The Phlebotomist

by Chris Panatier

  In a room that felt a shrine to evil’s abominations, in the bowels of a palace built upon the backs of the blooded, Willa had come to find her own blood, and found him. She reached Isaiah, swept him close. With their beating hearts pressed together, she allowed her tears to soak into his head.

  She took him by the shoulders and checked him over, all the while reassuring and apologizing and explaining, then repeating what she’d already said. The thought occurred to her that she might have been more traumatized than he. Finally, she took a breath and opened her mouth to ask the one question that had caused her so much heartache from the start. But her grandson’s face had already answered it. She never had reason to doubt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  HEMOSTASIS

  The process whereby bleeding or blood flow is stopped. The opposite of hemorrhage.

  On the way out of Patriot’s lair they grabbed anything that might be of use. Lindon, Willa and Kathy slung any lacegun that still held ammo about their shoulders and packed clips of ammunition into bags and pockets. They ransacked the kitchen, ordering the children to pilfer as much food as they could carry. Willa took the container of lollipops.

  Their exit from the Heart could hardly be called an escape, as they met no further resistance. What Ichorwulves survived had fled. In the short run, Willa surmised the company would blame blood contamination or an unknown pathogen until they simmered down and realized only the universal recipients among them had lived. At that point, they’d know they’d been hacked. God, she wanted to be able to share it all with Lock.

  Leading a procession of some four hundred-plus children through the blood districts at dawn was no cakewalk, even compared to the nightmare that had been Patrioteer. Once the children got over their fear of Kathy’s vrae swords, they allowed themselves to be entertained by her basic tricks and stunts. She had two blades now, having nabbed the one they’d found stuck in the wall above the pile of its previous owner. Word of the children spread quickly, and parents stood along the streets like onlookers at a parade hoping to find their own. Willa kept Isaiah close, whispering promises to never again let evil befall him.

  Lindon was well acquainted with many of Lock’s connections and they were able to find temporary accommodations for most of the children whose parents hadn’t yet been located. Willa finally met Jethrum, a tank of a man with a pointed red beard and a face that read like a history book written with sharp objects. As with Lock, he ran a section of the lowbloods, a criminal and caretaker alike, looking after homes packed to the gills with orphans. When Lindon broke the news about her, he’d been inscrutable at first and then punched a hole through the front door. They discussed logistics and Jethrum spent several minutes explaining how they might deactivate the beacons implanted in the children’s fingers without the need for amputation.

  Home, for now at least, would be Bad Blood until they determined which, if any, of Lock’s safehouses were still actually safe. Until then, it was the best place. Patriot was certain to show up at some point, but they hoped it would be after they’d ransacked the districts. The last place Patriot would want to venture shortly after being decimated would be one filled with blood diseases. They wouldn’t risk reducing their numbers any further by rushing in to shake down their own quarantine zone.

  Willa sat with Isaiah on a bench in one of Bad Blood’s communal gardens watching robins pluck berries from a bush. The birds had never left, but she hadn’t noticed them in years. Their whistle-clear calls, the ruffle of their wings against the air. And it seemed significant in some way. Like a rebirth. Birdsong. The sound heard when the guns of war fall silent. And for the first time since Chrysalis, Willa allowed herself an easy breath. Peace and normalcy, the objects of hope, felt attainable.

  Word was spreading. Kathy’s photos, proof of what lived in the bowels of Patriot’s heart, were disseminated as quickly as people could send them. They’d distributed some of the lollipops too. Truth was a tumbling boulder and there was nothing Patriot could do to stop it. There would be no more Harvest, no more Trade. No more categorization and ranking of people according to what antigens their blood happened to carry. Willa had no illusions that the path forward would be difficult. Society would begin to rebalance itself. With no authority pressing down from above, factions would rise and fall, protectorates and fledgling governments would vie for territory and control. Some would sputter, others would flourish. The prospect of all of that, even if daunting and a little bit scary, was invigorating. Human life would be in the hands of the humans. It felt like springtime.

  And should whatever remained of Patriot decide to make an appearance, they knew how to fight them. There was nothing special about Ichorwulves. They were a little quicker, stronger, maybe, but they died just as humans did. And they were ten times as hungry. You could always starve them out.

  That night, surrounded by several children who would become the new sons and daughters of Bad Blood, they met up with John in his module. Curious to see what Patriot was telling the outside world, he turned to the Channel when The Patriot Report usually came on, only to find the screen black. No shiny host in top hat and billboard teeth, no bombshell assistants or self-congratulations. No Confetti. Just blackness, and at the center of it, barely large enough to read, were two words flickering in red.

  Mos maiorum

  Everyone looked to everyone else.

  “I mean…” mumbled John, “… my Latin’s not so good.”

  “Tell us,” said Willa.

  “Uh,” he said, squinting at the screen and thinking, “it’s something like ancestral tradition or… the way of the ancestors.”

  Willa’s heart plummeted, her body hollow, her breath still.

  “What is it?” asked Lindon. “What’s the matter? What is that supposed to mean?”

  Willa looked up. “It means the Old Way.”

  Kathy stood, giving her blade a spin. “It means they’re hungry.”

  PATRIOCAST 3.11.68

  NUCLEAR BLAST IN THE SOUTHEAST!

  Hydrogen Bomb Fifolet

  Crisis –Fusion reaction detected on Southern Coast. Mass casualties reported.

  Tap to play video.

  Northwestern Gray Zone Update – Acute illness: up.

  Radiation sickness: up. Anemia of chronic diseases: up. All cancer categories: up.

  Total Units Required last 30 days: 3,708,409

  Total Units Provided by Patriot: 2,616,991

  Northeastern Gray Zone Update – Acute illness: up. Radiation sickness: up.

  Anemia of chronic diseases: up. All cancer categories: up.

  Total Units Required last 30 days: 12,087,116

  Total Units Provided by Patriot: 11,204,323

  #Lives Saved Estimate last 30 days: 12,000

  #Lives Saved Estimate year-to-date: 29,000

  Southwestern Red Zone – Traumatic injuries: widespread. Radiation sickness: anticipated. Anemia of chronic diseases: anticipated. Cancers: anticipated.

  Patriot thanks ALL DONORS. Your gift matters!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My wife has read and edited countless drafts and fragments of my various writing attempts for years now, always giving me her honest takes. She has been endlessly supportive along the way, serving as an important barometer to help me gauge feedback and criticism. I say thank you from the bottom of every one of my O-pos RBCs.

  It was my mother who put a pen in my hand. It was she who taught me to type, on an actual typewriter, with an actual typing workbook, in seventh grade. It was miserable, those summer months, typing each day for what felt like hours (it was thirty minutes). As a child, she read to me every night, and that imagery still lives unfaded in my memory – the grand adventures of Peter Pan, Huck Fin, White Fang, Meg and Charles Murry. Thanks to my father, who is always quickest to read my work and the first to give feedback. Getting that quick hit from my dad has always been the boon I need to push into that second draft.

  My sister, Elizabeth, a writer of children’s st
ories, has been with me each step of the way. We’ve shared this journey together.

  Jess Hagemann, whose book Headcheese any fan of horror should read, was one of the earliest to give feedback and encouragement on the first draft. My law partner David Greenstone was enthusiastic and supportive from the beginning, though he did lament the lack of a teenage vampire lust subplot (that’s what sequels are for, David!). Jackie Brewer read a draft in three days and gave me excellent notes. Heather Ezell, author of Nothing Left to Burn, did an extensive markup and structural edit on an early draft that helped me to focus the story. They say writing a novel is a solitary exercise – and that is mostly true. Finishing one, however, at least for me, was quite the opposite.

  An immense amount of research was necessary in order to create this world, but I am far from an expert. If anything, all of that learning simply showed me the breadth of what I don’t know. I reached out to a number of professionals for assistance and generally struck out. Apparently cold-calling (or messaging) people to politely ask how one might execute a vein-to-vein transfusion isn’t how you garner a response. Thankfully, one person, Dr Joe Chaffin, aka “The Blood Bank Guy,” did respond and assisted with a number of technical issues. Specifically, he helped me to portray the anastomosis scene correctly.

  Gemma Creffield at Angry Robot championed this story and was the main reason they acquired the book. As the book’s editor, she pushed me to give it flesh when what I had initially delivered was a bare-bones plot burner. The characters and settings would not have the dimension they do now absent Gemma’s input and urging. I count myself fortunate that she read this story when it came in and for her focus in helping to bring it where it had to go.

  Metal bands I listened to while writing this book: Alterbeast, Amorphis, Behemoth, Between the Buried and Me, Black Crown Initiate, Ensiferum, Falconer, Ghost, Gatecreeper, Kvelertak, Mastodon, Pig Destroyer, Power Trip, Ringworm, Russian Circles, Spirit Adrift, Totem Skin, Vault Dweller, Weekend Nachos, Wolfchant, and Zeal & Ardor.

  ONE

  Golden beams of sunlight spilled through the skeletal high rises, and through the concrete and steel network of interlaced highways, bypasses, and rails that once flowed with harried humanity, now devoid of all but the meanest signs of life. Overpasses stacked ten high lay inert, arteries of a city embalmed. The wind was light but weighty with the failing autumn, like the hand of a blacksmith gently laid.

  Beneath the lowest overpass, a lone figure plodded weary steps, bowed and hooded, burden dragging behind leaving long tracks in the concrete dust. He paused, raised his head, laid back his hood, and felt the cooling breeze on his sweat-beaded face. His sun-squinted eyes roved over the urban desert before him as he adjusted the straps of his makeshift harness to ease his protesting shoulders.

  “I see why you left,” the man muttered. He spat, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his knee-length faded olive-brown-mottled coat, and started on his way again.

  The man stepped up onto the road, felt his senseThetic boots soften slightly to better absorb the hard shock of the asphalt, cringed at the hollow echo of his cargo scraping across the scarred and pockmarked ground. As he walked, he imagined the city as it might’ve once been. The endless dissonance of a half-million people packed into five square miles, swimming in an almost tangible soup of electromagnetic traffic. He wondered what traces of personality might still be left, rippling through those invisible fields around him even now.

  Progress was slow, but he was close. Another few minutes and at last the man stood before the gates of his destination: a small enclave of survivors set within the dead cityscape. From atop a twenty-foot wall of haphazardly-welded urban debris, a watchman called down.

  “What’s your business, stranger?”

  The man jerked his thumb behind him, indicating the cargo he was dragging. The watchman grunted.

  “Yeah, alright,” he answered. “Reckon the agent’s gonna wanna take a look before you go far.”

  The man waited in silence as the enormous gates ground open, just wide enough to admit him and his payload. They started to close again before he was all the way through.

  “Second street on your right, agent’s the first on the left. First floor.”

  The man nodded curt thanks, and headed to see the enclave’s agent. Within the walls, the architecture was unchanged from that outside: tall gunmetal skyscrapers with windows darkened like gaping sockets of a skull, dead flat panel signs forty-feet wide that might once have hawked the day’s latest technological fashion. In here, however, there were men, women, and even wide-eyed children, who stared in wonder at this new evidence of life from beyond the wall, walking amongst them. Most of the adults pretended not to notice him, though he felt their sidelong glances and heard the hushed whispers after he passed. Even in days as strange as these, it was unusual to see a man harnessed as he was, hauling such a load: scrap aluminum, worn and scratched, bent into the makeshift but unmistakable shape of a coffin.

  The man reached the agent’s office, and he paused, steeling himself with a final deep breath of outside air. He’d dealt with agents before, nearly thirty he could recall, and they’d all been the same. Muscle-bound gun-toters with a lot of bark, always itching for a reason to bite. Mostly ex-military or law enforcement, agents were tough guys who liked the power, and still clung to the outdated notion that order could be maintained even in a desolate society. They had their uses. But the man had little use for them.

  He stepped forward, automatic doors sliding smoothly open to admit him, and dragged in from concrete to polished granite. In an earlier time, the office might’ve been a bank, with all its oak and stone. Or a tomb. Now, it was just a long corridor, leading to an imposing flexiglass cube. The glass was darkly smoked, but the man correctly presumed whoever was inside could see his approach. Still, he strode nearly the length of the corridor, before a sudden booming voice stopped him five paces from the cube’s door.

  “State your business,” thundered the voice, rolling emphatically down the stone hall.

  “Bounty,” replied the man.

  “State your name.”

  “Three.”

  There was a pause.

  “You got three of ’em in there?”

  “You asked my name.”

  The voice puzzled for a moment. Then–

  “Who you got in the box?”

  “One of yours.”

  “Open it.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  The voice resumed a more professional tone.

  “All collections must be verified and processed before payment will be distributed.”

  “So open the cube.”

  A slot opened in the cube, and a sleek metal case slid out, popping open to reveal a cracking rubberized interior.

  “Deposit your weapons in the provided secure receptacle.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  Another pause. Though it still boomed, the voice sounded flustered.

  “You cain’t come in here so armed, mister. I don’t care who you are.”

  The man named Three let the straps of his harness slide off his shoulders. They clattered to the floor next to the coffin.

  “Then you come out. I’m done dragging.”

  Three turned around and started back down the corridor.

  “Hey!” the voice thundered, “Hey, you cain’t just leave that settin’ there!”

  Three walked on.

  “I’ll have you arrested if you don’t come back!”

  He was almost to the exit. There was a whir and a click behind him, and a thin, crackly voice called out from the cube.

  “What about your bounty? Don’t you want it?”

  Three stopped. But didn’t turn.

  “Come on get this box inside, and I’ll see what we owe ya. My back cain’t manage it.”

  Three swiveled on a heel, and returned to the cube. There, a bent old man who looked like he weighed less than his age tottered and leaned against the now-opened door. A stimst
ick dangled precariously from his lower lip, glowing with casual indifference. Three grabbed the straps off the floor and hauled the coffin inside the cube. The old man followed him in.

  “Don’t know why you folks gotta make things difficult for us folk. Times is rough enough without undeserved meanness.”

  The cube interior was a stark contrast to the cavernous entryway. Nearly every available square inch was stuffed with various devices, blinking and humming and whirring, and it was easily fifteen degrees warmer inside than out. There was a desk of sorts in the middle of the room, with a plush recliner behind it, and an overturned plasticrate that Three assumed served as a seat for rare company. From within the cube, the flexiglass was clear, and the granite corridor stretched off to the glass exit at the far end.

  “So who’d you git?” the agent asked.

  “Nim. Nanokid out of the Six-Thirteen.”

  The agent’s eyes twitched back and forth as he internally accessed the appropriate file.

  “Alright. Looks like fifteen-hundred.”

  “Four thousand.”

  “Nah, only fifteen for dead.”

  “I didn’t say he was dead.”

  The agent looked up into Three’s eyes, mouth open slightly, but he swallowed whatever question he’d been about to ask, and instead took a drag on the stimstick. He turned and rummaged through a pile of gadgets on his desk, dragging out a slender rod, pewter-colored, without any apparent seams or separate parts, which emitted a pleasant hum. This he pointed casually at the coffin, grunting after a moment with some mix of satisfaction and disdain.

  “Well, that’s him in there alright,” he said, turning again to fish around in his desk drawer. “Pointcard’s OK?”