by Mazlow, J.
As I made my way back to the front of the boat early one evening, he spoke to me, though he never looked towards me, his squinting eyes remained focused on the river that lay before us.
“We were made to operate alone, to work alone, and I believe that our nature remains so to this day; solitary creatures made to kill, but only taught to obey authority. I should have known better than to leave you alone with those vampires when they’d been isolated up here so long, away from all constraining influences, festering in their own desires. Most naturals have no restraint, it is something the General struggles with and it gets worse as the blood farms become less and less productive.” I felt sick. He shook his head slightly, “Sometimes I blame myself,” he said more quietly.
“When my groups training had completed, we were shipped off one by one. I sat in my room for two weeks straight only taken out to exercise a couple of hours and each night in the exercise yard I noted that my fellows’ numbers had shrunk. In my room I read and practiced languages when the instruction came on a television. One night, I had not yet seen the light of day outside of the TV and pictures and believed that I was always awake during the nighttime, they came for me. Four big men in thick canvas jackets, leather gloves and wearing face shields stepped into the room without saying a word. As I stepped down from the bed where I’d been sitting cross-legged with a copy of National Geographic, the last one stepped in carrying a metal pole with a loop of rough fiber at one end which he snagged around my neck and pulled it tight. It scratched and itched. “We’re not gonna have any trouble with you right?” He called out and I shook my head. I knew that resistance was futile. Another man in a white lab coat filled with a clear liquid which he squirted into the air in front of him before flicking the reservoir with one nail. One of the canvas clad men bound my hands behind my back as the other kept the loop pulled taut around my neck, stretching me forward. The liquid was cold but burnt as it spread into my triceps. I gritted my teeth, but the feeling quickly evaporated once the needle had been pulled from my arm and the doctor left the room. Soon I couldn’t feel anything, and I lost all sense of orientation. I felt as if I was floating, having left my body behind, and when they pulled the noose over my head I laughed when I saw that it was a hoop large enough to leap through. The darkness at the edge of my vision bubbled up like a pot that was boiling over my retina, until it lapped together over my vision and I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, I was lying face down on cold metal, a screw digging into my cheek, my hands still bound behind my back, and my lips resting in my own drool. The drone of an engine filled the air and kept the floor vibrating rapidly so that combined with the cold the cheek that was pressed into the metal felt numb and unresponsive. I pulled my legs up into the fetal position and then pushed myself up into a sitting position. Wooden crates stamped USMC filled the area between the rounded walls and roof behind me. In front of me was nothing but a dull gray wall, broken by a giant square.
The plane flew on for hours, constantly bobbing and jerking occasionally so unexpectedly and so violently that it threw me to my knees as I paced among the crates trailing my hands along their rough splintering boards. The emptiness was interminable after the hours of training and videos, florescent and spotlights and little chocolates slipped to e by a third shift guard. Though I knew I was flying through the air it was hard to deny the premonition that this was a trick of the mind, a result of the drug that they had given me, but my arm was bruised and sore and my feet were cold against the metal floor. I cannot now recall what I thought as I awaited a change in my circumstances. I don’t know that I thought much at all, but I was beginning to grow thirsty. Eventually the engine tone shifted, and the plane shuddered as if the wind were pressing back against it. I sat down with my back to one of the crates and my palms flat against the floor as the plane pitched sharply forward. After the plane landed with a bump and the roar of air through the engines, I could hear the distant honking of car horns and the cries of birds. A vehicle rushed up the door in the cargo hold and I stood to one side waiting amongst the crates. The door slid back, just revealing a crack of harsh red-light hat cut through the darkness, glaring off the metal floor into my squinted eyes. A harsh voice yelled using the same intonations and blockish phrases of our instructors. ‘Back away from the door.’ I complied, stepping back deeper in the hold but where I could still see the bright outline of the door. It opened fully into a blazing square of orange and white that I could see through and I kept my eyes on the corner of the plane’s hold only watching the door with my peripheral vision. A rush of sweltering dry air rushed into the plane. The outline of a man appeared pointing a machine gun into the hold and sweeping it along with his head slowly back and forth scanning. ‘Where are you?’ he yelled, but I remained silent. He stepped just inside the doorway and a rounder outline appeared behind him. ‘Show yourself or I’ll open fire,’ the first shouted, but the one behind him patted him on the back, chuckling ad said, ‘Now don’t be hasty. We don’t want to damage the weapon that the Pentagon has so graciously provided.’ Then a little louder, ‘Come out lad, we’ve got work to do and I don’t care to stand out here in this blazing sun all day.’ I stepped out from behind the crate and immediately the marine brought the barrel of his rifle to bear as I stood in front of them blinking in the light. The private muttered something to himself and rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger as he stood there.
They escorted me out into the hot sun and blowing sand, handing me a thick black cloth which I wrapped around my head, tied low over my eyes. Everything burnt orange from the sun and the dust, that rose in fell in waves as the wind blew across the ridges and gullies. We got into a tan jeep and roared down a bumpy dirt road in the center of a convoy of vehicles. The commander spent his time talking into a radio and looking at information on his laptop, while I stared out across the landscape. Barren peaks of dark rusty brown rose in the distance topped with snow. Men in loose white trousers and long graying beards, women in long colorful dresses, their heads wrapped in shimmering cloths and their children scattered onto the roadside as we passed watching with tired eyes from gray banks of broken rock. The hot air whipped around me, and I basked in the heat of the sun as if I’d never known warmth in the air-conditioned corridors I’d previously been confined. I had the urge to run alongside the jeep, sure I could keep up with it, to run and never stop, but I remained sitting under the watchful gaze of the private and his machine gun. As we drove the sun set and with the darkness, I felt even more strength ebb into my body and more thirst drying my throat. I could see the clumps of little rough bushes hanging in no patterns in the ditches and swells of the land. I could hear the commander’s even pulse in his throat and the scent of fear from his guardsmen and my stomach clenched. My last sight of Derrick in his glass prison floated before my eyes reduced to a shriveled mass in the corner n ever moving except to feebly lift his arm, his eyes dulled until they were already a corpse’s eyes, until one day he was gone reportedly killed while we were locked in our rooms. Fear of an identical fate bore down upon me and my thirst welled up within me, two forces straining like a dam that’s been opened to the river for the first time.
“Eventually we arrived at a small compound layered with concrete walls and check points and the commander awoke from his fitful snoring, his laptop fallen asleep in front of him and ushered me into his office. He pulled a map out of a stack and sat it on his desk then stabbed at a red circle on it with a thick finger. ‘We have reason to believe he’s in a house here.’ He poked at a mountain and the veins stood out on the back of his hand. I licked my lips and nodded. He talked on and showed me an image of my target, a middle-aged looking man with thick glasses perched on a large nose, and dark eyes sandwiched between a white turban and a wiry graying beard. A man who looked a lot like the man I could have become had I been a man. Now I consider this night the beginning of my labor, my passage through the birth canal. The next night I would be born, but not in the sense that humans are born. I wa
s never born. I was made.
As the chopper flew, low over the sandy ridges and gullies the men divided their flitting attention behind their night vision goggles between me sitting near the open door and the rough ground that rolled by below. Was wound tightly, every sense overwhelming my mind with streams of data, but I maintained my composure as I watched the landscape clear in the moonlight despite having refused a pair of the goggles. The hot air rushed around me roaring in my ears. The moonlight sparkled on the rocks below; a road lay like a white vein twisting through the gray soil. The helicopter touched down roughly, and I leapt out underneath the crushing wind of its blades before I’d even been waved out. I landed with a crunching of boots and ran hunched over with my gun in both hands as the chopper lifted off and left me standing in a narrow valley looking up into in a crystal-clear night.
A quarter moon provided all the light I needed to move at a quick trot down the mountain sending little animals scurrying into the harsh brush. The air had cooled, and I breathed in deeply the fragrant aromas of the land warming my hands under my armpits, the skin growing taut and rubbery in the cold, trading them off as I ran. Finally, I approached a valley with a thin stream of smoke rising from one end and I crawled up to the ridge on my stomach and peered into it. Up where the valley narrowed and backed up against a tall steep mountain sat a cluster of brick and mud houses. I saw a couple of men moving, nothing more than specks and I could hear the faint shouts and their echoes rattling between the slopes. I slipped over the ridge and once I’d crept partially down the slope I stood and began moving across the slope. As I drew closer, I could make out a couple of guards shuffling around the grounds and I angled towards the closer, slipping a long knife from my belt. I slid along the sand soundlessly just another shadow lost in all the shadows of the night. He never saw me as he smoked his cigarette and gazed up at the clear pinprick stars and the dark mountains around us. My orders and my desires collapsed into one as I slunk up behind him, watching the large vein on his neck pulsating clearly in the moonlight, listening to the crunch of his boots in the rocks and the tinny music coming from the house, and trembling in time to his inhalations, my stomach clenched with his scent. I slid up behind him and at the last second he heard a rock slip underneath me and as he turned bringing his rifle up from the crook of his arm I thrust my knife into his lung and twisted, my other hand clasped across his lips before he could even scream. He fell into my arms gurgling in his own frothy blood that flecked lightly over his lips. I pushed him to the ground behind a scrubby brush and crouched over him as his dark eyes stared up at me with confusion. Saliva dripped onto his face. On my hands and knees in the warm soil I bent down and bit into his jugular with one quick motion, ripping open the tender flesh with my fangs, warm blood gushing all over my face. I wrapped my lips around the wound, one hand pinning his head to the ground, the other holding his chest down as his body writhed and flopped underneath me. The rush of his heartbeat swelled in my ears as I sucked at the blood, letting it flow into my mouth, swallowing more and more of the sweet iron and tobacco tasting liquid as his heart peaked and ebbed. Pure life poured down my gullet. My heart throttled ahead. My skin tightened and crawled across my entire body.
I was born, alive for the first time. I felt his encroaching death before his eyes stopped flitting and let the dusty soil soak up what moisture I had left. The details of the world sprang out in startling clarity, grains of sand shimmering in the bright heavenly lights of the night. Insects chirped and someone was singing to the music. I rolled over onto my back awash with contentment, sated, staring at the stars as if I could reach out, pluck them, and eat them. A deep-seated warmth filled me, and I almost laughed but then I heard the other guard’s steps and heard his rough voice calling out for Babur, and I lay silently feeling almost human, flush with heat. Then I stood impudent with the rush of blood and whooped running towards the house. I gunned other guard down as I flew along the sand. Shouts erupted from the house, a shot sounded from somewhere in the back, and a group of men swarmed out of the house. I ran right up to them as they emerged and opened fire, running through a spray of blood as they fell screaming and groaning, their shots flying wild. I was invincible. I shrieked and thrust my knife into a man’s heart as we met in the doorway. Humans were easy to kill, so powerless. An older man in a turban and dark rimmed glasses stood up from a table, a pen in his hand and then asked in Pashto, ‘Who are you? Do you work for the Americans?’ There was sorrow in his eyes. I’ll work for whoever will provide blood I thought but didn’t answer him except to leap across the table. There was a bright white flash and a searing pain ripped through my side. My newfound warmth dripped onto my thighs as I crashed into him driving him to the floor with a grunt. His glasses clattered away across the floor as he fell leaving his wide brown eyes bare as I ripped open his throat with one quick slash and quickly drank again.
There were more Desert Asps dropped into the beds, so to speak, of the Afghanis and the Iraqis, and other locations around the world, wherever commanders sought us and for a time I was content to be pointed and to lap up blood over my victims looks of confusion and horror.”
After he finished his remembrance, I stood queasily imagining him hunched over draining my prone body. I was about to turn away when he spoke again, a little more quietly so that his voice seemed to swell out of the hum of the engine. “Once this river was crawling with boats, long flat ones, moving slowly up and down river carrying goods and a truck could drive to where we’re going in a day, but now.” He shrugged. “Now we travel like this even if we could do better.” I waited for him to go on, eager for more about the past, but he just stared ahead.
As I turned to resume my pacing I was suddenly thrown to the deck as the boat slammed to a stop, my knees jarring against the wood. The boat twisted on its side screeching as it ground to a halt against something I could not see. The engine whined shrilly flopping in and out of the water as I began sliding off the deck sinking my nails into the planks futilely. Slivers slipped underneath them, but I did not slow until I fell off the end and into the water with a splash. It was warm and gritty. I kicked off my boots letting them sink into the river’s depths as I treaded water for a moment looking for the bank. Suddenly a gurgling wail poured into my ears as it rolled across the flat expanse of water. The ambassador had fallen into the turbid water near me and in the sheen of the moon on the surface of water he flayed and gasped, the water filling his mouth as he sank and then roiled himself to the surface before sinking again.
I don’t know what struck me, unless it was some instinct that overwhelmed reason at the sight of his frantic, contorted face, and his two cold eyes shining pitifully as they slipped underwater. His tan face had gone as pale as a grub in the grimy waters and before I knew what I was doing I’d grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him up to the surface. His body felt as if it were made of lead, it threatened to pull me under as he clasped himself to me, gasping air in long sputtering breaths. My lungs burnt and an itch at the back of my throat almost caused a coughing fit as my head was thrust again and again under the black water as I grew tired or he flailed, while we paddled inexorably towards the shore. I couldn’t really bring myself to search for the bank. I just doggedly paddled hoping to cast off Abdul and float if it came to it. Everything ached down to a mind dulling pain. Everything slowed. My limbs were wooden. My eyes stung with each lap of water that slapped me in the face. If I stopped for a moment, I knew that we would both sink to the bottom.
After what felt like hours, I thought I would give in, but then my legs hit a squelchy muddy bottom and I pushed forward off it, until I could sink to my knees. We climbed out like two drenched rats, dragging ourselves through the foul mud and collapsed halfway onto a bank of sand. Laying there on our stomachs, covered in mud and slimy grass we spit up black water and bile until we simply rose and fell on our heaving chests. I smiled wearily and the water rolling down Abdul’s face looked like tears, but vamps can’t cry. No words passed between
us and with the wet sand as soft as a pillow I slept.
Fat warm rain drops splattering on my cheeks and the brown river water lapping up my legs awakened me. A desultory light filled the air beneath the fat dark clouds that traveled along a warm breeze. I stood rolling the stiffness out of my neck and brushing the sand from my cheek. Several strands of slimy plants were wrapped around my legs, so I ripped them off and pulled my sopping socks of as well. I looked into the water. My boots were lost, my pack was gone, and Abdul was nowhere to be seen. His indentation was stretched out beside mine but there were no indications of where he’d gone. No tracks that had survived the rain. I moved off to the trees lining the bank and stood under widespread branches scanning the dark day for any signs of the ambassador. I shivered, assuming he was feeding, and then quickly looked behind me, but there was nothing, but the rain drops sliding off the tree’s leaves. Thunder rolled in the distance. Nothing moved but water falling and rolling along the ground and the surface of the river.
Momentary indecision gave way to ingrained action and I made my way back to the river hoping the rain would obliterate my tracks. The water was slightly cool as it slapped against the bottom of my thighs and I wished desperately for a cap of any kind to block the stream of rain rushing into my eyes, but I began to make my way north through the water. I moved upstream as quickly as I could sloshing through the water stumbling over rocks and branches buried under the swirling brown water as I fearfully scanned the bank for Abdul. I expected him to appear at any moment, fish me out of the water and break both my legs, transforming me into a human backpack he would then tote wherever he liked, but such a heavy rain was a god send, washing way tracks and scents, reducing visibility. After a thousand yards I emerged from the river my sopping socks balled up in one hand and cut a beeline away from the river. Larger rivers often had roads that ran parallel to them, all I had to do was find one, follow that to the nearest town and then head north to my brother’s camp without a vampire in tow. The trees that clung to the riverbank quickly gave way to tall grasses spread between fewer trees as the land rapidly sloped upwards and I regretted the beaten down trail of grass that followed behind me, but I couldn’t force myself back into the muddy water as the rain began to pour out of the clouds even harder, bending down the grasses of its own accord and making the slope slippery. Despite it all I found myself running, falling to my knees in the mud in my haste, unable to see following the sudden descent of darkness. My legs quivered turning to straw beneath me as I forced them onwards up slopes and down the other sides. My hair was pasted to my face by the rain; my beard was twisted into ropey knots that gathered the water into little streams that ran down my chest. As lightening filled the sky, seeing nothing on the ridges behind me, but trees waving wildly, I ran on suppressing howls of fear, pleasure, and the madness of the stormy night.