IX: The Camp
“Why do I feel empty inside? Will ever get better?” Autumn asked, still hugging her legs, the soft breeze gently touching her hair.
“It’ll take get better, with time. You feel empty because you have a new mind, you haven’t lived yet. As time passes and you make new memories, that emptiness will start to slowly disappear. It may not or may not completely dissipate—it all depends on how you live your new life. What you do with your immortality will ultimately determine how you feel. Bit cliché, I know but I can’t really put it in any other way,” Red said as he shifted in his seat so that he sank into it.
“Earlier you said you were locked up here. Why?”
“I was wondering if you were going to ask about that. ‘Locked up’ was a strong choice of words. Exiled here is probably more apt.” His gaze shifted away slightly, and a sadness crept into his eyes. “The vast majority of we immortals live in and around the region of that mountain.” He pointed towards a white mountain off in the distance with his chin. “Alba Mons: immortals settled there hundreds of years ago. What led those first settlers there is a story for another time. I miss being there sometimes; there aren’t a whole lot of us. Certainly far fewer than humans, vampires, and werewolves. Possibly two to three thousand.
“Since we began living there, we adopted a policy of non-interference with the surrounding nations and peoples, so long as we were left alone. Eventually that policy became a rule and we also began requesting that the other nations send in any newly born immortals to us, if we ourselves didn't retrieve them first,” his eyes rested upon Autumn as he spoke. “The benefit of looking like any other human is that without more, you can’t tell us apart from a mortal human. Some of us experience a tingling sensation when we’re near another immortal, or a human who has the potential. Those of us with this gift help to keep an eye on humans who can become immortals in order to spirit them away for us. That is how you came to be here.”
“That answers that, but not sure how it…”
“I’m getting to that bit, but I wanted to give you the benefit of understanding the background that most outside of Alba Mons wouldn’t know. So,” he said, leaning back and regarding Autumn as a lecturer might take in a pupil who asked too many questions, “back to why I’m here. Towards the end of the conflict between the UHR and the Vampires over Nova Flats, I forced our people to get involved. There had been rumors that both sides had been keeping new immortals from us. I took it upon myself to investigate . A few months in, I had overheard a man recount how he had to make an odd delivery to an unnamed camp in the middle of the woods. It was actually those woods just over there,” he said as he pointed off to the right.
“I camped out there for weeks, watching the occasional unmarked truck come and go from the camp. Vehicles back then were primitive and loud, so it wasn’t hard to follow from a distance. There wasn’t a whole lot of security to speak of--there were fences, but they weren’t tall. The buildings, if you could call them that, looked like they were slapped together haphazardly. I had counted seven immortals in the camp, and half a dozen lightly armed guards. One day into my fourth week camping out, a truck arrived, as was typical. Up to this point I hadn’t seen any new people being brought in and certainly nobody was being taken away, other than rotating guards. This specific day though, I’ll never forget. In addition to the normal deliveries, I saw four children come out of the truck. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. I didn’t know it then, but I discovered years later that a town was being evacuated because they feared that the conflict would engulf it. The last of the caravan of evacuees was hit by a rogue artillery shell. Most of them died in the ensuing blast, but these four survived, only to be shut up in a camp as a reward for living.
“Good god,” Autumn whispered, nearly inaudible.
“Rage consumed me that day. I waited until the truck had left, then strode straight up to the camp gates. I wasn’t rushing, and I was spotted quickly. The first guard shouted at me, prompting the appearance of one of his comrades, and raised his gun. They were screaming at me to halt and demanding to know why I was there. I didn’t answer. When they reached me, one tried to restrain me, and his shoulder came loose from his body, so violently did I retaliate, pulling him from behind me to in front of my face.
“So when his partner pulled the trigger of his rifle, it wasn’t me he hit, but the fool who’d thought he could take me in. The man went limp as the bullet shattered several of his vertebrae. I let him fall but relieved him of his pistol as he went down, shot the other one twice in the chest, and finished off my would-be captor with one in his head. I still think back on how charitable I was, not letting him live with a severed spine.
“I couldn’t stop to admire my victory, though—four more guards were rushing toward me. One of them fired at me, and I drew upon my power as an immortal by letting it hit me in the shoulder. I fell to the ground on top of the bodies that had begun piling up. Make no mistake, we still feel pain, even if we heal within minutes, and the bullet set my flesh ablaze with pain as it passed through me. My attackers, though, weren’t aware that this was merely a passing feeling. When they were right on me, I arose and jammed the dead guard’s knife into the thigh of the closest one. Using the same pistol, I massacred him and his friend who had thought to challenge me. While I exploded the knee of one of those remaining with a close-range shot, he and his compatriot got off a few fatal shots at me, and a faded off to death, for a moment. When I came to, I listened to the nervous chatter of the survivors for a few moments while I let life begin to flow through me once more.
“I didn’t relish a respite for too long, though. I rose to a look of terrified confusion on the man with only one knee left. In their horror it was pitifully easy for me to turn their firearms against them. Though to be perfectly honest, the injured one merely witnessed the last of his comrades fall to a headshot. Fear and despair did the rest of my work for me,” Red pronounced finally, as stared off into the distance.
“By the time they were all dead, the immortals imprisoned in the camp had gathered by the front gates. We had to leave, I told them, maybe too gruffly. I grabbed as much extra food other supplies from the camp and convinced them to follow me toward Alba Mons. It took us far longer than one would think to make the journey, because the path through the areas where the war raged was a tortuous one. The first time I told this story was once we arrived, and my audience was made up of the presiding immortals at Alba Mons, the same immortals who professed to understand why I’d done what I did, but saw to it that I was assigned here,” Red said, gesturing insolently at their surroundings, “as a diplomat.” He couldn’t help but let a bitter sigh escape him as he concluded his tale.
Autumn could do nothing but stare at the man who’d just recounted such carnage so impassively.
“I’ve played nice for a long time now, but that period is over. I think I’ll leave, even if it angers those who stuck me here in the first place.”
“Why the change?”
“Your visitors the other night were a pair of cops. One of them didn’t smell right to me. Might be nothing, but won’t know until I do some looking,” Red said as his gaze fell on Autumn.
“Won’t you get in trouble though?”
Red smirked in the way that only someone who had lost the last of his fear and the last of his willingness to take commands from anyone else could. “Been here two centuries. I’ve thought about my so-called crimes long enough and I miss those kids. You’ll eventually get to meet them,” he said as he stood. “Come along, we have things to do before our escape.”