Kardina

by Thomas Emson

  Ab put the camera down and said, “Brilliant.”

  “Will it do any good?” said Bill, taking off his tie.

  “Hope it will,” said Ediz.

  “Get me my clothes,” he said.

  Ediz picked up the pile of smelly old clothes and handed them to Bill.

  “You want to wear these again?” he said.

  “It’s my home,” said Bill. “My home. Right, where am I going to get a gun?”

  “Gun?” said Ediz.

  “You think I’m missing out on the fun?”

  CHAPTER 86. “DIE SLOWLY”.

  Hillah, Iraq – 9.52pm (GMT + 3 hours), 20/21 May, 2011

  ALFRED was terrified. He stayed out of sight behind a boulder as Nimrod sank his teeth into Aaliyah Sinclair’s throat.

  She screamed and threw her fists at the monster. But it made no difference. Sinclair slumped as the monster bit her on the clavicle.

  Nimrod drank a little from her, then let her fall to the ground.

  The woman groaned.

  She was still alive.

  Alfred was wondering what to do – stand up and try to communicate with Nimrod again or just get out of there?

  But before he could make a decision, he heard someone approaching from behind.

  It was Apostol Goga, hobbling along, using his cane.

  Alfred stood up and faced Goga. He pointed the submachine gun at the Romanian.

  “Where d’you reckon you’re going, Long John?”

  Goga kept coming.

  Alfred hesitated.

  “Ain’t you seen my gun, Goga?”

  “I have seen.”

  Alfred backed up, still pointing the weapon at Goga.

  “I’ll fucking shoot.”

  “And you will miss,” said Goga.

  Alfred nervously glanced behind him. Nimrod was just standing there, waiting. But waiting for what? Now and again, the monster nudged Sinclair, but mostly he loitered. Maybe he was disorientated after his resurrection. Maybe he was waiting for orders from that woman in white.

  Alfred checked on Goga again.

  The Romanian limped towards him.

  “You don’t think I’ll shoot?” said Alfred.

  “I said, you may shoot, sir, but you will miss.”

  Alfred fired. The submachine gun barked. He jerked backwards and saw stars. Pain shot up his arm.

  Goga laughed at him.

  “You cannot shoot straight,” said the Romanian. “Throw me the gun, and I will show you.”

  Alfred gathered himself. He took two steps forward, still aiming the gun at his target. He was still a little woozy but was determined to blow the Romanian to bits.

  And Goga’s eyes widened.

  Alfred said, “Now you’re scared, you fucking – ”

  Goga turned and started to limp away.

  At first, Alfred wanted to laugh at the man and call him a coward.

  But then Goga said, “He is coming for you.”

  Alfred heard the thunder of feet.

  He felt the fear race through him.

  He whirled round.

  Nimrod had shaken off whatever lethargy had taken hold and was coming straight for Alfred.

  He seemed to be speaking in that low, guttural voice – words Alfred failed to understand.

  He shrieked and begged. His legs felt weak, and the terror had sapped his strength.

  He collapsed and crawled away behind some ruins, waiting for Nimrod to dig him out and tear him to pieces.

  But then Goga was moving forward again – shuffling towards the advancing Nimrod. He yanked the gold ferrule from his walking stick to reveal a blade.

  He thrust, stabbing Nimrod in the leg.

  It had little effect.

  Then Alfred thought of something. He aimed at Goga and fired. The bullets raked the ground and sliced into Goga’s right leg.

  The man screamed and his knees buckled. He dropped his cane and hit the ground, groaning. Blood pulsed from his shattered leg.

  Alfred buzzed with excitement. He smelled the cordite. It was like a drug. He leapt from his hiding place, ready to take the credit from Nimrod for protecting him.

  But the monster didn’t seem interested in gratitude. His red eyes fixed on Alfred, and his shoulders hunched as if the monster were ready to attack.

  “No… ” said Alfred.

  She came from nowhere, and Alfred couldn’t understand where she got the energy from. Initially, he thought she was dead. Blood poured from her throat. But Aaliyah Sinclair had found the strength to launch another attack on the monster. She struck Nimrod with the spear with which she had stabbed the Great Hunter earlier. Her offense had less potency now. She could not break the beast’s skin with the spear. She just didn’t have the power to drive it home.

  Alfred fired at her.

  He missed.

  Goga was trying to get up.

  Nimrod fended off the woman, shoving her to the ground. She definitely had broken bones and a terrible injury to her neck, where Nimrod had bitten her – but she still had some fight in her. Alfred, for a second, admired Sinclair. But that respect quickly petered out when Nimrod fixed on him again. Alfred shrieked and made a run for a crevice in a wall, stuffing himself in tightly.

  Goga laughed at him, calling him a coward.

  “You’ll die in this hell, Fuad,” he said. “Die like the – ”

  Nimrod stamped on Goga. The huge foot slammed down on the Romanian. It crushed Goga’s lower body into the ground. The crack of bones breaking echoed through the caverns, and Goga’s squeal of pain made Alfred flinch.

  Goga lay in the rubble. He was twisted and broken. Blood spurted from his legs. Bones protruded like branches. He twitched, only just alive. He stared in horror at his ruin of a body.

  And then he began to shriek again.

  Alfred laughed at him.

  He checked that Nimrod’s attention had been averted and scuttled out of his hiding place.

  He stood over Goga.

  The Romanian’s eyes were wild, glazed over with madness and pain. He made a terrible, animal noise.

  “You can die slowly, you fuck,” said Alfred, “I got no bullets left.”

  Nimrod loomed over Sinclair.

  Finish her, thought Alfred. Finish the bitch.

  It was as if Nimrod had read his mind.

  CHAPTER 87. BAD DECISIONS.

  “I CANNOT let him die,” said Ereshkigal.

  “I cannot let him live,” said Lawton.

  She had clawed him. Blood ran down his arms and from his cheek.

  “Let me drink it better, Jake Lawton,” she said.

  “No more drinking.”

  “Let me bite you – then you will be vampire.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “You’re almost vampire already.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “I can do that.”

  He had heard gunshots. He’d tried to run towards them. He was desperate to save Aaliyah and get her out of there.

  But Ereshkigal had him cornered.

  “You are the one with wounds,” she said. “The one they said would come to kill my Lord husband.”

  “Don’t believe what they say; they just talk bollocks.”

  “Words spoken thousands of years ago, coming to pass.”

  “Old news.”

  “I can’t let you fulfil your destiny.”

  He hesitated. No more jokes: “You can’t stop it.”

  He sprang at her, and she pounced on him. They came together, limbs twisting together, flesh on flesh. He tried to stab at her with the swords, but she avoided the blows, spinning, ducking, bending, batting away his thrusts. She slipped inside his guard. Her jaw snapped shut inches from his throat.

  He pushed her head back by forcing his left forearm under her chin, baring her throat, and he lifted the bone sword in his right hand to strike her.

  But he hesitated, looking into her eyes – the eyes of a woman.

  How could
he beat a woman?

  She’s not a woman, he told himself.

  She’s an incubus.

  A vampire.

  A witch who murdered children.

  He’d had no difficulties killing female vampires before – even his own former girlfriends – but for some reason, Ereshkigal was different. She had a strange hold over him.

  Ereshkigal took advantage of his indecision and kicked him in the leg. He lost his grip and she was loose. She attacked again. He was forced to retreat. He hacked at her with the swords. She parried the blows, driving him backwards.

  They wheeled violently, Lawton trying to repel her, Ereshkigal trying to tear at him.

  “Fuck me or kill me,” she said.

  “I bet you say that to all the boys.”

  “I said it to Vlad. I said it the Lionheart. I said it to Saladin. And do you know which it was they did?”

  Finding strength, he pried her hands off his throat and threw her aside. She rolled like a cat and was up on her feet again.

  “I don’t fuck dead things,” he said.

  She smiled. “But you are nearly dead yourself, my darling.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “You are nearly undead.”

  He’d fucked up – fucked up badly. It was the worst decision he’d made in a life of making bad decisions. But when he’d had the eye made in Rotterdam many weeks ago, he thought it would make him invincible against vampires. He wouldn’t have to have the red mark pinned to his clothing, where he could lose it in a tussle. He’d have it implanted in his body. He’d lost an eye, so why not make an artificial one using the scarlet skin of the vampire trinity? Encase it in a glass eyeball, pop it in – protected for life.

  But no.

  The fool that he was had not taken into consideration that the flesh was still living. It had desires, wants, needs. It craved to exist again. It wanted to be part of a living thing. And he was that living thing. He had been infected.

  “I’ll never be what you are,” he said. “I’d rather die.”

  “I offer you that.”

  “Won’t take you up on it just now, thanks.”

  “You are slowly changing, Jake,” she said. “You will become the dead. Let me hurry it along, now. Let me drink from you. Like I did in that cell. Do you remember? My touch? My teeth in you? Inside you? Your veins pulsing out blood, your life, into my mouth, and I swallowed you. Do you remember when you grew hard against me? I will make you grow hard again, and you will have my dead flesh as I make yours dead, too.”

  “I’ll kill you first.”

  “I’m already dead.”

  “I’ll kill you again.”

  “You are being ripped apart. You are at war with yourself. Do you hear the voices of the dead calling you?”

  He did. He shook his head, trying to get rid of them. But they sang there now, a song of his doom.

  “Jake, are you human or are you not? Soon, there will be an answer, and it will not be the one you wish for.”

  He tensed, his hands gripping the handles of the swords. He’d have to finish this before that decision was taken out of his hands – before he’d lost all sense of who he was.

  He was ready to launch himself at her when a cry echoed from the coliseum.

  He recognized her voice.

  “Aaliyah,” he said.

  He took his eye off Ereshkigal.

  He knew immediately he’d made a mistake.

  Another bad decision.

  And as he was turning to look at the vampire again, she was on him – a flash of white blazing through the black to crash into him and drive him backwards.

  He hit a wall, and the impact winded him. For a second, he was defenceless. And it was a second too long. The next thing he knew, her teeth were pressed against his jugular vein.

  CHAPTER 88. TOO MANY DOUGHNUTS, NOT ENOUGH PORRIDGE.

  Wembley Stadium, London – 9.55pm (GMT), 20 May, 2011

  THE militia man was called Tony Drake. He was thirty-five years old. Before the war, he’d been a milkman, and he’d stacked shelves at a supermarket. Being given a gun and told he could kill with it had made him feel like a man.

  He waited near Fuad’s Daimler in the private car park. Already the prime minister’s friends had been ferried off in a convoy of 4x4s.

  Drake’s mate, who’d been with him when Fuad had told them all to fuck off, was chatting to the driver of the vehicle taking Zella Shaw home. It was about to leave the car park. He glimpsed the blonde actress in the back of the 4x4. She was hot. He thought maybe now that he was a member of the elite, he could shag her. But that was a no go. There were always firsts, even among equals.

  Drake had joined the Neb militia just after the vampire war three months ago. George Fuad had started making speeches about why Britain was in such a mess. It was because people were attacking vampires, he’d said, and because of those attacks, vampires were naturally going to defend themselves.

  “So, we have violence,” Fuad had said on TV one day.

  It sounded so convincing. Drake had signed up at his kids’ school, which had been shut down because Jake Lawton had inflicted this plague on England.

  “You can’t join the militia,” his wife had said. “Too many doughnuts, Tony, and not enough porridge. Join the library corps or something. Or people who file things.”

  She had laughed at him. But he’d joined up. And they gave him a uniform. Not a milkman’s uniform. Not a shelf stacker’s uniform. A cool, black uniform that an elite soldier would wear. They also gave him a small red clip. It was a piece of leathery cloth with a safety pin attached. The tag was clipped to his collar.

  “Never take it off,” they’d said to the new recruits. “And never let anyone take it off you, either.”

  They also gave him a Kevlar vest, a helmet, Doc Marten boots, a utility belt (“Makes you look like Batman, Dad,” said his son), pepper spray, a knife – which he’d given to Fuad to cut out the boy’s tongue – a baton, and, of course, the gun.

  A Smith & Wesson .38.

  And they’d even shown him, and the others, how to shoot it. Just an afternoon of training, that was all. It didn’t feel like enough time. And it proved to be the case a few times – some recruits had either accidentally shot themselves or a colleague. Drake heard rumours that some guys had been killed in shooting accidents, but they were told that the rumours were false.

  “Lies spread by the anti-vamps,” their commander had said.

  The vehicle carrying the actress left the stadium perimeter. People were still spilling out of the arena. Drake kept well out of the way. The Daimler waited in the private car park, behind a set of iron gates. He felt safe behind those gates. Safer than he’d feel out on the streets tonight.

  There was a bad feeling going round.

  His mate started to wander off.

  “Where are you going?” said Drake.

  “Fag.”

  “Shut the effing gate, then.”

  But the bloke had wandered off.

  Drake looked towards the entrance to the VIP lounges. He expected to see Fuad come out any minute. He really wanted to get going. There was a lot of trouble on the streets. Just beyond the gates, people were fighting. Gunfire erupted. Screams filled the night. He shuddered, suddenly worried about vampires. He touched the red tag.

  I’m safe, he told himself, I’m safe.

  He didn’t really like vampires. They were terrifying. They scared his wife and his kids. And if he could have got rid of them all, he would have done so. But these days if you weren’t a Neb or a Neb sympathizer, you were in trouble.

  And you didn’t get one of the little red tags to keep you safe from vampire attacks.

  He wondered how the tag worked. He had no idea. But it didn’t matter. He had no idea how antibiotics had cured his daughter’s infection the year before. He didn’t need to know. Only that they worked.

  Drake shivered. The crowds were dwindling. Fighting continued, but it had spread further from the s
tadium now.

  Come on, George, where are you? he said to himself, I want to go home.

  Things had really gone pear-shaped tonight. Fuad was going to go mental. He’d throw a hissy fit like no other. Drake just didn’t want to be around. He’d drive the man back to his Soho headquarters, then go home to his wife and kids.

  He wondered about the boy who was now probably having his tongue cut out. Was it necessary to do such a thing? The lad had been a traitor, one of Lawton’s allies. But surely they could just have sent him to a borstal or given him community service. Drake found the sacrifice business earlier on very worrying. He hated seeing those people tied to the stakes. It wasn’t right. But he wouldn’t say anything. Or he’d be tied up with them. And the wife wouldn’t want that.

  Across from the stadium, where the Wembley Retail Park had once stood, vehicles were lining up. They faced the arena. Their headlights glared. It was quite a convoy.

  Drake started to worry.

  It didn’t feel right.

  He jogged to the gate to see if he could get a better look.

  A chill ran through him.

  Is that a tank?

  “Yes, it fucking is a tank,” he said out loud.

  Among the vehicles, he saw figures. Dozens of them. They wore army fatigues.

  Reinforcements?

  He saw other figures too – men and women, black, Asian, white.

  Something was wrong.

  Badly wrong.

  He grabbed his walkie-talkie and tuned in to the military channel.

  “Th-this is Drake at the gates, has anyone seen what’s going around the retail park? Fuck – ”

  The vehicles, including the tank, were moving towards the stadium. And so were the figures. Men and women. Armed with guns and baseball bats and spades and…

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.