The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro; Chuck Hogan

  Its face…

  Eph grew dizzy as the being’s superhuman height made the room seem small, made him feel small. The sight weakened his legs, even as he turned to race toward the door to the hallway.

  Now the being was in front of him, between him and the door, blocking the only exit. As though Eph hadn’t actually turned but the floor itself had rotated. The other two normal, man-size vampires flanked him on either side.

  The being was closer now. Looming over Eph. Looking down.

  Eph dropped to his knees. Simply being in the presence of this giant creature was paralyzing, no different than if Eph had been physically struck down.

  Hmmmmmmmmmm.

  Eph felt this. The way you feel live music in your chest. A hum rumbling in his brain. He averted his eyes, to the floor. He was crippled by fear. He did not want to see its face again.

  Look at me.

  At first Eph believed that this thing was strangling him with its mind. But his breathlessness was the result of pure terror, a panic of his very soul.

  He raised his eyes just a bit. Trembling, he saw the hem of the Master’s robe, up to the hands at the end of the sleeves. They were revoltingly colorless and nail-less, and inhumanly large. The fingers were of uniform length, all oversize except for the middle finger, which was even longer and thicker than the rest—and hooked at the end like a talon.

  The Master. Here for him. To turn him.

  Look at me, pig.

  Eph did, raising his head as though a hand gripped his chin.

  The Master looked down at him from where his head bent beneath the ceiling. It gripped the sides of its hood with its huge hands and pulled it back off its skull. The head was hairless and colorless. Its eyes, lips, and mouth were all without hue, worn and washed out, like threadbare linen. Its nose was worn back like that of a weathered statue, a mere bump made of two black holes. Its throat throbbed in a hungry pantomime of breathing. Its skin was so pale that it was translucent. Visible beneath the flesh, like a blurry map to an ancient, ruined land, were veins that no longer carried blood. Veins that pulsed with red. The circulating blood worms. Capillary parasites coursing beneath the Master’s pellucid flesh.

  This is a reckoning.

  The voice rode into Eph’s head on a roar of terror. He felt himself going slack. Everything muddled and dimming.

  I have your pig wife. Soon your pig son.

  Eph’s head was swollen to bursting with disgust and anger. It felt like a balloon forcing itself to pop. He slid one foot flat beneath him. He staggered to his feet before this immense demon.

  I will take everything from you and leave nothing. That is my way.

  The Master reached forward in a fast, blurry motion. Eph felt, as an anesthetized patient feels the pressure of the dentist’s drill, a gripping sensation on the top of his head, and then his feet were off the floor. He swung his arms and kicked out his legs. The Master palmed his head like a basketball, lifting him one-handedly toward the ceiling. To eye level, near enough to glimpse the blood worms wriggling like plague spermatozoa.

  I am the occultation and the eclipse.

  Lifting Eph to his mouth like a fat grape. The mouth was dark inside, his throat a barren cavern, a direct route to hell. Eph, his body swinging from his neck, was nearly out of his mind. He could feel the long middle talon against the back of his neck, its pressure at the top of his spine. The Master tipped Eph’s head back as though cracking open the pop top of a beer can.

  I am a drinker of men.

  A wet, crunching sound, and then the Master’s mouth began to open. His jaw retracted and his tongue curled up and back and his hideous stinger emerged.

  Eph roared, defiantly blocking access to his neck with his arms, howling into the Master’s savage face.

  And then, something…not Eph’s howl…something made the Master’s great head turn ever so slightly.

  The nostrils in his face pulsed, the sniffing of a demon without breath.

  His onyx eyes turned back to Eph. Staring at him like two dead spheres. Glaring at Eph—as though Eph had somehow dared to deceive the Master.

  Not alone.

  A t that moment, coming up the stairs of Eph’s apartment building two steps behind Fet, Setrakian gripped the handrail suddenly, his shoulder slumping against the wall. Pain burst in his head like a blinding aneurism, and a voice—vile and gloating and blasphemous—boomed like a bomb exploding inside a crowded symphony hall.

  SETRAKIAN.

  Fet stopped and looked back, but through wincing eyes Setrakian waved him ahead. A whisper was all he could muster: “He is here.”

  Nora’s eyes darkened. Fet’s boots pounded as he ran up to the landing. Nora helped Setrakian, pulling him after Fet, to the door, inside the apartment.

  Fet hit the first body he encountered, an open field tackle, going in low and getting grabbed as he did, falling and rolling over. He popped up fast in a fighting stance and faced his opponent, seeing the vampire’s face, not grinning, but with his mouth spread like a grin, ready to feed.

  Then Fet saw the giant being across the room. The Master, with Eph in his grip. Monstrous. Mesmerizing.

  The nearer vampire came at him and drove Fet back into the kitchen, against the refrigerator door.

  Nora rushed inside, managing to switch on her Luma lamp just as the vampire Bolivar lunged for her. He hissed a breathless scream and reeled backward. Then Nora saw the Master, the back of his down-turned head against the ceiling. She saw Eph dangling by his head in the monster’s grip. “Eph!”

  Setrakian entered with his long sword bared. He froze for a moment when he saw the Master, the giant, the demon. Here in front of him now after so many years.

  Setrakian brandished his silver sword. Nora, closing from a different angle, drove Bolivar back toward the front wall of the apartment. The Master was cornered. Attacking Eph in such a small space had been a cardinal mistake.

  Setrakian’s heart pounded in his chest as he turned the blade point out and ran it at the demon.

  The droning inside the apartment expanded suddenly, an explosion of noise inside his head. And Nora’s, and Fet’s, and Eph’s. An incapacitating shockwave of sound that made the old man shrink back for a moment—just long enough.

  He saw a black grin snake across the Master’s face. The giant vampire threw the flailing Eph across the room, his body slamming into the far wall and dropping hard to the floor. The Master hooked Bolivar by the shoulder with one of his long, taloned hands—and lunged at the picture window overlooking Worth Street.

  A splintering crash shuddered the building as the Master escaped in a rain of glass.

  Setrakian ran toward the sudden breeze, to the frame of the window edged with jagged shards. Three stories below, the glass spray was just hitting the sidewalk, glittering in the streetlight.

  The Master, with his preternatural speed, was already across the street and mounting the facing building. With Bolivar hanging from his free arm, he went over the top railing and disappeared onto the higher roof, into the night.

  Setrakian sagged a moment, unable to process the fact that the Master had just been inside that very room and was now escaped. His heart was throwing a fit in his chest, pounding as if it was going to burst.

  “Hey—a little help!”

  He turned, and Fet was on the floor holding off the other vampire, Nora assisting with her lamp. Setrakian felt a new burst of rage and went walking over, his silver sword straight out at his side.

  Fet saw him coming, his eyes going wide. “No, wait—”

  Setrakian struck, sweeping his blade through the vampire’s neck, inches above Fet’s hands, then kicking the decapitated body off of Fet’s chest before the white blood could reach his skin.

  Nora ran over to Eph, lying crumpled on the floor. His cheek was cut and his eyes were dilated and terrified—but he appeared un-turned.

  Setrakian whipped out a mirror to confirm this. He held it to Eph’s face and found no distortion. Nora shone
her lamp on Eph’s neck. Nothing—no breach.

  Nora helped him sit up, Eph wincing in pain when his right arm was touched. She touched his chin underneath his cut cheek, needing to embrace him but not wanting to hurt him any further. “What happened?” she said.

  Eph said, “He has Kelly.”

  Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens

  EPH TORE ACROSS the bridge into Queens. He used Jim’s phone to try Kelly’s mobile as he drove.

  No ring. Immediate pickup by her voice mail.

  Hi, this is Kelly. I’m not able to answer my phone right now…

  Eph speed-dialed Zack again. Zack’s phone kept ringing through to the mailbox.

  He screamed around the corner onto Kelton and pulled up hard outside Kelly’s front yard, vaulting the low fence and running up the stairs. He banged on the door and pushed the bell. His keys were hanging on a peg back inside his apartment.

  Eph took a running start and put his sore shoulder into the door. He tried it again, hurting his arm even more. The third time he threw himself against the door, the frame splintered, and he fell, sprawling, inside.

  He got to his feet and rushed through the house. Slamming into walls around corners, his feet kicking at the steps up to the second floor. He stopped at the door to Zack’s bedroom. The boy’s room was empty.

  So empty.

  Back downstairs three steps at a time. He recognized Kelly’s emergency go bag next to the broken door. He saw suitcases packed but not zipped. She had never left the city.

  Oh, Christ, he thought. It’s true.

  The others reached the door just as something struck Eph from behind. A body, tackling him. He fought back immediately, already primed with adrenaline. He rolled his attacker over, holding him off.

  Matt Sayles. Eph saw his dead eyes and felt the heat of his overamped metabolism.

  The feral thing that was once Matt snarled at him. Eph braced his forearm against Matt’s throat as the recently turned vampire started to open its mouth. Eph went up hard under his chin, trying to block whatever biological mechanism was about to unleash the stinger. Matt’s eyes strained and his head shook all over as he tried to work his throat free.

  Eph saw Setrakian drawing his sword behind Matt. Eph yelled, “NO!” and drew from a ready well of rage to kick Matt off him.

  The vampire snarled, rolling to a stop, then popping up on all fours, watching Eph get to his feet.

  Matt rose, standing hunched over. He was doing weird things with his mouth, a new vampire getting used to the different muscles, his tongue swirling around his open lips in lascivious confusion.

  Eph looked around for a weapon, finding only a tennis racket lying on the floor outside the closet. He grabbed the taped grip two-handedly and spun the titanium frame on its side, going after Matt with it. All of his feelings for Matt—this man who had moved into his wife’s house and bed…who wanted to be his boy’s father…who sought to replace Eph—came surging up as he swung for Matt’s jaw. He wanted to shatter it and the horror that lurked inside. The new ones weren’t so coordinated yet, and Eph got in seven or eight good blows, chopping loose teeth and dropping Matt to his knees—before Matt lashed out, catching Eph’s ankle and upending him. Some residual anti-Eph rage still boiled inside Matt too. He rose up gnashing his broken teeth, but Eph kicked Matt in the face, extending his knee and throwing Matt back. Eph retreated around the partition into the kitchen, and it was there he saw the carving knife stuck on a magnet strip.

  Rage is never blind. Rage is uniquely focused. Eph felt as if he were looking through the wrong end of a telescope—seeing only the knife, and then only Matt.

  Matt came at him and Eph strong-armed him back against the wall. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked it back in order to expose the vampire’s neck. Matt’s mouth opened, his stinger swishing out, trying to feed on Eph. Matt’s throat rippled and bucked, and Eph attacked it, stabbing, knifeknifeknifeknifeknife. Hard and quick, right through the throat and into the wall behind, the blade tip sticking and Eph pulling out again. Crunching cervical vertebra. White goo bubbling. Body sagging, arms flailing. Eph stabbing until the head remained in his hand but the body sagged to the floor.

  Eph stopped cutting then. He saw, without truly processing it, the head in his hand with its stinger drooping through the severed neck, still twitching.

  He then saw Nora and the others watching him from the open door. He saw the wall and the white mess dripping down it. He saw the decapitated body on the floor. He saw the head in his hand.

  Blood worms wriggled up Matt’s face. Past his cheeks and over his staring eyes. Into Matt’s thin hair, approaching Eph’s fingers.

  Eph dropped the head, which struck the floor with a thud, not rolling anywhere. He dropped the knife too, which fell soundlessly into Matt’s lap.

  Eph said, “They took my son.”

  Setrakian pulled him away from the body and the infested vampire blood. Nora turned on her Luma light and irradiated Matt’s body.

  Fet said, “Holy, holy shit.”

  Eph said again, both as an explanation and as a nail to be banged more deeply into his soul: “They took my son.”

  The homicidal roar in his ears was fading, and he recognized the sound of a car pulling up outside. A door opened, soft music playing.

  A voice calling out, “Thanks.”

  That voice.

  Eph went to the broken front door. He looked down the walk and saw Zack getting out of a minivan, shrugging a backpack strap over one shoulder.

  Zack made it only as far as the gate door before Eph wrapped him up in his arms. “Dad?”

  Eph checked him over, grasping the boy’s head in his hands, examining his eyes, his face.

  Zack said, “What are you doing—?”

  “Where were you?”

  “At Fred’s.” Zack tried to wriggle out of his father’s grip. “Mom never showed, so Fred’s mom took me over to their place.”

  Eph let Zack pull back. Kelly.

  Zack was looking past him, at the house. “What happened to our door?”

  He took a few steps toward it, until Fet appeared in the doorway, Setrakian behind him. A big guy in a hanging flannel shirt and work boots, and an old man in tweed holding a wolf’s-head walking stick.

  Zack looked back at his father, the troubled vibe now fully setting in.

  He said, “Where’s Mom?”

  Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem

  EPH STOOD in the book-lined hallway of Setrakian’s apartment. He was looking in on Zack eating a Devil Dog at the old man’s small kitchen table, where Nora was asking him about school, keeping him occupied and distracted.

  Eph could still feel the sensation of the Master’s grip on his head. He had lived a life built on certain assumptions, in a world based on certain assumptions, and now that everything he thought he could rely on was gone, he realized he didn’t know anything anymore.

  Nora saw him watching from the hall, and Eph could tell by the look on her face that she was frightened by the look on his.

  Eph knew that he would always be a little insane from now on.

  He went downstairs two flights to Setrakian’s basement armory. The UV alarm lights at the door were turned off, the old man showing Fet his wares. The exterminator was admiring the modified nail gun, looking like a longer, narrower UZI submachine gun, but orange and black, and with its loading nail magazine feeding the barrel on a slant.

  Setrakian came straight over to Eph. “Did you eat?”

  Eph shook his head.

  “How is your boy?”

  “Scared, but he won’t let it show.”

  Setrakian nodded. “Like the rest of us.”

  “You’ve seen him before. This Thing. The Master.”

  “Yes.”

  “You tried to kill it.”

  “Yes.”

  “You failed.”

  Setrakian squinted, as though looking directly into the past. “I was not adequately pre
pared. I will not miss again.”

  Fet, holding a lantern-shaped object with a spike on the end of it, said, “Not likely. Not with this arsenal.”

  “Some parts I pieced together myself, from things that came into the store. But I am no bomb maker.” He clenched his gloved claws as proof of this. “I have a silversmith in New Jersey who molds my points and needles.”

  “You mean you didn’t pick this up at Radio Shack?”

  Setrakian took the heavy, lantern-shaped object from the exterminator’s hands. It was constructed of shaded plastic with a thick battery base, a six-inch spike of steel on the bottom. “This is essentially an ultraviolet light mine. It is a single-use weapon that will emit a cleansing spray of vampire-killing light in the pure UVC range. It is designed to clear a large room, and will burn very hot and fast once charged. You want to make certain you are out of the way when it does. The temperature and the radiation can get a bit…uncomfortable.”

  Fet said, “And what’s with this nail gun?”

  “This is powder actuated, operating on a shotgun load of gunpowder to drive the nail. Fifty nails per load, inch and a half brads. Silver of course.”

  “Of course,” said Fet, admiring the piece, getting a feel for the rubber grip.

  Setrakian looked around the room: the old armor up on the wall; the UVC lamps and battery chargers on the shelves; the silver blades and silver-backed mirrors; some prototype weapons; his notebooks and sketches. The enormity of the moment nearly overwhelmed him. He only hoped that fear would not turn him back into the powerless young man he had once been.

  He said, “I have waited for this a very long time.”

  He started upstairs then. Leaving Eph alone with Fet. The big exterminator lifted the nail gun out of its charger. “Where did you find this old guy?”

  Eph said, “He found me.”

  “I’ve been in a lot of basements in my line of work. I look around this little workshop here, and I think—here is the one crazy who’s actually been vindicated.”