by Mazlow, J.
I happened upon a journal as I rummaged through the bedrooms of a lonely house sitting in the curve of a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a deserted city. All cities are empty now. No one would dare congregate in a city. I doubt humanity could fill even a small city. I’ve seen only ten or twenty people since my brother, and I went our separate ways five years ago. They are watched and often searched by the vampires who are driven by their desire for sweeter meats and the memory of the past. The countryside had not been good to me recently and a decrepit old house with walls covered in faded blue vinyl siding and a sagging roof seemed safe enough to risk for a chance at food. It sat on the outskirts of a small town in a stand of young pines and saplings that were a bright yellow green in the light.
A tree had fallen through the living room roof and was propped up at an angle on a crushed wall but was still half alive even though its roots were exposed. It had sent fresh young branches out across a rotted couch. A family of wild dogs, brown and black with long floppy ears burst out of an open closet from atop their nest of muddy coats barking, growling and baring their yellow teeth at me as I walked along the length of the tree trunk into the house but I ran them out whooping and waving my arms until they fled. They remained just outside sniffing my tracks and eying me suspiciously. Under the collapsed lumber and dry wall of the fallen half of the living room tiny shards of glass from a television screen glinted as the sun light streamed down over them.
Luckily, the kitchen was intact and undisturbed though a green mildew grew all along the tiles. I ate three cans of spam scooping the pink mashed meat out with two fingers and carefully licking each can clean before moving onto a can of chicken noodle soup which I simply drank swallowing the slimy noodles without chewing them. I pondered sitting at a chair around the table, but I did not like the looks of any of them. Their patterns had peeled off revealing the chunky wood beneath, so I simply leaned against a counter and drank from my canteen. After a long drink from the canteen my stomach felt so distended and weighty that I thought I was in danger of falling forward at any second. I felt bulbous and ungainly but satisfied. A feeling of utter fullness that I had not experienced in weeks washed over me beginning with its dampening effect on my mind and extending to a stomach now begging for nothing but stillness. I went up the stairs carefully, testing each step before adding my weight to their damp and dingy carpeting. The overabundance of food had addled my mind so I gave the bedrooms only a cursory check and then I collapsed on the driest of the beds, a little pink metal framed bed that was so short that my feet hung off the end. As I lay there listening to the gurgles of my processing stomach and growing increasingly more relaxed, I saw the diary laying on a short flaking dresser underneath a black metal lamp. It was white with a small golden lock and a rainbow on its cover that wrapped around to its back. The edges of the pages had that yellowing, brittle look of paper that’s been exposed to the elements and a slightly musty smell. With my screwdriver I pried the lock open and flipped through the pages. The inside had remained somewhat dry and I was able to gently pry them apart although they did not turn well. A thick sprawling hand that drifted in and out of the blue guiding lines covered the pages in huge swoops and loops of airy writing. I held it over my head in the fading light of day and examined it in the light.
When we were children my mother had taught us to read from a coverless book with golden edged pages that she’d carried despite its weight since she’d been a teenager. She had read from it almost every night and had told us that its words had power over death and the power to protect us from the undead and their undeath. It saved her from the latter and I buried it with her so that she would have it with her in paradise, in the earth unsoiled that her book had promised. After she had died my brother had left me following the river into the North.
As the day died and the shadows of the room lengthened my eyes wavered as the food settled and the heat of the day fell into the humid warmth of the night. The first entry was dated August 28th, 2008 and read “My name is Janice. I live in Missouri with my parents and my little sister Missy, but she will never read this diary because I will lock it and never lose the key. I will keep the key with me always and if she tries to take it from me, I will swallow it. Then I can write secrets here that no one else will ever read.” I skipped towards the end of the journal which had gone blank about half way through its pages, but there was no mention of vampires, or the crazy times, or really even the time before so I tossed it into a corner of the room before I fell asleep. A forgotten piece of a forgotten time worth nothing now that it’s author had surely died, but as I fell asleep I wondered if she’d been turned and if she was a vampire would she want this relic of her time as a human girl, would it mean anything to her.
The next day I awoke in a stale sweat, my face hot from sunlight streaming through a window, my air passages clogged and my vision blurry, in disbelief that I had slept well into the morning. The bed creaked and rubbed against the wall as I got up grabbed my backpack from the floor and headed back downstairs. The journal lay on its spine where I had tossed it, its pages looking freshly mangled as if a rodent had appreciated the gift of fresh bedding. Back in the kitchen I took all of the cans out of the pantry and sat them on the table, hoping for a can of pineapples or peaches but was disappointed with only soups, tomatoes, two more cans of span, a can of beans and three cans whose identity had faded into oblivion. I sat my pack on the table and carefully took out socks, a shirt, pants, matches, a metal cup, and my can opener, then I lay all of the cans in neat rows along the patched leather bottom of the sack and then repacked the contents back on top of the cans. I went through all of the drawers of the kitchen and came back with two knives and a can opener which I held up in the light with one hand and compared its blade to my own can opener’s blade before tossing mine into the rusty sink. The knives I wrapped in musty and stiff towels I’d found folded in a drawer beside the dishwasher and put them in my pack as well. I tested a chair found it acceptable and sat down. As I drank another can of soup I wondered if not only this house had escaped looting but perhaps the surrounding houses had as well. If that was the case I there may be more provisions than I could carry on my own, unless I could find a cart but after I finished the can I decided to search the closets for any acceptable clothing or shoes instead. After finding nothing but wet and moldy clothes I lay down on the small bed again and slept.
That second night there, sprawled out in a food induced sleep I awoke to the sound of a branch tapping at the window in a slight breeze. It made a small high pitched clink that happened a few times in rapid succession, tap, tap, tap and then paused for a moment but as soon as my eyes opened I heard beyond the tapping the sound of an unmuffled engine and the whine of tires on pavement. How had they discovered me? Had they seen me somehow? I sprang out of bed snatching my canned food laden pack off of the floor with such force that I almost popped my arm out of its socket and then I leapt down the stairs no longer concerned with their structural integrity. The sound of the engine had grown louder by the time I had reached the tree trunk whether only because of my mind’s inability to focus on anything else or because it had actually grown closer, I did not know. It was like the roar of an animal hidden in the trees that could pounce anywhere at any time. I fought to force my mind to focus despite its constant presence. The cans stuffed into my backpack rattled horribly but I wasted no time in adjusting them as I slung the pack on my back and drew my pistol looking out into the night.
My weapon was large and blocky with a cavernous bore disappearing into a rectangular hunk of silver metal that glinted alarmingly in the night. It was warm from sitting close to my body in the rigged leather holster that hung from my belt. The handle was pebbly and dry, and it felt solid in my grip. The pistol was manageable with one hand but on
ly just barely which was preferable as the weight absorbed most of the recoil. It was a large enough weapon that it could send a vamp to the ground and keep him there for a least a few minutes. I’d found it about four years earlier in a house far to the South nestled lovingly in the bottom of a pile of rancid socks in the top drawer of a dresser in the corner of a room that had fallen in on itself, its timbers blackened with rot, hidden with two full cases of bullets. Most of this ammo was resting in the bottom of my pack and comprised such a large amount of bullets that if I ever found it necessary to fire all of them, then I had little doubt that I would end up dead or turned, preferably killed by my own hand if it came down to it.
Crouched behind the tree trunk I did a quick survey of my surroundings and saw nothing but one of the dogs scurrying into the brush. I hopped the trunk and quickly followed the dog into the trees. Outside I could hear the popping of the engine as it downshifted and then roared back as it accelerated. It sounded close and it held nothing good for me. Any humans who had a truck were undoubtedly humans I did not wish to meet. Some would say it is foolish to move about in the night at all because the night is the vampire’s realm as they see in the night as well as men on a bright day. However, the prospect of being trapped on a small second floor of a discovered hideout was worse than running.
The gentle light of a three quarters moon filtered down through the leaves casting long shadows of black that rippled through the dark of the night in the breeze. I dashed through the tall weeds surrounding the house, saplings tugging at my clothing and the knotted straps of my pack. Once into the deeper brush and taller trees I slowed so that I could move more carefully and quietly. The automobile was bearing down onto my location. It was headed towards the entrance to the small clutch of houses when I heard the snap of a branch from near the house.
I flung myself onto the ground with a giant flop behind a growth of bushes grimacing as the mass of cans slugged my lower back and clanged together like dense little drums. I clutched my pistol in both hands slightly off the ground in front of me propped up with my elbows against the ground. There was a long silence except for the engine drawing nearer and some coyotes yipping in the distance. I squirmed my way around with one hand and my elbows so that I was facing the house. I lay there panting into the ground momentarily before crawling forward very slowly until I could peer through the brush all the while thinking that that I should have been moving in the other direction. I stopped when I was about twenty feet into the forest. I could see the house through the screen of vegetation as a yellow outline in the moonlight. A fallen branch jabbed uncomfortably into my stomach, but the sensation faded away as a cold ball of fear settled into the pit of my stomach and froze me to the warm ground.
A vampire stood in the little clearing in front of the house sniffing with high nostrils set in a long thin nose. It was as if he’d popped out of the darkness or sprung out of the moonlight that bathed the clearing. He walked over to the trunk of the fallen tree, nostrils flaring, his sharp intakes of breath barely discernible above the light breeze that fluttered the dried leaves and pine needles around me. He walked with the smooth silent gait of the vampires barely lifting his feet from the ground as if he were gliding through the air. Mature vampires often move more quickly than the human eye can perceive so to me it seemed as if he took no steps at all but simply slid forward. When he came to the tree trunk he sniffed, his eyes narrowing, and then he bent as if bowing and inhaled deeply. As he rose, he turned and looked in my direction. His eyes glinted red as the light hit them and he hissed like a snake around two fangs that just jutted out over his thin grey bottom lip. They were dazzling white and were the length of a vampire who’d been turned between twenty and thirty years ago, my own age. A trickle of saliva ran down one fang and hung briefly suspended, crystalline in a beam of moonlight before it fell turning over in the air and then shattered against a crisp new olive-colored shirt.
He shot towards me with a speed that was made even more alarming by the silence of his passage. Foliage sprang back into place unmolested as he passed and still, he made no sound, not even the solitary crunch of a leaf. My fingers tightened around the trigger and I was prepared to leap up and flee when a dark green jeep came roaring up to the house. Even in the darkness it drove quickly without any lights. A couple of vamps leapt lightly out both clad in baggy camouflage pants that consisted of splotches of tan, gray and sandy brown and strode towards the vampire in the center of the clearing who’d spun around to face the jeep his face sinking into a flaccid wariness as he recognized them. The two vampires who’d arrived in the jeep moved almost in lockstep, but one moved with the shuffling, top heavy gait of a thrall. The other was extremely tall, very pale, and shirtless his bare chest a tangled mass of silver scars and wiry black hair. His dark eyes caught the moonlight and became featureless spheres of glinting light over a delicately shaped moustache.
My pursuer bowed to him and hissed through his teeth, “Sir, my hunt is glorified by your presence on this chill night.” I smirked a little as I lay drenched in sweat and felt no nip in the air.
“You expect me to be reclining cozily at the blood den losing my faculties?” His speech was smooth and languid but as he spoke his eyes flared and he bared his long fangs pulling his lips back tightly.
“No Sir,” the other replied quickly, “I simply trusted that you would be enjoying a few well-deserved comforts for one as powerful as yourself.”
“Not so powerful as the one who sent me youngling. General Marcus.” The one he berated frowned and his fangs vanished instantaneously. “It seems another ambassador to Benjamin Eldritch has been returned to us in a most unfortunate manner.”
I reeled. The moon seemed to roll over me in rapidly repeating orbit. Only basic instinct kept me from rustling any leaves as my senses abandoned me in the face of a vampire uttering my brother’s name. I felt as if I were drifting weightlessly, bobbing along the forest floor and the vampires’ voices came to me as if disembodied, formless, and emanating from the darkness. There was no reason for my brother to receive vampiric emissaries unless he had himself been turned.
“He put a stake through his heart and sawed off his head before floating his body downriver in a pine board box. How this human manages to survive with his ridiculous notions is beyond me, but he is nothing if not thorough.” A gasp escaped me as I heard that my brother remained human but then I wondered why they would send a Sir in army fatigues to meet with him. Unless it was an assassination.
“Why not raise the call, descend upon the North en masse and destroy this little worm?”
“The General does not think that is wise at this time.” He paused momentarily. “And we so enjoy the taste of wild human blood. We wouldn’t want to waste them.” He laughed a little and a shudder slid down my spine. “General Marcus has chosen you to go north next. He tires of vampires who have the mental competency of thralls and are weak and incompetent. He trusts you will do better.” The vampire who faced the summons saluted but without a taut snap and the paleness in his face seemed to deepen as he received the order.
“I serve. I will return to base as soon as I have caught my prey.” They sniffed almost in unison and scanned the forest where I lay behind the clutch of saplings and briars.
“He is near,” the higher-ranking vampire said. “But the General will not wait. Blood will be warmed for you.” The vamp that’d been deprived of my blood gazed in my direction with a disturbing expression of longing in his eyes and panted. “Perhaps I’ll send my thrall after him,” the depriver said tauntingly then he sniffed again, “And perhaps a hunting party as well. There’s something I don’t like about the smell of this one.” He turned and strode to the jeep with the other vamp following at his heels. When they reached the jeep, the vamp opened the backdoor and a shadow cumbersomely got out. The thrall shuffled around in the clearing drifting towards the driver’s side of the jeep. When the vampires had both sat down and the passenger had shut his door the thrall’s motion
s changed.
It was as if a grinding gear had finally snapped into place. Its neck and body straightened. Its shuffling stopped and it stood as motionless as a statue except for the rise and fall of its chest moving with slow but loud whistles of air through its narrow nostrils. The jeep did a tight U-turn and sped off down the cracked pavement. The vamp glared at my hiding place through his window as he passed. The thrall moved towards me, its eyes as still and dull as marbles, its arms dangling limply at its sides. It came slowly at first sniffing heavily, then it moaned and rushed forward like a slung stone. I leapt up. It snarled as it saw me. I leveled my weapon and fired two quick shots, their explosions crisp in the silent night air. The first struck just above his jaw blowing the front lower half of his face off in a shower of flesh and teeth and the second caught him in the left shoulder spinning him. It fell to its knees gurgling as it loudly spat up a mixture of yellowish bile and thick blood. It felt at its face, patting the dangling flesh tentatively, almost as if they were the hands of another body. Then it got to its feet blowing a fine bloody mist from the hole in its face as if the blow had had no effect. It turned to face me again. I stood breathing heavily as I watched it my ears keen on the receding engine noise. I considered putting another bullet through the thrall’s head just to eliminate it from the map, but it was no longer able to feed and would eventually atrophy to the point of death. As long as no one wandered into its grasp it was harmless. I holstered my weapon and turned away.
The jeep was heading in a northwesterly direction, so I headed off southbound setting a good land-eating pace as soon as my heart had stopped racing. Soon all I was concentrating on was repeatedly putting one foot in front of another as I attempted to stay on the relatively clear ground that lay underneath large pines and hardwoods instead of slogging through snake-infested tangles of weeds and brush. Even under the large trees the going was hard, and I kept a keen eye out for jutting roots as I navigated the slowly rising ground. My shirt was soon plastered to the small of my back with sweat, but I didn’t dare take to the roads. The threat of the party that might soon be hunting me loomed too large in my mind. I walked until the sun’s light drizzled down through bleak gray clouds and my legs were just short of collapsing before I lay down beside a decaying log. I slept for about an hour dreaming of the dancing silver hair of my mother.