by Mazlow, J.
I was walking none too quickly north, through a rapidly warming morning, whistling a tune my mother had often sung softly to myself. A flock of geese flew low overhead in a crispy V following the highway south and songbirds flitted in and out of the trees their songs filling in the voids that lay between the bursts of goose honks. I stuffed my jacket and flannel shirt into the top of my latest pack, a sad thing that would probably not last to the end of our journey though that drew close. The sun and the exercise were enough to keep me warm despite the nip that lingered from the night. The black highway top glittering in the morning light rolled out before me through a stretch of straight pines that prevented the sun from reaching the ground at their roots but warmed the strip at the center of the road down which I strode. The sky burnt a clear pale blue, the trees stood a silent dark green and the ambassador had taken his typical scouting trot. The world felt pleasantly empty and time trundled on slowly. A buzzard appeared circling lazily over the horizon ahead of me.
Suddenly Abdul burst from the trees as if a shadow had sprung to life startling a rabbit into darting away. Though he sprinted up to me the dull thuds of his boots on the pavement were the only sound of his passage and when he fell in beside me his chest rose and fell with its interminably languid rhythm. His eyes darted back and forth checking and rechecking the shadows under the trees and his hand lingered near the pistol he wore holstered at his hip but when he spoke his voice was even and steady.
“There are vampires ahead,” he said.
“Thralls?” I asked. He shook his head. His nostrils flared and I could hear him inhaling deeply.
“How many?”
“I saw two, but there may be more. They were waiting beside the road up on that ridge,” he pointed at a rise far ahead. “But a glint on their rifles revealed them. I tried to get closer, but they saw me and disappeared into the forest.”
I shivered a low sustained tingling that ran up my spine, my neck and pulled my scalp taut.
“If they tried to follow me then I led them on a merry chase, but we should still get off this road. They will return to watch it.”
I followed him as he slipped off under the trees where the bed of pine needles underfoot dampened the world to a low buzz that didn’t obscure the beating of my heart.
“Did the General send them?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I doubt it.”
“Unless he’s decided to go ahead and wipe out my brother’s camp.”
“A possibility,” he conceded.
“Why else would there be vampires so close to my brother’s camp?” I asked but he didn’t answer only walked along silently beside me in the gray underbelly of the pines.
The air under their branches was cool and still like a cave’s and filled with the fragrance of the tree’s sap. The needles crunched gently underfoot.
“Why can’t you,” I began but a glance from Abdul quieted me to a whisper. “Why can’t you just tell the vampires what we’re about so that they’ll leave us alone?”
“If they were from the General, they’re likely not pleased with me and any vampires this far north who aren’t from the General aren’t going to respond well to any sorts of threats of the General’s authority. Besides there are probably more than just the two.”
“What are we going to do then?”
He shrugged. “Head north, keep watch and hope we’re lucky.” He smiled and immediately fell back into silence.
All of the tenseness of my former life rushed back into our travels and I spent the next three days starting at nothing, sleeping fitfully and randomly palming the pistol Abdul had given me just for the comfort I received in its weight.
Abdul no longer left me to scout, but instead always remained within eyesight, pressing me on or hissing through his teeth at every crackle of leaves beneath my boots. I ate as we walked biting into chunks of cooked venison as we left the hilly riverside and passed into a land flat but for long shallow valleys and rocky mounds. We crouched at the edges of roads for minutes as Abdul listened, sniffed and studied them before we dashed across, my pack rattling as it bumped into my back and then threw ourselves under the pines on the other side. I could almost imagine that we were kids and that we were making a game out of it, but then the sound of a shot would puncture my vision and the danger came rushing back in. The weather turned colder the first night of our furtive flight and I awoke to a dreary drizzle on my face after a brief sleep. Abdul ransacked my pack for all the remaining clothing, wrapping a thick scarf around his neck, pulling a woolen cap down around his ears and struggling with two sweaters under his coat. As he led us through the night his silhouette bulged and receded like a lumpy sausage. The rain and the cold had dampened the forest so that the pine branches hung over like arches and we moved through the stillness almost humbly.
The morning of the third day Abdul awoke me with a boot to the shoulder and a finger to his lips. He stood with his rifle held in both hands angled across his chest inhaling deeply through his nostrils for a moment, then turned a quarter turn and smelled again and again until he’d completed the circle. His face was cut with a scowl. He gestured to the southeast and we made our way, my limbs stiff and aching from the cold. We moved more slowly than usual stopping often as Abdul smelled. After a while, the turned us to the northeast and we continued our northward journey. A creek burbled not too far from us. The sun lit the undersides of the trees and their fallen needles with a musty yellow light. Suddenly Abdul spun around pulling his rifle to his shoulder, a shot cracked, and I flung myself to the ground as Abdul’s gun fell away. A shadow flew over me and barreled into Abdul and they both fell to the ground. Abdul got to his feet under the vampire and flung him off. I ran as hard as I could towards the sound of the stream, my boots slipping on the thick bed of pine needles as I ran. There was another shot as Abdul faced a towering black vamp who grinned at the sight of Abdul falling to one knee and clutching his side and then they fell away behind branches. I hopped a bush and fell on the other side, scrambled to my feet again and ran, pulling my pistol out. I heard loud talking back where Abdul had been taken, but otherwise the forest was quiet except for my ragged breath, the jostling of my pack and the snaps and cracks under my feet. I ‘d almost reached the stream, a scant two feet wide slice of clear water running slowly along what looked like an overgrown ditch, when I was struck from behind and I fell, skidding through the pine needles. I rolled over, pine needles strewn across my face, and without even trying to get up freed my arm raising my gun. The vamp that’d shoved me sneered and dashed forward. The gun sparkled in a ray of sunlight falling between the branches and I squeezed off two quick shots. The bullets caught him in the chest punching him backwards a step and he paused there like a rearing bear, his face snarling with pain and rage. I sighted down the barrel and his head went up in a burst that splattered the tree trunk behind him, and he toppled to the ground twitching. Before I could get up though a vampire in an old body came running through the trees with the herkie jerky motion of those newly turned. He ran straight up to me, grabbed my arm and twisted it around, the gun went off ripping a piece of bark from a nearby tree, then he yanked the pistol away from me almost pulling one finger off with it and threw it away into the brush. He looked at the fallen vampire with an expressionless face and shook his head slightly before jerking me to my feet. He pulled my arms behind my back and cuffed them together with a click. Pushing me forward with one hand in the small of my back he guided me back to the clearing where Abdul had fallen.
As I walked, I kept my head down watching my feet, avoiding roots and branches that would trip me and tuned out the vampire who walked behind me muttering to himself. Everything collapsed down to that one strip of dark moist soil just in front of me stripped of its covering layer of reddish-brown needles, the occasional gray chunk of stone or roots laying in waiting like snakes. Even that soon slipped into an unconscious scanning and navigation so that I just stewed in my mind. The vampire behind me seemed unconcern
ed with our speed so I walked along at a slow pace placing my feet deliberately. Once again I found myself in the power of vampires with no reasonable route to escape but I felt no fear, or what fear I felt was so inundated with the seething rage that washed across my face that I did not notice it. My heart pounded in my chest but with a fury. According to the General and the Ambassador vampires living this far north were very sparsely populated and we were within a couple of days of my brother’s camp. He was supposed to have cleared out all the vampires. He’d killed all that the General had sent to negotiate yet here was a party of vamps, not stray thralls, or a new convert wandering alone but a party hunting. I kept myself very quiet, calm, and measured focusing on every step while inside I fumed.
When we entered the small clearing, the huge black vampire jerked the ambassador up and pinned his arms behind his back, the leather jacket he wore rustling and creaking as he moved. A portly young vampire with thick curly hair held a rifle at his hip pointed at Abdul but was ignored by both Abdul and his captor. A middle-aged vampire with graying hair stood off to one side staring. When we approached the vamp holding Abdul asked, “Where’s Bill?”
“Dead,” vampire with the old body said in a scratchy voice. “This one got him.” He shoved me forward a bit. The graying vamp’s face wrinkled distastefully at the idea before he shrugged. The old one’s eyes were wide and laced with red veins.
“Benjamin’s not going to be pleased.” I staggered backwards and all eyes shot to me. Cold vampiric eyes. I shifted my weight uneasily and prayed that somehow my brother was not a vampire, but that hope seemed farfetched. My anger drained away as his name reverberated through the air. The world I had known my whole life had once again overturned the world I had expected.
“It’s his orders,” said the black one, “besides; it looks like we got a couple of the General’s cronies.” He pulled the ambassador around as if to display him. Abdul bore himself coolly, smugly, despite an oozing ragged wound on his arm and the jerks and twists that he endured.
“I am Benjamin’s brother,” I said as haughtily as I could muster despite the hopelessness that dulled my mind. I addressed myself to the vampire in the oldest human’s body because he moved like he was newly turned but hoping that they would take it as deference to age.
“Yeah, you and a lot of humans,” the old one spat out in the middle of a string of his low-level muttering.
“More like one of the General’s spies,” the middle aged one said glaring at Abdul as he spoke.
“He’ll get his time with the leader just the same. You know Benjamin’s orders” the black one said smiling widely and stepping forward and twisting Abdul around so that he could slap me hard splitting my lip on one side. Their eyes flitted to the bright red drop that fell onto the ground and the thin trickle that ran down my chin but then the one who’d hit me chuckled and they all started laughing and shaking off the scent of my blood.
After that it became clear that they were not going to open up to any kind of talk. The middle-aged vamp pulled what looked like a football helmet; a white plastic head-shaped piece connected to a metal cage and a leather strap dangling from its back. They slid it onto Abdul who stood unresisting as if he were staring at the trees and tightened the strap around the back of his head which pulled the metal cage around his mouth. His eyes flashed widely at me but then returned to their calm. A rope attached to the cage and the large vampire tugged it leading us away through the trees.
Dried pine needles crackled hatefully under our shoes their piles slippery without the use of my arms to steady myself and a crow or series of crows cawed mockingly along our path. The sun shone warmly but in the shade the day had grown chill and I was soon covered with a thin layer of sweat that transformed into an icy blanket whenever there was a breeze. Thin white clouds swept across the pale sky like nets ensnaring their more substantial brethren. Abdul, without ever wavering in his forward gaze, glided over the ground avoiding every fallen branch, every root and every dip and bump in the ground despite the helmet, his bound hands and the rope’s jerking at his neck. He strode along erect with his arms relaxed even though they were bound behind his back as if he were pacing in thought not being led along captive, but his dark eyes searched the trees. The old vampire walked along beside him hunched like a thrall, alternatively staring at Abdul curiously and looking off into the distance. “He’s a Made, Peter,” he said to the vampire who led Abdul. Peter eyes flicked towards Abdul’s neck, but he ignored the vampire who’d spoken keeping at his quick even pace as if we weren’t even following behind him. The third vampire followed skittered along at the rear glancing behind us as if he expected an attack. His narrowed eyes were cold, and his face was constantly twisted into a scowl.
Though I watched the path closely I stumbled as the toe of my boot caught on a small rock I hadn’t seen and with my hands cuffed behind my back I staggered along for several steps before I could regain my balance. After that it felt as if I stumbled and tripped on every branch that caught on my pants’ leg, every dip in the ground that twisted my ankle unexpectedly and sifting piles of dried needles and leaves. At first our captors laughed and kicked me in the back of my legs so that my knees buckled, and I fell but the antagonism only weakened me further and contributed a jittery anxiety to my steps. I fell more and more often and took longer and longer to get back to my feet. Lying on the ground with my mouth filled with musty earth and leaves stuck in my hair I even thought of not rising, of remaining prone on the forest floor. Let the vampires carry me if they want me so badly I thought, the others surely had, but I got to my feet and I stumbled along as the taunts turned to grousing that I slowed them and complaining that my brother’s demands to inspect all trespassers was unreasonable.
“We should just shoot him and leave him for the buzzards,” the shifty-eyed middle-aged one said. “Or better yet drain him.”
They stopped looking back at me as I carefully navigated a tangle of branches. The leader’s face was impassive, the old one’s face grimaced, relaxed, and then settled into a scowl, but the middle-aged one never lost its disgust.
“Why don’t you just unbind him,” Abdul said as haughtily as if he could order them.
“What and let him run off?” asked the middle-aged one.
Abdul sneered pulling back his upper lip to expose his long fangs. “You northern boys are so self-deprecating. A human outrunning three vampires. All the cold weather must have shrunken your balls.” He laughed and the two white vampires glared while the black one’s face never even twitched as he held the chain that led to the ambassador’s helmet. He pulled a key from his pocket and tossed it to the young vampire who snatched it awkwardly out of the air with his old body and then unbound my wrists. The aroma of a pile of wet paper drifted from him as he stood so close to me, his musty breath hitting my back. Then he stepped away and the world seemed to widen again. I followed as we were led off again rubbing my wrists absentmindedly. Soon we burst out onto a long whit highway lying like a dried-out gnawed bone in the bushes. Cars lay along both sides of the road hoods up, doors open, missing tires, rusted used-up relics of another age. A stream of smoke climbed into the sunny sky over the road reaching for the wispy clouds that streaked through the blue. My heart sank a little more at the sight of that ostentatious plume. No humans would be so reckless if they knew that these vampires were about. Perhaps the General and the Ambassador had known all along. Perhaps my brother was a renegade vampire and I’d just assumed he was still a man. It would certainly explain the vampires doing his bidding.
We strode north towards the smoke at a quick clip along the pavement. A buzzard began to circle lazily overhead as we moved. The brisk northerly wind balanced the sun as it tousled the pines’ needles and the few hardwoods’ leaves that had just begun to take on their fall shades.
We had walked most of the day pausing only at a small stream so that I could drink and had entered a shallow valley. As we drew nearer a glint of sunlight, appeared, and disappe
ared as if the sun was striking a shiny rock, or binoculars or the barrel of a rifle. Later I saw the silhouettes of men or vampires standing along the ridgeline at that spot. They did not move to retreat or approach us, but instead paced, or squatted with the orange pinpricks of cigarettes at their faces. Our captors hurried our march once they’d spotted the others. The land rose smoothly and slowly up out of the valley, the road cutting through a dense grove of pines, birches, and beeches all tall and narrow sentinels with trunks as straight as arrows stacked together like pencils in a box.
Two bulky men with tousled brown curls atop their large heads kept their rifles trained on us as we crossed the ridgeline. My brother stood back from the ridge warily disinterested in us as he stood talking with two vampires who stood on either side of him. Somehow he seemed broader and taller, his body language was more open than I would have ever expected from the suspicious defiantly hunched over boy that he’d been only five years earlier, but his pale blue eyes, long neck and thin long legs were unmistakable. He turned towards us as we approached and one of our captors hurried forward to talk to him quietly. He gazed at my face calmly, contemplatively as I approached as if not hearing what was being said to him. His smooth-shaven face was tan, and the lack of beard brought the angle of his jaw to the forefront. Dark circles lay under his eyes.
He came at me then letting his rifle slip off his shoulder to the ground and opening his arms wide. He laughed at slow deep laugh like an engine sputtering to a halt. Clasping me to his chest he slapped my back roughly and hugged him back tentatively stifling a cough and scarcely believing that this was the same person who’d left me on the riverbank with our mother’s corpse. The embrace ended and he held me at arm’s length gripping my shoulders and squeezing them uncomfortably as he smiled broadly under cold blue eyes, paler than any eyes I’d ever seen. His smile disturbed me as if it were only one degree removed from insanity. One tooth was missing from amongst his yellow crooked teeth. His neck was unsettling as I stood so close to him that I could see that it was covered in many short sliver scars that rippled in the light. He let go of me and stepped back maintaining his impassive demeanor.