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,
