The Complete Strain Trilogy: The Strain, The Fall, The Night Eternal. Guillermo Toro del

dare you call to him?”

      Setrakian gripped the stake behind his bed, slowly sliding it out …

      “A man has the right to be called by his own name before meeting God,” said Setrakian, with the righteousness of youth.

      The Thing gurgled with joy. “Then, young thing, you may tell me yours …”

      Setrakian made his move then, but the silver tip of the stake made a tiny scraping noise, revealing its presence a mere instant before it flew toward the Thing’s heart.

      But that instant was enough. The Thing uncoiled its claw and stopped the weapon an inch from its own chest.

      Setrakian tried to free himself, striking out with his other hand, but the Thing stopped that too. It lacerated the side of Setrakian’s neck with the tip of its stinger—just a gash, coming as fast as the blink of an eye, enough to inject him with the paralyzing agent.

      Now it held the young man firmly by both hands. It raised him up from the bed.

      “But you will not meet God,” the Thing said. “For I am personally acquainted with him, and I know him to be gone …”

      Setrakian was on the verge of fainting from the vicelike pressure the claws exerted upon his hands. The hands that had kept him alive for so long in that camp. His brain was bursting with pain, mouth gaping, lungs gasping for breath, but no scream would surge from within.

      The Thing looked deep into Setrakian’s eyes then, and saw his soul.

      “Abraham Setrakian,” it purred. “A name so soft, so sweet, for a boy so full of spirit …” It moved close to his face. “But why destroy me, boy? Why am I so deserving of your wrath, when around you you find even more death in my absence. I am not the monster here. It is God. Your God and mine, the absent Father who left us all so long ago … In your eyes I see what you fear most, young Abraham, and it is not me … It is the pit. So now you shall see what happens when I feed you to it and God does nothing to stop it.”

      And then, with a brutal cracking noise, the Thing shattered the bones in the hands of young Abraham.

      The boy fell to the floor, curled in a ball of pain, his crushed fingers near his chest. He had landed in a faint pool of sunlight.

      Dawn.

      The Thing hissed, attempting to move close to him one more time.

      But the prisoners in the barracks began to stir, and as young Abraham lost consciousness, the Thing vanished.

      Abraham was discovered bleeding and injured before roll call. He was dispatched to the infirmary from which wounded prisoners never returned. A carpenter with broken hands served no purpose in the camp, and the head overseer immediately approved his disposal. He was dragged out to the burning hole with the rest of the roll-call failures, made to kneel in a line. Thick, greasy, black smoke occluded the sun above, searing hot and merciless. Setrakian was stripped and dragged to the very edge, cradling his destroyed hands, shivering in fear as he gazed into the pit.

      The searing pit. The hungry flames twisting, the greasy smoke lifting away in a kind of hypnotic ballet. And the rhythm of the execution line—gunshot, gun carriage clicking, the soft bouncing tinkle of the bullet casing against the dirt ground—lulled him into a death trance. Staring down into the flames stripping away flesh and bone, unveiling man for what he is: mere matter. Disposable, crushable, flammable sacks of meat—easily revertible to carbon.

      The Thing was an expert in horror, but this human horror indeed exceeded any other possible fate. Not only because it was without mercy, but because it was acted upon rationally and without compulsion. It was a choice. The killing was unrelated to the larger war, and served no purpose other than evil. Men chose to do this to other men and invented reasons and places and myths in order to satisfy their desire in a logical and methodical way.

      As the Nazi officer mechanically shot each man in the back of the head and kicked them forward into the consuming pit, Abraham’s will eroded. He felt nausea, not at the smells or the sights but at the knowledge—the certainty—that God was no longer in his heart. Only this pit.

      The young man wept at his failure and the failure of his faith as he felt the muzzle of the Luger press against the bare skin—

      Another mouth at his neck—

      And then he heard the shots. From across the yard, a work crew of prisoners had taken the observation towers and were now overriding the camp, shooting every uniformed officer in sight.

      The man at his back went away. Leaving Setrakian poised at the edge of that pit.

      A Pole next to him in line stood and started to run—and the will seeped back into young Setrakian’s body. Hands clutched to his chest, he found himself up and running, naked, toward the camouflaged barbed-wire fence.

      Gunfire all around him. Guards and prisoners bursting with blood and falling. Smoke now, and not just from the pit: fires starting all across the camp. He made it to the fence, near some others and somehow, with anonymous hands lifting him to the top, doing what his broken hands could not, he fell to the other side.

      He lay on the ground, rifle rounds and machine-gun fire ripping into the dirt around him—and again, helping hands and arms raised him up, lifting him to his feet. And as his unseen helpers were torn apart by bullets, Setrakian ran and ran and found himself crying … for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

      A matter of choice.

      For miles he ran, even as Austrian reinforcements closed in. His feet were sliced open, his toes shattered by rocks, but nothing could stop him now that he was beyond the fence. His mind was of a single purpose as he finally reached the woods and collapsed in the darkness, hiding in the night.

DAWN

17th Precinct Headquarters, East Fifty-first Street, Manhattan

      Setrakian shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable on the bench against the wall inside the precinct house holding tank. He had waited in a glass-walled prebooking area all night, stuck with many of the same thieves, drunks, and perverts he was caged in with now. During the long wait, he had had sufficient time to consider the scene he had made outside the coroner’s office, and realized he had spoiled his best chance at reaching the federal disease control agency in the person of Dr. Goodweather.

      Of course he had come off like a crazy old man. Maybe he was slipping. Going wobbly like a gyroscope at the end of its revolutions. Maybe the years of waiting for this moment, lived on that line between dread and hope, had taken their toll.

      Part of getting old is checking oneself constantly. Keeping a good firm grip on the handrail. Making sure you’re still you.

      No. He knew what he knew. The only thing wrong with him now was that he was being driven mad by desperation. Here he was, being held captive in a police station in Midtown Manhattan, while all around him …

      Be smart, you old fool. Find a way out of here. You’ve worked your way out of far worse places than this.

      He replayed the scene from the booking area in his mind. In the middle of his giving his name and address and having the charges of disturbing the peace and criminal trespass explained to him, and signing a property form for his walking stick (“It is of immense personal significance,” he had told the sergeant) and his heart pills, a Mexican youth of eighteen or nineteen was brought in, wrists handcuffed behind him. The youth had been roughed up, his face scratched, his shirt torn.

      What caught Setrakian’s eye were the burn holes in his black pants and across his shirt.

      “This is bullshit, man!” said the youth, arms pulled tight behind him, leaning back as