He blinked and looked away. “Anyway, I got to campus the day that the news reports started to come in. The reporters said that something had happened in DC. Some kind of dirty bomb. A biological weapon had been detonated in a bus station, supposedly.”
“Supposedly? They didn’t know for sure?”
“It was certain that something blew up. There were photographs of the destruction. Half a city block cratered. But there were other reports, unofficial reports on the Internet, that something had happened at the CDC.”
“CDC?”
“Centers for Disease Control. They study infectious diseases, in Atlanta. Just rumors . . . there were all kinds of rumors. Rumors that aliens had landed, rumors that something climbed out of the Sarcophagus at Chernobyl.”
I hated to admit my ignorance, but I needed to know what was happening more than I needed to protect my pride. “What’s Chernobyl? And why do they have a sarcophagus?”
He explained to me patiently, without condescension. I could see some of what might make him a good teacher. “Chernobyl was the site of a nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and relocated, and thousands of deaths were attributed to the radiation, depending on who you talk to. The ground is still contaminated with radiation. They covered the reactor with a lead structure they nicknamed the Sarcophagus. It’s been degrading for years.”
I nodded. It sounded like the plot of one of the movies from the newspaper, but I accepted it. “Go on.”
“There was even a story that some bored Satanists got drunk at a science fiction convention and managed to summon some supernatural evil that took over the whole convention center.”
My frame of reference was already stretched to its limit. I had no idea where to begin with questions about that statement.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I don’t know what was actually true. What I do know is that the news started showing videos of rioting. And not just in DC—it cropped up everywhere. I guess I thought it was some reaction to the terrorism, but it defied all logic. It wasn’t just a religious or political site that was burnt. It was schools, libraries. When I saw an Internet report of a tour bus of senior citizens turned over and . . . and eviscerated . . . I knew that it was much worse.”
“How did . . . how did it spread?”
“Cassia thought it was a result of transportation—airplanes, cars. It had spread within hours. And the contagion seems to have an absurdly short incubation period . . . less than two days.”
“Cassia sounds like a smart woman.”
“Yeah.” The corner of his mouth turned upward. “She’s freaking brilliant. That’s what I love about her. Biology fellow at the university. Gonna be a scientist.”
“Hmm.”
His gaze met mine. “What?”
“That’s just . . . the first time I’ve heard a man say he loved a woman for her brilliance.” I was used to hearing about men who loved women for their eyes, for their smiles, for their ability to work hard, for their gentleness and kindness. Not for their brilliance.
“Yeah, well. Women are different out there.” He let out a snort of derisive laughter.
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive about your dating life.” I lifted my chin in defiance. “But I want to know more about ‘out there.’ Why, with all those brilliant people, is there no more ‘out there’?”
He flinched. I felt a momentary sting of satisfaction at taking him down a peg. We Amish did not suffer pride well. Normally, I’d have accepted his condescension with a thin smile, but not today. Not after the world had ended. No one was observing the rules anymore.
“It’s not as if we weren’t working on it. I went with Cassia to the biology lab, slept in the hallway while all these people in their plastic suits stared into microscopes.”
“You went to protect her?” That was a feeling I could understand. Though I knew very little about his world and the things he spoke of, I understood human emotion.
“Yeah. And I had nowhere else to go. The university went into quarantine. I wasn’t sure if it was to keep the rioting out, or to keep us inside. They closed the iron gates, blocked off the roads. Campus police started shooting anyone who wanted in or out. Hell, I didn’t even know those guys were armed.” His voice was thin.
I sucked in my breath, thinking of Mrs. Parsall’s children, at their own distant colleges. “Go on.”
“I thought it beyond barbaric, until I saw a pack of rabid cheerleaders take out some cops in a patrol car. It was like they peeled open a sardine can, then dragged them out and chewed them up on the pavement.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.
“The lab was barricaded while Cassia and the other graduate students tried to figure out what the hell they were. The National Guard came in. They were better shots than the campus P.D.
“Odd thing was, they only came out at night. During the day, the streets were empty, almost peaceful. Cassia said that photophobia—extreme sensitivity to light—was a symptom of rabies. That perhaps we were seeing a mutated, sped-up version of that.”
His breath quivered when he blew it out. “I’ve seen rabies. This was . . . Jesus. This was something else. Something more atavistic in its power. Something . . . beyond science.”
“Something evil,” I whispered.
“I said they were vampires.”
My heart froze. “Vampires?” I wanted to say, They aren’t real—but the destruction of a world didn’t seem real, either.
“Yeah. Cassia laughed at me. A plague of vampires? She said that it would be impossible for the human digestive system to adapt to survive on blood in the space of two days. Eventually, the Guard brought a corpse into the biology department for them to cut up. She said that it had a gullet full of blood. Cassia thought it was due to internal bleeding, that the key had to be some blood-borne infection. Maybe rabies with a bit of hematological fever mixed in. I didn’t understand all of it.”
“But you thought of vampires.”
“I wasn’t the only one. It seemed as good a way to describe them as any other. Like I said, the violence was only at night. People were walking around with garlic strung around their necks. Some of them even found refuge in the campus church. That worked well for a while . . . until someone set fire to it. I remember watching the fire from one of the windows in the biology building. It was about three in the morning . . . People came streaming out of the building, right into the arms of the vampires. They ripped them limb from limb.” His eyes squeezed shut.
“It was nothing like you see in the movies, these creatures. There’s no seduction. No passionate luring of the victim to a dark side of velvet. This is just the stinking, rotting underbelly of evil without its makeup. This is exactly what the Undead were in the old folk stories, the world around. Every culture has a vampire—a creature that drinks the blood of the living. And it’s not a pretty process.”
“There’s nothing . . . nothing human remaining of them?” I struggled to articulate the question. “Is there anything intelligent there?”
“I think so. Cassia said they’re capable of speech, of strategy. They figured out how to burn down the church. They would circle the biology building at night, like moths drawn to the flame, calling out for help. Once, one of the Guardsman went to help a woman who was being attacked in the street. Turned out it was a ruse—she was a vampire too. She shucked him out of his body armor like a squirrel with a nut. Maybe they would be less frantic if there was enough food to go around. But they’re smart enough to find it.
“I suspect that the corpse that the Guard brought into the biology building was also a ruse, that it was something planned.”