by Phil Wohl
He took a mighty swing at what he perceived to be a man, but as he looked back all he saw was a cat on the ground below. Gary then tried to wipe the crust from his eyes, believing that he might be suffering from some sort of heat stroke. But when he refocused a snarling wolf was in front of him, causing a moment of pause. George turned back into his mortal form and said, “Why don’t you play along, son?”
George morphed into a series of creatures that Garrison had never seen in person: a hippopotamus, bottlenose dolphins and an Orca, the killer whale, which was actually the largest species of dolphin. The whale was so big that Gary surmised that it would be easy to strike it, although he wasn’t sure what kind of damage he could do to such an enormous creature with layers of protection. George took the opportunity to transform into his last iteration, a smaller aquatic mammal, and then dove into a small pool of water and hid beneath the earth’s surface.
George reappeared out of another small pool of water a few yards away, further startling his already-mentally decomposed son.
“This must be some sort of dark magic!” Gary yelled. “I must ask you politely to leave these parts!”
“You’ve always known that I existed,” George said as he walked toward his son and then cycled through his protector changes, spurring his son to do the same.
“What is happening?!” Garrison exclaimed as he had lost control of his body contour.
“You are taking your rightful place in the universe!” George replied amid a bit of a windstorm surrounding them.
George turned back into a man and so did Gary, who looked over the person in front of him and felt real emotion for the first time since he cried for a bottle as a baby.
“Dad, is it really you?”
“You know it’s me, Garrison,” George replied and then hugged his son, who was hesitant at first and then gripped his father tight. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, but that is the way your mother wanted it.”
They broke the hug a few moments later and Gary asked, “What are you?” And then he quickly corrected when his father looked at him as if he had to modify the question to better align with reality, “What are we?”
“We are protectors,” George replied.
“Of what?” Garrison asked and then got more specific, “Who do we protect?”
George stuck out his anvil of a right arm and touched it to Gary’s forehead, treating him to a similar highlight reel that both Hartwell and Thaddeus had also seen.
“What is that?” Gary asked.
“It’s a vampire,” George replied. “Your only job now is to protect your vampire.”
Gary thought, “Protect him from what?” and his father heard him loud and clear, as they were now on the same frequency. “You have to protect him from being killed by the hunter. If the vampire dies 100 times then you will lose everything and return to being a mortal that will expire in time.”
“Do you mean that I can’t die if I am a protector?” Gary asked out loud.
George laughed, “Oh you’ll die, but then you’ll wake up as good as new the next morning!”
Gary smirked, “I think I’m going to like this.”
“I always knew you would,” George replied.
DEPRESS
I had been killed more than 40 times by the end of the 1920s, mostly because Thaddeus had slowed down from initial fast pace. The ride of being a supreme being was not supposed to be a short journey of just a few decades, it was to be savored and enjoyed over centuries.
“You guys have definitely made it tougher on me,” Thaddeus said one day before we prepared to battle.
“Did you hear that the stock market crashed yesterday?” Garrison said while trying to avoid the subject of his previous ineptitude.
I had pretty much taken what he wanted in my years as a vampire to this point, but was instantly intrigued by the financial markets. I had been very poor to the point of being homeless in his life and had no plans to go back to such a vagabond lifestyle. The reverse was also true, I had also been quite wealthy as a mortal and definitely preferred a more privileged lifestyle.
“We should probably go to New York and see what’s happening,” I stated.
While Garrison was used to listening to me, Thaddeus had always been the big beast in our relationship and usually walked to the beat of his own song. While he lived alone and he had taken a number of days to visit his parents and travel the country. While there should have been pressure on him to always be thinking of me and Gary, Thaddeus used most of his time and energy to become one of the greatest bank robbers of all time.
Thad hesitated at first to respond to my request because he had plans to rob a local bank after the nightly festivities were completed. That was, if he survived the nightly festivities. While I had a cap on my deaths at 100, both Thaddeus and Garrison could perish as many times as physically possible. The nightly fights ended when either Thaddeus or I were eliminated, but on this night it was highly questionable if anybody was going to die. The battles had slowed to a crawl and were often replaced with all-night bar-hopping and c*arousing.
I looked at Thad and then added, “You can’t rob a bank if there is no money in the vault.”
Thad looked at me and smirked, “You got a point there, Thomas.”
So we went to the heart of the big city because it would surely be an initial sign of what was to come.
I flew into Manhattan with Garrison in tow, as Thaddeus the hawk flew next to us. We hit the ground and I had an immediate flashback of the chaos that ensued in San Francisco around the plague that took my family away from me at the peak of our existence.
Thad and Gary kept walking and then they noticed that I was frozen in the middle of a cobblestone street with a horse and carriage bearing down on me—not that it would have done me any real harm anyway.
“What’s wrong with him?!” Thad asked, having never seen me like this before.
“Oh, boy!” Gary exclaimed and then rushed over to move Hartwell away from pending danger.
Thad joined Gary as they helped me sit on a nearby stoop, away from oncoming traffic.
“We have to let him ride this out,” Gary said to Thad. “He’s thinking about his family again.”
Thad had been so intent on strategy and maneuvering for years that he hadn’t bothered to ask how we all got there in the first place. Gary and I spent so much time together that we were able to fully discuss our lives before meeting each other.
“How come we have never had this discussion before?” Thad asked Gary as they walked through the frenzied streets of lower Manhattan as I glided next to them. No one even noticed that my feet weren’t hitting the ground.
“Because I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said as I snapped out of it. We walked to the Battery, or Battery Park as it is now known, and stood near the water facing the Statue of Liberty.
“I’m sorry I brought you both into this,” I said to Thad and Gary, “this was only meant to be a means to see my family again.” To say that I dropped into a great depression along with the rest of my surroundings would have been an understatement. It was potentially the most pathetic I had been since my final days in San Francisco.
I could sense that Thaddeus was still confused and needed to be updated on what started this whole thing, so I stretched my left arm and rested my hand on his forehead. I then looked over at Garrison who knew the story, but he still wanted to view the moving pictures, so I reached over with my right arm and rested my right hand so he could partake as well.
I didn’t think that I wanted to see what they saw at first, but then found myself closing my eyes and experiencing it first-hand like it was happening to me all over again. My theory was that it would be therapeutic and produce some closure, but all it did was make me miss my people even more!
I thought back to the time when I had the gun in my hand and was about to take my own life while Thad and Gary finished up their little movie. Maybe it would have been better if I had thought about my decis
ion in the years leading up to this day, but it wasn't like I had so many options at the time! My choices were:
Blow my brains out
Take a chance and potentially see my family again
Continue to wander the streets aimlessly and then eventually be devoured by a vampire
Wait until I eventually got the plague and died
B was the only option where I actually had a chance to continue to exist. Lowery never mentioned the term "vampire" when presenting me with the idea, so all I really heard was "see you family again." Honestly, I wasn't even sure if he was telling me the truth. He could have just taken all of my blood and left me dead in my house for all anyone knew, and I would have been in the same place I would have been if I pulled the trigger myself.
It was all about them! It always had been and always would be! Life wasn't really worth living, either as a vampire or a mortal, without my wife and son. Being alone would have been pure torture, so I guess I had Gary and even Thad to thank for keeping me busy.
The playback finished with Lowery turning me into a vampire and Thad exclaimed "I didn't know!"
I must have been looking at both of them with a loving gaze, or something positive they hadn't seen before because he added, "What? Is there something on my face?"
"Have I ever told you guys how much I appreciate you?" I said with a heavy dose of vulnerability.
Thad looked at Gary and mouthed, "Is he okay?"
Gary mouthed back with his palms up, "I don't know? Never seen him this way."
And thus, I fell into a decade-long depression along with the rest of the country. I wouldn't feed and somehow Gary and Thad kept me alive through making me drink the blood of many living things. Thad had no thoughts of killing me during this time and he probably would have been passive even if I was at full strength. He was a family man through-and-through and he appreciated my sense of loyalty, even if I had misguidedly become a vampire.
WAR
A funny thing happened in the midst of my depression: the country became preoccupied with not one, but two world wars. Gary and Thad took me on a vacation to Europe just before the second world war to try and cheer him up. I must admit that I always liked to sample the European nectar, but I even noticed despite my fragile state that something was different this time around.
"Is it me, or is something weird going on here?"
Gary was surprised at first that I initiated a conversation, "Oh, did he just talk?" he asked Thaddeus.
"Yeah, he talked. Did you feel that weird vibe?" he asked Garrison.
Gary had been so focused on me and cracking my protective shell that he became shielded to the powerful force that was engulfing both the U.S. and all of Europe. We happened to be in middle of Paris, France on June 2, 1944.
Garrison closed his eyes and then pointed due northeast.
"Wow! I don't think I've ever felt this much rage since we first met you," he replied to Thad. "It's coming from over there."
I then stepped up in front of the other two, my extended bought of depression now over, and said, "Wölfe unter."
Thaddeus wasn't fluent in German but he sort of understood what I was getting at. He still looked at Gary for clarification.
"There is a wolf amongst us," Gary stated, as he and I had already zeroed in on the target.
While Thaddeus technically had no skin in the game, being that his sole purposed in life was to kill me and eradicate my kind from the planet, the presence of a being far worse than his sworn enemy was quite unsettling.
"We have to go there. We have to go to Germany," Thad said.
Garrison was about to respond because it had been some time since I had stepped up and acted like the lead dog. But, then he felt a mountain of energy rising and smiled, knowing that things were about to get back to normal.
"We need to get to the beach," I firmly stated as Thaddeus backed up both mentally and physically. While water was a safe place for both Garrison and me, it was a point of extinction for land mammal Thaddeus.
I turned back toward Thad and walked toward him, putting my large hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry brother, we got your back," and we made eye contact and I kept walking.
Thad was shocked as he looked at Gary for confirmation.
Gary put his hands up, palms to the sky, and replied, "What he said," and that was good enough for Gary. Besides, even if we double-crossed him and gave him a water nap, he would still wake up the next morning renewed, and as good as new.
We took our time getting to the beach over the next few days, following a trail of energy that accurately reflected months of wartime planning. The Allied forces were about to hit the beach at Normandy with great ferocity, but it appeared their strategy was a tad misguided.
"It's gonna be a blood bath," Gary said as he and we stood down the beach where the siege would begin.
Thaddeus looked toward the stronghold that the Germans and their allies had established facing the entry point.
"It's almost as if they know all about it before it happens. Sort of makes it unfair, don't you think, Thomas?"
Thad and Gary turned their attention to me as I thought about what our next move would be, if any.
"I've given this some thought, in all of the few hours that I've regained consciousness, and I've come to the following decision. In the past I've always thought only of myself, and you guys have let my actions usually dictate what happens between us. This wasn't the way it was in my previous life, where everything I did was for the benefit of my family. First, we have to stop whatever is going here because I don't want to be eating bratwurst, sauerkraut, and Bavarian beer for the rest of my vampirical existence. Second, and definitely more important in the world order, once we are done I want you two to leave here and go back to the states to start a family. There will be a day in the future when my family will return and I want you both to experience the joy of having families of your own."
FAMILY I (Thad)
We pared back the Nazis to a more workable foe for the Allied troops, who were able to capture the beach and then the war. Thaddeus and Garrison returned to the states, while I stayed behind the clean up what was left of the Third Reich. While some criminals escaped to South America and Scandinavia, others were not as fortunate. I bled them dry with no hope of continuing their torturous ways as vampires.
It was difficult at first for Thaddeus to turn off his tracking and hunting instincts as it concerned me. He landed in New York and then moved as quickly away from the ocean as he could toward the middle of the country, where he sought refuge on a farm in Kansas. There was no people, water or life around for miles and Thad enjoyed this lifestyle until he realized that he was alone and his directive was to shack up with a mate and start a family.
So he ventured out to the budding metropolis, the gateway to the west, St. Louis, Missouri. Thad had been to just about every corner of the world with me and Gary. Our special powers enabled us to get to and from places much quicker than even airplanes and trains could travel. He always found people in the Midwest and South to be impediments to his work, because they always seemed utterly clueless to everything going on around them. If it wasn't about barbecue or guns, Thad thought that it wasn't of interest to them. Vampires could be flying around and sinking their teeth into people, but none of this seemed to faze these war-happy constituents.
"The war is over," Thaddeus mumbled to himself as a group of drunk veterans were hooten' and a hollerin' about "Killin' some Jap's!"
He was surprised when an unfamiliar voice said, "Don't you love your country?"
Thad turned around and calmly replied, "Are you questioning my patriotism, miss?" being that he was much older than her on a chronological basis, but still looked like he was in his mid-20s.
"Did you fight in the war?" she asked.
Thad thought back to our elimination of hundred of Germans and then seemed annoyed as he walked away, "You ask a lot of questions for someone I don't know."
Mary O'Donnell was not goi
ng to go down that easy. She had spotted her diamond in the rough and was about to go mining to secure the asset.
"You're not from around here, are you?" she asked as she trailed a surprisingly-fast walking Thad, or so she thought. She had seen many people who could walk fast on the farm, but none with such a sense of purpose and drive as this man.
Thad rolled his eyes and then realized why he was in St. Louis in the first place. There was an actual woman showing interest in him, albeit a probing, flirty kind of interest, and he had been playing pretty hard to get. He slowed his roll and turned around, expecting the woman to be at least five paces behind him. But, what he found was a a woman that attached to him like Velcro, in the days before the loud, adherent strips were invented.
Mary looked deep into Thad's eyes and they both knew what time it was. "You walk very fast," he said, as she had the intent of a lion tracking a water buffalo in her gaze.
"Stop talkin' and start kissin'" she countered, which was quite aggressive for the times, even for a farm girl.
Thad, although he didn't know it until this moment, was quite the ladies' man. Plucked at the tender age of 18 to basically chase after me and cut me down to size, he had never experienced the passions of the flesh first hand. He had spent all of his time as a shoemaking apprentice and, although he had noticed the opposite sex, he hadn't made the move to actually date.
The first kiss between Thad and Mary was one for the story book. She felt like she was floating off the ground and she was actually was, until he realized that it would probably be best if she was kept in the dark about his life as a hunter, at least for time being. But, that's the thing about secrets: the longer you hold them, the less likely the truth is to come out.
After a steamy weekend, Mary accompanied Thaddeus back to the biggest and most fertile farm Mary has ever laid eyes on. She happily said "I do" to both him and the farm, and they were married on six months after they met in St.Louis, in what could be termed a shotgun wedding in those parts. The O'Donnell's were an old school clan who believed that kids had to be raised my a mother and father joined in holy matrimony. Thad and Mary were all-too-happy to tie the knot, as they had been too busy farming and doing a variety of in-house activities to even notice that they weren't married.
