Who else could have done this but Ben? He must have followed us all this way. He must be here right now. But what the heck is his game plan?
I cursed along with my father as we raced to the elevators. We had to slam the doors shut manually in order to close them in time. My father pressed the button for the ground floor, even as the Bloodless hit the metal, creating a dent in the doors. As we began to descend, lowering from the ninth floor, a heavy weight thumped down on the roof of the elevator. One had gotten into the elevator shaft already. And then came another. And another. Three Bloodless were now standing on the roof. They began to pound against the ceiling until a fist broke through.
We stopped the elevator prematurely and leapt out on the third level, just as the Bloodless created a bigger hole in the roof. We dashed past tables and lab equipment toward the other end of the floor. My father seemed to be moving purposefully, but I wasn’t sure that he knew what he was doing until we reached a thick, reinforced door in the opposite wall. As the Bloodless loped out of the elevator shaft, he fumbled with his keys, opened the door and yanked me inside with him. We both slammed it shut behind us. He pulled the bolt, locking us inside. This door would take a lot longer for the Bloodless to penetrate—that much I was certain of. I guessed this was designed for emergencies such as this. As I gazed around at the small room—more like a large cupboard—that we had entered, I realized that it was an armory, filled with guns.
My father’s breathing was hard and fast as he took a moment to recover. He reached into his pockets, then cursed. “Dammit! My phone slipped from my pocket in the run. Lawrence, do you have yours?”
I made a show of looking for mine. I did still have it, hidden deep in my back pocket… But something held me back from telling the truth. “Ach, dammit. No, I don’t,” I said. “Forgot to bring it with me.”
“Okay. We’re going to have to handle this ourselves.” My father exhaled heavily. “How the hell did they get out?” he muttered beneath his breath. He began milling around the room and examining the weapons. He picked up a particularly large one, a machine gun, and handed it to me, before taking one for himself.
I kept quiet, the pulsing of my blood loud in my ears.
The Bloodless had reached the door by now and were pounding heavily against it. Although it shuddered, it was showing no signs of giving way. Not yet.
I had to figure out what Ben’s plan was, and fast. Otherwise, if I made the wrong move, I could actually thwart it. I tried to calm my mind and think clearly. Ben had released the Bloodless. What other reason would Ben do that but to have them attack my father? If that supposition was correct, it didn’t take a genius to guess what his train of thought must’ve been. He wanted my father to get bitten and infected by a Bloodless.
I had my phone with me still. My phone which contained at least one contact whom we had a strong suspicion knew what the cure was. If my father got bitten, and I dialed the number—while maybe transmitting a video to Mr. Munston to prove that my father was in the process of turning—that could shock Mr. Munston enough into letting me know how to aid him. My father might not be willing to let on the procedure to anyone, even in the face of death, but I found it hard to believe that others held the same resignation. Especially if the son of their boss was calling them up and pleading frantically.
I feared that I might have completely gotten the wrong end of the stick regarding what Ben meant. But as my father continued to pull weapons off the shelf, along with piles of ammunition, that was the only thing I could think of that made sense. Ben wouldn’t have let the Bloodless loose for no good reason.
And doing it out of revenge or frustration would have been stupid, and unlike Ben—or at least the small amount I had gotten to know about him. He was a strategic thinker.
I gazed at the locked door. Now that we were trapped in here, what could I do? Let the Bloodless in somehow, without my father noticing that it was me? Or when we barged out—which we would have to do eventually—set my father up to be attacked?
As much as I had become disillusioned with my father, the notion made me feel sick. As much as he had changed, he was still my father. My own flesh and blood.
“We’re going to go out,” my father said, breaking through my thoughts.
“O-Okay,” I said, repositioning the gun in my hands, placing my finger over the trigger.
“Keep your back to the wall for as long as possible.” He motioned with his hand for me to back up. “And fire as many bullets as you can at the weakest parts of their body.” He pulled out two daggers that I hadn’t seen him retrieve from the shelves, and handed one to me. “We have to first take them off balance and then dismember them. Only one cage escaped… we’re talking about eight Bloodless. The situation could be worse.”
“Right,” I said. It could be.
“Are you ready?” he asked, moving to the door. “Start firing the second I open it.”
“Okay,” I said, even though I was still trying to figure out what, exactly, my game plan was supposed to be. I had to hope that Ben intervened once we opened the door and made things go the way he’d planned.
When my father opened the door, I fired at the seven Bloodless awaiting outside. My father quickly joined me. One of the Bloodless, hardly deterred by the bullets, leapt forward into the armory. It moved to grab me, but before it could reach me, my father brought the end of his gun smashing down hard against its skull, causing it to stagger and drop. I followed through with my blade, slashing at the back of its neck until I severed its head, while my father continued to fire through the door.
I wished that my father had not intervened just now. That he had left me to fend for myself. His protecting me only made things more emotionally difficult.
Once the Bloodless’ head was severed—even if its body did continue to move—it was no longer a threat to us. I kicked the head like a football away from my path so I wouldn’t slip on it before assisting my father. He had started firing two guns to make up for my lack of assistance. He ordered me to do the same. A moment later, we had four guns blazing at once. The remaining Bloodless weren’t as gutsy as the first; though they remained standing outside the door even as bullets hurtled into them, they didn’t leap closer to us.
My father moved forward and I strode by his side. Now we were down to six. We had seen only seven altogether. My father had talked of eight, which made me wonder where the eighth one was…
As he stepped out, a foot in front of me to attempt to force the group of Bloodless further backward, he yelped. I had been focused on my own firing, but as I spun to face him, it was to see him tumbling to the ground beneath the weight of a falling Bloodless. It was as if it had fallen from the ceiling, directly above him… but more likely, I suspected, Benjamin had managed to get hold of it and dropped it upon my father just at the right moment.
I couldn’t hurry to his side to make sure that the Bloodless was not sinking its teeth in too deep—we couldn’t afford to have my father die—because I was forced to keep my attention on the other six Bloodless to prevent them from piling on top of my father, and me, too.
I used my unnatural speed to my full advantage. Holding my dagger aloft while swooping down to pick up the blade my father had dropped, I launched at the Bloodless and began to slash them up so fast, I would have looked like a blur as I moved to any onlooker. I focused on severing their heads, one by one, before chucking them over the railing—far away from their writhing bodies as if I feared they would reconnect again.
I got bitten more than a few times in the process, and endured several slashes and gashes from their razor-sharp claws, but it didn’t matter now that I knew I was immune to the Bloodless virus. I barely even felt the pain.
Once I had cleared the floor of oncoming Bloodless, I whirled toward my father, intending to haul the Bloodless off him, since I figured that enough venom should’ve gotten to him by now. But as I turned, Ben had already done the job. The Bloodless was floating in the air toward the roof of o
ne of the cages. The outline of Ben was visible subtly behind the beast, pinning it down against the bars, even as blood—my father’s blood—dripped from its shriveled lips. I hoped my father hadn’t spotted Ben—really, he should have waited for me to get to the Bloodless myself, but he must have done it for good reason. Maybe it had looked like the Bloodless was about to do more serious damage. Hopefully my father was too far out of it at this point anyway to notice Ben’s approach, especially if he had been semi-transparent.
“Dad,” I wheezed, rushing over to him. My father was groaning in agony as he gripped his throat. His limbs had already started to tremble.
I had to act fast.
I wanted to call out to Ben and ask him to clarify exactly what he planned to be done next. But obviously, that was a step too far. We couldn’t afford for my father to realize Ben’s presence lest he put two and two together.
Thus I did the only thing I could think to do. I dug my hand into my pocket and retrieved my phone. My father’s eyes had closed at this point, too consumed by the agony. If he survived this, and ever got round to asking me about the phone, I would just have to tell him that desperation had a way of making you remember things. That I’d had it in my pocket all along after all. I swiped to Mr. Munston’s phone number and dialed it, my hand shaking as I waited for him to pick up. His voice arrived at the other end within thirty seconds. I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Mr. Munston,” I gasped, “this is Lawrence. I need help! My father, he’s been attacked and bitten by a Bloodless. He’s turning into one! We’re in the lab by Lake Michigan!”
“What?” Mr. Munston breathed. “Lawrence? What the—? Is this some kind of—?”
“Would I joke about something like this?” I practically roared. “I’ll show you, for crying out loud!”
I started recording a video of my father writhing on the ground, and zoomed in to show his bite marks clearly, before getting a shot of the still-moving bodies of beheaded Bloodless surrounding us.
I kept the video short so that it could be uploaded and transmitted to the man quickly. I waited a few seconds for Mr. Munston to receive it, and when he did, he swore.
“Dear God,” he breathed. “How did this happen?”
“There’s no time for questions!” I yelled, my voice booming around the cavernous lab. “I need help! What can I do to help my father? This lab is full of stuff! There’s got to be something!”
I wasn’t sure how conscious exactly my father was at this point, but I had to assume that he was listening to my every word. Still, there should be nothing suspicious about what I was saying—I was just a young man whose father was turning into a monster before his very eyes, and I was just desperate to fix him, somehow, anyhow.
“I-I don’t know,” said Mr. Munston, to my dismay.
Liar. I didn’t believe that he didn’t know. I was sure he was just too afraid to break the protocol of silence over the matter—he was probably sworn to an oath to never speak a word about FOEBA to anyone, under any circumstance. He probably feared for his life and that of his family if he broke the oath, even in what seemed like an emergency situation. I needed to speak to someone whose shell was softer…
“We should send in an emergency group of scientists,” he said.
I didn’t like the sound of that. Unless they’d allow me to watch every single step of the process, which I doubted. I was already foreseeing them arriving, swiping my father away to some private room where they would treat him away from anyone’s prying eyes. Then all this would have been for nothing—my attempt to throw myself at the Bloodless, and now Ben’s attempt to throw them at my father. We would be back to square one. My nerves couldn’t take it.
“There’s no bloody time!” I bellowed. “I need information right here, right now! Put me onto a scientist who knows what they’re talking about, instantly!”
My aggression seemed to get through to Mr. Munston. Although he still refused to offer any insights of his own, he dialed me through to another scientist… a scientist whose voice I recognized as the same woman I’d spoken to earlier, just a few hours ago. Dr. Finnegan. Gosh. It was hard to believe it was only a matter of hours since I’d last been sitting in this lab as a patient.
“Yes?” she answered, her voice tense, as though she’d already had some kind of briefing from Mr. Munston.
“I’m sending you a video,” I told her. I hit send quickly and she gasped on the other end as she viewed it, the same type of gasp that Mr. Munston had let out, except more strangled, more feeling. With her being a woman, I had to hope that she would show more empathy than him.
“I know you said there’s no way to help a bitten person, but please!” I made my voice crack. “P-Please. It’s my father. Help me! There’s got to be something in this lab.”
“I-I can tell you how to slow the turning process while we send in—”
At least she was basically admitting now that it was possible to help him even at this stage.
I dropped my voice to a whisper, hoping my father couldn’t hear clearly what I was saying. “It’s too late for that. The video I took was taken some time ago. I had a problem with getting a signal and I’ve only just managed to communicate with the outside world. My father brought me down here to pick up some papers that one of you forgot to deliver to him. We found Bloodless escaped and we were attacked. He’s already lost all his hair! His nails are loosened!”
That was, of course, a lie for the most part, but as unbelievable as my statements might sound, she was going to have to believe me. I hoped that my panic would get through to her. She was old enough to have a son my age.
When she fell silent, it seemed like I might have just struck gold. It occurred to me that perhaps she was the scientist who had forgotten to deliver the papers, causing us to come down here in the first place. Could it be such a happy coincidence?
“Where are you in the lab?” she asked in a voice so low it could have almost been mistaken for a man’s. I had managed to strike some kind of nerve in her, anyhow.
“I’m on, uh, the third floor,” I hissed, still trying to be mindful of my father hearing as little of this conversation as possible—I’d even wandered toward the other end of the lab, though in my urgency and desperation, it was kind of hard to keep my voice down. I was having to keep reminding myself.
She drew in a shuddering breath. “Okay. Okay… I’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” I gasped, meaning it with every part of me. It took guts to agree to what she had. I appreciated that.
“Go to the ground floor.”
“Okay, I’m going!”
I hurried toward the smashed-up elevator and pressed the button for the ground level. As the doors were about to clang shut, I was met with the sight of Ben zooming toward me, still holding the Bloodless he’d hauled off my father in his grasp. He stepped into the elevator after me a second before the doors closed.
“Good grief,” I breathed, putting my phone on mute for a second. The Bloodless struggling in his grip, Ben slammed its head against the elevator wall to keep it from lashing out at either of us.
“Can you get rid of that thing!” I hissed.
“Yes,” Ben replied. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to kill it unnecessarily.”
“Well, can you please do something else with it than drag it around?” I breathed. I prayed that my father hadn’t noticed it suddenly disappearing from the roof of the cage—assuming he hadn’t noticed it magically get up there in the first place. I didn’t know what state he would be in right now. I hated to think.
“Lawrence?” The doctor’s voice spoke in my ear. I unmuted the microphone.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “I’m still in the elevator.” The doors opened. “Okay! I’m here. On the ground floor. Now what?”
“Head to the fifth aisle, assuming you’re facing the entrance.”
“Yes, I’m facing it,” I said. “Okay, I’m going there now.”
I hurried there while Ben
scoured the room for somewhere he could stuff the Bloodless. He spotted a fire exit and opened it, stuffing the Bloodless outside before quickly slamming the door shut. Those fire exits were strong—just like the door to the armory and, indeed, the main entrance to the lab. The Bloodless wouldn’t be getting back inside in a hurry.
As nerve-racking as it had been to travel down the building with that thing in the small elevator—I might be immune to their venom but I wasn’t impervious to their claws, and neither was Ben when in his physical form—I understood Ben’s hesitation to kill it, of course, now we knew there was a cure. That was a person. A sick human. No longer just an unthinking, unfeeling monster. No longer an “it”.
I needed to start treating the Bloodless with the same respect myself, and not kill any without good reason.
“So are you in the aisle?” Dr. Finnegan asked me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Head to the last table on your left-hand side.”
I sped up to a run, Ben catching up behind me. We arrived at the table at the same time. “Now, beneath the table, you will see a block of drawers. Yes?” the doctor said.
“Yes.”
“Open the bottom drawer. You’ll find a large assortment of color-coded tubes,” she said. “Take out a purple one, a green one, an orange one, a blue one… Got them?”
“Yes.”
“And then the last one you need is—”
Just as she had been talking, and I had been hurriedly scooping up the colored tubes into my hands, a deafening alarm sounded, shrieking through the lab like a choir of banshees. I could hardly hear my own thoughts, let alone Dr. Finnegan’s voice on the other end of the phone.
What is that?
I pressed the phone harder against my ear, but it was hopeless. Her voice came like a vague whisper. Dammit! I hurried to the bathroom situated near the fire exit, but the blaring was just as loud in there. It was as though every single corner of the lab was reverberating with the sound. And then, as I glared in frustration down at my phone screen, it was to see Dr. Finnegan had hung up.
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