I started to walk away, holstering my warm pistol, and allowing my trembling heart to settle as I caught my breath when I heard a low rumbling to the west. I froze. I had never heard a sound like it before, a throbbing that shook the earth in a regular pulsation like a group of giants galloping in the distance. It seemed to come from all directions at once. I crouched beside a tree trunk shaking and watching for the source of the sound which grew louder and crisper. As it neared it was topped with the hiss of wind. I thought perhaps it was the beginning rumblings of an earthquake and did not know if I should leave the tree or not before an olive-green machine low over the treetops floated into view. It had the face and body of a locust but with two stunted wings. Its whirring black blades were blurred in the pale blue sky and the sun glared off its windshield as it twisted slowly back and forth. I squatted beside the tree hugging it with my cheek pressed hard against its rough bark. I was unable to move as the fabled flying machine from before the crazy times flew closer and closer until it hung almost directly overhead. Its roar blocked out all other sound and it whipped the dried leaves into a frenzy around me. They stung as they pelted my face. Through squinted eyes I could make out vampiric faces peering down from a door slid back along the machine’s rounded metal body. They pointed at the cul-de-sac and the machine twisted slowly and then flew ungainly towards the houses I’d just left. As soon as the door had turned away and been replaced by its tail I bolted briefly wondering if this was somehow my brother’s doing. A shout popped in the air just audible over the machine’s wind and the hum of its engines. I drove my legs as hard as I could as I ran.
It turned ponderously and followed as I ran madly splashing through the waters of a small creek as if I could throw it off my scent. It circled overhead if it briefly lost sight of me under the trees until I reemerged and then it raced across the sky until it was over me again. Every second that passed I expected them to shoot and leave me bleeding on the ground until they came to drain me or to hurl themselves from its belly and drag me to the ground in one leap. The sun was on the final leg of its decent and is orange and red light was crosshatched by the tree’s shadows. I cast my mind back and forth desperately trying to think of any way to elude the vamps before nightfall descended. My throat burned with each breath and my lungs felt squeezed. My heart palpitated. I knew of no nearby caves and certainly none that were anything more than dead end traps. There was a river nearby, but they would have followed me even me more easily along its course. I could see no option, so I just ran on.
A slight movement in the branches ahead of me was my only warning and I flung myself to the ground as a vampire hurled himself out of the trees and flew right over me. I got up and ran off tangentially, but a second vampire, a tall male with long scraggly hair and a face like old leather, stepped into my path. He held a rifle with an extremely long barrel. I turned but the other was now behind me and a third grinning broadly emerged from the trees to my right. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks as I jerked my pistol free. Over twenty years I had managed to escape the vampires and now I was to be turned or drained to the death. I started to lift the pistol, whether to fight or to escape my fate I didn’t consider and then his rifle cracked in the air. The sound was weaker than a gunshot and of a sharper pitch. I felt a prick in my calf and then an icy pain began to spread rapidly up my leg. When I looked, I saw a dart quivering there and I said, “What” aloud. The vampires laughed as my muscle’s strength abandoned me and I tumbled to the ground feeling as if I were floating. Darkness crashed across my eyes in strengthening waves and then I lost consciousness.
A jarring vibration that had numbed my mouth shook me slowly awake, but I remained still
