The Fence

 

                The fence on the hill was overgrown with tall weeds and grass. A chain-link fence, brown with rust in places. The barbed wire along the top edge completely rusted, but no less jagged and dangerous. The fence looked like a cat’s curved spine. An angry cat, ready to pounce.  The surrounding landscape was flat, making this long, high humped fence stand out on the only hill against the morning sunrise. It was beautiful in its stillness and aged security. I started walking along its edge, looking for a way through or over or around. My feet traipsing through the tall weeds and dying grass of Autumn.

                 The night before. The day before even, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the fence at all.  It was just something in the landscape that I didn’t think would ever have anything to do with me. Just a fence. A nondescript fence. Just like so many we’ve all seen before. Just the fence I passed through every morning. Every evening. As I went to and from my work. There was a guard post at the far end where Charlie worked. He sat in that post every day, for years. Getting fatter and fatter, on his high-backed swivel stool. But the fence itself, hardly ever registered with me.

                 I had passed through the fence like I had done every morning for the last three. I drove in past Charlie and gave him my customary nod. He seemed particularly unresponsive to my polite acknowledgment of his position. It was somehow, even ruder. I’m not even sure if he moved at all.  I parked my car in my usual spot.  There were a lot of empty spaces in the lot. Mary McDurring’s car wasn’t in her spot. She was never late or missed a day of work. She was like clockwork. I always thought the Army asked her what time it was since she was so punctual. Not to see her car was a pretty big tip that something might not be right.

                 I walked the short path from the parking lot towards the pit building. That’s where we keep our supplies and uniforms and the general lockers for employees. It’s a huge dingy corrugated steel building. It was probably a Railroad warehouse depot at some point in history as it had a permanent layer of sooty grime all over it. It looked like it could survive anything and most likely had.  I pulled open the pit building door and stepped inside.  The shop foreman was right there at the door, with his back to me. I called out to him, “Frank,” I said. Reaching out towards him.

                 Frank spun around and pointed a shotgun in my face. He started screaming if I was “one of them. Are you one of them?” To which I had to scream back that I wasn’t and had no idea what he was talking about. He kept the shotgun pointed nearly up to my nose as he eyed me up and down from the stock. I had my arms up at shoulder level and looked back in Frank’s direction. “Take it easy man,” I said, “I’m not one of them. I’m one of you, buddy.”

                 The shotgun slowly fell from my nose and towards the floor. Frank turned back around and looked off into the depths of the pit building. “They’re everywhere in here. All over the place. Hundreds of them, I think. They usually come out at night, but they’re out today. Before sunset,” said Frank as he licked his lips frantically.

                 “Who,” I asked.

                 Frank didn’t look away from the far end of the building. As if he was watching for something to come jumping out of the shadows.

                 “The vampires. The damn vampires, man,” said Frank.

                 I couldn’t help but smirk. I didn’t believe in Vampires. It was just a scary story. Propaganda from Romanian folklore.

                 “See,” said Frank. He pointed the shotgun towards his left and I traced the path of his gesture. Trying to get my eyes to adjust to the dim conditions. “I got those two. They went after Mary. She ran off. Don’t know where. They bit her though. Bit her good,” said Frank.

                 On the ground to Frank’s left were two pale, mostly hairless, bodies. They looked almost powder blue in the dim light.  Their ears were long and pointy. They had long talons on their hands. And a Devil tail, poking out of the small of their backs.

                 “Wow,” I said.

                 “Wow? That’s what you say? Wow? C’mon man. Freaking Vampires man,” said Frank.

                 I said I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen vampires before. I really thought they were a myth.

                 “Well, these myths killed most of the second shift. It’s like they went blood lust berserker or some godless thing,” said Frank.

                 “Wow,” I said again. Frank looked at me again over his shoulder. I said I was sorry. He shook his head and returned his attention to the far end of the building.

                 “You see that down there? Those shadows, darting in and out,” asked Frank. I did not see them. I couldn’t see them. I didn’t say anything though.

                 “Those other sons of a bitches, they’re plotting something. I can tell,” said Frank.

                 “Where’s everyone else? The rest of the workers,” I asked.

                 “Dead. They’re all dead. Cut to pieces by these things,” said Frank. He hunched down behind the makeshift redoubt of machine shop tool carts and various pieces of scrap and garbage. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

                 “So, should I like, go the way I came in? I’ll just leave then,” I asked as I started to move back towards the door. Frank grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me down next to him on the ground.

                 “No, no, no, my friend. Now that you’re in here they have your scent. They’ll follow you home and eat you in your bed. That’s what happened to Jimmy. After he left last night. He called me, screaming, saying that there were vampires in his house. You know, he only lives three miles from here. So they followed him home and got him,” said Frank, “That’s why I came with my shotgun today.”

                 I didn’t know Jimmy. He was a third shift guy and I was a second shift guy and we really didn’t interact much. I didn’t say anything though.  Frank was really on edge as it was.

                 “So, what’s the plan then,” I asked.

                 Frank gripped the shotgun in both hands and took a deep breath. He arched his neck back a bit to see around the corner of his temporary shelter, looking back towards the far end.

                 “I think we’re okay for now. They aren’t coming like they were earlier. As people were coming into the building. The vampires were swooping down from the rafters and just plucking people right up off the ground and dragging them back off that way. It was… it was horrible,” said Frank.

                 “Damn,” I said. I looked up at the high ceiling, but I couldn’t really see anything up there. Just corrugated steel and the high metal rafters. Just a normal looking ceiling. I wouldn’t have likely believed Frank about the Vampires, but the two blueish corpses just feet away were hard to ignore. “So, are we just going to stay here? I mean, that doesn’t sound like a good plan. Shouldn’t we go into the sunlight or start making crucifixes or wooden spikes or something,” I asked.

                 Frank was holding the barrel of the shotgun against his cheek, resting his head on it. He seemed sleepy.

                 “I’m just so thirsty,” said Frank, “I just need something to drink. I’m so thirsty.”

                 I took out my lunch box. The nice one I got from my mother two Christmases ago. I got out my Thermos and passed it to Frank. It was filled with Kool-Ade. He took a long sip and then spit it out. Spraying me and everything in the area in red Kool-Ade. “What the hell,” he shouted.

                 I explained that it was Kool-Ade. That I liked Kool-Ade and he didn’t have to drink it if he didn’t like it. He passed my Thermos back to me and wiped the Kool-Ade off his chin. “What are you, frigging Nine-years-old?”

                 “I just like it okay. I think we have more important things to worry about other than my beverage of choice,” I said defensively.

                 Frank wiped at his mouth again. “Shit tastes like, battery acid, or like, shit. Like actual shit,” said Frank. “I can’t drink that. I don’t want to drink that,” said Frank. He looked back down the length of the building, into the shadows. He started mumbling to himself about how thirsty he was. That they made him so thirsty. I wasn’t going to wait around for him to start lusting after my good blood so I grabbed a shovel off the wall and before Frank could turn back around, I hit him as hard as I could along the back of his head. The shovel made a loud “Pang” sound and Frank tumbled to the ground.

                 The Vampires at the end of the building. The ones Frank had been watching in the shadows started to squeal, or maybe laugh. Because it was sort of funny. The noise the shovel made as it connected with Frank’s head. I had to admit. I chuckled a little. “Pang,” I said again.  

                 I heard other shuffling around me, tools dropping with loud metallic thuds onto the concrete floor. I reached over Frank’s body and grabbed his shotgun. I noticed even though I had hit him pretty hard, and hilariously, there wasn’t any blood coming out of the wound on the back of his head. Which I figured meant he didn’t have that much blood left over. I started to wonder if he was a trap. Like bait, and as employees came in, he’d set them up and then let them get eaten or something. I didn’t really know.

                 Some big piece of machinery sounded like it was being dragged across the floor, grumbling loudly. I could feel it in my whole body.  I hoisted the shotgun up onto my shoulder and stood up. I looked into the darkness of the building. It had indeed gotten significantly darker. Some of the larger overhead shop lights were clearly broken creating shafts of darkness throughout the building.

                 “Crap,” I said. I started to back up towards the door. The one I came in through. I no longer believed that Frank was telling me the truth about Jimmy. Whoever that was. I kept backing up, holding the shotgun in front of me. Keeping my eyes on the darkness. I felt my back hit the wall behind me and I started moving towards my right, towards the door. I had to look to my right to make sure it was there. It was. I could see the thin shaft of daylight between the door and the jamb.  I turned my head back towards the darkness. I could hear more squeals, like bats. I slid along the wall until I felt the handle of the door on my back, just above my hip. I reached with my hand that wasn’t on the trigger of the shotgun and flung the door open.

                 A bunch of leaves blew in through the door in a blast of waning Autumn sunlight. I stepped back through the doorway and then turned and slammed it behind me. I leaned against the door. Feeling like I had just run a marathon. The sun was indeed going down. “Damn early sunsets,” I said as I caught my breath.  At least I was outside and could breathe.  I stood up and started walking toward the main office building. I figured there had to be some kind of corporate response. Although I wondered if Corporations actually had fall back plans for Vampiric invasions. I didn’t remember seeing that in the company handbook.

                 I walked across the campus courtyard, towards the main building. It was the nicer part of the property. All well-manicured, watered and mowed.  Along the grass’s edge there were piles of smoldering ashes. Whipped up in the wind. As if a great many people had tried to run through the sunshine and just burnt up, like vampires do.  If we’re to believe TV and movies, but not Twilight. I didn’t read Twilight. My girlfriend did and then we had to go see the movies. And those were just bad. I mean, I actually didn’t hate Kristen Stewart, but the rest, was just not scary or even interesting. At the moment though, I could go for some sparkly vampires that wanted to play baseball, rather than slaughter all my co-workers. Or turn them into Vampires too. Which is what I was guess happed in the campus courtyard.

                 The main building front doors and window glass was all smashed. I didn’t see any bodies though. Which I assumed meant the Vampires carried off their prey to some hidey-hole. They did a pretty good job of covering their tracks. I was a little disappointed that I had missed the fact that there had been vampires all over this place and I never saw them while I was working. Like, how often do you get to see that?

                 I looked up the face of the four-story main building to see if I could see anything or anyone maybe in the windows. I couldn’t see anyone. There had been less cars in the parking lot, but there were on average 300 people on the property a day. So not to see anyone, except Frank, was terrifying. I walked into the lobby of the main building and crunched across the glass on the white tiled floors. The little water fountain feature was still running near the front desk area. It was flowing with blood instead of water but that somehow didn’t seem unnatural considering the situation. The Girl from Ipanema was even playing quietly from the overhead speakers. “Typical,” I said.

                 I moved my way through the lobby towards the elevators. They seemed to be running just as well as Blood Fountain and the Muzak. I stepped into the elevator car and hit the top floor button. “Damn it. I left my Thermos behind,” I said.

          The elevator rode smoothly up to the fourth floor, the executive floors. The doors slid open and I stepped into the hallway. I had the shotgun out in front of me again. I didn’t even know if it was loaded. I never took any shells off Frank’s body so it might be completely useless. “Should have kept the shovel,” I thought.  I crept through the office double glass doors. Which seemed fine and unbroken. The office looked completely normal, other than the total lack of any living souls. There was still coffee steaming in the pot in the break room. There was just silence.  There was a TV in the break room. The sound was off, but the news was on; reporting some kind of world-wide Vampire attack. They came up from holes in the ground and just totally grabbed up tons of people. I turned the volume up slightly.

The terrified looking reporter spoke to the camera as the sound came up, “…cameraman Joe, didn’t make it. He was grabbed and pulled off. I am hiding in a closet. It’s a nightmare come to life outside…,”. The feed went dead, then flickered to a TV studio. The anchor person sat there, trying to listen to the producer in his ear. He wasn’t saying anything, so I turned the sound back down.

 I put the shotgun on one of the break room tables and went over to the coffee. I took one of the Styrofoam cups and poured myself a cup. There was no creamer or milk and I didn’t know where the sugar was. So I just sipped it black. It was pretty good. Better than the machine shop coffee.  I took another sip. The Anchor person was talking again. I turned the volume back up on the TV.

 “…have been informed that if you are watching this or hearing it, to just take shelter where you are and not to leave unless absolutely necessary. There is a military response underway at this time. Please return to your homes or anywhere safe and try to see if you can ride this out…,” said the anchorperson.

 Which was good advice I thought. Just stay put. No reason to risk my neck out there. Plus, it seemed like I was the only one left.  I went over the windows of the break room and looked out towards the flat landscape and that long fence, rimming the perimeter of the property. “What a funny looking fence,” I said as I sipped my coffee.