Free Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse by Johnny B. Truant Page A

prepared in case we ever tried anything like… well, like this.”  
    The weapon had a strap, so Reginald threw it over his shoulder. He carefully removed and then clipped one of the blinking grenades to a loop on his belt. Both made him feel better. He doubted he could outgun hostile vampires if they encountered any, but humans fell when you shot them with just about any kind of ammo.  
    They swept the catacombs, traveling deep. The found the emergency exit closed and secure. There were no bodies or piles of ash here; either nobody had made it this far or the vampires had made it down alone and escaped into the neighboring chamber. Even if it had been daylight at the time, there were holes on the other side in which they could have hidden to wait out the sun. He hoped that was what had happened — that some of their allies and friends had made it out alive.  
    Finally, on the last leg of their sweep, they found a survivor.
    Reginald didn’t know the vampire who’d hidden under the bunk in the deep catacombs, but he wasn’t sure he’d recognize him if he did. He was literally falling apart. He looked pale and almost green, and his skin was covered with blisters. His face was slack as if with palsy, and his limbs didn’t want to obey his brain.  
    Reginald knelt next to the vampire.  
    “Can you speak?” he said, fighting the urge to turn away.  
    The thing groaned, rattling with harsh breath. “Yes,” he finally managed to say.  
    “What happened here?”  
    “Invasion,” he said.  
    The vampire gave a shambling intake of breath. Reginald could imagine his dead lungs heaving, his body for some reason unable to heal faster than damage (damage from what? Reginald wondered) was being done.  
    “What did they do to you?”  
    “New weapons. Hurts.” He touched his side. There was an open gunshot wound there, nowhere near his heart. It looked diseased and festering.  
    Reginald turned to Nikki. “The bullet. We have to get it out.”  
    “It’s out,” said the vampire, pointing at the floor. Reginald saw one of the gray bullets on the stone below the vampire. The thing had flowered open along the red lines, exposing a hollow center that was now empty. The opened bullet was in a pool of mixed slime and ash. It seemed to have dropped off whatever deadly cargo it carried inside its target and then simply fallen away as the vampire rotted from the inside out.  
    “Did anyone escape?” Reginald asked.  
    The vampire nodded, then winced. “Lots.”  
    “Good.”  
    “Mellus died. Lola. Some other council members, I think.”  
    “Karl?”  
    “Escaped. Dragged out by the others. Didn’t want to go.”  
    “Out the deep exit?”  
    “Yes. Then it… ended.”  
    “Ended?”  
    The vampire grinned a horrid grin. Reginald realized that most of his teeth had fallen out, including his fangs. “We killed them all. Even with their fancy new guns.”  
    Reginald thought of what he’d seen coming through the catacombs. Apparently the AVT hadn’t retreated after all. Apparently they’d been overpowered and defeated. The surviving vampires must have fled and missed this survivor. Or — and this was more troubling — maybe they’d left him behind on purpose. Reginald thought of the gray bullet’s hollow core. What might the humans have created… and was it contagious?  
    “Where would they go? Where would the others run to?”  
    The vampire swallowed. “Everywhere. Anywhere.”  
    Nikki, behind Reginald, sighed. “So much for finding Karl,” she said.  
    The vampire swallowed again. “Karl,” he said.  
    Reginald leaned closer. “You know where Karl would have gone?”  
    “I know he has a boyfriend in Paris,” he said.  
    Reginald sat back against the stone wall. He looked at Nikki while the pale, blistered vampire continued to die.
    “Paris,” he said.  
    Nikki nodded.
    Outside, Europe was awash with sunlight — the humans’ single great advantage.

P ARIS

    THE