by Mazlow, J.
We pulled up to a short pier adjacent to a small square wood board house and a middle-aged vamp standing at its end tied us off once the boat had been settled gently into place. Abdul barked a perfunctory greeting at the vampire but stood staring into the wilderness up the river for a few minutes after Bart and the outpost vampire had already disappeared into the house. Fast paced acoustic guitar rattled out of the house and into the night. I’d never thought it fair that vampires could co-opt everything worthwhile about life and yet still not be human. Thralls I could forgive. They were like any mindless beast with only their focused desires driving them, but vampires would drain you and then sit around reading if they had the chance. The Ambassador seemed to scorn that behavior as much as I did.
After a while he stepped off onto the dock and I dutifully followed. My eyes burnt with exhaustion and the ceaseless winds of the boat’s travels. We entered the small cabin and the music died as another middle-aged bodied vamp stood and leaned his guitar against the wall with a ringing clank. The ambassador waved him back to a sitting position and took a seat at the wobbly table in the center of the room. I followed him uncertain of what I was expected to do. It seemed obvious that I should remain within sight of Abdul, but the stares of the other three vampires were unnerving and Abdul was ignoring me. The two vampires who manned the outpost were named Tim and Ricky and did not seem to have changed much from their human states. They were both large and blocky men with blue eyes and dull blond hair and were wearing cowboy boots, thick leather belts with garish belt buckles, and cowboy hats over black button down shirts that had flames running down the sleeves from their collars. They’d stacked the walls of the room with bright red cases of Budweiser and the table was already littered with empty cans. I wondered if the vamp back in St. Louis was aware of their stash. Bart was happy to be with vampires who were not as reticent as the ambassador and began talking with them, and they quickly warmed and passed around cans of beer to everyone, although Abdul had had to point at me before I was included. I watched them carefully as I took a sip of the lukewarm beverage. The resident vampire pair was odd; they could have almost passed for humans by their behavior and even wore frazzled beards that covered their faces. Vampires were unable to grow hair and most shaved soon after turning, but these two vamps had kept theirs and had even gone so far as to oil them in their efforts to hang on to the growth that they had brought with them once they’d been turned. Though the beards had grown ragged and were starting to show patches, with their bearded round red faces and the big goofy grins under the brims of their cowboy hats they looked like men who’d survived physically unscathed from before the crazy times.
Ricky pulled out a deck of cards and they bandied around the idea of playing poker for a while as the Ambassador sat sipping his beer quietly his eyes distant, and I avoided looking at anyone. “Really need a fourth for a good game,” Tim said as he shuffled the deck, the cards snapping together like a fan whirring and he glanced at Abdul who’d leaned back and put his feet up on the table. He had one hand curled around the beer on his lap and let his other arm hang limply at his side. He ignored the other vamps. Tim turned and looked at me. “Well, what about you then tasty?” They bellowed pounding the table and spilling a beer as it shook back and forth in the process. Their laughter died down slowly till it only trickled out of Bart in spurts. Tim pulled another beer out of a cooler and opened it with a hiss and a crisp snap.
“You might as well have some fun before you’re drained.” I could almost sense Abdul tensing up though he did not move from his reclined position, but then as they dealt me in, he relaxed. “Come on now boy, saddle on up to the table.” I quaked, my hand groping at my belt for the pistol that I had carried before I had been captured, then looked at the ambassador but his face provided no guidance. I scooted my chair up to the table.
“Pick up your cards,” Tim said, and I swiped them up from the tabletop. They were slick and glistened in the candlelight.
“Now that’s more like it,” Ricky said and threw me another beer as if to reward me. I cracked it and took a miniscule sip. Already the first one had gone straight to my head leaving me with a tinge of worrisome dizziness.
After a couple of rounds Ricky got up and disappeared outside, returning a few moments later with strips of smoky meat in his hands. “Try this,” he said and gave some to everyone. I shuddered. I’d never heard of vamps eating human flesh but that was all I could imagine. The vamps grunted appreciatively as they chewed, the strips dangling from their mouths.
“Deer meat,” he said grinning and biting off a hunk himself, chewing it noisily in between sentences. I tasted my own piece, chewing it slowly and carefully. It was salty and smoky, and the juices ran across my tongue like my own sweat. “I set myself some corn out across the river.” He pointed as if he were about to tip his hat. “Deer love it. Then I wait and POW,” he mimed shooting. “Delicious deer meat. Wish I had a freezer though, but I smoke it up real nice and it keeps.” He paused as he took another bite then asked with a wad of meat in one cheek. “You boys got freezers down in St. Louis, that’s what I heard.”
Bart leapt in. “There are some freezers at Fort Dix, but the power’s pretty sporadic.” Abdul had taken his boots down off the table, looked around drearily and then he stood and walked out waving to me to remain seated. I tensed. Ricky dealt another hand and the games continued. I glanced back and forth at their wan faces, a little slackened from the beer that they were rapidly consuming, and repeated to myself again and again, these are vampires, as my mind swam in the warmth, the beer and the laughter that rounded the table. They played hand after hand and I grew tired and the edges of objects in my vision grew fuzzy. Through the haze it seemed as if we were men from a forgotten time. My eyelids drooped. I tried to snap back into the right frame of mind, recalling an odd thing that my mother had once told us. Vampires are liars and deceivers, she’d said, they’ll seduce you with the devil’s tongue. They can draw you in, bait you, tempt you with false promises, and like a tender calf at the edge of a pasture, you may follow. They are handsome, and beautiful, but rotten within; do not be deceived by their shells. It was an odd thing for her to try to instill in us, because vampires had always seemed rather straight forward about their desire to drain us, but seeing their smiling faces in the crackling light of the fire her words came back to me and though it was too late, I understood them. A brief respite from being hunted and already they were beguiling me. The room took on a sinister tint and I awakened somewhat looking from Bart’s sharp fangs to their dull ones, barely differentiated from a human’s canines. I tensed up wishing Abdul would return, and then cursed myself for placing my faith in a vampire. There was nowhere I could turn, because everywhere I was surrounded by their cunning affability. My hands were going poorly, and I began to suspect that I was being cheated out of some innate bias against what they saw as a meal.
The night was more than halfway gone and still the ambassador had not returned. My eyes were dull and heavy, dry from the fire’s smoke, and forcing them open was a struggle that had me continuously blinking. My movements felt sluggish, clumsy and all I wanted was to sleep no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was in danger. The vampires seemed to be whispering back and forth around me, or perhaps that was just how I perceived their voices. They took on the appearance of paper outlines, white and thin against the darkness of the corners of the room. The cards rasped across the table like a snake shedding its skin. They no longer dealt me in as I floated in a warm pool that blurred the edges of objects and colors together.
I awoke when the cold hand jerked me up by my jacket and drug me across the table. My face slammed into the coarse wood and slid halfway across the table before my palms pressed into it at the ends of my outstretched arms and stopped me, spread eagle in an X on the table, caught like a deer in a spotlight. The two country vamps were practically dancing around me clapping their hands and slapping each other on the back. Their blue eyes were drained
of all but the faintest hint of color. Bart looked at me, his grayish tongue flitting across his thin lips that hung open and then averted his gaze, only catching me out of the corners of his eyes. My heartbeat against the table so hard I was surprised that I could not hear it reverberating throughout the room. I swung around kicking but one of the brothers grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my face into the table. It tasted dusty and piney for a split second before one of my teeth sank into my lip and the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth as it ran down my tongue. Immediately their eyes glinted as if a fire had flared and I could hear their breathing quicken from the even rhythms that they had previously maintained. It was as if bellows languidly pumped by machine with only the intention to keep the fires alight had been co-opted by a man intent on an inferno. The brothers hooted, saliva running down their chins. I kicked and squirmed, but I couldn’t raise my head against the grasp of the hand that seemed to be draining the heat from my head, let alone land a blow on one of them. The brother’s laughed and Bart forced a chuckle. “I ain’t never had a hand delivered snack before,” one of them said.
All my awareness shifted to my heart pounding in my throat. I felt as if they were staring at it, my most vulnerable point. I couldn’t see anything but a bit of light creeping around the edge of my vision and the jeans that one of the brothers was wearing. One of them struck me in the back with his fist. A wave of pain rang over me in all directions and my breath rushed out deflating me. I crumpled against the table filled with the urge to beg, to plead. I could talk with these creatures, appeal to them, reason with them. I’d just played cards with them. No arguments came to mind, but surely, they’d see. I’d leave them alone. I was not worth it. Wasn’t worth the wrath of the General. “The General,” I managed to squawk and received a slap to the back of the head that burst my lip and chipped a tooth against the table. My entire mouth throbbed, and the tooth burnt white hot with pain. They laughed again. “Thinks he’s something. You’re a snack boy, a plaything. The General must be losing it more than I’d heard to be sending a little shit like you upriver. You would have been his dinner back in the day.” A cold firm hand with sharp edges as if it were constructed of metal, grasped my wrist, and squeezed the skin against the bone. It pulled my elbow back stretching it until the tendons felt as if they would rip out, bending it backwards until my vision broke down into wavering blurry columns of light and I was unaware of what I was babbling. I saw a fleck of my own spit fly out of my mouth and lie glistening on the table, until the pain blurred it into a streak. “The General don’t hold no sway up here boy,” a voice said and pulled back further on the elbow. My teeth sank unaware into my lip. Blackness and heat washed over me, and I struggled again kicking and thrashing with the last of my energy, but my struggle quickly lost steam though and I was left twitching and blubbering. They cackled.
Suddenly a sharp crack like a rifle burst from behind me cutting through the fuzz of pain. The acute pain in my arm evaporated leaving behind only its residue and a pulsing ache. One of the brothers roared a jumble of consonants that sounded more like the roar of a charging animal than the words of an intelligent creature. I felt his spittle splatter me and their icy hands let me go. I rolled over weakly and saw Abdul standing in the door like darkness condensed, his face cool and impassive, except for his eyes dim and red like the coals of a dying fire. The three vampires were standing between us in a semi-circle facing the ambassador, Ricky hitting his fist into his palm. They looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes. Ricky to Tim and Tim to Bart. Bart’s eyes flickered back and forth and to the floor. His eyebrows were curved down around his eyes, but the rest of his face was blank and expressionless. The ambassador smiled slightly and rocked back on his heels with a look of perfect anticipation, the most natural expression I’d seen him exhibit, and then he flew forwards. He moved as if nothing else could move but him. One hand grasped Ricky around the throat before he had a chance to react, but he swung his arm in a giant arc as soon as Abdul’s hand wrapped around his neck and sank a fat fist into Abdul’s side. Abdul moaned slightly and his body flopped like rag doll with the impact. Then he jerked Ricky’s head forward and kneed him in the face. The blow threw Ricky’s head backwards and sent a quick spout of blood into the air. Tim rushed up and grabbed the ambassador from behind, locking his throat in the crook of his elbow and punching him in the side as Bart went for the rifles that were leaned up against the wall. My body felt paralyzed, a throbbing mass that was only able to watch, incapable even of running. Abdul hurled his body forward and pulled Tim over him, throwing him down on top of Ricky. He stomped down on his back and then leapt onto Bart with a snarl pulling a knife from his belt as he flew. They went down together in a frenzied mass near the rifles. The knife gleamed orange in the firelight and then a piercing scream filled the room, before abruptly dissolving into gurgling. The ambassador turned to face the outland vampires now standing together between us and the door. They came at him from opposite sides, their steps in sync as if they could read one another’s thoughts and their arms held open wide as if they intended to grapple. Bart rose to his knees behind Abdul and then fell again his hands slipping as they clasped around his neck as a thin trickle of rusty blood oozed down the jut of his Adam’s apple. The ambassador’s hand struck like a viper as the two approached him snatching up an outstretched wrist and bringing it down to meet his rising knee with a crack. Tim belted out a throaty howl and was spun away into a corner as Abdul shoved him away by his broken wrist and sidestepped Ricky’s charge. He grabbed Ricky by the hair, broke his momentum with a sharp jerk, and pulled him upright by the thin blond strands of hair that were wrapped around his fingers. Pushing up on Ricky’s chin with his other hand he held the vamp’s head at eyelevel, inches from his own face, and then he snapped it to one side with a laugh and as it lolled he leaned forward and slit the throat with his fangs. A brown line of blood flowed from the wound and then Abdul flung the vamp to the floor. He walked over to Tim who was still lying on the floor, bent over him, and slit his throat with his knife. Then he disappeared through the doorway wiping his hands on his pants and with a confirming glance backwards as he left. He returned moments later and dragged off first Tim and then Ricky. They squirmed but their broken limps flopped uselessly, and their heads rolled different directions with each tug on their bodies. When he stepped back into the doorway the hollows of his eyes seemed darker and deeper. I rose as he drugs Bart away and followed the ambassador out to a wood pile. The steps sent jolts of resurgent pain that set a sharp ache resonating through my skull. Ricky and Tim were pile atop one another beside the wood pile, Ricky’s limbs limply embracing Tim. Their disembodied heads lay on the sides of their faces beside them. Their eyes were wide open, and their skin was like snow in the moonlight, a rigid, plastic snow. An axe stuck out of a cylindrical log that was stood up on one smooth end. Abdul lay Bart down on his back with his neck stretched out across a long flat piece of wood, the slit opening up on his throat like a plastic bag. He pulled the axe free, stepped to one side of Bart and raised it. It fell in a long arc, propelled by the downward pull of his outstretched arms, and then connected with a clunk and the head fell away. Abdul chucked Bart’s body on top of the other two, and then tossed the head onto the pile. It rolled into the other heads, jostling them before they all settled with their wide eyes staring into the ground, sky, and trees. Abdul wiped his hands on his pants again.
Suddenly, his voice returned, “You have to cut them off,” he motioned towards the heads, “Or else they might recover.” I nodded; a vampire was never dead enough. “It’s cold,” he said, and I followed him into the house, our arms loaded with wood. He set the door back up against the door frame and built the fire up, until it was tall and crackling, and as he pulled a chair up close to it, I stripped my shirt off against the heat. I crawled up on to the table and lying down with my feet at a dark blood stain and my head resting on my arm, tried to sleep, but though I felt still, I felt as if the amba
ssador was standing over me and I could feel his cold grip grasping my throat again and again.
The next evening Abdul shook me awake. My neck was stiff, and my face was lying in a puddle of my own drool. The fire had died down, the sheen of sweat that had covered my skin as I’d fallen asleep had dried, and I was shivering as I slept in the coolness of the morning. I got up and quickly replaced my shirt. The ambassador was upending every container in the shack, every drawer was pulled out, every tub turned over, and he had a growing pile of knives, firearms, and ammunition in the middle of room. I found the jerky on the floor of the shack next door and filled my pack with it, wrapping it in a shirt, and hoping that it was truly deer meat. Abdul took a couple of knives and tucked them into his belt, shoved the ammunition into a bag, and hauled it along with an armful of guns out to the boat. Then we left the last vampire outpost behind, just another empty building along the river, and headed north, the ambassador now wearing a sweater over his uniform that diminished his forbidding appearance.
The ambassador pushed northward quickly, rushing the boat up the center of the river with a scowl on his face and muttering often to himself. I sat in the front of the boat watching the trees rush by and the animals startled from their drinking flee our passage. The world had emptied out. I felt no urgency. Abdul could have drained me at any moment, but to what end had he then saved me. I slept when I wanted, ate what I had in my pack, scooped up murky cups of water from the river to drink and pissed from the back of the boat as we raced away.