Turned

by Mazlow, J.

  “No one is to feed on any member of this village unless I permit it,” he said. “You all know that.” He pulled off his shirt displaying the hundreds of white scars that continued down from his neck and across his back and chest. They shone like slugs in the morning light. “I have given myself as all of you know.” He paused briefly then continued in a louder and firmer tone. “Any stranger found is to be brought to me before anyone can feed on him. Any vampire found is to be brought before me before he is allowed to feed. Any thrall is to be locked away with the others in their barns. Anyone, man or vampire who disobeys my law will find himself in this position.” He pointed with the ax shaft and the prone vampire then raised it. He brought it down with both hands, his teeth gritted, and it dug into the vampire’s neck with a sickening crunch then bounced and sliced a chunk out of his shoulder blade. The prisoner’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his tongue lolled as my brother raised the axe again. When it fell the vampire’s, head fell from the block with a thud. My brother stooped, letting the ax fall to the ground and picked it up by the shaggy hair holding it up over his head for all to see oblivious to the drops of blood that fell from the ragged stump of its neck. Its pale skin, the whites of its eyes and a grey tongue looked out over the crowd that screamed with approval. They roared and whooped; some even capering a little bit in places, but all I could do was stare at those dull grey eyes with the taste of bile in my mouth. Their mania filled me with a surprising sense of revulsion, after all who wouldn’t have cheered the death of a vampire. I’d always thought that one dead vampire was one less vampire to drain you later, but the excitement crashing around me felt akin to the roiling crowds of vampires as they clamored for fresh blood on the streets of their conquered city. I felt more alone in my silence as I stood surrounded by humans than I had walking the abandoned land with Abdul. I wondered what Abdul must have thought the humans were screaming about wherever he was locked up, he hadn’t been around so many humans for years. Had his hunger devoured him? As the crowd continued cheering my brother shook the head as he turned around to all sides of the crowd and then tossed the head against the block and strode away, his entourage in tow.

  I stepped forward to follow him, but the crowd swirled around him calling out questions and trying to get his attention as the majority began returning to their work. The people parted to allow my brother and his men to pass despite their clamoring, but they scowled me as I tried to shoulder my way through. The two brothers had been left behind to clean up the block and the corpse. One picked up the corpse but frowned when he found it too unwieldy and then they moved off carrying one at either end of the body. I paused as they walked in front of me and then spun around when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Slapping the hand away I reached to my empty belt and then came up in a crouch my hands in front of me and my knees bent ready to spring and found an old woman staring at me quizzically. Her face was rough and leathery, fractured by a thousand fine wrinkles that radiated out from her eyes, mouth, and nose. Just like my mother she had straight silver hair that she had woven into a neat bun that sat on the top of her head. She looked out at me from dark eyes, unafraid, and then crossed her arms under her breasts.

  “What,” I began but she cut me off.

  “Now that you’re here, you’re gonna work,” she said. I looked behind me, but my brother was quickly walking away, and the crowd had dispersed. My eyes lingered on the bloody block. The old woman took in my gaze. “Your brother has to do what he has to do.” she said crisply and then turned away and began making her way towards the farmhouse. I followed her shaking my head a little bit. “And you have to do what you have to do as well. My name is Dottie and it’s my job to keep you working.” She began again. “Discipline is central to our integrity. Everyone here works. I don’t care who you’re related to, you gotta work. You work, and then you eat.” She looked back at me and surprised me with a smile before she continued in her gruff tone. “Of course, plenty like you don’t like to work. They don’t know how. They’re not used to it. I’ve even seen one or two of them leave because they don’t like it so much. They prefer wandering around, I guess. You’ll either get over that or you’ll get out. We’re not going to keep you here if you don’t want to be here.”

  I followed her around the farmhouse, men and women bursting in and out of its doors. Delicious smells were already emanating from the smoky kitchen and my stomach growled despite the big meal I’d eaten the previous evening. My guide looked back at me as we wove our way through a maze of laundry dripping onto the dusty ground. “If you missed breakfast that’s your own concern. I don’t have time to go around making sure young men such as yourself get up in time for breakfast. All I care about is whether or not we get all the work done.”

  She walked along with a precise, stiff backed but smooth stride waving away several women and a man as we moved through the small cabins. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like the work I have to give you. I doubt if you have any useful skills so I have to employ you where I can, but don’t worry we’ll have plenty of work for you soon.” She looked around the sky. “And then we can all rest for a while.” A cold breeze emphasized her words as it blew her skirts back away from her thick ankles. We soon approached a small cabin near the southeastern outskirts of the small village. Its roof was woven with sheets of clear plastic and its sides were patched with rotting particleboard. A couple of boys followed us stifling their giggles and looking at me with wide brown eyes, but they ran away disappearing down a small alley when Dottie looked back at them with a scowl. No doubt she would have set them to work if they’d hung around even a minute longer.

  We came around the front side of the cabin and found a man sitting on the lane leaning against the wall of the cabin sipping a cloudy yellow drink from a dirty glass and looking down the narrow lane at a group of cattle that moved slowly along the side of the pastured hill. A wiry red beard trembled against his chest as he sipped, and he balanced his hand curled around the glass on thin knees as he sat. He didn’t notice our approach until Dottie sighed and then he got to his feet quickly, offering her a curt nod and holding the glass at his side with a chagrined grin. “Mrs. Dottie,” he said.

  “Andy,” she replied in a formal manner.

  His gaze shifted to me as if startled to find me at her side and then stared at my face with fervent awe in his bulging eyes.

  “You’re Benjamin’s brother?” he asked his voice half pitched as a question half as a statement.

  Dottie cut off any answer. “It doesn’t matter who he is, he’s got to work same as anyone if he wants his rations. So, you just take him up to the Barn and show him how to muck it out. I don’t wanna hear about you wasting time and drinking anymore or you’re never going to get back to a more respectable duty.”

  The redness and sleepy lifted from his eyes for a flicker in time and he said in a quiet but perfectly distinguishable voice, “It doesn’t matter what I do as long as he doesn’t like me I’ll be stuck mucking till I’m dead, which probably won’t be long.” Dottie’s back stiffened and straightened even further and she crossed her arms across her chest and glared until Andy scurried off at a brisk walk down the lane leading out of the village. I hung back a second unsure until Dottie waved me away and then I followed catching up to the wild-eyed man shuffling his feet through the dust as he slowed for me.

  “Man,” he said breathlessly sucking his hollow cheeks in deeply. “I can’t believe they got you doing this shit too. I knew your brother was a hard ass but that’s cold.” He spoke rapidly and looked around as he did it as if he thought we’d be beset at any moment by Dottie or other attackers. He still carried the glass and after offering me a drink which I turned down he drained it, throwing his head back and gulping down the cloudy liquid. He exhaled loudly when finished and tossed the glass so that it came to rest against the wooden siding of a hut as we left the warren of the village paths and begin climbing the hill along dirt path worn through the grass. The village’s morn
ing odors of smoke, sweat and excrement faded as crisper air blew down into the valley tinged with manure and the slight smell of rot and death. Black and white cows meandered slowly towards us along the hillside their heads down as they grazed. The air warmed up as a thin fiery arc of the sun rose from behind the grassy hill. Andy spoke quickly in a staccato rhythm and looked at me askance as we walked, pausing at times to wait for me to respond or to take up the other side of the conversation but if I kept my answers to yes or no. He didn’t seem to mind keeping up a flow despite my lack of enthusiasm.

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “The south.”

  “I heard that you were captured by a vampire and that your brother had you rescued and brought here.” He paused briefly but I didn’t respond instead studying the hill and the glinting curve of the river before it disappeared into the pine forests that covered the southern hillsides of the valley. A group of men were working down there felling trees and then rolling them over to one location near the river. “I can’t believe they didn’t drain you though. Never heard of a vampire who didn’t drain a human when it had the chance. Only your brother seems to be able to keep control of their hunger and even he only barely keeps a lid on it, if you catch my drift.” I didn’t but I didn’t say so. “They’ve got that vampire that captured you under lock and key. I guess they’re trying to get information out of it. That’s gotta feel good. A vampire getting what it deserves for a change. They’ll all get what they deserve soon if your brother gets his way.” He didn’t seem to be aware of the dissonance between his assertion and the entourage of vamps that were continually at my brother’s side.

  “You’re a quiet one, but of course your brother is to, and you’re probably tired from catching up with your brother. I had a brother, but I don’t know what happened to him.” His voice and eyes went distant. “I imagine he’s dead but maybe not.” As quickly as he faded, he returned to his verbal assault.

  “You won’t be mucking for long though. I’m sure your brother will have you doing something else quickly. Maybe he’ll throw you in here with me and the boys for a week or so to appease Dottie and to make it clear he doesn’t play favorites but then he’s probably going to want you helping him prepare for the war. I mean you’ve scouted the area; you’ve been living in their territory. With you and whatever he can get from that vamp we should be ready to attack soon. Maybe Dottie’s right, maybe I can get back in his good graces. Think you could put a good word in for me next time you talk to him.”

  “Sure,” I said. As we approached the barn, which as we drew nearer didn’t look like any other barn I’d ever seen, the odor of rot and death grew stronger. I breathed through my mouth but by the time we stood outside the barn’s door I was gagging from the stench. It smelled of week-old corpses, stagnant mud, and musty air.

  “You got a bandana?” He asked. When I shook my head, he scowled. “What’d you do to piss Dottie off? It’s not like her to not help out a new camp member.” He took his own bandana out of a pocket in his ripped windbreaker tied it around his face, so it draped over his nose and mouth. Then he pulled a knife from his belt and cut a large piece from his shirt leaving his pale stomach exposed. “This will have to do.” I took it and tied it around my face in the same way. It smelled of sweat and booze, but it lessened the impact of the stench emanating from the barn somewhat.

  Unlike the farmhouse or any of the hovels that surrounded it in the village the barn sat on a concrete slab that was a little bit longer than the farmhouse. The corner beams were enormous logs that had been stripped of their bark and smoothed and sunk into the concrete. Between them the wall was lined with layers of sheet metal topped with beam of logs and in its center sat a huge sliding door locked with what seemed to be pieces of rebar shoved thorough metal eyes and then chained to wall and padlocked. The roof slanted in the same direction as the hill so that it made a triangle with the wide side open to the hill. We walked along the concrete around the building under the roof’s overhang. The walls muffled most of the sound, but I thought I could hear scratching and what sounded like groans from the inside of the barn. Several trenches ran out from under the wall and across the slab allowing a trickle of yellow liquid to dribble down the side of the concrete. The trenches were stained brown and yellow all the way up their sides and even out onto the surface of the slab. It was from the trenches that the stench emanated. I expected that he’d open the sliding door and that we’d be feeding, watering and possibly mucking the stalls of the cows or horses that were inside. Instead I followed him as he circled around the barn. Tucked along the back wall that faced the slope, a narrow ladder of metal rungs ascended the wall alongside an elevator that hung from a steel cable. I followed as he climbed the ladder surprisingly quickly considering the swerving way he veered from side to side and as I neared the tops the scratching and groans grew alongside the foul smell. The odors now smelled like rotting meat and feces. I thought I could make out a human undertone to the moans and images of the caged men, women and children huddled outside of the vampire city flooded into my mind. I shuddered and my full stomach roiled. I bit back the taste of bile and continued following worried about the barn’s inhabitants. How did the vampires around my brother’s camp remain fed? Were they allowed to hunt the countryside? Even if they had discovered some way of feeding off the humans without converting them, I doubted that they would tolerate it.

  Andy’s boots rang out loudly as he stepped out over the top of the ladder onto a grey metal platform flecked here and there with rust and lined with indentations. The volume of the moaning increased as soon as he had topped the ladder. The scratching intensified along the wall we climbed as well, and it shook with a series of hollow thuds. A thick metal door was set into the wall alongside a square hole cut into the platform through which passed the elevator’s cable. Andy pulled a key from his pocket and grinned at me. “They still trust me with this,” he said as he inserted into a single stout lock. The door swung into the barn as he pushed it emitting a concentrated rush of filth that gagged me. Andy snickered and stepped out onto another narrow platform into the darkness of the barn on the other side of the doorway. I followed him though I was wary about the lack of light and as I stepped out onto the platform, which was lined, I heard another rapid succession of thuds slamming into the wall beneath me. The moaning rose again laced with angry hissing and my stomach sank with my suspicions. Andy lit a lantern with a match and then swung it out into the blackness with a maniacal glee. Below him thralls twisted and writhed in one undulating mass like entangled worms exposed to the day, their faces screwed up into horrific snarls. They hurled their bodies into the wall beneath us as they leapt for us and then scratched at it as they tried to climb. They tried to climb on top of one another reaching for us with arms that ended in only nubs, but never succeeding in getting more than one thrall on the back of another with their lack at cooperation. I instinctively stepped away from them, my back against the wall, my heart rushing in my throat and my arms coming up in front of my chest. What kind of fools would keep this many thrall? No one could expect to keep them secure. Everything in my mind and body screamed to run but I stood petrified, quivering against the metal wall as I imagined them swarming me, ripping my limbs from my body and devouring my blood as the vamps had done on the streets of the vampire city. Andy hung the lantern from a hook on a railing that ran alongside the platform and pulled another one off the wall and lit it. The platform ran along all four walls so that we could walk around the entire building with the ceiling just above our head. He moved to another wall lighting more lamps grinning at me. “I love seeing fresh meat wet their pants,” he laughed as he walked around the barn occasionally yelling taunts at the thralls. “It’s the best part of this job.” The light enraged the thralls so that they cried out louder and flung themselves higher, biting and flailing at each other when they fell back to the concrete floor having failed to reach me. As the barn grew lighter and I grew more confident that the thralls w
ould be unable to leap out of their containment, I ventured a couple of small steps towards the railing so that I could see more clearly their twisted faces. An oddity struck me; their maws though pulled back in ugly hisses exposed only bare gums patched in black. In fact, their mouths were nothing more than empty holes. Their fangs were gone. In fact, they had no teeth whatsoever. No teeth and no hands. Down in their disgusting pit they bit at each other with no effect and struck one another with their nubs. I move right up to the railing which roiled the creatures even more and though I started when one leaped right up underneath me slapping the platform with its amputated limb I didn’t move back.