Near the end of my reel, I watched myself talking to Gabriel and wished I had more time with him. I saw us leaving the bar and my car crawling toward home. I saw a close-up of Bud “Wiser” McElray driving his beat-up red truck down the highway about two miles behind me, drinking his favored Bud Light. I watched my own masterful use of obscenities as I climbed out of my stalled car, Bud following me. I watched as I face-planted into the ditch—which, I have to admit, even I laughed at. There was a wide shot as Bud caught my hunched, muddied form in his headlights.

“Oh, come on,” I murmured at the screen as Bud reached for the rifle behind his seat.

“Could be an eight-pointer,” Bud mumbled, rolling down his passenger window. Another close -up of Bud’s face as he squinted in concentration. His finger squeezed the trigger. I screamed at the screen as I watched myself fall to my knees, utter my oh-so-auspicious epitaph, and slump back into the ditch. Believing he’d missed his quarry, Bud put his truck in gear and lumbered away.

I screamed. “He thought I was a freaking deer?”

So, that’s how I died. A drunk was driving along Route 161 and decided to do some from-the-truck deer hunting. Instead of a nice buck to put up on his wall, he shot a recently fired, far-too-sober-to-die librarian.

In the theater of my dying brain, the highlight reel came to a close. I was cold and tired. And then I woke up as one of the undead.

2

Welcome to the fascinating world of the undead! Please use this guidebook as a handy reference as you make your first steps toward eternity. Inside you will find information on vampire nutrition, relationships, and safety. But before learning about your future, a word about our past…

—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

After thousands of years operating right under mortal noses, the Great Vampire Coming Out of 2000 wasn’t the result of a TV

exposé, a medical breakthrough, or a chatty vampire interviewee. It was a lawsuit.

Some of the undead choose to hold on to their original lives, continuing to work, pay taxes, and floss. In 1999, a recently turned Milwaukee tax consultant named Arnie Frink wanted to continue working for the firm of Jacobi, Miers and Leptz. But the human-resources rep, as ignorant as the rest of the world about the existence of the undead, refused to allow Arnie to keep evening hours.

Arnie got a fellow vamp with a two-hundred-year-old medical degree to diagnose him with porphyria, a painful allergy to sunlight, but the evil HR rep could not be moved. Even if leaving his condo before sunset left Arnie with second -degree burns and body odor similar to scorched dog hair, he was expected to keep banker’s hours. Mr. Jacobi was a bit paranoid about office security. This prevented Arnie from making a living (so to speak) and interfered with his pursuit of happiness. So Arnie did what any red-blooded American would do. He sued.

When the allergy-discrimination argument failed to impress a judge, a sunblock -slathered Arnie flipped out in court and demanded that his lawyer be fired so he could represent himself. As his indignant counsel slunk away, Arnie declared that he was a vampire, with a medical condition that rendered him unable to work during the day, thereby making him subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After Arnie was hauled off by the men in white coats, his vitals were checked, and the doctors noticed that his heart wasn’t beating. Plus, he bit a nurse who tried to take his rectal temperature, but I think we can all agree she had that coming. After extensive psych evaluations, the doctors agreed that it was possible that Arnie was telling the truth. But they weren’t willing to put it in writing.

After several lengthy appeals, Arnie won his lawsuit and got a settlement, evening hours, and an interview with Barbara Walters. The international vampire community was incensed and formally voted to have Arnie staked to an anthill at dawn. But after the media firestorm (and the “I told you so” storm from Internet conspiracy nuts), most vampires realized they should have come out a century ago. If nothing else, maybe we all could have avoided the Goth movement.

A select contingent of ancient vampires from across the globe officially notified the United Nations of their presence on Earth and asked the world’s governments to recognize them. They also asked for special leniency in certain medical, legal, and tax issues that were sure to come up. Vampires tend to throw away receipts.

The first year or so was chaos. Mobs, pitchforks, the whole deal. The federal government issued mandatory after -dark curfews. Wal-Mart started selling “Vampire Home Defense Kits,” including holy water, crosses, stakes, mallets, and a book of quick blessings to bar vampires from your door. The fact that these kits were generally useless didn’t bother me nearly as much as the idea of holy water being sold at Wal-Mart.

Humans didn’t seem to understand that they’d lived around vampires all of their lives and never realized it, that they had never been attacked before the Coming Out, never been threatened. And vampires posed even less of a threat now that they had better access to legally marketed blood. Vampires would never get their teenage daughters pregnant or tie up the McDonald ’s drive-through. Hell, vampires were less of a threat than Bud McElray.

Nevertheless, vampire safe houses were torched in major cities all over the world. The same interna tional contingent of vampires, who called themselves the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, appealed to the governments for help.

Vampires were given certain global rights in terms of self -defense against angry mobs, but no real progress was made in laws prosecuting said angry mobs.

In exchange for vampire public assistance programs, the U.S. federal government demanded a certain amount of information.

According to the 2000 national census, there are 1.3 million vampires residing in the United States. Of course, less than half of the vampires in the United States trusted the federal government enough to participate in the census. In fact, the results showed that two percent of census takers mysteriously disappeared in the course of their duties.

The census also showed that 63 percent of American vampires live in groups of threes and fours. This is called “nesting,”

which vampire behaviorists attribute to their need to bond with other creatures who share their unique needs and abilities. I believe that even after death, we want someone to assure us that our butts don’t look big before we leave the house. Single vampires tend to live alone in historic family homes…with a lot of cats.

Very few surveyed vampires were willing to disclose where they get their blood. And those who did disclose their food sources gave vague answers such as “Willing private donors.” That was less of an issue after companies flooded the market with processed artificial blood, which can also be purchased at Wal -Mart. Synthetic blood was originally designed to counteract dwindling American Red Cross donations and support military surgical units, but vampires found they could live a violence -free unlife on the stuff. This, combined with vampire blood banks offering thirty dollars a pint for real human blood, was more than enough to promote those first semifriendly human-vampire interactions.

An unexpected side effect of the Great Coming Out was the emergence of all -night industries to cater to the needs of

“undead Americans.” Electronics stores, delivery services, specialty dentists’ offices, window-tinting shops, and, yes, tax firms.

There was a new skilled, taxable labor force available to work at night. And there were new companies and products, such as SPF

500 sun block and blood banks that actually allowed withdrawals. The economic development was incredible. The recession the government had told us for years that we haven’t been having? Gone. With the realization that the undead population generated more above-the-table disposable income, vampires were grudgingly accepted into the living world.

It took me a while to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful, obsessive research to learn the rules.

There was a label maker involved. I’d rather not go into it. Here’s what I learned: Forget what you’ve heard from the vamp PR

firms. Vampires are not suffering from a skin condition that makes them anemic, sensitive to sunlight, and slow to age. Vampires are magical beings, creatures of the night, children of darkness. But don’t call them that to their faces—it really pisses them off.

The undead are highly sensitive to heat and daylight. Some older vamps can venture out in the day under controlled circumstances with no problem. But since their somewhat unstable molecular structure makes them pretty flammable, you get newbies who spend too much time outdoors and end up as little charcoal briquettes. Every vamp has a different level of reaction. I would find out later that I blister and smell like burnt popcorn, which I hate. That smell never comes out of your clothes.

A vamp’s sensitivity to religious symbols is directly related to his or her religious participation and ethnic background B.D.

(before death). Vampire legends and lore predate Christianity by thousands of years. Some vampires wouldn’t react if you shoved a rosary down their pants, though I wouldn ’t recommend testing the theory. For others, every mention of Jesus is like being punched in the forehead. The cross reminds them of what they once were, how far they’ve fallen away from God’s favor, the fact that they will never die. I don’t know how I will react yet, so I tend to stay away from churches.

As far as I know, vampires still have souls. They have the same capacity for good and evil that humans do. The problem is that the worst can emerge when a person is no longer answering to the “no stealing, no hitting, no bloodletting” constraints of human society. The bottom line is: if you were a jerk in your original life, you ’re probably going to be a bigger undead jerk. If you were a decent person, say a juvenile-services librarian with a secret collection of unicorn figurines, you’re probably going to be a kinder, gentler vampire. There are rare exceptions when a repressed person gets turned and goes buck wild and evil. Generally, they calm down after two hundred or so years. Or they’re beheaded by angry townsfolk.

Also, for some reason, vampires tend to wear a lot of leather. Animal-rights issues aside, I don’t think that’s an indicator of evil. When vampires are turned, they buy leather pants. It’s kind of like when human men get divorced, they get a sad apartment and a boat. It’s a rite of passage.