by Mazlow, J.
“We got em,” Tony told my brother as we walked up. He was a surprisingly swarthy vampire with dark hair and eyebrows that were still thick.
“Three dead. See any others?” Tony shook his head.
“How many did you see when you came through?” My brother asked.
“I told you, five, but there could easily have been more.”
My brother stroked his chin his eyes narrowed and focused as if he were trying to look into the time when I passed through the outpost. “Doubtful, they would have all come out to see you and the General’s vamp. They would have all been so freaking bored. Probably sent here for punishment as well, they would have wanted to know who was being punished worse than they were, or they would have hoped for a reprieve.” He looked around the room at the group of vamps. “Three down. You three,” he pointed at Tony and two others “get up there and check that boat. Sink it if it’s still there. The rest of you search every building and don’t forget the signal. Meet up here in two hours.”
The vampires filled out leaving only my brother’s group. My brother paced the building muttering to himself. I sat down in a corner shivering. The room was very cold and cave like. As the air cleared somewhat a wet musty scent covered everything. The hunger swept over me in a wave as my body relaxed. My mind screamed at me; my eyes were constantly hovering over the twins focusing on their necks even though they were tightly bundled in scarves. My stomach twisted over as if it were wringing itself out.
Tony and the other pair of vamps returned and reported that they’d sunk the boat with a grin. Another group of humans and vampires filtered in and reported that they’d killed the other two of the General’s vamps as they’d ran south along the road. I wondered if all the General’s vamps would be so stupid as to attempt to escape along the easiest and most obvious route or to trap themselves on a roof. My brother questioned this group intensely on their actions. They’d come up on the town from the south after crossing the river as they’d been instructed. Then they’d set up on one of the many hills that surrounded the riverfront on both sides. After an appropriate amount of time they’d fired their mortar, missed the building, readjusted, and then fired again. “And then,” my brother asked.
“We couldn’t see anything. The smoke was so thick, we didn’t know what we’d hit so we waited.”
“You couldn’t approximate?” My brother asked sharply.
“We didn’t want to hit any of our own. After a time, we seemed to be able to see the building still standing so we fired again.”
“Did you hear any other mortars firing at that time?” my brother asked very coldly and very firmly as if through gritted teeth.
“Not that I can think of?” said the vampire, “But I didn’t see anyone moving down there either.”
My brother slapped him so quickly that I only saw a flash as his hand travelled through the air and then the slap resounded through the air like a crackle of electricity.
“Of course, you didn’t you fool,” Eli hissed. “You said yourself that you couldn’t see anything because of the smoke. “You’ve killed Jackson with your stupidity. You’ve left us weaker all because you were too afraid to follow orders.”
The vampire’s mouth was open, aghast, and the red outline of my brother’s hand was rising in a welt on one of his cheeks. “I wasn’t too afraid. I didn’t know that the initial bombardment of the city had been completed.”
My brother turned away from him and paced with his hands locked behind his back. “Oh bullshit. Clearly the time for the initial bombardment was over. We didn’t know which building they were in. We’d have had to blast the entire town to bits to kill them. The mortars smoke them out. Then we come in and kill them. I’m sure you left a gaping hole to the south too and you were just lucky they made for the river. There could be more headed south this instance. Think about this the next time you’re out there. If you screw up again I’ll feed you bit by bit to whatever kinds of fishes and creatures that live in this river and you’ll be alive up to the point in which I toss your empty head.” My brother stalked out of the room leaving everyone in a hush.
I heard all of this through the haze of a catatonic state in the corner shivering. My stomach clenched and my blood burnt as my nostrils flared and inhaled the sweet scent of the men of our party, but I couldn’t move in anyway. I couldn’t alleviate the pain. All I could do was sit and endure the pain as room pulsed. My eye began to twitch, and I feel to one side convulsing. The room laughed. A wave of darkness and then a wave of red swept over me.
When I came to my senses, I heard the frantic heartbeat of the woman before I heard her cries. Her young son was lying at her feet stained in his own blood and the vampires were taking their turns at her neck as she alternated screaming and whimpering. Her blood filled the air. Outside I could hear the raucous grunts of the thralls jealous of my fellow’s feast. I wiped the drool from my mouth before I got unsteadily to my feet and then fled the scene. The woman’s eyes glazed over, and she fell silent for the last time as I lost sight of her. Every instinct of my body told me to return and to drink her blood. My stomach cramped for it. My limbs needed its warmth. My brain cried out in anguish and overwhelmed all other thoughts, but I pushed through, running as soon as I was outside. My brother yelled at me from the wagons. “Where are you going?” but I only shook my head. He waved one of his vamps to follow me, but I didn’t care. “I have to hunt,” I whispered as he ran alongside me, and he chuckled and fell back but didn’t lose me.
Out in the forest the world felt pure. The cold air was burning my throat, so I slowed a bit and wrapped a scarf around my face. It recalled the image of Mary and I cursed myself. The ground crunched with frost beneath my feet. I felt I could die there. That the trees were the pillar of the church that would contain my funeral. There seemed to be no life outside the unyielding trees. Then I caught a strong acrid urine scent with an earthy undertone. I moved towards it as slowly and as quietly as any nocturnal predator through the complete darkness of the early morning. The moon had set, the stars were hidden, and the sun would not rise for a few hours. I felt as if I might disappear into the night. My body and soul merge with it and then I would ride its winds and never see the harsh light of the sun again, but then I saw the deer lying under a clutch of brush. Its head was up as if it had gotten spooked and it looked around with big glassy black eyes twitching its ears back and forth. I dashed forward, ducking under the branches but still crashed through many of them as they ripped across my chest. I caught the doe just as she’d heaved herself to her feet and shoved her hindquarters to the ground. She kicked me in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind from my chest and allow her to scrabble to her feet. She danced around and started to run but I tackled her to the ground grabbed her muzzle and pulling her head to the side bit into her neck. It only enraged her. I had not yet grown fangs and I’d only managed to bruise and scrape her flesh. Still I got a slight taste of her sweet herbaceous blood and I went wild. I shoved her face into the ground with one hand even as she pummeled my chest with her front hooves and tried to roll over. Then I pulled the knife from its sheath and slit her throat open in one smooth move. I tossed the knife aside and leaned forward to suck the deep red blood from the wound. I pulled at it like a child nursing. The blood tasted of iron and bark in my mouth. It raged through my body. My mind cried for more and I drank and drank until she stopped spasming beneath me and my stomach pressed painfully against my abdomen. Even still I lay half dazed on top of the body licking at the slowly oozing blood as the warmth dispersed back into the cool night air. From off in the forest I could hear the laughter of the vamp that had followed me, but I scarcely registered it.
A drip of coagulated blood that fell from my chin to my hand snapped me from my feeding frenzy. My heart rushed with the influx of blood. My face, chest and hands were covered in a slippery, drying layer of blood. I pushed the dead animal away and scrambled backwards frantically all the while hearing the growing laughter of the vamp who
watched me. Even as I felt a surge of life and warmth rushing throughout my body I turned away from the corpse and hurled into the dormant brush. The thick liquid came rushing back up with an acid bite and splattered all over the ground. I watched the brown; black and red liquid running along the wrinkles of the ground and felt an involuntary sadness at its loss. Then I stood and wiped the vomit from my mouth with the back of my sleeve though a sticky layer of dried blood still coated it. I walked back slowly towards my brother. I felt truly vampire and truly disgusted with myself. I had drunk before but that had been the blood that had been brought to me. Now I had killed. Now I had sucked the life blood directly from a beating heart and quivered with joy at it rippling through my veins. I remember how Abdul had described the first time, how it had made him feel alive for the first time and I agreed. When I had the quaking frightful deer’s neck in my mouth and its blood was gushing into me, I had felt alive, more alive than I had felt since Mary had been killed.
I walked straight back to where the rest of the group was loading the wagons. I climbed up on the sidebar of the wagon and sat in the very front where the whipping of the cold wind would keep their heckling at bay. It didn’t take long for the mortars and packs to be repacked and soon we were on our way south again travelling through a clear night lit up by my inhuman sight. The doe’s blood had dried all over my face and I fitfully tried to wipe it off with my sleeves. The life coursing through my veins warmed me and waked something in me that I took to be the vampire which I felt was a parasite using my body to feed itself in exchange for its strength and extending my life. It hissed with pleasure and energy despite the sapping cold. I stared out across the landscape as we travelled barraged by the ceaseless lines of trees and grass and the glint of the moon on the river’s brown water as we crossed back and forth on man’s lost bridges. The blood had me buzzing so that I could scarcely stay still but I didn’t want to interact with anyone else and the wagons were rocking and skittering around curves as the thralls tore down the pavement so I just sat and rocked and shivered but not with cold. My humanity was dissolving in the blood of the deer. I let the warmth rush over me enjoying the brief respite from cold and dry.
But as we travelled the life that I had consumed ebbed and with it the warmth and the energy of the animal drained away. As it had left the body from which I had taken it, so it left my body. I felt like a cold dead empty husk filled only with the buzzing voice that now clamored for more, frantically calling my attention to the humans that surrounded me. As it cried to me, I wondered how my brother’s vamps had managed to leave the humans of the camp alone for all this time. How did they even now ride with the scent of humans in their nostrils? I could only imagine the constant ache for the blood that pulsed around them. Already my hunger had returned. It was not as strong as it had been, and it had taken on a different pitch, but it still nagged at me. It disgusted me but not as much as it once had.
After a two-day jarring ride on the hard-wooden wagon boards and the pitted highways, scouts returned to inform us that the nearby city supported a vampire camp of around twenty vampires and a pen full of their sustenance. The prospects excited my brother’s troop of vampires and men as they had not lost their high from the previous battle and were eager to outdo themselves on the field of battle. They relished the opportunity for a satisfying feeding and my jaw ached and the buzz in my head grew at the mention despite a wave of nausea that swept through my stomach. There were humans down there and not the brainwashed humans who retained less connection to the human race than I did. “Stupid bastards,” my brother had muttered half to himself half to Peter as the group went giddy with the news. “They’ll feast themselves into a stupor that will at best delay us a day, but at worse could get us all killed.” Still the thought had whipped them into a frothy mass ready to do as my brother ordered, but that could hardly abide waiting as the outpost was observed. By the time midnight had come my brother was satisfied by the scout’s reports that the General’s vampires had no idea of what had befallen their compatriots or that we were nearby.
Just before dawn we were loaded back into the wagons to travel the last few miles to the city. There was some debate as to whether mortars could be fired from the front seat of the wagon’s but after a time it was decided it wasn’t worth risking. The clattering of our wheels seemed excruciatingly loud in the early morning quiet and my brother’s jaw was clenched so tightly it looked as if he could chew metal. The morning was cold, and my ears burned with the wind that whipped by as I ran with about half our company alongside the wagons, our rifles at the ready. We moved quickly down a broad white highway littered with the rusted-out remains of automobiles along its far sides. We kept up easily with the thralls pulling the wagon and I found myself relishing my body, the surety of my steps and the speed of my stride. The cold wind bit at my exposed face but I longed to run faster and faster to test my limits. The trees and car carcasses rushed by in a blur, yet I felt as if I wasn’t even pushing myself.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when the city came into sight and we halted. Packs were ditched, guns were checked, mortars readied, and the thralls locked securely away. We could see nothing moving through the streets of the city, but the scouts assured my brother that the General’s troops were there. According to the scouts they were split into two groups. The majority of them were holed up in a scruffy brick building down near the river that had patches of green paint still peeling from its walls while the rest of them were in a two story house beside the pen where I could just make out the furtive movements of some humans. Traffic moved between the two areas daily. Either the vampires didn’t want to be perpetually exposed to the stench of the humans who lived in their own filth, or their food source was rationed and thus under constant guard from the insatiable thirsts of the vampires. The hissing in my brain screamed at me and I shuddered at the thought of the humans being drained there. I wondered if they kept them as feedstock as the general did or was there enough supply to round up. My brother had us divided into three groups; his would rush the main clutch of the General’s vampires, while the group that I was in would take out any vamps that were guarding the humans. The third group would stay behind and flush out the General’s vamps with mortar rounds. Peter would lead our group, while my brother had the twins, the crazy vamp, and the middle-aged vamp. In an icy voice my brother told the third group that should they fail to halt firing before the other two groups were beyond a broad lane lined with crimson trees he would rip a testicle at random from the group for each man or vampire injured by their inability to follow simple orders. I followed Peter as he set off at a trot towards the holding pen as my brother led his group towards the building where the General’s vamps sheltered. As we left I could hear the pop of a mortar tube being put into place, followed quickly by the click and hiss of the shot, then the mortar whistled overhead and crashed into a street short of the green building with a loud explosion of red flame and black smoke. My brother’s group peeled away to the right towards the impact and my group headed off towards the pens of humans. We rushed forward as fast as we could rifles held ready. Another mortar landed near the green building and then vamps popped out of both camps. Peter fired off a quick round of shots and led us alongside the buildings but still running quickly. Gunfire from the south echoed off the buildings that now surrounded us and when it quieted the air was filled with shrill yelling. As if they’d suddenly remembered, the barrage of mortars towards the green building ended and suddenly a projectile was whistling over my head. I watched its arc fall onto the street ahead spraying a deadly rain of concrete all around. A couple of the General’s vamps had emerged from the guardhouse and were crouched beside two husks of automobiles. Bullets rattled off the walls around us and I fell to the ground. One of our vamps took two more steps forward and then fell to the ground gurgling as a bullet took him to the throat. Another mortar fell, closer to the house where they were staying, and the General’s vamps took off on side streets.
Peter cursed, then waved us up and we ran forward hunched over near the sides of the buildings our packs rattling. A series of mortars fell, and another vampire ran out of the house in a frenzy screaming like a banshee. I fired but missed and he was soon lost in smoke. A final mortar fell, and the house collapsed in a mass of splintered wood and flames. Black smoke rolled down the streets. Peter paused at ever intersection and poked his head out ever so slightly before we crossed. In the absence of the mortar fire an ominous silence fell over everything. Our enemy was blanketed, hidden by the smoke that we had provided for them. I hoped that they headed straight for the hills. Then my brother would be forced to curtail his foolish mission before it came to its tragic end. I watched the rooftops but saw nothing there. The road was cratered and covered in dust and chunks of concrete. I could feel the heat from the flames that billowed into the sky from the pile of wood that had been the house. A faint whimpering came from the pen where I could smell the humans. Peter sent half of our group down one side street in pursuit of the General’s vamps while we turned north after the others. We moved cautiously making little more noise than a mouse. The smoke burned my throat but despite it my dry eyes refused to water. Suddenly a vamp leapt out from an alley and hurled himself into Peter. His eyes were blood red and the bottom half of his face was dripping with blood. He let out a wild shriek and tackled Peter to the pavement before he could fire. He slammed Peter’s head into the ground while the rest of us stood frozen. Peter grunted then got a hand under the vampire and tried to toss him aside. The vampire’s hand caught Peter’s neck though and jerked his head around with Peter’s own force as he slid off at an angle. He landed with a howl skidding across the road. “Shoot the bastard,” Peter yelled, and we fired but the vampire was already off and running. His leg jerked suddenly, and a patch of dark blood appeared on his calf, but it scarcely slowed him as he disappeared amongst the buildings. “Dumb asses,” Peter said and then ran off after him. We followed as quickly as we could. Gunfire echoed in front of us and we turned the corner to find Peter at the edge of a building clutching his side and grimacing.