Something of the Night (30 page)

Chapter
Forty-Seven

Less than three hundred yards from where Ezekiel
addressed his captives, Ben finished instructing his own audience. “Okay, let’s
get to it. We don’t have much time,” he said.

Like a flock of startled
birds, the small gathering scattered in opposite directions. Some headed
towards the corner of the cavern, where an unused generator sat idle; others
assembled at the nose of Black Bird, ready to offer their help with the fixing
of a metal structure to the front of the Huey.

Ben instructed the group
around the Huey, anxiously, like an overprotecting parent would shield their
only child. “Wait – wait,” he ordered, stopping the group from ramming the
heavy framework into Black Bird’s cockpit. “Drop it slightly,” he told them,
lining two struts flat against the hull. The second he gave the thumbs up, a
welder appeared – a dark visor over his or her face – and immediately began to
fix the framework into place. Ben winced as the Huey’s dark paintwork began to
bubble and burn.

“Watch your eyes,” the
welder, a woman, warned.

“Yeah – right,” Ben agreed,
and turned away from the blinding arc of the welding rod.

The woman quickly moved around
the helicopter, tacking the metal into place. “Okay, just a few more minutes,”
she said, and then started to weld every inch of metal she could find. The
immediate area filled with a choking, acrid fog. “Okay, that should do it,” she
remarked, and she stepped back.

Ben reached out, ready to
test its strength.

“Hang on,” the welder warned.
“It’ll be red-hot.”

Unable to look at the charred
mess, Ben turned away from Black Bird. The Huey looked like she’d just come
through a cloud of antiaircraft flak, pitted and scarred.

“Don’t worry. We’ll give her
a lick of paint afterwards,” a newcomer said.

Ben found Hutson before him.
“Promise?” he asked her.

“I promise,” the lieutenant
replied.

Alice
and Squirrel appeared, both laden with some of the
cables that Ben and Hutson had rescued from the
Empire
State
Building
.
“Okay,” Squirrel began, “we need to start fixing these to the hull.”

“How?” Ben asked, nervously.

“With that,” the mechanic
said, and pointed towards a heavy-looking machine cradled in the arms of a
soldier.

“Oh … God,” Ben croaked, and
turned away from the nail-gun. He found himself a quiet spot and did everything
he could to turn his attention away from the sound of nails punching through
the helicopter’s hull.

***

Most of the transports had been moved back towards the
walls of the cavern to allow the swarm of bodies to go about their work. The
trucks were ready to go now, piled high with civilians and goods, a team of
drivers waiting eagerly for the climb to the surface - to safety. Every couple of
minutes, a runner appeared with up-to-date information about the ongoing battle
down in the third level. So far, Lieutenant Farr and his men were holding the
vampires back, but the tight conditions were making it even more difficult to
push on. Humans and vampires were locked in a fierce standoff.

Major Patterson stood near
the main entrance to the cavern. He felt a squeeze against his hand and turned
to find Hannah there.

“How’re you holding up?” she
asked.

“Fine,” he replied. “Now
you’re here with me.” He kissed her cheek, and a twang of agony pulled at his
heart as he felt the protrusion of bones. Her face looked pale and gaunt, and
her eyes were harder than any he had seen.

“What about you?” he asked.

It took her a while to find
her voice. “Okay, I guess,” she finally said. “I just feel claustrophobic, too
many people in one place.”

“Give it time,” he told her,
and squeezed her hand back.

“How much longer before we
evacuate?” she asked.

“As soon as the helicopter is
ready, we’ll be heading west.”

“Where?”

The Major looked into his
daughter’s eyes and uncertainty resided there. “To safety, I hope. I
pray
.”

“What about my son?”

“Have faith,” Patterson said.

“In what – God?”

“No,” the old man responded,
“in Jacob.” He put one arm around her frail shoulders and hugged her tight.
“He’ll find a way. I promise.”

Together, they turned towards
the Huey and the hope for humankind that it prepared to carry.

***

“Down!” Lieutenant Farr ordered. A bright flash
exploded behind him and the tunnel shook with another blast. “Stay down!” Farr
cried to his men. They were huddled behind overturned tables and pinned down by
heavy gunfire. Another line of bullets stuttered towards him and he felt pain
rip into his hand as the edges of the table disintegrated in a shower of splinters.
He pulled some of the larger wooden slivers out of the back of his hand with
his teeth. As he spat one of them out, he looked up and saw the head of a
soldier pop up from behind another table. “Get dow-” The
crack
of the
soldier’s skull cut short his warning. In a lifeless heap the soldier slumped
over the edge of the table, blood oozing from a tearful third eye.

“Goddamn son-of-a-bitch,”
Farr cursed.

“They’re picking us off one
by one,” the soldier at his side said.

About half his men had fallen
and the constant barrage of bullets held down the other half. Twenty or so men
were gathered together, huddled behind tables, barrels, or anything that could
offer even the modest amount of cover. Every few second a cry of pain echoed
off the carved rock as another soul fell. Injured soldiers lay in agony, their
comrades unable to reach them, in fear of being cut down by the heavy weapons
of the undead. The vampires had come armed to the teeth and ready to take their
own casualties if need be. The space between Farr and the attackers was
littered with the bodies of both men and vampires alike.

Farr reloaded, then fired
over the table in a blind attack. He heard the cry of pain and grinned
callously with the thought of the victim’s suffering. The machinegun continued
to chatter until the clip emptied. He dropped it into his lap. The muzzle
scorched the front of his pants.

“I’m out,” he declared, over
the thunderous noise.

The soldier at his side
handed over another magazine. “That’s my last,” he said, and pulled a small
firearm from his waistband.

“Okay, I’m gonna see if I can
get us clear,” Farr announced.

“How?” the soldier asked.

Farr reached inside his
fatigues and retrieved two grenades. “Here,” he said, and handed over the
machinegun.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you a chance,” Farr
responded. He took the pistol from the soldier’s hand and chambered a round,
then pushed it into his waistband. “Get ready. When I move, I want you to pull
the men back. Find a better location to hold position.”

The soldier nodded. “What
about the canteen area?”

“As good a place as any. Now,
on my mark.” Farr pulled both pins from the grenades. He took a deep breath,
possibly his last, and then climbed to his feet. “GO!” he yelled. Bullets
whizzed past his ears like angry hornets. He launched the first grenade into
the tunnel. Wasting no time, he let fly with the second. The gunfire stopped.
He heard the grenades bounce and roll from one side of the tunnel to the other,
followed by the desperate footsteps as the vampires tried to flee. Then, he was
up and running.

A concussive wave of heat
swelled against his back, and the entire rock foundation shuddered as the
grenades exploded in a hail of deadly shrapnel, killing the vampire horde in
droves.

Farr entered the connecting
tunnel and saw his men flee towards the canteen area. There, they would have to
stop the vampires’ assault. Or risk total annihilation.

***

Rebecca sat on the flatbed truck and waited with the
rest of the bedraggled group. Their truck had been positioned behind two
others, waiting to be loaded onto the platform. The little terrier had stayed
at the oily newcomer’s side since he had appeared from the belly of the
mechanical beast. She felt a slight pang of sadness at the loss of her friend,
but she still had the glass vial to keep her company. She had it in her hands
and the lights from the cavern walls made the liquid inside glitter and sparkle
in a rainbow of colours. Over the last few minutes, the vial had begun to warm
up, as if Rebecca’s hands had begun transferring her body heat to the clear
liquid inside.

She heard the rumble of an
engine and watched as the lead truck rolled closer to the platform. Another
truck followed close behind, and then the one she rode in. The suspension swung
the back of the truck from left to right, and Rebecca was forced to take hold
of the sides. The truck bounced violently as it dropped into an open fissure.
The flatbed juddered and the passengers felt themselves thrown forwards by the
impact. Rebecca’s hand slipped and the crystal vial spun from her fingers. She
watched with sickening dread as the tiny glass bottle arced through the air
before landing on the rock-hard surface. She winced, expecting the vial to
smash into a thousand pieces, taking the rainbow with it. Miraculously, it did
not. Instead, it landed with a
clink,
rolled away from the truck,
directly towards the wheels of another.

“NO… ” Rebecca gasped,
jumping from the moving truck.

“Hey, what are you doing?”
one of the other passengers called.

Too late, Rebecca was already
racing after the crystal bottle. The vial followed the slight curve of the
cavern as it continued to roll towards the thick rubber tyres of the next truck
in line.

“STOP!” she yelled to the
driver.

The driver saw her appear
unexpectedly through the grime-coated windshield. He jumped on the brakes and
the vehicle screeched to a halt. Rebecca watched as the vial rolled agonisingly
close to the wheels. However, at the last moment, the truck stopped and the
vial raced by undamaged. It passed the tyre on the left, disappeared underneath
the truck for a moment before reappearing from behind the wheel on the right.
The little girl chased after it as it bounced and spun towards the centre of
the cavern.

As it raced away, bright
colours of red, yellow, blue, green and orange flashed and burnt in a dazzling
display of fire. She slipped between two lines of soldiers and closed in on the
collage of colours. Almost there, she thought, as the vial slowed and the
distance halved. She reached out to snatch it back, but it rolled out of her
reach by an inch. With horror, she watched as the vial fell towards a drainage
grille that was fixed into the floor. The crystal bottle balanced at the edge
of the grille for a second. Then, just before Rebecca had a chance to reach it,
it dropped over the edge and into darkness.

Plop.

It landed in water.

She dropped down over the
grille and jammed her fingers through the metal bars. “
Nooo…
” she
whimpered as it bobbed out of view. Like a little glass ship, the vial floated
away, a stream of dirty water taking deeper it into the drainage pipe.

“The rainbow,” Rebecca
moaned. She found another grille about ten yards away. Jumping to her feet, she
raced to the next. The vial passed by and moved towards the next. She followed
its progress until she reached the last grille in line. After that, the pipe
disappeared into a thousand tons of solid rock.

Unbelievably, the vial caught
itself behind a piece of stone that protruded out of the dirty stream of water.
The current pushed the crystal bottle to the stone and held it there.

“Help me,” she called towards
the nearest soldier.

“What is it, kid?” the
soldier asked.

“Help me,” she repeated, and
began to tug at the grille.

“What’s the matter?” he
asked, concerned by the girl’s strange behaviour.

“The rainbow - the rainbow,”
she cried.

“What?” he asked, dropping to
his knees.

“There,” she said.

The soldier followed her
finger and spotted the vial half submerged in brown sludge. “Christ, kid, I
ain’t got time for rescuin’ toys.”

“But the rainbow,” she
snivelled. Two teardrops slipped down either side of her face. She gripped his
arm and begged, “Please help me.”

“Jeez…” the soldier said.
“Okay, stand back.” He reached down and got a tight grip around the iron bars.
Then, tensing his upper arms and shoulders, he pulled at the grille with all
his might. It was fixed solid. The soldier redoubled his efforts and it
eventually gave, coming free with a crack of masonry and rust.

Rebecca jumped forwards,
intent on reclaiming the vial. Before she could do so, the cavern shook in
response to an explosion, somewhere lower down within the complex. The vial
slipped free. It bobbed underneath the surface. She plunged her arm down, but
her hand closed around nothing but foul water.