character :: Noah Smith
It was unlike any other outbreak the world had ever seen: a sharp rise in violent crimes, a strange virus, and crooked underground gangs perpetuating the chaos. As Noah graduated high school, the hot word on everyone’s lips could drive even the bravest men to shiver: Vykrosis. Vampirism. The fear attached to a once teenage-romance-novel novelty had taken on a stark new meaning, and the danger of a “vampire” had suddenly outweighed the very real threats of street crime. Because, as it turned out, these mythical creatures were becoming a nightmarish reality: and they were killing.
A lot.
Noah wasn’t the best kid after his best friend disappeared during his junior year. The two were inseparable; their parents had each other on speed dial because if Noah or Ian weren’t home: chances are, they were at their “second home”. They met as toddlers and did absolutely everything together – and the next hurdles in life were going to be big ones. Noah was a straight-A student and nearing the age he could rightfully begin earning money for his own car! Ian struggled a bit more in school, but for what he lacked in academics and sports the boy could make up for in spades with creativity. The two of them joined all the same afternoon clubs; the more secluded, the better. Ian and Noah were inseparable all right…and the romantic feelings brewing between the teens was palpable.
The surface shines, while the inside rots
So, when Ian didn’t show up for school one bright and shining day – Ian knew immediately that something was wrong. They were up late chatting with each other online, and although Ian hadn’t been feeling well for the previous few days, there’s no way his mother would let him stay home from school. She’d force him to go to school with a fever more often than not in the hopes he’d improve his grades (not that it ever worked), and at any rate he’d definitely tell Noah. Throughout his first period class, Noah sent a series of frantic text messages: first to Ian, and then, reluctantly, to Ian’s mother.
When Ian’s mother told Noah that she assumed he had snuck over for a school night sleepover, and that her shift at the grocery store had run long into the night, Noah calmly packed his backpack at the end of the class and ran right out the front doors of that school, the line already ringing to 911.
It was flabbergasting what kind of hoops Noah had to jump through to simply get police attention. The dispatcher on the line insisted that Ian was a teenager, being called for by his friend, and that he’s likely just playing hookie. Noah insisted that he simply knew Ian and there’s no way he’d be like that…but she insisted that this kind of thing “happened all the time”. So, Noah hung up and tried again and again as he rushed to Ian’s house, hoping to get some sympathetic person on the line. Finally, a woman addressed the fact that he’d called 911 a grand total of seven times in the past 5 minutes – and she began filling out a missing person report for him.
Noah used his copy of Ian’s house key and permitted himself inside of the home, rushing down the hallway to his friend’s room, the woman on the line typing away. His room looked like a crime scene alright, clothes strewn across the floor, dishes knocked over on the table, batteries and game controllers littering the bed: but no foul play here. Ian was a damn slob. It drove his father nuts. Noah rifled through the drifts and piles of assorted manner on the floor, looking for a clue; it was all there except for one startling thing: his laptop. Noah sat back in disgust when his fingers ran over a pile of vomit on the floor…Ian was a slob, but he wasn’t disgusting. Just messy. Noah screamed and began demanding a police officer when he finally saw what he’d been hoping not to see: blood. A thick, gelatinous stain had soaked into the carpet under a hastily thrown blanket, hidden from immediate view. The dispatcher helping Ian with the missing person report told Noah to leave the room immediately, and the following hours were a blur of consoling Ian’s mother through his own grief, relentless questioning from police, and wishing he’d wake up from the nightmare he’d found himself in.
and we almost won
We slammed the brakes
but the wheels went on
Eleven years later, Noah still hadn’t woken up. Highschool and all of it’s unpleasantries faded to the back of his mind as he began the career of a lifetime. The experience of losing Ian drove Noah to the brink and back, now determined to ensure that the cause of his suffering would be snuffed out. Not a year after Ian’s disappearance, the murmurings of Vykrosis in their sleepy little town began. The two were certainly related. In the bigger cities where the population grew wild and out of control, it was already an issue: but the toxin was spreading to even the most remote areas. Children were the easiest to target; and once you’ve been bitten by a vampire, chances are, you’d become one. Parents watched their children progress through a curious illness that sapped their little ones of energy, remedied only through ample blood transfusions before the illness turned to madness. But those were the lucky ones: older kids and teens who contracted the virus and knew to hide the bite could only treat the virus through much more aggressive means – and the blood they consumed had to come from somewhere.
All vykrosis infections lead to an inevitable madness, the last stage of the disease. If the patient could not find a steady supply of fresh blood, either via transfusion in a hospital, a donor, theft of blood banks, or - most abhorrently - an unwilling victim: a vampire would lose their mind. Age didn’t matter, wealth didn’t matter, race didn’t matter: all higher levels of thinking would shut down and only violence remained. A vampire at this stage of infection was more dangerous than a 250 pound man out of his mind on opioids: because these people will consume anything and everything around them in search of blood until they are killed.
When Noah applied to the police academy the day after graduation, he knew what the dangers were. He was well-respected and loved throughout the community as a moral young man, and that adoration only grew with his civil service. He dedicated his life to the police force, and with great purpose: Noah progressed up the ranks of service until he finally had the pull to found the first specialized division in the country solely dedicated to the vampire epidemic.
Life progressed for Noah steadily throughout those eleven years. He got married to a young woman who pined after him in high school, and their wedding was just as disgustingly picturesque as you’d imagine. A cute little home with a white picket fence just down the block from his parent’s house completed the picture of complete and total morality. Noah played the part of community defender just perfectly, and his position as Lieutenant would surely soon move on to an upper rank. And, while Noah’s first and foremost interest in fact were to capture and destroy as many vampires as possible – his mind and his heart belonged to his dead friend. He had helped Ian’s parents purchase a tombstone after he’d been promoted to police sergeant, and that polished chunk of marble saw many more flowers than his wife ever did. As the years marched on, Noah knew it should be easier for him to forget – but that simply wasn’t the case. He was trapped in his turmoil, and nothing seemed to quench that terrible sadness within him.
A show of hands from those in this audience of one
Where have they gone?
Noah had the opportunity to do some field work one afternoon when it happened. A rare opportunity, really, for him to stretch his legs and do the patrol right: there were many indicators that a vampire hub had been forming right under his nose. This kind of activity could only draw more vampire attention to his town, and Noah wanted it shut down immediately. Homeless communities seemed to draw vampires in (as they couldn’t hold a job these days without being reported), and that’s exactly where Noah went. He passed through startled groups of people loitering in abandoned buildings throughout the day, making several arrests for suspicion. These people would be sent in for a simple blood test to determine if Noah had done his job or simply wasted some good nurses’ time; either way, one after another, Noah burned through hotspots in his region. Noah entered an abandoned hospital, the doors left freely unlocked, when his flashlight crossed over the sunken, pale faces of a dozen or more people huddled over a small barrel fire. Activity flashed around him, sounds of shouts and the officers under his command taking off after targets. A brick formed in Noah’s stomach as he uncharacteristically charged after something in the corner of his eye, a figure ducking into one of the corridors away from the action.
“Wait!” Noah demanded, his flashlight casting a bouncing and disorganized beam on the running target in front of him. “Stop right there!”
The man ahead of him already heaved for breath, clearly very ill. Noah closed the gap between the two of them with no effort whatsoever, his backup somewhere far behind in the maze of decrepit building. When Noah finally laid a hand on his fugitive, he spun the man around and unabashedly shined his flashlight right in his eyes. Immediately, the air left Noah’s chest and the healthy young man swayed with realization. Brown eyes and square facial build of the man in his grasp strained under the bright light for a moment before pushing the bright beam of light away softly.
“Hey, Noah. It’s been a while.” He murmured.
The voice was unmistakable. All those years of work and suffering seemed to disappear, and finally, after all that time: Noah awoke as he took Ian into his arms once more.
But, with Ian back from the dead, what can this mean for Noah?
