A People's History of the Vampire Uprising_A Novel

by Raymond A. Villareal

  A discarded previous draft that was simultaneously leaked to various news organizations had a section considering the effectiveness of requiring registration for carriers of the NOBI virus, which would then be placed in a national registry. In addition, the draft discussed behavioral guidelines for Gloamings that, if not adhered to, could result in a temporary quarantine for health reasons. As per current statutes, of course.

  Each CDC and NIH member felt different, no doubt. I simply wanted to find a cure because I believed that this virus was a social threat. They hadn’t seen what I witnessed those early months in the Southwest.

  Regardless, the directive and memo caused more controversy than the director envisioned. Many attorneys found the directives to be contrary to current statutes and case law. Even academics and politicians, who were skeptical of all things Gloaming, found the memo an affront to the sacred civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution for all citizens.

  It led the nightly news for a few days—doesn’t everyone want to hate on the government when given the chance?—with the president and the administration absolving themselves of any knowledge of or participation in the construction of the memorandum and thereafter disavowing every aspect of it. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, our boss, slammed hard on the agencies’ executives, and the drama quietly filtered down with the instructions that we would desist from all Gloaming research.

  Of course, my name appeared on the masthead of the memo and directive, even though I had zero input into the contents. I was a convenient target given my notoriety and media exposure. I tried to tell people in the days of the fallout that I was a scientist, not an administrator or a policy maker, but no one seemed to have a desire to listen intelligently to an opinion other than their own. What was contagious, I thought, was all these people choosing to only hear what they wanted to hear.

  But that memo did accomplish something my research never had: illuminating the battle trenches at the CDC. There was no more hiding behind whispers or pleasantries, behind funding allocations or personnel requests. It was a defining moment for me in determining who supported my research and who was actively working against it.

  I’m not a big believer in coincidences, and the specter of construction at the CDC headquarters, on my particular office floor, came as a surprise in that we were normally given months of notice, considering the nature of our research. It took the agency a day to mobilize and carry my belongings to the basement.

  I accepted it without grievance—heck, I even loved it after a couple of days. It felt safe down there. Fewer visitors. In reality, I really only saw other people during sessions at the lab. The new office was like my own personal cave. I blasted Revolver, Pet Sounds, …And Out Come the Wolves, Milo Goes to College, and Walk Among Us without anyone complaining or banging on the walls. I had my own personal mosh pit and no one could do a damn thing about it. I transformed back into that black-hearted girl I used to be in medical school.

  I was only thirty, but I had the rage from years of putting up with other people’s shit.

  Amid all this turmoil, though, and adhering to the concept that when it rains it pours, I hit a breakthrough in my research.

  My use of the most sophisticated microscopes—specifically, high-input electron microscopes—was limited by the radiation emitted by the NOBI blood. I was in the basement and with limited funding, forced to use more primitive techniques: modified light microscopes.

  It was beneath these old-fashioned lenses that I stumbled upon an unidentifiable prion hidden within the sample. It appeared to be in the formative stages, and I wondered how long the incubation period would be, what it would bring. Would the core attributes modify into something stronger? How would these changes manifest? It was an unusual four single-stranded, negative-sense RNA segment that appeared and disappeared in my microscope. It appeared to be refolding the protein and, instead of degrading it, making it more substantial. Most prions did not contain RNA, but this one seemed to have hidden folds of the prion within its body. I was making great strides in understanding the process of re-creation, and the processes involved which changed the human body.

  The lurking problem was that I had used up most of the samples that were in my possession. I needed new samples of NOBI blood, even if it was a microscopic amount—anything to replace the degrading specimens.

  Needless to say, this put me in a deep funk. I prayed that I wouldn’t have to rely on computer simulation models to supplement my research. It would be like someone telling you what’s in your subconscious and pointing you in that direction. My funk had reached its apex when I went home that evening. I think Hector could tell when I was depressed. I talked a mile a minute when not guzzling our dinner wine.

  Hector was camped out at my place with suitcases still open as if it were temporary—like he would leave at any moment. As if. I let him be—I was long past the point of telling someone else how to live their life. In fact, this dusty Arizona cowboy had taken to the more cosmopolitan life in Atlanta quite well: wine, sushi, organic vegetables, and beef without recombinant bovine growth hormones. He even got to the point of inquiring as to whether my condo was LEED certified.

  Though this living situation had gone on for months, it was on this day that I found a used sleeping bag on the floor.

  Hector threw me an eye shrug. “Got it off Craigslist. Never know when it might come in handy.” Of course, you could say that about many things.

  “I should probably start researching the life span of the common bedbug,” I told him with a smirk.

  “It would probably lead to a cure for NOBI. God seems to have a sense of humor about these things,” Hector replied. “Hard day at work?” He sheepishly kicked the sleeping bag behind the couch.

  I nodded my head and threw my backpack on the floor, bedbugs be damned.

  “Wanna bounce some ideas off me?”

  I shook my head and snatched the glass of wine from his hands. “It’s not so much a science thing as much as a…The samples are degrading and we’re running out of viable specimens.”

  His downbeat look told me that even he knew replenishing the samples was a futile aspiration.

  It was. Even during this period of time, it was virtually impossible to acquire any type of blood or tissue sample from a Gloaming. Reportedly, there were a few research clinics in France, Russia, and China that had procured—by various means—viable specimens of Gloaming blood, but their research was never shared with the public. The Gloamings were obsessed with only having contact with their own private clinics. Human hospitals were off-limits even during an emergency.

  The Gloamings became adept at establishing their own private medical network, with speakeasy emergency rooms for any illness or injury that could occur. The methods used were never revealed but they were effective in providing medical care for any Gloaming that needed it. I needed to analyze Liza Sole’s samples against those of other Gloamings to determine if they shared the identical powerful and enhanced physical characteristics or if they degraded with each new re-creation.

  I even dared to consider the most extreme schemes. Hector had informed me that in the months and years since the emergence of the NOBI virus, rumors had circulated of a subgroup of Gloamings without homes, wandering throughout the United States and European countries. The various blogs and news organizations dubbed them Wanderers. They seemed to take on the mythology of Bigfoot or Slenderman, minus the hazy photographs and fake footprints.

  Reports from the people who claimed to witness one described a human creature quite distinct from the standard Gloaming: disheveled and sickly yet still with those flashes of substantial strength and the enslaving taste for blood. They were running the streets at night like a rabid dog looking for food in overturned trash cans. If these creatures did indeed exist, they must have had a genetic mutation after re-creation that kept them from attaining physical and mental perfection. They occupied that space in between an unsuccessful and successful re-cr
eation. Between life and death. If only I could get a sample of their blood or tissue and compare it to the analysis of Liza Sole, I could then begin to find the best way to distinguish this virus, perhaps attack it using its own RNA.

  We tracked and documented every known Wanderer sighting, however ridiculous they sounded, on an elaborate flowchart, and then tried to predict where the next appearance would be. Hector took it upon himself to sort through most of the obviously bogus sightings in contrast with the ones that seemed somewhat relevant. We had yet to stumble upon a lead that was solid enough, although we did take an impromptu trip to Córdoba, Argentina, to chase a reliable sighting of a Wanderer, from a retired university professor and his wife. It turned out to be a case of a mutated rabies exposure contracted by a vagrant.

  A month after that particular excursion, I received a call from a journalist named Jerome Liu, with whom I had established an offhand working relationship by providing him with anonymous quotes and information about the governmental response to the NOBI virus and the incidents that had followed its detection.

  Liu called me on the phone and basically screamed his excitement about a credible sighting of a possible Wanderer outside Melbourne, Australia. The details were somewhat weak in contrast with his elation, but several facts held my interest. A press release from the Australian Federal Police stated that authorities were searching for a white male—perhaps fifty years old—who had resisted arrest on a suspected burglary and trespassing and caused substantial injuries to two policemen while they were facilitating the detention.

  Hector and I pored over the report like it was a microscope on a virus. The officers had sustained fractures to the ribs, sternum, radius, and clavicle—in addition to various internal injuries. All of which could only be described as inflicted by hand. There was no indication that a weapon was used.

  It seemed auspicious, but Hector and I had promised each other that we wouldn’t chase every half-baked lead that came across our computer. This one sang, though. It seemed legit.

  “No human could do this kind of damage,” Hector said with an inscrutable look on his face.

  “I agree.” And I really did. This had to be a Wanderer.

  Hector stretched his arms above his head. “Then again, if it’s another rabbit hole then I think—”

  “Then so what?” I replied, fake punching his stomach as his arms swept down to protect himself. “At least we get another trip.”

  I had been implicated in tending to my own paranoia ever since I was a child. Every trip outside my house was an opportunity for me to be kidnapped or assaulted—or so I claimed. Therapy helped, but I knew the paranoia was only hibernating until the next opportunity. And the Gloamings sure woke it up. I was fine now but close to the border of mania. I knew when this trip to Australia began that my growing neurosis would be nurtured by every odd gesture or face or circumstance I encountered. We were being followed—I could sense it and see it in the faces of the men and women in different places and vehicles who stared until I caught them, at which point they looked away.

  Cars following us to and from the airport and on the plane—was that the same guy I saw glancing toward me at the Starbucks? It had to be him, and now he’s on our flight? Hector could only shake his head but I knew he felt it as well.

  As we walked to our terminal, I grabbed Hector by the arm and pulled. “Wha—”

  “Let’s grab a quick coffee,” I said.

  He was getting used to my myriad of eccentricities and only nodded his head as I pulled him to the coffee kiosk. He looked at me expectantly with a face that said, “This should be good.”

  “Don’t make it obvious,” I ordered, “but the guy with the purple carry-on is the same guy at the gas station this morning, at the Starbucks afterward, and at the CVS when we bought Advil.”

  Hector turned his head in segments like a stuttering movie reel—his way of being cautious but curious. “Maybe? I don’t know.”

  “I hate when you do that,” I spit out.

  “Do what?” we both said at the same time, although mine was more sarcastic. “You’re going to make me fill in the blanks again?” I continued. “I hate when you dismiss things out of hand—not with words but with your attitude. Makes me think I’m crazy.”

  He shot me that half smirk and I knew when to let it go. The point had been made. Fair enough, I’d say.

  I supposed that would have to do for now. I didn’t know what I was expecting but I knew this trip would be one more land mine we would be skipping to avoid.

  The sky was clear and blue when we arrived in Melbourne. As night fell, we wasted no time in arranging to meet with our contact: Jack King, a former police officer and now security consultant, journalist, and blogger. Interpret that as you will. I prayed he wasn’t one of those crazy conspiracy theorists. Kind of like what many people claimed I had become.

  We took a Lyft to the Bayswater district of Melbourne, where we would meet King at a fish-and-chips restaurant. Hector pulled me closer as we navigated a street on a block of broken-down row houses with shot-out streetlights and hands-in-pockets thugs manning the corners. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to protect me or himself.

  “How about next time let’s have the Lyft drop us off in front of the restaurant?” Hector said as he looked behind us for, like, the tenth time. “An ounce of prevention…”

  “I thought it would be better to walk a few blocks to ensure there was no one tailing us,” I replied, my steps faster, although I was questioning that plan in real time.

  We walked inside the fish-and-chips place with the door off the hinges and a barking nonservice dog in the corner. It looked like there was a sheen of dirty oil on every square inch of the place. And the smell: a deep fragrance of rancid cooking oil mixed with the trash can of a fishing boat. Mismatched wooden tables and chairs covered the floor, and there was a crooked counter built into the wall. Various bearded guys leaned against it…watching…

  A burly man in a cowboy hat and pressed jeans and shiny boots—with the attitude of a cowboy vagabond—nodded at me and stepped over. “Are you Dr. Lauren?”

  I gripped his hand. “I’m Lauren Scott. You must be Jack King?”

  “I sure am.”

  Jack glanced at Hector. “And you must be Dr. Hector—I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Hector nodded as his shoulders fell—he could finally relax for a moment. “So what’s the plan?”

  Jack sat down on one of the metal chairs and pulled out a sheet of paper with a diagram printed on it. “This is the layout. The Wanderer has been spotted a couple more times still in this neighborhood since the incident with the police. So I’m thinking, why would he do that?”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “Well, I looked at some of the architectural plans of these old buildings along these blocks, and guess what I found?” He pointed at a spot on the paper.

  “A blood bank?” Hector said with a smile.

  Jack returned the smile with a crooked grin. “Two buildings down from here. Old abandoned three-story that used to be a social services building. Best part about it: has a bomb shelter in the basement.”

  I glanced at Jack and then at Hector, who had a smirk on his face as he got up from his chair and clapped his hands. That was our cue to get it on.

  We walked a block before Jack stepped in front of us in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “I have a question, say,” Jack said.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “I’m wondering what we do if we find him.”

  I glanced up at the top of one of the buildings and could feel Jack’s and Hector’s eyes burning into me. I knew how difficult it would be to get a tissue sample from a Gloaming. Almost impossible. Every obstacle was planned for, but it all seemed like a war game scenario, trying to find all the moves and countermoves.

  All of my planning ended with blood being shed. Back at home everything seemed so conceptual, but here in the rain it was so damn real. There was no
way to truly plan for all of this.

  “I brought a gun,” Jack stated with a hesitation that made it almost sound like a question, as if that were the answer to all of our problems.

  Again I was stumped. What can one reply when it’s suggested that you use a gun?

  “A gun could get us a viable sample,” Hector said with a look that seemed to wonder if I was going to get mad at him for the suggestion.

  I elbowed him in the side and he shrugged, but he was right. We might need the gun. It might end up being that way. “Let’s go in,” I ordered, pretty much ignoring the gun option and leaving it to chance.

  We walked the two blocks as my anger built up inside me even more. I wanted to call this off and start again tomorrow, when we had an actual plan, but my stubborn mind refused to consider it.

  The rain was beginning to fall, and we stepped inside the former social services building. Try to imagine the three of us gingerly stepping through from a side entrance, the door pried off its rusty hinges. A few hunched figures startled and took off running as we walked into the dark, large foyer. Rain splattered our jackets, dripping from the rotted ceiling and decayed walls.

  On the far side of the room, Jack led us through the open doorway to the basement and the bomb shelter. Our flashlights swept the crumbling walls of the staircase like comets streaking through the sky. The walls seemed to envelop us like a dark blanket or the night sky I had feared for the past eighteen months. We stepped down three flights of stairs, where the ground met with thrashed flooring and cold silence. We had reached the bottom. I couldn’t hear the rainfall anymore. My light skimmed the room and found nothing but decomposing walls and trash.