Captive

Chapter 1

Ella

                Charlie and I creep through the deserted streets silently. Though the sun is out, we’re still cautious, and it doesn't make the setting any less eerie. Creeping around for food and other supplies is the worst job in the small group we’re a part of. It means going out to find abandoned stores or houses in small towns, searching for cans and other long shelf life foods. I’d rather go chop up firewood or cook or clean. Anything that means I don’t have to come where they are.

                Charlie stops abruptly ahead of me, motioning silently with her hands to a store across the street. It looks well abandoned with the front windows smashed in, but fingers crossed we’ll find something here so we can get back to camp. I shift the large rifle in my hands so it’s more comfortable and at the ready. I’ve never had to shoot anything, and honestly I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance. I pray that I'll never need to - for my own sake.

                I remember watching vampire movies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I was a kid, before all of this happened. It makes me laugh to think of them; because there’s no way any ordinary human could defeat a vampire. They are insanely fast and strong, and probably bullet proof. I can guarantee a wooden stake probably won’t affect them either. The only thing that is affecting them negatively these days is the lack of human blood.

                They hadn’t been too smart in the past; hunting all the humans so now we’re an endangered species, meaning they’re running out of blood to drink. They have human farms around the place, but they can’t meet the demands now, because in 2009 the old vamps decided it would be a good idea to turn a crap load of humans into vamps to create armies and it just grew from there. I’m happy to be alive, rather than one of the bloodsuckers, but I would rather die as a meal to one of them than be changed or end up in a farm. I've never seen a blood farm, because wherever a blood farm is, there's obviously vampires. But I don't need to see one to know that it's not pleasant.

                Once we’re through the broken glass on the floor, we can tell there is no way vamps would be in the store. It's way too sunny in here, so now we just have to hope there’s some food here to salvage, or our trip will all be in vain. Success comes in the form of spaghetti and baked beans as it usually does. Charlie and I take a couple of other things our small group will need, and then get out of there as fast as possible.

                I’m glad to have found the food so easily, but it also tells me that no survivors have been through this way. In our four years travelling from Atherton, Queensland, to our current location in a small town a few hours out of Sydney, we haven't come across anyone new in the past eighteen months. I always hope that there's a large group of humans somewhere, getting ready to rise up and take back our planet, but I'm pretty sure that'll never happen. Now it's just me, Charlie and the five other people we call our extended family.

                We make it back to the vehicle we’d hidden outside the small town and then drive back to the rest of our human survival group. We always stay in remote rural areas, never travelling to the big cities where they’ve set up their vampire towns.

                Charlie and I are pretty lucky; we’ve never been in contact with a vamp, hence why we’re still alive. Our parents weren’t so lucky; they went out one day and never came back. I just hope they’re dead and not vamped up or in a farm.

                The rest of our group are happy to see us once we’re back. Jack shows us the couple of rabbits he caught out hunting, so we’ve got a bit of extra food. We cook early while the sun is still up, so that all the evidence of us being here is hopefully gone before the vampires are up and about. 30 minutes before sunset we board up the house too, making sure it all looks abandoned and there’s no sign of life. This is how we’ve survived the past four years.

                Since we don’t use artificial lights or lanterns of any kind, we all just crawl up into our ‘beds’ and get ready for the long night of sleep. We don’t talk, move around or do anything that could be heard by the vampires’ sensitive hearing. It’s just too risky. So I close my eyes, and think of happier times.

                A couple of hours after sunset I’m woken by yelling and other loud noises. It’s at that moment I realise that no matter how careful you are, no matter the precautions you take, things never work out the way you plan.

Casey

                I’m sitting in my room, staring blankly at the screen in front of me. Vampire Rain: Altered Species is a shit game, but there’s something about the fact that I’m controlling a vampire hunter and killing as many vampires as I can that makes it enjoyable to me. Maybe if I was seeing a psychiatrist they’d tell me that I was symbolically killing myself over and over again.

I look up at the clock that tells me it’s only three in the afternoon. Just under three hours until sunset, until I can get myself out of this suffocating house. I throw my controller onto my bed and go to stand by the blacked out window. I can hear Lachlan downstairs with two girls, and I wish the walls were thicker, or that my hearing wasn’t as sensitive. I throw myself face first onto my bed and crush a pillow over my head. An animalistic growl escapes my mouth.

I stick my iPod earphones in and turn up the music as loud as I can stand. I can still hear my brother and the two slutty girls, though I’m pretty sure now that the noises are just in my head, taunting me. I know the girls are only here hoping for pure human blood, something my brother and I always have enough of due to the wealth and power he holds. Lachlan’s pretty high up for a young vampire, but he knows how to wheel and deal and he’s got the brawn to back it all up. It was the same when we were still human too. He was a successful ‘business man’, though rarely legally. But he was more of a big brother then. He would look out for me, take care of other kids if they were picking on me or back me up no matter what. It’s not like that now.

Now, we barely talk. And when we do talk, it ends up as fighting. Or more accurately, Lachlan yelling at me, telling me what a disappointment I am. I'm a vampire, of course I am. But I haven’t embraced it as well as Lachie would hope. I don't go out and run about with the girls like he does, I don't busy myself with classes or a job or anything. Lachlan would love it if I went and worked with him. I don't even know what he does, but I know I don't want any part of it.

I bring my hand under the pillow with me and press the button to light up my watch. 3:04pm. Two hours and 42 minutes until I can escape, until I can have 12 hours and nine minutes of freedom. Sitting around in my house all day waiting for the sun to go down isn’t how I thought my life would turn out. I wanted to finish uni and have a great job somewhere, spend weekends surfing, eventually get married and have a family. I guess things don’t work out the way we plan.