F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (61 page)

 
          
Something
hit Carole's hand, knocking the stake from her grasp. She turned back to her
vampire and felt it reaching for her. She patted the floor around her but found
only dead rats.

 
          
"Lacey!
The light!"

 
          
But
her words didn't penetrate Lacey's stream of shouted curses as she frantically
tried to free her ankle. Carole could feel things spinning out of control as
events accelerated, becoming increasingly surreal, chaotic, epileptic. The
creature before Carole clutched her wrist as Lacey began shooting at the one
grasping her. The shots were deafening in the small space. Lacey's wildly
gyrating flashlight beam raked across Carole, revealing the lost stake. Ears
ringing, she swung the hammer at the forearm of the hand holding her wrist,
heard a bone snap, felt the grip break. She grabbed the stake and in the dark,
placed it on the creature's chest over where she hoped its heart would be, then
hammered it into the flesh. Its limbs flailed, back arched, chest heaved, but
Carole kept her grip on the stake, taking a second swing, the hammer head
glancing off the end of the stake and grazing her hand. She clenched her teeth
against the pain as Lacey fired again, the strobe of the muzzle flash giving
Carole just enough light to see where to strike a third blow. This one landed
solidly, driving the stake through the heart beneath it. The creature spasmed
and lay still.

 
          
Carole
looked around for Lacey, saw her limping away down the narrow corridor,
dragging the still-attached vampire after her through the maggoty rats. Carole
reached around and pulled another stake from her backpack, then followed.

 
          
"Lacey,
stop."

 
          
"Carole,
get this damn thing off of me!"

 
          
"I
will. Just hold the light steady."

 
          
Lacey
stopped moving. Carole knelt on the back of the thing, placed the point of the
stake to the left of the spine, and drove it through with three swift blows.
The thing shuddered and finally released its grip on Lacey's ankle.

 
          
Lacey
lurched away and leaned against a steel support beam, gasping.

 
          
"I
think I'm going to be sick. The undead always disgusted me, but these things .
.. what the hell?"

 
          
Carole
rose and leaned against the wall, waiting for her pounding heart to slow.
"I think they're strays, and obviously they're starving."

 
          
"Have
they been living on rats? Is that possible?"

 
          
"I
don't know. Joseph said Franco told him
Manhattan
was empty and they were hunting in the
other boroughs. I do know that we got careless."

 
          
"Yeah,"
Lacey said. "Sorry for losing it in there. I didn't expect... wasn't ready
for being grabbed like that. I hope no one topside heard the shots."

 
          
So
did Carole. "Let's keep moving."

 
          
JOE
. . .

 
          
Joe
suffers again through his daymare. Every day, the same dream, clinging by his
fingertips to the lip of the same rocky precipice, his feet swinging and
kicking over the same dark swirling infinity. The living darkness calling to
him, beckoning, and still that same traitorous part of him longing to answer,
to let go and fall...

 
          
No.
Not fall. Go home.

           
Then a sudden shift. He's now
standing on the ledge. And below him, clinging by their fingertips, hang Carole
andLacey. He laughs as he grinds a heel into their fingers and sends them
screaming, tumbling into the abyss.

 
          
LACEY
. . .

 
          
"This
is creepy, Carole," Lacey said as she scanned the street from the subway
stairwell. Cars lined the curbs as always, but the streets lay still and
silent. "Nothing is moving. Nothing."

 
          
Except
for the birds, but they didn't count.

 
          
The
silence got to Lacey. She found the emptiness here eerier and far more surreal
than the close call with that pair of emaciated vampires. It sent cramps
rippling through her intestines.

 
          
But
even so, it was good to be out of the tunnels, to feel a fresh breeze on her
face, to inhale clean air. They'd found three more undead scattered in alcoves
along the shuttle tracks before they reached the Lexington Avenue line, and a
half a dozen more on the nine-block length of track they walked down to the
Thirty-third Street station. All were emaciated, and they dispatched them
without difficulty.

 
          
The
morning was further along than they'd intended by the time they crept up to
street level.

 
          
"We've
got to head uptown a couple of blocks, then west," Lacey said.

 
          
Her
uncle had laid out their route, but this was her city so it was only natural
that she take the lead here.

 
          
"We'll
be exposed," Carole said. "I don't like that."

 
          
"Neither
do I, but the only really open spot will be crossing Thirty-fourth. After that
there should be lots of nooks and crannies to hide in if need be."

 
          
They
made a headlong dash to Thirty-fifth, then turned left.

 
          
"This
area used to be called Murray Hill," Lacey told Carole as they hurried
along the sidewalk, staying low, ever ready to duck into a doorway at the first
sign of movement or sound of a car. "I guess it still is. Very tony, very
high rent. At least it was."

 
          
But
now it was a ghost town, pimpled here and there with piles of black plastic
garbage bags, torn open, their contents pawed and pecked through by rats and
pigeons, perhaps even people. Waiting in vain to be picked up by a non-existent
sanitation department. Waiting for Godot.

 
          
She
led Carole past the brick-fronted Community Church of New York with BLESSED ARE
THE PEACEMAKERS emblazoned on its front wall.

 
          
Peacemakers...
is that us? she wondered.

 
          
Further
up on the right, on the corner of Madison Avenue, sat a brown-stone church and
steeple.

 
          
"The
Church of the Incarnation," Carole muttered as they passed. "I wonder
... oh, it's Episcopal."

 
          
"Almost
as good as Catholic, right?"

 
          
Carole
smiled. "But not quite."

 
          
They
dashed across
Madison
to the shadows of the Oxford University Press offices, then continued
on toward
Fifth Avenue
. Before reaching Fifth they found the broken side doors of the
City
University
Graduate
Building
. They squeezed through and climbed to the
second floor. There, through huge arched windows, they had a panoramic view of
the Art Deco lower levels of the
Empire
State
Building
and the intersection of
Fifth Avenue
and Thirty-fourth Street
.

 
          
Lacey
leaned forward to see if she could see the top.

 
          
"Don't
get too close to the window," Carole said, pointing to the sunlight
slanting through the dusty air. "Somebody might see you."

 
          
Lacey
nodded, too awestruck by what she saw.

 
          
"Look.
They have electricity."

 
          
Houlihan's
bar and restaurant, occupying the ground-floor corner of the
Empire
State
nearest them, was lit up inside. A neon Red
Hook Lager sign glowed in the window. She'd stopped in there once to eat but
had walked out. Fourteen bucks for a hamburger. Location, location, location.

 
          
"Joseph
told us they were using the generators."

 
          
"I
know. But it's been so long since Eve seen a working electric light, I. .. it's
kind of wonderful in a way. Gives me hope."

 
          
They
found some chairs well back in the shadows and settled down to watch. A few
Vichy hung around under the canopied front entrance, but otherwise there wasn't
much activity.

 
          
"Do
you think this is the right way to go?" Lacey said after a while.
"The three of us attacking the Empire State Building, I mean."

 
          
"We
don't know that we will be. That's why we're here now. To see if it's
feasible."

 
          
"Don't
get me wrong, but do you get the feeling that no matter what we find, somehow
Joe's going to think it's feasible?"

 
          
Carole
turned and stared at her. "I don't think I understand."

 
          
"I
think you do. My uncle's got a major hard on for this Franco."

 
          
Lacey—

 
          
"It's
true and you know it. That's all he's talked about since we did the Post
Office: Franco, Franco, Franco. Here we are, possibly the only three humans in
the world with firsthand knowledge of the vampires' secret—how the death of one
reverberates through the progeny, wiping out all his or her get down the line—and
we're all together in New York instead of splitting up and trying to make it
into the unoccupied areas of the country to spread the news."

 
          
"We've
been through that."

 
          
"Yeah,
I know, but..."

 
          
It
was easier to move around within the occupied zone than to get out of it.
Vichy
were stacked at the
Delaware River
crossings waiting to pick off anyone who
tried. Joe's theory was that if they could knock off Franco and his get, the
Vichy network would collapse in disarray—at least for a while—and they could
waltz across.

 
          
Maybe.

 
          
"And
remember," Carole said, "one of the parishioners has a shortwave and
is probably broadcasting the news to the world right now."

 
          
"We
don't know that. And who'd believe him?"

 
          
"Exactly.
That's why we agreed it will be much better to be able to show than simply
tell."

 
          
Another
idea of Joe's: use the building's security system to videotape the deaths of
Franco and his get. Then they'd have proof.

 
          
"Look,
Carole, I know Franco is the head honcho and taking him down will put a serious
crimp in the undead master plan, but do you get the feeling that there's more
to it, that if Joe could demonstrate this get-death on another undead of equal
stature, he'd bypass the opportunity and remain fixed on Franco?"