The Night Eternal (22 page)

“It’s me, Gus. Is it really you?”

“
A guevo!
You better believe it,” he said.

“What is this building?” asked Fet. “Administration or something? What are you doing here?”

For a moment, she couldn’t remember. “Barnes!” she said. “From the CDC. He runs the camp—runs all the camps!”

“Where the hell is he?”

“Four big vampires just came and got him. His own security force. He went that way.”

Fet stepped out into the empty hall. “This way?”

“He has a car out by the gate.” Nora stepped into the hallway. “Is Eph with you?”

A pang of jealousy. “He’s outside holding them off. I’d go after this guy Barnes for you, but we have to get back to Eph.”

“And my mother.” Nora gripped Fet’s shirt. “My mother. I’m not leaving without her.”

“Your mother?” said Fet. “She’s still here?”

“I think so.” She held Fet’s face. “I can’t believe you’re here. For me.”

He could’ve kissed her. He could have. Amid the chaos and the turmoil and the danger—he could’ve. The world had vanished around them. It was her—only her in front of him.

“For you?” said Gus. “Hell, we like this killing shit. Right, Fet?” His grin undercut his words. “We gotta get back to my homeboy Bruno.”

Nora followed them out the door, then abruptly stopped. She turned back to Carly, the assistant, still standing behind her desk in the far corner of the anteroom, the telephone in her hand hanging low at her side. Nora rushed back toward her, Carly’s eyes widening with fright. Nora reached across her desk, grabbing the rest of the brownie off its paper plate. She took a big bite and threw the rest at the wall next to the assistant’s head.

But in her moment of triumph, Nora felt only pity for the young woman. And the brownie didn’t taste anywhere near as good as Nora thought it would.

O
ut in the open yard, Eph hacked and swung, clearing as much space around himself as possible. Six feet was the outside limit for vampire stingers; the combined length of his arm and his sword gave him about that distance. So he kept slashing, carving out a six-foot-wide radius of silver.

But Bruno did not share Eph’s strategy. He instead took on each individual threat as it appeared, and, because he was a brutally efficient killer, he had gotten away with it thus far. But he was also tiring. He went after a pair of vampires threatening from his blind side, but it was a ruse. When he took the bait, the
strigoi
separated him from Eph, filling in the gap between them. Eph tried to slice his way back over to Bruno, but the vampires stuck to their strategy: separate and destroy.

Eph felt the building at his back. His circle of silver became a semicircle, his sword like a burning torch keeping the darkness of vampirism at bay. A few of them dropped to all fours, trying to dart underneath his reach and pull him down by the legs, but he managed to strike at them, and strike hard, the mud at his feet turning white. But as the bodies piled up, Eph’s radius of safety continued to contract.

He heard Bruno grunt, then howl. Bruno was backed up against the high perimeter fence. Eph watched him slice off a stinger with his sword, but too late. Bruno had been stung. Just a moment of contact, of penetration, but the damage had been done: the worm implanted, the vampire pathogen entering his bloodstream. But Bruno had not been drained of blood, and he continued to battle, in fact with renewed vigor. He fought on, knowing that, even if he were to survive this onslaught, he was doomed. Dozens of worms wriggled under the skin of his face and neck.

The other
strigoi
around Eph, psychically apprised of this success, sensed victory and surged toward Eph with abandon. A few came off Bruno to shove the encroaching vampires from behind, further shrinking Eph’s zone of safety. Elbows tucked at his sides, he swung and cut at their wild faces, their swaying crimson wattles and open mouths. A stinger shot out at him, striking the wall near his ear with an arrow-like thump. He sliced it down, but there were more. Eph tried to keep up a wall of silver, his arms and shoulders screaming in pain. All it took was for one stinger to get through. He felt the force of the vampire mob closing in on him. Mr. Quinlan landed in the middle of the fight and joined instantly. He made a difference but they all knew they were just holding back the tide. Eph was about to be overrun.

It would be over soon.

A flare of light opened in the sky above them. Eph believed it was in fact a flare or some other pyrotechnic device sent up by the vampires as an alert signal or even a deliberate distraction. One moment of inattention and Eph was done for.

But the flare light kept shining, intensifying, expanding overhead. It was moving, higher than he realized.

Most important, the vampire attack slowed. Their bodies stiffened as their openmouthed heads turned toward the dark sky.

Eph could not believe his good fortune. He readied his sword to cut a swath through the
strigoi
in a last-gasp gambit to kill his way to safety …

But even he couldn’t resist. The sky-fire was too seductive. He too had to risk a peek at the polluted sky.

Across the black sackcloth of planet-smothering ash, a fierce flame was falling, cutting like the blaze from an acetylene torch. It burned through the darkness like a comet, a head of pure flame leading a narrowing tail. A searing teardrop of red-orange fire unzipping the false night.

It could only have been a satellite—or something even bigger—plummeting from the outer orbit, reentering Earth’s atmosphere like a fiery cannonball launched from the defeated sun.

The vampires backed away. With their red eyes locked on the streak of flame, they stumbled over one another with a rare lack of coordination. This was fear, thought Eph—or something like it. The sign in the sky reached their elemental selves, and they possessed no mechanism to express this terror other than a squealing noise and a clumsy retreat.

Even Mr. Quinlan retreated a bit. Overwhelmed by the light and the spectacle.

As the falling satellite burned bright in the sky, it parted the dense ash cloud and a brutal shaft of daylight penetrated the air like the finger of God, burning it all, falling over a three-mile radius that included the outer edges of the farm.

As the vampires burned and squealed, Fet and Gus and Joaquin met them coming the other way. The three of them ran into the panicked mob, cutting down the outliers before their attack triggered a full-blown riot, the vampires running off in every direction.

For a moment, the majestic column of light revealed the camp around them. The high wall, the dour buildings, the mucky ground. Plain verging on ugly, but only menacing in its ordinariness. This was like the back lot behind the showroom or the dirty restaurant kitchen: the place without artifice, where the real work gets done.

Eph watched the streak burn across the sky with increasing intensity, its head flaming thicker and brighter until it finally consumed itself and the angry trail of fire thinned to a wisp of flame—and then nothing.

Behind it, the much anticipated daylight had finally begun brightening the sky, as though heralded by that timely streak of flame. The pale outline of the sun was barely visible behind the ash cloud, a few of its rays filtering down through seams and weaknesses in the pollution cocoon. It was barely enough light for early dawn in the former world—but it was enough. Enough to drive the fleeing creatures underground for an hour or two.

Eph saw a camp prisoner following Fet and Gus, and despite her bald head and shapeless jumpsuit, he instantly recognized her as Nora. A jarring mix of emotions struck him. It seemed as though years instead of weeks had passed since they’d last met. But right now there were more pressing issues.

Mr. Quinlan retreated into the shadows. His tolerance to UV had been tested to its limit.

I will meet you … back at Columbia … I wish you all good luck.

With that, he bolted up the walls and out of the camp, effortlessly. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Gus noticed Bruno gripping his neck and went to him. “
Qué pasó, vato?
”

“Fucker’s in me,” said Bruno. The gangbanger grimaced, wetting his dry lips, then spitting onto the ground. His posture was open and strange, as though he could feel the worms already crawling inside him. “I’m damned, homes.”

The others all went silent. Gus, in his shock, reached for Bruno’s face, examining his throat. Then he pulled him into a hard hug. “Bruno,” he said.

“Fucking savages,” said Bruno. “Lucky fucking shot.”

“Goddamn it!” yelled Gus, pulling away from him. He didn’t know what to do. No one did. Gus stepped away and launched a ferocious howl.

Joaquin went toward Bruno with tears in his eyes. “This place,” he said, jabbing the point of his sword into the ground. “This is fucking hell on earth.” Then he raised his sword toward the sky, bellowing, “
I am gonna slay every last one of these bloodsuckers in your name!
”

Gus came back fast. He pointed at Eph. “You made it okay, though. Huh? How’s that? You were supposed to stay together. What happened to my boy?”

Fet stepped between them. “It’s not his fault.”

“How you know that?” said Gus, hurt burning in his eyes. “You was with me!” Gus spun around, went back to Bruno. “Tell me it was this motherfucker’s fault, Bruno, I’ll kill him right here, right now. Tell me!”

But Bruno, if he even heard Gus, didn’t answer. He was examining his hands and arms, as though looking for the worms infesting him.

Fet said, “It’s the vampires who are to blame, Gus. Stay focused.”

“Oh, I’m focused,” said Gus. He moved toward Fet threateningly, but Fet let him come up on him, knowing he had to vent his despair. “Like a laser fucking beam. I’m the Silver Ninja.” Gus pointed at Eph. “I’m focused.”

Eph started to defend himself but held his tongue, realizing that Gus wasn’t interested in what really happened. Anger was the only way the young gangbanger could express his pain.

Fet turned to Eph. “What was that thing in the sky?”

Eph shrugged. “I don’t know. I was done for, like Bruno. They were on me—it was over. And then that thing streaked across the sky. Something falling to earth. Spooked the
strigoi.
Extraordinary dumb luck.”

“That wasn’t luck,” said Nora. “That was something else.”

Eph stared, thrown off by Nora’s bald appearance. “Something else like what?”

“You can deny it,” said Nora, “or maybe you don’t want to know. Maybe you don’t even care. But that didn’t just
happen,
Ephraim. That happened to
you.
To
us.
” She eyed Fet and clarified. “To all of us …”

Eph was confused. A thing burning up in the atmosphere happened because of them?

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said. “And Bruno. Before anyone else gets hurt.”

“No way,” said Gus. “I’m tearing this place down. I want to find the fucker who did my boy.”

“No,” said Nora, stepping forward, the smallest among them. “We’re going to get my mother first.”

Eph was stunned. “But, Nora … you don’t really think she’s still here, do you?”

“She is still alive. And you of all people are not going to believe who told me this.”

Nora told Eph about Everett Barnes. Eph was mystified at first, wondering why she would joke about something like that. Then he was flat-out flabbergasted. “Everett Barnes, in charge of a blood camp?”

“In charge of all the blood camps,” said Nora.

Eph resisted it a moment more, only to see how right it was. The worst thing about this news was how much sense it made. “That son of a bitch.”

“She’s here,” said Nora. “He said she was. And I think I know where.”

“Okay,” said Eph, exhausted and wondering how far he could push this delicate matter. “But you remember what Barnes tried to do to us before.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Nora.” Eph did not want to spend any more time than was necessary inside this death trap. “Don’t you think Barnes would have told you anything—”

“We need to go get her,” Nora said, half turning away from him.

Fet came to her defense. “We have sun-time,” he said. “Before the cloud of ashes closes again. We’re going to look.”

Eph looked at the big exterminator, then back at Nora. They were making decisions together. Eph was outvoted.

“Fine,” said Eph. “Let’s make it quick.”

W
ith the sky glow allowing a bit of light into the world—like a dimmer slowly rotated from the lowest to the second-to-lowest setting—the camp appeared as a dingy, military-style outpost and prison. The high fence ringing the perimeter was topped with tangles of concertina wire. Most of the buildings were cheaply constructed and caked with grime from the polluted rain—with the notable exception of the administration building, on the side of which was displayed the old Stoneheart corporate symbol: a black orb bisected laterally by a steel-blue ray, like an eye blinking shut.

Nora quickly led them under the canvas-covered path running deeper into the camp, passing other interior gates and buildings.

“The birthing area,” she told them, pointing out the high gate. “They isolate pregnant women. Wall them off from the vampires.”

“Maybe superstition?”

Nora said, “It looked more like quarantine to me. I don’t know. What would happen to an unborn fetus if the mother were turned?”

Fet said, “I don’t know. Never thought about that.”

“They have,” said Nora. “Seems like they’ve taken careful precautions against it ever happening.”

They continued past the front gate, along the interior wall. Eph kept checking behind them. “Where are all the humans?” he asked.

“The pregnant women live in trailers back there. The bleeders live in barracks to the west. It’s like a concentration camp. I think they will process my mother in that area farther ahead.”

She pointed at two dark buildings beyond the birthing zone, neither of which looked promising. They hurried farther along to the entrance to a large warehouse. Guard stations set up outside were empty at the moment.