Sanguine Series (Book 1): The Fall

by Chris Laughton

  The waiter returned with their menus and glasses of water. Rebekah didn’t wait for the waiter to leave before taking a long drink from the glass. It had been a few days since she’d had water she knew was clean. This time the waiter couldn’t ignore her and was forced to hide his disgust when he left.

  “So, Rebekah with a k, how long have you been homeless?” ‘Well’, she thought to herself, ‘at least he’s direct’.

  She feigned shock, “What makes you think I’m homeless?” When she had paused long enough for the effect of her own joke, she answered, “Five days now.”

  “Do you mind if I ask how?” She had to admit, it was quite charming the way he hadn’t once looked around the restaurant to see the other diners watching them or the staff talking about them from the kitchen. She was probably blowing it out of proportion in her mind, but she knew they were attracting at least some attention.

  “I’ve sort of bounced around since my sister kicked me out of her place a while back. She didn’t approve of my, shall we say, recreational drug use in the same home as her daughter. Just ran out of places to crash on a couch, I guess.” She hadn’t planned on being this honest, but he apparently had a way of drawing it out of her.

  “Well did you try not doing drugs?”

  “You know the thought never crossed my mind,” she replied sarcastically with more than a little anger in her voice.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to offend you, just making conversation.” He looked slightly hurt and she found herself feeling guilty for snapping at him. Man, he was good.

  “It’s fine. I’ve quit them a few times, but I never seem to have much else going on and I just get bored, you know?” Her addict’s justification didn’t sound genuine, even to her. “But if I’d known I could make your kind of money from telling people to turn off the lights when they leave the room,” she gestured to the crisp dress shirt and tie he was wearing, “maybe I could’ve kept myself busy.”

  She was happy to make him laugh and get the wounded puppy look off his face. “So you think you could do what I do?”

  “I’m just saying that if you wanted to issue a ‘Trading Places’ style challenge, I think I’d do alright for myself.”

  The waiter returned with a plate of bacon-wrapped shrimp and Rebekah could feel her mouth watering. She hadn’t had real bacon in years and she could tell this wasn’t some imitation crap. The waiter asked, “Have you decided what you’ll be having?” Rebekah realized she’d been so focused on Mason that she hadn’t opened her menu, even though she was starving.

  To her relief, Mason bailed her out. “How about you just bring us your two favorites?”

  The waiter smiled. Either he was getting better at ignoring her, or his professionalism was winning out. “And how do you like your steak, sir?”

  Mason saw her eyes go wide. “Actually, we’ll both have that. Medium-rare for me please.”

  The waiter was forced to look at her now. “Uh, yeah, medium-rare’s fine.” Mason handed the waiter the menus and thanked him.

  “If they make you pay, then I sincerely hope you’re loaded. Real bacon and what I assume is real steak? I picked just about the swankiest place there is to warm up in, didn’t I?” She was eyeing the appetizer while she talked, but didn’t want to actually take one. It was too good to be true, and she was afraid that if she tried, somehow this would all be revealed as an evil joke. Food production and the infrastructure to deliver it were some of the first things to be hit all those years ago. As the climate shifted, weather grew more extreme. Unseasonal freezes, heat waves, and flooding decimated crops and people just keep thinking they’d have to recover the next year. Only each time, the next year was a little bit worse. Eventually, people realized this was the new reality and food was going to be scarce. It didn’t take long for the first wars to break out, and that was before Rebekah was even born. But none of that was on her mind at the moment. The only thing she could think about was how good that bacon would taste.

  Mason gestured to the plate that sat in between them, “Ladies first.” He smiled when she looked up at him, silently asking permission. “Please, I don’t usually eat a whole steak for lunch. I need to save room. Although I didn’t ask what size steak it was…” he glanced over her shoulder to see if the waiter was still nearby, but as he had vanished back to the kitchen, returned his attention to her and made easy conversation.

  She ate all eight shrimps, and when the steaks arrived, she ate that too. She was far too hungry to worry about being polite or lady-like. The waiter came back several times to fill her water, perhaps worried he’d be on Mason’s “inefficiency” list if he didn’t take care of her, but otherwise, left them to their meal. With her immediate hunger taken care of though, she started to be a little more analytical about the situation. Mason tapped his phone against the reader the waiter had brought to the table when he cleared their plates. That kind of data storage was mostly what cell phones were good for these days, although within fairly well-to-do cities like Seattle, you could still get a signal to make calls. Overall though, The Fall had ushered in the return of the landline to dominance for actual phone conversation. Still, they were invaluable for things like storing payment information and access codes (once unlocked by thumbprint or eye scan, of course). Pre-Fall, the phone-as-payment-method had started to pick up steam, but now that government money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, phones had become essential, allowing you to store your cryptocurrency keys on your phone and thumbprint authorize every transaction conveniently.

  Rebekah noted that it turned out they were making him pay after all. No doubt there had been discussion amongst the staff on whether they should. Mason didn’t seem to mind, though, so she assumed he made good money. As he put his phone away, it seemed as good a time as any for her to ask him. “So why did you do all this? Why stop them from kicking me out?”

  Mason started arranging his napkin on his lap. It must be something of a nervous tic for him, but she liked that she could make him embarrassed, if that’s what it was. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t see the harm in buying you lunch, but I could definitely see the harm in sending you back out into the cold.”

  “OK, but what do you get out of all this? Besides an empty bank account. I don’t want to imagine how much that bill was.”

  “I don’t know. What I get out of it, that is. I’m very aware of how much lunch cost,” he crossed his hands on the table in front of him. “I have a very easy time talking to you. In my line of work, I rarely get to talk to someone who just says what they mean. I wouldn’t have known you were like that when I first saw you though, so I don’t really have an answer. I think I could just see that you needed something to go your way for a change.” There was a pause and Mason checked his watch. “Unfortunately, I really should get back to my motel and do a little work before a meeting I have this afternoon, but do you have somewhere to go after this?”

  “Why? Are you going to say that I can come back to your hotel and we can live out our own private ‘Leaving Las Vegas’?”

  Mason was actually blushing. “No, I just…”

  This time, Rebekah bailed him out. “Relax, white knight. Yes, I have somewhere to go. I can stay at the church my family went to when I was younger. It still has the same pastor and he’s got a soft spot for me. I just try not to take advantage of it too often.” It wasn’t surprising that she would’ve been safe in a church. Even as crime and gang activity skyrocketed, churches remained fairly undisturbed. There are no atheists in foxholes, and in the midst of what could be called a slow Armageddon, nobody was eager to risk the wrath of any of the religions’ gods.

  Mason suddenly looked like a different thought had crossed his mind. “Wait, was I Elizabeth Shue in your scenario?” Rebekah laughed. Mason continued, “Because I’m OK with that. She has very nice legs. Although I’m noticing your movie references are a little dated.”

  Talking to him felt so easy, she wasn’t concerned that he would misconst
rue her playful sarcasm. “You know, for whatever reason, since I’ve been homeless, I just don’t make it to the movies very often.”

  She realized by the look on his face that she had walked right into whatever trap he had set. “Would you like to change that?” he asked.

  She knew where he was going with it, but delayed an answer by asking, “Pardon me?”

  “Would you like to go to a movie with me? Tonight? Say eight o’clock?,” he feigned like this was a spur-of-the-moment idea of his. “I don’t even know what’s playing, I think it’s the 1990’s this week, but we can pick one when we get there.”

  “A second date on the same day as the first?” She saw his enthusiasm and held up a hand. “Not that this was a first date. I’m just saying, that seems a little forward.” Mason smiled and stood.

  “You’re right. I tell you what: I’m going to see a movie tonight around eight at the theater that’s two blocks south of here, so if you happened to be there, I suppose we could both see the same movie.” Rebekah smiled, but didn’t say anything. Mason stood up and placed his napkin on the table and extended his hand to her again. “It was very nice to meet you, Rebekah.”

  This time she shook his hand. “You too, Mason.”

  And with that, he was gone. She tried to wrap her head around what had just happened, but only for a moment. She could feel the staff looking at her, wondering how long they should wait after Mason left to tell her to leave. She saved them the trouble and left through a side door. While she was walking down the street, she was replaying the conversation in her mind and realized it was the happiest she’d been in a while. She decided it was time to talk to her sister.

  Meanwhile, several blocks away, on the way to his hotel, Mason was similarly distracted. His smile and expensive suit were in stark contrast to the run-down buildings covered with graffiti that he passed. Even Seattle was beginning to crumble; the latest victim of society’s fracturing that seemed to have no end in sight.

  However, as Mason strode through soon-to-be ruins, he wasn’t thinking about any of that. He wasn’t thinking about his position as one of the last humans that would be alive to see these trappings of civilization before unbridled tribalism returned. He wasn’t even thinking about his job. He should’ve been thinking about the restaurant and his proposal, but all he could think about was Rebekah. He thought about her while he walked down the sidewalk towards his hotel, thought about whether she’d show up at the movie while he waited at the light, and thought about where in the hell he saw this all going while he crossed the street. He was still thinking about her when the car that was trying beat the light didn’t see him in his grey suit against the drab exterior of the buildings, and hit him going close to fifty miles an hour. He wasn’t thinking about much of anything after his head slammed into the windshield and he went careening over the car as it finally slammed on its brakes.

  5

  Roughly two decades earlier, China, faced with an aging workforce, further relaxed its controls on how many children its citizens were allowed to have, hoping to rebalance the population towards younger workers again and stave off an economic crisis of retirees draining the system. However, this led to an increased demand for basic human needs like food and fresh drinking water. While pouring billions into desalinization efforts that already drew the ire of the international community, China’s relationship with India deteriorated rapidly with a litany of skirmishes in the Arunachal Pradesh region, an area in the northeast corner of India with significant hydroelectric and agricultural potential that had long been contested. When the two countries finally opened armed conflict, China also announced claim to areas like Aksai Chin, Jammu & Kashmir, and the Siachen Glacier: areas typically contested between India and Pakistan along the border of those two countries, far from the initial disputes in Arunachal Pradesh. China’s interest in these areas was hardly surprising, given the Glacier’s immense water reserves, even as it receded due to climate change. However, the brazenness of attacking Pakistan at the same time as India shocked the world and drew other countries into the conflict. Two sides formed, seeking to rewrite the global status quo on one side, and maintain it on the other.

  Russia and Iran, bolstered in recent years by their increased portion of the world’s natural gas reserves, joined with China to form one side, while the United States and European Union joined with India on the other. China had correctly calculated that Pakistan’s long-simmering disputes with India and the western world would prevent it from effectively joining their enemies, and with Russia and China holding two of the five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, they could effectively stalemate any discussion on the issue. The nations of Africa remained militarily neutral, but hoped to profit immensely by supplying the India/U.S./E.U. coalition with the fossil fuels needed to fight a war given that the resources of Russia and Iran were now closed off to them. Australia and most of South America likewise, due to increasing diplomatic and military ties with China, but long-held alliances with the U.S. and E.U. tried to remain neutral, going so far as to not bolster trade over pre-existing levels with either side.

  Besides traditional conflict of arms between the nations, both sides employed cyber-warfare to devastating effect, both directed at the military and industrial structures of their enemies, and with more sinister goals, like implicating a neutral country in supplying one side or the other in order to draw them into the conflict. It was widely believed that non-governmental hacking agencies such as Anonymous were being contracted to bolster each side’s capabilities. The U.S. military, long the premier fighting force in the world had been spread thin for too many years, and cost too much money just to maintain that other countries had caught up. What would have been an easy U.S. victory just a few decades earlier, dragged into a war that lasted years. The previously neutral countries were forced to take sides, throwing their lot in with whomever they thought would emerge victorious. Even with the entire world involved, through some miracle of human restraint, no nuclear weapons were used. Eventually the coalition anchored by China/Russia/Iran were the victors, but there was to be no post-war rebuild.

  Left as the only remaining superpowers, the main victors found themselves bickering internally. Previously first-world nations had been left devastated and incapable of more than incidental impact on the global economy. China, using its bully position as the lone surviving purchaser of the resources that had made its allies so powerful, issued decrees that Iran and Russia were unwilling to comply with. Frequent diplomatic and even a few regional military conflicts broke out amongst the countries that had been anointed as the new world rulers. Russia and Iran backed secessionist movements in some of China’s outlying territories hoping internal strife would result in a more amiable China as a whole. Instead, it sparked war between the three nations as China easily brought the areas back under its control and sought revenge on the perpetrators, and the restraint on nuclear weapons faded. Faced with the impending Chinese victory in this new WW3 aftershock, Iran launched multiple nuclear attacks at China, for which China held Russia responsible as well, launching nuclear counter-attacks against both of its former allies. All three were left a shell of their former selves, with large lawless areas that were only still considered a part of their former nation because no one else had the strength to govern them.

  With no superpower left to steward the world and try to heal the most damaging decade in the planet’s history, the die had been cast. The communication and infrastructure that had allowed a globally connected civilization broke down into countless, constantly-shifting fiefdoms. The hacking groups that had been eager to flex their might on a global stage and redefine what it meant to be a nation, found themselves with no reliable network to lord over. Old conflicts between ethnic groups that the international community had kept tamped down reignited and exhausted almost all of the remaining large-scale warfare capability the world still possessed.

  During the war, the industrial might of the world had ramped up to c
hurn for years at its absolute apex, without even pretending to care about the environmental impact, despite the protests of many of the world’s more philanthropic elite. The pace of climate change had quickened, and a nuclear war had hardly slowed it back down. Seasons were more extreme, condensing most of humanity further into temperate zones and crippling agriculture and livestock. As food production ground to a halt, the price of food skyrocketed, and the remaining governments still moderately in control of their nations tried various methods including rations and price-fixing to stave off famine. Supply and demand cannot be legislated out, however, and starvation likely would’ve been the leading cause of death for the next decade if anyone had still been keeping track of such statistics.

  The survivors gave a name to the entire decade-long series of wars and events that had brought humanity to the precipice: The Fall. Seeing their seemingly inexorable slide towards extinction, they continued ousting their current governments for new ones promising change that never seemed to materialize. The constant shifting of policies and unchecked, widespread corruption ensured that no significant progress was ever made. Now humanity marched ceaselessly to its own demise, robbed even of having a single dramatic moment to define its passing. The situation had laid bare the flaws of the species, with several billion able-bodied members still left after the devastation, but incapable of rescuing themselves from extinction over petty ideological or historical differences.

  6

  Trevor Sanders didn’t like this. Didn’t like it one bit. A military man – and he still liked to consider himself one – wanted to know his enemy. Every enemy, no matter how daunting, had a limit to how terrifying it could be once you fully understood it. People feared the unknown, but the known could be quantified, compartmentalized and dealt with. Up until now, his enemy had been clear: Alexander, the first of his kind, Lord of the Vampires. Admittedly, Trevor had never seen Alexander – nobody still alive except Dr. Westfield had – but he felt like he understood Alexander quite well. Perhaps he’d never seen their leader himself, but Trevor had been working his way around the world, going wherever Dr. Westfield told him to, and clearing out the nests left in Alexander’s wake.