by Mazlow, J.
When I made it to the farmhouse a sudden desire to avoid my brother swept over me so I dashed around the house and into the side entrance to the kitchen startling several chickens into short-lived bursts of mad fluttering. They wobbled through the air like feathered bowling balls as I threw the door open and practically hurled myself into the warm room. A young girl screamed and dropped her dough to the floor. As I looked around the room, I realized that my heart had expected to find Mary there and I staggered, then clutched the table that they were working at to steady myself. Liza stood there as sternly as ever, her fierce visage in no way diminished by the flour that covered her up to the elbows or by my new state of being. “Pick that up,” she snapped. “And stopped acting like a foolish young girl.” The girl bent to retrieve her circle of dough slowly keeping her eyes glued to me. Eliza looked me up and down before returning to her kneading as if I were no more than a pesky boy looking to snitch some tasty morsels. “What do you want?”
I stammered something incoherent and began backing towards the door I’d come in my hands in front of me.
“As I suspected. You were weak and directionless in life and so you are in undeath.” The word tore through my stomach in a wave of nausea and I swallowed. The room seemed so empty without Mary. I cursed my inability to cry as the desire to release my sadness and desperation in tears built up. I wondered if the feelings would build up continuously for as long as I remained undead until I went mad. “If you’re looking to get warm there’s a fire roaring in the dining room for your kind.” I realized then that the chill in my bones had been melted away by the heat radiating from the big black stove on which several pots sat simmering away. Then I remembered all the vampires clustered around the fire on one of the long wooden benches while the men sat further away. The thought of sitting with them revolted me. What if one of the ones who had drank my blood were there? Would I recognize them? The images of their lips and fangs dripping with blood and searing eyes floated through my mind but not a complete vision of their faces. I could be sitting right beside them all the time and never know it.
“No, not thank you,” I said. I could see a harsher version of my mother in her eyes and I felt like a guilty child especially with unnatural feeling of my body. I would have run right back outside except the thought of the cold settling back into my limbs kept me rooted there. “Can I just stay here for a little while.”
She looked at me sharply and the young girl at her side gasped. “Well I can’t stop you, but mind you stay out of the way. I won’t have anyone clogging up my kitchen when I’ve got so many people to feed.” Her voice then shifted and lowered somewhat as she slipped into a what sounded like a well traversed rant. “I keep telling him. I need another kitchen. I need another stove. More pots, more pans, more girls, or at the very least more talented ones.” She glared the young girl beside her who began kneading vigorously. “Now girl don’t wear it out or it’ll be so tough the old men won’t be able to chew it. But he doesn’t care. Men don’t ever care as long as the food shows up.” I tuned her out then even going so far as to close my eyes and simply soak up the heat from the stove. Heat was peace. When I reopened my eyes, I felt completely relaxed, even my hunger having subsided further. I watched their hands moving through the dough. Three pairs of small hands with immaculately trimmed nails, now dirty. One pair of old hands wrinkled but steady and confident. She moved the dough without even paying attention to it while the young girl to her right watched hers as if she expected it to spring away. The air was filled with the scent of raw flour, wood smoke and of course the scent of the women. Liza stepped back from her dough wiping her hands on her apron and then stepped to the stove where she gave each pot a quick stir, then opened the stove and stoked. She then moved to a small table in one corner of the room and began dicing onions. The two young girls working for her began whispering to one another. I watched their lips moved and I watched the knife slicing through the onions as Liza’s hands expertly guided them. It was exhilarating. I felt as if I were an unnoticed piece of furniture in the room and I loved it. Before I knew it, the plates and bowls were clacking as they stacked them then carried them out to a table in the dining room.
I slid out the door while they were gone leaving before the farmhouse filled with people returning from their work. The day was still cold, but the clouds had dissipated somewhat allowing a dim sort of light to fill the air. I began shivering immediately and squinting my eyes against the light as I walked away from the farmhouse. I walked into the pasture past a young boy following a group of cattle despondently as they grazed, but as I drew closer to the tree-lined rim of the valley a figure emerged from the camp and began to follow me so I turned towards the concrete thrall barn. Even as a vampire I found the scent disgusting and overwhelming, but I wondered how did vampires feel about thralls. The common wisdom was that thralls were treated like vampires’ pets. A sort of mule/dog combination that was tossed the leftovers from the vamp’s hunts in exchange for tracking and flushing the prey. Vampires avoided killing thralls but weren’t particularly upset if one died. I examined my own feelings and was surprised to find that they had not changed. The thought of the thralls shuffling back and forth behind the stained concrete walls still frightened and appalled me though I thought that they should no longer do either. The thralls were now my own species and should no longer show any interest in draining me. Even if they did, I suspected a vampire should be able to escape or at least deal with thralls. Still I felt terrified. My heart no longer pounded but it did quicken as I mounted the metal ladder albeit more slowly than I would have expected. The ladder’s bars were so cold that they burnt my hands even though I flew up the ladder. I jumped out onto the walkway with scarcely a sound and looked down into the pit. The thralls looked up at me expectantly but no more. When I didn’t do anything, they continued their shuffling and sniffing mostly turning in the direction of the village. I felt somewhat disappointed that I wasn’t met with their slavering hunger because that meant that I was undeniably a vampire. I looked closely at my kin and felt nothing, not pity for their toothless maws or their unwieldy stumps instead of hands. I still felt human. I strode around the walkway and blew into my hands until I realized my breath was scarcely any warmer than the air. I walked around and around the walkway alternatingly glaring at the thralls, studying them, and looking away from them. I wondered what would happen if I jumped down into their midst, imagining that they would circle me like happy cats but then found that I didn’t care. Nothing became clearer as I paced. I was in no different a position then I had been when I’d first arrived at the camp. I thought of Mary, remembering her blonde hair and her innocent eyes. Humans didn’t give a shit any more than vamps did I thought. Then wondered what her blood had tasted like to those who’d feasted upon her. Then I stopped and fell to my knees dry heaving. Nothing came up but a dribble of mucus. The thralls cocked their heads at me and grunted. I scurried out of the shed almost running into a vampire who’d probably been tailing me at the bottom of the ladder. I fled back to the hut I’d been given.
The next two weeks passed much like that one day just played out repeatedly. I grew no more comfortable in my new identity though I did grow more comfortable in my body. My movements grew less jerky and my initial clumsiness declined. I drank the cow’s blood that was given to me, though the vamps who brought it laughed even as they cursed my brother for forcing them to keep me fed even though I declined human blood. I didn’t know if I would know if they had brought me human blood, but I didn’t worry about it assuming that their own hunger would prevent that. I grew stronger. Much stronger than I had been as a man, I felt that I could easy lift a cow off the ground though I didn’t try. Animals avoided me and I felt self-conscious about testing my new powers around men. I wandered the camp observing the men and women at their work and play, enjoying the faces of the men as they shaded their eyes against the falling sun, and the flitting shadows of the children as they dashed up and down the many paths. Through
it all though I felt a deep sadness that I was forever separated from these people and that I didn’t even have the memory of being a part of their community to look back on through the cold night of my vampire lifetime. Though even this fond imagining was tainted by the fear that these people lived in, fear that my brother had subjected them too. People barred their doors at night if they had them, and everyone but the children kept a wary vigilance and avoided the vamps as much as possible. My mother’s ghost wandered with me whispering in my ear pointing out vampires on the ridgeline patrolling with machine guns or the disappearance of a woman who’d recently shot a vampire who she thought had been responsible for the disappearance of her child. The vampires’ numbers grew but never from those in the camp. Only those men who surrounded my brother seemed comfortable among them and the majority of the camp’s humans considered them as much vampires as if they were already drinking blood. It was no secret that the twins and perhaps others wished to be turned and had asked for it but been denied by my brother who didn’t wish to be surrounded by vampires alone. They were for image; they were for winter protection; my brother used them like he used everyone else.
Despite all of the tension in the camp, the increasingly cold weather and my growing anxiety over my new state of being accompanied by the growing hunger gnawing at my mind and body these were some of the happiest times of my life. For the first time in my life I longed for nothing and I had nothing to do. I was no longer put to work with the rest of the human men, both because that would have denigrated the position of the vampires but also because it would have made them sorely uncomfortable. I was no longer bothered by my brother for anything more than passing information. The preacher seemed content to let me decide upon a course of action without providing any further input. When the days grew colder, I went to the farmhouse and spoke to my brother who provided me with a thick leather coat, long johns, gloves, and new thick woolen socks. The clothes took the edge off the cold, but I still did not feel warm, simply tolerable. The other vampires complained miserably of the cold and spent most of their free time sitting in front of roaring fires in the dining room of the farmhouse. They fed the fire almost continuously and held out their pale gray tinted hands towards the flames to no noticeable difference. They went about any outdoors work sluggishly and even the thralls’ energy had diminished. I did not notice much difference in my body as the temperatures dropped but I was a very young vampire who had little experience with his new body. The vampires had plenty of outdoor tasks to complete. They spent their time training on the weapons they’d stored up. The pops and booms of their rifles and mortars echoed throughout the valley day or night seemingly at random. After six constant hours of firing silence would descend across the valley for several hours only for the gunshots to suddenly ring out again even if it were deep in the dark of night. In addition to training the vampires also organized supplies, readied carts, and scouted to the south. My brother paced amongst it all sometimes aloof, sometimes outwardly pleased but often just anxiously, pausing now and then to stare to the south before yelling at those working. For my part I avoided them all having no desire to mingle with them and hoping that I would be forgotten.
The first snowfall of the season arrived in the dead of night with scarcely a wind to bend the paths of the small dense flakes off a straight line to the ground. I was pacing the empty paths of the village as it slept, craving sleep myself but now possessed of a body which did not need it and resisted it. The snow settled on my shoulders as I stared up into the dark sky and quickly drove me back to the moderate shelter of my frigid cabin. By morning, the thin white powder lay scantily scattered across the ground and roofs. Children met the sight with excitement dashing out to run their hands through the snow and attempt to roll snowballs. Its appearance lit a fire under the adults of the camp. Old men shook their heads and shivered, and old women looked worried while younger men chopped and stacked wood ferociously and women stored wares and repaired clothing. The vampires lined wagons up at the ammunition barn and began to load them. I was standing in the doorway to my hut with my blanket draped over my shoulders looking across the village when Robert came shuffling down the path sniffing the air and frowning. He’d walked almost right up to me before he seemed to notice me. “Your brother needs to see you.” I stared at him standing hunched over; his eyes roaming over everything waiting for him to do something besides stand there ticking nervously. Finally, I walked out of the hut without saying a word and turned towards the farmhouse with him following behind me.
As I approached the thick wooden door of my brother’s room a horrible grinding sound brought me to a halt. I listened at the door as it came in distinct sets of three gritting spurts like a stone being dragged across another stone. The tooth wrenching sound went on for a few minutes then paused. I raised my fist to knock and then it began again with the same rhythm. If not for the roughness of the sound I would have assumed my brother was sharpening a knife, but this sound was too uneven. I knocked and he said, “Come in,” in a muffled, groggy voice. He was standing at the front of his desk when I came in, he went behind his desk then turned and motioned for me to sit down. A thin trickle of blood was running down his cheek. A rasp wet with a touch of blood sat on the edge of the desk where he’d been standing. “Can I get a smoke?” I asked. He stopped, looking as if he’d just stepped in a pile then shrugged and handed me a pouch and papers from his desk. I rolled myself a fat cigarette and lit it.
“We’re going south day after tomorrow and you’re coming with us.” His expression allowed no resistance and I didn’t care to muster any. Despite the lack of danger from vampires hunting me any longer I felt the need to be moving, to be gone. “As long as the weather doesn’t turn the General’s vamps will be off their guard and more concerned about staying warm than us. You’ve been there; you’ve been inside their camps. I’m relying on you for information.” He took a long drag from his cigarette and I followed suit. It was good tobacco. I wondered if my brother knew that it came from a vampire not unlike the General, just to the east. He rocked back and forth in his seat a little bit and I felt a touch of pity wash over me. A distant memory of him as a dirty child holding a tooth up in front of my tear-stained face saying my name repeatedly as I cried. His face had been so expectant then. He couldn’t wait for me to see that he’d found the tooth I’d knocked out when I’d fallen from a log. I felt a desire to provide the answers for him again to show him the way, but I didn’t have the answers.
His face was haunted. What did he get out of ruling the camp and of planning this war? The preacher had claimed it was solely a lust for power, but it seemed more complex than that alone. Perhaps he did want to atone in some way.
“You ever get the feeling you don’t know what’s going on?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I get that feeling so often that I don’t even notice it anymore.” He snickered.
“Keep your eyes peeled when we go south, I don’t trust all these vamps.” He ran his hand along a cheek that looked slightly swollen. “Any of them could be spies for the General like Juan was.” We sat in silence for a moment then he said, “Got get yourself a rifle and a pistol. You’ll need them.”
The next two days warmed slightly and a constant drizzle kept the camp in a nasty mood including my brother, but when we set out on the third evening the air was clear and crisp and the sun was just scattering its last red rays across the valley. Every occupant of the camp seemed to have gathered in front of the farmhouse to see us off. Clouds of warm breath erupted from their mouths as they waited, chattering as we stood in the cool air. When my brother emerged, they quieted so that by the time he approached the top of the stairs I could hear his footsteps as he crossed the porch. He had a big smile on his face as he looked out across the crowd. The party that was heading south stood directly in front of him, surrounded by the crowd which formed a half circle with the porch as its diameter. “Tonight, we go south to begin what we’ve prepared for these last three years. Think o
f us as you lay in your warm beds because we’ll be braving the cold, sleeping on the ground and eventually clearing the land of the General’s cronies so that we can claim what is rightfully ours.” No clouds of breath escaped my brother’s lips though he belted the speech out. Everyone knew that my brother was a vampire I thought, but they denied the fact even to themselves because they feared that without my brother everything that they had would fall apart. “Come spring, you’ll be planting in black soil by the Mississippi.” The crowd roared. A wave of hats flew into the air and then fluttered to the ground. I never ceased to be surprised by the difference between a lone man and a group. In some way they ceased to be individual units and became a large organic creation driven by its own needs and desires. A crowd was a far less rational creature then men or women alone. It fed on violence and noise. They thundered on for several minutes setting the dogs to barking and howling as they trotted around the outskirts of the group. My brother descended the steps like a king waving to the crowd and blowing kisses to women. I could see the preacher standing quietly with a smug expression on his face on the far side of the crowd. He nodded slightly to me as I caught his eye, but I did not acknowledge it.