The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

enjoy your meal himself.”

Eph had actually been looking at the utensils set out for him. He grasped the sterling-silver knife, holding it up so that it caught the light.

“Silver, yes,” said Palmer. “No vampires here tonight.”

Eph took up his fork and, with his eyes on Palmer, and his handcuffs clinking, cut into the fish. Palmer watched as he brought a morsel to his mouth, chewing it, juices exploding on his dry tongue, his belly rumbling with anticipation.

“It has been decades since I ingested food orally,” said Palmer. “I grew accustomed to not eating while recuperating from various surgical procedures. Really, you can lose your taste for food surprisingly easily.”

He watched Eph chew and swallow.

“After a time, the simple act of eating comes to appear quite animalistic. Grotesque, in fact. No different than a cat consuming a dead bird. The mouth-throat-stomach digestive tract is such a crude path to nourishment. So primitive.”

Eph said, “We’re all just animals to you, is that it?”

“‘Customers’ is the accepted term. But certainly. We, the over-class, have taken those basic human drives and advanced our own selves through their exploitation. We have monetized human consumption, manipulated morals and laws to direct the masses by fear or hatred, and, in doing so, have managed to create a system of wealth and remuneration that has concentrated the vast majority of the world’s wealth in the hands of a select few. Over the course of two thousand years, I believe this system worked pretty well. But all good things must end. You saw, with the recent market crash, how we have been building to this impossible end. Money built upon money built upon money. Two choices remain. Either utter collapse, which appeals to no one, or the richest push the pedal to the floor and take it all. And here we are now.”

Eph said, “You brought the Master here. You arranged for him to be on that airplane.”

“Indeed. But, doctor, I have been so consumed with the orchestration of this endeavor for lo these past ten years that to recount it all for you now would truly be a waste of my last hours. If you don’t mind.”

“You are selling out the human race so you can live forever — as a vampire?”

Palmer put his hands together in a gesture of prayer, but only to rub his palms and generate some warmth. “Are you aware that this very island was once home to as many different species as Yellowstone National Park?”

“No, I wasn’t. So we humans had it coming, is that your point?”

Palmer laughed softly. “No, no. No, that is not it. Far too moralistic. Any dominant species would have ravaged the land with equal or grander enthusiasm. My point is that the land doesn’t care. The sky doesn’t care. The planet doesn’t care. The entire system is structured around a long-winded decay and an eventual rebirth. Why are you so precious about humanity? You can already feel it slipping away from you now. You’re falling apart. Is the sensation really all that bad?”

Eph remembered — with a spike of shame now — his apathy in the FBI debriefing room after his arrest. He looked with disgust at the cocktail Palmer expected him to drink.

Palmer continued, “The smart move would have been to cut a deal.”

Eph said, “I had nothing to offer.”

Palmer considered this. “Is that why you still resist?”

“Partly. Why should people like you have all the fun?”

Palmer’s hands returned to his armrests with the certainty of revelation. “It’s the myths, isn’t it? Movies and books and fables. It has become ingrained. The entertainment we sold, that was meant to placate you. To keep you down but still dreaming. Keep you wanting. Hoping. Coveting. Anything to direct your attention away from your sense of the animal, toward the fiction of a greater existence — a higher purpose.” He smiled again. “Something beyond the cycle of birth, reproduction, death.”

Eph pointed at Palmer with his fork. “But isn’t that what you’re doing now? You think you are about to go beyond death. You believe in the same fictions.”

“Me? A victim of the same great myth?” Palmer considered this angle, then discounted it. “I have made a new fate. I am forsaking death for deliverance. My point is — this humanity your heart bleeds for is already subservient, and fully programmed for subjugation.”

Eph looked up. “Subjugation? What do you mean by that?”

Palmer shook his head. “I am not about to detail everything for you. Not because you might do something heroic with this information — you cannot. It is too late. The die is already cast.”

Eph’s mind reeled. He remembered Palmer’s speech from earlier in the day, his testimony. “Why do you want a quarantine now? Sealing off cities? What is the point? Unless… are you trying to herd us together?”

Palmer did not answer.

Eph went on, “They can’t turn everybody, because then there would be no blood meals. You need a reliable food source.” It hit him then, what Palmer had said. “Food delivery. The meatpacking plants. Are you…? No…”

Palmer folded his old hands in his lap.

Eph pressed him. “And then — what about the nuclear power plants? Why do you need them to come on line?”

Palmer answered by saying again, “The die is already cast.”

Eph set down his fork, swiping the knife blade with his napkin before setting it down as well. These revelations had killed his body’s junkie-like urge for protein.

“You’re not insane,” said Eph, actively trying to read him now. “You’re not even evil. You are desperate, and certainly megalomaniacal. Absolutely perverse. Is all this spun out of a rich man’s fear of death? You trying to buy your way out of it? Actually choosing the alternative? But — for what? What have you not already done that you lust after? What will be left for you to lust for?”

For the briefest moment, Palmer’s eyes showed a hint of fragility, perhaps even fear. In that instant he was revealed to be just what he was: a fragile, sick old man.

“You don’t understand, Dr. Goodweather. I have been sick all my life. All my life. I had no childhood. No adolescence. I have been fighting against my own rot for as long as I can remember. Fear death? I walk with it every day. What I want now is to transcend it. To silence it. For what has being human ever done for me? Every pleasure I have ever experienced has been tainted by the whisper of decay and disease.”

“But — to be a vampire? A… a creature? A bloodsucking thing?”

“Well… arrangements have been made. I will be exalted somewhat. Even at the next stage, there has to be a class system, you know. And I have been promised a seat at the very top.”

“Promised by a vampire. A virus. What about his will? He is going to invade yours as he has all the others — possess it, make yours an extension of his own. What good is that? Merely trading one whisper for another…”

“I have dealt with worse, believe me. But it is kind of you to show such concern for my well-being.” Palmer looked to the great windows, beyond their reflection to the dying city below. “People will prefer any fate to this. They will welcome our alternative. You’ll see. They will accept any system, any order, that promises them the illusion of security.” He looked back. “But you haven’t touched your drink.”

Eph said, “Maybe I’m not so preprogrammed. Maybe people are more unpredictable than you think.”

“I don’t think so. Every model has its individual anomalies. A renowned doctor and scientist becomes an assassin. Amusing. What most people lack is vision — a vision of the truth. The ability to act with deadly certainty. No, as a group — a herd, that is your word — they are easily led, and wonderfully predictable. Capable of selling, turning, killing those that they profess to love in exchange for peace of mind or a scrap of food.” Palmer shrugged, disappointed that Eph was evidently through eating and the meal was over. “You will be going back to the FBI now.”

“Those agents are in on it? How big is this conspiracy?”

“‘Those agents’?” Palmer shook his head. “As with any bureaucratic institution — say, for instance, the CDC — once you seize control of the top, the rest of the organization simply follows orders. The Ancients have operated that way for years. The Master is no exception. Don’t you see that this is why governments were established in the first place? So, no, there is no conspiracy, Dr. Good-weather. This is the very same structure that has existed since the beginning of recorded time.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam unplugged Palmer from his feeding machine. Eph saw that Palmer was already half a vampire;