“But somewhere along the road to homosexualization, something wonderful happened—the vampire shed his fear of Christianity. But even a neo, or category three, vampire still retained core vestiges of nonhumanity. He was secularized, to be sure, but was still spinning in a void of latent supernaturalism.
“Do you see where this evolution is headed, girl?” he asked. “Or is your mind too deadened with malnutrition and batterings to grasp the obvious?”
“He’s becoming more and more human?” she rattled quickly.
“Bravo. With each succeeding category he sheds a layer of nonhumanity. Which leads us to category four—the ‘true’ vampire.”
“The category you’re a member of,” she said weakly.
“I, and the rest of my clan. We are those damned individuals born with cravings for human blood. And, regrettably, literature and movies have always neglected us. We possess no magical powers, so in many ways we are less romantic than our literary predecessors. But within our humanity lies a complexity that our predecessors would thirst for.”
“That’s very interesting.” She whispered, her body trembling from the cold every few seconds. “Are there any other categories—is there a category five?”
“That’s a good question.” He seized a cloak hanging from a sputtered out sconce and threw it to her. “You could say I’m plumbing category five. It’s a category I have yet to map—a category brimming with immeasurable power.”
“What kind of power?”
“The power of technology, of science. Thus far I’ve taught you of literature and history—but if those subjects were my only interest, I could never be a true Renaissance man, now could I? The foolish programmers and roboticians and tech theorists try to distinguish between virtual and actual reality. In the future, in ten years, there will only be one reality. What was virtual will become actual—and what was actual will become mundane. I’ll be able to assemble the collective powers of fictional vampires past within each fingertip! And there’s more. Right now, ask a man if dragons exists and he’ll laugh in your face. Ten years from now, when I’ve bio-engineered a snarling, five-hundred foot serpent named Tiamat, the man that laughs will be a crisp heap of ash.”
“You’re going to make a dragon next?” She gasped.
“If I feel like it. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a god-beast . . . an earthly manifestation of my draconic goddess before which the faithful will fall on their knees.”
“I have a question you probably won’t answer.” She stared past him at the stricken house of Usher. “Tell me what the Americans really are—and why you made them.”
He studied her for several moments, tongue seething in his mouth. Finally, he grinned toothily.
“Very well. You can impart my secret to anyone you wish in the afterlife—it will go with you to your grave.”
She blinked at his willingness to impart the information, then mustered every ounce of concentration she possessed.
“Americanization,” he said, “was inspired by my categorization of vampires. But while the vampire, as I have demonstrated, has gradually evolved in the popular consciousness toward humanity, treated Americans undergo a progressive retrogression toward monstrosity. Layer by layer, they molt their humanity. In two years, those who have recently received treatment will be shambling, inchoate, anthropophagous beasts.”
“They’ll be pure evil . . .” she breathed.
“Far from it, actually.” The vampire laughed. “Their intellect will be so miniscule they won’t have a capacity for evil. But they will serve me unquestioningly—and will abase themselves before the god-beast. I let my colleagues believe I was adopting their input regarding the creation of ideal humanity. Swan insisted that they be bisexual—and I complied. Gibbles advocated they possess a sexual desire for children to minimize discrimination against pedophiles—and I agreed. Of course, these predilections will be fleeting, and within time they will sink into an abyss of fang, claw, and loyalty. I will be their vampire king—and they will be my inexorable legions.”
“It sounds fictional.” She pulled the cloak around her.
“You’re damned right it does,” said the revenant. “And were it not for the Caucasian demographic to willingly enlist for Americanization, I never would have succeeded. Humiliate—degrade—marginalize them—then offer them hope by funneling them into treatment centers where they’re jabbed with needles dispensing a fluid I call Teratol-7. A small chip is also imbedded to facilitate my control over them. And then, they’re mine. But not every American has a chip implanted in them—the first handful of candidates, including Swan and his staff, never received them. It was their intractability that made me realize the need for a chip.” He laughed.
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked at her inquisitively. “Because, I just want what everyone else wants—to live in a world pleasing to my sense of taste and aesthetics. Swan wants to live in a gay world—and he’ll force homosexuality on people to achieve it. Gibbles wants to live in a world wherein his attraction for little boys and girls is perceived as normal—and he’ll do what it takes to implant his perversion into the minds of Americans. Take your room at home, Marisela—surely you’ve decorated it to your own personal taste?”
Her face convulsed, and her lips quivered.
“Yes.” She sniffled, as a tide of memories swept over.
“You miss it because it’s a place of comfort and protection. You’re at ease there. Well, imagine the whole world being as friendly and inviting as your bedroom—laden with all the décor and colors and fantasies that bring you pleasure. That’s our motivation, girl, to redesign a cruel and inequitable world according to our own sense of equity, balance, and fashion.”
She was weeping freely, now, but he prattled on.
“I, for example, always yearned to be a ruler of men. Unfortunately, I was teased and battered in school to the point of being driven to misanthropy. Well, conflate this desire for power with what I would argue to be a genetic predilection for Gothicism and the occult, and what do you get? A vampiric monarch lording over thirty million ghouls.” He laughed briefly. “It’s cliché, in a way—the ostracized genius exacting his revenge on humanity. But the novelty lies in our ascension—we were voted into office by the people. I don’t hide in some subterranean pleasure dome—my castle’s smack dab in the middle of an affluent residential neighborhood.”
She pondered his explanation, and shifted uneasily on the stone as the silence weighed down on her.
“That’s enough for one day, Marisela. Ah! And just in the nick of time—five to six.”
Keedu seized her arm and reeled her to her feet.
“And do watch that knee, my girl. It would be such a pity if you couldn’t pay me visits any more—I do enjoy our conversations.”
Chapter 39
Rick’s eyes blinked open slowly. He tried to reach for his throbbing head, but found that he couldn’t move his hands. In fact, he couldn’t move his entire arms. Then he registered a constriction around his upper body—the kind of constriction that is so unyielding that the body instantly recognizes the futility of struggle. As his vision swam into focus, he saw that a clinical gray straightjacket, buffered by what looked like seat belt straps, enveloped his upper body.
“Hell,” he managed to curse, and saliva expanded from his parted lips. He was in a filthy, small room. The walls, the ceiling, even the floor were covered by reinforced gray padding. A single bulb flickered overhead, and couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to live or die. The result of its indecision was a maddening alternation between light and darkness at sporadic intervals.
“I was wondering when they’d find you,” he heard a deep voice report glumly. It came from a man, similarly bound, slouched in a corner of the room.
“Who’s there? Who are you?” demanded Rick.
There was silence.
“I . . . I don’t know who I am now,” the man whispered, then gasped quickly. He gasped
again, and if Rick were nearer, he could have seen tears running over the black cheeks.
“Do I know you?”
“Yeah.” Silence again, as the man collected himself. “It’s me, Laurence.”
“Laurence! Oh my God, are you okay?” If Rick had been more perceptive he would have heard the sounds of mourning coming from the man in the corner, and he would have desisted his inquiry. “God, I haven’t seen you since we ran out of Bradley’s house. Where are your wife and son—are they safe I hope?”
The sounds that emanated from Laurence sounded as if they could have come from a small child.
“Trisha’s dead.” He sobbed. “And . . . and . . . they took Kevin and . . . and handed him over to that piano player bastard.” The final word was scarcely pronounced, and came out in a rush of clenched muscles and emotion.
Rick sank his front teeth into his bottom lip until it bled freely. Fucking loser, Rick’s mind berated, you should have choked the pianist harder. And to think you hoped he survived—if you had been more efficient, maybe that little boy would be alive.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he said to Laurence. The silence was interrupted only by the frenetic resuscitations of the light bulb and its accompanying crackle. “Maybe Kevin’s okay—maybe he’s alive.”
“You know as well as I do that if he is alive, he’s better off dead. Can you imagine the kind of twisted shit that’s being done to him if he’s alive? I . . . I couldn’t stop them . . . I couldn’t protect my family.”
“I don’t even know where my family is. I was at a rock concert when they attacked us full force. Cathy caught a cold from Blake and stayed home—Blake stayed with her. What happened on your end?”
“We were holed up with a gang of black nationalists. Said they’d help us—and they did. Fed us. Hid us. They thought they were bad-asses, though—what with their berets and machine guns and made-up military titles and badges. But when we were raided—about two months ago—we just got massacred.” He inhaled and held his breath until he could speak without tears sogging his voice. “They caught us off guard, in the midst of some kind of African festival for the gods that the nationalists liked to hold. Trisha was one of the first ones down from the gunfire. But it wasn’t regular gunfire, Rick—they had these laser guns or something and bullet-proof armor. They killed about fifty of us and we couldn’t take down but a couple of them.” Laurence’s fingers twitched beneath the straightjacket. “God knows why they took me here. Mangallah says they would have taken my wife, too. He said it was a shame she was killed because he had wanted to graft us together or some kind of fucked up shit.”
“Mangallah—the surgeon general?”
“Yeah. He runs this place.”
“Fuck. I’ve seen that guy on TV; he’s uglier than most of ‘em. Isn’t he like ten feet tall or something?”
“Seven. But one of his hands is bigger than the other—like a crab or something. And he’ll squeeze your head with it if you get him pissed. Saw him pop some dude’s head like a grape last week.”
“Bastard. So why do they have us in these jackets and not clinked up in iron chains or something?”
“Because, man, we’re insane—don’t you know?” His lips were grinning and sardonic. “What, you didn’t know you were an insane heretic?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Rick shook his head. “Do you have any idea where we are—what state we’re in?”
“Sanity One—high up on a frigid-ass mountain in Colorado.”
“Damn. We’re a long way from home. They must have flown me here by jet.”
“Yeah. I’m worried about why they shoved us in the same cell. Can’t be coincidence.”
“No shit,” Rick uttered quickly—there was someone outside the padded door.
A tone sounded, and they heard a bolt shoot back. Then the door swung wide, and two men entered. Their odor signaled their treatment before the light bulb vivified, and their gray faces were momentarily scrutable. Each wore a white smock smeared with colors ranging from pink to deep crimson.
“Time for your ideology scan, Alien,” said one, pulling Rick to his feet.
“A what?” asked Rick.
“Standard procedure, bro,” Laurence assured. “They gotta declare you insane before they can keep you here. Compared to the shit they’ll do to you in the future, this won’t be bad at all.”
“Keep your mouth shut, foreigner!” ordered the other guard, and kicked Laurence in the side.
Rick was pushed out the door, and down a bleak hall lined with cells. The building was chilled by December and an overzealous air conditioning system that seemed to blow cold air unceasingly. Howls reverberated all around, and it was hard to trace their origin. Some seemed to emanate from the vents overhead; others seemed to drift up from the floor. Not all seemed to be of human provenance.
The captive watched stretchers being pushed along by withered, hunchbacked grays. Many of the stretchers were covered with tarps that ill-concealed the contours of toes at the bottom and head at the top. The attendants pushing the carts stared at him languidly, and shuffled by. After passing through several sets of swinging double doors they entered a large, vacant room on their right, a light flicked on, and Rick was shoved into an empty chair that elongated with a rusty screech.
“The doctor will be with you momentarily,” said one of the guards. Then the door was shut, and the register of a bolt sliding home in a shaft was heard.
Rick struggled to sit upright from his recumbent position. After several attempts he succeeded, the chair reconfiguring with a sound as jarring as fingernails on chalkboards. There were other chairs in the room, as well, most less inviting than the one he was in. Several bore manacles and other restraints to contain the occupant. The shine of metal arrested his eyes, and with a tremor that waved through his body, he noted an array of edged implements lying on an unfurled cloth on a nearby table.
How he yearned to have his hands freed so that he could use those blades on his captors. Then he surveyed the rest of the room, and was struck by the presence of a large console near his chair. He jerked to the right, slid to the floor, then walked to the station. It teemed with switches and levers, dials and track pins. A warm light emanated up from inside the machine.
His head still ached from at least one concussion, and he blinked as nausea swept over him. He felt his body waver over the terminal, and his face drifted down to rest on the instrument panel. The warmth of the machine felt good on his face, and in a world of gloom, the light seeping through the metal interstices was comforting. Slowly, he ebbed into sleep.
“Awaken, Patient Wilkerson!” He dimly heard a guttural voice command. Then his body was yanked with such force that his head whipped backward. Before he could gain his balance he felt the ground leave his feet and he throttled into a wall. Had he been thrown? Who could have thrown him so effortlessly? He rolled around on the sickening gray tiles, trying to get to his knees.
Then he saw the giant walking toward him. Thick, greasy black hair covered his head, and a like-colored mustache bushed his upper lip. His skin was gray, and festering with acne. A tarnished stethoscope hung from his neck, and brushed against the bloody scrubs draped around his peculiar upper body girth. And Laurence’s admonition was dead on—the right wrist terminated in a disgustingly large and malformed hand.
Rick felt his heart accelerate, and bloodstream juice with adrenaline. He struggled against the jacket with all his considerable strength, but to no avail.
“Don’t be so fearful, Patient Wilkerson.” The gray laughed. “If you pass this test, I can’t keep you here.”
“What test?”
“Your ideology scan—it’s my latest barometer for measuring sanity and dementia in my patients. Now get into the chair so we can begin. You’ve already drooled all over my module—not an auspicious sign for sanity.”
“If I pass can I go see my wife and son? Where are they?”
“I don’t know where your family is, Patient Wilkerson. If you p
ass you will be transported to a federal prison.” Mangallah answered busily, hands aflutter on the panel.
“What? Why?” Rick hazily recognized that were he completely lucid, he wouldn’t even bother with such questions.
The doctor quickly scanned his digital pad.
“Murder of an American citizen . . . a certain Mr. Paul Bradley,” he reported, snickering. “At a party thrown at his house no less. Now get in this chair before you make me angry.”
Rick spotted the great hand clench into a fist, so he rolled to his knees. Seconds later he was standing, albeit shakily, and taking measured steps toward the chair.
“I feel sick,” he complained. “My head feels like it’s gonna burst.”
“If you don’t obey me I assure you that it will. Now take a seat.”
The environmental engineer flopped into the chair—he would have done so gingerly, but the straight jacket did not afford such precise movements. His stomach was roiling, and saliva was spilling over his mouth.
“Don’t I get a pad to circle my answers on or something?” he asked, wincing with pain as his head touched the cushioned rest.
“You won’t need it. All I ask is that you free your mind.”
“I feel too sick to do this . . .”
“Silence your Alien tongue if you wish to retain it.” Mangallah threatened, and placed a pair of metallic goggles over Rick’s eyes. “You will watch the following ten minute video segment. If you close your eyes and refuse to watch, a substantial shock will be administered to your body. I’ll receive your bio feedback from the images you view with these.” He placed wireless suction cups on Rick’s temples and neck. “Your results will be processed instantaneously, so I will review them with you upon completion.”
The Gods of Color Page 41
