Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  “That’s anasty — ass toy you got there, Jules,” Malice X said. “Lemme take that off yo‘ hands, boy-that’sdefinitely for children over the age of three.”

  He squinched one eye shut and sighted along the barrel, aiming at Jules’s crotch. “Shee-oot!You could hurt somebody with this! There oughta be arecall on these!” He grinned and wadded up the crossbow gun’s metal and plastic armature like a soggy paper plate. Then he tossed it over his shoulder into a trash heap at the back of the alley.

  Jules braced himself for an attack. But Malice X merely crossed his arms and smiled. He made no movement in Jules’s direction at all.

  Why isn’t he comin‘ at me?

  As if to answer Jules’s unspoken question, Malice X leaned languidly against the wall and said, “Man, this is more fun than front-row seats at cage-match wrassling.” But the sweat on his forehead betrayed the strain caused by mind-controlling his dozens of drug-addicted slaves.

  Jules took the risk of turning his back on his nemesis-no matter how good Doodlebug was, his friend couldn’t hold out alone against an onrushing tide of zombies forever. He waded into the fray, a buffalo charging into a tightly bunched flock of sheep. Only these sheep had knives, tire irons, and busted planks with bent nails protruding from the ends. One woman in a pink dressing gown pounded his flabby side with a can of baby formula.

  Jules found himself experiencing a savage, angry exhilaration. His assaults didn’t have anywhere near the fluidity and grace of Doodlebug’s twirling kicks, but he had mass in his favor. He used his elbows like a lesser man would use a two-by-four. His fists were the size of whole frozen chickens. All the frustration, hurt, and humiliation of the past month powered those fists like rocket fuel. He hadn’t cut loose like this since his glory days in the early 1940s. But for every wino or saggy-shorts teenager he flattened, three more surged forward.

  The sidewalk outside the alley began to resemble a set from a Sam Peckinpah war movie-bleeding bodies stacked like sandbags. But each “sandbag” still writhed with baleful life, and, short of a broken neck, eventually surged back into the attacking horde. Individually, none of the assailants was much of a threat. But cumulatively, their clumsy blows, knife thrusts, and attempts to stake him were wearing Jules down.

  “D.B.!” Jules shouted as he body-slammed the baby-formula-wielding woman against the brick wall for the third time. “Any bright ideas?”

  “Maneuver Double-Eagle!” Doodlebug shouted back in the midst of breaking a man’s arm. “Cover me while I change, and then I’ll cover you!”

  Maneuver Double-Eagle? What the fuck is that pantyhose-wearin‘ fruitcake talkin’ about?Jules watched, dumbfounded, as his friend launched into a gold-medal-winning backflip, landed on the roof of the limousine, and immediately stripped off his top and bra. Jules’s view of his friend’s augmented pulchritude was a brief one, for Doodlebug quickly transformed into the largest bat Jules had ever seen.

  Double-Eagle, huh?Jules glanced at the narrow gap between the hanging net and the heads of his attackers.Oh, I get it-!

  Taking advantage of Jules’s distraction, three zombies dashed into the alleyway, seeking to grab Doodlebug before he could take to the air. But Jules grabbed the biggest one by the legs and swung him like a club, bouncing one zombie off the Cadillac’s chrome grille and knocking the other into a woman who was trying to brain Jules with pieces of a baby stroller. Doodle-Bat vigorously flapped his six-foot wingspan, launching himself from the top of the limo.

  Now it was Jules’s turn. There was no wayhe was going to do a backflip onto the Cadillac’s roof-instead, he picked up a rusted car bumper, slung it across his shoulders like a yoke, put his head down low, and charged. Four hundred and fifty pounds of vampire plus fifty pounds of steel made for a formidable battering ram. Jules knocked down six attackers and threw a dozen more off-balance. Then he retreated to the front of the Cadillac.

  Jules didn’t bother stripping off his hood, cloak, or clothing; he wouldn’t be flying under his own power, and the bunched-up fabric would give Doodlebug something to grab hold of. Instead, he concentrated on transforming, double time, to the smallest bat he could. The painful melting/shrinking/stretching sensations were almost old hatLittle, littler, littlest-!

  Seconds later he was swimming in a sea of clothing. Strong talons gripped his hood, and Jules felt himself leaving the cobblestones. His boots and pants remained behind as the two bats struggled into the air, levitated by a single set of wings.

  Fingers grasped at his hanging cloak, pulling the two of them back down. Suddenly, Jules heard broken, staticky words in his head-shirt, grab hold of shirt-so he disentangled himself from his black cloak and sank his talons into his white shirt, just before Doodlebug let go of the cloak. Then he climbed up the shirt to Doodlebug’s tiny red-haired legs and grabbed hold of them with his own feet. His friend flapped toward the narrow window of open sky between the net’s edge and a sea of grasping hands.

  The world was upside down. Zombies clung to a ceiling of cobblestones and jumped down at him, only to snap back as though held fast by bungee cords. Those words in his head-they wereDoodlebug’s? He could read Doodlebug’s mind because they were both bats-? No time for puzzles-open sky was coming up fast. There’d be plenty of time later to ask Doodlebug about his latest trick At the last possible second, figures skulking on the rooftops along the alley unfurled a second net. Its mesh web tauntingly closed the gap just as Doodlebug reached it. His wing tips caught momentarily in the thick nylon strands. Jules thought he’d be dropped for sure. But with powerful wing beats and amazing control, Doodlebug was able to extricate himself without dropping his passenger. Even so, the tiny door on their cage had just been flung shut in their faces. Jules’s heart sank. They were trapped. And Cowboy Hat had shaken off his garlic poisoning; he looked ready to eat stainless steel and shit Ginsu knives.

  Jules heard the staticky voice in his head again.Malice X… key- This time, pictures accompanied the barely distinct words. He saw what Doodlebug wanted him to do. But it seemed impossible-no one could transform as fast as he was being asked to. Then another image invaded his brain. The image of a miniature train racing steadily around its track. It calmed him, centered him. As they approached Malice X, Jules knew he could do what he had to.

  He concentrated on an empty bathtub. He pictured his hands turning on the spigots. Liquid Jules flowed out the faucet. He grabbed the spigots and twisted them to full blast.

  Mass flowed back to him in an overwhelming rush. Once again, he was 450 pounds of fighting-mad vampire. A Jules-bomb, dropped from fifteen feet up. Plunging toward his nemesis, empowered by gravity and velocity to squash him with thousands of pounds of crushing force. Malice X stared upward, frozen by the apparition of a falling, naked Jules. They locked eyes. Jules, dead on target, smiled ruthlessly.

  And then Malice X, lizard-quick, stepped out of the way.

  (Cripes, is this gonna hurt-!)

  Jules belly flopped onto the cobblestones. The impact was equivalent to a Chevy Suburban and a city bus, both cruising at twenty miles per hour, smacking head-on. Unfortunately for Jules, he was the Chevy Suburban. Every puff of air was expelled from his lungs. Three ribs cracked on impact.

  He lay stunned for a few seconds. Then he sucked precious air into his chest, which felt full of broken glass, and struggled to get to his feet.Hurtin‘ in places I didn’t know existed-gotta get up or I’ll be dead for real… He made it to his hands and knees before incredibly powerful hands dug into his fat shoulders and, amazingly, lifted him into the air.

  “Man, I owe you-uh! — a wholeworld of hurt for what you done to Sonny and me,” Cowboy Hat said, grunting with exertion. “I’m gonna-uh! — stash you somewheres you won’t weasel away from, while I gets mytools ready.”

  His vision clouding with pain, Jules saw brown wings dive toward his assailant, but Malice X knocked Doodlebug’s bat-form aside before he could claw Cowboy Hat’s face. He heard the shadowy vampires on the roofs above him l
aughing. Warm drops of liquid struck his face; were they spitting at him? No-it had started raining again. Then his center of gravity shifted radically, grinding his broken ribs together. Cowboy Hat body-slammed him into the narrow gap between the limousine and the brick wall. The pain Jules experienced in transit was nothing compared to the pain of his landing.

  Blackness…

  When he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t sure whether he was awake or in the midst of a nightmare. His eardrums were stabbed with shrieks of approaching sirens. The hot-rodded V-8 in the limousine’s engine bay thrummed into life, vibrating the car’s flank roughly against his wounded side. The dozen zombies in the alleyway looked like they were emerging from comas. Some immediately fell to the ground and screamed as they experienced the extent of their injuries. Others ran or limped off into the night, scattered by the sirens like a pack of foraging rats startled by the sudden brightness of a flashlight.

  Jules felt a pair of hands grasp his shoulders and massage them in a friendly, almost brotherly way. “Hey, Jules?” Malice X’s breath blew hot and damp against the side of Jules’s face. “It’s been real, and it’s been fun. Heck, I hate to take a powder when things’re just gettin‘, y’know,intense an’ all. But it just ain’tsmart for a vampire to get hisself thrown in Central Lockup. And you an‘ me, we’resmart bloodsuckahs, huh? Assuming you don’t get sun-fried in some jail cell, this’ll let us stretch out our fun ’til the next boogie-down. The big one. Me, I can hardly wait.”

  The hands left his shoulders. A few seconds later Jules heard a door on the opposite side of the limousine open. “Oh, Jules? One last word to the wise. Or the not-so-wise. Get some pussy while you still can.”

  The door slammed. Jules felt the limousine lurch into gear. Spinning tires shot broken cobblestones into his face. The Cadillac’s black flank dragged him a dozen feet along the broken brick wall before finally releasing him. His legs folded under him like wet paper. Jules felt himself plunging into jagged darkness again. The limousine rocketed onto the street, jumping a curb and showering the fleeing ex-zombies with a hail of undercarriage sparks.

  But before he could retreat to comforting oblivion, Doodlebug was pulling him to his feet. “We need to get back to your car,” Doodlebug said, draping Jules’s arm over his shoulder. “How badly are you hurt?”

  Jules winced as he took his first stumbling step. “Ribs-busted, I think-”

  Doodlebug stared at him with wide, sorrowful eyes. “Jules, I amso sorry for dropping you and getting you hurt-”

  “No-was a good idea-” The sirens grew louder. The falling rain caught strobed reflections of flashing red lights from a few blocks downtown. “Help me-grab my hood and cloak, would ya? And the car keys-”

  Doodlebug scooped up the faded black garments and draped them around Jules. His own colorful ensemble had been scattered across two city blocks by the fleeing limousine. “The police are very close-can you walk any faster?”

  “I’ll,uh, do my damnedest, pal.”

  Melpomene Street looked like the end of the world. Or maybe the aftermath of the Zulu and Rex Carnival parades. The street was strewn with refuse of every kind, as half the neighborhood dropped their makeshift weapons and scattered for the refuge of apartments, bars, or the unlit depths of abandoned buildings. From the sound of the approaching sirens, at least half a dozen police cruisers were speeding up Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard from downtown. A police car had already screeched to a halt at the corner of Melpomene and Oretha Castle Haley, cutting off the escape route of a crowd of ex-zombies.

  Doodlebug dragged Jules toward Baronne Street. They stepped around the sprawled bodies of combatants too badly hurt to run any farther. Mothers, still dazed, looked frantically for their children. Teenagers pushed the wounded into the gutters in their rush to escape.

  “All this confusion should help us get away,” Doodlebug said hopefully.

  Jules grimaced as his ribs pinched organs never meant to be pinched. “Yeah-two naked white guys- ahh jeez-we’ll blend into this crowd real good.”

  They rounded the corner onto Baronne. Jules’s Lincoln was parked in the middle of the block. The battered gold car had never looked so beautiful to Jules before. “Guess you’re gonna hafta drive, buddy,” he groaned. “Lemme lie down on the backseat…”

  His friend tried to be gentle as he assisted Jules onto the back bench, but the process of squeezing his bulk through the narrow aperture was nearly as wrenching as getting smeared by the limousine along the alley wall. At least the engine started on the first try.Thank Ford for small favors, Jules thought as he stared at the car’s sagging head liner, fighting off unconsciousness.

  “How do I get out of here?” Doodlebug asked, his voice tight with tension. “Should I head for Claiborne Avenue?”

  “Not-Claiborne,” Jules gasped. The sirens were now so loud, they sounded like they were inside his skull. “Cops’ll be all over Claiborne. Go down to-St. Charles Avenue. Drive slow, normal-like. Wrap my cloak around you. Cops won’t think to stop a-white woman-drivin‘ on St. Charles-”

  “Left at the corner?”

  “Yeah-left…”

  Oblivion grabbed Jules tightly this time.

  The next time he opened his eyes, the car wasn’t moving anymore. He wasn’t in the car. Every part of him throbbed with pain; it was even worse than when he’d been boiled in holy water. Jules tried to figure out where he was. The light was dim. He seemed to be inside a building with a very high ceiling, close to a huge, shiny wall. Doodlebug’s shadow looked immense and grotesque against the pearly surface.

  “Where-where are we?” Jules croaked.

  He saw his friend’s worried face hover above him. “You’re awake? Good. We’re in a theater. I parked in a delivery alley behind Canal Street. After that battle we were in, the streets were swarming with police patrols; I thought we’d better lie low awhile before going back to the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “A theater… that’d be either the Joy or the Loews’ State Palace. Maybe the Saenger… cripes, I feel like hell…”

  “I tried being gentle when I pulled you out of the car and carried you in here. I hope I didn’t make your injuries worse-”

  “We’re right by Charity Hospital, aren’t we?”

  “I think so. That’s the big filthy art-deco building behind the government complex, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. That’s the one.” Jules took a quick inventory of his probable injuries. Broken or cracked ribs-three or four of them, for sure. Maybe a dislocated left shoulder. And if any of the ribs were busted clear off and were hopping around, possibly a perforated lung or kidney or something. “Wish I could check myself in there. I’m all busted up inside. Way more than a day or two of lying in my coffin can cure.” Jules felt his limbs begin to quiver. Then he was shaking all over. He sensed sweat rolling down his neck and sides. Was this what going into shock felt like? “Take me to Doc Landrieu. He’s a friend. My ex-boss. He’s helped me before. He could probably tape up my ribs, keep ‘em from grindin’. And maybe he could dope me up, too.”

  “Actually, I’ve got a better idea.” Doodlebug knelt down and stared directly into Jules’s eyes. “I’m going to hypnotize you. And then you’re going to heal yourself.”

  “You’re off yer rocker. You know as well as me that one vampire can’t hypnotize another.”

  “Normally, you’re right. But you’re on the edge of going into shock. Your natural, subconscious mental defenses against hypnotism have to be greatly weakened. You’ve already proven that whenever you’re able to achieve the proper level of concentration, you’re capable of higher-level vampiric metamorphoses and body control. What I’d like to try is to implant a posthypnotic trigger. One you can ‘pull’ whenever you need to achieve that heightened state of concentration.”

  The waves of nausea, sweating, and chills were becoming worse. “Whatever! Give it your best shot, and do it fast. ‘Cause if it doesn’t work, you’re gonna hafta drag my ass over to Doc Landrieu’s licke
ty-split.”

  “All right. Just hold still, and keep your gaze focused on mine.”

  “You got a pocket watch you gonna twirl?”

  “No. Just start counting backward from one hundred.”

  Jules fought to make the shaking in his limbs stop. “Hokay. Here goes. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, eh, ninety-six… ninety-uhh… ninety…”

  He was back in Maureen’s basement. He felt strong, as though he’d just swallowed an entire bottle of Doc Landrieu’s miracle pills. He sensed Doodlebug, invisible, floating above him, strengthening him even more. His mind was wonderfully, perfectly clear. The train set appeared around his feet, growing organically like a stop-motion fantasia from a kiddie movie. The twisting chalk line materialized, too, a luminous, beckoning pathway. He held his arms straight out from his shoulders, and two sets of coffee cups and saucers landed in his hands. The tiny locomotive puffed into life. Without his commanding them to, Jules’s feet set out along the path, moving with the speed and smoothness of ball bearings rolling along an oiled metal track. He hit all of his marks without altering his pace one iota, without even trying. It was easy. It was easier than anything he’d ever done.

  Jules blinked. Once, then three times in quick succession. He was back on the theater’s floor, still lying down. Was he all healed up? He still felt sweaty and nauseated. Hesitantly, he raised his arm and set his hand down on his ribs. He applied a tiny bit of pressure. The resulting shock wave of pain nearly made him double over.

  “Owww!You lousy rat-bastard liar! It didn’t work! I’m still as busted up as before!”

  “Well, of course you are. You haven’tdone anything yet. All we’ve accomplished so far is to implant the posthypnotic trigger. That part of it worked fine. My theory concerning your mental state was right on the mark.”