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

that the corpse had been decapitated at the shoulders, the remaining mass of its neck splattered with gobs of white.

      “And the guy was naked,” added the EMT. “Quite a night.”

      Eph drew the zipper all the way down to the bottom seam. The headless corpse was overweight, male, roughly fifty. Then Eph noticed its feet.

      He saw a wire wound around the bare big toe. As though there had been a casualty tag attached.

      Nora saw the toe wire also, and blanched.

      “A fight, you say?” said Eph.

      “That’s what they told us,” said the EMT, opening the door to the outside. “Good day to you, and good luck.”

      Eph zipped up the bag. He didn’t want anyone else seeing the tag wire. He didn’t want anyone asking him questions he couldn’t answer.

      He turned to Nora. “The old man.”

      Nora nodded. “He wanted us to destroy the corpses,” she remembered.

      “He knew about the UV light.” Eph stripped off his latex gloves, thinking again of Jim, lying alone in isolation—with who could say what growing inside him. “We have to find out what else he knows.”

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

      SETRAKIAN COUNTED thirteen other men inside the room-size cage with him, including one troubled soul with fresh scratches on his neck, squatting in the corner and rubbing spit vigorously into his hands.

      Setrakian had seen worse than this, of course—much worse. On another continent, in another century, he had been imprisoned as a Romanian Jew in World War II, in the extermination camp known as Treblinka. He was nineteen when the camp was brought down in 1943, still a boy. Had he entered the camp at the age he was now, he would not have lasted a few days—perhaps not even the train ride there.

      Setrakian looked at the Mexican youth on the bench next to him, the one he had first seen in booking, who was now roughly the same age Setrakian had been when the war ended. His cheek was an angry blue and dried black blood clogged the slice beneath his eye. But he appeared to be uninfected.

      Setrakian was more concerned about the youth’s friend, lying on the bench next to him, curled up on his side, not moving.

      For his part, Gus, feeling angry and sore, and jittery now that his adrenaline was gone, grew wary of the old man looking over at him. “Got a problem?”

      Others in the tank perked up, drawn by the prospect of a fight between a Mexican gangbanger and an aged Jew.

      Setrakian said to him, “I have a very great problem indeed.”

      Gus looked at him darkly. “Don’t we all, then.”

      Setrakian felt the others turning away, now that there would be no sport to interrupt their tedium. Setrakian took a closer look at the Mexican’s curled-up friend. His arm lay over his face and neck, his knees were pulled up tight, almost into a fetal position.

      Gus was looking over at Setrakian, recognizing him now. “I know you.”

      Setrakian nodded, used to this, saying, “118th Street.”

      “Knickerbocker Loan. Yeah—shit. You beat my brother’s ass one time.”

      “He stole?”

      “Tried to. A gold chain. He’s a druggie shitbag now, nothing but a ghost. But back then, he was tough. Few years older than me.”

      “He should have known better.”

      “He did know better. Why he tried it. That gold chain was just a trophy, really. He wanted to defy the street. Everybody warned him, ‘You don’t fuck with the pawnbroker.’”

      Setrakian said, “The first week I took over the shop, someone broke my front window. I replaced it—and then I watch, and I wait. Caught the next bunch who came to break it. I gave them something to think about, and something to tell their friends. That was more than thirty years ago. I haven’t had a problem with my glass since.”

      Gus looked at the old man’s crumpled fingers, outlined by wool gloves. “Your hands,” he said. “What happened, you get caught stealing once?”

      “Not stealing, no,” said the old man, rubbing his hands through the wool. “An old injury. One I did not receive medical attention for until much too late.”

      Gus showed him the tattoo on his hand, making a fist so that the webbing between his thumb and forefinger swelled up. It showed three black circles. “Like the design on your shop sign.”

      “Three balls is an ancient symbol for a pawnbroker. But yours has a different meaning.”

      “Gang sign,” said Gus, sitting back. “Means thief.”

      “But you never stole from me.”

      “Not that you knew, anyway,” said Gus, smiling.

      Setrakian looked at Gus’s pants, the holes burned into the black fabric. “I hear you killed a man.”

      Gus’s smile went away.

      “You were not wounded? The cut on your face, you received from the police?”

      Gus stared at him now, like the old man might be some kind of jailhouse informer. “What’s it to you?”

      Setrakian said, “Did you get a look inside his mouth?”

      Gus turned to him. The old man was leaning forward, almost in prayer. Gus said, “What do you know about that?”

      “I know,” said the old man, without looking up, “that a plague has been loosed upon this city. And soon the world beyond.”

      “This wasn’t no plague. This was some crazy psycho with kind of a … a crazy-ass tongue coming up out of his …” Gus felt ridiculous saying this aloud. “So what the fuck was that?”

      Setrakian said, “What you fought was a dead man, possessed by a disease.”

      Gus remembered the look on the fat man’s face, blank and hungry. His white blood. “What—like a pinche zombie?”

      Setrakian said, “Think more along the lines of a man with a black cape. Fangs. Funny accent.” He turned his head so that Gus could hear him better. “Now take away the cape and fangs. The funny accent. Take away anything funny about it.”

      Gus hung on the old man’s words. He had to know. His somber voice, his melancholy dread, it was contagious.

      “Listen to what I have to say,” the old man continued. “Your friend here. He has been infected. You might say—bitten.”

      Gus looked over at unmoving Felix. “No. No, he’s just … the cops, they knocked him out.”

      “He is changing. He is in the grip of something beyond your comprehension. A disease that changes human people into non-people. This person is no longer your friend. He is turned.”

      Gus remembered seeing the fat man on top of Felix, their maniacal embrace, the man’s mouth going at Felix’s neck. And the look on Felix’s face—a look of terror and awe.

      “You feel how hot he is? His metabolism, racing. It takes great energy to change—painful, catastrophic changes are taking place inside his body now. The development of a parasitic organ system to accommodate his new state of being. He is metamorphosing into a feeding organism. Soon, twelve to thirty-six hours from the time of infection, but most likely tonight, he will arise. He will thirst. He will stop at nothing to satisfy his craving.”

      Gus stared at the old man as though in a state of suspended animation.

      Setrakian said, “Do you love your friend?”

      Gus