Tasted blood.
And the river took him.
The last thought that went through his mind before the seizure snatched away his consciousness and he collapsed to the deck was that there was, at least, a fair chance that he might never wake up.
2
A stunned silence fell on the deck of the trawler, and for a moment even the ocean seemed to hold its breath.
Herb watched in open-mouthed astonishment as Dan Bellamy collapsed.
The guy hadn’t spoken a word in hours, and Herb might even have assumed that he had lapsed into unconsciousness in the container, if it weren’t for the occasional low moan of despair or soft grunt of pain. In that heavy darkness, Herb got the distinct impression that he was sharing the space with a broken, tortured man.
Herb’s oldest brother had given his life so that Dan would live, because Dan was the only man in recorded history who had killed a vampire. That made him important, but as earnest and certain as Edgar had been that Dan might hold the key to resisting the vampires, Herb had a hard time believing it, especially now that he could actually see the guy properly for the first time.
Dan was slim—almost scrawny—and of average height, with dark eyes almost buried under a mop of hair that made him look younger than he probably was. He didn’t look like a fighter. What he looked was either scared out of his wits, or crazy. Perhaps both.
The fit—seizure; whatever it was—only served to reinforce the notion that events on the Oceanus must have fractured the poor guy’s mind. Herb wouldn’t have thought it were possible for a man’s muscles to spasm so violently, but when Dan hit the deck, his limbs jerked hard enough that Herb expected to hear the snapping of bone at any moment. Dan’s collapse was, in a way, even more violent and shocking than his father’s execution.
Every member of the trawler’s small crew watched in amazement, unable to tear their gaze away until Dan finally stopped thrashing and lost consciousness.
And the ocean finally exhaled.
Herb turned his attention to his father’s ruined corpse.
Furious, trembling hours spent in the container, dreaming up the harsh truths he was going to deliver to Charles Rennick, but as soon as he saw the old bastard’s face, the rage had just been too much. He had no idea what would happen when he tossed the gun to Dan, but Herb had spent his entire life listening to his father preach about fate this and destiny that.
So Herb let fate decide, figuring that maybe for his father, fate—if such a thing even existed—might look exactly like Dan Bellamy.
So it proved.
And it felt infuriatingly like Charles Rennick got off easy.
Herb took a couple of steps forward, stooping to retrieve the pistol which Dan had dropped. Four more paces, and he was staring down directly on the punctured, leaking remains of his father. He knelt and retrieved a second gun from the dead man’s waistband. That had been the only gun permitted on the trawler: even with his followers comprehensively brainwashed, Charles would not allow anyone else to carry a firearm. Too much potential for trouble, he had said.
Herb grimaced. The old bastard had been right about that, at least. He stood and tucked both guns into his belt, turning to face the rest of the crew.
They regarded him with fear, but also with reverence and loyalty that made his nerves quiver. His father’s words came back to him, laced with contempt.
You’re going to kill me? Then who’ll be the head of the Rennick family? You?
According to custom, Herb was the head of the family now, though he was the last actual Rennick left. The rest of Charles Rennick’s people weren’t blood, but families who had attached themselves to the Rennicks over the generations; people for whom the vampires had become gods to worship. Herb’s duty now was to take his father’s position as the leader of those people, to represent the Order and—above all else—to keep the oath; protect the ancient truce.
To feed the vampires.
Custom.
Duty.
Tradition.
Destiny.
Herb drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
I’m in charge now.
The crew looked at him like machines awaiting the input of their next command, and the corpse on the deck stared at him reproachfully, making his emotions tumble.
With a grunt, Herb grabbed a fistful of his dead father’s coat, and dragged the steaming corpse to the low rail that ran around the deck.
When he tossed the body overboard, Herb stared down at it for several moments as it refused to sink; bobbing stubbornly on the dark water. What was left of his father’s eyes seemed to point accusingly at him, no matter which way the waves rolled.
Herb turned away.
“Turn this boat around,” he said in a flat tone to nobody in particular. “We’re going home.”
*
The Sea Shanty had been a factory fishing trawler in a previous life. At a little over one hundred and twenty feet, it would have looked like a toy alongside the cruise ship its black-market weaponry had sunk hours earlier, but in its heyday the Shanty had been just about the largest dragger money could buy.
Two huge freezer holds—once piled floor-to-ceiling with squirming life plucked from the Atlantic—devoured the majority of the space on the boat. The engine room took up most of the rest. What was left over was all about compromise: humans were afforded very little space to live and work in, no more than skinny corridors connecting a few anaemic rooms which were barely big enough for the average man to stand up straight in.
The deck area, when the Shanty had been a working vessel, had been a complicated network of potential death traps which tested the awareness of the boat’s crew continually, underlining that people and their comfort were strictly a secondary concern. After all, it was the fish in the Shanty’s belly that truly mattered.
The larger of the two holds was reliving its glory days; once more it carried precious cargo.
Herb had two of the crew place Dan inside, atop a pile of rags and filthy blankets. All of Herb’s attempts to wake the man—up to and including delivering a slap that made his palm sing—had failed. Whatever was wrong with the guy was far beyond the medical knowledge of anyone on the trawler. If he had a role to play in destiny, Herb thought sourly, Dan Bellamy would have to come through whatever was ailing him of his own accord.
He padlocked the hold, slipping the key into his pocket, and made his way back out onto the deck, his head bowed against the wind and rain until he reached the wheelhouse. Three of the crew were in there, watching him nervously, but Herb moved right past them, stepping into a smaller room to the rear which his father had turned into a sort of private office.
Inside, there was a small desk and a couple of chairs and not much else, other than a half-empty bottle of brandy which was rolling slowly from one side of the room to the other with each wave that buffeted the hull. Herb snatched up the liquor and slumped into one of the chairs, and for a while he focused on nothing other than the pleasant burning sensation in his throat as he took large gulps.
Through the gathering fog which the alcohol lowered across his thoughts, the question came, as he knew it would.
What am I doing?
Herb knew what he ought to be doing, and that was running; pointing the Shanty at some remote island somewhere and never looking back. He had always wanted to run, to just pick a direction and get as far away from the fanaticism of the compound on which he had been raised as he possibly could. In the end, he told himself that he stayed for his brothers, but would have readily conceded that it was more likely a simple matter of cowardice. Even if he had managed to flee, his father would have come after him. Rennick blood, after all, came with a sacred obligation.
Even if Charles Rennick had let his youngest son go, some other part of the Order would have hunted him relentlessly, until they were certain that he was dead—along with everything he knew.
He had failed.
Failed to run.
Failed to persuade his
brothers that mass murder would cost them all their souls if not their lives, that they were far from the good guys with a noble burden that their father had always maintained.
And, even while Herb was aboard the Oceanus, surrounded by death and madness, he had tried to save a man—just one man; to do one thing that was good amongst all the horror…
…and that man was dead.
Corrosive memories flooded back to Herb, crystal clear and debilitating: the wall of fire and the hideous monster that strolled through it nonchalantly, laughing as it prepared to devour him; the security officer blowing his own head off rather than face the abomination on the other side of a barricaded door. Edgar, pushing Herb inside the shipping container and locking the doors, turning to face the monster that he knew was behind him.
And screaming right outside those doors as the last of the Three tore him to pieces. That had been an armour-piercing sound, and hearing it had cast a sickly pall of grief and anger over Herb’s thoughts which he doubted would ever truly lift.
He shook his head thickly, and a groan escaped his lips. He had to occupy his mind with something. Reliving the nightmare would drive him mad.
He took another large swallow of the brandy and began to rifle through the desk drawers, finally finding what he was looking for in the lowest of them: a first-aid tin which looked like it hadn’t been opened in decades. He pried off the lid and surveyed the predictably disappointing contents. A single half-empty bottle of antiseptic; a box of painkillers that had to be years out of date; a faded yellow bandage.
He set the open tin on the desk in front of him.
Took another drink.
Gritted his teeth as he peeled off his jacket and removed what felt like most of his left arm along with it.
Wincing more out of revulsion than pain, Herb dropped his gaze to the burned limb. His pale flesh had been painted a livid red and was covered with weeping blisters. Along the forearm, where the fire had really taken hold, Herb saw that his skin was pockmarked by wide, shallow craters: layers of meat and fat that had melted away to leave revolting indentations. The arm smelled sweet and cloying and sickly, like a plate of pork and apple sauce that had been left to rot in the sun.
Herb choked back the urge to retch and dumped his jacket on the floor before prising the crusty cap off the ancient bottle of antiseptic. When he poured the clear liquid across his wounds, he was grateful that he still felt no pain, but the sight of his own dead flesh being sluiced away was its own kind of torment.
Once the small bottle was empty, he wrapped the arm tightly in the old bandage, uncertain whether a burn should be covered or left to breathe, and ultimately deciding not to risk leaving his skin exposed.
When he was done, he took another long drink.
Set the brandy down on the desk.
And dropped his head into his hands as the tears came at last.
3
Herb was still staring at his feet, sniffling softly and trying to sift through the chaos in his mind, when the door opened and footsteps made their way toward him. He knew there was only one man on the Shanty who would dare to follow him into the cabin and, in the end, he was surprised it had taken that man so long.
“Hi, Jeremy,” Herb said without lifting his gaze. “Thought you’d come sooner.”
“Had to weigh up the odds of you shooting me. There’s a lot of dying going on, after all.”
Herb snorted.
“Crew’s a little nervous, Herb. I don’t mind admitting that includes me.”
He glanced up and saw genuine concern etched on Jeremy Pruitt’s face. Pruitt was the older man of the two by far, getting ready to wave a sour goodbye to his late-fifties and sporting a balding pate that made him look like he belonged in a monastery somewhere; an impression that was undone somewhat by his hulking physique.
Jeremy had been a part of the family since before Herb was born, filling an ill-defined but necessary role at Charles Rennick’s side as adviser, bodyguard and, Herb had long suspected, occasional assassin. There had been times through the years when the Rennick family secret had come close to being revealed. On those occasions, it was Jeremy who ensured silence, one way or another.
Despite his murky, violent past, the big man was one of the few at the compound that didn’t treat Herb like a live grenade, and he considered Jeremy the closest thing he had to a friend. They had even talked openly at times about the oath, and about Herb’s unswerving belief that the creatures his family was sworn to protect—and the whole secret history of the world that went along with that duty—could not possibly exist. Jeremy disagreed of course, but while he was certainly a believer, he was no fanatic.
Unlike the rest of them.
When Herb had been preoccupied with the fantasy of running away, it was Jeremy that had dominated his thoughts. The older man would, in all probability, help Herb with the practicalities of fleeing the compound, and then immediately be tasked with hunting him down, and perhaps even killing him. Knowing Jeremy, if Charles Rennick had given such an order, he would have carried it out, friendship or no friendship. What Jeremy would do now—now that the man who had been his personal dictator for decades was dead, Herb had no idea.
But he was glad that he was the one with the guns.
Jeremy slumped heavily into the chair opposite Herb’s.
“Do I have a mutiny on my hands?” Herb smiled thinly and offered the older man the brandy. Jeremy waved the bottle away.
“Please,” he said. “Loyalty isn’t a problem; you know that. At least, not for those people.”
He gave a knowing stare, and Herb felt his mood darken.
“He deserved to die.”
Herb infused those four words with venom; poisonous enough that Jeremy couldn’t possibly miss the fact that his father’s death was not up for debate.
Jeremy held his calloused hands up in an apologetic gesture.
“Just saying. These people have been a part of your family for generations. They don’t serve the Order. They serve the Rennicks. You are the Order.”
Herb grunted, but said nothing.
After a moment’s pause, Jeremy cleared his throat a little awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, about your brothers.”
Herb’s eyes clouded, and he pointed them at the floor.
“I tried to stop it, right from the start. They wouldn’t listen. Nobody ever listened. Maybe my father had the right idea. Perhaps the only way to make sure your point gets noticed is to underline it with blood.”
“Yeah, that sounds like something he would have said. Never thought I’d hear it from you, though.”
Herb shook his head angrily, and for a few moments a dark silence settled on the small room. He wanted desperately to change the subject, but it appeared that all subjects were currently soaked in violence, one way or another.
“When was the last time you were in contact with the compound?”
Jeremy’s expression hardened.
“Not since the Oceanus was sunk. Your father was unwilling to accept his failure, not until he saw it for himself. He wanted to find the container before he called home.”
“We need to warn them,” Herb replied, “tell them that the rest of the nest may rise.”
Jeremy shook his head.
“Impossible.”
Herb’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
Jeremy sighed.
“Your father had the satellite phone in his pocket. I wish you’d checked before you decided to throw him overboard.”
Herb squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, and silence fell once more. It was Jeremy that broke it.
“The guy who pulled the trigger, what’s his story?”
“According to Edgar, he killed two of the Three with a cleaver.”
Jeremy arched an eyebrow.
“That guy?”
Herb snorted a laugh.
“I know, right? But Edgar was very definite. He thought Dan Bellamy was important. I imagine, at the end, m
y father thought so, too.”
He grimaced.
“Dan Bellamy,” Jeremy repeated softly, as though the name might mean something to him. Apparently not. “Did he talk, in the container?”
“He called out for somebody, once. His wife, I think. Don’t think he knew exactly where he was. Once he realised, though? No; not a word. I guess he’s in shock.”
Jeremy looked dubious.
“Never seen shock do that to a person before.”
Herb had no response to that.
“Did Edgar say anything else?”
“Just that he had told Dad about the vampires dying, and that Dad’s response was to fucking kill us all.”
“He hoped to cast this as an accident, I think. Maybe even claim that it was the vampires who caused the explosion and hope that the rest of the nest wouldn’t retaliate. Losing his own sons added a certain…authenticity to his story.”
Jeremy delivered the words without emotion. Herb tried to receive them in a similar fashion. Failed by a wide margin.
“‘Authenticity,’” he spat bitterly, and snatched up the almost-empty brandy bottle. He took a mouthful. “That sounds about right. Lies piled on top of lies; that’s the Rennick way. Tell me, Jeremy, did he know, before all this? Did he ever give you any indication that there might be people out there who the vampires can’t control?”
“No. There’s nothing in the texts, Herb, nothing that—”
“The texts,” Herb snarled. “More lies.”
Jeremy blinked at the ferocity in Herb’s tone. “Even if that’s true, nobody has found any evidence to contradict them. Think about it, Herb. Your own family has searched for information on the vampires for centuries, and what have you found? Nothing. The Order exists in more than thirty countries; families just like yours, all of them searching for exactly the same thing. Christ, the entire Order has devoted itself to uncovering the truth, and all they have discovered is evidence that these things can’t be resisted.”
He sighed.
“So maybe your friend Dan Bellamy is one of a kind. Good for him. But what use is that to anybody? The vampires have nests across the entire planet, probably including many that we don’t even know about. We’d need an army of Dan Bellamys to fight them.”
Adrift 2: Sundown Page 3
