30 Days of Night: Light of Day

by Jeff Mariotte

  Alex started to respond, but caught himself. You should stay with me, because you’re my partner, not his, he wanted to say. Because it’s not our fault his department’s too cheap to assign him a partner of his own. Because I don’t know how far things have gone between you two, but I don’t want you sitting in a dark car with him, with nothing to do. I need everybody’s attention on Walker Swanson’s door, not Greg Fielding’s zipper.

  But he couldn’t make himself give voice to any of those arguments, so instead he swallowed his anger and his fear. “Whatever,” he said, his voice close to breaking. “Fine.”

  “Cool,” she said. She opened her door—the dome light had already been disconnected—and started out, but then stopped, leaned back in and touched Alex’s thigh. “Thanks, Alex,” she said.

  Then she was gone, but her touch lingered on his lap like a hot coal, and Alex wondered if there was a way to set Walker Swanson loose on Greg Fielding before they brought him in.

  Walker and Mitch stayed inside most of the night. Mitch had suggested the location for the meet, an abandoned motor court between home and the city, and the time had been set for just before sunrise so when the Light of Day formula worked, as its maker swore it would, they could test it by going out into the sun.

  To Walker, that was a double blessing. Not only would he and Mitch be turned, but they would be a new breed of vampire. Advance soldiers of the new era. The later the hour, the more anxious he became. All of their work, all the people they had killed, led to this moment. And none of it had made him more anxious than this, the culmination of it all.

  He tried to sleep, but every time he drifted off he would snap awake again, tingling with anticipation. Finally he gave up and spent some time working on uploading auction items.

  About five-thirty, Mitch cleared his throat. “Walker, it’s time to boogie.”

  Walker looked away from the monitor. “Finally.”

  “No shit.”

  Walker shut everything down. “Let’s motor.” He pulled on a jacket against the early morning chill, then went to the refrigerator and took out a Nalgene bottle of blood. With trembling hands, he unscrewed the lid. “One for the road,” he said, and he took a drink.

  The motel was empty when Larry approached, or it looked that way. There was a monument signpost by the sidewalk, but the sign it had once held had blown down or been torn off long ago. Words could still be seen, faded but legible, painted on the office wall. ROOMS BY HOUR DAY OR WEEK. WATER BEDS. XXX MOVIES.LO-RATES. A hot-pillow joint, then, the kind of places blue collar guys took women they were having affairs with, or streetwalkers. The white-collar guys would spring for decent hotel rooms. Then there were guys like Larry had been, who had never interested the sort of women who would come to a place like this, but still dreamed about it when he drove past one.

  The place had eight square concrete block buildings, each with two recessed doors, arrayed around a parking lot of cracked asphalt with weeds growing up through it. Most of the windows were broken and boarded over. Larry observed the place as he drove by, then parked down the street in the lot of a two-story office building, and walked back carrying a duffel bag with his things inside. A few cars passed, but he saw no sign of motion or life at the motel.

  Walkin_Dude had promised that the door to Room 14 would be unlocked, and that’s where they would meet. Larry stepped into the shadowed doorway of Room 4 and observed for a few minutes. He didn’t see or hear anyone, and more important, he didn’t smell anyone. If this was a human-laid trap and vampire hunters waited inside, he would be able to sniff them out.

  He had spent most of the night online, uploading his formula to every place he could think of. Emails had poured in asking for more information, and he had answered what he could. Finally, he had shut off the computer. He left it and his other equipment in a motel room on the north side of the city, fully aware that he might never make it back there. But he had done what he could. If things worked out as he hoped this morning, he would go back to that motel to collect his things—but he would go back as a recognized prophet, a prince of the undead. In life he had been nobody, a nameless scientist working alongside his fellow drones. But in death, he would be so much more.

  And it would all begin soon, here in this no-name motel, where humans had mated and sweated and spawned more meat for the taking.

  Smiling, Larry crossed the pitted parking lot and pushed open the door to Room 14, ready to meet his future.

  39

  LARRY HAD BEEN IN the room for about fifteen minutes when he heard footsteps outside. He went to the window, where a sheet of plywood had buckled out just enough to offer a strip through which he could see, and looked out toward the lot. Dark forms moved toward him. A lot of them. He heard whispered conversation. He tasted the air, but didn’t detect human.

  This had to be the group from New York, then. They had indicated that they were a much larger group than Walkin_Dude’s; the latter had been reticent about how many his den really had, but Larry got the impression that it was just a handful, if that.

  He moved into the darkest part of the empty room. Spider webs were thick, as was the stink of old piss. The walls were coated in grime, oily and streaked. As the door started to creak open, Larry tensed, ready to run or attack.

  “Hey?” A male voice, young sounding but with a bit of a rasp. Then the door opened wider and Larry saw the speaker, tall and lean, with long dark hair and a goatee. He wore black clothes. At his side as he came through the door was a heavy young woman, a hippie type with flowing, straight hair. “I’m Rocco,” the man said.

  “Larry.”

  “You’re the guy. Light of Day.”

  “That’s right.”

  Rocco came forward, leaving the woman at the door and the others outside. “It’s an honor,” he said, extending his hand.

  Larry took it, felt his cool, firm grasp. “Thanks.”

  “If this works … man.”

  “It works.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You should get your … them … out of the parking lot.”

  “Yeah,” Rocco said. He crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. He was a good-looking guy, Larry thought, charismatic. “They’re good at blending in, but inside is better.” Rocco stuck his head out the door, gave a low whistle and a beckoning motion, and then bodies filed in, blocking light from coming in the doorway. They came into the small room, their scents filling the space with a pleasant musk. Rocco introduced them: Shiloh, Angel, Chip, Winston, Brick, Goldie, Dragon Lady, and Nightmare, who looked like a Hell’s Angel, only worse. From having been around only one vampire, Larry was suddenly surrounded, and it felt wonderful.

  It felt like home, like a family reunion.

  When Walker pulled up at the old motel, he was surprised to see an RV in the parking lot. The joint was deserted, or should have been. He parked near the RV, which appeared empty and silent.

  “What do you think, man?” he asked Mitch.

  “Maybe it belongs to the dude. The Light of Day guy. He said he’s been on the road, right? And with a bunch of scientific equipment or whatever.”

  “I guess. I just don’t tend to think of vampires as RVers.”

  “Maybe that’s because you’ve never met any. All you know, RV parks around the world could be full of ’em.”

  “Could be,” Walker admitted. “Should we go in?”

  “We didn’t come this far to sit in the van playing with ourselves.”

  “You’re right.” Walker tried to pull on courage, like drawing a cape over his shoulders. “Let’s get in there.” Before he could think it over any longer, he threw open the van’s door and stepped to the broken asphalt. He straightened his shoulders, tried to suck in his gut, and took purposeful strides to the Room 14 door.

  He was about to knock, then changed his mind. He was the one who had picked the place, who had come out here a couple of nights ago and pried out the nails holding the door shut. The Light of Day guy, if he wa
s inside, was his guest, not the other way around. Instead of knocking, he pushed the door open with the flat of his palm. A wave of some sour stench met him halfway in, a smell of rancid meat and old blood.

  The room was mostly dark, with just some light filtering in from outside, and that went away as the door swung shut. But before that happened, Walker saw enough to know that he and Mitch were seriously outnumbered.

  “I thought we were meeting one guy, not going to a convention,” he said. His voice quaked in spite of his efforts to control it.

  “You must be Walkin_Dude,” someone said.

  “That’s right. You can call me Walker. This is Mitch.”

  “I’m Larry.” Someone came through the crowd, which parted for him—Walker could hear it more than see it. “I’m the one you came here to meet. These others—they came for the same reason, so they could try out my Light of Day formula.”

  He emerged from the pack, stopping in a shoestring-thin band of light filtering through the crack of the door from the street lamps outside. He was an older guy, with thin hair and a big gut. He clapped a hand onto Walker’s shoulder and reached for his hand. As he did, a strange expression washed over his face, and Walker almost lost control of his bowels.

  “You’re alive!” Larry said.

  A hush fell over the crowded room.

  “I thought you were one of us!”

  “I want to b-b-be,” Walker said anxiously. “We do. We’ve done everything we can—we’ve killed people, we’ve been drinking blood nonstop. We just haven’t been able to find anyone to turn us.”

  “I don’t know about turning,” someone said from the midst of the crowd. “But I know where you can find someone to kill you.”

  “Whoa, hold up!” Walker shouted. “We … we don’t mean anyone any harm. None of you, I mean! We hate people. We just want to be like you … guys. More than anything.”

  “You keep saying ‘we,’ ” the one named Larry said. “What do you mean? Who else is with you?”

  Walker jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Me and Mitch here.”

  Larry peered past Walker. “What are you talking about? There’s nobody there,” he said. “Just you.”

  Walker spun around. Mitch stood there, right in front of the door, but he had a strange half-smile on his face and his eyes were sad. “Dude, he’s right here!”

  “They’re not buying it, man,” Mitch said.

  Larry kept his hand on Walker’s shoulder. His grip was strong, his fingers like rebar rods. When he spoke his voice was soft, tinged with concern. “I think maybe you have some problems that being undead won’t solve, Walker.”

  “I don’t know what you mean! Are you blind or something? He’s right …”

  Mitch shrugged, but he seemed less substantial than he had a moment before.

  “Mitch, for Christ’s sake! Tell them you’re there!”

  Larry’s hand pressed on his shoulder like a five-ton weight. Streams of sweat rushed down Walker’s sides and coated his upper lip; he tasted salt. His legs were rubber, barely supporting his bulk.

  “There’s no one there, son,” Larry said.

  “You’re seeing things,” someone else offered.

  “No, I’m not! Mitch and I … he’s my best friend!” Hot tears stung Walker’s cheeks. Mitch had faded more. He blinked back to full life and color for an instant, then faded again, until he wasn’t much more than a shadow covering part of the door.

  Walker didn’t understand. Mitch was flickering in and out, as if a strobe light was flashing on him. He had known Mitch for … well, he couldn’t remember how long. Mitch was his best friend.

  His only friend, really.

  And if Mitch didn’t exist, then …

  … then fuck, he didn’t know. He just didn’t know.

  Walker shut his eyes. When he opened them again, this would all be some nightmare. He would have fallen asleep at the computer, and Mitch would be sitting in the other chair, and none of it would be real, all the craziness with Andy and vampires would never have happened. Maybe he’d still be in high school, in bed with a pillow wrapped around his head because he didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to hear the alarm or Mom’s screech telling him he’d be late, didn’t want to face the taunts and insults from the guys, the looks of disapproval or disgust from the girls. Maybe he would be in grade school, before he had understood that he would always be the fat kid, the unpopular kid, the guy other kids pointed at, laughing.

  And he opened his eyes.

  And he was in Room 14 of a motel closed so long he didn’t know its name, a joint he had passed a thousand times and never thought about until a few days ago, inside a room where people fucked strangers, where emotions ran more toward loneliness, even hate, than love. He knew what that was like, and the loneliness seemed to collapse in around him even though he wasn’t alone, he was here with a dozen or so people—no, not people, vampires, that smell surrounded him still, and he knew now that some of it was him, the flop sweat sticking his shirt to his fleshy ribs.

  They were vampires, the undead, and he was not, and Mitch wasn’t real, had never been real. His life was awful, so sad and lonely that he had made up a friend who was closer to him than anyone had ever been. Terrible clarity shone on him like a spotlight.

  “Look,” Walker said. “I … I guess I made a mistake. Some mistakes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you here under false pretenses. I never meant to lie or—”

  “It’s okay, Walker,” Larry interrupted. “You do want to be a vampire, right? One of us?”

  “I … I thought I did, but—”

  “I can take care of that, Walker. It’s easy.” That iron grip clutched Walker’s shoulder again, making Walker feel like crying out, but he wanted to maintain some measure of his dignity, even though the front of his pants felt hot and wet and tears had laid down tracks from cheeks to chin. Larry leaned in close and his teeth were terrible, his face hideous, monstrous, his open mouth stinking like a vat of slow-simmering meat in a slaughterhouse. A lazy fly came to a brief landing on Larry’s lower lip, then took off again. “The thing is,” Larry said quietly, “I’ve never turned anyone yet. You’ve never been turned and I haven’t turned anyone. We can help each other, okay?”

  Walker wanted to run away, wanted to scream, wanted to drive his thumbs into his eye sockets and force his eyes from his head so he wouldn’t have to look at the monsters anymore.

  But it was too late for that. Anyway, his life was nothing he wanted to return to. Like Mitch had said— Mitch who wasn’t, who had never existed outside of his own head, but was still better than nothing—Mitch had told him: Out is out, right? Done is done.

  “Y-yeah,” Walker said. “We can … we can help each other.” He tilted his head back. “You want my neck? Is that how it works?”

  40

  MARINA WATCHED THE DOOR close behind the last guy to go in. This one had been a fat guy, young, and something hadn’t seemed right about him.

  What was worse was that two cars had pulled up right behind him, only the occupants of those cars hadn’t gotten out, they just sat inside watching the motel with as much interest as she was. Their cars were American-made sedans. One guy sitting alone in one, a man and a woman in the other.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Are those cops?”

  “Look like it to me,” Monte said.

  “What are they doing on Greenbarger?”

  “They didn’t come with Greenbarger,” Tony O. said. “They followed that last guy in.”

  “God, this is getting all fucked up,” Marina said. “Larry’s in there, and then all those bloodsuckers from the RV, now some chubbo, and the local law’s on his ass.”

  “We knew it’d be crowded,” Kat reminded her. “All those emails about the Light of Day.”

  “Yeah, but I thought we’d be able to handle it by ourselves. I didn’t know the freakin’ gendarmerie would be along for the ride.”

  “Maybe they can help.”

  “M
aybe they can blow me before they get hurt. I’m going to talk to them.”

  “You want backup?” Jimbo asked.

  “I think I can manage.” She took off her night vision goggles and got out of the van. She had to wait for a couple of trucks to barrel past before she could cross the street. Place was supposed to be good for a quiet meet, but only compared to the track at the Daytona 500.

  She went to the car with the single occupant. Maybe he was the boss. He spotted her coming and got out before she reached the vehicle. He was tall and rangy and he looked as happy as a funeral. Marina was reaching for her badge when he showed his.

  “Chicago PD,” he said. “I’m Detective Alex Ziccaria.”

  “FBI. Special Agent Marina Tanaka-Dunn.”

  “This is federal?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Doors opened in the other car, then shut again with a bang. “Can you keep your people under control?” Marina asked.

  “They’re not my people. What are you doing here? This is a Chicago PD/Cook County joint task force. We’ve got a serial killer suspect in there, and—”

  “You have no idea what you’ve got in there, Detective.” Remembering her cop manners, she added, “All due respect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marina looked toward the east. A band of pewter showed at the horizon. Daylight soon. The bloodsuckers would either come out in a hurry and get into their vehicles, or they would be trapped inside the room.

  Unless that whole Light of Day process Larry had been promising worked. The thing had hit the internet during the night, spreading like mad. Operation Red-Blooded researchers were all over it, trying to figure out if it had any legitimacy, and if it did what they could do to counter it, take the links down.

  Killing Larry Greenbarger wouldn’t stop it, not anymore.

  But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t feel good.

  “Look, Detective, that information is classified. Way above your pay grade. Why don’t you just get in your car and—”