The Ballad of a Drifter

1.

"Mommy? Who is he?"

"He is the new gardener."

"Mommy?"

"Yes? Now what?"

"I want him!"

"You can't and you know why, now go back to sleep."

"But mommy..."

"Go back to sleep I said."

I'm a drifter; I've been drifting around the land of the free, home of the brave for the last two years. Before that, I had a job, a good one, decent pay, great carrier in perspective but at some point it all went to shit. Why you ask, well not your fucking problem...

I heard about the job at the diner. Big fancy secluded residence called "The Eternal Bliss", up in the mountains above town, in dire need of a new gardener. I'm good with my hands and my money stash was running dangerously dry. I got hired by a sweaty and fat old lady. First time I saw her in town I thought she was the local hobo, but she explained the job to me, got me settled at the local motel and paid me for my first week. Instructions were not to go in the houses, not to bother the owners and never, ever stay on the premises after night fall.

Work was hard but the pay was good and I didn't have to talk to anyone which suits perfectly the state of mind I have been in for the last two years. The place was strange, half a dozen suburban homes plus one larger community building at the center of the residence, large garden areas, all the windows were mirrors and in the first days I worked there I never got to see any of the tenants.

That day had started exactly like the previous three; I got up early, showered in my room at the motel and got in my car to go grab a breakfast at the diner. I arrived at the residence by nine. Dan the guard nodded his head as I passed through the gates. I nodded back. I went to the large shed where I stored the tools and started working. Planned for today I had a lot on my plate as I had been delayed the day before by a reluctant dead tree. By noon I was still late on my schedule so I decided to skip lunch. I went on working all the afternoon.

When finally I finished mowing the last garden I realized that the sun was setting over the mountains. I hurried to the shed to park the little tractor and got my stuff. As I was locking the heavy metal doors, my attention got attracted by two women coming out the nearest house. They didn't seem to notice me so I stayed in the shadow and observed. Owners... I don't know if it was the thrill of the taboo or the beauty of the women but I couldn't stop watching.

One of them seemed younger than the other but besides that they looked pretty alike, sisters maybe, clearly related to each other. They were both blondes with very long hair; the young one had hers loose on her shoulders where the older one had it tied up in a strict bun high over her head. Despite the distance I noticed their deep green eyes, almost animal, kind of glowing in the dim light of the mountain evening. The younger one was wearing a long white dress made of some strange a rough fabric. The older one was wearing a man's tuxedo with a flashy red neck tie. Their skin was terrifyingly pale. They turned in the street walking away from me, allowing me to check on their beautiful silhouettes. Long after they had disappeared into the large building in the center of the community, I stay unable to clear my mind of the beauty of the vision. Finally, after a while I managed to get my senses back and walk to my car. Dan had obviously been gone for a while, so I had to open the large portal to the outside world. After doing so and starting the engine I heard a terrible scream coming from inside the residence. The chill that went down my spine told me that the time wasn't for heroics so I drove away as cool as I could almost throwing my car in the ravine twice. The scream haunted my dreams for many nights.

A few weeks later I was working on the (geraniums) in the garden of the house the two women came from when I heard a noise coming from behind me. I turned around to find the younger woman standing in the shadow of the porch of her house. She looked as beautiful and pale as the other night.

"Hum, hi," I said.

"Hi," she answered.

We stared at each other in silence for a while, I don't know for her but I wasn't able to find something clever to say and couldn't convince myself to leave so abruptly. From up close she looked younger than the other night. Barely eighteen I would have said if asked, but her eyes were those of a much more mature woman, void of the innocence of the young adults, a bit like mine or so I have been told. She was magnificent. I had to force myself to close my mouth.

"I've been observing you." She finally said.

"Ah?" I replied.

"I like the way you look, you seem strong," she continued.

"Ah?"

"My mother and the others wouldn't approve of me talking to you but I don't care and anyway they're all asleep."

"Oh?"

"I saw you the other night by the shed. You got lucky, my mother didn't. Anyway I'm tired now but it was a pleasure talking to you... See you."

"See you."

She turned around and closed the door.

Once again I stood there for a while unable to move or say anything. I cursed myself for not being able to talk to her. Not that I am in the porn fantasy of the gardener fucking the young girl of the house or anything but usually I'm better with words than that.

I managed to finish my day's work and went back to my motel. I took a hot and long shower, cleaning away the soreness off my muscles. When I went back into the room with just a towel around my waist I froze. There she was, sitting on the worn out couch by the window. The door was locked just like it had been when I went to shower. She was holding my gun, playing around with it.

"How..." I started but I stopped realizing that she was now pointing the old Glock towards my chest. "Put that down, it´s not a toy!"

She looked serious but a hint of mischief ran behind her eyes. The gun didn't move. Her finger was on the trigger pushing slowly.

"What a crude weapon," she said "a beautiful mechanic but so barbarian, no courage in it..."

I tried to move out of the line of fire, but the dark muzzle of the handgun followed me.

"Tonight is hunting night," she continued, "everyone is out of town but I wanted to see you so I gave them the slip and I came here."

She put the gun down and smiled at me. Finally I managed to relax, my shoulders went down, I was able to breathe.

"Aren't you happy to see me?" She didn't leave me the time to answer and continued "what a silly question, of course you're happy to see me, I can see it"

She was looking at the towel around my waist. The bulge my dick made under it was actually sort of painful.

She stood and licked her lips.

"No..." I said as she walked towards me, "wait you're too young"

She laughed a crystalline laugh sending her head backwards. When she looked back at me her green eyes burned with a reddish glow. With her hand she cupped my balls and felt the contour of my cock.

"I'd love to play with that but I haven't eaten tonight and it would be a shame to wear you off so soon..."

She kissed me deeply, turned around and disappeared through the wall. Her cold saliva on my lips and the pain between my legs convinced me that I hadn't been hallucinating.

I threw all my belongings into my bag grabbed my gun and left the room. The reception lights were on, I went in. A TV was playing in the next room. I left the room key and two hundred dollar bills under it to cover my tab, jumped into my car and drove away from this place.

By daybreak I had crossed the state line and was starting to fall asleep when I finally convinced myself to make a pit stop at a gas station. As the teenager filled my tank I asked for a phone. The machine was so old it had a dial wheel. After three trials I managed to dial a number in Virginia. Nobody was home as it was pretty early but I left a message asking for information telling I would call back later. I drove four more hours and stopped in the suburbs of a medium sized city. There, I rented a room in the first hotel I could find and dialed the same number again after a long shower and two pots of coffee.

"Hello Mike, did you get my info?"

"Jack? You son of a bitch, no christmas card, no congratulations on the wedding of my daughter, no nothing and you expect me to do your biding just like this?"

"Yes."

"You could say please at least."

"Stop fucking around I think it's important."

"Okay, okay, the Eternal Bliss residence, not a very public bunch if I may, the community was founded just after the second world war, that´s pretty much all you can gather officially, the IRS has twelve people leaving there reasonable income, nothing at the FBI, nothing at the CIA, I tried the NSA but they have no registered phone there nor internet connection, who are those guys by the way, Amish?"

"I don't think so, didn't you get anything else?"

"Yes and no."

"What do you mean?"

"No I didn't find anything else but I got a pretty strange visit."

"Go on."

"You remember Karl? He used to work for covert operations, when you were here."

"Yes I remember."

"Well, he went up the ladder and now he works for one of the deputy directors as a personal assistant of some sort."

"Okay and what´s up with him?"

"He stepped into my office about an hour after I started enquiring about your Eternal Bliss friends."

"And..."

"And he ordered me to stop looking into it, literally: stop looking into that or else..."

"Shit you're serious?"

"Now who's the dick? Of course I'm serious!"

"And did you?"

"Did what?"

"Stop looking into it?"

"You should know me better; my ol' pal Jack calls me and asks me for help, of course I'll overhear direct orders from a deputy director, for what I could find, anyway... Anyway what´s up with it?"

I told him my little story omitting the wall walking part.

"That´s creepy I agree but I don't see why you contacted me. Not that I don't appreciate hearing from you but don't you think you're over thinking it?"

"Yes probably, thanks a lot."

"Why you don't you come down here so we can catch up?"

"Not yet; I still have to make a bit of thinking."

"Man they've been dead for two years now and you've been thinking about it, I don't think that's the best way to get over it. Anyway, it's your call."

"See you, Mike."

"Bye Jack, don't be a stranger."

Despite the fact that I hadn't slept, the coffee in my system decided that it wasn't time for me to sleep so I went to the bar of the hotel and started drinking.

By six o'clock I was already pretty drunk. I paid my tab and crawled to my room. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.

I dreamt and it was pretty weird as for the last two year I've taught myself not to dream. In my dream, I was back in my room with the young girl. She was still holding my dick but instead of leaving she took me to the bed and forced me on my back. I could feel the rough fabric of the cheap bed cover scratching my ass. I was hard. She lifted her long white dress before impaling herself on me. Her screams mixed pain, pleasure and sorrow in a strange imitation of a cat´s purr.

She bended over me and whispered to my hear: "run."

Everything went to black.

I was now digging a hole in one of the gardens of the Eternal Bliss residence. I was surrounded by shadows, dead shadows. Shadows of my dead and shadows of other dead. Many dead surrounded me as I dug my own tomb. The deeper I dug, the darker it was all becoming around me. As the darkness closed in on me a hand wrapped around my hand and pulled me out of the hole.

"Run," she said again.

I woke up.

The darkness of my dream was replaced by the darkness of my room. A comforting artificial light was breaking through the curtains. The digital clock of the TV told me it was 3:22 AM. I was covered in sweat.

I turned on the light, I wasn't alone. A girl was sitting on my room´s chair. I reached for the Glock under my pillow but I stopped when I realized that she was asleep. I stood and walked to her. Her hair was dark and greasy. Her breath was jerky. She was wearing a pair of jean, a black rock band T-shirt and a leather jacket that might have known better days in the middle ages. She wasn't older than twenty and her face was covered with dirt. A runaway. Her sleep was uneasy. Her head rolled to a side. A thick and dirty scab of dried blood covered the base of her neck.

I checked her pockets: A pack of cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, twenty bucks in small change, no papers.

I slapped her.

"..."

She looked at me terrified.

"How did you get in here?" I asked.

She kept looking at me terrified, mute as a tomb.

"I..." She started, "... I don't know."

Something in her empty glance convinced me that she was sincere. I went and checked the door. It was closed. I went and checked the window. It was closed too. I dressed and started gathering my things.

"What happened to me?" She asked.

Without answering I threw my bag over my shoulder. I checked my gun and went to the door. I peaked in the hallway: no one.

"Who are you?" She asked.

I turned and stared at her. She looked so much like my own daughter. Indecisive I stood there.

Suddenly she jumped to her feet and rushed in the bathroom. She vomited profusely. I went in and helped her, holding her hair above her head. She looked at me thankfully.

"Thanks," she muttered with her stained mouth.

She looked at the shower and then at me. I nodded and went back in the room.

I lit one of the girl's cigarettes while sitting on the bed. After a while I picked up the phone.

"Reception, how can I help you?"

"Room 312 here, did you..." I stopped.

"Did you let a wounded runaway teenager into my room?" wasn't the type of questions you could hope an acceptable answer for. Either he had or hadn't, but if he hadn't the question would raise far too many other questions.

"...get my bill ready, I'll be leaving in the next thirty minutes." I finished knowing deep inside that my night was over.

When I hung up the phone the girl was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She was naked. Her perky breasts reminded me of my unfinished business with the blonde girl less than 24 hours before.

"I can't remember when I took my last shower. That felt wonderful," she said her eyes lost in a lusty mist "I feel so horny..."

Now clean, the wound on her neck looked far too familiar. Two punctures with a large patch of white skin around it, two stabs made by fangs, two holes used to drain the blood of the weak, to drain their candor, their innocence, a wound just like the ones I had found on my daughter's and wife's bodies a long time ago.

For the last year I had hoped I wouldn't have to see those again.

"Get dressed, we have to go"

"But..."

"If you want to live you will shut the fuck up and do as I say".

2.

When our daughter went to college my wife and I realized that our wedding had been dead for a long time. She had cheated on me on several occasions and the only reason I hadn't was because of my work. Retrospectively thinking, she had probably cheated on me because of my work. In the last ten years of our wedding the only thing that had held us together was our growing daughter. The moment she had crossed the door the untold failure of our marriage had become obvious and my wife and I had decided to separate. She kept the house and I went to live in one of my agency's witness protection apartment buildings. We kept in touch and by a common agreement we didn't tell our daughter about our separation.

The next thanksgiving, our daughter came back to us with a girlfriend. What can I say? My wife and I had met during the civil rights movement and we didn't mind having a lesbian daughter. The girl in question was called Berenice and unbeknownst to us she had just been contaminated with the scourge that would destroy my family and my future. She had been terribly sick for three days before turning into the nightmare that would rob me of any hope of happiness again.

She had emerged from our guest's bedroom as a wolf in sheep's clothing. My daughter had begged us to allow the two of them to share a room that evening, my wife and I had protested for appearance's sake knowing the three of us that the answer would be obviously positive. Damn this progressive thinking! If I had refused maybe that Berenice would have come after us first and maybe I would have been able to stop her before she committed the irredeemable act.

That night, my wife actually had been turned on by the screams of our daughter. We had fucked like we hadn't since the first years of our wedding. And as my wife sucked my sperm, our daughter was drained of her blood. The night after, Berenice and my daughter had gone after my wife. I was out buying milk for next morning's breakfast. When I came back the monsters were rapping my wife on our couch, the same couch where my daughter and I had enjoyed so many afternoons watching sports on TV. Killing Berenice and my daughter in self defense hadn't been so hard. Taking care of my wife, watching her turn and finally having to put her down as an animal, that had struck a terrible blow to my sanity. The day after, I gave up my badge and went after the ones who had been responsible for Berenice's contamination. I had wiped them, or so I thought.

At the time, the cleansing of that damn leeches' nest had been all over the news. The police and the FBI searched for nearly a year without making any progress. Nobody ever made the connection between the terrifying Harvard bombings and the tragic but so accidental death of three women in a fire in the Washington suburbs.

3.

"I'm sorry Mommy, but I wanted him so bad!"

"You've put us all in a complicated situation; you know we were supposed to hide here. Wait for a few more years before the system crumbled and we could take back our rightful place in the world."

"I know but I felt a connection with him, I wanted him to be with us, be with me."

On the passenger seat, by my side, Mary, as she had told me her name was, had been sleeping for the whole trip. The mountains and their monsters were far behind us now and the sun was setting behind them. I was starting to feel tired and had to rest. I woke the girl, she looked worn off, her skin was paler than before and her canines looked longer and sharper.

"We have to stop now, we should be out of their reach and you need to eat something."

"Yes," she whispered "so hungry, so thirsty," she paused "so horny..."

Her transformation was faster than I remembered, my wife had forced herself on me two nights after she had been raped. My mind wandered away under the memory of the last moments of happiness I had enjoyed with my wife, my last moments of relative normality.

Earlier I had left a message for Mike asking him for directions. I needed guns, something with a little more punch than my Glock and a lot of explosives. A lot. Our destination was a safe house, where I would find the necessary material to take care of the inhabitants of the eternal bliss, but I knew she needed real food to fight off the infection so we stopped at a small diner by the road. A white mobile home that had been behind us for a while on the desert road stopped too. I waited for the passengers to come out but when the old couple came out I was relieved.

The redhead young girl behind the counter looked bored. I ordered three rare steaks, a lot of fries and a large bucket of ice cream. I only took a mug of coffee. Mary devoured her food while telling me her story.

She had run from a dysfunctional family in the Middle West and managed to stay away from drugs. She had travelled around away from larger cities, whoring herself for passage and food. She had planned to find a job somewhere in the south but before she wanted to travel a bit. To a certain extent and despite everything her life on the road had been good. She was sleeping in a deserted interstate rest area when a beautiful lady had approached her. After that all that she could remember was a long and very pleasant dream before waking up to me in my room the night before. As she was telling me that she closed her eyes and stayed silent for a moment. Small tears ran down her cheeks when she opened her eyes again, her lips parted to let out a silent whimper of pleasure.