Siegfried, the scout, was running out of hope and time. His return journey home would have to be within the hour. He pushed on a little longer and finally found his tribe’s salvation. A remote village with a river running alongside nestled in the foothills. He circumnavigated the dwellings in the moonlight, giving it a final check over before he returned to speak to the elders.
As dawn broke, the villagers resumed their daily chores. The priest attended to his duties of administering help to the sick and giving the last rites.
Siegfried was treated as a hero, and was the first to be invited to take his fill of the tribe’s meagre rations. Their sheer numbers had stripped the location of all it had to offer. They all desperately needed new lives.
The villagers were woken by the constant ringing of the church bells, they rushed from their homesteads and headed towards the village church and waited expectantly for the priest to deliver his news.
“We have guests, I am sure that you will all welcome them into your homes. Like us, they have been made outcasts. Their leader tells me that outlaws have razed their village and their crops. There are women and children amongst them, please find it in your hearts to feed and clothe them. They are all waiting to meet you and have gathered outside the church grounds.”
The church buzzed as the congregation began talking all at once. Their excitement was palpable, they had never had anyone visit the colony before. They were all looking forward to hearing any news from the outside world.
“But father, do they know about us? Have you told them?” one parishioner asked.
“I thought it best for them to have a good night’s sleep first, they are tired and hungry as they have travelled for many hours. You can explain everything in the morning.”
So each of the travellers were invited into the villager’s homesteads. Siegfried had warned them all to keep a low profile until they were over the thresholds.
After that, they could do what they wished. Not having tasted fresh meat for a long time, the vampires did not hold back. They gorged themselves on the villagers and their livestock, not killing everything but holding some back for farming blood.
After all the residents had left the village square, the priest chatted to Siegfried explaining about how the isolated village had come about. How its villagers had been exiled from their previous homes because of their genetic blood disorder. Alarm bells started to ring in Siegfried’s head but it was already too late to save anybody, neither villagers nor vampires.
