Uprising

Chapter Thirty-Five

Greg opened his eyes, ready to spring up to his feet and engage his attacker.

But something was different. He wasn’t lying on the cold stone floor of the underground chamber beneath the house. He was lying on damp grass.

He blinked and raised his head, trying to make sense of where he was. A cool breeze caressed the wetness on his cheek. He struggled up into a crouch and his head connected with something hard. He reached up to feel it. Solid metal. Running his hand downwards, he felt the steel bars a foot away from his face, cold and slippery with dew.

He was in a cage. Around him, the long grass rustled gently in the breeze. The chorus of the birds in the trees heralded the dawn.

He gripped the bars in his fists and tried to bend them apart, but the steel was thick. They didn’t give a millimetre. He fell back on his haunches, beginning to breathe hard.

Then he noticed the object on the other side of the bars. The compact notebook computer whirred away quietly in the grass. Its screen was flipped open to face him, and the fixed black eye of a webcam was trained on the cage.

The screen was dark except for a shadowy face in its centre, watching him intently. It was Stone. Greg stared back at him, and saw the vampire smile.

‘Good morning, Greg. Or should I say good night? I’m staying up late to watch this. It’s well past my bedtime.’

Greg tore his gaze away from the screen. The red glow of dawn was breaking over the treeline. He tried to speak, but no sound came out.

‘I believe the word you’re looking for is “predicament”,’ Stone said. His smile widened. ‘That’s certainly what you’re in, my friend. Now, remember I said you were going to deliver a message for me? That’s exactly what’s going to happen.’ He paused, and his hand appeared on the screen holding a slim object that Greg recognised instantly. It was the tube of Solazal tablets they’d taken from him the night before.

‘I can see what you’re thinking, Greg,’ Stone said. ‘You’re asking yourself, “Did I take my Solazal?“’ He shook the tube. ‘Dear me. Still a lot of pills left. I do believe you forgot, didn’t you? Time will tell. And I think you may be running out.’

Greg was beginning to tremble as he struggled to remember. Alex’s warning rang round and round in his head, and his stomach flipped as the truth hit him.

Stone was right.

Greg looked up at the red glow in the sky, just as the first shimmering golden edge of sun broke over the treetops. He flinched away from the light, but not before he felt the terrible pain lance through his eyes. Rays of sun speared between the bars of the cage. One passed across his hand, and the flesh instantly sizzled and blistered. He let out a sharp cry and jerked his hand away.

‘Looks like you forgot, all right,’ Stone chuckled. ‘How wonderfully entertaining this promises to be.’

There was nowhere Greg could crawl to escape the steady rise of the sun. Even curled up in a tight ball with his arms over his face, he could feel its glare on him. He smelled the smoke that was beginning to rise from his clothes and hair, the acrid stench of charring flesh. Saw his hands blackening and curling like singed paper. The first flames licked across his skin.

He was a soldier. If he was going to die, he’d at least die facing his enemy. He turned towards the screen.

‘Damn you, Stone,’ he yelled.

‘I was damned millennia before you were born,’ Stone replied. ‘But I was smarter.’

Greg screamed as he burst alight. He could feel his flesh shrivelling, turning to ash.

The last thing he saw as he burned was Stone’s laughing face.