Ever since he was a child, James Falcon had heard folktales of the strigoi, the bloodthirsty vampires who stalked the forest of Wallachia. As a young man he was recruited by US counterintelligence to track down strigoi Nazis in war-torn Europe. Though the worst of the, the infamous Dorin Duca, always eluded him. Now, more than a decade later, the strigoi and Dorin Duca are ravaging London and James is back on the hunt. It’s only a matter of time before the old enemies meet face-to-face, because vampires are immortal…and so is their thirst for vengeance.
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this is audible descendant by Graham masterton read by Garrick Hagen Diana it was a sweltering Thursday afternoon and I was caught in the usual southbound traffic jam on the Kennedy Bridge when WKA played Diana and I felt as if my entire skin surface was shrinking Diana by Paul an that song has haunted me for the past 50 years and I guess it always will whenever I hear it I can’t stop myself from turning my head around just to make sure that I’m not being followed or that somebody isn’t watching me from some Shadow doorway on the opposite side of the street I’m so young and you’re so old it brings everything back the glassy heat of the South London suburbs in the middle of summer the large 1930s houses with their red tiled roofs and their tennis courts the flat sweet smell of British pubs the shabby clothes and the tiny little cars and those things that ran through the streets dark and voracious and utterly cruel clinging to ceilings rushing up walls you think that you know what it’s like to be frightened you don’t have any idea when I finally arrived back home in Kenwood Hill I closed the front door and stood for a long time with my back pressed against it and my heart was beating like a jackhammer two semicircles of crimson light Shone on the wall from the stained glass window at the top of the stairs like bloodshot eyes it was then that I thought damn it whatever the government might do to me it’s high time that you knew the truth that’s why I’m going to tell you what really happened during that summer of August 1957 and what hideous Carnage we had to face I’m going to tell you what happened afterward too and for me that was even more of a nightmare all I did was put off the evil day sooner or later the decision that I could never bring myself to make is going to be yours I was officially warned never to talk about it two days after I was relocated to Louisville a pimping young man came around to my house in a shiny gray suit and warned me not to say anything ever not even to my wife Louise even after all these years I guess the government could still have me arrested for breaching National Security or lock me up in a nut house but they can’t terrify me the way that I’ve been terrified every single day for the past 50 years because vampires never ever forgive you for anything antp 1944 Captain kerik led me up the uncarpeted stairs of this narrow unlit building on marrat in the Northwest part of the city two small children with grubby faces were standing in a doorway on the second Landing a girl and a boy and Captain koser said to them you’re going to be okay you understand we’re going to arrange for somebody to take care of you behind them in the Gloom of her sitting room an old woman was sitting in a sagging brocade armchair underneath her black laac widow’s cap her hair was white and wild and her face looked like a shriveled cooking Apple somebody from the children’s services will be calling around later Captain kosk shouted at her then he turned to me and said and death as a doorpost I called out the woman flapped her hand dismissively H made BR what did she say asked Captain kerik something about the family being cursed well I think she was right on the money about that come take a look for yourself he let me along the corridor and up another flight of stairs I could smell boiled cabbage and another smell much stronger and more distinctive the smell of blood although it was mid October it was UN seasonably warm the stairwell was alive with glittering green blowflies at the top of the stairs there was a much smaller landing and then a door with two frosted glass panels in it the door was half a jar and even before we opened it I could see a woman’s leg lying on the floor with a worn out brown brogue lying close by Captain kosk pushed the door wide so that I could take in a full view of the room it it was a one room apartment with a large iron-framed bed in one corner a frang beige couch and a wooden wheel back chair there was a small high window over the sink which had a view of a light gray sky and the dark 13th century spires of the ra the cathedral beside the sink there was a small homemade shelf with a red and white packet of tea a blue Pottery flower jar a glass dish with a tiny square of butter in it and three potatoes that were already starting to sprout a picture of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall beside the Shelf both of her eyes had been burned out with lighted cigarettes I looked down at the young woman lying face down on the streaky green lenium she must have been 27 or 28 with wavy brown hair which she had obviously tried to color with Hanah she was wearing nothing except a reddish wool skirt which had been dragged halfway down her thighs her skin was very white and dotted with moles there were spots and sprays of blood all around her and several Footprints some whole and some partial including some smaller bare Footprints which must have been those of her children but considering what had been done to her there was remarkably little blood want me to turn her over for you asked captain kerik I nodded I was sweating and the air was clogged with the brown stench of blood but I had to make sure Captain kosk hunkered down beside the young woman and gently rolled her onto her back she was quite pretty in a puffy Flemish way with bright blue eyes her breasts were small with pale nipples she had been split wide open with some very sharp Implement from her breastbone to her navl her heart had been forcibly pulled out from under her rib cage and her aorta cut about 3 in from her left ventricle it looked like a pale saggy hose pipe you seen this kind of thing before said Captain kerik the MPS told me to call you in as soon as they found her I lifted my khaki canvas bag off my shoulder unbuckled it and took out my Kodak I took about 15 or 16 pictures from different angles while Captain kosk went out onto the landing for a smoke after I had finished taking pictures I searched the young woman’s room Captain kosi came back in again what are you looking for if you don’t mind my asking oh you know evidence he was very young even though he had a streak of gray hair and a bristly little mustache but I guess we were all very young in those days even me I lifted up the thin threadbear mat beside the bed there were signs that one of the floorboards had been lifted so I went to the sink and took out a knife to pry them up underneath in the floor space I found a rusty can of cooked ham two cans of alt mecklinburg sausages three cans of condensed milk a box of cocoa powder and a box of powdered eggs as well as three packs of yasmi cigarettes why the horde said Captain kosk peering over my shoulder all German too where do you suppose she got these from fraternizing with the Enemy something like that so somebody from the resistance found out and they punished her that’s one possibility listen I know this is all supposed to be top secret and like that but who do you think might have done this I looked down at the young woman lying on the floor a blowfly was jerkily walking across her slightly parted lips oh I know who did it what I don’t know yet is why the night people I went downstairs again and knocked on the old widow’s door the two children were kneeling on the window seat looking down at the street below a ray of sunlight was shining through the boys ears so that they glowed Scarlet the old Widow lifted her head to see me through the lower half of her bifocals and made a kind of Silent snarl as she did so did you see anything I asked her in Flemish no but I heard it bumping and Loud talking and footsteps they were Germans the Germans aren’t here anymore the Germans have been driven back back to the other side of the Albert Canal these were Germans no question I looked at the children I guessed that the girl was about six and the boy wasn’t much older than four in those days though European children were much smaller and thinner than American children after years of rationing do you think they saw anything I pray to God that they didn’t it was 3:00 in the morning and it was very dark you want a cigarette I asked her she sniffed and nodded I shook out a camel for her and lit it she breathed in so deeply that I thought she was never going to breathe out again while I waited I lit a cigarette for myself too you mentioned the night people I told her Menon Vu I hadn’t told Captain kerik about that that’s what they were weren’t they you know that that’s why you’re here I blew out smoke and pointed to the ceiling what was her name had she been living here long an anterus she came here last April I think it was she was very quiet and her children were very quiet too but I saw her once talking to Leo kopman and I know they weren’t discussing the price of sausages Leo kopman from the white Brigade The White Brigade were the Belgian resistance even now they were helping the British and the Canadians to keep their hold on the ANP docks antp was a weird place in the fall of 44 the whole city was filled with Liberation fever almost a hysteria even though the Germans were still occupying many of the northern suburbs some belgians were even cycling from the Allied part of the city into the German part of the city to go to work and then cycling back again in the evening I gave the old woman my last five cigarettes do you mind if I talked to the children do what you like you can’t make things any worse for them than they already are I went over to the window seat the boy was peering down at three Canadian jeeps in the street below while the girl was picking the thread from one of the old brown seed cushions the boy glanced at me but said nothing while the girl didn’t look up at all what’s your name I asked the girl my cigarette smoke drifted across the window and the boy furiously waved it away Agnes the girl told me in a whisper and your brother martin Mrs tupet says that Mommy was sick so she’s gone to huml Mar announced brightly the Flemish word for Heaven is heml so he must have misunderstood what the old woman had told him the girl looked up at me then and the appeal in her eyes was almost physically painful he doesn’t know his mommy’s been killed don’t tell him please our uncle Peter lives in huml she whispered I nodded and turned my head so that I wouldn’t blow smoke in her face did you see anything I asked her she shook her head it was dark but they came into the room and pulled mommy out of bed I heard her say please don’t what’s going to happen to my children then I Heard lots of horrible noises and mommy was kicking on the floor her eyes filled up with tears I was too frightened to help her it’s good for you that you didn’t try they would have done the same to you how many of them were there I think three three that would figure they always came in threes the little girl wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her prayed red cardigan I saw something shining it was like a necklace thing a necklace like a cross only it wasn’t a cross those are the good men interrupted the little boy pointing down at the Canadians they came and chased all the Germans away you’re right umbre I told him then I turned back to the little girl and said this cross thing do you think you could draw it she thought for a moment and then she nodded I took a pencil out of my jacket pocket and handed her my notebook very carefully she drew a symbol that looked like a wheel with four spokes she gave it back to me with a very serious look on her face it was shining like silver I gave her a roll of fruit flavored Lifesavers and touched the top of her dry unwashed hair not much compensation for losing her mother but there was nothing else I could offer her I still think about them even now those two little children and wonder what happened to them they’d be in their 60s now the old Widow said you see I was right wasn’t I it was the night people I didn’t say anything I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody what my specific duties were not even my fellow officers in the 101 Counter Intelligence Detachment Captain kosk came back in you done here he asked me I got two core men downstairs ready to take the body away the little boy frowned at him you don’t know how glad I was that he couldn’t understand English Frank takes a drink Frank was sitting on the cobbles when I came out of the house his purple tongue Laing out of the side of his mouth Frank was a four-year-old black and tan Blood Hound who had been specially trained for me in Tangipahoa Parish Louisiana by the man Trail expert Roger duat actually Frank’s saddle spread so far over his body that he was almost entirely black but Roger had explained to me that he was still officially a blacken Tan in Belgium they called him a St Hubert Hound after the monk who had first trained blood hounds in the 7eventh century the patron saint of hunters Frank’s real name was pride of ponchatula but I had rechristened him in honor of Frank Sinatra who happened to be my hero at the time when I walked along to K with my great coat collar turned up I like to think that I looked as cool and edgy as Frank Sinatra did how’s it going Frank I asked him hope you’ve been conducting yourself with the Corum Frank was a pretty obedient dog but now and again he had a fit of the loonies which Roger duqu said was brought on by him picking up the smell of dead rats Corporal little said he’s been fine sir I fed him those marrow bones and then he took a dump around the corner well thanks so much for the update I said listen we’ll be going out tonight soon as it gets dark Corporal little looked up at the flat narrow front of number five Marat and said screechers no question about it they split her open like a herring holy Christ did you find find out who she was on the bouter age 28 or thereabouts I don’t know why they specifically came looking for her but her landl seemed to think that she might have had some connection to the white Brigade could have been a Revenge killing who knows maybe they were just thirsty Corporal little looked around his eyes narrowed against the bright gray October light BL they’ve gotten far I don’t think so by the time they finished with her it must have been nearly daylight in this whole area was heaving with Canucks by 0430 my guess is that they’ve gone to ground someplace close by Corporal little reached down and tugged Frank’s ears hear that boy we’re going to go screecher hunting Corporal Henry little was an amiable wide-shouldered young man with a red crew cut and a face covered in mustard colored freckles he had a snub nose and bright blue eyes that looked Perman permanently surprised although I have never yet known him to be surprised by anything even when it was first explained to him what his duties would be he did nothing but nod and say okay sure as if hunting vampires through the shattered cities of France and Belgium was no more unusual than chasing rabbits through the underbrush Corporal Little’s family had bred pedigree tracking dogs in Oak Ridge Tennessee which was why the Detachment had enlisted him to help me if blood hound e had been a language Corporal little would have been Word Perfect Frank had only to lift up his head and stare at Corporal little with those mournful hungover eyes and Corporal little would know exactly what he wanted cookie Frank Frank had a thing for speculo those Ginger and spice cookies they bake in Belgium preferably dipped into Corporal Little’s coffee to make them soft we climbed into my Jeep and Corporal little drove his back through the narrow sewage smelling streets jolting over the cobbles until I felt that my teeth were going to shatter we passed a dead horse lying on the sidewalk a German shell had landed in the Square two days ago and torn open a big triangular flap in its stomach so a passer by had killed it with a hammer somewhere off to the Northwest from the direction of the valkar and Peninsula I could hear our artillery fire like somebody banging encyclopedia shut we turned into ker Strat and stopped outside the vele hotel it was a small old style building with a 16th century facade the lobby had Oak panel walls and a brown marble floor and it was Milling with officers from the British 11th Armored Division as well as an argumentative crowd of Belgian politicians waving their arms and pushing each other and shouting in French the British officers looked too tired to care one of them was sleeping in an armchair with his mouth wide open I went to the desk where the deputy manager was trying to rub soup from the front of his shirt with spit I need to talk to Leo Koopman he stopped rubbing his shirt and looked at me with bulging brown eyes it’s important I said I need to talk to him about an de wter do you think you can get in touch with him the deputy man pulled a face that could have meant yes or possibly or why on Earth are you asking me I’ll be in my room until 8 I told him I tapped my wristwatch and said AK understand Corporal little and I went up in the rickety elevator to the fourth floor Frank sat staring up at us and panting and the vouter children were in the room when they killed her I said lucky for the boy didn’t wake up but the girl did I could see myself in the mirror I hadn’t realized I looked so Haggard my hair was greasy and flopping over my forehead and the mtled glass made it appear as if I had some kind of skin disease she give you any idea what they looked like no too dark but she was pretty sure that there were three of them and she saw that one of them was wearing the wheel we walked along the long blue carpeted Corridor until we reached 413 considering there was a waron my room was surprisingly Sumptuous with a huge four poster bed covered in a golden cream bedspread and gilded armchairs upholstered to match on the walls hung several somber Landscapes of gent and louan with clouds and canals a pair of gray riding brushes hung from the hook on the back of the door with dangling suspenders still attached these had belonged to the German officer who had occupied this room only days before we had arrived Corporal little unclipped Frank’s leash and let him Trot into the bathroom to lap water out of the toilet I went to the windows and closed them the maid had opened them every morning since we had arrived here last week even though there was no heat I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes lit one and blew smoke out of my nose then I unfolded my street map of antp and spread it out over the glass toop table here’s Mark kravat where on the vouchers was killed and this is the way the Canadian division was coming in so it’s pretty unlikely that the screechers would have tried to escape along Martin Strat I reckon they left the building by the back entrance which would have taken them out here onto Kip Thorp that means they had only two options either turn left and head Northwest toward the skelt or turn right and make their way across kipor Brook toward the Central Station Corporal little studied the map carefully I don’t reckon they would have headed for the river sir where would they go from there I agreed with him they couldn’t have escaped North because the Germans had blown all the bridges over the Albert Canal besides the Brits were holding the Waterfront area and most of the Brits were untrained conscripts waiters and Bank clerks and green grossers and they were even more trigger happy than the poles they would let loose a wild fusel of poorly aimed rifle fire and then shout who goes there afterward I circled a five block area with my pencil we’ll start in this street around kipor and work our way Eastward along s yobs Mark corporal little massage the back of his prickly neck that’s going to be one hell of a job sir with respect think of all them hundreds of sellers they could be lying low in think of all them hundreds of attics and all of them hundreds of closets and linen chests and steamer trunks it could easy take us days before Frank picks up a sniff of them and by that time they could be halfway back to wherever they’re headed we’ll find them Henry I promise you I have a hunch about these particular creatures with respect sir you had a hunch about those creatures in Ruan and you had another Huns about those scures in Bon I know but those scures we got in France they were like cornered rats weren’t they they were running and hiding and it took everything we could do to catch up with them well sure but what makes these guys any different think about it they must have been keeping themselves hold up someplace in the city center for the past 5 weeks either that or they’ve had the bras coones to make their way back in they wanted to have their revenge on the on devouts and they obviously didn’t care what chances they took they were German speaking right but they walked through a city crowded with British and Canadian troops and they cut a woman open in front of her children and they stayed there long enough to drink 90% of of her blood Corporal little looked impressed but still slightly mystified so what does this specifically lead you to conclude sir don’t you get it Henry they’re not scared of us they’re not frightened to come out in the open that’s why I think that we’ll find them the only trouble is when we do find them they’re not going to go down without one hell of a fight Corporal little gave me a smile of growing understanding in that case sir we better double the watch on our rear ends wouldn’t you say go get the kit will you I told him most of the time I couldn’t work out if he was a genius or an idios the kit the kit was contained in a khaki tin box about the size of a briefcase it was scratched intended but then we had been carrying it with us ever since we had landed in Normandy in June and we had used it five times since then Corporal little opened it up and together we inspected the contents a large Bible with a polished cover carved out of Ashwood and a silver crucifix mounted on the front a large glass flask of holy oil from St Basil’s Romanian Orthodox Church in New York a pair of silver thumb screws and a pair of silver toe screws a silver Compass about 5 in across with a base that was filled with the dried Petals of wild roses a 30ft Whip made of braided silver wire a surgical saw a small silver pot filled with black mustard seeds two small pots of paint one white and one black I lifted out a roll of greasy shammy leather and unwrapped it inside were three iron Nails about 9 in long they were black and corroded and each had been fashioned by hand I had no proof that they were genuine but if the price that the Detachment had paid for them was anything to go by they should have been these were supposed to be the nails that had been pulled out of Christ’s wrists and ankles when he was taken down from the cross at the bottom of the tin box there was a circular mirror made of Highly polished silver a pair of dental forceps and a sculptor’s mallet hunting scures was always a combination of science religion common sense and Magic so you needed the apparatus that went with each you also needed a willingness to believe that a human being can defy gravity running kind of low on garlic said Corporal little lifting up a bunch of papery covered clothes Frank came sniffing around his pendulous jows swaying see said Corporal little Frank knows that we’re going out tonight don’t you boy Frank gave one of those barks that can deafen you in one ear an oblique conversation just after 6:00 the deputy manager rang up to my room to say that Leo kopman had been unavoidably detained on the northeast side of the city however somebody in the lobby called Paul hanar would be privileged to talk to me I went down in the elevator alone and met him in the small dark bar at the back of the hotel Paul hanar was a short thick set man with a lumpy face like one of the peasants in a brogal painting and rimless spectacles he was wearing a black roll neck sweater and a black suit with shiny elbows I would have guessed that he was a school master in another life he stood up and shook hands colel pleased to meet you actually it’s Captain Captain James Falcon Jr 101 Counter Intelligence Detachment we sat down and I offered him a cigarette he took one and tapped it on his thumbnail I heard you were looking for for some special information he said his English was flat but barely accented you think you can help me I asked him it’s something we’ve been trying to keep quiet mainly because we didn’t want the Germans to know that we knew and because we didn’t want to cause any panic and because we didn’t want to look like fools in case we were wrong do you know a young woman called on the bouter she rents an apartment on marav Strat Paul hanar looked at me acutely I know the name yes you can’t do her any harm by telling me about her she was murdered last night he flinched as if I had reached across the table and tried to slap his cheek but then he recovered himself and said I very shocked to hear that her land lady said it was Manson van the knocked do you have any idea what she was talking about a young boy in a long white apron came over to us and asked us what we wanted to drink what do you have asked Paul hanar Apple snaps and anything else the boy shook his head in that case we’ll have two apple snaps one snaps one lemonade I corrected him I need to keep a clear head tonight and I know what that godamn snaps his like my Corporal calls it nuts waterer Paul hanar lit his cigarette and I noticed that his hand was trembling men V he said Riley that’s one explanation if you believe in such things but you don’t I keep an open mind Captain so tell me what’s been happening he coughed and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin it started in August last year we were having many successes against the Germans we had infiltrated many of their administrative offices and also the power company and the water company in July we were able to sink five barges on the Albert Canal which took them weeks to clear away but then everything seemed to turn around the Germans began to raid our hiding places and arrest Our People by the Dozen every time we planned to sabotage the docks they would catch us before we had the chance to plant any explosives they found our weapons and our wireless sets and our safe houses it became clear to us that some of our own people must be betraying us I didn’t say anything behind him there was an oval window with Crimson glass in it and the branch of a tree was tapping against it as if some beggar were trying to catch our attention Paul hanar said we noticed that some of our people were acting differently they started to look ill and to keep themselves to themselves also they smelled it’s very hard to describe not altogether unpleasant but musty like the inside of a closet in which a dead man’s clothes have been hanging gradually it became clear to us that every operation which was betrayed to the Germans was connected with one or more of these sick people what did you do about it of course we immediately isolated any of our people who showed any signs of illness or behaving in a strange way and allowed them no contact with the rest of us but even this didn’t stop the infection from spreading amongst us and we couldn’t understand how this could happen we have doctors who help us but even they were mystified it was on the vouchers who first discovered what the Germans had done she had spent many months becoming close friends with a young German officer from the 136 special Employment Division who had ministered antp during the occupation when I say close friends you understand what I’m saying to you he paused and took a deep breath as if he were trying to stop himself from sounding too emotional she is she was a very moral young woman but her husband Yan was arrested and shot by the Germans in 1942 and I think she believed that this was the best way she could take her revenge anyway one night this young German officer invited an to a party at Major General stalberg stalberg house he was the commanding officer of the 136 special Employment Division some of the German officers got drunk and started boasting that they would soon exterminate all of the resistance in antp he turned around in his seat to make sure that nobody else was listening and then he leaned forward and said they claimed they had brought in some kind of infection from Eastern Europe which would spread amongst the white Brigade and within 6 weeks it would kill us all still I didn’t reply and still the branch kept tapping at the window it sounded as if the wind was rising and I prayed that it wouldn’t start the rain the scent of screes was so much harder to follow in the wet Paul hanar said they didn’t seem to know exactly what this infection was but they were very excited about it apparently they had used it against the resistance in Poland and also in France they said that it had come from Romania I see any mention of mson vanak the night people as far as I’m concerned that was only an hysterical rumor it started to spread when people were discovered around the city with all of the blood drained out of them sometimes a whole family would be found in their apartment grandparents mothers and fathers even babies cut open and their hearts pulled out but in many cases their doors were locked on the inside and nobody could work out how anybody could have gotten in or out how do you think they were killed I don’t know I don’t believe in anything Supernatural once or twice some of our people who had gotten sick were seen by Witnesses in the vicinity of these tragedies but we never found any conclusive evidence that they were responsible I said quietly an was killed like that what they opened her up then they took out her heart and drained all the blood out of her Paul Han car’s mouth tightened but he didn’t say anything I watched him and smoked and eventually I said is there anything else you can tell me doesn’t matter how trivial you think it is it might help me to find out who killed her and then what after you found out who killed her that won’t bring her back I know but it might stop it from happening again he blew out smoke and Shrugged I know very little really an kept her ears open whenever she was in the company of German officers and once or twice she heard them discussing the killings especially the one on M the brothered Strat when 23 people died including two nuns the Germans never said anything to connect these massacres directly with the Romanian infection but on told me more than once that she had a feeling that they might be Associated one of the SS officers said something like at last the Romanians are being of some use to us and the sicker they are the more blood they want also one of our wireless operators managed to intercept some quoted messages which were sent to ANP from the sixth Army in Bucharest really we could only pick up bits and pieces but they kept referring to carriers in the sense of people who carry an infection these messages did they contain any names what do you mean Romanian names it could help us to find out what this infection actually is and where it came from as I remember only one Romanian name dorin du it came up times it was not completely clear because the messages were so fragmentary but it appeared that somebody called Dua was supposed to be assisting the operation in antp however we never came across any Dua so I doubt if he actually came here we keep a very close check on who comes into antp believe me and who leaves the boy arrived with a bottle of apple schnaps and a bottle of lemonade and two very small glasses Paul hanar immediately filled up his glass knocked it back and filled it up again if the Allies hadn’t taken the city there would have been no resistance left by Christmas what did you do when your people became infected I told you we isolated them broke off all contact we couldn’t jeopardize any of our operations so I could talk to some of them if I needed to Paul hanar Shrugged I think many of them got very sick indeed so maybe not how sick Paul hanar looked from left to right avoiding my eyes well they are dead now he said at last you understand for our own protection that we had to dispose of them how many alog together maybe 35 36 do you want to tell me you did it I don’t understand do you want to tell me how you disposed of them does it matter actually yes it matters a great deal he lifted his hand with his finger pointing like a pistol we shot them in the back of the head then we threw their bodies into the skel okay I was afraid of that wa did something wrong I shook my head you did what you thought was right I can’t blame you for that you think this was possibly easy all through the darkest times of the occupation we had trusted these same people with our very lives and they in their turn had implicitly trusted us they were not only friends but relatives some of them fathers and mothers brothers and sisters sure I didn’t like to tell him that shooting a screecher could only make things a thousand times worse the only saving grace was that they had thrown their bodies into the river we sat in silence for a while eventually Paul hanar picked up another paper napkin and blew his nose on it I am very sad about an he said she was always so careful not to compromise herself I always thought that she and I would both survive I’m sorry I said I didn’t think that I was old enough to tell him how obvious it was that he had loved her he finished his drink and stood up I have to go now I hope I have assisted you if you find the people who murdered her we will but you won’t find out about it besides what’s the point of telling an arivo jewelry designer who died in 1901 he nearly managed to smile you know the name Paul hanker I nodded I’m impressed I didn’t know Americans had such culture man trailing we left the hotel just as the pregnant looking longcase clock in the lobby chimed eight Frank was straining so hard in his leash that he sounded like a cinjun Squeeze Box it hadn’t rained hard but a fine wet Mist had descended over the city and the cobbles were all slippery and shiny I could hear heavy bombers somewhere in the distance but they were very far away drone drone drone then that crumpy bump crackle sound of anti-aircraft fire Corporal little said 36 of them sir Jesus do you know how far this could have spread half the city could be screechers by now I don’t want to think about it let’s just concentrate on picking up the scent from Marat we jolted our way back to on devou apartment building somebody had taken the dead horse away we were flagged down three times on the way by Canadian troops who wanted to check our papers so it took us almost 20 minutes before we arrived there us counterintelligence they asked half respectfully and half disdainfully some of them were so young that their cheeks were still pink we were admitted to number five by an old man in a saggy beige cardigan with a face the color of liver sausage Frank snapped furiously at the old man’s worn out slippers so that he almost had to dance upstairs to get away from him he won’t hurt you I reassured him I promise you he’s a friend to everyone I don’t have any friends who try to bite my feet the old man retorted it’s not your feet sir it’s your slippers he thinks they’re dead rats we allowed Frank to have a good snuffle around on deuter’s room we said nothing while he crossed from one side of the lolium to the other thrusting his head underneath the bed and into the curtained off space whereon devouts had hung her clothes he spent a long time licking the dried blood that was spattered over the floor blood hounds don’t identify sents with their noses but with their tongues I was hoping that the scates had left plenty of traces of saliva for him to pick up on when he was finished Frank sat up straight and made a whining sound in the back of his throat you ready Frank Frank Corporal little asked him said Frank we went back down the narrow staircase there was a light shining under V tet’s door but I didn’t want to disturb her the old man with the dead rat slippers was nowhere to be seen when he reached the bottom of the stairs Frank ignored the front door and turned sharp right heading toward the back of the building he led us past an Al Cove crammed with mops and brooms and strong smelling bleaches and up to a heavy oak door I pulled back the bolts and unlocked it and we stepped out into the fairy fine Mist told you I said out the back of the building and on to Kip Dorp Frank hurried through a low Archway on the opposite side of the yard where six or seven bicycles were propped up and then he hurried into the street his claws clattering Softly on the cobbles he hesitated for only a moment and then he turned right toward s yacob’s Mark and kipor brog every now and then he paused and looked around to make sure that we were following him I seriously believed that he thought we were like two stupid children and it was his responsibility to take care of us although the sidewalk was wet the scent of screechers must have been very strong because Frank went straight along the north side of Kip Dorp and there was none of his usual circling and sniffing and wuffling around I think we’ve got these Jokers sir said Corporal little triumphantly but when we reached kipor Brook Frank galloped straight up to the Sandstone wall of the maritime bank and stopped he looked upward and barked and then he turned back to us whining in frustration we looked upward too the Bank building was 17th century five stories high with a flat Flemish style facade apart from the window ledges there wasn’t a single hand hold between the sidewalk and the roof I looked at Corporal little and Corporal little looked at me we were both deeply impressed and frightened too they went straight up I said at least one of them anyhow we had known screechers to run up 20ft walls and jump from one sloping roof to another we had seen one run across a ceiling but we had never known one to climb up a sheer 100t building Frank kept returning to the wall and jumping up and barking good boy Corporal little told him pulling his ears good boy it’s not your fault you can’t climb walls it was difficult to know what to do next we could have located the manager of the maritime bank and have him open up for us so that we could follow the creatur’s trail across the roof but that could take us hours and in any case the screecher had probably climbed down the front of some other building and come back down to ground level my guess is this was a dead one I said Corporal little nodded he must have left a real strong trail behind him the way Frank’s getting himself so excited and if he could shimmy straight up the wall like that it’s worth checking though maybe he only climbed up part of the way and then jumped back down again I hunker down and opened up the kit I took out the compass and opened up its silver filigree lid the needle immediately swung around and pointed to the front of the Bank building when I held it up vertically it pointed directly upward there was no question about it our screecher had gone all the way up to the roof with no deviation like a rat up a drain pipe said Corporal little and Frank let out another expectant bark I swear that dog would have talked if he’d had the larynx for it as I was fitting the compass back into the kit how ever the needle started to creep back the other way in the direction of kipor brug it wasn’t an urgent swing but the needle was trembling a little the way it always did when screechers weren’t too far away look at this I told Corporal little shining my flashlight on it I don’t think all three of them went up the wall maybe only one of them I’m definitely picking up another Trail in this direction Corporal little took hold of Frank’s CER and tugged him away from the bank hear that boy more screechers go get them boy in the elephant house Frank was much less certain about this secondary Trail and he kept stopping and snorting and going back on himself now and then he got distracted and started to investigate a lamp post and Corporal little had to drag drag him away I kept the compass in my hand and even though the needle was just as hesitant as Frank and kept swinging from side to side there was no question that it was pointing in the general direction of Central Station and the anpa zoo maybe they thought they could get away by train Corporal little suggested I shook my head there’s no civilian trains running and even if they managed to ride a military train where were the go melin Brussels there’d be a very strong risk of them being caught if they tried to go South all of a sudden as he snuffled his way across the wide cobbled expanse of King ASD plane Frank must have picked up a much more definite scent because he started to run ahead of us with a curious lope his head down and his ears swinging by the time he had reached the steps of the Central Station he was Galloping so fast that Corp little and I could hardly keep up with him the Central Station was an extraordinary building like a richly decorated Renaissance palace with a high glass dome which covered the platforms and six elaborate spires the square in front of it was jam-packed with Canadian and British trucks as train loads of troops were unloaded from Brussels I can remember that night as if it were a dream trying to follow Frank through all of those jostling soldiers and Diesel smelling trucks all the lights and the shouting and the revving of engines some of the soldiers whistled at Frank and clapped their hands and called out here boy but Frank was mantrailing and he wasn’t going to be diverted by anything not even lonely young Canadian soldiers who were missing their dogs from home he didn’t run into the station instead he skirted around it and headed toward the entrance to the Ana Zoo we left the noise of the Central Station behind us and followed Frank to the zoo’s main entrance it was much quieter here although I could still hear the distant grumbling of artillery fire the zoo was in darkness but Frank ran straight through the turn Styles and disappeared Frank shouted Corporal little Frank you better come to heal boy or else there’s no more marrow bones for you we heard him bark but he didn’t come back then we heard him bark again even further away he’s found one for sure said Corporal little we better get after him then I opened the stud of my holster and tugged out my Colt 45 automatic this was only the third time since we had landed in Normandy that I’d taken it out and I had never fired it at anyone it was loaded with bullets that had allegedly been cast from the putor goblets from which the disciples had drunk during the Last Supper so it wasn’t the kind of weapon that you would fire indiscriminately but the zoo grounds were impenetrably black and very extensive nearly 25 acres of Parkland and trees and animal houses and if there were screechers here I didn’t want to be caught by surprise Corporal little and I climbed awkwardly over the turn Styles and made our way along the path to the mock Egyptian Square where the elephant house stood our flat FL lights made Shadows jump across the buildings like hopping hunchbacks and a couple of times I was tempted to fire Frank called Corporal little in a horse stage whisper Frank where the hell are you you disobedient mut we heard him bark again and this time his bark echoed like somebody shouting in a swimming pool he’s in there said Corporal little shining his flashlight on the elephant house there were no ele elephants in there of course when the Germans had first entered antp the zoo staff had shot all of the animals elephants Tigers gorillas giraffes in case they broke out of their cages and escaped apart from that there was little enough food for the human population let alone animals we entered the elephant house cautiously with our weapons raised it was like walking into Tutton Common’s tomb The Columns were gilded and decorated with a canthus leaves and Egyptian hieroglyphs had been painted all over the walls it was also dark and smelly and the tiled floor was gritty and wet so that our boots made a scrunching noise Frank called Corporal little Frank turned around and we saw his yellow eyes reflected in our flashlights like some kind of hound from Hell there said Corporal little cowering in the corner one hand clinging onto the bars of an elephant pen the other hand raised to Shield his face from my flashlight s a creature he was tall and emaciated with thinning brown hair and a palid bony face he was wearing a dirty gray Overcoat with a deluge of brown stains down the front of it and a cheap brown business suit and his shoes had holes in the soles most people would have passed him on the street but without a Second Glance but Corporal little and I had seen enough screechers to recognize him immediately for what he was it was the way he couldn’t look directly at the light and the way that his eyeballs kept darting from side to side like cockroaches he looked anxious and scheming rather than terrified like most of the creatures we’d encountered he’d obviously believed that humans couldn’t kill him no matter what we did to him but he did know know that we could hurt him what he was looking for with his Shifty little eyes was a way to escape well well I said walking right up to him I sniffed and I could smell the unmistakable odor of rotting poultry and dried dill where are your friends then he said nothing so I holstered my 45 knelt down on the floor and opened up the kit I took out the shiny silver mirror and held it up at an angle so that I could see his face in it contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies or read about in Dracula screechers are clearly visible in mirrors the only difference is that pure silver doesn’t reflect evil so the mirror showed me this creature as he used to be before he was infected sometimes of course you can make a mistake and a smelly homely looking character that you suspected of being his creature looks just as homely in the mirror in that case you apologize and let him go on his way without banging Nails into his eyes but what I saw in the mirror that night in the anpa zoo was a goodlooking young man in his mid-30s with wide apart eyes and a heavy jaw he looked German or Austrian or maybe Swiss I repeated waving my flashlight from from side to side to Dazzle him if you tell me where your friends are I might be able to save your life if you don’t then I won’t have any choice I’ll have to kill you here and now the screecher kept his hands held up in front of his face and didn’t answer me Frank barked at him but even Frank was sensible enough not to go too close the screecher may have looked like a down andout but I knew from experience that he was quite capable of ripping Frank’s head off with his bare hands I’m giving you one last chance I said in German I took out my pistol again and pointed it directly at his heart we can save you give you back the life you used to have before think of it your family your sweetheart all you have to do is tell us where your friends are I was lying of course I didn’t know if it was possible to return this creature to normality even if we were to give him a mass of blood transfusion we had never tried every screecher by his very nature had committed mass murder so we had never had much incentive okay then I told him I cocked my pistol and gripped it with both hands even if I hit him directly in the heart it wouldn’t kill him but it would stop him long enough for us to put the thumb screws on him and prevent him from escaping I was just about to fire when the screecher suddenly performed a backward somersault then he performed another and another right up the bars of the elephant cage until he reached the ceiling over 30 ft above our heads I fired two deafening shots but the ceiling was vaed and I was terrified of ricochets the screecher crawled quickly across it clambering over the vaulting like a huge brown spider heading for the entrance Frank started barking again and Corporal little took out his pistol too but I shouted at him no as the screechers scuttled upside down across the ceiling I took the silver wire whip out of the kit and flicked it so that it unraveled the whip was heavy and springy and jumped around with a tensile life of its own I swung it back and lashed out with it catching the screecher just as he reached the architrave around the door there was a small Barbed grappling hook on the end of the Whip and it snatched at his coat I yank the whip hard but his coat tore and the hook came free Frank was hurling himself up and down barking insanely Corporal little maneuvered himself until he was right beneath the doorway his pistol raised ey lashed out again and this time the grappling hook caught the screecher in the back of the head bearing itself in his scalp he cried out in pain and reached around with one hand trying to pull the hook loose it was then that I gave another yank and and he lost his grip in the ceiling and slammed onto the floor on his back immediately while the screecher was still concussed Corporal little and I seized his arms and wrenched off his Overcoat we pulled off his coat his shirt and his pants I hated this part of the job Liv screechers always stank of Decay like that chicken you should have cooked the day before yesterday and their skin had a chilly greasiness about it which took carbolic soap and very hot water to wash off like all screechers this one was dead white with a slightly bruised look across his abdomen and his inner thighs The Telltale sign of internal putri faction even before we had finished stripping him he started to come too his head lulled from side to side and he coughed and said something that sounded like German although I couldn’t understand what it was then he twisted his back and tried to flap at Corporal little with his right arm without hesitation I took the thumb screws out of the kit and fastened them tightly so that his hands were forcibly held up in front of his bony chest then I pinioned his big toes together with the toe screws in English he said what what are you doing what are you doing I will kill you I gave you an 18 karat golden opportunity didn’t I I retorted all you had to do was tell us where your your friends are hiding go to hell my friends will hunt you down and they will cut you open like pigs oink oink Corporal little taunted him between us we dragged him across to one of the Egyptian style pillars he was wriggling and struggling and trying to bite us and he was unnaturally strong considering how wasted he looked it took a whole lot of grunting and shoving to press him up against the pillar but while Corporal little held him in position I wound the whip around him six or seven times and made it fast the silver wire cut into his skin as if it were candle wax all right then I panded I’m going to ask you again where are your friends hiding you think that I will tell you anything he said speaking in German again he spat at me although I was too far away and the thick saliva ended up swinging from his chin listen I warned him I don’t want to hurt you fella but if you won’t cooperate go to head I went over to the kit and took out the dental forceps then I came straight back to the screecher and gripped his nose tightly in my left hand so that he couldn’t breathe he tried to waggle his head from side to side but I held him fast he protested trying to keep his mouth closed but he couldn’t keep his lips together for longer than a minute and a half when he opened them gasping for breath I immediately fored fored my thumb under his upper lip then I gripped his left front inzer with the dental forceps and wrenched it hard his gum made a sharp cracking noise and welled up with blood but the tooth was reluctant to come out I had to jerk the forceps backward and forward three or four more times before I managed to extract it altoe immediately I gripped his right front inzer and started to tug that too he choked as I pulled the tooth out by its roots without hesitating I moved the forceps across to his canines you want me to stop I asked him he said nothing but coughed so that a fine spray of blood covered his chest okay maybe you need something more persuasive what do you think Corporal something more persuasive that’s good to me think of all the innocent people he must have killed that’s right like on dev doubters now why did you and your friends want to murder and devouts I told you to go to hell the screecher spluttered well yes you did but you and I have to talk first and you have to tell me what I need to know you can’t kill me what is that what they told you you can hurt me as much as you like but you can never kill me when you have been lying in the cemetery for a hundred years I will still be alive to piss on Your Grave sorry pal I told him I hate to be the one to break this to you but somebody’s been shooting you a line not only can I kill you but I can kill you in such a way that you will wish you had never been born the screechers spat out more blood you’re lying I’ll prove it to you that’s unless you tell me where your friends are the screechers struggled against the silver wire but he succeeded only in cutting himself so that blood ran down his skinny white thighs when I thought back on it after the war I sometimes found it hard to believe that I could have treated anybody with such cruelty even a screecher but then I remembered all the times we broke into houses in France and Belgium and the Netherlands and found heaps of men men women and children massacred so that the creatures could feed on them when I remembered that the smell and the Flies and the tangles of pitiful bodies what I was doing by comparison seemed almost restrained I took the bottle of holy oil from the kit unsted it and held it up in front of the screature face with this oil I Thee anoint I told him you think that scares me you no I don’t in fact I don’t think you or your friends are scared of anything which makes you very dangerous and because you’re so dangerous that makes me all the more determined to kill you I poured about a tablespoon full of oil over the screecher head so that it ran down his face and dripped from the end of his nose he shuddered and took a deep snorting breath to him in his state of utter unh Holiness consecrated oil would have felt scalding I took hold of his oily hair and twisted it up into a point like the wick of a candle then Corporal little stepped forward and handed me his Zippo last chance I said flipping back the lid you could save yourself a whole lot of pain here believe me the screecher said nothing so I snapped the lighter into Flame the screecher stared at me with such venomous hatred that I wished that I had blindfolded him I’m going to count to three I told him then you’re going to burn like a church candle I’ll do the counting for you he said I F try now do whatever you have to do I lit his hair and immediately the whole of his scalp caught fire his hair shriveled and his skin blistered and even his ears were a light he managed to bear it for nearly 5 Seconds without moving and without crying out and he even managed to keep his eyes open but then the oil on his face burst into flame and he closed his eyes tight shut and screamed I had never heard a man scream like that before it sounded just like a French woman in Normandy whose legs had been crushed by a Sherman tank three soldiers had pulled her out but her legs had stayed where they were the screecher tossed his head wildly from side to side which only had the effect of Fanning the flames and making them burn more fiercely he screamed and screamed for nearly half a minute but then he stopped screaming and let his head fall back against the pillar the Flames died down and he was left smoldering his whole head blackened and raw his lips inor enormously swollen and his nostrils clogged with blood I used the Zippo to light a cigarette I waited for a while smoking and then the screecher slowly opened his eyes now that smarts doesn’t it I asked him you can’t kill me he said his voice thick with pain oh yes I can you want to know how you can’t kill me whatever you do I reached into the kit and produced the nails you see these do you know what these are these are the same nails that the Romans used to nail Christ to the cross and do you know what I’m going to do with them I’m going to hammer them into your eyes and right into your brain that won’t kill you I admit but it will have the effect of paralyzing you so that you won’t be able to stop me from doing what I’m going to do next I’m going to cut your head off with this saw and I’m going to take your body to the calvary Garden of St paulus Kirk and I’m going to bury it there because I have special dispensation from the Dominican monks to do that then I’m going to take your head and I’m going to boil it until the flesh falls off and your brains turn into broth and that is how I kill people like you whatever you do we will have our revenge on you I can promise you that I smoked my cigarette right down to the very last eighth of an inch and then I stepped on it Corporal little I said how about passing me that Holy oil again Corporal little did what I asked him I took the stopper off the oil and said this is what we call burning the candle at both ends just our little joke with that I poured oil between his legs all over his Scraggy pubic hair and his penis and relit Corporal little Zippo the screecher stared at the flame out of his swollen half closed eyes I want you to know that I am doing this simply for the pleasure of it I told him I don’t care whether you tell me where your friend are or not I’m going to kill you whatever I just want to hurt you as much as I possibly can before I do Corporal little was holding his collar but Frank made a strangled whining noise and scrabbled his claws on the floor as if he wanted to get away I don’t know if that was what convinced the screature that I was serious but he suddenly said 71 skiler Strat on the corner of Carl H Strat they’re hiding in the Attic how many of them two a German called Pelt and a Romanian called duka is duka the Dead one dead what do you mean he’s not dead what I’m asking you is is duo or Mort I still don’t understand what you mean Corporal little said sounds like this guy doesn’t even know half of what he was getting himself into oh I think he has the general idea it’s just that they didn’t fill him in on all the Gory details they promised you that you’d live forever didn’t they that’s what they said they said you were going to be a hero and turn back the tide of War I’ll bet they offered to pay your family a fortune too take care of your folks and your girlfriend what are you going to do now asked the screecher what do you think I’m going to do now you said you could give me back the life I had before did I did I really say that you promised me that if I told you where my friends were you would let me go well that was very stupid of me wouldn’t you say because I have no way of checking if your friends are really where you say they are or not I swear that I am telling you the truth 71 kilder Strat fourth floor in the Attic what’s your name I asked him Ernst Ernst Hower he said almost as if he could barely remember where do you come from the reinstein fort it’s a village near monster in vest Fallen why after the war I went to right your family and tell them where you died I think they deserve that much not how you died of course they wouldn’t want to know that but where you’re really going to kill me aren’t you I nodded it’s what I do ears it’s what I came here for Corporal little handed me the Mallet and one of the nails I positioned the nails so that the point was only a half inch away from the screecher eyeball I can’t tell you that I regret doing this I told him the plain truth is that I don’t the Stations of the Cross father Antonius opened the small garden door at the side of St paus Kirk on the corner of V Mar and swort suster stth and the hinges shuddered as if they were in pain father Antonius was Bal and almost comically ugly with enormous ears and drooping jowels so that he looked as if he were distantly related to Frank I didn’t expect you so soon Captain he told me in a thick flemy voice in fact to be truthful I didn’t expect you at all well God was on our side and we caught up with one of them at the zoo you asked father Antonius making a Cutthroat gesture with his finger we have his body in the back of the Jeep is it okay to bring it in Father Antonius didn’t look at all happy but he said yes we agreed so yes I will make sure that we bury it right away Corporal little and I went back to the Jeep between us we lifted the rough Hessian sack off the back seat and carried it through the gate and into the Cavalry Garden at this time of the night the garden was a deeply unsettling place to visit not only because of its Gothic arches and its dark shadowy corners but because it was crowded with 63 life-sized statues depicting Christ’s Journey To The Cross culminating in a crucifixion on top of a Stone Mound the figures stared at us blindly as we shuffled between them like a pair of grave robbers the sack in which we had tied up the screecher body swung heavily between us and my end of it was soaked in blood up above us search lights flicked nervously across the sky although the night was unusually quiet and there was no sound of bomber engines or artillery fire here said father Antonius pointing to an open area of grass if you leave him here we will do the rest thank you Father I lowered my end of the sack and wiped my hands on my handkerchief there may be two more we’ve been given an address but we’re not yet sure if it’s genuine father Antonius crossed himself I wish you God’s protection in your work I don’t pretend to understand what you are doing I don’t even know if I believe in such things but these have been terrible days and anything which could help to bring them to an end a bitter wind was blowing across the Cavalry Garden as we walked back between the silent Stone figures and Dead Leaves rattled against the walls Corporal little said when are we going after the other two sir not until it gets light if they’re hiding where ER said they were hiding I don’t think that they’ll have tried to make a break for it yet they’re probably still waiting for poor old erns to come back we closed the garden gate behind us and climbed in the Jeep on the floor in front of the back seats was a cardboard box which had originally contained cans of condensed milk one corner of the box was stained dark brown let’s just make sure that he never can come back shall we Frank barked and shook his head so that his ears made a flapping noise Ground Zero I slept until well past 0700 hours which I hadn’t done for months most nights I had terrifying dreams about Shadows chasing after me and I woke up with a jolt while it was still dark one of the hotel maids tapped on my door and came in with a pot of coffee and two bread rolls with red plum preserve she was a shy young girl plump with a pattern of moles on her cheek what’s your name I asked her I could see myself in the closet mirror and my hair was sticking up like a cocko Hilda she whispered well Hilda maybe you could open the drapes for me so that I can see what kind of a day it is it’s raining sir it’s a bad luck day A bad luck day what makes you say that it’s Friday the 13th you’re not superstitious are you she shook her head but then she said one of the girls downstairs thinks that you’re a toar toar is Flemish for a black magician the girl must have seen my Bibles and my crucifixes and all the paraphernalia of screecher hunting no I’m not a toar tell her I’m AAR auh halar is a conjurer the kind who pulls rabbits out of Opera hats and strings of of colored bunting out of his ears yes sir she tugged back the heavy velvet curtains and she was right the sky was gloomy and the window was speckled with raindrops you should be careful today sir I’m always careful here I reached over to the ashtray on my night table and fished out a couple of Franks to give her a tip I met up with Corporal little and Frank in the lobby downstairs the hotel was bus in with activity because some of the British were leaving outside Ker’s thr was crowded with jeeps and trucks and British tomies wearing rain capes you had something to eat Henry I asked Corporal little sure thing Frank and I shared some sausage you know what the belgians put in those sausages hate to think sir reconstituted Nazis with additional cereal Corporal little had parked around the corner we climbed into the Jeep and maneuvered our way towards skild throt Frank took the rain as a personal insult and kept shaking himself impatiently number 71 was a tall gray building right on the corner of Carl roio Strat the downstairs windows were covered with grimy lace curtains and all of the upstairs windows were shuddered Corporal little parked halfway up the curb and we went to to the brown painted front door and knocked the knocker was cast in Bronze in the shape of a snarling wolf a knocker like that was supposed to keep demons out of the house but if Ernst Hower had been telling us the truth it certainly hadn’t worked here we knocked three times before the door was opened a plain young woman in a white muslin cap and a plain brown dress stood in front of us holding a mop from inside the house a I could smell bleach and fish boiling we’re looking for three men I told her holding out my identity card you have anybody staying here nobody now only my grandfather how about before before yes we had five Germans here before the Allies came and another man but they’re all gone now another man I don’t know what he was he didn’t speak German I don’t know what language it was he used to talk to us sometimes and I think he was asking us questions but we didn’t understand maybe he said something like bua dimina or NOA or mesque yes that word mumes he was always saying that can you tell me what he looked like this man the girl looked embarrassed he was tall taller than you with dark hair combed straight back what else can you tell me about him I mean if I were to see him in the street how would I recognize him she lowered her eyes he was very handsome my mother’s friends used to come round for tea in the hope that he would be here really if he pass them in the hallway they would start to giggle what kind of handsome would you say did he remind you of anybody a movie star maybe well I know it sounds funny but if you can imagine Mar has a man instead of a woman High cheeks very proud looking also he spoke very warm if you understand me always looking you right in your eyes so you did mind if you didn’t know what he was saying his eyes were green like the sea and he had a scar on the side of his forehead like a vshape I gave corpal little a brief translation of what the girl had said and the Corporal grinned and shook his head sounds like this young lady didn’t exactly fail to be swept off her feet either she didn’t happen to notice his sock size by any chance I turned back to the girl did this this man ever tell you his name no but I heard one of the Germans call him her doctor what were the Germans like horrible I hated both of them they kept coughing as if they were ill and they always smelt bad Frank picking up anything I asked Corporal little not so far sir but it’s been raining all night do you think there’s any possibility that these men may still be here I asked the girl what do you mean could they still be hiding in the house in the Attic maybe their rooms are empty I had to clean them after they left do you think we could possibly take a look around I don’t know my mother isn’t here she won’t be back for an hour we wouldn’t disturb anything I promise you she doesn’t even like me to answer the door door it was only because you wouldn’t stop knocking okay then we wouldn’t like to get you into any trouble we’ll go find ourselves a cup of coffee and come back later she smiled and said danu and I can still see that smile now and her white linen cap and her hand holding the mop we drove to a cafe at the far end of Carl roist Strat there there were chairs and tables set out on the sidewalk but because it was raining there was nobody sitting there except for one old man he was Sheltering under the dark green awning smoking a Miram pipe Corporal little tied Frank to the cast iron umbrella stand and we went inside the interior was very gloomy even though there were decorative mirrors on every wall behind the bar an old Marone Wireless was playing I’ll seeing you we sat down in the corner lit up cigarettes and asked for two filter coffees the proprietor was a fat middle-aged man in a floorlength apron every time he turned toward the window the gray Morning Light reflected from his glasses so that he looked as if he had Pennies on his eyes you know what today is I asked Corporal little breathing smoke at that instant there was a deafening Bang louder than a thunder clap instantly followed by another one the cafe windows cracked diagonally from side to side and everything in the whole place rattled and shook we both stood up just as a huge Billow of brown smoke came rolling along Carol Rock his Strat immediately followed by a shower of bricks chairs torn fragments of sheet metal window frames curtains roof tiles and even more bricks we hurried to the doorway Frank was cowering behind a plant pot his eyes wide trembling debris was still falling from the sky including a huge metal cylinder that looked like an old-fashioned kitchen stove it bounced and bounded over the cobbles and slammed into an office doorway across the street Jesus said corpal little who never blasphemed what the hell was that I looked down towards kilder Strat through the gradually clearing smoke I could see that number 71 had been completely demolished along with three or four houses on the other side the whole intersection had been reduced to mountains of rubble and bodies were lying everywhere a young woman in a black coat with an overturned baby carriage an elderly couple whose heads had both been blown off six or seven nuns who must have been walking on the opposite side of the street lying on top of each other like dead pigeons the cobbles were strewn with body parts and blown apart sofas and a black citen taxi that looked like some surrealistic Panther standing on its hind legs all of the windows within a 100 yard radius had been blown out and in some houses fires were blazing I walked slowly down the street and stood on the edge of the crater that had been number 71 the crater was almost 20 ft deep as as if the house had been hit by a meteor I was still Deaf from the double blast so it was like walking through a silent movie with the rain falling and people running in all directions I turned around Corporal little had been following me with Frank he said something but I couldn’t hear what it was and then he Shrugged I knew what he was trying to tell me though if there had been screechers hiding in the Attic they had been obliterated along with the rest of the house and the young girl’s grandfather and the young girl herself with her white linen cap and her mop for the first time since we had landed in Normandy I felt that I wasn’t the sole representative of the Angel of Death I’ll be seeing you so what’s the plan now sir asked corporal little God knows I told him I was still half deaf we were sitting in one of the Dank Stone alos in De CLA Cafe on Old corn Mark eating chicken V zoy and potatoes the cafe was converted from a 13th century Cellar and it was lit only by candles in small glass jelly jars it was so cold that we were both wearing our overcoats and mittens and our breath was smoking Frank was lying under the table making disgusting noises with a pork knuckle I mean supposing those other two screechers weren’t hading in that building at all we only have that Hower guy’s word for it after all well you’re absolutely right Henry but it’s going to take days to clear all that rubble and even then we may not know for sure what do you reckon it was gas m i Shrugged and said nothing but I had guessed what it was the instant I had heard that distinctive double bang the house in skiler Strat had been hit by the first German V2 to strike the center of antp the first bang was a sonic boom as the rocket came out of the sky at over three times the speed of sound the second was over a ton of high explosive 6 days before a V2 had hit the village of cross chot about 8 km to the northeast of antp and all of us officers in 101 Counter Intelligence Detachment had been briefed that this was probably a rangef finding shot with more V2s to follow the stove like object that had bounced along the street had confirmed it for me it was the Rockets combustion chamber which weighed over 600 kilos and almost always survived the explosion I lifted up a Scraggy piece of chicken leg on the end of my fork with a shred of wet leak hanging off it what do you think they fed this on newspaper a second V2 landed on the city in the middle of the afternoon when Corporal little and I were walking along kaser Strat Frank did a four-legged jump and cowed against the nearest wall it’s okay boy corpal little reassured him but Frank never did get used to the side mic shock of V2 explosions which made the cobblestones knock together like pebbles on the beach if blood hounds are capable of having nervous breakdowns poor old frank got pretty close to it that Sunday October 15 a rocket destroyed 25 houses on kunun Strat at borgerhout killing four people and injuring a 100 more over the next few days more and more V2s hit the city center there was a total news blackout nothing on the wireless and nothing in the newspapers except vague warnings about flying bombs so nobody knew what was really happening the city authorities were desperate to avoid any panic and just as importantly they didn’t want the Germans to find out whether their Rockets were hitting their targets or not after the schilder Strat attack Corporal little and Frank and I spent three more weeks in antp searching for any Trace of the Romanian screecher and his German companion just in case Ernst Hower had been lying to us or they had been hiding in some other house when the V2 struck but after we had dragged Frank up and down every Rubble strewn Street and every smelly Alley between Prince thrat and long and thrat and talked to more than 200 people including police officers and hospital orderlies and Priests we finally had to conclude that they had either left antp and returned to Germany or else that first V2 had simply atomized them as the winter grew colder and colder and the Germans retreated we were sent into Holland we visited houses in einhoven and brda and tilberg and found the grizzly evidence that screechers had been there men women and children with their hearts cut out and all of the blood drained out of them but the screechers themselves had long gone and they had left no trail that Frank could usefully follow whenever I think of that winter I think of finger num numbing cold and skies as dark as lead I think of desperate tiredness and boredom driving miles and miles between Avenues of popper trees and seeing nobody for hours it felt as if the war had passed us by and we were completely alone in the world on on the morning of January 16 1945 a message came through Brussels that my mother had died and that I should return home immediately operation screature was over as far as I was concerned anyway because I was never sent back to Europe Corporal little was ordered to take Frank back to antp where he could help the Belgian Rescue Services to locate buried bodies the city was still under daily attack from V2 rockets and already more than 3 and a half thousand people had been killed the last time I saw Corporal little and Frank was on the long Stone mole at zga Harbor where I was due to board a British troop ship it was the middle of the afternoon and it was snowing hard the lighthouse on the end of the mole was back in action and every now and then the snow was illuminated by a bright sweeping light well Henry it’s been an experience yes sir it has he hesitated for a moment and then he said think we did any good sir I don’t know I guess we never will I can’t see us going into the history books can you no sir but we’ll remember it you and me and Frank Frank made that whining noise in his throat and irritably shook the snowflakes from his back I shook corpal Little’s hand and walked back along the mole to the dock side somewhere in some alternative existence I think that I’m still walking along it now with the lighthouse flashing on and off and the snow falling all around me and the bang and clatter of crane still echoes in my ears I didn’t yet know how my mother had died but I was already feeling a devastating loneliness as if I had lost not only the the woman who had given birth to me but part of my ancestry too mil Valley 1943 I was swinging in the hammock in my parents backyard when my father came walking through the overgrown grass and said there’s two military guys want to talk to you I sat up a little and shaded my eyes with my hand two middle-aged men in sharply pressed army uniforms were standing by the kitchen steps with their hats tucked under their arms one had a silvery gray crew cut and the other had horn rimed glasses and a heavy black mustache they wouldn’t tell me what they wanted said my father if you prefer me to say that you’re not at home well I’m more than happy to you know my views on the military my father was what you might call a professional non-conformist he always reminded me of grouo marks in horse feathers when he sang whatever it is I’m against it he looked a little like grocho Marx too in his slopy shouldered Cardigans and his baggy corduroy pants with his pipe always sticking out of the side of his mouth he was professor of Slavic languages and literature at Berkeley but he was also a writer and a fly fisherman and when he played the piano on summer evenings with the Parlor windows open his music was so sentimental that he could make you choke up the officer with the Silvery gray crew cut raised one hand and called out James Falcon Jr need to talk to you sir I looked at my father and my father Shrugged I clambered out of the hammock catching my foot so that I staggered on one leg for the first couple of Paces but I managed to hold on to the Apple I’d been eating the officers approached me I’m Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth bullo and this is Major Leonard Harvey they stood with their backs like Ram rods and they almost had me standing up straight not long ago I found some photographs of myself that my brother took around that time and you’ve never seen such a skinny lanky 25-year-old streak in your life in a baggy pair of jeans and a striped shirt that was five times too big for me we need to talk in private said Lieutenant Colonel bover he didn’t look at my father and at first my father didn’t understand what he was saying this is just about as private as you can get he said taking his pipe out of his mouth there isn’t another house for half a mile hey we could beat a pig to death with baseball bats and nobody would hear us Lieutenant Colonel bullo looked at him as if he were mentally efficient when I say private sir I mean that I need to talk to your son confidentially on his own oh oh what for and this family doesn’t have secrets that’s as may be served but this is wartime and this country has Secrets oh my father hesitated for a moment and then he put his pipe back in his mouth and walked away across the grass jerkily turning around now and again as if half expecting us to call him back eventually he climbed the steps and disappeared into the kitchen the screen door banged Lieutenant Colonel bullo placed his hand in the small of my back and gently steered me down toward the far end of the yard where the Tangled raspberry canes grew it was very hot and still that day and I remember that everything looked magnified as if I were seeing it through a lens major Harvey and I were attached to the office of the coordinator of information in Washington DC about 3 weeks ago we received some information from a resistance agent in Belgium he confirms something that our intelligence agents have been suspecting since the early days of the war in Europe oh yes major Harvey cleared his throat with a single sharp bark Mr fcan what Lieutenant Colonel bullsh over is a about to tell you now is absolutely top secret that means you are prohibited from divulging any of this information to anybody your father your mother your best friend even your family cat if we discover that you have been giving anybody else even the faintest hint of what we’re going to discuss with you you may discover that your life is forfeit what you’ll be shot said major Harvey I stared at him in disbelief I’ll be shot are you serious in that case excuse me I don’t want to hear it you have to hear it James said Lieutenant Colonel bover firmly then in a quieter tone you have to you’re the only person we’ve been able to find who seems to have a comprehensive knowledge of the particular problem we’re faced with the only person of an appropriate age anyhow I don’t understand I don’t know anything about any military stuff I know that but you know all about these with that Lieutenant Colonel bullo reached inside his coat and produced a sharply folded sheath of papers I didn’t have to open them to recognize what they were they were tear sheets of my paper the stoy myth versus reality in popular Romanian folk culture I had written it for my anthropology exam in the summer and Professor Yuan had been so impressed with it that he had submitted it to the North American Journal of ethnography admittedly the journal’s circulation was only a little over 2,500 copies so it wasn’t exactly like being published in Life Magazine but it was the first article I had ever gotten into print and I was seriously proud of it I even had some cards printed James Z fcan Jr author and Anthropologist and handed them out to all of my friends until my father told me to stop acting so swell-headed the stoy I said cautiously I was strongly beginning to suspect this was a practical joke set up by some of my friends at Berkeley what through the stro have to do with the war in Europe more than you’d think in August of 1940 under the terms of the Vienna dictat Germany forced Romania to give up the territory of Northern Transylvania to Hungary which Hungary had been claiming for centuries was theirs well sure I know that what you may not know is that the Romanians would have had to surrender Southern Transylvania too but they made some kind of offer to the Germans which the Germans accepted and they allowed them to keep it major Harvey said we’ve been trying for three years to find out exactly what this offer was it was Cod named um Arun which didn’t mean anything to us at the beginning um Arun I repeated Embrace that’s right and how many times does the word Embrace appear in your article James 47 to be exact and according to what you’ve written here here the Embrace is the way in which the stoy initiate humans into becoming one of them I Shrugged could be a coincidence I mean Embrace that’s a pretty common word wouldn’t you say you can embrace all kinds of things you know like a religion or a philosophy or your Nextdoor neighbor’s wife true and the Romanians embraced Nazism they still chose to fight on the German side even though the Germans made them surrender all of that territory but after we received this report from Belgium we’re pretty sure now that Embrace means something very specific we think it’s the kind of embrace that you were writing about I kept a straight face for about 10 seconds longer and then I burst out laughing God you guys are good you even sound like you know what you’re talking about who set this up I’ll bet it was strad later wasn’t it tell me it was stradlater James said Lieutenant Colonel bover but I interrupted him how many times does the word Embrace appear in your article James I mimicked him 47 to be exact you’re excellent look at you standing there like you both have pool cues stuck up your asses Lieutenant Colonel bullo waited until I had finished then as if I hadn’t said anything at all he continued since February last year James we’ve been receiving reports of some very unusual killings they started in Romania more than 60 members of the Red Knights resistance group were murdered all within the space of a week that immediately deprived us of vital intelligence and it drastically reduced our ability to sabotage the Nazi war effort from within I looked at him with my eyes narrowed come on now this is a joke isn’t it not for the victims and not for the Allies if this continues come on admit it if it wasn’t strad later who was it not dunan dunan wouldn’t have the brains James said major Harvey it wasn’t any of your friends and it isn’t a joke all right I said although I still believed that they were bullshitting me what does any of this have to do with me since the Red Knights were all murdered we’ve been receiving more and more intelligence which suggests that the Nazis have been infiltrating local resistance groups and literally wiping them out it happened all across the Eastern Front especially after they took bz Arabia and bukovina back from the Russians now is happening in Holland and Belgium and France the reason why this has everything to do with you is that all of the victims had their chests cut open their main arteries severed and the blood drained out of their bodies dinner with the Falcons that evening my mother made Boris sour meatball soup which was one of the Specialties of her Village in northeastern Romania we sat and ate it it in the kitchen with the windows open so that the last of the sun Shone across the table my mother Mar chica was beautiful in a darkhaired white-skinned way like a Madonna in a church painting she did everything gently and gracefully she could even peel apples gracefully their skins unwinding in spirals she always spoke softly too although the quietness of her voice bellied a very strong character dad was fuming he didn’t like secrets and he didn’t like anything to do with authority his father had been a biochemist and a violin player and had knitted his own sweaters mostly green with orange zigzags he had brought Dad up to believe that a man was answerable only to his own intellect and God in that order you can’t even give us a hint what they want you to do your own family I shook my head they said if I told anybody even you they’d shoot me oh my God said my mother they threatened you they come here uninvited into my house and threatened to shoot you my son in my yard hey it’s my house too my father protested and my son and my yard come to that we should complain to the Army said my mother they said I have to go to to Washington next week I told her they’re going to pay my fair and everything they can’t coer you said my father is this why we pay taxes tell them you don’t want to go to Washington I spooned a meatball out of my soup but I do want to go to Washington I think this is going to be really really interesting I see it’s so interesting you can’t tell us what it is Dad not only will they shoot me they’ll probably shoot you too P said my father pushing his chair back in disgust the same way he did when I beat him at chess but my mother was staring at me across the table and there was a look in her eyes which told me that she had guessed why the Army had come looking for me after all what was the one thing that made me different from all the rest of my college friends I had a Romanian mother who had told me all kinds of scary Romanian folktales when I was little none of my friends had been brought up on stories of stoy and struga the creatures of the night and none of my friends had researched Romanian Legends as thoroughly as I had and published a paper on them I have to admit that I decided to write a paper on stoy out of perversity almost as a joke everybody in my class thought that I was a clown including my professors and I guess I decided to live up to their expectations it’s difficult to grow up normal when your father expects you to recite Edward Arlington Robinson to amuse his lunch guests when you’re only four years old and your mother sings You Romanian lullabies about what will happen to you if you betray love if you betray love you will squirm like a snake walk like a beetle and you will own nothing but the dust of the land the stoi even though she told me so many stories about them my mother never gave me the impression that she actually believed in the sto and she was brought up in tanaku where they still cross themselves if a crow flies down their chimney or a black dog urinates against their gate po as recently as the summer of 2005 a priest from the Holy Trinity Monastery in tanaku strangled and crucified a nun because he thought she was possessed by demons to begin with I didn’t believe in the stoy either but like I say I thought it would be a terrific wee to write a paper that discussed them as if they were real only two or 3 weeks after I had started work on it however I I began to come across credible documentary evidence that the stoy might be more than imaginary letters newspaper reports even some blurry old photographs I couldn’t help asking myself what if they did exist even more intriguing what if they still do I studied the stroy for nearly two years I made scores of phone calls and talked in person to more than 200 remain immigrants of all ages I searched through private libraries and smelly old collections of rare books without realizing it day by day I was becoming one of the world’s greatest experts on stoi one of the elderly Romanian immigrants I interviewed for my college paper talked to me about his cousin who became aoy Mort he was the handsomest man you ever met tall wiy and irresistible to women but he could be very melancholy too once when he came to visit us I saw him standing by the window and there were tears in his eyes I asked him what was wrong and he said look he reached out his hand and it passed straight through the glass of the window pane without breaking it I could actually see his hand outside the window still with his gold wedding band on it then he drew his hand back in again and the glass was completely intact I felt a chill like nothing I had ever felt before he said I am dead Daniel and I can never go home again ever it was this man who first drew me a picture of the wheel which the stoy Morty wear around their necks a diagonal cross to symbolize a kiss with a circle around it to represent endlessness usually the stoy Morty fashion the wheels themselves they use gold from any rings they wore when they were still human with copper to enhance its electrical conductivity the wheel is much more than symbolic it gives the stoy Morty exceptional night vision and it contains the protective power of absolute evil several respected academics suggest that JRR tolken was inspired by the wheel when he wrote The Lord of the Rings and that the physical and spiritual degeneration of Gollum is a close parallel to what happens to people when they become infected by stroy you remember that gollum’s eyes lit up so that he could see better in the dark just like the stoy Morty when they wear the Wheel by the time I had finished writing my paper I still hadn’t conclusively proved that the stroy did exist like I had never knowingly met one but I had a wealth of anecdotal evidence that they might I ended up my paper by saying on balance it appears highly likely that the stoy did once haunt the remoter Regents of Transylvania and vakia and a few may do so even today and I was right which was why Lieutenant Colonel bullo and major Harvey came knocking at my door to tell me that the joke was on me my training I flew to Washington DC on August 11th 1943 it was the first time I had ever flown and I saw mountains with scatterings of snow on them and Fields of wheat that seemed to stretch forever with Cloud Shadows moving over them slow and lazy as if whales were swimming through the sky somewhere I still have the blue American Airways timetable with by more war bonds printed on the front I was met at Washington National Airport by a a skeletally thin man in a flappy gray double breasted suit and Tiny dark glasses he raised his hat to me and asked me to call him Mr kianu he drove me to a large Ivy covered house on the outskirts of Rockville and it was there during the next 3 months that I was given my basic training in stgo hunting since I already knew a whole lot more about the stoy than almost anybody else what they were really giving me was military training I was taught to fire a gun and to read a map and to climb over a 10-ft wall I was also introduced to a laconic animal trainer with no front teeth who had been specially recruited from barnab and Bailey’s circus he gave me daily instruction in wielding a bull whip which is a darn sight more difficult than it looks I spent whole afternoons lashing my own calves until the looked like corn beef meantime the stroy hunting kit was gradually being assembled mostly according to the details I had provided in my college paper although it was Mr kianu who suggested the black and white paint according to him stroy are repelled by the sight of a dog with an extra pair of eyes painted above its real eyes it was during my training session that we started calling the stroy screechers the word stroy comes from the Romanian worda meaning which and this in turn comes from the Latin cognate stga which has its origins in stricks the word for a screech owl besides that my sidearms instructor always used to say if you want to immobilize those creatures you have to hit them dead center and the way he slurred his words always made it sound like those screechers I wish I knew where they acquired the nails from the crucifixion I asked Lieutenant Colonel bullo several times but he always refused to tell me all he said was it was a case of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours I always wondered if this meant that in return for these Priceless relics the United States had agreed to support the creation of an independent state of Israel but maybe I was reading too much into it 6 weeks before dday I was introduced to Corporal little and Frank so that Frank could get used to my smell and Corporal little could be briefed on what he was supposed to be doing 3 weeks before D-Day we were embarked from New York on the USS New Hampshire to sail to England we were taken over over to Normandy a week after the first Landings on Omaha Beach we were all seasick even Frank the rest I’ve already told you except that it didn’t end there nothing ends when you get yourself involved with the stoy the stoy are Immortal and their sense of grievance is Immortal that’s why when two US army officers Drew up outside my house in New Milford Connecticut in July 1957 I almost felt a sense of relief because I had always known in my heart of hearts that this was coming New Milford 1957 my wife Louise answered the door the two officers stood on the veranda with their caps tucked under their arms just as Lieutenant Colonel bull and major Harvey had done 14 years before it was a hot bright day and they were both in shirt sleeves Captain Falcon I came out of my study and put my arm around Louise’s shoulders help you I asked them I didn’t like the sound of Captain like to have a few words with you Captain if that’s okay sure what’s it about maybe we could could come inside I invited them into the living room the dark oak floor was highly polished and the Sun was shining on it so that when they sat on the couch opposite me it was difficult for me to make out their faces they were both young though one was sandy-haired and the other was wearing black rimmed eyeglasses like Clark Kent where from CER intelligence at Ford hird sir we need to speak to you in confidence I turned to Louise and said how about some coffee honey okay she agreed although she wasn’t especially happy about it Louise was very petite with bouncy brunette hair and an Audrey heurn look about her but she had her own opinions about almost everything which were usually the exact opposite of mine and she never allowed me to treat her as if she were a little woman she went into the kitchen and started a percussion solo for spoons and cups and coffeee Percolator the officer in the black rimmed eyeglasses leaned forward and said saach we’ve had a communication from British intelligence Captain MI6 it concerns a series of incidents in the suburbs south of London England incidents what kind of incidents the Sandy hered officer said homicides well I I say they’re homicides but they’re practically massacres to be honest with you 13 people killed at a business conference six children killed at an orphanage nine women killed at a social club altogether 73 people dead in the space of five weeks I slowly sat back I didn’t say anything I had already guessed what was coming MI6 have kept all of these kids ings out of the news they’ve been telling relatives that there’s some kind of bug going around Korean flu something like that in fact they’re actually calling their investigation operation Korean flu the officer in the eyeglasses said it’s not a bug though Captain all of the victims were cut open and the blood drained out of them exact same scenario as operation screecher during the war Louise came in with a tray of coffee and Ginger Snaps which she passed around with a tight shiny smile Ginger Snap they’re homemade not by me I’m afraid my mother while she did so none of us said anything except thank you when she had finished pouring coffee Louise waited for a while and all three of us looked at each other in uncomfortable silence at last she said maybe I’ll go out outside and cut some roses sure good idea I told her she hesitated a moment longer but the officer in the eyeglasses raised his eyebrows at her expectantly and she left I could see her through the French Windows snipping away at the rose bushes as if she were giving all three of us pomies before we tell you anymore Captain we have to remind you that you are still Bound by the same rules of confidentiality that you were during operation screecher maybe I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell me anymore we’re not at War now are we well yes Captain I’m afraid we are it may not be an allout fighting War but it’s still a war and your country needs your help what if I declin to give it we don’t actually think that you will Captain I see I told him I wasn’t stupid however callow these officers looked they worked for one of the most secret and highly specialized counterintelligence units in the western world and I could tell when I was being seriously threatened the officer in the eyeglasses said according to our records you were in ANP Belgium in the winter of 1944 searching for a Romanian National by the name of dorine Dua that’s right I never found him though or it I should say I always assumed that he was killed by a V2 in actual fact sir Dua escaped to the Netherlands he was located by another operative from operation screecher and detained I frowned at him I didn’t know there were any other operatives in operation scater I thought that I was the only one no Captain not exactly other operatives were occasionally brought in as and when the situation called for it well that’s news to me besides what do you mean by detained you can’t detain screechers all you can do is eliminate them knock Nails into their eyes and cut their heads off this particular operative had special abilities which allowed her to take zuka into detention this was a woman the officer nodded she confined duka to a casket and the plan was to fly him to England and then ship him back here to the United States to see if we could learn anything useful from him as regards counterintelligence operations I shook my head I can’t believe this we were going to bring a screecher to America deliberately didn’t anybody have the first idea how dangerous those creatures can be oh I think so sir after all screechers wiped out practically the entire resistance movements in bessarabia and Bulgaria during the war and they did some major damage to the French and Dutch underground movements the Nazis even used them in Warsaw during the uprising sent them down the sewers to hunt down members of the home Army but what possible use could a screecher be to us once the war was over the officer took off his eyeglasses the opinion was that we needed to maintain our Edge over the rusky captain it was all part of Operation Paperclip I don’t know what Operation Paperclip was that was the code name we used for bringing Nazi scientists and intelligence experts to the United States after the war not even the state department knew about it to begin with none of them had visas and most of them had their files altered to conceal the fact that they were 100% Nazi sympathizers or Worse you’re talking about people like verer Von Bron exactly Von Brun developed the V2 for Hitler and now he’s developing rockets for the Army ballistic missile agency then there’s Hans F oain who used to design jet engines for hle he’s director of the US Air Force aeronautical laboratory and Alexander lipes who did the same for measures SMI he’s in Cedar Rapids designing jet fighters for con Reinhardt galin used to be in charge of intelligence for the verm and he set us up with the most effective counterespionage Network that we’ve ever had Kurt Bloom he used to test plague vaccines on concentration camp victims now he works for the US Army chemical Corps there were 760 of them Al together put in the sandy-haired officer but Dua Dua isn’t even human we’re aware of that Captain but it made good military sense to bring him over here too if the ruskies got hold of him think of the damage that they could do to our intelligence gathering Louise was standing in the sunshine not clipping roses anymore but raising her face to the sky with her eyes closed as if she were enjoying the warmth of the Sun or praying I had a terrible sinking feeling that I was about to let her down and very badly but not through any fault of my own I stood up and walked to the French windows and lifted my hand up pressing it against the glass but her eyes were still closed and she didn’t see me you better tell me what happened I said lost and found duer was sealed into a casket and flown out of Holland on the night of December 17 1944 along with two marines a lieutenant from the counterintelligence Detachment and the operative who had managed to detain him do you know how Dua was caught I asked him we looked all over Northern Belgium and Holland for him for weeks and we didn’t even get a sniff of him I called duah him because these officers did but I always thought of any stoy as an it especially a stoy Mort they weren’t people they weren’t even ghosts of people they were things they could be deeply sentimental but they only looked like people the sandy-haired officer unbuckled his briefcase from all the reports I’ve read captain they caught him mostly by sheer chance he was hiding in the cellar of a house in braeda when it was shelled by British artillery and he was trapped the Dutch resistance had been looking for him and they had the good sense not to let him out of that Cellar but to give his location to us Counter Intelligence so why the hell didn’t they tell me I was the one who was hunting for duka they didn’t tell you Captain because they knew what you would do to him and they wanted him well alive isn’t quite the word for for it is it but they didn’t want him destroyed so this female operative somehow managed to seal Dua up in a box I can’t imagine how she did it but I’m very impressed what happened to him after we flew him to England that’s the problem Captain when they took off from Holland it was snowing very hard blizzard conditions they were supposed to fly to big and Hill Airfield in Kent but their plane never arrived the Royal Navy sent out airca rescue boats to search for it but they couldn’t find any Trace at all nothing he took a photograph out of his briefcase and passed it over to me it showed the muddy fuselage of a DC3 on the back of a trailer last May though a dredger was clearing the temp’s Estuary near a place called Leon sea and it struck one of the plane’s propellers the aircraft must have hit the water at full speed and buried itself in the mud that British Aras what was her name Amy Johnson she disappeared in almost the same place in 1941 and they still haven’t found her plane either so they dug the plane up and found dua’s casket I asked him that’s right and nobody realized what was in the casket so they opened it right again Jesus I said MI6 are very very very anxious to get this situation under control as quick as possible said the officer I’ll bet they are it’s not just a question of innocent lives being lost Captain it’s a question of National Security think of what could happen if the ruskies get wind of this and track duka down before we do British intelligence has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese so it’s a distinct possibility if we lose duka to the Communist block well to put it bluntly we’re in very deep doodo oh you bet we are I told him and if the Press find out that us counterintelligence were covertly trying to smuggle a stro into the country at the end of the war without the knowledge or approval of the state department and in complete disregard of the very obvious dangers to Public Safety some pretty important heads are going to be rolling don’t you think you can’t tell anybody about about this said the officer not even your wife nobody so what do you want me to do you’re booked already on a tww Starliner from Idle Wild to London you leave tomorrow evening at 1945 what about a man trailer a dog British quarantine laws won’t allow you to take a dog with you you’ll be met in London by somebody from MI6 who will brief you more fully and provide you with a tracker dog and a trained Handler I sat down again and I didn’t say anything for a long time the two officers watched me tensely almost as if they expected me to make a run for the door at length I said supposing I say no saying no is not actually one of your options said the sandy-haired officer what am I going to tell my company I can’t just disappear without telling them where I’m going or how long I’m going to be away we’ll take care of that Captain okay but I’ll have to get some stuff together silver mirror Compass bable all that kind of thing and I need the nails they use to crucify Christ where am I going to find those we have your kit already Captain said the officer with the eyeglasses everything’s in there just the way it was when you handed it in including the nails all you need is some fresh garlic you think this is funny no Captain not in the slightest so you want me to eliminate duka if I can find it you don’t want me to bring it back here to the states I afraid you don’t have the expertise to detain him Captain nobody does nobody that we can find anyhow so this female operative who did detain it do you have any idea who she was the sandy-haired officer said yes Captain actually we do that was one of the things I was instructed to tell you about you were bound to find out sooner or later I looked from one officer to the other both of them looked highly embarrassed it was your mother Captain Marica Falcon nay loveing rescue my mother what the hell are you talking about my mother died of a heart attack at home in California I’m sorry captain no she didn’t when you were being trained to hunt stoy you told your instructors that you learned most of your basic information about vampires from your mother the cater intelligence Detachment sent some people to talk to her and they found out that she knew almost as much about the Rego as you did not only that she had some practical knowledge too like how to seal thoy Morty into lead caskets in such a way that they couldn’t escape I was stunned my mother had been sent to capture Dua I had never thought that she believed in this droy in fact she had always said that they were only stories to frighten naughty children into behaving themselves I thought of of my father sitting on The Veranda his eyes glistening with tears she had a problem with her heart he had told me hely and now I have a problem with mine he must have known what had happened to her and yet he had never said a word he had even emptied her ashes into the sea at poda Bay which used to be one of her favorite places except that they couldn’t have been her ashes at all London 1957 they had reserved me a sleeping birth on the tww flight to London so that I would be rested and ready to start work as soon as I arrived but shortly after I dozed off I started having terrifying nightmares the droning of The Airliner turboprop engines gradually turned into the noise of a huge dark Factory crammed with strange machines for crushing people’s bones and I found myself running past dripping pipes and greasy electric cables with a dark figure running just ahead of me I knew that I was supposed to catch up with this figure but I was frightened to run too fast in case I did after less than 4 hours however it began to grow light and the flight attendant brought me a cup of coffee are you all right sir she said smiled you were shouting in your sleep she had very blue eyes and freckles across the bridge of her nose oh yes what was I shouting I don’t know something about teachers I think you were telling them to get off you teachers if only it was surprisingly hot when we landed in England well over 80° and the sky was cloudless as I came down the steps of the plane I was greeted by a young man with wavy Brill creamed hair and sunglasses the only concession he had made to the heat was to take off his Tweed coat and hang it over his arm and roll up his shirt sleeves Captain fulan how do you do I’m Terrence Mitchell how are you I asked him and shook his hand which was soft and sweaty hope you had a comfortable flight sir well it certainly was a ins sight faster than the last time I did it they’ll be bringing in Jets next year and that’ll make it even quicker 6 hours to New York or so I believe amazing when you think it takes six days by boat at this way sir I’ve got a car waiting outside I hadn’t been back to England since the end of the war but it hadn’t changed much the same flat smell of English cigarettes and body odor the same dinky little cars and red double-decker buses the same clipped accents as if everybody had been to elocution school don’t worry about your things said Terren I’ve arranged to have them sent straight round to your hotel a beige Humber Hawk was parked by the curb outside the terminal with a uniformed Bobby standing beside it the Bobby gave Terren a nod as we approached and strolled off Terren opened the door for me and then climbed in himself gaspa he said taking out a box of players cigarettes uh no thanks I gave up two years ago had a cough I couldn’t get rid of you won’t mind if I do we drove out of the terminal and along the Great West Road toward the center of the city good book asked Terrence nodding at the blue bound volume I had brought to read on the flight comparative folk mythologies of DOA I told him holding it up oh I’m more of a Neville suit man myself it always surprised me how green London was the narrow streets were bursting with trees and every little front yard had its bushes and its neatly trimmed hedge among the rows of houses stood the Tranquil spires of Victorian churches which gave the suburbs the appearance of order and respectability and enduring Faith very nasty business this sir said Terren with his cigarette waggling between his lips seven more fatalities yesterday morning in Cen you don’t have to call me sir all the time really Jim will be fine righto Jim it is he pronounced it as though it had inverted commas he looked ridiculously young to be an SIS operative but he was probably the same age as I was when I was hunting the stroid during the war he was was pale and round shouldered and he reminded me of one of those young English Pilots you see clustered around Spitfires in Wartime photographs all smiling and most of them doomed to be incinerated alive before their 21st birthdays how are you managing to keep this out of the news I asked him it’s been Jolly difficult to tell you the truth fortunately there’s been some Korean influenza going around so most of the time we can blame it on that these seven in um where did you say Cen it’s a burough about 10 miles south of London not the most attractive spot on earth pretty groty as a matter of fact were they all in the same room when they were killed yes apart from one lad they found his body upstairs only 11 years old very nasty business they all belong belong to the same family except for one of them an elderly lady who was a friend of theirs it was a birthday party shocking there was blood all over the food you haven’t touched anything the bodies have been taken away but that’s all everything else is just as we found it okay but I’ll need to take a look at the bodies later we were coming into West Kensington now past the Natural History Museum and the bromton oratory and the traffic was beginning to build up as we reached Howard’s store in nightsbridge Terren tossed his cigarette out of the window and took out a fresh one tapping it on the steering wheel to Tamp down the loose tobacco the first murders were on the 23rd of May at the selston Park Hotel 11 men and two women at a business conference I read the police reports I saw the photographs too property developers weren’t they estate agents it was a total fluke that we found out who might have killed them oh yes one of our senior chaps just happened to be round at Scotland Yard for some security power when the news about the murders first came in look at that Bloody cyclist he must have a death wish he leaned out of the window and shouted nutcase go on I told him oh yes as luck would have it our chap used to leave a with us counterintelligence during the war and he remembered that your people always wanted to be urgently notified of any mass killings especially if the victims had their hearts cut out or the blood drained out of them at the time your people never actually told him why they wanted to be notified or what it was all about and our chap still had no idea what it was all about but he thought hello Mass killing people with all the blood d r out of them and he got on to your people anyway your people came back to us in less than 24 hours and they came round to HQ and gave us the full SP I must say I find it really fascinating in a Grizzly sort of way but it isn’t exactly easy to believe is it you know vampires he Beed his teeth and gave a bad imitation of a Bella Lugosi ho ho let me tell you Terrence I said you need to believe I probably sounded too serious and pontificating but I was very tired if you think that Russian spies are dangerous you don’t know what dangerous is the stroi are the most vicious creatures you are ever going to meet in your entire life we drove around hide Park corner with his its massive Stone Arch and its triumphant statue of winged victory then we made our way down the m and passed Buckingham Palace a troop of horse guards jingled their way down the center of the road their helmets sparkling in the sunlight the last time I had been in London it had been grim and gray and badly bombed but this was like driving through a brightly colored picture postcard after another 15 minutes of sitting in traffic around alar square and up lgate hill we arrived at MI6 headquarters in the city it was a large ugly office building with a soot streak facade and plastic Venetian blinds in a nasty shade of olive green Terren parked his Humber around the back and led the way in you’re fully cleared right up to level one said Terren clipping an identity tag onto my shirt pocket I peered down at it I don’t know where my photograph had come from but my eyes were half closed and I looked as if my mouth was stuffed with cheeseburger the building was very warm and stuffy and smelled of floor polish three or four plain looking women passed us in the corridor and they all said hello with that funny little English Yelp we went up to the top floor Terren said it’s supposed to stay warm until Sunday but I can’t see it myself you know what they say about the English summer three hot days followed by a thunderstorm he knocked at the Walnut panel door marked director of operations sis and we walked into a large office with a panoramic view of the city and the river temps I could see tower bridge and London Bridge and the Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral everything was hay with summer heat so that it looked like an impressionist painting except for the constant Spark of traffic as we entered a tall heavily built man in a gray suit rose up from behind an enormous desk like a whale coming up for air he had a large elaborately chiseled nose and deep set eyes and short shiny chestnut colored hair which I could imagine him polishing every morning with a matching pair of brushes aha you’re the uh creature fellow he said he spoke in a hesitant draw with the sides of his mouth turned down as if he found the whole business of talking to be rather a damn boore he reached across his desk and gave me a crushing handshake Charles frii so gratified that you could get here so promptly good flight yeah great thanks I never flew over the pole before really he said as if I had admitted that I had never ridden to hounds this is all turning out to to be very unpleasant indeed so we’re uh glad of any help that you can give us how many have been killed altogether Charles frii blinked at me perhaps you’d like a cup of tea I usually have one around now or coffee I think we can run to some instant te’s fine during the War the British seemed to spend more time Brewing up tea than they did fighting the Germans it was usually strong and astringent and tooth achingly sweet but I had developed a taste for it myself 97 fatalities so far said Terren that’s including yesterday’s figure any eyewitness statements one or two people have said that they heard things at the seston Park Hotel there were several reports of screaming in the middle of the night but the screaming didn’t last very long apparently and the witnesses thought it was somebody throwing a party well I mean it could have been for all we know Charles F said I talked to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner yesterday evening and unfortunately he can give us very little to go on the police found Footprints made by some very narrow shoes but no identifiable fingerprints and no fibers to speak of in several cases there was no obvious means of entry and um the premises were secured from the inside making access virtually impossible to a human as salant in any case we all sat down around Charles fi’s desk all he had in front of him was a leather blotter three telephones one black one green and one red and a framed photograph of a grinning blonde woman with a gap between her front teeth I expect cic told you that the stgo are capable of entering a room through the thinnest of apertures I told him they rarely leave much in the way of fingerprints or Footprints but they do leave a very distinctive smell which is why we use dogs to hunt them down we’ve arranged for a Tracker dog and uh uh somebody to handle him okay that’s excellent the sooner I meet him the better her as a matter of fact Terren corrected me the full SP we sat in Charles FRS for the next 3 and a half hours so that we could study all of the Case Files together all the forensic evidence all of the photographs all of the witness statements I wanted to see maps and reconstructions and transcripts of Coroner’s Court proceedings I insisted that we go right back to the very beginning from the moment that a T’s dredger called the Mary Ellen had struck the propeller of that buried DC3 I didn’t tell Charles fi or Terrence that I knew who had died in it I was afraid that I might catch myself unawares and fill up with tears the wreckage had been discovered on April 11th it had been raised out of the mud on May 15th by a combined team from the air Ministry and the British aeronautical archaeological committee it had been taken on a flatbed truck to the Royal aircraft establishment at farbor for cleaning research and possible restoration because of the total secrecy that had surrounded Operation Paperclip The Disappearance of this plane and its cargo had never been officially reported after the war it had mostly been forgotten since the counterintelligence agents involved had gone back to civilian life or retired or died even when the plane’s excavation was widely shown on television radio and news reels even a two-page spread in Life Magazine nobody in the cic put two and two together and realized which plane it was and what it had been carrying that only happened when the pilots and their Marine escort were formerly identified and by that time it was too late for me the most poignant paragraphs came from hm coroner sir Philip Platt Dickinson at South End on sea the remains of five adult individuals were discovered in the wreckage there was no soft tissue remaining only bones but judging from the positions in which they were found all of them were instantly killed when the airlane struck the water at a speed that must have been well in excess of 200 M hour and was almost completely buried in the EST mud the pilot and his co-pilot were identified by their dog tags as officers in the United States Army Air Forces the remains of two further individuals both male were identified as officers in the United States Marine Corps the remains of the fifth individual who was female carried nothing at all that allowed me to make a positive identification although the recovery team found a gold wedding ring and a rectangular gold wristwatch from shrien company which I am given to understand is a respected jewelry shop in San Francisco California her dress and shoes were also of American origin animal remains were found close to the female individual and these were identified as being those of a Blood Hound probably 6 or 7 years old the American Embassy in London was notified of the exhumation of these individuals and their remains were duly removed for repatriation to the United States where they could be formally identified and given appropriate funeral rights I sat in that MI6 office in London and in my mind’s eye I could see that rectangular gold wristwatch I could even remember the day that my father had given it to my mother their 25th wedding anniversary in April 1941 we had drunk sweet white wine in the yard while cherry blossoms blew all around us like snow and my mother had sung Romanian DOA who made DOA the small mouth of a baby left asleep by his mother who found him singing the DOA the casket had been examined by an air Ministry crash investigation team led by Professor Roger brathe who was renowned worldwide for his expertise on unusual air accidents apparently it had been secured to the floor of the DC3 with webbing straps but these had snapped on impact when the aircraft crashed the casket had slid forward smashing into the co-pilot seat and breaking his back Terren passed me a selection of black and white photographs these showed the casket from four different angles resting on a Trestle in a large empty hanger with several bespectacled men in laboratory coats standing around it it appeared to be fashioned out of a thick lead alloy beaten and welded by hand it measured approximately 9 ft long 3 ft wide and 2 6 in deep it weighed over 750 lb when it was lifted out of the aircraft the casket was tightly fastened with two lengths of braided silver wire which formed a cross over the lid at 6:45 on the evening of May 17th professor braithway joted in his notebook that he had decided to cut this wire and take the lid off the casket to see what was inside the next morning May 18th when Rae technicians opened up the hanger they noticed that the casket appeared to be intact but the silver wire had been neatly cut and was lying on the floor there was no sign of Professor brathe or his two assistants by 6 p.m. that day professor brawe and his assistants had still failed to put in an appearance and none of them were answering their home phone numbers the security services were immediately notified and a major search initiated watches were kept on all British ports and airports and roadblocks set up in Hampshire and sui several houses were searched including Professor brae’s holiday Cottage in the Lake District some days later when the Press made polite inquiries about Professor brae’s whereabouts they were told that he had flown to the United States to undertake several weeks of background research it’s hard to remember how trusting the press used to be in those days to date though neither Professor brawe nor his assistant had been cited anywhere dead or alive and there was no evidence to explain what might have happened to them except of course the empty casket the lid of the casket was still in place on the morning of May 18th but investigators were able to lift it open without difficulty inside they found it to be lined with white Thorn wood and thickly bedded with dried garlic flowers and Wild Roses on one side lay an empty sack made of thin Brown Linen like a torn open shroud there was a deep impression in the petals as if somebody had been lying there motionless for a very long time didn’t anybody suspect what had happened even then I asked Charles fi didn’t anybody think to ask what kind of creature could have been lying in a sealed casket for nearly 13 years without air or food or water afraid not old man Security Services are never very good at communicating with each other at the best of times somebody could have used their imagination imagination Charles fith blinked at me as if I had used a four-letter word not a requirement for MI6 I’m sorry to say the police reports on all of the recent killings were depressingly similar and all of the photographs too heaps of bodies with their clothes torn open their abdomen sliced apart and their hearts pulled out from underneath their rib cages men women and children even toddlers in little white socks in the background cheap floral wallpaper decorated with loops and spatters of blood no no had ever seen anybody entering the crime scenes nobody had ever seen anybody leave well um we’re quite certain that this is the work of you know stoy no doubt about it one stroy Mort and at least two stroy V and they’re going to multiply fast more tea no thanks I think I’ll go to my hotel if that’s all right with you and take a shower I need to call my wife too then I want to go to this house in Cen and take a look at this birthday party Terrence do you think you can arrange for our dog handler to meet us there say about 3:30 I don’t anticipate any problem with that Jim I’ll give her a tinkle I stood up and Charles fith stood up too tremendously pleased to have you on board Captain falcan well me too sir I have a very personal interest in Catching this particular scater H it’s a long story sir I’ll report back to you later yes good oh uh but there’s one more thing you’ve been issued with a sidearm Colt 45 automatic I gather it’s all been approved but I have to ask you to be very discreet with it this is England you know not the wild west of course course I told him yes he repeated on the way back along the corridor I said to Terren he kept saying ears what did he mean by that oh that’s English upper class for Yes House of flies for my first night in England the sis had booked me a room at the Strand Palace Hotel it was comfortable in a well-worn Shabby way although the traffic was so noisy that I had to close my window and the furniture rre of cigarettes I booked a transatlantic call to Louise and tried to take a shower the shower head gurgled and sneezed and then dribbled I took a shallow bath instead I was lucky it could take hours before a call to the states came through but the operator rang me back after only 20 minutes Louise answered and although she sounded quite close I kept hearing an echo so that she said everything twice I’m going to the Marriotts this evening they’re having a cookout they’re having a cook out that’s great I said are you going to see your sister this weekend I don’t know it depends if Dick’s coming home if Dick’s coming home uh listen I have to go but I love you be careful Jimmy won’t you please won’t you please I’ll be careful I hadn’t been allowed to tell her what I was doing here in England only that it was connected with my work for the intelligence Services during the war but Louise wasn’t the kind of woman to be easily fooled she had stood in the bedroom doorway watching me pack as intently as if she were making an 8mm home movie in her head a home movie that she could play back later in her Mind’s Eye if I never came back to her I had known Louise since College we had dated once or twice and had a good time together but Louise was always much more serious than I was she liked string quartets and art galleries and live theater while I preferred beer and swing music and WC Fields movies not that I wasn’t academic you couldn’t help being AC mic with a father like mine but I wasn’t a sensitive academic I didn’t carry a lily around and I didn’t lisp as it happened though Louise and I met up again in 1949 at a friend’s party in North Beach and I invited her to mil Valley for the day we were both different people by then she had been through a violent marriage and lost a baby I had been chasing stugo in Europe we saw qualities in each other that we hadn’t been able to appreciate when we were younger in Louise I saw thoughtfulness and a deep appreciation for the value of human life but an unexpected willingness to have fun too I don’t exactly know what she saw in me but I always tried to be kind to her and protective and I even pretended to like her cheese and macaroni Terren called for me at 2:30 p.m. and we drove to Cen Terren was right cuden was pretty gry a densely overcrowded suburb with mile after mile of Victorian and Edwardian shops and pubs interspersed with sorry looking semidetached houses and filling stations and HED car lots the sky was beginning to Cloud over although the heat was still unbearable Terren was steadily perspiring in his coat and necktie but he didn’t make any attempt to take them off we reached an ugly red brick pub called the Red Deer where the main road divided Terren took a right up a steep Narrow Street lined with scabby looking plain trees we passed a huge Victorian Church faced with flint and then pulled up outside a large three-story house there were two men standing around outside the front gate smoking teren said couple of our chaps couldn’t have the constabulary here somebody might ask awkward questions I climbed out of the car and looked up at the house it was massive and clumsily proportioned built of the same shiny red brick as the pub we had passed with a gabled roof and window frames painted bright blue the front garden sloped up from the street and was crowded with Laurel bushes the soil was so chalky here that the flower beds were strewn with big white lumps of limestone Terren introduced me to his chaps like Terrence they both seemed to be far too young to be MI6 operatives like two school boys one of them said don’t know what the latest score is by any chance last I heard Evans took four wickets for 64 Cy I thought he’d broken his finger our dog handler not here yet I asked shouldn’t be too long do you want to take a quick shufty inside sure why not one of the ch led the way up the steps to the front door which was propped open with a dogeared telephone directory six pint bottles of lumpy looking milk stood on the doorstep the Family’s last delivery I followed the chap into a high airless hallway which had a wide staircase on the left hand side house was shared you see the chap told me Mr and Mrs and three children lived on the ground floor while the grandparents lived upstairs although the house was detached it stood only 6 ft from the house next door and the windows were all glazed with yellow and green glass so the hallway was deeply gloomy like an aquarium on the wall hung a damp spotted print of a miserable looking Maiden by Dante Gabriel Rosetti window cleaner looked in and saw the bodies said Terren otherwise who knows it might have been weeks we went through to the dining room which was thick with the smell of decaying food and human blood and noisy with the buzzing of hundreds of flies dark brown Woolen drapes had been drawn across the bay window but enough sunlight penetrated the room for me to be able to see what had happened here the dining chairs had been set back against the walls presumably so that the family could stand around the dining table and help themselves to the buffet plates and Cutlery were scattered on the mustard yellow carpet as well as trotten in sandwiches and cakes on the sideboard stood bottles of scotch whiskey in Gordon’s chin and EM Cream Sweet Cherry as well as six or seven bottles of light ale and macasin stout I was reminded that the British liked their beer warm the words happy birthday Jackie had been cut out of colored paper and stuck onto the mirror difficult to tell how the buggers got in said Terren that door was locked and all of the main windows were closed I stepped carefully across the dining room and Drew back the drapes three of the small upper windows were open even a child would have found it impossible to climb through them but a stroy Mort could slide through the narrowest of gaps once inside he would have opened the front door for any stoy V who might have accompanied him it wasn’t easy to tell how many stroi had been here because there was so much blood and so much mess but they usually went out feeding in threes I looked back at the dining table all the food had been splashed with dark brown blood the birthday cake the sausage rolls the mashed sardine sandwiches and now flies were crawling all over it so that the whole table looked as if it were Rippling I went to the door there were Blood Stained fingerprints on either side of the door jam you say that one of the bodies was found upstairs 11-year-old boy yes see these fingerprints my guess is the kid was trying to escape and somebody blocked the doorway to stop the screechers from going after him unsuccessfully of course because look I pointed to some smudges of Blood on the wallpaper they ran diagonally up the wall each one higher than the next until they reached the ceiling I stepped back into the hallway and looked up the smudges continued across the ceiling toward the staircase and up the sloping ceiling above the stairs too Footprints I said the boy tried to get away and one of the stro chased him on the ceiling said Terren he looked at the chap and the chap raised his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks but didn’t say anything you have to understand what we’re up against here I told him the other ch cap came in from outside your dog handler is here he told us bit of all right as a matter of fact bullet I went out onto the porch not only to greet my dog handler but to breathe some fresh air during the War I had grown pretty much enured to The Ripe stench of cut open human beings but over the past 12 years I had forgotten how sickening it was and how it seemed to cling to your clothes and your hair for hours afterward you could even taste it in your mouth when you were eating the dog handler had parked her pale green Hillman mink estate car next to terrence’s Humber and was opening the back doors so that her dog could jump out the dog came up The Path first a glossy black Labrador with a crimson tongue panting furiously in the heat the dog handler followed and the other chap hadn’t been exaggerating she was a bit of all right she was very slim with dark shiny hair cut into a bob she looked as if she might have had some burmes or Siamese blood in her because she had high cheekbones and dark feline eyes she was wearing a white shortsleeved blouse with the collar turned up and she was very large breasted I don’t know what it is about white bles and big breasts that th it for me but for a split second I felt A Rush of Blood to the Head as if I were 15 years old again her waist was cinched in with a large silver buckled belt and she wore a Navy pencil skirt that came down just below the knee hello she smiled she had a clear upper middle class accent and she spoke as if she were reading the BBC News you must be Captain Falco is it Falcon with an N like peragine Falcon but call me Jim all right I’m Jill foxley from the metropolitan police dog section at Kon great to meet you Jill foxley and her dog too what does he answer to his proper name is Willowick Gruff but his working name is bullet bullet I like that hey bullet how you doing boy bullet turned to me and gave a single contemptuous bark hey I think he likes me already and Jill said I’m sorry he’s very loyal once he gets to know people but he’s been trained to be suspicious of strangers well that’s what we need suspicious in fact we need very suspicious you’ve been briefed about this job I hope I mean you know what you and me and bullet here are supposed to be looking for yes they gave me a general idea they said that if I needed to know anything more I should ask you about it apparently you’re the world’s greatest expert and what do you think she pulled her face I’m not at all sure at first I thought they were having me on toast but I’ve always liked Unusual Work bullet and I spent the last 6 months tracking down heroin smugglers in Limehouse that was fascinating you know all that Chinese culture and everything you understand what these creatures are don’t you well yes she seemed embarrassed vampires sort of exactly we’re not dealing with human beings here they don’t have a soul and they don’t have a conscience they don’t have any compunction about killing anybody of any age with no warning at all like wild animals and really uh-uh they’re not like animals they’re intelligent and they’re so damn quick you can’t even see them and they won’t give you any second chances I understand she had an alluring way of tilting her head sideways and looking at me out of the corner of her eyes well I said trying to sound brisk and professional you better bring bullet inside you’ve visited a homicide scene before it’s not too salubrious in there the language I was using I was starting to sound quite British I would probably start saying constabulary next instead of cops don’t worry said Jill I’ve been called to quite a few murders the last one was a husband who beat his wife and their seven-year-old daughter to death with a hammer and then cut his own throat with a bread knife that was quite yucky quite yucky yes I guess it must have been out of her navy blue pocketbook Jill pulled a strip of brownish fabric about the length of a woman’s scarf she held it up against bullet snout so that he could sniff it and lick it this is a piece of the linen shroud they found in the casket she explained if the same screecher has been here then bullet will be able to tell good for bullet let’s take a look shall we I led her through the hallway into the dining room with bullet trotting obediently beside her I think she was determined not to show that she was nauseated but as soon as she entered the door she clamped her hand over her mouth and couldn’t stop herself from letting out a high cackling wretch oh my God it’s disgusting do you want to go back outside she shook her head I can manage thanks it’s the Flies more than anything else I can’t stand flies join the club but this is fairly typical of a screecher attack the stoy Mort gains entry first in this case I’m guessing that it came through one of the skylights here it probably came in so fast that nobody saw it or if they did it would have looked like nothing more than a dark blur whizzing through the room it would have opened the front door and LED in its Companions and then the three of them would have come back in here and had themselves a feast bullet was snuffling around the carpet occasionally licking it with his thick Crimson tongue how many victims were there asked Jill seven the scures would have sliced their stomachs open first and cut the Achilles tendons in their heels so that they couldn’t get away then they would have gone from one to the other cutting them open even wider pulling out their hearts and drinking their blood directly from their aortas that’s so horrible yes it is but if you and I don’t stop them the creatures are going to multiply I don’t know how much they told you when they briefed you but there are two kinds of screes the infected ones who are still alive the stoy V and the dead ones the stoy Morty I didn’t completely understand that when they briefed us the stoy Morty they’re really dead I mean dead dead dead in the sense that they’re not human anymore and never will be they can be nostalgic for sure in a very selfish way they can shed tears for their lost Humanity they can even have relationships with humans you’d never know if you passed a stoy Mort in the street except that they usually look unnaturally Flawless Perfect Skin Perfect Teeth it’s just that they have no soul they said that the dead ones spread the infection that’s right by sharing their blood or other bodily fluids with human beings who attract them they call it the Embrace or the witch’s kiss there must be a cure for it surely I shook my head once you’ve caught the infection that’s it you have a raging thirst for blood and you can never get enough of it it’s like being a drug addict only a thousand times worse so what happens to you in the end you can’t stand it any longer and you go looking for the stroy Mort who first infected you you drink more of its blood which poisons you and so you in your turn become a stoy Mort very good-looking an idealized version of yourself but utterly dead and unable to rest forever bullet came up to Jill and let out another bark his tail was beating furiously against the table leg he’s picked up the scent he wants to go after it in that case we’ll let him shall we of course I hope you’re f are you kidding me I swim I play tennis I paint fences painting fences you’d be surprised what good exercise that is bullet was already heading for the door Jill looked at me and Shrugged and so we followed him I went to the car and heed out the battered metal case containing my kit I think we have a trail I told Terren oh he didn’t look very pleased about it it was one thing to talk about stoy hunting them was something else altogether bullet made his way out of the house and up the street with Jill and Terren and me trying to keep up with him unlike Frank he didn’t turn back once to see if we were following at the top of the hill we reached a small public park called hailing Grove there was a brick and concrete air raid shelter by the front Gates which could have made a good hide hiding place for stoy but its doorway was sealed with corrugated iron and its ventilation holes had all been bricked up we walked through the shadow of some horse chestnut trees until we reached an open space the park was strangely deserted even though it was such a hot day in the middle of the summer vacation period in those days the British didn’t fly to Spain or France or Florida during the summer they couldn’t afford they went to the seaside for a week and then they spent the rest of the time at home tenting their Gardens or building shelves the park was probably no more than 3 or 4 Acres surrounded by mature Oaks and beach trees bullet looped across the bright green grass ahead of us on the other side of the grass stood a large stained Oak summerhouse with a dark thatched roof where an elderly woman sat wearing a black dress and Tiny green sunglasses she was so white-faced that I could have believed she was dead they would have been long gone by now wouldn’t they panted Terren perspiration was trickling down the sides of his cheeks oh for sure this will probably come to nothing but if we can pick up more than one Trail we can begin to work out where they’re hiding themselves triangulation said Jill she must have been much fitter than Terren or me because she wasn’t out of breath at all and she looked as cool as a pin’s number one bullet had passed the summerhouse and now he was standing beside a wide flower bed planted with dalas along the back of the flower bed ran a brick wall over 18 ft High which looked as if it marked the Park’s southern boundary bullets sniffed at the soil and barked three or four times times go on bullet Jill told him follow up boy bullet crossed the flower bed and went up to the wall he turned around for the first time and looked at us in frustration clever I said I’ll bet you 10 bucks they climbed the wall and ran along the top of it there’s a door further along said Terren we could check the other side couldn’t we the door was half open and LED through to an overgrown area of old glass houses and abandoned wheelbarrows and compost heaps Jill guided bullet along the length of the wall snipping at it but it seemed as if I was right and the stroy had made their way along the top of it even if we could have lifted them up there there was no way that bullet could have balanced along the coping to follow their scent about 300 yd away the wall passed under the branch es of several large oak trees and it was my guess that the stroy had used them to climb down from the wall and Escape into the street nearby we spent a half hour crisscrossing the street and the park Pathways but bullet had lost the scent completely Jill gave him a handful of black and red dog biscuits patted him on the head and said Well Done bullet never mind bullet ate his biscuits with a crackling sound like gunfire and I had never seen a dog look so Furious Jill said he’s very annoyed he hardly ever loses a trail we’ll get them I told her screechers have to come out and feed and that’s their greatest weakness I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand Jesus it’s hot anybody feel like a drink Terren looked at his watch it is opening time for another 2 and 1 half hours but there’s a sweet shop on the corner down at the bottom of the road I could get you a bottle of tier I hadn’t realized that British pubs were closed all afternoon until 6:00 p.m. and so it was that I was driven back into Central London drinking this fizzy bright orange cordal out of a heavy glass bottle feeling sweaty and tired and more than a little sick death on a double decker I slept badly that night as badly as I used to sleep during the war The Strand Palace had no air conditioning and the endless knock knock knock of Taxi and bus engines seemed to penetrate right through my pillows I had a nightmare in which I couldn’t find my way out of haling Grove Park and the old woman with the white face and the green sunglasses was sliding after me as if she were on Wheels I took a tepid bath around 700 a.m. and then I went down to the dining room for breakfast I ordered a full English bacon sausages fried eggs grilled tomatoes and mushrooms everything was cold and lying in congealed Grease and I could only conclude that I must have been hungrier during the war or younger and less discriminating the coffee tasted like weak beef stock while I pushed my food around my plate I read the Daily Express Cairo radio had incited Arabs to rise up against the British and sabotage the RAF Venom Jets at Shara Airfield where they were being used against Rebel forces in muskat and Oman on PanAm had announced that they were beginning transpolar flights to London from the West Coast flying time about 18 hours a British doctor had been killed by the polio epidemic in the British Midlands because he had vaccinated all of his patients but hadn’t thought to vaccinate himself in spite of the warm weather British roads were unusually empty because motorists feared bonnet to taale snars in traffic not a word about mass killings in Cen or selon or anywhere else not a word about stoy on television that night were sir Lancelot chriscross quiz and gun law the waiter came over and looked at my plate not to your liking sir no it was great just a little too much perhaps you’d care for something else sir porridge perhaps no thanks I had seen the porridge and it looked like badly poured concrete I was crossing the lobby on the way back to my room when the receptionist called me Captain Falcon sir you have a telephone call I went into the phone booth at the side of the lobby it was Terrence calling me we’ve had another one Jim really bad this time I can’t tell you anything over the blow up but I’m coming to collect you in 15 minutes it’s South London again okay I could see my eyes in the small mirror at the back of the telephone booth they looked expressionless as if they didn’t belong to anybody at all we drove to Wallington another suburb on the far side of cyen Aerodrome a wide grassy field which up until the war had been London’s principal airport Wallington was Avenue after Avenue of 1930 semidetached houses with white painted Pebble Dash walls and monkey puzzled trees in their front Gardens Bank clerk land Terren was wearing the same shirt in green necktie that he’d been wearing the day before he smoked even more furiously than ever and it was obvious that he was very nervous and upset 17 killed that’s what they told me 17 Jesus this time a whole Avenue had been cordoned off by police two Bobbies stopped us and made a meal of checking our identity cards you’re an American sir asked one of them peering at me as if he’d never seen a real live American before and was wondering why I wasn’t wearing a Stetson hat and a bolo neckti eventually they led us through and we drove about a half mile to the end of the Avenue here we found more police as well as two fir trucks and five ambulances I could see Charles fith wearing an Immaculate light gray suit talking to a senior Police Inspector this must be really serious if Charles frii had actually ventured out of his office the Avenue was crossed by a low green painted railroad bridge a green double-decker bus was wedged under the bridge so that the front half of its roof had been ripped backward six or seven policemen were erecting High canvas screens around the bus while two firefighters were up on the bridge lowering a tar poolin over the top of it ah Jim said Charles frii as I approached him this is inspector Ruck Metropolitan Police Inspector this is our American friend Captain James falcan inspector Ruck was a stocky man with a Scarlet face that looked as if it were just about to explode he had pale blue eyes with colorless eyelashes like a pigs he eyed me up and down and said nothing at all this happened at about 6:30 this morning said Charles fi the bus comes down the main road here but I’m told that it usually turns off at Chesterfield Avenue which is I the second Side Road just back there this morning it kept straight on and as you can see tremendous bang apparently residents came out to see if they could help but uh no survivors I’m sorry to say I better take a look I told him inspector Ruck said not happy about that sir not until my men have finished their job don’t want any evidence booger up no need to worry about that inspector said Charles fifth in his Urbane draw Captain fuler here is a very experienced investigator who specializes in this sort of business all the same sir I Charles fith gave him the coldest possible smile and said carry on Jim in inside the bus I breathed in a strong smell of blood and fat like a butcher shop but it was far less nauseating than the house in Cen because the passengers were freshly killed all the same it was stifling in there especially now that it was draped in a heavy tarpulin and the windows were speckled with flies two forensic scientists in white lab coats and rubber gloves were dusting for fingerprints and taking photographs watched over by a sweating detective in a badly fitting brown suit the detective looked at me with deep suspicion when I climbed onto the platform I held up my identity card and said Captain James Falcon from the cic I’m temporarily sanded to MI6 the detective frowned at my card and said MI6 he was sandy-haired and freckly and put me in mind of Spencer Tracy if Spencer Tracy had been 6 in taller what’s this got to do with MI6 can’t answer that one I’m afraid what do you think happened here I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you believe me you’re supposed to tell me inspector Ruck dragged aside the tar pollen and said irascibly we’re cooperating with the US intelligence Services Johnson whatever Captain Falcon wants to no just tell him will you he disappeared and Johnson blinked at me in dismay sorry I said in the brief time that I had stayed in Britain during the War I had learned that sorry was the key word that would get you out of any kind of awkward situation somebody steps on your foot you say sorry and they say sorry and you say sorry again and that’s the end of it unless one of you feels it’s necessary to say say sorry a third time well come on then said Watkins we’ve got 11 stabbing victims on the lower deck five upstairs and then there’s the driver the driver was stabbed to no he died of chest injuries when the bus hit the bridge he led the way down the aisle our shoes made sticky noises because the floor was varnished with blood most of the passengers were sitting upright as if they were still waiting to be carried to their destinations there were eight men most of whom looked like Factory workers on their way to start an early shift and two women with their hair tied up in scarves office cleaners more than likely the bus conductor was lying sideways on one of the bench seats at the back of the bus his hands were covered in blood as if he had been struggling to defend himself against an as salant who was wielding a very sharp knife in fact three fingers of his right hand were almost completely severed and were dangling on thin shreds of skin every one of the passengers had been stabbed in the lower part of the stomach and then the knife pulled upward until it met the breast bone since they were all still sitting in their seats it was clear that they had been attacked very rapidly before they had time to react that spelled stroy Mort to me a stroy Mort could flicker through a busload of people like this and kill all of them in a matter of seconds the passengers pants and skirts were soaked in Blood and several of them had little heaps of glistening pink intestines in their laps can’t think why the poor SS didn’t put up any kind of a fight said Watkins I didn’t say anything but leaned forward and examined the stomach wound of one of the cleaners whatever had been used to slice her open it must have been wickedly sharp because it had cut through her thick white elasticated girdle she was looking at me with a suspicious expression as if she were just about to speak to me do you have any idea who might have done this Johnson asked me oh yes I nodded but you’re not going to share it with me no well I must say this is all B frustrating sorry maybe your boss will fill you in later I climbed up the Steep curving stairs at the back of the bus onto the top deck it was the same story here except that two of the passengers sitting right at the front of the bus had been crushed under the railroad bridge their mutilated Heads Lay on the seat behind them one of them still wearing a wiry brown toue like a ventriloquist dummy I duck down under the roof of the bus to check their bodies both had been gutted like everybody else one of them had been cut so wide open that his entire digestive system was hanging from the edge of his seat bowels stomach and liver in a glutenous Cascade that was crawling with flies on the other side of the bus however I saw the body of a young boy no more than five or six years old he was wearing school uniform a blue blazer with a badge on the pocket and gray flannel shorts and gray Woolen socks and brown Clark sandals his head had been compressed against the side of the bus window so that his eyes were bulging out and his skull was oval but what interested me more than anything else was that unlike everybody else on the bus he hadn’t been stabbed he was dead but his stomach was intact Johnson came up the stairs and said everything all right I don’t know yet but you still can’t tell me who did this or why it really would help me an awful lot if you could give me an inkling I knew who had done it there wasn’t any doubt I knew why they had had done it too an early morning Bus full of dozy shift workers must have looked like a mobile Feast to daoka and his stroy V I guessed that they had planned to take it someplace secluded and drink the blood of everybody on board at 5:30 in the morning there would have been few people around to disturb them I went downstairs again and took another look around then I climbed off the bus and walked around to the driver’s cab the driver was a balding man in his early 50s with a handrolled cigarette tucked behind his ear he was slumped forward over his steering wheel with his eyes closed as if he had simply nodded off the sliding door to his cab was marked with seven or eight fresh scratches some of which had gone right through the red paint to the bare aluminum underneath it looked as if a screecher had tried to get into the cab stabbing at the door in frustration I was still examining the cab when Jill arrived with bullet the day she was wearing a yellow blouse and natural colored slacks and no makeup she had probably had to come down here at very short notice as I had good morning she said in a hushed voice looking at the bus not for these folks they told me 17 it’s Dreadful yes but the screechers didn’t get the chance to do what they wanted to do what was that I’m pretty sure that they were trying to Commander the bus so that they could take the passengers someplace and drink them dry but it looks like the driers saw what was happening inside his bus and panicked I pointed up at the railroad bridge I don’t think he did this deliberately he was probably trying to go for some help wait a minute they were trying to Commander the bus you mean screechers can drive of course they can screechers are no different than they were before they were infected they can drive they can use telephones they can do anything the stoy virus affects people’s bodies and it snuffs out their soul but it doesn’t affect their memory or their intellect or any of their practical skills I didn’t realize I mean when you think vampires you can’t help thinking medieval can you you know castles and hor drawn carriages and things like that why don’t you let bullet here take a sniff around the bus there’s some officious detective called Watkins in there but don’t let him bother you okay I’ll call for help if he starts being too bossy one of the Bobbies lifted the Tarpin for her bullet jumped onto the bus and she followed him pretty girl the Bobby remarked as I walked past him I didn’t say anything I was married to Louise and I had always thought of myself as faithful but I was surprised how pleased I had been when Jill had turned up I rejoined Charles fth and Terrence got everything you need said Charles fith peering at his wristwatch I must get back to town by 12:30 lunch with the Minister for my sins Jill uh Miss foxley she’s seeing if she can pick up a trail do we know exactly what went on here attempted hijack most likely hijack eh Charles fi seemed to like the American hand of that hijack well keep me informed inspector Ruck came over looking hot and Crist there’s some press boys wanting to know what’s happened and they say they’d like some pictures too tell them that somebody on the bus was infected with the Korean flu and collapsed the driver tried to take the bus to the nearest hospital and misjudged the low bridge everybody else on the bus has been quarantined just to be on the safe side you’ll give them a fuller statement later oh I will will I said inspector Ruck aggressively and what will I tell them then Charles fith patted the silver Pips on his shoulder I’ll let you know after lunch now I really must Dash can’t keep the minister waiting beneath the trees bullets spent over 15 minutes sniffing around the bus downstairs and up when Jill emerged from the tarpulin she looked pale and upset I’ve never seen anything like that before that was too horrible for words are you okay her hair was damp with perspiration and I lifted a strand of it out of her eyes do you want to drink of water or anything no I’m all right it’s the way that they’re just sitting there bullet looked up at me and barked twice I really think he’s getting to like me and actually he’s warning you not to get too close oh sorry sorry boy do you think he’ll ever get to like me Jill smiled once he gets to know you better I’m sure he will okay then I said does he have a trail for us to follow yes he does and I think it’s quite strong I called out to Terren Darren we’re going screecher hunting you want to go get your car oh okay okay then righty ho Jill and I walked along the crown of the road trying to keep up with bullet while Terren crept along behind us in his Humber although the sky was cloudless we could hear distant collisions of Thunder and the lime trees along the Avenue began to rustle uneasily after only 10 minutes we reached the entrance to a large public park where there was a tar McAdam parking lot surrounded by giant elms what’s the betting the screechers were planning on bringing the bus here I asked Jill there was a bus stop close only 10 yards away for numbers 403 and 403a so the bus would normally have passed this way bullet hesitated and lifted his head he sniffed in several different directions as if he couldn’t make up his mind which way to go I think they must have split up somewhere here said Jill she took the scarf-like piece of linen out of her purse and held it in front of bullet’s nose to refresh his memory bullet immediately galloped through the entrance to the park and crossed the parking lot until he reached the trees on the far side there he stopped again and barked he’s confused said Jill he can still smell something but it’s different we LED bullet up and down the parking lot for over 10 minutes every now and then he lifted his head and sniffed the air but the strong scent that he’d been following from the bus seemed to come to an end here very abruptly you know what this means I said the stroy have a car or even cars plural that’s going to make things damned awkward said Terren mopping his face with his handkerchief how can we follow them if they’re driving around in bloody cars I got down on one knee and opened up my kit bullets snuffled around me suspiciously while I took out my compass and opened up the silver filigre cover that’s rather fancy said chill what is it stroy compass for locating any nearby scures really it looks like an antique it is it’s nearly 300 years old the priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church designed it in 1682 on the instructions of the vo V Akia sherban kakino the who of where I held the compass up higher and slowly moved it right and left Chan kakino was a great social and religious reformer he had the bible translated into Romanian and it started a huge religious revival like the King James Bible in the west the compass needles spun around and around he was determined to root out the stroy all of them because they were so Unholy obviously he didn’t have much luck no the stroy got him first some treacherous boyars allowed a stroy Mort to slip through the window of his Palace one night and the poor chap was sliced open and completely drained of blood the compass needle suddenly stopped spinning and started to seesaw in between North Northeast I’m pretty sure the stroy Mort must have driven off I told Terren and Jill but there are still some other creatures not too far away bullet can smell them can’t you boy bullet growled in the back of his throat it’s quite a thing isn’t it asked Terren bending over and peering at my stroy Compass how do it actually work look at the needle it’s made up of pearl copper and silver silver is highly sensitive to evil and moral impurity copper is responsive to lies and deception ask anybody who has ever taken a lie detector test and pearl goes dark when you expose it to hydrogen sulfide hydrogen sulfide that’s the principal gas given off when human beings start to decompose colly said Terren that makes it sound almost scientific doesn’t it I stared at him almost scientific my rear end he was talking about a theological tracking device invented and constructed by some of the leading intellects of the 17th century I didn’t argue about it though I had a job to do and very little time to do it in gradually nervy the needle began to settle down although it was still twitching from side to side whatever it had picked up it was still quite a long way off and the needle couldn’t seem to make up its mind exactly which way it wanted to point to me that meant that it had probably picked up more than one screecher and was dithering between the two as bullet was distance maybe a half mile Direction diagonally Northeast across the park across an Avenue of Pop and then a bright green playing field go on boy said Jill bullet circled around for a while sniffing and snorting and sneezing as if he had a head cold then without warning he tore off across the playing field bullet slow down boy bullet Jill ran after him and I jogged after Jill my metal kit banging painfully against my knees Terren had gone back to to his car and was slowly driving toward us up the Avenue of poppers even though Motor Vehicles weren’t allowed inside the park I could see two uniformed Park Keepers in the distance staring at him although they were too far away to make out the Expressions on their faces bullet shouted Jill bullet crossed the playing field to the other side and ran into a cops of horse chestnut trees at this time of the year the trees were dark green and heavy with pink Blossom and the ground beneath them was deeply shadowed Jill disappeared into the Gloom and I followed her bullet started barking again and this time he wouldn’t stop I had almost caught up with Jill now together we burst into a clearing amongst the trees and there was bullet barking and snarling and running from side to side oh God said Jill standing in the middle of the clear ing were four people a young man with short scruffed up hair and a pale bruised looking face wearing a torn sport coat and badly stained gray flannel pet a girl with gingery curls as pale and bruised as the boy she was plump about 17 years old and she was wearing a white summer dress with red and gray cats printed on it like the Siamese cats in lady in the but the the front of her dress was flooded with dark maroon blood the young man was standing behind a round-faced middle-aged woman with permanent waved hair the woman’s flower pot hat had been knocked a skew and she was panting hysterically not surprising the young man had one arm around her neck and he was holding a long wide-bladed kitchen knife right in front of her face the gingery haired girl was holding the wrist of a skinny young boy about eight or nine who was so frightened that he had wet his khaki shorts and could barely stand up the girl was holding a kitchen knife too and repeatedly prodded the boy in the chest and the shoulders with the point the boy kept whining ow ow ow ow I reached behind my back and lifted my Colt 45 out of its holster I held it up in both hands cocked it and took two steps closer you don’t need me to tell you what to do I announced I’m going to give you till 3 and then I’m going to kill you the young man looked at the gingery haired girl and then he looked back at me bucker off he told me not a hope pal you heard what I said I’m giving you a count of three and then I’m going to kill you one I thought I said bugger off the young man challenged me you did but I think you were under the misapprehension that even if I shot you I couldn’t kill you you’re a screecher after all a stoy V and as such you think you’re Immortal the young man frowned what do you know about it you tosser I know very much more than you do pal if my old friend Dua is running true to form the young man lowered his arm so that the point of his kitchen life was digging into the woman’s blouse just above her waistband a small spot of bright Scarlet blood appeared amongst the pattern of lime green leaves the woman whimpered and started to cry and helplessly opened and closed her hands the young man said I don’t know who you are mate and to be honest with you I don’t give a monkeys but if you don’t sling your o right now I’m going to get the right hump and do this poor old bag right in front of you two I told him and for your information the bullets in this gun were cast from the melted down goblets that were used by Christ’s disciples at the Last Supper not only that they’ve been plated with pure silver and rubbed with garlic from the pope summer Residence at Castel Gandolfo you’re having a bubble M you want to try me barel said the young man half turning toward the girl I took another step forward forward I had never been Roy Rogers but at this distance I could have blown at least half of the young man’s face off without too much risk of hitting the middle-aged woman one I warned him at that moment the girl swung her elbow back and stabbed the little boy in the middle of his stomach the blow was so forceful that I could hear the chop as the blade went in without any hesitation the girl whipped the knife upward so that he was cut open from his belt to his chest the little boy let out a horrible high-pitched scream like a run over cat then he fell backward onto last Autumn’s leaves I fired once and hit the girl in the shoulder the bang of a 45 is absolutely deafening and disorienting too I fired again and hit her in the side lumps of red flesh flew off her hip and she rolled over backward and sideways just behind the boy she tried to get up so I shot her again blowing off her left kneecap Jim screamed Jill I swung around pointing my pistol at the young man but I was too late he had already thrust his knife into the middle-aged woman’s stomach right up to the hilt and her blood was running down his wrist and staining her skirt she was staring at me in pain and shock and for some reason I couldn’t help noticing the large brown mole on her upper lip as if she had suffered that that blemish all her life only to die like this I aimed at the young man’s head but he ducked down behind her I tried to dodge to the side but he swung her around as if he were dancing with her with the knife still buried in her stomach no matter which way I tried to get a clear shot at him he kept her between us Terrence I yelled I needed someone to outflank this young screecher and hid him from the side Darren where are you for Christ’s sake it was then that I turned to Jill she was standing under the trees her eyes wide holding on to bullet’s collar Jill set bullet on him Jill he’s going to kill her but it was too late the screecher yanked his knife upward and the woman’s intestines piled out onto the ground unraveling themselves like yards and yards of overcooked canalone the screecher turned and ran away through the woods and he was running so fast as that all I could see was a brief gray Shadow and a flurry of leaves there was no point in wasting a Last Supper bullet on him I turned around the gingery haired girl had gone as well did you see which way she went I asked Jill we have to call for an ambulance she told me her voice was jerky and erratic and she was trembling uncontrollably I gripped her arms and shook her did you see which way way she went the redhead send bullet after her they’re going to die said Jill she tried to turn around and stumble away but I wouldn’t let her listen Jill they’re probably dead already Terren will call an ambulance you and me we have to go after the screechers that’s what we’re here for she shook her head I can’t send bullet after those people I can’t I I can’t do this anymore I didn’t realize eyes Jill for Christ’s sake pull yourself together we have to get after them now no she said I can’t do this anymore I thought I could but I can’t I let her go there was nothing else I could do I couldn’t let bullet run after the screechers on his own and he certainly wouldn’t listen to me I walked over to the little boy his arms and legs were sprawled as if he were jumping into the air but he would never jump again he was white-faced and dead the woman moaned and I crossed over to see how she was her intestines were stuck all over with leaves and twigs and she was staring at them in despair pray for me she whispered I nodded every morning from now on until the day that I die I promise you you’re a strange bloke she said I didn’t answer her what can you answer when a dying woman says that to you hunt for the dead Charles frii was Furious he paced around his office throwing up his arms from time to time as if he were singing the finale to a grand opera you don’t know what it took to cover this up 17 dead people in a 403 bus a woman and a boy disembed in a public park this is worse than the Buster crab business the red phone rang and Charles fith picked it up what He barked even louder than bullet then oh oh sorry Home Secretary I leaned close to Terren and said Buster cra business as far as I knew Buster Krab was a movie actor with big muscles I think I’d seen him in some Third Rate Western bster Krab was a royal Navy diver said Terren hoarsely it was obvious from the way he was talking out of the side of his mouth that the Buster crab business had been a serious embarrassment they found his body in Chester Harbor early last year no hands and his head fell off when they tried to lift him out of the water hey yes I nodded I think I read about that it was that time that Cru visited England wasn’t it and they thought this guy had been secretly diving under K’s ship that’s right said Terren uncomfortably that was MI6 perhaps possibly but you certainly didn’t hear it from me Charles frii banged the phone down it’s the daily mail again they’ve got hold of this bloody idiotic idea that MI6 has been secretly running some kind of mad scientist experiment turning our agents into sociopathic assassins and that some of them have escaped human killing machines on the loose sir David’s fluffing at the mouth sir David’s always froing at the mouth said Terren I just want to know what the devil we do now said Charles Smith I mean what’s the plan Jim I thought we were going to track these buggers down and exterminate them before the press or the public got wind of what was going on that’s what I promised s David anywhere and if we can’t do it I need to know now it might be an idea to let the male run with their story about killing machines Terren suggested we can always prove them wrong later and it’s better than telling them that South London is infested with screechers forget about the Press relations I told him press relations won’t mean anything if we can’t locate the stoy Mort you’re talking about this fellow Dua it’s not a fellow sir I insisted it’s a thing we have to find it and destroy it and we have to do it real quick dua’s been infecting people much faster than I expected you only have to do the math I turned Charles fi’s blotter around and joted on it with my mechanical pencil 17 people contain 170 pints of blood but the human stomach only has the capacity to swallow four pints at a time obviously Dua didn’t know in advance how many passengers were going to be riding on that bus and even if there were more than he and his fellow creatures needed it still would have been necessary for him to Kill Them All but if they did need 17 people we could be talking about 42 screechers here oh my God said Charles F this is out of control already isn’t it if you have 42 screechers in the South London suburbs and all of them are looking for eight or nine pints of fresh human blood three times in every 24 hours then yes this is out of control the green phone rang Charles fith picked it up and bellowed what he listened for a moment and then he said no commissioner absolutely not commissioner I’m sorry commissioner not a chance no and a very good day to you too he slammed the receiver down and said sir Kenneth bloody mlan they should demote that man back to Constable no cloak room attendant he sat down in his big leather armchair and swung from side to side breathing like a man who’d eaten a large lunch smoked a cigar and then run up eight flights of stairs eventually he said what’s it going to take to find this dooka fella a thing I mean I drew a few more lines on Charles fi’s plaughter when I was hunting down screechers after dday it was a totally different ball game we were attached to an advancing Army which was driving the screechers ahead of us but here well this is South London in peacetime we can’t go from Street to street searching every house we can’t ask the Royal Engineers to blow up buildings for us if we suspect that a couple of screechers are hiding in the Attic so what can we do we’ll have to use a combination of plain old-fashioned police work plus some inspired deduction plus well something else something else asked Charles frii suspiciously raising one Bramley eyebrow I guess you’d probably call it sorcery are they are cult you mean Dennis whle kind of stuff the devil rides out dear God I can just hear myself explaining this to Sir David I hope you won’t have to sir but let’s make a start from what happened today it’s pretty clear that Dua has found himself an automobile we need to check any reports of stolen vehicles in that part of South London over the past 6 weeks but we also need to ask the public if they have seen a neighbor’s automobile not stolen but being regularly driven by somebody unfamiliar what are you getting at stoy Morty aren’t half rotten and sick looking like stgo V they look perfectly normal in fact they usually look better than normal but they’re dead and dead people find it difficult to rent or buy property because well they’re dead so they have a habit of killing other people and taking over their lives their homes their property even their clothes and usually they’re clever enough to do it without arousing suspicion so how do we get the public to help us I’m not really sure to tell you the truth maybe some kind of announcement in the newspapers I’ve got it said Terren we could tell the press that we’ve had an intelligence report from Washington they suspect that a KGB spy has moved into a flat or a house in South London and that he might be driving the car belonging to the previous occupier we could give out a special telephone number for the public to call we could even offer a reward Charles fith pulled a disapproving face in his opinion newspapers were only good for wrapping up Cod and chips but terrence’s idea was actually a pretty good one we were right in the depths of the Cold War and every day the Press was full of scaremongering stories about Soviet spies living amongst us leading what appeared to be commonplace lives and as we l discovered they actually were very well Charles fi told tence why don’t you scribble something down on paper and see if you can have it on my desk by 5:00 I’ll talk to Sir Kenneth bloody mlan and see if he can get his beat chaps to start asking questions about people driving cars that they shouldn’t be what are you going to do Jim I looked at my watch the gold brightling that Louise had given me on our wedding day I have some persuading to do T for two Terren let me borrow his Humber and I drove back over Chelsea Bridge toward the south suburbs the sky was deep blue and streak with Mar’s tails and it was so warm that I drove with all the windows open and my cows licked blowing the river temp sparkled in the sunlight like smashed mirrors I drove through the builtup center of Cen at an overheated crawl I hadn’t driven a manual shift for over 10 years so I kept stalling and kangaroo jumping and it took me over an hour to get to pearly by the time I turned into Kum Road my shirt was sticking to the leather seat and I was so thirsty that I could have drunk blood pearly was a prosperous suburb BB with huge 1930s houses concealed behind High Beach Hedges shining new Rovers were parked in every graveled driveway and I could see tennis courts and gardeners clipping rose bushes and well-dressed children running around in Airtec shirts and white socks and sandals there was a tranquil air of summer heat and confidence and money I found the starlings at the end of Kum Road an enormous mock tutor house with glittering Ivy all down one wall and pigeons warbling on the roof I steered the Humber into the drive and parked outside the garages a middle-aged man in a droopy cotton sun hat was clipping the edges of the front lawn not that they looked as if they needed clipping the lawn itself was so perfectly kept that it looked unreal and striped like a pair of green silk pajamas I climbed out of the car and walked up to him shielding my eyes with my upraised arm I’m looking for Jill I told him oh yes my name’s Jim Falcon Captain James Falcon actually Jill and I have been working together yes I know about that well as much as I’m allowed to I’m her father he climbed up over the herbaceous border onto the driveway he had a squarish pugnacious face and a prick ly gray mustache is Jill home I asked him I really need to talk to her I don’t know if that’s a very good idea Captain fulan Jill came home in a state of considerable distress and we had to call the Family Doctor to give her a sedative I’m sorry she hasn’t told us what happened and of course we haven’t been pressing her to tell us because we’re aware that it’s extremely Hush Hush but if it’s good to have this kind of of an effect on her well we’re her family we have to put her personal well-being first before her work yes sir I can understand how you feel I know Jill’s extremely shocked and I’m sorry about that but this investigation we’re working on is critical we’re talking about people’s lives here sir maybe hundreds of people’s lives maybe even more well I’m really not sure I PA for a moment and then I said sir you saw action during the War I guess yes of course I was out in Burma you saw plenty of things that shocked and distressed you Al bet you saw people killed he blinked at me Captain fulcon are you trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me I nodded what Jill and I have been doing together it’s just as important as what we did during the war in some ways even more so though because nobody’s prepared for it something to do with the bloody Russians I suppose I’m sorry I’m not allowed to tell you but I need her sir I need her expertise I need bullet The Situation’s getting more and more desperate by the day and she has to pull herself together I can’t say I’m altogether happy about it look at it this way sir and Jill also has to realize that her entire career could be in jeopardy I covered up for her this afternoon I told my boss that she took bullet to Cen to follow up some new trails we found but if she won’t get back on the job they’ll probably have to demote her or even sack her her father lowered his head so that I couldn’t see his face under the brim of his sun hat all right he said I’ll see what I can do Jill was lying on a flowery chint sofa in the drawing room B was lying on the rug next to her panting I thought you’d come sooner or later she said wly turned out to be sooner her eyes were swollen and there was a feverish pink flush on her cheeks she had pulled her hair back with a pale blue Alice band which made her look even younger like a sixth former from some upper class English girls school she was wearing a white cotton robe although her legs were covered by a silky throw with fringes I looked around the room traditional yet expensive with staffer figures of shepherdesses on the mantlepiece and oil paintings of gallions at Sea through the French windows I could see a yorkstone patio with cast iron garden furniture and Beyond to a tennis court where a 20-ish couple were shouting and laughing as they knocked the ball backward and forward over the net a clock discreet completely chimed too how are you feeling I asked better thanks a little woy the doctor gave me something to calm me down are you going to be coming back or is this your way of saying you quit she looked up at me and I could tell that she didn’t really know what to say I’ve seen dead bodies of course it’s part of the job but I’ve never seen anybody killed before not right in front of me so that’s it you quit at that moment the drawing room door opened and a middle-aged woman appeared wearing an orange silk dress she had the flat pretty face of a Burmese and there was no question where Jill had inherited her exotic looks from she came forward and held out her hand Maya foxley I’m Jill’s mother Jim falcan good to meet you is everything all right Mr falcan we were very worried when Jill came home in such a state I gave her a tight non-committal smile I know I’m sorry I wouldn’t have bothered you but Jill’s doing some very important work for us and and I just came to remind her how important I see Mrs foxley looked uneasy I don’t know if she was expecting me to explain myself any further but when it was obvious that I wasn’t going to she said would you like some tea chill and I talked for nearly an hour her mother brought in a plate full of Scottish shortbread called Petticoat tals and I ate about seven of them I hadn’t realized how hungry I was I tried not to push chilled too hard instead I encouraged her to think about what she had seen and why it had shocked her so much from my own experience during the War I knew that people can be much more distressed by tiny poigny than by Major tragedies the baby’s shoe lying in the ruins Jill said what I can’t get out of my head that stoy who killed the little boy she was a girl it never occurred to me that you could have female scures too I put down my teacup sure you can they’re called stuga in some ways they’re supposed to be even more powerful than the male stoy according to the folk stories they can turn your butter rancid stop your cows from giving milk ruin your Harvest even ruin your marriage they sound horrendous horendous that one we saw she was horrendous well she was still alive and physically decomposing which didn’t make her very attractive but once they’re dead or Undead rather the strio AA is suppose to be very alluring some of the stories even say that they can fall in love with human men and have children who are half human and half stoy they’re still just as dangerous of course they still need fresh human blood so you wouldn’t want them living in your neighborhood Jill said I couldn’t help thinking what if that happened to me I think that was what I was afraid of more than anything else first of all that’s not going to happen to you because Dua is not going to catch you unawares the way it did with those poor people second of all if it did I would immediately know what had happened to you and I would Hammer Nails into your eyes cut your head off and bury your body in consecrated ground so you’d have nothing to worry about for the first time that afternoon Jill actually smiled she reached out her hand to me and touched my shirt sleeve I’m sorry she said I’ve really let you down haven’t I your stiff upper lip went a little floppy that’s all I came around to starch it for you so what do we do now I think we need to take bullet back to the park and follow Any Trail that the screechers left behind them I very much doubt that they would have gone straight back to the place where Duke is hiding but if we can find out where their hold up they’re bound to make contact with him before too long all right then um just give me 10 minutes to get dressed she stood up I hadn’t realized how short she was without her shoes I’ll wait for you I said and nodded toward the tea tray I’ll um take care of these cookies as she left her mother came back in and gave me that look that only mothers can give you when you’re taking their daughter away bindes road we drove bullet back to bedington park the woods where the middle-aged woman and the little boy had been killed were already screened off with 10t high sackings and signs saying Metropolitan Police no entry I took the kit out of the trunk of the car and then we showed our identity cards to three sweating Bobbies in shirt sleeves who allowed Us in inspector Ruck was still there looking even closer to detonation than before oh it’s you he said what the devil do you want want we’re going to be following Any Trail that the perpetrators may have left behind them about Bloody time I wanted to get the Dogs Out hours ago but believe it or not I was countermanded he pronounced countermanded as if it were one of the most disgusting words in the English language like mucus yes sir I know I said try to calm him down but that only made his eyes bulge and his nostrils flare even more widely I have to say though that I loved apoplectic Englishmen like him especially if they were on my side they were like hand grenades with the pin out morning till night Jill let bullet off the leash and he scampered off through the woods I gave inspector Ruck a half-hearted salute and then I followed bullettin Jill carrying my kit Madness I heard inspector Ruck protest bloody ludicy the whole bloody thing in the clearing we found two forensic scientists from the Metropolitan Police laboratory at Hen still raking through the leaves and taking photographs okay if we play through I asked them one of them stood up and took out a pipe actually old boy we’ve just about finished here no footprint but plenty of blood samples if you catch the blighters we should be able to to match them for you he lit up his pipe and he was sucking at it furiously when his companion came over holding up his tweezers George have a deco at this I thought he was showing us a leaf at first a curled up shred of something pale and wobbly with turquoise tinged edges George took out his pipe and peered at it human skin he said almost at once I suddenly thought of the shots that I had fired at the ginger-haired girl and the lumps of Flesh that had sprayed out of her arm that’s green said chill of course which tells us that the owner of this particular piece of skin must have been dead for at least 24 hours I looked at Jill and gave her the slightest Shake of my head she looked back at me wide eyed don’t say a word about scates odd said George you haven’t had any earlier reports of any missing persons in this area have we not that I know of I told him but take that piece of skin back to your laboratory would you and preserve it we might need it for evidence later George said what’s going on here I really get the feeling that we’re being kept in the dark yes you are and for a very good reason George took out his pipe again it’s not very helpful you know when they keep us in the dark hard to know what we’re supposed to be looking for you’re looking for anything that doesn’t seem to be natural like that piece of skin H said George frowning around the clearing as if he had lost something important bullet picked up the screecher trail almost immediately and began to trot ahead of us with his nose down he led us to the edge of the park and out into the Suburban streets again heading back in the direction of Cen Aerodrome every now and then we found spots of blood on the sidewalk which indicated that the ginger-haired girl must have been pretty seriously wounded Jill said another thing I always thought that vampires could only come out at night you’re thinking about the NOS veratu like Dracula and all the vampires you see in the movies the stoy are different they have some similarities but they’re more like distant cousins the thing is the stroy were isolated for hundreds of years in the forests and mountains and small village communities in Romania and because of that they became very inbred and they developed different strengths and different weaknesses they can walk around in sunlight which the NOS sparatu can’t do and they can eat normal food and like I say there’s even a legend that female creatures can even conceive how can a dead woman give birth to a live baby search me how can a dead woman walk around at all but when a stoy V becomes a stoy Mort there’s a radical change in its body chemistry it becomes I don’t know like liquid mercury and smoke it can walk on ceilings and it can pass through a gap only an inch wide which is why the people in Romania always close their windows at night even in the summer yeah look said Jill bullet had reached a red mailbox at the corner of the street what the British call a pillar box the female screecher must have leaned against for a while because there were splatters of Blood on the asphalt pavement all around it and a smear of Blood on the white enamel plaque which gave the times of maale collections I hope she hasn’t gone too much further I said we had already walked over a mile and a half and we were close to the perimeter of the aerodrome but bullet turned around and barked at us and so we continued we climbed a grassy Hill next to the main area field where young children were flying kites and kicking footballs from here we could see all the way across Cen with its Victorian Town Hall Tower and even as far as the city of London and the Dome of St Paul’s it could have been idilic Earth has not anything to show more fair if we hadn’t been following that dogged black labrador on the trail of stoy as we crossed the grass chill said to me I was wondering how you started chasing screechers it’s rather a funny choice of career don’t you think hey I’m not a professional screecher Chaser my real job is giving cultural advice to businessmen you know if American Executives want to know how they should behave when they sell their products in Belgium say or Greece or India I tell them what the protocol is in India for instance nobody ever says no you want something they don’t have they always tell you tomorrow so why screeches my mother’s fault most of all she was Romanian she told me all about the stoy when I was little and when I went to college I did a whole lot of research into them without really meaning to I became something of an international expert is is your mother still alive I shook my head I didn’t want to talk about my mother just now I didn’t want Jill to know how intent I was on hunting down Dua and destroying it and why in any case anger was unprofessional anger could lead to fatal mistakes bullet led us across the field and back into crowded residential streets soon I found out that we were walking down a street that I recognized ized it was the same street where the birthday party Massacre had taken place we passed the same house and the same Victorian church and soon we were back on the busy main road just opposite the Red Deer Pub I would have given 5bs for a beer right then even a warm one but of course the Pub’s doors were closed we passed a small parade of shops a Barbers and a chemists and a sweet shop outside the Sweet Shop there was a color poster for the curse of Frankenstein starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing showing next week at the Regal Cinema I can’t stand horror films said Jill and then she looked at me with a self-deprecating smile I’m really not very good for this job am I Jill nobody’s good for this job believe me but some poor sucker has to do it you’re doing fine Jill bent down to take hold of bullet’s collar and we crossed the main road on the other side the streets were even narrower and the houses were smaller and closer together orange brick Victorian houses with black slate roofs we walked up a short Steep Hill into Bin’s road which backed on to the main London to Brighton railroad line we were only halfway up the road when just above the rooftops a pman Express train flew past with its distinctive Brown and cream carriages and pink table lamps shining in every window whoosh bang a decompression of air and it was gone that was the Brighton Bell said Jill London to Brighton in 60 minutes flat and a good lunch too well we’ll have to do that one day you and me when this is all over and paddle in the sea yes she said that would be lovely bullet continued to sniff his way along the sidewalk but then I said grab his collar Jill look about a 100 yards further up the street a glossy black Armstrong sidley Saloon was parked apart from a 10-year-old Morris and a motorcycle it was the only vehicle in the straet and it was far more expensive than anything that the people around here could have afforded well over $44,000 new I would have guessed bullet whined and strained but Jill pulled him back across the street and we took shelter in the doorway of a small laundry on the corner the woman behind the counter looked at us oddly but didn’t come to ask us why two grown people and the dog were playing hide and go seek in the front of her shop we waited over 10 minutes and then the front door of the house opened after a further pause a tall gray haired man in a gray suit appeared he was too far away for me to be able to see his face clearly but he had a very upright bearing and he was carrying a cane he opened the garden gate and as he did so he turned back to the house as if he were saying something to the occupant then he climbed into the Armstrong sidley and drove off bullet made another strangled noise as if he were disappoint pointed that the man had gone I’ll bet money that was Dua I said well we have his registration number said Jill all we have to do now is get the Ministry of Transport to look it up for us NLT 683 I’ll call Terren then I want to take a look at that house I went into the laundry and asked the woman if she had a phone I could use of course she said is every everything all right oh sure my girlfriend and I are just playing a trick on somebody it’s his birthday oh said the woman blinking at me then you’re American aren’t you as if that explained why I was behaving so strangely when the MI6 operator put me through to Terren he sounded distracted I gave him the license number of Duke’s Car and told him that I’d call him back later but Terren on no account take any action even when you found out who the car belongs to don’t worry old man I wouldn’t have the first idea we walked up Bin’s Road toward the house it had a peeling Brown painted front door and a knocker in the shape of Mr punch the tiny front garden was covered over with concrete but dandelion were growing up between the cracks I tried to see into the front window but a pair of sagging net curtains were drawn across it and all I could make out was the sunlight shining in the backyard in Louisville they would have called this a shotgun house in the sense that you could fire a shotgun in through the front door and the pellets would go clear through the house without touching anything the front door of the adjoining house opened and an elderly woman appeared wearing a flowery summer dress that appeared to have been modeled on a bell tent and wrinkled red socks from the open door I could hear Diana playing on the radio I’m so young and you’re so old the elderly woman made a flemy noise in her throat and said If you’re looking for the Browns mate they’ve been poorly really when was the last time you saw them three days ago the doctor’s been around twice a day he even came around in the middle of the night I asked him what was wrong with him and he said mentis was that their doctor the guy in the black sedan that’s right he’s not their usual doctor though they usual doctors Dr Bedford I suppose he’s on his holidays Dr Bedford yes I imagine he is well thank you for telling us the elderly woman didn’t appear to be in any hurry to go back back into her house she said I go to Dr cotr myself she’s a woman doctor you don’t want to go to a man doctor at my age I’ll get this rash on me legs see I see we thought we were going to be delayed there for hours talking about the woman’s skin problems but after 2 or 3 minutes a younger woman appeared at her front door and told her that her tea was getting cold so she went inside I said thank God the British can’t survive for more than 10 minutes without a cup of tea I think there’s somebody in the living room said Jill I saw a shadow moving across toward the door I shielded my eyes with my hand and she was right there was definitely somebody in the house moving around although it was impossible to tell what they were doing I decided to go in cold normally I would have made sure that we had covered the back of the house but the railroad embankment was very Steep and trains were rattling past every 3 or 4 minutes some of them at 50 or 60 M an hour and even a screecher would have thought twice about trying to escape that way I opened the garden gate and went up to the front door it may have been bolted on the other side but the main lock was only a cheap Yale I turned my back on it and at the same time I reached behind me and took out my gun Jill said nothing but held on to bullet’s collar and waited don’t let bullet go I warned her these bastards are capable of breaking his neck without blinking and once I’m inside bring my kit in will you as quick as you can all right said Jill apprehensively I had started to count to three 1 two when I heard the young man’s voice inside the house who’s there is there somebody outside barel there’s somebody outside I can smell them without any more hesitation I kicked backward and the door burst open I barged into the hall and hurled myself sideways so that I virtually bounced off the wall there were three or four coats hanging up and for one desperate moment I was entangled in empty sleeves as if the Coats were trying to catch hold of me but then I fought my way out of them and pushed my way into the living room the young man we had seen in the park was standing in the far corner behind The Frayed brown couch lying on the couch was the gingery headed girl with its knee heavily bandaged the living room was stuffy and hot and there was a sickening smell of pesent Flesh and dried herbs the unmistakable stench of screechers chill I yelled pointing my gun at them with both hands get in here now what do you think you’re going to do with that the young man sneered at me kill us we’ll suck you empty said the ginger-haired girl you and your girlfriend and your bleeding dog there was no doubt where the piece of skin in the park had come from the girl’s face had a pale greenish tinge to it and its eyes were already already starting to milk over it was very close to becoming a stoy Mort Jill came in with my kit bullet was close behind her eager to get at the two screechers but Jill said stay bullet and he reluctantly waited in the hallway panting his tail thumping against the umbrella stand keeping my gun pointed at the young man I went down on one knee and opened up my kit the young man started to come around the side of the couch and as it did so it took his kitchen knife out of its belt I’m going to split you wide open mate and there’s nothing you can do to stop me I was reluctant to shoot it for one thing I didn’t want the neighbors to call the police for another thing I had only six Last Supper bullets left and I wanted to conserve them the young man came up to me crouching slightly holding out its knife and grinning like most creatures it thought that it was Immortal and that even if I shot it it would survive I think that’s near enough son I warned it out of my case I lifted the Bible with the Ashwood cover and the silver crucifix and held it up in front of it immediately it turned its face away as if I had Shone a blinding light in its eyes the gingery haired girl clamped both her hands over its face and cried out what’s that Mickey what’s that I’ll tell you what this is this is the first Bible that was translated into Romanian for sherban kakuzo of wakia when he swore to rid his country of Unholy Vermin like you take it away the girl screamed at me take it away it’s hurting my eyes the young man raised one hand to protect its face and started to Edge its way toward me again but then I handed the Bible to Jill and said open it where it’s bookmarked and hold it up high she took the Bible and found the faded Red Ribbon then she opened it wide and held it up it was marked at revelation 20ce both screat found it almost impossible to see when I had first used this Bible on a screecher during World War II I hadn’t been able to believe that the word of God could have such a blinding effect on them but they were totally Unholy and it did it was like throwing salt on slugs I shoved my gun back into its holster and took out my silver wire whip I made Jill take a step backward toward the door and then I lashed it sideways so that it wound itself around the young man’s chest pinning hit arms I gave the whip a sharp yank and the young man fell onto the worn out carpet struggling and swearing what have you done to me you bastard what have you done you never forget how to restrain a screecher after you’ve done it often enough you could almost do it in your sleep kneel on its chest pass its thumbs together with the silver thumb screws then drag off its rancid shoes and fasten its big toes together until you hear the screws crunch into the bones the gingery headed girl kicked and wrestled me too but for a screecher it was very weak I must have heard it badly when I shot it and Jill helped me by holding the Bible right in front of its turquoise mtled face so that it was completely dazzled when I had tightened up their thumb screws and toe screws I pulled the young man so that it was sitting upright and Unwound the whip then I dragged the girl off the couch so that it was sitting upright too back to back and I wound the whip around both of them so hard that it was cutting into their arms Jill looked at me and I could see that she was Disturbed you’re going to regret this you bastard the young man told me not as much as you are sunshine you see how British I was becoming and I’d only been there a couple of days especially if you don’t tell me what I need to know I’m not telling you nothing you can eing f off I want to know where dooka is that’s all Mickey will spit you wide open and I’ll drink you dry the girl spat at me um I don’t don’t think so you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I can’t kill you the truth is I can and I’m going to Jill was still holding up the Bible I said it’s okay Jill you can put that down now the only way these characters are getting out of here is in a sack she slowly closed the Bible and put it back into my kit you’re not really going to kill him of course they’re half dead already but I need some information first why should we tell you anything said the young man if you’re going to kill us anyway what’s the effing difference the difference is that if you don’t tell me what I want to know I’m going to hurt you both very badly Joe said Jim can I talk to you outside if that’s all right sure these two aren’t going any place she went out into the front garden I could see that she was very agitated bullet stayed close to her and kept looking up at her anxiously Jim they told me that you were going to kill the screeches when you found them but I never realized that it was going to be like this I didn’t know what to say she was a lovely and sensitive young woman and I really didn’t want to distress her but she had to realize that we were hunting some of the most disgusting parasites on the face of the Earth and there was no easy or humane way of Exterminating them listen I said why don’t you go back to that laundry and call Terren for me again tell him where we are and tell him that we’re going to need an unmarked van he’ll know what you mean I don’t know how you can do this she said if it’s any consolation neither do I how long do you need give me 10 minutes okay if they’re going to talk that should be long enough and if they don’t the curse of Dua the two screechers looked up at me as I came back into the house and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such hatred on any creature’s face human or not you you still don’t want to answer my questions I asked them all I need to know is where Dua is hiding himself and how many people he’s infected you can kill us but we won’t die said the young man contemptuously you can even cut our heads off and we won’t die oh yes I know that but that can only happen if your body is able to escape from the place where I put it and your head is still reasonably intact since I’m going to bury your bodies in consecrated ground and I’m going to boil your heads until there’s nothing left of your brains but soup which I’m going to pour down the drain there isn’t much chance of that happening Dua will find you and Dua will make sure that you suffer duka doesn’t have to worry about finding me I’m going to find it first I have a score to settle with dooka well we’re not going to help you find him said the gingery haired girl you want a bet I asked it I went to the windows which Overlook the backyard and pulled down The Grubby net curtains then I came back and wrapped the curtains around the screechers heads what are you doing you TSA the young man said spitting to get the net curtain out of its mouth guy Fox Knight just came early I told it what I took the holy oil out of my kit unstoppered it and poured it over their wrapped up heads bloody hell that burns the young man shouted tossing its head violently from side to side the girl didn’t say anything but sucked in its breath because the oil hurt so much I took a box of swan Vestas and struck one holding it up in front of them so that they could see the flame now do you want to tell me where Dua is hiding you’re mad you are the young man screamed I’m not going to tell you nothing the choice is yours buddy how about you sweetheart are you going to tell me where dooka is go to hell the girl retorted its voice muffled under the Nets in that case you don’t leave me any alternative the match had burned right down to my fingers and I had to blow it out and take out another one at that moment though Jill came back into the living room she looked wide-eyed at the two screechers with the net curtains wrapped around their heads but she didn’t ask me what I was doing instead she said I’ve just spoken to Terren he’s identified the car well that’s good news for these two comparatively speaking Jill had written the car owner’s address on the back of a laundry bill it belongs to Dr Norman Watkins The Laurels pampisford Road South Cen he’s in general practice but most of his patients are private so I wonder what a stoy Mort is doing driving his car around Terren is leaving now he’s going to collect his car from bedington Park and then he’s coming over here with a van he says that he shouldn’t be more than an hour that’s plenty of time do you want to take bullet for a walk while I do the necessary Jill said all right come on bullet but when she reached the door she hesitated do you have to do this I mean is there really no other way come on Jill you saw for yourself what these two jokers are capable of and once they become stroy Morty they’ll spread their infection like wildfire can’t they be given a proper trial chill Justice is a human right these godamn things are halfway to losing their Humanity already Dua will drain your blood even if we can’t said the gingery head girl I promise you that you piece of I promise both of you what your language I told it smoke and mirrors parents arrived just after 5:00 p.m. followed closely by a dark blue Austin van Jill and I were sitting on the low brick wall in front of the house with the mid August sun in our eyes the van was driven by a whiet thin man in a brown boiler suit with a sharp purple nose and hair that stuck up at the back of his head His companion was big and Silent with a blue shaved head and a scar under his nose where his hair lip had been sewn up without a word the two of them opened the back doors of the van and carried two folded up coal sacks into the house Terren went in after them and came out almost immediately looking quasy my God Jim nobody said that it was pleasant I know but all the same he pressed his hand over his mouth and held it there for a while his eyes watering my God I wish I hadn’t had those sausages for lunch Mickey and Barrel hadn’t been easy to kill especially since I was on my own and I wasn’t nearly as young and as fit as I used to be during the war the only way to kill them together was to force Barrel face down onto the floor with Mickey on top of her facing upward even though they were both restrained they still twisted and fought and cursed and I had to wedge their shoulders underneath the legs of a dining chair to keep them still I hammered each nail directly into Mickey’s eye sockets and at 9 in they were just long enough to penetrate the back of Barrel’s skull too which was sufficient to numb her then I got out my saw and cut through their necks leaving both of their heads in the kitchen sink the driver and His companion came shuffling out of the house with one of the sacks swaying heavily between them Terren winced and looked in the opposite direction what do you plan to do about duka he asked go after it I told him but this isn’t something we can Rush Tuk is going to be a hell of a lot Wier than these two and much more difficult to nail down we need to do some reconnaissance first what’s your suggestion well it’s posing as a doctor isn’t it so oh let’s make a doctor’s appointment pampisford Road was a 3M Long Avenue that ran along the east side of Cen Aerodrome most of its houses had been built in the mid 1930s large detached residences hidden behind Laurel Hedges but they weren’t as opulent as Jill’s parents house and most of them weren’t nearly so wellmaintained their front Gates were sagging on their hinges and their Gardens were overgrown with weeds we parked on the grass Verge about 50 yards away from the Laurels and walked the rest of the way leaving bullet in the car on the gate post there was a tarnished brass name plate with the name Dr Norman Watkins F frcs general practitioner engraved on it beyond the gate there was a shingled driveway where Dr Watkins Armstrong sidley was parked the house was Pebble dashed and painted white although the pebble Dash was Gray from years of weathering and there was a bright green streak of damp down one wall where the guttering was broken I said you can see why Dua chose a practice like this Dr Watkins was running it single-handed and from the looks of things he was probably pretty old he wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight what’s the plan then asked Terren the windows of the house were black and curtainless and the interior looked deeply forbidding with dark antique furniture and mirrors on the walls in the dining room mirror we could see ourselves standing in the driveway our faces pale and distorted like Reflections in a lake why don’t you keep watch from the road I told Terren Jill and I will go in and try to see Dua you’re actually going to go in and talk to him it I corrected him never forget that it’s an it but yes we can make out that we’re just about to get married and we need some information on birth control Jill looked at me and gave me a nervous smile well I said we don’t want a whole lot of baby Falcons around do we not just yet do you need your kit asked Terren I shook my head this is a wrecky after all but if you hear any gunfire bring it in and bring it in quick Terren retreated to the side walk just outside the Laurels standing behind the Hedge and lighting a cigarette Jill and I crunched over the shingle to the maroon painted front door there was another brass sign on it polished this time which said kindly enter I turned the door knob and we went inside the house was stuffy as if nobody had opened a window in a very long time and there was an underlying smell of boiled fish the hallway was tiled in a dime pattern of black and white with a hideous oak coat stand and four or five dead flies lying on their backs on the Windows Hills a doorway to the left hand side was open and I could hear typing I went in and Jill followed me a middle-aged woman in a pale green tailored suit was sitting very upright at a desk her head slightly raised so that she could see through the lower half of her bifocal spectacles pecking away at a huge huge black typewriter opposite her stood a row of Bentwood chairs and a low table with a collection of doged magazines on it John Bull and The Illustrated London news and Horse and Hound the woman looked up and said sharply can I help you as if helping us was the last thing she wanted to do I um we don’t have an appointment but we were wondering if we could see Dr Watkins I’m afraid surgery finished half an hour ago and in any case Dr Watkins is away it’s just that this is the last chance we’ll get before Saturday I gave Jill an indulgent smile and took hold of her hand we’re getting married and there were one or two things we wanted to talk about you know personal things are you regular patients of Dr Watkins I’m afraid I’m only temporary myself oh sure I mean my fiance is Dr Watkins helped to deliver her so I’m sure that he’d want to help her as much as he could well all right I’ll ask Dr duka if he can see you he’s the locom that would be great it’s just that we want to make absolutely sure that you know we don’t have any little surprises God I must have sounded dumb who shall I say asked the receptionist clicking down the switch of her intercom Mr Billings and miss erskin the receptionist leaned forward and shouted there’s a Mr Billings and a miss kin here doctor they’re going to be married on Saturday and they were wondering if they could have a word she didn’t really need an intercom I was sure that Dua must have been able to hear her across the corridor there was a moment’s silence and then I heard dua’s voice for the very first first time and I felt as if centipedes were crawling over my shoulders of course why don’t you ask them to come through Suave measured with that distinctive Romanian accent that reminded me of all the other stoy morti I had encountered I almost felt that the past 12 years had shrunk away completely the receptionist led us across the hallway to a door marked private she knocked and showed us in my heart was beating in slow painful thumps as if I had been running for my life Dua was standing by the window looking out over the back Garden it was very tall over 6′ 3 and it was wearing an Immaculate light gray suit with a dark gray shirt underneath it and a white starched collar its gray silk necktie was tied to just a little more flamboyantly than the average Englishman would have tied it in those days and its gray combed back hair was just a little longer than the average Englishman would have allowed it to grow so that it curled over its collar at the back it had a single Diamond sparkling in the lobe of his left ear which the average Englishman would have thought was incontestable proof of homosexuality not only that it was wearing some kind of lilac colog at a time when even Old Spice was considered a little suspicious but like most regy Morty it was devastatingly handsome even in my eyes and I detested Tuka more than anything alive or dead its face was angular with hooded seag green eyes and a sharp straight nose its straw was clearly defined and it had lips of extraordinary sensuality as if it had just finished giving a woman the most intimate kiss imaginable and had not yet wiped its mouth the girl at the house in skiler Strat had been right it strongly resembled a male incarnation of Milena dri it turned away from the window and smiled at us behind it in the garden I could see a dilapitated Pergola so wildly overgrown with creepers that it looked as if it were infested with green snakes beside it stood a marble statue of a pensive woman holding a water jug so you are to be married said Dua it turned its head toward me but it never once took its eyes off chill you are a very lucky man Mr Billings John Billings and your very desirable bride to be Katherine erskin Catherine I yes in my country you would be called Katherine which means pure you are an extremely beautiful woman cine you deserve many years of Joy thank you said Jill although Dua was being so absurdly flirtatious I had the feeling that in a way she was enjoying it its voice was so mellow and yet it had an air of intense danger about it that was both alarming and attractive at the same time it gave me the same sensation as standing too close to the edge of a cliff for some reason I always feel insanely tempted to throw myself over why don’t you both sit down it asked us then you can tell me what it is that you wish to know with sat down in two leathered armchairs facing dukas’s desk or rather Dr Norman Watkins desk because it had Dr Watkins name plate on it and a cpf photograph of a rather overweight family standing by a seaw wall somewhere Dua eased itself into a highback chair and tilted itself back still keeping its eyes fixed on Jill we were wondering about birth control said Jill and blushed either she was a very good actress or else she was genuinely embarrassed we are not at all sure what the best method is well you are both mature adults capable of deciding what your priorities are Dua replied are you looking for complete safety or are you looking for unmitigated pleasure both I hope I told him but Dua still didn’t look at me Dua raised his eyebrows no method of course is foolproof but there are four different ways in which you can lessen the risk of conception the occlusive cap sometimes known as the Dutch cap which would cover the neck of your desirable young lady’s womb and prevent the entry of spermatozoa the sheath or condom which would prevent spermatozoa from entering your desirable young lady at all then there are chemical pessaries or Solutions which kill the spera on contact you can practice quite as interruptus withdrawing yourself from your desirable young lady immediately prior to ejaculation or you can try the Rhythm method whereby you should only have intercourse with your desirable young lady during that time of the month when she is not oating the way in which its tongue lingered around the words your desirable young lady would have really raised my hackles if I had genuinely been intending to marry Jill but all I did was nod and say uh-huh I see as if I were taking this all very seriously and didn’t realize how lubriciously it was talking to her it’s difficult to decide isn’t it said Jill which method do you personally recommend well said Dua the Rhythm method of course is the best for natural pleasure but it is very unreliable for contraceptive purposes Kus interruptus is also unreliable in that some spermatozoa can escape prior to ejaculation or the husband may not be prompt enough in his withdrawal also somewhat messy the sheath sounds the most effective to me I put in for the first time Dua really looked at me you may think so my dear sir but it is only effective if you can be relied upon to wear one is there any reason why I shouldn’t I’ve always used one before perhaps one night you may have drunk too much wine and forget perhaps one night you may decide that you are tired of sheaths that they diminish your pleasure after all what does it matter to you you are not the one who will have to carry the child and go through the agony of Labor well no I guess not in my opinion the Dutch cap is the best protective because your desirable young lady herself will ensure that she always fits it Dua lifted its thumb and two fingers as if it were folding a Dutch cap prior to insertion it was one of the most sexually suggestive gestures I had ever seen anyone make uh where can I get one asked Jill do they sell them at the chemists no no your doctor has first to measure your cervix so that you have the correct size then he has to demonstrate to you how to insert the Dutch cap so that it snugly seals the neck of your womb usually I insist that my young ladies insert it for themselves at home and then visit the surgery so that I can ensure they have learned how to fit it correctly Jill looked at me her eyes wide and the look on her face said absolutely not I cleared my throat and said that was uh very enlightening doctor thank you I think you’ve told us just about everything we need to know maybe my fiance and I should go away now and talk this over between ourselves of course said duka but you are to be married in only a few days time so if your desirable young lady has need of my services it would be better if you made your decision sooner rather than later sure I said and stood up as I did so however Dua looked at me again and this time its sea green eyes narrowed a little and a crease appeared in the middle of its forehead as if it had suddenly remembered something you know my dear sir it’s very strange you remind me very much of somebody I once knew well I do Dua nodded I can’t quite put my finger on it it’s in your expression you don’t have any Romanian blood in you do you me my parents were Irish Irish it’s still very strange I have a long memory for faces and your face it’s so much like this person I knew can’t help you I’m afraid I told him but he kept on staring at me and I was convinced that he could see my mother looking out of my eyes Night Fever at around 6 that evening the sky clouded over from the west and it grew so dark that Terren had to drive with his headlights on rain began to fall on the window shield big fat drops as warm as blood we drove moved to Jill’s House in perly and Terren parked in the driveway we had decided that there was no point in my going all the way back to Central London so Jill had invited me to stay over Terren would find me a local bed and breakfast in the morning and have my cases brought down Charles fi had arranged with inspector Ruck for a watch to be kept on The Laurels throughout the night the police would alert us immediately if duka left the house and follow it although they were under strict instructions not to attempt to stop it if they did they wouldn’t stand a chance what’s next then asked Terrence tugging on the parking break we need to get into The Laurels sometime during the day when Duke is out what I’m looking for is his wheel the Talisman that he wears around his neck why do you want that two reasons when a live screecher becomes a dead screecher its physiology changes it can slide through the narrowest of gaps and it can run so fast that you can barely see it but it has very poor night vision the wheel has properties which realign the rods and the cones in its eyes so that it can see in the dark but if duka wears it around its neck said Jill it doesn’t not during the day if it did its eyes would be much too sensitized and it would practically be blinded especially if the sun came M if we can find duk’s wheel and take it duka is absolutely certain to come looking for it and I suppose we’ll be waiting for it when it does you’ve got it we’ll catch it in a sealed and darkened room so that it won’t be able to see us and it won’t be able to escape then what we’ll tie it up nail it down decapitate it and dispose of the body just like the other creatures the only difference between external minating aive screecher and a dead screecher is that the dead one’s bodies have to be cut into four pieces and each piece has to be buried well away from the others Terren looked queasy Jill said I don’t have to be there when you kill it do I not unless you want to it’s dangerous and it’s pretty damn disgusting and the dead ones usually scream blue murder in that case I think I’ll pass as we went into the house lightning flickered over the trees at the end of the garden followed by an indigestive Rumble of Thunder Jill’s mother was in the dining room wearing an emerald green sari and setting the table for dinner her father was in the living room standing in front of the fireplace Captain fulcon good evening perhaps I can offer you a sniffer I’ll have a scotch if that’s okay he went over to a large drinks cabinet and opened it I’ve just been given some very palatable single malt as a matter of fact that sounds very palatable he handed me a heavy cut crystal glass brimming with whiskey I didn’t usually drink this much alcohol in a week Jill’s mother has been having a bit of a word with her said Jill’s father leaning forward confidentially and lowering his voice to make sure that Jill and her mother couldn’t hear him oh yeah yes it turns out that Jill’s rather taken with you oh I didn’t realize but what she has to understand is I suppose it’s partly the danger that she finds attractive women do don’t they they get Starry Eyed about racing drivers and test pilots and Mountaineers and such like I’m afraid I’m not doing anything nearly as glamorous as that well well whatever it is it certainly had an effect on our Jill or so her mother tells me she was very upset about what you were doing no question about it but she was even more upset that she might not have the gumption to go on working with you oh I see I’m sorry but I think she needs to know that Jill’s father lifted his hand all I’m saying to you old boy is that I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take it advantage of her no offense meant but I’m her father and obviously I have to have her best interests at heart of course I totally understand good man just thought that it would be better to get things straight I sipped my whisk