October 29, 9 p.m. Year of the Curtain+5
Cut Off, Louisiana
Francisco should have listened to his grandmother. When he left Mexico, coming to the United States looking for work, she gave him a thousand reasons he shouldn’t go, ranging from “You don’t speak English” (hardly an obstacle, as he learned) to “You’re going to get yourself killed!” As it turned out, the latter turned out to be a more valid argument.
He turned away from the back woods and up one of the tiny, shell-covered residential roads that littered Cut Off, rushing up towards LA 1 in the hopes of flagging down one of the ubiquitous police officers. He’d done his best to avoid them in the weeks he’d been down here, helping build a couple of houses as a day laborer, but after what he just saw, he was going to take any help he could get. The crew had been packing up as the daylight died, and as he was loading tools into a pickup truck, there was motion in the woods. He tried to ignore it at first, but there was soon more and more movement in the darkness, and then the darkness was moving towards him.
The things that came out of the night, the things that grabbed the others in his work crew… they were pale as snow with long fangs like razors. But they didn’t try to bite anybody – they grabbed them, pulled them into the woods, and their screams suddenly ceased. Only Francisco managed to escape the rampage, but there was only so far he could go before he had to stop and catch his breath. The things that were following him didn’t seem to require something as luxurious as stopping to catch their breath, but Francisco had to not only stop, but hide long enough not to be captured.
His grandmother probably would have called these things Diablo – devils – but he knew the American had a different word for them. Vampires. And the damnable things didn’t even sparkle.
He’d had several close calls – the things seemed able to track him like bloodhounds – and he’d noticed as he ran that there was a chilling absence of people on the streets. Cut Off was by no means a bustling metropolis, but it was the kind of community where people still knew each other by name and used the name, where neighbors shared the fish they caught with each other and the guy next door was as likely to be your cousin or brother as anybody else. It was also the place where outsiders weren’t necessarily welcomed. Oh, people were friendly, but nobody treated him like a long-lost brother. Still, he respected the closeness of the community… and the fact that there wasn’t anybody on the streets while these things ran rampant chilled him to the core.
As his feet pumped underneath him, he caught a glimpse of something that gave him a moment of hope: a cross. Francisco wasn’t as spiritual as his grandmother was, but certain lessons of his childhood had never left him, and one of those lessons was that a Christian cross always marked a place of sanctuary. He had spent a few years wandering Mexico and down into South America in his younger days, and even in those countries where he didn’t speak the language, he always found that a place with a cross was a place where he would be safe. And it didn’t hurt that, according to the American movies he’d seen, these vampires were powerless on Holy ground.
He ran up the stairs and burst into the main hall of the Church. It was empty, save for a single man in black lighting candles near the Sacristy. He ran at the man shouting, screaming, “Padre! Padre! ¡Ayúdame! ¡Ayúdame!”
“Son, calm down,” the Father said. Francisco was stunned that the man spoke perfect Spanish, but he took it as a sign that he’d found a place he could escape the monsters. “Tell me, what’s wrong?”
“The monsters… the things have been chasing me for miles now, Father.”
“Things?”
“Ugly things… big teeth… vampires, Father, vampires!”
“My son–”
“I’m not crazy, please don’t say I’m crazy. I watched them capture ten strong young men. There’s nobody walking the streets, Father, I think they’re planning to take the town.”
“Oh, my child, don’t be ridiculous.” The priest smiled at him, and his pronounced teeth appeared. “We’ve already taken the town.”
“No… no…” Francisco backed up, pleading to the air. “It’s not possible. This is a Church, a place of sanctuary!” He flailed across the altar, grabbing a Crucifix from the wall and holding it in front of him. “STAY BACK!”
“Oh, my silly child,” the priest said. “That only works on Christian vampires.”
Francisco pointed at him, panting. “But… but you’re wearing…”
The vampire laughed. “Anybody can wear a collar, son.”
Francisco was out of places to run.