Tim Lebbon - 30 Days of Night - Fear of the Dark

He had maybe twenty pounds in his pockets. That was enough. He walked along the street toward the nearest tube station, and just as he caught sight of the familiar Underground sign, he passed a baker’s. The smell was too good to resist. He slipped inside and waited behind a line of people in suits, watching what they bought, deciding what he wanted to eat. Even by the time he reached the counter he hadn’t decided, so he bought a meat pie, an egg and bacon roll, a coffee, and a custard tart for afterward.

“Hungry?” the amused woman behind the counter asked.

“Starving!” As he paid and walked out with the food, he considered the pangs of hunger and the pleasures of eating, and wondered what it would be like to feel a different hunger that it brought no pleasure to satisfy. He bit into the hot pasty and savored the taste; sipped from his hot coffee; smelled the egg and bacon roll.

The street was bustling. The usual London traffic was building already, though it was not even eight o’clock, and the pavements were filled with people filing to and from work and parents taking their children to the upscale school nearby. He thought of his parents, then diverted his attention once more to the Bane. Walking among them, he was still not quite part of the same world as these commuters. Not anymore.

It was when he saw the cover of the early-morning edition of London News that he realized just how far removed he was. There were no photographs, but he just knew who the headline referred to: MAN FOUND MUTILATED IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. He walked quickly toward the tube entrance. A woman did a double-take at him, and Marty felt the tears already coursing down his cheeks. He took another bite from the pasty and chewed, looking at the ground, thinking of the Bane and Ashleigh Richards and 56 Otter Street in Colliers Wood. And slowly he blinked back the tears yet again.

There’ll come a time, he thought, and he knew that was true. Grief couldn’t be fought like this without consequences. But as long as these horrors could hold back the reality of his loss, he was content to let them.

He threw out the rest of his food, bought a Travel card, and carried his coffee with him into the station. It was good to be an anonymous part of the crowd, and he stood on the right of the two long, deep escalators, watching the people pass him by in such a hurry to reach somewhere else. Marty reckoned he had maybe forty minutes on the tube, including one changeover, before he reached Colliers Wood. He should use that time to think about what he’d say to the archaeologist, and what he’d do if she really was as crazy as Lee had suggested.

It was only as he boarded the first train that he realized what a stupid prick he’d been.

There was no sun down in the tube station.

He gasped, winded by his foolishness. What if they were waiting in one of the nearby houses? What if they’d been watching all the time, or they knew where he was? He couldn’t imagine how that could have worked—he’d walked through the daylight, and no vampire could have followed. But the idea was still planted, and he couldn’t now shake it.

The usual tube play began. Everyone stared everywhere but at someone else, but Marty started scanning the people around him as covertly as possible. A big black guy sat next to him, reading Metro and humming along to something on his iPod. Across from him sat two good-looking young women, heads close together and faces serious as they swapped gossip. Marty’s eyes flickered to their long legs and short skirts, and when he looked up again, one of them was looking right at him. He glanced away with a nervous smile. Beside one of the girls sat an old woman, glasses perched on her head as she read a novel by some writer Marty had never heard of. A few people were standing, their suits and office wear making them all but anonymous. No one was looking at him.

He sipped more coffee, looking down at people’s feet and examining their shoes. When he looked up again, one of the girls was looking at him while her friend whispered something in her ear. The girl stared right at him without seeming to see anything at all. Marty smiled, then glanced away when there was no reaction.

Can a girl that pretty really be a vampire? He looked at her again. Her makeup was light and subtle, and she seemed to have good color about her. She was carrying a bottle of water in one hand. Disguise? A cross hung on a silver chain around her neck, dangling into her cleavage.

She saw him looking and turned slightly toward her friend, crossing her arms and legs.

Marty sighed and drank more coffee. Fucking paranoid.

But at the next stop, he alighted and waited on the platform, and five minutes later he boarded the next train. This one was more packed, and he didn’t manage to find a seat. He stood pressed against a door instead, scanning faces, trying not to be seen, and every second of his journey he felt watched.

It was a relief to emerge into the sunlight once more in Colliers Wood.

“Spare some change?” The beggar was sitting close to the tube station exit. It was a guy not much older than Marty, a scruffy dog curled up on a blanket by his side. A couple of cans of cider sat on the pavement beside him. He was looking up at Marty, shielding the sun from his eyes so he could see him clearly.

Marty delved into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. As he was going through it, looking for a pound coin, the beggar chuckled.

“What?” Marty said.

“Eh? Nothin’. Spare some change?”

Marty found a pound coin and dropped it into the man’s outstretched hand. The dog lifted its head lazily and looked at him, then went back to sleep.

The man grinned, and Marty saw his teeth. The two front ones were missing, but those on either side seemed sharper than usual, their points darkened with rot but still capable of inflicting puncture wounds. Longer than usual.

Marty stepped back, heart thudding, and he thought, The sun’s right in his face, he’s no vampire, don’t be such a prick .

“Thanks, mate. Have a good day.” The beggar chuckled again—longer this time, almost like a twitch—and dropped the pound coin into one of the empty cider cans.

Marty had to shake this damn paranoia. He found a newsstand and asked where Otter Street was, and the proprietor jotted the directions down on a scrap of paper. Marty thanked the man and left. He looked behind him as he walked, certain that he was being followed, feeling eyes on him all the time. But it was all in his mind. He slipped into several shops, browsed products he didn’t want to buy, and lingered inside their front windows, watching people walking past. But he never saw the same person twice.

Finally he found the street, and then the house, and walked past three times before summoning up the nerve to ring the bell. He had to press it several times before it was answered, and the woman who opened the door looked as if she had lived a dozen lives. Her hair was graying and falling out, her skin was cratered, her hands were clawed, and her clothes stank of piss. But behind all this, he could see that she was not much past middle age.

“What?” she asked. She held a stained cloth in her right hand and was using it to wipe her left, scrubbing her palm and between her fingers, across the back of her hand and up to her wrist. It looked clean enough to Marty.

“Er…”

“What?” the woman snapped again.

“Ashleigh Richards?”

The woman’s hand froze in its wiping. She stared past Marty, along the street in both directions, behind him, head jerking like a startled bird’s.

“No,” the woman said. “She’s dead. Ashleigh Richards is dead.”

“Oh,” he said, stomach dropping, but he saw the truth straightaway. “Has anyone been?” he asked more gently. He took a step forward, aware that he was invading her personal space but keen to lower his voice, engender a feeling of complicity. If only he could get her trust…