CHAPTER 12
Reginald’s plan was to take the ship back to Africa, retrace their steps to the north, and pray that planes were still crossing the Atlantic when they reached Europe. According to what he’d learned at Vampire World Command, the biggest cities before the war were still the most active cities today. He wanted to try for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, reasoning that if anyone was still flying west, they’d be flying out of de Gaulle. Reginald and Nikki had to find a way to stow away and make it to New York, and from New York, they had to make it to Philadelphia. Because not far outside of Philadelphia, the Delaware river made a shape that Reginald had seen once when he’d memorized an entire wall of atlases… and then had seen again in the mind of Malcolm the seer, paired with a statue of an angel with fangs.
By the time they stopped south of Vienna, the nights were becoming cold. The days were beginning to shorten and equal the days as the equinox dawned. It was strangely appropriate. There were equal amounts of night and day — equal amounts of time given to the two warring species.
The world had changed. They avoided cities on the trip north, but still encountered vast fields of death. They found several thousand dead humans in the desert — perhaps a traveling tribe that vampires had razed through like a scythe. They mostly drained animals for sustenance once their blood pouches ran out, but couldn’t resist peeking in when they passed towns and settlements, searching for something human to feed their parched and tired muscles. There were few lights in any of them. What lights they did see came from either individual oil lamps or heavily fortified strongholds. The humans (those that remained, anyway) had adapted amiably. Many had created forts, their walls made of wooden stakes and pocked with sharp, sheared pieces of silver jewelry harvested from the dead. One fort they passed was using a chain of generators to power outward-facing ultraviolet tanning lamps. In theory, the idea was perfect… but Reginald couldn’t help but recall the V-Crews and their handy EMP device. An electromagnetic pulse would turn off the lights no matter how they were being powered, and then the monsters would come out of the shadows.
They passed encampments that had formed over the shells of human towns as victorious vampires gathered to celebrate and gloat. The new hybrid towns had the feel of rustic moors villages. The pubs in these places seemed to always be alive when the sun was down, always lit and overflowing with rowdy patrons who dragged victims inside and then left with blood on their chins. The vampires were drunk — drunk with power, and drunk on humans who they forced to imbibe before being slaughtered.
And there was another change, too — one that shocked Reginald the first time they camped in an abandoned but powered hotel and turned on a TV: the vampire networks were now in place where the human networks had been. Where there was power (something they saw more and more often as they moved past Europe’s larger cities, where vampires seemed to have taken over the old human utilities), they saw the VNN feed where ABC had been. Finding a European charger and accessing his phone, Reginald also found that the cellular network was strong, and that Fangbook and the rest of the vampire internet was still alive and kicking.
But even once charged (as if charging made a difference) his phone remained silent. Reginald tried to dial Maurice’s phone number and predictably couldn’t connect. So, frustrated, he searched the Fangbook profiles of vampires who he knew lived near Maurice’s mansion and soon realized why his efforts to reach it had failed: the entire neighborhood had been burned flat by the AVT, then scoured in a second pass by AVT troops firing ammunition that vampires reported “stopped strong men and women in their tracks.” There was even a video posted. In it, several vampires were visible on the ground, their skin green and covered with blisters, as Vincent’s had been in the tomb of the Luxembourg Chateau. In the video, on the hill, Reginald could even make out what he thought was one of Maurice’s fountains. Behind the fountain was nothing but a smoking crater.
They were all gone. All dead. He knew it, yet he refused to face it. He shut off those thoughts, turning his attention to the codex, which might be all he had left other than Nikki.
First Paris.
Then New York.
Then Philadelphia.
Then the small bend in the river, where Google Earth (which was still up; what the hell?) showed an old, colonial-era graveyard. The kind of graveyard that might contain old statues, possibly including a few of blasphemous angels.
First the codex, then reality.
First futility, then sorrow.
It was more than a lot of people had.
He turned on the location-spoofing software he’d patched into his phone’s operating system and logged in to Fangbook using the dummy account he’d set up before they’d left. He poked around for a while and then pulled out, his face twisting in disgust.
“How are things on the antisocial network?” Nikki asked, watching him while painting her toenails. It was such an inconsequential activity during the apocalypse that Reginald found himself both amused and charmed.
“Delightful. Our esteemed president Timken is still in charge in America. He also seems to be moving in on Europe too, seeing as the European Council was scattered by the AVT, but there’s already a dick-measuring contest going on as spear-rattlers in Europe push back. Stateside, he’s put the Young Seditionists to work cleaning up bodies. It reads like a Boy Scout civic responsibility job. Who knew — a quarter billion corpses makes things stink and attracts flies.”
“And rats. And disease.”
“Exactly. And while the disease doesn’t matter to the rather cavalier and hilarious population of Fangbook, they say the flies and rats are gross. What’s more, the bubonic plague could get an encore. Again, no problem for vampires, but do you really want to bite into a human and discover after you’re already drinking that they’ve got pestilence in them?”
“Ugh,” said Nikki.
“So they’re gathering bodies and burning them. I saw some videos. It’s disturbing. The mood in the videos is like the mood around a victory bonfire after your high school football team wins a big game. They’re all drinking alcoholic blood, screwing in the light of the flames. All right out in the open. In the middle of Central Park in New York. The humans are simply staying away.”
“If there are any left,” said Nikki.
“Oh, they’re left. Because another thing that’s popular on Fangbook right now are a series of groups, posts, and articles explaining how to find them. You can’t break into their homes and you can’t glamour them into letting you in, so you have two basic options.”
“One is to find them outside,” said Nikki.
“Right. And there’s a whole series of tips on ‘where to hunt wild humans.’ They read like classroom instructionals on how to find potato bugs under rocks. There are homeless people, newly homeless people, traveling groups — each has its own how-to article, you understand.”
“It’s only logical,” said Nikki.
“And the second way… are you ready for this?”
Nikki raised her eyebrows, intrigued.
“You can evict them. Or foreclose.”
“You’re kidding.”
“The Fangbook ads I saw most often were for vampire lawyers who will evict humans so that they can be fed on. There are vampire judges in collusion with them. If the humans you want to get are in a rental, for instance, the lawyers have to secure eviction notices, then post them on the humans’ doors. They then have thirty days to vacate. Afterward, the sheriff — who’s no longer bound by the restrictions protecting a human home — can go in and remove them, so the clients can eat them.”
“Again, you’re kidding.”
Reginald shook his head. “The arbitrary rules have become so much more arbitrary.” They’d had this discussion before, when the angels had first threatened vampirekind. The entire interaction between humans and vampires, from the beginning, had the feel of a board game. The rules were so random, so conveniently structured as to keep things fair.
Nikki laid back on the hotel bed. “Well,” she said, “that’s what you get for not paying your rent.”
“The irony is how easy it is for those who’ve figured it out,” said Reginald. “While the world is ending, it’s not like anybody is paying attention to things like rent and mortgage payments. The evictions and foreclosures would be totally legal from a human point of view, which is probably why it works. But who’s going to just move out when vampires tap on your door at night… but instead of clawing and taunting, they tack a notice to it?”
They slept. In the morning, they moved on.
Making Paris wasn’t difficult. They didn’t encounter any AVT troops as they entered the city’s outskirts, and the only humans they saw were terrified ones. There were only vampire troops and authorities to contend with, and Nikki moved like a vampire. Yes, she had a fat guy strapped to her back, but that was a curiosity if it was anything, so as they traveled among others, they were left alone.
They found Paris lit but quiet, and they found Charles de Gaulle airport operational — something Reginald had been almost certain would be the case. Air transport was still a necessity, even for vampires. Reginald had heard rumors about ancient, very powerful vampires being able to fly in extreme circumstances, but even if those rumors were true, he doubted anyone was flying across the ocean. Unless the new Vampire Earth wanted to isolate itself into distinct tribes, transatlantic traffic would continue.
The apocalypse made security lax (Nikki made a joke about carrying brass knuckles in her pockets and bringing vast amounts of forbidden liquids in her carry on) and they were easily able to sneak into an aluminum shipping container bound for the US. Eight hours later, they touched down in New York and Nikki said that not once had she put her seatback and tray table in their full upright and locked positions. She had, however, done a nude stewardess demonstration by lamplight during the trip wherein she’d indicated the locations of the exit doors and several other things.
Not wanting to push their luck with public transportation, they again saddled up and ran once they found dark American soil under their feet. They were approaching Philadelphia — and the old graveyard near the targeted spot in the river — when the sky began to blush red on the horizon.
Reginald wanted to push on and search for the statue of the angel, but Nikki held him back. She pointed to the horizon, to the rising sun, and said that as much as she knew he wanted to find the codex, it could wait for another day. She was too kind to point out that the war was essentially over, and that the codex, if it existed, could wait an eternity of days because they were already too late.
They found a small, one-story motel nearby with a dilapidated sign advertising heart-shaped hot tubs. The sign used a red, heart-shaped tile instead of the word “heart.” Once inside the first room, they found the hot tub cracked and in use by two dead humans. Nikki said that the corpses deserved their privacy and they found another room, which only had a conventional tub and shower.
They climbed under sheets that seemed too clean and hygienic for a roadside motel. And the day passed.