Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Just cut to the chase.

  /The genetics of race is both more complicated and more simple than you might believe . . . skin color and hair texture and facial features are only superficial variations in the human race that are based on climatological influence rather than true genetic divisions . . ./

  I know. The externals of human appearance are actually determined by less than 0.01 percent of our genes while patterns of thousands to tens of thousands of gene markers determine other distinguishing characteristics like intelligence or susceptibility to certain diseases—things that really matter. I don’t think the general has a clue as to what kind of a genetic smart bomb he’s sponsoring. I figured it must have a melanin trigger—

  /It does . . . and it’s very indiscriminate as a result . . . some Hispanics may be more susceptible than some Negroids . . . and more than a few Caucasians may trip the viral trigger, as well./

  That doesn’t sound like it’s very well designed.

  /Oh, it is . . . for its actual purpose, that is. You’re right when you say that the general doesn’t know what he’s turning loose on the world. But the Blackout virus is actually a ruse, a classic example of misdirection./

  So it doesn’t really work?

  /Oh, it does after a fashion. My people are seeing twice the mortality rate from this strain of the flu than from any previous year. There will probably be some kind of increase for other population vectors, as well. But it isn’t a doomsday virus. Except to the people who die from it./

  So what is the point of developing this—what did you call it? Genetic tar baby? If it’s only marginally more effective than Mother Nature and bound to set off alarms at the CDC, USAMRIID, and every genetics research facility around the globe?

  /That, it turns out, is precisely the point. As soon as the word gets out that there’s a flu bug that singles out people of color the shit is going to hit the fan. There will be demonstrations, riots . . ./

  To say the least.

  /I am saying the least. Because once it comes out that the virus has been artificially tailored, the white establishment becomes public enemy number one./

  “Anarchy,” I whispered.

  Her ghostly reflection nodded in the mirror. /To say the least./

  So, the end result is a social meltdown that is potentially more destructive than, say a virus with a fifty-percent mortality rate!

  /See how easily you’re distracted by the social implications of the secondary virus? That’s the real point of Operation Blackout. Any damages accrued are just bonus points. The real, end-of-the-world haymaker is the Greyware Project!/

  I shook my head, trying to clear it as much as deny this new premise. They’re both bad news but I think the Blackout virus—God, doesn’t that sound like something straight out of the Klueless Klutz Klan—is the greater and more immediate threat in end-of-the-world terms.

  /That’s what everyone will think. Resources may be divided in attempting a cure for both but the greater attention and pressure will be directed toward the melanin marker. That’s part of her plan. To give the Greyware virus a chance to spread unchecked./

  And?

  /The influenza is virulent: Everyone will get it!/

  But it only kills old people, right? I shook my head again. I don’t mean that like it sounds.

  /It kills both the elderly and the unborn./

  So the very old and the very young?

  /I’m not talking about human fetuses. This flu is a super-combinant virus—much like the virus that turns the living into the undead. Except it’s designed to operate backwards./

  And a big “huh?” here.

  /You told me the vampire virus was composed of two separate viruses, one which lives in the bloodstream, the other taking up residence in the saliva. Your condition is unique because you were only infected with one of the two virae./

  Okay . . .

  /Well, that’s how you get a white-supremacist paramilitary organization to work with a bunch of vampires: Greyware was originally conceived as two-stage, piggybacked virus. Virus A: the flu, a general, low-grade, all-purpose infection that would infect everyone but be no more virulent than a mild cold. In fact, its base design is more along the lines of the cold virae than the influenza models. Virus B: piggybacked onto A as the all-purpose transporting agent, it was designed to trigger upon encountering telomeres of reduced lengths in the host’s cells. It didn’t have to be powerful to kill hosts of advanced age. Younger victims either would not trigger the secondary agent or would be healthy and strong enough to throw it off with little difficulty. That was the initial design./

  But Báthory tampered with the design?

  /Yes. The blueprints I saw last night show a tertiary virus, piggybacked behind B. Virus C is actually wired directly to A and uses the mild, flulike symptoms to mask its own purposes./

  Which are? The connection suddenly flared in my mind. Oh dear God! The unborn! It’s designed to sterilize the host!

  The ghost of Chalice Delacroix inclined her head. /As one generation passeth away . . ./

  So passeth the end of the world. And no one will notice until it’s too late. I stared into her translucent eyes. Are you sure?

  /I would need a month or more of research and testing to be sure. But she certainly believes it. And the documentation lays it out in no uncertain terms. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why would a vampire want to bring about the end of the world? Or, at the least, eliminate her food supply?/

  That’s easy.

  /It is . . . ?/

  Yeah. The short answer is, she isn’t.

  /She isn’t . . . ?/

  A vampire. I think she’s something else. Not only some thing, but also some—

  Skippy yanked me away from the mirror. “Come on, man. Time to join the family.”

  I got in two backward glances as they walked me out the door. The mirror was as empty as the eyes of the corpse sprawled across the desk.

  “Gentlemen,” I said as we trundled down the hall to the door marked Gen/GEN, “the countess may be the Big Boo around here and I know that if she says ‘bat,’ everybody flaps . . .”

  Skippy grinned but Kurt was listening very carefully.

  “ . . . but if anyone other than myself so much as touches that poor girl back there, I will dedicate the rest of my unlife—however short and difficult—to fucking them up beyond all recognition.” I hadn’t raised my voice but Skippy stopped grinning. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Kurt nodded. “Crystal.”

  * * *

  Gen/GEN looked different packed with people. There were about a dozen vampires, another dozen human soldier-types, and yet another dozen or so humanoids that were neither alive nor undead but as different from one another as the inhabitants of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Shakespeare said that there were more things in heaven and earth than we could dream of—perhaps he was referring to the denizens of that twilight realm in-between. Báthory, it appeared, had drawn most of her recruits, allies, and servitors from an otherworldly zip code.

  The military attendees dressed uniformly (if you’ll pardon the implied pun) in gray shirts with black ties and pants. Again, no insignia but that unmistakable carriage and attitude that set them apart and suggested martial discipline and training. The BioWeb vampires were dressed semiformally. No ties or joint color coordination but they dressed so as not to raise eyebrows as they passed among humans on the outside. The rest were a sartorial mixed bag: they dressed more like extras from The Rocky Horror Picture Show than envoys and ambassadors from unworldly realms. Perhaps this was the contingent from the Peewee Herman Dimension.

  Since no one was wearing paper hats and booties I figured the need for “clean room” standards was at an end. That or perhaps paper-wear just wasn’t festive enough for the fête that was about to commence.

  I stood off to the side, flanked by my escorts who were doing their best to look more like an honor guard and less like my handlers.

  I tried takin
g my mind off my broken promise to Robert Delacroix by contemplating the logistics of tonight’s departure. If we were supposed to fly, I wondered whether the juxtaposition of a plane’s wings and fuselage presented any impediment to vampires with hypersensitivity to a cruciform design.

  Obviously the drugs still retained some finger-holds on my cortical folds.

  Meanwhile, Liz was working the room.

  There was the usual blather about being united in an important cause and how great things would come to pass due to the efforts of those gathered here tonight. I wasn’t following too closely as I was trying to fight my way through the residual buzzing in my head and reach out to Deirdre.

  Either the lines were down or she wasn’t answering.

  Now Báthory was putting an interesting spin on the events of this morning. About how her research had uncovered some unique properties in the family bloodline—proving, by the way, her incipient superiority over lesser vampires and humans and, thus, her divine right to rule as she saw fit.

  Yadda, yadda, yadda . . .

  Then there was the matter of The Dragonspawn—how he had been sired by Dracula, achieved the powers of a Doman and more, had slain a dozen vampires, himself, including Drac and the ancient sorcerer Kadeth Bey—it took me another moment to realize that she was talking about me. The big buildup was designed to lend significance to our pending alliance by magnifying my own importance.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  Finally, she announced that a little demonstration was in order.

  Theresa was brought forward (sorry Toots, you can run but you can’t hide) and she looked terrible. Not as bad as she would if Krakovski hadn’t been scalpel-tated this morning, but bad nonetheless.

  What are you doing? I asked, shooting the thought straight at Erzsébet’s forehead.

  It furrowed as if in pain. she shot back.

  If she intended to mindsmack me, the last vestiges of the tranquilizer must have still cushioned my brain from the brunt. That or the ingestion of Chalice’s amped hemoglobin was reinforcing my own shields and defenses.

  Hey, I’m still a couple of pints low from this morning, I reminded her.

 

  That was a snack, not a meal. The idea of referring to Chalice Delacroix as a snack was repugnant but I made the emotion work for me. I sent that ambiguity back at her in the guise of uncertainty, along with: Not to mention the residual dope in my system, thanks to your toy soldiers. Might throw off your demo in ways you haven’t considered.

  She scowled and glanced over at a video camera on a tripod and wired to one of the lab computers. Hello: we’re live for the folks back home in the Big Apple. Don’t want any screw-ups that can’t be re-spun later.

 

  Yeah, you’re in good hands with All-Stake. Looking at her face I was forcibly reminded why I never went out on a second date with a woman who didn’t have a sense of humor.

  “Join me, Mr. Cséjthe,” she commanded aloud. She backed it up with a mental booster shot that pulled me away from my fanged bookends before I even had time to consider the directive. The Báthory Dog and Pony Show was under way in Supermarionation.

  She motioned to me to approach and I staggered, stiff-legged, across the room to join her before the crowd. If you want to see me do my thing, pull my string.

  A lab tech joined us. It wasn’t Spyder. I wondered how ole Spyder was and whether any of his brains had actually leaked out of his ears. It sort of felt like mine was having a little slippage in that direction.

  The tech slipped a needle into my forearm and withdrew two vials of blood in short order. Another tech swiveled the camera as one of the vials was carried over to a testing tray and prepared for analysis.

  Here, and before the world—or at least the East Coast underworld—my lineage to the Báthory-Nádasdy line was to be revealed and validated. Too bad I was properly dressed instead of hanging out of one of those backless gowns we had appropriated this morning: it was the perfect moment to moon the audience.

  It took just a few minutes for the results to be analyzed and verified: I was descended from the House of Cséjthe. But apparently not the House of Nádasdy. I thought of the Countess Báthory’s storied premarital dalliance with a gypsy lad and the baby girl who was spirited away into the unknown mists of history.

  So, it was true: on some level of generational reckoning, I was a bastard after all.

  It was time for another speech and Báthory used the opportunity to diagram my place in the coming New Order. While she yakked, another voice began to whisper in the back of my head.

  >Cséjthe . . .<

  Huh?

  >Cséjthe, are you anywhere near an exit?<

  Vlad? That you? I thought you were a drug-induced dream fragment.

  >We’re outside the building. If you can get close to an exit, we’ll—how do you say—bust you out.<

  You’re here? In Louisiana?

  >In Monroe. Right outside BioWeb’s rear emergency exit.<

  You came to rescue me? Talk about morte ex machina! Wow, someday my prince did come!

  >How can you jest at a time like this? You do not know Erzsébet Báthory!<

  I think you’re probably right.

  >Can you slip away?<

  No can do, Uncle Morte. I’m surrounded by hostiles, still throwing off some kind of tranquilizing agent in my bloodstream, and I’m being mindstrung like a puppet: my body is not my own.

  >We share a blood-bond, Cséjthe. I may be able to break her hold on you and reinforce your will over your own flesh and blood.<

  May? I don’t suppose you’d be willing to improve the odds by coming inside?

  >That woman has kept me on the run for decades and you ask me to walk into her lair now? You ask too much, Soulgiver.<

  What did you call me?

  “Cséjthe,” interrupted our Mistress of Ceremonies, “it is time for you to take The Oath.”

  Kurt approached with a pair of crystal goblets and a small golden knife. I guess they needed something ceremonial and, in matters involving undead flesh, silver was a big no-no.

  Our dominatrix of ceremonies took the knife first and ran the blade across the side of her neck. A living woman would have produced an arterial spray that would have spattered the far wall. Báthory’s carotid artery produced a dribble that was quickly caught in one of the crystal goblets before her preternatural flesh resealed itself with no hint of a scar or blemish.

  She handed the blade to me and mindwhispered:

  The knife was in my hand but it might as well have been hers: she was still pulling the “strings.”

  “Now would be a good time,” I murmured.

 

  >To give Mr. Cséjthe the gift and curse of free will, Betya.< I felt Báthory’s hold on me evaporate.

 

  “The Blue Fairy, Geppetto,” I said, taking advantage of her surprise and confusion to pull her into my embrace. “Guess who just became a real, live boy.”

  I might be slower than a full-fledged vampire but I had the element of surprise: within the space of a single heartbeat I was standing behind her, my left arm clamped about her throat and my right hand pressing the scalpel-sharp blade against the back of her neck. “Nobody move!” I yelled. “Or I’ll slice through her spinal column before anyone can say ‘heads up’!”

  The crowd looked more amused than upset. Was that because they knew I didn’t have a prayer of getting out alive or because this passed for entertainment in the soap opera of succession?

  “What do you want?” she croaked, being very careful not to add any pressure to the golden edge nestled between her third and fourth vertebrae.

  “From you? Nothing. I’ve already got what I want from you.” I nodded toward Kurt, who was still holding the crystal goblets, one of which hel
d the dark, rich red essence of the countess’ four-hundred-year-old veins. “I want Kurt, however, to give your blood to the lab tech. I want to see what happens when they run your genome through the database.”

  She tensed in my grasp. “My genetic profile is already in the database!”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. If it were, you wouldn’t be able to connect me to the Báthory line. Erzsébet Báthory’s grave is in northeastern Hungary, in the village of Ecsed. I believe her genetic samples were collected years ago so that the database wouldn’t be corrupted with incorrect data. The wrong genome in the wrong field and flags would start popping up all over the place as you added hereditary listings.”

  “This is absurd!” she protested.

  “What do you expect to prove?” Kurt asked.

  “He’s stalling!” Báthory exclaimed.

  “Am I?” I asked. “It’s a matter of history that the Countess Báthory dictated her last will and testament to two cathedral priests from Esztergom on July thirty-first, 1614. Three weeks later she was found dead, face down in her sealed chambers, by one of her guards.”

  “I was faking,” she snapped, starting to squirm again. “How do you think I arranged my escape?”

  “Good fake,” I said, cutting into the back of her neck so that the edge of the blade touched the top of a vertebrae knob. She immediately stopped moving. “Erzsébet Báthory was fifty-four when she died and showed it. Did you fake that, too?”

  “Kurt!” she cried, “he is cutting me!”

  The head of her undead household stood next to the lab tech, clutching the crystal goblet of his mistress’ blood in agonized indecision. “My lady, what would you have me do?”

  I jerked her into a tighter embrace. “Run the blood, lapdog; or the countess dies the Second Death!”

  He hesitated another two beats, then thrust the goblet into the technician’s hands. “Run the countess’ DNA,” he ordered. “Hurry!”

  “What are you doing?” Báthory screeched.

  “Saving your life,” her servitor replied.

  I was hoping for the opposite result.

  Chapter Twenty-four