Guillermo del Toro - The Strain. Book I of The Strain Trilogy

“I thought I was,” mumbled Eph. “Until now.”

Nora said, “I thought vampires drank virgin blood. They hypnotize…they turn into bats…”

Setrakian said, “They are much romanticized. But the truth is more…how should I say?”

“Perverse,” said Eph.

“Disgusting,” said Nora.

“No,” said Setrakian. “Banal. Did you find the ammonia?”

Eph nodded.

“They have a very compact digestive system,” Setrakian continued. “No room for storing the food. Any undigested plasma and any other residues have to be expelled to make room for incoming nourishment. Much like a tick — excreting as it feeds.”

Suddenly the temperature inside the bay changed. Setrakian’s voice dropped to an icy whisper.

“ Strigoi ,” he hissed. “Here.”

Eph looked at Jim. Jim’s eyes were open, his pupils dark, the sclera around them turning grayish orange, almost like an uncertain sky at dusk. He was staring at the ceiling.

Eph felt a spike of fear. Setrakian stiffened, his gnarled hand poised near the wolf’s-head handle of his walking stick — ready to strike. Eph felt the electricity of his intent, and was shocked by the deep, ancient hatred he saw in the old man’s eyes.

“Professor…” said Jim, on a slight groan escaping from his lips.

Then his eyelids fell closed again, Jim lapsing back into a REM-like trance.

Eph turned to the old man. “How did he…know you?”

“He doesn’t,” said Setrakian, still on alert, poised to strike. “He is like a drone now, becoming part of a hive. A body of many parts but one single will.” He looked at Eph. “This thing must be destroyed.”

“What?” said Eph. “No.”

“He is no longer your friend,” said Setrakian. “He is your enemy.”

“Even if that is true — he is still my patient.”

“This man is not ill. He has moved into a realm beyond illness. In a matter of hours, no part of him will remain. Apart from all that — it is supremely dangerous, keeping him here. As with the pilot, you will be placing the people in this building at great risk.”

“What if…what if he doesn’t get blood?”

“Without nourishment, he will begin caving. After forty-eight hours without feeding, his body will begin to fail, his system cannibalizing his body’s human muscle and fat cells, slowly and painfully consuming itself. Until only the vampiric systems prevail.”

Eph was shaking his head, hard. “What I need to do is formulate some protocol for treatment. If this disease is caused by a virus, I need to work toward finding a cure.”

Setrakian said, “There is only one cure. Death. Destruction of the body. A merciful death.”

Eph said, “We’re not veterinarians here. We can’t just put down people who are too ill to survive.”

“You did so with the pilot.”

Eph stuttered, “That was different. He attacked Nora and Jim — he attacked me.”

“Your philosophy of self-defense, if truly applied, absolutely holds in this situation.”

“So would a philosophy of genocide.”

“And if that is their goal — total subjugation of the human race — what is your answer?”

Eph didn’t want to get tangled up in abstractions here. He was looking at a colleague. A friend.

Setrakian saw that he was not going to change their minds here, not just yet. “Take me to the pilot’s remains, then. Perhaps I can convince you.”

No one spoke on the elevator ride down to the basement. There, instead of finding the locked morgue room, they found the door open and the police and the hospital administrator huddling around it.

Eph went up to them. “What do you think you’re doing…?”

He saw that the doorjamb was scratched, the metal door frame dented and jimmied, the lock broken from the outside.

The administrator hadn’t opened the door. Someone else had broken in.

Eph quickly looked inside.

The table was bare. Redfern’s body was gone.

Eph turned to the administrator, wanting more information, but to his surprise found her retreating a few steps down the hall, glancing back at him as she spoke with the cops.

Setrakian said, “We should go now.”

Eph said, “But I have to find out where his remains are.”

“They are gone,” said Setrakian. “They will never be recovered.” The old man gripped Eph’s arm with surprising strength. “I believe they have served their purpose.”

“Their purpose? What is that?”

“Distraction, ultimately. For they are no more dead than their fellow passengers who once lay in the morgues.”

Newly widowed Glory Mueller, while searching online about what to do when a spouse dies without leaving a will, noticed a news report about the missing corpses from Flight 753. She followed the link, reading a dispatch labeled DEVELOPING. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was due to hold a press conference within the hour, it said, to announce a new and larger reward for any information about the disappearance from the morgue of the bodies of the victims of the Regis Air tragedy.

This story struck a deep note of fear. For some reason she now remembered, that previous night, awaking from a dream and hearing sounds in her attic.

Of the dream that had awakened her, she remembered only that Hermann, her newly deceased husband, had come back to her from the dead. There had been a mistake, and the strange tragedy that was Flight 753 had never actually occurred, and Hermann had arrived at the back door of their home in Sheepshead Bay with a you-thought-you-were-rid-of-me smile, wanting his supper.

In public, Glory had played the part of the quietly grieving widow, as she would continue to do so throughout whatever inquest and court cases might come her way. But she was perhaps alone in considering the tragic circumstances that claimed the life of her husband of thirteen years a great gift.

Thirteen years of marriage. Thirteen years of unrelenting abuse. Escalating throughout their years together, occurring more and more in front of their boys, ages nine and eleven. Glory lived in constant fear of his mood swings, and had even allowed herself — a daydream only, too risky to attempt in reality — to consider what it would be like to pack up the boys and leave while he was away this past week, visiting his dying mother in Heidelberg. But where could she go? And, more important — what would he do to her and the boys if he caught up with them, as she knew he would?

But God was good. He had finally answered her prayers. She — and her boys — had been delivered. This dark pall of violence had been lifted from their home.

She went to the bottom of the stairs, looking up to the second floor and the trapdoor in the ceiling there, its rope pull hanging down.

The raccoons. They were back. Hermann, he’d first trapped one in the attic. He’d taken the fear-crazed intruder out into the backyard and made an example of it in front of her boys…

No more. She had nothing to be afraid of now. The boys wouldn’t be home for at least another hour, and she decided to go up there now. She had planned to start going through Hermann’s things anyway. Trash day was Tuesday, and she wanted to have it all gone by then.

She needed a weapon, and the first one that came to mind was Hermann’s own machete. He had brought it home some years ago, and kept it wrapped in oilcloth in the locked plastic toolshed against the side of the house. When she asked him why he would ever want such a thing — a jungle tool here in Sheepshead Bay, of all places — he’d just sneered at her, “You never know.”

These constant little insinuated threats were part of his daily menacing. She pulled the key from the hook behind the pantry door, and went outside and sprang the lock. She found the oilcloth buried under yard tools and an old, splintered croquet set they had received as a wedding gift (which she would use for kindling now). She took the package into the kitchen and set it on the table, pausing before she unwrapped it.