Vigil

by Saunders, Craig

  If the path breaks, the world ends. Time will not allow such a thing to come to pass. Time itself is a force, and its will to live is what drives the universe forward. It will not allow itself to be broken.

  At least, that is what I believe. But I am just an immortal being. I do not presume to know the mind of the immutable; time.

  Is time the heartbeat of a God, the life force of the universe?

  I do not know. All I know is that it calls me on. I am its chronicler. I am the watcher of the seasons.

  *

  Chapter Seventy

  Tsarskoye Selo

  1916

  The burial was a secret. I thought I could take his body unobserved. I needed to burn him. I needed to make sure.

  I was so caught up in the small things that I failed to see the big picture. Rasputin was of minimal importance.

  The empress had him buried in the Royal graveyard, among her ancestors. I watched from the shade of a tree during the ceremony. That night I returned with a silver chain and a shovel.

  I dug up the body. It was in remarkably good condition. There was no sign of the autopsy that had been carried out.

  I took his body onto my shoulder after digging him up and I carried him from that place and out into the woods.

  I knew from carrying him that he was not dead. My hearing is phenomenal, but I knew what I was waiting for. That slow beat, his heart, keeping him alive even though he was all but killed.

  The beat came, as I knew it would. It was sustaining him though he would no doubt sleep for years and years and be a different man once he dragged himself from the earth.

  But I could not risk it.

  I carried him for a long time but I am tireless and he did not weigh that much.

  I found a place within a stand of trees and laid him on the floor, the chain around his neck to bind him should he arise before I thought he should.

  I built a pyre and put Rasputin in the centre where the flames would be hottest. The wood was frozen and would not burn easily, but someone brought some fuel.

  We doused the wood and I set the match to the pyre.

  The flames were slow to rise but soon there was an inferno.

  Rasputin sat up in the fire and screamed. I knew he could not have the strength to break free. It was just an automatic response, his body fighting death even though his mind was absent.

  I calmly took a revolver from my holster that I had taken to wearing and shot the devil through the skull. A portion of his skull and hair and brain flew from the back of his head and his body fell back into the fire.

  I watched as the flames licked about his body. The night was chill so I stepped closer to the fire for the warmth.

  Many things served to undo me throughout my life.

  For a few years I thought it was the crackling of the flames, the smell of his roasting flesh and charring wood, the wind blowing the wrong way. It did not matter how it happened, but they were stealthy.

  They were not as strong as me, but his children had the benefit and the fearlessness of youth. He had taught them well.

  They snuck up behind me and cracked me over the head hard enough to knock me out. It wasn’t hard enough to cause any lasting damage, but it knocked me unconscious for long enough for them to bind me and take me from that place.

  I was a captive once again.

  Unlike my first captivity, in some ways benevolent and learning, under Radu, many hundreds of years ago, this was a ticket to a dark place, and in many ways the end of my innocence.

  I came to realise just how sadistic a vampire could truly be.

  I thought, sometimes I was a dark knight. In many ways, compared to Rasputin’s children, I was a saint.

  Russia was in dread hands.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Unknown

  I knew nothing. I was nothing. Afloat in a dark sea, abandoned by reason, I slept and was held under by a nightmare from which I could not wake.

  I screamed in my sleep. Demonic hands cut away my flesh and sawed at my bones. First one hand, then the other, removed. Before my eyes, held open, even though I slept, I saw them wither, decomposing while I was forced to watch.

  A man I knew as Gregori, although that man was long dead, spoke to me. His voice was rough and low and he whispered in my ear for what seemed like years. I did not question a dream that lasted for decades. I was a vampire. My cycles have ever been slower than those of a mortal. I did not question that this dream demon could speak to my sleeping mind.

  A nightmare, I reminded myself, as they burned a hole through my abdomen with something that was not fire, but still the flesh smoked and I screamed and in that dream I could hear myself pleading, begging them to die. But I am a vampire. I was made complete again when a young girl was bled into my mouth while I lapped in idiot hunger. Even though I had no stomach (I remembered that, although my head seemed bound and I could not move to see) the blood took away the hunger, the pain subsided, until the next time.

  I dimly felt a large saw, and thought to myself, someone is sawing through my torso, but I could not see that happen.

  After came a torrent of blood, and a tingling that grew from my stomach to my hips, spread to thighs and knees and ankles and toes. The tingling became a maddening itch but in my sleep I could not scratch it. You cannot move in a nightmare. You peddle your legs but can move no faster while fearsome creatures chase you. You run on in nightmares, but your waking body just scissors its legs and you cry out. You cannot hear yourself scream when you are asleep.

  But I could hear myself scream.

  Gregori did not return one day. It may have been a day. It may have been a week, a year, a decade.

  Others came. Still I screamed. Gregori had been my most inventive tormentor. This was the dream before waking.

  I was burned. My eyes were put out and for a time I dreamed in darkness, although I told my torturers I could still see, though it was more like smell and when my eyes grew back I was not surprised to see that the creatures that tormented me looked exactly how I had imagined.

  I was fed sporadically. They knew the blood was necessary, because, after all, the demons that populated the strange and terrible landscape of my dream were like me. They were my children, once removed. A grandchild, I imagined. Then they came no more. Others came. They too slowed down. I noticed sores on their faces. They had lesions that wept pus and fingernails that were falling from their fingers. They were slowing, until, slowing completely, my visitors ceased to come.

  When I awoke much of my body was new. I could feel that there was little that remained unscarred. My head was mine, largely. My spine, between my torso and my head. My chest, my heart, were mine. They knew that to take my heart would have killed me. To remove my head would have done the same.

  I cried, alone in a dark room that had been the only view during my long dream, and my prison, and my hospital bed. I could smell flies and decomposing flesh and the other odours of a battlefield or a hospital.

  I think I cried for perhaps a year. I did not know where I was. I could not see a way out. Now, awake, I understood that if I was not found I might be here in this dark room, on this stained and rusted bed stripped of all cloth for the rest of eternity. I understood now just how resilient my body was, the extent of the injuries that I could withstand.

  I wished I had not. I heard loud crashes from overhead. They were explosions, louder that anything I had heard before. I heard chattering, popping sounds and I thought that this was the angry muttering that a rifle made, although for the sounds to be so close together it must have been a fusillade. It was the sound of repeating rifles, machine guns, once huge machines with many barrels now small enough for a man to carry.

  To carry into war.

  But I did not know then what I know now. But then, isn't that true of everyone?

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Unknown

  Above I heard the sounds of what I came to understand was gunf
ire. My senses were coming alive at last. The terror of my long dream was fading, although the memory of the pain was not, and never would. Injuries had been done to my mind. I was no longer the same creature I once was. Now I knew the true meaning of fear. I knew the horrors my kind could inflict willingly. There was darkness in the vampire’s soul. But it was there before they were made. It was the human that was cruel. I had never been cruel. I had killed to feed.

  This torture was new.

  I cowered as much as a man who is bound is able. I flinched at each sound that came. There was a time when things went quiet and I thought that they had gone, but my bestial sense told me otherwise. The beating of human hearts was clear from above.

  I counted days below, listening to the footsteps above, muffled by depth. I wondered if they would find me, down here, down in the dark.

  More people came. I waited.

  Can you imagine the terror that the hostage feels, made worse by a hint of hope, when release finally comes? Is this new owner really release, or a torment worse than that I have already suffered?

  I hoped that I would be found, given my freedom. I hoped that they would free me and leave me to live. But I feared, too. I feared my nightmare would resume, with different faces, and this time never end.

  That is the worst of the humiliations of captivity. That you need someone to grant you your freedom. Freedom should never be something granted. It cannot be granted. If someone needs to give it to you, it is not freedom. Your mind will always be a captive.

  I was wrong to worry over such a thing.

  Six days passed. I was shaking, waiting for release and fearing it at the same time. I had long given up struggling against my bonds. My strength had faded and I was bound tightly in chains that burned, perhaps coated in silver, perhaps entirely of silver. It held me fast and drained me of my will to fight.

  Six days of waiting. Somehow that short period of time was worse than the time that had gone before.

  Then an explosion. Followed by footsteps.

  The door to my cell was made of wood. I could have cried out, perhaps, led them to me, but I was afraid. I stayed silent. My mind was still a captive.

  It did not matter. I might have been struck dumb by fear, but they found me anyway. Perhaps they followed the smell.

  ‘Kick it down,’ someone said, in English. It had been so long since I had heard this English that I nearly cried. Here was something I understood. Its cadences were real and remembered, not something I had learned, but something that was bred into my bones.

  The door splinted as it was met by a heavy boot.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said someone. He gagged and turned outside the door to be sick. I guessed it was the smell of the room.

  Another man came into the room. He was carrying a rifle and it looked like something out of a dream I had before. It had a short stock and had a magazine. I knew it held many bullets.

  His clothing was strange and of a style that I did not recognise. He had a badge on his lapel, a flag that I remembered. There were red stripes on white, with a blue square bearing stars in one corner. He had three chevrons on his shoulders, like a heraldic sign without a bordering shield.

  He, too, was sick, but he just wiped his moustache clean and said, ‘Doctor, you better come in here.’

  He stood to one side as another man entered.

  This man was shorter than the soldier. He wore ordinary clothes, with no markings.

  I blinked and the man said, ‘Fuck.’

  He raised his rifle but the man in plain clothes gently pushed the gun to one side.

  ‘I’m taking command from this moment forward,’ he said. He was not sick. He didn’t even hold his nose.

  ‘Get a medic down here. Tell him we need plasma.’

  ‘Doctor…’

  ‘Enough. Do what you’re told. Send Michaels down when you fetch the medics. This room is now off limits. I want a double guard on the outer door. Make sure no one other than level five clearance gets in. Do not speak about this to anyone. You have your orders.’

  The soldier looked like he was going to complain, but then he took a look at me and that seemed to decide him.

  They left and the doctor came in. I was slightly relieved, I thought, that this man was a doctor. I thought he could help me. I was in pain and I wanted some blood. I thought about trying to get him close enough to bite into his neck. Perhaps if I had some fresh blood I would be strong enough to break free of my bonds.

  He did not give me the option. He came closer, but out of reach.

  ‘Can you speak?’ he asked me. He seemed intrigued, and not horrified.

  ‘I can,’ I managed, after some time. I tried to work some moisture into my mouth so that I could speak properly. My voice was cracked and shaky.

  ‘There is no need to be afraid,’ he said. ‘I am here to help.’

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked.

  ‘You are in Germany. This is a secret facility, a place used by a special unit within the German army called Unit 731. I think you understand what they did.’

  ‘They…tortured me.’

  ‘I know. We will fix you up. You’ll understand why I can’t release you.’

  ‘What do you mean? Let me up. Please. Let me be free.’

  ‘That can never happen. I will never be as cruel to you as they have, but you can never be free.’

  ‘I beg you…’

  ‘I know what you are,’ he said. He was not unkind. But there was no swaying him.

  I heard footsteps from outside and two men came in. They both wore uniforms but they had armbands on.

  ‘Leave it. Leave us be,’ he said.

  One of them began to speak but he held up a hand to silence him. ‘There is nothing you can do for him. I will attend him in his final hour. Please.’

  They left. It seemed the doctor was in command of these men, too. I should have been worried then. I guess I was, because I was shaking, but I was not afraid just yet.

  He took a plastic bag and I knew it contained blood. He put a needle in my arm and I began to feel better. It was a new way of feeding. It was not as satisfying as eating, but I could feel my strength returning and my hands and feet began to tingle once again.

  ‘Can you feel anything?’

  ‘My hands and feet are tingling.’

  ‘That is good. Your wrists and ankles have been burned through by your chains. How long have you been here?’

  ‘What year is it?’ I asked. It seemed strange that I was having a conversation with this man, as yet unsure whether he was a change for the better. But he was polite and his voice was powerful and persuasive.

  ‘1945. The war has ended.’

  ‘Since just after the start of the war,’ I said. ‘1916, it was. My God, I’ve been here for 29 years.’ I think I began crying then.

  ‘That was the first war,’ he said. ‘The second began in 1939.’

  ‘How did I end up in Germany?’

  ‘You must have been brought here many years ago. You were an experiment. A failed experiment. Your blood could not be controlled. I have the records, but I expect you know much of what went on.’

  ‘My children?’

  ‘The ones like you? I read about them. The silver gradually killed them. They did not live long. They traded you to the Germans in exchange for their lives. They were hunted in Russia. The records are quite complete. You are the only survivor.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘We’ll get to that later. First we have to get you out of this country.’

  ‘What is to become of me?’

  ‘A long life, no doubt. If you co-operate, benefits.’

  ‘My freedom?’

  The man shook his head. ‘That can never happen. I’m sure you understand. Now, don’t cry. It is most unattractive. I can assure you we are not so barbaric as the Germans or the Russians. You have nothing to fear.’

  I should have known then when a doctor tells you that there is nothing to fear, you better be afraid.
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  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am a doctor, of a sort. A specialist, you could say. My name is John Fallon. I’m sure we will get to know each other very well.’

  For some reason my stomach turned and my heart beat quicker. It was something in his smile as he said this. I was suddenly certain that I did not want to get to know this man any better, and that far from improving my situation had become considerably worse.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Paris

  2025 A.D.

  Pre-Apocalypse

  The world was white. Some people think that pain is red, but the colour of real pain is white.

  Tom Fallon tried to move but found that his hips were facing the wrong way. His right arm could move, but his left arm was trapped under his body. His neck was broken. He was aware of this because his head was facing backwards. He could not understand why his right arm could move.

  With his head facing the pavement he could not see where he was. He thought he was on a city street. With a immense effort he managed to turn his head to one side. He could feel the bones in his neck, his shattered vertebra, grinding and sending splinters of bone into his nerves.

  A woman swam into view, leaning over him. She screamed as he turned his head. He couldn’t hear the sounds but he could tell from her face. She dropped the mobile phone she had been holding and held her head instead. Tom imagined he must have looked just as terrible as he felt from the look of horror on her face. He tried to talk, to tell her to calm down, but he could not.

  Awareness came flooding through him as he took in her clothes. She wore modern clothes, a tight skirt and a shirt. He was aware of the press of her breasts against the cloth. He was thankful of the sight and wondered what he was thinking, staring at her breasts while he was crippled and crushed…by what?