The Strain (The Strain Trilogy 1)

"What are you doing-?"

Eph moved inside. "Sylvia, we have some very important questions, and we only have a little time. What do you know about Jim and the Stoneheart Group?"

Sylvia held her hand to her chest as if she didn't understand. "The who?"

Eph saw a desk in the corner, a tabby cat snoozing on top of a closed laptop. He crossed to it and started opening drawers. "Do you mind if we take a quick look through his things?"

"No," she said, "if you think it will help. Go ahead."

Setrakian remained near the door while Eph and Nora searched the contents of the desk. Sylvia apparently received a strong vibration from the old man's presence. "Would anyone like anything, a drink?"

"No," said Nora, smiling briefly, then getting back to the search.

"I'll be right back." Sylvia went to the kitchen.

Eph stood back from the cluttered desk, mystified. He didn't even know what he was looking for. Jim working for Palmer? How far back in time did this reach? And what was Jim's motive anyway? Money? Would he have turned on them like that?

He went to ask Sylvia a delicate question about their finances, leaving the room to find her in the kitchen. As Eph turned the corner, Sylvia was replacing her wall phone. She stepped backward with a strange look on her face.

Eph was confused at first. "Who were you calling, Sylvia?"

The others came in behind him. Sylvia felt for the wall behind her, then sat down in a chair.

Eph said, "Sylvia-what's going on?"

She said, without moving, and with an eerie sense of calm behind her wide, damning eyes, "You're going to lose."

PS 69, Jackson Heights

KELLY USUALLY never turned her mobile phone on in the classroom, but now it sat to the left of her calendar blotter, set to silent. Matt had stayed out all night, not unusual for overnight inventories; he often took the crew out to breakfast afterward. But he always called to check in as well. The school was a no-cell-phone zone, but she had sneaked a few calls to him, getting his voice mail each time. Maybe he was out of range. She was trying not to worry, and losing the battle. Attendance was low at the school.

She regretted listening to Matt and giving in to his arrogance about not leaving the city. If he had somehow put Zack at risk...

Then her phone lit up and she saw the envelope icon. A text message from his mobile.

It read: COME HOME.

That was it. Two words, lower case, no punctuation. She tried to call him right back. The phone rang and then stopped ringing as though he had answered. But he didn't say anything.

"Matt? Matt?"

Her fourth-graders looked at her strangely. They had never seen Ms. Goodweather talking on a phone in class.

Kelly tried their home phone, and got a busy signal. Was the voice mail broken? When was the last time she'd heard a busy signal?

She decided to leave. She'd have Charlotte open the door to her classroom next door, keep an eye on her students. Kelly thought about packing it in for the day and even picking up Zack at the middle school, but no. She'd shoot home, find out what was wrong, then evaluate her options and go from there.

Bushwick, Brooklyn

THE MAN WHO MET THEM at the empty house filled most of the door frame. The shadow of a skipped shave blackened his jutting jaw like a dusting of soot. He carried a large white sack at his hip, one hand choking its neck, an oversize pillowcase with something heavy inside.

After the introductions, the big man went into his shirt pocket and unfolded a worn copy of a cover letter bearing the CDC seal. He showed the letter to Eph.

"You said you had something to show us?" said Eph.

"Two things. First, this."

Fet loosened the drawstring on his sack and overturned the contents onto the floor. Four furry rodents landed in a heap, all dead.

Eph jumped back and Nora gasped.

"I always say, you want to get people's attention, bring 'em a bag of rats." Fet picked one up by its long tail, its body twirling slowly back and forth under his hand. "They're coming up out of their burrows all across the city. Even in daytime. Something's driving them out. Meaning, something's not right. I know that during the black death, rats came out and dropped dead in the streets. These rats here aren't coming up to die. They're coming up plenty alive and plenty desperate and hungry. Take my word for it, when you see a big change in rat ecology, it means bad news is on the way. When the rats start to panic, it's time to sell GE. Time to get out. Know what I mean?"

Setrakian said, "I do indeed."

Eph said, "I'm missing something here. What do rats have to do with...?"

"They are a sign," said Setrakian, "as Mr. Fet rightly states. An ecological symptom. Stoker popularized the myth that a vampire can change its form, transforming into a nocturnal creature such as a bat or a wolf. This false notion arises out of a truth. Before dwellings had basements or cellars, vampires nested in caves and dens on the edges of villages. Their corruptive presence displaced the other creatures, bats and wolves, driving them out so that they overran the villages-their appearance always coinciding with the spreading sickness and the corruption of souls."

Fet was paying close attention to the old man. "You know what?" he said. "Twice when you were just talking, I heard you say the word 'vampire.'"

Setrakian looked at him evenly. "That you did."

After a contemplative pause, and a long look at the others, Fet said, "Okay." As though he was starting to get it. "Now let me show you the other thing."

He led them down into the basement. The smell was one of foul incense, of something diseased that had been burned. He showed them the atomized flesh and bone, now cold cinder lying on the floor of the basement. The rectangle of window sunlight had elongated and moved, shining against the wall now. "But it was beaming down here, and they went into it, and it cooked them in an instant. But, before that, they came at me with this...thing shooting out from underneath their tongues."

Setrakian told him the short version. The rogue Master stowing away on Flight 753. The disappearing coffin. The morgue dead rising and returning to their Dear Ones. The household nests. The Stoneheart Group. Silver and sunlight. The stinger.

Fet said, "Their heads tipped back and their mouths opened up...and it was like that candy, that kids' candy-the one that used to come with Star Wars character heads."

Nora said, after a moment, "A Pez dispenser."

"That's it. You tip up the chin, candy pops out of the neck."

Eph nodded. "Except for the candy part, an apt description."