Vamp-Hire

by Rice, Gerald Dean

  Or was it four?

  He struggled to remember, swimming in a directionless sea, his limbs and mind going number by the second.

  “I… need,” he managed to say before fogging out.

  * * *

  Nick came to inside a pen. It was like a light being switched on in his head. He blinked several times. His eyes insisted on being dry and scratchy. He rubbed at them, which only made them feel hotter and scratchier.

  Finally, tears came and he sat on the floor with his lids closed, rolling his eyeballs left and right, up and down until he felt something akin to relief.

  He had to figure out where he was. This didn’t look like the Pens. It wasn’t packed enough, the air didn’t carry the stank of despair, there was no constant moaning or mindless screaming. The concrete walls were bland, dull blue fluorescent lights making the room look washed out. There was a bed of newspaper in each pen, like they were animals who would eventually need to go potty, though nowhere the level of awful that was the Pens. He didn’t think he’d been out long enough to be taken to Middle-of-nowhere, Iowa. For all Nick knew the Pens were just across the state line or maybe they were franchising into this area.

  At least he knew this wasn’t the Pens. And if that were the case maybe there still was a way out of here.

  Nick looked around. He was in a five by five chicken-wire enclosure. There were iron rods at all corners to keep the structure upright and secure that went through all the other Pens to the walls on either side. There was a little hatch in the front of each one, held closed with shorter iron rods and padlocked. Most of the pens were empty and his neighbors were the three vamps who had been in the truck with him and about five or six more. All of them were in separate enclosures that backed up to a bare cinder block wall.

  To his right was a baldheaded man in a track suit. He looked lost and confused, like he had gone to sleep in his bed and woke up here.

  Nick nodded at the vamp twice before he noticed him. The man’s eyes swiveled back and forth in his head, taking in their surroundings.

  “What is this place? Get me out of here.” The man was speaking a language Nick understood despite never hearing it before. He didn’t know how to respond or even if he should. He wanted answers from Nick he couldn’t provide.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—” Nick pointed to his ear and shook his head. The man wrapped his hands around the wire mesh separating them and cleared his throat.

  “I have family,” the bald vamp said. “I have go.” He had visibly struggled mightily with forming those few words in English. Nick got a good look at him and realized he didn’t look like any vamp he’d ever seen before. His skin was yellow and his ears were flat, like he was a different species of vamp. Most inhuman of all were his eyes, black where they should have been white, crimson red where they should have been brown or blue.

  Nick felt a visceral revulsion at the sight of him in toto. By some miracle he kept his feet rooted where they were. If anyone ever were, this man was his brother. Somehow, he managed to be alien to Nick. He’d said he had a family and needed to get back to them. Nick had no one.

  Tears spontaneously spilled from his eyes. He thought he’d cried all the tears he’d had in store for his lonely plight. Apparently, that was a well much deeper than he’d thought.

  “Please,” the vamp said, locking eyes with Nick. “Please help. Please let go.”

  “I-I can’t,” Nick said. “I’m trapped in here too.” He grabbed hold of a section of wire mesh and shook it to show he was in the same situation.

  “I wouldn’t get too close to him if I was you,” someone said. Nick turned and saw one of the men who had kidnapped him. The one not Wendell. “That sucker is one tricky devil.” Nick stepped over to see the man better.

  “Why are you holding me?” Nick said.

  “C’mon, man. Let’s not jerk each other’s chains here. You know exactly why we picked you up. We get sixty-five a head for you people violatin’ curfew.”

  “I was just out for a walk. Getting medicine for my sister’s sick kid.”

  “Riiiiight.”

  The baldheaded man leapt into the wire mesh and began shouting rapidly in his native language at the man. It was too fast for whatever in Nick’s head to keep up and he only caught every fourth word or so.

  “Calm down, you.” The man lifted some sort of metal stick and jabbed the pronged end of it into the vamp’s chest. His body convulsed violently and he went down like his bones had evaporated. The human pulled the cattle prod back and pointed it in Nick’s direction. Nick seethed, wishing he could peel away this cage and get at him. “You gonna need some o’ this?”

  Nick took a subconscious step backward when the man stabbed the air in his direction, eyes locked on the weapon in his hands.

  “Good.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfectly straight, white teeth. Nick was surprised, he would have suspected there would have been at least a half dozen missing. He’d have to remedy that. “Now I gotta make a phone call to see about payment for you people. Pearlanne, come in here and watch for me, wouldja?”

  There was a door to his right, slightly ajar. It creaked open and a tall figure stepped in. Pearlanne had cropped hair with an apostrophe of a ponytail pulled to the back of her head with a rubber band. She had on a necklace with a black circular medallion. She was an Imprean. Nick recognized P immediately, except she appeared less muscular, taking another step back like she was a second cattle prod. The vamp in the pen next to him moaned softly and her eyes settled on him. He didn’t think she had noticed him but that would change in a moment.

  The human left and she shut the door behind him. P, or someone who had to have been her twin, stood there, lips slightly parted and staring at the man on the floor. Nick looked at him too, then at the pens farther out to either side of him. He revised his estimate to at least a dozen other vamps in here, captured by whoever these people were. And there she was on the other side.

  Nick was agitated that one of his kind would take part in this. He didn’t know where the feeling came from, considering he had never really associated with his own kind by choice. One thing they all did have in common was that they were all alone. Of all the things he had been taught back at the Center, he had never been given a sense of community. It had never been encouraged for vamps to participate with one another outside of the doctors’ tests, to have a united strength greater than the sum of its contributors. Of all the activities in which they had been immersed, never had any of them involved cooperation. Except with the commands of designated superiors.

  Nick vowed that would change right now. He didn’t waste time believing he could save everyone, but there had to be something he could do to strike a blow against the machine that had delivered him here. He had heard of wranglers before, had been warned about them as a means of deterring vamps from going out after dark. He was certain it was all legal, but that didn’t make it right. As near as he could tell there wasn’t a single human in this room and there wouldn’t be one on this side of a cage.

  “You need to let us out,” Nick said.

  Pearlanne looked at him and her harsh eyes softened. “Sweetie,” she said. Her voice was similar, though a much softer version of the grizzled one P had. “You know I’m not doing that, right?” She smiled at him and slinked toward him in a manner that would have been better complimented by a floor-length gown instead of blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “You have to let us go, Pearlanne.”

  She looked momentarily surprised then smiled. “And why do I have to do that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  She stifled a laugh and covered her mouth. “Really?” She was about a foot away from the enclosures and began walking past them in a line. “What about this one—should I let him go?” A vamp lay curled into a ball on his bed of newspaper. He lifted his head and regarded her out of one unwinked eye. “He still smells like the cold pool of blood we found him in. Now, I think it was human blood,
but hey, we can take his word for it, right?” She looked at him. “You didn’t kill anyone tonight, did you?”

  “I’m innocent!” he shouted and laughed, near maniacally.

  “Sure you are, dear.” She walked back in Nick’s direction, slowing in front of one of the vamps Nick had come in with, the woman. She stared silently at Pearlanne and Nick noticed she didn’t come any closer.

  “She had a grenade. Probably was going to use it as a paperweight? Maybe we should just give it back to her before she goes.”

  “Okay, I get it. Some of us are dangerous. Not all of us. I was only out after curfew. The sun was barely down!”

  “So we should let you go?” She’d stopped in front of his pen and jabbed a finger at him.

  It sounded wrong to him so he didn’t say ‘yes’. He couldn’t abandon his position after so recently adopting it. Sure, some vamps were bound to be criminals. In that respect they couldn’t be more human.

  “I’m sure you know about the Pens,” Pearlanne said. She laid a hand on the wire mesh between them. “Did you know eighty percent of all vamps go through there and that there’s a ninety percent recidivism rate?”

  Nick had heard that stat before and knew it was as much crap as the one about one percent of the population of the world being vamps. Too many bodies went through there to keep track. He’d nearly starved to death there simply because they couldn’t truck in food fast enough.

  “You should know,” Nick said, “if you don’t let me go, I’ll tell.”

  “Tell what, Sweetie? I was never in the Pens.” She had lowered her voice as if Nick was clueing her in on a conspiracy. She hadn’t responded to his threat, almost as though she hadn’t heard.

  The door opened then and the man came in with a cordless telephone tucked between face and shoulder, an industrial strength-looking chainsaw and some device that looked like a skinny tablet, much longer than it was wide with a nub of a rubber antenna at the top.

  He set the chainsaw down and walked over to the Pens.

  “No. I want all my money,” he said into the phone. I got nineteen here, that’s fifteen hunnert dollars.” Nick’s eyes went to the chainsaw. What the hell was that for? His conversation with Pearlanne had been usurped by this new one between man and phone. “I don’t care if you can’t take ‘em! I have fulfilled my responsibilities, it is time to collect.”

  The chainsaw wasn’t big at all, but it was shiny and had big teeth every four inches in its chain. That could probably saw through a body no problem.

  “Well, then I’mma let ‘em go. Hell yeah, I am.” He listened a moment. “And where does it say I gotta warehouse vamps?” Another couple beats. “Well, when the military gets here they can pay me my fifteen hunnert!”

  He finally turned in the direction and seemed to look right at Nick. He’d missed it before. Pearlanne was the man’s daughter. It was in the set of their shoulders, the high forehead, and the sea green eyes.

  “All right, fine, I’ll do it. There better be somebody on the way.” He took the skinny tablet thing and went from one end of the room to the other, the device making a series of beeps as he passed it over each pen. He got to Nick and the machine made a high-pitched trilling sound. He slapped the side of it and ran it again, getting the same result.

  “What do you know?” he said. He got to the end of the row and said into the phone, “Yeah, I got one. But I want two thousand. And you take the whole lot and not only him, got it? All right. Bye.”

  He thumbed a button on the phone and tossed it onto the table next to the chainsaw.

  “So what are we doing, Will?” Pearlanne asked him.

  “They’re gonna come get ‘em,” he said, thumbing in Nick’s direction. “Like I told ‘em to.”

  “And what about the payment?”

  “Already in the account.” He took out his cell phone and waggled it in front of her. “Just got the notification!” They fist bumped and Nick affirmed what he’d suspected before. Father and daughter, although it wasn’t a traditional relationship and that wasn’t even because she was a vamp.

  “You’re not going to live to see that money,” Nick said. Will and Pearlanne looked at him. “They’re going to kill you. Probably all of you.” He wasn’t sure how he knew this, he just knew. “Calm down, you,” Will said. “We do this all the time. Pretty standard stuff.”

  “Have you ever had someone like me?” Nick had no clue how he was the unique one amongst the vamps in here. He didn’t even know there was such a thing. Even if he had thought it, he would have guessed the man in the pen next to him would have been it.

  A smile hooked the side of Will’s mouth. “I’m not that worried about it. You should be worried about Wendell, though. He’s upstairs right now trying to find a twenty-four hour dentist to fix his tooth. He’s pretty peeved at you.”

  Nick said nothing. He was looking at Pearlanne, who was making kissy faces at him.

  “You should have asked for more for him,” she said. “He’s a cutie.” Nick had the feeling that if he had asked for more, whoever was paying would have gladly handed it over. There was something just on the edge of being realized, something he should be putting together

  “Will, who were you talking to?” Nick asked. “On the phone there, who was it?”

  Will gave him a look. “I don’t think I’m gonna answer that. I don’t believe we are on a first name basis.”

  “Come on,” Nick said. “Was it military?

  “That’s an educated guess. I mean, who else would it be?”

  Nick figured it had to be military. Who else could it have been?

  The answers pinged inside his brain. The way Nick saw it, there were two possibilities. Either it was Leonard who was looking for a special vamp for whatever reason, his ‘special project’ as he had phrased it, or it was the vamp from the vision he had had. If it were the second, then that had so many other implications. Nick had guessed at least three, but if the killers had connections and cash that implied so much more. So much more going on than just killing other vamps and it still begged the question why? To what end did it serve to kill their own kind?

  “Was it a guy named Leonard?” Nick figured he wasn’t the only military in the city, though he was probably the only one actively seeking vamps. He hoped he was guessing right. That was the only way they had a chance to see tomorrow.

  “Him?” Will said. “I don’t deal with him no more.” Something about his tone was too forced, too proud, like it hadn’t been his decision to end their business. Clearly he wanted Nick to think it had been.

  “So you used to? What did he say—that he didn’t want to do business with you because you kept bringing him bums?”

  “Hey!” someone a few pens down shouted.

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “Never you mind what he said to me. I’m gettin’ two large for the bunch a’ you.” He spun around and stormed out.

  “Wow,” Pearlanne said. “You push his buttons almost as well as me.”

  “Look, if you care about him at all, you have to get out of here.”

  “Why?” she said slowly. “What do you know?”

  “It’s my Skill,” he said. “You know about Skills, right? Almost all vamps have them.” He realized she was the one who had alerted Wendell and Will, locating him when he should have been tactically invisible. “You have a Skill too. You told them where to find me. Where to find all of us.”

  From the look on her face, Nick could tell it was true.

  “Pearlanne, I need you to do something.” Nick knew he was taking a big risk with the scant bit of credibility he had. “Locate any vamps nearby. I bet there’ll be at least three of them.” It was a big guess and he hoped if he came close she would believe him.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “I can feel emotions and where they are. I’ll do it for you, Sweetie. For a kiss.”

  “Are you… are you serious?”

  “As flapjacks on Sunday morning.”

  Nick considered
for a second. Pearlanne was probably one of the prettiest women he’d ever encountered, vamp or human. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have believed her, and in this instance it seemed an even more difficult prospect to believe. He didn’t want to but he didn’t want to die even more.

  He waved her closer.

  It took a little maneuvering. She looked like she was somewhere around six feet tall and he couldn’t stand up straight in his cage. Pearlanne had to squat for their mouths to match up.

  Nick gave her a quick peck and her eyes fluttered open.

  “Not good enough.” She licked her upper lip in a manner that looked more hungry than lustful. Nick was pretty sure of the mechanics, even though he doubted he had ever done this before. He prayed there were no vamp kissing diseases he needed to be concerned about.

  He pulled in close. Their lips met once, twice, then her tongue was like a butterfly, darting here and there inside his mouth. He tried to keep up, but every time the tip of his tongue met hers, it swam away. Her mouth was surprisingly minty and sweet. He relaxed into the kiss, angling his head to probe deeper. Fingers touched his face. Her nose tickled the side of his. He would have been lying to say he wasn’t enjoying himself.

  She pulled away.

  “Already done, Sweetie.” She had the same half smile as her father, her eyes half-lidded. For at least three seconds everything was alright. Then the serene expression on her face melted. “Oh, God, no!” She looked left and right, then at the door she’d come in. “No, no, no, no!”

  “What?” Nick said. “What is it?”

  “They’re here!” she said. “They’re already here.” She was still touching the wire mesh and Nick wrapped a finger around the corner of her hand.

  “Pearlanne, let me out. I can help.” It took a moment for her to focus on him. He locked eyes with her. “Pearlanne, I can fight with you. Whatever’s up there.”

  Her eyes softened. “Okay,” she said, her voice bland. “Yeah. I can let you out. I can do that.” She produced a key from her pocket and slid it into the lock of the hatch at the front of the enclosure.