Vigil (8 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Command

Level 1

Tom’s chest hurt like a bastard. Perhaps he had had a minor heart attack. His chest was sore, but he could have hit himself falling off his chair.

He didn’t think it would matter either way, soon.

His mind was racing as the council came in behind him. He schooled his thoughts for a moment, his intellect corralling each thought as it tried to leap away from him.

‘What’s all this about, Tom? You’ve got the whole complex in a bloody panic now. I’ve half a mind to put you back in solitary.’

‘Thanks, Jean. Nice to know I’ve still got a few friends on the council.’

Jean sighed and held his hands up in a gesture of peace. ‘Perhaps that was uncalled for. What’s on your mind?’

Tom took a breath. Steeled himself. Easy. Take it easy on them.

‘Rumour, Jean. Rumour. And fact. Bear with me while I work through it.’

‘You’ve been with us since the start, Tom,’ said Kappa. ‘You’ve earned your five minutes.’

Kappa had been on the original security team from before the fall. He’d seen the signs, same as Tom. He was far from a grunt. Twenty years down the line, he was one of the few in the complex that Tom respected and trusted.

‘Thanks, Kappa. Now, we know vampires are evolving, right?’

‘You want a medal?’

‘Let him speak, Sam,’ said Marie.

‘OK,’ Tom continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. ‘Let’s just suppose, for a minute, that vampires remember the things they knew from before, you know, before the cure. And to take it further, wouldn’t it be possible that vampires, mechanics, doctors, football players, could still have the skills they had before they turned?’

‘When they turn they’re drivelling idiots, purely driven by the hunger.’

‘The hunger, yes. Millions died when the hunger took, but some still lived. We’ve seen what happens then. They grow more powerful, they grow more intelligent. We’ve a vampire in quarantine being tested right now, and he can speak.’

‘He doesn’t say anything worth a damn but ‘please,’’ said Sam with a grin.

Tom ignored him. ‘Let’s assume that they know all they knew before…is there any reason a scientist, or a military man, or a sniper…anyone, could become cured…survive…remember?’

Jean looked at Tom thoughtfully. ‘I suppose so.’

‘And just suppose that a leader came. Suppose a leader got them together. He’d have to be powerful to rule them, and offer them something they wanted. He’d have to offer them food. People must be dwindling out, getting better at hiding.

‘Food is getting scarce. So he has the idea of keeping their food alive. Farming people. They need more people. They need food. Because food on the hoof has got wise and gone to ground.’

‘You think they want to farm us?’

‘No, Jean. That’s what I thought to start with. That’s what the rest of the complex thinks. That’s why I wanted to speak to the council in private, Jean, because the people don’t need to know what I think.’

‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘I know that’s not what they want. Do you know what the place in
Switzerland is?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the biggest particle accelerator on the planet. It was set up to study the theory behind the big bang. It was supposed to recreate the state of the universe at its inception on a small scale. That’s what they said it was for. It was run by a team of international scientists, the brightest in the world. Particle physics on a grand scale, with an accelerator miles underground. Immense. And powerful.’

‘So you think that’s where these new vampires are coming from?’

‘I’m sure of it. But I haven’t finished. The project was taken over in 2020 by a private concern. It was big news when it all started…then…nothing. But it was rumoured there were breakthroughs. I heard through my dad that they’d done it.’

‘What?’ said Marie.

Tom looked into her eyes. If she believed him, maybe the others might, too.

‘Broken the barrier.’

‘What barrier?’

‘The particle accelerator didn’t work as it was supposed to. They didn’t create the big bang. They created a worm hole.’

‘OK, Tom. You’re not making any sense. What the fuck is a wormhole?’

Tom ignored Samson and turned to Jean.

‘It’s a gateway, Jean. The rumour was, it was a gateway.’

‘That would have to go somewhere, right? What are you saying?’

‘There’s another accelerator. The two were linked. One was secret. One was public. The public never knew what was going on. They were both essential. Time and space are just dimensions. There was no wormhole through space. That would take the power of a sun imploding, is the best guess. With that power on a small scale? Using the power of an atom? Couldn’t it just be that they managed time and space? Or just time?’

‘What, they could control time?’

‘No. But they could send things back.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Samson.

‘I hope so.’

‘It’s got to be nonsense, Tom. It’s not possible.’

‘I hope so. Because I don’t think the elder vampires want us as food. I think they want the world. The world as it was. What if they could go back in time and create a world where people were just cattle, food for an immortal race?’

‘Bullshit,’ said Sam again.

‘Sam. Ask me how I know this. Ask me.’

‘Fuck you, Tom. Don’t try to get in my head.’

‘Sarah?’ Tom said. He smiled, but he didn’t feel anything approaching humour.

Sarah had been quiet throughout. Her face was pale.

‘Tom…it can’t be.’

‘Tell them.’

‘If it were true…and there were two accelerators, they could go anywhere they wanted. They’ve had twenty years to work on it. I bet they could do anything they set their minds to.’

‘I don’t think they want us as food. We’re just in the way.’

‘What have we got to do with it?’ said Marie. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Well done, Tom,’ said Suzanne. ‘You’ve freaked everyone out. Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ said Tom, shaking his head sadly. ‘That not what I want. I want to grow old. I want to die in peace. When I was growing up I wanted to be my own man, but I was always in my father’s shadow. I can’t get away from the bastard, even though he’s dead.

‘I know all this because the private concern that bought the CERN project is the same one that built this facility. Fallon Corp. bought it. My father’s company.

‘I think the second accelerator is here. I think we’re on top of it.’

*

The Parisian Countryside

2025 A
.D.

Year Zero: Apocalypse

The intruder watches the old man’s chest rising, though he should be dead. But it is early in the night yet.

The fires that ravage the remains of Paris burn bright against the night, and even though the intruder is accustomed to the light, it still pains him.

He turns from the beginning of the end of the world, and looks to the old man again, his thin chest rising and falling. Looks at the artificial hand, the machines, back to the old man, time and time again, until he can bear to look no longer.

For a time, he turns his attention to the painting on the wall. The paint is cracked but the beauty of the subject is unmistakable. The hand that painted the woman was talented. The intruder can see the brush strokes that make up her dark hair, the lustre somewhat faded over many years. Her eyes, jade, stare down at the man in the bed. It is her he will see if he ever wakes. She will be his first sight.

It makes the man in the coat angry and sad and unsure. The man in the bed has a soul. He had forgotten. But he is remembering more with every passing day, the memories flying into his head now, faster and more powerful by the minute. Each new revelation has the power to buckle his knees and bring tears to his eyes.

Yes, he remembers. He remembers very well.

He turns away from the painting and the memories with a heart of marble and looks once more to the old man propped in the bed.

The old man’s ribs and collar bones poke at the thin cotton nightshirt he wears. A shirt the nurses would have had to put on him, for he had been in this state of unbeing for many weeks now, since the heart attack that felled him.

That he had breath at all was a miracle.

No. No miracle.

Clear fluid drips thickly down a tube and into the old man’s unresisting vein.

The needle is in his left arm, held in place by surgical tape and covered by a pad of gauze. The needle leads to the tube, the tube to a plastic bag. The bag is marked FE612.

The man in the long coat notes this with weary eyes but is not surprised.

The old man’s chest, forehead, shoulders, hands are all covered with sensors, running to the machine on the wall. There is an oxygen tank beside the bed, and a cabinet, open, from which medical supplies overflow.

The room is equipped well enough to be mistaken for a hospital ward. The surfaces are pristine and everything gleams and smells of disinfectant.

The man looks more closely at the machine taking readings.

FALLON CORP. is printed on the plastic casing, just above and centre of the readout.

The intruder stoops low to look into the unconscious man’s face. Neither one changes their expression.

There is a sink in the corner, with hand soap, probably antiseptic. The man empties the pockets of his long coat. He takes it off. Then he strips his shirt and trousers until he is standing in only his underwear. He walks to the sink and washes head to toe, his hair and his neck, his stubble and
the dog bite in his arm. As he washes away the blood he examines the wound. It is closed.

He dresses once more in his battered clothes and pulls up a chair, one no doubt used by the nurses to sit beside this bed and watch the old bastard as he slept and dreamt in the darkness behind his eyes, dreams he would never remember.

He takes the old man’s hand in his and strokes it. It is a thoughtlessly beautiful gesture full of kindness, to take that mechanical arm in his and hold it as though it could feel, although the metal is cold and emotionless as the old man himself.

He watches the flitting eyes beneath the old man’s papery eye
lids and imagines the world the man within is seeing. He was a dreamer, ever a dreamer.

Part Two

The Feast

Chapter Sixteen

Transylvanian Plateau

Hoove
s thundered against the soft turf, muddy earth splattering the warrior’s shields, but still they stood firm.

Over three thousand men had fallen already. The
earth was stained red. Now they were fighting in the remains of their comrades, sliding in the muck and entrails of those eviscerated by the deadly lancers.

The Armistice Riders
, Hussars, came at first light. They had ridden through the dark, through the depths of the forest under orders from the Voivode. The Hungarian army were marching hard. Ten thousand strong, the finest fighting men in the region, hardened by seven years of war.

The Voivode could bear their stink on the soil of Seervtky no longer.

The Hussars had taken every army but one…the Cavalry of the Night. Now they faced demons, nightmare creatures that would not fall in battle, full visors down so their faces were invisible. In their armour the Cavalry of Night could almost be ghosts. But their lances and their swords rent flesh too easily for them to be mere illusions.

Jarre
ordered his men to make fast the ground before them. As before, they raised their long poles hewn from branches. It halted the advancing cavalry, but when those dark bastard’s horses fell things only got worse. But what could Jarre do? They fought, they hacked limbs from the enemy, but their blood was like a poison. His own men turned berserk and attacked their friends, their brothers, until they had no choice but to cut them down, hack them to pieces, or they would rise again.

Jarre
knew fear unlike anything he had experienced before. There was dark magic at work here. He feared no army. He feared no man. But these were night walkers, demons that could not be killed. There was no hope of victory here today.

The ground shook as the enemy charged yet again. Some of the horses stumbled over bodies and went down – the ground was no longer even and the cavalry lost much of their advantage – bu
t Jarre hoped they would keep charging. If they came on foot his army would be slaughtered. He was under no illusions.

His only hope was to flee…but even then, he knew they would hunt his men down and tear their limbs from them. He had heard how the
Cavalry of Night treated their defeated foes and it made his blood curdle to think of it. It was rumoured that they drank their enemies’ blood until they died. His cousin had survived one battle against them and told him of the dried out husks of warriors he had seen before he fled.

The first flank of horsemen crashed into his men and his line buckled almost in two. More men came from the rear and fought to close the gap, but as they hacked the arm from one of the
Cavalry, blood spewed forth, covering his men, and like a wave, madness broke out among them. Jarre roared and ran into the thick of the fighting. He knew all too well that the madness would spread if they did not destroy it soon. With a great swing he took the head from one of his own men. Then it was heat, and burning rage, and redness that overtook him. Men turned on their own kin. The carnage was terrible. Jarre had time to curse the Gods before he went down with a torn throat. He was aware of sucking sounds and then everything fell mercifully quiet...until he rose again.

*