Turned

by Mazlow, J.

  Bullets ricocheted around us but didn’t come near us. “Bastard led me right into a trap,” he said. His hand was covered in sticky black blood. “There’s a couple of them around there waiting. Go around back.” He illustrated with a circling movement with his hand. “Not you,” he said as I turned to follow. “I need you to stay with me.” It was only a shot to the side, unlikely to kill a vamp, but he looked paler than I would have expected.

  “Check,” he said and pointed to the corner. I lay down on the ground and slowly inched my head forward. I couldn’t see anything. I shuffled forward a bit more and as I did bullets skittered across the pavement near my face. I pushed myself backwards. “Good, we need to keep them thinking we’re over here.” He pointed his rifle around the corner and fired in a sweep. Their gunshots broke off and then started up again. I took my turn firing. The exchange of fire went on for a couple of minutes. The sun climbed into the sky and my muscles stiffened under the strain, but my body refused to sweat. Though the slight warmth of exertion felt good I thought that a human would sweat no matter the temperature under similar circumstances. As I leaned my gun out to fire suddenly the barrel was ripped away from me and the rifle was hurled down the street. A vampire leapt around the corner slamming me into the side of the building with his shoulder. My head snapped backwards and pounded into the wall sending me sliding down. Peter grabbed the vampire by one shoulder and spun him away.

  As they faced each other in the street there were shouts from behind us and gunshots. I struggled to regain my feet hoping that our vamps had surprised the General’s. Peter met the vamp’s cocky expression with his usual stone face. The vamp’s face was flush with the blood that had only just begun to dry around his lips. He grinned and hissed flashing well-developed fangs. Then he charged forward. Peter moved twisting his body to the side so that he could use the vamp’s momentum to push him forward into the ground but the vamp quickly adjusted and wrapping his arms around Peter’s waist brought them both to the ground. I brought my weapon up but they rolled in such a tangled mass that I couldn’t fire. The General’s vamp punched Peter in a face and his teeth erupted in a cloud of blood clicking as they hit the pavement. Peter groaned and punched the vamp in the stomach then threw him off him. He pulled his knife and lunged at his opponent, but he grabbed Peter’s arm as it flew towards him laughing and pulled him into his knee. Then despite being doubled over from the knee’s impact Peter reached up and grabbed the vamp by hair wrenching his head back to an impossible angle. The vamp lost his balance and stumbled back and as quick as a flash Peter slit his throat open. His knife was no more than a glint of sunlight. The vamp’s hands went to his neck and I shot him three times driving him to his knees. Peter looked at me with scorn and then cracked his neck and set off down the street.

  We found our little group of vampires clustered around a trio of bodies, two of the General’s vamps and one of theirs, all twitching on the pavement. “Any get away,” Peter asked. In answer they shrugged. He glowered and then left the bodies in the street and we made our way back to the house fire and the pen of humans. As we approached a wailing cut through the air and the whimpering of the humans intensified, Peter broke into a trot despite his injuries and we burst into the pen running through a ragged hole in the chain fling fence cut by flying debris from the mortar blast. The air was dense with acrid smoke. Through it I could make out the other half of our squadron two of them on their knees while the other two stood smoking cigarettes. Peter groaned and then sprinted forward with a speed that belied his huge frame. He kicked one of the kneeling vampires in the chest without even slowing. The vampire flew through the air and landed on his side with a shriek. Blood spurted from his mouth as he crashed into the ground. Then Peter pulled the other vampire back by the shoulders sending him scooting on his backside through the mud. Their eyes flashed angrily, and their fingers twitched as they got to their feet. The one who’d been kicked had his arm wrapped around his ribs and he asked, “What gives Peter?”

  “You’re fools. You know how it works. You know what Benjamin’s orders are.” He bent down beside the man they’d been feasting on and wrapped a hand around his neck. “You’ve drained him. Feed on the children if you have to.” He pointed a finger at the huddled mass of naked whimpering bodies coalesced in one corner of the fenced compound. They stood barefoot in the muddy slop like groups of pale mushrooms. A few women stood with babes in their arms and infants wrapped around their ankles and a few men stood sullenly but the majority formed a clutch of dark-haired grimy children. The biggest ones wore snarls slashed across their faces and their hateful dark eyes looked out across the matted hair of the smaller ones who they shoved to the edge of their little circle. Their backs were to a chain link fence, but they did not attempt to run. They squinted at the men who were with us but did not say anything. “We can’t take these brats with us, suck them dry and leave the men who can carry a rifle for Benjamin to decide what to do with.” He knelt drank from the man’s body then rolled it over before getting up. Then he walked off towards the still burning house and the structures around it and the men that were with us accompanied him leaving the vamps to shuffle around until he was well and gone before they again approached the clutch of humanity backed against the fence. I felt as if I were watching from underneath a shawl or from huddled under a clutch of bushes as if there was an invisible barrier between me and the events that were occurring and if I broke that barrier something awful would happen to me. The children had packed themselves into a single moving mass that was constantly undulating and overturning like the water under a waterfall. Bursts of machine gun fire rang out in the air from the General’s vamps’ main outpost. The vampires approached the children slowly so as not to spook their prey each approaching from a different direction in order to cut off any attempt at escape. The mass of children slid slowly along the fence as they jostled for position, the bigger ones shoving the smaller ones to the edge of the circle, then others took their places and the ones on the edges desperately tried to shove or climb their way into the mass of flesh. I watched frozen. My mind felt completely disconnected from my body. The humans stank of blood, sweat, mud, shit, and piss. Many were naked or wore nothing but a rag around their genitals.

  I didn’t move when the one that approached from the right darted forward and snatched up a little boy on the edge of the group. The group immediately dashed away to another corner of the lot as the three vampires converged on the catch. They didn’t try to escape through the torn fence even though the vamps were no longer paying any attention to them. The little boy squealed and kicked as the vamp lifted him and slashed his throat open with one quick snap of his fangs. The squeals momentarily transformed into wail like a bunny caught by a dog in the brush that burnt through my frozen haze before it filled with gurgling. The vampire held the slumping youth over his mouth by a clump of his long raggedy hair and let the blood spray all over his face and into his mouth. It ran down his checks, down his neck, down his arms and stained his shirt until his pale face was bright red with two glowing eyes. The scent of the blood filled the air and my stomach clenched and my hands trembled. I salivated. The other two vamps clamored around him, but he ignored them, bathing in the fresh blood until its stream diminished to nothing more than a few drips. Then he threw the boy to the ground and licked his lips. His body thudded against the ground gruesomely and then lay there crumpled and denigrated. The remainder of the children did not run or scream even then. The men watched with horror and the women clutched their babes even closer to their quivering frames, but no one moved. I remained frozen in place; unable to move or act, unable to think. All I could do was feel a scream rising through my throat that battled with the hunger for blood that welled up from my twisting stomach. The two unquenched vampires plucked up two children that had slumped near the edge of the group while the tallest boy glared defiantly and shoved other children between him and the vamps. When the third child had fallen to the ground drained the vamps moved
to the edge of hole in the fence and began to bargain amongst themselves for the privilege to remain as a guard over their treasure. I was finally able to move. I turned and walked out with the muddy slop of the containment pit sucking at my boots. I did not look at the vamps as I passed them. I did not look backwards at the children. I did not look forward at the shattered street. I heard someone ask where I was going but I did not answer. As soon as I was outside of the fence I began to run and I flew down through the shadows along the streets, not slowing until I moved between the thick trunks of trees away from the remnants of man’s golden years.

  Surprisingly, I was not followed, and I stopped and sat with my back leaned against the smooth trunk of a tall tree surrounded by its jutting roots. I pulled my knees up close to my chest against the chill of the land. As soon as I stopped, I slumped over trembling willing myself to weep but unable to do so. I closed my eyes and I saw the clustered children. Only the whites of their eyes had been clean so different from those children that played in the dirt lanes and the pastures of the village. My brother had given them hope. Thoughts of my brother led to visions of my mother’s bullet torn head lying on the ground. She’d told us to take care of one another, but she’d always had unrealistic expectations of our devotions to one another and to humanity.

  My brother had given them all hope. He’d given the men and the pretty ladies in their rough spun dress’s homes. He’d given the children the ability to play even though vampires patrolled amongst them. The people there were able to walk in the open, keep crops and tend to the sick that huddled around the hearth until their fevers had burnt off. They were able to bury their dead and say their last respects, not just leave their corpses to be defaced by the creatures of the forest and the elements. My brother had given them that. My brother had given me the farm and the wind rustling through the corn, the quiet nights and Mary’s smile. Despite the vamps there had been calm, love and happiness there.

  Benjamin had given them hope, even those that had only heard of him, he’d given me hope and then he’d stripped me of that hope. Was my brother not a monster as evil as those we marched against? Was a rigged lottery of vampirism less cruel than a pen of human meat? Was their hope for the future enough to keep them from stirring against the specter of death that constantly hung over their own lives? The ambassador had been created by men to kill men and yet somehow, he seemed more innocent than my brother and his plans. The women and men struggled and screamed as they were drained and turned or killed, while the rest of the camp lay in their beds with the covers pulled over their heads to block out the horrors that they allowed in exchange for a bit of peace, in exchange for the promise of a life that did not consist of constantly running and hiding. The sins of the fathers were still being applied to the sons even to the fifth generation and how much would I suffer as I wandered the earth continuing the destruction of humanity.

  The children floated in front of me. Those in the camp with wide curious eyes indifferent to vampires but moved by their mother’s scolding and those in the pen with their bloated stomachs, all appeared to me. So many children were hungry, naked, forgotten, and dead. I shook. I fell to the ground, gagging even as I needed and desired their blood. Faces floated in front of me accusing, my mother, Mary, Abdul, the children. I was responsible for them. Their blood was on my hand. There were no signs in these visions only the desperate realization that nothing of the world or beyond it had a care for me or any of the other men who scrabbled along the earth’s surface through the world’s forests and ruins. Dogs barked, coyotes yipped, and birds chirped and from the town gunshots still raged. Everything continued oblivious to my inaction.

  A cold wind whipped through the air shaking the bare branches overhead and rustling the leaves around me. My eyes and face were as dry as the leaves that blew against my leg. I stood. My body moved automatically without thought. I saw the world, but I did not process. A vague thought crawled across my mind. The preacher had sent Mary to her death for his own ends. I shook it away and began to walk back towards the town. A blanket of high grey clouds was rolling in from the west scattering the sun’s light so that I squinted as I emerged from the forest into the overgrown neighborhoods on the town’s edge. I didn’t think about what I would do. I didn’t think about what I should do. I only moved as if I was possessed as if I was no longer in control of my body. A great orange fire burning near the river was sending black smoke billowing into the air. As I walked, I reloaded the clip of my rifle and checked the chamber. I felt cool and still.

  I moved slowly but firmly down the street making my way carefully around the craters and the shattered block. A young vampire sat with his back to the gap of the fence smoking a cigarette. He looked up at me but didn’t say anything to me and he dropped his cigarette butt and went back running the toe of his boot through the coating of dirt that had washed onto the pavement as I passed. I walked over to the still smoldering pile of charred wood and melted plastic that had been a house before. The embers glowed orange and black and seemed to breathe with the wind. I breathed deeply of the smoky air and clutched my rifle to my chest. I turned back to the vamp sitting tensely at the human’s pen. “Where’d the rest of them go?” I asked.

  He looked at me insolently then pointed off towards the sounds of the battle to the south. “They went to help root out the last of the bastards that way.” When he’d finished, I swung my rifle up in the blink of an eye and shot him in the head before he had a chance to move. His body fell slowly forward like a tree toppling and he landed face down on ground. He never even made a sound. I let out a deep breath. His head looked like a bashed in melon, all jagged edges of white skull peeking through a pulpy mixture of blood and brains. I flipped him over and searched his pockets coming away with a pistol, a second rifle, ammo, and a knife, then left him there to rot.

  I entered the pen slowly trying not to breathe in the scent of the humans who stood trembling at my approach near the four corpses that lay discarded in the torn-up mud. Once again, the scrambling began with the most powerful shoving the weaker to the edges. The smaller ones ran around the group wearing the expressions of frightened calves, wide eyes and open mouths, their breath erupting from in fitful spurts that quickly disseminated into the air as they tried to find somewhere to enter the group. The entire mass of humans quivered in an undulating rhythm that quickened as I stepped slowly towards them. I held my arms open and my rifle by the barrel to show them that I meant no harm and said, “Hi.” The only responses I received were eyes that blinked at me with fear and curiosity or teeth bared at me in snarls. I focused on one woman who had two children clutching her legs and one in her arms. She glared at me with one-part defiance and one-part desperation. “Go north,” I said slowly and clearly pointing behind me towards the village. There was no response except for wailing from some of the smaller children, the rest watching me warily but having quieted. “There you can find a place away from vampires.” Still I received no response. “Follow the river. Then take a stream that branches off at a silver rock hanging out into the water with a stumpy tree with a thick trunk growing on its top. I will catch up with you if I can.” I pointed with more emphasis and startled those nearest me into to running to the back of the group on the verge of tears. “Go,” I said louder and stomped my foot. “Get out of here. There’s nothing keeping you here.” My face began to burn, and my eyes felt as if they’d been doused with scalding salty water. I ran at the group hissing and yelling with my teeth bared wishing that my fangs had come in. As one they whimpered, cried, and snapped at me. Despite my roars they took no more than a couple of steps away from me and scrambled for their positions within the group. I ran at them again screaming until my throat hurt trying to herd them to the torn fence, but they wouldn’t budge. Some fell to the ground hunkered down arms over their head.

  I fell to my knees so hard that the impact jarred my neck. The cold ground numbed my kneecaps through my jeans as I kneeled with my hands clasped before me as if I was p
raying, wishing for tears to run down my face, unable to believe my grief without that human exhibition. I grabbed a handful of dirt and ground it into my face trying to cover the scent of the men. Even then I ached for their blood. The humans watched me puzzled, returning to their calmer state as I did nothing but collapse onto the ground in convulsions of dry sobs and stare into the blue sky. They were just children. They were born with the possibility of becoming men, but I didn’t know what they had become. Unmen. I shrieked into the air my body shaking with the effort and the humans howled and quivered, huddled together. My breath grew ragged and the ground leached my meager body heat until I was numb from head to toe, and my eyes were so dry that the world appeared to me in splintered gray fragments of hazy vision. After a time, my lamentations petered out and I stood wearily pushing myself up with the butt of my rifle. I stared at the greasy haired blue-eyed men, women and children lolling at me through terrified eyes and burnt with a mixture of loathing, hatred, and pity. I charged at them again roaring and firing my rifle into the air. They started at the shots and I reached out as if I was trying to grab one of the taller boys. He shoved a small girl to the ground as he pushed himself through the group away from me, but the group moved with him as if they were all connected. I pursued him and the whole conglomeration moved, pulling, and jerking in starts and stops. Eventually I herded them out of the fence and then I stopped.