They walked back to Eph’s Explorer. Eph felt all jittery and exposed out in the front yard. Setrakian opened the passenger door and pulled out a spare battery pack. He swapped batteries with the one in Eph’s lamp, then checked the purple light briefly against the side of the truck.

Setrakian said, “You wait here please.”

“For what?” said Eph.

“You saw the blood on her lips, her chin. She was flushed. She had fed. This is not done yet.”

The old man set off toward the next house. Eph watched him, Nora leaving Eph’s side in order to lean against the truck. She swallowed hard, as though about to be sick. “We just killed two people in the cellar of their own home.”

“This thing is spread by people. By un people.”

“Vampires, my God…”

Eph said, “Rule number one is always—fight the disease, not its victims.”

“Don’t demonize the sick,” said Nora.

“But now…now the sick are demons. Now the infected are active vectors of the disease, and have to be stopped. Killed. Destroyed.”

“What will Director Barnes say about that?”

Eph said, “We can’t wait for him. We’ve already waited too long.”

They fell silent. Soon Setrakian returned carrying his walking stick/vampire sword and the still warm lamp.

“It is done,” he said.

“Done?” Nora said, still appalled by what she had seen. “Now what? You do realize there were some two hundred other passengers aboard that plane.”

“It is much worse than that. The second night is upon us. The second wave of infection is happening now.”

The Second Night

THE SECOND NIGHT

Patricia ran a hand vigorously back through her hair, as though shaking out the lost hours of another day gone by. She found herself actually looking forward to Mark coming home, and not just for the satisfaction of throwing the kids at him and saying, “Here.” She wanted to fill him in on the only real news of the day, the Lusses’ nanny—who Patricia spied through the sheers of the front-facing dining room windows—racing out of the Lusses’ house not five minutes after arriving, children nowhere in sight, the old black woman running as if she was being chased.

Oooh, the Lusses. How neighbors can get under your skin. Whenever she thought of skin-and-bones Joanie tossing off a description of her “European-style pure-soil wine cellar,” Patricia shot an automatic middle finger in the general direction of the Luss house. She was dying to find out what Mark knew about Roger Luss, if he was still overseas. She wanted to compare notes. The only time she and her husband seemed to get on the same page was when they were tearing down friends, family, and neighbors. Maybe because savoring others’ marital problems and family misfortunes somehow made hers and Mark’s seem less troublesome.