Aftermath for the vampires (post-book questions)

[aeroplane]

Mostly some things I'd be curious to hear a theory on and obviously we'd need to consider the events of One for the Road from Night Shift.

Here goes.....


1. Even though Salem's Lot takes place in a different era than we live in today (for the timeline), is it unreasonable to wonder why the State Police or feds never came in and tore the town to pieces looking for clues?

In theory, sooner or later a search would turn up a few hiding places and eventually someone would start piecing things together. Seems like if this sort of widespread disappearance of people happened in real life, a massive search would take place. But I also like to believe it would have happened during the timeline Salem's Lot takes place in.


2. Just how far could you count on the vampires branching out? In SL and One For the Road (OFTR), we see a number of characters depicted as living and working just mere miles from Jerusalem's Lot. They carry crucifixes but don't seem to be overly worried, otherwise they'd move further away.

It would seem like such a large number of vampires would get tired of waiting for a few hitchhikers or drifters a year to accidentally wander into their town after dark. So eventually, you'd think some of them would start making headway into nearby towns. Wouldn't you? We see a little of this mentioned in the press clippings collected by Ben Mears, but not a whole lot more detail than that.

[Bluey Lunger]

those questions surfaced for me, aeroplane, least the first one did. but really, what happens when the unexplained happens, today, yesterday, or tomorrow? the dallas police show up and "area 51" becomes part of the vocabulary. i thought there was a suggestion that some kind of investigation took place, albeit, in bits and pieces, and...this could be related to Q2, didn't the boys from mexico head back cause they'd (ben, anyway) been reading the papers and decided to do something?

besides, rupert murdoch wasn't around (unless he had more hair and was busy climbing the corporate ladder) at the time and walter was getting ready to retire...and that's the way it was?

[scarywriter]

I didn't grow up in Maine, but one of the other sparsely populated parts of the country. I know from experience that sometimes towns die. A factory or a mill shuts down, business that rely on those workers close up shop, some of the people move to find new jobs, old folks who don't move get older and pass away, no one new moves in and next thing you know, a drive down Highway 71 takes you through what is essentially a ghost town. It doesn't raise any alarms or red flags for troopers or politicians or even the next town over.

[michal]

And why would the police "tear it apart"? There is no proof that a crime has taken place, no bleeding bodies - just people that have left and moved on.

[aeroplane]

And why would the police "tear it apart"? There is no proof that a crime has taken place, no bleeding bodies - just people that have left and moved on.

There is no proof of a crime but there are a couple of good reasons that someone might show up to investigate.

1. When somebody as important as a County Sheriff (Homer McCaslin) vanishes, it usually makes news and finding him would seem like a priority.

2. The town contains what is described as a brand new school, which is now going unused. Heck of a lot of tax dollars were spent on that only for it to sit empty.


Point is, I'd picture feds or detectives crawling all over that town looking for something.

[aeroplane]

Does anyone care to venture what percentage of the vampires who were already in Salem's Lot survived the fire started by Ben Mears?

Where did some of the go afterwards?

Who would have been the "new" Master in Salem's Lot with Barlow out of the picture?

One can also imagine the number of possible vampires who may have attacked later visitors to Salem's Lot like the Daniel Holloway family at the end of the original book or the Lumley wife and daughter from One For the Road. Perhaps it was Mike Ryerson, Danny Glick, Charlie Rhodes, Dud Rogers. The possibilities are endless.