In the inky darkness, Walt moved cautiously between boulders, casting about for a secluded spot to relieve himself. A lemon-sized prostate—hell, it might be a small grapefruit by now; he hadn’t been to a doctor in years—made urinating a slow and sometimes painful process. At ninety-six, he was nothing if not patient. As he stood, waiting for the trickle to start, the thought of what he had just accomplished made him smile. He had climbed Devils Tower, the last item on his bucket list. It was not lost on him that he had also claimed the record of being the oldest climber to mount the monolith. Walt experienced no guilt over bumping the eighty-seven-year-old from the title but had no interest in attempting other record-setting endeavors. All that remained was a sense of contentment.
He heard rustling sounds behind him.
“Hey, I need some privacy; can you find another spot?”
He got no answer. Probably the guide, who, thankfully, veered off in another direction. He returned his concentration to the task at hand and was rewarded with a dribble of urine leaving his body.
As he zipped up, he was grabbed from behind and jerked backwards. A sharp pain—a ten-out-of-ten pain—just under the jaw on the side of his neck caused him to cry out. As he fell to the ground, the hearing aid was ripped from his right ear. He lost consciousness.

***
“Walter!”
“Dad!”
“Waaalter!”
Walt’s eyes opened a crack. The Milky Way and thousands of stars came into view above him. The odor of loamy earth and the metallic scent of blood filled the air. He was cold, so very cold, and he felt every minute of his age.
“I’m here,” he rasped. “Here, help.”
Bill rushed to his side. “Dad, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I think I got knocked down?”
Terrence, their climbing guide, knelt and examined Walt, asking him to move each limb and shining a bright flashlight in his eyes. “You don’t seem to have broken any bones, but there’s a lot of blood near your ear; you must have hit your head on a rock. Your pupillary response is normal, so I don’t think you have a concussion.”
“We thought you’d walked off the edge,” Bill said.
Terrence helped Walt to his feet. “How’re you feeling?”
“Drained.”
“How about you sit for a while?” He tried to guide Walt to a nearby rock.
“No, I’m okay to start down if one of you can find my hearing aid. It popped out.”
“Found it,” Bill said a minute later. He wiped it off and handed it to Walt.
The device squealed as Walt guided it into his ear, then went quiet as he nudged it farther down the canal.
“Dad, are you sure you don’t want to rest before we head back?”
“Getting up here was the hard part. The rappel down should be a piece of cake, right Terrence?”
That, though, took another two hours, so the party made it down around midnight. After the short drive to the lodge, Terrence checked Walt’s pupils one more time. “I think you’re okay to sleep, but I can run you to the hospital in Spearfish if you’d like. And you should probably not have any alcohol tonight.”
“I did what I came to do. It’s time to hit the sack. I’m dead tired.”

***
Walt’s bladder woke him at five a.m.—same old, same old. He lay in bed thinking as he stared at a mushroom-shaped stain on the ceiling. “I’ve done everything I want to do in this world. I hope to join you soon, Jules.” His breath caught in his chest. God, how he missed her.
After a while, he got up. He expected muscle soreness and aching bones after hours of climbing that required jamming fingers, hands, and feet into the vertical cracks of the butte, but somehow he felt fine. He put in his hearing aids. In the bathroom, he found the cup he’d stored his dentures in only a few hours earlier, rinsed the top arcade, and opened his mouth. When he tried to push it into place, it wouldn’t go. He ran his tongue up to investigate, and it snagged on something. In the mirror over the sink he saw—teeth. What in the Sam Hill? Not only were there teeth where they hadn’t been for thirty-four years, his canines were unusually pointed. He stared at those points until a knock at the door startled him out of his fugue. Walt snapped his mouth shut. He opened the door to find a thin man in a shiny black suit standing in the hall. It was the ghost of Johnny Cash.
“I’m Mattias. May I come in?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a … friend. I’m here to give you some answers. May I come in?”
Walt invited him in, his curiosity tickled, and sat in one of the cloth-covered chairs. Mattias sat in the other, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankle.
“I’ll just get right to it. I am a vampire,” Mattias said, “and now you are, too.”
Walt stared at him.
“I didn’t mean to turn you. I should have stopped sooner. I’ve only had prairie dogs to feed on for the last few months, and they’ve gotten wise to my various forms. Now they see a shadow, squeal a warning, and the whole colony disappears down their holes. Anyway, no excuse. I’m the one who chose to stay in a sparsely populated area with more critters than people.”
Walt hadn’t registered anything after, “I am a vampire and now you are, too.”
“You’re probably wondering about the rules. One, you will not burn up and die if you go out in the sun, but if you spend too long in daylight, you will feel your energy depleted and need to feed within a few hours. Two, you don’t have to sleep during the day, or even in a coffin. Your Sleep Number bed or whatever you have will work fine.” He laughed. “Three—”
“Look, I’m almost ninety-six years old. I’m a widower. Yesterday I did the last big thing I intended to do before I die. Now you’re telling me, what? I’m going to live forever? I don’t want to live forever. I’ve earned a rest.”
“I understand, but other than having a wooden stake driven into your chest or getting decapitated, you will keep living. Or being undead, depending on the terminology you choose.” Mattias continued, “Three, you have lots of choices about how you feed: blood from an abattoir, blood bank, live animals, or people—each has pluses and minuses you have to weigh. And, finally, you’ll be able to physically change into a bat or wolf, which really helps if you choose to feed on living creatures.”
“That’s how you got me on the tower—you were a bat.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
Walt raised his eyebrows and shook his head in disbelief and disgust. This was jibber-jabber, and he still needed to pee. “Get out.”
On his way to the door, Mattias handed Walt a piece of paper. “Here’s my contact information and some suggestions for how to find other vampires in your area. You’re going to have questions. Don’t hesitate to call me, anytime.”

***
At breakfast, Terrence came over to check on Walt. “You look a lot better today. Did you sleep well?”
“I slept fine.”
Terrence examined the spot where Walt’s neck had been injured the night before, and he looked confused. “I don’t see any bruising at all. How can that be?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see it.” Walt suspected it was directly related to the news Mattias had dumped on him, but knew better than to share. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t even tell his son. It would only scare the bejesus out of him, worry him, or both.
Terrence shrugged and congratulated him again on his achievement.

***
Walt went back to Florida, and his son returned to Ohio. The Orlando Sentinel ran a short mention of his climbing accomplishment in the local interest section. Life returned to normal, except that it wasn’t and never would be.
Walt resumed his daily routine. He made the bed every morning with the precise hospital corners he’d learned in the Army, and he put cracked corn and seeds out for the squirrels and birds. He watched as wood ducks swam across the pond, and sandhill cranes hunted for bugs in the grass nearby.
His new normal demanded a novel self-maintenance routine. Every morning, he drank a glass of Gainesville Fresh Meat Company’s aptly named Fusion Cocktail: an ever-changing blend of beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken, duck, gator, and rabbit blood. He’d always heard that vampires lusted for blood, but he sipped with the enthusiasm of a four-year-old eating brussels sprouts. Twice a day, he rubbed some of Jules’s Olay Regenerist moisturizer, what his son called ‘Oil of Old Lady,’ on his face and bald head, but the wrinkles only deepened. His fingernails grew so long and thick he had to bring a Dremel tool in from the workshop to work on them. He trimmed the bush of hair that sprouted from his nostrils and ears daily. That used to be monthly task.
Even as he performed the upkeep, Walt searched for ways to end his life. He stopped taking his anticoagulant and beta-blocker, hoping his frequent episodes of atrial fibrillation would lead to stroke or, better yet, ventricular tachycardia, heart failure and, inevitably, death. He found a sharp, thick branch on one of the logs in his woodpile and threw himself on it. It crumbled under his leathery chest. He ate four d-CON rat baits and saw the green blocks, intact, in his stool the next day.
Walt remembered when he was ten, hearing his parents talk about a hobo falling asleep on the railroad tracks and being decapitated by the morning train. He headed for the tracks and lay with his neck draped like a wilted celery stalk over one of the rails. No trains came, and it was too hot and uncomfortable to lie there all day. He thought of hiring someone to kill him, but decided that even if he knew how to find a contract killer, it would probably cost an arm and a leg, and he was determined to leave his son, Bill, as much money as he could. Teaching geology at a land-grant college was not a lucrative profession. He finally called Mattias.
“It’s Walt. I need help killing myself.”
A deep exhalation was Mattias’s only response.
“You did this to me,” Walt said, “now you need to help fix it. I’ve tried several ways, but haven’t had any luck.”
Finally, with a touch of exasperation in his voice, Mattias spoke. “Being a vampire can be lonely, Walt, but it doesn’t have to be. Have you tried to make any friends, or found a Meetup group in your area?”
“No, I don’t want friends. I just want to die. Really die.”
“What’s your zip code?”
Walt told him and listened to the clicking of a keyboard.
“Okay, here’s one: Eternal Friends. It says they meet in the abandoned Minute Maid orange juice plant. Do you know the area?”
Walt had a thought: maybe he could meet someone who would help him die. “I’ll try it.”

***
The squatty Minute Maid office building sat across the parking lot from the factory and storage buildings. There were about forty people in the meeting room. No, about forty vampires. Walt wasn’t great with change. It took almost a year after his marriage for him to stop introducing Jules as his girlfriend. The thought of Jules brought tears to his eyes. He turned away from the group and dabbed at them. The white handkerchief came away with smears of red. When he turned back, the vampires were all staring at him. Walt broke the ice. “I’m looking for someone to help me with a problem.” He watched for a reaction.
The group remained hushed, but one of the vampires, a man in his twenties, Walt guessed, stepped forward with his mouth gaping.
“Sir, we’re honored by your presence,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Thomas.” Other vampires came up and repeated similar sentiments as they introduced themselves.
What had he walked into? Did he look like someone they knew? A movie star? Jules always told him he looked like Kirk Douglas. Maybe that was it, the dimple in his chin.
The vampires formed a semi-circle in front of Walt and seemed to be waiting for him to speak.
“Do you greet all new members like this?”
“Sir, we’ve never had a Nosferatu in our midst. We are a bit taken aback.”
“A what in your midst?”
“Nosferatu, sir, one of the truly old ones.”
You didn’t live to ninety-six without facing ageism a time or two. He soldiered on. “Would any of you be willing to kill me?”
No one spoke for an awkward moment, and then a vampire with curly red hair said, “Pardon? We don’t want to kill you; we’d like to learn from you. The things you must have seen through the centuries—”
“I’m not following. I never heard of a nosteratoo. I was an old man, minding my own business, who got bit by a vampire.”
“Nosferatu are legend among vampires. It’s believed that they’re vampires who’ve survived for thousands of years, or they could be horribly disfigured vampires, or even alien beings. Opinion is also split over whether they are benevolent savants or malicious creatures. Hence, our curiosity.”
That was clear as mud. Suggesting Walt was horrifically disfigured was just plain rude but he needed a recruit, so he held his tongue. He spent most of the next hour taking questions and talking about himself. When he said that he had become a vampire only seven months earlier, the group seemed dubious. What about the bald head, wrinkled, leathery face, and the thick, curled nails on his withered hands? The bald head was genetic, passed down from his mama’s side. The leathery skin came from growing up in Florida, before sunscreen was widely used. The nails, he confessed, were a new thing. When the vampires had satisfied their curiosity, he asked again if anyone would kill him. Again, they thought he was joking. Most of the group drifted off, leaving Thomas and two others.
“I like you, Walt. You’re a hoot,” said Thomas.
“Thank you. You seem like a smart young whipper-snapper.”
“Why on Earth would you want to die?”
“I’ve lived a full life; now I’m ready to join my wife in heaven. I never was a religious person, and I may not be heading upstairs, but Jules was so devout, I have to try. Plus I have a bad heart, a huge prostate, two fake knees, and I can’t hear squat without my hearing aids.”
Thomas’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought being able to hear a tick fart was part of the package.”
Mattias, too, had been surprised when he learned that Walt didn’t have the exquisite senses other vampires enjoyed. He had asked around, and the consensus was that becoming a vampire at such an advanced age did not cure existing deficiencies. Walt might be protected from harm going forward, but pre-existing conditions would not be magically healed. His heart would continue to be erratic; his prostate would maintain its death grip on his urethra. The new teeth were an exception.
Later in the evening, a female vampire, tattoos of snakes encircling her arms and neck, suggested that Walt seek out a vampire named Vinny who was rumored to have been a gang member when he was a young man in Chicago. “He might kill you, or know someone who would. He’s at a biker vamp meetup tonight, but he should be back next month.”
“Do you have his phone number? I’d like to get this set up sooner than later.”
“Sorry, I don’t.”

***
Walt returned the following month. This time, the room didn’t go silent and staring, but there were a lot of vampires who hadn’t been there the month before, and he spent a good thirty minutes answering their questions before he finally saw the woman with the snake tattoos.
“Is Vinny here?”
“No. But I ran into him the other night. I told him you were looking for him.” She flipped her hair and handed him a slip of paper with a phone number.
Walt left the hall to find a quiet spot and dialed the number.
“Go for Vinny.”
“Vinny, this is Walt. Maybe the vampire with all the snakes told you about me?”
“She said you wanted to be whacked.”
“Yes. I’m looking for someone to kill me. I don’t want to be … this for eternity.”
Vinny agreed to decapitate Walt for a thousand bucks. He wanted the money up front. “I’ll meet you at the Butcher Block downtown tomorrow morning at nine. I’ll be at the booth in the back left corner. You pay me, then we can talk about how and when this is gonna happen.”
Walt returned to the meeting hall and started mingling, a great weight lifted from his shoulders. At some point, the door opened, and a strikingly beautiful woman walked in. As she headed his way, Walt’s heart ceased beating, or so it seemed. Hubba, Hubba. She was a real looker. A stab of guilt, and Walt looked quickly away. Jules, you always said it didn’t matter where I got my appetite.
“I’m Vera. You must be the new guy.”
“Uhhhh.” Walt forgot his manners, forgot his name, forgot everything. Vera smiled and waited. When his mind finally clicked back on, he stuttered his name but couldn’t look away from her brown eyes.
“You really got tongues wagging around here,” Vera said. “I can see why everyone thought you were Nosferatu. No offense.” Her smile was intoxicating.
“None taken,” he said, acutely aware of their age difference. For once, Walt was glad he resembled a nosteratoo. He couldn’t fathom any other reason Vera would be so interested in him.
“Tell me about yourself.”
“There’s not much to tell. My wife died thirty-one years ago. We have a son, two grandkids, and five great-grandkids. I made a bucket list, finished everything on it, and was ready to join my wife. Then my neck got chewed, and I have nothing to look forward to but more of the same. I’m working on changing that, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in negotiations to have my head lopped off.”
“Good lord, no. You don’t want to do that.”
“This isn’t my world anymore. Nobody is civil. People treat others horribly and would rather play on their phones than have to talk to each other. You have to use a computer for everything.”
Vera looked thoughtful. “Can I take you out on my boat tomorrow? We’ll laze about on Lake Griffin and talk. If you like to fish, you can do that.”

***
The aromas of coffee, baking bread, and pork sausages filled the air as Walt entered the Butcher Block. He was a longtime regular. A waitress carrying three plates of steaming food said, “Hey, Walt. Long time,” as she rushed past him. He worried about being recognized, then realized he wasn’t planning anything illegal. Vinny might need to be concerned, but not him. He made it to the back booth and stopped short.
“Are you Vinny?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t expect you to be black.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to be Nosferatu. Deal’s off. I ain’t tryin’ to kill no Nosferatu, get a bounty on my head.”
“I’m not nosteratoo; I’m just old. I mean, I was already old when I got bitten.”
“That’s what a sneaky Nosferatu would say. Not falling for that; I’m out.”
Walt let loose a long, low-pitched fart that ended in a watery sputter like someone gargling.
Vinny gagged. “That’s straight up foul. What’s wrong with you?”
“I told you, I’m old. My bowels are old. That’s why I want to die.”
“Smells like you already did.”
“So, do you want the job or not?”
“You got the money?”
Walt fished in his pocket and pulled out the folded paper.
“Is that a check?”
“What’s wrong with a check?”
“Come on, dude. I do Venmo, Bitcoin, ApplePay.”
“Okay, how about I meet you back here with cash tomorrow?”
“No can do. I’ll see you Friday, 9 a.m. sharp. With cash. And the price went up. Bring $1,500 in small bills.”

***
Walt begrudgingly enjoyed the wind in his arm hair as Vera powered her boat to a secluded area. As promised, she had poles and worms, so Walt threw out a line.
“So, tell me more,” she said. “What did you do for a living? What was your wife like? I want to know it all.”
She was easy to talk to, and Walt found he was quite candidly telling her his story. He stopped. “This has got to be boring for a young woman like you.”
“Not at all. I really like you, Walt.”
“I’m way too old for you.”
“Are you kidding me? How old are you?”
“I just turned ninety-six.”
“Well, I’m two hundred and thirty-five, so I’m the one robbing the cradle.”
Walt blinked. “But you look …”
“I was twenty-seven when I was turned. All this,” she swept her hand down along her body, “is still under warranty.”
She laughed. When Walt heard the little snort at the end of that laugh, his knees almost buckled. He wanted to hear it again.

***
Vera insisted Walt come to her condo that evening, after she’d had a chance to clean up. Walt suspected she was making a project of him. He was a skinny, big-eyed puppy she had to save. He found he didn’t mind so much.
“Can the hostess get you a Bloody Mary?”
“Much obliged, but I only drink animal blood.”
“Silly, there’s no ‘Mary’ in it, just cow blood, a dash of Tabasco, and a skewered olive to doll it up.”
Vera returned with two drinks, placed one on the coffee table in front of Walt, and plopped into an arm chair with the other. “What you said about this not being your world—I understand. I’ve felt the same way many times over the centuries. But the deal is, things will change. They always do.”
Walt stayed silent, thinking. Vera exuded the confidence of an elder and her optimism was comforting. Then again, she’d lived her two-hundred-plus years as a healthy twenty-seven-year-old.
“How are you planning to kill yourself?”
“Machete. I’m getting someone else to do it. I’ve tried to kill myself, and it never worked.
“When is it supposed to happen?”
“I don’t know—and I don’t want to. He’s supposed to sneak up on me.”
“Would Jules want this for you?”
He hadn’t even thought of it that way. Of course Jules wouldn’t approve. “No, I don’t think she would. She was a woman of faith.”
“She would want you to live your best life?”
“Yes.”
The next night, Vera welcomed Walt into a darkened condo where several vanilla candles burned and Johnny Mathis sang “Remember When.”
Walt pulled out his handkerchief again. “That’s one of my favorite songs. It always gets to me.”
“I want to get to you.”
They sat together on the couch and talked. Vera shared her story. Born in 1757, the eldest daughter of a wealthy New York landowner, she was courted by many men, none of whom interested her. Her mother fretted that Vera would end up a spinster. At age twenty-seven, when spinsterhood appeared inevitable, Vera met the perfect man and, after a short courtship, was to be married. Two days before the wedding, however, her fiancé’s brother guzzled her blood and showed her what forever really meant. “He was a very handsome man, with none of his brother’s character. His arrogance was stunning—he assumed I would be flattered to be his bride. Because of him, I lost my family and the man I loved.” The candles had burned halfway when she snuggled against him and tenderly kissed his cheek.
“Many years ago, that would have given me an erection.”
“Did you not enjoy it, or can’t you get an erection?”
“Oh, I can have an erection as long as I pump it up myself. I have an implant.”
Vera appeared fascinated. “Does it hiss as you’re pumping?”
“It’s filled with some kind of fluid, so it’s quiet.”
“Let’s take it for a drive.”

***
Vinny’s chromed-out Harley was parked in the handicap space in front of the Butcher Block. Walt shook his head as he walked by. Once a lawbreaker, always a lawbreaker. He found Vinny in the back corner and handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
“I’m calling off the deal. This is just a thank you.”
“What changed in four days?”
“I met someone.”