The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (72 page)

“There is a man,” said Gus. “An old pawnbroker over in Manhattan. He was the first to clue me to these vamps. Saved my soul.”

“No chance,” said Creem. “Why go all the way across the river when there is killing galore here?”

“You meet this guy, you’ll understand why.”

“How do you know he’s still kickin’ it?”

“I sure hope he is. We’re going over the bridge at first light.”

Angel took a minute then to return to his apartment for the last time. His knee ached as he looked around: unwashed clothes heaped in the corner, dirty dishes in his sink, the general squalor of the place. He had never taken any pride in his living condition—and it shamed him now. Perhaps, he sensed, he knew all the time that he was destined for something better—something he could never have foreseen—and he was just waiting for the call.

He threw some extra clothes into a grocery bag, including his knee brace, and then lastly—almost ashamedly, because taking it was like admitting it was his most cherished possession, all he had left of who he once was—he grabbed the silver mask.

He folded the mask into his jacket pocket and, with it next to his heart, he realized that, for the first time in decades, he felt good about himself.

The Flatlands

E
PH FINISHED TENDING
to Vasiliy’s injuries, giving particular attention to cleaning out the worm hole in his forearm. The rat-catcher had sustained a great deal of damage, but none of it permanent, except maybe the hearing loss and ringing in his right ear. The metal shard came out of his leg and he hobbled on it but did not complain. He was still standing. Eph admired that, and felt a
bit like an Ivy League momma’s boy by his side. For all his education and scholarly achievements, Eph felt infinitely less useful to the cause than Fet.

But that would soon change.

The exterminator opened his poison closet, showing Setrakian his bait packs and traps, his halothane bottles and toxic blue kibble. Rats, he explained, lacked the biological mechanism for vomiting. The main function of emesis is to purge a body of toxic substances, which was why rats were particularly susceptible to poisoning. Why they had evolved and developed other traits to compensate for this. One was that they could ingest just about anything, including nonfood materials such as clay or concrete, which helped to dilute a toxin’s effect on the rat’s body until they could get rid of the poison as waste. The other was the rats’ intelligence, their complex food-avoidance strategies that aided in their survival.

“Funny thing,” said Fet, “is that when I ripped out that thing’s throat, and got a good look in there?”

“Yes?” said Setrakian.

“The way it looked to me, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they can’t puke either.”

Setrakian nodded, thinking on that. “I believe you are correct,” he said. “May I ask, what is the chemical makeup of these rodenticides?”

“Depends,” said Fet. “These use thallium sulfate, a heavy metal salt that attacks the liver, brain, and muscle. Odorless, colorless, and highly toxic. These over here use a common mammalian blood-thinner.”

“Mammalian? What, something like Coumadin?”

“No, not something like. Exactly like.”

Setrakian looked at the bottle. “So I myself have been taking rat poison for some years now.”

“Yep. You and millions of other people.”

“And this does what?”

“Same thing it would do to you if you took too much of it. The anticoagulant leads to internal hemorrhaging. Rats bleed out. It’s not pretty.”

In picking up the bottle to examine its label, Setrakian noticed something on the shelf behind it. “I do not wish to alarm you, Vasiliy. But aren’t these mouse droppings?”

Fet pushed his way in for a closer look. “Motherfucker!” he said. “How can this be?”

“A minor infestation, I’m sure,” said Setrakian.

“Minor, major, what does it matter? This is supposed to be Fort Knox!” Fet knocked over a few bottles, trying to see better. “This is like vampires breaking into a silver mine.”

While Fet was obsessively searching the back of the closet for more evidence, Eph watched Setrakian slip one of the bottles inside his coat pocket.

Eph followed Setrakian away from the closet, catching him alone. “What are you going to do with that?” he said.

Setrakian showed no guilt at having been discovered. The old man’s cheeks were sunken, his flesh a pale shade of gray. “He said it is essentially blood thinner. With all the pharmacies being raided, I would not like to run out.”

Eph studied the old man, trying to see the truth behind his lie.

Setrakian said, “Nora and Zack are ready for their journey to Vermont?”

“Just about. But not Vermont. Nora had a good point—it’s Kelly’s parents’ place, she might be drawn to it. There’s a girls’ camp Nora knows, from growing up in Philadelphia. It’s off-season now. Three cabins on a small island in the middle of a lake.”

“Good,” said Setrakian. “The water will keep them safe. How soon do you leave for the train station?”

“Soon,” said Eph, checking his wristwatch. “We still have a little time.”

“They could take a car. You do realize that we are out of the epicenter now. This neighborhood, with its lack of direct subway service and comparatively few apartment buildings conducive to rapid infestation, has yet to be totally colonized. We are not in a bad spot here.”

Eph shook his head. “The train is the fastest and surest way out of this plague.”

Setrakian said, “Fet told me about the off-duty policemen who
came to the pawnshop. Who resorted to vigilantism once their families were safely away from the city. You have something similar in mind, I think.”

Eph was stunned. Had the old man intuited his plan somehow? He was about to tell him when Nora entered carrying an open carton. “What is this stuff for?” she asked, setting it down near the raccoon cages. Inside were chemicals and trays. “You setting up a dark room?”

Setrakian turned from Eph. “There are certain silver emulsions that I want to test on blood worms. I am optimistic that a fine mist of silver, if possible to derive, synthesize, and direct, will be an effective weapon for mass killing of the creatures.”

Nora said, “But how are you going to test it? Where are you going to get a blood worm?”

Setrakian lifted the lid off a Styrofoam cooler, revealing the jar containing his slowly pulsing vampire heart. “I will segment the worm powering this organ.”

Eph said, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Only if I make a mistake. I have segmented the parasites in the past. Each section regenerates a fully functioning worm.”

“Yeah,” said Fet, returning from the poison closet. “I’ve seen it.”

Nora lifted out the jar, looking at the heart the old man had fed for more than thirty years, keeping it alive with his own blood. “Wow,” she said. “It’s like a symbol, isn’t it?”

Setrakian looked at her with keen interest. “How do you mean?”

“This diseased heart kept in a jar. I don’t know. I think it exemplifies that which will be our ultimate downfall.”

Eph said, “Being what?”

Nora looked at him with an expression of both sadness and sympathy. “Love,” she said.

“Ah,” said Setrakian, his acknowledgment confirming her insight.

“The undead returning for their Dear Ones,” Nora said. “Human love corrupted into vampiric need.”

Setrakian said, “That may indeed be the most insidious evil of this plague. That is why you have to destroy Kelly.”

Nora quickly agreed. “You must release her from the Master’s grip. Release Zack. And, by extension, all of us.”

Eph was shocked but knew all too well that she was right. “I know,” he said.

“But it is not enough to know what is the correct course of action,” said Setrakian. “You are being called upon to perform a deed that goes against every human instinct. And, in the act of releasing a loved one … you taste what it is to be turned. To go against everything you are. That act changes one forever.”

Setrakian’s words had power, and the others were silent. Then Zack—evidently tired of playing the handheld video game Eph had found for him, or perhaps the battery had finally given out—returned from the van, finding them gathered in conversation. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, young man—talking strategy,” said Setrakian, taking a seat on one of the cartons, resting his legs. “Vasiliy and I have an appointment in Manhattan, so, with your father’s permission, we will catch a ride with you back over the bridge.”

Eph said, “What kind of appointment?”

“At Sotheby’s, a preview of their next auction.”

“I thought they weren’t offering that item for preview.”

“They are not,” said Setrakian. “But we have to try. This is my absolute last chance. At the very least, it will give Vasiliy the opportunity to observe their security.”

Zack looked at his dad and said, “Can’t we do the James Bond security stuff instead of getting on a train?”

Eph said, “’Fraid not, little ninja. You gotta go.”

Nora said, “But how will you all keep in touch and connect afterward?” She pulled out her phone. “This thing is just a camera now. They’re toppling cell towers in every borough.”

Setrakian said, “If worst comes to worse, we can always meet back here. Perhaps you should use the ground line to contact your mother, tell her we are on the way.”

Nora left to do just that, and Fet went out to start the van. Then it was just Eph and Zack, the father with his arm around his son, facing the old man.

“You know, Zachary,” said Setrakian, “in the camp I was telling you about, the conditions were so brutal that many times I wanted to grab a rock, a hammer, a shovel, and take down one, maybe two
guards. I would have died with them, for certain—and yet, in the searing heat of the moment of choice, at least I would have accomplished
something.
At least my life—my death—would have meaning.

Setrakian never looked at Eph, only the boy, though Eph knew this speech was meant for him.

“That was how I thought. And every day I despised myself for not going through with it. Every moment of inaction feels like cowardice in the face of such inhuman oppression. Survival often feels like an indignity. But—and this is the lesson as I see it now, as an old man—sometimes the most difficult decision is to not martyr yourself for someone, but instead to choose to live
for
them.
Because
of them.”

Only then did he look at Eph.

“I do hope you will take that to heart.”

The Black Forest Solutions Facility

T
HE CUSTOM VAN
in the middle of a three-vehicle motorcade pulled to a stop right outside the canopied entrance of the Black Forest Solutions meatpacking facility in Upstate New York.

Handlers from both the lead and trailing SUVs opened large black umbrellas as the rear van doors opened and an automatic ramp was lowered to the driveway.

A wheelchair was rolled out backward, its occupant immediately surrounded by the umbrellas and quickly shuttled inside.

The umbrellas did not come down until the chair reached a windowless expanse among the animal pens. The occupant of the wheelchair was a sun-shy figure wearing a burka-like habit.

Eldritch Palmer, watching the entrance from the side, made no attempt to greet the occupant, but instead awaited its unveiling. Palmer was supposed to be meeting with the Master, not one of its wretched Third Reich flunkies. But the Dark One was nowhere to be seen. Palmer realized then that he had not had an audience with the Master since its run-in with Setrakian.

A small, impolite smile curled the edges of Palmer’s lips. Was
he pleased that the disgraced professor had shown the Master some disgrace? No, not exactly. Palmer had zero affection for lost causes such as Abraham Setrakian. Still, as a man used to being president and CEO, Palmer didn’t mind that the Master had been shown something in the way of humility.

He chastised himself then, admonishing himself to never let these thoughts enter his mind in the presence of the Dark One.

The Nazi removed his coverings layer by layer. Thomas Eichhorst, the Nazi who had once headed the Treblinka extermination camp, arose from the wheelchair, the black sun-coverings piled at his feet like so many sloughed layers of flesh. His face retained the arrogance of a camp commandant, though the decades had worn away the edges like a fine acid. His flesh was smooth as a mask of ivory. Unlike any other Eternal Palmer had ever met, Eichhorst insisted on wearing a suit and tie, maintaining the bearing of an undead gentleman.

Palmer’s dislike for the Nazi had nothing whatsoever to do with his crimes against humanity. Palmer was in the midst of overseeing a genocide himself. Rather, his distaste for Eichhorst was borne out of envy. He resented Eichhorst’s blessing of Eternity—the great gift of the Master—because he coveted it so.

Palmer then recalled his first introduction to the Master, a meeting facilitated by Eichhorst. This had followed three full decades of searching and researching, of exploring that seam where myth and legend met historical reality. Palmer finally tracked down the Ancients themselves, and finagled an introduction. They turned down his request to join their Eternal clan, refusing him flatly, even though Palmer knew they had accepted into their rare breed men whose net worth was significantly lower than his. Their unqualified scorn, after so many years of hope, was a humiliation that Eldritch Palmer simply could not bear. It meant his mortality and the surrender of all that he had accomplished in this pre-life. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust: that was fine for the masses, but for Palmer, only immortality would do. The corruption of his body—which had never been a friend to him—was but a small price to pay.

And so commenced another decade of searching—but this time, in pursuit of the legend of the rogue Ancient, the seventh
immortal, whose power was said to rival any of the others. This journey brought Palmer to the craven Eichhorst, who arranged the summit.

It occurred inside the Zone of Alienation surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, a little more than a decade after the 1986 reactor disaster. Palmer had to enter the Zone without his usual motorcade support (his unmarked ambulance and security detail), the reason being that moving vehicles kick up radioactive dust, laced with cesium-137, so you don’t want to follow any other moving vehicles. So Mr. Fitzwilliam—Palmer’s bodyguard and medic—drove him alone, and drove fast.