“You still don’t drive do you?”

“Carol, of course I can drive. If it has wheels, wings, or can be submerged, I can pilot it. I have driven chariots in Rome, elephants in Istanbul, horses in Mongolia, race cars in Monaco, tanks in Italy, planes for Pan Am. I like walking. I am in no rush to get anywhere in particular. When I feel particularly feckless, I will take a boat out into the middle of an ocean and swim the rest of the way.”

“So, you rode in my car because?”

“I was between cars at the moment.”

“How many people did you kill on the way here?”

“The whole trip or just since I got to New York.”

“Just New York, please. No need to exceed the boundaries of good taste.”

“Thirty-five assorted rapists, murderers and pimps since I entered the city.”

“Was there anyone you didn’t kill?”

“Yes, I’m always nostalgic when I come to the city, so in your honor I do my best to spare at least one person on any given day that I would have otherwise killed. I came upon a check point and found a group of men raping young men and women before allowing them past the checkpoint. One young man had just joined the checkpoint duties and was aghast at what he was seeing. As I strolled past the gates, I heard the cries and upon investigating, decided none of those so-called guards deserved to live.”

“What did you do to their victims?”

“Nothing, by the time I arrived, they were already past helping. Two bled out seconds before I arrived, the third was shot trying to escape.”

“Tell me the guards suffered. Something suitably nasty.”

“Oh, I love it when you talk vengeance. Ebola, with an accelerated timetable. Organs liquefy while you watch.”

“What happened to the last guard?”

“I instructed him in the proper destruction of their rape-mobile camping vehicle to prevent the spreading of the disease. I left him with the Mark of Caine and informed him a pious and respectful lifestyle was recommended. Should he ever consider harming anyone who had done him no injury, he would be consumed in a similar fashion.”

“You left him with a biological weapon incubating on his chest? How long will it last? What kind of life have you left him? Just when I thought you might be changing, you do something like this.”

“Calm down. I can create a Mark that does whatever I want it to. In this case, as long as he maintains his decorum, he will mostly have a slightly irritating rash which will flare up from time to time to remind him of our meeting. Should he experience symptoms of guilt, his body chemistry will alter the Mark making it significantly more painful. It will interact with his brain chemistry and cause him to have nightmares, terrifying ones. And should he be unable to reconcile himself to his deeds, he will eventually take his own life, since the idea of watching his organs liquefy will simply be beyond his capacity to deal with given our current climate. So it won’t save his victims, but it will ensure he creates no others.”

“He is a soldier monitoring security gates, how could you leave him in such a state? How can he do his job, a stress-related job without the risk of eventually blowing his brains out?”

“I suggested a different line of work. Gardening, food production, burning the dead, perhaps. He may show up looking for a job. I suggested he show the mark to the Senior Official at your particular hospital. I assured him he would be able to get a job.”

“Get out of my bed. Now.”

“Is that any way to show how much you missed me? We were doing so well.”

“You haven’t changed at all.”

“I am ten thousand years old. How would it look if I went changing for every woman I came across? It would ruin my reputation. Now come back over here. We can fight again tomorrow if it will make you feel better.”

“You promised me there would be no bloodshed at the hospital.”

“There won’t be. The Lord Oak is already planning his escape. Once he leaves the hospital, I will end the threat his knowledge presents.”

“Why not work with him? If what you suspect is true, wouldn’t he be a powerful asset?”

“The Lord Oak is a loose cannon. He does what he wants, when he wants. He is convinced there is a threat out there older than the Vampyr and it is the cause of the phage.”

“But you agree with that. So I still don’t see why you can’t work together. We have made some headway at the hospital as well. Pooling our resources, we might be able to…”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“You are to discontinue any further research.”

“I am about to put you out of my bed, again. We think we are close to beating this thing.”

“I mean it. When you were far from anything that looked like an answer, It left you alone. The Lord Oak must leave here and look as if he has discovered nothing. If he stays, your work, your hospital and your lives are at great risk. I mean this. Your next papers, your next info releases to your masters must say nothing of your recent discoveries. Nothing. Write it off as a false lead, for now and the foreseeable future.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Please.”

“You never ask, my Shepherd, only command. Is it really that important?”

“Yes. This is a threat to everyone, and a threat with the power to erase anything or anyone it thinks knows too much.”

“This does not explain why you won’t work with Oak? You said he knows or suspects the same things you do.”

“Lord Oak wants to go to the Vampyr council in Los Diablos and plead a case beyond our scientific support. He wants to create a war council, and combine our military capacities.”

“They have an army?”

“Of a sort. How do you think they managed to build Los Diablos in the middle of the ruins of LA in less than three years?”

“I assumed we helped them. Keeping people busy has been a government mandate. Too busy to notice the dying.”

“No. There were no humans hired or used in the building of the Council City. It was built in the cover of darkness for a reason. The Vampyr are not just vampires, they’re a people, a collection of different creatures working together for a variety of reasons. They are a force to be reckoned with. If they wanted, they could take your government, any single government by force.”

“But it would spark a world war.”

“Yes.”

“Is your threat so dangerous, Lord Oak’s plan won’t work?”

“It is not the problem of his idea working. If he were able to convince both groups to work together, that would only accelerate Its plans.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everyone likes to think of themselves as the Alpha predator. Humans think they rule the Earth. But until recently they were unaware of the Vampyr who both as individuals and collectively are far more dangerous than Humanity could ever be. They keep themselves hidden because humans are very poor at accepting their overall mediocrity. Present company excluded.”

“No offense taken.”

“But I have lived for ten thousand years and have seen things, especially recently, which make me believe the Vampyr are not the pinnacle of life on Earth.”

“What does this have to do with the phage?”

“When food becomes hard to find, what do hunters do?”

“They flush it out, chase it down.”

“The Vampyr had become so good at hiding, they were unable to be found, except as legends. So if you wanted to flush the Vampyr out of hiding, what do you do?”

“Considering their intelligence and capabilities, you have to threaten something they value or couldn’t live without…And if you know humans, they would never allow the Vampyr to walk freely; hence the Red Star program. Tagging your meals and letting them walk around in the open.

“I knew there was a reason I loved you. Oh yes, and these six hundred thread count sheets.”

“You love me for my sheets? What? Park benches a bit splintery for your old ass?”

“No my dear, I love you for your intellect, your sheets, and what you can do between those sheets.”

“Such open flattery will only delay this conversation.”

“I will take the delay. Let me handle this and draw the threat away from you.”

“I’m a big girl. I can handle things.”

“I’m counting on it. Turn off that light and get over here.”

“Yes, my Shepherd.”

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Red Star, White Sun (8)

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies:Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short(2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

Red Star, White Sun (7) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you managed to get here without reading Chapter 5…

Flight Transcript: Classified — Top Secret

TELEMETRY AND BIOMETRIC DATA INCLUDED

“Whiskey Niner One, Whiskey Niner One, this is Flight Command. ETA to target?”

“Command, this is Whiskey Niner One, ETA eight minutes. Package is prepped, all lights green. Whiskey Niner Two on station.”

“Whiskey Niner Two to Niner One, recommend switching to Channel six.”

“Roger, Niner Two. Switching to channel six.”

“Niner Two to Niner One, comms established. Hawkeye, tell me you are not going through with this?”

“Boomer, orders are orders. You knew what we might have to do one day.”

“Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but that is Los Angeles painted in the center of my targeting map. Are you saying you can drop a bomb there and not look back? Don’t you have family there? ”

“Yes.”

“Well, sir, I can’t do that. It’s fucking downtown Los Angeles!”

“Boomer. (pause) Whiskey Niner Two, return to your flight path and follow your orders.”

“No, Colonel Hawkeye, sir. I will not be responsible for being the first pilot to bomb American soil.”

–FLIGHT DEVIATION DETECTED

“Niner Two, check your six. Do you see those four escort fighters? They are here for our protection. But they have another job to do.”

<squelch> “Bombers Whiskey Niner One and Whiskey Niner Two, you are deviating from your flight path. Return to the flight corridor.”

–FLIGHT DEVIATIONS CORRECTED

“Boomer, this is an Executive Order. That means its bigger than you or me. The fate of the United States may lay in the balance.”

“To hell with your executive order. It is an illegal order to bomb Americans, I don’t care what is going on down on the ground. I don’t have to follow an illegal order, no matter who it’s from.”

<squelch, unintelligible> “Whiskey Nine One. This is Ground Command, we are expecting your delivery. Are you in the pipe?”

“We are in the pipe, Ground Command. Are you on site?”

“That is an affirmative. I’ve never seen anything like this. We won’t last long, son. We are being overrun. <multiple sounds of gunfire are heard in background, men shouting, screams> But you can’t let anyone leave this city. Whatever this is, it cannot get out. Promise me.”

“You have my word, Ground Command.”

“We are lighting the beacon, our position is compromised. You hit this mark, son. This is Ground Commander, Zachery Baker, Colonel, United States Army.

–SIGNAL LOST

“Boomer, you don’t have to look. Just do your job, drop the payload and don’t look back. This isn’t about your personal comfort.”

“Flight Command, this is Whiskey Niner One, we are thirty seconds out. Weapons armed, coming in hot.”

“You are free and clear. You may launch when ready. May God have mercy on our souls.”

“Whiskey Two, Boomer what are you doing?

–FLIGHT DEVIATION, W92, THROTTLES BACK, ATTEMPTS TO LOCK W91.

“I can’t let you do this. We can’t do this”

–W92 FIRES ON W91, DAMAGE RECORDED, W91 EVADES

“Escorts you are free and clear, fire on Whiskey Two.”

–W92 EVADES FOR ELEVEN SECONDS BEFORE BEING SHOT DOWN

“Flight Command, this is Escort One, we have a splash on Whiskey Niner Two. There was no chute deployed. Whiskey Niner One is smoking and leaking fuel.”

“Whiskey Niner One, you are clear for payload delivery. Can you deliver the package.”

“Flight Command, the package will have to be a manual drop. Tell my family I may be a little late. Carol will understand. Thank you Escort One, get clear.”

–PILOT EXPERIENCING TACHYCARDIA DUE TO BLOOD LOSS, RECOVERY IN PROGRESS

“Good luck, Whiskey Niner One.”

If I had any luck Escort One, I wouldn’t have been here. Don’t look back.

“This is Escort One. The payload is on target. We have detonation. Whiskey Niner One hit the mark.”

–TELEMETRY INDICATES MANUAL ACTIVATION OF DEVICE AT OPTIMAL HEIGHT, FEED FROM W92 LOST.

“This is Flight, you are to shoot down any aircraft that attempts to leave that airspace. No exception, no exclusions. We are tracking two jets which launched ten minutes ago. Split up and take them down. No survivors.”

“This is Escort One. Understood Flight, we are moving to intercept.”

–TRANSCRIPT ENDS, ALL FURTHER FEEDS REDACTED.

Four hours later, Daryl Mayers woke and walked out of the wreckage of flight 326 to New Mexico in the foothills of Southern California. He had only been on the plane for thirty minutes, and had a slight tickle in his throat. He found himself still strapped to his chair with a painful concussion for his troubles. Meanwhile the burning wreckage of Flight 326 with 193 passengers and crew a few hundred yards away exploded sending chucks of debris and the smoldering remains of passengers all over the area. Confused, he got up and walked away from the plane. A fighter jet roared away in the distance, its work done.

Curiously enough, none of the Native Americans who found him wandering from the crash thought anything unusual about him and nursed him back to health. For weeks he danced in and out of consciousness, sick with fever, they were initially afraid, especially after the tales of the new disease in the remains of Los Angeles. But no one else grew sick and they eventually found him friendly, but unable to remember anything about his life.

The only thing he seemed insistent on was returning to a particular stretch of road to create new paintings in the sand. The Native Elders saw it as therapy and did not stop his weekly wanderings.

He became a local legend as he created sand sculptures and paintings often visible from the air. It was not known how he created these images without the aid of a computer or an aircraft. An occasional wanderer might appear or come to see his work, be amazed and leave feeling enlightened. They were never seen again.

He would never know any of these things. His ability to remember anything beyond the basics had, at least for the moment, left him. It was just as well. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

A doctor might have diagnosed him with a traumatic brain injury which removed his power of speech and caused his artistic talent to explode. That same doctor, in a month after diagnosing him, would too be dead, with an irresistible and inexplicable urge to travel and mingle before he died. The same urge every visitor would have upon leaving, the once Daryl Mayers, now desert artist, spreading a unique contagion associated with a desire to create beautiful art until the moment of their painful demise.

Daryl would spread his art to over a thousand people before an unfortunate accident with an eighteen wheeler ended his career. The driver tried to help and resuscitate Mr. Mayers, unsuccessfully, but his truck of produce would arrive on time, hand delivered by an honest fellow just doing his job. An outbreak of artistic talent would follow almost two years to the day of the bombing of Los Angeles. These artists, of course, experienced an urge to travel…

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze, 2012, All Rights Reserved

BONUS: Los Diablos

• House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun - Los Diablos (with images, tweets) · ebonstorm
• Red Star, White Sun (7)

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

Red Star, White Sun (6) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you managed to get here without reading Chapter 4…

Hospitals, if they can be said to have a character, would have developed it based on the people they saved. Mount Sinai was a hospital who would have been said to have been a guardian of the poor, the weak, and the dispossessed. Mount Sinai’s walls of fine marble were covered in soot and ash, a testament to one of her primary tasks of destroying the dead and dying.

But it was not always so.

Her bright and sparkling corridors were once the exclusive province of the well to do. Founded at the turn of the last century, she was a product of her time. She was the hospital for the wealthy, the privileged, for those whose money could buy everything, even in a time when the bulk of the people had almost nothing.

She was the creation of the Victorian era and her origins had her foundations laid next to a grand cathedral in the center of New York City. Over time the two would eventually become a landmark, one of faith and one of healing in a time where there was too little of both. When they were finished building her, white walls contrasted the dark granite used to construct the church. They stood in opposition to each other, a testament to science, a reliquary of faith. The doctors in white and the pastors in black; each looking at the other shaking their head certain the other path was the path to damnation.

This was not to last.

Forty years and a generation of pastors and doctors later, the economy collapsed and both fell into disrepair. The ebb and flow of the times meant the church’s population would often grow directly in proportion to the quality of services available next door. The hospital was prepared against tough times and while its administrators minimized its services, she would push on during dark times.

Sinai did not close. She never did.

In a hundred and fifty years, Mount Sinai would never close her doors to anyone. Her lights might be dimmed and only the most dedicated would walk her halls, tend her sick, and bring solace to her wounded for the next two score of years.

Those unfortunates who found their way to her were in a bad way and though she did not have much, she tended them. Her doctors and nurses plied their craft with dedication, her janitors were equally focused. The two buildings would light the way for their part of the city. It would be cleaner, more beautiful, the people more generous and would maintain their quality of life as if protected against the vicissitudes of a cruel universe. They could not know there were other forces at work.

Mount Sinai’s strong walls had survived two World Wars, and a variety of smaller ones. Locked in the heart of the inner city, she was once a hospital only for the rich, who desired care but did not want to travel away from their opulent lifestyles. So while she started life as a refuge for the wealthy, she eventually became, as she aged and as the city grew into adulthood, a caretaker and bastion of those now too poor to have other choices. Somehow Mount Sinai always managed to have what she needed to survive. She drove her doctors and her administrators toward greater levels of capability. Her community loved her, they did whatever was necessary for the hospital to survive, somehow they knew, her survival would be theirs.

Their doctors and research facilities grew stronger and she grew larger, expanding into the local neighborhood providing clinics, healthcare and a personal touch slowly eroded by the march of corporate healthcare. Only the church stayed the same after a century, its bell towers, still crossed the skylines, well lit after a century.

When Mount Sinai was nearly a hundred years old, forty years ago, she was considered historical and the city realized her value as a symbol of hope in a decaying age. They rebuilt her walls, expanded her, reinforced her, and protected her. Her surgeons, doctors, scientists became legends in their own right, as if her desire to protect had seeped into the air, the water, their food, their love of life transformed into an art, a passion for lifesaving. When the Great Wasting was first discovered, it was found by those doctors who worked at Mount Sinai, ever vigilant for threats against her city.

The Great Wasting challenged Mount Sinai and her legion of practitioners. It challenged their belief systems (it wasn’t possible), it challenged their skills (we can’t stop it), it challenged their very nature of what good care was (we can’t keep up with it), but they did not stop.

At Mount Sinai, stopping wasn’t ever considered. One hundred and fifty years of tradition broke for no disease. They believed it was only a matter of time. The champion of that cause two years ago was Dr. Chaucer.

The head physician, Carolyn Chaucer, MD sat back from her terminal took off her reading glasses and pinched her forehead trying to relieve a headache. A headache likely caused by trying to uphold the standards and principles of the great institution even while she danced on the head of a pin to maintain a hospital during martial law.

For the first time in one hundred and fifty two years, the doors of Mount Sinai were closed to the public.

Soldiers guarded her doorway and a DMZ stood between the world and the hospital. The church next door was also included within the DMZ, having been taken over by the military as a staging area.

Dr. Chaucer had served this hospital for nearly thirty years now and was in her early sixties. She was a good sixty. She was fit. She could still Zumba with the best of them. Working in hospital had given her a great respect for the frailty of the human condition, so she made every effort to maintain both her body and her mind. She was still a beautiful woman, but her recent cares had added years to her eyes.

Just her eyes. Men still sought her favors, until they looked into her eyes. She had seen too much. Most fled checking their watches, remembered meetings they were late to, made stammering statements to excuse themselves from her imposing psychic presence.

The corner office, her only concession to her position’s status looked out at the church next door. She had never set foot inside of it. Not for a lack of curiosity, but for a lack of faith. Growing up religious, she had no truck with it after adulthood. Even though this particular church shared a fence and was considered to be one of the most beautiful of its kind, she would have nothing to do with it, out of principle. But there was nothing preventing her from admiring its lines. As her eye slid down the building, her mind crossed the fence back into her own backyard.

Fatigue coursed through her bones as she considered the three hundred patients she had in and on the grounds in varying states of disrepair. The hospice regions on the edge of the hospital grounds were the saddest part of the hospital to her. These patients never entered the hospital proper and their caretakers were restricted as well. Clean facilities established on the grounds meant staff could move only between particular regions unless they were equipped with the proper military biosuit. She had been wearing hers for days and had been relieved to take it off, have it cleaned, take a bath and for a moment allow the air to touch her skin. Considering the horror of her job, she felt naked without it. She put it back on before she sat down to finish her paperwork.

Flicking through the close circuit data-stream, she looked at the various hospice regions surrounding the hospital. There was nothing to be done for these people consigned to this area except to keep them clean and dry and hope for the best. The disease was painful, the never-ending moans and cries as the disease ravaged their bodies, consuming their nerve endings, left most begging for death. Many nurses would secretly comply as the screams reached a terrifying crescendo, night after night.

For most, relief never came. Painkiller supplies ran out after the first year. Most would die within a three week window after being admitted.

A few lasted longer, maybe ten percent. And a curious few might last a few months. But there were two classes who would remain in hospital care and be moved into isolation units for study; those who didn’t die, but did not get better. This disease was a deadly one. Either you lived or you died. End of story.

These two exceptions were the reasons she was still practicing medicine.

Ninety percent of the people infected with the Wasting died. They were eaten from within or from without by the symptoms of what appeared to be flesh-eating disease. Most died so quickly, they never made it to the hospital. If the disease was internal, most never knew what killed them. Autopsies show internal organs completely consumed by the disease. Early sufferers died this way. As the disease continued, later sufferers started showing external injuries as flesh melted away, almost over-night.

Within a week to fifteen days, the patients on average died. This fast dying group was only twenty percent of the sufferers. Most would be members of the middle group, who died much slower but died just the same. They might suffer for a month or more. This accounted for the next fifty percent of sufferers. The last twenty percent were worthy of study. If you stayed sick but did not die, did not progress in symptoms, you were watched closely.

Then there was a new class of patients. There was excitement when people noticed a few patients were showing signs of improvement. But every third person who did survive was still not clear. They stopped showing signs of the disease. But they were still highly infectious. These were now her patients and her problem.

As she signed the crematory notations for last night’s shift, she could hear the furnaces being started as their solar charges and cremation chambers reached their threshold temperatures.

She normally stood vigil as they disposed of the bodies, but after the first thousand, it became almost unbearable, by the second, she wept inwardly, by the ten thousandth, she could no longer weep, her heart hardened by the horror of watching them die, consumed by a disease she knew but could no longer understand.

She watched from her desk over the CCD. She did not need to. It was her self-imposed penance.

Today was the anniversary of the discovery of the Sinai bacterium and today, she wanted to sit in her chair and forget. Forget Patient Zero. Forget the panic. Forget the riots. Forget the military. Forget martial law. Forget her husband and her children who died so early on. Forget the tens of thousands she herself personally euthanized to spare them their terrible fate.

She just wanted to forget.

Her secretary came into her office, out of breath. “Excuse me, doctor. There is a man downstairs at the main gate asking for you.”

“Did you ask him what he wanted?”

He asked me to give you something to you. It was a card in a beautiful hand written script written in Latin. Nex has adeo vestri urbs. EGO adeo praecipio vos Sit hic. “Death has come to your city. I come to warn you He is here.”

Her face paled as she sealed her suit at the neck, grabbed her white coat and ran past her secretary into her airlock.

She primped and checked her appearance as she rode the elevator to the first floor. It had been a while since she had cared what she looked like.

She slowed herself as she entered the main security region. She could see his blue-black face even from this distance. He was wearing his trademark ornate shades of gold and a dark grey suit.

“Let him through, Captain.”

“I’m sorry ma’am but he is displaying signature irregularities indicating he may be sick.”

“I am authorizing his passage, Captain. I will take full responsibility.”

“Yes, ma’am. Let him through.”

His face was solemn, but his mouth had the hint of a smile. “Your eyes speak to me, Doctor Chaucer. They are filled with your suffering. You are now old enough to understand.”

Her eyes and face harden. She slaps him. He does not resist.

A few seconds later he hugs her. She does not resist.

They walk away toward the elevator, silently, closely but not touching. Everyone returns to looking busy, their questions internalized until the elevator closes.

It was within these walls, did Ben Szandros find himself; so very close to death from every side and yet in this moment, more alive than any other time in his short life.

The walls of Mount Sinai shudder.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies:Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

Red Star, White Sun (5) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you haven’t read Chapter 3 (and shame on you)…

His name was spoken among the Vampyr in hushed overtones; if you spoke of him at all. He was the boogey-man of boogey-men. His real name was lost to antiquity. He was called the Shepherd. Like a scourge or plague, where the Shepherd came, none survived, so the legends said. All legends have a kernel of truth in them if you dig deep enough.

He could no longer remember his name. He had not used it in so long, no one living, even the oldest of the Old Ones could remember it and their pedigree went back four thousand years, but he, he was one of the First. And as far as he knew he was the Last.

Sun-baked by millennia of crossing the world on foot, on camels, later horses, ships of nearly every size and shape, he knew the sun, from every angle, from every climate, from every biome on Earth. His skin was black as night, nearly so black it shone with a bluish tint. On occasion, his appearance caused men to recoil in fear, back when humans had the proper respect for his… vocation.

A little over five and a half feet tall, he was powerfully built; his body festooned with scars acquired over the ages, should you be fortunate enough to see him without his clothing. As ruggedly as his body had lived, he kept himself impeccably dressed, his custom-made suit hid only the physical manifestations of his power. Anyone standing near him felt his aura of confidence, of supreme will.

His head was clean-shaven, though he did nothing to maintain this state. His hair simply no longer grew upon it. He would occasionally wear a hat, if the fashion of the time required it. Modern times no longer had such requirements, more the pity. He often thought modern times had lost touch with the little things that mattered.

Though the sun was hot, it was nothing compared to the sun of his ancestors, The August sun beat down on New York city like a drum, rhythmic ripples flowed away into the distance, distorting the long avenues, bereft of all but a few people, scurrying along. He wore a pair of dark and beautiful bronze-like sunglasses; their like had not been seen in some time.

Not the sentimental type, these sunglasses were one of the only things he kept from Byzantium before its destruction. He attributed this attachment to their high quality. But they were not for his protection; he could stare directly into the sun for days with no trauma. These were for the humans who would dare to stare into his eyes. His eyes revealed his nature as a Shepherd though few would recognize that today. It was how they knew each other. To know his gaze was to court death.

His mouth and nose were both ample and full, yet did not dominate his face, having nearly perfect proportions with his cheeks and chin. Each element of his face was distinct but together, women considered him breathtaking. Back when he cared about such things, he was vain and proud of his appearance, but the centuries slowly eroded the value of his physical beauty until it became one more tool at his disposal, nothing more.

He walked through the streets of New York with purpose. He remembered these streets from decades ago when they were pulsing with life, people bustling from place to place barely aware of the person next to them. Nights were filled with lights stridently crying out for notice. The scents of the city spanned the globe and each reminded him of another epoch, in time, when those foods were prepared with less flair but more honesty. He hated to admit it but New York was one of his favorite cities of the last two centuries. There was a vitality he thought lost to the modern world.

And now it was lost again. But not just to New York but to everywhere.

He had seen the face of plague before. He had watched millions die in his ten thousand year journey. Before he knew his purpose, he watched in horror as smallpox devastated Mesopotamia, and later spread to nearly every corner of the globe, a more devastating disease had never been seen, then or since. He watched and learned as cholera swept across Africa, with diphtheria in tow, and heralded by malaria.

As mankind moved to avoid diseases, and learned technologies to forestall disease, it was simple to mislead them and he watched as Rome fell to madness and lead poisoning. Only a few centuries later the European continent was devastated by the Black Death. By the twentieth century his work had grown easy as the world trembled before the might of the Spanish Flu. An affliction so terrible, historians were the only ones who remembered it willingly.

The diseases of the modern era, AIDS, Morgellans, drug addictions, were no less effective than his previous works, but lacked the sweeping devastation he was used to, until now.

And this, this was the conundrum. This Great Wasting as it was called, resembled the lowly staph infection, a modest creation which had enjoyed a return to prominence early in the twenty first century but now had turned into this new thing; something vile and unpredictable with a speed rarely seen except for flesh-eating bacteria. It would be something he would have been proud to take credit for if it were his.

But it was not.

There were no other Shepherds alive. He knew this. He was there at the passing of the last. And nature, while she can be a beast, would never have developed anything as dangerous as this. The question was who or what could have done this?

It didn’t matter now. What mattered was keeping this from the public eye until he could complete his investigation. He had his suspicions but no one could know the truth until he was sure.

The meddlesome and curious Lord Oak had already discovered what he hadn’t wanted to be known. This was no ordinary disease, nor was it one placed into the ecosystem to control the population of man. This disease had only one purpose, the complete and utter extermination of man.

No Shepherd would do this.

How was it created? Who would create such a thing? Why would they make it so virulent? None of those questions could be answered until the underlying reason for his being here could be dealt with.

It cannot be known this was not a culling. Panic among the People would be the result. He already disapproved of this coming out to Humanity. It would only create more tensions than it solved. The fall of Rome had proven we can never truly coexist. The Dark Ages only reinforced our experiences of the inability to effectively coexist, though we expanded our numbers greatly after the Renaissance so it was not a complete loss.

He considered letting the local powers deal with the Last member of the House of Oak, a once great house, filled with artists, scientists and scholars; a friend to most, a rival to few. Once, even a friend to, a Shepherd. That was a long time ago, a different Shepard and a different Lord Oak.

This was no time for sentimentality. The stakes were the entire world. For without Humanity, the People will perish. I must find the true source of this contagion, without the source, humanity had no chance to defeat it.

Their skills were great enough they were already learning this, but if Maximillian Oak is able to share his knowledge, we will no longer be able to contain the powder keg. Humanity without hope of reprieve would explode into an orgy of violence and despair.

As he approached an inner city checkpoint, the security guards leveled their weapons and ordered him to stop. He did not acknowledge them. He simply removed his sunglasses and stared at them. Like the six checkpoints before this one, the men clutched their chests, their eyes burst and they fell over dead. When they are checked at a forensic lab a day from now, their bodies will be coursing with diseases, numerous ones, unseen for decades.

There would be new bulletins issued, new protocols released, but none of them will matter for the source of the disease defied pathology.

He strides past the checkpoint, unchecked. He returns his shades, their familiar weight comfortable on his face.

I needed more time.

As long as he was aware of this knowledge, the Lord Oak must die.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

If you can’t stand to wait, jump to Chapter 5…

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies:Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun (4) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you haven’t read Chapter (1) or Chapter (2)…

There is a medicinal tang to the air of a hospital, an unmistakable, sharp biting odor, punctuated by the constant release of new chemicals and drones swishing them about promoting the illusion of health; as if cleanliness ensured healthiness.

It doesn’t always. Make no mistake about it, hospitals are about the dying, not the living. I never enjoyed finding myself in one and the main reason I was a health nut was to do my best to avoid visiting one of these mausoleums of the dying. Death has a scent, two actually. One of them is the odor of carrion and putrification; the other, a fresh and antiseptic scent. Death wears both.

You come to know its putrid perfume if you spend enough time around it. Digging mass graves after the Plague started, it was something everyone had to do sooner or later. My room stank of it, the strong scent of Death permeated every corner.

After the Plague began, hospitals became a luxury almost no one could afford. Triage centers, hospice camps, became the new medical facilities on the streets, away from anything truly important like surgery facilities for the wealthy. Advanced medical facilities were no longer for anyone, they were reserved for the very rich. Everyone else was forced to seek medical care where and if they could find it.

No one would have been more surprised than I was to find myself breathing in the metallic odors, brass, copper, stainless steel, shined and sanitized to perfection in a room barely lit, festooned with machines, tiny lights telling others how I was doing at a glance. I remember briefly waking to doctors sagely looking at my charts, making hmmming noises before nodding and walking away.

The occasional shake of their head made it through the drugged fog I found myself moving through with only one thing remaining constant, the white suited figure standing next to my bed. He rarely moved, and whenever I woke, however briefly in the beginning, he was there, his satanic eyes glowing red, looking at me with expectation and anticipation. Of what, I wondered before falling asleep again.

Finally, something changed, either my medication was reduced or I just started making some unexpected progress. There was less head shaking and more affirming noises. The machines made more noises, stronger, more regular and eventually, he even moved from my bedside for a moment or two.

Staring out the window when I awoke, he had the curtains cracked just a sliver, and the sunlight seemed bright, oh so bright. He closed the curtains and turned toward me. “Good morning, Benjamin. You’re looking better. Don’t try to move. It will be quite a few more days before you can get around.”

I tried to speak, my chest felt as if a rhino were napping there. I don’t care what you see in movies, I felt barely able to move my fingers and had more tubes, patches and bandages than I had ever known were possible. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.

“How long have I been here?” The last thing I remember was tons of rubble crushing us.

“Benjamin Szandros, you have been here some months now. The medical practitioners did not have much hope for your survival.” He smiled as if we were conspirators discussing a booming stock market.

Despite my fatigue, my mind was surprisingly clear. My memory was returning and with it, a burst of fear. “What about the, whatever the hell you called it?

The smile faded, he was all business again. He seemed to be considering exactly how much to tell me. “The boomsha: it was gone by the time they dug us out.”

I let the implications sink in for a moment; mentally I was running on fumes. It was speared savagely through the heart, smashed into a ceiling, and then buried under tons of rock. “You got to be kidding me, it survived?”

“Why wouldn’t it? We did.”

If he had not reminded me, I would not have remembered he was there and in far worse shape at the time than I was now. He stood there unmarked, as if nothing had happened. He wore a white suit accented in grey and silver. His long coat was back, its unnatural sheen only reminded me of what it actually was, a pair of giant wings. Currently they were colored a dark grey and affected the look of a cloak over both shoulders. The clawed sections pretended to be buttons, looking innocuous, shimmering, beautiful. I tried not to grimace as I remembered how he speared the boomsha, with one of his wing talons, like a bug under glass.

“Max…” I began.

“Stop. I allowed such familiarity when we were facing imminent death. I am Maximillian Oak, last son of the House of Oak. You will address me as Lord Oak, or if you must affect some level of familiarity, Maximillian. Do you understand me?”

Okay, it’s like that. “Maximillian.” I said with as much venom as possible, “what happened to the rest of the people on the train?”

He turned away from me and walked back to the window. He opened the blinds again and the early morning sunlight spilled into the room, a river of gold separating the two of us for a moment. I saw a few particles of dust swirling in the sun beam and found myself fascinated without realizing it. He was in no rush to continue the conversation, I could feel it. “There were no survivors. The tunnel collapsed killing almost everyone on board. The White Sun chose the spot well. There were already existing weaknesses which made the tunnel vulnerable.”

I had no proof but I had a feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. “You’re lying. How did they really die?”

The face I saw on the train was the one he turned back to me. A face that was cold, indifferent, timeless; the face of an immortal determined to stay that way. “You don’t want the truth of the incident, so leave it be. We have survived the moment. With the escape of the boomsha, this is hardly over. In fact it has only just begun.”

I wasn’t willing to let it go like that. “So you’re telling me a ton of rock lands on top of me and I am alive because I live cleanly, drink Spirolina shakes and exercise regularly?”

He came over to the side of the bed and moved his face close to mine. There was no heat this time. If anything he was colder than I expected, akin to opening the door to my freezer, but the chill was nothing compared to what his words caused in me. I would do whatever it took to survive…

“Between the bomb and the collapse, there were massive casualties. Most would not survive, their injuries were too great, the time before rescue was simply too long. It took twenty hours before they could reach us. Most died, long before then, slow agonizing deaths. Without the help of my kind helping to dig and remove the rubble, it would have been days. If you must know the truth, yes, I fed. Several times, in fact.”

My adrenal glands having had a few months of rest, rose to the challenge and I was able to raise my voice above a broken whisper. “Those people had nothing to do with you or whatever you, the boomsha and the White Sun had going on. How could you kill them?”

“I see. You think I fed just to survive. Their passage into the next life was filled with pain and suffering. I will spare you the visions, you are too weak to survive them. I saved every moment of their passing for you, whenever you wish to see it. I knew you would be self-righteous and filled with survivor’s guilt.”

“Yes, and I see you survived, just like you said you would. Did you have to kill them all, or only a dozen or two.”

“Spare me your piteous mewling about those people. While you slept blissfully ignorant and protected beneath my body, I endured their cries as their air ran out, I listened to their bones breaking as their crushing injuries filled their bowels with blood. I was with them, all of them. When they could bear it no longer, when their terror overwhelmed their veneer of civilization, when their minds broke waiting for rescue, I was there for them. I took them and they are with me. Within me are the souls of thousands.”

I felt my face grow cold. My rage drained away. I felt pity, but only for a moment. Then I remembered. “You used me. You involved me in this vendetta of yours when I used my flashlight against the boomsha.”

“You were involved the moment you stepped on the train. I simply made you useful to me, in that moment. Do not presume to know my mind, Benjamin. You have only just begun a journey I have lived for five hundred years. You have no idea of what your people are capable of. You have not lived long enough. You are still filled with youthful idealism. I harbor no such illusions now.”

I wanted to say something more. I wanted to tell him what I thought of what he did, killing innocents, children. I wanted to be angrier. But I was alive and this seemed to trump my righteous fury. Seeing my impending surrender, he administered the coup de grace. “Why aren’t you enraged about the Church of the White Sun planting the bomb, in the first place? They certainly didn’t have any compunction about killing their fellows to enact their revenge scenario. Save your sanctimony for someone who still feels anything for anyone. I certainly do not qualify.”

The door to my room opened and a woman and two heavily armed military policemen entered. She was quite attractive, in that stern school-teacher sort of way. She was dressed in black bio-fatigues still sealed from the neck down and also wearing her gloves.

The PAIN logo on her left shoulder stood out against the black suit. She was carrying her filter-mask and headgear under her arm and carrying a data wand in the other. Her eyes were like flint, she analyzed me when she came into the room and decided I was no threat. When she looked at Max, er Maximillian, she seemed to be dissecting him, determining his threat potential, stopping only to look him directly in his eyes, almost challenging him.

He was unimpressed.

Her next words however, did get a rise out of him, only for a split second, but I saw it. Imperturbable my ass.

“Maximillian Oak, you are under arrest.” Her face was stern and she was coldly professional in her delivery.

“And what is the charge, officer?” Oak was equally chilling.

“Murder, using psychic means. We place you at the bombing onboard the train and can provide testimony to your use of your abilities to feed against the strictures of the Red Star Convention. Please come with us. Be advised, we are aware of your… vulnerabilities. They were provided when your arrest warrant was issued. This data-wand has the warrant for your perusal if you so desire.”

“I am certain your paperwork is all in order, Officer…?”

“Forester. Beth Forester, Psychic Analysis Investigations Unit, NYPD.”

“I am sorry, Officer Forester, I will have to decline to be arrested at this time.” He turned to look at me in my hospital bed. I had to attest to a bit of satisfaction with his arrest. Any fascination I had with the man was gone. He was a murderous fiend and would be getting what he deserved.

“If I am taken from young Benjamin’s side, within the hour he will sicken and die.”

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun (3) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you haven’t read Chapter (1)…

I couldn’t breathe. My whole body felt shrouded, covered by an unyielding barrier. My ears were ringing and I could smell hair, plastic, electrical wiring burning. I tried to move and as I wriggled my arm, the barrier fell away, with a dull flapping sound.

It took a moment to remember where I was. The train. Underground. The explosion. The bomb. Then it came flooding back to me. I was lying down and there was a body next to mine. I knew it was a body because it was still warm. But it was cooling rapidly. Maximillian Oak, a Red Star was standing next to me when the bomb went off.

I slowly reached into my pocket for my keychain and LED flashlight. I figured it wouldn’t be much but any light would be better than none for me. I rolled to the right to free my hand, but I couldn’t move it. I reached out with my right arm and found my arm was bleeding, sticky and wet. I had to be in shock, I didn’t feel it yet. Reaching across my body, I got my keys and fumbled with the LED; a gift from a former girlfriend. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but now, if I live, I will have to thank her.

At least that’s what I was thinking until I turned it on. A brief flash of its harsh, blue-white light and I immediately turned it off.

How am I alive? The train, I remember we were on a train, was nothing more than a tangled wreck with no piece of it larger than a beagle near what was left of Max and I. Rubble from the tunnel had collapsed onto what was left of the car and Max was pinned underneath that. I could see the dripping smears that used to be people on the other end of the car.

I turned to what was left of Max and gasped involuntarily. He had wings. They were disguised as his coat, complete with the iridescent sheen. Now that they hung open, limp and lifeless, they only added to the horror of what I believe was his true form. His body was burned across the back and legs but his wings appeared to have taken no damage from the blast.

That’s what I heard before the explosion, his wings wrapping around us.

His face was twisted up in pain and his hair and parts of his skin around his neck has been burned away. In seeing his injuries, I began to feel my own and between the rubble pinning him down and my broken arm, we weren’t going anywhere fast.

“Artist.” His voice was a whisper but he spoke with a casualness that belied our circumstances. “You are looking well, relatively speaking.”

“Max. You look like hell, relatively speaking.

“I’ll get better. We’ll be here for some time. But this area is unstable. We need to move.”

I waved my light around. I couldn’t see what he was seeing but there were still particles falling from the ceiling. I took that as a sign of the area’s instability.

“Are there others still alive on the train?” I wanted to feel as if one subset of human selfishness hadn’t cost everyone on the train their lives.

He looked at me with a cold stare. “Yes, but they won’t be for long. With my injuries, I will need to feed soon.”

“How do you plan to do that? You can barely move.”

“As usual, humans confuse feeding with movement. I don’t need to move to feed. From where I am lying, I can take the lives of everyone on this train and there is little they could do to stop me. And I will if that is what it takes for me to survive,” he hissed.

Earlier, I felt fascination and even a few seconds of pity for this enigmatic being. Now, despite the fact I should be grateful to be alive, in this moment, I hated him and more importantly recognized his inhumanity. I had no doubt he would and could kill us all if that’s what it took for him to make it off this train.

“Then why save me? I was nothing more than a failsafe snack to ensure your survival?” I tried to sit up and the effort made me dizzy. Sand from the ceiling hit me in the face, interrupting my attempt to look outraged. Fact of the matter, I will still too damn grateful to be alive to really be mad.

He took a minute to answer. He croaked, “If I told you that was true, would you hold it against me? It isn’t, but I am curious.”

“No, not really. I’m pissed but if I had been alive as long as you, I might have the very same attitude. Survival at any cost. I guess you don’t get many Christmas cards.”

“No, I don’t.”

For a moment, we sat silently, for my part awkwardly, trying to decide if I felt good enough to try and get up. I was also considering whether I should be helping him.

“Did you hear that?” He lifted his head and turned his good (and by that I mean unburned) ear toward where he said he heard the sound.

On the other end of the car, there was a still intact train door. I could hear someone trying to force it open. “We’re rescued.”

“No, it hasn’t been nearly long enough. It would take longer than an hour to reach us. Someone is here to finish what they started.”

My stomach clenched as he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. I grabbed his arm and was swept up in his evil. I could see again with his senses, there were five people still alive in this car. They were at the far end of the car and protected by the press of bodies during the explosion. They were barely alive, their energies fading even as I watched. One by one, they winked out like candles in a storm, flickering brightly for a second and then gone. A winged darkness fell over them and then it was gone.

Max breathed in, deeply like man given a glass of water after being in a desert.

“You bastard.”

“So you think this is just about me? You do understand they cannot allow any witnesses. You, my good man, are a witness. They have already killed everyone between you and I. Do you doubt this? Take my hand and see what I see.”

His grip was hot again. Strong. Terrible. The visions before this one were soft compared to this one. His senses tore the car apart, his visual acuity sharp, I could see every torn angle of the car, ever drop of viscera dangling from the walls, every human remnant. I could see these things in complete darkness. His vision zoomed to the car door as it was pulled open. The sound of a silenced handgun echoed though the adjacent car. Max feasted. The well-oiled scent of the gun, mixed with the explosive effluvia, and the iron-hard scent of blood spattered on it made it easy to find.

I could see the man, his pores visible even from fifty feet, his face pockmarked like the surface of the moon, his eyes glittered with a drug-enhanced shine. His movements were strange, stuttering things, as if he could barely contain himself, a juxtaposition of stillness and action. His head snapped in our direction, as if taking our measure. He sniffed the air like a wild animal as he brought his gun about.

Max shuddered. “I know what you are. You didn’t tell them did you? You used them to plant your bomb and do your dirty work.” He spoke as if he were talking to someone right next to him.

When I looked back to the door, the man was gone. He was standing right above both of us. I never heard him or saw him move.

Do not trust your eyes. He is boomsha, a dweller between shadows. We have only one chance. You will know. If you fail, I will kill everyone who is left alive here to save myself. Including you.

The boomsha stood above us his gun pointed at our still forms. “Lord Oak, you have been deemed a Betrayer of the Way. You have conspired with Man and have been found guilty. I am here to deliver justice. Do you have Words for me to Deliver?” His speech surprised me. A thick accent I could not place, almost as if he spoke a language I had never heard.

“No Boomsha. I have no Words for you to Deliver. You will, however, send a message for me.”

“And what is that Lord Oak?” Suddenly my supernatural vision failed me. I could not see anything and the darkness was terrifying. I felt so heavy and slow, adrenaline no longer driving my actions. I turned my LED toward where I heard the boomsha’s quiet voice. I turned it on.

The light struck the boomsha directly in the chest and the clawed wing of Maximillian Oak blasted through the spot of light and penetrated the ceiling above him. The look of surprise was clearly written on the boomsha’s face. He shrieked as he tried to escape being pinned, vibrating between one place and another but unable to complete his blinking movement.

Then the ceiling collapsed upon us all.

Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Dig your way out to Chapter (3)

Thaddeus Howze is a popular and recently awarded Top Writer, 2016 recipient on the Q&A site Quora.com. He is also a moderator and contributor to theScience Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange with over fourteen hundred articles in a four year period.

His speculative fiction has appeared online at Medium, Scifiideas.com, and theAu Courant Press Journal. He has appeared in twelve different anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. A list of his published work appears on his website, Hub City Blues.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun (2) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My morning started out like any other, late for work, hung over, and wearing sunglasses. My car was in the shop, again, piece of shyte, so I was on the train.

A quick sprint turns my cheap poly-blend suit into an oven in the early morning heatwave, with the added humidity ensuring I will never be dry again over the course of the day; wonderful way to start work, hot, sticky, stinky and late.

I never would make it to work, though. I was listening to the radio and things sounded like they were getting tense since the Red Star Amnesty. Damn vampires. Last year, they were nothing more than bad myth, now they were national news. Every day, there was something new about them being discussed, fought over, fawned over or lamented.

Especially hard hit were the celebrities; those people famous for saying things they would never say in real life, dressed in clothing they could only afford after they became rich, getting paid to play “let’s pretend” in front of cameras for obscene salaries, and wearing enough makeup to choke a rodeo clown. They were mad as hell, being massive attention whores, they were forgotten almost overnight. Personally, I thought it was funny watching them doing more ridiculous things to make their way into the news.

At least I used to. I make my living as a police sketch artist. When I need extra cash, and who doesn’t these days, I paint Red Star ID portraits. Yes, the euphemism for vampire is Red Star. Some psychologist said the word vampire was too loaded with baggage so the government thought it would make relationships between Us and Them go better if we could easily identify Them. So in an act of genius, someone decided to make all vampires who were out, and they are supposed to be, wear a red eight pointedstar visible at all times.

Civil rights groups had kittens. Just like that, they had forgotten vampires weren’t even human. Then some scientists weighed in and explained it so guys like me who have art degrees could understand it.

“‘Homo Sapiens Vampyr’ is an evolutionary offshoot of ‘Homo Sapien Sapiens.’ What we once called “junk DNA” in the 1990s, is now forty years later a sophisticated blend of genomic markers with unknown and untapped potential. Homo Sapiens Vampyr is a regularly occurring pattern of mutation with specific traits and advantages.”

And just like that, the German Übermensch had been found.

Except he came in a variety of colors, cultures and in every social group in the human populace. And within their population there was such a wide array of differences so people were just as confused about vampires as they were before you could meet one in a coffee shop.

Standing on the platform in the early morning sun, I could tell it was going to be a scorcher, my armpits were already dripping and I once again regretted the creation of polyester. When the door opened, people poured out onto the platform rushing away as if they were being chased from the train. Once they left, the people on the platform stood there transfixed.Then almost collectively they looked down and moved onto the train looking away; looking away from him.

I saw him standing in the train, the car was hot and as usual the AC didn’t work. He stood there nonchalantly apparently oblivious to the wide berth people had given him, a space of easily fifteen feet. I knew what he was even before I saw his Star. Why would he travel this way? Most Red Stars kept to themselves, had their own private vehicles and wanted little to do with people despite their claims of wanting to help Humanity as a whole.

The Plague had made humans much less inclined to gather together during the early years, but as it became more contained, people started returning to work and after the revelation of the Red Stars, humanity was simply too tired, too wrung out to care. Nearly a billion people had died from the plague and every city maintained several hospice centers where the infected waited to die. This disease had a ninety percent mortality rate.

It resembled a staph infection, causing necrosis, first in small patches, then spreading and consuming the flesh in an orgy of devastation. Within a month, sometimes two, depending on your initial state of health, you were dead. First thought to be a bioweapon, no nation or faction ever claimed it. Eventually fingers were pointed but no one recognized it. No one wanted to be associated with a disease which showed the potential to wipe out the human race within the next year, unless drastic measures were taken.

Infection screening checkpoints had been developed and you were constantly being scanned as you moved from one part of the city to another. Every checkpoint was well-manned by hazard-suited police who tolerated no disobedience. Follow the rules or be shot, immediately. Order was maintained. But even this order was breaking down as the vector for the disease remained mysteriously absent.

People who had never traveled, drank bottled water, ate nothing new or unique would wake with the disease. Once it claimed a victim, it would usually claim the family as well. Only early treatment with the strongest antibiotics money could buy had a chance. As the year dragged on, those antibiotics were in short supply. Eventually they were gone. But almost at the same time, the disease appeared to go into remission. New infections appeared to have stopped and mankind breathed a sigh of relief.

Then they came; the Vampir, dwellers in the darkness, masters of science, technology and some claimed magic, monsters which feasted upon the flesh and souls of men. They were called all of these things and more. One year after the great Wasting Death, they appeared in large numbers in public places, at sites of government, science, museums and collectively told Humanity, the Great Wasting was not over. It had only just begun. They claimed they were here to help.

The unwashed masses accused them of causing the disease. Even as they explain who and what they were, humanity was already blaming them for the horrors it had experienced. There were still five hundred million people suffering from the Great Wasting, and while few new cases had been seen, there was no doubt others would be found.

The Vampir offered technology, serums and expertise gathered through lifetimes of scientific exploration. We could slow the disease, but we could not stop its march. But the real question no one wanted to ask but which was on everyone’s mind was ‘Why are you helping us?’ The answer was equally terrifying. We were their primary food group.

Hating the press of the crowd when there was perfectly good space being wasted, I slid up to the pole where the Red Star stood. He was, as most tended to be, impeccably dressed. His suit was something from about a decade ago, but the lines were clean and the fabric well-cared for. He wore a long coat made of some material I could not identify, but it had a subtle shimmer and shouted expensive to the world.

His hair was slicked back into a style worn by almost no one today, a throwback to around the 1950s. His hands revealed something of him, though. They were rough, skin calloused, like the hands of a dock worker and each nail ended in a grey sharpened claw, reputed to be able to cut through flesh and bone, like a scissor through paper. His grasp of the pole on the train was casual and his body swayed gently in rhythm with the movement. It was hypnotic to watch him.

His face was the most compelling thing about him. His eyes were positively chilling. Though he tried to affect an apparent devil-may care smirk, his eyes told of a smoldering and impotent rage. The look of a man who was used to a different lifestyle, of being in control, no, of being a power in his own right. I caught only a glimpse of this before he turned to me and smiled; a predator’s smile complete with razor sharp teeth.

“You’re bold. A man among mice, perhaps. Do you know what I am?”

“Of course, you are a Red Star, a citizen of these United States, subject to its laws and beneficiary of its privileges few though they may be these days.”

“You recite the litany as if you were one of us.”

“I am an identity portrait creator. I work with Red Stars every day.”

The problems including the Red Stars into society were numerous, they had been among us so long they had altered our ability to see them, each was born with a psychic gift allowing them to be unperceived by most of humanity. It wasn’t invisibility. You simply didn’t notice them. There were a tiny segment of the human population who could perceive them and others of their kind with similar “perception-blocking” abilities.

“So does your vocation make you loathe us more or less?” His voice was soft but carried through the background roar of the train. I suspect he was using his gifts to ensure I could hear him. “Don’t bother to answer, it was mostly a rhetorical question. I already know what the answer is.”

Emboldened by his turn of phrase, I spoke. “Actually, I have no problem with what you are. Having had the opportunity to paint dozens of Red Stars, I recognize your true nature and have moved past blind fear and panic. Now, it is a controlled fear. Something I recognize as dangerous but have no choice but to learn to accept it.”

“Have you now.” He moved very close to me, into my personal space, but I knew I couldn’t and shouldn’t back away. I had to control my fear, lest he feast upon it. His breath was hot, furnace hot and I realized the Hunger was upon him. “So you think you have mastered your fear? I assure you, you have not. Sweet, like a redolent wine, it rises from your flesh, the stink of it, like a fetid cheese, permeates your hair, your clothes. You live in fear of the unknown, the dangerous, the wretched state of humanity, our appearance, your military and the ultimate horror, that in three years, all of you may cease to exist. You have not mastered your fear, you simply stew in it like a lamb in a crockpot.” He sniffs me and then moves slowly away.

“You have nothing to worry about, young man. Your compatriots on this train give me more than enough to feed upon and I don’t have to do anything at all. Would you like to see?” He grabs my hand, tight, hot, rough and his grip is a thing of iron, inescapable. “Look at them.”

I did.

The room was awash in colors, while the train and all of its surfaces were almost black, the people faded into a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and most importantly smells. I couldn’t distinguish what I was seeing at first, there was so much information, my mind wasn’t comprehending everything, it was a new sense, filled with information I had never known existed. My mind was mapping it on top of my existing senses with a riot of data. The artist in me was astounded and I found myself wanting to keep seeing it, feeling it. I could feel them, their fear was a palpable thing, a living organism whose heartbeat was suddenly synced with my own.

“Do you feel that? That beating, throbbing thing? That is the taste or sound of fear. All of you make that sound now; your entire species. Only the children seem immune to its crushing weight. There is a purple sound, listen for it.” I understood what he meant as he guided me through my, no our, new vision.

I could feel a pain forming behind my eyes, but I could not stop. “What is it?”

“Your plague, not the disease, but the fear of it. Do you see how pervasive it is? Can you see how all-consuming it is? This is why I need not feed from you, Artist. I am awash in all of the emotion I can consume, all the time. My greatest desire is to be away from humans now. This,” he says tapping his Red Star Amulet, “is the only reason any of us has to keep from feasting upon you and killing you all. Only in death would you stop. Only in death are we relieved from your emotional cataclysm. This cacophony is why so many of us in the early days killed so many of you. To make the noise which is you, stop.”

He lets go of my hand and my vision fades. The pain remains, throbbing, filling the space in my head until it feels as if my brain would burst.

“So much for controlled fear.”

“I never said I was good at it.”

“You are better than most. My name is Maximilian Oak. Virologist, student of Jonas Salk, and I have been alive for five hundred years give or take.”

“I am Ben Szandro. Artist, writer, student of hard knocks and I have been alive for thirty years give or take.” I was about to lie and say I was pleased to make his acquaintance but I wasn’t really sure that I was. The Red Stars are big on propriety when they bother to acknowledge us at all. His introduction struck me as strange, as if there were more to it. He had no reason to introduce himself.

“You are a suspicious man, Ben Szandro. I like that. No. I did not read your mind. Your face is like an open book to one such as myself. Have you ever heard of the White Sun Movement?”

I was sorry to say I did. A group of crazed terrorist humans who take every opportunity to harass and kill Red Stars who live and work in the open with humans. “Yes.” I whispered.

“There are six members on this train. I have watched them for days now, wondering when they would make their move. I am a creature of habit. I arrive at the train the same time every day, catch the same train, every day. It never occurred to me this might be a problem, until a few days ago. You see, I believe there is a bomb on board this train.”

My blank stare seemed to amuse him. He smiled and continued.

“Their anticipation and heart rates are elevated. I hear whispers between them and each is wearing or carrying a White Sun rosary necklace; their annoying prayer and clicking drives me mad.”

“But what makes you think it’s a bomb?”

“I can smell it. I have lived through a number of wars, military events or otherwise uncivilized periods between humans. I know what a bomb smells like before and after its detonated. Do you doubt my senses?”

After what I had seen, no. “Then why didn’t you get off the train? How long have you known?”

“Since I stepped onto the train.”

“Does your plan include getting off the train Max?”

“No. It includes killing those members of the White Sun.”

This had just moved from frightening to outright dangerous. You have to understand a little about the Red Stars to appreciate what was about to happen. A bomb, unless it is laced with the right materials, will not kill a Red Star. And each one is different, so what might work for one may do nothing to another. Some are so damage resistant, they can bounce bullets like you and I deflect raindrops.

Honestly more than a bit concerned, I turned to look into the crowd of people pressing against each other on the distant end of the car. They all appeared to be just frightened people huddled against their inevitable fear of the strange and different.

Except for him. One fellow looked back at me. His eyes were not filled with fear. Or not just fear. He was filled with hate. Eyes tight with the hatred of something so great, it takes all of your willpower not to spit directly at this object of your loathing.

He spit.

Okay, hatred greater than his willpower. He was a man of middling height, but a strong build, rare in this day and age, it seemed the plague had a taste for body builders or those with high muscle definition, so many of the first to die were those with a low percentage of body fat. Scientists and doctors all laughed, when they could laugh, at the irony. His sandy hair was combed but uncut, his clothing looked serviceable but worn. Once I knew what to look for, the others weren’t hard to find. As I scrutinized their faces, I could see their resolve growing firm. They looked as if they were steeling themselves. Almost like they were counting down. But where was the bomb?

Max turned away from them and turned his gaze to the floor. And almost as I thought it, he answered my question. “I believe we’re standing on it.” The train groaned as it rounded the curve into the tunnel and day turned to night.

Before I could gather myself for the realization, I could feel a flash of heat coming from the Red Star, his clothing appeared to catch fire, and he whispered. “Forgive me.” The world slowed down, his long coat flashed out over his shoulders, flung back as he pulled me to him.

I heard flap of something like wings. There was sound and light everywhere, filling every crack of my consciousness. And then nothing but the screams of terror. Eventually, they too faded.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

When the ringing in your ears stops, make your way to Chapter (2)

Thaddeus Howze is a popular and recently awarded Top Writer, 2016 recipient on the Q&A site Quora.com. He is also a moderator and contributor to theScience Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange with over fourteen hundred articles in a four year period.

His speculative fiction has appeared online at Medium, Scifiideas.com, and theAu Courant Press Journal. He has appeared in twelve different anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. A list of his published work appears on his website, Hub City Blues.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun (1) was originally published in House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.