Snowbirds of Prey

by Ward Parker

  Bernie’s conflict with Schwartz began shortly after he started the job. He often saw Schwartz taking a stroll on cooler nights, a short, pot-bellied man who always wore colored socks with Bermuda shorts and sandals. Once Bernie learned the residents’ secret, he couldn’t believe this man could be a vampire.

  Bernie thought vampires were supposed to be cool, doing the Gothic thing in all-black with a morbid taste in music. At least that’s how all the kids looked who were into the fake-vampire subculture. Maybe real vampires of a younger age did look cool. But their fans would be horrified if they found out Schwartz and his colleagues shuffling about in Hawaiian shirts were vampires, too.

  Of course, if Bernie had known this himself from the beginning, he would have been more careful not to get on Schwartz’s enemy list. He got there on only his third night of work. His internal clock hadn’t yet adjusted to working overnight, so he was sound asleep when a loud rapping shook the glass door of the gatehouse. He jumped and wiped the drool from his chin. Schwartz glared in at him through the glass. His eyes appeared to be glowing red.

  “We don’t pay you to sleep at the job,” he said in a gruff Brooklyn accent when Bernie opened the door.

  Bernie mumbled an apology.

  “Is that your car over there?” Schwartz demanded.

  “Where?”

  “There by the palm trees. That’s a reserved space. It belongs to me. You’ve got to move your car now.”

  “It’s a handicapped spot,” Bernie said.

  “And it belongs to me.”

  “But who—”

  “My name is Leonard Schwartz. I’m on the homeowners association board of directors. Now move your car or I’ll have it towed and then banned from the property. I used to work in city government, and I know how to get things done.”

  Bernie raced outside to his lovingly restored Pacer. The ignition ground fruitlessly.

  “C’mon, I don’t have all night,” Schwartz said, glancing at his watch.

  “Sorry,” Bernie said after he rolled down the window. “She’s very temperamental.”

  “I don’t care, you moron. A piece of junk like this, it shouldn’t even be allowed in here.”

  “Hey, I got rights,” Bernie murmured.

  Suddenly he was out of the car and hanging two feet above the ground with Schwartz’s right hand clamped around his throat.

  “You also have a job you’re going to lose if you don’t get this heap out of here.”

  Bernie couldn’t help but notice Schwartz’s canine teeth were awfully long and sharp. There was also a small bloodstain on the front of his shirt, almost lost among the floral patterns. Maybe Bernie wasn’t the quickest wit around, but none of these observations added up to any sort of vampire conclusion at the time, not even the fact that a guy with a physique shaped like Mr. Peanut’s was holding up Bernie’s 190 pounds with one scrawny arm. He was much more concerned about being able to breathe again.

  Just as Bernie was seeing large dots in front of his eyes, Schwartz put him down. He was looking at the faint glow appearing in the eastern sky. He stroked his chin nervously.

  “She’ll start, don’t worry,” Bernie said hoarsely. “I just need to do a little tinkering under the hood.”

  He glanced at the Pacer and then back at Schwartz, but he was gone.

  Eventually, he was able to start the car and move it to another spot in the visitor lot. The problem was, his car had left a giant oil stain in Schwartz’s space. He didn’t think this was a big deal until Schwartz paid a visit the following night.

  “You moron,” Schwartz said.

  “Good evening to you, too, sir.”

  “If it weren’t so hard for the security company to hire people for this shift, I’d have you fired on the spot. What, you think you can leave your oil stains on our asphalt just like that and walk away from it? Huh?”

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll clean it up tomorrow. There’s this stuff you can buy, this powder—”

  Schwartz disappeared. He was simply gone, with nothing but the building’s lobby doors swinging shut to assure Bernie that Schwartz hadn’t just vaporized right in front of him.

  There had been plenty of clues pointing to vampires. The strange patterns of all the residents heading out after sunset when most geezers would normally be getting ready for bedtime. The parking lot and garage filled with cars all day. The utter lack of tanned complexions on every resident he saw. He should have figured it out right away, but logical deductions were not his strength. Even after finding the grave dirt he still had doubts.

  What happened was early one evening before sunset, not long after first meeting Schwartz, Bernie had been making a quick patrol of the grounds before relieving the day guard. The parking lot was still full. He walked past the cars, through steam rising from hot asphalt wet with a just-ended rain. He was whistling a Barry Manilow tune when he noticed the car in Schwartz’s spot had its trunk partly open.

  It was a rusty, silver Lexus with New York plates and the doors were all locked. Schwartz must have accidentally hit the trunk release when he got out of the driver’s seat. Just as Bernie was about to close the trunk, a rat popped its head out, a big, fat, oily rat like you’d find along the waterfront in Brooklyn. It squeezed through the crack, looked at him nonchalantly, and dropped to the ground, waddling away beneath some cars.

  Why Bernie did it he didn’t know, but he opened the trunk all the way. The smell walloped him. It was the smell of mold, mildew, and rotting things—the smell from beneath a porch where the light never shines. The trunk was filled with dirt that was clay-like and covered with fuzzy mold, packed hard like something had lain upon it. When he noticed a large human-like bone protruding, he slammed the trunk shut and took off for the gatehouse.

  None of this made any sense until Philomena, one of the day guards, brought up the bodies on the beach.

  “Bernie,” she had said, “ever notice how this beach has gone to the pits?”

  He asked her what she meant.

  “This is no place you’d want to live, with all the undesirables here.”

  “You mean the Red Sox fans?” Bernie had asked.

  She studied his face for a moment and scratched her long chin. He had only recently learned she was from Martinique, or some other Caribbean island originally settled by the French, he couldn’t quite remember. She seemed old to be a gate guard, but in Florida lots of seniors had to work after they discovered their retirement nest eggs wouldn’t be enough.

  “No, I mean them.” She pointed to Squid Tower rising above them, dark and ugly in its 1960s concrete architecture. “Do you believe in vampires, man?”

  “Get out of here. Are you still into that superstitious stuff from the islands?”

  “Say what you want,” she said, with a patronizing smile. “But they found a couple of bodies on the beach the other night. A young man and woman.”

  “Yeah, a detective was asking around. I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “He didn’t tell you how they died. My friend’s brother works at the coroner’s office. He said the dead people didn’t have a drop of blood in their bodies. Not a drop. No marks on them either, except for two little holes in their necks. Just like in the movies.”

  “You’re making this up,” he said.

  “This building used to have humans in it. You know, normal seniors who stay in at night. They used to own half the units in the building, but now none of them are left.”

  “What happened?”

  “They sold out. Or they died. No one asks many questions when an eighty-year-old dies.”

  “You’re actually telling me they were killed by vampires?”

  “No, they’re smart enough not to feed on their own neighbors. There’s a rule against it. They go out for dinner instead. Man, with all the homeless folks and runaways in this town, it’s like a vampire’s all-you-can-eat buffet out there.”

  It suddenly occurred to Bernie why a blood donation bus showed up at the community eve
ry night. He had assumed the residents were simply generous and altruistic.

  “If you’re so sure they’re vampires, why don’t you do anything about it?” Bernie asked.

  “Who’s gonna believe me? Besides, it’s good pay and I can sit around all day watching the soaps with no one to bother me. They’re all inside, asleep. No, they’re not going to hurt me. I guess I got the best shift.”

  She laughed as she walked away. Bernie had the whole night alone to think about what she’d said. It didn’t take long until he learned Philomena was right.

  The next night, Unit 742, the vampire from Scarsdale, called and said her sink was leaking. He told her he was just the gate guard, but he promised to call the management company. Their answering service reached one of the managers who tried to find a plumber who’d make a call so late at night, while the woman in 742 kept calling and demanding that Bernie fix her pipe. Finally, two hours later, the plumber showed up. Bernie let him in and went back to the love song he was composing on his tablet.

  He happened to look up at the security monitors and saw the plumber waiting at the elevator in the lobby. There was something moving in the background. He zoomed in on the camera just as a shadow lunged at the plumber. The plumber wrestled with something and suddenly the screen was empty. Then the plumber’s face popped back into the picture. He was screaming silently, his eyeballs bulging out, and his head had been twisted around like a doll’s. Something was holding him up, chewing on his grotesque neck.

  The thing looked up and stared at the camera. It was Schwartz, his fat nose, and his mouth all covered with blood. Fangs protruded over his lower lip. He obviously knew he was being watched. He bared his fangs like a rabid dog and something flew at the camera. The screen went dead. Just then Bernie realized he was sitting in a pool of urine.

  He called the security company he worked for because the most important rule of working here was that he wasn’t supposed to call the cops himself. Ever. He sat in his wet pants for twenty minutes until Rudy arrived. Bernie told him about Schwartz, only for Rudy to smile and say Schwartz would never attack anyone here because it was against the condo association bylaws.

  “But I saw him on camera,” Bernie said, pointing toward the bank of security monitors.

  “Let’s say you did see him,” Rudy said in his German accent. “What are you proposing we do about it? Our job is to keep the residents safe. Not cause trouble about vampires’ natural feeding habits.”

  “You never told me vampires lived here.”

  “Well now you know. You want to resign?”

  “Rudy, please put me on the day shift, bro. At any property. Please.” Bernie tried not to cry in front of him.

  “Sorry,” Rudy said, turning away. “Can’t do it. We need you here at Squid Tower.”

  Bernie would have quit on the spot except for the fact he was completely broke. He needed to collect a couple more paychecks, then he’d be out of there, he promised himself. He’d heard the piano lounges were booming up in Orlando. All the European tourists just loved that stuff. Or he could play guitar at the bars along the Florida coasts. He knew enough Jimmy Buffett and Eagles songs to pull it off easily. Or, if he had to, he could even get a gig with a cruise line. He tried to believe his skills had improved and that this time he could kickstart his music career.

  He arrived the next night to find a surprise waiting for him: a dead rat with its head chewed off lying on his chair. He immediately threw the chair along with the rat outside. Then he found the note lying on the desk. In elegant, old-fashioned script it said, “Too bad the bloodstain on your chair is so small compared to the stain you left on my parking spot.”

  So, in the meantime, he had to make it through each night, which was never easy, even under normal circumstances. The worst hours were those nearing dawn when the vampires were all back in their condos and there was hardly a car along A1A. The only sounds were the wind and surf. He tried to sing old John Denver songs, but his voice seemed hauntingly hollow against the silence. All the songs on his playlist sounded like the saddest, loneliest tunes ever written.

  So he just sat there, praying for morning, his mouth dry, his eyes sore, listening to the buzzing of the fluorescent bulb above his head. Sitting alone in his glass booth, a tiny oasis of light in the blackness of the dead hours.

  Thinking about Schwartz.

  10

  Interview with the Vampire

  The vanity license plate said, “Snowbyrd.” It caught the eye and was easy to remember.

  The plate helped Matt recognize the grimy silver Lexus parked right in front of the Mega-Mart in a handicap spot, although it was readily apparent in the bright lighting of the parking lot that the car lacked a disabled-person plate or permit hang tag.

  The car belonged to the obnoxious old man at Squid Tower who was giving the gate guard a hard time. Schwartz was his name, if Matt remembered correctly.

  The Mega-Mart was the only store open at this late hour, aside from convenience stores, and Matt was here to pick up a few groceries. He decided to first try to find Schwartz in the store, scope him out, and see if there was anything vampire-like about him.

  It didn’t take long. Schwartz, with his blindingly shiny bald head, was in a checkout lane arguing with the clerk about a coupon. Matt got behind him and pretended to select a brand of chewing gum from the impulse-buy rack. He studied the alleged vampire. Schwartz wore a moth-eaten sweater, a pair of cheap, white tennis shorts, and sandals with black dress socks that didn’t quite grip his skinny calves.

  In short, he looked like any other retiree in the store.

  “How could it be expired?” Schwartz said in a heavy New York accent. “I told you it was in today’s newspaper. It’s not my fault if there was a misprint.”

  “How do I know it was in today’s paper?” asked the clerk, a cherub-faced young man with a pencil neck.

  “Because it was,” Schwartz replied.

  “I mean, it could be from months ago.”

  “Are you implying I’m lying?”

  The clerk’s face turned red. He stammered without getting any words out. Schwartz’s stuff was lined up on the checkout counter ahead of the scanner: more cheap, white tennis shorts, several pairs of dark dress socks, swimming trunks, mothballs, nose-hair clippers, and a large bottle of laundry detergent. The detergent was the cause of the coupon clash.

  “I’m not implying anything,” the clerk said. “I’ll be happy to get the manager if you’d like.”

  “You could just give me the benefit of the doubt and honor the coupon,” Schwartz said in a low, angry voice.

  “Sir, I’ve already pointed out this coupon expired two weeks ago.”

  “You’re a good man. You know the customer is always right.” Schwartz’s voice took on a strange, musical lilt. It was hypnotic. “You want to be kind, don’t you?”

  The clerk had a blank look on his face. He nodded and stared off into space.

  “You will honor my coupon. Tell me you will honor my coupon.”

  “I. Will. Honor. Your. Coupon.” The clerk sounded like he was in a trance. He robotically moved the detergent over the scanner and then swiped the coupon, which was rejected. He manually entered a code and then continued scanning the other goods on the counter as he stared blankly into space.

  The clerk’s left hand attempted to place each scanned product into a plastic bag on the carousel at the end of the counter but merely dropped them in between the bags. The nose-hair clippers bounced off an arm of the carousel and fell onto the floor.

  Schwartz calmly paid with a credit card, bent over with a grunt, and put the goods into bags. As he gathered them in one hand, he held the other hand close to the clerk’s head and snapped his fingers.

  The clerk regained his senses. “Thank you for shopping at Mega-Mart,” he said.

  Schwartz hadn’t given Matt any strong clues he was a vampire until he appeared to have hypnotized the clerk. Matt followed Schwartz outside.

  “Ex
cuse me, sir,” Matt called after him.

  Schwartz stopped and turned around, glaring at Matt with suspicion.

  “Mr. Schwartz?” Matt asked with a smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m Matt Rosen. I work for the Jellyfish Beach Journal and I’m doing a story on the murders on the beach. Do you have a moment for a couple of questions?”

  “No,” Schwartz said, turning and walking away.

  Matt followed him. “Are you a professional hypnotist? That was an impressive job with the clerk.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Schwartz said, continuing to walk.

  Matt hurried after him and got ahead, walking backwards so he faced Schwartz. He decided to go all-out with his questioning.

  “There are rumors vampires are responsible for the murders. Do you agree?”

  By now they had reached Schwartz’s car. Matt stood with his back to the driver’s door, blocking Schwartz, who stopped uncomfortably close to him. Matt studied the man’s face. It was unnaturally pale, but that didn’t prove anything. His ears were a bit elongated. His nose was large and did, indeed, need some nose-hair clipping. In all, he looked like a normal male of his generation.

  But then something odd happened in his eyes.

  His pupils expanded until they eclipsed his gray irises and his eyes became black discs with only a ring of white around them. Red light, like glowing embers, appeared in the center of each eye.

  Matt suddenly felt scared.

  “Vampires don’t exist,” Schwartz said in a flat, tight-lipped voice as if he were trying not to let his teeth show.

  “Someone is making the murders appear like a vampire did them,” Matt said, worrying he was pushing Schwartz too far.

  “That’s none of my concern,” Schwartz said. “Now get out of my face.”

  “I will. But please, one last question.”

  Matt was in the air. Schwartz’s car passed beneath him, followed by a row of other cars, and then Matt landed hard on his butt on the asphalt next to a minivan. A harried mother with a kid in her shopping cart was loading groceries into the van. She looked at him with disgust.