Pallid Airs and Lost Highways

Connie’s hands gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were blinding white. The way her fingers ran to firmly caress you’d think she was looking to break it in half as her unblinking eyes stared hard at the dark road ahead.

She feared if she loosened them, they passengers would see just how scared she was, just how nervous and tense she was. She couldn’t let them. She didn’t know they were well aware of how shaky she had become since driving through Winnepeg by way of Montana. She was already shaky. It wasn’t in her hands, but in her arms. The one that sat beside her in the passenger seat was named Virgil and the one in the back was called Oz. Oz didn’t speak. Well, he spoke, but he no longer spoke English. What came out of his mouth was some bastard German mixed in with a tongue she was uneducated to, a language his brother was well versed in. Virgil said they were called Nachtzehrerian, a species of vampire. She didn’t believe them at first until Oz nearly shook her heart out of her chest. He was the meanest of the two and by far the ugliest. His face was pale, his head was bald and his eyes were the color of the moon and he smelled sickly. Virgil, at least, hid it with cologne.

Even after that she wasn’t afraid of them. They weren’t the reason why her hands shook like a newborn pup. It was why lied ahead. See, Connie had lost her husband to the burning black virus known as Cancer. It had come in his head in the form of a tumor and it slowly worked on him, giving him hallucinations and daydreams of horrors that turned him mad with dread until he couldn’t fight anymore. That’s when the rats come from the darkness, when those needing a resolution out of a claustrophobic agony offered her a way out. They told her they could save her husband (his essence at least) and when the tumor took him as she always knew it would, they came…

The McLarens. She cursed herself for this whole thing. Why didn’t she do her research. Everyone has a phone, a way speedway to instant information and she didn’t take it as seriously as she should have. She thought they truly cared. Just as she tried to tell herself these Nachtzehrerians cared, but in the back of her mind she knew this had nothing to do with her or Harry. This was a venture of pride.

“We’re coming up,” she said.

Virgil looked ahead. The car was driving north of Manitoba until the break of the Hudson Bay. They would have to take a boat out to get to Mansel Island where the McLaren’s camp was, but as long as they remained hidden for the whole thing, they weren’t much to worry about. See the thing about the McLarens is they were dangerous. Even the young girl who told Connie she was a student in her husband’s class had been the daughter of the estranged couple. She was the same young girl Harry was having dreams of; the young girl who was a mature woman in his hallucinations. For the longest time she didn’t know what any of this meant, what it truly meant until it was far too late.

Oz started speaking. To Connie it sounded like a jolt of harsh jumbles, but to Virgil, it sounded like something so much more.

“He said there should be a boat waiting for us on the edge of Port Nelson.”

Whenever it was that Oz spoke, Connie gave Virgil the side eye like she was peaking up at the closed caption of a foreign movie. Thankfully ever since they met with them, Virgil was always there to give an answer. Virgil had once told her that his brother indeed spoke English, man’s tongue, but he did so in only in whispers and for specific phrases that were too updated from their forgotten language and he only did it around other vampires particularly other Nachtzehrerians.

The car pulled up to the dock where the boat was awaiting them.

“It’s a dinghy all right,” Virgil said. “Is it big enough for the three of us?”

“Looks like it,” she said.

“Fine then,” Virgil said, offering his brother the first to step aboard. “We’ll row while you rest.”

“No funny stuff?” she said.

Virgil had promised her they’d never try anything on her, not TV vampiric hypnotism, no turning her into a vampire and no feeding from her. Besides, they carried synthetic blood with them during this trip. It wasn’t the best, but it was the only alternative.

“We’ve eaten already,” Virgil said. “I wouldn’t dare over stay my welcome, if you get my drift.”

Virgil the prince of puns and charms. Boat, water, drift—get it?

She got on after Oz and he followed. It was a tight squeeze, one that put Oz and Virgil far too close to each other, but as long as Connie was leg’s length away and they rowed to the island, it was by design or so their father would say. Virgil focused on the path of the boat as he rowed. Connie didn’t really want to rest, but she had been driving long enough that it was easy for her eyes to get heavy and to start their blinking game until the darkness took over. The brothers rowed, but Oz suggested playing a trick on her. Virgil told him no, this was a business venture, not one that was rooted in mischief and fun like the old days. This wasn’t a game, this was revenge.

Connie was curious an hour prior to leaving and Virgil told her their story, although she didn’t believe them, but it was the true story.

See, Virgil’s brother Stephen was once working on a blood transfusion with Lazuli Trust, a multinational consortium and was one of the largest defense manufacturers in the nation. As Virgil noted, “Stephen was working on cancer research which would also establish to be the world’s first global synthetic blood producer in the world.”

“What happened?”

“Things went awry with the president of the company, percentages and all. One wanted more than one was willing to put in and words were exchanged and threats made.”

“Is this why you want to help me and my husband?”

“It’s all to do with the men and Lazuli Trust,” Virgil said. “See, they want to technology the McLarens have and they want it to have an upper hand against any of their rivals. If they hold this technology, they can replicate anyone they want.”

“And that’s scarier than just replicating my husband?”

“It’s scarier than anything I could think of right now, and I’ve met the devil in the flesh.”

Virgil wanted to do right by their brother who not only sacrificed himself for the woman he wanted to love until eternity, but to bring vampires together and to stop the warring factions. While both these things had been accomplished, the curse was that there were folks in this company who didn’t care for sacrifices. Capitalism would push on. If war needed to be met and money needed to be made, Lazuli trust would spill blood in the name of patriotism.

See, the brothers knew of something else, which is why they pushed Connie to this at this moment. The president of Lazuli Trust and his COO were adamant on getting that information tonight, rescuing the McLarens from this prison and establishing them on their base. If they managed to do this, then all was lost for Virgil and Oz.

While the brothers rowed Connie dreamt of her husband Harry. She dreamt of their last night together, their honeymoon and the love they made, the hugging mattress that gripped her at the shoulders while he was on stop of her while her legs were in the air wrapped around his waist and her hands over his back looking into his brown eyes. She wanted him more than she had ever realized. He was her king, her knight in shining armor protecting her of the evils of the world. She had made him the father of their children, the lover of her life. Without him, this world was empty and without fighting for him what point was there to love? She moaned and whimpered underneath him. He thrusted into her and with each push the nerves in her body jolted with ecstasy. His sweat dripping off of him, trickling on to her bare body. She loved the taste of him.

But in this dream, she wasn’t the woman under the man enjoying his animalistic sex as she had months prior. This Connie Van Schidt was the ghoul in the room watching herself from the past all trying to reason with herself that this moment, when all this was done, would come back. But it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. She was never going to see him again. This was a farewell and, in her dream, she knew this and that’s why she was seeing this moment, her disconsolate eyes looking at the Harry that she had known and not the Harry that he had become—infirm by the black virus, weakened by his current state, and feeble by time.

“Fuck you,” she hissed at the disease. “You took the best thing away from me. You took from me the only man on this planet that mattered.”

Harry at time, whether he knew it or not, took the place of her father and of teachers in her past. He was smart, funny, and knew how to treat a woman. She never feared protection from him because his promises were never broken and even as he lay in his hospital bed, taken by pain and decrepitude, his promises remained with her. That was when the walls started to crumble and the picturesque moment of lust and adoration came with it, replacing a world of demise, the world Harry had called The Never. It was bleak and grayed out, all except for the sky that was made of shit green as lightning jolted through the horizon and the pungent smell of filth ballooned in the air.

There were hills in the place, hills that managed to conceal the world beyond that so that the light from the lime-colored moon barely broke past the highest peak. This world, while being bleak and in repair from dismay, gave her an image of Harry. She went to him. Her bare feet stepping in a swamp of warm muck, sinking ankle deep before her steps went up and down, back and forth, turning her struggle worse with each movement she made. The thunderclap did not discern her in the slightest. There was nothing that had the will to turn her away from Harry. If the muck had pulled her away, she would swim through it to get to him. But it allowed her to touch him, grasp at his hand. He was facing away from her, his face looking at the rising hills. She managed to speak his name under the applause of thunder. She didn’t know he’d heard her through the calamity in the skyline until he turned. His face was agape and his eyes were knots, like little tightened assholes that scared her out of her dream.

When her eyes opened, she saw Virgil hanging over her, shaking her out of the dream. She gasped.

“We’re here,” Virgil said.

She had been whimpering in her dream. She was whimpering so much that her muffled cried were getting too loud, but he almost didn’t want to wake her up.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Not long.”

She didn’t say anything further. Instead, she followed them out of the boat onto the marge of Mansel Island. Where they’d stopped was at a floor of ice that surrounded the isle. The air was cold and she didn’t much appreciate waking up to the arctic gusts of the Northwestern Passage. It was enough to make her teeth chatter and her limbs harden. She wasn’t much prepared for this, dressed in a light jacket only fit for spring, not the Canadian winter. Virgil, however, didn’t feel such discomfort. He and his brother were already dead and the cold didn’t much bother those with cold, unfeeling blood pumping through their palliated nerves.

“Here,” Virgil offered Connie his jacket. “It’s not too warm, but it’s better than nothing.”

She took it. It wasn’t the thickest, but it wasn’t a t-shirt either. It was thick enough that her shivering simmered down for a moment as they went from the iced edge of the island to the path that led up to the peak of the isle. The grounds were wet and the walkway was slick with ice. For Connie it was a bitch to walk through but after a dozen or so times of losing and gaining her balance and step, she made it all the way to the top where they saw the men guarding the camp of the McLarens. They were armed and suited in tactical gear. These were the kind of men who went under the motto of, “shoot first, question later” or “spray and pray” with no consequences to hold until the air was clear.

“Stay put,” Virgil told her.

The brothers stepped forward until their presence was a speedy blur and all seven of the front guards (four on the ground and three on the upper level of the prison guarding the McLaren’s home). Their kill was quick. Before any of the guards could point their guns or react, they were already down on the ground—clawed throats, severed limbs, beheadings, faces ripped to shreds. These prim and proper vampires were true blood-drenched maniacs when they needed to be. Hell, when she thought about it, they came through so quick the guards didn’t even have a chance to heave or catch their breaths.

Virgil came back to her. From head to toe, blood covered him. “It’s clear now,” he told her. She barely reacted. It was all a shock for such a suburbanite woman that all she said back was, “OK” and followed him through the entrance before they rejoined Oz who was feeding on the guts of one of the guards.

“I thought you said you already ate?” Connie said.

“Works up quite the appetite,” Virgil said. “Immortality is like a batter that needs to be recharged.”

She didn’t want to test it. She was grateful they hadn’t bit her, but she checked her neck to be sure.

Following them, they lead her through another set of armored egresses that led to the front of the McLaren’s home. It was similar to a log cabinet but had other sections wrapped around it that you could tell they were using this place to establish more of the synthetic androids they were building.

Behind the two vampires, she whispered, “What do we do now?”

Virgil knew just what to do. He and Oz had mapped this place out and knowing exactly where to strike when it needed to take form. But the scary thing was that there was a whipping of helicopter blades in the distance. For Connie, she didn’t where this noise was coming from. The only bad thing was Virgil and Oz knew who this was just by the time on their watches.

They turned and looked southwest. The looks on their faces were looks of despair. Both started to breath with a slight panic that crept through the vertebrae of their spines.

“We don’t have long; we need to do this now.”

“Why what’s going on?”

“Lazuli Trusts men are approaching,” Virgil said. “We need to get into this place as soon as possible. Connie, you need to find your husband and we need to find the McLarens.”

Connie went forth. After a few miles, she went to the door and tried for the knob but it was locked from the inside. She hissed profanities. Behind her, Oz kicked the door opened. Her head went up to him. She looked into his pale blue eyes and under her voice offered him a soft thanks. She went inside, Oz was following her. She wasn’t afraid of him, but was curious as to why he wasn’t assisting his brother. She didn’t neg. The inside was very home-like but filled with beaming lights lined up by greens, whites, and blue string lights. There was a couch, a box TV, some stand-up eating trays that had interesting left-over plates of food on it and the smell of cedarwood.

“They’re not here,” Connie said.

Oz didn’t say anything. He just sniffed the room. His head went left—sniffed, his head went up—sniffing, and then his head rounded right—sniffing. Nothing. He gave a shake of his head.

“Fuck,” Connie spat.

Oz walked the room. He was looking for something but she was sure he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, he just walked from the far left of the room, rounding the front of the room, then the right passing Connie. Still, there was nothing. To the far left of the room there was an archway leading to a kitchen. Oz walked in first before stopping in the middle of the kitchen staring at the door leading to the backyard.

“What’s that?”

His head slowly turned to her and his left eyebrow slowly went up.

She watched him walk to it and down the stairs to a sealed manhole cover. The casting was gone and the inset rim was light up by direction lights.

“Is that it?” Connie asked.

Oz nodded. Then, light a child diving off the high diving board descended into the opening. Connie took a deep breath and followed him inside. She went down the latter and found her guide waiting for her, staring at a metallic door.

“Is that it?”

He nodded.

Then, she watched his head turned up to the manhole opening.

“What is it? Virgil?”

He nodded.

“Go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

He gave her a look of doubt, but shot up to go help out his brother who was forty meters away calling for him. She turned as he leapt up through the manhole. Internally she prayed to god what was on the other side of the long, tube-like corridor wasn’t dread and it wasn’t violent. She wasn’t like the Nachtzehrerian. They, based on looking at both of them, were former warriors who were only going about this because they missed the chase, the hunt, and the battle. Of course, that was speculation. With her, they were soft and warm, but only on the surface. Beneath that, she feared that underlaying realization of a history she didn’t want to dig up.

She walked. Her shoes tapped hard against the steel flooring beneath. Hearing it, letting it distract her with each step, her eyes managed to drop only to get a feeling that the floor wasn’t being held on by minor tacks and would shift and collapse at any moment the way it wobbled beneath her. Her brow furrowed at that. “Damn Canucks.”

At the opposite end, she faced the door. It, like the flooring, was made of the same cut steel and about as heavy. The door handle was cold to the touch, like that of a meat fridge and when she turned and jerked it, she gave it a heavy pull to unleash the breeze of a multi-colored room that had all these bodies hung up in large tubes. Some of them were only half-bodies—head to waist, waist to feet, some small with only arms and legs and even just unattached torsos. Each of them encased in a gelatinous fluid, slightly clear and slightly yellowed. This room, while oddly cold and lit up in neon greens, deep blues, and florescent violets had no discernible scent except for the stink of motor oil, which to Connie was more than peculiar. The floor wasn’t made of steel, but a mix of plastic and linoleum that lit up red beneath her feet as she walked.

“Article 8801v is ready for extrication,” said a voice from the upper speakers.

Connie looked upward to the sound. What?

There, off to the left, was a control panel. It was large and reminded her of one of those control panels from the USS Enterprise-E. She went over to it and started pressing buttons. They were face buttons affixed to the plate of the computer lighting up orange when she pressed each of them but nothing was happening. Between each button and between each notification and sound that came with them, she received no sign of progress until she looked below and saw what she believed was a start/help button.

“Hello, I am Briar Romulai the AI of the McLarens. What assistance would you like? You can press search in the upper right-hand corner or you can speak to me if you like.”

“Where is Harry Van Schidt? Where is the body of Harry Van Schidt?”

A silence came over the room, all she could hear was the distant machines running in the background pumping out airs and venting out oiled gases. Then the voice from the speakers spoke again, “Article 2375-HKU is here! Please enter finger prints or passcode to unleash said implement.”

Passcode? She didn’t know of a passcode. She didn’t have a plan for any of this. This entire thing was being ran by the damn Nachtzehrerian vampires. She started to stammer, thinking of random words and phrases and people.

“McLaren?”

Access denied.

“Shit.”

She stared off. She was speechless. What was the damn passcode? What would it be? She thought of the doctor that led her and Harry to this point, the woman who Harry once said was in his future, the woman who now was only a college-aged student who turned out to be the daughter of the McLarens. Her eyes darted through the memories of all this, beating about left and right before the words popped in her head as she let her self breathe.

“McKenna McLaren!”

ACCESS DENIED! YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS TO ENTER THE CORRECT PASSCODE BEFORE GASEOUS ANNIHILATION…

She gasped.

What?

A breeze burst past her. To her right stood Virgil.

“Having a problem?”

He started her.

“Umm… I can’t t-t-think of a passcode.”

“Oh…country mouse,” he smiled with that gentle charisma. “Operation Lazuli-Peak!”

GASEOUS ANNIHILATION DISPLACED…ACCESS GRANTED. Welcome, Mister Dieners.

“Who’s Mister Dieners?”

“No one you need to concern yourself with,” Virgil said. “If you ever run into him—run!” he said to her. That moment she looked at him, she started to see he was drenched in blood from his mouth to his nice, tightly-fitted suit. “Shall we grab your man?”

“Y-yes.”

She was a few feet behind him as they walked the direction to her husband. He was in the back, nearly a meter from the door in a juiced tube the covered his body. He was floating there and for a second he looked entirely peaceful, more so than she had ever seen him since this cancer took him over. Her heart was beating, her feet felt like she was walking on a weighted ball. There was a point she wanted to topple over.

“Oh my god,” she whimpered.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Virgil told her. “Oz is having all the fun and we need to get out of here, so let’s grab your man and get him across the island.”

Her eyes went to him. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, to let her grieve because she felt like until this moment she didn’t feel like she had ever grieved although she had cried and cried over the months of this sickness. She breathed again and gave Briar Romulai an order. “Briar, remove Schidt’s tube, please!”

The AI took a moment. Then the fluid was flushed away and at the last drop the tube followed and went down to the floor like a glass elevator and behind him, his body was slowly and softly released to the floor, keeping him upward. A smile went over her face. Virgil grabbed his body. For a moment he was struggling, but managed to hold the weight perfectly.

“Are you okay?” Connie asked.

“Sure, he ain’t too heavy.”

“Will you be able to get him through the top of the manhole?”

“No problem,” Virgil said.

When they exited, Virgil let Connie get out first. She climbed up the ladder until she made it to the top. Looking over the manhole, the darkness was only minute enough that she could see the pale face of the Nachtzehrerian she watched him fix her husband up on the floor, wrapped his hands up from the back and managed to pick the heavy, internal metallic body to shoot him up through the manhole like a gigantic bottle rocket. Connie was almost hit as his body shot up—she gasped, nearly screaming—and the body collapsed a few feet from her. Virgil shot up after and landed on his feet.

He saw the fear and shock on her face.

“Don’t worry! He’s half a robot.”

That didn’t make it any better.

There was a fluttering in the distance. The sounds of a helicopter. He looked off to the distance and while Connie couldn’t see it, Virgil could and he didn’t like what he was seeing. A scowl came over him. It wasn’t pure anger, but a slight anger mixed in with a bit of fear, the kind of fear she had never seen before.

“What is it?”

“Lazuli! We need to get him and move forward—now!”

He grabbed the body and they hurried through chaos. There were explosions in the distance—Connie figured this was because of Oswald. The fires were high burning down the compound. In the deeper distance she was the guards were slain and disemboweled. Limbs everywhere, blood spilled over the grounds, but also in this bedlam there was a war going about. There were these people attacking the guards and they were attacking them like vampires. Many of them like guards biting others. At a glance, it appeared there was more of them than the army of the compound.

“You turned them?”

“Even the odds.”

Oz appeared in front of them.

“Good to see you, old man!”

Oz looked at Harry’s body.

“We need to get him to the boat.”

Oz nodded his head and within the blink of an eye Harry’s body disappeared from Virgil’s arms as Oz jolted between the location of the boat to back to the compound. Connie was stunned.

“He’s stronger than me, I guess.”

Oz, in his eternal silence, shrugged.

“Is Dieners here?”

Oz nodded.

“Did you see him?”

He nodded again.

“Did he see you?”

He shook his head—NO!

“Good. We can get out of here unscathed.”

But it was too late. Oz had seen the man, the myth and the monster in the distance. He nodded directing his brother and the human woman to the back. Virgil turned. He could see him, donned in his metaphysical armor, the blood orange and the deadened silvers coming over him and his gigantic sword slicing through the parade of turned soldiers coming after him. Connie had never seen a man so big. Not only was he some kind of human behemoth, but he was quick. Turns out, he was so quick his yellowed eyes over his mask, this demonic-faced helmet that hid his human face, turned to them.

“Shit!” Virgil snapped. “Grab her! We need to get out of here.”

Oz grabbed the woman, but it was too late. The man known to them as Xavier Dieners had already grabbed the Nachtzehrerian by the throat. Oz struggled, choking and swiping at the face of the monster. Connie started to run. Virgil grabbed at the back of Xavier’s neck with his fangs and with him the army of untouched soldiers and if not for them, Oz would have snapped like a twig. The bites, the claws coming at him were enough to weaken him and turn his attention to the twenty or so soldiers. Virgil dropped, crawling from the crowd and he and his brother ran, following the woman down the hill of the mountaintop.

Connie was assisted by Oz and they were way ahead of Xavier. They got to the boat. Oz rested while his brother and the woman rowed away as fast as they could. Just as they were a few dozen yards away, there was Xavier at the edge of the island looking at them. Virgil was startled. He was shaking, but seeing as Xavier wasn’t moving, he felt safe in this moment, he felt calm and filled with a presumptuous ease.

“Why isn’t he moving?”

“Big fucker will drop through the ice.”

Xavier looked at them and give them a finger-gun, gave a pop and then pointed up at the sky. Connie looked up. Oz looked up. Virgil looked up before saying, “The sun’s coming up.”

“We’ll make it won’t we?”

“We will,” Virgil said.

The woman looked at the immortal and understood his fear. She looked at her husband and partly, seeing this shell of the man she once loved she had it in her own bones. “You’re terrified of him, aren’t you?”

Virgil laughed. “What? Him? A giant? I’m mortified. The thing about Xavier is I’ve never met a living creature, dead or undead that could take him. He was the great slaughterer of angels and demons. He has lived for over 500 years and has—as you can see—taken on armies by himself. He can’t die. His only place in this world is to destroy and one day he’ll come for us. We’re the last of our bloodline. No kids, no family. Like death, Xavier Dieners is the inevitable for those like us.”

She looked at her escort, her eyes showed her fear. She felt sorry for him. He knew he was going to die; he almost saw it just the way Harry Van Schidt saw his own future in the place he called The Never.

“Will he come for me?”

A moment passed. He looked back at her and with a resounding grin said, “You? No. He has no reason. You’re an innocent, even under this. He has no purpose for you. As for us, he has a vendetta. We’ll take it on the chin for ya.”

They made it just before the sun came up. Got Harry’s body in the back, sat him up, Oz sat beside him, covered the windows with the black tarp and Virgil rested in the passenger. Connie drove back to America.

“You got your husband,” Virgil said to her. “Thank you for helping us.”

“Thank you for helping me and not killing me.”

Oz laughed.

“Believe me, we thought about it. But we knew we’d have a feast on the island,” Virgil said.

“What’s going to happen to those people?”

“The robots you mean? They’ll have enough to build an army. That’s all Lazuli wants is an army of synthetics, but they won’t win. There’s a storm coming and the lightning will strike Xavier Dieners and the McLarens. It may not hurt the former, but it’ll burn through the latter. Go home. Be safe. Fall in love again. He may not be your Harry, but he’s still there, his consciousness is still here.”

She smiled. Virgil was sweet. So was Oz in his own way. A part of her would miss them. But she’d never see them again. She’ll tell the media her story. She’ll name Lazuli, she’ll name the McLarens, but in the end…just as Virgil said, the inevitable would come and that inevitable was death at the hands of her husband who, while holding the consciousness of her husband, the cybernetics of the McLarens would kill her in the middle of the night. Proving that love as deep as it ran was all the more chaotic and sour to those that needed to obtain its golden riches.