Van Helsing's Diaries (Books 1-3): Nosferatu
Page 19
Snow is kicked up by the rotor blades, causing a whiteout as we land. It’s impossible to tell where the ground is. I look for the skids of the chopper as I jump, following Anton. The ground should be no more than a few feet away, but we fall for what seems like an eternity, and it’s only while in midair that I realize the helicopter never actually touched down. It’s hovering above a snowbank on the edge of the woods.
My legs plunge into the snow, and I sink up to my waist. A backpack lands beside me, spraying me with snow and ice. The helicopter departs. The wind subsides. Deciduous trees line the ridge, devoid of leaves—they’re skeletons—the tarot card of death still laughing at me from back in the markets. A smattering of fir trees further up the mountain hides the peak.
We don our packs and begin trudging through the snow. Two Russian soldiers lead the way. They’re dressed like hunters, with fancy jackets, but they’re carrying AK-47s with bayonets fixed—hardly looking for deer. One has a string of raw garlic around his neck. I counted fifteen bulbs, which has Jane keeping her distance. Anton and the soldiers take the lead, followed by Vlad, while Jane and I bring up the rear.
Once we clear the field, the snow thins, making the going easier. Within a couple of hundred yards, I’m sweating. I open my jacket, then my shirt. The chill brings relief. We’re wearing leggings over our boots to prevent our socks from becoming soaked, as the snow sticking to our pants melts with our body heat.
The sun sits low. Wolves howl at our approach, objecting to our intrusion into their domain.
“How far?” I ask between breaths. Jane’s enjoying this. She points to a outcrop of rocks.
“Two miles. We’ll camp up there for the night, and search for the caves in the morning.”
Snow flurries drift on the wind. In those places where the sun has warmed the land during the day, the surface is crisp, refrozen as a thin sheet of ice. It crunches underfoot like sugar-glass.
We march in silence for an hour up the mountainside following an animal trail. The path narrows to less than a foot as we cross a frozen waterfall. Loose gravel slips from the rocks, tumbling hundreds of feet. I’m a little slower across these sections, and find myself falling behind. I follow the muddy footprints ahead. When I look up, I find I’m alone.
“Hey,” I call out, quickening my pace. No one replies. The sun has already slipped below the mountains. Darkness creeps across the land.
A set of animal tracks runs across the path, but to my surprise, they’re on top of the numerous imprints of our various boots—this happened in the last few minutes. Large, padded paw prints.
“Not a dog,” I mutter, knowing what inhabits these woods. “Not good.” I pick up the pace.
I crouch as I pass under the branch of a fir tree, catching the needles with my pack and knocking snow loose. The fine frozen powder slips down the back of my neck, sending a chill through me, urging me on. I’m not sure how far I’ve fallen behind. The others could be just around the next rocky outcrop, or a hundred yards ahead. I power on.
A low growl stops me in my tracks. A wolf crouches beneath the snow-laden bough of a fir tree, snarling in the shadows. It’s then I see him—Michael, Anton’s older brother. He steps out from behind the wolf. His eyes seem to pierce right through me. His boots crunch softly as he walks toward me. He points his finger, scolding me.
“This ends tonight,” he says. “There will be no dawn.”
Michael reaches for me. His fingers curl, drawing me closer, willing me to approach.
“No,” I say, standing my ground.
His eyes narrow, and he bares his teeth, revealing his disdain for me. His hair is ragged. The stubble on his face suggests he came here straight from the airport in Berlin, and has been waiting for us in the wilderness.
“You disgust me,” he says, balling up his fist in anger.
The sound of boots pounding along the track breaks his spell. I turn, and Jane comes jogging around the side of the rock face. She has a loaded crossbow in her hands. Instead of a bolt, the crossbow holds a wooden stake in its cradle. I doubt the stake is aerodynamic in flight, but then she’s not looking for distance. This thing is intended for close-quarter combat.
“Joe,” she calls out. “What are you doing?”
“I—”
I turn back and Michael’s gone, as is the wolf. I blink, looking at the ruffled snow beneath the tree, wondering if they were ever actually there. Am I going mad?
“It’s M—” I begin, but I never finish my sentence. A shot rings out, then another. Each report shakes the forest, shattering the fragile silence. Birds take to the air.
“Come on,” Jane yells. I grab my pack and run after her. We sprint uphill for a hundred yards, watching as the Russian soldiers aim and fire again at someone on the far side of the ridge. By the time we reach them, my lungs are burning in the cold air. To my surprise, the soldiers are cheering.
“Stupid bastards,” Vlad says.
“Venison,” Jane says. “Well, I’m not complaining.”
The soldiers make their way along the snow-covered ridge to retrieve a fallen doe. Blood stains the pristine snow. The mountain peak looms. Sheer cliffs and packed snow threaten an avalanche. The clouds are lifting and the pass is visible between the peaks.
“Well, it looks as though we’re setting up camp here,” Anton says, dropping his pack at the base of the cliff. Being on the leeward side of the mountain, the ground is sheltered from the prevailing winds and largely free of snow. Sticks and twigs litter the ground. I drop my pack beside his.
“Let’s get a fire going,” Jane says.
“Sure,” I say, still bewildered by my encounter in the woods, and wondering what I should say to her.
I help collect wood, keeping a wary eye on the shadows, feeling as though at any second a wolf is going to charge. The soldiers gut the doe, dragging the intestines well away from camp. “Wolves,” Jane says, seeing my interest in their actions. “This will lead them away from us. Give them something to feast on.”
“Wolves.” What can I say? I saw something—someone in the forest? I’m not even sure it was Michael I saw back in the customs holding cell, let alone out here in the wilderness.
“We need to set a watch through the night,” Vlad says.
“They’re going to attack us,” I blurt out.
“Of course they are,” Jane says.
“No, you don’t understand. They’re out there.”
“They’re always out there,” Anton says.
“It’s Michael. I saw him.”
“Then I will kill him myself,” the old man says with no hint of remorse. “Two awake at all times. After we eat, you and Anton will take the first shift, three hours each.” I’m being paired with Anton—wonderful.
The soldiers roast the hind flanks of the doe. They skewer the meat, forcing a thick branch in where the bone once lay. They rest the end of the skewer on the far side of the fire, slowly turning the rump. The smell of burning meat rises into the night. I sit against the cliff, using my sleeping bag to ward off the cold. Stars shine down through the trees. The cliff is forty feet high, but I have no idea if it marks the start of the mountain pass. Vlad offers the meat around, giving us each a thick steak. Jane devours her portion, and polishes off the scraps with glee. In the flickering light of the fire, she looks more animal than human.
The soldiers set up a series of cameras on telescopic stands, pushing them into the ice and snow, covering the approaches through 270 degrees. “If you need to piss,” one of the soldiers says, “go against the rock.”
“They’re setting up an electronic wall,” Jane says. “Vampires may be able to see in the dark and move with stealth, but they can’t beat radar, or thermal imaging.”
The soldiers run cables back to a laptop, but this is old tech. The screen is black and white, showing only text and the occasional grainy image. I guess the Russian military doesn’t trust Microsoft. One of the soldiers taps the screen, speaking in Russian as the thermal imag
e of a deer appears in the distance. A blob of undulating white moves through the trees. The legs are cool, and seem to disappear, while the core of the animal glows. The animal’s neck appears slightly cooler, while its skull is warm. Looking out into the forest, I can’t see anything beyond boughs sagging under the weight of the snow bearing down on them.
Anton gets out a crossbow, loads a thick wooden bolt, and winds the crank to set the tension. He clips several other bolts into a quiver set below its fiberglass body.
“Goodnight,” Jane says, curling up in her sleeping bag, using her backpack as a pillow. I’m not sure how she can get comfortable on the twigs and rocks beneath her, but within a few minutes, she’s sound asleep. Vlad’s not far behind her. I clear some rubble, trying to get comfortable, and face out at the forest, settling in for what I hope will be three hours of utter boredom.
After a while, Anton flicks his fingers, catching my attention. He points at himself. I turn, unsure what he means. Softly, he says, “We watch each other, not the woods.”
“I don’t understand,” I say softly.
“We keep each other awake—alert,” he says. “The cameras, they will watch the approaches.” I’m not sure I’m ready to trust Russian technology, but he’s right about the need to keep each other alert. With the venison still settling in my stomach, I’m feeling a little drowsy.
Moonlight creeps through the trees.
Anton cradles his crossbow, resting the riser on his thighs so the bolt points out into the night. We sit in silence for most of an hour, but eventually, I talk. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll fall asleep.
“So how did you do it? How did you help the Russians with their satellites?”
“I’m a mathematician,” he says. My surprise must show. “What? You don’t think of math as a career?”
“No, I guess—you know, vampires and all. It seems about as far removed from all this as you could get.”
“And what does that tell you about me?” Anton asks, smiling for the first time. “Math is pure. Everyone—everything is subordinate to math.”
I nod. I’m not sure whether I agree, as I’ve never thought about it, but his point sounds reasonable.
“Physics, chemistry, biology—they’re nothing without math. If there’s a god, he’s a mathematician.”
Again, I nod.
“I contacted NOAA first,” he says, coming back to my question. “The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then NASA. I told them the answers were in their data—they’ve collected more than enough data on the planet to know, but they didn’t believe me.”
“Answers to what?” I ask.
“To what lies beneath. Oil reservoirs. Mineral deposits. Subterranean river systems. Fault lines. Caves. It’s all there in the math. Gamma rays can be blocked by a few feet of concrete, but quantum statistics says you can never stop them entirely. The math doesn’t lie. Math tells you what to look for.”
“Math?”
“Sure, look long enough at the same spot on Earth—over periods of years, decades even, slowly accumulating data, and there will be leakage. I developed a statistical derivation based on differential calculus using fast Fourier transforms to enhance subsurface topography.”
Perhaps I’ve read Anton all wrong. It’s not that he despises me—he’s a walking calculator, with the emotion to match.
“I knew if we could get the raw data, we could see beneath the surface. It’s a case of removing the noise as we amplify the natural signals.”
I nod yet again, pretending I understand—Here I was, worried that staring out into the forest would be tedious. I’d had no idea I’d be even more bored talking with Anton.
“The Russians understood the math. They repurposed their weather satellites to collect the data we needed to find the strigoi, combining that with over fifty years worth of observations.”
“Huh,” I say. I had no idea about the level of sophistication they’ve put into their hunt. “How do you fund all this? I mean, how many of you are there searching for vampires?”
Anton is about to reply when his eyes go wide. I watch as his hand tightens on the stock of his crossbow. Sudden movements seem like a bad idea. My eyes flick to the soft glow coming from the laptop screen. There’s nothing but a lifeless forest out there—no heat signatures. Anton makes a subtle motion with his head. His eyes gesture for me to look up, but without giving anything away. I tilt my head slowly, but I don’t need to move too far. A dark shape crawls down the sheer cliff face above us, staying in the shadows of the rock. I have no doubt Anton’s looking at something similar above me.
Vampires descend the cliff, only unlike humans, they’re not climbing down feet first, they’re clambering head first like geckos.
“Don’t move,” he whispers.
I keep my head facing squarely at Anton, but my eyes are looking up.
“Math bores people, you know?” Anton laughs.
“Yeah,” I reply, trying to laugh, but not pulling it off as well.
“Math is a whole different world—free from opinion, free from interpretation, free from ideology. That’s why I love it. Freedom.”
As he speaks, he pulls a flare gun slowly out of his pack, talking as though he’s distracted, all the while intently focusing on the threat above. The vampires use the elongated fractures in the rocks to hide as they inch their way down.
“Everyone should learn math,” he says.
“Yeah,” I reply, although I’m pretty sure mathematics is a core subject just about everywhere on the planet. His comment is vague, endangering us. If they think about it, they’ll realize they’ve been spotted, so I say, “It’s more than numbers, right? It’s about logic—thinking clearly.”
“Absolutely,” he says, quietly cocking the flare gun. My eyes dart to Jane curled up near the fire. Anton shakes his head softly. No. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Jane and Vlad were awake.
“Probabilities,” he says, and I understand what he’s doing, creating noise—static—anything to keep the vampires from realizing we’re aware of their descent. “Statistics, stochastic processes—these principles define our lives.” As sublime as his comment is, there’s method to what he’s saying. “Even something as simple as a countdown has infinite meaning. Think about the depth behind a sequence as basic as three, two, one.”
He turns and fires the flare gun, striking the vampire above me in the small of her back. Smoke billows into the air as a bright glow lights up the night. The woman screams. White hot phosphorus burns through her clothing, sticking to her skin.
Michael springs down from the craggy rocks, landing with a thud on the loose branches at the base of the cliff. Jane throws her sleeping bag open, as does Vlad and the soldiers. They’re armed. They’ve been lying in wait. It’s a trap. A hail of gunfire erupts. I drop to the ground, landing on the rock. Blood splatters across the cliff face behind Michael as his body shakes from the incoming rounds.
Anton fires his crossbow, hitting the woman in the face, but the wooden bolt glances off the side of her skull. An inch to the left and he would have impaled her through her eye socket. Immediately, the torn flesh begins knitting itself together.
She lunges at him, striking him across the chest, sending him flying. He lands in the fire. Ash billows into the air. Embers fly into the night. Anton screams, rolling in the snow. Steam rises in his wake.
Michael advances on the two soldiers. His body seems to grow in strength under the onslaught of the automatic gunfire. The sound is horrific, echoing off the cliff face and through the trees. The first soldier empties his magazine, and tries to switch it out as Michael bats the AK-47 from his hand. The other soldier stumbles as he steps back, tripping on a branch buried in a snow drift. His gun fires, raking the cliff, sending chips of stone flying.
Jane and Vlad flank Michael, both moving to his right. Jane has a crossbow. She fires, but misses. The wooden bolt tears through the back of his jacket before sailing within inches of my head.
Jane strikes Michael with the butt of her crossbow, hitting him in the head. She thrusts her leg into the side of his knee, breaking the joint and forcing him to the ground. Jane brings the wooden butt down in the center of his forehead, cracking his skull open. Vlad positions a stake in the center of Michael’s chest and strikes it with a wooden mallet. The sharp point breaks through his son’s rib cage, plunging deep into his chest. Blood sprays across the old man’s arms, but he is relentless, pounding the stake in anger. Within seconds, Michael is pinned to the ground.
I watch in horror as Michael convulses. Blood runs from his lips. His lifeless eyes stare up at the stars, and still Vlad pounds. Tears stream down the old man’s cheeks. It takes all his effort to raise the mallet one last time, but he brings it thundering down with all his might, driving the stake into the frozen ground beneath his son.
“Anton,” Jane says, rushing over to him. I’ve been so focused on Michael, I didn’t see what happened to Anton. As I turn, the ghostly glow of phosphorous disappears into the dark woods.
Anton lies half buried in a snow drift.
“Easy,” Jane says, desperately trying to comfort him when there’s no comfort to be found. Anton’s throat has been torn open. Blood runs over the snow and rocks, staining them in deep crimson. Anton’s on his back, gasping for air. His eyes are glazed.
“Get me the first aid kit,” Jane yells. I scramble for my backpack, frantically tearing through the contents and racing to get back to her. Jane has both of her gloved hands pressed hard over Anton’s throat, trying to contain the bleeding. I tear open a major trauma kit. She looks at me with tears in her eyes. Even with a full ER crash cart, a team of nurses, surgical lighting, and proper equipment, Anton wouldn’t stand a chance, and she knows it.