A dim rustle went up through the squalid ramshackle huts cobbled together from particle board and sheet metal that surrounded me as men and women suspiciously peeked out for the source of the gunshot and whispered to one another about what they’d seen as they lay back down and hoped the violence would overlook them. Near the village’s center, a door slammed followed by some inarticulate yelling. I ran towards the river, my breath hanging behind me in warm tufts of air. The night was cold, but I scarcely noticed it. Soon I was at the edge of the village and running across the fields towards the copse of trees lining the river. More yells went up from behind me and someone fired a gun into the air near the site of the vampire’s dead body. I felt a dim sensation of fear, but it was overwhelmed by a feeling of release. Once again among the trees I ran along the trail towards Abdul’s cell oblivious to the darkness, my shoes slapping against the damp soil. I slowed as I drew near though there was no doubt that I was being pursued. Either my brother and his vampires or the preacher and his lackeys would want me. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my face as if to protect it against the cold and then pulled my jacket back on. The little concrete shack stood dappled by the tree’s shadows and the water stains that ran up its walls. A large vampire, tall and fat, a gray doughy monstrosity of the night squatted in front of the door shivering over a little orange fire burning fitfully on the damp ground. I walked forward at a normal pace. An owl flew across the small clearing moving like the night coalesced and the vamp stood to meet me. I held the shotgun cradled against my chest. Everything slowed to a crawl and I wondered if vampires always perceived everything at this rate. His lips moved revealing short, barely perceptible fangs. He wore a pistol on a thick leather belt at his waist, but he didn’t reach for it. He seemed sluggish. He held his hand out to halt me. I continued to walk forward whipping the gun around and pulled the trigger. The muzzle erupted in a white-hot flare. His hand shredded and his stomach was ripped open by the shot. He struggled on the ground trying to crawl and reach his gun at the same time as his mouth opened and closed silently like a fish gasping for breath. I put the gun to his head and finished him. Shouts erupted from the camp, some nearer some further. I pulled the pistol out of its holster and searched for keys. The body was revoltingly still alive in some way, the legs and arms moving slowly and the skin twitching at my touch. He had no keys. I swore. I looked at the lock in the moonlight prodding it with the gun’s hot barrel. The door and the lock were new. I pounded it away from the doorframe with the butt of the gun in quick sharp thrusts, but the lock held. I could hear some faint murmuring from behind the door. The lock held despite my attempts to beat it out of the door the metal shining brighter after the beating. I put the gun to the wood behind the latch and pulled the trigger. The door erupted in a flash of splinters and rebounding shot. A splinter scratched my cheek as it flew by and a piece of shot lodged in my arm causing me to drop the gun. I picked it up again and kicked the door open. The inside was as black as a cave. “Abdul,” I said and was greeted with a string of quiet babbling.
“Denise, Denise. I’ll be good. I’ll be good I swear. Don’t hurt me. Don’t make me take the shot.”
“Abdul,” I said again loudly and firmly. He quieted. He was hanging limply from his chains, with his chin rolling around on his chest and his tongue lolling. I took one look at his limp form hanging like a sack in the darkness and I knew that there was no way he would be able to even support his own weight. Rats squeaked indignantly and fled into the walls as I approached leaving behind open sores that ran only with a clear thick puss. “Oh shit,” I whispered as I squatted beside him. His eyes flickered opened, rolled into the back of his head as he hissed and then burst open again. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I said. His thin frame contorted as if he had no bones left disturbed me and reminded me of a conversation, we had one sunny day as we’d traveled north.
“What do you vamps live for?” I’d asked. “What do you want?”
He’d looked back at me with dark eyes swirled like the grain in a plank of mahogany, shook his head and even smiled sadly. “What do you want my friend.” Each time he’d called me his friend a cold sweat had broken out on my arms, even though it was just some idiom the vampire had picked up or retained from the time before, but I had never been able to escape the sensation that my humanity was being dragged down simply by my association with him. At the time I felt that as if I were becoming something no longer human but not quite vampire either.
“I guess I want to survive.” I’d told him.
“Well that’s more than most of us,” he said, and I never knew if he’d meant just vampires, or he’d meant everyone.
As
