Psalm of Vampires: Chapter 24
Hunger Pangs
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After Philip’s CRISPR injection, Brilexus flashed to Goa and back to Singapore without incident. Like me, it took a few tries, but she got the hang of it quickly. The other four quickly demanded the same capabilities. Philip nervously accommodated the intimidating Goa vamps.
Before I had a chance to warn them about exhaustion, the five vampires were flashing back and forth, looking greatly amused. They must have done it a hundred times, grinning ear to ear like kids stumbling into a pile of unexpected Christmas presents. How they had the stamina for that, I had no idea. I was lucky to do it three or four times without feeling exhausted. Once, when they came back, they said in their common voice, “We do love Singapore. It has always been a delightful city for us.” Then, they flashed as one unit out of the lab. They appeared a few minutes later, looking pleased. This scene was repeated a dozen more times in the span of an hour.
If you’re thinking that there must be a catch, or that something was sure to go wrong, you’re right. The Goa vampires stopped returning from their flashes.
My phone started blowing up with local news reports of thirty or forty vampire attacks. Then fifty. Then sixty. These weren’t doubtful stories from disbelieving witnesses. These were attacks in broad daylight, including one at a soccer stadium full of cheering fans. Everything was on video. Enormously tall female vampires with fangs dripping blood looked at camera phones as if they were posing for grisly selfies. Human necks spewing geysers of blood were caught on video as their loosely attached bodies spasmed themselves into their final moments.
Multiple emergency vehicles blared their sirens outside the lab while people ran through the halls. Outside the building, people wandered around the surrounding campus looking at their phones, their eyes darting about like they were being circled by flocks of flying predators.
Owens was on a flight to Singapore from Atlanta, so I’d be spared his reaction for at least a brief time. Before I could even think about a course of action, more local news reports rolled in. One of the most disturbing involved a shopping center with hundreds of fatalities involving at least twenty vampires, all, according to the reports, looking precisely the same.
TikTok wasn’t just trending vampire. It was consumed by their attacks. Moreland was freaking out, texting close friends like Stormcycle and Morgenthau, who promised to send help, but since they didn’t know how to flash, may as well have said that they’d see us next Tuesday.
Bennie and Philip wondered how they’d survive the onslaught when it appeared that the rest of Singapore wouldn’t. It wasn’t like I could tell them not to worry.
It became apparent that the Mouras Encantadas were finding the time to flash to Goa to recruit more from their clan. I thought, shit, they may be biting their fellow Mouras Encantadas to inject Bennie’s DNA hack. Then I thought, shit, their initial flashes were biting jaunts to Goa. The number of reports involving attacks multiplied exponentially, all within a matter of minutes.
Moreland, who had been wearing her usual light, translucent robe, changed into her warrior outfit and pulled me by my arm, asking if I had my karambit. I told her I always have my karambit, but that if she thought we’d be able to take on a hundred Mouras Encantadas, she was crazy. “We gotta try to stop the slaughter,” she said, pulling me out of the lab, through a hallway, and out of the building. She brandished her sword.
“What about the brothers?” I said, thinking of Philip and Bennie.
“I think they’ll be okay,” she said. Exasperated, she added, “I dunno, Jade.”
“I gotta stay here,” I said. “I gotta protect those kids.”
An ambulance screeched past us, then another, then several police cars. People were screaming across the street in what appeared to be a shoe store. A cloud of shoes broke through a shattered window as if someone had found a way to spray them out of a huge hose. We ran to the store and saw six or seven Encantadas feasting on the store’s employees. The shoes that hadn’t been blown out the window were off the shelves and scattered across the carpet, which was soaked in blood.
The Encantadas looked completely out of control, like in one of those apocalyptic zombie movies where the creatures relentlessly attack with oblivious ferocity. The Encantadas weren’t just feeding. They were consuming. If they saw a piece of body that didn’t look appetizing, such as a foot, they hurled it against the wall or across the store, and, looking insanely famished, tore into another piece of flesh or organ.
While they were ravaging their victims, a beautifully eerie chorus filled the store with a song in the same key sung by several voices. A couple of the Encantadas looked up from their ravaging, but ignored us, returning to the feast as if we had merely interrupted dinner. Their eyes were wide and beady, nearly popping out of their sockets. All the comely vampires were soaked in blood. A military vehicle pulled up and emptied, but the troops were quickly overwhelmed by vampires charging through the same door of the shoe store, followed by the same eerie chorus. The soldiers were torn to shreds faster than you can tie a shoe, despite a hail of bullets that should have had at least some effect.
“What the hell is happening, Moreland?” I asked. “This isn’t exactly in the Encantada Chronicles.” I was referencing an old written history of Goa vampires that few, including Moreland, had probably heard of.
“The DNA thing that Bennie did?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Can’t be that. All their friends? The ones they’re bringing from Goa?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, what then?”
“I dunno, but there’s something wrong. They don’t look normal.” Then I changed my mind. I told her about my theory that they bit their fellow vampire brethren when they returned to Goa.
“Or they’re being controlled like I was,” said Moreland. I doubted that, but we had to consider everything.
“We gotta kill one and bring her back to the lab for Bennie to check out,” I said.
“No, we have to kill six,” said Moreland. “To guarantee that at least one of them isn’t one of the five that he gene edited. Since they all look the fucking same.”
The first one was the hardest, and it was pretty easy. Moreland entered what was left of the shoe store and took a swing at one of the Goa vampires with her sword as the rapacious vampire stooped over the remains of one of her victims. The vampire didn’t fight back but instead kept trying to feed. Moreland sliced the head off, then threw it onto the sidewalk outside as I jumped onto another and slit her throat. After I hacked off her hand, I aimed it perfectly toward the head Moreland hacked off. The hand bounced off the head, then down onto the pavement. I didn’t need her to die. I just needed her hand. Four more.
The rest were just as easy. No resistance. Their only focus was on the feeding rampage that seemed to guide their bodies. The police and military discovered that if they didn’t try to interrupt attempts to feed, they could blast them with bullets for hours. But the problem, as it always is with vampires, was that the bullets were ineffective. It was also almost impossible for law enforcement to shoot at vampires without killing victims. The situation was a mess.
Against that backdrop, we chopped at Goa vampires and hauled pieces of their bodies to the two terrified brothers, who urgently needed syringes of Valium for their anxiety. But the brothers braved through it. Bennie acted quickly to examine the DNA. Meanwhile, Philip got a desperate call from Leia Tan, who was stuck in an elevator on her college campus. Philip told her she was the luckiest person in Singapore, and to sit tight. That was probably good advice, but I told him I could try to fetch her.
It didn’t take long for Bennie to conclude that the blood of all the Goa vampires was the same. They all had his DNA hack. To say that this sent Bennie spiraling into a sudden fit of extreme depression wouldn’t come close to doing justice to his reaction.
“It’s all my fault,” he began to repeat. “If I hadn’t played God, none of this would be happening.” He couldn’t break out of this kind of conversation no matter how much consoling we did or how many times we reminded him that it wasn’t his fault that circumstances led to the use of CRISPR. We couldn’t really say it wasn’t his idea because it was, but we reminded him how we had to talk him into its execution. We reminded him how nervous he had been to try it. It didn’t matter to him. He had held the knife, so to speak.
Speaking of knives, when was the last time I didn’t keep my karambit in its sheath? Of course, you don’t have an answer for that. Neither do I, but it doesn’t happen often. Leaving it on the table next to Bennie was a supremely bad idea. I realized this as soon as I saw his hand reach for it and begin the knife’s short journey to his throat.
Moreland’s arm became a whip as she ran three or four steps toward him to snap the knife out of his hands. Then, she bit hard into his neck. Bennie’s body quickly turned yellowish white, like death, as Moreland’s eyes lit up. A strong scarlet eggshell glow surrounded her body. I could see an expression of pure enjoyment consume her through the glow’s translucence as her jaws dug deeper. Philip screamed like he had just lost his dear brother, which, in a way, he just had. The scarlet glow deepened, absorbing her body and Bennie. Bennie’s body shuddered violently as Moreland’s jaw remained firmly engaged with his neck. I could barely see Bennie and Moreland through the glow as voices in an African dialect filled the air around them.
The glow subsided. Bennie’s head spilled backward like his neck had been broken. The pupils of his eyes rolled into white. Philip was pounding on Moreland with his fists, but she ignored him. She picked Bennie up, laid him on one of the lab tables, and softly said to him, “Rest, my friend. Your days of rash self-judgment are over.”
She looked at Philip. “Sorry. We seriously do not have time for this shit. He’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
“You killed him,” Philip said through sobs as he ran to Bennie and kissed his forehead. “Bennie!”
“He almost killed himself. Or did you not see him take Jade’s knife?” said Moreland. “Now, he lives. And will live. He will live on far beyond this day of self-immolation.”
“Days? Talk about no time. We’ll all be dead by then.” Through tears, Philip was still reacting to the first thing Moreland said to him.
“Yeah, Moreland, how the hell are we going to deal with the genetics angle now?” I asked.
“I think we’ve proven that we are in over our heads in that regard, don’t you, Jade?” she replied. “Philip has everything we need.” She put her hands on Philip’s shoulders as he continued bending toward his brother. “You won’t see anything different about your brother. Nothing about his personality will change. But he won’t try to kill himself again, either.”
Philip shook his head and sat down on a chair next to Bennie. “Oh, Bennie, I’m so sorry,” he said, clasping one limp hand. He looked at Moreland. “So, you’ve turned him into one of you?”
She nodded. “He is now the origin father of the House of Chua. All his heirs are answerable to him.”
“Can you turn me, too?” asked a despondent Philip.
“I can. But we must complete our mission first. Can you?” she asked.
Philip took a rag from the table and wiped his face, which had been moistened by cascading tears. “I think so,” he said.
“I know so,” Moreland replied.
I didn’t know how I felt about Moreland’s latest rash, uncounseled decision. Turning him wasn’t necessary to save Bennie’s life. She had already achieved that by snatching the knife from his hand. But she also eliminated the possibility that he could die at his own hands during another attempt. One of the universe’s most improbable events is vampire suicide. Not because we don’t want to do it. The thought has crossed my mind a hundred times. It’s just very difficult to accomplish. Bennie would have to learn to live with his decision to alter the Goa DNA. I was determined to help him do that.
The Mouras Encantadas raged on. It occurred to me that the onslaught on Singapore would attract Longtooth’s attention. I didn’t know how he’d react, but there was no reason to think it would be for the better. I sat next to Philip. “I need you,” I said quietly.
He looked at me with glazed, puffy eyes and said, “For?”
“Longtooth. He’ll be on the move. He’ll be trying to take advantage of this situation.”
“Of course he will,” said Philip. He sighed, shook his head, stood up, and lumbered slowly to his laptop.
“Hey,” I said.
Philip turned around to look at me as he was about to sit down.
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded, sat down, tapped the keyboard, and slid the screen my way. “Maybe it’s all wrong, Jade. Maybe I’m wrong, like Bennie was.”
“Bennie wasn’t wrong,” I replied. Moreland came up behind me.
“We all were,” said Moreland “That was a team effort.”
Philip nodded again. “Well, you say Longtooth will move. He isn’t moving. Makes sense he’d move. Like you said. Take advantage. But according to this, he hasn’t moved.”
“He’s still in San Francisco,” I said.
“According to the beacon. Which is why I wonder if I’m wrong.”
“Unlikely you’re wrong. But strange.”
“I’m worried about Leia,” said Philip. “We’re not dating or anything. I mean, not yet. A guy can hope, though, right?”
I smiled. “Yeah. It’s good to dream. It’s good to hope, even when the world collapses around you. Or maybe especially then. You know the building she’s stuck in?”
He did. The building was near enough that I was able to retrieve her without incident. The Mouras Encantadas were too occupied with their uncontrolled feeding to notice me as I walked to and through the building’s entrance. There were two other humans in the elevator with her. I grabbed them, too, flashing them all one by one to the lab.
“Oh, fabulous,” complained Moreland when I brought the elevator occupants to the lab. “One of these days, you should set up a human petting zoo, Jade.” She stomped out of the lab to who knows where, mostly just to make a point. She didn’t want to have to think about protecting more humans.
Philip looked exhausted. He was wearing a white oxford shirt and a pair of black suit trousers with red tennis shoes. I had noticed before that his red tennis shoes seemed permanently affixed. I didn’t ask him why he was wearing the dress shirt. Whatever event he had planned to attend was canceled by the Mouras Encantadas, so it didn’t matter. The shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his normally coiffed short black hair was mussed. This should have been clue enough for me that enough time had passed that Owens and Garrison should be arriving soon. It wasn’t though, so Owen’s text alerting me of his arrival surprised me.
After I acknowledged his text, he called my cell. “There’s a problem. The airport is on lockdown. I can’t get out of here. They’re not letting any flights out, and mine was the last one in. But I’m told they’ve sealed off the roads. I’m not going anywhere. What the hell is going on, Mourning?”
“Your worst nightmare,” I said, “Times a hundred or so.”
“You’ve been cloned into a swarm?” Still time for punches. Unbelievable.
“We’re gonna need to pull you out of there,” I said. “Garrison can lose a lung if he has to.”
I told him to meet us at his arrival gate. Moreland and I would have to flash to a place we’d both been at the airport, which left us with one choice, a small ride share area outside one of the terminals. Then we’d have to navigate through an airport stuffed with angry Singapore law enforcement officers on the hunt for people who looked a lot like us. The attackers’ profile was so ridiculously specific, though, that we thought we had a chance to get to Owens and Garrison without too much trouble.
“My hair’s not even black,” said Moreland. “And I’m not eight feet tall.”
“Don’t you have a more human looking outfit, at least?” I asked. She didn’t fit in on the best of days.
“This is totally human,” she answered, rubbing her hand across the tight spandex. “Hecho en Nicaragua,” she said in perfect Spanish.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said. “And leave your sword here, for God’s sake.”
We flashed to the Singapore Changi Airport’s ride share area, which was empty. There were no cars anywhere. The usual bustle of harried passengers around terminals was gone. We ran to a set of large electronic doors, then past security personnel and a few passengers. Airport security had managed to get almost all the passengers out of the terminal areas, but I couldn’t imagine where they were shipping them off to.
We found out soon enough. Hundreds of people were milling about a place on the huge airport’s grounds called the Rain Vortex, which was like an indoor jungle with a forty-foot manmade waterfall colored with spectacular blue lighting. The waterfall normally poured out of a glorious façade roof shaped like a funnel made from steel and glass held up by a huge round beam that made up the edge of the roof. The roof was composed of thousands of glass panels held by a twisting steel lattice framework that soared overhead.
The reason Moreland and I discovered all the people at the vortex was because we were chased there by three security officers, who couldn’t keep up with us as we raced toward the place in hopes of losing them in the small manmade jungle. Instead, we found ourselves dodging confused, frightened passengers as we darted around them. We scaled the terraced, plant-covered slopes that overlooked the round concrete drop point for the waterfall, which wasn’t in operation. No human could have made the climb as easily as we could.
While we were surveying the area below trying to figure out how to get to Owens’ gate, I got a text from Owens: “In big ass indoor jungle. Got herded there by local PD. Not sure what they call the place.” That meant he was below us somewhere in the crowd of passengers.
“We’re above you in the jungle wall,” I texted back.
“You are kidding me, right?” he texted back.
“Nope,” I replied.
Moreland began to glow. Sometimes, that glow served a damned good purpose.
“Well I can’t get up there, you idiot,” wrote Owens. “But I do see your ass. Me and everyone around me.”
One part of the crowd seemed to point up to us in unison.
“Well, wave or something, dipshit,” I texted.
A minute later, I saw a commotion below. A circle was forming around a man lying on the ground where the pointing people were. It looked like he was kicking his legs in the air and screaming. Owens. Moreland and I leaped down the jungle wall toward the circle forming around Owens. When we arrived, Garrison was laughing. Owens, his back on the ground, looked at me and yelled, “Get me out of here, will you?” Unable to contain my desire to torture him, I fell on top of him and pressed my body hard against his. I assumed Moreland was smart enough to grab Garrison, so I flashed.
Owens and I arrived on the floor of the lab. “Shit, get off me, you mother fucking goon,” he said.
“Nice to see you, too, darling,” I replied, standing up. I offered my hand, but he refused it and cursed something about my long-dead mother while he stood up. I looked to my left to see Moreland’s arm in the crook of Garrison’s elbow.
“Now, that’s nice, civil vampire travel,” said Owens as he looked at them.
“Always gotta make things difficult, don’t you, Owens,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. “What you got for me? You said you know how to take these bad boys out? And what the hell is going on here in Singapore?”
We sat down at a lab table where Philip was doing his computer thing. Moreland and I filled Owens in on everything we knew.
“How many automatic weapons we got here?” asked Owens when we were finished.
“Just a few. Not enough to arm the local police with meteor-bullet weapons,” I replied.
“You shoulda been taking out as many of these mother fuckers as you could instead of getting my ass out of there. What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked. He seemed pretty angry. I understood his anger. What was happening in Singapore was the exact opposite of what he could have ever hoped for as the climax to his years of battling vampires.
“We’ve been doing what we can,” I said. “It only took us a few minutes to get your skinny ass out of there, and now we need you to help deal with Longtooth.”
“But you don’t need me, Mourning.” I couldn’t explain why I did. Because I didn’t know. For his mind? His guts? Both? I tried to explain. Then I looked at Garrison. “This guy’s no idiot, either. Look, man, I just need you guys, okay?”
“Alright,” said Owens. “But let’s make this the last fight with this prick. I ain’t leaving his hovel until one of us is dead. He’s in San Francisco? You know, I really hate this flashing shit almost as much as my partner here does.”
“Stop complaining for fuck’s sake,” I replied. “Dr. Chua is dead, half of Singapore’s been slaughtered. You’re doing okay here.”
“Remember how well the last injection worked out?” asked Philip sarcastically in reference to the Goa CRISPR disaster. Everyone was mad. Stressed out. Nobody said anything, so he continued. “Well, I think I’ve got a modification to these nanobots that’s worth trying.”
“At this point, we don’t have much to lose,” I said.
“I think I’ve established a response protocol,” said Philip. “I’m testing it now.” He was furiously typing on his laptop keyboard. “If I’m right, in about thirty seconds, Miss Moreland will be singing America the Beautiful.” Everyone not named Moreland looked at each other like Philip was asking us to eat a ball made of sewing needles. “And… go!”
On cue, Moreland sang:
O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!
She had an amazingly beautiful voice. I had always found her high pitched shrill annoying, but when she sang, it became a gorgeous soprano.
“And… stop!” Philip hit a key on the laptop.
“You little fuck,” said Moreland. “I should feed your head to your brother when he wakes up. I just might.” Like I said, sewing needles.
“Sorry,” said Philip unconvincingly. If I could see he was withholding a smile, I’m pretty sure Moreland could, too. “Before you get too mad at me, you should know that you’ll be able to use your phone to send commands when you get to Longtooth. I don’t know if these Wurdulacs can sing but it won’t matter because you’ll command them to do something else. Anything you want, actually.” He smiled innocently at her. “I could have made you dance instead. This microcircuitry is hard-wired to convert English to command inputs. There’s another language in there, too. Must be what the Wurdulacs speak.”
“I’ve never heard a Wurdulac speak,” I said.
Philip shrugged. “The processor accepts the commands in English, then sends out translations. And then, somehow, in a way I don’t understand yet, gets the body that is receiving the command through the nanobot to respond to the command. It is crazy sophisticated. My uncle figured most of this out,” he added when I looked impressed. “It has taken me this long to parse what he has done and his instructions.”
“So, the foundation for you to work with was better than he said,” I said.
“He made the tape first. But added it last. I think,” said Philip.
“The amazing Dr. Chou. Someone should make a movie out of this guy,” said Owens.
“Miss Moreland,” said Philip. “I can disable your nanobots before your arrival.”
“Mmm,” she grunted.
“Then, I’ll use them to send the signals to you. But you’ll just be a communications hub. You use the app I install on your phones to pick up the signal from the nanobots in your body. Then you send the instructions out to whatever has nanobots inside of it in Longtooth’s place.”
“Sounds complicated,” said Moreland.
“No, all you need to remember is to send the command when the phone sends you an alert that you’ve got your signal,” said Philip. “And don’t lose your phones.”
“I sure hope he’s got cell service near that building he’s in,” I said.
Owens and Garrison looked at me like I was crazy.
“It’s San Francisco,” said Owens.
“He’s bouncing these signals off satellites somewhere. Not a cell tower,” said Philip. “Some unused frequency in the five-point-nine gigahertz band.”
“Oh, that. Of course!” I exclaimed sarcastically. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“There won’t be a problem,” continued Philip. “I hacked the sim cards to your phones.”
“Of course you did,” I said.
“I feel like I’m in a Tom Clancy novel,” said Garrison.
“A what?” asked Owens.
“You know, Jack Ryan. He’s always got some brilliant computer hacker around while he’s singlehandedly smoking the Russkies.”
“Anybody seen Charly and Daphne around?” I asked rhetorically as I looked at my phone.
Moreland approached me, put her hand on my shoulder, and asked softly, “Do you really think for one second that Charly is going to let anything happen to her? She’s okay, Jade. So is he.” She wanted me to stay focused, but I had been having trouble keeping my mind off her well-being since the moment she left with Charly. Since the moment she turned, if indeed she had. I shook my head. I was frustrated.
But we had another problem. And this was one of the reasons I was desperate for Charly’s return. We couldn’t leave Philip, Leia Tan, and her elevator companions alone while the rampage was continuing outside the building. The area surrounding us had settled into an eerie quiet. But the news reports described a worsening situation.
“Everyone is probably in a bomb shelter,” Philip said when I brought it up. “Little known fact you Americans probably do not know. Every newly constructed living space in Singapore must have a bomb shelter.”
“No way,” I said.
“Way,” he said, imitating a movie comedy character. “Since the 1990s. There is one here, too. In the basement of the building next door. They are blast-proof. Maybe vampire proof. I hope so!”
“Why are there bomb shelters in residences?” asked Owens.
“Our brothers to the north,” said Philip. “Boom!” He motioned an explosion with his hands. “Another little known fact…” He leaned in closer to Owens, who was sitting across from him. “…Everyone who has one in their apartment uses them as closets!” He laughed. “True story!” I had a vision of people scrambling to pull stuff out of their bomb shelter closets so they could crawl inside and hide.
We decided that even if the Mouras Encantadas could break through a bomb shelter, they probably wouldn’t try if there was easier prey available.
So, we helped Philip gather all his equipment. Moreland gathered Bennie. Leia Tan gathered her new friends from the elevator. And we moved everything to the building that had the bomb shelter. Once there, Moreland and I found a small gathering of students huddling with their phones. After we left Leia Tan and Bennie, we fed on a couple of stragglers because we both desperately needed it. A couple of passersby were in such a state of shock they barely noticed.
Then, we gathered some weapons.
“Everyone ready?” I asked. It was time for our final meetup with Longtooth.
“Please don’t lay on top of me,” said Owens.
“Take my arm, you pansy,” I said.
Owens did so. Garrison did the same with Moreland. And it was off to San Francisco.
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