After the Fall (7 page)

“Why are we stopping here? It’s so dark.”

“I am just getting a quick bite to eat,” I replied, not being able to resist the irony.

“What are you gonna eat? There’s no food here.”

“Oh, yes…there’s food.”

I sank my fangs into his neck before he could ask another question. There was no need for a needle this time. He was going to perish. I drank in big, gluttonous gulps and felt the life drain from him. His blood was burning hot, and not just from the temperature. It was my turn to be intoxicated. He let out a death rattle and went limp. I pulled back as I felt the swoon and laid him down.

The question now was, what to do with him? I looked up at the high wall and knew. It was three stories high and twenty feet thick, with guards patrolling at the top around the clock. Climbing it undetected would be no easy task. I felt very warm and courageous. I was going to climb the wall.

There was a thing I once knew as beer muscles. It referred to those who became stronger in their own mind as they drank more. I always enjoyed watching their illusions shatter, along with a cheekbone or two. Some of the shadier characters ended up becoming a tenderized meal later that night. Tonight, I was experiencing the Vampire equivalent of that. I grabbed the still warm corpse of my victim and jumped up to the roof of an adjacent house. From there, I jumped up to the wall.

I gained purchase on the ledge and held on by one hand, holding on to the corpse with the other. I swung the body onto the ledge and pulled myself up. The guard were gone, at least until their patrols brought them back here.

There was no time to waste. I dragged the remains of my quarry across the breadth of the wall to the opposite ledge. The sight that awaited me below surprised me. It was what looked like a thousand faces pushing and shoving their way to the wall. They scratched at it in the hopes that it would wear down with enough work. My nose also picked up something else. It was the faint smell of blood. Fresh blood. I thought it might have merely been the smell of a recent zombie kill.

“It’s been great, friend,” I said to the body that once belonged to Frank. “Thanks for everything.” Without any further ceremony, I shoved the body off the wall. The mass of undead began to feed on it with that torpid enthusiasm only zombies can muster.

“Hey, you! Who goes there?” My short ceremony had taken too long and the guard was returning. He was holding an oil lamp in his hand that was only slightly better than being in the dark. I leapt off and landed on a roof that crackled, threatening to swallow me. After a few minutes of leaping from roof to roof, I found myself atop the house of my benefactor. I was panting heavily from my effort, but I was smiling. The effects of drinking Frank’s blood were delightful. It had been a long time since I felt so light and free. 

Even with my impaired judgment, I started to realize that perhaps it wouldn’t be the best idea to leave the city and jump into the horde of undead that cordoned the walls. I decided I had an even better idea.

Speaking of bad judgment, I had resolved to give Rhiannon a piece of my mind. She would know that I was not one to fall prey to human charms. I was already forming a speech in my mind, though I would be hard pressed to say what the words were now.

Sneaking back into the house proved effortless. As a veteran hunter, I had mastered the art of stealth. It can take a great deal to sneak up on a human sometimes. I went into the unlocked window leading to my assigned bedroom. My eyes adjusted to the dark and there I found Rhiannon, sleeping on the bed that my host had given me. Alaric was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he knew where she was or if he was away checking on the guards or attending to some other situation. She had come to lie down on my bed, having guessed that I would come back for my belongings. I felt a sense of indignation at this. My courage seemed to have trebled in size. I was going to give her a piece of my mind.

“Listen, you,” I said. She jerked out of her sleep and gasped. I thought she would scream, but she seemed to know it was me. “I’m just going to tell you something. You’re just going to shut up and listen.”

“You came back. I knew you’d come back.”

“No, I’m not back for good. I’m here to tell you something.”

“What? I don’t care what it is, just that you’re here.”

I opened my mouth and the words did not want to come out. All the brilliance and bravado of alcohol amount to absolutely nothing when push comes to shove. Now I was frustrated. She took advantage of this to reach out and kiss me. I now know it was a terrible idea, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was stark blind at that moment. The passion, fueled by the alcoholic blood in my veins, enveloped me and soon I was pinning her down on the bed. She was beginning to undress me and I was doing the same, reaching for that string in the back that I would pull and loosen the fastenings on the back of her dress.

That was until I felt the sharp pain on my tongue. She only bit for a second, but oh, did it hurt! I don’t know if it was reflex or a bit of playfulness, but she bit down hard and caressed my tongue as if to make it all better, but it only made it burn. I got up from the bed and buttoned up my clothes.

“Where are you going? I thought this was what you wanted.”

“It is a mistake and you know it.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t love him. I love
you
. Be with me. Or take me with you. We’ll run away together.”

I’m not sure if it was intuition or her blood boiling within me, but I knew that to be a lie. She may not have loved him, but as far as loving me, I knew that I was a passing fancy from a girl that was barely a woman.

“Goodbye,” I replied.

“No, don’t leave me!” she screamed. It was time to make an exit
post haste
, before Alaric or any of the help showed up to check on her. I came out of the window and climbed back onto the roof. Her screams ripped through the night air and sent pinpricks up and down my spine.

There was one silver lining to all this commotion. Because of her screaming, she had provided a diversion that allowed me to sneak out of the place with little notice. It had been nice while it lasted, but I had worn out my welcome in this place. I had my fill of life-giving blood—and insanity. Of the former, I might have enough to last a few days. As for the latter, I had enough to last me another century. Had I not needed their blood to survive, I could have done without seeing another human for an aeon. 

Now that I had managed to completely muck things up, I leapt away into the night. I never got the chance to say goodbye to Alaric, or thank him for his hospitality. It was probably for the best. He would eventually learn his wife’s true feelings, but it would not be from me.

The wall was much easier to scale this time. As intoxicating and delightful as the alcohol-tainted blood had been, it did not last long. My system was already hard at work detoxifying itself. This time, I did not care about the guards and climbed straight up the wall like a lizard. Sure enough, they were at their posts, but my presence went unnoticed. The focus of attention was at ground level. I looked to see what was holding their attention.

My jaw went slack when I saw it. Hundreds of undead gathered at the entrance, clamoring for admission to the feast. They had somehow gained access to the first set of gates and were fighting with the second one. The heavy iron gate creaked and groaned from the pressure of their collective strength pushing and pulling against it. I had seen this before, during the Fall, but never this intense. The mass of bodies acted with untiring, single-minded purpose and seemed to be working in synergy, something I had never before seen.

“Hey, you! How long have they been here?” I asked the guard. He seemed to start for a moment before redirecting his attention back to the ground.

“Sometime after dusk. They came in a mob, at the tails of our hunters, almost biting at their heels. We tried our best to save them, but they forced their way through the outer gate and attacked them. There is nothing we can do for them now.”

I looked at his crossbow. “Didn’t you shoot them?”

“I did—we all have. Everyone’s run out of bolts.” It struck me how casual his tone of voice was. Not once did he ask me who I was or what I was doing up there. He could just as well have been reading from a dictionary, reciting every word with an even, monotone drawl that unnerved me more than the mob of ravenous zombies below.

The sound of grinding metal continued, but my ears picked up on the subtle change. I peeked over the edge at the door below and saw that the fasteners were stretching. Orange dust poured out of the holes with every shake and rattle. The gate would not hold for long, and I pitied the soldiers below when it did give out.

“Aren’t you going to do anything besides stand there and watch them take the town?”

“There’s nothing else to do. If they take down that gate, we are done for. There will be no town left. We don’t have enough people to take them.”

I clenched my fists in frustration. Impotence was not a feeling I handled well. I looked around the wall and the soldiers at either side of me. The other soldier had a saber in a scabbard clipped to his belt.

“I’m taking this,” I said to him. He started to protest, but before the words could come out, I took a running start and pounced on the crowd below. The mob did not know what hit them.

For the sake of brevity and to spare your stomach, I will gloss over the gorier details. It should go without saying that many heads rolled that night. If humans were fast compared to them, I was a flash of lightning, hacking off heads and limbs before they even realized it. I fought, hacked, and slashed my way through the undead ranks until I reached the very chamber where I had almost met my demise. Knee-deep in their bodies, I pushed back at the rest of the mob and closed the gate on them. As I walked back to the inner gate, a hand reached out to my leg. My saber darted out and pierced through the skull of the owner of that arm. It twitched and went limp.

“Let me in!” I shouted to the guards. They stared at me in horror and held their positions. “The gate is closed and you’re safe. I said, let me in this instant!” They continued to look at me with that fearful, mystified look. I felt the rage surge through my brain and everything I saw was tinted bloody red. My body took on a life of its own and reduced me to a mere spectator. The saber dropped out of my hand and I rushed out at the gate. The rivets popped loose as I pulled apart the strips of metal. When the hole was large enough for me to fit, I pulled myself through. Now everything began to go in extreme slow motion for me, even if it was real time for everyone else. My ears registered the click of the crossbows. I could see them oscillate as they shot out. Some I dodged and others I deflected with my hands. Just for show, I caught the last one and broke it in half. I stared and growled. All of them gasped and took a step back. Only one person stepped forward. It was Alaric.

“Stand down, everyone!” he commanded, but there was no need. After my performance, they had all lowered their weapons. Do not think I am complaining, because I am not, but I wondered where all the guns were. I thought about asking Alaric, but it was neither the time nor the place, and I had run out of alcohol to excuse my indiscretions.

“What did you do?” he asked. Alaric may have been walking and talking, but he looked just as dazed as all the others. Of all the questions he could ask, he settled on asking the most idiotic one.
Has everyone lost their mind?
I wondered, and turned around to look back at the wrecked gate. There was a gaping hole in the center, with strips of metal flowering out in every direction. It looked like it had been struck by artillery. Bodies inside were piled about two feet high. I saw something stir and seized one of the guard’s crossbow. Before anyone realized what was happening, it was in my hand. This crossbow that a grown man strained to pull back with both hands I loaded with one single finger.

I pulled the trigger and sent a bolt flying through a gap. The bolt punched a hole in the newly undead man’s skull, right next to the other bolt that protruded from his eye. He let out a croaking breath and went back down.

“Where are you standing right now?” I asked him.

He looked around and gave me a mystified look. “I…am standing right here, as you can plainly see.” 

I just smiled. Two can play at this game.

“So you are. You and the rest of your men stand right here at the gates and not fighting or retreating. None of you are hiding underground, are you?” They seemed to break out of their trance and exchanged whispers of agreement.

“We stand right here before you, safe and unharmed,” Alaric replied. “All because of
you.”

“That is the answer to your question.”

“You truly are an angel sent from God,” he said as he took a knee. I thought nothing could shock me anymore, but I was wrong yet again.

Investigation

“Get up! Please, get up. I am the farthest thing from an angel. Alaric, I beg you, please get up.”

He finally agreed to get to his feet, but the damage was done. All the men around us were watching me with reverence. Those stars in their eyes sent more fear into my heart than their projectiles did just moments ago. I could cope with hatred, but this was something new.

I addressed the crowd, “All of you, stop! I am not an angel and I am not your savior!” They paid no mind to my words. Now the rest of the townspeople were streaming in to see the show. It could not get any worse than this. As bad as it had already gotten, I just
had
to believe that it could not. I did believe it—until I saw what came next. That stream of auburn hair came flying from behind the crowd. They parted to let her through to the front. The sight of her face filled me with equal parts joy and dismay.