By Jonathan Maberry
The Oval Office
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Day 18 of the Red Storm
The president leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, thin fingers steepled, dark eyes fixed in a long and silent appraisal of Dr. Luther Swann. The president did not look at anyone else. Not the two generals, not the secretary of state, not the director of national security. He continued to stare at Swann for what seemed like an hour. No one spoke.
When the president spoke, his tone was calm, measured, precise, revealing none of the emotion he had to be feeling.
“And you are absolutely certain of this, Dr. Swann?” he asked.
Every eye in the room was on him. Swann swallowed. He could feel sweat running in slow lines down his body beneath his clothes. His hands were balled into icy knots at his side. He sat in a wheelchair, his foot in a cast and his entire upper torso encased in a plastic shell. It would take weeks for his sternum and right clavicle to heal, and then there would be months of careful, painful physical therapy. The stitches had been removed from his mouth and when he was better he would see a dentist to replace the teeth he did not remember losing. His eyesight was getting better every day, though, and the double vision was nearly gone. The headaches persisted, however.
“I am, sir,” Swann said.
The president nodded. “Since the V-Wars began, doctor, we have seen threats hitherto unimaginable to the modern mind. Vampires. Many species of vampires. What’s the current total?”
“Counting newly discovered subtypes and hybrids?” said Swann. “Six hundred and thirty-eight.”
“Six hundred and thirty-eight different kinds of vampires,” said the president slowly, as if he could taste each syllable. “Even now it’s hard to process that fact. And the I1V1, the so-called Ice Virus… all of the original estimates, the computer models are wrong. That’s what you’re telling me, doctor. Instead of one to three percent of the population being infected, you’re here to tell us that it could be as high as ten percent.”
“Y-yes,” said Swann, tripping over the word.
“Ten percent.”
“Yes?”
“Of the global population?”
“Yes.”
“There are seven and a half billion people on this planet.”
“Yes.”
“Ten percent would mean that there are seven and a half million vampires out there.”
“Yes, Mr. President, that’s what I’m saying.”
The president waved a hand toward his staff. “You’re saying that despite all existing medical evidence. You’re saying that despite everything the best medical experts in this country—in the world—are telling me.”
Swann swallowed again. “Yes, I am.”
“Bullshit,” said one of the generals under his breath, then immediately muttered an apology. There was nothing genuine about the apology and he fixed Swann with a harsh, unblinking shooter’s stare. Swann was used to being glared at by soldiers. For the first three years of the vampire wars he had rolled out as advisor to V-8, a special ops team. He had never managed to bond with the members of that team, especially with their leader, a gruff gunnery sergeant named Nestor Wilcox who everyone called Big Dog. Since deciding to step away from an official involvement with the United States military and most of the political and law enforcement departments, Swann had still run up against men and women in uniform who looked at him as if he was the cause of all of this. That was absurd, of course. The cause was climate change melting billions of tons of polar ice and releasing dozens of ancient diseases into the air. People called it the Ice Virus, though it really wasn’t a virus from the ice. Bacteria from the ice melt had caused a mutation in an influenza A virus, transforming it into a new disease that targeted genes that lay dormant in all human DNA. The so-called junk DNA. One of those genes coded for a transformative mutation and this bacteria-virus cluster—known as I1V1—and unlocked the genes, which in turn activated a string of others, returning to the human gene pool ancient disease forms that were the historical and medical basis for the legends of vampires. No supernatural curses, no demonic possession, nothing like they used to show in Hollywood movies. Real vampires.
Hollywood wasn’t making vampire films anymore. Not in the same way. Now they were making war films. Humans against vampires. Vampires against humans. Sometimes vampires against vampires. Hundreds of iterations. Countless potential variations, though it all came down to the same thing. A percentage of the global population was changing, transforming, acquiring new abilities. Turning into monsters.
Some looked like monsters, with oversized fangs, hideously distorted features, misshapen bodies. Others were so subtly changed that only they could pass without detection. The kicker was that there was no real way to test for vampirism. Everyone had the V-gene. Everyone. But until the change manifested, no one knew who was infected by the activation virus. Sometimes not even the infected knew. Not at first, anyway.
The math was further complicated by the variety of ways in which the transformations impacted brain chemistry and behavior. Some of the vampires, like the first known case—Michael Fayne—had lost his humanity entirely and turned into a killing machine driven by a bloodlust so powerful that he had no free will when the thirst was on him. Others developed new personality traits, ranging from a kind of violent misanthropy to a dangerous type of pack hunting instinct. And some—even most—experienced no measurable behavioral changes. They were who they had always been; however, they were no longer what they had always been.
Outbreaks happened in pockets and they happened quietly in isolation. They tore families apart with fear and aggressive hatred, and they brought families together in sympathy and support. The same was true of neighborhoods, schools, towns, cities, countries. There was no pattern to how people would react to either becoming vampires or seeing friends and loved ones transformed. Paranoia burned in the air, and because of it sometimes whole cities burned.
What tortured Swann was that most of the violence was unnecessary. Sure, there were times when the police and the military were forced to take action against an individual or group who either were slaves to their new predatory nature or reveled in it. Isolationists and extremist groups emerged among the vampires. V-cells, as they were called, were cells of terrorist vampires who believed that the Ice Virus was proof of an evolutionary jump and that the new species needed to fight in order to ensure its own survival. And some were just assholes who liked to kill, liked to burn, liked to tear it all down.
For every one of the vampires who wanted to go to war there were at least as many humans, though Swann thought it was more like ten to one. Or a hundred to one. Humans feared the vampires. Old fears and new fears. Rabble rousers and hawks screamed out a message that the vampires were rising to kill them all, and that the only path to survival was genocide.
A bad and terrifying policy at the best of times. Worse still when anyone could turn at any time. And when many of the vampires could hide among humans as easily as a terrorist could hide among civilian populations. There were rumors—and Swann believed them—about human sleeper agents who pretended to be vampires so they could infiltrate the Red World.
That was the war.
So far there had been four phases to it. After the first outbreaks groups of V-cells launched terror attacks on the human establishment, and the pushback was brutal. Back then the humans possessed all of the weapons, all of the power, all of the advantage.
There was a peace that was fragile as glass and which shattered when bombs were detonated across the country, tearing down bridges and monuments and buildings. Vampires were blamed and a second wave of the war exploded. But fresh rumors began circulating that a group of humans were behind the attacks, that they had reignited the war so that they could continue their fight with the full support of the population. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides.
The second peace lasted longer.
And then more bombs went off, destroying huge chunks of New York City. This time it was a radical human group behind the attacks. Swann had been in New York on that long, dreadful night. He had been there through the days of shocked awareness and expectation. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It dropped so hard. The response from the militant vampires was immediate and appalling.
Since then there had been a steady escalation. Not just in America, but globally. The battles in Germany, Italy, Russia, the Czech Republic, China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere were unlike anything that had come before. And yet some cities went untouched. There were places where humans and vampires lived in peace. Paris, Las Vegas, Cardiff, Shanghai, Baghdad.
Over the last five weeks, though, the fury of those battles had begun to ebb. There were fewer deaths, fewer terrorist attacks. And notably fewer cases of active infection. The scientific community had begun to whisper of a possible end to the virus, a stopping of the spread of the Ice Virus. Luther Swann knew that this was not the case. It was the Red Empire. It was out there, rising slowly, gaining power, gaining followers, uniting many of the disparate bands of vampire terrorists and even drawing in some infected in the middle ground, people who saw them as something stable and maybe as something that could protect them.
The trick was convincing the president of what he knew.
“Should we assume your source is confidential?” asked the president dryly.
“It is information passed along to me through what I can best describe as reliable.”
“‘Reliable,’” said the president glumly. “Why not just come out and say that you have this from the Crimson Queen?”
Swann took a moment to compose his features. The woman who called herself the Crimson Queen was a vampire, that much was true enough. She was also militant, but militant in defense. Her people had never once launched an attack on the human population. Not directly. She had, Swann knew, very quietly had people on both sides of the war removed. Hawks and killers who wanted the war either for ideological, religious, political, or monetary reasons. Sometimes for all of those reasons. The Queen herself did not want a war. She wanted some kind of new society, one where diversity in all of its manifestations was accepted. Race, religion, political views, and even species. It was a lot to ask from either of the two human races—homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens vampirus. Humans were a predator species. The history books and even the holy books of the world’s dominant religions were filled with accounts of conquest, slaughter, genocide, persecution, xenophobia, and mass murder.
So far all that the Crimson Queen’s empire had managed to accomplish was a holding pattern. It did not defuse the bomb as much as it simply added time to the clock every once in a while. Maybe peace and cultural evolution was naïve. Swann didn’t want to think so, but he had little evidence to support any optimism.
“Because,” said Swann, “I didn’t get this information from her.”
“Oh? From whom, then?”
Swann said nothing. He had been advised not to let himself get tricked into trying to defend the name of his confidential informant because those kinds of conversations were filled with tricks and traps. He was in a room filled with politicians and military strategists. They were all better at subterfuge than he was, so silence was his safest option.
The president nodded and even smiled, acknowledging Swann’s tactic. “Can you offer any proof?”
“None,” said Swann. “Absolutely none. As you know there is no scanner, no reliable blood or genetics test that can—”
“Thank you, yes, I’m aware of that. Which makes a claim like yours hard to buy.”
“Sir,” said Swann, “I think you misunderstand why I’m here. That’s my bad, that’s on me for not making myself understood.”
“Then, pray, enlighten us.”
Swann looked around at the hostile eyes and frowning faces. He licked his lips and took a steadying breath. “I’m not here simply to give you numbers that I can’t support. What would be the point of that? You already have statistics that work for you, and you have a slightly different set that your press people trot out during press conferences. I know the difference, Mr. President. I know that you elevate the threat level when it’s useful to do so and dial it back when you think that’s best. I saw those numbers go up and down during the last election cycle, and frankly I’m appalled at the manipulation of the public, especially when candidates in both parties trotted out completely different sets of numbers on the same day depending on how red or blue the state was, or on which bias was fueling the camera shoved into their faces.”
“Now hold on a goddamn—,” began an aide, but the president cut him off.
“Dr. Swann knows he’s right,” said the president. “We all do. He also knows he can’t prove it in any useful way. He knows that my saying what I’m saying isn’t something he can repeat because he is aware that my staff will deny anything he says. Let’s hear him out.”
The eyes, already hostile, seemed to all burn a little hotter, which made fresh sweat pop out on Swann’s face.
“I came here at the request of cooler heads,” he said. “My source for this information tells me that contact will be made, so I can only assume that facts and assurances—if there are any to be had—will come from them. I’m here because I’ve been a part of this whole thing from the beginning. Before any of you. Before the government. I’ve seen this grow and I’ve seen it go out of control. I’ve watched what happens when political agendas are allowed to trump the actual best interests of the American people and the people of the world. I’ve watched that happen from the inside. I’ve been privy to conversations that would shock the nation, and yes, I know I signed reams of nondisclosure agreements. I know that breaking those agreements would get me arrested and also lose me all constitutional protections. I know all that and it scares me. But, more than that it offends me. It sickens me that this is required of someone like me. I’m not a soldier and I’m not a politician. I was a college professor before this. I wrote scholarly textbooks that no one but my students read. I was tenured and happy. Then the world changed and I lost my job and a lot of my faith in the system.”
“Boo hoo,” said one of the aides.
“Hush,” snapped the president, giving the aide a stern look. “Have some respect.”
The aide began to speak, thought better of it, and clamped his jaw shut. He gave the president a single nod but made no apology to Swann.
“I’m here because the majority of people on this planet do not want this war to get worse. They—no, we—want it to stop. We want sanity. We want common sense. We want a sophistication of response appropriate to a livable future. There are only three choices left to us anymore, Mr. President. Either one side succeeds in committing wholesale genocide, or we continue fighting to the point where someone—blood or beat—gets their hands on the nuclear codes, and then it’s all over for everyone. We both know that is a real possibility. You, of all people, have to know that it’s true, even likely.”
The room was deadly quiet. The president uncrossed and recrossed his legs. He rested his folded hands in his lap.
“There were three choices,” he said. “What’s the third?”
“Peace, of course.”
“Between humans and vampires?” said one of the generals. “You can’t be that stupid, Dr. Swann.”
“General Cole, please,” began the president, but Swann shook his head.
“No, it’s okay. I’d like to respond to that,” said Swann. “Stupid, general? No, I’m not stupid. Nor am I as naïve as I once was, or as optimistic as I used to be. Right now I feel like I’m clinging onto the edge of the world by my fingertips. I came to you to make a request and to give a warning.”
“What’s the request?” said the president. “To meet with the Queen? She’s refused that offer a dozen times.”
“I told you, this isn’t about her. Not directly,” Swann countered. “I spoke with her, sure, but I spoke with a lot of people and a lot of groups. Before and after the attack at Global Acquisitions. The Queen won’t meet with you, Mr. President, because she doesn’t trust that any such meeting can be safely arranged. That concern is shared even by some of the celebrities in OneWorld with whom I’ve been working since the attacks in New York. George Clooney, Shaq, Jennifer Lawrence… there are a lot of people who have risked quite a bit to speak out in favor of a new direction but they stop short of meeting with the military on either side of the conflict. And I can’t blame them.”
“And yet you’re here,” said the president.
“I am. Not as a representative of any party, though. I don’t speak for the Crimson Queen and I don’t speak for you. Not anymore. I’m not here to try and advise anymore. Not in the way I had been doing because that was a waste of my time. I think I may even have done more harm than good because my knowledge wasn’t used to try and understand the vampires, it was used against them. From the very beginning they were regarded as monsters and the response from your government and other governments was cliché. Kill what you don’t understand. Use force instead of reason. Well, Mr. President, hatred as a policy has gotten us all into a lot of trouble, hasn’t it? Now we have the Red Empire to worry about.”
“A handful of radicals calling themselves an empire doesn’t make it so,” said the secretary of state.
Swann gave him a long, pitying stare. “Surely you can’t be that dense, Mr. Secretary.”
“Now just a goddamn minute—”
And the president’s phone rang.
The president snatched it up. “Carol, I thought I told you to hold all—”
He stopped. Listened. Said, “Very well. Wait until everyone leaves and then send him in.”
The president replaced the phone very carefully and sat back, staring at nothing for long seconds.
“What is it?” asked the secretary.
The president glanced at him. “I would like you gentlemen to leave,” he said quietly. “No questions and no arguments. Everyone except Dr. Swann. Out.”
“Mr. President,” began the secretary, but the commander in chief shook his head and waved him away. The aides and the generals scowled and exchanged looks of confused annoyance, but they left. Swann watched them go, then he turned back to the man behind the desk.
“You knew he was coming to see me, didn’t you?” asked the president. He rubbed his eyes and looked very old and tired. “This was all a set up.”
“Yes,” said Swann.
“Shit.”
There was a discreet knock on a side door to the oval office and then it opened. The middle-aged man who entered was big and blocky. He had dark hair going gray, wore tinted glasses and thin black silk gloves. Swann did not know why he wore the gloves, but when the man declined to shake the president’s hand he assumed that they hid some kind of damage or injury.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” said the big man. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“Did I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice. You’ve made quite a few already, which is why things are as bad as they are.”
“I thought you agreed to stay out of this matter.”
“I was ordered to stay out,” said the visitor. “I can no longer do that.”
The president sighed and flapped a hand toward a chair. “Have a seat. I assume you two already know each other.”
The big man stopped in front of Swann’s chair. “Only by reputation,” he said. “Captain Ledger speaks very highly of you, Dr. Swann. He said that you offered crucial assistance at Global Acquisitions. He is grateful and so am I.”
Swann laughed. “My assistance was getting beaten half to death.”
“But at the right time. Captain Ledger said that you endeavored to help at a critical moment, which created a much-needed advantage. That’s what matters. You have my gratitude and admiration.”
“I don’t even know your name,” said Swann.
The big man smiled. “Church,” he said. “You can call me Mr. Church.”
He settled himself in a chair, crossed his legs, folded his gloved hands in his lap and studied the president for a full five seconds before he spoke.
“The world is burning, Mr. President,” he said quietly. “Let’s talk about keeping it from burning itself out.”