The moans released us from our trembling stupor, and we bolted down the path, painfully aware that our scent was as tantalizing to the thralls as meat on a fire. The Hunger upon conversion is said to be overwhelming. Luckily, the terrain was favorable for quick travel. A wide forest of oaks and poplars grew along the slopes of soft low mountains and their shadows kept the undergrowth sparse. The carpet of previously shed leaves required some caution, but the falls had not yet fallen and those of previous years had mostly disintegrated or been stamped into the earth. After an hour of alternating trotting and walking we came across my brother sitting on a ragged stump eating granola bars. He pulled a couple out of his pack and tossed them to us. The packaging glinted in the light and crinkled as I caught it. I ripped off the wrapper and shoved it into my pocket. The chocolate aroma drove away the musty smell of the forest’s shadows. Its rich and sensual scent caused instant salivation. The granola was beeswax yellow and comprised of shiny little clusters of perfectly shaped grains that surrounded the dark chunks of chocolate. I enjoyed the aroma momentarily of a food as sinful and as luxurious as blood, and then I devoured it. My mother clenched hers in one small hand and stared at the ground as a bead of sweat ran through a wrinkle along her forehead. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and an ill looking sheen clung to her skin.
“Must be about ten of them after us now,” I said as my brother took a gulp of water from his canteen, swished it around in his mouth, spat and then stood up.
We continued to run at a moderate pace until only a sliver of red clung to the horizon and the world had fallen into a grey shadow that tricked our eyes into believing that they could still see adequately. Then we slowed to a walk as Benjamin led us off the deer trail. We descended into a holler whose steep slopes were jutted with rocks between patches of gnarly rhododendron and tawny grasses. A spring ran down the holler’s center before running off out of the mountains to meet the river somewhere. About halfway down the slope was broken by a ridge and we moved along it is climbing a little bit amongst a cluster of oaks. Where the slope joined with the ridge, we came across the entrance to a cave which was little more than a hole. It’s deeper shade of black differentiated it from the shadows. My brother crouched down and stuck his head in the cave’s mouth, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he crawled inside. A moment later the shrill cries of bats roared up at us, deepened and magnified by their echoes through the underground vault. My mother shrank back as the hairy bests erupted from the ground swirling like a current of wind, before their grey bodies disappeared into the darkness. Benjamin called out that the cave was clear, his words indistinct, and blurred and I waved my mother in first. She stopped bent with age, crouched at its entrance, and peered back into the forest as furtively as a rat in front of its hole. I realized then that I could not remember a time when her hair had not hung like a silver veil around her face. I had always thought of it is as a sign of her dignity and wisdom but then it seemed only the inevitable encroachment of age.
As we descended into the cave a deep dank darkness sucked us up. We turned a corner and the corridor opened up to a height in which we could walk, and the lack of light became so total it was as if our eyes had suddenly been bound. We stumbled down the cave’s slope with only the dim yellow beam of an electric lamp that my brother shined up
