"It truly is a dark day in American history."

Nadia Pollock turned off the TV, making Chris cry out in complaint.

"I was watching that!"

"That's enough for today," she sighed. "They're just going to show the same footage over and over. How many times do they think we want to watch such a horrible thing?"

"Its human nature, sweetie," George Pollock piped up from his spot on the bed. "We dread destruction, but when something terrible happens we can't get enough of it. They'll show the twin towers collapsing as many times as they please and advertise all the latest cars along with it."

Chris's mother crossed her arms. "I wish you wouldn't be so cynical in front of our son. He's just a child, he only just started middle school yesterday!"

"And what a way to kick it off."

"Come on, mom, please?" Chris pleaded. "Just one more hour? You know, I'm watching history here! Wouldn't you want me to share these memories with my children?"

Nadia pinched the bridge of her nose. Her son could be so manipulative, and normally she just gave In, but this time she didn't exactly feel like embedding one of the worst days in America history into his memory.

"They're just going to show that footage in school anyway," the tree the apple fell from chimed in. "It's better off if he sees it now. He understands it. He needs to, we only live half an hour away from the World Trade Center."

"He would have understood a description, he's a smart boy. Please go to bed, baby, it's almost nine."

"Alright," Christian groaned.

"Here, I'll put him to bed," George said, getting up.

He pushed his long, jet black hair over his right shoulder, picking Christian up and swinging him over his left shoulder. Chris laughed, waving to his perpetually worried mother as he left their bedroom. His father carried him down the hall to his own room. Chris grew annoyed, however, as he could hear his father's rescued parrots still squawking away downstairs. He grunted as his tossed him down onto the bed playfully, looking up.

"How come I've got to go to bed before the birds?"

"The birds don't have a bedtime, but you do."

"When do I get to have a bird?"

"When you're old enough. You only just turned 11 last month, kid. Slow your roll. You have a long way to go before you can properly care for and appreciate such magnificent creatures."

"How come you don't just rescue birds for a living if you love them so much?"

"Because it's a good thing to do, but I also need to make money so we can live in our nice house, eat good food, and wear the clothes we want. Doing good doesn't get you money, and honestly, I don't think it should. Still need cash, though. Anymore questions?"

Christian thought for a moment, his eyes trailing along as his elderly yellow lab made her way up to the bed using the pet stairs they'd set up for her, laying down next to him. He draped his arm over her.

"... Do you think Bella is going to die soon?"

"Everything dies eventually," said George. "But I hope she stays with us for a long time."

"Me too," said Christian. "... Can I watch the Daily Show with you tomorrow?"

"Only if your mom is working late."

"... Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think the President handled this situation well? Cause I kind of feel like he could have done better, all things considered."

"Bush has the grace and elegance of a turd. Of course he handled this badly. He has the brain of a walnut. It's Dick Cheney that's calling the shots, and lord knows what that garbage bag of mayonnaise is going to do about this nightmare. Probably use it as an excuse to go to war, I'll bet you that much."

Christian nodded, laughing. "... Hey, my history teacher said yesterday she's going to have us do a heritage project. We were supposed to find out where our surnames came from and tell her today but. Y'know."

"And you forgot to ask yesterday."

"Yep."

George chuckled. "I don't know where our surname comes from nation wise. I just know that your great-great-grandfather picked it out of a hat when the government was making his family get a surname. If that never happened, you wouldn't even have a surname... or maybe you'd have your mother's. Who knows?"

"He literally picked it out of a hat?"

"What was he supposed to do? They didn't have phone books back then. Anymore questions now?"

"... No I don't think so."

"Okay. Goodnight, buddy."

"Goodnight."

As his father turned out the light and was about to exit the room, a new thought popped into Christians head, one that made his eyebrows furrow with worry.

"... Dad?"

"Yes?" His dad asked, hanging back with his hand in the doorknob.

"... Are you scared?"

"I don't know, are you scared?"

"A little," Chris admitted.

His father walked back over to him, sitting on the edge of the bed. His dark eyes sparkled under the glow of the nightlight Chris was too old to have but still did anyway.

"Scary things happen a lot," his father said softly. "My father lived through JFK getting assassinated and that was scary. I lived through the Challenger blowing up, and that was scary. Before then people lived through the Holocaust, the Great Depression, and slavery. Now people are out there living through a terrorist attack. Its terrible, yes. We don't know what's going to happen next or if the people will hurt us today are gonna try again. But I'll tell you what. The world may be a scary place, but I've found over the years that as long as you have people you love with you, you can get through anything scary and terrible just fine."

"That's cheesy."

"That's life. I'm not scared of terrorism because I have you and your mother, Bella, the birds, your grandparents, and Jon Stewart."

Chris smiled. "... Okay."

"You good now?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, now goodnight."

"Goodnight. I love you."

"I love you too, Christian."

━━━━━━━━━━━

Chris groaned and rolled over, the alarm on his phone making that familiar beeping pattern. He would just throw it at the wall if it hadn't cost like $500. Fucking Apple, it was truly the face of American consumerism. He swiped at his phone tiredly, trying to get it to turn off. Finally, Eli leaned over him, leaving a kiss on the back of his head as he turned off the alarm for him.

"... Thanks," Chris said. "What are you doing up so early?"

"I checked the forums when I woke up around 5AM as usual, but stuck around because things are getting a little.. intense today."

"What kind of intense?" Chris asked, sitting up.

He pet the animal closest to him, his white Pomeranian dubbed Kipper. He wasn't sure how he'd ended up with so many pets. Honestly, his heart was just too big to refuse an animal in need. The only creatures in his menagerie of paws and claws that he'd actually purchased were his saltwater fish when he was getting super big into being an aquarist, and even then he'd done meticulous research to make sure each one was captive bred instead of wild caught. Yes, even the clown fish. And that was a pain in the ass, because clown fish took as well to breeding in captivity as giant pandas. Which is to say, they don't.

"Hey, are you dozing back off over there?"

Chris blinked out of his thoughts. It was easy for him to fade out when he wasn't fully awake. "Yeah, yeah, what's going on in the forums?"

Eli smirked, his ice blue eyes crinkling. "As I was saying before your mind astral projected into another plane of existence, there's this far left group on the forums right now talking about killing Trump."

Chris yawned. "What else is new? You see that shit on human forums too."

He stood up, stretching. He didn't exactly understand his boyfriend's obsession with staying in touch with the vampire world. He himself was just fine blending in with humanity. To almost everyone, he was just a normal 27 year old guy. Well, about as normal as he could be perceived to be between all his quirks and habits. Eli, on the other hand, lived for it, despite feigning the appearance of a normal guy in his mid-20s as well. But, then again, he was born in the 1800s, so maybe he had the right.

"I know it's to be expected, but, come on. This is getting intense. All these sites are going nuts."

"How many sites are these, exactly?"

"There are at least two versions ripping off every human social media surface web platform."

Chris snorted. "Welcome to the dark web, where we have drugs, child porn, and vampire Facebook."

Eli shook his head. "Everywhere I go I keep seeing this copy and pasted message from this chick, Anastasia. She said she's gonna change the world today and everyone's freaking out a bit. My friends and I are agreeing that she might do something to try and out our species."

"Then the cryptozoologists are gonna have a fucking field day," Chris joked.

He grabbed the leftover bottles of water he'd hoarded, planning on using them to refill the water bowl he left out for his cats. Eli looked at him, exasperated.

"Look, I know you let everything go over your head despite being painfully socially aware at the same time, but listen to me. I don't think these are idle threats. I think something bad is going to go down. I can feel it I the air, it's the same electricity that comes before a storm."

Chris sighed softly, putting the bottles down for a moment. He walked back over to the bed, climbing on top of it and running his fingers through Eli's hair.

"No matter what happens, it'll be fine, okay? ... Do you need me to stay home?"

"No, you've been working all weekend on that practical. I wouldn't want you to miss it."

"Oh wow, thank you, you just saved my life," Chris grumbled sarcastically.

Eli laughed, planting a kiss on his cheek. "I'll take care of the animals, you go get some blood and coffee in your stomach. No matter what, I think today's gonna be a big day"

The formaldehyde was fogging Christian's brain. Of course he had to be the one supervising the part of the practical that involved sticking pins in dead rabbits. Two years of technical school and all it got him was a short while in a practice and what seemed like would now be an eternity of teaching. Not that he didn't want to teach the future vet techs of America, it's just that some of them were stupid. All he had to do was look over their shoulders at the answers they jotted down to know that. At this point, he couldn't even tell if it was a failure on the part of him and his

co-workers or if his class was just that infuriatingly ignorant no matter how much material they tried their best to shove in their brains.

"Look at you, Mr. Grumpy Gus! What do you have against those trays?"

He turned to his co-worker, Sam, a short bubbly blonde with a large

port-wine stain birthmark on her arm that he always ended up staring at when she was talking to him. He hadn't even realized how hard he'd been scrubbing the tray the cadavers had been on. As he noticed, the scraping sensation made his teeth grit, and he put the sponge down.

"... Sam, these kids are a lost cause. I saw one of them write a celebrity's name in place a of muscle's name. It's like the 2016 election all over again."

"Don't you mention that year in my presence!" Sam joked. "Listen, let me take over. You can just do a headcount on the bodies."

"You are really good at making us sound like serial killers, you know that?"

Sam laughed, taking the tray from his hand and moving in front of the sink. Chris wandered off out of the anatomy room and to the nearby freezer, where they kept the cadavers, which was just rabbits and small dogs the imported from Mexico. He didn't particularly care, but they had to have extra security to protect the building from animal rights nuts because of this fact.

"Christian?"

He peered out of the freezer to see his other co-worker, Molly. She was carrying a load of stuff, as per usual, her geriatric Doberman trailing behind on her nautical themed leash.

"Yep?" He replied.

"Something weird's going on with Anna, she told me to bring my stuff back here because we need to hide or something."

"... Hide from what?"

"That's a million dollar question," Molly said. "I think sleep deprivation has gone to her head. You may wanna grab Brody."

Chris nodded, walking out of the back area of classrooms and into the lobby, where the neat row of four offices was. He walked into his own office, picking up his Hyacinth macaw, the bird his father had given him for his 13th birthday. When they got Brody he was small, scared, and barely eating; given up by his owners who couldn't take care of such a unique and challenging animal. Now, he was happy, friendly, and basically an adolescent even though he still acted like a toddler, the way all parrots naturally do. Chris grabbed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, peering into Anna's office. She had on her cheaters, staring intensely at the computer screen in front of her.

"What's going on?" Chris asked.

"I don't know, I'm watching a live stream of CNN right now," Anna said. "They're telling everyone to evacuate to a safe place. Just go to the AP lab, I'll meet you there."

Chris frowned, walking back down the long corridor and reentering the room he'd been in previously. Molly and Sam looked up, both with concerned expressions on their faces.

"What's going on?" Molly asked.

"I don't know, but apparently CNN is doing a bit of fear-mongering so it's either something really bad or really stupid."

"Was there a shooting?" Was Sam's immediate reaction.

"I don't know," Chris replied. "Whatever it is, it must be going on close by. I hope the world is finally ending."

"Oh, shush." Sam scolded.

The sound of loud heels came down the hallway, and Anna popped in, her laptop in her arms and her eyes wild.

"Oh my God, you need to see this," she said.

She placed the laptop down on one of the tables. Chris looked over her shoulder, his eyes focusing on the reporter on screen. He recognized the newscaster's face, but couldn't put a name to it if you paid him. All their words turned to incomprehensible gibberish as the screen cut to footage that was a warning of

"extremely graphic and disturbing" there was the president, standing at a rally in New Hampshire. Chris's eyebrows shot up.

"Did someone finally shoot the bastard?" He asked.

"Shh!" Anna hissed. "Worse."

Suddenly, a blur appeared on the screen, and within a span of a blink there was blood spurting everywhere. Sam groaned and looked away, while Molly pushed forward, her blue eyes wide and wild with fear and fascination.

"Son of a bitch!" She cried.

Brody mimicked her almost comically, having picked up the phrase from Eli as it was what he said whenever he hurt himself or was frustrated. Chris didn't even wince at the shouts, though. He was transfixed by the image on screen. A woman now stood at the podium, covered in blood and holding Trump's head in her hand, as if she was a mixture of Hamlet and the controversial Kathy Griffin image from the year previous.

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too!" The woman quotes Stephen King loudly over the screams of the crowd, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. "They don't just live inside of you, and now they'll always win! We are tired of your tyranny, your reign of fear, horror, and violence even more terrible than something one of us could ever do! Now, the tables have turned, my friends! Now we will rule over you!"

Chris didn't bother to stick around for the rest of the clip. He exited the building quickly, going around the side of it leaning against the sturdy brick wall. Both his stomach and mind were churning. Suddenly, like an angel sent from above, he heard Eli's voice. The other vampire ran across the parking lot. Instead of saying "I told you so," he simply embraced Christian. Chris hugged him back tightly, immediately drawn to the stability.

"What are we gonna do?!" Eli said.

It was apparent that he was terrified. His blue eyes were filled with a cold dread that made Chris's heart clench. He grabbed him by the cheeks, kissing his forehead before looking him in the eyes.

"What just happened is fucking terrifying, but I'm not scared, because I have you," Chris said. "And you have me. And we're going to get through this together. We're gonna get all the shit we need to live through this right now, and then we're gonna go back home and hide, Okay? Fuck everybody and everything else. As long as I have you, nothing will stop me from having hope and wanting to still live in this hellhole."

Eli smiled, nodding. "Okay, I love you."

"I love you, too."

━━━━━━━━━━━

Despite the absolute madness of the war, even events that happened far too close to home, Chris's portside town hadn't exactly been struck. In fact, it was kind of a vampire haven. Trading goods and services, getting all the supplies he needed to take care of his animals, gasoline for the generators to keep his lights on (and heat lamps working), stolen blood bags being imported and shared. It was all kind of a post-apocalyptic dream come true. That was, until his car pulled into the worst scene of his life. His street was packed with people; moving supplies, pets, furniture, everything that they could carry and pack into their vehicles. Chris quirked an eyebrow at the people. He went down his own driveway, only to see his beloved home being gutted in the same way. The three vampires that ended up becoming roommates of his and Eli's over the past several years were loading stuff into the bus they had. That was always a "Just in case." He never pictured it coming out of the garage.

"What the fuck's going on?!" Chris cried, running over to them.

Molly looked over at him, her short brown hair tied back in a ponytail. "There's a report of an invasion running around. The humans are finally cracking down on the pockets of us that are hiding from the war. We need to evacuate."

"B-But this is my house! These are my pets!" He turned to Charlie, who was clutching his three legged cat Pepper in her arms. "You put that baby down!"

Charlie sighed. "Told you he'd react badly to this."

Ziggy pushed up his round sunglasses. The young vampire always managed to stay fashionable, even in such drastic times. "Look, I'm sorry, but we're fucking boned if we don't G T F O."

"Where's Eli?" Chris asked immediately.

The three vampires looked at each other before turning back to Chris, which made his nails dig into the palms of his hands.

"He's helping set up a defence," Charlie finally admitted. "He um... he's going to try his best to make sure they don't destroy the town. For now, the rest of us have to leave."

"Jokes on fucking you if you think I'm leaving without him!" Chris said. "I don't give a shit about losing the house, but I do give a shit about losing him. Where is he?!"

"... The town hall," Ziggy said.

The two women gave him glares, but Chris had already run off. He ran as fast as he could, only freezing when he heard the sound of an explosion. He was rocked completely to the core, not just from the sound and vibration, but from the sheer dread that rocketed through his body. He tried to keep running, but felt a hand grab onto his arm. It was Molly.

"We need to get out of here, now!" She said, her normally mellow nature taking a complete 180m "Eli knows where we're going to go, he'll meet us there! I promise! You're not going to lose him!"

Chris felt like he was teetering over the edge of a cliff. One side was the safety and comfort of Eli, and the other was a completely dark abyss. He didn't want to go into there. He loved his friends and animals as well, but Eli really was the only thing that had stopped him from going insane. He had been there from the beginning. His mind went numb, buzzing with the memories. Drinking, baking, playing scrabble, watching DVD collections of cartoons he'd grown up with, playing the grand piano in the foyer while Eli joined him on the acoustic guitar, Chris most precious possession. It had been his father's, he brought it after John Lennon died, and it was one of the only things Chris had left of the man. Eli was the one other person he allowed to touch it. The one other person he shared all those things with. Without that, he may as well have had his heart and lungs ripped out.

"Please," Molly pleaded.

He turned to face her, her eyes watering. He sighed softly. Despite everything, he couldn't abandon them. Especially not Molly. He had to make a choice. He took a deep breath, putting on his brave face.

"Okay."

They evacuated to an abandoned seafood restaurant 45 minutes away. Chris paced the rest of the day, waiting. And waiting. And waiting. But no other cars showed up. No blue eyes, no laughter, no words Chris had never even heard before. Only silence and the smell of rotten fish.

Eli never came.