She and Jimbo cleared that house and moved on to the next one. By this point, people were on the radio again and she had a better sense of who was where. She couldn’t raise R.T., but there were two more houses before they reached his.
The original plan started coming together. At the next house, they caught the bloodsuckers between Marina and Jimbo outside and Kat inside. Once that was cleared they shifted up the beach to the next, taking out a handful of vampires on the way. This must have been a big den, Marina thought, before a more disturbing idea came to her—what if it wasn’t a single den, but multiple ones joining forces? Since Andy Gray’s manifesto had made the news, vampires across the country seemed intent on making sure people knew they were real, and a major assault on a well-to-do area could only help their cause. The attack on the Red-Blooded facility in Nevada had been easy to hush up, because of its remote location, but one on a prosperous beach community on the East Coast would be noticed.
By the time all the members of the team had been accounted for, she figured there had been more than twenty vampires destroyed. A good night’s work.
But R.T. and Tony H. had been bitten.
Marina took the responsibility onto her own shoulders for ending them, blowing their brains to bits with phosphorous rounds. When she did it, tears stung her eyes; an unfamiliar sensation, and one she didn’t like. On top of the strange sadness over Barry Wolnitz that she couldn’t seem to shake, she wondered if she was going soft. Did everyone have a boundary of some sort, a number of killings beyond which it was impossible to function? Marina had never expected to reach any such line. She had never thought of herself as a murderer, because her killings were always done in the service of the greater good.
Keeping R.T. and Tony H. from coming back as vampires was also in the greater good, she knew. And they had been valuable members of the team, when they lived, each one putting down numerous bloodsuckers. So their lives hadn’t been wasted.
Somehow, at the moment, that knowledge didn’t help much.
Operation Red-Blooded’s budget would cover the damage to the houses, and the residents, law enforcement, and the media would all be pressured to tell the story as one of a serial murderer targeting local families, killed by the task force as he tried to gain entry to one of the homes. Evidence supporting this tale was already being manufactured—Operation Red-Blooded had a special “community relations” unit dedicated to misinformation of just that sort.
Marina knew the truth, though. She knew that she had cost two good agents their lives, that her plan had been flawed, that she never should have stationed any of her people alone. She had underestimated the enemy. She had wanted too much to destroy bloodsuckers, above and beyond any other considerations.
Was it maturity? Or just the recognition of loss, the understanding that she couldn’t win every battle? She wasn’t sure, but there was an aching in her gut that was as new to her as the tears she had shed.
War was hard, with a cost almost too high to bear. It had never hit her before, not in quite the way it recently had. She wasn’t simply a soldier anymore; she was calling the shots.
Now the weight of lost lives pressed down on her, a responsibility she hadn’t known would be so hard to handle. She could only hope it didn’t slow her down, because the war was far from over. More lives would be lost, she was certain.
And for the first time in her professional life, she wondered if she would be able to see it through to the end.
22
WITHOUT A VAMPIRE MENTOR, Larry Greenbarger had to rely on bits and pieces of data he had picked up as an Operation Red-Blooded researcher to know what his limits and capabilities were. It had taken hours of practice before a mirror to perfect the ability to appear human, even though he had known for some time that vampires could do so. Now that he’d been at it for a while, he could do it more quickly, but holding it for very long was still a strain, and he wondered if there was some trick to it he didn’t know.
But he needed access to a library, to read some journals that hadn’t yet been posted online. So he wore his human disguise as best he could and went into the night, to the McGoogan Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he was able to find what he was looking for. It was hard to concentrate, surrounded by humans. He tried to shut out the sound of the blood coursing through them, the smell of it tempting him, and he had to keep dabbing saliva from the corners of his mouth as he read.
What he learned encouraged him. Vitamin D had been thought of for ages as crucial to bone growth and development, but new research showed that it worked throughout the entire body, not just on bones. It played an active role in preventing cancers and certain infectious diseases, in regulating autoimmune systems, and in strengthening cell defenses. At one time, it had been the only known therapy for tuberculosis, and was also effective against rickets. The more scientists studied it, though, the farther reaching its effects were found to be.
The thing about vitamin D was that it wasn’t an actual vitamin at all. Although it could be obtained by eating fish, it could also be manufactured by the body through exposure to ultraviolet B light.
Sunlight.
This was the link Larry needed. He read feverishly, jotting notes on scraps of paper. Since becoming undead, some changes were completely unexpected—his fine motor skills, for instance, had diminished slightly, so his handwriting had become scrawled and scratchy, even though his strength was much greater.
Through the action of vitamin D, in ways expected and not, sunlight influenced the development and defense of cells throughout the body. Larry had to believe that the vampiric response to sunlight had to do with the effects of vitamin D, and if he knew that then he could figure out how to finesse that response to get the reaction he wanted.
Larry tapped his chin absently as he read, and at one point noticed that his facade had fallen. He summoned the will to reclaim his human appearance, but he had to get out of there. It was too hard to keep it up so long, and in a place like this, full of people and security cameras, being observed could cause unwanted problems.
On his way out the door, he passed two young women with their arms full of checked-out books. One didn’t become a scientist without passing plenty of time on university campuses, and while he had never been to this one before, it shared certain familiar characteristics with others. Spirited conversation, lithe young bodies, trees and walls plastered with flyers and signs promoting an incredible variety of causes and events, and people with a thirst for knowledge were everywhere. So were people just looking for a good time, and others intent on career preparation, thinking only about earning those paychecks once they graduated, hungering for the cash.
Larry Greenbarger’s hunger these days was of an entirely different sort. He sought knowledge, albeit of a very specific type. But looking at women he once would have wanted to date—although he doubted he’d have had a chance, not with these beauties—all he wanted now was to bend over them and tear through flesh and expose arteries.
He hurried from the library, back to a truck he had stolen in North Platte, on the way out from Colorado. By the time he reached it, his vampire countenance had returned, and he ducked his head and avoided people until he was driving away through the night.
Since his stint at the old man’s house outside Denver, Larry had taken to moving around a lot. He changed cars more often, and he stayed in motels when he couldn’t find victims who lived alone and in sufficiently private surroundings. The hard part was carrying out his scientific research while changing residences frequently, but something he could only classify as a finely tuned survival instinct had kicked in, telling him never to rest for long.
When he came to a new town, in addition to hunting for food, he hunted for vampires. He guessed that they would be drawn to the same quarters he was: places where people were out late, where streets weren’t crowded but not sleepy, as the farming communities and suburbs were. People leaving bars were good options, or prostitutes working lonely st
reet corners, or their customers. Sometimes he came across an insomniac walking around a suburban block late at night, but he couldn’t count on that. Most of the lost souls who inhabited the night lived in the cities.
Larry became increasingly anxious to meet others like him. He needed to know more, to have questions answered that never would have occurred to him as a human researcher. And he needed subjects for his own researches. If he was successful, he would need ways to communicate that success to others.
So during the days, when he couldn’t travel or hunt, he divided his time between research and continuing his quest online. He haunted websites and message boards he had heard about during his days at Red-Blooded, and he discovered new ones. He read post after post from people who either claimed to be vampires or who idolized them.
Finally, he decided to take a more proactive approach. He spent an hour composing a post, and then more hours spreading it to every vampire-related site he could think of. “Do you yearn to walk in the Light of Day? To feel the sun without peril? It can happen. I can help you come out of the night.”
He had made it to Joplin, Missouri, before he got a response that seemed legitimate. Most of the responses were clearly from wannabes, and a few from vampires—or poseurs—who thought he was laying some sort of trap.
Which he was, but his bait was the truth.
In a seedy motel on the edge of Joplin, a place where the smell of smoke had soaked into the walls and beds and carpet, and burn marks cut brown divots in the plastic bathroom counter, he checked his in-box and found a response he could barely believe.
“I’ve seen your message,” it said. “And I believe you. I long for daylight, long to no longer feel hemmed in by the dark hours. Hunting during the day … if you can do this, you’re the savior our kind needs. I’m in Louisiana but can travel to you.”
Larry wrote back immediately, informing his correspondent that he was in Missouri but they could meet in Little Rock, splitting the difference. When he got an affirmative reply, he could barely contain his excitement.
Another vampire, at long last!
And someone upon whom he could test his revised formula.
It was all he could do to wait until dark to hit the road.
23
THE MEET WAS SET for 2:00 AM, at Twelfth and Woodrow in downtown Little Rock, not far from the State Capitol. Larry got there a little early and cruised around the neighborhood. There were still a few people out, liquor stores open, bars just shutting down. He saw one police car drive slowly past a clutch of scantily dressed women who scattered at its approach. The car moved away.
Larry drove around for another few minutes, then parked and hiked back to the intersection. He picked a shadowed doorway, a couple of buildings down from the corner, and waited there.
A copper SUV chugged slowly around the corner. Larry stepped from the shadows, just enough so a vampire would know he was there. The darkness wouldn’t interfere with a vampire’s vision, but he wanted the one he’d been corresponding with, who said his name was Cecil, to know where to look.
The SUV had two people in it, white suburban kids from the looks of them, probably looking to score dope. They took one look at Larry and the driver stepped on the gas, leaving rubber on the asphalt as he peeled out. Larry was heading back into the shadows when a big dark blue Dodge sedan rumbled up to the curb. There were six people inside, three up front and three in back. The one behind the wheel, a wiry, muscular guy with short dark hair, leaned out through his open window.
“You Larry?”
Larry hadn’t been expecting to meet an entire den, just the one named Cecil. The whole thing felt wrong to him. The driver appeared human, as did the car’s other occupants. Larry could appear human, too, but wouldn’t in this sort of situation. This was supposed to be a vampire-to-vampire meeting.
“No,” he said quickly.
“That’s him,” someone in the back said. “Look at him!”
“Get him!”
The doors flew open and all six of them flooded out. They were between nineteen and thirty, Larry guessed. Good old boys, or they would be when they got older. White T-shirts, Western-style snap-button shirts with the sleeves torn off, jeans, heavy boots. Most of them carried wooden stakes, but one had a revolver and one a crossbow. Too much Buffy, Larry supposed.
They weren’t nosferatu, though. Larry had walked right into a trap, set by what appeared to be half-stupid, redneck vampire hunters. They might have been spurred by the media blitz about vampires, or by the explosion of online discussion about them, or perhaps something more personal. He wasn’t inclined to sit and chat with them, though. At the moment, he felt pretty stupid himself.
“Freeze, bloodsucker!” one of them called.
Larry smiled. For a moment he had thought they might be a genuine threat. Until he heard that. Then he had to revisit his half-stupid description, rounding up. Two-thirds stupid, maybe. “You’re not serious,” he said.
“As a fuckin’ heart attack.”
“God, you’re like a bad country song. Do you know how to say anything that’s not a hopeless cliché?”
The guy with the revolver aimed it at him. The crossbow was pointed in his general direction, too, but it looked like something from the toy department at an outlet store and he doubted it would do any damage. The four stake-wielders had fanned out around him. No one wanted to close in on him, either afraid of him, their friend’s bullets, or both. “Fuck you,” the gunman said. “Now you die, bloodsucker.”
“Too late,” Larry said. He didn’t wait for the first bullet, but lurched to his right and grabbed the closest guy. He swatted the man’s wrist, snapping it, and the stake flew out of his hand. The guy screamed. Larry lifted him by collar and crotch and threw him into the Dodge hard enough to cave in the roof.
The gunman squeezed his trigger and chips flew from the brick wall behind Larry. Bullets wouldn’t kill him, unless the man was lucky enough to destroy his brain—his encounter with the university guard had proven that—but that didn’t mean he wanted to deal with the pain should one accidentally strike him. He darted forward, grabbing the throat of another stake-wielder with his left hand and ripping through it, pulling out the man’s Adam’s apple and throwing it, along with gobs of blood and tissue, to the ground. The gunman stared in horror and revulsion, rooted in place, and Larry tackled him next. He broke the man’s arm, jammed his own finger inside the trigger guard, bent the man’s shattered arm up so the gun barrel was inside the man’s mouth. Tears ran from the man’s eyes and he made pathetic whimpering sounds until Larry pulled the trigger.
A crossbow bolt finally sailed from that weapon. It glanced off one of the remaining stake-wielders, who was spinning around to take off at a sprint. He screamed and the crossbow guy started to reload, to what end Larry couldn’t fathom. Did the man imagine that a projectile that couldn’t pass through a T-shirt and a few layers of human skin would hurt him? Larry jumped onto the hood of the Dodge, sprang off it again, and landed on the crossbow guy, knocking him to the ground. Larry tore his throat open with the claws of one hand while shredding his face with the other.
Two remained, and they were running in opposite directions. Larry picked the one who had been hit by the crossbow bolt. He didn’t have much time until people started coming out to see what all the commotion was, he believed, even in this neighborhood. The guy had covered most of a block at a dead run, and was just starting to glance back over his shoulder, probably thinking he had a good head start, when Larry caught up to him. He slammed his fist into the guy’s back, dropping him onto the sidewalk where he tried to curl into a ball. Larry stepped on his hand.
“Have you found any others?” Larry asked him. “Like me? Any leads?”
The guy was sobbing, almost hysterical. Larry got off his hand, crouched beside him. “Just tell me and I’ll make the pain go away.”
“There’s … m-maybe one … in … Port Gibson…. We’re supposed … to meet him … after you. Tomor
row.”
“Is there anything in the car? A meeting place, a schedule?”
“R-Ronnie has it all … written down. In … the g-g-glove.”
“You mean Cecil?”
“Y-yeah. R-really Ronnie.”
“Thanks.” True to his word, Larry made the pain go away.
Leaving the bloody corpse where it was, he hurried back to the car, yanked open the glove box, found a piece of paper and a map. He pocketed both and ran. Sirens were closing in on the neighborhood, but Larry was far away before they got there.
24
USING THE ARRANGEMENTS MADE by a half-assed group of vampire hunters against one of his own felt like a kind of betrayal, but Larry told himself that the whole species would benefit from his researches. Risking one to help many was a time-honored tradition in the world of applied biomedical sciences. Anyway, continuing to experiment only on himself could be disastrous, because if he failed to survive any of the tests, then his whole line of research would end with him.
Jesse, the vampire with whom “Cecil” had made arrangements in Port Gibson, Mississippi, was apparently far more trusting than Larry was. He had given an address at which to meet, instead of a street corner. When Larry got there, he found that the address belonged to an abandoned juke joint outside of town, a place with a tin roof and a collapsing screened-in porch and faded signs painted on the outside walls. A dirt road, hemmed in by overhanging trees, led to where it stood by the Bayou Pierre, surrounded by a patchy gravel parking lot. The rusted red-and-white door of a pickup truck leaned against one of the walls. The night was alive with insects—crickets, or cicadas buzzing incessantly, mosquitoes droning all around. The bass notes of croaking frogs came from the bayou, along with occasional, unidentified splashing sounds. Larry’s sensitive nose caught traces of blood nearly submerged beneath the heavy, fertile scents of bayou water and night-blooming flowers.
30 Days of Night: Light of Day Page 12