Guillermo del Toro - The Fall

We do not. But then again, the outcome will follow the design no matter what we do.

“Doing nothing seems to me like a flawed plan.”

And what would you want in return?

“A brief glimpse at its contents. Handcrafted in silver, this book is the one human creation you cannot possess. I have seen the Silver Codex, as you refer to it. It holds many revelations, I can guarantee you that. You would be wise to see what mankind knows of your origin.”

Half-truths and speculation.

“Is it? Can you take that chance? Mal’akh Elohim?”

A pause. Fet felt his head relax a moment. He could have sworn he saw the Ancient purse its lips in disgust.

Unlikely alliances are often the most productive.

“Let me be quite clear here. I offer you no alliance. This is nothing more than a wartime truce. The enemy of my enemy is in this instance neither my friend nor yours. I promise nothing other than a viewing of the book, and through it, a chance to defeat the rogue Master before he destroys you. But once this agreement is consummated, I promise you only that the fight will continue. I will come after you again. And you after me…”

Once you view the book, Setrakian, we cannot allow you to live. You must know that. This holds for any human.

Fet swallowed and said, “I’m not much of a reader anyway…”

Setrakian said, “I accept. And now that we understand each other, there is one other thing I need. Not from you, but from your man here. From Gus.”

Gus stepped in front of the old man and Fet. “Just so long as it involves killing.”

There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony. No giant pair of prop scissors, no dignitaries or politicians. No fanfare at all.

The Locust Valley Nuclear Power Plant went online at 5:23 A.M. Resident Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors oversaw the procedures from the control room of the $17 billion facility.

Locust Valley was a nuclear fission facility, operating twin thermal, light-water-moderated Generation III reactors. All site and safety reviews had been completed before the Uranium-235 bundles and the control rods were introduced into the water inside the pressurized core.

The principle of controlled fission is likened to a nuclear bomb exploding at a slow, steady rate, rather than a millisecond. The heat produced generates electricity, which is then harnessed and delivered in a manner similar to that of conventional coal-burning power plants.

Palmer understood the concept of fission only in the sense that it was similar to cell division in biology. The energy was produced in the splitting: that was the value and the magic of nuclear fuel.

Outside, the twin cooling towers gave off steam like giant beakers of concrete.

Palmer marveled. Here was the final piece of the puzzle. The last tumbler falling into place.

This was the moment of the bolt sliding free, just before the great vault door is opened.

As he watched steam clouds drift off into the ominous sky like ghosts rising from great boiling cauldrons, he remembered Chernobyl. The black village of Pripyat, where he had first encountered the Master. The reactor accident was, like the concentration camps in World War II, a lesson for the Master. The human race had shown the Master the way. They had provided the very tools for their own demise.

All of it underwritten by Eldritch Palmer.

He’s been out there turning folks for free.

Ah, Dr. Goodweather. But the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. That was how it was supposed to work, according to the Bible.

But this wasn’t the Bible. This was America.

The first should be first.

At once, Palmer knew how his business partners felt after dealing with him. Like they’d been punched in the gut with the same hand they just shook.

You think you’re working with somebody, until you realize: you’re working for them.

Why make you wait in line?

Indeed.

Zack pulled away from Nora’s hand when his iPod fell to the tunnel floor. It was stupid, it was a reflex, but his mom had bought it for him, even paying for tunes she didn’t care for very much, and sometimes hated. When he held the magical little device in his hand and lost himself in the music, he was losing himself in her as well.

“Zachary!”

Weird for Nora to use his full name, but it worked, straightening him up fast. She looked frantic, holding on to her mother near the front of the train. Zack felt something extra for Nora now, something they had in common, seeing her mother so sick: both of their mothers were lost to them, and yet still partly there.

Zack grabbed the music player and shoved it into his jeans pocket, leaving his tangled earphones behind. The derailed train rocked faintly with howling violence and Nora tried to block it from his view. But he knew. He had seen the windows running red. He had seen the faces. He was half in shock, moving through a terrible dream.

Nora had stopped, staring in horror at something behind him.

Out of the tunnel darkness came small figures moving at great speed. With inhuman agility, these recent human children, none of them older than their early teens, sprang toward them along the tracks.

They were led by a phalanx of blind vampire children, eyes black and burned out. The blind ones moved more strangely, the sighted children overtaking them once they reached the train, emitting horrible little squeals of inhuman joy.

They immediately set upon the passengers fleeing the carnage on the train. Others raced up the tunnel walls and swarmed over the roof of the train like baby spiders crawling out of an egg sac.

And among them-one adult figure moved with evil purpose. A feminine form, shadowed by the dim tunnel light, seemingly directing the onslaught. A possessed mother leading an army of demon children.

A hand gripped the hood of his jacket-it was Nora-yanking Zack away. He stumbled, turning to run with her, taking Nora’s mother’s arm under his shoulder and half-dragging the old woman from the train wreck flooding over with mad vampire children.

Nora’s indigo light barely illuminated their path along the tracks, brightening the kaleidoscope of colorful and sickly psychedelic vampire excrement. No other passengers followed them.

“Look!” Zack said.

His young eyes spotted a pair of steps leading to a door in the left-hand wall. Nora steered them that way, running up to try the handle. It was stuck, or locked, so she stepped back and kicked at it with the heel of her shoe again and again until the handle came down and the door popped open.

Through the other side was an identical platform and two steps leading down into another tunnel. More train tracks, this the southern tube of the tunnel, heading eastbound from New Jersey to Manhattan.

Nora slammed the door, shutting it as hard as she could, then hustled them down onto the tracks.

“Hurry,” she said. “Keep moving. We can’t fight them all.”

They pushed farther into the dark tunnel. Zack helped Nora, supporting her mother, but it was clear they could not walk like this forever.

They never heard anything behind them-never heard the door bang open-and still they moved as though the vampires were right on their heels. Every second felt like borrowed time.

Nora’s mother had lost both her shoes, her nylons torn, her feet cut and bleeding. She said over and over, her voice rising, “I need to rest. I want to go home.”

Finally, it was too much. Nora slowed, Zack slowing with her. Nora clamped her hand over her mother’s mouth, needing to silence her.

Zack saw Nora’s face by the purple light of her lamp. He read the stricken expression on her face as she struggled to carry and silence her mother at the same time.