Red Eye - 02 (24 page)

Technicians were ready for them in the basement levels of the house on East 84th. The remedy for Team Red Eye’s fatigue and injuries was a fresh course of treatment—another dose of the Porphyrian process. In a large, antiseptic-smelling chamber, all six soldiers stripped to their underwear and allowed themselves to be strapped to gurneys by means of Kevlar restraints round their wrists and ankles. The restraints were as much for the techs’ benefit as the soldiers’. Things could get pretty wild once the treatment was under way. Wild and potentially hazardous.

Each of the team was injected with a solution containing the active ingredient known as PP-66, the successful end-product of the sixty-sixth attempt by Farthingale’s research scientists to extract vampire DNA and make it compatible with that of humans. Or, to put it another way, weaponise it.

Jacobsen wasn’t any too clear on the specifics. He knew some kind of vector was involved, a modified retroviral pathogen which carried the PP-66 round the subject’s body and installed it at a cellular level, like an infection. He knew also that the vampire DNA had been tweaked in order to tone down many of a vamp’s less desirable characteristics, though not all of them. Some, such as vulnerability to sunlight and a taste for human haemoglobin, could not be completely edited or excised. They were too fundamental, it seemed, too intrinsic a part of vampirism.

Beyond that, it wasn’t Jacobsen’s business to enquire too deeply. A good soldier never asked questions. The process worked, that was all he needed to know.

It hurt, too.

The techs beat a hasty retreat, locking the chamber door behind them, and Team Red Eye waited for the PP-66 to take effect. Jacobsen cast a rueful glance over at the empty seventh gurney where PFC Larousse ought to have been. Then he looked briefly at Berger, catching her eye. She responded with a grim smile. They all knew what was coming next, and none of them was looking forward to it.

The pain hit. At first it felt like a fever. A sharp rise in body temperature. Sweats. Muscle cramps. It rapidly blossomed from there into a grinding, marrow-deep ache, as though a million maggots were boring tunnels inside your bones. This sensation grew and grew until it was unbearable.

And that was only the beginning, the initial phase. Soon Jacobsen was lost in a long, seemingly endless continuum of agony. His conscious mind fought to blot out the pain but couldn’t. It was like trying to contain a volcanic eruption. All the pain management techniques the army had taught him, the mental tricks for withstanding torture, were useless. They meant nothing when your veins were channels for molten lava and your flesh was on fire.

There was screaming and groaning all around him. He glimpsed Abbotts gibbering, frothing at the mouth. Child wept and sobbed like an infant. Giacoia was bleeding from the nose and eyes. Lim was nothing but a writhe of tendon and sinew, bucking and thrashing so hard that at times he rose clear of the gurney, bent almost double, his spine a perfect arch.

On it went. At most, the treatment lasted three quarters of an hour. But it was such a hellish three quarters of an hour that time became irrelevant. It might as well have been eternity. The digital clock on the wall was no help. Jacobsen could look at it but make no sense of the numerals. They warped and shifted until they resembled Hebrew script, or a mocking robotic face, or just empty black orifices outlined in red.

It was only when the clock’s numerals settled down and became intelligible once more that Jacobsen realised he was through the worst of it. The pain ebbed. Now and then it would rise to a peak again, but the intervals between these spikes widened. He clenched his jaw and rode them out, sinking blissfully into the increasingly long lulls.

Soon he was almost at normal. A sense-memory of the ordeal lingered, like a scorch mark in his psyche, but otherwise he felt good. Not just good—great. Reinvigorated.

And thirsty. Oh, so thirsty.

His whole self cried out for just one thing. He looked round at his comrades and they were full of what he craved. Their bodies were ripe to bursting with it, like succulent juicy fruit. He was desperate to rip them open and gorge himself on the crimson nectar inside. The urge was so strong, it nearly overwhelmed him. If not for the restraints he might have given in to it.

The technicians entered, and they brought with them large plastic squeeze-packs of human blood, which they distributed among the members of Team Red Eye. The restraints had just enough slack in them to allow the soldiers to uncap the squeeze-packs and guzzle the contents. As the blood slithered down his throat Jacobsen’s thirst abated and the haze of
need
in his head cleared. His thoughts became entirely his own again.

Before any restraints were undone, the techs asked each soldier to give name, rank, serial number from time of service, and social security number. The checklist determined whether or not they were in full control of their faculties.

Jacobsen reeled off the data without pause or error, and was released. He stood and stretched. The overhead fluorescent striplights were harshly bright and buzzed like swarming bees. The sound of Velcro parting as Child was freed from his restraints was as loud as firecrackers. One technician’s cologne was cloyingly sweet, another’s underarm odour repellently pungent. Jacobsen could even smell Berger’s pussy, and he divined that she was in a state of mild arousal, which in turn made him feel very randy indeed.

This was what made the forty-five minutes of pain worthwhile, this incredible flowering of the senses, this renewed surge of power and vitality. The Porphyrian process wasn’t permanent. It started to wear off within twenty-four hours and so required constant re-application. It was a boost to the system, vampiric Viagra, which the human metabolism couldn’t tolerate for long and invariably rejected in the end. It was a genetic fix, not a mutation.

That was fine by Jacobsen. If the alterations had been irrevocable, he would never have agreed to undergo the treatments in the first place. He was no idiot. Who would want to be a quasi-vampire for the rest of their days? Whereas to have the best vampiric traits for just a while, to experience superhuman levels of strength, speed, stamina, agility, sensory awareness...

A commotion to his right. Jacobsen spun round to see Abbotts with his hands around a technician’s neck. Abbotts was clawing at the man’s throat, apparently trying to tear it open with his bare fingernails.

Jacobsen sprang across the room. He thrust his arms up inside Abbotts’ and levered them apart, breaking the private’s grip on the tech. Then he rammed Abbotts down on the gurney, pinning him in place.

“What the fuck, private?” he roared.

“Blood!” Abbotts cried. “I feel so hollow. I want more. I want
his
.”

“Stand down, Abbotts. We do not do this. We do not attack civilians.”

“I want... I want...”

Abbotts resisted with all his might, straining to be free. Child appeared at Jacobsen’s side and joined him in keeping Abbotts in place. Together they wrestled the Alabaman back into the restraints. Abbotts mewled and snarled. His eyes were bright with wanton greed.

Jacobsen snatched up a spare squeeze-pack and emptied it down Abbotts’s gullet. Abbotts nearly choked, but managed to swallow most of the blood. Gradually he calmed.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I just... I couldn’t control it, you know?”

“No,” said Jacobsen, “I don’t know.”

“Let me up. I’m okay now. It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t think so.” Jacobsen glanced at the technician, who was being comforted by his colleagues. There were raw red weals on the man’s neck. He looked—understandably—very shaken. “You’re going to stay put for the next couple of hours, Abbotts.”

“But colonel...”

“No fucking arguments. Until I’m sure you’re safe to be around again, you aren’t going anywhere. Understood?”

“But—”

“Is that understood, private? Because, believe me, the way I’m feeling right now, I’d happily pound your brains to oatmeal.”

Abbotts, with his torn, disfigured face, looked surly but resigned. “Yes, sir,” he murmured, adding, “Ain’t as if
you
just watched a friend drown or anything.”

“No, but a soldier under my command is dead,” Jacobsen retorted, “and you’d be sorely mistaken if you think I take that lightly.” He turned to Giacoia. “Oversee this, lieutenant. Two hours tied to that table, so’s he can learn a little self-discipline. The rest of you, to your quarters. Grab some sack time.”

Jacobsen stalked out of the chamber.

He went to his own quarters and sat on the bed flicking through a copy of
Stars And Stripes
which he’d borrowed from the rec room.

The newspaper reminded him how he used to have a cause once, a vocation. He had stood for something until, at the age of forty-one, he’d become aware that he was considered too old to stand for it any more. He had been faced with accepting an administrative post or a job training recruits. Neither appealed. Better to get out altogether than continue as a shadow of his former self, a ghost soldier, washed-up, pointless, army surplus.

His restlessness deepened. He tried to distract himself with a game of Angry Birds, but couldn’t seem to make any progress through the levels. There was a nagging itch in his brain. A compulsion. An urge.

Finally he gave in to it. He got up and made his way to the ready room, where he donned battle fatigues and body armour and gathered a selection of weapons, as much ordnance as he could carry in one load. He deliberately didn’t take a helmet. No camera, no comms. No one looking over his shoulder.

Shortly after that, he was at the wheel of the Hummer and heading back out into the city.

The car growled along, windscreen wipers struggling to fend off the continual assault of snow. Jacobsen drove slowly, with some impatience, peering out into a world of whirling white. He had the roads virtually to himself—here and there the occasional cab or police car, tyres caked with ice, struggling for grip, and a few snowplough trucks and grit spreaders vainly trying to subdue the snow, about as successful in their efforts as King Canute holding back the tide.

If it wasn’t for the integrated sat nav unit embedded in the dashboard, Jacobsen might easily have become disorientated and lost. One snowy street was all but indistinguishable from another, and most of the street signs were frosted over and unreadable. The blizzard seemed to be erasing everything, as though God had grown sick of His creation and was rubbing it out and starting again.

Eventually, St Magnus’s. A section of the street was cordoned off by police tape and sawhorses. Jacobsen rolled past at the crosswalk. Cops, firefighters, paramedics and forensics experts were tramping in and out of the church. Blue and red lightbars rippled like fairground illuminations.

Jacobsen continued round the block and commenced his hunt. With the driver’s side window wound all the way down, he cruised the neighbourhood, halting every now and then to lean out and inhale deeply through his nose. The air was laden with scents, mostly vehicle exhaust particulates and the peppery aroma of Portland sandstone, New York’s principal construction material. The falling snow deadened the scents, making them less potent, but Jacobsen nevertheless breathed them all in and assessed them. Vampires had a distinct odour. Old dried blood, poor personal hygiene, a faint undertone of decay. Once you knew it, you couldn’t forget it or mistake it for anything else. And a group of vampires would leave a significant trail.

An hour passed, Jacobsen methodically exploring the area around St Magnus’s in a widening spiral. A number of times he got out of the Hummer and stood on the running board, the better to catch the air currents. There was a chance that this search was futile, he knew, but he had to try. The vampires weren’t going to get away from him. They certainly weren’t going to get away with Larousse’s death.

He was outside the car, being bombarded by snow, when his phone rang. Farthingale. Jacobsen hit the Accept Call icon. He had been expecting this.

“At least you’ve got your cell with you,” the Bostonian growled. “You haven’t gone completely incommunicado.”

“Sir. Rather busy right now. Can we hurry this up?”

“Five minutes ago, colonel, I was woken up by a call from one of the Red Eye technicians. He informed me that the Hummer wasn’t in its garage and you weren’t in your private quarters.”

“Which tech, sir?”

“Does it matter?”

“One of them was attacked this evening, that’s all. By Red Eye Seven.”

“How unfortunate,” said Farthingale. “Well, it may have been him, but his motives in contacting me were purely honourable. One of my employees has gone off the reservation, and that’s something I ought to know about. So we pinged the Hummer’s onboard GPS and apparently it and you are on the West Side. Can this be true? And if it is, can you kindly tell me what the hell you’re up to?”

“I’m furthering the mission.”

“I beg your pardon, you’re what?”

“Looking for the vampires who gave us the slip.”

“Alone? Without my say-so?”

“With all due respect, sir, I didn’t think permission was required. Our original objective was to take out all the vamps at St Magnus’s, am I right? So I’m seeing that through to the end.”

“I’m not sanctioning this,” said Farthingale. “While I applaud your thoroughness and your initiative, Colonel Jacobsen, I can’t have one of my employees going off on a jaunt, working independently. What’s got into you? Does the chain of command mean nothing?”