“Nah,” Abdul said, “The General has a use for him.”
“A snack.” They laughed.
I looked away from them but all I could see were the fences and the lights and the grey walls. An engine started somewhere, sputtering, and jerking before it finally caught. They weren’t just draining the humans, they weren’t just keeping them here to feast upon their blood, they were farming them, raising them for their consumption. The taste of bile rose into the back of my throat once again, but I willed it down, kept my mouth clamped tight, kept myself upright, straight-backed, despite the taste. I felt wearier than I ever had. Somehow, I felt more alone than ever before despite being closer to more humans that I’d ever imagined existed, but humans that could not speak with me, humans that could not understand me. Men and women, boys and girls who had lived their entire lives behind rusting fences, constantly under the glare of spotlights, sleeping in muddy pits, dreading the days that they’d be brought into this warehouse and strapped down while their life was slowly and forcibly taken from them.
My guide roused me from my morbid thoughts with a shove to one of my shoulders. I followed him through a gate in the fencing and we began to navigate a maze of individual cages filled with men and women in various states, some weeping, some lying dazed on the floor and others pulling against the front of their cages. The pair of vampires passed us carrying a struggling young girl the way we’d come. At an empty cage Abdul stopped and I went into the cage without even thinking. I sat down in the center of the cage as he locked it with a solid click. All around me I could hear the moans and the shuffling of the captives. The cage was pocked with rust and blackened spots, the floor was vaguely damp and stained brown. I lay on my back and closed my eyes willing it all away and fell into a sleep that I hoped I’d never wake up from.
I awoke to the soft thud of boots followed by a woman’s shrill screams from deeper within the cages. Her voice cracked intermittently, interrupting her shrieks but never halting them. They continued on as if the cracks were just glitches that once passed over the sound resumed its place without fault. They passed directly in front of my cage but I kept my eyes squeezed shut even when she managed to slip a foot free and kick a vamp in the ribs, her bare foot eliciting a curse from the struck vamp, and an admonition to go easy on the goods from another. I didn’t move even though the cuffs were digging into my cheeks, the metal right up against the bone. There was simply no use. I lay concentrating on breathing and trying to conjure up my earliest memory, a red furred mongrel, a gray trailer up on blocks with one room’s floor rotted away, a man who was not my father, or so my mother had always said, but I could never pinpoint the chronology of my first memories, they just floated in blackness. A vivid splash of color and faces that abruptly dropped into black before another emerged. My mother had said who my father was and where he was wasn’t important, he wasn’t with us and we could take care of ourselves. That had always suited me just fine, vampires were a known evil, but people, especially men, weren’t trustworthy, a fact my mother could never accept as it would have crushed her longing for the past, but during his middle childhood my brother developed an intense interest in our father, an interest that my mother usually blew off to his consternation.
I finally opened my eyes when the footfalls stopped with a slap on the concrete at my cage and the lock began to rattle. Abdul looked fleshier and ruddier than he had the night before as he unlocked the cage and swung open the door. He sighed as he looked down at me lying there and let a backpack slide off one shoulder to the floor where it landed with a clank.
“Well get up.” I stood up as he pulled a key from his pocket. He grabbed my arms roughly and twisted it in the cuffs. “At the very least you can make yourself useful,” he said pointing at the sack. I slid my arms into the straps and followed him as he glided away, never once looking back to make sure I followed. The pack was heavy and poorly packed the weight uneven and the edges of some cans pressed into my spine.
“My mission,” he said as we walked exiting the building onto a parking lot filled with jeeps and moving trucks, “is to bring you to your brother, so that you can convey the General’s demands.” The sun was low on the western horizon and the He opened the passenger door of a jeep and I climbed into a cabin reeking of the cigarette butts that had overflowed the ash tray onto the floor. He continued once he got into the driver’s seat. “As long as you are coherent, I’ve fulfilled my duty, so if you try to escape, I’ll break both of your legs and carry you there.” The jeep started with a roar and a belch of black smoke, jerked as he threw it into gear, and we pulled off. We raced past the fences, but no humans were visible
