Leo sometimes liked to do things a bit differently than other people. So one night of camping saw him in his sleeping bag outside the tent. He had wanted to go to sleep under the stars and moon. He had gotten his wish but he was rudely awakened by a pain in his neck. Reflexively his hand swatted at the pain and hit something. Almost immediately his eyes opened and he was wide awake. He felt around his neck but the something was gone. He felt wetness at the site.
He got out of his sleeping bag and looked at his neck in his car’s mirror. The wetness was a bit of blood that came from a wound. He reluctantly drove down to the ranger station at the entrance of the park. They took it very seriously, proclaiming that it was most likely a bat bite. They cleaned the wound as best they could and declared that he must get rabies shots. When Leo objected they told him that the course of rabies vaccines aren’t nearly as painful as they used to be. This calmed Leo so he agreed to go to the emergency room of the nearest town.
Leo drove himself to the hospital. The doctor saw him almost right away. “It must have been a bat bite,” said the doctor. “Most likely a rabid bat bite. I’ll start the course of treatment with one rabies shot today, then we’ll follow up 3, 7, 14 and 28 days later.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Leo. “I am to give you five full chances of putting microchips in me. You’re in cahoots with Bill Gates!
“Your life is hanging by a thread. No microchip is small enough to be put through a vaccine needle. You absolutely must get the course of rabies shots or you’ll die! That conspiracy theory is nonsense. Wait ! You can’t walk out of here without treatment!”
“I don’t need your microchips and I sure don’t need your lectures!” Leo was already out the door before the doctor had a chance to reply.
All the way to the campsite and back home, Leo’s mind was racing. A bat bite on the neck, he kept thinking, why did that have to mean rabies? Then he saw it. Couldn’t vampires change into bats. Maybe. And it bit him on the neck. That meant it had fed. Wouldn’t Leo now turn into a vampire when the change occurred? And wouldn’t that mean immortality? They were keeping Leo from immortality! That must be it.
Still, Leo looked for clues about what might come from the rabies literature. There was the roughly weeks long incubation period. He took that time to set up his home properly. He got himself a coffin for his bed and got blackout curtains for the windows for when it was daylight. Although he didn’t believe the garlic myth he still rid himself of that food stuff.
Soon the flu like symptoms came with weakness, fever and a headache. He quickly set up a meeting amongst himself and his local libertarians. He was calling the meeting “The Myth of Rabies”.
That night came and he managed to get to the lecture room even though he had bouts with confusion and felt delirious. Although he meant to give a rousing lecture, he could barely croak out what had happened to him and his thoughts on vampirism. The first question he went right up to the asker and instead of answering, bit her on the neck. She screamed and it felt good to Leo,
Of the 20 libertarians, 10 ran away at this. A couple tried to pin Leo and the rest were frozen at first. Leo bit the wrestling ones on the arm and on the shin. But they finally managed to hold Leo. One of the frozen did the unthinkable and called the police.
The police took Leo into a private cell and left him there while taking the statements of the bitten. All of the bitten got their course of rabies shots while Leo, who had wanted immortality so badly that he started all this, died for his wish.
