How Not to Vampire - Season 1

PANIC AT THE DISCO: An Amazon Prime PANIC Bonus Chapter

Mr. Munroe shook his head and led the way out of the airport. "Just don't get arrested. You have to be careful of the cops in town. They like a little bit of extortion with their coffee, but it's the honest ones who are the real problem."

I was suspicious. "You aren't going to try to stop us from doing anything stupid?"

"Claude's got it into his head that he's going to put a stop to this game and that's entirely his prerogative. I trust him to do the right thing and definitely not to do anything stupid."

"Besides, doing stupid stuff is your department," Claude teased, and I reflexively flipped him the bird.

***

Stupid stuff was definitely the name of the game, especially when you considered the crowd around the abandoned grain silos was mostly made up of the recent graduates of Carp High. The silos were located about three miles outside of the town center, and had been chosen as the location for the first challenge in the game that the kids referred to as "Panic."

"Every year, the senior class pays one dollar a day into the Panic pot," Claude said as we drove the dark dirt road that led to the silos. "It doesn't matter if they're playing it or not, everybody has to pay in."

It was 11PM as we pulled into the impromptu parking lot that had been established at the back of the field. Claude parked his dad's black BMW coupe among the trucks and various late model foreign cars. It was his dad's "around town" car and had been lent with the promise that I wasn't to drive it except in the case of extreme emergency. I noted in passing how the assembled cars spoke more about the socio-economic breakdown of the town than anything else could have done.

"That doesn't sound fair," I observed, taking the cars into consideration.

Claude locked the doors, and I followed him toward a circle of lights close to the towering grain silos.

"It isn't fair," Claude agreed in a low voice, "but it makes sure that everybody has some skin in the game. At the end of it all, when they've collected something like twenty grand for the year, some people end up changing their minds. People start thinking they're tougher than they are. Last year a kid almost died and five were injured."

"And some are just desperate to get the hell out of Dodge, I mean Carp," I noted.

We entered the circle of light to find a party-like atmosphere. There was a mixed crowd of teenagers drinking and dancing in their small circles of friends, visible cliques still strong a week after graduation. Claude stopped at a small white battered card table upon which sat a signup sheet and a bowl with slips of paper inside.

"Welcome to the first night of Panic," the pretty girl at the table piped up. "Come for your number Claude?" She noticed me and raised an eyebrow. Her brilliant blue eyes, completely unlike anything I had ever seen before, met mine and I felt a little weak at the knees. Whoa. You're thinking it, so I'm going to say it since I have the benefit of hindsight: Izzy was a freaking vampire.

"Who's your friend?"

"Hey, Izzy," Claude greeted the girl with an easy smile, and she blushed. "This is Bob. He's my regular wingman visiting from Toronto."

I shrugged. "He's the big damn hero. I'm just the sidekick."

"You're number three, Claude," Izzy said, handing him his number with a wink. "Good luck out there."

Looking back at it, I can definitely say that was the point where everything went to shit, but like we agreed before: hindsight can be a bitch.

***