Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (9 page)

Then everything went black as the kid hit him, hard, across the chin.
 

He had a dream that he starved to death. He desiccated like a raisin and Maurice found him curled up in his house and said, “I knew I made a mistake.” Then things in the dream changed and he was in hell, a vampire hell, with vampires everywhere, their legs and arms and hair on fire, forever in pain and forever burning but unable to die…

… and then his eyes opened and there was nothing but pain across his face as a beam of sunlight lanced him like a sword. He rolled away and it stopped, but a second later there was another pain in his hand, then on his face again. It was disorienting.
 

He fought the pain and got to his hands and knees and looked around. He was maybe ten feet off the path, more or less hidden from early-morning walkers by three trash cans marked for the disposal of aluminum, glass, and refuse. The sun was rising in the east, across the river, and he was mostly shadowed by a huge, overhanging tree. Sunlight was peeking through the shifting holes in the leaves, and each time one of the beams touched him, it was like being seared by a brand.
 

He scrambled back, deeper into the shadows.

As the sun began to rise, Reginald ducked back into the shadows under the tree. He figured he could spend the day on his usual bench near the trunk of a second, larger tree, but then he realized that he felt very hot despite the fact that his skin had already healed from the singeing.
 

He opened the buttons on his shirt. He rolled up his pantlegs and rolled down his socks. Then he took off the shoes and socks. If he’d had a razor, he would have shaved his head. Eventually, fighting embarrassment, he stripped off his shirt. His gut looked enormous and pasty in the outside air. But none of it helped, and sweat began to bead on his skin and pool in his belly button. It ran down his back and onto the bench, into his pants and underwear. His hair became a heavy, sloppy mess.
 

It was the sun.

Even though the shade was filtering out direct light, indirect light was bouncing off of every surface he could see. And really, that was just the visible spectrum. All of the other wavelengths of solar radiation were moving right through the leaves — right through the bark of the tree — and baking him.

As if to confirm this, his exposed white belly began to turn red before his eyes. He lifted one of the large folds of skin and found his flesh white underneath. He held the flap up and watched as the newly exposed skin began to turn red, too.
 

He had to get out of here. But to where?

The bridge.
 

There. Not far away, but far enough away to be terrifying.

As if playing a deadly serious game of “the floor is made of lava,” Reginald slid off the bench and made his way across the grass, staying in the rapidly diminishing islands of shadow, until he reached the underside of the bridge over the river. He climbed up underneath it like a troll.
 

With several feet of concrete and rebar between him and the sun, Reginald began to cool down. He pulled his phone from his pocket. It was just after seven AM, and about fifty-nine degrees. He assessed his own temperature. Yes, that felt about right. He’d be safe here.
 

With no way to get home and nobody to call, Reginald settled in to spend the day under the bridge. There was one other person in the crook of the bridge with him — a homeless man who seemed very concerned that Reginald would try to steal his blanket. Reginald showed the man his fangs and the man took his blanket and ran. It was only after he’d left that Reginald realized he could have fed on the man, at which point Reginald told himself, yet again, that he was the worst, fattest, biggest failure of a vampire ever.
 

As the sun rose, he tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy. There was no truly level surface up high under the bridge, and every time he tried to sleep, he found himself starting to roll down the incline and toward the jogging path. So he sat up and leaned against a stanchion, pulled out his phone, and watched YouTube videos until the battery had all but died. He decided to save a few minutes of usage just in case. Maybe he could get someone to deliver a pizza to a man under the bridge. You never knew.

A few hours later, several hot dog vendors set up within his line of sight. It was like torture. He didn’t need hot dogs any more than he needed the pizza he’d ordered a few nights ago, but the memory of human hunger mingled with his blood hunger drove the sensation up to a fever pitch. He tried several times to get people on the jogging path to get him a hot dog, yelling at them from up under the supports, but each time he tried, the person he’d been trying to solicit either yelled obscenities at him or took off running.
 

By the time the sun set on Saturday, his hunger had become something physical. His skin, on his hands, was beginning to look dried and wrinkly. His stomach didn’t rumble, but somehow his
blood
did. He could feel it in every part of his body, running outward from his core in long, ropy tendrils of desperation. With each heartbeat, need left his heart and screamed out in search of sustenance, and with each beat, blood returned to his heart empty-handed and sad. He could
feel
his blood’s need in every cell of his body. What had Maurice said? It was like a limb he didn’t know he had.
 

Yes, it felt like that.
 

Having been outrun by a woman, caned by an old man, and beaten up by a teenager, Reginald decided to lower his expectations. He wasn’t ready for the big leagues. He had to go down past the farm leagues, past the minors, past little league. He needed the vampire hunting equivalent of preschool tee-ball.
 

So, as the sun was setting, he used the last of his phone’s battery to do an internet search. After a few minutes of dead ends, he found a church that offered daycare for parents who worked late — later than most daycares even on weekends, for later-than-normal parents.
 

This one would keep your kids until ten if necessary.
 

Past sunset.
 

L
ITTLE
G
IRL

WHEN REGINALD ARRIVED AT THE church, the children were out in a well-lit, fenced-in play yard. There were quite a few of them. It seemed strange to Reginald that there were so many kids in childcare on a Saturday night, but apparently the church was the only game in town for parents who worked unconventional hours.

Reginald looked at his cell phone to check the time. It was eight-thirty. He sat on a bench a hundred or so yards from the play yard and, using his enhanced vampire sense of sight, watched and waited as over the course of the next hour, parents arrived and claimed their children. Reginald started to doubt his plan. How had he expected to ambush a kid while under the church’s supervision or while holding their parents’ hands?
 

Ten o’clock arrived. Reginald crossed his fingers. The lights went out. Someone opened, peeked out, and then locked the door to the play yard. Everything became quiet.
 

Ten minutes passed. Nothing.

Reginald swore.
 

He’d known this was a stupid idea. What had he expected? To grab one through the fence? To have one walk over and offer him- or herself up after the shop was closed for the night? The whole idea was stupid, and now that he thought about it, he realized he’d
wanted
it to fail. He couldn’t bite a kid. He couldn’t terrify an innocent child. And now he’d wasted almost two hours and the kids were all gone, but it was for the best, he’d just have to head back to the bridge and find that hobo, or head into the city and find a hooker with a bad enough drug habit to allow him to do something particularly kinky, or maybe he could…

The front door of the church opened and a small figure, wrapped in a jacket against the nighttime chill, emerged and began walking away.
 

Reginald watched for a few seconds. He could see a brown pony tail running down the back of the jacket. A girl. Judging by the height, he guessed she had to be nine or ten. Why was a little girl leaving the church as the daycare closed? Why was she left alone to walk the streets at night?

But in the end, it didn’t matter. With his blood growling, hating himself for what he was about to do, Reginald got up and started to follow her.
 

The third time was bound to be the charm. Between the woman and the teenage kid, he’d learned exactly what not to do.
 

He approached the girl slowly, diving into pools of shadow behind her and keeping his footsteps light. There weren’t many streetlights. The girl was wearing earmuffs. He doubted she’d be able to hear him.
 

Loathing rose in his throat. He pushed it down. She’d be fine. She’d be scared, and she’d be hurt, but afterward he’d make her forget and she’d continue on her way. He’d even follow her, he decided, to make sure she got home safely after he’d fed. He’d be energized. He’d want to return the favor.
 

And besides, he needed it. He really, really needed it. If he didn’t feed soon, he’d die.
 

As if to confirm this thought, Reginald’s leg hitched and he almost fell. A cramp curled his left hand into a claw. He looked down at his arm, at the claw hand, as it slowly relaxed. The skin on his arm was scaly and gray.
 

The girl would get over it. He needed the blood more than she did.
 

He sprinted toward the girl and grabbed her by both shoulders. Then, without hesitation, she spun as if she’d been waiting for this exact move, rotated ninety degrees, and slid sideways out of his grip. Then she ran.
 

He ran after her, feeling deja vu.

“Hey! Wait!” he shouted. He asked himself what a successful pedophile would say at this point and then yelled, “Your dad sent me to give you a ride home!”
 

The girl was running, but he was keeping pace just a few yards behind her. She wasn’t screaming or panicking, but her running speed felt deceptively slow for someone her age. It was as if she was toying with him.
 

She turned her head and yelled back, “I’ve never met my dad!”
 

“I mean your mom!” Reginald huffed, already starting to lose his wind.
 

The girl didn’t turn this time. Breathing easily, she said, “My mom would never do that!”
 

“I… I have candy!”
 

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” the girl yelled.
 

Reginald, already out of shape and further weakened by his need for blood, felt his legs give out as his breath fell short. He collapsed onto the ground and then, giving up, laid motionlessly on the concrete for the third time in as many nights.
 

Several minutes later, his heaving gasps for breath began to abate and he felt his pulse slow down. “I’m the worst vampire ever,” he muttered aloud.
 

“You’re a vampire?”
 

The voice wasn’t far away. It sounded curious. Reginald lifted his face from the concrete and looked up. He felt a piece of gravel drop off of his forehead.
 

It was the girl. She was maybe twenty feet from him, standing under a streetlight. She was wearing a pink jacket with Hello Kitty on the front. The zipper bisected Hello Kitty, three whiskers on each side. A pair of fluffy white earmuffs were hanging loose around her neck. She must have removed them after their brief sprint.
 

“You’re a vampire?” the girl repeated.
 

Reginald sighed. “Yes.”
 

“But you’re fat.”
 

“Yes.”
 

“I’ve never heard of a fat vampire.”
 

Reginald rolled onto his back, then sat up. “There’s a reason.“
 

“Were you trying to eat me?” she asked. She didn’t sound afraid, just interested.
 

“I’m sorry. I’m very hungry.”

The girl shrugged. “Well, I’m not letting you do that.”
 

Reginald sighed, then looked up. “Why are you still here?”
 

“I know I can outrun you,” she said, her eyes avoiding his. He waited for her to say more, but apparently the subject was closed. Reginald rose to his feet and brushed the rest of the gravel and glass off of himself. The girl, true to her word, didn’t move.

“I’m very hungry. And I’m a vampire,” he said.
 

“I got that.”
 

“I could just grab you before you could stop me. So you might as well just come over here and we’ll make this easy.”
 

“I don’t think so,” said the girl. “You’re too fat.”
 

“I was making it sporting,” he said. But he could tell she wasn’t buying it.
 

Reminding himself that his very survival was at stake, he lunged forward, determined to somehow move faster than he ever had before. He could do it.
 

But, no he couldn’t. The girl turned and ran again, only this time she was laughing. Not in mockery, but like an elated child in the middle of some seriously great play.
 

They rounded a corner, then another, and then she sprinted up a set of steps to a small brownstone and
 
fumbled out a set of keys. She was going to open the door, and that would give him time to catch up…

… but it didn’t, because Reginald was even worse at steps than he was at running. His belly bounced and struck his thighs as he climbed as if it were trying to drive him back down.
 

The girl was through the door before he reached the top of the stairs but he bounded after her, his hands out, and as she tried to close the door he threw his weight into it and it exploded inward. The girl stopped halfway down the inside hallway and looked back at him.