Suckers

by Z. Rider

  The buzzing was more distant. The headache slipped from around his skull, leaving him reasonably all right again.

  He got dressed and headed to Ray’s.

  † † †

  Ray walked out of the bathroom with a cigarette hanging between his lips. “How much you got left?”

  Dan held up his thumb and forefinger, spread a little ways apart.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “All right.”

  Ray held his gaze. “Straight up?”

  “Yeah. I mean it. I’m good for now.” Barely. For now. The cat, though—he’d dreamed about that fucking cat last night. Dreamed it was sitting in his closet, watching him from the dark shadows. Twitching its tail every time his dreaming self tried to settle back into sleep. “Got anything promising yet?” he asked, following Ray into the living room, where Ray’s laptop rested on one of the easy chair’s flat arms. Ray steadied it with two fingers as he sat.

  “I’ve got two possibilities, one maybe we can chase up as early as tomorrow. Tonight if I can talk them into it.”

  “What about Moss?”

  Ray squinted at the screen as he scrolled the browser. After a few seconds, Dan gave up on an answer. He set a cardboard tray of coffees on a battered paperback on quantum physics. “Do you actually read this stuff?”

  “Hmm?”

  He dropped the bag of Egg McMuffins beside the coffees, opened the top, and pulled one out for himself. He had to move a book on changing reality out of his way to sit on the couch. “So where are these possibilities?”

  “Boston, both of them. B.U. kids, I think.”

  “Do they know each other?”

  “If they do, they haven’t said anything. And I haven’t mentioned I’m talking to someone else in the same area. One I’m not sure is gonna pan out. He keeps asking if he’s going to become a vampire.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that’s such a great fucking deal.” Dan tore off a piece of the breakfast sandwich.

  “Now, he don’t know no better,” Ray said. “Toss me one of those.”

  “Do you think I could pass it on to people?” Dan asked.

  “Like a cold?”

  “I mean, you don’t have it, so it’s not air- or saliva-borne.”

  “I guess we have yet to see if Esmy gets it from your other bodily fluids.”

  “We used a condom.”

  “Very smart.”

  “Mostly because I don’t want to have a kid on top of being a blood-drinking freak.”

  “Right,” Ray said. He sat back, unwrapping his sandwich.

  Dan said, “Esmerelda wanted to taste my blood.”

  Ray’s attention flicked up from the sandwich.

  “I said I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Dan said.

  Processing this latest bit of info, Ray nodded slowly.

  “It was the first time I thought to wonder if my blood might be infected,” Dan said.

  Ray gave it some thought before shrugging and taking another bite of the McMuffin.

  “What about the other possibility?” Dan nodded at the computer.

  “Uh, sleep deprived at this point. I’ve had them both up all night, emailing back and forth. I really want to do it tonight if I can talk them into it. On the other hand, you have to watch yourself. These guys can get you in a position of spending hours convincing them you’re what you say you are, only to decide you’re full of shit anyway. Waste of fucking time. You’ve gotta avoid that whole trap. Not to mention the complete fuckheads like the guy in Brattleboro.”

  Dan watched him eat.

  Eventually he launched into questions again—starting with the one that was most bugging him: “What about Moss? He’s not going to want to go out again already.”

  “We’ll talk to him,” Ray said without looking. “I have an idea to solve that problem too.”

  “I actually don’t want to keep taking him away from his family. We do that enough as it is.” Moss didn’t come with them overseas—they had a guy in Europe who jumped on the tour to replace him—but even just the North America dates took him away from home for big jumps of time.

  He stood, wadding the sandwich wrapper in his fist, and went to the kitchen to throw it away—more to work off his nervousness than anything else. They weren’t going to get Moss. Moss was going to sit them down and go, “Look, guys, I hate to do this to you, but…” And who could blame him?

  Back in the living room, he fetched one of Ray’s guitars and sat, checking the tuning, strumming it a bit, then picking out bits of the melody he’d had in his head all night.

  “Something new?”

  “Yeah. It’s all I’ve got of it so far.”

  “I like it. Kind of melancholy, though.”

  “I’m thinking of building it to chaos and then just—you know, done. Silence.”

  “This guy’s not getting back to me any too quickly,” Ray said. “Fuck it.” He flipped the laptop shut and lifted his Gibson from beside the chair. “Run through that again?”

  Head down, Dan nodded and started to play.

  They spent two hours at it till Dan got up to take a leak and Ray sat back to enjoy a cigarette and check his messages.

  “Bingo!” Dan heard him call.

  “What?” he asked as he walked back in. “We’re on for tonight?”

  “Ah, no. I don’t think that’s gonna work out.” As Ray scratched the back of his head, Dan found it a wonder he didn’t singe his hair with the lit end of the butt. Ray said, “But the other one’s definite for tomorrow. Guy calls himself deathly_black.”

  “At least it’s not deathly_black76923.”

  Ray wheezed out a laugh with a lungful of smoke.

  “Tomorrow night,” Dan said. “Boston?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Moss?”

  “Gonna call him right now.” He stubbed his cigarette and got up to find his phone.

  Dan settled back on the couch. Moss was going to say no. You could only push someone’s hospitality so far. Moss was going to say no, and he couldn’t blame him.

  But man did that fuck them. Him.

  Ray walked by, punching up Moss’s number. He was in the kitchen when he started talking. The back door rattled open, swung shut.

  Dan slumped lower and said, “Fuck,” under his breath. Did they know anyone else who could do it?

  Did they know another way they could do it?

  He itched to jump up and use Ray’s laptop to look up…what? Blood Drawing for Dummies?

  They could break into a blood bank.

  Right.

  The door opened. Ray headed for the bathroom instead of the living room. Fucker. Time crawled. The toilet flushed, and eventually Ray appeared in the doorway, towel-drying his hands.

  “Well?” Dan asked.

  Ray picked up what was left of his coffee. “He’s gonna come over in a bit for a half-hour or so.”

  “For?”

  Ray drank. Then he set the cup back down. Then he searched out his pack of cigarettes and found one still in it. He put it between his teeth and lit it.

  Dan followed his every move, impatient. Wanting to say For? again, louder. For? For?!

  Finally Ray exhaled a cloud of smoke. “He’s gonna teach me how to do it.”

  Dan watched him, open-mouthed. “Can you?”

  “Can we use your arm? He also said we should get some oranges to practice on before we move on to fucking up your arm.”

  Dan continued to stare.

  “He said he’s not letting me anywhere near his arm, so it’s gotta be yours or mine,” Ray said. “And mine might be awkward. Plus we might need to use me, so I don’t want to fuck up my veins practicing.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” Maybe. He looked at the coffee cups on the table, at the physics book—Taking the Quantum Leap. At envelopes full of bills, at picks and a machine head and a harmonica with a dent in it. “You think it’ll be okay?”

  “You can chug it when we’re done. I know it’s not as good
as outsourcing…”

  “Right.”

  Ray held the cigarette filter in front of his mouth as he watched Dan. Squinting through the smoke. “If you need more, I’ll donate,” he said.

  It had been, what, five days since his last donation? The glow of the laptop screen wasn’t the only thing making him look pale and worn down.

  Dan said, “Don’t worry about it. I still have Esmy’s at my place. And drinking my own’s not for nothing.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “How many times are you going to ask?”

  “Hey, I’m just checking.” He closed the laptop. “Pass me that guitar. I think I got another idea. And you should run out and get some oranges.”

  † † †

  With a mesh bag of fruit sitting on the front seat, Dan pulled up behind a dispiritingly familiar car. It wasn’t Moss’s. He let out a long sigh before collecting the bag and heading upstairs.

  They were in the living room, Ray in his chair with the laptop shut, Jamie on the couch.

  “Hey,” Dan said. “Rehab over?”

  “Over for me,” Jamie said.

  Dan set the oranges on the coffee table and dropped onto the couch.

  Jamie pushed his hair back from his eyes. “They got me all hyped up to do rehab while I was at detox, like that was gonna be the icing on the cake, but it’s— It didn’t do it for me.”

  “So you left,” Dan said.

  “What I needed was to get clean. I got clean. I’m still clean. How’ve you been?”

  “Shit.” Dan leaned back. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “He’s been having a health problem,” Ray said.

  Dan wasn’t sure he wanted Jamie to know—but of course he had to know. He was the other third of the band.

  Jamie turned, bringing his knee up on the couch. “Seriously? What’s wrong?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Um, you remember when I was attacked in North Carolina?”

  Jamie said nothing.

  Ray said, “The bat.”

  “Oh yeah. Shit. What happened?”

  “I’ve been having some issues. Audio hallucinations, headaches, vision problems…”

  “Have you been to a doctor?”

  Ray said, “We’ve figured out how to fix it. For a while at least.”

  Jamie looked from Dan to Ray to Dan again, and Ray said, “Never mind. Don’t worry about it.”

  Dan let out a breath, but it left a tightness in his chest. On the one hand, he didn’t want to deal with Jamie knowing the truth of it. On the other—drug money for blood, right? But he did look clean: bright-eyed, fleshed out. “Where’re you staying now?” he asked.

  “My parents,” Jamie said. “They’re cool with it as long as I’m clean.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “What’s up with you anyway?” Jamie said to Ray. “How come you look like shit if he’s the one who’s sick?”

  “Too much tobacco, too little sleep, too much worry.” He glanced at his fingers as he got ready to fire his lighter up again. “My nails are so chewed-down, I can’t get the tab on a can of soda up without using a butter knife.”

  “Take better care of yourself, Ray-Ray. You’re supposed to be on break.” Jamie slouched lower on the couch, yawning. “Got any idea when we’re getting back to work?”

  “It’ll be a little while yet.”

  Jamie hung his head back and let out a sigh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  He dreamed the sky was black and undulating. Buzzing came from loudspeakers, black boxes mounted high on thick black poles. Everyone was running.

  It colored his mood when he got into Ray’s car, that and the steel-gray clouds crowding the sky. One of the Bostons canceled at the last minute, rescheduling for tonight, leaving Ray more time to practice on the oranges, on Dan. On himself, with Dan pacing restlessly, eyeing the measuring cup he was bleeding into, saying, “That’s enough. You just need to get the hang of it, not feed me.” Saying, “I’m good, you know. I’m fine for now. Eat a steak or something. Please.”

  They didn’t talk much on the trip down—what was there to say that hadn’t been said already, outside of I hope you can do this? On a real person. On a stranger.

  As they drove through Medford, Dan did think of one thing to say. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am you’ve stuck with me through this.”

  “What else was I supposed to do? Lose the band?”

  Dan laughed. “Shit. You’re officially the only member of the band without serious substance abuse problems.”

  Ray smiled. “I guess I am.”

  They headed to Cambridge, where deathly_black’s street was crowded with huge Georgian and Federal multi-family buildings and suffered from a distinct lack of on-street parking.

  “Is that a cemetery?” Dan said as Ray slowed, looking for a side street with parking.

  “Wouldn’t be surprised if that had been a selling point for our guy. He’s a little morbid.”

  They got out of the car. Ray said, “Up here,” as he grabbed a railing. Dan looked across to the cemetery while Ray rapped on the door.

  When it opened, Dan turned to see a guy in a red polo shirt with a Staples logo on it. He was probably twenty four and already starting to lose his sandy-brown hair.

  “Dude. Hey. I just got off work.” He held the door wide. “Just ignore the mess.”

  The place was a single room, the décor schizophrenic: a quilt that looked like a hand-me-down from Mom covered the bed, a chunky computer desk took up most of one end of the room. An iron pentagram thumped lightly on the back of the door as deathly shut it behind them. Satanic posters—goat-headed men, naked women on stone slabs—papered the walls. Black candles beside Mountain Dew bottles and a Kleenex box had been burned down to mounds of wax.

  “So you’re the vampires,” deathly said.

  “He’s the vampire,” Ray said. “I’m the nurse.” He brandished the orange bag.

  Dan wondered if he could get in trouble for claiming to be a nurse.

  “How’d you get to be a vampire?”

  “Bad luck,” Dan said.

  “I’ve drunk blood before. Mostly goat, but I was involved in a ritual using human blood once.”

  “How was that?” Dan asked. Because…what else did you say to that?

  “Powerful as fuck.”

  “Why didn’t you think of goat blood?” Ray asked Dan as he set the bag on the bed and unzipped it.

  “Missed opportunity there.” Dan stepped away from the poster of the woman being sacrificed, where the huge shadow of the knife on the chamber wall was more ominous than the knife itself.

  “So how this works is just like the Red Cross.” Ray worked his hand into a latex glove.

  “So you said.”

  “All right, so have a seat, roll up your sleeve. Let’s get started.”

  “I’m gonna get some air,” Dan said.

  The guy looked at Ray and said, “You have a squeamish vampire?”

  “It takes all kinds,” Ray was saying as Dan let himself out. He stuffed his fists in his pockets and stared at the dark cemetery again, waiting. Twenty minutes later, the door opened. Ray came out with Moss’s bag and a bottle of Mountain Dew.

  “Want some?” He held it out.

  “I’ll take the blood instead.”

  “We’re good on that.” He passed Dan the bag, and Dan waited till their car was headed up 16E before getting the bottle out and uncapping it.

  “So that was an experience.” He screwed the cap back on.

  “It takes all kinds,” Ray said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Where are we meeting this one?” Dan asked. After a week, donors were getting hard to come by. The news reports weren’t helping—the random attacks by others infected the same way he was. He nudged an empty Filet O’Fish container and some Coke bottles out of the way with his toe so he could slouch down.

  “We’re gonna do the actual draw at her
place, but she wants to meet us at a bus stop first, make sure we’re okay.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “She has roommates, but she’s not telling them what’s going on. We’re just going to head straight to her room.”

  “I don’t think I’d tell my friends if I was giving blood to a vampire either,” Dan said. “You’d think I’d lost my fucking mind.”

  Ray laughed.

  Tonight’s stop was Danbury, Connecticut. Ray was hoping to get another donor lined up for tomorrow, thinking New York City should have at least one—at least.

  “You know, if this band thing doesn’t work out,” Ray said, “I might go for a phlebotomy certification.” He flashed his teeth.

  “Right.”

  When they got to the bus stop, Dan was glad for the chance to stretch his legs. The weather had warmed up—still chilly, but more seasonably chilly than “Holy shit it’s fucking cold out for November.” Ray leaned against the stop’s three-sided shelter, watching traffic.

  A bus came by, unloaded people, moved on.

  “It’s easier without Moss, isn’t it?” Ray said.

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like we’ve lost our babysitter, no one standing behind us worrying about everything.”

  “I’m worrying about everything,” Dan said.

  “Me too, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t know. It’s just easier, you and me. More maneuverable. If an opportunity comes up, we just go, you know?”

  Dan nodded at the sidewalk.

  Ray checked his phone for the third time, put it back in his pocket.

  They gave it a half-hour before they started talking about what they should do.

  “Fuck it,” Ray said, stubbing out his latest cigarette. “We’re here, let’s find someone else.” When they were back in the car, he dug out his laptop. “Take this. Give me a shout when an unlocked Wi-Fi connection pops up.”

  They didn’t have to go far, and Ray took the laptop back, checking messages, contacting the girl who’d been planning to meet up with them, reaching out to a few others to try to line something up.

  The lights went out in the coffee shop they were parked alongside. People walked up the sidewalk, alone and together. He had maybe a third of a cup left in the bottle, and he itched to drink it. He wasn’t even hearing buzzing anymore these days, had no problems with his vision. The headaches came, though—like the one leaning against his skull now—and with them a hunger that felt a lot like he imagined Jamie’s need to use felt. It took you over. It made all other thought impossible. A soft huff of air jumped from his throat at the thought that he finally understood their drummer. Ray, focused on the laptop, didn’t look up. Dan chewed his thumbnail. He couldn’t live like this. How could anyone live like this?