Act of War

This is Fiction

The truce was holding. A human had not been turned and a vampire had not been slain in three years. The daylight belonged to the living, whilst the undead held the night.

Jacob was a man without a purpose. This was not always the case.

The nightwalkers feared this daylight killer. Tales of his cruelty filtered through the communities left after the great flood, when the world was reduced to those who could walk during the day and those who would feed on them at sundown.

With his converted armor vehicle equipped with a hydraulic mini crane on the roof, along with an assortment of hidden assault weapons lining the edges all armed and ready to engage - Jacob would travel from town to town across Europe and the Americas on tip-offs, bankrolled by various churches and religious institutions, climbing to the top of dilapidated houses and attaching his crane hooks - ripping the roofs off and watching the beasts of the night burn in a daylight bonfire.

It is estimated he wiped out entire ecosystems of vampires throughout Eurasia before he moved on to the Americas. Severe delays in getting his heavy equipment across the Pacific in the absence of air travel slowed his progress but his efforts did not go unnoticed.

Especially for Thomas Sinclair.

Long believed to be the first of his kind. Thomas was born into a noble English family, trained classically at Oxford and Cambridge, became a doctor at the accelerated age of twenty-five, and focused his professional career on the study of blood-born diseases emerging in the wartorn areas of the Balkans, the Middle East and eastern Europe.

He made himself a human guinea pig.

He became stronger than man, stronger than animal. When the world collapsed, he was able to survive by sheer strength and adversity to the elements. His age was approaching a hundred and fifty and yet, he did not look a day over thirty. He would spend his remaining days feasting on fresh blood to power his advanced agility. It seemed to work at prolonging his immortality. His only weakness… Daylight. His skin grew pale, his hair turned white and his eyes morphed into vision only equipped for the night. When he would turn someone, this ailment carried over. No one was immune from the threat the sun would impose. Most would sporadically erupt in the ultra-violent light.

Thomas knew of Jacob. All vampires knew of Jacob.

Jacob, too, knew of Thomas. He made it his mission to end the life of the one who discovered the dark menace of the earth.

But both men did not know about the development of diplomacy amongst the tribes. Thousands were dying by day and by night. Jacob was not the only hunter and Thomas was not the only bloodsucker. The earth was turning in on itself and in the aftermath of the great flood and the wars that preceded it, those left on earth grew weary of conflict.

A truce was reached between the newly established council of nightwalkers and the remaining humans. No more turnings, no more slayings. The night belonged to them, the day belonged to us.

That was three years ago.

Jacob sat at the end of the pier with the fishing line in his hand. It was minutes to sundown but the days were too hot to conduct such activity. He would delay his daytime endeavors to avoid the heat. He was never one to rush back to his quarters. Sure, he used to do all his hunting under the safety of sunlight, but he knew his reputation amongst the bloodsuckers was such that they would not protest too loudly if they saw him walking the streets under their watch, under the moonlight.

Not one of them would engage with him, a known mass murderer of their kind.

He enjoyed fishing, the only legal hunting he was able to partake in. He would never eat his catch. He would gut them and use their insides as bait to attract more. He would continue this cycle until the water was too red with blood that it was pointless to continue. Eventually, the bloodlust would subside.

He made his way back to his old hydraulic armor van for the slow drive home just as the moon emerged from a cloud and shone a night light down. Thomas Sinclair was standing in the middle of the road, awaiting his return to the vehicle.

Jacob knew who he was looking at - no bloodsucker would dare face him with such confidence.

“I have imagined this so many times in my head,” Jacob began. “But in my dreams, it takes place in the daylight and you are in flames.”

Thomas opened his mouth to show his razor-blade smile. The teeth glistened in the moonlight.

“Nice dental work,” he said, placing his tucker box inside his van and removing his shotgun. He clocked the gun just as a set of footsteps landed on the roof of his van. Jacob looked up and a vampire had emerged above him and hissed.

“I too have imagined this day,” began Thomas Sinclair. “It ends with you begging for your life.”

Jacob raised his weapon at Sinclair.

“Tell Goldilocks to get off my van, right now - or you receive a silver sandwich to those beautiful teeth,” he said.

Sinclair hissed something in the evolved language to his vampire colleague who jumped off the roof and landed to the left of Jacob.

“This is Jessica, she is from Naples,” Sinclair said.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Jacob said, not looking at the blonde vampire.

“Her entire family was burned alive when you attached your crane hook to the roof of their three-hundred-year-old estate. Eight members in total. She is the only survivor,” said Sinclair. “I have brought her here, all the way to America for one reason.”

“To kill me, well what a shame I got in first,” Jacob said as he ducked down and ignited a fully automatic sixteen caliber, rapid-fire machine gun with a hidden switch in his combat boot. The impact sent Jessica thirty meters into the ditch by the side of the road. Jacob kept the trigger firing while he lay flat against the road to avoid the shrapnel. After thirty seconds of the intense firepower, he stood and ran towards the truck and grabbed the handle. The heat of the firearm burned his hand redraw. He flinched but grabbed at it once more to open the cockpit and get himself inside. He sat in the driver’s seat and ignited the engine, illuminating the headlights.

Sinclair was nowhere to be seen.

Jacob didn’t wait to find out where he might be hiding. He put the truck into gear and began to speed off, hearing the tailspin of the wheels behind him as he did.

He ignited the weapons that secretly aligned the truck and set them all off, getting them to fire off in all directions simultaneously as he emerged out of the coastal town, towards the highway that took him to the nearest village.

An act of war, the breaking of a truce.

When the sun would rise, Jacob would have to answer for his actions. He wondered if his excuse of being ambushed would hold.