Adrift 2: Sundown (21 page)

Conny’s eyes narrowed.

“Then why
are
you here?”

The man lowered the gun a little and beamed at her.

“To save the world, of course.”

It was the burning bus that did it.

One of those distinctive London double-deckers, painted a bright and cheerful red. It rolled along slowly, almost of its own accord, with fire and thick black smoke pouring out of the windows.

Mancini stared at it, transfixed by the incredible spectacle and the grisly narrative it threatened to tell.

Was it full of people when the flames took hold; all of them now just meat cooked in a giant metal oven? Were the blistered remains of the driver still hunched over the wheel, his charred foot still pressing the gas pedal?

Mancini couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through his body at the sight.

And he couldn’t stop watching.

That was the trouble.

If it hadn’t been for the almost hypnotic sight of the burning bus—if they had been just thirty seconds earlier or later; if they’d taken a different turn as they approached the River Thames—none of it might have happened.

What did happen, in the first instance, was that everybody in the van was so transfixed by the eerie sight ahead of them that nobody saw the truck coming from their right, and they had time only to turn their heads at the last moment as it smashed into the side of the van.

The world span like someone had dropped it into a washing machine.

Inside the rolling van, Mancini heard someone yelling, and someone else loose a round from their weapon, before a lamp post abruptly killed their forward momentum.

Along with Braxton.

The van came to a rest on its roof, all windows smashed and most of the right side of the vehicle caved in. The driver’s seat had been all-but obliterated as the solid stone post drove half of the engine backwards into the cab. Most of Braxton wasn’t visible. He was smeared across the exposed engine like red paint.

Mancini looked away from the dead driver and checked himself for injuries. His head was bleeding, and he was pretty sure the seatbelt had cracked a rib or two, but he’d been lucky. He unclipped the belt, grunting as pain arced through his chest, and fell out of his seat. He twisted awkwardly to see into the back of the van.

“Everybody okay?”

“Burnley fucking
shot
me,” Montero snarled.

“Grazed you,” Burnley muttered. “Sheesh. And I didn’t
shoot
; the gun went off. If I’d ‘shot’ you, you’d be dead.”

“Yeah, whatever, Burn—”

“Keep your damn voices down!” Mancini hissed. “Pruitt?”

The Brit hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt; he was crumpled at the rear of the van, looking pretty beaten up.

“I’m fine,” Pruitt grunted. “The worst part is having to listen to Laurel and fucking Hardy back here.”

Mancini grimaced.

“Yeah? Try spending six hours on a plane with ‘em.”

“Fuck you, Mancini,” Montero said. He lifted his voice. “Hey, nice driving, Braxton.”

“Braxton’s dead,” Mancini said flatly. “Like the rest of us, if you don’t quit hollering.”

He squatted low, peering out of the windows. The street outside the van looked quiet. In the distance, the fiery bus had come to a stop at last, crashing sedately into the side of a building and setting it alight.

“I think we’re okay,” he whispered.

“Tell that to Braxton.”

Mancini flicked his eyes to Montero, letting his gaze burn some silence into the man. “We have to move,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “Quietly.”

He reached into the rear of the van, helping Jeremy clamber over into the passenger seat as the others fumbled at their seatbelts, and crawled out onto the road through the side window.

In the distance, he heard heavy weaponry being fired; a sound he hadn’t heard since his days in the military: helicopter gunships raining death down onto the city. No wonder a single gunshot hadn’t drawn much attention. Somewhere overhead, a jet engine shrieked, crossing the city in seconds. Mancini couldn’t see it.

Jeremy hauled himself out of the window with a grunt, and pulled himself to his feet, refusing Mancini’s offered hand. Almost as soon as the Brit was out of the way, Burnley slipped through the window smoothly.

Somewhere in the van, Montero let out a muffled curse.

“I only grazed him.” Burnley shrugged.

Mancini ignored her, turning to Jeremy.

“How far away are we from Rennick’s apartment?”

Jeremy scanned the streets, his expression thoughtful.

“We’re not far from the London Eye,” he said, “so it’s just a couple of miles east, along the river. Maybe less.”

“You know the way?”

“More or less.” Jeremy glanced around fearfully. “It’s a good thing it’s quiet on this side of the riv—”

He fell silent as an unearthly shriek split the night.

Mancini span toward the direction of the noise. Somewhere near the giant Ferris wheel, he thought.

Not only on the south side of the river, but probably in the next damn street
.

Montero finally hauled himself through the van’s broken window, still muttering curses. Mancini clamped a hand over his mouth and hauled him to his feet.

He stared at Jeremy.

Jeremy stared back blankly, his face twitching in terror.

“Which way?” Mancini breathed, and Jeremy blinked, pointing down a dark street.

“See that building?”

He pointed at a skyscraper which loomed far above the nearby buildings.

Mancini nodded. At least they would be moving away from the creature, he thought, and finally released his grip on Montero’s flapping jaw.

“Move,” Mancini hissed. “Eyes open.
Quiet
.”

Without another word, he turned and set off for the street which Jeremy had pointed out. It looked dark and quiet, but with each stride forward, Mancini felt his nerves tightening. The others fell into line behind him, moving single-file, and even Montero looked focused.

After about three hundred yards, Mancini stopped, hunkering down next to a parked van.

“Which way?” he glanced at Jeremy.

“Straight ahead.”

Mancini gritted his teeth. They would be crossing a wide intersection, bathed in the glow of streetlights. Completely exposed. He scanned left and right, and then turned to shoot a glance behind. There
was
a vampire in that direction somewhere, but he saw no sign that it was following them. The road to the right would take them south, back in the direction they had just travelled, and though Mancini desperately wanted to head that way, it wasn’t an option. The road to the left headed toward a distant bridge.

The British Army would almost certainly try to establish a beachhead along the river, but it wouldn’t do any good. At least one of the vampires was already south of the Thames.

There was nothing for it. Going forward was the only option.

Mancini waved a beckoning hand at the others and set off at a controlled run, cradling the MP5, his eyes open and alert for any movement. He was halfway across the intersection when he heard screaming to his left and he spun, raising his weapon.

A small group of people were fleeing from the direction of the river, chased by another: a man wearing a
peace is love
T-shirt and brandishing a huge knife.

Mancini lowered his weapon a little, gawping as the guy with the knife ran down a middle-aged woman, leaping onto her back and driving the knife into her head. Before Mancini could react, heavy gunfire rained down from above, and the guy with the knife damn near
exploded
.

With a deafening roar, a large chopper swung low overhead, turning back toward the other side of the river and heading back into the city.

Jesus
, Mancini thought,
they don’t even know what they’re fighting against. They think
people
are doing this.

The vampires weren’t even showing up for the fight. They were staying in the shadows, turning humans on each other, revelling in the chaos. To the authorities, it probably looked like half of the city’s population had gone completely berserk
. Throw in some far-fetched sightings of monstrous creatures
, he thought,
and you have a recipe for madness, and bad decisions
.

The British military was doing the work of the vampires for them, killing the wrong species indiscriminately. Yet every time they mowed down some poor bastard with a knife, the real enemy would simply take control of another puppet, and the wheel of insanity would continue to turn.

He blinked as his thoughts reached a troubling destination.

If one of the monsters’ puppets had been that close; no more than fifty yards away…

“Move!” Mancini hissed, and took off at a panicked sprint.

He had taken no more than five steps forward when he heard a shriek split the night behind him.

Darkness.

Pain.

The hands in the darkness have him.

They carry him along helplessly, tossing and thrashing him.

The whole world is cascading black water.

Seeping through his skin.

Poisoning his soul.

And when it roars, he hears it clearly, and understands that it is not the sound of a river at all.

It is the sound of a voice.

Bellowing in the void, vast and incomprehensible.

Beckoning him forward.

The journey in the helicopter had become bloated with pounding anxiety almost as soon as the vehicle reached the outskirts of London and the
fuel low
light began to flash.

Herb had taken the pilot’s seat, not trusting either Lawrence or Scott with the task, and his rusty skill with the controls had made the journey
interesting
even before the fuel began to run out.

When the warning light caught his attention, he had instinctively searched for a place to set down, but the city below seemed to be made of darkness and fire. Any landing could put them in immediate danger, and at the very least would mean that they would have to travel the rest of the way on foot. He had considered the prospect of carrying a comatose man through territory that was quickly becoming vampire country and dismissed the idea of landing. He didn’t fancy their chances of surviving long down on the streets. They would make it to the hospital; they
had
to.

Besides, if the chopper was anything like a car, he thought, the fuel warning probably wasn’t
urgent
. The tank probably still had plenty of miles left in it.

Apparently not.

Their destination was in sight, silhouetted against the burning city to the north of the river, when the engine began to wheeze out its last breaths, and setting the chopper down became a matter of crashing rather than landing. The final descent, as the rotor blades began to stutter, had been steeped in fear that should have made his soul shrivel, but he had remained oddly calm. Herb had decided, as the roof of the hospital lurched toward him like an uppercut, that you knew you were having a bad day when crashing a helicopter into a building was only the second most frightening thing to happen.

Or was it the third?

He couldn’t be sure anymore.

Now that he was safely inside the hospital, with a doctor checking Dan, the adrenaline which had kept him upright for more than thirty-six hours steadily leaked away, and a wall of fatigue collapsed on top of him. It felt like he had been terrified forever, and the constant, draining fear and lack of sleep was making his thoughts unstable and skittish.

He hadn’t eaten either, he realised, not since before boarding the Oceanus
.
Increasingly, he was finding it hard to think straight.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on what the woman who had examined Dan was saying.

“It’s not his injuries,” the doctor said.

Herb blinked slowly, switching his gaze from Dan to her.

“Not,” he repeated dumbly.

“That’s right. He has a lot of bruises and lacerations, and the wounds to his abdomen are deep, but not life-threatening. Not serious enough to render him comatose. I’ve stitched him up, though it was a rush job. He’ll need to get to another hospital in the next day or two to get his wounds redressed, and—”

“Wait…it’s
not
his injuries? Then why isn’t he waking up?”

She shook her head, looking a little irritated.

“He is in shock, perhaps. A fugue state. Or he has a pre-existing psychological condition that I am not aware of. Look, I really—”

“You don’t have his medical records?”

The doctor shook her head impatiently. “I’d have to request them from his current doctor. That tends to take a few days when the world
isn’t
falling apart. He’s not dying, but he’s not waking up, either. I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do. Do you need me to take a look at your arm?”

Herb blinked, and stared down at his bandaged arm. He’d forgotten all about it.

“No, it’s nothing. You’re
sure
it’s not his injuries?”

The doctor nodded curtly.

“Quite certain. Now, please, I have other patients that I need to prepare for the evacuation…”

Herb nodded absently, returning his gaze to Dan as the doctor left the room.

Out cold yet again
, he thought, and felt a stab of envy.

He was
so
tired.

He rubbed at his eyes once more. It felt like his eyelids were made of grit.

Lack of sleep. An empty stomach.

As problems went, they were so ordinary; so mundane.

Yet, despite his exhaustion, Herb wasn’t sure he could ever sleep again. Certainly, if he had been forced to kill the police officer’s fucking
dog
on top of everything else, he was sure he wouldn’t sleep
well.
No, sleep was out of the question.

But at least he could eat.

He turned to leave Dan’s room, and flinched in surprise when he saw the policewoman leaning on the doorframe with her arms folded across her chest. The dog sat at her feet, regarding Dan’s inert body with an expression that struck Herb as
cautious interest
.

“Who is he?” she asked, as Herb made his way out into the corridor and headed for a vending machine a few rooms away. When he passed by her, she turned and followed. A moment later, the dog did likewise.

“Nobody,” Herb said ruefully, “according to him, anyway.”

He chuckled when he reached the vending machine, patting at his pockets. “No cash,” he said with a weary smile. “Would you believe I didn’t think I’d have to stop for snacks? Sorry about this.”

The police officer frowned, and then her eyes widened in surprise as Herb pulled the gun from his waistband and blew a hole in the glass front of the machine.

Somewhere further down the hallway, someone screamed, and Herb yelled an apology.

He reached inside the vending machine and began to pluck out chocolate bars and tiny bags of peanuts. He ripped a pack of nuts open, pouring the entire contents into his mouth, and smiled happily at the policewoman as he chewed.

And chewed.

“Herb Rennick,” he said finally, swallowing the last of the nuts and tearing the wrapper off a
Snickers.
He took a large bite and stuck out his right hand.

She shook it uncertainly, apparently disoriented by the sudden, formal gesture.

“Cornelia Stokes. Conny,” she said. “You know what’s going on out there, don’t you?” Her eyes narrowed. “I can see it on your face.”

“You must be a good cop, to get that just from looking at me,” Herb said with a chuckle as he reached back into the smashed vending machine to pluck out a juice box. He popped the straw and sucked on it noisily, nodding his head at the smashed glass. “You gonna arrest me for stealing?”

“And vandalism, and threatening behaviour, and discharging a firearm in a public place, and being a shit pilot,” Conny said. “Yeah, maybe later. For now I’ll settle for knowing what you know.”

Herb drained the juice box and grabbed another, offering it to Conny. She started to wave the offer away, but apparently thought better of it. She took the drink with a nod of thanks.

At her feet, Remy huffed softly, and Conny pointed at the vending machine.

“Grab some of that jerky, too. For Remy.”

Herb grunted, raiding the machine once more and dropping his eyes to the dog.

“Hey, Remy. This jerky makes you an accessory to the crime, right? Or guilty of receiving stolen goods. Either way, we’re on the same team now, buddy. No teeth, understand?”

Remy tilted his head, his eyes wide and alert as Herb tore open a pack of jerky and held it out. The German Shepherd looked up at Conny pleadingly, and she nodded.

Within seconds, the jerky was gone.

Herb began to open another pack, and returned his gaze to Conny.

“I can tell you the truth—or as much as I know of it at any rate. But in my experience, people have a hard time believing it. In fact, those people I
do
tell generally seem to end up punching me. Hmmm.”

Conny glared at him.

“Just tell me.”

“The city is being overrun by vampires,” Herb said breezily, heading back toward Dan’s room, dangling a piece of jerky from his hand for Remy to follow. “This is the part where you say ‘vampires? Are you crazy?’”

“Do you always talk so much without actually saying anything?”

Herb paused for a moment at the entrance to Dan’s room, and his face split in a wide grin.

“Yeah, I think there are people who’d agree that was accurate.”

He walked inside and sat heavily on the edge of Dan’s bed, trying not to think about how much he, too, wanted to lie down.

“They’re not vampires like you see on TV,” he said. “The vampire myth is a fabrication; disinformation that the passage of time has given a veneer of truth, understand? Different civilizations have different interpretations, but they all have some version of the vampire myth, and it is all built on the same memories: creatures that live in darkness, and feed on humans. That’s where the truth ends and the myth begins. The vampires hibernate underground for centuries, for so long that their very existence becomes a fairytale. When the time comes for a nest to rise, the humans who serve them offer up a sacrifice, and then erase the whole event from history.”

“And how do
you
know all this?”

Herb took another bite of chocolate and chewed slowly, staring thoughtfully at Conny.

“Is that your kid in the other room?”

She looked surprised at the sudden change of subject.

“Logan, my son, yes,” she nodded.

“He looks like he’s pissed off with the world.”

Conny’s gaze hardened.

“He’s…angry. Confused.” She lowered her voice a little. “He found out today that he is dying.” Her jaw dropped a little, as if she couldn’t quite believe she had offered that information so freely to a complete stranger.

Herb snorted.

“So did a lot of people,” he said around a mouthful of chocolate.

She stared at him evenly.

“You didn’t answer my question. How is it that you know so much about these vampires?”

“I don’t know enough.” He returned her gaze without blinking. “I’m one of the people that served them the Oceanus.”

He popped the last of the chocolate into his mouth.

Conny frowned, as if the word was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it for a moment. Her eyes widened. “The cruise ship?”

Herb nodded.

“The deal with these things is that they are meant to be immortal. Our choice was to do what they say or risk an entire nest rising—maybe even
all
the nests—and wiping us out.”

“‘
Was
?’”

Herb arched an eyebrow. The police officer seemed no more perturbed about the existence of vampires than if he had just informed her that it was raining outside. She picked up on the vital part of the information he was attempting to convey almost instantly.

He pointed at Dan Bellamy.

“He killed at least two of them. They die, all right.”

Conny’s gaze settled on Dan for a moment.

“How many are there?” she met his eye. “How many vampires?”

Herb’s eyes narrowed.

“Gotta say, you’re taking the news that vampires exist pretty well.”

Conny shrugged.

“I saw them. In the Underground.
Vampire
isn’t the word I would choose, but it serves just as well as
monster
, I suppose.”

“You saw them? And survived? How?”

“I ran.”

“You were lucky.”

“Luckier than the rest of the police. You’re avoiding the question. Again. How many vampires are there?”

Herb frowned.

“In total? Nobody knows for sure. According to records we have, which have proved to be…unreliable, each nest is structured so that there are several females for every male. Best estimate for that ratio is around nine to one. But even if that is true, we don’t know how many males there are in any given nest, and we don’t know how many nests there are out there; not for certain.”

“Like lions,” Conny said thoughtfully.

“Huh?”

“A pride of lions is matriarchal,” Conny said. “Usually, around three or four females for every male. Males are for hunting and breeding. They don’t tend to last as long as the females.”

Herb stared at her, his eyes widening slowly as realisation dawned.

The Three.

The question of why only three vampires had been sent to feed had nagged at him for hours. The vampires which had been unleashed upon the Oceanus were
males
. They had to be. They had even looked a little different from the vampire he had seen at the mansion; slightly bigger, their bodies more heavily packed with sinewy muscle.
Males.
Why else would a bunch of creatures that had slept for centuries only send up three of its kind to feed?

Because the Oceanus wasn’t about satisfying hunger. Well; not entirely. It was about something else.