Two men walked past the window at head height on the wooden stockade wall. Their wooden torches gave off a yellow light into the bedroom. She lay in her hammock about half a metre off the ground in the whitewashed room. The night was hot and sticky but the white hut was cooler than outside. Under the bed she could just feel the top of her luggage through the canvas. A soldier came to the door with a burning torch and asked if she was all right, she replied that she was. He nodded then left and walked across to the opposite hut. As she tired she got up and locked the thin wooden door and then closed the wooden shutters on the window pulling the metal latch down to keep them closed. In the locked up room she changed and got into bed pulling a blanket over herself then blew out the candle in a small alcove above her bed. After some tossing and turning she slept all night.
A soldier knocked on the door in the morning and, receiving no reply, opened the door. She was still lying in the bed curled up almost like a foetus, still unresponsive. He reached out and gently shook the hammock. There was still no movement from her in the bed. He left and called the doctor. He was an older man who had put a white jacket over his red military uniform and left his white hair uncombed and erratic across his head.
He put his hand to her neck to check for a pulse, she was cold and had no pulse, clearly dead for a long while. The doctor wrapped her in blankets and told the soldiers that had come with them to remove her to his surgery. They unhitched the bed and carried the bag out.
Her body was lain out on its back on the cold, stone slab with her cold white flesh touching the stone. The doctor took the internal temperature; she had been dead some time and was in fact not even as warm as the room. Examining her body cause of death was easily seen; there were two small puncture marks a few centimetres apart as if made by sharp pencils. The paleness of the body and lack of bruises showed that it had been drained. There were no signs of trauma from a struggle so she had died in her sleep. The doctor left the body with a soldier while he reported to the garrison commander. However light the doctor's surgery was eerie. The soldier kept himself just sane until the doctor returned.
They buried her in a shallow grave with only about a metre of soil above her body. Some of the other camp followers put flowers and wooden crosses into the bare soil. Most of the people at the burial cried with the notable exception of the stiff upper-lipped commander in his full red dress suit.
The group came back inside the compound from the small hillock on which they buried her and went about their daily business inside the stockade. As night drew in torches and candles were lit like little stars in the stone and wood compound. It merged into the sky with its one small flickering lights. The crescent moon hung lazily in the sky over them. Fires glowed above which were pots of food cooking for dinner. All was quiet except for the steady pacing of the guards and crackling of the cooking fires. The smell of local spices filled the air.
The spell was broken by a long blood-curdling scream. Inside the compound walls the clatter of running soldiers broke the silence completely. A hue and cry thronged the air. In one of the rooms they found a camp follower dead and dry just as she had been. Two soldiers swore they had seen her running through the buildings away from the scene. A few moments later two further bodies, one a soldier the other a cook. They were both dry and dead; their skins fitting loosely and anaemically white on their bones. The cook had fought it off with his kitchen knife that was carefully placed on top of his body. His throat had been torn out completely and was now a bloody pulp. The bodies felt warm, very recent since the heat retaining blood had gone. The warm night encouraged flies making the bodies a mass of humming pestilence. They were brought indoors away from the flies to stop them being eaten. A soldier sat over them in the doctor's surgery lit only by a single candle soaked in camphor to keep the flies away.
It flickered in the darkness waking him from his semi-slumber. He looked for the draught, checking under the window shutters and the wooden door. There was little movement there, but as he turned from the door and straightened himself out he saw that the slabs were empty. Rubbing his eyes he swiftly walked across to the tables. He looked all around the tables for signs of the bodies having been moved. A shocking pain pulsed through his neck two sharp points dug in. Spinning round he fought the creature off. In front of him now was one of the corpses, re-animated and bearing his long fangs. His neck was still pulp but not as wet as it had been. Next to him was the cook that had attacked the soldier's neck with a bloody mouth, which it swiftly licked clean. The soldier pulled his pistol and fired twice at the one in front of him. The rounds passed straight through his body and out the other side without his noticing. The creature on his right lunged forward and clamped back to his neck. Startled he emptied the gun into the creature on his neck. Ten rounds hit the mark having no effect, and in desperation he began to club the creature with his pistol. The other joined in leeching on his neck and killing him.
Someone had heard the shots. Four men ran to the door, the first tried it, it was locked. Another man joined him and they rammed the door with their red suited shoulders. A few blows caused the door to snap as it broke inwards. All four of them rushed into the room. It was dark and had the stench of fresh blood and death hanging in the air. Lighting their torches they thrust them into the darkness, slowly casting light into the corners of the room. Moving further in their torches reached into the recesses of the room searching for what ever was wrong. Outside a large crowd gathered with torches and candles. They surrounded the place affording no escape.
The headquarters building was the most substantial of the huts being made of thick stone blocks. The roof was red tiled and it even had white framed windows. The camp commandant's secretary opened the big wooden door. On the walls were the victims of his hunting career and fine paintings in gold frames. His gun hung on hooks above the four poster bed, a long elephant rifle that had not been used for sometime. She called his name and shortly after he lifted his head from the pillows. The ivory sheets fell down from his body showing his lightly tanned chest. She told him that something was going on in the mortuary. He gave her leave to go and got up out of bed.
A form in deep soil brown floated down landing softly on the ground in front of him, long hair adorned her body flowing down to her waist. Even in this state he recognised her, yet the day before he had been at her funeral. She hovered a few centimetres off the carpet below as he stared at her in her soil-covered nakedness. She scared him so much that he could not cry out. His lips felt dry and his throat hoarse. Her hand extended out to him, stretching her arm in his direction. He took her hand into his and floated mesmerised into her arms. His body pressed against her breasts as she cocooned him in her arms like an iron maiden. He felt her teeth pierce his throat and fell into the deep slumber of death. As his eyelids closed the last thing he saw past the dirty flesh was the door opening as the knob turned. She tore the secretary's head off with her bear hands. It fell like a weight to the ground and rolled over to the base of the wooden bed. Blood sprang like a fountain from her neck staining the ceiling a thick crimson.
Pouncing on the fountain came six or seven of the camp's ancillary staff who were as white as paper. They drank the blood like nymphs at a dark bacchusian festival. When the body stopped producing they fell around the feet of their strong leader who hovered in the air above the two fresh bodies. Some of the acolytes who now joined were soldiers still in their red uniforms. The two from the doctor's surgery and their prey entered as silently as the rest.
Suddenly an almighty crash signalled the breaking of a window. Outside the courtyard thronged with a chant. A single man stood there in a long, black coat with his wide brimmed hat on. In one hand was a large wooden crucifix and in the other a sword dripping with holy water. His chant came directly from the bible, a passage he knew by heart in a voice that was loud and forceful without a taint of fear. The creatures cowered from his attack of faith as he stepped through the broken window onto the blue carpet. He dealt blow after blow from his blessed sword, taking care to remove their heads to prevent them from rising again. The cross burnt holes in them as he touched it to their flesh.
Their leader watched her followers die and waited for him to turn on her. By the time he had fought off all her fiends his crucifix had been dropped in order to allow him the use of both hands on the sword as he sliced and severed them. To repel her as she attacked him he wielded the black bible on a chain around his neck at her. With a scornful look she made it burst into flames in his hand. This caused him to drop it onto the floor, setting light to the carpet. She recoiled from the flames before he managed to regain his composure. He had been bought some time that he used most profitably by pulling a vial of holy water from his coat and throwing it so as it broke onto her flesh burning her away.
Her head flew back in pain and, as it did so, he swept the long blade across her neck, killing her. Her head clattered on the ground as he left through the window he had entered by to follow the master, the head vampire who habitually caused this chaos.