30 Days of Night: Light of Day (7 page)

Naturally, the blogosphere was melting down over speculation, half-truths, and conspiracy theories. Andy Gray’s data pack had made waves everywhere. His videos were posted to YouTube and distributed at file-sharing sites, and as fast as they were pulled down, someone else put them up. If someone was killing media personalities to quiet the chatter, it wasn’t working.

But that didn’t mean they didn’t have to be stopped. Operation Red-Blooded had access to the world’s best forensic science labs, and bits of trace evidence, hairs and fibers and some soil with a particular sort of mold mixed in, led Marina’s team to a row of
abandoned houses on the Lower East Side, just blocks from the river.

Marina had the NYPD close off the block at both ends at high noon, figuring the bloodsuckers would all be inside at that hour. Zachary Kleefeld had arranged things with the mayor and the NYPD brass, making sure they wouldn’t try to interfere no matter what they saw. She and her team drove to the site in a converted cargo van, its walls lined with high-tech weaponry. More of the same filled the containers beneath the bench seats. It wasn’t made for comfort but for utility, and could carry an eight-person team and enough gear to win a small war. They would go in carrying specially configured Barrett Arms M82A1s mounted with TRUUV lights and loaded with special .50 caliber phosphorous rounds designed and built in Red-Blooded’s armament labs, grenades, and long-bladed knives.

She sat in the back, wedged between Spider John, who she called that because of the spider web tattoo covering most of his body (all the spiders living on the web tattoo currently hidden by his black tactical clothing, but there were many), and R.T., a massive bald man with skin so dark it looked like a starless night sky. Spider John was the man who she believed had no interest in sex whatsoever, but who had directed those energies instead into all manner of mayhem. On R.T.’s other side was Monte, a rangy guy from east Texas whose criminal record Operation Red-Blooded was willing to overlook because his talents were so suited to the work.

He was the one who wouldn’t come out of the closet, and the one Marina had the highest hopes for.

On a bench across from them were Kat, the team’s other woman, a onetime Olympic powerlifting contender, and Tony O., an Army Ranger who had been recruited into the FBI, and from there into Red-Blooded service. Up front were Tony H., behind the wheel—his background was law enforcement, and he had spent years on L.A.’s SWAT team—and Jimbo, the out gay man, a veteran of two wars in the Persian Gulf and several years of mercenary work around them. Tony O. thought he had a future with Kat, and maybe he did as long as it didn’t interfere with his duty to Red-Blooded.

“… so I always did. From the time I was little,” Kat was saying. Marina had been trying to ease the tension, while keeping them focused on the mission, so she had asked the others when they had started believing in vampires. Kat’s had been an extreme case, brought on by watching the vampire movie
The Hunger
on TV when her parents thought she was asleep.

“My old man was a Master Sergeant in the United States Army,” Monte chimed in. His accent was Southern, but not the mellifluous sophisticated Southern that Marina found charming. More redneck than Kentucky colonel. He wasn’t stupid, but sometimes, she thought, he came off that way verbally. “I was raised to believe in three things: rules, him, and the flag. In that order. If I had believed in anything like vampires he woulda broke my fuckin’ nose. In fact, I think that was one of
his rules—no believin’ in shit you can’t see, touch, or kick the crap out of.”

Before anyone else could reminisce, the van came to a halt. Tony H. killed the engine, but nobody budged. “We’re there,” he said. “As far as we can drive, anyway.”

“Okay,” Marina said. “We don’t know which house it is—it’s one of the first three on the north side of the street. So we’ll enter all three at once. Teams of two, as we discussed, with me and Monte hanging back to support whichever team hits the jackpot.”

“Right on,” R.T. said. “Hope it’s my team.”

“These bloodsuckers have a rep,” Marina reminded them. “They’ve been active and they’re not afraid of publicity. So expect resistance. This could get as hairy as that battle in downtown L.A.”

“Hoping for that, too,” R.T. said.

“Who isn’t?” Tony O. said.

“Let’s do this,” Marina said. She rose from her seat and opened the van’s rear doors. They all piled out except Tony O., who stayed inside long enough to pass out weapons and ammo. Then he jumped to the ground and closed the doors.

The NYPD officers stared anxiously at them. They hadn’t been told much about the mission, but knew they weren’t supposed to get in the way. That was all Marina wanted from them.

There were six houses on the north side of the block, but the three on the far end had been ruled out by surveillance. The three on the near end were all seemingly
abandoned, but structurally sound and yet free of the usual squatters, gangbangers, drug dealers, and whores who would otherwise have made use of them. Those people stayed clear for a reason, and Marina figured the most logical reason was that those who
were
using those houses were too bad to mess with. She also guessed the vampires were primarily in the center house, leaving the other two unoccupied as buffer zones. But they might know that someone would figure that out, and so use one of the others as their den. Thermal imaging wouldn’t be much use in this situation, since the bloodsuckers and their prey were all on the cool side.

The team fanned out, watching the windows in each of the houses (the police had evacuated everyone from the houses on the south side; anyone hiding out in the empties at the end of the block was on their own). Nobody moved inside. R.T., Tony H., and Spider John carried handheld battering rams and had their automatic rifles strapped to their backs; the others were ready to open fire at the slightest provocation. Marina and Monte stood a dozen feet back from the center house’s door, watching Tony H. and Jimbo and hoping her guess was correct.

When everyone was in place, Marina took a deep breath and shouted, “Go!”

Simultaneously, rams crashed into three doors.

The door of the center house didn’t buckle under the assault like the others.

“It’s this one!” Marina cried.

Tony H. swung the ram twice more, putting his shoulders and back into it, and the doorjamb split. The door buckled open into the darkness.

By the time she and Monte reached the four steps up to the door, the agents from the other houses had joined them. The cops would watch the surrounding houses, but she really believed they were out of play. This center one was where the action would be.

It didn’t take long to get started.

Tony H. dropped the battering ram and brought his weapon around as he took his first two steps into the house. Before he had the gun in place, though, a dark form dropped on him from above. Jimbo had gone farther into the house already—if he turned and fired, not only would he risk hitting Tony H., but his rounds would threaten the other Red-Blooded operatives charging the door.

“We’re engaged!” Marina shouted. She clicked on the TRU-UV lamp mounted on top of her weapon as she rushed up the stairs.

The vampire hunkered on Tony H.’s back. It made a horrible hissing noise and gnashed its teeth, from which pink-tinged spittle flew. Marina caught it in the beam and it screeched. Jimbo got his TRU-UV on. Pinned between the two, the vampire dropped off Tony H. and curled on the floor like a bug on fire.

Tony H. aimed down and fired two phosphorous rounds into the creature’s head. The phosphorus burned, bright and white-hot in the dark house, and
the vampire writhed for only an instant before its brain was destroyed.

The phosphorus emitted a lot of smoke, but before the room filled up, its white glow revealed the real nature of the hell they had entered. The floors and walls were brown, caked in old blood. There were skeletons, bones, and body parts strewn here and there, with no real pattern or order. The bitter smoke couldn’t cancel out the stink of death.

“We’re in the right place,” Marina declared. “Let’s mop this up.”

W
HILE
T
ONY
O., K
AT,
Jimbo, and Monte went up the stairs, Marina, Tony H., R.T., and Spider John descended into the house’s basement. It was impossible to tell from the odor which level got the most use, because the house was rank, disgusting from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. They should have been wearing Hazmat gear, Marina thought, not tactical, but it was too late to change.
Vampires must have been using this place for years.

With every step down, the air seemed to grow thicker. The stairs were slick, some of the blood coating them still liquid, but even though her hands were gloved she didn’t want to touch the walls to steady herself. Instead she took careful steps, knees flexed, bending over slightly to see what was coming. She didn’t want anyone taking her out at the knees. Her TRU-UV light beamed out ahead of her.

There was no electricity on in the house, and before heading down the three of them had donned night vision goggles. The goggles relied on ambient light, although very low levels of it were needed, so in absolute blackness they wouldn’t be any help. But the TRU-UV
lights gave off enough illumination that Marina could see clearly, albeit with a greenish glow.

At the bottom of the stairs they found a narrow hallway. The bloodsuckers attacked as soon the agents were in the hall with nowhere to retreat to except back to the stairs. They swarmed the three agents, hissing and screaming. In the confined space, shooting was dangerous. Clawed hands gripped Marina’s legs and something ripped the night vision goggles from her head. She swung her weapon about, trying to cut the dark with her TRU-UV everywhere at once, but the creatures moved so fast that it just glanced off them.

Marina opened her mouth to shout to the others, but as soon as she did a hand was jammed into it. She didn’t dare bite down and risk breaking its skin. She tried to shove the bloodsucker away, but it was far stronger than she was. The vampire shoved another hand in there and started prying her jaws apart, pressing her against a wall at the same time. She tried to scream but could only make weak squeaking sounds, more than drowned out by the general commotion. A vampire still had her legs, pulling her off balance, and R.T., Spider John, and Tony H. were similarly overwhelmed. No help was coming from there.

The thing kept pushing her mouth open. Its head moved in close, in spite of her efforts to hold it at bay. A special Kevlar collar ringed her neck, so she wasn’t worried about being bitten. But she sensed the creature right before her face. Then she felt saliva strike her
cheeks, and she realized Jesus Christ it was trying to spit into her open mouth.

Marina kicked backward, at the bloodsucker behind her, then lashed out toward the one in front. She couldn’t spit with those hands in her mouth, but she whipped her head from side to side, trying to break its grip. The gun was useless, trapped under her arm where she couldn’t even get to the trigger. She closed her eyes. They weren’t doing her much good anyway, and she didn’t want to give it any additional ways to trade bodily fluids with her. She didn’t know if vampire spit would harm her, but even Operation Red-Blooded’s researchers admitted they didn’t know everything about how vampirism was transmitted. She didn’t want to be a test case.

Then she felt another bloodsucker grab her left arm and twist it toward her back. The pain was sudden, excruciating. She could smell the bloody stink of the first one’s breath, closer than ever to her nose and mouth. Its upper lip made contact with hers in a horrible kiss, and she felt its tongue slide against hers. Even if she could bite it, she would get a mouthful of poison blood.

Instead, she snatched for the knife on her belt. Its blade was eight inches long, the top edge serrated. You couldn’t kill a vampire with it unless you sawed its head off, separating it from its brain. But you could do some serious damage. She freed it from its scabbard with her right hand and stabbed up and forward.

The knife entered under the vampire’s chin and drove up into its open mouth. It screeched in pain and bucked away. Somebody’s TRU-UV light (maybe her own) flashed over them and in its glow Marina could see the steel blade, slick with blood, behind all those teeth.

She yanked it out and brought it in closer, slicing below one of the hands in her mouth. She cut wrist. Blood splattered her boots but the thing let go. Marina drove the knife to her left, stabbing the one holding her arm. It released her for an instant, long enough to drop the knife and bring up the gun. Tony, R.T., and John would have to fend for themselves. Marina opened fire, phosphorous rounds hitting vampires and exploding with bright white light and fizzing sounds and gagging smoke.

As she held the trigger down, she spat and spat, trying to clear any vampire saliva from her mouth. She prayed she hadn’t swallowed.

Gradually her senses returned and the phosphorus lit the hallway well enough to see. Spider John was down, flesh peeled from his face in curling ribbons. A vampire was drinking from him. Marina swore and fired a quick burst into its head, spraying pieces of it the length of the hallway. R.T. was dazed, but appeared okay. Tony H. had fallen into a corner, where he sat on top of a pile of human corpses. He opened fire with his own gun, and in seconds the hall was clear.

“John?” he asked.

“He’s done,” Marina said.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. You okay?” she asked. Meaning, did any of them bite you?

“I’m a little shaken up. Not bit.” Tony put his hand against the corpses to push up off them, and it sank into a soup of decomposing flesh. “Oh, fuck me!”

“We’ve all got to sterilize ourselves.”

“Yeah, but … shit, my pants are soaked from sitting on that crap.”

Marina twitched her light at the pile. The bodies had started to melt into one another. A pool of fluid surrounded them. She tried to swallow a lump in her throat but it wouldn’t go down, and then she remembered she never wanted to swallow anything again as long as she lived, and she spat onto the dead bodies.