Adrift 2: Sundown (23 page)

And that faint flicker of hope crumbled.

Conny’s voice, calling to him from the other side of the ruined helicopter toward the rear of the building.

“There’s no way down,” she yelled.

Herb paled, and sprinted toward her. Lawrence and Scott were standing alongside Conny’s kid, propping up Dan with fear plastered on their faces. Remy was staring up at Conny with an incredulous look in his eyes, like he was wondering how his human had managed to lead them to such a disastrous bolt-hole.

Conny pointed toward the chopper, and after a moment, Herb saw it.

The wall that he had crashed into had been home to a black metal ladder.

A ladder which now rested where it had fallen on the street far below, mocking him.

No way down.

Stay in the light!

Mancini rocketed away from the intersection, aiming for the intermittent glow of streetlights, too afraid to look back. He trusted his ears to tell him whether the monster was gaining on them.

His ears were full of bad news.

Judging by the thunderous sound of the pursuit, he was trying to outrun a creature that could move like a damn cheetah. The team had a significant head start, but it sounded like it was eroding by the second.

The vampire shrieked, the sound making Mancini’s blood freeze in his veins. The noise was an attempt to draw attention, he knew; the creature’s bid to get the fleeing humans to look in its direction.

No chance.

“This way,” he snarled, unwilling to turn to check whether the others had heard him, and he loosed a short burst from the MP5, shattering the front window of a restaurant which occupied a corner plot dead ahead. Inside, the lights were blazing cheerfully over empty tables and booths. It all looked so
normal.

Mancini pumped his legs, running like he was a teenager again, and when he was close enough, he threw himself forward, vaulting over the waist-high window sill and crashing across a table and into the warmly-lit dining area. His momentum carried him on.

With a grunt, he rolled into a chair, and saw stars as one wooden leg impacted on his ribs. He gasped the pain away and hauled himself to his feet, throwing the flimsy furniture aside.

As Burnley threw herself into the restaurant behind him, Mancini took off again.

The lights of the restaurant might slow the vampire down. They wouldn’t stop it.

He charged through the dining area into the kitchen to the rear of the building, slamming into a fire exit that led back outside.

Kept running.

Further ahead, across a narrow side street, he saw a car dealership. More lights, reflecting off the polished surfaces of eye-wateringly expensive sports cars. He fired the MP5 again, making straight for the shattering window, grimacing as he heard gunfire behind him. It sounded like someone—Montero, most likely—was laying down some covering fire, probably trying to dissuade the creature from following.

He was wasting his time, and his bullets.

Their only hope was to find somewhere that offered a sturdy wall to hide behind.

He burst into the showroom, darting around a black Ferrari, and blasted out the next window. Beyond it, he saw something that gave him faint hope: an old church, standing at odds with the sleek glass skyscrapers that had sprung up around it. The church had to be several hundred years old; its walls looked like thick, solid stone. Even better, the ground-level windows looked narrow—maybe even too narrow for a vampire to squeeze through.

Burnley shot past him. With a clear run, she was the fastest by far.

“The church,” Mancini panted as she passed, moving with a smooth fluidity. If anyone was going to make it, Mancini thought, it would be Burnley. He cursed his bulk, and tried to ignore the fire slowly building in his muscles.

“On it,” Burnley yelled, and tore away from him, eating up the ground. Somewhere further back, Montero was still shooting, and Mancini risked a glance behind, his eyes landing first on Jeremy Pruitt, struggling to keep his sprint going. Behind Pruitt, Montero was firing wildly back through the car dealership, peppering the showroom with automatic fire. Maybe, Mancini thought, he was trying to hit one of the car’s fuel tanks and trigger an explosion, like in the movies.

But this wasn’t a movie.

Mancini didn’t glance at Pruitt as he huffed by him.

“Get in the church,” Mancini muttered absently, his gaze fixed on the roof of the car dealership. He could have sworn he saw movement up there in the darkne—

The vampire launched itself down onto Montero with a shriek.

While Montero had been attempting to slow it down, the monster had simply scaled the building, traversing it in a matter of seconds. Montero was shooting at nothing.

Mancini turned away as the creature landed on the man and the gunfire stopped abruptly.

He didn’t wait to see the former SEAL die.

He was already running.

Fifty yards to the church entrance.

He saw Burnley holding the heavy wooden door open, waving at him frantically.

Forty yards.

Saw Jeremy Pruitt disappear inside.

Thirty yards.

Saw Burnley’s eyes widening in horror as she began to close the door.

Twenty yards.

“No!” Mancini shrieked, and he emptied the submachine gun blindly over his own shoulder, praying that he might slow the monster which he knew was bearing down on him, closing with every stride.

Ten yards.

Click, click, click, click clickclickclickcli—

With a desperate scream, Mancini hurled himself forward, aiming for the narrow gap as Burnley finally threw the door shut.

His hip glanced off the wood painfully, and he landed heavily on a cold stone floor as Burnley barred the door and something heavy crunched into the other side a fraction of a second later.

Mancini rolled onto his back, still screaming, slammed another magazine into the MP5 and scattered bullets at the inside of the door until the weapon clicked apologetically.

When he released the trigger, and the echo of gunfire receded, he heard only silence.

Mancini leapt to his feet, reloading and scanning the interior of the church.

“Vampires, right?” Burnley said in a shaky voice. “They…uh…can’t go inside churches…right?”

Jeremy Pruitt snorted.

“Don’t bet on it,” Mancini replied, casting a glance around the huge interior of the church. The stained-glass windows looked too narrow for one of the vampires, but…

The glass shattered as he looked at it, and he had the briefest impression of a dark shape and glowing red eyes peering in before he tore his gaze away.

“Don’t look at it,” he roared, and ran for the back of the church. “Keep moving!”

He felt the monster’s deadly gaze burning into his back the whole way.

The church—or maybe cathedral was more accurate—was huge, much bigger than it had looked from the outside. Far above, delicate arches propped up a decorative ceiling, and there had to be seating for five hundred, at least. Lots of fabulously intricate and expensive ornamentation lined the walls, images depicting violence and bloodshed and reverence. In some ways, it wasn’t so different to the ranch back in Colorado. Different gods, same worship.

Mancini led the others down the centre aisle, panting for air.

To the rear of the building, there was a raised altar beneath a huge wall, filled with carved statues representing various bishops and saints. To either side of that were two wooden doors. Mancini slammed into the one on the right. Some sort of private chamber; a place for the bishop to relax between sermons, perhaps. More importantly, there was no way out. He turned, barging past Pruitt, and made for the opposite door. It opened onto a narrow corridor, with several smaller rooms and hallways branching from it, at least one of which looked to lead up to a bell tower.

Mancini grimaced. It wouldn’t be long before the vampire made its way up there, and found a route into the church. He slammed the door to the base of the tower shut, searching for a key to lock it.

Nothing.

“Keep moving,” he snarled again, and ran through the gloomy corridors, searching for an alternative exit. He ran frantically from room to room, his fear increasing with each door that he tried. There surely
had
to be another way out.

Somewhere above him, muted by thick stone walls, he heard the bell in the tower clanging, and adrenaline flooded his system. In a panic, he burst through several featureless doors blindly, until at last one spat him out into the night.

And headlong into the site of another atrocity.

He was standing across the street from the main entrance of a hospital, and there were corpses
everywhere
, chewed up and scattered across the street. Some wore uniforms marking them out as healthcare staff; others were clearly patients. Still others wore military clothing. The British Army, clearly, was having no more success when confronting the vampires than Mancini himself.

The scale of the slaughter was almost incomprehensible. Mancini’s mind wanted to recoil in horror at the sight of so many torn bodies; to retreat to some warm, safe place and pretend that Hell wasn’t opening up all around him, but his instincts drove him on. He charged forward, feeling the terrible burning ache caused by the extended sprint beginning to weaken his thighs, and made straight for the hospital, with Burnley and Pruitt behind him.

And a monster somewhere behind them.

Beyond the hospital, he saw the building which Pruitt had pointed out as their destination looming. The Rennick apartment. Just a few hundred yards away.

If they were lucky, Mancini thought as he streaked across the bloody road, the vampire might take a wrong turn in the church’s narrow labyrinth of stone corridors. Maybe it wouldn’t even be aware that they had found an exit, and would waste time searching the building, giving them enough time to lose it on the streets.

If
they were lucky.

Mancini sprinted through the bloodbath with his jaw clenched, trying not to look at the corpses that littered the ground.

Luck looked to be in short supply in London tonight.

Herb heard a soft
thump
somewhere behind him, and knew instinctively that the noise had been caused by Scott and Lawrence dropping Dan’s comatose body onto the flat roof.

He could hardly blame them, really.

He didn’t turn to check whether Dan was okay. His entire focus was taken by the doorway, and the steps leading down to the corridor beyond. He couldn’t see as far as the glass doors which he had barricaded, but the top floor of the hospital looked—and sounded—quiet. Those who remained—the most severely ill patients in their rooms and a handful of doctors and nurses—were apparently unharmed.

So far, at least, there was no screaming.

Herb turned away and scanned the rooftop again in growing frustration, hoping that he might see an adjacent roof that they might be able to jump to. There was nothing.

“We have to go back inside,” he snapped at the others. “Find some other way down. Maybe the elevators—”

“Too late,” Conny said.

Herb turned to face her. The policewoman had one arm wrapped tightly around her son—who looked like he desperately wanted to struggle away from her—and pointed at Remy with the other.

“Remy can sense them, or hear them. I don’t know. But it’s close. Getting closer.”

Herb dropped his eyes to the dog. Remy stood at Conny’s feet; muscles tensed, startled eyes fixed on the same open doorway that Herb had studied moments earlier. As Herb watched, Remy began to edge backwards, and shot a pleading glance up at his master.

The dog knew something was close, all right. The mutt looked as terrified as he thought it was possible for a dog
to
look.

“Found a drainpipe!”

Herb flinched as Scott hollered from the other side of the roof. When he turned to face the cleric, he saw that Scott was already swinging a leg over the low wall.

There was, he supposed, little point in remaining quiet now.

“We can’t get Bellamy down a fucking
drainpipe
,” Herb roared, but Scott simply shook his head and kept on climbing down. Herb could see Scott’s intention written across his face, and he didn’t hold it against him. The cleric simply wasn’t prepared to die for Dan Bellamy. Why should he be? The brainwashing that all those who were inducted into the Order underwent clearly wasn’t comprehensive enough. When faced with imminent death at the hands of one of the creatures they were supposed to worship, all that manufactured belief and loyalty just…crumbled away.

His father would have been mortified at just how quickly the tiny empire he had built up had fallen apart. At any other time, that thought might have made Herb smile.

Not now.

Seething in frustration, Herb turned away and sprinted back to the
roof access
door, peering back down into the hospital. It still seemed quiet. The vampire hadn’t come through yet. Was it possible that the glass was strong enough to stop it?

Why was nobody screaming?

He crept halfway down the steps, and stopped dead, his heart hammering.

At the far end of the corridor, the doctor who had stitched up Dan’s belly was walking toward the glass doors slowly, her arms outstretched, moving unsteadily, as though in a daze.

Oh no
, Herb thought,
don’t do that—

The doctor slid the aluminium crutch out from between the handles obligingly, and pulled the door open.

Welcoming the monster like an old friend.

She was still holding the door handle for a second or two, even after her innards had been lanced like an abscess; punched out through her back and splattered across the wall behind her in an instant.

Herb felt his own stomach do a backflip.

The doctor collapsed to her knees, and fell forward onto what was left of her stomach, and
then
the other patients and staff started to scream.

Herb gaped, and watched it unfolding in a terrifying sort of slow motion; his brain mulling over the twisted images that reached it, and telling him in no uncertain terms that he should be running or screaming or both. For a long moment, all he could do was stare.

The sound of breaking glass.

The light above the doctor’s head winking out of existence as a fire extinguisher flew into the corridor and crashed into it, plunging the far end of the top floor into semi-darkness.

An impression of a large shape hurtling from left to right, crossing the hallway in a flash and disappearing into one of the rooms.

Another light cut out.

Another.

It was moving toward him, room by room, killing as it went.

At last, Herb tore himself away and fled back up the steps, pulling the broken door shut behind him and praying that the creature might overlook it.

If not…

There weren’t many potential victims on the top floor of the hospital. Nothing much to slow the vampire down. If it was coming, it would be on the roof in a minute. Maybe less.

No time.

He caught Conny’s eye as he burst back onto the roof.

She shook her head grimly, opening up a well of despair in Herb’s gut. He didn’t even need to ask; it was obvious from Conny’s expression that they had found no other way down. Even if they
could
all clamber down the drainpipe and carry Dan somehow, their progress would be too slow. Too loud. As soon as the vampire reached the roof, their presence on the drainpipe would be unmissable.

He flicked his gaze to Dan, still unconscious on his back in the middle of the roof.

I can’t leave him behind.

I won’t.

Somewhere behind Conny, at the far end of the building, Herb heard a loud crack, followed by a surprised scream which ended with a sound like a gunshot, and he realised the flimsy option of fleeing had been removed altogether. At the edge of the roof, he saw Lawrence hauling himself back up over the wall, flushing and petrified. Apparently he, too, had decided that the drainpipe was the best option, and it hadn’t been able to take both his and Scott’s weight.

Lawrence gasped as he pulled himself upright, and peered behind him, leaning out over the street far below
.
When he turned away from the sheer drop, Lawrence’s eyes were wide, his expression sickly, and Herb knew what the cleric had seen splattered on the ground, five storeys down. The drainpipe wasn’t the best option anymore. It never had been.

It was hopeless.

All they could do was hide, like frightened children whimpering beneath their blankets, waiting for the monster to come for them.

“Get behind the helicopter,” Herb hissed, “out of sight. If it comes for us, don’t look at it. Jump if you have to. At least you’ll get a quick death.”

His eyes landed on Logan. The kid looked at his mother with fearful, disbelieving eyes, but Conny kept her gaze firmly on Herb. She nodded, her own eyes clear and focused, and Herb knew the message had got through. Conny’s boy might be dying, but not at the hands of a monster. Not today. She would do what was necessary.

Will I?

Herb ran to the chopper, reaching it just after Lawrence, and hunkered down behind the ruined vehicle as best he could, pulling Conny and Logan down alongside him. Conny began to call for Remy.

Herb clamped a hand over her mouth as his eye caught movement beyond the broken door.

Remy charged from one side of the roof to the other in a frenzy; running to the edge and peering over it, desperate to jump. Finally, he howled mournfully, and settled down on his belly in plain sight, not far from Dan. The dog was too terrified to think, Herb realised. It had given up all hope of survival, and opted to simply wait for the end. Maybe it was hoping for mercy, or it believed that if it offered no threat, the vampire might not bother to attack.

Herb shifted his attention to Dan Bellamy. Comatose in the middle of the roof. Maybe the vampire would assume he was already dead.

Unlikely.

Lying on his back in the cold evening air, Herb clearly saw Dan’s breath pluming; his chest rising and falling. The vampire would see it, too. Dan would die without ever waking up, and his death would be the stark result of the latest in a series of Herb’s bad decisions. Bellamy was important. Far too important to be left in the care of someone like Herbert Rennick.

Herb squeezed his eyes shut, feeling despair wash through him.

I led him into this. I led them all here.

To the place where we die.