by Will Hill
Matt Browning was almost at the front door when his father called his name from the living room. He cursed silently, dropped his backpack by the umbrella stand and went to see what his dad wanted.
His mother had taken his sister to visit Matt’s grandparents in Grantham for the weekend, leaving the men of the family alone. The debate had lasted almost a week, as Lynne Browning tried to convince herself it was all right for her to let her son out of her sight for a whole forty-eight hours. She had eventually caught a taxi to the train station the previous evening, casting glances back at the house as the car pulled away, despite Matt and Greg’s endless reassurances that they could look after each other for a single weekend.
“All right, Dad,” he said, as casually as he was able to manage.
It had taken him most of the day to work himself up to what he was about to do, and he knew himself well enough to know that if he was delayed too long by his father, he might conceivably lose his nerve.
“How’s it going?” asked Greg, brightly. “Everything all right?”
Matt’s father was sitting in his armchair in front of the TV, peering round at his son. On the previous occasions that his wife had gone away for the weekend, the area surrounding the chair would by this point have already become a mountain of empty lager cans and crumpled takeaway trays, but the floor was scrupulously clear. It was one of many small things that changed since Matt had come home.
“I’m fine, Dad,” replied Matt, forcing a smile. “You OK?”
Greg nodded. “You heading out?” he asked.
“Going to Jeff’s,” replied Matt. “We’ve got a project. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” replied Greg. “Of course it is.” There was a pregnant pause, which Matt resisted the urge to fill. It seemed as though his dad wanted to say something else, but after a few seconds, he simply smiled at his son. “Have a good time,” he said. “Don’t stay out too late, OK?”
“I won’t, Dad,” replied Matt. “I promise.”
His father nodded, then turned back to the TV.
Matt gratefully backed out of the living room and into the hall. He slung the backpack over his shoulder for the second time, took a quick glance around the house he had lived in his whole life, then opened the front door and stepped outside.
The backpack contained nothing that would have been any use to Jeff, who Matt knew was playing football in the park at the end of their road, or that would have helped with a school project. Inside his bag were two sandwiches he had bought on his way home from school, a bottle of water and a wooden stake he had carved in the school woodwork shop during his lunch hour.
He had felt faintly ridiculous carving it, and had kept a close eye on the doors to the technology block; he had no desire to try and explain what he was making to anyone. He doubted that it would be of any real use if he encountered a vampire; he had always gone to great lengths to avoid even the remote possibility of a fight with anyone, let alone a creature like the girl who had landed in his garden. But it made him feel slightly better to have it in his backpack.
Matt closed the gate to the small front garden behind him, turned to his right and started walking. Behind him, he could hear shouts and whistles from the park at the end of the road, the soundtrack of a dozen ramshackle games of football, of teenage boys and girls furtively smoking and drinking cheap cider and wine. He had never had much interest in that world, filled as it was with pitfalls and dishonesty and insincerity, and since waking up in the infirmary, he had turned his back on it entirely.
He had barely spoken to anyone at school, a stance that had gone unnoticed for the first day or so, before boys who had no normal desire to talk to him began taking fraudulent offence at his distant demeanour, and began to demand he speak. They had realised he didn’t want to, so now there was sport in making him do so.
He walked quickly through the fading light of the evening. He passed the small high street, ignored a couple of half-hearted shouted insults from some of the sixth-formers who were congregated round the Chinese takeaway, swigging heartily from brown plastic bottles of cider. At the end of the road, he swung left through a narrow alley between a furniture shop and an empty lot, his heartrate rising momentarily as he remembered the time that Mark Morris had chased him through the alley with a pot of UVA glue, promising Matt that he was going to glue his eyes shut if he caught him. He hadn’t, but the memory still made Matt’s stomach churn.
At the end of the main road, fifteen minutes’ walk away, was another park, and it was this expanse of green, far enough away from his house and the prying eyes of the small number of people who might recognise him, that was his destination. He adjusted the backpack, and walked quickly towards it.
Next to the metal gates that led into the park was a public phone box. Matt stepped into it, placed his bag on the ground and lifted the receiver from its cradle. He took a deep breath.
You know it’s real. You were there. You know.
He reached out with a hand that trembled slightly in the evening air and dialled 999. A female voice answered instantly.
“999 emergency, which service do you require?”
“None of them,” he answered, his voice steady.
“Pardon me?” asked the voice.
“I need something else.”
“Please state your emergency or I will report this as a nuisance call.”
Matt fished a piece of paper out of his pocket, and held it up in front of his face. On it were written six words.
“My name is Matt Browning,” he said. “I just saw two vampires attacking a girl in Centenary Park, Staveley, North Derbyshire.”
“Sir, I don’t have time—”
“I saw their fangs clearly. I saw blood on the girl’s neck. Then two men showed up and followed the vampires. They were wearing black uniforms. With purple visors.”
“Sir, I have reported this call. Please clear the line immediately, or there will be serious consequences.”
“Absolutely,” said Matt. “Thank you.”
He hung up the phone, slung his bag back over his shoulder and stepped out of the phone box. The gates to the park were still open; he walked steadily through them, then made his way to a small children’s playground not far from the entrance. He sat down on a swing, and began to wait.
One hundred miles to the north, inside the Department 19 Northern Outpost at RAF Fylingdales, a light began to flash on the wide radio desk, and a console standing beside it began to beep.
The Duty Operator, a young man named Fitzwilliam, hit a button on the control panel, and a printer whirred into life. The sheet of paper that emerged from the tray was headed ECHELON INTERCEPT, and contained a transcript of the call that Matt had made, only ninety seconds earlier. Fitzwilliam read it, entered it into the electronic logbook on his computer screen and keyed a six-digit code into a panel on the radio desk.
In the Loop’s Surveillance Division, the message emerged from a bank of printers next to a real-time satellite map of the UK, on which a new red dot had now appeared. An Operator passed the printout to the Divisional Duty Officer, who immediately picked up the telephone on his desk, and told the person on the other end of the line that they had a Condition 6.
Somewhere else, the transcript of the phone call appeared on the screen of a laptop, the letters glowing green in the darkened room. A hand pressed a series of keys, opening a live VOIP connection.
“There may be a problem,” said a voice.
Twenty minutes later Matt was swinging his legs gently beneath him, lost in thought, when a voice called his name. He started, almost overbalanced, then gripped the chains of the swing in his hands and looked towards the source of the sound, a surge of excitement bursting through him.
It worked. It really worked.
Then he caught sight of the two men approaching him, and his excitement was swiftly replaced by a cold ripple of fear.
The men were walking towards him with smiles on their faces, their arms dangling l
oosely at their sides, but neither was wearing the black uniform that Matt had seen on the soldiers who came into his house, the military overalls and body armour that he had been expecting. Nor was either wearing a helmet with a purple visor. The two men, who were now only fifteen metres away from him, were wearing dark suits, and the smiles on their faces were too wide, like the grins of sharks.
Matt leapt down from the swing; he could feel adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream, could feel the muscles in his legs tensing, telling him to run, but he forced himself to stand his ground. Then one of the men drew back his lips and grinned at Matt with a mouthful of teeth that looked like carving knives, and he turned and sprinted across the playground.
He ran hard, his arms and legs pumping, his eyes locked on the copse of trees that stood beyond the low fence that enclosed the children’s area. He didn’t look back, not even when he heard two strange rushes of air, like the noise a foot pump makes if it is not connected to anything; he just ran. Then the air fluttered around him, and the two men dropped casually out of the sky in front of him. They made no sound as they landed, their feet sliding gently to the ground. Matt skidded to a halt, no more than two metres away from them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
It was the one with the mouth full of knives who spoke, his grin now so wide it looked as though it was about to tear his face in half.
“Little boys who cry wolf need to be punished,” he continued, and this drew a dull, rasping laugh from his partner.
Matt stared at them, rooted to the ground by fear, the adrenaline in his system already used up and gone.
“I’ve got an idea,” said the second man, the one who had laughed. “Let’s see if he can still make phone calls without a tongue.”
From behind him, there came a screech of tyres, but Matt’s brain barely registered it. He was going to die, or worse. Vampires were real; he had been right, and it was going to be his undoing.
Then a voice bellowed for him to get down, and he threw himself to the concrete. Two loud explosions of air burst in the silent park, then two somethings whistled above his head, whining through the air. Two horrible crunching noises sounded, awfully near him. A pair of dull thuds shook the ground beneath him, and something foul and wet pattered down on his hands and the back of his neck, like a thick rain.
Matt lifted his head. The two vampires were gone; where they had been were wide splashes of crimson, studded with lumps of steaming flesh. His gorge rose in his throat, and he gagged, clamping a hand across his mouth and looking away.
“Matt Browning?”
He rolled over on to his back, looked up and saw his reflection in a curved piece of purple plastic. There were two figures standing over him, dressed in black uniforms, their faces covered by visored helmets. Both were carrying a weapon Matt had never seen before, a long wide tube with a handle and a trigger set into the underside. One of the figures, he guessed it was the one who had said his name, was extending a hand down towards him. Then a wave of nausea hit him, and his vision turned grey at the edges.
“Oh good,” he said, dreamily. “You came. I knew you would.”
Then he fell back on to the concrete in a dead faint.
88 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
23
THE INTERROGATION OF VALENTIN RUSMANOV
Jamie walked on to Level H ten minutes before the interrogation was due to begin, but still found himself the last to arrive. The rest of the Zero Hour Task Force were already gathered outside the Security Office as he emerged from the double airlock and cast a glance down the corridor, to the last cell on the left where his mother now lived.
Admiral Seward glanced round as Jamie approached, and nodded.
“Good morning,” he said, formally.
“Morning, sir,” replied Jamie, then quickly greeted the rest of the Task Force. Jack Williams gave him one of his usual grins, Cal Holmwood and Professor Talbot threw genial nods in his direction; Marlow, Brennan and the Communications Operator whose name Jamie had now learnt was Jarvis, gave no indication that they were even aware of his presence. Paul Turner, whose job it would be to interrogate the ancient vampire, surprised Jamie by giving him a brief nod of acknowledgement before he addressed the group.
“Shall we get started?” Turner asked. “I see no reason to wait any longer.”
“Lead the way, Paul,” replied Seward.
Turner did as he was ordered, turning on his heels and striding away down the cellblock, with the rest of the Zero Hour Task Force following behind him. He drew to a halt at a cell halfway down the corridor on the right-hand side; the rest of the group lined up alongside him and looked through the shimmering ultraviolet wall.
It was empty.
“What the hell?” said Cal Holmwood, turning to look at Admiral Seward.
The Director’s face drained of all colour. He scrambled the radio from his belt, keyed in a nine-digit code and held it to his ear.
“Code seven,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Unauthorised supernatural presence in the facility. Scramble all—”
“That’s really not necessary,” said a smooth voice. “I’m right here.”
Seward froze, then muttered “Stand by” into the radio. The voice had come from the next cell down the block, and the eight men stepped slowly round the dividing wall.
Valentin Rusmanov was sitting in a chair in the middle of the cell with a towel around his shoulders, and shaving foam covering one side of his face. Lamberton, the old vampire’s butler, glanced briefly up at the black-clad figures as they appeared on the other side of the ultraviolet barrier, then returned to his task. With three smooth strokes of a beautiful, pearl-handled straight razor, he finished Valentin’s morning shave, and retreated to the sink at the rear of the cell to wash the blade. Valentin stood up, using the towel to dry his face. When he turned back to face the line of Operators, his expression was warm and friendly.
“Oh, don’t be annoyed, for heaven’s sake,” he said, seeing the looks of outrage on the faces before him. “This barrier may be all well and good for a vampire who was turned the day before yesterday, but when you’ve been around as long as I have, it’s little more than decoration.”
There was a blur of movement, too fast for the eye to follow, and Valentin was standing outside the cell, in the corridor beside them. He extended a hand towards Operator Brennan, who instinctively took a step backwards.
“Valentin Rusmanov,” said the old vampire. “Lovely to meet you.”
Brennan, suddenly incredibly aware that the rest of the group were watching him, struggled for composure, found it and stepped forward.
“Brennan,” he said, shaking the vampire’s hand cautiously. “Operator Brennan.”
“Operator?” asked Valentin, rolling the word around his mouth as though it was some delicious morsel. “That’s marvellous. What’s your Christian name, Operator Brennan?”
“No names,” said Admiral Seward, sharply, before Brennan had a chance to answer. “Mr Rusmanov,” he continued, turning square to face the vampire. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I’d rather my men don’t give you their personal details. And while your ability to pass through our barrier unharmed is certainly very impressive, I’m going to ask you to step back into Mr Lamberton’s cell, at least for the time being. Providing you have no objections?”
Valentin looked at the Director for a long moment, then smiled.
“Of course not, Mr Seward,” he said. “No objections whatsoever.”
The old vampire blurred a second time, and was back inside the cell. He flopped lazily into the chair, facing the men on the other side of the redundant wall of light.
“Are we to talk like this?” asked Valentin. “You on your side, me on mine? Hardly civilised.”
“We’re not here to talk, Mr Rusmanov,” said Paul Turner, stepping forward. “We’re here to ask questions, that we expect you to answer. If you’d rather I asked you them from inside the cell, that’s fine with me. I am not
afraid of you.”
“Then by all means, join me,” replied Valentin. “Although do me the courtesy of your rank and your surname at least. I don’t think I will be able to use those small pieces of information for nefarious means.”
“My name is Major Paul Turner,” he replied, stepping through the barrier and ignoring the grimace of anger on Admiral Seward’s face. He walked across the cell, to where Lamberton was already holding out the second plastic chair for him to take. He lifted it from the vampire’s hands, and set it down a short distance away from Valentin, who turned his own chair to face the Security Officer.
“I’m sure it will not surprise you,” Turner continued, “to know that this interview is being recorded. I hope you will also realise I’m telling you this only for reasons of civility. It’s not required that I do so.”
“Noted,” replied Valentin. “And appreciated.”
The Security Officer nodded, then looked over at his Director.
“Proceed, Major Turner,” said Admiral Seward.
“Valentin Rusmanov,” said Turner, “would you mind repeating the verbal offer you made to Lieutenant Carpenter last night?”
“Not at all,” said Valentin, stretching his long legs out before him and crossing them at the ankles. “I offered young Mr Carpenter my assistance in defeating my brother, Valeri, and the newly resurrected Count Dracula. In exchange, I requested indefinite immunity from persecution by this organisation, and all others like it.”
“And you stand by that offer today?”
“I do.”
“Before we address the specifics of your proposal,” said Paul Turner, “I have two questions; firstly, why would you do this, and secondly, why would you possibly expect us to be able to trust you?”
After Valeri left the study on the top floor of the old building on West Eighty-Fifth Street, Valentin continued to stare out of the window for a long time.
A news helicopter hovered over the north end of Central Park, its spotlight roving among the thick tangles of trees that ringed the reservoir; in the distance, tiny pairs of flashing lights gleamed above the runways of Newark and La Guardia, a constant stream of arrivals and departures. Valentin noticed none of it; his mind was adrift in the past.
