Darkest Night

by Will Hill

  Kate and Shaun.

  Jamie and Larissa.

  In a display of resilience that Matt could still scarcely comprehend, Kate had managed to move on from the terrible sight of her boyfriend lying dead in front of her, his neck broken, his eyes wide and staring up at nothing. But although she had found the strength to keep getting out of bed each morning, Matt didn’t believe for a second that she was really, truly over what had happened to Shaun; he doubted, in all honesty, that she ever would be.

  He had similar doubts about his best friend. It was painfully clear to everyone that Jamie still missed Larissa so much that it hurt, despite his protestations to the contrary. Matt had been furious when Kate told him that Larissa was gone, had disappeared into the night without so much as a goodbye, so he could not imagine the depths of anger and misery Jamie must be feeling. In truth, Matt had worried for a while that it might prove the final straw; his friend had been beset by a trio of revelations that would have been hard for anyone to deal with – the truth about his dad, and Frankenstein, and the sudden disappearance of the girl he had relied on far more than he wanted people to know – and it had taken Matt a number of long weeks to truly believe that Jamie was going to be able to carry on.

  Be grateful, he told himself. For Natalia, and Jamie, and Kate, and for the simple fact that you’re still breathing in and out. Because the world could literally end at any moment.

  Matt looked around the long rectangular space that comprised the Lazarus Project’s central laboratory. There were three more large labs, sealed behind airlocks and disinfectant showers, along with a twenty-four-hour canteen and two corridors of quarters for those men and women who chose to eat and work and sleep without ever setting foot beyond the project’s borders. He briefly considered trying to persuade Natalia to call it a day as well, but saw the lines of data scrolling down her screen and decided not to disturb her. He would send her a message later. With that settled, he reached for his mouse, intending to log out of the Lazarus network, and paused as a window popped open at the bottom of his screen.

  He groaned inwardly. The window was an automated notification, informing him that the results of his most recent set of data runs were now available, and for a brief moment he considered pretending he hadn’t seen it and leaving as he’d intended. But he knew he couldn’t; he knew that wondering about the results would prevent him sleeping, regardless of how tired he was. Instead, he clicked the window open, and double-clicked on the secure link that would load the results. While the computer worked, Matt lowered himself back into his chair and waited.

  The data he had brought back from San Francisco had allowed Lazarus to take giant leaps forward; it was no exaggeration to claim that it had saved years of research and development. To best handle the huge amount of new data, the project had subsequently been separated into eight smaller teams, each working independently, each focused entirely on one aspect of the search for the cure. Matt’s team had been tasked with analysing the protein coat and envelope of lipids that enclosed the genetic material of the vampire virus itself, and had made rapid progress, to the point that it was widely believed they had learnt all there was to learn.

  It was clear that the genetic material inside the virus was responsible for the DNA rewriting that took place in the early stages of the turn, and contained the trigger which began the physical alteration, but Matt had retained a nagging suspicion that the key to undoing the transformation lay in the protein coat rather than what it surrounded, and he had designed structure after structure based on that suspicion. The results that were now loading were the last of what had been officially listed as a dead end, a line of enquiry that the project had moved on from, but which Matt had found himself strangely unwilling to drop.

  The screen filled with data, with page after page of equations and genetic analysis. Several lines of text and numbers were purple, and Matt recognised them instantly; they were the protein pairs that had been extracted from the DNA in John Bell’s blood, the first reliable building blocks for what would eventually be the genetic blueprint of a cure for vampirism. Matt scanned the rest of the lines, reaquainting himself with the structure he had built, one of literally thousands that he had sent into the supercomputer array for testing over the last year or so. Forty-three per cent of the structure had been confirmed when he sent it in, which was about normal for a test formula; it didn’t sound like much, but the percentage had been a lot lower before Matt scraped John Bell’s blood and flesh up from the tarmac beneath the wheels of a truck.

  Matt tabbed past the structural overview to the preliminary testing results, and sat forward to read them. He skipped the document’s first section, which was the Analysis Team’s assessment of the design he had submitted, confirming that it met all the criteria to be taken forward for testing. The second section detailed the results of their attempts to physically produce the gene itself, hundreds of lines generated by the sequencers and growth managers showing that this particular gene could be provisionally manufactured with ninety-seven per cent reliability. The third and final section showed what had happened when the gene was introduced into cells infected with the vampire virus, and was always the point at which hopes were dashed. Every set of test results had concluded with the word NEGATIVE, eight letters that every member of the Lazarus Project had come to both hate and expect.

  But as Matt looked at the screen, he saw that this report was different; there were two words at the bottom of the document, rather than one, and they were words he had never seen before.

  VIABLE REACTION

  Matt was suddenly aware that his mouth was incredibly dry. He stared at the screen, trying to comprehend what he was seeing, trying not to let his brain go racing ahead of itself, then picked up the phone on his desk and dialled the number for the testing laboratory.

  “Analysis,” answered a voice.

  “Hey,” said Matt, trying to force himself to at least sound calm. “I sent a sample through three days ago and I’ve just got the results back. Can you tell me if these are simulated findings?”

  “Which sample?”

  “Submission 85403/B.”

  “Hang on,” said the voice. “Let me just bring it up …”

  Matt held his breath.

  “OK, got it,” said the voice. “Those are real-world results. I’m looking at the production vials right now.”

  Matt felt a shiver race up his spine. “You’re sure?” he said. “You’re absolutely sure? The computers really built this and this is really what it did?”

  “I’m sure,” said the voice. “Why? What do the results say?”

  Matt looked back at the two words at the bottom of the document, as if he was afraid they might have disappeared in the second he had taken his eye off them.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered. “Thanks. I have to go.”

  He hung up the phone, and took a deep breath. There was an unfamiliar feeling spreading slowly through him, one that it took him a moment to identify.

  Hope, he realised. It’s hope. My God. This could change everything.

  Max Wellens strolled through quiet streets, whistling a tune he had been trying to place all evening.

  It was maddening; he was sure it was a television show theme, most likely from his childhood in the 1980s, but none of his friends had been able to identify it, not even Sam, whose knowledge of popular culture was usually encyclopaedic. It was a simple melody – duh-duh-duh-da-duh-dum-duh-da-daa – and it had settled comfortably into Max’s brain, with no sign of it leaving any time soon. The only consolation, as far as he was concerned, was that he had successfully managed to pass the earworm on to his friends; both Dan and Barry had left the pub humming it, cursing him as they went.

  Max smiled at the memory as he turned off the high street and headed for the park gates. It had been a good night: United had won in the Champions League, the special had been pulled pork burgers, and everyone had been on good form, laughing and joking and mocking each other, as they had been
doing for the fifteen years since they met on the first day of senior school. But, as it always did, the walk home from the pub filled Max with pre-emptive nostalgia; he had at least a couple of years before he needed to worry, but he knew there was going to come a time when his youthful appearance was going to raise questions that he could no longer answer with claims of yoga and a balanced diet. When that time came, he would leave Nottingham for somewhere nobody knew him and start again; he knew he would have the strength to do it, but the prospect, unavoidable as it was, nonetheless tightened his chest with sadness.

  Part of him believed he should simply tell his friends the truth; he was sure they wouldn’t judge him, and it was far from an uncommon problem these days. But he knew it would change things. And he didn’t want things to change; he never had.

  The sound of the cars and the yellow glow of the street lights on the main road faded away as he walked into the park, his footsteps clicking rapidly across the tarmac of the main path. Trees towered above him on all sides, and Max could hear the movement of animals in the undergrowth and the rustling of branches as they swayed in the gentle night breeze. He followed the path round the lake, past the boats tied up to a small wooden jetty, and out across the football pitches, their rusting goalposts gleaming in the moonlight. On the far side of the field, Max heard voices and laughter coming from the playground. He headed towards it, knowing what he would find: teenagers drinking cheap booze and smoking cheap cigarettes, exactly as he and his friends had done in a dozen similar parks when they were the same age.

  “Mate, you got a fag?”

  The voice came from the swings at the centre of the park, and Max turned towards it. There were five teenagers clustered round the metal frame and three actually sitting on the seats, as clear a social hierarchy as it was possible to imagine. The boy who had spoken was in the middle, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a thick hoodie, and staring at Max with an expression that he no doubt thought looked hard.

  “Don’t smoke,” said Max. “Sorry.”

  The teenager looked at him for a long moment. “Prick,” he muttered, the volume of his voice clearly intended to be audible to Max. Two of the girls giggled in approval, and one of the standing boys, clearly a member of the lower order of the playground hierarchy, clapped him on the back.

  Max stopped. He had no doubt they were harmless, just as he and his friends had been, but he was full of a sudden urge to teach them a lesson, to make them realise that there were things in the night that were far more dangerous than kids full of cider-inflated bravado. And on a gut level, in the base part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone, he was hungry.

  “What?” asked the teenage boy, getting up from his swing. “You got a problem?”

  Max stared at him, feeling the first flush of heat behind his eyes. The boy’s acne-ridden face was pale in the moonlight, his mouth curled into an arrogant smile.

  Don’t rise to it, he told himself. There’s eight of them. Too many.

  “No problem,” he said. “Have a good night.”

  He walked along the path towards the west gate without a backward glance, knowing the boy would stare daggers after him until he was out of sight; it would be no less than his friends would expect. Max strode through the gate and into the quiet estate where he’d lived for the last five years; his house was a square brick box standing behind a paved drive and a small lawn that he only mowed in the evenings. He unlocked the front door, hung his coat on the hook rack in the hall, and walked through to the living room where he flopped down on to the sofa, put the TV on, and was asleep within a minute.

  Thud. Thud thud.

  Max’s eyes flew open, his heart racing in his chest. He had dreamt of her again, the same dream as always: the trees, the blood, the screams, the freezing water. He sat up on the sofa, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the one that had been his mother’s.

  Two forty-three, he thought. Almost three in the morning.

  He got unsteadily to his feet. Something had woken him, something that had managed to penetrate the fabric of his dream and engage his conscious mind. Max went to the window, slid open the curtains that were always closed, and peered out at the dark street.

  Thud. Thud thud thud thud.

  He jumped. The sound was coming from the front of the house.

  Someone was knocking on his door.

  Max pulled his phone from his pocket and checked its screen. No messages. No missed calls. Slowly, his heart pounding, he walked out into the hallway and turned on the lights. A dark silhouette loomed outside the front door, clearly visible through the pane of frosted glass.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, and heard a tremor in his voice.

  “Nottinghamshire Police, sir,” came the reply. “Open the door, please.”

  Max frowned. “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “We’ve had a complaint of a disturbance at this address, sir.”

  “There’s no disturbance here,” said Max. “You must have the wrong house.”

  “Sir, we’re required to follow up on all complaints,” said the silhouette. “Please open the door.”

  Max hesitated, then slid the security chain on the back of the door into place. He unlocked the door and pulled it open a few centimetres. “I’d like to see your identification,” he said.

  “No problem, sir,” said the man. A gloved hand pushed a leather wallet through the gap between the door and the frame. Max opened it and found a plastic warrant card in the name of Sergeant Liam Collins of the Nottinghamshire Police.

  He breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed the door shut. “I’m sorry, officer,” he said, as he slid the chain back. “Can’t be too careful, you know?”

  “I understand, sir,” said the man, as the door swung open. “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”

  Max had just enough time to see a circle of glass gleaming in the moonlight. Then a searing beam of purple light blinded him, and his face burst into flames.

  He fell backwards, screaming incoherently and beating desperately at the fire erupting from his skin and hair. The pain was unthinkable, far beyond anything he had ever known, enough to drive reason from his mind; all he knew, on an instinctive level, was that he had to put the fire out, had to stop himself burning. His fangs burst involuntarily from his gums, slicing through his tongue and transforming his screams into high-pitched grunts. One of his eyes was empty blackness and awful, sickening pain, like someone had tipped boiling water over it. Through the other, he saw billowing smoke as he clawed at his face and head, and the dreadful sight of two men dressed all in black stepping into his house and shutting the door behind them.

  The pain in his head lessened fractionally as his pounding fists finally extinguished the flames. The skin on his hands was charred red and black and peeling away in wide sheets, revealing the pink muscle beneath. Max tried to focus, but felt his reeling body resist him as he rolled over on to his front and crawled towards the kitchen, each agonising centimetre requiring a Herculean effort. He heard voices behind him, but ignored them; his remaining eye was fixed on the fridge, and the bottles of blood he knew were chilling inside it. If he could reach them, perhaps there might still be a chance.

  Then he felt a tiny stab of pain in the side of his neck, and realised there was none.

  He slumped to the ground as the syringe was drawn out of his flesh, as though the power supply to his muscles had been turned off. His ruined tongue slid limply out of his mouth as one of the black-clad men pressed a boot against his ribs and rolled him over on to his back. Max stared up at him, his diminished vision beginning to blur and darken, and managed a single mangled word.

  “Blacklight …”

  The man grunted with laughter. “Not us, mate,” he said, as Max slipped into unconsciousness. “We’re something else.”

  When he awoke again, he could feel the steady vibration of an engine somewhere beneath him. Max opened one eye and the pain came rushing back t
o him, deep, searing agony in his face and scalp. He gritted his teeth and let out a low groan; his stomach was spinning, and he was sure he was going to be sick. He tried to roll on to his side, but couldn’t move; whatever had been in the syringe was still working on him, paralysing his muscles.

  Above him, sitting on a wooden bench and leaning against a metal panel, was one of the dark figures that had burst into his home. He stared up with his good eye and wondered how he had ever mistaken them for Department 19. Max had seen a squad of Blacklight soldiers once, a long time ago, and they had been slick, almost robotic in appearance; the man above him was wearing a black balaclava, a cheap black leather jacket, and a backpack that looked like it had been bought in a sports shop. But then he focused more closely, and felt terror spill through him.

  Painted on the man’s chest, in crude sprays of white, was a wolf’s head, its teeth huge, its jaws open wide. And all of a sudden, Max knew who had him.

  “Night … Stalker …” he managed, his tongue barely obeying his brain’s commands, his mouth filling with saliva.

  The man looked down at him. “Welcome back, mate,” he said. “Don’t try to talk. It’ll just make things worse.”

  Max stared, his eye wide with fear. He tried to move, felt nothing happen, and bore down with all that remained of his strength. His left hand trembled, but stayed flat against the floor.

  “You want me to dose you again?” asked the man. He leant forward and held up a thick black torch. “Stay still or die. It’s up to you.”

  The purple lens seemed huge, as though it was about to swallow Max up. He forced himself to look away, and fixed his gaze on the ceiling above him. It was the roof of a van, moulded metal and plastic, long and wide. Beneath him, the engine rumbled on. He knew what happened to vampires taken by the Night Stalker, had seen the bloody aftermath on the news and online. His only chance was to wait, to not provoke his captors, and hope that enough of his strength returned before they reached wherever they were taking him.