Flight of the Bloodmobile, Chapter 7

And here's Chapter 7.

Chapter 7

~ The Vampires of New York  ~

            After the vampires left the hotel, there was a lot of walking.  This was followed by several subway rides (separated by even more walking), and finally one last walk down the city streets before they had reached their destination: a huge, multi-level nightclub built inside what was once an old warehouse, located in a part of the city known as the Meatpacking District.

And Steve, as usual, had a random question for the others.

"So, uh... why's this part of the city called the 'Meatpacking Distict' anyway?", he asked, glancing around at some of the nearby buildings.  "I haven't seen anyone packing meat here..."

"Well... I'm guessing they must have had their meatpacking industry here at some point in the past," Elvis said.  "Can't really see any other reason why a place would have a name like that."

"Hey, you never know," Zamboni said.  "Humans have given things weirder names before.  It could've been named after some guy called... Johnathan Meatpacking, or something like that."

For several minutes, the group stood on the nearby streetcorner and watched as dozens of humans came and went.  Like the pictures Pugh had found on the Internet before, they came in all different shapes and sizes; some wore lots of makeup and dark clothes, others had dyed their hair in all sorts of bizarre colors, and every once and a while one that was clearly trying to look like a vampire would show up.  After watching and waiting for a bit longer until the sidewalk in front of the club was less crowded, the vampires (led by Pugh) finally walked over toward the front doors.

Just as they reached the entrance, a pair of rather large men wearing black leather jackets stepped out in front of them, blocking the way.

"You guys have any ID?", one of them said, looking over the group and paying especially close attention to Steve (as it was pretty obvious from even a passing glance that he was the youngest of the group.)

"I have a driver's license," Pugh said, reaching into one of his pockets and pulling out his wallet.  "I'm not sure about everyone else, though."

He then turned back toward the other vampires.

"Did any of you bring some sort of ID card with you?"

One by one, the vampires all shrugged, shook their heads, or checked their own wallets.  Rhombus and Crurotarsi both produced driver's licenses of their own, but the rest of the group came up empty.

"Dude... I don't even have a driver's license yet," Steve said, glancing over at the bouncers for a second in hopes that they hadn't heard him.  Unfortunately, it looked like they had, as one of them scowled and the other crossed his arms.

Steve began to reach for his wooden sword, expecting a fight to break out, but before he could even begin to pull it out of its sheath someone else came up behind the two bouncers and pushed the two huge men aside.  The newcomer who walked out from between them was not a human at all--he was a tall vampire, wearing what appeared to be a purple trenchcoat and a matching hat.  The gold chains around his neck jingled and clanked together as he walked out of the club, coming to a stop just a foot away from where Pugh was standing.

For a few moments, he silently looked over the group of vampires, seeming to focus his attention mostly on their faces.  He then turned back toward the bouncers and shrugged slightly.

"Well, go on," he said, glancing from one bouncer to the other.  "Let 'em in."

The two thugs glanced between the tall vampire and each other for a few seconds, looking a bit confused, and then shrugged and stood aside so that Pugh and friends could pass through.  They looked around for the vampire in the purple coat, but he had already vanished into the crowd of dancing humans inside the club.

"Huh," Zamboni said, scratching his head slightly.  "Wonder who that guy was..."

"Apparently somebody with a lot of influence in this place," Elvis said, looking a bit worried.  "Definitely a bit suspicious, though."

"Hey, he did let us in," Steve said, shrugging.  "And he's never even met us before.  He can't be that bad!"

"We'll worry about that if we bump into him again," Pugh said.  "For now, let's just look around and see if we can get an idea of what the vampire community in this area is like."

With that, the vampires headed into the main room of the club's first floor.  The room would have been almost pitch-black inside, if not for the multi-colored lights flashing in odd patterns from above that made the room seem almost as if it was both dark and bright at the same time.  Most of the room was filled with hordes of dancing humans, many of whom seemed to be grinding up against each other in almost obscene ways.

On one side of the wall was a bar, which was a bit more brightly-lit than the rest (the lights didn't flash on and off, at the very least) and had several bartenders standing around behind it and occasionally mixing drinks for the club's visitors.  There were more humans standing all along the walls, sitting down at bar stools and tables, or sometimes even just walking around.  If not for the loud music blasting out over every set of speakers, the vampires would have been able to hear dozens of different conversations all overlapping each other until none of them could really be heard at all.

Almost immediately, Steve broke off from the group and headed over toward the bar.  Rhombus, not wanting to have a repeat of the Tumpaduh incident, went after him; Crurotarsi soon joined the two, though it wasn't clear if she was going to stop Steve or just to get something to drink.

"So... what do you guys want to do?", Zamboni said, glancing over to Elvis and Pugh.

"I was planning to try and find some other vampires," Pugh said.  "There's bound to be a few around here somewhere."

Zamboni nodded.

"I think I'll just take a look around the club for a while."

He turned and started to walk off past the crowd of dancing humans, but before he could get very far he nearly bumped into several girls, forcing him to stop in his tracks.

"Hey," one of the girls said, reaching up and almost petting Zamboni's spiky hair.  "Nice haircut."

"Err... thanks," he said, stepping away a bit to avoid a second girl's hand reaching for his head.  "It's mostly hair gel, really."

"Ooh, let me touch it!", another girl said, coming up behind him and reaching for his hair.  He stepped aside to avoid her, accidentally giving the first two girls a chance to grab at him once again.

Standing just a few yards away, Elvis and Pugh snickered.

"Well, it could be worse," Elvis said.

"Yeah... at least they're not fangirls," Pugh added.  "They can't be--not nearly enough drooling and squealing."

            About an hour passed as the vampires each took a look around the club in their own way.  Steve attempted, again and again, to order alcoholic beverages at the bar... failing every time, of course, thanks to being under the legal age and with no fake ID to prove otherwise.  Rhombus had a bit to drink, and Crurotarsi had a bit more than that, but both of them made sure to stay sober enough to keep Steve from causing too much trouble.  Zamboni ended up on the dance floor, though it was difficult to tell if he had gone willingly or if the three girls had dragged him out there.  Elvis and Pugh, on the other hand, were no longer present on the first floor; they had went up the stairs to see what was happening on the other two levels of the club.

"Seems a bit quieter on this floor," Elvis said.

"Yep," Pugh said, "It does seem that way."

The two vampires walked down a long hallway lined with small rooms on either side, occasionally spotting a door that seemed like it hadn't quite been closed all the way.

"Still... it's hard to tell what might be going on behind all these doors."

Elvis glanced at one of the slightly-open doors, spotting what appeared to be some article of clothing hanging out into the hallway.

"Knowing humans... I don't think I want to find out."

They walked down to the end of the hall, then turned and began to head down another hallway toward a staircase leading up.  About halfway down the hall, however, one of the doors ahead of them suddenly swung open and a grungy-looking vampire in a tank top and jeans walked out.  He was followed shortly afterward by a young and rather drunk-looking woman with an obvious vampire bite mark on her upper shoulder.

"Err... you've got a bit of blood on your face," Pugh pointed out.  "Right there."

"Huh?", the other vampire said, reaching up with one finger to check.  "Oh.  Whoops, sorry 'bout that, man.  Always have been kind of a messy eater."

The woman standing behind him giggled, then wobbled a bit before grabbing onto the vampire to support herself.  Apparently, she was having a hard time standing up, which was no surprise at all considering that she was both drunk and lacking a pint or so of blood.

"Hey, is there any chance you've seen a vampire with a purple coat and hat around here?", Elvis asked.  "About yea high, wearing lots of gold chains.  We've kind of been looking for him."

"Yeah, that'd be the boss," the other vampire said, taking the drunk woman by the hand and leading her back down the hallway.  "Lives up on the third floor."

Pugh and Elvis watched as the two staggered down the hallway, the vampire apparently beginning to get a bit tipsy himself after drinking a meal's worth of alcohol-laden blood.  They then headed over toward the stairs leading upward, stopping just short of the first step.

"So... this guy we're looking for is apparently a 'boss' of some sort," Pugh said, putting his hand on his chin and thinking.  "My question is... boss of what?"

"Good question... I'm thinking the company that owns the club, or maybe some sort of organized crime."

"Well... the stairs to the third floor are right there," Pugh said, turning back in that direction.  "So how about we go and find out?"

            The third floor of the nightclub, as it turns out, was like a bizarre combination of the first two floors.  The music wasn't nearly as loud, the lights weren't nearly as obnoxious, and there weren't nearly as many humans taking up space, but the middle of the room still resembled a rather large dance floor, and there was a bar off to the side.  All around this middle section were hallways leading off to separate rooms like those on the second floor, though the rooms here seemed to be a bit larger and not quite as grungy.  Pugh and Elvis looked around for a few minutes, then headed over to a table surrounded by small couches where a couple of other vampires seemed to be sitting.

On closer inspection, however, it turned out that these vampires were actually just a bunch of vampire-wannabes.  The two actual vampires looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged and decided to sit down on one of the couches anyway.

"So," Pugh asked, looking over at the vampire-wannabes, "Who are you guys?"

One of the teenagers took a drink from a glass of something that looked an awful lot like blood, then gagged slightly before gulping it down.

"We're vampires," the second of the wannabes said.  "Well... we're going to be vampires, anyway.  We haven't passed all the tests of the Elder Vampires yet."

Pugh raised an eyebrow.

"And... you're saying that when you pass these 'tests'... you'll somehow become a vampire?"

By this time, the first teenager had apparently gotten the taste of blood out of his mouth, as he stopped gagging and coughing and spoke up.

"Well, duh," he said.  "We wouldn't even be working for the Elder Vampires if they hadn't agreed to turn us when we've passed the tests."

Elvis sighed.

"So... what exactly do these 'Elder Vampires' make you do?"

"Eh, just the usual stuff," one of the teenagers said.  "They've got us sellin' drugs out on the streets so they don't get seen by the humans, and sometimes they send us to go crack down on some other gang."

"Yeah," the other blurted out.  "You know, gangster stuff.  Except that we get to be vampires when we're done, instead of just gettin' shot or goin' to jail or somethin' like that."

There was a brief moment of silence as the current song stopped playing and a few other human teenagers (along with one actual vampire) walked past the table.  Pugh and Elvis glanced at them as they passed, then back at each other, and then finally toward the two teenagers on the other side of the table.

"And these 'tests' you mentioned," Pugh said, "What exactly are they?"

The teenagers shrugged.

"Nobody knows, man... only the vampires know."

"Y'know what I heard?" the other one said, leaning over the table and almost whispering.  "I heard they have the test on your eighteenth birthday.  If you pass, then you're turned into a vampire... but if you fail, you get all your blood drained out of you.  And then you die."

"Okay... so have you ever met anyone who passed?"

The teenagers stopped for a moment, attempting to remember if any of their old gang buddies had ever showed up as vampires after turning eighteen.  For a while, they mumbled rapidly back and forth amongst themselves, then finally turned toward the two vampires.

"Uh... I don't think so.  Why?"

Pugh and Elvis both crossed their arms and leaned their elbows on the table.

"Let's get this straight," Pugh said.  "It's just not possible for a human to turn into a vampire."

"Everyone who went to take the test," Elvis continued, "They're all dead right now, or maybe in jail somewhere."

The kids suddenly went pale.  Which, of course, wasn't actually much of a difference, since they were already wearing extremely pale wannabe-vampire makeup.

"Y... you... you mean..."

"We're not gonna get to be vampires?"

Elvis sighed and nearly slapped his face against the table, while Pugh just glanced down and shook his head.

"Didn't you heard me the first time?", Pugh said.  "It's impossible for a human to turn into a vampire.  They're two different species.  It would be a like a pigeon magically transforming into a chicken."

With that, the two vampire-wannabes finally seemed to figure it out.  They stood up suddenly, leaving their glasses of blood behind on the table, and took off running across the dance floor, stopping and ranting hysterically to every other one of their fellow vampire-wannabes as they went.

"Okay... that was fast," Pugh said.  "Guess we should probably get out of here before the boss finds out he's lost all his flunkies."

Elvis nodded, standing up from the couch.  Pugh followed shortly afterward, and the two walked (quickly, but still not quite breaking out into a jog) back the way they came, reaching the stairs down to the second floor just as the door to one of the side-rooms swung open and the purple-coated vampire stepped out.  Fortunately, he was so distracted by the vampire-wannabes running around and going crazy that he didn't even notice the two vampires from out of town quietly leaving.

            Back down on the first floor, Steve had just been refused some kind of alcoholic drink for about the hundredth time (though he had guzzled down several of the non-alcoholic drinks on the menu, not realizing they were non-alcoholic until after the fact.)  Rhombus and Crurotarsi had long since stopped drinking in order to make sure they could keep Steve under control, instead passing the time by talking to the various humans (and occasionally even another vampire) that sat down at the bar.  Occasionally they would spot Zamboni out in the crowd somewhere, dancing around a bit but mostly attempting to leave the crowd of humans without being grabbed by yet another girl.

A few minutes passed, with Zamboni managing to get to the edges of the crowd and Steve making another failed attempt at ordering booze despite his age.  Bored of seeing the exact same things happen over and over again, Crurotarsi glanced over in the direction of the stairs... and nearly dropped her drink out of surprise when she noticed Elvis and Pugh almost running from the stairs, looking more than a little bit worried.  Not long afterward, the two vampires reunited with their friends at the bar.

"Pugh? Elvis?", Crurotarsi asked, "What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing much," Pugh said, sitting down and catching his breath.  "Just found out this place is run by a vampire street gang that tricks teenagers into thinking they can turn into vampires if they work for the gang long enough."

This time, Crurotarsi did drop her drink.  Rhombus managed to duck down and catch it just a split-second before it smashed against the floor, but most of the ice cubes and booze inside the glass went flying everywhere anyway.

"Oh, that's not all," Elvis added.  "We just happened to mention how it's imposible for a human to turn into a vampire... and a certain gang lost ninety percent of its membership."

Steve suddenly turned around, paying attention for the first time in the entire conversation.

"So... time to run away again, right?"

Everyone blinked and turned to face the younger vampire.  Had Steve just blurted out something smart? Rhombus and Crurotarsi initially passed it off as a trick of the alcohol on their minds, but they quickly remembered that neither of them had more than three drinks, and they hadn't even finished the last ones they ordered yet.  Eventually, they snapped out of it and nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, Steve," Rhombus said, setting what was left of his drink down onto the bar.  "That just about says it."

"We shouldn't need to leave town, though," Pugh added.  "Nobody knows who we are here, remember? So nobody knows who told the kids that they can't turn into vampires."

With that, everyone stood up from their seats at the bar and walked along the edge of the dance floor, with Pugh and Rhombus reaching out and pulling Zamboni out of the crowd of flailing humans as they passed him.  With the group now complete, they immediately headed for the door, smiling and waving calmly as they passed the bouncers on their way out.

As the vampires walked down the street away from the club, everyone glanced back toward the door occasionally to see if the purple-clothed vampire gang boss would suddenly come barging through after them and start a fight.  Surprisingly enough, it never happened; their exodus from the nightclub was actually quite a bit more peaceful than their entrance.  Before too long, they had hopped onto a subway train and were on their way back to the safe, comfortable, and absolutely gangster-free room at the hotel.

            The next morning (which really seemed more like "later that night," due to the fact that nobody had actually been to bed yet), Pugh left the hotel just before the sun rose and drove off toward the nearest hospital in the Bloodmobile.  Just like his visit to the hospital in Tumpaduh, everything went pretty well; within a few minutes, he was able to set up a time for the Bloodmobile to be in that hospital's parking lot later that day.  It wasn't until after leaving the hospital that something totally unexpected happened.

"Hello," a middle-aged lady said, popping out from around the corner of the hospital almost as if appearing out of thin air.

Pugh looked a bit confused.  He became even more confused when a man and several children appeared in much the same way, each taking a single quick step from behind the wall so that they ended up in a straight line trailing off behind the woman.

"Um... hello?"

"Would you like tickets to Emeril Lagasse's studio audience tomorrow, by any chance?", she asked, pulling a wad of tickets from her pocket.  "I had tickets for all of my kids, but something came up and ten of them... won't be able to make it."

"Ten of your kids won't be able to make it?", Pugh asked.  His eye twitched slightly just from the thought of one woman having children in the double-digits.  "What happened?"

"Oh, nothing much," she said, smiling happily.  "I just drowned them the other day so the house wouldn't be so crowded and it'd be easier to pay for all the food.  It's no big deal, really, I can always just make more of them."

Pugh shivered, and for a second he felt like running like mad back to the Bloodmobile and getting as far away from this frightening woman as he possibly could.  He fought off the urge, however, just long enough to ask about the tickets.

"Err... I don't really think I could find a use for ten tickets," he said, "How about I just take six of them?"

The man, apparently the woman's husband, nodded.

"That'd be just fine, too," he said.  "We can always find somebody else to take the other four."

The woman smiled and nodded as well, then separated six of the tickets from the rest and held them out to Pugh.  He reached out and grabbed them, stuffed them into one of his pockets, and turned around to walk off down the sidewalk back toward where he had parked.  A few seconds into this walk, he noticed that the odd family was back behind the wall again, waiting to spring out and surprise someone else with tales of murdered children and offers of free tickets.  Almost as soon as they were out of sight, he gave up on walking and took off running as if a horde of mindless fangirls was right behind him, not stopping until he was safely in the driver's seat of the Bloodmobile... and far away from the creepy family.

            "Tickets to go see Emeril Lagasse?", Elvis asked, giving Pugh an odd look.  "You're saying that some married couple with tons of kids just walked up to you and gave you tickets to a cooking show?"

"That's... basically what happened, yes."

Pugh was so creeped out by the way the couple casually talked about killing their children that he hadn't even mentioned that part to his friends, though he had called in an anonymous tip to the police from one of the hotel's pay-phones as soon as he got inside.  Considering how few families there are with more than a dozen kids, the cops had probably already started their investigation by this point.

"So," Zamboni said, glancing around to the other vampires, "You guys want to go, or not?"

"I guess so," Rhombus said.  "We already have the tickets... and we didn't really have anything else planned for tomorrow night, after all."

"I'll be running the Bloodmobile this afternoon," Pugh said, "But Rhombus is right, nobody's really planned anything else for tomorrow."

"Hope we're not sitting too close to the front row," Crurotarsi said, sitting down at the table with the others.  "From what I've seen, this guy uses a lot of garlic in his cooking."

"Hey," Steve said, "Don't you mean... a lot of gaaaahlic?"

Crurotarsi blinked and turned toward Steve.  At first she wanted to punch him in the shoulder as usual, but then she realized that he actually did a surprisingly good imitation of the way Emeril said the word "garlic."  Instead of taking a swing at the younger vampire, she just snickered a bit and turned back around.

"Yeah... she's got a point about the garlic," Zamboni said.  "Plus, it might be a bit of a problem if he just happens to pick us as the people from the crowd to give free samples to."

"I doubt he'd force garlic on someone who's allergic to the stuff," Elvis said.  "We should just let him know that there's certain foods we just can't eat.  If he's cooking something with lots of--"

Steve, imitating Emeril's voice once again, leaned forward in his chair and interrupted the other vampire.

"Gaaaahlic!"

This time, Crurotarsi did punch him, causing him to fall out of his chair and into the cardboard box on the floor next to him.

"Like I was saying... if Emeril is cooking something with garlic tomorrow night, things will be set up so that nobody gives it to anyone he knows is allergic.  So we'll just have to make sure the show's staff knows about it ahead of time."

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful.  Most of the vampires slept until near sunset, with Pugh getting up early and driving the Bloodmobile over to the hospital to get enough donations to replenish the fridge's blood supply.  New York City being as big and horrendously overpopulated as it is, this wasn't all that hard--dozens of humans came in to donate blood before the Bloodmobile left the hospital parking lot, and by the end of the day Pugh had collected enough blood to keep himself and his five buddies going for at least another week.

While Pugh was busy with the Bloodmobile, the rest of the group took to wandering around in the streets of New York all night, locating a variety of laundromats, grocery stores, and restaurants in the more vampire-friendly neighborhoods and occasionally even bumping into another of their kind... though even in the most vampire-heavy areas, they usually ran into more humans dressed up as vampires than they did actual vampires.

Hours later, when the sun was just beginning to rise, the vampires had all returned to the hotel, gathering in the street right in front of the entrance.  Pugh handed out fresh blood packets to everyone in celebration of finally restocking the Bloodmobile's supplies, and the other vampires (most of which hadn't had much to eat or drink in at least a few hours) gladly gulped the blood down once they had returned to their hotel room.

"So," Pugh asked, "Everyone still planning to go see Emeril's show later?"

The rest of the vampires nodded.

"Yeah," Elvis said, "We've got about a dozen laundromats marked on the maps now, and even more places to get food.  I figure we've got plenty of time to goof off and go watch someone cook things on live television."

"And watch him pronounce garlic like gaaaahlic!", Steve added.  "And yell out things like 'BAM!' And--"

Crurotarsi smacked Steve in the shoulder once again.  Zamboni, sitting a few seats away, snickered for just a second and added his own sound effect to the scene.

"BAM!"

Elvis, Pugh, and Rhombus glanced over at Zamboni for a second and held back a few snickers of their own, while Crurotarsi just rolled her eyes.  Steve, of course, was too busy rubbing the sore spot on his arm to notice.

"Okay, then," Pugh said, standing up and throwing away the empty blood packet before heading off toward the bathroom.  "We should probably get ready for bed now if we're going to be up and ready to go before the show starts."

The rest of the vampires followed his lead, and everyone headed back to their respective rooms in order to change out of their usual clothes and into something they could sleep in.  Within a few minutes, they had all flopped down onto their beds, a few of them seeming to drift off to sleep almost instantly.  Before long, the room was silent but for the sounds of vampire snores.