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
