The Red Nights of Summer

Speak now or forever hold your peace, I aimed the bolt downwards towards his heart's left curve. He begged to witness the sunrise one last time before the monstrous affliction took over his humanity completely. To make it in this line of work, you have to whittle away at your soul bit by bit. Those who can’t handle it end up taking the easy way out.

“I apologize, sir. I never meant to disappoint you,” he said, as I noticed the white gauze soaked with red droplets on his arms. I knew he didn't deserve this fate. He was just a young man with promising baseball skills, whose future was snuffed out by being forced into a war he didn't understand. As he lay there grasping for life, I watched as he slipped away from this world. I knew that no matter how well-trained you are or prepared for battle, sometimes fate has other plans.

A carrier attacked us from inside a barn and my sleep-deprived state and my age made my aim go awry. His mother may receive a medal and our commanding officers might applaud us, but deep down we all knew we were enacting horrors in the name of our country.

As I walked away from the makeshift fortress with blood on my hands and guilt gnawing at my insides, a gunshot echoed in the distance. It was an eerie and chilling sound that made me feel as though death was lurking around each corner. Was it coming for me or was it just a reminder of what awaited us all? With nothing but fear in my heart, I removed his dog tags and papers and left him with a stake through his heart - an effort to prevent him from returning as an undead carrier who craved nothing more than flesh and blood.

Will someone do the same for me when my time comes?

I never felt more alive than knowing I was no longer at the top of the food chain.

The private at the station inspected the authenticity of my passport and the signature below the government document. The riflemen were wet behind the ears. Their faces were as barren as the dust bowls across the mid-west. Boys that could barely produce stubble.

Every man has a look of shame that never got to become a soldier. The boys checked the blue lines by my throat and wrists for signs of puncture wounds. Those who bore incisions were given orders by the governor, what was left of him was to be placed in isolation. Those that refused were shot on the spot.

“Point of destination.” The sentry asked. “The Valley.” There’s a nest preventing canned goods from being shipped up to San Francisco. Migrant workers are afraid to work even under armed guards. It was strange, even as the world came to a halt, the captains of industry couldn’t let their bottom lines run dry.

We were not all welcome as heroes but as a hindrance.

 “These are state and county issues. The Federal government should not be allowed to intrude on containment.”

 The charming Pastor on the radio cried.

“Washington has become a den of vipers! The Whores of New Babylon.” Scores of heads nodded in agreement as I boarded the train. There was a lot of downtime between operations. Every nest removed required a trove of paperwork. A bean counter would crunch the numbers and a congressman would sell it to the people. What I would give to be a bean-counter.

 Every bolt fired or bullet spent was accounted for. Checks and balances came at the cost of autonomy. That being said, a bureaucracy was strangely comforting as the world went to hell in a handbasket. I mean who are we kidding, it was always going to hell. You would think the dead coming to prey on the living would bring us together. But grifters and zealots put a stop to that.

The sapphire embers danced and kissed across the dim violet sky. It was no longer novel as struggling towns burned and buried the remains of loved ones.

We couldn’t risk the blight getting out in the air even when they were managed to be killed. I’ve witnessed mothers throw their children in the infernos, only for them themselves to jump in with it. The agony of the fire was little compared to a life without their offspring. Survivor’s guilt was an epidemic that rivaled the blood-lust.

Grief and chaos were the little bed bugs in society that crawled into every invitation. The tent revivalists spread the bites of the blight through towns and counties. The power of prayer was the only protection they needed against the calling of the night.

Who needed medical treatment?  One would think I would scoff at the idea of faith, but the polished rosary beads and crucifix told another story. This nation still feared the blessed virgin and her saints. They scorned the ones that worshiped at a similar yet different altar.

I’ve come across the bullet-riddled bodies of guardsmen, good people attempting to deliver vaccines to poor towns. That was the version of civil discourse.

We could have pushed back the red tide in a matter of weeks, but public health became a political hot button. I mean, I can’t blame people at all, the food bank lines and the broken-down cars running away from the bible belt didn’t help either.

Hungry families became the victims of endless thirst. Imagine if we set up camps and food banks before the spread. Millions of displaced people with fresh veins and blood ripe for the taking. It was the stained cribs that kept me up at night.

The crawlers knew how to shift their weight and dampen the sounds of the footsteps while overworked parents slept in unprotected shacks and tents.

This job has an expiration date. Some people do it because it beats digging up ditches. Others like myself believe it’s a civic duty.

 It doesn’t hurt that it’s a foot in the door for other government jobs and eventually a pension.

We became poster boys and folk heroes. Government-issued wooden stakes, I never thought I’d see the day. However, the job attracted people with less than stellar moral fibers.

Former convicts and ruffians looking for a paycheck and a license to raid. Companies liked them became they could take government contracts such as blight removal and pay them less than competing wages.

We called them tooth fairies. They ripped off the fangs of carriers of the blight. Sold them as souvenirs or talismans to make up for the undesirable wages. I’ve walked across towns where victims of the plague were strung up or nailed to wooden posts, the warning wasn’t for the blood initiated, it was a monument to terror.

There were worse creatures than the ones that prowled the dirt roads and the main streets of small towns. Some people enjoyed the mayhem. They had endured the horrors of war and couldn’t adjust to a life of peace.

There were whole towns were under the jurisdiction of the real monsters, and they looked just like us. He was always just a few steps ahead. He left a lead bullet in me and I intended to leave a silver one in return. I made small circles around the indents of the entry wound.

You can’t print that in the news, what would the tax payers think.

I followed the stink of the Sunday barbeque to the next town. It was time to take a break, I cracked open the field Manuel I had read over twenty-seven times. The silence of the field was deafening and the black ink shut out the terrible world around me.

Department of the Army: California State Guard. Est. 1846:

All authorized personal to keep on their persons.

Section V: Equipment and Tools

·       Rifle: Know your rifle inside and out. It is the first defense of the soldier. Know the rifle as if it was a loved one. Study the firing pin and the weight of the barrel. 5 cartridges will be held in a clip. A steel-jacketed nose shaped round will have silver properties mixed. It will knock down an unvaccinated carrier of the blight.

·       Bows Once thought to me archaic. A shortage of silver and silence make this bolt projectile effective for containment and raids conducted at sun-rise.

·       Knife: Standard for digging, cutting and a last defense resort. Do not break your knife.

·       Gas Masks: The spread of the blight can be transmitted through spores in the air and puncture wounds from carriers of the epidemic. 

If you ask a thousand scientists about the blight you’ll get a thousand answers. You ask the eggheads who sit cozy away at the Walter Reed Hospital they believe it transfers from bats to humans.

They poked us with so many needles in those tattered green tents. I still feel the pinpricks in my sleep.

Many veterans believe the bombs and the blood awakened something dark in the woods and the meadows of Europe. As the firestorms killed off the deer and the doves, a bounce less presence became desperate and started to feed on us. The killing must have been good for them, all those bodies spread in the mud and trapped in razor-wire. 

There are stacks of files from the medical corp that you couldn’t write off as shell shock.

These are men with degrees and basic training that swear they have recovered bodies with punctures around purple veins. Speaking of veins, I was impressed with the irrigation system. The roots were as thirsty as the scourge looking for blood.

I wondered who craved it more. The carriers needed it to survive, they didn’t take more than they needed. But I have watched tooth fairies take their time pulling a someone apart. They started with the teeth, then they worked from limb to limb. It was no different then an emotionally damaged child, pulled the wings off a fly.

I poured through the pages of the tooth fairies report to pass the time until the sun went down. The night belonged to the dead, but a rifle team would have a hard time spotting me through the scrubs and the shadows. 

‘The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each soul hunts the other.’

The words from the Old testament sprang to life and sent shivers as cold as a knife on the edges of my spine. If you want to understand your target you have to become as intimate as the person you share a bed with.

No wonder this profession is best for unattached men. I found more red streaked jars of sharpened teeth as I crossed the creek. A warning for raiders or men with ill-intent. I was most assured a man with such devices. 

‘The farm hand and the brick layer must always be aided with funds and flour. The insurrectionist will become a guardian angel who has fallen from the gates of heaven. The true affliction is not by those that seek blood to live, but those that squeeze blood for profit.’

The affliction drove a wooden stake in the old-world order. The demand for labor rarely matched the wages attached for it. The only walking red, the government feared, was the workers' movement. 

The tooth fairy survived the gas attacks in France and the machete charges in the jungles. Infantrymen would said he had a medal to match each scar. It’s one thing to put down flesh and blood, its next to impossible to kill a legend. Speaking of medals, an aroma that carried the same scent traveled up wind.

Blood.

The burnt husks of carriers lit up the night sky. A warning to deserters and the damned. Rows of wooden pikes stood diagonally against the world. The man had built a fortress of fire at the ends of the world.

“Please let me bury him.” A woman cried.

“I’m sorry Emily, we can’t contaminate the wells, and we can’t let it spread in the air.”

The voice behind the smoke stacks claimed the woman down in a fatherly tone. 

“Rejoice for death no longer stings for our fallen friend.”

I expected a mini fiefdom ruled by a little man with a napoleon complex. I witnessed red cuts inside butcher stand. Bread and fresh green produce sat in crates for all on a mini main street. I left the heavy gear by the drainage ditch and covered it with reeds and grass.

To my surprise I did not have to look too far, the man left the safety of the walls and stood at the end of the creek. He waited for those to grieve to return to their homes. He placed a cross over his shoulder and walked in-between the torched bodies.

“Are you here to cast the first stone?” It was useless to ignore the accusation.

“The torches seem cruel but a message must be sent.”

I will admit the tooth fairy had a more stocky frame than I expected, but the still demeaner rang ten feet tall. The man whose left jars of fangs all over the central valley and the sierras.

“You’ve made the wrong people uncomfortable Major.” I replied. My hands trembled once again, even in his age I still doubted if I could get the shot off in time.

 “Killing a man is different from killing a vampire.”

Vampire, he said it so casually. The medical officers wouldn’t utter the word on the bases. 'I have no more animosity to them anymore than the town physician had towards the common cold.' He spoke with a warm bedside manner.

"We have no cure, only preventive measures.

They were content to eat off our scrapes and remain boogiemen. Then the real boogeyman showed up. The weeping and gnashing teeth had brought hell on earth. The affliction had left the dead forests of the war and made its way across the Ocean.’ He said.

The irony was not lost on me, in the legends of old they ones that crave blood usually needed a host to cross a body of water.

 "The people that suffer from the plague, they work together and they don’t hoard the red nectar that's pumping in our veins. That’s why they will inherit the earth."

As the man's voice echoed, my gun shifted away from his vitals. This time, one round wasn't enough to finish him off. History revealed how bullets and convictions had rewritten its course countless times. We stood there, on the brink of the end of the world, with a chance to lay its foundations anew.

"We," he said in a grave tone, "play as puppets." Two rulers we served: our commanding officers and the companies which tugged their strings.

"They say we must keep running the factories even in this pandemic. Rules we impose on the poor now spread across continents. The true disease is greed." The man's words echoed with an eerie chill.

Three suspicious outlines emerged from beside the river's edge. The pebbles' dampness muddied their steps - concealing them in darkness. Red bite marks in their helmets told me stories of carnage beyond measure: Tooth Fairy's shock troops. I grabbed the Major and used him as a shield as another wave of soldiers aimed their guns at us.

"They let you in here for a reason - because they couldn't do it themselves," one hissed the chilling words in my ear as a cold shiver ran down my spine. Neither of them seemed to take pleasure or pride in what was about to happen, yet they still pulled their triggers. "In the end of days, brothers will kill each other," said Tooth Fairy before giving his go-ahead.

Then suddenly, we were no longer shields but targets. This is where it ended; I had stepped into the middle of their power struggle.

"It was a necessary measure," one of them spoke out through trembling lips. "We do not have resources to fight on all fronts," he continued with quivering voice while looking at his comrade. The Major wanted nothing more than to spread a message against capital in besieged towns across the country, but "the titans of industry" would never allow that to happen. "His presence here is evidence enough."

The quiver in their palms drew attention from the layman, but it was silent alarm, warning me to prepare. "Take them to the abyss," the new warlord commanded, "inject poison in their veins. They'll be discovered soon enough." The Tooth Fairy understood the toll of relentlessly collecting souls - sleepless nights, nauseous mornings. A fourth figure, distinct from the rest, emerged from the shadows. 

The soldier was splattered with fresh blood. He overpowered the younger shooter. A hopeless gunshot pierced through the darkness as the carriers sank their teeth into the shooter's tender flesh. Fifth and sixth mercenaries fell victim to the epidemic, snatched by death's icy grip. A violent coup had blinded them to reality - they invited danger right to their doorstep. Once again, Lady Luck had abandoned us all.