Adrift 2: Sundown (19 page)

Suddenly, the thunder of fleeing feet began to fade, and Harold lifted his head in amazement.

Whatever had happened, whatever terrible event had just unfolded in Hyde Park, it seemed to have flowed right past him. He heard some screams; perhaps people who had fallen like himself, but whose injuries were more severe.

The sound of fleeing people continued to move away.

They’re gone,
Harold thought, and let out a long, explosive sigh of relief.

Click.

Harold frowned at the noise. It almost sounded like a dog’s claws tapping on a linoleum floor.

“Bro? That you?”

Click, click, click.

An animal of some sort exhaled loudly nearby; a snort that sounded far too
big
to have been made by a dog.

Harold froze, and the dreadful truth of his situation unwound in his mind. Suddenly, it was like he could see again; like the thick veil that had been draped over his eyes for more than thirty years had lifted abruptly.

The people who were running were gone.

Escaped.

The thing that scared them is still here
.

Click.

Click, click.

Harold swallowed; his throat felt like it was filling with broken glass.

It’s right in front of—

Something large and heavy breathed onto Harold’s face: a warm, moist wave of air that reeked of meat and blood. The creature grunted, and Harold thought the terrible noise, mere inches away from him, sounded almost like
confusion.

He reached out gingerly, feeling the air in front of him.

And whatever was lurking out there in the syrupy darkness, beyond the reach of Harold’s ruined eyes,
laughed.

His mouth dropped open, and he had no idea whether the breath he drew in was intended to fuel words or a scream.

It didn’t matter.

Harold’s lungs were still inflating when something sharp punctured his chest. Huge; it felt like someone had just steered a train into his ribcage. He felt and heard the cracking of his bones, and then the terrible pulling sensation as something began to furiously rearrange his internal organs, before—finally—a new sort of darkness claimed him.

*

On the crowded, slow-moving streets of Camden, the lights were blinking on and the stream of daytime shoppers was slowly preparing to hand over ownership of the streets to the night-time revellers. Much of the expansive market was shutting for the day, the stalls trying to shift a few last items before the sun went down.

The vampire erupted near a railway bridge, spearing up from the ground into a crowd of people who were determined to spend the last few minutes of daylight sitting in a beer garden at the rear of one of Camden’s most popular pubs.

It emerged from the dirt already swinging.

Its first victim didn’t even have time to scream.

But others did.

*

In Oxford Circus, the traffic had slowed to a crawl as the evening rush hour began. Tourists moved in almost aimless herds, winding their way from one pedestrian-crossing to another, waiting patiently for the traffic to ease, or simply walking out in front of it and delaying the whole process still further.

The vampire rocketed from a manhole in the middle of the road, leaping onto the roof of a bus under the gathering darkness, and shrieked as it clawed a courier from his bicycle, sweeping him up and tearing him apart in a dull explosion of blood that spattered across windscreens and stunned faces.

In the distance, others answered.

With a roar, the vampire charged toward a group of stunned pedestrians, impacting upon them like a speeding combine harvester, chewing up muscle and sinew as it carved through them before smashing into the window of a large department store.

*

They came from the river; from the soft ground beneath parks and gardens. From the tunnels and stations of the Underground; scattered across the city, but rising as one.

Blood flowed across London.

And the last scraps of weak daylight dissolved.

Sundown.

Stay in the light.

Jennifer Craven’s warning rattled in Leon Mancini’s head like small arms fire as the van headed toward London.

It would be full-dark by the time the van reached the city, despite the fact that it was only around six in the evening, and it felt like reaching England’s capital was taking forever. The roads around the south of the country were nothing like those back home: no wide, fast-moving highways here; instead, single-lane traffic crawled at infuriatingly slow speed through village after village.

And then there were the ‘roundabouts.’ Navigating them was logical enough, but the behaviour of the other drivers made each one a little hair-raising.

And slowed them down even more.

If Mancini had been able to speak to a local, they would have reassured him that the van was actually making short work of the trip to the capital; he wouldn’t have believed them.

Still, the journey did give Mancini plenty of time to absorb the story that Jeremy Pruitt told. The Rennick family had attempted to satisfy a vampire rising on a massive scale, unleashing the creatures on a cruise ship and then sinking it to bury the evidence.

Not a bad plan, all things considered, but somewhere along the way, one of the ship’s passengers had begun murdering the monsters, and what was left of the UK arm of the Order when the dust settled was Herbert Rennick, an idealist in his twenties with more balls than sense, and a group of young clerics, most of whom, Jeremy said, had entered the mansion, but had never come back out.

But Dan Bellamy
had
, and Herbert Rennick had bundled him into a chopper, fleeing to the north just minutes before Mancini and his team arrived at the compound. According to Pruitt, the Rennicks owned an apartment in the city. It was there that Herb would head, the Brit was sure of it.

In a way, Pruitt’s certainty made Mancini’s heart sink. If Bellamy and Rennick had
really
disappeared; if they were on the wind, never to be seen again, he wouldn’t now be heading toward the epicentre of the apocalypse.

Braxton drove, navigating the winding roads with only the occasional curse, and when Pruitt finished filling them in, Mancini held up a hand to silence him and pulled out his cellphone. He was only supposed to break radio silence in extraordinary circumstances.

He figured this counted, and punched in a number.

Jennifer Craven answered immediately.

“We’re too late,” Mancini said. “The vampires are already on the surface. By the look of things, they have been for a while. The Rennick compound is gone.”

For a moment, Craven said nothing, and he wondered if she was suppressing a smirk at his sudden acceptance of the fact that vampires did exist after all.

“What about the Hermetic?” she asked finally.

Mancini was sitting in the front passenger seat alongside Braxton. He glanced through the windshield at the sky ahead. Smoke was gathering over London, and several small fires lit up the skyline from east to west.

“Looks like he’s in London.”

“You know where?”

“Maybe. But London ain’t looking so healthy right now.”

“Yes. I’m watching the news. Tragic. Do you
know
where the Hermetic is?”

Mancini gritted his teeth.

“We ran into the guy who called you. Pruitt. He thinks he knows where Rennick took him.”

“So what’s the problem? Go get him.”

“Half the team’s already dead, Jennifer. I damn near died
myself
, and that was only coming up against
one
of them—”

“You
saw
one? What happened?”

“Some people died, some people ran. Defeat, Jennifer.
That’s
what happened. Comprehensive fucking defeat. And now you want us to go into a city full of these things?”

Craven snorted.

“Like I said, I’m watching the news. They don’t know what they are dealing with yet: reports are talking about sudden bouts of mass hysteria; people attacking each other or killing themselves. But they
do
know how widespread it is. So far, eight separate incidents have been reported across London. Which means eight vampires.”

“Yeah,” Mancini hissed, “eight
so far
. I doubt this is
all
playing out in front of the cameras, Jennifer. We have no idea how many—”

“It’s a big city, Mr Mancini. I’m sure a man with your qualifications should be able to grab
one
civilian and get out in one piece. That is what I pay you for. No?”

Mancini pulled the phone away from his face for a moment, fighting back the urge to throw it out of the window. When he pressed it back against his ear, Craven was still talking.

“…chances of us stumbling across another Hermetic in this or any other lifetime are virtually zero. You do realise that understanding this Dan Bellamy could be the key to stopping the vampires once and for all? To understanding how they are able to live for so long? Their abilities? War is coming, Mr Mancini. The secret is out. In a few hours, there won’t be anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know about vampires, and humans tend to respond badly to threats. It doesn’t matter whether the vampires come after us, or we go after them. The end result will be the same. We’ll need to be able to defend ourselves with something other than walls. He is the
key.
”

“Great,” Mancini said. “And what if I
can’t
get him?”

Craven paused.

“Then don’t bother coming back. And pray for a quick death.”

She hung up, and Mancini gripped the phone so tightly that he felt the plastic casing beginning to buckle.

He sucked in a deep breath, and focused on the burning city ahead.

Braxton shot a glance at him.

“Mancini? What’d she say?”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket.

“We go on,” Mancini growled. “But at the first sign of trouble—the first fucking sign—we’re turning this piece of crap around and hightailing it outta here. I don’t give a fuck
what
Craven says.  I’ll take her Gulfstream as severance pay. Fucking
gladly
.”

Braxton glanced at him again, his eyes widening when he saw the anger written on Mancini’s face, and apparently thought better of asking any more questions.

When the furious silence became too much to bear, Mancini leaned forward and flicked on the van’s ancient radio, twisting the dial until he heard a breathless news reporter reeling off facts that they clearly had trouble believing.

There had been outbreaks of ‘unexpected violence’ across the centre of the city, and large parts of London to the north of the river were burning. All residents of the city were advised to evacuate immediately or to barricade themselves in their homes until the all clear was given. The military had been called in to restore order…

In the rear of the van, Montero and Burnley were bickering quietly, just as they had for most of the flight across the Atlantic.

Jeremy Pruitt just sat there, frowning at the floor, muttering to himself.

Mancini tuned it all out, and tried to persuade himself that Jennifer Craven wasn’t worth it; that she hadn’t been for a very long time. That the only rational thing to do was turn the van around and get the hell out of England immediately; find some way to disappear.

He said nothing, glaring at the road ahead, watching the miles creep by.

His gut told him that his entire world was about to be reduced to a single imperative.

Stay in the light
.