I came out of the water dripping, with her eyes on me, and gathered my clothing.
“I don’t have any food,” I said as I checked my pack and my pistol.
She jostled her bags at me with a crackle. “I can take care of myself boy; it’s you that I’m worried about. It was mighty easy sneaking up on you.” I ignored her as I took my dry clothing from my pack and replaced it with my wet set.
“Which way you headed? She asked.
“Don’t know. Just thought I’d head that way,” I’d pointed to the north east. “Trying to find somewhere that hasn’t been looted yet.”
She’d squinted hard at me as I’d pointed. Her face was creased and wrinkled, ridged and valleyed, her skin was as dark as the night, and her lips looked as if they’d deflated over the years. Her eyes almost disappeared amongst all the bags, flaps and wrinkles that were squished together when she squinted. Her voice was quieter when she spoke again, and she wove her enormous hands together in front of her face with a crinkling of their attached bags, as if to steady them. “There’s nothing that way but vamps.”
“Vamps? Really. I haven’t seen any in weeks.”
She shrugged, but her eyes widened, the whites intense in the sunlight and her pupils almost disappeared. “There’s vamps up there, mark my words, an entire city of them.” I began pulling on my clothes even though she seemed harmless and she went on her eyes losing their intense focus.
“I was up that way a few years ago near St. Louis. It used to be a big city before the crazy times. I was near out of my mind with hunger and I ignored advice. ‘Stay away from cities, they’re always searched’ that’s what everyone had always told me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even make it to the city though before I had some sense scared back into me. At night I could see lights that burning all evening. Car lights ran back and forth along the roads and lights flashed on the bottoms of planes. The place was crawling with vamps like ants crawling in and out of their nest. I lay along the roadside and watched them roll out of the city in jeeps. Each jeep carried standing on the bumpers and hanging off the backs. Their pale skin was ghastly in the moonlight. When the wind blew up from the city, I thought I could make out a dim wailing like a thousand children quietly sobbing. That sent a chill down my spine that has never been matched and I’ve faced a made.” I scoffed at the concept of a made even more than her boast of facing one, but she didn’t seem to care. “When I got the opportunity, I slipped away from the city and I ain’t never going back.” She looked at me expectantly and said, “and I’m still alive ain’t I?” balling up a fist and holding it over her chest as if preparing to beat on it, but she didn’t, she just let it slowly drift back down to her waist under the weight of the bags. Her face reddened and a brief tremble rippled down her body but I all I could see was my mother burning with the thrall sickness superimposed over her image. I shook my head and picked up my bag.
“Even my elders can make mistakes,” I’d said quietly, and she burst into a guffaw so loud that I looked around worriedly as birds flew to more distant perches and screeched into the air.
“You’re right boy, you’re right. And you may just be smarter than I’d thought. Still, if I was you, I’d stay away from St. Louis.” She opened one of her bags and pulled out a small green fruit.
“Want some crabapples?”
“Crabapple?” I said as I took the smooth hard fruit from her hand and looked at it.
“Yeah, crabapple. I picked em off a nice tree a couple of days ago.” She pulled another out and bit into it, so I followed suit. A crisp tartness puckered my mouth, but I finished it off, pulling all the fruit off the core with my front teeth before throwing it into the stream. The wind blew in a soft but constant breeze rustling the thin leaves of a nearby willow and pushing white clouds across the sky. I reached into my pack and pulled out a slender can of anchovies, rolled back the top and held it out to the old woman now smiling at me. She pulled a couple of the fish from the can delicately and then slurped them down. Still smiling she’d said, “Young people don’t know shit.”
Sitting in the back of the truck as it flew down the highway faster than I’d ever traveled and staring the blond vampire in the face, I realized that the elderly woman had spoken the truth and now I was headed for the vampire city. Bats dive bombed the truck’s headlights and deer stood petrified in the bushes along the side of the road as we passed. I’d never ridden in any kind of car before, though when we’d been young my mother had often looked into their cabs and checked their steering columns, floorboards and behind the puffy backed mirrors that were pushed against their roofs for keys. She’d also sniff the gas tanks but even if she found keys, she’d only ever started one car. Instead she would just ramble on at our camp that night about how we could drive west to California, live on the ocean, and never walk again, except through Disneyland. As a little girl she’d dreamed of Disneyland, and begged to visit, but her parents had never taken her. The one vehicle that she’d started was a small black truck with a windshield that had been reduced
