by Chuck Hogan
He ran as best he could back to the landing. He panicked at the thought of becoming trapped inside the elevator cage and so mounted the curling staircase, pulling himself hand-over-hand along the broad banister. Adrenaline neutralized some of the alcohol in his blood.
The study. That was where the pistols were displayed. He threw himself down the long hallway toward the room—when a pair of hands grabbed him from the side, pulling him into the open doorway of the sitting room.
Barnes instinctively covered his head, expecting a beating. He fell sprawling, thrown into one of the chairs, where he remained, cowering in fear and bewilderment. He did not want to see the face of his attacker. Part of his hysterical fear came from a voice inside his head that most closely resembled that of his dearly departed mother, saying, You’re getting what you deserve.
“Look at me.”
The voice. That angry voice. Barnes relaxed his grip around his head. He knew the voice but could not place it. Something was off. The voice had become roughened over time, deeper.
Curiosity outstripped fear. Barnes removed his trembling arms from his head, raising his eyes.
Ephraim Goodweather. Or, more reflective of his personal appearance, Ephraim Goodweather’s evil twin. This was not the man he used to know, the esteemed epidemiologist. Dark circles raccooned his fugitive eyes. Hunger had drained his face of all cheer and turned his cheeks into crags, as though all the meat had been boiled off the bone. Mealy whiskers clung to his gray skin but failed to fill out the hollows. He wore fingerless gloves, a filthy coat, and faded boots under wet cuffs, laced with wire rather than string. The black knit cap crowning his head reflected the darkness of the mind beneath. A sword handle rose from the pack on his back. He looked like a vengeful hobo.
“Everett,” Eph said, his voice hoarse, possessed.
“Don’t,” said Barnes, terrified of him.
Eph picked up the snifter, its bottom still coated and chocolaty. He brought the mouth of the glass to his nose, drawing in the scent. “Nightcap, huh? Brandy Alexander? That’s a fucking prom drink, Barnes.” He placed the large glass in his former boss’s hand. Then he did exactly what Barnes feared he would do: he closed his fist over Barnes’s hand, crushing the glass between his ex-boss’s fingers. Closing them over the multiple shards of glass, cutting his flesh and tendons and slicing to the bone.
Barnes howled and fell on his knees, bleeding and sobbing. He cringed. “Please,” he said.
Eph said, “I want to stab you in the eye.”
“Please.”
“Step on your throat until you die. Then cremate you in that little tile hole in the wall.”
“I was saving her . . . I wanted to deliver Nora from the camp.”
“The way you delivered those pretty maids downstairs? Nora was right about you. Do you know what she would do to you if she were here?”
So she wasn’t. Thank God. “She would be reasonable,” Barnes said. “She would see what I had to offer to you. How I could be of service.”
“Goddamn you,” said Eph. “Goddamn your black soul.”
Eph punched Barnes. His hits were calculated, brutal.
“No,” whimpered Barnes. “No more . . . please . . .”
“So this is what absolute corruption looks like,” said Eph. He hit Barnes a few times more. “Commandant Barnes! You’re a goddamn piece of shit, sir—you know that? How could you turn on your own kind like this? You were a doctor—you were the fucking head of the CDC for Christ’s sake. You have no compassion?”
“No, please.” Barnes sat up a little, bleeding all over the floor, trying to ease this conversation into something productive and positive. But his PR skills were hampered by the growing inflammation of his mouth and the teeth that were missing. “This is a new world, Ephraim. Look what it’s done to you.”
“You let that admiral’s uniform go right to your fucking head.” Eph reached out and gripped Barnes’s thinning thatch of hair, yanking his face upward, baring his throat. Barnes smelled the decay of Eph’s body. “I should murder you right here,” he said. “Right now.” Eph drew out his sword and showed it to Barnes.
“You . . . you’re not a murderer,” gasped Barnes.
“Oh, but I am. I have become that. And unlike you, I don’t do it by pushing a button or signing an order. I do it like this. Up close. Personal.”
The silver blade touched Barnes’s throat over his windpipe. Barnes arched his neck farther.
“But,” said Eph, pulling the sword back a few inches, “luckily for you, you are still useful to me. I need you to do something for me, and you’re going to do it. Nod yes.”
Eph nodded Barnes’s head for him.
“Good. Listen closely. There are people outside waiting for me. Do you understand? Are you sober enough to remember this, brandy Alexander boy?”
Barnes nodded, this time under his own power. Of course, at that moment he would have agreed to anything.
“My reason for coming here is to make you an offer. It will actually make you look good. I am here to tell you to go to the Master and tell it I have agreed to trade the Occido Lumen for my son. Prove to me you understand this.”
“Double-crossing is something I understand, Eph,” said Barnes.
“You can even be the hero of this story. You can tell him that I came here to murder you, but now I am double-crossing my own people by offering you this deal. You can tell him you convinced me to take his offer and volunteered to take it back to the Master.”
“Do the others know about this . . . ?”
Emotions surged. Tears welled in Eph’s eyes. “They believe I am with them, and I am . . . but this is about my boy.”
Emotions swelled in Ephraim Goodweather’s heart. He was dizzy, lost . . .
“All you need to do is tell the Master that I accept. That this is no bluff.”
“You are going to deliver this book.”
“For my son . . .”
“Yes—yes . . . of course. Perfectly understandable . . .”
Eph grabbed Barnes by the hair and punched again. Twice in the mouth. Another tooth cracked.
“I don’t want your fucking sympathy, you monster. Just deliver my message. You got it? I am somehow going to get the real Lumen and get word to the Master, maybe through you again, when I am ready to deliver.”
Eph’s grip on Barnes’s hair had relaxed. Barnes realized he was not to be killed or even harmed any further. “I . . . I heard that the Master had a boy with him . . . a human boy. But I didn’t know why . . .”
Eph’s eyes blazed. “His name is Zachary. He was kidnapped two years ago.”
“By Kelly, your wife?” said Barnes. “I saw her. With the Master. She is . . . well, she is no longer herself. But I suppose none of us are.”
Eph said, “Some of us even became vampires without ever getting stung by anything . . .” Eph’s eyes grew glassy and damp. “You are a capitulator and a coward, and for me to join your ranks tears at my insides like a fatal disease, but I see no other way out, and I have to save my son. I have to.” His grip tightened on Barnes again. “This is the right choice, it is the only choice. For a father. My boy has been kidnapped and the ransom is my soul and the fate of the world, and I will pay it. I will pay it. Goddamn the Master, and goddamn you.”
Even Barnes, whose loyalty fell on the side of the vampires, wondered to himself how wise it would be to enter into any sort of agreement with the Master, a being marshaled by no morality or code. A virus, and a ravenous one at that.
But of course Barnes said nothing of the kind to Eph. The man holding a sword near Barnes’s throat was a creature worn down almost to the nub, like a pencil eraser with just enough pink rubber left to make one final correction.
“You will do this,” said Eph, not asking.
Barnes nodded. “You can count on me.” He attempted a smile but his mouth and gums were swollen to the point of disfiguration.
Eph stared at him another long moment, a look of pure disgust
coming into his gaunt face. This is the kind of man you are now making deals with. Then he threw Barnes’s head back, turning with his sword and starting for the door.
Barnes gripped his spared neck but could not hold his bleeding tongue. “And I do understand, Ephraim,” he said, “perhaps better than you.” Eph stopped, turning beneath the handsome molding framing the doorway. “Everybody has their price. You believe your plight is more noble than mine because your price is the welfare of your son. But to the Master, Zack is nothing more than a coin in its pocket. I am sorry it has taken you so long to see this. That you should have borne all this suffering so unnecessarily.”
Eph stood snarling at the floor, his sword hanging heavily in his hand. “And I am only sorry that you haven’t suffered more . . .”
Service Garage, Columbia University
WHEN THE SUN backlit the ashen filter of the sky—what passed for daylight now—the city became eerily quiet. Vampire activity ceased, and the streets and buildings lit up with the ever-changing light of television sets. Reruns and rain; that was the norm. Acid, black rain dripped from the tortured sky in fat, oily drops. The ecological cycle was “rinse and repeat,” but dirty water never cleaned anything. It would take decades, if it ever self-cleansed at all. For now, the gloaming of the city was like a sunrise that would not turn over.
Gus waited outside the open door of the facility-services garage. Creem was an ally of convenience, and he had always been a squirrely motherfucker. It sounded like he was coming alone, which didn’t make much sense, so Gus didn’t trust it. Gus had taken a few extra precautions himself. Among them was the shiny Glock tucked into the small of his back, a handgun he had seized from a former drug den in the chaos of the first days. Another was setting the meet here and giving Creem no indication that Gus’s underground lair was nearby.
Creem drove up in a yellow Hummer. Bright color aside, this was just the sort of clumsy move Gus expected from him: driving a notorious gas guzzler in a time of very little available fuel. But Gus shrugged it off, because that was who Creem was. And predictability in one’s rival was a good thing.
Creem needed the big vehicle to fit his body in behind the steering wheel. Even given all their deprivations, he had managed to keep much of his size—only now there was not an ounce of loose fat on him. Somehow he was eating. He was sustaining. It told Gus that the Sapphires’ raids on the vampire establishment were succeeding.
Except he had no other Sapphires with him now. None Gus could see, anyway.
Creem rolled his Hummer into the garage, out of the rain. He killed the engine and worked his way out from the driver’s seat. He had a stick of jerky in his mouth, gnawing on it like a thick, meaty pick. His silver grille shone when he smiled. “Hey, Mex.”
“You made it in all right.”
Creem waved at the air with his short arms. “Your island here is going to shit.”
Gus agreed. “Fucking landlord’s a real prick.”
“Real bloodsucker, huh?”
Niceties aside, they exchanged a simple handshake grip, no gang stuff—while never losing eye contact. Gus said, “Running solo?”
“This trip,” said Creem, hiking up his pants. “Gotta keep an eye on things in Jersey. I don’t suppose you’re alone.”
“Never,” said Gus.
Creem looked around, nodding, not seeing anyone. “Hiding, eh? I’m cool,” he said.
“And I’m careful.”
That drew a smile from Creem. Then he bit off the end of the jerky. “Want some of this?”
“I’m good for now.” Best to let Creem think Gus was eating well and regularly.
Creem pulled out the jerky. “Doggie treat. We found a warehouse with a whole pet-supply shipment that never went out. I don’t know what’s in this thing, but it’s food, right? Will give me a lustrous pelt, clean my teeth and all that.” Creem barked a few times, then snickered. “Cat food cans keep for a good long time. Portable meal. Taste like fucking pâté.”
“Food is food,” said Gus.
“And breathing is breathing. Look at us here. Two bangers from the projects. Still hustling. Still representing. And everybody else, the ones who thought this city was theirs, the tender souls—they didn’t have no real fucking pride, no stake, no claim; where are they now? The walking dead.”
“The undead.”
“Like I always say, ‘Creem rises to the top.’ ” He laughed again, maybe too hard. “You like the ride?”
“How you fueling it?”
“Got some pumps still flowing in Jersey. Check out the grille? Just like my teeth. Silver.”
Gus looked. The front grille of the car was indeed plated in silver. “Now, that I like,” said Gus.
“Silver rims are next on my wish list,” said Creem. “So, you wanna get your backups out here now, so I don’t feel like I’m gonna be ripped off? I’m here in good faith.”
Gus whistled and Nora came out from behind a tool cart holding a Steyr semiauto. She lowered the weapon, stopping a safe thirty feet away.
Joaquin appeared from behind a door, his pistol at his side. He could not disguise his limp; his knee was still giving him grief.
Creem opened his stubby arms wide, welcoming them to the meet. “You wanna get to it? I gotta get back over that fucking bridge before the creeps come out.”
“Show and tell,” said Gus.
Creem went around and opened the rear door. Four open cardboard moving cartons fresh out of a U-Haul store, crammed full of silver. Gus slid one out for inspection, the box heavy with candlesticks, utensils, decorative urns, coins, and even a few dinged-up, mint-stamped silver bars.
Creem said, “All pure, Mex. No sterling shit. No copper base. There’s a test kit in there somewhere I’ll throw in for free.”
“How’d you score all this?”
“Picking up scrap for months, like a junk man, saving it. We got all the metal we need. I know you want this vamp-slaying shit. Me, I like guns.” He looked at Nora’s piece. “Big guns.”
Gus picked through the silver pieces. They’d have to melt them down, forge them, do their best. None of them were smiths. But the swords they had weren’t going to last forever.
“I can take all this off your hands,” said Gus. “You want firepower?”
“Is that all you sellin’?”
Creem was looking not only at Nora’s weapon but at Nora.
Gus said, “I got some batteries, shit like that. But that’s it.”
Creem didn’t take his eyes off Nora. “She got her head smooth like them camp workers.”
Nora said, “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here?”
Creem smiled silver. “Can I see the piece?”
Nora brought it forward, handed it to him. He accepted with an interested smile, then turned his attention to the Steyr. He released the bolt and the magazine, checking the load, then fed it back into the buttstock. He sighted a ceiling lamp and pretended to blow it away.
“More like this?” he asked.
“Like it,” confirmed Gus. “Not identical. I’ll need at least a day though. I got ’em stashed around town.”
“And ammo. Plenty of it.” He worked the safety off and on. “I’ll take this one as a down payment.”
Nora said, “Silver is so much more efficient.”
Creem smiled at her—eager, condescending. “I didn’t get here by being efficient, baldy. I like to make some fucking noise when I waste these bloodsuckers. That’s the fun of it.”
He reached for her shoulder and Nora batted his hand away, which only made him laugh.
She looked at Gus. “Get this dog-food-eating slob out of here.”
Gus said, “Not yet.” He turned to Creem. “What about that detonator?”
Creem opened his front door and laid the Steyr down across the front seat, then shut it again. “What about it?”
“Stop dicking around. Can you do it for me?”
Creem made like he was deciding. “Maybe. I have a lead�
��but I need to know more about this shit you’re trying to blow. You know I live just across the river there.”
“You don’t need to know anything. Just name your price.”
“Military-grade detonator?” said Creem. “There’s a place in northern Jersey I got my eye on. Military installation. I’m not saying much more than that right now. But you gotta come clean.”
Gus looked at Nora, not for her okay but to frown at being put in this position. “Pretty simple,” he said. “It’s a nuke.”
Creem smiled wide. “Where’d you get it?”
“Corner store. Book of coupons.”
Creem checked on Nora. “How big?”
“Big enough to do a half-mile of destruction. Shock wave, bent steel—you name it.”
Creem was enjoying this. “But you wound up with the floor model. Sold as-is.”
“Yes. We need a detonator.”
“’Cause I don’t know how stupid you think I am, but I am not in the habit of arming my next-door neighbor with a live nuclear bomb without laying down some fucking ground rules.”
“Really,” said Gus. “Such as?”
“Just that I don’t want you fucking up my prize.”
“What’s that?”
“I do for you, you do for me. So first, I need assurances that this thing is going off at least a few miles away from me. Not in Jersey or Manhattan, bottom line.”
“You’ll be warned beforehand.”
“Not good enough. ’Cause I think I know what the hell you’re looking to use this bad boy on. Only one thing worth blowing up in this world. And when the Master goes, that’s gonna free up some serious real estate. Which is my price.”
“Real estate?” said Gus.
“This city. I own Manhattan outright, after all is said and done. Take it or leave it, Mex.”
Gus shook hands with Creem. “Can I interest you in a bridge?”
New York Public Library Main Branch
ANOTHER ROTATION OF Earth, and they were back together again, the five humans, Fet, Nora, Gus, Joaquin, and Eph, with Mr. Quinlan having traveled ahead under cover of darkness. They came out of Grand Central Station and followed Forty-second Street to Fifth Avenue. There was no rain but an exceptional wind, strong enough to dislodge trash accumulated in doorways. Fast food wrappers, plastic bags, and other pieces of legacy refuse blew down the street like spirits dancing through a graveyard.
