TWENTY
At five minutes past two that sultry morning Trajan walked beside Ben as they left the taxi that had carried them from where they'd talked to the graffiti artist.
'If the man was mad,' Trajan said, 'why should we make too much about this Vampire Sharkz business?'
'Mr Akinedes isn't mad. He suffers from Obsessive Compulsion Disorder; that means he completely understands his compulsions are irrational, only he has no power over them.'
They turned off the main road into a park that ran beside the Thames. Nearby, the formidable square structures of Tower Bridge rose into the night sky where they gleamed in the floodlights. Beyond them, the thousands of lights of London still burned brightly even at this hour.
In the gloom Trajan's head appeared as a bobbing smudge of blond as he asked, 'Then did he mean there's a dangerous animal in the river; perhaps something that's escaped from a zoo? Did that attack April?'
'Don't have me speculating yet, Trajan. I want to compare Mr Akinedes' story, irrespective of how bizarre it sounds, with what Elmo Kigoma knows.'
'The man in the boat? If he's still here. The last I heard the Mayor had plans to evict him from the park.'
'Oh, he's still here. Elmo's built from tough stuff.'
Elmo Kigoma was, indeed, still in the riverside park but he was no longer alone. Ben groaned at what he saw. 'Damn…' There, in the muted gleam of street lights shining from the road, were a group of at least ten figures. They'd clustered around the boat that appeared to float above ground, the pole that supported it rendered invisible by the shadows.
'The guy's got trouble this time.' Ben moved faster.
'Wait!' Trajan caught his arm. 'Wouldn't it be better to call the police?'
Ben fished out his phone. 'If it turns nasty - I mean really nasty - call the cops; but only as a last resort. If they come roaring down here we won't get a chance to talk to Elmo alone. And stay here; you've already cracked your skull once this week.'
After pushing the phone into Trajan's hand he ran toward the aerial boat. By now, the group of men had begun to push at the vessel's pole. They were clearly trying to topple it. The tiny plywood craft swung back and forth as if tossed on a stormy sea. A silhouette of a figure hung on tight to the mast of the boat.
These are stupid odds, Ben told himself as he ran along the path. One against ten? They've been drinking, too, so it's going to be tough reasoning with them.
The men chanted, 'Out the boat! Out the boat!'
'Give someone else a turn, y'old bastard!'
Their laughter was sadistic; they'd worked themselves up an appetite for hurting someone.
'Come down here, y'wanker - y'can kiss my arse.' One of the men bared his backside at the hermit in his boat.
'Dirty little bugger. Where do y'go to the toilet? Bet y'do it over the side.'
'Yeah, right where kids are.'
'Filthy pervert.'
'Get down here… gonna get the hiding of your life!'
Ben stopped a few paces from them. 'Excuse me. Gents?'
A guy with a tattooed line around his throat with the words 'Cut Here' etched in the skin turned on him. 'Fuck off.'
Ben took a deep breath, 'I need to speak to Mr Kigoma. It's important.'
'Y'hear that?' one of the men slurred. 'These two lovebirds want to be alone.' Pure sadism made the thug's laughter harsh.
'It's all right, sir. I'm safe,' Elmo called down. 'Please go home.'
'Yeah, go home,' the men chorused.
'Mr Kigoma. I'm Ben Ashton. We spoke recently.'
The thugs shook the pole, making the boat flip from side-to-side. Ben saw it wouldn't be long before the old man was twitched from his vessel. 'Look, stop that,' Ben said angrily. 'You're going to hurt him.'
The man with the tattooed 'Cut Here' throat calmly punched Ben on the jaw. Ben had no intentions of falling down, but his legs appeared to have no communication with his brain. As they folded under him he slapped down on to the grass with enough force to knock the air from his lungs.
'Down in one! Down in one!' the guy chanted while his buddies cheered his skill.
What had been a numb feeling in Ben's mouth suddenly made way for a whole head full of pain. Any plans he had for standing were forgotten, although he managed to sit as Trajan appeared.
'Do you want it as well?' snarled Ben's attacker. 'Do you?' He swung his fist at Trajan and Ben remembered the guy's head wound only too clearly. A hard punch would kill him.
Trajan side-stepped neatly, then dealt a couple of rapid jabbing punches to the man's stomach that suggested pretty forcefully that he had martial arts training. The tattooed guy didn't fall but he backed away holding his stomach. Ben forced himself to his feet. The odds were still one-sided. They faced a beating. Nevertheless, Ben knew he must stand by Trajan.
The men's faces were ugly with aggression and drink. They shook their fists, and stuck out their chests to make themselves more intimidating.
Ben groaned. 'It looks like you backed the wrong side.'
Trajan wasn't a man for running. He held out his arm for Ben to stay back. 'Give me room to work,' he said.
'You can't fight them,' Ben countered.
Meanwhile Elmo Kigoma called down in a panicked voice. 'Look out, they're coming back.'
'Tell us something we don't know,' Trajan said as the thugs closed in.
The hermit's voice rose. 'Look, back there. Dead-bone creatures. Children of Edshu. You must get away from here.'
That did strike home. Ben raised himself on his toes to look over the men's heads. Beyond them, figures loped across the grass from the direction of the river.
'Dear God,' Ben said. 'Here they come… Vampire Sharkz.'
'What?' Trajan shot him a startled glance.
As he did so, Ben nodded at the advancing men. 'Watch your backs, boys. You've got company.'
The thugs probably thought Ben meant that someone had circled round behind them. Instead, when they looked, they saw figures of both sexes and all ages race at them with the speed of panthers. The thugs turned to fight them. But the bodies that slammed into theirs moved with inhuman speed and power. The guy with the tattooed neck fell back with a girl of around sixteen ripping his throat with her teeth. A balding man in a torn business suit pounced on a thickset yob and held him down to the ground as he tore away his shirt, then started to gnaw at the beer belly. The thugs' shouts of rage stopped to be replaced by an eerie silence. Then came screams of pain.
High in his boat Elmo Kigoma shouted down at Ben. 'Up here. You won't outrun them!' With those words he dropped a rope ladder over the side.
***
In his kitchen Raj repeatedly went to the window to peer outside into the darkness, before returning to the corner of the room to drink from a glass of orange juice. He wished he had whisky. That's what he needed right now. A strong liquor. Liquid fire to shock his vocal chords back to life. He'd made two attempts to telephone the police only nothing coherent had left his mouth. Here in the corner where two solid walls met he felt safer. Then his cat burst through the cat-flap. The abruptness of the movement made him jerk the juice from the glass down his pajamas.
Instead of scolding Nipper he merely sighed with relief that it was his pet and not… he swallowed… not those two things that appeared at his door just minutes ago. He knew April Connor. She had one of those smiling faces that was always full of fun. What had happened to her? Beneath a mass of sticky-looking hair had been a grey face that possessed the blue lips of a corpse. Beneath her eyes her skin was etched with black rings. And then there were those eyes. Good God, the way they burned with such an overwhelming greed. They didn't even appear human. If eyes communicate something of their owners' thoughts then what April communicated sickened him. He could imagine only too vividly her leaning toward his ear and whispering, 'I want…' Only whatever she'd want would be so extreme and so perverse, Raj knew he'd have recoiled in horror. Only that scenario didn't have time to take place. Because she and he
r strange companion had tried to bite a lump out of his hand. If he'd neglected to lock the security chain in place… He began to shake again. Meanwhile, the cat dropped the mouse it had caught on to the floor and gazed expectantly up at the man, waiting for his approval.
Raj took a deep breath and decided to give the telephone another try.
***
The two men scrambled into Elmo Kigoma's boat. There they lay panting in the bottom while the sounds of battle took place below.
Elmo grimaced. 'Why didn't those boys listen to me? Instead they shake the pole and fight the pair of you.' He slapped his forehead as he became angry. 'It's because people don't listen to Elmo. They never do.'
'They're paying the price now,' Ben murmured as he looked down.
'My God,' Trajan breathed as he saw what was happening. 'They're eating those poor guys.'
'Not eating,' Elmo corrected. 'Drinking. They're having the blood out of their veins.'
Ben crouched there in the dinghy as it rested on its pole ten feet above the ground. Below him, in the glow of street-lamps, he witnessed the death of the men who'd attacked them. A group of individuals dressed in rags, with unkempt, spiky hair, thrust their faces against the torn bodies of the corpses. Trajan watched, too. They didn't lap the wounds or bite now, the Vampire Sharkz pressed their faces hard to the wounds. Then they drank. It was violent gluttony. These creatures appeared to be starving; now they drank so deeply they grunted as if it physically hurt them to swallow so much blood in one draught. Their entire bodies pulsed with the effort of gorging.
Ben absorbed what he saw: the grey skin of those creatures; their blackened nails; mouths surrounded by blue patches; at least the skin that wasn't smeared with their victim's blood. These things aren't human, he told himself. Okay, they're roughly human in shape but the humanity's vanished from them. These things are something else entirely.
When the creatures finally raised their faces, their expressions were exultant. Feeding had not only satisfied their hunger, it had intoxicated them. Their eyes blazed with alien joy. When one noticed the men looking down at them from the boat it leapt from a crouching position. Ben watched in horror as it appeared to effortlessly glide up toward him. A second later it would catch hold of him and drag him down to that grisly feeding area below with its mangled corpses. Only it was satiated now. Hunger didn't drive it. By its standards the leap was a lazy one. Its fingers almost reached the gunwale before it swiped in Ben's direction. The fingernails raked the hull's flanks before the creature dropped back.
After that, the creatures realized that more prey squatted in the little boat. Fortunately Elmo had raised the rope ladder. Even so, they attempted to climb the telegraph pole that held the boat aloft. Fortunately blood is slippery. And fortunately for the three men the monsters were smeared in the stuff. When they tried to shin up the pole their limbs were too slippy to find a purchase. Soon they wandered back to their victims to suck the remaining blood from their bodies.
Only it wasn't over yet. Trajan muttered, 'Oh my God,' as they watched the next stage in the procedure. One by one the creatures clamped their mouths back on to the wounds of their dead victims. Then they regurgitated. Ben heard the hiss of fluids gushing back from stomachs into throats, then he saw the monsters' bodies convulse as they vomited into the wounds.
Trajan rocked back with his hands over his eyes. 'I remember now. That's what happened to April. They did that to April… my poor April… Oh God.'
Trajan no longer watched but as the time crept past three and daylight broke on the horizon Ben saw the creatures… the Vampire Sharkz as Spiro had called them… drag their victims through the park to the river. There they dropped the bodies into the water. Quickly, with a predatory urgency, the things returned to lap every trace of blood from the grass. Then, as sunlight touched the underside of the clouds, they scurried back to the river to vanish into the darkness of its waters.
TWENTY-ONE
Carter and April stood on the bridge watching the cars pass beneath them. Even at this time of night the traffic still surged along the highway as unceasing as the River Thames flowing to the sea.
Carter blinked. 'What happened to us, April?'
'We got distracted, that's all,' she reassured. 'It's this hunger. We're not used to it.'
'But the guy we called on; the one who was going to give us your friend's address…' He grimaced. 'I tried to bite him.'
'Never mind, Carter. We're fine now. Don't you feel good? Like you're so strong you could throw those cars like they're just toys?'
'But we knew exactly what we were going to do, April. We'd go to the journalist's home. We'd explain our discovery to him.'
'The miracle!' April hugged herself.
'Yeah.' He smiled, yet his eyes were troubled. 'The miracle. The New-Life. It went wrong, didn't it?'
'We have appetites that are above and beyond what anyone has ever experienced before.'
'April, it was more than that. We were so hungry we went crazy; we're no better than Berserkers.'
'We'll control it next time.'
'Will we? If I'd got my hands on him I'd have torn that editor feller apart, and sucked every drop of blood out of him. April, that can't be right, can it?'
'We're fine now. That's all that matters.'
That river of light created by the cars held Carter's gaze. 'Remember the island…' He gave a grim laugh. 'You called it the Isle of the Dead?'
'Sure. What of it?' April was upbeat; nothing fazed her.
'We drank from pools of water on the shore.'
'Ugh, don't remind me.' She rubbed his arm. 'Come on, I'm sure we can find Ben Ashton. We'll use the telephone directories.'
'April, listen to what I've got to say.'
'If it makes you happy.' She beamed at him.
'When we were on the island we got hungry, right?'
'Yep.'
'So ravenous we wanted to eat dirt, tree bark, anything? We watched how those Berserkers attacked the Misfires and tried to eat them. But there was something missing, so they couldn't find satisfaction in what they were eating.'
'Sure… Can we go now?'
'Just a minute; I haven't made my point yet.' He licked his lips. 'The reason that nothing else satisfied their appetite was because it didn't contain blood. The Misfires are bloodless. That's why they hardly move. They're nine tenths corpse.'
'But you found a way, because you're smart. You showed me how to drink water that had been left behind by the tide. Come on, time to find my writer.'
'Wait, this is important. We drank estuary water left in the beach pools. Because it had been evaporating there was more salt, right?'
'Right!' Her full stomach engendered a sense of glee.
'I read somewhere that seawater with all the salt and minerals and stuff is similar to blood.'
'Our ancestors came from the ocean. We're basically a walking, talking bag full of seawater.'
'So, we managed to find something that was almost a substitute for what we craved. The salty water knocked the edge off our hunger.'
'Absolutely, Carter. Absolutely. Now get moving before the sun comes up.' She walked away.
Carter held out his hands in a desperate gesture, as he tried to make her understand. 'What we were drinking, April, was a substitute for blood.'
'So?' She twirled as she crossed the bridge.
'So why do we have this craving for blood? Why is it so strong that we end up acting crazy?'
'We'll learn to deal with it.'
'Will we? Or are we doomed to repeat the cycle? Where we tear some poor devil apart, suck out his blood, get high on it like we are now… and then we make all these plans about sharing it with the world. Only we get so far, then the craving starts again, the hunger drives us into a frenzy, and all that's important is ripping open another victim. April! Wait for me… where are you going?'
April started to run. 'It's getting light. We can't be outside when the sun rises.'
'There's a ditch
down there that runs into a tunnel.'
'I'm not sleeping in a ditch, Carter.'
'Where, then?'
'I've got somewhere far better. You come with me.' Barefoot she raced along the path, her giddy laughter rang out on the night air.
***
Raj lifted the phone from its bracket. The cat nibbled delicately at its prey on the kitchen floor so Raj averted his eyes as he dialed. He had a dilemma. Should he call the police or not?
I mean, what is it that I'm reporting? he wondered. If I announce that April Connor, a missing person, turned up at my house they're going to say 'thanks for letting us know', then cross her off the list. If I add that she and her companion tried to bite me, then they'll arrest her for assault. And April isn't a stranger. I've known her years. Okay, she looked strange tonight but you don't report friends to the police, do you? So when Raj dialed, it was Ben Ashton's number he called.
***
Only when the red glare of the sun burst above the city's skyline did the three men climb down from the boat on its pole. As Elmo Kigoma's boat wasn't even built to float on water it had just weathered a hell of a storm. Albeit a storm of an entirely different kind. Ben noticed rust-coloured smears on the grass that marked where the gang of thugs had bled.
'You first, Ben.' Elmo indicated the rope ladder.
Ben complied. Even so, he shot glances at the riverbank. That's where the creatures had dumped the bodies of the men into the water before joining them in the depths of the Thames. Vampire Sharkz… Those were the things the graffiti artist had seen, and had devoted his life to warning the city about. Vampire Sharkz. A bizarre term - yet uncannily apt. As Ben descended the rungs the Vampire Sharkz phrase echoed in his head. When he reached the ground he examined the blood stains on the grass, what there were of them. Either those creatures were fastidious in their tidying up or it had simply been a brutal hunger that compelled them to lick spilt gore from each blade of grass. The end result was that there was little evidence of a battle taking place. If anything, the debris consisted of watches torn from wrists, along with coins, keys and phones that had fallen from the victims' pockets together with a couple of knives. Ben noted that the blades were bent, so they'd been used during the fight. Clearly to little effect. From what he'd witnessed of the battle, the creatures - these Vampire Sharkz - hadn't suffered any visible injury. The orgiastic feeding on the men's blood had been nothing less than a bloody carnival for them.