by Mazlow, J.
When I awoke late, I was curled around a little tree clutching a wet sock in each hand as the sun rose over a steaming landscape. Nothing moved and no sounds came to me except a latent sigh, everything was dampened until a thump and the grating of a black leather boot hitting the ground pulled me away from the enchanting landscape.
“Good work continuing north,” Abdul sad smirking, “Saves time.” He threw another boot down beside the first. “I don’t think you’ll need those,” he handed me a sealed bag full of socks which I snatched from his hands greedily, scowling. A madness must have set upon me indeed the prior night to think that I could have escaped these cursed vampires.
We found a wide concrete road that wound its way northward through the forests. The trees grew right up to the edges of the bleached pavement, their roots penetrating into the soil underneath the highway, mounding it in rows as if an extraordinary mole had tunneled through it. It rose and buckled, cracking like a picture frame, splintering away from the roots, weeds and saplings growing in the cracks. Potholes that had sunk into the center of the pavement filled with puddles of water which left behind a gritty sand as they dried out and refilled again and again, that gave dandelions and other plants purchase. Many trees had fallen across the roads, felled by wind and rain, unmanned barricades except for the vines that wound the length of the trunks and sent serpentine tendrils to probe the pavement’s strength. Copious deer droppings showed that the road was frequently travelled by animals but still nature did her best to destroy it.
I sat in the center of that white path that sparkled lightly in the dimness of twilight until it vanished into the green and black shadows that lay both north and south. Our camp, two bed rolls, was set up on the pinnacle of a small hump covered in briars, weeds, and trees. A large fire crackled in the center lane warmly, sending a tall plume of smoke audaciously into the night sky as I watched large chunks of venison sizzle and spit over the flames. I was distended, bloated, stupid with meat as I tried to cook as much as I possibly could before the morning when we’d travel again. Abdul had brought the deer to me as I’d rested beneath a tree, its throat trailing blood behind him as it lay limply over his shoulder.
“How did you catch it?” I asked seeing no gunshot wound across its smooth brown body. He smiled.
“Like a panther. I spotted it standing in the edge of a clearing and I stalked it. I could have reached out and lay my hand on its flank before it would have realized I was there, but instead I tackled it. Then I seized it by the neck and deflecting its hooves with the other hand lifted it up and he snapped his teeth together and then jerked them to one side. He rolled back his sleeves displaying a mass of yellow flesh with a grin, and then ruined it by saying, “It did not taste very good. It is too bad you cannot feast like I do my friend, your searches through dusty stores slows us. Already the nights begin to make me sluggish.”
He lay the doe down on the highway in front of me and walked a few paces beyond our camp muttering to himself about time and disapproval. Then he announced that he would scout, and he flew away along the highway almost too fast to follow.
Despite his goading assurances of satisfaction with his diet his sharp eyes often chilled me as they followed me, tracing my neck with keen interest, but not so much as my mind’s newfound complacency with this true nature. After our travels together there were times when I had to forcibly remind myself that he was not human. Many irritations plagued us both; mosquitoes hovering over us in clouds, soles worn thin, and a sensation which I found altogether alien, but which Abdul had experienced in droves, boredom. Monotony had settled into our travels as the terror of travelling with a vampire had been eroded by days of bland walking and the realization that as long as I travelled with Abdul I need not fear any other vampires. I did not continuously worry about the dangers of visiting idle towns for supplies. My life no longer consisted of constant flight without a haven even as a fanciful destination. I managed to sleep for hours without waking to listen to the night sounds for anything amiss. All that I could worry about was the outcome of our journey and I did not agonize over it so much as the Ambassador did.
“So, what if we’re delayed,” I had asked him one night as we sat under an overpass watching a sheen of rain fall like a curtain from both sides. He frowned, then sighed settling down onto his haunches.
“The General is a hard vampire but was perhaps a harder man. Some vampires react to their transformations with an intensification of their innate cruelty, a bestial hue that is painted across their emotions but some such as the General take a more practical approach to their immortality.” I cleared my throat and he looked at me with apologetic eyes. “And they are more lenient as long as they are allowed to pursue those pleasures that remain to us. As a man, the General was constructed of rust-clad iron and flint, the originator of many sparks. His wife and children had died in a car accident while he was in Iraq, defending the desert when he should have been defending their lives he’d said. At the wake he’d stood like a statue in his polished uniform shaking each hand with grim reluctance, returning each salute with a mechanical snap bereft of tears, refusing compassion. He returned to Iraq immediately following the funeral, devoting all the remained of his body and soul to the effort and a determination to seize victory from the jaws of defeat. Later he was transferred to Afghanistan where a cabal of vampires met as we conducted missions. I reveled in the companionship, I reveled in the blood. I was a lock that had each pin in place. In retrospect I let it all go to my head and only got myself taken for a ride. Of that handful of vampires none yet living reside in this land. We sought more influence; we sought to turn the system to our own use, to guide ourselves to targets of our own choosing. We sought to channel a river to bear us on its back, but instead it burst its banks and took us where it willed.
So early one morning I found myself looking at Kabul awaking with a jolt, when I should have been returning to base. If an alarm had not gone out already one would. I ditched the stolen jeep outside the city in a cluster of burned out frames on the roadside and joined the people entering the city in the cool of the morning. I made my way through many check points, but few then were aware of our existence, and fewer still were able to discern the subtle differences between man and vampire. I wonder if you would have had the ability.
My face scowled with offense, and though he offered no retraction, he said, “I think you assume everyone to be a vampire until proven otherwise,” I grunted, “A wise course of action on your part to be sure.
“One of our own waved me through the final checkpoint and I slipped into the General’s quarters and waited for him slouched in one dark corner.
As soon as the door clicked closed behind him one of my hands closed over his mouth and pulled his head back while my teeth ripped into his throat and his blood welled into my mouth as if it longed to be there. I shook with the exhilaration of his blood and the fear that he would not turn. Though he struggled, jerking forward so that my lips slipped along his neck, stomping my feet with his black boots, and attempting to hit me with his free hand, that strength was not enough surety in and of itself that he would turn. Some die before they can turn and others are caught in the thrall sickness their minds stripped in a flash of heat as the pathogen courses through their veins, even as their bodies gain strength.
But the General came to more quickly than any vampire I’ve ever turned. No sooner than I’d turned from his fallen body to smoke a fretful cigarette he was standing again, weakly rubbing his neck and staring at the blood that stained his hands. The skin around the raw wound, the wound that becomes the scar that all Naturals bear, never mind that we the Mades made the Naturals, that skin was sallow and loose. A thin sheet of sweat left behind from his exertion lay across his wrinkled forehead and his silver hair was in disarray.
“What is this?” he asked rubbing his hands together as if cleaning them, but instead just smearing the blood further. He seemed to be talking to himself, so I didn’t answer. When he looked
up he saw the blood on my face, put a hand to his neck and gasped, then flew across the room, his uniform rustling faintly between his legs as he moved and pinned me to the wall with one stumpy hand clenched around my neck. “What have you done to me?” he flexed squeezing his hand. “Why?
I pushed him back firmly and he let me down. “I have changed you; you are a dagger now.” He had trembled rubbing his hands together again and staring at me.
“I was not informed of this.”
“They did not know.”
“I’m hungry.”
“That’s typical,” I told him.
“A dagger, the assassins.” He moved in front of a mirror and scrutinized himself warily while I watched him, wonder what he saw as he rubbed his chin and gingerly traced his bite mark. I saw the same stodgy man I’d seen before, only a trifle paler. I stepped into the bathroom, washed my face, and then returned with the wet washcloth. He was pushing one fist into his other palm and gritting his teeth. I handed him the cloth.
“Do I have all of your abilities?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “You are very young. You are like a man given a weapon for the first time. You must train with it before you can aim it properly.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We had been the Delta Squadron, Night Asps, when we’d first left training and that is how we’d referred to ourselves, our little group of vampires, when we’d brought the general into the fold. We’d turned him so that he could use his influence to allow us more freedom, which he did when it served him, but more he used that influence coupled with his natural tendency to rise to the forefront, first killing the vampire who’d had the idea to turn him in the first place. That was the first vampire that I’d seen killed by a vampire, but not the last. At the time we were all insane, overpowered by our wanton desire for blood, we shrugged aside the death, and ignored the General as he turned other vampires to assist him as ambition took root in the withered remains of his bitter heart. He was certain he’d never be rejoined with his beloved wife even in death, once he’d become a vampire, and to stem the pain he’d set his sights on becoming the President.
So, the General returned to the United States with me in tow, never letting me venture far from him, the bond of his turning was very strong, and I didn’t care as sated as I was with blood. The Mades among our group were all as dulled by the blood as I and the General was overcome by his newfound power, convinced of his immortality he maneuvered toward his goal. Once stateside we infiltrated the compound that contained the laboratory where I’d been created and the compound where I’d grown up. Then it had only been a small group of us that made up the General’s most trusted vampires, mostly Mades. The night was crisp, our breath hung in front of our faces as we complained of how cold it was compared to the war we’d left behind, and the unsettling lethargy and heaviness that the chill brought to our limbs. Gaining access was easy for the General and several vampires were dispatched to eliminate security as we set about destroying the lab’s capability to create any new Mades. We smashed the incubators, the freezers, the samples, and took what records we wanted burning the rest. Higher level scientists were turned, technicians killed, and all vampires were freed. Many did not trust us and were driven out of the compound into the countryside at the General’s insistence that we not kill our own.
Afterwards I walked alone across the short-cropped grass of the darkened training area as fires blossomed and bloomed across the complex. The search lights had gone dark and shadows slashed across the tall fences surrounding the yard so that they looked alien. I had wanted to be alone, to try to parse the knowledge of my origin. Fertilized human eggs had been tweaked, DNA removed, DNA inserted, genetic markers turned off and on. A mish mash of bat, tortoise, fly and even plant and virus DNA had been hodgepodged together. I couldn’t understand the technical details, didn’t really care to, all of them had been jumbled together to create men who could navigate darkness, survive lethal wounds, and possessed supernatural strength. Patented assassins crafted to do slave work for the armed forces. The thirst was an undesired trait, but they’d been unable to eliminate its occurrence. The General had been pleased to learn that humans did not yet know of the condition’s ability to spread to drained victims and had been amused to find out that the President was fully aware of the project. I felt no joy at the discoveries, no emotion at all except a disappointment that I felt no emotion. Should I not feel something upon discovering that I’d been created to kill at the behest of men, disgust, ironic satisfaction. It had changed nothing.
As I mused, I approached the glass coffin (though I had not thought of it as a coffin when it had first been introduced) twinkling softly in the center of the field. It seemed to have dulled, its corners rounded since I’d last seen it. A dark shape laying in it caught my breath in my throat but as I drew close enough to stand over the cell and peer down through its lid I saw that the shape was not Derrick, still shriveling away inside as I’d feared. I exhaled despite thinking that I had only transferred that horrific punishment to several young boys. The prisoner did not even acknowledge my existence though I tapped the glass as if he lay inside a terrarium. His glazed eyes didn’t even blink. Just when I’d assumed, he was dead his head began to rock back and forth slowly. Drool rand down his cheeks from his opened mouth. He raised one arm slowly to the lid, but his eyes still did not meet mine. His eyes were filled with a slow uncomprehending madness, they were sapped of sense. I backed away slowly, abandoning any ideas of freeing him. He could not distinguish between being alive and being dead, so I deemed him to be dead though he lived on suffering a fate that no human has ever had to endure.
After those first vampires disseminated from the compound, and some of our targets had turned, bringing vampires outside the reach of military discipline it did not take long for the media (I must have looked puzzled for he spread his hands wide to indicate the breadth of his words and said) magazines, TV, newspapers. It didn’t take long for them to get word of our existence. One hundred people drained and a twenty percent turning rate was enough. We had always called ourselves the Night Asps, the name our unit had been given. It was the press that first referred to us as vampires. If only they had known. I remember one local news station asked ‘Are these terrors Edward Cullen, or Lestat? I guess they got their answer. Of course, these myths benefited us immensely. No one expected us to be able to endure the sunlight; therefore, there was little suspicion of those of us who maintained self-control. No one ever suspected the General though his superiors died off, if anyone suspected they died or were turned themselves. The General captured newly converted vampires and had them executed so that he was elevated to the status of a hero. The public loved him, his bravado, his soft slurred drawl. He weakened the United States so that he might take control of it, and dispatched other vampires to all corners of the globe to spread out corruption and prevent anyone from taking advantage of the softened nation. Everything seemed to be going his way, total control seemed close. The ranks of naturals swelled quickly though and began to run amok through the cities and blister the countryside. Even that went his way at first as Marshall Law was declared giving him almost complete control of the nation.
But the infection spread too quickly, and the nation shut down in terror. The army could not contain the vampires’ growth. Shipping halted, groceries emptied, and starving people rioted even as vampires feasted among them. Thousands of humans and vampires were mowed down in attempts to restore order in DC alone. Any vampire who was not seen as loyal to the General, who drank against his will was dismembered if captured. Limbless torsos fretfully wiggling their heads as they begged for help, for mercy, for weeks and weeks on end until they grew too weak. Once the President was drained by an unknown vampire and didn’t turn the last grip of control on the nation slipped and the Armed Forces deserted so that they could protect their families. Perhaps the President could have maintained a semblance of order if he’d been turned, but that was not to be.
After that tipping point had been crossed the land descended into bands of roving naturals draining humans and accidentally turning thousands. Some of the Night Asps abandoned us and led them. Humans fled the cities and filled the countryside with the putrid stench of their rotting bodies as they starved and died of exposure by droves, far more dying by natural causes than at the fangs of the vampires. As society crumpled the General Left DC and headed to his hometown, St. Louis, and those left of the Night Asps remaining with him travelled across the country with him in a caravan of black SUVs. Any vampires who desired could join our ranks, any who did not where beheaded. Most humans we met along the way believed that we worked for the government and approached us, so that soon after leaving we pulled trailers full of them behind us.
Many naturals went mad at the sight of their world, their lives disintegrating before their eyes and fled into the night or blew their heads off. Others clung to our group and their vampirism even more tightly as we passed through cities afire, growing stoic at the sight of the ornate trails of black smoke visible against the blue sky from miles away. I felt little. I had not known their world. I had never seen a movie or had a cookout. I had never been to a mall. I drank when I wanted, and I could feel the breeze on my skin as we rolled across the deserted land. I did not feel happiness so much as satisfaction.”