Red Eye - 02 (13 page)

Redlaw fixed her with his sternest, most forbidding stare, then nodded.

T
HE TRACKS DEVIATED
, the lit one continuing on a level course to some unseen station further up the line, both of the others plunging into pitch blackness. Redlaw wavered between the latter two, then plumped for the left-hand one. It was instinct as much as anything. The tunnel was the steeper of the pair; it went deeper, therefore seemed to afford greater protection, better shelter.

He had commandeered the flashlight off Tina, and with its beam he soon found confirmation that he’d made the correct choice of tunnel.

“Shit,” said Tina.

“Precisely. Sunless faeces. Roughly a week old.”

Tina dollied in with the camcorder, capturing a close-up image of the long, black-red turd. “Just laying on the rail like that. Aren’t these vamps, like, housebroken?”

“It’s a signpost,” Redlaw said. “For the benefit of other vampires. I’d say this one was deposited by an adult male, judging by the calibre.”

“You can date it. You can tell whether it came from a man or a woman. You’re like a Navajo tracker, only with vampire poop.”

“If I’m not mistaken, there’ll be more nearby. A couple of dozen yards further along... Ah yes.”

The flashlight’s ring of brightness targeted another clump of faecal matter, a much smaller one.

“It’s known as a secondary marker,” Redlaw said. “It points the way.”

“Ugh,” said Tina, although she sounded as much fascinated as revolted. “So the biggie says ‘here we are’ and the little one says ‘keep going’.”

“That’s more or less it.”

“This is good shit. That’s not a joke. I mean as in good material.”

Redlaw ventured on, Tina following with the camcorder held up before her face, her features ghostly in the moonglow of the screen.

A soft scuffling sound ahead brought Redlaw to an immediate standstill. He whipped his Cindermaker out.

“Whoa,” said Tina. “What’s up?”

“Could be nothing.”

“Mighty big piece of artillery you’ve got yourself there, if it’s nothing.”

“Just a precaution.” Redlaw trained the flashlight along the tunnel, pointing the barrel of the Cindermaker alongside. The beam extended fifty yards before beginning to lose brilliance and definition. Streaks of moisture glistened on one wall, where a water main or a sewer above was leaking through. Some kind of moss or fungus flourished in a semicircle beneath, forming a thick spongy mat that covered half the tunnel floor.

“This is so fucking creepy,” Tina whispered, just loud enough for the camcorder’s mike to pick up. “We’re about one mile underground, I’d guess, and we’re on the trail of vampires. That man there is John Redlaw, who used to be with London SHADE, a.k.a. the Night Brigade. Nobody even knows we’re down here, so if anything goes wrong, we’re—”

“Shh!” Redlaw hissed.

“I’m narrating.”

“Well, don’t.”

“But you’ve got to narrate,” she protested. “It adds to the general atmosphere.”

“No, all it does is annoy me and make it hard to listen out.”

“So I should shut up.”

“Ideally you should be somewhere else entirely, but since we can’t have that, shutting up would be great.”

“Okay,” Tina pouted. “I’ll tack on a voiceover later, then. Won’t be the same, but what the hell.”

Redlaw advanced slowly. All at once, a rat popped up from behind one of the rails. It blinked in the light, whiskers fibrillating madly. Another rat appeared behind it and started grooming the first’s fur, nibbling with its incisors and combing with its claws.

“Hmm,” Redlaw said. “That’s pretty telling.”

“Aw, Mr and Mrs Rat are in
lurve
.”

“They’re comfortable. They’re not scared. Which implies that there aren’t any predators around. Any ’Lesses that were here, they’re gone, so the rats feel it’s safe to be out in the open.”

“You are just a mine of useful vampire information, Mr Redlaw.”

“Come on.”

Not much further on, their destination came into view—a huddle of very basic living accommodations. There were sticks of furniture, little cubicles divided from one another by blankets or sheets of plywood, loose newspaper pages lying everywhere, and a few rudimentary creature comforts such as books, board games, kerosene lanterns and rusty camping stoves. Everything was tattered and broken, riddled with holes, overturned, strewn. Clearly there had been some semblance of order once, and then something like a hurricane had come tearing through.

Redlaw bent into a crouch. “Look,” he said, indicating the ground directly in front of him. “What do you see?”

Tina adjusted focus with the camcorder, zeroing in on what he was pointing at: a glinting expanse of small round objects littering the track, like an army of dead metal cockroaches.

“Those are bullet casings, right?” she said.

Redlaw picked one up and examined it closely. “Fraxinus. Nine millimetre. See?” He showed her the “FRAX-9” stamped on the cartridge case head around the primer. “But also...” He sniffed the small copper cylinder and held it out to her. “Yes. Not just cordite. There’s a distinct smell to a spent Fraxinus round. Burnt wood, like a bonfire or a hearth.” He straightened up. “And that there...” He gestured at the wreckage. “That’s been shot to pieces. This is where your homeless man’s ‘foreigners’ were living, until someone came along and raked the place with gunfire and wiped them out.”

He strode five paces and bent again. He dabbed his forefinger into what appeared to be a thick scattering of dust, then held it up.

“Ash,” he said of the gritty grey coating on his fingertip.

“You mean to say that’s...”

“Vampire remains.”

“So gross.”

He pinpointed several other mounds of dust with the flashlight beam. “Must have been around twenty of them. A mid-size nest. The question is, who did it? Who dusted them? Who’s responsible?”

“Those soldiers.”

“Seems logical. You obviously caught them on their way out, after they’d completed the task. Overall, I’d say you were pretty lucky, Tina. Had they spotted you, I imagine at the very least they would have confiscated your camera, but at worst...”

He saw her shudder. Good. He wanted her to be frightened. It would stop her treating everything like a game.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “I mean, not Jesus. Buddha, Allah, L. Ron Hubbard, someone else. You really think...?”

“I think we’re talking about some well-organised and well-equipped people, ruthless, with a very specific agenda. I’ve no idea who they are, but I do know that they’re easily a match for the quarry they’re hunting. There’s no indication that any one of them was hurt during their attack. No blood at the scene, no scraps of torn clothing, no suggestion that the vampires gave as good as they got and went down fighting. Your footage backs that up. Nobody in it looked like they were limping or injured in any way. It was a massacre. A one-sided, cold-blooded massacre of vampires. And I don’t mind admitting I’m really quite unnerved. Even a squad of seven SHADE officers couldn’t have pulled off something like this, not without taking casualties.”

“So what’s the plan?” Tina asked. “What do we do now?”

Redlaw deliberated. She was using him as documentary subject matter. He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do to change it now. He might as well get something in exchange and use
her
.

“Film,” he told her. “Film everything. Gather evidence. Make sure it’s all recorded for posterity. If anyone wants proof of what’s going on, we can supply it, proof aplenty. Get it all into your camera, Tina Checkley.”

Tina didn’t need any further prompting. She fired up the built-in light on her camera and set to work.

CHAPTER

TEN

“T
EA,
”
SAID
R
EDLAW,
gazing morosely at the murky brown liquid in the mug in front of him. “You’d think, this being the world’s last remaining superpower, the cradle of liberal democracy and free-market economy, and all that, that Americans would have the nous to be able to brew tea properly.”

Tina held up a finger. “One. We’re in a diner in Hell’s Kitchen. I think you’re raising your hopes a little high.”

“They certainly got the name of the place right,” Redlaw muttered.

“Two.” A second finger rose to join the first. “We chucked crates of tea into Boston harbour to show how much we hated your British asses. You think we’re going to make an effort with the stuff now?”

“You’re saying this abomination I’m drinking is a calculated insult?”

“Call it a historical tradition. A protest. Don’t take it personally.”

“Well, it’s just not my cup of tea.” Redlaw shunted the mug aside and scooped up a mouthful of scrambled eggs instead.

The diner was steamy hot, its windows fogged with condensation. Lunchtime patrons filled every booth, some hunched over tabloid newspapers, others over laptops, many consulting their phones. The waitress barked at the short order chef, she enormous and Jamaican, he tiny and Vietnamese. His response every time was to curse her in his native tongue, to which she simply rolled her eyes and gave a talk-to-the-hand gesture. They wore matching wedding bands.

A wall-mounted TV set added to the general hubbub. The news was on, and yet again the weather was the lead story. “Forecasters predict no end in sight, as the Big Freeze enters its nineteenth day,” intoned an immaculately coiffed anchorman. “Last night’s fresh snowfalls will be followed by blizzard conditions this evening, lasting well into tomorrow morning. Already it’s being called the worst winter in living memory, and the battered economy is taking a further pounding as industry and commerce all along the East Coast grinds to a halt, with workers struggling to make their daily commutes.”

“Missing home, then?” Tina said to Redlaw.

“Somewhat. Certain aspects of it.”

“So why’d you leave, again?”

“It’s personal.”

“Yeah, only, the thing is, I’ve just remembered something about you. Vaguely. Am I right in thinking you got yourself into a spot of bother back in the UK?”

“This isn’t bacon, either,” Redlaw said, intent on trying to spear some with his fork. The rasher shattered into a dozen pieces. “Bacon’s meat, not this brittle nonsense.”

“Wasn’t there some kind of scandal? I’m pretty sure there was. You were in the headlines.”

“And a jug of syrup on the side? With the main course?”

“Avoid the subject all you like. I’ve got my BlackBerry. I can do a search and have the full story at my fingertips within seconds. Whyn’t you save me the effort and just tell me yourself? Give me your side.”

Redlaw put down his fork with a heavy sigh. “It’s simple enough. I uncovered a plot to eliminate Sunless. It was a Final Solution affair, concentration camps by any other name. I blew the whole conspiracy wide open. Stopped some very bad people doing a very bad thing.”

“For which you were hailed as a national hero,” said Tina.

“For which I was vilified, accused of murder, and obliged to go on the run.”

“Well, I wasn’t
so
far off. Have you considered there might be some way of clearing your name?”

“So you believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You hardly know me. All you’ve heard is my account of things, and you take it at face value. Don’t journalists need to double-check their facts?”

“From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a straight kind of guy. I may not be a professional journalist—yet—but I’ve got the instincts. Some people are fakers. Some are lying fucks. Some people you shouldn’t trust any further than you can throw them. You’re not any of those. You act like you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And whistleblowers always,
always
get screwed over. It’s like...” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t know, a law of nature. The bastards are in charge. Anyone who crosses them or challenges them comes off worst. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

“Doesn’t mean one should stop trying,” said Redlaw. “Jesus defied the authorities all his life. He stood up to the money lenders, the Pharisees, the Romans...”