by Mazlow, J.
We turned and followed my brother as he began down the lane still basking in the adoration of the crowd who continued to cheer. They would have thrown flowers if there had been in bloom. The crowd parted around him somewhat reluctantly as if they all wanted to be close to him one last time, though none of them touched him or even spoke to him except to yell encouragement. We were through the boisterous throng in a couple of minutes and behind us the cheers subsided quickly like a fire put out with a pot of water. Suddenly the men and women who were left behind were just standing in the dark and the cold and they soon began to scurry back to their normal routines. A few children scampered along behind us happily for a few minutes more before they grew bored and turned back. We walked along in an oppressive silence. I strained to make out any sounds from the village behind us or from any animals but the only sound other than our footsteps was the inexorable tumbling of the stream as it made its way south. When we crossed the bridge our footsteps on the wood sounded like an army at march but then the illusion evaporated as we were back on the dirt road on the other side. The crazy vampire in the old man’s body was waiting on the other side with three wagons and a pile of packs smoking and grinning foolishly. On the other side of the wagon a group of tightly trussed thralls with canvas bags over their heads wiggled like worms on the ground grunting and rolling ineffectually. Some of the vampires in the group went immediately over to the thralls and begin to cut the bonds away from their ankles keeping them tightly reined in as they caught scent of the men in the group. One man lured the thralls over to the front of the wagon where they were secured into a team of six for each wagon. Despite being blinded with the canvas bags each team had to be held on short leads so that they didn’t chase after the humans. Once each team was in place, the vampires picked up their bags and hopped into the back of the wagons, two of which were covered over with beige tarps. Other vamps crowded onto the seat with the driver. I stood on a running board alongside one of the wagons with a few other vampires holding onto the wooden frame for support. My brother waved his hand and three men jumped onto the platforms in front of the teams, the reins were released, and the thralls began to run after the men. The wagons shook and creaked as they shot down the road at frightening speeds. I kept expecting us to take a turn and go skidding off the road overturning in a mass of cold flesh and firearms, but the thrall’s feet gripped surely, and they always managed to turn the wagons.
We travelled the same lonely road that the ambassador and I had followed northward, the pitted pavement providing an easy path for the wagons despite their wood and iron wheels. There were forty or fifty of us in the party. My brother had brought all the vampires from the camp with him, nearly forty of them. I imagine he didn’t trust them with the smorgasbord he’d left behind. The remainder of the group was men who were eager to please or like the twins hoped to be blessed by being turned one day. The night was cold, the wind burrowed through my coat and sweater and burnt my flesh, but the sky was clear and peppered with stars. To my changed eyes the night was as bright as an overcast day. Inside the wagon something large and heavy shifted, rolled across the wagon as the vamps inside cursed and rammed into its side with a loud crack and a groan. The thralls never noticed and never paused in their pursuit of the human that was constantly just out of their reach. My brother looked back from beside the driver scowling and yelled, “Get the gun secure.” There was a muttering from inside the wagon, but the item remained secure after that even as we raced around curves. The wind whipping by, the rasping of the wheels on the pavement and the creaking of the wagons overwhelmed any other sound and no one spoke. The vampires either huddled as tightly as they could with their backs to the wind or watched the road of the head suspiciously with one hand on their rifles. I surveyed the land for as long as I could my rifle slung around my back as the cold turned my face into an icy block that felt as if it could no longer move. Deer startled by our passing darted off into the naked brush white tails flashing. Branches slapped at me where the road was overgrown, and I began to wish that I had taken a different place on the wagon. The thralls ran on through the night seemingly indefatigable whereas the humans they vainly pursued strapped themselves to their perches so that they wouldn’t fall onto the road. The landscape glowed with an eerie evanescence and the pine needles wiggled like thousands of eager young tentacles. By the time the sun began to rise my face and body were petrified with numbness from the burning of the wind. The sun was no relief though and the thralls slowed as its rays hit them. My brother called a halt and the wagons were brought to a grinding stop by their large brakes. Most of the thralls continued to struggle against their harnesses while others stood panting dully. The humans trotted up the road a little ways accompanied by the sound of their jangling packs and then disappeared to eat whatever sustenance they’d brought along. The remainder of the group brought the thralls to the shade of some pines and I paced back and forth rubbing my hands together. A pair of vamps disappeared into the woods and my brother sent another off in the opposite directions. The absence of the wind was a relief, but the day was still frosty. Several cigarettes were lit. I paced. The wind carried the scent of the men straight to me even though they were out of sight. The sun was too bright and white to make tolerating it easy and its intensity washed the definition out of the terrain. I sat down with my back to a tree the chill of the ground seeping up through my thighs and fell into a sort of trance in which I stared at the pavement tracing my eyes along the craters, pockmarks, and trail of splinters from our wooden tires. The road was like its own world with canyons, valleys, mountains and whiteness of ash or snow.
My daze was broken by a dull scream carried to us from the south by a transient breeze. Instantly two vamps sprung up and dashed towards the sound leaving their cards to flutter to the ground behind them. I also rose but didn’t follow, instead I resumed my pacing and listened to the screaming as it continued and slowly grew louder. It soon became obvious that the screams were growing closer and closer to our resting place. Though as they approached, they grew weaker, more sporadic and with greater lengths of time between them. They soon ceased to be intelligible in anyways though I had distinctly heard a cry for help when the screams had first begun. It wasn’t long before the vampires returned, two of them manhandling an emaciated man between them while the other two walked to either side salivating. I expected some sort of recognition from the man, perhaps raised eyes pleading with me to help, or just asking me why. His eyes flitted around the group like a stunned rabbit, but they did not linger on me or acknowledge me in anyway. They did not see my humanity, our shared experience. His eyes went dull and his chapped lips constantly moved in silence. The vampires shoved him forward and he fell to his knees. I looked down at myself, but I could see no changes to my body. My face had grown paler and was not reddened by the cold but that was a little thing. To him I was just another vampire no different than the rest of them. The realization almost sent me reeling to the ground. The world spun around me. I could hear the nasty laughter of the vampires and a slight whimpering from the man. Then my devastation was washed away by a flood of anger. How could he not see that I was not one of these vampires? How could he not know that human blood had never crossed my lips? One of the two vampires who had brought him back to us bent over and slashed his throat with his fangs. The man emitted a weak, gurgling scream and struggled somewhat. As the vampire rose with blood running down his chin his blood filled the air with its sweet tempting scent. I gagged, but nothing came up. The vampires surrounded him in an instance, hooting and grinning. Their eyes gleamed like a blind person’s in the brightness of the day. They opened his wrists and then his thighs as they danced around him trying to claim their piece and get their fill. They drained him in moments leaving his corpse lying on the hard ground as they turned away, their faces and the front of their clothes now stained with his blood. Their faces had taken on the ruddiness and flush of the man who was now deflated and colorless. One of the vamps let out a wild shr
iek and they laughed. Another lit up a cigarette and said, “A nice snack.” The middle-aged vampire looked at me and said, “There may be something left if you hurry.” I turned away from them in disgust all the while ignoring the gnawing hunger that remained in the back of my mind.
I stood like that for a few minutes staring at the bleak hard ground under the pines while they joked and talked jovially behind me boosted by their snack. There was a creak from one of the wagons and I turned to see my brother’s head emerging from under the canvas covering. He took in the scene with one glance and his face instantly became a confusing mix of signs. He seemed to scowl at everyone while grinning at them conspiratorially at the same time. I could see how everyone allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that he was still human. He seemed different from the vampires, set apart in some way that was not just a result of his leadership. I could almost believe it. I felt a great kinship towards him. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said then whistled to alert the humans who’d moved away to escape the thrall’s interest and despite it being the height of the day we pressed on. I climbed into the shade of the back of the wagon and curled up beside a stack of disassembled mortars and pretended to sleep as we road south.
We rode on into the next day before we halted again in sight of a bridge the crossed the upper reaches of the Mississippi. Abdul and I had crossed it on our journey northward. My brother asked if the General had any outpost at the bridge and I told him that there was none when I’d come through the area, but he halted and sent out four vamps as scouts. When three of the four had returned we began travelling south though the thralls weren’t given their heads and we moved at a much slower pace. We rolled through the abandoned town, nothing more than a few abandoned brick façade buildings and derelict docks, without incident. A pack of dogs loped towards us but turned around and trotted away once they’d caught our scent. We continued southward for a couple of hours along the roadway before we once again halted. The fourth scout had rejoined us along the road and had spent the rest of the travel in conversation with my brother. When we stopped it was as if everyone had a task but me, everyone knew what to do and they went about unpacking mortars, checking their packs and machine guns, and corralling and securing the thralls in a portable pen that they’d brought. I checked my weapons to appear to be doing something, but the machine guns were beyond my experience. I made sure that it was loaded and that I had extra rounds in my pack then did the same thing for the pistol and finally made sure that my knife was secure in its sheath. Peter spoke to us as we worked. “Charles has scouted one of the General’s outposts. It’s located a few miles from here on the river. He didn’t see any of the General’s vampires, but he knows that they are there.” I remembered the outpost. It was nothing more than a couple of vamps and a small boat. “This looks like an easy target but let’s not forget who we’re dealing with. We don’t want word of our attack escaping to warn outposts further south.” He then divided the vamps and men into small groups again ignoring me and even making the effort to keep me from hearing his instructions. As the vamps left our position in very unmartial groups I walked over to stand near my brother who unusually was standing alone looking off to the southeast, presumably towards the outpost his vamps would soon assault. His usual group of bodyguards formed up around him once the rest of the vampires had moved out; Peter, the crazy old vamp, the middle-aged vamp, the twins, and me. My brother shook himself out his gaze and we began to trot down the road at clip that would have easily run down any human, but we easily kept up. After a few minutes we left the road and moved under the barren branches of oaks and birches. The sun was low on the horizon. Other than the slight scuttle of our footsteps over the fallen leaves, needles, and soil I could hear nothing but the calls of birds that silenced at our approach and then continued their songs as we passed by. We climbed a small hill as dusk fell and my brother made us crawl to its top so as not to silhouette ourselves against the orange skyline. An owl watched us with its enormous blinking eyes then fluttered off on silent wings. Eli pulled a pair of binoculars from his leather satchel and studied the small building which constituted the General’s forces’ outpost. I had come through here with Abdul but he’d been in no mood for companionship since he’d killed the Iowan vamps so we’d basically moved on after a lanky vampire had eyed me hungrily and endured Abdul’s haughty responses to his questions regarding our purpose. I’d told my brother as much back at the village, earlier in the day and once again as we climbed the hill. The outpost was a white block building on a row of nondescript buildings on the street nearest the river. Their backs opened on a grassy strip and the remnants of docks. One dock had been rebuilt and had a small boat tied to it, which along with the steady stream of smoke emanating from the chimney were the only signs of inhabitants. The evening air was clear, and a low moon illuminated the streets. My brother studied the area for a few minutes as we lay on the roots of a cluster of pines before passing them off to Peter. He scoured the town for a minute before he said, “I don’t see nothing.” Everything was as still and as quiet as a painting. We started down the other side of the hill and were descending when a loud pop from across the town brought us up short, ducking behind tree trunks for cover before an eruption of dirt and block tore into the air. The explosion left one half of the building two blocks south and one block east of the building the General’s men were in a pile of crumpled block with a cloud of white smoke and dust pouring off into the sky. A trio of vamps ran out of the outpost, one holding a rifle. When they saw the smoke and rubble two of them disappeared back into their post while the third stood in the shadow of the building with his rifle raised as he looked back and forth for the source of the attack. Another mortar dropped close to him and he disappeared in a haze of smoke. My brother waved us forward and we ran crouched with our guns ready. Suddenly a burst of machine gun fire scattered across the hill and I flung myself to the ground and shot back in the direction of the fire’s origin. Two more mortars fell back to back. I could see their arches tracing through the sky but not where they landed. Smoke and dust blotted out any sight of the riverfront and no breeze blew that would disperse it. A yell from my compatriots sent me running forward again. Gunfire erupted from the town, but none landed near us. I could make out shouts between the bursts of fire, but I couldn’t recognize the voices. Another mortar fell and my brother cursed loudly threatening to bury whoever fired for a month. A long scream split the night and then slowly diminished. We paused at the bridge straining to see anything through the heavy acrid clouds waiting until no mortars had fallen for a couple of minutes before crossing the bridge. We continued onto the riverfront street flitting along flood-stained fronts of buildings on cracked and shifted sidewalks. Footsteps approached us and then stopped before any image appeared out of the smoke and dust. I sniffed instinctively and then struggled to keep from choking and coughing as Peter glared at me. All I could see was particles swirling gently through the air. Suddenly I saw a slight movement in the air like the swaying of a curtain down the street and before I could react three machine guns fired into the swirl. When they’d stopped a low gurgling emanated from the spot and we walked stealthily up to it. A figure lay on the ground writhing slowly as it tried to crawl. A dark strain trailed the vamp on the pavement. “Shit,” my brother said and crouched down beside one of the vamps in one of the other groups. The vampire’s entrails were dragging behind him and he only groaned as we stepped up beside him. My brother put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger. In response a hail of bullets chipped into the pavement and the walls of the buildings around us as I dropped to the ground with a thud that jarred me. This time I fired along with everyone else, but we didn’t know who had fired at us or which direction the bullets had come from. I crawled over to the side of a building and lay with its wall to one side of me and looked down the street both ways. The group followed me as my brother repeated a two-toned whistle repeatedly. There was no response. We got up and moved slowly along th
e facades of the buildings towards the outpost seeing and hearing nothing. The area around the building was completely destroyed. The surrounding buildings were either completely or partially collapsed and the outpost itself had been reduced to nothing more than a smoldering heap. A burnt and blackened body lay on the pavement near the wall of a nearby building where it had been flung. It was bent backwards against its spine and its face was permanently etched with a strained gasping expression. It didn’t appear to be one of ours. Gunshots echoed up the street from the south and then a shout. “That’s Tony,” the old-bodied vamp exclaimed, and we ran south. The fire went on in short bursts and we pulled up as we neared it. Then we saw the barrel of a gun sticking out from a rooftop and it erupted with orange flame and bullets tore into the corner of a brick storefront across the street. Tony shouted again, something about moving up, as they returned fire sending chips and powder cascading off the building near the roof. My brother whistled again, and several replies came back from the grid of streets around us. “Break out our mortar,” my brother said and even though they looked at him curiously they pulled one out of Peter’s pack and set it up in only a couple of minutes. I watched the streets but didn’t see anything. My heart was beating as fast as it ever had since I’d been turned, and I felt like I was on the cusp of sweating despite the frigid air. My brother whistled and bullets fired at us. Chips of brick stung my face and I backed up. “Watch our backs,” my brother said to me as they pulled the mortar back somewhat. Again, the replies came, and my brother pointed at the direction of the rooftop as two machine guns fired from its height. The twin dropped the mortar in the tube, and it exploded with a loud pop. The shell flew over the building in a high arch and landed somewhere on the other side. They were already adjusting the gun’s angle when several vamps darted forward from another position and ran into the building. Gunfire erupted from inside and we followed leaving one of the twins to pack up the mortar. Inside it was dark and musty and filled with the excited mutterings of our vampires standing over two bodies. Other vampires were searching the building from the roof down.