Chapter Seven
Phil
I returned to the Jacobsons’ home and could just sense the wave of doom in the air. Somehow, I knew this wasn’t going to go the way I‘d wanted, and it made me sick. The knots in my stomach began to tighten as I thought about what the outcome would be if their son continued to refuse the injection.
Just, get ahold of yourself, man.
Frustrated, I pulled the visor mirror down and looked at my reflection. What I saw was normal for me but very unsettling at the same time. As usual, I looked… perfect. Every hair was in place, my blue eyes were vibrant and bright, and hell, even my teeth looked like they could be in one of those toothpaste commercials.
Clenching my jaw, I slammed the visor shut. How could I look that good on the outside, when deep down, I felt like such a monster?
I remembered asking him, when I was a young child, if we were monsters, since we drank blood to survive. His stock answer was always, “No, Phil, we are not monsters, we are blessed.”
Our lineage went to the beginning of time and he’d often tell me of the mortals who’d been the true monsters. Attila the Hun, Maximilien Robespierre, Idi Amin Dada, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Caligula and Adolf Hitler.
I remember cringing on his lap as he would tell the stories.
“There was once a Countess named Elizabeth Bathory,” he’d once said. “Now, she had been a true monster. This woman believed that the blood of young girls would make her youthful. She’d killed over six-hundred-and fifty young girls, using their blood for her baths, smearing their blood on her face. But, alas, she was wrong. Once the people found out what she had done, they locked her alone a room, and she died four years later. Son, now that is a monster.”
Unfortunately, I still felt like a monster at times.
Sighing, I got out of the car and strode to the front door. I rang the doorbell and only waited a moment before Mrs. Jacobson opened the door.
She quickly pulled me inside. “He's gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
She smiled grimly. “Tyler.”
My stomach dropped. “Shit.”
Just then, Mr. Henderson walked down the stairs, looking uneasy. “He took off last night.”
I rubbed my forehead in frustration as he continued.
“I… I… went up to his room, you know, to do what I had to do. But when I reached Tyler's door, it was locked.” He cleared his throat and continued. “He wouldn’t open the door, and I was so angry that I just broke it down. When I stepped inside, I noticed his window was opened. He must have climbed down the trellis and took off.”
“What do we do now?” Mrs. Henderson asked while nervously rubbing her hands together. “His car was also gone; we spent the entire night searching for him.”
I looked at both Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson and had a gut feeling that they were telling the truth.
“What kind of car does Tyler have?” I asked, pulling out a small notepad.
“It's a gray 2006 Nissan Altima,” Mr. Jacobson answered. “License plate number is MNF384.”
I wrote down the information and thanked them.
“Unfortunately,” I said quietly, “we have unfinished business here.”
They both looked at me in confusion.
I reached into my back pocket and produced a syringe, one that contained a serum that would destroy an Eternal. The one my father had created. I quickly grabbed Mrs. Jacobson by the back of her blouse.
“No! No!” shouted her husband as he rushed toward us. “My wife! My beautiful wife! Please, please… don’t hurt her!”
I raised the syringe and plunged it into his chest.
Horrified, he looked at me, his wife, and then finally to the needle that was protruding from his chest. Then tears streamed down his cheeks as he fell to his knees.
“Nooooooo!” wailed Mrs. Jacobson. “Please don't die, baby, I love you so much!”
Mr. Jacobson fell to his knees, and within seconds, his body erupted in flames. Then, as quickly as the fire started, it was gone, leaving only a pile of ashes.
Mrs. Jacobson, trembling in terror, turned to me. “Please, Phil,” she begged. “You don't have to do this. I promise, I will find Tyler, and we’ll make sure your secret is safe... I promise!”
I did not want to prolong the agony of this any longer, nor did I want to give her any hope that there could be any other outcome. I had orders, and if I was caught disobeying them, I’d be dead.
Straightening up, I took a deep breath and pulled her toward me. “I truly am sorry,” I whispered, plunging another syringe into her chest.
She fell to the floor, and within seconds, there were two piles of ashes at my feet.
Sighing, I quickly made an exit. I then drove away from the Jacobsons’ home clasping the steering wheel with shaky hands. I knew that killing them was the only answer, but it still made me sick to my stomach. I just hoped as time went on this would become easier.
Why is this choice so difficult for some of them? I wondered. Who wouldn’t want to stay young and healthy for the rest of their lives?
I thought back to the day when my father had explained to me and the other recruiters of how we were actually doing these people a favor. We were giving them to chance to live the life most people dreamed of.
“Sit down,” said my father, Dane Slatter, through tight lips. He was one of only a handful of full-blooded Eternals left in the world. “I don't have all day, and we have a lot of material to cover.”
We quickly grabbed our seats around the conference table.
I looked around - Big John, Steve, and Gina Montgomery. The four of us had been hand-chosen by my father for this special assignment. We were the ones he trusted the most, and knew how important this assignment actually was.
“I know you are all aware that we have finally found success in creating DD8. Now, after several trials, we are finally ready to set the plan into motion.”
We all sat up straighter.
“I have already done the market research in our first test market,” he continued. “Unfortunately, not many people will have the honor of becoming an Eternal.”
“Why not?” Gina interrupted. “Wasn't that the point of DD8? To make as many Eternals as possible to ensure that we would become the majority?”
“NO!” my father barked. “We are not just going to make anyone an Eternal! The Eternals we want to bring into our fold have to fit a certain criteria.” “Here,” he said, giving us each a piece of paper. “These are the pre-qualifying factors that each person must meet:
1. Individuals must be between fifteen and fifty-five years of age.
1. Individuals must be financially stable (i.e. two-income homes and must make the minimum of one hundred grand a year.)
2. Individuals must have a current health form stating that they are in good health
I was well aware of my father's criteria. He told me once that he refused to have any poor, losers or vagrants as Eternals. His belief was that if someone could prove that they were hard-working and ambitious, they would be the most deserving, and typically the type of individual who would jump at the opportunity to become immortal. He’d already worked with many CEOs and leaders of various organizations, and had noticed that they’d all shared similar qualities - the need to succeed, regardless of whom they harmed on the rise to the top and greed, even though many had more money than they could spend in a lifetime, they still always wanted more.
“Okay,” my father continued, as he handed each of us a large stack of papers. “What you have there, are the list of the families that you will be visiting. We’re going to start with Hugo, because they are a much newer community. The neighbors will be less likely to get into other people’s business, and we want to be able to visit their homes, without prying eyes watching our every move.”
I stared at the information on my stack of papers. I’d heard of Hugo. It was a small growing community in Minnesota and home to a lot of younger families who tended to earn decent salaries. At least that’s what my father had explained to me.
“Do you really think these people are going to let us into their homes?” Gina asked.
It was a great question, one that I had asked him in the beginning stages of DD8.
“Yes, they will,” he answered, glancing at each one of us. “Once you tell people that by accepting this gift their children will never get sick, old, or feel any pain, ever, their emotions will get the best of them,” he continued, “then their egos will kick in. Just the thought of being immortal, like a god, and,” he snapped his fingers, “bang, we got 'em hooked.”
***
I returned to the Jacobsons’ home later in the day to see if Tyler had returned. When there was no sign of him, I decided to stake it out, for just a little bit.
I parked several houses down and watched, my stomach growling.
Shit, I should have fed.
I’d been very fortunate growing up that I’d never had to kill anyone myself for food. My family had been wealthy enough that we’d had other Eternals go out and get our meals for us. Of course, I’d been well aware of where the blood had come from, but it was easy to push aside the facts when sustenance was always neatly bottled in the fridge and waiting for me.
My stomach growled again.
Although we drink blood to survive, there were some Eternals who liked to compare themselves to vampires, which I thought was totally ridiculous.
Totally ridiculous.
Most importantly, vampires are not real. They are fictional creatures. that apparently, and according to the latest craze of vampire movies, now glitter in the sun. I guess one would say that compared to vampires, Eternals are pretty boring. We don't shimmer in the sun, we can’t move at lightning speed, we don't have super strength, and we certainly can’t turn into bats. The up side is that the sun does not bother us and holy water can't kill us. The only thing we have in common with vampires is that we definitely need blood to survive.
And boy can we survive!
Although, admittedly, being an Eternal does come with drawbacks. For one, our bodies stop aging at the age of twenty-five, which sounds good, but can be complicated, especially when everyone else keeps aging around you. My father, who I tell everyone is my brother, and I have actually moved around so much that I have lost track of all the different cities we have lived. He looks twenty-five on the outside, but he is over two-hundred and fifty years old. I am only twenty-one, the same age my mother was when she met my dad, so I have four more years before I reach full maturity.
I thought about my mother and wondered if my father would ever share more information about her with me. Although she’d been human, he had fallen head-over-heels for her. Knowing it would never work, he’d tried denying the feelings he’d had, but it had been too late. Before he could break it off, she’d become pregnant and he’d ended up marrying her. Sadly, she died in childbirth and I’m not sure what went wrong, as my father refuses to talk about it. I still carry an old worn picture of her in my wallet, however. Many days I’d pull it out and stare at it for hours, wondering what would have happened if she’d have survived.
Pushing my mother and blood out of my mind, I played Candy Squash on my phone. It was such a dumb-ass game, but it was so damn addicting. Just when I was about to pass a level I’d been stuck on, I saw a young blonde girl knocking on the Jacobsons’ door. I stopped playing and watched her.
She waited for a few minutes at the doorway, and then ran off when nobody answered.
I tried to follow her with my car, but she zig-zagged through a couple of homes, and I lost her.
Who was that? Maybe a girlfriend?
I went back to the house, waited around for another hour, and then left, calling it a day. I needed blood and if I waited too long, my mood would only get worse.
The next day, I went back to Tyler’s home in the early morning, but there was still no sign of him. I played a little more Candy Squash, eventually throwing my phone against the windshield when I couldn’t get past the next level.
Damn game.
I sat in the car, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, birds singing, a lone dog in the distance barking, and the occasional car that would pass me by. I thought it was a decent place to live, one you’d see in a typical new subdivision - perfectly landscaped lawns, two and three-story homes with two or three, stall garages. Unfortunately, I’d never lived in a neighborhood like this. My father had always insisted on living in condos in the city. He thought that living in the suburbs would be as much fun as watching paint dry.
“Son,” he’d say. “I love the city life and the commotion. Something is always happening.”
Not me, though, I thought, stretching my arms. I could get used to living in the suburbs.
I was getting lost in my thoughts, once again, when I saw her again. The blonde girl had returned, and this time she had a small red-haired girl with her. I pulled out my pair of binoculars and watched the pair ring the front doorbell. After a few seconds, the blonde ran off toward the back of the house, followed by the other girl.
What the hell are they up to?
I quickly left my car and quietly made my way near the back of the home, hiding on the other side of a fence. I could hear them talking.
“It should be under here,” one of them said.
I stole a glance and noticed that the blonde had retrieved a key from underneath a grill top.
Must be a girlfriend, or possibly a family member? How would she know where the family hid their house key?
The two young girls raced back around the house and opened the front door.
I hastily went back to my car and waited to see what would happen next. After about ten minutes or so, the girls walked out. They had their heads down and seemed to be talking to each other.
Did they see the ashes?
Of course they did, you dumbass, I thought, mentally kicking myself. You should have cleaned up your mess.
This time I was determined that I would not lose the blonde. I followed them at a safe distance until they entered a bakery. They went inside for a few minutes and then left, apparently without purchasing anything. Then, their next stop was a coffee/bistro. I parked my car and watched through the windows as they sat down. After a few minutes, I decided to go inside.
When I entered the coffee shop, the smell of newly crushed coffee beans was a delight to my senses. I‘d always loved the smell of coffee, and it was times like this that I wished I could drink the delectable smelling concoction.
I thought back to when I was six years old.
“Dad,” I called out, while a commercial interrupted my favorite television show. “Can we please, please, please go to McDonald's?” I wanted to try the chicken nuggets that were on T.V. “Those kids look happy when they eat those chicken things.”
“Son,” my father replied. “You and I have gone over this a hundred times…”
I stomped my foot. “I know, but it is not fair! I want a McNugget!!”
“If you eat that food, Phil, you will get sick.”
“I will not!” I argued.
He smirked. “Fine, let's go.”
When he pulled into the McDonald's drive thru, I was actually pretty shocked. My father was usually a very stubborn man.
“One kid’s meal with nuggets,” my dad said loudly into a menu of food.
“No, Dad! MCNUGGETS!” I yelled, worried that I would get the wrong order and not look like one of those happy kids I’d seen on television.
“McNuggets,” repeated my father, sounding a little annoyed.
Unfortunately, he made me wait until we got home before I could dig into that deliciously smelling cardboard box that had a big yellow smile on it.
We took the elevator up to the penthouse level where our condo was located and I was practically bouncing on the walls of the elevator, willing it to move faster.
“Go to the table.”
I ran and took a seat. He handed me the box and I tore it open. Inside was a smaller box. I opened it and took one out, examining the nugget. It was light brown, and had a weird shape to it. I shoved it into my mouth, expecting to be amazed, but… there was nothing.
I could taste nothing.
I could feel the chicken moving around in my mouth as I chewed, but there was no taste whatsoever.
I quickly grabbed another one and it was the same thing.
Hmm? I thought, Maybe they were bad?
I grabbed a few French fries, hoping they’d be different but…. nope.
Sadly, I looked at my Happy Meal box and was pretty pissed off that I was not smiling like the kids I’d seen on the television commercial.
I spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom, throwing up, and I never attempted human food again.
“How many?” the elderly woman asked at the front register.
“Ah, um… one please,” I replied, a little distracted.
“Here you go, hun,” she said, handing me a menu. “The special is tuna-and-rye with tomato soup.”
“Thank you.” I smiled and looked up at her. Unsurprisingly, she reacted to me as most females did. I could already see the faint blush creeping up to her cheeks.
“My pleasure, hun. Your waitress will be right with you.”
“Okay.”
I watched her walk away, and then focused my attention to the reason why I was here. The blonde and red-head were only a few tables, away. I could tell they were having a deep conversation, but, unfortunately, I was not close enough to hear what they were saying.
When the waitress came by, I ordered a black coffee. Just because I couldn't drink it, didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the aroma.