Turned

my head to search all around me.  Finally, my fear subsided, and I stood but as I did so a tall and skinny vampire flew out of the underbrush.  The bushes rattled and shook off dried leaves as I stood momentarily stunned.  Then instinct took a hold of my legs and I dashed out of the stream up the other bank leaving a spray of water in my wake.  The vampire practically leapt into the stream with a great splash, but I was already flying through the brush on the other side screaming.  Two shots reverberated amongst the tree trunks and then a third a moment later.  I stopped and looked back and my mother stood on the other side of the stream silhouetted by trees, one arm wrapped around Benjamin, who rested on her hip with his face buried against her side and his little hands clinging to her shirt.   She held a pistol with a faint wisp of smoke trailing from its barrel in her other hand half fallen to her side.  She waved to me and I turned back towards her but as I did two thralls and a vampire burst from the woods near the creek.  The thralls turned towards me and began their elegant shuffling charges while the vampire turned towards my mother hissing as she raised her pistol again.  I turned and ran and didn’t look back as gunfire erupted behind me.  Ten shots fired in a continuous even interval and my little brother ‘s voice rose in a foreboding wail that diminished as more forest fell between us.  I ran back and forth like a deer trying to escape a cougar, zigging this way and that just as my mother had always said.  I could hear the grunts and groans of the thralls behind me as they changed their direction to follow my course.  I expected any moment to feel the cold grasp of undead hands closing around my neck and I shrieked and almost fell when a cold drop of water fell from the trees and ran down the back of my neck. As I stumbled leaves slipping out from underneath my feet I glanced backwards and caught a glimpse of the ashen faces pursuing me.  Their faces clenched in snarls. At that moment I thought they would have me and the only thought that went through my brain was that I didn’t want to drain my mother.  Just then there was a shot and my mother’s voice screaming for me to run and I regained my feet and sprinted as hard as I could towards a copse of gnarly brushy trees crouching underneath them as I ran.  I kept running and even crawled when the brush grew too thick and hung low over the ground.  I heard nothing behind me, but I didn’t trust my own ears.  Thralls can run as silently as a panther through the forest if they want.

I ran until I could no longer run and then I walked and finally I fell panting beside a tree, my body given out, unable to propel myself further even a single inch even if a vampire was right behind me.  I collapsed on the ground, chest heaving as I panted drinking in the air.  The world faded away too little more than a blur and when I finally came out of my stupor a warm humid southern night was upon me.  The forest was alive with the sounds of the night; crickets, owls, tree frogs and unidentified rustlings which I assumed were not vampires.  I got to my feet, my stomach growling.  Even at that age my mother had insisted I carry a small pack and I pulled from it a can of spaghetti o’s and a can opener.  I drained the can as I started to walk aimlessly unsure of which direction I should go.  Once I’d finished and tossed the can to the ground with a clatter I felt more hollow than when before I’d eaten and tears streamed down my face as I stood there alone in the dark world for the first time. I had no idea where to go, no idea even which direction I’d come from.  The stars appeared only in disjointed bursts between the branches giving my child’s brain no direction.  I worried that I would wander alone forever, and I wished that I had been taken by the vamps if only to avoid that fate. I must have wandered in circles then only partially aware of what I was doing through my sobs.  The day came hot and heavy and still I walked until my clothes were drenched with sweat.  I didn’t know where I was walking, and I had no idea where I should walk.  I thought perhaps I could find my mother and my brother’s body, but then I thought what if they’d been turned.  My feet kept walking even when my mind didn’t command it. Finally, I came upon an immense fallen oak with green leaves still hanging from its branches.  A huge hole had been ripped from the ground where its roots now hung exposed to the sunlight, so I climbed down into the hole and hid myself in its shadows under the roots and an overhang of earth.  I curled up into a little ball in the deepest recesses of the little pit that the tree’s roots had left behind as if I were a fox in the depths of winter and fell asleep.

I slept throughout the day and the next night, my only movement was to pull my canteen from my pack and drink the remainder of the water it held and then freshly roll up.  A warm rain settled over everything and little red streams of clay and rainwater ran down the sides of my pit and pooled up against me but still I didn’t move.   The outside world became little more than dull shapes, pools of color and incessant dripping. Faces appeared