Guillermo del Toro - The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

Setrakian said, “Why you? Why did he keep you?”

The Master learns from humans. That is a key element of his greatness. He watches and he sees. Your kind has shown him the way to your own final solution. I see only packs of animals, but he sees patterns of behavior. He listens to what you are saying when, as I suspect, you have no idea you are saying anything at all.

“You’re saying he learned from you? Learned what?” Setrakian’s grip tightened on the handle of his sword as Eichhorst turned. He looked at the former camp commandant — and suddenly he knew.

It is not easy to establish and operate a well-functioning camp. It took a special kind of human intellect to oversee the systematic destruction of a people at maximum efficiency. He drew upon my singular knowledge.

Setrakian went dry. He felt as though his flesh were crumbling off his bones.

Camps. Human stockyards. Blood farms spread out across the country, the world.

In a sense, Setrakian had always known. Always known but never wanted to believe. He had seen it in the Master’s eyes upon their first meeting in the barracks at Treblinka. Man’s own inhumanity to man had whet the monster’s appetite for havoc. We had, through our atrocities, demonstrated our own doom to the ultimate nemesis, welcoming him as though by prophesy.

The building shuddered as a bank of monitors went dark.

Setrakian cleared his throat to find his voice. “Where is your Master now?”

He is everywhere, don’t you know? Here, now. Watching you. Through me.

Setrakian readied himself, taking a step forward. His course was clear. “He must be pleased with your handiwork. But he has little use for you now. No more than I do.”

You underestimate me, Jew.

Eichhorst vaulted up onto the nearby console with little apparent effort, moving out of Setrakian’s kill range. Setrakian raised his silver blade, its tip pointing at the Nazi’s throat. Eichhorst’s arms were at his sides, elongated fingers rubbing against his palms. It feigned an attack; Setrakian countering but not giving any quarter. The old vampire leaped to another console, shoes trampling on the tender controls of this highly sensitive room. Setrakian swung around, tracking it — until he faltered.

With the hand holding the wooden sheath of his walking stick, Setrakian pressed his crooked knuckles to his chest, over his heart.

Your pulse is most irregular.

Setrakian winced and staggered. He exaggerated his distress, but not for Eichhorst’s sake. His sword arm bent, but he kept the blade high.

Eichhorst hopped down to the floor, watching Setrakian with something like nostalgia.

I no longer know the tether of the heartbeat. The lung breath. The cheap gear-work and slow tick of the human clock.

Setrakian leaned against the console. Waiting for strength to return.

And you would rather perish than continue on in a greater form?

Setrakian said, “Better to die a man than live as a monster.”

Can you fail to see that, to all the lesser beings, you are the monster? It is you who took this planet for your own. And now the worm turns.

Eichhorst’s eyes flickered a moment, their nictitating lids narrowing.

He commands me to turn you. I do not look forward to your blood. Hebraic inbreeding has fortified the bloodline into a vintage as salty and mineral-muddied as the River Jordan.

“You won’t turn me. The Master himself couldn’t turn me.”

Eichhorst moved laterally, not yet attempting to close the distance between them.

Your wife struggled but she never cried out. I thought that strange. Not even a whimper. Only a single word. “Abraham.”

Setrakian allowed himself to be goaded, wanting the vampire closer. “She saw the end. She found solace in the moment, knowing that I would someday avenge her.”

She called your name and you were not there. I wonder if you will sing out at the end.

Setrakian sank almost to one knee before lowering his blade, using the point against the floor as a kind of crutch, to keep himself from falling.

Put aside your weapon, Jew.

Setrakian lifted his sword, switching to an overhand grip of the handle in order to examine the line of the old silver blade. He looked at the wolf’s head pommel, feeling its counterbalancing weight.

Accept your fate.

“Ah,” said Setrakian, looking at Eichhorst standing just a few feet away. “But I already have.”

Setrakian put everything he had into the throw. The sword crossed the space between them and penetrated Eichhorst just below the breastplate, dead-center in his torso, between the buttons of his vest. The vampire fell back against the console with his bent arms back as though in a gesture of balance. The killing silver was in his body and he could not touch it to pull out the blade. He began to twitch as the silver’s toxic virucidal properties spread outward like a burning cancer. White blood appeared around the blade with the first of the escaping worms.

Setrakian pulled himself to his feet and stood, wavering, before Eichhorst. He did so with no sense of triumph, and little satisfaction. He made certain that the vampire’s eyes were focused on him — and, by extension, the Master’s eyes — and said, “Through him you took love away from me. Now you will have to turn me yourself.” Then he grasped the sword handle and slowly pulled it from Eichhorst’s chest.

The vampire settled back against the console, its hands still grasping at nothing. It began to slide to the right, falling stiffly, and Setrakian, in his weakened state, anticipated Eichhorst’s trajectory and set the point of his sword against the floor. The blade rested at about a forty-degree angle, the angle of the guillotine blade.

Eichhorst’s falling body pulled its neck across the edge of the blade, and the Nazi was destroyed.

Setrakian swiped both sides of his silver blade over the vampire’s coat sleeve, cleaning them, then backed away from the blood worms fleeing Eichhorst’s open neck. His chest seized up like a knot. He reached for his pillbox and, in trying to open it with his twisted hands, spilled the contents onto the control-room floor.

Gus emerged from the nuke plant ahead of Angel, into the dim, overcast last day. Between the persistent alarm blasts, he heard a deathly silence, the generators no longer working. He sensed a low-voltage snap in the air, like static electricity, but it might just have been him knowing what was to come.

Then, a familiar noise cutting into the air. A helicopter. Gus found the lights, seeing the chopper circle behind the steaming towers. He knew it wasn’t help on the way. He realized that this had to be the Master’s ride out of here, so it didn’t cook with the rest of Long Island.

Gus went into the back of the National Guard truck. He had seen the Stinger missile the first time, but stuck with the small arms. All he needed was a reason.

He brought it out and double-checked to make sure he had it facing the right way. It balanced nicely on his shoulder and was surprisingly light for an antiaircraft weapon, maybe thirty-five pounds. He ran past the limping Angel to the side of the building. The chopper was coming in lower, making to land in a wide clearing.

The trigger was easy to find, as was the scope. He looked through it, and once the missile detected the heat of the helicopter’s exhaust, it emitted a high, whistle-like tone. Gus squeezed the trigger and the launch rocket shot the missile out of the tube. The launch engine fell away and the main solid rocket engine lit up and the Stinger flew off like a plume of smoke traveling along a string.

The helicopter never saw it coming. The missile struck it a few hundred yards above the ground and the flying machine burst upon impact, the explosion upending it and sending it pinwheeling into nearby trees.