Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest

by Johnny B. Truant

  “But why, Maurice?” he asked. “Why did Balestro give me that ability at all? What did he want from me? The angels never came back. Timken and Claude took that to mean that vampires had done their job, that no news from angels was good news. But I don’t buy it. I think that whatever they wanted from us — from the whole world, maybe — isn’t finished.”

  Maurice shrugged. “I don’t know. Which is to say that you don’t know, and that your deductive powers, no matter how creatively you’ve personified them —” He put his palm on his own narrow chest. “— aren’t sufficient for anything beyond a guess.”

  Reginald looked down at his big stomach, which was easily as big inside his own head as it was in life. It was unfair, the way even his subconscious mind insisted on beating him up.

  “So what do we do?” he asked.

  “You mean, what do you do?”

  “Sure.”

  “You keep on. You keep building the puzzle.”

  Reginald looked out across the vast, endless floor. “But it’s almost finished.”

  “Then you finish it.”

  “Then what?”

  “You mean, what do you do next?” Maurice asked.

  Reginald nodded.

  “By which I mean, what do we do next?”

  Reginald nodded again.

  “I have no idea, fatass,” he said.

  Reginald looked at the huge cardboard puzzle piece in his hand, representing yet another datum to slot into the puzzle. He didn’t precisely know what to do, but he realized as he looked at it that he did know what to do next. He would read the piece, and he’d see what fate had in store, and then he’d do it, because apparently there was no other way.

  Reginald dropped the piece into the puzzle. He felt another bit of realization dawn. It was almost complete. It was almost there.

  “Maurice,” he said.

  Maurice looked up.

  “You’re not entirely me, are you? I mean, the present part of you. The part that isn’t your stash of memories.”

  Maurice looked thoughtful. “Well, I don’t know. Is a puzzle the sum of all of its pieces? Or is there something above them that transcends all of the little parts?”

  “Is that a metaphysical question?” Reginald asked. But Maurice just smiled.

  Reginald looked down at his metaphorical feet and saw two more metaphorical puzzle pieces. Now that the codex was mostly assembled, their position was obvious. He didn’t have to think about where they went, and so he watched as they floated up and zipped into place, not crossing the space in between here and there so much as appearing where they belonged. Then the whole puzzle seemed to shimmer and shine, and Reginald felt his knowledge of it (so far, anyway) transform into an intimate familiarity with it. It was like the point in learning a language where you stopped translating words and simply started thinking in the new tongue.

  And as Reginald felt himself become fluent in the vampire codex, he felt as if he were flying. All of the pieces in the larger puzzle — still metaphorical, but now outside of himself, in the bigger world — started to come together. He saw how it all fit. He began to see the truth.

  Vampires and humans.

  Humans and vampires.

  And he saw how it all ended — which was to say how it didn’t end, how it hung delicately from a point where the whole thing was stuck — a point past which even Reginald, with his insider’s knowledge, couldn’t see.

  He awoke in the shielded car, feeling hot and uncomfortable. Nikki had been driving before they’d parked in the thicket, and she was still asleep beside him in the driver’s seat. He reached over and turned the key, starting the engine. Then he turned on the air conditioning, amused as if for the first time that a vampire could care about the temperature — that a cold being could be bothered by heat. But reality, more than ever, was not what it had once seemed to be.

  Nikki, startled by the sound of the engine, stirred. She blinked, stretched, and then looked over at Reginald.

  “I know how to end it,” he said.

  Nikki blinked again, seemingly trying to process his words. “You do?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But we’re going to need a little bit of help.”

  CAR

  THE SCREEN WHERE THE WINDSHIELD would be on a normal, non-dayproofed car flickered. They’d turned the screens off — on all of the car’s faux windows — because leaving them on while they slept made them all feel like they were out in the open. Now only the windshield was active, showing them nothing and then what looked like the inside of a hotel room. Then it was nothing again.

  “Come on, Claire,” Reginald mumbled, as if in prayer.

  Claire, in the back seat, yawned. She focused, and the windshield flickered. Then they saw the room again in all its glory, steady as anything.

  “Got it?” Reginald said, turning to look at Claire.

  “I had it just fine from the beginning,” she said. “I’m just tired, is all. I’m used to a vampire sleep schedule. What time is it? Like 3PM?”

  Reginald didn’t answer, and instead turned back to the screen. “So now what?” he said.

  “Pretend it’s a window,” said Claire.

  Reginald looked again at the room in front of him. It was bizarre. The clarity was perfect, just like the projection of the road outside would normally have been. It looked like they were looking through a car’s windshield, but the car in question had somehow plowed into a Holiday Inn.

  “Where is he?”

  “I’d guess the bed is behind us,” said Claire.

  Reginald turned around as if expecting to see the other half of the hotel room in the rear window. But instead he saw nothing, because the rest of the screens were off.

  “Yell,” Claire suggested.

  So Reginald did. He felt stupid yelling in a car filled with four people, but he did it anyway. Shortly afterward, there was a noise from offscreen, then the sound of footsteps. The steps had a confused rhythm, as if their owner didn’t know what was going on. Which was accurate.

  “Go to the computer!” Reginald yelled.

  The footsteps became louder. Then the view changed and Reginald found himself looking at the entirely-too-large face of Charles Barkley.

  “Jesus, trim your nose hair,” said Nikki.

  “Reginald?” said Charles, looking confused.

  “And your ear hair,” Nikki added.

  Charles tapped the screen. The view bounced, then was still. “How are you doing this?” he said.

  “It’s not important. The important thing is that…”

  The image bounced again as Charles flicked the screen of his laptop back in New York. The feeling was disorienting. Before, it had felt like they’d crashed into a hotel room. Now it felt like they’d crashed into a vibrating hotel room.

  “I didn’t call you,” said Charles, messing with his keyboard. “What is this, Skype?” He peered closer at the screen, which to everyone in the car made it look like he was peering at their feet because the camera was up higher, and he wasn’t looking into it.

  “Better than Skype,” said Claire.

  Charles kept flicking the screen. “Where are you?”

  “We’re in a car. Where we are isn’t important.”

  “And you’ve got a wireless signal?”

  “Who cares? It doesn’t matter.”

  “How did you get out of the building? Claude was furious.”

  “Again, not important. Look. I need you to get Walker.”

  “Why?”

  Brian leaned forward between the seats, his massive shoulders actually pushing the seats apart. In a loud monotone, more statement than question, he blurted, “OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU SUCH A DOUCHEBAG.” Then he leaned back.

  “Why do you want Walker?”

  “Because he’s so charming,” said Nikki.

  “Because we need his help,” said Reginald.

  But as soon as he’d said it, he realized how stupid this idea was. Sure, Walker would know where to find Paul Isis
because it was his job to know. But Walker knew Paul as the blood farm humane treatment officer, not as a member of the Underground, which was how Nikki knew him. Might Reginald’s inquiry get Paul in trouble? Paul was human, allowed to live free because his work with the blood farms made for good PR, like having a dog sit on the board of a company that tested cosmetics on animals. But Paul had taken a big risk by supporting the Vampire Underground, and if Walker put two and two together now, Reginald might well be signing his death warrant.

  He shook the thought aside. There was no other way. Paul was the only one who could make the contact they needed, and going through Walker was the only way to contact Paul. They’d been unable to reach him so far, but the grateful slave would forever be reachable by the man with the whip.

  “Why should Walker help you?” said Charles.

  “Why don’t you let him decide?” Reginald retorted.

  “I’m not your slave,” said Charles, putting his hand somewhere above the camera. “You want Walker? Fine. Go barge into Walker’s room.” The view started to tilt downward. Reginald saw the laptop’s keyboard approach the camera, then shouted for Charles to wait.

  The view returned as Charles re-opened the computer.

  “Charles, please,” said Reginald. “We can’t get to his screen. His computer is closed. His phone is either not with him or is off. We need you to get him for us.”

  “Why should I help you?” said Charles.

  “Oh come on, Charles,” said Brian from the backseat. “For once in your life, don’t be a cliche and a cockface.”

  Charles rolled his eyes. Then he vanished, and a few minutes later they saw Walker’s perfect teeth. The rest of his face came with them. He stood beside Charles, both vampires looking down at the screen, side by side.

  Charles gestured at the screen. “Well, there they are,” he said to Walker. “Have at it.”

  Walker instantly became Walker. He totally ignored the strangeness of the incident, the strangeness of Charles’s summons, the way they’d all parted in New York, and the fact that the new homicidal president would almost certainly be on a rampage. Instead he said, “Hey Nikki. Show me your tits.”

  Nikki rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously,” he said. His voice sounded almost sad.

  “Todd,” said Reginald, “we need your help to…”

  “Are you guys in a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you…?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “If you’re in a car, you can show me your tits. Nobody’s going to see.”

  “Gross!” said Claire. And again, Reginald remembered Claire as he’d first met her, wondering if he’d stunted her growth by being in her life, like a corpulent cigarette habit.

  “This is stupid,” said Charles. He turned to Walker. “Claude is looking for them. We should tell him that they’re…”

  Brian leaned forward again, pushing the seats apart with his hugeness. “OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU SUCH A DOUCHEBAG,” he speak-shouted.

  Charles ignored Brian and kept speaking to Walker. “Seriously, Claude will shit a brick if he…”

  “Charles,” said Reginald, barging in and cutting him off, “what has Claude been doing?”

  “Why should we tell you?”

  “Look,” said Reginald. “Claude killed Timken. You know that, right?”

  “The humans killed Timken,” said Walker, suddenly serious.

  “No. Claude did it. I watched him do it. Lafontaine had released him. He came to us. Claude asked how he was. He said he was fine. Then Claude twisted his head off, knocked out Lafontaine’s man, and ordered the humans at the farms shot.”

  “Bullshit.” It was Walker, suddenly stripped of his jocularity.

  “Not bullshit. Claude wanted the presidency from the beginning. The Annihilists want a vampire planet. Timken came close, but not close enough. There were still too many humans out there for Claude, and the way Timken handled things wasn’t efficient enough throughout the entire war. I was in the Antarctic station. I saw how his V-Crews operated. I promise you both: Timken was an evil son of a bitch, but Claude makes Timken look like Santa. Jesus, Walker, don’t be a punk for once in your life. Open your eyes. Surely you’ve seen how he is?”

  Walker shook his head. “Bullshit.”

  Reginald realized that he shouldn’t have taken the tangent when it had opened. Now he’d gotten Walker defensive — and Reginald had never, ever known Walker to admit being wrong. Walker didn’t “get” civility; he’d never understood that there were other people in the world and that he wasn’t the only one. He had a very selective memory and felt the need to twist reality so that it agreed with the way he acted. If humans took over and reestablished order and Walker somehow survived, he’d suddenly decide that he’d been turned against his will. But the most frightening thing of all was that it wouldn’t be a lie; inside of Walker’s own mind, he’d believe it to be true.

  Now that Reginald had raised Walker’s defenses, what were the chances he’d help them contact Paul Isis, who might be able to reach Lafontaine? It wasn’t something they could afford to trifle with. If anyone had his finger on the trigger right now, it was Walter Lafontaine. And if he pulled that trigger, then everyone would pay.

  “Look,” Reginald told him. “It doesn’t matter. I need you to put us in touch with someone.”

  “Why?” Reginald noticed without surprise that Walker hadn’t led with “who.”

  Reginald sighed, then decided to change tacks. “Because I think we can stop all of this.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Charles demanded.

  Reginald locked eyes with Walker, ignoring Charles. Walker was the man whose help he needed. He couldn’t feel his emotions. He was too far away. If Reginald went inside himself, he’d be able to access all of Walker’s blood memories, of course, but that wouldn’t help him right here and now.

  “Hey Todd,” he said. “How are things outside?”

  “Rough but holding,” he said.

  “How much longer do you think you can hold out at USVC?”

  “We’re fine,” said Charles.

  But Reginald wasn’t interested in Charles’s opinion. Again he stared at Walker. “What do you think, Todd?”

  Walker looked down. He seemed tired, as if he just wanted it all to go away. If they were under siege by the humans from the outside and under siege by Claude from the inside (for any number of imagined infractions; Claude seemed to have broken, and Reginald guessed that he’d strike at anyone who crossed him these days), then they would be worn thin indeed.

  When Walker looked back up, Reginald saw that it was all true. Walker had been a jackass when they’d worked together; then he’d become a murderer; then he’d become a bloodthirsty social climber. Over and over and over, when he’d heard Walker updates in the press over the years, Reginald had wished that Nikki had just let Maurice kill him on the day of his vampire birth. But she hadn’t, and now he was in their way — and simultaneously their only reluctant hope.

  “It’s bad, Reggie,” said Walker, his voice uncharacteristically low. “But I’m sure as hell not going to help you and make it worse.”

  “Worse how?”

  “By pissing off Claude. We’re stuck here with him, and for now, there’s no way out. Ophelia has been giving us battlefield reports. Whenever they send troops in, the humans descend on them with that black plague shit. It makes them impossible to touch. They blew a kind of dirty bomb just after you and Claude came back, and it killed a lot of the guards outside the building. We’ve heard the same thing from other cities, but it’s hard to say because they’ve done something to our communications. I don’t suppose you’ve checked the VNN feed today?”

  Reginald turned to Claire. She shook her head side to side, but her hooded eyes conveyed the message perfectly well: she wasn’t saying “no” meaning that she hadn’t seen the feed. She was saying “no” to indicate that she’d seen it (or absorbed it, or plucked it from
the air) just fine… and that there was something wrong with it.

  Walker saw Claire’s head shake and nodded at her. “Right. It’s in and out. Mostly out. We don’t know what’s happening in Geneva or anywhere else, although we did manage to receive a message from your buddy Karl Stromm in Europe, who says they’re bunkered in like we are. But it looks like the humans might have blown other bombs in other places. And there’s something else. Rumor says that…”

  Charles shot him a look. “That’s bullshit,” he said to Walker.

  Walker shook Charles off and continued. “Some people on Fangbook — when you can access Fangbook, I mean — are saying that the humans are drinking it. The plague shit, I mean. Vampires are afraid to feed on wild humans.”

  Nikki turned to Reginald. “Jesus,” she said.

  “It’s a lie,” said Charles. “It would kill them if they drank it.”

  “It doesn’t kill them when it’s on their skin,” said Brian from behind.

  Reginald looked back at Walker. “Look. I’ve got to talk to Lafontaine.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” said Walker.

  “I think Paul Isis can contact him for us.”

  “Us?” said Charles.

  Walker was shaking his head. “Why would Paul be able to contact him?”

  Reginald looked at Nikki. Nikki didn’t want to shake her head, but her eyes told him not to say why.

  “I just think he can. He’s human, after all.”

  “Oh, and all humans know each other?” said Charles.

  “Just… do you know where he is?”

  Walker shrugged. “Well, communications are down,” he said. But it wasn’t a categorical denial. Reginald saw a hole opening in the fence.

  “But you know how to contact him,” said Reginald. “You do, don’t you?”

  “I really don’t understand why Paul would…”

  “Just… do you know how to find him or not?”

  “He has a cell. We had to contact him a lot while he was out on farm visits. But that guy is such a little prick. He’s…”

  “Call him.”

  “I don’t see what good that would…”