30 Days of Night: Light of Day (12 page)

He was nervous, jittery, tapping his fingers nonstop against his legs, as if on a meth rush. He had done what she’d instructed, worn a black turtleneck under a black leather jacket and brand new black jeans, still creased from the store shelves, and black
sneakers. He had even colored over the white parts of his shoes with black marker. She was a little surprised he hadn’t put on black greasepaint. On the plane he drank two cups of coffee, which Marina didn’t think would help with the nervous energy. But better that than booze.

There was a car waiting for them on the Tarmac. The keys were inside. No driver, no one visible in any direction. From here, it was just the two of them. She had arranged the flight and the car through Red-Blooded, but without filing any paperwork or telling anyone what she was up to—one of the perks of her new position. Marina didn’t think she would ever advance higher in the agency; she just wasn’t a team player and she was impulsive, and although it was an unusual bureaucracy, all bureaucracies shared certain characteristics in the end. This kind of thing would drive Zachary Kleefeld nuts.

So no one she worked with or for would probably understand why she had granted Barry’s request. Or having done so, why she didn’t take him out on a prearranged show-and-tell mission with the full team. She thought if he really wanted to see what life was like on the front lines, she would let him. Show him something that resembled the real thing. If they found bloodsuckers, fine, and if they didn’t, well, that was reality. More nights than not, they went home empty handed. Barry might be disappointed, but he wouldn’t be able to claim that she hadn’t taken him seriously.

What she wouldn’t tell him was that the site they would visit had been swept just over a week ago. A den had been taken out. Chances that any others would have moved in were slim, but he would still see evidence that they had been there. He would come away with a sense of what they were like, without having to face any himself.

She drove into the city. Barry was quiet most of the way, twitchy but nonverbal; he had figured out by now that although she was taking him along, she didn’t intend to answer a million questions about her work. She didn’t go into Philadelphia’s historic district, which he certainly would have recognized, but into a run-down neighborhood south of downtown, near the Schuylkill River.

“Crappy neighborhood,” Barry said.

“Maybe it needs some federal dollars.”

“Don’t they all?”

“You tell me.” Marina brought the car to a stop in the parking lot of an abandoned supermarket.

“We there?” Barry asked.

“We’re there.” She got out, went around back and opened the trunk. Barry joined her there. “I’m telling you now, it’s going to be dangerous,” Marina said. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“You sure you’re up for this?”

Barry Wolnitz looked at Marina. Small, dark haired, sexy. She looked strong and capable, but she didn’t
look like his idea of a warrior. Certainly not like the Marines he knew from around the Capitol. Barry was no warrior, either, but he had played baseball in college, boxed a little. He worked out three times a week at a gym near his house in Arlington. He ran most mornings before work. He had been raised in a hunting family, in the hills of western Pennsylvania. He knew his way around firearms.

He was pretty sure they were back in his state now, had recognized some of the buildings around the airport. The air smelled right, not like the air of home but like that near the river in Philly, that particular eastern corridor mix of industry and never-quite-clean river water.

Anyway, maybe he had never killed a vampire, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t—only that he had never had the opportunity. “I’m pumped,” he said.

Marina opened a locked case in the trunk and took out a big automatic rifle with a flashlight clipped on top. There was another waiting in the case, he noted. “This is loaded with special phosphorous rounds,” she said. “You don’t want to fire them into anything that’s not a vampire, because they’ll burn hot and they’re hard to put out. Get one in yourself and you’ll be regretting it for a long time, if you live. Get one into the building and you just might burn it down around us.”

Barry fought back the impulse to swallow. It would look like weakness, and she would certainly notice it. But there was a lump in his throat like a tennis ball,
and he had no spit. “Okay,” he said, ashamed of the way his voice croaked.

She handed him a couple of clips. “Extra ammo,” she said. “Put them in your pockets. You know how to use this thing?”

Before he could even answer, she ran through the basics: aiming, firing, recoil, reloading. He nodded along the whole time.

When she finished she took the other one out for herself and loaded spare clips into her pockets. “The flashlight at the top is called TRU-UV,” she said. “Sunlight kills vampires, and this replicates the specific properties of sunlight that do the same thing. Just try to hold the light on one as long as you can and it’ll burst into flames.”

“Okay,” he said again.

She handed him big goggles. Night vision, he had seen those before. “Put these on so you can see in there,” she said. “The power’s out. We wouldn’t want the lights on anyway, because they’d be able to see us that much better. Their night vision is more efficient than the goggles, but we go for every slight advantage we can get.”

“Of course,” he said, slipping the goggles on over his head and cinching up the straps. Everything had a greenish glow, but they cut through the darkness even better than he had expected.

Marina closed the trunk and started walking toward the empty market. It had the usual huge front
windows, a flat plane above them where a sign had once been, a pitched roof on top. It was dark and still; hard to believe looking at it now that once families had spilled out pushing carts laden with their weekly groceries and the blank expanse of parking lot had been filled with colorful vehicles.

“Did you bring a crucifix?” she asked as they crossed the lot.

Barry touched his chest anxiously. “No, should I have?”

“Vampires don’t care if you go to church every Sunday. All they’re interested in is killing you and drinking your blood. There’s a lot of crap you might have heard about them from movies and books. Forget all of it. They don’t have to sleep in coffins, they don’t avoid crosses, garlic doesn’t bother them in the least. They’re strong, they’re vicious, and I can assure you there is nothing sexy or romantic about them, unless having your throat ripped open or being torn to pieces turns you on.”

The info dump made Barry’s head swim. To be entirely accurate, it was already swimming, the reality of what he had asked for and how quickly it had happened setting in. He hadn’t really thought she would go along with it, had expected her to refuse his request flat out. Then he would have felt good about having asked, would have felt courageous and strong.

But now that he was here, he realized what an idiot he had been. This sort of thing was way out of his
league. And just two of them? What was up with that? He’d thought at the very least he would go in with a squad, everybody watching out to make sure he wasn’t hurt. He worked on a United States senator’s staff, for God’s sake!

There was no backing out now, though. He would have to tough it out and stick close to Marina. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

They approached the front of the store and Marina gave the glass doors a gentle push. They swung open, unlocked. “Play time,” she said quietly. “I’ll go around back. Give me ninety seconds to get to the back door, then we’ll go in at the same time.”

Sudden panic clenched icy fingers around Barry’s throat. “You’re leaving me here?”

“We’ll meet up in the middle,” she said, flashing him a quick smile. Then she dashed off, and in a couple of seconds he couldn’t even hear her footfalls anymore. He checked his watch, wondering if he should run after her or stick to her plan.

If he chased her, though, she might be inside before he caught up anyway. And she would be pissed. Better to just go in. She wouldn’t really have left him on his own if there was a chance they’d encounter vampires, would she?

On the other hand, he was the one who had pushed for this. Maybe this was her way of teaching him a lesson. Maybe even a lesson he wasn’t expected to survive. Marina had insisted that he not tell anyone what he
was up to, and stupidly he had obeyed. If he disappeared tonight, no one would know where to look. He should just go back to her car and sit inside until she returned.

Time was up.

Fuck it,
Barry thought. He took a deep breath and pushed through the front doors.
I’m going in.

M
ARINA KICKED IN THE
rear door. It had been rammed in during the recent raid, and not repaired, but she wanted to make a lot of noise. Even if vampires hadn’t taken the place over again, homeless squatters might have moved in. Either way she wanted anyone inside to hear her entry, and she wanted Barry Wolnitz to know where she was. The most dangerous part of this whole thing was the possibility that he would shoot her with some of those phosphorous rounds. She had considered leaving his gun unloaded, but then if he did run into trouble before she reached him, he would be out of luck.

For the same reason, she stomped through the back room, the concrete-floored loading and storage areas, past the big walk-in freezer units, and slammed into the swinging double doors that opened into the main store. Anyone inside who posed a threat would be heading her way. She was sure Barry could survive if a few homeless people passed by him.

She could smell bloodsuckers as soon as she got inside. Operation Red-Blooded agents would have come through after the raid and cleaned out the bodies, but they wouldn’t have bothered scouring the place clean,
and a den developed a particular stink of rotting flesh, spilled blood, and the rats and insects attracted to both.

The smell was tart, sickly sweet, and fresher than it should have been.

From the front of the store she heard the sound of Barry’s entrance, a couple of seconds behind schedule but not too bad. The store’s largest fixtures remained in place, shelving units standing in empty rows, big freezer sections between her and the doorway, so she couldn’t see him yet.

“Barry!” she called out. “It’s—”

And then she stopped because a flurry of motion caught her attention, the brisk flap of fabric and limbs darting toward her from the blackness of the girders overhead. She snapped her weapon up, clicking on the UV and squeezing the trigger at the same time. Phosphorous rounds stitched across the roof, but two of them hit the falling figure. The bloodsucker—if that’s what it was—screeched in pain and plummeted down. Marina dodged its fall. It landed with a heavy thud next to her, then tried to crawl toward her, hissing and scratching at the floor. She fixed it with the beam and it flinched away. A final short burst blew its head apart.

Phosphorous rounds in the ceiling were still glowing, starting to burn.

Exactly what she had told Barry to avoid. They’d have to get out of here fast.

Speaking of Barry …
She called out his name again. Then she heard his gun.

The store reeked.

He didn’t know if it was spilled, rotting food, rodent droppings, or what—some combination of those and more, probably. He felt a big sticky patch underfoot right after he walked in. He got the feeling that the owners had emptied out the shelves and then just walked away, making no effort to clean the place. Probably driven out of business by the economic downturn, and they couldn’t wait to be free of the supermarket’s debt.

Banging noises from the back had to come from Marina, or so he desperately wanted to believe. Then she called him. Then she started shooting. Barry freaked, his hand almost reflexively yanking the trigger before he stopped it. Her bullets glowed with an intense white heat, burning into his retinas. The goggles only made it worse. When he heard something else, something closer, he swung around to try to see it but ghost images from her bright rounds in his eyes half-blinded him. And it was dark against dark, just a rustle of motion passing from one shelving unit to another. Could have been a big rat.

Or something else.

He blinked, afraid to leave his eyes closed longer than a fraction of a second. While they were closed he heard something else, louder and closer. Marina’s voice sounded very far away. He opened his eyes again. The ghost images had faded a little, allowing him to see better through the goggles.

He wished he couldn’t, wished he was blind.

Instead, he saw a horrible thing charging him. Its forehead was swept back, tiny eyes bright, nose jutting forward. Below that a gaping mouth held jagged teeth, way more teeth than anything needed. A wave of fetid air reached him before the creature did. Barry fell back, slipped to one knee, and tried to swing the gun around with its light and its brilliant ammo. As he did his finger clamped down on the trigger and the gun started firing. Barry, startled, not expecting the recoil to be so powerful (
but she warned me, Marina told me it’d punch my shoulder like a heavyweight fighter if I wasn’t careful
), was knocked off balance. His left knee, the one in contact with the floor, skidded sideways. He landed on his ass, rolling backward just as the thing reached him.