The Strain

Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem

EPH AND NORA stood with Setrakian behind the locked doors of his pawnshop, the two epidemiologists still shaken up.

“I gave them your name,” said Eph, looking outside the window.

“The building is in my late wife’s name. We should be safe here for the moment.”

Setrakian was anxious to get downstairs to his basement armory, but the two doctors were still rattled. “They are coming after us,” said Eph.

“Clearing the way for infection,” said Setrakian. “The strain will move faster through an orderly society than one on high alert.”

“They who?” said Nora.

“Whoever had the influence to get that coffin loaded onto a transatlantic flight in this age of terrorism,” said Setrakian.

Eph said, pacing, “They’re framing us. Sending someone in there to steal Redfern’s remains… who looked like us?”

“As you said, you are the lead authority to sound the general alarm for disease control. Be thankful they only tried to discredit you.”

Nora said, “Without the CDC behind us, we have no authority.”

Setrakian said, “We must continue on our own now. This is disease control at its most elemental.”

Nora looked over at him. “You mean—murder.”

“What would you want? To become like that… or to have someone release you?”

Eph said, “It’s still a polite euphemism for murder. And easier said than done. How many heads do we have to cut off? There are three of us here.”

Setrakian said, “There are ways other than severing the spinal column. Sunlight, for example. Our most powerful ally.”

Eph’s phone trembled inside his pocket. He pulled it out, wary, checking the display.

An Atlanta exchange. CDC headquarters. “Pete O’Connell,” he said to Nora, and took the call.

Nora turned to Setrakian. “So where are they all right now, during the day?”

“Underground. Cellars and sewers. The dark bowels of buildings, such as maintenance rooms, in the heating and cooling systems. In the walls sometimes. But usually in dirt. That is where they prefer to make their nests.”

“So—they sleep during the day, right?”

“That would be most convenient, wouldn’t it? A handful of coffins in a basement, full of dozing vampires. But no, they don’t sleep at all. Not as we understand it. They will shut down for a while if they are sated. Too much blood digestion fatigues them. But never for long. They go underground during daylight hours solely to escape the killing rays of the sun.”

Nora appeared quite pale and overwhelmed, like a little girl who’d been told that dead people do not in fact grow wings and fly straight up to heaven to be angels, but instead stay on earth and grow stingers under their tongues and turn into vampires.

“That thing you said,” she said. “Before you cut them down. Something in another language. Like a pronouncement, or a kind of curse.”

The old man winced. “Something I say only to calm myself. To steady my hand for the final blow.”

Nora waited to hear what it was. Setrakian saw that, for whatever reason, she needed to know.

“I say, ‘Strigoi, my sword sings of silver.’” Setrakian winced again, uncomfortable saying this now. “Sounds better in the old language.”

Nora saw that this old vampire killer was essentially a modest man. “Silver,” she said.

“Only silver,” he said. “Renowned throughout the ages for its antiseptic and germicidal properties. You can cut them with steel or shoot them with lead, but only silver really hurts them.”

Eph had his free hand over his other ear, trying to hear Pete, who was driving in a car just outside Atlanta. Pete said, “What’s going on up there?”

“Well… what have you heard?”

“That I’m not supposed to be talking to you. That you’re in trouble. That you’ve gone off the reservation or some such.”

“It’s a mess here, Pete. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Well, I had to call anyway. I’ve been putting in time on the samples you sent me.”

Eph felt another stone fall into his gut. Dr. Peter O’Connell was one of the heads of the Unexplained Deaths Project at the CDC’s National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases. UNEX was an interdisciplinary group made up of virologists, bacteriologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians, and clinicians from inside and outside the CDC. A great many naturally occurring deaths go unexplained in the United States each year, and a fraction of these—about seven hundred per annum—are referred to UNEX for further investigation. Of those seven hundred, merely 15 percent are satisfactorily resolved, with samples from the rest being banked for possible future reexamination.

Every UNEX researcher holds another position within the CDC, and Pete was the chief of Infectious Disease Pathology, an expert on how and why a virus affects its host. Eph had forgotten sending him early biopsies and blood samples from Captain Redfern’s preliminary examination.

“It’s a viral strain, Eph. No doubt about that. A remarkable bit of genetic acid.”

“Pete, wait, listen to me—”

“The glycoprotein has amazing binding characteristics. I’m talking skeleton key. Astonishing. This little bugger doesn’t merely hijack the host cell, tricking it into reproducing more copies of itself. No—it fuses to the RNA. Melds with it. Consumes it… yet somehow doesn’t use it up. What it’s doing is, it’s making a copy of itself mated with the host cell. And taking only the parts it needs. I don’t know what you’re seeing with your patient, but theoretically, this thing could replicate and replicate and replicate, and many millions of generations later—and this thing is fast—it could reproduce its own organ structure. Systemically. It could change its host. Into what, I don’t know—but I sure would like to find out.”

“Pete.” Eph’s head was swimming. It made too much sense. The virus overwhelmed and transformed the cell—just as the vampire overwhelmed and transformed the victim.

These vampires were viruses incarnate.

Pete said, “I’d like to do the genetics on this one myself, really see what makes it tick—”

“Pete, listen to me. I want you to destroy it.”

Eph heard Pete’s windshield wipers working in the silence. “What?”

“Save your findings, hang on to those, but destroy that sample right away.”

More windshield wipers, metronomes of Pete’s uncertainty. “Destroy the one I was working on, you mean? Because you know that we always bank some, just in case—”

“Pete, I need you to drive straight to the lab and destroy that sample.”

“Eph.” Eph heard Pete’s blinker, Pete pulling off the road to finish the conversation. “You know how careful we are with any potential pathogens. We’re clean and we’re safe. And we have a very strict laboratory protocol that I can’t just break for your—”

“I made a terrible mistake letting it out of New York City. I didn’t know then what I know now.”

“Exactly what kind of trouble are you in, Eph?”

“Bleach it. If that doesn’t work, use acid. Set it on fire if you have to, I don’t care. I’ll take full responsibility —”

“It’s not about responsibility, Eph. It’s about good science. You need to be straight with me now. Someone said they saw something about you on the news.”

Eph had to end this. “Pete, do as I ask—and I promise I will explain everything to you when I can.”

He hung up. Setrakian and Nora had listened to the end of his conversation.