Blood flowed from a hole beside her navel. I pressed the gauze pad against the wound. Her warm blood soaked my hands. I reached under her tiny waist to tie the ends of the bandage around her.
How could this have happened? I knew what I had seen through the goggles. How could I have been so wrong?
We carried the girl away from the canal, her cracking voice echoing across the desolation. The night disintegrated into a dismal blur.
O’Brien slowed and tugged at his end of the poncho. “Hold up.”
We shuffled to a halt. A rivulet of blood poured from the poncho.
We laid the girl on the ground. O’Brien put his fingers on her throat. “Tell the medics not to bother.” He crossed himself.
Grief wracked my body. I felt pain from the bottoms of my feet to the inside of my skull. The agony squeezed my heart, compressing so hard I thought it would burst.
White tracers splattered around us. Jolting with terror, we dove and scattered. The bullets hunted us. One thumped against my armor vest. Another slapped the carbine from my hand.
RPGs exploded around me, knocking the helmet from my head. Dirt pelted my skin. My ears rang from the concussion and for what seemed like an instant, I blacked out.
Dazed, I pushed myself off the ground and staggered painfully to my feet. The fighting had stopped. I called to my team but saw that I was alone, surrounded by the bodies of the Iraqi civilians we had killed.
Where was my unit? Had they left me for dead? With trembling fingers I clutched a grenade. The silence betrayed nothing; even the enemy was gone.
I hobbled to the top of the bank, shivering like a frightened, wounded animal. At the far end of the alley, a ball of fire consumed the Humvee. Flames jumped from the roofs of the houses. Gulping for breath, I tasted ashes and fear.
I turned to my left, as if following a meridian that pointed the way to safety. Picking my way through the rubble of the brick wall, I limped for the closest dwelling.
A strange force pulled me and I stumbled over debris littering the threshold. Smoke clouded the interior, rolling up the walls and escaping through a hole in the ceiling.
I crept to a window. I stayed hidden inside the gloom and glimpsed outside. The canal twisted below like a piece of beaten pewter. On the banks lay the forms of the Iraqis. The girl’s dress shimmered against the dark earth.
Her blood glistened on my fingers. Bloody handprints stained my trousers. Confusion and shame coiled around me. I felt as if my uniform were strangling me.
I was no hero.
I was a murderer.
I pulled at my collar. We’d been sent here to kill the enemy in the name of freedom, and instead we had massacred an innocent family. Our great cause was a sham. I didn’t want anything more to do with this stupid war.
Smoke drifted through a door leading to another room. The force that had drawn me here led me to the door.
In the next room stood a man tending a flame, poking a long stick at the coals piled on the dirt floor. He wore a tattered vest over a dirty robe. His head turned toward me, a mustache, beard, and bushy hair outlining a drawn face.
His eyes shone like those of a wolf, two red shiny disks. My reflex was to flee, but his gaze held me with a power that reached through my eyes and seized my thoughts. His will became mine.
He commanded, “Come here.”
His voice came from inside my head. It was not in Arabic, nor in English, but was a soothing tone that cut through my delirium to promise relief from despair.
“You need no weapon.”
I let the grenade drop, not caring if the pin still secured the safety lever. I approached with my hands raised, my fingers mottled with the blood of the Iraqi girl.
The stranger grasped my hands and brought them to his face, smearing my dirty, bloody fingers against his cheeks and nose. “Nothing is as precious as the blood of the innocent.” He put a hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. “It is this girl’s blood that torments you. Why?”
His question pumped more anguish into me. I choked on my words. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It was a mistake. I didn’t know. I was wrong.”
“You are a soldier. You kill. That is your job.”
“My job isn’t to kill the innocent.”
The stranger stroked my neck with the back of his hand as if what he desired was within my throat. I wanted to recoil in revulsion but this strange, hypnotic trance overpowered my instinct to escape.
“Death would end the guilt.” The stranger’s grin threatened more than it reassured. “You want to die?”
I forced myself to shake my head, since my body no longer felt like my own.
He yanked my armor vest and pulled me off balance. I fell to my knees in front of him. He cradled my head in his rough hands and his thoughts materialized inside my head.
“If not death, then suffering would appease this guilt. Is that what you want?”
I whispered, “We didn’t come here to slaughter children and their mothers. If someone must be punished, then make it me. Hold me accountable.”
“Punishment? How noble of you, soldier. Everyone else begs for mercy. I could make this pleasant, but you want to suffer.”
His face approached me. His lips parted. An intense creepiness overcame me, a horrid sensation like hundreds of spiders crawling over my skin. But I could do nothing except let him turn my head to expose the left side of my neck. Moist lips touched my skin. Two sharp points punctured my flesh. I clenched my fists to endure the pain.
The drumming of my heartbeat slowed. My muscles relaxed. The maddening distress spinning in my head dissolved into a dreamy, pulsating haze. A coolness crept up my limbs to my torso. My toes and fingers began to tingle. The fog in my brain thickened. The shroud of death brushed over me.
Then the stranger pressed his mouth against mine, and a salty ooze of blood washed over my tongue.
My throat burned as if acid had been poured into me. My guts twisted and writhed like a snake set afire. I tried to retch but he held me tight against him. When I started to convulse, he let go and my body jerked in feverish spasms. I lay on my side and looked up at him. An orange aura-like the glow from hot coals-surrounded him. He wiped blood from his chin.
I gasped for the words. “Who are you?”
“I am the damned son of Nadilla, the undead queen of the Tigris and Euphrates.” His answer was drenched in bitterness and self-loathing.
I dragged myself away from him. The orange glow radiated from my hands as well. My insides thrashed in panic. “Undead?”
He nodded. “And I’ve given you what you wanted. A punishment even worse than death. I’ve given you immortality. As a vampire.”
CHAPTER 2
SOMETIME AFTER MY DISCHARGE from the army, I was driving my ’62 Dodge Polara north on Highway 93. The rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains were to my left, and in the distance to my right stretched the sprawl of the Denver metroplex. Here Highway 93 cuts through a grassy plain littered with cinder-block-sized rocks. Past the intersection with Highway 72, I turned right at the first traffic light and entered the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Closure Project, formerly known as the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, but always remembered by its original function-the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.
I halted by the shack alongside the entrance road. A guard wearing a gray camouflage uniform and a large black holster cinched to his dumpy waist greeted me. A sign on the guard shack listed prohibited items: guns, explosives, cameras, binoculars, all non-DOE-approved communications devices-whatever those were.
The guard asked for my license. He examined my photo and growled, “Mr. Gomez, please remove your sunglasses.”
Despite the fact he had a gun and I didn’t, he gave a frightened grimace when I removed my sunglasses. I expected the reaction. The dark rings surrounding my eyes gave me a hungry, predatory appearance. I squinted because of the sun and shielded my face with one hand.