Dominant Species
DOMINANT SPECIES
By Guy Pettengell
Why it’s Never Wise to Count Chickens too soon
Jake and Max face their Demons
The Vampire Army Approaches and Jake’s Past Returns to Haunt Him
The Great War had destroyed almost everything. Years of warfare, conventional at first followed by the nuclear holocaust that people said would never happen. But the terror had only just begun, as the few survivors that remained were soon to discover a new nightmare rising out of the darkness, one that brought an even greater fear.
The year is 2033 and a new evolution has dawned, with a hierarchy of vampires ruling in the post-apocalyptic darkness. Following the nuclear winter there is now no daylight in the world and very little hope. But still, a small human resistance fight a seemingly futile battle to retain their freedom and stop all that remains of mankind from becoming nothing more than food to the Vampire overlords.
Escape from t
he Broken City
The War had changed everything.
Grey dust hangs in the freezing air, giving the impression of an old, grainy, black and white film. Above the dead city the dark sky looks down, mocking the ruined, lifeless cityscape with its unseeing eyes. It is a world without daylight, a world without hope. All that remains is nothing but, dust, darkness and broken dreams.
The
once great city of New York stands, now barely recognisable, in post-apocalyptic decay. A tortured and twisted statue of liberty bent into submission looks down towards the depths of an inky black New York harbour. There is no sound, nothing but death, destruction and decay. All across the ghost city the streets are deserted, abandoned and lifeless. At the once bright and vibrant Times Square empty buildings look out blindly through their sunken windows, as shattered shards from the neon signs cover the streets with a multi-coloured sea of glass.
Sitting above the silent streets on top of St. Patrick’s Cathedral something dark watches and listens. Suddenly the eerie silence is broken by the sound of running, made by quick, light, feet, as they slip and slide across the broken bricks, glass and other debris. The feet scrabble into view as two boys burst into the remains of Rockefeller Plaza, past the scared remains of the golden globe that once sparkled in the bright sunshine outside the once resplendent Rockefeller building.
Their eyes are wide their hearts are pumping
; in front an older boy darts left, then right, dragging his younger brother behind him like a rag doll. Dust kicks up from worn boots as they jump a wall, landing hard. Then they collapse back against the wall that once surrounded the open air ice rink, their lungs bursting, bright lights dancing in front of their eyes at the lack of oxygen, both struggling for breath. The older boy looks round, his wide eyes, darting, searching for someone – or something. The only sound that he can hear, above the pounding of his heart that thuds like an express train in his ears, is that of the younger boy’s muted sobbing. Then suddenly a shadow, blacker than black, flickers over the wall like seeping water, and he’s up, moving; pulling his brother with him. They run blindly now, as if their very lives (which they do) depend on it.
A pair of dark eyes watches
from above as the two tiny figures cut toward Times Square, then back across Forty Second Street, towards Bryant Park. They narrow as the two children bolt forward below, scything left, right, stumbling, falling, and clawing their way ahead. An evil, crooked, smile twitches on the watcher’s lips.
The children don’t dare look back as they pound on, ignoring the cuts, the grazes and the shooting pain in their legs as the thing that follows them slowly closes. They can feel its presence, like the feeling that grips you in the middle of the night when you awake from a nightmare, breathing hard, your chest tight, your heart pounding. Slowly the thing grows ever closer, getting nearer and nearer and nearer.
The thing
above moves efficiently as cold and silent as a shadow with no apparent effort at all. It makes no sound as it moves across the broken buildings, jumping between the close stacked remains of once towering skyscrapers, powering its hands into broken brickwork as it slithers upwards, then pauses on top of another building, its head cocked to one side as it watches its prey. The terrified boys scrabble between the remains of the buildings below and disappear briefly from sight. The thing’s mind is totally focused on the chase, on the two small figures below, its nostrils flare slightly as it takes in the cold and clammy night air, noticing the scent of fear on the dead breeze. It licks its lips and there is again the hint of a crooked smile as it looks on through dead eyes that miss nothing.
Below
it the two boys charge across Forty Second Street, legs like jelly, lungs burning. Looking all around they stumble to a jog, then stop running all together, simply unable to go any further. They’ve reached the old New York Library, once the centre of learning in a bustling city. Slowly they climb the steps and crouch by its shattered pillars trying to gather their thoughts, trying to get their breath back. The older boy looks down into the eyes of his younger brother and can see the fear, can see the pleading, knows he can’t go on. He looks around carefully; nothing. For a second he dares to wonder that they may have escaped the hunter. The unbelievable thought forcing its way into his mind. He hugs his brother tightly. The night is cold and their breath is clearly visible in the dank air, short sharp breaths that burn the back of their throats.
Directly a
bove them, on top of the library, looking down, the creature waits. It knows they are tired, knows it could take them at ease, but where is the fun in that? It wants to play. So it waits, allowing them to recover a little, allowing them to believe that maybe they have managed what no one else has; to escape from the sanctuary. Slow minutes pass, during which its eyes never leave the two shivering figures below. It listens to the sound of their breathing as it begins to slow. Then just as the boys start to relax it casually tosses a stone from the Library roof and watches mesmerised as it lands only feet from the boys and skips down the steps beyond. Its smile broadens as the children are up, running again as fast as their weary legs will take them, charged with renewed fear.
They charge across the front of the library, down Fifth Avenue, running for their lives
. On and on they run, past the devastated remains of what was once the tallest building in the world and on towards Madison Park not daring to look back. In front of them the flat iron building, one of the few buildings relevantly unscathed by the great war, stands like a lonely beacon now even more isolated than ever before. But behind them the creature still follows. Onwards they run, the older boy almost dragging his brother behind him now, running down the cross streets, loosing track of which way they’re heading.
Suddenly, the two boys burst out into what remains of Union Square, past the remains of the Alamo sculpture, hardly believing how far they’ve run. They know they can’t keep going for much longer, there lungs are bursting, their breath comes in short, sharp and painful gaps, tears streak their faces. They stumble as they turn into the next street and slide to a halt. Blind panic courses through their bodies as they stare blankly at the pile of rubble that blocks their path. It’s a dead end. They look round, beyond despair now. The older boy yanks his brother into the darkness of an alleyway, but a collapsed building denies any chance of escape.
Above, unseen, t
he creature climbs from empty window to empty window, from buckled fire escape to buckled fire escape, before it settles and looks around from its perch high above the streets. The building it sits upon is the Amato Opera Theatre. A warped thought flickers across its mind, how apt it thinks, just the place to play out the final Act.
The younger boy turns toward his brother in utter hopelessness, his small chest heaving, his wet eyes searching his brother’s face for some sign of encouragement. There is none. Suddenly a sound from the entrance to the alley makes them start. Together, as one, they turn and begin to back away from the mouth of the alley, knowing that they are trapped with no way out.
A shadow wavers across the entrance, growing slowly longer, as if teasing them,
and then… it’s gone. Silence. The boys look around. To their left, rising high above them, what remains of the opera house. The younger boy stares up into his brother’s face with a smile of hope. A smile that freezes in fear as their hunter, a Vampire, lands from nowhere right behind them.
‘No!’ he screams, the shrill sound bouncing off the surrounding rubble, as before them, their hunter looms, tall and majestic but also of pure evil. Then, unable to move, unable to close their eyes they watch as the Vampire begins to change. Its face contorts into a ghoulish mask. The skin stretching, its jaw protruding, teeth drawn back exposing an ‘almost smile’. Then its empty eyes fix on them and it crouches slightly as it prepares to attack.
Still neither boy can move. Frozen in time, they stand looking at their destiny. Despite the distance, they can clearly smell its rancid breath, feel it on their skin. Now the younger brother’s eyes squeeze shut. The wet patch that appears on his leg attracts a snarl of contempt from the demon, the ancient smell of fear. The little boy knows it’s over and can only wait for the inevitable, when he feels his brother move in front of him. The older boy, despite his own terror, stands tall. Silent tears stream down his face as his small and fragile hand reaches up, closing tightly around the crucifix that hangs from his neck.
‘Our Father who art in Heaven
…’
The creature leaps.
The awakening
The creature leaps.
In a dark room, somewhere in what remains of Brooklyn, Jake Bradshaw jerked upright in bed. He was breathing hard, his breaths coming in short burst like a steam train; his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest. His hand was clenched tight around the silver chain that hung loosely from his neck; the beads of sweat on his face caught in the weak and gloomy light that came from the old rusting oil lamp that flickered dimly in the corner.
The room
was dark because there was no external light. In fact the windows were boarded up, covered by layers of sacking that had been roughly nailed over the wooden planks that seemed to act like the twisted bars of some long lost jail. Jake stared in fear at the jagged shadows that danced around the room and across the wall, desperately looking for the beast that was both forever real and a dim and distant memory. Then, as he slowly realised that it was another nightmare, just another bad dream, full of memories that he fought to forget from a long time ago, he slowly calmed down. As his neck muscles relaxed, his head dropped and he looked down in a somewhat detached way at his own hand, still tightly clasped around the chain that hung from his neck.
Slowly and carefully
Jake opened his hand, staring stared at the impression of the cross that had been left imbedded in the calloused skin of his palm. He watched transfixed as the white impression slowly faded and the blood began to flow back to his skin. Suddenly his brain kicked in and he realised that he was still holding his breath. With a great gush of air he breathed out. Then taking a deep gulp of the stale, musty air that was the norm in the dusty, boarded up lair in which he lived - through necessity, not choice - he swung his legs off the bed. He rubbed at his temples with his thumbs, pressing them hard into his skull with his eyes clamped tightly shut.
Jake was in his late twenties with dark, sad eyes. His dark brown hair was long
and had grey flecks already streaking its entire length. His jaw was darkened with stubble. Slowly, still with his eyes closed, he stood, trying to calm his breathing. Unsteady on his legs for a second, he crossed himself, as his lips moving in silent prayer. The prayer finished with a quick and whispered, Amen.
Brooklyn had been hit hard by the war, but was slightly less devastated than the other five Boroughs of New York City. Even so, many of the old wooden houses, all standing in lines, clustered together with their strangely ornate fencing had been scorched by the bombs and the ensuing fires, with great swaths simply levelled to the ground. Strips of scorched earth ran across Brooklyn and out toward Queens. In between these strips, the small clusters of houses that remained were all badly burned. They stood like gravestones, a lonely reminder of what had once been.
It was t
he door to one of these derelict houses that cracked slowly open as Jake peered out onto the shattered remains of Brooklyn. The door paused with barely an inch of gloomy light seeping in and then, when Jake was sure all was safe, he carefully swung the door open enough for him to clamber out, wary not to disturb the dead plant life that clung to the frame too much. He stood silently in the gloom. The air was colder out here, his breath visible in the half-light that was somehow neither day nor night.
Jake’s eyes cast around his now familiar surroundings as he dug his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders
against the cold inside his thick woollen coat. His home was one amongst row upon row of houses, some barely standing, that stood opposite a massive cemetery that ran the full length of the hill opposite. It felt to him like a fitting reflection of the destruction all around.
There was no sound. Looking across the crumbling walls
, the decaying streets lined with nothing but derelict buildings and abandoned cars he felt a deep, deep sorrow. It was the same feeling that had greeted him each and every day for more years than he cared to remember. And although this was the view that he had become accustomed to, he remembered, or rather he forced himself to remember, each and every day lest he forget, that it should never have been this way.
The stupidity of Man continued to amaze him
, even now. With a tired sigh he carefully pulled the door closed then dragged some of the dead plant life back over the frame to make sure it didn’t look in use. He walked carefully down the short path, matted with weeds, and through the gap in the rusty fence where the gate hung at a severe angle, its own rusty form tangled in climbing plants. Broken glass, left where it fell, crackled beneath his boots, making a sound like gravel and causing him to wince at each step. He stopped, leaned against a wall and stared through the misty air. To the north, over the now levelled landscape, he could just make out the remains of Parkes Cadman plaza.
Despite his heavy coat the cold bit deep into his bones, his breath came in short bursts as his lungs received the cold
-charged air and he quickly pulled up a scarf to cover his mouth. At first it seemed as if he was totally alone, the last man alive in a forgotten land, but then, as his eyes slowly scanned the derelict terrain, he picked them out; one, two, four men in total, each hidden in the dark shadows of various doorways. These were the men known simply as the watchmen. Each man acknowledged him silently from the depths of the grey shadowy embrace that they had almost become a part of, and, although he often wondered about their actual ability to provide protection against the real monsters that he knew lived not that far away; monsters that he had once faced when just a boy, he couldn’t help but smile at the thought that their presence made him feel just a little bit safer, just a little bit more secure.
His smile suddenly broadened further as a young woman appeared to his right. Her pretty face looked out from beneath a thick layer of clothes, topped off by a large coat with a fur-trimmed hood. She was petite with short dark hair and
dark chestnut coloured eyes that Jake felt were the most achingly beautiful thing he had ever seen. Megan smiled as she drew close, her perfect teeth brightening his soul as she spoke.
‘Hey Jake
.’
Jake smiled
brightly as he looked into those beautiful, dancing eyes.
‘Hey Megan
.’
Her eyes dropped to the battered tin mug that she was carrying in her tiny hands, hands that
were partly encased in thick, fingerless, woollen gloves. Still with that perfect smile she offered the tin mug up to him.
‘Here, this will warm
you up.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ she quizzed.
Jake took the mug and
leaned over the wall holding it protectively, his gaze lost somewhere to the middle distance.
‘You know what it’s like?’
‘Only if you tell me,’ she replied, allowing a touch of concern creep into her voice.
Jake deliberately sidestepped her comment,
‘you know… I’m Twenty-Eight years old and although all I’ve ever known is this… darkness,’ he stared into the depths of his mug as if it contained some secret insight, ‘…it still doesn’t feel...right.’
Megan moved close beside him, he felt
the warmth of body pressed against his side as they both stared out into the grey, misty air.
‘I know what you mean,’ she
said, shrugging, ‘I suppose one day we’ll get used to it… that’s evolution for you.’
‘Well for one, I hope we never do,’ Jake
’s response contained an unmistakable edge of bitterness and he felt her tense slightly, ‘I’d like to remember that it wasn’t always this way. I have to believe that one day, somehow, it might be different.’
Megan didn’t respond. The
latent anger in his tone was something that still took her by surprise, regardless of how many times she heard it. It made her wonder if Jake would ever find peace from his nightmares, whether he’d ever come to terms with his life, however dark and painful it was.
‘Where’s Trent
and your father?’ he asked, seemingly oblivious to the effect his response had caused.
Megan turned, looked up into his face
as if trying to read his thoughts. At first Jake tried to avoid her gaze, choosing instead to stare resolutely into the bottom of the battered tin mug, but he couldn’t for long and so he turned, briefly looking down into those dark brown, questioning eyes. For a second neither of them spoke, lost in the moment.
Megan
hesitated. She wanted desperately to ask him about the nightmares but knew, as always, that he wouldn’t talk about them anyway, so instead she just answered his question, ‘the crypt, where else?’ She looked back into the mist.
‘I suppose Max is there, too?’
‘I guess,’ she sighed, ‘Jake you know, perhaps you should...’
Jake threw
her a sideway glance and watched as Megan shrugged. He desperately wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure how to. He wondered if he’d ever be able to explain how he truly felt to her.
‘How’s the school coming along?’
he asked, changing the subject quickly.
‘Good actually,
it makes me feel I’m doing something that really makes a difference.’
The pride in her voice was obvious, it made Jake feel warm for a second,
‘that’s because you are,’ he said with real conviction.
For a minute they both stood side by side lost in their
own thoughts, before Megan once again broke the silence.
‘How’s the drink?’ she
asked.
Jake smiled,
‘good, thanks, as always.’
He took a last swig
, draining the remnants and handed her back the mug. It was a ritual they repeated each morning. Whatever time he woke, Megan always seemed to be there. He suddenly realised that he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her and a finger of fear streaked through him.
‘I’d better get going
,’ he muttered and with a last smile he turned to walk away.
‘Jake?’
Megan called out softly behind him.
He turned.
She hesitated, and then simply shook her head. ‘Nothing…’ she said, ‘…don’t worry.’
Megan watched as
he walked away with his head down, and her heart felt heavy as she tried to imagine the terrors he’d been through.
The community Jake now lived in consisted mostly of a ragtag group of survivors together with a handful of escapees. The survivors had chosen to try and create a new beginning, a new life, rather than become enslaved by the demons that had risen from the ashes of the war to take control of the City of New York; their City. The escapees were the lucky few that escaped from these demons.
Their community
was one of a scant number that had sprung up in the surrounding areas of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. In order to survive they had learnt to keep a low profile and not to cause any problems to the vampires that now ran New York City. In return they found they had been mainly left alone. But things were changing.
The community was now around seventy strong and they had already created an impressive infrastructure including a council to make decisions, a church for much needed prayer and a school for the children.
T
he school was Megan’s idea and passion and she taught there daily. In fact it was Megan that had been the driving force in setting the school up in the first place. It was situated in the remains of a small neighbourhood primary school right in the centre of what they considered to be ‘their area’. But it hadn’t been easy. At the start, Megan had needed to fight to get the Council’s agreement, even though Megan’s father was the Council Chief. The Council had been split, concerned that large gatherings were dangerous and preferring children to be schooled a home. One or two had even the queried the importance, questioning the value in a world where the most important skill was simply staying alive, a world where they were now the outsiders looking in.
But Megan had won out, arguing strongly
and pervasively that they needed the structure, needed to learn social skills and needed to learn what had gone before the death and destruction that was all some now knew. She has said that it was essential if they were to have a future, lest they all become animals themselves. Finally, after much arguing, the Council agreed and she had worked tirelessly ever since to deliver not only a safe environment that their children could learn in, but also a structured curriculum that balanced academic subjects with the practical lessons needed to survive in the world they lived.
The Council
was where all major decisions were now made. It had been set up to manage their small, but growing, society and to try and stop the endless arguments about what was, and what wasn’t important, arguments that had seemed to define the early days of their lives. It was made up of a small elected committee, consisting of five members, of which Jake was now one. But times were becoming more strained and Jake new it. There was a rift that was beginning to grow between its members, and the feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo was becoming stronger by the day.
Security continued to be a major issue, not only had they to remain hidden from the vampires, a task that had become more and more difficult over the past months due to a dramatic increase in what were known as search and destroy parties, but there were other risks too. Perhaps the most disappointing were the ad hoc raids carried out by other survivors from the other groups and clans that had grown up on the outskirts of the city.