The Fall

Director Barnes pulled away from Eph, readjusting his jacket. “They are on orders to keep well back. But they will be here soon, make no mistake about that. I insisted that I needed a few minutes alone with you.”

“Jesus,” said Eph, checking the rooftops across the street before backing away from the front windows. “How did they get you here so fast?”

“It is a priority that I speak to you. No one wants to harm you, Ephraim. This was all done at my behest.”

Eph turned away from him, heading back to the bar. “Maybe you only think so.”

“We need you to come in,” said Barnes, following him. “I need you, Ephraim. I know this now.”

“Look,” said Eph, reaching the bar and turning. “Maybe you understand what’s going on, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re part of it, I don’t know. You might not even know. But there is someone behind this, someone very powerful, and if I go anywhere with you now, it will certainly result in my incapacitation or death. Or worse.”

“I am eager to listen to you, Ephraim. Whatever you have to say. I stand before you as a man admitting his mistake. I know now that we are in the grip of something altogether devastating and otherworldly.”

“Not otherworldly. This-worldly.” Eph capped his brandy flask.

Fet was behind Barnes. “How long until they come in?” he asked.

“Not long,” said Barnes, unsure of the big exterminator in the dirty jumpsuit. Barnes returned his attention to Eph, and the flask. “Should you be drinking now?”

“Now more than ever,” said Eph. “Help yourself if you want. I recommend the dark ale.”

“Look, I know you’ve been put through a lot—”

“What happens to me doesn’t really matter, Everett. This isn’t about me, so any appeals to my ego won’t get you anywhere. What I am concerned about are these half- truths—or, should I say, outright lies—being issued under the auspices of the CDC. Are you no longer serving the public now, Everett? Just your government?”

Director Barnes winced. “Necessarily both.”

“Weak,” said Eph. “Inept. Even criminal.”

“This is why I need you to come in, Ephraim. I need your eyewitness experience, your expertise—”

“It’s too late! Can’t you at least see that?”

Barnes backed off a bit, keeping an eye on Fet because Fet made him nervous. “You were right about Bronxville. We’ve closed it off.”

“Closed it off?” said Fet. “How?”

“A wire fence.”

Eph laughed bitterly. “A wire fence? Jesus, Everett. This is exactly what I mean. You’re reacting to the public perception of the virus, rather than the threat itself. Reassuring them with fences? With a symbol? They will tear those fences apart—”

“Then tell me. Tell me what I need. What you need.”

“Start with destroying the corpses. That is step number one.”

“Destroy the…? You know I can’t do that.”

“Then nothing else you do matters. You have to send in a military team and sweep through that place and eliminate every single carrier. Then expand that operation south, into the city here, and all across Brooklyn and the Bronx…”

“You’re talking mass killing. Think about the visuals—”

“Think about the reality, Everett. I am a doctor, same as you. But this is a new world now.”

Fet drifted away, back toward the front, keeping an eye on the street. Eph said, “They don’t want you to bring me in to help. They want you to bring me in so they can neutralize me and the people I know. This”—he crossed to his weapons bag, drawing a silver sword—“is my scalpel now. The only way to heal these creatures is to release them—and yes, that means wholesale slaughter. Not doctoring. You want to help—to really help? Then get on TV and tell them that. Tell them the truth.”

Barnes looked at Fet in the front. “And who is this one with you now? I expected to see you with Dr. Martinez.”

Something about the way Barnes said Nora’s name struck Eph as odd. But he could not pursue it. Fet came back quickly from the front windows.

“Here they come,” said Fet.

Eph ventured near enough to see vans pulling up, closing off the street in either direction. Fet passed him, grabbing Barnes by the shoulder and walking him to a table in back, sitting him in the corner. Eph slung his baseball bag over his shoulder and ported Fet’s case to him.

“Please,” said Barnes. “I implore you. Both of you. I can protect you.

“Listen,” said Fet. “You just officially became a hostage, so shut the fuck up.” To Eph, he said: “Now what? How do we hold them off? UVC light doesn’t work on the FBI.”

Eph looked around the old ale house for answers. The pictures and ephemera of a century and a half, hanging on the walls and cluttering the shelves behind the bar. Portraits of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and a bust of JFK—all assassinated presidents. Nearby, among such curios as a musket, a shaving-cream mug, and framed obituaries, hung a small silver dagger.

Near it, a sign: WE WERE HERE BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.

Eph rushed behind the bar. He kicked aside the sawdust over the bull-nose ring latch embedded in the worn wooden floor.

Fet, appearing at his side, helped him raise the trapdoor.

The odor told them everything they needed to know. Ammonia. Pungent and recent.

Director Barnes, still in his seat in the corner, said, “They’ll only come in after you.”

“Judging by the smell—I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Fet, starting down first.

“Everett,” said Eph, switching on his Luma lamp before going down. “In case there is any lingering ambiguity, let me be perfectly clear now. I quit.”

Eph followed Fet to the bottom, his lamp illuminating the supply area beneath the bar in ethereal indigo. Fet reached up to close the door overhead.

“Leave it,” muttered Eph. “If he’s as dirty as I think he is, he’s running for the door already.”

Fet did, the hatch remaining open.

The ceiling was low, and the detritus of many decades—old kegs and barrels, a few broken chairs, stacks of empty glass racks, and an old industrial dishwasher—narrowed the passageway. Fet adjusted thick rubber bands around his ankles and jacket cuffs—a trick from his days baiting roach-infested apartments, learned the hard way. He handed some to Eph. “For worms,” he said, zipping his jacket tight.

Eph crossed the stone floor, pushing open a side door leading to an old, warm ice room. It was empty.

Next came a wooden door with an old, oval knob. The floor dust before it was disturbed in the shape of a fan. Fet nodded to him, and Eph yanked it open.

You don’t hesitate. You don’t think. Eph had learned that. You never give them time to group up and anticipate, because it is in their makeup that one of them will sacrifice itself in order that the others might have a chance at you. Facing stingers that can reach five or six feet, and their extraordinary night vision, you never, ever stop moving until every last monster is destroyed.

The neck was their vulnerable point—same as their prey’s throat was to them. Sever the spinal column and you destroy the body and the being that inhabits it. A significant amount of white-blood loss achieves the same end, though bloodletting is much more dangerous, as the capillary worms that escape live on outside the body, seeking new human bodies to invade. Why Fet liked to band up his cuffs.

Eph destroyed the first two in the manner that had proved most effective: using the UVC lamp like a torch to repel the beast, isolating and trapping them against a wall, then closing in with the sword for the coup de grace. Weapons made of silver do wound them, and cause whatever constitutes the vampire equivalent of human pain— and ultraviolet light burns through their DNA like flame.

Fet used the nail gun, pumping silver brads into their faces to blind or otherwise disorient them, then running through their distended throats. Loosened worms slithered across the wet floor. Eph killed some of the worms with his UVC light, while others met their fate beneath the hard treads of Fet’s boots. Fet, after stomping a few of them,