He chuckled. “You suppose correctly. Medical dissertations, certainly. Mostly we do biological research here. You’re the first political science grad we’ve had. But your husband had the idea and I could never say no to him.”
I smile. “Oh it’s not so hard, start crying and he’s putty in your hands.”
Sergeant Raja frowned.
“I’m joking,” I said. I didn’t think that method would work out for him anyway. Sergeant Raja had two emotions – forthrightness and righteous indignation.
At last, we arrived at a cell block on the lowest level, kept even darker than the others. The grimy orange industrial bulbs barely illuminated a path.
“Here we are. Specimens. For obvious reasons, we only use low-powered lights in this area.” Raja stretched out a hand, indicating that I was to continue into the darkness alone.
“You’re not coming with me?”
“I don’t think you’d get much out of her if I accompanied you. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. She can’t hurt you. You told me you’re not attracted to women?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you’ll be just fine. If you feel the least bit uncomfortable, just call out, we’ll stun her with the bright lights. I set up a chair for you in front of her window. The adjacent cells are shuttered, so the other monsters won’t bother you.”
Still, I was reluctant to proceed. In fact, in the end, the only reason why I did was I would have been embarrassed to have wasted everyone’s time. This place – it was everything you screamed at characters in a horror movie to avoid. It was cold and dark and miserable. Torture happened here. It was literally full of monsters.
Yet I went.
Best to get this over with, I thought. You’re going to have a dissertation about something real. They’ll be quoting your work for years to come, I thought.
I walked faster and faster as I made my way down the hall until eventually I all but threw myself into the plastic folding chair they’d placed in front of the cell.
The window was dark too. Lights at the windowsill would allow me to see the creature within, provided she came close to the glass. I reassured myself that everything she did would be monitored by night vision cameras.
I scanned her file one last time, just to settle my nerves. Anna Tsybukin . . . born in Russia, grew up in Portland. Published a poem about being gay when she was 11. Became a corporate Nurse for Nike after a stint in the ER. Married to Nadia Wilhelm, a criminal defense lawyer. Friends described her as smart, responsible, caring but nosy. A mom friend.
“Hello?” I said. “My name is Erin Forest. I’m a graduate student in sociology at the University of Portland. It’s been arranged for us to speak together.”
And then, as if emerging from the depths of the sea, an outline of a woman appeared, framed in the incandescent twilight. Lit from below, her bright red eyes twinkled like hellfire stars. Her crimson hair was long and ragged, hanging down to breast level. Her skin was colorless, her features gaunt and feral.
Could they have made this set up any spookier? I wondered.
She leaned her elbow against the glass, but said nothing – only eyed me hungrily. After a few seconds, I realized with a flush of horror and embarrassment, that I had been looking her right in the eyes for several seconds. It was hard to help – she was so inhuman it was mesmerizing. Furious with myself, I tore my gaze away.
“Anna?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course.”
“Ah, sorry! Yes. It’s just you didn’t say anything, so I thought-” Realizing that I was babbling, I caught myself. I’m sure I was blushing furiously – not always what you want to do when facing down a bloodsucker. “I have a couple of questions for you.”
To my surprise, the creature smiled, revealing, yes, fangs. “You’ll have to forgive me if I act a little strange. I don’t socialize much. And they keep us starving, I’m afraid. So we don’t break out. A few milliliters would be all it would take to restore my strength – they don’t dare give even that.”
Milliliters. Of blood. This person in front of me drank blood. I was having a conversation with something that had a human shape, yet was essentially a giant animal. A vampire bat on two legs.
I had no idea what to say to her, so I settled for, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” She gave a strange, almost-joyful laugh. “You’re not what I was expecting at all. It’s adorable.”
Now I was sure that I was turning red. “Adorable?” I spluttered. “Thank you, I guess? Listen, the reason I’m here-“
But Anna the vampire wasn’t done with the topic. “You don’t get compliments much, do you? Or when you do, you don’t trust them, because they’re from someone you know. A compliment from a stranger – even someone like me – I can tell you take that seriously. What a perverted view of things.”
“Perverted?”
“Trust your friends. Hug them close, while you still have human arms.” Like milk, her voice turned bitter in an instant.
“When you’re trans like I am, you never know when people are just trying to make you feel better.”
When I first came to Portland, sometimes women would be suspicious of me because I still looked like a man – revealing my gender identity put them more at ease. Of course, things had changed a lot since those days.
Anna laughed softly. “I didn’t even know. Your voice could definitely be a woman’s voice. Your features are very feminine. You have nothing to worry about. You know, I attended a protest in Portland years ago – a national bill that would have removed certain protections for trans folk. I’m sure you remember.”
“I do,” I said. “I might have been at the same one.” I might have passed her in the crowd. Of course, she would have been normal back then. No fangs, no appetite for blood. It was too surreal to contemplate. I had to steer the conversation back on track.
But the same thought appeared to occur to her, and she wasn’t going to let it go. “You know,” she said, with a nasty smile, “only people with a strong conscience can become vampires. I’ll bet that If I bit you, maybe you’d become like me. Would that help you with your research?” She bared her fangs to punctuate the thought.
“If I call out, they’ll turn on the lights!” I said, rather more frantically than I intended. Her threat had spooked me, I would admit it. For the briefest instant, I imagined myself standing on the other side of the glass and it was enough to make me shudder. “Look, I was just hoping we could have a civil conversation.”
“Your wish is my command,” she sniffed. “What did you want to know, anyway?”
“You’ve killed people.”
“Obviously.”
“But you didn’t kill anyone for several years. They allowed me to read parts of your history. Your girlfriend, Nadia, fed you. In return, you protected her. Even fought off a demon that threatened the neighborhood.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The reason we monsters are losing the war here in the west is because so many of us didn’t even realize we were fighting.”
“You mean, you tried to coexist.”
“Is that what your research is about? The possibility of coexistence? I’m surprised they’re even letting you write about that.”
“It’s about the existence of ethics among monsters,” I told her. She’d hit a bit too close to the truth. I had, in fact, wanted to write about coexistence. My academic advisor, Emma, told me there was no way.
“What a stupid topic. You come here and rub my sins in my face? It’s obvious why I kill. I’m a vampire, I do it because I’m hungry. Make no mistake, if the glass were gone, I’d kill you in a heartbeat. Not because I hate you. It would be involuntary.”
“I’m not interested in why you killed. I’m interested in why you didn’t.”
She shrugged. “Because Nadia didn’t want me to. I tried; I really tried. She tried too. Technically, a vampire can survive by peacefully drawing blood from a few donors. Practically speaking, it doesn’t work.”
I wanted to ask her to explain, to get more answers, but I could hear Sergeant Raja’s footsteps. My time was up.
“Listen, I’d love to talk to you again. Before I do, I want to give you a copy of my introduction to the dissertation. If you don’t mind doing so, I hope you’ll read it and give me your opinion next time we meet.”
“You know that I have to do whatever you say, right? I’m kept alive only because I’m useful for research. You don’t have to be so polite.” she said.
I nodded and produced the papers from my bag. It was titled Vampires of the West Coast: Monster Ethics and Society. There was a thin slot that could be used to push small items into the cell. I passed the fifteen pages of dissertation I’d written so far through it and into a collection tray below.
Anna smiled, and once again I accidentally met her eye, sending a vibration of warm terror through my being. In a surprisingly soft voice, she replied. “Don’t worry, I’ll read it. Better than the usual dissections. I look forward to your next visit.”
Raja put his hand on my shoulder. It was time to go. It was only as we did I noticed that my hands were shaking like two epileptic starfish. No wonder he told me not to make eye contact.
Four years ago the world changed. This was how most newspaper articles began these days – except for articles in less serious and more casual journals which usually said instead “four years ago the world went to shit.”
Both were accurate. And both were pertinent – no matter whether one was discussing international politics or gardening, it was always worth pointing out that all the rules were rewritten four years ago when climatologists discovered that damn temple.
A team of climate scientists from Oxford was doing a study of snowmelt due to climate change in Greenland. The team was so small that it didn’t even make the news that they were doing this – just assessing the damage from the latest summer. They discovered that a major new crack had appeared in the Greenland ice sheet. What’s more, they found there was something inside it.
This did make the news, although I didn’t remember seeing it. My husband does. “Unknown structure discovered beneath Greenland ice Sheet.” He swears he noticed it playing in the airport just as he was getting back from Afghanistan. In any case – it only took a couple of months before archaeologists found their way down to it.
The temple was like nothing they’d ever seen. It was apparently 150,000 years old – which raised a number of serious questions in itself. The contents were even more mysterious – presumably. The moment the doors of the temple opened, the entire research team died of causes unknown. All we have left is the notes they sent back to the States.
On that day, October ninth, two thousand and nineteen, an immense sound, a low rumbling, spread across the world. Every recording device on the planet – including NOAA’s deep sea hydrophones – picked it up. It didn’t cause damage but it was enormously unsettling. At the same time, approximately 3,000 individuals, all across the world, suddenly manifested their hidden monster genetics.
It was discovered later that these people were never “human” per se. They were the descendants of monsters who took human form to hide among the population. They were born to humans, grew up raised by humans, believed themselves to be so. But they weren’t. And on that day, we all knew it.
China and India were swiftly overwhelmed by a strain of ghoulism. The newly awakened monsters had a taste for human flesh, and the ability to transform others into creatures like them. The two most populous countries on earth collapsed within a year.
No one is exactly sure how nuclear weapons got involved but they did. Even now, news of the wide world only slowly trickles in, but it seems that with one thing and another the number of major cities in the world was reduced from roughly four thousand to maybe thirty.
I was twenty-two when this all started and a student at Portland State University. Fearful of the work world, and thoroughly enamored of my subject, I choose to stay in Academia and go for a doctorate in political science. Maybe I’d run for office one day. I didn’t know.
For about two weeks classes were canceled. Strange news stories were coming in: A small town in New Mexico is emptied of people. Figures in red robes flood the streets of Boston. The Senate passes a bill banning the possession of silver objects with no explanation. The only thing the stories had in common was that none of them made any sense at all.
And then everything just stopped. The internet, the power, the phone lines, they all went out. Deliveries stopped. The radios were full of static and the air was full of smoke. The city and the police attempted to keep order, but more and more they had to supplement with militias. John and a few buddies managed to keep our neighborhood safe – special forces training and all. But it was a challenge.
I’d stockpiled several years worth of hormones (and antiandrogens, though I’d gotten surgery at twenty and didn’t need them anymore). A couple of times we only survived because I managed to trade them to other Portland trans folk for food.
But there was never enough of anything – we were always cold and hungry, and almost every day John had to kill people who’d come to loot and steal in our neighborhood. A few here and there at first. One week raiders essentially laid siege to the university – we were out of bullets. John was the only fighting man left. He grabbed a knife and a wood ax and snuck out the window during the night.
When he came back, his clothes were shiny-wet with death. Thirty people, in close combat – something he’d never been seriously trained for. “Babe, I’m tired,” he told me.
And through all of it, there were the whispers. The rumors. “Why does no one come to help?” People asked. “The rest of the world has been overrun by creatures,” others answered.
Every full moon, we all hid inside, fearful because something was out there. People grew sick with radiation and died, so it was clear there was fallout in the winds. People would vanish all the time. If you left campus you were taking your life into your hands. Your soul too.
Things didn’t start to get better until the second spring. That was when the army arrived – or what was left of it. It wasn’t just US troops either – it was a sort of patchwork of warriors from all over the world who had tried and failed to hold their cities – consolidated for a last stand in the Pacific Northwest where the monsters were less organized.
And it worked – they kept the order. They put people to work again (John as a soldier obviously. I wound up teaching). The University became a staging ground for research on the specimens they brought with them. Soon there was food and medicine in the stores again. Life started to feel real again.
By now, we’d taken almost the entire west coast. The monsters were driven back. San Francisco may have been the capital of our new country – that was political compromise for you – But Portland was the bastion. It was where knowledge and culture had been preserved. Through unbelievable good fortune, I lived and still had a future.
The bunker was built into one of the many green hills that overlooked the Portland suburbs. It had been built by someone extraordinarily wealthy, right underneath his house. Not only was it designed to keep his family alive, but it had been built as a sort of post-apocalyptic zoo. The cages which now held vampires and werewolves once held lions and bears. Of course, now the owner was gone, as were his animals. The house was a ruin, as was the surrounding neighborhood. During the first years of the crisis the city outskirts had been largely been abandoned as indefensible. Even now this was still the case, except for military outposts here and there.
I walked my bike through the forest, then got onto the freeway back to the center of town. Most of the lanes of the freeway were now reserved for bike and pedestrian traffic. Only military and industry groups had vehicles. These outskirts were eerie, and the bike ride back always made me nervous. What had once been a town called Clackamas was now a tangled rainforest, the rooftops converted into quiet watchtowers.
It was daytime and this was one of the safest parts of the country, but biking alone along the highway I felt like monster food. Maybe Anna had spooked me more than I thought.
I only started to relax once I reached the city and was surrounded by people again. Downtown Portland was much like it was. Oh there wasn’t nearly as much vehicle traffic. And there were no large corporate buildings – the storefronts had generally all been raided by gangs back in the early days. But in the last few years local businesses had started to sprout up again. In a way, it was nicer than it once was. More authentic.
Of course, there were also signs of our fear. Floodlights were mounted on every building. Jury-rigged phone booths were installed on every street. They had large red buttons you could press that would activate loud sirens and wake the whole neighborhood in the event of monster attack.
John and I lived in University housing – after everything we’d done to keep the campus safe, people accepted that our small apartment belonged to us – no need for rent or landlords. Things could certainly be a lot worse I told myself as I reached the edge of campus. There’s hardly any smoke today. You can see the sun, though it’s hazy. A group of healthy-looking teenagers passed me, laughing and chatting and enjoying the air.
Then again, I had to remind myself that as the wife of an extermination operator, I enjoyed a lot of unusual privileges. The PCA made sure to keep its soldiers and police happy, but the average worker, skilled and unskilled, spent seventy hours a week at tough labor just for a stipend that barely covered backbreaking rents imposed by the landlords who cooperated with the military. The same landlords that, generally speaking, had controlled raider gangs in Portland until the army arrived.
Not to mention the plight of refugees. Even if you were a skilled and helpful person, it was never good to be another mouth to feed.
So the PCA wasn’t great for everyone. But compared to the earlier years? Life was good. Life was safe. I had a man I loved, who loved me back, and we were both spending our lives doing what we enjoyed. The memory of the wraith-like vampire in that dark bunker? It barely seemed real.
I locked up my bike and nodded to Carol, who was on duty. A mountain of a woman, she’d inherited only the most substantial of genes from her Samoan and Viking ancestors. She had a shotgun in one arm, and a cat in the other, although she wasn’t playing with it. It looked for all the world as though the cat had simply been issued to her – like her weapon and uniform.
“It’s for detecting ghosts,” she explained, as the cat tried to climb onto her face.
Our apartment was upstairs. John would just be waking up – after two months on expedition he could hardly be blamed for sleeping in. For three glorious weeks, I would have the man to myself.
He was sitting at a table eating “Mountain Cottage artisan steel-cut oatmeal” (read: freeze-dried mush in a bag) when I walked in.
“Hi honey, how were the vampires?” He asked. This was my line – it was what I asked him every time he returned from expedition.
“Dead,” I replied with a smile. This was his line.
Before I knew it, I was in his arms. All thoughts of Anna – her fangs, her eyes, her skin – forgotten. It was John time. Six feet tall with buzzed blonde hair. And he’d never lost his special forces muscle. Every time I saw his face I was reminded of a German Shepard – alert, eager, faithful, and a little bit dopey if I was being completely honest.
John was the first person ever to make me feel like a woman. We’d met when I was eighteen. I was still shaking off the cobwebs of transition and was only just starting to pass as female. And it was terrifying. I was working as a waitress in a kind of seedy bar back then and didn’t have the faintest clue how to deal with male attention.
So I took a self-defense class. That John happened to be teaching as a volunteer. One day, I happened to ask him how to make men back off.
He’d shrugged. “Tell them you have a boyfriend. It sucks that that works but it does.”
I must have appeared skeptical, because he added, “And if that doesn’t work, try this,” and he showed me how to “accidentally” break someone’s foot with a well placed stomp.
Two weeks later I pretended to trip and used his little trick to dispatch one of our problem customers. I got yelled at, but I didn’t get fired. The next time I saw him, he asked if he could buy me a drink to celebrate my victory, then jumped back in anticipation of a foot attack.
I took him up on it. Later I mentioned I’d seen “the Raid’ recently and he taught me some of the moves from the movie. Then the Raid 2 happened to be in a local theater so of course we had to go together. Eventually we’d had four dates before we even realized we were dating.
After we’d been seeing each other for six months, some superior of his decided that he was too valuable to waste on a desk job in the states. We decided to wait for one another. For years, we only saw each other at Christmas. Then as soon as he was done for good the world decided to end. Now I only saw him for a month at a time, and I spent the rest of my life worrying that he’d be killed.
Worth it. It was all worth it because of him.
“So, thank you for arranging this whole visit,” I told him. “I’m going to have one hell of a dissertation.”
“I still don’t totally understand why you wanted to speak with a monster,” he admitted. “But that’s okay. Any earth-shattering insights?”
I thought for a moment. “Vamps scary.”
“Anything else?”
“John pretty.” I kissed him. He was very warm. Another thing I loved about him – he was like a space heater.
“Correct!” he said. “A plus.”
And he carried me into the bedroom.
An hour later, we were both exhausted. The sun, outside our window, was hanging low – the color of a pink highlighter in the smoke. “Ugh,” I said, throwing an arm over my eyes. “I have to teach.”
“I swear, your schedule is so goddamn weird,” John said.
“Okay, soldier boy. It’s not that complicated. I teach sections on Mondays and Wednesdays. I teach my other sections on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the time I have classes. Saturdays and Sundays I teach pre-school.”
He gave a contented, cat-like sigh. “I’m just happy one of us doesn’t kill things for a living.”
“You know I’ve never minded what you do. I didn’t mind it when it was people. I especially don’t mind it now that it’s monsters. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a hero.”
“High praise from someone who once woke me up because you had ‘a scary nightmare about the military-industrial complex,’” he smirked.
A moment of silence.
“You know the vampire – the one you picked out for me to talk to?”
“Anna, I think.
“Did you know that she went years feeding off her girlfriend without biting anyone?”
“Of course. That’s why I wanted you to talk to her. She was probably a decent person before.”
“I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“Yeah, it’s not commonly known. A vampire bite is fatal – or worse. But if they draw blood in other ways, they don’t need to kill to stay alive. Sometimes they try to stay under the radar by mind controlling someone and leeching off of them. It makes our job really hard to track them when they don’t drop bodies.”
“True, but it sounds like Anna’s girlfriend was doing it of her own free will.”
He stood up, started putting his clothes on. “Maybe, yeah. Can’t imagine what was going on in her head.”
“Couldn’t there be harmless vampires, then? I mean, wouldn’t that be sort of the ultimate protection against monsters – having a monster on your side?”
“Erin, vampires need at least a pint a day to stay healthy and happy. No single donor can provide that without serious risks. Anna probably only lasted by killing raiders and stuff.”
“But if we could develop a pool of donors-“
“If we compelled people to give their blood we’d be no better than the vampires. We can barely keep our blood banks stocked, as is.”
“You sound like Anna.”
He gave me a pained look. “What did she say to you exactly?”
“She said coexistence was possible. But that it would never happen.”
John nodded sadly. “She’s right.”
I sat up. “Well, doesn’t that make you sad? I mean, god, it doesn’t have to be like this! I think you both are giving up too easily.”
“What I do isn’t exactly easy, Erin.”
“I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say, it’s just-“
“Do you have any idea how scary monsters actually are? No, you don’t – because it’s classified, but I think maybe you need to.” As if ticking off a list in his head, John launched into a speech.
“Werewolves?” he started. “Well, actually they can shapeshift into whatever they want, all they need is to put on a fur and they’re a super-fast bulletproof animal. Oh, and if you lock eyes with their human form, suddenly it’s you they’re wearing like a skin.”
“Witches? They look just like you or me, but if they get their hands on a strand of your hair, they can kill you from a distance, any time they want. And that’s just the weaker witches.”
“Oh, and ghouls,” he continued, “they look just like people too, at least until they get hungry for flesh and start rotting. They can pop off any limb they want and control them from a distance and oh, by they way, they can’t die. All you can do is seal them in concrete and hope for the best.”
“John,” I interjected. But he wasn’t having it.
“And can’t forget ghosts. They can’t hurt you physically, but once they start following you around it’s only a matter of time until you go completely crazy. And demons are even worse-“
“John!” I said. “You’re right. Enough already!”
He sat down on the bed again. “Look, I’m sorry. You care more than anyone else I know. About everything. And you’ve never met a minority you didn’t want to save. But we’re on the knife’s edge here. You know as well as anyone else that things didn’t start getting better until we went on the offensive – hunting down monsters instead of just keeping an eye out in the neighborhood. It’s awful, but welcome to the post-apocalypse. “
“I can’t accept that.”
He hugged me. “That’s why I love you. But you have to. Besides, I know what this is really about.”
I gave him a quizzical look.
“Trans people are going to keep getting their medicine. The estradiol at least would need to be manufactured anyway. The people making noise right now are just a vocal minority-“
“What, you think I identify with vampires because I feel guilty about needing medicine?”
“Don’t you?”
If there was one thing that annoyed me about John it was that he thought he was very perceptive. He wasn’t. Perhaps I felt more empathy for other outcasts because of my trans status, but it only took two seconds of critical thought to determine that vampires and trans people were not the same.
“There’s a world of difference! I’m a human being, for one thing. I can’t believe you even thought that! I want to stop the killing cause it’s wrong. And by the way, the vocal minority you’re talking about includes President Ochre and like half of Congress so-“
“I’ll protect you, Erin. From monsters, from people, whatever. No matter what. Everything I do. Everything the other soldiers do, it’s to protect you. Please, please, please try to remember that when you write your thesis. And be careful, because I think vampires are the worst monsters of them all.”
John was a hard man to upset, but I could tell he was a little more wounded than he let on. I understood what he was saying, and even accepted that he was probably right. But it didn’t feel correct. Me and my big mouth. Always being an activist, even when the world was ending. Even for stupid causes.
“I promise,” I said.
An uneasy smile crossed his face. “If it’s alright, can we not talk about this again?” he asked, somewhat sheepishly. “I just can’t go out there and fight at my best if I’ve got thoughts like this rattling around in my head. I know it’s important to you, but I have to be left out of it, okay?”
“Of course it’s okay. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” I kissed him again, then spotted my underwear lying in a heap on the floor and sighed. “I have to get ready for section.”
“Sounds rough.”
“They make you wear clothes,” I pouted.
“What? No one makes my girl do anything,” he cried. “Fuck the police!”
“Stop teasing.”
He held up his hands in a gesture of submission, but as I got into the shower, he added, “This is what democracy looks like!”
My man, ladies and gentlemen.
