Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest (17 page)

Lafontaine and a human guard were already there, already out of their car and waiting, their headlights on and pointing toward the vampires. Reginald could see a shape in the back of the car that had to be Timken. There was also a fourth man in the group, unarmed and unarmored, wearing a tattered suit. He approached Reginald, who’d been driving, and held out his hand. Reginald, guessing, gave him the keys. The man climbed into the Town Car behind them, started it, and drove away. The move struck Reginald as funny, but he decided not to comment. Instead, he looked at Lafontaine and his armed escort across the parking lot, then at Claude.
 

“I’m glad you understand the need to help the Vampire Nation resolve this,” said Claude. “Despite… you know.”
 

“If you talk to me again,” said Reginald, “I will try to kill you. I’m sure I’ll fail and you’ll kill me instead, but then you’ll be short one fat genius brain.”
 

Reginald was sure that Claude would retort — was almost hoping he would — but the big man only looked at Reginald and then closed his mouth with a sense of “fair enough.”
 

Lafontaine, who hadn’t bothered with his sunglasses this time, dragged the shape from the back seat and began walking with it toward the center of the parking lot, back-lit by the other car’s headlights. The guard followed on Lafontaine’s other side. As they came nearer, Reginald could see Timken’s face. His hair was disheveled but he looked otherwise pristine, almost ready for a photo shoot.

Then they stopped, and Reginald suddenly realized that nobody would be entering the building. The exchange would be conducted in the open. That, too, made sense, but Reginald couldn’t help but look over at the building, wondering if it was filled with human snipers.
 

Lafontaine beckoned. Reginald and Claude walked forward to join them.

Right now, all of the humans at the besieged blood farms would be lining up at the gates. The vampire troops guarding the gates would be allowing them to do so, lowering their weapons. It was all being televised by news crews, and the whole nation was watching. That, Reginald thought, was the hidden reason behind this exchange — the reason Lafontaine had insisted on it. It wasn’t just about freeing the captive humans; it was about changing hearts and minds. The public would see the Vampire Nation regain its leader, but it would also see the Nation allow 75 percent of its blood supply walk away unmolested. The surrender of sustenance would demoralize the vampire world to the point of breaking while simultaneously giving the humans unbridled new levels of hope. In the minds of the watching humans, the righteous would have won. Their cause would have become not just
possible
… but really just a matter of time.
 

On his belt, Claude wore a cell phone. This was intended to be straightforward; Claude would use the phone to tell the vampire troops to allow the humans to pass the gates, then Lafontaine would hand Timken over, and then when the blood stock was safely away, Lafontaine would order his troops to retreat. But until those events actually took place, anything could happen. There were guns aimed in every direction, creating a giant Mexican standoff.
 

Reginald had stopped caring. All that mattered were Claire and Nikki, ideally Brian, and, if possible, himself. That was it. As he stood in the dark, headlight-lit parking lot, he realized that he didn’t care about the humans of the world; he didn’t care about the vampires of the world; he didn’t even care about the human community where his mother and Nikki’s sister had lived and died, or the cluster of vampires he knew back at home. In an ideal world, everyone would live. Maybe they’d join hands and sing and braid flowers through each other’s hair. But that wasn’t going to happen, and he just
didn’t care.
Nikki. Claire. Maybe Brian. Maybe himself. And the rest could go to Hell.
 

They stopped ten feet from Lafontaine, Timken, and the guard. Timken was at the end of what appeared to be a silver-chain leash. Claude picked up the phone, dialed a number, and put the phone on speaker. They heard Ophelia’s voice.
 

“The gates are open,” she said, her voice distorted by the phone’s speaker. “The humans are lined up, the guards awaiting your command.”
 

“How do the humans look?” said Claude. “For the cameras, I mean?”
 

“Clean and unabused enough. But a lot of them still look sick.”
 

“Good,” said Claude. “Stand by.”
 

“Standing by, sir.”
 

Claude looked up from the phone and met Timken’s eyes.

“How are you, Mr. President?” he said. Reginald couldn’t help looking over. Hearing concern come out of Claude’s mouth was surreal. He tried again to pry into Claude’s thoughts, but Claude still had his impervious wall up.
 

“Oh, peachy,” said Timken.
 

Reginald looked at Lafontaine. He was dressed in dirty blue jeans and an old button-up shirt that was whole but well-worn. As before, his empty eyes were looking directly at Reginald and Claude as if he could see them, and Reginald again wondered how. The guard, beside him, was carrying a weapon with a tank under the barrel like a giant squirt gun, but Lafontaine himself was unarmed. Still, Reginald remembered what had happened last time. He thought of the glints they’d seen on the horizon. The unknown element of the building beside them. And Lafontaine’s dark skin, which might again have been covered in the vampire disease agent. They were ready for anything, appearances to the contrary.

“I’ve been watching the news while we’ve been waiting,” said Lafontaine. Then he nodded with satisfaction. “It looks like you’re keeping up your end of the bargain on the blood farms.”
 

“We don’t really have a choice,” said Claude, a scowl forming on his face.
 

“Sure you do. You could let him die.”
 

Claude shook his head, exasperated.
 

Lafontaine turned to assess the president as if he’d never seen him with his sightless eyes before, starting at his feet and scanning him upward. Then he turned back to Claude and Reginald.
 

“I shouldn’t let him go,” he said. “I’ve heard the stories about vampires from my grandmother’s day. You used to stay in the shadows. You hid, before anyone knew you even existed. But this one right here —” He shook Timken’s chain. “— was the one who made you come out. He’s the one who planned the slaughter of humanity.”

“Well,” said Claude, “him and me.”
 

Lafontaine was looking at Timken again. He sighed. “Well,” he said, “a deal is a deal.” He locked eyes with Claude, then with the others. He paused. Then he said, “Do I need to remind you that if you try anything, we’ll kill you all?”
 

Claude laughed.
 

Lafontaine ignored the insult. “And do I need to remind you that if you think you can kill
us
, you’re sorely mistaken?”
 

This time, Claude didn’t break a smile.
 

“And while we’re at it, I’ll just go ahead and remind you that we’ve watched you since you rolled out of New York, since you took that wrong turn seventeen miles back and had to turn around. We’ve got eyes in the sky, and eyes all around. Enough to be sure that you don’t have anyone waiting to jump on us this time.”
 

“Fine,” said Claude.
 

Lafontaine nodded. “Then go ahead and do your part.”
 

Claude looked down at the phone in his hand. “General Thax?” he said.
 

“Yes, sir?”

“Release the humans.”
 

“Yes, sir.”
 

They stood for a moment, everyone staring at each other. Claude started to talk, but Lafontaine held up a finger. He looked over at the guard beside him. The guard touched an earpiece, listened, and then nodded. Then Lafontaine carefully, using only his fingertips, lifted the silver chain from around Timken’s neck.
 

“Wouldn’t want to touch his skin with mine and kill him by accident,” he said, noticing Reginald’s gaze. Then he laughed. “Well… at least not yet.”
 

The chain came off. Lafontaine nodded at Timken. The guard raised his weapon and trained it on the president’s back, casually, just in case. Claude watched the display, seething. But something was wrong; Claude was too tense. Something had gone sour. They needed to finish this and get out.
 

Timken walked the short distance and came to stand beside Claude. He straightened his suit coat.
 

“You okay, sir?” said Claude.
 

Timken nodded. “I’m fine.”
 

Then Claude looked directly at Lafontaine, grasped Timken’s head between his hands, and twisted it off his neck.
 

“Now,” he growled, “you have nothing to hold against us.”
 

Timken’s body had begun to spark. Claude shoved it hard at the guard. Timken’s corpse, now flaming, struck the guard like a two-hundred-pound sack of flour, driving him to the ground. The guard’s head racked hard on the concrete of the parking lot, and then he began to burn.
 

Claude had dropped the phone when he’d decapitated Timken. He stooped to pick it up.
 

“General Thax,” he said, “tell the farm guards to kill the humans.”
 

“Sir?”
 

He raised his eyes to stare at Lafontaine. “Do it.”
 

Claude pocketed the phone, then marched slowly toward the human.
 

“Stay back!” he said, raising his hands. “I’m contaminated!”
 

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Claude, a smile surfacing beneath his black goatee. “I won’t kill you. I want to be sure you’re able to see them die.”
 

E
VIL

REGINALD WAS SHELL-SHOCKED. OF all the ways the exchange could have unfolded, this was the one he hadn’t seen coming. But after Lafontaine ran from the parking lot to his presumably waiting troops, Claude turned and marched unhurriedly past the burning guard, stopping just long enough to drive his boot into the man’s face and end his misery. Then he began to walk back the way they’d come without a word. Reginald, after a pregnant moment, followed. He was in a dream. What would happen now? And how had he — Reginald Baskin, protector of Nikki and Claire — failed them all?

Claude waited for Reginald to catch up. The humans, who’d obviously been watching, were already descending on the parking lot and the running figure of Walter Lafontaine. Reginald came up beside the new president and looked over, feeling that if he’d never done it before, he was now looking into the face of pure evil. Claude didn’t turn. Reginald found himself no longer angry at the big man. He couldn’t be angry because he felt so many other emotions in anger’s place: disbelief, terror, ejected from reality.
 

The whole game had changed in the span of thirty seconds. Anything could happen now. He could imagine the blood farm guards gunning down the retreating humans, wasting bullets and lives and stock, decimating the blood supply through the Nation’s own volition. Reginald could almost understand if Claude had sacrificed Timken in the Vampire Nation’s best interests, as Timken had always seemed to think he was doing. But if that was Claude’s intention, wouldn’t he have recaptured the humans instead of executing them? Now the Nation would be just as short on blood as if they’d gone free — but now, the humans would be twenty times more driven to unleash everything they had.
 

“You’ve killed us all,” Reginald said, his mouth wanting to hang open.
 

The humans turned as they descended, driving their vehicles and sprinting toward Reginald and Claude. Reginald could see the glint of gunsights, could hear the first firing of shells.
 

But milliseconds later, Claude half-squatted and grabbed Reginald’s left calf, casually straightening up and dropping Reginald onto his back with a thud. Then the world became a blur of dust and pain as Claude ran, dragging Reginald behind him. Reginald could feel his skull opening, could feel the skin ripping off his back.

It went on forever. Reginald let his mind go, turning inside, finally finding voluntary control of his internal pain switch — or maybe just rediscovering traumatic shock. But then sometime later, he was thrown roughly through the door of the USVC building’s loading bay, left to bleed and heal in a pile on the floor. Claude didn’t bother with pleasantries once he’d delivered Reginald like so much incoming freight. He blurred away, and then Reginald was alone.
 

Reginald ran upstairs to find Nikki, Claire, and Brian. He didn’t need to tell them what had happened. They knew that the humans had been executed; they’d watched it unfold live on VNN. They hadn’t, however, known that Timken had been killed, though they’d assumed from what they’d seen publicly that the deal had gone bad. The propaganda machine, however, was already hard at work, trying to turn the slaughter of the blood stock into some kind of a necessity, or possibly even a victory.
 

“He’s done,” said Nikki. “They’ll lynch him. His own people.”
 

Reginald shook his head. “They won’t. There’s only room for one enemy in the public eye, and right now, the bigger enemy is the humans.”
 

“But Claude…”
 

“… will be the man in charge when the dust settles, if it ever does. And the vampires of the world will become convinced that whatever happened at the farms
had
to be done once Claude explains how the humans killed the president.”
 

“Nobody will fall for that,” said Brian.
 

Reginald turned to his brother with a small smile. “I wish I could still believe that,” he said.
 

Reginald demanded that they leave, and nobody argued. He began packing the room, barking at Nikki and Brian to do the same. Claire, who’d only brought a backpack, followed them around in turns, sticking mostly with Reginald because he moved at a speed she could keep up with. They had the room cleared in just over a minute.