Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse

by Johnny B. Truant

  It was daytime.

  “I forgot,” said Nikki.

  “You forgot.”

  “Well, just listen to what’s going on out there!” she said.

  Reginald listened. He’d thought it was quiet save the explosion and crash, but as he concentrated he realized he could hear a sort of animal chattering, like vampires made when circling a kill. It was an ominous sound — the sound of approaching doom. He’d seen humans cower from it. For vampires sadistic enough to make the chattering noise in front of their prey, human cowering was just validation, so chatters were inevitably combined with laughter. Outside, Reginald could hear laughter, too.

  “You thought it was vampires,” he said.

  “What else would it be? That’s who we’re hiding from.”

  “According to Timken, who ‘forgave’ us, we’re not hiding at all,” said Reginald. He could hear the chattering outside, circling, coming closer.

  “Humans,” said Brian. His fangs were out. So were Talia’s. So were Maurice’s, when he walked in from the east wing, the direction from which the explosion had come from.

  “The Swedes are dead,” he said.

  Maurice said it like he was announcing the score of a sporting event, but Nikki and Talia’s hands went to their mouths. Reginald felt his undead heart sink. Bjorn, Gert, and Paul had been part of their little bunkered-in family for almost six months, ever since Karl had sent the Swedish refugees — vampires without allegiance, like the rest of them — to Maurice’s mansion to wait out the coming storm.

  “Dead?”

  “Ash. The explosion took out the fence and several windows at once. The humans left the stakes they used to kill them in their beds, almost as if to taunt whoever found them. They seem to have staked and retreated. They must have been afraid of who they might meet deeper in.” Maurice put a hand on his hollow chest, silently adding that their fear was justified.

  “Cowards,” said Brian, his menace growing deeper.

  Maurice looked back toward the east wing. “They’ve put the sun behind them,” he said. “Smart. Even if we wanted to risk running out and sticking to the shadows, we couldn’t get at them.”

  Beside the front door, one of the blackout shutters shook as something struck it. There was a sound of breaking glass, and a sliver fell to the floor from the other side of the shutter.

  “Stay away from the east-facing windows,” said Maurice. “The sun is still very low.”

  “Won’t the shutters protect us?” said Talia.

  “They’re just shutters,” said Maurice.

  They stood on the marble floor, listening. The chattering became a sort of mumbling, and there was more laughter. The voices moved around. Reginald listened hard, trying to catalogue all of the nuances of what he was hearing. One voice had a lilt to it. One had a guttural sound around the R’s. At least two were female. He listened, taking notes on a mental tally board.

  “I hear eleven of them,” he announced.

  “What if there are some who are being quiet?” said Nikki.

  Reginald shook his head. “I’m counting their footsteps.”

  “And I can hear them breathing,” said Brian. He said it with contempt, his mouth open and his fangs out like an animal. Breathing was a human thing. Technically they all did it too — but barely, and it wasn’t terribly necessary.

  “This is why you need familiars, Maurice,” said Talia. She’d mentioned it again and again in the past, urging Maurice to find some trustworthy humans to watch the grounds while the sun was up.

  “So that when they find out what Timken is up to, they can stake us in our sleep?” Maurice spat back.

  “Then use the humans we have here,” she said. “Like Nikki’s sister.”

  “My sister is not a soldier,” Nikki said, her eyebrows creased.

  “Not now, Talia,” said Brian.

  Maurice had his hands on his hips. “There are only eleven of them. They can’t hurt us.”

  But then they heard a new noise, this time coming from the west. Some of the humans had circled around in that direction a moment ago, and now Reginald could hear a popping, cracking sound.

  “Oh shit,” said Maurice.

  It was the sound of fire.

  Maurice’s wife Celeste blurred in, either having slept through the initial tumult or having run around the house, assessing. Soon after, Nikki’s sister Jackie jogged into the foyer and took Nikki by the arm. Jackie was an inch shorter than Nikki and had lighter hair, but otherwise the two might have been twins.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Fucking humans,” said Nikki.

  Reginald looked from Jackie to Nikki, who had her fangs bared, like Brian.

  “No offense,” Reginald added, because Nikki wasn’t going to add it.

  “Oh,” said Jackie, exhaling. “Should we go back to bed?” Jackie kept the same schedule as her sister, sleeping during the day and staying awake all night, making only one obligatory excursion into the sun each day to soak up some necessary Vitamin D. Most of the other humans — Claire, her mother, Brian’s human kids — did the same. When you lived inside a sun-tight mega-mansion with vampires, time of day didn’t matter much. Only Reginald’s mother kept to her usual pattern, but that was mostly so that she could complain that nobody paid attention to her.

  “Sure, you can go back to bed,” said Brian, “if you’re into burning alive.”

  “They set a fire?”

  Nikki nodded.

  “Can we call the fire department?” said Jackie.

  “Interestingly, yes,” said Maurice. “But ironically, the first thing the firemen will do when they show up is to pull us outside — so that we’ll be safe.”

  “We could hide in the house when they come,” said Talia. “Let Jackie meet them out front.”

  “With the people who are trying to kill us, you mean?” said Nikki, her animosity at Talia clearly visible. Nikki was the younger sister, but she was as protective of her human sister as a mother bear of her cubs, and this was the second time Talia had suggested throwing Jackie into danger.

  “And then when the arson squad shows up, they’d come in and find us anyway,” Maurice added.

  Reginald looked at his maker. “You’re so negative,” he said.

  The humans outside were beginning to taunt and shout. Reginald heard slurs he recognized from pop culture vampire movies and shows (eg: “fangers” from True Blood; humans were so damn unoriginal) and a few more general epithets like “cocksuckers” and “motherfuckers.” One man with a country-fried accent was yelling “faggots” and “niggers,” thus establishing that the group considered its hate endeavors to be more or less interchangeable.

  Jackie was at the shutters, trying to look out without letting the sun in. She shouted, “These are the good ones in here, you assholes!”

  “Jackie!” Nikki hissed.

  “These vampires are trying to help you! Go kill some of the bad ones!”

  “Jackie!”

  From outside, the loudmouth yelled, “Shut up your ass, faggot!”

  “That guy,” said Brian, “will need to die painfully.”

  Reginald could feel minutes bleeding away. The west end of the house was on fire. The east end was awash with sun. They couldn’t go outside. They couldn’t call the authorities. All of their vampire allies in the area, if they’d had any (which they didn’t) would be incapacitated. They had no local human allies. Their attackers were outside in the sun, beyond reach. The humans inside were too few — and of them, only Jackie would be worth anything in a fight. The people outside would be armed. Waiting was the wrong choice, but it was all they could do.

  “Bunker in the basement,” said a voice behind them. “Wait for night, then waste them.” It was Claire, leading her dazed mother by the hand.

  Reginald looked back. He didn’t like Claire’s casual use of the term “waste them,” but the girl had seen plenty of blood in her short life and would need to prepare to see much, much more in t
he coming months and years.

  “Even if they don’t come in after us, breaking through the floor and letting the sun shine below,” Reginald told her, “you and the other humans would suffocate in the smoke.”

  “Let us walk out. We’ll pretend you were holding us hostage. Like… keeping us as blood slaves or something.”

  “Show of hands from everyone who thinks that’s a good idea,” Reginald called across the foyer. No hands went up. Reginald shrugged at Claire.

  “They weren’t listening,” Claire said, rubbing the tip of a pink slipper against the marble floor.

  “Come out, you fucking coons!” yelled the hillbilly voice from outside.

  “I am not going to be done in by the cast of Hee-Haw,” Maurice grated. He marched away into the hallway behind them, furious.

  “Let’s run outside holding sheets of cardboard over our heads,” said Nikki.

  It wasn’t a serious suggestion, but Nikki didn’t crack a smile. Using the proverbial parasol for protection would buy them a bit of time, but Reginald had baked even in the shade during his first week as a vampire. Obstructions didn’t stop all solar radiation. Enough came through and bounced around to cook you wherever you stood. The youngest vampires in the group might make it into the shadows, but they’d be weak and vulnerable once exposed, and the humans would take them in minutes.

  Reginald moved to the unbroken north-facing window beside the front door and peered out, already feeling his eye warm up. The glass was coated with a UV protectant, but he still wouldn’t be able to look out for long.

  “Can you see them?”

  “A few of them. But they’re getting blurry.”

  “Because of fire haze? Did they light the front of the house too?” said Talia, alarmed.

  “Because my eye is melting,” said Reginald. He switched to his left eye so his right could heal. He could only see five of them. They had settled in and were standing in direct sunlight. Reginald wanted to rip them apart for their cruelty and complacency… if they weren’t in the sun and if he were able to catch them. He felt fairly sure that the man who’d been yelling out the wrong slurs was the short one among them, because he was the only one in a Dokken T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and a mullet haircut.

  Reginald jumped at the sound of a long, low rumbling, then staggered again as the second story of the house’s east wing seemed to explode. Returning to the peephole, Reginald was in time to watch as a silver Mercedes was briefly airborne. The flying car struck the five human men like lined-up bowling pins. Then Reginald heard a hoot echo down the staircase behind him, followed by Maurice’s voice yelling, “BULLSEYE!”

  Turning, Reginald almost laughed as he watched Maurice blur down from the second story and into the basement. But before he could, he heard an enormous popping sound, then another, and then another.

  Whatever was happening was happening in the east wing.

  “Let’s go!” Reginald yelled, and took off in that direction.

  Everyone ran. Reginald ran too, but he was immediately left with the humans. This seemed unfair, seeing as he’d been the one who’d tried to rally them.

  Jackie ran past Reginald, who was moving at top speed. She yelled back at him, saying, “Let’s go!”

  It wasn’t far. Reginald’s eyes had healed; he peered through the shutters from his new vantage point and saw the six remaining humans standing as the others had, eyes up and carefully watching for flying automobiles. Maurice had plenty of cars in the attached garage to throw, but the humans were too spread out, and they’d see them coming.

  The humans outside jerked with each loud popping sound, but the pops were harmless, like shots fired in the distance. Nothing was coming at them. After witnessing the flattening of their compatriots, they looked like they were willing to call it a draw and run, but they didn’t know which way to go.

  “What is that noise?” said Brian. It sounded like grenades.

  But Reginald had already figured it out.

  “It’s the foundation bolts,” he said.

  “What?”

  The entire east wing of the house began to move underfoot as Maurice, somewhere below, shoved the frame forward against the blocks that comprised the foundation. Reginald heard the house crack behind him, splitting open at the rear as the entire east wing pivoted ninety degrees. A warm draft came from their backs as sun spilled into the house, but the split was yards back, and they were well sheltered in the east dining room.

  Reginald was still watching the humans. They were starting to stir and panic, but they seemed unsure where to go. The house had been in front of them. Now, thanks to Maurice’s spontaneous architectural rearrangement, it had folded around them, with the far wing at their sides, now perpendicular to the rest of the house.

  Blocking the sun in the east, thereby putting the humans in the shade.

  “Get ‘em,” said Reginald.

  Nikki and Brian blew through the front wall as if it were the tape at the finish line of a race. Both were young enough that a few seconds of shade wouldn’t slow them down much, and a few seconds was all it took for the two vampires to blur out and grab all of the people on the lawn. Nikki gripped two of them by the arms. Brian slammed into the remaining four in a line, his arms open like a giant claw. Then they hauled the humans back into the house, ducking into a kind of anteroom beside the dining room where the walls were still intact.

  Brian didn’t hesitate. He ripped three of the humans’ heads from their shoulders as they tried to run, then bit into the fourth and drained him dry. The body that hit the ground was no more than a husk. Brian’s face was dripping with gore, and blood from arterial spray had coated the walls. Maurice arrived just in time to notice a huge glut of red that had splashed across an original Monet on the far wall and say, “Fuck.”

  The two remaining humans, watching, were battering against Nikki as she held their wrists. Both were men. Moreover, both seemed deeply offended that they’d been subdued by a woman. They were following the lead of their dead compatriot’s colorful and misguided epithets, calling Nikki many things that in one way or another related to her having a vagina. So she broke their wrists.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” yelled one of them.

  The other collapsed to the floor, gripping his forearm and marveling at the way his hand refused to stand erect. Nikki judged him to no longer be a threat and allowed him to lay down, where she kicked him.

  The other man was more vocal, beating on Nikki with his unbroken wrist, so she punched him in the teeth. Then he went down, crab-crawling backward wearing a mask of blood. He stopped when he met the wall, and once he’d settled, Maurice moved to his one side. Brian moved to the other.

  “Fucking vamps!” the man blurted, looking up. He spat at Maurice, judging him to be the lesser threat. A glob of red saliva struck Maurice’s pants.

  Maurice seemed disturbingly calm. He looked down at the quiet man, then the one who’d spat on him. “What did we do to you?” he said.

  “You fucking eat us!”

  “I’ve never eaten you,” said Maurice, still calm.

  “People don’t believe that… that fucking monsters are causing all of the killing!” the man gurgled through his throat full of blood. “They will, though! We took video of those three we killed! It’s already uploaded to YouTube! Those motherfuckers blew right up into sparks and ash! That video’ll go viral; you just watch! Shit has gotten too weird. You goddamn bloodsuckers think you can fuck with us forever? Fuck you! We’re not going to take it!”

  Maurice looked at Reginald. Reginald stooped in front of the man, squatting down on his hams. The ability to squat had come with vampirism and his odd balance skills. In most ways, gravity was still Reginald’s enemy, but squatting was one thing he could do. Woe be it to the vampire or human who challenged him to a squat-off.

  “Hey,” said Reginald.

  The man’s head flicked to the side, away from him.

  “Look at me.”

  The man kept his head
turned away. Brian reached down and easily turned it back, but the human rolled his eyes to keep them averted. Reginald tried to stay ahead of his eye-flicks but couldn’t, so Nikki, who was much faster, squatted to join him, blurred her head around until she caught the man in a glance, and then handed him over to Reginald.

  “Better,” said Reginald, meeting the man’s pupils.

  “Better,” the human echoed.

  “Don’t tell him anything, Sam!” shouted the other man.

  Reginald looked at the other human. “No, you want Sam to tell me all about it,” he said.

  “Tell him all about it, Sam!” the man said.

  Reginald turned back to the first man and said, “Sam, listen to me. Not all vampires are your enemies. How did you find out about us?”

  The man, his gaze vacant, said, “Everyone knows.”

  “Everyone knows?”

  “The big house with all the land is full of monsters. People come and go there, confused. You never see the owners during the day. Folks never met the neighbors. They garden at night, and never seem to leave to shop, for anything.”

  “We could be recluses. Human recluses.”

  “There are rumors. People say there is something wrong here. They are afraid of you.”

  “So you came to kill us.”

  “Exterminate the nest,” he said, nodding.

  Reginald looked up at Maurice. “This is your house. What do you want to do with them?”

  “I’m hungry,” said Nikki, a remorseless look on her face. “I’m told that the moment when the heart stops is exquisite.”

  “Nikki,” said Reginald. “They’re humans. We were humans.”

  “That didn’t stop Brian.”

  Brian shrugged and said very practically, “You kill my people, I kill you.”

  Nikki was staring directly at the men, nodding. “Brian has a point.”

  “They killed three of ours,” said Reginald, “and we killed nine of theirs.”