Adrift 3: Rising (Adrift Series) (17 page)

Movement inside?

Had the monster caught up to her?

She squinted, her gut clenching.

The movement was a product of her imagination, wasn’t it? A lingering echo of the fear that had drenched her spirits while she walked blindly in the dark?

Better to be certain
.

She grunted, lifting herself fully upright and leaving the comatose girl on the ground, and moved back to the mouth of the tunnel, aiming the grenade launcher. It was a heavy weapon, and she would be glad to be rid of its weight, but she wasn’t about to dump it without it being useful one more time.

The launcher held five more rounds.

Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump.

Conny pumped them all down the long, pitch-black passage, and pressed her lips together in satisfaction as the slightly staggered detonations brought the roof down, sealing it off forever under tons of solid rock.

She tossed the empty launcher aside.

And her radio crackled to life.

*

Herb breathed a huge sigh of relief when Conny answered. He had tried to reach her a half dozen times with no response over the past couple of minutes, and had just about resigned himself to the fact that she was dead.

He wasn’t quite sure why he cared so much, given that there were dead people everywhere, and that virtually everyone he had come into contact with over the past couple of days had been snatched away from him, but the thought of Conny dying made a well of despair open up in his mind.

It wasn’t that he
liked
her, he knew that, and it was clear that Conny had no romantic feelings for him either. Conny had to be fifteen years older than him at least, and if he had to characterise their relationship it would have been something like
weary parent and troublesome child
. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was the mother figure he had never really had.

Or maybe it was because Conny, Logan, Remy and Dan were all that was left of home now. Perhaps because she had saved his life, and on more than one occasion had laughed with him, reminding him that there was still light in the world; that there still could be.

Herb was fiercely loyal. He always had been. It was a quality that most would say was admirable, but when you found that most of your life had aligned you with monster-worshipping scumbags, loyalty sometimes proved to be a hindrance.

It was Herb’s loyalty to his brothers—his steadfast refusal to turn his back on them and abandon the mission, no matter how much he had wanted to—that had brought about the destruction of the Oceanus in the first place. His loyalty to a security officer he had briefly bonded with on the ship had seen him almost burned alive as he tried to save the guy, unaware that he was already a corpse.

His loyalty to Dan kept him moving forward, deeper into the madness of battle with the vampires, standing alongside the guy even as he slowly became something else for Herb to be afraid of.

Hell, Herb wouldn’t admit it, but even Mancini had earned his loyalty.

It struck Herb that only his loyalty to Conny did not bring with it a prospect of him getting punched, killed or mindfucked. She was an innocent swept up in the chaos, oblivious to the existence of either the vampires or the Order until a combination of Herb and Dan’s mistakes on the ship and chance had brought her into his orbit.

Herb would be damned if fate pushing Conny into his destructive path would get her killed. Not if he could help it.

“Good to hear your voice, Conny,” Herb said, laughing into the radio.

Static buzzed.

“Back at you, Herb. Thought you were dead.”

“You too. Where are you?”

“Just exited the tunnel. It’s...uh...not a tunnel anymore.”

Herb laughed again. “I see that.”

He was standing, along with Mancini, around halfway down the narrow, half-destroyed stairwell that the American claimed led down into the basement, and a tunnel that Jennifer Craven had built as an escape route for the oldest members of the Order, to use if things at the ranch ever got out of hand.

At the bottom of the steps, the dark stairway terminated in a huge mound of rubble.

Herb glanced back up the ruined stairs. Dan was at the top, standing guard. All three men had agreed that the stairway had the look and feel of a trap, but so far, no vampire or puppet had tried to sneak up on them from behind.

Herb lifted his finger from the
transmit
button.

“Anything, Dan?”

Dan shook his head.

“No movement. No vampire.”

Somehow, despite the presence of death all around, Dan managed to sound pissed off about that.

Herb hit the button again. “What happened, Conny? Where are you now?”

While he waited for her to answer, Herb’s eyes dropped to the rubble below him, where something had momentarily seemed to reflect the faint light spilling down the basement steps. He squinted.

“You see that, Mancini?” Herb pointed down.

The radio crackled. “The vampire happened, Herb. I had to blow the tunnel.”

Herb watched Mancini. The big American was nodding, his eyes narrowing.

“I’m on the way to the bunker,” Conny continued. “Looks like I have a couple of miles to go yet. We got a lot of people out of there, Herb. We saved a lot of lives.”

Herb took a couple of steps down, toward the rubble.

“Okay, Conny. I’m glad you’re alright. We’re still ticking, but I don’t know yet what our next move is. If you see any sign of vampires, let us know, yeah? Stay in touch.”

“Will do, Herb.”

Herb started to drop the radio back into his pocket, but paused, remembering. He lifted it back to his lips.

“Conny, I think the vampires can’t take minds in the light. It’s just a hunch, but it feels right. They need the shadows. So...stay in the light, okay?”

Mancini shot a sharp glance at Herb, his expression undecipherable.

“Got it, Herb. Be safe.”

“You too. See you soon.”

Herb slipped the radio back into his pocket and took another couple of steps down. He stood right in front of the rubble, peering down intently. After a moment, Mancini squeezed into the narrow space alongside him.

“It’s blood,” Mancini said. “
Black
blood.”

Herb nodded, crouching down. He reached out gingerly, running a finger through the small, wet stain he had spotted on the rubble. His forefinger came away sticky with thick black residue. It had the consistency of treacle. “Vampire blood,” he said, standing upright and peering at his stained finger, fascinated. “She must have brought the roof down right on top of it, pinned it under the rocks. It’s injured.”

Mancini grunted.

“Not badly enough to hold it here. A few spots of blood. Barely scratched it.”

Herb studied the steps, hoping to see more blood leading up; a trail that they could follow. There was nothing.

“So where is it now?” Mancini continued, apparently reading Herb’s mind.

Herb began to climb back up the steps, his shoulders slumping. The vampire could have forged ahead, digging its way through and into the tunnel; it could have escaped back the way it had come, up into the house.

“No way to know.”

“Until it attacks us.”

Herb had no response to that.

They were wasting time, and Dan’s irritation at the delay grew deeper with each passing moment.

It had been a full half hour at least since Herb had found vampire blood in the rubble blocking the basement, and following a fraught and far-too-slow search of the ranch house and its immediate surroundings, they had discovered nothing other than dead teenagers.

Herb and Mancini were continually slowed by the revolting scenes they encountered; the torn bodies and sightless eyes, and Dan wanted to scream at them to just get
on with it
.

The vampire was gone. Either it had burrowed away and died of its injuries—which didn’t seem likely given how small the pool of blood in the rubble was—or it had fled from the ranch altogether. Either way, it wasn’t attacking—and that meant there was no way for the group to track it down.

Every minute wasted staring at corpses was another step toward darkness.

The three men were standing outside the ranch house. Dan glanced at the sun. It was a bright afternoon, but the October sun was deceptive. It was already dipping fast toward the western horizon, and he figured they had a couple of hours left before the light started to fade fast. Once night crossed America, the carnage that followed would be worse than anything the vampires had mustered so far.

Herb had explained his theory about the vampires use of shadows; the reason they avoided the light, and both Dan and Mancini had agreed that it sounded plausible. Ever since he had discovered the existence of vampires, Dan had been keen to classify them among the planet’s other creatures, seeking out the characteristics that made them similar to certain animals or distinct from others. The creatures, he was certain, were not supernatural. Their behaviours—and even their psychic abilities—had a place in the real world. They were defence mechanisms; they were predatory instincts. The vampires weren’t the immortal gods that the Order had been led to believe all those centuries before. They ate, they slept, they bred. They hunted.

That they used light—or the lack of it—to their advantage wasn’t surprising. They were the planet’s apex nocturnal predator, evolved to bend shadows to their benefit.

All of which meant that delaying so that Herb and Mancini could wring their hands over the kids who’d lost their lives at the ranch was costing them precious minutes of daylight.

At least for now, the vampires were confined to using puppets or attacking fast and falling back. Night would bring them out in force, and electricity had probably been cut off over most of the country by now. Just spotting the creatures in the dark would be a challenge; facing them directly, when they were in their element, would be near-impossible.

“We can’t wait here,” Dan said stiffly. “If it was going to come back, it would have done so already. And if it went after Conny, I think we would have heard about it by now.”

Neither Herb nor Mancini responded. Conny had given them regular updates on her progress via the radio. She hadn’t encountered the vampire.

Herb’s radio crackled again, breaking the confused silence, and he pulled it out.

“Conny?”

“We’re almost at the mountain now, Herb. Still no sign of vampires. I might lose you when I go inside, but keep your radio with you, just in case. We have plenty of injuries to deal with, but everybody here is safe.”

“Got it,” Herb said. “No sign of trouble here, either. I think we’re gonna have to go out looking for some.”

Conny laughed. “Roger that. Be careful.”

“Will do.” Herb dropped the radio back into his pocket, and turned to face Dan. “So...what’s the plan?”

Dan lifted his eyes to the sky once more. It was so peaceful in Colorado.

Because there’s nobody here to kill
, he thought.
Craven wanted isolation to hide her operation, but all this emptiness isn’t helping us now. We need to be where people are dying. Where the vampires are.

“We need transport,” he said.

Mancini arched an eyebrow.

“To go where?”

Dan thought back to the news broadcast. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since he watched it. He replayed the stories the horrified anchor had relayed, and conjured up a somewhat-fuzzy mental map of the United States. His knowledge of the country’s geography was limited: he had a vague idea where some of the fifty states were, and he could recognise a select few, like California or Texas, by their unusual shape. Beyond that, he knew roughly where the major cities and landmarks that usually appeared in movies or on TV were located, but not much else.

“We know they attacked the Hoover Dam,” he said, staring at Mancini intently. “That’s Nevada, right? Not too far?”

Mancini snorted.

“Sure,” he said sarcastically, “just one state over; no problem. It’s not like Utah is
big
.” Mancini rolled his eyes. “This ain’t Britain, Bellamy. You can’t just drive across what you guys call counties in thirty minutes here. Vegas from where you’re standing is five hundred miles, easy. Probably closer to six. And that’s as the crow flies.”

Dan swallowed a curse. Mancini was right. On Dan’s mental map, Nevada and Colorado looked close—almost right on top of each other—but he wasn’t taking into account the sheer size of the country.
Close
was relative.

Six hundred miles?
He thought.
No chance of making it before nightfall.

“What if we don’t drive? What about the jet?”

“Needs a pilot.”

Dan fought back the urge to reach out and shake Mancini in his frustration. The bigger man probably wouldn’t even feel it, anyway. He’d probably slap Dan to the ground without breaking a sweat. But Mancini wasn’t offering up solutions, just shooting down ideas, and the casual way he was torpedoing Dan’s suggestions and wasting time made anger burn in his gut.

Anger that seemed to have set up a permanent home inside him now.

He took a deep breath.

He couldn’t be sure if it was the three days that had passed since he had last taken his medication, or his growing frustration at his own mistakes, but he seemed to be just one wrong word away from blind rage at any given moment.

During the trial-and-error period of Dan’s treatment after the knife attack, when the doctors had been searching for the correct combination of meds to calm his mind, he had briefly taken a drug called
Mirtazapine.
One of the side effects had been rage, and Dan had suffered it
badly
for a short time, before the medication had ultimately been deemed unhelpful to him. It had been incredible to hear the vitriol that had spilled out of his mouth during that period, like he was a completely different person. Even Elaine had taken the brunt of his uncontrollable fury. When he had screamed at her one night over nothing at all, he had known for sure that Mirtazapine wasn’t for him, but the memory of that rage still burned bright.

This felt like that. He was losing control, piece by piece, and if he was honest with himself, it was nothing to do with his lack of medication, and probably little to do with regret at the mistakes he had made.

It was the presence of the river in his mind, and the growing suspicion that it might be beyond his reach.

Occupying the cleric’s mind for a few seconds—being inside his skull right up until the moment that the vampire’s talons had ripped it open like a ripe melon, had done something to him. Torn off another strip of the man he had been before. Soon enough, he feared, there would be nothing left to take.

He felt...rickety.

Unstable.

Erratic.

Parts of Dan were slowly slipping away, being replaced by something new. In certain circumstances, the new Dan Bellamy was useful—preferable, even. The new Dan didn’t cower around strangers, he didn’t piss his pants in terror at nothing every five minutes.

He had spent two years dreaming about casting the shadow of fear from his life, but now that he had done it, he didn’t feel better. He felt worse. Fear had been replaced by something far more toxic: the unquenchable thirst for vengeance.

Fury.

Incredibly, his mind ran back to the numerous occasions that he had woken, sweat-soaked and gasping, from a nightmare, to find Elaine there to comfort him, and he felt a surge of longing.

He’d give anything to be back there. The fear in those nightmares had been worse than anything the real world could ever have thrown at him, but now, he thought he would gladly endure any nightmare; any amount of anxiety and agoraphobia.

But Elaine was gone. The old Dan was gone.

And the new version had a job to do. Miles to cover. One journey left to make.

An inhuman mind to take.

Maybe it would be the last mind he took. Perhaps it would be the one that finally erased the old Dan Bellamy forever. In some ways, he welcomed that prospect. Losing his sanity, the occurrence he had feared so much for two years, might not turn out to be such a bad thing. The whole world was insanity now, after all.

And memories only brought him pain. Let them dissolve in madness.

Bring it on.

Dan gritted his teeth, fighting to bring his thoughts back under control.

For all his irritatingly abrupt answers, Mancini was right. No pilot was the same as having no plane. Dan hadn’t ever seen the pilot who had ferried them across the Atlantic; he hadn’t even thought about it at the time. The cockpit door had not opened once during the entire time he was aboard the Gulfstream jet. Whoever had been at the controls had probably made their way back to the ranch. If not, and if the pilot had any sense, he was already long gone. He might even have taken the jet with him, pointed it at somewhere uninhabited and not looked back.

Dan turned to Herb. Before he could even ask the question, Herb had his response ready. He lifted his palms. “Helicopters are about as far as I go, Dan. And last time I flew one of those, I landed it in a damn building.”

A bright flare of frustration arced across Dan’s mind. He felt like he wanted to scream, but it struck him that if he took the reins off the emotions bubbling in his head, he might never get them under control again. He’d had his shot at a vampire, and he hadn’t been able to take it. Now, while the whole world was burning, the problem that seemed to have beaten him was as mundane as it was insurmountable. Distance. Travel time. There was no way to get to another of the monsters before night gave them the advantage.

His chin dropped.

“What’s the nearest big city?”

Mancini stroked his chin. “Depends on your definition of
big
. Denver’s closest. Half a million people, give or take.”

“Anything there the vampires would consider a high-value target?”

Mancini shrugged.

“The airport, maybe.”

Dan nodded. He’d read all about Denver airport, during the months when his only access to the world outside his apartment had been the internet. Denver International was the focus of a far-fetched conspiracy theory that placed the site as the location of a secret headquarters for the
New World Order.
The airport, the theory went, had been built atop a massive underground base. According to the lunatics who believed it, the entire place was deliberately built in the shape of a swastika seen from the air, and riddled with artwork and coded messages that dangled ‘the truth’ in front of commuters’ eyes every day.

The irony that Conny had just made her way to a secret underground base of sorts wasn’t lost on him. It wasn’t the new world order the paranoid folks on the internet should have been worried about. It was the old world order. The one humanity had buried somewhere beneath its collective subconscious.

“Then I suppose we go to Denver,” Dan said glumly, “and just hope that we’re headed in the right direction.”

Mancini shrugged.

Herb shook his head suddenly, waving a frustrated arm.

“We’re going about this all wrong, Dan,” he said. “There’s only three of us. Only one of
you
.”

“And?”

“
And
, I don’t think the vampire that attacked the ranch was even here for you. It’s like you already said: if they wanted you dead so badly, they would have sent numbers here. Hell, it sounds like there are hundreds of the fucking things out there. If they knew about you, what was to stop them
all
coming here? We wouldn’t have been able to stop them. You might have killed a couple, but they would have got to you.”

“What are you getting at?”

Herb scratched at his jaw.

“I can’t be certain, but I think the vampire that came here was doing the same job as the vampire that killed the people at my family’s compound. It was here to tie up loose ends, to kill off everyone who knew what these things are. Knowledge is power, right? That’s why they have been in hibernation all this time. To let humans forget they ever existed.”

“And so that humans forgot Hermetics existed, too,” Mancini offered.

Dan and Herb both shot glances at the bigger man. Somewhere at the back of Dan’s mind, a lightbulb threatened to blaze into life. Hermetics. Jennifer Craven had used that odd word back at the runway. He hadn’t had time to wonder what it meant.