Chapter Two Continued

Chapter Two Continued

I was late.  The boar had been heavy and the going had been slow.  I handed the carcass off to a passing group of men and rushed inside.  I poured water over my head to wash the sweat and blood away and quickly donned my armor.  By the time I'd driven to the perimeter Samuel, the civilian I relieved, was agitated.  I told him of the boar and his uneasiness fled, replaced by a grin.  He reported that there again had been no activity and then went on his way.

I began my shifts by walking my zone.  It was a half mile of the perimeter, a five foot space between the wall and the churned soil.  No one set foot on the soil.  Anyone who did usually didn't last long enough to get back to safe ground.  If these people remembered mines, I'd tell them that was what this was.  A mine field.  But nothing of metal and explosive lay beneath the dirt.  Just as deadly, though.

When I'd first arrived in this place, the churned soil had been in patches scattered across the island.  After the initial shock had passed at what came out of the soil I'd designed a strategy to use the traps to our benefit.  We'd only lost three civilians in the attempt, and what resulted had saved countless others.  It had also given us the first advantage in the war.

We called it the Ark War.  Well, they'd called it that, the enemy.  The name had stuck.  Because the Bible was no longer around except as a book in Frank's collection, the civilians didn't get the joke. It had lasted almost two years, though perhaps war wasn't the correct term. A series of skirmishes, pitched battles. They'd attack, we'd fight back. When we got the guns working the tide had turned. We'd attacked, and they'd died. Death was something that human beings, though they tried not to think on it, knew was coming. Inevitably. But the enemy-they'd lost that acceptance. So when it had come to them in greater numbers than they could stand, they'd called for the treaty. The enemy knew me as Noah, just as most of the civilians did.  Noah and his Ark, saving mankind from extinction.

I think in some ways it amused them.  I amused them.  Not the death, but the challenge it represented.  I knew they could crush us if they really wanted to.  We'd resist, some of them would perish, but their numbers were so much larger.  So it was that as long as I entertained them they'd let us be.  Almost five years of this might be getting old for them.  And if I was gone, would they proceed with the extermination?

Frank either didn't know or wouldn't discuss it with me.  The fact the he indulged me as much as he did continued to baffle me.  It was as if was waiting for me to do something.  Or waiting for something to be done to me.

After two hours or so of pacing, I leaned back against the wall and took a long pull from my canteen. The water was warm and tangy from the metal but it refreshed me nonetheless. Then I stared out over the sun-beaten earth and thought of how I'd lied to Frank.

The hurtle through time and space hadn't made me stronger, faster, or more agile. I'd always been that way. I'd learned over the years to hide it, to pretend that I was a normal guy. The only time it had come up, that anyone had asked questions, was the fire.

I heard a noise to my right. I squinted and saw through the shimmering heat the small figure of the guard speaking with someone else. He waved me toward him. I straightened, took another sweep from left to right with my eyes, and trotted over to the two figures.

"Noah, this guy wants to join us," he explained as I approached.

I perused the recruit. He was a tall, lanky civilian with matted blond hair that tangled to his shoulders. His clothes were loose on him, the white tunic and pants billowing in the breeze. He flashed me a grin of white teeth. Obviously his tribe was advanced enough to care about dental hygiene.

"You want to join, you have to train," I told the newcomer. "You speak to the leaders."

"Leaders busy," he grunted. "You who talk to, says them." He waved a hand toward HQ.

"They are wrong," I told him patiently. "You shouldn't be here. It's dangerous."

"I face danger," he said proudly, thumping his chest with a fist. "I protect."

"Yeah? How about you let us do our job and go..."

I was cut off by a low swear from the guard. I turned and saw and then I ran.


She'd somehow gotten through the gate.  No time to wonder how.  She was elderly,  carried a toddler in her arms.  The kid was pointing at the far off trees and laughing.  She'd made it to the edge of the revenant field before I could shout.  And she ignored the shout.  Kept going.  I pumped my legs faster, brought my Uzi forward.  She walked casually but ate up ground.  Five feet.  Ten feet.  The ground behind her had started to ripple, like water disturbed by stones.  I kept screaming and while she didn't seem to notice the kid did.  He noticed the ground, too.  His agitation finally got her attention.  She stopped, looked over her shoulder as the first white hands shot from the earth.  Then she panicked.

I reached them just as she took off.  Not back to safety, but farther into the churned dirt.  The first revenants had gotten halfway out of their holes, their dead eyes and white flesh streaked with dirt.  I sprayed them with bullets as I ran backward after the woman.  I didn't wait to see if they fell, but turned and ran hell-bent toward the fleeing grandmother.  I jumped and dodged the hands that pulled at the soil and finally got a hold of the woman.  I yanked her around and she fought me.  I grasped her shoulders and shook her.  Her eyes rolled and she clutched the child tighter.  He yelled and squirmed, then turned to me.

"Gram can't hear," he babbled at me.

I stared at him, into his blue eyes.  He pointed behind me.  I blinked and turned.  Shuffling toward us was a goddamned army of revenants.  I looked past the dead things and saw a group of my soldiers standing at the edge of the field.  I shouted at them to stay the fuck there.  I unstrapped my Uzi and tried to hand it to the grandmother.  She shook her head, pushing it away. 

"You have to!" I shouted at her.  The little boy was crying now, and the revenants were inching closer.  The grandmother set the child down.  She took the Uzi.  I quickly showed her how to pull the trigger and aim.  Then I turned to the revenants.

They'd formed a loose semicircle around us, blocking us from the safety of solid ground.  I advanced with my knives. 

"Tell her not to move," I barked at the child.  "And tell her not to aim that thing at me."

My first knife took an arm off, my second plunged into a throat.  The next minutes passed in a blurry of knife blades and sprays of viscous blood.  I heard the machine gun going off in random bursts and the moans of the dying revenants.  I tasted acrid, rotten blood.  The sun tried to blind me as I carried out my grim task.  Finally I spun, looking for more flesh to cut, more dead eyes to stare into.  It was quiet.  The soldiers stared at me, open-mouthed, from a great distance.  Somehow we'd moved across the field.  I swerved and looked to the grandmother.  Revenant bodies lay around her, bloated and white in the sun.  She held the gun loosely by her side, panting.  Of the little boy there was no sign.  And two feet away was the vampire side of the island.  Chills went down my spine as I watched a child vampire, appearing no older than ten, step from the foliage with a huge grin on his pale ageless face.  Clutched under one arm was the little boy.

"Do you dare to break treaty Noah?" he taunted.  "This one did."  He surveyed the path of dead revenants leading across the perimeter.  His smile faded a fraction.  Hundreds of white bodies.  Hundreds.

"He's only a child," I told him warily.  The grandmother was openly weeping, trying to shove my gun at me.  I ignored her, not daring to take my eyes off of the vampire.

"Then come and get this child," the child vampire told me evenly.  "Come and get him, Noah of the Ark."

I realized dimly that the grandmother was shaking my arm frantically, and I turned to her.  Before I could register even surprise, the world went black. 

End of Chapter Two.  Isn't this a fun story?  :)