The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  The shells had landed so close to the trench that the concentration of the gas quickly overwhelmed us. Even those men who were able to affix their masks quickly were overcome. At this time, Corporal , with no regard for his own safety, climbed out of the trench and began picking the smoking five-nines2 up by hand, one at a time, and throwing them back at the German positions. I never saw a man pick up a smoking shell with his bare hands, or throw them such distances. It may seem impossible, but I would swear on my honor as a Christian that I saw him throw one shell at least fifty yards. He continued to do this, even as German machine-gun nests opened up on him. Exposing his hands and arms to the escaping gas in such concentrations must have caused excruciating burns to his skin, yet he continued picking them up and throwing them back toward the German positions. It was at this time that I saw that Corporal ’s gas mask had been damaged by gunfire. Even as his mask failed him, the corporal continued clearing the shells. When he had finished, rather than retreat back to the trench, he drew his revolver and began to advance on the enemy’s position, firing his weapon. At this time, I witnessed Corporal fall backward as a bullet struck the front of his helmet. Though injured, and clearly suffering the ill effects of the force of the blow, the corporal returned to his feet and continued his advance.

  Seeing his bravery, the other men were inspired to pick up their rifles and follow suit. Upon the completion of our objective, Corporal refused to be evacuated and refused any treatment for his injuries. I believe that his courage, more than any factor, is responsible for taking Hill 142. Suffice it to say, neither I nor any of the members of my company would be alive today, had it not been for the courage and selflessness of Corporal . I am sure that the statements of my fellow men will reflect the same sentiments.

  Henry had returned to America a war hero, though few people knew his name or would ever know the feats of valor he’d carried out, both in uniform, on the front lines, and covertly, deep in enemy territory. Like millions of American men who’d served their country, he’d come home eager to forget the war.

  The twenties were fully roaring. The stock market was booming, I was richer than ever, I was immortal, and thanks to men like Tesla, the night had become brighter and fuller of life than the day. We had signs glittering with thousands of lightbulbs. We had cars. We had jazz. We weren’t Chicago, not quite, but New York was a respectable jazz mecca. We had [Duke] Ellington and [Louie] Armstrong. We had cigarette girls in short skirts and short haircuts doing the Charleston and the Black Bottom. You would get dressed up and go out to catch the new Broadway musical, or to one of the movie palaces—the Bunny in Brooklyn. The Audubon in Harlem. The Astoria in Queens.

  Henry had just seen a new feature-length German import, Nosferatu—an expressionistic adaption of his old friend Stoker’s novel Dracula.

  I know it’s considered a classic [now], but it bothered me. No. “Bothered,” isn’t strong enough. It angered me. The makeup was all wrong, for one thing. Two, no self-respecting vampire would go slinking around like that—a bug-eyed, overemoting idiot, clasping his hands maniacally or tilting his head to the heavens every time he suffered a setback. The other people in the theater laughed every time [Max] Schreck was on-screen, mugging in that stupid makeup. I could hardly sit through it. In a way, it was the beginning of something I’d long feared: that vampires would become part of the popular culture. That people would be too busy worshiping them or imitating them or even laughing at them—and forget to fear them. Americans cast off the shackles of fear after World War I, but when you share the planet with an apex predator that is your better in every measurable way, a little fear is a healthy thing.

  It was an early August morning in 1920, warm and cloudless. Henry was in the back of a chauffeured motorcar, on a twenty-five-mile trek upstate, the dappled light of the low sun glinting through the trees that lined the road. He wasn’t accustomed to being out and about so early, but then, the man who’d sent the motorcar wasn’t accustomed to waiting. Henry flipped through his morning paper as the car rattled along: the first commercially operated radio station in the country had begun broadcasting in Detroit. The Supreme Court had just unanimously upheld women’s recently granted right to vote.

  Finally settling, for me, anyway, how America could go around calling itself a “democracy” while half of its citizens were barred from participating in it.

  And another shooting. Always another shooting in the morning papers. One of Capone’s men. Or Schultz’s. Or Luciano’s. Prohibition was only two years old, and though it had so far failed to curb the nation’s appetite for alcohol, it had succeeded wildly in giving rise to scores of clandestine distilleries and jumping speakeasies and ushering in the golden era of the American gangster. The new Thompson submachine gun, dubbed the “tommy gun,” or the “Chicago organ grinder,” tearing men apart like never before.

  But even death seemed like fun, like entertainment, in those days. There was an eagerness, you know? An eagerness to move on from the previous decade. Those years of war had been so joyless, so stagnant, that we were all about joy now. Joy and movement and sex. There was an infectious feeling of possibility everywhere. An optimism, especially in America. As if we could do anything. Build anything. Beat anyone.

  No American embodied that conquering spirit more than John D. Rockefeller. He was the wealthiest human being who had ever lived, having amassed a fortune equal to more than $650 billion in today’s money3 through his monopolization of the oil industry. Henry had never met him, though they had mutual acquaintances. So it came as a surprise when he’d received notice that Rockefeller wished to meet with him at once.

  I knew very little about him. What the papers printed, mostly. He was a deeply religious man. Never drank. Never smoked. Never swore, or even went to the theater. Anything that had the slightest hint of immorality.

  Rockefeller was descended from ardent abolitionists and had given millions to establish black colleges in the South. He spent most of his time on the sprawling grounds of his Westchester County estate, moving markets and governments around the chessboard in his mind, pursuing his interests quietly and powerfully.

  Lately, Rockefeller had become interested in death. Not his own. He was resigned to that, though still relatively fit and active for a man who was a few weeks from celebrating his eighty-first birthday and who would live to celebrate another sixteen after it. And he was secure enough in his faith and service (Rockefeller gave 10 percent of every dollar he earned to his church) that he expected rewards in heaven that would outshine even his seemingly impossible earthly blessings. He’d walked away from his oil empire at the age of fifty to focus on philanthropy, the pursuit of long life, and the perfection of his golf swing.

  But after thirty years of semiretirement, and while still in good health, Rockefeller could see the end on the horizon. There was a list of things he meant to accomplish with his remaining time. A list of “assurances,” as he privately called them. Assurances that the good Lord would deem him worthy of his eternal rewards. That he would leave the world a better place than he’d found it.

  But there were other, less public assurances Rockefeller was after in his remaining years. And I was about to learn that I had a part to play in one of them.

  Henry’s motorcar passed through the gates of the Rockefeller compound before noon, winding up the long drive to a forty-room main house, called Kykuit (Dutch for “Lookout”), a Classical Revival–style villa that sat on a hill overlooking the Hudson River—about an hour’s ride from where Henry would one day build his own upstate retreat. As manors went, Kykuit was relatively modest, especially considering it was the primary residence of the world’s richest man. But if there was any mistaking the understated main house as a sign of the elder Rockefeller’s modesty, the thirty-five-hundred-acre grounds that surrounded it—with their world-class golf course, sculpture gardens, and private cattle farm—more than made up for it. It was often said of Rockefeller’s compound, “It’s what God would have built, if on
ly He’d had the money.”

  I was greeted by a butler and shown to the Japanese Garden, a short walk from the main house. Imagine being in upstate New York one moment, then rounding a corner and stepping back in time. Stepping halfway around the world, into feudal-era Kyoto. Cherry blossom trees, a carpet of moss on the ground, water flowing gently over terraced rocks. There was Rockefeller. Sitting on the porch of a teahouse built to resemble a Shinto temple, looking out at the still waters of a small koi pond. A blanket covering his lap. A napkin stuffed in his shirt collar.

  “Mr. Sturges,” said Rockefeller.

  “Mr. Rockefeller,” said Henry with a slight bow. “An honor.”

  “Yes, yes, all right.” Rockefeller motioned for Henry to sit. The butler pulled a chair out for him, and Henry obliged.

  “May I bring you some tea, sir?” asked the butler.

  “Mr. Sturges doesn’t drink tea,” said Rockefeller, his eyes narrowing as he considered Henry up close. “Do you, Mr. Sturges?”

  Henry paused a moment, considering Rockefeller right back.

  “Indeed,” said Henry. “Don’t have the constitution for it, I’m afraid.”

  An elderly John D. Rockefeller as he would have appeared on Henry’s arrival at Kykuit. When adjusting his fortune for inflation, he remains the richest human being who ever lived.

  The butler gave a nod, clicked his heels, and left them.

  “Well,” said Henry, waiting until the butler was out of earshot, “it seems you know at least one thing about me.”

  “Oh, I know a great deal more than that,” said Rockefeller, taking a sip of his tea. “Henry O. Sturges, born in England, March 2nd, 1563. Landed at Roanoke, July 27th, 1587. Friend to the American Revolution, present at the Battles of Trenton and Yorktown, staunch supporter of the North in its hour of need, adviser to presidents, a decorated soldier who distinguished himself in the trenches of the Great War, and member of the Union Brotherhood—a collective of vampires dedicated to preserving the freedom of man and his dominion over the earth.”

  It was unnerving, to say the least. Not so much that he knew I was a vampire—I’d been outed unexpectedly before, and there were plenty of powerful humans with ties to our world. But no one, other than myself, knew that much about my history. To put together such a complete picture of my life—my date of birth, the places I’d been, all of them under different assumed names—would have required a huge undertaking. It would’ve meant tracking down multiple sources, human and vampire alike. I couldn’t imagine whom he’d talked to, or how he’d found them.

  “It seems you have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “I have everyone at a disadvantage, Mr. Sturges.”

  Rockefeller pulled the napkin out of his shirt collar and set it down on the table.

  “Lately,” Rockefeller continued, “you’ve been something of a one-man branch of the Armed Services. Sneaking around Europe, intimidating and eliminating the enemies of the executive branch. I hear you’re quite gifted.”

  Remember, the CIA wasn’t created until 1947. The United States didn’t have an organized foreign intelligence service, much less a group of trained soldiers able to execute operations on unfriendly—or even friendly—soil. We were still emerging from a long period of self-imposed isolationism, still reeling from the consequences of all those decades spent with our heads stuck in the sand.

  Henry was a simple solution to complicated problems, the tip of America’s secret spear. When Teddy Roosevelt uttered his immortal line, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” he was talking about Henry Sturges. And he wasn’t the only president who enjoyed wielding his secret weapon.

  In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson and other world leaders had gathered in Paris to found the League of Nations—an international organization whose mission it was to promote and maintain world peace in the wake of the First World War.4 Henry was invited along as an unofficial member of the American delegation. Having witnessed centuries of conflict, he was inspired by the prospect of such a peaceful covenant. But not everyone was as sure. And so, when each day’s meetings were through, President Wilson put his unofficial emissary to work.

  Denmark’s chief negotiator found me very convincing, especially when I dangled him from the roof of the Grand Hotel. [V.K. Wellington] Koo, one of China’s representatives, required a show of fangs and the threat of disembowelment before he acquiesced.

  The League of Nations was agreed upon. But in the end, it was the Unites States who refused to join. Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, but his own Congress didn’t see the point of letting others have a vote in America’s foreign affairs.

  “With all due respect,” said Henry to Rockefeller, “am I to sit here and listen while you rattle off my curriculum vitae, or is there some way I might be of service?”

  “Oh, I don’t require your help, Mr. Sturges… But you certainly require mine.”

  I was off balance. I still didn’t understand why I was there—whether I’d been summoned because of what I was or who I was. But I understood why Rockefeller was Rockefeller. How this man—this one man—had been able to monopolize an entire industry and vanquish his fellow titans in the process. There wasn’t a molecule of him willing to give ground or relinquish control. There was nothing in his tone to suggest that he was addressing a man three hundred years his elder. A man who could rip him to ribbons in the blink of an eye if so inspired.

  “You and I,” Rockefeller continued. “We’re the last of our respective breeds, Mr. Sturges. Gould is gone. Field… Morgan… Carnegie,5 gone.”

  I noticed a slight smile creep across his face at the mention of Carnegie, the only one of his fellow robber barons to approach his level of absurd wealth. The only one who’d ever given him a real challenge.

  “I outlived them all,” said Rockefeller. “Just as you’ve outlived every one of the great men you’ve known in your time. Me, a titan who wishes to give back some of the good fortune that God has bestowed upon him. You, a monster—I use that term with the greatest respect, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “A monster, who wishes to redeem himself in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. A vampire with a sense of duty to his country. We’re living pieces of history, Mr. Sturges. Museum pieces in a world barreling out of the past aboard a locomotive. Industry, modernity, electricity—these are the ways of the future. We old men in our castles… we’re myths, and the world has little room left for us.”

  “Again, with admiration for the eloquence with which you’re making your point, Mr. Rockefeller, these have been topics of conversation among my kind for the better part of a century. You’d be hard-pressed to find a vampire who doesn’t feel as if our race is dwindling toward extinction, or that the world is becoming more unwelcoming to us.”

  “You’d be hard-pressed to find a vampire at all, Mr. Sturges. There aren’t many of you left, it seems. Least of all in the United States. My men put the number somewhere between two and three hundred.”

  “Your ‘men’?”

  “With another thousand or so scattered around Europe, Asia, South America, and so on. That’s some thirteen hundred vampires, worldwide. Why, during the Civil War, there were thousands of you in America alone.”

  “Yes, and we either ran them off or wiped them out.”

  “ ‘We.’ The Union… yes. Ah, but even that venerable institution is on the verge of extinction, isn’t it? I hear things haven’t been the same since poor old Adam Plantagenet met his end.”

  “You’ve made your point, Mr. Rockefeller. And I’m impressed, truly. And quite grateful for the invitation to your magnificent home. But again—if you’ve brought me all the way here to discuss the details of my life, then perhaps I should come back better prepared.”

  Rockefeller’s eyes narrowed again. His face struck Henry as gaunt, even sickly. His skin weather worn and sunburned from daily rounds of golf. But the eyes were still very much alive, as clear and sharp as the mind that operated behin
d them.

  “Tell me,” said Rockefeller, “what do you know about this vampire ‘Grander’?”

  I was surprised to hear him mention that name. Until then, the name ‘Grander’ had been discussed only among my fellow Union vampires and a handful of high-ranking government officials. At the same time, it stood to reason that a man of Rockefeller’s stature—a man who’d somehow put together my whole life story—would know his share of state secrets.

  “Very little,” said Henry. “No more than you, I suspect.”

  “What do they say? Who he is, what he wants.”

  “They say Grander wants to see America broken on the rack. And all who admire this nation, all who serve it, ground to dust. Vampires and humans both. I don’t know his reasons.”

  “And as for who he is?”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Rockefeller, I’ve begun to doubt whether he exists at all.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been looking for this ‘Grander’ for going on forty years. I’ve traveled halfway around the world, chasing shadows, and all I have to show for it are the stamps in my passport.”

  “Perhaps you’ve been looking in the wrong places.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps he’s just a name given to a collective. Perhaps he’s some kind of vampire bedtime story. Meant to frighten the rest of us from rounding up the last of the conspirators. Meant to keep us afraid.”

  “Oh, he exists, Mr. Sturges. He is as real as you and I. And he means to do exactly as you say: to lead others of your kind to victory against this great nation. To stand astride the corpse of America and spit in her face.”