The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

Cities degenerated into toxic prisons, highways became gridlocked junkyards. The Canadian and Mexican borders were closed and illegal U.S. citizens crossing the Rio Grande were met with decisive firepower. Though even these boundaries were not to last.

Above Manhattan, the massive radioactive cloud lingered, the sky turning crimson until the atmospheric soot blotted out the sun. The dusk was artificial, in that clocks said it was still daytime — and yet it was all too real.

At the shore, the ocean turned silvery-black, reflecting the sky above.

Later came a rain of ashes. The fallout wiped away nothing, only making things blacker.

Soon the alarms faded and hordes of vampires emerged from their cellars… to claim their new world.

North River Tunnel

Fet found Nora sitting on the tracks in the bowels of the tunnel beneath the Hudson River. Nora’s mother’s head was in her lap, Nora stroking her gray hair while the sick woman slept.

“Nora,” said Fet, sitting next to her, “come — let me help you, and your mother…”

“Mariela,” said Nora. “Her name is Mariela.” And then she broke down finally, crying, her body shuddering with deep, primal sobs as she buried her face in Fet’s shoulder.

Eph soon returned from the eastbound tube, where he had been looking for Zack. Nora turned to him, spent, empty, almost rising but for her sleeping mother, hope and pain expressed on her face.

Eph pulled off the night-vision monocular and shook his head. Nothing.

Fet felt the tension between Eph and Nora. Each of them emotionally ravaged, and beyond words. Fet knew that Eph did not blame Nora, that there was no doubt Nora had done everything she could for Zack under the circumstances. But he also sensed that, in losing Zack, Nora had lost Eph too.

Fet retold the events leading up to Setrakian leaving with Gus for Locust Valley. “He told me to stay behind — to come here.” Fet looked at Eph. “To find you.”

Eph pulled a glass flask from his pocket, one he had found in the wheelhouse aboard the tugboat. He took a hard hit from it, then looked around the tunnel with an expression of angry disgust. “So here we are,” he said.

Fet felt Nora bristle next to him. Then a distant roar began filling the tunnel. Fet couldn’t track it at first, the sound distorted by the unceasing tone in his bad ear.

An engine, a motor, coming toward them — the noise a rumble of terror inside the long, stone tube.

Light approached. A train was impossible — wasn’t it?

Two lights. Headlights. An automobile.

Fet pulled his sword, ready for anything. The big vehicle came to a stop, its thick tires shredded from the tracks, the black Hummer rattling along on its rims.

The front grill was white with vamp blood.

Gus climbed out. A blue bandanna was tied around his head. Fet hurried to the opposite door, looking for a passenger.

The Hummer was otherwise empty.

Gus saw whom Fet was looking for and shook his head.

“Tell me,” said Fet.

Gus did. He told about leaving Setrakian at the nuclear power plant.

“You left him?” said Fet.

Gus’s smile showed a flash of anger. “He demanded it. Same as he did of you.”

Fet caught himself. He saw that the kid was right.

“He’s gone?” said Nora.

“I don’t see any other way,” said Gus. “He was prepared to fight to the end. Angel stayed, that crazy fucker. No way the Master got away from those two without feeling some pain. If only radiation.”

“Meltdown,” said Nora.

Gus nodded. “I heard the blast and the sirens. Bad cloud headed this way. The old man said to get down here to you.”

Fet said, “He sent us all here. To protect us from the fallout.”

Fet looked around. Burrowed underground. He was used to having the upper hand in this scenario: the exterminator, gassing vermin in their holes. He looked around, thinking about what rats, the ultimate survivors, would do when faced with this situation — and he saw the derailed train in the distance, its bloodstained windows reflecting Gus’s headlights.

“We’ll clear out the train cars,” he said. “We can sleep in there, in shifts, lock the doors. There’s a cafe car we can raid for now. Water. Toilets.”

“For a few days, maybe,” said Nora.

“For as long as we can make it last,” said Fet. He felt a surge of emotion — pride, resolve, gratitude, grief — striking him like a fist. The old man was gone; the old man lived on. “Long enough to let the worst of the radioactivity disperse up top.”

“And then what?” Nora was beyond burned-out. She was done with this. With all of this. And yet there was no ending. Nowhere else to go, but on, and on, into this new hell on earth. “Setrakian is gone — dead, or possibly worse. There’s a holocaust above us. They’ve won. The strigoi have prevailed. It’s over. All over.”

No one said anything. The air in the long tunnel hung still and silent.

Fet pulled his bag down off his shoulder. He opened it and rummaged through with dirty hands, then pulled out the silver-bound book.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or — maybe not.”

Eph grabbed one of Gus’s strong flashlights and went off on his own again, following every trail of vampire waste to its end.

None of them brought him to Zack. Still, he went on, calling out his son’s name, his voice echoing emptily through the tunnel, returning back to him like a taunt. He emptied the flask, and then hurled the thick glass at the tunnel wall, where the sound of its shattering was like a profanity.

Then he found Zack’s inhaler.

Lying beside the track in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of tunnel. The prescription sticker was still affixed: Zachary Good-weather, Kelton Street, Woodside, New York. Suddenly, every one of those words spoke to him of things lost: name, street, neighborhood.

They had lost it all. These things meant nothing anymore.

Eph gripped the inhaler as he stood in the dark burrow beneath the earth. Gripped it so hard that the plastic casing started to crack.

He stopped then. Preserve this, he thought. He held it to his heart and switched off his flashlight. He stood still, vibrating with rage in the pure dark.

The world had lost the sun. Eph had lost his son.

Eph began to prepare himself for the worst.

He would return to the others. He would clear out the derailed train, and watch with them, and wait.

But while the others waited for the air to clear above, Eph would be waiting for something else.

He would be waiting for his Zack to return to him as a vampire.

He had learned from his mistake. He could not show any forbearance, as he had with Kelly.

It would be a privilege and a gift to release his only son.

But the worst thing that Eph had imagined — Zack’s return as a vampire seeking his father’s soul — turned out not to be the worst thing at all.

No.

The worst thing was — Zack never came.

The worst thing was the gradual realization that Eph’s vigilance would have no end. That his pain would find no release.