Adrift 2: Sundown

by K. R. Griffiths

  This would be nothing like that terrible incident, though. The fight at Euston was almost certainly nothing more than a few commuters getting steamed up over having to wait too long for a train and lashing out. A typical London flashpoint. It would probably all be over in less than thirty seconds.

  She glanced in the mirror again as she pulled the van to a halt outside the station’s main entrance and killed the siren.

  Remy was now dead silent, staring at her calmly with expectant, hopeful eyes. The siren had stopped wailing. The time for preparation was over.

  Conny opened the door and began to step out of the van when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, and a dreadful sickening sensation unfurled in her stomach. She sat back down heavily, staring at the unlock screen. Afraid to swipe her thumb across it. As much as possible, she tried to compartmentalise her life; to leave the personal stuff at home and focus only on the job when she was on shift. Anything else would be failing in her duty as a police officer. She rarely carried her phone with her while she was in uniform.

  Today was different, of course.

  The screen on her phone glowed for a moment before falling dark.

  You haven’t got time to just sit here, Con.

  She unlocked the screen, and felt a scream building inside her, desperate to be free.

  A text from Logan. The text. Just two words, steeped in bitterness which punched her in the gut like a professional boxer. No matter how much she had tried to prepare herself for seeing them, the words inflicted damage that she already knew would never heal.

  Confirmed. Huntington’s.

  Conny placed the phone gently on the dashboard, face down, and stared through the rain-flecked windscreen at the exterior of Euston Station for several long moments, until Remy huffed impatiently.

  You’re on duty.

  She blinked away the tears that gathered in her eyes, and set her mouth in a firm line. Remy was right.

  Time for action.

  *

  At ground level, Euston Station was a huge, functional square space lined with overpriced shops, and a bar in which unoccupied seats were as rare as reasonable rent. Toward the front of the building, where the departure boards displayed the latest information for each of the eighteen platforms, a few hundred passengers clustered, waiting for the signal to board the trains that would take them toward the north of England.

  Conny headed left, aiming for the escalators that would transport her down to Euston’s separate Underground station, and glanced down at Remy. The dog remained silent and focused, his watchful eyes scanning, ears pricked up. She gripped his heavy chain leash tightly, as her own training dictated, but she would have been confident in unleashing him, knowing that he would have kept pace without the restraint.

  Below ground level, the short escalator led to a small area filled with ticket machines and electronic barriers which barred the path to the subterranean platforms that were yet another level further down. There was no sign of a disturbance in the ticketing hall, but the tension in the space was palpable. The barriers to the platforms had been closed by staff, and the resulting crowd which formed simmered with uneasy frustration at yet another delay on the Tube.

  Conny heard a loud voice informing passengers that there was a ‘security issue’ down on the platforms, and that delays of around fifteen minutes were expected.

  Not if Remy has anything to do with it, she thought, and headed toward the barriers, letting Remy carve a path between groups of commuters who parted silently to let them pass. When she reached the barriers, a portly and stressed-looking security guard waved her through with a nod, gazing warily at Remy.

  The dog ignored him, his gaze focused on the next escalator. Much larger than the first; it speared down into the earth, providing access to the Northern Line’s north and south platforms.

  He growled softly.

  Conny nodded, and quickened her pace. They were close enough now that Remy could probably hear whatever was happening down on the platform. Maybe he could smell blood and danger on the air.

  The escalator had been switched off, so Conny and Remy took the steep metal steps leading down at a brisk pace.

  When she was halfway down to the next level, she could hear the shouting at last, and Remy finally began to strain at his leash.

  *

  The fight looked like it was still ongoing.

  Conny stepped onto the platform that served southbound trains, moving past some onlookers who had retreated to a safe distance, but couldn’t bring themselves to actually leave and miss the excitement. Far to her right, at the very end of the platform, she saw a mass of bodies milling around, a couple of whom wore the distinctive hi-vis yellow jackets which marked them out as staff.

  She broke into a trot, reaching the perimeter of the fracas in a few seconds.

  Remy’s growl grew louder; a rumbling thunder that cut cleanly through the noise of the scuffle. Several faces turned toward Conny and her partner, their eyes widening.

  Once she had pushed past a few gawkers, Conny saw that there were a couple of people on the platform lying face down, unmoving. At least one of them was bleeding heavily, and both were either unconscious or dead.

  She hesitated.

  It looked a little more serious than just some fight.

  Several other people had staggering away from the tussle, nursing minor injuries, and the two staff were struggling with a man who screamed and thrashed, resisting their attempts to pin him to the floor. Conny watched the man shrug off one of the staff and swing at him with what looked like a length of rebar, and decided she had seen enough.

  She unhooked Remy’s leash and pointed at the weapon.

  “Go.”

  Remy approached steadily, barking furiously, and the two staff rolled away from the thrashing man, their eyes wide and fixed on the dog. Isolated with Remy, the man leapt to his feet, and Conny expected that he would immediately drop the weapon and either attempt to flee or surrender.

  Instead, the man—who Conny noticed in surprise was also wearing a torn hi-vis jacket, its bright colour dulled by dirt and bloodstains—took a step toward the dog and lashed out, swinging the heavy metal in a savage arc.

  Conny’s breath caught in her throat as Remy took matters into his own hands, darting underneath the intended blow. He struck before his attacker had even finished swinging, leaping forward and clamping his teeth onto the guy’s forearm.

  Twisting.

  The rebar hit the floor with a clatter.

  And Conny’s mouth dropped open in amazement as the man lined up a punch with his free hand, striking Remy in the neck. The dog clearly decided that enough was enough. It pulled hard on the man’s forearm, twisting its thick neck violently to unbalance him, and brought him down hard onto the platform. He hit the floor face-first with a sharp snap that Conny thought had to be his nose valiantly attempting to cushion his fall.

  Yet still he struggled.

  Conny had never seen anything like it. Remy had brought plenty of people down over the years, and not once had anyone even tried to get up when the dog was looming over them.

  The stricken man heaved himself back to his feet with the German Shepherd still attached to his arm—blood flowing freely around Remy’s powerful jaws—and he began to stagger to his left.

  Conny recognised what was happening immediately. The man—maybe drugged, who knew—clearly wasn’t feeling the pain of Remy’s teeth as he should be, and was using his superior weight to drag the dog across the platform.

  Toward the tracks.

  The live line, Conny thought in horror.

  “Remy, release,” she yelled sternly, and Remy obeyed instantly, glancing back at her with something like chagrin in his eyes.

  When Remy withdrew his teeth from the man’s forearm, he lost all balance. He might have fallen onto the tracks anyway, carried there by his momentum, but as Conny watched the man in the torn hi-vis jacket dive off the platform onto the deadly waiting trac
k with a wince, she couldn’t help but think that it looked, for just a fleeting moment, like he wanted his life to end.

  Had he continued to struggle with Remy because he wanted the dog to kill him?

  For several long seconds, a pregnant hush descended on the small crowd of people gathered on the platform, and Conny stared down at Remy, seeing her own confusion reflected in his big brown eyes.

  15

  Familiar sensation

  Crawling up the back of—

  “Dan…Dan? BELLAMY! Snap out of it!”

  Dan coughed violently and sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the raging vibrations in his head. The air stank of blood and shit and death, and it felt like his skull was fracturing.

  Herb, he thought. That’s Herb. Focus on his voice.

  “Oh, fucking hell…Dan? Can you hear me?”

  He took another breath.

  Let it out slow.

  And the world began to swim into focus.

  Herb was standing over him, his face twisted in concern.

  “It’s okay, we’re safe,” Herb said. “For now, anyway. It can’t get in.”

  Dan pulled himself to his feet, and his eyes widened when he saw the kitchen. The large group of men he expected to see suddenly wasn’t so large at all. Two of Herb’s followers were lying on the floor, one panting out rattling breaths and clutching at his bloody chest; the other was motionless, with a towel draped over his face. Still others looked to have disappeared altogether.

  “What happened?”

  Herb’s brow creased.

  “You didn’t see?”

  Dan coughed, spitting out the foul-tasting air.

  “I get…blackouts. Panic attacks.”

  “Panic attacks?” Herb stared at him, bewildered. “Jesus Christ. How the hell did you survive on that ship?”

  Dan glared back at him for a moment, and felt dark emotions bubbling, clutching at him; trying to pull him under.

  —hands in the darkness—

  He scowled. “Just bad luck, I guess. I tried to tell you. I’m not what you think I am. Not special. Not some sort of vampire slayer.”

  Dan’s words came out harsh, tainted with bitter sarcasm.

  “No shit,” Herb muttered. “I guessed that much when you decided to have a fucking breakdown instead of help—”

  Dan punched him.

  Actually punched him.

  His right arm shot out of its own accord, fingers clenching into a bony fist, and he drove Herb’s words straight back down his throat.

  It was, as far as Dan could recall, the first punch he had thrown in his life. He doubted it was powerful enough to hurt; certainly as he threw it, his arm felt loose and elastic rather than taut, but the blow snapped Herb’s jaw sideways, and a moment later the bigger man was sitting on the floor, staring up at him in surprise.

  Dan stared back.

  Stunned.

  Mortified.

  And Herb laughed.

  He rubbed his jaw ruefully as he stood up, and he grinned at Dan, who could do nothing but gape at him.

  “Well, all right, then,” Herb said. “I guess that’s more like it.”

  Dan had no response. At least, none that he could vocalize.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “There are eight of us left,” Herb said, and paused, staring at one of the bodies on the floor. The man with the bloody chest was no longer drawing in those rattling breaths. He sighed heavily. “Make that seven.” Heglanced at his watch. “I’d say we have about half an hour before it gets dark outside. We need a way out.”

  “A way out? Aren’t we safe in here? I thought you said it couldn’t get in.”

  Herb nodded.

  “It can’t get in right now. But once it gets dark outside, it will have no reason to leave those down.”

  He pointed at the shuttered windows.

  Dan felt his stomach lurch. Herb was right. It was the vampire that had sealed them in. When the shutters were no longer required to keep the daylight at bay, it could simply reopen them and come through a window.

  “Does this place have a cellar?”

  “Yeah,” Herb said grimly, and he pointed at a door to the rear of the kitchen. “Through there. The others went that way; made a run for the front door, I think. They didn’t make it.”

  Dan searched Herb’s eyes and saw the remembered nightmare the younger man was trying to conceal. He must have heard them screaming, he thought, and for a moment Dan was back on the deck of the Oceanus, listening to a symphony of destruction being played out in the darkness. Cries of fear and pain and horror, all punctuated by the otherworldly shriek of the vampires.

  “How long was I, uh, out for?”

  “About ten minutes. At least this time you weren’t screaming.” Herb offered a watery smile.

  No, Dan thought. That part is still to come.

  “Ten minutes,” he said absently. “An hour until sundown.”

  “Yeah. Ish.” Herb nodded.

  “How many exits are there?”

  “From the kitchen? Three. But they all lead to open plan areas. It would run us down in no time.”

  Dan frowned. He couldn’t see how they could possibly escape without further loss of life. Even if they could successfully leave the kitchen and somehow lose the vampire in the vast house, the place was locked down. The only exit that mattered was the one the vampire itself had blocked; the mansion’s front door.

  They could try to run, maybe, turning lights on as they went; try to lock themselves in another room, perhaps, one which might offer some means of escape he couldn’t imagine.

  It would be suicide.

  “Maybe if we split up, we could—” Dan said, and fell silent when Herb stared at him, aghast.

  “Split up? I take it you’ve never seen any horror movie, ever?”

  He had a point. Besides which, Dan thought, he was the only one who didn’t know the layout of the Rennick mansion. If it came down to fleeing blindly, he would surely be the first to die.

  “Then we have to kill it,” he said uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” Herb replied. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he rolled his eyes. “Killing them is where you’re supposed to come in, Dan. If you’ve got some grand idea on how to go about doing that, I’m all ears.”

  Dan searched his thoughts.

  He had been lucky to survive his encounters with the creatures on the Oceanus. On both occasions, he had killed vampires that were preoccupied with murdering somebody else. It was like they were complacent, so sure that no human would dare attack them that they had let their guard down. He had landed sucker punches, no more than that. He remembered the moment of hesitation on the twisted features of the one that had killed Elaine; the way it almost seemed that the vampire couldn’t actually believe what was happening as Dan attacked it with a cleaver.

  But that had been in the swirling storm of chaos on board the cruise ship. Here, where the vampire was focused only on hunting the tiny group of men that had sealed themselves away from it, he didn’t think that luck would hold.

  “What do you actually know about these things?”

  Herb opened his mouth to respond, but Dan cut in.

  “And if you say anything about ancient fucking texts, I may have to punch you again.”

  Dan smiled weakly. A joke.

  Isn’t it?

  “I can only tell you what is supposed to be true,” Herb said. “They claim to be immortal; they live below ground. They sleep for centuries. They feed on humans. In their presence, humans lose their minds. We are powerless to resist them. They don’t like light. Oh, and they don’t burn. That wasn’t in the texts. I saw that one myself.” Herb rubbed absently at his bandaged arm. “I don’t see how any of that can help us now, especially since any or all of it could be lies.”

  They don’t burn, Dan thought. He stored that piece of information, and then irritably told himself that he didn’t want that knowledge taking up space in his brain. If he could just
get away from the mansion—away from the monsters; away from Herb and his rapidly diminishing group of followers—he would flee and gladly hand himself over to the police and confess to the murder he had committed in the Atlantic. He could spend the rest of his days in the safety of a cell, and he wouldn’t ever have to think about the creatures that Herbert Rennick called vampires ever again.

  He stared at the locked door.

  Behind it, he heard soft snuffling sounds; wet smacking. It was a noise he had heard before. The vampire was sitting outside the kitchen. Feeding. Waiting.

  Listening.

  They are intelligent, Dan thought, not mindless monsters. We know that much for sure. They can speak. They can understand.

  He clutched at Herb’s arm, and pulled the younger man close, breathing into his ear softly.

  “It’s listening. We need to draw it away, up to the top floor, and make a run for the front door, you understand?”

  Herb nodded, but he looked dubious.

  He mouthed how?

  Dan stared around the kitchen in mounting frustration. He saw counters, racks of crockery and pans, various foodstuffs. Some wine bottles. No way out. Nothing that might serve as a distraction.

  His mind raced.

  “Where does that dumb waiter lead?” he said loudly, and pointed at a patch of bare wall.

  Herb followed his gaze and then stared at Dan, puzzled. There was no dumb waiter.

  Dan mouthed play along.

  Herb’s confused expression softened, and he nodded vigorously.

  “It stops off at all five floors,” he replied, making sure that his voice was loud enough to carry. Trying to ensure that he wasn’t being too obvious.

  Dan nodded.

  “If we can get to the top floor…is there a way we can access the roof?”

  Herb grinned and shook his head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A skylight in the attic.”

  Dan could tell from Herb’s wide smile that there was no skylight; maybe even no attic.

  “Then we’ll go up,” Dan said. “Quietly. If we make any noise once we’ve left this room, it will hear. Once we get to the roof, we run. Can any of you fly the helicopter?”