Civil Blood_The Vampire Rights Trial that Changed a Nation

by Chris Hepler

  He seems lost in the screen, but I'd better check in. "How're the berries?"

  "Squishy."

  "How's the news?"

  "Worse." He shows me his aging tablet, smeared with fingerprints and dust, and brings up a screen. "A Wall Street Journal poll says twenty-nine percent of Americans say anyone who tests positive should be executed. Forty-eight percent say locked up."

  "Better than fifty-one."

  "Margin of error is four points. Where did you hunt tonight?"

  "Uh..." I was at the wheel, but Fer gave all the directions. "College Park, why?"

  He shows me the story. "They found our guy from last week. Police say they have some leads on a quote, 'gang of vipes familiar to us.' And vigilantes, those Vipe-Free America guys, killed a vipe in Anacostia. How'd our teacher man do?"

  I hesitate.

  "Oh, Christ," says Ly. "You had to think about it."

  "It's nothing much," I say quickly. "He thinks he might have been spotted before he could get his shirt changed. The mask was on."

  "Fucking great—"

  "We're not going back there. And we're switching vehicles for next time."

  "We can't keep this up," Deborah interrupts, leaning on the doorway to the kitchen. "He loses his nerve, his lure sucks, now he's forgetting to check for witnesses. It's not just a learning curve. He's not good at it."

  "Are you volunteering?" I say, sick of the conversation already.

  "Ly and Cass could," says Deborah.

  "If you'd like to contribute," I say, "please go upstairs and help with the towels." Deborah rolls her eyes. As she disappears, I feel as if I just reprimanded my teenage daughter.

  "It needs to be you, Infinity," Ly says. "You're the best at it."

  "You just like the taste," I growl, defensive. Maybe calling him on it will send the message. The truth is I don't like him lapping at me. Morgan held them in line with ideals. All I have is the threat of choking them out—a poor way to enforce discipline.

  Ly shrugs with his face. "What can I say? I'm human."

  "Five out of nine assholes agree," I mutter.

  "Any progress on finding Morgan?"

  God, not now. "I was driving. You got anything, mister I-have-a-tablet-in-my-hand?" I can see by his face that he doesn't.

  "Infinity!" Deborah calls, rushing down the stairs. "Trouble!"

  The look in Deborah's eyes is enough. I take the stairs two at a time, blasting past Deborah to the upstairs bedroom. Inside, laid out on the floor like a quilt, are different colors of towels. Crumpled in heaps are Ferrero's sweater and shirt—Cass still wears his. He's lying on the prostrate smaller man, pinning him.

  "Fer!" Ly strides over and grabs Cass by the hair, pulling his head back. It's then I see how much blood is on his face, on the towels, all over Ferrero's upper body. Cass's gray-blue eyes are all swallowed up by deep black pupils.

  "Hey—" He flails, and I step in. This will get worse.

  "Stop it, or I hurt you," growls Ly.

  "What is that for?" Cass barks. "He likes it."

  "Off." I break Ly's grip and address Cass. "You're taking too much. Let him go." He doesn't move, and for a second, I think we're going to have to mess him up. Maybe it's the threat that makes him back down. Maybe it's just shame.

  "I was going to leave enough for you."

  "Doesn't look that way from here. Lord, he must be down a liter."

  "It's not that much—"

  "Fer?" I hold the bleeding man, putting a hand on his neck to stanch the flow. "Wake up, Fer." I look back at the door. Deborah is watching. I can't just start in on him now—

  I stop myself. I'm thirsty, and it's getting hard to concentrate.

  "Fer, wake up," I say, hoping that if he talks, he'll look less tasty.

  His eyelids flutter. "Fini?" He moves his head, then realizes how much pain his neck is in and tries to cup it in his hand. He gets my hand instead.

  "Try to sit up. You're losing a lot of blood." He does. "I don't believe you two. Did you think for one moment where the rest of us would get ours from?"

  Cass looks bothered. "He can heal—"

  "No, he can't!" I snap. "Have you been listening when Jess talks? He's only fifty-five kilos. That's about four point five liters of blood. You take one. The rest of us take three hundred milliliters each. That leaves him at two point three. You want to see how well he heals with half his blood volume gone? I'll give you a hint. It's called torpid. Then, we get to figure out who goes out next time because he's dead to us."

  Cass looks confused. "Wait… you didn't say how much he had before."

  I'm about to bark out something nasty, but he isn't wrong. I haven't said it before. I had assumed that I'd know what to do, and they'd learn by osmosis. I didn't drill them on F-prot math because I thought everyone knew what I knew. Or that they'd listened to Jess. But really, who pays attention to the schoolmarm other than Memorizing Girl?

  Okay. Damage control. "You may be right. I'm not going to say I did, but you need to know how much we can take. We all do. We have to be professionals about this until—"

  Until he gets back, I don't say. I collect myself. "Cass, please dry off and get downstairs."

  "I'll watch him," Ly says.

  "No," I say. "We don't need the two of you having words. You and Deborah are up to feed. I'm going to watch you, and then I'm going to go out to get something for me and Jess."

  "I'm sorry," says Cass on the way out. "I didn't know."

  "Go."

  As Deborah comes in, and I hold on to my bleeding friend, it occurs to me that I'm going to have to launder my clothes again before going out, and I won't get to sleep until fuck-it-thirty.

  I say to you, stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action is of men, it will be overthrown. The line comes to mind too easily, like a song lyric ringing in my head. It is my punishment, like my father had intended it to be.

  "Are you all right?" Deborah asks. "What are you thinking?"

  "Man makes plans," I say, "and God laughs."

  47 - KERN

  November 19th

  I close my eyes as the makeup assistant powders me down. I calm my breathing. Jess taught me how, a million years ago before she sold videos on the technique. I figure if I can beat a hostile audience like the F-prots, this should be apple pie. It isn't. My hands stay sweaty no matter how often I paw out a tissue from the packet in my sport coat.

  "Five minutes," someone calls, a production assistant or some other person in charge of getting the word out. My only frame of reference for all the people I see scurrying around is old sitcoms about the crews of TV shows.

  "You done?" I ask, and when the man nods, I get out my phone and tap my way through menus to call Diana.

  A coiffed young woman in a business suit answers. "Waterford and Price," she announces, then sees my face. "How much time is left?" We rehearsed carefully, and she knows her role without asking. Today requires it.

  "Five minutes. Get your attack dog on the line now."

  "Roger," she says, and a new window opens, patching in another line. A ringing phone icon tells me what I need to know.

  A hand on my shoulder brings me back to the room. "You're not gonna be on that thing on camera, are you?" It's Edison Field.

  "I'm just assembling the troops."

  "Nerves?"

  "Nah. It'll all be over by the end of the day."

  "It'll be the beginning," the veep corrects, and I nod. Our long-term strategy goes far beyond this little show. Field steps off to confer with a project lead, so I focus on the phone, which shows the grinning face of a South Asian girl in a pinstriped pantsuit. Truth be told, she's probably in her thirties, but anyone with a smile is a kid the way I count it.

  "All right, you in position?" There is no reaction. "Can you hear me?" She stares at the screen intently. A window opens, and text comes through.

  Can't hear on NYSE floor, it reads.

  I nod and put my thumb up. The kid mi
rrors it. I kill the volume and take out my glasses. I hardly use them since I got my eyes fixed, but they have a port, and that's what I want right now. I flick the glasses' power stud and a display on the lenses flares up. The glasses join my phone's network. When I put them on, the numbers are small but clear: BRHI stock is trading at $59.93 per share.

  I join the photo op team headed for the stage. It has a podium and a blue curtain and nova-bright lights shining down in stagecraft tradition. As I squint through the lights, I can see how many press showed up. Our PR team deserves diamonds.

  "I feel like we should have a presidential emblem behind us," says the project lead, who told me to call him Matt. I'm still fuzzy on his last name since he's been acting lead for about twenty hours, and our usual lead is sending me pictures of her brand-new infant. I take his photo with the glasses to look him up on the staff Web page and flash a grin at him.

  "This is no time to be thinking small."

  Field, the warhorse, takes the podium. "Good afternoon," he says, and the recording devices chime like a pond full of mating robotic frogs. "Thank you all for coming. It gives me great pleasure to announce that our company has made public health progress that bears notice. I'd like to introduce you now to Dr. Matt Nolan, our project lead who will make some introductory remarks, and then we will open it up to questions and answers."

  Nolan steps forward. "Thank you," he says, a little too loudly into the microphone. "For the last year, I've had the privilege of working with a talented group, an army, really, of people who have been at it night and day. We are proud to say that we are beginning clinical trials on a vaccine for qi-positive European Bat Lyssavirus-4, the organism that causes VIHPS."

  The reporters don't say much: they read the press statement already. The number on my glasses is still a flat 59.93. I wonder. This early, will anyone care? Or will they demand results?

  Nolan continues. "The first phase of the trial will involve approximately fifteen hundred subjects from groups at high risk for VIHPS. They will be given a series of six injections as well as a stim treatment to counteract the unique attributes of EBL-4. At the end of the trial period, their VIHPS incidence rates will be compared to those of a control group. I will now take your questions. Yes."

  A bearded cowboy of a reporter, minus the hat, lowers his hand. "When do you expect the first phase of the trial to end?"

  "In order to observe a statistically significant number of exposures, we estimate wrapping up Phase I by May. Yes?"

  A grandfatherly-looking black man is next. "When you say high-risk groups for getting the virus, could you give us some examples?"

  "I believe Dr. Kern could answer that most succinctly. Dr. Kern?"

  Nolan moves out of the way, and it's showtime. I'm about to respond when the number in my glasses goes down. 59.75.

  Focus on the face in front of you, I tell myself. The investors probably haven't heard yet. We might not even be live.

  "Through our sampling, we've found many different factors that contribute to being exposed to the virus. I should be clear: when I say high-risk groups, I'm not talking about genetics or immune system reactions after infection. I mean when vectors have decided to take a blood meal from the subject.

  "For example, we've found that in Los Angeles, we had our data strongly correlate with the swinging community. Not because sex communicates VIHPS—it doesn't—but because there were three or four promiscuous vipes in the area, and they infected in places they knew, which included some specialty bars in West Hollywood. In D.C., it's gymnasiums. So, when we say we're starting the vaccine, it'll be three studies of high-risk groups in New York, L.A., and D.C., given to volunteers willing to risk exposure." I pause for breath.

  59.9, my glasses read.

  Trying not to pause, I add, "Does that answer your question?"

  "It does."

  The hands go up again, and I point at a young brunette in a solar skirtsuit. Somewhere vaguely, I consider that Nolan may want the microphone. Too late.

  "You said—Mr. Field said—that the Initiative is using a qi-positive treatment as part of the regimen. Given the rarity of qi-positive doctors, what steps are you taking to prevent them from getting swamped when this goes out to the general public?"

  "Our first effort is to come up with a treatment that works, and due to the tenacious active qi in this virus, we felt fighting fire with fire was mandatory. As for distribution, our door is always open to new applicants. It is our sincere hope that stimweb users will want to learn the techniques perfected here and spread them to other users. We're not going to hoard that secret and say, 'oh, you only get it if you're rich.' We want that aspect to be public knowledge, until there are enough stimweb users out there to halt this pandemic. Next, please."

  When I look back into the corner of my glasses, there is writing. I strain to read it, and when I see the number—62.54—I realize what it says.

  They just heard.

  "Dr. Kern," someone calls, and I point at a hand in the crowd, "do you have anything planned to help those already infected by the virus?"

  "Thank you," I say, thinking fast, "that's an excellent question." The number in my glasses is up to 66.15. "Our current approach to combating the VIHPS pandemic is to focus on the vaccine for a number of reasons. EBL-4 is a very robust virus. Attempting to counteract it before it gets a hold on a target immune system is, we believe, a much easier task than trying to do so after the fact." The number hits 70, and I struggle to remain on-topic. "However, our plan is to look out for the unfortunates who have become victim to this virus as well."

  74.80.

  This is it. They've probably got the TV on. They're watching me. Now, sell the savior act.

  "Our goal is to immunize everyone who wants to be immunized through this vaccine so that the choice of a vipe can change. Imagine if, instead of biting into an unprotected human, the vipe bit into someone who couldn't get infected."

  78.90. A flashbulb goes off. Thanks, clown.

  "The amount of blood lost in a feeding situation can be very small, less than what you'd lose donating at the Red Cross. If that were all that happened—no violence, no infection—the disease wouldn't be the problem that it is today. If we can get enough people immunized, the vipes can live with their disease. They can find a pool of willing donors, and over time, the number of new cases will simply die out."

  81. By the time I read the number after the decimal, it changes.

  "Does that answer your question?" I finish. The reporter nods and sits. I'm done. I smile at Field, who grins back. Field retakes the podium, and I rub my hands together to dry them. If the veep notices that I have a display up, he doesn't seem to care.

  The price hits 270 that day before I sell a quarter of what I own. For the first time in my life, I'm a millionaire.

  48 - BREUNIG

  November 28th

  I pull into the National Harbor lot in the cold hours between midnight and dawn. My skin prickles as I see the multicolored lights of two black-and-whites. The sight confirms that I have, at least, been disturbed for a reason. That's no comfort. Every time I've visited a sidewalk lit up in red and blue, people volunteer all kinds of reasons.

  I find parking on the street—the lot's structure is strung with police tape, no doubt to the frustration of whatever poor saps still have their vehicles inside. Crowdsource cars pick fares from the people who decided to come back in the morning. I spot al-Ibrahim among the civilians.

  "What have they found?" I say by way of greeting.

  "The one on the gurney had a close encounter." Al-Ibrahim jerks his head at a small man resting on a collapsible crashcart. He's probably destined for an ambulance ride but not in terrible condition, or they'd have wheeled him off already.

  "You run any photos by him?"

  "Didn't need to. He's one of ours."

  I reconsider, looking again at the man by the ambulance. Now that Ebe mentions it, I've seen him before—and a few of the faces in the crowd nearest him.<
br />
  Yarborough got the F-prots a gig not long ago, consulting and training for a sizeable pack of concerned citizens. I didn't know where they'd gotten the funds, and it was never in my interest to ask. That concerned me less than the false confidence of these amateurs. It's a tide that I can never hold back no matter how many warnings I give. Its results are predictable, the human cost all too avoidable. But it's rent.

  "So, he went fishing, got a shark?"

  "He said he spotted a woman, mid-twenties, black leather jacket over workout clothes. Overheard her conversation. She sat at a man's table, complete stranger, and started to hit him up to come home with her. Twenty minutes later, they walk to her car."

  I fold my arms. "He's sure she wasn't a prostitute?"

  "Our hero phones his friend for backup, tries to delay her. She's wise to it. She gets in her car, he calls her a vipe, gets in front of her vehicle, draws his nine. She hits him with the car. Driving. Not, you know—"

  "I know. You were right to call me."

  "I figured your kids were in bed by now."

  "Fucking Dracula is in bed by now," I say, more observation than complaint. As I look over my teammate, it's clear there's something more. "You're grinning. What do you know?"

  "Do the words 'Chevy Quasar' mean anything to you?"

  He's got my full attention. "He got eyes on the car? Guaranteed?"

  "Eyes, face, shoulder—"

  "No jokes, Ebe. Is this reliable?"

  "He says he drives one, too. He'd know it anywhere. Dark red. Didn't get a license plate."

  I don't care. My brain kicks in like I've vaped nicotine, but if I know anything, it can't be as good as it sounds. Infinity is a professional. After an incident like this, she'll try to switch vehicles. Then again, she can't do that forever. Cars, even rentals, cost money and create paper. We already figured out she used a pickup truck and then changed it up to some kind of sedan. The question is, can she get another? Or are the cops going to pull her license plate number from a security camera and end up with her home address?