Forever Hunger

by David Salkin

  himself, but out loud.

  “You are wounded! Let me help you!” pleaded Olmer, not yet

  comprehending what he was actually seeing.

  “I am not wounded!” hissed the man. “I am dead! I have been dead

  for two hundred years! But never wounded!” He sounded confused. He

  looked back down at his wounds, and pushed a finger deep into one of

  the holes. When he pulled it out, he sucked off the blood and stared at

  Olmer with eyes that looked insane.

  “This battle has ended me!” he hissed. He pushed two fingers back

  into the hole and pulled them out, this time they were dry. His color

  was changing from flushed fever-red to a whitening ashen color of

  death. “I can drink your blood and live another few hours maybe.” He

  was now speaking to himself again. “Or I can give you my curse and

  live on forever through you!”

  Olmer pushed himself back into the ground as hard as he could,

  trying to get away even though he was pinned against the forest floor.

  He was terrified of this mad man that held him with inhuman strength.

  “Please!” he pleaded, “Please! Let me go!”

  “I will let you go when I am finished with you,” he whispered,

  now leaning inches from Olmer’s face. His breath was terrible, like

  something rotting, and his face was turning white as the whites of his

  eyes slowly yellowed. His once blue eyes were fading to pale silver. Olmer was crying again. Surely he was seeing the devil himself.

  “Please!” he shrieked.

  “I served with the Prussians—I served with the French—I served

  with the English…wherever there was war. Wherever the crusaders

  went. Wherever there was blood. I have been there—always on the

  fringe of death—watching, waiting for my chance to feed. I was

  immortal!” His breath was becoming ragged and wheezy now, and his

  rotten breath grew even more repulsive. He leaned closer, his teeth now

  pointed like some type of wild animal. Olmer opened his mouth to

  scream, but no noise would come out. His heart was pounding in his

  chest, and the creature on top of him placed his hand on Olmer’s heart. “I feel it!” he hissed. “I can hear it! Your blood pounds in your chest

  so hard I can smell it!” He leaned closer still, his razor sharp teeth now

  longer and extended out of his mouth. He inhaled deeply, smelling Olmer’s blood pounding in his chest. “I could feed on you right now— but it wouldn’t help me. I know that now. I am dying. But you!” he hissed between ragged breaths, “You will live undead forever!” He bit deeply into Olmer’s throat, his teeth tearing through Olmer’s trachea. He exhaled deeply into Olmer’s lungs, filling them with his breath of death as he expelled his own cursed blood into Olmer’s throat. The Prussian soldier had disappeared—what was on top of Olmer now was pure evil—pure ungodly animal. Olmer was trying to scream as pain tore through his body. His head felt like it would explode, and his legs kicked wildly under the beast that was coughing its curse of blood and

  evil air into Olmer’s open throat.

  Olmer kicked and struggled until he felt his world going dark. He

  couldn’t breathe—couldn’t get away—he was dying and he could feel

  panic giving way to surrender. He felt sadness at his own death…could

  feel his own life slipping away from him…helpless. The forest began to

  spin around him, and Olmer felt weaker as his life ebbed. The creature pulled his face away from Olmer, panting like a wild

  beast, winded and wild. He spoke, but his voice was now a hoarse

  ragged wheeze. He had a crazed smile on his face, Olmer’s blood

  running down his chin.

  “You’re one of me now!” it whispered. “Just as I was made in those

  dark cold mountains all those years ago, taken from the human world

  and cursed with never ending hunger, so shall you be cursed! You’re not

  alive! You’re not dead!

  You are death itself !”

  Olmer lay there, feeling nauseous and paralyzed, looking up at this

  creature from the depths of Hell, and tried to pray to God. The words

  wouldn’t come. His mind was confused, and his heart rate was slowing.

  He felt so sick. So cold.

  The creature rolled off of him and began laughing wildly again, sounding like a broken musical instrument being played by Satan. He began screaming at the heavens, making no sense at all as his voice broke and went hoarse. He was speaking a language that was not Prussian as he rambled wildly. The creature opened his arms and shrieked, his skin now rotting before Olmer’s glazed eyes. As the creature’s flesh rotted, his eyes went dim and rolled back into their sockets, and his stomach collapsed upon itself as the final remnants of bodily fluid leaked into

  the forest floor.

  Olmer rolled to his side, finally feeling like he could move, and

  proceeded to vomit up huge quantities of blood. He watched his blood

  coming up in huge surges, scared and horrified by what he saw. The

  creature before him was now turning to dust—gone from this world

  forever—but what had it done to him? He felt cold—so cold. He

  doubled over in agony and vomited for what seemed like hours as the

  last of his blood poured out into the grass and leaves, making them

  slick with thick red goo.

  Olmer closed his eyes and died. His heart stopping, never to beat

  again with his own blood.

  Three

  VWX

  Olmer awoke, his clothes drenched in his own blood. He was dazed, and felt sick. It was so quiet. He looked around, trying to remember what had happened. He remembered the battle. The slaughter of his comrades under the French cavalry. He remembered running into the woods. Nightfall. The attack. What was that? His hair stood up. The creature. He remembered now. That thing that he thought was a soldier—that thing he tried to help.

  Olmer sat up and reached for his throat. It was sore, but not bleeding. He held his hand there, suddenly worried at how cold he felt. He felt for his pulse, but couldn’t find it. He reached for his left wrist and tried there—nothing. He must be very weak, he told himself. He stood. The

  • 20 • silence was such a contrast to the screaming and sounds of battle the days before. He cocked his head and listened. Listened so hard. He could hear noises he had never heard before. Sounds like breathing. Like hearts pumping. The slightest of sounds that must be so far away, and yet, he could hear them.

  His stomach grumbled. He remembered now—vomiting so much blood. He opened his coat and looked at his own stomach and chest. He looked so white. Ashen. Sickly. But he didn’t feel sick. What was wrong? He reached for his throat again and remembered that horrid thing that had bitten him. He shuddered as he remembered that thing breathing into his own lungs—that putrid smell. He dry heaved again, but nothing would come up. He realized he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since…when? The day before the battle. That was…three days now? No wonder he was so sick and weak.

  Olmer decided to risk walking out of the forest. He needed to find food and water. He stopped and thought about that. He wasn’t thirsty. He should be. When did he last drink? That night when the three soldiers stole his canteen. Strange.

  Olmer walked for hours through the ancient forest, towards the battlefield. It was getting near dusk. Olmer should have been tired, but he wasn’t. In fact, he was feeling better, not worse. When he reached the fringe of the forest, he stopped and looked out at the sight of the Jena battlefield. It was like looking at another planet. The landscape was scorched. The rolling plains were burnt and destroyed. Piles of dead and dying soldiers extended as far as he could see. Dead horses
were everywhere, mixed with the men. Broken wagons, destroyed cannon caissons, even the large cannons themselves were littered about the landscape. The ground had been torn up and trampled by thousands of charging horses and fleeing men. Tattered flags and clothes fluttered in the light breeze under the dim autumn sun.

  Olmer crouched down and looked. And listened. He could hear it again. That strange noise in his ears. Men crying. Breathing. Begging for water. For help. For God. He could hear beating hearts in a quiet chorus of pumping. So strange. He should have felt revulsion. Sadness. Horror. Something. Instead, he only felt hungry. Scanning in all directions for French troops and seeing none, he stepped out of the woods and walked towards the devastation. Twenty-five thousand dead countrymen and five thousand dead French, mixed with thousands of dead horses and mules...it had been a massacre. Olmer was starving.

  He came upon a small group of dead Prussians. They were white and frozen in death, eyes still open but not seeing. One of them was now food for a large black bird that ignored Olmer as it pecked at an eye socket. Olmer ignored the bird, feeling nothing, and pulled off the man’s canteen. He pulled out the cork and took a long swig. He spit it out and began vomiting although nothing would come up. He felt horribly ill. Perhaps the water had gone rancid? He smelled it. It smelled like a swamp. Disgusting. He tried another canteen. It was the same. Disgusting. And another, and another. All of the water was bad? He couldn’t bring it to his lips without feeling sick.

  His stomach tightened. He was starving. He rifled through the field packs and pockets of the dead looking for food until he found a piece of hardtack. He brought the old biscuit to his lips and the smell hit him. It smelled like weeds, or wood, or dirt…whatever it was, it wasn’t food. He threw it on the ground and the birds went after it.

  He walked, without purpose, through the battlefield. Whatever wounded who had been able to walk had already hobbled on to find help or the end of a French Bayonet. But then he heard someone calling for help. Olmer stopped and cocked his head. He closed his eyes and listened. Really listened. He walked towards the sound, amazed at how far away it was, but that he could still hear it. He found the source, a French soldier on his back clutching rosary beads and quietly awaiting death. The Frenchman had managed to tie off the leg wound that had almost severed his leg below the knee with a scarf. He opened his eyes and saw Olmer standing above him.

  Olmer had never felt it before when looking at another human. Hunger. He felt a slight sense of nausea at what he was thinking, but it was too strong. He knelt beside the dying Frenchman and pulled the make-shift tourniquet off of his shredded leg. The blood immediately began to pump again from the wound near his knee where a cannonball had skipped by and shattered his lower leg bones. Olmer felt something in his mouth, and to his shock, realized it was his own teeth. He reached into his own mouth with his fingertips and felt razor sharp teeth extending out of his mouth as his body readied to feed. Olmer didn’t feel panic or horror, only uncontrollable hunger.

  The Frenchman looked at him and saw his mouth—saw his fangs, and whispered, “Mon Dieu!” Olmer knelt beside the man, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He could smell the blood. He could feel its warmth. He felt so alive! He let out a long howl like a beast from the forest, and surprised himself at his own noise, but he could feel an animal inside himself coming out. He couldn’t stop it. Olmer pounced forward on the man’s leg wound and used his fingertips, now armed with claws, to tear open the man’s trouser leg and sink his teeth into the man’s lower thigh. He bit hard and his fangs slid deep into the man’s flesh. Warm delicious blood poured down Olmer’s throat as he sucked as hard as he could. He ignored the man’s screaming, listening instead to the sound of the man’s heartbeat pounding louder and faster as the man panicked.

  Olmer could taste the adrenaline pump into the man’s bloodstream and felt it carry into his own body, his excitement now building at his first blood meal. “The animal was out” now, as Olmer would learn over time, and he was almost out of control. He bit through the man’s leg deeper, in a feeding frenzy, and tore off a huge chunk of the man’s thigh, which he chewed and swallowed in large chunks. The Frenchman was screaming at the top of his lungs and trying to beat the animal on his leg with his fists, but he was too weak, and could feel his life slowly draining from him with each loud slurp of the nightmare on top of him.

  Olmer looked up at the man’s face—saw the expression of complete and total terror, and let out a loud, long howl that filled the air for hundreds of yards. Large black birds took to the air at the sound, their fluttering wings adding to the eerie sound of the dead landscape. He leaned forward and stared deeply into the man’s eyes and smiled, blood and flesh running down his chin in a nasty drool. He pushed the man’s head up, exposing his throat, and could actually hear the man’s pulse in the carotid artery. He was crazed with blood lust and leaned in where he opened wide and ripped out the man’s throat, sucking up the gushing flow of blood. He slurped and sucked deeply, swallowing mouthful after mouthful until his own body was warm and strong. For the first time that day, he could feel his own heart beating, although not with blood made by his own body. As Olmer sucked the blood, he could feel the man die in his mouth, the blood becoming flat tasting, like old soda, as the lungs no longer pumped oxygen into the blood.

  Olmer sat back and looked at the dead man in front of him. He should have felt horror and shame and disgust, but he didn’t. Instead, he felt power. His hunger was gone. He felt stronger than ever, and totally calm. And then it happened. He leaned forward and vomited up the chunks of flesh he had eaten in a black bloody mess. He spit and cleared his mouth. Lesson learned. It was okay to drink the blood, but not to eat the flesh. He wished that thing that had created him was still alive to question. There was much to learn.

  Four

  VWX

  New York City, 2011

  Adam Priest woke from his dream and tried to remember where he was. When he was. He was in New York. It was 2011. Amazing. He looked around at the warehouse where he had fed last night and then had decided to stay and rest. He burped, tasting the woman from last night. Disgusting. The street walkers were always diseased and on drugs, but he had been hungry and this one was attractive to him at that moment. He loved the way he could seduce the prostitutes, who were usually so cold and “faking it” with their Johns. When he had them, he would surprise them with the use of his long tongue, making them scream in delight and send out a flood of hormones, adrenaline and pheromones, making their blood like a fine Cabernet, filled with subtle flavors. He had come a long way since his savage days in the

  • 26 •

  forests of Germany. This one had been particularly thrilling, although she has been a cocaine user which always made him feel sick the next day. He had allowed her to proposition him in a bar, then agreed to follow her to a cheap motel she knew about. When they neared a warehouse along the way to the hotel, he pulled her inside and told her how he loved it in public. When he dropped to his knees and pulled her skirt up to bury his face between her legs, she didn’t resist. It wasn’t until he sank his long fangs into her femoral artery that she protested anything he had done to her. She had started to scream, but Adam had reached up with his left hand and squeezed her throat so hard she couldn’t make a sound. He sucked her blood slowly, enjoying the many flavors of her blood chemistry. She had obviously been seriously turned on by him before he bit into her, and she was one of his better meals in a long time. When he was full, and she was empty, he laid back and savored the taste, quite cheerfully. He could feel every nerve ending in his body—nothing short of complete euphoria. He allowed himself to sleep for a few hours, something he rarely did until he had gotten rid of the body, but she had been so delicious, he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

  Adam dreamt of his creation, the fateful night in the woods after the Battle of Jenna, back when he was human. He awoke confused for a moment, almost drunk on the many chemicals in that whore’s blood, but smiled as he re
called his evening. He got up, picked up the dead woman like she weighed nothing, and threw her over his shoulder. The warehouse was huge and abandoned, and one he had used before. He walked into a rear storage area where an old furnace still sat, and pushed her body into it. He grabbed the gasoline can he had used before as well and doused her thoroughly before lighting her up. With very little fluid left in her body, she burned easily as Adam shoved pieces of gas soaked wooden pallets in with her. Watching her flesh roasting, he felt sad. It smelled good, under the gasoline vapors, and he missed being able to eat. She would have been tasty, he was sure. Oh well. His belly was quite full and his body was warm and strong. He inhaled her one last time, and then hustled out back into the street to head home.

  Five

  VWX

  NYPD – Midtown North Precinct

  “C

  aptain, I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I’ve got another missing hooker, and ‘her girls’ are making a huge scene downstairs,” said Sergeant Ruiz to Captain Ammiano, who had just hung up his phone.

  “So send it over to missing persons,” he grumbled. “I told them that, and they say they did four days ago. They say she’s dead. No way she’d just disappear for this long.”

  “Any evidence of a homicide?” asked the captain.

  “No ‘evidence’ of anything, Cap. Just a disappeared hooker. But she’s number four this month. The LT said to bring it to you. Wants to know if we should open a possible homicide file. Maybe these are connected. What do you want me to do?” asked Sergeant Ruiz.

  • 29 • The captain leaned back in his ancient green “leatherette” chair, which let out a long rusty squeak. He put his hands on top of his bald head and locked his fingers together there. “Number four, huh?”

  “Yeah. But you know—we get two or three a month every month. They usually turn up OD’ed in the Hudson or under some culvert in the park. LT has a bug up his ass, though. Says we should be looking at these.”