30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

6

BY THE TIME THE crying boy was asleep, Lee Woodhams was ready to flee into his world once more. It spanned the globe and the minds, thoughts, and actions of those who lived there, but he rarely left his house. He explored through the internet, but he treated the net as a much more advanced animal than most people. For Lee, it was more than music and blogs, porn and social networking, online purchasing and information exchanges. The internet for him was a living, breathing thing. A bleeding thing. And more than once he had considered the irony of how he used it. He drew blood from the internet and absorbed it into himself, and it was long past the stage where he could give it up.

He made a large mug of coffee and sat at his computer, randomly selecting which ISP to use today. He logged into several message boards under one of a dozen pseudonyms he had registered, then initiated some automatic search software. It brought up over a hundred new mentions of “vampire” since he’d last searched yesterday, and he started scrolling through the messages and postings involved. They were mostly casual chat, deluded monologues, or book or movie reviews. He rarely found anything significant in these places anymore—the vampires had grown too careful—but he was thorough. If they knew these sites were too open and public, that might well mean they were the perfect camouflage for certain messages.

His coffee steamed, and he scanned the screen and thought of the boy sleeping in the next room. There was something wrong about him. He’d just seen his mother killed and father kidnapped by monsters, true, but there was a strange awareness about the kid that Lee couldn’t shake. It wasn’t that vampires were known to him, he was sure; he could almost feel the terror coming off the boy in waves. But he was holding something back. He’d talked about the most terrible aspects of what had happened, and yet Lee felt that he’d only skirted at the edges of events. There was something at the heart of what had happened that Marty—and perhaps Rose—was keeping from him.

So Rose and Francesco had killed one of the fuckers. Good. He wished he’d been there to see that, after all these years. He was jealous that it had been them instead of him, but he hoped they had both gained some sort of catharsis from what had happened. From the time they had joined ranks against the monsters, he and the others had agreed that they could know nothing about one another. First names, and that was all. No personal background, no history, no reasons why they hated the bloodsuckers so damn much… nothing that the vampires could use against them, if one of them were ever caught. To begin with, Lee had been uncomfortable that it was his house used as a meeting place, but Francesco had persuaded him that it made sense. He was the one who was ex-SIS; he had the computers, the know-how, the string of contacts around the globe. He was in touch by email with a score of people doing the same thing, and he acted as a focus for their own small group. Francesco and the others had made him feel like their de facto leader, though Lee wasn’t stupid. He knew that wasn’t the case at all. He might be clever and have access to the resources, but Francesco was the wise one. If Lee wanted to know any of their backgrounds, it was Francesco’s.

And he could have found out. There were ways and means, after all. But he had honored his group’s vow of silence and anonymity, and honor, after all, was one of the things that set them apart from the vampires.

He started checking his fifteen email accounts, each under a different name and with randomly generated passwords. He used each account slightly differently. One was for the nut jobs whose emails inevitably ran to thousands of words and were rants and diatribes about the vampire curse. They were usually written by people who’d never seen or encountered a vampire in their lives but who thought themselves stalked. Too many bad movies, perhaps, or too much time on their hands, they grasped on to something and it became a part of their lives. Lee rapidly scanned each message and discarded them all.

Marty shouted something next door. Lee stood quickly and silently, grabbed the crossbow leaning against his desk, and approached the door in a crouch. Any killer waiting with a gun would be aiming high. He listened, moved again, and ducked into the corridor and around Marty’s bedroom doorway. The boy was asleep on the bed, curled into a ball and shifting slightly. Bad dreams. Lee waited until he settled again, stood, checked the windows, and went back into his small office.

He reduced the search window on his computer and opened the house security monitor. There were six cameras and twelve motion detectors. One detector alarm was flashing, and he shifted an external camera to scan his back garden. A neighbor’s cat was taking a sit at the edge of his lawn. That was okay: cats were sensitive, and if there were any dangers close by, it would have fled.

The next email account he checked was for ex-colleagues who’d had some sympathy with his experiences. There weren’t many. He’d been all but laughed out of the Service when he’d entered a report that mentioned vampires, and the brief mention he’d heard of Operation Red-Blooded—a shady American research project into vampires—had been quickly swept away. One day the signs were there, the next they led nowhere, and Lee’s days in the Service were at an end.

But there were several people who had not laughed out loud at his claims. Even over the ten years since he’d left, he’d not been able to glean any reason from any of them as to why that was, but he suspected they each knew of a vampire encounter, if they hadn’t actually experienced one themselves. This inbox was usually empty, and today was no exception. He sent a brief email to each of them—An attack in London last night, eyes and ears open—and then moved into the next.

He checked several more email accounts until he came to the one that had gleaned the most information. He always checked this last in the mornings, teasing himself with the possibility that she had made contact again and usually disappointed that she had not. For a while, a few years back, they’d had regular email conversations, then she had fallen from the radar and the emails became much less frequent. He’d heard things about her that he found difficult coming to terms with, but her information had still been rich, and though she knew who and what he was, he’d respected her honesty. But today, as most days now, there were no new emails from Stella Olemaun.

There must be something…

Lee took a swig of his cooling coffee and reached for a cigarette. The pack sat beside the computer, always open, always half-full. He’d given up ages ago, but he left the pack there as a temptation to deny. Sometimes he toyed with a cigarette, smelling it and tasting its tip in his mouth before shredding and tossing it. Other times he just looked. And sometimes, like now, he lit one unconsciously, so distracted that he forgot that he no longer smoked.

“Damn it,” he said, dropping the cigarette and feeling the smoke flooding his lungs. Since giving up, he’d taken another spoonful of sugar in his coffee and tea, and his consumption of biscuits had increased. He’d piled on twenty pounds. He’d once prided himself on his fitness and stamina, but now he was panting by the time he reached the third floor of his home. Another thing he could blame on the vampires.

He finished his coffee and closed his eyes, and the flash of memory hit him again. He’d been trying to forget for ten years but knew he never could. Phil, his partner and friend for several years at the SIS, pinned against the wall and writhing as his throat was ripped out, his blood flowed, his eyes grew wide and pleading as he saw Lee running for him. His own hand aiming the gun and firing several times, each bullet finding its mark because he was a good shot and had been well trained. The thing breaking Phil’s neck with a snap of its wrist and then turning on him. The blood, the teeth, the meat hanging from them, the roar, the click of his gun snapping on empty…

He’d watched it climb the side of a building and disappear across rooftops, an ascent that he knew was impossible for a normal person.

Phil, dead and staring.

Lee opened his eyes and sighed, and then the soft ping of a new instant message grabbed his attention.

He’d left three accounts open and went to the one showing a new message. Stella, he hoped, but no, this was from one of his contacts in North Africa. Yaseem was an ex–Libyan gunboat captain, in hiding in Tunisia for six years. He and Lee had “met” in a discussion forum three years before, swapping brief but punchy instant messages about how deluded and foolish most of those in the discussion were. A level of trust had grown over the next few months, and now they were regularly in contact.

Yaseem had seen his first vampire when his boat intercepted a refugee dinghy sailing north from Libya. There were eight people in the boat, he’d told Lee, trying to escape an oppressive regime with no idea of what a future in Europe might hold. Following orders, they’d machine-gunned the refugees and sunk the boat, leaving the bodies to the fish.

But not every refugee died. One swam away, and however much they fired at him, he continued swimming. Eventually he dived and they thought he was dead. But between then and dawn two hours later, three men vanished from their gunboat. It must have been holding on to the hull, Yaseem had told Lee. We were doing twenty knots, and by the end we were all panicked, shooting at shadows, but it still managed to take one last man before the sun rose. Then it was gone, and we had explaining to do. We blamed pirates.

He’d fled soon after. Across land.

You there? the message said.

Lee smiled and typed, As usual.

Busy time in London?

Lee frowned. What do you mean?

The attack.

He supposed it could have bled onto the net already. It was possible there were people in London doing the same thing who he didn’t know about. But Yaseem’s knowledge made him instantly suspicious.

What do you know about it?

My source tells me it’s the first of an incursion. They’re looking for something.

Marty, Lee thought. He’s important to them somehow. He stared at the blank wall above his desk, listening to Marty’s troubled breathing from the next room. What the hell could they want with a young man like him?

What are they looking for?

Don’t know. But there are more on the way, mostly from Europe. Your gang seen anything?

Lee hesitated, but only for a second. No, he typed. Lying. He wasn’t sure why, but he was the one here in London, with Marty sleeping in one of his spare rooms. Putting himself at an advantage felt like a necessity.

OK, Yaseem sent. Keep your eyes open.

Will do. And let me know if you hear anything more.

Stay safe.

Their usual sign-off. Stay safe. This from two men who knew the world to be so much more dangerous than anyone could imagine.

Lee breathed deeply and tried to analyze what this meant, but the more he thought, the more clouded his perceptions became. He quickly checked the regional and national online press for coverage of the attack, seeking anything that might have caused Yaseem to jump to conclusions. But the only thing he found was in the morning edition of a London paper’s website, a hastily written paragraph about a house fire in which “two people were believed to have died.” The full report might appear in tomorrow’s papers, or maybe not. Lee knew that events such as this tended to be swept under the carpet.

There are more on the way… Yaseem had typed. Lee shivered, stood, and as he went to watch over Marty, the boy started screaming.

Lee dashed into the hallway again, crossbow shouldered. But it was just another dream. Marty thrashed on the bed, clawing one hand in front of his face as if to clear his vision of something terrible. “Mum!” he groaned, and in his sleep he began to cry. “Mum, Mum…”

Lee settled back against the banister and watched through the open bedroom door. Such grief. Such a terrible way for—

“Rose!” Marty shouted. “Rose, help me! Help Mum!”

Rose? Lee listened for more, but Marty settled back into sleep then, hugging a pillow to himself.

Lee watched the boy in confusion. Rose had brought him here, had told Lee that his family had been attacked and killed, that she and Francesco and the others had intervened and killed one vampire… but never had she mentioned that she and Marty knew each other.

And neither had the boy.

Suspicion aroused, fear tweaked by Yaseem’s email, Lee glanced at his watch. It was almost mid-afternoon. Rose had said that she’d return that night. He stalked back to his computer and propped the crossbow against the wall. Drummed his fingers on the desk. Checked through his emails again, deleted a few spam mails that had come in, sat down to surf a few of his regular sites… and all the time he was thinking of Rose.

If she had been deliberately targeted by vampires—her and her family alike—why wouldn’t she tell him that?

He took out his mobile phone and placed it gently on the desk. Spinning it in a gentle circle, he thought things through. Trust was important, and honor, and he knew that fear could destroy both.

But this wasn’t fear. This was being thorough. And she never had to know.

He opened his phone menu, found what he sought, and sent it to his computer. As Marty slept in the next room, Lee went about discovering exactly who he was.

None of them could call what they had a friendship, because they were all strangers to one another. The only thing that connected them was their hatred of vampires and the desire to see them all dead. But Lee’s training in the SIS was hard to shake, and right at the beginning he had taken steps to protect himself.

The photograph he had taken of Rose surreptitiously almost three years ago was good quality and clear. She’d been sitting at his breakfast bar in the large, sterile kitchen, and at the bottom left of the photo Lee could just make out Francesco’s shadow. While Rose drank and Francesco talked, Lee had aimed the phone from his hip and taken several silent shots. Back then, technology had lagged behind what he wanted, so he had kept the photographs for another time. Now was that time.

He cropped the photo and reformatted it, feeling a surge of guilt as he transferred it into the relevant program file. He pressed ENTER and glanced away as her face was scanned, over a million points of reference taken and recorded. It felt as if he were deconstructing the trust they had sworn to uphold between each other, but he tried to offset that with the certainty that she had misled him about Marty. She must have had her reasons, and maybe tonight she would fill him in on what they were. But between now and then, he was arming himself with as much knowledge as he could.

The computer indicated that the process was complete, and Lee initiated the search software he’d hacked from the SIS’s main server two years before. Even with the hardware he owned, it would take some time. The world was a big place, and there were hundreds of billions of photographs online.

He needed a beer.

Almost an hour later, scanning through the file of photographs downloaded by the search software, flipping through almost two hundred pictures entitled “possible match,” Rose stared out at him at last.

Lee put his third beer gently down on his desk. It wasn’t a surprise that he’d found a picture. Somewhere behind the face she showed him she had a life, after all, and not everyone could be a fuckup like him. She probably had a job and a husband, maybe even kids. And nowadays most people could probably find a picture of themselves on the internet, whether they’d posted it there themselves or not. Many pictures would not be captioned, and it was usually word searches that people relied on. This facial recognition software was a hundred times more powerful.

He opened the link that came with the picture and reached for his beer again. He already knew that he’d need it.

And Rose stared out at him, a younger, prettier Rose, missing from her family home for over five years now, and—

“Presumed dead,” he whispered, reading from the screen. It was a database of missing people in London. He’d used it before when trying to track a vampire and found it a depressing place because there were so many faces, some of them smiling, some frowning, all of them gone, leaving someone behind to mourn.

He read on, taking in details he had never known about Rose. Twenty-two when she vanished—

Christ she looks older, I put her at forty, those wrinkles, and those weird eyes when she even bothers to take off the sunglasses…

—no sign of depression, no indication that she wanted to leave her family. And as he scrolled down the page he saw the picture he’d been expecting. Rose, her parents, and a younger Marty, smiling around a table in what must have been their small back garden.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered, sitting back in his leather chair and trying to piece together what all this meant. The truth circled him and he tried to grab it, but there was too much in the way. Denial, fear, disbelief—all combined to haze what he should know. He shook his head and stood, draining the beer and instantly regretting it.

Francesco. He had a photo of him as well, another secret snap taken with his phone camera.

He went through the same procedure and viewed the file of possible matches, going through it three times before admitting that Francesco was not there. Not so unusual, maybe. Not everyone was on the net, and the software wasn’t infallible. If he managed to procure the new updated version, maybe with its regional allowances and automatic aging conditioner, but…

“Marty is Rose’s brother. And his parents were attacked. So… where has Rose been all this time?” Talking to himself was a habit he’d tried shedding a few years before, but now he hardly noticed that he did it. Sometimes he was his only living company for days on end, until Rose or one of the others might call by one night and—

And they only ever came at night.

Lee dropped the empty beer bottle and felt his knees give way. He tried to prevent it but he couldn’t, slipping to the floor and biting his lip to prevent the faint taking him all the way down. It was shock, he supposed, and fear, because the idea that he had been colluding with anyone or anything other than human was just too horrible.

He knew it happened. Vampires had their servants, and those vampires that chose not to feed on humans—to live among them as another species of human—also sometimes took their helpers. Stella Olemaun had told him that.

He had known Francesco for over six years.

Lee stood and walked into Marty’s room, sitting on the edge of his bed and shaking the boy awake.

“Marty!” he said.

Marty’s eyes snapped open and he cried out.

“It’s okay! Don’t worry, it’s okay. Rose called and…”

“…told me she’s a vampire. Francesco too. All of them.”

“Why would they tell you?” Marty asked. “Last thing she told me was to not say a word.” And then he was fully awake and saw the look in Lee’s eyes—dawning realization, and growing terror. Tricked me.

Lee stood from the bed and backed toward the window, hauling the curtains even wider than they had been, flooding the room with sunlight. Marty knew what he was doing. He leaned across to where sun splashed onto the bed.

“Not me,” he said.

“I can’t take this,” Lee said, stalking quickly from the room. Marty followed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, trying to process everything that had happened yesterday and what was happening now. Mum’s dead Rose saved me they’ve got Dad.

“She saved me,” Marty said.

“She’s a fucking vampire! A bloodsucker! A killer!”

“No,” Marty said, but he couldn’t know for sure. Lee walked into the next room, a smaller room with a desk against one wall, a large computer monitor displaying half a dozen pictures of people who all looked a little like Francesco, a couple of casual chairs that looked as if they’d never been sat in. Lee was breathing hard and he went for the crossbow, hefting it in one hand and looking around the room as if searching for something.

“How long have you known?” Lee asked.

“Yesterday, when she saved me. They all saved me.”

“But your mother’s dead and your father’s been taken?”

Marty nodded. Being reminded by someone else seemed to bring it home even harder, and his vision blurred.

“Don’t fucking cry! So they rescued you but couldn’t help your folks. That tell you something?”

“Wh-what?” Marty asked. He wiped angrily at his eyes. I won’t let him see me weak.

“They want you; no need for them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No… no, you might not. But there’s something…” Lee turned from him and Marty felt immediately dismissed. Being woken like that, snapped out of dreams which even now were fading behind the fog of wakefulness, was shocking enough. But the man whose arms had cradled him as he’d cried himself to sleep was gone, replaced by this person.

Marty eyed the crossbow.

“Lee, I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “But Rose has watched over me ever since she went missing. She’s helped me more than once.”

“Because you’re important,” Lee said. “Because they’re looking for you.”

“Who are?”

“The vampires!” He spun around and Marty saw something strange in his eyes. It almost looked like tears. “The other vampires.”

“Not me,” Marty said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing special about me.”

“I have to email someone. Go and get yourself a drink. Stay away from all the windows and doors downstairs. They’re locked, but stay away anyway. Bring me a beer from the fridge.” He half smiled. “Get yourself one. I have to figure this out.”

“You’ve known Rose for a long time?”

“Five years,” Lee said softly. “Five years.” He turned back to his desk and took a seat, and Marty saw him fire up several email accounts. Eyeing the crossbow one last time, he turned and left the room, heading downstairs to the large kitchen.

The light outside was changing. Marty had always liked dusk: the light softened, tempering the sometimes harsh London atmosphere, and the bustle in the air was heading toward a time of rest, not chaos. Through the wide window above the deep kitchen sink, he could see Lee’s small garden. It was bare and functional; no plants or flowers, just some stone paving and a few benches. But even that looked almost romantic in the fading light.

Now he wasn’t sure he’d ever like dusk again.

What have I done? he thought. He tricked me. I should have been sharper, faster, but he woke me from a nightmare and knew what he was doing. Marty thought he should run. The doors might be locked, but he could soon heave a stool through that wide window, climb the wall across the yard, then once out in the street he’d run until…

Until what? The sun would be setting soon, and Rose knew exactly where to come and find him. If he escaped here and ran, where would he hide when darkness came? Who would protect him?

He opened the fridge and pulled out two beers, twisting the tops off and swigging from one. It was nasty, cheap stuff, all gas and blandness—his dad was a real ale fan and had already introduced Marty to its delights—but he felt the alcohol hit straightaway. There were a few instant meals in the fridge, lots more beer, and a couple of pints of milk that looked distinctly lumpy. Lee was not a man who looked after himself in any way that normal people would recognize. His was a more heightened defense: personal protection against monsters that most people thought only existed in fiction. Marty wasn’t quite sure what that made him. Insane? Perhaps. But certainly dangerous. He was obsessed, and now his obsession had been blown wide open with a staggering revelation.

Marty knew what he had to do. Lee had worked with these people for years, and he had to convince him that nothing had changed. Yes, all your friends in your little vampire-hunting team are actually vampires, but they’re good vampires, honest. He wasn’t sure how that would go. But all he could do was try. Failing that, he had to make the house safe for Rose’s arrival in…

He looked outside. The sun was already behind a neighboring rooftop, and shadows were flexing their shoulders and limbs in readiness to emerge. He had maybe an hour.

Finishing the foul beer, he took another one from the fridge and went back upstairs to talk with Lee.

He was no longer in the office. Marty stood by the door, mildly confused, because the crossbow was still propped against the desk and the computer was open on an email. But the room was deserted and there was nowhere for him to hide.

“Lee?” he called. No answer. Moisture dripped from the beer bottles onto his bare feet; he glanced down, and that’s how he saw the shadow shifting behind him. He cried out as something encircled him, panic rising instantly and blindly as he recalled the attack that had started all this, and he could think only of that bloodied scrap of hair and scalp hanging from the hall light—his mother’s hair. He didn’t want to end up like that, and it wasn’t only survival instinct; it was his love for his dead mother. She’d hate to think of him in danger, and her grief, should something terrible befall him—

He lifted his right foot and stamped it back against his attacker’s shin. He’d read about that in a Joe R. Lansdale book he’d read once—and never really understood how it could hurt so much—but the voice that screamed in his ear spoke of the pain.

“Little fucker!” Lee shouted, and he stopped playing soft. The grip around Marty increased, squeezing the wind from him.

Wait! he tried to shout, but it came out as a gasp. He thrashed his head back, his shoulder-length hair whipping around his face, but felt no impact. He’s a fucking spy! he thought, images of James Bond and Jason Bourne inspiring unwelcome scenarios.

“Just chill!” Lee said between his teeth, squeezing so much harder that Marty thought his ribs would cave in. The arms wrapped tightly across his chest and stomach crushed the breath from him, and his struggles lessened. “Stop… That’s it… I’m not going to hurt you.”

“When my sister finds out about this—”

“Oh, now, that’s very much the wrong thing to say.”

Marty caught a whiff of something before the cloth was pressed over his mouth. He tried not to breathe in but Lee prodded him in the kidneys, making Marty draw a harsh breath, and then everything was fading away. He felt himself lowered and saw Lee’s face above him, watching him fall, already bagging whatever he’d used.

As Marty fell unconscious, he dreamed of the darkness to come.