The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro; Chuck Hogan

  Roger heard the scrape on the partition. The head-wound man’s tongue came out, and he was trying to slip it through the ashtray-style pay slot. The fleshy tip poked through, straining, almost sniffing at the air as it tried to get at Roger.

  With a scream, Roger kicked at the slot in a frenzy, slamming it shut. The man in front let out an ungodly squeal, and the severed tip of his…whatever it was, fell directly into Roger’s lap. Roger swatted it away as, on the other side of the partition, the man spurted white all over, gone wild either in pain or in pure castration hysteria.

  Whamm! Another swing of the shovel crashed against the back window behind Roger’s head, the antishatter glass cracking and bending but still refusing to break.

  Pown-pown-pown. Footsteps leaving craters on the roof now.

  Four of them on the curb, three on the street side, and more coming from the front. Roger looked back, saw the deranged UPS man rear back to swing the shovel at the broken window again. Now or never.

  Roger reached for the handle and kicked the street-side door open with all his might. The shovel came down and the back window was smashed away, raining chips of glass. The blade just missed Roger’s head as he slid out into the street. Someone—it was Hal Chatfield, his eyes glowing red—grabbed his arm, spinning him around, but Roger shed his suit jacket like a snake wriggling out of its skin and kept on going, racing up the street, not looking back until he reached the corner.

  Some came in a hobbling jog, others moved faster and with more coordination. Some were old, and three of them were grinning children. His neighbors and friends. Faces he recognized from the train station, from birthday parties, from church.

  All coming after him.

  Flatbush, Brooklyn

  EPH PRESSED THE DOORBELL at the Barbour residence. The street was quiet, though there was life in the other homes, television lights, bags of trash at the curb. He stood there with a Luma lamp in his hand and a Setrakian-converted nail gun hanging on a strap from his shoulder.

  Nora stood behind him, at the foot of the brick steps, holding her own Luma. Setrakian brought up the rear, his staff in hand, its silver head glowing in the moonlight.

  Two rings, no answer. Not unexpected. Eph tried the doorknob before looking for another entrance, and it turned.

  The door opened.

  Eph went in first, flicking on a light. The living room looked normal, slipcovered furniture and throw pillows set just so.

  He called out, “Hello,” as the two others filed in behind him. Strange, letting himself into the house. Eph trod softly on the rug, like a burglar or an assassin. He wanted to believe he was still a healer, but that was becoming more difficult to believe by the hour.

  Nora started up the stairs. Setrakian followed Eph into the kitchen. Eph said, “What do you think we will learn here? You said the survivors were distractions—”

  “I said that was the purpose they served. As to the Master’s intent—I don’t know. Perhaps there is some special attachment to the Master. In any event, we must start somewhere. These survivors are our only leads.”

  A bowl and spoon sat in the sink. A family Bible lay open on the table, stuffed with mass cards and photographs, turned to the final chapter. A passage was underlined in red ink with a shaky hand, Revelations 11:7–8:

  …the beast that ascends from the bottomless pit will make war upon them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which is allegorically called Sodom…

  Next to the open Bible, like instruments set out upon an altar, were a crucifix and a small glass bottle Eph presumed to be holy water.

  Setrakian nodded at the religious articles. “No more reasonable than duct tape and Cipro,” he said. “And no more effective.”

  They proceeded into the back room. Eph said, “The wife must have covered for him. Why wouldn’t she call a doctor?”

  They explored a closet, Setrakian tapping the walls with the bottom of his staff. “Science has made many advances in my lifetime, but the instrument has yet to be invented that can see clearly into the marriage of a man and a woman.”

  They closed the closet. Eph realized they were out of doors to open. “If there’s no basement?”

  Setrakian shook his head. “Exploring a crawl space is many times worse.”

  “Up here!” It was Nora, calling down from upstairs, urgency in her voice.

  Ann-Marie Barbour was slumped over from a sitting position on the floor between her nightstand and her bed, dead. Between her legs was a wall mirror that she had shattered on the floor. She had selected the longest, most daggerlike shard and used it to sever the radial and ulnar arteries of her left arm. Wrist cutting is one of the least effective methods of suicide, with a success rate of less than 5 percent. It is a slow death, due to the narrowness of the lower arm, and the fact that only one wrist cut is possible: a deep slice severs nerves, rendering that hand useless. It is also extremely painful, and as such, generally successful only among the profoundly depressed or the insane.

  Ann-Marie Barbour had cut very deeply, the severed arteries as well as the dermis pulled back, exposing both bones in the wrist. Tangled in the curled fingers of her immobilized hand was a bloodied shoelace, upon which was strung a round-headed padlock key.

  Her spilled blood was red. Still, Setrakian produced his silver-backed mirror and held it at an angle to her down-turned face, just to be sure. No blurring—the image was true. Ann-Marie Barbour had not been turned.

  Setrakian stood slowly, bothered by this development. “Strange,” he said.

  Eph stood over her in such a way that her down-turned face—her expression one of bewildered exhaustion—was reflected in the pieces of shattered glass. He noticed, tucked beneath a twin frame containing photographs of a young boy and girl on the nightstand, a folded piece of notebook paper. He slid it out, paused a moment with it in his hand, then opened it carefully.

  Her handwriting was shaky, in red ink, just like the notation in the kitchen Bible. Her lower case i’s were dotted with circles, giving the penmanship a juvenile appearance.

  “‘To my dearest Benjamin and darling Haily,’” he began reading.

  “Don’t,” interrupted Nora. “Don’t read it. It’s not for us.”

  She was right. He scanned the page for pertinent information—“The children are with the father’s sister in Jersey, safe”—skipping down to the final passage, reading just that bit. “‘I am so sorry, Ansel…this key I hold I cannot use…I know now that God has cursed you to punish me, he has forsaken us and we are both damned. If my death will cure your soul, then He can have it…”

  Nora knelt, reaching for the key, drawing the bloody shoelace away from Ann-Marie’s lifeless fingers. “So…where is he?”

  They heard a low moan that almost passed for a growl. It was bestial, glottal, the kind of throaty noise that can only be made by a creature with no human voice. And it came from outside.

  Eph went to the window. He looked down at the backyard and saw the large shed.

  They went out silently into the backyard, to stand before the chained handles of the twin shed doors. There, they listened.

  Scratching inside. Guttural noises, quiet and choked.

  Then the doors banged. Something shoved against them. Testing the chain.

  Nora had the key. She looked to see if anyone else wanted it, and then walked to the chain herself, inserting the key in the padlock and turning it gingerly. The lock clicked and the shackle popped free.

  Silence inside. Nora lifted the lock out of the links, Setrakian and Eph ready behind her—the old man drawing his silver sword from its wooden sheath. She began unwinding the heavy chain. Threading it through the wooden handles…expecting the doors to burst open immediately…

  But nothing happened. Nora pulled the last length free and stepped back. She and Eph powered on their UVC lamps. The old man was locked in on the doors, so Eph sucked in a brave breath and reached for the handles, pulling open the
doors.

  It was dark inside. The only window was covered with something, and the outward-opening doors blocked most of the light coming down from the house porch.

  It was a few airless moments before they perceived the form of something crouching.

  Setrakian stepped forward, stopping within two paces of the open door. He appeared to be showing the occupant of the shed his silver blade.

  The thing attacked. It charged, running at Setrakian, leaping for him, and the old man was ready with his sword—but then the leash chain caught, snapping the thing back.

  They saw it now—saw its face. It sneered, its gums so white it appeared at first that its bared teeth went all the way up into the jaw. Its lips were pale with thirst, and what was left of its hair had whitened at the roots. It crouched on all fours on a bed of soil, a chain collar locked tight around its neck, dug into the flesh.

  Setrakian said, never taking his eyes off it, “This is the man from the airplane?”

  Eph stared. This thing was like a demon that had devoured the man named Ansel Barbour and half-assumed his form.

  “It was him.”

  “Somebody caught it,” said Nora. “Chained it here. Locked it away.”

  “No,” said Setrakian. “He chained himself.”

  Eph then understood. How the wife had been spared, and the children.

  “Stay back,” warned Setrakian. And just then the vampire opened its mouth and struck, the stinger lashing out at Setrakian. The old man did not flinch, as the vampire did not have the reach, despite his stinger being many feet long. It retracted in failure, the disgusting outgrowth drooping just past the vampire’s chin, flicking around its open mouth like the blind pink feeler of some deep-sea creature.

  Eph said, “Jesus God…”

  The vampire Barbour turned feral. It backed up on its haunches, hissing at them. The unbelievable sight shocked Eph into remembering Zack’s camera in his pocket, and he handed Nora his lamp, taking out the recorder.

  “What are you doing?” asked Nora.

  He fumbled on the power, capturing this thing in the viewfinder. Then, with his other hand, he switched off the safety on his nail gun and aimed it at the beast.

  Snap-chunk. Snap-chunk. Snap-chunk.

  Eph fired three silver needles from his nail gun, the long-barreled tool bucking with recoil. The projectiles ripped into the vampire, burning into his diseased muscle, bringing forth a hoarse howl of pain that tipped him forward.

  Eph kept recording.

  “Enough,” said Setrakian. “Let us remain merciful.”

  The beast’s neck extended as he strained from the pain. Setrakian repeated his refrain about his singing sword—and then swung right through the vampire’s neck. The body collapsed, arms and legs shivering. The head rolled to a stop, eyes blinking a few times, the stinger flailing like a cut snake, then going still. Hot white effluent bled out of the trunk of the neck, steaming faintly into the cool night air. The capillary worms slithered into the dirt, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, looking for a new vessel.

  Nora caught whatever sort of cry was rising in her throat with a hand clamped fast over her open mouth.

  Eph stared, revolted, forgetting to look through the viewfinder.

  Setrakian stepped back, sword pointed down, white spatter steaming off the silver blade, dripping to the grass. “In the back there. Under the wall.”

  Eph saw a hole dug beneath the rear of the shed.

  “Something else was in here with him,” said the old man. “Something crawled out, escaped.”

  Houses lined the street on either side. It could be in any one of them. “But no sign of the Master.”

  Setrakian shook his head. “Not here. Maybe the next.”

  Eph looked deep into the shed, trying to make out the blood worms in the light of Nora’s lamps. “Should I go in and irradiate them?”

  “There is a safer way. That red can on the back shelf?”

  Eph looked. “The gasoline can?”

  Setrakian nodded, and at once Eph understood. He cleared his throat and brought the nail gun up again, aiming it, squeezing the trigger twice.

  The weaponized tool was accurate from that distance. Fuel glugged out of the punctured canister, spilling down off the wooden shelf to the dirt below.

  Setrakian swept open his light topcoat and fished a small box of matches from a pocket in the lining. With a very crooked finger he picked out one wooden match and struck it against the strip on the box, bringing it flaring orange into the night.

  “Mr. Barbour is released,” he said.

  Then he threw in the lit match and the woodshed roared.

  Rego Park Center, Queens

  MATT GOT THROUGH an entire rack of juniors’ separates, and then holstered his bar code collection unit—the inventory gun—and set off downstairs for a snack. After-hours inventory actually wasn’t all that bad. As the Sears store manager, he was comped the overtime, applicable toward his regular weekday hours. And the rest of the mall was closed and locked, the security grates down, meaning no customers, no crowds. And he didn’t have to wear a necktie.

  He took the escalator to the merchandise pickup bay, where the best vending machines were. He was coming back through the first-floor jewelry counters eating jelly Chuckles (in ascending order of preference: licorice, lemon, lime, orange, cherry) when he heard something out in the mall proper. He went to the wide steel gate and saw one of the security guards crawling on the floor, three stores down.

  The guard was holding his hand to his throat, as though choking, or badly hurt.

  “Hey!” called Matt.

  The guard saw him and reached out, not a wave but a plea for help. Matt dug out his key ring and turned the longest one in the wall slot, raising the gate just four feet, high enough to duck under, and ran down to the man.

  The security guard gripped his arm and Matt got him up onto a nearby bench next to the wishing fountain. The man was gasping. Matt saw blood on his neck between his fingers, but not enough to indicate a stabbing. There were bloodstains on his uniform shirt also, and the guy’s lap was damp where he had peed himself.

  Matt knew the guy by sight only, recognizing him as kind of a douche. A big-armed guy who patrolled the mall with his thumbs in his belt like some southern sheriff. With his hat off now, Matt saw the guy’s receding hairline, black strands straggly and greasy, over his pate like oil. The guy was rubber limbed and clinging to Matt’s arm, painfully and not very manfully.

  Matt kept asking what had happened, but the guard was hyperventilating and looking all around. Matt heard a voice and realized it was the guard’s hip radio. Matt lifted the receiver off his belt. “Hello? This is Matt Sayles, manager of Sears. Hey, one of your guys here, on the first level—he’s hurt. He’s bleeding from the neck, and he’s all gray.”

  The voice on the other end said, “This is his supervisor. What’s happening there?”

  The guard was fighting to spit something out but only air wheezed from his ravaged throat.

  Matt relayed, “He was attacked. He’s got bruises on the sides of his neck, and wounds…he’s pretty scared. But I don’t see anybody else…”

  “I’m coming down the utility stairs now,” said the supervisor. Matt could hear his footfalls over the radio broadcast. “Where did you say you—”

  He cut out there. Matt waited for him to come back on, then pressed the call button. “Where did we say we what?”

  Finger off, he listened. Nothing again.

  “Hello?”

  A burst of transmission came through, less than one second long. A voice yelling, muffled: “GARGAHRAH—”

  The guard pitched forward off the bench, crawling away on all fours, dragging himself toward Sears. Matt got to his feet, radio in hand, turning toward the restrooms sign next to which was the door to the utility stairs.

  He heard thumping, like kicking coming down.

  Then a familiar whirring. He turned back toward his store and saw the steel securi
ty gate lowering to the floor. He had left his keys hanging in the control.

  The terrified guard was locking himself in.

  “Hey—hey!” yelled Matt.

  But before he could run there, Matt felt a presence behind him. He saw the guard back off, big-eyed, knocking over a rack of dresses and crawling away. Matt turned and saw two kids in baggy jeans and oversize cashmere hoodies coming out of the corridor to the restrooms. They looked drugged out, their brown skin yellowed, their hands empty.

  Junkies. Matt’s fear spiked, thinking they might have hit the guard with a dirty syringe. He pulled out his wallet, tossing it to one of them. The kid didn’t move to catch it, the wallet smacking him in the gut and falling to the floor.

  Matt backed up against the store grate as the two guys closed in.

  Vestry Street, Tribeca

  EPH PULLED UP across the street from Bolivar’s residence, a pair of conjoined town houses fronted by three stories of scaffolding. They crossed to the door and found it boarded up. Not haphazardly or tem porarily, but covered with thick planking bolted over the door frame. Sealed.

  Eph looked up the front face of the building to the night sky beyond. “What’s this hiding?” he said. He put a foot up on the scaffolding, starting to climb. Setrakian’s hand stopped him.

  There were witnesses. On the sidewalk of the neighboring buildings. Standing and watching in the darkness.

  Eph went to them. He found the silver-backed mirror in his jacket pocket and grabbed one of them to check his reflection. No shaking. The kid—no older than fifteen, done up in sad-eyed Goth paint and black lipstick—shook away from Eph’s grip.

  Setrakian checked the others with his glass. None of them was turned.

  “Fans,” said Nora. “A vigil.”

  “Get out of here,” snarled Eph. But they were New York kids, they knew they didn’t have to move.