by J. C. Diem
Heavy footsteps clomped down the hall towards the morgue. The death chamber door creaked open, followed by the sound of a light switch being thrown. I had a sinking feeling that I knew who was in the room with me and I didn’t think it was anyone who worked there.
Quickly straightening my legs, I forced myself to lie still as the footsteps drew closer. Starting from the left, the visitor methodically checked each locker. Mine was the fourth one along so it didn’t take long before the door was opened. Warm air swirled inside, making the sheet flutter.
Pulling on the drawer, my unwelcome visitor dragged my corpse out from the cold. He grasped the sheet and tugged it down, exposing my face. I opened my eyes to slits and studied the young man who had freed me. He was in his early twenties and had lank brown hair that needed a wash. Pimples were scattered across his chin with a particularly juicy one nestled in the corner of his mouth. Muddy brown eyes sparkled with excitement and he uttered a high pitched giggle that he’d found me and had me all to himself. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was the creepy guy from the ambulance. Senewski, I presume.
Leaving me for a moment, Senewski retrieved the gurney that had been pushed out of the way against a wall. Thin and weedy, he grunted with the effort of rolling my inert body onto the gurney. As soon as I was away from the cold enclosure, my limbs slowly began to warm. Closing the locker, the pervert turned and began to undress. His erection was small and puny, just like the rest of him but he was definitely happy to be alone with me.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” he crooned and placed a hand on my leg. He bent to kiss my cold and unresponsive mouth and I decided the only one who’d be having any fun in this morgue was me. I remained unmoving as his warm lips touched mine and his tongue wormed its way into my mouth. Breathing hard, he straightened up and shifted his hand to the button of my jeans.
Before he could undo my pants, I opened my eyes like a princess that had been woken by true love’s kiss. This guy was no Prince Charming, he was just a disgusting pervert who liked to hump corpses. He started when he saw that my eyes were open but he wasn’t afraid. Yet. “Sen…ew…skyyy,” I moaned and at his look of utter horror, I truly began to enjoy myself.
Screaming, he backed away when I sat up. Putting his hands over his face like a kid watching a horror movie, Senewsky peeked out from between his splayed fingers. His eyes bulged from their sockets in the profoundest terror that I’d ever seen on a human being before.
His shrieks were continuous and ratcheted up a few notches when I swung my legs over the side of the gurney and stood up. Twice now I’d thought I was a zombie and had been appalled by the idea. Since zombies had been my greatest fear as a human, besides rats, I figured they’d scare the bejesus out of most people. Holding my arms out stiffly, I shambled towards the pervert who had been about to perform necrophilia on me.
If the room hadn’t been soundproofed, his frenzied screams would surely have drawn attention. I felt no remorse when he pissed himself in fear. It was a sure thing that my corpse wouldn’t have been the first he had tried to violate. As a paramedic, Senewski would have had plenty of opportunity to abuse his patients, alive or dead. Like the ginger haired monster I’d dispatched in London who had murdered a bunch of men, women and children, this guy also had to die. There was no way I could let him live knowing what I did about him. In a weird way, I felt it was my duty to erase human monsters when I came across them.
My ears were ringing from all the screams by now so I put an end to them as quickly as I knew how. Grabbing the pervert’s head with my palms, I wrenched his head around in a full circle. The screams cut off with the sickening crunch of rent bone, cartilage and tendons. Buck naked, it would be obvious to the cops what he he’d been up to when they were called to investigate his death. My disappearance would be a mystery that I was confident they would never solve.
Before leaving, I searched for the fridge that contained my blood sample and found it by methodically opening every door. The tiny fridge blended in well with the other cupboard doors but I finally found it beneath the sink. My vial of blood was the only one inside but it would have been easy enough to identify even if there had been a forest of samples. My blood was much thicker and darker than normal.
Searching the pervert’s pants, I found his keys and wallet. The wallet didn’t have much money in it but I took it anyway. No one had my fingerprints on file so I didn’t bother to wipe the place down. Now I just had a couple more things to find and then I would be on my way.
Unlike the death chamber, the rest of the building was painted a clinical white. Even the floor had white tiles. Maybe they’d painted the body storage and autopsy room green to liven it up a little. Not that moss green was very exciting.
Creeping down the hallway, I located a small office and entered. Turning on the lights would be a bad idea so my search was performed in the dark. My eyesight was good enough that the room might as well have been softly lit anyway.
Apart from a ratty chair, wide desk and wall of bookshelves, there was very little furniture in the office. It was the filing cabinets I was interested in. After a quick search of the drawers, I located my chart, the tape with the morgue assistant’s findings and the wallet I’d stolen last. They had been filed under what I assumed passed for ‘Jane Doe’ in whatever country I was in.
Closing the drawer, I left the office and searched for the exit. Beyond the death chamber, the hallway ended in a solid metal door. The sign above it proclaimed that it was an exit. At a light shove, the door swung open. This must have been how the pervert had broken in. Either the building didn’t have an alarm system or it had been disabled. I checked for a surveillance camera but didn’t spot one. Finally, a stroke of luck. Hunting down the security room to disable the cameras and steal the footage would have taken time and I just wanted to be gone.
Parked in the small lot behind the building was a foreign car. It was compact, brown, exceedingly ugly and suited the dead pervert perfectly. Hitting the alarm button on the keychain, the car beeped shrilly. “So much for a silent getaway,” I murmured and climbed inside. It took me a few moments to figure out how everything worked then I was on my way.
Driving through unfamiliar streets in the strange car, I stopped long enough to discard my vial of blood, the chart and the recording when I was a few kilometres away from the morgue. They went into a handy drain. The vial smashed and I hoped the sluggish water would be enough to wash the evidence of my strangeness away.
I’d taken a brief and unexpected detour from my intended destination but I was back on track once more. In a couple more days I would reach my target. I vowed silently to take more care when finding a place to hide during the daytime in the future.
Chapter Eleven
I made it to the east coast of China without any further delays. I’d had few chances to take in the sights, even if I’d been inclined to. I only stopped to have a snack or to fill up the car with petrol. After the credit card stopped working, I stole another wallet and used it to finance my journey.
At long last, I was standing on a rugged, isolated shoreline. I’d chosen this stretch of land as my starting point because it was too rocky for tourists to visit or for soldiers to bother guarding. Back home in Australia, tourists often swam at night even though the beaches were unmanned and closed. Unaware of the risk they were taking with hidden rips that could carry them out to sea and drown them, they sometimes died. I was fully aware of the risks and had little to worry about. It was impossible for someone who didn’t even breathe to drown.
Flying would be a far quicker way to cross the water but I didn’t want any lurking European vampire spies to notice my departure. The last thing I needed was for the Comtesse and her cronies to find out not only that I had broken free but where I had ended up.
What I hadn’t known when I’d first thought of this idea was that Japan was made up of hundreds if not thousands of tiny islands. I’d stopped briefly at a newsagency the night before and had examined
maps of both China and Japan to choose where I’d attempt to cross the sea.
I had no idea where the vamps were hidden. Now that I was so close, I was mystified at where to start. Maybe I should start at the bottom and work my way up. It was a sound plan since I was closest to the southern islands of Japan anyway. Surely I would stumble across my Japanese kin eventually. Something told me these vamps were more reclusive than their European contemporaries. They wouldn’t be hiding in a large city like Tokyo for instance. These guys would be somewhere far more secluded than that.
Swimming across the English Channel had taken me over five hours. I had a lot further than that to travel tonight. Daylight might arrive when I was still in the water. What would I do then? Swim the rest of the way deep enough beneath the waves that the sunlight wouldn’t reach me? I would if I had to, but I’d rather not.
As if in answer to my problem, the sound of a distant motor came on a salty ocean breeze. A couple of minutes later, movement in the dark water caught my attention. A small but powerful boat was angling towards the shore. It was difficult to make out since it had been painted black to blend in with the night. Smugglers, I decided. This could be just what I needed to get me to Japan. A boat would be a lot faster than swimming. Jogging closer, I crouched down behind a straggly clump of bushes.
Slowing down just before it hit the shore, the boat eased onto the rocky beach and two men leaped clear of the water. They dragged the vessel further up the sand until only the back end was still in the water. One man hurried to search some bushes and pulled out a couple of large plastic containers. A third man on the boat began tossing small white packages to them. Working with well-practiced skill, they packed what I strongly suspected were illegal drugs into the containers.
“That’s all of them,” the guy still on board said. I automatically translated the words from Chinese into English. “I’m taking the boat back to the ship.”
“We’ll meet up with you tomorrow,” one of the others replied while he and his friend pushed the boat back into the water.
While the man on board struggled to get the motor started, I crept closer. As soon as the pair lugging the containers had disappeared out of sight over the ridge, I leaped into the boat. I landed so lightly and quietly that the smuggler didn’t even hear me. Swearing bitterly each time the motor failed to catch, he finally succeeded and the small motor roared to life. The smuggler’s grin of triumph changed into a gasp of alarm when he turned to find me standing right in front of him.
My hand muffled his scream of fright as I yanked him towards me. Even in the starlight, my dark magic worked and he became pliant in my hands as soon as our eyes met.
We’d drifted quite a distance from the shore while he’d been attempting to start the motor. He was going into the water and I didn’t want him to drown. “Put on a life vest,” I told him and hoped he understood English. He did and knelt to rummage beneath the seats. Coming up with an orange life jacket that had seen better days, he pulled it on over his head. “You have something I need,” I told him and stopped him from pulling the cord that would inflate the vest.
“Anything,” he muttered in thickly accented English. “You can have anything you want.” If that were true, I’d still be human, working late on a Friday night and moaning about my aching feet while busting to go to the bathroom. It was difficult now to believe that had once been my life. I had been lonely and without family or friends but it didn’t seem all that bad to me now. I was still lonely and without family or friends but had the added downside of also being allergic to sunlight and needing to drink blood in order to survive.
Speaking of survival. I pulled the smuggler close and turned his head to the side. He wore a blissful smile as my teeth broke through his skin. It was risky to drink from someone who smuggled drugs since there was a good chance he might have imbibed his own product. I’d been there and done that and had gotten slightly high from it. Thankfully, this meal’s blood was clean.
Finished with the smuggler, I tugged on the cord to inflate his jacket and shoved him backwards. Pin-wheeling his arms, the man fell overboard and hit the water while the vest was still inflating. “Swim to the shore,” I ordered him. He turned jerkily then began thrashing towards the beach. He swam like I danced, without any hint of natural ability or grace. It was just as well I’d ordered him to don the jacket.
I hadn’t been looking forward to swimming across the dark stretch of water to the southern islands of Japan and now I wouldn’t have to. Taking a seat on the damp bench, I angled the boat towards what I hoped was the correct direction and cranked up the speed.
Chilly, salty water splashed onto my face and wind whipped my hair back as the boat took off. It was a moonless night and only the white caps of tiny waves broke the monotony of black sea and even blacker sky.
After a couple of hours of zooming along, the motor began to splutter. Squatting in an inch or so of water, I searched the compartments beneath the seat. Inside were a few plastic containers filled with fuel. It should be enough to get me where I wanted to go. When the small tank was full of juice again, I had no trouble starting the motor. Maybe it just needed a woman’s touch.
Dawn was less than two hours away when I finally spied land. A small cluster of islands appeared in the near distance and quickly grew in size. None looked well populated. I couldn’t see any lights and there were few signs of habitation. This seemed as likely a place to start searching as any. A deserted island would be the obvious choice for vampires to hole up in if they wished to remain unnoticed.
The first island had a wide, inviting sandy beach. Dense trees hid any buildings in the area from my view. A couple of small boats had been pulled up to the tree line so the high tide couldn’t kidnap them and carry them off, never to be seen again. A row of deck chairs also sat above the high tide mark. They were shaded by umbrellas that were anchored by sturdy metal tables. This definitely wasn’t a vampire hangout. Not unless they took moonlight naps beneath the stars. It looked more like an exclusive island getaway for the rich and bored to me.
All of the islands in the cluster were the same. I had just decided to head for land and find a spot to hide for the day when a larger island in the distance caught my attention. Rising high above the tree line, an ominous mountain with sheer sides frowned down at me. The island was uninviting enough that I decided to take a closer look at it.
It was further away than I’d thought and it took half an hour just to get close enough to see just how unhospitable it was. Waves crashed and boomed off rocks that surrounded the entire island. A shiver went down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. This is the place, my intuition told me. I’d been lucky to find it so quickly into my search. Yeah, lucky, my subconscious said. You watch, as soon as they spot you they’ll skewer you with stakes and chop off your head. I’d always struggled with optimism, pessimism came more naturally to me.
Spying a narrow stretch of beach sandwiched between piles of boulders, I turned the boat towards it. The vessel puttered along slowly as I searched for a break in the ring of rocks protecting the island. A gap appeared, just large enough for my boat to fit through and I steered towards it. A wave lifted the boat just at the right time to force me through the break, or so I thought. Then the wave disappeared and the boat dropped sharply. An unholy screech came from beneath my feet and I came to a sudden halt.
Losing my balance, I crashed to my knees beside a foot long tear in the bottom of the boat. Water swirled inside at an alarming rate. Since I had no means to plug the leak, I came to the conclusion that the vessel was a goner. I wasn’t a captain and I wasn’t about to go down with this ship, it was time to abandon it.
I discovered that diving over the side was a mistake when I crashed headfirst into a large rock. Swearing in pain, I managed to swallow a mouthful of salty water. Struggling to the surface, I wiped seawater and blood out of my eyes then made for land. This wasn’t the first time I’d cracked my skull. At least this time it knitted b
ack together within seconds and the pain swiftly receded.
Speedy healing was new enough to me that I was still amazed at how fast I could mend. I might have thanked Alexander for using me as his lab rat instead of killing him if the whole experience hadn’t been so painful and awful. But he’d been one of the damned, even if he hadn’t known it, and he’d been fated to die by my hand. Any vampire I met from now on who had a shadow that acted independently was going share his fate. Destroying the damned was, after all, the reason why I existed.
My clothes were water logged and heavy as I dragged myself clear of the ocean but they didn’t slow me down as they would have if I’d been human. A vertical cliff face barred my way and prevented me from progressing any further inland. A quick search told me there was no easy path to the top. It was too close to dawn to attempt to climb it now. Scaling the wall would have to wait until I rose for the night.
Following the cliff face, I clambered over rocks until I found a promising cave. Even at my average height, I had to bend to avoid the rough rock ceiling as I ducked inside. The cave was long, narrow and curved in a gentle arc. It ended in a small, cosy space after about a hundred feet. There were no holes in the walls or ceiling that I could see so I should be safe from the sun here.
Smoothing out the sand and pushing aside a few lumpy rocks, I lay down and proceeded to shiver. With my low body temperature, being wet was usually miserable, unless I was taking a boiling hot shower. There had been no wood on the beach and I didn’t have the means to make a fire anyway so I just had to endure the chill.
I dozed off and on, waking at noises regularly, positive that someone or something was sneaking up on me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my presence had been noticed. Someone knew I was on the island and they weren’t happy about it.
When night fell and it was safe to leave the cave, I retreated back down the tunnel and stood at the base of the cliff. It had to be at least fifty feet high. My stolen sneakers were too big to attempt to scale the wall in. I took them off, knotted the laces together and slung them around my neck.