One: Unfortunate Circumstances

 § Unfortunate Circumstances §

 

A gun shot"no, several shots"rang out into the night, making me have a mini heart attack. It was the noise of machine guns I’d used to hear in movies.

 

            An elderly man’s voice cried out in extreme pain, and I hunched down yet a bit more in the bushes, if that were possible; tried to make myself even smaller than I was, which was definitely impossible. It had sounded much too loud not to be extremely close to my hiding place. I closed my eyes shut and prayed to God it wasn’t an old man who was in pain; children and the elderly were the worst victims in the war. They were disadvantaged to begin with, so they hardly had the same chances of survival as the youth and privileged adults.

 

            Thick-soled footsteps of a soldier thudded away at a fast pace toward the direction of the opposite bush from mine. Before the noise had completely receded, I quickly ran to the spot I thought I’d heard the shots resonate from.

 

            An old man lay in the clearing, on his back, bleeding through his chest. Not from one wound, but several. Who with any hint of a heart or soul would do such a thing? What was wrong with the world? Oh yeah, the vampires and their aspiration to dominate it.

 

            Suddenly, more booted-feet were marching this way; I froze in fear. A black-clad soldier appeared; AKA an armed vampire. As if a vampire by himself wouldn’t have been terrifying enough.

 

            My eyes widened in shock and terror as I imagined what kind of torture he’d be putting me through. News headlines and new reporters’ voices mingled in my jumbled brain as an oracle-mush of impending doom. The young soldier"a year or two older than me, by the look of him, but then again, vampires were experienced at hiding their age"gazed down at the elderly dead vampire, then at my frozen face.

 

            Other thoughts also raced through me like lightning"What if this is the soldier who killed him with the machine gun?"Wait, it couldn’t have been him, the old man was also a vampire, and vampires are out to get humans, not others of their own kind"He doesn’t even have a machine gun on him"But, oh God, what If he does?

 

            “What could he have possibly done to you to deserve this?” he demanded harshly. “This particular man was crippled, as well as aged.”

 

            My eyes stared blankly, hardly blinking, anticipating an unimaginable form of horror. My brain stopped working, as did my legs and face. I hardly even felt the snow storm that was buzzing away all around me, sharply whipping my hair into my eyes and mouth.

 

            The vampire soldier glanced down at the corpse and a flicker of remorse crossed his face. He reached down into one of his pant pockets.

 

            Oh, God…Is he going to brutally kill me, or turn me in to one of them? I wondered helplessly.

 

            He spoke into a device that was now in his hands, calling for backup, and uttering a bunch of code words.

 

            The only thing worse than death and vampirism combined…Is…

 

            In spite of my shocked state, I couldn’t bring myself to think the words.

 

            And one with a whole gang"of vampire soldiers…is probably even worse.

 

            For the first time in my life, I contemplated suicide. Maybe if I managed to piss of this soldier enough, he’d shoot me on the spot and get it over with. It was literally worth a shot.

 

            And then, he glanced at me with curiosity all over his face, like, Why are you still here?

 

            And against all odds, I found my brain and my legs ran me out of there as fast as I’d ever run in all my eighteen years of life.

 

                                    •••                                •§•                               •••                               

 

I woke up to gun shots.

 

            I ate break fast to gun shots too, these days, as well as the few classes that still stayed open, and dinner.

 

            But that never stopped my heart from drumming in my ears until my brain assured me I wasn’t the one who’s been shot. But this meant that every day, when I felt like crawling under a rock until the war ended and humans came out as victorious, I always pushed myself to continue, telling myself not to be a coward. Others were having a much worse day than I. In order to help humans have some amount of hope, the still living population of us had to carry on and fight in our own ways. Preferably not by being as painfully cheesy as me about the whole thing.

 

            “They took Kirschbaum, it’s occupied and its people are locked in while the rest of the world is locked out” my roommate Adelheid informed me.

 

            “Oh no…” I moaned before I’d had a chance to sit up; all my energy rushed out through my breath.

 

            “Yeah, and what’s worse, they’re planning to rename it ‘Aeternum’ or ‘Aeternitas,’ which is like eternity or something in Latin.”

 

            “My parents are there,” I breathed out, mentally and physically collapsing.

 

            “Oh no.”

 

            As quickly as my burst of helplessness had come on, I sat up in the bed with resolve.

 

            “I have to get there somehow,” I stated, partially trying to convince my cowardly self, which was at the moment shivering from the mere thought of it.

 

            “What? Mädchen, are you insane?” my friend asked in her slightly-accented tilt.

 

            She always started to insert a few German words here and there when she got stressed.

 

            “I have to at least know if they’re okay…”

 

            “They cut off all ties to the outside world for humans"offensichtlich,” she reasoned.

 

            “That just means that I have to go see for myself if they’re still…alive. And for the record, I have no idea what the hell ‘offen-whatever’ is.”

 

            “It means ‘obviously,’” she explained, exasperated. “I really hope you’re not serious, Eileen Vale.”

 

            “I am. I’m going down for breakfast, you coming? Want me to bring you some?”

 

            “Is there any way I can convince you to change your mind?” Adelheid pleaded.

 

            “But…But I’m hungry!” I joked. “Come on you, let’s get some food in our bellies, and then we’ll talk.”

 

            At breakfast, there were more noises of war"a child crying out for his mother, a woman screaming a boy’s name, more gun shots. Naturally, most of us lost our appetites before finishing half of what was in front of us. Some of the other students"mostly girls"bolted out of there, and some even had tears streaming down their faces. I was about to be one of those people, until Adelheid rescued me by telling me that Fröhlich had been liberated by the German army"one of the strongest human armies in the world.

 

            Soon, we left the dining hall and prepared for the mandatory first class of the day: Recognition of Vampires.