by Robert Brown
“Cora, is this true?” her mom asks with concern.
“Yes, it’s true. My powers have been increasing.”
Lilly grabs Cora and Grace around the necks in a playful hug and pulls them together.
“While most arch-vampires have seen their powers diminish and no one born post haze has any psychic powers at all, these two little devils have seen their powers grow to incredible heights. It has the other vampires a little freaked to say the least.”
“You don’t seem bothered by what they can do.”
“I’m not bothered because I can do this.”
Lilly’s body slowly fades from view between her two friends. Then in a blink, Cora and Grace vanish as well. The spot around the three continue to disappear, and the vanishing act continues until the entire house is invisible. The only thing remaining in sight are the four humans sitting on invisible sofas in the middle of a yard surrounded by The Angel’s vampire guards.
The guards take notice that the house is gone, and one runs toward the four visible humans and breaks through a wall to reach them.
The house and three vampires reappear around the foot soldier that is covered in broken drywall and dust from his unconventional entrance into the home.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, stammering, “I thought the house wasn’t here…I mean I didn’t see it anymore…what just happened?”
The heads of two more guards pop into view, looking through the new hole in the wall their friend just created. Lilly has to bend over because she is laughing so hard.
“It wasn’t your fault, Tony,” The Angel says in a calm tone and guiding him back to the opening. “I’m going to step outside and calm everyone down. I’ll be back in a moment.”
*
“Are your new powers why you brought us all together?” Greg asks when Cora returns.
“They are only part of the problem. I learned something new from Dr. Usachova’s files when we were at the lab.”
“I really like that woman. How is she doing?”
“She was killed by President Kambanda’s men. I brought you to be together here because I think you are in danger. I don’t know how many vampires he had on his side or what his powers of persuasion were, but I can’t take a chance that someone is still out there that can act on his behalf.
“We are facing two potential issues in the future. The first is our powers. They are already creating fear and distrust among our own kind. I think the best way we can prevent future wars and bloodshed is to erase the existence of them.”
“I wouldn’t want to get rid of my powers even if I could,” Lilly counters.
“No, erase our powers from the records. It will take a great deal of time to get to every item that mentions our special abilities, but we need to alter them to make it seem like everything we accomplished was done through common physical means. If what Dr. Usachova indicated in her research is true, we will have all the time we need.
“Mom, Dad, she thinks we will live forever. Not all mutants, though; only the ones born before the haze left. Those born after will have shortened life spans and might only reach thirty years old.”
“What?” Evelyn stands in shock and looks at her daughter.
“I meant those conceived before the haze disappeared, not born. Lilly is fine, I saw her records at the lab. All of the vampires conceived after the haze will begin dying in the next ten to twenty years. The rest of us might remain alive until we are killed by another vampire or in some cataclysm that destroys everything.”
“So you’re afraid we might be killed, everyone else is going to die, and you need to erase everyone’s memories or they might get jealous and kill you. Anything else?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Tanya hits her husband’s arm and shakes her head.
“What? It’s not like we haven’t been in danger from day one when this stupid mutation stuff started. We’ll be fine, we always are. If things end up bad for us this time, I’m fine with it. Look at us all. I have the love of my life, great kids that are healthy and successful, and I’ve lived to have a pot belly and a head full of white hair. What more could I want?
“By the way, Cora, while you’re out saving the world and ending the next inevitable war, you need to get your brothers and sisters to stop by more often. I know you have them running all over the globe taking care of all sorts of things for you. It would be nice if you would write your mom and dad into your to-do lists every once in a while.”
Pulling her parents into a hug. “I will, I promise.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Mortality
Thirty Years Post Haze
Heartland Territory
“Cora, you need to get up, something has happened!”
The fear she feels permeating the building causes her to shiver. A lone guard is standing at the foot of her bed, forehead drenched in sweat, sword in hand, and eyes darting around the empty room.
“They’re dead. Bobby, Jody, Wildcat and Yung! I tried waking them up but they’re dead.”
“Did you check the security footage?”
“Brinkley is checking it now, but I didn’t find any signs of forced entry and the werewolves say no one arrived during the day.”
She climbs out of bed and steps into a gown, pulling it up and then fastening it closed above her wings in the back.
“Take me to their bodies.”
“I checked them for bites and didn’t find anything. I think it might have been gas.”
Feeling each body, she confirms what she could sense when walking into the room. There are no brainwaves, diminishing cellular activity, no warmth. She turns and places a calming hand on Nick’s shoulder.
“We weren’t attacked, it was just their time.”
Brinkley runs into the room also in a panic. “There was nothing on the security footage and we’re getting calls and messages from all over the country. What happened here is happening everywhere, vampires have been killed in their sleep by something.”
“Brinkley, calm down. They weren’t murdered, they died in their sleep. This is what I have been warning might happen, only it’s occurring sooner than expected. The mutation shortened life spans.”
“But they were only thirty! I’m twenty-nine. Does this mean we only have thirty years to live?”
The same panic and disorientation spreads itself across the globe with the setting of the sun and the arrival of nightfall revealing scores of vampires who passed away as they slept during the day. Everyone that died was at the young age of thirty. Each death recorded was connected to someone believed conceived on the first day after the haze left. The following day reveals a second vampire group of thousands that will no longer wake from slumber.
Shock turns to sorrow as the world’s mutants and humans mourn the loss of their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. A new horror is unleashed upon the humans of the world in parents having to witness the deaths of their children before them. These deaths are not the meaningful or senseless losses in a war or skirmish, they are the empty reminder that we are all the slaves to our genetic codes. The new written code is one that gives the children born after the haze unlimited youth in never-ending regeneration but a sharply abridged life span.
*
Two hundred arch-vampires are gathered at one of the new dome construction sites. The giant domes are entrances to the new underground cities that are being constructed. Living underground will enable future vampires to extend their productive hours beyond the limiting factors of the sun. The Angel and those like her have shunned the idea of retreating underground and are concerned what changes might occur if vampires no longer come out into the open world at night.
The Angel stands to address the group. “The tragedy of mass deaths we are experiencing is a small benefit to our efforts toward concealing our powers. As we continue to remove the records of the feats we are able to perform, so too will the deaths of the later born remove mention of them.
“We should begin the n
ext phase of record removal and start altering the memories of our powerless arch-type and wingless vampire friends. Begin implanting hints and suggestions that they might have imagined that they saw. Every step we take moves us farther away from the potential for war born out of jealousy.
“The reports on your screens show the birth versus death rate should stabilize over time. While telomeres after Shatterbones of successive generations are still smaller than normal, they are getting longer. This means post haze vampires should begin living longer than thirty years with each new generation removed from the haze.
Chapter Forty-Five
Humanity
Forty Years Post Haze
Gray storm clouds roll in the sky overhead. Grace’s two sons stand behind her, knowing she must work through her sadness and allow the storm to clear on its own. Evelyn leans on Lilly as she watches Cora bend over the casket one last time.
“I can’t believe we are here again so soon.”
“I couldn’t alter his thoughts,” Cora says returning to the others. “I knew what he was planning and tried to make him happy again. I tried altering his memories after we buried my mom, but nothing would work. He loved her so much.
“The mermaids found him in the ocean a few days ago. He was floating in that little canoe they would take in the pond behind their house. He must have asked someone to take it to the ocean for him and he just started paddling out to sea.”
Lightning flashes outside and a downpour begins as the flood of Lilly’s emotions burst forth. Her mother’s parents are both dead and her remaining grandfather isn’t doing well either.
“How is Greg?” Cora places a hand on Evelyn’s knee.
“He’s in the hospital or he would have been here. We were afraid it was his time when he woke up and said he was weak, but it turned out to be the flu. I don’t know what I’ll do when he’s gone. I don’t blame your father one bit for his decision.”
“I don’t blame him either. It’s just difficult with all of the others dying as well.”
“Have the scientists discovered a way to do anything about it yet?”
“Some say we lack the technology, others say our scientific understanding isn’t great enough. Dr. Usachova knew what would happen years ago, she just didn’t expect it to affect humans as well. It all boils down to the changes the haze made to our genes.”
“It doesn’t seem fair that humans aren’t able to live past age seventy-five any longer. I’m not happy to know my time will be up soon, but I’m happy to know you will all live on.”
*
Fifty-Seven Years Post Haze
“Today, we return to the earth, our final ancestor. The humans who gave us life and from which our form mutated, were a people much like ourselves. They had conflict and turmoil, bitterness and envy. But they also had love and empathy, compassion and fairness. They gave us life and provided for us when we were young, the way our children’s children now provide for their own.
“This passing of Emily Young shall be written into the history books and should be remembered as the closing chapter to the most tumultuous time in our mutant history. The trials and troubles, war and bloodshed we witnessed and often caused while coming to terms with our new existence are now behind us.
“Pettiness and quarrel still abound but warfare is now, hopefully, a thing of the past. Let us allow our thirst for discovery and conquest to turn away from our Earthly home and instead work toward reaching for the stars as our human ancestors once successfully achieved.
“With the passing of Emily Young, the last human on Earth, our darkest hour as a race passes with her. From this day forth, we should look to the future and not be anchored to painful memories of the past.
Link-In Break
Chapter Forty-Six
Link-In Origin
Oregon Territory
Three Hundred and Sixty-Eight Years Post Haze
Jeremy Gordon taps lightly on his console waiting for the sun to set. He fought hard for the right to get to do this interview, beating out many other writers at the Virtual Link-In. The mirrored screen on his windows block the ultra-violet rays from reaching his body and causing him harm. Even with the barrier, it is rare for anyone to venture out during the daylight for any event, let alone an interview.
Through the screen, he watches as the sun dips lower until the last light finally blinks out of view below the horizon. His door slides smoothly upward allowing the unfiltered air of the world in. Checking one final time that he has all of his equipment, he turns to face the glossy stone walls of the house before him. There is a small opening in the wall into which he must place his arm for a blood sample. It is the type of security he has witnessed in only two high-level government facilities, and he wasn’t permitted to enter those locations. His reports were done outside those facilities. He grabs on to a small yellow handle which pulls his arm into the hole.
“Hello, Jeremy Gordon from World Link-In.”
A small ringing tone is sounded and a seam appears in the smooth wall surface before it splits open with each side sliding away with a whisper, revealing the walkway to the front of the house. A beautiful young woman sits on a bench in the courtyard off the side of the path.
“Lloyd?”
“Excuse me?”
“I…I’m sorry. Welcome to my home, Mr. Gordon. You look a great deal like someone I once knew.”
“Please just call me Jeremy, Miss…um Miss.”
She laughs lightly in a soft tone that seems flirtatious. “You can call me Cora. I’ve had the same response from your predecessors in the past. In the early years after The Shattering Event, people used to interview me when we’d pass a milestone, but no one ever thought of how to address me before they arrived.”
“I apologize, Cora.”
“There’s no need for that. I have been around long enough to know not to be offended by such trivial things.” Standing up, she stretches her wings out behind her and gives them a shake before turning toward the house. “The people from the Government Sciences Institute will be here shortly, shall we go inside to set up for the interview? I have more comfortable furniture inside than this hard bench.”
“If you don’t mind, I will begin recording now. I prefer not to miss anything.”
She smiles and nods before turning away. Jeremy watches her enter her house and is frozen in place, a chill hits his neck, and he suddenly feels like a fly being invited into the spider’s web.
“You’re welcome to come in, Jeremy. Your feeling of unease will diminish after we have gotten to know each other better. My making you feel that way is a side effect of the experiences I have had.”
Stepping through the doorway, he looks around briefly before asking, “You can sense what I’m feeling?”
“I can do more than that, the rumored stories you have heard are true. Those vampires like myself that were around during The Shattering Event had special abilities, often psychic powers of varying degrees.”
Jeremy chuckles, his journalistic tendency of doubt and disbelief kick in. “I would love to believe you, but I know you’re just teasing me for some reason. That type of change, those types of abilities, would have been recorded. If the original arch-types had powers, I would know about it. I’ve studied everything available about the history of The Shattering Event and the early wars.”
“You have read everything that is currently available, Jeremy. I must tell you that I can not only sense your feelings, but I can read your mind as well.” She smiles softly and motions toward a seat for him before walking around a counter and lighting some incense and candles. “I know what I tell you is difficult to accept, especially with your depth of study on our history, but when the other group arrives, you will be able to see for yourself what happened so long ago.”
Jeremy rolls his eyes slightly and begins rubbing his forehead as Cora walks to another chair. I keep forgetting how old she is, that must be why she isn’t making sense.
In anger at his thought, Cora
grabs the back of an oak chair with her hand and crushes it while fixing Jeremy with a fierce gaze. The utter terror her action engraves on his features forces a bellowing laughter to erupt from deep within her. It is a non-threatening heavy heartfelt laugh that she hasn’t had in many decades.
Through fitful attempts to regain her composure, Cora motions again for Jeremy to sit on a soft cushioned chair across from a small sofa.
“I am sorry for laughing at your expense, but I must also thank you.” She smiles, shaking her head. “I haven’t had such a release in a very long time. I will give you this warning, however; your thoughts will be more insulting to me if you try to hide them. Yes, you do keep forgetting how old I am but NO, I am not mixed up, confused, or forgetful in the slightest. The problem with your not understanding me is on your end, I can assure you.”
“Then perhaps you can explain it in more detail for me? I have seen old recordings of the past, and neither they nor the books or articles ever mention special powers other than explaining how and why rumors about them began. I have done more than just some brief homework to familiarize myself with you; I am a history buff and have extensively researched the past.”
“Your current understanding of what happened so long ago and your known expertise on the subject is why I chose you among all the others to do this interview. As I mentioned, you have researched only the history that is currently available, that which has been allowed public access up until this point. Tonight, you will be recording the true history of The Shattering Event and everything that has occurred since. The history you have researched up to this point has been censored.”
“No, that’s not possible, we have free records; there are penalties for document tampering.”
“There are penalties for it now, but there were none in place when I and others like myself scoured archives to remove mention of psychic abilities.”
