Then the atmosphere inside the store changed. The only way to describe it is the way things get so still outside right before a storm. Creem’s hair stood up on the back of his neck. Something was about to happen. This was like the moment when two hands go rushing toward each other, the instant before the clap.
A humming entered Creem’s brain like the rumble of a dentist’s drill, only without the vibration. Like the roar of an approaching helicopter without the wind. Like the droning chant of a thousand monks—only without the song.
The bloodsuckers stiffened up like soldiers awaiting inspection. The two Stonehearts stepped to the side, against an empty aisle rack. The suckers on either side of Creem relinquished their grip on him, pulling away, leaving him sitting alone in the middle of the dirty linoleum …
… as a dark figure entered the store.
Camp Liberty
THE TRANSPORT JEEP was a repurposed military vehicle with an expanded cargo bed and no roof. Mr. Quinlan drove at breakneck speed through the lashing rain and inky darkness; his vampire vision required no headlights. Eph and the others bumped along in the back, getting soaked as they hurtled blindly through the night. Eph closed his eyes against the rain and the rocking, feeling like a small boat caught in a typhoon, battered but determined to ride it out.
They stopped finally, and Eph lifted his head and looked up at the immense gate, dark against the dark sky. No light was necessary. Mr. Quinlan cut the Jeep’s engine, and there were no sounds or voices, other than the rain and the mechanical rumble of a distant generator somewhere inside.
The camp was enormous and all around it a featureless concrete wall was being erected. At least twenty feet high, it had crews working on it day and night, raising rebar, pouring concrete by stadium quartz lights. It would be ready very soon, but for the time being, a gate constructed of chain link backed by wooden planks gave access to the camp.
For some reason, Eph had imagined he would hear children crying, adults screaming, or some other form of audible anguish, being near so much human suffering. The darkly quiet exterior of the camp spoke to an oppressive efficiency that was almost as shocking.
No doubt they were being watched by unseen strigoi. Mr. Quinlan’s body registered bright and hot in the vampires’ heat-sensitive vision, with the five other beings in the back of the Jeep reading as cooler humans.
Mr. Quinlan lifted a baseball equipment bag from the passenger seat and lay it across his shoulder as he exited the Jeep. Eph stood dutifully, his wrists
, waist, and ankles bound by nylon rope. The five of them were knotted together with only a few feet of slack between them, like members of a chain gang. Eph was in the middle, Gus in front of him, Fet in back. First and last were Bruno and Joaquin. One by one they hopped down from the back of the vehicle, landing in the mud.
Eph could smell the strigoi, their feverlike earthiness and their ammoniac waste. Mr. Quinlan walked alongside Eph, accompanying his prisoners into the camp.
Eph felt as though he were walking into the mouth of the whale and feared being swallowed. He knew going in that the odds were no better than even that he would ever emerge from this slaughterhouse again.
Communication was handled wordlessly. Mr. Quinlan was not exactly on the other vampires’ wavelength, telepathically, but the existence of his psychic signal was enough to pass first inspection. Physically, he appeared less gaunt than the rank-and-file vampires, his pale flesh more lily-petal smooth than dead and plastic, his eyes a brighter red with an independent spark. They shuffled down a narrow canvas tunnel beneath a roof constructed of chicken fencing. Eph looked up through the wire into the falling rain and the sheer blackness of the starless sky.
They arrived at a quarantine station. A few battery-powered work lamps illuminated the room, as this area was manned by humans. With the low-wattage light casting shadows against the walls, and the relentless rain outside, and the palpable sense of being surrounded by hundreds of malevolent beings, the quarantine station resembled a scared little tent in the middle of a vast jungle.
The staff’s heads were all shaved. Their eyes were dry and tired-looking, and they wore slate-gray prison-grade jumpsuits and perforated rubber clogs.
The five were asked to provide their names, and each man lied. Eph signed a scribble next to his pseudonym with a dull pencil. Mr. Quinlan stood in the background, before a canvas wall thumping with rain, while four strigoi stood golemlike, one pair of sentries at either flap door.
Mr. Quinlan’s story was that he had captured five outliers squatting in a cellar beneath a Korean market on 129th Street. A blow to the head, suffered in the act of subduing his cargo, explained his glitchy telepathy—whereas, in fact, Quinlan was actively blocking the vampires from accessing his true thoughts. He had shed his oversized pack, laying it down on the damp canvas floor near his boots.
The humans first tried to untie the binding knots, in hopes of preserving the rope for reuse. But the wet nylon would not budge and had to be cut. Under the watchful eyes of the vampire guards, Eph remained standing with his eyes down, rubbing his raw wrists. It was impossible for him to look a vampire in the eye without showing hatred. Also, he was concerned about being recognized by the strigoi hive mind.
He was aware of a disturbance brewing inside the tent. The quiet was awkward, the sentries directing their attention at Mr. Quinlan. The strigoi had picked up on something different about him.
Fet noticed this too, because he suddenly started talking, trying to direct attention away from Quinlan. “When do we eat?” he asked.
The human with the clipboard looked up from his note-taking. “Whenever they feed you.”
“Hope it’s not too rich,” he said. “I don’t do well with rich foods.”
They stopped what they were doing, staring at Fet as though he were insane. The lead man said, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Good,” said Fet.
One of the strigoi noticed that Mr. Quinlan’s pack remained on the floor in the corner of the room. The vampire reached for the long, heavy bag.
Fet stiffened near Eph. One of the human personnel grasped Eph’s chin, using a penlight to examine the interior of his mouth. The man had bags beneath his eyes the color of black tea. Eph said, “Were you a doctor?”
“Sort of,” said the man, looking at Eph’s teeth.
“How ‘sort of’?”