Chapter Twelve: The Good Fight

 

My mind refused to make sense out of what I had just witnessed. I glanced down at the two bodies and then back up to my granddaughter. “What... why?” I stammered.

“Who, where, when?” Lara mocked me with an evil grin. “What’s the old quote? Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it? This all must seem very familiar to you, huh grandpa? A member of the Russell family playing you like a fool and capturing your werewolf friend. You think you’re so much better than the rest of us,” Lara said with a shake of her head. “Nick the aged vampire turns out to be just as dumb as everyone else. You made the exact same mistake as the one you made in 1945. Like every man, you’re a sucker for a pretty face.”

“Ma’am?”

Lara glanced over her shoulder but was careful to keep her revolver pointed at me. Two young men, who were dressed all in black, slipped into the room behind her. They looked at me nervously, but they did not retrieve the pistols from the holsters at their sides.

“It’s about time you assholes showed up,” Lara scolded. “I had the target isolated this morning. We could have slipped away without any fuss.”

“Sorry, Ms. Russell,” one of the men said. “There were more militia patrols around Starside than we anticipated. It took us longer than expected to infiltrate the city.”

“Best and brightest my ass,” she muttered. “Take the werewolf down to the car.”

The two men obeyed her command immediately. One of them grabbed Reginald’s hands and the other grabbed his ankles. Still in shock, I stared as they started to carry my friend out of the room.

“What about him?” the man holding Reginald’s ankles asked with a nod back in my direction.

“He’s not a threat. He’s too weak from starvation. Plus, he’s no match for this,” Lara explained. She waved her pistol up and down in front of her face for emphasis before addressing me. “Hitler left me a special toy hidden in the hospital’s ceiling. This revolver is loaded with wooden bullets. I don’t know why no one else ever thought to use them. They work great against zombies... and vampires. Go on ahead, I’ll catch up in a few minutes,” she said to the men. “I’ve waited a long time for this moment. I can’t leave without at least gloating a little bit.”

“We shouldn’t linger here, ma’am,” one of the infiltrators recommended. “The Chicago herd will be here soon.”

Lara grunted in acknowledgement as the two goons departed with the unconscious werewolf.

My heart was pounding in my chest so violently that, had I not been a vampire, I would have feared I was having a heart attack. “When?” I demanded. “When did you decide to betray us?”

Lara scoffed at my ignorance. “I’m not betraying you, I’m being loyal to Adolf Hitler. It wasn’t just my grandmother who was a Nazi spy. My whole family has been dedicated to the cause since the 1930s. I was taught from birth about the superiority of National Socialism. We have been some of Hitler’s most trusted followers for the better part of a century. The members of my family were some of the few people who knew that Hitler survived the war. I met Hitler years before I ever met you. He personally selected me for a very important mission because of my skill, intelligence and beauty. Like my grandmother, I was tasked with getting close to the great Nick Whittier. I was way more successful than Grandma Lucy though. You were so starved for love that it was easy for her to seduce you, but I infiltrated your inner circle without even having to have sex with you.”

“That’s why you never slept with me,” I reasoned. “Because you knew all along that we were related.”

“No, I honestly didn’t learn that you are my grandfather until I ran the DNA test. I didn’t have sex with you because you are hideously unattractive,” she laughed.

“But... you were the good one. You were my moral compass,” I complained.

Lara balled her free hand up under her eye and twisted it back and forth. “Nick, don’t kill those genetically engineered babies,” she said as she pretended to cry. “Nick, don’t torture Dr. Mengele. Don’t eat those poor enemy combatants. Don’t blow up tens of billions of aliens! Boo hoo! It’s called acting, shit-for-brains,” she concluded. “If Hollywood still existed, I’d demand a goddamn Oscar. Although, admittedly, my performance was aided by your willful ignorance. You were too lonely and pathetic to see what was right in front of your face the whole time. You were desperate for the love of an attractive woman. Once you found out that we’re related, you transitioned to being desperate for the love of your new family member. You never thought it was odd that someone like me would flirt with someone like you?” she questioned. “I’m Hawaiian Tropic bikini model hot, and you’re only a few steps up from the Elephant Man! We had all those calamities in the ER when we first met, and you said that I was the most capable intern that you ever saw. You know why? Because I wasn’t a new doctor!” she screamed. “I was far too skilled and knowledgeable for that position, and you should have been able to tell that. Then you come back from being on the lam and find me in charge of the Vampire Research Institute, one of the greatest, most expensive, medical facilities ever created by man, and you think nothing of it. You know what it takes for someone my age and with my level of experience to be given a position that prestigious and with that much responsibility? That doesn’t happen unless there’s a powerful genius pulling strings and calling in favors from behind the scenes! And you never thought it was strange that I knew so much about viruses after supposedly only studying them for a year? I dedicated my life to them! I was researching the vampire virus long before the rest of the world even knew that vampires were real!”

“If you knew I was a vampire,” I started. “Why did you freak out when you saw me feeding from the wounded patient? You said you were going to go to the authorities.”

“Hitler’s master plan wasn’t ready yet,” Lara explained. “I was sent to spy on you at McClane County General in part to see how far your research had progressed. I snuck into your lab, gained access to your notes and realized how close you were to perfecting the cure. You had spent a century studying the virus, and your work was essential for our biological weapon, but it was too soon. I threatened to tell the cops about your true identity because I wanted to scare you out of town in order to delay your progress. I had been waiting for a while to see you do something supernatural so I could call you on it. I just happened to catch you feeding off the patient at the same time that moron Franklin Ruine decided to stage a fake terrorist attack on the hospital in order to destroy your research.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I started to piece everything together. “Those super soldiers at Dr. Mengele’s lab didn’t attack you. I thought at the time it was because they didn’t view you as a threat, but they must have been ordered not to harm you,” I said. I continued after Lara nodded and grinned. “You didn’t develop the SPF 1000 for me. You made it to protect Hitler from the sunlight.”

“Technically, I didn’t develop it at all,” Lara admitted. “Most of the employees who worked here at the VRI were loyal fascists. Some of them whipped up the concoction while the rest of us were busy with the biological weapon. But I did use you as a guinea pig to make sure there were no side effects before Hitler used the SPF 1000.”

“But you fought with the rest of us against Hitler’s forces,” I argued. “You helped me and Laura disrupt the iNazi secret weapons.”

“I wasn’t really that helpful if you think about it. I was mostly just along for the ride. It was all necessary to keep up appearances and not blow my cover. Trust me, I would have been happy to murder you and Laura while you slept. Hitler assured me that your interference was irrelevant to the real secret weapon,” she finished as she motioned with her gun towards the zombie in the cage. “Poor dad was too old to join the rest of us. There’s only so much room in the hideouts, so the space is reserved for young, healthy loyalists. He still wanted to show how dedicated he was to the cause though. He volunteered to have the biological weapon tested on him a few weeks before the main outbreak to make sure there were no problems. They were supposed to put him down afterwards though,” she lamented.

I jumped again as another gunshot rang out. The hungry groaning ceased after the wooden bullet penetrated the zombie’s heart. My son collapsed to the ground, but I did not bother to turn around to look.

Tears streamed down my cheeks, but they were not for the son who I had never known. “You’ve been sabotaging me all along,” I said. “That’s why the cure worked for all the other vampires but not me. You swapped out the dose I took with a placebo!”

“Nope, you got the real cure,” Lara smirked. “I never figured out why it didn’t work for you. Although, to be honest, I didn’t put any effort into investigating the problem. If I had to guess, I assume it’s just because God hates you.”

I put a hand to my forehead as my vision started to blur. “Jasmine,” I whispered. “I chose you instead of her at the farmhouse!” I screamed at my granddaughter. Too light-headed to stand, I collapsed to the floor. “She risked her life to save you at the mall, and that’s the reason why Anthony got bitten. They both died so that you could live!”

“Gee whiz, that sure was swell of them,” Lara responded heartlessly in a faux Southern accent. “The toughest thing I’ve had to do during these last five years was pretend that I gave a shit while I watched them die. It was all I could do not to laugh. I was so sick of their Goody Two-Shoes bullshit! Nick’s loyal companions, bravely fighting in a war that they were too stupid to realize was already over. Jasmine was the worst. After everything she had been through, everything she had seen, she was still wasting her time worrying about that stupid sick brat from the farmhouse. Uh, hundreds of zombies are closing in on us,” Lara said while doing a poor imitation of Jasmine’s voice. “I think I’ll insist on trying to save some dumb kid who will probably just die later anyway. Moron,” she concluded. “Thank God I murdered Chandler and his mother quickly after I volunteered to go inside. Another few seconds and I would have ended up getting torn apart by zombies just like that dumb bitch did,” she said. “She took a few steps forward and smiled as she gazed down at me. “Oh, don’t give me that look. Their deaths, and the deaths of everyone who isn’t loyal to Adolf Hitler, were inevitable. If anything, Jasmine and Anthony were spared a few more weeks of misery by dying to save me. Besides, it’s all your fault. I wanted to leave for Starside at the very beginning of the outbreak, but you refused to let me go. I couldn’t very well tell you the real reason, which was because I wanted to rendezvous with Hitler, so I got stuck meandering around the country with you and your dumbass little friends.”

“It’s all my fault,” I agreed. I whimpered and put my head against the floor’s cold tiles. “Jasmine... Anthony... Oliver XLVIII...”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Lara said, eager to twist the knife. “Seven billion people are dead because of the mistake you made in 1945. You agreed to turn the most powerful, and some would say evil, man in human history into a vampire because you weren’t willing to sacrifice the life of one stupid, insignificant teenager. You must have known that there would be repercussions, but you just couldn’t let Chuck Kruse die. You’ve been able to justify your existence for centuries with the excuse that you are doing good in the world. Most vampires are so distraught about having to murder people that they commit suicide before they turn fifty. You managed to use your warped sense of morality to alleviate your guilt. You’ve fought against the depression and the darkness for close to seven centuries. How ironic that you discover at the end that the world would have been much better off if you hadn’t missed your heart when you fell on that stake back in the fourteenth century,” she concluded.

Lara stood over me for a minute as she waited for a response. I was in no condition to argue. I kept my eyes shut and whimpered on the ground.

“Well, better off for most people,” my granddaughter clarified as she straightened out. “We Nazi loyalists would like to extend our appreciation for your role in the apocalypse. If it makes you feel any better, I promise that the new world we create will be far better than the old one. Speaking of which, I really should be going. I have to meet up with Hitler and help him torture another man who I pretended to love. As the leader of the werewolf community, Reginald is privy to a lot of useful intelligence that we’d like to get our hands on. Slaughtering those genetic monstrosities is one of the loose ends that we need to tie up. That job will be a lot easier once my former lover is compelled to tell us where all his flea-ridden friends are. The merciful thing for me to do would be to kill you, but the brutal, three-month journey you forced me to take has left me low on compassion. I’ll leave you here, physically weak and powerless to save anyone. I pulled that whole ‘zombie virus vaccine’ plan out of my ass in order to convince you to finally take me to Starside. It’s possible it might work, but it’d take you months if not years to develop it. I’m afraid the good people of Starside don’t have that kind of time. The only reason Hitler didn’t destroy the city before now was because it was where I was ordered to rendezvous with his agents. You can watch your last few remaining friends meet their brutal ends while you wait to starve to death.”

Lara did not bother to back out of the room or keep her revolver pointed at me. She knew I was no threat to her. My granddaughter chuckled as she turned her back to me and departed. I stayed curled up on the floor and wept quietly for hours. Watching my friends die had been excruciating, and the only reason I had not broken down sooner was because I had been so focused on keeping Lara safe. Her betrayal was bad enough, but the revelation had also taken away the one reason I had left to live.

“In here! I found him!”

My eyes shot open at the sudden sound. The militiamen had finally cleared the VRI of zombies and made their way to the top floor. The young soldier who had spoken stood in the middle of the room and looked down at me in puzzlement. He was shoved out of the way a moment later by his leader.

“Nick? Are you hurt?” The Mayor asked as he knelt down next to me. He glanced over at Dr. Berkowitz’s corpse and scowled. “What happened, my friend? Where’s Reginald and your granddaughter?”

I stared up at the leader of Starside but did not respond.

“Sir!” a middle-aged woman said as she entered the room. She was out of breath and her face was white. “We just received reports from several of our scouts. There are gigantic herds closing in on us!” she gasped. “It looks like the entire zombie populations of Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis! Their paths are too direct for it to be a random phenomenon. Something must be luring them towards Starside. The first wave will hit the fences in ninety minutes!”

“Numbers?” The Mayor demanded.

“Millions,” the woman replied in a whisper. “Tens of millions.”

“We’ve prepared for this,” The Mayor responded immediately. “Call up the reserves and deploy them to their preset defensive positions. I want every crossbow and recurve bow that we’ve manufactured and stockpiled in the last three months distributed. Clear out every warehouse and factory. I expect every able-bodied man, woman and child in this city to be on the front lines within half an hour!”

“Yes, sir,” the woman said quietly before departing with the young soldier who had first entered the room.

“It won’t help,” I muttered from the ground. “Hitler’s first army was defeated, so he created a new one. You’re surrounded by the undead. You can’t fight them off, and there’s no way to escape. It’s over,” I declared. I moved to a seated position with my back against the empty cage that was behind me before I took a few minutes to explain everything that I had just learned to The Mayor.

“Indeed,” The Mayor remarked after I was finished. “That is certainly disconcerting. You have my deepest sympathies. I did not know your granddaughter well, but her treachery will surely go down in the annals of history as one of the most egregious incidents ever perpetrated. My defensive position is, conveniently enough, not far from here. Come join me.”

I snorted and covered my eyes with the palm of my hand. “Did you not hear what I just said? Hitler has already won. There is no point in fighting,” I said flatly. “The zombie horde will mow you down, and I’ll starve to death. How can you possibly be concerned with defenses at this point?”

“What would you have me do?” The Mayor asked softly. “Shall I order the 250,000 people I am in charge of to fall on their knees and wait for death? Shall we tear down the fences ourselves and walk hand in hand towards our inevitable demise? You ask me how we can worry about a battle that we have no chance of winning. I ask you, have you learned nothing during your seven centuries on this planet?”

“I don’t understand what you—”

“You seek wisdom from me?” The Mayor pressed. “Did the drug-addled gibberish I spouted when first we met make that much of an impression on you? You are far older than I. You have studied, whether deliberately or not, the nature of our species for longer than any other man in history. Have you ever known us to give up even in the face of insurmountable odds? I would not expect such a silly query from a man so well-versed. We fight because we are human,” he concluded. “It is true that we cannot win, but I reject the premise that there is nothing to be gained from fighting. The survivors of Starside are the best that humanity has to offer. We are the most virtuous, the most selfless and the bravest members of our once great society. We will rage!” he shouted with sudden intensity. “Rage against the dying of the light! Hitler and his ilk have won the war through brute force, but we shall show them with our last breaths what it truly means to have strength! Cruel fate prevented us from choosing our paths in life, but we have the power to decide how they will end. We cannot chose when we die, but we can chose how. Shall it be with a bang or a whimper?” he asked me. “Come, fight with us.”

“How can I?” I demanded as I continued to wallow in self-pity. “After everything that has happened... everything that I’ve done.”

“Do you have any sons?” The Mayor said, suddenly shifting the conversation.

I aimed my thumb to the right to indicate the zombie corpse in the cage next to me. “Just him,” I said. “We weren’t close. Plus there are the three men who I turned into vampires. I always said it was pathetic when a creature of the night considers someone they turned to be their child, but there are a lot of similarities between the two types of relationships. If that’s the case then I am, without a doubt, the worst father ever. I’m one for four. Perry was the only man who did any good in this world. Lara’s father was a secret Nazi. Lance Flowers murdered the woman I loved. Adolf Hitler destroyed the world...”

“You suffer the pain of seeing what your children became. Because of my actions, I was robbed of the opportunity to watch my son grow into a man,” The Mayor said. “Even after all these years, that fateful day is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing on my mind before I drift off to sleep. There was a time when I believed I would never recover from the guilt that I felt. It destroyed my marriage and left me to walk the streets as a drug-addled shell of a man. The regrets were too much to bear. What if I had remembered to set my alarm the night before? What if I hadn’t been in such a rush to leave? What if I had only taken a second to look behind my car before I sped out of the driveway? They should have been trivial mistakes, but on that day they merged together and took the life of my son. I never thought I would come back from that tragedy,” The Mayor admitted. His hand shot out to my shoulder as he stared into my eyes. “But I did.”

“That’s different,” I argued. “Your son’s death was an accident. I knew exactly what I was doing when I turned Hitler into a vampire. Seven billion people are dead because of me!”

“You didn’t deploy the biological weapon,” The Mayor countered. “You turned Adolf Hitler into a vampire, but you did not make him the monster that he is. You did it to save the life of an innocent young man. You talk of the biological child who you never knew and the vampires who you created,” he said. “But you were closer to Chuck Kruse than to any of those men. You berate yourself for what has happened, but no one else would fault you for the crime. You did not make a bad decision because there was no decision to be made. Every parent in this world knows that they would do anything for their child. Your only sin was saving the life of the boy you considered to be your son.”

I exploded with emotion and buried my head into The Mayor’s chest. He held me for a while as I dampened his shirt with my tears. The kind words of the good man made me feel better, but he could not wipe away all of my guilt. I still felt miserable, but the outpouring of feelings helped to alleviate some of my despair.

“We do not determine the course of our lives,” The Mayor said after a few minutes. “We are all desperate for control, but we are slaves to what the world throws at us. Who we are is not based on what happens to us, but rather how we choose to react to those events. Come,” he said as he ended the embrace and stood up from the floor. “Be the man who we all know you are. Be the man who you refuse to admit exists,” he finished with a smile.

“How?” I asked my wise friend, who I was at least 615 years older than.

“By doing what you’ve done a hundred times before in your life,” The Mayor explained. He extended his hand down towards me. “Rally. Fight back against your despair and your agony. Fight the good fight.”

I took a deep breath, looked up at my friend and nodded. I stretched my hand out and accepted his assistance to my feet. “I’m no stronger than a normal human at this point,” I warned. “I don’t have any supernatural powers.”

“Join the club,” The Mayor smiled.

 

A light snow was falling when we exited the VRI. It was far from a blizzard, but there was already a half-inch of accumulation. The snow crunched under our feet as we walked through the safe zone towards our designated defensive position. The Mayor had trained the surviving residents of Starside well. Men, women and older children crowded up against every section of the fence as we passed. The looks on their faces told me that they all knew what they were up against. The defenders seemed scared and were quiet, but I witnessed a peculiar phenomenon as we walked by them. Cheers and applause rose up from the crowd as they noticed their leader. The Mayor had saved all of their lives, and his mere presence on the battlefield was enough to inspire them.

The Mayor was called away by one of his lieutenants once we reached our defensive position. I stood by myself for a moment before deciding to approach the fence. I was not one of the militia’s leaders or a brilliant military strategist. I was no longer a supernatural weapon who could hope to affect the battle by myself. On that night I was just another soldier.

There was nothing remarkable about the place I was helping to defend. It was merely a couple of chain-link fences across the street from a gas station’s parking lot. One of the militiamen in charge of distributing weapons handed me a crossbow without giving me a second glance. Small, open crates filled with arrows had been placed near the fence every twenty feet or so. I stocked up on ammunition as I took a look around at all the familiar faces. The Chief nodded at me from farther down the line. He was surrounded by many of the other officers who I had served with in the Starside Police Department. To my left I saw Alexandra and Benjamin Furcht, who was the last surviving senior partner from my old law firm. They were joined by Chris and John, the two bailiffs from the courthouse. Some of the staff from the emergency room, the nice Indian man who worked at the convenience store and used to sell Jasmine and me coffee and even Pauline were nearby as well. The biggest surprise came after I felt a slap on my back. I turned around and discovered Jason Ferraro with a wide grin on his face. He had been a dear friend to me while I was imprisoned after being convicted of murdering Christina. While most prison guards had a tendency to be cruel, Jason had shown me unusual kindness and respect.

“Jason!” I said happily as I shook his hand. “What are the odds?”

“I know, right?” Jason responded automatically.

“No, seriously,” I continued. “Literally everyone I know from Starside who survived the zombie apocalypse is right here. There has got to be at least sixty miles of fence to defend, but I’m basically in the middle of a reunion. Even Alexandra is here, and I already saw her defending a barricade on the east side of the city earlier. I wonder why she switched positions. Anyway, it’s good to see you. I was planning on sending you an apology letter after my administration collapsed, but I’m afraid I didn’t have the time before the zombie outbreak.”

Jason snorted and waved his hand through the air dismissively. “I deserved to lose my job. I was never qualified to be a Secret Service agent to begin with. It was a nice little adventure though, and it was kind of you to give me the opportunity. I was happy to come back to Starside and enjoy some peace and quiet... until the zombie attacks started,” he finished with a chuckle.

I chatted with Jason and my other comrades for a few minutes while we waited for the massive herd to arrive. We talked about the past, but it was clear that the present was on everyone’s minds. The defenders were scared, but they had also accepted their fate. In the back of their minds, they had all expected this day to come ever since the first reports of zombies. They had prepared themselves for the end.

An odd thought occurred to me despite the gravity of the situation. I was standing on the front lines with people who viewed me as being no different than any of their other comrades. I did not have magnificent powers and I was not the focus of attention. I was just part of the community. For the first time in more than six and a half centuries, I felt like a normal person.

The Mayor ordered us to quiet down after a little while. We stood behind the fences and stared ahead. About a hundred yards of the field in front of us was illuminated with floodlights. My superior senses were gone, but I did not need them to hear the sounds of grinding teeth and grips being tightened around bows.

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” a militiaman who I did not know exclaimed in a peculiar voice from a few feet down the line. He had shattered the tense quiet, and everyone within range groaned and cursed at him. “Sorry,” the man started defensively. “I know we’re all on edge, but I’ve been waiting three months to use that line. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to get another opportunity,” he added softly.

The first zombie stepped out of the darkness and into the area illuminated by the floodlights. The defenders had all dealt with zombies before, but I heard several people gasp at the sight of it. It was not the individual creature that frightened them, but rather the knowledge of what it represented. It was merely the tip of the iceberg. A dozen arrows flew through the air and cut the zombie down before it took another step. I chose not to fire my crossbow. I knew there would be many more targets shortly.

Two more zombies took the first’s place and emerged into the light. They were followed by dozens more within a few seconds. The other defenders and I unleashed a volley of arrows and killed the attackers. I was not able to follow my arrow as it flew towards it target. My superior eyesight was gone as was my accuracy. I still had plenty of experience with the weapon though, and my skill was better than most of the other defenders. I heard cursing in all directions as some of Starside’s residents, in their haste to fire, had launched their projectiles into the chain-link fence rather than through it. There was a flurry of activity as people snatched arrows out of the crates and reloaded their weapons. The Mayor stood behind us and shouted for us to concentrate fire in specific directions depending on the numbers of the incoming attackers. Within minutes the illuminated area was littered with hundreds of dead zombies. The attackers stumbled and crawled over the piles of the dead, but they kept coming. We unleashed an impressive and constant stream of arrows, but our efforts were about as useful as trying to swat snowflakes out of the sky before they reached the ground.

More zombies fell, but the war of attrition was futile. The mass of undead continued their journey and slammed into the first fence. The city’s defenses were great at preventing small groups from getting into the safe zone, but they could do nothing to stop the massive wave of bodies. The herd barely slowed down as it trampled through the first fence. Those at the head of the pack got tangled up in the chain-link, but their comrades trampled over them on the way to the second fence.

“Fall back!” The Mayor shouted over the chaos. “Secondary defenses! Fall Back!”

The defenders did not need to be told twice. I was impressed by their discipline. There were thousands of zombies only a few feet away from them, but they did not simple turn and run. They were eager to retreat, but they did so in an orderly manner. They laid down covering fire and helped their slower friends and neighbors get out of danger. Given how quickly the defenses fell though, not all of the defenders managed to escape. I stood my ground and continued to fire since the zombies had no interest in me. I watched sadly as Officer Lacey was attacked from behind as he attempted to grab a crate of arrows. The Chief jumped in and slammed his crossbow into the head of the zombie who had attacked his comrade. A half dozen more of the creatures poured through the defenses and tackled the Irishman to the ground. I heard Alexandra scream from nearby, but she was lost in the crowd of undead by the time I turned towards her. I was spun around by a zombie who collided with me before I could search for other defenders to help. Two more of the attackers knocked me to the ground during their eager shuffle towards their prey. Pain shot through my right hand and arm as the undead trampled me. My crossbow was kicked away from me, but I had no interest in trying to retrieve it. If I did not escape soon, I knew that I would serve only as a welcome mat for the horde of zombies who were piling into the city. I grabbed the t-shirt of the nearest zombie and used its momentum to carry me off of the ground. I rode it for a few feet before I saw a break in the crowd and decided to make a run for it.

I managed to get a small lead on the horde of undead by the time I reached the fallback point. Arrows whizzed by me and over my head but, thankfully, the defenders were able to avoid targeting me. Our secondary defensive position was a narrow street between two buildings that had been blocked by an overturned semi truck. Jason Ferraro was climbing up the ladder that allowed access to the top of the vehicle. He was the last of the survivors to reach the position. I scurried up after him and kicked the ladder away.

Twenty of us stared down from the top of the truck. The snow in front of the makeshift defensive position was covered in blood. A moment later, the ground was not visible at all. The truck was jostled as the zombie herd slammed into it. The defenders who were still armed fired down at the mass of undead, but it was no use. The creatures in the front were trampled to the ground by those who were behind them. A mound of bodies arose from in front of the truck, and the mindless monsters climbed up the hill towards us.

“We should fall back!” one of the militiamen shouted.

“No!” The Mayor bellowed over the noise. “There is no place left to run! We make our stand here!”

I pulled a wooden stake from my pants as the first few zombies started to claw their way up to the top of the semi. I jammed the weapon through the heart of the nearest attacker and pushed it backwards before moving on to the next. With the horde too close, the other members of the militia were forced to drop their crossbows and engage in hand to hand combat. I saw a zombie fly backwards through the air out of the corner of my eye as The Mayor’s foot connected with its chest. Starside’s leader punched and kicked at the attackers with a ferocity that I had never before witnessed from a normal human being. He staked half a dozen of the creatures while continuing to shout orders and warnings to the men and women under his command. I saw a rotting hand clasping around his ankle, but there was nothing I could do to help. The Mayor lost his balance as two more hands grabbed his feet. In an instant he was pulled off of the semi and into the crowd below.

The Mayor’s lieutenant cried out in anguish, but she had been trained by the best. She took command of the defenders without missing a beat, although there was little that could be done by that point. We formed a solid line and stabbed out at the zombies as they climbed up to the top of the truck. The mass of bodies pushed us backwards inch by inch. I heard screams of pain as living flesh was torn away by rotting teeth, but still we held the formation. I snuck a glance backwards as I heard even more cries. Down in the street, in what should have been the new safe zone, more of Starside’s residents were engaged in hand to hand combat. The zombies had already overrun the blockades at nearby streets and double backed to flank our position. The people below were fighting tenaciously, but they would be overwhelmed within moments. The Battle of Starside was over.

There were only five of us left alive on top of the defensive position, and we had been backed up to the edge of the semi truck. I heard Jason grunt in pain as a zombie took a chunk of flesh out of his cheek. I kicked the attacker away, wrapped my arms around my friend’s stomach and fell backwards in order to use my body to cushion his fall. Excruciating pain shot through my back after we hit the ground, and the wind was knocked out of me for a moment. My vision blurred, and I coughed violently as I stumbled to my feet. Jason held a stake in one hand while he pressed his other against the wound on his face. Screams echoed off the nearby buildings as the living were torn apart by the zombies who were so desperate for their blood. I could do nothing to save Jason’s life, but I could make his death less gruesome. I opened the door to the apartment building we were next to, dragged him inside and then slammed it shut. The zombies reached the door to the building seconds later. The glass cracked under the force of the mass of bodies. Jason and I checked the nearby doors frantically until we found one that was unlocked. We dove into the apartment, closed the door and struggled to move the couch we found inside up against the entrance. The hallway was narrow, and I was optimistic that our barricade would hold for a few minutes since not very many zombies could fit inside at the same time. I winced at the sound of fingernails scratching against wood as Jason and I collapsed on the couch and struggled to suck down oxygen. I leaned over after a moment to inspect his wound, but he jerked his head away from me.

“You can’t fix this boo-boo, doc,” Jason grinned. “It’s okay. My wife died during the initial outbreak three months ago. I’ve missed her more than... I’ve missed her a lot. I even miss her terrible cooking,” he joked. He rolled his head so that he could look me in the eyes. “I’m ready to go.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You haven’t lost much blood, so it’ll be a little while before you turn. I can wait if you want to take a moment. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to go,” I smiled as tears welled up in my eyes.

Jason shook his head. “I’ve known this day was coming. Besides, we both know you’re going to go after that werewolf friend of yours who you were talking about.”

I shook my head sadly. “Hitler could have taken Reginald anywhere. Even if I had the strength to start a search, I wouldn’t have enough time. Hitler will torture him for a few days, but after that he won’t have any reason to keep him alive. Reginald will die just like all my other friends.”

“Hitler could go anywhere,” Jason started. “But your granddaughter and the two agents you mentioned would have to hole up in a secure location in order to avoid the zombies.”

I sat up in excitement. “That’s true,” I agreed. “I didn’t even think of that. But where would they have gone?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jason asked. He tried to laugh but it quickly turned into a coughing fit. “Isn’t it obvious? He needs a place that’s nearby and easy to fortify but that wasn’t in the path of all the zombies that he lured to Starside. Plus he has a prisoner with him who has supernatural powers. The state of Illinois had to deal with a similar problem a few years back, minus the zombies of course. Their solution was the reason that you and I first met.”

“The prison!” I exclaimed. “Of course!”

“Yup,” Jason said as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He closed his eyes, leaned back and chuckled. “I was there to make sure you got executed. This role reversal is kind of funny if you think about it. Do it,” he commanded.

I closed my grip around the wooden stake and leaned forward. “Thank you,” I said simply. “For everything.”

Jason barely grimaced as I plunged the stake into his heart.

 

The zombies stopped clawing at the apartment’s door shortly after Jason died. With no living humans to entice them, they stumbled out of the building in search of food. I moved my friend’s body to the other side of the room, pushed the couch away and opened the door. After the chaos of the recent battle, I was struck by how calm and quiet it was. A cool breeze blew in from the apartment building’s entrance, which the zombies had smashed through during their pursuit of Jason. I was still sweating from the battle, and the wind felt good on my face. I left the door open before moving back inside the apartment. I missed my friends, my neighbors and even the annoying vocalizations of the undead. I have always complained that I lived a life of solitude, but at that moment I was truly alone.

I understand now why the cure never worked for me. As a man of science, I know that there is a logical reason. Finding a solution to that problem no longer concerns me though. The real cure cannot be found in a laboratory. As far as I am concerned, the cure failed because I did not deserve it. I am not guilty for the plague that ended civilization, but that does not mean I am innocent. Even as I justified my actions in these books I knew deep down that I was lying to myself. The guilt gnaws at me every single day. I deserve my fate because of Gabrielle, the buxom girl who lived in my village and became my first victim back in 1366. I deserve it because of Old Man Williams, my mother and my darling sisters Gwendolen and Guinevere who I murdered soon afterwards. I deserve it for the spam e-mailer, the pushy Jehovah Witness, the literary agent, the man with the poor grammar, the enemy combatants and everyone else whose lives I cut short over the centuries. I clung desperately to the moral code I created, but I had no right to execute those people. I murdered 34,060 human beings... and that is just an estimate. How many widows did I create during my killing spree? How many children did I orphan? Sure, I did some good during my life and saved many lives. Even if I saved more people than I killed though, my actions are not justified. It pains me to admit it, but Lance Flowers was right about me. I lived to be the oldest vampire because I had the ability to rationalize my crimes.

I regained my humanity over the course of the last three months. I lost my powers and my senses, and I felt like a normal person for the first time since I was turned into a vampire. Although I did not know it at the time, I was paying my penance by starving myself. Unfortunately, absolution is still out of my reach. The world forgave my many sins, but I cannot. The Mayor’s story of rebirth was certainly inspirational, but I cannot follow his path. It is impossible for me to let go of all my guilt. It is a futile endeavor, but I will attempt to alleviate it the same way I always have, by trying to do good in this world. The moral code that has kept me alive for so long leaves me with one last task to complete.

I found a laptop computer at a desk in the apartment and booted it up. I retrieved a flash drive from the pocket of my pants and breathed a sigh of relief after inserting it into the computer. I had not checked the device in three months, and I had been worried that it might have been damaged during all the excitement. I was eager to go after Reginald, but the sun would be up before I could reach the prison. With my stockpile of SPF 1000 depleted, I would be forced to spend another day indoors. My final showdown with Adolf Hitler would have to wait. It pained me to know that Reginald would have to suffer twelve hours of torture before I could try to rescue him, so I focused on an activity to distract myself. I decided to sit down and write this final story about my life. It also seemed like a good idea to go back and add a chapter to the end of book four in order to clear up some of the ambiguities of that story. It was probably all a waste of time, but it seemed like a fitting way to spend the day. There will be no one left to read my books, but it feels nice to have a sense of completion. As The Mayor said, we humans have a tendency to keep going even when it seems pointless.

I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet about a half hour after I started writing this manuscript. A black cat without a collar cautiously slunk into the room and stared up at me. It looked like the same stray animal that I had rescued from a tree earlier, but it was impossible to tell for sure. I do not want to sound like a feline racist, but all black cats kind of look alike to me. The zombie horde had slammed through the barricades and opened up holes into almost every building in Starside. The cat could feast on all the food that had been left by the recently deceased residents of the city, so I knew he had not wandered into the room because of hunger. There were millions of human beings walking around Starside, but I was the only one who could offer the animal what he desired. Zombies, after all, made for terrible friends.

“Hey, little guy,” I said to the cat. “You looking for some company? I can hang out with you for a little bit.”

“Meow,” he answered.

I smiled as I bent down to pick up the cat. He curled up in my lap and began to purr immediately when I rubbed my thumb behind his ear. I resumed typing on the laptop for a moment but then paused.

“I think I’ll call you Oliver XLIX,” I said. “How does that sound?”

“Meow,” Oliver XLIX responded indifferently.