by Mazlow, J.
Eventually the long metal door to our left rolled up and two vampires in fatigues stepped out giving my captor a quick wave and walked slowly down a truck sized ramp that ran down into the yard. The group of humans rolled and railed against their cage at the approach of the two vampires, even those that had fallen to the ground found the strength to get up and beat vainly against the fence. Some began to climb the fence only to be knocked back to the ground with blood streaming down their faces by guards wielding the butts of their rifles along the platform across the fence. They crouched at the bottom of the fence clutching their noses eyes fearfully locked on the two vampires who had entered the mud. Others tried to dig underneath the fence tearing at the ground with their hands like dogs, while some shook the fence so hard that blood flew from their hands unnoticed as the fence ripped their flesh. Their shrieks intensified until my body shook. My eyes grew blurry and my stomach clenched and then without realizing it I was on my knees, coolness from the mud seeping through my jeans as my stomach ejected its meager contents. I continued heaving even after the only thing that continued to come up was a thin trickle of yellow bile that burnt my throat and left my mouth with a rancid coating. I saw everything through a red wave that pulsated with each wretch, but through it I could make out the two vampires that were approaching the humans, and I their screeching over my wheezing crowding out all other sound. My captor stood at my side as inert as a statue, a slight smirk on his face as he looked down at me. The group of captive humans split like an egg around the two vamps, running to either side of them leaving behind those who were dazed or petrified beyond movement, but the vamps ignored the motionless humans instead tossing a red rope over the head of a man sprinting away. They jerked him to the ground with a sharp tug. I remained on my knees, my stomach forgotten, my entire body forgotten. The man scrambled to his feet, his hands going to the rope around his neck, trying to loosen it, his face reddening, but the vampire held it tight. His stomach tightened and his ribs bulged as he pulled against the rope as if they only stuck to a sack being inflated with air. He jerked with his arms, thrust with his legs, and thrashed about with his neck, but with each struggle the rope tightened further around his neck, squeezing so that his Adam’s apple bulged overtop the rough fibers, and a red raw ring of flesh peeked out from underneath. The rope had constricted so much that he could not have screamed had he wanted to, but when his eyes met mine only dull voids stared back, empty of even fear. His thin chest swelled and collapsed with each quick breath. His eyes were red lined and encircled with thick black rings. His ratty hair hung down over his shoulders in greasy strands clumped together with a crust of dried mud. He wore nothing but a ragged pair of denim shorts shot through with holes and threatening to come unraveled from the innumerable threads and strings that dangled from their bottoms. His knees jutted into the air just like the ragged corners of sagging doorways in homes I’d slept in whose roofs had halfway collapsed. As I looked into his dark eyes his emptiness deflated me and I stood beside my own bile watching as if behind glass with my own captor, and those of the humans who could bear not to avert their eyes, as he was dragged step by step, struggling against the rope, up the concrete ramp and into the building. Once the vampires had disappeared back into the building, the crowd of humans returned to its original corner and crouched down in a loose cluster chatting unintelligibly as they pointedly ignored the ambassador and I, except for the children who stared, slack jawed, with void faces until someone grabbed them and brought them into the group. My captor coughing loudly and spitting a wad of phlegm into the pen broke the intense silence that had fallen in the wake of the prisoners’ wails. He’d looped his fingers into his belt loops and grinned at me. “He didn’t fight too much. That takes all the fun out of it really, but most of them don’t fight that much, some do though. Then you have to drag them into the blood bank kicking and screaming.” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a lot of fight in you, but you’re a wild and we can’t even train these feeders to go peacefully.” He started for a door into the building motioning for me to follow. “I’m glad I don’t have to do any rope duty though. It’s too tempting. Half the vamps who work the rope end up dead. The last one turned two and drained four before the General had him tossed into the river chained to a concrete block. Probably could have survived a while, maybe worked the chain out of the block, except the General had his throat slashed just before he was thrown overboard. Fish don’t prefer vampire meat, but with the fresh blood floating around something ate him. Probably an eight-foot catfish if I had my guess.”
The door was the same dim metallic beige as the concrete blocks that made up the flat roofed building and opened into a large warehouse that had been divided into several sections by chain link fencing and the gray carpeted half walls that typically reside in former office buildings. Low distant moans punctuated with short lived shrieks mingled discordantly with papers rustling and the even purposeful tread of boots. There was little color to be seen, everything was dull whites and grays washed out by the fluorescent lights that beat down inexorably in even rows and hummed just perceptibly. The stale, hot air, reeked of urine, defecation and sweat, the stench of the holding pens outside, but condensed, never washed away by a breeze, never cooled by the night air. As we approached the other end of the building the odors of diesel and gasoline provided some relief from the foul air. A great weariness fell over my body. My limbs trembled with the exertion of each step; their weight almost unbearable. I felt too tired to think, feel, or even to fear. I trudged on without thought my body moving automatically and I saw everything as if it were distant, and unimportant. Oh, the other hand my guide had stepped up his pace. His nostrils flared with each infrequent breath, his eyes were wide as if he were on the verge of losing control, their brown turned the color of drying grass in the harsh light, surrounded by thin plentiful red veins. We came into an area bordered behind us by those gray partition walls and on its far side by a chain link fence. There were several gurneys scattered around the concrete floor, their stuffing leaking out on the floor and some had been reduced to only hard boards on top of metal frames set on black plastic wheels. A couple of vampires came out of the chain link fence, one backing as they carried a squirming young man with blonde hair that hung almost to the floor. One of his eyes was closed as if he was permanently squinting and was crusted with mucus and dirt. A fly landed on his stomach and then flew away as he twisted trying to kick his feet, but they were tucked firmly under the armpits of one of the vampires. He glared at me as they passed baring his teeth and making a deep rumbling sound in his chest as if he were growling. There was language contained in the sound. They brought him to one of the empty beds and swung him up onto it. Another vampire popped up from behind one of the gurneys on which a human quivered fitfully against the straps that bound him to the bed and gnawed at the leather gag that pinned his head down. They pulled a thick leather strap dangling from the side of the bed over the arrival’s chest and arms, and another smaller one over his legs and pulled them tight through silver buckles. The man screamed, but not the hideous wailing of those outside but an outraged roar that diminished as the belt dug into his chest. The vampires then pulled the gag across his mouth, silencing him as he ground his teeth together in an attempt to prevent the leather from slipping into his mouth, but they slid a long piece of wood in between his teeth and pried them open asking, “You wanna lose a tooth, no skin off my teeth,” over and over again as they laughed. When his teeth popped open the gag filled his mouth and he sputtered and spat around it until his head was forced against the bed as it was pulled tight. The two vampires moved to another bed where a woman lay with her eyes closed breathing weakly and unstrapped her before they carried her off, back into the fenced area. The vampire who worked in the area retrieved a plastic tackle box from behind the man he’d been initially attending and pulled a needle from it. He licked the needle, his tongue dull and grey, before he attached it to a tube that ran to a bag sitting on a plate that ro
cked gently back and forth, clicking at the beginning of each interval. The bag, the tubes, and the needle were all stained a dark rusty red. All the vampires were tense, their movements lacking the usual vampiric smoothness, their limbs instead moving in a series of disjointed jerks. Their tongues continuously flicked in and out over their mouths, running over their lips, their eyes were wide, and a thin sheen covered their foreheads. The vampire loosened the man’s right arm and twisted it so that the inner arm faced upward, before he strapped it down by a cord looped around his wrist, then he tied a tourniquet around the man’s upper arm, patting the arm like a dog when he was finished and slipped the needle into the vein in the crook of his elbow. The man’s body pulsed against the restraints as much as it was permitted to as the ambassador muttered something about alcohol swabs. The vamp released the tourniquet and blood began to flow through the tubing and into the bag beneath the gurney. The vampire rubbed his hands together staring at the blood as it pooled in the bag, then wiped his forehead with one hand and looked up at my captor. “I gotta get out of here,” he said in a raspy voice as if his throat had dried out. “I gotta feed.” His eyes darted back to the blood and then to the bodies that were unwillingly being drained of their blood before settling on my neck. The hot stale room suddenly went cold. I was sure that he could see my jugular through the skin, see my life pulsing there. He ran his tongue along a fang that extended beyond his other teeth; he was a fairly old vampire. He smiled at Abdul. “A wild. Are we going to get a taste?”
“Nah,” Abdul said, “The General has a use for him.”
“A snack.” They laughed.
I looked away from them but all I could see were the fences and the lights and the grey walls. An engine started somewhere, sputtering, and jerking before it finally caught. They weren’t just draining the humans, they weren’t just keeping them here to feast upon their blood, they were farming them, raising them for their consumption. The taste of bile rose into the back of my throat once again, but I willed it down, kept my mouth clamped tight, kept myself upright, straight-backed, despite the taste. I felt wearier than I ever had. Somehow, I felt more alone than ever before despite being closer to more humans that I’d ever imagined existed, but humans that could not speak with me, humans that could not understand me. Men and women, boys and girls who had lived their entire lives behind rusting fences, constantly under the glare of spotlights, sleeping in muddy pits, dreading the days that they’d be brought into this warehouse and strapped down while their life was slowly and forcibly taken from them.
My guide roused me from my morbid thoughts with a shove to one of my shoulders. I followed him through a gate in the fencing and we began to navigate a maze of individual cages filled with men and women in various states, some weeping, some lying dazed on the floor and others pulling against the front of their cages. The pair of vampires passed us carrying a struggling young girl the way we’d come. At an empty cage Abdul stopped and I went into the cage without even thinking. I sat down in the center of the cage as he locked it with a solid click. All around me I could hear the moans and the shuffling of the captives. The cage was pocked with rust and blackened spots, the floor was vaguely damp and stained brown. I lay on my back and closed my eyes willing it all away and fell into a sleep that I hoped I’d never wake up from.
I awoke to the soft thud of boots followed by a woman’s shrill screams from deeper within the cages. Her voice cracked intermittently, interrupting her shrieks but never halting them. They continued on as if the cracks were just glitches that once passed over the sound resumed its place without fault. They passed directly in front of my cage but I kept my eyes squeezed shut even when she managed to slip a foot free and kick a vamp in the ribs, her bare foot eliciting a curse from the struck vamp, and an admonition to go easy on the goods from another. I didn’t move even though the cuffs were digging into my cheeks, the metal right up against the bone. There was simply no use. I lay concentrating on breathing and trying to conjure up my earliest memory, a red furred mongrel, a gray trailer up on blocks with one room’s floor rotted away, a man who was not my father, or so my mother had always said, but I could never pinpoint the chronology of my first memories, they just floated in blackness. A vivid splash of color and faces that abruptly dropped into black before another emerged. My mother had said who my father was and where he was wasn’t important, he wasn’t with us and we could take care of ourselves. That had always suited me just fine, vampires were a known evil, but people, especially men, weren’t trustworthy, a fact my mother could never accept as it would have crushed her longing for the past, but during his middle childhood my brother developed an intense interest in our father, an interest that my mother usually blew off to his consternation.
I finally opened my eyes when the footfalls stopped with a slap on the concrete at my cage and the lock began to rattle. Abdul looked fleshier and ruddier than he had the night before as he unlocked the cage and swung open the door. He sighed as he looked down at me lying there and let a backpack slide off one shoulder to the floor where it landed with a clank.
“Well get up.” I stood up as he pulled a key from his pocket. He grabbed my arms roughly and twisted it in the cuffs. “At the very least you can make yourself useful,” he said pointing at the sack. I slid my arms into the straps and followed him as he glided away, never once looking back to make sure I followed. The pack was heavy and poorly packed the weight uneven and the edges of some cans pressed into my spine.
“My mission,” he said as we walked exiting the building onto a parking lot filled with jeeps and moving trucks, “is to bring you to your brother, so that you can convey the General’s demands.” The sun was low on the western horizon and the He opened the passenger door of a jeep and I climbed into a cabin reeking of the cigarette butts that had overflowed the ash tray onto the floor. He continued once he got into the driver’s seat. “As long as you are coherent, I’ve fulfilled my duty, so if you try to escape, I’ll break both of your legs and carry you there.” The jeep started with a roar and a belch of black smoke, jerked as he threw it into gear, and we pulled off. We raced past the fences, but no humans were visible within their confines for which I was grateful. He hurtled around a curve as we descended the hill and I grasped the handle over the door as I slid across my seat, before the turn ended and we entered a long flat expanse of road surrounded by empty neighborhoods. The vampire metropolis was to our backs, their farms to our west and my brother far to the north but as the jeep blazed down the empty highway the acute pain of my stomach’s clenching precluded all other thought. I glanced at Abdul, but his concentration seemed to be on the road, though I couldn’t see his eyes through his dark wrap-around sunglasses. I opened the flap on the olive-green pack that he’d given me as I held it between my feet and began to pull out its contents. There was nothing but cans of food and a can opener, no weapons, no socks, no coat, and no shoes. Not even a spoon or fork. There were large cans of tomatoes, cans of beans, a can of chili, and some cans of fruit cocktail. I pulled out a can of pinto beans and opened it. Abdul wrinkled his nose as soon as I’d pulled the top off and said, “I can’t believe this is what I have to put up with.” Ignoring him I tilted my head back and began swallowing the beans in large gulps. “We’ll be lucky if we make it out of there before the first snow,” he scowled shaking his head and then slowed as he turned off the main highway onto a smaller road that descended through a decayed industrial park. Long buildings, with abandoned trucks and tractors in their parking lots lined the roadway broken with clusters of rusting tanks as large as any building and flat square gray gravel lots. The few weeds that had grown up in this area were covered with a fine gray grit. There were cranes ahead of us, their rusted hooks hanging unmoving in the sun, and behind them the wide dark expanse of the Mississippi framed the entire scene without even a ripple disturbing its smooth surface.
We pulled up beside a motorcycle in front of a dock that extended out into the river from a sandy bank. A vampire st
ood at the entrance to the dock, leaning with his forearms on the railing as he smoked a cigarette. He wore a long canvas trench coat and jeans pulled down over his boots despite the heat and he stood up straight grinning at the ambassador as he approached having ordered me to remain in the jeep. His dark eyes were squinted beneath his dark coarse hair, thin in the front but thinner in the back. He had flat square face that seemed to merge into his neck with little transition and a rough pock marked nose. His fangs were of medium length and he was shorter but broader than Abdul. They greeted each other with a handshake and then he walked down the pier as the ambassador returned to the jeep and pulled a pack and a rifle from behind his seat. “Everything’s ready,” he said, and I followed him out across the black water, the cans in my pack clinking with each step that I took. Tied alongside the dock a small gray boat sat high rolling slightly as the water slapped against the dock’s wooden piles. Its bow angled sharply into the black water Arabella painted in crisp black letters just under the deck, and a black railing ran along its sides from the open space in the front, around the cabin, and alongside another open space in the back. The ambassador clipped an orange vest around his chest as the other vampire who was already onboard and similarly clad took our packs and we hopped in. He avoided looking at me as I sat on one of the benches in the back area and looked out across the river towards the high rises to our south and the birds dipping across the water.
“The sun’s killing me, sir,” he told Abdul even though his lazy grin never subsided.