A blurry light hung in the darkness on the east side of the river, dripping with humidity and flickering with the spastic longings of the mosquitoes and beetles that courted its rays. The beams slid down the river creating a shining path through the twisted shadows of the trees that hung along the bank. The river was as smooth as a highway and the air was heavy. I sat in the front of the boat watching the sickly green moon float across the sky and cast its reflection onto the river. The ambassador paced with his hands behind his back, his boots clapping against the deck in loud rhythmic patterns. Birds cried out and darted into the night at our passing and snakes tumbled from branches into the river adding their splashes to the lapping of the water against the banks. All the ceaseless movements of nature coalesced into the creaking of the earth as it rolled through time, but over it all burst the ambassador’s footfalls in military precision, as if he comprised an invading army.
When the ambassador saw the light, he stopped and then peered at it cursing softly under his breath. It was the final outpost, the edge of the General’s regime, though far within the borders of what the General claimed as the territory of New America. As far as I knew there wasn’t anyone to stop the General from laying claim to the entire world. No one to challenge him.
We pulled up to a short pier adjacent to a small square wood board house and a middle-aged vamp standing at its end tied us off once the boat had been settled gently into place. Abdul barked a perfunctory greeting at the vampire but stood staring into the wilderness up the river for a few minutes after Bart and the outpost vampire had already disappeared into the house. Fast paced acoustic guitar rattled out of the house and into the night. I’d never thought it fair that vampires could co-opt everything worthwhile about life and yet still not be human. Thralls I could forgive. They were like any mindless beast with only their focused desires driving them, but vampires would drain you and then sit around reading if they had the chance. The Ambassador seemed to scorn that behavior as much as I did.
After a while he stepped off onto the dock and I dutifully followed. My eyes burnt with exhaustion and the ceaseless winds of the boat’s travels. We entered the small cabin and the music died as another middle-aged bodied vamp stood and leaned his guitar against the wall with a ringing clank. The ambassador waved him back to a sitting position and took a seat at the wobbly table in the center of the room. I followed him uncertain of what I was expected to do. It seemed obvious that I should remain within sight of Abdul, but the stares of the other three vampires were unnerving and Abdul was ignoring me. The two vampires who manned the outpost were named Tim and Ricky and did not seem to have changed much from their human states. They were both large and blocky men with blue eyes and dull blond hair and were wearing cowboy boots, thick leather belts with garish belt buckles, and cowboy hats over black button down shirts that had flames running down the sleeves from their collars. They’d stacked the walls of the room with bright red cases of Budweiser and the table was already littered with empty cans. I wondered if the vamp back in St. Louis was aware of their stash. Bart was happy to be with vampires who were not as reticent as the ambassador and began talking with them, and they quickly warmed and passed around cans of beer to everyone, although Abdul had had to point at me before I was included. I watched them carefully as I took a sip of the lukewarm beverage. The resident vampire pair was odd; they could have almost passed for humans by their behavior and even wore frazzled beards that covered their faces. Vampires were unable to grow hair and most shaved soon after turning, but these two vamps had kept theirs and had even gone so far as to oil them in their efforts to hang on to the growth that they had brought with them once they’d been turned. Though the beards had grown ragged and were starting to show patches, with their bearded round red faces and the big goofy grins under the brims of their cowboy hats they looked like men who’d survived physically unscathed from before the crazy times.
Ricky pulled out a deck of cards and they bandied around the idea of playing poker for a while as the Ambassador sat sipping his beer quietly his eyes distant, and I avoided looking at anyone. “Really need a fourth for a good game,” Tim said as he shuffled the deck, the cards snapping together like a fan whirring and he glanced at Abdul who’d leaned back and put his feet up on the table. He had one hand curled
