Missing Vampire: Reward Available (Hypernaturals 6)

NorthWest in Bulgaria

I have been following a road NorthWest. Always listening. Always looking for my next cover. I like the direction of this road. I do not like stretches without good cover.

Bad cover means a pause. A listen. A burst of speed that uses my resources faster.

Roads can be perverse sometimes: Not only nerve-racking open stretches. Sometimes it's worse. This road split into a SouthWest road and a NorthEast one. I have no map so I have no idea if they stay on those courses or not. I want to go north and west.

I need to make a choice here. For me, there is a third path. It's a gamble, and I HATE gambling. I have fresh water, but my food is getting consumed fairly rapidly. I am moving as quickly as I can and able to stay literally on the run all night.

A marathon runner my weight would use over four thousand extra calories for a 27-kilometer run. I am going at least twice that fast on average, and on a good night, I am going four times as far, as I run for eight hours, not two and change. Of course. That does not count all the time I am stopped, evaluating, listening, scenting for fresh water near me, or things like that. I am using twenty-thousand calories extra per night at a minimum. I can't ration: that only slows me down. I have to stay fueled. I have maybe two or three days left at most before I am going to need to start using my knife to hunt game. In all my existence I never hunted jack shit, so I have no faith in my ability to find, kill, clean, and eat anything other than a fast-food bag.

I am woefully unprepared for the end of days.

I decided to take a chance and head the direction I want to go, and hope that the terrain does not reach up and kill me. The unpaved direction came with a nice side effect. I am in my happy but slow place: forest. No roads mean no vans, and trees are places to hide behind and in. Going slower my calorie burn is lower too, so my food lasts longer.

I slogged through the forest, finding ridges that went my way, and that even looked down upon Valleys with tiny roads and even smaller cars. If the vans are there, they cannot tell me from any other forest creature.

I cannot tell me from any other forest creature. I stink. My clothes stink. Everything. Anything with a nose knows I am coming if they are downwind.

Vampire immune systems are outstanding against bacteria on the inside. On the outside, the critters are safe. No Vampire immune system fingers reach out and crunch them. We do not have immune systems like in the second season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'Unnatural Selection' that pursues bad stuff outside us. I kind of wish we did come with that feature right now.

I was forced after a few days, even at my lowered pace, to drop down to the level of the road when I ran out of food. I am a modern hunter. I hunt fuel stations that close at night and have no alarm systems. I found one, a small distance from a town. I went in through a window, and I did the same thing as before, except this time I stole a pad of paper and a pen, and I took an inventory. I am going to pay these people back as soon as I can, with interest.

By morning, pack reloaded to the gills, safely back up in the tree line and well away from my victim service station, I am ready for bed.

I ate first, to allow my body to refuel and rebuild overnight (which is really over-day), and I listened closely to be sure no one is near. I do not want the authorities looking for the person that broke into the fuel station to be able to be easily near me. I heard no cars on hidden and unknown nearby roads. I think I am back in the middle of a forest. Sure: the authorities finding no suspects below on roads or behind buildings may look up here. Maybe even bring dogs. By the time they do that, I will be long gone again. Dogs are not useful against someone that can be one hundred kilometers away overnight. A few days head start, and the dogs are just going to look up at the people on the other end of the leash and say: 'You know what? Fuck it.'