In The Blood (Book 3): The Blood Flows

by Lee Isserow

  “Shh,” Ben instructed. Those outside couldn't see the bloods, not from their current vantage points at their vans and in the helicopter. If it came to it, their gelatinous reinforcements had the advantage of surprise.

  He reached to the door and opened it, sliding out of the driver's seat. Luke and Kat followed, climbing down to ground level.

  “So much as twitch, and we'll blow your heads off!” the voice on the loud-hailer grunted.

  Ben could feel a tingle across his neural tissue, blood talking to him, making its way to the motor cortex.

  “Don't you dare!” one of the guards shouted, stepping closer, aiming his weapon at Luke. Ben glanced down, the boy had his bottom lip between his teeth. He shook his head. “I said don't you bloody dare!” the guard shouted again. His finger was twitching on the trigger. Twitching a little too much. The weapon exploded to life in his hands.

  Luke flew back against the side of the van with the force of the blast. His body seemed to hang there, seated sleepily in a dent in the body work, then fell to the floor. Lifeless.

  16

  Kat ran over to the crumpled heap of Luke's body, cradling him in her arms. The armed guards around them remained motionless, allowing the woman to grieve over her son. Tears forked down her pale cheeks, the colour sapped by overwhelming anguish. Her mind was blank, lips quivering, hands trembling. He felt so warm in her arms, so much like he did only moments earlier, when he was next to her in the van. She looked around his body for a wound, there should have been blood coalescing, a creature bursting forth, but she couldn't see any signs of a 'goblin emerging.

  Lifting up his shirt, there was a thick purple bruise across his sternum, that fringed black at the edges.

  “Beanbag rounds,” one of the guards grumbled. “Ain't gonna shoot a kid, are we?” He lowered his weapon and stomped towards Kat with heavy, clodding footsteps, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her away from Luke.

  Another of the guards knelt down and picked up the boy's unconscious body, taking him back towards their van.

  Ben's eyes navigated from one guard to the next. Some still had their weapons primed and aimed at him, others were preparing the abduct the boy and his mother. She fought at the strong grasp that held her hair tight, but another guard was on her, taking her arms, holding them behind her back as they marched her away.

  Ben wasn't going to let this happen, wasn't going to watch a child taken from their mother. And a more selfish part of him wasn't going to let anyone stand in the way of finding his father, not when they had only just started to get answers. He could feel the mood of the free bloods in the van, they wanted out, wanted to attack. But they were waiting for his signal for them to burst forth, out the doors, through the windows, to lay waste to the people hurting their kin. Ben felt like he already owed them so much, he wouldn't let them put themselves at such risk yet again. He would lead the charge.

  Surreptitiously, his hands tapped at his sides, feeling for something – anything – sharp in his pockets. But they were empty. He could bite through his tongue, his lips, but feared the trigger fingers of the men that surrounded him would be faster than the time it would take the blood to fully form.

  Then from somewhere in the back of his mind, a pulsing, that white-noise calm, a knowing. He might not have anything in his possession to cut through his skin, but he was suddenly aware that he didn't need to cut his skin to let the blood out.

  As he watched Kat being forced into the back of one van, Luke's body thrown into another, his blood began to boil, not hot, but cold. A chill started in his finger tips and began to make its way up his hands towards his wrists. He looked down to his extremities They were pale, turning blue. The cold stopped half-way up his wrists, the skin bulging between the shift in tones, a line between the warm and cold. Not a bulge, he realised, but a thick, deep clot.

  He took another look at the guards around him. They were shifting positions, coming towards him with weapons raised. Two ahead of him, six to the left, eight to the right. Then there was the helicopter above, but that he would leave to the free bloods.

  Rough leather gloves wrapped round his arms, as the guards prepared to take him towards the back of a van. “Don't struggle,” one of them said. “This will all be over soon.”

  They were more correct than they could know. The clots in his wrists broke up, three on his left and four on his right as he whispered through the pulses in his head to the free blood. It was time to strike.

  He took a deep breath and lifted his wrists up, fighting free of the grip the guards had on him, throwing his arms out wide like a preacher on the mount, praising the will of God.

  But it was not God's will that would smite those who wished to harm him and his compatriots. Arrows of hard, dark blood shot out from his skin, tearing his wrists to shreds as they blasted towards the guards. The arrows snaked through the air piercing each of the guards in turn. Through one ear and out the other, through a throat, a sternum, a gut, sewing them into a grisly friendship bracelet, with a silken thread that trailed back to the tattered musculature of his wrists.

  Behind him, a mighty pillar of blood stood proud, at its peak a sharp spike that had impaled the base of the helicopter. The pillar receded, separating back into the individual bloods, whilst the helicopter whipped wildly through the air, its spotlight darting around as it was knocked off its intended course.

  Ben cared not for the destruction of the craft behind him. He lifted the men aloft by the thread that bound them, holding them in the air like paper dolls. He needed to be certain that all of them were dead, that Luke and Kat were safe. Once all of them were accounted for, he pulled the arrows back, the bodies of the guards making thick, wet sounds as their wounds were re-torn in the opposite direction, each thudding to the ground in turn. The arrows liquefied as they returned to Ben's wrists, sealing up the tattered and torn skin behind them.

  . The free blood gorged themselves on the dead, as Ben walked towards the vans, their slurping sounds overpowered by an ungodly explosion from the helicopter. It had finally came to a stop from its wild movements, meeting the ground just outside the laboratory compound.

  A chill came over Ben, the realisation that a blood was in the helicopter when it crashed, that it had sacrificed itself for the others. He glanced at the creatures devouring the dead guards. They did not seem concerned for their own safety, for their own lives. This worried him, that it would be so easy to take advantage of the noble creatures.

  As he wrenched the door of the first van open, spikes of blood launched at him, tearing through his chest, Kat jumping out behind them, her mouth frothing with blood. She froze, seeing him hanging there on her scabrous spears, and withdrew the spikes back into herself instantly.

  Ben fell to the floor, gasping. His blood flowed, filling the holes in his chest and back, stitching muscle and skin back together, rebuilding the organs that had been skewered.

  “Sorry!” Kat stammered. “I don't... I'm not able to control it like you and Luke... Are you...?”

  “Fine,” he gasped. “Go get Luke.” He pointed with frail limbs to the other van, catching his breath and holding in the agony as his blood repaired the damage to his body.

  Kat returned with the boy in her arms. She took him back to the camper, Ben picking himself up and following, past the free blood, each of which were now big and fat with the fluids drunk from the guards.

  The three of them sat in the front of the van, whilst the bloods returned to the back. Silence fell over them, as they looked out on the field of bodies around them. Kat pulled up Luke's shirt to check his bruises from the beanbag round. They were healing fast. Once again, they owed the blood their lives.

  “Still want to meet my mother?” she asked, a scoff following her words, even compared to almost being recaptured, it was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “Unless you've got a better plan...”

  There was no better plan. They were all too aware that even the plan they had was barely a
plan, but they were already so deep down this rabbit hole, they had to see where it led.

  17

  They drove through the night to London, then drove through London. They made no stops, no deviations from their route. Kat's mother was another piece of the puzzle, the only piece they could reach right now, and they prayed that with her lay some answers.

  They pulled off Camden Road into the grounds of the tower block, an uncertainty washing over Kat as she stared up at the concrete behemoth that stood over them. She didn't get on with her mother at the best of times, and calling round unannounced was hardly going to bring her unbridled joy. She feared the barrage of insults, for Luke more than her self. But the idea of leaving Luke alone in the van, even under the protection of the free blood, did not sit right with her. She had come so close to losing him, she wouldn't let him stray from her side, not again.

  Leaving the confines of the van, they walked up to the entrance. It required a key to open the door, which was no challenge to Ben's new aptitude with the blood. Coming to the elevator, they discovered it was out of order.

  “Twenty floors, and the lift doesn't work?” Ben sighed, as they started climbing the stairs.

  “Good thing she's on the third floor...” Kat grumbled, dread growing with every footstep up with old concrete staircase.

  Ben made the others hold back as he pushed the door to the third floor open. There was no telling what might be lying in wait for them. He saw no signs of activity, and continued along the hall, beckoning for the others to follow. As they came to the door, Ben reached to the lock to create a scabby key, and the door fell flat down into the hall of the flat.

  “You're strong!” Luke said, with a giggle.

  Ben signalled for them to hold back as he poked his head into the apartment, listening for any movement inside. There was none, but the hall alone looked like a bomb site. As they stepped deeper into the apartment, it was clear that it had been ransacked, someone searching for something, whatever that might be.

  “Couldn't have happened to a nicer person...” Kat muttered under her breath.

  “Take Luke out of here,” Ben instructed. “Take the bloods, go back to the sewer.”

  “What? No!”

  “They'll know an entrance nearby, they'll know where to keep you safe.”

  “No, this is my mother's flat, crappy as it is, I'm not going to leave you and hide out!” She was adamant, and thought he was being an ass for suggesting she leave..

  “Please,” he asked. “Whoever broke in here probably broke into my dad's office, they won't stop looking, for them or us. I couldn't stand Luke getting caught up in this... and neither could you... Keep him safe.”

  She knew he was right. “I only just got the sewer stink out of my hair...” she grumbled, as she took Luke's hand in her own and walked out, back towards the stairwell.

  As soon as she was out of the room, Ben started searching through the belongings in the flat. There had to be something of worth, something old, medical, that would slot the next piece into the puzzle. He stretched his fingers out. They started getting cold, faster than before, and with a gut-wrenching sound of fleshy rips, snakes of blood tore through the thin skin at the top of his hands. The snakes formed fingers from their heads, gecko-like suckers at the ends, flicking through papers and books from all over the room for him to look through before they were discarded in a pile.

  He lifted up the couch, the bed, combed through the remnants of the television, the shards of wood that were once a dresser, but there did not appear to be anything that would help them.

  A creak, a footstep at the door, and Ben froze. His snakes of blood slid through the air around him, arcing out, the fingers receding, sharp spikes emerging from their glistening skin. Another footstep, and another, getting closer and closer, but still slow.

  He shifted the blood to the floor, used it to pick himself right up off the ground and deposit him behind the bedroom door. The blood shifted and shimmered as he reshaped it, into a guillotine above the door frame, just as he had seen the supposedly blood-driven lovers do with the portcullis, all those months ago. Subject one twenty seven, that was what the Squad called the guy. Ben tried to remember his name. The guy was a person, not a damn number. It came to him; Daniel Johnson. For a moment, he mourned the man's death, but the nearing footsteps brought him back to reality. The blade sharpened its tip as it hung there, hardening above the door, ready to strike.

  The footsteps were closer, had come past the kitchen and living room, heading his way. He prepared the guillotine to fall, readied himself to follow up the attack and kill any others who might come through the door after he cut the first down.

  “Ben?” An old voice, withered and tired, but so familiar. A voice he hadn't heard in years, a voice that these days he only heard in memories of a fractured childhood so long in the past.

  “Dad?”

  18

  “What... I...” Ben was speechless, a rush of emotions was running through him, and the blood guillotine that hung over the door was reacting to the imbalance, its blade trembling as he struggled with the appearance of a man he thought gone. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? What the hell have you done to me?” he spat, through tremoring lips.

  “A Google Alert,” his father replied, nonchalantly, as if it were the most obvious answer, as if he had no notion that he had dealt so much torment to his son by his absence, let alone his genetic tinkering.

  The man looked even older than Ben imagined him to be. Not so much frail, but tired, exhausted from a life on the run. The skin sagged around his eyes and cheeks, withered by time, but the eyes that lay in dark, bag-laden sockets were bright as they had ever been. Whether that was from being reunited with his son, or from what his son and the infection within him could do, Ben could not yet say.

  “A Google Alert!” he shouted. The blade above the door clicked, fell, tore through the thin wooden laminate of the floor, barely missing his father's back. “A Goddamn Google alert?!”

  “For a description,” his father continued, shaken, his eyes on the scabby blade that narrowly missed him. “Of the free blood...”

  “What the hell? Where have you been? What are you doing here?”

  “There were sightings, of the blood travelling down in Brighton, I was considering a trip, and then there were further sightings here, around this tower block.”

  “You're not answering any of my damn questions!”

  “Well you are asking rather a lot of them all at once... If you slow down with your questions, perhaps they will all receive answers.” his father said, sternly. This was a tone Ben was all too familiar with, the scolding scholar, no trace of familial bond, let alone love in his progenitor's voice.

  “Do you have any idea of the hell you've put me through?” Ben asked, trying to calm himself, pulling the blood back into his body for fear it might lash out if he left it out any longer.

  “I do,” his father said. “Ever since you entered Thames House,”

  “What? You were there?”

  “I was told, by one of the few people there I still trust. Listen Ben, it's not safe here, we have to leave.”

  “Why didn't you stop me going in? Why didn't you say something? Find me? Get me out?”

  “Once you were through the doors, there was nothing I could do... I couldn't risk them getting their hands on me, on my research.”

  “I haven't seen you since I was a damn kid, haven't heard from you in, what, five years? And you've been watching me all this time? Knew I was infected with this damn thing?” The blood knew he was angry, could feel his rage all too well, and made itself known, tearing through his back, bursting through this clothes, a series of sharp spikes that curved over him, their points looming over the old man. “I've spent all these years communicating with the ghost of you, using your email address like a damn wind telephone - -”

  “- - A what?”

  “Oh, Goddamn it,” Ben sighed. “After the Tsunami in Japan
a man stuck an old phone box in his garden and used it to talk to his dead family, then people from all around started using it to talk to their lost relatives... that's what your email address was Jesus, it doesn't matter! Why didn't you answer me?!”

  “I couldn't...” His father's eyes fell to the floor, something encroaching guilt forming in his heart. “They were watching, they've always been watching, but with the Investigatory Powers Act, they have carte blanche to spy on every communique.”

  “You could have found another way, WhatsApp, some encrypted email service, something!”

  “I didn't want you involved...”

  “I've always been involved, apparently. This whole thing started with me. All because of you.”

  “Not because of me. It started because of my love for you.”

  Ben had no words. He couldn't remember his father ever saying that he loved him. There were no memories from his childhood that had anything close to love in them. They were always academic, teaching him things that in retrospect felt useless. What good is a periodic table in life, let alone when your blood is alive.

  The silence hung in the air. But it was not pure silence. There was a flurry of movement somewhere, deeper in the building. It echoed through the thin walls and floorboards.

  “We have to go,” his father instructed.

  Ben sighed. He knew the old man was right, and wasn't happy about it. Leading the way, he stomped through the flat out to the corridor. The sound of heavy boots was coming from the stairs. Tacks. He knew the sound all too well.

  They turned, running towards the other end of the corridor, a dead end with nothing but a small window at its centre.

  “There's no exit this way!” his father shouted.

  “Then we'll make a damn exit.” Ben said, gruffly.

  The blood tore through his chest, forming into a fist the flew ahead of them, punching through the glass, sending a glittering rain to the tarmac below. Ben sent a tentacle of blood out of his back that wrapped around his father, grabbing hold of him as he leaped through the window, taking the old man with him.