30 Days of Night: Light of Day

by Jeff Mariotte

  He couldn’t stay for long. By now there would be choppers en route, fighters scrambling, convoys rolling across desert highways. Sunrise would find clean-up teams already scrubbing the place.

  Larry found some laptops and started downloading. Someone in Virginia or elsewhere might clue in to the fact that classified data was being snatched. But that someone might not have heard about the attack, and even if he or she raised an alarm, soldiers could only get here as fast as they could get here. Since they were already on the way, he wouldn’t be changing that. As long as they didn’t shut him out of the system, he would get the data he wanted, spread across several laptops because no single one had enough memory to capture it all.

  When he finally left the facility in a stolen truck, Larry still had just over an hour of darkness. Not a lot, but enough to get him safely away. He could hole up for the day, and keep traveling when the sun fell again.

  Larry Greenbarger’s world had been reversed in an instant; he had become that which he had worked against, his days had become nights, and hungers once repulsive to him were suddenly as familiar and mundane as a young boy’s attraction to peanut butter and jelly.

  He was nothing if not adaptable. It was all about survival.

  With a couple of fresh corpses rolled in a tarp in the back of the truck, laptops safely in the foot well of the passenger seat, he pressed the accelerator to the floor and drove.

  2

  “DUDE, VAMPIRES ARE REAL.”

  Mitch stared at Walker as if he had just emerged, wearing a bikini, from inside a giant cake. Walker shuddered. He had seen himself naked since birth, but that was an image even he didn’t want trapped inside his brain. “Yeah,” Mitch said. “And the sun sets in the west and ninety-nine percent of the music played on the radio is utter crap. What else is new?”

  Walker took his seat in front of a big computer monitor. The bank of equipment arrayed on the desk had cost more than everything else he owned combined, but he and Mitch made their living online, so being able to rely on their gear was paramount. “No, I mean yeah, we’ve always believed in them. But I mean really real.” He slammed his palm down on the wooden desktop. “As real as this.”

  “You doubted?”

  “Believing in something is different from knowing something, dude. That’s why they have two different words.”

  “So you believed, but now you know.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Because of the stuff Andy sent?”

  “Duh.”

  “It was pretty trippy, no shit.”

  It was more than that, but Walker let the understatement slide as he settled in front of the desk and started checking on the status of several auctions. He was distracted, though, thinking about the data Andy had sent out.

  For months, Walker Swanson (and Mitch Morton, although less enthusiastically, but they were partners in business and best friends, so he went along) had been part of Andy’s network. Walker had posted information Andy sent, monitored online chat rooms and message boards, watched the news for signs, and generally did whatever Andy asked, all in the service of informing the world about the reality of vampires. But until the massive data packet he had received three days before, he hadn’t known that Andy was really Andy Gray, former FBI agent. He hadn’t seen actual video of the vampire invasion of Barrow, Alaska, several years ago, or read 30 Days of Night, the true account of that invasion written by Stella Olemaun, one of the area’s sheriffs, who had been one of the few survivors. He hadn’t been exposed to still photographs of the victims of vampire attacks, or of vampires themselves. Some of the pictures Andy had sent showed close-ups of vampire skeletons, horribly mutated skulls, jaws that swung open wider than any human’s could, jammed with awful teeth.

  The distinction he had made for Mitch had been accurate. He had believed what Andy had said about vampires because he had wanted to, and because Andy made a convincing case. But that belief had been centered in his brain, in his imagination, not in his gut. That’s where it was now that he had seen the pictures and video, read a PDF of the book. Those things had changed belief into certainty, and certainty meant reconsidering everything he had ever thought about the world.

  Walker hadn’t slept much over the past few days and nights. He had spent a lot of time thinking. He took a Snickers bar from his shirt pocket and peeled the wrapper back, took a bite.

  “Breakfast of champions,” Mitch said. “Eat me.”

  He suppressed a shudder—he would have to be more careful about saying things like that in the future.

  “How’s the utility belt doing?”

  “I’m checking!”

  “Okay, chill. Geez.”

  “Sorry, dude. Guess I’m just a little tense.”

  “I guess.”

  Walker took another bite of the Snickers, washing it down with a swig of Diet Coke. He recognized the hypocrisy: diet sodas wouldn’t help him lose weight that he packed on with terrible eating habits. Every now and then he felt like he should do something about his physique, which was more or less that of a snowman with legs. That feeling usually passed quickly, swept away by bingeing on pizza or burritos or burgers and fries. He was twenty-five, and figured he would be lucky to reach fifty. On the other hand, life was essentially a long, boring chain of disappointment and heartache, broken occasionally by minor tragedies, so he didn’t really see much value in extending it through healthy living.

  “Utility belt is at two thousand bucks. Little over. Seven hours to go.”

  “Sweet,” Mitch said. “Yeah.”

  The belt had been made by IDEAL! and sold in 1966 to cash in on the Adam West TV series. The one they had on eBay was in its original packaging and included a batarang, batcuffs, batrope, bat message-sender dart, bat flashlight, bat grappling hook, and for unknown reasons, a gun. Batman never used a gun on the TV show, so Walker didn’t understand why it was there. It was supposed to shoot the message-sender dart, but it was still a gun. Maybe IDEAL! hadn’t trusted kids to buy any play set that didn’t involve firearms. Bidding would get furious in the last hour or so, he expected, and the belt would likely fetch more than five grand.

  “So what’s the matter?”

  “What makes you think something’s the matter?”

  “Walker, look at you. You’re acting like your mom died again.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Walker let out a sigh. “It’s the stuff from Andy.”

  “The stuff you were supposed to send out immediately.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Dude, I know, okay?”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Didn’t you always do whatever Andy told you to?”

  “Yeah …”

  “So what makes this different?”

  “It’s … like I said, now I know they’re real.”

  “And?”

  “There really are vampires. It’s not a myth anymore. It’s for real, and … and they’re bloodthirsty monsters. They kill, they feed, they show no mercy. They’re killing machines, superior to humans in almost every way.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So that fucking rocks!”

  Mitch just looked at him, silently.

  “I mean, don’t you want in?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Dude, don’t you want to be a vampire? Wouldn’t that be better than sitting around this house selling old toys on the internet and eating candy bars?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Walker couldn’t believe he had to ask. “Prowling the dark streets, hunting for our meals. Knowing that people cower in fear of us. Seeing that look of terrible recognition in their eyes when they know their lives can be measured in seconds. How could you not want to be part of that?”

  “I guess it soun
ds pretty cool, when you put it that way.”

  “Of course it does.” He had known Mitch would come around. He always did.

  “So in all that info Andy sent, did he tell you how to find any vampires who could turn us?”

  Andy turned to another auction, a 1965 Gilbert Oddjob action figure, from the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Most of the best stuff had been released before he was born, but that didn’t keep him from buying and selling it. This one still had a couple of days to go, and had just passed four hundred bucks. “No,” he said. “Plenty of advice on how to protect yourself against them, but nothing about how to find them.”

  “There are still those message boards and all. I mean, if you’re serious.”

  “Yeah,” Walker said. “Always hard to tell if there are any real vampires on those, or just wannabes. But I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  “You got any other ideas?”

  This question, more than any other, was what had prevented Walker from sleeping during the night. He had rolled around in bed, going over and over the options, trying to tease out the pluses and minuses of the plan that had occurred to him. “I have one,” he said.

  “What?”

  “If we want to become vampires, we have to bring vampires to us.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “We attract them,” Walker said, “by acting like vampires. Starting right now.”

  3

  IN HIGH SCHOOL, Walker had asked Missy Darrington to two dances. The first time, during sophomore year, she had turned him down and gone with Chad Benson, who was on the football and track teams and who had, three years after graduating, taken a dozen Ambien tablets, downed a fifth of Jim Beam, and gone for a drive in his father’s restored vintage Thunderbird. Even if the pills-and-alcohol combination had not done him in, the collision with the utility pole did the trick. The second time Walker asked Missy out (and that had been excruciatingly difficult; although it was senior year and he had enjoyed a couple of dates with other girls by then, he still remembered her earlier rejection like it had happened only days before), she not only spurned him, but she talked about it online.

  She still lived in her parents’ old house, off 155th in Harvey, Illinois, where they had both grown up. She was still one of the most beautiful girls Walker had ever seen outside a porn site. Her shiny dark brown hair hung past her shoulders and curled up gracefully at the ends, which were healthy enough to be used in shampoo ads. Her eyes were big and brown, her lips pink and perfectly shaped, her cheekbones just right, her nose small but exceptional, all of it contained in a face that was almost perfectly oval. Her body had inspired many an emission, nocturnal and otherwise, beginning during his fifteenth year.

  At the moment, she was tied up in the basement of Walker’s house.

  He and Mitch had gone back and forth about it for a couple of days. Walker had been trying to figure out the best approach, but Mitch still needed convincing on the idea as a whole. Walker had pressed, knowing all the while that Mitch would give in.

  “We aren’t vampires yet,” Walker had said. “Which leaves us with some disadvantages. So we’ll just have to go with our strengths. We can walk in daylight. We can blend in with other people. Nobody can tell by looking at us that there’s anything different about us.”

  “Because there’s not.”

  “You don’t feel it yet, dude? I do.”

  “Feel what?”

  “I feel stronger already. Determined. Like I’ve finally found my purpose, after all these years. I know what I was meant to do.”

  “I guess I’m not there yet.”

  “You will be. Trust me.”

  Rather than seek out a random, nameless victim, which might have exposed them to law enforcement or observation by witnesses, they decided to start with someone they knew. Missy Darrington had come immediately to mind, since Walker knew where she lived and had spent many hours sitting in his car outside her house over the years, watching for any glimpse of her through the windows. He knew who all her neighbors were, and that the old busybody living on her left went to bed early.

  Plus, he was still mad at her.

  They had gone to her place at ten o’clock the night before. She would still be up, but most of her neighbors would be asleep. Walker sent Mitch around to watch the back door while he knocked on the front. She came to the door, suspicious at first, but opened it when she recognized Walker. She even managed a hesitant smile.

  “Walker? This is a surprise,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “Hi, Missy,” Walker said.

  “It’s pretty late, Walker. But—”

  “I know. Can I come in, just for a minute? I wanted to apologize, but I feel kind of exposed standing out here.”

  “For a minute,” she said. She had already dressed for bed, in loose gray sweats with nothing on underneath, and fuzzy red socks. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She backed away from the door and let Walker in. Walker’s breath caught as he passed close to her, inhaling the fresh scent of her soap and toothpaste. “Apologize for what?”

  He pushed the door closed with his foot and reached under his coat. The gun he drew out was fake, but it was a replica snub-nosed .38 Police Special from 1975, and the casual observer would never know it wasn’t the real deal. Especially staring into the barrel. “For this.”

  Missy gave a little shriek and brought her right hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, Walker, what are you doing with that? What …”

  “Just stay quiet, Missy. I don’t want to shoot you.”

  “Then put that away.”

  “I can’t. Not yet.”

  “Is it real?”

  “What do you think?”

  Tears brimmed her eyes and started down those perfect cheeks. “But … why … ?”

  “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”

  She swallowed but complied, shuffling around on legs that threatened to give way beneath her. Trembling hands offered themselves behind her back. Walker couldn’t help enjoying her terror, her sense of helplessness, as he snapped handcuffs around her wrists. They had come from a sex shop in the city, but they were the real thing.

  Beside her door there was a short section of wall, blocking the view of the dining room from the doorway. Three sections of textured mirror were hung on it, her parents’ idea of style, Walker supposed. But Missy hadn’t taken them down when her mom had finally moved into a nursing home, so she was just as much to blame. He pressed her up against the wall, leaning into her with all his weight.

  “Walker, I’m going to scream if you don’t cut this out.”

  Holding her in place with his bulk, he opened the glass bottle of chloroform that he had made following directions he’d found on the internet, and he doused a rag with it. Then he shoved the gun back into his pocket and clamped the wet rag over her nose and mouth. She bucked against him, making spitting and gagging noises, but he held it in place. It seemed to take a very long time, but finally her knees buckled and she went limp in his arms. He lowered her to the floor, checked for a pulse by pressing his hand against her left breast, which he knew wasn’t the best way to find one but which satisfied a long-held desire. She was alive, breathing softly, but unconscious.

  Walker let Mitch in. They got her out to the car and drove her back to Walker’s house. Walker had a garage there with an automatic opener and a doorway to the inside, so nobody watching would have seen them take her from the car and carry her in. Then it was down to the basement, where she was securely bound and gagged.

  “What are you waiting for, Walker?”

  It was about the fiftieth time Mitch had asked that question. Missy had awakened downstairs—they could hear her struggling, kicking and writhing in her bonds. Walker’s answer wasn’t any better than it had been. “I don’t know! I just don’t know if this is the right thing to do.”

  “You said if we act like vampires, we’ll attract them.”

  “I know what I said. But how will this
attract them to us? We made sure nobody saw us, nobody knew what we did. How will they know what we did, or where to find us? If they’re even real, that is.”

  “If? Man, I thought you were sure!”

  “I was!”

  During the time they had been considering their plan, the media had run with the vampire story. Walker knew from the online forums and vampire blogs that he wasn’t the only one to receive the data packet. It had been big news, but mostly in a mocking way. Cable news channels and tabloid papers covered it nonstop, but nobody seemed to take it seriously. Law enforcement and other government officials had pushed back hard, saying that Andy Gray was a rogue agent who had suffered a mental breakdown, murdered his own family, and then used his computer skills to play out his sick fantasies on a big stage. Rumors had spread that the whole thing was a viral marketing campaign for a low-budget vampire flick, shot Blair Witch–style, and the video that had seemed so convincing was just bits of the movie.

  All of it had since shaken Walker’s confidence. Not enough to get him to call off the plan, because once he had settled on Missy Darrington as their first victim, nothing could have dissuaded him. Now, though, faced with the reality of what he had done, and what he had yet to do, his certainty had turned to ice water in his guts.

  “Well, you can’t ever let her out of this house,” Mitch reminded him. “She knows you.”

  “I know that!”

  “So one way or another, you have to get it done. You might as well go through with the original plan.”

  “I will, dude. Just … give me a few minutes.”

  “You want to still be at it when the sun comes up?”

  “No …”

  “Then you’re running out of time. Let’s get this done. The first step on a great journey, that’s what you said before.”