“You know, they would never admit it, but some time ago someone escaped from the Tunnels, hungry as hell. God knows how, but they ended up just outside Radcliff where I, poor sod, just happened to be visiting a farm building I’d bought to convert into housing. I never saw him, don’t know to this day what he looked like; he must have come up behind me. I remember it still, my last moments alive. I was making my way back to the beat-up Vauxhall I used to take on jobs and the next thing I knew my face was in the mud and a great weight was on top of me. I struggled as best I could, hitting out at his body and tearing at his clothing, but the shock of the attack and the draining of my blood from my body prevented me from doing anything much but spill my blood over the ground. After he’d almost finished the job, his hunger must have been sated enough that he realised what he was doing; the fool stopped drinking and started instead to sob. There I was dying before him and all he could do was cry and apologise for what he’d done; he did nothing to help me or even make me feel more comfortable in my final moments.
“I still had enough strength in me to turn my head to try to see if I could catch a glimpse of the pathetic creature, but he was standing just beyond the end of my feet; all I could make out was his general form. He started up again, choking out that he was sorry for what he’d done. He had never meant to hurt me, he spluttered, but the hunger had overtaken him and there was nothing he could do. He even had the audacity to claim that though what he said probably made no sense, I would understand what he had meant soon enough. He was wrong.
“He ran away, still distraught at what he’d done to me and adding further apologies, just as the light of the day was starting to fade. I think I lived on, bleeding slowly into the ground, for a good few hours. I read later in the local paper that a builder I’d asked to come and look at the place had found my body the next day, my face lying in the mud.”
Amanda tried her best to think of something to say to console the man, but the only things that came to her mind were questions about his attack. A couple of times she stopped herself from letting a question spill out from her lips, causing her to produce sharp inhalations of breath, but Milch paid her no regard as the telling of how he had become a vampire had left him drained and concerned only with how miserable he thought his life to be. As Milch sank deeper into his usual circuit between thoughts of self-loathing, hatred of the man who had turned him into a vampire and recognition of how he despised all vampire-kind, he forgot that Amanda was even there. As a consequence, he caught nothing but the sound of Amanda’s words when she finally asked a question.
“What?” he spat out.
“When did it happen?” repeated Amanda.
“Who keeps track of time when you’re dead?” said Milch. “Why don’t you go back to your school; they probably know better than me.”
“Just roughly then.”
Milch ran one of his hands across his face and then once again through his remaining hair as he pondered over how to get rid of the girl so he could return to his own business.
“A decade or so I guess,” he finally said with a grunt of exasperation.
“And…” started Amanda.
“Look, weren’t you about to leave?”
“Just one more thing, I promise. How do you know that it was someone from the Tunnels?”
With this question, Amanda finally caught Milch’s full attention. Indeed, the man shot up from the ground and gruffly shouted: “What the hell do you mean coming here and asking me that? You’re no different from the rest of them! Why don’t you just get out my life and get back to your damn school!”
Amanda took several steps back from Milch. She was so shocked by his reaction to her question that she did not pay any attention to what she was doing and almost tripped over a small clump of dead animals that had built up away from Milch’s main refuse pile. However, Milch made no effort to come any closer to her and just stood on the spot, his eyes to the ground, breathing at far too rapid a pace. Though she felt a strong urge to leave the forest and Milch behind, when it became clear that the man had no intention of doing anything much, she repressed this desire and instead decided to listen again to her curiosity.
“Sorry, Johann, I didn’t mean to suggest that I didn’t believe you…”
“I said, why don’t just leave!” choked out Milch.
Amanda tentatively took a step towards Milch with her hands held open before her. “Look, I honestly don’t know what this is about, I just want to get whatever information I can. I tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. Just tell me – on your own terms – why you know this guy came from the Tunnels, and I’ll do exactly what you want: I’ll leave.”
For what seemed like a gruelling eternity to Amanda, though it was only really a few moments, Milch did nothing but remain standing, with his whole body clenched, seemingly ready to strike out. When he finally relaxed, a smile of relief emerged on Amanda’s lips as she knew he would tell her what she wanted to know. Milch once again sat down on his patch of dry earth, grumbling to himself about Amanda
