by Day, P. J.
“Go ahead, Havens, shoot, you sick fuck,” I yelled, challenging him.
The masked man stood up and yelled something in Cantonese at the others who were slightly ahead of us near the alleyway. One of the other masked figures, also wearing leather motorbike wear, leaped from the elevated concrete platform onto Havens below. The distance of his leap was by no means possible from a human. Havens quickly changed the direction of his crossbow and shot the leaping man in midair, the arrow puncturing the center of the man’s chest. The man hit the floor, rolled a few times, and finally rested motionless in front of Havens. The masked man next to me yelled, “Go...go...go!”
I turned around and bit my lip, trying my hardest to deflect the pain that was gnawing the wound in my thigh. The pain was resonating so deep, it began affecting a nerve that somehow started to stiffen my ankle. I began skipping furiously on one leg toward the dark alleyway. I looked back again and four to five masked men jumped down where Havens was standing below, attempting to overcome him while I escaped. Havens grabbed one of the men, grappling him by his neck and thighs, the tips of his fingers kneading deep into the man’s leather outfit, plowing his back right onto his knee with a monstrous force. The man twitched as he hit the floor and could only lift his upper chest, his legs paralyzed, as he attempted to crawl away from Havens, using only his hands. Havens grabbed another man and flung him toward the concrete mound. Another jumped on Havens’s back, and began bashing him on top of his head with both of his enclosed fists. I turned my head and mustered every last bit of energy in my legs and walked as fast as I could.
I entered the alleyway. I used the grimy walls to support myself. “Make a quick right,” said the masked man, taking quick, continual glances at our rear.
About ten yards into the main alley, it deviated into two different directions. The man swiftly came underneath me and scooped my left shoulder with his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “It’s right through this door.” The man began banging on the door with his closed fist. “I have him! Open up...hurry.”
A young Chinese male with spiky hair, wearing a pair of denim motorcycle pants and a bright red leather jacket, answered the door. The door led to a large empty garage. There were four motorcycles waiting for us; three Ducati Monster 696’s and a slick, black and silver Star Stryker, which had a female driver, and sitting bitch, a heavyset man in jeans wearing a familiar-looking corduroy jacket. He lifted his visor, revealing his unmistakably familiar pair of jolly eyes. His chubby cheeks spilled out of the bottom part of the black motorcycle helmet. “I knew you were alive, you stud,” howled Ted. “Listen, get on that bike cause' we need to get the hell out of here, man. Shit is getting crazy.”
The man who helped me escape from the facility took off his gas mask. Small droplets of his sweat splattered all over my face. I used my right hand to quickly wipe his perspiration from my forehead.
“Sorry,” he said, revealing a fresh-faced Chinese youth, with short black hair and a playful smirk. He gave me his small hand for a quick handshake and said, “Hello Jack, I’m Milton.” My eyes opened wide and I began to shake my head in disbelief. I readied for a self-inflicted blow to my own head but Milton caught my wrist with his hand. “This is no dream, buddy,” he said, getting on one of the Ducatis. “Let’s go, there is someone waiting for you.”
I climbed onto the back of the motorcycle, wincing in pain as I had to lift my wounded and bloodied thigh with both hands. I held onto Milton’s waist as the sudden and abrupt acceleration of the motorbike whipped my head back violently.
Our group of motorcycles headed east. I looked behind me and saw a large ball of fire emanating from the location of the market and the underground facility. An ungodly booming sound followed a few seconds after a large fiery plume erupted into the calm starry night. Milton and the rest of the riders accelerated their motorcycles, at hazardous velocities, onto the empty streets of Guangzhou, leaving nothing but devastation, carnage, and death in their wake.
Chapter Five
We were a few miles south of Guilin, a city located on the Li River, in the Southern Region of Guangxi. Our bikes hugged the two-lane highway, which ran in between the carved green hillsides, that were lush with vegetation, and whose varied and winding peaks stood tall over the rice paddies in the fog-filled valley below.
Dawn was approaching, and the sun’s radiance began peeking through the dips of the interconnecting jagged hills that Guilin was known for. I forced myself from falling asleep on the backseat of the bike, as our ride was approaching its fourth hour, by counting the descending levels of the rice terraces that were sculpted into the hills.
I leaned into the side of Milton’s helmet. “The sun will be up soon, are we almost there?” I asked, as the wind and the roar of the motorcycle’s engine drowned out my diction.
“What?” Milton asked.
“The sun is almost up,” I yelled. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, giving me a quick wink through the opening of his helmet. “Twenty minutes.”
Ted’s weight bore onto the back of the girl’s motorcycle, slightly flattening the back tire. He gave me a thumbs up as we continued on the winding, hilly, and desolate highway. We reached the crest of the highway and promptly descended down a long drop in the road. Off into the distance and through the morning fog, like a grounded chandelier, downtown Guilin shone brightly on the marshy banks of the Li River. Suddenly, thoughts of a vampire-friendly city in the heart of Southern China began to ruminate in my head. However, if there was such a thing, Guangzhou Jiyin Engineering most likely would have turned it into ghost town by now.
“Is that where we’re going?” I yelled.
Milton shook his head.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough sun to last me a lifetime,” I said.
Milton lifted his left arm and pointed toward a group of small lights that were flickering like fireflies at the base of the large outcropping a few miles west of Guilin.
“Are we going to make it before sunrise?” I asked.
Milton motioned at the other bikes with his left hand. The motorcycles all shifted into a gear that I was not used to on the long ride from Guangzhou. My body draped over Milton’s back, as we descended down the road’s slope at extremely dangerous speeds. On the back of the female driver’s motorcycle, Ted reveled in the terminal velocity as his whoops and hollers bounced off the chiseled, mountain walls that lined the road.
We veered left on a fork, away from the road that led to the center of Guilin City. The stars in the sky began to give way to the emerging reddish hue from the morning sun. Rural Guilin was green and beautiful. Fisherman wearing conical sedge hats stood on their canoes, paddling down the Li River, with large black birds standing on the bows, splaying their wings at the morning sun.
Our bikes slowed down almost to a halt as they made a quick right onto a small, muddy driveway that was nestled in between two farms. The serene emptiness of the desolate vicinity was immediately overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of large banyan trees that hung over the narrow muddy road, whose lush overreaching canopies temporarily shaded me from the emerging sunlight.
A few minutes passed and we crossed a wide wooden bridge, that was around 200 yards in length. The bridge seemed hastily suspended over the brown rush of the Li River. The old wooden planks of the bridge were all slightly raised at differing heights, bouncing us up and down on our bikes as if were on the saddles of a galloping show horse.
As soon as we crossed the bridge, we came upon a large concrete enclosure with eight-foot-high walls and two large wooden doors—of the same height—in the center. We stopped our bikes in front of the door, and the young man in the red leather jacket got off his bike and pushed through the large wooden doors. He stood by the entrance and waved us through with his right arm.
Inside the enclosure was a large dried-up vineyard, which extended to another set of concrete walls near another opening. Half of it had plastic bird netting,
while the other half looked desiccated and brown. A row of wires and small, clear light bulbs hung over the road leading to an encampment. Old rusty cars, tires, and farming equipment rested near the camp ahead, which was setup at the base of the mountain, where a small stone house with mossy walls rested in the center. Our bikes stopped under a large tree alongside old wooden picnic tables. Milton got off the bike, looked at me and offered his hand. “You need help getting off?” he asked.
I bit my lower lip and attempted to lift my left leg off the back of the motorcycle. There was slight pain, more like soreness actually, but I managed to climb off the bike without assistance.
“You need help walking?” asked Milton.
Ted ran up to me and gave me a big hug. “I’m so happy you’re okay,” he said, his face snug up against my right cheek.
“Be careful, Ted,” said Milton. “Let him try to walk.”
Ted backed away and stared at me with worried eyes, I noticed his beard overgrown and shaggy as soon as he took off his helmet. I put one step forward, seeing if there was going to be a sharp pain that ran down my leg starting from my thigh. Nothing. As expected, I had managed to heal on the ride from Guangzhou. I smiled at Milton and Ted. “The arrows weren’t pure silver.”
Milton patted me on my shoulder. “You’re lucky their suppliers were cheap bastards.”
The sun’s rays began to shine through the branches and foliage above our heads. The young man in the red jacket arrived and parked his bike next to the others. He dismounted and took off his helmet.
I looked up at the streaming rays of light, worried. “I should start heading indoors.”
“It’s okay, we have plenty of shade,” said Milton, in a deeper voice that I was accustomed to. His cadence was the same as it was in my dreams, but his voice was no longer squeaky and prepubescent.
“Jenny, your helmet?” Ted said to the girl who was still on the bike.
The girl took off her helmet and long, silky, black locks splashed onto her shoulders. She faced me with a longing look, lipstick smeared on her upper lip, most likely from her helmet grazing her lips as she took it off.
“Jenny? Jenny Mah?” I asked, in utter disbelief. “From the club in Hong Kong?”
“Crazy, right?” asked Ted, doubling my surprise with a cackle.
Jenny ran right up to me and hugged me.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, pushing her away with my hands, with a tinge of homophobia. “I thought it was strictly business that night.”
Jenny, Milton, and the young man in the red jacket all laughed out loud in unison. Ted shrugged his shoulders at me in discomfort and said, “Jack, you’re not going to believe what’s going on.”
“Thank you for rescuing me,” I said to Milton. “As soon as dusk hits, my friend and I are going to be leaving. I need to get a hold of Holly and think of a way to get back to the States.”
“No, Jack. You are going to take a few days and rest with us,” said Milton.
“No, I am not,” I said, trying to keep my inflection from sounding too hostile.
“Jack, just listen to what he has to say,” said Ted.
“We saved your life, you owe us,” said Milton.
I squinted my eyes and carefully looked at Milton and the young man’s skin. It was pale and semi-translucent. “You’re...”
“...Yes, yes we are” said Milton. “Jiang-Shi, in fact.”
“Okay, so you’re special, cool,” I said. I turned to Jenny. “You seem to have color. Makeup? Are you a Jiang Shi?”
“No, I’m not a vampire, but my clients are,” she said, with a sly grin.
“Look, I’d love to talk but even though you guys are used to a little sunlight it seems, I’m not,” I said, as I began to scratch my itchy skin. “Can we go inside?”
Milton put his hand on my shoulder, giving me an all-knowing smile, “Here, let’s go behind this house.”
“Wait, I thought we were going into the house?” asked Ted, nervously.
“What? You think we’d all fit in that tiny little house, you’re crazy,” said Milton, letting out a playful laugh. “Plus, it’s filled with rats and cockroaches.”
Jenny ran up to me as we walked down a dirt path behind th house, and excitedly whispered into my ear, “You need blood?”
“Not right now—why?”
“If you need some, let me know; your bite, it’s just so...so...it feels good, okay?” she said, draping herself all over my shoulder.
“She says your bite is magical,” said Milton, as we continued to walk toward a large dark crevice at the base of the mountain.
Magical? I guess that was the right word which described what I thought she experienced that night in the club. When it was time to develop zeopirudin at Schnell, I had advocated for the development of a second version, one that would treat trauma patients who were in severe pain. Zeopirudophine was the name of the second version, which happened to contain an opiate derivative, to help with the pain. Of course, the last thing on my mind was helping patients relieve their anguish at the time I advocated for its creation; it was a selfish request. One that obviously worked, since Cassie and now Jenny were fans of my irresistible and chemically enhanced bite.
“What’s your secret, Jack?” asked Milton.
“Let’s find Holly first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Well...” said Milton. “Holly is safe.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, as I turned and faced Milton, grabbing him by his shoulders. “Where is she?”
We all stopped in front of the base of the mountain. There was a deep, dark rocky chasm that extended into black nothingness. I couldn’t tell if it stretched into the side of the mountain or if went into the ground.
Milton curled his lip and pointed toward the bottom of the rift. “She’s down there.”
Ted and I walked toward edge of the precipice and peered into the ill-lighted, craggy abyss.
“She’s down there?” I asked.
“You guys didn’t tell me anything about this,” said Ted, bewildered. “I’m not spelunking.”
Milton grabbed a long, purple Maglight from his leather jacket and lit some makeshift stone steps that led to the cave opening below. “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” he said. “Plus, Kai over here...” he said, pointing at the red-jacketed man, “...is good with swords.”
Chapter Six
All five of us cascaded down the rocky steps into the cold, limestone cave. Milton guided us with his flashlight in hand, while Jenny and Kai followed from behind.
“Just a few more steps before we see gas lamps,” said Milton.
“Gas lamps?” I asked. “Is this where you guys live?”
“Yes, this is the temporary home of the Jiang-Shi,” added Milton, illuminating the steps immediately in front of him. The cave’s steps weren’t anything like the regular steps you’d see in an old ruin or even a set of the stairs that were built into a mountain that you’d see at a national park. They were just groupings of limestone and dolomite stones that collapsed down the cave either through erosion or rockslides.
“Okay, so how did this all happen?” I asked, my question particularly aimed at Ted. “How the hell did you know where I was?”
Ted kept his footing by keeping his right arm against the wall. He chuckled, “Well, remember the café in Hong Kong where you extorted me into going?”
“The Ngo Ngo, right?”
“Yeah, well, Jenny here, was the one who instant messaged you.”
I looked back at Jenny, while taking small careful steps as I continued to descend down the craggy floor. “How did you manage to instant message me—it wasn’t even 24 hours after the night went to shit by the time you got a hold of me.”
“I took your business card from your wallet,” she said.
“Oh...”
Ted gave me a funny look and asked, “You have your screen name on your business card?”
“Yeah, well. I thought it would be like hip, you know?”
“I don’t even put my email on mine. I just want to be left alone when I am away from work,” said Ted. “You surely are committed.”
“Was committed,” I quickly corrected him. “I don’t know what I was thinking, trusting those sons of bitches.”
The stony declination began to flatten after a few minutes of descent. Fifty yards ahead, we could see the flickering of flames.
“Just a few more feet,” said Milton. He flashed the wall to the right as we approached the lit tunnel. “Pretty cool, huh?” It was a row of four Buddha statues that were chiseled and shaped out of a limestone quarry into the wall. “These are over five hundred years old,” said Milton.
“That’s nice,” I said. “Sorry if I don’t want to act like Indiana Jones right now, but I need to know how you found me and I also hope for everyone’s sake that Holly is fine.”
Milton turned around and stopped everyone from walking further. He turned the flashlight toward the bottom of his chin, giving himself an ominous and playfully scary appearance. “Wait a minute, you can trust mortals but not your own kind?” he asked.
“Look, I’ve been through shit, I just want to get to the bottom of things, and just want some reassurance, okay?” I said, pleading with Milton. “Pardon me if I feel kinda spooked for being led down a scary, dark cave with a guy who somehow infiltrated my dreams like Freddy Krueger.”
Milton smiled and looked straight into my eyes, “I want to sit down with you and tell you everything, but there are some things we need to iron out first.”
“Good...”
“It’s a long story but can a full explanation wait?” he asked.
“Sure, but what have you done with Holly?”
“She is fine, but she was getting a little panicky and out of control so we had to put her away, temporarily.”
I grabbed Milton by the collar of his jacket. “What do you mean ‘put her away’; is she hurt?”