by Mazlow, J.
“Why?” I began but the preacher cut me off.
“You yourself traveled here in the company of a vampire, introducing another into our midst. Now that same vampire threatens the very continued existence of this place.”
“I was captured, kidnapped, forced to travel here by the General and his vampires. I had never even heard of this place.
“Yet here you are, another brother with another vampire. Your brother already mistrusts your purpose. What do you think a few whispers of your plots would make him think?” A heavy pause filled the room. “I’ve already asked you. Now I will tell you. What is one girl, pretty no doubt, in the Lord’s eternal plan? If she were to be harmed the Father would have already foreseen it and no doubt, He would have reason to sweep her up into his heavenly bosom.” Mary gasped and stood.
“Sit down,” the preacher said curtly as the son behind him drew a pistol from his waist. “At least she understands me. Your brother is faltering on his determination to go to war. Your vampire friend has filled him with doubts with his talk of the mightiness of their army. Now I could go before your brother and present my case, but I haven’t been in the southlands and even if I had I have no reason to believe that he would trust me. I can preach and there is no doubt that the camp is in favor of the eradication of the vampire threat. They would willingly sacrifice their young for me in that cause, but obviously they need a leader and I am not some kind of warrior pope. Even if I were Benjamin is the only person they’d follow on that kind of war and the only person the vampires would follow at all.” A bit of spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on his chin. The preacher didn’t notice but the bit of frothy matter beneath his pink lips moving up and down was all I could stare at.
“You’ve been in the south and you’ve seen the General and his forces. You’re also his brother which if he has any modicum of humanity remaining should allow you to reach him.” He paused to lick his lips. “Convince your brother to go south with his army. Convince him that he can defeat the General’s forces. Lie if you have to. The Lord our Father will forgive you that if you are working towards his kingdom on Earth. Get your brother and his foul lackeys out of this precious camp and perhaps the Lord will see fit to allow you into His kingdom.”
Keenly aware that I was unarmed I stood as stiffly as if I were being robbed and unsure whether a blow would follow or if I would be left unharmed and simply deprived of my possessions. Behind me Mary was silent. My body tensed and my mind screamed against the constriction of the room which left me feeling like a dog ready to rip anyone to shreds who stood between me and the exit. The preacher smirked. Everything in me urged violence despite my disadvantage.
“Well I’ll leave you to pray and meditate on it. I will know your answer shortly.” He emphasized the final word then turned and walked out preceded by one son and followed by another.
Mary let out a deep breath and began to sob quietly. I sat down beside her trembling but didn’t touch her. I hung my head as if the heaviness in the room was actually in the air. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “He was so good to me when my brother died. Why?”
I didn’t say anything. Everyone was hidden behind a veneer that proved to be false. The shock was greater for Mary who had had more years of the veneer ripped off like a Band-Aid. “You have to talk to your brother,” she said looking at me with tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” I said in a voice that was low and even to my ears sounded sinister. Still trembling Mary got up.
“I have to get back to work. Liza will wonder where I’ve been.”
“Ok,” I said but didn’t rise and she left me sitting on the hard edge of the cot staring at nothing in the shadows of the shack.
When the bell rang for supper I stood, stretched my stiff legs, and walked slowly towards the farmhouse. I didn’t feel hungry nor did I feel like being amid the gregarious dinnertime crowds, but I came anyways drawn by the ringing of the bell. Men and women were filing into the farmhouse and I entered with them averting my eyes so as to avoid conversation, but as they went into the dining room were the bustle of bodies and the crackle of a large fire had obliterated the chill in the air and replaced it with an oppressive heat, I turned opening the door into the hallway. The young vampire trapped in the old man’s body sat on a stool staring at nothing with a disturbing smile on his face. When he saw me, he scowled, then smiled again and then licked his lips. His eyes began to flit back and forth, and he got up from the stool.
“Where do you think you’re going,” he said in a voice as dry and dusty as papers tucked away in some attic.
“I want to see my brother,” I said, my voice far more forceful than I felt.
“Hmm,” he muttered and kept making the sound as if his mind were processing the request. His eyes continued to dart back and forth and his tongue to flit across his thin pallid lips. There was a pistol at his waist and a shotgun leaning in the corner. I tried to imagine him sitting in the hall just sitting on a stool with smiling with his unfocused eyes and I shivered. This vamp must have barely survived the thrall sickness.
“He’s not here,” he said finally.
“I’ll wait,” I said and began walking towards the room. He moved alarmingly fast thrusting himself between me and the room, but he didn’t say anything. I reached by him and opened the door. It was dark and empty inside. “I’m not waiting out here with you. At that he snapped his fangs at me, and his eyes blazed but he stepped aside to let me in.
The room was dark and cooler than the rest of the house, but light filtered in through the walls and a window at one end of the room. The window looked out at cottages set respectfully back from the farmhouse. A few stragglers hurried down the dirt lane towards the front door. I lit one of the candles with a match that I carried in my pocket then lit a cigarette that one of the villagers had given me. It tasted stale but I puffed it regardless as I wasted sitting in a narrow stiff backed chair across from my brother’s desk I’d just finished the cigarette grinding the butt out in an ashtray on Benjamin’s desk when he walked in. He didn’t greet me except with a grunt as he threw a leather jacket into a corner, then he sat down behind his desk and looked at me with cold searching eyes. I almost laughed. It appeared that he was putting on airs of disappointment.
“Well, what is it? Perhaps you want to try to get useful information out of your vampire friend again? You’ve been nothing but trouble since you’ve got here, although no doubt you’re oblivious to it all. It’s only through the great love that I bear our mother that I am allowing you to remain here.”
My jaw tightened and my mouth tasted of bile. I thought that I might strike him but then I remembered Mary’s terrified face and the Preacher’s beady narrowed eyes staring at her.
“I have a confession to make.”
“Oh ho,” he said softly leaning forward. “Now we get to the crux of the matter.”
“I haven’t been able to confess this before because I was too frightened but now, I see that the General cannot reach me here no matter what he says.”
My brother smiled. “You’re damn right he can’t,” he said.
“Everything that the vampire and I have told you about the General’s strength is a lie. He sent us here to undermine you. He promised that if I delivered the message of his strength to you and dissuaded you from expanding your range that I’d go free, but if not, the vampire would drain me.”
My brother’s eyes glittered, and a slight smile flickered and then disappeared on his face. It was the expression an animal makes when you hold out food for it and it tentatively approaches you, greedily eying the food but warily waiting for the trap to spring. It made him look like a weasel. A cunning creature but one frozen with the inability to choose between its options.
I went on. “He thought that you’d be frightened into cutting a deal with him in order to avoid his false wrath. His vampire army is nothing more than a ragtag bunch that scarcely obeys him and is ill armed. Despite what his vamp says they’re low on
fuel and ammo and the majority of his vampires are weak and irrational from lack of blood. They would turn on their master in an instant and would flee a stronger force.”
“How many are there?” he asked.
“In St. Louis, a hundred or so hardened soldiers and a few thousand weak vampires, hangers-on subsisting off scraps. Between here and there scattered camps of less than that. Those are isolated and bored. The General’s strength is failing. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing crumbles. Of course, a good kick could hasten the process.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his heavy boots up on the desk. A bit of dark mud fell onto the wooden surface and splattered. He stared wistfully off into the distance unaware of the touch of grin that was rising to his cheeks.
“It’s only been what five, six years since I’ve been up here, but it seems longer. Five years of cold. I think of the lands we used to rove. Warm lands where we could have gone around naked if we chose. Lands where crops can grow late into the year. Here once you’ve survived one winter, you’ll never get warm again. It seeps into you and you can’t get it out no matter how much you bask in the warmth of the short summer’s sun. The wind finds you no matter where you hide. It will find you by the fire and it will find you in the bed with your love and it will leave your joints aching and your skin burning. It sets me to dreaming about the south. Our people need it. Our people deserve it.”
He was silent for a time and I wondered what I should say. I thought that I had said enough but would the Preacher see it that way and more importantly how would he know that I’d done as he’d asked?
“You know even less about this place then I did when I came here. I imagine you’ve heard some tall tales about my journey north.” When I shook my head, he continued. “When I came north, I just wandered aimlessly as we’d always done. I only tried to keep moving away from that horrible scene and you, the destroyer of all we had in the world. I didn’t move carefully. I didn’t care. I thought if a vampire takes me so what, as long as they ended my horrific tenure. But I didn’t see any vampires for weeks and the pain had dulled by the time that on one morning I woke to three of them sniffing around the area. Instinct kicked in and I bolted but it was too late. They ran me down as I tried to make my way through a dried-up streambed. A small blond vampire tackled me to the ground. I remember her immense weight as she pinned one of my shoulders to the ground with her knee. How could a little scrap of a girl weigh so much? It was as if she was made of iron. Stupid thoughts really, perhaps just my mind distracting itself as she opened my throat. The other two walked up as she was lapping my warm blood as it well up from the gash in my throat, approaching a bit hesitantly licking their lips and their eyes locked on my fresh blood. As the first vampire rose and they began to feed on my in turns the world flashed black and red and all I could feel was an icy chill seeping into my limbs as the warmth of my own blood spilled down my neck onto my chest. I don’t think I’ve been warm since that day. The world was sapping away into a black void, like paint washing away in rain, or a smeared pen when I heard the woman vampire say, ‘Don’t kill him, we’ll need more if we’re ever to bring down the General.’ ‘A thrall,’ another asked but she said, ‘no,’ and after that I fell into what felt like a pleasant sleep.
“I awoke in the middle of the night shivering atop the cold hard ground and forced my shuddering body into a sitting position clutching my arms around my chest. My breath came in little bursts of white clouds. There were no signs of the vamps, but my neck was raw, torn and throbbed dully. Blood covered the front of my shirt. I looked around dazed and weak, cold to the core. ‘I’m not dead,’ I muttered staring at the pallor of my hands as I flexed them against a rubbery feeling. The skin had lost some of its tautness along with its color and my hands felt more like flippers than hands. The snapping of breaking branches and the crunching of leaves came from the forest behind me and I looked over my shoulder as I reached for my pistol, but it was no longer at my waist. I struggled to stand and fell back to the ground. I pushed again with my arms as the sound approached but ended up falling to my chest in the leaves as an old man carrying a stack of branches and kindling came into the small clearing.
‘Don’t be a fool boy,’ he grunted as he saw me and dropped the wood to the ground. ‘I’m surprised that you’re awake. They drained you more than a typical turning so I was sure you’d die.’ He gave me a hand helping me into a sitting position. ‘You didn’t seem to have the thrall sickness, so I let you be. Figured you’d die and if you didn’t, well a young vamp doesn’t scare me much.’ He wore hides with the fur turned inside towards his body and a coyote skin hat. His bear was as brittle as corn straw and rustled against his shirt as he moved. ‘Ol’ John,’ he said extending his hand and I gave him my name as we shook. He then pulled a blanket out of a pack that was lying on the ground nearby and threw it to me. The fabric reassured me with its coarseness as I pulled it up to my chin shivering underneath it. Ol’ John wasn’t fazed by the night chill.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, ‘You were trying to reach a camp.’
I shook my head and asked, ‘What camp?’ but he ignored my question.
‘Better for you that you didn’t. The fools get reckless when they hope too much, and they rush. No doubt you’d have been dead if that were you.’ He began to break up the smaller sticks and twigs and arrange them in a teepee over a pile of tender. ‘A camp isn’t nothing but a bunch of men who live up north. The vamps don’t much like the cold.’ He smiled with yellow and black teeth. He pulled a worn-out box of matches from his pack and struck one along its worn-out strip. The familiar odor of sulfur was comforting. The tender burnt up in quick yellow flames that flitted up the twigs until the whole thing was a smoky orange mass. I watched the thin trickle of smoke rise into the sky.
‘Aren’t you worried that someone would see that?’ I asked.
‘I killed those three and I scouted around and didn’t see any signs of any others. Besides, we’re getting north and winter’s coming.’ He looked at me hard as if trying to figure something out. ‘You get close to the fire. You’re as pale as a vamp.’ He crouched down beside the growing flames peeling off his gloves and then rubbing his hands together over the fire. The effort of sliding over closer to the fire almost sent me back to the ground but I stayed up my arms trembling as I rested my weight against them. A wave of dizziness washed over me.
‘You don’t seem stupid enough to get caught up by three miscreant vamps. You had everything you needed.’
‘You went through my pack,” I asked.
He nodded. ‘Of course. Who knows what I’ll find? We’re just lucky the vamps didn’t take it. When I came up on them, they were squatted around you sated and waiting for you to begin to turn. Now they’re not going to turn anyone else though.’ He pulled three ragged tongues out of a leather pouch he wore around his neck and then sat them on a stone by the fire. ‘Best to keep your enemies close,’ he said and then chuckled with a dry rasp.
There was a long pause. The forest was silent except for bugs, frogs and a gentle but cool wind blowing through the trees. The fire’s warmth buffeted me like a river washing up my legs, bashing them around like logs on the river but the chill of the night was strong on my cheeks. I felt frail like an old man but strong as if I were paper wrapped around a skeleton of steel. I flexed my fingers against the warmth trying to work out an odd feeling in them, an odd stiffness that left the feeling off.
‘I’ve never seen anyone live through that,’ Ole John said staring at me with his crystalline eyes reflecting the fire’s glow. ‘If you weren’t looking for a camp what were you doing anyways?’ he asked.
‘I was just traveling through.’ I answered. A deep silence settled over the world as if we were the only two living creatures still awake. My companion settled down after tossing me some jerky to chew on. I gnawed on it as he lay down and closed his eyes. I watched the flames dance up and down a log and listened to my heart beating slow and stead
y. I was alive.”
My brother stopped his story for a moment as there was a knock and a woman’s voice at the door. He got up and retrieved a pitcher of ale through the door, poured us each a glass and sat back down. He even smiled as he sat the glass down in front of me.
‘The cold and the travel took it out of me but eventually strength returned to my body and then exceeded my former strength. It was not my own strength but the vampires who had fed upon me.’ He clenched and unclenched his outstretched fists in demonstrations. “I am the only man to ever survive being drained. No thrall sickness. No turning.” Then he glared at me with icy eyes. “Perhaps you could become like me. Perhaps our mother would have survived as well. She could have lived. She could have become an even more powerful woman.”
He gulped down several chugs of his beer. When he spoke again, he had calmed somewhat. I continued to sip my beer as he spoke.
“But then of course I never would have been feasted upon by those three foolish vamps. Old John would never have brought me here. I sometimes wish that he were still around.”
‘You have to understand brother, that when he brought me here for the first time none of this was here except for this farmhouse rotting in a tangle of weeds, and a plot of corn struggling to grow in the middle of its own weedy patch. There wasn’t anyone to be seen, but John knew where to find them. Just another scruffy bunch of men, women, and children. You know the type. A family gets together with another family, and then they grow until they’re no longer able to escape the vampires’ notice. Then the vampires find them, drain them, capture them and any that escape are scattered to the four heavens. There were two things that had saved these people up from that up until that point: the cold and their weaponry. They’d plant their seed and then head north, and they carried the finest arsenal I’d ever seen in my life. You could tell Old John loved these people though he was gruff and often called them idiots to their faces for coming back to the same area each spring. I think he admired their stubbornness, a trait he had in droves.’