The Fall (29 page)

Eph was plenty tired, and sore, but more than that, he felt relief. He was done. Under arrest, in federal custody. No more fight, no more struggle. He was of little use to Setrakian and Fet anyway. With Zack and Nora now safely out of the hot zone, speeding south to Harrisburg, it seemed to him that sitting here in the penalty box was preferable to warming the bench.

Two agents entered without introduction. They handcuffed his wrists, Eph thinking that strange. They cuffed them not behind his back but in front of him, then pulled him out of the chair and walked him from the room.

They led him past the mostly empty bullpen to a key-access elevator. No one said anything on the ride up. The door opened on an unadorned access hallway, which they followed to a short flight of stairs, leading to a door to the roof.

A helicopter was parked there, its rotors already speeding up, chopping into the night air. Too noisy to ask questions, so Eph crouch-walked with the other two into the belly of the bird, and sat while they seat-belted him in.

The chopper lifted off, rising over Kew Gardens and greater Brooklyn. Eph saw the blocks burning, the helicopter weaving between great plumes of thick, black smoke. All this devastation raging below him.
Surreal
didn’t begin to describe it.

He realized they were crossing the East River, and then really wondered where they were taking him. He saw the police and fire lights spinning on the Brooklyn Bridge, but no moving cars, no people. Lower Manhattan came up fast around them, the helicopter dipping lower, the tallest buildings limiting his view.

Eph knew that the
FBI
headquarters were in Federal Plaza, a few blocks north of City Hall. But no, they remained close to the Financial District.

The chopper climbed again, zeroing in on the only lit rooftop for blocks around: a red ring of safety lights demarking a helipad. The bird touched down gently, and the agents unbuckled Eph’s seat belt. They got him up out of his seat without getting up themselves, essentially kicking him to the rooftop.

He remained in a standing crouch, air whipping at his clothes as the bird lifted off again, turning in the air and whirring away, back toward Brooklyn. Leaving him alone—and still handcuffed.

Eph smelled burning and ocean salt, the troposphere over Manhattan clogged with smoke. He remembered how the dust trail of the World Trade Center—white-gray, that—rose and flattened once it reached a certain elevation, then spread out over the skyline in a cloud of despair.

This cloud was black, blocking out the stars, making a dark night even darker.

He turned in a circle, bewildered. He walked beyond the ring of red landing lights, and, around one of the giant air-conditioning units, saw an open door, faint light emanating from within. He walked to it, stopping there with his cuffed hands outstretched, debating whether or not to go inside, then realizing that he had no choice. It was either sprout wings or see this thing through.

Faint red light inside came from an
EXIT
sign. A long staircase led down to another propped-open door. Through it was a carpeted hallway with expensive accent lighting. A man dressed in a dark suit stood halfway down, hands folded at his waist. Eph stopped, ready to run.

The man said nothing. He did nothing. Eph could see that he was human, not vampire.

Next to him, built into the wall, was a logo depicting a black orb bisected by a steel-blue line. The corporate symbol for the Stone-heart Group. Eph realized, for the first time, that it resembled the occulted sun winking its eye closed.

His adrenaline kicked in, his body preparing to fight. But the Stoneheart man turned and walked away to the end of the hall, to a door, which he opened and held.

Eph walked toward him, warily, sliding past the man and through the door. The man did not follow, instead closing the door with him remaining on the other side.

Art adorned the walls of the vast room, supersized canvases depicting nightmarish imagery and violent abstraction. Music played faintly, seeming to find his ears in the same measured volume as he moved throughout the room.

Around a corner, at the edge of the building walled in glass, looking north at the suffering island of Manhattan, was a table set for one.

A stream of low light spilled down onto the white linen, making it glow. A butler, or a waiter—a servant of some kind—arrived when Eph did, pulling out the only chair for him. Eph looked at the man—he was old, a domestic for life—the servant watching him without meeting his eye, standing with every expectation that his guest should take the seat offered him.

And so Eph did. The chair was pushed in beneath the table, a napkin opened and laid across his right thigh, and then the servant walked away.

Eph looked at the great windows. The reflection made it appear he was seated outside, at a table hovering some seventy-eight stories over Manhattan, while the city roiled in paroxysms of violence beneath him.

A slight whirring noise undercut the pleasant symphony. A motorized wheelchair appeared out of the gloom, and Eldritch Palmer, his frail hand operating the steering stick, rolled across the polished floor to the opposite side of the table.

Eph began to get to his feet—but then Mr. Fitzwilliam, Palmer’s bodyguard-cum-nurse, appeared in the shadows. The guy was bulging out of his suit, his orange hair cut high and tight, like a small, contained fire atop his boulder of a head.

Eph relented, sitting back down.

Palmer pulled in so that the front of his chair arms lined up with the tabletop. Once he was set, he looked across at Eph. Palmer’s head resembled a triangle: broad-crowned with S-shaped veins evident at both temples, narrowing to a chin that trembled with age.

“You are a terrible shot, Dr. Goodweather,” said Palmer. “Killing me might have impeded our progress somewhat, but only temporarily. However, you caused irreversible liver damage to one of my bodyguards. Not very hero-like, I must say.”

Eph said nothing, still stunned by this sudden change of venue from the
FBI
in Brooklyn to Palmer’s Wall Street penthouse.

Palmer said, “Setrakian sent you to kill me, did he not?”

Eph said, “He did not. In fact, in his own way, I think he tried to talk me out of it. I went on my own.”

Palmer frowned, disappointed. “I must admit, I wish he was here, rather than you. Someone who could relate to what I have done, at least. The scope of my achievement. Someone who would understand the magnitude of my deeds, even as he condemned them.” Palmer signaled to Mr. Fitzwilliam. “Setrakian is not the man you think he is,” said Palmer.

“No?” said Eph. “Who do I think he is?”

Mr. Fitzwilliam approached, pulling a large piece of medical equipment on casters, a machine with whose function Eph was not familiar.

Palmer said, “You see him as the kindly old man, the white wizard. The humble genius.”

Eph said nothing as Mr. Fitzwilliam pulled up Palmer’s shirt, revealing twin valves implanted in his thin side, the man’s flesh hashed with scars. Mr. Fitzwilliam connected two tubes from the machine to the valves, taping them sealed, then switched on the machine. A feeder of some kind.

Palmer said, “In fact, he is a blunderer. A butcher, a psychopath, and a disgraced scholar. A failure in every respect.”

Palmer’s words made Eph smile. “If he was such a failure, you wouldn’t be talking about him now, wishing I were him.”

Palmer blinked sleepily. He raised his hand again and a distant door opened, a figure emerging. Eph braced himself, wondering what Palmer had in store for him—if this scallywag had a taste for revenge—but it was only the servant again, this time carrying a small tray on his fingertips.

He swept in front of Eph and set a cocktail down before him, rocks of ice floating in amber fluid.

Palmer said, “I am told you are a man who enjoys a stiff drink.”

Eph looked at the drink, then back at Palmer. “What is this?”

“A Manhattan,” said Palmer. “It seemed appropriate.”

“Not the damn drink. Why am I here?”

“You are my guest for dinner. A last meal. Not yours—mine.” He nodded to the machine feeding him.

The servant returned with a plate covered with a stainless-steel dome. He set it in front of Eph and removed the cover. Glazed black cod, baby potatoes, Oriental vegetable medley—all warm and steaming.

Eph didn’t move, looking down at it.

“Come now, Dr. Goodweather. You haven’t seen food like this in days. And don’t worry about it having been tampered with, poisoned or drugged. If I wanted you dead, Mr. Fitzwilliam here would see to it promptly and then enjoy your meal himself.”

Eph had actually been looking at the utensils set out for him. He grasped the sterling-silver knife, holding it up so that it caught the light.

“Silver, yes,” said Palmer. “No vampires here tonight.”

Eph took up his fork and, with his eyes on Palmer, and his handcuffs clinking, cut into the fish. Palmer watched as he brought a morsel to his mouth, chewing it, juices exploding on his dry tongue, his belly rumbling with anticipation.

“It has been decades since I ingested food orally,” said Palmer. “I grew accustomed to not eating while recuperating from various surgical procedures. Really, you can lose your taste for food surprisingly easily.”

He watched Eph chew and swallow.

“After a time, the simple act of eating comes to appear quite animalistic. Grotesque, in fact. No different than a cat consuming a dead bird. The mouth-throat-stomach digestive tract is such a crude path to nourishment. So primitive.”

Eph said, “We’re all just animals to you, is that it?”

“‘Customers’ is the accepted term. But certainly. We, the over-class, have taken those basic human drives and advanced our own selves through their exploitation. We have monetized human consumption, manipulated morals and laws to direct the masses by fear or hatred, and, in doing so, have managed to create a system of wealth and remuneration that has concentrated the vast majority of the world’s wealth in the hands of a select few. Over the course of two thousand years, I believe this system worked pretty well. But all good things must end. You saw, with the recent market crash, how we have been building to this impossible end. Money built upon money built upon money. Two choices remain. Either utter collapse, which appeals to no one, or the richest push the pedal to the floor and take it all. And here we are now.”

Eph said, “You brought the Master here. You arranged for him to be on that airplane.”

“Indeed. But, doctor, I have been so consumed with the orchestration of this endeavor for lo these past ten years that to recount it all for you now would truly be a waste of my last hours. If you don’t mind.”

“You are selling out the human race so you can live forever—as a vampire?”

Palmer put his hands together in a gesture of prayer, but only to rub his palms and generate some warmth. “Are you aware that this very island was once home to as many different species as Yellowstone National Park?”

“No, I wasn’t. So we humans had it coming, is that your point?”

Palmer laughed softly. “No, no. No, that is not it. Far too moralistic. Any dominant species would have ravaged the land with equal or grander enthusiasm. My point is that the land doesn’t care. The sky doesn’t care. The planet doesn’t care. The entire system is structured around a long-winded decay and an eventual rebirth. Why are you so precious about humanity? You can already feel it slipping away from you now. You’re falling apart. Is the sensation really all that bad?”

Eph remembered—with a spike of shame now—his apathy in the
FBI
debriefing room after his arrest. He looked with disgust at the cocktail Palmer expected him to drink.

Palmer continued, “The smart move would have been to cut a deal.”

Eph said, “I had nothing to offer.”

Palmer considered this. “Is that why you still resist?”

“Partly. Why should people like you have all the fun?”

Palmer’s hands returned to his armrests with the certainty of revelation. “It’s the myths, isn’t it? Movies and books and fables. It has become ingrained. The entertainment we sold, that was meant to placate you. To keep you down but still dreaming. Keep you wanting. Hoping. Coveting. Anything to direct your attention away from your sense of the animal, toward the fiction of a greater existence—a higher purpose.” He smiled again. “Something beyond the cycle of birth, reproduction, death.”

Eph pointed at Palmer with his fork. “But isn’t that what you’re doing now? You think you are about to go beyond death. You believe in the same fictions.”

“Me? A victim of the same great myth?” Palmer considered this angle, then discounted it. “I have made a new fate. I am forsaking death for deliverance. My point is—this humanity your heart bleeds for is already subservient, and fully programmed for subjugation.”

Eph looked up. “Subjugation? What do you mean by that?”

Palmer shook his head. “I am not about to detail everything for you. Not because you might do something heroic with this information—you cannot. It is too late. The die is already cast.”

Eph’s mind reeled. He remembered Palmer’s speech from earlier in the day, his testimony. “Why do you want a quarantine now? Sealing off cities? What is the point? Unless… are you trying to herd us together?”

Palmer did not answer.

Eph went on, “They can’t turn everybody, because then there would be no blood meals. You need a reliable food source.” It hit him then, what Palmer had said. “Food delivery. The meatpacking plants. Are you…? No…”

Palmer folded his old hands in his lap.

Eph pressed him. “And then—what about the nuclear power plants? Why do you need them to come on line?”

Palmer answered by saying again, “The die is already cast.”

Eph set down his fork, swiping the knife blade with his napkin before setting it down as well. These revelations had killed his body’s junkie-like urge for protein.

“You’re not insane,” said Eph, actively trying to read him now. “You’re not even evil. You are desperate, and certainly megalomaniacal. Absolutely perverse. Is all this spun out of a rich man’s fear of death? You trying to buy your way out of it? Actually choosing the alternative? But—for what? What have you
not
already done that you lust after? What will be left for you to lust for?”