The Strain. Book I of The Strain Trilogy

“Too much.”

Eph could not stop looking in her eyes. He said, “I have to go after her.”

“I know.”

“I just want you to know…”

“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “But — I’m glad you want to.”

He pulled her close then, into a tight embrace. Nora’s hand went up to the back of his head, caressing his hair. She pulled away to look at him, to say something more — and then kissed him instead. It was a good-bye kiss that insisted on his return.

They parted and he nodded to let her know he understood.

He saw Zack watching them from the hallway.

Eph didn’t try to explain anything to him now. Leaving the beauty and goodness of this boy and departing from the perceived safety of the surface world to go down and face a demon was the most unnatural thing Eph could do. “You’ll stay with Nora, okay? We’ll talk when I come back.”

Zack’s preteen squint was self-protective, the emotions of the moment too raw and confusing for him. “Come back from where?”

He pulled his son close, wrapping him up in his arms as though otherwise the boy he loved would fracture into a million pieces. Eph resolved there and then to prevail because he had too much to lose.

They heard yelling and automobile horns outside, and everyone went to the west-facing window. A mass of brake lights clotted the road some four or more blocks away, people taking to the streets and fighting. A building was in flames and there were no fire trucks anywhere in sight.

Setrakian said, “This is the beginning of the breakdown.”

Morningside Heights

Gus had been on the run since the night before. The handcuffs made it difficult for him to move freely on the streets: the old shirt he had found, and wound around his forearms, as if he was walking with his arms crossed, wouldn’t have fooled many. He ducked into a movie theater through the back exit and slept in the darkness. He thought of a chop shop he knew over on the West Side, and spent a considerable amount of time making his way over there, only to find it empty. Not locked up, just empty. He dug through the tools he could find there, trying to cut the links joining his wrists. He even ran an electric jigsaw, held with a vise, and nearly sliced his wrists open in the process. He couldn’t do anything one-handed, and eventually left in disgust.

He went by the haunts of a few of his cholos but couldn’t click up with anyone he trusted. The streets were weird — there wasn’t much going on. He knew what was happening. When the sun started going down, he knew that his time and his options would be running out.

It was risky going home, but he hadn’t seen many cops all day, and anyway he was worried about his madre. He slipped inside the building, trying to keep his shirt-balled hands casual, making for the stairs. Sixteen flights up. Once there, he walked down the hallway and saw no one. He listened at the door. The TV was playing, as usual.

He knew the bell didn’t work, so he knocked. He waited and knocked again. He kicked at the foot plate, rattling the door and the cheap walls.

“Crispin,” he hissed at his dirtbag brother. “Crispin, you shit. Open the fucking door.”

Gus heard the chain lock being undone and the bolt turning inside. He waited, but the door never opened. So Gus unwound the shirt covering his cuffed hands and turned the knob.

Crispin was standing back in the corner, to the left of the couch, which was his bed, when he came around. The shades were all drawn and the refrigerator door was open in the kitchen.

“Where’s Mama?” said Gus.

Crispin said nothing.

“Fucking pipehead,” said Gus. He closed the fridge. Some stuff had melted and there was water on the floor. “She asleep?”

Crispin said nothing. He stared at Gus.

Gus started to get it. He took a better look at Crispin, who barely rated a glance from him anymore, and saw his black eyes and drawn face.

Gus went to the window and whipped apart the shades. It was night. There was smoke in the air from a fire below.

Gus turned to face Crispin, across the apartment, and Crispin was already charging him, howling. Gus got his arms up and got the handcuff chain across his brother’s neck, under his jaw. High enough so that he couldn’t get his stinger out.

Gus grasped the back of his head with his hands and pushed Crispin down to the floor. His vampire brother’s black eyes bugged and his jaw bucked as his mouth tried to open, which Gus’s strangling grip would not allow. Gus was intent on suffocating him, but as time went by and Crispin kept kicking, and there was no blacking out — Gus remembered that vampires didn’t need to breathe and could not be killed that way.

So he pulled him up by his neck, Crispin’s hands clawing at Gus’s arms and hands. For the past few years, Crispin had been nothing but a drag on their mother and a big pain in the ass for Gus. Now he was a vampire and the brother part of him was gone but the asshole part remained. And so it was retribution that moved Gus to wheel him headfirst into the decorative mirror on the wall, an old oval of heavy glass that didn’t crack until it slid down to the floor. Gus kneed Crispin, throwing him down onto the floor, and then grabbed the largest shard of glass. Crispin wasn’t quite to his knees when Gus rammed the point through the back of his neck. It severed the spine and poked the skin out of the front of his neck without quite ripping it. Gus worked the glass piece sideways, slicing Crispin’s head nearly off — but forgetting its sharpness against his own hands, cutting his palms. The pain stabbed at him, but he did not let go of the broken glass until his brother’s head was removed from its body.

Gus staggered back, looking at the bloody slash across each of his palms. He wanted to make certain none of those worms wriggling out with Crispin’s white blood got into him. They were on the carpet and hard to see, so Gus stayed away. He looked at his brother, in pieces on the floor, and felt sickened by the vampire part of him, but as to the loss, Gus was numb. Crispin had been dead to him for years.

Gus washed his hands at the sink. The cuts were long but not deep. He used a gummy dish towel to stop the bleeding and went to his mother’s bedroom.

“Mama?”

His only hope was that she not be there. Her bed was made and empty. He turned to leave, then thought twice and got down on his hands and knees to look under the bed. Just her sweater boxes and the arm weights she’d bought ten years ago. He was on his way back to the kitchen when he heard a rustling in the closet. He stopped, listening again. He went to the door and opened it. All of his mother’s clothes were pulled down off the hanging rack, lumped in a big pile on the floor.

The pile was moving. Gus tugged back an old yellow dress with shoulder pads and his madre’s face leered out at him, black eyed and sallow skinned.

Gus closed the door again. Didn’t slam it and run off, he just closed it and stood there. He wanted to cry but tears wouldn’t come, only a sigh, a soft, deep whimper, and then he turned and looked around his mother’s bedroom for a weapon to cut her head off with…

…and then he realized what the world had come to. Instead, he turned back to the closed door, leaning his forehead against it.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered. “Lo siento. I should have been here. I should have been here…”

He walked, dazed, into his own room. He couldn’t even change his shirt, thanks to the handcuffs. He stuffed some clothes into a paper bag for when he could change, and crumpled it up under his arm.

Then he remembered the old man. The pawnshop on 118th Street. He would help him. And help him fight this thing.

He left his apartment, exiting into the hall. People stood down at the elevator end, and Gus lowered his head and started toward them. He didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want to have to deal with any of his mother’s neighbors.

He was about halfway to the elevators when he realized they weren’t talking or moving. Gus looked up and saw that the three people there were standing and facing him. He stopped when he realized that their eyes, their