They walked to the back bar, which was darker, and just as empty. Half-consumed mugs of beer sat on the tables, and a few chairs still had coats hanging off them. When the party ended here, it had ended abruptly and all at once.
Eph checked the bathrooms—the men’s room containing great and ancient urinals ending in a trough beneath the floor—and found them predictably empty.
He came back out, his boots scuffing the sawdust on the floor. Fet had set down his case and pulled out a chair, resting his legs.
Eph stepped behind the back bar. No liquor bottles or blenders or buckets of ice—just beer taps, with shelves of ten-ounce glass mugs waiting below. The place served only beer. No liquor, which was what Eph wanted. Only its own branded brew, available in either light or dark ale. The old taps were for show, but the newer ones flowed smoothly. Eph poured two dark draughts. “Here’s to …?”
Fet got to his feet and walked to the bar, taking up one of the mugs. “Killing bloodsuckers.”
Eph drained half his mug. “Looks like people cleared out of here in a hurry.”
“Last call,” said Fet, swiping the foam off his thick upper lip. “Last call all over town.”
A voice from the television got their attention, and they walked into the front room. A reporter was doing a live shot from a town near Bronxville, the hometown of one of the four survivors of Flight 753. Smoke darkened the sky behind him, the news crawl reading, BRONXVILLE RIOTS CONTINUE.
Fet reached up to change the channel. Wall Street was reeling from consumer fear, the threat of an outbreak greater than the H1N1 flu, and a rash of disappearances among their own brokers. Traders were shown sitting immobilized while the market averages plummeted.
On NY1, traffic was the focus, every exit out of Manhattan congested with people fleeing the island ahead of a rumored quarantine. Air and rail travel were overbooked, the airports and train station scenes of sheer chaos.
Eph heard a helicopter overhead. A chopper was probably the only easy way in or out of Manhattan now. If you had your own helipad. Like Eldritch Palmer.
Eph found an old-school, hard-wired telephone behind the bar. He got a scratchy dial tone and patiently used the rotary face to dial Setrakian’s.
It rang through, and Nora answered. “How’s Zack?” Eph asked, before she could speak.
“Better. He was really flipped out for a while.”
“She never came back?”
“No. Setrakian ran her off the roof.”
“Off the roof? Good Christ.” Eph felt sick. He grabbed a clean mug and couldn’t pour another beer fast enough. “Where’s Z now?”
“Upstairs. You want me to get him?”
“No. Better if I talk to him face-to-face when I get back.”
“I think you’re right. Did you destroy the coffin?”
“No,” said Eph. “It was gone.”
“Gone?” she said.
“Apparently he’s not badly injured. Not slowed down much at all. And—this is weird, but there were some strange drawings on the wall down there, spray paint—”
“What do you mean, someone putting up graffiti?”
Eph patted the phone in his pocket, reassuring himself that the pink phone was still there. “I got some video. I really don’t know what to make of it.” He pulled the phone away for a moment to swallow more beer. “I’ll tell you, though. The city—it’s eerie. Quiet.”
“Not here,” said Nora. “There’s a little bit of a lull now that it’s dawn—but it won’t last. The sun doesn’t seem to scare them as much now. Like they’re becoming bolder.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” said Eph. “They’re learning, becoming smarter. We have to get out of there. Today.”
“Setrakian was just saying that. Because of Kelly.”
“Because she knows where we are now?”
“Because she knows—that means the Master knows.”
Eph pressed his hand against his closed eyes, pushing back on his headache. “Okay.”
“Where are you now?”
“Financial District, near the Ferry Loop station.” He didn’t mention that he was in a bar. “Fet has a line on a bigger car. We’re going to get that and head back soon.”
“Just—please get back here in one human piece.”
“That’s our plan.”
He hung up, and went rooting underneath the bar. He was looking for a container to hold more beer, which he needed for the descent back underground. Something other than a glass mug. He found an old, leather-jacketed flask, and, in brushing the dust off the brass cap, discovered a bottle of good vintage brandy behind it. No dust on the brandy: probably there for a quick nip for the barkeep to break the monotony of the ale. He rinsed out the flask and was filling it carefully over a small sink when he heard a knock at the door.
He came around the bar fast, heading for his weapon bag before realizing: vampires don’t knock. He continued past Fet to the door, cautiously, looking through the window and seeing Dr. Everett Barnes, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The old country doctor was not wearing his admiral’s uniform—the CDC was originally born of the U.S. Navy—but rather an ivory-on-white suit, the jacket unbuttoned. He looked as though he had rushed away from a late breakfast.
Eph could view the immediate street area behind him, and Barnes was apparently alone, at least for the moment. Eph unlocked the door and pulled it open.
“Ephraim,” said Barnes.
Eph grabbed him by his lapel and hauled him inside fast, locking up again. “You,” he said, checking the street again. “Where are the rest?”
Director Barnes pulled away from Eph, readjusting his jacket. “They are on orders to keep well back. But they will be here soon, make no mistake about that. I insisted that I needed a few minutes alone with you.”
“Jesus,” said Eph, checking the rooftops across the street before backing away from the front windows. “How did they get you here so fast?”
“It is a priority that I speak to you. No one wants to harm you, Ephraim. This was all done at my behest.”
Eph turned away from him, heading back to the bar. “Maybe you only think so.”
“We need you to come in,” said Barnes, following him. “I need you, Ephraim. I know this now.”
“Look,” said Eph, reaching the bar and turning. “Maybe you understand what’s going on, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re part of it, I don’t know. You might not even know. But there is someone behind this, someone very powerful, and if I go anywhere with you now, it will certainly result in my incapacitation or death. Or worse.”
“I am eager to listen to you, Ephraim. Whatever you have to say. I stand before you as a man admitting his mistake. I know now that we are in the grip of something altogether devastating and otherworldly.”
“Not otherworldly. This-worldly.” Eph capped his brandy flask.
Fet was behind Barnes. “How long until they come in?” he asked.
“Not long,” said Barnes, unsure of the big exterminator in the dirty jumpsuit. Barnes returned his attention to Eph, and the flask. “Should you be drinking now?”
“Now more than ever,” said Eph. “Help yourself if you want. I recommend the dark ale.”
“Look, I know you’ve been put through a lot—”
“What happens to me doesn’t really matter, Everett. This isn’t about me, so any appeals to my ego won’t get you anywhere. What I am concerned about are these half-truths—or, should I say, outright lies—being issued under the auspices of the CDC. Are you no longer serving the public now, Everett? Just your government?”
Director Barnes winced. “Necessarily both.”
“Weak,” said Eph. “Inept. Even criminal.”
“This is why I need you to come in, Ephraim. I need your eyewitness experience, your expertise—”
“It’s too late! Can’t you at least see that?”
Barnes backed off a bit, keeping an eye on Fet because Fet made him nervous. “
You were right about Bronxville. We’ve closed it off.”
“Closed it off?” said Fet. “How?”
“A wire fence.”
Eph laughed bitterly. “A wire fence? Jesus, Everett. This is exactly what I mean. You’re reacting to the public perception of the virus, rather than the threat itself. Reassuring them with fences? With a symbol? They will tear those fences apart—”
“Then tell me. Tell me what I need. What you need.”
“Start with destroying the corpses. That is step number one.”
“Destroy the …? You know I can’t do that.”
“Then nothing else you do matters. You have to send in a military team and sweep through that place and eliminate every single carrier. Then expand that operation south, into the city here, and all across Brooklyn and the Bronx …”
“You’re talking mass killing. Think about the visuals—”
“Think about the reality, Everett. I am a doctor, same as you. But this is a new world now.”
Fet drifted away, back toward the front, keeping an eye on the street. Eph said, “They don’t want you to bring me in to help. They want you to bring me in so they can neutralize me and the people I know. This”—he crossed to his weapons bag, drawing a silver sword—“is my scalpel now. The only way to heal these creatures is to release them—and yes, that means wholesale slaughter. Not doctoring. You want to help—to really help? Then get on TV and tell them that. Tell them the truth.”
Barnes looked at Fet in the front. “And who is this one with you now? I expected to see you with Dr. Martinez.”
Something about the way Barnes said Nora’s name struck Eph as odd. But he could not pursue it. Fet came back quickly from the front windows.
“Here they come,” said Fet.
Eph ventured near enough to see vans pulling up, closing off the street in either direction. Fet passed him, grabbing Barnes by the shoulder and walking him to a table in back, sitting him in the corner. Eph slung his baseball bag over his shoulder and ported Fet’s case to him.
“Please,” said Barnes. “I implore you. Both of you. I can protect you.”
“Listen,” said Fet. “You just officially became a hostage, so shut the fuck up.” To Eph, he said: “Now what? How do we hold them off? UVC light doesn’t work on the FBI.”
Eph looked around the old ale house for answers. The pictures and ephemera of a century and a half, hanging on the walls and cluttering the shelves behind the bar. Portraits of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and a bust of JFK—all assassinated presidents. Nearby, among such curios as a musket, a shaving-cream mug, and framed obituaries, hung a small silver dagger.
Near it, a sign: WE WERE HERE BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.
Eph rushed behind the bar. He kicked aside the sawdust over the bull-nose ring latch embedded in the worn wooden floor.
Fet, appearing at his side, helped him raise the trapdoor.
The odor told them everything they needed to know. Ammonia. Pungent and recent.
Director Barnes, still in his seat in the corner, said, “They’ll only come in after you.”
“Judging by the smell—I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Fet, starting down first.
“Everett,” said Eph, switching on his Luma lamp before going down. “In case there is any lingering ambiguity, let me be perfectly clear now. I quit.”
Eph followed Fet to the bottom, his lamp illuminating the supply area beneath the bar in ethereal indigo. Fet reached up to close the door overhead.
“Leave it,” muttered Eph. “If he’s as dirty as I think he is, he’s running for the door already.”
Fet did, the hatch remaining open.
The ceiling was low, and the detritus of many decades—old kegs and barrels, a few broken chairs, stacks of empty glass racks, and an old industrial dishwasher—narrowed the passageway. Fet adjusted thick rubber bands around his ankles and jacket cuffs—a trick from his days baiting roach-infested apartments, learned the hard way. He handed some to Eph. “For worms,” he said, zipping his jacket tight.
Eph crossed the stone floor, pushing open a side door leading to an old, warm ice room. It was empty.
Next came a wooden door with an old, oval knob. The floor dust before it was disturbed in the shape of a fan. Fet nodded to him, and Eph yanked it open.
You don’t hesitate. You don’t think. Eph had learned that. You never give them time to group up and anticipate, because it is in their makeup that one of them will sacrifice itself in order that the others might have a chance at you. Facing stingers that can reach five or six feet, and their extraordinary night vision, you never, ever stop moving until every last monster is destroyed.
The neck was their vulnerable point—same as their prey’s throat was to them. Sever the spinal column and you destroy the body and the being that inhabits it. A significant amount of white-blood loss achieves the same end, though bloodletting is much more dangerous, as the capillary worms that escape live on outside the body, seeking new human bodies to invade. Why Fet liked to band up his cuffs.
Eph destroyed the first two in the manner that had proved most effective: using the UVC lamp like a torch to repel the beast, isolating and trapping them against a wall, then closing in with the sword for the coup de grâce. Weapons made of silver do wound them, and cause whatever constitutes the vampire equivalent of human pain—and ultraviolet light burns through their DNA like flame.
Fet used the nail gun, pumping silver brads into their faces to blind or otherwise disorient them, then running through their distended throats. Loosened worms slithered across the wet floor. Eph killed some of the worms with his UVC light, while others met their fate beneath the hard treads of Fet’s boots. Fet, after stomping a few of them, scooped them into a small jar from his case. “For the old man,” he said, before continuing on with his slaying.
They heard a multitude of footsteps and voices in the bar above them as they pressed on into the next room.
One came at Eph from the side—still wearing a bartending apron—its eyes wide and hungry. Eph slashed at it backhandedly, driving the creature back with the lamp light. Eph was learning to ignore his physician’s inclination toward mercy. The vampire gnashed pitifully in a corner as Eph closed in, finishing it off.
Two others, maybe three, had taken off through the next door as soon as they saw the indigo light coming. A handful remained, crouched beneath broken shelves, ready to attack.
Fet came alongside Eph, lamp in hand. Eph started toward the vampires, but Fet caught his arm. Whereas Eph was breathing hard, the exterminator proceeded in a businesslike manner, focused without distress.
“Wait,” said Fet. “Leave them for Barnes’s FBI buddies.”
Eph, seeing the advantage of Fet’s idea, backed off, still with his lamp trained on them. “Now what?”
“Those others ran. There’s a way out.”
Eph looked at the next door. “You better be right,” he said.
Fet took the lead belowground, following the trail of dried urine fluorescing underneath the Luma lamps. The rooms gave way to a series of cellars, connected by old, hand-dug tunnels. The ammonia markings went in many different directions, Fet selecting one, turning off at a junction.
“I like this,” he said, stamping muck off his boots. “Just like rat hunting, following the trail. The UV light makes it easy.”
“But how do they know these routes?”
“They’ve been busy. Exploring, foraging. You never heard of the Volstead Grid?”
“Volstead? Like the Volstead Act? Prohibition?”
“Restaurants, bars, speakeasies, they had to open up their cellars, go underground. This is a city that just keeps building over itself. Combine the old cellars and houses under there with the tunnels, aqueducts, and old utility pipes—and some say you can move block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, solely underground, between any two points in the city.”
“Bolivar’s place,” said Eph, remembering the rock star who had been one of the four
survivors of Flight 753. His building was an old bootlegger’s house, with a secret gin cellar that linked to the subway tunnels below. Eph checked behind them as they passed a side tunnel. “How do you know where you’re going?”
Fet pointed to another hobo signal scratched into the stone, probably with one of the creature’s hardened talon nails. “We’re on to something here,” he said. “That’s all I know for sure. But I bet the Ferry Loop Station isn’t more than a block or two away.”
Nazareth, Pennsylvania
AUGUSTIN …
Augustin Elizalde got to his feet. He stood in a stew of absolute darkness. A palpable inky blackness without a hint of light. Like space with no stars. He blinked his eyes to make certain that they were open—and they were. No change.
Was this death? No place could be darker.
Must be. He was fucking dead.
Or—maybe they had turned him. Was he a vampire now, his body taken over, but this old part of him shut away in the darkness of his mind, like a prisoner in an attic? Maybe the coolness he felt and the hardness of the floor beneath his feet were just compensatory tricks of his brain. He was walled up forever inside his own head.
He crouched a bit, trying to establish his existence through movement and sensory impression. He grew dizzy due to the lack of a visual focal point, and set his feet wider apart. He reached up, jumping, but could feel no ceiling above him.
An occasional faint breeze rippled his shirt. It smelled like soil. Like earth.
He was underground. Buried alive.
Augustin …
Again. His mother’s voice calling to him as in a dream.
“Mama?”
His voice doubled back on him in a startling echo. He remembered her as he had left her: sitting in the bottom of her bedroom closet, under a great pile of clothes. Staring up at him with the leering hunger of a newly turned them.
Vampires, the old man said.
The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal Page 45