by Hal Bodner
“In that outfit, don’t you think the cap should say ‘Tunnel ahead. Lights on next ten miles’?” Chris irritably shucked his robe and went into the bathroom.
“I happen to adore this outfit,” Troy said huffily. “It’s what all the best people are wearing, you know,” he informed Chris. “Very gangsta.”
“In my day, gangsters wore pinstriped suits.” Chris grumbled. “It was so much easier to dress you when they were still making Grr-Animals. As long as you stuck to all monkeys or all elephants, you looked OK.”
“I’ve matured,” Troy insisted. Then he added with a dramatic flair which Bernhardt would have envied, “I’ve eschewed that behavior!”
“Troy. Please. Spare me,” Chris begged, “It’s too early.”
“Coffee’s on,” Troy called through the door.
“Great,” Chris murmured as he turned on the shower. He felt the beginning rumblings of hunger in his belly. He’d eaten briefly on the plane the night before, but the airline steward he’d chosen, though attractive enough, had had traces of marijuana in his system, and Chris was forced to imbibe lightly and finished with a dissatisfied, unfulfilled feeling.
Chris rarely killed in search of food—at least not intentionally. He supposed that, by most definitions, he’d probably be considered a murderer were he ever hauled into some hypothetical court to answer for the actions of his life. But he felt he’d be able to present a good defense; after all, how many normal humans, if given a lifetime spanning roughly two and a half centuries, would be able to list their capital crimes on the fingers of both hands? On the few occasions where a death had been unavoidable, it had usually been as a result of accident or in self-defense.
No, Chris preferred light snacking as opposed to a filling repast. Thus, the increase in the use of recreational drugs during the latter part of the twentieth century was something upon which he frowned with selfish disapproval. And despite his firm resolution to put the past in the past and to allow himself to be swept along by the waters of the present and adapt to the future, Chris was not always successful in refraining from silently wishing for the return of earlier, simpler times.
In the early 1800s, right after the last of his immediate family had died, he’d gone to England for a while, hoping the experience of a new country in a new century would help him to put the familiar New England surroundings of his birth in their proper place in the past. He’d been right; London had helped heal the pain of Chris’s transition into the next generation.
There, it had been easy to avoid tainted companions; he merely steered clear of the opium dens and various institutionalized drug houses. On the few occasions when he wanted to get slightly stoned, he would merely join an after-theater or late-night supper crowd and surreptitiously take a little nip from one of the group who seemed to have had a bit more brandywine than was wise. The effect of taking the alcohol into his system directly from another’s bloodstream gave him an intensified high; drinking spirits, caffeine or other liquids directly from a glass or bottle never seemed to achieve the same effect.
When he finally returned to the United States, forty-some years had passed. Walking down the streets of his hometown in Massachusetts, he’d been pleased to note that he recognized very little; the intervening changes in the streets, shops and homes had almost eradicated all that had been familiar to him in his breathing days. With a pang of mingled regret for his life of the past and a feeling of satisfaction that, finally, he’d managed to put everything that belonged in the past behind him, he’d left the Boston suburb and had yet to return.
In Virginia some years later, nourishment had also been easy to find. Chris had, for a short while, actually enlisted in the Confederate forces, thinking he could take what he needed from the seriously wounded and dying soldiers while mercifully easing their passage into the next world. He’d debated about going north and enlisting there, but with his deep-seated dislike of bullies, the Southern forces held more attraction. As for the slavery issue, although he disliked it on principle, Chris, rejecting his Yankee roots, didn’t seriously consider that it was anything more than an excuse for the Union to justify its economic stranglehold on the South. Slavery was simply a fact of life back then and Chris was a product of his time; it wasn’t until almost the turn of the twentieth century that he’d truly begun to detest the concept.
He hadn’t remained in the army long, he recalled with a shudder. In addition to the problems encountered by having to be awake during the daylight hours, the War of Northern Aggression had provided Chris with new insight into a man’s ability to be senselessly cruel to his fellow man. The War had been violent and bloody, the carnage sickening—even to someone of Chris’s race. Then again, there had been an unhappy ending to a love affair, cut short by a Union bayonet; the memory still pained him.
The Great War had been cleaner, as far as wars went. Although the political situation in Europe had been anything but stable since the uprising in Russia, Chris was caught by surprise, along with the rest of the world, by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Fleeing Saint Petersburg and trekking uncomfortably toward France, Chris had ample opportunity to observe man’s inhumanity.
Mystified at why normals insisted on creating, maintaining and obliterating enemies, he was, nonetheless impressed with the efficiency humankind brought to slaughter. Although the Great War had its share of mindless bloodshed, technology had increased to the point where it was no longer necessary to meet the enemy face-to-face in order to slay him with musket or bayonet. Chris reflected that man’s entry into the twentieth century had enabled him to make organized killing easier and easier as the minimum distance required to effectively destroy those who did not agree with his politics became greater.
As for the rise of the Socialist party in Germany and the resulting Second World War, Chris considered it an abomination. In his opinion, that insane, mustached house painter had been, at best, a pompous bully—inspired by the devil, perhaps, but a bully nonetheless. Together with his friend Sylvia, Chris had fled to Denmark, foolishly unable to comprehend that the Nazi’s could possibly win their way that far north. There they had established a safe house for others of their race, drawing upon Chris’s earlier experiences with the underground railroads of the American South.
The Nazis terrified him. Unlike the Union soldiers of the prior century, Herr Hitler had managed to take torture, murder, and the other accoutrements of war and turn them into an organized, efficient bureaucracy in the name of an Aryan race. The thought that an intelligent individual could harbor such deep-seated hatred for others simply because of a perceived difference from an impossible idealization of humanity struck deep chords of fear in Chris’ soul; Hitler’s propaganda stirred Chris’s unconscious discomfort with his own condition.
When rumors had reached Denmark that somewhere in the high ranks of the German government, a member of their own race existed, Chris and Sylvia, frightened but determined, had traveled to Berlin to make certain that an eternal Third Reich would not come to pass. The rumors had proved false, thank heaven, but not before Chris had experienced Herr Hitler’s “Master Plan” at first hand.
The encounter left him shattered. It had been decades before the nightmares of being buried beneath huge piles of stick-like human corpses had finally left him. Even now, at least twice a year or so, he would awaken in the evening with the stench of burning human flesh lingering in his nostrils as a fortunately vague dream faded from his conscious mind.
Upon his return to America, he’d sought refuge in the South once again—the “New South” as he thought of it. Aimlessly wandering, confused and doubting any God who would instill morality in a race of creatures that thrived on drinking blood from living human throats, and yet seemed to deny it from humans themselves, he’d contemplated suicide.
Two centuries, he reasoned, was more than enough life experience for anyone. War and strife were an inevitable part of the human world, and since Chris’s life was inextricably linked with that hum
an world, he’d undoubtedly see the horrors of Germany again and again, growing more and more terrible with each new conflict. For a few years, thinking about self-extinction seemed ironically to be the only way he could manage to continue living. The fact that the two were mutually exclusive only heightened his inner turmoil.
And then, that fateful day in 1953, in that dismal little South Carolina town, sitting in that dreary hotel, he’d met Troy. There had been such despair, such helplessness, in that beautiful face, such misery creasing the brow below the golden blond curls. And yet, Chris had nonetheless sensed a childlike wonder at the marvels of the day-to-day world within the grief-stricken countenance.
That first night had been incredible. Not the sex—especially not the sex! Troy had been surprisingly naive. Chris had had to teach him all the basics of physical intimacy—basics that Troy had long since mastered. Nevertheless, the outpouring of need and love, even that early in their relationship, was something that Chris simply couldn’t ignore.
With Troy, Chris had rediscovered his place in the universe; it was at Troy’s side. Endearingly irritating, delightfully unpredictable, and enchantingly helpless when confronted with life’s little problems, Troy had enabled Chris to feel young again while experiencing life anew through his eyes.
And then there had been trust. From the moment that Chris, startled, had wrapped his arms around the weeping youth who had without warning launched himself forward to bury his tearful face in Chris’s shirtfront, Troy had emanated trust—trust that had not even briefly wavered upon his discovery of Chris’ true nature.
The creation of another vampire was not something to be taken lightly. Although most members of Chris’s race were territorial and would have preferred to lead rather solitary lives, they soon found that a total retreat from the world could prove fatal. Whether it was the vivacity of a life they had missed or something even less tangible, isolation invariably resulted in ennui and, eventually, the true death.
Chris and Sylvia had discussed this strange dichotomy in their nature many times. Sylvia put forward the theory that the eventual drive towards company was a safety mechanism, provided to the vampiric race by nature. A truly reclusive vampire would soon starve. Chris, on the other hand, believed they were, at heart, inherently social creatures and that the desire to be alone was an evolutionary outgrowth of the necessity for keeping the location of one’s lair secret, hidden from ignorant humans brandishing sharpened wooden stakes. Sharing a common stubbornness, each had listened to the other’s reasoning and had quietly held to their own beliefs.
Whatever the reason, inevitably, vampires were drawn to their own kind for social comfort. Small cliques of five or ten individuals would form in a particular city. There had probably been little communication between the different groups at first. However, humans tended to notice if a neighbor or colleague who they had known for thirty years still seemed to appear the same age as when they’d first met. So the vampire would be forced to move on to a new town, a new country, and a new life. Once relocated, he or she would invariably establish a new support group, at least until it was time to move on once again. The result of this constant forced migration, when combined with the limited numbers of vampires in the world, was that almost everyone, at one time or another, had spent at least a decade or two with almost everyone else. A global network had developed; it was not unusual, upon arriving in a new country, to encounter someone with whom you’d spent a lifetime, albeit several hundred years ago.
There was also a natural reluctance to create new members of the race. After all, just like mortal infants, a newly made vampire could not be returned to the store for credit or exchange if he or she didn’t work out. One was stuck with one’s mistakes, in a word—forever. Not to mention the more obvious problem of haphazardly depleting the larder. And so some, seeking company, created companions for themselves, beings existing in a nebulous state between vampirism and humanity. Chris had heard of Eastern vampires who had surrounded themselves with veritable harems of these creatures. Until Troy, Chris had never met anyone with whom he felt eternity would not soon grow boring.
He’d agonized for weeks. On the one hand, he wished Troy to experience all the things that life had to offer, things that Chris had himself been denied—physical maturity, the love of family and friends without subterfuge, the joy of becoming a parent, aging and, finally the sweet bliss of death. Through it all, Chris vowed, he would be there, guarding the youth and shielding him from the cruelties that human society would undoubtedly throw in Troy’s way.
On the other hand, if he refrained from acting, their time together would be short. What was it Lincoln had said? Four score and ten? Or was it two score and ten? Oh, well. Perhaps it hadn’t been Lincoln after all. In any case, Troy would leave him all too quickly. The alternative, for Chris to leave Troy before it became impossible to do so, was unthinkable. Chris had finally succumbed.
He recalled fondly the rush of pleasure and love he’d felt when Troy, innocently trusting and still not fully understanding the consequences, lay naked on the hotel bed and, drained of blood almost to the point of death, handed Chris a sharp knife after announcing proudly that he’d sterilized it first so that Chris wouldn’t get infected with germs. Chris had used his fingernail to open the skin of his own chest before pressing Troy’s lips to the wound, but he’d saved the knife as a tender memento of the experience.
Nightly, for almost a week, Chris and Troy had shared blood, until finally Chris was certain the aging process had stopped, Troy having entered that limbo between mortality and death. Chris had considered converting Troy fully, but he knew, though he had never before done it, that to create a vampiric Troy the initial draining and replenishing of the blood must be swift and the potential convert must die the mortal death very shortly afterward. Chris would have to kill him.
Chris couldn’t do it. His own death, despite his commitment to it, had been terrifying and painful; he refused to subject Troy to similar agony. Although Chris had felt minimal discomfort while shedding his mortal wastes, the physical process of his body changing and becoming more than human had been excruciating. It had taken him years to recover from the sickening feeling he’d had when, as he thrust the point of the sword through his own heart, he’d suddenly doubted that eternal life was anything but a myth. The disbelief at what he’d done washed over him in waves, along with the terrible pain in his chest; he’d been horrified by the inevitability of his own imminent death. No, even though he would have remained with his lover throughout the process of dying, he couldn’t bring himself to put Troy through the agony of doubt and fear that Chris himself had suffered. Remembering the ineffably sweet taste of Troy’s human blood, Chris felt his hunger pangs renewed and his thoughts returned to the airline steward. Chris had friends, mostly in Europe, who’d made a conscious choice to seek out those unfortunates who used alcohol and drugs as an escape from reality, but few of them had survived the years. Many of their victims were of a class who, before the advent of modern medicine, frequently suffered from various diseases. And although sporadic encounters with hepatitis, syphilis and, in more modern times, AIDS, would merely make Chris and others like him extremely ill, repeated exposures over a short period of time had been known to prove fatal. Chris chose not to take the risk.
The 1960s took him by surprise. A conservative by nature, Chris had made the mistake of ignoring the budding “Free Love Movement” as a short, aberrant mortal fad, doomed to quickly die out before he would need to devote it any attention. His first encounter with a young man who had partaken liberally of LSD quickly changed his mind. Wandering about in a psychedelic daze for several weeks, disoriented and sick, Chris made a mental vow to pay close attention to future developments in recreational mind-altering substances. The fairly recent trend of “cutting” cocaine, a drug about which he had fond memories dating from the turn of the last century, had caused him not a small amount of discomfort as a variety of the more common substances used to dil
ute the drug played havoc with his system. Thus, his tastes had become more and more Catholic in recent years and, for the most part, heavy drinkers were the only sin in which he would indulge.
Pills were forbidden to him by his very nature, as was any solid food. He could ingest small amounts, and had on many occasions as a way of passing as normal in various social situations but, no matter how talented the chef or how exotic the meal, everything always tasted wooden and flat; he was forced to disgorge it within several hours or suffer disabling cramps in his belly. He had been thrilled when bulimia and anorexia became popular diseases as it provided him with an excuse. He found that he could, in false confidence, admit his “affliction” in such a manner that people rarely inquired further. In fact, for the past two years, he’d been attending fairly regular meetings of an eating-disorders support group in Philadelphia to provide additional cover.
Stepping from the shower, he toweled himself dry. He examined his body critically; there was never any change, but Chris had been extremely vain in life and his custom of constant and repeated self-appraisal was one of the few conscious habits he retained from that time. Satisfied with the results, he once again thanked whatever gods existed that he’d had enough advance warning of his change to be able to get himself into the physical condition in which he had wanted to spend eternity.
He dropped the towel to the floor and, entering the bedroom nude, opened the closet. Troy leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, and made kissy noises at Chris’s naked body. Chris ignored him.
“Nice butt,” Troy commented.
Slipping into worn jeans and pulling a white T-shirt over his head, Chris replied with a grin, “You should know.”
Troy couldn’t help smiling lasciviously while pretending he hadn’t heard Chris’s quip. “I thought we’d start out at the Mother Lode and see what’s going on. We can go dancing at Mickey’s later, then to Revolver and on to the Spike for a midnight snack. Can you hold out that long?”
