Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest (21 page)

Once Reginald was bound, the five humans retreated, still aiming their guns. More men appeared around the baseball field’s edges, aiming weapons like spectators with a vested interest in the game’s outcome. Reginald found himself painted in laser sights. He wanted to laugh, but doing so felt incredibly dangerous. The humans had been burned twice — and had done some burning themselves — so no trust was going to be granted until it was duly earned. All in all, Reginald didn’t particularly care if they killed him. In many ways, death would be a relief… but he had to at least convey his message before he left the planet. He owed it to the others. He owed it to every human and vampire still alive, because without that message, none of them would be alive for long.

More lights came on facing the field. More lights came on facing away from the field. More troops swarmed. Reginald realized a strangely harmonious thought as he watched them: when they were armored, humans and vampires looked the same. Both species dressed in black armor, protected their necks, wore helmets… and, today, both wielded guns. Both had hate and suspicion in their eyes, even when their eyes weren’t visible. He was watching human rebels, but they could be vampire members of the CPC. Or Timken’s pre-war Sedition Army troops. Or pre-war human AVT. Or Claude’s murderous, black ops V-Crews.
 

Killers, in the end, were killers.
 

And then, strangely, Reginald realized something else. Something he hadn’t seen before. Not only did they look alike; they
felt
alike as well. Sitting on the chair in the middle of the brightly lit baseball field, alone and waiting to see if Lafontaine would show or if they’d kill him out of hand, Reginald realized that
he could feel the humans.
They felt like a haze of nerves, of distrust and fear and anger and focused, desperate hope. He’d always been gifted at glamouring humans, but he’d never been able to feel them before. Yet right here and now, all of that emotion and thought surrounded him like a cold fog. Maybe other vampires couldn’t evolve, and maybe the angels had been right. But Reginald had never stopped evolving, never stopped discovering new talents. It should be worth something. But somehow, it never had been.
 

A shadow emerged from the dugout. It walked ten feet toward Reginald, still not even to home plate on the baseball field. The figure was larger than the others, wearing armor that made its chest look big. But its chest was already large. The big belly of the human — so like Reginald’s big belly — was a silhouette against the blinding lights.
 

“I wanted to believe you, Reginald,” said the shadow.
 

It took a few more steps, now nearing home plate.
 

“But you just can’t be trusted, can you? I don’t like the idea of killing you all. I really don’t, honest. But you vampires are like killer bees. You give us no choice; we can’t live with you off to the side — live and let live — because every time we try to give you the benefit of the doubt, you do something to break whatever trust there almost was, and to take away the doubt.”
 

Reginald tried to straighten his back under the chain. He looked at the fat black silhouette and said, “You’re right. I’m coming at you right now. Look out; I’m dangerous.”
 

Lafontaine’s silhouette turned and yelled something into the dugout. A new silhouette emerged, holding a second silhouette. More men with weapons appeared, now pointing at Reginald and at the new figures. More lights began to scan the distance.
 

Reginald realized what he was looking at. Then Nikki’s voice said, “I’m okay!”
 

Reginald wanted to scream. She’d followed him. Of
course
she’d followed him. His love for her and his fear for her were temporarily overrun by his frustration with her. She’d never trusted him to lead, and she’d never trusted him to be able to take care of himself. It was sweet until it wasn’t sweet; it was kind until it was flat-out dangerous. Had she really thought she could sneak in? They’d been over this for the entire drive. There were no holes in Lafontaine’s plan. The only way to meet the force in the park would be to go in heavy, with hundreds of soldiers. They didn’t
have
hundreds of soldiers. They had four ordinary folks, and only two of them were any good in a fight. The idea of this whole thing had been to concede, to be humble, and to try to use brains above brawn. Reginald was never supposed to
win
this confrontation. Even the best-case scenario would be neutral. He was supposed to roll over and expose his belly, content to die so long as he could convey the truth he needed to convey. But now, Nikki had made that impossible. All that her lack of trust had done was to make sure that Reginald couldn’t even roll over and be heard. She hadn’t saved him, and she hadn’t saved herself. And now everyone, everywhere, was going to die.
 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nikki,” he said. Then, knowing it was a betrayal and hating himself for it, he yelled, “I didn’t know she was coming! I told her not to come!” The words felt horrible passing his lips, but the time had come for desperate measures. He and Nikki were goners anyway. He had to do what he could to salvage anything that could be salvaged.

Lafontaine walked closer. Nikki’s captor held her where she was. Reginald could hear the jingle of silver chains around her shoulders and arms.
 

“What was the plan?” said Lafontaine. “Were you going to kill me? Was she going to sneak up behind me and bite my head off?”
 

Reginald felt seconds slipping away, felt blood leaking through the world’s cracks. “No!” he shouted.
 

The human shook his head. “When I first saw you, I was shocked. I’d never seen a vampire like you. My grandfather told me that vampires are like animals. They kill their own kind. Grandpa said that vampires are pure survival of the fittest. They’ll only turn thin, strong, and fast humans and will drain the rest.” He gestured at his own body. “Maybe I’d have joined you once upon a time. But I figured yours was a club that wouldn’t have me.”

He started to pace, his shadow washed out by the multi-directional glow of the field lights and the supplementary spotlights.
 

“Of course, spending my whole life under the thumb of your superiority, being fed on, being treated like slaves… well, that turned me off to the idea pretty quickly, and by the time I was twelve and my beloved grandfather was killed by a blood farm guard for stealing tools to make me a toy — just one toy for the boy who grew up with an IV in his arm — I’d pretty much decided that if I ever became a vampire, the first thing I’d do would be to kill my maker. Then I’d kill the next vampire I could find, and then the next, and then the next until they killed me. And years later when I escaped, I vowed that I’d see the planet wiped clean of you or die trying. But I’d never again be your… your
food
.”
 

He walked up to Reginald and stood in front of him. He squatted, surprisingly agile for a big man.
 

“But you? You weren’t like the others — and honestly, the fact that you are who you are is the reason I’m even here tonight. I saw you in that first melee. You reacted like a human. You’re slow. You’re weak. You were afraid. I can tell the others don’t even respect you. It’s in the way they look at you…”
 

Reginald stopped him, unable to help himself. It was Lafontaine’s mention of “looking” that did it.
 

“What happened to your eyes?” he said.

A small, surprised smile crawled onto Lafontaine’s dark lips. He pointed at Reginald. “And that’s another thing about you, Reginald Baskin: you’re
curious
. I’ve never met another vampire who was curious. Our scientists have tried to figure that out — to understand your psychology — but it’s hard. Vampires don’t tend to be cooperative when we catch them and try to test them, and when we remove your brains to autopsy them, they turn to ash. We had to study your blood while you were still alive with it still circulating in your veins, or else we wouldn’t have been able to develop our ace-in-the-hole.” He ran a finger up his bare arm, presumably rubbing a line in the disease agent on his skin. “But it’s not just curiosity that most vampires lack. I’ve never seen a vampire who appears embarrassed, or self-conscious, or shy. But you have all of that. You hide behind the others, yet you do things that are selfless. You think beyond yourself. We’ve discovered the bond between maker and made, though we don’t understand it, and we’ve watched V change under our microscopes when a maker’s progeny is in danger…”
 

“V?” said Reginald.
 

“That’s what we call the organism in your blood.”
 

“What is it?” said Reginald, suddenly forgetting that he was bound, in a hundred gun sights, and that Nikki was being held captive. This was the question he’d asked his own kind over and over and never gotten an answer to. It was so strange to think that his curiosity about himself might, in his final hours, be sated by a human.

Lafontaine’s strange little smile became larger and again he pointed at Reginald.
 

“See? There’s that curiosity again. To answer your question (because I’ve got an investigative mind myself, and because you’re not going anywhere), it looks like a virus. Not quite alive and not quite not dead. It’s almost
un
dead, like you.”
 

“A virus?”
 

He nodded. “And to answer your other question, I lost my eyes to cancer a few years ago, after escaping the farm. But every cloud has a sliver lining, because it makes me impervious to your little mind tricks.”

“But you can see.”
 

Lafontaine touched a small device pinned to his earlobe that Reginald had taken for an earring. “Sonar,” he said. “Like a bat. With a bit of training, I can see nearly as well as you can. Well… as well as a
human
can see, anyway.” He sighed. “Though I do miss colors.”
 

Behind Lafontaine, Nikki struggled. The sound of her chains seemed to remind Lafontaine of her presences, and of what it meant.
 

“I wanted to hear what you had to say,” he told Reginald. “But every time I try to listen to vampires, someone gets killed. But it’s okay. Silver lining, see. Because you were so unique that I was beginning to question my conviction. I was afraid I might be making a mistake, and that you weren’t all worth killing. And that made it hard, because you make it impossible for us to let you survive. So in a way, I’m glad that it has turned out this way. It makes me feel so much better about what we need to do.”
 

Reginald swallowed. “Your weapon,” he said. “You have a way to deliver it.”
 

Lafontaine nodded. “Again, I don’t
want
to kill all of you, Reginald. I really don’t, even after your species killed my entire family after they’d gotten too old to milk for quality blood. I don’t want to kill you after you killed almost every human who once walked this planet.” He squatted again, his empty sockets meeting Reginald’s eyes as if they were the source of his sight. “My grandfather told me that once upon a time, there were human cities so full that the sheer number of people created disease. That there were countries that limited the number of children people could have, because the Earth was too full. Was that true?”
 

Reginald nodded. “It’s true.”
 

Lafontaine stood. “It’s an amazing thing to think of, all those people. I’ve seen the old bibles: ‘Go forth and multiply,’ they said. We did it once. You drove us back, and now we’ll have to do it again. And still, I don’t want to kill anyone. But in my shoes, what would you do?” He stood, now looking down at Reginald. “I’m told that your logical mind is unmatched. So I’m actually asking: what would
you
do, if there was an intelligent, vengeful group who wanted to kill you and suck you dry, who would hunt you forever and never relent? You’d have to eradicate them, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t have any choice, if you wanted your own kind to survive, but to kill them all.”
 

Reginald found himself recalling his encounter with Timken all those years ago. So much was the same between that meeting and this one. Reginald had been in a jail cell, held in place by silver. Timken had been asking Reginald’s opinion on a difficult decision, plumbing him for input. Like Lafontaine, Timken hadn’t wanted to do what he felt needed to be done… but what choice was there?
 

“I understand,” said Reginald.
 

Lafontaine turned to the guard holding Nikki. He gestured with his head and the solider dragged Nikki forward. She started to say something to Reginald, to apologize, but Reginald told her with his eyes not to bother. What was done was done. She had probably doomed them both — had, in fact, probably doomed them all — but it was what it was.
 

“Do you?” said Lafontaine. “Because I see how you are. We have eyes everywhere. It’s easy once we see how to piggyback on vampire communications protocols — a trick, by the way, that you used on us at the beginning, but which we improved on — and I’ve been watching you, Reginald. You and her…”
 

“My wife Nikki,” he said. It didn’t matter if Lafontaine knew Nikki’s name, but Reginald wanted to take any opportunity he could to humanize her in Lafontaine’s mind. He was already calling Reginald by his name, and Reginald could feel Lafontaine wanting to like him, wanting to find a solution. His thinking of her as “Nikki” rather than as a nameless assassin could only help.
 

“Well, you and Nikki and a few others seem different. But how am I supposed to pick out the good ones from the bad ones? My first duty has to be to my species. So what can I do?”
 

“I know what you can do,” said the guard holding Nikki, loud enough for only the two of them to hear.
 

The voice was familiar. And when Reginald looked up, he realized that the shape of the soldier was familiar, too. He was big, with broad shoulders.