After the Fall (19 page)

There were also the sounds of people arguing. What began as a calm discussion between Alaric and Matthias devolved into a heated dispute. Even with my enhanced hearing, I could not manage to make out more than bits and pieces. Alaric must have had the place soundproofed when it was built. They thought of everything around here. Well…almost everything. It seemed they did not think of someone placing explosive charges on the wall. This town survived the Fall and even thrived afterward, but it could not survive one insider attack.

They argued back and forth. Failing to secure an agreement, Matthias stormed off and locked himself in his own room. Eventually, the children settled down and all the noise tapered off. I assumed everyone had gone to sleep, but I was wrong. There were footsteps wandering about the place, whispers I could not make out. Matthias was trying to have an argument with himself, and he was succeeding. I pressed my ear so hard to the floor it hurt. I only made out bits and pieces, but it was enough to make me spring to action.

“He will see…he
must
see…I will show him.” I heard a small whimper, a few choked gasps, then silence. A few minutes later, something rose up and began to bang and crash its way through the rooms. I bolted for the door. It was locked, but I was determined to pull it off its hinges. A woman screamed. I pushed and pulled at the door in my frantic attempt to get in. The wood cracked and splintered, but held strong. I heard Alaric fighting. He cried out and I despaired.

“Alaric! No!” I kept fighting against the door. It wasn’t often that I felt so powerless. This door must have been made to withstand a horde of them. I stepped back, gathered my strength, and charged at it. The thick frame broke off from the wall and fell forward. I sprinted through the hallway and came to a scene of carnage. The minister’s wife had been killed. I could hear her children crying from behind the door, Evelyn and Magda doing everything they could to hold them back. Alaric stood over the woman’s body. A sword ran straight through her skull, piercing the diseased brain that nearly killed them all. He gave me a look that said it all.

“It’s over. I’m done,” he said. His left hand was bleeding and oozing. There was a tourniquet above the wrist. I understood what he meant and joined him in his despair. In the heat of the moment, I only wondered one thing.

Where is Matthias?

There was no time to waste. I rushed over to him and examined his hand. The bite mark was deep, already seeping with dying matter. He was as good as gone, but I could not accept that.

“I need a knife, a sharp one,” I said. His eyes were filled with fright when he guessed what I was about to do, but he nevertheless pointed me in the right direction. I went to his closet and pulled a knife about eight inches long, sharpened to a razor point.

“Let’s go!” I took him to the kitchen and laid his arm on the counter. I gave him a thick towel to bite down and made another tourniquet just above the elbow. At the same time, I got the stove fire going and placed a frying pan on top of the burner. Magda made the mistake of coming to check on us.

“What are you doing?” she cried out, right as I was raising the knife.

It came down with a loud twhack, slicing right through meat and bone. He howled out in a rapture of pain. His severed arm lay on the counter like tonight’s dinner. Magda screamed again.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I separated Alaric from his newly severed arm.

He continued his vituperations from behind the gag. It only helped muffle the sound a little. Magda threw her hands up to her mouth to stifle her own screams, with little success. I was the only cool head remaining in this place. The fire was roaring and the pan was radiating heat but not quite glowing red. I couldn’t wait any longer. It would have to do. I grabbed the pan and pressed it into his stump. How wrong I was when I thought his screams were loud before. The bellowing yell that exploded out of his throat ejected the towel across the room. Anyone that had managed to sleep through all the commotion would be awake now.

O
h, my poor eardrums!
That was the only thing going through my mind at the moment. The strident noise combined with the smell threatened to overwhelm my senses. I held myself together and pulled away when I was sure his stump was cauterized.

Exhausted by the ordeal, Alaric collapsed. I caught him and put his remaining arm around me to lead him back to the bedroom. He was alive, at least for now. How long it would be, I wasn’t sure. For all my efforts, I may have only delayed the onset of the infection. It was out of my hands now. All I could do was lay him down beside his dearest. I would sit there and wait for him to expire before ending his life the next time he arose. Holding vigil over him was also a convenient excuse to stay at Rhiannon’s side.

I laid Alaric down on the bed and was ready to take my place when I heard the groaning in the hallway. In all this commotion, I had forgotten about the infected body out there. Magda gasped and started to plead for her life. The thing that used to be the minister’s wife was reaching out for her. I grabbed her by the neck and snapped it. Her corpse went to the place that used to be my room. I placed her on the floor and took care to decapitate her before I left.

When I returned to hold vigil over Rhiannon—I meant Alaric, of course—I found him sitting up on the bed, holding a piece of cloth over his stump. It was heartbreaking to see the mighty warrior reduced in this way. Still, I knew that even with one arm, he was worth ten men.

“Alaric, you need to lie down and rest,” I said. He just kept looking at his stump, shaking his head.

“There is no time for that. We have to retake the town. My people are going to die if we don’t. Our supplies can only last for so long.”

“I understand that. You will retake the town. I know you’ll do it, but for now, you need to rest.”

“There’s nothing left but this town and the people.”

My mind went back to his only son, who had just tried to kill him, perhaps even succeeded. Time would tell if Alaric would continue to live his natural life or if I would have to lock him up in that cell and sever his head like I did to the preacher’s wife.

Alaric went to get up and fell back upon the bed as if slapped by an invisible hand. All his willpower was useless when his own body refused to move. I lay him back on the bed and pulled the blanket up to him.

“You need to leave,” he said.

“Lie back and rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

“I will…but I haven’t changed my mind. I want you to leave.”

He couldn’t be serious, not after all I had done for him. If it weren’t for me, his son would have killed him and Rhiannon both. In fact, everyone here would be dead. Without a leader, the town might lie in siege until the survivors died of disease and hunger. In a way, I might have saved the entire town.

“I want you to leave…and never come back.” He started to drift off to sleep. I decided to ignore his request for now. Maybe he would reconsider after getting some rest. For now, I would continue to hold vigil over him…and Rhiannon, of course.

Goodbye

It was nighttime again. I knew because I had woken up naturally, without having to force myself. My eyes opened slowly and I looked about the room. There she was, in all her loveliness, like the sleeping beauty. Only this sleeping beauty would not awaken, not for my kiss, nor anyone else’s.

“What are you still doing here?” asked the gruff voice I knew belonged to Alaric. His stump was wrapped in a fresh bandage. He was trying to act tough, but I could sense he was in pain. Predators have that way of spotting weaknesses. If there had ever been a good time to strike, it would have been right then.

Go on. Then you can pick off the rest of the town one by one.

Vampire sense is usually dead on. The things it suggests are usually selfish and cold-hearted, but it is sound advice in these days of chaos and uncertainty. Anyone with more than five minutes in this world would know that. All except for this guy, that is.
I
just had to have a
conscience
. Mordecai just had to do the right thing because it was best for everyone. 

Well, let me ask you, Mordecai, how did that work out for you?

“I told you to leave,” he continued, rattling on with that same tired old verse.

“I am waiting for her to awaken. It should be anytime now.”

“She’s not going to awaken. She’s dead, Mordecai.”

“No, I’m telling you. She will awaken.”

“What’s the longest it has taken for someone to awaken from this?”

A few minutes to a few hours at most
, I thought. “It will just be a little longer.”

“I’m going to lay her to rest.”

“No! I mean, you can’t do that. What if she reanimates and dies locked up in some tomb? I couldn’t bear to have that happen.”

“My son attacked me.” He held up his stump. “The evidence is right here. He came upon me in the night, holding some kind of needle in his hand. I could not sleep and was still awake when he came into the room and tried to stab me with it. He is my son and I love him, but he is built just like his mother and could not hold his own against me. I pushed him back and he left the room.

“Some time later, I heard a scream. It was the minister’s wife. She has been having nightmares, so I thought nothing of it. The screams continued until I thought of going to her, but they stopped. I drifted off to sleep again. Next time I woke, she was standing over me. I didn’t know what to do. I called out to her. When she didn’t respond, I reached out, touched her on the shoulder. She bit me. I fought back, but her strength seemed to have doubled. I threw her to the other side of the room, but she came back at me. I was able to reach a sword just in time. The battle spilled out into the hallway, where I finally drove that sword into her head.”

“I’m sorry you had to kill her,” I replied.

“No, I did not kill her. My son killed her and ran away, that coward. I killed the
thing
she became. But all of it served to show me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I threw her near Rhiannon. She got up and walked past her without giving her the slightest bit of attention. If there had been some life left in her, she would have tried to feed on her.”

“They ignore our kind. I can walk past them without drawing attention.” I was trying to convince him, it was no use.

“I’m going to bury her, Mordecai.”

My arguments were useless, but I convinced him to at least install a crude device of bells and strings loosely based on Dr. Taberger’s warning system. It was easy enough to get him to agree, but he was convinced she would not rise.

It took another two days for her to be buried. Two long days, during which my thirst built. My senses actually became keener, and everyone’s heartbeat seemed to grow louder by the minute.

At this point, nature should have taken its course, assimilating her body back into itself. With every passing moment, she looked every bit as lovely as she did when she was alive, untouched by the scourge of decay. It only made me more anxious. I held on to the hope that she would open her lovely eyes and look upon me, but it never happened. Her eyelids remained like tightly sealed vaults, denying me the pleasure of seeing the azure gems within.

Alaric went to work right away, using his one good arm to toil before dawn and well into the night. He dug up the floor in the underground living room, much to the inconvenience of his guests. During this time, he moved her upstairs. When he slept, he did so beside her, in the bed they had shared for the short time they were married. He was gracious enough to honor my request to block the daylight by closing off all the windows, even if he believed it to be a pointless task.

The village security measures worked, and soon the horde began to thin out. I checked on them every night. Their numbers gradually diminished as the hungry revenants sought easier sources of food elsewhere.

When the grave was completed, Alaric reluctantly decided to grant me a stay from my banishment, just long enough to remain for the burial. His one condition was that I leave immediately after its conclusion. At this point, his firm belief in her death had infected me to the point that I would have left even before the service, had he asked me to do so.

He had cut a rectangular pit in the ground and lined the bottom with cushions, where he laid her body down for its final rest. A few of us said some final words while he laid a framework of wood he had built to encase her. She looked like he was lying inside a wooden ribcage. Next was the hard part, when he stacked the bricks on top of her. The enclosure would not allow them to crush her, but I hated to see her covered up. I wanted to see her face one more time. Eternity seemed like nothing as long as I was with her.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he quoted, reciting a well-worn verse I had heard countless times throughout the ages, as I buried the ever-growing list of loved ones, the sum of which would fill several cemeteries. Alaric concluded the ceremony by cementing over her grave, but he was true to his word and left two orifices, one for the bell string, and a breathing hole above her face.

“Thank you, my friend,” I said, not caring that I was not his friend anymore. He ignored my remark and continued to brood over her grave. I had nothing left in this life now but the burgeoning hunger that threatened to take over me. Given enough time without blood, my primal mind would take matters into its own hands and I would turn feral, feeding on whatever living thing crossed my path. I would be no different from
them
.