“How did you have vampire blood?” she asked. “Were you bitten?”
“My mother had it,” she said.
“Was she bitten before the time that almost killed her?”
“No. Her mother and father had it.”
Nikki looked at Reginald.
“This is what I found when I completed the codex,” said Reginald, looking alternately at Nikki and Lafontaine. “The virus is copied into the DNA of human hosts when they’re bitten. It’s like how a mosquito sort of backwashes into you when it bites you, and why infected mosquitos can spread diseases like West Nile and malaria. You don’t turn, but the virus is still there, and it’s copied down the line, from parent to child.”
“Do you mean that every…?” Lafontaine began.
“Every human has it, yes,” said Reginald. “Vampires have been around long enough for it to filter into all of you.”
“So what does that mean?”
Reginald shrugged. “It means that you need us and we need you.”
“You need us,” said Lafontaine. “We merely have you.”
“No,” said Reginald, shaking his head. “You need us. You’ve heard about the humans raised in blood farms getting sick?”
“Yes. We assumed it was the kind of minor plague that festers in contained groups. We were going to test the humans when they were released, but…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence: … but your president had them all killed.
Reginald nodded, sighing. Then he said, “But think about it. If it were something being spread around in a contained population, why would it be present in all of the contained populations? Because in case your people haven’t done the research, I’ll just tell you: every blood farm is reporting sickness and losses.”
“So what is it?”
Claire looked at the human. “Forty years of the kids not coming home,” she said.
“Farm humans aren’t fed on,” said Reginald. “They’re drained with machinery. It’s ludicrous: a bunch of undead monsters, while they were building TVs and making infomercials for blood pills and learning to like human junk food, became germophobes. There are only a few ways to kill vampires, and normal germs aren’t one of them. But even so, the blood farms had very, very strict rules that prohibited guards and employees from feeding on the stock. So in all that time — two generations — those populations didn’t get fresh infusions of what you call the V virus. It’s unstable over time, and if an interbreeding population isn’t fed on, it begins to fall apart.”
“Are you saying that without vampires, we’d…”
“You’d die,” said Reginald.
Lafontaine looked at Nikki’s pocket, where his walkie was stowed. Reginald, thanks to the bridge Claire’s hybrid blood had made between the species, could feel his fear — his sense of a crisis barely averted. He could feel something else coming from the human, too: blessedly, Lafontaine believed what he was hearing. He sat back on the packed dirt of the pitcher’s mound, his hands propping him up, his elbows straight. He looked weak.
“So we’re stuck,” he said. “There’s no way to win.”
“There’s something else,” said Reginald. “Something that may make you feel less stuck.”
Lafontaine looked up, again acting oddly like a sighted man. But then again, Reginald thought, human sonar wasn’t something he knew much about. Maybe the man had to look where he wanted to “see” so that his ears could help his brain form pictures.
“Did you ever wonder why you were able to so easily outmatch us this time?” he said.
Lafontaine shrugged, asking Reginald to continue.
“In the vampire population, the virus runs the body. It’s like an engine. But when it’s not working to make systems work — when it’s latent, and is just being replicated as new cells are made, which is what happens in humans — it spins off a bit of debris that does, in a small way, give you a touch of vampire blood.”
“Intelligent blood,” Claire added. “Conscious blood.”
“You don’t know it’s happening, but the consciousness in the blood talks to your human brain.”
“I’d say spirit,” said Claire, looking thoughtful.
“Spirit. Sure, I guess. Consciousness is something that rises above individual thoughts — an ‘emergent property’, they call it. And that’s what that touch of vampire blood… let’s say ‘communes’ with. Consciousness and creativity and intelligence are technically in the brain… but it’s almost more accurate to say they’re ‘out there’ somehow as well.”
Lafontaine said something that Reginald didn’t catch. Reginald was thinking of Maurice, his memories, and his presence in Reginald’s blood, speaking with what Reginald had assumed was Reginald’s own authority.
“Sorry?”
“I said, ‘So what does that mean?'"
“It means that while vampire brains stagnate with our bodies — enhanced, yes, but forever locked in that enhanced state, save small changes over very long periods of time — the same blood inside humans causes your brains to grow.”
“Spirits,” Claire corrected.
“It makes you intelligent, in other words. That bit of vampire blood gives you emergent properties, like intelligence and self-awareness. And curiosity.”
“I said earlier that I’d never seen a curious vampire,” said Lafontaine. “Until you.”
Reginald shrugged. That was one mystery he didn’t know the answer to. But then again, most vampires couldn’t do most of the things Reginald could do. Maybe he was a kind of biological version of the codex — something that had, after millennia of trial and error, finally combined into a perfect configuration. He couldn’t help himself; he looked down at his body as he thought it. The idea of Reginald Baskin as the universe’s perfect being was delightfully ridiculous. He thought again of Maurice, saying, You are what you are. Fatass.
“Without vampires,” Reginald continued, “the blood farm populations were getting sick and stupid. And without humans to copy and steal from, even our ability to feed off of you wasn’t enough to save us. Each species needs the other. We’re a perfect symbiosis.”
“Like a tapeworm,” said Claire.
“Claire,” said Reginald, “that’s a parasite.”
“Sooo-ry,” she droned, waving her hands. “Someone destroyed the world before I got to high school.”
SLAPFIGHT
LAFONTAINE BELIEVED. IT WAS ENOUGH.
They retired to a human stronghold away from the open air of the baseball field an hour before sunrise. The vampire troops, seemingly frightened to their cores by Reginald’s ability to seize them by their brainstems, didn’t return. The humans loaded into the vehicles they’d arrived in, and Lafontaine, who suspected his men might not be convinced of the interlopers’ good intent (especially after they’d been forced to point their guns at their own heads) kept the vampires separate, giving them their own truck. Walker declined to go with them and refused all thanks and praise. Nikki told him that he’d been noble. Walker told her that her tits looked fantastic. Then he was gone, like an asshole in the night.
Brian, Nikki reported, had run “somewhere safe” after she’d turned Claire. He wasn’t specific about where he was going, but Brian was a big boy and could handle himself, and Reginald’s blood would lead them to him when the time came. So they rode as a troika, almost afraid to speak and break what felt like a delicate spell. They didn’t need to speak, though; Reginald accepted the flow of thoughts that Claire, who’d joined the vampire family tree and was now accessible through Nikki, offered him. Her mental images came in a burst, but he slowed his processing to see all of their colors: Claire meditating to calm herself after Reginald had left, her realization about herself and the virus, and her request to Nikki. Reginald nodded at Claire as he finished the mental tour, telling her that he understood. She’d made a bridge between the conscious blood of vampires and the latent intelligence inherent in human blood. The two species were more alike than they were different — despite a
ll of the hunting, the fangs, and their differing mortality.
“This still doesn’t solve anything, you know,” said Nikki.
Reginald looked over. “How so?”
“Vampires still need to feed on humans, and the humans aren’t going to want them to.”
“Vampires can be made to understand,” said Reginald. “Once they know what’s at stake.”
“What is at stake?” said Nikki.
“He’s talking about the angels,” said Claire from the back seat. “I told you that, Nikki.”
She looked back. “When?”
“When I asked you to turn me. When I realized the truth about the fog.”
In Reginald’s mind, he watched the image Claire sent him: a thick white cloud, parting in a breeze. Claire’s knowledge of the future had faltered when she’d reached the fog, and Reginald’s had faltered when he’d completed the codex and had seen, in a similar fog, that the predestined timeline had reached its end. The codex spoke about a human uprising, but not about whether the uprising would mean the end of everything. It was like seeing a gunshot but not where the bullet struck.
The fog had meant that a decision had to be made before the future could roll forward. And as soon as Claire had realized that the decision was her own decision to become a vampire, everything had cleared.
“I don’t remember,” said Nikki.
“That’s because you have a dumb vampire brain,” said Claire.
Nikki reached into the backseat and slapped playfully at Claire. It had the feel of a mother acting silly with her daughter, but to anyone on the outside it would look like a slapfight between sisters.
When they were done sparring, Claire said, “The angels talked about evolution. Charles and Timken and Claude and the others took that to mean they had to evolve into the dominant species on the planet — to ‘win the game’ against humans, due to that dumb Cain and Abel myth.”
“So there was no Cain and Abel?”
“There was a Cain,” said Reginald. “I don’t know about Abel. But when I went all the way back, I didn’t see fighting, or a contest, or a bet, or any of the things the myth talks about.”
“Reginald, on the other hand,” Claire continued, “interpreted ‘evolution’ to mean becoming more human. What was it the angels told you, Reginald?”
"'They became whole. You remained half,'" he quoted.
“But what I think that actually meant was the blood itself needed to change. Humans and vampires were ‘half’ of each other. And while humans embraced the creativity and innovation given to them by the vampire virus, vampires took nothing back from humans. Other than food, that is.”
“So what are they supposed to take back?”
“An evolved virus, maybe,” said Claire.
“And how does that happen?”
“Nikki! Didn’t you listen to anything I told you? Did you just think I wanted to become a vampire so I’d have some cool pointy teeth?”
“Hey,” said Nikki, pointing a red-fingernailed finger sternly back at Claire, “don’t make me slap you again.”
“In the codex,” said Reginald, “the one thing I couldn’t make sense of until tonight was the mention it made of a missing link that would come from the unresolved conflict.”
Nikki looked at him, not getting it. So Reginald, keeping his eyes on the road, flopped a lazy finger back at Claire.
Nikki craned over the seat. “You’re the missing link?”
“Apparently,” said Claire.
“Like a caveman?”
“You’re the one with the dumb brain,” said Claire. Nikki tried again to slap her, but Claire pivoted away and retaliated with a bag of Cheetos that was lying on the backseat. Real Cheetos, not clones, which meant that they’d been around for at least forty years. Old Reginald would have eaten them anyway, convinced that something so artificial would be perfect for a vampire, seeing as it never aged.
“How are you the missing link?”
Claire shifted in the back seat. “Shut up.”
“I’m serious,” said Nikki. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Reginald watched as Nikki put on an overly serious face. It looked ludicrous.
“When I took your blood,” Claire explained, “I changed it. I could see it as if it were in front of my eyes. I moved the blocks around and made it into something new. I ‘made it my own’ as they used to say on certain dearly departed reality singing shows.”
“So what is it now?”
Claire thought for a moment. “Something new,” she said.
“So you’re not like us?”
“Not in any way you’ll notice,” said Claire. Then, in the rearview mirror, Reginald watched her eyes dart around mischievously and she added, “Except that I’ll be smarter than your dumb vampire brain.”
Nikki tried to hit her again.
“She’s right, though,” said Reginald. Nikki moved to hit him and the car swerved, causing their human escort, speared in the headlights ahead, to hit the breaks in alarm. Nikki lowered her arm and Reginald, begging for mercy, continued. “If the codex’s implications are right, she’ll heal the gap. She’ll allow for a slightly different exchange between the species, based on a modified vampire phenotype. Very slightly different. It’ll take generations to filter down through everyone, if not centuries or even millennia as the humans repopulate.”
“What’s a a phenotype?” said Claire.
“It’s the way the germ shows up in the body, dumbass,” said Nikki. Then she turned and whispered to Reginald, “I figured it out from context.”
“But that will help the vampires to understand, too,” said Reginald. “Over time, they’ll get used to the idea that humans aren’t just food, but are actually the opposite halves of themselves. Like night and day.”
“And the humans?” said Nikki. “You expect them to just lay down their arms, bare their necks, and make friends?”
“In a way,” said Reginald. “But more accurately, I expect them to forget.”
“Oh, right,” said Nikki. “That’s logical.” But when she looked over at Reginald, she saw that he was tapping his head, indicating his own vampire brain — the one that got smarter rather than dumber, that was like a codex in itself. A brain that was more than the sum of its parts, featuring millions of collections of vampire memories housed forever in conscious, emergent blood.
“Just like that, huh?” said Nikki.
“Just like that.”
“Can you do it now?”
“I could, yes. But Lafontaine needs to remember. Others will need to remember, too. There will always need to be some humans who know all of what happened. To be shepherds of the secret — to oversee the birth of a new codex.”
There was a snapping motion from the back seat, and Reginald looked into the rear view mirror to see that Claire had discovered an ancient Coca-Cola to go with the Cheetos and had just cracked it open. She was drinking it, taking it in in long swallows.
“Gross, Claire,” said Reginald. “That Coke is at least forty years old.”
Claire shrugged. “Hey, what else am I supposed to drink? Blood?”
SUNRISE
REGINALD SAT ON THE FRONT porch, looking east, watching the barest blush of red begin to creep onto the horizon. To a lot of vampires, it might look like a suicide in progress, but he’d gotten this down to a science. When the first true yellow began to appear, he’d start to feel warm. The front door was literally right behind him, and he’d duck inside. Even if some joker with a deadly sense of humor locked the door, he could run around the side and dive through a window. It was glass, and they’d never installed steel shutters. But he liked this dangerous little game. He liked to feel the warmth on his skin, to feel as alive as a dead man could feel.
“Mind if I sit with you?” said a voice.
Reginald looked up at the tall man standing on the deck behind him.
“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned.
“Not quite,” said the man. He stooped down and sat besid
e Reginald, looking eastward. He appeared to be in his seventies and had a narrow, hawklike face. He also had piercing blue eyes that, Reginald knew from experience, could look at the forthcoming sun without harm.
“Do you want some blood?” said Reginald, raising a pouch. They’d need to start hunting again soon, and Reginald, with his four decades of slightly improved speed, might even be able to catch a victim. Still, he’d miss the farmed blood. It had been so convenient, like his old life of fast food and television had been. But he hadn’t been fat anywhere but on his fleshy body for a long time, and while he’d miss the convenience of packaged blood, he wouldn’t really, deep down, be sad to see it go.
“I don’t drink blood,” said the man.
“How about a Coke?”
“Real Coke, or that shit your company started making when all the humans died?”
Reginald turned and met the man’s gaze. It wasn’t as threatening of a gaze as it had once been. “You saw that?” he said.
The old man shrugged. “I’m an angel. We’re supposed to watch over you.”
“But you’re an evil angel.”
Balestro raised his wrinkled hand, held it level, then wiggled it to indicate that hairs were being split. “Meh.”
“It’s real Coke,” said Reginald. “Claire found a six-pack in the back seat of a human car. It kept surprisingly well. I had one for nostalgic reasons.”
Balestro kept looking into the distance, nodding. “Yeah, bring me one.”
When Reginald returned with the drink, the angel was still sitting where Reginald had left him. Some part of him had been convinced that he’d been an apparition and would be gone, but he was still there, still as corporeal as ever, still looking exactly as he had all those years ago on the hilltop in Germany when he’d surrounded them with the fabled Ring of Fire. Reginald could see it in his mind as clearly as if it were yesterday.
“We couldn’t have done it, you know,” said Balestro, not looking up until Reginald nudged him with the can of Coke. Then he did look up, smiled a thank you, and took the red can from Reginald’s hand. Reginald could have put it in a glass with ice, but this was an angel. Angels were certainly badass enough to drink from cans, and would laugh at Earthly niceties such as ice.
Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest Page 18