Darkest Night

by Will Hill

  The door behind him swung open, and Jason Neves, the Red Cross site director, stepped into the room. His eyes were wide, his face tight and pale.

  “Are you seeing this?” he asked. “It’s crazy.”

  “I’m watching,” said Allen. “Are all your people out?”

  Neves shook his head. “I’m sorry, General,” he said. “We’ve still got a team inside.”

  Allen narrowed his eyes. “You told me the city was clear.”

  “I thought it was,” said Neves. “The last team stopped to check a social housing block. They were almost out when the petrol stations went up.”

  Allen groaned. “For Christ’s sake,” he said. “You knew the deadline. Everyone in the world knew it. Why didn’t you make them leave?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” asked Neves. “I told them to ignore the block and return to camp, but they refused. If I’d sent a team back in to get them, we’d just have more people stuck inside.”

  “Are there still residents in there?” asked Allen.

  “I’m afraid that’s a certainty,” said Neves. “We evacuated as many as we could, but we couldn’t check every single building in Carcassonne in forty-eight hours. We estimate we got ninety-five per cent.”

  “Goddamnit,” said Allen. He sighed, forcing himself to stay calm. “Where are they? Your team?”

  “They were coming out on the N113,” said Neves. “We lost contact with them somewhere around Rue Claude Debussy.”

  Allen unfolded a map of the city of Carcassonne, spread it out on the table in the middle of the command centre, and traced a finger across it.

  “Four miles from here,” he said. “How many people?”

  “Six,” said Neves. “The team leader is Francisco Rodriguez.”

  “Tell me right now if there’s anything else I need to know, Jason.”

  “There’s nothing else, General,” he said.

  “All right,” said Allen. “Get out and let me deal with this.”

  Neves nodded and backed out of the command centre. As the door swung shut, Bob Allen tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth to prevent the scream of frustration building inside him from gaining release.

  How much clearer could I have been about the deadline? How many times did I tell the goddamn Red Cross and goddamn UNICEF to be out of there at least an hour before? At least!

  He took a long, deep breath, opened his eyes, and stared at the map; the location Neves had given was a residential neighbourhood straddling one of the main roads in and out of Carcassonne, and the ease of a rescue mission was going to depend on exactly where the Red Cross team were. If they had been able to stay on the N113, then it might, just might, be a straightforward extraction. But if the fires that were now burning wildly out of control had forced them into the suburban streets, there was no telling how tight the situation might have become.

  Allen pulled his radio from his belt, typed a code into the keypad, and hit SEND. There was a burst of static, then Danny Lawrence spoke.

  “Sir?”

  “Priority Level 1, Danny,” he said. “I need your squad in the air in ninety seconds. There’s a Red Cross team inside the city.”

  “How many?”

  Allen smiled with pride. Danny hadn’t wasted time asking why there were still civilians inside Carcassonne; his only interest was in acquiring the intelligence he needed.

  “Six,” he said. “I’m sending the coordinates to you now, and I want you to keep a comms channel open throughout. You can expect to meet resistance.”

  “I’m on it, sir,” said Danny.

  “Good boy,” said Allen. “Out.”

  He pressed END and clipped the radio back to his belt. He walked back to the bench, opened a comms window on one of the monitors, and clicked CALL.

  “Paul?” he asked. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Bob,” said Paul Turner, sitting forward in the chair behind his desk as the NS9 Director’s voice emerged from the speakers in the walls of his quarters. “Do you know what the final evacuation figures are?”

  “We don’t have exact numbers,” said Allen. “The Red Cross think we got ninety-five per cent out.”

  “That’s good,” said Turner. “It’s miraculous, to be honest with you.”

  “Thanks,” said Allen. “I don’t think anyone who’s still in there would agree with you, but we did the best we could.”

  “I’m guessing most of those that are still there decided not to go?”

  “Or couldn’t. Like I said, we don’t really know.”

  “Did you get all your people clear?” asked Turner.

  “We did,” said Allen. “Though I’ve just had to send a squad back in to extract a Red Cross team that got caught inside.”

  “What are the emergency services doing?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” said Allen, with a grunt of laughter. “You can see the pictures, Paul. The whole damn city is on fire. Even if I believed for a second that Dracula would let anyone try to put the fires out, which I don’t, there’s nothing they could do. It’s completely out of control.”

  Turner looked at the footage playing on his wall screen; the individual fires had merged into a vast, rapidly spreading inferno. He glanced over at Victor Frankenstein, who was standing beside his desk, an unreadable expression on his face as he watched the screen. Turner had always suspected that Dracula’s move, when it finally came, would be terrible, but he had never even entertained the prospect of the first vampire burning a major European city to ash.

  “Why is he doing this?” he asked. “Why claim a city then destroy it?”

  “I have no idea,” said Allen.

  “He never wanted the whole city,” said Frankenstein. “He wants the old city, the medieval city. You aren’t thinking about this like he is.”

  “What do you mean, Colonel?” asked Allen.

  “Dracula is a medieval General,” said the monster. “I don’t care what he’s learnt about the modern world, or from the battle outside Château Dauncy. Carcassonne is a walled medieval city, high and easily defendable. It is exactly the kind of place he would have taken as his base five hundred years ago. It is his new castle.”

  “So what does burning down the rest of the city get him?” asked Allen.

  “Apart from acting as a show of strength and scaring the hell out of everyone watching?” asked Frankenstein. “It will give him a perimeter, a ring of scorched earth that means nobody can get close without being seen. It’s a no-man’s-land, General. It’s a battlefield.”

  The helicopter descended into the choking grey smoke, its running lights blazing, its engines howling.

  Danny Lawrence sat in the hold, his visor down, his T-Bone resting on his lap, and stared at his squad mates. He had only been working with Anna Clement and José Arias since V-Day, when NS9 had reorganised its entire roster to spread its Operational experience as widely as possible, but he was already entirely comfortable with them. Clement had come from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and was every bit as calm and analytical as Danny would have expected, and Arias had been a Navy SEAL, the elite Special Forces regiment that had sent more men and women to NS9 than any other.

  “Got them,” shouted one of the pilots, over the intercom. “Directly below. Taking us down.”

  The helicopter lurched, sending Danny’s stomach leaping into his throat as it descended rapidly. He raised his visor, and looked at his squad mates.

  “In and out,” he said. “Weapons free the second I open the door. We get them to the LZ and get the hell out of there. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” chorused Clement and Arias.

  Danny nodded, and lowered his visor. He felt no nerves, no doubt, just the calm desire to carry out the orders he had been given and get his squad mates safely back to the camp.

  The Black Hawk touched down with a heavy jolt. Danny was out of his seat instantly, unlocking the heavy access door and hauling it open. Smoke billowed into the hold, and he
felt the heat of the fires through his climate-controlled uniform as he leapt down on to the tarmac. He checked his surroundings as his squad mates followed him out of the helicopter; the street was a long curve, with tightly packed rows of houses running parallel on either side. To the west, towards the N113, he could see nothing but fire, a thick wall of orange that had already engulfed the first half a dozen houses on both sides of the road. To the east, smoke filled the sky, lit from within by ominous flares of red.

  There were still cars on the road, presumably abandoned by the former residents of the street as they fled; they were parked haphazardly, blocking driveways and paths. There was a tangle of crashed vehicles fifty metres east; the Red Cross Land Rover they were looking for was parked in front of this barricade of metal. Through the smoke, Danny could make out the dark shapes of six figures; they were standing beside the jeep, their arms waving frantically in his direction.

  He twisted the comms dial on his belt and spoke directly into the ears of his squad mates.

  “Target to the east,” he shouted. “Fifty metres. All six visible. Arias, lead us in. Clement, with me.”

  Arias immediately crouched and ran forward, T-Bone in his hands, as Clement and Danny followed their colleague, keeping their eyes peeled for movement. The smoke swirled at head height, reducing visibility to a few metres, and the heat and noise of the burning city were overpowering; it was like trying to conduct an Operation in Hell. They reached the Land Rover, and Arias and Clement took up positions facing down the long road as Danny went to the men and women huddled beside it.

  The volunteers had wrapped strips of clothing round their noses and mouths, but their eyes were red and streaming. One of them pointed to the helicopter.

  “We go?” he asked, his voice a rasping croak.

  “Is anyone hurt?” asked Danny.

  The man shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t mean to—”

  “Save it for when we’re back at camp,” interrupted Danny. “Follow me.”

  He raised a hand towards his squad mates, pointed at the helicopter, and clenched his fist. They dropped in behind the six coughing, wheezing volunteers as he led them forward, counting down the metres in his head.

  Forty-five.

  Forty.

  Thirty-five.

  Thirty.

  Twenty-fi—

  A dark shape burst out of the shadows on the south side of the street and streaked towards them, low and fast. Danny skidded to a halt, raised his T-Bone, and pulled the trigger. The stake rocketed out of the barrel, the bang of exploding gas silent amid the roaring cacophony of the burning city, and tore through the gloom.

  The onrushing vampire raised its head at the worst possible moment. The stake plunged through its left eye and out the back of its skull, trailing blood and brain and metal wire; it fell to the ground in a thrashing heap, and Danny hit the button to wind his weapon back in as he sprinted across the road, drawing a stake from his belt as he ran. The T-Bone’s projectile thudded back into the barrel at the same moment he reached the stricken vampire; its remaining eye was rolling wildly, its limbs drumming the concrete, and he thought it was almost a mercy to drive his stake into its chest. As the vampire exploded in a cloud of blood, gunfire rang out behind him and he spun round, searching for his squad mates through the smoke.

  Fresh adrenaline burst through Danny as he saw Arias helping the Red Cross volunteers into the hold and Clement firing her MP7 at something he couldn’t see on the other side of the road. He raised his T-Bone to his shoulder as he ran to her side.

  “Where is it?” he shouted.

  Clement shook her head. “Lost it,” she said. “Definitely tagged it, though.”

  He scanned the empty street. The smoke was darkening and thickening, and visibility was almost down to zero. He twisted another dial on his belt, switching his visor’s filter to infrared, but saw instantly that it was no use; the air around him was so hot that all he saw was a landscape of flat, featureless yellow.

  “Load up!” he shouted, reverting to his normal view. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Clement nodded and ran towards the Black Hawk. He backed up alongside her, his T-Bone at his shoulder, scanning the street for movement, until she leapt up into the hold and extended a gloved hand towards him. Danny grabbed it and climbed up into the helicopter.

  “Everyone in?” he shouted.

  “Yes, sir,” said Arias.

  The volunteers stared up at him; they looked terrified, exhausted by the heat and the smoke.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Danny.

  The engines cycled up, the noise deafening, even over the noise of the inferno, as the Black Hawk hauled itself into the air. Danny leant over to slide the door shut, but as he took hold of the handle he looked down and saw something that froze his heart in his chest.

  A vampire was rising through the smoke, a wild-eyed look on its face as it sped directly towards them. Danny released the handle and reached for his MP7, but there was no time; the vampire rocketed past the open door and slammed into the rotors above. There was an explosion of blood as it disintegrated, followed by a deafening bang as at least one of the rotor blades shattered and the helicopter lurched violently to the left. Danny saw the open doorway leap towards him, and flung his hands out, hoping to feel the metal edges of the frame beneath his gloves. His fingers closed on nothing, and he tumbled out of the helicopter, falling down towards the road.

  He hit the tarmac at an angle and felt his left leg break. The pain was huge, red and full of teeth, and he screamed, the sound lost in the roar of the nightmare unfolding around him. The Black Hawk spun across his view, its stability compromised, its engines howling, its descent wildly out of control. He watched helplessly as it came down on one of the houses, destroying the roof and sinking into the building with a screech of shearing metal and a hail of shattered tiles and glass. There was a moment of stillness that seemed to last forever, until the helicopter’s fuel tanks ignited, and the entire house exploded from within.

  The noise struck Danny momentarily deaf as fire belched up into the sky and the front of the house blew up and out. He managed to get his arms over his head and roll on to his side as chunks of brick and metal hammered down all around him and fuel sprayed out of the remnants of the helicopter in flaming yellow plumes.

  He pushed himself up on to his elbows, and looked at the devastated remains of the house. His ears were ringing with an agonising, high-pitched whine, but he ignored it; his mind was entirely full of the ten lives he knew had just been lost. There was simply no way anybody could have survived such a crash.

  They’re gone! shouted the part of his brain that had kept him alive through countless Operations. You can’t do anything for them now! Focus!

  Danny took a deep breath and surveyed the carnage, forcing himself to think analytically, despite the pain roaring through him. He knew there was no way he could stand on his leg; it was badly broken, the snapped bone visible through his uniform. But if he could drag himself to the Red Cross vehicle, maybe he could manage to drive it using only one leg.

  Maybe.

  The ringing in his ears faded, and was replaced by General Allen shouting for an update.

  “Helicopter down,” said Danny, his voice hoarse with smoke. “I’m the only one that made it out.”

  “Stay right where you are,” shouted Allen. “Don’t move. I’m sending help.”

  Danny looked down the street, to where the vast fire was burning unchecked, and felt a small smile rise on to his face as the tiny flicker of his hope was extinguished. Walking towards him, little more than black silhouettes against the orange inferno, were at least a dozen figures, their eyes glowing bright red.

  “Negative,” he said. “Do not send anyone. The situation is completely compromised.”

  “Cancel that shit!” roared General Allen. “Backup will be there in three minutes! Don’t you give up on me, Danny!”

  “I repeat, sir,” he said, gritt
ing his teeth against the pain, “do not send anyone. There’s going to be nothing left for them to find.”

  The Director shouted something else, but Danny didn’t hear it; he took his helmet off, put it down beside his shattered leg, and lifted his MP7 to his shoulder.

  “Come on then!” he screamed at the advancing line of vampires. “Come on if you’re coming!”

  He squeezed the trigger, sending a volley of fire towards them. They parted like liquid, almost dancing round the bullets, then surged forward at supernatural speed, and Danny had time for one final thought before they were upon him.

  Don’t scream. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

  Three miles away, atop the walls of the medieval city of Carcassonne, Dracula watched the distant helicopter fall from the sky and smiled.

  Welcome to the new world, he thought.

  Paul Turner sat helplessly behind his desk, staring at Frankenstein’s impassive face.

  The two men had listened in impotent horror to Danny Lawrence’s final transmission and Bob Allen’s desperate demands for him to wait, to damn well wait for backup to arrive. Neither had spoken; they had both lost more colleagues than they cared to remember over the years, and they knew that there was nothing they could say that would mean anything to the American Director.

  So much death, thought Turner. So many lives lost already, and the worst is surely still to come.

  His radio buzzed, breaking the silence in the room. He left it lying on his desk and pressed SEND.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “It’s Darcy, sir,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “What is it, Captain?”

  “We’ve confirmed extraction of Pete and Kate Randall from Lincoln General,” said Angela. “They’re on their way back now.”

  “Good,” said Turner. “Let me know when they land.”

  “I will, sir,” said Angela. “But there’s something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Kate Randall was attacked by two men posing as police officers, sir. In her father’s room.”