“There’re humans left, they won’t do that.”“They will try to rescue them, once they do, we’re done,” Rancid said.“They have no idea how many humans are left, they won’t do anything unless they can account for everyone who was working at the time.”Rancid scratched his chin and thought for a second. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Until they can force us out, they can’t do much.”“We need to get the humans out of pod three and into a cell, so we can keep an eye on them. Maybe put them if a few different cells so they can’t get to them at the same time.”“You forget something, I’m not in charge,” Rancid said. “You want to be,” Anita replied.“Want and be are two very different things. I might have some pull with the skinheads, but that’s about it. I’m surprised you’re talking to me. Why don’t you take the lead?”“If I thought I could, I would. The women here get no respect at all. If we didn’t keep together, we’d be raped and killed,” Anita said. “It’s still a man’s world.”“Well, I don
“What are our options?” Kathy asked. She looked to Steve for the answers. “There must be a way to get out of this pod.”“Yes there is,” Steve replied. “There is an escape hatch built into every pod in case of a prison riot or takeover, just like this.”“Great, why didn’t you mention this before?”“Because it won’t work unless you have someone in maintenance to open the door at the end of the tunnel. Every pod has a hex key in the emergency box that will let you open the pod escape door, but once you traverse the tunnel, which is only two by three feet, you have to exit by another hatch door that is opened by someone in maintenance. Last I checked, Alex was dead and I’m here. And unless the National Guard goes in and opens the hatch door, we’re fucked.”“There’s no way to open it from inside the tunnel?” Kent asked.“You won’t fit in the tunnel anyway fat boy,” Steve replied. “What are you? Three fifty?”Steve expected to get beat for his comments, but Kent was more of a gentle giant w
Early evening creeped in and the group in the pod were becoming restless. Only a few vampires could be seen walking the halls across the commons as the sun glared through the window and began to set.Then Bohdan spoke up to Steve, “How come you didn’t get gassed?”Steve turned and looked to Bohdan, “The maintenance department is on the same vent system as the tram lines. That’s so we can fix them when they break down.”“Didn’t your boss die in the gas? Isn’t his office in the maintenance department?” “No, his office was in the administration section, down the hall from Kathy.”“Kathy survived,” Bohdan said.“I kept her office off the vent. I wanted her alive. Long story.” “Seemed odd that you survived when all the rest of the staff died.”“I wasn’t going to connect the boiler to the vent system if I knew I was going to die in the process.”Then the lights in the pod blinked on and off. And again, only this time it went dark for a full second.“What’s going on?” Ted asked.Steve replie
“If they can turn off the air, they can find a way to get to us. We need to buy time, until the National Guard can save us. Sacrificing a few women can buy us that time,” Bohdan said.“What kind of misogynistic prick are you?” Cindy asked. “I’m not some animal you can send to the slaughter to save your own hide.”“You’re a woman, basically worthless,” Bohdan said. “Fuck you asshole!” Cindy yelled.Paula stood up and pointed a finger at Bohdan. “Keep your mouth shut!” Paula said. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you or why I ever came here in the first place.”Kathy chimed in, “You do realize why Bohdan is an inmate here don’t you? He used to kill women for sport. He’s known as Bohdan, the Vampire Ripper. Don’t expect that zebra to change his stripes.”Bohdan shook his head in disgust. “There are nine of us in this metal trap, if we give up two females, in let’s say twenty four hours, that could buy us enough time to be rescued. I think that’s a valid trade.”“What if he’d take you ins
“I still think we should put it to a vote,” Cara said. “No, they chose you,” Kent said.“We don’t have to do anything now! The air will last for a while, give the National Guard a chance to save us first.”Kent looked at the clock on the wall, it was a little after seven o’clock. “I’ll wait till noon tomorrow that is if the air holds out.”Steve turned around in his chair and looked at the behemoth of a man who was taking control of the pod. “Who elected you president?” Steve asked.Kent glared at Steve. “Someone had to take charge.”“You need to give me a chance to figure this out. Giving into the vampire’s demands is the last part of negotiations.”“What can you do? We’re trapped in here, and the vampires have control of maintenance. The only way out of here is through the front gate which is locked.”“Or out the tunnels below the prison,” Steve said. “What’s your plan? To bore through the floor?”“No, can you be more of a condescending asshole? Give me a chance to think on this. Yo
“What do you mean so? We’d be exposed if we tried to get to them. It’s a hundred yards past the commons, down a flight of stairs, another hallway to the maintenance door, through the department and another hundred yards to the tunnel entrance. All while trying to avoid any vampires that might be running around in the building.”“I’d rather try that then let them feed me to those two vampires sitting over there,” Cara said. Isaac and Rancid were both chatting, sitting at a table in the commons area.“Are you going to ask them to leave so you can try?” Steve asked. “I’ll wait till they go,” Cara said. “Who wants to go with me?”No one spoke up. “We need to try to escape, we can’t let them kill us in here. It may seem safe for now, but by tomorrow, we’ll all be dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.”Paula spoke up, “I’ll take my chances here. The National Guard won’t let us die. I’m sure they’re aware of what’s going on.”“You stupid bitch, you’ll be dead by morning.”“He’ll find us air,”
Four in the morning Bohdan looked around the pod and saw that everyone was asleep. It was ten hours since the vent was turned off and the room was filling with carbon monoxide slowly killing everyone inside. Bohdan saw his chance and decided to take it, he crawled over to Cindy, who was fast asleep and sunk his teeth into her neck and fed off her. Nobody in the pod heard or noticed a thing as he slowly killed her.When Bohdan finished, he decided it was time to leave. He needed Steve’s keys, so he stood up and walked over and took them. While he was looking for the keys he found his pliers and a pocket knife. He took those as well. Now that he had a knife, a thought crossed his mind, it had been over a hundred years since he gutted a woman, and Cindy’s lifeless body lay on the floor of the pod waiting for him.For the next ten minutes, Bohdan stripped Cindy and cut out her bowls dumping them on the floor and spreading them around the pod. Still nobody opened an eye or noticed a thing.
Bohdan fumbled with the keys and managed to unlock the maintenance door with Cara slung over his shoulder. He entered the short hall into the department to another door and entered. Once inside, he looked around the large, dark, dusty mechanical room looking for the entrance to the tunnel that led to Topeka. What he saw was endless shelves full of wires, tools, and other odds and ends used to repair the prison. To his right were the boilers, near them was the central air units and to his left was the control panel that allowed the maintenance workers to run various parts of the prison and view what was going on.The one thing Bohdan didn’t see was a sign that said, “Tunnel this way.” Cara began to struggle as she woke from her carbon monoxide induced sleep. Bohdan laid her on the concrete floor and walked around the room looking for anything that would lead him to the tunnel entrance. Then he heard voices. The voices of Rancid and Isaac speaking to each other. The room Bohdan was in w
“I have the feeling that he’d kill you in a second if it benefited him.” “And I would gladly die for him if that’s what he wanted.”Preacher Jack shook his head in disgust. He heard what Cara was saying, but he knew she was too screwed up in the head to realize she had a sick unhealthy obsession with Bohdan. There was no way he was going to help her, she was too far gone by now. “What if they send him somewhere else and he doesn’t come back?”“Don’t say that, I don’t want to hear…” Cara couldn’t finish her sentence.“You can live here as long as you want. We don’t have many women around here, we could use a new one,” Preacher Jack said.“If he doesn’t come back, I’ll escape, I’ll find him.”“No vampire that I know of has ever escaped this prison. You’d be the first.”“I’m not like the rest of you, I’m special, this zoo can’t hold me,” Cara said. She looked up into the stars above and took a deep breath. “I will pray that he returns by morning, if my prayers are not answered, I will fi
“Did you hear that?” Isaac asked.“Hear what?” the warden asked. “I didn’t hear anything.” “Sounded like dogs.”“I heard it too,” Bohdan said. He raised a finger to silence everyone in the room. “There it is again.”“They have the bloodhounds out looking for me,” the warden said. “I knew you couldn’t keep me for long.”“Fuck, now what are you going to do?” Isaac asked. “Is there a basement?”Brother Adam replied, “No, the ground is almost solid clay.”“There has to be a way out, when it rains, how do they drain the pit?” Bohdan asked. The warden was silent, but everyone knew he was keeping something from them. “What are you talking about?” Isaac asked. “Why do you give a shit about rain?”“It’s not the rain I’m concerned about, if the ground is solid clay, the rain that comes down would fill the pit and drown everyone in it. There must have been a drainage system put in place to remove the excess water. Where is it?” Bohdan looked at the warden, the one person in the room who should k
“Bohdan, is that you?” a voice called out. Bohdan instantly recognized the voice as Isaac. Bohdan looked around in the dark and saw Isaac standing alone in a wooded area near the Mormon house.“Yes, it’s me,” Bohdan replied.Isaac rushed over and met Bohdan, noticing right away he had the warden in his grasp. “What are you doing with the warden?” Isaac asked. He still had his familiar British accent.“I took him when they weren’t looking,” Bohdan replied. “When who wasn’t looking?”“The guards,” Bohdan replied. “Where have you been all this time?” “I’ve been living with the Mormons.”“The Mormons? I heard they’re a bunch of killers.”“No, not at all, you should meet them, Brother Adam is a very nice man.” “Brother Adam?”“That’s what they call themselves,” Isaac explained. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”Bohdan didn’t have much choice, his options were very limited in the pit and it would be a short time before the guards came looking for the warden.“Let him go,” Isaac said.Bohdan le
“How do you explain me raping them first? If I were gay, I’d have a very hard time getting hard, if you know what I mean,” Bohdan said with a grin.“Another rumor squashed,” Lucy Jo said. “How did you pick your victims?” “By chance mostly.”“You didn’t seek out certain types of women?”“I was lucky to find the ones I did. I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing. When you live out in the country, you take what you can.”“I see, but with such a limited number of women, didn’t that play to your disadvantage? I would think they would have figured you out quickly.”“And they did quite often. I lived on the run for most of my life, up until they captured me. I’m actually glad in a way they did. I’m so sick of running.”“So you like the Vampire Zoo,” Lucy Jo stated.Bohdan paused for a long time before answering. “Actually no, this place is a shit hole. They toss the vampires in a pit and let them fend for themselves. Then they charge admission to watch them. It’s very vile.”“From
The sound of a rock hitting Bohdan’s cage woke him up and let him know the tourists that came today weren’t happy. He had fallen asleep in the midday sun and ignored the very people who had paid to see him spin in the wind. He raised his hand and gave the crowd the finger in defiance. He knew it was a hollow gesture and that the crowd would take any interaction they could get from him. Then he felt the cage start to lower. Usually he stayed elevated until sunset, but for some reason, was being let down.When the cage came to rest on the ground below, two guards unlocked the door and let Bohdan out. A rumbling came from the crowd as they didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want the star attraction leaving. The tickets were expensive enough.“You’re going to the warden’s office,” a guard said. “Now what?” Bohdan asked.“You’ll see when you get there,” the guard replied and the two escorted Bohdan up the tower, across the bridge and to the administration building. As he passed by th
Bohdan returned to the pit after his meeting with the warden. It was late afternoon and he was covered in Ashley’s dried blood. The other vampires kept a distance as they were warned by the warden to keep away from his prize. Bohdan had a love/hate relationship with his fame. He got what he wanted, but he wasn’t always happy about it. He liked his isolation, to a point. Like any social animal, he needed someone to interact with and Cara was the only person she could stand.“How did your show go?” Cara asked. She met him at the front door of the miners building.“The warden was happy, the governor was too from what I heard.” “What did they make you do?”“I had to rape and murder Ashley,” Bohdan replied. “Who?”“Ashley, remember her?”“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, you killed her? Last I knew she was still back in Seneca with Isaac.”“They charged her with accessory to murder, along with Isaac.” “Where’s he?”“Ashley said they were transferring him here today. I haven’t seen him.
Bohdan noticed several tools on the ground lying on the sand just outside Ashley’s reach. He bent over and picked up a butcher’s knife and a long steak knife with serrated edges. It was obvious they were put there for Bohdan to use. He looked at the stainless steel shine and admired how they reflected the sunlight and blue sky from above. “This is out of my control,” Bohdan said. He paused for a moment and smiled. “This will hurt, very badly.” Again he paused and gauged Ashley’s reaction. “First I will rape you, then I will cut you to pieces and take out your heart. I don’t know what I’ll do with it once I have it, but that’s my plan.”Ashley pulled away as far as the chain would allow. “But you know me, we worked together. We were part of a team!”“We escaped from the prison before it blew up. That was out of my control. Otherwise we did spend time together, but that wasn’t because I had any fondness for you. I probably would have eventually killed you anyway. You were lucky I was se
For two weeks straight the warden had Bohdan suspended twenty feet above the ground trapped in a cage. The cage hung from the bridge that connected the tower to the guard post on edge of the pit. Spectators came from far and wide to see Bohdan as word got out he was now a prisoner at the Vampire Zoo. His reputation caused overcrowding that choked the prison grounds and made life more difficult for the guards and other inmates. The guards were pissed their workload had increased and the other inmates were jealous of the attention Bohdan received.From his cage, Bohdan could see the three buildings and watch the other vampires as they carried on with their lives. They often stopped in groups to look up at him and jeer. Many times they threw rocks and stones and tried to hit him, often hitting the sides of the steel cage with a clank. Bohdan was hit a few times, but was never injuredThen the day came when the warden called him back into his office with some news. It was an idea he had h
“Do you have a daughter?” Bohdan asked.The warden paused for a moment. “Why do you give a shit?” “How old is she?”“Old enough that I can let her watch you rot in that cage. Do you know what it will be like to sit out in the hot sun all day? And in the rain? Fuck, it gets pretty cold in the winter too, you’ll be an ice cube vampire. But they will come from all over to pay to see you,” the warden said.“You know why I like to fuck and kill little girls?” Bohdan asked. He was trying his best to get to the warden. “They’re easy, and they turn me on.”“I bet, sick fucks like you are a dime a dozen, I’m surprised they’re not more of you in prison. How you got a reputation is beyond me.”“I’m not who you think I am, but I do share in this rippers desire for girls. Maybe he is a copycat, maybe I inspired him,” Bohdan said.“It shouldn’t take too long to identify you. I’ll wire the marshal’s office today and get someone down here to check you out. In the meantime, I’m ordering the cage be bu