He expected them to shake their heads. Instead, all of them nodded—even Herb.
“The benefits of a Rennick home-schooling,” Herb said with a crooked grin. “I can build an EMP bomb; I can strip and reassemble most any firearm you can imagine; I can fly a helicopter. I can’t function as a normal part of society. That’s the trade-off.”
“Okay,” Dan said, “so it’s agreed?”
He looked around the small group of terrified men.
When did I end up being the one in charge?
The thought sent a thrill of dizzying anxiety coursing through him. He breathed deeply and forced it back before it put down roots. This was definitely not the time. If Herb was right, they might have only a matter of minutes before the sun started to dip below the horizon. If they didn’t make it out of the mansion, their only option would be to lock themselves in one of the kitchen’s windowless store rooms and pray.
If it came to that, Dan didn’t think he would ever see daylight again.
I can be terrified later.
“Agreed,” Herb said quietly, and he reached out to a nearby cupboard, sliding open the door loudly enough for the noise to carry beyond the kitchen.
A nice touch, Dan thought, and he tilted his head and listened.
Outside the kitchen, the faint, sickening sound of the vampire feeding had stopped.
Silence.
16
Remy sat and watched Conny with a slightly puzzled expression, his head tilted a little to the right.
He huffed.
Right back at you, Rem, Conny thought. What the hell was all that about?
She leaned over the platform edge, staring down at the prone body on the tracks.
Her brow furrowed.
Now that she had a chance to look at it properly, she saw that the dead man’s hi-vis jacket was very similar to the ones worn by the staff at Euston. A blood-spattered I.D. tag was pinned to his chest. She squinted at it, just able to make the lettering out.
Adam Trent, senior engineer
Conny’s frown deepened.
One of the staff?
“He...he came from the tunnel.” A young woman’s voice, her tone high-pitched and tremulous.
Conny turned to see a number of stunned commuters staring at her. Frightened, shocked faces. The woman who’d spoken took a step forward, jabbing her finger first at the distant tunnel and then at the bodies on the platform.
“He killed them.”
Conny glanced at Remy. The young woman’s aggressive gesture had his attention. Remy didn’t discriminate when he was on duty. There was either threat or no threat. He growled softly.
“Easy, Rem,” Conny said, and waved a stop gesture at the young woman. “What’s your name, Miss?”
“Deanne.” Her lower lip was quivering, her eyes wide. Remy relaxed a little at her tone. “I was standing right there...he was screaming. He came out of the tunnel, screaming like there was something chasing him, and then he...he just...”
Deanne’s eyes filled with tears and she pointed again at the two bodies on the floor.
“Deanne, I’m going to ask you to step back, okay?” Conny lifted her voice. “I need everyone to step back, please.”
The crowd shuffled backward a few steps, and Conny turned to examine the bodies on the floor. She could tell immediately that the nearest was dead; a middle-aged man in a suit whose face had been pulped, presumably by the rebar. It would have taken more than one blow to do the sort of damage Conny saw. The second victim, a young woman who looked roughly Deanne’s age, appeared less seriously injured. Conny walked over and knelt at her side. She pressed a finger into the prone woman’s neck, searching for a pulse, and nodded. Faint, but there.
She hit the button on her radio and called for an ambulance, before alerting her CO that Euston Station required the presence of a little more than a single dog handler, and then returned her attention to Deanne.
“Did he say anything?”
Deanne shook her head, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“We brought him down when he attacked the girl,” a man’s voice said. Conny glanced at the speaker. A young man in a hoodie gestured to a small, disparate group of men around him. “We tried to hold him on the ground until the security guys got here. He...just kept swinging. He didn’t say a word. He was…screaming. Like she said.”
Conny nodded over her shoulder at the tunnel.
“And you saw him come from that direction, too?”
“Yeah. Sounded like a fucking train coming at first,” he said, letting out a nervy laugh.
Conny returned her gaze to the tunnel, distracted by the buzz of her radio.
“Copy that,” a crackling voice said. Conny’s CO. “Hold your position, Stokes. We’ve got reinforcements en route. Secure the platform and await further orders.”
Conny turned back to study the carnage that Adam Trent had caused. Several injured, at least one victim dead, but the platform was secure. She had just reported that very fact. Trent was dead.
Secure the platform from what?
Behind her, Deanne was talking again, softly; tearfully, but Conny wasn’t listening. She was staring at Remy.
The German Shepherd had apparently decided that Conny was in no immediate danger, and was no longer watching his handler. Instead, Remy was staring at the distant entrance to the tunnel.
And whining softly.
Remy didn’t whine; Conny doubted that he had since he had been a puppy.
Squinting, she moved to Remy’s side and squatted, following the angle of his gaze. She saw nothing. The entrance to the tunnel yawned; an impenetrable abyss.
“What is it, Rem?”
Remy’s response was a low growl, and for the first time ever, Conny thought she detected a different note in the familiar noise, something that sounded a little like fear.
She gazed at the tunnel.
Saw nothing.
Couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.
*
The London Underground Central Line was generally the most overcrowded on the rail network; hardly surprising given the easy access it offered to many of London’s most popular tourist spots, and the fact that it passed through the shoppers’ Mecca that was Oxford Circus. Travelling at rush hour on the Central Line was the last resort of the desperate and the crazy, in Petra Duran’s opinion, which was precisely why she stepped onto one of the dreaded trains at around four in the afternoon, an hour before the offices of the city would spit out tens of thousands of weary commuters.
Even at that time, in what should have been a quiet period, the train still felt crowded, and it still stank of sweat…and she still didn’t get a seat.
She clung onto one of the handrails for balance as she travelled from Notting Hill Gate toward Liverpool Street, where she was due to catch an overground train that would take her out of the city towards Norfolk, and a family reunion that she was dreading. The whole journey would be a slow descent into eventual Hell, and it all began with the damn Central Line.
Petra figured she was something like three stops away from getting out of the Underground and heading to somewhere that might offer some actual fresh air, when her train began to slow down between stations for no good reason.
The old, familiar sinking feeling as the brakes squealed. It was the first of what would probably be many delays in her journey. The train crept along for a few hundred yards. She sighed.
Somehow, Petra decided, the train moving so slowly—surely at one mile per hour or less—was even more irritating than if it just came to a full stop.
Of course, as soon as that thought popped into her mind, the train did stop completely.
She peered at one of the tube maps which hung over the scratched, dirty windows that mocked passengers with a view of nothing other than pitch-black darkness. The train had halted somewhere between Chancery Lane and St. Paul’s.
She checked her watch.
If the delay swallowed up more than ten minutes,
she ran the risk of missing her connection at Liverpool Street. Petra cursed herself for leaving the house so late. That was the trouble with journeys you didn’t want to make: you tended to eke out every last second before finally leaving home only when you absolutely had to, leaving no margin for error.
She began to daydream idly about calling her mother, and saying that she had missed her train.
There’s no way I can get there now, Mum. I’ll just have to meet your twenty-five-year-old boyfriend some other time. Such a shame…
Even if Petra had made that call, she knew her mother would have insisted that she find alternate transport. She hadn’t been home in nearly two years, and that, as far as her mother was concerned, bordered on being a personal insult.
Still, it was nice to at least think about calling it off. Nice to linger on prospect of just turning around and returning to her studio apartment, spending the rest of the day reading a book and eating chocolate. It would be so—
BANG.
Petra jumped as a loud thump ricocheted around the carriage, snapping her back to reality.
A couple of passengers murmured and peered around in interest. Those, Petra figured, had to be tourists. True Londoners knew that the only place to point your eyes while on a tube train was the floor, or—at a push—the maps above the windows. Eye contact was a definite no-no.
BANG.
The second thump was louder—way louder—and it sent a ripple of tension rolling through the carriage.
Train protocol abandoned, Petra found herself staring straight into the eyes of an old man sitting near the middle of the carriage when a third thump rocked it; saw those eyes widening with a growing apprehension that she felt uncoiling in her own gut.
That third bang sounded much closer, and somehow heavy with intent.
The tube was grimy and slow and overcrowded and shit, but mostly it was predictable. Yet the thumps that Petra heard were entirely new to her. It didn’t sound like an engine malfunction or even the wheels on the tracks. It didn’t sound like anything she had heard on a Tube train before.
In fact, it almost sounded like somebody was walking alongside the train, banging their fists against the exterior, or perhaps swinging a baseball bat at it. But that couldn’t be possible.
Another thump, though this one far more distant. A carriage or two further down the train.
Whatever was causing that noise, it was definitely moving.
Now, almost everybody in the carriage was peering around at each other nervously, each perhaps hoping to see a face that wasn’t riddled with concern staring back at them.
Petra glanced at the door to her right, focusing her gaze on the strips of glass that were little more than pitch-black rectangles.
Suddenly, for the first time ever, she thought about how the passengers must look from the outside; beacons of light in the darkness, lit up like a bloody Christmas tree.
So vulnerable.
She shuddered.
Edged a little closer to the glass.
Holding her breath.
Did I see something out there? Something in the blackness? Some darker shadow?
Is it looking at me right now?
Petra’s heart pounded, and she leaned in further, until her nose was only inches away from the window. When the breath in her lungs began to feel like a serrated blade, she let it out softly, and it fogged the glass in front of her face.
She wiped at the pane, half expecting to reveal a face pressed up against the other side of the glass, something hideous and twisted and demonic; maybe some crazy cannibals that lived in the tunnels, like in those silly old movies her boyfriend loved.
Nothing.
Just darkness and delays on the Central Line. Everything oh-so ordinary. The strange banging was probably just the engine imploding. Most of the transport system in London needed replacing yesterday, if not four decades earlier. Most likely, the noises were just parts of the train dying at last, and ensuring that her journey would be slower, and just a little more hellish than it ought to be.
Stifling a nervous chuckle, Petra turned away from the door and faced the carriage once more.
Squuuueeeeeeeeeaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllll.
The noise stopped everyone in the carriage like a freeze frame. It sounded like a rusting nail being scraped across glass. An obscene shrieking that made shoulders hunch and teeth grit.
Somewhere, a passenger whimpered.
Might have been Petra herself.
With the lights blazing inside the train, the windows were little better than mirrors, but through the distorted reflections of themselves, everyone in the carriage saw it.
Attached only to empty darkness; somehow all the more terrifying for being disembodied by the light spilling from inside the carriage.
A hand.
A single, terrifying hand.
It looked like it belonged to some enormous bird, or some prehistoric creature; long, thin fingers that ended in wicked talons.
The hand ran along the length of the carriage, scratching a line through the middle of each pane of glass, and the noise was dreadful and hypnotic. Petra watched, unable to look away, as the claw slowly drew closer to her position by the doors. Its movement was almost leisurely, like whatever unseen horror was attached to the fearsome talons was enjoying every second, and wanted to draw it out as much as possible.
The squealing stopped.
And then the lights went out.
For several moments, the darkness was so complete that Petra thought something had blinded her.
She listened to her breath, rattling like rusted chains, still hearing that all-consuming screech of the terrible claws on the glass, and let out a trembling yelp when emergency lighting kicked into life, bathing the carriage in a soft, orange glow. Suddenly, it was possible for her to see what the grotesque hand was attached to: a creature that she couldn’t even have conjured in her worst nightmares was standing right outside the window.
More than one.
Monsters.
Petra saw them for only the briefest of moments, for barely a second—just a fleeting, chilling glimpse—before the windows imploded, and something—some things—hurtled into the carriage.
And the crowded space filled with the sound of screaming.
*
Conny secured the platform with the help of Remy and the two bruised security staff, guiding the small crowd of witnesses out to the bottom of the escalators which led up to the ticketing hall, explaining that medical assistance was on the way and that they would all be required to provide statements.
Almost as soon as she had shepherded the commuters away from the platform, she saw the first of the reinforcements arriving, clattering down the stopped escalator in single file, evenly spaced.
Her eyes widened in surprise.
Kevlar body armour. Assault rifles. Protective visors.
An armed response unit.
What the hell?
The first group of officers made directly for the tunnel that led to the platform without even looking in Conny and Remy’s direction. A second group followed, and made their way straight toward her.
“You have been ordered to evacuate the station,” a man wearing an Inspector’s uniform said loudly, addressing the group. “Please leave in a calm and orderly fashion.”
As if perfectly planned, the up escalator began to move again. Armed officers began to guide the shaken commuters toward the exit, telling them that they would be taken care of upstairs.
“Sir,” Conny said, “these people are witnesses to a murder. There is an ambulance—”
“That will have to wait.”
Conny blinked.
Murder will have to wait?
“The ticketing area has been cleared,” the Inspector continued. “You’ll need to go up to the main hall and speak to the CS.”
“Chief Superintendent?” Conny repeated, surprised. “Here, at the station?”
He nodded.
“Everybody is
here or headed this way. All hands on deck. Didn’t you hear on the radio?”
Conny flushed. Her radio had been crackling during Remy’s scuffle with Adam Trent. With all the noise of the man screaming and the dog snarling, she hadn’t been able to pay attention to it.
She shook her head.
“Well, get upstairs.” He looked down at Remy, who was still staring back toward the entrance to the platform. “I’m sure they will want you both up there.”
The last of the commuters had disappeared from sight, and the Inspector gestured for his group to make for the northbound platform.
“Hey,” Conny called, “it didn’t happen in there, it was the southbound line.”
The Inspector shook his head and grimaced behind his visor.
“It’s all the lines.”
17
Herb’s pulse thundered in his ears as he gripped one side of the table which he had placed across the kitchen door as a barricade. Dan held the other side, and when he nodded, they lifted together, moving the table aside as quietly as possible.
He stared at Dan. One minute the guy was having seizures on the floor, and the next, he was smoothly taking over as Herb’s own courage began to desert him. At any moment, Herb half-expected him to collapse and start screaming, but Dan remained focused only on moving the table without making a sound. His head was bowed in concentration, his mop of hair matted with sweat. Herb noticed for the first time that he had a scar that began an inch or so above his right eyebrow, running up into his tangled hair. A surgical scar.
Before Herb could ponder the significance of that scar any further, Dan began to lower the table. Herb focused on making sure the legs didn’t make a sound as they made contact with the tiles, and when he looked up again, Dan had already brushed his hair back over his forehead, and was moving to the door and pressing his ear against it.
After a moment, he shook his head.
Now, he mouthed, and Herb nodded, picking up the two guns from the counter and gripping them in palms that trembled wildly.
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