by Dave Housley
Chapter 8
June 27, 1995. Washington, DC
Each of the folders held less than ten sheets of paper. They were manila, government issue, with pictures of the bodies stapled to the front. Their paucity was a testament to a life poorly lived. These victims had very little in the way of biography. Even allowing for the bureaucrat’s language of paperwork, these men, and they were all men, had almost nothing—scarce tax records, off-the-books financial histories. Save for a few drug charges—the average victim had been arrested 3.3 times, 95 percent of the time on possession or possession with intent—these people were ghosts, barnacles that, when their tenuous hold on this Earth was released, left only the barest impression of having been there at all.
The bodies were ugly—gray and decaying. Jenkins had seen worse—children, hoarders discovered only when the smell reached their neighbors, but never like this, so many similar victims in one place, a trail of bodies, a data set so alike, it could only have one source. A shared source. An unregistered who had gone off the agreed path so far as to resort to its natural state, which is to say: a serial killer.
Except the last one. The last victim didn’t fit with the rest. A twenty-five-year-old teacher, a regular citizen. There was something there too, some piece of information waiting to make itself known, but he couldn’t figure it just yet.
Focus on the junkies, he thought, get the baseline and then let the shadows fill themselves in after that. His mind mapped the similarities, assembled data into comfortable columns and groupings. The folders were laid out in neat rows, one for each week. He had run out of room on the floor, and the two most recent victims lay on the windowsill. Each was drained of blood, for starters, with a puncture wound on or about the neck area. They showed signs of prolonged drug use—arms riddled with holes, teeth black and rotting, skin hanging off extended bones. They had very little in the way of personal effects—sometimes a few grubby ticket stubs, ten dollars in bills and change, along with a few pills or a baggie full of marijuana stems and seeds. Only half of them were wearing shirts or shoes at the time of death.
He had tried mapping their seat locations at the various concerts, but the resulting data would have only been useful to a practitioner of chaos theory, and if anything, Jenkins was the exact opposite. He knew enough to know these people were unlikely to even consider sitting in their assigned seats.
He had already done his time in the library, and knew the basics of the community. There were the Spinners, mostly female, who migrated toward stadium exits like mosquitoes toward a streetlight, where they would spin in circles like they were experiencing nirvana. The Tapers, who carried their own recording equipment into the shows, setting up near the sound booth or as close to the stage as they could get. The Old Heads, real hippies who followed the Dead like lost cats with literally nowhere to go. Wharf Rats, sober Deadheads, a concept he struggled to understand on a basic level, but they were indeed part of the scene and given the suspected biology of his perpetrator, they were a group worth looking at. The young people seemed to be either trust fund kids trying on their parents’ sixties clothes or college kids taking a break from their summer jobs. Within each group, of course, there were endless variations—environmentalists, PETA activists, nerds, posers, fakers, and everything else. It was all data, all filed away. He had no idea when he would need this information, only that it would come eventually, when there was enough information for the wheels to start turning.
Jenkins was embarrassed to know these things, but the job was at least part anthropology. Whether you were dealing with gangs or drug cartels or child pornographers, you needed a baseline on the subculture—the groups, roles, mores, traditions, pressure points. It was all part of the job, the part that Crabtree would never understand. He imagined trying to explain the difference between Spinners and Tapers to Crabtree. He’d seen the look before—mid-explanation, watching Crabtree’s face turn from amusement to disbelief to disgust to something more, something angry and dangerous, the part of Crabtree that had changed in the war, the part Jenkins knew enough to keep aimed in the opposite direction.
He smelled coffee and then remembered his own 7-Eleven cup on the windowsill, no longer steaming. Outside, the sounds of people arriving—the same grumbled greetings and reproaches that had been bantered about ever since the formation of the unit, most likely ever since the first lawmen had gathered in the first grottos, preparing for the day.
Crabtree would find him soon, and then the questions, the prodding, the man’s insistent, steady lurch toward whatever was next would all start up again. Jenkins walked the rows, watching the pictures move by, allowing his mind to relax, take in data. A trick he had learned from Tibor. Breathe. Walk. Watch. Let the mind go free. Let your eyes be open. He wondered if the old man had brought this from the old country, or if it was something he’d come to on his own. Spend a few lifetimes as a cop, he thought, and you would put some tricks together. Breathe. Walk. Watch…
“Oh Jesus,” Crabtree said. Jenkins hadn’t even heard the door open. “This again? Breathe. Walk. Let your third eye figure it all out later or whatever. Shit, I thought you had a lead on this.” He grabbed the folders off the windowsill and dropped them on the ground, sat down in their place. “How many more days you imagine you’ll be walking around with your third eye open and shit?”
Jenkins stopped. He walked to the window and picked up his coffee. In the parking lot, the usual government-issue sedans coming and going. He wondered how David was doing. The poor kid’s hair was never going to do what he wanted it to do. If he could only talk to the boy, tell him…oh, what was there to tell him? He would be back in Chicago soon, back to Kathleen and the life the two of them had made without him.
He picked up the folders one by one, putting them back in the order in which they had come to the division—first out, first on the pile. Finally, he pulled the last two victims from under Crabtree’s butt.
“What’s next, swami?” Crabtree said. He sat up and yawned.
“Next, I forget everything for a while,” Jenkins said.
“Shotgun,” Crabtree said.
“There’s only just the two of us.”
“Still.”
Jenkins jingled his keys in his pocket. He needed more data, but he could already feel that somewhere deep in his mind, somewhere in the unconscious side, things were starting to click, data elements falling into columns, things coming together. Soon, he’d be able to point Crabtree at whatever wall was in their way and watch him run through it.
Chapter 9
June 28, 1995. Northern Virginia
The directions, the letter was careful to say, were to a building in Langley, Virginia, but not the building. How had Nutter put it? “The nature of our work is…sensitive. Different.”
Pete mimicked the man’s overly serious tones as he drove along the office buildings and fast food places. “Sensitive,” he said. “Different.”
On each side there were nondescript office buildings, names like E-max or Netcoders stenciled on sober looking signposts. There were a lot of car washes, chain restaurants, and big box stores. He passed a Bed, Bath and Beyond, and then a Target. More office buildings. He watched the street numbers getting larger, heading for his destination. “My name is Pete Vandenberg,” he began. “I’m a recent graduate of Chandler University with a major in religious studies….”
No, that didn’t sound right.
“I recently graduated from Chandler University…” But they knew that already. Would everybody here, he wondered, know as much as Nutter? Would they admit it if they did?
“I’m Pete,” he said. “I think you know more about me than I do about myself.”
“I’m Pete,” he said. “I have no earthly idea what I’m doing here.”
“I’m Pete,” he said. “Maybe you can actually tell me who the fuck I am.”
The office buildings were becoming scarce, replaced with used car lots and factories, the sidewalks lined with chain-link fence t
hat looked equally suited to keeping people inside as out.
“Hi,” he said. “Nice to meet you. I’m Pete Vandenberg.”
There was no need to be nervous. Nutter had told him that. Either it was a fit or it wasn’t, and what Nutter kept referring to as “the data” seemed to indicate that it was indeed a fit. What “it” was, Pete had no idea.
How did you get ready for an interview like this? Was there something he was supposed to do? Something he needed to prepare? But Nutter had said no, just show up. Show up and be yourself and that will be enough.
He passed a strip club and then another. Things were getting dirtier, gray, with litter lining the street. He allowed himself the indulgence of imagining what it might have been like to talk this through with a father and a mother. There would have been advice given, tips on handshaking and looking your interviewer in the eye, how to negotiate a salary, what the hell a 401K was in the first place. “An interview?” they would say. “Already? My goodness, son. We sure are proud.” There would be a hug. A handshake. But when he tried to picture their faces, as usual, all he saw was a shining light, a blur.
He had no memories. No people. No matter what happened today, there would be no handshake, no clap on the back, no excited calls home.
Home was packed in his car—two suitcases and three boxes full of dishes and books.
The road narrowed to two lanes and he reduced his speed. Up ahead, a gray concrete building, three stories tall. He turned into the parking lot and found a spot among the sedans and wagons. He looked at the building. No guards, no signs. Just a number: 222. He looked at the letter. He was in the right place.
He checked his hair in the rearview, put the letter in his pocket, and walked to the door. There was a small lobby, roughly the size of the living room in his apartment. Behind a desk, a small man with a beard and close-set eyes worked through a crossword puzzle. Pete walked to the desk and the man stood up. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Vandenberg,” he said, nodding his head. His hand was warm and sweaty. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter 10
June 28, 1995. Outside Chillicothe, OH
Cain woke and was surprised by the quiet. It had been how long now? Twenty-three years of listening to the same sounds outside his window. Twenty-three years unregistered. Twenty-three years of day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, of “goo balls shrooms doses.” It was twenty-three years longer than he would have imagined possible, back when he first went through the change. And he’d managed. He had survived. He had managed, despite the particulars of his diet, to make it twenty-three years without really hurting anybody.
And then he’d had his moment of weakness, and he’d taken his dose.
He rolled over. He lay still. No trembling in his fingers, no black pain crawling up his neck. Not yet, at least. What would he do if that happened? He had come to rely too much on the girl. Of course, he could do the scouting himself, but as always, the enemy was time. Simple math. The show might not end until midnight. The crowd might not disburse until two or three, and even then, a good portion of the traveling fans, those truly on tour, wouldn’t actually go to sleep until four or five. That left a few scant hours of true dark to find someone nobody would miss, someone who just seemed a little less than the rest of them. And then to actually do the thing.
How long could he last in this hotel in—where was he? Maryland, or Virginia, maybe Ohio. He was not in Auburn Hills, or headed that way.
It had been so much easier before his dose, easier to subsist on cow’s blood or squirrels, black market Plasmatrol or the occasional willing human, too stoned to remember or believe what had happened. Twenty-three years he’d made it, and then: “I know what you are. I can help.”
It was oblivion he wanted. He knew this. It was the old feeling, the numbness. He hadn’t felt anything but animal hyperawareness ever since he’d gone through the change. In this way, the folklore was correct. His eyesight was perfect; his movements were quick and easy. He didn’t know how strong he was, or if there was really a way to measure the kind of strong he was now. It was animal strength, functional and raw. Nothing to be proud of or show off. Just a fact of the change.
But with the strength also came the rest of it, an acute sensitivity to everything around him that he couldn’t turn off. That, too, was an animal instinct. He felt almost like an insect: his antennae constantly tuned to signs of danger, of approach, of any stir in the web of his environment. It made shows amazing. He was in tune with it all—the music, dancers, the air thick with smoke, the vibrations of thousands of individuals all gathered around one stage for the same purpose. It was the only time he felt even the smallest connection, the most basic sense of belonging.
But the rest of the time, it was terrible. He longed for the sweet oblivion of drink or drugs. The punch line being, of course, that he was no longer affected in the least by any stimulants or depressants, that until his dose he had felt acutely each of the seconds of his life since he’d taken the change, had felt them the way a grasshopper feels them, or a lion: sharp and immediate. All he had been looking for when the man had found him was a few seconds of peace.
What it had gotten him was much worse than anything that had gone before.
Chapter 11
June 28, 1995. Northern Virginia.
Pete stared at the front of the binder. U.S. Department of Defense, Invasive Species Division. It looked official enough. It had all certainly seemed official enough. But still, he couldn’t get over what they had told him. It couldn’t be real, but they were so matter of fact about everything. They had reports and spreadsheets and treaties that had been signed. He had seen John F. Kennedy’s signature, right there in front of him, smudged and ancient and as real as the stains in the shabby office carpet.
On one hand, he believed it. They were very serious. Very convincing. From the lousy office building to the bad coffee, there was nothing about it that didn’t smack of the middling effects of bureaucracy, no doubt in his mind that these were government agents in a government office talking government business.
On the other, as Nutter had explained, Pete had been trained to study belief, to examine the results of a particular faith the way an epidemiologist might study the spread of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. Religious studies were, by definition, the examination of other people’s belief systems, the ways in which they were founded, the way they affected a person or group of people’s manner of interacting with the world.
“Somebody with your kind of background,” Nutter had explained. “Especially your particular…family background.” He held Pete’s eye for emphasis. “Is less inclined, let’s say, to run out of the building and go straight to mass. To go tell his priest or his mother or some radio call-in conspiracy theorist. Somebody like yourself, say, might be more inclined to tilt his head in the way you’re doing now, to listen the way you’re doing now, and ask intelligent questions. Take all this information, decades and decades of research, back to the hotel and come back in the morning asking for more.”
Pete stared at the hotel television. It was the largest he’d ever seen, but he could say that about the king-sized bed and the whirlpool tub and the wall-to-wall windows that looked out over the strip mall across the street. He watched the headlights move back and forth along the highway, supplicants migrating toward one fate or another. He walked back to the bed, where the binders and briefcases sat waiting to fill his head with knowledge.
Nutter was right, of course. He’d done nothing since he arrived in the room but read, digesting decades of first-hand field information about the United States government’s battle against invasive species—or more specifically, Eastern European vampires. Nutter had outlined the path for him: the government’s concern was traced all the way back to the Garfield Administration, when millions of Germans immigrated to the United States, among them either hundreds or thousands who had been through “the change.” Of course, their numbers swelled as they made the voyage, and once they hit the heartland, t
hey continued to grow. The species was inherently suited to the environment, or as Nutter had explained, “to any environment with oxygen and humans.”
Some of the folklore was correct. They could appear to be superhuman, were stronger, faster, their senses as sharp as animals in the wild. They subsisted on blood—human blood was the best for them, “health food” is what Nutter had called it, but they could subsist on any kind of blood, including animals or the artificial Plasmatrol that registered vampires were given in shipments each week. “Mostly synthetic blood,” Nutter had explained. “Also some anti-depressants, some other drugs in there, intended to, let’s just say, ‘keep everything in line.’” They couldn’t go into the sunlight. They never died of natural causes and didn’t experience pain.
In some ways, the folklore was incorrect. Their minds were human minds. The same ones they’d had as farmers or miners or middle school teachers, with all the strengths and weaknesses of human beings. “Leave some people alive for a century or two,” Nutter had said, “and they’re just as stupid as they were for the first twenty or thirty years.”
They experienced emotion, although most became “harder” over the course of time, less emotional, less attached to people and things and situations, to anything, really. Loss was in their DNA. They were birthed in loss and they lived in death. It was that simple.
Pete opened the first binder again. A Guidebook for the Management of Invasive Species, U.S. Department of Defense, Invasive Species Division, FY 1994-5. Nowhere in the literature did it mention that word: “vampire.” They were referred to as “non-human invasive species.”
There was a knock on the door. Pete shouted, “One minute!” and hid the notebooks and tapes under the bed as he had been instructed. When he opened the door, a hotel employee wheeled a cart in, opened some stainless-steel trays, bowed briefly, and left the room as efficiently as he had arrived.