Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  “As for myself: I need hardly add that I didn’t wait to see what they would do or if I could reason with them, but fled the other way. Aft and starboard, I went, to the last faint glimmer of daylight, and what little remained of sanity…”

  5

  Undead in the Med

  NICOLAE RUSU HAD FALLEN SILENT, HIS EYES staring blankly into the near-distant past at terrible scenes he would never be able to forget. Trask supposed so, anyway, and let him stay that way for a minute or two. But time wasn’t on Trask’s side, and in a little while he said:

  “Look, Nick, we understand how difficult this must be for you, but there are things we need to know. We’re going back to that ship in an hour or so’s time, and—”

  “We?” The other started back into awareness, a tic jerking the flesh at the corner of his mouth as his eyes suddenly focussed on Trask. “Did you say we are going back? No—” he gave a wild shake of his head, “—no, you may be going back, but I am going to find a place to hide until we’re under way and gone from here!” He gripped Trask’s arm and tried to rise, but Lardis held him down.

  “Just you hold still, son,” the Old Lidesci told him then. “He didn’t mean you. You’re not going anywhere. I reckon you’ve seen enough of that ship to last a good many lifetimes. But the fact is we have to go back. It’s our duty. There’s something we have to do before we sink her.”

  “Sink her?” Rusu looked at him. “Really? The…the Evening Star?”

  “All the way to the bottom,” Lardis nodded. “And every poor bloodsucking bastard aboard her.”

  “But then…why go back?” Rusu was logical at least. “Why not just do it? It would be a mercy to everyone on board.”

  Lardis looked at Trask.

  But Trask couldn’t tell Nick Rusu the real reason; Rusu had more than enough things to nightmare about already. And so, “We have to be sure there are no more survivors,” he lied, and that came hard to him despite that it was a white lie. For to Trask the truth was all-important. “If it was you, you wouldn’t want to have been left stranded on that ship, would you?”

  “God, no!” the other shuddered long and uncontrollably. And then, gripping Trask’s arm more tightly yet, “But listen, I was stranded on that ship, and I’m telling you there are definitely no more survivors. Take my word for it, they’re all gone.”

  Trask nodded and said, “You know that, don’t you, Nick? You know it because you saw everything.”

  “Not everything,” the other shook his head. “But enough.”

  “Be as brief as you want to be, then,” said Trask, “but tell us about it.”

  “But it’s all a jumble,” Rusu protested. “A whirling tangle of terrible images…three nights of hell…like an endless nightmare of blood and terror!”

  “What if I ask you specific questions?” said Trask. “Do you think you could handle that? We really do need your help.”

  Rusu released Trask’s arm, lay back again, said, “Ask away. And if I know the answers, I’ll…I’ll try to tell you.”

  “What about the other lifeboats?” said Trask. “Initially—I mean in the beginning, when Malinari and Vavara, creatures we call ‘Great Vampires,’ after they’d left, during that first night and the following day—surely there were other survivors? Perhaps even other crew members? How come you, or they, didn’t try to launch another lifeboat?”

  Rusu nodded. “I know what you mean. I thought about it, too. I even tried it, or would have if it had been at all possible.”

  Trask frowned. “It wasn’t possible? But surely, on a modern ship like that, it can’t be too difficult to launch a lifeboat? That would defeat the whole purpose.”

  Rusu gave a weak laugh and said, “They defeated the purpose! Those damned…what? Great Vampires? Don’t ask me why they did it—it could only have been for some perverse reason of their own, perhaps to ensure that everyone on that ship was doomed—but they fixed the lifeboats, every damned one of them.”

  “Fixed them?” Trask repeated him. “You mean they sabotaged them before leaving? Would you care to tell us about it?” Maybe his attitude was too casual; maybe he was hardened to this kind of thing and too unsympathetic; whichever, Rusu’s reaction was violent.

  “No!” he snarled. “I wouldn’t care to tell anyone about it! Jesus Christ—God Almighty—haven’t I said I don’t even want to think about it!” But as once more he tried to rise, so Lardis Lidesci continued to hold him down, saying:

  “Best to get it out of your system, Nick. You have blood of the old people in you—my people, an older race than you could ever imagine, in a world you could scarcely believe—and that will see you through. But if you try to keep these memories all bottled up inside, keep them to yourself…” He shook his head. “They’ll only do you harm.”

  And now Rusu gripped Lardis’s arms, staring deeply into his eyes. “I…I trust you, father,” he said. “And I believe you. So very well, I’ll try…” And in a little while he continued:

  “That first night wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was bad, but it wasn’t the worst. They were still fighting—that is, fighting what was happening to them, not fighting each other, not yet—and while a few were hunting, others hadn’t quite succumbed and were still trying to protect their loved ones. Later…my God! Later they’d be converting their loved ones! But it hadn’t come to that just yet. As for the lifeboats:

  “You saw the Star, the way she’d brought up on those rocks, that little island? I believe it was done that way intentionally, so that there’d be no chance of getting off her once she’d run aground. And it was just their good fortune that they could get away in that one launch. But no, there’s no sense in that, and it seems far more likely it wasn’t so much luck as planned that way. As for the rest of the lifeboats:

  “Apart from a handful at the stern end, what good would it have been to lower them onto rocks? And the situation was such that even if it could be done, there was no way we could carry a boat over that moonscape to the water. I’ll explain the ‘we’ later. But the rocks…well, you saw them. They were jagged, with deep fissures. Over a sandy beach, yes, it would be possible, but no way a half-dozen men could manhandle a heavy boat across even twenty or thirty feet of terrain like that! When I saw those rocks…it was a miracle that my hidey-hole in the bilges hadn’t been ripped open. And me with it!

  “Anyway, I got through that first night. I spent the whole night on the heat-and-fumes baffle—that big collar under the exhaust array—from where I was able to see…to see what was going on. But I…I don’t want to go into that, not just yet. Let it suffice to say that there were other survivors, at least for that one night. And somehow it passed, and it could be that I even managed to sleep a little until it was morning.

  “Blessed morning—and oh, the wailing when the sun came up over the horizon! And the way the decks cleared of that moaning, howling, screaming crowd! They just melted away, back down into the night-dark guts of the ship. Except for a handful that came out, creeping like mice into the sunlight for’ard. And that was where I joined them.

  “They were the ‘we’ I mentioned: the handful who had lived through it. And there were probably plenty of others down below locked in their rooms, who didn’t dare come out—and who could blame them for that? But I didn’t think they’d last through the second day, poor bastards—not with a horde of vampires prowling the lower decks, bars, lounges, and all…

  “And it’s a funny thing—or maybe not so funny—but some of them, for whom it was already too late…they seemed to be trying to pretend that it wasn’t happening! They had the tannoy systems going, and we could hear the Cab Calloway look-alike in the jazz bar doing his stuff. All those old numbers: ‘Minnie the Moocher,’ ‘The Scat Song,’ and…and you know, all that jazz? But I don’t like to think what his audience looked like—how they showed their appreciation—or what they were drinking!

  “Okay, ‘we’: myself, two other deckhands, a ship’s engineer, and a junior steward. That’s it
, all that was left of humanity aboard the vessel. Survivors other than the crew wouldn’t know where to hide, so like I said they’d be shivering in their cabins. But by now the hunting must be well under way, and those doors were oh-so-flimsy. Or maybe they’d be safe, at least during daylight hours. We didn’t know enough to say for sure.

  “About the lifeboats:

  “The engineer—I don’t know his name, didn’t get to know any of their names; we never got around to asking—but anyway, he said we should go aft and see if we could lower a boat. This was a hell of a hard man; he was full of grit, so determined to live through this thing that he lifted our spirits. Well, for a while at least.

  “But those perverse bastard things, those—what was that you called them? Wamphyri?—they’d taken care of all that. The winches had all been sabotaged, and to be doubly sure the boats had been wrecked, too. Any of them that were hanging over clear water, they’d been holed in far too many places to fix.

  “So that was that. We were stuck there in the middle of the ocean, on a ship full of vampires…”

  As Rusu faltered to a halt and his eyes began to glaze over again, Trask prompted him: “But what about the radio? How is it there was just one brief call for help…and then on a mobile-phone frequency?”

  Rusu jerked alert again. “Eh? Oh…the mobile-phone thing? That was me. As for the ship’s radio: well, the first place your bloody Great Vampires headed for was the bridge. The radio room is in an annexe, and after what I had seen as I approached that place…I’m assuming they took care of communications first.

  “And then there was my cell phone…

  “I’m afraid my using that was completely illegal, the first time I’ve ever been glad to break the law!”

  “Illegal?” Trask didn’t understand. “To call for help?”

  “To use a cell phone. On her last trip before this one, just a week or so ago, the Star had trouble with all the sunspot activity. Satellite navigation, ship-to-shore and onboard communications were all very badly affected, made worse by passengers using cell phones. Since the prognosis was for another—perhaps even worse—spell of sunspot activity, cell phones were banned on this trip. Passengers weren’t allowed to bring them on board. But mine was already on board, in my quarters.”

  Trask glanced at his colleagues and nodded. “We experienced something of the sunspot problem ourselves. But in your case—in your position—surely it wasn’t a case of breaking the law? You and your handful of survivors, you were the only legitimate or lawful people aboard.”

  Nicolae Rusu grinned however weakly. “I was making a joke,” he said, “trying to be flippant. I mean, do you really think I gave a damn that the Captain had ruled cell phones out? The Captain was dead, and most everyone else undead! But my cell phone was down in my quarters, and we didn’t know what would be waiting for us down below.”

  Trask blinked his surprise. “You went back down there?”

  “Had to.” Rusu shuddered. “I’d told the engineer about the cell phone and he insisted we go below and retrieve it, that it was our one last chance. He’d found two Verey pistols and some flares, and if we made torches—and if we carried fire axes—we should be able to make it. As it turned out, our going down there was a mistake; it gave us away, told those bloody things that there was a bunch of people up top who hadn’t been got at. And when night fell…when night fell again, they would remember that.

  “Anyway, we waited until midday, when the sun was sizzling hot on the decks and its glare was reflecting off the rocks and the sea, blazing in through all the windows and portholes. Only then did we dare go below…

  “As I told you, my bunk was on B deck down in the guts of the ship. There were passenger cabins down there, too, but crew quarters weren’t nearly so sumptuous. By then the elevators had quit working and we had to use the stairwells. That was okay at first and there was plenty of light from outside. But when we’d got down through the main deck onto A deck, by then the light was very poor. The emergency lighting was still working, but it was flickering, weak, and failing. And the cabin configurations were such that they had the portholes, which kept almost all of the natural light from the gangways. Most of the cabin doorways were open, however—in fact a lot of them had been ripped off their hinges—so that at least a little light from outside did shine through. But…but the light was red! The light shining in from outside, that came in through the open or wrecked doorways into the gangway, was red!

  “And when we checked one of the cabins we saw why. A girl’s body was in there. She’d been savaged, raped, murdered. But…but raped? No, it was worse than that. I could never have imagined anything so bad. She’d been just about torn apart. And her blood and guts had been used to smear the porthole, to keep out the light. And part of her face, her lips and her tongue…it looked like they’d been eaten!

  “Her heart had been cut out of her with—I don’t know—with a fire axe, judging by the mess it had made. But whatever, she wouldn’t be coming back to life. And, God help us—when we came out of that cabin and looked down the gangway—every door that was open, wrecked or just plain massing…the light that was filtering in through them was that same shade of red!”

  As Nicolae Rusu paused, David Chung said, “Ben, we need to get on. We’re only fifteen minutes from the Evening Star, but the light will start fading in about an hour and a half. We have to get through with our business and airborne again before Invincible can finish this thing. Surely we’ve heard enough now from Nick here? I mean—”

  “No!” Lardis interrupted. “Let him finish. It can’t hurt us to know, and I think in the long run it will be good for him. I feel a certain kinship, and it’s no more than I’d do for one of my own on Sunside.”

  Looking at Lardis, Trask nodded. “We owe him to let him get this out of his system. We have the Star’s schematics, so we’re not going in blind. Also, it isn’t as if those poor bastards on that wreck are…experienced. They’re neither lieutenants nor even true thralls. They’re just…just vampires, and we’ve had far worse to deal with in our time. And anyway, as night begins to fall the first of them will be on the prowl. Who can say, it might even make our task easier to have one of them come to us, instead of having to hunt one down.” He nodded again and turned back to Rusu. “So I’ll leave it up to you, Nick. If you want to go on, we’re listening.”

  Rusu was no longer trembling. His eyes were fully focussed, and he looked a lot steadier now. “You must be very brave men,” he said. “Which makes me feel like the world’s worst coward.”

  “No need for you to feel that way,” Trask told him gruffly. “We really do know what you’ve been through.”

  “But knowing what’s waiting for you on that ship, and then to go back to it…?”

  “It’s our job,” said Lardis. “It’s what we do.”

  “Rather you than me,” said Rusu. “But if that’s the way it is—if you’ll risk your lives that way—then what have I got to lose? All I’m doing is telling my story.”

  “Out with it, then,” said Lardis, “for time’s wasting.”

  And Rusu nodded and quickly went on:

  “Some of the cabins on A deck that still had doors…we could hear movement behind them. But not knowing what was waiting for us in there—not knowing if they were survivors or…or something else—we didn’t wait around but crept on down to B deck. And this far, despite all the many hundreds of people and crew on that big ship, we hadn’t seen a single one. Not one that was living, anyway.

  “But dead people? Oh, there’d been plenty of those. They’d littered the stairwells, men, women, and kids, and all of them so badly mangled that they were past any kind of recovery. I mean, they were just dead, really dead! Most of them were either old ones or very young ones, and all of them were weak ones. They’d paid the price first, of course. And as for the living, if you want to call them that—the ones we hadn’t as yet seen, not in daylight hours, anyway—well, plainly they weren’t just drinking blood but ea
ting flesh, too. Some of those corpses…God, they’d been well chewed down! The stairwells, the gangways, and the cabins; there was blood and guts everywhere. The whole ship stank of blood and shit and death.

  “But the worst, most nerve-wracking thing by far was this: we knew that for every corpse we’d seen there were at least two others who were still ‘alive,’ sleeping or hiding there, crouching and listening there, red-mouthed, feral-eyed, and full of a feverish, hideous strength there. And of course that was why we crept…

  “We made it down onto B deck…and then everything went wrong. By then the light was very bad. Only our torches, electric and flaring both, sustained us. We had thought to go unobserved, unheard, unobstructed—huh! But when they’re no longer human it appears their senses become far more highly tuned. And already they were accepting what had happened to them, becoming organized, and sorting themselves into groups and hunting parties. So maybe they had been aware of us all along, and B deck being in the guts of the ship, down in the darkest levels, that was the obvious place to spring their trap.

  “We reached my cabin and found the door hanging open. Everything inside had been turned upside down, thrown about all over the place, so it took me a while to find the cell phone. While I searched through the jumble the others kept watch, and just as I found what I was looking for under a pile of my clothing, so I heard one of the other deckhands hiss a warning; he thought he’d seen movement in the shadows at one end of the gangway. A moment later, the big, burly engineer cursed and fired a Verey light. He was good at cursing—every other word was ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ or ‘bastard’—but I’d never in my life heard anything like the stream of abuse that came out of him then! The reason why was obvious, and when he reached into my cabin, grabbed me and dragged me out into the gangway…I saw it for myself.

  “Back the way we’d come, down the aft stairwells, the vampires were massing—but I do mean they were massing! The engineer’s flare had glanced off a bulkhead, gone skittering almost all the way along the gangway. And there it was sizzling away, spinning about all over the place—like a blob of raw sodium on water, or a drop of grease in a hot pan—creating a brilliant, dazzling ball of light in a wreathing cloud of pink smoke. And leaping and dancing in the smoke, skipping to avoid contact with the thing, a dozen or more people—men and women both, or things that had been people—were outlined in its glare. And behind them, crowding the stairwell, a sea of feral faces swam in a secondary darkness made luminous by their firefly eyes!