Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest (18 page)

Once they were packed, they trotted to the elevator. They began moving upward. Then the elevator shuddered to a stop, and the emergency lights went on. It could be Claude clamping them down and trying to keep them in place, or it could be that the power was out, that the US Vampire Council building had finally fallen under the weight of the human population of New York.

Reginald shoved Claire to the front of the elevator. Claire looked over her shoulder once, but he only nodded. She put her hand against the panel, and the elevator’s overhead light immediately lit and the box began to move. It reached the top floor, and Reginald nodded at Claire again to take the lead. She did, taking them to the stairwell and then to the roof, where the sky overhead was gray, still glowing from below with the lights of the city. The helicopter was still where Claire had left it, landed askew like the world’s worst aerial parking job. Reginald wanted to crack a joke to loosen the mood, but before he could, on the street far below, they saw an explosion of bright light — a bit of ultraviolet flash preceding a conventional explosion as the wall around the protected section of the city was breached. And perhaps, Reginald thought, that bomb had been a dirty one. Why not? Maybe they’d even made their biological weapon airborne by now. They had the brains and the vampires were forty years out of practice. And the humans, who owned the day and the open land, were slowly buying themselves all the time they’d ever need.

The helicopter lifted off under Claire’s touch, and the chopper full of vampires began lumbering through the sky over Manhattan. Reginald half expected artillery to bring them down, but there was too much excitement and light and fire below; neither the humans nor vampires were concerned about one lone helicopter out about its business. The thundering of the rotors was deafening. The ride was jarring; they kept pitching up and down, lurching either with the breeze or under Claire’s inexpert piloting. He wished he could fly without assistance — just fly through the breeze like a bird or Superman. Maurice had flown, once, when he’d come to save Reginald and die in the doing. But what had Brian said? That the vampire agent was like human adrenaline, that it responded in times of extreme duress to give vampires strength and new abilities. But how was that possible? Nobody knew. The very thing that made them
them
, and nobody knew anything about it. Was it a germ? A virus? Reginald had asked, but the reactions he always got were almost perplexed. How could anyone know such a thing? And really, why would anyone care?
 

Curiosity wasn’t a problem for humans, and it had never ceased being present in Reginald when he’d turned. So why was
that?
But that, too, was something nobody seemed to know.
 

They crossed the sky in their giant mechanical bird, a middle-aged woman who looked like a college student piloting the craft without knowing how she was doing it. Reginald wondered if Claire had thought to check the gas, then wondered if it mattered. Could she turn the rotors herself? Could she run the engine? Could she make sparks in the cylinders, driving the pistons by the force of mental incendiaries? But ultimately it didn’t matter; they made it back and unloaded, leaving the copter at the converted hospital where Claire had found it. Then they located the car she’d taken, found it blessedly dayproofed, and drove into the wilds, into a thicket, and waited for the daylight to arrive.
 

M
ADE

“PUT IT RIGHT THERE, FATASS,” said Maurice, pointing Reginald to a spot where he could slot another piece into the codex puzzle.

Inside Reginald’s mind — his brain working as his body slept in the shielded, dayproofed car — he sat his imaginary self on a chair. The room around him became a study, responding to his mental desire to have a studious discussion. Then he said, “I’m not a fatass, Maurice.”
 

“Really.”
 

“Really. I’m Reginald Baskin. You’re Maurice Toussant. Or at least, you were. I’m not fat and I’m not white and you don’t have the acne of a teenager. I’m not a vampire and you’re not a vampire. We’re just Reginald and Maurice.”
 

Reginald’s mental projection of Maurice sat in an imaginary leather chair across from Reginald’s. “This is fascinating,” he said.
 

“Nobody wants to see Reginald, except for Nikki and Claire. They all want me for what they think I am. But I’m not those things. I’m more than those things.”
 

“But you are also those things, Reginald,” said Maurice.
 

“I refuse to be defined as fat. I refuse to be defined as a mastermind, or a strategist. I
definitely
refuse to be defined as a leader, as Claire said once upon a time that I was supposed to be. And I also refuse to be defined as a vampire or a human. I hate both of them. I want out. I want to be my own thing.”
 

“I see. And how do you plan to do that?”
 

“I’ll stay in here,” Reginald said. “In here — and nowhere else — I am only Reginald. I am only myself, and nothing else.”
 

Maurice leaned forward and poked Reginald in his big imaginary gut like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. “Then tell me,” he said, “why are you still fat in here?”

Reginald looked down, seeing his imagined body with his internal eyes. He hadn’t thought about that.
 

Maurice continued. “Do I have to point out that I’m actually mostly
you
, and that hence it is
you
who keeps calling you ‘fatass?’ Do I have to point out that if
you
are
you
in here and nothing else, then it is
you
who has chosen to present
you
to
yourself
as a fat vampire?”
 

As if on cue, Reginald’s fangs popped out. He put his hand over his mouth.
 

“You are who you are, Reginald. The decision you have to make isn’t whether you are going to be what and who you are, but whether you can accept it. And this?” He gestured out at the mostly assembled vampire codex, which was inexplicably still visible through the wall even though they’d sat down in a mental study. “This tells
all
of us who we
all
are. Only
you
could solve this puzzle. You understand that, right? After forty years of living with this puzzle in your head, that
has
finally sunk in, hasn’t it?”

Reginald shrugged. “I guess.”
 

“Then that means that you really
are
a kind of Chosen One. Nobody wants to think about that — especially the Chosen Ones themselves, because it sounds so douchey — but it’s true. Only, you weren’t really
chosen
. You were
made
. You were a statistical eventuality. Nobody handpicked you to decipher the codex. The codex was always there in plain sight. That piece in your hand? I could have noticed that particular memory when I was alive. Hell, it’s from my own memories! And I had access to the thoughts of my maker to some degree, so there are other pieces I could have seen. But only you, who were special enough to see it all, could have put the entire puzzle together.”
 

“Because Balestro gave me that blast back in Germany,” said Reginald. “If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be able to see the entire vampire bloodline. And if I couldn’t see the bloodline, I couldn’t put it all together.”
 

“True,” said Maurice. “But Balestro only
chose
you after you were already here. Maybe he gave you the ability to bloodwalk after he realized who you already were — that you were the only mind ever created that could have seen order in all of these memories… that could have looked through all of that vampire history and seen the pattern in it.”
 

Reginald felt exasperated. Something had bothered him from the very beginning, but he hadn’t yet verbalized it even inside his own head. It came out now, as he looked across the codex puzzle and saw how close it was to completion — how close this whole adventure was to being over, for better or for worse.
 

“But
why
, Maurice?” he asked. “Why did Balestro give me that ability at all? What did he want from me? The angels never came back. Timken and Claude took that to mean that vampires had done their job, that no news from angels was good news. But I don’t buy it. I think that whatever they wanted from us — from the whole world, maybe — isn’t finished.”
 

Maurice shrugged. “I don’t know. Which is to say that
you
don’t know, and that your deductive powers, no matter how creatively you’ve personified them —” He put his palm on his own narrow chest. “— aren’t sufficient for anything beyond a guess.”
 

Reginald looked down at his big stomach, which was easily as big inside his own head as it was in life. It was unfair, the way even his subconscious mind insisted on beating him up.
 

“So what do we do?” he asked.
 

“You mean, what do
you
do?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“You keep on. You keep building the puzzle.”
 

Reginald looked out across the vast, endless floor. “But it’s almost finished.”
 

“Then you finish it.”
 

“Then what?”
 

“You mean, what do you do next?” Maurice asked.
 

Reginald nodded.
 

“By which I mean, what do
we
do next?”

Reginald nodded again.
 

“I have no idea, fatass,” he said.
 

Reginald looked at the huge cardboard puzzle piece in his hand, representing yet another datum to slot into the puzzle. He didn’t precisely know what to
do
, but he realized as he looked at it that he did know what to do
next
. He would read the piece, and he’d see what fate had in store, and then he’d do it, because apparently there was no other way.
 

Reginald dropped the piece into the puzzle. He felt another bit of realization dawn. It was almost complete. It was almost there.
 

“Maurice,” he said.
 

Maurice looked up.
 

“You’re not entirely me, are you? I mean, the present part of you. The part that isn’t your stash of memories.”
 

Maurice looked thoughtful. “Well, I don’t know. Is a puzzle the sum of all of its pieces? Or is there something above them that transcends all of the little parts?”
 

“Is that a metaphysical question?” Reginald asked. But Maurice just smiled.
 

Reginald looked down at his metaphorical feet and saw two more metaphorical puzzle pieces. Now that the codex was mostly assembled, their position was obvious. He didn’t have to think about where they went, and so he watched as they floated up and zipped into place, not crossing the space in between here and there so much as appearing where they belonged. Then the whole puzzle seemed to shimmer and shine, and Reginald felt his knowledge of it (so far, anyway) transform into an intimate familiarity with it. It was like the point in learning a language where you stopped translating words and simply started thinking in the new tongue.

And as Reginald felt himself become fluent in the vampire codex, he felt as if he were flying. All of the pieces in the larger puzzle — still metaphorical, but now outside of himself, in the bigger world — started to come together. He saw how it all fit. He began to see the truth.

Vampires and humans.
 

Humans and vampires.
 

And he saw how it all ended — which was to say how it
didn’t
end, how it hung delicately from a point where the whole thing was stuck — a point past which even Reginald, with his insider’s knowledge, couldn’t see.
 

He awoke in the shielded car, feeling hot and uncomfortable. Nikki had been driving before they’d parked in the thicket, and she was still asleep beside him in the driver’s seat. He reached over and turned the key, starting the engine. Then he turned on the air conditioning, amused as if for the first time that a vampire could care about the temperature — that a cold being could be bothered by heat. But reality, more than ever, was not what it had once seemed to be.

Nikki, startled by the sound of the engine, stirred. She blinked, stretched, and then looked over at Reginald.
 

“I know how to end it,” he said.
 

Nikki blinked again, seemingly trying to process his words. “You do?”
 

“Yes,” he said. “But we’re going to need a little bit of help.”
 

C
AR

THE SCREEN WHERE THE WINDSHIELD would be on a normal, non-dayproofed car flickered. They’d turned the screens off — on all of the car’s faux windows — because leaving them on while they slept made them all feel like they were out in the open. Now only the windshield was active, showing them nothing and then what looked like the inside of a hotel room. Then it was nothing again.
 

“Come on, Claire,” Reginald mumbled, as if in prayer.
 

Claire, in the back seat, yawned. She focused, and the windshield flickered. Then they saw the room again in all its glory, steady as anything.
 

“Got it?” Reginald said, turning to look at Claire.
 

“I had it just fine from the beginning,” she said. “I’m just tired, is all. I’m used to a vampire sleep schedule. What time is it? Like 3PM?”
 

Reginald didn’t answer, and instead turned back to the screen. “So now what?” he said.
 

“Pretend it’s a window,” said Claire.
 

Reginald looked again at the room in front of him. It was bizarre. The clarity was perfect, just like the projection of the road outside would normally have been. It looked like they were looking through a car’s windshield, but the car in question had somehow plowed into a Holiday Inn.