by Ward Parker
Abe was training for . . . well, he was training just for the sake of training. He’d evolved from 5Ks, to 10Ks, to half-marathons, to a couple of full marathons. Then it was the Iron Man competition and other triathlons. Next it was Spartan races and events where you tortured yourself ankle-deep in mud. He recently won a competition in which the entrants wore backpacks filled with bricks, hauled telephone poles, and ran for twenty miles while a man yelled and threw water balloons at them.
Note: He won. He kicked butt, in fact.
Abe was solid muscle without an ounce of fat. So it no longer was a question of getting his body in its highest possible condition. Now it was all about competition. Abe liked to win. Or, more accurately, he liked beating other people and his own records.
He knew he’d become unbearable to everyone in his life. He’d reached his twenty-eighth year and still no romantic partner was good enough for him, and the few he lowered his standards for couldn’t stand his constant competitiveness. He didn’t enjoy hanging out with people because he had absolutely no interests other than improving his performance. Almost all his leisure time was spent training, at gyms, on tracks, on beaches, in the ocean. He ate not for pleasure but only to sustain his body and improve its performance. He didn’t read or listen to music. He had no love for movies. All he liked to watch were videos of his own races.
He was competitive at work, too, to the point of obnoxiousness. He didn’t care how well his data analytics firm did; he only cared how well he outdid his colleagues. The problem was, he was so obsessed with himself that he didn’t have time to focus on his job enough to advance very far in the company. Work was much lower on his priority list, anyway, than his athletic performance.
Somewhere along the way, he had lost sight of any goal in life other than beating performance goals he arbitrarily set for herself.
Once Abe got through the surf zone and the waves no longer broke upon him, he turned and swam parallel to the shore, riding the swells. Occasionally, he looked to his left at the beach to watch for the high-rise condo tower marking the three-mile point.
A shooting star passed overhead. To other people it may have been beautiful, but he couldn’t care less about it, even as it appeared to land in the ocean behind him. He kept swimming freestyle, three kicks per stroke, breathing to his left, opposite the incoming waves.
The star appeared again, coming from behind him and passing over. Though he tried to keep his head down for proper form, he couldn’t help glancing up at it. It wasn’t a star; it was a fireball of sorts. And it was moving along with him, just ahead.
Abe’s oxygen-starved brain couldn’t make sense of it other than to conclude it was some organic entity related to the phosphorescent glow he’d seen before in tropical seas.
He didn’t really care what it was.
He just wanted to race it!
And race it he did. But every time he caught up to the glowing ball, it increased speed and got ahead of him. This caused his competitive instinct to flare up. He pushed himself even more.
He passed the high-rise that indicated three miles, but kept going. He was determined to beat this stupid fireball. Suddenly, the ball turned left and cut across his path, heading toward the shore. He turned and followed it.
Plowing through the surf, getting back on his feet, and wading onto the beach slowed him down, but it was as if the fireball waited for him. Then it shot up the beach northwards.
He pursued it at the pace he used for long-distance runs. But as it went faster to keep ahead of him, he sped up as well. Soon, he was nearly sprinting. His lungs and legs were burning but he refused to give up.
Now he was passing it! Had it allowed him to get ahead, or was he really beating it? He didn’t care because he was winning. He glanced back. It was only ten feet behind.
Then it stopped. So, he did, too. He was the victor!
“Woo-hoo! I win, sucker!” he shouted, as if the fireball could hear him.
The fireball moved toward the dunes and hovered near the end of a dune crossover belonging to a moderately tall building. The sign at the bottom of the steps read, “Private property. Squid Tower residents only.”
As he bent over, regaining his wind, hands resting on his legs above his knees, he looked more attentively at the fireball which hovered now at a height of a couple of stories. It was perfectly round with a diameter of four or five feet. It was bright but not so bright that he couldn’t stare at it. The surface of the ball was smooth with fiery swirls inside. The luminescence throbbed with varying levels of intensity.
It was a bizarre phenomenon. During the race he had thought of it only as a competitor to be crushed, but now he wondered what exactly it was. Should he be afraid of it?
As if reading his thoughts, the globe drifted closer to him and dropped to the level of his head. It shrank to the size of a basketball, as if to be less threatening.
Inside the globe, within the fire, were the outlines of a human face. Looking at him and smiling. Abe felt himself smiling back.
Then it all went bad.
The ball disappeared and a hard mass slammed into him, knocking him on his back in the sand. A heavy body lay atop him and weighed him down. Despite all his weight training, he didn’t have the strength to push the body off him.
Pain flared in the side of his neck. He tried to twist away from it but something held his head immobile. The weight on top of him felt like the body of a human and he tried again to push it off him, his hands touching hot, wet, slippery tissue.
He could barely breathe. Sharper pain arced through his neck. The creature had bitten him. And it continued to do so, gnawing at his neck with the sounds of grunting and slurping.
He screamed in agony. With every move he made to slip out from underneath, the creature adjusted and held him immobile with its body and limbs.
He’d never been this afraid before. He’d always been in control of his physical well-being, always confident in his body’s ability to persevere. For the first time ever he was completely powerless.
More grunting and slurping. Panic amid the burning pain. And then dizziness and helplessness and growing despair.
Abe took a faltering breath as the creature lifted its head from his neck, but all he saw in the darkness was a bloody face with blood-stained, sharp teeth, and eyes glowing with the same color as the fireball he had raced.
I beat the stupid fireball, he reflected with pride.
It was the last coherent thought he would ever have.
And the creature sank its teeth into his neck again, grunting and slurping, until his world went black.
17
A Real Barbarian
When Missy arrived at Agnes’ condo, the vampire HOA president was taking a bath with the help of a home-health aid from Missy’s employer, Acceptance Home Care. The bathroom door was open and Agnes invited Missy to take a seat in the adjoining master bedroom.
“Did you hear?” Missy asked. “They found another one on the beach.”
“Yes, regrettably I did,” Agnes said. “The body was right at the end of our dune crossover. The murderer isn’t subtle at all in trying to implicate one of us.”
“I heard the victim was a young man,” Missy said. “His name hasn’t been released yet.”
“I know. The police were here questioning us. They’re getting increasingly aggressive.”
Agnes groaned and water splashed.
“Sometimes I think being immortal is a curse,” Agnes said as the home-health aide helped her out of the bathtub and dried her off with a thick white towel. The aide, a sturdy young Haitian-American woman, was gentle in her work.
Agnes didn’t try to hide her nakedness from Missy, as she was used to being attended to by nurses and servants throughout her human and vampire lifetimes. She was slight and frail, not quite five feet tall, and wrinkled from head to toe. The Visigoth tribal tattoos ringing her neck still maintained their vibrancy on the wrinkled flesh. Similarly, there was a presence inside this tiny
body greater than the vessel that held it.
Missy grabbed another towel from a bathroom shelf and wrapped Agnes in it as the aide finished.
“Humans who are old and infirm welcome death as a release from suffering,” Agnes said. “I was made a vampire just as I was at the point of looking forward to death. I was quite old for that day and age.”
“When were you reborn?”
“In the year 497 of the Common Era. I remember like it was yesterday,” Agnes said in her hard-to-place European accent. “It was exceptionally rare for anyone to live into their nineties back then, let alone sixties. The Visigoths were good at war and pillaging. Healthcare was not our strong suit. But I came from a wealthy family, so I lived well and had a servant to help me once I had trouble walking.”
“Tell me more, please,” Missy said, fascinated. “How did your family gain its wealth?”
“The spoils of war. It was the main way to get rich in those days. No tech start-ups, vulture capitalists, or hedge funds back then. Though the rapaciousness of humans has never changed. I was fortunate my father was a lord of King Theodoric and my husband was Mauric.”
“Who was he?”
“You haven’t heard of him? Everyone knew his name back in the day. He was a top general under King Euric. My husband defeated Romans and Franks alike. After he died, I lived with my son’s family and he had enough wealth to afford a servant to care for me in my old age. She helped me like Jeanette here. Even after I was turned, my son cared for me until he died. I then lived with my granddaughter in Hispania, and then my great-grandson’s household until the family was scattered by war. I became homeless. It was not easy to be homeless at my age.
“I was finally taken in by a colony of vampires. After the Moors invaded Hispania, we migrated into France and then Germany. There, incredibly, I was found by the vampire who made me, Portia. She took me to live with her in a convent. I lived there for centuries. I was fortunate. The Middle Ages were a very hard time. I might not have survived otherwise.”
“The nuns knew you were vampires?” Missy asked.
“Yes. Some of them were as well. Then, when Protestantism spread throughout Germany, many of us in the order moved to Rome where we joined a large vampire nest in Vatican City. Life was better for me then.
“There I remained until, once again, humans ruined things. When the Fascists took over in the 1920s, some of us fled to New York City. We had enough money to live comfortably, with nurses for those of us who needed them. After the war, the warmth and palm trees of Florida beckoned. And here we are!”
“‘We’?”
“A small group of us, a couple from the convent, a few more from Rome. We’ve stayed together all along. It’s the only way we could survive.”
“They live here at Squid Tower? Who are they?”
“I can’t tell you who they are. It’s up to each of them to tell you their own stories, if they choose to do so.”
“Is your maker among them.”
A cloud moved over Agnes’ eyes. “No. I lost her many years ago. Which is another story for another time.”
Missy patted her shoulder. “It must be much more comfortable for you now with all the conveniences today.”
“Yes,” she laughed darkly. “But it still is a burden to be very old. When I see younger vampires spending eternity at the peak of their physicality, I admit I hate them.”
“But didn’t your transformation to vampire improve you?”
“It was thrilling to be able to see at night without carrying a torch. My sense of smell became so sensitive that it was torture living in cities with all the unwashed bodies around you and the excrement on the streets. It’s better nowadays, but I’m practically asphyxiated whenever I come across a human senior who wears too much perfume because she can’t smell it herself. And I can more easily open jars. Now, does it sound like my existence is excellent? Do I not still need Jeanette to help me bathe and dress?”
She had a hint of a smile. Missy patted her hand and gave her a quick medical examination. Agnes had a host of geriatric medical conditions. In humans, these conditions meant your body was gradually failing you. In a vampire, it meant your body was compromised, but it wouldn’t get worse. They were just an irritant and, if you’ve lived with them for hundreds of years, you almost got used to them. Even if Agnes acted as if she hadn’t.
“The vampire who made me was a bit younger than I was. I used to resent the fact she chose someone as old as me. But I shortly realized when you’re a very old vampire, the only humans you can catch are ones who are older than you.”
“Fortunately, these days you have the Blood Bus.”
“And, since I moved to Florida, lots and lots of old humans in easy reach.”
Missy let that one go. But thoughts of the murders arose in her mind.
“Are you absolutely convinced no one from Squid Tower preyed upon the man who was just found on the beach?” she asked. “Or any of the others?”
“Human murderers make stupid mistakes. Vampires don’t. Our instincts are too strong to risk endangering our community. No, I don’t believe one of our residents is responsible. A vampire from somewhere else? It’s possible, but one of us would have sensed he or she was here, invading our territory.”
“I was told that in the early days of the Squid Tower colony, human residents were taken.”
“By stupid vampires who are no longer with us.”
“‘No longer with us?’ You mean, killed or forced to move away?’”
“Whatever it took to rid us of them,” Agnes said.
“The night gate guard told me he saw Mr. Schwartz stalking young women at the ice cream shop. Some of the people who disappeared were last seen there.”
“Leo is notorious for his sweet tooth. But as a board member he wouldn’t be stupid enough to prey so close to home.”
“When I binge-eat a tub of ice cream it’s pretty stupid,” Missy said. “But I can’t help myself. Sometimes I think sugar is a drug.”
“Even if Leo ignored his best judgement, I can’t believe he would feed to the point of killing. Vampires aren’t monsters, do you understand? We need sustenance just like anyone else. We take as much blood from our prey as we need without killing them. We only kill if the victim was a threat to us.”
“Only then?”
“I admit when a vampire is near starvation, he might be unable to stop himself from draining prey to the point of death. Often, then, the vampire will use his own blood to turn the dead prey into a vampire. When practical, of course, because it’s a great responsibility to re-make someone. You have to help them through their transition period. You become, in essence, their parent or guardian.”
“Maybe vampires are smarter than humans,” Missy said, “but they begin as humans, right? They keep most of their personality, right? Good parts and bad?”
“Yes. Of course. All of their personality.”
“Well there are bad people out there, sociopaths and psychopaths and plain and simple jerks. I’m sure it’s the same with vampires.”
“Yes. There are those who choose an evil path.”
“Wouldn’t they just kill their prey without guilt? Especially if they don’t want a witness who could report them?”
“We have ways of mesmerizing our prey so they don’t remember the attack.”
“I know. But are you sure the memory is permanently erased?”
“Not necessarily,” Agnes said quietly.
“It’s something to consider. The vampire could be ignoring the rules. Because he or she doesn’t want witnesses and doesn’t care at all about the victims. Because he or she is just a bad guy. Bad vampire, I mean.”
Missy didn’t need to say, because everyone knew, the biggest vampire jerk in Squid Tower was Schwartz.
“The gate guard also told me he witnessed Schwartz attack a plumber in the lobby. He reported it, but his boss told him to keep it quiet.”
Agnes sighed. “Yes. We had to deal with the inc
ident. The security company does pass on that kind of information to the board. Plus the homeowner kept complaining about the plumber not showing up and then the plumbing company started calling our management company. Fortunately, the plumber wasn’t killed and Schwartz mesmerized him to forget the incident. Schwartz was fined and given a warning.”
Agnes made it clear the topic was finished. But when Missy looked into her eyes she realized they both suspected Schwartz.
18
Entities Most Foul, Part One
Missy left Agnes’ condo around 3:00 a.m. which was nice, since she often didn’t get off work until close to dawn. She looked forward to relaxing at home. But as she drove through the gate, Bernie, the geeky gate guard, flagged her down. She stopped and rolled down her window.
“What’s up?” she asked, trying to hide her annoyance.
“Hi, miss . . .” he seemed to have forgotten her name.
“Missy.”
“Miss Missy, thanks again for the charm. But I’m still worried about Mr. Schwartz. He really wants to kill me.”
“Have you asked your boss about working a day shift?”
“There are no openings. I’m working this shift because no one else wants it. Who would? Besides, the owner of the company is a vampire and he doesn’t have much sympathy for me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I just know Schwartz is the murderer everyone has been talking about.”
“It’s a possibility. But remember, it’s our job to protect the residents here, so we can’t go spreading rumors that give our residents unwelcome attention. The police are investigating, and we have to let their investigation take its course.”
“But Schwartz knows I saw him at the ice cream shop. He’s going to want to get rid of me. Don’t you think I should call the police?”
“If you do, and they question him, then he’s going to know who tipped them off.”
