Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  “But I had the cell phone and we were out of there, or so we thought, all of us making a stumbling run for the for’ard stairwells—where another group was waiting for us! But a group? I mean, they were a nightmare horde! They came spilling, spewing, spawing from the stairwells into the gangway; a milling crowd of gaunt, staring, feral-eyed faces like so many grinning zombies, and all of them reaching for us with outstretched arms and eager hands!

  “We had the big engineer with a Verey pistol in front, and the steward with the other pistol at the rear. And only one way out now: through the middle of that…that awful undead horde of blood-lusting monsters.

  “The engineer had reloaded; he fired his Verey pistol; the shot went right through the vampire crowd, setting some on fire as it passed before ricochetting off the stairwell bulkhead and leaping back into the press. There it flared up, sputtering and jumping like a Chinese firecracker—issuing smoke and blinding light, and setting fire to everything it touched—causing the milling once-humans to scatter like shell-shocked rats.

  “Simultaneously, the steward had fired his pistol into the massed ranks of the original pack at the aft end of the gangway. They had recovered from their panic and were loping after us to close us in. In fact we were closed in from both ends, and only the incendiary Verey lights and our fire axes—and our terror—gave us any chance at all. But I think the best weapon of all was our terror.

  “The big engineer led the charge; he tucked his pistol into his belt and was into them in a moment, his axe swinging with a will. The other deckhands flanked him, which just about filled the width of the gangway, leaving the steward and I to turn our backs and bring up the rear. And while it lasted…Jesus, but it was a slaughter!

  “Mad with blood-lust those creatures surely were, but they seemed to have little or no sense of direction; their orientation was shot, their blood and senses were out of kilter because of the poisons that coursed through their veins. Oh yes, their senses had been enhanced…but they hadn’t yet learned how to put them to best use. Yes, they were that much stronger, but as yet they didn’t seem to recognize that fact. And the strangest thing of all: I don’t think they cared a damn!

  “All they cared for was blood. That was the fuel that drove or powered them. They’d tasted a drug which made man-made drugs seem puny by comparison, which—combined with the alien stuff that had been transfused in them—was instantly addictive and caused their craving. They wanted our blood! But in their blind lusting they’d forgotten or ignored a simple fact: we wanted to keep it! And our axes did terrible work.

  “But their strength…and their numbers…we piled them up and then had to climb over them! And through all the crimson hell of it, we were awash in their blood!

  “How we made it to the for’ard stairwell, I don’t know, but that was where we lost the first of our group. One of the deckhands up front…he fell…went shooting past me feetfirst down the stairs. Kicking and screaming, slipping and slithering in spilled blood, he crashed into the ravening horde behind us. And because we were facing that way, me and the steward, we…we saw the end of it.

  “Still shrieking—and I shall hear his screams forever—the deckhand was grabbed up by the red-spattered crowd. It was as if a press of red and grey and feral yellow came together on him. One moment he was thrown aloft, buoyed up by all the hands that grasped him, and then he was dragged under. It was like—it was as if—he had fallen into a huge vat of dense, swirling paint: at first the surface was solid and supported him…but then the skin broke and the colours opened to engulf him. Whole and pale he was absorbed, only to be tossed up again…but no longer whole! Pieces of him, bites out of him, had gone missing in the space of only two or three seconds. Then all of him went missing, as he was dragged under again, devoured and lost to us forever.

  “Two of us in front and two behind, back to back, we fought all the harder up that stairwell. And as daylight began filtering down to us so the pressure slackened off. Suddenly—almost unbelievably—we were fighting on the A deck landing, where lances of glorious yellow light slanted down from above, stinging and blinding our attackers. On the way down, those beams of light had seemed faint; now they were quite literally the light at the end of the tunnel. Then, just as it looked like we might make it without any more losses—damn, damn, damn it to hell!—that was when we lost the young steward.

  “In the briefest of brief lulls, he’d put down his axe and was trying to reload his Verey pistol. But his hands were slimy with blood and shaking so feverishly that precious shells were spilling from his grasp and pockets both. And that was it: the terror that had been his mainstay now cost him everything, for in the moment before he could shoot he was tripped. Someone—or rather some thing—had kept low and crept up the steps to snatch his axe where he’d dropped it, and now used it to catch him behind the ankles.

  “As his feet shot out from under him he gave a wild cry and finally managed to fire the pistol diagonally across the stairwell. The ball of fire made a hissing zigzag of heat and smoke down the stairs, ricochetting off walls and bulkheads alike before the final explosion and brilliant starburst. But as burbling cries of fear and hissing warnings went up as the vampires below me retreated in confusion, so they took the steward with them, dragging him by his ankles. It was the last I saw of him, and now there were only the three of us.

  “The way below was temporarily clear, so I joined the other two facing forward where they drove just three or four vampires before them. Considering the amazing strength of these terrible creatures, you might find that hard to believe or imagine: that we could force them back. But in the main they were still thinking like men; their near invincibility had not as yet dawned on them. Moreover, there was light pouring down from above—real light, reflected sunlight—so that as well as having to avoid our bloody axes, the vampires were also hindered by stray ultraviolet rays which, however watered down by reflection, worried and blinded them.

  “By then we were almost exhausted; even our terror could no longer fuel our desperate fight for survival. And on those last few steps up to the main deck, with salvation in view, that was where the big engineer’s massive strength finally gave out. And at the same time—as the creatures above us realized they were being driven up into raw, seething sunlight—it was the moment they chose to launch themselves in a body down upon us.

  “One of them threw himself at me, another at the other deckhand; we were able to hold our axes overhead, impaling them and using their impetus to hurl them down the stairs. The other two were relatively small men; one was fat and balding. The big engineer cursed and swung at him, caving in his chest, but his axe somehow got caught fast in his ribs. And as the gibbering thing flopped down on him along with the last of the four, their combined weight drove him backwards, sent him stumbling into darkness. And below us, the pack that trailed us took the opportunity to reach up into the light, grab him and drag him down. The last I saw of him was his snarling clenched teeth—his straining, blood-spattered face—as with his last ounce of strength he somehow managed to toss his Verey pistol up to me.

  “Earlier, he had given me a box of four spare cartridges to carry in case he ran out. Knowing he was finished, I rammed one of these into the pistol, snapped it shut, and fired it directly down the centre of the stairwell. But I didn’t look to see what was illuminated by the flare, for I already knew.

  “Then my last human friend and I were up onto the main deck and racing—or rather staggering—along the gangway to where it came out into broad, blessed daylight at the prow. And there we fell in a sprawl on the open deck, gasping and sobbing until we could breathe again….”

  “I was covered in blood! It suddenly dawned on me that my flesh and clothing were drenched in the blood of vampires! And so was my friend. We climbed—but we would certainly have run if only we’d had the strength—up three flights of exterior stairs to the open upper deck on the very roof of the ship, where without pause we went amidships and threw ourselves into the large sw
imming pool.

  “In the water, we tore our clothes off and bathed our shuddering bodies. And we floundered from one patch of water to the next as each in its turn became tinged with red. This cleansing seemed to take forever, but when we were done we got out in the sunlight to dry.

  “Incredibly, I was unharmed—which is to say I had no cuts, bites, or punctures—but my friend…he wasn’t so fortunate. During the fighting, he’d been bitten in the shoulder and upper arm, and a shallow cut in his forehead was still oozing blood.

  “Seeing his wounds he became very scared, even more so than during the fighting, and asked me, ‘Do you think…think that maybe I…?’ But I didn’t know enough to answer him, not right then.”

  “My cell phone wouldn’t work. The batteries had run down, and my splashing about in the swimming pool hadn’t much helped things. Ridiculous that after all the trouble we’d gone to—the price we’d paid to recover the damn thing—I had forgotten it was in my coverall flap pocket! Obviously it was my state of mind, the fact that I’d been in fear of my life and completely panicked.

  “I took the cell phone to bits and dried it out, and while I was putting it together again sent my friend looking for fresh batteries. Fortunately I’d carried the Verey pistol in my hand, retaining sufficient common sense to leave both it and the cartridges beside the pool. At least they hadn’t suffered any water damage.

  “As for my friend:

  “At two-thirty in the afternoon he still hadn’t come back. Meanwhile I had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, but there in the sunlight, half in the shade of an awning, I knew that I was safe. And despite that there had been slaughter last night, the decks were amazingly clean; it seemed the vampires had seen fit to clear up after themselves! Apart from a few stains, the ship looked freshly swabbed down. Or had they simply been keeping their house in order?

  “Earlier there had been, oh, maybe a hundred or more bodies floating in the sea. These had sunk or drifted away now; but in a narrow bottleneck where the sea met the rocks, I saw that the water was alive with motion. When I looked closer, I saw a huge raft of crabs and small fishes in a feeding frenzy down there. Nothing goes to waste in the sea…

  “The Evening Star is a monster of a ship. Hah! Unfortunate choice of words…let’s just say she’s big. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to go looking for the other survivor; he could be anywhere, could even be—might even have gone—missing? Myself, I didn’t intend to go anywhere belowdecks again, and certainly not into any dark places. But I didn’t know about my friend. While he had seemed to understand what was going on, maybe he hadn’t understood enough.

  “And suddenly I found myself in a panic again. I was alone! I was stark naked! My cell phone was my only hope, and it wasn’t working because I had no batteries!

  “I got a grip of myself, or at least as much of a grip as I could get. There were gift shops on the main deck, but that was three flights of stairs down. Fortunately the shopping area was dead centre of the ship, almost directly below the pools. Also, the central main deck was above the porthole level and had windows that let in lots of God-given daylight. More to the point, so far I hadn’t seen a single changeling creature on that level—well, with the exception of the original pair of Great Vampires when they were rampaging, and they’d now left—and with the sun high in the sky, I prayed I wouldn’t see any more. And I didn’t.

  “When finally I got my nerves under control, and after I’d descended to the central area of the main deck, I saw why there were no vampires down there. For indeed the windows let in lots of light, and most of the shop façades and interiors were lined with chrome or mirrors that reflected it. To my eyes the effect was no more dazzling than a well-lit shopping mall, but to them…I supposed it must seem like hell!

  “I went to a gift shop which I knew stocked every kind of photographic accessory. For some reason I thought I’d find the place wrecked, but that wasn’t so. Indeed, it was almost fully intact…except for the shelf which had housed the batteries. That had been stripped clean…

  “Quickly then, I tried the other shops, but to no avail.

  “And so I returned to the open upper deck, but not before I’d taken socks and shoes from a shop, a shirt and fresh coveralls from the laundry, and raided a refrigerator in the Star’s main dining room to stuff my pockets with food and a bottle of decent wine. The power had been off for some time but the food was still good and cold.

  “And still I’d seen no sign of my friend. So that I found myself wondering if he was my friend after all…or anyone’s friend, for that matter.”

  “I thought about using the Verey lights. Crazy! What good would it do to fire them off in the daylight? And I doubted very much that I’d be able to do it at night…if I did it would be the last thing I did! Anyway, I needed the Verey pistol as a weapon. Apart from a fire axe, it was my only weapon.

  “After eating I felt heavy and tired, from nervous exhaustion or whatever. And anyway, I reckoned it would be a good idea to get as much sleep as I could right there and then, for I had no idea how much I’d get later. And dusk was only some three or four hours away. But I did spend another hour looking for batteries without finding any. I supposed that I might find some on the bridge…but after just a few seconds in there I couldn’t take any more. And now I knew what hell must look like.

  “I climbed up to the exhaust baffle and opened a maintenance hatch in the lead stack. I had been in there before, scaling out the flue between voyages. The burning stench of greasy diesel residue was sickening, but with the engines at a standstill it was just about bearable. I couldn’t have gone in there when the ship was running; I would have suffocated and fried in a matter of seconds. But these engines wouldn’t ever be running again. Not as long as the ship was parked on these rocks. There was a ledge in there where I could even lie down, but not until I had to. Not until nightfall.

  “And so I slept out on the collar, in the shade of the big exhaust array, while in the west the sun slid down the sky…”

  6

  The “Entertainment,” and Leave it to the Marines

  DAVID CHUNG, EVER THE MOST NERVOUS OF THE team, said, “Ben, we have to get on.”

  Glancing at his watch, Trask answered, “We can spare a few more minutes. Let him carry on.”

  Lardis nodded and said, “I agree. Let him get it right out of his system. And anyway, if it’s vampires you’re after you’ll need the night. It’s like you said, Ben: with the sun up, you’d have to hunt ’em down. But when the sun’s down…they’ll come looking for you!” And winking encouragingly at the survivor, he prompted him, “Nick?”

  Rusu had gone from strength to strength. In the presence of men such as these he felt safe for the first time in three long days and nights. He was actually looking around now, making eye contact, actually seeing people. One of Invincible’s medics had left a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on a table. After lighting up and taking a deep, soothing drag, Rusu looked at Lardis, gave a curt, decisive nod, and continued where he’d left off.

  “So there I was asleep on the collar…until I heard this voice whispering, ‘Hey, wake up!’

  “I started awake and saw it was the other deckhand. He was up the maintenance ladder, just his head and shoulders visible, and he was staring at me where I lay. I was a little chilly and started shivering, and I could see by the length of the shadows that the sun was almost down. Both myself and…and my former friend, we were covered by the shadow of the exhaust array. And the way he was staring at me—all intent, and unblinking—it was unnerving.

  “‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked him. ‘Did you have to hide up or something? Did you get trapped?’

  “‘Hide up?’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Trapped?’ And then he gave himself a shake and seemed to come more alive. ‘Trapped, yes! Down below. But they didn’t see me, and I fell asleep waiting them out. Later, I couldn’t find you. But then I remembered where you came from this morning. And…and here you are.’

&
nbsp; “As he climbed up onto the collar, I sat up and backed off until I came up against the exhaust array. ‘What about the batteries?’ I said. ‘Did you find any?’

  “‘The batteries?’ Echoing my words, he sat down cross-legged facing me. ‘Oh, yes—the batteries!’ He’d rigged himself out with some ill-fitting clothes, and reaching into a pocket, he produced three or four brand-new blister packs of different-sized batteries. The price tags were still on them, and labels with the name of the gift shop. I looked at them, then at him, and he nodded. He knew what I was thinking. And:

  “‘See,’ he said, ‘it’s a matter of survival. After all that fighting—what with getting myself wounded and bitten and all—I couldn’t say for sure if I was…if I was okay, you know? So I thought it through and decided to wait and see.’ His voice had fallen to a slow, monotonous, husky drone; he sounded as if he were drugged. But even as he spoke he crept a little closer.

  “I had been using my shoes wrapped up in my new shirt as a pillow. Now I reached out, carefully pulling the bundle toward me. He watched me and said nothing, so that in a little while I prompted him with, ‘You weren’t trapped below at all, were you? You were just worried about yourself, right?’