by Michael Bray
“No. I am under strict orders that Mr. Nicu is not to be disturbed.”
Garrett opened his mouth to speak when the door opened smoothly.
“Resoui, let the gentleman through,” Nicu commanded.
Resoui complied at once and stepped aside. Garrett was now face to face with Alex Nicu. He was pale skinned and slender. He had a natural charm and elegance about him, even if up close he was much shorter than he had first appeared.
“Come in, Mr. Garrett,” Nicu said, motioning to the office. Garrett tried not to think too much about how Nicu knew his name, or that he was about to lock himself in the room with some kind of…whatever Nicu was. The consensus was that they were cannibals, but Garrett was starting to think they were something else, something you only see in films or read about in books. The word beginning with ‘V’ and one he couldn’t quite bring himself to say even though his pale-skinned host bore all the right hallmarks if folklore and Hollywood were to be believed. Too late to turn back, Garrett entered the office and Nicu closed the door softly behind him.
II
Back in the store, the rest of the shoppers stood and fussed around Donald, helping him to his seat and giving him small sips of water. Only Bernard wasn’t involved. He had watched Garrett slip inside the door to Nicu’s office and smiled to himself.
“Got you, you son of a bitch.”
The Impossible Ultimatum
Nicu’s office was cold and smelled faintly of polish and leather. Nicu sat behind his imitation oak desk, watching Garrett, an amused semi-smile on his thin lips.
“Please, sit.”
Garrett complied, and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was doing. He looked around the office, trying to gauge some sense of who Nicu was, but it was as pale and unreadable as the man himself. Eggshell colored walls, indistinct green carpet, no photographs, or any other personal features. It was sterile and made Garrett immensely uncomfortable.
“I must apologize for Resoui. My son is impatient to say the least.”
Garrett was thrown off guard by how polite and articulate Nicu was. There was definite upper class sophistication about him. He nodded without responding, still trying to work out exactly who Alex Nicu was. It wasn’t easy, as there wasn’t a lot to go on. He would have put him somewhere in his mid to late thirties, and it was an age Nicu would have been able to pull off with ease if not for his eyes, which were a deep, almost opaque brown and looked to be filled with knowledge and a confidence beyond anything Garrett could ever hope to comprehend. Even without such an obvious name, Garrett would have guessed Nicu was Romany. He had the long hooked nose and high cheekbones typical of the race. Nicu smiled, and Garrett looked away and tried to make his scrutiny less obvious.
“I understand you must have many questions.”
“I do.”
“I must confess I find it curious the other people in the store respect you, for the most part, and yet… you come here in secret.”
“Yes.”
Garrett felt his skin grow cold as he watched Nicu hang on to every word that was said. It was as if Garrett was a unique creature Nicu had never seen before, and he appeared both amused and at the same time, almost overcome with a sense of childlike wonder.
“I assume you have come here to bargain for your collective freedom?”
“I thought that was the reason,” Garrett said as he lowered his gaze. “In truth, I don’t really know why I came here.”
“Isn’t it obvious? The people out there look to you for guidance. In such a situation, I’m sure you felt any action, however futile, was better than no action at all.” Nicu smiled, and now he didn’t look like a wonder-filled child. He looked like a lion toying with its prey.
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“May I ask you a question, Mr. Garrett?”
Garrett nodded. He didn’t like the way Nicu was watching him. He leaned forward slightly and bore his ancient gaze right into Garrett’s soul. He imagined he could feel Nicu probing around his head in search of the truth.
“Are you afraid?” Nicu asked, the left side of his mouth turned up into a cruel smile.
He considered lying, but knew that somehow, Nicu would know.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Yes, I’m afraid.”
“And yet you come to me alone to discuss the possibility of release.” Nicu leaned back and smiled, breaking the mesmerizing spell of observation. “Curious. Curious indeed.”
“Look, I’m no hero. I don’t crave the praise of these people. They’re strangers I don’t even know. All I want is to get home to my family.”
“So you come to plead for your own freedom?”
“Yes— No. Look, is there no way we can resolve this situation without people dying?”
“People die all the time, Mr. Garrett. It’s the way life is. And how lucky we are that they do, for if not, the world would be a despicable, vastly overpopulated place.”
“Look, forgive me if I don’t quite follow what’s happening here. Frankly, I don’t care what you are but—”
“What we are, Mr. Garrett?” Nicu said with a questioning smile.
Garrett didn’t like that smile. There was something sinister and predatory about it.
“I mean…I don’t know,” he mumbled, lowering his eyes to the imitation wood of Nicu’s desk.
“I think you know well enough what we are, Mr. Garrett, even if those you keep company with do not.”
“So tell me. Confirm it,” Garrett fired back, risking looking directly into those bottomless eyes.
“Ah, but that would be too easy. I would like to hear it from you.”
“Why?”
“Because you fascinate me for reasons I don’t yet understand. Now, please, indulge me.”
Garrett hesitated, hovering on the fine line between bravery and terror. He looked Nicu in the eye and said the word that had been plaguing him for some time.
“Vampires. I think you and the rest of the people working here are vampires.”
It didn’t sound as ridiculous as he’d expected now that it was out in the open. In fact, if anything, it made everything feel more real. He waited for a confession, for his slender host across the desk to plead his innocence or admit his guilt. Neither of those things happened. Instead, Nicu sat back in his chair, folded his hands neatly over his chest, and smiled.
Lee / Accusations
Donald’s recovery was going well. Helen flustered and flapped, the concern in her frightened face doing nothing to ease Donald’s guilty conscience which was screaming at him for being such a heartless son of a bitch.
“Helen, for Christ’s sake, just relax and stop fussing. I feel fine now.”
“You didn’t look fine. I thought you were having a heart attack,” she said, her voice wavering.
“You won’t get rid of me that easy. Please, just relax and go grab a bite to eat or something, okay?”
She wrung her hands nervously, her cheek twitching as she struggled to figure out what to do.
“I’m sorry, I just…I couldn't cope without you, that’s all.”
The ever present guilt bit him a little harder, and he had to remind himself it was all for the greater good.
“Look, Honey, please. I’m fine. Would you mind grabbing me a coffee?” He pointed to the large self-serve Starbucks machine nestled between the men’s and women’s restrooms.
“Yes, yes of course. You just wait there. Don’t try to move now.”
“Honey, please. I’m fine. Do you need any change for the machine?”
“No, no I have some. You just relax and try not to get too overexcited,” she said, her face pale.
“I promise, I’ll stay right here. Please, I really could go for that coffee right now.”
“Of course, I’ll be right back,” she replied before reluctantly making her way towards the humming vending machine.
As soon as she was gone, Donald turned his attention back to the door to the manager’s office which he
could just make out from his vantage point at the bottom of the store. Garrett had been gone for a while now, and Donald had made the subtle but definite shift from mild concern to outright worry. Lee walked over and sat on the floor beside Donald.
“He’s still not back yet, eh old man?” he said, taking a slow sip of his beer.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on,” Lee said with a laugh. “The heart attack thing was good but not that good.”
Donald struggled to find something else to say, but Lee cut him off with a warm grin.
“Relax, fella. I know why he did it.”
Donald decided there was no sense in lying, not after the deceit he had already pulled on his wife, and nodded. “He’s been in there for a long time. Maybe too long.”
“I wouldn’t worry yet. I get the feeling these arseholes need us to keep calm. They can’t afford a mass panic.”
“So you’re saying we should just sit tight?”
“What else can we do, old man? Take a look around, will ya?”
Donald did. Everywhere he looked there were small pockets of frightened people. The only current exception was Bernard, who if anything seemed to be growing more and more confident. He was thankfully out of earshot, but Donald could see by his gestures and the intense way he was speaking that he was either completely unafraid or worryingly crazy. Perhaps he was a little of both. Donald counted seventeen in all that were now listening to him, over half of everyone in the store if you didn’t count the broken shells of people walking endlessly around the aisles. Lee continued with a smile.
“These pricks know as things stand they have us under control. We’re nothin’ to them right now but a bunch of frightened lab rats just waiting for them to finish us off. Course, the other problem is him.”
Lee nodded towards Bernard.
“You mark my words now, that wanker might yet cause trouble.”
“You don’t have to convince me, son. He hasn’t shut that mouth of his since you bloodied him up.”
“Arsehole deserved it. I’d do it again too.”
“I wonder what he could be talking to those people about now.”
“I bet I can guess,” sneered Lee, before finishing his drink.
“Wrath of god, end of days, beginning of the fuckin’ end. Usual shite that comes out of the mouths of people like him.”
“People seem to be paying attention.”
“Aye. I’m not surprised.”
Donald turned towards Lee. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, fella, he seems to be the only person in here who has a plan. And even though he’s the biggest wanker in the building, he could be a problem because, for all his faults, those people are willing to listen to him if they think it might give ‘em a chance at getting out of here alive.”
“I’m not so convinced. They must surely see he’s babbling. Talking nonsense. Hell, I can tell from all the way over here just by the way his lips are moving.”
Donald said it more to try to convince himself, as he was afraid to consider Lee might be right. The brawny Irishman only grinned.
“Trust me, fella. When things get down to it— and have no doubts about it, they will— people will want to have somebody they can turn to, and if it’s a choice between a man with a plan and the rest of us…well you can guess the rest.”
Donald could only muster a nod, and the two sat in somber silence, stewing over the implications of Bernard leading some kind of fear led uprising. Helen returned and handed Donald his coffee. He sipped from the paper cup and winced, then set it down on the floor.
“Damn, that’s hot. Thanks, Honey.”
Helen looked mistrustfully at Lee and then back to Donald. “I’m going to see if I can find us some food. Will you be okay for a while on your own?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? I can stay if you prefer?”
Donald smiled and took his wife’s hands in his own and looked her in the eye.
“Helen, please listen to me. I’m fine. I feel fine. I'm okay. What happened before may have just been a flutter, something stress related. You don’t need to worry.”
“I’m sorry for fussing,” she said, just about managing a weak smile.
“It shows you still love me after all these years if nothing else,” he replied, giving her hands a gentle, reassuring squeeze.
“Will we be okay, Donald?”
She was searching his eyes, looking for him to say the words she so desperately wanted to hear, but he couldn’t face lying to her again.
“I… I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “We can only hope.”
Her cheek trembled slightly, and she blinked away the tears which he knew from their years together were coming no matter how hard she tried to hold them back.
“I’ll go see about that food,” she said absently, then pulled her hands free and walked away.
Donald watched her go and realized telling the truth made him feel just as bad as lying to her. He promised himself he would make it up to her if— when— they made it to safety. However, that all depended on Garrett and his conversation with the manager. Donald turned his attention back to the door at the end of the market.
“Why did you do that?” Lee asked, taking a battered pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“Do what?”
“Your old lady.” He took out a cigarette and offered the pack to Donald, who waved it away. “Why didn’t you just tell her it would be okay?”
“I couldn’t face lying to her, not again.”
“She didn’t know the heart attack was a stunt, did she?” Lee said as he lit the cigarette.
“No. She would never have agreed to it otherwise. Please don’t tell her.”
Lee inhaled then blew twin plumes of smoke out of his nostrils. “Hey, it’s none of my business, fella. I was just curious.”
“I’m not a bad husband,” Donald said, much more defensively than he intended.
“I never said you were. Truth be known I kinda see your reasons for keeping it from her. Relax, old man, before you give yourself a real dicky ticker.”
Lee smiled as he smoked, and although he was still tense, Donald was able to relax a little. They watched as one of the customers— the ones who were mentally broken and walking the store like drones— rounded the corner of the aisle and made her way into the next one. Her eyes were glassy and vacant, and her tongue poked out of her open mouth. It looked shriveled and dry as she shuffled past on her never-ending shopping trip. Her presence seemed to leave behind a heavy, depressing atmosphere and reminded the two men how dire the situation was. Donald took a careful sip of coffee, and then glanced at Lee.
“So what’s your story?” he asked pleasantly.
“No story, fella. Wrong place wrong time just like everyone else.”
“I mean why were you here, tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we were in here trying the place out as we only live a few blocks away. Ray was doing a few errands for his wife. What about you? What brought you to this store, on this night with the rest of us?”
Lee looked at Donald, and the old man saw there was anger in his eyes and perhaps guilt. There was an aggression in Lee, and remembering he was prying into the private life of a virtual stranger, Donald wished he had never asked. He was about to change the subject to something less intrusive when Lee spoke softly.
“My kid. My kid brought me here.”
Donald realized it wasn’t anger in Lee’s eyes, but hurt.
“What happened?”
“That’s a long story, fella. A really, long story.”
“Way I see it, time is all we have now.”
“I ain’t in the habit of talkin’ about stuff like this to strangers.”
“Maybe it might help? I’m not going to judge you. It seems fate brought us all together for a reason. Maybe the reason was for you to get whatever’s troubling you off your chest.”
“You’re a strange one, ain’t ya, old man?” Lee said with a half-smile.
“I just believe in giving everyone a fair crack of the whip. You don’t have to talk to me, son. I’m just saying that if you do, I’m willing to listen to you.”
Lee smiled, a regretful expression more than one of happiness. “All right,” he said as he took another drag on his cigarette. “I’ll tell you.”
Donald waited. Patient and attentive as Lee organized his thoughts.
“So my kid needs special attention. Around the clock care. Some kind of birth defect or somethin’. Anyways, long and short of it is, she can’t walk or do any of the stuff the rest of us take for granted. She…”
He flashed an awkward, pained grin, his throat bobbing as he tried to find the words.
“She…she shits herself. It’s not her fault. She can’t control it, and she cries when it happens. Really screams the house down… I think that’s the worst. When you look her in the eye, you can see she understands and can’t do anything about it. Let me tell ya’ that cuts me up inside. It just makes me feel so fuckin’ helpless. Anyways, things were going okay, right? I mean the three of us, me, my girl, and my kid moved over here from Ireland a few years ago now. We believed all that fresh start, new life shite. But things didn’t go as smooth as we hoped, right? But we were getting by. Then last year I lost my job. It was only a shitty bar job, and I hated it, but I did it because I needed to make ends meet. That’s what people do, right? They do what they have to. But see, one night my boss was on one of his power trips. He was in my ear all night, just winding me up, trying to get a rise out of me, showing off to his pals about how big and powerful he was, and how much power he had over his staff.”
Lee looked at Donald, a haunted smile forming on his lips.
“What it is, fella is that I have a short fuse. Nothin’, I’m proud of, but it’s just how I am. He kept pushing and pushing. And I tried holding it all together, and even though I wanted to bite his face off, I was doin’ okay. I was coping. I was tryin’ to think of my girl and my kid, about how important it was to keep my job for their sake. And then he pushed too far. I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘you are almost as dumb as that retarded kid of yours,’ and that’s all it took. I snapped, and I ended up putting him in the hospital for six weeks. I thought that would be it, and I’d be brought up on charges and deported back to Ireland. But the funny thing is he never did anything about it. I don’t know if he was scared of what I would do to him, or if he just knew it had been his fault, but for whatever reason, that was the end of it. Or maybe he knew the best way to get back at me was to fire me and watch me suffer. So here I am now without a job. We have rent. Back in Ireland, we had free healthcare. It ain’t like that here. We have medical bills to pay for the kid. We have to put food on the table. I tried, fella. I tried to get another job, but my rep worked against me. Nobody would touch me and so…”
