The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood by Richard Finney, Franklin Guerrero Page B

deeper into his neck.
    “If you would only trust me… like when we were kids…”
    Nothing Matt was screaming inside his head was emerging from his lips.
    “The two of us… together… Matty… we can survive all of this…”
     
    Matt flashed his eyes open with a start.
    He was back in his bunk staring up at the ceiling.
    The first rays of the morning sun were starting to light up the steel beams above him.
    Sitting up, he saw some of the other prisoners were still asleep, but others were moving around.
    Many thoughts were running through his head. He wasn’t sure about any of them.
    Then he saw purple bruise marks on his wrist. He checked his other arm and discovered the same. Matt pulled up the collar on his neck and lay down. He had not been dreaming.
    The nightmare he had been living for most of his life had just started another chapter.
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    The rising sun wasn’t yet visible as the prisoners hopped out of their beds and scrambled to get their clothes and shoes on.
    This was the first morning for the newbies in the camp, so some of the veteran prisoners took it upon themselves to push the recent arrivals through the process.
    Every morning started with a loud alarm in the barracks. It was followed seconds later by the goons moving through the barracks and making sure the prisoners assembled in a timely manner at the center of the main compound.
    The prisoners were supposed to assemble in lines of eleven prisoners each. But Juarez and Barrett would intentionally screw with the guards by making sure none of the lines ever contained exactly eleven people.
    It was one of the reasons the goons did both a roll call and a head count.
    However, even Juarez and Barrett wouldn’t dare downplay the importance the goons placed on their two daily roll calls -- the one in the morning, and the other in the early evening. The times for the two roll calls changed all the time, probably as a security strategy. But the second roll call always occurred before dark.
     
    The first of three meals was served two hours after the first roll call. The kitchen was manned by prisoners, supervised by camp guards.
    The vampires knew enough about the living to know that their prisoners wouldn’t eat heartily if they didn’t trust who was cooking their meals.
    Matt had some vegetable soup ladled into his bowl. Another prisoner, wearing an apron over his camp fatigues, next dished out three slices of Spam onto Matt’s plate. For breakfast.
    “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang… but with soup and Spam.”
    It was Juarez paraphrasing T.S. Elliot.
    Matt was not in the mood to be amused, and tried to keep on moving forward, but that was when he realized Barrett, Juarez’s straight man, was standing in front of him.
    “My pal back there is a poet… and I didn’t even know it,” said Barrett.
    “How can you look forward to three meals a day when all of it is crap?” said Juarez.
    When Matt didn’t respond, Juarez used his tray to tap him on the shoulder.
    “Wanna know what’s for lunch?” asked Juarez.
    Matt wouldn’t respond.
    “Barrett, tell the new recruit…”
    “Sugar sandwiches.”
    “He’s not fucking joking.”
    “I heard through the camp grapevine the bloodsuckers have trademarked the recipe,” said Barrett.
    “That might explain why we’ve eaten it every single day since we’ve been here,” shouted Juarez. He shoved his tray into Matt’s back. “Wanna know the secret recipe for ‘sugar sandwiches’? Tell him Barrett…”
    “Lots of butter spread over white bread and then covered with sugar,” Barrett answered without missing a beat.
    “Yum, yum, right?”
    Matt got his drink and left the line for a table.
    It didn’t stop Juarez from talking. He just directed his comedy routine toward one of the goons standing nearby, supervising the meal.
    “Somebody should tell the bloodsuckers that we might taste better if they didn’t keep feeding us sugar sandwiches and pig