by Hugo Huesca
Quark wondered how he could ever have believed Old Sullivan to be a man, even a settler when he clearly was a monster. A starving vampire, who hypnotized his victims with his mind before feasting on their blood. Quark felt his neck so very exposed, and shivered.
“Maybe some long-lost cousin of mine,” Old Sullivan said, reading his thoughts, “a long time ago it was easy to swim over the vastness of the True Night. My kin liked to visit your world, even my own children. I preferred the cold planets, farther away. The men there were tastier.”
Sullivan looked out of the window, like someone pretending to be deep in thought, while underneath being empty. “They are dry rocks, nowadays, and the currents of the True Night stopped long ago. I’ve slept for a long time, see, alone with my thirst. Wasting away with each eon. But then you came into my kingdom, you humid-men filled with warm, healthy water… Oh, how I’ve waited for this day, young larva. How I’ve waited, indeed.”
Quark tried to think of a cross because he knew it was supposed to ward off vampires, and he was desperate. But the night terror just looked at him with amusement and shook its head.
“You should be ashamed of your manners. Humid-man larva, coming here into this land and then trying to harm its Count. But no matter, I don’t hold grudges against cattle.”
Quark tried that some defiant look shone through the panic that he was feeling, but if it did, Old Sullivan paid him no mind.
“I was merciful, with the cattle that worshiped me, back in the day. And there are little nutrients in your tiny frame. I can’t make you forget about me, so I offer you a deal. Stop trying to peer into my business, and stop asking questions about me in your metal-lair and I may forgive the lives of your parents and your friends.”
Quark didn’t believe a word he said. But why didn’t the vampire eat him and be done with it? Even as he thought it, he tried to suppress the idea, desperately, in case Old Sullivan took it as a suggestion, but his efforts only made the thought clearer. The Count nodded.
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss me, larva. If I ate all my new cattle, I would have to go back to sleep, don’t you think? No, little Quark Campbell, you’ll grow old and have many children. In time, this Colony of yours will have you as its leader, and you will teach it to serve me as humid-men are supposed to serve.
“That’s the deal I offer you, and I advise you to consider it. Keep quiet now, and give me no trouble, and I’ll make you a king among your fellow humid-men and may spare your parents and your friends from my thirst. This is a courtesy I’m offering you, you won’t get another one. There are other larvae for me to groom. Perhaps little Orion would do. Don’t you agree?”
Then he laughed, and dissolved into black ink that behaved like mist, and circled around Quark while it floated slowly through the window that wasn’t a window. Quark couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, he could only feel a deep, scathing thirst that felt as if his throat was a smoldering desert, and his body felt as hot sand…
“Quark! Quark!” Hands shook him awake, and Quark opened his eyes, confused. He was shaking. He had no desert in his throat, but he felt so thirsty his mouth felt like slush. In front of his bed, was his dad, looking at him with the expert look that only a person with two Ph.Ds. ––but none in medicine–– can give a sick boy. “You alright, kiddo?”
Quark looked around his room. Everything was as he had left it. The window reflected the Martian morning but it was an obvious illusion because it was a screen with a metal sheet under it. You’d need a bulldozer to pry it open.
“And the room would have depressurized,” Quark thought. His mind felt clear this morning, not like the feverish dream-mind of a nightmare, where he could only behave according to the laws of the dream.
No, nightmares could not follow into the morning, so he was free to think. He knew of depressurization, and since he was alive and his dad and mom were fine, then the vampire’s visit must’ve been a dream.
Which, of course, Quark didn’t believe for a single second.
“Yes, dad, I’m fine,” he said, although his body felt like burning and his lips cracked, “I just…”
“Well, you have a fever,” said his dad, and for a second Quark thought he had seen his dad’s eyes light up with panic. “Could’ve caught it while at the funeral, should be nothing. But I’m taking you to the doctor anyways before you go prancing around with your friends and singlehandedly get half the Colony bedridden.”
Dad gave him a pat on his shoulder and walked to the door. He turned back for a bit, “get some rest and suit up, today we are going early.”
“What about breakfast?” Quark complained.
“I’ll get you some juice, but we are in a hurry,” said his dad, and this time Quark was sure his voice had cracked a bit right there.
Quark’s mom stayed to check some last Sunday data, she still had some work to do and wouldn’t be free until a couple of hours later. “I’ll catch up with you guys on the Coaster,” she told them. “Take care you two, don’t get into any trouble.”
And Quark had said yes because he didn’t want to worry his mom, but he fully intended to get himself into trouble.
He felt much better once he drank the cold juice on the way to the Administrative Complex, even it was a simple artificial sweetener for some nutritional serum, but his father wanted to make sure.
Mrs. Xin’s office was open this Sunday only because Quark’s dad had phoned her beforehand. It was a small office with a computer, cabinets with medicines and medical instruments that Quark didn’t recognize. She was a middle-aged doctor with a stern face but kind eyes. She wore a white coat with a stethoscope hanging from her neck, which she said was mostly for show because robots handled the vitals checking for her.
Doctor Xin made Quark lay on the examination table, looked at his eyes, his tongue, pinched his skin and hit his knee with a hammer. He would have found it all very funny if he wasn’t so worried.
“It seems everything is fine,” Doctor Xin said, giving Quark’s dad a meaningful look, “it’s just normal dehydration; I think Quark here forgot to drink water yesterday while he was out playing.”
His dad seemed relieved, “I thought so, but you know, I wanted to be sure.”
“Of course, Frank. I understand, better be safe than…” She cut herself off from that sentence, but Quark was paying them little attention. He ached to be outside and get the Futurisians together.
Doctor Xin gave him some more nutritional juice to sip during the day and sent them on their way.
“Do you mind if I go look for my friends?” asked Quark, when his dad and he were walking outside Xin’s office, along the walkway that could get them to the buggy’s lot or deeper inside the complex. “I promised them we would meet today.”
“I’m not sure kiddo, the doc thinks you are okay, but maybe I should keep an eye on you,” his dad told him.
“I feel fine,” argued Quark, “and if I start to feel bad, I’ll call you, playing while sick is no fun. And perhaps I can skip school tomorrow for it.” Now that had sounded more like himself.
“Hah, we will see about that,” his dad said, but Quark had convinced him, “alright, scatter, you brat, go play with your pals.”
Quark didn’t wait to be told twice.
The Futurisians met at the botanical garden. It was weird, that just a couple days ago, they thought of it as ‘Mr. Danglers’ garden.’ Now it was empty while the Bureau and Bob Cunningham found someone with a related field of work that could juggle around the extra responsibility. That could take a while, so the garden was closed until then, maintained by the little whirling robots that cared for the entire Colony.
But since Danglers was an honorary Futurisian, the three kids knew that obviously, the rule didn’t apply to them, so they claimed the territory with boldness and daring fitting to any Martian settler. And then forgot to tell anyone else.
“I’ve got some bad news,” Quark said after they were safely inside the botanical garden and the thre
e were sure no adult was nearby. Two ‘bots were mechanically tending to watermelons growing from plastic trays hanging from the ceiling, but otherwise they were alone.
Quark waited for a brief dramatic pause, “Old Sullivan isn’t human. He is something like a vampire, and wants to use the Colony as its personal food supply.”
Orion nodded, going pale as snow. The kid lived in a constant state of expecting disaster, so when someone had nasty bad news, his usual response was a ‘Sure, and then…?’
But Lizzy wasn’t having it, “What do you mean a vampire? I’m sure the settlers had medical exams before getting in the rockets to Mars, I don’t think the government would let some vampire on-board.”
“He was already here,” Quark explained, impatient, “he is a Martian vampire.”
“Makes sense,” said Orion.
“What’s your source?” demanded Lizzy, “you can’t go around accusing old men of being vampires, people will think you are mad.”
“I had a dream about it, obviously,” said Quark. He needed to get his friends past it, so they could focus on what was important. Vampire Hunting. “Except it wasn’t a dream. Dreams don’t feel like that, or threaten your friends and family if you won’t stop meddling in his business.”
“He told you not to tell anyone?” mumbled Orion, biting his lip. “Then why would you go and tell us?”
“Because vampires don’t make deals, Orion,” said Lizzy, and she patted the kid on the back to comfort him. “Don’t worry, if Quark is right, Old Sullivan planned on killing us anyways.”
“Oh,” said Orion, pale as snow, “makes sense.”
Then she turned back to Quark:
“It could have been a really bad nightmare, I have them sometimes, doesn’t mean a giant flaming pony is trying to drag me under the bed.”
Quark knew she was right, but he couldn’t explain how he knew it hadn’t been a dream. None of his nightmares had been as terrifying as Old Sullivan sitting at the edge of his bed, smiling in a way that made his entire face look false.
“Guys, I know it was real. Please, I need your help on this. I think the Colony is in danger.”
There wasn’t more to argue.
“Alright, we are on vampire hunting duty,” said Lizzy, with a determined gleam in her eyes, “that’s going to be hard to top on my curriculum when I’m older.”
“How are we going to kill a Martian Vampire?” asked Orion.
During the buggy ride to the complex, Quark had pondered the same questions. He had some ideas.
“We film him being vampire-like, and then we get someone to kill him for us.”
“Oh, thank god,” said Orion, “I thought you wanted us to kill him.”
Quark had thought about it. But he would rather stay far away from those abyss-like eyes if he could help it.
“No way, we don’t have any weapons against him. And we don’t know his weaknesses, this is an alien vampire, he is playing by different rules.”
The Futurisians devised a plan, working fast in the sticky and hot air of the botanic garden. Orion had brought cameras from his dad’s cache, they were the size of ants and with as good a resolution as the kids’ tablets. There were enough cameras to stake out a good part of the complex, that was part number one of the plan. They wanted to see Old Sullivan come and go, maybe figure out what he was planning.
The next part was the dangerous one: Quark was going to get near him and plant a camera directly on him.
“In my dream, he could read my mind,” he remembered, “but I’m not sure how strong that power is, or if he can just go around reading people thoughts at will. I want to take the risk anyhow. We are doomed if he can pull that off,” because he would read any plan they had come up with the second he came near any of them.
Finally, Orion was going to track every movement with his tablet. “If he doesn’t appear in mirrors like the stories, maybe he won’t appear on the video feed either,” Orion said. Then he frowned like he did when in deep thought. “Well, in that case, I will show my dad the feed in front of Old Sullivan, so he can see something weird is going on himself.”
Quark considered all this. It was a good plan, better than the last Spy Network they had tried to pull off. The difference was, this one wasn’t a joke. It was the real deal, with real danger.
“Let’s go. We can cover more ground if we split off—”, he started, but then he laughed at the panicked expressions of his friends, “I’m just kidding.”
So they went together into the corridors of the complex, trying to look innocent every time they crossed a group of adults. It only made them look guilty, which in turn made the adults relax because that meant it was a normal Sunday morning for the Colony.
They planted a camera at every corner and at every entrance and exit from the main building, and especially at the airlocks. They moved cautiously, ready to go into hiding if any of them caught sight of Old Sullivan. If he saw them, they would just turn around and run, and track his movements later, before Quark tried to pull any camera-planting on him. They knew that a vampire, even a Martian vampire, was serious business. They had to win on misdirection and cleverness, not by running to him and trying to club him on his ugly face.
They caught no sight of him for hours, and Quark hoped the man had turned around and went back to wherever he came. After all, even if he remembered his pale bald head being around for years, the only memory he had of him being vampirish had come from yesterday. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. And that one felt real. The other ones had a sticky-like quality to them. Quark had goosebumps.
“He called himself The Count,” he thought, while Orion staked the last entrance of the living quarters. The search took them the better part of the morning because space was cheap even in the complex. “He also said he had been sleeping for a long time.” But it talked, looked human, and everyone remembered it as a trusted member of the Colony. Was that how he hunted? By getting inside his victim’s brains?
The thought of that tendril-like mist toying around with his brain –and his friends and family’s brains—, made him shiver.
They were done with half of the complex when they stepped into the park by the Bureau’s building and found Old Sullivan. The black suit with that yellowed moth-eaten white shirt was unmistakable. He was standing near the tomb of Mr. Danglers, talking to Quark’s dad.
Quark felt like someone had poured a bucket of cold water over his head. He ran towards his father:
“Get away from him, dad! He is a monster!”
Old Sullivan kept a straight face but shared a knowing look with his dad.
“So, that’s what you’ve been doing all day, Quark?” his dad asked him, not moving from Sullivan’s side. Quark realized with desperation that he was about to get a lecture right in front of the Count.
“What? No, you don’t understand, that man is…” The memory of what Old Sullivan had said the night before itched inside his mind: He would destroy his family and friends…… Would he dare attack in the middle of the day?
“Except that it’s not the middle of the day, in the Colony, because we use artificial lights,” Quark thought, grimly, “that is how he gets to walk around unharmed.”
“I understand just right. Sullivan here told me you were hiding in the Botanical labs, Quark. You three are in so much trouble. How could you be so irresponsible? Mr. Danglers just died there, whatever weird sickness got him could still be inside. You could get the virus yourselves, even infect the whole Colony!”
“What sickness?” intervened Orion, which had arrived with Lizzy seconds after Quark, and were standing now by his sides, trying to even the numbers. “My dad works security; he didn’t mention any sickness. Mr. Danglers had an accident, from working too hard.”
“What accident?” asked Lizzy. This was news to the three of them. Quark had just accepted Mr. Dangler’s death like it was a sad affair but nothing out of the ordinary.
He got a dismal feeling in the back of the t
hroat, like someone realizing he was scammed, but doesn’t yet understand how. He looked at Old Sullivan, but the man’s face revealed nothing. Those eyes had no feeling of triumph or glee or cruelty. They just were bottomless.
“You know,” Orion explained. The kid looked just as confused as Quark, “he liked to work overtime, and the garden is very hot. He lost track of time one day and fell unconscious… then died. Of dehydration, you see. He wasn’t a young man anymore, said my dad, that’s why it affected him more. He didn’t drink any nutritional juice because he didn’t like the taste. He wanted to wait until his watermelons were ripe.”
“Oh god,” mumbled Lizzy.
Quark had stopped listening. He looked at Old Sullivan, who towered over him, still with the blank look. Dehydrated, Orion had said. Just like him after his encounter with the monster last night.
It seemed that Martian vampires had different feeding habits than those he knew from Earth. And this one had murdered Mr. Danglers. And everyone believed he was just some guy…
“Some of us think it may have been a virus or bacteria,” said his dad, oblivious to his son realization. “Old Sullivan here knows his stuff, and worries about you three, hanging around in that garden, where you may get infected.”
“That’s not true!” yelled Quark, appalled at the injustice. Couldn’t his dad see the Count was playing him? “He is evil dad, he killed Mr. Danglers himself!”
“Quark, this is serious, you could ruin a good man’s reputation saying things like that. I’m sorry, Sullivan, he gets engrossed in his games sometimes. He is getting way too old for this…”
“Don’t worry,” said Old Sullivan, with a cool and icy voice that was different to the cavernous growl he had used last night, “I understand. Kids will be kids. I had some of my own, you know. A long time ago.”
His dad nodded, seemingly sorry for the guy, and Quark realized he was thinking Sullivan had lost his own children during the war.