Read Suck It Up and Die Online
Authors: Brian Meehl
Suck It Up and Die (42 page)
The FDNY brass did readmit Morning and his crew to the academy for their last day of testing. After passing with flying colors, they attended the fire academy graduation ceremony. Clancy wasn’t thrilled, particularly over the age waiver the brass had regranted Morning, but the captain managed to find an upside. Since Morning was now a full-on mortal, the FDNY was still vampire-free.
As for Becky-Dell, the president summed up her villainy in a speech from the Oval Office. “Those of us who were hoodwinked into thinking Leaguer vampires were homegrown terrorists threatening America now realize the real homegrown terrorists were closer to home. In fact, homegrown terrorist number one was right here in the house: the House of Representatives.”
Becky-Dell was stripped of her seat in Congress and indicted on numerous charges. Several of her crimes included firsts in American law: from the minor—“altering
military weapons to fire wooden projectiles”—to the major—“attempted destruction of a mountain.” The biggest surprise was the discovery of her family lineage tracing back to Transylvania, where the original family name was Vallesscu. This inspired Rachel, in a rare moment of Earth Angel cattiness, to suggest, “I say we deport
her
to Transylvania and feed her to the Transylvanian Loners.”
The dozens of soldiers and pilots who took part in the attack on Leaguer Mountain were quietly discharged but were allowed to keep their pensions because their lawyers successfully argued (1) that they thought they were following legitimate orders, and (2) the “Van Helsing defense.” That is, “The instinct to slay vampires runs so deep in our DNA, to strip the gene from our genome in two years is an unreasonable expectation.”
In the following weeks, there was a great thawing between Lifers and Leaguers. Peace and goodwill swept the nation.
The president led the campaign to resubmit the Vampire Rights Act to Congress. Shortly after his reelection in November, Congress passed the VRA, but with a few changes. The Bureau of Vampire Affairs, smeared by Becky-Dell’s hijacking of it, was abolished. In its place, Congress created a new agency, the Even Playing Field Agency. The EPFA would establish the rules that would allow Leaguers to compete in the world of business, sports, gaming, etc., without using their superpowers to unfair advantage over their Lifer peers. The president appointed Penny Dredful as the first head of the EPFA. She sold Diamond Sky Productions to a group of Leaguer investors and began spending her workweek in Washington.
While hard-core holdouts from the Mortals Only Party vented about the country turning into a nation of “fang-huggers,” most Americans came to believe that, like so many minorities who had joined the great melting pot, Leaguers were here to stay, and despite their liquid diet, sterility, and tediously long lives, Leaguer citizens were endowed with the same inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Morning didn’t pay much attention to all the hoopla. But he did perform one final act as the retiring poster boy for the Leaguer movement. He posted his “first and last blog” on the IVL webpage.
DEATH NOTICE
Our great leader, Luther Birnam, is no longer with us. He recently passed away in the city where he was turned, Tripoli. Cause of death: old age. How can this be? The fact is, Mr. Birnam not only guided vampires from the dark wood, the
selva obscura
, into the light of Leaguerdom, he discovered the cure for vampirism.
That cure is simple, and one I have taken myself. Return to and pursue your Lifer dream; it will reawaken the gene of mortality that lies dormant within you. In chasing those original dreams, your body will once again begin to produce what Birnam called
pneumabrotus
, the spirit of death.
There’s a reason we’ve never known about this. A secret cult of Loners, known as Millennials, have kept it secret by slaying re-mortals, like myself, as soon as they begin to show signs of re-aging. But I have been promised by the highest authority, the Matriarch, that Leaguers have been granted a 100-year reprieve from the wrath of Millennials.
So, if immortal life hasn’t lived up to your expectations, and you’ve grown tired of age-lock and the bloody diet, you can re-embrace the blessing and curse of the sweet, time-challenged mortal life. It can begin with your last hunt as a vampire: the hunt to recapture your Lifer dream.
Thoreau once said that mortals, haunted by death, “lead lives of quiet desperation.” I disagree. I say, lead a life of humming exhilaration. Chase your dream. Take all that life has to offer, good and bad. I say, bring it on. I say, suck it up and do what mortals do: earn your death.
Your friend, and ex-Leaguer,
Morning McCobb
LIFE NOTICE
The bristlecone pines of the Mother Forest are making a slow but steady recovery from the fire. Except for one, the grave-trees of the oldest vampires live on, and the spirits of the Old Ones rest peacefully in their roots.
More FalloutMorning’s revelation rocked the Leaguer world. Since a vampire cure was seen as the next huge development in what Birnam had once called “the great experiment,” the IVL named the cure after him: the Birnam Effect.
About half the Leaguers worldwide decided to re-chase their Lifer dreams, prime the
pneumabrotus
pump, and come full circle to their mortal coils. The other half, led by Rachel Capilarus, chose to remain Leaguers, and set about starting businesses and joining sports teams and gaming tournaments, all in compliance with the new EPFA rules—for example, Leaguer athletes could compete, but there were “term limits” on their pro careers.
Rachel was the ceremonial first Leaguer licensed to do business by Penny and the EPFA. Her company, Earth Angel Productions, produced a hit reality show,
Earth Angels
. Zoë was her first guest, and they re-created, with help from special effects, Zoë’s heroic flight from New
York to the White House, dubbed “The midnight flight of Zoë Zotz.” At first, the president’s advisers were against re-creating this historical footnote because it revealed too much about the president’s back problems. But the president overruled them. He wanted the world to know, and see, how the huge gash ended up in the presidential desk.
Special effects were needed to re-create Zoë’s flight because, when it came to each vampire choosing to re-mort or not to re-mort, Zoë was a unique case. Her lifetime dream had been to be a vampire. So when the Birnam Effect kicked in and her body realized she’d
achieved
her Lifer dream to become a vampire, she began to re-mortalize. She tried everything—hypnosis, memory-loss drugs—but nothing worked. Within two weeks, she was back to mortally plagued Zoë. She had to accept the tragic irony that if anyone was immune to becoming a vampire, it was her.
Despite this setback, Zoë refused to let mortality get her down. She expanded her Fanpire Tour, adding Washington Mews, where, from a certain perspective, she had been turned by Morning
and
DeThanatos, and became, “the first known case of someone turned in a three-way.” She enlisted fellow students and expanded her pedicab fleet. Finally, she began planning to take Fanpire Tours national after she graduated, with the hope of adding a Fanpire Tour to the Leaguer Mountain Battlefield National Park, and, from a respectful distance, the Mother Forest. She also recorded her version of “Part of Your World,” which became a mega-hit in the goth scene.
Your Pumpkin Is WaitingMorning’s first assignment as a rookie firefighter was in Prowler’s engine company. He had settled into the job, and had even seen some action. While his Thursday-morning breakfast with Portia wasn’t always possible, he still saw a lot of her when he was off. They happily returned to their
pneumabrotus
patrols, and sometimes got distracted and wandered off trail. But not so far off that they didn’t keep their eyes on the prize: December 21, 2012.
The evening of the End Is Upon Us Ball, Morning was in his room putting on his rented tux. The ball wasn’t black tie; the invitation simply stated,
Attire: End of the World–Appropriate
. But Portia, Zoë, and Cody had decided, on the outside chance their LaGuardia Arts prom the following spring might be canceled due to worldwide destruction, they should move up their first, and possibly only, black-tie event to the End Is Upon Us Ball.
As Morning fumbled with his first-ever attempt at tying a bow tie, there was a knock on the door. “Who is it?”
Zoë walked in. “Your fairy godmother,” she answered. “Your pumpkin is waiting.”
He stared at her usual black goth attire. “Are you changing into your dress at Portia’s?”
“Nah,” she said nonchalantly. “My date bailed on me, said he had to work.”
Morning gave up on the bow tie. “What’s Cody working for? This could be our last night on earth.”
As Zoë answered she began tying Morning’s bow tie for him. “He said he’s gotta get tonight on film in case the world ends in a radiation blast that destroys all living things, but not thing-things, like his footage of humanity’s last gasp. He felt bad about dumping me, but when it got down to choosing between dancing with me all night or getting on YouTube in whatever alien civilization discovers our lifeless planet, he chose YouTube.”