The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  Demons, Herb thought.

  He held out a hand, and Mancini did likewise, pulling the two remaining Rangers aboard. Captain Smalling slumped to the floor, gasping for air, his eyes wide, his head shaking.

  “I never saw anything like…”

  “Take off,” Herb roared at the pilot. “Get us to Yellowstone.”

  The pilot’s voice crackled through the chopper as it lurched up into the sky.

  “That’s a long trip. We won’t have enough fuel to get back.”

  Herb dropped down alongside Mancini, and watched as the burning city fell away below the fast-rising chopper.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said quietly, tearing his gaze away from what was left of Las Vegas to focus on Dan. He was still breathing, and Captain Smalling and the other Ranger were busy staunching the flow of blood from his stomach, and applying a large, square dressing to the wound. “Coming back isn’t the objective.”

  *

  Locked inside a vast, pitch-black maze with a monster.

  It was only a matter of time before it found them.

  Conny’s thoughts raged through her head, tumbling over each other, becoming a wall of indecipherable noise. She had tried to push the pieces of the door lock back together in her desperation, jabbing pathetically at the broken buttons.

  It had been wasted effort. It wasn’t the door to a bunker anymore. It was the door to a cell.

  She pulled open the small hatch in the door, peering out through the narrow viewing window. Outside, the world was dark and peaceful; just inches away.

  Inches...and a million miles.

  She thought she had seen explosives back in the vast supply room at the foot of the complex. Given enough time, she was certain she could blow the door open. Hell, she’d bring down the entire mountain, if necessary.

  But there wasn’t time.

  Sooner or later, the vampire stalking through the maze would find them.

  Hide?

  Conny replayed her memories of all the rooms she had passed through while touring the complex with Andrew Lloyd. The vast majority of them weren’t rooms at all; they were caverns. Bare, empty spaces encircled by rock. Very few even had furniture; nothing beyond a few crates for chairs and mattresses tossed on the floor. Not even a bed that she and Logan could hide under and hope the boogeyman wouldn’t see them.

  She felt like screaming.

  She was so close.

  Where was the vampire now? She pondered that question for a moment. There were probably others like Logan; kids who had hidden in the remains of their friends, or who had fled into the dark at the first sign of trouble. There might be dozens of them still out there in the maze, cowering in corners, as Logan had. The vampire would be hunting them down now, picking them off at its leisure. Playing with them. She doubted that it would attempt to find a way out of the bunker until it had scoured every cavern clean of life.

  Remy nudged at her leg, apparently keen that they should get moving.

  “I know, Rem,” she said through gritted teeth, “I know. I’m trying to th—”

  Her eyes fell on Remy. He looked up at her, puzzled, his tongue lolling from his mouth.

  That’s it.

  Oh Christ, Conny, you really have lost your mind.

  She shrugged off her police-issue shirt, stripping down to her vest, and tore a long strip of fabric from it. Kneeling, she tied one end of the fabric around Remy’s collar to create an improvised leash.

  Remy glared reproachfully at her.

  “Sorry, Rem. I know, buddy, but it’s necessary, okay?”

  Remy huffed, looking away. If dogs could pout, she thought, that was exactly what Remy was doing at that very moment.

  “What are you doing, Mum?”

  “Hang on, Lo.”

  Conny tore two more strips from the ruined shirt, and handed one to Logan.

  He stared at her, confused.

  “It’s a blindfold,” she said. “Put it on. Keep it on, no matter what.”

  She wrapped the other length of fabric around her own face, pulling it tight over her eyes, and tying a sturdy knot.

  “We’re going hunting.”

  36

  “Yellowstone is a big place, Dan,” Herb said dubiously.

  Dan nodded, wincing. They had apparently been in the air for a long time when light returned to his eyes and he sat up, gasping. His belly felt like a warzone.

  Only shattered fragments of the confrontation outside the Bellagio remained in his mind: standing in the shallow pool of water, waiting for the approaching vampire to get close enough, turning to find it was already in the air, launching itself at him.

  Even as he had taken its mind, he had felt the monster’s momentum rake a talon through his gut, carving open a wound that Captain Smalling said was eight inches across, easy. Just a scratch, kid.

  Dan had resisted the impulse to tell him that they were probably the exact same age.

  They had done a good job of taping him up, and had offered him morphine when he awoke, but he refused it. He needed the agony, now. He had a feeling that it was only the constant physical pain that was holding his mind together, ensuring that he still knew his name was Dan Bellamy.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” he said, still nodding at Herb. Aim for a lake by a mountain. I can take it from there.”

  Herb glanced inquiringly across the chopper at Captain Smalling and Mancini, who were poring over an enormous map.

  “Lot of lakes and mountains in Yellowstone, Bellamy,” Mancini said in a dubious tone.

  Dan shut his eyes, calling up the memories that didn’t belong in his head.

  “It’s a small lake,” he said. In his mind, he was a vampire standing atop a hill, looking out across the water as it emerged from what he presumed was its nest. “It’s wide at one end, tapering in at the other. It looks kind of like...a heart. Yeah, it’s the same sort of shape as a heart. Not an actual heart. Like a Valentine’s Day heart.”

  The two men fell silent for a few moments, searching, before Mancini pointed at a spot on the map and Smalling nodded.

  “Lewis Lake,” Smalling said.

  Dan shrugged. The vampires didn’t have a name for the body of water. At least, none that he could understand.

  “We got enough fuel?” Smalling asked, raising his voice for the pilot to hear.

  After a few seconds, the pilot responded, “Barely.”

  “Get us there,” Smalling said, fixing his eyes on Dan. “What’s waiting for us in Yellowstone?”

  Dan pondered the question.

  When he had been in the vampire’s mind, back at the Bellagio, he had sensed the presence of the black river immediately, and for the first time in two years, it wasn’t clawing for him. Wasn’t reaching out to pull him under. It felt like it was trying to pull away. To hide.

  The entity remained hidden deep in the bowels of the Earth because it was afraid. Vulnerable.

  “The end,” he said.

  *

  Conny walked slowly, barely moving forward, letting Remy dictate her direction. She clutched the improvised leash tightly in one hand, and the M4 in the other, while Logan kept a tight grip on her vest, at the small of her back.

  They had moved that way for what felt like hours, but probably hadn’t descended very far at all into the huge bunker. They had definitely passed through the dining area though, she knew that much. She hadn’t been able to miss the stink of blood filling her nostrils where most of the kids had been massacred. Without fresh air to push the stench away, the room would start to smell like the rotting guts of hell in a few more hours.

  They must have looked ridiculous, she thought: two blindfolded idiots shuffling along with a dog in the impenetrable darkness. She stubbed her toe often, and nearly lost her balance just as much, but never allowed so much as a whimper to escape her lips.

  Sound was all important, now.

  The sound of Remy growling.

  The German Shepherd had started to rumble a few moments
earlier, straining on the leash. Conny pulled up, reaching out with the M4, using it like a blind person’s stick to try to understand her surroundings. They weren’t in one of the chambers, but in a narrow tunnel.

  Good, she thought. It can only come at us from two directions.

  Probably just one, in fact: her instincts told her the vampire was somewhere ahead of her, still making its return journey to the surface.

  Without her eyes, her other senses seemed to have become hyper-alert. She could smell the stale sweat on her body; the blood that covered her son. She even thought she could still detect a little of that gravy that Remy had wiped all over his face.

  But it was her ears that she focused on.

  She tried to tune out the sound of her heart pounding, and the soft whisper of her shuffling shoes on the rocky floor.

  Listened for the clicking.

  Remy’s growl increased, just a fraction, but it hadn’t yet reached the sort of urgent level that he had managed back at the ranch. There the vampire had been, what? four hundred yards away?

  She reasoned that Remy’s senses probably weren’t as keen here, where the sound of the vampire’s distant movement was muted by thick rock walls. It could be closer, but it could also be on the other side of one of those walls, moving past them in the dark, in a separate tunnel, oblivious to their presence.

  Remy’s growl began to fade.

  Damn, she thought. She hoped to encounter the vampire in a narrow space just like this, where she had more chance of hitting it when she opened fire.

  There was nothing to do but keep pressing forward, circling around and around in the dark maze.

  As she walked, her mind began to replay Frank Mather’s words. His theory that Hermetics had suffered from some sort of brain disorder, and that the sickness in their minds was what made them impervious to vampires.

  Could it be possible?

  Could Logan be the same as Dan Bellamy? Dan didn’t suffer from Huntington’s, that much was clear, but perhaps it didn’t matter. Maybe the vampires could only take a healthy human mind?

  She set her jaw.

  Logan was still healthy. He had barely begun to exhibit symptoms. He was years away from his mind starting to disintegrate.

  No, she thought, Logan dies down here if I don’t kill it.

  Myself.

  *

  Dan staggered from the helicopter, ducking low despite the fact that the rotor blades cleared his head by a good two feet at least.

  They had touched down near a small mountain of rocks in wide, sweeping fields that sloped gently down toward the distant heart-shaped lake.

  He’d seen this exact panorama laid out in front of him before, but not through human eyes.

  “Here,” Herb said, gesturing to a small cave mouth that had been sealed up with two-by-fours and chicken wire. Herb pulled the wire away with a grunt, and pointed a flashlight inside. “Looks empty,” he said.

  Dan smiled thinly, and hobbled toward Herb. Each step felt like it was ripping a new hole in his belly, but Captain Smalling assured him that the dressing was secure; almost wrapped around his body tightly enough to crack ribs.

  It didn’t help with the pain, though.

  Either physical or mental.

  Darkness gathered closely around Dan’s psyche now, surrounding him on all sides. It was, perhaps, just the siren’s song of unconsciousness that he felt, luring him toward the rocks of oblivion, begging him to rest. To heal.

  Perhaps.

  Dan thought it was something else: the minds of all those that he had taken—human and inhuman alike—pressing down on his mind, slowly crushing it. He had feared for so long that his sanity would collapse, and now it felt like it was on the precipice. If he took his mind off the pain in his gut for a moment, he suspected that he would never be able to grasp his thoughts firmly again. He would be lost, dragged into a shrieking vortex, never to return.

  Adrift on the terrible black river forever.

  He grimaced, biting down on the pain; relishing the bitter taste, and made his way into the cave.

  Herb was right.

  It looked empty. Even those who stood inside it might miss the cave’s treasure, but Dan knew exactly where it was. He’d seen it.

  The fissure.

  He made his way directly toward it, and paused at the entrance.

  The others—with the exception of Jerome Mills, who now slept soundly aboard the Black Hawk, dosed up with just enough morphine to stop him whimpering—gathered behind him.

  Herb moved in front of Dan. He looked confused.

  “Why have you stopped? That’s it, right? The entrance?”

  Herb nodded at the fissure.

  “Yeah,” Dan said, gasping at the pain in his belly. “That’s it. But this is as far as you go, Herb. I go on alone from here.”

  Herb opened his mouth to protest.

  “I mean it,” Dan said. “It’s too…” he trailed off, wincing as another wave of pain ebbed through him, threatening to short-circuit his mind. “It’s too dangerous for you to go any farther.”

  “Too dangerous for me?” Herb looked astonished. “You can barely stand—”

  Dan shook his head and smiled wearily.

  “Strength won’t help you where I’m going, Herb. Having your mind in there with me...it’s too dangerous. It can use you against me. Or me against you.”

  Realisation seemed to dawn in Herb’s eyes, and he nodded.

  Dan could almost have sworn he saw tears on the younger man’s face.

  “It’ll be okay. Once this is done, those that are left will be disorganised. You can fight them.”

  Herb nodded.

  “You’re making it sound like you’re not planning to come back.”

  Dan smiled sadly.

  “They’ll be coming,” he said, lifting his voice enough for everybody in the cave to hear. “The black river ordered the ones that are closest to come back the minute I looked at it, back in Vegas. They’re on their way here, right now. Coming to save their master. The best thing you can do right now is leave. Get as far away as the helicopter will take you.”

  Dan didn’t wait for a response.

  He turned away, shuffling through the narrow fissure.

  Each pace a new exercise in agony.

  Each step burning.

  His mind beginning to sizzle.

  He didn’t look back.

  Just...keep...moving...forward, he thought, and then the world lurched crazily.

  And he collapsed.

  No, he thought weakly. No…I’m so close.

  He felt the cold rock beneath his face, and it was like a silk pillow, urging him to rest, just for a moment.

  No…

  He threw an arm out feebly, trying to pull himself forward.

  And then strong hands slipped underneath him, hauling him up.

  *

  “I got you, Dan,” Herb grunted.

  “Herb,” Dan slurred. “What are you doing?”

  Herb grimaced.

  “Saving you.”

  Dan’s head lolled over Herb’s shoulder, and he slurred out something else, something that Herb couldn’t quite catch.

  He thought it was, “Can’t save me.”

  “Then maybe I’m saving everybody else,” he muttered.

  *

  “Okay,” Mancini said, turning away from the fissure and heading for the cave mouth. “You heard the guy. Incoming vampires.”

  The remaining Rangers looked at him, startled.

  Most likely, Mancini thought, they were thinking about jumping back in that chopper and getting the hell outta Dodge. Leaving all this craziness behind, just like Dan said they should.

  Hell, Mancini thought, that’s normally what I’d be thinking myself.

  “You know the drill,” he said. “Weapons aimed at that entrance, and if you hear anything coming, shut your damn eyes and start shooting.”

  Mancini dropped to one knee, hefting his rifle, checking that the magazine wa
s full.

  Rennick was a grade-A asshole.

  But Leon Mancini wasn’t going to leave him behind.

  *

  Someone else had already been there.

  Once he made it through the fissure, gasping at the last few feet as the rock closed in on him like pincers, Herb exited gratefully into wide, almost circular cavern.

  And in the centre, he saw a hole.

  The true entrance.

  Most surprising of all, though, was the climbing equipment he saw: pins driven into the rock to secure a line of sturdy nylon cable which dropped down into the abyss. The equipment looked old: covered in dust and spiderwebs, but when Herb tested its strength he thought it would hold.

  His mind ran back to the Shard building. There, he had used an old survival technique, improvising a rudimentary descender from a torn length of tablecloth, and the resulting attempt to slide down an elevator cable with Dan on his back had damn-near broken his legs.

  At least this time, the climbing line would offer some sort of friction.

  There was nothing for it.

  He placed Dan on the ground—still conscious, just barely—and slipped off his shirt, looping it around his wrists and knotting it.

  And at least this time, he thought, I’m not being chased.

  He peered down the hole once more, praying it was not as deep as it looked, and picked Dan back up, balancing him on his shoulder and tensing his muscles to keep him steady.

  Here goes nothing.

  He swung his legs out over the abyss, and tied off his shirt around the cable, pulling it tight before securing it with his other hand.

  His heart began to thump uncontrollably.

  In his head, he heard Mancini’s sneering voice, calling him a pussy.

  Herb grinned.

  And eased out over the void, letting the knots in the shirt take his weight.

  He stayed there for a moment, testing the improvised descender’s strength, and then began to rappel down fast.