Vigil (32 page)

Chapter Seventy-Two

Unknown

Above I heard the sounds of what I came to understand was gunfire. My senses were coming alive at last. The terror of my long dream was fading, although the memory of the pain was not, and never would. Injuries had been done to my mind. I was no longer the same creature I once was. Now I knew the true meaning of fear. I knew the horrors my kind could inflict willingly. There was darkness in the vampire’s soul. But it was there before they were made. It was the human that was cruel. I had never been cruel. I had killed to feed.

             
This torture was new.

             
I cowered as much as a man who is bound is able. I flinched at each sound that came. There was a time when things went quiet and I thought that they had gone, but my bestial sense told me otherwise. The beating of human hearts was clear from above.

             
I counted days below, listening to the footsteps above, muffled by depth. I wondered if they would find me, down here, down in the dark.

             
More people came. I waited.

             
Can you imagine the terror that the hostage feels, made worse by a hint of hope, when release finally comes? Is this new owner really release, or a torment worse than that I have already suffered?

             
I hoped that I would be found, given my freedom. I hoped that they would free me and leave me to live. But I feared, too. I feared my nightmare would resume, with different faces, and this time never end.

             
That is the worst of the humiliations of captivity. That you need someone to grant you your freedom. Freedom should never be something granted. It cannot be granted. If someone needs to give it to you, it is not freedom. Your mind will always be a captive.

             
I was wrong to worry over such a thing.

             
Six days passed. I was shaking, waiting for release and fearing it at the same time. I had long given up struggling against my bonds. My strength had faded and I was bound tightly in chains that burned, perhaps coated in silver, perhaps entirely of silver. It held me fast and drained me of my will to fight.

             
Six days of waiting. Somehow that short period of time was worse than the time that had gone before.

             
Then an explosion. Followed by footsteps.

             
The door to my cell was made of wood. I could have cried out, perhaps, led them to me, but I was afraid. I stayed silent. My mind was still a captive.

             
It did not matter. I might have been struck dumb by fear, but they found me anyway. Perhaps they followed the smell.

             
‘Kick it down,’ someone said, in English. It had been so long since I had heard this English that I nearly cried. Here was something I understood. Its cadences were real and remembered, not something I had learned, but something that was bred into my bones.

             
The door splinted as it was met by a heavy boot.

             
‘Jesus Christ,’ said someone. He gagged and turned outside the door to be sick. I guessed it was the smell of the room.

             
Another man came into the room. He was carrying a rifle and it looked like something out of a dream I had before. It had a short stock and had a magazine. I knew it held many bullets.

             
His clothing was strange and of a style that I did not recognise. He had a badge on his lapel, a flag that I remembered. There were red stripes on white, with a blue square bearing stars in one corner. He had three chevrons on his shoulders, like a heraldic sign without a bordering shield.

             
He, too, was sick, but he just wiped his moustache clean and said, ‘Doctor, you better come in here.’

             
He stood to one side as another man entered.

             
This man was shorter than the soldier. He wore ordinary clothes, with no markings.

             
I blinked and the man said, ‘Fuck.’

             
He raised his rifle but the man in plain clothes gently pushed the gun to one side.

             
‘I’m taking command from this moment forward,’ he said. He was not sick. He didn’t even hold his nose.

             
‘Get a medic down here. Tell him we need plasma.’

             
‘Doctor…’

             
‘Enough. Do what you’re told. Send Michaels down when you fetch the medics. This room is now off limits. I want a double guard on the outer door. Make sure no one other than level five clearance gets in. Do not speak about this to anyone. You have your orders.’

             
The soldier looked like he was going to complain, but then he took a look at me and that seemed to decide him.

             
They left and the doctor came in. I was slightly relieved, I thought, that this man was a doctor. I thought he could help me. I was in pain and I wanted some blood. I thought about trying to get him close enough to bite into his neck. Perhaps if I had some fresh blood I would be strong enough to break free of my bonds.

             
He did not give me the option. He came closer, but out of reach.

             
‘Can you speak?’ he asked me. He seemed intrigued, and not horrified.

             
‘I can,’ I managed, after some time. I tried to work some moisture into my mouth so that I could speak properly. My voice was cracked and shaky.

             
‘There is no need to be afraid,’ he said. ‘I am here to help.’

             
‘Where am I?’ I asked.

             
‘You are in Germany. This is a secret facility, a place used by a special unit within the German army called Unit 731. I think you understand what they did.’

             
‘They…tortured me.’

             
‘I know. We will fix you up. You’ll understand why I can’t release you.’

             
‘What do you mean? Let me up. Please. Let me be free.’

             
‘That can never happen. I will never be as cruel to you as they have, but you can never be free.’

             
‘I beg you…’

             
‘I know what you are,’ he said. He was not unkind. But there was no swaying him.

             
I heard footsteps from outside and two men came in. They both wore uniforms but they had armbands on.

             
‘Leave it. Leave us be,’ he said.

             
One of them began to speak but he held up a hand to silence him. ‘There is nothing you can do for him. I will attend him in his final hour. Please.’

             
They left. It seemed the doctor was in command of these men, too. I should have been worried then. I guess I was, because I was shaking, but I was not afraid just yet.

             
He took a plastic bag and I knew it contained blood. He put a needle in my arm and I began to feel better. It was a new way of feeding. It was not as satisfying as eating, but I could feel my strength returning and my hands and feet began to tingle once again.

             
‘Can you feel anything?’

             
‘My hands and feet are tingling.’

             
‘That is good. Your wrists and ankles have been burned through by your chains. How long have you been here?’

             
‘What year is it?’ I asked. It seemed strange that I was having a conversation with this man, as yet unsure whether he was a change for the better. But he was polite and his voice was powerful and persuasive.

             
‘1945. The war has ended.’

             
‘Since just after the start of the war,’ I said. ‘1916, it was. My God, I’ve been here for 29 years.’ I think I began crying then.

             
‘That was the first war,’ he said. ‘The second began in 1939.’

             
‘How did I end up in Germany?’

             
‘You must have been brought here many years ago. You were an experiment. A failed experiment. Your blood could not be controlled. I have the records, but I expect you know much of what went on.’

             
‘My children?’

             
‘The ones like you? I read about them. The silver gradually killed them. They did not live long. They traded you to the Germans in exchange for their lives. They were hunted in Russia. The records are quite complete. You are the only survivor.’

             
‘And now?’

             
‘We’ll get to that later. First we have to get you out of this country.’

             
‘What is to become of me?’

             
‘A long life, no doubt. If you co-operate, benefits.’

             
‘My freedom?’

             
The man shook his head. ‘That can never happen. I’m sure you understand. Now, don’t cry. It is most unattractive. I can assure you we are not so barbaric as the Germans or the Russians. You have nothing to fear.’

             
I should have known then when a doctor tells you that there is nothing to fear, you better be afraid.

             
‘Who are you?’

             
‘I am a doctor, of a sort. A specialist, you could say. My name is John Fallon. I’m sure we will get to know each other very well.’

             
For some reason my stomach turned and my heart beat quicker. It was something in his smile as he said this. I was suddenly certain that I did not want to get to know this man any better, and that far from improving my situation had become considerably worse.

*

Chapter Seventy-Three

Paris 

2025 A.D.

Pre-Apocalypse

The world was white. Some people think that pain is red, but the colour of real pain is white.

             
Tom Fallon tried to move but found that his hips were facing the wrong way. His right arm could move, but his left arm was trapped under his body. His neck was broken. He was aware of this because his head was facing backwards. He could not understand why his right arm could move.

             
With his head facing the pavement he could not see where he was. He thought he was on a city street. With a immense effort he managed to turn his head to one side. He could feel the bones in his neck, his shattered vertebra, grinding and sending splinters of bone into his nerves.

             
A woman swam into view, leaning over him. She screamed as he turned his head. He couldn’t hear the sounds but he could tell from her face. She dropped the mobile phone she had been holding and held her head instead. Tom imagined he must have looked just as terrible as he felt from the look of horror on her face. He tried to talk, to tell her to calm down, but he could not.

             
Awareness came flooding through him as he took in her clothes. She wore modern clothes, a tight skirt and a shirt. He was aware of the press of her breasts against the cloth. He was thankful of the sight and wondered what he was thinking, staring at her breasts while he was crippled and crushed…by what?

             
He pulled his neck around with sheer will and she ran from him, leaving her mobile phone on the floor behind her.

             
He could see further now that she was not filling his vision. There was a building in front of him. It was an apartment block. He could make out the name of the building on a plaque above the front door. A man came through the door at a run, perhaps to see what the screaming was about. Tom’s ears began to work again, and he could hear the man asking him in French if he could hear him, if he could speak.

             
The man took his own mobile phone from a pouch on his belt and began speaking into the phone.

             
Tom fought through the haze that was his thoughts. Something was different. Wrong, somehow. These people were talking on mobile phones. Mobile phones hadn’t worked for years. There was no power. He could see a hint of grey sky above. He was topside, out in the fresh air. He could feel the breeze caressing his face. His legs and arm were still numb, but he tried to push himself up with his right arm. Feeling was coming back to his left arm. At first it began with a tingling of blood rushing to his fingertips, then he was aware of a world of pain.

             
The man was speaking into the phone, telling someone to come quickly, it was an emergency. Then he was saying it was OK, he would stay on the phone until the ambulance came. But there were no ambulances. There were vampires, and guns, and death and the endless hunt. The world belonged to the night kin. Where was he that there could be an ambulance, and by extension a hospital for it to take him to?

             
He pushed himself from the ground with a grunt and a scream of agony. He sat up straight and pulled his left arm from underneath his body. He looked down at last and noted with hazy confusion that his lower body was facing the wrong way.

             
The man was pale with fear, saying over and over that he, Tom, should stay still, don’t try to move, oh God don’t move, oh Jesus, oh fuck…and Tom saw the problem. Part of his upper arm was broken and the bone was poking through his skin into his back. He noted with amusement that he was naked. No time, though. There was urgency. He felt it come through his haze and make his heart quicken. He pulled down and out on his arm and the bone returned under the skin. Then the skin began to heal over and the man with the mobile phone beside his ear took one gasp of air and then passed out.

             
Tom realised that there were other people crowding around him now.

             
He was beginning to remember. He was in the past. This was a world he had known long ago. This was a place he remembered well. It was the street he had lived on once when he was younger before…what?

             
The end of the world.

             
In the future. It was coming. He had to stop it.

             
It was easier to turn his torso round that to turn his legs so he turned to face the pavement once again and suddenly his legs, too, were overtaken by pins and needles.

             
His hearing was becoming clearer and he was aware that the light was hurting his eyes. A thought came from out of nowhere:
why didn’t I come through at night?

             
He hated the light. It burned. He laid his face on the pavement while the pain in his hips, his legs, awoke with full force. He kept his eyes closed. He could hear the wail of an ambulance coming…coming for him.

             
He didn’t want to be here when the ambulance came. He could not answer questions. There was too much to do.

             
But what did he have to do?

             
Save the world. Kill his father.

             
Kill his father? He did not care enough about his father to kill him. Why would he think that? Think later. Get away. For now. Get away.

             
He rose on unsteady legs, the left on still buckled at the knee. He was naked, in a Paris city street, and surrounded by chattering, screaming people. He had no answers for the questions that people were saying, to themselves, to others who were watching Tom healing.

             
How did he do that? My God, what is he? How, how, why, why…

             
With strong hands he pulled his patella back into place with a grinding crunch and a scream and he ran, pushing the people out of his way, hurling them from his path with power that he did not know he had. He ran down the street, faster, so fast. The air was glorious on his skin. His strength was returning. He felt better than he had for years.

             
But how could he run so fast? He had a memory of a broken leg, badly healed, a weak heart…and he was old? How old was he? He looked at the firm supple skin of his legs and arms as they pumped him faster and faster down the street, away from the people who had seen him heal and past different people who cried out in surprise or laughed as he ran naked down street after street, trying to find somewhere quiet to rest and think.

             
He needed time to think, but he did not have time. Time was ticking away. He was acutely aware of it. Time was something he did not have. He was not mortal, but he did not belong in this world. This world was in danger.

             
He had come to save it.

             
He stopped, barely panting, in a dark alleyway, thinking, his mind waking now and synapses firing.

             
He had come to save the world. To save it from his kind. To save it from his father.

             
His father was going to end the world.

             
Fallon Corporation. The place of the birth of the vampire nation.

             
This world was the past and with a cry of remembrance he fell to his knees in the shadows of the alleyway. He had come from that world and travelled through time to get to this world.

             
He remembered the time he had set in the computer. He needed to know if this was the right time. The right place. If it was he did not have long.

             
Good people had died so that he might save this world.

             
He remembered them very well. He cried red tears for the loss of his friends as he searched for something to wear.

             
And a newspaper.

*