“Two.”
Henri swears something in French. The medics who arrived first have their hands full with the nearest body; he’s pale and his throat’s messed up – you can smell the iron in the air despite the rain. He’s trying to pull the tube out of his throat, so if they’ve chemically restrained him it hasn’t kicked in yet.
“He’s good, the other one!” one of the firemen say, pointing to the two young firemen a few feet away.
The scene doesn’t make sense; six firemen and two medics are busy working on the guy, there’s someone wearing stilettos being looked after by two. A blonde with a purple leopard-print skirt with blood and skin in her teeth. She’s gasping, and the younger of the two firefighters is trying to ventilate her.
“Knock it off,” says the other, “they don’t need to breathe.”
Henri’s by her side. “Ma’am, we’re here to help you,” he said. “That is, if the rookie can grace us with some vitals.”
I put down the bag and Henri keeps encouraging her to cough as he checks her over. “What’s your name?” I ask.
She tries to talk, but all she does is wheeze out a few half-words. She’s not cyanotic but pale – like that’s a surprise. I can’t tell if it’s dark lipstick or blood on her lips. I can’t detect an ID chip, so I can’t access her medical history, and her jewellery doesn’t sing me any hints. The firemen say that they’ve already checked her for injuries and have broken a few needles on her skin. Henri instructs her to inhale as best she can as he gives her a nasal spray, and yells at one of them for trying to put an airway in.
I can’t get a pulse, but her blood pressure – my sphygmomanometer doesn’t even go up that high. The only thing they mentioned in class about this is that vampires laugh when faced with our trauma, aren’t effected by diseases, so unless they’re stuck in the sunlight or have been decapitated or impaled with silver or your holy item of choice are they in a bit of a pickle, and then there’s not much we can do – some will even regenerate from that.
“Bee,” Henri barks, “give me vitals.”
“I can’t detect a heartbeat.” I heard someone say that their hearts beat, but it’s so fast that we can’t detect it. “Skin is pale, diaphoretic.”
Henri wipes the drizzle off his brow. “Get the stretcher.”
I get the doors to the ambulance open but the young fireman’s already scooped her into his arms and he climbs in.
“You know how to drive?” Henri asks the young fireman as soon as she’s on the stretcher. Henri tells me to calm her down and before I can ask how he’s got a mouthful of swears for a regular on dispatch.
“Another vampire do this to you?” I ask as the other firefighter closes the back door to the ambulance and holds on to avoid getting thrown into the door.
She shakes her head and suddenly she seizes. She’s arched her back on the stretcher. “Calm down-” I start.
We suddenly lurch forward. “Watch the road, Glasses!” Henri shouts, manoeuvring back to us.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I ask, trying to slip an oxymeter on her finger. She stops seizing, and doesn’t even make a coughing noise this time. The reader doesn’t work. “I need to take a blood sample,” I say. “It’ll tell me what’s going on in your body.”
She understands. I can’t hurt her, but she can hurt herself. She bites the back of her hand, and I do my best not to look too deep at the puncture, just draw and swab what I need and tell the other firefighter to put pressure on the wound.
Back in school, my instructor called the Blood Oxymation Test the Skin Sampler 3000 – basically your glucometer, capnic-reader, blood-alcohol reader and gives us a general idea as to what’s going on with the body, including red blood cell oxygen level, white blood cell count, and more crap I’ve already forgotten. Henri thinks its too invasive – we can identify someone in the databank and know not only their current condition, and any medical past and some potential if we have their family on record. “All that, in thirty seconds,” Henri would say, “but what are you gonna do about it?”
Thirty seconds is a long time to someone who’s dying, looking at you for answers.
I wait for the little button to analyze – a minute passes, and it’s still reading. The fight’s leaving her. Henri’s in cold storage. Supposed to be for trauma, but most of the guys store their sodas there. Blood. He’s carrying blood-bags. “Here, eat this.”
Before I can object she’s unfolded her fangs. It’s the bag or me, so I wait until she’s bitten through the plastic and start to feed before I realize what he’s done. “That’s not-”
“Sedated?” Henri asks.
She’s already drained it, and looks at us wanting more. We’re more. Her color’s improved, and I see the predator, her pale skin near transparent, her network of veins and musculature more visible as her skin draws back, her eyes appearing wider, but only for an instant. She slumps down, almost looking peaceful, were it not for the stained canines protruding past her lower lip.
“That’s better,” Henri said. “Don’t bother with that machine. Bandage her hand.”
I thought vampires were supposed to self-heal, but there’s purple blood dripping onto the stretcher and floor, but it’s easy enough for me to bandage. We’re at the hospital and a cop opens the door. Three others point guns at us, and some cougar wearing thigh-high boots watches with a cross in hand. Every hospital has its own slayer – just in case anyone rises – some morgues have them too. They seem to come in two variations: someone who wears black lace and pretends to be French or Spanish, the elder, greasy sunnovabubba or the grande bubba herself who doesn’t speak a lick of English but can stake them before we have the proper documentation making it good and legal.
“Back off,” Henri says, “unless you wanna work off that donut gut and help.”
I recognize the lead cop; I’m terrible with names but moustaches like that glow in the dark. “You got an ID on that?” he asks Henri.
“Nothing so far.”
I secure her to the stretcher and the cops help me unload her. The nurses look anxious, and are waiting at the emergency doors for the other cops to make sure she’s secure with silver handcuffs before they move her out of the emergency bay.
“Those could hurt her!” Henri says. “She’s in enough distress as it is.”
“These things are tough,” says the slayer, “I’ve seen ‘em rip cuffs apart.”
My patient starts to vomit. I go to suction, but the slayer grabs my arm.
“It’s her job,” Henri snaps.
I never thought I’d have to stick my fingers in a vampire’s mouth, even just to open it. She’s throwing up the blood she just ate. The fireman, Glasses by Henri, is trying to get her back on oxygen. “Do we need an IV?” he asks.
I shake my head. Even if she nicked one of her veins, I’ll bet you she’s already regenerated. “We need to move her.” I can hear the other ambulance coming.
She’s being moved and two cops keep their guns on her as I try to clean her airway. Blood; I can smell it through my respiratory mask. Then there’s black stuff – bile? Something to help her digest blood? I shouldn’t be so aware of the emergency room, but everyone clears the way for us as we wheeled her through emergency, right into a room. The guy she was feeding off of should be unconscious. They wheel him into the same room. We’re separated by a thin sheet.
“The bitch tore off my face!”
“You’re relieved,” a nurse tells me, but I wait until someone’s got my suction before I step back. I hate hand-offs; Henri says get another profession. I’m not supposed to look at the other guy, but no one cares. He’s still haemorrhaging, his lips are blue, and it’s not his face he should be worried about. They’ve ID’d him already. Dennis Curleill, Beta Code. Has a violent criminal record, high risk to reoffend. Probably an attempted rape, or mugging. It’ll be funny, later.
I hear startled shouts, and look back at my former patient. The vampire seizes, and the silver cuffs dig into her han
ds. I can almost smell the burning. The cops tell the nurses to back up. No one fires a shot. She stops. A doctor shows up, but he’s on the guy through the curtain. Before I regroup with Henri, they’re toe-tagging her. Someone makes a joke about bringing in the dead.
“I’ll fill out the PCR,” Henri tells me, “try to find some me some coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s coming out of a donkey’s arse.”
~*~
I’m hoping the vending machine coffee is better than the swill they serve in the cafeteria. I can get a decade-old candy bar while I’m at it. My ID vibrates, and the sleepy janitor takes three steps away from me.
I go to decon to pee and sneeze in the respective containers and figure maybe my job’s not so bad. A chemical shower and a new uniform later, I’m back in the ambulance, plastering my hair into a bun and contemplating going pixie.
I check my messages while I restock the ambulance and check out cold storage. I’ve never thrown a patient on ice, and Henri’s got two more bags, laced with sedative-hypnotics if he’s labelled them right. I just wanna know where he got it from; I don’t ever remember waking up with a new bandage.
“Bee, it’s mum. You said you’d call yesterday. We’re worried, Bee. They know you’re clean; they should let you out of the city. Call me as soon as you’re off shift, okay? Shannon says you haven’t been calling her…” She starts to talk about my little sister’s wedding – hint hint, tick tock, so I skip to the next message.
“Hey Beatrice, it’s Ike.” Huzzah! “I know I said I’d be available for your sister’s wedding, but, I just found out my grandmother’s supposed to be coming in that weekend. You’re a bridesmaid anyway, so you won’t even remember I’m not there, right? Call me after this weekend.”
The next message better be about some devilishly handsome voyeur who’s secretly been in love with me and wants to take me away from my overbearing mother and my underbearing near-fiancé. Come to think of it, that’s just creepy. “Bee, it’s Chelsea. Can you go on nights for me next week?” SKIP. “End of messages. Low battery.” I dump the soiled linens and plug in my handheld and start to download the Stegarzki interview.
Sitting on it, I remember that I forgot to clean out the Skin Sampler 3000. It says her tissue’s dead, but it probably said that when it was reading her. I know I’m not supposed to look at her information after I hand her off, Henri can use the information for his report– not that I can even tell how accurate it is; it’s calibrated for human tissue.
The readings are actually pretty on par with human readings – I mean, we get vampires from the basic human prototype, right? Blood oxygen level is way down, but I’ve heard other medics say they don’t need to breathe. A new heading gets my attention.
Vampire, 4rth level.
Since when do vampires have levels? I take out my handheld and do a quick search. Most of the results are trying to sell me something: Oil of Venom, promising to take a potential century of my face, and a website where I can chat with a real vampire, or at least some virgin doused with baby powder sitting in his mom’s basement.
Henri’s back, but I can’t hear him as I’m too busy being shocked that my patient just tested positive for Kyoli-4.
“Beatrice! Sleep when you’re off shift! You’re not a fireman!”
“Henri,” I start, but the slayer’s right beside him. “You need me to talk to the cops?”
“You really want to?” he asks. He waives so-long to the slayer; I can’t help but wonder if she’s one of his many ex-wives he’s always complaining about “Are we ready to roll? We need to gas up before next shift.”
“Replaced everything,” I say quietly, sliding over to the driver’s seat, “besides some laced blood.”
“Don’t start,” Henri says, getting in.
The rain’s let up, and the early sun’s peaking through the clouds. “At least those things are all back at home, hey?” I ask. Henri’s using my handheld, and changes the channel before my program can finish downloading. “Hey!”
“You can’t drive and watch this at the same time,” he says. “Don’t say anything about that blood to anyone.”
“Isn’t everyone doing it?” I ask, but don’t wait for him to finish. “Henri, are there different levels of vampires?”
“Are you ditching that loser and becoming a necrophliac?”
“I got a reading when I took a sample of her blood,” I tell him, handing him the Skin Sampler. “How did they call her death?”
“Vampires are dead, Bee,” he says.
“They’ve changed the definition of death a few times…”
He’s not listening, he’s looking at the readings. He fumbles in the glove compartment for his sunglasses. “Kyoli? Vampires aren’t supposed to…” he pauses. “You took this on our last call?”
“Yeah.”
“Head back to the bay,” he says.
“We’re not off for-”
He’s on my phone, arguing. He looks at me, and goes in the back so I can’t eavesdrop. Boring drive back to base, but at least we miss the morning rush, with the exception of the early coffee line-ups at the local donut shops, and he won’t stop.
“Leave the unit,” he says. I grab my bag and head for the locker, but he says. “Hold this. We’re going for a drive. My car.”
Even though he’s got kids he gets to see like once a month, his old blue gas-powered abomination smells like he’s got a bunch of kids in elementary and they’re with us, dropping raisins and have their muddy feet on the seats. “Where are we going? Shouldn’t we at least report-”
I look down at the Skin Sampler. It’s bagged. “It’s fine, Bee. Let’s both try to have lives and get this done, alright?” he asks.
“You want me to drive?”
“Nah.”
I know our medical office, but I try to avoid the place. I’ve never been past the main floor, and he won’t even tell me where we’re going.
The secretary’s obviously been in for plastic reconstruction – she looks younger than me, but she’s chipped so I can pick up her life story if I feel like it. My reader says she’s pushing fifty. “Henri, you’re not due back for another week. Are you unwell?”
“Is Kravera in?” he asks. “We need to talk to her.”
“We?” a woman behind me asks, chuckling slightly, clutching a steaming mug of caffeinated goodness. I can almost feel the heat suck from my body as she walks by. She’s short, kind of reminds me of my grandmother, especially with that Oh really? tone. Not chipped, and no longer human. She flashes her fangs at me when I try to scan her. “If you’re unwell, go see your personal doctor. I’m not dealing with patients.”
“I think we have something you’ll be interested in,” Henri says, and gestures to me. “Tell her where you got that.”
“We responded to a mugging turned bad last night,” I say, unsealing the Skin Sampler and handing it to the doctor. “Our patient was a vampire.”
Kravera frowns. “These are designed for humans. I’m surprised there’s any reading at all.”
“I think you want to look it over,” Henri says, “in your office.”
The halls look more administrative than laboratory and doctor’s office. Doctor Beverly Kravera’s not chipped, but her ID’s got most of the same information and I can easily scan it without her noticing it. She doesn’t look 63 – I’d say early forties, and the glasses add five years.
“These machines look for common patterns. Interesting. How did you get a sample?” Kravera asks.
“I told the vampire I needed it, so she bit the back of her hand,” I tell her. “I swabbed, and let the machine do its thing. Couldn’t save the vampire, though.”
“Kyoli?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Henri says. “I ain’t seen anyone fully transformed carrying a virus that can compete with vampirism.”
“Now now, Henri. You know that not all vampiric infections are viral in nature,” Beverly says.
“Why would you know?” I ask.
Henri smiles, and shows me his teeth. I back up. I’m in a room with two of Them.
“Calm down, Bee. Why’d you think I was carrying laced blood?” Henri asks.
“To save your partner if one of those things ever came near us while we were on scene!”
Henri laughs a bit. “Doctor, you have any questions?”
Kravera’s transferring the sample and labelling it.
“You mind if we go for a coffee, and we’ll come back in a few minutes? Make sure we’re not wasting your time?” Henri lets himself out. I follow because I don’t want to be in the same room as her by myself. “I got bit by a kid playing dead about six months ago. I’m on suppressants.”
“You got fangs,” I say.
He shoots me a look and I shut up as we pass the secretary. She smiles, and ignores us as we proceed to the hallway. “How long are we going to leave her?” I ask once we’re clear.
“She’ll find us.”
It’s almost 07:00 – no way I’ll be off before shift change. The cafeteria’s open, and I’m so tempted by the egg-by-product and seaweed soy shakes that I join Henri in powdered donuts and fresh java, and promise myself I’m going on the treadmill as soon as I get home. “This why you’ve been on night shift?”
Henri stirs his coffee, then looks up at the ceiling. “Just don’t tell Nina.”
“Which wife is Nina?” I ask.
“The first one – she’s got her claws on my pension and I want it to be something for her to remember me. Vampires are technically dead…”
“How long you got?”
Henri shrugs. “The drugs are experimental. Could be a week, could be a year. Could be ten. They can only slow it down. I’m on borrowed time.”
“That why you wanted to see Kravera?” I ask.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 25