Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (45 page)

He felt himself pass the patch of mental black ice and felt his control return. What he’d just done, he knew he could do again. He took a quick glance around to give himself a visual map, then went into his mind and felt everything grind to a stop like a dying clock. The world froze around him. And he thought.
 

I can’t go forward.
 

I can’t go backward.
 

I can’t go up. Even if a pipe would support me, they’d cut me in half before I reached a roof.

But there was nothing left. There was nowhere else to go.

But then he thought:
Go down
.

And in the still moment inside of his mind, Reginald looked forward and saw the jagged hole in the street. Into the sewer.
 

Two voices began to bicker inside of him.

Who knows what’s down there?
 

It doesn’t matter, considering what’s up here.
 

I don’t know where it leads.
 

You
do
know where your current course leads, and it’s nowhere good.
 

I’ll never fit.
 

You have to.

And he
did
have to. Claire’s mother had just been attacked, maybe killed, and Victoria was all Claire had. Maurice depended on him for his strategy, and the strategic direction Maurice took could decide the fates of thousands — both human and vampire. The war had already started. The evidence was right behind him, splattered all over the wall in the alley.
 

Reginald allowed time to resume.
 

He could see the construction pylons thirty yards ahead. The men behind him were gaining, still firing. He was almost out of energy, but he
had
to make it. His legs slowed. He forced them to keep moving, knowing that normally they’d feel intensely painful, as if they were on fire. His chest wanted to seize, but he pushed through it.
 

Another bullet struck him in the back of the neck. It didn’t hurt, but it knocked him down. Down to the ground.
 

Get up.
 

I can’t.
 

Get up!

I can’t!
 

And he couldn’t. As he healed, as the men gained on him, the slug fell through his neck and onto the concrete with a noise like a dropped quarter. He couldn’t get his breath. It wasn’t a matter of will. It wasn’t a matter of fighting through the pain, because there was no pain. It was a matter of his inability to function. Too much lactic acid, paralyzing his muscles so that they could recover. You couldn’t fight biology, even if you were a vampire.

GET UP, YOU FAT MOTHERFUCKER, AND RUN!

The men hadn’t slowed. They were getting very close — into shotgun range, anyway.
 

As Reginald stumbled onto his feet and made his final approach to the pylons, a blast from the rear struck him full in the back and he pitched forward, into one of the large orange and white cones. For what felt like the dozenth time since he’d become a vampire, Reginald felt his nose break.
 

They were twenty yards back.
 

Ten.
 

He had his arms inside of the hole, his vampire eyes barely making out a shallow stream of disgusting water at the bottom, fifteen or twenty feet down. He was going in head-first. If he made it, this was going to be unpleasant. But that was irrelevant, because he
wasn’t
going to make it.
 

He was stuck.
 

Feeling more bullets strike his lower half (many in his ass; what the hell), Reginald hung above the sewer with his head, arms, and shoulders dangling like a man trapped in a snare, his gut wedged firmly in the hole in the concrete.
 

The posse of men arrived above him. Reginald knew they’d arrived because he could hear them and because the number of bullets and buckshot striking him increased. He was very, very thankful he wasn’t experiencing pain, because the pain in this moment had to be a whopper.

“What the fuck! He’s wedged into that hole!” yelled one of the men.
 

“Should we pull him out?” said another.
 

“Don’t get close!”
 

“How could this guy be a monster? I mean, look at him.”
 

More gunshots. In a distant, pain-free way, it felt like one of his feet might almost be severed. The men would be able to start a whole collection of vampire shoes.
 

“Pull him out!” said one of the earlier voices. Reginald thought it might be Greg, the guy who believed in vampires.

“Why?”
 

“You want him to get away?”
 

Hands grabbed Reginald’s legs. His foot seemed to have regrown, because he felt someone tugging at both of them. This went on for a few minutes, and then the hands let go.
 

“Jesus,” said a voice. “He’s really wedged in there.”
 

Reginald hung in the blackness, wondering if there was a limit to the humiliation a person could endure before he snapped.

“Man, he’s a fat fucker,” said a voice.

From inside of the hole, Reginald yelled, “Get off my back. It’s glandular.”
 

A foot pressed on his ass, then began to stomp in earnest.
 

A voice said, “What the hell are you doing?”
 

“Figured I’d try to push him through.”
 

“You dumbass. He’ll get away.”
 

“What? They can’t be killed, except… Oh!”
 

Reginald waited to see what the voice had just realized, then felt something poking him randomly around the midsection, where he was wedged in the hole.
 

“Damn,” the voice said. “He’s too far in.”
 

“What were you going to do?”
 

“I figured I could pound a stake through his heart.”
 

“Oh.”
 

Minutes passed. Reginald hung upside-down in the darkness, his arms over his head and swinging. “So, you guys from around here?” said Reginald.
 

“We should just leave him,” said one of the men.
 

The stake continued to poke him, trying to find a way in.
 

“Knock it off, Teddy.”
 

The stake kept probing. “I thought I might be able to angle it in through his stomach. But I think there’s too much fat in the way.”
 

“It used to be hard for me to give blood for the same reason,” Reginald said conversationally. It occurred to him that it stunk in here. And why not? It was a sewer.
 

The men were silent for a few moments. Finally someone said, “Well, what should we do?”
 

Reginald said, “Let’s play twenty questions.”
 

There was another brief moment, and then one of the men said, “What time is it?”
 

“They have to be ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions,” said Reginald.
 

“Maybe a few minutes past eleven?” said the first man, ignoring him.

“We’ll just have to wait until sunrise,” said the second.

“No,” said Reginald. “You now have nineteen questions remaining.”
 

“That’s all damn night!” said the man who’d reported the time. “What are we supposed to do, get lawn chairs and camp out?”
 

“Yes,” said Reginald. “Eighteen left.”
 

There was a gunshot, and Reginald felt a bullet explode into his right buttcheek.

“We can’t just stay here all night. The cops will be here any minute.” He paused, as if something was occurring to him. “Shit. You’ve already called 911.”
 

The other man sighed. “All right, fine. We’ll go. I don’t think he’s going anywhere. The sun can finish him off.”
 

Reginald thought,
Shit
.
The sun.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Which one of you lives three blocks away and has the ugly wife who won’t shut up?”
 

Two or three distinct voices made disturbed murmurs. One voice was louder than the others. Reginald addressed it.

“I fucked your wife, buddy,” he said. In truth, he had no idea who the men were, who their wives or families were, or where they’d come from. But they’d arrived on foot and looked like rednecks. The chances of one of them living a few blocks away and considering his wife an ugly nag seemed pretty good.
 

One or two of the voices murmured. A third shrieked, “You stay away from my ugly wife!”

“I fucked her earlier, and as soon as you leave, I’m going to use my monster powers to get out of here and warp over there and eat her brains while fucking her again.”
 

“Which one of us are you talking to?” said one of the others.
 

“All three of you. I fucked them all. There’s the ugly woman in the shitty house, the ugly woman in the house with the shitty car in the driveway, and the ugly woman with the Ted Nugent tattoo.” The last was a long shot, but Reginald almost laughed when one of the men screamed like a girl. But still nobody was reacting, so Reginald thrashed from the waist down, kicking his legs out and twitching.
 

“What’s he doing?” yelled the man who’d spoken earlier. There was a note of panic in his voice.

“I’m preparing my monster warp.
Muhahaha
!”

“Stop him, Greg!”
 

“In a minute I’ll vanish, and then I can’t wait to visit each of your ugly wives and cut their heads open and play with their brains while I fuck them in the eye sockets and…”
 

The composition of the men broke and they all began firing their guns at point-blank range. As they did, large chunks of Reginald began to peel off and fly away. Reginald could feel it happening. It was distant without the pain, and almost interesting. He could sense parts of his body until they were severed, and then he lost their awareness. He felt shotgun blasts blowing holes in his back, his legs, and the exposed part of his overhanging belly.
 

“Afterward,” Reginald screamed over the gunshots, “I’m going to head over and fuck your ugly
mothers
!”
 

The guns fired faster.

Finally, enough of Reginald’s stomach had been eroded away that he — more or less just his upper half, now — fell head-first down the hole. He plummeted to the hole’s concrete bottom and found himself in feculent, smelly water. He tried to stand up, but what remained below his belt was like a giant pink tadpole’s tail.
 

Except that he
had
no belt. And what was somehow worse, no lower half meant no pants.
 

Something fell from above. It looked like a sack full of meat, but when it hit the bottom, it exploded in a grey cloud, lit from the dim streetlight above. It was what used to be his legs, and was now just his pants. They were shredded beyond belief, but once he’d totally healed, he stood up and pulled them on. Incredible Hulk pants were better than no pants any day of the week.
 

Reginald looked up. The heads of eight men in a circle stared down at him, not one of them angry or bold. All of the men looked absolutely terrified.
 

“Hey!” Reginald yelled. “Whose girlfriend has the bedazzled shirt that says, ‘Mega Cum Slut’?”
 

“Mine!” yelled one of the heads.

“Jesus, really?” said Reginald.
 

“What about her?”
 

“I’m going there now.” He gave a dramatic moan and waved his arms. “Run, run!”
 

The heads vanished. Reginald heard feet running away, and then he began the long slog in the dark toward wherever the sewer led him.
 

H
ULK

REGINALD KNOCKED ON NIKKI’S DOOR about an hour before sunrise. She opened the door to find him covered in blood, smelling like sewer, his shirt in shreds and his pants not much more substantial than a grass skirt. His hair was packed with dirt and gore and had wedged up into a fauxhawk before hardening.
 

He crossed the room, slapped an assortment of shiny metal balls into Nikki’s palm, and began to undress on a threadbare area rug. Once he was done, he balled the rug up and put it near the trashcan, then sat nude on the couch.
 

Nikki stared at him.
 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
 

But they did, briefly, with Reginald simply trying to keep up with his own memories as he spoke. He was exhausted. At some point — possibly in the middle of a sentence — he fell asleep.
 

An indeterminate amount of time later, Reginald awoke to find that he’d been rubbed somewhat cleaner and dressed in pajamas. The clock on the wall indicated that the sun must be up, but Nikki was awake, a cordless phone in her hand.
 

“She’s fine,” said Nikki, raising the phone.

“Who’s fine?”

“Claire’s mother. You told me to call around?”

Reginald sat up. He felt hung over. He rubbed his head, feeling as if he’d overtaxed it. All of last night was there inside of his mind, but it was foggy, and it hurt to think. His mouth felt dry. There was an empty Cheetos bag in front of him. He remembered annihilating the Cheetos before sleep took him, and of showing them no mercy.

“Oh, right.” He put both hands on his forehead.

Nikki walked to the couch and sat next to him. She tried to run a hand through his hair. It was hard and stiff, so she ran her hand over the top of it instead, like rubbing a turtle’s shell.

“Some weird stuff happened last night,” said Reginald.
 

“You said you stopped time.”
 

“Not literally. But that’s what it felt like.”

Nikki punched him in the side of the head.