After the Fall (21 page)

Oh, the great forgotten comforts of modern life! The motor whirred softly and brought me up to forty-five degrees until I took my finger off the button. For that matter, there were no restraints on my hands, or muzzle on my mouth. I was actually a patient, not a prisoner. The IVs dripped a steady flow of blood into my veins, filling me with renewed life. If it weren’t for this, I would surely be dead now. Who knows how many of these bags it had taken to revive me?

My limbs had regained some of their fullness, but I still looked lean and scrawny. It would take some time for me to replenish my reserves and return to my original strength. At this point, I guessed I would be healthy enough to feed on my own. When the bags went empty, I took the needles out of both arms. The holes sealed themselves within seconds. In a few minutes, there would be no sign that they were ever there.

“Now, why did you do that?” asked the nurse with stern look on her face and her hands on her hips. The red on her lips was highlighted by the paleness of her face and the pure white of her uniform.

“I’m better. I can feed on my own now.” Honestly, I hated having those things in my arms. I felt like a patient, which I was, and I hated it.

“Yes, but it’s much faster this way.” She walked up to the bed and examined me, looking in my eyes and opening my mouth. “Well, you look healthy enough. I guess we can go ahead and have you sip on the bags.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

This was something that had become routine for me. The teeth on the neck method was pleasurable, but it often resulted in damage and bruising, not to mention the lethal infections that followed. My method was unorthodox but clean, and it seemed that I had found likeminded Vampires who survived using the same methods.

“You are my kind. How did you survive?” I asked.

“I could ask you the same thing. How did you manage to get along by yourself all that time out there?”

By doing whatever I had to. Scavenging, trickery, anything that got me the blood I needed to keep on going. Nothing was off-limits as long as I was still alive at the end of the night.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital in the city of Anathorn.”

“Anathorn?”

“Yes, it’s been one of the first cities retaken after the Fall. There are others, but we’re probably the biggest. The territories go out farther than you can see. We have oil, manufacturing, basically every resource we need to get along.”

Sounds like paradise. Someone better tell God he sent me to the wrong place. I was supposed to go a few floors downstairs.

“You’re telling me there’s a whole city here? Are there any more of our kind?”

“There’s many more. This isn’t just a safe haven for humans. Our kind suffered a lot during the Fall.”

“You’re not kidding.”

“From what I hear, we were nearly wiped out. It was luck that brought me here. I was a nurse before I was turned, just a little before the Fall. My skills were in high demand as civilization collapsed, so I had no shortage of patients or donors, willing or unwilling.”

“Just happened to be in the right line of work.”

“Yes, I was. That, and…Anna helped me a lot.”

“Who is Anna?”

“You’re in the city of Anathorn.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“It was named after her, Anna Thorn. She essentially founded it. She is simply known as the Mother.”

Anathorn. She might as well have called it Shangri-La. 

The Mother

After our conversation ended, she brought me a tall glass of my favorite drink. It had been kept chilled and stirred back to a semi-normal consistency, but in my emaciated state, it tasted like ambrosia.

I was curious about the nurse. Since the Fall came, I had not seen another of my kind. I was sure that someone must have survived elsewhere in the world. It was simply a matter of probability. I survived, so others must have survived as well. Still, I had not seen anyone else and my hopes had all but faded away.

Despite my attempts at getting to know more about her, she seemed to get quite busy as the night progressed. I suspected that she used her work to avoid me, but I would have to be satisfied with her answers for now.

The next night, that same nurse came with a handful of release forms for me to sign and sent me on my way.

“Will there be any charge for this?” I asked. She laughed.

“And how would you pay? You don’t have a cent to your name.”

Ah, a taste of the poignant wit of our kind.

“Don’t worry,” she added. “It’s already been taken care of. Looks like someone is looking out for you.”

“I can’t imagine who, but I thank whoever it is.”

“Yes, that’s all good and well, but I still need you to get out of here. There’s a patient coming within the hour and I still have to clean this room.”

I considered arguing with her some more, just to get a reaction out of her, but I could see that she was deathly serious about this one thing and decided to comply.

She directed me to the elevator and wished me good luck. At the moment of saying goodbye, I thought about asking her where she lived, or maybe a phone number. Did they have phones here? I liked to think that they did, yet all I did was thank her and go on my way. The wound was too fresh. I did not feel like I could make a connection with anyone, not even a friendship. I hoped that would change with time.

The streets reminded me of how things were before the Fall. Some of these “perks” of modern existence I could have done without. Scores of cars traveled up and down the road. They were piled high into the first live traffic jam I had seen in decades. 

I had seen a great number of them on the roads, forever frozen in time. Their bodies lay shriveled inside without ever having reached their safe haven. Some were infected and destined to die a second death inside the car. Others just gave up. It was easier to lie down and die than it was to stand up and fight the new threat. In a way, I understood. Being a human meant that you had only but one life to give. You might as well hurry up and give it away, get it over with. No such luck for me. 

There were lights everywhere, far more than necessary. I wondered if they did it out of fear or out of celebration. It was reminiscent of the wastefulness that went on before the Fall. People consumed and devoured like locusts. Those in charge allowed this to go on out of ignorance or fear. Industries and corporations held the governments in their grasp. 

Even to the very end, they held fast to the notion that it wasn’t that bad, that everyone should remain calm and wait for the authorities to take care of it, except the authorities never came. When the horde came, the military decided to withdraw. It was a game of numbers. Either send all your forces to their deaths or cut your losses and consolidate your resources. I’d like to say it worked, but their campaign of denial had gone on for so long that the infection had infiltrated their high-tech hazmat barriers. They didn’t stand a chance. The remains of their response centers in every major city I visited were proof that all the way to the end, they tried to keep a handle on it, but it was just a case of “too little, too late.”

This place was about as different from Jericho as it could be. I walked down the street unnoticed. People walked past me without the slightest acknowledgment. I would think that survivors would be eager to connect to one another, but these people here were just like they were before the Fall.

I wasn’t hungry, but I found myself in hunting mode. Those around me stopped being people and became potential meals. I sized them up and classified them by their ability to fend me off. Generally, a large brawny man would be easier to take down than a small woman. They usually tried to take you on themselves instead of shrieking for help. When pitted against a Vampire, even the strongest human came up short. Even their strongest grappler couldn’t stand being bitten. They would start to panic, lose more blood, then they would become dinner.

This hunting exercise continued for some time until I sensed someone following me. Every time I looked, they seemed to blend into the crowd and disappear, but my primal mind told me they were still there, still on my tail.

I went zigzagging through several streets, but I still felt them right behind me. The busy streets that once provided the best concealment now exposed me to my pursuers. The crowd, upset by the commotion, reacted to me and began to clamor. My austere clothing plainly stood out as something out of the ordinary when compared to the frivolous, cosmopolitan clothing that was the norm.

In a desperate attempt, I went into an alley and climbed straight up the building. I hopped from rooftop to rooftop in the most haphazard manner I could manage. This went on for a while until my endurance failed me. No, I wasn’t out of breath. I was
exhausted
. My chest was going up and down in rapid succession while air wheezed raggedly through my throat. The only good thing to come out of this was that I had lost my pursuers. There had to be a whole team of them chasing me, using radios to coordinate their efforts. I sat down and leaned against the roof access door. My stamina began to return to normal. I relaxed just a bit.

“Whatcha doin’ there?” queried the voice. The surprise propelled me to my feet in less than a blink. She smiled and stood face to face with me. I recognized the sharp cheekbones, solid jaw, and deep, penetrating eyes the color of burnt sienna. She had an earthy complexion that reminded me of clay. It was so dark she could pass for a mortal. We Vampires are naturally pale in complexion, but this woman was a rarity. Had I not been able to detect her true nature, I would have dubbed her a hunter with superhuman abilities.

“Just having a heart attack, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, go right ahead,” she replied. “While you do that, the name is Espinoza, Rayna Espinoza.” She held out her hand and I shook it. She had a firm, embracing grip more typical of a man. There was no tenderness there, just a silent declaration that she could hold her own.

“Mordecai,” I offered in return.

“That come with a last name?”

“No. I have taken names and discarded them as one does a change of clothes after so many years. Even my original name feels strange and alien to me.”

She looked me up and down. “Well, you
do
look strange and alien to me. Where did you come from, Mordecai?”

“Originally or more recently?” Her face told me she didn’t care which one. “I was born in Europe, eventually migrated to the Americas. Last place I called home before the Fall was New York City. After that, I have wandered the landscape, trying to survive.”

She studied me while she took a long, deep breath. “You’re a good, long way from back East. It must have taken years to travel.”

“Far too many.”

The pause between us lingered until it felt uncomfortable, but she seemed to be using the time to size me up.

“Let’s pretend I believe you for a moment,
Mordecai
. Suppose I buy your bullcrap story and we roll out the welcome mat to welcome you into Anathorn, then what? Do you have something you can bring to the table or are you just another parasite looking for a free meal ticket?”

I bristled at the notion. How dare she call me a parasite when I could see plain as the moonlit night that she was the same as me?

“What do you need here? I’ve walked the Earth for many years. What can I do to make this place better?”

She took me to the edge of the building. I thought for a second that she was going to throw me over the edge.

“You see all this, Mordecai? We built all this.”

“And by
we
, you mean…”

“Don’t play stupid. You weren’t made yesterday. I know you’re one of us, so let’s just drop the cute little games for right now.”

“Fine by me.”

“Like I said, we built this. We gave them a safe place to live.”

“So you did this out of the kindness of your heart?”

She laughed. “Yeah, that’s it. The kindness of our hearts, that’s a good one. We’re the regular do-gooders around here, helping our fellow man get back on his feet.”

“I never suspected otherwise.”

“Humans are safe here, mostly. Besides the occasional infected straggler, the only threat they have here is one another. Thieves, murderers, all these people are still around, still causing trouble for the rest of the decent folks.”

“My favorite kind of people,” I said, flashing my long fangs and relishing in the thought.

“Especially after they’ve had a few shots of whiskey with dinner,” she added. We shared a laugh. “You’re not as bad as you look at first.”

“Thanks…I think.”

“A little scrawny, but you’re funny. Worst comes to worst, you can be our entertainer, keeping everybody laughing all the way to the dinner table.”

I never saw myself for a comedian or any other kind of entertainer. Like many Old World Vampires, I learned to play the piano and violin, but those were things I left behind during the chaos of the Fall. It was only after a few years that I realized my mistake. Solitude makes a terrible companion, but music can help lift your spirits.