by Chuck Hogan
It would be over soon.
A flare of light opened in the sky above them. Eph believed it was in fact a flare or some other pyrotechnic device sent up by the vampires as an alert signal or even a deliberate distraction. One moment of inattention and Eph was done for.
But the flare light kept shining, intensifying, expanding overhead. It was moving, higher than he realized.
Most important, the vampire attack slowed. Their bodies stiffened as their openmouthed heads turned toward the dark sky.
Eph could not believe his good fortune. He readied his sword to cut a swath through the strigoi in a last-gasp gambit to kill his way to safety . . .
But even he couldn’t resist. The sky-fire was too seductive. He too had to risk a peek at the polluted sky.
Across the black sackcloth of planet-smothering ash, a fierce flame was falling, cutting like the blaze from an acetylene torch. It burned through the darkness like a comet, a head of pure flame leading a narrowing tail. A searing teardrop of red-orange fire unzipping the false night.
It could only have been a satellite—or something even bigger—plummeting from the outer orbit, reentering Earth’s atmosphere like a fiery cannonball launched from the defeated sun.
The vampires backed away. With their red eyes locked on the streak of flame, they stumbled over one another with a rare lack of coordination. This was fear, thought Eph—or something like it. The sign in the sky reached their elemental selves, and they possessed no mechanism to express this terror other than a squealing noise and a clumsy retreat.
Even Mr. Quinlan retreated a bit. Overwhelmed by the light and the spectacle.
As the falling satellite burned bright in the sky, it parted the dense ash cloud and a brutal shaft of daylight penetrated the air like the finger of God, burning it all, falling over a three-mile radius that included the outer edges of the farm.
As the vampires burned and squealed, Fet and Gus and Joaquin met them coming the other way. The three of them ran into the panicked mob, cutting down the outliers before their attack triggered a full-blown riot, the vampires running off in every direction.
For a moment, the majestic column of light revealed the camp around them. The high wall, the dour buildings, the mucky ground. Plain verging on ugly, but only menacing in its ordinariness. This was like the back lot behind the showroom or the dirty restaurant kitchen: the place without artifice, where the real work gets done.
Eph watched the streak burn across the sky with increasing intensity, its head flaming thicker and brighter until it finally consumed itself and the angry trail of fire thinned to a wisp of flame—and then nothing.
Behind it, the much anticipated daylight had finally begun brightening the sky, as though heralded by that timely streak of flame. The pale outline of the sun was barely visible behind the ash cloud, a few of its rays filtering down through seams and weaknesses in the pollution cocoon. It was barely enough light for early dawn in the former world—but it was enough. Enough to drive the fleeing creatures underground for an hour or two.
Eph saw a camp prisoner following Fet and Gus, and despite her bald head and shapeless jumpsuit, he instantly recognized her as Nora. A jarring mix of emotions struck him. It seemed as though years instead of weeks had passed since they’d last met. But right now there were more pressing issues.
Mr. Quinlan retreated into the shadows. His tolerance to UV had been tested to its limit.
I will meet you . . . back at Columbia . . . I wish you all good luck.
With that, he bolted up the walls and out of the camp, effortlessly. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Gus noticed Bruno gripping his neck and went to him. “Qué pasó, vato?”
“Fucker’s in me,” said Bruno. The gangbanger grimaced, wetting his dry lips, then spitting onto the ground. His posture was open and strange, as though he could feel the worms already crawling inside him. “I’m damned, homes.”
The others all went silent. Gus, in his shock, reached for Bruno’s face, examining his throat. Then he pulled him into a hard hug. “Bruno,” he said.
“Fucking savages,” said Bruno. “Lucky fucking shot.”
“Goddamn it!” yelled Gus, pulling away from him. He didn’t know what to do. No one did. Gus stepped away and launched a ferocious howl.
Joaquin went toward Bruno with tears in his eyes. “This place,” he said, jabbing the point of his sword into the ground. “This is fucking hell on earth.” Then he raised his sword toward the sky, bellowing, “I am gonna slay every last one of these bloodsuckers in your name!”
Gus came back fast. He pointed at Eph. “You made it okay, though. Huh? How’s that? You were supposed to stay together. What happened to my boy?”
Fet stepped between them. “It’s not his fault.”
“How you know that?” said Gus, hurt burning in his eyes. “You was with me!” Gus spun around, went back to Bruno. “Tell me it was this motherfucker’s fault, Bruno, I’ll kill him right here, right now. Tell me!”
But Bruno, if he even heard Gus, didn’t answer. He was examining his hands and arms, as though looking for the worms infesting him.
Fet said, “It’s the vampires who are to blame, Gus. Stay focused.”
“Oh, I’m focused,” said Gus. He moved toward Fet threateningly, but Fet let him come up on him, knowing he had to vent his despair. “Like a laser fucking beam. I’m the Silver Ninja.” Gus pointed at Eph. “I’m focused.”
Eph started to defend himself but held his tongue, realizing that Gus wasn’t interested in what really happened. Anger was the only way the young gangbanger could express his pain.
Fet turned to Eph. “What was that thing in the sky?”
Eph shrugged. “I don’t know. I was done for, like Bruno. They were on me—it was over. And then that thing streaked across the sky. Something falling to earth. Spooked the strigoi. Extraordinary dumb luck.”
“That wasn’t luck,” said Nora. “That was something else.”
Eph stared, thrown off by Nora’s bald appearance. “Something else like what?”
“You can deny it,” said Nora, “or maybe you don’t want to know. Maybe you don’t even care. But that didn’t just happen, Ephraim. That happened to you. To us.” She eyed Fet and clarified. “To all of us . . .”
Eph was confused. A thing burning up in the atmosphere happened because of them?
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said. “And Bruno. Before anyone else gets hurt.”
“No way,” said Gus. “I’m tearing this place down. I want to find the fucker who did my boy.”
“No,” said Nora, stepping forward, the smallest among them. “We’re going to get my mother first.”
Eph was stunned. “But, Nora . . . you don’t really think she’s still here, do you?”
“She is still alive. And you of all people are not going to believe who told me this.”
Nora told Eph about Everett Barnes. Eph was mystified at first, wondering why she would joke about something like that. Then he was flat-out flabbergasted. “Everett Barnes, in charge of a blood camp?”
“In charge of all the blood camps,” said Nora.
Eph resisted it a moment more, only to see how right it was. The worst thing about this news was how much sense it made. “That son of a bitch.”
“She’s here,” said Nora. “He said she was. And I think I know where.”
“Okay,” said Eph, exhausted and wondering how far he could push this delicate matter. “But you remember what Barnes tried to do to us before.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Nora.” Eph did not want to spend any more time than was necessary inside this death trap. “Don’t you think Barnes would have told you anything—”
“We need to go get her,” Nora said, half turning away from him.
Fet came to her defense. “We have sun-time,” he said. “Before the cloud of ashes closes again. We’re going to look.”
Eph looked at the big exterminator,
then back at Nora. They were making decisions together. Eph was outvoted.
“Fine,” said Eph. “Let’s make it quick.”
With the sky glow allowing a bit of light into the world—like a dimmer slowly rotated from the lowest to the second-to-lowest setting—the camp appeared as a dingy, military-style outpost and prison. The high fence ringing the perimeter was topped with tangles of concertina wire. Most of the buildings were cheaply constructed and caked with grime from the polluted rain—with the notable exception of the administration building, on the side of which was displayed the old Stoneheart corporate symbol: a black orb bisected laterally by a steel-blue ray, like an eye blinking shut.
Nora quickly led them under the canvas-covered path running deeper into the camp, passing other interior gates and buildings.
“The birthing area,” she told them, pointing out the high gate. “They isolate pregnant women. Wall them off from the vampires.”
“Maybe superstition?”
Nora said, “It looked more like quarantine to me. I don’t know. What would happen to an unborn fetus if the mother were turned?”
Fet said, “I don’t know. Never thought about that.”
“They have,” said Nora. “Seems like they’ve taken careful precautions against it ever happening.”
They continued past the front gate, along the interior wall. Eph kept checking behind them. “Where are all the humans?” he asked.
“The pregnant women live in trailers back there. The bleeders live in barracks to the west. It’s like a concentration camp. I think they will process my mother in that area farther ahead.”
She pointed at two dark buildings beyond the birthing zone, neither of which looked promising. They hurried farther along to the entrance to a large warehouse. Guard stations set up outside were empty at the moment.
“Is this it?” asked Fet.
Nora looked around, trying to get her bearings. “I saw a map . . . I don’t know. This isn’t what I envisioned.”
Fet checked the guard stations first. Inside was a bank of small-screen monitors, all dark. No on/off switches, no chairs.
“Vamps guard this place,” said Fet. “To keep humans out— or in?”
The entrance was not locked. The first room inside, which would have been the office or reception area, was stocked with rakes, shovels, hoes, hose trolleys, tillers, and wheelbarrows. The floor was dirt.
They heard grunts and squeals coming from inside. A nauseating shudder rippled through Eph, as he at first thought they were human noises. But no.
“Animals,” said Nora, moving to the door.
The vast warehouse was a humming brightness. Three stories tall, and twice the size of a football field or a soccer pitch, it was essentially an indoor farmstead and impossible to take in all at once. Suspended from the rafters high above were great lamps, with more lighting rigs erected over large garden plots and an orchard. The heat inside the warehouse was extreme but mitigated by a manufactured breeze that circulated via large vent fans.
Pigs congregated in a muddy enclosure outside an unroofed sty. A high-screened henhouse sat opposite, near what sounded like a cowshed and a sheep shelter. The smell of manure carried on the ventilating breeze.
Eph had to shield his eyes at first, with the lights pouring down from above, all but eliminating any surface shadows. They started down along one of the lanes, following a perforated irrigation pipe set on two-foot-high legs.
“Food factory,” said Fet. He pointed out cameras on the buildings. “People work it. Vamps keep an eye on them.” He squinted up into the lights. “Maybe there’s UV lights mixed in with the regular lamps up there, mimicking the range of light offered by the sun.”
Nora said, “Humans need light too.”
“Vamps can’t come inside. So people are left alone in here to tend the flock and harvest produce.”
Eph said, “I doubt they are left alone.”
Gus made a hissing noise to get their attention. “Rafters,” he said.
Eph looked up. He turned around, taking in a three-hundred-sixty-degree view until he saw the figure moving along a catwalk maybe two-thirds of the way up the long wall.
It was a man, wearing a long, drab, duster-style coat and a wide-brimmed rain hat. He was moving as fast as he could along the narrow, railed walkway.
“Stoneheart,” said Fet. Eldritch Palmer’s league of fellow travelers, who since his demise had transferred their allegiance to the Master when the Master assumed control of Palmer’s corporation’s vast industrial infrastructure. Strigoi sympathizers and—in terms of the new food-and-shelter-based economy—profiteers.
“Hey!” yelled Fet. The man did not respond but only lowered his head and moved more quickly.
Eph ran his eyes along the walkway to the corner. Mounted on a wide, triangular platform—both an observation post and a sniper’s perch—was the long barrel of a machine gun, tipped toward the ceiling, awaiting an operator.
“Get low!” said Fet, and they scattered, Gus and Bruno running back toward the entrance, Fet grabbing Nora and running her to the corner of the henhouse, Eph hustling toward the sheep shelter, Joaquin heading for the gardens.
Eph ducked and ran along the fence, this bottleneck being the very thing he had feared. He wasn’t going to perish by human hands, though. That much he had decided long ago. They were open targets down here in the serene, brightly lit interior farmstead—but Eph could do something about that.
The sheep were agitated, bleating too loudly for Eph to hear anything else. He glanced back at the corner and saw Gus and Bruno racing toward a ladder to the side. The Stoneheart reached the perch and was fooling with the mounted repeater, turning the muzzle end down toward the ground. He lashed out first at Gus, strafing the ground behind him until he lost the angle. Gus and Bruno started up the left-side wall, but the ladder did not run directly beneath; the Stoneheart might have another chance at them before they reached the catwalk.
Eph threw off the wire loops holding the sheep inside their shelter. The gate door banged open and they went bleating into the enclosure. Eph found the hinged section of fence and vaulted over it, working the outside catch. He grabbed the fence and raised his feet just in time, riding it open in order to avoid being trampled by the escaping sheep.
He heard gunfire but didn’t look back, running to the cowshed and doing the same, throwing up the rolling door and turning the herd loose. These were not fat Holsteins but rather cows in the dictionary definition of the term only: thin, loose-hided, walleyed, and fast. They went every which way, a number of them galumphing into the orchard and knocking into the weak-trunked apple trees.
Eph went around the dairy, looking for the others. He saw Joaquin far right, behind one of the garden lamps with a tool in his hand, using it to aim the hot lamp up at the corner shooter. A genius idea, it worked perfectly, distracting the Stoneheart so that Gus and Bruno could charge up the exposed section of ladder. Joaquin dove for cover as the Stoneheart ripped at the lamp, exploding the bulb in a shower of sparks.
Fet was up and running, using one wayward heifer as a partial shield as he broke for a ladder on the near wall, to the right of the shooter’s perch. Eph edged around the corner of the dairy, thinking about making a run for the wall himself, when the dirt started popping before his feet. He bolted backward just as the rounds chewed the wooden corner where his head had been.
The ladder shivered under his weight as Fet climbed hand-over-hand toward the catwalk. The Stoneheart was swung all the way around, trying to angle his fire at Gus and Bruno, but they were low on the walkway, his rounds clanking off the intervening iron slats. Someone below turned another lamp on the Stoneheart, and Fet could see the man’s face locked in a grimace, as though he knew he was going to lose. Who were these people who would willingly do the vampires’ bidding?
Inhuman, he thought.
And that thought powered Fet up the last few rungs. The Stoneheart was still unaware of his blind-side approach but co
uld turn at any time. Imagining the long barrel of the gun swinging his way made him run faster, drawing his sword from his pack.
Inhuman motherfuckers.
The Stoneheart heard or felt Fet’s pounding boots. He swung around, wide-eyed, firing the gun before he had completed the sweep, but too late. Fet was too close. He ran his sword through the Stoneheart’s belly, then pulled it back.
Bewildered, the man slumped to his knees, appearing as shocked by Fet’s betrayal of the new vampiric order as Fet was by the Stoneheart’s betrayal of his own kind. Out of this offended expression vomited bile and blood, bursting onto the barrel of the smoking weapon.
The man’s agonal suffering was wholly unlike any vampire’s. Fet was not used to killing fellow humans. The silver sword was well suited for vampire killing but completely inefficient for dispatching humans.
Bruno came charging from the other catwalk, seizing the man before Fet could react, grabbing him up and dumping him over the low edge of the perch. The Stoneheart twisted in the air, trailing gore, landing headfirst.
Gus grabbed the trigger end of the hot weapon. He swung it around, surveilling the artificial farmstead below them. He tipped it up, aiming it at the multitude of lights beaming down on the farm like cooking lamps.
Fet heard yelling and recognized Nora’s voice, finding her below, waving her arms and pointing at the gun as sheep trotted past.
Fet grabbed the tops of Gus’s arms, just below his shoulders. Not restraining him, just getting his attention. “Don’t,” he said, referring to the lamps. “This food is for humans.”
Gus winced. He wanted to light up the place. Instead, he pulled away from the bright lamps and fired straight out across the cavernous building, rounds punching holes in the far wall, ejected cartridges raining onto the perch.
