Home » Archives » June 2004 » David Parker’s Journal: 20

06/11/2004: "David Parker’s Journal: 20"

I could feel them coming after me on I-95, seething with hostility, trapped in the hellishly dense traffic hurtling south through Florida at 85 miles per hour.

It wasn’t the svelte vampires from the sidewalk café in Palm Beach, but others like them – hunters dispatched to kill one of there own for because his name was not on the mysterious Napoleon List.

Namely me.

I had walked away from my home without so much as a change of clothing, flown halfway across the country, and still they were after me, relentlessly following, watching, waiting for the opportunity to swarm over me and chop me limb from living limb.

The ultimate irony was that I no idea why they wanted me dead. This Napoleon List – what was it? I’d never even heard of the list until opening the crypt where the warning had been left for me, years before even my parents had been born.

Something bad was moving through the world of the Vampiri. I had a sick feeling it was not only the evil ones -- the Borgia and their ilk -- who were taking part in this unholy jihad. It bigger than that, and more evil.

My secret benefactor and protector, William Benton, had sensed it coming. But who was Benton? That was another thing I didn’t know. A prophet, it seemed, perhaps my private vampire prophet, reaching out to warn me of impending doom in an era when automobiles and telephones were still novelties.

They wanted me dead. Vampires were killing vampires. The only thing more unlawful than taking the life of an ordinary mortal was for a vampire to kill a vampire.

I swerved around a semi-truck hauling a load of sugarcane, still following the Porsche I’d been behind since Palm Beach. The little black roadster would have left me in its dust, had there been anywhere to go amid the ribbon of taillights stretching off over the horizon.

The only thing I knew was that there was a list. Your name was either on it or not. Mine apparently was not. That simple fact marked me for death. But why? What determined whether you were or weren’t protected or marked for extermination? Was it that I had, in moments of extreme weakness and stress, killed? Or was it because I was an American? Or a member of the Illuminati instead one of the other secret societies my kind has organized to support, protect and govern its immortal members?

I had no idea.

A half-mile ahead of me a van blew a tire and began to slide uncontrollably across the three lanes of traffic. The quick and unexpected maneuver had an instant effect. Cars smashed into one another as they swerved one way or the other or jammed on brakes to avoid the spreading accident, only to become part of it when the vehicle behind them slammed into them from the rear.

The driver of the Porsche didn’t react quickly enough to get onto the off-ramp, but I did, though just barely. There was no way I could get stuck in a traffic jam with my killers close behind me.

Exultant to have escaped, I ran the light at the bottom of the ramp and headed toward the ocean. I looked up at a road sign that said: “Welcome to Ft. Lauderdale.” Welcome indeed.

The traffic became increasingly congested as I approached the beach. The killers were bound to catch up with me. Perhaps I should make a stand there in the smooth, wave-wetted sand. I might be able to hold them off long enough for them to become alarmed by the mortal attention. Much as I dislike violence, I am rather good at it, when the occasion requires.

I finally made it to A1A and turned south. Why, I do not know. North would have at least given me the chance of winding my way back up the long peninsular state to disappear into Georgia or Alabama. But instinct led me south. There are times when it is best for a vampire to let his sixth sense rule him.

Cloaking myself to the utmost of my ability to detection from other vampires, I parked the car and began to make my way through the crowd of revelers on the sidewalks along the beach. There were others of my kind present, of course. I could feel them. Most of them were crude fledglings who barely knew what they were doing. Come to prey on the young and beautiful, they probably killed as often as not in their inept attempts to feed the Hunger.

A drawbridge going up temporarily halted my progress. I looked around behind me, aware at how much more at risk I was, with the direct avenue of retreat cut off. Closing my eyes for a moment, I reached out, feeling my way through the thoughts and desires of a thousand people congregated there along the beach.

Music…

Sexual longing…

The sound of the tropical sea breeze moving through the palms…

Drunken anger…

There!

It was just a twinge, a spike of awareness instantly gone.

They were back there, the killers, perhaps like me led by chance and intuition. I was hardly the only vampire with psychic abilities.

Below the bridge, a tall-masted sloop moved past, its sails furled, pushed toward the ocean by the invisible force of its diesel motor.

I crossed the street and followed the canal and sailboat toward the inlet. Shielded from the street by a building in the next block, I saw my chance and took it. I broke into a run far faster than any mortal could attempt. I leaped into the air at the last moment, kicking my left foot against the guardrail as I rose for a bit of extra momentum.

In the next instant I was flying through the air for a moment, an ungainly angel trying to escape the earth’s bounds. Time slowed the way it does when we aren’t entirely sure the desperate thing we’ve attempted will lead to our salvation or doom.

My arms beat the air like two useless wings as I looked down between my feet toward the deck of the sailboat, which was coming up at me now with alarming speed. I had only a fraction of second to decide whether I would land on the deck in a way that wouldn’t break the boat, or my legs, or to overshoot the mark, go into the water, and then swim for it.

If I could just make it onto the sloop and hid myself from the hungers long enough to sail over the edge of the world, perhaps I could like long enough to discover what the Napoleon List was, and why so many of my fellow vampires suddenly wanted me dead.