by Will Hill
Lene looked up at her father, an expression of terrible worry on her small face.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”
“It’s all right,” he replied, still staring at Frankenstein. “I want you to go with Angela and wait inside, OK? Daddy will be there in a minute, and then we can go. All right?”
Lene nodded. A teenage girl wearing a white waitress uniform stepped forward, looking at the monster with obvious disgust, and took Lene’s hand. The little girl waved at Frankenstein as she was led away. He raised his hand to wave back.
When the door of the diner clanged shut a second time, the group of lorry drivers stepped slowly towards Frankenstein, who found himself backing away down the narrow space between two rigs.
“What were you doing with my little girl, mister?” asked Michael Neumann, his voice trembling with anger. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
Frankenstein knew that nothing he could say would change what was about to happen, but he tried anyway.
“I was bringing her back to you,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “She was hiding from you, and I told her it wasn’t safe. I was bringing her back.”
“He’s lying, Michael,” said one of the other drivers, a huge man in a leather jacket that was creaking at the seams. “I’d bet my last cent on it. He knows he’s caught.”
“I’m telling the truth,” said Frankenstein. “She told me you were playing cards and she sneaked out. She saw me next to your truck and asked me if I was a thief. I’m not lying.”
“What were you going to do to my daughter?” asked Lene’s father, his voice little more than a whisper. “What were you going to do if we hadn’t stopped you?”
You didn’t stop me, thought Frankenstein, anger spilling through him. If I was the kind of person you think I am, I’d be twenty miles down the road with your daughter and you’d never see her again. Because you were playing cards instead of watching her. Because you—
The thought was driven from his mind as a crowbar crashed down on the back of his neck, sending him to his knees. One of the drivers had crept round the back of the rig that Frankenstein had been retreating along; now he stood over the fallen giant with the bar in his hand, bellowing.
“He’s down, boys!” the man roared. “Let’s show him what we do to his kind!”
The men surged forward, their weapons raised, Michael Neumann in the lead. Rage exploded through Frankenstein; he erupted to his feet, his enormous frame jet black in the shadows between the trucks, and grabbed one of the drivers by the neck. The man’s roar died as his throat was constricted by the monster’s huge hand, and then he was jerked off his feet and into the air, as Frankenstein threw him against the side of one of the trailers with all his might. The man crashed into the thin metal, leaving a huge dent, then slid to the ground, blood spraying from his head.
The rest of the men skidded to a halt, their eyes wide. This was not how it was meant to go; they were supposed to teach the stranger a lesson, and leave him on the ground while they went back inside and finished their game.
“Come on!” shouted Michael, his voice faltering. He ran forward, a torque wrench raised, but then the enormous shadow of Frankenstein engulfed him, and he stopped. He stared up into the terrifying face of the monster, and his courage deserted him, along with the men who had accompanied him; they fled back towards the café, shouting for someone to call the police as they did so.
Frankenstein reached out and took the wrench from the man’s hand. Lene’s father offered no resistance; he was transfixed by the sight of the giant man standing over him.
Frankenstein lowered his head until it was level with the man’s. Breath rushed out of his mouth and nostrils in huge white clouds, and blood trickled over his shoulder from where the crowbar had split the skin of his neck.
“Next time,” he said, his voice like ice, “pay more attention to your daughter than to your cards. Do you hear me?”
Michael Neumann nodded, shaking.
“Good,” said Frankenstein, and dropped the wrench. It clattered to the ground at Michael’s feet, beside the unconscious shape of the man who had been thrown against the trailer. Michael turned and ran, without looking back.
Frankenstein prowled the edge of the parking area, looking for a way out.
His heart was pounding, his stomach churning at the memory of the sound the man had made when he crashed into the side of the truck, and at the ease with which he had inflicted the violence. He had just attacked, on instinct, without thinking.
It had felt so normal.
Once their fear subsides, they will call the authorities, he thought. And it won’t matter that they attacked an innocent man; when they see me, it won’t matter at all.
He reached the end of one of the long lines of trucks, and suddenly found himself bathed in light. The last rig on the stand, an enormous thirty-wheeler, was covered in hundreds of bulbs of different colours, like a vast Christmas tree laid upon fifteen pairs of wheels. Frankenstein looked up at the cab, and something opened up in his mind.
Above the wide windscreen was a dot matrix display, like the ones that displayed the destinations on the fronts of buses. This one displayed only a single word.
PARIS
A nauseating tangle of memories burst through the monster’s head, images and voices, feelings and places he couldn’t identify. But he understood that the word was familiar, the first thing he had found that was.
Movement in the cab caught his eye, and he ducked low beside the truck’s wide radiator as the driver settled himself behind his steering wheel. A moment later Frankenstein’s whole body vibrated as the huge diesel engine roared into life.
Now. You need to move now.
Still crouching, he ran around to the side of the rig. There was no time to break into the trailer; the truck would be moving before he could even get the locks open. He ran past the huge tyres of the cab until he reached the trailer’s frame. Beneath the container, lying on steel cross members, were three large storage pods, most likely for spare parts and tools. The space between them was a coffin-shaped gap, below the trailer’s container and a metre and a half above the tarmac of the road.
With no time left, Frankenstein dived into the gap, landing hard on the cross members, which were arranged in an X shape. He hauled himself into the space, and found that the bars were close enough together to support his weight. He wedged himself hard against the round edge of one of the storage pods and braced his legs against a second. Diesel fumes filled his nostrils as the driver put the truck into gear and resumed his journey south, to Paris.
13
HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE
“Incoming,” said Jamie. He spoke into the microphone built into the side of his helmet, which linked him to the other five Operators on the Operational frequency. “Heads up, Jack.”
“How do you know?” asked Jack, his voice sounding directly in Jamie’s ear.
“Larissa,” replied Jamie. It was all that needed to be said; the vampire girl’s senses were hundreds of times more sensitive than those of a normal human, and she had heard the trucks entering the shipyard long before the rest of the squad would have been able to.
Jack swore. “How long?” he asked.
“Less than a minute,” answered Larissa. “Three trucks, I don’t know how many vampires. At least ten.”
“Ready One,” said Jack. “Nobody moves until I give the go, clear?”
Squad G-17 immediately lowered their visors, pulling their T-Bones from their holsters. Ready One was the code for imminent contact with the supernatural; it meant that the use of force was authorised.
Four heavy thuds sounded from the edge of the dock, and Jamie craned round the corner of the container to see what had made them. Thick ropes were lying on the ground, thrown from the deck of the towering freighter. He looked up at the high steel wall, and saw a flash of movement through the fog, a dark shape disappear
ing into the gloom. Then the rumble of engines began to shake the ground beneath their feet, and three black trucks appeared from the north.
They drove in single file, approaching slowly along the crumbling central road of the shipyard. The Operators, concealed in the deep shadows cast by the containers and the high concrete wall, watched them as they passed. Their paint was peeling, and the trucks were coated in dirt and dust. But the engines purred as they made their way towards the ship, and Jamie saw that the tyres were new, the walls black, the manufacturer’s logos still bright white. He could not see anyone inside the vehicles; the windows were smeared with grime, and the cabs were high above his low vantage point, making the angle impossible.
He watched the trucks pull to a halt in a line near the edge of the dock, then waited, his breath held tight in his lungs, as the door of the first cab creaked open, and a figure emerged.
The fog drifted lazily round its feet as it made its way to the back of the truck, and began to unlock the rear doors. Behind Jamie, somewhere back towards the main road, something clattered; an animal most likely, skittering across the concrete. The figure’s head instantly flashed round, and Jamie saw the glowing red coals of its eyes.
For a long moment all was still, then the vampire, a man who looked to be in his late thirties so far as Jamie could tell in the gathering darkness, turned back to his task. Seconds later the lock was undone and cast aside, and doors were pulled open, exposing a square of jet black emptiness. Then movement filled the space, as a crowd of vampires piled out of the truck and on to the dock.
They gathered at the back of the vehicle, laughing and shouting, shoving each other with playful familiarity as the vampires who had driven the other two trucks joined them. Several lit cigarettes, and then they got down to business; eight of them went to the ropes, tied them on to huge metal mooring hooks, and began to pull the freighter tight alongside the dock, a display of casually superhuman strength. From somewhere on the hull there came a shout of greeting, which was returned by the vampires as they hauled at the thick lines.
Two of the vampires went to the other trucks and opened their rear doors, so all three vehicles sat open to the night. The first vampire who had emerged oversaw the activity, a cigarette clamped between his teeth; those without specific jobs milled around at the edge of the river, waiting for the ship to be pulled into position.
“I count fourteen,” whispered Jack Williams.
“Me too,” replied Jamie. “Plus seven on the boat. Twenty-one of them.”
“Hold positions,” said Jack. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
From somewhere up on the high deck there came the sound of a metal door creaking open. Seconds later the seven vampires that they had seen as blobs of bright white heat on the infrared satellite image appeared at the railing at the edge of the deck, and began to shout greetings and insults at the vampires waiting below, their eyes glowing red as they traded friendly barbs and jibes with their welcoming party. This continued for a couple of minutes until the vampire who had opened up the first truck, who was clearly in charge of things, lit another cigarette and told them all to shut up. With a few snarls and hisses, the vampires did as they were told.
“Let’s get this done!” the foreman shouted. “There’ll be time enough for jokes later. Open up the containers; let’s have a look at what you brought us.”
The vampires on the ship disappeared from the railing and got to work, assisted by a number of the greeting party who flew up on to the deck to lend a hand. Another vampire flew easily up on to the freighter, and hauled down a long folding gangway, which met the concrete surface of the dock with an almighty clang of metal and settled beside the row of trucks.
As the doors to the containers screeched open, terrible sounds began to fill the air. There were cries of fear and misery, screams of pain and terror, and a relentless chorus of sobbing, pleading human voices, many of them speaking languages which were alien to the ears of the listening Operators. Then, through the mist, a small figure appeared at the top of the gangway, silhouetted against the grey canvas of the thickening fog. It took a nervous, shaky step on to the metal walkway, then another, and another. Then it passed through the beam of one of the freighter’s huge running lights, and Kate gasped.
Bathed in the bright white beam stood an Asian girl who could have been no more than five or six years old. Her tiny face was pale, her eyes narrowed against the light. She wore a dress printed with a pattern of flowers that had once been white, but was now the deep grey of dust and dirt. In her small hand she clutched a filthy doll that was missing one of its arms and both of its legs. She took a hesitant step forward on bare, filthy feet, then another, then stumbled backwards, grabbing desperately for the gangway’s metal rail. She sat down hard on the metal panel, looked around with awful confusion on her small face and began to cry.
A second silhouette appeared at the top of the gangway, running down towards the girl. In the light, the shape became a tiny Asian woman, as pale and filthy as the girl, who dropped to her knees beside the sobbing child and began to shush her gently.
On the concrete dock, one of the vampires began to laugh, and suddenly Jamie was full of an anger so intense he had only ever felt anything like it once before in his life, when he saw the terrified face of his mother standing beside Alexandru Rusmanov in the monastery on Lindisfarne.
“Let’s get them,” he growled.
“Negative,” replied Jack Williams, instantly. “Not until everyone clears the ship.”
Jamie gritted his teeth, and forced himself not to reply. Larissa’s hand rested momentarily on his arm, a show of support invisible to everyone else, and he felt his rage subside, just a fraction. He refocused his attention on the freighter, where a steady stream of men and women, emaciated, filthy, with looks of blank terror on their faces, were now making their way down the gangway.
The woman and the little girl had reached the bottom, where they stepped nervously off on to the concrete of the dock. Immediately, one of the vampires grabbed for the girl, who cried out with fear, pressing herself against the woman. There was more laughter, and more boiling, acidic anger spilled into the pit of Jamie’s stomach.
“Let them be,” said the vampire foreman. “Makes no difference if they want to stay together. They’re all going to the same place. Start loading them up.”
The vampire who had grabbed for the girl hissed, but did as he was told. He reached out, and grabbed the woman by her shoulder, sinking his nails into her flesh as he did so. The woman gritted her teeth, but did not cry out; instead, she fixed the vampire with a long look of utter contempt.
Good for you, thought Jamie. Just keep it together for a few more minutes.
The men and women, a dirty, shambling mass of damaged humanity, reached the bottom of the gangway, and began to spill out across the dock. The vampires moved beside them, funnelling the ragged group towards the waiting trucks; the prisoners, weakened and disoriented by their time in the containers, went unprotestingly.
“This is stupid,” breathed Kate. “It’s much easier with them still on the boat. Down here they’re just going to get in the way.”
“Hold your positions,” insisted Jack.
“She’s right,” said Angela. “We need to go now.”
“Angela, I’m warning—”
“Warn me later,” interrupted Angela, and moved.
Angela Darcy slid silently out from behind the wall that was sheltering Squad F-7 from view and brought her T-Bone to her shoulder as though it was the most natural thing in the world. There was a fluidity to the way she moved that was almost feline, and Jamie watched her from the other side of the dock with a feeling that made him almost guilty.
She sighted the vampire who had laughed at the little girl, who was now ordering the woman holding her to climb into the back of the nearest truck. The woman was refusing, shaking her head left and right, spitting torrents of what Jamie thought might be Mandarin. The vampire stared back at her
with a lazy smile on his face, the face of someone who is eager to commit violence, and knows his chance is about to arrive.
Angela squeezed the T-Bone’s trigger, and then a loud bang and a rush of escaping gas sounded through the quiet evening air. The smiling vampire was beginning to turn his head towards the source of the noise when the T-Bone’s metal stake smashed into his chest, punching a hole the size of a grapefruit clean through him. His eyes widened, before he exploded in a steaming gout of blood, splashing the back of the truck and the woman and the girl standing beside it.
The freshly spilled blood hit the noses of the other vampires instantly, and their eyes darkened red. The Chinese woman, her face coated with blood, was staring at the space where the vampire had been standing, her eyes wide. The little girl pulled a strand of something red and wet from her hair, held it up before her face and started to scream. In an instant, the rest of the vampires appeared around her, snarling and hissing. The ones who had been unloading the containers on the freighter’s deck swooped down from the air and landed softly beside their colleagues. The foreman muscled his way through the crowd and grabbed the woman by her arm.
“What did you do?” he demanded. “What did you—”
His question was cut off as the stake from Jamie’s T-Bone tore through his throat, spraying his blood across the rest of the vampires, who recoiled, howling with alarm. Jamie hadn’t missed; the foreman’s heart was blocked by the throng of vampires. But he was confident that the rest of them would be a lot easier to deal with if their leader was unable to speak.
“Goddamnit, you two,” snarled Jack Williams. “We are go, repeat, we are go.”
The Operators broke cover and advanced from both sides towards the vampires, who immediately panicked. The foreman, who had sunk to his knees as blood gushed from his throat, was waving his hands and gurgling incomprehensibly, but the rest of the vampires ignored him. Instead, they hurled themselves at the approaching figures.