Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (5 page)

Reginald felt as if a great weight had settled on his shoulders.
 

“You, on the other hand, didn’t have time to get prepared, either physically or psychologically. One day you were a human and the next day you are a vampire. You’re going to find yourself at a significant disadvantage in the vampire community — especially today.”

“Especially today?”
 

“Everything evolves with time, and the Vampire Nation is no different. I remember when the rules and practices surrounding creation were different, but…”
 

After Maurice trailed off, Reginald decided he should say something optimistic to lighten the dour mood.

“I wasn’t much of a daylight kind of person anyway,” said Reginald. “And now I can… wait. Let me try.” Reginald rolled onto his stomach and did a pushup. “See? That’s awesome.”
 

“I don’t think you respect the gravity of the situation,” said Maurice.
 

“It’s okay. I’ll work on it. I’ll be the fastest, strongest protege you’ve ever had.”
 

“You aren’t hearing me,” said Maurice. “You
can’t
train. You
can’t
lose weight. A potential vampire usually takes three to six months to get strong, get lean, get fast, and get healthy. Nowadays, they train for sprinting and for combat. Muscle memory is physiological, so if you learn kung fu and then become a vampire, you’ll be able to do it well forever. Every generation, people manage to get more and more physically refined before they take the blood, and they become amazingly powerful when they’re turned. You, on the other hand, are untrained. The muscles and organs and systems you have now are as changed as they will be, ever again, for all of eternity. I’m sorry, Reginald, but you are exceptionally out of shape as far as vampires are concerned, and that will never change.”
 

Reginald, who had grave doubts about the self-improvement field but who held a secret hope that Tony Robbins might someday come to magically save him, found this incredibly depressing. All of his life, do-gooders had been telling him that he could do anything he set out to do, that a person’s potential was unlimited, that there was a fully realized version of himself deep inside just waiting to come out. And now he was being told that no matter what he did, he was screwed. It was as if Tony Robbins had walked into his house and punched him hard in the balls.
 

“‘Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right,’” Reginald mumbled under his breath.

“Not anymore,” said Maurice.
 

B
AKED

REGINALD TRIED TO CALL OFF work the next day.
 
He was unsuccessful.

He phoned the office and asked the secretary to transfer him to Phil Berger. Phil was nearly identical to Todd Walker, and Reginald often confused one for the other if one of them went by too quickly. The only real difference between them was that Phil, who was his boss, seldom body-checked him into the walls when they passed each other in the hallways. Seldom, but not never.
 

“I can’t come into work today,” Reginald told him. “I’m sick.”
 

“Can’t give you the day off, Reggie,” said Berger. “Try to be here in a half hour.”
 

“I can barely stand.”
 

“Twenty minutes if you can swing it. The fiscal year-end is coming and those spreadsheets won’t fill themselves in.”
 

Reginald sighed as he hung up. He was bone tired. Sitting through work — on zero sleep and up while the sun was out — was not going to be easy.

After their sobering heart-to-heart on the hill the night before, Maurice had led Reginald down the blue path, past the trailhead, all the way to the base of the big hill. Then, once they were back on flat ground, Reginald told Maurice that he wanted to test his legs again. Maurice advised him to dial his speed back and told him that being a vampire was like running an engine without a governor. Although his body would allow him to push very hard for a long time, doing so would burn him out — whereas a somewhat slower but still very fast speed (something Maurice called his “sustainable top speed,” the speed at which his body would be able to repair itself as fast as he damaged it) would keep him upright, and keep him from running out of steam.

While Reginald experimented with faster and slower running speeds, Maurice added that whatever his top speed was now, it would change. He’d get faster as he got older, for one, and he’d get an extra infusion of speed and stamina once he fed for the first time. For the first few days, however, Reginald was kind of like a vampire in reverse. His new nature was actually feeding on what remained of his human blood, and that would provide him with enough sustenance for three or four days. After that, he’d start to get hungry and weak, and he’d need to learn to feed himself.
 

Then Maurice told him that blood had a kind of telepathy, and that the two of them were bonded by blood for as long as they both lived. Because of this, Maurice said that as Maurice’s vampire nature fed itself inside of Reginald’s body, he could actually taste Reginald as if he were feeding on him himself. This seemed embarrassingly intimate to Reginald, so he said nothing.

A minute later, he noticed how Maurice kept grabbing his side while they were running.
 

“What’s wrong?” Reginald asked.

“Side stitch. And nausea,” said Maurice.
 

“Vampires get nausea?”

“Depends on what we eat,” he said. “I’m considered a health nut amongst vampires. I usually feed only on vegetarians.”
 

“What have you been eating that’s got you sick?” Reginald asked.
 

Maurice took a breath and held it as if fighting through a cramp. “You,” he said.
 

“Oh,” said Reginald. “Sorry.”
 

“No problem,” said Maurice. Then he turned and vomited on the side of the road.

Reginald’s sustainable top speed turned out to be, unsurprisingly, far slower than Maurice’s. Even with Maurice incapacitated, he kept having to stop and wait for Reginald to catch up. But that was okay. Maurice had said that older vampires were faster than young vampires and that he himself was quite old. He’d said that Reginald himself would improve with age, and might even improve some after feeding. And regardless of how much faster Maurice was, Reginald himself
was
fast and running was suddenly
easy
. He’d never run even a mile before, and so far they’d run several. He’d never felt so much wind in his hair. He felt invincible. He wished a car would go by so that he could race it. He wanted to see if he could catch a deer on foot.
 

“This is amazing!” he said to Maurice.

Maurice, at his side, smiled.

“I could run a marathon!” he said. “In no time at all!”

“Good for you,” said Maurice.
 

“I’m not tired! I feel so energized!”
 

“That’s fantastic.”
 

“Fuck out the way!” said a voice, and two teens on low-rider bicycles passed Reginald on the left. They slowly pulled ahead until they’d vanished in the distance, laughing.
 

After a few more miles, Maurice pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and called for a cab, and a half hour later Reginald was at home.
 

He tried and failed at sleeping for a few hours, but it was like sleeping in the middle of the day, which he’d never been able to do. Eventually he pulled himself out of bed bone-tired, wondering if his new vampire nature was asserting itself as a flipped circadian rhythm. He wondered if being awake during the day would drain him in some way, but Maurice hadn’t said anything about that, so he figured it’d be okay.
 

Okay, but
really damn tiring
.

By the time he’d showered (scrubbing hard to remove all of the dried blood), shaved (he cut himself once and it healed instantly), and dressed (which was slow due to torpid fingers and the fact that he fell asleep while buttoning his shirt), it was after eight and well beyond his normal start time. He’d have to stay later, getting maximal doses of Walker. And…
 

Reginald stopped in his tracks and said, “Dammit.”
 

Maurice had told him that being a vampire wasn’t complicated. There were really only two things he needed to know to get through his first day, and then Maurice would meet him in the evening to work through the rest. One of those things involved feeding: he didn’t yet need blood, and although he could eat human food if he wanted, he in no way needed it.

The other was a stern admonition to stay as far out of the sun as possible.

“Damn damn damn,” Reginald said again, peeling aside a drape and looking out at his sun-drenched lawn.
 

What Maurice hadn’t told him was whether he had to stay inside when it was sunny or if he could just avoid direct sunlight, perhaps even venturing out when it was overcast or while wearing sunscreen. Then he remembered what Walker had said about Maurice walking home in the mornings holding an umbrella and wearing long sleeves and gloves and decided that he could no doubt do something similar. And besides, he didn’t have much choice at this point. An hour had passed since he’d talked to Berger.

So, Reginald donned a size 4-XL long-sleeved Oregon State hoodie that his mother had given him for Christmas last year and a pair of heavy gardening gloves. The gloves were the only ones he could find that were large enough for his hands. He found them in the garage. They had belonged to the house’s previous owner and were pink with flowers on them. Reginald made a mental note to keep his hands in the front pocket of the hoodie until he got inside the office, and then to stow them post haste. That’s all he needed was to give Walker more ammunition.
 

Properly attired, Reginald climbed into his car in the windowless darkness of the garage. Then he whispered a little prayer of hope and opened the garage door. A shaft of yellow penetrated the gloom. Then, holding his breath and squinting against the exceedingly bright light, he backed out of the driveway.
 

Tires crunched on gravel as he backed into the street.
 

The sun even
seemed
dangerous as he made his way down the street. Something in his blood seemed to fear it. It made him nervous to be so totally surrounded by brightness. It was as if he were on a tiny lifeboat, surrounded by sharks. He’d have to ask Berger for a switch to the night shift immediately. There was no reason he couldn’t switch. His work was only vaguely time sensitive, he didn’t interact with any of his co-workers, and the company, as evidenced by Maurice, already had people working nights.
 

Reginald reached the end of the street. He put on his blinker and turned left, toward the office…

… and felt his face suddenly on fire, as if he’d taken a desk nap in a bed of red hot coals. His skin bubbled and boiled, and he heard himself start to scream. He could feel his cheeks sagging, melting, becoming liquid. His vision blurred and then became a flat, featureless black. He could feel the gelatinous content of his eye sockets run out and begin inchworming down his cheeks like a Slinky. His scream had started to disintegrate into a wet, gargling sound.
 

He was going to die right here. Day one and already out of the game. Someone would find his car with a pool of flesh and blood in the driver’s seat, or maybe just ash, a huge hoodie and slacks and shoes in the middle of it all, and a pair of pink gardening gloves…

Turn your head.

But of course. The sun was still low in the sky, and he’d just turned to the east. It hadn’t been bothering him a minute ago.

Reginald turned his head to the right and the boiling, melting sensation abated.
 

He took a deep breath, just trying to hang on. Two breaths. Three.

The burning diminished more and more, and then it was gone.

Reginald’s hands traced his face with his gloved hands. Everything seemed to be back where it was supposed to be. He also had sensation back in the skin of his face. He could feel the roughness of the gloves on his cheeks, his forehead, his lips, his chin.
 

He kept his head turned, feeling as if a very large gun had been placed against it.
 

He’d made most of the turn before the burning had started and so his car, idling, had driven into a brick mailbox. Smoke and an acrid odor had filled the car. He reached down, fighting the urge to retch, and found the gearshift by feel. He depressed the brake and pushed the transmission into reverse. He wouldn’t be able to look behind him. He’d have to trust the passenger-side mirror, and if someone or something was behind him, then so be it.
 

He backed up in a quarter circle, back to the stop sign.
 

Then, slowly, he reversed his entire course, backing into his driveway. He closed the garage door, felt the darkness cover him like a comfortable blanket, and sighed.
 

He didn’t want to go back out there, no way and no how.
 

But because he was a man who did what he was told, he fought down the fear and thought of Maurice and his walk home, and then he went inside, grabbed the largest umbrella he had, and ran to work, east, with the umbrella held in front of himself like a shield.
 

W
ORK

WORK WAS A CAVALCADE OF humiliating situations.
 

For one, it took nearly an hour to run the five miles to his office, and when he arrived, Walker and several of his doppelgängers were waiting in the lobby, clapping. Walker had spotted him from his office, which had a west-facing window, and had taken a movie with his cell phone that he was showing to the gathering when Reginald arrived. Walker clapped Reginald on the back and said that while he was glad Reginald had decided to get in shape, he could use some form tips — for instance, don’t run with an umbrella, because it adds wind resistance. And by the end of Reginald’s first five minutes, Walker had ordered Reginald a pair of jogging shorts and a moisture-wicking shirt. Or at least he’d tried to, but then had apologized that they didn’t seem to have shirts big enough, and ordered a parka instead.