Fet came to her defense. “We have sun-time,” he said. “Before the cloud of ashes closes again. We’re going to look.”
Eph looked at the big exterminator, then back at Nora. They were making decisions together. Eph was outvoted.
“Fine,” said Eph. “Let’s make it quick.”
With the sky glow allowing a bit of light into the world—like a dimmer slowly rotated from the lowest to the second-to-lowest setting—the camp appeared as a dingy, military-style outpost and prison. The high fence ringing the perimeter was topped with tangles of concertina wire. Most of the buildings were cheaply constructed and caked with grime from the polluted rain—with the notable exception of the administration building, on the side of which was displayed the old Stoneheart corporate symbol: a black orb bisected laterally by a steel-blue ray, like an eye blinking shut.
Nora quickly led them under the canvas-covered path running deeper into the camp, passing other interior gates and buildings.
“The birthing area,” she told them, pointing out the high gate. “They isolate pregnant women. Wall them off from the vampires.”
“Maybe superstition?”
Nora said, “It looked more like quarantine to me. I don’t know. What would happen to an unborn fetus if the mother were turned?”
Fet said, “I don’t know. Never thought about that.”
“They have,” said Nora. “Seems like they’ve taken careful precautions against it ever happening.”
They continued past the front gate, along the interior wall. Eph kept checking behind them. “Where are all the humans?” he asked.
“The pregnant women live in trailers back there. The bleeders live in barracks to the west. It’s like a concentration camp. I think they will process my mother in that area farther ahead.”
She pointed at two dark buildings beyond the birthing zone, neither of which looked promising. They hurried farther along to the entrance to a large warehouse. Guard stations set up outside were empty at the moment.
“Is this it?” asked Fet.
Nora looked around, trying to get her bearings. “I saw a map… I don’t know. This isn’t what I envisioned.”
Fet checked the guard stations first. Inside was a bank of small-screen monitors, all dark. No on/off switches, no chairs.
“Vamps guard this place,” said Fet. “To keep humans out— or in?”
The entrance was not locked. The first room inside, which would have been the office or reception area, was stocked with rakes, shovels, hoes, hose trolleys, tillers, and wheelbarrows. The floor was dirt.
They heard grunts and squeals coming from inside. A nauseating shudder rippled through Eph, as he at first thought they were human noises. But no.
“Animals,” said Nora, moving to the door.
The vast warehouse was a humming brightness. Three stories tall, and twice the size of a football field or a soccer pitch, it was essentially an indoor farmstead and impossible to take in all at once. Suspended from the rafters high above were great lamps, with more lighting rigs erected over large garden plots and an orchard. The heat inside the warehouse was extreme but mitigated by a manufactured breeze that circulated via large vent fans.
Pigs congregated in a muddy enclosure outside an unroofed sty. A high-screened henhouse sat opposite, near what sounded like a cowshed and a sheep shelter. The smell of manure carried on the ventilating breeze.
Eph had to shield his eyes at first, with the lights pouring down from above, all but eliminating any surface shadows. They started down along one of the lanes, following a perforated irrigation pipe set on two-foot-high legs.
“Food factory,” said Fet. He pointed out cameras on the buildings. “People work it. Vamps keep an eye on them.” He squinted up into the lights. “Maybe there’s UV lights mixed in with the regular lamps up there, mimicking the range of light offered by the sun.”
Nora said, “Humans need light too.”
“Vamps can’t come inside. So people are left alone in here to tend the flock and harvest produce.”
Eph said, “I doubt they are left alone.”
Gus made a hissing noise to get their attention. “Rafters,” he said.
Eph looked up. He turned around, taking in a three-hundred-sixty-degree view until he saw the figure moving along a catwalk maybe two-thirds of the way up the long wall.
It was a man, wearing a long, drab, duster-style coat and a wide-brimmed rain hat. He was moving as fast as he could along the narrow, railed walkway.
“Stoneheart,” said Fet. Eldritch Palmer’s league of fellow travelers, who since his demise had transferred their allegiance to the Master when the Master assumed control of Palmer’s corporation’s vast industrial infrastructure.
“Hey!” yelled Fet. The man did not respond but only lowered his head and moved more quickly.
Eph ran his eyes along the walkway to the corner. Mounted on a wide, triangular platform—both an observation post and a sniper’s perch—was the long barrel of a machine gun, tipped toward the ceiling, awaiting an operator.
“Get low!” said Fet, and they scattered, Gus and Bruno running back toward the entrance, Fet grabbing Nora and running her to the corner of the henhouse, Eph hustling toward the sheep shelter, Joaquin heading for the gardens.
Eph ducked and ran along the fence, this bottleneck being the very thing he had feared. He wasn’t going to perish by human hands, though. That much he had decided long ago. They were open targets down here in the serene, brightly lit interior farmstead—but Eph could do something about that.
The sheep were agitated, bleating too loudly for Eph to hear anything else. He glanced back at the corner and saw Gus and Bruno racing toward a ladder to the side. The Stoneheart reached the perch and was fooling with the mounted repeater, turning the muzzle end down toward the ground. He lashed out first at Gus, strafing the ground behind him until he lost the angle. Gus and Bruno started up the left-side wall, but the ladder did not run directly beneath; the Stoneheart might have another chance at them before they reached the catwalk.
Eph threw off the wire loops holding the sheep inside their shelter. The gate door banged open and they went bleating into the enclosure. Eph found the hinged section of fence and vaulted over it, working the outside catch. He grabbed the fence and raised his feet just in time, riding it open in order to avoid being trampled by the escaping sheep.
He heard gunfire but didn’t look back, running to the cowshed and doing the same, throwing up the rolling door and turning the herd loose. These were not fat Holsteins but rather cows in the dictionary definition of the term only: thin, loose-hided, walleyed, and fast. They went every which way, a number of them galumphing into the orchard and knocking into the weak-trunked apple trees.
Eph went around the dairy, looking for the others. He saw Joaquin far right, behind one of the garden lamps with a tool in his hand, using it to aim the hot lamp up at the corner shooter. A genius idea, it worked perfectly, distracting the Stoneheart so that Gus and Bruno could charge up the exposed section of ladder. Joaquin dove for cover as the Stoneheart ripped at the lamp, exploding the bulb in a shower of sparks.
Fet was up and running, using one wayward heifer as a partial shield as he broke for a ladder on the near wall, to the right of the shooter’s perch. Eph edged around the corner of the dairy, thinking about making a run for the wall himself, when the dirt started popping before his feet. He bolted backward just as the rounds chewed the wooden corner where his head had been.
The ladder shivered under his weight as Fet climbed hand-over-hand toward the catwalk. The Stoneheart was swung all the way around, trying to angle his fire at Gus and Bruno, but they were low on the walkway, his rounds clanking off the intervening iron slats. Someone below turned another lamp on the Stoneheart, and Fet could see the man’s face locked in a grimace, as though he knew he was going to lose. Who were these people who would willingly do the vampires’ bidding?
