The Fall (The Strain Trilogy 2)

Gus did. He told about leaving Setrakian at the nuclear power plant.

“You left him?” said Fet.

Gus’s smile showed a flash of anger. “He demanded it. Same as he did of you.”

Fet caught himself. He saw that the kid was right.

“He’s gone?” said Nora.

“I don’t see any other way,” said Gus. “He was prepared to fight to the end. Angel stayed, that crazy fucker. No way the Master got away from those two without feeling some pain. If only radiation.”

“Meltdown,” said Nora.

Gus nodded. “I heard the blast and the sirens. Bad cloud headed this way. The old man said to get down here to you.”

Fet said, “He sent us all here. To protect us from the fallout.”

Fet looked around. Burrowed underground. He was used to having the upper hand in this scenario: the exterminator, gassing vermin in their holes. He looked around, thinking about what rats, the ultimate survivors, would do when faced with this situation—and he saw the derailed train in the distance, its bloodstained windows reflecting Gus’s headlights.

“We’ll clear out the train cars,” he said. “We can sleep in there, in shifts, lock the doors. There’s a cafe car we can raid for now. Water. Toilets.”

“For a few days, maybe,” said Nora.

“For as long as we can make it last,” said Fet. He felt a surge of emotion—pride, resolve, gratitude, grief—striking him like a fist. The old man was gone; the old man lived on. “Long enough to let the worst of the radioactivity disperse up top.”

“And then what?” Nora was beyond burned-out. She was done with this. With all of this. And yet there was no ending. Nowhere else to go, but on, and on, into this new hell on earth. “Setrakian is gone—dead, or possibly worse. There’s a holocaust above us. They’ve won. The strigoi have prevailed. It’s over. All over.”

No one said anything. The air in the long tunnel hung still and silent.

Fet pulled his bag down off his shoulder. He opened it and rummaged through with dirty hands, then pulled out the silver-bound book.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or—maybe not.”

Eph grabbed one of Gus’s strong flashlights and went off on his own again, following every trail of vampire waste to its end.

None of them brought him to Zack. Still, he went on, calling out his son’s name, his voice echoing emptily through the tunnel, returning back to him like a taunt. He emptied the flask, and then hurled the thick glass at the tunnel wall, where the sound of its shattering was like a profanity.

Then he found Zack’s inhaler.

Lying beside the track in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of tunnel. The prescription sticker was still affixed: Zachary Good-weather, Kelton Street, Woodside, New York. Suddenly, every one of those words spoke to him of things lost: name, street, neighborhood.

They had lost it all. These things meant nothing anymore.

Eph gripped the inhaler as he stood in the dark burrow beneath the earth. Gripped it so hard that the plastic casing started to crack.

He stopped then. Preserve this, he thought. He held it to his heart and switched off his flashlight. He stood still, vibrating with rage in the pure dark.

The world had lost the sun. Eph had lost his son.

Eph began to prepare himself for the worst.

He would return to the others. He would clear out the derailed train, and watch with them, and wait.

But while the others waited for the air to clear above, Eph would be waiting for something else.

He would be waiting for his Zack to return to him as a vampire.

He had learned from his mistake. He could not show any forbearance, as he had with Kelly.