Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead

by Unknown

  “About the same,” he says. “You know how it is.”

  The short one smiles weakly. “You kind of think it’s better somewhere else.”

  “Especially somewhere more rural,” the other one says. He turns and strips off his shirt. “Less people to worry about.”

  Jacob doesn’t say anything back. He’s hoping they find him aloof. Maybe they’ll shut up. He tucks in his shirt and turns to the door.

  “Did you leave your jacket in Omaha?” says the tall one. “You can borrow one here. I’m sure no one will mind.”

  They both approach him helpfully. They filter through a rack of red coats against the wall. “Jardin’s not here,” the tall one says, holding out one to size him up. “But you could probably use any that’s your size.” They are friendly. He doesn’t want to touch them. He wants to run, but he nods politely and takes Jardin’s coat. It is a bit large; Jacob is a small-framed guy. “This is great. Thanks.” His shoulders are swallowed in the coat.

  “Hmmm. Try this one. It was Eamer’s.” The short one gives him another and he slips it on. It fits. They both smile. “He’s gone now. It’s good to get some use out of it.” The shorter man brushes the coat down.

  “Thank you.” Jacob feels the need to explain himself. “I left mine.”

  The short one smiles. “Well, I hope you enjoy your visit.”

  He wants to leave. He thinks he can smell death on them. But they are smiling; they seem sincere.

  A door opens behind him at the far end of the morgue.

  An older man walks in, already taking off his coat. “We need to wake up the others,” he says. “Dr. Esterhazy’s found a new donor. Impeccable blood, no impurity.”

  “No BBD?” the tall one asks.

  “No anything. Pure. Almost unheard of.”

  Jacob feels a lump in his throat. They have to be talking about Harlin.

  And donors can’t be dead.

  The shorter one turns to him. “Good day to visit, eh?” The two are beaming pride as if they are offering Harlin as a miracle they’ll be performing in an hour, something to break out the cameras for. Jacob can’t help but grin and his eyes start to water. If Harlin’s still alive, it is a miracle.

  The two turn to the older man as he comes into the locker room. “Dr. Lake from Omaha,” the tall one says.

  Jacob must look ridiculous, about to cry. Scared to death of this man approaching. Of these two men that have come from a room full of dead bodies.

  “Mercy?” the older man asks. He has thick black hair and bushy eyebrows. You can see the veins in his hands and they look younger than his face.

  “Mercy, yes. It’s been a day,” Jacob says.

  “Mercy Hospital in Omaha,” the older man says.

  “St. Mary’s,” the shorter one replies for Jacob. “He’s up for a visit.”

  “St. Mary’s?” the older man asks, looking as if he’s trying to remember any hospital by that name.

  “A small clinic,” Jacob says, “big name. We aim to grow into it.”

  The doctor smiles, extends his hand. “Philip Gontard.” Jacob shakes it. It’s cold. The doctor seems surprised, holds Jacob’s grip, a curious look on his face that fades as quickly as it appeared. “Enjoy Sanctuary. There’s a lot to see. I’d suggest Room 710 in an hour.” He looks at the other two men, suddenly in a hurry. “We need to wake everyone. Esterhazy wants everyone there.”

  Jacob fades back through the morgue towards the door, as the men proceed to wake the others. The older doctor moves to the console next to the silver panels and presses a few buttons. Jacob doesn’t want to see any more bodies come to life.

  Except one.

  And he already feels as if Harlin has risen, somewhere.

  The Seventh Floor. If you are infected with Baby Dee, you come here. The walls are white. All the doctors wear redcoats, as does Jacob. They are all specialists in blood identification: hematologists, hematopathologists, phlebotomists. The names of their specialties make him queasy. He hated needles as a child. His parents were like most. They believed in the booster shots, flu shots, and in taking their child to the doctor as much as they could. With healthcare free in the country, there wasn’t a reason not to. But, if he watched a needle approaching his arm, he fainted. “We got a fainter,” the phlebotomists would say, chuckling to each other, as if he was supposed to be okay with people drawing his blood. There was something unnatural about it.

  And yet, every time the government issued a health risk warning, his parents got “in line to get in line with the law,” as his father would say.

  Jacob followed rules, for the most part. But the blood, the needles, the alcohol smell — it still bothered him. Harlin, in some ways, gave him an excuse to run from the whole thing. As if they were playing a game with the medical establishment. “Let’s see if they can catch us,” Harlin said.

  There was a time without Redcoats. Before Baby Dee. Hospitals were scarier then. There was a sense of the unknown, of the unpredictable. Then, after Baby Dee, the WHO appointed all these specialists to treat BBD before it could become a global crisis. Smart-thinking, dedicated Redcoats were credited with averting disaster. “In the war for your life, Redcoats are the front line,” went the commercials. Jacob watched TV specials on their procedures — it looked like a common transfusion to him. But the transfusions — the frequency of them — were “the reasons the world stays safe” the nations’ Presidents assured their citizens. The Redcoats found new treatments for several more blood diseases, and cured Leukemia. But BBD was a constant threat that the doctors could only contain. These doctors worked as a team, cooperating with hospitals all over the world. They earned the respect of the world, and most people revered them.

  Jacob was indifferent. He just wanted to avoid doctors and hospitals. But Harlin was skeptical. And adamant. “It’s a show,” he said. “Where’d all these specialists come from? Phlebotomists were the low man on the totem pole. Why’d they all of a sudden rise up the ladder? The medical profession is fulla secrets, Jake.”

  Well, now Harlin knows some of them. And so does Jacob.

  On the seventh floor, he sweats nearly through his red coat. He pictures every other doctor he meets lying under the muslin cloth on a shiny silver table. Dead. Or asleep. Who are they? What are they?

  He feels like a guided missile going through the hallway. He reads the numbers on the doors, smiles at people. He’s now past confidence and has moved into determination. Harlin is alive. Or at least he will be for the next hour.

  Jacob encounters more and more of them. The hallways are flooding with Redcoats plus a few white coats, floating in among the nurses and general staff. They look vibrant in the over-whitened space. He can’t take his eyes off them. They even look back at him as he passes.

  “Dr. Lake?” says a voice to his right. It’s the older doctor, Dr. Gontard, who now walks beside Jacob, matching his pace. “Could you assist me here?”

  The man’s eyebrows overshadow the slits his eyes have become. The grin on his face isn’t pleasant. He grips Jacob’s arm and he can feel small pinpricks.

  Dr. Gontard pulls him into a dark room with a central set of lights illuminating a patient on an angled platform. The patient, a man who appears to be his late twenties, looks unconscious; the light creates an impression of rapture on his upturned face.

  “Dr. Lake.” He says the name as if he’s savoring it, amused by it. “I need to conduct a transfusion and we need a hand.” He indicates another doctor in the shadows in a red coat, operating a tower of blinking lights and some cords, none of which are connected to the patient.

  Dr. Gontard walks over to the patient and climbs up onto his body until he is straddling the man. “This man has BBD. If we don’t transfuse him, he’ll eventually succumb to the neurological side-effects, the tremors, the loss of muscle tissue, the general wasting away of a healthy individual. As you undoubtedly know,” he turns to look at Jacob, continuing wryly, “transfusion is all that works right now, and th
is will eliminate 99% of the disease. We’ve never been able to totally cure an individual. All we can do is keep them as healthy as possible despite the ongoing infection.”

  The man on the board isn’t strapped down except at the waist, to prevent him from sliding.

  Dr. Gontard places his hands beside the man’s neck, far enough away for Jacob to notice the nails on both middle fingers elongate into needles, the tips sharpening to fine points.

  “This patient will eventually die of BBD if we don’t do something, but hospitals can’t handle the number of complete body blood transfusions, which is why they have relied on us for the past twenty years.”

  He inserts both needles into the man’s neck and cups the chin in his palms. His fingers puncture the skin then the veins. He leans his own head back and sighs. “If only we could keep all the blood for ourselves instead of just the nutrients. But I suppose our job is to purify as much as we can, then return it.”

  Jacob steps back. The other doctor, the one who has been monitoring the situation at the blinking tower, is behind him.

  “What does this have to do with me?” Jacob asks. He has to stop himself from backing further away. Dr. Gontard’s fingers are fat sausages, red and flush with blood as the patient’s blood transfers through the doctor’s body. What are these people? He gulps. “I know all this,” he says.

  “Do you?”

  Jacob reaches into himself to pull out as much confidence as he can. “I’ve performed these transfusions for fifteen years.”

  “Have you?” says Dr. Gontard. His head turns so that he is peering over his shoulder, his eyes completely blocked by the oppressive eyebrows.

  “Well, I think you have this completely under control. As a guest, I do appreciate you showing me your technique; however you didn’t need my assistance. I’m not sure your positioning is best for accomplishing a transfusion. In Omaha, we do our transfusions from the side of the patient so as not to restrict blood flow. Thank you for your time, Dr. Gontard. Perhaps we’ll... we’ll meet again.”

  Jacob turns to go, and looks directly at the Redcoat who stands between him and the door. The man hesitates but finally steps aside and Jacob leaves the room.

  In the hall, he feels sick. Faint. The hallways are filled with Redcoats. He wants a bathroom more than anything else. But instead, he scans the numbers above the doors, counting backwards. He weaves in among the medical personnel, hoping he won’t fall. If they’ve hurt Harlin already, Jacob doesn’t know what he’ll do. What he can do to people like this. If they are people.

  Finally, he feels a rush of relief as he spots Room 710 and pushes through the door.

  There is only a central light above a body on a table.

  It’s Harlin, flat on his back. A sheet covers him from the waist down. He looks like he’s sleeping.

  The room is small, empty of people. A little desk that glows from the LCD imbedded in its surface, blinking lights and tower, and rolling silver tray tables against the wall. The room is a circle.

  He hurries to Harlin’s side to see if he’s breathing. He looks so alive. His cheeks are flush, his hair is combed, his lips half parted as if he has just lain down. For a moment, it’s as if Jacob has only turned over in bed to see Harlin sleeping. He has done that so many times, just to watch the man breathe. He often thinks of that breath as keeping a rhythm to the night, a way of knowing that everything is secure. Jacob is such a light sleeper, if the breath stops, or if Harlin turns his head, Jacob wakes. Is he afraid of losing the man? Or is he just... afraid?

  “Harlin,” he says.

  But Harlin doesn’t answer.

  Jacob feels a pulse in his neck and, most importantly, there are no needle holes. No one had gotten to Harlin yet, but there are two lines marked on his neck. His chest moves up and down slowly but steadily. “I got the body of a thirty year old,” Harlin often says. “From hard work and good livin’. I’m gonna live to be a hundred and twenty.”

  “You’re gonna live,” Jacob says to him now, pats him on the chest.

  He moves to the computer on the desk. He saw how the nurse pulled up files, so he searches fast for Moybridge, and finds Harlin’s records. He needs an ace in the hole. If the Redcoats are afraid of Harlin — if he doesn’t have such perfect blood — they won’t want him so badly. And they will let him go.

  The file opens, and Jacob creates a disease.

  It’s not so different than a press release, really, just more subtle.

  And medical records are scripture. He just hopes that Harlin will forgive him for messing up the scripture as it pertains to him. Muddying up his reputation, his perfection.

  Jacob adds a note at the end of Harlin’s records, as if a doctor added it. That done, it is time to get Harlin and himself out of there.

  Quickly, he reaches the gurney and begins to unlock the wheels. He is covering Harlin to his neck with the sheet when suddenly lights come on all around him.

  Jacob finds himself standing in the middle of a surgical theatre. Above him, surrounding him, are windows and at those windows Redcoats. Fifty, seventy five, a hundred. All of them peer down at him, all watch him as if he is a drop of blood on a slide at the end of a microscope.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Dr. John Lake from St. Mary’s Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska,” a familiar voice booms through the speakers. The Redcoats clap. As the clapping dies, Dr. Gontard continues. “We are indeed privileged that Dr. Lake is with us. Today, he is going to tell us a bit about a new donor that we discovered among the pool of applicants that come to the hospital. And, I believe,” and here Dr. Gontard smiles, “he is going to show us a new transfusion technique. Is that correct, Dr. Lake?”

  Though initially frightened, Jacob suddenly feels at home. This is a press conference. Instead of being the communications man behind the scenes, whispering the strategies, the lines, every second, he is now the Minister himself.

  “Thank you, Dr. Gontard,” he says broadly, “and to the staff of Sanctuary Hospital for your generosity and the honor of demonstrating to you the Omaha Method of transfusion, popular at our clinic, but also a technique that is becoming more popular in other hospitals.”

  He stalls, looks around the room. “I wish we had this kind of staff at St. Mary’s.”

  The crowd murmurs their pride and approval. It’s a cheap shot, but it gives him time to think. “I would like to tell you about this donor; I’m going to need his records.”

  Dr. Gontard taps the window twice and small screens appear at intervals around the glass. A projected holographic image, shoulder height, displays in front of Jacob.

  The report is two pages, which include his additions at the bottom.

  Dr. Gontard begins, “With your permission, Dr. Lake, I’ll give an overview of the patient.”

  Jacob nods, even as sweat runs down his back. He sees the door behind him, and knows that most of the Redcoats are close by, too close; he might have only minutes to escape, if that. He can’t be too obvious.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Gontard begins dramatically, “the patient, Harlin Moybridge, is in peak physical condition. Even at fifty-six years, he is as healthy as a man half his age.”

  Oh how Jacob wishes Harlin could hear this. It would stroke his ego.

  “Harlin Moybridge has never had any man-made chemicals invade his body. He made a point to list on the patient application that he has only eaten organic foods all of his life, drank purified water, that he’d never taken antibiotics, and only employed homeopathic remedies. He is chemical-free and therefore chemically unaltered. His blood cells possess the ability to regenerate at an astonishing rate. He could be a universal donor and could be the answer to our own dilemma, even as we are the answer to theirs.”

  What did he mean? Jacob suddenly remembers the doctors talking in the morgue. ‘Jardin’s sick.’ Another doctor was ‘gone’.

  Someone calls out, “What is SVD?”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Gontard asks. There is general curio
sity.

  “At the end of the record: evidence of SVD. Patient not safe to transfuse.”

  “But the top of the form has him approved.”

  Curiosity has become confusion as they each check the records.

  “I don’t know SVD. And who is the doctor listed? Esterhazy.” Dr. Gontard looks up, “Dr. Esterhazy. What do you mean by SVD?”

  “I didn’t put that there!”

  “It’s on the records.”

  “But, I don’t even know what SVD is.”

  There is now rumbling among the Redcoats. Jacob knows he has only seconds to convince them. They are so much like a group of reporters hearing something they can’t believe, something they fear... You can calm that fear. Or not. He watches the slow chaos forming, wants to wait until it hits a peak. But, he hears a murmur from behind him. Harlin moves his head and grunts.

  “May I address the doctors?” Jacob asks.

  They quiet down. “It is what I feared I might find at Sanctuary. Something only recently discovered in other hospitals. SVD or Shanghai Ventricular Disease has started appearing in our patients in the heartland of America. It is not confirmed yet, so WHO doesn’t want rumors spread.

  “First discovered one week ago, SVD is responsible for three deaths at our hospital, two of those doctors. Harlin Moybridge, it appears, carries this disease.”

  He keeps his face as straight and convincing as possible. “Which means that anyone who transfuses him will contract SVD.”

  The silence tells him they are waiting for one last word.

  “This man is no longer of use to us.” He moves to the head of the gurney and begins pulling it backwards. “Gentlemen, for your own safety, please keep back. I’ve already been exposed and I will take this man to isolation. Thank you.”

  He moves quickly towards the door.

  “Jake?” says Harlin. “Jake. That you?”

  He tries to place a hand over Harlin’s mouth.

  “Jake,” he’s slurring. “Got me strapped down, buddy.”