Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [125]
He stopped, thinking about how to tell his tale. How to lay it out.
“I believe there are at least three types of vampires at work in our world. I call them Types One, Two, and Three. Type Ones are rare. Barlow was a Type One. They live very long lives, and may spend extended periods—fifty years, a hundred, maybe two hundred—in deep hibernation. When they’re active, they’re capable of making new vampires, what we call the undead. These undead are Type Twos. They are also capable of making new vampires, but they aren’t cunning.” He looked at Eddie and Susannah. “Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?”
Susannah shook her head. Eddie nodded.
“The undead in that movie were zombies, utterly brain-dead. Type Two vampires are more intelligent than that, but not much. They can’t go out during the daylight hours. If they try, they are blinded, badly burned, or killed. Although I can’t say for sure, I believe their life-spans are usually short. Not because the change from living and human to undead and vampire shortens life, but because the existences of Type Two vampires are extremely perilous.
“In most cases—this is what I believe, not what I know—Type Two vampires create other Type Two vampires, in a relatively small area. By this phase of the disease—and it is a disease—the Type One vampire, the king vampire, has usually moved on. In ’Salem’s Lot, they actually killed the son of a bitch, one of what might have been only a dozen in the entire world.
“In other cases, Type Twos create Type Threes. Type Threes are like mosquitoes. They can’t create more vampires, but they can feed. And feed. And feed.”
“Do they catch AIDS?” Eddie asked. “I mean, you know what that is, right?”
“I know, although I never heard the term until the spring of 1983, when I was working at the Lighthouse Shelter in Detroit and my time in America had grown short. Of course we’d known for almost ten years that there was something. Some of the literature called it GRID—Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. In 1982 there started to be newspaper articles about a new disease called ‘Gay Cancer,’ and speculations that it might be catching. On the street some of the men called it Fucksore Disease, after the blemishes it left. I don’t believe that vampires die of it, or even get sick from it. But they can have it. And they can pass it on. Oh, yes. And I have reason to think that.” Callahan’s lips quivered, then firmed.
“When this vampire-demon made you drink his blood, he gave you the ability to see these things,” Roland said.
“Yes.”
“All of them, or just the Threes? The little ones?”
“The little ones,” Callahan mused, then voiced a brief and humorless laugh. “Yes. I like that. In any case, Threes are all I’ve ever seen, at least since leaving Jerusalem’s Lot. But of course Type Ones like Barlow are very rare, and Type Twos don’t last long. Their very hunger undoes them. They’re always ravenous. Type Threes, however, can go out in daylight. And they take their principal sustenance from food, just as we do.”
“What did you do that night?” Susannah asked. “In the theater?”
“Nothing,” Callahan said. “My whole time in New York—my first time in New York—I did nothing until April. I wasn’t sure, you see. I mean, my heart was sure, but my head refused to go along. And all the time, there was interference from the most simple thing of all: I was a dry alcoholic. An alcoholic is also a vampire, and that part of me was getting thirstier and thirstier, while the rest of me was trying to deny my essential nature. So I told myself I’d seen a