The Phlebotomist

by Chris Panatier

  “Yeah, Willa.”

  “I have to get my grandson from Central City.”

  “I got six in there too, don’t forget. My grandkids for all intents.”

  “Do you have more guns… or weapons,” Willa asked, struggling to speak in a parlance of violence entirely unfamiliar. “Grenades?”

  “Good God, Willa, you’re gonna make me crash if you keep up with your jokes.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “Alls I have aside from the MK are twenty-six rounds sitting inside the original ammo box that I gave myself as a retirement gift when they kicked me out of the Corps.”

  “You only have twenty-six more bullets?”

  “Yep. Speaking of which – Kathy, would you be a dear and fetch a round from the stock there? We’re getting close to the Bahamas. Yeah, just flip the little – you got it.”

  Kathy handled the gun adroitly and clicked down the small door on the stock once she’d found the bullet.

  “Just drop it in my pocket,” Lock said, indicating. “Here we are. Cross your fingers.”

  They slid into the shed with a thump and Lock opened the door.

  “Janet!” called Lindon, emerging from the back door.

  Embracing her he said, “Everard made it, just barely. His dressings came open and he bled some. He’s inside.”

  “And the kids?”

  “We weren’t hit.” He looked to Willa. “I’m sorry, Ms Wallace. I really am.”

  Kathy exited the shed and Lindon went to her. “Lindon,” he said, offering a hand. Kathy took it, gave it a jerk. “Kathy.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I’ll look at Everard,” said Willa, stepping through the screen door.

  Slumping but conscious, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, Everard raised a finger in salutation from the card table below a curtained window. Willa opened her bag and laid out her works as the others entered.

  “What happened over there?” he asked

  “Patriot left one behind,” answered Lock. “In the attic. That old Isaiah left his viewer behind with a warning. If we had all gone to sleep, we’d… ahem, anyway.”

  “Viewer’s how they found us,” he spat.

  “I’m sure it is,” said Willa, easing Everard back in his chair and checking on his dressings. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” The blood had come through and soaked the front of his shirt from the neck down. She quickly went into her bag for more gauze and bandages. “Lock’s going to have to stitch you again.”

  “No more goddamn needles,” he grunted. “Just bandage.”

  “So long as you don’t move,” said Willa. She pressed the new dressings down as Everard groaned, and dropped the soiled ones onto the table.

  Lindon gestured toward the next room where the children slept or softly murmured. “What’s the plan?”

  Willa used a clean bit of bandage to wipe blood from her fingertips and tossed it on top of the others. “We have to break into the Heart before they move the children, or we’ll lose them forever.”

  “You can’t get into Central City,” said Lindon. “It’s not even a possibility.”

  “I told her. It’s impenetrable,” Lock said.

  “And there’s only the three of us – four,” Lindon said, noting Kathy. “No weapons. No resources.”

  Willa nudged Everard forward and wound a cotton stockinette lightly around his neck and secured it with a reef knot. “We got fifty thousand off of Hunter.”

  Everard almost undid his bindings and Lindon straightened, eyes wide, as if Willa had just levitated.

  “Fifty thousand?” exclaimed Everard. That much money could buy half of AB Plus.”

  Willa produced the tricoins. Everard and Lindon began laughing, though Everard eased up on account of his neck gash. “Where,” he said with a huff of discomfort, “d’you plan on spending those?”

  “Naysayers, the lot of you. Fifty k is fifty k,” said Lock. “We can launder those at maybe twenty-five percent. They’re worth something to us.”

  “And what do we do with twelve k?” asked Everard. “Walk up to Triple C, say ‘Here’s twelve thousand, please return the children you stole’?”

  “No. We have to get the truth out to the districts about the Ichorwulves,” said Willa.

  “Ichorwulves?” said Lindon.

  Lock snorted. “That’s what they’re called – or, what was it – oh, yeah, ‘Apex,’” she said. “Think pretty highly of themselves.”

  “So, what the hell are they?”

  “Well they ain’t bulletproof!” Lock exclaimed, popping the butt of the rifle to the floor.

  Willa tapped her finger on the card table. “If people stop donating blood, they won’t have anything to eat.”

  “We are those people, Willa,” said Everard. “AB Plus, the other lowbloods, they ain’t giving up their meal ticket. We’ll starve before the Ichorwhatsits do.”

  “We have to tell them the truth, Everard. They deserve that, don’t they?”

  “The truth!” he blurted. “What do you think people are gonna say when you come around spinning yarns about the undead? Get the door shut in your face is what.”

  “Everard’s right,” said Lock.

  “We have Claude’s skull thing, Scynthia’s too,” said Willa. “Maybe people will boycott the draw if they see those.”

  “Those could be anything, though,” said Lindon. “Art sculptures.”

  Everard put off a visible tremor. “Brain crabs.”

  Kathy perked up. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “The little souvenirs those Ichorwulves leave behind after they biodegrade,” said Lock. “Little gold skull thing with pinchers.”

  “You’ve seen one?” asked Kathy.

  “Seen one? We got two of them, darling,” said Lock.

  “Where?”

  “In Willa’s bag. Under the unmentionables.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Sure,” said Willa, burrowing into the duffle. She flopped some clothes out and withdrew the relic that had once been Claude. Kathy gasped and took it.

  “You know what that is?” asked Lock.

  “Yeah. It’s a ganglion,” said Kathy. “An Apex Ganglion.”

  “OK, what the hell’s that?” said Everard.

  Kathy turned it over in her hand. “It’s like… like not quite a brain. More like a thing that… doesn’t control them, really, more… pushes them. It makes them what they are. I can’t really explain.”

  “A gang-leon,” said Everard. “Gross.”

  Kathy looked over the table, then placed the ganglion with a clank onto the blood-soaked bandages piled on the table. It sat there, balanced like a nightmare arachnid paperweight, the long front tendrils almost like legs with a tangle of stunted ones at the back.

  “Whatcha trying to do?” said Everard, leaning in.

  “Watch,” she said.

  Everyone held their breath. Willa was afraid to exhale. What was the girl doing? Then they all leapt backward. Except for Kathy, who wore a satisfied grin.

  One of the tendrils moved. Slowly it pulled away from the rags, then returned, like testing water temperature with a hand. The other side did the same. At the ganglion’s base, the tiny branches lost their rigidity, flexing slightly so as to settle deeper into the gauzy dressings. The long tendrils at the front clawed at the cloth causing it to bunch up underneath the eye sockets. It wobbled, awkward, a land-borne crustacean learning to walk.

  “What the hell’s it doin’?” shouted Everard, who’d pushed himself away from the table to the wall.

  “It’s trying to seat,” said Kathy.

  “Seat?” asked Lock.

  “Yeah, like, it’s trying to sort of, take control. It thinks it’s back inside. The blood, uh, wakes it up, I guess.”

  The thing stumbled forward.

  “You’ve seen this before?” Willa stated more than asked.

  �
��I saw a lot at the Oldens’. You should see what happens when you put them in a whole puddle of blood. They go crazy.”

  Lindon, who’d been frozen during all of this, finally spoke. “What exactly are we dealing with, here?”

  Everard unhooked a long pole from the old blinds and prodded the thing. “So this gang-leon,” he said, “eats a hole in your head and crawls in and then you get possess’ and it gives you a thirst for blood.”

  “No,” said Kathy. “It grows inside after you get turned. Then it seats.”

  Lindon put a hand over his mouth in a combined display of fear and disgust. “It grows there?”

  “If you get bit,” said Kathy. “Something like an infection. It takes a while for it to get fully grown.”

  Everard squirmed.

  They all watched as the thing balanced in the darkening cruor, stumbling blindly in an instinctual search for a place to embed itself. Finally, it clanked over on its side. Kathy picked it up by the top portion, the tendrils and rootlike extensions still scanning for purchase, and set it on a shelf. Its movements slowed to paralysis in the absence of blood.

  “That is some shit,” said Lock.

  Willa contemplated the thing, both disgusted and intrigued by it. “OK, Everard,” she said. “What if I told you the truth about Patriot and the Ichorwulves and then showed you that? Would you believe me then?”

  Everard was still locked on the ganglion, seeming paralyzed himself. He cleared his throat. “It’s freaky, Willa. But I don’t know if I’m skippin’ the draw and risking starvation or jail ’cause I been presented with a gilt crawdad.”

  “They’ve got to be told about the lie. They’ve got to see what we’ve seen,” said Willa. “Then maybe they’ll boycott. At least the truth would be out.”

  Everard shook his head. “I don’t know. Repercussions and whatnot.”

  “OK, well… we know the drones are empty,” she continued. “Lock could shoot one down in public.”

  “Word might spread,” said Everard. “But Patriot would just whitewash it on the Report. Technical difficulties, testing new drones, there a million little things they could make up.”

  The Patriot Report. The words signaled the germination of a thought. Willa stood. “The Patriot Report?”

  “Control the airways, control the information. The way it’s always been,” Everard said, toasting an unlit cigarette to the Truth of Things.

  Willa slapped the table. “That’s what we do! We shoot down a drone on camera and put it on The Patriot Report.”

  “How do you do that?” asked Kathy.

  Willa smiled big. “This is the Locksmith, Kathy. She’s hacked Patriot’s mainframe before. I’m guessing she can figure out a way to upload a little footage of some empty blood drones to the live broadcast of The Patriot Report. Right?”

  Lock just shook her head. Willa couldn’t tell if she was just skeptical or all out against it.

  Everard fluttered his lips. “And what if you hijack The Patriot Report for one whole episode? Show a couple-a crash drone,” he said. “All the sudden you think you’re a master manipulator. Use that smart brains of yours: the only people that boycott are the ones that got a choice. You forget where you come from? AB Plus ain’t got no choice. Neither really do the other districts, for all that matters.”

  Lock shrugged. “His analysis is salient.”

  Willa knew they were right. A boycott meant forfeiting the next meal for a lot of these people. For those who relied completely on The Box, skipping the draw even once meant being kicked out of the program and going hungry. The world in which boycotts influenced behavior hadn’t existed for decades. But her brain wasn’t sending forward any other options.

  “We have to try,” she urged. “We might have to do it more than once. I don’t know how many times. But assuming we could do it, Patriot would lose patience even if we didn’t hurt the supply. I know them. They need to control everything. Maybe we could leverage them to release the children.”

  Everard rolled his eyes.

  “Well, does anyone else have another idea? Anyone?” asked Willa, frustrated. “We take down a drone and broadcast it. Lock, you could do that, right?”

  “My dad operated HAM so radio’s in my blood,” said Lock. “But yeah: maybe.”

  “Even if it doesn’t cause a boycott, people will know Patriot is up to something. And they’ll know someone is out here fighting for them,” said Willa. “At the very least, maybe Patriot holds up on transferring the children if they’re under the microscope.”

  “Delay Patriot, figure the rest out later,” said Lock. “It’s half a plan.”

  “Half a plan better than no plan, I’ll cede you that,” said Everard, sweeping his unlit smoke like a conductor’s wand.

  “Hope springs eternal,” said Lindon.

  * * *

  Willa lay on one of the children’s mats staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Or maybe she was able but didn’t have the want. Of course she didn’t have the want. Even the idea of wanting to sleep disgusted her. She ran through the past twenty-four hours, her body feeling as if it’d borne the toil of two lifetimes: soreness and aches making themselves known in the quiet and stillness. The muscles of her arm burned. The lacerated skin of her bicep stung. She massaged it some, feeling guilty for allowing herself to feel any pain beyond the hole that had been stabbed through her heart.

  She wanted to know things, to do research on Central City and Patriot and the Gray Zone lies, but without a touchstone, even with its censored content, she was entirely in the dark.

  Helplessness was a punishment worse than failure. On this precipice where her life now teetered, all she had left to grasp was their long-shot half-plan that sat drawn out on scraps at the card table. It wasn’t much, and if she was being honest with herself – it was riddled with contingencies and reliant on the predictability of an entire swath of people fueled by desperation. There was no way to know how they would react when shown the truth. Even assuming the plan got off without a hitch and they were able to broadcast, there was always a chance they’d be completely ignored. Nothing like this had ever happened before, as far as she knew, and there was no way to guess the odds. Certainly, they were against. But it was, as Lindon had said, something to give them hope, at least for now. Hope. A foothold that kept you from falling, even in the worst of times. Until it gave, of course, as all footholds eventually must.

  And she remembered the old saying that she’d heard repeated by her parents, who were probably repeating theirs. Hope dies last.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MITOSIS

  The process by which cells are replicated. Refers specifically to the division of a cell that results in two identical daughter cells.

  Never a deep sleeper, he woke with a start. Still aching all over from his ordeal, he was not as groggy as he expected he would be with only an hour or two or three of sleep. He slipped to the side of his pallet, put a cigarette to his lips. His hand scrambled for the lighter, located it, then stopped at his T-shirt on the way to his mouth to poke at the bloodstained pattern. He tapped at his neck. Felt no pain. Pressed harder. Those women were good at what they did, real modern healers. Would have made a fortune down in the low quarter of North-By where all your former Southern Coast residents with their mysticism practiced the sacrifice of perfectly good fowl by candlelight.

  He pressed up, groaning some but again less than he thought he would have, and walked into the other room where the children were housed. It was pitch and so he went to where he knew the window was boarded, found the plank with one loose nail and swung it to the side, letting the moonlight spread across their faces. He’d not given any hint to the others of the degree of immense guilt that pressed down upon him like an anvil. It would be a form of penance, to have to look upon the faces of the children still safe and protected by the tall one who’d not let his domain be raided by those wolfs.

  He mapped each sleeping face, Cali, Sundip, Honey, Gustavo, Octavia, Frederi
ck, hoping they would cut his heart deeply enough so that the wound would never heal, providing a reminder in their gentle eyelids and tiny noses of the ones that had been taken, those whose kidnapping he couldn’t stop. Lynn, Hali, Jack, Wren, Ryan, Sasha, Isaiah. He traced over them again. And again. Until he realized what he felt.

  Empty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ENDOCRINE SYSTEM

  A chemical messenger system that exists between various glands and organs to regulate things like metabolism, growth, tissue function, etc.

  Jamaica, the house where Willa and Isaiah had first met Lock, appeared unraided when they set down behind it. Willa dabbed at the new yellow paint on Llydia’s exterior as they exited. It was still tacky and clearly fraudulent at close range, but from a moderate distance was no longer of obvious Patriot make. Secured with deck screws to the drone’s posterior was Lock’s smudge device, a collection of circuit boards soldered together like graham crackers stacked askew. At the back door, Lock presented a massive kingring from inside the leather jacket and fumbled through the keys like a jailer. Willa felt a kinship with this woman and her manual deadbolts.

  Lock opened the attic above the basement stairway. As they ascended, every shadow seemed to take on the shape of a huddled Patriot agent, calmly waiting for them to make their return. Lock clicked a few lights and the shadows retreated like cowardly haints.

  She ping-ponged about the room, bringing old monitors to life, clipping wire harnesses together, adjusting dials. “So look,” she said, resuscitating a screen with a tough-love whack to its backside, “first thing, we need to get our signal ready to transmit to the hub. I’d bet we can cover maybe sixty or seventy percent of the city depending on how close we get our relay. If we’re convincing enough, what folks don’t see the transmission will hear about it via word-of-mouth.”

  Willa watched, inching one way and another in a subconscious effort to show a willingness to assist, but all of the technical talk was beyond her training. “What can I do?” she asked, finally.