by Philip Henry
“The Ministry was ablaze. My dad and Davis were trying their best to put out the fires. The windows had no glass left in them but the vampires were charging them and being repelled. The Ministry was protected but unless they got the fires under control the barrier would soon collapse. I looked up at the windows and saw nothing but vampires outside, hundreds of them all trying to get inside. We couldn’t stay in the cupboard any longer; we were choking. I opened the door and led the rest of the kids out. I couldn’t see my mum. The vampires were growling as they slammed into the invisible barrier above us. I made everyone hold hands and we formed a chain. I led them across to the fireplace, which was the only place that wasn’t burning. I saw my dad turn to me and he was about to shout something – probably for us to go back to the cupboard – then he saw the cupboard burning and realised I had done the right thing. He smiled at me and then got back to beating the flames. My mum ran down the burning staircase with a walkie talkie in her hand. She shouted to my dad that she had ordered a recall and that all the agents were on their way.
“My mum ran over to us and lifted the burning agent’s sword on her way. She knelt down to Owen Johnson, who was the oldest of us. She offered him the sword and told him to use it on any of the Badmen that came near. Owen was scared stiff and wouldn’t take the sword from my mum. I said I would take it. She looked dubious but in the circumstances she couldn’t say no. I took the sword and was glad that it wasn’t that heavy. It was a samurai sword. My mum gave me a courageous smile. Suddenly my dad shouted that the agents had started to arrive. The vampires disappeared from the windows as they swarmed down on the agents that had shown up. My mum said us kids should stay where we were until she told us. Behind her a vampire tried to slam the barrier and came inside with such force that he crashed into the burning staircase. My dad and Davis both stopped trying to put out fires and drew their swords. The vampire burst from the flames of the stairs and flew at my dad. Dad drew back his sword to swing but didn’t get it turned in time. The vampire caught him around the throat and pinned him to the ground. Dad dropped his sword but was keeping the vampire away. Davis ran over and swung his sword. He cut it deeply in the throat but didn’t take its head off. The blood flowed from the cut into my dad’s mouth below. I saw him spitting, but… Davis finished off the vampire and we thought my dad was all right. My mum looked outside at the war taking place on the streets of Portstewart. Cars and buildings were burning, bodies were strewn everywhere, but the Ministry agents had shown up in force and were holding their own against the vampires.
“My mum opened the doors and looked for escape. The van that had been outside waiting for us was now toppled over and on fire. The church was only a couple of hundred yards away and she decided that would be the best place to hide. If the vampires won the fight they might well burn the church down as well, but we were all praying that they wouldn’t win. My mum waved us over. We all joined hands again and I led the other kids across with the sword held up in front of me. We were almost at the door. My mum was waiting for a lull in the fighting on the street between the Ministry and the church. Then my dad pounced on her and tried to bite her neck. My mum fell to the ground with my dad on top of her. Davis was there in a second and put his arm around my dad’s neck and tried to pull him back. It was stalemate. My dad punched my mum three times quickly in the face and tried to shake Davis loose. He managed to wriggle into a position where he could bite Davis’s arm. I saw the red liquid running down Davis’s arm and his strength begin to wane. My dad was strangling my mum with the other hand. I let go of Mitzi’s hand and stepped forward. I drew the sword right back over my head. Davis saw me and gave me a quick nod through his pain. With every ounce of strength I had I brought that sword down. I cut off Davis’s arm below the elbow… and my dad’s head.
“I don’t remember much after it happened. I remember the expression on my mum’s face. I still don’t know what it was. Maybe there is no name for the expression you have when something like that happens. I remember us running across the street to the church. The vampires didn’t get any more of us. I remember my mum putting a tourniquet on Davis’s arm. I think he brought the arm with him but too much time had passed when he did finally get to the hospital and it couldn’t be reattached. I remember walking to the window of the church that night while my mum attended to Davis. I watched the Ministry burn and collapse. I watched agents fight the Badmen on the streets. The local men even ran from their houses to help. We lost a lot of people in the siege of 1986. My dad was one of them. I guess you could say it was the defining moment of my childhood. Everything I’ve done since then has…well, that’s what the Ministry shrink says.”
Nicholl turned to Rek and he saw her cheeks were covered in tears. Nicholl wiped them away quickly, embarrassed to have shown such emotion in front of a subordinate. She composed herself quickly and said, “The Ministry is one government agency that doesn’t mind you joining for revenge. A lot of Ministry agents have a story like that to tell. I’m sure you’ve got one, too.”
Rek looked at her and then shrugged and nodded a vague agreement.
“Well,” she said in an officious tone. “The sun’s up. Let’s find these two before dark. You can fill me in on what you know on the way.” She walked off towards the door and Rek followed her.
risk taking
It was a meeting for the band only. No girlfriends, no hangers-on. The rehearsal had gone well and Epic Void’s lead singer was in the toilets practising poses in the mirror. When he walked onstage to collect the many awards that were in his future, he wanted to have the right balance of humility and sexiness. He wanted to smoulder. He pushed his hair back over his shoulders and shook it like he was in a shampoo ad. The blond streaks did work! He knew that all the teasing the band had given him was just jealousy. Two of them had receding hairlines and had opted to shave their heads completely, but Risk Fortress – or as his parents knew him, Rick Fortune – still had long, luscious locks and would no doubt break teenage girlies’ hearts on a global scale one day soon. He hiked up his leather trousers and cupped his crotch to give it a more pronounced bulge. He didn’t want to keep the rest of the band waiting too long but the star always arrived last and, no offence to the rest of the guys, he was most definitely the star of Epic Void. He straightened his Epic Void T-shirt that his mum had made and strode out of the bathroom.
His three bandmates, whom he intended to call “the backbone of Epic Void” when interviewed, sat in the chill-out room. The rehearsal space was a couple of disused sheds in the yard of the bass player – one half of the rhythm section – one shed had a pool table and a couple of old sofas, the other was a big empty space where Epic Void’s equipment was permanently set up ready for the call that their first gig had been arranged. The chill-out room was where they sat and discussed what direction the band would take and how they would spend their money when they were famous. The three members looked pensive as Risk, their leader, entered the room. Risk felt it was his duty to reassure the other members in these sparse times before fame and fortune.
“I fink we did well tonight, guys. No need to look so glum. I fought we might try to learn one of my new songs for next week. I wrote one called Froo The Looking Glass. I fink it’s really good.”
The other members of Epic Void looked at each other. No one wanted to be the one to bring up the fact that Risk’s speech impediment was a serious problem. Songs like Funder & Lightning, Fro It Away and Fanks for Noffing, were not only losing impact but had also become something of a comedy catchphrase to anyone who had watched a rehearsal – and they were friends! The remaining members of Epic Void saw that this good-natured parodying among their friends would translate into public ridicule when they played to a room full of indifferent rockers. He had to go, and they had to tell him.
Risk watched, oblivious, as the guitarist; the Richards to his Jagger, stood up nervously and scratched the back of his head while staring at the ground. “We’re sorry, Risk. We’ve found a new sin
ger and you’re out of the band.” He sat down quickly and continued looking at the floor.
Risk was confused. “A new singer?” Then he got the joke. “Oh, right. Good one. Risk you’re out of deh band – as if!”
The drummer chimed in. “It’s not you, mate. It’s your speech impediment. People are laughing at us and we’ve got our career to consider.”
It began to occur to Risk that this might not be a joke. “What speech impediment? I fink you’ve got me confused wif someone else.”
The bass player thought he should support his bandmates and said, “You don’t know you’re doing it. You have a problem saying some of your TH’s.”
“I don’t fink I do. I fink you boys saw me becoming the star of deh band and you got jealous and fought you’d kick me out. Well just remember I wrote all deh songs. You’ve got noffing wifout me. No set, no frontman, no name; I came up wif Epic Void. Well, fuck you!” He opened the door and shouted on his girlfriend, “Anfea, we’re leaving.”
The drummer stood up as Anthea came to the door. She looked around Risk and asked the drummer, “Did you tell him? Is he out of the band?” The drummer nodded. She turned to Risk and said, “Sorry, babe. I’ve been seeing him for weeks now; it’s not right to do that behind your back so I think we should break up. Sorry.” She ran in and joined her new boyfriend. Part of Risk’s backbone. The man he had planned to call Sticks on the TV documentary. Risk held his head high and said, “Wifout me Epic Void is just a whole lot of noffing.” He turned and walked out into the night.
The bass player’s house was way out in the country and Anthea had been Risk’s lift home. He would have to walk six miles to the nearest town. He walked down the road quickly, wanting to be out of sight as quickly as possible because he was going to cry. About half a mile down the road he did cry. Only briefly, but genuine tears. One day he would tell his biographer that this was the low point. The biographer would reply that considering the fame and riches he achieved shortly after that night, it was a small price to pay. He would be right, too. Risk was going to do it. He was going to show those no-marks just what he could do when given complete control of his musical destiny. No more compromises because the drummer didn’t like the song. No more concessions about mentioning sitcom characters in his lyrics. No more bass players rewriting his riffs. In three years he would be lying by a pool in Beverly Hills wearing nothing but a couple of busty groupies and those guys would still be sitting in that shed.
The road was dark. There wasn’t a house in sight now and no cars had passed him, but he still felt like he was being watched. Maybe the guys had come after him, realising that sacking a burgeoning sex-god was foolish. Maybe Anthea had realised where her loyalties really lay. Maybe the whole thing had been a joke. He stopped walking and looked round cautiously. He imagined the sound-bite: “We’re great friends offstage. We play jokes on each other all the time.” He looked at the dark hedges and tried to see if he were being videoed – this classic clip would probably end up on Before They Were Famous some day. He cracked a grin. He was a good enough sport to admit when he had been suckered.
“OK, guys. You got me. You can come out now. It’s freezing. Come out and let’s go back to deh shed so I can faw my bollocks out.” He tried to keep on a brave façade (for the camera) but fear was beginning to creep into his voice. “Come on, guys. You’re dragging dis out a bit. What are you going to do next; starting whistling deh feem from Halloween?”
Impossibly, from high above him he heard the theme from Halloween being whistled. He looked up into the darkness and saw someone flying straight at him. Someone with sharp teeth. Risk screamed just like he did before the chorus of Funder & Lightning and put up his hands to shield himself.
Kaaliz and Sin sat watching the teenage wannabe rock star sleeping in his cage. Sin got hardly any sleep that day because she had been reading the research that the scientists of Project Redbook had accrued on the Che’al over the years. It wasn’t a pureblood Che’al; it had eaten a vampire at some point in its life and now had its own barbaric strength mixed with the powers of a vampire. There were X-rays of the creature and even a CAT scan. Its brain was very small and it seemed to only have the basest instincts. The big plus was that it seemed virtually impossible to kill. It had been underwater for one hundred and fifty-four years without drowning or feeding. It might have caught the odd fish but Sin doubted it. The Che’al was slow, lumbering and not intelligent enough to catch a fish in any way other than grabbing, and being underwater would only have slowed it even more. The records said the staff of Redbook hadn’t fed it since they had it in their possession either. It wanted to be fed, Sin was in no doubt about that. When she or Kaaliz stepped anywhere near its cage it would lash out and try to grab them. Sin needed to find a way to control it and she was lucky that the scientists had been working on this problem, too.
From what she could gather, there was some discussion about the use of the Che’al as a military weapon. The idea seemed to be that it could be dropped in a hostile area and the army could sit back and wait for it to kill everyone, but how could they safely move into the area? They needed a way to restrain it. A drug called GR281, which was successful at doping the Che’al or knocking it out completely with a higher dose, had been developed for this purpose. The problem was administering it. The Che’al’s skin was so dense that tranquilliser darts just bounced off. The scientists had tried various strategies to dope the Che’al; bullets tipped with the drug only dented the skin, sword/syringe combinations were grabbed and thrown aside. In the end it was the most bizarrely simple suggestion that worked: one of the scientists taped a large capsule of the drug to one of the laboratory mice and let it loose next to the cage. The Che’al lunged forward, grabbed it and swallowed it in one motion. Twenty minutes later the Che’al was staggering around its cell in a stoned daze. Soon after it fell over.
The scientists had approached it cautiously at first and then when they were sure that it was really unconscious they had set to work quickly. They took various samples from the creature but the main reason for the doping was to put an implant in the back of its neck. The technician actually had to use a power drill to get through the creature’s hide. It twitched a little while he did it and everyone was anxious to leave. The implant was inserted and they cleared the cage without casualty. When the Che’al came to, half and hour later, it scratched at the implant at first but its fingers didn’t have the dexterity to pull it out. The implant was a remote device triggered by a keypad. It delivered an electrical pulse directly into the brainstem of the creature. When tested, it just made the creature more angry. Instead of dulling its senses, it just made it stronger and more excitable.
The scientists didn’t give up. They thought that in time the creature could be trained like a dog. It would be rewarded when it did as it was told and shocked when it didn’t. That was how they had spent their time until the facility was closed. The final entry in the daily log was: Pavlov never had this fucker to contend with!
Sin had been intrigued by the creature and the research. She wanted to study a sample of its blood and decided to adopt the same method as her predecessors, but they had no mice so she sent Kaaliz out to get a substitute. Kaaliz had brought back a young long-haired teenage boy to serve as their mouse, but when he returned Sin had thought up another more interesting experiment.
“So you’re saying you don’t want to kill him now?” Kaaliz asked.
“No. While you were away I had a great idea. So I went outside and looked around the fields until I found Bugs.” She held up a rabbit she had put in a cage.
“Very cute, but what’s the plan?”
“You can see how strong that thing is even though it hasn’t been fed in nearly two centuries, it would be a great ally.”
“But it’s stupid. If we let it out there’s just as much chance it’ll kill us as anyone else.”
“Exactly. We can’t control it because it has no higher brain functions. We can’t reason with it
and we can’t explain the difference between humans and us. So I had a thought.”
Kaaliz could see the glint in her eye. He knew this was going to be fun. “And what was your thought?”
“Well, this isn’t a pureblood Che’al; it’s half vampire. Vampires Make other vampires by getting them to drink their blood, so I wonder what would happen to a human if they drank this Che’al’s blood?”
Kaaliz was excited by the possibility. “You think it could transform a human into something that had its strength, but still had human reasoning and thought.”
“It’s an interesting idea, don’t you think? We tape the GR281 to Bugs, the Che’al eats the rabbit and takes a nap, we get a sample of its blood and feed it to Mr Spinal Tap over there.” She looked at the Che’al. “We could Make a whole new species of vampire. Stronger, more resilient to attack, more vicious…”
