The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (10 page)

He may have hated in brief flashes, in moments of anger. The Superiors who had found him with the survival books and kept him for a time before turning him over to the blood bank. The blood bank itself. The woman from whom he’d stolen the books, although he’d had so many conflicting emotions towards her that he’d never tried to make sense of them all. And himself. He’d hated himself plenty as a sap. He knew he’d never hated anyone after he’d evolved. Hatred required passion, and he had little of that to spare for anything.

So what had he done to these homo-sapiens to bring their hatred upon him? In truth, he had meant them harm. He would have fed from them. But not too much. He never wanted to hurt the saps he fed from. He treated them as kindly as possible. But these sapiens had gone mad. They hated with a vicious passion that had nothing to do with him as a person, but only what he was. Hating him for his Superior nature wouldn’t change their circumstances and most likely proved them insane. That was equivalent to him hating them for being sapiens.

Certainly they had gone mad to believe they could escape from Superior rule. And yet, they had. Somehow they had regained power, at least in their six-person vigilante party. They had overpowered and outwitted a Superior, and they had him at their mercy. Draven didn’t want to imagine what they planned next, but he had a strong impression it involved his death.

He lay with his face in his bloodstain and thought of escape. If he could somehow escape…if he could work his way out of the chains, surely he could free himself from the cage that surrounded him. Most certainly he could. He could go to the next town, Princeton they had said, once he healed. He could find someone, go to the Enforcement office and tell the Enforcers of this terrible place. The government would come and burn the house and wait for the humans to flee.

Then they would kill them.

Imagining this, he decided he didn’t mind as much as he’d thought he would. They had beaten him badly, broken bones, spilled his blood. He would not have killed them for that. But better they die than him. It appeared he was not as prepared for death as he’d imagined.

His body had exhausted itself trying to heal, so he lay still and rested. When the door opened, however, he started into alertness. A blast of cold air came in with the man who had first begun kicking him. Draven became instantly attentive to the man’s every movement. He didn’t have to see the man—his other senses told him with infallible precision where and in what position the man stood, the exact degree angle and intent of every motion. With eyes still closed, Draven could have shaved the hair off the man’s arm without once touching blade to skin.

“How’s it going in here, boy?” the man asked.

The voice of the man who had stayed in the shed with Draven answered. “Ah, fine. He’s been laying there all night. Get you some rest?”

“Yup. Sure did. You ready to get you some?”

“Sounds good,” the younger man said, standing. Someone had called him Larry.

The men stood looking at Draven. “What you figure’s the matter with it?”

“I don’t rightly know. He’s just laying there,” Larry said.

“I thought they’s day-sleepers.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. Hey, I read somewhere they’d burst into flames in sunlight. Think that’s so?”

“I don’t reckon. I can’t remember iffen we ever took one out in the sunlight. Wanna try it tomorrow?”

“Maybe after everybody’s seen it. We don’t want to burn it before they get a chance to see we caught one.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Maybe that’s why this-un was all wrapped up in that weird black bag.”

“It’s kinda creepy, ain’t it? That black stuff?”

“We’ll take it off tomorrow and get any weapons he’s got. It’s real lucky you tied him up so he couldn’t get to them.”

“We’s lucky we found him. I bet we’d all be dead by now if Sally hadn’t followed that trail.” The younger man smelled painfully wonderful. Draven’s body needed nourishment to heal, making him ravenous, and the age and activity level of the man matched his feeding preference.

“That was Sally’s idea, huh?”

“Both ours, truthfully,” Larry said.

“Hey, dumb bloodsucker, what you looking at?” the older man asked Draven. “Look at you just laying there in your own blood. Ain’t that irony for you? I bet you ain’t feeling too ‘superior’ now, is you?”

Both men laughed, but Draven’s thoughts had strayed. He’d managed to lift his eyelid halfway. He didn’t move his body, but his gaze roved about the shed. It rested not on the man who spoke, nor the one who watched him, but behind them.

“Holy…” Draven whispered under his breath.

Against one wall, stacked row upon row, floor to ceiling, sharpened wooden stakes waited.

Chapter 15

Byron finally made it out of the damn hotel. He didn’t think he could have taken one more day in his room that reeked of sapien. In his desperate moments, he had regretted bringing them at all. It hadn’t seemed worth it to have to smell their constant stench.

But things were going well again. He had received the go-ahead from
Princeton
, the town that apparently needed him. Plows had cleared the roads somewhat. Although he had to drive more slowly now, at least the smell of sapien stayed contained in the trailer behind him. He kept time to the music by drumming on the steering wheel, and wondered about the other Enforcers back home, if they had gotten any interesting cases he would miss. He thought about his family and about Draven and his other friends.

Lucky bastards didn’t know what cold was. Here he was freezing his ass off in the snow while everyone he knew basked in the tropical heat back home. They’d stay warm as a night-breeze in summer, while he had to run the heater in his car. He’d never used that feature before.

When he arrived in Princeton, he went to the Enforcement Office to get his assignment and square away his living arrangements. The chief Enforcer struck him as a friendly, honest man, if a bit vain. The other two Enforcers he met seemed nice enough. And best of all, his apartment had separate quarters for his saps.

Byron came out of the offices whistling and let his saps out for a bit. They picked their way through the snow making shocked, gasping noises. He’d have to get them some climate-appropriate attire. He’d forgotten that. Back home they wore the regulation shifts the government issued. Here, he’d need something warmer and some shoes. He watched his property with a growing sense of satisfaction. They appeared to be getting along just fine. Pretty soon they’d have little saplings hanging all over them.

After Byron watched his sapiens play in the snow for a while, he called them back to the trailer. He stopped at the sapien supply store and picked up the local attire—a woolen jumpsuit whose design resembled a prison uniform from Byron’s days as a human. He got two pairs of chunky clog-type shoes and a bag of feed for them.

Byron’s apartment, paid for by the government for the duration of his assignment, suited him fine. The apartment building had four floors, with Byron’s on the third level. The place had big windows overlooking the town and the mountains, a nice view this time of year. It offered a comfortable if not quite luxurious dwelling for him and his livestock. The sapiens’ quarters were separated from his apartment by a small hallway accessible only from his apartment but without adjoining doors. Byron checked out the arrangement with satisfaction. The saps couldn’t escape without going through their door, the hallway, the door into his apartment, and the door out of his apartment into the rest of the building. Basically, escape would be impossible, which comforted him a bit. He knew the female’s history. But this apartment looked secure. No chance of escape. All was well.

On top of that, their smell wouldn’t come into his apartment as long as he kept the doors on either end of the hallway closed. He intended to do just that.

After he’d settled in for a few days, he went down to the Enforcement office to get a better idea of his surroundings. Princeton was a small city. The crime rate must not be too overwhelming, even in the warmer months. Sure, the Enforcers couldn’t number more than a few handfuls. But the number of residents didn’t look too high, either.

“We got all sorts of problems around these parts,” Milton told Byron. “Some of them are probably what you’re used to down south.”

“And the others?”

“You may have guessed that we’re not equipped for all the problems we got up here,” Milton said, running a hand over his shiny bald head. “I guess they thought you’d do us some good. We got two other Enforcers coming in another couple days. They got held up by the snow, too.”

“Uh huh. Then I guess I’m not getting the whole story yet.”

“Ah well, I don’t guess I’m doing you any favors by keeping you in the dark. We’ve developed a bit of a…sapien problem.”

“A sapien problem? What’s that mean? Too many? Not enough? Are they dying or getting killed?”

“More like…disappearing.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep, that’s about it. They just disappear on us, and no sign of them ever again.”

“So I was called all the way up here because you folks can’t keep track of your livestock?”

“With all due respect, Enforcer, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Milton said with a frown. “We’ve set our trackers on them, and there’s just no sign of them, no smell, nothing. It’s like the earth just opened up and swallowed them.”

“So you think someone is stealing them?”

Milton
shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s possible. There’s also been a few Superiors disappeared in the last five years or so. Three, I believe. Could be they’ve hidden out somewhere and are keeping these saps. Maybe using them and accidentally killing them, and that’s why they keep taking more, or they’re just hoarding them and feeding off a whole bunch of saps.”

“So they would be very powerful by now,” Byron mused. This made things more interesting. “How many saps have disappeared?”

“Let me see,”
Milton
said, rubbing his brown head again. He kept his scalp shaved and highly polished, and he looked like a man who took as much time in front of the mirror as a woman. “Well, I’d say maybe ten or twelve of them in the last ten years. Might be more like twenty. Hard to say exactly. A missing sap isn’t usually cause for too much alarm. Not like a missing person.”

“Right. I’ll check into it and see how many reports I can find on missing saps, sir. We’ll go from there.”

“Sounds good. I’ll let my men know.”

“Thanks, Enforcer. I’d appreciate any information anyone has on the matter.”

“Of course. Oh, and Enforcer? There’s a lot of rumors that go around every time a sap goes missing. I wouldn’t put too much stock in them.”

“Thank you,
Milton
. I’ll keep my ears open. Sometimes rumors turn out to be true.”

Chapter 16

Fear gripped Draven when he thought of his coming death. But a small part of him thrilled at the thought, a lurch in his chest so like a heartbeat. He lay, his body broken and torn, and thought of his journey to this hell house. He’d been so scared when he entered the woods. Not scared of this, though. Now his initial fear of the woods struck him in all its ridiculousness. He’d never imagined, never could have imagined, that humans lived free somewhere. Not just any humans, but murderous, savage humans. If someone had warned him, he wouldn’t have believed it. He’d have thought they’d gone mad. Because everyone knew that saps belonged to Superiors, depended on them, needed them, obeyed them.

But not these saps. These defied imagining, defied belief. He’d imagined hardships on his way, but never something like this. It was inconceivable. The hurdles he’d faced on the road had seemed like the worst that could happen. That silly incident, getting caught in the snow, had seemed the worst possible scenario.

Never had he suspected he’d face much worse.

When he’d entered this forest, he’d never have dreamed such a place as this, such vicious people existed. Now he remembered his hesitancy to enter the forest. If only he’d known then how right his apprehension would prove. But he’d misread it, thought he’d feared the trees alone.

In his captivity, he let his eyes scan the stack of daggers again. If only he’d had some way to know, when he’d entered the forest, that as his fear had multiplied by untold thousands, this fate awaited him.

When would they return? And what horrors would they bring with them when they came?

Chapter 17

Cali
explored the new apartment with Shelly. It was much nicer than the hotel room they’d stayed in. Well, maybe nicer wasn’t the right word. But it had a lot more space, and that was good enough for her. A door, locked to them, led outside to a small space enclosed by bars, which they could see through their window. The window opened a hand’s-width when she cranked a little lever.
Cali
had never had a real window before, with glass in it and everything. She opened the window despite the cold, and she and Shelly laughed as a blast of freezing air swept through the room. She closed the window and continued exploring.