The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

Endeavor and the next research facility module it carried. She heard the voice summoning her, and spent a pleasant few seconds transforming from sleep to wakefulness. The floating sensation of dreaming is a constant in zero gravity. She wondered how her head would react to a pillow upon her return. What it would be like to come under the benevolent dictatorship of Earth’s gravity once again.

She removed her eye mask and neck pad, tucking each inside the sleeping bag before loosening the straps and wriggling out. She undid her elastic and shook out her long, black hair, combing it apart with her fingers, then turning a half-somersault to regather it and wind the elastic back around in a double loop.

The voice of Mission Control from Houston’s Johnson Space Center called her to the laptop in the Unity module for a teleconference uplink. This was unusual but not, in itself, a cause for alarm. Bandwidth in space is in high demand, and very carefully allocated. She wondered if there hadn’t been another orbital collision of space junk, its debris rocketed through orbit with the force of a shotgun blast. She disdained having to take shelter inside the attached Soyuz-TMA spacecraft, as a precaution. The Soyuz was their emergency escape from the ISS. A similar threat had occurred two months ago, necessitating an eight- day stay inside its bell-shaped crew module. Space-junk hazards posed the greatest threat to the viability of the ISS, and to the psychological well-being of its crew.

The news, as she found out, was even worse.

“We’re scrapping the Endeavor launch for now,” said Mission Control head Nicole Fairley.

“Scrapping? You mean postponing?” said Thalia, trying not to betray too much disappointment.

“Postponing indefinitely. There’s a lot going on down here. Some troubling developments. We need to wait this out.”

“What? The thrusters again?”

“No, nothing mechanical. Endeavor is sound. This is not a technical problem.”

“Okay…”

“To be honest, I don’t know what this is. You may have noticed you haven’t received any news updates these past few days.”

There was no direct Internet access in space. Astronauts received data, video, and e-mail through a Ky-band data link. “Do we have another virus?” All the laptops on the ISS operated on a wireless intranet, segregated from the mainframe.

“Not a computer virus, no.”

Thalia gripped the handlebar to hold herself still in front of the screen. “Okay. I’m going to stop asking questions now and just listen.”

“We are in the midst of a rather mystifying global pandemic. It apparently started in Manhattan and has been popping up in various cities and spreading ever since. Concurrently, and apparently in direct relation, there have been a large number of disappearances reported. At first, these vanishings were attributed to sick people staying home from work, people seeking medical attention. Now there are riots. I’m talking entire blocks of New York City. The violence has spread across state lines. The first report of attacks in London came four days ago, then at Narita Airport in Japan. Each country has been guarding its flank and its international profile, trying to avoid a meltdown of travel and commerce, which — as I understand it — is, in fact, exactly what each country should be seeking. The World Health Organization held a press conference yesterday in Berlin. Half of its members were absent. They officially moved the pandemic from a phase five to a phase-six alert.”

Thalia couldn’t believe it. “Is it the eclipse?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“The occultation. When I watched it from up here… the great black blot that was the shadow of the moon, spreading over the northeastern U.S. like a dead spot… I guess I had this… I had a premonition of sorts.”

“Well — it does seem to have started around then.”

“It was just the way it looked. So ominous.”

“We have had a few major incidents here in Houston, and more in Austin and Dallas. Mission Control is operating at about seventy percent manpower now, our numbers shrinking every day. With operation personnel levels unreliable, we have no choice but to push back the launch at this time.”

“Okay. I understand.”

“The Russian transport that went up two months ago left you plenty of food and batteries, enough to last up to a year if rationing becomes necessary.”

“A year?” said Thalia, more forcefully than she would have liked.

“Just thinking worst-case. Hopefully things get back under control here and we can get you back maybe two or three weeks out.”

“Great. So until then, more freeze-dried borscht.”

“This same message is being relayed to Commander Demidov and Engineer Maigny by their respective agencies. We are aware of your disappointment, Thalia.”

“I haven’t received any e-mail from my husband in a few days. Have you been holding those back as well?”

“No, we haven’t. A few days, you say?”

Thalia nodded. She pictured Billy as she always did, working inside the kitchen of their home in West Hartford, dishrag over his shoulder, cooking up some ambitious feast over the stove. “Contact him for me, will you? He’ll want to know about the postponement.”

“We did attempt to contact him. No answer. Either at your house, or his restaurant.”

Thalia swallowed hard. She worked quickly to regain her composure.

He’s fine, she thought. I’m the one orbiting the planet in a spaceship. He’s down there, both feet on the ground. He’s fine.

She showed Mission Control only confidence and fortitude, but she had never felt so far away from her husband as at that moment.

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

The block was already burning when Gus arrived with the Sapphires and Angel.

They saw smoke from the bridge on the way over: thick and black, rising in various spots uptown and down, Harlem and the Lower East Side and points between. As though the city had seen a coordinated military attack.

The morning sun was overhead, the city quiet. They shot up Riverside Drive, weaving around abandoned vehicles. Seeing smoke rising from city blocks was like watching a person bleed. Gus felt alternately helpless and anxious — the city was falling to shit all around him, and time was of the essence.

Creem and the other Jersey punks looked upon Manhattan burning with a kind of satisfaction. To them it was like watching a disaster movie. But to Gus, this was like watching his turf going up in flames.

The block they were headed to was the epicenter of the biggest uptown blaze: all the streets surrounding the pawnshop were blacked out by the thick veil of smoke, turning day into a strange, storm-like night.

“Those motherfuckers,” said Gus. “They blocked out the sun.”

The entire side of the street raged in flames — except the pawnshop on the corner. Its large front windows were shattered, security grates pulled off the building overhang and lying twisted on the sidewalk.

The rest of the city was quieter than a cold Christmas morning, but this block — the 118th Street intersection — was, at that dark daylight hour, teeming with vamps laying siege to the pawnshop.

They were after the old man.

Inside the apartment above the shop, Gabriel Bolivar moved from room to room. Silver-backed mirrors covered the walls instead of pictures, as though some strange spell had converted artwork into glass. The former rock star’s blurry reflection moved with him from room to room in his search for the old man Setrakian and his accomplices.

Bolivar stopped in the room the mother of the boy had tried to enter — the wall boarded behind an iron cage.

No one.