by Michael West
“I know what you want,” she said. “I know what you are.”
One of them hissed, “Paaaaaglia. Sssssteinemmmmm.”
Another growled, “Behhhhind the hhhhhedges.”
Another, its face fuzed into profile, its mouth almost filled with the metastasized flesh of its fellows, said, “Ennnnjoying the view?”
“I could give you what you want,” she said, and wondered what would happen if she did. Wondered if it could somehow erase the bad decisions and the worse luck, the tense and unpleasant marriage, the dead baby that never lived, the ghost of which floated between her and Jim. She wondered if she’d finally feel like she’d done something worthwhile. Each of the faces in the wall salivated in expectation, wet from lips to chin with thick foamy spit. Could she refuse them? Could she disappoint them like that?
She would tell one more secret. And then she would see.
“When we were in college,” she said, squeezing the gash, “Jim asked me what I wanted to do. With my life, I mean. We were spent, exhausted. We had just finished, you know … fucking, I guess. Making love. I don’t know. We were satisfied with ourselves. We felt philosophical. So he asked me … ‘in the cosmic sense,’ he said, whatever that means, what I wanted to do. And I took a deep breath, and I imagined that I was inhaling the whole universe, the stars and the planets and the dark matter, and I told him what I wanted to do. I wanted to make an impact. I wanted the world to bend a little under my weight. To never be the same after me.”
She lifted her thumb upward, offering it to the chomping mouths in the wall of the Sudden Room. They strained and gurgled and roared, and the house shook.
-----
Jim could hear them gurgling and roaring upstairs, louder than they’d ever been. And here he was, downstairs, listening to the doorbell man, whatever he was, stumble through his best estimation of what human conversation might sound like. He wasn’t sure how much more of this his brain could take.
“Now imagine,” whispered the doorbell man, “that some homeowner just … stumbled onto the secret corridor where that Rattenkönig had become stuck. It would have to have been a sleepwalking homeowner, a homeowner catatonic with despair and disappointment. Sound familiar, homeowner? Sound like anyone you know?”
“Okay, enough!” Jim was standing. “Enough, man, alright? Now what?” He was leaning over the doorbell man, shaking his fists, gesturing, shouting. “Why are you here? Are you here to help? Can you help us? Can you, what, kill those fucking things?” He grabbed the doorbell man by the lapels, shook him. “Can you do fucking anything? Huh?” He crumpled, came down onto his knees before the doorbell man, buried his head in the doorbell man’s chest, wept.
The doorbell man caressed the hair at the nape of Jim’s neck and shushed him, rocked him back and forth. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not here to kill them. I just wanted to … see. I wanted to see, homeowner. I’ve never seen a Rattenkönig before.”
Upstairs, someone screamed.
-----
Abigail Quatro screamed. She tried to pull herself away, but she was trapped, held by dozens of scrambling arms and legs against the pulsing wall of skin. She felt their razor fangs at her wrists, her thighs, her shoulders, felt their dry, sore-covered lips wrap around the wounds and suck, drinking desperately from her, and it hurt, it hurt, God, it hurt. She struggled, kicked, squirmed, but even piled into a single gigantic body, they were stronger than anything she’d ever known. They weren’t letting her go. Her vision was getting hazy, and the part of her with the will to fight back was shrinking, fading. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.
She heard the door to the Sudden Room slam against the wall, felt the hall light burst through onto her skin, saw two silhouettes through the haze. One of them was shouting her name, rushing toward her. Jim. It was Jim. It had to be Jim. She was so very tired. And this wasn’t fair.
The other silhouette clapped his hands, bounced on the balls of his feet. It said, “Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.”
Jim was at her side now, pulling on her, trying to remove her from the wall of mean mouths and blind eyes. He was screaming. He was struggling.
When they finally let her go, she knew that Jim hadn’t saved her. Her monsters just … weren’t hungry anymore.
Her vision was coming back to her now. The pain was receding. She felt numb and betrayed. She kept trying to speak, but her throat wouldn’t let the words pass.
“God, Abby. Oh Jesus, Abby, it’s okay,” Jim, above her, faking his way through normal again, “it’s okay, baby, I’m here. I’m here. God damn it, god damn it. Okay, it’s okay. I’m going to call the hospital, baby, okay? Everything is going to be … ”
She hated to be called Abby. Always had.
The other man … the bald man with the sunglasses and the fedora and the umbrella hanging from his arm … put his hand on the back of Jim’s head. She watched all of this from the floor. She didn’t like the floor. It was so dirty. So uncomfortable. The bald man said, “Well, that was fun, homeowner. Bye, now.”
Jim’s head jerked up to stare at the bald man, watched him strolling through the door, down the hallway. Out. She stared at the slope where his jaw became his throat. She watched his pulse announce itself in the throbbing vein there. It seemed to be beating so much faster than hers.
“What?” he screamed. “What?” Loud, raw, unhinged. “What?” A real question. A question to which he desperately expected an answer.
For many moments, they listened to the bald man’s footsteps. They listened to the door slamming on his way out. And then all there was to listen to was the gurgle and slurp of the wall of monsters.
When her voice returned, Abigail Quatro said, “Nothing changes. Nothing is different. Everything is always the same.”
VAMPIRE NATION
Jerry Gordon
Jerry Gordon is the co-editor of the Dark Faith and Last Rites anthologies. His fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Shroud, and The Midnight Diner. His apocalyptic thriller, Breaking The World, will be released through Apex Publications in 2013. When he’s not contemplating the end of the world, he’s blurring genre lines at www.jerrygordon.net.
His favorite vampires overwhelmed humanity in Richard Matheson’s classic, I Am Legend.
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“Africa? When are you going to pick a cause you can actually win? From what I hear the continent has maybe two months at best.”
“That’s about right.” I poured myself a scotch and walked along the wall of captures that adorned Senator John Mitchem’s office, stopping in front of one frame that showed him and his older brother as college students. The low-res motion clip followed their volunteer group as it worked to restore oil-ravaged beaches on the Gulf Coast some twenty years ago. I handled most of the camera work for that trip. It was my first and only adventure as an honorary member of the Michem family.
“So what’s to save?” John darted in and out of his senate office’s private bathroom, fiddling first with his tuxedo jacket and then with a mangled excuse for a bow-tie. “I mean the Chinese have a pretty good handle on containment.”
“Come on, you know the Chinese have a vested interest in Africa’s demise.”
“Sure, they get the land. We’ve agreed to that much, but you’re assuming anyone will ever use it. The Chinese are going to have a hard time convincing their people to build on vampire central.”
“I thought you guys were only allowed to refer to it as the quarantined zone?” I smiled and took a quick sip of scotch to hide my nerves.
“Did you see the footage of that human rights group in Johannesburg? The vampires ripped out their throats and drank their blood. On camera. Once the networks got hold of that footage, fangs and all, the name ship sailed.”
I glanced at the capture above the Gulf Coast trip. It was a more modern clip of John taking his oath of office. While the rest of our Yalie cronies had comfortably settled into middle age, John’s thick black hair and deep blue eye
s belonged to a man ten years his junior. Standing tall with his right hand raised, he embodied our college pact to change the world. Two years into his second term of office, it was time to see if he actually had the guts to do it.
“They have a vaccine, John.”
“What?”
“The Chinese. They have a vaccine, and they’re choosing not to use it.”
John came out of the bathroom, pulling the loose bow-tie apart. I could see my old friend measuring the likelihood that this was some kind of perverse lobbyist joke.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I have the ambassador from the African Union outside. He flew directly from their emergency headquarters in Paris.”
“Damn it, David.” John glanced at the backdoor to his office, considering a quick escape. “It’s one thing for you to sneak up here to say hi, but don’t corner me with something like this right before a state dinner. I’m the foreign relations chair for God’s sake. There are channels for this sort of thing.”
“There isn’t any time for that.”
John gave the backdoor a second look. “Has this … vaccine even been tested?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure it works?”
“Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”
“Fine, you’ve got five minutes.” John took off his jacket and punched the antique intercom button on his desk. “Liz, let the ambassador in.”
The door opened and a distinguished African statesman entered the room. His dark, shaved head framed a graying goatee.
“I hope you will pardon our rather unorthodox meeting, Senator Mitchem.”
“Call me John.” He offered the ambassador a heartfelt handshake. “Your people are in my prayers, Ambassador … ”
“Hounsou.”
“Ambassador Hounsou, of course. Please, sit. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Scotch?”
The ambassador looked past him, sizing up the tattered colonial flag that suspended itself on the wall behind John’s desk. Before fading into the state flag of Pennsylvania, the simulacra morphed from a stained relic of the Revolutionary War to a spotless, fifty-two star standard.
“I thank you for the offer, Senator, but that will not be necessary. I am well aware your time is limited.”
“Of course.” John leaned against the front of his desk and motioned me to take a seat next to the ambassador. “I understand that you may have found a cure to the terrible plague ravaging your country.”
“A member of your Gates Foundation smuggled the original formula and its antigen vaccine out of India.”
“India?” John straightened his tuxedo shirt, shooting me an angry glare before returning to the ambassador. “I was told this was about China … and what do you mean original formula? Are you suggesting this is somehow man made?”
“That I am, sir. The Indian scientist that created the formula committed suicide shortly after the plague appeared in Benin. One of his former aids helped the foundation obtain the technical information necessary to stop it.”
“That’s a very serious accusation, Ambassador.”
“It is not an accusation. It is an unfortunate fact for both our countries. India has been providing bio-weapons research and technical support to the Chinese. The documentation that accompanied the antigen vaccine is proof enough of that.”
John closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you’ve actually tested it?”
“We dispatched two of our remaining SANDF teams into Africa through the Mediterranean. The Chinese blockade shot down both helicopters, but one managed a hard landing in the foothills of Tipasa. The team captured and treated five test subjects in various stages of transformation. Within forty hours, all but one of them had stabilized and was beginning to exhibit non-violent cognitive thought. I personally linked into the operation from our headquarters in Paris.”
“How much time does your team on the ground have left?” John asked.
Ambassador Hounsou met his gaze with cold, dark eyes. “Their makeshift compound was overrun twelve hours ago. They held out as long as they could.”
I could see the pain on John’s face. For all his flaws, he understood this type of loss better than anyone. We both did. John’s older brother Sam was killed the summer after our sophomore year when militants overran his UNICEF operation in Darfur.
Three college summers, three causes. That was our freshman pact. The idea had been Sam’s, but he let John pick first. That’s how we ended up spending two months cleaning beaches in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill. Sam’s passion for Africa made it our sophomore destination. He spent two years there with the Peace Corps before joining his younger brother at Yale.
When the three of us were tapped to be Bonesman, just weeks before the trip, Sam was the only one to say no. Instead of joining Yale’s most prestigious secret society, he boarded a plane for Africa. I never chose a third destination. I left the university shortly after Sam’s death.
“With the help of the French,” the ambassador continued, “we have set up a facility to mass produce the antigen vaccine. But we are in no position to challenge this blockade. The only military assets we have left flew President Mobunte and his cabinet out of the capital city. China and India are bursting at the seams, and it appears our continent is the perfect solution to their population problems.”
I knew the vaccine put the United States in a difficult position. Africa had plenty of natural resources left, but their most valuable one was space. In a world of eight billion people, disease and war had conspired to under-populate their continent. The vampire plague, properly contained, went a long way toward mitigating a whole host of population problems.
“With India’s support,” I began, “the Chinese have a dominate position, but they can’t afford to ignore us on this issue. We could —”
“Just stop, David. It’s not fair of you to get the ambassador’s hopes up. As much as I wish it wasn’t the case, the President’s not going to go for this. He’s as isolationist as they come, and there is no way he’ll risk pissing off China and India over a country with, I’m sorry Ambassador, little to no strategic value.”
I shook my head, unwilling to accept John’s cursory dismissal. “If this was happening in the Middle East —”
“We’d be deploying troops out of the Iranian Protectorate. I don’t disagree. This isn’t the turn of the century. Our nation building days are behind us. The Chinese played it smart and let us exhaust our resources trying to change the world. Now they’re on top, and we play by their rules.”
“What about the Grid? We could take this to the people.”
“Come on, David, nobody on the Grid cares about Africa or anything else. They’re all too busy wasting away in their private virtual worlds. Why fight to make this or any other country a better place when you can just link-in and have it any way you want? If we didn’t make them pay to be on the Grid, we wouldn’t have any ditch diggers left. Outside of the rich, nobody cares what we do.”
“But we’re talking about half a billion people.” I put down my scotch. “There has to be something you can do.”
“I can talk to the President about asylum and maybe even provisional citizenship for the refugees that made it to Paris. I feel for the African Union, I truly do. What’s going on there is unspeakable, but you’re gravely mistaken if you think the United States is going to challenge another nuclear power’s military blockade. In that respect, Africa is on its own.”
“I feared as much.” Ambassador Hounsou stood, extending his hand. “I thank you for your candor and your time, Senator Mitchem.”
“I really wish I could do more.”
“Oh, I believe you will.”
“Excuse me?” John tried to pull his hand away, but the ambassador held tight, cutting his fingernails deep into the palm. The whites of Hounsou’s eyes turned red as blood vessels swelled to the surface, nearly bursting.
“My country has had less exp
erience with democracy than yours, but I have come to believe, from personal experience, that politicians only care about problems that affect them. For that reason, I injected the vampire plague into my body shortly before this meeting. Now, my problem is your problem.”
John pulled away from the ambassador, his hand red with blood. “For your sake, this had better be a joke.”
“I would not joke about such things.” The ambassador leaned closer, exposing the beginnings of nicotine-stained fangs. “Depending on your individual physiology, the virus will take between sixty to ninety days to permanently destroy your brain. The first forty-eight hours will be the worst for you. You will begin to feel the blood in your veins boiling. It will become progressively difficult for you to think clearly. Your reactions will become more violent. Your thought processes less human and more, shall we say, animalistic.”
“Why would you do that to me?”
“As you so eloquently stated, we have no strategic value to your country. That makes it easy for you to sit in comfort while we die. Aids. Ebola. Genocide. Your government has turned a blind eye to Africa in our greatest hours of need, never offering more than token sentiments and inconsequential donations. It’s time for your country to pay for its indifference.”
“Do you really think infecting me helps your cause? What part of avoidable nuclear confrontation do you not understand? There are seven and a half billion people on this planet that don’t live in Africa. David, tell him this isn’t something I can talk the President into.”
“You don’t have to talk the President into anything, John. You just have to go to dinner tonight and shake his hand. We’ve taken care of the rest.”
John turned to me in disbelief. “You really think I would knowingly infect the President?”