by Mazlow, J.
“Now you see that their harmless.” Andy said. “Well at least mostly harmless.”
“Are you just waiting for them to die?” I asked.
“Hardly, though they will die eventually.” He pointed to one lying in a corner flopping and drooling onto the concrete. It grunted and squirmed in protest as its fellows stepped on it but didn’t get up. “That one there will have to be dealt with soon, though let’s not deal with it today. If anyone asks just to say they were all still on their feet when we were up here. It’s a major pain when one dies.”
The thralls were all naked and shoeless and their feet had been worn ragged by the rough floor. Though they were of all skin tones and colors their skin shared a waxy pale dullness which would have signified a life-threatening illness in any man or of course thrall sickness. They moved with various degrees of intelligence, some simply hurling themselves at us and then lying about viciously with their stumps as they fell back to the floor, some scrambling back and forth with their hands on the wall feeling for handholds, some climbed onto the backs of others and then leaped and still others simply stood looking at us with cocked heads and a gleam in their head. Their voices had been reduced to groaning, hissing and full-throated roars of rage.
“What do you keep them for, then?”
He waved me over to him. “Here crank this.” A slightly rusted handle stuck out of the wall disappearing into a pipe visible through cracks on the other side. I began to turn it as he walked along looking down at where the platform joined the wall. It caught, but I was able to turn it without applying too much force though I had to grip it with two hands and the pipe began to gurgle. A trickle of brown water spurt onto the platform with the wet hiss of escaping air. Andy jerked up the hose that spilled it and keeping it pointed away from him walked over to the railing as the water began to spray out with more force. The water cleared somewhat as I cranked.
“To fresh meat like you, when you see those thralls all you think about is how they’re going to drain you and most likely leave you as another one of them.” He grinned at me with yellow teeth, and then spat into the pit. As he talked, he sprayed a steady stream of water into the pit, moving it from side to side, sometimes laughing as the stream hit a thrall in the face. Occasionally he yelled for me to crank faster. “But to a man like your brother he sees opportunity. An opportunity to use what the Lord has given us to our advantage. These thralls are the best work horses you’ve ever seen. Harness a couple up to a plow and then put a man in front of them and they’ll pull all day long. Don’t need much to eat either, just toss then a bleeding animal now and then. Of course, as you can see, they’ve been rendered harmless. Of course, they still require a lot of precautions. Everyone would have a fit if they got free.” The pungent odors of the barn must have been augmented by the spray of the water stirring them up because my stomach clenched in protest and I vomited off to the side. Once my stomach had ejected all my previous evening’s meal, I resumed my turning and he sprayed the vomit down into the pit laughing. With the taste of bile strong in my mouth and my vision water with tears the world shimmered, and I felt hot. I cranked the pump though weakly as I felt as if I were slipping into an alternate world.
“So, they can live off animal blood then?” I asked my voice small against the constant ebb and fall of the squalling from the pit. He ran his finger across his throat, and I stopped my turning as he sat the hose down and retrieved a long pole with a net at one end from hooks set into the wall. He swung it rapidly down into the pit yelling at the thralls as he did so.
“Get off that you bastards.” He brought the pole back up with a black mass of hair, skin, feces and other unknown materials clustered in the net which he regarded with distasteful amusement as he waved it near my face and then dumped it into a chute set into one corner. “I was hoping you’d puke again.” After he’d returned the pole he went back to the hose and we began our rinsing. “You’d think they could live off animal blood. Blood is blood, right? But eventually they just seem to disintegrate. Their skin starts to come off in strips, then their knees get all twisted and give out and if it continues their flesh rots and comes off in chunks. Nasty thing that. If you give them some human blood occasionally, though they survive.” He seemed to forget about the hose for a moment just letting it flow into the pit in one place. “Makes you wonder though. How much human blood do those bastard vampires need?”
He signaled for me to cut off the flow again and he began winding the hose up. “We’ve been trying to keep around twenty thralls lately, though I hear that they’re going to increase that number soon, especially with the war effort. So, we can’t really let these die. A shame about that one.” He looked into the pit. “Hope no one blames me. Oh well, that’s life.
He headed back over to the ladder and descended as I followed. “Mucking’s not really so bad. Everyone thinks it’s hard and nasty so you can take your time and then relax a bit when you’re through. You don’t have to do a good job because nobody really wants to come up here and inspect your work. There’s the off chance someone might complain when they’re getting a thrall out, but I doubt it.”
We sat with the thrall’s scratching through the barn’s wall at our backs facing up the hill to the pines that grew along the ridge beyond the pasture. Behind us camp sounds broke through the otherwise peaceful quiet of sporadic breezes and cows mooing. Kid’s shrieked, gunfire echoed down the valley and voices were heard yelling but not urgently. Andy pulled his hat low over his eyes, his knees pulled up in front of him and his chin falling onto his chest. “Damn,” he said quietly. “I wish I would have thought to bring something to drink.” I was thirsty as well though no doubt he meant booze of some kind. He soon fell asleep, his breath whistling softly and left me wondering what I should do. I felt a sense of exposure, even though I was not visible from the camp and I could see no one along the hills above me. It left me tense and restless, unsure of myself. My brother had said not to leave the camp, but the trees seemed to beckon me with their covering branches. I stood and walked to the two corners of the barn, peering around each in turn. No one was worried about me. Everyone was at their own tasks. I began walking up the hill.
As I climbed the hill, keeping myself hidden from below by the barn for as long as I could I cursed myself. There must have been tons of tools around the camp and here I was with nothing but clothes on my back and shoes on my feet heading towards a forest and cold nights. I thought about turning back until I at least had a knife. Surely there would be other opportunities to flee later, but my legs were filled with a tense energy that walking seemed to relieve. I could leave Abdul behind and I could leave my brother and his vampires behind as well. A tinge of guilt and sadness erupted at the thought of losing my brother again, but if he came with vampires than it was worth it. I walked at a normal pace hoping I’d be mistaken for someone with some work to do in the pasture. The sun warmed my back, and everything grew more peaceful as I ascended. The sounds of the camp were still audible, but they had diminished to no more than a soothing coo that showed people were living in the valley. I stopped to look back as I neared the top of the hill, perhaps foolishly but something wouldn’t let me disappear without one last look at the largest settlement I’d ever seen. Smoke from the farmhouse, the various huts and hovels that surrounded it and tasks I couldn’t be sure of at that distance rose into the air in narrow twisting columns that merged into a big cloud and flowed off to the south proclaiming their existence. From above the tin roofs of the cluster of buildings sparkled in the sunlight like a field of mica and the yellow of the farmhouse’s walls dazzled like a fresh flower. No area was untouched by the bustle of activity. Children dashed along the narrow pathways between buildings, along the hillside to the south a young man slowly moved a herd of cattle along. There were men, women and children in the fields, men and women tanning hides just south of the city, men digging, men building what I did not know, women hustling between buildings and everywhere children helped and hindered.
My soul sighed but I did not belong here. I could not make my peace with the vampires as they had. I turned and continued my climb.
Then I saw a flash of movement along the hillside. I hurried up the ridge but as I ascended a vampire trotted up, faster than a man could run. He had pistols holstered on both sides of his waist and carried in his hands a high-powered rifle with a sleek black scope. He had been a tall gangly man with a large Adam’s apple which bobbed as if his body had lost control of it in a thin long throat. He grinned at me flashing long fangs and eyes that were slightly reddened from being out in the early morning sun. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in a nasally voice. My heart fluttered in my chest. He could drain me and leave me here. No one would be the wiser for days, or at all assuming the beasts took my body away. I started to speak as he stared at my face, his eyes judging, but wild like a dog on a chain that doesn’t want to spook something beyond its reach. He cut me off before I could say anything. “You’re his brother, aren’t you?” he asked but before I could answer he grabbed me by the wrist and a shrill whistle burst from his lips in three sharp pulses. A moment later another vampire ran up. He looked amused; there was a twinkle in his chestnut eyes.
“This one tried to escape. It’s his brother.” He told the newcomer. The other one just smiled and tossed a length of straight black hair that was lying across his forehead and over his slanted eyes out of his face. It shone in the sun, surprisingly vibrant for the patchiness of the remainder of his scalp. He shrugged his shoulders. “Better take him in then. You know what we were told.”
“Of course, I do. I don’t need you to tell me.” He glared at the other vampire who appeared not to care or notice. “I just need you to cover my section while I do it.”
“Sure,” he replied and then walked off disappearing into the pines. My interferer exhaled exasperatedly and then said, “Come on,” letting go of my wrist and heading towards the camp.
As we walked through the town there were some whispers of, “that’s his brother,” but other than that no one saw anything out of the ordinary about a man and a vampire walking together through the narrow lanes. We crossed through the town and made our way to a trio of barns that sat in the middle of the northern pasture. The first barn’s doors were flung open and I could see straight through a dusty, hay strewn interior to the pasture beyond. Each side of the pathway through the barn was set with stalls from which protruded the long faces of horses. As we passed, they stomped, whickered, and shook their heads at the vampire leading me. There were a group of vampires and men lounging around the front of the next barn some of them standing and smoking, others sitting on the ground and a couple of hay bales which had been stacked up outside. They looked up as we approached, and a quick round of laughter passed through them causing the vampire who led me to scowl. My brother’s cronies: the two human brothers and Peter came forward as we approached. My captor approached nervously, slowing his steps.
“What do you want?” asked Peter annoyance coming through in his deep voice.
“Nothing John,” my interceptor said, “It’s just that he said if his brother tried to flee, he should be brought to him and I caught him trying to leave.” He pointed down the valley to the hilltop where he’d intercepted me.
“He’s busy. Jeremy let him know about this.” Everyone stood awkwardly for a few moments, occasionally flicking a cigarette butt away from the barn as one of the brother’s disappeared into the bar. There were muffled voices from inside and what sounded like something being dragged across a floor.
The brother reemerged and said as he pointed at me, “Benjamin wants you to go on in.” He then shifted his attention to the vampire who’d brought me. “You go back to your patrol.” As my captor turned and went back the way we’d came I slipped past the vampires, the sensation of insect crawling over my skin shooting up my arms as they briefly surrounded me. Then I opened the barn door with a creak and entered a dimly lit building. It had a concrete floor like the thrall’s pit and tall wooden walls that let in slits of light to crisscross the floor. I didn’t see my brother as I entered and walked slowly through the dust and gloom. Large crates were stacked along the wall near the entrance and the air smelled of metal and chemicals. As I passed around a corner my brother looked up from where he was crouched down with a couple of vampires looking at what looked like a telescope or a barrel on a tripod.
“So, one of you could carry this right?” he asked, and the vampires nodded. I approached slowly. Around me hung ranks of camouflage uniforms and behind my brother there were rows of rifles sitting on their butts and leaning against one another. “Good, good,” my brother said. “We can definitely use those. Let me see whatever else you’ve discovered in a few minutes.” The two vampires moved off into the barn and my brother dusted his hands off on his pants as he looked at me. “Trying to report what you’ve seen here back to your masters?” I didn’t answer. I looked around at the stacked boxes, piles of knives, shovels, backpacks, and guns fading away into the darkness of the huge barn. “It soon won’t matter anyways.” He looked at me with eyes that were slightly red, probably irritated from the dust, and squinted in a slightly clever way as if he knew something that I didn’t. “We’ve got almost everything we need. Weapons, food, vampires, and thralls.” He grew distracted and scowled in thought. “Do they use thralls as we do?” he asked vehemently. I shook my head. “I thought not. All the vampires say they do not, but who’s to say if they haven’t started, or if the vampires aren’t lying. They say they find it distasteful. Oh well.” He grinned. “I don’t.”
“In some ways vampires hold on to the old world more than we do. I guess because they remember it better. Well it will be their undoing, just like it was our mother’s undoing.”
His tirade lapsed and he looked at me shaking his head and rubbing his smooth chin between his thumb and his forefinger. “Eli, Eli, Eli.” He said. “You’re a big headache for me, right when I don’t need it. I told you not to leave and yet you tried to. Well you’ve found out that you can’t leave so don’t try it again. You won’t like the consequences.” He turned away from me and pulled a gun from the rack, hoisted it to his shoulder and pantomimed firing. He grunted and dropped the gun back amongst its peers. There were deep wrinkles spreading out from eyes that dropped in purple bags.
“I can trust so few people, man or vampire,” he said softly as if to himself and then louder. “You smell like a thrall.” He laughed. “As much as I’d love to keep you in that stench I can’t afford to. I couldn’t be seen playing favorites, but mucking is so despised I can ‘t afford to keep you up there with that washed up drunk.”
He got quieter for a second, shaking his head and squatting down beside a pile of vests which he rubbed between his fingers as he looked at me. “Damn its Eli, why’d you have to show up with a vampire? An army vampire too. If it were just a loner than maybe, we could have worked it out. I’ve kept my eyes peeled for you; you know.” He looked at me with eyes bright in the dim light and he looked briefly younger than he had since we’d been reunited. I could remember him looking up to me like that when we were growing up after a time of relative peace and safety, playing in a field or a brook. His face had been dirty then and now it was clean and smooth.
“I followed you for a while.” I said, “But I got off the trail.” That seemed to anger him.
“Well I’m glad you didn’t catch up. I would have killed you.” There was silence for a while. A couple of gunshots echoed to the north and my brother perked up. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now and I’m once again between a rock and a hard place. Hopefully putting you straight away into mucking will convince everyone that I’m not favoring you too much, but if I keep you there, they’ll think that we’re at odds. There’s too much politics and plotting around this camp. Those cowards may be laying low now biding their time, waiting until they can catch me in their machinations, but if they see a strong ally then they’ll come crawling out of the woodwork and make no m
istake, if we’re seen to be competing than you’ll be a strong ally.”
“Don’t look so surprised brother. Our name carries a lot of weight now. Maybe you wouldn’t want it but that may or may not matter. So, no more mucking for you.” He fell silent staring off down the long aisle of the building.
“What’s with all of these vampires?” I asked him and he glared at me.
“You should know. You walked in here with one.” Abdul again. The vampire who’d kept me alive and kept me on a leash for the entire northward journey. My brother stood bristling. The tall door at the entrance creaked and then a block of searing light burst into what looked like a barn from the outside but was really a warehouse.
A vampire came into view; a short skinny female, its silhouette moving more smoothly across the floor than any human could have managed. My brother and I stood side by side and he spoke to me in a quieter but stern voice as the vampire approached. “There’s a war coming brother. I’d like to have you on my side, but either way, it’s coming, and I intend to be prepared.” The vampire stopped in front of him as he continued speaking to me. “You go back down to the camp. We’ll find something more suitable to your talents than mucking.” Then he turned away dismissing me with the abrupt shifting of his attention.
As I walked slowly away unsure as to where I should go, I heard the vampire say in a low voice to my brother, “Sir, there’s a group headed to the valley.”
“To or towards,” my brother asked.
“To, sir. They know it’s here.”