Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (29 page)

“No, it isn’t
true. They’ve got everyone fooled. Those were killers… vampires. I’m doing this
for you, for everyone.”

The Chief sat
back, clearly at a loss for words. “Why are you doing this then? If you’re a
vampire and they’re vampires, hypothetically, why would you want to kill them?”

Tears sprang
to his eyes, “I’m not supposed to be this. I never asked to be this. I wouldn’t
want anyone else to have to go through what I’ve gone through. You call me a
killer… I’m just a victim.”

The Chief got
up from his chair, “Sure pal, you’re the victim, and a vampire, and a killer of
families and innocent people. You’re in a bad way, Dead Man. Your brain is
scrambled. I don’t think you even know what is real anymore.”

The Chief
shuffled through more of the photos on the desk and tossed another over to him.
He picked it up and looked at it. It showed the Old Soldier in a gutter, his
jugular ripped and torn and a small puddle of blood around his head. Except for
the blood and the tear in his neck, he could have been a bum passed out drunk.
Part of him wished that was what he was looking at.

“What about
that guy, was he a vampire?”

He looked at
the picture a little longer, etching it into his mind, into his memory, “No… he
was my friend.”

“Was he a
vampire?”

“No, he was
just a bum, a damaged man.”

“What do you
mean damaged?”

“He was kind
of fucked up from the war; he was a little off his rocker; I suppose that’s why
he stuck with me so long.”

“What war?”

“He was in Vietnam.”

The Chief sat
down and handed him a cigarette. “That guy wasn’t in 'Nam.”

It took him a
while to register what the Chief was saying, but then it hit him and it hit him
hard.

“What do you
mean he wasn’t in Nam? That’s bullshit. He told me stories.”

“Maybe he told
you stories, but that guy was never in 'Nam.”

“That’s
bullshit and you know it.”

“Really? You
think I’m fucking lying to you? Here take a look at his file… this is
everything we got on your buddy.” The Chief tossed a thin file over to him
nonchalantly.

It said
“Gordon Stanton” on the file, the Old Soldier’s name was Gordon… funny, he
didn’t look like a Gordon. Apparently, he didn’t look like a lot of things that
he was. He read the file in growing horror. Gordon Stanton had been considered
clinically crazy for quite some time. He had spent the majority of his youth in
a mental institution, even the years during Vietnam. During the war, he was
listed as having been a guest at an Oregon State Mental Institution in Marion County, committed after a series of paranoid delusions forced his parents to lock
him up. He had stayed in there for a while, until the state turned the hospital
into a prison and he was kicked out onto the streets. He had been arrested for
vagrancy, petty theft, and public indecency several times throughout the years,
but none of it said anything about him being a war veteran. He had just been a
crazy old bum that could spin a tale. Who knew? Maybe Gordon Stanton even
believed that he had been in the war.

He grabbed the
cigarette the Chief had given him with a trembling hand and gestured to the man
that he wanted a light. The Chief handed the lighter over to him and he lit the
cigarette; this time the smoke reminded him of an old guy that had been crazy and
fucked up for his entire life. For the first time, doubt crept into his mind
just like the smoke crept into his lungs.

“When Mr.
Stanton showed up dead, we had to scramble. You see we were on to Mr. Stanton.
Crazy people don’t cover their tracks very well, but you were like a fucking
ninja. Then this girl comes into us, hot little number. You may remember her;
you tried to suck the life out of her tonight. She starts talking about how her
brother and her friend were killed and she thinks she’s next… because of you.”

“So you guys
were waiting.”

“Yeah, and you
stroll in like some skinny Van Helsing with your bag full of stakes and
spattered with blood. Tell me, Dead Man. How many people did you kill?”

“Two.”

“Two? I got a
hell of a bigger body count than that. Maybe you killed so many people you
can’t remember.”

“Oh, three… I
killed three people. I forgot about my neighbor, plus the kid and the Old
Soldier… that makes three.”

“So who killed
those other people?”

“Those weren’t
people, so they don’t count. No one complains when a doctor wipes out an
infection or a virus… even though those are independent organism, even though
they are alive. These things are the same, a disease that preys on us, kills us
and spreads. Just because they look like people and talk like people doesn’t
make me any different from a doctor.”

“Viruses don’t
walk around and talk. Viruses don’t cry about how their brother was murdered in
an alley. I’ve never had a virus walk through these doors and start crying
about how they were scared they were going to get killed.”

He smoked his
cigarette in silence.

Exasperated,
he finally said, "You don’t get it do you? You won’t let yourself see.
You’re blinded. Unable to admit that something you don’t know is out there
doing things you are sworn to prevent.”

“The only
thing I’m trying to stop here is a psycho killer. We got the bodies and the
proof… and now we have you. So I guess I’ve done my job because you’re sitting
here and no one is dying tonight.”

He leaned back
and took a last puff off of the cigarette, dropped it on the floor and snuffed
it out with the toes of his shoe.

“Maybe… maybe
not.”

The Chief got
up out of his seat and called the officers in to remove him. They undid his
handcuffs and led him back to the cell with little fuss from him. His mind
whirled with the possibilities, as the door was popped open and he was thrust
inside. The Samoan dude took off his handcuffs and gave him a shot in the gut
before he left. He doubled over in pain on the shitty cot that was in his cell.

He couldn’t
help but wonder what was going to happen when the sun came over the horizon.

            Amid
the coughs and the sickness of the cellblock, he waited. He waited for the
truth hurtling toward him at 736 miles per hour. It floated out there, in
space. A giant eye hovering in the middle of nothing, ready to decide whether
he was going to live or die. It seemed silly when you thought about it… the sun
killing him. Maybe it was like a really bad sunburn… maybe when he had become a
vampire, if he had become a vampire, his skin had ceased to create any sort of
ability to fight the sun. Maybe when that giant eye came over the edge of the
windowsill he would just disappear in a puff of dust. Poof… no more.

            Or
maybe the sun would come up and he would just sit there, getting a tan and
waiting for the hammer of the law to drop on him. He would be branded a psycho,
get thrown in a maximum security prison and rot for the rest of his days.
Perhaps he would be a guinea pig. Maybe when he got older and died his autopsy
would be a special treat for some lucky criminologist interested in figuring
out what exactly had been wrong with him. With any luck they would make
plasticized cross-sections of his brain and parade his corpse around the world…
a never ending tour of sideshow excess disguised in scientific trappings. Come!
See the brain of the man that thought he was a vampire! See the brain of the
man that killed his friend, watched his family die, and then killed other
families! Wouldn’t that be something? He wondered if he would pay to see such
an experience.

            The
cellblock whirred with unadulterated normality. People in cells held heated
debates about which actress was hotter, what they had done to get in here, and
where someone could score some drugs. The hardened spoke in a manner that
belied the life they had, while the soft clung to corners trying to look like
anything but a victim and succeeding only in making themselves look like even
more of a victim. The fluorescent lights buzzed in the ceiling as the prisoners
stalked around their cells like chickens pecking at the ground for seed.

            He
saw a tiny sliver of it at first… just a little crack of yellow. From his
vantage point on his cot he could see the sky turning orange and pink, a
fireworks show just for him. Puffy white clouds filled the sky like tumors,
floating through the lungs of the world. The sky spread out painfully small in
the tiny rectangular vision of the window, impossibly large through such a
small space. He stood on his cot, watching and waiting as the sliver grew in
size, expanding and approaching him where he sat on his cot as the angle of the
sun changed. For a second, he felt like James Bond in one of his many movies,
lying on a table and waiting for a laser to split his junk in two. Only he
wouldn’t be fighting. He wouldn’t cower in a corner hiding from what should
have happened to him long ago, besides, it was much better to be burned up than
rot in a cell.

            The
sliver grew thick, expanding, encompassing the room and brightening it to an
unbearable level. His head ached with the sight of something he hadn’t seen in
forever, the brightness washed out the details of the cell and the hum of the
prisoners. It was as if he could hear the sun moving, frying everything it
touched in waves of radioactive energy. The roar of the sunlight filled his
head, and when the light filled up a good majority of the room, enough to
encompass his whole body, he jumped off of his cot and ripped his clothes off,
staring into the offending body of gas and heat.

            As
he stood in the sun, basking and baking in its early morning heat, he finally
knew. He could hear Leroy screaming out for the guards as his skin started to
blacken and become hard, he could feel his eyes turn into rocks and his mouth
fall open as it too blackened. The pain flooded his body and he burned all
over.

            Somewhere
in the distance he could hear guards trying to get into his cell, the jangling
of keys the coughing and frantic screaming of the guards. He heard the door
clang open and then they were on him, their hands applying enough pressure to
his skin to split it open like a bratwurst that had been left on the grill too
long, exposing pink insides as his blood and fleshed dripped onto the floor
where it sizzled like an egg. They knocked him out of the sun and onto his cot
where he lay immobilized and burst, oozing flesh and blood onto the cot.

            The
clamor of the cell was amazing, cops and prisoners screaming expletives of
disbelief at the top of their lungs. The tears that ran from his eyes felt like
boiling water as they ran down his black and blistered face, a living,
breathing freakshow that would never die. The clang of the cell door behind the
guards rang with finality as his skin started to fade to normality and the
weight of being denied sank into his bones through the open tears of skin.