Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse (22 page)

He looked at Brian and Nikki, who were standing behind him. Brian nodded. Nikki knelt beside him. Then, with wet eyes, she put her arms around him. The hug lasted for a long moment, but Reginald could barely feel it. He was barely there.
 

He looked at the strange marble tumblers in the door of the vault, seeing their shape, seeing the shape they were supposed to create together. He could imagine the marble as it had once been, when the glyphs carved into its surface had been new and sharp. He could imagine the material beneath the marble, guaranteed to hold its shape.
 

He aligned the tumblers. He nudged the door open.
 

Inside the vault was a small space containing nothing at all.

N
EW
W
ORLD

THE TELEVISION WAS ON. THERE was a man on the screen who was supernaturally beautiful. Then the camera shifted and showed a woman sitting next to the man, also supernaturally beautiful. On the news desk in front of them were two coffee cups. The liquid in the cups was red and thick.
 

For the past half hour, Reginald had been watching the VNN news network on the TV that Brian had looted from one of the human houses in the valley. Brian’s reasoning was that if he was able to enter the house, then the humans who had once lived there must be dead — and therefore, anything they had was up for grabs. He’d taken the television to replace Maurice’s old one, which had been destroyed when the SA had stormed in and burned the above-ground floors. Fortunately, though, Maurice had been a very rich man who’d had millennia to build and plan, and his house was somewhat like the icebergs that Reginald had avoided in the Antarctic waters — as big in the below-ground area behind the concealed fire doors as it was above. So after the AVT had left the neighborhood (and then almost certainly met their own untimely deaths), it was simple to restock, refurnish, and move back in.
 

Brian had mostly returned to his old mood, but Reginald suspected he was repressing. He’d just need time. Reginald knew he was repressing — using TV as his crutch — and would need his own time. They’d both lost a friend. And they’d both lost a maker.
 

“I brought you Cheetos,” said Brian, walking in. It wasn’t a joke. He’d been bringing Reginald junk food from each trip he made into the desolated, all-vampire neighborhood to loot supplies. The idea was to make Reginald feel better, or at least feel comforted — to remind him that some things could endure the planet’s change of ownership. But Reginald wasn’t hungry. He avoided the junk food so that he could avoid pleasure, then drank blood in great quantities because its taste made him want to vomit. He watched the news so that he could feel bad. He ran laps around the house because it hurt. He ran until his lungs burned. He ran until he became lightheaded. He tripped, fell, and hurt himself. But nothing mattered anymore. When you were a vampire, you could only live (such as “living” was) and die. There was nothing in between. Life as a vampire was binary; there were no shades of gray. He was as he would always be; Brian was as he’d always be; Nikki was as she’d always be. Reginald wanted to feel pain in order to feel human again, but even the pain never lasted. He could break arms and legs and they’d heal. He was indestructible, and he hated himself for it.
 

“I don’t want them.”
 

“Come on, Reginald. I miss your fat good humor.”
 

“Don’t worry about me, Brian,” said Reginald, sighing and focusing on the new news playing on the new TV, which ran on the newly reestablished electricity. “I’ll forever be fat.”
 

But of course, “fat” wasn’t the part of that description that Brian had meant to emphasize. He sat down beside Reginald and said, “You can’t hog all the moping. He was my maker too, you know.”
 

Reginald shook his head, his thoughts bitter. “See, that’s just it, Brian. I
didn’t
know. Everyone wants me to save the world. And guess what? I can’t save it. Not when the whole thing is just a big game. Not when I’m sent to find a magic scroll that doesn’t exist, then lose my best friend because of it. Not when all this time, I’ve had a brother… and I never even knew it.”
 

“You know it now,"
 

“Big fucking deal.”
 

Brian sighed, then reached up and turned off the television. It was showing nothing but infuriating news anyway. VNN had replaced CNN, right there on what used to be the human air, and the supernaturally beautiful newscasters had been reporting that crews were working to subdue the remaining human population in order to prevent further losses of vampire life. PSAs in the commercial breaks warned vampire families that humans were dangerous and that they should report any humans they saw to the National Patrol, which was what Timken’s Sedition Army had started calling itself once the “army” moniker had started to sound like overkill. A scroll across the bottom of the screen gave updates on the winding-down progress of the mission to restore the planet. Soon, Reginald thought, the same squawking bullshit would be back on every channel: vampire reality TV, vampire talk shows, vampire infomercials. Maybe there’d even be a few vampire sitcoms, wherein someone hilariously ate a human that someone else had been saving for the Christmas party.

“It was necessary to keep our connection a secret if I was to be on Council,” said Brian. “Maurice wasn’t a sanctioned maker and my paperwork was forged. I didn’t want the foul blood that comes with an approved turning, so I went to a friend. Nobody could know.”
 

“Not even me.”
 

“Not even you,” Brian echoed. “Blood ties can inadvertently leak secrets you don’t want anyone to know, whether it’s intentional or not. Even Talia and the kids didn’t know. We were going to tell everyone, though, seeing as my position on Council — or any chance that Council might ever return — was pretty much done with.”
 

“Awesome. Thanks for the notice of something you might someday have told me and that is now irrelevant.”
 

“It’s not irrelevant,” said Brian. “You’re my brother. I’m like Nikki’s uncle… or whatever. We’re blood. And that means something for a vampire. Claude knew that; it’s why he ran from me. Maurice felt your pain a state away because you were his blood, and the vampire agent made him stronger and let him fly. When Claude killed Maurice? Well, Claude is thousands of years older than me, but that moment — if your mission hadn’t mattered more — I could have easily caught and killed him with my bare hands.”
 

“That must explain why, later that day, I was able to do a pushup,” said Reginald.
 

Brian gave him a tight-lipped frown, then stood. He clapped him on the shoulder and let him be.
 

Reginald felt numb. So the vampire agent acted like adrenaline? So it gave you superpowers when your kin was threatened? Such bullshit. He was beyond irritated, all the way to downright incensed. He hadn’t gotten anything. He hadn’t felt any strength at all. He apparently also had no real logical ability, seeing as he hadn’t correctly predicted the events leading up to (not) finding the vampire codex. He hadn’t pegged Claire correctly, either. She was supposed to be the oracle, but she’d said he’d find a thing that turned out to be an empty vault in the middle of nowhere. She’d predicted a vampire revolution that turned their population over end for end, resulting in more balance. She’d predicted Reginald would be a leader. But none of it had come true. He was just a big worthless fatass who could read fast and remember trivia. That was it. He wasn’t a Chosen One, destined to find some mythical plan and save them all. He’d been guided by lies, and he hated himself for allowing himself to feel important enough to sacrifice for.
 

He thought about Claire, realizing that he was being selfish. Claire was still sick, still not recovered from the odd, weeks-long flu that had knocked her flat and cut their link to Reginald and Nikki. But whether it was fair or not, he was angry at Claire. She’d pumped him up. She’d made him think he mattered, and that his quest was righteous. But what had happened? Maurice had died. Brian, at the cemetery, had told Reginald to make Maurice’s death matter, but the vault they’d been looking for — the vault that had been just one state over while they’d run to the literal ends of the Earth wasting months and billions of lives — had been empty. Maurice, in the end, had died for nothing.
 

Reginald put his head in his hands.
 

Another hand ran long fingers through his hair. He looked up and saw Nikki sitting delicately down beside him. She looked like a negotiator about to begin speaking to a terrorist or a suicide jumper. Either scenario required delicacy. Either could easily push the ball in the wrong direction if she weren’t careful.
 

“You’ve been sitting here for hours,” she said, her hand finding his.
 

“Days,” he corrected.

“Let’s go for a walk. The streets are mostly cleared and there’s a beautiful moon out. It’s safe. National Patrol is keeping watch.”
 

“You mean the genocidal murderers? Them?
They’re
protecting the streets from the innocent people we tried to save?”
 

“We did our best,” she said. But it was hollow.
 

They sat for a while, saying nothing. Something was hanging in the air. It wasn’t precisely loss and it wasn’t precisely sadness. It wasn’t anger or indignation or even frustration. It was nothing at all. There was nothing to be said. The situation was what it was, and it was terrible, and there were no platitudes that would make it better.
 

“How is Claire?’ he finally said. He felt like a hypocrite saying it. He cared how Claire was, but he knew Claire would be fine. What she had was probably mono, but all they could do, with Claire being an unauthorized human, would be to wait it out. He was only asking so he could pretend that he wasn’t wallowing in self pity.
 

“She’s okay. She actually told me to apologize to you for not being able to push through a connection while we were traveling. She says she was busy throwing up.”

Reginald snickered, surprising himself. Then, after a beat, he said, “She was wrong.”
 

Nikki’s silence sounded pregnant, as if she might say something vaguely optimistic to contradict him. But instead she just said, “Yes.”
 

“Not just about the codex. About me. About the war. About everything.”
 

Nikki ran her hand over his head, as if he were a pet. “I’m sorry, baby.”
 

“Do you think she did it deliberately?”
 

Nikki said nothing, so he turned his head, lifting it from her side, and saw her looking down at him with confusion.
 

“To give us a reason,” he went on. “To give us purpose.”
 

“Claire is eleven. I don’t think she’s that deep.”
 

But Reginald wasn’t so sure. Claire had inherited a kind of mental atomic bomb, and it had made her old before her time. She knew, subconsciously, more about the world than anyone who’d ever lived. She knew intimate details of how empires had risen and fallen. She knew how history had unraveled like a tapestry — albeit not a totally predictable one, it turned out. Prescient or not, she had an unfathomable burden on her shoulders. Reginald wouldn’t have wished it on anyone. And from a well that deep, it wasn’t hard to see that armies fought better when they had a quest — when they had a reason they believed in to fight for.
 

“I’ll talk to her,” he said. And he wanted to. But not yet. It was all too fresh.
 

Nikki stood, holding out her hand. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
 

“Through the garden of vampire Eden?”
 

“Come on.”
 

But Reginald just shook his head.
 

Nikki rubbed his shoulder, then left with an implied promise to return. She’d drag him outside eventually. She and Claire were his only anchors. Well, and Brian. But whether they were blood or not, he barely knew Brian. Not as a brother, anyway. They’d shared a roof for nearly a year, but through that time, Brian had kept to his family and acted as security officer and Reginald had kept to his group. And with that thought, Reginald remembered that he did still have his mother. She was off in the other wing, now underground, hidden as were the rest of the humans. They’d adjust in time; she’d simply swap her human TV shows for vampire TV shows. The day would probably come when Reginald and the others would have to turn all of the humans to keep them safe. But not yet. Not until it was required. It felt wrong to spit in the eye of their mission, to aid the vampire cause by giving it another few souls for the pile.
 

Reginald turned on the TV. He caught a glimpse of Nicholas Timken, still looking calm and cool and well-dressed. It was a clip Reginald had seen before. Timken was announcing that it was all over — that once again, vampires could live in safety. He spoke of reconstruction, of dayproof homes and dayproof vehicles. He said that their journey had only begun — and that they had, finally, beaten the Ring of Fire back for good, and done their creators proud.
 

But if that was true, Reginald wondered, where were the angels?
 

Nobody talked about that. An angel hadn’t been seen on Earth since Santos had vanished from Differdange. Balestro and his ilk hadn’t returned. There had been no divine word, no angelic atta-boy for the proud vampire race. Yet Timken talked in doublespeak as if he were in communion with them, as if they had given Timken himself the all-clear. But they hadn’t, and that meant that after everything — after all the slaughter and misery — there was a possibility that the angels were still not satisfied. Or worse: there was a distinct chance that they had never been dis
satisfied
in the first place, that the Ring of Fire had all been one big joke. A bluff. A lot of bullshit that had amounted to nothing, like the codex itself. Reginald could already see signs that vampires were forgetting the supposed reason they’d fought. Fangbook had settled down; posts containing gore and carnage and good-natured murder became posts about nighttime gardening. Vampires began to post about their new jobs working for the state, for the few re-established vampire businesses. There was a lot to be done, Timken promised. Lots of cleanup. Lots of construction, and an economy to rebuild. The world had flipped. Vampires were the new tenants, with all the responsibilities that came with it.