by Michael Bray
Garrett nodded and looked at Donald.
“Are you still with me?”
“I’ve seen enough in my time to believe anything is possible, son,” he said with a warm smile.
“I’d suggest we relocate to a different part of the store, though,” he added, nodding to the people who now almost universally glared at them mistrustfully. “I think we’ve worn out our welcome here.”
“Agreed. Come on.”
The group gathered by the beer coolers in the alcohol aisle. Garrett looked at the faces of those surrounding him. First the old familiars. Lee, Donald, Helen. There were some new faces, too. They had been joined by the guy in the khaki fatigues who Garrett had spotted earlier and also a young Hispanic looking man with a poorly maintained caterpillar mustache and a vast landscape of acne scars across his face. They all looked at him attentively, waiting to hear what he knew. He composed his thoughts and began.
“Before I get into it, I need to ask you all to do me one thing.”
“Shoot," said Lee around his cigarette.
“He— the manager— told me all about what he is and why we’re here. He also said I was free to share the information with whoever I saw fit, something in hindsight was probably a deliberate motion to divide the group which— by the looks of things— has worked. Either way, I’ll tell you what he told me. All I ask is you let me finish and get it all out in the open.”
“Then what?” asked khaki guy.
“Then,” Garrett said, “we get the hell out of here.”
“Okay, Ray,” Donald said. “The floor is yours.”
Leena
Leena’s headache was on the verge of becoming a vicious migraine. It throbbed and probed at the back of her eyes and bored into the center of her brain. She squinted at the harsh strip lights overhead and wished for darkness, at least until she thought about the people they were trapped with, and then the idea of the dark frightened her. They were too bright, too invasive. She shot a concerned glance towards Mark, but he was no longer speaking and hadn’t been for some time. Instead, he stared into oblivion, mouth partially open, the bottle of beer she had given him still held loose and untouched in his hand. She leaned close and looked into his eyes but the smell of his breath— spoiled and pungent— made her recoil. She didn’t want to admit it. In fact, want was too weak a word. She refused to admit he now looked more like one of the others— the broken ones who haunted the rows of produce like slack jawed ghouls. Unable to look at him anymore, she walked the store, desperate to escape from Mark and those blank, sightless eyes. She kept away from the aisles themselves as she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear the horrors that lurked amid the otherwise ordinary stock. Instead, she kept to the perimeter, keeping close to the non-edible things. The home furnishings, the CD and DVD section. Things that brought a little normality to an otherwise abnormal world. She had removed her shoes and was enjoying the sensation of cold tiles on her skin when she saw him.
Bo.
He was lurking by the fresh fruit stand. Her heart began to beat ferociously in her chest, and every fiber in her wanted to run, but she willed herself not to show fear. She walked towards him, careful not to break her stride. He watched her come, a frightened girl out of her depth and at the end of her own ability to remain rational and calm. She, in turn, watched him back. A sweating, foul smelling troll who licked his lips and was barely able to hide his excitement as she neared.
She held her nerve and walked past him, keeping her gaze fixed firmly ahead—determined to prove a point. She expected to feel him groping out for her, reaching for her ass or worse, but she remained unhindered and was now safely past him. She exhaled deeply; not realizing she had been holding her breath and even allowed herself a smile, a small victory no matter how trivial, was a big deal to her. It was then, with her guard down, that he grabbed her. She tried to scream, but his filthy, fat hand was covering her mouth, and the other was around her waist. She struggled to free herself, but despite his small stature, Bo was incredibly strong. She felt herself being dragged away from the safety of the familiar electronic gizmos— Blu Rays and iPods and overpriced mobile phones that had apps for everything under the sun— and towards the restrooms. Bo dragged her kicking and struggling into the men’s room, the door swinging gently shut behind them.
Nobody in the store had noticed what had happened.
What Happened with Nicu
Garrett found that his story— as wild and ridiculous as it sounded even to him, was still being reasonably well received by his small party of interested listeners, and so far nobody had walked away, called him a fruitcake, a nut-ball or anything else that would bring his sanity into question. Of course, he hadn’t told them much at all yet, none of the things that mattered anyway, but he knew the time for being selective with his information was over, and no matter how much he was trying to put it off, he had to tell them the part that even he found difficult to believe. He paused and took a long drink of his beer. It was bitter and cold and soothed his throat, which felt dry and sore. He toyed with further delaying telling of the next part, fearing its sheer unreality would either push people over the edge or make him a laughing stock, then almost instantly dismissed the idea. Even so, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. Nicu had overloaded him with information, and Garrett was struggling to process it. He half wished he had put off the telling until he had managed to gather his own thoughts. It was too rushed, too soon too—
“Ray.”
Garrett blinked, and looked at Donald, who had a concerned frown etched on his tired face.
“Are you okay, son? You seem a little… lost.”
It was a good observation. He felt lost. His mind swam and pulled in a thousand directions at once. He couldn’t concentrate and yet he knew what he needed to say, knew he would be able to articulate it if only he could overcome his own deep-seated fear. He shook his head.
“Sorry, I— I lost my train of thought.”
“You were about to tell us about what you said to Nicu when he asked you what you thought he was.”
“Yeah.” Garrett nodded. “I guess I was.”
“Are you okay, son? We can do this later if you don’t feel up to it.”
“No.” Garrett shook his head. “No. It has to be now, or I don’t know if I’ll ever get it out in the open.”
Donald nodded, and not for the first time, Garrett felt the pressure and all eyes were on him, waiting for him to go on.
“Okay. So Nicu asked me what I thought he was…”
“Are you afraid?” Nicu asked, the left side of his mouth turned up into a cruel smile.
He considered lying, but knew that somehow, Nicu would know.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m afraid.”
“And yet you come to me alone to discuss the possibility of release.” Nicu leaned back and smiled, breaking the mesmerizing spell of observation. “Curious. Curious indeed.”
“Look, I’m no hero. I don’t crave the praise of these people. They’re strangers that I don’t even know. All I want is to get home to my family.”
“So you come to plead for your own freedom?”
“Yes— No. Look, is there no way we can resolve this situation without people dying?”
“People die all the time, Mr. Garrett. It’s the way life is. And how lucky we are that they do, for if not, the world would be a despicable, vastly overpopulated place.”
“Look, forgive me if I don’t quite follow what’s happening here. Frankly, I don’t care what you are but—”
“What we are, Mr. Garrett?” Nicu said with a questioning smile.
Garrett didn’t like that smile. There was something sinister and predatory about it.
“I mean…I don’t know,” he mumbled, lowering his eyes to the imitation wood of Nicu’s desk.
“I think you know well enough what we are, Mr. Garrett, even if those you keep company with do not.”
“So tell me. Confirm it,” Garrett fired back, risking looking directly in
to those bottomless eyes.
“Ah, but that would be too easy. I would like to hear it from you.”
“Why?”
“Because you fascinate me for reasons I don’t yet understand. Now, please, indulge me.”
Garrett hesitated, hovering on the fine line between bravery and terror. He looked Nicu in the eye and said the word that had been plaguing him for some time.
“Vampires. I think you and the rest of the people working here are vampires.”
It didn’t sound as ridiculous as he’d expected now that it was out in the open. In fact, if anything, it made everything feel more real. He waited for a confession, for his slender host across the desk to plead his innocence or admit his guilt. Neither of those things happened. Instead, Nicu sat back in his chair, folded his hands neatly over his chest, and smiled.
“That is quite a leap, my friend,” Nicu said, flicking his top lip with a tongue which looked a brilliant shade of red against his pale skin.
“I’m not your friend,” Garrett whispered.
“No.” Nicu shrugged. “I suppose not.”
“So you’ve heard me say it. Now I want to know if I’m right.”
Nicu smiled, and Garrett expected to see razor-sharp teeth, and for his host to launch himself across the desk and attack, but neither happened, and Garrett let his body relax a little.
“Ah, the vampire,” Nicu said with a sigh. “The bane of our existence, the curse that has plagued us for centuries.”
Garrett felt his stomach drop as if it was filled with stones. He had a bizarre urge to giggle.
“So it’s true?”
“Actually no, Mr. Garrett, at least not in the sense that I’m sure your underdeveloped brain has already decided at least.”
Garrett said nothing. He was watching Nicu carefully, ready to move at a split seconds notice if he needed to, even if, as he suspected, such a gesture would prove futile after what had happened to the girl who tried to escape. Nicu continued.
“Ever since Bram Stoker penned that troublesome work of fiction, my kind has been plagued with inaccuracies. Indeed, before that even. Idle gossip and folklore, Mr. Garrett, have made the vampire into a romantic, brooding figure, a fictional thing which lives only within the darkness, a noble creature with raw sexuality with which they seduce large chested virgins. Sadly, the reality is very much different.”
Garrett found his mind was swimming with the classic vampire references. Bela Lugosi’s count Dracula stalking around under cover of darkness in pursuit of Helen Chandler’s Mina, or of Vlad the Impaler and tales of his gruesome deeds written in history books, and even more modern versions of the myth. Wesley Snipes as the black half vampire, Blade, and those awful romanticized vamps, where the bloodsuckers sparkle under sunlight and are more interested in love triangles with werewolves than draining blood from their brooding victims. It was enough to make the mind boggle. More so because— according to Nicu— every idea Garrett thought he knew, everything he had prepared for when he came to this office was now redundant. Useless. Worth the grand sum of nothing. He felt sick and looked at Nicu through frightened eyes. Nicu smiled again, the twist of his lips both cruel and somehow elegant at the same time. He wanted to speak, but found his brain wouldn’t make the connection to his mouth, and so he looked on, waiting for his thoughts to unscramble.
“Mr. Garrett, if it’s any consolation you are coping well. Many of your kind breakdown at this point and become gibbering, pleading shells.”
“You’ve done this before?”
Nicu smiled and placed his long-fingered, pale hands on the desk. “Mr. Garrett, try to understand. This is by no means an isolated situation. The people you came here to bargain for, are not special. You are victims of circumstance. All over the world, there are operations much like this one, and almost always there is someone, not unlike yourself who will come forward to try and negotiate for freedom. Many are desperate, pleading beings, ones who quickly become tiresome to listen to. Others try to talk their way out, offering money or possessions, as if we couldn’t just take such things if we needed them. And then of course, occasionally there are people like you, Mr Garrett.”
“What do you mean?”
“People who come to me with dignity, with self-respect, who listen calmly as they are told what is to become of them.”
“We never had a chance, did we?” Garrett asked, unable to keep his voice steady.
Nicu didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled.
“What if I kill you?” Garrett heard himself say, unsure where the words were coming from. “What if I kill you right here, right now?”
Nicu snorted, a thin smile spreading across his lips. “You can try, by all means, Mr Garrett. Many before you have, many after you will.”
For a split second, Garrett thought about it. He thought about throwing himself over the desk at Nicu, then immediately decided against it. What would he do? He had no weapons, and it was obvious there was little he could do to physically harm Nicu. Worse than all of that was the image of his wife swimming into his mind, the sick feeling of how they parted, and that a stupid argument over nothing could well lead to him never seeing her again, or the birth of his child.
He relaxed, leaning back in the chair. Nicu chuckled as if he had read Garrett’s thought process from start to finish.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mr. Garrett! You weren’t to know escape was impossible and only went by your human instincts. You made the same mistake as those who came before you. You relied on what you know, what culture, television, books, and fiction have told you. You could never have hoped to know the truth. Let me ask you this, if I may. If indeed, garlic was like poison to our kind, would we stock it in our store? If a stake through the heart would be our undoing, would we supply you with the tools to make them? No, no. What we are, what your perception of what we are and—more importantly— how to deal with us is, frankly…. laughable.”
Nicu pursed his lips and looked at Garrett carefully, and then pointed at him with a long, bony finger.
“I like you, Mr. Garrett. You don’t sob and cry and beg like so many before you have. If it puts your mind at ease, I can assure you what I said earlier is true. Even though we could kill everyone in this facility without effort, we will stand by our initial agreement. We do not wish to draw unnecessary attention to our operation. We only need to retain some of you in order to…restock.”
“But blood… I mean you need to drink blood to live…” Garrett blurted before he could stop himself. Nicu shook his head slowly.
“Folklore. Stories passed down through your human race, and like the game of Chinese whispers changed so that eventually the truth was lost. However, if you want to know what we are, in terms you can understand, then you can think of our species as a natural evolution of your own. We are stronger, faster, live longer. Impervious to disease. We are without limitations such as remorse. Conscience. We feed on humans not because we have to, but because we choose to. It is our religion. Our way of life. It is not just the drinking of the human blood, but also in the eating of the flesh. The sweet, human meat. That, Mr Garrett, is where we draw our strength. Our vitality. We are able to sustain ourselves on other foods, of course. We can, if required, survive indefinitely without feeding, but Mr. Garrett, who on earth would ever want to do such a thing? Why would we deny ourselves the right to dine on the meat of the inferior? To gorge in the hot bitter blood of those beneath us?”
“So you’re… immortal?”
“In terms, as you would see it and compared to your lifespan, yes.”
“But you said it was all legend. Stories.”
“And so it was, or at least back in the dark times. Remember, Mr Garrett, they knew nothing of modern science. Our kind back then was best explained with witchcraft rather than science.”
“Science?”
“Of course,” Nicu said, seeming a little surprised that Garrett didn’t follow. “Evolution, Mr Garrett. Evolution is the key. Our species sim
ply have a much longer lifespan than yours. Whereas you humans may have a life of around seventy or eighty years, the average for my kind is something nearer nine hundred. I will see my two hundred and ninth birthday later this year.”
Nine hundred years.
Garrett felt light-headed, and was certain he was about to faint away, but somehow he regained his composure.
“How did this happen, I mean, where did you come from?”
Nicu smiled. “Nobody knows, even amongst my people. It seems at some point in mankind’s past, something happened which created the first of our species, and all of my kind have grown from there. Sadly, if the first of our kind had the means to chronicle his life, then we are yet to find it. The reason for our being is still shrouded in mystery today as it always has been, and yet, here we are, living in the shadow of a species to which we are its complete superior.”
“Why are you telling me all this? What good can it do?” Garrett asked.
“Because I want you to understand. I want you to see that planning to fight, planning to fashion crude weapons with which to attack us is no good, and will result only in unnecessary bloodshed.”
“What’s to say you won’t just kill us anyway?”
Nicu sighed and shook his head. “Mr. Garrett, how many times do you need to be told? You are just a small part of something incomprehensibly large. My kind walks among yours and have infiltrated your human infrastructure from top to bottom. Almost forty percent of the planet is populated by our kind, and you humans are still oblivious. We are your friends, your enemies, your colleagues. Your wives, husbands, and lovers. We are celebrities; we are politicians. We are even world leaders. We walk beside you both by day and by night.”
“By day?”
Nicu grinned. “The aversion to sunlight is yet another falsehood, I’m afraid. A convenient addition to the story of our kind to put human minds at ease that their days will be safe. I actually enjoy the warmth of the sun. I own a beautiful home in Florida where I spend a lot of time when I am away from work.