He leaded forward, too. “This has everything to do with the Farm. They’re all part of a plan. To take over the world.”
“The vampires have a plan to take over the world?” I asked. I felt a bit dumb, gasping in surprise at every twist to the story and incredulously repeating all the important bits. But somehow Carter’s version of things made sense. I felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz when the green curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth.
Carter shook his head. “They’re not all in on the plan. Vampires don’t work like that. That’s one way they’re different from Ticks. Ticks are pack animals. They stick together. Vampires are the opposite. They’re fiercely territorial about their kine and—”
“Their what?” I asked.
“Their kine.” Carter said the word more slowly, toying with a bit of Rolo wrapper as he did. Like he didn’t want to look at me. “Their livestock.”
“Oh, livestock. The humans they feed on.” A sort of sick feeling roiled in my gut. I’d been donating blood to feed the Ticks for months now. I thought I was long past being creeped out. So why did that word—kine—send a shiver through my body?
Maybe because it wasn’t the sort of word Carter could have just come up with on the fly. It was an archaic word, but one he knew well enough to slip into conversation. And it lent a sense of truth to his story about vampires. Vampires who—according to him—were just as deadly as Ticks, just as fast, just as strong, but were also smart. Smart.
The Ticks’ diminished brain size—their lack of mental capacity—represented the one advantage humanity might have over them. Someday, we might have a chance of winning against an enemy that was as dumb as stegosaurs, but if they got smart, we’d be screwed.
I took another gulp of Dr Pepper because I needed that sugar burn on the way down to keep me grounded.
“Do they have . . . like, ranches or something?” As soon as I asked it, I realized how stupid that sounded. I was on a Farm. I was a Green. That was as livestock as it got. “I mean in the Before. There couldn’t have been Farms before. Right?”
Carter gave a terse shake of his head. “No, there weren’t Farms. Vampires think of all the humans in their territory as their kine. As belonging to them. The way a medieval king would think of the deer in the forest as belonging to him. But if a vampire accidentally makes another one then—”
“Wait a second. What do you mean accidentally? Isn’t it, like, you get bitten by a vampire and if he doesn’t suck all your blood, voila, you’re a vampire?”
“Not exactly. The only people who turn have a very rare gene. They call it the regenerative gene. Less than one percent of the population has it. Only people with that gene become vampires. But if they’re bitten by a vampire and exposed to a vampire’s venom, they always become vampires. And once a vampire turns someone, he has to share his territory. Which means—”
“Less livestock,” I supplied, talking past that sick, squelchy feeling in my stomach.
“Exactly. And one vampire decided he’d had enough. He decided to build an army and take over the U.S. Roberto started by—”
“Did you say Roberto?”
Carter nodded. “Yes. Roberto De La Cruz. He’s the vampire who—”
“Roberto?” I said again.
Carter’s mouth flattened in annoyance. “Yes. Roberto.”
“So there’s an evil vampire trying to take over the world . . .”
“Yes.”
“And his name is Bob?”
“Yes.” Carter huffed with impatience. “Roberto—”
“Bob.” Laughter bubbled up inside me. It was the juxtaposition that did it. The dehumanizing brutality of people as kine, up against the benign banality of the name Bob.
“Bob,” I said again. And then dissolved into giggles.
It was inappropriate. Completely. And it pissed Carter off. I could see that.
“This isn’t funny.” Carter frowned.
“I know,” I gasped. “I know it’s not. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?” Carter asked when I was laughing too hard to talk.
“Bob is the least scary name. Ever.” I wiped tears from my eyes. “My grandfather’s name was Bobby. And there’s Bob Hope. Bob Dylan.” I could feel more laughter well up inside. “Bob Newhart. SpongeBob. That gelatinous guy from Monsters vs. Aliens.”
I lost the battle again; I dropped my head onto my folded arms to hide my lack of control.
“Why is this funny?” Carter bit out the words. His voice was terse and angry.
“It’s not.” I pushed myself up, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. “That’s the thing. If you were making this up, you’d have come up with something else. Something that sounded scary. Like Vlad or Damien or Dante.” Suddenly I wasn’t laughing anymore. “But his name is Bob.”
The harsh lines of Carter’s face softened. “It’s Roberto. But yeah, I probably would have gone with Damien or something.”
I nodded, swallowing back my emotions. Carter just looked at me, an intensity in his gaze that unnerved me. Suddenly I felt so damn vulnerable. I wasn’t one of those girls who looked pretty when I laughed. Or when I cried, for that matter. My face got all red and splotchy. Never mind that I hadn’t seen makeup in half a year.
And none of that mattered. Not really. “So,” I said after a minute. “Roberto. He did this.”
“Yes. He wanted to build an army that would destroy modern civilization. He wanted to take back what he thought should be his. The Aztecs once worshipped Roberto as the god Tezcatlipoca. They offered him daily blood sacrifices and thought he was all powerful. He wanted to be returned to his former glory.”
“So why not just bite a bunch of people? Why not make his own vampire army?”
“Because most people he bit wouldn’t turn into vampires. They would just die. Besides, he didn’t want a vampire army. He’d never be able to control them. No, he needed something else. Something like vampires, as strong, as fast, as difficult to kill, but something he could easily control.”
I gave a snort of derision. “Yeah, how’d that work out for him? I mean, the Ticks I’ve seen don’t seem like they’re under anyone’s control.”
Carter gave a shrug. “That’s where our intel gets dicey. We’re not sure if this is what he really intended to happen or if the Ticks have gotten out of hand. But. . .” Carter’s words trailed off and he shook his head.
“What?” I prodded.
“Well, we know some of what Roberto wanted because of things he told Sebastian, but I can’t imagine that this was his end goal. Either things in the Genexome Corporation went really wrong, or this is just a stage two in a multi-stage plan. Which means things could get worse.”
I let that vile thought roll around in my gut for a while before I pushed it away and went back to something Carter had said. “What about the Genexome Corporation? All those scientists? Do they work for Roberto?”
“It’s buried pretty deep, under about five dummy parent corporations, but yeah. He owns it.”
“Those scientist at Genexome, they must have started with vampire venom and—”
“Actually, we don’t know that for sure. And we have no way of knowing if they knew what they were working with. But, yeah, it’s a pretty good guess that Roberto supplied them with a sample of his venom and they used that as a starting point.”
I felt the Rolos trying to creep back up my esophagus. The idea that the Tick outbreak wasn’t accidental, that someone had done this on purpose was repugnant. I dropped my head back to my arms, resting my ear on my sleeve, feeling suddenly more exhausted than I could believe. I just sat there, staring at the cheerfully glowing Coke machine. Something that had no right to exist in this horrific new world. It occurred to me then that this might be the last time I ever drank a soda. Or ate candy. And if it was, then I resented the hell out of this Roberto guy. I really didn’t want to puke up the last Dr Pepper I ever drank.
Slowly, I realized that Carter still hadn’t answered the basic question: what did this have to do with anything? What did it have to do with the Farm or with me and Mel or escaping?
But as soon as the question drifted through my mind, the answer was there behind it. I remembered what Carter had said just now about things Roberto had told Sebastian. Suddenly it was as if the fog of the tranq rifle had lifted and I could see the truth that should have been so obvious from the second I opened my eyes in the admin building.
I pushed myself up. “He’s one of them, isn’t he? Sebastian’s a vampire.”
For a long moment, only the gentle hum of the Coke machine filled the room, but eventually Carter spoke, his voice as soft as someone trying to coax a spooked kitten out of hiding. “He is. But he’s different.”
“Different how? Like Edward Cullen different? Like Stefan Salvatore different?”
“No. Nothing that . . .” He searched around for a word. “That romanticized. He’s a vampire. He drinks blood. But he’s on our side.”
“Our side? We have a side?”
“I do and I’m hoping you’re on it, too.” He pulled his chair closer to mine. He propped his elbows on his knees. “That guy I mentioned before, the guy with the military background from school. That’s Sebastian. The school was sort of an . . . investment for him. He was there when the Ticks hit the school. After we lost the school, Sebastian expected us to scatter. But those of us who were left stayed together.”
“I thought you said there weren’t many left.”
“Forty-three guys. Out of over five hundred.”
“Oh.” Less than ten percent.
Christ. So those were the odds.
He raised an eyebrow, like he was asking if I had any more questions. I gave my head a little shake and he continued. “We found a stronghold that we can defend, most of the time anyway.”