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

The groundwater deepened farther into the catacombs, with strange, sun-starved roots and vines and albino growths crawling down from the unfinished ceiling to feed off the water. The occasional yellow tunnel light showed a total lack of graffiti. White dust lay across the untouched sides of the floor, some of it very fine, coating the surface of pockets of stagnant water. It was residue from the World Trade Center. The three of them avoided stepping in it where they could, with the respect afforded a graveyard.

The ceiling got lower, gradually dipping below head level, approaching a dead end. Setrakian’s search beam found an opening in the upper part of the shrinking wall, wide enough to admit them. A rumbling that had been vague and distant began to gather in force. Their flashlight beams showed the water at their boots beginning to tremble. It was the unmistakable roar of a subway train, and each of them actually turned around to look, though the tunnel they were standing in contained no rail beds.

It was in front of them, coming right at them — but on live tracks lifting over their heads, entering the active City Hall BMT platform above. The squealing, roaring, and shuddering became unbearable — reaching earthquakelike force and decibels — and at once they realized that this powerful disruption was their best opportunity.

They pressed through the crack, hurrying into another man-made, trackless passage, this one strung with unlit bulbs, construction lights dancing under the force of the passing subway train. Piles of dirt and debris had long ago been pushed back beyond steel beams rising some thirty feet to the ceiling. Around a long corner up ahead, jaundiced light shone faintly. They switched off their Luma lights and rushed along the dark tunnel, feeling it widen as they rounded the corner into a long, open chamber.

As the floor stopped trembling and the train noise faded like a passing storm, they slowed to keep their boot steps quiet. Eph sensed the others before he saw them, their outlines, sitting on or lying about the floor. The creatures were roused by their presence, sitting up, but not attacking. So he and Setrakian and Fet kept moving, wading forward into the Master’s lair.

The demons had fed that night, and were bloated with blood, like ticks, lying about and digesting. Their languor was deathlike, they were creatures resigned to waiting for sundown and the opportunity to feed again.

They started to rise. They wore construction clothes and business suits and workout clothes and pajamas and evening wear and dirty aprons and nothing at all.

Eph gripped his sword, searching faces as he passed them. Dead faces with bloodred eyes.

“Stay together,” whispered Setrakian, lifting the UVC mine thing carefully out of the mesh bag on Fet’s back as they walked. With crooked fingers, he peeled back a strip of safety tape, then rotated the top of the globe to ready the battery. “I do hope this works.”

“Hope?” said Fet.

One came at him then — an old man, maybe not as sated as the others — and Fet showed him his silver dagger and the vampire hissed. Fet put a boot on the man’s thigh and kicked him back, showing the others his silver.

“We’re digging ourselves into a deep hole here.”

Faces came out of the walls, flushed and leering. Older vampires, first or second generation, marked by their whitening hair. There were animal-like groans and glottal clicks from some, like attempts at speech blocked by the vile appendages grown beneath their tongues. Their swollen throats twitched perversely.

Setrakian said, walking between Fet and Eph, “When this spike makes contact with the ground, the battery should connect.”

“Should! ” said Fet.

“You must take cover before it ignites. Behind these supports.” Rusted, rivet-studded beams stood at regular intervals. “You won’t have more than a few seconds. When you do, shut your eyes. Do not look. The burst will blind you.”

“Just do it!” said Fet, crowded by the vampires.

“Not yet…” The old man opened his walking stick just enough to bare the silver blade, and with the quick motion of flint striking stone he ran the tips of two crooked fingers against the sharp edge. Blood dripped to the stone floor. The scent went through the vampires with a visible ripple. They were coming from all over, crowding in from unseen corners, ever curious and ever hungry.

Fet swiped the dusty air with his dagger in order to maintain the few meters of open space around them as they moved. “What are you waiting for?” he said.

Eph searched faces, scanning the dead-eyed women for Kelly. One made a move toward him and he laid the tip of his sword against her breastbone and she shrank back as though burned.

More noise now, the front crowd being pressed closer from behind, hunger overriding hesitance, want trumping wait. Setrakian’s blood dribbled to the floor, its scent — and the casual waste — driving them into a frenzy.

“Do it!” said Fet.

Setrakian said, “A few more seconds…”

The vampires pushed in, Eph prodding them back with the tip of his sword. He only then thought to turn his Luma light back on, but they leaned into its repulsing rays like zombies staring at the sun. The ones in front were at the mercy of those in the rear. The bubble was collapsing…Eph felt one hand grab at his sleeve…

“Now!” said Setrakian.

He tossed the spiked globe into the air, like a referee serving up a jump ball. The heavy thing righted itself at its apex, weighted spikes pointing straight down as it drove toward the floor.

The four-edged steel spike sank into the stone, and a whir started, like that of an old flashbulb rack recharging.

“Go, go!” said Setrakian.

Eph waved his light and swung his sword like a machete, making for one of the stanchions. He felt them grabbing at him, pulling, and felt the squishy thump of his sword cutting, and heard their groans and garbled howls. And still — he checked faces, looking for Kelly, and striking down all those who were not her.

The mine’s whir became a growing whine, and Eph stabbed and kicked and swiped his way to the steel support beam, stepping into its shadow just as the underground chamber began to fill with a blazing blue light. He clamped his eyes shut and buried them in the crook of his elbow.

He heard the bestial agony of the shattered vampires. The melting, blistering, peeling sound of their bodies being desiccated at the chemical level, the collapsing of their innards like the charcoaling of their very souls. Their dumb cries strangled in scalded throats.

Mass immolation.

The high-pitched whine lasted no longer than ten seconds, the brilliant plane of cleansing blue light riding from floor to ceiling before the battery burned out. The chamber went mostly dark again — and when the only sound left was a residual sizzling, Eph lowered his arm, opening his eyes.

The nauseating stench of roasted disease rose in smoky steam from the charred creatures laid out over the floor. It was impossible to move without disturbing these rotted demons, their bodies crumbling like artificial logs hollowed out by fire. Only those vampires lucky enough to have been partially behind a beam remained animate, Eph and Fet moving quickly to release these crippled, half-destroyed creatures.

Fet then walked over to the mine, which had caught fire. He surveyed the damage.

“Well,” he said, “that fucking worked.”

“Look,” said Setrakian.

At the far end of the steaming chamber, set on top of a yard-high mound of dirt and refuse, was a long, black box.

As Eph and the others approached it — with the dread of bomb-squad agents approaching a suspicious device without wearing blast suits — the situation felt terribly familiar, and it was only a moment before he placed it: he had felt exactly the same walking toward the darkened airplane on the taxiway, at the start of this whole thing.