“I serve. I will return to base as soon as I have caught my prey.” They sniffed almost in unison and scanned the forest where I lay behind the clutch of saplings and briars.
“He is near,” the higher-ranking vampire said. “But the General will not wait. Blood will be warmed for you.” The vamp that’d been deprived of my blood gazed in my direction with a disturbing expression of longing in his eyes and panted. “Perhaps I’ll send my thrall after him,” the depriver said tauntingly then he sniffed again, “And perhaps a hunting party as well. There’s something I don’t like about the smell of this one.” He turned and strode to the jeep with the other vamp following at his heels. When they reached the jeep, the vamp opened the backdoor and a shadow cumbersomely got out. The thrall shuffled around in the clearing drifting towards the driver’s side of the jeep. When the vampires had both sat down and the passenger had shut his door the thrall’s motions changed.
It was as if a grinding gear had finally snapped into place. Its neck and body straightened. Its shuffling stopped and it stood as motionless as a statue except for the rise and fall of its chest moving with slow but loud whistles of air through its narrow nostrils. The jeep did a tight U-turn and sped off down the cracked pavement. The vamp glared at my hiding place through his window as he passed. The thrall moved towards me, its eyes as still and dull as marbles, its arms dangling limply at its sides. It came slowly at first sniffing heavily, then it moaned and rushed forward like a slung stone. I leapt up. It snarled as it saw me. I leveled my weapon and fired two quick shots, their explosions crisp in the silent night air. The first struck just above his jaw blowing the front lower half of his face off in a shower of flesh and teeth and the second caught him in the left shoulder spinning him. It fell to its knees gurgling as it loudly spat up a mixture of yellowish bile and thick blood. It felt at its face, patting the dangling flesh tentatively, almost as if they were the hands of another body. Then it got to its feet blowing a fine bloody mist from the hole in its face as if the blow had had no effect. It turned to face me again. I stood breathing heavily as I watched it my ears keen on the receding engine noise. I considered putting another bullet through the thrall’s head just to eliminate it from the map, but it was no longer able to feed and would eventually atrophy to the point of death. As long as no one wandered into its grasp it was harmless. I holstered my weapon and turned away.
The jeep was heading in a northwesterly direction, so I headed off southbound setting a good land-eating pace as soon as my heart had stopped racing. Soon all I was concentrating on was repeatedly putting one foot in front of another as I attempted to stay on the relatively clear ground that lay underneath large pines and hardwoods instead of slogging through snake-infested tangles of weeds and brush. Even under the large trees the going was hard, and I kept a keen eye out for jutting roots as I navigated the slowly rising ground. My shirt was soon plastered to the small of my back with sweat, but I didn’t dare take to the roads. The threat of the party that might soon be hunting me loomed too large in my mind. I walked until the sun’s light drizzled down through bleak gray clouds and my legs were just short of collapsing before I lay down beside a decaying log. I slept for about an hour dreaming of the dancing silver hair of my mother.
I’d been hunted often enough before but not in the last few months and never anything as bad as the hunt which had separated my brother and I. Five years earlier my mother, my brother and I were still traveling together despite my mother claims that she had grown too old and burdensome. We’d been walking through a hilly region of hardwoods when we found ourselves trailed by a party. I’d been in my early twenties and my brother in his late teens. We were both arrogant and foolish. My mother who had been over fifty, was both wise and lucky, the eldest human I had ever known. Parties were more prevalent in those days though not as pervasive as they had been when the vampires had been systematically rounding up humans. Now the parties had grown smaller and only occasionally fanned out across the countryside searching for humans.
My mother had been something of a healer and she was known as Nurse Sue. Somehow this name never failed to bring a laugh to her eyes and a laugh from the other men and women that we met. We’d come across one such small group as we’d been hiking down the side of a hill through trees turned bright red and orange hoping for a spring. We’d spotted the group’s blatant plume of white smoke as soon as we’d topped the ridge. It circled up from a clearing and hung against a pale blue sky. My mother had insisted that we visit with them even though my brother had
