the rest of chapter one
I awoke shortly after dusk. It was a clear night. The majesty of the heavens was open above me as I crawled out from the rubble I had rested under through the day. I did miss civilisation to some degree but to stand now in the midst of a city that was once home to over four million people and to see the stars as bright as they were upon this night was something quite extraordinary. Rare had the skies been so clear since The Fall.
I did like this new world, bleak as it was. I suppose that it suited my demonic nature. The lack of sunlight through the day due to thick persistent cloud cover offered a distinct advantage when I have needed to travel by day. You see, unlike many others of my kind I can tolerate sunlight to some degree. I do not feel pain upon my exposed flesh and it’s resultant reddening. Nor does it blind me except on very bright days when the suns radiation is particularly intense. The worst that occurs to me on a typically dull cloudy 23rd century day is that when the sunlight does breakthrough it weakens me sufficiently to render me powerless and even slightly delirious. With thick cloud cover I can travel by day as if I were a rather clumsy and witless mortal.
I had no real plan. No direction. Only the will to survive and something I didn’t fully understand pushing me to keep moving. I had a mission, only I didn’t know what it was. This had been the case for close to two centuries. Always on the move, stopping only to fed. All this was about to change, however, for I was about to discover the beginnings of vampires behaving in a previously unheard of manner. You must understand that before the fall we were things of legend. I certainly never really believed in vampires when I was mortal. Today, we are an unquestioned fact of life. No longer do we remain in the shadows but many have come to believe of themselves as inheritors to the earth, long have we stood over humanity, farming them, and enslaving them. But before this night of which I speak the vampire remand a myth. I had encountered perhaps a dozen since the fall until recently, something changed. The tides had turned in our favour. I noticed our numbers where increasing. We thrived in this new post-apocalyptic environment. It seemed there was some truth after all in the doomsday prophet’s mad ravings as the great nations began to destroy one another. Communities of vampires had emerged and humans lived in constant fear of dusk and the darkness that followed.
I immediately began to search for my first prey of the evening. It was not long before I discovered a small group of mortals gathered in a warehouse a couple of blocks from where I had rested for the day. I spent sometime spying on them from a hole in the roof. There were half a dozen men, two women and five children, ranging in age from an infant up to a pubertal teenager. They spoke in whispers and had only a small fire going in which to keep out the chill of the night. They were armed with at least two shotguns between them. More than enough to cause a real nuisance if I was to be discovered. They kept close except when the men would take it in turns to patrol the parameter. I was going to have to take one of these I decided. I desired one of the children, whose blood is particularly sweet tasting and whose purity in death brings a certain thrill to this demon’s feast, but they were closely guarded and I dared not face so many without the cover of pitch darkness.
I watched one of the men walk outside the warehouse on his patrol. He seemed confident that there were no threats nearby and leaning his gun against the burnt out shell of an old bus, proceeded to relieve himself on the sidewalk. Now was my chance. I leapt almost silently from the roof of the warehouse, landing squire on the man’s back. He was slamming violently to the ground. His companions had heard the impact. They were calling to him asking if everything was all right out there. I could hear them coming and the sound of a shotgun being cocked. I had to move fast. I lifted the semiconscious man onto my back and then began to run up the street in search of a place to take my meal. An old brick building offered such and opportunity. His companions were coming so I had to be fast. There was a large hole in the ceiling that opened into the second floor not far from where I had entered the building. Much to my surprise I sprang through onto the second floor with little difficulty despite my burden. I quickly found a staircase and made my way to the rooftop.
As the man’s companions began to enter the building below I sank my teeth in to his neck and began to draw the life out of his body. Images of the man’s life flooded my mind. He was a pitiable creature that had never known a life other than in the ruins of a deceased civilisation. His life had been hard. He had been abandoned as a child and was then taken in by cruel men who beat him and abused him. He had managed to run away but continued to have nightmares of the men even in adulthood. He had been with his current companions less than six months. He desired the woman and fantasized about taking them but feared the repercussions. These were as close to friends as he had ever had. He hoped that someday the eldest girl child would be his, but the leader on being approached had warned that he would kill the man if he ever touched any of the children.
Now in the arms of a vampire was the closest thing to joy he had ever experienced. He died and I felt both sad and relieved for the man. His life was not all that different to so many of my victims. These were very difficult times.
By the time his companions reached the rooftop I had disappeared into the night, leaving a corpse that looked as if frozen in a moment of rapture.
All Rights Reserved R Garrett 2009
