We Are All Monsters Here
After decades of movies and TV shows and books filled with creatures by turns terrifying and tempting, it was a guarantee that real vampires could never live up to the hype. We knew that. Yet we were still disappointed.
When the first stories hit the news—always from some distant place we’d never visited or planned to visit—the jokes followed.
Late-night comedy routines, YouTube videos, Internet memes…
people had a blast mocking the reality of vampires.
The most popular costume that Halloween?
Showing up dressed as yourself and saying, “Look, I’m a vampire. ” Ha-ha.
Then cases emerged in the U.S., and people stopped laughing.
While vampirism was no longer comedy fodder, people were still disillusioned.
They just found new ways to express it. Some started petitions claiming the term “vampire” made a mockery of a serious medical condition.
Others started petitions claiming it made a mockery of long-standing folklore.
There was actually a bill before Congress to legislate a change of terminology.
Then the initial mass outbreak erupted, and no one cared what they called it anymore.
I first heard about the vampires in a college lecture hall.
I couldn’t tell you which course it was—the news made too little of an impression for me to retain the surrounding circumstances.
I know only that I was in class, listening to a professor, when the guy beside me said, “Hey, did you see this?” and passed me his iPhone.
I was going to ignore him. I’d been doing that all term—he kept sitting beside me and making comments and expecting me to be impressed, when all I wanted to say was, “How about trying to talk to me outside of class?” But that might be an invitation I’d regret.
So I usually ignored him, but this time, he’d shoved his phone in front of me and before I could turn away, I see the headline.
The headline read, Real-Life Vampires in Venezuela. The article went on to say that there had been five incidents in which people had woken to find themselves covered in blood…and everyone else in the house dead and bloodless.
“Vampires,” the guy whispered. “Can you believe it? I’d have thought they’d have been scarier.”
“Slaughtering your entire family isn’t scary enough for you?”
He shifted in his seat. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s not vampires,” I said. “It’s drugs. Like those bath salts.”
I shoved the phone back at him and turned my attention back to the professor.
Two years later, I was still living in a college dorm, despite having been due to graduate the year before.
No one had graduated that term, because that’s when the outbreak struck our campus.
Classes were suspended and students were quarantined.
The lockdown stretched for days. Then weeks.
Then months. The protests started peacefully enough, but soon we realized we were being held prisoner and fought back.
The military fought back harder. The scene played out across the nation, not just in schools, but every community where people had been “asked” not to leave for months on end.
Martial law was declared across the country. The outbreaks continued to spread.
Given what was happening in the rest of the world, soon even the college’s staunchest believers in democracy and free will realized we had it good.
We were safe, living in separate quarters equipped with alarms and deadbolts so we could sleep securely.
Otherwise, we were free to mingle, with all our food and entertainment supplied as we waited for the government to find a cure.
One morning I awoke to the sound of my best friend Katie banging on my door, shouting that the answer was finally here. I dressed as quickly as I could and joined her in the hall.
“A cure?” I said.
Her face fell. “No,” she said, and I regretted asking.
I’d known Katie since my sophomore year, and she bore little resemblance to the girl she’d been.
I used to envy her, with her amazing family and amazing boyfriend back home.
It’d been a year since she’d seen them. Three months since she’d heard from them, as the authorities cut off communications with her quarantined hometown.
She’d lost thirty pounds, her sweet nature reduced to little more than anxiety and nerves, unable to grieve, not daring to hope.
“Not a cure,” she said. “But the next best thing. A method of detection. We can be tested. And then we can leave.”
A method of detection. Wonderful news for an optimist. I am not an optimist. I heard that and all I could think was, What if we test positive? At the assembly, I was the annoying one in the front row badgering the presenters with exactly that question. “What would happen if we had the marker?”
That’s what it was—a genetic marker. Which didn’t answer the question of transmission.
Two years since the first outbreak, and no one knew what actually caused vampirism.
It seemed to be something inside us that just “activated.” Of course, people blamed the government.
It was in the vaccinations or in the water or the genetically-modified food.
What was the trigger? No one knew and, frankly, it seemed like no one cared.
Those who had the marker would be subjected to continued quarantine while scientists searched for a cure. The rest of us would be free to go. Well, free to go someplace that wasn’t quarantined.
The next day, the military lined us up outside the cafeteria.
There were still people who worried that the second they got a positive result, the nearest guy in fatigues would pull out his semi-automatic.
Bullshit, of course. The semi-automatic would make noise.
If they planned to kill us, they’d do it much more discreetly.
To allay concerns, the testing would be communal. As open as they could make it. I had to give them props for that.
They took a DNA sample and analyzed it on the spot. That instant analysis wouldn’t have been possible a couple of years ago, but when you’re facing a vampire plague, all the best minds work day and night to develop the tools to fight it, whether they want to or not.
My results took eight seconds. I counted. Then they handed me a blue slip of paper. I looked down the line at everyone who’d been tested before me. Green papers, red, yellow, purple, white and black. They didn’t dare use a binary system here. So we got our papers and we sat and we waited.
When Katie came over clutching a green slip of paper, she looked at mine and said, “Oh,” and looked around, mentally tabulating colors.
“They say the rate is fifteen percent,” I said. “There are seven colors. That means an equal number for each so we don’t panic.”
Once everyone was tested, they divided us into our color groups. Then we were laser-tattooed on the back of our hands.
I got a small yellow circle. When I craned my neck to look at the group beside us—the reds—they were getting the same. So were the blacks to my left. I exhaled in relief and looked around for Katie.
A woman announced, “If you have a yellow circle, you are clear and you may—”
That’s when the screaming started. From the green group. I caught sight of Katie, standing there, staring in horror at the black star on her wrist. I raced over. A soldier tried to stop me, but I pushed past him, saying, “I’m with her.”
A woman in uniform stepped into my path. “She’s—”
“I know,” I said. “I’m staying with her.”
It wasn’t a particularly noble sacrifice.
That circle on my wrist meant I could leave at any time.
Katie could not. I had nowhere to go anyway.
My family…well, let’s just say that when I got accepted to college, I walked out and never looked back and don’t regret it.
I won’t explain further. I don’t think I need to.
I would stay with Katie because she needed me and because I could and because—let me be frank—because it was the smart thing to do. I’d heard what the world was like beyond our campus. I was staying where there was food and shelter and safety and a friend.
Assemblies and a parade of officials and psychologists followed, all reassuring the others that their black star was not a death sentence. Not everyone who had the marker “turned.” Those who did were now being transported to a secure facility, where they’d continue to await a cure.
There were private sessions that day, too, with counselors.
During those, I sat in one of the common rooms with the other yellow suns.
Yes, I wasn’t the only one. We all had our reasons for staying, and most were like mine, part loyalty, part survival.
We sat and we played cards, and we enjoyed the break from being hugged and told how wonderful and empathetic and strong we were, when we felt like none of those things.
Night came. Before today, the locks had been internal, meant to protect us while reassuring us that in the event of an emergency, we could leave.
Now the doors had been fitted with an overriding electronic system.
Perhaps it’s a testament to how far things had gone that not a single person complained.
We were just happy for the locks, especially now, in a building filled with dormant monsters.
I woke to the first shot at midnight. I bolted up in bed, thinking I’d dreamed it. Then the second shot came. No screams. Just gunfire. I yanked on my jeans and ran to the door, in my confusion forgetting about the new locks. I twisted the knob and…
The door opened.
I yanked it shut fast and stood there, gripping the knob.
Was I really awake? Was I really me? How could I be sure?