We Are All Monsters Here #2
People who “turned” were not usually killed on sight, not unless they were caught mid-rampage and had to be put down.
Studies said that when vampires woke in the night, they later had no memory of it.
People took comfort in that—at least if you turned, you’d be spared the horror of remembering you’d slaughtered your loved ones.
I took no comfort because it also meant there was no way of knowing what it felt like to turn.
Would you be conscious in that moment? Did it seem real at the time?
I looked at the unlocked door. My gaze swung down to the yellow sun on the back of my wrist.
Another shot, this one so close that I ducked, the echo ringing in my ears. The shot had come from the other side of the wall. Katie’s room.
I threw open my door and raced to hers, and finding it open, I ran through and…
Katie lay crumpled on the floor. In her outstretched hand was a gun.
I ran to her and then stopped short, staring. She lay on her stomach, and the side of her chest…there was a hole there. No, not a hole—that implies something neat and harmless. It was bloody and raw, a crater into her chest, just below her heart. I dropped to my knees, a sob catching in my throat.
She whimpered.
There was a moment when I didn’t move, when all I could think was that she’d come back to life, like a vampire from the old stories and Hollywood movies. Except that wasn’t how real vampires worked. They weren’t dead. They weren’t invulnerable. I grabbed her shoulders and turned her over.
Blood gushed from her mouth as I eased her onto her back.
I tried not to think of that, tried not to let my brain assess that damage.
It still did. I was pre-med. I’d spent enough hours volunteering in emergency wards to process the damage reflexively.
She’d tried to shoot herself in the heart, not the head, because she didn’t know better, because she was the kind of person who couldn’t even watch action movies.
So she’d aimed for her heart and missed, but not missed by enough. Not nearly enough.
I shouted for help. As I did, I heard other shouts.
Other shots, too, and screams from deep in the dormitory and I tried to lay Katie down, to run out for help, but she gripped my hand and said, “No” and, “Stay” and I looked at her, and as much as I wanted to believe she’d survive, that she’d be fine, I knew better.
So I shouted, as loud as I could, for help, but I stayed where I was, and I held her hand, and I told her everything would be fine, just fine.
“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait to turn. I couldn’t make you wait.”
“I would have,” I said, squeezing her hand as tears trickled down my face. “I’d have stayed for as long as you needed me.”
A faint smile. “Just a few more minutes. That’s all I’ll need. Then you can go.”
I told her I didn’t want to go, just hold on, stay strong and hold on and everything would be fine.
Of course it wasn’t and we both knew that, but it gave us something to say in those final minutes, for me to tell her how brave and wonderful she was, and for her to tell me what a good friend I’d been.
“There,” she whispered, her voice barely audible as her eyelids fluttered. “You can go now. Be free. Both of us. Free and…”
And she went. One last exhalation, and she joined her family and her boyfriend and everyone she’d loved and known was dead, even if she’d told herself they weren’t.
I sat there, still holding her hand. Then as I lifted my head, I realized I could still hear shouts and shots and screams. I laid Katie on the floor, picked up the gun and headed into the hall.
How many times had I sat in front of the TV, rolling my eyes at the brain-dead characters running toward obvious danger? Now I did exactly that and understood why. I heard those shots and those screams and I had to know what was happening.
I got near a hall intersection when the guy who’d showed me the news of the first reported deaths two years ago came barreling around the corner.
He skidded to a halt so fast his sneakers squeaked.
He stared at me, and there was no sign of recognition because all he saw was the gun.
He dropped to his knees and looked up at me, and even then, staring me full in the face, his eyes were so panic-filled that he didn’t recognize me.
He just knelt there, his hands raised like a sinner at a revival.
“Please, please, please,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt anyone. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I need to say good-bye. My mom, my sister, my nephew…please just let me say good-bye. That’s all I’ll do, and then I’ll do it, and if I can’t, I’ll go away. I’ll go far, far away.”
I lowered the gun, and he fell forward, convulsing in a sob of relief, his whole body quaking, sweat streaming from his face, the hall filling with the stink of it.
“Thank you,” he said. “Oh God, thank you. I know I should do it—”
“Where did the guns come from?”
He looked up, his eyes finally focusing. “I know you. You—”
“My friend had this gun. I hear more. Where did they come from?”
He blinked hard, as if shifting his brain out of animal panic mode.
Then his gaze went to my yellow sun. “You aren’t…
So you don’t know. Okay.” He nodded, then finally stood.
“When the black stars had their private counseling session, they gave us guns. Access to them, that is. They told us where we could find them, if we decided we couldn’t go on.
Except…” He looked back the way he came.
“Not everyone is using theirs to kill themselves first.”
“They’re killing the other black stars?”
He nodded. “They think we should all die. To be safe. They’re killing those who didn’t take the guns.”
Footsteps sounded in the side hall.
“I need to go,” he said quickly. “You should, too.”
I lifted my hand to show my tattoo. “I’m not a threat.”
He shook his head but didn’t argue, just took off. I waited until the footsteps approached the junction.
“I’m armed,” I called. “But I’m not a threat. I’ve got the yellow sun—”
“And I don’t really give a shit,” said a voice, and a guy my age wheeled around the corner, blood spattered on his shirt, his gun raised. “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
I dove as he fired. He shot twice, wildly, as if he’d never held a gun before tonight.
When he tried for a third shot, the gun only clicked.
I ran at him, but didn’t shoot. I couldn’t do that.
I smashed the pistol into his temple and he went down.
Then I heard running footsteps and more shouts, and I raced down the hall, taking every turn and running as fast as I could, until I saw the security station ahead.
I fell against the door, banging my fists on it.
When no one answered, I held my wrist up to the camera.
“Yellow sun!” I shouted. “Let me in!”
A guy opened the door. His gray hair had probably been cut military short a couple of years ago, but no one enforced those rules now and it stood on end like porcupine quills.
“Get in,” he said.
I fell through. When I got my balance, I saw a half-dozen military guards watching the monitors. Watching students killing each other.
“You need to get out there,” I said. “You need to stop this.”
The gray-haired guy shrugged. “We didn’t give them the guns.”
“But you need to—”
“We don’t need to do anything.” He lowered himself into a chair. “You want to, girlie? You go right ahead. Otherwise? Wait it out with us.”
I hesitated. Then I turned away from the monitors and slumped to the floor.
I was released the next day. That was their term for it: released.
Cast out from my sanctuary. They escorted me back to my room to get my belongings and gave me a bag to pack them in.
Then they walked me to the college gates, and for the first time in over a year, I set foot into the world beyond my campus.
It was fine in the beginning. Better than I dared to hope for.
The entire college town had been tested, the black stars already rounded up and taken away, and while families grieved and mourned their loved ones, there was a sense of relief, too.
Was it not better that their loved ones be taken somewhere safe…
so the remaining family members would be safe from them, if they turned?
That’s what it came down to in the end. What left us safe.
I boarded with an elderly couple who’d lost their live-in nurse and declared that my limited medical experience was good enough for them.
It was four months later when we heard the first report of a yellow sun turning into a vampire.
No one panicked. The story came from California, which might only be across the country, but was now as foreign to us as Venezuela had been.
The reports kept coming though. Yellow suns waking in the night and murdering their families.
Then rumors from those who worked in the nearest black star facility, that they’d had only a few occurrences of the dormant vampires turning.
Finally, the horrible admission that the testing had failed, that the stars seemed to indicate only a slightly higher likelihood of turning.
That’s when the world exploded, like a powder keg that’d been kept tamped down by reassurances and faith.
People had been willing to trust the government, because it seemed they were honestly trying their best. And you know what?
I think they were. As much as my early life had taught me to trust no one, to question every motive, I look back and I think the authorities really did try.
They simply failed, and then everyone turned on them.