Path of the Vampire forum

Date Unrecorded

Wendigo turned the key and opened the door to his apartment in the Corvidae Flats. He paused before stepping through the doorway: now that he was possessed of a different mind, would he find a barrier ahead of him? He reached through the threshold... apparently the answer was no. Yet another curiosity he found himself filing away to investigate later.

At the moment, however, he was focused on a different mystery. Namely, he had been created in the Quarantine Zone some two and a half years ago, but shortly after that his mind had been turned into a battlefield. The personalities of a son turned vampire, and the father whose blood he consumed, had gone to war, leaving only a beast at the reins.

An infant vampire was much like an infant human in that it was hedonistic and impulsive, and just as an infant with coordination and superhuman strength would be a hellish, greedy behemoth, an infant vampire was a devastating vortex of carnage.

Opening the double doors, Wendigo stepped out into the only space in the apartment he cared about: the balcony. The flat was certainly fully furnished: everything had been left behind during the evacuation of Gambondale. Chairs and tables, all covered in white sheets, never once looked at. No, he'd purchased the apartment for the balcony. Here, he had set up a sniper's nest with a wide angle view on the Quarantine Zone: a veritable shooting gallery of monsters.

Taking up a position behind the scope -- as he tried to do at least once a week -- he always started his search in the same place: the sewer entrance next to the old Multiplex. Now that he could distinguish between the memories of his various "guests", he realized that the sewer entrance there was really where it all started for him...

October 1st, 2011
Condition: Human

When Vincent and Gabriel were kids, they would sometimes sneak around Groom Center while Wendell worked. The place had certainly seen better days, and most of it was abandoned. Rows and rows of cubicles, old labspaces... everything but a few offices and the lobby was pretty much in disarray. To them, it was the ruins of a castle rather than a kingdom: their own private playground.

Once, crawling through the duct work, they'd found their way down to the old parking garage. This by itself was a marvel: a vast, multilevel cave right beneath their feet! It wasn't until years later, however, that they had found a way through the maintenance door that took them into the sewers. Once they were brave enough to go into the sewers, all of Harper Rock became their playground.

It had been decades since Gabriel had been in the sewers, but since Gambondale was closed, he didn't see another way in. He had gotten a cryptic message from one of T.J.'s old military buddies who had reportedly been stationed to guard this Quarantine Zone. Between a hint of desperation and medical curiosity, he'd convinced himself to pry open the maintenance hatch and go under the river once more.

He found the sewers surprisingly active: there were never people lurking in the sewers when he was a kid... but then hard times were falling on Harper Rock. Reminding himself that it was just around two corners, he pressed on careful to avoid those he could only assume were drug dealers and the downtrodden.

He found his way beneath Gambondale in short order, though he would soon discover that what lurked in the sewers was only half as terrifying as what lurked above.

October 1st, 2011
Condition: Human

Gabriel had heard T.J. and Wendell speak of warzones, but he had never been to one himself until now. Just across the river, he could see Groom Center looming ominously: how could this hell be going on at his doorstep without his knowledge? He ducked back down the manhole to muster his courage. Peering out, he had seen gunfire and bodies. What sort of Quarantine was this? Who were those disparate, violent murders? Some kind of Black Ops team? Independent Wet Team? And what terrible infection merited the wholesale slaughter of these people?

Most of those questions couldn't be answered, but maybe the last one could. He wasn't a Pathologist, but there were some on staff at Groom Biomedical. What he needed was a sample.

Spotting a corpse slumped against a wall twenty feet away, Gabriel worked himself up -- near to the point of hyperventilation -- and ran (rather, crawled quickly) for it in a lapse of silence. He barely noticed the road rash that quickly developed on his hands as he crossed the pavement on all fours, and he pressed himself into a seated position beside the corpse to catch his breath. The odor was rancid and terrible; he could taste it as he swallowed great gulps of air. A sudden horror washed over him: was he now infected? If he left, would he spread this disease? In his haste, he'd forgotten every biohazard safety procedure he'd ever learned.

Overwhelmed at the notion, he ran his raw hands through his hair, and looked about as if he would be able to physically locate the answer. As he turned his head to the side, he came face to face with the corpse he had forgotten about. His sympathetic nervous system in overdrive, he yelped despite his normally calm demeanor in the presence of corpses. In fairness, this was not a normal cadaver: this was rotted thoroughly. In some places, bone was even visible. It looked like this body had been decomposing for months, which seemed unlikely: surely someone would have moved it, right?

After another moment's consideration, he decided to simply take a sample and escape. Prolonged exposure to the Quarantine Zone was likely to make him sick or get him shot. Carefully, he removed the scalpel and vial from his kit and began the first incision.

The arm of the corpse shot up and grabbed him around the neck.

((End of Pathday Memory 1))

Date Unrecorded

Scanning the QZ with the sniper rifle for zombies was a lot like killing ants with a magnifying glass: they didn't really stand a chance, but there was no way you could kill an entire nest that way. Even a concerted vampire effort couldn't clean the QZ, much less one vampire in a nest. Especially since each building was its own nest. Wendell had once proposed razing the buildings in the area: forcing all the undead hordes out into the open. Maybe the Community could at least find out where they came from. As it was, they just seemed to rise up out of the asphalt. He had personally killed enough undead to fill the Graveyard twice, so there had to be another source.

In response to his proposal, the Community did what they always did best: nothing. In fact, one of them had the Corvidae Flats remodeled so that vampires could move in. Get them invested in NOT razing the Quarantine Zone. Zombies were in the lobby within the day. Just one more place to hide.

These things hadn't angered Wendell, and they seemed trivial matters to the vampire who had reclaimed his mind. Harper Rock, after all, was doomed from the start. Killing zombies this way wasn't about preventing or even slowing that doom. It was about...

...he wasn't even sure anymore.

He often found that he couldn't put reason to his actions. Without emotion, it was certainly difficult to justify many actions. Normal, feeling, people (and, yes, vampires) did things that made them happy... which, of course, was a pointless exercise. Still, if they could waste time, so could he.

Swinging the barrel towards an approaching zombie, he squeezed the trigger.

November 5th, 2011
Condition: Human

The centrifuge wound down with a distinctive hum and stopped, and Gabriel took one of the vials from it. Days ago, Gabriel had allowed himself to accept that he wasn't infected by his time in the Quarantine Zone. However the sickness was passed, it wasn't merely through the air. On his return trips though, he donned a mask and gloves: better to be safe. He'd been sloppy enough as it was.

Forty eight hours after he disappeared, he was officially a missing person. Unwilling to turn himself over to any authority after seeing what was being done in the Quarantine Zone, he let events proceed without contacting or correcting his family. It pained him to do so, but it was the only way to keep them safe and to reclaim his life was to get to the bottom of this mystery.

As such, an investigation started. The detectives invariably found the notes and maps on his computer at Groom Center. They were even able to find the security video of him riding the elevator down into the basement and never coming back up.

It didn't take much convincing: his family held a small service. Given the prominence of the Groom Family in Harper Rock, it even made the paper (which is how he learned all of this). He wondered if the coffin they buried was empty or if there was a random corpse inside. He made a mental note to visit his grave and check the date: it would be curious to see how soon he'd been given up as dead. Coming back to life was a problem for another day. Today the problem was the disease.

Perhaps "problem" was too mild a word. Gabriel's investigation had become an obsession. He sensed that he wasn't thinking clearly -- he hadn't slept for over thirty hours now -- but he also knew that he was so close! Besides, every time he closed his eyes, he saw those freaks murdering the infected. That the infected looked almost... undead... did nothing to soothe his conscience. In fact, it just made the whole mess more traumatic.

Worse still, if this series of tests came back negative, he would have only one more set of tissue samples left before he had to acquire more. He shuddered involuntarily at the thought. Three trips to that hellhole should have been enough. Still, if it meant a cure, a clean bill of health, and an end to the nightmare, then he would have to go back in. If he lost his nerve now, he would be in hiding forever.

If he was going to get his life back, he would have to be willing to pay a steep price.

((End of Pathday Memory 2))

November 8th, 2011
Condition: Vampire

Gabriel tentatively touched the great canines that he had developed for the eightieth or so time in the past hour. He had tried to examine them using some of the broken glass that lie, well, everywhere, but he couldn't make out his reflection. Not even a trace of it.

By God... vampires? This was some kind of nightmare.

In fact, "nightmare" was the first conclusion he'd come to. He'd certainly been having enough of them lately. Having escaped the Supermarket and the strange red-haired woman within, he considered wandering back through the sewers. However, weighing the risks of contaminating Harper Rock against... whatever this was... he hid himself away in the bathroom of the Multiplex to rest, check his non-extant wounds, and attempt to evaluate his condition. How long would he need to wait to see symptoms develop? He couldn't be certain.

These questions kept him awake all night in spite of his recent sleep deprivation. At 7am, just as he started to work up the courage to go searching for answers in the daylight, great fatigue washed over him and he collapsed against a wall. He slept for almost ten hours (a record of late) and woke up at 5pm just as the sun was setting.

He had hoped that, when he woke, it would be in his own bed. Even waking up in the cabin among the tissue samples would be a step up from this. Instead, he woke to find himself in the same shattered bathroom that he had collapsed in. It was here that he found the broken glass that first put the thought of Vampires into his mind.

"Enough speculation," he thought loudly... he resisted the urge to speak aloud, as the sound that emanated from his throat was only a terrifying facsimile of his voice. He was still a man of science and medicine. Empirical evidence, rather than instinct or emotion, would see him through.

It was time to go get some answers.

((End of Memory 3))

Date Unrecorded

At 80x magnification, a man can still make out the eyes of his target at a distance of a kilometer. Of course, when firing that far, one has to take into account the wind, gravity, even their own breathing and pulse; of course, the last two were not a problem for Wendigo. Since becoming a vampire, he had shed so many human traits -- physical and emotional -- and been reduced to a truly primal force. He imagined himself in one of Gabriel's centrifuges, being spun rapidly until the thinner, weaker solution could be removed from the denser components.

Over time, he was becoming purer: making room for more power by casting out the parts of him that were human. Humans certainly had useful traits, particularly knowledge, but that could be taken from them: papers could be stolen, computers could be hacked, and voices persuaded to speak. Then, when they thought they had nothing more to spill, he would spill their blood and drink it. Their blood contained additional memories -- some useful, but mostly useless. Then he'd be spun again: killing the humans in his mind as he did with Gabriel and Wendell. Keeping what made him stronger and casting away the rest.

Wendell, and now Wendigo, had always pursued power, and knowledge was truly power. Each time he stole thoughts it was like taking shots of lightning. Stealing memories -- now that he knew he was doing it -- was better than the blood itself in some ways. It threatened to become something of an addiction. Perhaps, he thought, that's why he felt drawn to the sniper's nest. Taking aim at a hapless victim, squeezing the trigger, ending their existence -- that was power too. A poor substitute, but a substitute nonetheless.

There was a certain irony to it, of course. Namely, the essence of the Vampire wanted to simply drink the world and take all the memories, but it was the very memories he stole that helped him build a framework of rules to hold him in check. The more he drank, the more he wanted, but the more he understood the need for control. It was as though he was expanding inside a prison that was getting smaller.

At some point, something would have to give.

November 10th, 2011
Condition: Vampire

Over the last few weeks and months, things had gone from bad to worse at an incredible rate. At each step, Gabriel's mind threatened to break under the strain of the impossible: a government Quarantine in his hometown seemed impossible for a long time, but then it turned that the walls held back Zombies, then it turned out that Vampires were fighting Zombies, and now he was something supernatural. So many decades of working in science, working in the explicable, only to find out that there was another larger, fouler world out there that he knew nothing about.

None of it was as horrible, though, as what he faced now.

He didn't know if it was coincidence or madness that he found himself facing his father in the ruins of the Multiplex. He had also never seen his father look upon him with the relief or appreciation that he saw in the man's eyes now. This man, whom he had been at odds with for so long had come into Hell after him? The existence of vampires seemed reasonable by comparison.

Gabriel considered -- for the thousandth time -- that he was simply hallucinating recent events... but he resolved to act in case he wasn't. Perhaps, he thought, this is how normal people succumb to insanity. The old man was badly wounded though, and hesitating would certainly lead to his death. Even acting quickly, Gabriel didn't like the odds: his medical supplies had been lost when the redhead had moved him, and improvised bandages wouldn't be enough.

The hospitals weren't an option: the infected were killed rather than treated. Furthermore, that was supposing he could even be moved at all. As he looked at his father, Wendell Sr. no longer seemed the brutal giant who had made him feel like a child even into his fifties: he was simply an elderly patient, terrified, and on the verge of death. He turned and rummaged in the debris, not quite knowing what he hoped to find. If only he had medical supplies! Then he'd have a chance to save his father. He remembered the pain associated with those bites, and wondered how anyone -- let alone a man in his seventies -- would ever survive.

But then... he had survived those same bites, right? Gabriel stopped digging and looked at his bicep where he had been bitten before being turned. His father had a similar bite, only his father was bleeding from his wound and Gabriel's wound had healed without so much as a scar.

How had the redhead done it? He remembered only flashes. He rubbed his wrist where he thought she had bitten him. Take his blood and then feed it back to him? Was it that simple? Of course not. There were a lot of unanswered questions: how much blood to take? To return? Does he die in the process, or would that be too late? Decades of medical experience were useless to him now! He couldn't stop to try to find the redhead: his father was basically in shock already. He would have to try to feel his way through the process and hope for the best.

Gabriel grabbed for his father's arm and crouched over him. He sensed that the old man might have oriented toward him slightly, but he didn't have time to confirm it. "Don't know if you can hear me, dad," he said, hating the sound of his new voice. "But no matter how this turns out, I want you to know... I'm so sorry."

((End of Memory 4))

November 11th, 2011
Condition: Vampire

Gabriel had stayed near the corpse of his father through the night and the following day. As he slept, he dreamed of the old man over and over: his once-piercing eyes glazed over in death. The man cursing him and rebuking him for yet another failure, and for never properly making use of the things that were given to him. The day he slept through seemed to last for months, and throughout it, he felt profound pain: a pounding on the inside of his skull that threatened to press out his eyes from behind.

When darkness finally returned and he was able to rouse himself, he checked his father again. No pulse. No signs of life. His attempt had failed. Perhaps he had taken too much blood. Admittedly, he couldn't really stop himself once he had started: he hadn't actually consumed blood before, and it abated the thirst he had felt since being turned. Any remaining doubt as to his nature had been swept aside. He was a Vampire.

More than that, though, he was a monster who had -- despite other intentions -- killed his own father. If not by draining his blood, then certainly by driving the old man into wandering around in this wasteland through his disappearance. He would have wept then, had there been tears in his body to produce, but instead he simply lie on the ground for an hour as his chest went into spasms. The physiological response of crying was paralyzing when one's dead lungs seemed to refuse air.

When he finally regained himself, he resolved to step outside, clear his head, and then dig a grave for the old man in the nearby graveyard. After all, Gabriel might be a monster, but he could still act like a man while his faculties remained. As he rose, he could almost hear his father's body sigh with disappointment. Ignoring the sensation, he left. Leaving the Multiplex, however, did little to alleviate the sense that his father was watching disapprovingly. Now that the old man was dead, Gabriel might never be free of his ghost.

As he dug into the earth, the sensation only grew, and come midnight, Gabriel was becoming certain he was not alone. At the bottom of the grave, he stomped the last few clumps of dirt, and then turned to climb out to see a familiar silhouette above him. The voice, however, seemed to come from within.

"Hello, Junior."

The figure pounced on Gabriel, driving him to the recesses of his own mind, and leaving nothing but a vampire behind in a shallow grave.

((End of Memory 5))

Date Unrecorded

Wendigo didn't bother breaking the sniper rifle down when he left. He told himself that this was because the sniper rifle remained in the nest anyway, but he knew that he was generally more meticulous than this.

He had frequently come to the Quarantine Zone looking for answers. Not only was it a place where a Vampire could generally drop the facade of humanity, but he had been turned here as well. Perhaps there was some correlation between dying in a world without humanity and entering the next world without it.

Walking across the blasted landscape to the graveyard, he stopped at the shallow grave he had dug out years ago. It was, no surprise, filled with the corpses of zombies and the charred bones of more corpses below. A fire pit of sorts. Nearby, he located a fuel canister that someone had left behind and pour the remaining contents over the fresher bodies. Flicking open the lighter Ariadne had sent him one Christmas -- a strange, but useful, gift -- he started the blaze.

Waking up in that shallow grave as a Vampire -- not a human turned Vampire, but a pure Vampire devoid of humanity -- had only been the starting point. For almost two months afterward, he had been on some sort of campaign of terror: killing dozens and feeding without regard for the Masquerade. Without the human elements blocking his memories, he felt that he might be able to retrace that path, but he wondered if it was worth it to do so. Toward the end of that road, the personality of Wendell had reasserted itself, and bound the Vampire for close to three years.

Inwardly, Wendigo suspected that there must have been a catalyst for that shift in the balance of power. Perhaps learning what it had been would reveal a weakness that he could correct.

But that was another mystery for another night.