As I sat on the bed, hoping we were safe at the campground, I thought about it all. The world had changed so much in such a short time. It was hard to take in. My vision of having a worry-free, suburban life in an idyllic country town had vanished. People were being hunted, killed even, and the world would never be the same again. My life would never be the same.
Would all the kids from school be okay? Would Mrs. Babcock still be alive? What has happened to my parents and my sisters? Would I ever see any of them again?
Hunted
This mortal fear for the welfare of the people I knew gripped my insides, tried to mush them all up into a tight ball. I felt so helpless. I wanted to save them, but there was nothing I could do. Tears ran over my cheeks. I didn’t want to cry, it just happened. I didn’t make a sound but the tears kept coming. Unable to stop them, I didn’t make any attempt to dry them either. I could feel their wetness on my T-shirt after they fell from my jaw-line, but the discomfort on the outside was nothing compared to the discomfort on the inside.
I became aware of Charlie standing in the bedroom doorway. I turned my head toward him but didn’t move otherwise. Aware that he could see my tears, I wasn’t ashamed. He just stood there and looked at me with his sorrowful eyes. It was as if we had a connection without speaking, without words, only emotions exchanged between us. I felt a tranquility I never experienced before. His presence soothed me and brought me out of the vortex of my desperate thoughts. I liked it and didn’t want it to end. I didn’t move or say anything, afraid that this would break the spell. Charlie also didn’t move.
“Come on, let’s make dinner,” he said after a long while.
***
We agreed to keep the same watch-shifts as the night before, and so I was up late again. After a few games of solitaire, I sat on the couch listening to the animals outside. My thoughts haunted me with memories of the past days. It was all so unreal. The first TV announcement in the pub, Mrs. Sloan’s shaking body, Bullsbrook being rampaged by looters, Mrs. Babcock with a baseball bat, the campground owner aiming a shotgun at us. Trying not to go down that rabbit hole again, I thought about the life I’d led so far.
Have I made the most of my life? Should I have chosen another profession? Did I become the person my parents had hoped I’d be?
There were so many questions. Certainly, there were some aspects of my life I wasn’t proud of. The choice of boyfriends I’d had, the occasional smoke without my parents knowing, my cheating during one of the tests at college. Sometimes, after a bad day at school, I’d wished I hadn’t become a teacher. Overall though, looking back at some of the great conversations with the children during my classes, I was sure I’d made the right choice. I hoped I'd achieved what my parents wanted for me. If they were disappointed, they’d certainly never let it show.
All of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t hear any animals outside. No birds, no insects, nothing. Plucked out of my self-absorption, I sat upright.
This isn’t good.
The crack of a gunshot reverberated through the campground.
“Shit,” I said under my breath and jumped up to wake Sue and Charlie. Sue was already clambering out of bed when I opened the door, and Charlie came out of his room as I turned around.
“Did you see anything?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “But I didn’t look either.”
Sue and Charlie got dressed as fast as they could. We were ready to flee. Charlie got out his blowtorch, and I my Maglite.
Sue looked at us with despair. “What should I get?” she whispered.
I scanned the cabin in a hurry and spotted the table lamp with ceramic base on the little corner table. I unplugged its cord and removed the light bulb to get rid of the lampshade.
“Here, clobber them with this,” I said as I handed the lamp base to Sue. The cord dangled down, but she wound it around the base of the lamp.
I joined Charlie at the window and peeked outside. There wasn't much to see. The lights from the lane were blinding my night vision. Suddenly, we heard lots of screaming down the little street. Fearful, we waited, hoping this was just a single attack. When new screams arose closer and closer, it became obvious the suckers were going from cabin to cabin.
“Let’s get out of here!” Charlie said.
He opened the door and shimmied along the wall of the cabin in the opposite direction of the screams. I followed him. Sue was close behind me. We tried to be as quiet as possible. Then the screen-door of our cabin slammed shut. Sue had forgotten it had a spring-closer. My head spun toward the noise, and I saw it trap the plug from the lamp as the wire had become half-uncoiled. I nearly screamed as Sue continued to move away from the door. The wire went taut. The lamp slipped from Sue’s hands, shattering on the concrete porch. The three of us froze and stared from the crash site to the row of cabins. Someone stuck their head out of a door and yelled to the people inside, “They’re trying to escape!”
That was the cue for us to run.
“To the river!” Charlie yelled, and we dashed in between the RV’s and camper trailers, taking the shortest route.
I could hear at least two people following us in hot pursuit. I was worried for Charlie and his short legs, but boy, could he run. We didn’t have much of a head-start, and our pursuers were soon gaining ground. I heard loud swearing and threw a glance backward. One of the pursuers had tripped over a piece of heavy furniture in front of one of the camper trailers.
Thank you so much, boring person.
We kept on running until we reached the tent field. The field lights lit up an eerie scene that gave us the scare of our lives. There was a whole bunch of suckers here, herding humans together while more and more were being added. Those suckers hadn’t seen us yet, so we continued our sprint for the jetty. Sue was in front, her long legs giving her the edge. For some strange reason, she ducked under the upturned dinghy.
“No! The canoes!” Charlie and I both screamed at her.
I tried to reach for her as Charlie grabbed my arm. At that same moment, the closest chasing sucker caught up with me. He seized the arm I had the Maglite in, and I couldn’t fight the sucker off me with it. Charlie didn’t waste any time thinking as he swung around and planted the bottom of his blowtorch right in the sucker’s face. The shock made the sucker lose his grip on my arm. I tried again to reach for Sue, but Charlie pulled me toward the canoes.
I followed him, running onto the jetty, and we jumped into the furthest canoe. Charlie worked frantically on the cord to get it loose. It was old and broke, allowing him to push all the canoes away from the landing stage. As he did this, I noticed Sue hadn’t followed us. She must have stayed under the dinghy. My gaze was drawn by movement from the center of the field. Some of the suckers there had spotted us and were running toward the jetty. I knew they would never be able to reach us in the canoe as we had already drifted more than a yard away from the jetty. I searched for Sue again and saw that the second chaser had caught up with the first one, who was clutching his nose. My heart stopped as number one pointed to the dinghy and number two then dragged Sue from under it.
“Sue!” I screamed, fear pulling on every nerve in my body.
Sue also screamed. It had no effect as they dragged her struggling body with ease toward the center of the field. A man from the crowd tried to free Sue from her captors. Was it Paul? I couldn’t believe what I saw next. One of the suckers, not an overly big one, picked the man up above his head and threw him away from Sue, away from the pile of humans.
This is unreal, superhuman, movie stuff.
At first, I thought I hadn’t seen it right and blinked.
“Did you see that?” Charlie said.
I turned to him with eyes wide open and nodded. We looked back to the tent field. More and more victims were added to the crowd of prisoners. Like Sue, they hadn’t escaped the hunt.
The suckers who had run onto the jetty halted. They realized they’d never be able to catch us and returned to their captured
victims.
Charlie and I watched as the suckers gathered around the humans. What happened next chilled me to the bone. As one, the suckers fell on their victims. It was a feeding frenzy. People were screaming, fighting, clawing, desperate to escape. But the suckers were stronger, their hunger was great, and the resulting bloodbath was like a scene from a horror movie.
“Nooo! Sue!” I screamed again at the top of my lungs, nearly tipping the canoe over. “Sue! Sue! Sue…” I looked at Charlie and back to the field again.
I was frantic, panicking. I had never been so scared in my life. I wanted to help those people, to help Sue, but I couldn’t do anything. I wanted Charlie to do something, but of course, he couldn’t either. Charlie and I both were safe here in the canoe, and they weren’t.
“Sue…” I whimpered.
This time I felt like someone wasn't simply grabbing my insides but was ripping them out. I had to fight for breath, to stay conscious. I became lightheaded and felt myself fall forward. The black water was coming closer and closer to my face.
It suddenly backed off. A strong hand had grabbed me by the scruff and pulled me back. It was Charlie. He embraced me and turned my head, so I couldn’t see what was happening on the tent field. I could still hear the screams and wailing, though, as we were only slowly getting further and further away from them.
“Deep breaths,” Charlie said in between his own sobs. “Deep breaths.”
Slowly the current of the river had us drifting away from the campground, and eventually the screams faded into nothing. We sat in the canoe hugging each other for what seemed like an eternity, both of us crying for the loss of Sue’s life, for the loss of all those lives.
Going Back to Bullsbrook
The canoe followed the river, which wound and bent like a slithering snake through the landscape. I now huddled at the front end of the canoe, Charlie sat at the back. As we meandered along, my memories drifted back to when I had first met Sue.
We had met in the hardware store, where I was looking for paint to do up my new home. We bumped into each other trying to grab the same can of paint. She was the most colorful person I had ever met. When we started chatting, I found out she was the new English teacher at Bullsbrook High. We immediately clicked and were like two peas in a pod from that day on. We spent most of our time together, helping each other painting and decorating. Then school started, and our time was spent teaching long hours in the classrooms as well as at home preparing lesson plans.
How I wished I had spent more time with her those last few weeks. How I wished I’d saved her. How I wished I still had my friend.
We drifted for hours. When we got too close to the shore, Charlie pushed us off with a branch he’d broken off from an overhanging tree. We didn’t talk. We didn’t want to be heard by any onshore suckers. Besides, we didn’t have anything to say to each other. Sue was gone, people were dead. What was there to say?
If I hadn’t given her that lamp, we might have all escaped together.
If I had run faster, she would have followed me to the canoes.
If I had turned to fight the sucker, we may have helped Sue get free.
I went through all the possible scenarios over and over in my mind. I couldn’t stop it. It was as if my mind had a subscription on repeats lately. Though my brain knew I couldn’t change what had happened, my heart seemed to refute that fact. It kept telling my mind to try and find a loophole to undo past events.
***
When the first rays of sunshine climbed over the horizon, it created glittering sparkles on the water’s surface. Birds had already begun singing earlier, and life seemed to continue as if nothing eventful had happened.
Charlie spoke all of a sudden.
“It’s not your fault.”
I wasn’t facing him. Silently, I pondered his words for another minute before answering.
“Yes, it is. If I hadn’t given her the lamp, she’d still be alive.”
“You don’t know that.” His voice was devoid of emotion. Calm, if anything.
“Don’t give me that bullshit about Karma.” My breathing sped up a notch.
I heard Charlie sigh. “Look, if you want to blame somebody, blame me. I was the one that grabbed and saved you instead of Sue.”
I finally turned to look at him and saw his sad eyes.
Oh my god. He thinks he’s to blame for Sue’s death.
“It’s not your fault either,” I said.
He didn’t reply, which was on par with my verbal refusal of his words. We let the silence linger. There was no use wasting our breath on words that had no bearing on changing the situation. I let my arm drop outside the canoe, fingers gliding over the water’s surface. The cool, little waves lapping against my hand were all I had to keep me from drowning in my sorrow.
***
I had no idea how far we had drifted down the river. When houses began to appear, we could only guess we’d reached Bullsbrook. We got off at the first jetty we came across and moored the canoe.
I felt like a fugitive as we walked through the town, dashing from house to house, huddling in the shadows against the walls. We stopped at every sound we heard as we didn’t know if there were any suckers here, and we didn’t want to find out either.
Before we had gotten out of the canoe, we had decided to go to the school. There was a ribbon of pure magnesium in the science storeroom. I had explained to Charlie that magnesium, when you set it on fire, gives off an extremely bright light, including UV-light. I knew it was only a tiny piece, but Charlie agreed it might be our only chance to escape from a sucker attack in a dire situation. The school buildings might offer a safe place to hide as well. Who would want to go back to school?
It took us a while to find out which part of town we were in, but soon we recognized where we were and set off for the school on a more direct route. Bullsbrook High was the only high school in the area. It also housed the only local adult education facilities; hence the school wasn’t a small one and consisted of multiple buildings. We arrived there without incident, and went straight to my science classroom on the second floor of the main building.
Magnesium
At the front of the classroom was the door that led to the storeroom. We hurried into the room, and I searched the boxes on the shelves with consumables from top to bottom. Charlie let me get on with it. In the meantime, he examined pieces of equipment, like beakers, cylinders, and clamps.
“Gee, you need to do some dusting in here, Kate.” I saw him wipe his fingers over the surface of an Erlenmeyer before wiping his hands.
“Yeah, I meant to, but I haven’t had the time for it yet. I’ve been having too much fun teaching them about magnets and electrical fields.”
I continued my search. The boxes were almost empty, so it didn’t take me too long to find the one I wanted.
“Ah, got it,” and I showed Charlie the small, silvery piece of ribbon in a little zip-lock plastic bag filled with oil. The magnesium strip was about five centimeters long.
“Is that all?” Charlie said.
“Yes, unfortunately.” Even though I had known it wasn’t much, I was as disappointed as he was.
“How long is that going to last?” Charlie asked.
“To be honest, I have no idea. If I remember correctly, not long, but I don’t want to waste it trying.” We both looked at it a while longer. “Let’s cut it in half, so we each have a piece.” I put the package on the desk and opened a desk drawer.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to make it even smaller?” It was obvious Charlie didn’t think so.
“Where’s a zip-lock bag when you need one?” I rummaged through the contents of the drawer.
“Wouldn’t it be better to keep it whole, to keep it burning longer?” Charlie tried again.
I stopped my search to think about that.
“Yes, possibly, but what if we’re attacked from two sides? We need to be able to ward them off from different directions.”
“Hmm,
you’ve got a point there. But if we are attacked by hordes, we won’t get out anyway. At least, it’ll be very unlikely.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting this stuff will make them have seizures, and we can just step over them to get away.” I continued my search for a small zip-lock bag.
When I finally found one, I took a pair of scissors from one of the wooden blocks on the shelves. I took the ribbon of magnesium out of the bag and cut the silvery piece in half. The metal was soft and pliable. I carefully poured half of the oil into the new bag and dropped a piece of ribbon into each one. I closed the seals and held out one bag to Charlie.
“Don’t lose it through a hole in your pocket,” I said.
He took it, looked at it for a moment, and put it in his pocket. I rummaged some more through the desk’s drawers.
“What are you looking for now?” he asked.
Turning around I held up two lighters. “These!” I said triumphantly. “We need to be able to light the magnesium.”
He smiled and held up his own lighter, retrieved from his pocket.
“Got one already. Need one to light my blowtorch, remember?” His face had a smug look as he picked up his blowtorch which he had set down for the time being.
I looked at the cheap-looking lighters in my hand and again at the silver-colored, engraved lighter in his hand before dropping my arms.
“You win. Your Schwartz is bigger than mine.” I threw one of the lighters back in the drawer and pocketed the other.
“Sorry,” Charlie said, but he was still smiling.
Living Like A Vampire Page 5