Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (42 page)

Dr. Penfold

All the lights go out. I look around the room and realize that there has been a complete power cut. The only light is coming through the small window at the top of the wall. I stumble over to the other side of the room and, in the darkness, I try to find the torch that I know is on one of the shelves.

“Finish the job,” hisses a voice close in my ear. I spin around. It's next to me. I can't see it, but it's closer to me than it has ever been. “Make her speak,” the voice says.

I fumble around some more for the torch, and then I stumble back over to the bed. Sophie's still strapped down, but she's struggling to get loose.

“I'm going to find a back-up generator,” I say. “You're going to stay here”.

I turn and find my way to the door.

“Don't leave me in here,” Sophie says. “With that thing”.

I open my door and make my way out into the corridor. “You'll be okay,” I say.

In the corridor, I can see a little better. Although we're in the basement, each end of the corridor has a little window at the top of the wall. Moonlight is streaming in at one end, and some of the wiring on the walls seems to have gone haywire. It's sparking and fizzing.

I make my way along the corridor. In the distance, there's the sound of someone banging on a wall. John Tarmey is clearly having another of his panic attacks, but right now John Tarmey is not my concern.

“Davies!” I call out. “Davies!” I need him. He'll know where there's a generator I can hook up to the power system. I need to get the electro-shock machine back up and running.

As I turn a corner, I pull up short. There's something hanging from the ceiling straight in front of me. There's a moment of light as one of the wall panels flares, and I see with horror that Davies is dead. Something has ripped open his throat, and he's hanging from the ceiling, his head almost completely removed from his body. Blood is dribbling down into a puddle on the floor.

Sensing something behind me, I turn, but there's nothing there. I turn back to face the dead body of Davies. There's only one person who could have done this, who could have done all of this. Patrick is clearly inside the building, and he's angry. He knows what we've been doing here. He knows who and what John Tarmey is, and he's determined to get his revenge. But sooner or later he'll also realize what we're doing to Sophie Hart, and then his anger will be doubled.

For a moment, I consider my options. And then, finally, I realize that I know what I have to do.

So I run.

I run along the corridor, up the stairs and into the main recreation room of the facility. All the patients have been put to bed by now, but I can hear them shouting from their rooms. With only the moonlight to guide me, I make my way across the room and out into the office area. Hopefully Patrick is downstairs now, trying to break into John Tarmey's room. That should give me enough time to get out of here. It's over. I tried my best, but it's all over.

I tug at the main door, but it's jammed shut. As I try to force the handle, I realize that the whole mechanism seems to have been fused together, with the metal having been melted and then reformed. There's no way out through here, so I head over to my office. Once inside, I push the door shut and lock it, and then I head to the window.

“
Don't leave so soon,” says a familiar voice from behind me. I turn to find the dark creature lurking in the shadows. It has followed me up here, and it clearly has no intention of allowing me to leave. “The girl is useless," he hisses. "She's never going to remember what happened to the child. We have to be more subtle. We have to use John Tarmey against the vampire. Perhaps we can reverse the process that left Mr. Tarmey in such a miserable state”.

“
Tarmey will never engage another vampire in combat. That's the whole reason he's been hiding down there in a lead-walled room. The lead prevented Patrick from sensing that Tarmey was still alive. Tarmey's a coward”.

“
No,” says the voice. “Tarmey's a realist. He knows he can't defeat Patrick in a straight fight. Like me, he's been waiting to find some other way to stand up to the last vampire”.

“
There
is
no way,” I say.

“
There's always a way,” says the voice, stepping toward me. For the first time, I see its face: burnt and hideous, scratched and damaged, with two white eyeballs slowly twitching in wide-open sockets that have no eyelids.

Sophie

“
Sophie?” asks a voice in the darkness.

I'm still strapped onto the bed. “Alex?” I ask.

“Where are you?” he says.

“
Over here,” I reply. “Follow my voice”. Suddenly I feel, in the darkness, Alex's hands reaching down to untie the restraints. I sit up. “What are you doing down here?”

“
Dr. Penfold gave us express orders not to come down to the basement under any circumstances,” he replies. “So I took the back stairs. Do you understand?”

The lights blink and fizz.

“We need to find John Tarmey's room,” I say.

We carefully make our way out into the pitch black corridor. The lights are occasionally blinking back on, but never for more than a fraction of a second. As we head toward Tarmey's room, we hear an increasingly loud banging sound, and eventually we turn a corner and see Tarmey's door. However, there's another figure at the other end of the corridor.

Patrick.

He's slamming himself into the door to Tarmey's room, trying everything within his power to get that door down so that he can get in and... what? What exactly does Patrick want with Tarmey? Whatever it is, it's driving him insane. He's like an animal, just throwing himself against the door again and again.

“Patrick,” I say.

He doesn't hear me.

“Patrick!”

He slams his whole body against the door yet again, creating something of a dent, then he steps back and looks at me. In the dark corridor, with the only light coming from the moon and the occasional flickering of the lights, Patrick looks terrifyingly fierce. As he looks at me, he bares his teeth and I see those two little white fangs that I once felt slide into my body. I've never seen him look more monstrous.

“What do you want with him?” I ask. “You need to talk to
me
. You need to tell me about what happened after we left Gothos. Where did you take me for a whole year?”

Patrick looks away, slams himself into the door again, and then he takes a moment to rest.

“You're never going to break down an iron door,” I say, approaching him slowly and cautiously. “Let me help you find the key. It's probably up in Dr. Penfold's office. And then you have to talk to me”. As I reach him, I realize I'm almost trembling with fear. I've never seen Patrick like this before, so animal-like and angry. Even when he was attacking Martin Keller, I could see a hint of humanity in his eyes. This time, however, there's nothing but raw fury.

“
I need to know if what they've been saying is true,” I say. “They say I gave birth to a baby and I don't remember it, and they say they found me almost dead. Is that true?”

Patrick stares at me.

“For fuck's sake!” I shout at him. “You have to talk to me!”

He just stares.

“This silent thing,” I say, “it's kind of cute sometimes, but right now you owe it to me to talk to me and explain what's been happening. You owe it to me to be honest and tell me if it's true that I had a child, if... if
we
had a child." I wait for him to answer. "Well? Did we?”

I step closer to him.

“Talk to me!” I shout, pushing him against the wall. I'm sick of the way he refuses to say anything. He has a mouth, a tongue, a brain, so why does he just keep staring without ever saying anything? “Tell me what happened! Tell me what you did to me! I don't care about us anymore, I just want to know about the baby!”

For a moment, I think he might be able to say something, but then he just pushes me back against the door.

Suddenly something appears between us. It takes me a moment to understand that it's Alex. He's stepped in Patrick's way.

“
Leave her alone,” Alex says. “Don't hurt her. Do you understand?”

Without any warning, Patrick grabs Alex and throws him head-first into the corridor wall. There's a sickening crunch and Alex falls to the floor. I run over and roll him over, and for a moment I stare at his face.

“You killed him,” I say, unable to believe what just happened. I look up at Patrick, and for the first time I see him as the monster that he really is. “He was only trying to protect me, and you broke his neck”.

Ignoring me, Patrick slams his body into the door yet again.

"You didn't have to do this,"I say, looking down at Alex's face. "He wasn't a threat to you. He wasn't a threat to anyone."

Still ignoring me, Patrick continues his assault on the door.

"You don't even care, do you?" I ask. I stand up and walk over to him, pushing him against the wall again. “You're not the only one with a temper!” I shout. “You're not the only one who's angry!”

Ignoring me, Patrick continues to try to break down the lead door. I can hear John Tarmey screaming inside the room. Turning, I walk over and look at Alex's body, crumpled on the floor.

In the distance, there's the sound of people running, and I start to smell smoke. There's a fire. Whatever's happening here, it's getting worse by the minute.

“
We have to leave,” I say to Patrick, going back over to him as he continues to try to get through the door. “You have to come with me. We can still work everything out, but you have to calm down. Whatever's happening, you have to stop it”. I grab his arm and try to pull him away, but he snarls at me.

“
What are you going to do?” I ask. “Break my neck too?”

He stares at me in silence.

“Is that what you were going to do at the van?” I ask. “Did you come to kill me? Did you get what you need from me and then you thought you had to kill me to keep your precious secret?”

I step back and start trying to drag Alex's body away. “Come with me!” I shout, but Patrick just resumes his relentless attempts to get into John Tarmey's lead-walled room. He's like an animal, unable to do anything other than use his brute strength to try to solve his problems. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything more. As I reach the stairs, I realize there's no way I can drag Alex with me all the way.

“Sorry,” I say to his body, and I abandon him.

As everyone evacuates the building, I go to Dr. Penfold's office. I need to find the key to John Tarmey's room. It's the only way I can get Patrick to come away with me, so I can get some answers. As soon as I get into the office, however, I find Dr. Penfold dead on the floor. Kneeling down to take a look, I see that someone has sliced open his neck and chest. For a moment, I assume this must have been Patrick, but then I spot a blood-covered knife nearby. Patrick would never use a knife to kill someone, he'd use his bare hands. So who did this, and why?

Going to Dr. Penfold's desk, I open the drawers and eventually I find a set of keys. I've no idea if any of them open John Tarmey's door, but it's got to be worth a try, so I turn to head back down to the basement. At that moment, half a dozen firefighters run through the main door. Seeing me, one of them races over and grabs me, pulling me toward the exit.

“
Let me go!” I shout, but as I struggle, I drop the keys and soon I've been pulled out onto the lawn, where the other patients and various staff members are being kept away from the building, which is going up in flames.

Before I have a chance to try to find a way back in, there's a loud creaking sound and I watch in horror as the roof of the entire building collapses, sending the upper floors crashing down into the main part of the building. Firefighters usher us all away and within a few minutes it's clear that the whole hospital is going to be destroyed. There's nothing the firefighters can do except keep us back and wait for the flames to die down.

As I stare at the flames, I can't help wondering whether Patrick is still down there, still trying to break down the door to John Tarmey's room. I've seen Patrick survive some pretty serious injuries, but the entire building is collapsing into the basement now. There's nothing I can do to try to save him. All I can do is hope that he and John Tarmey were able to get out before the basement was crushed and engulfed in flames.

John Tarmey

I close my eyes and wait.

The chase lasted almost a century but finally, today, I lost. I always knew I would. As the door starts to crack and smoke fills the room, I can do nothing but wait for the inevitable. I always knew that Patrick would find me, that he would set himself loose against my body. I will try to fight him, of course, but I know there is nothing I can do. He'll tear me to pieces, just as he destroyed all the others. That's how he earned his reputation all those years ago. At first, no-one feared him, he was seen as just an annoyance. But by the time he had killed ten thousand of our brothers, he was the most feared vampire who had ever lived. He thought he had killed me too, but of course I was able to get away and hide. Until now...

Some of us chose not to die. We chose, instead, to abandon our vampire forms and become human. Even this, though, was not enough to calm Patrick's fury. He went after everyone, and now there are just a few of us left. We were once vampires, but now we're mere humans, and still he comes for us.

With my eyes closed, and the smell of thick smoke in my lungs, and with flashes of intense heat coming into the room, I hear the door finally come off its hinges. There's a loud clatter of metal as the door hits the floor, and now I can hear the flames from the corridor.

I open my eyes.

Patrick stares back at me, his face up close to mine, his eyes filled with absolute malevolence. I don't blame him. Even before the war started, he and I were enemies. We hated one another with a passion, and we would surely have squared off before if the war had not interrupting things.

"Hello, old friend," I say with a smile. "I think you have me at something of a disadvantage."

Before either of us can do anything else, however, there's a loud creaking sound from above, and I hear something crashing toward us. It's the building, collapsing in on itself. I look at Patrick and I can see that he knows what is about to happen. I smile at him, but the smile is not returned. I hold my arms out wide to welcome him.

He launches himself at me, just as the entire burning building crashes down on top of us.