The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (63 page)

He checked to see how this was going with Zack. Couldn’t tell.

“And now this thing, this plague, this awful … it’s taken who she was and burned off all that was good in her. All that was right and true. All that was, as we understand it, human. Your mom … she was beautiful, she was caring, she was … she was also crazy, in the way all devoted mothers are. But you were her great gift to
the world. That’s how she saw you. That’s what you are still. That part of her lives on. But now—she is not herself anymore. She is not Kelly Goodweather, not Mom—and this is hard for both of us to accept. All that remains of what she was, as far as I can tell, is her bond with you. Because that bond is sacred, and it never dies. What we call love, in our sappy greeting-card way, is evidently something much deeper than we humans imagined. Her human love for you has … it seems to have shifted, has morphed, into this kind of want, this need. Where she is now, this bad place? She wants you there with her. It’s not bad to her, or evil, or dangerous. She just wants you with her. And what you need to know is that this is all because your mother loved you so completely.”

Zack nodded. He couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.

“Now, that said, we have to keep you safe from her. She looks different now, right? That’s because she
is
different—fundamentally different—and it’s not easy to face that. I can’t make this right for you except to protect you from her. From what she has become. That’s my new job now, as your parent, as your father. If you think of your mom, as she originally was, and what she would do to save you from any threat to your health, to your safety … well, you tell me. What would she do?”

Zack nodded, answering immediately. “She would hide me.”

“She would take you away. Remove you from the threat, get you to a safe place.” Eph listened to what he was saying. “Just pick you up and … run. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“You’re right,” said Zack.

“Okay, so—being the overprotective mom? That’s my job now.”

Brooklyn

E
RIC
J
ACKSON PHOTOGRAPHED
the window burn from three different angles. He always carried a small Canon digital camera when he was on duty, along with his gun and his badge.

Acid etching was the thing now. Craft-store etching product usually mixed with shoe polish, marking on glass or Plexiglas. It
didn’t show up immediately, burning into the glass in the space of hours. The longer the acid-etched tag remained, the more permanent it became.

He stood back to size up the shape. Six black appendages radiating from a red center mass. He clicked back through his camera memory. Another one, taken yesterday in Bay Ridge, only not as well-defined. And another, in Canarsie, looking more like an oversized asterisk but evincing the same tight lines.

Jackson knew Phade’s work anywhere. True, this wasn’t like his usual throw-ups—this was amateur work compared to that—but the fine arcs and perfect free-hand proportion were unmistakable.

Dude was going all-city, sometimes in one night. How was that possible?

Eric Jackson was a member of the New York Police Department’s Citywide Vandals Taskforce, his job to track and prevent vandalism. He believed in the gospel of the NYPD as it pertained to graffiti. Even the most beautifully colored and detailed graffiti throw-up represented an affront to public order. An invitation to others to consider the urban environment theirs to do with as they pleased. Freedom of expression was always the miscreant’s way out, but littering was an act of expression also, and you still got nicked for it. Order was a fragile thing, with chaos always just a few steps away.

The city was seeing that now, firsthand.

Riots had claimed whole blocks in the South Bronx. Nighttime was the worst. Jackson kept waiting for a call from a captain that would put him back in the old uniform and out on the street. But no word yet. Not a lot of radio chatter at all, whenever he switched it on inside his car. So he kept on doing what he was paid to do.

The governor had resisted calls for the National Guard, but he was just a guy in Albany, weighing his political future. Supposedly, with so many units still in Iraq and Afghanistan, the guard was undermanned and underequipped—but, looking at the black smoke in the distant sky, Jackson would have welcomed any help.

Jackson dealt with vandals in all five boroughs, but nobody bombed as much of the city’s façade as Phade. Dude was everywhere. Must have slept all day, tagged all night. He was fifteen or
sixteen now, had been getting up since he was twelve. That was the age most taggers start, toying up at schools, on newspaper boxes, etc. In surveillance photos, Phade’s face was always obscured, usually by a Yankees cap tucked underneath a sweatshirt hood, sometimes even an aerosol mask. He wore typical tagger get-up: cargo pants with many pockets, a backpack for his Krylons, hi-top kicks.

Most vandals work in tagging crews, but not Phade. He was a young legend, moving with apparent impunity throughout diverse neighborhoods. He was said to carry a stolen set of transit keys, including a skeleton that unlocked subway cars. His tags earned respect. The typical profile of a young tagger is low self-esteem, a desire for peer recognition, a distorted view of fame. Phade fit none of these traits. His signature wasn’t a tag—usually a nickname or a repetitive motif—but his style itself. His pieces jumped off walls. Jackson’s own suspicion—long since moved from a hunch to a foregone certainty—was that Phade was likely obsessive-compulsive, perhaps showing symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome or even full-spectrum autism.

Jackson understood this, in part, because he was an obsessive himself. He carried a full book on Phade, quite similar in appearance to the “piece books” taggers carried, featuring their graffiti outlines in a black-cover Cachet sketchbook. As one of five officers assigned to the GHOST unit within the Vandals Taskforce—the Graffiti Habitual Offender Suppression Team—he was responsible for maintaining a graffiti offender databank cross-referencing tags and throw-ups with addresses. People who consider graffiti a kind of “street art” think of brightly colored, Wild Style bubble bombs on building murals and subway cars. They don’t think of tagging crews etching storefronts, competing for high-profile—and often dangerous—“gets.” Or, more often, marking gang territory, establishing name recognition and intimidation.

The other four GHOST cops had stopped showing up for shifts. Some radio reports had NYPD officers deserting the city like the New Orleans cops after Hurricane Katrina, but Jackson couldn’t believe that. Something else was happening—something beyond this sickness spreading throughout the boroughs. You’re sick, you bang in. You get your shift covered so you don’t leave a brother to pick up
your slack. These claims of abandonment and cowardice offended him like some incompetent tagger’s clumsy-ass signature over a freshly painted wall. Jackson would believe this crazy vampire shit people were talking before he’d accept that his guys had turned tail and skedaddled to Jersey.

He got inside his unmarked car and drove down the quiet street to Coney Island. He did this three days a week, at least. It was his favorite spot growing up, but his parents didn’t take him there nearly as much as he’d have liked. While he’d abandoned his pledge to go every day when he was a grown-up, he went often enough for lunch to make it okay.

The boardwalk was empty, as he had expected. The autumn day was certainly warm enough, but with the mad flu, amusement was the last thing on people’s minds. He hit Nathan’s Famous and found the place deserted but not locked up. Abandoned. He had worked at this very hot-dog stand after high school, so he went back behind the counter and into the kitchen. He shooed away two rats, then wiped down the cooking surface. The fridge was still cold inside, so he pulled out two beef dogs. He found the buns and a cellophane-covered tin of red onions. He liked onions, especially the way the vandals winced when he got up in their face after lunch.

The dogs cooked fast, and he stepped outside to eat. The Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel were still and quiet, seagulls perched on the uppermost railings. Another seagull flew close, then darted away from the top of the wheel at the last moment. Jackson looked closer and realized that the critters sitting atop the structure weren’t birds at all.

They were rats. Lots of rats, dotting the top edges of the structure. Trying to grab birds. What in the hell?

He continued down the boardwalk, passing Shoot the Freak, one of Coney Island’s landmark attractions. From a railed promontory, he looked down into the alley-like shooting gallery cluttered with fencing, spattered barrels, and assorted mannequin heads and bowling pins set upon rusted racks for target practice. Along the railing were six paintball guns chained to a table. The sign listed the prices, promising a
LIVE HUMAN TARGET.

The brick side walls were decorated with graffiti, creating more
character. But among the fake white Krylon tags and weak bubble throw-ups, Jackson noticed another of Phade’s designs. Another six-limbed figure, this one in black and orange. And, near it, in the same colors, a design of lines and dots similar to the code he had been seeing all over town.

Then he saw the freak. The freak was dressed in heavy black armor, like riot gear, covering his entire body. A helmet and mask with protective goggles hid his face. The orange-painted shield he normally carried in order to deflect paintball projectiles stood against a low section of chain-link fence.

The freak stood at the far corner of the shooting alley, a can of spray paint in its gloved hand, marking up the wall.

“Hey!” Jackson called down to him.

The freak didn’t acknowledge him. It kept right on tagging.

“Hey!” called Jackson, louder now. “NYPD! I wanna talk to you!”

Still no response or reaction.

Jackson picked up each of the carbine-like paintball guns, hoping for a free shot. He found one with a handful of orange balls still inside its opaque plastic feeder. He shouldered the weapon and fired low, the carbine kicking and the paintball exploding in the dirt at the freak’s boot.

The freak didn’t flinch. It finished its tag and then dropped the empty can and started toward the underside of the railing where Jackson stood.

“Hey, asshole, I said I wanna talk to you.”

The freak did not stop. Jackson unloaded three blasts at its chest, exploding red. Then the freak passed below Jackson’s angle of fire, heading underneath him.

Jackson went to the railing, lifting himself over it and dangling a moment before dropping down. From there, he had a better view of the freak’s handiwork.

It was Phade. No doubt in Jackson’s mind. His pulse quickened and he started for the only door.

Inside was a tiny changing room, the floor spattered with paint. Beyond was a narrow hallway, and along it he saw, discarded, the freak’s helmet, gloves, goggles, body armor overalls, and other gear.
Jackson realized then what he had only previously begun to understand: Phade wasn’t just an opportunist using the riots as cover to blanket the city with his tags. No—Phade was linked to the unrest somehow. His markings, his throw-ups: he was part of this.

At the end, he turned into a small office with a counter and a phone, stacks of paintball loads in egg cartons, and broken carbines.

On the swivel chair was an open backpack stuffed with Krylon cans and loose markers. Phade’s gear.

Then a noise behind him and he whipped around. There was the tagger, shorter than Jackson had imagined, wearing a paint-stained hoodie, a silver-on-black Yankees cap, and an aerosol mask.

“Hey,” said Jackson, all he could think to say at first. It had been such a long hunt, he never expected to find his man so abruptly. “I wanna talk to you.”

Phade said nothing, staring, his eyes dark and low beneath the brim of his ball cap. Jackson moved to the side in case Phade was thinking of ditching his backpack and trying to make a run for it.

“You’re a pretty slippery character,” Jackson said. Jackson had his camera in his jacket pocket, ready as ever. “First of all, take off the face mask and hat. I want you to smile for the birdie.”

Phade moved slowly—not at all, at first, but then its paint-spattered hands came up, pulling back its hood, removing its cap, and pulling down its aerosol mask.

The camera remained at Jackson’s eye, but he never pushed the button. What he saw through the lens surprised him at first—then transfixed him.

This wasn’t Phade at all. Couldn’t be. This was a Puerto Rican girl.

She had red paint around her mouth, as though she had been huffing it, getting high. But no: huffed paint leaves an even, thin coat around the mouth. These were thick drops of red, some of it dried below her chin. Her chin dropped then, and the stinger lashed out, the vampire artist leaping onto Jackson’s chest and shoulders and driving him back against the counter, drinking him dry.

The Flatlands

F
LATLANDS WAS A
neighborhood near the southern shore of Brooklyn between Canarsie and the coastal Marine Park. As with most New York City neighborhoods, it had undergone many significant demographical changes throughout the twentieth century. The library currently offered French-Creole books for Haitian residents and immigrants from other Caribbean nations, as well as reading programs in coordination with local yeshivas for children from Orthodox Jewish families.

Fet’s shop was a small storefront in a strip mall around the corner from Flatlands Avenue. No electricity, but Fet’s old telephone still gave out a dial tone. The front of the store was used mostly for storage, and not designed to service walk-in customers; in fact, the rat sign over the door was specifically meant to discourage window shoppers. His workshop and garage were in back; that was where they loaded in the most essential items from Setrakian’s basement armory—books, weapons, and other wares.

The similarity between Setrakian’s basement armory and Fet’s workshop was not lost on Eph. Fet’s enemies were rodents and insects, and, for that reason, the space was filled with cages, telescoping syringe poles, black-light wands, and miners’ helmets for night hunting. Snake tongs, animal control poles, odor eliminators, dart guns, even throw nets. Powders, trapping gloves, and a lab area over a small sink, with some rudimentary veterinary equipment for taking blood or sampling captured prey.