Half a bottle Harold’s Dark Whiskey sat in the passenger seat. Having not expected to survive the night, Erik stirred.

His eyelids felt too heavy to lift. A heavy thump shook him from his liquor-laden coma. Opening his eyes slightly, his vision blurred. He was barely able to make out the dust covered dashboard of the abandoned car he found himself in.

He listened as a hand dragged across the drivers side. He retched his eyes open to see a blurry hand trace fingerprints through the grime of the driver-side window.

Erik closed his stubbornly burdened eyes, but his brain was now wide awake.

Light filtered in from the windows, causing a red aura and a headache. The headache was   a small mercy after escaping the grasp of the thralls. Erik and the thralls are now together in what many have called MARS or Military Asylum and Restraint Sector. A walled off city for vampire, their thralls, and other ‘despicables’.

Erik was one of those. A vagrant… a criminal. He entered MARS through the North Gate. He fought his way through the night. He survived and hid in this car. He lost his belongings and his food but saved his liquor.

That liquor had squashed the horror of listening to the screaming as the thralls grabbed un-bitten humans to hold or drag to its master.

“… but why are the thralls moving around right now?” He pondered as another pressed upon the plyable aluminum hood and passed by the windshield.

“What triggered them from their sleep?” He asked. “Is it possible someone else survived the night?”

He reopened the bottle of Dark Whiskey and downed a swallow.

“There is no way someone survived the night. It’s not possible,” he continued to think… to reason. “I heard the screaming stop last night,” he tries to recall.

“… or did I?“

“I did pass out… I would not be here if it wasn’t for drinking.“

Before Erik can reply, a door opens, then a scream, followed by the door closing.

“Did one of those thralls open then close the door,” he asked himself. “They don’t open doors… Can they?” He wondered.

He reached over the passenger seat and locked the door of the two-door coupe he found.

He sat in silence for what seemed like a long time. He stared at the grimy window.

“The scream came from the left,” he figured. “It’s only a few hundred feet ahead of us.”

“Gawd…” Erik shouted at himself. “I am not a superhero. I don’t know what you think I am?”

“I don’t rescue people!” He screamed suddenly.

He felt the car door handle jingle. He had forgotten the thralls near his own doors.

Erik sat quiet, hoping the thrall would move on, but they rarely did that. They only escalated. They would often attract the others, who were sleeping… they slept a lot… but they woke up real easy.

The handle shook again, and soon, the passenger door handle shook.

Erik could sense they didn’t understand how door locks worked and why the door didn’t open. He also knew they would find a way to get inside. They would… but that stranger screamed again, very loudly.

Erik knew the woman… it sounded like a woman… wouldn’t last much longer.

“Would you allow another human to be turned? Will you?” He vilified himself.

Erik listened this time. He was prepared to fight his way out the door, but they had stopped shaking.

“They moved on to that screamer. You could stay,” but Erik was going to do something. Save someone.

He grabbed a small duffel and a bat that had been left in the car. Its owner passed long ago and lied in the backseat under a blanket. He almost opened the door but looked back at the bottle of whiskey. He grabbed it and placed it in the bag. He then shoved the door open and stepped into the cool air of early fall.