by Mark Tufo
I wished I could kill her here, right now, but I also felt a deep pity, her life had been nothing but a cesspool of slavery and deprivation. A man who I had not noticed earlier swept passed me on the left on an intercept course for her. For a moment I wondered if he was also ‘outside’ of this time and knew that she had to be destroyed. He was a destroyer alright, but not just of bodies, souls were included.
I watched as he latched on to her arm much like her father had five maybe six years previous. Her eyes ratcheted up defiantly to look at him, then I watched as the will was sapped out of her and was replaced with rabid fear. She was petrified, but did not struggle as the stranger spoke.
His words were clear and of a higher origin than the rabble strewn around him, who I noticed tried their best to ignore him completely.
“I can give you the world,” he promised her. “I can take you away from this filth of humanity. Do you want that?”
Eliza alternated between nodding and shaking her head back and forth. Who wouldn’t want out of the shit hole she was in, but she was thinking the cost might be steeper than she was prepared to pay.
“Answer me correctly, girl,” she stranger said angrily. “Either I will dine and you will die, or I will show you a world you never knew existed.”
She was trapped. What were her options? I wonder now, if an Eliza with a soul was able to look back on her life if she would have stayed human. She had spent the last five hundred years making mankind pay for her rotten childhood, think of how many psychiatrists off-spring college tuitions she could have funded in that time. The thought of Eliza on a couch explaining all her problems brought a small smile to my face.
Eliza nodded as the stranger led her into an alleyway much like the one that had first enlisted her into the ranks of slavery, this was slavery but of another sort.
“I am going to feed on you slightly.” Eliza’s eyes grew wide. “If you live, you will be changed forever. You will be beautiful forever,” he said, stroking some stray hair that had fallen across her eyes. Eliza winced but did not move. “When you are strong enough, I want you to meet me in London. There is a pub down by the docks called the Dragoon, I will be there tomorrow night only. If you do not show, it will be because the vampirism did not take.” Eliza backed away at that word.
Vampire was still a scary word today. I can’t imagine the connotations it held back in these dark ages.
“It would be a pity if you died,” he said as he leaned in and bit deeply. Eliza’s head tilted back as her eyes rolled up inside her head. Her ruddy cheeks began to drain of all color.
The stranger took his measure and seemed to take a cruel dose of pleasure when Tomas ran up to his sister. He moved swiftly and silently away as Tomas cradled his sister in his arms. I wept at the sight. I figured this was as about as safe as it was ever going to get for me to cry and nobody to actually witness it. What little part of her was still left when the vampire came was stripped away like rotten bark on a dead tree.
***
Her eye’s fluttered open as Tomas cascaded her face with his tears. “Tomas? Is that really you, Tomas?” Eliza asked.
“It’s me, Lizzie, it’s me!” he cried. “We’re finally together again! How I’ve missed you! Now we can be together again forever!”
“Tomas,” Lizzie said sadly, stroking his face gently, “it’s too late for me.”
“What are you talking about, Lizzie? I’m here you’re here, we’re together.” I wept even as Tomas uttered the words. He had been minutes from finding his sister still human. But she was not intact, her life thus far had twisted and gnarled her, she would be distrustful and bitter until the day she died, unfortunately the stranger had now extended that indefinitely.
Even as he wept for joy, it was not difficult to tell that he sensed something else happening something evil beyond even his extraordinary sense of empathy.
“What is the matter Lizzie? You are burning up.” Tomas asked the question but even from my vantage point I could see the snow around her melting at an alarming rate as if she were a mini sun going nova.
“You should go, Tomas,” she said, closing her eyes.
“I can’t leave you, Lizzie. We’re all we have, you and me. You told me you would always look out for me. You were the only one that told me I didn’t have witches living in my head.”
I had no idea what the boy was referring to, but in these Middle Ages it was never good to be associated with witches. His life had most likely only been spared because he had left home to find his sister.
“I love you, Lizzie.”
I wanted to turn away this was worse than watching the Hallmark channel.
“I love you too, Tomas. And that is why you should go.”
“Why won’t you open your eyes, Lizzie? Please, please look at me.”
Tears pushed through her closed lids. “Please, Tomas, don’t look at me this way. I’m not the sister you used to know. Unspeakable things have been done to me and I found a way to right those wrongs and I took it. I will exact my revenge.”
“That’s not how my Lizzie talks,” Tomas said as he wiped at his blurring eyes.
“GO!” She pushed him away. Her eyes seemed to produce their own light as she looked at him menacingly. I backed up an extra step. This was more of the Eliza I knew, unbridled power and a deep wish to unleash it on all those around her.
“I will not!” he screamed, but to me it looked like he was tensing to spring away from her.
Eliza sat up. I could see Tomas’ window of opportunity to make a clean get away closing rapidly on exposed fingers. Tomas finally seemed to be getting it as he stood and started backing up, it would have been impossible to miss her cross over from love to predatory awareness. He kept shaking his head in denial but I knew that wasn’t going to help him at all. The field mouse can continue to eat its seed even in the talons of the hawk, but that isn’t going to change the outcome: flesh rending and bone crunching.
With an ungodly speed, Eliza wrapped her hand around Tomas’ neck. He was at least six inches off the ground; I knew that feeling well enough.
“Lizzie, please,” he begged.
Eliza didn’t waste any time as she bit down hard on his neck. Tomas screamed in pain.
“Lizzie please, I love you!” His tears splashed down on her upturned face.
Some last remnant of Lizzie rose to the surface. She pulled her extended canines out of his neck. “GO!” she screamed again. “I won’t be able to stop next time.” She looked defeated, with her head bowed. Tomas dropped to the ground as she released her grip.
He scurried away. I would imagine scarcely believing the turn of events. “I love you, Lizzie. I will follow you until I find a way to fix whatever has happened here tonight.”
I watched for a moment as Eliza hesitated, she looked like she had regretted her last decision. If I hadn’t already met Tommie, I would have assumed she finished him off right there and then. She warred within herself for long minutes fighting the urge to hunt him down, the only thing that might have saved Tomas was an unfortunate boy who had just bought a loaf of bread and was most likely taking a short cut to get home. The bread soaked in the melting snow as Eliza drained the boy dry. She discarded his husk much like a smoker would a used cigarette, she flicked him away with no regard for who he was or had been.
He was a meal plain and simple. I mean, I guess it makes sense. Lions don’t sit there and think about the gazelle’s hopes and dreams as they rip chunks of meat from its hindquarters, why would she? We whooshed again, the journeys through the ripples of her mind were causing no small amounts of vertigo but since I was fairly certain I didn’t have a stomach which to throw up with I should be fine.
Through a thick glassy haze I watched her meeting with The Stranger in the tavern in London, but her memory of it must have been skewed from the affects of the cross over, she was having a difficult time keeping her head up as long dirty stringy strands of her hair kept pooling up on the rough wooden table.
“I did not think you would make the transition, and I’m still not so sure,” he said as he tightly gripped her chin and thrust her face up so that he could look in her eyes. “You have eaten? Impressive, most die in these first few hours because they cannot overcome their human weaknesses. But you’re a survivor aren’t you? I think I chose wisely.” He let go of her and her forehead almost bounced off the table.
“Come,” he said, standing and whisking quickly towards the door. He did not help her or wait, she struggled to stand and lurched out into the murky light to try and keep pace. We whooshed quickly from scene to scene, most consisted of her severe beatings at the hands of her ‘savior.’ He had saved her from one hell only to be thrust into a different layer. The only time he seemed even remotely ‘human’ was when they would go on feeding frenzies in some of the more outlying areas of Britannia, if that was what it was even called back then. I got the sense we were still on English speaking soil, but mostly all I was hearing from the peasant populations was crying and screaming as the vampire duo tore through them like hyenas at an orphanage.
You get the imagery, right? It was that bad. I wanted to forget that this had ever happened. The human misery these two were doling out was without rival. They actually reveled in their kills, playing with children much like a cat does with a mouse. Even going so far as to toss one back and forth as they took small measures of blood, the mother screaming in horror as she would run from one vampire to the other in a desperate bid to get them to stop. If I could have stepped through the barrier of time to never return to my own era just to have the chance to stop them I would have. I was merely a voyeur to their disease.
This repeated to the point where I just stopped watching. She had each kill catalogued in her memory like a soccer mom stores dinner recipes on a little rolodex, although really, how many mom’s still did that up until the end. Most likely all of that was either on a smart phone or a tablet, these days though it would be whatever was scavenged. It was only by mere chance that I caught what unfolded next, I was getting a crick in my non-existent neck and pulled my head back up from my penny finding pose.
The Stranger was completely old-school as far as vamps go, he was sleeping in a coffin, but where there should have been dirt I saw what looked like the finest of silks, apparently blood thirsty creatures of the night liked their comfort also. Eliza was staring down at him, she was on the far side of the coffin her hands guiltily behind her back, from this angle I could not tell what she was hiding. She was about as coy as a five year old with chocolate all over his face and a busted cookie jar on the kitchen floor, adamantly denying any knowledge to the events in said room.
She kept inching closer to him, peering intently at his face. It was impossible to figure out what she was doing but she looked to me like she was trying to find his soul.
“Good luck with that,” I said aloud.
Eliza looked straight up and at me as I said the words, she startled the shit out of me, I was pretty glad I was incorporeal at the moment or I would have had a hell of a mess to clean up. After my heart stopped trying to dislodge itself from my chest I realized she was looking through me and at the doorway where something heavy had scraped against stone, at least that’s what it sounded like. When she looked back down at The Stranger, his eyes were open and he was eyeing Eliza curiously and I might add a little warily. It seems the same noise had disturbed his beauty rest.
“Up early, my dear?” he asked.
Her head moved back, but she did not. Eliza nodded once and I could tell she was wavering with whatever her plan had been.
He began to sit up; that was all the trigger Eliza needed as she pulled a large wooden stake from behind her back. What happened next was too fast to track with human eyes, but when I caught up, Eliza had plunged the stake at least 8 inches deep into The Stranger’s chest. He in the mean time had wrapped his large hand around her slender throat, he was dying but he seemed very determined to take her with him. The world would have been a much brighter place had they both succeeded. Eliza finally wrenched free as the vampire’s heart began to beat its final rhythm. Eliza stepped back and placed her hands to her bruised and blackened throat.
“You will never lay your hands on me again, Victor. No one will,” she rasped heavily.
“I was wondering when you would turn. I knew I should have killed you weeks ago,” Victor said as he placed both his hands around the stake.
I thought he was going to try and pull it out, but he seemed incapable of much more than lying there as his...what poured out? His death? Can death pour out? Nobody spills death. I’d let future theologians worry about it. I was glad beyond words that this monster was dying but he had bred one that would far surpass his mastery. Then Eliza hit me with words so hard I was knocked back into the reality of the Zombie Apocalypse.
“I curse you, Victor Talbot, my hope is that you walk the world in eternal darkness. I will destroy every seed that you have ever sowed.”
Check out these other titles by Mark Tufo
Zombie Fallout
It was a flu season like no other. With fears of contracting the H1N1 virus running rampant through the country, people lined up in droves to try and obtain one of the coveted vaccines. What was not known, was the effect this largely untested, rushed to market, inoculation was to have on the unsuspecting throngs.
Within days, feverish folk throughout the country, convulsed, collapsed and died, only to be re-born. With a taste for brains, blood and bodies, these modern day zombies scoured the lands for their next meal. Overnight the country became a killing ground for the hordes of zombies that ravaged the land.
This is the story of Michael Talbot, his family and his friends. When disaster strikes, Mike a self-proclaimed survivalist, does his best to ensure the safety and security of those he cares for. Can brains beat brain eaters? It's a battle for survival, winner take all!
Zombie Fallout 2: A Plague Upon Your Family
Zombies have destroyed Little Turtle, the Talbot’s find themselves on the run from a ruthless enemy that will stop at nothing to end their lineage. Here are the journal entries of Michael Talbot, his wife Tracy, their three kids Nicole, Justin and Travis. With them are Brendon, Nicole's fiancée and Tommy previously a Wal-Mart door greeter who may be more than he seems. Together they struggle against a relentless enemy that has singled them out above all others. As they travel across the war-torn country side they soon learn that there are more than just zombies to be fearful of, with law and order a long distant memory some humans have decided to take any and all matters into their own hands. Can the Talbots come through unscathed or will they suffer the fate of so many countless millions before them. It's not just brains versus brain-eaters anymore. And the stakes may be higher than merely life and death with eternal souls on the line.
Zombie Fallout 3: The End…
Continues Michael Talbot's quest to be rid of the evil named Eliza that hunts him and his family across the country. As the world spirals even further down into the abyss of apocalypse one man struggles to keep those around him safe. Side by side Michael stands with his wife, their children, his friends and the wonder Bulldog Henry along with the Wal-Mart greeter Tommy who is infinitely more than he appears and whether he is leading them to salvation or death is only a measure of degrees.
As Justin continues to slip further into the abyss he receives help from an unexpected ally all of which leads up to the biggest battle thus far.
Dr. Hugh Mann – A Zombie Fallout Prequel 3.5
Dr Hugh Mann delves deeper into what caused the zombie invasion. Early in the 1900’s Dr. Mann discovers a parasite that brings man to the brink of an early extinction. Come along on
the journey with Jonathan Talbot is bride to be Marissa and the occasional visitations from the boy with the incredible baklava. Could there be a cure somewhere here and what part does the blood locket play?
Zombie Fallout IV: The End…Has Come and Gone
The End…has come and gone. This is the new beginning, the new world order and it sucks. The end for humanity came the moment the U.S. government sent out the infected flu shots. My name is Michael Talbot and this is my journal. I’m writing this because no one’s tomorrow is guaranteed, and I have to leave something behind to those who may follow.
So continues Mike’s journey, will he give up all that he is in a desperate bid to save his family and friends? Eliza is coming, can anyone be prepared?
Zombie Fallout V: Alive In A Dead World
Michael Talbot has set up a plan to finally turn the tables on his bitter rival Eliza. Sick of being relentlessly hunted, Mike asks for volunteers in a pivotal move that could finally end their conflict. But like what always happens to the best laid plans, nothing goes as it was drawn up. Now they are once again struggling to survive and more than one will succumb to the evil that walks the world.
Indian Hill
This first story is about an ordinary boy, who grows up in relatively normal times to find himself thrust into an extra-ordinary position. Growing up in suburban Boston he enjoys the trials and tribulations that all adolescents go through. From the seemingly tyrannical mother, to girl problems to run-ins with the law. From there he escapes to college out in Colorado with his best friend, Paul, where they begin to forge new relationships with those around them. It is one girl in particular that has caught the eye of Michael and he alternately pines for her and then laments ever meeting her.