“He sees something there, Mr. T, something you had a long time ago. It’s still there…you just have to dig a bit deeper.”
“So what gives? Remember I grew up in Boston, I know when I’m being played. Damn, I miss the Red Sox.”
“They’ve started playing a version of baseball. Looks more like hockey with base pads, but they’re calling it baseball.”
“Full-contact baseball? I love it; maybe I’ll have to catch a game someday.”
“What if that day were a little sooner than exp f bner thaected?”
“Could you please just tell me what’s going on?”
“There’s a new threat to man.”
I didn’t say anything; man had been on the edge and had come through the other side – not unscathed, but they had made it. “And what concern of that is mine?” I finally asked.
“You are still half-human, I would think that would be enough.”
“It’s not.” I answered flatly and a bit too quickly.
“Purpose is a fine dog, and he seems to love you even with all your faults. Treated kindly and with love, he will most likely live fifteen years, maybe a few more. What then, Mr. Talbot? You going to go back and stink up your hovel?”
“You leave him out of this!” I shouted as I stood. Purpose was on the far end of the yard; he looked over at me, his head cocked to the side, wondering why I was so upset. “Do not lecture me, Tommy! I think I love that scraggly, gangly damn dog, and I will not listen to you talk about his eventual decline and death!” I was shaking in rage. “Why would you make me go through this again?” I asked as I sat heavily, my face in my hands as I hid the shame of my outburst.
“I gave you Purpose, to give you a purpose, Mr. T. You can still be a part of something even if you are apart from it.”
“That’s pretty philosophical.”
“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands,” he said in a placating manner.
“Please tell me zombies haven’t made a resurgence. I never knew how sweet the smell of fresh air could actually be.”
“Worse.”
That perked my interest somewhat and I think Tommy knew it.
“Fine, I’m listening…what’s worse?”
“Lycanthropes.”
“What? Listen, I know I haven’t seen a dictionary in years, much less read a book, but what the hell is a lycanthrope?”
“A werewolf…sort of.”
“Oh, come on.” I stood. Purpose, again, stopped what he was doing to look at me, the crazy part-human. “Werewolves? Really? How about a Frankenstein or two just for fun?”
“No just the werewolves or actually lycan would be the correct term.”
“If that’s true and not just some ruse of yours to get me out of this yard, then how bad could it be? Last movie I watched there was like one of them and they ate a person or two every full moon.”
“That’s myth.”
“What’s myth?”
“The full moon aspect,” he answered. “Lycan can change at any time, they just happen to be strongest during the full moon.”
“Stop dancing around it and get to the meat of it, please, I’m a busy person.”
Tommy looked up at me, his eyebrows upraised as if to say ‘Really?’
“I have to get dinner for Purpose and me,” I told him in haste.
“The zombies killed some Lycan, but not nearly the same sort of percentages that man suffered. It was always man’s vast numbers that kept Lycan on the periphery of existence. They didn’t dare disturb the sleeping giant. They would take only what they needed to feed. Often times relying on the homeless and destitute to satisfy themselves.”
“But…?” I prodded when he paused.
“But the balance has shifted. Lycan have numbers now that can truly end man’s reign as king of the hill.”
“This can’t be serious. This seems entirely too far-fetched, even after what I’ve been through.”
“Oh, it’s true. They’ve gotten bolder as they’ve begun to realize their superior position.”
“Wait…so you’re saying they’re not attacking yet, but they will? How could you know this?”
“Azile—” he started, but I stopped him.
“Azile, the Azile? Are you hearing yourself? This is the worst Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale I’ve ever heard. They would have laughed you out of their office if you brought them this story. Okay, let’s get all the pieces straight. We’ve got you – a vampire. And me – a half-vamp, apparently there’s werewolves…and now you’ve just informed me about a witch that lived a century and a half ago. Oh, and Purpose the wonder dog,” I added when the pooch licked my hand.
“Azile sends her regards.”
“How is she still alive? And how long have you known?”
“It was her that brought me the information regarding the Lycan. That was a little over four months ago. I was nearly as surprised as you when she showed up at my doorstep.”
“You have a house?” I don’t know why that sounded so insane. A vampire home owner; would the milkman deliver? Did he get satellite or cable? Right now, a domesticated vamp sounded like the most normal thing this weird afternoon.
“In Florida, more of a mansion, than a house - overlooks the ocean. I find peace there.”
“Florida? Plan on retiring soon?” He looked at me crossly. “How did she find you?”
“I’ll be honest, Mr. T, she’s as much a mystery to me as she is to you. She’s obviously a very powerful witch if she can cheat death of its rightful property.”
“How hard can it be? You and I do it every day.”
He gave me that cross look again, until I shut up.
“She did a locator spell to find me and warn me about the Lycans. She said she had foreseen it.”
“Prophecies…wonderful…those are always so much fun. Why can’t she see stuff like marshmallows falling from the sky? Stop looking at me that way,” I told him. “Okay werewolves, what are we, I mean you, supposed to do about it? You’re only one person.”
“We’d be three if you joined. Four including Purpose.”
uchwidth="“There is no way, Tommy; I will not put Purpose in harm’s way. Not another loved one, not ever.”
“Lycan hate vampires, they eventually will seek you out and destroy you. One-on-one you may have the advantage, but they hunt in packs.”
“It would be mercy from them if they were to end my existence.”
“You cannot have forgotten.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. I die without my soul; I’ll never be able to retrieve it.”
“Do you perhaps think your soul is going to come looking for you here?” he asked, spreading his arms wide.
“It could happen,” I told him.
“Come with me, Mr. T, it will do you some good.”
“I’d love to, but I’m agoraphobic.”
“You’re afraid of leaving this thing you call a home? There’s a whole new world of man starting up. We could help see that they have a fair chance of making it. How many families are out there right now where the father is doing his best to protect his family from the monsters that go bump in the night?”
“You really do know how to hit a man below the belt. I’ll go only because I need to see what this new baseball game is all about. But if this is a true quest, don’t we need a fifth so we can be like the Lord of the Rings.”
“I have a surprise for you in that department.”
“I’m not big on surprises,” I told him.
Last time a friend of mine had thrown a surprise birthday party for me, I had punched him square in the mouth when he had jumped up to announce himself. He had spent the majority of the night making calls to dentists to see if they could fix his tooth; I subsequently got hammered. I was twenty-one, not much phased me back then. He would call me a dick after every desperate attempt to find an emergency dentist. ‘I’ll toast to that’ was my normal response.
“It’s got nothing to do with your sister right?”
A pained expression showed briefly. “No, nothing to do with Eliza. She has paid her penance and is at peace.”
“There’s jail in heaven? You’re kidding right?”
“We all must atone for our deeds while we live.”
“Well holy fuck! That doesn’t sound all that fair. I mean, those of us who live longer lives…well, we’ve done more, meaning we’ll have more to atone for. Oh, this is bad.”
“To be fair, Mr. T, you really haven’t done anything this past century to be overly concerned about.”
“That’s a true enough statement, but I did plenty before that. Shit, shit, shit,” I said as I began to pace. “Okay, so is there like a balance sheet, one bad deed gets outweighed by a good one? Maybe I could help little old women across the street while I sell them Girl Scout Cookies, that’s like a two-fer.”
“It doesn’t really work like that.”
“You a theologian?”
He shook his head.
“I’m going with my model then.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“We should get going,” I told him. “I have a shitload of good things I need to get done.”
It took me under a minute to pack up what I was taking, and that revolved around some rope dog toys I had made for Purpose. It was, however, another hour as I said goodbye to my family. My head throbbed from my tears as Tommy led me away. One way or the other I knew I wasn’t coming back here, not ever. That thought produced such a wide and varying range of emotions; it would do me little justice trying to capture them here in my journal.
Ah, my journal, how I have missed you. Like a true friend, you have waited for me these many long years. I hadn’t written much in one in a long while, but that hadn’t stopped Tommy from bringing them to me every so often. Now that I come to think of it, where in the hell was he getting them? The pages were new and crisp, not yellowed, dry and crumbly like they should have been. The kid was one giant question mark. I would have to accept this as I did a long line of anomalies that swirled around him.
CHAPTER 2 - Mike Journal Entry Two
“Where to?” I asked him as he had patiently waited for me on what was left of the road that led to Ron’s house – now it wasn’t much more than a game trail. Growth had pressed up through the hard, compacted ground, and trees had created a canopy overhead. I dragged my hand over the rusted out hulk of something that had meant so much to me once-upon-a-time. Just for luck I put a piece of the red painted flecks that had come loose into my pocket.
Purpose bounded ahead as we walked. I feared he might become extremely dehydrated as he desired to mark everything. At one point, I had even gone up to a tree to check. “There’s nothing even coming out, you crazy dog,” I told him when there was not a hint of wetness where he had just lifted his leg. He came back to me, smelled again and lifted his leg. I laughed, “Any dryer, pooch, and you’ll be shooting powder.”
He didn’t care and trotted off; tongue lolling about wildly.
We had been walking maybe twenty minutes or so, when Purpose began to bark excitedly. I ran up to see what had him in such a fuss. Two black mares were dancing around, their hooves stomping on the ground as Purpose kept running in quickly, barking, and then dashing out from the giant animals. The two horses were tethered to a small cart.
“This yours?” I asked Tommy as he approached. He nodded. “I wondered if we were walking the entire way.”
“No more Jeeps,” he said smiling.
“Yeah, I know,” I told him as I fingered the small piece of metal in my pocket.
We were bumping our way down the road; Purpose had finally settled down in a small bundle of blankredets that appeared suspiciously like a bed. It had taken him a while to get used to being around the horses. But when he realized his barking didn’t scare them, he had given up.
“Pretty sure about how this was going to go?” I asked after turning from petting Purpose’s head.
“I still had my doubts, but I figured I might as well be prepared.”
The silence was welcome; it had become something of a friend to me over the years. I knew it well.
“I thought man would be on other planets by now,” Tommy said to me. “When your kind got to the moon I figured it was only a matter of fifty more years. I would have found a way to go.”
I don’t know that I liked how he distinguished himself from ‘my’ kind, but that was overshadowed by thinking about Tommy the Star Traveler.
“I read so much science fiction, I swear I could taste some of those other worlds, I wanted to travel so badly,” he told me.
“We could still get there.”
“I’ve got a feeling that if it ever happens it will be past my time,” he said in an unusual morose tone. The kid was usually the living embodiment of a cheerleader, so it was strange to see him down. “Did Azile say something?” I asked.
“What? No, but even vampires have a shelf life.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing written in stone, but after around a thousand years we kind of hit the wall. Immortality has its limits. The world around us changes so vastly in that time frame that vampires simply cannot adapt, and they seek ways to die. That was partly why Victor turned my sister and treated her so cruelly.”
“Suicide by vampire…wow,” I told him. “You should be alright then.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Shit, man has done a complete reboot. We’re almost two hundred years in arrears at this point. Maybe by the time we get our shit together you’ll still be around to take that trip.”
He smiled and urged the horses on.
“Not buying it?”
“It’s a nice thought.”
“What am I getting into, Tommy?”
“Maybe exactly what you need,” he told me, and that apparently concluded all discussion for the remainder of the night.
As vamps, sleep wasn’t absolutely necessary, I suppose I needed it more than Tommy did, and really only because it was such an ingrained human habit that I still even did it. I stayed up most of that night; maybe I cat-napped a couple of times, but I did it while sitting up and with the cart rocking back and forth – no easy feat.
As the sun came up, I could tell we were on what was once some major thoroughfare. “This I-95?” I asked, breaking the easy silence.
“It is. What do you think they do with all our tax dollars? They sure don’t use it to fix the roads.”
“Funny. Are there governments?”
“Noid e="+0">thing like there used to be. There are regional types of governments. Some are ruled with an iron fist, more like dictatorships. Others are almost lawless like the early Wild West.”
“I always fancied myself a cowboy,” I told him.
“That means you’d have to ride a horse.”
“Okay, so we’ll pass on that.” I’ve never been a fan of any animal that’s bigger than me. Time and frost heaves had completely ravaged the thoroughfare. Larger trees had still not completely cut through the eleven inches of roadbed. But refrigerator sized chunks of the broken material was pushed up at odd angles everywhere. The carriage was constantly cutting back and forth among the mini monoliths. It got so bad at some points that I was convinced that for every mile the horses walked we had only gone a tenth of that in roadway.
“This gets worse every year,” Tommy replied.
“I guess it’s a little late in the game at this point, you already told me that where we’re going is a surprise, but can you at least tell me how long we are going to enjoy this hard-ass seat?”
“You could always get in the back with Purpose. He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“And miss all this?” I said, pointing to the trees.
“We’ll be in Portland tomorrow.”
“Two days for a normally two hour drive? Is that it, is that where we’re going?” My heart dropped for a moment when I realized I sounded like my kids when they would ask ‘Are we there yet?’ Seemed so damn aggravating at the time. The stu
pid shit we got mad at meant nothing when you get right down to it. There’s family, there’s love…that’s it. The rest is bullshit that we heap on ourselves. ‘We’ complicate our lives. We’ve always striven to make the world a harder place than it needed to be. Family and love.
“You alright, Mr. T?”
“Fine, sorry. I’m fine. Must be allergies or something.”
“Vampires don’t have allergies.”
“Then can we get dust in our eyes?”
“We can,” he answered.
“Then that’s what happened.”
“Portland is one of the places that most resembles the Wild West.”
“Portland, Maine? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s actually called Robert’s Land now.”
“Do we really need to stop there? I don’t really play well with others.”
“There is no way around it. Robert’s Land is pretty much the last outpost in Maine, not many people live north of it. We just stay low, get a room, some supplies, and leave in the morning.”
“Have you met me? I’ve been tossed from Chuck E. Cheese, and once I’d even had a priest try to punch me out…then, to top it off, he banned me from his church. How does that happen with a religion that preaches forgiveness?”
“Do your best, please.”
“t size=“I’m not promising anything,” I told him as I folded my arms across my chest. “So, about this Robert’s Land, talk about an egotistical bastard.”
“That’s the kind of thing that’s going to get us in trouble. The people of Robert’s Land love him.”
“The bastard is still alive?”
“Mr. T, he saved Portland when it was attacked by the Micmac.”
“Indians attacked Portland, Maine? I spent way too much time in my yard. Is it alright to call them that now? Or should we go with something like Pre-Apocalyptic Indigenous Peoples?”
“I really should try to find another way,” Tommy replied.
“Are there Indians around now?” I asked, spinning in my seat.