Page 25 of High Stakes

In an alley between homes, a pack of dogs growled and tore at a pile of bodies. They paused at the sound of my dress scraping against the legs of my suit, but seemed to decide that their gruesome meal was more interesting than I was.

At the center of town sat a church, the tallest building in this place, and arguably the nicest. I walked quickly, keeping my nose and mouth covered. I had no idea how a person contracted the plague, and didn’t want to learn while I was here.

The church’s doors were barred with thick, wooden beams. I knocked loudly, but no one answered. The bottom panes of the windows were high off the ground, but I found a cart and dragged it over to one of them so I could stand on it and peer inside. The building was empty. No pews, no candelabras, not even an altar. Nothing as simple as a dust mote stirred in the air.

“Hello?” I yelled, banging on the glass.

A dove startled in the corner, cooing indignantly as it flapped its wings and flew up to perch on a cross-beam. The entire town was dead. Did the illness claim everyone, or were there survivors who sought shelter somewhere else?

Jumping down from the cart, I made my way around to the back of the church, zig-zagging through a small maze of gravestones, most of which were coated with a thick layer of pine needles. I stopped to brush them off one, only to see that the name etched into the stone was unreadable. The ravages of time had worn it away.

The sound of footsteps caught my attention and I whirled around to see a tall man wearing a coal-black suit jogging toward me. He wore a mask that resembled a raven with enormous eyes and an equally long beak.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know how dangerous it is for you to remain?”

His voice was muffled by his mask, but there was something familiar about it.

“Where is everyone?” I called out.

“There’s naught here but death,” he answered grimly. “There’s nary a soul left in this place. Tarry in Edenshire, and you’ll soon join them.”

“Where can I go that’s safe?”

The man walked toward me and paused, pointing to a wide, earthen road that led out of town. “Take the Northwest pass to the manor of Lord Enoch. You’ll be safe there. Now be on your way, Lady, before you catch your death.” With that, he turned to continue into the town.

“Wait! I thought you said it wasn’t safe here?”

He paused, his broad shoulders tensing. “The mask protects the wearer.” Glancing back at me over his shoulder before continuing, he advised, “You’ll want to find the manor before sunset.”

It was still morning, many hours before sunset. Exactly how far away is Enoch’s manor?

I fumed as I walked northwest. I bet Enoch invited every human he could find into the sanctuary of his house. As if the plague wasn’t bad enough, he was feeding his way through the survivors.

Chapter Ten

I wasn’t exactly sure what a manor house looked like, but I was guessing it would be bigger than the homes I’d seen in Edenshire. Maybe it boasted two stories instead of one? Or maybe it was made of better material than dried mud, straw, and dung.

To the northwest, a wide road with a tiny ditch running down the middle of it led away from town. In the ditch, a narrow stream of clear water trickled. I fell to my knees and cupped my hands, gathering as much water as I could from the stream before gulping it down and going back for more. I couldn’t get enough.

Gusts of wind tore the last, yellowing leaves from the trees on either side of the road. Occasionally, the sound of a rustling squirrel came from the woods As I made my way toward Enoch’s manor, I couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching me; keeping their distance, but following me. I shook off the feeling in my gut. Traveling through Edenshire set me on edge. That was all.

My stomach had been queasy since I first smelled the rot, and even though Edenshire was hours behind me, it still hadn’t settled. I passed a cart that had been abandoned along the road, one wheel almost entirely buried in the now-dry mud. Where in some homes life kept going, in others it had just stopped, leaving behind haunting reminders of the past.

I couldn’t help but compare it with what was happening in my own time. The scene got bleaker with every broadcast. Throughout the city, abandoned vehicles lined the streets and highways, scattered along bridges and left in the centers of tunnels. Beneath the city wasn’t any better. Strings of train cars stretched along forgotten tracks. It was common knowledge that many a vampire made their nests in the underground, where it was dark and damp and cold.

I barely remembered what it was like to ride a bicycle. To ride in a car. To walk down the sidewalk— even in daylight. I’d been so young when it was all stripped away. Not that I wasn’t grateful to have been taken to the compound. People still lived outside and went on with life, but they were never really safe. Death waited just outside their doors. For most, it was only a matter of time until it came for them.

* * *

By sundown, I’d found the steepest hill in existence, but still hadn’t found Enoch’s manor. The stranger’s warning about finding the manor before nightfall slithered up my spine. It was getting darker by the minute.

With my hands on my knees, I paused on the summit I’d been climbing and then looked up. Only a valley separated me from a towering castle surrounded by a thick, imposing stone wall. The impressive structure had to be Enoch’s ‘manor’. Only he would refer to a massive castle as something so diminutive.

Torches attached to wooden poles lit the way to the castle gate. Their orange flames revealed that Enoch was Enoch, no matter the time. Situated between the torches was a series of pikes, each with speared human heads in various stages of decay. The torchlight cast shadows on their ghoulish features. The eyeballs of all the victims had been pecked away; the parts of the tongues that hadn’t been eaten lay over the jaws like dried ribbons, frayed at the edges.

Closer to the wall, the pikes were replaced by human-sized metal cages hung from strong, L-shaped wooden beams. The flickering torchlight illuminated the corpses inside. Some were no more than piles of bones, bleached by long hours in the sun. Others had died more recently. Their flesh still peeled away as insects gorged themselves on the remaining juices.

Even though there were torches lining the top of the wall, I couldn’t see the men standing guard. And I couldn’t hear them because of the buzzing sounds, which were so loud, I batted at the air beside my ears. The movement didn’t go unnoticed.

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