Dominion of the Damned

by Jean Marie Bauhaus

  Hannah hid her disappointment and nodded. She let him help her to her feet. “I need to take Noah by the lab before my shift there starts. He’s way overdue for his shots.”

  Chris winced and looked down at the baby with sympathy. “I sure don’t envy you right now, little guy.”

  “Not a fan of needles?”

  He shook his head. “When I was little it took my mom and three nurses to hold me down to give me a shot. I think that probably traumatized me more than the actual needle.”

  Hannah couldn’t help but laugh at the image, but he seemed to take her laughter in stride.

  They walked back to town together, and stopped in front of her house. “So, what do you say?” Chris asked before she went inside. “Want to make a date for lunch tomorrow?”

  Hannah smiled. “Sure.”

  He grinned and kissed her, a quick peck on the lips. “See you then.”

  She watched him go, then took the guns inside. Noah was waking up when she came back out, so she gave him his bottle on the front porch. After he ate she should have just enough time to take him for his shots and then come back and clean up before Paula arrived. The thought of going to work filled her with a feeling somewhere between anticipation and dread. Her dreams of Alek tried to invade her thoughts, but she fought them, forcing herself to think about Chris instead.

  Chris, with his cute, floppy hair and his easy smile and casual kisses. Chris, who should be everything she wanted at this stage of her life.

  She liked him. There was no doubt about that. He made her feel comfortable, and he made her laugh, something she didn’t get to do much of these days. His kisses probably weren’t going to set the house on fire, but they were pleasant, and he was still young and lacking experience. They both were. At least he was her own damn age.

  So then why did she have to work so hard to think about him when he wasn’t around, always having to push past thoughts of Alek? He was always right there at the front of her memory, his face appearing effortlessly every time she closed her eyes. She had to try hard to not think about him, and it made her angry. It felt like a violation, like he was somehow forcing himself on her mind.

  Ordinarily, she’d dismiss such a notion and wonder about her own sanity for even thinking of it. But Alek wasn’t ordinary, and she had no way of knowing the true extent of his powers. Did they extend to mind control? She remembered the previous evening in the elevator, the way he’d looked at her as she left, and the inexplicable urge she’d felt to return to him. She had wanted him in that moment, more than she’s ever wanted anything, or anyone. It scared her.

  Tonight, she decided, she would make sure she was never alone with him. She would have to make it clear to Zach that she wasn’t comfortable delivering Alek’s breakfast and wakeup call.

  But that was later. For now, Noah had finished his bottle, and it was time to go get his shots.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “What do you know about vampires?” Hannah looked up from the box of specimen slides Zach had asked her to sort and waited for him to answer. She was starting to wonder if he’d even heard the question when he finally tore his eye away from the microscope and looked over at her.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What kind of special powers do they have?”

  He shrugged. “Enhanced strength, speed, hearing, smell. Nothing you haven’t seen for yourself. Oh, and night vision. Plus there’s the extremely slowed aging process. You know, in a perfect world, they’d have found a way to engineer out the whole blood addiction and sunlight allergy thing and market the virus as a fountain of youth. Without those drawbacks, it seems like being a vampire would kind of rock.”

  “So, they can’t fly or change into mist, or bats, or anything like that.”

  Zach laughed. “Ah, no.”

  “What about mind control?”

  He seemed to think about that one a moment. “I haven’t seen any evidence for it.”

  “What kind of evidence would you look for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe lost time? Sleepwalking, missing memories, that sort of thing.”

  Hannah frowned. She hadn’t experienced anything along those lines. “What about hypnotic suggestion? Like, forcing themselves into your thoughts. Or your dreams.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Seduction, maybe? Or to make us think warmly toward them, open ourselves up to them?”

  Zach swiveled his stool to fully face her, and seemed to study her. “Is this about the doc?”

  Hannah’s whole body tensed up. She hoped he didn’t notice. She forced herself to relax as she said, “It’s about vampires. And he is one.”

  “But he’s not like the vampires you dealt with at that prison camp. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out by now.”

  She sighed. “I know he seems kind and decent. But how much of that is just an act?”

  “If it’s an act, it’s a hell of a good one,” Zach said. “And what purpose would it serve?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Lull us into a sense of false confidence? Get us to trust him?”

  “But why? I mean, newsflash: the vampires are in charge. They don’t need to trick us, they can just force us to obey.”

  “But if we think they care, we’ll be more cooperative, less likely to rebel. We can still reproduce, but they can’t, not without winnowing their food supply. Sooner or later, we’re going to have the numbers for a revolution. It’s in their best interests to keep us compliant.”

  Zach looked at her suspiciously. “Wait. Are you, like, one of those people who think the government shot JFK and staged 9/11?”

  “No. Well,” she admitted, “my dad was. But I’m not talking about the government. I’m not even talking about people. Vampires are baby-eating, raping sons of bitches, and they need us to survive. And he’s a vampire.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Um, some of them tried to eat Noah, and one of them tried to rape me, so yes, I believe it.”

  “I mean that the doc is anything like that,” Zach said.

  She sighed. “No. Not really.” She stuffed a slide in the box a little harder than she should have. “I don’t know what to believe about him. I’m just saying, how can we know? I mean, how do we even know he hasn’t cast some kind of hypnotic spell over us or something?”

  “What, like we’re all under his thrall?” Zach laughed. “You’ve seen too many Dracula movies.”

  “Maybe. I just don’t see how it’s possible for there to be one good vampire out of the whole bunch.”

  “But there’s not just one. You’ve met Carl, right? He’s a pretty nice guy, although he’s a little belligerent if you get him drunk. But all the vamps around here are decent people. That’s why the doc hired them. As for the how, it’s the doc’s theory of self-selection.”

  “His what?”

  “Okay. Say you have someone infected with the vampire virus, who just happens to be a total psychopath. They go looking for someone to keep them company, you think they’re gonna target some straight-laced church-goer? Of course not. They look for somebody they can have a good time with, who doesn’t have any moral hang-ups. So they turn another psychopath. And so on, and so on.” He paused. “Come to think of it, that also explains why most of them are so damn good looking. Anyway,” he said, shaking his head as if to shake off the stray thought, “every now and then, a good person gets infected. It’s not like the movies. They don’t lose their souls or become demon-possessed. They’re still themselves. And since the vampires with morals are less likely to pass on the infection, the good guys are way outnumbered by the amoral baby-eating bastards. But the good guy vamps do exist. And the doc is one of them.”

  He sighed. “Anyway, the only thrall he has me under is the fact that he saved my ass from becoming shambler meat. And then he gave me a job to keep me out of the kind of place you just came from. It’s called gratitude.”

  Hannah didn’t have an answer for that, so
she went back to sorting slides in silence. Everything Zach said made sense. If she was being totally honest, she would have to ask herself, was it Alek she was afraid of? Or was it the undeniable feelings she was starting to have for him? If he wasn’t stirring something up in her on purpose... it scared her to think that it was all her. That she could be attracted to someone so... other than human. What did that say about her? Especially when there was a perfectly sweet and cute and human boy right there who wanted to be with her.

  “What do you know about him?” she asked. “Where did he come from? If he’s such a good man, how did he end up getting turned?”

  Zach looked startled by the sudden barrage of questions, like he’d thought the conversation was over. He stared at her a moment, then shrugged. “He doesn’t talk that much about his past. I know he was a Holocaust survivor. I think that’s why he’s on such a crusade to shut down the interment camps. He takes them personally.

  “As for how he got turned, you should probably ask him that.”

  Hannah fidgeted with the slides. “I would, but that just seems too personal, somehow.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Zach, “but somehow I don’t think he’d mind it all that much, coming from you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Did you ever think,” said Zach, “that maybe the reason you think about him all the time is because you have the hots for him?”

  Hannah nearly dropped her box of slides. “What?”

  “I mean, he definitely has the hots for you.”

  “What?” She stared at him in horror, but she wasn’t sure whether it was at what he was saying or the fact that he was actually saying it out loud. “He does not!”

  Zach laughed and turned back to the microscope. “Oh, he does.”

  Someone knocked on the door. Hannah was relieved for the interruption, until she looked up and saw Chris, and a sudden wave of guilt seized her. He looked out of breath, like he’d run the whole way there.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Mom sent me. It’s Noah—”

  Hannah jumped up from her stool, guilt forgotten. “Is he okay?”

  “He has a really high fever. Is the doc up yet?”

  “No,” said Zach, “but it’s time to wake him. You two go on. I’ll go get Doc.”

  THIRTY

  Hannah ran out of the lab, and kept running until she reached home, with Chris right behind her the whole way. She followed the sound of Noah’s crying to the bathroom, where she found Paula trying to soothe him while holding a wet washcloth to his head. The bathroom felt muggy, even with the window open, and condensation covered the mirror. “He’s having a hard time breathing,” she explained. “I thought some steam might help unclog him, but his fever’s too high for that. We didn’t have any baby medicine at the store, so I sent Chris to fetch the doc.” She looked over Hannah’s shoulder at Chris. “You were just supposed to get him, you weren’t supposed to scare her half to death.”

  “He wasn’t up yet,” said Chris, defensively. “Besides, she works there. How was I supposed to do one without the other?”

  As they bickered, Hannah took Noah into her arms. He was burning up. “It’s okay Boo,” she murmured. “Sissy’s got you.” She shook her head. “He’s never been sick before. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Keep that washcloth cold, and keep rubbing him down with it,” said Paula. “Hopefully the doc’ll have some Tylenol in his little black bag. That would help.”

  As if on cue, Hannah heard her front door open and close, and a moment later, Alek appeared in the bathroom doorway, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed and thrown on yesterday’s clothes.He shouldered his way past Paula and Chris while Zach looked in from the hall.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Hannah’s voice grew thick as she fought hard to keep from adding her tears to Noah’s.

  Alek put a hand on Noah’s forehead, then set his bag on the counter and pulled out an ear thermometer. “Did you get him vaccinated today?” Hannah sniffed and nodded. “It’s probably just a side effect, then. Although it could be an allergic reaction.” He took Noah’s temperature and frowned at the reading. “We need to get his fever down. Do you have ice?”

  “There’s some in the freezer. Just a couple of trays.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Paula, who had moved out into the hallway with Zach and Chris. She told her son, “You go home and get all the ice we have.”

  Alek moved to the tub and turned on the cold faucet. “Bring him here.”

  Noah shrieked as they immersed him in the cold water. Hannah tried to soothe him as they added ice to make it even colder, but it didn’t do any good. As she leaned over the side of the tub to keep his head and chest out of the water, Alek retrieved a stethoscope from his bag and listened to Noah’s chest. “His lungs are clear. That’s a good sign.” He turned back to his bag and took out a clear plastic bottle filled with purple liquid and a dropper. He filled the dropper and handed it to Hannah. “Cold medicine and fever reducer,” he explained. “See if you can get him to swallow it.”

  It was a struggle, and they had to refill the dropper a few times as purple syrup dribbled uselessly down Noah’s chin and over his cheeks, but they finally got it in him. Alek used a suction bulb to clear his nose, then checked his temperature. “He’s still feverish, but he’s out of danger. You can take him out of there now.”

  Hannah blew out a big sigh of relief as she drew Noah out of the water and wrapped him in a towel. His shrieking cries had subsided to fussy whimpers and the occasional wail. “Thank you,” she told Alek as they followed him out of the bathroom.

  “It’s my job,” he said, dismissing her gratitude.

  “But I wouldn’t have known what to do for him. He was so hot… could he have died? If we didn’t bring his fever down in time?”

  He paused in the hallway and pursed his lips, apparently deciding what to tell her.

  “The truth,” she insisted.

  Slowly, Alek nodded. “Yes. Or he could have suffered permanent brain damage, or become epileptic.”

  Hannah shuddered and hugged Noah close. “All that from a shot?”

  “Side effects are rare, and it’s even rarer for them to be this severe. It was more likely an allergic reaction. Although it could also be because his immune system simply hasn’t had a proper chance to build itself up. The good news is, he should be stronger after this.” He leaned closer and took hold of her elbow to give it a reassuring squeeze. “And he’s safe. None of those things happened. He’ll be okay.”

  “Thanks to you.” As her gaze locked onto his, she remembered the conversation she’d been having with Zach before all of this started. Particularly the last part, what he’d been telling her before Chris interrupted them. She felt her cheeks flush, and buried her face in Noah’s towel.

  “Hey,” Zach called to them from the living room. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

  “No,” Alek told him. “The crisis has passed. I think now it’s just a matter of getting him to sleep.”

  Hannah looked around and realized it was just the four of them. “Where are Chris and Paula?”

  “They went home. Paula said they’d just be in the way, but I’m supposed to go get them if you need them. Chris wanted to stay, but his mom practically dragged him out.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “You can go, too,” said Alek. “I’ll stay, in case he has any more complications.” He turned to Hannah. “If that’s all right with you.”

  Again she nodded, without hesitation. She realized how much she really did trust him on an instinctual level. She also realized how much she really didn’t know about taking care of a sick baby. She needed help, and it comforted her to have a doctor standing by.

  “All right,” said Zach, heading for the door. “Good luck, and let me know how it goes.” He let himself out.

  Hannah turned to Alek. “What do we do now?”

  “Make sure he can breathe, and try to get
him to sleep.”

  Alek suggested that she prop him up to help him breathe, so Hannah settled Noah in his stroller. She rolled it back and forth, hoping that the motion would lull him to sleep.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Alek suggested. “Maybe that will calm him down.”

  Hannah didn’t like the idea of taking him out so late, but at that point she’d try almost anything. “Let me get my gun.”

  “You don’t need it,” said Alek. “You have me.”

  She stopped, and looked at him. He seemed unaware that she was watching as he hefted the stroller effortlessly and carried it to the door. Hannah remembered the barn, the way he had torn through all of those zombies with his bare hands.

  She remembered being carried to the barn, held gently in arms that felt like they could just as easily crush her.

  You have me, he said, and she realized she believed him. They had him, and he had their backs. She still didn’t totally understand it, but she was starting to accept it.

  Instead of getting her gun, she went to get the door.

  “I wish my mom was here,” she said as they headed down the street. “She’d know how to do this.”

  Alek looked over at her. “You’re doing a great job.”

  “You’re doing a great job,” she corrected him. “If you weren’t here I’d have no idea what to do.” A thought occurred to her, and she looked up at him. “Did you have any kids?” The question made him flinch, and she instantly regretted asking. As he looked at the ground, she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “I said you could ask me anything. No. I was never a father.” He looked up at the sky. “But I was going to be, once.”

  Putting it all together, Hannah said, “She was pregnant. Your wife, I mean.”

  “Six months and two weeks, when they took her.”

  “The Nazis?”

  He nodded, and neither of them said anything for a while. Noah’s fussing filled the silence. Finally, Hannah said, “I’m sorry.”