They walked toward the far end of the alley. “Y’all headed over to donate, right? Got full bags?”
The woman answered this time, “Yeah. So?”
“You O-negs right?” he said, getting a little excited, wiping his mouth.
“Yes,” said the man. “How’d you know?”
“Givem bags here then, keep the cash.”
The man laughed and offered the tricoin back. “You could buy all the black-market blood in Southern City for that. Come on, Lena.”
He grabbed the man’s shoulder, a predator’s strike in the speed of his hand. “Give me the bags!”
They seemed to melt. “OK, fine. Calm down,” said the man, pocketing the tricoin and removing his jacket. The woman did the same.
He felt on fire. Why were they moving so slowly? As they peeled the bags from their arms, his vision suddenly sharpened and he felt he could see every millimeter of each needle as they slid out from the implanted ports, like he was watching through a magnifying glass. Hunger stretched every passing second into an eternity. The needlepoints finally emerged, flinging a microscopic scatter of blood from each, and he rejoiced at the task’s completion while raging inside at the miniscule drops of wasted food. “Hurry up!”
The woman flinched and nicked her arm above the port. Rich O-neg welled from the tiny puncture, spherical and gleaming. He felt recognition. Reunion. From inside the headache a word came to him that he’d never even used: ichor.
He dove onto the pair, ripping the bags from their hands. The man fell under his weight and the woman stumbled back against the alley’s brick wall. He put one of the bags into his mouth and bit into it as fiercely as he could, wrenching his neck to tear the poly. Blood poured across his face and into his mouth, over his chin and onto the man below. The woman screamed. He brought the second bag to his lips and repeated, more careful this time to prevent spillage, relishing each viscous gulp. His distraction allowed the man to wiggle himself free and regain his footing.
Hunger waned and his vision centered, broadening the periphery. The headache unwound some and his heart slowed. He sat back on his knees in relief. Felt partly himself again. A nap would top off the perfect meal. He felt like he wanted a cigarette, and then he didn’t.
The pair ran for the street. He didn’t understand why they would do that. He was tip-top now and they were rich. He used his sleeve to wipe the blood from the bottom of his face and then sucked it from the threads.
As the couple made the mouth of the alley, an authority drone swung around the corner, its girth just wide enough to plug the narrow lane. The man and woman ran up to it, squeaking little cries of relief. The drone landed and two helmeted officers exited.
“Oh, thank God!” cried the woman. “There’s something wrong with that man.”
He pressed up from the ground and started a slow retreat down toward the alley’s far exit. The old him started gaming the situation. Play it off? Start rambling shit at the cops, see if they get tired of him and roll on? Run away? If he went zigzag maybe he could make it without getting laced. The new him was less concerned, for some reason. His belly was full. And he came to the realization that he didn’t really care what happened.
“You!” called one of the officers. His voice boomed from an amplifier inside the drone, connected to a microphone inside his helmet. “Don’t move. We have you locked.”
With their guns trained, he halfheartedly professed his innocence, then remembered he was drenched red.
“Approach the drone. Slowly, sir.”
He complied. With his hunger tamped, his wits were less frazzled. Act reasonable like. He licked his lips and approached with caution.
The woman became hysterical as he got closer. “He ate our blood bags! He. Ate. Them. He – he robbed us! He’s insane!”
Everard gave a maniacal laugh, still feeling the afterglow of food.
The second officer spoke, “How did he rob you? Did he have a weapon?”
“No weapon. He simply attacked us, officer,” said the man, calmly re-tucking his own blood-covered shirt.
The officers appeared to make eye-contact through their visors. “What were you and your wife doing in the alley?”
“Can we please focus on the insane person who attacked us and then ate our blood-bags?” said the woman, pointing at him.
“Ate, you say?” asked the first officer.
The second officer turned to face the man. “He has no weapon. You came here of your own volition.” He smirked. “You were selling. That’s illegal, you know. How much did he offer you?”
“This is outrageous!” she cried. “We would never!”
The officer reached into the man’s coat pocket and pulled out the tricoin, held it up for the other to see. “That’s a lot of money,” his voice came through the helmet like a walkie-talkie. “Your blood must be delicious.”
The other officer whistled.
“We sold it, so what?” said the man. “You would too for that much. You’d sell your own arm for that much.”
The first officer called down the alley on the loudspeaker, “Was it worth it? Was it worth twenty-five thousand, sir?”
He felt his chin for more of the sticky red and sucked on a finger. “Yep. It was, yes,” he affirmed with a happy thumbs-up and a crazy grin.
“Hmm.” The first officer pulled off his helmet revealing a pale face outlined by a tailored black beard. “It’s worse than I suspected,” he said.
“What?” the woman asked.
“This person… is a vampire,” said the still-helmeted officer, delivering the line as if to prompt laughter from a sitcom audience.
“A vampire?” exclaimed the man, apoplectic. “Are you crazy?”
“No crazy here, sir. I’m sure of it,” said the bearded officer, matching the hambone delivery of his partner. He cocked his gun and the second followed suit. “You two wait in the drone,” he continued. “For your safety.”
The couple eyed the blood-covered man and pulled each other close.
“Go on,” said the helmeted officer. “We’ll write you up for selling after we deal with him.”
When the couple turned for the drone, the officers shot them in the back of their heads. They dropped dead to the concrete, hands still clasped.
Down the alley, he flinched. The laceguns had been virtually silent. Just a little puff of air and he thought he actually saw the disks trail off to the sides of the alleyway after they’d exited the couple’s brains. “Shee-it,” he said, putting his hands to his red-smeared cheeks.
They turned back to him. Uh-oh.
Beard holstered his weapon and hailed him, “Hey buddy, you’re not supposed to be out here. Explain.”
He hardly knew anything anymore. Why was he here? What was he supposed to be doing? Why weren’t they shooting him?
Helmet, who was much bigger and more muscular than the other, approached. “Answers. Now. We know there’s a shortage, but you can’t be sorting yourself in public.”
“Uh,” he answered. “I came in from…” his mind raced, “…Riversfork, uh, for the conference.”
“The conference? You look like shit,” said Beard. “Riversfork, you say?”
“I’m not picking up a touchstone on my scans,” said Helmet.
“Where’s your touchstone?”
His mind raced but hunger’s claws were scratching again. He tried to answer their questions, but no words would come out, just a clenched teeth growl of some sort. The noise was animal-like and foreign. He refocused and tried to get his mouth to say something convincing, and the last thing that came before his eyes rolled back toward his brain was, more O-neg. He felt his muscles seizing up, all the tendons and ropey bits in his joints going tight.
“He’s not from Riversfork,” said Helmet.
The other officer dropped to a knee and came in for a closer look. “I can’t believe it,” he said.
He’d seized up now and collapsed to his side, elbows pinned tight to his ribs, forearm
s and hands sticking out from his body like a mannequin with the limbs twisted wrong.
“What is it?” asked Helmet.
“Look at him, stupid.”
“Yeah, he’s sick or something.”
“Nah,” said Beard. “He’s seating.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MITOCHONDRIAN
Organelle responsible for cellular respiration, digestion, and energy production.
Sitting in the shed out behind the Bahamas, Lock tapped away on Llydia’s screen. She brought up some diagnostics and scrolled through them until a window opened with various functions such as environmental control, autopilot, trim, and pitch assistance. She went down the list, setting them all to off. “It’s fly-by-wire now,” she said. “No hovering or letting off the stick, ’kay Willa? Or kaboom, get it?”
“I get it,” Willa answered. The drones’ aluminum-air batteries had legendary capacity and longevity, but Lock had no way to recharge Llydia’s. They had access to electricity, but drones charged inductively and none of the islands had a pad. They had to conserve what power she had left, and it was beginning to wane.
“Should be more than enough left to get us to my guy with the printers and back,” said Lock.
Kathy came out from the back door of the house and entered the drone.
“Kids good?” asked Lock.
“Yeah,” answered Kathy. “I think Lindon can handle them. Maybe.”
Lock shut the door and flicked her eyes skyward. Willa lifted them off and made for the course Lock had set.
Lock turned back to Kathy. “What else was he doing before he split to launder the coins?”
“Nothing really,” Kathy answered. “He was sort of rummaging around. I tried to talk to him but he just acted like I wasn’t there.”
“He say anything weird?”
“Everything he says is weird.”
“Help me out here. What was he talking about?”
“He just kept saying that he was hungry. I made him some oats and offered my last cheese tube, but he wouldn’t take it.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know,” said Kathy. “He said he would just get food along the way.”
“That’s not like him.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t get the food,” said Lock. “I get the food or Lindon gets the food. He watches the kids. That’s what he does. On the rare occasion he has to run an errand, he’s out and back without a side trip for anything, much less food. He hates leaving the children.”
Willa spoke up, “Maybe it all got to be too much. I mean, losing the kids and all.”
“I’ve known him for a decade,” she said flatly. “He’s never disappeared on me and we still have a house of children. No. He didn’t just give up.”
“He had two tricoins he was supposed to launder, though, right?” asked Willa.
Lock’s jaw tightened. “He wouldn’t steal from me. He wouldn’t steal from those kids. Maybe… maybe somebody mugged him. Hurt him.”
Willa didn’t disagree. Everard loved the children unconditionally. But from what she had learned of the man, he’d lived a life that seemed to attract trouble. Who knew what might happen to someone trying to launder fifty K in the lowbloods.
They flew into AB Minus and over a series of industrial complexes big enough to cover entire city blocks.
Lock directed Willa to one of the largest warehouses with a series of square shafts leading down from the roof. Willa brought them in low and Lock pointed to the shaft furthest to the left. “That’s it. That one.”
Willa maneuvered Llydia over the center of the shaft, then lowered them down into it, concealing them from all angles except from directly above.
“What is this place?” Willa asked as the drone landed.
“Where Patriot makes The Box.”
“What?” Willa exclaimed. “I thought we were meeting your associate to get the printers?”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re doing,” Lock answered.
“This is a Patriot facility, Lock.”
“Anyone else you know that has industrial printers laying around?”
“This was your plan?” exclaimed Willa. “To steal printers from Patriot?”
“Willa, dangit. Jethrum is stealing printers from Patriot. He’s gifting them to me on account of he grossly underpaid me for Claude’s cooler bag. He owes me a favor and we criminals help each other out when we’re not screwing each other over.”
Willa was flabbergasted. “You brought us to a Patriot facility to steal Patriot printers!”
“My plan, Willa, was to get our tricoins laundered and buy already-stolen printers from my associates, but Everard’s gone AWOL with the money, hasn’t he?”
Willa crossed her arms in frustration.
“You ready, Kath?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t know we were coming to Patriot,” said Willa shaking her head. “This is too dangerous for her.”
“She’s the only one small enough to crawl through the incinerator clean-out,” said Lock.
“Incinerator?” Willa exclaimed.
“Relax. It’s not even on.”
“Jethrum hid the printers in the incinerator?” asked Willa.
“Don’t be crazy. That’s just where we’ve landed.”
“Inside the incinerator?”
“You want to use the employee parking lot?” Lock said. “Besides, it’s not really the incinerator itself, just the smokestack right above it.” She knelt. “Alright, Kathy, let’s move. The printers should be somewhere near to the cleanout door on the other side. I’m guessing Jeth probably concealed them.”
Kathy hit Lydia’s hatch. The chamber into which they’d landed was scorched black cinderblock. A gigantic chimney. The smell of ash came damp and cold into the drone and Willa prayed that meant the incinerator was dormant, or, better, defunct. The outline of a metal door on two hinges made its impression in the soot.
Lock punted the small hatch with the toe of her combat boot, then knelt and held it open as Kathy slithered through. “Hurry now.”
Kathy’s feet disappeared. Seconds ticked by. Willa began to panic. “How do you know this thing won’t turn on while she’s gone?”
“I don’t know that.”
A swell of frustration bubbled in Willa’s throat. Lock’s plans always had a distinct by-the-seat-of-her-pants improvisational element to them. And here they had Kathy involved again. Willa dropped to the little cleanout door and pushed it open, saw only blackness on the other side. “Lock, what if this thing fires up?”
“Well, it’d probably shear about a hundred pounds of paint off old Llydia, but we’d get out fine.”
Willa opened her mouth to retort but was interrupted by the loud clank of the hatch. A long box marked THE BOX – FAMILY OF SIX slid into the drone, followed by another. Willa pulled them in and stacked them by the bench. Kathy began to climb back through, but recoiled as a jet of hot gas blasted up from below. The tiny door slammed shut.
“Shit!” yelled Lock. With Llydia’s door still open and a plume of smoke racing up the walls, she yanked on the stick and took the drone straight up, scraping the sides on the way out.
“What are you doing? Kathy’s still in there!” cried Willa.
“We can’t be!” she answered as they exploded from the chimney like a cannonball.
“We have to get her!”
“She’s smart. She’ll get herself out,” said Lock, as she calmly banked the drone. “We’ll circle back and pickerup.”
“We cannot lose her!”
“I know that!”
White smoke billowed from where they’d been parked moments before. They made a wide circle over the facility. Willa’s fingers clawed the frame of the tiny window as she watched the ground.
Lock ascended to get a better view and brought Llydia around toward the back of the building where workers loaded pallets of The Box into speedloop cargo pods. As if on cue, Kathy burst from
a large door and leapt from the dock. She rolled on the ground, sprang upright just as quickly, then sprinted out toward the street. Patriot gave chase.
“There she is!” called Lock.
Kathy raced into the neighborhood, leading her pursuers through a labyrinth of alleyways and side streets, before ducking into a toolshed. Willa’s mouth went dry. Her nails dug further into the rubberized window trim.
“We gotta get her fast,” said Lock, nervously. “They’ll have drones up any minute.”
The security detail stormed by Kathy’s hiding spot.
“Sit there for a sec, kid,” Lock hoped aloud.
Kathy burst back into the alley, headed in the opposite direction.
“Shit!” exclaimed Lock. “Too soon!”
The security team reversed direction.
Anticipating Kathy’s vector, Lock flew ahead and set Llydia down in the mouth of another lane just ahead of the running girl. They flung open the door as she sprinted by.
“Kathy!” called Willa.
She skidded to a stop and slipped on the wet ground. Willa reached out from the door as Kathy scrabbled upright. A man flew in from the side, crushing her to the ground. Willa leapt out and tried to pull the man away. More rushed them, guns trained. Lace whispered by. Kathy’s hands fired like pistons into the man’s face and throat, bloodying his nose, but he managed to keep her pinned through sheer size. Lock latched onto Willa and yanked her back into the shelter of the drone. Willa screamed and struggled. Rays of light burst from the walls as holes popped across Llydia’s body. Lock jerked her skyward and closed the door.
Willa beat her fist against the window. “No!”
Lock took Llydia around the facility’s perimeter. Below, the men dragged Kathy into the building.
Willa pounded again and again. “No! No, no!”
“We’ll get her back, Willa.” She leveled the drone. “I promise!”
“You brought her here and you left her!” Willa cried.
“If we stayed another second, it’d be all of us! Don’t be stupid!”
“There had to be another way to get those printers! We had to do it your way! Jethrum could have hid them somewhere else, but you had to make it into some grand adventure! Everything is just a game to you!”
The Phlebotomist Page 23