Adrift 2: Sundown

by K. R. Griffiths

  He slammed the door shut and locked it.

  “That’s what it wants,” Herb snarled at the cleric, and he turned to face Zoe.

  She was only feet away.

  Still coming; still clutching the knife.

  Still crying.

  Herb wanted more than anything to turn and flee from the hideous sight, but he grimaced and darted forward, skipping around the knife and stooping to catch her arm. His fingers closed on her wrist and he twisted it violently. The knife fell to the tiles with a metallic clatter, but Herb didn’t even hear it landing.

  His entire focus was taken up by Zoe’s eyes: wide and pleading, so terribly aware.

  She’s still in there somewhere, he thought, and felt a scream gathering in his lungs. She’s living every second of it.

  He pushed Zoe away and rose to his feet, taking a step backwards and kicking the knife away from her grasping fingers.

  Zoe’s eyes dropped to her hands in despair, and she whimpered as they began to drag her back toward the distant knife rack.

  She won’t stop, Herb thought. It won’t let her. It will use her until she is dead…or we are.

  Zoe’s commandeered body was reaching up, straining for the knife rack on the kitchen island when Herb picked up one of the guns he had left on the counter and put a bullet in the back of her head, slamming her into the floor.

  Doing what was necessary.

  Just like Dad.

  Herb gritted his teeth, and shook away the grinning image of his father.

  At his feet, Zoe’s body was motionless at last, her eyes fixed and empty.

  And as the echoing blast of the gun in the enclosed kitchen faded, and Herb tried to process the insanity of what she had been forced to do—what he had been forced to do—the vampire outside the kitchen door began to chuckle.

  The sound coiled around Herb’s nerves like razor wire, but even as his instincts howled at him, his mind was calling his attention to something else. A very important detail. The rest of the house remained quiet. The two clerics that had fled through the wine cellar in a panic hadn’t even started to scream. Not yet.

  Because it has been busy with us.

  There’s only one here, he thought.

  Could it be that there was only one more vampire? According to the texts, the English nest was small, but was thought to number in the dozens.

  Maybe that was a lie, too.

  It made sense, didn’t it? That the creatures who had decided to erase their existence from human history might exaggerate their own strength? They weren’t immortal, that was for sure.

  Herb frowned, and in the distance, he began to hear the shrieking of the two clerics, exactly as he had known he would. A flurry of terrified yells which cut off abruptly, until there was only one voice left.

  And his screams were long, and slow.

  Herb tried to tune out the horror of the noise and think.

  One vampire.

  If there are more out there, where the hell are they?

  13

  The absence of light made the noise all the more terrifying; a high-pitched scream that shredded Adam Trent’s nerves like a hacksaw.

  He froze, the wrench in his hand forgotten, and stared into the blackness. The cone of illumination cast by the light mounted on his hat dissolved after a few feet. Beyond it, the darkness was an abyss.

  Sometimes the tunnels could play tricks on you—especially when you were working near an active line. The shriek of metal on metal could sound otherworldly in the dark, and most of the staff working the lines had let their nerves get the better of them at least once. It took some getting used to, working down there in the pitch black, tending to the roots of the city. The darkness and the isolation; the musty air and the dislocation from reality. It all took its toll, especially on those who were new to the job.

  Yet Adam had been working maintenance on the London Underground system for ten years and counting. He was no rookie.

  And that isn’t metal-on-metal.

  The noise which Adam heard, ricocheting around the cavernous tunnel, was a twisted fusion of terror and pain. Definitely not mechanical; it was unmistakably the sound of someone screaming. It rang out clearly over the clanging noise of Roni hammering at a stubborn section of the rusting track a few feet to his left.

  It sounded like it came from a distance down the tracks, somewhere around the curve of the tunnel. Even if there had been light in that direction, Adam doubted that he would have been able to see what had caused the noise, and maybe, he thought, that was a good thing.

  The scream spoke to him on an animal level, and his senses shifted into a state of high alert.

  It lasted for maybe five seconds, rising in pitch.

  Ending suddenly.

  And then there was thunderous silence.

  The two-man sub-team’s work—routine repairs on a section of the Northern Line—ceased immediately.

  Adam turned to face Roni, and flooded his colleague with light.

  “You heard that?”

  Roni nodded slowly, but both question and response were unnecessary: Adam knew that he hadn’t imagined the noise as soon as he saw Roni’s eyes; painfully wide, darting with incomprehension. He looked as unnerved as Adam felt.

  Adam took a hefty flashlight from his belt, and aimed it down the tunnel. The other sub-team—Colin and Tarpey; good guys, whose easy banter generally made the long hours pass quicker—were a few hundred feet further down the line, working their way back towards Adam’s position.

  The scream had come from their direction.

  It had to have been one of the two men that screamed, but Adam had no idea what could prompt a man to make such a noise.

  Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.

  He tried not to notice the beam of light jerking as his hand trembled wildly. The flashlight’s bulb was a good deal more powerful than the one attached to his hat, but it, too, was eaten by the void before it revealed anything out of the ordinary.

  He saw nothing.

  Heard nothing.

  “You think one of them is hurt?” Roni hissed, and Adam flinched at the sudden break in the oppressive silence.

  As it happened, yeah, Adam did think either Colin or Tarpey was hurt. Maybe even worse than hurt. He couldn’t see how a man could scream like that and not be in terrible agony. Men had been injured in the tunnels before, plenty of times, and Adam had rushed to their aid without hesitation, tending to injuries that ranged from concussion to electrocution to—on one particularly horrible occasion—dismemberment. It was, he thought, part of the job description. He imagined that it had to be the same whenever people worked in places that were so inherently dangerous. You developed a bond, even with the colleagues you didn’t much like. An unspoken code. Look after each other down there.

  Further down the tunnel, it sounded like somebody needed looking after, all right, but this time, Adam found his feet unwilling to move and his skin prickling. Suddenly, he felt terribly afraid at the prospect of calling out to see if everything was okay. Frightened that he would draw the attention of something; some awful creature out there, sharing the shadows with them.

  He wondered if he should shut off the light, and hope whatever was out there could not see him.

  Sweat beaded on Adam’s forehead as his mind ran to dark destinations. Whatever was out there, it had surely killed Colin and Tarpey, and it was crawling toward him at that very moment, unseen in the dark, licking its lips…

  He willed his legs to move.

  And then the whimpering started up; faint, but audible. The soft, gurgling cries of a man suffering terrible pain. The sound was somehow even worse than the screaming.

  “We have to help him.”

  Roni’s words.

  High-pitched and breathless; the voice of a man out of his mind with fear.

  Adam swallowed hard and nodded almost absently, his eyes fixed on the section of tunnel that he could not see. Someone was still alive, and the
y were hurt. He had to help. He lifted the wrench above his head, brandishing it like a club. Roni acknowledged the gesture, but there was no question in his eyes, and Adam knew, then.

  It wasn’t just him. Not his imagination. Roni felt it, too: the air in the tunnel, suddenly thick and syrupy; laced with danger. A nagging certainty that there was another presence in the tunnel with them, something foul and dangerous.

  Adam advanced slowly, his heart hammering painfully, the wrench raised.

  Ready.

  Click.

  He froze again, and this time the message his nerves tried to send was run, but fear had tangled the wiring in his brain. He felt like he was standing in quicksand.

  He remembered listening to Tarpey talking about the time when he had seen a train heading straight for him in a tunnel which he had believed was inactive, and about the grey area between fight or flight; that rabbit-in-the-headlights paralysis.

  Tarpey had called it fight, flight or shite.

  It had been funny. Adam had laughed.

  Click, click.

  He swallowed painfully.

  The noise was heading toward him, getting louder. Advancing a little and pausing. It sounded to Adam like the cautious movement of an animal. But there weren’t any animals in the London Underground, not really. Rats, of course; maybe the odd stray dog. Yet the sound he heard wasn’t made by any rat or dog. It skittered and tapped, and struck Adam as more like the noise an insect might make.

  Yet for the noise to be that loud, it would have to be huge.

  Or very close.

  He felt his heartbeat ratchet up in intensity until he was sure his chest would burst open.

  The shuddering beam of light gave up nothing. He frowned, and felt a dry panic squeezing his bladder. The noise sounded close enough that he was sure he should be able to see something.

  Click, click, click, cli—

  So loud, Adam thought. Like it’s right on top of us.

  Oh.

  Shit.

  Adam knew that it would be there even before he jerked his jaw up and illuminated the roof above his head with ghostly light. Some crazy intuition told him before he saw it.

  Bursting from the shadows toward the two paralysed men, bewildering and obscene.

  A creature born in a fevered nightmare.

  It came at them fast, scuttling along the ceiling like some horrific spider; humanoid in shape and yet somehow insectile at the same time. Glistening skin that seemed to absorb the light. Angular limbs whirring in furious motion, eating up the distance at extraordinary speed.

  Glowing red eyes.

  Teeth.

  It shrieked as the light spilled across it, and launched itself down onto Roni before he could react, opening up his body from shoulder to groin as it fell, cleaving him in two almost casually with a talon as long as a pocket knife.

  Adam heard a tragic, surprised gasp followed by a wet splat, impossibly loud in the enclosed space, and realised with numb horror that the noise was Roni’s blood. It sounded like there was so much of it, raining down heavily on the ground. A grisly downpour that fell not from storm clouds, but from an unfolding nightmare.

  Blood, Adam decided distantly, made a horrible sound. It was a noise no human being should ever have to endure.

  Roni’s eyes flickered with piercing awareness for an instant as his guts began to slide from his abdomen. The oozing dark mass of innards looked almost alive in the bleak light, and the awful sight of his colleague’s pulsing organs made the last functioning part of Adam Trent’s mind shriek loud enough to break the spell.

  Go!

  The creature began to turn to face Adam even as he turned away, pounding his legs forward.

  He only managed to take a couple of frantic strides before something impacted heavily on his back.

  Searing pain.

  Falling.

  Adam crashed into the ground, and the air blasted from his lungs.

  The light on his helmet smashed, plunging him into pitch-black darkness.

  He rolled over onto his back, feeling something flapping around the base of his spine, and realised in horror that it was his own flesh, drawn apart like curtains. He gagged.

  Hauled himself to his feet.

  Heard guttural breathing in the void.

  He tensed, trying to ready himself for the next attack.

  It came from his left, delivering another tearing blow, and this time Adam was conscious of the fact that he was sailing through the air moments before he clattered into a wall with a dry and terrible slap. His skull rang, and for a moment he just laid there, with his eyes shut and his head spinning, waiting helplessly for the end.

  Waiting.

  Nothing.

  His left side felt like it was on fire, and he dropped a hand to find that a sticky chasm had opened up in his love handle, a hole that felt gigantic to his probing fingers.

  Again, he rose to his feet and began to stumble away, and again he felt the talons raking him, lifting him and tossing him away like rotten meat. Another hole. Another leak.

  Another pause.

  It was during that pause that Adam slipped into a dreamlike trance, and thought about his neighbour’s cat; about the way he had once watched it idly batting a mouse around the garden, letting the poor creature believe it had a chance to escape, only to drag it back for another round of fun with claws and teeth at the last moment.

  It’s playing with me.

  This time, Adam couldn’t even bring himself to stand. He rolled onto his back and heard it moving toward him slowly, like it was savouring the moment.

  “Please,” Adam slurred, a bubble of blood and saliva popping on his lips, “please…just kill me…”

  The thing laughed, and Adam let his head drop against the ground. He closed his eyes.

  Prayed for oblivion.

  And felt it crawl directly over him.

  Tasted the rotten stink of its hot breath; blood and ancient decay.

  He opened his eyes, and found the hideous face just inches from his own, terrible eyes burning like torches in the darkness.

  Adam stared directly at those sickening crimson pools and felt something in his head snap; something that made his skull ring with a dull and nauseating permanence.

  His sanity began to evaporate, making room in his mind for something else; worse than the pain had been; than any pain could possibly be.

  The creature took what was left of Adam Trent’s mind then, and in his final moment, he understood the terrible truth.

  It wasn’t going to kill him at all.

  14

  Growling.

  Increasing in intensity.

  Filling the dark space like the sound of idling American muscle.

  Cornelia Stokes glanced at the rear view mirror and saw light brown eyes staring directly back at her. The rising growl became a bark.

  Conny grinned and returned her eyes to the road, steering the van along Mornington Crescent toward Euston. Her day had been mapped out, and it was supposed to provide little in the way of drama: she and Remy had spent the early part of the afternoon in Regent’s Park—keeping an eye on a rain-soaked and peaceful protest which certainly didn’t look like it might turn nasty—when she got the call to respond to an emergency at the train station.

  Remy barked again, louder.

  To anyone who didn’t know better, it might have sounded like the dog in the rear of the van was going crazy; growling and barking at nothing. But Conny had been Remy’s handler for four years—most of her career with the British Transport Police’s Dog Unit—and knew him better than she knew herself. The chaotic noise was his routine; his own way of preparing himself for the work he knew was to come. When he was placed in the van and the sirens began to wail, that meant only one thing for Remy. Time to put on his game face.

  Time for action.

  Conny couldn’t have silenced him even if she had wanted to.

  Remy’s specialty was crowd control. Controlled aggression was his purp
ose, and he was the best police dog that Conny had ever seen, let alone worked with. Smart and obedient and completely harmless…ninety percent of the time.

  The other ten percent of the time Remy was a snarling weapon, and on each and every occasion that the German Shepherd was called into action, Conny found herself astonished at the impact his bristling presence could have on a crowd of people. Even those who were armed themselves shrivelled in fear at the sight of him. A weapon with teeth, she concluded, reached right into the primitive part of a person’s brain in a way that no knife or firearm ever could.

  Remy represented a primal fear that could not be ignored, and often merely the sight of him—eighty-five pounds of coiled muscle, propping up snapping jaws full of sharp trouble—was enough to calm even the most aggressive of suspects. Conny had a long-standing love affair with firearms, but once Remy had given her his complete, unquestioning loyalty and trust, she wouldn’t have traded the dog for a full-auto assault rifle. Guns jammed; they got misplaced or ran out of ammunition. Remy never did.

  She swung the small police van onto Hampstead Road, nodding acknowledgment at the afternoon drivers who pulled aside to let her through, and Euston Station loomed ahead of her. She stepped on the accelerator.

  Conny and Remy had been asked to provide backup to the security staff at the station: to help break up a scuffle which had broken out among several commuters waiting at one of the Underground platforms. In Conny’s experience, most fights broke up as soon as Remy started to bark, and she expected that this occasion would be no different.

  Her day could have been a lot worse, she thought. She could have been one of the poor bastards dealing with the massacre which had taken place in south London just a few hours earlier: a junkie who’d gone berserk in a supermarket, killing three people and wounding two others before taking his own life. When local police had responded to the incident, they had discovered the bodies of a further nine homeless people torn to pieces under a nearby bridge.

  There was no weapon to deal with something like that, no shield that could keep the damage at bay, either. Sometimes, the world just erupted into madness and violence that was impossible to comprehend, and somebody out there had to face it.