The Night Eternal (The Strain Trilogy 3)

Ann said, “What about Little Thumb?”

“You can’t give these islands pet names and expect everyone else to memorize them.”

Ann looked at Eph and explained, “The third island looks like it has a little thumb.”

Eph looked at the sketch. The route appeared clear enough; that was all that mattered.

Eph said, “Can you take the others down the river to your island ahead of us? We won’t stay, we won’t be using up your resources. Just a place to hide and wait until this is all over.”

Ann said, “Sure. Especially if you think you can do what you say you can do.”

Eph nodded. “Life on Earth is going to change again.”

“Back to normal.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Eph. “We’ll have a long way to go to get back to anything resembling normal. But we won’t have these bloodsuckers running us anymore.”

Ann looked like a woman who had learned not to get her hopes up too high. “I am sorry I called you an asshole, buddy,” she said. “What you are is really a tough motherfucker.”

Eph couldn’t help but smile. These days he would take any compliment, no matter how backhanded it was.

“Can you tell us about the city?” said Ann. “We heard that all of midtown burned down.”

“No, it’s—”

The glass doors opened in the candy shop and Eph turned. Gus entered, holding a machine gun in one hand. Then he saw, through the glass, Nora approaching the door. Instead of Fet, a tall boy of about thirteen walked at her side. They entered and Eph could neither move nor speak … but his dry eyes instantly stung with tears and his throat closed with emotion.

Zack looked around apprehensively, his eyes going past Eph to the old ice cream signs on the wall … then slowly coming back to his father’s face.

Eph walked to him. The boy’s mouth opened but he did not speak. Eph got down on one knee before him, this boy who used to be at about Eph’s eye level when he did that. Now Eph looked up a few inches at him. The mess of hair falling down over his face partially hid his eyes.

Zack said quietly to his father, “What are you doing here?”

He was so much taller now. His hair was long and ragged, swept back from his ears, exactly the way a boy that age would choose to grow his hair without parental intervention. He looked reasonably clean. He appeared well fed.

Eph grabbed him and hugged him hard. In doing so, he was making the boy real. Zack felt strange in his arms, smelled different, was different—older. Weak. It occurred to Eph how gaunt he must have looked to Zack in return.

The boy did not hug him back, standing stiffly, enduring the embrace.

He pushed him backward to look at him again. He wanted to know everything, how Zack had gotten here—but realized nothing else mattered right now.

He was here. He was still human. He was free.

“Oh, Zack,” said Eph, remembering the day he had lost him nearly two years before. He had tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”

But Zack was looking at him strangely. “For what?”

He started to say, “For allowing your mother to take you away—” But he stopped. “Zachary,” said Eph, overwhelmed by joy. “Look at you. So tall! You’re a man …”

The boy’s mouth remained open, but he was too stunned to speak. He stared at his father—the man who had haunted his dreams like an all-powerful ghost. The

father who had abandoned him, deserted him, the one he remembered as being tall, so powerful, so wise, was a feeble, dry, insignificant thing. Unkempt, trembling, and weak.

Zack felt a surge of disgust.

Are you loyal?

“I never stopped looking,” said Eph. “I never gave up. I know they told you I was dead—I’ve been fighting this whole time. For two years, I’ve been trying to get you back …”