Blood Outback (Early chapters/concepts for "Children of the Outback")

Chapter 1

I brushed my long dark hair out of my eyes, smearing my face with sandy dirt. It was hot but, then again, when wasn't it. I'd adapted to the climate long ago, not that it was a surprise. I'd spent my whole life here in the middle of the unforgiving desert. This place, a barren wasteland where no one was really free, was the only home I'd ever known. I never knew my parents, couldn't even give their names if my life depended on it. I didn't even feel like they were gone. They just weren't, almost like they'd never existed at all. Their absence was one of the only things that separated me from the other humans, the only testimony to the fact that I wasn't born here unlike most of them. Actually, by now, the only humans here were probably born here. No one else would dare to come to the place formerly known as Australia, no one except my parents. Australia was vampire country now, had been for the past three hundred years, give or take. At least, that's what the other humans all said.

"You know, you really shouldn't be slacking off," a male voice commented.

I looked over my shoulder only to meet a set of eyes that were much darker than mine. "Elijah, you should know better than to sneak up on me like that."

Elijah Walker was one of the closest things I had to a friend at the camp, even if he was a werewolf. He was young, probably only in his twenties when he came into his wolf heritage, and not half bad looking. His hair was as dark as mine, almost black, and cropped short like all of the other guards. He was fairly nice too, as far as the guards went. He rarely addressed me as anything, just started talking to me. I wasn't offended by it. In addition to having no parents, I also had no name. To the guards I was NH, a numbered human, and to the other humans I was simply girl.

He shrugged. "Better me than one of the other guards. Black River isn't a place for slackers. They're usually the first to go."

He was right. Black River definitely wasn't for slackers or humans with weak spirits for that matter. It was a work camp, an inescapable prison where the vampires kept us. Even if we dared to try and go over the ten foot fence topped with razor wire, the vamps and their werewolf guards would just hunt us down and drag us back. If we somehow managed to get past all that, the chance we'd ever be truly free was slim at best. The camp was located right in the middle of what was once known as the outback. If we weren't dragged back to the hell we were running from, the merciless desert would just kill us off slowly. Escape attempts were suicidal. No one dared to attempt them, and I was no exception.

"What are you doing out here anyway?" I questioned, looking enviously at his guard uniform. His uniform was light colored, somewhere between cream and khaki colored, and was much lighter than the heavy, sleeveless denim jumpsuits we humans wore. "Don't you have someplace cooler to be?"

"Need to take blood, something about some kind of disease going around," he explained.

I scowled. "There's always some kind of disease going around."

He shrugged. "It's for your own good. You don't want to get sick here, especially since you're sixteen now."

I flinched. In the camp, sixteen was the dividing line between children and adults. Once we turned sixteen, vampires could request us to be brought to them for any kind of purpose imaginable. They could do whatever they wanted to us and we were powerless to stop them. If I got really sick now it would make me look weak, easy prey to whatever desires the vamps had at the moment. I shuddered.

"Don't worry about it. You and everyone else know it doesn't hurt."

I glanced down at my arm, at the multiple scars from where guards had taken blood before. None of them were very big. The largest was only about the length of the nail on my middle finger. I sighed in resignation and extended my arm towards Elijah. He drew and x-acto knife from his thin jacket and pressed the blade into my wrist, over one of the already formed scars. He was the only guard who ever made that effort. All of the others had no qualms about adding new scars to the masses.