Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse

by Johnny B. Truant

  Reginald didn’t answer. He was watching the monitors. The V-Crew was moving in distinct, contained bursts rather than sprinting into the city. They were moving forward in a blur of motion, then stopping, assessing, and repeating. The city was getting closer. In the distance, Reginald could see humans milling around, some of them armed.

  “See this?” said Ophelia, pointing at a screen. It seemed to show the same region from above, with bright green blobs moving about and some sort of glyph tags tracking other objects that the camera couldn’t see in the dark. “This is their feed. Their satellite. We don’t even need our own. We can piggyback on theirs. It’s simple. They secure their systems against other humans, but we are better than humans. We’re in, using their own technology against them, and then we’re out, and they don’t even know we’ve been there. We’ve done it again and again, when their population needs trimming or when we need to bolster our blood stores.”

  Reginald watched the screen, feeling cold. On the overhead shot, the troops were moving closer and closer to the human city.

  “How many are in that city?” Nikki asked. Reginald almost wished she hadn’t asked, because it was obvious what was about to happen.

  Ophelia turned to one of the technicians seated in front of a keyboard, watching a computer screen, wearing a kind of headset and mic. “Tell her,” she said.

  The vampire didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Heat map surveillance indicates four hundred fifty three.”

  “How long?” Ophelia asked.

  “I was just about to give the order to cut the power, sir.”

  “Go ahead.” Ophelia turned to face Nikki and Reginald. She smiled briefly, then turned back to the monitor.

  The technician spoke into his microphone. Reginald heard an answer come through the vampire’s headphones. A moment later, on the screen, every light in the town went out.

  “We use what is essentially a unidirectional EMP generator,” said Ophelia. “Technology we stole from glamoured human military officials not long ago. We don’t need to find power lines this way, and we don’t need to worry about generators the targets may have. One flick of a switch and it’s nighttime, and then the monsters arrive.”

  Onscreen, the visual blurred as the camera-bearer blurred the rest of the way toward the settlement. On the overhead satellite shot, Reginald watched as six glyphs — all of them tracking something that was invisible on the screen, presumably a member of the V-Crew — spread out in a coordinated pattern. A grid appeared over the satellite view, and the smudges indicating human heat signatures were all speared with miniature labels. It would probably appear random to Nikki, but Reginald could see that there were six groups of labels bearing six distinct glyphs, presumably assigning kills to individual soldiers.

  “Time,” said Ophelia.

  “Ten seconds, sir… mark.”

  The camera was a blur. Even in the infrared, Reginald could see faces, terror, and liquid splashing everywhere. He watched an arm fly as it was severed with one of the clawed gloves, turning end for end as if in slow motion.

  “Fifteen,” said the operator.

  Reginald turned away. Nikki did the same. The vampire operator called out twenty seconds, then twenty-five. Screams could be heard sneaking around his headphones, but the screams sounded confused, not terrified. The humans weren’t having time to scream in terror, and they couldn’t see. They barely knew what was happening, and once they did know, they were dead.

  “Final signature down, sir,” said the operator.

  Claude shuffled behind them as if rising at the end of a movie. Ophelia appeared between Nikki and Reginald.

  “Twenty-seven seconds,” she said, “and another nest of parasites is gone forever.”

  SEER

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE WAY to fight, and it was to not fight at all.

  Reginald had engaged in philosophical debate with Timken when Timken had told Reginald his plans, but Ophelia and Claude were not Timken. Nobody in the entire VWC compound was Timken. Reginald had made a mistake in vastly underestimating the depth of his foes’ ruthlessness. Timken was just the tip of the iceberg. His fantasies that the codex would reveal a simple Timken-related solution (expose him, assassinate him) were gone, and a more complex problem had fallen into place. Now he was facing psychopaths. Psychopaths who wanted his help to become better psychopaths.

  He’d also realized something terrible in the minutes following the V-Crew display: Ophelia (and, by extension, Claude) hadn’t shown him the extermination in order to shock or intimidate him. They’d done it to impress him.

  And that, in the end, might be the only way out.

  “Get out” had moved in front of “find the codex” on Reginald’s to-do list. He was doing more harm by staying at VWC than the piddling amount of good the codex could still provide even if he found it. Besides: if he could get out, he might still find the codex. He wasn’t sure how that would happen, but if predestination was in play, then the details would handle themselves. He reminded himself that nothing was an accident. His trip to VWC hadn’t been wasted even if he learned nothing; there was a reason he’d come. But was that reason to learn information, or was it something more sinister? Was he destined to help Claude and Ophelia win the war whether he wanted to or not? Could they twist him into an unwitting weapon of mass destruction?

  He wouldn’t let that happen. And with that simple conviction, he reminded himself that the fact that Claude and Ophelia thought he might be impressed by the V-Crew attack could be a weakness. It meant he might have one last chance to play into the arrogance of the hunters — to get what he wanted by letting his opponents think they were getting what they wanted.

  So following the V-Crew display, he’d stuffed down his disgust and acted impressed.

  Before they’d left the dark room, Reginald had watched the soldiers clean up body parts and pile them into what looked like a collapsable dumpster that Ophelia had explained was another piece of equipment piggybacked on stolen human technology. It was a kind of compactor, and would press the blood from the scraps for later consumption. There were several processing steps afterward, she explained, because the human body contained many liquids other than blood. She’d asked if they wanted to see the processing facility. Reginald had declined, but made a comment about how efficient and impressive it all was (throwing warning glances at Nikki not to contradict him) whenever the others’ backs were turned.

  Claude had seemed guardedly pleased. Ophelia was almost post-orgasmic, her earlier anger dissipated by the thrill of murder.

  They showed Reginald and Nikki to a small, comfortable apartment where, apparently, they would be expected to live. Reginald forced himself to smile and interrupted Nikki’s every protest. Then, after a few hours of rest and recovery, Claude showed back up at the door. He led them back to Ophelia to talk through any recommendations that Reginald’s strategic brain — a brain that surely saw the handwriting on the wall and wanted to make things easiest on everyone now that he’d had some time to think — had in mind to improve what the VWC was doing.

  Reginald didn’t want to make recommendations. He wanted to get the fuck out. Whether the codex materialized or not barely mattered. Humanity was a sinking ship; Ophelia told them that their estimates pegged the population as down by fifty-six percent. She said they expected that figure to quickly rise to sixty percent now that V-Crews were working at full capacity following the official onset of war, but that it would take as long as a month to knock off another twelve due to the clusters that would fight back with new fervor. The remaining twenty-eight percent of humanity would be much harder to eliminate or contain, she said, because all of the simulations predicted that by that point, humans would form fortified communities protected by armed, knowledgeable groups like the AVT. At around the two billion mark, humans should have gotten most of the bugs out of their defense systems.

  “In essence,” Ophelia explained, “they will get smarter.” She looked at Reginald and, unbelievably,
at Nikki. It was as if there had never been any tension between them, and that they were all on the same side, interested in the same goals. “We’re doing them a favor, you know. Humankind has become bloated. What’s left at around two, one and a half billion will be much more adapted to us. Like instant evolution. If we were to back off at that point and let them live, they would grow into a much stronger civilization than one they had a few months ago. Hunger and overpopulation would be solved. They’d have kept most of their best and brightest, and lost their least fit.” She pointed a lecturing finger at Reginald. “The blade needs the stone to be sharpened, Reginald. You know that.”

  “But you won’t back off,” said Nikki.

  “Of course not,” Claude interjected. “As they get smarter, they also get more dangerous. Again, this is all up in the air, but the simulations predict that the curve flattens significantly at that point. But we are faster and stronger and smarter. We estimate it will take six full months to reduce the human population to five hundred million. Maybe another six months, employing human armaments that should become available as they depopulate, to knock them down to ten million.”

  Reginald felt like he was going to pass out. He re-ran his own scenarios while Claude was talking, nodding outwardly, trying to act complicit. There was no way they’d let him leave. Protesting and making a stand would do little other than enrage them, and enraging them wouldn’t be a good idea. He couldn’t win an argument against insane people, and insane people similarly wouldn’t consider moderation. All that was left was to sell out now, then try to find a way out — when their guards eventually dropped — later.

  “General,” he said. “I have a question.”

  Ophelia had been looking off into some imagined distance. She turned her head, seemingly pleased that Reginald was willing to enter the conversation, which she and Claude had been monopolizing.

  “What is it?”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  The pleased expression left her face. Claude slid between them, breaking the tense moment.

  “Wrong how?” he said.

  “Wrong in your tactics. Wrong in your simulations.” He reached into his mind, searching for something appropriately convoluted to say. He needed just enough jargon to knock them off kilter and sound ominous while still totally speaking out his ass. So as Claude’s big eyebrows furrowed, he added, “I’m not saying you will be wrong, or that you should change your tactics. Just that knowing all of the possibilities within a logical puzzle, even if you don’t plan to pursue them, will throw new light on your planned course of action. Basically: you need to find out not only what you don’t know, but what you don’t know you don’t know.”

  There. Let them make sense of that.

  Ophelia turned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  At least she was honest.

  “I’ve heard of an alternate plan,” Reginald said, treading carefully now that the crux of the matter was at hand. “It will sound like a legend, but it still might be relevant — and I say that as a strategist who needs every piece of the puzzle in order to make the best predictions, no matter how obscure the data. See, even though the plan I heard of is just a legend, there are fanatics who believe in it. These fanatics believe there is a predestined end to this conflict, and those fanatics, however misguided, might interfere by…”

  Ophelia interrupted him, nodding. “You’re talking about the vampire codex.”

  Reginald suppressed his surprise, unable to believe she’d laid it so plainly in front of him. It was tricky to ask for something without appearing to ask, and to introduce a far-flung ancient legend into a military discussion without sounding like a superstitious idiot. But apparently he was a better manipulator than he’d thought, because Ophelia looked like she’d expected it to come up. Claude, on the other hand, was already waving a hand dismissively.

  “That’s it,” said Reginald, ignoring Claude. “But I only found out about it, not what might be in it. But if you’re the World Command and have all the power and reach you seem to have, I thought you might know more.”

  Ophelia appeared flattered. She said, “We have a seer.”

  “A seer,” said Nikki. She said it flatly, and Reginald couldn’t help but feel proud of her. She’d read what he was doing perfectly, and knew that the best way to get knowledge of the codex without suspicion would be to act skeptical about anything having to do with it.

  Beside them, Claude picked up Nikki’s cue and began rolling his eyes.

  “We don’t call him that; he calls himself that,” Ophelia said quickly. “His name is Malcolm. We don’t consider him a mystic, and we certainly don’t consider him a source of objective information. But bloodsense is a real thing, of course, and everyone receives different vampiric gifts. Bloodsense is Malcolm’s gift, so we wanted to at least hear what he had to say. In the interest of historical background, you understand.”

  Reginald had brought the issue up, but now it was Ophelia who was on the defensive. Good. She just needed another push. Claude, his expression neutral, watched Reginald give it to her.

  “I see,” said Reginald. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said he could feel through the blood to his maker, who saw the codex.”

  “So he’s interpreting a vague feeling of someone else’s impression about some rumored document,” said Nikki. She nodded. “Well, there’s no way that could be misinterpreted, with such an excellent and totally ‘non-telephone-game’ chain of communication.” She turned to Reginald. “Hey, Reginald. Purple monkey dishwasher.”

  “Purple monkey dishwasher?”

  “Oh, is that what you heard? I actually said that these people are shit out of their minds.”

  Olivia scowled.

  Reginald held up a hand. “Forgive Nikki,” he said, glancing over and silently telling her to tone it down a notch. “Bloodsense isn’t one of her abilities. I believe your seer.” But he didn’t. Not at all. There had been many accounts of seers in the records he’d read over the years, and all of them sounded like tarot readers. Some were surprisingly accurate, but all were relying on intuition and feeling. There was nothing objective about reading blood for most vampires. He himself was the only vampire he’d heard of who could actually step into the minds of those he was related to — and even for Reginald, the experience could be a crapshoot. If the VWC’s seer had been relying on the vague sense his maker had of an ancient mythical object, he didn’t trust him even a little bit. But so far, it was the best lead they had.

  “Do you know if the codex is real?” he asked. Claude gave him a look, so he continued: “Because if you set the mystical considerations aside, it would contain a lot of historical data.”

  “It’s real. At least according to Malcolm.”

  Reginald’s pulse quickened. “Does he know what’s in it?”

  “No.”

  “Does he know where it is?”

  Ophelia looked at Reginald for a long time. Then she said, “It’s gone. Nobody knows where it is.”

  “But the seer’s maker…”

  “He’s dead,” Ophelia said with a dismissive wave. “There was an overthrow around the time of the Renaissance. Human minds turned away from superstition and toward science — and so, therefore, did ours. According to Malcolm, a contingent of vampires assassinated the keepers of the codex. His maker was one of the keepers. Now they are all gone, and so is their knowledge of what was in it.”

  Reginald sighed. Seeing the sigh, something strange entered Claude’s expression.

  “Ah,” said Reginald, catching Claude’s odd look. “Well, no big deal.” Then the conversation moved on to other matters, and Claude’s expression returned to normal.

  Below his composed facade, Reginald fumed. If the seer was telling the truth, his direct blood relative had seen the document they were looking for. The maker was gone, but if he were Reginald’s maker, Reginald would be able to go into the old vampire’s mind and literally see what he’d
seen as if with his own eyes. But the seer — surely just another fortune teller with delusions of mystical grandeur — wouldn’t be able to do the same. That knowledge might be gone forever.

  Now that Reginald knew the information he wanted was here after all, he wouldn’t be able to leave until he found it. But now there was another problem. The only way to learn more was to visit the seer, and he couldn’t ask to visit the seer. If he did, he’d be letting Claude and Ophelia know just how much the obscure old artifact mattered. He had a fine line to walk; he’d told them that the codex might matter, but he’d also seen the way Claude’s eyes had focused when Reginald had kept pushing. Claude, Reginald knew, might already suspect that Reginald knew more than he was saying. He couldn’t keep prying. He was dealing with a man who’d been plotting the murder of a planet for thousands of years… and allowing such a man to see that a double-cross was in the making would be an extraordinarily bad idea.

  Reginald filed the codex in his mind as a taboo topic. Like it or not, whatever else he uncovered would need to be uncovered on his own.

  They settled into a familiar rhythm over the next few days, as Reginald sought to use servility to dilute any suspicions the others had of him. Ophelia or one of the other generals would come to Reginald, drag him into the situation room, and explain the latest developments on the warfront. He would then make complicated-sounding suggestions and predictions that were vague enough to be totally unhelpful. He would pretend to be interested in the progress against the humans. Then he would be dismissed, would return to his room with Nikki, and would worry.

  He watched his phone. He stared at it, willing it to ring. But it didn’t ring, and he had no way to call Maurice and Claire from his end. He wished they would call. Right now, he needed counsel. He needed help. He needed another few ears and another few brains. He also needed (and this was something he couldn’t admit to Nikki, lest it worry her) a reason to believe that the others were even still alive. They hadn’t heard anything from Maurice and Claire in over a week, since the day Claire had let them through the VWC’s back door. Reginald could see things going either way for the crew back in America. Maurice and Brian were strong, but they were also harboring humans at a time when humans were public enemy number one. Would the vampire armies know about Claire, her mother, Jackie, and the others? Would V-Crews be at work in the area? Reginald just wanted to know one way or the other — and no news, in this case, was definitely not good news.