Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

find you some pamphlets in the counselor’s office—'

'You know what I’m talking about. You’re walking around suddenly like you got a stake up your butt.'

Doug glared at Jay’s serious face. But then the corner of Jay’s mouth twitched and a laugh came coughing out his nose. Doug lost it, too.

'A stake up my — How long have you been waiting to use that?'

'Just since last night.'

The boys stared at each other, smiles fading.

'You look better,' said Jay. 'Did you…get some blood last night, or—'

'I think it would be better if I didn’t share every little detail of my life now,' Doug answered.

'Oh. Well.'

The truth, as Doug considered it, was that he had not become a vampire in the Poconos so many weeks ago. Last night had been like a ritual, and he told Jay so. Now he was a vampire.

'Huh,' said Jay. 'Like a dark Bar Mitzvah. Like a…well, I was going to say Bat Mitzvah, but that’s for girls, right?'

'Okay, see? This is what I can’t have anymore. I’m different, now. I’m getting a do over on my life. I can’t get my do over if you’re always around being all…'

Jay frowned. 'What?'

The bell rang, signaling the end of round one and of lunch in general.

'We’ll talk after school,' Jay insisted. 'Well…not right after school, ’cause I’m going over to Cat’s and I guess you wouldn’t want to…but later, maybe? After dark?'

'I have something I have to do after dark,' said Doug.

26 Fade to black

'THERE,' Mike said, tilting his head toward the passenger seat where Alan Friendly sat but never taking his eyes off the MoPo across the street. 'What about that guy?'

'Maybe,' said Alan. He’d seemed distracted all day. Mike wasn’t used to being the enthusiastic one.

They were sitting in the front of a windowless white crew van. They’d had to cover the large, red Vampire Hunters logo on its side with butcher paper and duct tape. It had been Mike’s idea to monitor all the local news stations after they’d relocated to the Philadelphia area, and they’d seen the story about the thwarted holdup. And it had been Mike’s idea again to stake out the convenience store.

'Stake out,' Alan had repeated, and laughed. 'Get it? Stake out?'

Mike ignored this. 'Look. So we’re pretty sure our guy is a kid, right? He’s short, he looks young as far as we’ve been able to tell, he went to a party full of teenagers.'

'He may only look like a kid,' said Alan. 'He may be thousands of years old.'

Mike sighed. He didn’t know what to think anymore. There was something off about this kid, but it would take more than that to get Mike to say the V word. According to the MoPo clerk, the hooded vigilante from the previous night had shown some remarkable strength. According to her he had vanished into thin air. 'Turned into mist,' Alan had suggested. 'Or a bat or rat.' If only they could have seen the MoPo’s security tapes, but the police had taken them as evidence and they weren’t sharing.

'Whatever,' said Mike. 'Somehow he vanished from the scene, and when he vanishes he leaves his clothes behind. So he must have gotten to the MoPo the old-fashioned way: in a car or on a bike or on foot. Otherwise he would have arrived naked, too.'

Alan nodded. 'So…'

'So if we’re lucky he left a bike or a car behind. Probably a bike, if he’s as young as we think. Maybe it’s still there and he’ll come back for it.'

It made sense. Enough sense that the two of them parked themselves in sight of the store on the morning after the robbery. But by now one or both of them had been sitting there for twelve hours and Mike was beginning to feel a little foolish.

Still, there was a bike there, locked out front. Customers had come and gone, the MoPo employees had even changed shifts, and the bike remained.

The short man they were watching now had arrived on foot, but he left that way, too. 'Okay, that wasn’t our guy,' said Mike. 'But the sun’s going down. We wouldn’t really expect our guy to come for his bike during the day if — if, you know.'

'Right,' said Alan.

'Man, what’s with you?' said Mike. 'I’ve seen you more excited about traffic school. I’ve seen you more excited about that Best Lighting award you got for CatCops. We’re actually close to… something here. We’re not just harassing Eurotrash like we usually do.'

Alan was quiet for a moment. 'You can’t tell the rest of the crew,' he said. 'Not yet.'

Mike listened to the silence a moment, then exhaled and stared back out at the road. 'Shit,' he said. 'We’re canceled.'

Alan nodded. 'Almost certainly. I have a conference call tomorrow, but…yes, we’re canceled.'

The sky had darkened to the color of a bruise. Across the street, the MoPo’s exterior lights flickered on.

'We’re under contract for two more shows,' Alan added. 'So. I’ll be pitching something new tomorrow, I’m calling it America’s Top Psychics. If they go for it, I might be able to bring the whole crew over without much downtime.'

A trolley pulled up to the corner just past the MoPo, as trolleys had done every ten to twenty minutes throughout the day. Someone got off, as someone often had.

'There,' Alan whispered. 'There.'

Mike followed Alan’s eyes and was surprised to find the bass suddenly turned up in his chest, his heart pumping out a beat he could feel in his ears. Something had stepped off the trolley, something he’d only seen in grainy black-and-white video.

'There’s our Bigfoot,' he said.

The boy walked directly to the bike and unlocked it.

'This is bloody amazing,' said Alan, switching a handheld camera on and training it on the boy. 'What is he, five four? Five five? The Littlest Vampire.'

'The littlest…person of interest,' Mike answered, and started the engine.

'Easy.'

The boy wheeled his bike around and started off quickly, glancing back only for a moment at the bright lights of the MoPo. Then he turned onto the road, settled into the bike lane, and pedaled west. Mike pulled out behind him.

'Not too close,' said Alan. 'Give him room—'

'I’ve seen the same cop shows you have, Alan. I know what to do.'

In fact, following a bicycle in a van turned out to be far more difficult than Mike expected. Their quarry was by no means riding slowly, but he wasn’t traveling at thirty-five miles per hour, either. They would pass him, then have to casually crawl below the speed limit to give him a chance to catch up. But then their van would get caught behind traffic or stuck at a light, and the boy would weave through the red and have a two-block head start again.

'I can’t see him anymore,' said Alan. 'You’re losing him.'

'I’m not losing him.'

'Maybe we could just offer him a ride. Lure him with candy. That’s how you get kids into vans, isn’t it?'

Mike glanced at the camera. 'I think we’re going to have to edit that last part out.'

'Oh, what are they going to do — cancel us?'

Mike closed the gap just in time to see the bicycle turn off the main road and onto smaller, quieter streets.