I hit the computer room door at full speed and punched the code into the lock. It clicked and I entered the cool room in a flurry. To prevent an untimely interruption, I locked the physical lock in the doorknob, dropped my briefcase and rushed to my desk. I flicked the computer on and waited impatiently for it to boot up.
Sitting down at my chair, I caught the hint of another odd smell, but dismissed it when the login window came up. I typed the password and soon was surfing through the email server looking for the video. Certainly an ethics violation, but Satan Jr. had violated me enough that I really didn't care anymore. Before I found the video, I discovered an email from Jack to my boss. I clicked it.
Your guy, Mike, has been doing great lately by coming in well before anyone else. Both Cathy and he seem to have the place humming along by the time I get in. Just wanted you to know he's doing good…Jack
This email really caught me off guard. Jack had just told me I should come in earlier, but he had already sent kudos to my boss several days before about me coming in early.
What the hell?
I really couldn't grasp what was going on, but then I saw an email lower on the list. It was from Cathy to Jack, and there was a video attached. She sent it just before I arrived to work. I clicked, and used my admin privileges to get it through the firewall.
Subject: I need help with Mike.
Not good.
At first, there was only darkness in the video, but then a fluorescent light switched on. If I hadn't already been clinically dead, I have no doubt that a heart attack would have hit me. The video showed my office, and standing in the middle of it topless was Cathy. She indicated with a single finger for the person to approach.
"I don't want to lose my job," she said in a sultry voice that made me feel uncomfortable. "I'll do whatever you want. Will that make you happy, Mike?" I jumped. Did she just say my name? Rewind. "Will that make you happy, Mike?" Holy shit.
"Yes, it will," my voice replied as the camera came ever closer to the woman. I hit the pause button.
I couldn't recall ever having kissed Cathy on the cheek, let alone having a lurid affair with her. How could it be my voice, unless she had recorded it from one of our many conversations? But why? I clicked to bring her email forward.
Jack,
This has really been bothering me, and I don't know what else to do. Mike promised me long ago that he would help me get a promotion if I would, well…have sex with him. The attached video is what he made me do this morning. I feel terrible, and don't know who else to turn to. I have a child to feed and can't lose my job. Please help…Cathy
They're trying to set me up!
Jack had probably hoped that I would open the video on his computer, and then he could have a blast acting shocked, disgusted, and then fire me on the spot. Moreover, with the video evidence in hand, he could convince my boss that I was coming in early—as his accolades to my boss demonstrated—for sex, not work. Shit!
I clicked on the video again and the camera rolled. Closer it came to Cathy until the man stood in front of her. The cinematographer eased the view to her lips, and down slowly over her breasts. Watching, I felt like I was violating a friend.
"Do you like this, Mike? Do you enjoy watching me?" Creepy.
"Yes," I heard myself say. It was a good editing job. Scary good.
The camera started to pan down to her hips, and then the video abruptly ended, but something had caught the attention of my newly honed vision. I rewound to just before the end and let it play again.
"Yes," I said on the video. It panned down, and I paused it. At the bottom of the screen in the last frame was the edge of a belly—the large belly of the camera operator. Appearing six-four and a well-muscled two-twenty, nobody would believe it was me, and I was confident that experts existed who could verify that.
I felt bad for Cathy though. I had strong doubts that she was a willing conspirator with Jack, plus something bad had happened after the camera shut off judging by the scratches on his chest. It dawned on me now what the smell lingering in the computer room was. It was very mild, thanks to the air filtration, but enough for me to understand that it was the fresh smell of humans fighting. I recalled her puffy red eyes. It wasn't a sickness; she had been crying.
Everything in me wanted to kill Jack.
Chapter 4
I would have been shaking with rage in my seat if I were human. I wondered if it had occurred to Cathy that the video condemned her more than it did me, after all, there would be no doubt about whose breasts those were. I was confident that after Jack canned me, Cathy would be right on my heels if she didn't give him what he wanted. She had been desperate enough for a promotion to slip badly, but she was also desperate to get her bright son out of a ghetto school and into a private one. It's true, desperate people do desperate things. I found it hard to condemn her. In one devious swoop, Jack had found a way to fire us both, or so he thought. I had to get rid of the video quick though, before anyone else caught a glimpse of it.
I deleted the email and offending video from the server. I then deleted it from the deleted folder. Next, I remotely logged on to Jack's computer from mine, and wiped out his email folder along with its backup just in case. Screw him if he lost a few months worth of backstabbing emails. After that, I took over Cathy's computer and began searching for the video. It took all of two seconds since she had brilliantly hid it in the My Videos folder. I rammed a memory stick into my machine and copied the video just in case it resurfaced and I had to have it analyzed.
The phone rang, and the caller ID said corporate boss. Answer, stall, but keep working.
"Hello?" I said while deleting the video from Cathy's machine.
"Hi, Mike. Jack just called and said he has an urgent video from an employee stuck in email."
"Yeah, I'm working on it." I copied a just-in-case program that many techies love to fiddle with—a virus in reality—from my memory stick to Cathy's computer. I executed it. The death of her machine would be instantaneous.
"Really? He told me that you said videos are not allowed and then you walked away. I have the corporate IT guys looking, but they can't seem to find it?"
"He said that? Maybe he misunderstood. I said that I had to get it through the firewall for him, but I can't seem to find it either."
Cathy's dying machine stopped responding so I logged back onto Jack's, and from there onto the corporate servers with an old backdoor administrative login. I copied my special program up to the servers from Jack's computer as what I considered my parting gift to him.
"No. He said you told him to fuck off, in all honesty. What's going on?" he asked.
What I was about to do would end my career, and possibly get charges filed against me, but at least no evidence of Cathy's poor judgment would exist.
"What's going on," I said. "Is that I think we have a disgruntled employee trying to unload a virus onto the network." Actually, it was the truth. Through Jack's computer, I activated the software bomb that would eat away at the servers, replacing every piece of data with random zeros and ones. There would be no trace of the video left, no matter what they tried.
There was a knock on the office door.
"Mike, are you in there?" I heard Cathy ask. I ignored her for the moment.
"What's your evidence?" the boss asked.
"I've gotta go. This virus is getting out of control. Ask your people there. I'm sure they'll see what's happening." I slammed the phone down and tensed for a moment. I really wanted to open the door and cuss her out for being so stupid, but I didn't have the time. Instead, I activated the virus on Jack's computer and finally on my own machine. Soon they would all be wiped clean. That done, I knew I had to find the camera and the original video. I retrieved the memory stick, and stood, ready to confront. In less than five hours of reverting into the evil undead, I had discovered that the living were far worse.
Cathy had gone back to her receptionist's desk near the window, which was half packed in anti
cipation of her move to a private office, and hopefully a private school for her kid. I walked up behind her as she clicked uselessly on her mouse as if that would save the computer from its spiraling death.
"Why?" I asked. She reeled around in her chair.
"Mike! You scared me." She was beyond nervous—she was scared shitless.
"Why did you make the video with him?" I came forward, put my hands on the arms of her chair and stared into her eyes. They fluttered left and right, seeking help. "Did he threaten you?"
"What are you talking about?" she squeaked.
"Goddamn it! He's going to use it against you, too!" I pushed the chair just hard enough that she rolled to the side, and out of my way. "Where's the camera?" Ripping open the drawers of her desk, I searched for it.
"Mike! Please!"
"Where is it?" I yanked out the last big filing drawer, but found nothing. I looked at her. "Cathy?" Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry! He made me, for the promotion and a huge bonus, and if I didn't then…"
"Is there a problem here?" the plant engineer interrupted, stepping out of the nearby restroom.
"No, just personal issues," I said. He looked suspicious and then walked away towards Jack's office. "And if you didn't do it?" I prodded her.
"Fired, no unemployment. Mike, I am so sorry."
"What happened after the camera was turned off?"
"He…he tried to go further, but I fought him off." She was shaking.
"Jesus." Fury raged in my blood. "Do you have the camera? If I don't get it, he'll threaten you with the video unless you give him what he wants. Do you want to deal with that every single day? Where is it?" She looked at me and then behind me. Her eyes filled with fright.
"Right here," Jack said. I whirled around and saw him holding a video camera up. He smiled. "Thank you for bringing this to me, Cathy. You go on and move into your new office while Mike and I have a chat." She scurried away.
"Cathy!" I yelled after her. "We can fight him together! He assaulted you!" She vanished into her new office and slammed the door. My ears picked up the sound of her muffled cries. I faced Jack.
"You will go to jail for what you did to her," I said.
"What I did? What I did?" He laughed. "Boy, I've got the evidence here that says you did it, and we know you deleted it from email and destroyed the servers in the process. I just got off the phone with your boss. He said, and I quote, fire him. So Mike, you're fired! Get out, now!" The plant engineer returned, along with the human resources manager, ready to escort me away.
"We'll have your stuff delivered to you," the HR guy said. "They don't want you in the computer room again."
I stepped forward, glaring into Jack's face. "You will regret this," I warned. He began to chuckle, but stopped when my hand snatched the camera from his so fast that it was a blur. I crushed it into small plastic slivers, including the DVD that I hoped held the video. I had a copy on my memory stick and could prove, if worse came to worse, that it was a setup. Proving Cathy's innocence would be much harder. I dropped the ruined equipment to the floor.
"Get him the fuck out of here!" Jack yelled. I brushed off my escorts and walked to the door myself.
Before exiting, I turned around and said, "I'll see you soon, Jack. Very soon." I couldn't refuse a warning, with hope that he would lose a lot of sleep. I really wanted to say I'll be back, but that sounded a little cliché. No matter what, I would amputate Jack's ass. I just didn't want to end up losing my daughter over it. Then it occurred to me that Jack's wife might recognize the offending fat belly at the end of the video. With a grim smile, I slipped out the front door and walked away without looking back. A second relationship of my former life ended within an hour of the first. Freud tried to warn me I had mother issues.
Chapter 5
Starvation is a crazy thing. I don't mean the kind that a snack can take care of, but the donate-now-to-save-a-child's-life type. I had lost my wife and job in scandal but screw it, I had to feed. I was ravenous. The bloody meat I had for breakfast wasn't cutting it. I needed at least five-liters of human blood—ten would be better—after the stress of changing back to my natural form, not to mention the stress people love to hand out. No wonder the country was going obese.
My knuckles were white on the steering wheel as I stared at the factory's front office windows. I felt sure beetle-butt and his cohorts were watching me through the tinted glass, while Cathy cried in her office. I considered sending them the bird, but that seemed petty. Now if I had a bazooka, I wouldn't have hesitated to send a good, strong message.
"Fuck it." I started the car and backed out.
I had to eat, but killing innocents wasn't my thing. Killing the guilty was becoming an appealing option, but I knew it would have to be done with care so that I didn't have to go into hiding and lose custody of Lori—if I hadn't already. Lucky for me, a farm full of food was just a few miles away in the form of a blood-processing center. I actually had a small connection to the place in that a headhunter tried to lure me away and come to work for them. I declined, thinking how wonderful my current work was, but then Jack showed up. I should have run then, but change is scary and therefore hard. C'est la vie as the French say. I had planned to hit the blood buffet after work, but now that I was unemployed, any time was a good time.
Less than ten minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of Plasma Worx, Incorporated, which was about the size of an average grocery store. To me, that is exactly what it was. I stepped inside through glass doors. The receptionist glanced at me, her ear pinned to a telephone, a look of concern on her face.
"Yes, it is," she said, and then hung up quickly and looked at me. "May I help you?"
"I would like to donate blood," I said, flashing my best save-the-world smile.
"I'm sorry, but we only accept blood through donation centers." My smile crumbled.
"Oh. Do you give tours?"
"No," she stated flatly. I paused, trying to think of an excuse to get in, but couldn't.
"Okay, thanks. I guess I'll just go to Red Cross."
Defeated, I walked out and scanned the building. It stood by itself at the back of a medical park. There were black half-globes high on the concrete walls indicative of cameras, but I doubted they monitored them during the day. Blood hadn't become a hot commodity for thieves, yet.
I strolled along a small sidewalk that skirted the building, considering jumping up to the roof, but I saw a metal door as I came around the side. It looked like an easy target. I tried it. Locked. I tried again, but this time used the strength that my kind are famous for in the movies. At least they got some things right. Out of practice, I used too much, and the entire door broke off. I was thankful that the hallway behind it was deserted. I stepped inside and put the door back in place as best I could, certain that the next person to open it would be in for a shock.
Along the hall were metal doors on each side with small windows in them. I walked, looking in each window. Every room seemed to be some sort of laboratory. I needed to find the refrigerated storage area. At the opposite end of the deserted hallway, a tall blonde woman appeared out of a doorway and started to approach. I put some confidence in my gait and stopped looking in windows, hoping it appeared as if I knew where I was going. We were about to pass when she stopped.
"Can I help you?" she asked. She sounded tired, and looked exhausted, but I also sensed a nervousness that was beyond what the situation called for. Her most striking aspect though was her eyes, which were so dark that they bordered on black.
"Just going to work," I tried to play cool.
"Where's your badge?"
Badge? I don't need no stinking badge! Instead, I said, "Left it in the locker room."
"Your uniform, too?"
"Yeah. Just got in. Late. Not good, I know. Excuse me." I started to walk, but she put a hand on my shoulder. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
"You came in from the emergency exit?"
Damn!
The woman loved to play twenty questions. "Yeah, since I was late I thought it would be faster."
"What's your name?" She pulled a walkie-talkie out of her lab coat pocket.
Busted by the hall monitor, I had no choice and my fangs snapped out. Before she could press talk, I was on her and felt the joy of my teeth slide smoothly into her neck. A drop of venom leaked into her, sending her into euphoric pleasure.
"Oh," she whimpered, and then began to emit soft moans.
I just wanted to incapacitate her with venom, not drink her dry, but I was so famished that I couldn't refuse a little pull on her jugular. A hint of her fluid entered me, but the taste caused me to withdraw immediately. I spat on the ground and wiped any remainder off my lips. Had it been so long since I tasted blood that it now tasted strange? It wasn't how I remembered it at all. Instead of semi-sweet with an iron aftertaste, she was bitter and sour. I eased her to the floor and checked her pulse. It was racing, but she would live.
Standing, I couldn't help but feel that the woman seemed familiar somehow. Maybe we had passed in the aisle at the local Wal-Mart or perhaps stood together in a lunch line nearby? Had to be.
Leaving her in a venom-induced delirium, I took her badge and proceeded further down the hall. Soon I came to a metal door with a sign that read COLD STORAGE. I hoped it was the mother lode. I slid the newly acquired badge through an electronic reader and was rewarded with a green light and the click of the lock. My hand pulled the freezer-type lever back and with a whoosh, the cold air enveloped me. I stepped inside and smiled. Rows and rows of blood-filled bags lined the walls behind glass cabinets. I pulled the door shut behind me, but it wouldn't lock, designed so that absent-minded workers didn't trap themselves inside. I went to a cabinet labeled TYPE O NEGATIVE. The best drink in town.
Sliding the glass aside, I grabbed a chilled dark-red bag. If they had had this kind of setup back in the dark ages, my species might have never gone to war with itself. What a pity. I slid my fangs through the plastic, a drop of venom purified the meal, and then I felt the pleasure as the nourishment rushed in. The blood was gone in seconds, washing the odd-tasting woman out of my system. I threw the bag into a small wastebasket in the corner and grabbed another. Up until then, my strength had been mediocre by vampire standards, but I felt it surging back. My skin relaxed and became more pliable, my senses improved, my muscles felt warm with newfound power. Life was good.
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