by Mazlow, J.
I’d been hunted often enough before but not in the last few months and never anything as bad as the hunt which had separated my brother and I. Five years earlier my mother, my brother and I were still traveling together despite my mother claims that she had grown too old and burdensome. We’d been walking through a hilly region of hardwoods when we found ourselves trailed by a party. I’d been in my early twenties and my brother in his late teens. We were both arrogant and foolish. My mother who had been over fifty, was both wise and lucky, the eldest human I had ever known. Parties were more prevalent in those days though not as pervasive as they had been when the vampires had been systematically rounding up humans. Now the parties had grown smaller and only occasionally fanned out across the countryside searching for humans.
My mother had been something of a healer and she was known as Nurse Sue. Somehow this name never failed to bring a laugh to her eyes and a laugh from the other men and women that we met. We’d come across one such small group as we’d been hiking down the side of a hill through trees turned bright red and orange hoping for a spring. We’d spotted the group’s blatant plume of white smoke as soon as we’d topped the ridge. It circled up from a clearing and hung against a pale blue sky. My mother had insisted that we visit with them even though my brother had scowled. “If we go down there, we’re even bigger idiots than they are,” he’d said. I’d agreed with him, but I kept my mouth shut. When we’d descended, we found four of them laid up around a smoldering fire covered in heaps of blankets with only one small gray-haired woman moving slowly and shakily between them. They had a great big German Shepard with them with hair as silver as my mother’s and eyes as rich and dark as some enchanted farmland out of a story book. It started barking as we crouched at the edge of the clearing watching them for a few minutes. The old woman shushed it and smiled at us as my mother pushed forward through the tall dry grass of the clearing. My brother hung back in the bushes. She greeted us bowing deeply to my mother with her hands clasped together in front of her chest. Her fingers dug fiercely into each other. My mother introduced us softly and then the woman began to speak excitedly. I only managed to catch the word fever as I peered around their camp. They had a rusted child’s wagon drawn up next to the fire carrying only a couple of cans and a couple of knives. My brother emerged as warily as a wild dog. He shot a hard glance at the invalids, scowled at the old woman and my mother, and then locked eyes with me before disappearing back into the trees at the other end of the clearing. My mother sighed, pulled her great book out of her backpack, and stepped up to the man that the lady said was her husband. I stepped a little closer as she bent down stiffly and laid her bony hand across his red and sweating forehead. His face was reddened with sweat and grease oozed from it and sat on the skin shining in the daylight. It was as if it was cooking in the sunlight. My mother closed her eyes and mumbled a prayer silently, holding her hand on his forehead, and then she began digging in her pack pulling out small bags of dried herbs.
The other three were in even worse condition than the woman’s husband. A young woman lay gasping for breath and writhing. Her head slid around on top of her stringy blonde hair as she repeatedly cried out for Joe. A little boy lying on his back did not move at all. His head was tilted to one side and his tongue lolled. Another man shivered and clutched his blankets even though his lips were chapped and the skin on his face was peeling away. My mother was attempting to feed the woman’s husband a mash of herbs and water, but his teeth were clenched unrelentingly, and she could not get the spoon in his mouth. Their dog lying near the edge of the clearing where my brother had disappeared suddenly leapt up and began barking furiously, its ears flattened back against its head. My brother burst out of the forest and trotted towards us. Startled, the dog ran to the lady’s side and resumed its barking. My mother’s spoon tilted forward forgotten, the green mash dripping onto the ground.
I met my brother just on the other side of their circle, my mother and the woman sidling up to us as we spoke.
“A party’s coming or I’m a fool,” he said.
“A party? What are they doing here?” I asked but before he could answer the old woman burst in.
Her voice quavered. “Jimmy there, he killed one of their thralls last week.” She looked at my mother with wide brown eyes glistening with tears. Her lips quivered as she spoke. “They tried to take our son.”
I dashed over to her husband and threw back his coarse dingy blanket. A warm rush of foul air reeking of sweat and hot meat washed up from his body. He moaned and his eyes flashed open and then rolled into the back of his head leaving his eyes lying there like two untouched sheets of paper. He jabbed at his chest with his hands, grasping for the blanket but gripping his tattered black t-shirt instead. It was worn so thin that his shoulders peeked through the fabric and the armpits had sagging holes that opened and closed with each arm’s movement. But what caught my eye were three long rips that ran diagonally across his chest and beneath them three raised red welts slowly oozed a thick dark mixture of blood and pus.
“Damn,” Benjamin said and strode back to where we’d left our packs lying hidden in the woods. The woman stood frozen in place with only her head moving from my mother, to my brother’s receding figure, to myself and back to my mother again. Her eyes fluttered as she watched us. My mother visibly deflated. Her chin fell to her chest and her presence entirely turned in on itself. I ran my arm through my mother’s, linking our elbows, and then tugged at her gently. She stood rooted staring over the sick people. I expected the woman to fling herself forward and cling to my mother at any moment pulling at her skirts and wrapping her arms around her legs like a child, but she didn’t move. She seemed dazed. I pulled more firmly, and my mother sighed and followed me. Her weight seemed to evaporate in the sun so that it felt as if I was leading an empty dress. The old lady watched us leave with tears running down cheeks gone ashen. Then she sat down hard next to her husband and buried her face in her hands.
Benjamin was waiting for us at the edge of the clearing, leaning on his pack against a tree trunk. His hands were shoved into his pockets and his shoulders scrunched up as if it were cold. The brim of his wide black hat cast a straight line of shadow over his nose that obscured his eyes. He didn’t say a word but gave our mother a disgusted shake of his head as he started trotting down a deer trail that cut through the woods. As we unlinked elbows to put on our packs, I gave my mother’s arm a squeeze. It felt wiry and cold. Benjamin moved out ahead of us and soon was only a silhouette framed between tree trunks in the dusty yellow light. I hung back with our mother who lagged behind. Her movements had grown stiff and her strides irregular as she’d aged. Her face was worn by time and worry. Its skin had sagged, and her eyes had grown pale. As we trotted her breath rasped in her throat. She stopped and I ran back to where she was slumped over, one hand against the smooth gray bark of a tree trunk to steady herself. “What’s wrong?” I asked from one knee so that we were faced to face. Spittle ran down her chin as she shook her head, but before she could answer screams like those of a rabbit caught in a fox’s jaws filled the air. The voice was just recognizable as belonging to the old woman we had left behind but they had morphed so that they were higher pitched than any man or woman or any mortal creature’s cries. The sound burrowed through our ear canals and beat at our brains until we were lying on the dusty ground with our hands clamped as tightly around our ears as possible. It went on and on, besieging our senses for several minutes until it suddenly ceased, and a disturbing silence dampened the forest floor. Then four deep moans gurgled up from the clearing behind us. The four-sick people from the camp had already had the thrall sickness and had transitioned more easily into vampirism. Nothing my mother could have done for them could have saved them.
The moans released us from our trembling stupor, and we bolted down the path, painfully aware that our scent was as tantalizing to the thralls as meat on a fire. The Hunger upon conversion is said to be overwhelming. Luckily, the terrain was
favorable for quick travel. A wide forest of oaks and poplars grew along the slopes of soft low mountains and their shadows kept the undergrowth sparse. The carpet of previously shed leaves required some caution, but the falls had not yet fallen and those of previous years had mostly disintegrated or been stamped into the earth. After an hour of alternating trotting and walking we came across my brother sitting on a ragged stump eating granola bars. He pulled a couple out of his pack and tossed them to us. The packaging glinted in the light and crinkled as I caught it. I ripped off the wrapper and shoved it into my pocket. The chocolate aroma drove away the musty smell of the forest’s shadows. Its rich and sensual scent caused instant salivation. The granola was beeswax yellow and comprised of shiny little clusters of perfectly shaped grains that surrounded the dark chunks of chocolate. I enjoyed the aroma momentarily of a food as sinful and as luxurious as blood, and then I devoured it. My mother clenched hers in one small hand and stared at the ground as a bead of sweat ran through a wrinkle along her forehead. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and an ill looking sheen clung to her skin.
“Must be about ten of them after us now,” I said as my brother took a gulp of water from his canteen, swished it around in his mouth, spat and then stood up.
We continued to run at a moderate pace until only a sliver of red clung to the horizon and the world had fallen into a grey shadow that tricked our eyes into believing that they could still see adequately. Then we slowed to a walk as Benjamin led us off the deer trail. We descended into a holler whose steep slopes were jutted with rocks between patches of gnarly rhododendron and tawny grasses. A spring ran down the holler’s center before running off out of the mountains to meet the river somewhere. About halfway down the slope was broken by a ridge and we moved along it is climbing a little bit amongst a cluster of oaks. Where the slope joined with the ridge, we came across the entrance to a cave which was little more than a hole. It’s deeper shade of black differentiated it from the shadows. My brother crouched down and stuck his head in the cave’s mouth, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he crawled inside. A moment later the shrill cries of bats roared up at us, deepened and magnified by their echoes through the underground vault. My mother shrank back as the hairy bests erupted from the ground swirling like a current of wind, before their grey bodies disappeared into the darkness. Benjamin called out that the cave was clear, his words indistinct, and blurred and I waved my mother in first. She stopped bent with age, crouched at its entrance, and peered back into the forest as furtively as a rat in front of its hole. I realized then that I could not remember a time when her hair had not hung like a silver veil around her face. I had always thought of it is as a sign of her dignity and wisdom but then it seemed only the inevitable encroachment of age.
As we descended into the cave a deep dank darkness sucked us up. We turned a corner and the corridor opened up to a height in which we could walk, and the lack of light became so total it was as if our eyes had suddenly been bound. We stumbled down the cave’s slope with only the dim yellow beam of an electric lamp that my brother shined up at us to guide us, stubbing our toes and scraping our shins when the floor suddenly rose in ridges, fell away in holes, or the edges of rocks jutted out from the wall. The cave was cool and damp and when we reached Benjamin, we pulled sweaters and jackets from our packs and put them on. Once we were all sitting on the smooth flat cave bottom my brother shut the light off, leaving us with nothing but our breath and the drips and whispers of the underground. My mother lay down and soon fell asleep.
“You shouldn’t have left mama behind.” Though he didn’t answer right away I knew that he’d heard me, and I could hear his slow, soft, steady breathing.
“We didn’t have any business with those people. Look what it brought down on us.”
“I know, but mama wanted to help.”
“We can’t help everyone,” he snapped, and we sat for a moment separated by darkness so complete that we could have been alone. I bristled with a rising rage at the selfish attitude that had been growing in my brother, and my own stifling inability to change him only intensified my anger.
“I’ll take first watch,” he said.
I blew air out through my nose in irritation, lay down and rolled over onto my belly. The chill of the rock seeped through my clothing and tightened the skin on my face. It felt good to have my skin pushed to the forefront of my thoughts and senses. The sensation was so tangible, so near that it could not be denied, or analyzed, but could only be experienced.
When my brother awoke me, it felt like the very early morning though there was no indication of time in the cave’s stale air. I grumbled wondering why he’d not awoken me for a watch. My mother was already up and had walked to the back of the cave to urinate. The sound of its splashing crashed all around us loudly. As she walked back towards us with the dim beam of the flashlight bobbing along her path my brother whispered to me.
“About five of them are outside sniffing around.” I nodded and then felt like a fool for doing so in the pitch-black darkness. I pulled my gun from its holster and checked the clip. Then I pulled on my pack and handed my mother’s hers when she returned. We followed my brother cave’s entrance. As we turned a corner in the grey rock a dismal light filtered in that compared to the darkness of the cave behind us lit everything in a grisly shifting imitation of day and allowed us to turn off our flashlights. We crawled quietly up to the entrance of the cave our three pistols drawn and pointed into the trees beyond. The trees of the holler were cast in ghastly green moonlight and the outline of the slender old woman stood amongst them. She stood straighter than the trunks of the trees that grew around her for they leaned towards the light and dug into the flat ridge with their thirsty roots and she had been pushed beyond life. Her back was a straight as if her spine had been replaced with rebar. The sight of her stiff unwavering body surrounded by her four hunched companions sent a shiver across my skin. She’d turned purely, untouched by the thrall sickness and she was not the only vampire lurking in the night.
Her eyes blazed and suddenly a thick voice that cut through the night like a knife burst from her body, but she didn’t waver from her statuesque pose. “Nurse Sue,” she said her s’s hanging in the air and permeating her words in a hiss that degraded my mother’s nickname. In her voice the name sounded weak, childlike, and foolish, as if my mother had been messing with things far above her, things that she had had no business messing with.
“You ran away. You left us.” She paused. “Nurse Sue can heal anyone they said.” Her last words rose into hyper feminine sweetness. Then her volume dropped, but her words were still distinctly audible against the little night sounds of crickets and tree frogs that rose and fell together in an ominous backdrop. “But you couldn’t help them, and you couldn’t stop the vampires, but they favored us anyways. He turned me and now I will live for a hundred years. I will take my place amongst the eldest of vampires.”
If I had not been there I would have wished that a mature vampire would have heard her words, because she was just a newly turned vampire, and her superiors would have had her bowing and scraping for fear that they would drain her to immobility and lock her in a coffin for a week. If her mind survived that ordeal intact, which her new body could easily survive then perhaps, she would learn her place.
There were no older vampires within earshot, and she smiled with her still unchanged teeth as she waved the thralls forward with one arm. Her husband limped heavily so that the ragged ends of his t-shirt swayed from side to side as he shuffled forward and the female thrall’s one eyes was still covered with a green gunk but the only sign that the child and the other man were thralls was their stiff gaits. Their nostrils flared in and out in quickening rhythms as they neared us. The old woman vampire laughed and clapped twice gleefully like a child who receives a gift.
The laugh must have triggered something in my brother because he squeezed off three quick shots and launched himself from the cave’s mouth, scrambling on
his hands and knees out onto the soft ground. The gunfire exploded with yellow and orange bursts from the pistol like fireworks in the darkness and its sharp cracks roared deafeningly inside the cave. The tall shadow of the old woman vampire fell to the ground clutching at her chest and the thralls paused and shuffled in place uncertainly. I rushed my mother out of the cave, practically pushing her from behind as we squeezed out of the narrow entrance. Our packs scraped the cave’s roof as we hurried to our feet as soon as we had passed the cave’s threshold. A gurgling and spitting erupted from the vampire’s mouth and covered her chin and chest in blood. The thralls shook off their hesitation and closed in a circle around the cave’s mouth. The night air that pressed in around us was slightly cooler than the cave’s and dulled the thralls somewhat though they moved as quickly as if they were unhindered by any lameness. My brother shot again, and the old woman’s head melted into the ground where she lay twitching. The thralls were unfazed by her death. I fired as I ran to up the slope, half-turned to maintain my balance and caught a thrall that was closing in on me with two shots to the chest. He crashed to the ground and my brother killed the child thrall with one shot to the head as it rushed up to him with the speed of a panther. The two remaining thralls hurtled along the ground and closed in on my mother, who had fallen a couple of steps behind. Their faces were rigid, their mouths opening and closing automatically, and their eyes were dull, but their limbs swung in tight frenzied arcs as they ran.