The Outside

by Laura Bickle

  “Initially, we heard that a contagion was affecting the East Coast. I was up here on sabbatical, doing some research on late-season algal blooms affecting the Great Lakes. Tourist season was over, and it was a great time to get some peace and quiet. There are only a few straggler tourists here after Labor Day, those and the locals. Plenty of time and space for me to collect samples, set up in the house, play with sequencing DNA of algae species. I brought a truckload of equipment. I meant to stay here for a couple of months, and then return to Case Western—where I teach—by December. Write a paper, get some grant funding—the usual academic stuff.

  “But then . . . this thing happened. I saw reports on TV and in the newspaper about a plague on the East Coast, then popping up all over the world. I called my colleagues at Case Western. They had some theories. They thought that a germ had somehow gotten tangled up with a novel strain of rabies. Someone else pointed out that a meteor shower had hit us a few days before the first reports and suspected an extraterrestrial bacterial influence. There was a popular theory that something nasty had crawled out of Chernobyl or Fukushima. And a dirty bomb detonating in Washington days before didn’t help speculation much either. The most plausible theory I encountered seemed to suggest a widespread mutation in antibiotic-resistant anaerobic bacteria. That’s where I’d put my money, if I still had any.

  “But by then it was too late for any of our theories to matter. The military was rolling out. There was talk of nuking entire cities. I lost contact with the other folks at the university. Television went out, then the radio. There was a lot of talk about vampires.” He shook his head and stared into his cup.

  “You didn’t believe that?” I asked.

  “No. Not at first. I’m a scientist. I’m not supposed to believe in things that go bump in the night.” His mouth flattened into a self-deprecating line. “But after I saw . . . I went out beyond the gate of Water’s Edge to get some food. And I saw a man being eaten alive by a pack of fishermen. Fishermen with teeth, with red eyes . . .” He shook his head. “I began to believe that there was something to the myths. And when we discovered that we were safe here, at Water’s Edge, for no demonstrable reason other than it’s holy ground . . . I sure began to reexamine my ideas.

  “I mean . . . I can scientifically explain the idea that a contagion caused this. It’s transmitted through saliva, and works as fast as necrotizing fasciitis—flesh-eating bacteria. I can rationalize these things. I can guess that anaerobic bacteria—bacteria that don’t need oxygen to survive—shrivel in sunlight. But I couldn’t explain why a vampire can’t cross into Water’s Edge without an invitation. I couldn’t explain how they can entrance their victims.

  “Not at first. I had to get out of the box. I remembered reading about this guy in Japan who did experiments with water. Masaru Emoto.” Matt leaned forward, his fingers laced together, as if trying very hard to capture an idea. “He had a theory that water, when exposed to human thought, changes. If it’s exposed to positive thoughts, like love and hope, the molecules become more orderly and form ice crystals that can be photographed. Similarly, water that’s exposed to negative thoughts and words will not form crystals, becoming disorganized and chaotic.”

  Alex interrupted. “That sounds like total crap.”

  Matt spread his hands. “That’s what I thought, too. Way too new-agey for my taste. Nobody in the scientific community really took him seriously. But I began to wonder . . . what if human consciousness, the changes that occur to human brain waves during prayer and meditation—really a perfect alpha state—affect the physical world?

  “So I started to run some experiments. I used some of the water here at Water’s Edge, compared it to water I collected from outside the settlement. Now get this: The water here forms unusually organized crystals. And that’s not just the lake water. Even the tap water here is much more molecularly organized than tap water coming from just outside the gate.” Matt pointed to the refrigerator. I saw pictures of what appeared to be snowflakes tacked up on it.

  I pushed away from the table and crossed to the refrigerator to get a better look. Some of the crystals were breathtakingly beautiful. Each one was labeled in felt-tip marker. The ones marked “Water’s Edge” were gorgeously symmetrical and glistening white with bits of rainbow gleaming in them.

  Not all of them were beautiful. I saw several that looked like broken rings, like black holes, uneven and stained. These were labeled with other locations: “Tap water from gas station west of town.” “Culvert one block west of Water’s Edge.” The blackness inside seemed to reach forever.

  “So, I started thinking about humans and how we affect our environments,” Matt was saying. “What if there was something to it? What if human consciousness can organize the molecules of water, minerals in the earth, or what-have-you in a way that the creatures find intolerable? True ‘holy water’ or ‘sacred ground.’ I’m guessing that this is especially pronounced when many people are praying over a finite area with clear boundaries. Even the symbols or rituals that have been used by many people over time, whether man-made or natural, could be vectors that organize this mental energy.

  “And once the holiness becomes molecularly disorganized or degrades, evil finds a way in. ‘Evil’ being shorthand for destructive forces. If I expose some of this water to negative stuff . . . even if I tell a glass of tap water here that it’s stupid every day for a week, the crystals break down and the molecular structure becomes chaotic. Maybe, someday, with enough experiments, that could be something I could prove . . . but for now that’s just conjecture.”

  I touched a photograph of a crystal. But it was beautiful conjecture.

  “Is that what happened here?” Alex said. “An experiment in positive thinking? You thought yourselves glowy? Or is this the part where aliens show up and rescue humankind?”

  Matt put his hands before him, about a foot apart, and shook them. He leaned forward, and in a slow, dramatic voice said: “Aliens.”

  Alex mimicked him. “Aliens.”

  I swallowed. If aliens existed . . . My worldview wasn’t ready to be expanded that far. I was pretty sure it was going to burst at the seams. “Aliens?”

  Both men dissolved into laughter.

  “It’s an Internet thing,” Alex said. It was clear that this was some pop culture reference I didn’t understand. “Mad scientists. Sorry.”

  “No aliens. At least, not unless the extraterrestrial bacteria theory is proven to hold any water.” Matt shook his head and wiped his eyes. “And what we’re doing is an experiment, but not one in positive thinking. I figured that if this was a catastrophic evolutionary event, we’d have to do something to survive. My colleagues, before I lost contact with them, were trying to figure out ways to destroy the vampires. Weapons systems using flamethrowers, concentrated UV light, that kind of thing.

  “But this is larger than that. There are more of them than there are of us. Last reports indicated that two-thirds of the world’s population is gone. That there are pockets of survivors, on submarines and cruise ships and at holy sites around the globe.”

  “I heard that too,” I said. “My friend’s husband was in the military. He said that there were people safe in very unusual places.”

  “Right. Mount Fuji, mosques, synagogues, Jerusalem. But this is a global catastrophe. There simply aren’t enough of us to fight them. Not anymore.”

  Alex’s jaw hardened. “We can’t just wait for them to kill us. Lie down and die.”

  “No. No, we can’t. And we can’t win. Which is why I proposed that we adapt.” Matt steepled his fingers in front of himself. “I watched the vampires. I knew that they were afraid of sunlight, of fire. But not artificial light. I knew that there had to be something about natural light that bothered them. I observed that they only are interested in fresh flesh, whether from humans or animals. Meat that’s starting to rot is of no interest to them. There are particular bacteria that multiply in room-temperature meat. If you leave a chicken out for
a couple of days, it will start to glow in the dark. Faintly. People have been noticing this since the time of the Civil War, when wounded soldiers had glowing wounds when there was no antiseptic. “

  “Bizarre,” Alex said.

  “Those bacteria thrive on oxygen, though. And doctors during the Civil War observed that wounds that glowed healed better than those that didn’t—the bacteria removed dead tissue. And I noticed that the vampires hate foxfire. It’s a fungus, but it’s still producing natural light.”

  I nodded. “We sometimes use it to light haylofts in the winter.”

  “I found a little bit of it in some rotted wood at the park. I smeared it out on the street, beyond the gate, and watched with binoculars from a nearby house. They wouldn’t cross that line.”

  “That’s really . . . really cool,” Alex said.

  “Bioluminescence is cool stuff. Cold light is created when you have three things: something called a luciferin, a luciferase, and oxygen. They react together to create cold light.”

  I frowned. “Lucifer?”

  “It’s Latin for ‘light-bearer’—a chemical not affected by heat. And a luciferase is an enzyme destroyed by heat. It’s a catalyst. Add oxygen, and . . . there’s glow.

  “I study bioluminescent algae. Scientists have had a lot of success in recent years with altering the DNA of various creatures to make them bioluminescent. Injecting jellyfish proteins into cat and mice ova, for example.”

  “I’ve seen that,” Alex said. “It’s been all over the Internet. Glow-in-the-dark kittens.”

  “Right. It’s not too terribly useful. But it got me thinking . . . what if we could do that to people? Would that help protect us from vampires?” Matt rubbed his temple. “I’ve been around and around the issues of faith. Frankly, I’m not qualified to assess that.

  “But the cold light—that’s something I could understand. I took the gene from the algae I’m studying and introduced it to my body.”

  “How does that work? Isn’t genetic manipulation usually done in vitro?”

  “I used a virus. A variant of the common cold was handy, and I don’t have access to much else here. I have a decent lab set up, but not anything I can use to do anything more delicate than the crude gene-splicing I did. It was a gamble, and the results were . . . imperfect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The virus takes over the body the way a virus usually does. Only this is more painful. There’s a lot of algal junk I wasn’t able to isolate. I was pretty sure I’d done myself in. And Cora called me an idiot. But within a few days, I started to recover. And I could see cold light spreading throughout my body.

  “Once I felt strong enough, I went outside after dark. The others didn’t want me to do it, but I had to know if it worked or if I’d just screwed up my body with a bunch of genetic garbage.

  “I held my breath. A vampire approached me. He called me Lucifer. He tried to grab me, but my skin on his . . . it burned him. He went away, searching for better prey.” Matt fiddled with the spoon in his mug. His coffee must have long since grown tepid. “The others at Water’s Edge tried it, one by one. And nobody’s died yet. I have no idea what the long-term effects are on abnormal cell growth, reproduction, aging. It could be a long-term poison.”

  “But it’s a short-term defense,” Alex said.

  “Exactly. We became something other—‘Homo luciferus.’ And it is, for what I can do, the least of the evils.”

  ***

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “About what?”

  Alex and I walked along a paved path to the dock, Fenrir at our heels. The sun shone in a cold blue sky. A small beach with pale sand spread out on our right, and the dock was on a poured concrete foundation, reaching out into the lake. Small boats were moored at a pier to the west, bobbing against the steel gray waves. A solitary gray heron fished along the edge of the dock. Seagulls spun in the air overhead, keeping low against the wind. Keene walked Horace along the edge of the beach, likely more for our peace of mind than any benefit to the horse. The flagpole rope slapped against the pole in a regular rhythm, like a clock ticking away the seconds.

  “About what they’re doing to themselves being the least of the evils,” I said.

  Waves crashed against the dock, and I pulled my coat closer around me. We paused at a bench that had been bolted to the concrete and sat down, facing north. An island with dark trees was just ahead of us. To the far west, I could see a spidery industrial apparatus that extended out into the lake. Judy had said that was part of a marble quarry from the next town over.

  “You think of it as evil?” Alex asked. He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “I’m thinking that this looks like the best thing since sliced bread.”

  I sank into my coat. The wind tore tendrils of hair away from my bonnet. “Plain people don’t even believe in dying our hair. Piercing our bodies. Or tattoos. It’s tampering with the vessel God created. This is surely violation of Gelassenheit on the highest order.”

  “These are different times, Bonnet.” He scratched his tattoos under his coat. “Beliefs have to evolve.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It seems like the further we move away from the old ways, the more trouble we are in. I don’t know that I believe Matt’s explanation about . . . about vampires being the product of a bacteria.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any. It makes sense.”

  I shook my head. “No, no it doesn’t. It doesn’t explain why the vampires can’t cross into holy ground. Why your tattoos and my Himmelsbrief deterred them. He’s stretching to try to explain it with this business about water crystals and human consciousness affecting the physical world. I don’t . . . I don’t believe that this is a scientific evil. It has to be a spiritual one.”

  “You think Ginger succumbed to spiritual evil?”

  I stared down at my shoes. “She wasn’t evil. I know that. But the science doesn’t explain everything. There is something of pure evil at work here . . . and also God. I have to respect that.”

  Alex stared down at his hands. “I’ve seen Matt’s experiment work. For me, the proof is in the pudding. And it would give us another chance to live to see tomorrow. Objectively.”

  “It will change us. Make us something else. Something not human. And if we are no longer human . . . what are we?”

  “I don’t know, Bonnet. I don’t know what the human race is becoming. But it needs to survive, in some form. Even if that form glows in the dark.”

  “It is too . . . I don’t know that I can. It is turning away from everything I believe in. It is accepting modern technology . . . embracing it on a terrifying level. This is beyond using a cell phone or wearing britches. This is . . .” I struggled to find the words. “This is something irreversible. Something that I fear would destroy my soul.”

  “And that’s the thing that scares you the most, isn’t it?”

  “Ja. Before . . . when I was at home, I didn’t feel ready to be baptized. I was not really afraid of being caught out. It didn’t seem real. Now . . .” Tears filled my eyes. “Now that I have been separated from my family, I don’t want it to be forever. I know that I will likely not see them again on earth. But I want to know them in heaven.”

  Alex stared out at the lake. “There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind on that, Bonnet. It’s an article of faith. And I respect that.”

  “But you don’t feel that way,” I said slowly.

  “No. I don’t. I don’t know the condition of my immortal soul, if I have one. But I’m pretty sure that the gods won’t mind if I do the best I can to preserve the life I’ve been given.”

  “I understand.” But a pain in my chest began to flower.

  “I’m going to ask Matt if he will give me the algae juice . . . whatever it is.”

  He reached over and squeezed my hand. The waves washed hypnotically toward me, singing their exotic siren call. He stood up and walked back down the dock. Fenrir fo
llowed him. They left me alone to stare out at the lake and contemplate the ache in my chest.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The way I placed my faith in God, Alex placed his in science.

  And there was no middle ground in these things, whether our paths led us to the same place or to vastly different ends.

  Linh’s sister Yen was infected. We could all see it, in her pallor and the flecks of red growing in her eyes. Linh had been told, and she wailed like a banshee. I wondered if the tears burned her ruined eye socket. She wore a bandage over that eye, seeping red. Her sister gazed at that stain hungrily.

  Peter and the rest of the men came to take Yen away. Peter carried a rifle, his mouth set in a grim line. Linh followed in their wake, her face swollen, and seeming strangely silent.

  Alex and I followed at a respectful distance. I don’t know if we watched because we wanted to measure the character of this group of people we’d fallen in with, or because we wanted to make sure that the dirty work was done. I pulled my coat close around me and shuddered.

  When Yen saw that they were dragging her to the gate, she howled and writhed in the men’s grip. They were wearing heavy gloves, but she hissed and spat. She didn’t yet have the full strength of a vampire, but she was strong. She kicked one of the men in the gut, knocking the wind from him. Peter stood back, holding the rifle at his shoulder. He couldn’t get a clear shot at her as she thrashed.

  I covered my mouth with my hand. I had hoped that he would not have to shoot her. That she would surrender and go quietly. I glanced at her sister. Linh watched with a dull glaze in her good eye, her hands slack at her sides.

  The men flung Yen outside the gate. Like the gate in my community, this gate seemed so symbolic, only an arm and nothing to keep anyone in or out. Just faith.

  Yen sprawled on the ground. She turned, snarling, her hair in her mouth. She crawled back but could not cross over. It was as if an invisible wall kept her from moving beyond, and she bloodied her fingers on the pavement, scrabbling at the edge of it, with a high-pitched keening.