Will Hill - Darkest Night

The previous day, they had taken nine hundred and twelve.

The phone operators were working incessantly, starting early and staying late for no reason other than faith in what they were doing. The blood drives, where SSL volunteers took fresh, clean blood from slaughterhouses into communities and made it available to any vampire that wanted it, were also proving massively popular; in Birmingham two nights earlier, they had run out of blood in less than two hours. Pete was in the process of trying to secure more stocks as Greg worked to bring in new volunteers, both for the main Lincoln office and to run the regional projects; after barely three months, SSL already needed every pair of hands it could find.

What struck Pete most as he scanned through the call logs was how often the same names appeared, time and time again. SSL did not record transcripts of the calls it received – they had promised their callers anonymity, and Pete was adamant that they adhere to it – but each call did have a number of acronyms marked against it. Some were obvious – a capital V for vampire, a capital H for human – whereas others were harder to decipher: SI for suicidal ideation , TTCH for threatening to cause harm , ATHK for admits to having killed , and many, many others. Most callers did not identify themselves in any way, but perhaps as many as fifteen per cent gave their names; it seemed to Pete, from the acronyms beside those particular calls, that they were largely men and women who were dealing with crushing guilt, who were searching for absolution. The phone calls he was looking at represented probably the only chance vampires had to speak openly about the things they had done, about the life that had been thrust upon them.

Pete scrolled through the log list, and paused. A name halfway down the fifth page had caught his eye, a name that seemed familiar. He realised why at the same moment Greg Browning knocked on his office door and stepped through it.

“Morning, mate,” he said. “Ready?”

“Morning,” said Pete. “Come in for a second.”

Greg frowned, but closed the door and walked across the office. “What’s up?” he asked.

Pete pointed at the name on the screen. “Recognise him?”

“Albert Matheson,” read Greg out loud. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?”

“Not really,” said Pete. “He was the vamp the Night Stalker killed a couple of months ago. I read about him at the time.”

“No shit?” said Greg. “ATHK too. I guess he was confessing.”

“He was a convicted child molester,” said Pete. “He probably had a lot to confess.”

Greg shrugged. “Poor bastard,” he said. “Does it bother you, mate? That he’s dead, I mean? Because given what’s going on out there, he probably won’t be the last vamp who calls us and ends up getting killed.”

“I know that,” said Pete. “And no, it doesn’t bother me. It was just weird to see his name on the call log.”

“Weird,” said Greg, and nodded. “Close that down, mate. It’s time to meet the new recruits.”

Pete rolled his eyes and got up from his desk. He followed Greg out into the open-plan centre of SSL, full of people talking into phones and concentrating intently on computer screens. As they made their way across the space, several of the volunteers looked up and nodded; Pete nodded back, smiled, and stepped through the door in the corner of the office that his friend was holding open for him.

Standing at one end of the small boardroom was the latest group of men and women who had volunteered to be a part of SSL. There were eleven of them; they were mostly young, apart from a couple of middle-aged women and one man who looked to be in his sixties, at least. They all appeared nervous, and Pete moved quickly to calm them down.

“Morning, everyone,” he said. “I’m Pete Randall, and you’ve already met Greg Browning. Thank you all for volunteering to help us out here at SSL. We appreciate it more than you can imagine.” He watched smiles rise on to several of the new volunteers’ faces and continued. “I’m not going to go over why Greg and I founded SSL, or what we’re trying to do here, because I’m going to assume you wouldn’t be here unless you already knew what we’re about. What I am going to tell you is that what we do here is really, really important. The existence of the supernatural is the biggest social issue to hit this country in many decades, quite possibly the biggest there has ever been, and everybody’s struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Including us.

“As you know, the second S in our name stands for Survivors. It’s a big word, and to us it means anyone who has been adversely affected by an experience with the supernatural. We’re not just talking about people who have been attacked, or whose family or friends have been killed. We’re also talking about vampires themselves, the majority of whom never wanted to be turned and are simply trying to get through each day without doing any harm. They are survivors too, of a monstrous violation. At SSL, we view everyone equally, we don’t prioritise humans over vampires, and we don’t judge anyone for the things they might have done. Ever. Is that clear?”

The volunteers nodded as one.

“Good,” he said. “Those of you who work the phones are going to hear things that will upset you, that will probably make you angry. You need to be prepared for that. And those of you who work in our outreach teams are going to come face to face with things that are frightening, possibly even terrifying. It’s hard work, and it’s not always popular, I warn you now. There are plenty of people out there who think that there should be no help or sympathy for any vampire, so be careful who you tell that you work here. ‘Vamp sympathiser’ can be a dangerous label to be stuck with. So if you decide that SSL isn’t for you, we won’t think any less of you, I promise. But if you stay, you’ll have not only our gratitude, but the gratitude of everyone who wants the world to be a better place than it is.”

Pete stopped, and surveyed the group. He had given the same speech at least a dozen times in the last fortnight, and was pleased to see it have the same effect it always did; the nervousness on the faces of the volunteers was gone, replaced by clear-eyed determination.

“Any questions?” he asked.

Silence.

“All right then,” said Greg, casting a smile in Pete’s direction. “There’s a six-week probationary period, but I’ve got a good feeling about you all. You’re on the side of the future.”

Matt Browning looked up from his screen and squeezed his eyes shut. Dots of light whirled and spun across his field of vision as a dull ache pulsed down the back of his head and across his shoulders; he had been in the Lazarus Project labs for almost seventeen hours and he was absolutely spent.

He sat back in his chair, stretched his arms above his head in an attempt to lessen the knots in his neck and upper arms, and checked the time. It was just after 10pm, but the lab was almost full; the Lazarus staff were prone to working until they could no longer keep their eyes open. There were perhaps half a dozen desks unoccupied, but Matt knew they would not remain so for long; they belonged to those men and women who had drifted into nocturnal cycles of working and sleeping, and who would likely arrive any minute to start shifts that would go through the night.

Matt glanced to his right and saw Natalia looking at him; she grinned, before turning her attention back to her screen. He stared at her, marvelling, as he always did, at both her very existence and the impact she had had on his life. The talk had happened almost five months ago now, and there was no longer any doubt: she was his girlfriend.