It was and early morning, to match the early sunset. I had a busy day ahead of me; I had to take Mariah shopping in town. Firstly I had to take a shower, eat breakfast then call Mariah to make sure she was ready before I drove over. I grabbed some pants and a shirt, jumped into the shower, dried off, then put on my clothes. For breakfast I made some scrambled eggs. I ate slowly, savoring the morning. When I finished I called Mariah.
“Mornin’ beautiful, ready for a day of shopping? I asked
“Sure am, you heading over now?”
“Yup”
“Okay, see you soon, love you”
“Love you” then I hung up.
It was a ten minute drive to her house; I rolled down the windows and took it easy. The morning breeze was quite refreshing. When I pulled into her laneway she was already outside waiting for me. By the time I had opened my door, she was already in front of me, and I took her in my arms and kissed her. She kissed me back, and I could feel the longing in her movements, but we had to stop. We walked back to the car and drove into town. It was a 30 minute drive to the mall; we made lots of small talk. We talked about what we did the night before, I watched some movies and she went to bed early. Before we knew it, we were already there. Only a few other cars were in the lot, it seemed like no one wanted to shop this early.
We walked out and went to the stores she wanted to visit. She tried on outfits for awhile and then bought the ones she thought were best. All in all it had only taken us about 3 hours to do the shopping. So we had an early lunch at the food court and spent a few hours just talking, about the weather, music, movies, friends, and all sorts of stuff. Tired of sitting we had decided to just walk around for awhile. We rode up down the escalators countless times, sat by the fountain watching others shop around, walked by a lot of cheesy half price sales, and we spent the last few hours just talking and walking, stopping occasionally. When I looked at my watch, I realized how late it actually was. We took the elevators to the parking level. It was dark and almost closing time anyways.
When we got out of the elevators we headed towards the doors leading outside, but on the other side we noticed these incredibly pale, wiry people, all standing there staring inwards. When a lady tried to pass through they all moved aside, until she got halfway through the crowd, once she was halfway, they surrounded her. She kept turning in circles, obviously freaked out, so where we. Then all of a sudden, one of them leapt onto her back, and lowered his face to her neck in a second. We saw the blood spurt out of her neck from where we where, she collapsed to the ground screaming in pain. Others knelt down to what looked like drink her blood. The others who weren’t near to her, turned at the sound of our yells, one of the ones closest to us, jumped through the glass shattering it, and getting closer to us.
“Mariah! Run!” I yelled while pulling her hand as I started to run.
I only heard our two set of feet, but I felt like it was chasing us.
“Where those…” Mariah began
“Vampires?” I finished for her
“It couldn’t have been, that’s impossible!” I continued.
“But those fangs and that lady!” she yelled.
Then it occurred to me, no matter whom or what those were, they probably didn’t want witnesses, and they already saw us. I took a sharp turn down the hallway and raced towards the gun store with her hand still firmly in mine.
“Where are we going?” she asked
“Whatever those things were, we need some sort of protection.”
I burst into the store to find it empty of people; we raced to the back and jumped the counter. We grabbed a shotgun each, a pistol each and a six shooter each. We loaded the guns just in time, when one of those pail people cam at us, he was fast, too fast to be human, he burst into the store with fangs bared. Our shots rang out and seconds later his body hit the floor. Knowing the others had most likely heard the shots we reloaded and left quickly.
We ran into the back door and into the maintenance hallway, we ran into a washroom and locked the door behind us. It was a large washroom with bright fluorescent lights. We just hid in the back with our guns in our hands. So there we waited for who knows how long, Mariah quietly sobbing on my shoulder. Occasionally screams were heard throughout the echoing mall. We heard some howls of those things nearby, they were very close. Out of nowhere one of them banged on the door and Mariah let out a loud shriek of horror. They must of heard Mariah because they all seemed to have worked into a frenzy and started howling and screaming and banging on the door. We stood up and held our shotgun in front of us and prepared for the worst, prepared to fight for our survival. We cocked the shotguns as the lock cracked and the door slowly swung open.
On the other side of the door were 7 vampires staring at us. They rushed at us and we started to shoot. What must have been seconds dragged on like hours. Two of them went down amidst the hail of gunfire, and as they got closer another two of them dropped hard. We let the shotguns fall from our hands and took out our pistols. Knowing they were getting too close I stepped forward and shot, hitting one of them in the face twice. The remaining two both lunged, one at me, and the other right over me. I was brought down to the ground; I desperately attempted to keep its mouth away from my neck as I wrestled my hand out of its grip. I managed to get my hand free and brought the pistol under his chin and I just kept shooting. The first two shots demolished his face while the others went into the ceiling hitting the lights and causing them the flicker and spark.
I rolled the vampire off of me and lay there exhausted, they were strong. I then remembered Mariah. I got to my feet and pumped the shotgun one more time. In the flickering light I saw one pail body on top of Mariah’s. She was too close to the vampire I could not shoot. Raising the gun like a club I brought it down on the head of the vampire with a sickening thud. Seeing his head was caved in from the blow I rolled him off of her. Mariah was unconscious but she was still breathing. I sat her up and held her against me, brushing my hand against her neck I felt something warm and sticky. Her neck was covered in blood. I looked at her and saw a gaping hole in her neck from the vampires teeth. She woke up soon afterwards looking dazed.
“What happened?” she asked me.
“Well, while you were sleeping another 30 or 50 of them came. I fought them all off so I could hold you close and tight.” I said making an attempt at humour.
She just laughed, but her voice sounded strained.
“What’s on my neck?” she asked bringing her hand to her neck, shen she saw that her hand was covered in blood here eyes opened wide but she couldn’t say anything. I held her close and whispered in her ear.
“You know what I have to do right?” I could barely get the words out.
“I know” she replied
“I love you, you know that?”
“I know you do, that’s why you wont let me become one of those things.”
I kissed the back of her neck and whispered again into her ear.
“exactly”
I kissed her temple and sat her against the wall.
“Maybe…maybe you wont change from just one bite?” I offered half heartedly
“You cant risk it.”
I got up and walked away from her.
“Mariah, I don’t know if I have the guts to put this to your head…I mean, either way you’ll be dead, being one of those things can hardly be considered living can it?” I said as I cocked the gun and made sure it was loaded. Her eyes already started to turn vacant and stained…like theirs were.
“I love you” she told me
“saying you love me only makes things harder at best.” I said smirking
“im sorry”
“don’t be”
“good because im not, I love you”
I steadied my aim from its wild shaking and aimed the pistol
“I love you too” I told her tears streaking down my face
Then I pulled the trigger.
I stood there, watching her lifeless corpse. I couldn’t help but to think to myself, ‘I was going to marry that girl’. I opened the door and left towards the parking lot, when I thought of her body there, surrounded by all of those…those things. I went back and got her body, and carried it back to my car. I drove up to the cliff we went to on our first date, the night we stayed up and talked all night and decided it was meant to be. I laid her on the roof of my car, and lay there beside her thinking.
I waited until sunset, to pull the trigger on myself. I’d always remember that one last early sunset over munroeville.
