“You might as well have some fun before you’re drained.” I could almost sense Abdul tensing up though he did not move from his reclined position, but then as they dealt me in, he relaxed. “Come on now boy, saddle on up to the table.” I quaked, my hand groping at my belt for the pistol that I had carried before I had been captured, then looked at the ambassador but his face provided no guidance. I scooted my chair up to the table.
“Pick up your cards,” Tim said, and I swiped them up from the tabletop. They were slick and glistened in the candlelight.
“Now that’s more like it,” Ricky said and threw me another beer as if to reward me. I cracked it and took a miniscule sip. Already the first one had gone straight to my head leaving me with a tinge of worrisome dizziness.
After a couple of rounds Ricky got up and disappeared outside, returning a few moments later with strips of smoky meat in his hands. “Try this,” he said and gave some to everyone. I shuddered. I’d never heard of vamps eating human flesh but that was all I could imagine. The vamps grunted appreciatively as they chewed, the strips dangling from their mouths.
“Deer meat,” he said grinning and biting off a hunk himself, chewing it noisily in between sentences. I tasted my own piece, chewing it slowly and carefully. It was salty and smoky, and the juices ran across my tongue like my own sweat. “I set myself some corn out across the river.” He pointed as if he were about to tip his hat. “Deer love it. Then I wait and POW,” he mimed shooting. “Delicious deer meat. Wish I had a freezer though, but I smoke it up real nice and it keeps.” He paused as he took another bite then asked with a wad of meat in one cheek. “You boys got freezers down in St. Louis, that’s what I heard.”
Bart leapt in. “There are some freezers at Fort Dix, but the power’s pretty sporadic.” Abdul had taken his boots down off the table, looked around drearily and then he stood and walked out waving to me to remain seated. I tensed. Ricky dealt another hand and the games continued. I glanced back and forth at their wan faces, a little slackened from the beer that they were rapidly consuming, and repeated to myself again and again, these are vampires, as my mind swam in the warmth, the beer and the laughter that rounded the table. They played hand after hand and I grew tired and the edges of objects in my vision grew fuzzy. Through the haze it seemed as if we were men from a forgotten time. My eyelids drooped. I tried to snap back into the right frame of mind, recalling an odd thing that my mother had once told us. Vampires are liars and deceivers, she’d said, they’ll seduce you with the devil’s tongue. They can draw you in, bait you, tempt you with false promises, and like a tender calf at the edge of a pasture, you may follow. They are handsome, and beautiful, but rotten within; do not be deceived by their shells. It was an odd thing for her to try to instill in us, because vampires had always seemed rather straight forward about their desire to drain us, but seeing their smiling faces in the crackling light of the fire her words came back to me and though it was too late, I understood them. A brief respite from being hunted and already they were beguiling me. The room took on a sinister tint and I awakened somewhat looking from Bart’s sharp fangs to their dull ones, barely differentiated from a human’s canines. I tensed up wishing Abdul would return, and then cursed myself for placing my faith in a vampire. There was nowhere I could turn, because everywhere I was surrounded by their cunning affability. My hands were going poorly, and I began to suspect that I was being cheated out of some innate bias against what they saw as a meal.
The night was more than halfway gone and still the ambassador had not returned. My eyes were dull and heavy, dry from the fire’s smoke, and forcing them open was a struggle that had me continuously blinking. My movements felt sluggish, clumsy and all I wanted was to sleep no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was in danger. The vampires seemed to be whispering back and forth around me, or perhaps that was just how I perceived their voices. They took on the appearance of paper outlines, white and thin against the darkness of the corners of the room. The cards rasped across the table like a snake shedding its skin. They no longer dealt me in as I floated in a warm pool that blurred the edges of objects and colors together.
I awoke when the cold hand jerked me up by my jacket and drug me across the table. My face slammed into the coarse wood and slid halfway across the table before my palms pressed into it at the ends of my outstretched arms and stopped me, spread eagle in an X on the table, caught like a deer in a spotlight. The two country vamps were practically dancing around me clapping their hands and slapping each other on the back. Their blue eyes
