The Strain

Jamaica Hospital Medical Center

Eph and Nora swept their badges through security and got Setrakian through the emergency room entrance without attracting any undo attention. On the stairs going up to the isolation ward, Setrakian said, “This is unreasonably risky.”

Eph said, “This man, Jim Kent—he and Nora and I have worked side by side for a year now. We can’t just abandon him.”

“He is turned. What can you do for him?”

Eph slowed. Setrakian was huffing and puffing behind them, and appreciated the stop, leaning on his walking stick. Eph looked at Nora, and they were agreed.

“I can release him,” said Eph.

They exited the stairwell and eyed the isolation ward entrance down the hallway.

“No police,” Nora said.

Setrakian was looking around. He was not so sure.

“There is Sylvia,” said Eph, noticing Jim’s frizzy-haired girlfriend sitting in a folding chair near the ward entrance.

Nora nodded to herself, ready. “Okay,” she said.

She went to Sylvia alone, who rose out of her chair when she saw her coming. “Nora.”

“How is Jim?”

“They haven’t told me anything.” Sylvia looked past her. “Eph isn’t with you?”

Nora shook her head. “He went away.”

“It isn’t true what they say, is it?”

“Never. You look worn out. Let’s get you something to eat.”

While Nora was asking for directions to the cafeteria, distracting the nurses, Eph and Setrakian slipped inside the doors to the isolation ward. Eph passed the glove-and-gown station like a reluctant assassin, moving through layers of plastic to Jim’s bay.

His bed was empty. Jim was gone.

Eph quickly checked the other bays. All vacant.

“They must have moved him,” said Eph.

Setrakian said, “His lady friend would not be outside if she knew he was gone.”

“Then…?”

“They have taken him.”

Eph stared at the empty bed. “They?”

“Come,” said Setrakian. “This is very dangerous. We have no time.”

“Wait.” He went to the bedside table, seeing Jim’s earpiece hanging from the drawer below. He found Jim’s phone and checked to make sure that it was charged. He pulled out his own phone and realized it was like a homing device now. The FBI could close in on his location through GPS.

He dropped his phone into the drawer, swapping it for Jim’s.

“Doctor,” said Setrakian, growing impatient.

“Please—call me Eph,” he said, slipping Jim’s phone into his pocket on the way out. “I don’t feel much like a doctor these days.”

West Side Highway, Manhattan

GUS ELIZALDE SAT in the back of the NYPD prisoner transport van, his hands cuffed around a steel bar behind him. Felix sat diagonally across from him, head down, rocking with the motion, growing paler by the minute. They had to be on the West Side Highway to be moving this fast in Manhattan. Two other prisoners sat with them, one across from Gus, one to his left, across from Felix. Both asleep. The stupid can sleep through anything.

Gus smelled cigarette smoke from the cab of the windowless van, through the closed partition. It had been near dusk when they were loaded in. Gus kept his eye on Felix, sagging forward off the handcuff bar. Thinking about what the old pawnbroker had said. And waiting.

He didn’t have to wait long. Felix’s head started to buck, then turn to the side. At once he sat erect and surveyed his surroundings. Felix looked at Gus, stared at him, but nothing in Felix’s eyes showed Gus that his lifelong compadre recognized him.

A darkness in his eyes. A void.

A blaring car horn woke up the dude next to Gus then, startling him awake. “Shit,” said the guy, rattling his cuffs behind him. “Fuck we headed?” Gus didn’t answer. The dude was looking across at Felix, who was looking at him. He kicked Felix’s foot. “I said where the fuck we headed, junior?”

Felix looked at him for an instant with a vacant, almost idiotic stare. His mouth opened as though to answer—and the stinger shot out, piercing the helpless guy’s throat. Right across the entire width of the van, and the dude couldn’t do anything about it except stomp and kick. Gus started to do the same, trapped as he was in back there with the former Felix, yelling and rattling and waking up the prisoner across from him. They all yelled and screamed and stomped as the dude next to Gus went limp, Felix’s stinger flushing from translucent to bloodred.

The partition opened between the prisoner area and the front cab. A head with a cop hat on it twisted around from the passenger’s seat. “Shut the fuck up back there or else I will—”

He saw Felix drinking the other prisoner. Saw the engorging appendage reaching across the van, the first messy feeding, Felix disengaging and his stinger coming back into his mouth. Blood spilling out of the dude’s neck and dribbling down Felix’s front.

The passenger cop yelped and turned away.

“What is it?” yelled the driver, trying to get a look in the back.

Felix’s stinger shot out through the partition, latching onto the van driver’s throat. Screaming rang from the cab as the van lurched, out of control. Gus grabbed the handcuff rail with his fingers just in time to keep his hands from being broken at the wrists, and the van veered right and then left, hard—before crashing on its side.

The van scraped along until it hit a guardrail, bouncing off, spinning to a stop. Gus was on his side, the prisoner across from him now dangling from broken arms, yelping in pain and fear. Felix’s bar latch had broken, his stinger hanging down and twitching like a live electrical cable dripping human blood.

His dead eyes came up and looked at Gus.

Gus found his pole broken and slid his manacles fast along its length, kicking at the crumpled door until it opened. He tumbled out fast, onto the side of the road, ears roaring as though a bomb had exploded.

His hands were still cuffed behind him. Headlights went past, cars slowing to inspect the wreckage. Gus rolled away fast, quickly bringing his wrists underneath his feet, getting his hands in front of him. He eyed the busted-open cargo door of the van, waiting for Felix to climb out after him.

Then Gus heard a scream. He looked around for some kind of weapon, and had to settle for a dented hubcap. He went up with it, edging to the open door of the tipped-over van.

There was Felix, drinking the wide-eyed prisoner still strung up on the handcuff bar.

Gus swore, sickened by the sight. Felix disengaged and without any hesitation, shot his stinger at Gus’s neck. Gus just got the hubcap up in time, deflecting the blow before spinning away, out of sight of the rear of the van.

Again, Felix did not follow him. Gus stood there a moment, regaining his senses—wondering why—and then noticed the sun. It was floating between two buildings across the Hudson, bloodred and almost gone, sinking fast.

Felix was hiding in the van, waiting for sundown. In three minutes he was going to be free.

Gus looked around wildly. He saw broken windshield glass on the road, but that wouldn’t do it. He climbed up the chassis of the van, onto the side that was the top now. He scooted over to the driver’s-side door and kicked at the hinge of the side mirror. It cracked off, and he was pulling at the wires to get it free when the cop inside yelled at him.

“Hold it!”

Gus looked at him, the driver cop, bleeding from the neck, holding on to the top handle of the roof, his gun out. Then Gus pulled the mirror free with one hard yank and jumped back down onto the road.

The sun was melting away like a punctured egg yolk. Gus went to figure out the angle, holding the mirror over his head to catch its last rays. He saw the reflection shimmer on the ground. It looked vague, too dim to do anything. So he cracked the planar glass with his knuckles, breaking it up but keeping the pieces adhered to the mirror backing. He tried it again and the reflected rays now had some distinction.

“I said hold it!”

The cop came down from the van with his gun still out. His free hand was holding his neck where Felix had gotten him, his ears bleeding from the impact. He came around and looked in the van.

Felix was crouched inside, handcuffs dangling from one hand. The other hand was gone, severed at the wrist by the cuffs at the force of impact. Its absence didn’t seem to bother him. Nor did the white blood spilling from the open stump.

Felix smiled and the cop opened up on him. Rounds pierced Felix’s chest and legs, ripping away flesh and chips of bone. Seven, eight shots, and Felix fell backward. Two more shots into his body. The cop lowered the gun and then Felix sat upright, still smiling.

Still thirsty. Forever thirsty.

Gus shoved the cop aside then, and held up his mirror. The last vestiges of the dying orange sun were just poking over the building across the river. Gus called Felix’s name one last time, as though saying his name would snap him out of it, would miraculously bring Felix back…

But Felix was no longer Felix. He was a vampire motherfucker. Gus reminded himself of this as he angled the mirror so that the blazing orange shafts of reflected sunlight shot into the overturned van.

Felix’s dead eyes went to horror as the beams of sun shot through him. They impaled him with the force of lasers, burning holes and igniting his flesh. An animal howl arose from deep inside him, like the cry of a man shattered at the atomic level, as the rays ravaged his body.

The sound etched itself into Gus’s mind, but he kept working the reflection around until all that was left of Felix was a charred mass of smoking ash.

The light rays faded and Gus lowered his arm.

He looked across the river.

Night.

Gus felt like crying—all kinds of anguish and pain mixed together in his heart—and his pain was turning into rage. Fuel was pooled beneath the van, almost at his feet. Gus went to the cop who was still staring from the roadside at what had happened. He riffled through his pockets, finding a Zippo lighter. Gus popped the top and scratched the wheel and the flame jumped up dutifully.

“Lo siento, ’mano.”

He touched off the fuel spill and the van went up with a boom, knocking back both Gus and the cop.

“Chingado—he stung you,” Gus said to the cop who still held his neck. “You’ll become one of them now.”

He took the cop’s gun and pointed it at him. Now the sirens were coming.

The cop looked up at Gus, and then a second later his head was gone. Gus kept the smoking gun aimed at the body until he was off the side of the highway. Then he tossed away the gun and thought about the handcuff keys, but too late. Flashing lights were approaching. He turned and ran off the side of the highway, into the new night.

Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens

KELLY WAS STILL in her teaching clothes, a dark tank shirt beneath a soft wraparound top and a long, straight skirt. Zack was up in his room, supposedly doing his homework, and Matt was home, having only worked a half day because he had a store inventory that night.

This news about Eph on the television had Kelly horrified. And now she couldn’t get him on his cell phone.

“He finally did it,” said Matt, the tails of his denim Sears shirt pulled out for the time being. “He finally cracked.”

“Matt,” said Kelly, only half scolding. But—had Eph cracked? And what did this mean for her?

“Delusions of grandeur, the big virus hunter,” said Matt. “He’s like those firefighters who set blazes in order to be the hero.” Matt sank deeply into his easy chair. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he was doing all this for you.”

“Me?”

“The attention, or whatnot. ‘Look at me, I’m important.’”

She shook her head fast, as if he was wasting her time. Sometimes it confounded her that Matt could be so wrong about people.

The doorbell rang, and Kelly stopped her pacing. Matt sprang up from his chair, but Kelly was at the door first.

It was Eph, with Nora Martinez behind him, and an old man in a long tweed coat behind her.

“What are you doing here?” said Kelly, looking up and down the street.

Eph pushed inside. “I’m here to see Zack. To explain.”

“He doesn’t know.”

Eph looked around, completely ignoring Matt, who was standing right there. “Is he upstairs doing homework on his laptop?”

“Yes,” said Kelly.

“If he has Internet access, then he knows.”

Eph went to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

Leaving Nora there at the door with Kelly. Nora exhaled, soaking in awkwardness. “Sorry,” she said. “Barging in on you like this.”

Kelly shook her head gently, looking her over with just a hint of appraisal. She knew that there was something going on between Nora and Eph. For Nora, Kelly Goodweather’s house was the last place she wanted to be.

Kelly then turned her attention to the old man with the wolf-head walking stick. “What is going on?”

“The ex—Mrs. Goodweather, I presume?” Setrakian offered his hand with the courtly manners of a lost generation. “Abraham Setrakian. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“The same,” said Kelly, taken aback, casting an uncertain glance at Matt.

Nora said, “He needed to see you guys. To explain.”

Matt said, “Doesn’t this little visit make us criminal accomplices to something?”

Kelly had to counter Matt’s rudeness. “Would you like a drink?” she asked Setrakian. “Some water?”

Matt said, “Jesus—we could both get twenty years for that glass of water…”

Eph sat on the edge of Zack’s bed, Zack at his desk with his laptop open.

Eph said, “I’m caught up in something I don’t really understand. But I wanted you to hear it from me. None of it is true. Except for the fact that there are people after me.”

Zack said, “Won’t they come here looking for you?”

“Maybe.”

Zack looked down, troubled, working through it. “You gotta get rid of your phone.”

Eph smiled. “Already did.” He clasped his conspiratorial son on the shoulder. He saw, next to the boy’s laptop, the video recorder Eph had bought him for Christmas.

“You still working on that movie with your friends?”

“We’re kind of in the editing stage.”

Eph picked it up, the camera small and light enough to fit into his pocket. “Think I could borrow this for a little while?”

Zack nodded slowly. “Is it the eclipse, Dad? Turning people into zombies?”

Eph reacted with surprise—realizing the truth was not much more plausible than that. He tried to see this thing from the point of view of a very perceptive and occasionally sensitive eleven-year-old. And it drew something up in him, from a deep reservoir of feeling. He stood and hugged his boy. An odd moment, fragile and beautiful, between a father and son. Eph felt it with absolute clarity. He ruffled the boy’s hair, and there was nothing more to be said.

Kelly and Matt were having a whispered conversation in the kitchen, leaving Nora and Setrakian alone in the glassed-in sunroom off the back of the house. Setrakian stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the glowing sky of early night, the third since the landing of the accursed airplane, his back to her.

A clock on the shelf went tick-tick-tick.

Setrakian heard pick-pick-pick.

Nora sensed his impatience. She said, “He, uh, he’s got a lot of issues with his family. Since the divorce.”

Setrakian moved his fingers into the small pocket on his vest, checking on his pillbox. The pocket was near his heart, as there were circulatory benefits to be gleaned just from placing nitroglycerin close to his aged pump. It beat steadily if not robustly. How many more beats did he have in him? Enough, he hoped, to get the job done.

“I have no children,” he said. “My wife, Anna, gone seventeen years now, and I were not so blessed. You would assume that the ache for children fades over time, but in fact it deepens with age. I had much to teach, yet no student.”

Nora looked at his walking stick, stood up against the wall near her chair. “How did you… how did you first come to this?”

“When did I discover their existence, you mean?”

“And devote yourself to this, over all these years.”

He was silent for a moment, summoning the memory. “I was a young man then. During World War Two, I found myself interred in occupied Poland, very much against my own wishes. A small camp northeast of Warsaw, named Treblinka.”

Nora shared the old man’s stillness. “A concentration camp.”

“Extermination camp. These are brutal creatures, my dear. More brutal than any predator one could ever have the misfortune of encountering in this world. Rank opportunists who prey on the young and the infirm. In the camp, myself and my fellow prisoners were a meager feast set unknowingly before him.”

“Him?”

“The Master.”

The way he said the word chilled Nora. “He was German? A Nazi?”

“No, no. He has no affiliation. He is loyal to no one and nothing, belonging not to one country or another. He roams where he likes. He feeds where there is food. The camp to him was like a fire sale. Easy prey.”

“But you… you survived. Couldn’t you have told someone…?”

“Who would have believed an emaciated man’s ravings? It took me weeks to accept what you are processing now, and I was a witness to this atrocity. It is more than the mind will accept. I chose not to be judged insane. His food source interrupted, the Master simply moved on. But I made a pledge to myself in that camp, one I have never forgotten. I tracked the Master for many years. Across central Europe and the Balkans, through Russia, central Asia. For three decades. Close on his heels at times, but never close enough. I became a professor at the University of Vienna, I studied the lore. I began to amass books and weapons and tools. All the while preparing myself to meet him again. An opportunity I have waited more than six decades for.”

“But… then who is he?”

“He has had many forms. Currently, he has taken the body of a Polish nobleman named Jusef Sardu, who went missing during a hunting expedition in the north country of Romania, in the spring of 1873.”

“1873?”

“Sardu was a giant. At the time of the expedition, he already stood nearly seven feet tall. So tall that his muscles could not support his long, heavy bones. It was said that his pants pockets were the size of turnip sacks. For support, he had to lean heavily on a walking stick whose handle bore the family heraldic symbol.”

Nora looked over again at Setrakian’s oversize walking stick, its silver handle. Her eyes widened. “A wolf’s head.”

“The remains of the other Sardu men were found many years later, along with young Jusef’s journal. His account detailed their stalking of their hunting party by some unknown predator, who abducted and killed them, one by one. The final entry indicated that Jusef had discovered the dead bodies inside the opening to an underground cave. He buried them before returning to the cave to face the beast, to avenge his family.”

She could not take her eyes off the wolf’s-head grip. “How ever did you get it?”

“I tracked this walking stick to a private dealer in Antwerp in the summer of 1967. Sardu eventually returned to his family’s estate in Poland, many weeks later, though alone and much changed. He carried his cane, but no longer leaned on it, and in time ceased carrying it altogether. Not only had he apparently been cured of the pain of his gigantism, he was now rumored to possess great strength. Villagers soon began to go missing, the town was said to be cursed, and eventually it died away. The house of Sardu fell into ruin and the young master was never seen again.”

Nora sized up the walking stick. “At fifteen he was that tall?”

“And still growing.”

“The coffin… it was at least eight by four.”

Setrakian nodded solemnly. “I know.”

She nodded. Then she said, “Wait—how do you know?”

“I saw, once—at least, the marks it left in the dirt. A long time ago.”

Kelly and Eph stood across from each other in the modest kitchen. Her hair was lighter and shorter, more businesslike now. Maybe more Mom-like. She gripped the edge of the countertop, and he noticed little paper cuts on her knuckles, a hazard of the classroom.

She had gotten him an unopened pint of milk from the fridge. “You still keep whole milk?” he said.

“Z likes it. Wants to be like his father.”

Eph drank some, and the milk cooled him but didn’t give him that usual calming sensation. He saw Matt lurking on the other side of the pass-through, sitting in a chair, pretending not to look their way.

“He is so much like you,” she said. She was referring to Zack.

“I know,” said Eph.

“The older he gets. Obsessive. Stubborn. Demanding. Brilliant.”

“Tough to take in an eleven-year-old.”

Her face broke into a broad smile. “I’m cursed for life, I guess.”

Eph smiled also. It felt strange, exercise his face hadn’t gotten in days.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t have much time. I just… I want things to be good. Or at least, to be okay between us. The custody thing, that whole mess—I know it did a job on us. I’m glad it’s over. I didn’t come here to make a speech, I just… now seems like a good time to clear the air.”

Kelly was stunned, searching for words.

Eph said, “You don’t have to say anything, I just—”

“No,” she said, “I want to. I am sorry. You’ll never know just how sorry I am. Sorry that everything has to be this way. Truly. I know you never wanted this. I know you wanted us to stay together. Just for Z’s sake.”

“Of course.”

“You see, I couldn’t do that—I couldn’t. You were sucking the life out of me, Eph. And the other part of it was… I wanted to hurt you. I did. I admit it. And that was the only way I knew I could.”

He exhaled deeply. She was finally admitting to something he’d always known. But there was no victory for him in that.

“I need Zack, you know that. Z is… he’s it. I think, without him, there would be no me. Unhealthy or not, that’s just the way it is. He’s everything to me… as you once were.” She paused to let that sink in, for both of them. “Without him, I would be lost, I would be…”

She gave up on her rambling.

Eph said, “You would be like me.”

That froze her. They stood there looking at each other.

“Look,” Eph said, “I’ll take some blame. For us, for you and me. I know I’m not the… the whatever, the easiest guy in the world, the ideal husband. I went through my thing. And Matt—I know I’ve said some things in the past…”

“You once called him my ‘consolation life.’”

Eph winced. “You know what? Maybe if I managed a Sears, if I had a job that was just that, a job, and not another marriage entirely… maybe you wouldn’t have felt so left out. So cheated. So… second place.”

They were quiet for a bit then, Eph realizing how bigger issues tended to crowd out the little ones. How true strife caused personal problems to be set aside with alacrity.

Kelly said, “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say we should have had this talk years ago.”

“We should have,” he agreed. “But we couldn’t. It wouldn’t have worked. We had to go through all this shit first. Believe me, I’d have paid any amount not to—not to have gone through one second of it—but here we are. Like old acquaintances.”

“Life doesn’t go at all the way you think it will.”

Eph nodded. “After what my parents went through, what they put me through, I always told myself, never, never, never, never.”

“I know.”

He folded in the spout on the milk carton. “So forget who did what. What we need to do now is make it up to him.”

“We do.”

Kelly nodded. Eph nodded. He swirled the milk around in the carton, feeling the coldness brush up against his palm.

“Christ, what a day,” he said. He thought again about the little girl in Freeburg, the one who had been holding hands with her mother on Flight 753. The one who was Zack’s age. “You know how you always told me, if something hit, some biological threat, that if I didn’t let you know first you’d divorce me? Well—too late for that.”

She came forward, reading his face. “I know you’re in trouble.”

“This isn’t about me. I just want you to listen, okay, and not flip out. There is a virus moving through the city. It’s something… extraordinary… easily the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The worst?” She blanched. “Is it SARS?”

Eph almost smiled at the grand absurdity of it all. The insanity.

“What I want you to do is to take Zack and get out of the city. Matt too. As soon as possible—tonight, right now—and as far away as you can possibly go. Away from populated areas, I mean. Your parents… I know how you feel about taking things from them, but they have that place up in Vermont still, right? On top of that hill?”

“What are you saying?”

“Go there. For a few days at least. Watch the news, wait for my call.”

“Wait,” she said. “I’m the head-for-the-hills paranoiac, not you. But… what about my classroom? Zack’s school?” She squinted. “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

“Because then you would not go. Just trust me, and go,” he said. “Go, and hope we can turn it back somehow, and this all passes quickly.”

“‘Hope?’” she said. “Now you’re really scaring me. What if you can’t turn it back? And—and what if something happens to you?”

He couldn’t stand there with her and address his own doubts. “Kelly—I gotta go.”

He tried to walk out, but she grabbed his arm, checking his eyes to see if it was okay, then put her arms around him. What started as just a make-up hug turned into something more, and by the end of it she was gripping him tightly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his ear, then left a kiss on the bristly side of his unshaven neck.

Vestry Street, Tribeca

ELDRITCH PALMER sat waiting on an uncushioned chair on the rooftop patio, bathed in night. The only direct light was that of an outdoor gas lamp burning in the corner. The terrace was on the top of the lower of the two adjoining buildings. The floor was made of square clay tiles, aged and blanched by the elements. One low step preceded a high brick wall at the northern end, with two door-size archways hung with iron-work. Fluted terra-cotta tiling topped the wall and the overhangs on each side. To the left, through wider decorative archways, were oversize doorways to the residence. Behind Palmer, centered before the southern white cement wall, was a headless statue of a woman in swirling robes, her shoulders and arms darkly weathered. Ivy slithered up the stone base. Though a few taller buildings were visible both north and east, the patio was reasonably private, as concealed a rooftop as one might hope to find in lower Manhattan.

Palmer sat listening to the sounds of the city rising off the streets. Sounds that would end so soon. If only they knew this down there, they would embrace this night. Every mundanity of life grows infinitely more precious in the face of impending death. Palmer knew this intimately. A sickly child, he had struggled with his health all his life. Some mornings he had awakened amazed to see another dawn. Most people didn’t know what it was to mark existence one sunrise at a time. What it was like to depend on machines for one’s survival. Good health was the birthright of most, and life a series of days to be tripped through. They had never known the nearness of death. The intimacy of ultimate darkness.

Soon Eldritch Palmer would know their bliss. An endless menu of days stretched out before him. Soon he would know what it was not to worry about tomorrow, or tomorrow’s tomorrow…

A breeze fluttered the patio trees and rustled through some of the plantings. Palmer, seated facing the taller residence, at an angle, next to a small smoking table, heard a rustling. A rippling, like the hem of a garment on the floor. A black garment.

I thought you wanted no contact until after the first week.

The voice—at once both familiar and monstrous—sent a dark thrill racing up Palmer’s crooked back. If Palmer hadn’t purposely been facing away from the main part of the patio—both out of respect as well as sheer human aversion—he would have seen that the Master’s mouth never moved. No voice went out into the night. The Master spoke directly into your mind.

Palmer felt the presence high above his shoulder, and kept his gaze trained on the arched doors to the residence. “Welcome to New York.”

This came out as more of a gasp than he would have liked. Nothing can unman you like an un-man.

When the Master said nothing, Palmer tried to reassert himself. “I have to say, I disapprove of this Bolivar. I don’t know why you should have selected him.”

Who he is matters not to me.

Palmer saw instantly that he was right. So what if Bolivar had been a makeup-wearing rock star? Palmer was thinking like a human, he supposed. “Why did you leave four conscious? It has created many problems.”

Do you question me?

Palmer swallowed. A kingmaker in this life, subordinate to no man. The feeling of abject servility was as foreign to him as it was overwhelming.

“Someone is on to you,” Palmer said quickly. “A medical scientist, a disease detective. Here in New York.”

What does one man matter to me?

“He—his name is Dr. Ephraim Goodweather—is an expert in epidemic control.”

You glorified little monkeys. Your kind is the epidemic—not mine.

“This Goodweather is being advised by someone. A man with detailed knowledge of your kind. He knows the lore and even a bit of the biology. The police are looking for him, but I think that more decisive action is warranted. I believe that this could mean the difference between a quick, decisive victory or a protracted struggle. We have many battles to come, on the human front as well as others—”

I will prevail.

As to that, Palmer harbored no doubts. “Yes, of course.” Palmer wanted the old man for himself. He wanted to confirm his identity before divulging any information to the Master. So he was actively trying not to think about the old man—knowing that, in the presence of the Master, one must protect one’s thoughts…

I have met this old man before. When he was not quite so old.

Palmer went cold with astonished defeat. “You will remember, it took me a long time to find you. My travels took me to the four corners of the world, and there were many dead ends and side roads—many people I had to go through. He was one of them.” He tried to make his change in topic fluid, but his mind felt clouded. Being in the presence of the Master was like being oil in the presence of a burning wick.

I will meet this Goodweather. And tend to him.

Palmer had already prepared a bulleted sheet containing background information on the CDC epidemiologist. He unfolded the sheet from his jacket pocket, laying it flat on the table. “Everything is there, Master. His family, known associates…”

There was a scrape along the tile top of the table, and the piece of paper was taken. Palmer glimpsed the hand only peripherally. The middle finger, crooked and sharp-nailed, was longer and thicker than the others.

Palmer said, “All we need now is a few more days.”

An argument, of sorts, had begun inside the rock star’s residence, the unfinished twin town houses that Palmer had the unfortunate pleasure of walking through in order to get to the patio rendezvous. He showed particular distaste for the only finished part of the household, the penthouse bedroom, garishly overdecorated and reeking of primate lust. Palmer himself had never been with a woman. When he was young, it was because of illness, and the preaching of the two aunts who had raised him. When he was older, it was by choice. He came to understand that the purity of his mortal self should never be tainted by desire.

The interior argument grew louder, into the unmistakable clatter of violence.

Your man is in trouble.

Palmer sat forward. Mr. Fitzwilliam was inside. Palmer had expressly forbidden him to enter the patio area. “You said his safety here was guaranteed.”

Palmer heard the pounding of running feet. He heard grunting. A human yell.

“Stop them,” said Palmer.

The Master’s voice was, as ever, languid and unperturbed.

He is not the one they want.

Palmer rose in a panic. Did the Master mean him? Was this some sort of trap? “We have an agreement!”

For as long as it suits me.

Palmer heard another yell, close at hand—followed by two quick gun reports. Then one of the interior arched doors was thrown open, inward, and the ornamental gate was pushed out. Mr. Fitzwilliam, 260 pounds of ex-marine in a Savile Row suit, came racing through, his sidearm gripped in his right hand, eyes bright with distress. “Sir—they are right behind me…”

It was then that his vision moved from Palmer’s face to the impossibly tall figure standing behind him. The gun slipped from Mr. Fitzwilliam’s grip, clunking to the tile. Mr. Fitzwilliam’s face drained of color and he swayed there for a moment like a man swaying from a wire, then dropped to his knees.

Behind him came the turned. Vampires in various modes of civilian dress, from business suits to Goth wear to paparazzi casual. All stinking and scuffed from nesting in the dirt. They rushed onto the patio like creatures beckoned by an unheard whistle.

Leading them was Bolivar himself, gaunt and nearly bald, wearing a black robe. As a first-generation vampire, he was more mature than the rest. His flesh had a bloodless, alabaster-like pallor that was almost glowing and his eyes were dead moons.

Behind him was a female fan who had been shot in the face by Mr. Fitzwilliam in the midst of his panic. Her cheekbone was split open back to her lopsided ear, leaving her with one half of a garish, teeth-baring smile.

The rest staggered out into the new night, excited into action by the presence of their Master. They stopped, staring at him in black-eyed awe.

Children.

Palmer—standing right before them, between them and the Master—was completely ignored. The force of the Master’s presence held them in abeyance. They gathered before him like primitives before a temple.

Mr. Fitzwilliam remained on his knees, as though struck down.

The Master spoke in a way that Palmer believed exclusive to his own ears.

You brought me all this way. Aren’t you going to look?

Palmer had beheld the Master once before, in a darkened cellar on another continent. Not clearly, and yet—clearly enough. The image had never left him.

No way to avoid him now. Palmer closed his eyes to steel himself, then opened them and forced himself to turn. Like risking blindness by staring into the sun.

His eyes traveled up from the Master’s chest to… …his face.

The horror. And the glory.

The impious. And the magnificent.

The savage. And the holy.

Unnatural terror stretched Palmer’s face into a mask of fear, eventually turning the corners of it into a triumphant, teeth-clenching smile.

The hideous transcendent.

Behold the Master.

Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens

KELLY WALKED FAST across the living room with clean clothes and batteries in her hands, past Matt and Zack, who were watching the television news.

“We’re going,” said Kelly, dumping the load into a canvas bag on a chair.

Matt turned to her with a smile but Kelly wanted none of it. “Come on, babe,” he said.

“Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Yes. Patiently.” He stood up from his chair. “Look, Kel, your ex-husband is doing his thing again. Lobbing a grenade into our happy home life here. Can’t you see that? If this was something really serious, the government would tell us.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. Elected officials never lie.” She stomped off to the front closet, pulling out the rest of the luggage. Kelly kept a go bag also, as recommended by the New York City Office of Emergency Management, in the event of an emergency evacuation. It was a sturdy canvas bag packed with bottled water and granola bars, a Grundig hand-crank AM/FM/shortwave radio, a Faraday flashlight, a first-aid kit, $100 in cash, and copies of all their important documents in a waterproof container.

“This is a self-fulfilling prophesy with you,” continued Matt, following her. “Don’t you see? He knows you. He knows exactly which button to push. This is why you two were no good for each other.”

Kelly dug to the back of the closet, tossing out two old tennis rackets in her way, hitting Matt on the feet for talking like that in front of Zack. “It’s not like that. I believe him.”

“He’s a wanted man, Kel. He’s having some sort of breakdown, a collapse. All these so-called geniuses are basically fragile. Like those sunflowers you’re always trying to grow out along the back fence—heads too big, collapsing underneath their own weight.” Kelly sent a winter boot out, flying near his shins, but this one he dodged. “This is all about you, you know. He’s pathological. Can’t let go. This whole thing is about keeping you close.”

She stopped, turning on all fours, staring at him through the bottom of the coats. “Are you really that clueless?”

“Men don’t like to lose. They won’t give in.”

She backed out hauling her big American Tourister. “Is that why you won’t leave now?”

“I won’t leave because I have to go to work. If I thought I could use your daffy husband’s end-of-the-world excuse to get out of this floor-to-computer inventory, I would, believe me. But in the real world, when you don’t show up at your job, you lose it.”

She turned, burning at his obstinacy. “Eph said to go. He’s never acted that way before, never talked like that. This is real.”

“It’s eclipse hysteria, they were talking about it on TV. People freaking out. If I was going to flee New York because of all the crazies, I’d have been out of here years ago.” Matt reached for her shoulders. She shook him off at first, then let him hold her for a moment. “I’ll check in with the electronics department now and then, the TVs there, to see if anything’s happening. But the world keeps turning, all right? For those of us with real jobs. I mean—you’re just going to leave your classroom?”

Her students’ needs pulled on her, but everybody and everything else came second to Zack. “Maybe they’ll cancel school for a few days. Come to think of it, I had a lot of unexplained absences today—”

“These are kids, Kel. Flu.”

“I think it’s actually the eclipse,” said Zack, from across the room. “Fred Falin told me in school. Everyone who looked at the moon without glasses? It cooked their brains.”

Kelly said, “What is this fascination with you and zombies?”

“They’re out there,” he said. “Gotta be prepared. I’ll bet you don’t even know the two most important things you need in order to survive a zombie invasion.”

Kelly ignored him. Matt said, “I give up.”

“A machete and a helicopter.”

“Machete, huh?” Matt shook his head. “I think I’d rather have a shotgun.”

“Wrong,” said Zack. “You don’t have to reload a machete.”

Matt conceded the point, turning to Kelly. “This Fred Falin kid really knows his stuff.”

“Guys—I’ve HAD it!” Being ganged up on by them wasn’t something she was used to. Any other time, she might have been happy seeing Zack and Matt pulling together. “Zack—you’re talking nonsense. This is a virus, and it’s real. We need to get out of here.”

Matt stood there while Kelly carried the empty suitcase to the other bags. “Kel, relax. Okay?” He pulled his car keys out of his pocket, twirling them around his finger. “Take a bath, catch your breath. Be rational about this—please. Taking into account the source of your ‘inside’ info.” He went to the front door. “I’ll check in with you later.”

He went out. Kelly stood staring at the closed door.

Zack came over to her with his head cocked slightly to one side, the way he used to when he’d ask what death meant or why some men held hands. “What did Dad say to you about this?”

“He just… he wants the best for us.”

Kelly rubbed her forehead in a way that hid her eyes. Should she alarm Zack too? Could she pack up Zack and leave here solely on Eph’s word, without Matt? Should she? And—if she believed Eph, didn’t she have a moral obligation to warn others in turn?

The Heinsons’ dog started barking next door. Not her usual angry yipping, but a high-pitched noise, sounding almost scared. It was enough to bring Kelly into the back sunroom, where she found that the motion light over the backyard deck had come on.

She stood there with arms crossed, watching the yard for movement. Everything looked still. But the dog kept going, until Mrs. Heinson went out and brought it—still barking—inside.

“Mom?”

Kelly jumped, scared by her son’s touch, totally losing her cool.

“You okay?” Zack said.

“I hate this,” she said, walking him back into the living room. “Just hate it.”

She would pack, for her and for Zack and for Matt.

And she would watch.

And she would wait.

Bronxville

THIRTY MINUTES NORTH of Manhattan, Roger Luss sat poking at his iPhone inside the oak-paneled bar room of the Siwanoy Country Club, awaiting his first martini. He had instructed the Town Car driver to let him off at the club rather than take him straight home. He needed a little reentry time. If Joan was sick, as the nanny’s voice mail message seemed to indicate, then the kids probably had it by now, and he could be walking into a real mess. More than enough reason to extend his business trip by one or two more hours.

The dining room overlooking the golf course was completely empty at the dinner hour. The server came with his three-olive martini on a tray covered in white linen. Not Roger’s usual waiter. He was Mexican, like the fellows who parked cars out in front. His shirt was shrugged up out of his waistband in the back, and he wore no belt. His nails were dirty. Roger would have a talk with the club manager first thing in the morning. “There she is,” said Roger, the olives sunk at the bottom of the V-shaped cocktail glass, like beady little eyeballs preserved in a pickling vinegar. “Where is everyone tonight?” he asked in his usual booming voice. “What is it, a holiday? The market closed today? President died?”

Shrug.

“Where are all the regular staff?”

He shook his head. Roger realized now that the man looked scared.

Then Roger recognized him. The barman’s uniform had thrown Roger off. “Groundskeeper, right? Usually out trimming the greens.”

The groundskeeper in the barman’s uniform nodded nervously and shambled off to the front lobby.

Damn peculiar. Roger lifted his martini glass and looked around, but there was nobody to toast or nod to, no town politicking to be done. And so, with no eyes on him, Roger Luss slurped the cocktail, downing half of it in two great swallows. It hit his stomach and he let go a low purr in greeting. He speared one of the olives, tapping it dry on the edge of the glass before popping it into his mouth, swishing it around for a thoughtful moment, then squishing it between his back molars.

On the muted television built into the wood above the bar mirror, he saw clips from a news conference. The mayor flanked by other grim-faced city officials. Then—file footage of the Regis Air Flight 753 plane on the tarmac at JFK.

The silence of the club made him look around again. Where in the hell was everyone?

Something was going on here. Something was happening and Roger Luss was missing out.

He took another quick sip of the martini—and then one more—then set down the glass and stood. He walked to the front, checking the pub room off to the side—also empty. The kitchen door was just to the side of the pub bar, padded and black with a porthole window in the upper center. Roger peeked inside and saw the barman/groundskeeper all alone, smoking a cigarette and grilling himself a steak.

Roger went out the front doors, where he had left his luggage. No valets were there to call him a taxi, so he reached for his phone, searched online, found the listing that was closest, and called for a car.

While waiting under the high lights of the pillared carport entrance, the taste of the martini going sour in his mouth, Roger Luss heard a scream. A single, piercing cry into the night, from not so far away. On the Bronxville side of things, as opposed to Mount Vernon. Perhaps coming from somewhere on the golf course itself.

Roger waited without moving. Without breathing. Listening for more.

What spooked him more than the scream was the silence that followed.

The taxi pulled up, the driver a middle-aged Middle Eastern man wearing a pen behind his ear, who smilingly dumped Roger’s luggage into the trunk and drove off.

On the long private road out from the club, Roger looked out onto the course and thought he saw someone out there, walking across the fairway in the moonlight.

Home was a three-minute drive away. There were no other cars on the road, the houses mostly dark as they passed. As they turned onto Midland, Roger saw a pedestrian coming up the sidewalk—an odd sight at night, especially without a dog to walk. It was Hal Chatfield, an older neighbor of his, one of the two club members who had sponsored Roger into Siwanoy when Roger and Joan first bought into Bronxville. Hal was walking funny, hands straight down at his sides, dressed in an open, flapping bathrobe and a T-shirt and boxer shorts.

Hal turned and stared at the taxi as it passed. Roger waved. When he turned back to see if Hal had recognized him, he saw that Hal was running, stiff-legged, after him. A sixty-year-old man with his bathrobe trailing like a cape, chasing a taxi down the middle of the street in Bronxville.

Roger turned to see if the driver saw this also, but the man was scribbling on a clipboard as he drove.

“Hey,” said Roger. “Any idea what’s going on around here?”

“Yes,” said the driver, with a smile and a curt nod. He had no idea what Roger was saying.

Two more turns brought them to Roger’s house. The driver popped the trunk and jumped out with Roger. The street was quiet, Roger’s house as dark as the rest.

“You know what? Wait here. Wait?” Roger pointed at the cobblestone curb. “Can you wait?”

“You pay.”

Roger nodded. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted him there. It had something to do with feeling very alone. “I have cash in the house. You wait. Okay?”

Roger left his luggage in the mudroom by the side entrance and moved into the kitchen, calling out, “Hello?” He reached for the light switch but nothing happened when he flipped it. He could see the microwave clock glowing green, so the power was still on. He felt his way forward along the counter, feeling for the third drawer and rooting around inside for the flashlight. He smelled something rotting, more pungent than leftovers moldering in the trash, heightening his anxiety and quickening his hand. He gripped the shaft of the flashlight and switched it on.

He swept the long kitchen with the beam, finding the island counter, the table beyond, the range and double oven. “Hello?” he called again, the fear in his voice shaming him, prompting him to move faster. He saw a dark spatter on the glass-front cabinets and trained his beam on what looked like the aftermath of a ketchup and mayonnaise fight. The mess brought a surge of anger. He saw the overturned chairs then, and dirty footprints (footprints?) on the center island granite.

Where was the housekeeper, Mrs. Guild? Where was Joan? Roger went closer to the spatter, bringing the light right up to the cabinet glass. The white stuff, he didn’t know—but the red was not ketchup. He couldn’t be certain… but he thought it might be blood.

He saw something moving in the reflection of the glass and whipped around with the flashlight. The back stairs behind him were empty. He realized he had just moved the cabinet door himself. He didn’t like his imagination taking over, and so ran upstairs, checking each room with the flashlight. “Keene? Audrey?” Inside Joan’s office, he found handwritten notes pertaining to the Regis Air flight. A timeline of sorts, though her penmanship failed over the last couple of incomprehensible sentences. The last word, scrawled in the bottom-right corner of the legal pad, read, “hummmmmm.”

In the master bedroom, the bedsheets were all kicked down, and inside the master bath, floating unflushed in the toilet, was what looked to him like curdled, days-old vomit. He picked a towel up off the floor and, letting it fall open, discovered dark clots of staining blood, as though the plush cotton had been used as a coughing rag.

He ran back down the front stairs. He picked up the wall phone in the kitchen and dialed 911. It rang once before a recording played, asking him to hold. He hung up and dialed again. One ring and the same recording.

He dropped the phone from his ear when he heard a thump in the basement beneath him. He threw open the door, about to call down into the darkness—but something made him stop. He listened, and heard… something.

Shuffling footsteps. More than one set, coming up the stairs, approaching the halfway point where the steps hooked ninety degrees and turned toward him.

“Joan?” he said. “Keene? Audrey?”

But he was already backpedaling. Falling backward, striking the door frame, then scrambling back through the kitchen, past the gunk on the walls and into the mudroom. His only thought was to get out of there.

He slammed through the storm door and out into the driveway, running to the street, yelling at the driver sitting behind the wheel, who didn’t understand English. Roger opened the back door and jumped inside.

“Lock the doors! Lock the doors!”

The driver turned his head. “Yes. Eight dollar and thirty.”

“Lock the goddamn doors!”

Roger looked back at the driveway. Three strangers, two women and one man, exited his mudroom and started across his lawn.

“Go! Go! Drive!”

The driver tapped the pay slot in the partition between the front and back seats. “You pay, I go.”

Four of them now. Roger stared, stupefied, as a familiar-looking man wearing a ripped shirt knocked the others aside to get to the taxi first. It was Franco, their gardener. He looked through the passenger-door window at Roger, his staring eyes pale in the center but red around the rims, like a corona of bloodred crazy. He opened his mouth as though to roar at Roger—and then this thing came out, punched the window with a solid whack, right at Roger’s face, then retracted.

Roger stared. What the hell did I just see?

It happened again. Roger understood—on a pebble level, deep beneath many mattresses of fear, panic, mania—that Franco, or this thing that was Franco, didn’t know or had forgotten or misjudged the properties of glass. He appeared confused by the transparency of this solid.

“Drive!” screamed Roger. “ Drive!”

Two of them stood close, in front of the taxi now. A man and a woman, headlights brightening their waists. There were seven or eight in total, all around them, others coming out of the neighbors’ houses.

The driver yelled something in his own language, leaning on the horn.

“Drive!” screamed Roger.

The driver reached for something on the floor instead. He pulled up a small bag the size of a toiletry case and ran back the zipper, spilling out a few Zagnut bars before getting his hand on a tiny silver revolver. He waved the weapon at the windshield and hollered in fear.

Franco’s tongue was exploring the window glass. Except that the tongue wasn’t a tongue at all.

The driver kicked open his door. Roger yelled, “No!” through the partition glass, but the driver was already outside. He fired the handgun from behind the door, shooting it with a flick of his wrist, as though throwing bullets from it. He fired again and again, the pair in front of the car doubling up, struck by small-caliber rounds, but not dropping.

The driver kicked off two more wild shots and one of them struck the man in the head. His scalp flew backward and he stumbled to the ground.

Then another grabbed the driver from behind. It was Hal Chatfield, Roger’s neighbor, his blue bathrobe hanging off his shoulders.

“No!” Roger shouted, but too late.

Hal spun the driver to the road. The thing came out of his mouth and pierced the driver’s neck. Roger watched the howling driver through his window.

Another one rose up into the headlights. No, not another one—the same man who had been shot in the head. His wound was leaking white, running down the side of his face. He used the car to hold himself up, but he was still coming.

Roger wanted to run, but he was trapped. To the right, past Franco the gardener, Roger saw a man in UPS brown shirt and shorts come out of the garage next door with the head of a shovel on his shoulder, like the baseball bat of an on-deck hitter.

The head-wound man pulled himself around the driver’s open door and climbed into the front seat. He looked through the plastic partition at Roger, the front-right lobe of his head raised like a forelock of flesh. White ooze glazed his cheek and jaw.

Roger turned just in time to see the UPS guy swing the shovel. It clanged off the rear window, leaving a long scrape in the reinforced glass, light from the streetlamps glinting in the spiderweb cracks.

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:

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-c hunk. 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 security 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.

Setrakian looked up at Bolivar’s building. The front windows were darkened but he could not tell, at night, if they were blacked out or just in the process of renovation.

“Let’s climb up that scaffolding,” said Eph. “Break in a window.”

Setrakian shook his head. “No way we can get inside now without the police being called and you being taken away. You’re a wanted man, remember?” Setrakian leaned on his walking stick, looking up at the dark building before starting away. “No—we have no choice but to wait. Let’s find out some more about this building, and its owner. It might help to know first what we are getting into.”