I've been looking for Ultraviolet fanfiction forever. Peeved at the lack thereof, I've decided to take a whack at my own. As usual, I have no beta, so there may be man-eating typos ahead. Oh well.
Ladies and Gentlemen... here ya go.
Suggested Soundtrack: Modern Way by the Kaiser Chiefs
I ran.
I had been safe for too short a time, here in this sleepy country town. Not that anyone questioned the weird hours I kept; I was always buying coffee and energy drinks and just about anything with allarming levels of caffeine. Nobody had even questioned my reclusive ways; hell, it was a remote little place-- most of the natives lived there so that they wouldn't have to deal with the crowds of the city. Besides, I hardly looked dangerous; curly blond hair, blue eyes, average height and build... not exactly your stereotypical nosferatu.
Nosferatu; one of the many terms for me and those like me. Leeches. Demons.
Vampires.
I had hoped that this place would have provided me with shelter for a little longer, with rest. I'm so tired of running, so tired of lurking through the night, fearing for my unlife. I guess, though, that my uncanny luck had finally run out. Olympia, Washington was where my lucky days of easy disguises and excuses had ended. It seems nosy neighbors tend to freak out when they peer in your kitchen window and see you wolfing down pop-tarts, sipping a glass of microwaved O negative and reading the funnies in the morning paper.
I heard a high-pitched, smoker's rasp scream before I could finish Get Fuzzy.
Whatever. In my opinion, the real monsters are the old women in hair curlers snooping around your garden in their pink bathrobes and green slippers, pressing their withered faces against your windows, hoping to see something that would liven up gossip at the local beauty parlor.
Oh well. Point is, I've been identified, diagnosed and marked for extermination. Teal Marken was deceased. Now there was just the matter of her walking corpse to settle.
It's how I got where I was then, sprinting down Highway 20 at over fifty miles-per-hour in the middle of the night, the Containment Service Exterminators' howling sirens drawing nearer by the second.
You should have just grabbed your car, you dumbshit! That irritating voice in my head wailed. You can run like hell, sure, but you can't out-run the CSE's! Why didn't you just get in your car?!
"Shut up!" I roared, glancing over my shoulder. I knew it would be there, the sleek, black car merging onto the highway, tires shrieking like hellcats, red lights flashing. It scared me senseless all the same.
I had no idea where I was running, in what direction. I just had to get away. I knew the fate of those who were captured by the CSE's. It was a appallingly simple, the way the so-called immortality of my kind was unraveled-- the humans just throw us into something a lot like a stand-up tanning booth. The lights come on, and...
Ashes.
If I could have still produced tears, I would have been crying. I was dead already. Was there a heaven for the twice-dead? Would some happy afterlife accept my cursed, lingering soul after the countless gallons of blood I've sipped like water?
Somehow I doubted it.
No harm in trying, right?
"God," I whispered, turning down a gravel driveway toward a cosy farmhouse.
"God, please..."
I crouched down, the soles of my flats growing hot as I skidded across the rocks.
"I need help..."
I sprang up, alighting on the rooftop before I spared a glance back again. The predatory car was already coming down the driveway.
"God," I begged, bolting across the arch of the loose-shingled roof. I heard car doors opening. I heard gunfire.
"Please..."
I felt as if my torso had burst into flames. My last plea for divine intervention was lost as thick, stale blood surged into my mouth, the cool goop spilling over my lips. My ceaselessly sarcastic side felt like laughing. Mom always told me that God can hear you even when you don't say things out loud, it sneered. I'm fairly sure I snorted humourlessly, spraying droplets of partially coagulated blood into the dark before I toppled over, riddled mercilessly with bullets, and rolled off the the roof, falling down through the spiced night air.
They're gonna catch me. I'm gonna be torched. No more moonlight, no more pina coladas, no more bridge-jumping, no more laughing...
I hit the hard, cold ground, groaning in pain, eyes clinched shut. Rain beat down on me as I felt several bullets being forced from my rapidly-mending flesh, the objects rolling off my ribcage and clinking on the wet pavement. The CSE's were probably right over me now, and any second I'd have a bag over my head and cuffs around my ankles and wrists...
Rain? Pavement? Around a farmhouse?
Remnants of overpowering terror demanded that I left my eyes closed, but my keen nose and ears were at attention. I smelled exhaust of some kind, paper, fuel, metal... and humans. Lots of humans. Their unified heartbeats nearly overwhelmed the roar of traffic, the hum of electricity...
Where the hell was I?
CS Exterminators or not, I opened my eyes.
Unbelievably tall buildings jabbed at the angry clouds. Now, I had never seen a skyscraper in person before, not like the ones in New York and wherever, but when I've seen them on TV. They all seemed kind of... well, rectangular. These buildings, though... they reminded me of the Jetsons. All orbical and winding, luminous and ingeniously crafted. Something out of a B rated sci-fi flick. You know, the kind with great graphics and halfwit storylines...
Deciding that I must look rather odd sprawled on the sidewalk with thick, blackish blood staining my sweatshirt and jeans, I carefully sat up. Not because I felt pain, my wounds having vanished completely by then, but because I was sure that I was hallucinating. Maybe a drug one of the CS pigs had injected me with to keep me catatonic or something?
I looked around dazedly, amazed that my drugged mind could be so imaginative and... realistic. I was standing in the cleanest alley I'd ever seen. Not a garbage bin or rambling hobo in sight. Unthinking, I meandered out of the alley and onto a main street. I glanced up and down the road nervously, wondering if I'd run into any night owls and\or nocturnal thugs. They couldn't hurt me, of course, but I'd had enough of would-be slayers for one night. I ran my tongue over my incissors, making sure that they were retracted. Check. Too-bright eyes properly lightless. Check.
The rain was doing an admirable job of washing my clothes. I watched the muddy blood get washed away by the violent torrents, strolling dumbly onward. The streets were entirely empty, all cars probably keeping to the main drag of this enormous, incredible, but nevertheless suffocating fantasy city. I stopped walking and frowned, wondering at myself. You'd think if I was drugged that I'd think of a place that was serene to me, a place that would make me calm and docile. So why wasn't I seeing rolling, green hills and pretty, purple flowers? I was a country leech, god damn it! So why did my crippled mind put me in a city?
I really have no idea why I was standing in the middle of the expansive road. Maybe I was still in shock about my near-death-again expirience. Maybe because I didn't think it mattered, because it was all a pipe-dream, right?
Whatever the reason, the mirage of rain was apparently too heavy for the fictional driver of an imaginary, ketchup-red semi-truck to see through, because the illusionary vehicle didn't have time to slam on it's not-really-there brakes.
I just looked over my shoulder stupidly at the blinding headlights, my eardrums splitting at the sound of deep, urgent, bellowing honking.
Hmph. Great.
I felt immense pressure, bones shattering, then... blackness.
When the truck had screeched to a halt, the driver stared wide-eyed at the woman crumpled in the street a few yards ahead. Swearing colourfully and raking his fingers through his short, red hair, he threw open the door and lunged from the truck. Once he'd raced to the mangled stranger's side, he dropped to his knees, years of medical training insisting that he feel for a pulse, no matter how hopeless the situation seemed. He fought with her soaked, tangling hair for a moment before pressing his fingers to her neck.
Nothing.
"Would ya mind tellin' me what you're doin', Jenkins?!"
The young man, slowly rising to his feet and blinking the rain from his eyes, did not reply. His attention was still settled on the forlorn lump of black-and-turquoise stripes that lay motionless and bleeding on the cement. He sighed, his fingers attacking his hair again. In wordless response to his employer, Michael Jenkins motioned briefly to the body.
"Oh..." Shaky annoyance faded from the accented voice as it's brown-haired owner stepped down from his place hanging out of the truck. Concerned as he looked, he still managed to shoot a nervous glance at the dark windows of the buildings lining the vacant street before regarding the dead girl sadly.
"Move her aside, Mike," he murmered, only loud enough to be heard over the shouting rain. "The humans'll find her."
"Yeah," sighed the younger man, his long teeth flashing under the lightning as he cringed. "I just... she just stood there, boss." Jenkins bent down and carefully grasped the ragged figure, pulling her to the sidewalk. Laying her down, he drew back, gazing at her thoughtfully.
"C'mon, Mike. We gotta get out of the open." The soft voice of the older hemophage.
Nodding, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and went back to the truck, swinging into the driver's seat. The other man pulled himself into the passenger's as the truck roared back to life. It was a testament to their friendship that the second man didn't just climb over the seat and into the trailer, back to his beloved technology and formulae like he usually would. Instead, he rested his elbows on his knees an fiddled with his hands, his angular face turned downward as he searched for words to comfort his friend.
The young man just stared at the abandoned body of the girl, alone in the rain.
"I've killed lots people, Garth." The redhead's whisper was low and hoarse. "But they always deserve it, you know? They're trying to kill me at the time, but this girl..."
The other man, Garth, sighed quietly, playing with his onyx ring. "I could drive for a while, Mike. 'Til we find someplace to park it for a while," he offered.
Mike shook his head, clearing his throat and giving a trace of a crooked smile. "Nah," he sighed. The fingers traced the hair again. "I can keep going. Feel sorry for her, though. Alone like that." Garth gave his friend a gentle, but still repremanding look. Mike ignored it. "What if we just drop her off in front of a medical center or the morgue or something? What if she has family, boss?"
"Mike, you know we can't risk playing Good Samaritan like that. We... people get killed everyday."
The redhead snorted. "Yeah, but I killed her, boss."
Garth shook his head quickly, eying his driver. "You always take people you kill to the morgue? How do the humans feel about that?"
"Oh, come on, I'm not saying we stroll inside! I'm saying we leave her in plain sight of a place that could take care of her."
Garth seemed to choke on words for a second or two before sighing in a long-suffering fashion, looking out at the lifeless girl in exasperation. He scratched his chin-- more of a nervous gesture than a thoughtful one.
"Get her," he finally sighed, hauling himself over the seat. "But leave the engine runnin', Mike. I'll open the back doors. Once she's in, we're movin'."
Mike nodded, smiling thankfully. Thrusting himself back out into the rain, he rushed to the body and gathered it in his arms carefully, marvelling over how unbroken she seemed. When he had first seen her, he had thought she looked... well, like she had been mowed down by a semi-truck. Now, she was just limp and cold.
Once she was set gently down on to a stark, white seat in the deceptively normal-sized trailer and Mike got them going again, Garth felt he could breathe easier. He was fairly certain that this corpse-delivery thing was a potentially very bad idea, but the medical station wasn't too far away. Besides, if Mike moved fast, they'd be long gone less than a minute after they dumped their depressing load.
Frowning, Garth stretched a pair of gloves over his hands and stepped over to the body. She really didn't look like she'd been hit by a bike, nevermind a truck this size. The hemophage smoothed out the striped sweatshirt gently, furrowing his brow at the holes-- bullet holes-- that rendered the cloth nothing but a shirt-shaped rag. After a moment of curiosity he tried unsuccessfully to stifle, Garth leaned over and down, gently parting the pale, bloodless lips of the corpse.
There. Long, white fangs. But that wasn't what made him blink in surprise.
She had fangs, yes. Not just her upper incissors, but her lower ones as well. These were longer, too, almost by a quarter of an inch. And sharper. Much sharper.
He drew back, pressing his thin lips together in a ponderous line, exhaling loudly through his nose. "What are you, honey," he whispered in puzzlement to the sad, ragged corpse.
"Same as you," it replied.
Vampires! Hooray for vampires! If you love vampires, poke the ickle button and tell me about it.