The Strain tst-1

by Guillermo Del Toro

  The nauseating stench of roasted disease rose in smoky steam from the charred creatures laid out over the floor. It was impossible to move without disturbing these rotted demons, their bodies crumbling like artificial logs hollowed out by fire. Only those vampires lucky enough to have been partially behind a beam remained animate, Eph and Fet moving quickly to release these crippled, half-destroyed creatures.

  Fet then walked over to the mine, which had caught fire. He surveyed the damage.

  “Well,” he said, “that fucking worked.”

  “Look,” said Setrakian.

  At the far end of the steaming chamber, set on top of a yard-high mound of dirt and refuse, was a long, black box.

  As Eph and the others approached it—with the dread of bomb-squad agents approaching a suspicious device without wearing blast suits—the situation felt terribly familiar, and it was only a moment before he placed it: he had felt exactly the same walking toward the darkened airplane on the taxiway, at the start of this whole thing.

  This sense of approaching something dead and not dead. Some delivery from another world.

  He got close enough to confirm that it was indeed the long, black cabinet from the cargo hold of Flight 753. Its top doors exquisitely carved with human figures swirling as though burning in flames, and elongated faces screaming in agony.

  The Master’s oversize coffin, set here on an altar of rubble and rubbish beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center.

  “This is it,” Eph said.

  Setrakian reached out to the side of the box, almost touching the carvings, then pulling back his twisted fingers. “A long time I have searched for this,” he said.

  Eph shuddered, not wanting to meet this thing again, with its devouring size and ruthless strength. He remained on the near side, expecting the top doors to burst open at any moment. Fet went around to the facing side. There were no handles on the top doors. One had to slip one’s fingers in beneath the lip of the middle seam and pull up. It would be awkward, and difficult to do quickly.

  Setrakian stood at the presumed head of the cabinet, his long sword ready in his hand. But his expression was grim. Eph saw the reason for this in the old man’s eyes, and it deflated him.

  Too easy.

  Eph and Fet wriggled their fingers in beneath the double doors, and on a nod of three, pulled them back. Setrakian leaned forward with his lamp and his sword… and discovered a box full of soil. He probed it with his blade, the silver tip scraping the bottom of the great box. Nothing.

  Fet stepped back, wild-eyed, full of adrenaline he could not stifle. “He’s gone?”

  Setrakian withdrew his blade, tapping off the soil on the edge of the box.

  Eph’s disappointment was overwhelming. “He escaped.” Eph stepped back from the coffin, turning to the wasteland of slain vampires inside the stultifying chamber. “He knew we were here. He fled into the subway system fifteen minutes ago. He can’t surface because of the sun… so he’ll stay underground until night.”

  Fet said, “Inside the longest transit system in the entire world. Eight hundred miles of tracks.”

  Eph’s voice was raw with despair. “We never even had a chance.”

  Setrakian looked exhausted but undaunted. If anything, his old eyes showed a bit of fresh light. “Is this not how you exterminate vermin, Mr. Fet? By rousting them from their nest? Flushing them out?”

  Fet said, “Only if you know where they’re going to end up.”

  Setrakian said, “Don’t all burrowing creatures, from rats to rabbits, construct a kind of back door…?”

  “A bolt-hole,” said Fet. He was getting it now. “An emergency exit. Predator comes in one way, you run out the other.”

  Setrakian said, “I believe we have the Master on the run.”

  Vestry Street, Tribeca

  THEY HADN’T TIME to properly destroy the coffin, and so settled for shoving it off its altar of rubble, overturning it and spilling the soil to the floor. They had resolved to return later to finish the job.

  Getting back through the tunnels and out to Fet’s van took some time, and more of Setrakian’s energy.

  Fet parked around the corner from the Bolivar town house. They ran the sunny half block to his front door with no effort to conceal their Luma lamps or silver swords. They saw no one outside the residence at that early hour, and Eph started up the crossbars of the scaffolding in front. Over the boarded door was a transom window decorated with the address number. Eph smashed it in with his sword, kicking free the larger shards and then clearing out the frame with his blade. He took a lamp and went inside, lowering himself into the foyer.

  His purple light illuminated twin marble panthers on either side of the door. A winged angel statue at the bottom of the curling stairs looked down at him balefully.

  He heard it, and felt it: the hum of the Master’s presence. Kelly, he thought, misery aching in his chest. She had to be here.

  Setrakian came down next, held from the outside by Fet, helped to the floor by Eph. Setrakian landed and drew his sword. He too felt the Master’s presence, and with it, relief. They were not too late.

  “He is here,” said Eph.

  Setrakian said, “Then he already knows we are.”

  Fet lowered two larger UVC lamps to Eph, then clambered over the transom himself, his boots striking the floor.

  “Quickly,” said Setrakian, leading them under the winding stairs, the bottom floor in the midst of renovation. They moved through a long kitchen of still-boxed appliances, looking for a closet. They found it, empty inside, and unfinished.

  They pushed open the false door in the back wall, as it had been pictured in Nora’s People magazine printouts.

  Stairs led down. A sheet of plastic behind them flapped, and they turned around fast, but it was only riding the draft rising up the stairs. The wind carried the scent of the subway, and of dirt and spoilage.

  This was the way to the tunnels. Eph and Fet began arranging two large UVC lamps so they could fill the closet passageway with hot, killing light, and thereby seal off the underground. And block any other vampires from rising up, and, more imperative, ensure that the only way out of the town house was into direct sunlight.

  Eph looked back to see Setrakian leaning against one wall, his fingertips pressing against the vest, over his heart. Eph didn’t like the looks of that, and had started toward him when Fet’s voice turned him back around. “Damnit!” One of the hot lamps tumbled over, clunking to the floor. Eph checked to make sure that the bulbs still worked, then righted the lamp, wary of the radiative light.

  Fet quieted him. He heard noises below. Footsteps. The odor in the air changed—became ranker, more rotten. Vampires were assembling.

  Eph and Fet backed away from the blue-lit closet, their safety valve. When Eph turned back to the old man, he was gone.

  Setrakian had moved back into the foyer. His heart felt tight in his chest, overtaxed by stress and anticipation. So long he had waited. So long…

  His gnarled hands began to ache. He flexed them, gripping the sword handle beneath the silver wolf’s head. Then he felt something, the faintest breeze in advance of movement…

  Moving his drawn sword at the last possible moment saved him from a direct and fatal blow. The impact knocked him back, sending his crumpled body sliding headfirst over the marble floor to slam into the base of the wall. But he kept his grip on his sword. He got back to his feet quickly, swinging his blade back and forth, seeing nothing in the dim foyer.

  So fast the Master moved.

  He was right here. Somewhere.

  Now you are an old man.

  The voice crackled inside Setrakian’s head like an electric shock. Setrakian swung his silver sword out wide in front of him. A black form blurred past the statue of the weeping angel at the foot of the curling marble stairs.

  The Master would try to distract him. This was his way. Never to challenge directly, face-to-face, but to deceive. To surprise from behind.

 
; Setrakian backed up against the wall beside the front door. Behind him, a narrow, door-framing window of Tiffany glass had been blacked over. Setrakian struck at the lead panes, smashing out the precious glass with his sword.

  Daylight knifed into the foyer.

  At that moment of breaking glass, Eph and Fet returned to find Setrakian standing with his sword raised, his body bathed in sunlight.

  The old man saw the dark blur rising up the stairs. “There he is!” he yelled, starting after him. “Now!”

  Eph and Fet charged up the steps after the old man. Two other vampires met them at the top of the stairs. Bolivar’s former security detail, his Big-and-Tall-Store bodyguards now hungry-faced hulks in dirty suits. One swatted at Eph, who stumbled backward and almost lost his balance, grabbing the wall to keep himself from tumbling down the marble stairs. He stuck out his Luma light and the big dummy recoiled and Eph chopped at his thigh with the sword. The vampire let out a gasp and swung at him again. Eph gutted him, running his sword most of the way through his belly before pulling it back, the vampire sinking to the landing like a stuck balloon.

  Fet held his at bay with his lamp light, sticking and cutting at the bodyguard’s grabbing hands with his short-bladed dagger. He brought the light up, right into its face, and the vampire flailed and looked around wildly, temporarily blinded. Fet ducked him and got behind his back, stabbing the bodyguard in the back of its thick neck before shoving him hard down the stairs.

  Eph’s vampire tried to rise, but Fet dropped him again with a kick to the ribs. The bodyguard’s head lay off the top step, and with a cry of anguish, Eph brought his sword down.

  The head bumped down the stairs, gaining speed and rotation at the bottom, hopping the other vampire’s body and rolling all the way to the wall.

  White blood oozed out of its opened neck, onto the carmine runner. The blood worms emerged, Fet frying them with his lamp.

  The bodyguard at the bottom of the steps was no more than a skin sack of broken bones, but he was still animate. The fall had not severed his neck, and so had not released him. His eyes were open and he stared dumbly up the long staircase, trying to move.

  Eph and Fet found Setrakian near the closed elevator grate with his sword out, taking a swipe at a dark, fast-moving blur. “Watch out—!” called Setrakian, but before the words were out of his mouth, the Master struck Fet from behind. He went down hard, nearly smashing his lamp. Eph barely had time to react before the form flew past him—slowing down just long enough for Eph to see the Master’s face again, his wormy flesh and sneering mouth—and he was thrown back against the wall.

  Setrakian lunged forward, sweeping his sword two-handedly, driving the fast-moving form into a wide, high-ceilinged, floor-through room. Eph got himself up and followed, as did Fet, a lick of blood dribbling down his temple.

  The Master stopped, appearing to them before the massive stone fireplace at the midpoint of the room. The town house had windows only at either long end—leaving no sunlight in the middle to assist them. The Master’s cloak rippled and settled and his horrible eyes looked down on them all, but mainly Fet, no small man himself. The blood trickling down his face. With something like a howling grin, the long-armed Master grabbed up lumber and bales of electrical wire and any other debris within reach and hurled them at the three assassins.

  Setrakian flattened against the wall, Eph taking cover around the corner, Fet using a chunk of wallboard as a shield.

  When the assault ended and they looked up, the Master was gone again.

  “Christ!” hissed Fet. He swiped the blood off his face with his hand, then tossed aside the wallboard. He threw his silver dagger into the cold fireplace with a clank and a thud—useless against this giant—and took Eph’s lamp from him, giving Fet two, freeing Eph up to wield his longer blade with both hands.

  “Stay after him,” said Setrakian, pushing ahead. “Like smoke rising up a chimney, we must force him to the roof.”

  As they rounded the corner, four more hissing vampires came at them. They looked like former fans of Bolivar’s with their razored hair and piercings.

  Fet went after them with the twin lamps, pushing them back. One got through, and Eph played backup, showing her his silver sword. This one looked like a chubby Vampira in a denim skirt and torn fishnet stockings. She had that curious rapacity of the newly turned vampire that Eph had come to recognize. Eph aimed his sword at her from a crouch, the vampire feinting right, then left, hissing at him through white lips.

  Eph heard Setrakian yell, “Strigoi!” in that commanding voice of his. The chopping sound of the old man cutting down vampires emboldened Eph. The chubby Vampira feinted too aggressively and Eph jabbed her, his sword tip slicing into the front shoulder of her torn black cotton top, burning the beast within. Her mouth opened and her tongue curled up, and Eph darted back barely in time, her stinger just missing his neck. She continued at him, mouth agape, and with a howl of anger, Eph ran his sword at her face. Straight at her stinger, the blade slicing right through the back of her head, the tip burying a few inches in the unfinished wall.

  The vampire’s eyes bugged. Her stinger was cut and leaking white blood, filling her mouth and spilling down her chin, which she could not move. She was pinned to the wall. She bucked and attempted to cough her wormy blood onto Eph. A virus will propagate itself any way it can.

  Setrakian had slain the other three vampires, leaving the newly polished maple flooring at the end of the hall slathered in white. He returned to Eph, yelling, “Back!”

  Eph released his sword, the grip quivering out of the wall. Setrakian swung at the vampire’s neck, and gravity pulled the headless body to the floor.

  The head remained speared to the wall, white blood spilling from its severed neck, the vampire’s black eyes flaring wide at both men… then rolling upward and relaxing, holding still. Eph grasped the handle of his sword and plucked it from the wall behind her mouth, and her head dropped on top of her body.

  There was no time to irradiate the white blood. “Up, up!” said Setrakian, walking along the wall to a different set of stairs, these circular with an ornate iron railing. The old man’s spirit was strong, but his strength was flagging. Eph passed him at the top. He looked right and left. In the dim light, he saw finished hardwood floors and unfinished walls. But no vampires.

  “We split up,” said the old man.

  “Are you kidding?” said Fet, grabbing hold of him and helping him to the top. “ Never split up. That’s the first rule.”

  One of his lamps fizzled. The bulb popped as the unit overheated, and suddenly burst into flames. Fet dropped it, crushing the flames underneath his boot. Now he was down to one lamp.

  “How much more battery time?” Eph asked.

  “Not enough,” said the old man. “He will wear us down like this, having us chase him until nightfall.”

  “Gotta trap him,” said Fet. “Like a rat in a bathroom.”

  The old man stopped then, turning his head to a sound.

  Your heart is weak, you old wretch. I can hear it.

  Setrakian stood still, his sword at the ready. He looked all around, but there was no sign of the Dark One.

  He tapped the point of his sword on the floor. Pick-pick-pick. “Show yourself.”

  You have fashioned a handy tool.

  “You don’t recognize it?” said Setrakian aloud, with heavy breaths. “It was Sardu’s. The boy whose form you took.”

  Eph pulled closer to the old man, realizing that he was in a conversation with the Master. “Where is she?” he yelled. “Where is my wife?”

  The Master ignored Eph.

  Your whole life has led to this point. You will fail a second time.

  Setrakian said, “You will taste my silver, strigoi.”

  I will taste you, old man. And your clumsy apostles—

  The Master attacked from behind, throwing Setrakian to the floor again. Eph reacted, swiping his sword at the breeze he felt, a couple of guessing swishes. W
hen he pulled back the blade, he found the tip sticky with white.

  He had hurt the Master. He had cut him.

  But in the moment it took to process this fact, the Master returned and swatted Eph in the chest with his taloned hand. Eph felt his feet leave the floor, his back and shoulders ramming into the wall, his muscles exploding with pain as his body fell to the side.

  Fet swept forward with his lamp, and Setrakian swung silver from one knee, pushing back the beast. Eph rolled over as fast as he could, bracing for more blows… but none came.

  They were all alone again. They could feel it. No sound except the tinkling of construction lights strung along the ceiling, swaying near the foot of the stairs.

  Eph said, “I cut him.”

  Setrakian used his sword to get to his feet, as one arm was hurt and hanging limp. He moved to the next flight of stairs going up.

  There was white vampire blood on the unfinished planking of the stairs.

  Sore but determined, they climbed the steps to the top. This was Bolivar’s penthouse, the top floor of the taller of the two conjoined town houses. They entered the bedroom half, looking for vampire blood on the floor. Seeing none, Fet went around the unmade bed to the far windows, tearing down the room-darkening curtains, letting in light but no direct sun. Eph checked the bathroom and found it even larger than he had expected, with facing, gold-framed mirrors reflecting him into infinity. An army of Ephraim Goodweathers with swords in their hands.

  “This way,” gasped Setrakian.

  Fresh streaks of white stood out against a black leather chair in the broader media room. Two arched and heavily draped doorways along the eastern wall showed soft light edging beneath the hem of the long curtains. The roof of the adjoining town house lay beyond.

  There they found the Master standing in the center of the room, his worm-infested face angled down toward them, onyx eyes staring, the dangerous daylight behind him. Iridescent white blood dripped, slow and irregular, down his arm and off his elongated hand, falling from the tip of his unearthly talon to the floor.

  Setrakian limped forward, his sword dragging behind him, scoring the wood floor. He stopped and raised the silver blade with his one good arm, facing the Master—his heart racing at too many beats per minute.