by Mazlow, J.
I awoke to the pain of my wrist being bent as an icy hand pinned it to a bed. I twisted trying to slide my arm free, but another hand grabbed me and pulled my other arm back to the bed. My eyes cracked open and I could see my brother standing at the end of the bed smiling a weak smile that did not reach his eyes and drinking deeply from a wide mouthed jar filled with the village’s homemade beer. In the weak light that seeped in through the cracks in the walls he was ghastly pale, even more so than the vampires that were holding me down. He paced back and forth along the width of the bed a couple of times his boots’ thudding against the wooden floorboards was the only sound over my rasping breath. My chest ached with every breath and my head throbbed. My brother shook his head and muttered to himself as he paced, then stopped and drank deeply from the beer before turning to me. His eyes shone with a sinister boyish glee as if I were an ant and he was contemplating plucking my hind legs so that he could watch me stumble and fall as I tried to walk across the floor.
“Brother.” The white scars on his neck twinkled and flashed as he spoke. “You can’t even begin to imagine the power I possess.” I stopped struggling. He stood so that my rising and falling chest was like a ridge that he stood just behind. “No other human has had this power.” He quieted a bit. “Perhaps no other human can.”
“What are you talking about,” I spat. I lay quietly conserving my energy for any moment when I might be able to break free, but if the vampires hadn’t been holding me down, I would have throttled his speckled neck.
“When you killed our mother, you had no idea what you were doing,” he said coldly. “She could have been alive today, just greater than she was.”
“She was turning, and you know it. The thrall sickness was ravaging her body; soon it would have taken her mind as well.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Maybe she would have turned, or maybe she would have lived and become something even more glorious. If she would have turned you could have killed her then. I can’t believe that you are afraid of a single newly formed vamp lying right in front of you. But you couldn’t wait. Your own fear and selfishness wouldn’t even allow her that chance. What if she had had power like me, then she could have been the matriarch that we all needed. She would have had wisdom, experience, and power. With her knowledge of the time before and her charisma we could have been something. He paused. “Well, now the power has fallen to me now and there’s not going to be anymore scrounging around. The preacher’s God and mother’s God didn’t give it to them, but I have it.” He held his arm out towards me and clenched and unclenched his fist as if I could see the power coursing through his veins. His eyes were wide and unfocused. “I am the only man who has ever survived being fed upon by vampires. The only one who didn’t succumb to the thrall sickness or turn. Some kernel of strength must have spared me those fates and allowed me to turn the vampires’ power to my own use. We’ve tried. We’ve drained men and women and watch them burn up or swell the ranks of our vampires, but I am the only one who is more than a man but not yet a vampire.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke but if he had he’d have seen the disbelief smeared across my face despite the white-hot pain in my wrists where the vampires held me down. They felt as if they were going to snap at any moment.
“If there’s any chance at all that this can be replicated, we’re obligated to do it. This is what humanity needs to survive. Others have failed but perhaps you are like me, and if so, our father will be and others as well. Then we will find them and move like a growing tide across the land. But if you fail then I will know that I alone can bear this power. Take him,” he finished with a growl.
I flung myself forward with all my strength pushing up against the table and kicked my feet against the third vamp that held them. A fourth vampire, the young vampire in the old man’s body approached my head and leaned over my neck. I struggled in vain against their hard-icy grips. The vampire’s stale breath washed over my face as he bent over my neck and huffed my scent. A drop of saliva fell from his fang onto my neck and I flinched. Other than his fangs his teeth looked little different than a human, if only more yellowed and in danger of falling out. To my surprise he didn’t plunge his fangs into my jugular instead he pulled a razor from a pocket and slid it across my neck. It cut with almost no feeling but as soon as the metal had passed a thin line of burning, gritty pain erupted along the wound as if it had been doused with alcohol but even more intense and similar to an itch. The vampires moaned as my warm blood gushed along my throat and ran onto my chest. Immediately the old one was lapping at my throat and I grew dizzy. I wanted to wipe the blood away, to wind cloth tightly around the wound to contain it but the vampires were still pinning me down even as they leaned over and joined in the feeding frenzy. After that my brother’s head floating in the air as if beheaded and covered with intoxicated grin that could have been mistaken for cluelessness was all I could see and whether it was real or imagined in a haze of lost blood and fear I’ll never know. One of the vampires wrapped his rubbery lips around the wound and I shuddered as he sucked up my blood, slurping like a child and running his tongue along the wound. Color faded to a continuum of grays. A ghastly hand, all knuckles and nails appeared and pulled one of the vampires away. The world spun slowly wobbling on an unsteady axis as another vampire took his place. My brother’s eyes blazed in the dark as he watched with interest as the rest of his face disappeared into swirling shadows. By the time another vampire had taken its fill all was dark except apparitions of their hungry lips as an unending line of the beasts approached. My body was dull and cold and then nothing remained but an unhealthy sleep that was deeper than death.
The next few days could have been months for all I knew. I passed in and out of red tinged dreams of my mother and my brother laughing at me while Mary lay on the ground in a pool of her own blood. I would awake briefly from time to time and sit up shivering against the cold winds that blew in through the chinks in the wall and then fall back into my half sleep without seeing anything more than dust motes creeping through the air of the cabin. I remember hearing the words thrall sickness and then waking up with face in a pool of saliva. I grew so warm that my lips cracked, and I threw my blanket to one side. Then I froze lying on the hard cot shivering curled up as if I were in my mother’s womb.
When I did finally awaken for good, I just sat up and stared. No one noticed my consciousness not even the guard whose shadow I could see pacing relentlessly just outside the door. My body was as weak as a newborn kitten. After sitting up for a few minutes I lay back down and slept again more peacefully. When I awoke my stomach was clenched in a painful knot and the light that slanted into the shack looked like the light of early morning. I called out feebly to the guard who stood outside. The middle-aged vampire who’d been part of the group which had initially captured me tromped in with one hand on his side arm. My mind was filled with so many things but the only words that came out when he stood in front of me crossly were “hungry,” and “thirsty, so thirsty.” I felt dry from my lips, down through my throat, into my eyes and out to the tips of my fingers as if I’d been standing in front of a fire. The guard left in a huff shutting a heavy door behind him. Once he’d gone, I walked unsteadily over the door and tested it. It didn’t budge. I pushed harder rattling it against a lock before settling roughly to the plank floor with my back against the door. “What are you doing in there?” another harsh voice asked but I didn’t answer. I pulled myself up by the door and returned to the cot. My guard returned with a lukewarm bowl of thick cloudy chicken noodle soup. I sipped the bland broth gingerly and slurped up the soft noodles scarcely tasting anything but enjoying the feel of the warm liquid as it ran down my throat. Afterwards I felt as if I’d scarcely eaten anything but I was able to pace around my shack for a few minutes before my legs grew shaky and my stomach cramped so badly that I could think of nothing else. Night fell and with it the air grew so cold that I lay curled up on the bed with my thin strip of blanket pulled tightly over my body as I shive
red, and my teeth chattered. The cold kept me from sleeping and I lay in a daze. In the middle of the night I got up and walked to the door. I beat on it and cried out that I would freeze if they didn’t bring me more blankets or move me but all I got in return was a wheezing laugh and a swear. “I’m freezing out here. You think that you’re better than me.” I returned to the bed and lay back down sure that they’d find no more than a frost covered corpse in the morning.
Somehow, I slept after that, a luxury that would come more and more rarely the further I passed from the day I was drained and somehow, I survived to the morning. I was awakened early but the touch of the sun on my face and then roused from the bed by the door opening. My brother walked in with Peter at his side. The sunlight flooded in behind him in a bright cascade of white that left me squinting at him. He looked at me closely clearly disapprovingly. “Get up,” he ordered. “I think you need to see what you’ve wrought. I think it will provide an instructive lesson.”
As I followed him out into the morning light the sun cast the outlines of the veins in my eyes across my vision so that everything was overlain with silver lines. He walked ahead talking in a low voice to Peter while Robert fell in behind me mumbling to himself as usual. The air was crisp and fresh, only dimly scented with cows, smoke, and people. The village surrounding the little alley what we walked along was ominously quiet, but the rustle of people and the murmur of voices mashed together into an intelligible wall of sound grew louder as we approached the farmhouse. The whole village was gathered in the square, talking quietly to one another. A narrow lane split in the crowd as we approached, and the tone of the voices grew more frantic like bees buzzing. Most of the crowd looked away from me as we approached but Paul shook his head and another of the men whom I’d worked with scowled. The preacher looked almost worried as he stood shoulder to shoulder with his two sons.
The chopping block stood in the center of a clearing in the crowd allowing its dusky red stripe to absorb the sun’s light. Abdul was laid out on the ground in front of it face down in the dust. No one held him and he didn’t try to escape, he just lay there wriggling and gasping not even able to lift his head. I walked with my brother to the front of the crowd and then stopped as he leapt onto the chopping block and faced the crowd. The rising sun was at his back and haloed him as he spread his arms.
“We all know of the threat to our south,” he shouted, and the crowd murmured with agreement. “This so called General would like nothing better than to have us bring new life to his breeding pits and his blood banks. He’s even gone so far as to kidnap my own brother and then send him north to infiltrate our camp.” Their eyes burned into the back of my skull. I could feel them all and I wanted to turn around so badly and see the accusation there, to meet it with the sadness in my own eyes but I was afraid that I wouldn’t find pity. I was afraid that glares were not all that I would feel, so I remained watching my brother even as my body tensed. “His little ploy has failed,” my brother yelled, and the crowd cheered. “My brother is now safe with us and his minder, this made vampire has given us all the information that we need to crush this general and secure our land forever. No more will we wait for the vampires to push us out of our homeland. No more will we have to keep our eyes to the south each summer. This winter the vampires had better watch to their north for our coming, but they will not, and we will crush them before they even realize that humans can fight back.”
He motioned and two vampires pulled Abdul to his feet holding him up by the armpits and jerking his head back by his failing hair like some kind of puppet. His once fine rusty skin was flabby now. It hung off his face in rolls and was covered with a dry white sheen like frosting.
“He expected us to give him whatever he wanted, to send him men, women and children to protect ourselves from his threats. We will not treat with him. We will not bow to him. We will come to him in arms and we will start with his messenger. As you all know, I’ve already sent several of the General’s vampires floating south headless. I doubt that one more will change his mind but what difference does it make.”
The people howled in delight. They hissed. They began to clamor for Abdul’s head and his blood as if they were vampires themselves. A rock flew from the crowd towards him. As Abdul’s handlers stepped back one dropped his shoulder and he fell limply threatening to drag the man who held him on the other side down with him. His head lolled at the end of his neck and his arms flopped like deadwood as they twisted him upright again. Peter glared at the crowd and the rocks stopped but the volume of the crowd grew. “Get on with it,” someone yelled. I was shoved from behind and fell to my knees. I didn’t look backwards not wanting to agitate them further against me, fearing a shot or a knife to the back. I looked up at my brother’s eyes golden in the morning light as if I were kowtowing to him and suddenly, a searing hatred flared in my veins and sputtered out in spittle from my lips. I stood quickly turned and took a step as if to push myself through the crowd but then stopped, not because I was afraid of the crowd though I did fear them at that moment. The faces of the men and women were contorted into animalistic expressions of anger and bloodlust and the children with them aped their parents. Their voices sounded like the squawks of ravens overlooking a corpse that a coyote has forced them to leave. An attempt to force my way through them could have easily ended in them pummeling me to death and leaving me lying on the ground in a bloody heap that my brother wouldn’t have mourned. I turned back because I thought I owed it to Abdul. He could have drained me at any time and who would have been the wiser. He could have left my corpse on the side of the road, or worse still turned me into a thrall to serve as his hunting dog, but he didn’t. He had remained true to his orders, to the General, and in some way to the men who’d created him. If he would have come upon me on an empty road before the General had learned of my existence than he would have drained me without qualms but even so I felt that he deserved for me to bear witness to his death as the closest thing to a friend or family member present. When I turned back Abdul’s eyes were opened wide but unfocused and his lips were moving slowly as if he were muttering to himself. The vampire slung him down onto the wooden block with an audible thump. The impact didn’t faze Abdul. There was no indication that he realized that he’d changed position at all. He looked almost peaceful lying there with his head on the block as if it were a pillow and his face turned to one side. His lips moved steadily and silently as if he were praying, and his eyes seemed to be staring into a world that no one else could see as if he’d achieved some transcendental ascension beyond the world that we inhabited, a world in which I stood, alone and surrounded by people, people who I’d worked with, people who were now reduced to no more than animals.
The vampires’ skin shone in the sun and those that stood around my brother looked somewhat queasy as Robert came forward with the axe, his thin old arms miraculously holding it upright without shaking. A crust of blood still clung to its edge. He alone amongst the vampires showed no signs of queasiness, though undoubtedly the other vampires had no qualms about killing one of their own but were instead suffering the effects of the sunlight. He sauntered up to the block grinning up a storm and swinging the axe handle jovially. As he approached the Peter grabbed Abdul by the hair and pulled his neck into position. He flicked a clump of hair from his fingers as he stood. It floated slowly to the ground dissolving in the sunlight. Without even stopping and making a show of it, as if the act were an extension of his stroll Abdul’s appointed executioner swung the axe. The blade glanced off Abdul’s neck shooting to the right before the old vampire got it under control with a smirk. The crowd squealed with delight and a child in the front row shrieked and covered her eyes. A chunk of Abdul’s neck was gone and the wound oozed rancid yellow pus slowly. He moaned and his body shuddered. His tongue was sticking out. A wave of sadness washed over me and my eyes quivered, but no tears fell. I wondered if I was still able to cry. The vampire struck again spraying himself with a line of bloody pus. Still t
he neck remained intact. A couple of people laughed, and he looked around glaring for the source of the noise, and then turned back to Abdul’s quivering body. My brother stood behind it all sharing a self-assured smile with his compatriots. Again, the old vampire swung, no longer lackadaisically but with more vigor, and with a crazy anger building in his eyes. The blade bit through the bone and the head rolled away. The crowd roared with approval. The head came to rest facing me only a couple of feet away. In death Abdul’s eyes were more focused than they had been in his last few minutes of life and they stared at me sadly as if they knew all that was in store for me. I turned away from that gaze only to stare across the capering crowd, the dismal lot of humanity that chose to believe my brother’s lies. I almost pitied myself more than Abdul. I pushed through the crowd away from his still twitching body and the oozing stump of his neck.