of European geography that Hans had described to him, and no idea where he might go to begin the process of attempting to piece together who he was.
He was completely lost.
As night fell, and the cold wind drew in around him, carrying heavy flakes of snow with it, he had found a group of homeless men and women beneath a bridge on the outskirts of Cuxhaven. They had not welcomed him, nor offered to share their small amount of food, but they had not driven him away either, and had eventually allowed him to huddle round their brazier, and keep the worst of the cold from his bones. The following day he had headed south, away from the sea; he reached the tiny farming hamlet of Gudendorf as night fell, and the full moon rose above him, sickly yellow and swollen in the clear sky.
Suddenly a bolt of agony had burst thro
ugh his body, driving him to his knees. It felt as though his skin was on fire, as though his bones had been replaced by molten metal, and he screamed up at the moon, as his body began to break. With sickening, agonising crunches, his bones snapped and reset in new shapes. Blood boiled in his veins as thick grey hair sprouted from his skin before his eyes, which had turned a deep, gleaming yellow. His face stretched and lengthened, his teeth bursting from his gums and sharpening into razors, as he fell on to all fours, no longer able to scream; what came from his gaping mouth was a deafening, high-pitched howl.
As the moon shimmered above him and the transformation neared completion, he began to run, shambling forward on four unsteady, newborn legs, then faster and faster, as the last vestiges of his rational self succumbed to the animal that roared in his blood, until he was racing through the dense, snowy forest, towards a distant light and a plume of grey chimney smoke, towards the thick smell of animal fear that drifted through the frozen trees.
The following morning, for the second time in barely a week, Frankenstein had woken up in a strange place, with no memory of how he had arrived there, or what he had done; compounding the strangeness this time was the fact that he was naked, and lying beside a main road.
Mercifully, the road was deserted, as dawn was barely scratching the sky in the east. But even as he looked around in an attempt to get his bearings, the cold of the German winter bit at his naked skin, and he knew he needed to find shelter, quickly. The patch of ground where he had woken up was a circle of damp green grass, the snow thawed away, as though he had been emitting tremendous heat while he slept. He was coated in something sticky, and when he rubbed his hands across his face, they came away streaked with red.
Frankenstein reeled, but then the wind blew hard across him again, and he tried to put the red substance from his mind and concentrate on staying alive. He began to stagger alongside the road, his breath clouding in front of him, towards a gentle slope in the terrain, above which smoke was rising in lazy loops.
Beyond the rise lay a farmhouse, facing away from the road and out over frozen fields and the forest beyond. Frankenstein tried to open the small gate, but his fingers were so cold that they refused to grip; he half-climbed, half-fell over it, his body screaming in pain as he landed in the hard, freezing snow. He staggered towards the house, prepared to risk the likely wrath of whoever it belonged to, knowing that he had to get out of the cold, had to or else he would surely die, when he saw a long washing line strung between the house and a tree that rose from the middle of the garden’s small lawn. He made for it, his feet numb and his grey-green skin now a virulent shade of purple, and hauled clothes down from the line, scattering the pegs on the ground.
Once he was dressed, Frankenstein thumbed a lift in the back of a pick-up truck, burying himself deep beneath a pile of sheepskins, which had carried him as far south as Dortmund. He had spent nearly two weeks in a homeless shelter on Kleppingstraße, only being forced to leave when a kind, nervous woman named Magda had started to take a little too much of a friendly interest in him.
Frankenstein still didn’t know who he was, but he knew that nothing good would have come from encouraging her affection. And so he had left, in the middle of the night, and resumed his journey, following the cargo routes through Germany, looking for something, anything, that might unlock his memory.
Frankenstein watched as Andreas slowly wheeled his truck round, and headed out on to the northbound lane of the road. Behind him were row after row of articulated lorries; huge rigs, eighteen and twenty-two wheeled, their trailers towering above him in the darkness of the parking area. When Andreas’s pick-up had been absorbed into the stream of red lights on the motorway, he made his way through the labyrinth of vehicles towards the diner that lay beyond the filling station.
Jeremy’s was a no-frills kind of place; a simple, greasy, one-storey building, in which Jeremy and his wife Marta sold heaped platefuls of cheap, starchy food to the endless stream of lorry drivers making their way south, to Paris, to Bordeaux, to Spain and Portugal beyond. Most were wired on coffee or amphetamines, and wanted nothing more than something hot to line their stomachs; it was these low expectations that Jeremy and Marta were experts in accommodating.
Frankenstein was not interested in the food, or even the temporary respite from the cold that sitting in one of the café’s linoleum booths would provide. He was only interested in finding a way of continuing his journey, of continuing south. He had no money to offer any of the drivers, and no goods to barter: no drugs, or alcohol, or pornography. There was always a chance that he might find a driver who craved human companionship, who was quietly going crazy at the isolation of being on the road, of the disembodied voices that floated into his cab via CB radio. But it was unlikely; the men who lived this nomadic life did so largely because they wanted as little to do with other human beings as possible.
“Are you a thief?”
The voice was soft, and lilted sweetly on the night air. It seemed to contain no accusation, only curiosity. Frankenstein turned to see the owner of it standing in the shadows between two of the enormous lorries.
It was a little girl, a tiny thing of no more than eight. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, thick, sensible work boots and was holding a small model of a truck in her hand; she was every inch a driver’s daughter. She was frowning at him, staring up at his huge frame, her forehead furrowed.
“I’m not a thief,” Frankenstein replied, lowering his voice. “Are you?”
The little girl smiled, involuntarily, at such a naughty idea, then remembered herself, and frowned again.
“Of course I’m not,” she said, firmly. “This is my daddy’s lorry.” She reached out and touched the wheel of the truck she was standing beside; it was taller than her.
“Where is your daddy?” asked Frankenstein. “You shouldn’t be out here on your own. It’s cold.”
The little girl pointed to Jeremy’s transport café.
“Daddy’s playing cards,” she said. “The clock said he had to stop driving, but he’s not tired.”
“Does he know you’re out here on your own?”
“No,” she replied, proudly. “I sneaked out. No one saw me.”
“You shouldn’t do that. It’s dangerous.”
“Why?” she asked. “Aren’t I safe with you?”
Frankenstein looked down at the tiny figure beside the wheel.
“You’re safe,” he said. “But we should still get you back to your daddy. Come on.”
He held out a huge, mottled hand, and the little girl skipped forward and took it. She smiled up at him as he began to lead her towards the café.
“What’s your name?” she asked, as he stopped at the edge of the parking area, checking that nothing was about to pull up to the fuel pumps.
“Klaus,” he said, leading her forward across the brightly lit forecourt.
“That’s a nice name.”
“Thank you.”
“My daddy’s name is Michael.”
“What about yours? What’s your name?”
“My name is Lene. Lene Neumann.”
“That’s a pretty name,” said Frankenstein.
“You’re nice,” replied Lene, smiling up at the monster that was holding her hand. “I like you. Are you going south? I bet my daddy will give you a lift with us.”
Frankenstein was about to reply when an almighty crash rang out above the noise of the idling engines. He looked at the truck stop, and saw a commotion in the small diner, before the screen door slammed open, banging with a noise like a gunshot against its metal frame.
A man was silhouetted against the fluorescent lighting of the transport café. He was short, and heavy-set, with a baseball cap perched on the top of his round head.
“Lene!” the man bellowed. “Lene! Where are you, sweetheart? Lene!”
The man leapt down from the doorway, and ran across the forecourt in their direction. He would see them as soon as he reached the shade of the fuel
station’s canopy. Behind him, a cluster of men and women followed him out of the diner, all calling Lene’s name.
“That’s my daddy!” exclaimed Lene. “He’s looking for me! I bet we can go when he finds us!”
A sinking feeling settled into Frankenstein’s chest, and as he looked down at the little girl’s hand wrapped tightly in his own, everything seemed to slow down. He saw the rotund figure of Lene’s dad pass under the canopy and out of the blinding spotlights that illuminated the entrance and exit ramps. The man’s face was ghostly pale, his eyes wide, his mouth a trembling O of panic. The men who were following him across the forecourt were all drivers, some of them carrying wrenches and crowbars. Frankenstein looked again at his hand, and Lene’s hand, and realised what was going to happen, realised it was too late to do anything about it.
“Daddy!” cried Lene, and the group of running men bore to their left, adjusting their course towards the sound of the little girl’s voice, like a flock of birds in flight. Lene’s father skidded to a halt in front of them, and took in the scene he found before him.
“Lene,” he said, gasping for breath. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“Don’t be silly, Daddy,” his daughter smiled. “This is my friend, Klaus.”
The rest of the men drew up behind Lene’s father, weapons in their hands and looks of anger on their faces.
“He’s your friend?” asked Michael Neumann. “That’s nice, sweetheart. But you come over here next to me now, all right? Come on.”
Frankenstein let go of Lene’s hand; she ran happily over to her father, and hugged his leg. Her father stroked her hair, his gaze never leaving Frankenstein, his eyes like burning coals.
“You shouldn’t sneak off like that,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “How many times have I told you? It scares me when I don’t know where you are. You don’t want to scare me, do you?”