by Will Hill
Turner grabbed his console from his belt. “Send me a message,” he said, turning to face her. “Quickly.”
“What message?” asked Kate, thumbing her screen into life.
“Anything,” said Turner. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
Kate tapped on the MESSAGING icon and pressed NEW. She searched Paul Turner’s name, quickly wrote TEST in the subject line and hit SEND. There was a long, pregnant moment of silence, then the screen on Paul Turner’s console lit up and a short, two-tone beep sounded in the silent room.
“Was that the noise?” asked Turner, turning back to face Jamie’s mother. “The one you heard? Was that it?”
Marie nodded. “Yes.”
Green.
Turner flicked a glance in Kate’s direction; his eyes were wide, and the corners of his mouth were curling slightly upwards, in what appeared to be the beginnings of a smile.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re telling us that you’ve heard Valentin Rusmanov using a console like the ones that we carry, like the one you’ve seen your son use? And that you’ve heard it beep like mine just did? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” said Marie, frowning. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Turner.
“It wasn’t Valentin. It was the other one.”
Turner stared. “His butler?” he asked. “Lamberton?”
Marie Carpenter nodded. “That’s him.”
50
DEADLINE
SPIRIT OF INNOVATION INDUSTRIAL PARK,
READING, bERKSHIRE
The sun finally slipped beyond the horizon, plunging the industrial estate into the gloomy grey of twilight.
Four pairs of eyes watched from inside a rented van as the men and women who worked in the vast concrete boxes began to stream out, heading for the train station or the sprawling car parks. They went quietly, paying no attention to the small white vehicle parked in front of the glass reception of one of the largest buildings on the estate: the printing press that produced more than half a million copies of The Globe every night of the year.
Inside the van, Pete Randall was nervous.
Throughout the long, tense afternoon, Albert Harker had refused to tell them what he had planned; he believed it was vital that only he knew the details until it was absolutely necessary. His caution was extreme, bordering on paranoia; he had apologised, but would not be moved on the matter.
Pete and Greg had eventually been sent out with a handful of Albert Harker’s money and instructions to rent a vehicle, a van with no windows in the sides or back, so the vampire could be safely transported inside it. They had found a place barely ten minutes’ walk from the hotel. At first, Pete had been reluctant to hand over his driving licence, until Greg told him that, at this point, it no longer mattered. They were in too deep to worry about a paper trail or an electronic fingerprint.
The four of them had piled into the van and the vampire had given him the location that he was to drive them to. It had initially meant nothing to Pete: a nondescript industrial estate in a part of the world that was full of them. But as he had driven the van through the entrance, he had seen a familiar logo on the tall board listing the resident companies and felt his stomach tighten.
“This is where they print The Globe, right?” he said.
“Indeed,” said Harker. “The printing presses that produce Kevin’s former publication each night. This is where we will strike our first blow for truth.”
Then he leant forward and explained his plan.
The side door of the van slid open and four figures emerged. They were dressed in black clothing, one of them carrying a black sports bag over his shoulder.
They walked quickly across the forecourt towards the printing press’s entrance, Albert Harker in the lead. Through the glass, Pete could see the reception desk and the lone security guard sitting behind it. The man had noticed their approach and was watching them, but his face bore no trace of concern: out-of-hours visitors were presumably a common occurrence. As they neared the glass door, the guard reached out and pressed a button on his desk. A second later there was a loud buzzing noise and the door clicked open.
Albert Harker took hold of the handle and pulled it open.
“Thank you,” he said, as Pete, Kevin and Greg followed him inside.
“No problem,” said the guard. “Sign in—”
The rest of the sentence died in the guard’s throat, as Albert Harker’s eyes burst a deep, flaming red. He crossed the reception in a blur of black, grabbed the reeling guard by the back of his head, and slammed his face into the desk. There was a loud crunch as the man’s nose broke; blood flew in the fluorescent brightness of the reception.
“Jesus,” shouted Kevin McKenna.
Harker lifted the guard’s head; his mouth hung open, his eyes rolled back.
“He’ll be fine,” said the vampire. “He’s going to have a sore head when he wakes up, but we’ll be long gone by then. Greg, tie him and bind his mouth. Make sure you leave his nose clear; we don’t want him to choke.”
Greg nodded, and shrugged the bag down from his shoulder. He unzipped it and pulled out a roll of black electrical tape and a length of plastic wire. Harker lifted the security guard over the desk with one hand and laid him flat on the floor; Greg quickly tied his hands behind his back and his legs together at the ankles. Then he tore a strip of tape and pressed it firmly over the guard’s mouth.
“Well done,” said Harker, and carried the man back behind the desk. He placed him on the floor beside his chair, hidden from anyone looking in from outside, then walked back to his companions, his eyes still blazing.
“That’s it, right?” said McKenna. “No one else gets hurt?”
“As I promised you, my friend,” replied Harker. “No one else gets hurt.”
“OK,” said McKenna. “Like you promised.”
*
At the rear of the reception, a pair of doors led on to the printing press floor. Access was controlled by a key-card panel, but Harker simply pushed until their deadbolts gave way with a loud crunch of metal. Deafening noise spilled instantly out into the reception, an unholy cacophony of thundering metal pistons and giant spinning wheels.
“Follow me,” said the vampire, and walked through the doors.
The printing press looked like something out of an industrial nightmare; it filled the enormous room from floor to ceiling, a series of innumerable machines connected by conveyor belts that snaked between them. An open area to their right contained a number of desks and computer screens; a sign that read EDITORIAL hung from the ceiling above it.
Five metres along the wall beside the door stood a large glass cabinet. Harker strode along the edge of the room and stopped before it. His companions followed, Pete scanning the huge room as they did so, his eyes peeled for any of the press’s employees. McKenna had told them that the facility was almost fully automated; once it was running, only a skeleton maintenance crew stayed overnight, their job to fix the machines if something went wrong. He had estimated that there would be no more than ten men and women in the entire building.
Beside the editorial department, rolls of paper taller than the average man spun endlessly, feeding the hungry machines. At the far end of the room, Pete could see stacks of finished newspapers being automatically bundled, wrapped in plastic, and stacked on to pallets. Then one of the press’s employees, a man wearing blue overalls, appeared, driving a forklift truck with a yellow light spinning on its roof. The distant wall contained a number of large rolling doors, most of which were open; these were where the lorries that delivered The Globe to distribution centres throughout the country parked, ready to be filled up with brightly coloured pages of gossip and sport.
As Pete watched, the man lifted a pallet into the open trailer of a lorry, before a second worker closed its doors and locked them. The lorry immediately pulled away from its berth, leaving a rectangular hole in the si
de of the building. The man reversed the forklift, until it disappeared behind the towering machines.
Harker pulled open the glass front of the cabinet, as his companions crowded round him. There were a number of illuminated switches on a metal panel, with a large red button in the middle marked ALL STOP.
The vampire reached out one thin, pale finger and pressed the button.
The cessation of noise was so startling it made them all jump. For a long second, all that could be heard was a high hissing as the presses ground to a halt. Then a number of alarms began to sound and shouted voices echoed through the cavernous space.
“Here we go,” said Harker. “Let me do the talking.”
The vampire’s eyes bloomed red as his fangs slid into place. A second later two men in blue overalls appeared from between the rows of machinery, their faces red and frowning.
“Hey!” shouted one of them, pointing at Pete. “What the hell do you—” His voice died away as he caught sight of Albert Harker, a grinning, glowing thing from his worst nightmares. His eyes widened and he tried to turn back, but it was too late; Harker slid forward and lifted both men off their feet. He threw them almost casually into the editorial department, where they hit the ground hard. They screamed in pain and terror, their eyes wide and staring.
“Watch them,” growled Harker, then disappeared.
Pete and Greg ran forward and stood over the cowering, terrified men. Seconds later Harker returned, holding two more workers in his supernatural grasp; after less than two minutes, eight men were huddled together between the desks, trembling with visible terror.
Albert Harker dropped out of the air and regarded them with his terrible glowing eyes. “Stay calm, gentlemen,” he growled. “You will come to no harm as long as you do as I tell you. Do you understand?”
The men’s panicked whimpering receded slightly, and three or four of them managed to nod their heads.
“Good,” said Harker. “We are going to be making a late alteration to tomorrow’s edition and you fine men are going to help us. You are not going to be blamed for this, and no one will think it was your fault. So please do not do anything stupid.”
The men stared, uncomprehending.
“How many of you are required to run this press?” Harker asked.
There was silence from the huddled mass.
“I asked you a question,” said the vampire, his voice rumbling with menace. “I expect an answer. You, tell me.”
He pointed at a skinny, pale man at the front of the cowering group. He was barely more than a boy and his expression was one of utter terror, but he managed to find his voice.
“If nothing breaks…” he whispered.
“Speak up, for God’s sake,” snapped Harker.
The man gulped audibly and tried again. “If nothing breaks,” he said, “you don’t need anyone on the machines. Just loaders at the other end.”
“How many of you to load the lorries?”
“Four,” said the man. “Four of us can do it.”
“Good,” said Harker. “That’s good. Greg, tie four of them up. Quickly, please.”
Greg Browning stepped forward, enthusiasm radiating from his face. Pete watched, an odd feeling rising in his stomach; a sensation of being in the dark, of not being told all there was to tell. The vampire seemed to be taking unnecessary enjoyment from the fear of the men who were huddled before him.
I don’t know if this is what we thought it was.
Greg stepped away from the group of men, leaving four of them tied and gagged. Harker dragged them easily away from their colleagues and laid them in a line against the wall.
“Watch them, Pete,” he said. “They’re your responsibility.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
Harker smiled, then turned to McKenna. “Kevin,” he said. “Make us proud.”
McKenna nodded, his face tight with concentration, and made his way past the bound men into the editorial department. He took a seat at one of the desks and woke up the computer that sat on it. The screen lit up, displaying the file that was currently running through the enormous press; the following day’s edition of The Globe. The front page was a splash photograph of an American singer on a beach in a bikini, with a headline speculating as to whether she had been the recipient of surgical enhancement. The sidebar contained the apparently exclusive news that a Spanish footballer was about to make a multi-million-pound move to a team from the north-west.
McKenna pulled a memory stick out of his pocket and slotted it into the side of the monitor. He expanded the folder when it appeared and opened the only document. Working quickly, he deleted the edition’s existing front page and pasted a huge headline and three short columns of text on to page one. He then wiped page two, pasted in the rest of the document, and saved the new version of the print file. He scrolled back to page one, before showing it to Harker and his companions.
It was far from a masterpiece of design: the fonts were boring, the text was small, and the formatting was simple at best. But there was no disputing the blunt power of the page that McKenna had created.
VAMPIRES
ARE REAL.
THE GOVERNMENT
IS LYING TO YOU.
“It’s perfect,” said Harker, his hand clasping the journalist’s shoulder. “It’s exactly right. Print it.”
“I need one of them to do it,” said McKenna, pointing at the four men who had not been tied up.
Harker nodded. “Who can start the process?” he asked, his eyes flaring red. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
One of the men put his hand up. “I can,” he said.
“Then do so,” said Harker. “Quickly.”
The man nodded and got to his feet. He walked unsteadily over to where Kevin McKenna was sitting, gently taking the computer’s mouse from his hand. Pete watched as the man ran through the pre-print checks, recalibrated the system to accommodate the new pages, and set the machine running. A rumble shook the ground beneath the men’s feet, but the machines stayed still.
“Why is nothing happening?” asked Harker.
“It takes eight minutes to warm up,” said the man, his voice shaking. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Harker gave a brief growl, but nodded his head. “So be it,” he said. “Eight minutes will make no difference. Kevin, stay here and carry out the second part of your task. Pete, you know what you’re doing?”
“Watching them,” he replied, nodding towards the bound men.
“Correct,” said Harker. “Greg, you’re coming with me, as are you fine gentlemen. As soon as copies start to come off the press, you go back to work. I don’t want the delivery drivers to have the slightest idea that anything out of the ordinary is happening here. If you try to alert one of them, both you and he will wish you hadn’t. Am I making myself clear?”
The four workers nodded furiously, their eyes full of fear.
“Good,” said Harker. “Then let’s go. Pete, Kevin, you shout if there are any problems this end. I can hear you quite clearly. Remember that.”
Pete frowned.
Remember that? Was that a threat?
The vampire floated up into the air, provoking a new ripple of panic among the men in the blue overalls. They scrambled to their feet and staggered down the corridor between the machines with Greg Browning behind them, herding them back to the loading bays. Pete watched them go, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. He looked over at Kevin McKenna, trying to gauge the man, but the journalist was turned away from him, working rapidly at the computer.
Pete stared at the back of his head; the feeling in his stomach was getting stronger and more insistent by the minute. He had never been an arrogant man; he had, if anything, tended towards excessive modesty where his attributes and achievements were concerned. He had always known he wasn’t the cleverest, the strongest, the best-looking or the most charming, and that was absolutely fine. The one thing he had always believed about himself, that he had given himse
lf credit for, was that he was a good man, a man of integrity, loyalty and moral courage. He backed away from the journalist, giving himself distance from the four bound men laid out against the wall, and tried to reconcile what he was doing with the man he had always believed himself to be.
McKenna pushed his chair away from the desk and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“Albert,” he said, barely raising his voice. “Do you want to see this?”
There was a long moment of silence, before the vampire dropped silently out of the air beside McKenna and peered at the screen.
“It’s live?” he asked, his eyes smouldering.
“Yep,” replied McKenna. “It’s up, for everyone to see.”
Harker clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done,” he said. “You have played your part perfectly, Kevin.”
“Cheers,” he replied. “So what now? The papers go out, then we’re done, right?”
“Done?”
“Done,” repeated McKenna. “The public will know everything. That’s what we want.”
“My dear friend,” said Harker, a smile rising on his face. “This is not the end. Far from it. When we are finished here, you will start work on the follow-up story.”
McKenna frowned. “What follow-up? What else is there for me to write about?”
“A personal description of the world we are showing them,” replied the vampire. “The death, the horror, the blood. Families torn apart, innocent men and women caught up in the carnage. A crusade needs rallying points, images too sad and shocking to be ignored, that make people confront a reality that could happen to them. In short, Kevin, it requires martyrs.”
A chill ran up McKenna’s spine. “What do you mean, martyrs?” he asked, slowly. “You told me nobody was going to be hurt.”
The smile on the vampire’s face narrowed. “Don’t concern yourself with the details,” he said, softly. “Suffice it to say, you are perfectly safe.”
“What about the others?” hissed McKenna. “Pete and Greg, and the print workers?”
