Ahoy!

Arthur Kirkland, a privateer during his human life and now a feared vampire, haunts the shores of the New World. Alfred F. Jones is was the son of a preacher with an unbecoming penchant for seeking out the rowdy sailors detested by the rest of their colonial New English town.

Pictured: Shortly after Alfred has his first (very messy) meal as a vampire, Arthur “examines” his fang growth. Alfred is taking his transformation and newfound bloodthirst disturbingly well.

For this AU, I’ve been toying with the idea of two-sided corruption. On the one hand, we have Alfred abandoning his passage to heaven for a creature of the night who can grant him eternal life if he’s willing to become just like him—a monster. On the other, we have Arthur, jaded but principled (in a twisted vampire way), being enticed into bloody and chaotic indulgence by his new protege.

The story:

I don’t know anything about the Beatles but from what I gleaned from the Wikipedia page, it goes like this.

In 1963, Americans mostly looked on in amusement at the Beatlemania hitting the UK, seeing as none of their singles had been released in the US, and rock and roll was a bygone genre. On November 22, 1963, CBS ran a short feature on Beatlemania in the UK, but it was not shown again in the evening as scheduled due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the same day.

Later, on December 10, 1963, CBS aired the story again, looking for something positive to report. Upon seeing the segment, 15-year-old Marsha Albert wrote to her local Maryland radio station asking, “Why can’t we have music like that here in America?” The disc jockey of that radio station, Carroll James Jr., pulled some strings and managed to get a copy of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” which was then introduced to America for the first time on December 17.

Soon, the Washington, D.C. area was electrified with this single, and people began asking for a record which was not in stock anywhere in the US. The record was sent to other disc jockeys in America, and a similar response rose there as well. Thus, on December 26, Capitol Records released the record ahead of schedule, selling a million copies and becoming a number-one hit by mid-January. Beatlemania in America and later the rest of the British Invasion was now underway.

This is not a realistic road trip at all, but here are the places/activities shown:

Yorktown Battlefield, Virginia: the site where General Cornwallis surrendered in 1781, bringing the end of the Revolutionary War

Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: the famous bell with the message "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof", and later a symbol of liberty for abolitionists and suffragists

Drive-in theater: outdoor cinemas that reached their peak in popularity in the 1950s to 60s; the film is The Searchers (1956)

Kayaking: a fun lake/ocean activity

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail: this trail crosses nine states and follows the forced displacement of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles due to the Indian Removal Act in 1830

Traffic (and billboards): a bane to many and common in car-dependent cities

Cedar Hill Cemetery, Vicksburg, Mississippi: one of the oldest cemeteries in the US still being used; predates the Civil War and includes a Confederate burial site

Devil's Tower, Wyoming: a majestic (and sacred) butte and the first US national monument

Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah: a flat, empty salt pan estimated to hold 147 million tons of salt and a popular racing site

Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: a geyser in the world's first national park known for its reliable eruptions

Gas station, Nowhere, USA

Horseback riding, Montana: no comment, just a fun time

Las Vegas, Nevada: the world renowned Sin City, a place that caters to many vices

Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, North Dakota: group of missile defense facilities including missile silos and the pyramid-shaped radar system; built in 1975 and decommissioned after one day of operation, a "monument to man's fear and ignorance"

Hoover Dam, Nevada and Arizona: hydroelectric power plant on the Colorado River; the highest dam in the world at the time of its completion in 1935

Space Needle, Seattle, Washington: an observation tower with a revolving restaurant built for the 1962 World Fair "Living in the Space Age", a theme chosen to show the US was not lagging behind the USSR in the Space Race

Sequoia National Park, California: home of the world's largest tree by volume (General Sherman) and the highest point in the contiguous US (Mount Whitney)

Muir Beach Overlook, California: a former base station overlook with dugouts that gained importance immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as a means to watch for attacks on nearby San Francisco