Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

“Look, they ain’t neo-Nazis, okay? They’re white supremacists.”

“Oh! Of course. Howcould I have overlooked such an important distinction?”

The dirt parking lot outside the American Veterans Union Hall was about half full when Jules pulled up. He checked the lot for television trucks. If reporters were there when the gas went off, he’d just have to recruit them, too, and hope for the best. To his relief, no marked media trucks or vans were evident.

He checked his watch again by the Lincoln’s dome light. “We’re in luck,” he said. “The gas is timed to go off at nine-fifty. It’s only nine-forty. We still got ten minutes.”

“Oh joy,” Doodlebug said, straightening the straps of his dress.

“Let’s go inside. I wanna see what’s goin‘ on.”

The hall wasn’t especially crowded. Jules pushed aside a sinking sense of disappointment as he estimated the gathering at between twenty and twenty-five persons. It would have to do. At least they were nearly all men. Only two women were in attendance. One of them was wearing aTimes-Picayune badge and typing notes on a laptop. Jules was pleasantly surprised to find a coffee urn and Styrofoam cups on a table near the back. He stationed himself next to the urn and listened to the proceedings.

“Point of order! Point of order!” a man not far from Jules shouted as he leapt from his chair. The speaker was a short man shaped like a papaya, wearing a faded T-shirt emblazoned with the logoBUCHANAN FOR PRES ‘ 96/’00/‘04/’08.His face was flushed; he beat the air as he spoke. “The reason we’re here tonight is to officially draft Mr. Knight as our candidate for parish councilman! This is not the time or the place to be discussing the creation of ethnic homelands!”

“Now, George, I couldn’t disagree with you more!” The tall, thin man at the podium also beat the air as he spoke; the two of them looked like they were playing a game of invisible paddle tennis across the room. “If we’re to have any hope of drawing Mr. Knight into this race and then winning it, we’ve got to havevision! The old standbys-our ‘Three W’s’ of Welfare reform, Wasteful government, and Waco-they’re not gonna cut the mustard this time. Folks are tired of the same-old, same-old. They wantinnovative thinking! They want leadership that isn’t afraid to stand up to the real problems facing America!”

A man wearing a Mighty Ducks cap raised his hand to speak. “What I want to know is, do we hafta give thewhole island of Manhattan to the Jews?”

“Bill, you have a problem with that? Itis crowded, disease-ridden, and filthy, after all.”

A number of audience members mumbled their agreement with the moderator. Bill shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Well, see, I’ve got this elderly aunt who lives in Battery Park. Can’t we just shove the Jews over into the Bronx with the Puerto Ricans and keep Manhattan for us whites?”

The thin man at the podium wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Look, you need to keep in mind that Mr. Knight has already put a tremendous amount ofcareful thought into the exact geographic division of North America. Now, is there any more discussion on this issue before we move on to the next item on the agenda?”

The lone female participant, a worn-looking woman in the advanced stages of pregnancy, raised her hand. “Yeah. I’ve got something to say. Not to stir the pot more than it’s already been stirred, but I’ve got a real big problem with handing Mississippi over to the niggers. Them gambling casinos in Gulfport and Biloxi are the best thing to happen to this part of the country inyears. I’ll bedamned if I’ll vote for any man who plans on handing those beautiful casinos over to the niggers!”

The hall erupted into a cacophony of angry shouts and competing calls to order. Jules checked his watch, then nudged Doodlebug. “Time for us to take our ‘cigarette break,’ pal.”

“Thank Varney! Any longer in here and I’d have to scrub myself down with lye.”

They waited outside beneath the gloomy shadows of the pine trees. Jules sweated with nervous anticipation; would his setup work as planned? Three minutes later Tiny Idaho proved his worth as a gadget man. The shouting from inside suddenly changed to raucous and deranged laughter. Thirty seconds later the only sounds to be heard were crickets chirping and the rumble of traffic from the highway.

Jules rubbed his hands together with glee. “It worked! Am I a hotshot planner or what?”

They went back inside. Unconscious bodies were grotesquely sprawled across chairs, tables, and the floor, their faces still twisted with the muscle spasms of laughter. To Jules, it looked like the aftermath of one of the Joker’s rampages from a 1940s Batman comic. He felt tremendously proud of himself. He quickly counted the bodies: twenty-three. Then he headed for the door.

“What are you up to now?” Doodlebug asked.

“Wait and see, pal. I got this all planned out to a T.”

He returned a minute later, his arms full of stacks of disposable aluminum baking pans. He set these aside, then began arranging the slumbering bodies on shoved-together chairs, laying out each victim so that the head and neck dangled below the rest of the body.

Jules glanced archly at his companion. “Are you gonna help me, or are you just gonna stand there and watch?”

“Neither, actually,” Doodlebug said as he sat himself down by the door and pulled a folded copy ofThe New Yorker from his purse. “This isyour show. I’m just along for the ride, remember?”

Jules grumbled darkly, but he continued with his work. After twenty minutes he had all the bodies in proper position, aluminum baking pans on the floor beneath their necks. Now came the tricky part. He had to actually drink enough of their blood to ensure that they’d become vampires, but not so much that he’d succumb to the gas’s effects and fall unconscious himself.

One of the women began to stir. It was the reporter from theTimes-Picayune. He’d hoped she would’ve left before the gas went off, but now he had no choice but to do her. He knelt by her side and unceremoniously chomped down on her neck. She moaned quietly. Her blood had the same metallic, off-taste he remembered from his kayaker victim in the cab. He allowed himself to swallow two mouthfuls-any more than two would be pushing his luck-and then he sucked hard but spat the blood into the pan below. He sucked and spat and sucked and spat until he got a good, steady flow going. Then he let gravity do the rest of the work.

The job rapidly turned into a race against time. He hustled from one side of the room to the other, biting, sucking, and spitting as grunts or twitches of wakefulness called to him. Several times he had no choice but to stop and sit for a minute. Even in small individual doses, the cumulative effect of it all caught up with him, and he giggled as the room shifted around his spinning head.

Finally, Jules was done. He slumped against the rear wall, a few feet away from where Doodlebug was still sitting with his magazine. He felt dizzy and more than a little nauseated. But he was very satisfied with himself. He’d planned his work and worked his plan. Now there was nothing more to do but wait a couple of hours, the time it would take for his recruits to reawaken as fledgling vampires. The nucleus of his army of vengeance.

TheTimes-Picayune reporter was the first to stir. Outside, a trucker blasted his air horn. The woman slowly rubbed her face and mumbled. “Honeeee… honey… turn off the alarm, will you? It’sirritating…”

Roughly in the order in which Jules had serviced them, the newly born vampires mumbled and stretched and worked the kinks out of their necks and backs. The ex-moderator was the first to attempt to stand. He clung to the podium and swayed like a drunk on a three-day bender. “What… what the hell happened?” He stared across the room at the other slowly unclouding faces, who in turn glanced about them and looked at each other with wide, surprised eyes.