Dead Things (24 page)

Students are now taught a mixture of hard academics and fundamentalism, constantly reminded of God’s ability to punish and destroy any modern day Sodom and Gomorra. The students are drilled, just like their elders serving in the armed forces, to combat and survive incursions. Although fewer and farther between, their tales still instill terror.

Wright stops. “Are there questions?” She expects a flood from this group of thirty, but there is only one hand raised. Wright nods. “Yes?”

“My name is Connor. I’m, I guess, what you might call the leader here.”

“Hi, Connor. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Oh, yes. So, what can you tell us about it—I think you called it a
condition
?”

Funny
, Wright thinks.
They want answers just as I do
. But she must tread carefully. She’s aware that the chaplain and a group of prisoners near him are shifting in their seats uncomfortably. “We’ll never know for sure,” she says. “There is no government-sponsored work on this, although there is a rumor in certain circles that a group of scientists is holed up in a missile silo working on this. But it is only a rumor.”

“Is it a virus, like the cold?” Connor asks.

There’s grumbling, then someone near the chaplain calls, “Heresy!”

The more things change the more they stay the same
, Wright reflects.

A man stands, pushing his chair aside. “What we are witnessing is a perversion of the transubstantiation—the symbolic act of eating the body of Christ, the bread, and drinking of his blood, the wine. It is God’s revenge. Plain and simple.” He is a balding, grey little creature. He is a murderer.

Ian regards him, thinking,
Gollum
. God’s will? He’s heard this all before.

“Mr. Ridge,” Connor says, “that’s enough.” Then he says something that sends a chill up Ian’s spine. “I want to remind everyone this party is under my protection. They are not to be harmed. Should any hurt come to them, I will personally see to it that you hang from the southeast turret. I’ll push you from the gallows myself. Understood?”

He barely has control, if he has any at all
, Ian thinks.

There is no response from the residents. A mountain of a man rises, and Ian thinks Connor is going to be challenged. Instead, the man says, “Connor asked you question. Do you understand?”

**

The springs groan gently as Wright shifts her weight from the mattress. She regards Ian through the bars, then moves on. She pursues Creedy down C Block’s narrow passage…completely unaware that Ian has overheard every word.

Creedy’s hulking frame fills the width of the passage. Despite twenty years of squats, presses, lifts, and curls, Creedy still maintains a gazelle-like grace and fluidity. He moves quickly and silently through the labyrinth until he arrives at a pair of glass doors engraved “Library, Suite 107.”

“We’re here.” He ushers Wright into the room with a giant hand.

She brushes by him into the darkness. She feels him follow, hears him flip switches on the wall. The fluorescents flicker, row upon row winking to life.

They stand before a cavernous room. Row after row of shelves, each brimming with books, span the expanse. Novels, nonfiction, magazines, treatises, journals and other tomes of varying size, color, and subject matter. Wright hasn’t seen anything like this in a long time. She parts her lips to speak—

“Look, I’ve brought you here for a reason.” He’s nervous. There’s sweat on his lip. It must be good. “Connor and I don’t necessarily agree with the others about the plague, but it’s pretty dangerous for us to talk about it. I’m a big guy, a guy who can defend himself, but no amount of size or strength is going to protect you when someone puts a shiv in your ribs during your sleep, you know?”

Wright’s eyes are wide.

“Okay,” he chuckles, “maybe you don’t know. Let me just say this: I’m not so sure we’re facing Armageddon. I’m not agnostic, but I just don’t think the epidemic is of, well, divine origin.”

“So,” Wright toys, “you think this is an epidemic?”

“Don’t you?” he asks, offering a quick smile. “I’m no doctor, so I can’t say this is a pathogen. But I’m pretty sure it is. But we have to view this in broader terms. We need to think more expansively.”

Her earlier discussion with Burt tugs at Wright’s subconscious again. Here, an opportunity is presented to clear the air a bit and brainstorm. “I’m glad you said that, because I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Please do. Ask me anything.” Creedy misses being able to have a dialog with someone, especially a woman.

Wright hesitates, studying Creedy a full second as an internal debate rages. “Okay,” she resolves, “but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone else.” What she is going to ask is heresy.

Creedy’s never been one to bend to another’s will, even when it’s been in his best interest to do so. “That, in a nutshell, explains why I’m here. But it also explains why I can’t just accept that this”—he indicates the space around him, beyond the confines of the prison, with upturned palms—“as God’s will. I mean, why would God spare inmates? We’re a bunch of murderers, thieves, rapists, and drug dealers. We’re the original monsters that society hid away and forgot. But God doesn’t forget. And if God was concerned about heresy, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be one of those things outside. So, yeah, I promise not to say a word. Fire away.”

“Do you have any books about the occult?” she asks. “Specifically, vampires.”

An hour later, Wright faces Creedy across a broad library table, dozens of books and loose papers spread between them. Creedy is silent, and Wright feels the need to fill the vacuum. “I know this seems crazy…”

“Crazy,” Creedy repeats, nodding. “Sounds crazy, but let’s be honest: crazy’s not in short supply these days. Think of it like this: fifty years ago, any talk about zombies would have seemed crazy, too. But not now. So tell me why you want to know about vampires.”

Ah, the “why.” The “what” part was hard enough! The why is a little more complex. “Essentially,” Wright stammers, “the assumption that the epidemic is novel—I mean a unique event—might be false.” The skeptic in her begs her to stop, but Wright pushes ahead. “I’m having a problem accepting that recent events”—and she uses the term ‘recent’ loosely in the context of human history—“represent earth’s only experience with the plague.”

Creedy cuts through the jargon. “You think this might have happened before? And vampire lore might prove a window into that past?”

Wright feels stupid. “I don’t know, perhaps—”

“Wait one second, there’s a book I’ve forgotten.” Creedy is off, marching into the stacks. Wright hears him mumbling, “Where is it?” then, “Bush, Bush—Ah, here it is!” He emerges from the stacks, a book open before him. He bumps the shelves hard with a shoulder, dislodging several treatises on U.S. foreign policy. He fumbles to catch them, but they clatter to the floor. Rather than gather them, he proceeds to the table. “I’ll get those later,” he huffs.

“What do you have there?” she asks.

“This,” he announces, as if introducing guests at a royal dinner, “is Haim’s
Ghosts, Goblins, and Things that Go Bump in the Night
.” He passes the book to Wright. “Although they pretty much leave me alone here—I don’t make waves and it doesn’t hurt that I am as big as an ox—I keep this hidden.”

Why? The book would be considered profane. He has to hide lots of books, or else Ira Ridge, Ian’s Gollum, and the others will burn them. Where does he hide them? Lots of places. This one he hid behind the memoirs of George Bush.

“Father or son?” she asks.

“W.”

A memoir of his presidency? “You’re right; no one will ever look there,” Wright chuckles. Hard to believe they were actually better off then.

Wright flips through the pages, scanning images of ghosts, demons, witches…and then one particular picture catches her eye. She backtracks to page 86. There is an etching of a skeletal creature, its fingers and lips missing. It devours what looks to be a human hand. She reads the caption under the etching:

“Wendigo.”

She hands the book over to Creedy.

He squints as he reads. ‘“The Wendigo: a vampiric monster in Algonquin mythology.’ They’re presumed to have once been human, preying on Native American hunters.” He stares hard at Wright. “It kind of looks like one of those things out there!”

Wright nods. She takes the book back and turns several pages ahead. Again she stops. “Look at this one.”

Creedy gawks at the picture of a humanoid eating the corpse of a woman by the light of the moon. “Loango,” the caption under the illustration reads. “It says this vampire’s from Africa.”

Wright turns the page. “Bruxsa,” she says, eyeing the drawing of another ghoul. She reads for a minute, then summarizes. “Apparently, also a vampire. This one was known to eat its own children. Many cultures believe that vampires prey first on family and loved ones. Their incarnation gives shape and face to taboo.”

“No,” Creedy enjoins, “they’re wrong.” The writer. The folklorists. They’re wrong. “These things simply covet what they know.”

Wright is reading the book’s table of contents. It contains a listing of vampire lore by nation.

Albania: Sampiro, Lingat;

Armenia: Dahkanavar;

Assyria: Ekimmu;

Australia: Yara-ma-yha-who;

Babylonia: Lilitu;

Bavaria: Nachtzeher;

Belarus: Mjertovjec;

Benin: Asiman/Obayifo…

“My God, this book is full of these things.”

Bohemia and Moravia: Ogoljen, Mura, Vilkodlak;

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Blautsauger, Lampir;

Brazil: Lobishomen, Jaracaca;

Bulgaria: Krvoijac, Obur;

Burma: Thaye/Tasei;

China: P’O, Ch’ing Shih;

Crete: Kathakanko;

Croatia: Pijavica;

Czech Republic: Ogoljen;

Dalmatia: Kuzlak;

France: Melusine, Moribondo;

Germany: Alp, Mara, Nachtzehrer, Neuntoter;

Ghana: Asasabonsam;

Greece: Lamia, Empusa, Brukulako, Vrykolakas, Catacano, Callicantzaros;

Gypsy: Sara, Mullo, Dhampire;

Holland: Mara…

Wright reads aloud. “‘Although the origin and details differ regionally, all cultures believe in the undead returning to life to devour the living.’”

Hungary: Liderc Nadaly, Pamgri, Vampyr;

India: Baitol, Bhuta, Kali, Churel, Punyaiama, Rakshasas, Chedipe;

Indonesia: Ponianak, Buo;

Ireland: Dearg-dul;

Italy: Vampiri, Strix, Strega;

Japan: Kappa;

Macedonia: Vryolakas;

Malaysia: Lansuyar, Penanggalan, Langsuit;

Mexico: Cihuateteo, Camazotz, Tlahuelpuchi;

Namibia: Otigiruru;

Peru: Pishtaco;

Philippines: Aswang;

Poland: Upier, Upierzyca;

Polynesia: Talamaur…

“In fact, in Christian society, the vampiric taboo can be traced all the way to Leviticus 17:14…”

Portugal: Brusxa;

Prussia: Gierach, Stryz, Viesczy;

Romania: Strigoi, Muronul, Nosferatu, Vircolac;

Russia: Viexczy, Uppyr, Oupyr, Ereticy, Vampir, Myertovets, Vurdalak, Upierzhy;

Saxony: Neuntoter…

“…to paraphrase, ‘Blood is life and whoever eats of the blood shall be cut off from God…’”

Scotland: Baobham Sith;

Serbia: Vlkoslak, Mulo, Dhampir;

Slovenia: Vukodlak;

Spain: Vampiro;

Sweden: Vampyr;

Thailand: Phii;

Tibet: Wrathful Dieties;

Uganda: Obayifo;

West Indies: Asema, Loogaroo, Sukuyan;

Yugoslavia: Vlkodlak, Mulo, Vukodlak…

“…Those unfortunate enough to die at the hands of these monsters are doomed to the very same fate: to walk the Earth in eternal damnation.”

Vampire

Creedy sits motionless, his mind racing. “It is an interesting premise,” he allows.
Interesting?
Interesting is a term used by people to describe simple wonders. It shouldn’t be used to summarize that which cannot be or dare not be comprehended. No, this hypothesis can only be deemed Scary As All Hell.