“I’m hanging up, Todd.”
“Hey,” said Walker’s smooth voice. “Remember Noel?” She could’ve been hot if she’d ever done herself up right.”
“I remember Noel,” said Reginald. “I found her hand under the copier and set it next to the rest of her body after you killed her, so that she could be buried intact.”
“I didn’t kill Noel,” said Walker.
“Scott, then.”
“Okay, I killed Scott. But I was a kid with a machine gun that first night. Wasn’t it like that when you were newly turned?”
“What do you want, Todd?”
“I want you to come to New York, same as Chuckie does. We’ll take in a show.” This was a joke. Most of New York was deserted even at night because the vampire population was so small and hence was safer in a cluster. The city had proven impossible to clear, even forty years later, because it was simply too large and the human bands in the old neighborhoods kept moving around. So the US Vampire Council had walled off the southern tip of Manhattan and fortified the USVC building in the financial district, and it had let the rest of the city go feral. Broadway had gone with it. The only “shows” still playing in the vampire section of New York were sex shows, of which Walker probably partook often.
“Fuck you.”
“Come on. We’ll make it worth your while.”
“I have all the money I’ll ever need,” Reginald said. It was true, too. After the vampire government had gotten the presses going and re-minted world currency to replace the scattered currencies of the human world, the system had stabilized surprisingly fast, and Mogul Reginald had cornered more than his share.
“Hey,” said Walker, chuckling. “How is Nikki?”
Reginald was taken off guard. He didn’t reply.
“You’re married, right? How is she?”
“Fine.”
“Just to be clear, I meant ‘How IS she.’ IS. You know what I’m saying.” He chuckled with sexual innuendo.
Reginald prepared to hang up.
“She was so hot. I’ll bet she’s really wild, too. And totally fucking tight. You know what I mean by…”
“Tell Charles I said I fucked his mother,” said Reginald, taking the phone away from his cheek.
“And with her being in the Underground?” Walker continued, his voice now sounding canned with the phone no longer against Reginald’s ear. He made panting noises. “Seriously, revolutionary chicks are so hot. I can just imagine Nikki firing a gun. Just a regular human gun. You know, so the recoil makes her tits bounce.”
Reginald stopped with his finger hovering above the END button. He put the phone back to his ear.
“What was that?”
“Oh, come on. I heard you never miss anything. I’ll bet you heard me unbuckle my pants a minute ago so I could beat off thinking about your wife.”
Reginald felt his fangs extend. He was suddenly sure he could lift a house. “I’ll kill you,” he said.
“Good. I’m in New York. Come here and maybe we won’t send CPC to arrest Nikki as a subversive.”
“They don’t even do anything,” said Reginald. “They’re just lobbyists and paper-pushers.”
“All I know is that they’re on the restricted roster,” said Walker. “‘Report your neighbors.’ ‘Anarchists are a threat to us all.’ You know the slogans.”
“Sounds like Claude Toussant’s work,” said Reginald. He hadn’t heard anything about the “Report your neighbors” initiative for over thirty years, but Claude had a million zingers at the ready. One recent poster and TV propaganda campaign showed a young human boy with a sinister scowl on his face, holding a stake. The caption read: He’ll grow up to kill your family. Will you let him?
“And that’s another reason to come,” said Walker, twisting the knife. “To catch up with family. Claude will be so happy to see you.”
There were a million things Reginald could say to that, but he held himself back. Just as with Charles, Walker would only be egged on by anything else he said. The die was cast. If they knew about Nikki’s involvement in the Underground, then he had to go. He wouldn’t make it worse by opening his chest to stabbings.
“When and where?” said Reginald.
And Walker, grinning all the way through the phone line, told him.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
NIKKI WENT WITH HIM. BRIAN went with him too. The three of them were like a posse.
Reginald didn’t strictly need Nikki or Brian, but he didn’t like the idea of going to see Walker without moral support. Besides, he had plenty of money to blow on the trip. So they took a shielded jet — private, because with only ten million people in the world and with half of them being slaves to the other half, there was little demand for regular commercial air traffic between any two cities. There was a daily flight from New York to Los Angeles and another from New York to Geneva (with a stopover in Paris), but the other settlements (Chicago, Berlin, the Far East Council’s home city of Beijing — an abandoned city if ever there was one) were serviced once a week or less.
They landed at the bones of JFK airport near three A.M, then got into a blackout limo for the drive into the city. They traveled only on patrolled roads, but Reginald couldn’t help but wonder about the wildlands beyond. New York had been home to almost as many people in its day than existed in the entire world now, and a lot of those people had run to the suburbs during the purge. CPC and other agencies claimed that they tracked humans on their satellites, but the world — even just the area outside of (and, honestly, inside of) New York’s boroughs — was a big place. There were only a handful of vampire cities, and that left a lot of open space for human men and women to roam.
And grow.
And plan.
And reproduce.
And innovate.
As they drove, Reginald stared at the screen where the window would have been decades ago, watching as the camera showed him the city’s skyline approaching in green-tinted black. He would ordinarily retract the shields for nighttime driving, but Timken had sent the limo — and, being a government vehicle, it was armored and didn’t open up. So Reginald took in the view in the enclosed space as best he could, watching both the city and the deserted sprawls behind them. He wondered again what might be brewing where vampire eyes weren’t watching. Reginald had spent some time tooling through the wildlands out of curiosity, and he’d seen a lot of video footage and documentaries of what the wildlands had become. All but the largest cities were now overgrown with plant life, looking like something out of a post-apocalyptic storybook — which, when you got right down to it, was exactly what they were.
The documentaries said there were isolated bands of wild humans who lived in those thickets, but Reginald had always questioned the numbers they quoted. Back before he’d begun to disbelieve the codex, he spent inordinate amounts of time trying to work out the mechanics of a human uprising. He filled notebooks with handwritten calculations out of habit, despite the fact that he could do the figuring in his head. He began to believe that there were many more humans hiding than the Vampire Nation believed — that there had to be in order for the predictions to make sense. But as he worked and panicked and tried to raise his futile, laughable alarm, the days stretched into weeks. Weeks stretched into years. Years stretched into decades. And as more time passed, it all began to seem like bullshit: the codex, the uprising, even his own math on the matter.
But now, as he looked through the windows of the limo, he realized that he had been wrong about those numbers — but only because his timing had been off. He’d thought the uprising prediction had been bogus because decades had passed, but now he saw that it had to take this long. Time needed to pass, so that humanity would be able to mature enough to strike.
Forty years.
Two human generations.
That was enough time for them to forget what they needed to forget, and turn what they needed to remember into legend. Enough time for them to learn what they needed to learn, for
hatred to brew and percolate in their very blood, for them to multiply and adapt. Food in the wilds was plentiful. The soil was good, and there was a lot of wildlife. The humans had been dislocated, but they had evolved brains capable of adjusting. Their old technology, in all those abandoned cities and homes, was just lying around, waiting to be picked up. They’d have had no problem finding food and clean water. And what would they do, with those abundant supplies and nothing but time and hate on their hands? They’d grow. They’d swell. They’d train. They’d innovate. Humanity could be lazy and repugnant, but it had sharpened for forty long years under the honing edge of the vampire grindstone.
The official estimates pegged the human population at five million — half in captivity and half in the wildlands, living as slow-witted savages. But Reginald’s numbers, now that he adjusted them in the limo, pointed to many more than that. He could see the unfolding of the new human societies in his mind as surely as he could predict the falling of dominoes. They’d form clusters. They’d establish hierarchy and nominate leaders. They’d have children and they’d form religions. They’d tell the old stories, and they’d find hate and fury. They’d find a reason to believe. And belief, Reginald knew, could be a powerful and dangerous thing.
The car crossed into the city, then wound through a well-lit guarded corridor carved through New York’s destruction and chaos. Beyond the fences and walls, Reginald, Nikki, and Brian could see burnt-out abandoned buildings, the rusted wrecks of cars, and the detritus of old lives. Here and there, Reginald saw a human skeleton, long ago picked over. Once or twice he saw a wild human in the shadows: a quick flash of eyes in the headlights, like those of an alley cat.
The corridor took them into lower Manhattan, into the area where the old Trade Center used to be. The driver approached the USVC building and pulled into an underground garage. Then they got out of the limo and as they walked, the driver (who’d transitioned into the role of an armed escort) explained that the USVC building had been partially converted into apartments, and that they’d be staying in two of them as special guests. There were stores and restaurants and entertainment in the surrounding area (and behind the sector walls) if they wanted to explore, and the entire area was accessible 24 hours a day thanks to the orbiting sun blocker.
Nikki chuckled humorlessly when he mentioned the sun blocker, but the driver didn’t seem to understand. Nikki didn’t explain. She simply said that they’d accept the guest apartments in the building and that regardless of the darkness outside, they wouldn’t venture out while the sun was on this side of the planet. The driver gave them a condescending little smile and said to suit themselves. His smirk, apparently unknowing of the Geneva disaster, seemed to say, Country vamps.
They settled into the guest apartments (two side by side and adjoining — one for Reginald and Nikki and one for Brian) in the way they’d settle into a hotel, rested for a few hours, then took the elevator down to the main US Vampire Council floor just after dawn.
The elevator opened into a wide lobby. Nikki looked up first, then visibly flinched as she saw that the room was an atrium, complete with an unobstructed glass ceiling. Somewhere above, past the sun blocker’s enormous edges, the morning sun was up. The atrium, open to the sky and dimly lit by electric lights, remained in shadow. Still, the nonchalance — the unmitigated arrogance — of having an uncovered atrium in a key vampire building bothered Reginald all the way down to his core. Once upon the time, this had been a human building, and the humans had wanted the sun to shine in. Leaving it in place when the building had changed ownership felt to Reginald like giving God the finger.
There was no way to skirt the atrium without feeling like fools, so they simply walked through its center, always looking up and moving quickly — at a “fast human” pace so as not to leave Reginald behind. Once they were past and in another hallway, Nikki exhaled. Brian clapped Reginald on the back and said that it was a good thing they were brothers, because if they weren’t, Brian would have made his own pace and left Reginald to flop along on his own. He said it like a joke, but Reginald suspected he was being honest. Brian had a history of looking out for himself first and foremost, and the fact that Reginald warranted a slightly slower jog thorough a perfectly safe atrium (the same as Brian would have done for Talia and his kids) was strangely touching.
A guard met them halfway down the next hallway. He was dressed in a black uniform, with a Boom Stick on one hip and a human pistol on the other. He was also holding a clipboard, which he ran a finger down as they approached.
“Mr. Baskin,” said the guard, looking at the clipboard. Then he looked up and met Reginald’s eyes.
“Yes.”
The guard looked at Brian and Nikki. Then he looked again at Brian, taking in his massiveness.
“There is no mention of guests, sir,” said the guard.
“Well, I brought guests.”
“It’s not on the roster, sir.”
Reginald put his hand on Nikki’s shoulder, then spoke to the guard. “This is my wife, Nicole,” he said. “And that’s my brother, Brian.”
There were two chrome trash cans opposite the guard. Each stood three feet tall and had a domed top with a swinging door on the front. When the guard looked at Brian, Brian walked over to the cans, picked one of them up in his massive paws, and crushed it between his palms like an accordion. Then he tucked in the edges and pressed the compacted trash can into what looked like a giant ball of aluminum foil. He did it casually, in the way most people chew gum.
“Nice to meet you,” said Brian, catching the guard’s eye.
The guard kept his eyes mostly on Brian, then flicked them toward Reginald. Probably subconsciously, his right hand moved toward the Boom Stick on his hip. But the idea of using it was a joke; if Brian wanted to fight the guard, he’d be able to tie him in a double knot before the man could so much as brush the handle of his weapon.
“I’m sorry,” said the guard, swallowing. “I can’t just let you in.”
Brian reached forward. The guard flinched, but Brian was just pulling a black sharpie out of the guard’s pocket. He uncapped it.
“Got a riddle for you,” said Brian. He walked over to the other trash can, then drew two wide and stupid eyes on the thing above the trap door in its front. The trash can, with a door for a mouth, looked shocked. Brian pointed at it. “What is this?”
The guard looked at Nikki and Reginald, then at Brian. “Trash can?”
Brian dropped the Sharpie into his pocket, then crushed what used to be the first trash can into a tighter ball. When he’d made it more dense than should have been possible, he tossed it through the trap door of the remaining can.
“A cannibal,” he said.
The guard swallowed.
“Please let us in,” Nikki purred, batting her eyelashes.
Brian reached forward, and again the guard flinched. He placed the Sharpie back in the guard’s pocket, then tapped him on the head with his huge hand the way he’d tap a kid to give him an atta-boy.
“Please,” he echoed in his less-sexy voice.
“S-stay right here,” said the guard. He blurred through a set of doors further down the hallway, then returned a moment later and waved them forward. He wrote down Brian and Nikki’s full names, then told them to enjoy their stay at the Ramada, which wasn’t where they were.
Once inside what turned out to be yet another hallway, Reginald, Nikki, and Brian were greeted by Charles Barkley, who tried to shake all of their hands. Nobody reciprocated, so he asked if they wanted coffee. Then he asked if they wanted one blood creamer or two in their coffees despite the fact that all three of them had declined.
Reginald gave Charles an appraising look. “Timken told you to be nice to us, didn’t he?” he said.
“Hel-lo, Charles,” Brian cooed in a sing-song voice before Charles could answer. He was wearing a smile as wide as a dinner plate. Brian had been the one member of Logan’s Council that Charles had been unable to intimidate. Instead
of cowering, Brian had flipped the tables on his opponent, dedicating most of his time on Council to making Charles look stupid.
“I’m just glad you agreed to help us,” said Charles, the sycophantic smile falling from his lips.
“Well, threatening us will do that.”
“Hel-lo Charles,” Brian repeated.
“Did Timken threaten you if you didn’t kiss our asses?” Reginald asked, still wondering at Charles’s servility. Then he thought of something. “Wait… do you even report to Timken these days? Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Do you work for the esteemed Mr. Walker now?”
The idea to poke Charles with Walker had just occurred to him, but the shot clearly hit its mark. When Timken had run for the vampire presidency, Charles had been his opponent and Walker had been Charles’s running mate. But in the intervening years, because Walker was better at greasing palms and licking balls than Charles, Walker had moved above Charles. Walker was now the logical choice to replace Timken whenever Timken decided to step down, and Charles would have to pedal hard just to secure himself a job as the Secretary of Something Stupid. It had to be humiliating.
“Right this way,” said Charles, avoiding Reginald’s gaze. And they began walking.
“Hel-loooo Charles,” Brian purred. He clapped a brotherly hand on Charles’s back, and the impact of the gesture slammed Charles into the edge of an approaching doorway. He burst through it in an explosion of metal and plaster dust, fell to the floor covered in gypsum, and then kept walking a few paces ahead of Brian as if nothing had happened.
As they walked further, they passed a sign. It read: American Vampire Council meeting room. And there was an arrow pointing straight ahead.
But instead of walking into a dirt-floored arena or a chamber of monster horrors, they entered a conference room like any Reginald had seen on the human news a lifetime ago. He hadn’t been to a Council meeting since the one where they’d almost been murdered and he’d only sporadically checked in on Council since the war — since more or less giving up on solving the rest of the codex. He’d known the Vampire Nation had been trending toward more and more conservative ways of operating, but the conference room’s simplicity still caught him by surprise. Gone were elaborate thrones, stadium seating, and sunlight rooms meant for executions. Gone were the chains, the torturers, the sniper windows, and the long formal robes. In its place was banality, and President Nicholas Timken.
Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest Page 5
