Better off Undead

Chapter 33: Vampires Don't Exist

The room was dead silent, except for the dull hum of fluorescent lamps and the irritating whir of the VCR.

For a long moment nobody moved. Paul broke the stillness first by stepping over to the TV and ejecting the tape. Everybody else continued the not moving or speaking.

"What the hell was that?" Devin suddenly blurted, and in doing so seemed to shock everyone else out of their stupor. Everyone began talking at once, throwing question after question at Paul, who could only hold up his hands in defense.

"Please, please, please," he called, "one at a time!"

"Are you trying to tell us that your work involves making a sequel to the Blair Witch Project?" Jay demanded.

"What?" Paul asked, momentarily caught off guard. "Uh, no. Not at all."

"Seriously, what the hell was that?" Marshall demanded, pointing an accusatory finger at the TV screen, as though it had betrayed him and he was waiting for an apology. "That... thing, it looked just like... like..."

Marshall realized what he was saying and stopped, but it was too late. All eyes were already on him. He swallowed hard, knowing that like it or not, this was the time for truth. Besides, it was too late. The others, at least the ones who had been there, were already reaching the same conclusion.

"Like the talking zombie," Devin finished.

"Talking zombie?" Elaine and Donald said almost simultaneously, the only two members of their current group that had not been present during the captivity in town.

Marshall let out a long sigh and turned to face the pair. "When we were in town... the thing that delayed us... it was more than just being trapped in a room by zombies. There was actually a... a special zombie. It had us tied down to chairs at a table and it could control the zombies and it... talked... to us. It told us the plans it and all its zombie friends had in store for us."

Paul cleared his throat, and everyone turned to look at him.

"Actually, the thing on the screen," he said, motioning behind himself at the blank screen, "that was no zombie. That was a vampire."

Paul was making a habit out of silencing the room.

"That does it," Amber said, throwing her hands up in the air above her head, as if surrendering. "I think I've had about enough of this."

Eli gawked at her. "You've had enough? Of what?"

"Of this." She waved her hand in a wide arc that indicated pretty much the whole room. "Of everything. I mean, seriously Eli? Vampires? What's next? Unicorns and mermaids?"

"Why would you find the idea of vampires so outrageous?"

"Because they don't exist?" Amber's voice was slow and high, almost shrill. She spoke like she was speaking to a child, and not in a good way. It was more like she was chastising the child for getting into the cookies for the one hundredth time after having been explicitly warned.

"You would have said the same a month ago about zombies," Eli challenged back.

"It makes sense, though."

Everyone stopped and turned to Marshall in surprise. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were unfocused, dim, like he was staring past the walls of the room to something far beyond. His voice was soft but steady, the voice of a man who was coming to terms with the fact that he had lost and was finally willing to cooperate.

"Wait," Amber said, a look of confusion on her face so drastic that it was as if this was the first point in all this madness that things had stopped making sense, "You are agreeing with Eli?"