by Michael West
“You forgot Mike Johnson,” Melissa said, rubbing Frank’s neck. “That bootlegger we ran into in Alabama just after the Great War.”
“Oh yes,” Frank said, grinning over at Sammy. “I almost forgot about him. Fellow used to be a sharecropper. I seem to remember that we saved him from a Klan lynching.”
Sammy nodded. He looked at them all, wondering how they all came to be in their state, but then figured he would find out soon enough. He looked over at Olivia, who smiled at him, and he knew right then that as long as he stayed with them Olivia would keep him company for as long as he decided to remain with them in this physical state.
“You said you had more than one question,” Frank said. “What’s the second question?”
Sammy grinned. “Provided I serve you well, and I mean to do so, how long do I have to wait before I take the next step?”
There was silence for a moment. Jason chuckled and Melissa smiled. Olivia’s smile was wide and triumphant. Frank laughed and the tenseness lifted. Frank reached across and clapped Sammy on the back. “As long as it takes to find another unique human like yourself, Sammy. As long as it takes.”
As Sammy took the wheel of the RV to take them out into the desert, Melissa took Gus to the rear of the RV to take him to the next step. The night was endless and black, the highway unwinding before them like a long snake, and as he piloted them along to the next town Olivia joined Sammy in the cabin of the RV and told him what it was like to live through the sinking of the Titanic.
WHAT ONCE WAS FLESH
Tim Waggoner
Tim Waggoner’s novels include the Nekropolis series of urban fantasies and the Ghost Trackers series written in collaboration with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of the Ghost Hunters television show. In total, he’s published close to thirty novels and two short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
His favorite type of vampire is the relentless, feral-at-the-core blood beast that, regardless of outer appearance, is the true embodiement of all-consuming darkness and evil: Christopher Lee’s Dracula, Jerry Dandrige in the original Fright Night, Marvel Comics’ Dracula, Stephen King’s Barlow in ’Salem’s Lot and the corrupt inhuman thing in his story “Night Flier,” the Master in Skipp and Spector’s Light at the End, Prince Vulkan in Robert McCammon’s They Thirst, the monstrously gluttonous creature in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, among others. Soulless, merciless, remorseless and insatiable … that’s what makes a truly great vampire.
–––––––––––
“You got some blood on the corner of your mouth,” Al said.
An unnaturally long black tongue slithered out of Dylan’s mouth to lap away the excess gore. He smacked his lips when he was finished.
“You gotta watch little details like that. That’s the sort of thing that’ll give you away.”
“You telling me someone will see a smear of red on my mouth and think, ‘Holy shit! That guy’s a vampire!’” Dylan smirked. “I doubt it.”
“Human senses may be duller than ours, but they can recognize a predator when they spot one – at least on a subconscious level. People start getting suspicious of you, they’ll call the cops. That happens, and you’ll have to find new a hunting ground. As it is, we can only stay in the same area a few months. A year tops, if we’re careful. Why make life harder on yourself if you don’t have to?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Dylan said grudgingly.
The two men sat in the front seat of a red-and-white van with the words Community EMS painted on the side. There was nothing to identity what community, which was exactly the way Al wanted it. In a town of any decent size, people – even police – didn’t look twice at emergency medical vehicles. Not only was it a great cover, it was a damned good lure, too. The blue uniforms Al and Dylan wore put people immediately at ease, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to approach them with some sort of medical emergency and ask for their help. Talk about having your food delivered! And if a cop ever did pull them over, they had a plausible reason for why someone was strapped down to a gurney in the back. Just transporting a patient, officer. Acute anemia. Real serious.
Al had parked the van outside a UtiliMart, two rows away from a fluorescent lamppost. He wanted their vehicle to be visible, but not too visible. He’d been running the EMS scam for four years now, moving from town to town as necessary, and if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that, as in real estate, success was spelled location, location, location. And an extra-large helping of patience didn’t hurt, either – especially when it came to breaking in a new partner.
Dylan was in his late twenties, stocky, with a shaved head, stubbly beard, expanders in his ears, and tattoos over much of his body. He looked like a tough customer, but when it came to vampirism, he was about as green as they came. He’d been turned less than a month ago, not by Al, but by some bitch working the prostitute angle, a scam as old as the Pleistocene. She hadn’t stayed with Dylan. Why would she? Most humans didn’t turn after they’d been drained, and most vampires had a “feed or die” mentality when it came to any progeny they might unwittingly create. Al had found Dylan working a rest stop in Kentucky, doing his best to subsist on the occasional sips of blood he managed to steal from truckers. He’d been half-starved and half-crazed when Al took him in, and they’d been traveling together ever since while Al showed him the ropes.
The first thing Al had taught the dumbass: It’s not just blood they fed on, but blood and death. For blood to be truly nourishing, their prey had to die. Not right away, but eventually. There was something about having your teeth buried in the flesh of your prey as they died – being so intimately connected as the life fled their body – that charged the blood in your belly and turned it into fiery liquid more potent than rocket fuel. If your victim didn’t die, you might as well be drinking water.
Speaking of victims, they’d had good hunting tonight. They’d picked up a jogger in a suburban neighborhood soon after sunset, and they’d each drank from her, although Al had let Dylan finish her off. He was still hungry, but he didn’t feel deprived. He was saving his appetite. The jogger’s corpse was in the back, strapped to the gurney, covered by a sheet. When he could, Al liked to wait a bit before disposing of his empties, just in case they turned. But it had been a couple hours since the jogger had died, and she hadn’t so much as twitched in all that time. He decided to give it a little longer.
He settled back against his seat and watched the shoppers outside come and go from their cars, much as a lion watches animals move across the Savanna. Not necessarily hungry, but still alert for an opportunity too good to pass up. Al looked to be in his sixties, although he was far older. His skin was sallow, almost jaundiced, and he was thin to the point of being gaunt. He wore his brown hair short, and although he’d sported many hairstyles over the centuries, he liked his current haircut best. It didn’t get in the way, and it didn’t give prey anything to grab hold of. His eyes were brown, too, although when the hunger was upon him, they appeared jet black. Like now.
Dylan lit a cigarette and took a long drag. He cracked the passenger window and blew the smoke out. Regardless of their habits in life, most vampires didn’t smoke. Their heightened senses rendered all forms of tobacco noxious to them. But Dylan was still a child in darkness, his senses nowhere near as sharp as they could be.
“I got a question for you, Al.”
“Yeah?”
“A lot of times you talk about us like an announcer in a nature documentary. To hear you tell it, we’re apex predators, the very tip-top of the food chain. But we’re more than that, aren’t we?”
Al frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, we’re … you know. Evil, right?” He grinned, displaying elongated incisors. He
hadn’t yet learned how to conceal his fangs without concentrated effort.
Up to this point, Al had kept his gaze fixed on the people passing by. Now he turned his head to look at Dylan. “What exactly do you mean by evil?”
His smile widened too far, and tiny fissures opened at the corners of his mouth. Clear fluid beaded forth from the wounds, but Dylan seemed unaware of them. Vampires were so strong they could easily injure themselves, but since they were so resistant to pain, they often didn’t realize it. Good thing we heal so fast, Al thought. And as if the thought gave birth to reality, the fissures in Dylan’s mouth closed, though the beads of liquid remained.
“Evil,” Dylan repeated. “Princes of Darkness, Lords of the Night, that kind of thing.”
Al’s smile was smaller and more controlled than Dylan’s. “So melodramatic. Did you read too many comics as a child? Yes, we are creatures of evil, for lack of a better word. It’s why we shun daylight, avert our gazes from holy objects of all sorts, and why our flesh burns if it comes in contact with them. And of course, it’s why we must feed as we do. But all of these qualities are symptoms of our true condition. We have no souls.”
From the bemused look on Dylan’s face, Al knew he wasn’t following.
“Human beings are born with souls. It’s what sets them apart from all other creatures on Earth. When a human becomes a vampire, the physical body reanimates, but the soul is no longer present. This is why our kind can kill without hesitation or remorse. No soul, no conscience. It’s a very useful adaptation. You can’t be an effective predator if you’re burdened by a conscience.”
Dylan took another drag on his cigarette and stared out the window for several moments before speaking again.
“So where does it go? The soul, I mean.”
Despite his long years of practiced control, Al had to fight to keep from grinning so wide that he ripped his own cheeks wide open. Dylan had finally asked The Question, the one every vampire came to eventually. And he had asked it at precisely the right time.
“Some self-styled experts in the occult believe that a vampire’s soul is damned to Hell until its body is destroyed, thereby freeing the spirit to enter Heaven. But this is nothing more than a fairy tale concocted by humans. The truth is far more interesting. Do you really want to know where your soul is now?”
“Yeah.”
Al turned and pointed at a man walking past their van. He wore a faded army jacket, old jeans, and running shoes on the verge of falling apart. His head was shaved, his body tattooed, and the holes in his earlobes were held open by large metal rings.
“It’s right there.”
-----
“This is so freaky!” Dylan said.
The two vampires stood in an aisle in Utilimart’s electronics department. The other Dylan was less than thirty feet away from them, examining a cell phone display with a vacant, almost lost expression on his face, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing here.
“Keep your voice down,” Al hissed. “As long as you stay close to me, I can use my powers to conceal your presence from him, but he isn’t deaf. Once you attract his attention, I won’t be able to hide you again.”
Dylan whispered this time. “You say that’s my soul, but he looks solid enough. Is he some kind of ghost? If I walked over and tried to poke him, would my finger pass through his body?”
“He would feel like flesh and bone to you, but I wouldn’t advise getting that close. He might not look dangerous, but he’s the closest thing to a natural predator that our kind has. Or should I say, that you have.”
“I don’t get it.”
The other Dylan turned away from the cell phones and headed to the aisle where the DVD’s were kept. Al and the real Dylan followed at a discrete distance. The other Dylan paused before the comedies as if he might browse them, but he just stared at the titles with the same blank expression on his face.
“If you think of vampirism as a spiritual disease, then beings like him are antibodies,” Al said. “When a new vampire is created, the mortal soul is cast out of its body and remains earthbound. Eventually, the soul – the Animus – is compelled to seek out the corrupt creature that stole its body and attempt to destroy it. It never tires, and it will not stop until its mission is complete … or until it is neutralized.”
“What’s the big deal?” Dylan said. “He doesn’t look so tough. I’ll just walk over and tear his head off, and we’ll call it a night.” He took a step toward his other self, but Al grabbed hold of his arm and stopped him.
“Don’t be fooled by his appearance. He’s just as strong and resistant to damage as we are – and he has none of our weaknesses.”
Dylan looked skeptical. “If you say so. But even if it’s true, so what? There are two of us and one of him. All we have to do is tag team him.”
“It’s not that simple. Killing one’s own soul is the final act of evil that completes our transformation. Once you do it, you’ll be truly immortal. Otherwise, even though you are a vampire, you will age and die just as any mortal. But you have to do it. Your Animus can only perish at your hands. No one else’s.”
The other Dylan moved on from comedies and was now standing in the children’s section. Al and the real Dylan could still see him, so they stayed where they were.
“Did you kill your soul?” Dylan asked.
“Yes. And it was the toughest battle I’ve ever been in. I’d rather face a dozen of our kind in combat than a single Animus.”
Dylan continued looking at his other self for a few moments, and when next he spoke, he sounded overly nonchalant, as if he were scared and working hard not to show it. “So … what do I do?”
Before Al could respond, the other Dylan’s head snapped up and turned in their direction. His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to see them but had trouble focusing his vision. Al grabbed hold of Dylan’s arm again so they would be in physical contact, the better to extend his glamour over the other vampire.
“Don’t move,” he breathed.
They stood absolutely motionless in the way that only the dead can do, and after a few moments, Dylan’s Animus looked away and wandered off to another section of the store.
Still keeping hold of Dylan’s arm, Al led him toward the exit.
“Come on. We have work to do.”
-----
“Why didn’t you warn me about him before?” Dylan asked. He tossed another shovelful of earth out of the hole he’d been digging, hurling it with such strength that it flew a dozen yards away to join the rest of the soil strewn there. The hole – a small pit by this point, really – was square, four feet deep and six feet across. Dylan stood inside, doing the excavating, while Al remained topside, supervising.
Dylan sounded pissed, and Al supposed he couldn’t blame him.
“You’re not the first vampire I’ve mentored. Ever heard the phrase ‘Seeing is believing’? Why do you think we’ve spent so much time hanging out in parking lots the last couple weeks? I’ve been waiting for your Animus to track you down so I could show it to you – and I wanted to give you more time to grow stronger, so you’d have a better chance of defeating it.”
“The least you could do is get in here and help me dig,” Dylan said, sounding like a sulky child.
“I told you, I need to keep watch. We don’t want your Animus sneaking up on us, and since I’m so much older than you, my senses are stronger. I’ll know when it’s within half a mile of here.”
The two vampires were in a field beneath a clear night sky. A crescent sliver of a moon hung overhead, nestled in an ebony expanse dotted with glittering stars. Nights like tonight, it was good to be undead, Al thought. An abandoned farmhouse and barn sat on the property, two black shapes silhouetted against the horizon. The Community EMS van was parked inside the empty barn, lights off, of course.
Dylan removed a couple more shovelfuls of dirt before speaking again.
“I don’t see how this is going to work. You said my Animus is just as tough
as we are. How is falling into a pit going to hurt it? And really, do you think it’s stupid enough to fall for a trick like this?”
“It’s not intelligent, per se. As I said earlier, it’s like an antibody. It doesn’t think; it just acts and reacts. I stopped cloaking your presence over an hour ago, so your Animus is undoubtedly on your trail and headed this way. Once it sees you, it’ll make a beeline straight for you, and as long as you’re standing on the other side of the pit, it’ll tumble right in. Hell, by that point, it’ll be so excited that we probably don’t even need to cover the pit, but we’ll put some trees branches over it and lay some sod on top, just to be sure. When you finish digging the pit, we’ll put sharpened stakes in the bottom. They won’t kill the Animus. It’s not a vampire. But they will hold it in place long enough for you to jump in and sink your fangs into its neck. The only thing that can kill your Animus is the bite from a vampire. But not just any vampire: you.”
Dylan flung another shovelful of dirt out of the pit, and then looked up at Al, a skeptical expression on his face.
“Are you sure about this?”
Al smiled. “Have I steered you wrong yet?”
-----
“It’s close,” Al said.
He stood next to Dylan at the edge of the pit. They’d waited like this for several hours, during which Dylan had run through all of his cigarettes. The stink of tobacco hung heavy in the air, but Al didn’t complain. He had been in Dylan’s shoes once, and he understood how nervous the younger vampire was. It was a hell of a thing, finding yourself transformed into a bad-ass monster, only to discover that there was something out there just as dangerous as you whose only purpose was to take you out.
“I think I can hear him,” Dylan said softly.
Al had been able to hear the Animus approaching for the last ten minutes, its footsteps steady and regular, machine-precise. If he was right, the thing was just about close enough to –
The pace of its footfalls suddenly picked up, shoes pounding the earth, waist-high grass rustling as it raced toward them.
