We found a wide concrete road that wound its way northward through the forests. The trees grew right up to the edges of the bleached pavement, their roots penetrating into the soil underneath the highway, mounding it in rows as if an extraordinary mole had tunneled through it. It rose and buckled, cracking like a picture frame, splintering away from the roots, weeds and saplings growing in the cracks. Potholes that had sunk into the center of the pavement filled with puddles of water which left behind a gritty sand as they dried out and refilled again and again, that gave dandelions and other plants purchase. Many trees had fallen across the roads, felled by wind and rain, unmanned barricades except for the vines that wound the length of the trunks and sent serpentine tendrils to probe the pavement’s strength. Copious deer droppings showed that the road was frequently travelled by animals but still nature did her best to destroy it.
I sat in the center of that white path that sparkled lightly in the dimness of twilight until it vanished into the green and black shadows that lay both north and south. Our camp, two bed rolls, was set up on the pinnacle of a small hump covered in briars, weeds, and trees. A large fire crackled in the center lane warmly, sending a tall plume of smoke audaciously into the night sky as I watched large chunks of venison sizzle and spit over the flames. I was distended, bloated, stupid with meat as I tried to cook as much as I possibly could before the morning when we’d travel again. Abdul had brought the deer to me as I’d rested beneath a tree, its throat trailing blood behind him as it lay limply over his shoulder.
“How did you catch it?” I asked seeing no gunshot wound across its smooth brown body. He smiled.
“Like a panther. I spotted it standing in the edge of a clearing and I stalked it. I could have reached out and lay my hand on its flank before it would have realized I was there, but instead I tackled it. Then I seized it by the neck and deflecting its hooves with the other hand lifted it up and he snapped his teeth together and then jerked them to one side. He rolled back his sleeves displaying a mass of yellow flesh with a grin, and then ruined it by saying, “It did not taste very good. It is too bad you cannot feast like I do my friend, your searches through dusty stores slows us. Already the nights begin to make me sluggish.”
He lay the doe down on the highway in front of me and walked a few paces beyond our camp muttering to himself about time and disapproval. Then he announced that he would scout, and he flew away along the highway almost too fast to follow.
Despite his goading assurances of satisfaction with his diet his sharp eyes often chilled me as they followed me, tracing my neck with keen interest, but not so much as my mind’s newfound complacency with this true nature. After our travels together there were times when I had to forcibly remind myself that he was not human. Many irritations plagued us both; mosquitoes hovering over us in clouds, soles worn thin, and a sensation which I found altogether alien, but which Abdul had experienced in droves, boredom. Monotony had settled into our travels as the terror of travelling with a vampire had been eroded by days of bland walking and the realization that as long as I travelled with Abdul I need not fear any other vampires. I did not continuously worry about the dangers of visiting idle towns for supplies. My life no longer consisted of constant flight without a haven even as a fanciful destination. I managed to sleep for hours without waking to listen to the night sounds for anything amiss. All that I could worry about was the outcome of our journey and I did not agonize over it so much as the Ambassador did.
“So, what if we’re delayed,” I had asked him one night as we sat under an overpass watching a sheen of rain fall like a curtain from both sides. He frowned, then sighed settling down onto his haunches.
“The General is a hard vampire but was perhaps a harder man. Some vampires react to their transformations with an intensification of their innate cruelty, a bestial hue that is painted across their emotions but some such as the General take a more practical approach to their immortality.” I cleared my throat and he looked at me with apologetic eyes. “And they are more lenient as long as they are allowed to pursue those pleasures that remain to us. As a man, the General was constructed of rust-clad iron and flint, the originator of many sparks. His wife and children had died in a car accident while he was in Iraq, defending the desert when he should have been defending their lives he’d said. At the wake he’d stood like a statue in his polished uniform shaking each hand with grim reluctance, returning each salute with a mechanical snap bereft of tears, refusing compassion. He returned to Iraq immediately following the funeral, devoting all the remained of his body and soul to the effort and a determination to seize victory from the jaws of defeat. Later he was transferred to Afghanistan where a cabal of vampires met as we conducted missions. I reveled in the companionship, I reveled in the blood. I was a lock that had each pin in place. In retrospect I let it all go to my head and only got myself taken for a ride.
