Vampires: The Recent Undead (68 page)

“That,” Lee said, “is fucked up.”

“There’s a reason they made me an officer,” the Lieutenant said. He turned to Han. “What about you, Han? Any thoughts concerning the nature of our imminent guest?”

“Devil,” Han said.

“Ah,” the Lieutenant said.

“Which?” Lee asked. “A devil, or the Devil?”

Han shrugged.

XI

2005-2006

To start with, the Lieutenant called once a week, on a Saturday night. Davis could not help reflecting on what this said about the state of the man’s life, his marriage, that he spent the peak hours of his weekend in a long-distance conversation with a former subordinate—as well as the commentary their calls offered on his own state of affairs, that not only was he always in his apartment for the Lieutenant’s call, but that starting late Thursday, up to a day earlier if his week was especially shitty, he looked forward to it.

There was a rhythm, almost a ritual, to each call. The Lieutenant asked Davis how he’d been; he answered, “Fine, sir,” and offered a précis of the last seven days at Home Depot, which tended to consist of a summary of his assistant manager’s most egregious offenses. If he’d steered clear of Adams, he might list the titles of whatever movies he’d rented, along with one- or two-sentence reviews of each. Occasionally, he would narrate his latest failed date, recasting stilted frustration as comic misadventure. At the conclusion of his recitation, Davis would swat the Lieutenant’s question back to him. The Lieutenant would answer, “Can’t complain,” and follow with a distillation of his week that focused on his dissatisfaction with his position at Stillwater, a defense contractor who had promised him a career as exciting as the one he’d left but delivered little more than lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties at which the Lieutenant was trotted out, he said, so everyone could admire his goddamned plastic leg and congratulate his employers on hiring him. At least the money was decent, and Barbara enjoyed the opportunity to dress up and go out to nicer places than he’d ever been able to afford. The Lieutenant did not speak about his children; although if asked, he would say that they were hanging in there. From time to time, he shared news of Lee, whom he called on Sunday and whose situation never seemed to improve that much, and Han, whose sister he e-mailed every Monday and who reported that her brother was making progress with his injuries; in fact, Han was starting to e-mail the Lieutenant, himself.

This portion of their conversation, which Davis thought of as the Prelude, over, the real reason for the call—what Davis thought of as the SITREP—ensued. The Lieutenant, whose sentences hitherto had been loose, lazy, tightened his syntax as he quizzed Davis about the status of the Plan. In response, Davis kept his replies short, to the point. Have we settled on a location? The Lieutenant would ask. Yes sir, Davis would say, Thompson’s Grove. That was the spot in the Catskills, the Lieutenant would say, south slope of Winger Mountain, about a half mile east of the principle trail to the summit. Exactly, sir, Davis would say. Research indicates the Mountain itself is among the least visited in the Catskill Preserve, and Thompson’s Grove about the most obscure spot on it. The location is sufficiently removed from civilian populations not to place them in immediate jeopardy, yet still readily accessible by us. Good, good, the Lieutenant would say. I’ll notify Lee and Han.

The SITREP finished, Davis and the Lieutenant would move to Coming Attractions: review their priorities for the week ahead, wish one another well, and hang up. As the months slid by and the Plan’s more elaborate elements came into play—especially once Davis commenced his experiments dosing himself with adrenaline—the Lieutenant began adding the odd Wednesday night to his call schedule. After Davis had determined the proper amount for inducing a look through the Shadow’s eyes—and after he’d succeeded in affecting the thing a second time, causing it to release its hold on a man Davis was reasonably sure was a Somali pirate—the Wednesday exchanges became part of their routine. Certainly, they helped Davis and the Lieutenant to coordinate their experiences interrupting the Shadow’s routine with the reports coming in from Lee and Han, which arrived with increasing frequency once Lee and Han had found their adrenaline doses and were mastering the trick of interfering with the Shadow. However, in the moment immediately preceding their setting their respective phones down, Davis would be struck by the impression that the Lieutenant and he were on the verge of saying something else, something more—he couldn’t say what, exactly, only that it would be significant in a way—in a different way from their usual conversation. It was how he’d felt in the days leading up to Fallujah, as if, with such momentous events roiling on the horizon, he should be speaking about important matters, meaningful things.

Twice, they came close to such an exchange. The first time followed a discussion of the armaments the Lieutenant had purchased at a recent gun show across the border in Pennsylvania. “God love the NRA,” he’d said and listed the four Glock 21s’s, sixteen extra clips, ten boxes of .45 ammunition, four AR-15’s, sixteen extra high-capacity magazines for them, thirty boxes of 223 Remington ammo, and four USGI M7 bayonets.

“Jesus, sir,” Davis had said when the Lieutenant was done. “That’s a shitload of ordnance.”

“I stopped at the grenade launcher,” the Lieutenant said. “It seemed excessive.”

“You do remember how much effect our guns had on the thing the last time . . . ”

“Think of this as a supplement to the Plan. Even with one of us on board, once the thing shows up, it’s going to be a threat. We know it’s easier to hit when someone’s messing with its controls, so let’s exploit that. The more we can tag it, the more we can slow it down, improve our chances of using your secret weapon on it.”

“Fair enough.”

“Good. I’m glad you agree.”

Davis was opening his mouth to suggest possible positions the four of them might take around the clearing when the Lieutenant said, “Davis.”

“Sir?”

“Would you say you’ve had a good life? Scratch that—would you say you’ve had a satisfactory life?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I guess so.”

“I’ve been thinking about my father these past few days. It’s the anniversary of his death, twenty-one years ago this Monday. He came here from Mexico City when he was sixteen, worked as a fruit picker for a couple of years, then fell into a job at a diner. He started busing tables, talked his way into the kitchen, and became the principle cook for the night shift. That was how he met my mother: she was a waitress there. She was from Mexico, too, although the country—apparently, she thought my old man was some kind of city-slicker, not to be trusted by a virtuous girl. I guess she was right, because my older brother was born seven months after their wedding. But I came along two years after that, so I don’t think that was the only reason for them tying the knot.

“He died when I was five, my father. An embolism burst in his brain. He was at work, just getting into the swing of things. The coroner said he was dead before he reached the floor. He was twenty-seven. What I wonder is, when he looked at his life, at everything he’d done, was it what he wanted? Even if it was different, was it enough?

“How many people do you suppose exit this world satisfied with what they’ve managed to accomplish in it, Davis? How many of our fellows slipped their mortal coils content with what their eighteen or twenty-one or twenty-seven years had meant?”

“There was the Mission,” Davis said. “Ask them in public, and they’d laugh, offer some smartass remark, but talk to them one-on-one, and they’d tell you they believed in what we were doing, even if things could get pretty fucked-up. I’m not sure if that would’ve been enough for Lugo, or Manfred—for anyone—but it would’ve counted for something.”

“True,” the Lieutenant said. “The question is, will something do?”

“I guess it has to.”

Their second such conversation came two weeks before the weekend the four of them were scheduled to travel to Upstate New York. They were reviewing the final draft of the Plan, which Davis thought must be something like the Plan version 22.0—although little had changed in the way of the principles since they’d finalized them a month earlier. Ten minutes before dawn, they would take up their positions in the trees around the clearing. If north was twelve o’clock, then Lee and Han would be at twelve—necessary because Han would be injecting himself at t-minus one minute and would require protection—the Lieutenant would take two, and Davis three. The woods were reasonably thick: if they positioned themselves about ten feet in, then the Shadow would be unable to come in on top of them. If it wanted them, it would have to land, shift to foot, and that would be the cue for the three of them aiming their AR-15’s to fire. In the meantime, Han would have snuck on board the Shadow and be preparing to jam it. As soon as he saw the opportunity, he would do his utmost to take the thing’s legs out from under it, a maneuver he had been rehearsing for several weeks and become reasonably proficient at. The average time Han guesstimated he’d been able to knock the Shadow’s legs out was fifteen seconds, though he had reached the vicinity of thirty once. This would be their window: the instant the thing’s legs crumpled, two of them had to be up and on it, probably Davis and Lee since the Lieutenant wasn’t placing any bets on his sprinter’s start. One of them would draw the Shadow’s notice, the other hit it with the secret weapon. If for any reason the first attacker failed, the second could engage if he saw the opportunity; otherwise, he would have to return to the woods, because Han’s hold on the thing would be wearing off. Once the Lieutenant observed this, he would inject himself and they would begin round two. Round two was the same as round one except for the presumed lack of one man, just as round three counted on two of them being gone. Round four, the Lieutenant said, was him eating a bullet. By that point, there might not be anything he could do to stop the ugly son of a bitch drinking his blood, but that didn’t mean he had to stay around for the event.

Davis knew they would recite the Plan again on Saturday, and then next Wednesday, and then the Saturday after that, and then the Wednesday two weeks from now. At the Quality Inn in Kingston, they would recite the Plan, and again as they drove into the Catskills, and yet again as they hiked up Winger Mountain. “Preparation” the Lieutenant had said in Iraq, “is what ensures you will fuck up only eighty percent of what you are trying to do.” If the exact numbers sounded overly optimistic to Davis, he agreed with the general sentiment.

Without preamble, the Lieutenant said, “You know, Davis, when my older brother was twenty-four, he left his girlfriend for a married Russian émigré six years his senior—whom he had met, ironically enough, through his ex, who had been tutoring Margarita, her husband, Sergei, and their four-year-old, Stasu, in English.”

“No sir,” Davis said, “I’m pretty sure you never told me this.”

“You have to understand,” the Lieutenant went on, “until this point, my brother, Alberto, had led a reasonably sedate and unimpressive life. Prior to this, the most daring thing he’d done was go out with Alexandra, the tutor, who was Jewish, which made our very Catholic mother very nervous. Yet here he was, packing his clothes and his books, emptying his meager bank account, and driving out of town with Margarita in the passenger’s seat and Stasu in the back with all the stuff they couldn’t squeeze in the trunk. They headed west, first to St. Louis for a couple of months, next to New Mexico for three years, and finally to Portland—actually, it’s just outside Portland, but I can never remember the name of the town.

“She was a veterinarian, Margarita. With Alberto’s help, she succeeded in having her credentials transferred over here. Has her own practice, these days, treats horses, cows, farm animals. Alberto helps her; he’s her assistant and office manager. Sergei gave them custody of Stasu; they have two more kids, girls, Helena and Catherine. Beautiful kids, my nieces.

“You have any brothers or sisters, Davis?”

“A younger brother, sir. He wants to be a priest.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Isn’t that funny.”

XII

5:53
AM

Lying on the ground he’d swept clear of rocks and branches, his rifle propped on a small log, the sky a red bowl overhead, Davis experienced a moment of complete and utter doubt. Not only did the course of action on which they had set out appear wildly implausible, but everything from the courtyard in Fallujah on acquired the sheen of the unreal, the delusional. An eight-foot-tall space vampire? Visions of soaring through the sky, of savaging scores of men, women, and children around the globe? Injecting himself with adrenaline, for Christ’s sake? What was any of this but the world’s biggest symptom, a massive fantasy his mind had conjured to escape a reality it couldn’t bear? What had happened—what scene was the Shadow substituting for? Had they in fact found a trap in the courtyard, an IED that had shredded them in its fiery teeth? Was he lying in a hospital bed somewhere, his body ruined, his mind hopelessly crippled?

When the Shadow was standing in the clearing, swinging its narrow head from side to side, Davis felt something like relief. If this dark thing and its depravities were a hallucination, he could be true to it. The Shadow parted its fangs as if tasting the dawn. Davis tensed, prepared to find himself someplace else, subject to a clip from the thing’s history, but the worst he felt was a sudden buzzing in his skull that reminded him of nothing so much as the old fuse box in his parents’ basement. He adjusted his rifle and squeezed the trigger.

The air rang with gunfire. Davis thought his first burst caught the thing in the belly: he saw it step back, though that might have been due to either Lee or the Lieutenant, who had fired along with him. Almost too fast to follow, the Shadow jumped, a black scribble against the sky, but someone anticipated its leap and aimed ahead of it. At least one of the bullets connected; Davis saw the Shadow’s right eye pucker. Stick-arms jerking, it fell at the edge of the treeline, ten feet in front of him. He shot at its head, its shoulders. Geysers of dirt marked his misses. The Shadow threw itself backwards, but collapsed where it landed.