Vampire Sunrise

The Three Fiends

I didn't expect Tulane Medical to be so inundated with wounded. The emergency department was filled, and there were so many wounded that a triage unit was set up outside in white tents with large red crosses on them. The scene looked like a MASH unit responding to a successful terrorist attack.

I counted thirty-three large tents erected to facilitate the injured and critically wounded. Over two hundred were here outside the hospital seeking treatment. It was close to 3:00 am and bright as day here at Tulane Medical from the parking lot lights and the emergency light towers the city provided. Generators were scattered about with wires running into tents powering medical equipment and field gear.

A temporary fence stretched across the boundaries of the triage area that encompassed most of the parking lot. Decatur Blood Bank vans, along with other human services organizations, were filtered throughout the makeshift camp. The rain had returned in full force, soaking everything and everyone.

We walked around the camp, and it was very apparent that the vampires gave no mercy, and those that escaped were lucky. The survivors here were fortunate, but most had lost a lot of blood and were on the verge of being critical. The tents were full of doctors and technicians suturing up wounds and performing field operations until operating rooms opened up inside the hospital.

For every person that lived, there were half as many that didn't survive. Two tents were set aside for collecting the dead. One tent was for the men and another for the women and children. By my count, over two hundred humans had been slain and piled into the two shelters.

"Angel, did I cause all of this? Am I the one responsible?" I asked. I felt a sense of dread overtaking me as I assessed the wounded and dead.

"Did you harm anyone here?" She replied.

"No, of course not, but you know what I mean. Did burning those vampires cause these people to die? Am I the true murder of all these innocent people?"

"Alice, we are only responsible for what we do, Dominus has probably killed thousands over the years, and now you've stood up to him; it's going to get worse, a lot worse."

I felt responsible, although I knew deep down, it wasn't my fault directly. I needed to find Dominus and put an end to this fast.

A van squealed up to the hospital's already packed emergency room entrance and searched for a place to unload. Just behind the van, a patrol car stopped at the makeshift camp boundary with someone else injured.

The officer got out, ran around to the passenger side, pulled an older man from the seat, and helped him down to a tent. The man was bloody, but the officer looked like he had rolled in blood.

For the love of God, it was after 3:00 am, and more injured were still coming. What would the ultimate death toll be? Will it reach a thousand before sunrise?

Angel and I walked over to the tent that held the female dead and looked carefully; we expected to find Charley. We searched for about twenty minutes, and thankfully didn't see her, but that didn't mean she wasn't dead, just that she wasn't dead here. There were two other hospitals in the city going through what Tulane was, and I hoped we were near the end of this bloody night.

Charley could be critical and in the main hospital or inside one of the tents getting worked on, but at least she wasn't in the death tent. Angel and I split up and searched through the other tents, but Charley still had not been found after thirty minutes. We regrouped and walked inside the emergency entrance of Tulane Medical.

Usually, police officers or security guards would be monitoring the main entrance, but they weren't. The admissions desk was empty, and the main emergency room doors that generally functioned as a barrier between the emergency care rooms and the reception area were wide open.