by Unknown
“What have you done to her?” asks the man.
Anton knows there is no point denying that he knows her. He is not in the presence of a vampire but simply facing an annoyed father. He becomes aware of the anger running through his veins. Anger at himself for being foolish and pretentious, for thinking he has been recognized by a real vampire so that he can finally evolve. Indeed, he has been recognized, but not for the reason he wants. Someone probably described him to Rachel’s father.
Anton decides that he does not want this conversation to last too long so he goes straight into it. “She came of her own will to my place. We did not have sex, if that’s what you want to know.”
Indignation blazes in Rachel’s father’s eyes. “Rachel is dead. What did you do to her?”
Why should the death of Rachel have anything to do with him?
“She died a few hours after coming back from your place,” the man goes on. “She was very tired. Her skin grew paler and cooler every hour. Lying in her bed, she told me about you, Anton. She wanted me to believe that you only sucked at her neck.”
“Well, that is exactly the truth, so I don’t see how it can be related to her death.”
The man thrusts his hands deeper in his coat pockets. He looks behind his back as if he wants to make sure nobody will hear the rest of the conversation.
“Are you a vampire, Anton? We all know that they exist.”
Anton cannot help his melancholy smile. “I am not a vampire. I wish I was. I pretend I am, expecting to meet one who will guide me into the transformation. I thought you were a vampire. That’s why I followed you out here.”
Rachel’s father is not smiling.
“I think there’s something wrong with you, young man. When Rachel died, her body was drained of half her blood.”
“That’s not possible. I didn’t drink her blood at all. I only sucked her skin.”
“Maybe you don’t know yourself very well. I don’t think you need a vampire to help you turn into one. You’re already one. Maybe not feeding the traditional way, by biting skin with sharp teeth, but you have the power to suck blood through skin.”
What is that man saying? That he, Anton, is a vampire? A different kind of vampire? Does that make sense?
“Have your parents never told you about your origins?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve investigated you. You were adopted. Maybe your real parents had something to do with vampires and your blood is tainted, vampirism transferred to your genes. That would explain what you do, and why you’re different.”
Of course, Anton knows he was adopted but it never occurred to him to ask his adoptive parents about his real parents. Nevertheless, why is this man telling him all this?
“What do you want from me?”
“I lost my only reason to live. You took her away from me. I could have gone to the police and revealed what I know about you but I did not. People at the morgue probably suspected that Rachel’s death was caused by a vampire. But you know, even these days, no one is comfortable with such weird cases. Nobody really wants to deal with that kind of problem. And you know why, Anton?”
Why should he know? But the man goes on without waiting for an answer.
“Because in the old days, vampires could be destroyed or at least kept away by things like a stake to the heart, sunlight, holy water, a crucifix, garlic, and so on. But these don’t work anymore. Vampires have evolved and adapted to modern times; vampires are headed into the future. Like viruses and bacteria, they have developed the ability to protect themselves and avoid annihilation. We normal human beings are no longer immune. We don’t know how to get rid of the new and different breed or I should say breeds of vampire. Most of them aren’t eternal. They live longer than us but only two to three hundred years. And this has been their most significant decline now that human beings are living longer. In a not too distant future, it’s likely we will reach a point where vampires and humans live as long as each other, understand each other better and might live together in harmony. Vampires might still have a taste for blood, but maybe they won’t need it to survive.”
Anton knows he doesn’t need blood to survive, but he likes the taste. He cannot fly, but he sometimes moves more quickly than humans. Anton cannot see himself clearly in a mirror; his image is always slightly blurred. Anton likes garlic, is not afraid of a crucifix or holy water. He can’t bite skin but has learned to suck blood from under the flesh and up through the pores. He cannot give eternal life. Apparently he kills his prey.
Anton suddenly realizes that he is a vampire. An evolved vampire. He has not been recognized by a vampire but by a normal human being.
“What do you want from me?” he asks again.
“I want you to kill me. I have no reason to live anymore.”
“Rachel’s mother?”
“She hanged herself after our daughter’s death.”
The wind is blowing stronger now than when they first came into the alley. The air is colder. Anton does not know what to do. Should he kill this man? He has never sucked a man’s flesh. He does not find the thought appealing at all. But if he does, the man will die and it will be the end of the case. The Rachel case. He will release her father from a life he does not want to live anymore. If he does not do it, what will happen? Do vampires who commit murder go to jail? Ridiculous. Stupid. Nonsense.
Anton looks into Rachel’s father’s eyes.
“I won’t kill you,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to kill you. Even if I might be a real new-breed vampire, I don’t need blood. I only like it. You think I need to kill, but I don’t.”
“Why don’t you want to give me what I want? You killed my daughter. You own me something.”
Anton takes a step back from Rachel’s father. Do vampires have regrets? Does he feel any regrets over the girl? He owes this man nothing at all. He is a vampire of a new kind, even though some elements will always be the same for all vampires. No, he has no regrets.
He turns and walks away from Rachel’s father, who has no power to force him to do anything that he, Anton, does not want to do. Anton knows that he is the one with the power.
How foolish he has been in not realizing that he is a vampire! Now that he knows, he will ask his parents about his origins.
Anton decides not to go back into the club. He has nothing more he needs to do there. He will never return to Cold Hell. He no longer needs to meet a vampire. He is a vampire.
He knows he won’t spend time looking for others and yet he hopes that one night he will meet his kindred. Will they be vampires from the same breed, or different than him? He hasn’t met any others yet; maybe that means he’s the only one of his kind. If he is the only one and yet he cannot turn a human into what he is… He can live with that. For now. Until he evolves again.
How Magnificent is the Universal Donor
By Jerome Stueart
Jacob stumbles from the elevator on the fourth floor of Sanctuary Hospital. He’s in a hurry, and feels guilty that he’s been detained for three hours at a press conference helping the Deputy Minister field questions. He can still see the lights from the steadycams, purple spots now erasing the hospital walls. The white hallways seem suddenly quiet. His short stride makes it look like he’s running, and his beard is hiding clenched lips. At Room 423, he stops at the door. The sheets of the bed are neatly folded. They moved him.
Back in the hallway, he breathes in and scans the patient screen, but doesn’t find Harlin Moybridge anywhere on the list. It’s probably just a mistake. He turns and looks around to find anyone who can tell him what’s going on. A blond-haired nurse in a cool blue uniform is standing, leaning over a desk. The desk lamp highlights her neck, and her skin looks like white fire. When he asks her where they’ve moved Harlin Moybridge, she checks the desk, a flat screen where she moves documents back and forth with the tip of her finger.
“Oh, Mr. Moybridge,” she looks up
. “Your husband died this morning.”
He stares in disbelief. Dead? “He was just in for tests,” Jacob says. “Look. There’s been a mistake. I would have been called.”
She looks hurt, sad for him. She glances back to the desk. “They called you.”
“They didn’t.” His voice is higher than normal.
“It says that you were contacted, and made arrangements to see the body.”
“Where’s the body? I’d like to see it.”
She looks back down at the desk, flustered. “It says ... it says you’ve already seen the body.” Now she looks up, as surprised as he is. “You came in at 10 am, two hours ago.”
It didn’t matter that he insisted he didn’t come in. There it was in the records. Harlin always said that when it’s in your medical records, it’s scripture.
“How did he die?”
She scans the records, tells him, “He tested positive for BBD.”
“He didn’t,” Jacob says evenly.
“You received the letter in the mail and came in for tests for BBD. Obviously there was reason to suspect your husband had the disease. Those initial tests are rarely wrong.”
“Rare,” he says, “but not impossible.”
The Beijing Blood Disease, or Baby Dee as it is popularly known, is not normally fatal. Since more than 40% of the population has it at any one time, it is rampant, but transfusions seem to keep those infected in check. But Harlin Moybridge has the strongest immune system he’s ever seen.
“I never been inoculated, never had flu shots, never been sick. I’m fine, and they hate that,” Harlin once told him. He smiled, arched his back and spread his shoulders. “I’m on a black list somewhere because I don’t take their damn shots.” No antibiotics, no synthesized medicines ever entered his body. His father made sure that none of his kids got shots. He was a homeopathic doctor, but his children were fine examples of health. The dad faked the shot records himself, enough to get the kids through schooling.
“They don’t like people who say they don’t need doctors,” Harlin said. “It’s a scam, you know. To make you need ‘em. They want you to need ‘em. It’s about control. But everybody’s smart enough to take care of themselves.” It’s that rebellious streak that Jacob loves. And wasn’t Harlin proved right? At fifty-six, he was in perfect health, robust, full of life. He could have given any man twenty years younger a run for his money.
“I don’t have Baby Dee,” Harlin said when he opened the letter. “They just want me in the hospital.”
Like a subpoena, a summons from the World Health Organization is pretty much unbeatable. Jacob read the letter. It indicated Harlin was a “health risk to society.” Baby Dee is contagious. He is to report to the hospital for more tests and possible treatment. “They loved my blood. They envied it. Dadgum ‘em, they’d never seen finer blood than mine. The bastards!” When he was angry, his Texas drawl really showed.
Everyone has to give a blood sample, just a tiny needle’s worth, at the front of every supermarket. This ensures that on a continuous basis, every person who needs food is screened.
“It’s a mistake,” Jacob told him. “It must be. We’ll go down to the hospital, and we’ll retake the test and we’ll show them that they got yours mixed up with someone else’s.”
Harlin resisted. He balled up the letter and threw it across the room. “From now on, you buy the groceries.”
“Look, if we just go and prove to them that your blood is fine, this will be over.”
Harlin growled at him.
Jacob smiled “Let them be stinking envious. You have to clear your name.”
The nurse invites him behind the desk, and lets him read the report himself.
Harlin died on the transfusion table. His body is awaiting incineration. They have to burn it. An out of control BBD could infect so much of the population that it would be impossible to contain the spread. No, Jacob isn’t allowed to view the body. “Again,” she adds. Yes, he will have to be screened as well. Could he stop by the main floor and give a blood sample? He cringes at the lack of compassion.
Looking at the document, Jacob is sure he will sue the hospital for negligence. There on the document is his phone number.
“I never came in to see the body,” he tells her again. “I was never called.”
She nods.
He walks away from the nurse. She calls after him that there is a chapel and a counselor on the second floor. But he’s not going there. Harlin wouldn’t be in the chapel.
The elevator doors shut and he’s alone. He looks at his blurred reflection in the walls of the elevator. He’s angry at the hospital. What man, playing Jacob, came and saw the body? Who would do that? He’s angry at the nurse. He’s mad at Harlin. How could a man with an “unbeatable” immune system go and die during tests? And finally, as the elevator sinks further and further down, he thinks, I should have stayed. Then, thankfully, he finds a way to blame it on the Deputy Minister and lastly, China, and this gets him prepared for the doors to open.
He wipes his eyes with his sleeve. But he needn’t. An aerosol antibacterial mists the air. The spray is wet only for a second, but he can feel it on his face, and when it evaporates it leaves his face dry, and the doors open to the basement, the morgue.
“You can pull off anything if you’re confident enough,” Harlin told him before his first interview for the communications position with the government.
“Yeah, they call that false confidence,” Jake said.
“Unjustified confidence,” Harlin smiled. “Who knows? You may be a whiz at it. Just act like it ‘till it comes natural.” Harlin liked that he was transparent. “You’re an honest man,” he said. “You got no guile. But sometimes, buddy, you have to learn to fake it.”
Press conferences are great testing grounds for faking it. And Jacob ended up in more than his fair share as the communications analyst for the Deputy Minister. But even when he learned to hide nearly everything in front of a camera, still Harlin would tell him, passing his hand warmly across Jacob’s face, “You can’t fool me. This face is a map. And I’ve got the legend memorized.”
On his way to the morgue, he passes three pathology labs, an autopsy room. He walks through the retracting door into the morgue. It is bland, sterile. He expects to smell formaldehyde, but there is no strong odor. A shiver goes through him. Harlin should be here.
Silver panels line one wall. He imagines they have bodies tucked away behind them. There are tables with bodies on them in four rows. They are each draped with thin muslin. Should be plastic, he thinks. One table has the muslin, but no body. He looks around first, and then begins to uncover the faces of the different bodies.
They don’t shock him. He’s so determined to find Harlin, to see that white-haired, clean-shaven face, smiling even in death, underneath the muslin. He does it quickly, a flip off, a flip back on. The faces are peaceful. Nothing in their skin gives it away that they are dead. They’re pale, yes, but not blue-lipped. Some women, mostly men. They all have their clothes on. This is not at all what he expected. But he checks each one in turn until he has looked at them all. Harlin is not here.
He looks up. He walks over to the computer controls on the wall. All the silver panels are represented by a green LCD number display. On the main screen is a list of names, none of which are Moybridge.
These are all the dead bodies in the room, and all the bodies in the slots.
Where the hell is Harlin?
In the back, he discovers a change room. Lockers. Showers. It makes sense. If the nurses burn their clothes because of disease risk, then he can see why showers for pathologists might be available. He just didn’t expect them in the morgue.
He expected Harlin.
But if Harlin isn’t in the morgue, where is he?
From the corner of his eye, Jacob sees something stirring.
A body on a table moves, stretches. One of the dead bodies. He sees a hand come from underneath the muslin cloth and pull it slo
wly down its face then its body. It exhales and then breathes in deeply.
Jacob slips into the locker room. His breath is shallow and his heart races. He hears the squeak of the table where the body was lying, as the person steps down. Jacob remembers the faces of the dead-still and peaceful. He hears them moving and feels trapped. He looks around the change room for hiding places. Lockers are too small, showers too open. And what about a weapon?
He hears another squeak. “I thought Jardin was on today,” says a voice.
“Jardin’s sick. I’m filling in,” says another.
They’re conversational, casual.
“He’s just a third year.”
“Sad, isn’t it?”
Jacob takes off his shirt and lays it on a bench. Maybe he can pretend to be someone, anyone, dressing after a shower. Maybe.
He has his back to the footsteps as they enter the locker room. They’re talking, hardly noticing him. They pass him.
“I don’t want to work today,” one says.
“Are you third year?” There’s a pause. “Oh. Well, I can understand.”
Jacob acts as if he’s just putting his shirt back on. He looks at his shoes, trying not to think about them.
Two of them stop talking. “Hello?” one says.
He turns slowly. He remembers them from the tables, how they looked when they were dead. One is shorter, blond hair, stocky build; the other taller and lean.
“John Lake,” Jacob says, not extending his hand. “From St. Mary’s. In Omaha.”
They introduce themselves, smiling. They seem to buy it. These dead people. He looks at their faces. He would not be able to tell they are dead. He starts to think maybe they were just asleep. But this is the morgue.
“I’m here on a visit,” he adds.
“Oh,” they nod. “How are things in Omaha?”
What would they want to hear? He waits. It’s always good to wait in an interview to hear a follow up question. People clarify themselves. They do it all the time in press conferences.
These two don’t. They shuffle awkwardly. The tall one looks at Jacob’s hands as he finishes buttoning the shirt, watching his fingers work the buttons. Will they notice his hair’s not wet?
