Adrift 2: Sundown (11 page)

Familiar sensation

Crawling up the back of—

“Dan…Dan? BELLAMY! Snap out of it!”

Dan coughed violently and sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the raging vibrations in his head. The air stank of blood and shit and death, and it felt like his skull was fracturing.

Herb
, he thought.
That’s Herb. Focus on his voice
.

“Oh, fucking hell…
Dan
? Can you hear me?”

He took another breath.

Let it out slow.

And the world began to swim into focus.

Herb was standing over him, his face twisted in concern.

“It’s okay, we’re safe,” Herb said. “For now, anyway. It can’t get in.”

Dan pulled himself to his feet, and his eyes widened when he saw the kitchen. The large group of men he expected to see suddenly wasn’t so large at all. Two of Herb’s followers were lying on the floor, one panting out rattling breaths and clutching at his bloody chest; the other was motionless, with a towel draped over his face. Still others looked to have disappeared altogether.

“What happened?”

Herb’s brow creased.

“You didn’t see?”

Dan coughed, spitting out the foul-tasting air.

“I get…blackouts. Panic attacks.”

“Panic attacks?” Herb stared at him, bewildered. “Jesus Christ. How the hell
did
you survive on that ship?”

Dan glared back at him for a moment, and felt dark emotions bubbling, clutching at him; trying to pull him under.

—hands in the darkness—

He scowled. “Just bad luck, I guess. I tried to tell you. I’m not what you think I am. Not special. Not some sort of
vampire slayer
.”

Dan’s words came out harsh, tainted with bitter sarcasm.

“No shit,” Herb muttered. “I guessed that much when you decided to have a fucking breakdown instead of help—”

Dan punched him.

Actually
punched
him.

His right arm shot out of its own accord, fingers clenching into a bony fist, and he drove Herb’s words straight back down his throat.

It was, as far as Dan could recall, the first punch he had thrown in his life. He doubted it was powerful enough to hurt; certainly as he threw it, his arm felt loose and elastic rather than taut, but the blow snapped Herb’s jaw sideways, and a moment later the bigger man was sitting on the floor, staring up at him in surprise.

Dan stared back.

Stunned.

Mortified.

And Herb
laughed
.

He rubbed his jaw ruefully as he stood up, and he grinned at Dan, who could do nothing but gape at him.

“Well, all right, then,” Herb said. “I guess that’s more like it.”

Dan had no response. At least, none that he could vocalize.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

“There are eight of us left,” Herb said, and paused, staring at one of the bodies on the floor. The man with the bloody chest was no longer drawing in those rattling breaths. He sighed heavily. “Make that seven.” Heglanced at his watch
.
“I’d say we have about half an hour before it gets dark outside. We need a way out.”

“A way
out
? Aren’t we safe in here? I thought you said it couldn’t get in.”

Herb nodded.

“It can’t get in
right now
. But once it gets dark outside, it will have no reason to leave those down.”

He pointed at the shuttered windows.

Dan felt his stomach lurch. Herb was right. It was the vampire that had sealed them in. When the shutters were no longer required to keep the daylight at bay, it could simply reopen them and come through a window.

“Does this place have a cellar?”

“Yeah,” Herb said grimly, and he pointed at a door to the rear of the kitchen. “Through there. The others went that way; made a run for the front door, I think. They didn’t make it.”

Dan searched Herb’s eyes and saw the remembered nightmare the younger man was trying to conceal.
He must have heard them screaming
, he thought, and for a moment Dan was back on the deck of the Oceanus, listening to a symphony of destruction being played out in the darkness. Cries of fear and pain and horror, all punctuated by the otherworldly shriek of the vampires.

“How long was I, uh, out for?”

“About ten minutes. At least this time you weren’t screaming.” Herb offered a watery smile.

No
, Dan thought.
That part is still to come
.

“Ten minutes,” he said absently. “An hour until sundown.”

“Yeah. Ish.” Herb nodded.

“How many exits are there?”

“From the kitchen? Three. But they all lead to open plan areas. It would run us down in no time.”

Dan frowned. He couldn’t see how they could possibly escape without further loss of life. Even if they could successfully leave the kitchen and somehow lose the vampire in the vast house, the place was locked down. The only exit that mattered was the one the vampire itself had blocked; the mansion’s front door.

They could try to run, maybe, turning lights on as they went; try to lock themselves in another room, perhaps, one which might offer some means of escape he couldn’t imagine.

It would be suicide.

“Maybe if we split up, we could—” Dan said, and fell silent when Herb stared at him, aghast.

“Split up? I take it you’ve never seen any horror movie, ever?”

He had a point. Besides which, Dan thought, he was the only one who didn’t know the layout of the Rennick mansion. If it came down to fleeing blindly, he would surely be the first to die.

“Then we have to kill it,” he said uncertainly.

“Yeah,” Herb replied. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he rolled his eyes
.
“Killing them is where
you’re
supposed to come in, Dan. If you’ve got some grand idea on how to go about doing that, I’m all ears.”

Dan searched his thoughts.

He
had
been lucky to survive his encounters with the creatures on the Oceanus. On both occasions, he had killed vampires that were preoccupied with murdering somebody else. It was like they were complacent, so sure that no human would dare attack them that they had let their guard down. He had landed sucker punches, no more than that. He remembered the moment of hesitation on the twisted features of the one that had killed Elaine; the way it almost seemed that the vampire couldn’t actually believe what was happening as Dan attacked it with a cleaver.

But that had been in the swirling storm of chaos on board the cruise ship. Here, where the vampire was focused only on hunting the tiny group of men that had sealed themselves away from it, he didn’t think that luck would hold.

“What do you
actually
know about these things?”

Herb opened his mouth to respond, but Dan cut in.

“And if you say anything about ancient fucking texts, I may have to punch you again.”

Dan smiled weakly. A joke.

Isn’t it?

“I can only tell you what is supposed to be true,” Herb said. “They claim to be immortal; they live below ground. They sleep for centuries. They feed on humans. In their presence, humans lose their minds. We are powerless to resist them. They don’t like light. Oh, and they don’t burn. That wasn’t in the texts. I saw that one myself.” Herb rubbed absently at his bandaged arm
.
“I don’t see how any of that can help us now, especially since any or all of it could be lies.”

They don’t burn
, Dan thought. He stored that piece of information, and then irritably told himself that he didn’t
want
that knowledge taking up space in his brain. If he could just get away from the mansion—away from the monsters; away from Herb and his rapidly diminishing group of followers—he would flee and gladly hand himself over to the police and confess to the murder he had committed in the Atlantic. He could spend the rest of his days in the safety of a cell, and he wouldn’t ever have to think about the creatures that Herbert Rennick called
vampires
ever again.

He stared at the locked door.

Behind it, he heard soft snuffling sounds; wet smacking. It was a noise he had heard before. The vampire was sitting outside the kitchen. Feeding. Waiting.

Listening.

They are intelligent
, Dan thought,
not mindless monsters. We know that much for sure. They can speak. They can understand.

He clutched at Herb’s arm, and pulled the younger man close, breathing into his ear softly.

“It’s listening. We need to draw it away, up to the top floor, and make a run for the front door, you understand?”

Herb nodded, but he looked dubious.

He mouthed
how
?

Dan stared around the kitchen in mounting frustration. He saw counters, racks of crockery and pans, various foodstuffs. Some wine bottles. No way out. Nothing that might serve as a distraction.

His mind raced.

“Where does that dumb waiter lead?” he said loudly, and pointed at a patch of bare wall.

Herb followed his gaze and then stared at Dan, puzzled. There was no dumb waiter.

Dan mouthed
play along
.

Herb’s confused expression softened, and he nodded vigorously.

“It stops off at all five floors,” he replied, making sure that his voice was loud enough to carry. Trying to ensure that he wasn’t being too obvious.

Dan nodded.

“If we can get to the top floor…is there a way we can access the roof?”

Herb grinned and shook his head.

“Yeah,” he said. “A skylight in the attic.”

Dan could tell from Herb’s wide smile that there was no skylight; maybe even no attic.

“Then we’ll go up,” Dan said. “Quietly. If we make any noise once we’ve left this room, it will hear. Once we get to the roof, we run. Can any of you fly the helicopter?”

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.

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.