by Mazlow, J.
“You look like shit Eli,” he said despite our mother’s insistence that I was named Elijah.
I mumbled, “So do you,” in an unnoticed response as my eyes flitted back and forth to the nearby vampires. His voice had even changed. It felt deeper, gruffer, and more dangerous. He’d undergone a greater metamorphosis as he’d passed into manhood than I’d thought possible. It was the difference between a branch and that same branch but whittled down to a sharp point and then blackened and hardened in a fire completing its transformation into the short spears that people would carry when they were dry of ammunition.
I had no idea how I looked with my wiry beard hanging down to my chest and my face shaded with the floppy broad brimmed hat I’d worn since losing my baseball cap in the river. My windbreaker had ripped at the elbow and my jeans were stained on the knees and the backside. My brother, however, did not look like shit, but instead looked as if he’d been living well. His body had filled out, his arms and chest bulking up and his stomach protruding somewhat beyond his belt. He didn’t wear scavenged clothes but instead wore what looked like a homespun woolen sweater and leather pants that all looked somewhat rough and clumsily made compared to the tight weaves of scavenged materials but still looked thick and warm. His feet were clad in soft moccasins beaded with childlike depictions of wolves. All his clothing fit perfectly, close to his body, but not overly tightly still allowing him freedom of movement without the worry of his clothes snagging on branches. His face was freshly shaven down to the clean pale skin and showed the angle of his jaw line and his scar-covered neck. I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d seen a shaven face. I hadn’t even trimmed my beard in weeks.
He wore a thick leather belt around his waist embossed with ornate letters spelling his name. From it hung a black pistol snapped into its holster and sitting on his opposite hip gleaming as its blade peeked over the top of it sheathe was his Henkel Blade. It had been almost ten years since we’d found a block of the knives unmolested in a partially collapsed kitchen. I’d carried a long, thin blade from the same cache until my run-in with the General’s vamps had left it lying on the ground back south. My mother had told us that our grandmother had received a block of those knives as a wedding gift in a time when they’d been used solely for cooking. She’d pulled another blade from the black and slanted it back and forth in the sunlight, watching it glisten and dull as her words drifted to a tale of cutting watermelons and hurling the rinds into the woods. Then she’d slid the blade back into its block as if unwilling to bear the burden of the memory.
I was happy that he still carried the blade. It hung there at his belt bringing forward the past that we’d both left behind, and I looked into his face, into his eyes, eyes that were slightly red and dry, searching him. He smiled at me and his eyes did not crinkle but the scars on his neck danced in the sunlight. A vampire started to walk up to us, and he waved it away with a finger. It rejoined the rest of the group who stood around the Ambassador lighting up his cigarettes as he stood aloof looking coldly past them at my brother and I, some calculation in his eyes.
“This is the real shit,” one of the brothers exclaimed as he inhaled, then he offered one to Abdul who accepted with a shrug of his shoulders holding the cigarette with his lips and smoking it slowly.
“How’d you know we were coming,” I asked just to break the silence that had sprung up and consisted of my brother staring at me. The stare hardened into a glare and his eyes narrowed and he came out of his thoughts.
“Why do you?” he began but then stopped. “A couple of vamps sent word that some warm bloods were moving north. It seems they were only half right.” He looked from me to the ambassador and back again with a curious mixture of animosity and what seemed to be pride. “I figured those southern vamps hadn’t gotten my first two messages, so I thought I’d send them another. The third time’s the charm.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked but I couldn’t answer right away, something in his look restrained me. Those scars encircling his neck chilled me. I was struggling to contain my emotions. I felt worn out, worn down, worn so thin that allowing the tiniest bit of emotion to trickle out it would punch through my grasp and pour out without restraint. I wanted to scream for him to send all the vampires away, Abdul included, if he had the power to, but I did not.
“Looking for you,” I said quietly, and he snorted. I had to deliver the General’s message, no matter how powerful my brother’s camp proved to be there was no way that it could withstand an army of vamps, but I decided to wait for a more private moment between the two of us.
Benjamin stepped away from me then and said, “Well no use standing round here all day. Robert scout North, Peter South.” The old-bodied vampire snuffed out his cigarette and then ran north along the highway as fast as a deer while the large vampire headed south at a more relaxed pace. The rest of us began walking north at a quick pace, my brother with his rifle slung on his shoulder and Abdul with his hands bound at his back moving with such ease while I felt just short of trotting. The two brothers fell slightly behind us while the middle-aged vampire dashed forwards and backwards across the road, prodding bushes with his rifle and jerking back at the sound of their branches crackling. After about an hour we turned off of the highway onto a smaller road that cut through a land turning from the orderly pine groves into a chaotic mess of hardwoods with their hints of yellows and reds beginning to peek through the fading green. Despite its crumbling edges, the way along the two lane road was clear and as the branches and the shrubs that grew between the trees and the road had been neatly cut back so that they formed a mock hedge that fenced off our path. The road curved as it sloped up a hill and the pleasant gurgle of a creek emanated from behind the screen of vegetation to the lower side.
As we topped the hill the forests fell away in a final blitz of stumps, some of them smoothly cut, some ragged, and the final row of them blackened. I could see the entire length of the valley lying out before me like an arm that wasn’t completely outstretched with a stream shining in the sunlight at its center. I gasped and my brother grinned at me with his unnaturally smooth teeth and said, “I felt the same way when I first saw this place even though it was little more than a run-down farm house and barely tended fields.” The entire valley had been cleared except for a grove of hardwoods that sat astride the river just north of the village. A large yellow farmhouse faded from the sunlight sat on the other side of the stream with smoke puffing from its brick chimney and a ramshackle cloister of shacks and cabins constructed of logs, lumber and rusted tin sheets clustered around it. Downstream from the dwellings two large barns stood with their doors swung wide open. People milled about the buildings disappearing into the barns and winding their ways through the narrow pathways between the huts as children ran freely amongst them screaming wildly at one another.
We made our way down a trail that ran through a field of tall corn whose dark green stalks swayed slightly in the breeze. “This is mom’s fairy tale come to life,” my brother whispered to me and I just stopped myself from disagreeing. Mother had told us of cartoons on the TVs, cars in the streets, and men and women in suits riding elevators to the top floors of tall buildings. The hill on the other side of the river was pasture that had been trimmed short by sheep and cattle. The cows moved slowly their heads down as they walked across the pasture while the sheep skittered and turned back and forth, breaking from their grazing to dash across the grass at some disturbance that was insignificant to us. Barking dogs rustling through the stalks ran up to greet us. They were large black and tan dogs with floppy ears that approached us warily sniffing the air with their shiny noses, their enormous paws flexing and digging into the soil, until they saw the two brothers that trailed my brother and then they bounded forward happily to have their heads scratched. I walked as if in a dream. My body felt distant and my nostrils were permeated with the rich fibrous scent of the corn. When we emerged from the cornfield, we were much closer to the camp and I cou
ld see women in simple dresses of yellow and red tending small vegetable plots. Here one hoed and there another was crouched down amongst her crops doing what I did not know. A band of figures emerged from one of the bigger cabins near the farmhouse and walked quickly out of the camp, their rifles glinting in the fading light. Some of them moved with the sinuous grace of vampires.
After we crossed the wooden bridge and were walking among the houses on a dirt path that ran between the small ragtag buildings the group of children ran up behind us chattering among themselves as they pointed and stared at the ambassador’s bound hands and skin color. No one else in the group took any notice of these girls and boys but I stared right back at them. I had not seen a child in many years and now here was an entire pack of them rosy-cheeked in the chilly air wearing smiling and conniving faces. They did not seem to be afraid of the vampires that still chilled me to the bone, but they did show them a begrudging respect, like a child would show any adult whose temper was prone to sudden flare-ups. But the thing that shook me to my core filling me with a wave of emotion that I could scarcely stifle even more than their ease among the vampires was their cleanliness. They weren’t even completely dirt free, they had dirt on their hands, the ends of their pant legs and here and there on their faces but they lacked the grimy layer that covered me and every other human that I had ever met, the second skin that weighed our hair down with grease, and stained our skin. Without that layer these children’s skin seemed to shine like a river in the sunlight. There was hope in their bright curious eyes unafraid of the vampires, but there was even more hope in their clean skin and clean clothing, hope in the mothers who had deemed their tidiness worthwhile and who had taken the time to keep them clean. Walking with them fanned out around me I felt like an outcast, a relic, an ambassador from an uncouth land come to beg the wisdom of a more dignified civilization.
The small homes were constructed of plywood with frames consisting of two by fours or tree trunks and angular roofs that were often made of sheet metal and dotted with small metal chimneys capped with conical strips of metal. They were windowless and many of them had nothing more than blankets and skins hanging in the doorframes slung back now and letting out a steady stream of smoke. Dogs, cats, and chickens loitered between the buildings lying against the walls of the huts. We turned the corner on a hut from which emanated the screams of an infant and entered a muddy courtyard in front of the farmhouse where women were hanging clothes on lines strung between tall wooden poles. They wore rough yellow dresses that looked homemade. They did not stop their work for our arrival. Only one of them took any notice of us at all waving to my brother and smiling when he nodded back to her. My breath caught at the sight of their cheeks, tanned but smooth, and the thin ribbons of blonde hair that peeked out from under their dull colored bonnets, and it didn’t return until my brother told me to stop gaping and to come on. He was waiting for me with Peter, and the heavyset vampire whose thick black hair had yet to begin to fall out, the others having left us behind as I’d gawked.
At the front steps of the broad porch that ran along the front of the farmhouse my brother had a quiet word with Peter, the latter leaning over so that his ear was close to my brother’s lips and then he led Abdul away as Benjamin began to wipe the dirt from his moccasins onto the corner of one of the steps. Abdul looked back at me with a shrug that conveyed disbelief but no urgency as he followed the vampire still holding his leash without struggling around the corner of the farmhouse and as he disappeared I felt a burden lift from me. I felt free for the first time since the vampires had captured me. I followed Benjamin inside as the other vampire knocked his boots off against the side of the porch. As I stepped up onto the porch the succulent odor of cooking meat hung in the air like a perfect fantasy mingling with the smell of onions which I had not had since my mother had made us dig up the wild ones that grew alongside the roads and in fields with our bare hands. A third unidentifiable but delicious scent wafted up to me alongside the others, a grainy yeasty smell sweeter than anything I could have imagined. My eyes closed involuntarily as I inhaled deeply when my brother threw open the door and we stepped inside. The room inside was long and dark, lit up by only a low burning fire that crackled over a bed of orange coals in a stone fireplace along the back wall and what light leaked in from outside. The room had once had several windows, but they’d all been covered with boards and sheets of dingy plastic. Two long wooden table lined with benches ran down the length of the room. Three men eating from ceramic bowls looked up from one table as we entered, and a couple of vampires sat at the other nearer the fire. Their eyes lit up at my brother’s entrance and embraced even me but flitted over the vampire who entered with us warily before they returned to their steaming bowls and shoveling chunks of broth-soaked meat into their mouths. My brother and I sat down across from the men, but the vampire sat with his own kind only a few feet away, but the atmosphere lightened considerably once everyone had taken their places. Only my brother stiffened as if he were assuming a burden that had been lighter on the trail. He sat very straight at the bench and he spoke slowly and clearly when he spoke at all. Mostly he simply listened as a wash of reports broke over him as the men spewed words at him nearly as excitably as puppies jumping at someone’s knees. They updated him on harvests, meat stores, possible vampire, and human sightings and even sickness among the livestock and the men. My brother took it all in, nodding as they spoke or asking pointed questions at moments. I listened, as my own report, the mission given to me by the General gnawed at me and I waited to ask my brother for the opportunity to speak in private but when there was a break in the conversation my brother immediately got to his feet, motioning me to remain seated and said loudly in the direction of a door at the end of the room, “Mary get Eli some food.” The trio of vampires followed him at a command rubbing their hands together against the cold as they left.
I tried to shake off the unease imbedded deep within myself and relax. The fire, an orange glow behind the men, crackled lazily and the floorboards creaked underneath their weight shifting on the bench. A stifling warmth seeped into my body. They didn’t speak to me as they sat and ate but instead just cast my curious glances. They were all wearing a mixture of homemade and looted garb and had short well-trimmed beards. A young woman wearing a faded yellow dress and bonnet, her waist wrapped in a tan apron came out of the door at the end of the room carrying a steaming bowl in her two hands and sat it in front of me. Her shoes slapped against the wooden floor as she walked. She smiled at me beautifully, a wide smile with a full set of teeth and smooth plump cheeks but nervously her eyes shy. My face simmered at her attention. As soon as she had set the bowl down, she turned and walked from the room without a word to anyone. I watched as she returned to the kitchen her skirts swaying just off the floor and her golden braid swung slightly in time with the motion of her hips. The pink backs of her heels were like two diminishing stars until the door closed behind her and my eyes abdicated command to my nostrils.
The scent of the steaming stew swept over me in a glorious wave that set my mouth to salivating. I picked up the spoon and shoveled a heaping spoonful into my mouth. It scalded my tongue and I swished it around my mouth and pulled in air with a hiss. It was sweet and savory with the hint of some herb that I’d never tasted. Tender chunks of meat fell apart with the first nudging of my teeth. Rice exploded between my molars and potatoes dissolved into creamy filling morsels. Carrots added crunch to the entire dish. It was the most delicious meal I’d ever experienced. I inhaled the entire bowl and would have clamored for more if my stomach had not felt near exploding. As the food settled into my stomach it warmed my core as it had never been warmed before even on the hottest of summer days, the fire popped and spat bright yellow sparks, men filed in and out of the room sitting at the table and eating, jostling and joking with one another as they passed through the narrow doorway and I felt a deep sense of peace and contentment wash over me. I sat with my eyes half open everything bathed in a
warm orange glow and prayed that I would be able to remain in that room forever. It was like the kingdom of heaven spoken of in my mother’s great book, but better because I was experiencing it. I sighed as I sat and nodded off.
A strong but contained shove to my shoulder awakened me. I gagged on a snore as my head jerked to an upright position from leaning back in the chair, one hand swatting in front of my face and the other going to my empty beltline. The chair tilted precariously as I pushed backwards and then I saw my brother standing silently a couple of paces off as still as a painting on a wall. My mind was so dazed, and awareness came more slowly than it ever had in my entire life. I could scarcely process his unsmiling face cast it was in an orange tint from the burnt down coals glowing silently in the fireplace or the grim corners of the room that were lit only with the greenish moonlight that seeped in from the night outside. My stomach bulged at my waist. It felt as if it was wrapped tightly around a gigantic egg that was incredibly dense and threatened to pull me over onto one side. The moisture had been drained from my face; my nostrils were dry and clogged with hardened snot and whistled with each breath. My vision was blurry through my sticky eyes and their lightly crusted lashes. My mouth and my throat were tight and spitless. I tried to scratch it with my tongue but that provided no relief. I felt if I was waking from a deep relaxing sleep into an uncomfortable nightmare. The type of nightmare where there’s no discernible source of danger but simply an oppressive atmosphere. I wiped my eyes and yawned as I sat up, my brother standing impatiently at my side. His neck glistened with those thin white scars, short straight lines that pointed in every direction and slid overtop one another. They even peeked out of the end of his sleeves like white hairs underneath the dark ones that crisscrossed his arms. His eyes were wide and looked gray in the darkness as they hood over his crooked nose. His chapped lips were tightly pressed together and reddened from coming in out of the cold. My body tensed as it awakened, and my mind recalled its circumstances as it began to shake off the mind dulling effects of the warmth of the room.