A People's History of the Vampire Uprising_A Novel
Page 4
We all stood there in shock.
“Another day at the office,” the third deputy grumbled.
“Are you taking her to jail?” I asked.
“No, honey, I thought I might take her back to the art gallery,” Lamar said.
More of this bullshit. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Sheriff Lamar replied. “We have a holding facility in the office until we can get her transferred to Alpine, which has a proper jail, and maybe to El Paso. Pretty sure Arizona will come for her in record time.”
“Is it okay if I come with you? I need to make a determination about whether there is a danger from any virus.”
Sheriff Lamar shrugged. “You started the show. Feel free to play it out.”
The trip to the sheriff’s office only took about two minutes. I rode in the front of the police car, with Liza Sole in the back behind the bars. When I glanced back at her, she stared at me with sparkling blue eyes and pale skin. Her lips were bright red even in the darkness of the vehicle, and as she moved her body in and out of the shadows it was almost as if she disappeared and reappeared.
Liza allowed the deputies to walk her into the police station. She showed no signs of violent behavior or resistance. They placed her in a small cell with bars—like from an old western movie. I think Sheriff Lamar sensed my amazement. “Original forged steel,” he said. “They don’t make them secure like this anymore.” Let’s hope it’s as secure as he claims. A window to the outside sat on the wall opposite the cell, moonlight streaming inside.
Years later, when I was debriefed extensively by a multitude of federal authorities, I would sometimes question my own recollections from that night. For example, I don’t know how long I watched Liza in that cell, or when Hector joined me, but I held her eyes for what felt like hours. Liza stared silently back out at us. There was something hypnotic in her movements and eyes. A strange gracefulness in her manner, like a gentle migration from one space to another.
A distinct sense of hopelessness enveloped me in those minutes or hours. But I had to get through all these psychological flashes in my brain—I felt a certain responsibility to understand this person, in spite of my fear. I felt that the prison bars were a mere curtain that Liza could push aside with a wave of her hand. An hour, maybe more, passed.
“How do you feel?” I asked her with a cracking voice.
Silence.
Then: “I feel awesome.”
I didn’t expect that answer with such a blank face.
“I only ask because I believe you have acquired a new type of virus into your system and you may begin to exhibit symptoms.”
Silence.
And she never said another word to me.
Even today, I can recall the feeling of something attempting to put thoughts in my mind or look into my consciousness. The Nogales organic blood illness, we now know, reached each victim or recipient through a previously unknown virion attached to specific cell-surface receptors—such as C-type lectins, DC-SIGN, or integrins. The virus then entered by fusion of the viral envelope with cellular membranes. Even their virions had a mind of their own. So those affected with the virus, essentially, could tap into a consciousness on even a cellular level.
But that night, I, and eventually Hector, simply watched her through the bars in amazement. Finally, Sheriff Lamar pulled us away. The FBI and federal marshals would be arriving soon to transport her back to Arizona, and he urged us to catch a nap in his office.
I don’t know how long I slept. I may have dreamt of people stoning me for transgressions, like waking up late for class, forgetting the answers on my medical boards, not sending my mother a birthday card, or not lending my sister five dollars.
What woke me was the most vengeful shriek I had ever heard. Animalistic—like something from a bad sci-fi movie.
Liza Sole sat in the corner of her cell, screaming, as her arm and part of her face emanated smoke. Were they…burning? The skin almost dripped off her face. I thought it might be some type of dermatitis or eczema, a by-product of the blood disorder, until I realized the window across her cell—
“The sun,” I whispered to Hector.
Given my credentials, the Feds graciously allowed me to ride along in the helicopter. Hector said he would meet me at the hospital.
It was a longer trip to the university medical center than I would have liked. Liza had screamed like a trapped animal the entire helicopter ride, and when we landed on the hospital’s roof, the doctor administered a sedative as the nurses rolled her gurney across the roof in the morning light.
Liza still screamed.
When I met Dr. Jenkins, the hospital’s burn specialist, near the quarantine ward, she shook her shoulders in exasperation. “I have no idea what this is. Her blood has certain attributes that shouldn’t fit, but that’s not my expertise. It appears to have been a significant allergic reaction to exposure to the sun, but the molecular composition of this reaction needs to be studied.”
“Is she any better?” I asked.
“She’s stabilized. We have her in a windowless room with soft lighting. It doesn’t help that there are police everywhere, but she’s still in intensive care. We’ve just got to wait.”
I nodded. “I need to get a sample of her blood.”
“We have that for you.”
As I sat in the cafeteria making calls to the University of Texas at El Paso to get a team together, I saw cameras and reporters descending on the hospital outside. My phone buzzed with a blast of emails: similar cases of dead bodies with the same carotid wounds had spiked in the last few days. The NOBI virus, it seemed, had finally made it to the top of the CDC agenda.
But that didn’t mean that my efforts were being recognized or encouraged. My research was disputed and questioned down to every minute detail. Some scientists insisted that the bite marks were in fact made from a needle and a syringe. Others insisted that there was no new virus—the conditions were simply circumstances and consequences of environmental factors related to injuries from various assaults. And others felt that any possible virus was so limited in the apparent infection rate that it didn’t warrant any expenditures of funds.
I was on my third cup of coffee when Hector shuffled into the hospital cafeteria looking worse than myself. I glanced down after hearing another buzz from an email. This one was from my supervisor at the CDC. I read it three times in the time it took Hector to make it to the table.
He collapsed into the Formica chair. “So what’s the verdict?”
I wanted to laugh. The email seemed to confirm my madness, and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, but I knew it would change my life forever.
And it has. My old man also used to say, “I’d be ahead by now if I could quit while I’m behind.” I thought about that a lot as, for many years, we searched for the Nogales organic blood illness cure. We’ll never know how or why Liza Sole ended up at that mass grave site on the border. No one knew where the bodies went or who retrieved them. But I always suspected they were somewhere out there, re-created for some purpose. And in spite of the many accusations that my work was unethical, I believe my work had—still has—merit.
That day, I sat in the hospital cafeteria and gave Hector a sad smile.
I handed him my phone, so he could read the email too. I said, “I think we found the first vampire.”
I needed to see Liza Sole one more time before I went back to Atlanta. If only to monitor her condition and make certain observations—or more likely to see if I could look into her eyes and have a conversation without my mind becoming fractured. As a scientist, I needed more time with this subject—the most important carrier of this virus.
I took the elevator up to the third floor, and as the doors parted, a scream and crash rolled down the hallway. I brushed against the tide of people running away from the drama. I tripped into the room in time to see Liza Sole launch herself into the closed window and fall out with a hail of glass shards and onto the pa
vement below.
I suppose it was a stroke of luck that I arrived a few moments after the sun went down, because that was when Liza Sole broke out of her restraints and killed two federal marshals and one nurse, before breaking the window and leaping silently from her third-story room onto the pavement.
She was never seen again and still remains on the FBI’s ten-most-wanted list.
But I had her blood.
Boston Herald
July 191: Early this morning, in the South End historic district, the Ellison Corporation, an independent gold distributor for the Northeast, was robbed of over $5 million worth of gold bullion. The Ellison Corporation traded in other precious metals but most of those were kept on the first floor—the gold was kept exclusively in the basement. The FBI has determined that the surveillance systems of the building were disabled and other surveillance cameras on the block malfunctioned with no usable video made available. The two guards on duty were incapacitated by unknown means, rendering them unconscious. The FBI has no current leads on the perpetrators.
1 Page 2, Metro section.
Chapter 2
Father John Reilly
Ordained Catholic Priest and Jesuit
Department of Defense—DIRECTIVE:
SUBJECT: High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group interview with Father John Reilly
Detainee was captured in REDACTED by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Detainee was transferred to a holding facility at REDACTED. After four days, interviewed by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Detainee was not subject to extraordinary conditions before his interview.
Transcript tracks with video recording.
Interviewer is a younger man with Gucci joggers and a gold bomber jacket with a black snapback cap. He chews gum at a rapid pace in between puffs on a cigarette.
Detainee is a man in his early thirties without any visible signs of nervousness.
Interviewer: Are you comfortable? Coffee? If you need a bathroom break let us know. We’re not here to waterboard you or anything. That’s not funny, is it? Pause. Loudly. Let it be known that the subject shook his head in dissent.
Interviewer takes a drink of water.
Father Reilly: Actually, if you’re not too busy, maybe you can start a GoFundMe page for me. Kinda like, “Save me from getting tortured by the U.S. government.”
Interviewer: That’s hilarious. So, how are you feeling?
Father Reilly: Well, if every Shakespeare tragedy has five acts, let’s just say I’m probably sitting here in act five. I used to think of Shakespeare as more of God’s word than the Bible, but then I realized Shakespeare’s work was just better made.
Interviewer claps!
Interviewer: I feel that! Okay, so the bad thing for you is you weren’t exactly caught on American soil. That makes you subject to extraterritorial measures. Let me break it down to you this way. These men sitting and standing in front of you are from the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. They have put together a plan for our interrogation. It’s what they do. I will carry out that plan. It’s what I do.
Father Reilly: Shouldn’t I be read my rights? I mean, for appearances.
Interviewer: We have an emergency exception due to extraordinary circumstances—a “public safety” exception to Miranda. Members of the task force have not yet decided whether to assign your status as an “enemy combatant.” I’ll give you the quick history lesson. Under the Geneva convention guidelines—
Father Reilly: Yes, yes. I know all that.
Interviewer: Then needless to say, you don’t prefer that option. Agreed? Pause. Good. Let it be known again that subject nodded in assent. Why don’t you start by telling me what brought you to the priesthood?
Father Reilly: Okay. Yes. I never entertained thoughts of becoming a priest when I was growing up. My hometown was pretty small, and kind of backwards—at least to a teenager. “The kind of place where people still point at planes,” my sister used to say before she left for college. Or the kind of place where directions were given through local landmarks: “Take a right at the third Olive Garden, then a left at the Red Lobster.” You get the idea.
My parents were Catholics but never whipped a heavy hand when it came to religion. We were expected to make our sacraments of baptism and confirmation, but to be honest, I think it was enough for them that we never got arrested or hooked on drugs.
I never had friends growing up. It sounds kind of offhand when I say that, but it was true. Literally. No. Friends. I wasn’t what is now called Asperger’s, but I was certainly diagnosed many times during my childhood as a loner. I spent years in waiting rooms of doctors’ offices with their medicinal scent, uncomfortably hard couches, and stale music. Answering a series of questions. Waiting on the examination table with the disposable, thin, and crinkled sheet. Then watching the doctor explain the diagnosis to my mother as she nodded in agreement.
I had “a distinct detachment from social interconnections,” with the exception of close family members. As well as “a confined range of exposition of emotions in interpersonal settings.” In layman’s terms, I hated people—solo and in groups.
Interviewer: You know, at a party, someone might call that a sob story.
Father Reilly: Don’t feel badly. I actually developed a pretty elaborate fantasy life. I could sit outside on the driveway with my comic books and become any superhero I wanted to be. Or lie on my back in the front yard, count every star, and blast off into space. I liked it that way—all by myself.
Perhaps I never thought to feel badly for myself, because of my father: he had a pretty hard time of life, and it was sort of the defining aspect of our family.
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Father Reilly: He was born with an extremely large jaw and eyebrow ridge as part of his acromegaly illness—where the anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone. Sort of like gigantism. Not only was his face aggressively distinctive, but he was so tall. You couldn’t miss him if you tried. As a result, he had a perpetual cloud of low self-esteem that seemed to follow him through every encounter. I didn’t realize this for many years. As a kid, he was just my big dad. But as I got older, I saw that any event that required him to leave the house became a stressful circumstance. Even for simple excursions to the grocery store or my baseball games, his anxiety permeated our house for days before and after. He found solace in his garage work space and playing with us in the backyard behind our tall privacy fence.
My father was almost like a monk in his religious devotion—I suppose he thought he could cure his afflictions with prayer, or more likely, he preferred to spend his days at church or at home, to avoid being in public. He began to save money to make a pilgrimage to a shrine in France. There, my dad was certain he would be granted a cure. My dad would take me with him as we went in his truck to pick up junk and scrap metal from different neighborhoods. No matter the heat, we dug through boxes and garbage bags, slime covering our hands, gagging from the smell of rot.
We took what we could find and held a garage sale every Saturday. Our neighbors soon loathed us, although they were too nice—or just felt sorry for my dad—to complain to the police about it. It took forever to accumulate even close to enough money for the pilgrimage. Even then, he ended up having to sell his truck.
So on a warm June day, we all boarded a plane for France—specifically Rocamadour, in southwest France, where the shrine to the blessed Virgin Mary was located. The shrine of Our Lady of Rocamadour.
The church and shrine were located high up on a plateau of a jagged mountain with the basilica built up against a cliff that overlooked the Alzou, a tributary of the Dordogne River. We stayed at a hostel in the Hospitalet village closest to Rocamadour. The next morning, as the sun rose, we made our way to the main street of the village and to the Place de la Caretta. My father stopped in front of the steps that led up to the shrine.
Interviewer: You’ve stopped. Was that it?
Fat
her Reilly: No. This is difficult.
At last my father said, “You all go ahead.”
“What do you mean?” my mom asked. “What are you going to do?” I still recall her fearful expression.
“I’m going up the steps like you but I’m going on my knees while praying the rosary.”
Me, my mom, and my sister all looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Richard,” my mom said. “You can’t do that. There have to be, like, five hundred steps. You’re in no shape to do that, much less in this heat.”
“I’m doing it,” he said. He wasn’t going to give this up, even if he ended up in the hospital.
So my mom pivoted to make a bad situation better. She pointed to me. “Johnny, you and your sister go find a store. Buy ten bottles of water and some healthy snacks and bring them back here. We need to keep your dad hydrated.”
It was hard to watch, but certainly even harder for him to do. Two hundred and sixteen steps to the top. Each step he took on his knees with the pocked and uneven granite that dug into his skin and radiated through his entire body up his spine. Ready to give penance with despair on each step. Twice he leaned over as if he were going to collapse or fall back down the stairs, and we rushed to hold him up. Mom didn’t ask him to quit, but after a hundred steps I was certain he would not make it to the top. I saw the blood seeping through his pants at the knees. His enlarged face twisted in agony. His spine curved to dissipate the needles that poked through his back.