This is your "doctor" pecos
Dr. Hugo Pecos: My Story
I was born in Texas in 1925, son of a migrant farm workers from Mexico. We traveled the country in a battered truck with all of our possessions piled high in the back, and we went wherever there were crops to be picked: apples in Washington, chile in New Mexico, tomatoes in California. It was the depression, the time of the dust bowl, and many of the native workers didn't want us around. Though we were often the targets of hate, the discrimination made use closer as a family. Eventually, that family grew to include one girl and four boys; I was the middle child.
Some people may think it was a terrible thing for children to be working all the time, but we knew no other life and so were happy in ours. In fact, I'd wager that we were closer than many of the families I see today, with their big houses and cars and modern conveniences. When I wasn't working in the fields, I tagged along after my older brother Orlando. I looked up to him and tried to emulate him in every way. He was handsome, a gifted baseball player and a magnet for the girls.
The vampire population in the U.S. was near its peak in those days, and the effects were apparent all over the country. Every night at dusk, no matter where you where, curfew sirens would shatter the air. As children, we never really understood why our parents made us come in when those sirens sounded. After all, none of us had ever seen a vampire.
Life had settled into a steady rhythm when we arrived in North Carolina for the tobacco harvest in the Summer of '31. It was hard work, with the sun beating down and the sticky tobacco juice getting in your eyes. To make matters worse, the forest around the workers camp was said to be home to a vampire pack; several farmhands had been dragged away in the months before our arrival.
Shortly after we arrived, Orlando began a flirtation with the plantation owner's teenage daughter, Rayleen. At the end of the day's work, she would find some excuse to ride her horse out and steal moments with him. When my father found out, he told Orlando that he couldn't see her anymore; he knew well what would happen if the owner found out. But Orlando was headstrong, and he continued the relationship in secret.
One night, I awoke with a strange feeling of dread and discovered Orlando's bed empty. I slipped out of the cabin and looked for him all over the camp. I finally found him with Rayleen: they were kissing under an enormous oak tree. Embarrassed, I turned away for a moment. When I looked back, four vampires dropped out of the tree and dragged them away. Though the vampires only appeared for an instant, I'll never forget their bluish pallor, black eyes and malevolent smiles.
Dr. Hugo Pecos: My Story (Part II)
I ran back to our cabin and awoke my father; he organized a search party of about a dozen men, and they went into the woods with torches. They called for him all night, to no avail. The next day, the plantation owner organized a larger search party, with dogs. Two days later, the party returned, with a bound and gagged Rayleen draped over one of the horses. My father and I ran out to see if there was any news on Orlando. That was when I noticed that the men were dragging something behind one of the horses. My father tried to shield my eyes, but I broke away and saw what had once been my brother.
The owner blamed my family for what happened and threw us off the plantation. Though we quickly joined up with another tobacco farm, my grieving father could barely rouse himself for a day's work. When he collapsed the next summer in a field of strawberries, the coroner listed the cause of death as a heart attack, but I know he died of a broken heart.
My mother was left to raise four rambunctious children by herself. She was a strong woman, and she had to be. After we settled with some relatives in Dallas, my mother worked as a maid by day, cleaning lady by night, and still managed to keep us kids on a short leash. All that discipline paid off for me when I graduated high school first in my class and enrolled at the the University of Texas.
Plans to attend medical school were derailed, however, when I was drafted into service in World War II. My interest in medicine compelled me to enlist as a medic, and after some brief training in New Jersey, I shipped out to England with the 31st Infantry Division on October 31, 1944. After a month of additional training in England, we crossed the English Channel on a bitterly cold, blustery day and arrived in France to help the Allied push east into Germany.
I am not going to dwell on my World War II experiences here. To go into them in any detail would require far more space than this Web site can provide. One day, I intend to publish the whole story in book form. For now, let's just say that I saw things no 19-year-old should see, and nothing was worse than the experience of liberating a POW camp in Luxembourg that had been overrun by vampires. Some say the Germans intentionally infected the POWs in a desperate attempt to slow the Allied invasion. Whatever the case, I gained valuable experience fighting vampires and treating those wounded by them. And so, when the war ended and I returned to the States, I was summoned to Washington D.C., where I heard for the first time the words "Zozobra Project."
Zozobra Project housing
was rustic at best
The Zozobra Project was an attempt to bring an end to several millenia of vampire activity by developing a vaccine for the virus. Mindful of what happened to my brother, I signed on, and a day later, in an atmosphere of stonefaced secrecy, I was flown to the air force base in Albuquerque and then escorted into the back of a van with no windows. Some time later, I arrived in what could have passed for a summer camp, with trees and cabins, except for all the scientists milling about.
The scientists of the Zozobra Project were a true "dream team." Men I had read about in books were now sitting across from me in the lunchroom. As one of the younger scientists, I felt like I was in over my head. But there was no time for anxiety, as reports of vampire outbreaks were reaching us almost every day.
The early years of the project were a string of failures. In vaccine work, the objective is to expose the patient to enough of the virus to develop immunity, but not enough to make him sick. With HVV, the Human Vampirism Vaccine, it was always the same problem; injections of "killed" virus failed to stimulate antibody production, and injections of the treated, live virus caused vampirism. We knew that the secret lay in finding the right way of manipulating the virus before injecting it into the patient.
Fortunately, the war ended without the threatened onslaught of vampire armies. But most of us stayed on with the Project, plugging away. Weeks turned to months, years. To alleviate the stress, we played chess, formed a softball team and enjoyed frequent barbecues.
And then, five years after the Project had begun, we finally had a breakthrough. Simply put, we injected the virus into a chicken egg, took fluid from that egg and injected it into another egg, and repeated the process about a dozen times. In doing this, we were able to weaken the virus, but not so much that it failed to stimulate antibody production. So, on a sunny October day (Friday the 13th, believe it or not), a Santa Fe auto mechanic named Joe Valdez was brought to Santa Rosa showing early signs of vampirism. We gave him the new vaccine, stepped back and held our breath. It was a long night as Mr. Valdez tossed and turned with fever, then slipped into a vampiric coma. But the next morning, to our amazement, Mr. Valdez awoke with no symptoms of the disease! We put on some music, had a brief celebration and then got back to work. After all, the world was waiting for this vaccine.
In my years in New Mexico, I had fallen in love with the strange beauty of the state, and so when the Zozobra Project was folded into the Santa Rosa Institute, I decided to stay on. I also agreed to head up the Southwest Office of the Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency (FVZA). I must confess, there was another reason for me wanting to stay: Maria Turner, a microbiologist who had fled Germany in 1934. We were married in 1953 and eventually had two beautiful boys.
The vampire vaccine was an unqualified success at checking the spread of vampirism, but as FVZA Regional Director, I was busier than ever, as vampires proved to be particularly tough to root out in the Southwest. Where my work at the Zozobra Project had been confined to the lab, my FVZA duties took me all over the region. I mastered martial arts and weapons, I faced vampires in abandoned mines, old Indian ruins, forests and caves. I grew to know their smell, the sound of their breathing; it got so I could sense their presence well before I saw them. Between 1950 and 1960, my New Mexico office alone destroyed over 1500 vampires.
My dedication to my work took its toll on my personal life. I divorced, remarried, and got divorced again. My family grew to include two more children. Slowly but surely, the vampire population dropped to a point where my life got quieter. I taught classes, watched my children grow into adults. My son Rogelio is an emergency room physician in Santa Fe. The next oldest, Ferdinand, manages a restaurant in Corrales, New Mexico. My daughter Rosa is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of New Mexico.
You may have noticed that I mentioned only three of my four children. That is because my youngest son, Emilio, is no longer with us. He realized his dream of going to medical school and came back to New Mexico to set up a family practice in the small town of San Miguel, where he was the only doctor for 150 miles. One night, he got called out of bed to deliver a baby. On the way back home, his car was struck by a drunken driver and he was killed. I had lost my brother, mourned the deaths of my parents, but I never expected to have to bury my own son.
I was laid low for awhile, and the world moved on. During the Eighties, profit-hungry drug companies mounted an assault on Congress, pushing to overturn the ban on vampire research. This outrage was enough to wake me from my stupor: I spent many a day in Washington lobbying to uphold the ban. In the end, we were outmanned and outspent: President Reagan signed the bill and, in short order, the Vampire Genome Project (a.k.a., the Methusela Project) was launched.
I was glad of at least one thing: the Santa Rosa Institute was chosen as the base for the Project, enabling me to keep a close eye on the proceedings. And all that I have seen convinces me that we are moving too fast. Recently, the Project moved into the animal testing phase, housed in the appropriately ominous-looking Bluestone Center. Behind its thick walls are thousands of animals that have been injected with mutated vampire DNA. If just one handler gets bitten, we'll have a new plague on our hands.
In perhaps the cruelest irony of all, one of my former students, Edward Westhead, recently returned to New Mexico to take over the Vampire Genome Project. Dr. Westhead was an exceptional student with a never-ending supply of questions about vampires. He would follow me after class and pick my brains. It's funny, I always hoped that he would return to the Institute, only I expected it would be to take over for me at the reigns of the Vampire Studies program. While I have no doubt that Dr. Westhead is motivated by an altruistic desire to help people, my opposition to the Vampire Genome Project is well-documented on this site and elsewhere. Rest assured I will continue to try to impress upon him the risks in opening this Pandora's Box.
Lest you think I'm obsessed with vampires, I do have other interests. I live in an adobe house on two acres of land in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. Years of practice have made me, if not exactly a master gardener, then at least a worthy apprentice. I have a pretty fair vegetable garden and grow prize-winning roses. I enjoy reading and have a weakness for detective stories (perhaps a natural outgrowth of the detective work involved in finding vaccines). I am blessed with good health and six beautiful grandchildren. I try not to dwell on the losses.
There is, however, one thing that bothers me. As vampires have faded into folklore, there has been considerable glorification of them in our media. Vampires in movies and TV shows are depicted as charismatic, sexually potent, the life of the party. Vampire Chic has swept the country, with vampire-themed nightclubs and cults and music. I have even had some young people tell me they wish that vampires were still around.
Folks, let me assure you of one thing: we should all thank God that vampires no longer live among us in large numbers. Vampires are bloodthirsty, indiscriminate killers. They prey on the elderly and infirm, they will snatch newborn babies from their mothers. I speak with authority when I tell you, their lives are a constant torment. I'll never forget one young man who'd been brought to the Institute after being bitten on his way home from a bar. We had him trussed-up to a table, and I was walking about preparing to draw blood from him, when I noticed him looking at me and trying to say something through his muzzle. I leaned close to him, and he hissed, "please, make me like I was before."
Memories like these fuel my desire to counter the current wave of misinformation about vampires. Each pair of eyes I can open makes the struggle worthwhile. But sometimes I wonder: who will do it after I am gone?
My strong voice has cost me much: most recently, my job. I'll miss my daily walks across the picturesque Institute campus, just as I'll miss greeting the new students every fall. You don't spend over forty years in a place without forming some strong friendships. But I feel too strongly about this to stand pat (go to my FAQs page for more on my decision to resign). I know Dr. Westhead sees me as a cranky old-timer who prefers living in the past. I don't blame him. He didn't grow up in a world of vampires, he doesn't know how it really was.
Perhaps because I have endured so much tragedy in my life, I am extra cautious. I unequivocally believe that we should not be opening the Pandora's Box of vampire DNA research until we know more about genetics. My opponents often say to me, "don't you want to live three-hundred years?" I admit, the idea of immortality has its allure, but I don't believe we are meant to live forever, and any attempt to do so will meet with unforeseen consequences.
From www.fvza.org
