Denzel gave it some thought. “I’ve always believed you should judge someone by their present actions, not their past sins. Otherwise, nobody’d get along with anybody ever.”
“What about this?” Redlaw tugged out the crucifix around his neck. He held it up. “Does this bother you?”
The vampire drew back, squinting, as if a bright light had been shone in his face. Then his frown cleared.
“Not so much,” he said. “We lived in that church a while. Desensitised.”
Redlaw tucked the crucifix away. “Yes, must be that.”
Or my crucifix has no power because there’s no faith behind it. Not any more.
What did that make him then, he wondered? An apostate? Lapsed?
How could he be? He still felt instinctively, with every fibre of his being, that there was a God and that He had a plan for John Redlaw, as He did for everybody. Redlaw might not be able to fathom the nature of that plan, but faith meant he wasn’t supposed to. He was just supposed to accept that a plan existed and that it was for the greater good. As Job had done. And Abraham. And Paul. And even Jesus. The Bible was a litany of examples of people who did as the Lord bade and were loath to query His will, whatever sacrifices or suffering it entailed.
Why should John Redlaw be any different?
He recalled a conversation he had had with Father Graham Dixon, one of their get-togethers in the vicarage at Ladbroke Grove. Redlaw had been drinking tea, Father Dixon pale ale, alcohol being his one priestly vice. This was after Father Dixon’s term as visiting SHADE pastor had ended, when the two men realised they had gone beyond being priest and penitent and were friends. Their get-togethers had become an occasional, informal substitute for confession and also a chance to enjoy each other’s company and chat.
“The absolute all-time bummer,” said Father Dixon, “is you’re never going to get a firm yes or no. About anything. Not ’til after you die. Life is a bizarre one-sided game show, all questions, no answers. The Almighty Quizmaster fires off riddles and conundrums at us and expects us to work them out for ourselves. Occasionally He’ll give us a hint, a nudge, a clue, a sign, but mostly we’re on our own. You, John, want to know if Sergeant Leary’s death has meaning. That’s what’s preying on your mind.”
Róisín Leary had been killed by vampires less than a month earlier, and the wound of her death was still raw and festering, with Redlaw still nowhere nearer fathoming a divine rationale for it.
“And I can’t say if it does,” Father Dixon went on. “That’s got to be for you to figure out. You’re angry that Róisín’s dead because it seems so senseless and because you weren’t there to protect her. Fair enough. We’re allowed our regrets and self-recrimination, especially when we’re grieving. ‘But how can I carry on?’ That’s what you’re asking yourself. She was dear to you, we all know that.”
“She was an over-talkative pain in the you-know-what,” said Redlaw.
“She never shut up, did she? I’m glad I’m C of E and never had to take her confession. That would have been a long haul.”
“And for a woman educated by nuns, she certainly didn’t stint on the expletives.”
“Exactly. Róisín was crude and earthy and vivacious and everything you’re not, and you’d never have put up with her as your partner if she hadn’t been special to you, and she likewise wouldn’t have endured being with a grumpy old fart like you if she hadn’t been able to see the decency that’s intrinsic in you, even if you keep it buried deep down. And now she’s dead and you’re thinking, ‘Where’s the justice in that? Good people, people who are important to us, shouldn’t die. Only scumbags should.’ But if God only picked off the scumbags... Well, the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it? But He doesn’t. He’s indiscriminate. He’s tough and arbitrary. He makes us work hard for what we’ve got and He kicks the legs out from under us time and time again. It’s what He does, it’s all He does, and He absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
“That’s some sort of quotation, isn’t it?”
“You need to go to the movies more, John. Would it kill you to rent a DVD every once in a while? Be like the rest of us, us ordinary mortals?”
“So the good are allowed to die while the, as you put it, scumbags flourish,” said Redlaw. “Is that it? You’re fine with that? That’s perfectly acceptable in your world?”
“I never said they flourish.”
“They seem to. There’s evil all around, sin on every street corner, and nobody seems too bothered by it. God certainly not.”
“Ah, and that’s the paradox, Captain Redlaw. The great unresolvable.” Father Dixon took a long, deep pull on his beer. A thin strip of froth adhered to his top lip. “Why does God allow evil to exist in the world, when it’s surely in His power to stamp it out? The thing is, evil isn’t fixed or quantifiable. Evil people aren’t aware that they’re evil. To them, committing foul or harmful deeds is of no consequence. They’ve somehow squared it morally with themselves. They feel no more guilty about it than I do about having this beer. Which is to say, slightly guilty but not to the extent that I’m going to stop. Same with you and your peccadilloes. If you have any. Come to think of it, you probably don’t.”
“I have my moments.”
“I doubt it. God, at any rate, has given each of us free will to decide whether to do good or bad. It’s His greatest and also most perplexing gift, in that it pre-empts Him—the New Testament version of Him at any rate—from ever taking action against malefactors. It’s our responsibility to be good, He’s telling us, not His. It’s all down to us.”
“Regardless of that, evil is wrong and should be punished.”
“Oh, no argument here. Transgressing man’s laws, never mind God’s, is a bad thing. Luckily we have fine law enforcement professionals such as yourself to apprehend and bring to justice anyone who does.”
“So where does that leave vampires?” Redlaw asked.
Father Dixon looked calculatingly across the room at him. “Unequivocally evil. I’d have thought that was obvious. Monsters. Abominations. Things of the pit. That’s why men and women of faith are required to police them. Stands to reason. Men and women of faith armed with Holy Water bombs and whacking great handguns. Are you not so sure about that, John? Even after what’s just happened to Róisín?”
Just then, before Redlaw could frame a reply, the vicarage phone rang. A parishioner in need. A mother whose infant son had a life-threatening brain tumour and who was in the depths of despair and seeking pastoral counselling.
“No rest for the non-wicked,” said Father Dixon as he grabbed his coat and bicycle lock. “We’ll resume this discussion another time, I trust.”
But the subject hadn’t come up again. Redlaw had been reluctant to revisit it, and Father Dixon had sensed his reticence and, the soul of tact, let the matter lie.
FATHER DIXON’S CHUCKLE. The beer froth on his lip. The moment faded in Redlaw’s memory. Father Dixon was dead too. Shot by Lieutenant Khalid, having taken a bullet meant for Redlaw. Another good person gone to their reward. Another profound loss. Another body-blow to Redlaw’s faith.
Redlaw and Denzel Lomax circuited the factory perimeter one more time, trudging through their own footprints in the snow. One of them left white vapour puffs behind him as he breathed, the other did not.
“If I am to be the shtriga of your group,” Redlaw said eventually, “I may not always go easy on you. But it will always be for your own good.”
Denzel considered this, then grinned. “Long as you’re looking out for us, that works for me.”
Vampires—unequivocally evil?
Father Dixon had been right on many counts, but in this one instance, where he had been at his most dogmatic, he had also been at his most mistaken.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
JACOBSEN WAS ALL in favour of heading right back out into the field and hunting down Redlaw and the remaining vampires. Time was wasting. The longer the delay, the grea
ter chance of losing them. America was a big place. Hell, New York was a big place. There were a million and one little nooks and crevices the vamps could hide in, and even Farthingale, with his uncannily accurate source of intel, might not be able to pinpoint their whereabouts.
On arriving back at Red Eye headquarters, however, he had to acknowledge that his team was in no fit state to turn and burn. They were all exhausted and, in the cases of Berger, Lim and Abbotts, in pain as well. They could hardly be expected to go haring off on another mission straight away. The first order of the day—or rather, of the night—was rest and recuperation.
Technicians were ready for them in the basement levels of the house on East 84th. The remedy for Team Red Eye’s fatigue and injuries was a fresh course of treatment—another dose of the Porphyrian process. In a large, antiseptic-smelling chamber, all six soldiers stripped to their underwear and allowed themselves to be strapped to gurneys by means of Kevlar restraints round their wrists and ankles. The restraints were as much for the techs’ benefit as the soldiers’. Things could get pretty wild once the treatment was under way. Wild and potentially hazardous.
Each of the team was injected with a solution containing the active ingredient known as PP-66, the successful end-product of the sixty-sixth attempt by Farthingale’s research scientists to extract vampire DNA and make it compatible with that of humans. Or, to put it another way, weaponise it.
Jacobsen wasn’t any too clear on the specifics. He knew some kind of vector was involved, a modified retroviral pathogen which carried the PP-66 round the subject’s body and installed it at a cellular level, like an infection. He knew also that the vampire DNA had been tweaked in order to tone down many of a vamp’s less desirable characteristics, though not all of them. Some, such as vulnerability to sunlight and a taste for human haemoglobin, could not be completely edited or excised. They were too fundamental, it seemed, too intrinsic a part of vampirism.
Beyond that, it wasn’t Jacobsen’s business to enquire too deeply. A good soldier never asked questions. The process worked, that was all he needed to know.
It hurt, too.
The techs beat a hasty retreat, locking the chamber door behind them, and Team Red Eye waited for the PP-66 to take effect. Jacobsen cast a rueful glance over at the empty seventh gurney where PFC Larousse ought to have been. Then he looked briefly at Berger, catching her eye. She responded with a grim smile. They all knew what was coming next, and none of them was looking forward to it.
The pain hit. At first it felt like a fever. A sharp rise in body temperature. Sweats. Muscle cramps. It rapidly blossomed from there into a grinding, marrow-deep ache, as though a million maggots were boring tunnels inside your bones. This sensation grew and grew until it was unbearable.
And that was only the beginning, the initial phase. Soon Jacobsen was lost in a long, seemingly endless continuum of agony. His conscious mind fought to blot out the pain but couldn’t. It was like trying to contain a volcanic eruption. All the pain management techniques the army had taught him, the mental tricks for withstanding torture, were useless. They meant nothing when your veins were channels for molten lava and your flesh was on fire.
There was screaming and groaning all around him. He glimpsed Abbotts gibbering, frothing at the mouth. Child wept and sobbed like an infant. Giacoia was bleeding from the nose and eyes. Lim was nothing but a writhe of tendon and sinew, bucking and thrashing so hard that at times he rose clear of the gurney, bent almost double, his spine a perfect arch.
On it went. At most, the treatment lasted three quarters of an hour. But it was such a hellish three quarters of an hour that time became irrelevant. It might as well have been eternity. The digital clock on the wall was no help. Jacobsen could look at it but make no sense of the numerals. They warped and shifted until they resembled Hebrew script, or a mocking robotic face, or just empty black orifices outlined in red.
It was only when the clock’s numerals settled down and became intelligible once more that Jacobsen realised he was through the worst of it. The pain ebbed. Now and then it would rise to a peak again, but the intervals between these spikes widened. He clenched his jaw and rode them out, sinking blissfully into the increasingly long lulls.
Soon he was almost at normal. A sense-memory of the ordeal lingered, like a scorch mark in his psyche, but otherwise he felt good. Not just good—great. Reinvigorated.
And thirsty. Oh, so thirsty.
His whole self cried out for just one thing. He looked round at his comrades and they were full of what he craved. Their bodies were ripe to bursting with it, like succulent juicy fruit. He was desperate to rip them open and gorge himself on the crimson nectar inside. The urge was so strong, it nearly overwhelmed him. If not for the restraints he might have given in to it.
The technicians entered, and they brought with them large plastic squeeze-packs of human blood, which they distributed among the members of Team Red Eye. The restraints had just enough slack in them to allow the soldiers to uncap the squeeze-packs and guzzle the contents. As the blood slithered down his throat Jacobsen’s thirst abated and the haze of need in his head cleared. His thoughts became entirely his own again.
Before any restraints were undone, the techs asked each soldier to give name, rank, serial number from time of service, and social security number. The checklist determined whether or not they were in full control of their faculties.
Jacobsen reeled off the data without pause or error, and was released. He stood and stretched. The overhead fluorescent striplights were harshly bright and buzzed like swarming bees. The sound of Velcro parting as Child was freed from his restraints was as loud as firecrackers. One technician’s cologne was cloyingly sweet, another’s underarm odour repellently pungent. Jacobsen could even smell Berger’s pussy, and he divined that she was in a state of mild arousal, which in turn made him feel very randy indeed.
This was what made the forty-five minutes of pain worthwhile, this incredible flowering of the senses, this renewed surge of power and vitality. The Porphyrian process wasn’t permanent. It started to wear off within twenty-four hours and so required constant re-application. It was a boost to the system, vampiric Viagra, which the human metabolism couldn’t tolerate for long and invariably rejected in the end. It was a genetic fix, not a mutation.
That was fine by Jacobsen. If the alterations had been irrevocable, he would never have agreed to undergo the treatments in the first place. He was no idiot. Who would want to be a quasi-vampire for the rest of their days? Whereas to have the best vampiric traits for just a while, to experience superhuman levels of strength, speed, stamina, agility, sensory awareness...
A commotion to his right. Jacobsen spun round to see Abbotts with his hands around a technician’s neck. Abbotts was clawing at the man’s throat, apparently trying to tear it open with his bare fingernails.
Jacobsen sprang across the room. He thrust his arms up inside Abbotts’ and levered them apart, breaking the private’s grip on the tech. Then he rammed Abbotts down on the gurney, pinning him in place.
“What the fuck, private?” he roared.
“Blood!” Abbotts cried. “I feel so hollow. I want more. I want his.”
“Stand down, Abbotts. We do not do this. We do not attack civilians.”
“I want... I want...”
Abbotts resisted with all his might, straining to be free. Child appeared at Jacobsen’s side and joined him in keeping Abbotts in place. Together they wrestled the Alabaman back into the restraints. Abbotts mewled and snarled. His eyes were bright with wanton greed.
Jacobsen snatched up a spare squeeze-pack and emptied it down Abbotts’s gullet. Abbotts nearly choked, but managed to swallow most of the blood. Gradually he calmed.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I just... I couldn’t control it, you know?”
“No,” said Jacobsen, “I don’t know.”
“Let me up. I’m okay now. It won’t happen again.”
“I don’t think so.” Jacobsen
glanced at the technician, who was being comforted by his colleagues. There were raw red weals on the man’s neck. He looked—understandably—very shaken. “You’re going to stay put for the next couple of hours, Abbotts.”
“But colonel...”
“No fucking arguments. Until I’m sure you’re safe to be around again, you aren’t going anywhere. Understood?”
“But—”
“Is that understood, private? Because, believe me, the way I’m feeling right now, I’d happily pound your brains to oatmeal.”
Abbotts, with his torn, disfigured face, looked surly but resigned. “Yes, sir,” he murmured, adding, “Ain’t as if you just watched a friend drown or anything.”
“No, but a soldier under my command is dead,” Jacobsen retorted, “and you’d be sorely mistaken if you think I take that lightly.” He turned to Giacoia. “Oversee this, lieutenant. Two hours tied to that table, so’s he can learn a little self-discipline. The rest of you, to your quarters. Grab some sack time.”
Jacobsen stalked out of the chamber.
He went to his own quarters and sat on the bed flicking through a copy of Stars And Stripes which he’d borrowed from the rec room.
The newspaper reminded him how he used to have a cause once, a vocation. He had stood for something until, at the age of forty-one, he’d become aware that he was considered too old to stand for it any more. He had been faced with accepting an administrative post or a job training recruits. Neither appealed. Better to get out altogether than continue as a shadow of his former self, a ghost soldier, washed-up, pointless, army surplus.
His restlessness deepened. He tried to distract himself with a game of Angry Birds, but couldn’t seem to make any progress through the levels. There was a nagging itch in his brain. A compulsion. An urge.
Finally he gave in to it. He got up and made his way to the ready room, where he donned battle fatigues and body armour and gathered a selection of weapons, as much ordnance as he could carry in one load. He deliberately didn’t take a helmet. No camera, no comms. No one looking over his shoulder.
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