The Fall (The Strain Trilogy 2)

The writing in the Lumen was densely yet beautifully hand-scribed, as many as one hundred lines to a page. His old, long-ago-broken fingers turned each corner with delicacy and speed.

He analyzed every page, backlighting them, scanning for watermarks and quickly sketching them as they were discovered. He annotated their exact position and disposition on the page, as these were vital elements in decoding the text laid on them.

Eph stood at his shoulder, alternately looking at the phantasmagoric illustrations and checking the burning island out the wheelhouse window. He noticed a radio near Fet and switched it on, keeping it low so as not to distract Setrakian. It was satellite radio, and Eph searched the news channels until he came across a voice.

A tired female voice, a broadcaster holed up in the Sirius XM headquarters, was operating off some sort of failsafe backup generator. She was working off multiple, fractured sources—Internet, phone, and e-mail—collating reports from around the country and the world, while repeatedly clarifying that she had no way of verifying this information was accurate.

She spoke candidly about vampirism as a virus spreading person-to-person. She detailed a crumbling domestic infrastructure: accidents, some catastrophic, disabling, or otherwise cutting off traffic along key bridges in Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Washington state, and California. Power outages further isolated certain regions, most prevalent along the coasts. Gas lines in the Midwest. The National Guard and various Army regiments had been ordered into peacekeeping duty in many major metropolitan centers, with reports of military activity in New York and Washington, DC. Fighting had broken out along the border between North and South Korea. Burning mosques in Iraq had triggered rioting, compounded by U.S. peacekeeping efforts there. A series of unexplained explosions in the catacombs beneath Paris had crippled the city. And an eerie series of reports detailed suicide clusters occurring at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Iguazu Falls on the border between Brazil and Argentina, and Niagara Falls in New York.

Eph shook his head at all of this—bewildering, a nightmare, War of the Worlds come true—until he heard the report of an Amtrak derailment inside the North River Tunnel, further cutting off the island of Manhattan. The broadcaster moved on to a report of rioting in Mexico City, leaving Eph staring at the radio.

“Derailment,” he said.

The radio couldn’t answer him.

Fet said, “She didn’t say when. Maybe they got through.”

Fear spiked in Eph’s chest. He felt sick. “They didn’t,” he said. He knew it. No ESP, no psychic knowledge: he simply knew it. Their escape now struck him as being too good to be true. All his relief, his clear-headedness—gone. A dark pall fell over h

is mind.

“I have to go there.” He turned toward Fet, unable to see anything but the mental image of a derailment and vampire attack. “Bring us in. You have to let me off. I’m going after Zack and Nora.”

Fet did not argue, fooling with the steering controls. “Let me find someplace to crash-land.”

Eph looked for weapons. Former gang rivals Gus and Creem were eating junk food out of a convenience-store bag. Gus used his boot to slide their weapon bag toward Eph.

A change in the broadcaster’s tone returned their attention to the radio. A nuclear plant accident had been reported on the eastern coast of China. Nothing out of Chinese news agencies, but there were eyewitness accounts of a mushroom cloud visible from Taiwan, as well as seismometer readings near Guangdong indicating an Earth tremor in the neighborhood of a quake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale. The lack of reporting from Hong Kong was said to indicate the possibility of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, which would turn electrical cables into lightning rods or antennas and have the effect of frying any connected solid-state devices.

Gus said, “Vampires nuking us now? Fuck us.” Then he translated for Angel, who was repairing a homemade splint around his knee.

“Madre de Dios,” said Angel, crossing himself.

Fet said, “Wait a minute. A nuclear plant accident? That’s a meltdown, not a bomb. Maybe a steam explosion on the site—like Chernobyl—but not a detonation. They’re designed so that those aren’t possible.”

“Designed by whom?” Setrakian said this, never looking up from the book.

Fet sputtered. “I don’t know—what do you mean?”

“Constructed by whom?”

“Stoneheart,” said Eph. “Eldritch Palmer.”

“What?” said Fet. “But—nuclear explosions? Why do that when he’s so close to winning the world?”

“There will be more,” said Setrakian. His voice came without breath, disembodied, intoned.

Fet said, “What do you mean, more?”

Setrakian said, “Four more. The Ancients were born from the light. The Fallen Light, Occido Lumen —and they can only be consumed by it…”

Gus got up and went to stand over the old man. The book was open to a two-page spread. A complex mandala in silver, black, and red. On top of it, on tracing paper, Setrakian had laid out the outline of the six-winged angel. Gus said, “It says that?”

Setrakian closed the silver book and got to his feet. “We must return to the Ancients. At once.”

Gus said, “Okay,” though he was befuddled by this sudden change in course. “To give them the book?”

“No,” said Setrakian, finding his pillbox inside his vest pocket, pulling it open with trembling fingers. “The book arrives too late for them.”