Suck It Up and Die (35 page)

He learned that the president, acknowledging the vampirophobia gripping the country, had declared martial law. Worse, he had ordered the U.S. Leaguer population to report to Leaguer Mountain in California, where they would be implanted with tracking devices and deported. Becky-Dell Wallace had been appointed the “vampire tsar” and put in charge of the operation.

A clip showed her detailing the plan. “Should any Leaguers fail to report to Leaguer Mountain,” she warned, “you will find yourselves in the crosshairs of a new weapon developed by the Pentagon, which you
don’t
want to mess with. Leaguers will then be deported to their true homeland, which has been revealed to us by Ikor DeThanatos: Transylvania.” Her eyes narrowed as she issued one
more threat. “Should any Leaguer be tempted to sneak back into the U.S., their tracking device will trigger the Electronic Vampire Defense Shield soon to be deployed over the nation.” Her mouth twisted into an exultant leer. “Yes, vampires had American Out Day; now it’s time for Leaguer Outta Here Day!”

Morning banged the TV off. He was stunned by the spiral of events. He stared at the ceiling and wondered what to do. The only thing that came to him was the itch and irritation of the ropes, netting, and buoys of his Ancient Mariner outfit. He even smelled like a bucket of chum.

He got up, took a shower to wash away the fishy smell, and rummaged through the closet and the bureau until he found clothes that almost fit. While looking for a pair of socks, he found a surprise in the bottom drawer of the bureau. It was jammed with old videocassettes, handlabeled with movie titles. Apparently, the couple that had hosted him for Thanksgiving were movie buffs, and had recorded a ton of them.

One title jumped out at him.
Casablanca
. He pulled it out and shoved it in the TV’s VHS slot.

While Becky-Dell loathed vampires, she was not numb to the tragedy that had befallen the Zotz family. Having learned—with a little help from the FBI—the location of where Zoë was turning from omnivore to sanguivore, she, and a half-dozen bodyguards, paid a visit to the Dredful town house in the Village. Wanting the world to know she had a heart, she informed the media of her visit. They were waiting in force when her limousine arrived in front of the town house.

Becky-Dell turned the stoop into a soapbox and was giving an I-feel-your-pain speech about how the Zotz family was enduring such a terrible ordeal, when Penny and Portia opened the door behind her.

“If you’re finished tooting your horn,” Penny said, “would you like to come in?”

“Absolutely,” Becky-Dell announced as she gestured to her bodyguards.

“Alone,” Penny added.

Becky-Dell hesitated.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a ninety-five-pound vampire-about-to-be who’s still so sick she can’t lift a finger, much less a fang?” Portia asked, trying not to sound catty. Although she was still in deep grief over Morning, she wasn’t going to reveal a shred of it to the woman she considered one of his killers.

As much as Becky-Dell reviled Penny and Portia for being vampire huggers, she realized this was an opportunity with a double upside. By entering their lair she would show the world her steely resolve and fearlessness against the red menace. And she would be able to take care of a bit of official business regarding Zoë.

Penny and Portia led Becky-Dell to the guest room. Zoë was still unconscious and looked like any other sick teenager, except for the blood products on the bedside table. They were unopened, awaiting her complete turning and the moment when someone would tell her,
Your dream has come true. Would you like to drink to it?

Rachel was also there, sitting in a chair and watching over Zoë.

Becky-Dell was surprised to see her. “Didn’t you hear the president’s order?” she demanded. “You and your kind have been ordered to Leaguer Mountain.”

Rachel flipped her hand. “Oh, we’ll go, all right.” She flashed a taunting smile. “The day you figure out how to herd cats.”

Becky-Dell answered with a smile of her own. “Perhaps that day has arrived.”

Back in the kitchen, Penny and Portia sat Becky-Dell down for a chat.

“So,” Portia began, “when Zoë turns total vampire will she be ordered to Leaguer Mountain and deported too?”

Becky-Dell laid a hand on her bosom. “As a human being, my heart goes out to that girl; every vampire was a victim once. But as the president’s Vampire Tsar, let me be perfectly clear. Whether someone has been a bloodsucker for a minute or a hundred years doesn’t change the threat they pose. America is now a
majority
with special needs, and that special need is to be vampire-free.”

In their strategy session for the meeting, Portia, Penny, and Rachel had figured she would say as much. “What if,” Portia said, “we could prove that Morning didn’t do it? That he’s innocent, and that a Loner vampire, probably DeThanatos, CDed into Morning and attacked Zoë.”

Becky-Dell laughed at the absurdity of it even though she knew it was true. “If you wanna talk skin-swapping, why stop there? What if DeThanatos isn’t even DeThanatos?” She leaned forward and bugged her eyes behind her glasses. “What if he’s actually my ex-husband masquerading as DeThanatos just to make my life miserable?”

Undaunted by her sarcasm, Portia launched into the evidence about the pimple on Morning’s chin, who had seen it, and how the security video confirmed that Zoë’s attacker was pimple-less.

“Ha!” Becky-Dell hooted. “Who’s gonna believe a vampire with a zit?”

“What if …,” a voice sounded from the kitchen door. It was Rachel. “What if there was a more peaceful way to make America ‘vampire-free’?”

Becky-Dell eyed her with haughty contempt. “What if
the sun was green? It’s not and never will be. Don’t give me ‘what if’ when ‘what if’
isn’t
.”

Before their strategy session, Portia had told her mother and Rachel everything she knew about re-morts,
pneumabrotus
, and the fact that Morning had been re-aging until he had been expelled from the academy.

Rachel was armed with this trump card. She took a seat and played it. She explained to Becky-Dell that Morning had grown a pimple because his growth hormones had kicked back in. She then carefully laid out how Birnam and Morning had discovered the cure for vampirism by returning to their Lifer dreams, which retriggered their mortality genes, which began to produce
pneumabrotus
.

Just as Rachel’s burst of scientific coherency the day before had stunned the doctors claiming Zoë as theirs, her lucid account of a vampire cure momentarily disarmed Becky-Dell.

Seizing the moment, Portia continued their pitch. “Besides me, my mom, and Zoë—although she’s about to not count anymore—and now you, Congresswoman Wallace, we’re the only Lifers who know this. You could take this knowledge and become the Madame Curie of vampirism, the Nelson Mandela of America. You could heal the rift between mortals and immortals by giving just about every Leaguer the thing they want most: to be normal again, to be mortal.”

“No doubt,” Penny added, “there will still be
Loner
vampires lurking in the dark, but they’ve always lived in the shadows and will never come out.”

“The point is,” Portia jumped back in, “instead of making America vampire-free by force, you could make it almost vampire-free by
choice
. You’d be up there with
Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson. Heck,” she added eagerly, “maybe they’d finally add a woman to Mount Rushmore. You!”

Becky-Dell gave Portia a nodding smile and turned to Penny. “You must be so proud, having trained your daughter so well in the art of BS.” Then she gave Portia a condescending pat on the hand. “Nice try, sweetie, but I’ve got my monument planned: a new Statue of Liberty, me holding a bloody stake.” She got up and started to leave.

Portia rushed after her. “But we’re not BSing. There
is
a cure for vampires. Morning’s suicide proves it!”

Becky-Dell wheeled on her. “I’ll believe
that
when I see the body.” She stepped to the door and addressed the room. “As for your ‘cure,’ if there is such a thing, let ’em take it in Transylvania. After that, if they swear their loyalty to a government of the mortals, by the mortals, and for the mortals, then they can bring their newly aging butts back to America.”

Out on the stoop, Becky-Dell gave the media a sugar-coated account of her visit to Zoë’s bedside and the condolences she had conveyed to Zoë’s caregivers. She described the kitchen-table summit with Penny, Portia, and Rachel as “a cordial visit in which we agreed to disagree.” She then climbed into her limo with her bodyguards and drove away.

Rachel came outside with Portia and Penny behind her. With the reporters all ears, microphones, and cameras, Rachel launched into a plea to the Leaguers of America. She told them that a compromise with Ms. Wallace had been offered and rejected. She told them that now was the time to stand up for their rights. And, having returned to her linguistic loopiness, she declared, “In the eighteen hundreds,
it was wrong when Native Americans were forced onto reservations. In the nineteen hundreds, it was wrong when Japanese Americans were shoved into internment camps. Now, in the twenty hundreds”—she hesitated, wondered if that was a word, then plunged on—“it’s just as wrong that we’re being sent to Leaguer Mountain to be shipped off to a country that’s not our home, never has been, and never will be! So I’m asking all my fellow Leaguers to CD, to
civil disobediate
, and not report to Leaguer—”

A gunshot sounded; as people ducked and screamed, Rachel fell against Portia and Penny. They gaped at the hole in Rachel’s shirt and the blood pouring from it. Over the shouting and calls to 911, Rachel pushed against Penny and Portia and stood back up. She raised her arms. “It’s okay! It’s okay!”

The captivated media watched an act never recorded before: a vampire healing from a wound in a matter of seconds. The blood on Rachel’s shirt shrank back into her wound. In a moment, the only evidence she had been shot was a bloodless hole in her shirt.

Rachel spotted the gunman across the street and fired off a question. “Now, who’d be dumb enough to shoot a va—va—” Her face suddenly blanched and winced with pain; she fell back into Penny and Portia. Her eyes went wide with confusion and shock.

“What’s wrong?” Penny asked.

Rachel could only manage a groan.

Someone broke through the barricade of reporters and mounted the stoop. It was Becky-Dell. She whipped around and addressed the media again. “Rachel Capilarus is the first field test of the government’s newest weapon: a vampire pacification bullet. It’s no silver bullet like you’d use
on a werewolf, it’s a warfarin bullet. Warfarin is a chemical used to kill bats by inducing internal bleeding. Ms. Capilarus won’t die, but her internal hemorrhaging will make her so anemic, the only thing she’ll want to get her hands on is her next few bottles of blood. And until she does, she’ll be as weak as a sick kitten.”

Penny and Portia started to help Rachel inside. They knew just where to find what Rachel needed. But two of Becky-Dell’s bodyguards, flashing U.S. marshals’ badges, grabbed Rachel and dragged her toward the waiting limo. Rachel didn’t have the power to resist.

Another marshal pushed Penny and Portia back into the town house, ordering, “We’ll come for Zoë Zotz later.”

Becky-Dell beamed a mission-accomplished smile and mopped up her cunning operation. “The president of the IVL will be transported to Leaguer Mountain at government expense. As for the rest of you Leaguers, get yourself to the mountain, or you’ll be sucking on warfarin bullets faster than you can say ‘vampire pacification.’ ”

In the house on Staten Island, Morning was watching
Casablanca
for the third time when the screen went blank. Trying to fix the problem, he hit the eject button on the VHS machine. The video stuck out at a weird angle. He extracted it and a tangle of tape followed.
Casablanca
was casabroka, a victim of age and videotape fatigue.