Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  “You wanted to know about Arcadia, Mere,” I say as I wander over to the narrow desk and search for something to write on. “This is your chance.”

  “Huh. True enough, I guess.” She rubs her hands across her arms as if she is catching a chill. “Okay, out with it, Mere,” she sighs, talking herself into something. “Ah, shit. This is too weird, but what other explanation is there? I mean, I'm sure there's a rational explanation, but what does rational even mean, really? And then there's Clarke's Law, right? The whole magic is just science we don't understand argument.”

  Having found a piece of paper and a pen, I return to the bed and start making a list.

  She interrupts her stream of consciousness thinking. “What are you doing?”

  “I'm making a shopping list.”

  “Why?”

  “We need a few things.” I point at her robe. “Unless you want to go around wearing that.”

  “No.” She is flustered for a moment, her hands touching the robe. “No, I don't. Silas, you're not answering my question.”

  I raise my eyes to her face. “You haven't asked one yet.”

  “What are you?”

  “I was born a Dardanoi, in a place that was once called Troas, which later became Anatolia and is now part of Turkey. Later, I became an Arcadian.”

  “What's an Arcadian?” she asks.

  I offer her a smile. “What do you think?”

  “I think ‘kyuuketsuki' means ‘vampire,' and I also think you're not answering my question.”

  “I'm not using the words you want me to use, but I am answering your questions.” I say. “You have to ask better questions.”

  She makes a face and fidgets. I know what she wants to know, and I'm not making it easy for her. Why? Because what she thinks she knows isn't true, anyway.

  “Look,” I say, “a vampire is a creature out of folklore. Stoker made his career out of sensationalizing what is a bit of propaganda that had its roots several hundred years earlier. The old stories were just a way to scare children and keep the locals malleable. It's all true inasmuch as it functions as an effective deterrent.”

  “But that doesn't explain what I saw.”

  I shrug. “Can you explain everything you see, Mere?”

  “No,” she says, “but you're just side-stepping my question. You and I both know what I saw, and you know damn well that's not normal.” She levers a finger at me. “And don't give me that But what is normal? bullshit.”

  “Look, you know this as well as I: every story has a kernel of truth to it, doesn't it? All our folklore is based around an effort to explain something, right? You start with a key truth—something you are willing to believe is absolutely swear-to-God true—and then layers and layers of embellishments and other nonsense get piled on top, until no one can really remember what the original kernel was. Or whether it was really true, in an objective sense.”

  “If I come over there and punch you in the face, I think we can both agree there's some objective truth to the fact that it'll hurt.”

  I smile. “Do you want me to say that I'm a vampire, Mere?” I spread my arms. “I'm a vampire. Do you feel better? Safer?”

  “No,” she snaps, “because you're just saying it to placate me.”

  “It could also be true.”

  “But what if I don't believe in vampires?”

  “That makes me a liar, then.” I remember something Talus said to me on the boat. “You wouldn't be the first to think so of me.” I write one more item down before I offer her the piece of paper.

  “What is this?”

  “A shopping list,” I tell her again.

  When it becomes clear that I'm not going to get up and bring it to her, Mere gets out of the chair and takes the list from me. She stands—legs slightly apart, body square to me—as she reads the list. “A loofa?” She looks up and notices my expression. “What?”

  I shake my head and look away. She's made her decision already, even if she hasn't mentally accepted it. Her body language has given her away. “A loofa is one of nature's best exfoliators,” I say.

  “Why? Oh—” She wrinkles her nose. “Never mind. What am I going to do for clothes? And cash?”

  When I stand up, we're close to one another, and we both pause for a second, gauging each other. “I have money,” I say, spoiling the moment. I cast about for my coat and spot it on the floor of the shallow closet. I was going to offer it to her, but the back is a gnarled mess of melted fibers and bits of my skin. “Stick with the robe,” I say. “Be eccentric until you can find some tourist crap.”

  “Spoken like a man who has done this before,” she says.

  A fragment of memory floats through my head. Yellow lights along a river. A two-spired cathedral with a rounded hump of flying buttresses. Gargoyle skyline. I'm wearing less than the robe Mere's wearing now. “Once or twice,” I admit.

  “What if I don't come back?” she asks. “What is stopping me from running to the police?”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  She nods. “It's Kyodo Kujira, isn't it? Those pellets. Whoever is behind this is gunning for Arcadia, aren't they?”

  “We can talk about it when you get back.”

  She laughs. “Of course. What better incentive could there be for me to not run screaming to the police?”

  “I can't think of one,” I reply.

  The truth is: I need her help, and it'll be easier if she's already decided to stay for her own reasons. I need someone I can trust, even if it is only inasmuch as sharing convergent short-term goals.

  Arcadia has been dying slowly for centuries now. As the planet becomes more and more toxic, we inch ever closer to extinction. Whoever is manufacturing this chemical is trying to accelerate the process, and with Arcadia gone, there will be no stewards left.

  That sounds like the sort of story Mere might be interested in.

  * * *

  I follow her, of course, even though I know she'll come back. I want to know if anyone notices her, eccentric style of clothing aside. Have we lost Secutores? Is there anyone else?

  In the old days, we held to the Rule of Rome—kill everyone; leave nothing behind—but in the last few hundred years, as a general policy “salting the earth” has become less viable. It was easier to be invisible; to hide in the shadows and prey upon their fear of the dark. They welcomed any excuse to look away.

  But we got lazy; we forgot our mission. We convinced ourselves that we didn't need to know, and like a field untended and unwatched, weeds grew. After several generations, they became strong and entrenched. Like clover with thousands of runners beneath the surface, binding everything together. Choking the life out of the native grasses.

  It is easy to remain unseen when I follow Mere. I know her mannerisms: the way she tucks her hair behind her left ear when she stops at a street corner and looks both ways; how she makes tiny popping motions with her lips when she is reading and thinking; her quick, distance-devouring stride; she plays chicken with anyone walking in the opposite direction, unconsciously—oblivious, even—waiting for them to side-step first. Without her knowing, we fall into the same routine we had two years ago.

  She was an up-and-coming investigative reporter for one of the network affiliates in Boston. Too brash for an anchor job, she preferred the deep research, investigative exposé—building a story, chasing down witnesses, and packaging it all together in five-minute segments that would be doled out over successive nights in the heart of the prime time news slot. The New York and Los Angeles markets were already sniffing around, and she was on the shit-list of more than one lobbyist group in D.C. Meredith Vanderhaven was going places; it was just a matter of time. Organized crime and double-speaking politicos in the Boston area could not wait for her to move on.

  It didn't matter if she was chasing the money trail of city-wide construction contracts gone horribly over-budget, or the social media scandals of city government candidates who didn't understand the first rule of texti
ng sexually explicit pictures, or the byzantine backroom dealings of the fulsomely corrupt city government, she dug into it all with the same tenacity. But Big Ag could turn her head quicker than anything else, and it had been her story about the cattle conditions at Hachette Falls that had caught Arcadia's attention.

  A family-owned cattle ranch, Hachette Falls was two generations past its sell-date. The current operator was half again as unconcerned about the quality of the meat coming out of the Hachette slaughterhouse as his father had been, and as a result, the stockyards were beyond inhumane. Downer cows and electric prods were the order of the day, and the workers were masters at spotting the signs of brain damage and virulent distress in the herd. They knew how to shock the sluggish cows right into the chute.

  Mere got a video camera on site and her clandestine video footage was story enough, but what made her story pop was the arrogant indifference of Hachette senior management, especially in light of government subsidies the company was receiving for being a test farm for a new GMO-based additive in the feed. The product was made by a miniscule biotech that was getting inordinate handouts from the same government program—collusion of the most scandalous sort. The biotech company disappeared within days of Mere's footage finding its way onto the Internet. No mere trick there.

  It was as if, having seen the presence of the Devil, Mere was now a true believer, a crusading convert, who would face any hardship in her relentless quest to hunt Old Scratch down, to purge his influence off the surface of the planet. Hachette's BSE haven was almost forgotten in her zeal to track the influence. The money was easy—right out of D.C.—what was harder was finding out who pulled strings to get the cash flowing the way it had been. And who had the power to make a company of twelve suddenly disappear.

  Her search led her to Beering Foods, a subsidiary of a subsidiary who made patties from the ground chuck that came out of Hachette Falls. They were part of a resurgence on a community level to buy and eat local, though the community was clearly oblivious to the corporate chain behind Beering. They were equally oblivious—for different reasons—to Beering's black market channel of organ trafficking. This channel was run by a bunch of Chechens who had been schooled in modern international business by “retired” officers of the pre-Glasnost Russian secret police.

  A fun bunch and Mere, having reported from the floor of a recent Republican National Convention, was a little too fearless for her own good. Arcadia was watching Mere's progress, and it was my job to steer her toward a data cache that would crack Beering open and force the FDA—who had been trying their best to look away as they counted their payoff—to step in and shut the company down. A shutdown that would have included the backroom organ-legging. The Chechens would have rolled up their shop and gone somewhere else—which was victory enough for the time being—but Mere wanted more—she wanted to expose the whole operation.

  Illytch Dmitri Kirkov had a different idea. One that involved a private conversation about some of the more exotic interrogation techniques he had learned during the First Chechen War.

  I shouldn't have gotten involved. We had risked exposure in retrieving the corporate data and leading her to it. My surveillance of Mere had been ongoing. Twenty-four seven. We had an interest in her. We couldn't walk away. We had made an investment. She was a valuable asset. She could be useful, properly pointed at our enemies. If she died, we would have no voice in the media. This is how I justified taking the Chechen's knife from him, how I convinced myself that dragging him away and leaving Mere—unconscious and bleeding from the cut in her throat—was an acceptable risk for myself—for Arcadia.

  I did what I did for Mother's sake. What son wouldn't have done the same?

  * * *

  “You gave me a lot of money,” she explains when she returns, laden with bags. “I bought some clothes for both of us. I… I guessed your size.”

  “I'm sure they'll be fine.” I'm sitting by the window, a cup of tea on the table next to me. “There's more water,” I point out, “if you want tea. I could make coffee too.” Pretending I don't know that her first stop was a coffee shop where she ordered an enormous beverage that was more sugar and milk than espresso.

  “I'm good,” she says. She sorts through the clothes, laying them into several piles. She points to a white bag adorned with the logo of a local chain. “Toiletries and the like are in there,” she says, “including your loofa.”

  “Thank you.” I stand and walk over to the bag, inspecting its contents. “I guess I'll go clean up.”

  She makes a face. “I'll go first.” She snatches the bag out of my hand and flees to the bathroom. The door shuts firmly behind her.

  I can't say I blame her. I need to scrub off a lot of dead skin.

  For me, she's picked out a few nondescript t-shirts, a pair of dark jeans, and a thin wool sweater. The color of the last isn't one I would have chosen for myself. Magenta, perhaps, maybe vermillion—it all depends on how upscale the brand marketing is meant to be. I run my fingers across the wool as I try to recall the last time a woman bought me clothes. Before World War II? Paris? No, somewhere else.

  It's been a while.

  In her rush, she didn't take her own new wardrobe into the bathroom. I carefully strip off all the tags and pile them neatly on a chair I set before the door. I return to my seat by the window and listen to the world rush by while she showers.

  My hearing is getting better. I can hear her humming as she stands beneath the steaming water.

  Memory gets slippery after a few centuries. There's too much to remember, and no good way to retain it all. After a millennium, you learn to not worry about what you've forgotten, but that doesn't mean the sense of loss is any less frustrating.

  What was her name? I can see the café where we met, down the street from the theater. On Posthumalaan, yes, in Rotterdam. She had loved the movies. What had we seen at that theater? I remember her face. She had cut her hair short, a flagrant dismissal of her family's authority, and she was wildly ecstatic about her emancipation. Valentien. Yes, that was it. She let me call her Val.

  She had bought me a suit.

  I had been wearing it the night the German Blitz had started.

  * * *

  “What are you thinking about?” Mere is wearing a gray t-shirt and loose shorts—the sort of casual wear that would look like undergarments on men, but women manage to turn them into accidentally alluring lounge wear. Her hair is still wet, and she's worrying sections of it with a towel as she wanders across the room.

  “Someone I knew once,” I say. The sun has gone down, and I've opened the curtains again. The sky is nearly black, and the clouds are outlined with a faint roseate glow.

  “A woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Dust. Crushed beneath a ton of rubble when her apartment building collapsed.

  “I don't know,” I answer honestly.

  “Are they going to find us?” She changes the topic, sensing there is nothing more of the previous subject that I wish to share.

  “Eventually.”

  She winds her hair up into the towel and wanders over to look out the window. “What are we going to do?” she asks.

  I let my gaze flick up to the towering white cone perched atop her head.

  “After my hair dries,” she amends.

  “I suppose I can take my turn now.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You're going to make me wait, aren't you?”

  “Not unless you want to scrub my back.”

  “Silas,” she sighs, “eeeew. Not a turn-on. Really.”

  “I'm out of practice.”

  “Stick with being enigmatic and confounding. It works better for you.” She jerks her head toward the bathroom. “Go. Exfoliate. And then you had better start talking when you come out.”

  * * *

  She is curled up on the bed when I finish with my shower. Her towel had slipped off her head, and her red hair curls around her face. I brush some of
it back, my fingers lightly caressing her cheek.

  I suddenly remember the way the morning sun used to stream in through the porthole-shaped windows in Val's bedroom. She would accuse me of purposefully leaving the curtains open. I was always apologetic, but continued to forget.

  I liked watching the sun creep across her face.

  Mere's breathing is slow and restful. Whatever dreams she had fallen through on the way to the deep trough of sleep were not troubling her.

  When did I start caring for her? Was it when I entered the warehouse and took Kirkov's knife from him? Has Mother known since then? Had I become expendable? Was that why I had been chosen for Talus's mission? Mother doesn't love me anymore, and maybe that means it is time for me to finally die, after all these years. This is how it ends, like Eliot says. ‘Not with a bang, but with a whimper.' I am one of his Hollow Men. Who will miss me when I'm gone?

  “No one,” I whisper.

  They're all dead. Everyone I ever cared about. Mother took care of the pain. She always did. I would fall into her embrace, and she would take away the memories that hurt the most. That was why we went back to her; that was why we loved her as we did. She gave us life, and she helped us forget.

  After Val, I had sworn that I was done with consorting with mortals.

  I lie down next to Mere, as close as I can without actually touching her. When I inhale through my nose, I can smell her scent. Mere's right; I don't breathe when I sleep. None of us do. I close my eyes, but I don't let myself rest. I'm not going to fade. Not yet.

  Maybe this is just a reaction to my exile from Arcadia, a sudden panic that my life—my three millennia plus, quasi-immortal existence—is coming to an end. Maybe I'm not ready to let this world consume me. Not having died, I don't quite know how to do it.

  Or maybe I'm just an old soldier and it's been too long since I've had something worth dying for.