The Strain (The Strain Trilogy 1)

"Doctor," said Setrakian, growing impatient.

"Please-call me Eph," he said, slipping Jim's phone into his pocket on the way out. "I don't feel much like a doctor these days."

West Side Highway, Manhattan

GUS ELIZALDE SAT in the back of the NYPD prisoner transport van, his hands cuffed around a steel bar behind him. Felix sat diagonally across from him, head down, rocking with the motion, growing paler by the minute. They had to be on the West Side Highway to be moving this fast in Manhattan. Two other prisoners sat with them, one across from Gus, one to his left, across from Felix. Both asleep. The stupid can sleep through anything.

Gus smelled cigarette smoke from the cab of the windowless van, through the closed partition. It had been near dusk when they were loaded in. Gus kept his eye on Felix, sagging forward off the handcuff bar. Thinking about what the old pawnbroker had said. And waiting.

He didn't have to wait long. Felix's head started to buck, then turn to the side. At once he sat erect and surveyed his surroundings. Felix looked at Gus, stared at him, but nothing in Felix's eyes showed Gus that his lifelong compadre recognized him.

A darkness in his eyes. A void.

A blaring car horn woke up the dude next to Gus then, startling him awake. "Shit," said the guy, rattling his cuffs behind him. "Fuck we headed?" Gus didn't answer. The dude was looking across at Felix, who was looking at him. He kicked Felix's foot. "I said where the f**k we headed, junior?"

Felix looked at him for an instant with a vacant, almost idiotic stare. His mouth opened as though to answer-and the stinger shot out, piercing the helpless guy's throat. Right across the entire width of the van, and the dude couldn't do anything about it except stomp and kick. Gus started to do the same, trapped as he was in back there with the former Felix, yelling and rattling and waking up the prisoner across from him. They all yelled and screamed and stomped as the dude next to Gus went limp, Felix's stinger flushing from translucent to bloodred.

The partition opened between the prisoner area and the front cab. A head with a cop hat on it twisted around from the passenger's seat. "Shut the f**k up back there or else I will-"

He saw Felix drinking the other prisoner. Saw the engorging appendage reaching across the van, the first messy feeding, Felix disengaging and his stinger coming back into his mouth. Blood spilling out of the dude's neck and dribbling down Felix's front.

The passenger cop yelped and turned away.

"What is it?" yelled the driver, trying to get a look in the back.

Felix's stinger shot out through the partition, latching onto the van driver's throat. Screaming rang from the cab as the van lurched, out of control. Gus grabbed the handcuff rail with his fingers just in time to keep his hands from being broken at the wrists, and the van veered right and then left, hard-before crashing on its side.

The van scraped along until it hit a guardrail, bouncing off, spinning to a stop. Gus was on his side, the prisoner across from him now dangling from broken arms, yelping in pain and fear. Felix's bar latch had broken, his stinger hanging down and twitching like a live electrical cable dripping human blood.

His dead eyes came up and looked at Gus.

Gus found his pole broken and slid his manacles fast along its length, kicking at the crumpled door until it opened. He tumbled out fast, onto the side of the road, ears roaring as though a bomb had exploded.

His hands were still cuffed behind him. Headlights went past, cars slowing to inspect the wreckage. Gus rolled away fast, quickly bringing his wrists underneath his feet, getting his hands in front of him. He eyed the busted-open cargo door of the van, waiting for Felix to climb out after him.

Then Gus heard a scream. He looked around for some kind of weapon, and had to settle for a dented hubcap. He went up with it, edging to the open door of the tipped-over van.

There was Felix, drinking the wide-eyed prisoner still strung up on the handcuff bar.

Gus swore, sickened by the sight. Felix disengaged and without any hesitation, shot his stinger at Gus's neck. Gus just got the hubcap up in time, deflecting the blow before spinning away, out of sight of the rear of the van.

Again, Felix did not follow him. Gus stood there a moment, regaining his senses-wondering why-and then noticed the sun. It was floating between two buildings across the Hudson, bloodred and almost gone, sinking fast.

Felix was hiding in the van, waiting for sundown. In three minutes he was going to be free.

Gus looked around wildly. He saw broken windshield glass on the road, but that wouldn't do it. He climbed up the chassis of the van, onto the side that was the top now. He scooted over to the driver's-side door and kicked at the hinge of the side mirror. It cracked off, and he was pulling at the wires to get it free when the cop inside yelled at him.

"Hold it!"

Gus looked at him, the driver cop, bleeding from the neck, holding on to the top handle of the roof, his gun out. Then Gus pulled the mirror free with one hard yank and jumped back down onto the road.

The sun was melting away like a punctured egg yolk. Gus went to figure out the angle, holding the mirror over his head to catch its last rays. He saw the reflection shimmer on the ground. It looked vague, too dim to do anything. So he cracked the planar glass with his knuckles, breaking it up but keeping the pieces adhered to the mirror backing. He tried it again and the reflected rays now had some distinction.

"I said hold it!"

The cop came down from the van with his gun still out. His free hand was holding his neck where Felix had gotten him, his ears bleeding from the impact. He came around and looked in the van.

Felix was crouched inside, handcuffs dangling from one hand. The other hand was gone, severed at the wrist by the cuffs at the force of impact. Its absence didn't seem to bother him. Nor did the white blood spilling from the open stump.

Felix smiled and the cop opened up on him. Rounds pierced Felix's chest and legs, ripping away flesh and chips of bone. Seven, eight shots, and Felix fell backward. Two more shots into his body. The cop lowered the gun and then Felix sat upright, still smiling.

Still thirsty. Forever thirsty.

Gus shoved the cop aside then, and held up his mirror. The last vestiges of the dying orange sun were just poking over the building across the river. Gus called Felix's name one last time, as though saying his name would snap him out of it, would miraculously bring Felix back...

But Felix was no longer Felix. He was a vampire motherfucker. Gus reminded himself of this as he angled the mirror so that the blazing orange shafts of reflected sunlight shot into the overturned van.

Felix's dead eyes went to horror as the beams of sun shot through him. They impaled him with the force of lasers, burning holes and igniting his flesh. An animal howl arose from deep inside him, like the cry of a man shattered at the atomic level, as the rays ravaged his body.