The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  It was, as far as Dan could recall, the first punch he had thrown in his life. He doubted it was powerful enough to hurt; certainly as he threw it, his arm felt loose and elastic rather than taut, but the blow snapped Herb’s jaw sideways, and a moment later the bigger man was sitting on the floor, staring up at him in surprise.

  Dan stared back.

  Stunned.

  Mortified.

  And Herb laughed.

  He rubbed his jaw ruefully as he stood up, and he grinned at Dan, who could do nothing but gape at him.

  “Well, all right, then,” Herb said. “I guess that’s more like it.”

  Dan had no response. At least, none that he could vocalize.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “There are eight of us left,” Herb said, and paused, staring at one of the bodies on the floor. The man with the bloody chest was no longer drawing in those rattling breaths. He sighed heavily. “Make that seven.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d say we have about half an hour before it gets dark outside. We need a way out.”

  “A way out? Aren’t we safe in here? I thought you said it couldn’t get in.”

  Herb nodded.

  “It can’t get in right now. But once it gets dark outside, it will have no reason to leave those down.”

  He pointed at the shuttered windows.

  Dan felt his stomach lurch. Herb was right. It was the vampire that had sealed them in. When the shutters were no longer required to keep the daylight at bay, it could simply reopen them and come through a window.

  “Does this place have a cellar?”

  “Yeah,” Herb said grimly, and he pointed at a door to the rear of the kitchen. “Through there. The others went that way; made a run for the front door, I think. They didn’t make it.”

  Dan searched Herb’s eyes and saw the remembered nightmare the younger man was trying to conceal. He must have heard them screaming, he thought, and for a moment Dan was back on the deck of the Oceanus, listening to a symphony of destruction being played out in the darkness. Cries of fear and pain and horror, all punctuated by the otherworldly shriek of the vampires.

  “How long was I, uh, out for?”

  “About ten minutes. At least this time you weren’t screaming.” Herb offered a watery smile.

  No, Dan thought. That part is still to come.

  “Ten minutes,” he said absently. “An hour until sundown.”

  “Yeah. Ish.” Herb nodded.

  “How many exits are there?”

  “From the kitchen? Three. But they all lead to open plan areas. It would run us down in no time.”

  Dan frowned. He couldn’t see how they could possibly escape without further loss of life. Even if they could successfully leave the kitchen and somehow lose the vampire in the vast house, the place was locked down. The only exit that mattered was the one the vampire itself had blocked; the mansion’s front door.

  They could try to run, maybe, turning lights on as they went; try to lock themselves in another room, perhaps, one which might offer some means of escape he couldn’t imagine.

  It would be suicide.

  “Maybe if we split up, we could—” Dan said, and fell silent when Herb stared at him, aghast.

  “Split up? I take it you’ve never seen any horror movie, ever?”

  He had a point. Besides which, Dan thought, he was the only one who didn’t know the layout of the Rennick mansion. If it came down to fleeing blindly, he would surely be the first to die.

  “Then we have to kill it,” he said uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” Herb replied. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he rolled his eyes. “Killing them is where you’re supposed to come in, Dan. If you’ve got some grand idea on how to go about doing that, I’m all ears.”

  Dan searched his thoughts.

  He had been lucky to survive his encounters with the creatures on the Oceanus. On both occasions, he had killed vampires that were preoccupied with murdering somebody else. It was like they were complacent, so sure that no human would dare attack them that they had let their guard down. He had landed sucker punches, no more than that. He remembered the moment of hesitation on the twisted features of the one that had killed Elaine; the way it almost seemed that the vampire couldn’t actually believe what was happening as Dan attacked it with a cleaver.

  But that had been in the swirling storm of chaos on board the cruise ship. Here, where the vampire was focused only on hunting the tiny group of men that had sealed themselves away from it, he didn’t think that luck would hold.

  “What do you actually know about these things?”

  Herb opened his mouth to respond, but Dan cut in.

  “And if you say anything about ancient fucking texts, I may have to punch you again.”

  Dan smiled weakly. A joke.

  Isn’t it?

  “I can only tell you what is supposed to be true,” Herb said. “They claim to be immortal; they live below ground. They sleep for centuries. They feed on humans. In their presence, humans lose their minds. We are powerless to resist them. They don’t like light. Oh, and they don’t burn. That wasn’t in the texts. I saw that one myself.” Herb rubbed absently at his bandaged arm. “I don’t see how any of that can help us now, especially since any or all of it could be lies.”

  They don’t burn, Dan thought. He stored that piece of information, and then irritably told himself that he didn’t want that knowledge taking up space in his brain. If he could just get away from the mansion—away from the monsters; away from Herb and his rapidly diminishing group of followers—he would flee and gladly hand himself over to the police and confess to the murder he had committed in the Atlantic. He could spend the rest of his days in the safety of a cell, and he wouldn’t ever have to think about the creatures that Herbert Rennick called vampires ever again.

  He stared at the locked door.

  Behind it, he heard soft snuffling sounds; wet smacking. It was a noise he had heard before. The vampire was sitting outside the kitchen. Feeding. Waiting.

  Listening.

  They are intelligent, Dan thought, not mindless monsters. We know that much for sure. They can speak. They can understand.

  He clutched at Herb’s arm, and pulled the younger man close, breathing into his ear softly.

  “It’s listening. We need to draw it away, up to the top floor, and make a run for the front door, you understand?”

  Herb nodded, but he looked dubious.

  He mouthed how?

  Dan stared around the kitchen in mounting frustration. He saw counters, racks of crockery and pans, various foodstuffs. Some wine bottles. No way out. Nothing that might serve as a distraction.

  His mind raced.

  “Where does that dumb waiter lead?” he said loudly, and pointed at a patch of bare wall.

  Herb followed his gaze and then stared at Dan, puzzled. There was no dumb waiter.

  Dan mouthed play along.

  Herb’s confused expression softened, and he nodded vigorously.

  “It stops off at all five floors,” he replied, making sure that his voice was loud enough to carry. Trying to ensure that he wasn’t being too obvious.

  Dan nodded.

  “If we can get to the top floor…is there a way we can access the roof?”

  Herb grinned and shook his head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A skylight in the attic.”

  Dan could tell from Herb’s wide smile that there was no skylight; maybe even no attic.

  “Then we’ll go up,” Dan said. “Quietly. If we make any noise once we’ve left this room, it will hear. Once we get to the roof, we run. Can any of you fly the helicopter?”

  He expected them to shake their heads. Instead, all of them nodded—even Herb.

  “The benefits of a Rennick home-schooling,” Herb said with a crooked grin. “I can build an EMP bomb; I can strip and reassemble most any firearm you can imagine; I can fly a helicopter. I can’t function as a normal part of society. That’s the trade-o
ff.”

  “Okay,” Dan said, “so it’s agreed?”

  He looked around the small group of terrified men.

  When did I end up being the one in charge?

  The thought sent a thrill of dizzying anxiety coursing through him. He breathed deeply and forced it back before it put down roots. This was definitely not the time. If Herb was right, they might have only a matter of minutes before the sun started to dip below the horizon. If they didn’t make it out of the mansion, their only option would be to lock themselves in one of the kitchen’s windowless store rooms and pray.

  If it came to that, Dan didn’t think he would ever see daylight again.

  I can be terrified later.

  “Agreed,” Herb said quietly, and he reached out to a nearby cupboard, sliding open the door loudly enough for the noise to carry beyond the kitchen.

  A nice touch, Dan thought, and he tilted his head and listened.

  Outside the kitchen, the faint, sickening sound of the vampire feeding had stopped.

  Silence.

  16

  Remy sat and watched Conny with a slightly puzzled expression, his head tilted a little to the right.

  He huffed.

  Right back at you, Rem, Conny thought. What the hell was all that about?

  She leaned over the platform edge, staring down at the prone body on the tracks.

  Her brow furrowed.

  Now that she had a chance to look at it properly, she saw that the dead man’s hi-vis jacket was very similar to the ones worn by the staff at Euston. A blood-spattered I.D. tag was pinned to his chest. She squinted at it, just able to make the lettering out.

  Adam Trent, senior engineer

  Conny’s frown deepened.

  One of the staff?

  “He...he came from the tunnel.” A young woman’s voice, her tone high-pitched and tremulous.

  Conny turned to see a number of stunned commuters staring at her. Frightened, shocked faces. The woman who’d spoken took a step forward, jabbing her finger first at the distant tunnel and then at the bodies on the platform.

  “He killed them.”

  Conny glanced at Remy. The young woman’s aggressive gesture had his attention. Remy didn’t discriminate when he was on duty. There was either threat or no threat. He growled softly.

  “Easy, Rem,” Conny said, and waved a stop gesture at the young woman. “What’s your name, Miss?”

  “Deanne.” Her lower lip was quivering, her eyes wide. Remy relaxed a little at her tone. “I was standing right there...he was screaming. He came out of the tunnel, screaming like there was something chasing him, and then he...he just...”

  Deanne’s eyes filled with tears and she pointed again at the two bodies on the floor.

  “Deanne, I’m going to ask you to step back, okay?” Conny lifted her voice. “I need everyone to step back, please.”

  The crowd shuffled backward a few steps, and Conny turned to examine the bodies on the floor. She could tell immediately that the nearest was dead; a middle-aged man in a suit whose face had been pulped, presumably by the rebar. It would have taken more than one blow to do the sort of damage Conny saw. The second victim, a young woman who looked roughly Deanne’s age, appeared less seriously injured. Conny walked over and knelt at her side. She pressed a finger into the prone woman’s neck, searching for a pulse, and nodded. Faint, but there.

  She hit the button on her radio and called for an ambulance, before alerting her CO that Euston Station required the presence of a little more than a single dog handler, and then returned her attention to Deanne.

  “Did he say anything?”

  Deanne shook her head, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  “We brought him down when he attacked the girl,” a man’s voice said. Conny glanced at the speaker. A young man in a hoodie gestured to a small, disparate group of men around him. “We tried to hold him on the ground until the security guys got here. He...just kept swinging. He didn’t say a word. He was…screaming. Like she said.”

  Conny nodded over her shoulder at the tunnel.

  “And you saw him come from that direction, too?”

  “Yeah. Sounded like a fucking train coming at first,” he said, letting out a nervy laugh.

  Conny returned her gaze to the tunnel, distracted by the buzz of her radio.

  “Copy that,” a crackling voice said. Conny’s CO. “Hold your position, Stokes. We’ve got reinforcements en route. Secure the platform and await further orders.”

  Conny turned back to study the carnage that Adam Trent had caused. Several injured, at least one victim dead, but the platform was secure. She had just reported that very fact. Trent was dead.

  Secure the platform from what?

  Behind her, Deanne was talking again, softly; tearfully, but Conny wasn’t listening. She was staring at Remy.

  The German Shepherd had apparently decided that Conny was in no immediate danger, and was no longer watching his handler. Instead, Remy was staring at the distant entrance to the tunnel.

  And whining softly.

  Remy didn’t whine; Conny doubted that he had since he had been a puppy.

  Squinting, she moved to Remy’s side and squatted, following the angle of his gaze. She saw nothing. The entrance to the tunnel yawned; an impenetrable abyss.

  “What is it, Rem?”

  Remy’s response was a low growl, and for the first time ever, Conny thought she detected a different note in the familiar noise, something that sounded a little like fear.

  She gazed at the tunnel.

  Saw nothing.

  Couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.

  *

  The London Underground Central Line was generally the most overcrowded on the rail network; hardly surprising given the easy access it offered to many of London’s most popular tourist spots, and the fact that it passed through the shoppers’ Mecca that was Oxford Circus. Travelling at rush hour on the Central Line was the last resort of the desperate and the crazy, in Petra Duran’s opinion, which was precisely why she stepped onto one of the dreaded trains at around four in the afternoon, an hour before the offices of the city would spit out tens of thousands of weary commuters.

  Even at that time, in what should have been a quiet period, the train still felt crowded, and it still stank of sweat…and she still didn’t get a seat.

  She clung onto one of the handrails for balance as she travelled from Notting Hill Gate toward Liverpool Street, where she was due to catch an overground train that would take her out of the city towards Norfolk, and a family reunion that she was dreading. The whole journey would be a slow descent into eventual Hell, and it all began with the damn Central Line.

  Petra figured she was something like three stops away from getting out of the Underground and heading to somewhere that might offer some actual fresh air, when her train began to slow down between stations for no good reason.

  The old, familiar sinking feeling as the brakes squealed. It was the first of what would probably be many delays in her journey. The train crept along for a few hundred yards. She sighed.

  Somehow, Petra decided, the train moving so slowly—surely at one mile per hour or less—was even more irritating than if it just came to a full stop.

  Of course, as soon as that thought popped into her mind, the train did stop completely.

  She peered at one of the tube maps which hung over the scratched, dirty windows that mocked passengers with a view of nothing other than pitch-black darkness. The train had halted somewhere between Chancery Lane and St. Paul’s.

  She checked her watch.

  If the delay swallowed up more than ten minutes, she ran the risk of missing her connection at Liverpool Street. Petra cursed herself for leaving the house so late. That was the trouble with journeys you didn’t want to make: you tended to eke out every last second before finally leaving home only when you absolutely had to, leaving no margin for error.

  She began to daydream idly about calling her mother,
and saying that she had missed her train.

  There’s no way I can get there now, Mum. I’ll just have to meet your twenty-five-year-old boyfriend some other time. Such a shame…

  Even if Petra had made that call, she knew her mother would have insisted that she find alternate transport. She hadn’t been home in nearly two years, and that, as far as her mother was concerned, bordered on being a personal insult.

  Still, it was nice to at least think about calling it off. Nice to linger on prospect of just turning around and returning to her studio apartment, spending the rest of the day reading a book and eating chocolate. It would be so—

  BANG.

  Petra jumped as a loud thump ricocheted around the carriage, snapping her back to reality.

  A couple of passengers murmured and peered around in interest. Those, Petra figured, had to be tourists. True Londoners knew that the only place to point your eyes while on a tube train was the floor, or—at a push—the maps above the windows. Eye contact was a definite no-no.

  BANG.

  The second thump was louder—way louder—and it sent a ripple of tension rolling through the carriage.

  Train protocol abandoned, Petra found herself staring straight into the eyes of an old man sitting near the middle of the carriage when a third thump rocked it; saw those eyes widening with a growing apprehension that she felt uncoiling in her own gut.

  That third bang sounded much closer, and somehow heavy with intent.

  The tube was grimy and slow and overcrowded and shit, but mostly it was predictable. Yet the thumps that Petra heard were entirely new to her. It didn’t sound like an engine malfunction or even the wheels on the tracks. It didn’t sound like anything she had heard on a Tube train before.

  In fact, it almost sounded like somebody was walking alongside the train, banging their fists against the exterior, or perhaps swinging a baseball bat at it. But that couldn’t be possible.

  Another thump, though this one far more distant. A carriage or two further down the train.

  Whatever was causing that noise, it was definitely moving.

  Now, almost everybody in the carriage was peering around at each other nervously, each perhaps hoping to see a face that wasn’t riddled with concern staring back at them.