The locals never understood why Massimo called it Vamp, and when he explained that it was because of the bite it had they all disagreed — even Leandro who hardly ever drank. He said it was fruity and fresh tasting.
For years Massimo had heated discussions with the townsfolk, regularly getting into late night drunken debates about the flavor. It was as if they tasted something different to Massimo. And each morning when he woke up with a hangover he knew that they were right and he was wrong.
The change in Massimo’s taste occurred after the WWDE, at the same time he gained the ability to daywalk. Since then, a fresh apple tasted like it had been rotten for the same number of years he’d been alive. At first he thought he was going crazy, and that his mind was playing tricks on him that he was really eating a rotten apple. Only when friends confirmed he wasn’t, that’s was when he worked out that something had changed with his nanocytes. Food had never been the same.
But if that was the side effect of being able to walk out in the sunshine again? He’d take it.
He opened the door to the shed and looked at the empty bottles lined up on the shelf. The labels on the bottles were simple, with just the word “Vamp” written on them. He’d tried to draw a cool picture, but it had ended up looking like a drunk child had drawn it. Leandro had attempted his own version but that had been even worse.
Since paper was a luxury, they stuck to just writing the one word on each label. It didn’t have the same feel as beer bottles from the good old days, but at least the liquid inside was decent.
He poured the beer from the kegs into the funnel that filled the bottles. There was something pleasing about filling the bottles and capping them. It was like seeing a project through from start to finish.
Sometime after the WWDE, the world started returning to normal and Massimo had decided to guide the settlement closest to him into the modern age.
Well, as much as he could.
He was quite proud of his results, but there was always room for improvement. But the vampire wasn’t afraid of a little hard work for the sake of making the people of Pinewood’s lives better.
Massimo knew that all good towns needed a bar. His time in England had shown him that. English people had a pub in every village and loads more in the cities. His bar was the heart of Pinewood, the place where the townsfolk gathered after a hard day’s work.
When Massimo had named his bar ‘The Old Dog’ Leandro thought he’d named it after him, which he wasn’t too happy about, but Massimo had actually named it after his first wife, Bridget. He’d married young, and she had turned out to be a total ballbuster—and not in a good way.
The woman had a temper like an active volcano, and she’d blow her top at the slightest provocation. Massimo had forgotten to take out the trash one morning, so she had destroyed his record collection. Records could survive just about anything if you kept them away from sunlight, cold weather, or water, but get them near a pissed-off wife, and they didn’t stand a chance.
When Massimo was told he had six months to live, he’d realized that Bridget had to go. He thought he would have six months of freedom from her, but he’d had more than a lifetime since he had been turned into a vampire before death could claim him.
Unfortunately for Massimo, there were a lot of women like his former wife, and he somehow managed to fall in love with all of them. His taste in women was terrible, but, at least, his taste in beer was spot on.
Once he had filled enough bottles for the bar’s daily needs, Massimo placed them in the cart ready to take to Pinewood when Leandro returned. Kelvin, the bar manager, would have the empties ready for him, and they would bring them back and repeat the process.
Pleased with his work, Massimo drank one of the beers. Over the years he’d got used to the taste. The beer was a little warm for his liking but refreshing nevertheless.
The people of Pinewood would be happy with the results of his hard work, except for Tightwad. He was one of several customers who didn’t get drunk from the beer or hard liquor Massimo sold in the bar. To them, it was like drinking water.
Strangely enough, when Tightwad drank actual water, it was a different story. Regular old water got him so wasted that he was unable to walk in a straight line or string sentences together.
Lucky bastards like him would have saved a fortune on booze before the world had been nuked back to the Stone Age. Then again, Massimo guessed that the nuclear Armageddon was the exact cause of this strange phenomenon.
Massimo thought that maybe Tightwad had his own type of nanocytes, working in his blood to turn water into wine. The thought always made Massimo chuckle, because that made it sound like if Tightwad was God in colorful knitted sweaters. He was a good guy, but not God material. He just didn’t know.
That was his theory, anyway, since there was no TV or internet to tell him differently.
He took another sip of Vamp and grimaced at the bite from the acid as it hit his mouth. It had a kick, but he knew it was nothing compared to the potato vodka distilling in his vault under the house. Now that the beer was taken care of, Massimo could have his first taste.
When he got back to the house, ‘Mamma Mia’ was playing in the background. He left it on in the hope that
