The Fall

Kelly watched her suffering son impassively. The Master had been prepared to destroy Kelly. The Master was unaccustomed to defiance, and could think of no reason why Kelly had not turned the boy immediately.

Now the Master saw why. Kelly’s bond with the boy was so strong, the affection so potent, that she had instead brought him to the Master to be turned.

This was an act of devotion. An offering borne out of the human precursor-love-to vampire need, which, in fact, surpassed that need.

And the Master did indeed hunger. And the boy was a fine specimen. He would be honored to receive the Master.

But now… things appeared different in the darkness of a new night.

The Master saw more benefit in waiting.

It sensed the distress in the boy’s chest, his heart first racing, and now starting to slow. The boy lay on the ground, clutching at his throat, the Master standing over him. The Master pricked its thumb with the sharp nail of its prominent middle finger, and, taking care not to let slip any worms, allowed one single white drop to fall into the boy’s open mouth, landing upon his gasping tongue.

The boy groaned suddenly, sucking air. In his mouth, the taste of copper and hot camphor-but in a few moments, he was breathing normally again. Once, on a dare, Zack had licked the ends of a nine-volt battery. That was the jolt he had felt before his lungs opened. He looked up at the Master-this creature, this presence-with the awe of the cured.

EPILOGUE

Extract from the diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Sunday, November 28

With every city and province around the globe-already alarmed by initial reports out of New York City-now afflicted by growing waves of unexplained disappearances…

With rumors and wild tales-of the vanished returning to their homes after dark, possessed of inhuman desires-spreading at speeds more scorching than the pandemic itself…

With terms like “vampirism” and “plague” finally being uttered by those in positions of power and influence…

And with the economy, the media, and transportation systems all failing throughout the globe…

… the world had already teetered over the edge, into fullblown panic.

And then began the nuclear-plant meltdowns. One after the other.

No official sequence of events or proper time line can, nor ever will be, verified, due to the mass destruction and subsequent devastation. What follows is the accepted hypothesis, though admittedly a “best guess” based mainly upon the arrangement of the tiles before the first domino fell.

After China, the reactor failure of a Stoneheart-constructed nuclear plant in Hadera, on the western coast of Israel, led to a second core meltdown. A vapor cloud of radioactivity was released, containing large particles of radioisotopes as well as caesium and tellurium in aerosol form. Warm Mediterranean wind currents scattered the contamination northeast into Syria and Turkey and over the Black Sea into Russia, as well as east over Iraq and northern Iran.