Maybe just a nap, then I’d search for food. And then, who knows? Perhaps I’d find my way across that stream, when it was frozen over, and visit Stone Harbor after all. Plenty to eat there, too.
As I settled into my slumber, away from the hateful sun, I heard Jenn singing to me. She was happy, I could tell, because we were together again, just as we’d been promised.
Besides, this was my village. No one else belonged here. There can be only one queen.
WE ARE ALL MONSTERS HERE
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
After decades of movies and TV shows and books filled with creatures by turns terrifying and tempting, it was a guarantee that the real vampires could never live up to the hype. We knew that. Yet we were still disappointed.
When the first stories hit the news—always from some distant place we’d never visited or planned to visit—the jokes followed. Late-night comedy routines, YouTube videos, Internet memes . . . people had a blast mocking the reality of vampires. The most popular costume that Halloween? Showing up dressed as yourself and saying “Look, I’m a vampire.” Ha-ha.
Then cases emerged in the US, and people stopped laughing.
While vampirism was no longer comedy fodder, people were still disillusioned. They just found new ways to express it. Some started petitions claiming the term vampire made a mockery of a serious medical condition. Others started petitions claiming it made a mockery of long-standing folklore. There was actually a bill before Congress to legislate a change of terminology.
Then the initial mass outbreak erupted, and no one cared what they called it anymore.
I first heard about the vampires in a college lecture hall. I couldn’t tell you which course it was—the news made too little of an impression for me to retain the surrounding circumstances. I know only that I was in class, listening to a professor, when the guy beside me said, “Hey, did you see this?” and passed me his iPhone. I was going to ignore him. I’d been doing that all term—he kept sitting beside me and making comments and expecting me to be impressed, when all I wanted to say was, “How about trying to talk to me outside of class?” But that might have been an invitation I’d regret. So I usually ignored him, but this time, he’d shoved his phone in front of me and before I could turn away, I saw the headline.
The headline read REAL-LIFE VAMPIRES IN VENEZUELA. The article went on to say that there had been five incidents in which people had woken to find themselves covered in blood . . . and everyone else in the house dead and bloodless.
“Vampires,” the guy whispered. “Can you believe it? I’d have thought they’d have been scarier.”
“Slaughtering your entire family isn’t scary enough for you?”
He shifted in his seat. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s not vampires,” I said. “It’s drugs. Like those bath salts.”
I shoved the phone at him and turned my attention back to the professor.
Two years later, I was still living in a college dorm, despite having been due to graduate the year before. No one had graduated that term, because that’s when the outbreak struck our campus. Classes were suspended and students were quarantined. The lockdown stretched for days. Then weeks. Then months. The protests started peacefully enough, but soon we realized we were being held prisoner and fought back. The military fought back harder. The scene played out across the nation, not just in schools, but in every community where people had been “asked” not to leave for months on end. Martial law was declared across the country. The outbreaks continued to spread.
Given what was happening in the rest of the world, soon even the college’s staunchest believers in democracy and free will realized we had it good. We were safe, living in separate quarters equipped with alarms and dead bolts so we could sleep securely. Otherwise, we were free to mingle, with all our food and entertainment supplied as we waited for the government to find a cure.
One morning I awoke to the sound of my best friend, Katie, banging on my door, shouting that the answer was finally here. I dressed as quickly as I could and joined her in the hall.
“A cure?” I said.
Her face fell. “No,” she said, and I regretted asking. I’d known Katie since my sophomore year, and she bore little resemblance to the girl she’d been. I used to envy her, with her amazing family and amazing boyfriend back home. It’d been a year since she’d seen them. Three months since she’d heard from them, as the authorities cut off communications with her quarantined hometown. She’d lost thirty pounds, her sweet nature reduced to little more than anxiety and nerves, unable to grieve, not daring to hope.
“Not a cure,” she said. “But the next best thing. A method of detection. We can be tested. And then we can leave.”
A method of detection. Wonderful news for an optimist. I am not an optimist. I heard that and all I could think was, What if we test positive? At the assembly, I was the annoying one in the front row badgering the presenters with exactly that question. “What will happen if we have the marker?”
That’s what it was—a genetic marker. Which didn’t answer the question of transmission. Two years since the first outbreak, and no one knew what actually caused vampirism. It seemed to be something inside us that just “activated.” Of course, people blamed the government. It was in the vaccinations or the water or the genetically modified food. What was the trigger? No one knew, and frankly, it seemed like no one cared.
Those who had the marker would be subjected to continued quarantine while scientists searched for a cure. The rest of us would be free to go. Well, free to go someplace that wasn’t quarantined.
The next day, the military lined us up outside the cafeteria. There were still people who worried that the second they got a positive result, the nearest guy in fatigues would pull out his semiautomatic. Bullshit, of course. The semiautomatic would make noise. If they planned to kill us, they’d do it much more discreetly.
To allay concerns, the testing would be communal. As open as they could make it. I had to give them props for that.
They took a DNA sample and analyzed it on the spot. That instant analysis wouldn’t have been possible a couple of years ago, but when you’re facing a vampire plague, all the best minds work day and night to develop the tools to fight it, whether they want to or not.
My results took eight seconds. I counted. Then they handed me a blue slip of paper. I looked down the line at everyone who’d been tested before me. Green papers, red, yellow, purple, white, and black. They didn’t dare use a binary system here. So we got our papers and we sat and we waited.
When Katie came over clutching a green slip of paper, she looked at mine and said, “Oh,” and looked around, mentally tabulating colors.
“They say the rate is fifteen percent,” I said. “There are seven colors. That means an equal number for each so we don’t panic.”
Once everyone was tested, they divided us into our color groups. Then we were laser-tattooed on our wrists.
I got a small yellow circle. When I craned my neck to look at the group beside us—the reds—they were getting the same. So were the blacks to my left. I exhaled in relief and looked around for Katie.
A woman announced, “If you have a yellow circle, you are clear and you may—”
That’s when the screaming started. From the green group. I caught sight of Katie, standing there, staring in horror at the black star on her wrist. I raced over. A soldier tried to stop me, but I pushed past him, saying, “I’m with her.”
A woman in uniform stepped into my path. “She’s—”
“I know,” I said. “I’m staying with her.”
It wasn’t a particularly noble sacrifice. That circle on my wrist meant I could leave at any time. Katie could not. I had nowhere to go anyway. My family . . . well, let’s just say that when I got accepted to college, I walked out and never looked back and don’t regret it. I won’t explain further. I don’t think I need to.
I would stay with Katie because she needed me and because I
could and because—let me be frank—it was the smart thing to do. I’d heard what the world was like beyond our campus. I was staying where there was food and shelter and safety and a friend.
Assemblies and a parade of officials and psychologists followed, all reassuring the others that their black star was not a death sentence. Not everyone who had the marker “turned.” Those who did were now being transported to a secure facility, where they’d continue to await a cure.
There were private sessions that day, too, with counselors. During those, I sat in one of the common rooms with the other yellow suns. Yes, I wasn’t the only one. We all had our reasons for staying, and most were like mine, part loyalty, part survival. We sat and we played cards, and we enjoyed the break from being hugged and told how wonderful and empathetic and strong we were, when we felt like none of those things.
Night came. Before today, the locks had been internal, meant to protect us while reassuring us that in the event of an emergency, we could leave. Now the doors had been fitted with an overriding electronic system. Perhaps it’s a testament to how far things had gone that not a single person complained. We were just happy for the locks, especially now, in a building filled with dormant monsters.
I woke to the first shot at midnight. I bolted up in bed, thinking I’d dreamed it. Then the second shot came. No screams. Just gunfire. I yanked on my jeans and ran to the door, in my confusion forgetting about the new locks. I twisted the knob and . . .
The door opened.
I yanked it shut fast and stood there, gripping the knob.
Was I really awake? Was I really me? How could I be sure?
People who “turned” were not usually killed on sight, not unless they were caught mid-rampage and had to be put down. Studies said that when vampires woke in the night, they later had no memory of it. People took comfort in that—at least if you turned, you’d be spared the horror of remembering you’d slaughtered your loved ones. I took no comfort because it also meant there was no way of knowing what it felt like to turn. Would you be conscious in that moment? Did it seem real at the time?
I looked at the unlocked door. My gaze swung down to the yellow sun on the back of my wrist.
Another shot, this one so close that I ducked, the echo ringing in my ears. The shot had come from the other side of the wall. Katie’s room.
I threw open my door and raced to hers, and finding it open, I ran through and . . .
Katie lay crumpled on the floor. In her outstretched hand was a gun.
I ran to her and then stopped short, staring. She lay on her stomach, and the side of her chest . . . there was a hole there. No, not a hole—that implies something neat and harmless. It was bloody and raw, a crater into her chest, just below her heart. I dropped to my knees, a sob catching in my throat.
She whimpered.
There was a moment when I didn’t move, when all I could think was that she’d come back to life, like a vampire from the old stories and Hollywood movies. Except that wasn’t how real vampires worked. They weren’t dead. They weren’t invulnerable. I grabbed her shoulders and turned her over.
Blood gushed from her mouth as I eased her onto her back. I tried not to think of that, tried not to let my brain assess that damage. It still did. I was pre-med. I’d spent enough hours volunteering in emergency wards to process the damage reflexively. She’d tried to shoot herself in the heart, not the head, because she didn’t know better, because she was the kind of person who couldn’t even watch action movies. So she’d aimed for her heart and missed, but not missed by enough. Not nearly enough.
I shouted for help. As I did, I heard other shouts. Other shots, too, and screams from deep in the dormitory, and I tried to lay Katie down, to run out for help, but she gripped my hand and said, “No,” and “Stay,” and I looked at her, and as much as I wanted to believe she’d survive, that she’d be fine, I knew better. So I shouted, as loud as I could, for help, but I stayed where I was, and I held her hand, and I told her everything would be fine, just fine.
“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait to turn. I couldn’t make you wait.”
“I would have,” I said, squeezing her hand as tears trickled down my face. “I’d have stayed for as long as you needed me.”
A faint smile. “Just a few more minutes. That’s all I’ll need. Then you can go.”
I told her I didn’t want to go, to just hold on, stay strong and hold on and everything would be fine. Of course it wouldn’t and we both knew that, but it gave us something to say in those final minutes, for me to tell her how brave and wonderful she was, and for her to tell me what a good friend I’d been.
“There,” she whispered, her voice barely audible as her eyelids fluttered. “You can go now. Be free. Both of us. Free and . . .”
And she went. One last exhalation, and she joined her family and her boyfriend and everyone she’d loved and known was dead, even if she’d told herself they weren’t.
I sat there, still holding her hand. Then as I lifted my head, I realized I could still hear shouts and shots and screams. I laid Katie on the floor, picked up the gun, and headed into the hall.
How many times had I sat in front of the TV, rolling my eyes at the brain-dead characters running toward obvious danger? Now I did exactly that and understood why. I heard those shots and those screams, and I had to know what was happening.
I got near a hall intersection when the guy who’d shown me the news of the first reported deaths two years ago came barreling around the corner. He skidded to a halt so fast his sneakers squeaked. He stared at me, and there was no sign of recognition because all he saw was the gun. He dropped to his knees and looked up at me, and even then, staring me full in the face, his eyes were so panic filled that he didn’t recognize me. He just knelt there, his hands raised like a sinner at a revival.
“Please, please, please,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt anyone. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I need to say good-bye. My mom, my sister, my nephew . . . please just let me say good-bye. That’s all I’ll do, and then I’ll do it, and if I can’t, I’ll go away. I’ll go far, far away.”
I lowered the gun, and he fell forward, convulsing in a sob of relief, his whole body quaking, sweat streaming from his face, the hall filling with the stink of it.
“Thank you,” he said. “Oh God, thank you. I know I should do it—”
“Where did the guns come from?”
He looked up, his eyes finally focusing. “I know you. You—”
“My friend had this gun. I hear more. Where did they come from?”
He blinked hard, as if shifting his brain out of animal panic mode. Then his gaze went to my yellow sun. “You aren’t . . . So you don’t know. Okay.” He nodded, then finally stood. “When the black stars had their private counseling session, they gave us guns. Access to them, that is. They told us where we could find them, if we decided we couldn’t go on. Except . . .” He looked back the way he came. “Not everyone is using theirs to kill themselves first.”
“They’re killing the other black stars?”
He nodded. “They think we should all die. To be safe. They’re killing those who didn’t take the guns.”
Footsteps sounded in the side hall.
“I need to go,” he said quickly. “You should, too.”
I lifted my hand to show my tattoo. “I’m not a threat.”
He shook his head but didn’t argue, just took off. I waited until the footsteps approached the junction.
“I’m armed,” I called. “But I’m not a threat. I’ve got the yellow sun—”
“And I don’t really give a shit,” said a voice, and a guy my age wheeled around the corner, blood spattered on his shirt, his gun raised. “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
I dove as he fired. He shot twice, wildly, as if he’d never held a gun before tonight. When he tried for a third shot, the gun only clicked. I ran at him but didn’t shoot. I couldn’t do that. I sm
ashed the pistol into his temple and he went down. Then I heard running footsteps and more shouts, and I raced down the hall, taking every turn and running as fast as I could, until I saw the security station ahead. I fell against the door, banging my fists on it. When no one answered, I held my wrist up to the camera.
“Yellow sun!” I shouted. “Let me in!”
A guy opened the door. His gray hair had probably been cut military short a couple of years ago, but no one enforced those rules now and it stood on end like porcupine quills.
“Get in,” he said.
I fell through. When I got my balance, I saw a half dozen military guards watching the monitors. Watching students killing each other.
“You need to get out there,” I said. “You need to stop this.”
The gray-haired guy shrugged. “We didn’t give them the guns.”
“But you need to—”
“We don’t need to do anything.” He lowered himself into a chair. “You want to, girlie? You go right ahead. Otherwise? Wait it out with us.”
I hesitated. Then I turned away from the monitors and slumped to the floor.
I was released the next day. That was their term for it: released. Cast out from my sanctuary. They escorted me back to my room to get my belongings and gave me a bag to pack them in. Then they walked me to the college gates, and for the first time in over a year, I set foot into the world beyond my campus.
It was fine in the beginning. Better than I dared to hope for. The entire college town had been tested, the black stars already rounded up and taken away, and while families grieved and mourned their loved ones, there was a sense of relief, too. Was it not better that their loved ones be taken somewhere safe . . . so the remaining family members would be safe from them, if they turned? That’s what it came down to in the end. What left us safe.
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