But I recently found this story and read over it again last week, so now, after 4 years since the last chapter of Flight of the Bloodmobile appeared online, I present... Chapter 11! (Chapter 12 is also coming soon... 13, maybe if I ever get around to finishing it. XD)
~ Shark Breast Man ~
Not long after leaving the town that had become a battlefield two nights in a row, the vampires came upon a roadside rest area and decided to stop. Steve's injuries--as ridiculous as they seemed--were pretty serious, after all, and nobody wanted him to end up with some sort of horrible nipple infection thanks to that nun not cleaning her yardstick often enough.
While the others stepped out of the vehicle for bathroom and snack breaks, Pugh laid Steve down on one of the beds and removed the shirt-bandage from his chest. Taking a box of medical equipment out of one of the Bloodmobile's many storage cabinets, he cleaned the dried blood away from the wounds (and the rest of Steve's chest, as it had dripped down quite a bit before the bandage was in place) and then began to swab away at the missing nipples with some disinfectant.
"Owwww! That stings!"
Pugh sighed.
"Of course it stings," he said, starting to swab the other nippleless area. "You have open wounds on your chest. It's not going to be very comfortable, no matter what I do."
A few minutes later, Pugh was done cleaning off Steve's injuries. He then opened up the box of medical equipment again, preparing to replace the torn shirt with actual bandages. Before he had a chance, Steve suddenly stood up and stared down at his chest.
"What's wrong?"
"I dunno... my chest just feels really weird all of a sudden..."
For a moment, both vampires just sat there and watched as nothing happened. And then, out of nowhere, two new nipples popped into place, quickly replacing the ones that had been severed.
Steve's jaw dropped.
"Dude," he blurted out. "What the heck just happened!?"
Pugh just stared, one eye twitching slightly. He knew that vampires tended to recover from injuries quicker than humans; sometimes, they could even fully regenerate small body parts, though this usually took a long time. However, he had never heard of new nipples spontaneously sprouting from someone's chest, not even during the years he spent at medical school.
"It looks like... your nipples grew back," he attempted to explain. "Almost like a shark's teeth... when one falls out, another one eventually comes in behind it and pops into the empty space."
Steve blinked for a second, then looked down at his chest. When he looked back up toward Pugh a second later, he had a very silly look on his face.
"So... I'm like, some kind of... shark-breast man?"
The other vampires, who were returning from their breaks, just happened to climb back into the Bloodmobile at this very moment. Pugh sighed and slapped one hand against his forehead, while everyone else just stared at Steve, confused both by the presence of nipples on the young vampire's chest and his bizarre statement.
"Okay," Crurotarsi said, "What just happened?"
"Steve's nipples grew back," Pugh answered. "I was standing right here when it happened. As strange as it sounds... they just kind of popped back in."
"His nipples popped back in?", Elvis asked. "Not even a slow regeneration or anything? Huh."
"Yes... it's the first time I've ever seen it happen, or even heard of it happening," Pugh said, flipping through one of his medical books. "So either Steve is just a rare exception, or we vampires have the ability to... spontaneously regrow our nipples."
Zamboni snickered.
"Well... I guess that would be the kind of ability that could go unnoticed for a very long time."
"Yeah," Rhombus said. "It's not every day that someone gets a nipple cut off, vampire or not."
Pugh nodded, then climbed up into the driver's seat of the Bloodmobile.
"Anyway... now that Steve's wounds are healed and everyone's had a break," he said, "I think it's about time we head out. That okay with everyone else?"
The other vampires nodded in response, hopping into their seats and fastening their seatbelts. Elvis, in the passenger's seat as usual, pulled out several maps from the glove compartment and started glancing over them.
"So... where are we going to go now?"
Pugh shrugged as he pulled out of the rest area's parking lot.
"Not sure just yet," he said. "I was planning on just heading west along the northern border until we bump into someplace interesting."
"And then," Steve spoke up from his seat closer to the back, "When we get all the way over to the west coast, we can go to California!"
After that point, the Bloodmobile's journey by night through the American north was fairly uneventful. They drove through several small towns and along the outskirts of cities, passing through pine forests, over curvy mountain roads, and past lakes. They were only forced to stop once, when a small moose family began to cross the road ahead of them, and even that stop only took a few brief minutes. Eventually, morning came around and the sun began to rise, so the group pulled over along the side of the road in a forested area and closed the curtains on all the windows so they could get some sleep.
Later that day, the group woke up and had breakfast as usual. While Pugh munched away at a large grapefruit, the rest of the vampires drank from blood packets and tried to figure out where they were going to go next.
Zamboni glanced over to Elvis, who had borrowed Pugh's laptop and was searching for information on the area they were driving through.
"So," he asked, "Any vampires nearby?"
"Not sure," Elvis replied, typing something into the computer. "There's usually a decent amount of vampires in the northern states, but I haven't been able to find anything really solid outside of Michigan."
"Michigan, huh?", Rhombus asked. "How far is that from here?"
"Just another couple hundred miles. We should be able to make it pretty easily before the end of the night."
"I just hope we don't run into any more of those nuns," Steve said, glancing down at his chest to make sure both of his nipples were still in one piece before putting on a shirt. "Who were those guys, anyway?"
"They apparently call themselves the Holy Order of the Shanking," Pugh said, pausing between bites of grapefruit. "That's what the side of that church van they rode in on said, anyway."
"I wonder if they're even real priests and nuns," Zamboni said, sipping some blood from his packet before continuing. "One of them said Steve was breaking the twenty-seventh commandment, but... I'm pretty sure there's only supposed to be ten of those."
"Says here that Rhode Island is the most Catholic state in the country," Elvis said after typing something into the laptop and clicking a few times. He turned the computer to face the others for a second, then turned it back so that he could continue searching for more information.
"So... if the church really is in charge of those guys, I'm guessing we won't have to worry about them as much now that we're out of there."
Crurotarsi, having emptied her blood packet, took it over to the small trash can bolted to the wall of the Bloodmobile and tossed it in. She then walked back over to where the others were sitting and sat back down.
"What about Michigan, then? What's it supposed to be like?"
"Probably getting cold this time of year," Rhombus said. "A few of us will probably need to wear coats if we're going to be out at night."
He glanced over to Steve for a second, then back to Crurotarsi before returning his attention to the half-eaten orange in his hand. Steve, of course, didn't get the hint, though it wouldn't have helped him much anyway since he didn't actually own a coat.
"Hmm," Elvis said, clicking something on the computer, "I think I just found something here."
The other vampires gathered around to take a look at the computer screen. Well, except for Steve, anyway; he was too busy reading a comic book that Rhombus had found lying on the floor of the bathroom in the last rest area they had stopped at. On the screen were several pictures of what appeared to be a huge underground city, populated by vampires of all shapes and sizes. The last picture on the screen was a lone female vampire, wearing an elaborate blue-black dress and practically covered in all sorts of jewelry.
"Who's she?", Zamboni asked, pointing toward the last picture.
"Not quite sure yet," Elvis said, clicking a few times. "Looks like she's probably some sort of authority figure in this place, though... can't think of any other reason why her picture would be everywhere."
"So what is this place, anyway?", Crurotarsi asked.
"Yeah," Rhombus added, "And where is it?"
"Underneath the town of Rochester, Michigan. Apparently the vampires there built some kind of underground city to get away from the humans," Elvis said, quickly reading over the place's description on the website. "Says it right here... 'we welcome any vampire who wishes to be free from the threat that living among uncivilized creatures poses.'"
Zamboni snickered.
"Heh... 'uncivilized creatures.' Bet the humans would bring out the torches and pitchforks in a heartbeat if they heard that one."
"And prove just how uncivilized they are," Pugh added. "Humans always have been good at that..."
At this point, Steve had apparently finished reading his comic book and started paying attention to the conversation going on all around him.
"So, uh... how do we get into this place again?"
"Through some old underground tunnels, apparently," Elvis said. "I'm not exactly sure how you get into the tunnels in the first place, though... probably a secret entrance in some old building, or something like that."
Pugh tossed the peel of his grapefruit into the trash can and then stood up, walking back to the front of the Bloodmobile and getting into the driver's seat. He then turned back to the rest of the group and checked to see if they were ready to go.
"So, you guys want to head over to Michigan and see if we can find that underground city?"
Elvis nodded, shutting down the laptop and hopping up to get into the passenger's seat. The rest of the vampires, after finishing their breakfast, got into their own seats and prepared for another long drive.
"We should be able to make it up there before sunrise," Pugh said. "Might even have enough time to take a look around before it's time for bed."
With that, the Bloodmobile rumbled to life once again, leaving its parking spot among the pine trees and rolling off down the road. Several hours later, the traveling vampires reached the Michigan state line; a while after that, they came upon the outer reaches of Detroit's suburban areas. Pugh decided to avoid the city of Detroit itself, instead sticking to the suburbs where the human population (and, thus, the traffic) wouldn't be quite as high.
With a couple hours of night still left to go, the Bloodmobile pulled into the parking lot of a hotel in the town of Rochester, the supposed location of the underground city where vampires could live without fear of human interference. After checking in and lugging all of their stuff up to the room, they immediately headed back down to the lobby and planned for a short trip out into the city before the sun rose.
"Okay," Steve said, "We're looking for some kind of tunnels under the city, right?"
The others all nodded. Steve then took off running toward a few humans standing at the other end of the lobby, causing everyone else to either sigh, shake their heads, or quietly growl in annoyance. A few minutes passed, and then the young vampire came running back, shrugging.
"Nope... those guys don't know anything about any tunnels. Sorry."
Crurotarsi punched him in the shoulder, this time a bit lighter than usual since he was at least trying to get some useful information.
"Well, duh," she said. "If every random human off the street knew about them, they wouldn't be secret tunnels anymore."
Zamboni barely held back a snicker.
"Yeah... I say we should just go search some old buildings and sewer holes. There's got to be an entrance to this place somewhere."
"Might be a good idea to check the older parts of the city first," Elvis added.
Rhombus turned toward him for a second.
"Why's that?"
"One of those websites I was looking at a while ago mentioned that there's rumors that the tunnels were used back before the Civil War," he answered. "So they must be pretty old."
Pugh nodded.
"Well, we've only got a couple hours left before daylight," he said, taking a few steps toward the hotel's front door. "How about we go ahead and start the search?"
Everyone nodded and followed Pugh through the doors and onto the sidewalk outside, walking down the street toward the nearest old building in sight. Elvis and Rhombus each pulled a pamphlet of maps from one of their pockets, taking some time to glance down at their pages every time they had to stop at a crosswalk and wait for a few cars to pass. Steve, still a bit traumatized by his nippular injury back in Rhode Island, became a bit nervous as they passed a Catholic church, glancing around in all directions as if he expected ruler-wielding nuns to leap out from every door. Of course, none ever showed up.
The vampires checked several old houses (and the dark alleys alongside them) for any sign of a secret underground tunnel entrance, but each time came up empty. Eventually, they decided to climb down a few manholes and see if the tunnels might be connected to the sewer system.
"Ugh," Steve said, making a feeble attempt to hold his nose and climb down a ladder at the same time. "Aw, man... it really stinks in here..."
"It's a sewer," Rhombus said. "What did you expect?"
Once the entire group had reached the bottom of the ladder, Elvis pulled a small flashlight out of one of his pockets and illuminated the sewer tunnel around them. Steve pulled his shirt up over his nose and started to feel around on the walls for blocks that might push in and reveal secret doors, while the rest of the group relied on less cartoonish methods--feeling the air to see if there were any places where air was flowing in from somewhere else, listening to see if there were any sounds coming from somewhere behind them, and of course just looking at the stones to see if any of them looked out of place. Occasionally, one of them would pause and poke at a suspicious-looking section of the wall, but these never turned out to be anything more than just a loose stone.
After searching through several blocks' worth of sewer, they decided that the tunnels they were looking for probably weren't down there and climbed back up a different ladder, shoving the manhole aside and causing a nearby homeless man to get up and run in terror at the sight of them. Steve groaned, thinking that they'd have to leave town already.
"Eh, don't worry about that guy," Zamboni said. "Homeless people say all kinds of weird stuff, and nobody ever buys it."
"Plus," Crurotarsi added, "If he's still sitting out in the street at this time of night, he's probably high on something."
After Rhombus slid the manhole shut again, the group walked down another street for a while, giving their clothes some time to air out after their visit to the sewer. After walking across several blocks, Pugh suddenly stopped the rest of the group and pointed toward an alley.
"Look," he whispered. "There's somebody in there."
There was, indeed, someone in the area that Pugh had pointed out. A bald man with very pale skin and pointy ears seemed to be carefully sneaking into the alley, occasionally pausing and checking the nearby streets to make sure no humans were watching. The group tiptoed closer to the alley and peeked around the corner, watching as the bald vampire tapped on a Dumpster three times and then stepped back. Something behind the Dumpster clicked, and then the massive trash recepticle slowly slid to the side, revealing a small staircase leading down into the wall behind it.
As soon as the bald vampire disappeared beneath the city streets and the Dumpster slid back into place, the rest of the group came out of hiding and walked into the alley.
"Well," Zamboni said, "Looks like we've found our secret entrance."
The vampires all gathered around the Dumpster, with Pugh stepping forward and lightly tapping it a few times in an attempt to find the exact spot where the bald vampire had knocked. After a few seconds, he seemed to find a spot that sounded similar, and knocked three times just like he had seen the other vampire do before. He then took a couple of steps back, knowing that the Dumpster would slide out a bit before moving to the side.
A few seconds of silence passed, and then, just like before, there was a click from behind the Dumpster. The rest of the group lined up behind Pugh and watched as the green hunk of metal slid across the concrete, revealing a small door with an old staircase leading down into the city's hidden underground.
"Well, looks like this is it," Pugh said. "Let's go see what it's like down there."
The others nodded, then followed close behind Pugh as he ducked into the doorway and climbed down the stairs. After walking down about a dozen steps, they ended up in a long tunnel with a ceiling so low that everyone had to crouch slightly just to walk. Following the sounds of footsteps in the tunnel ahead of them, they eventually came upon another hidden door, which slid shut just as they reached it. With some help from Elvis's flashlight, Pugh leaned in close to the wall and searched for any sign of a mechanism to open it.
"Hmm..."
He poked at a loose stone, but nothing happened. A few seconds later, he tried the same knock-three-times "password" that had opened up the door behind the Dumpster, but this too had no effect. After a little while longer, Rhombus stepped forward and joined Pugh in his attempts, poking around at loose stones and pushing on different parts of the wall.
"Would've helped if we had seen how the other guy got in..."
The rest of the vampires either joined in on the search or just stood back and watched, with Steve quickly getting bored and looking around for a place to sit. He glanced around the tunnel around him, then walked over to the other side and sat down on an oddly-shaped rock protruding from the floor.
Almost instantly, the wall on the other side of the room started to shake, and the section that the group had seen sliding back into place as the other vampire passed through it shifted open once again. Pugh and Rhombus looked around, both looking a bit confused and wondering what they had done to open the door. Steve, of course, freaked out and immediately jumped back to his feet.
"Whoa! You guys got the door open?"
Pugh turned toward him and shrugged slightly.
"Well... it looks that way, but... I'm not sure how it happened."
Rhombus glanced over toward Steve for a second, noticing the oddly-shaped stone block on the floor behind him.
"Steve," he asked, "Did you touch that block on the floor?"
The young vampire turned around for a second, making sure that Rhombus was talking about the same block he was sitting on earlier. He then scratched his head for a second before answering.
"Uh... yeah. I kinda sat on it. Why?"
Crurotarsi, Zamboni, and Elvis all simultaneously burst into a snickering fit.
"Steve... we didn't open the door. Your scrawny ass did," Crurotarsi said. "That block on the floor isn't a seat, it's a button."
"Oh."
Steve then glanced back toward the block, stared at it for a second, and then turned back toward the now-open door. The vampires, with Steve in the back, headed through the door and down another set of stairs, this one far longer than the last. After what seemed like a full minute of walking down stairs, they ended up in a large, open room with a deep moat-like pit around the edges. They crossed a short stone bridge as they came in, and almost immediately afterward they heard the door at the top of the stairs sliding shut behind them.
On the other end of the room was a huge metal door, with several buttons and other devices attached to a plate on the side. Pugh walked over and took a good look, with the rest of the vampires following close behind.
"Hmm," he said, reading the labels next to the buttons. "Seems like each of us has to put our hand onto this flat part here and get DNA-scanned before we can get in."
"Another thing to keep the humans out, I'm guessing," Elvis said. "They're probably going to do tests to see if we're really vampires."
Pugh was the first to put his hand up onto the scanner and push the button nearby. For a few seconds, there was a low humming noise from behind the wall, and then a small ding! as a blue light on the doorframe came on. The door then slid open, allowing him to pass through.
"So, can we all go in now, or--"
Steve was stopped just short of the door by some kind of invisible forcefield, causing him to stumble back and hold his nose in pain.
"Ouch," he mumbled through his hand. "Guess not..."
After this, everyone else decided it would probably be better to go ahead and do the DNA-scanning thing rather than trying to charge in after Pugh. Elvis, Zamboni, Crurotarsi, Rhombus, and finally Steve all put their hands onto the machine, each getting the blue light to come on and the forcefield to turn off just long enough for them to pass through the door. Once the entire group was safely on the other side, the door itself slid shut behind them.
"These guys must really like sliding doors," Steve said, glancing back as the two sides of the metal door snapped shut once again.
"Yeah," Zamboni said, "What I'm wondering is... where did all this technology come from? I mean, the DNA scan isn't that unusual, but I didn't know anyone knew how to make forcefields like that."
"I've never seen anything like it," Pugh said. "But then again, I have been living in the mountains of Virginia for thirty years."
"Still," Elvis said, "It doesn't seem likely that you'd miss a jump in technology as big as this... I mean, most humans have at least heard of stealth fighter jets and the Mars landers, even if they know nothing about how they work."
Pugh glanced around at the underground city around them, noticing more of the sliding, human-proof doors leading into certain buildings. The ceilings were lined with some sort of artificial lighting, dim enough to avoid hurting anyone's eyes but at the same time bright enough to see everything in full color (at least for a nocturnal creature like a vampire; a human might have a bit more trouble.) All in all, the place seemed to be far more technological than most vampire settlements, which tended to keep the high-tech stuff behind closed doors.
"Right. We're definitely going to have to ask someone how they pulled all this off..."
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