by Chris Hepler
And, from what I know, Ferrero's had to do something similar before. He's mentioned in my absence, they'd been forced to bury Ly.
I don't deserve you, Infinity had said. I piece that together. Fer explains what he can, and given my history with botched feedings, I hold off on the condemnation. I wanted Ly to last, to live. All of them should have.
It's four hours until we reach a funeral home in some suburb called Ardsley. I'm leery of talking to the staff because they're probably expecting the body to come from a hearse, not a trunk. But Fer says the director is infected. I numbly look on as specialists move the shrouded body into a simple pine box and close the lid.
"The others are in the reception room," says the director. She's said her name, but I haven't registered it. "I'll let you say goodbye. When you want to open this up for visitation, just ask." I nod. It's cold here. Jess's name isn't on anything, for secrecy. She won't have a headstone.
I thought I had cried out everything on the way up. I was wrong.
Ferrero squeezes my wrist. "I wish I knew what to say."
"Anything honest."
"I don't know, man," he says. "It feels like we did it wrong."
"It's the best we could manage."
"No, not this. You. You tried turning yourself in, staying legal, and it would have killed you. But then we tried everything to get you out, you know… Deborah being ten times braver than me… Cass bringing… everything—"
"Violence," I say. "Own it. You saved my ass with an active shooter."
"You mad at us?"
"Mostly at myself, but… then I think about it."
Ferrero rambles. "Yeah, you… you had something. I don't know what to call it, but us, we took that and we threw it all away. We got you free, but that's plus one, minus three. That math sucks."
I look at him point-blank. "So, you want out?"
"Out of what?"
"This war," I say harshly. "You know they'll never stop, right?"
Ferrero looks disgusted. "I remember you telling us we could do this. You were the one quoting MLK, and now you're telling me our life is war?"
"You fought to regain ground we lost, from an enemy who'd eliminate all of us if they could. That required the spirit of a war, like it or not. But how we fight it, we control that. We can try it like Cass or like Jessica and Deborah. We don’t have much, but we have our entire lives to do things that honor them." I pause, out of words.
"I've never been in a war," Ferrero says. "I just know they go on longer than anyone wants them to."
He's right. "If you stick with me, I will make every effort to make it a clean one. I don't think any other vipe is going to give you a better offer. What do you think?"
Ferrero looks at the coffin and sniffs. Runny nose, no surprise. "I'm with you."
We embrace and then walk away out of the visitation room. In the doorway to the outside, there are a dozen people in varying shades of black. They're probably here for some other service, so I don't speak to them. But when I open the door to the reception hall, I can't pretend anymore.
There are a hundred faces in here.
The closest vipes give me passing glances. Then, they stop. Then, they glance again. "Are you…" asks one.
"Yes," I say.
"I heard you were dead. I gave up."
"Well," I say, "let that be a lesson to you."
72 - KERN
December 10th
For someone drifting in and out of consciousness, I'm concealing my infection well. The EMTs load me into one of the fire and rescue ambulances, and I wake up in a recovery room with a metal rod holding my shin together. A friendly-but-busy surgeon drops by with a plastic jar holding a bullet fragment that lodged in the meat of my calf. The wound is left to drain and heal—the full leg cast will go on soon enough. After the surgeon leaves, I get down to the serious business of freaking out.
They've put me on morphine, which solves a significant but small part of my problems. I can still feel the pain of my tibia, splintered like a plank of wood, but on the morph, I can somehow choose not to care and push it to the back of my mind. This is good because the front has no real estate left. I need an escape plan. It took me four hours to get into surgery, three to get it done. Sleep took up ten. That's all the incubation it needs.
My fever is at 38.4 C, and I've thrown up once already. That sealed my fate—the nurse suspected something. He took four vials of blood and saliva and skin samples, a flag that couldn't be redder if it had been made in a vat of maraschino cherries. Lyssaviruses are in saliva and skin. I'm within the window period, but they'll retest as long as I show symptoms. And when the results come back, the hospital will contact their security staff. I'll be in no condition to resist.
I ring for the nurse. It's fourteen long minutes before the man shows up, even though his station is maybe thirty feet away.
"What do you need, Mr. Kern?"
"Crutches," I say. "I need to be able to get to the bathroom."
The nurse taps the bedpan by the side of the bed. "Sorry. No walking. Until that cast goes on, it's Old Reliable here."
"I'm not shitting in a pan."
He's obviously heard this before. "Then I hope you don't have to go at all."
"If that’s how we do this," I say, "please bring me a Discharge Against Medical Advice."
The nurse's face falls. I hold his gaze. That's right. You mess, I mess back. A DAMA isn't much, just a form stating I'm going to go home and live or die on my own dime, all hospital responsibility absolved. It's not anything a nurse should fear, but he'll need his supervisor and the attending to sign off: more work. More work is something people avoid like oncoming traffic.
"Mr. Kern, you are in no condition to get out of here."
"Doctor Kern."
The nurse compromises. "How about I get you a chair?" He leaves and returns with a wheelchair. I'm soon perched on the toilet, with the nurse outside the closed door, waiting.
The morphine's given me constipation, which is fine with me—I simply sit and use the time to plan.
I have to get out before the stuff wears off because when it does, I'll be useless. I need my clothes, I need to get past the desk, then out to a taxi because my car is still at Greenbriar. After that, what? My phone. I need to convert every asset I own to cash. If the police come knocking, I'd better be gone. They can take anything I own. They can take my life.
I flush the toilet for effect and shuffle into the wheelchair again. I roll out into my room. I feign compliance. The nurse lifts me into bed.
"You stay there, okay? Once they check the drainage and all that, someone will be in to put a cast on. We're not even supposed to let you use the bathroom."
"Look," I say, "I want a DAMA, but I guess explaining it to your boss could be annoying. If it's too much work for you, just print it out, and tell the next guy on shift to bring it to me."
That seems to mollify the man. "I'll see what I can do, all right?"
"Great."
I watch him go, consider waiting for all of a minute and decide to screw it. I unhook myself from the drips and make for the wheelchair again. I fall successfully into it and push myself over to the corner where my clothes are piled. The shirt and the underwear are done with some delicate maneuvering. But when it comes time for the slacks, they're rags. Dimly, I remember the EMTs cut them off me to see my leg. The slacks are shredded to the waist.
Waiting is death. I pull the one good pant leg on and let the chopped-up rags dangle. My wallet and keys are still in the pockets—excellent. I throw on my jacket and, within minutes, cautiously roll down the hall.
Avoiding notice isn't hard—there are tons of wounded officers from Greenbriar, as well as the usual ER patients. The nurse is on the phone. I roll through the double doors and then to an elevator. Five minutes later, I'm out by the parking lot, feeling cold wind and post-rain mist.
It takes me a few seconds to realize my victory is nothing of the kind. I need a ride but have no taxi and no phon
e. I roll into the parking lot, hoping some cab will swing around the corner and pull up right next to me. The road is dark, and the cars that come by are nothing good.
They're going to search for me. They have to. I push on to the main road. With no alternative, I stick out my arm, thumb extended. Cars pass me by, over and over, and every second I look back, waiting to see my captors. The mist turns to cold, small droplets of rain that sting me. If it weren't for the morphine, I'd lose it completely.
A black sport utility vehicle finally comes to a halt a little beyond me. A man gets out and throws open an umbrella. I roll toward the car, down an incline. I seize the wheels to avoid hurtling into him. I can barely control myself going ten fucking meters.
"Hell of a night, huh?" says the man, whose head is framed by long, gray braids and male pattern baldness. The bumper stickers plastering the back of the car were mostly catchy slogans about world peace and how the current occupant of the White House was a moron. He's a walking heartbrainer stereotype.
That's normalcy, blessed normalcy.
I see an opening. "They kicked me out," I say. "No health insurance. I'm trying to get to Bethesda. Is that far out of your way?"
"Don't you worry about that," my savior says. "Let's get you in."
It's a struggle—the SUV is high, and as I clamber into the back, I bang my foot on the shotgun seat. I wince, less in agony, more afraid I've knocked something loose. The driver manhandles the wheelchair into the trunk, programs the drive, and in a minute, the SUV is doing its electric glide. I notice a distinct plastic smell.
"New car?" I ask.
"Four days," the man says proudly. "Just in time to lend a hand, right?"
"Right, thanks," I say distantly. Human interaction is more difficult than I imagined. Is the morph wearing off? I have meds in my house from the last time I pulled a muscle, but they can't be sufficient. I debate asking my savior to stop, but there are so many things to stop for, I don't know where to begin. I need pants, a phone, plaster so I can put on the cast myself and a crutch from a medical supply store so I can handle stairs. If I can just convert my stock to a cashiers' check, I'll be home free—
—except I won't be. I glance down at my wasted leg, still discolored from the iodine of the surgery, still wadded with dressing that will need to be changed. I'm supposed to heal fast now but if, and only if, I can get what I need.
Blood? That's so small, so petty, by comparison. The videos are everywhere. The F-prots will find out what I am. And Field can blame me for losing ENDGAME. But what was it that I said back at the trial? A vipe in a wheelchair. Still dangerous.
"You okay back there?" asks the driver.
"Yeah, it's nothing," I say. "I'm just hungry."
EPILOGUE
December 14th
Ena flexes her muscles one by one, peeling away a layer of white, dead skin and emerging with cool, gray scales that look young and a little bit beautiful. I watch as the snake finishes pulling her tail out of the sock-like skin. She doesn't mind my presence now that I sit obediently on the couch and make no sudden movements. I can't explain why, but I find the shed soothing to watch, at least from the safety of the other side of the glass.
I glance over to the cherry-wood god carving. He tried to return it, but I told him to keep it. He drilled in a hole and strung it on a leather thong. It's on the bed, now, just a little too awkward to wear when we make love. We've done a lot of that, slowly and carefully, since we made it to Atlanta. It beats grief.
Ranath is hanging up the phone as I come in.
"What did they say?"
"Nothing terrifying," he reports. "I still have the job, and a very nice intern is going to take us house-hunting in the suburbs. It will all be rather boring."
"Until the day you drop the mice on them," I say.
Ranath—it is strange to call him that but hardly the strangest thing I've ever done for a lover—scrubs a pot and puts it in the drying rack. "Well, legally the CDC can't do a thing with stolen research. But you never know. They may provide interesting answers."
"You don't think—I mean, Kern was talking like in ten years—"
He shuts off the sink and looks at me intently. "I can't promise a cure," he says. "I can't promise that we can create prey for you immune to the virus."
"You'll have a lot of nights where I come home from biting another man."
"I understand," Ranath says. "But I know we won't lie to each other."
I don't say anything but walk closer and embrace him. He squeezes back, and I try to come up with something good to say.
"Is it weird if that sounds very romantic to me?"
"Romance needs all kinds of weirdness." He brightens. "Come on, the news is almost tolerable tonight." He turns on the wallscreen and televised opinions blare.
I grimace. I guessed him for a bookworm, but no one is perfect. "Have they stopped showing Deborah?"
"Breunig's the story now. Charges against him were yesterday. The missing persons tied to him are today."
"He's going to rat out both of us."
"At the moment, just you. It's probably time for a change of name."
"Just how good are you at that?"
He gives me a smile. "I have practice in making things disappear. Now, fortunately, the news isn't all BRHI. Most of it is swallowed up by the election."
"I barely even know who's running," I say. "I mean, I know there's like twenty jokers who announced, but call me when there's a choice of four. Two, even."
He mutes the television. "Well, given the next president's ability to sign executive orders and the ages of the Supreme Court justices… I think we'd better get involved."
I stop. "Wait, we couldn't… I mean, they ruled no…"
"The world changed once," Ranath says. "It can change again." I look into his eyes, and for once, the cold sea-green is warm and inviting. He believes it.
I tune in a few seconds later to hear him saying something about scathing dissents and legislation in Congress. You can't take the D.C. out of him.
"Go back to the president thing," I say. "Is there good news or not?"
"This debate was last Thursday," he says. "From what I hear, the shocking impact of a video came up, and then, among other things, the candidates clarified their positions on VIHPS. I took the liberty of downloading it all for tonight."
I'm a little startled that he remembered to do all this in the midst of everything. But I'm not mad. I'm remembering Kern and his rant about affecting an election. The thought makes me mad enough to fight.
"Get out of here," I say. "Why do you sound like you're going to make me vote?"
"Because," he replies, "I like you."
Acknowledgements
Only after considerable time and effort did I realize that writers always mean it when they say, "no book is written alone." I would like to thank my initial beta readers, Anna Salonen, Mary Sexton, and the writer who goes by "Learned Foote." Adding expertise were Brian Joughin, who corrected my medical slip-ups; Ronald J. Allen, James Daily, and especially Carole Hirsch, who shot down the worst of my legal ridiculousness; and Philip Daay, who helped me jump into the world of self-promotion. Lindsay Mealing of Emerald City Literary offered encouragement over a long project when giving up was a tempting option. As for editing, Cameron Harris killed useless chapters with a tai chi sword and Sigrid Macdonald finalized the manuscript that, like a vampire, refused to die. Any mistakes that remain are mine.
Beverly and Shane, the kiddos, provided much-needed breaks and perspective, and my brother Brian is always up for talking about how to clear a house. My parents have displayed an unending patience with my choice of profession, and their optimism is always heartening.
Lastly, my wife Jennifer helped conceive Lorenz v. BRHI back in a Constitutional Law class when learning about a case similar to the fictional Kelly v. Seven Star Health and Hospice. I would not be the writer I am today without her, nor would Civil Blood be what it is. Thank you, Jenny.
Ded
ication
For Sue Colton-Carey, who made me read
The Washington Post
every morning of third grade.
It stuck.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Copyright © 2018 by Christopher M. Hepler. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018904598
Edited by Sigrid Macdonald.
Cover art by Jake Clark.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-9996133-1-3
Kindle Edition ISBN: 978-0-9996133-0-6
Electronic Edition ISBN: 978-0-9996133-2-0
Information about the author and the Civil Blood
universe can be found at:
www.christopherhepler.com
