by Mazlow, J.
One of the vampires in the back of the truck sniffed and then spat out of the truck. “Thrall food.” I closed my eyes as we drove on but the image of that man alone, with his wide eyes and his emaciated body, burned in my mind, settling there, rotting there as surely as all humans rot, dispersing fumes that became nightmares.
I opened my eyes as the truck slowed to a stop, its engine whining as it absorbed our momentum and then chugged along as it idled. We’d pulled up to a gate comprised of tall chain link fence topped with rusting coils of razor wire. Behind it sat a narrow metal shack with long windows running down both sides and a smaller window on the front, none of which contained glass, except for the left side, which on closer inspection turned out to be a sliding door. The dusty brown vamp that’d prevented me from being prematurely drained leapt out of the bed of the truck springing over the side and landing lightly on the pavement. A large gnat alighted on my nose, ugly and alien in my cross-eyed vision as its slender snout pumped my blood into its body. It itched and I rubbed at it with the cuffs binding my wrists trying to scrape the skin with the metal’s edge but without getting any satisfaction other than a momentary pause in the bug’s feast as it hovered around my head. The tan vamp shouted something to a deeply black vampire with exceedingly long fangs that stood out in the bright light streaming down from the search lights atop the corners of the fencing and along the roofs of the low grey buildings. Vamps with fangs that long were very old, probably dating back to the crazy times if not earlier. The black vamp had stepped back into his shack and the gate began pulling back with an electric whirring, tottering, and creaking as it rolled along its track. We drove up beside the shack and stopped at an identical gate along its backside enclosing the shack. Once the gate we’d passed through had completely closed the one in front of us opened and we passed through as soon as it had scarcely skirted our mirrors. We pulled into a large black paved parking lot filled with a hodgepodge of vehicles including every style of car and truck imaginable, several fire trucks and ambulances, a tank, and two rows of military jeeps parked neatly in the front of the parking lot, adjourning a gate in the fencing that led to a long narrow path between two concrete buildings.
The vamps all got out of the truck and stood at its tailgate as I carefully leapt out, throwing my bound hands up in front of my face to steady my landing. The driver was stretching and looking at me with interest. “Looks like any old human to me,” he said. “Only good for one thing.”
The dark-skinned vamp ignored him and said, “Good work. I’m sure the General will be very appreciative.” He passed each vamp two slips of paper with something printed on them in red, which they folded up and put into their pockets. Then they headed off together in a group lazily walking down one side of the fence. As they left me alone with my unusual benefactor I felt an alarming sensation of exposure crawling down the back of my neck, along my spine and then down my arms as the skin tautened into a continuous expanse of goose bumps and erect hairs. The parking lot was intensely lit by the spotlights that adorned the flat roofs of the long buildings that surrounded it and every reflective surface glaring and all of the light felt directed onto me, so that I didn’t even cast a shadow. I eyed the darkness under the automobiles, but my captor said, “Come with me,” in a stern voice and I followed him to the gate.
He pushed a small button at the side of the gate, and I heard a distant buzzer groan. A moment later three female vampires sauntered up the narrow passageway. Each one carried a black machine gun loosely in their small white hands. Each one wore loose camo pants tucked into tight tightly laced boots and close-fitting shirts that clung to their breasts. The first thing that I noticed was their weapons and I wondered where they had been found and if I could snatch one away from them and shoot my way out of the city, but then my attention drifted away from my fantasy and I found myself entranced by the women as if the tale that vampires had the power to hypnotize with their eyes was true. They walked forward in a tight V, their hips rolling gently from side to side in enticing arcs. The two flanking vampires had long dark hair that hung to their waists and shone under the searchlights, wide dark eyes, and high porcelain cheekbones. They smiled with a smoldering elegance that contrasted with their gear and surroundings, a smile that hid the sharp tips of their fangs, but still revealed their existence. But even their beautiful pale skin, small crisp noses and dark features faded in comparison to their leader. I forgot myself as I stared at her; I drifted out of my surroundings with each bounce of her golden hair. She must have been a pretty woman once, with short artfully tousled blonde hair, but as a vampire she was radiant. Her pale skin had faded to an almost translucent cream color with just a hint of pink tinting her cheeks and served to bring out her crystalline blue eyes like frozen jewels. I would have wagered that she hadn’t seen the sun since she’d been turned. Her breasts were small but had remained perky and were well suited to her tall lithe frame. Her eyes danced as she looked at me and her smile was devilish in an enrapturing way, slightly parted lips pulled back from straight white teeth. I had not seen a woman in almost a year, I had not even seen anyone in many months, and I would have forgotten that she was no longer human, I would have begged myself to forget what she was now if it had not been for her fangs, long and thin, protruding over her lower lips. She flicked her tongue across them teasingly and I stepped back startled out of my admiration, bumping into my captor, my ambassador to the vampire world. He scowled as I jumped forward away from him cringing as a series of shivers pulsed down the length of my body as I remembered my surroundings. I wanted to flatten my body and slink into the shadows along the walls, but I could not.
She pulled a key from her belt and unlocked the gate pushing it open with a creak. Up close she and her companions were even more perfect than I had thought their faces unblemished, their lips with just a hint of color and plumpness. They had recently fed.
“The general has been notified of your arrival,” she said in a silky voice. Her body exuded coldness, as if I’d stepped into a pocket of cold air. As we stepped past she inhaled deeply through her nostrils and said, “You smell good,” with a biting snap to her jaws almost driving me to the floor quaking, but my captor kept moving at a quick march down the concrete between the two buildings and I dashed to catch up to him. We left the trio behind as they locked the gate and when I looked back as we turned to enter a door set halfway along the walls they were gone.
We’d entered a long narrow hallway set at intervals with fluorescent lights that hummed and flickered as we walked underneath them. Their bright squares reflected from the tile floor moving as I moved. A thrall shuffled far down the hallway ahead of us but other than her the hallway was as desolate and quiet as a tomb except for our footfalls echoing off the gray concrete block walls. Grimly my guide marched past nondescript doors set in the walls, his eyes faced front, his jaw set, not speaking, as if he were alone. I followed, lagging as far behind my captor as I could with no doubt in my mind that I could not stop, or turn without his knowledge. A cold sweat ran down my back and my body trembled as it battled continuous dread and exhaustion. My brother had offended these vampires in some way and I wondered if our shared blood would spare me from the life led by the penned humans we’d passed on our way into the compound, or would they simply torture me in lieu of Benjamin. The vampire stopped at a door no different than any others we’d passed except its wired glass window was lit and painted on the door in silver letters was the name, General Marcus. He rapped twice and a barked, “Come in,” came almost instantaneously. My guide opened the door, motioned me through, and I stepped in ahead of him, my legs wobbling and my heart pounding. The room was shadowy, lit by several floor lamps that could not illuminate every corner. The walls behind the lamps were covered with maps of North America before the fall, when it had been a shining net of cities stretched out across the land. Plush couches hugged the walls on three sides and an ash tray smoked on a low faux wooden table in front of the boots of a squat, grizzled va
mpire reclined on one couch and pulling at a cigar that he held between two fingers. He had gray streaks the color of the cigar ash running down the sides of his head and peppering the rest of his hair. He greeted us with a disturbing big toothed smile. The cigar alternately lit up and obscured his square face. His torso looked as if it had been modeled after a tank, especially in the rumpled desert camouflage uniform he wore. On the couch across from him a young woman lay in a soft robe with a chain trailing loosely to an eye set in the floor from a metal collar at her neck. Her breath caught as I came in, her eyes darted away from me. She was unlike any woman I’d ever seen with soft pale skin scarcely touched by the sun, clean shining hair, a round stomach that sagged slightly, and a butt that jiggled as she rolled over and faced the back of the couch. There were bite marks on her throat, her wrists, and her thighs. Silence only broken by the General’s inhalations hung over everything alongside the smoke. My captor approached slowly his head tilted forward. I stood behind him, not wishing to venture far from the door that had shut behind us, rubbing my arms as if to ward off a chill. I began to feel as if we were trapped in time, that we would always be standing in front of this smoking general bulging out of his khaki uniform, with his squnched up bulldog face, pocked nose, and a grin at our expense. A grin that was almost like an old-fashioned country boy. The general continued to sit there puffing, his eyes burning almost as brightly as the tip of his cigar. The smoke smelled so delicious that I was salivating, sweet, spicy, and clove like.
Finally, the general pulled his feet off the table, letting them fall to the floor with two distinct thumps and sat up. “Well sit-down boys,” he said in a low gravelly voice rattling with phlegm and pointed at another couch. My captor sat down quickly and crisply, and I followed lethargically. I felt drained, overwhelmed, and hopeless as I stood deep within the belly of the beast. All I wanted to think about was my mother but the only image I could recall was that of her lying on that sandy beach dead by my own hand. I sat down slowly on the leather couch resisting the urge to shut my eyes. General Marcus took another couple of long slow puffs from his stogie studying me and weighing me over its orange tip through eyes with so many creases around them that they seemed permanently squinted, and grimaced as if he did not believe, or like, what he saw. He had the air of someone who expected a trick and wanted to avoid being the one that it was sprung on. “Boys, we’ve got ourselves a helluva problem.” My captor tensed as if struck every time the General lumped us together.
“You Benjamin Elderitch’s brother,” he asked locking me with his cold blue eyes. I nodded, my body quivering in the couch. Out of the corner of my eye the ambassador looked bored, but his body was tense. I saw his tongue flick across his lips for only a moment and then he was still again. The General sat back a bit considering me. “He the one?” he asked my captor.
“He smells right sir.”
“That he does,” the General nodded as he spoke. “Smells just like the bastard who repaid my generosity with three corpses.”
He looked at me again and gave his head a little shake as he took me in. “Your brother thought he’d set himself up a right nice kingdom up north.” He watched my face closely, glaring and I tried to remain impassive, but it was as if I’d just swallowed a glass full of home and fear and the hot rush of each were flushing my face.
“Now, I don’t mind him getting his kicks up there in the frozen northland too much. I got more important things to worry about trying to get this country back to what it was. But if he keeps flouting me and refusing to pay me a pittance.” His eyes smoldered as he leaned closer to me and his voice descended into a growl. “We’re going to have ourselves a natural blood feast.” He smelled stale, stale smoke, stale air, and stale flesh. By contrast my own body stank of sweat, and urine. I shivered.
He leaned back into the couch again and puffed his cigar. “Now I figured I’d let him have his little slice of the pie, it being a might too cold up there for me to go traipsing about, and blood supplies being what they are with stupid vampires turning people and killing people left and right, without the future ever registering in their pathetic little minds.” He sighed.
His cigar was smoking down unnoticed as he spoke. “I’ve tried to send some vampires up there to talk some sense into that thick noggin of his and now it’s your turn.” He pointed at the both of us with two thick stubby fingers, and then rubbed the cigar out in the ash tray as he stood. Striding around the room with the curt clomping of his boots he continued in a louder voice.
“I want ten people sent down here to me each year. Man, woman, or child, it doesn’t matter to me. No sick, no elderly. Ten healthy people sent to me each spring and I’ll leave him alone. Of course, the number may increase in the future. But if your brother wants to remain undisturbed then he’s going to have to do as I say and give me what I want, or I’ll have his head on a plate and his people spread to the four winds.” He stopped in front of me as he spoke the last in a hard-even voice and I sat underneath him tight lipped and trembling.
The door had shut behind us as we’d left the General’s office accompanied by the creak of springs as the woman got up and the General returned to his relaxed position, and my captor, the vampiric ambassador to my brother’s “right nice little kingdom,” stormed down the hall away from the direction we’d come in. Remnants of the sweat that had drenched me as the General had railed against the transgressions of my brother ran coolly down the small of my back. We exited through double glass doors out onto an empty parking lot sparkling in the bright lights that were perched atop the building and bordered on its far side by another tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire. A group of camo clad vampires snickered as we passed them, one licking its thin grey lips as it caught my scent, but the ambassador paid them no attention as he strode along. I scurried along after him afraid that he would carry me himself if I did not follow closely enough. He did not look back at me as he glided across the parking lot until we reached the fence and compared to his soft footfalls the slapping of my boots upon the pavement rang out exposing me to the night. Inside the fence another group of humans huddled together in one corner, muddy, emaciated, wide-eyed and even more agitated than those corralled outside the front of the compound. They shoved one another, clamoring over those of their group that just lay or sat at the edge of the group closest to the building that the fence hugged, the tongues lolling and their eyes unfocused. The ambassador unlocked a gate and opened it just enough for us to squeeze through. At the first creaking of the gate long desperate howls that disappeared in ragged edges only to begin again a moment later erupted from the humans and they shoved themselves as one mass against the fence rattling it as if they were holding it and shaking it. Along the platform that ran from spotlight to spotlight down the length of the fence rifles clicked as they were being readied. We stepped into the rank containment area, our boots squelching in the mud and the human’s howls deepened and at the same time increased in volume. The sound ran through my gut tightening my body around my innards as if those howls could wring my body dry. It felt like the cry of a child who cannot understand why it has been hurt but amplified. If I had been free, I would have run and hid myself at the first breath of those howls. We stood waiting outside of a door for a moment watching those humans, their faces twisted in anguish, their bodies in irrepressible throes. Several threw themselves onto the ground and buried their faces in the mud wailing.