Walking through the double doors
that led to the pristine decontamination chamber the lights in the chamber
automatically switched on and lit up the vampire dressed in black with a bright
white light. The smell of ozone crept
into the chamber from the enclosed ozone generating lamps designed to prevent
the transmission of disease, mostly from human to vampire then back to human
again. Though the vampires weren’t
susceptible to the many diseases that the humans may carry, they could still
transmit them inadvertently.
Humans had for some time been
organizing within the icy grip of the vampire control. The southwest region had been the home of the
original Ratones and their graphiti could be seen here and there, the Rats were
eating the beast from the inside out.
His mission had come down from the
highest level. He had been in the field
hunting “rats” when the Emperor had sent him the call. Los Ratones, was the underground
organization responsible for the loss of a great many of the vampires’ precious
human cows. Not just the Emperor’s
personal supplies were being targeted either.
At this point the regional Overlord of the Southwest of what used to be
The United States of America was frantic with the tide of suicides and
breakouts. Often they didn’t get far and
offered the sport of hunting them down, but the cost was mounting.
The vampire walking with terrible purpose was brought in to root out the problem. His inquiry so far had led him on several wild goose chases within the labyrinthine halls full of caged humans. A human will say anything given the right motivation. This was the motivational vampire that the Emperor used for situations requiring special creativity solving the riddles behind crimes against the Empire.
His name was Mortin, and he was 400 years old. He could remember the way things had been
before the collapse and the rise of The Empire.
He was aware that things weren’t perfect within that Empire, and he was
more than happy and willing to break bones or spirits in search of a future
securely in the grips of the Emperor.
His mission today was to root out the individuals that had been
supplying the Rats that were taking refuge in the massive hunting hall complex.
For over a century the Rats had
been gaining greater and greater numbers.
It was mostly a fictional group in reality, a myth perpetuated by
generations of human prisoners, the organization was less an organization than
a means of maintaining morale amongst a destroyed people. At first there had been only the one incident,
one human stood up to a vampire overseer after learning of the human colony on Australia and New Zealand
It had been amusing to the Emperor
at first but when humans began to stand up to their guards more often and
refuse to peacefully be drained of their blood in their bi-weekly session he
had realized that things were rather more pressing. He was aware that in the hunting hall complex
there were tunnels dug by the Los Ratones group, skillfully concealed by the
human workers that dug them. He hadn’t
yet found them but that was why he brought in a specialist to root out the
problem.
The vampire walked between the two
rows of cages on his way to cage 1134, he could see it in the distance, the
cold shower was ongoing. 35 degree water
showering over 29 humans clothed in rough sewn cotton sheets of patchwork
colors, as the materials had been available.
In most cases the sheets were hand-me-downs, bloody smelly clothes from
the last cow that wore them, when they were received by their new owner. As the tall thin figure walked he rattled his
electric prod against the cages of humans covering the last two hundred or so
yards to his destination. The humans in
the cages were silent, eyes wide following his every move, and also careful to
not make eye contact at the same time.
The Empire in general had a policy
of using a minimum of behavior modification chemicals on the human cows that
were primarily used as food. The taste
of anti-depressants or sedatives, or the stimulants that were sometimes used to
maintain the servant classes of humans simply taste bad. A vampire’s taste in blood varied with the
vampire and the nature of their own conversion, some prefer fear, some lust, it
all depends. This vampire today wasn’t
interested in a feed however and the humans huddled together in the corners of
their cages weren’t about to take any chances inviting an attack or worse by
acting up. Fear of being frozen to death
in an icy shower was all that was needed to keep them in line.
He walked looking into each of the
cages suspiciously, reading the faces of the terrified zombie-like blood
generators for signs of insurrection or rebelliousness. His narrow eyes stared deeply into any eyes
foolish enough to be caught by his. As
he got closer to the cage in question he could feel the energy around him
growing more and more hostile. Behind
him and further down, in both directions from him, a hum began to grow. A murmur not yet loud enough to resonate in
the long hallway; the voices of nearly five thousand captive humans beginning
to grumble their discontent.
The cages immediately around him of
course were perfectly quiet and the sounds of the other humans more distant
from him in the hall remained audible but subdued as he approached the cage
1134. This was the cage where his
information led him to believe he would find one of the Rats; a Rat that had
been ratted out, as it were. One of the
maintenance class humans had overheard talk that the Rats leader was somewhere
in this section of the cow cages and offered up this information in return for
a chance in the hunting halls to earn ‘the gift’.
The intelligence service had been
able to use the audio surveillance microphones in place in the cage halls to
listen to noise levels and had decided that this cage, or the one directly next
to it must be the one. While the humans
were careful enough at maintaining secrecy within their communication, they
were unable to prevent the vampires from knowing that they were communicating.
By monitoring the tap volumes and the general pace of the communication
that went on the vampires were able to infer more than the humans realized, as
truly careful as they were. The humans
in cage 1134 knew now though that they had been found out of course as they
were huddled together fighting the freezing cold. The feeling of the humans in the other cages around
where the vampire interrogator now stood was downright hostile, but they were
powerless to stop him and his intentions.
He yelled into the cage 1134, “SO,
WHO IS IT? Someone wants out of that
shower I KNOW it”.
This was the standard method of
gaining cooperation, rather than using the prod or truth serum that could be
tasted for weeks in the contaminated human, simply freezing them until their
survival instinct took over was preferred.
Humans would be kept alive and in freezing agony for weeks. Warm them up, freeze them back down, till
they talk. The fear attached to knowing
that one was most likely going to be frozen nearly to death over and over again
was enough to wear anyone down after three or four hours normally. The vampires could go for weeks without sleep
as a human would think of it.
“Who wants a warm bath and a hot
meal?!” he taunted. “Whos cold? Brrrrrrr! Im freezing out here.” He mocked
their pain. “I know you are in there you
fucking Rat! Who wants to save their
cage? I am authorized to let you all
freeze on the first ‘cold’.” Referring to the shared knowledge of the freezing
and warming that happened, implying there would just be no warm, ever again for
these people. “Do you all want to
die? You there” and he pointed through the bars at the
huddled mass of humans in the center of the cage where the spray was a little
weaker because the light fixture above demanded some space. The humans would cram together like penguins
conserving warmth in the Antarctic winter.
In this cage there were two
complete families, from the three small children to the various other ages and
on up through to a, ‘quite old for the conditions’ fifty something year old man
and woman who were talking soothingly and low amidst the sound of the spray,
keeping their respective families together.
They all had stories, as simple as they may be, and lives, and they all
hoped for a future beyond today.
“You there! BOY!” he singled out a teenage boy on the outside
of the pack, calling to him, “you look strong!
We could use you in the maintenance ranks!” he had to shout slightly over the sound of
the spray nozzles above. “you look
smart, don’t let yourself die with these losers today!”
The boy looked back over his
shoulder and at the vampires black boots and was quickly helped lovingly by a
female arm in towards the center of the mass of crouching shivering humanity. Many of them were crying now, the children
sobbed as their parentts tried to cover them completely from the icy water and
soothe them. The boy had not given it
much thought, but that was largely because of his now more slowly working
mind. The ten minutes it had taken the
vampire to deal with the maintenance human who had tried to spare this cage and
then walk the distance to where he was now, was already taking its toll on the
boys brain. He was thirteen years old
and had never seen the sun.
“Ok then!” shouted the now slightly
angry vampire. “how about you
ma’am!” showing a level of politeness
that while obviously faked for the moment sounded horribly appealing when accompanied
with his offer. “how about I let you and
your baby live?! How much is THAT little
rat worth to you? Do you believe in
GOD?! Is that who is pouring out icy
love over your baby’s precious naked skin???
I will let you both out right now, just tell me which one of you is the
Rat in there? Or is it your baby
there? Is it the rat? Should I just
torture the truth out of IT?”
The woman he was speaking to had
dark hair and tanned looking olive skin despite the fact that at 24 years of
age she had also never seen the sun first hand.
Life in the cages was numbing to the senses and ones family was the only
break from the sensory and spritiual deprivation that came with isolation from
the natural world. The vampires simply
left families together whenever possible because the humans lived longer and
could be bled 14% more often.
She heard the mans words and felt
her one year old baby son squirming and crying in the cold water, that while
warmed by her back was still probably not much more than 40 degrees by the time
it ran over his infant body. She raged
inside and at the same time felt a hand on her right forearm, it was the eldest
man, her grandfather. “he will probably
kill you both if you listen, don’t give in” he whispered in her ear nuzzling
into her hair and neck paternally, warming her, protecting his great grandson lovingly.
The emotional pain was nearly unbearable,
holding her whole world in her arms and unable to spare her son or any of her
family the pain that was everywhere, she gritted her teeth so hard that one
broke, then another, sending shooting of pain all the way up the nerves
invigorating her quickly numbing brain.
Looking around at the floor between her bruised and scraped knees,
perpetually damaged with the life on the rough cement floor, feeling her life
slipping away, aware of her own pain and the pain her writhing child felt, she
was beginning to snap. She didn’t have
the words for how angry she was, she wasn’t angry she was enraged.
All the humans had was each other
and they often shared stories in whatever language they had or could
learn. The one concept that kept them going
was God. While it might seem unlikely
the concept of God was even stronger in this pit of despair. Life in the dark only made the light at the
end of the tunnel seem brighter. It was
hard for vampires to fathom this fact.
They didn’t care if their humans killed themselves, in particular if
they were there to drain the corpse quickly enough. They would often push their humans to the
breaking point trying to get them to ‘pop’ and assumed that there was a
fundamental design flaw in the human mind, belief in the unseen, unprovable
God, that led it to suicide, rather than become vampire. Most vampires couldn’t understand the pwer of
mortality after a few short days with the gift.
She raged in her mind as this
vampire held over her head, her today tomorrow and yesterday, but she never
abandoned what she felt was her only hope, her faith in a world under the
sun. A world of humans her grandfather,
the kind man who now comforted her, had told her existed and would exist again. “As sure as the sun rises every day, whether
we are there to see it or not; it goes around and around”. She held onto her child and the warm hand on
her forearm she guided to the exposed parts of he childs back that she just
couldn’t cover on her own.
Watching the touching scene
unfolding before him the vampire started in on another of the mothers, taunting
her with the life of her child. This
mother was older by a few years and had two children, one around 3 the other 7
or so. He prodded at her mind with
images of warmth and comfort, food, peace, an opportunity to help herself out
of her current predicament and save her children at the same time. He took a walkie out of his inside breast
pocket and mumbled something into it, the temperature of the water in the cage
raised to a skin searing seventy degrees Fahrenheit. There was an audible sigh of relief from all
the humans in the cage and despite the sounds of the water still flowing the absence
of the sobbing of children drove home the sickening reality of the sounds that
had been emanating from the cage just a few seconds before.
The hum of the other humans had
been rising and falling as the drama played out, those furthest away grew
louder and louder, feeling safely distant from the immediate threat of
anguish. The vampire looked around
himself and raised his arms as if in the rain of the growing rumble of human
emotion, bathing in the anguish.
“what are we going to do here
people?” he looked across the ten foot span that was plain cement the same as
the cages at the humans in all the cages.
As his eyes fell on this or that cage the humans fell silent, then began
their hum again as his eyes moved on. He
sensed the resentment and emotion growing around him and sighed. How could he get the information he wanted,
that the Emperor wanted? There was a Rat
in one of these cages he knew it.
“okey dokey people, you give me no
choice!” he barked out with arms still outstretched in the sign of the
Cross. Pulling out his walkie he held
down the button with his arms still wide, capturing the sound of the spray in
cage 1134 still rewarming the inhabitants there, the sound of the rising rage
around him and his voice as he screamed a shrieking howl, “TURN EM ALL ON!”
With that, the sound of a waterfall
filled the long narrow hall and all the human sounds stopped. Freezing cold water, taken directly from the
mountain streams high above them and in the sun, and then chilling it further
to the desired temperature. The humans
throughout the long hall instinctively assumed the same position as those in
the unfortunate cage in front of the interrogating vampire.
“I can do this all night you
thankless worthless animals!” he yelled at the masses of huddled humanity
around him. “I can freeze you all to
death and the Emperor would thank me!”
He antagonistically grabed and shook at the bars like he was trying to
get in to beat them, he shoved his twelve inch long prod through the bars of
the cages, pressing the discharge button making it spark wildly in the freezing
mist. “We will drain you all and feed
your empty skins to the next batch we bring in!
someone wants to tell me who the rat is!
Who are you you weak minded toad?!
Which ONE of you is going to survive ME?”
The lights above him flickered and
made weak rainbows in the mist that overflowed the cages as he paced watching
as first this and that person began to cry.
Cries for mercy began to be heard, “mercy” they called through audibly
chattering teeth. “So is this how you
are all going to die? Begging me for
mercy? Tell me there isn’t one of you
that would like to have the gift?” he
was upping his price, he felt. “if I
walk out of this hall without my RAT” he said emphasizing the word, “you will
all die and I will be a hero! Who wants
to have dinner with me and the Emperor tonight, the rest of them we can eat
TOGETHER!” This of course wasn’t at all
true, he had strict orders to not harm any of the other cages,
permanently. The terrified and freezing
humans couldn’t know that though.
The mother holding her baby in cage
1134 still clenched her broken teeth despite the warming water still flowing in
their cage, intentionally, to enhance the pain.
She wasn’t fooled by the warm water.
Neither did those others in her cage, buy the vampire pain games being
played, they were all of them, RATS. The
father of her child, crouching next to her with his arm around her holding her
close, saw the pink of diluted blood leaking from her mouth and imagined she
had bit her cheek. “I love you, forever”
he whispered to her in the now less searing than pleasant seventy degree
water. “no matter what Eassau,” he said
finally naming the child after a year of life, “will live forever with us. No matter what. They will never stop us all” he said through is own gritting teeth, and
tearful rage, helpless to stop the pain afflicting his family, his whole world.
Madelaine, the mother, started
crying with rage and pain and the vampire saw her shaking with the tears. “what are you crying for NOW?” he asked with mocking annoyance. “YOU got the warm water now, what should I do
for you? Invite you back to my
quarters? Would you like to earn the
gift the old fashioned way?” he was
trying anything he could to get a reaction.
He was losing control of the situation from the standpoint of his goals;
at this rate there would be no constructive information gained today, he
figured he might as well have fun with it.
“I could introduce you to some of
my other slaves, im sure they would like you very much indeed!” he looked at her sidelong, ogling her clearly
visible body. The shower of icy water
continued on the cages around them. The
hum that had increased to a rumble was now gone, replaced by the sounds of
crying. Two thousand cages, in this hall
alone, sobbed as one it seemed. in some
of the cages some triednow to call out, offering information. None of them had any of course and the
vampire with a look was able to tell this as he walked a few feet this way and
that up and down the hall, feigning interest in this humans attempt or that
persons attempt to gain his attention.
They were freezing, they were lying, he didn’t need converts, or slaves,
he needed information.
As some humans tried to sell their
selves to this vampire in the cages around them, the vampire refocused on the
cage in front of him again as he returned from taunting and prodding the
unfortunate humans that attempted to gain his ear, his favor.
“what do you think you fucking
rats?”he said to the humans still enjoying warm water in front of him. “do you want the cold back? Should I leave all you pathetic worms to
wriggle around until you die? Surely you
are worth more to yourselves than that?
What about your kids? Think about
the children!” he said mocking them, with the lives of their children.
Here he waited listening to the
shivering and sobbing barely audible above the white noise of the spray heads
that were in each cage placed four to a cage, for proper coverage of the cell
area. He took out his walkie and ordered
the temperature back down for the cage in front of him and rattled his prod on
the bars. This was his final ploy.
“ok you all, im sorry you are going
to have to die like this, but its your choice, I tried to be reasonable.” He made a show of walking away down the
center of the low hall and its evenly spaced fluorescent lights. But still noone in cage 1134 said a thing,
not one word, not even the parents.
As he walked past cage after cage
of humans huddling in masses on the floors of what they had to assume was to be
their tomb, he heard at long last what he wanted, a truthful voice screaming in
rage, a female voice. “I AM THE RAT!”
she screamed over and over, shreiking. He stopped in his tracks and smiled a
reptilian smile, pulling the walkie out he ordered all the cages spray systems
turned off, except 1134. he suspected it
was the mother he had so thoroughly taunted and he walked briskly back to what
he assumed would be the window of opportunity to break open Los Ratones and
secure the Emperors information and favor.
He was counting his reward as he walked.
Maybe he would get all of them?
He wondered to himself.
He found the woman whom he had
suspected the voice to belong to, standing at the bars screaming with her child
no longer in her arms. The sheer cotton
garment clung to her skin revealing a full and beautiful motherly form as she
screamed with a near unholy rage through the bars and shaking herself back and
forth trying to dislodge the bars from the cement, itself poured on the living
rock of the mountain.
“Soy la RATA!” she screamed as he
approached. She was visibly scared of
the approaching figure but she didn’t slow down or stop screaming and spitting
blood and pieces of her own broken teeth on her self as she did. He approached her walking through the
freezing mist from the spray nozzles above and enjoying her ire and smiling at
her as she screamed and spat.
He knew she was lying now, although
she was making such a scene that the now less cold humanity around them was
beginning to chatter and yell, like angry chimpanzees. He took one long look at her, sizing up her
emotion, and reached through the bars allowing the water to wet his black
leather clad arm and grabbed her by the hair.
She went on screaming “SOY LA RATAA!” and spitting tasty blood in his
face. He looked her over with cold
disdain and taking his electic prod and its 20,000 volts of nerve wrenching
love, he shocked her where her adams apple would be and she convulsed, held
vertical now only by his grip; she was vomiting bile and remnants of wheat paste
uncontrollably.
The cages nearby fell silent while
those too far away to see the commotion went on screaming and carrying on now
like monkeys, throwing feces and whatever they could stand to lose that might
do damage.
Mortin, now shocked her cruelly again
on each breast and then again on the forehead before dropping her and shaking
his jacket arm clean of her vomit and blood.
He wiped the tooth bits off of his front and looked at her,
“youre no rat. But you are going to die like one” he said
now assured that he would get no information out of this cage today or ever
probably. If he killed them all, he
would get the Rat. he perused the rest
of the humans in the enclosure as the woman’s man, a shorter fellow crouched
low in the continuing rain of icy water came and collected her spasming form. “you
people just will never learn will you” spat Mortin at shivering mass of monkeys.
He took his walkie out again and he
barked an order in a mix of several languages and all the sprinklers again came
on.
As he walked back towards the exit,
visible off in the distance down the narrowish walk between the rows of cages now
silent of human ruckus again, the sound of water spraying again filled the
hall. He walked calmly but briskly.
As he reached the doors of the
decontamination chamber a second vampire was waiting for him standing at the
control panel looking at him sidelong as he approached.
The second vampire was the aide to
the Investigator and had been in an adjacent hall seeking the same information
in another cage when he had gotten the call to turn on the spray in these cages. “so,” he started,
“how many get to sleep forever tonight? And are we going to
collect them up?” he asked with some
purpose, as he was hungry.
“just the one cage dies, and no we can grab a drink at the
bars. I want them to rot.”
And with that the second vampire
smiled and cocked his head in an ‘oh well’ gesture and turned a dial and all
the cages, but one, turned off and the monkeys started to howl again. The two vampires walked, the second letting
the first pass with a nod, into the decontamination chamber where a series of
blasts of disinfectant ozone gas impacted them from all sides making their
clothing fluff out and flutter with each of the six blasts. The elder of the two, who still had some
bloody tooth and vomit on his sleeve walked over to the rinsing station at the
corner nearest the exit doors and began to wash himself.
“so what is our next move then eh
boss?” said the slightly shorter and larger of build, aide.
“we keep looking… we should examine the hunting halls again,
the worst of the problem has to still be in there. This is the heart of the issue here in the
cages but ill guarantee the head is somewhere in those hunting halls.” He was referring to the massive complex of
hunting halls that totaled nearly ten million square feet of space and many
more million cubic yards of volume, all under ground, hewn out of the rock
beneath the mountain. Once the complex
of NORAD, it was now the playground for vampires.
As the two departed the hall they talked about their next
move and planned out a strategy to solve the Rat problem, quickly; the Emperor
was not patient. Meanwhile behind them
in the hall the shower continued and the humans in cage 1134 froze to death, in
each others arms. Except one.
The woman, now blissfully incapacitated by the
savage shocking she had received and unaware of her own freezing death, had
shoved him through the bars, squeezing the child painfully through, desperate
to save him. It worked. Cage 1135 had a new member and a teenage
girl, barely seventeen had a new baby boy.
The rest, too large to escape the bars, froze, and were left for weeks
decaying in a pile. It was a calling
card.
“Vampires own you”, it said.
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