Turned

myself up awkwardly with my joined hands under the watchful eyes of the vampires sitting in the bed of the truck and froze.  I was paralyzed like a deer caught in headlights by the light rising from the bluff, oblivious to the truck’s frequent swerves, as I stared past the vampire who’d never left St. Louis, sitting across from me wearing an amused and slightly proud smile on his face before he turned and gave the city a glance.  I was as spell bound as a man witnessing the works of gods, like a man approaching the altar of his god.  More lights then I’d seen cumulatively, all burnt together in one location, huddled together turning the bottoms of the clouds that drifted over them orange and pink.  I sat staring in the face of what the old woman, my mother, and even random passersby to avoid, that which men had been forced to forsake, the lost habitat of men, the giant steel buildings, dark and gray, stark against the night sky, glittering in the lights that shined underneath them, dark hulking masses of the past, their bases crowded with thousands of electric lights burning white and hot, the headlights of cars and trucks moving in front of them, mingling with the stationary light of dwellings, and then crossing the darkness.  From our position several miles away it appeared as I had always envisioned it, as it had awoken me with terrors sweating in the night, a giant swarming hive with vampires walking briskly in and out of buildings, rushing down streets and upstairs, speeding into the night in their automobiles and bringing back their human victims to share with one another in their vampiric city.  I trembled. They were going to eat me alive.  Yet beneath the fear, there lay a layer of wonder and away and jealousy of the profligate electricity and machinery that these vampires had leeched away from human civilization just as they leeched their very lives from men.  As I absorbed it all one of the flying machines must have taken off because I could make out a flashing light rising from the city that circled around the tall buildings and then headed east.

I swallowed trying to lubricate my dry throat and wondering at my audacity.  “How many?”  I paused a moment sorting through the words in my head and recalling the word people before it spouted fragrantly from my lips.  “Vampires live in that city?”  I didn’t know why but the question had become imperative.  My entire life had been spent wandering through a desolate, rotting countryside, going months without seeing man or vampire, avoiding both when at all possible and taking great pains to not become either’s prey, and yet while that life had been hard it had been manageable, but the sight of just one city containing thousands of vamps towered over that control like a wave.  Even if there had been a way to escape in that moment it would have been impossible to go back to my life of foraging in the shadows of this shining monstrosity. Unless one fled to the frigid corners of the north there was no escape from their sheer numbers, no choice but to turn a blind eye to the inevitability of the extinction of the human race, when all of the world would be cold vampires crawling along its surface desperate for blood, growing weaker and weaker.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry your tasty little head about that,” said the one who’d married his high school sweetheart, “but I’d say a hundred thousand at least.  I’m sure the whole city will want to introduce themselves to you personally.  Wild blood is rare around here.  Got a bit more kick to it than the farmed variety.  A little bit of spice from the varied diet.”  The city’s lights had brightened as we drew nearer and washed out his pale speckled face and caused the tips of his fangs to glint like stars.  As we descended the bluff towards the city that sat astride the black Mississippi winding through its center and dividing the lit side from the empty dark side across the water I spied an arch, white like a sun-bleached bone against the dark water, rising in such a graceful curve that I gasped and everything else fell away.  I could understand my mother’s sense of loss, her eagerness to point out the useless relics of society like speakers, fish tanks, ATMs and countless other hunks of rusting metal and sagging plastic that littered the houses and streets that we’d wandered, each one spurring her into a wistful and enthusiastic descriptions of their forgotten uses.  Even though she’d only been a little girl at the advent of the crazy years this world with its buildings that rose like giant legs disappearing into the sky had always maintained its hold on her.  I could scarcely breathe from the weight of loss settled over me as I examined thousands of lights clustered at the bases of those monoliths of previous glory.

The roar of another engine came up behind us as a low car approached us, its engine growling in the night.  A wave of panic swept over me at its approach as the combination of the might of the vampire city that I was descending into and the mystery of my brother’s involvement settled into my mind and left only the sickening question of my role and the surety that if I did not meet the vamps’ expectations I would be drained to death or worse.  Even squinting I couldn’t make anything out inside the red car until it pulled up beside us and a vampire woman with an angular face leaned out of the window and shouted something at our driver.  Then the car burst ahead of us, gunning its engine, and wound its way down to the city ahead of us leading with one red taillight.

We had slunk into the city from