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.
“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.
Setrakian said, “You sent the virus somewhere else?”
“He’s going to destroy it. Pete will err on the side of caution — I know him too well.” Eph looked at the televisions for sale along the wall.
They found one that did. It wasn’t long before the story rolled around.
They showed Eph’s photograph from his CDC identification card. Then a blurry snippet of his encounter with Redfern, and one of the two look-alikes carrying a body bag from the hospital room. It said that Dr. Ephraim Goodweather was being sought as “a person of interest” in the disappearance of the corpses of the Flight 753 airline passengers.
Eph stood motionless. He thought of Kelly watching this. Of Zack.
“Those bastards,” he hissed.
Setrakian switched off the television. “The only good news about this is that they still consider you a threat. That means there is still time. Still hope. A chance.”
Nora said, “You sound like you have a plan.”
“Not a plan. A strategy.”
Eph said, “Tell us.”
“Vampires have their own laws, both savage and ancient. One such commandment that endures is that a vampire cannot cross moving water. Not without human assistance.”
Nora shook her head. “Why not?”
“The reason perhaps lies in their very creation, so long ago. The lore has existed in every known culture on the planet, for all time. Mesopotamians, Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, Hebrews, the Romans. Old as I am, I am not old enough to know. But the prohibition holds even today. Giving us something of an advantage here. Do you know, what is New York City?”
Nora got it right away. “An island.”
“An archipelago. We are surrounded on all sides by water right now. The airline passengers, they went to morgues in all five boroughs?”
“No,” said Nora. “Only four. Not Staten Island.”
“Four, then. Queens and Brooklyn are both separated from the mainland, by the East River and the Long Island Sound respectively. The Bronx is the only borough connected to the United States.”
Eph said, “If only we could seal off the bridges. Set up fire lines north of the Bronx, east of Queens at Nassau…”
“Wishful thinking at this point,” said Setrakian. “But, can you see, we do not have to destroy every one of them individually. They are all of one mind, operating in a hive mentality. Controlled by a single intelligence. Who is very likely landlocked somewhere here in Manhattan.”
“The Master,” said Eph.
“The one who came over in the belly of the airplane. The owner of the missing coffin.”
Nora said, “How do you know he’s not back near the airport? If he can’t cross the East River on his own.”
Setrakian smiled flatly. “I feel very confident that he did not journey all the way to America to hide out in Queens.” He opened the rear door, the steps leading to his basement armory. “What we have to do now is hunt him down.”
Vasiliy Fet, the exterminator with the New York City Bureau of Pest Control, stood at the construction fence above the great “bathtub” foundation at the site of the former World Trade Center complex. He had left his handcart in his van, parked over on West Street, in a Port Authority lot with the other construction vehicles. In one hand he carried rodenticide and light tunnel gear in a red-and-black Puma sport bag. In his other he held his trusty length of rebar, found at a job site once, a one-meter-long steel rod perfect for probing rat burrows and pushing bait inside — and occasionally beating back aggressive or panicked vermin.
He stood between the Jersey barriers and the construction fence at the corner of Church and Liberty, among the orange-and-white caution barrels along the wide pedestrian walkway. People walked past, striding toward the
