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

Eph nodded, interested but also distracted. Fet could stand back and consider the big picture, while Eph’s situation was the opposite of Fet’s. His wife — his ex-wife — had been taken, turned. And now she was hell-bent on turning her blood, her Dear One, their son. This plague of demons had affected him on a personal level, and he was finding it difficult to focus on anything else, never mind theorizing on the grand scale of things — though that was, in fact, his training as an epidemiologist. But when something this insidious enters your personal life, all superior thinking goes out the window.

Eph found himself increasingly obsessed with Eldritch Palmer, the head of the Stoneheart Group and one of the three richest men in the world — and the man they had identified as the Master’s co-conspirator. As the domestic attacks had scaled up, doubling each passing night, the strain spreading exponentially, the news insisted on reducing them to mere “riots.” This was akin to calling a revolution an isolated protest. They had to know better, and yet someone — it had to be Palmer, a man with a vested interest in misleading the American public and the world at large — was influencing the media and controlling the CDC. Only his Stoneheart Group could finance and enforce such a massive campaign of public misinformation about the occultation. Eph had determined, privately, that if they could not readily destroy the Master, well, they could certainly destroy Palmer, who was not only elderly but notoriously infirm. Any other man would have passed on ten years ago, but Palmer’s vast fortune and unlimited resources kept him alive, like an antique vehicle requiring round-the-clock maintenance just to keep it running. Life, the doctor in Eph imagined, had become for Palmer something akin to a fetish: How long could he keep going?

Eph’s fury at the Master — for turning Kelly, for upending everything Eph believed about science and medicine — was justified but impotent, like shaking his fists at death itself. But condemning Palmer, the Master’s human collaborator and enabler, gave Eph’s torment a direction and a purpose. Even better, it legitimized a desire for personal revenge.

This old man had shattered Eph’s son’s life and broken the boy’s heart.

They reached the long chamber that was their destination. Fet readied his nail gun and Eph brandished his sword before turning the corner.

At the far end of the low chamber stood the mound of dirt and refuse. The filthy altar upon which the coffin — the intricately carved cabinet had traversed the Atlantic inside the cold underbelly of Regis Air Flight 753, inside which the Master lay buried in cold, soft loam — had lain.

The coffin was gone. Disappeared again, as it had from the secure hangar at LaGuardia Airport. The flattened top of the dirt altar still bore its impression.

Someone — or, more likely, some thing — had returned to claim it before Eph and Fet could destroy the Master’s resting place.

“He’s been back here,” said Fet, looking all around.

Eph was bitterly disappointed. He had longed to demolish the heavy cabinet — to turn his wrath on some physical form of destruction, and to disrupt the monster’s habitat in some certain way. To let it know that they had not given up, and would never back down.

“Over here,” said Fet. “Look at this.”

A splashed-out swirl of colors at the base of the side wall, given life by the rays of Fet’s lamp wand, indicated a fresh spray of vampire urine. Then Fet illuminated the entire wall with a normal flashlight.

A graffiti mural of wild designs, random in arrangement, covered the stone expanse. Closer, Eph discerned that the vast majority of the figures were variations on a six-pointed motif, ranging from rudimentary to abstract to simply bewildering. Here was something starlike in appearance; there a more amoeba-like pattern. The graffiti spread out across the wide wall in the manner of a thing replicating itself, filling the stone face from bottom to top. Up close, the paint smelled fresh.

“This,” said Fet, stepping back to take it all in, “is new.”

Eph moved in to examine a glyph at the center of one of the more elaborate stars. It appeared to be a hook, or a claw, or…

“A crescent moon.” Eph moved his black-light lamp across the complex motif. Invisible to the naked eye, two identical shapes were hidden in the vectors of the tracery. And an arrow, pointing to the tunnels beyond.

“They may be migrating,” said Fet. “Pointing the way…”

Eph nodded, and followed Fet’s gaze. The direction it indicated was southeast.

“My father used to tell me about these markings,” said Fet. “Hobo speak — from when he first came to this country after the war. Chalk drawings indicating friendly and unfriendly houses — where you might get fed, find a bed, or even to warn others about a hostile homeowner. Throughout the years, I’ve seen similar signs in warehouses, in tunnels, cellars…”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know the language.” He looked around. “But it seems to be pointing that way. See if one of those phones has any battery left. One with a camera.”

Eph rooted through the top of the pile, trying phones and discarding the dark ones. A pink Nokia with a glow-in-the-dark Hello Kitty charm winked to life in his hand. He tossed it to Fet.

Fet looked it over. “I never understood this fucking cat. The head is too big. How is it even a cat? Look at it. Is it sick with… with water inside it?”

“Hydrocephalic, you mean?” said Eph, wondering where this was coming from.

Fet ripped off the charm and tossed it away. “It’s a jinx. Fucking cat. I hate that fucking cat.”

He snapped a picture of the crescent glyph illuminated by indigo light, then videoed the entirety of the manic fresco, overwhelmed by the sight of it inside this gloomy chamber, haunted by the nature of its trespass — and mystified as to its meaning.

It was daylight when they emerged. Eph carried his sword and other equipment inside a baseball bag over his shoulder; Fet ported his weapons in a small rolling case that used to contain his exterminating tools and poisons. They were dressed for labor, and dirty from the tunnels beneath Ground Zero.

Wall Street was eerily quiet, the sidewalks nearly empty. Distant sirens wailed, begging a response that would not come. Black smoke was becoming a permanent fixture in the city sky.

The few pedestrians who did pass scurried by them quickly, with barely a nod. Some wore face masks, others shielded their noses and mouths with scarves — operating on misinformation about this mysterious “virus.” Most shops and stores were closed — looted and empty or without power. They passed a market that was lit but un-staffed. People inside were taking what was left of the spoiled fruit in the stalls in front, or canned goods from the emptying shelves in back. Anything consumable. The drink cooler had already been raided, as had the refrigerated foods section. The cash register was cleaned out as well, because old habits die hard. But currency was hardly as valuable as water and food would be soon.

“Crazy,” muttered Eph.

“At least some people still have power,” said Fet. “Wait until their phones and laptops run dry, and they find they can’t recharge. That’s when the screaming starts.”

Crosswalk signs changed symbols, going from the red hand to the white figure walking, but without crowds to cross. Manhattan without pedestrians was not Manhattan. Eph heard automobile horns out on the main avenues, but only an occasional taxi traversed the side streets — drivers hunched over steering wheels, fares sitting anxiously in the back.

They both paused at the next curb, out of habit, the crossing sign turning red. “Why now, do you think?” said Eph. “If they have been here so long, for centuries — what provoked this?”