Chapter 4
The heavy white box fan slowly and clumsily came to a stop in front of a dumpster in the windy alley. Monica exited out the right side and looked up and down the alley dodging trash and paper with her hand.
The sudden stop had awakened Sonic and Rossi, and they climbed out from the rear.
Blade looked at the old, decrepit building, and reached to knock on the steel door, but before he could, it began to open. Blade looked up and to the left, and saw a somewhat hidden surveillance camera.
A man with shoulder-length dirty-blond and gray hair and beard greeted the Daywalker and his guests through misty glasses. His smile was ear-to-ear and he grabbed Blade's hand, and then threw his free arm over his shoulder. It had been years, maybe too many to count, the man thought as he hugged his old friend. Blade noticed how the man nearing fifty still looked youthful and full of life.
"It's good to see you again, Blade. It seems like forever. I thought—," the man was cut-off.
"I know, you thought I was dead. I suppose in a way I was," Blade replied and began to introduce everyone:
"Bible John, this is Rossi, Monica and …?"
"Sonic."
"It's nice to meet you all. Please, come in, come in," he said with a smile and gesture of his hand.
John Carik, or Bible John as he is often called by friends, was a slender man—probably doesn't like food too much, Rossi thought as he sized the man up and down. Bible John looked back through his thick, black-framed glasses and smiled.
Inside the building was a complete reverse of the dilapidated look of outside. For the first time in years Sonic and Rossi looked on with big grins at the lavish furniture and food covering the kitchen. A kitchen! This guy had a kitchen Rossi and Sonic said silently with a look at each other.
On the far wall opposite the kitchen was a library of hardbound books. Monica noticed not a hint of dust atop the bookshelves. The man likes to read. Shakespeare, King, Keats, Lumley, Rice, Alwine, Romkey, Lovecraft, Clancy, etc. etc; the list went on and on and on. Blade too noticed the library, and looked at the books and then to Bible John.
"You read all these?"
"Yes, of course. But, that wall is more than meets the eye," Bible John began, but looked to Rossi and Sonic and said with a wink, "It's ok, my apples are your apples."
He continued: "I keep a low profile of course, but living above ground carries a price."
Bible John rubbed a small leather-bound book that read Houdini along the spine, and pulled it slightly from the shelf.
"Even I have my tricks," he said with a big grin. Slowly, the entire library wall began to move forward, and then separate at the middle, and slide to either side in a low grumble of mechanical parts and gears.
Rossi stopped amid-chew, and walked closer to the bunch at the sliding wall; Sonic followed after a view of the inside.
It was a complete room full of weapons hanging from each wall, and computers atop a long wooden desk. Two TV monitors filmed two locations of the building. The room itself enlarged as the wall hiding it removed and folded out of view. The space grew to about fifteen feet in width, and another five feet in distance.
Sonic and Rossi chuckled and Monica was in awe of the arsenal and technology.
"Something that you may or may not be aware of Blade, is that the American government is still functioning, and quite well, unbeknownst to the Vampire Nation it would seem. You wouldn't believe some of the preposterous things they are trying to come up with to defend themselves from the immortals.
Everything from installing gigantic ultraviolet lights in the sky during the night to ultraviolet rail guns that can pierce walls of concrete. America may not have much of an army left, but the technology from the fall out of the war has evolved ten fold. They live, or hide rather, in pockets in America: under the mountains of NORAD and several locations similar that were built in case of Nuclear War." Bible John stated.
"They have scientists and biochemists researching captured vampires, and are trying to come up with a disease that could possibly wipe out the race entirely. So far they've failed due to their accelerated immune system. The government has infected them with AIDS, syphilis, bubonic plague, smallpox, and hundreds of other biological weapons and diseases, but alas to no avail," the man said while adjust his glasses. Bible John walked over to the computer in the center of the three desktops, and typed in some commands.
He brought up a couple of pictures of people Blade knew well. Frank Drake. Hannibal King. Quincy Harker. Their groups and followers next, and what they all had in common was death.
"Blade, they're all dead. All of our friends; all of our colleagues. But you, I never gave up on you. I knew you weren't dead, but I was beginning to doubt my self and my intelligence," he finished with a smile that Blade managed to return, but then looked back at the computer monitor.
You could feel the despair and dread replace hope and optimism in that instant, Monica thought while looking at Blade's face—it painted a picture of a thousand words. No doubt he was thinking once more of the overwhelming odds in the vampires' favor. One man and two boys against an entire race now that the Earth's best hunters were gone.
As Blade turned around to walk out of the office, out of the corner of his right eye, he noticed a picture of a "concentration camp." The large black building that warehoused human livestock and slaves.
"This is where I'm gonna call 'em out. I'll start with this one," Blade said as he tapped his gloved finger onto the picture on the wall.
"The concentration camp? Call them out? What do you mean?" Rossi asked.
"I think he means he's going to declare war on the suck-heads, Rossi," Sonic explained.
The picture reflected Blade's wide grin to the four behind him.
*****
A square colossal structure sits atop a man-made island just next to the Statue of Liberty, which sits sadly and armless and decayed and weathered. The building is colored a flat black and is very dull and missing any kind of artistic touch in its design—just a large square. A very large square in fact, measuring about a ¼ mile in length and width.
The building was constructed for one purpose—to breed and generate the humans which were now only cattle. You couldn't really even consider them slaves, for they were treated by the vampires far worse if such a thing is possible. Sex is no longer permitted, save for the occasional sex-toy for the immortals; the camps are not co-ed. Pro-creation is done in a separate part of the compound, where the babies born are thrust immediately into slavery for the Vampire Nation.
A man stared at his translucent reflection in the clear wall. It was better than staring at the three silvery blue walls behind him, but as he looked out into the compound he was inflicted with pain: the familiar pain of a now forgotten time. The pain was from his memories before the vampire uprising, when they were nothing more than myth, legend.
Now, sitting in his claustrophobic cell, it was giving him a headache. He rubbed the stubbles of hair on his head and temples trying to ease the searing pain.
He quietly asked himself how long it had been since he had seen the sun. He couldn't calculate it. In here, time did not matter, much like it seemed it didn't for the vampires. He was more than sure it was over years—indicated by little cuts he made on his stomach from each new day he awoke. He now had over three hundred, before he stopped.
Besides, he had seen some people in here grow from young men to now more mature adults. They were the unlucky ones, much like him, the ones who actually had to live, or endure rather, this cruel life and existence—slaves to the immortal blood-suckers whom they were merely food, sustenance—and the occasional lay, nothing more.
While rubbing his head, his hands slipped to his forehead and to the small metal rod that barely protruded over the skull and through the skin, and the tattoo that he could not feel atop it. The small implant was an inventory device basically, and if the product (being the human) was ever to escape, it served as an electronic tracking device as well.
Again, hope disappeared with the touch of the needle shaped rod in his head. He could see the barcode-like design across his face, and a tear as it rolled silently down his cheek in the glass.
Jerry! That was his name, Jerry. He forgot it now and then. No one here spoke much at all, unless it was to themselves in the almost private conditions of their cells. But it came back to him just then, Jerry. But it didn't matter, no one would ever be calling out that name again, at least not while referring to number 111212, which is what he now went by.
A human reduced to nothing more than a few digits, and pints of blood.
Disgraceful.
He wanted to curse God then, but realized of course he didn't believe in such a creature or deity. And what would God have to do with a survival of the fittest war? Nothing…it's been happening since the beginning of time. And after all, vampires existed, so why not a God? Too many thoughts—too tired.
The man looked around his blank and lonely cell, and stared at the toilet and sink. At least we're given that much he thought, but he wasn't sure if it was aloud or in his head.