by Unknown
“I’m all right,” she said. “Really. I just slipped.” Everything seemed to be in working order, except for one broken toe. It hurt like a bitch.
“Are you sure?” the janitor asked. He still didn’t look convinced, so she pulled herself to her feet and smiled, even though the pain was horrendous.
“Absolutely! Sorry if I frightened you.”
She walked down the stairs until she heard the janitor leave the stairwell, then groaned and hobbled back to her room, feeling like an idiot. Flying was definitely out.
Her head started to ache as she climbed into bed and attempted to contact Gina. She didn’t feel the usual warm click, and frowned. “What the hell?”
Tried again. Nothing. She felt the first flicker of panic, but steadied herself and tried again. Still nothing. She touched the scar and felt a spot of pain where she’d obviously hit her head.
“Oh my god!” she whispered. Almost without thinking, she grabbed the emergency button clipped to her bed and pressed it over and over again, as though it could do some good. She’d disconnected herself from the V-Link! She was all alone.
The nurses added sedatives to the chemical stew they pumped into Roslyn’s body and for days she couldn’t pull it together enough to even get out of bed. The truth was, she didn’t know if she wanted to. She couldn’t hear a whisper from the Link.
“I’ve lost everything,” she muttered.
“What was that, dearie?” A nurse stood on the other side of the room. Roslyn hadn’t realized she was there.
“I think I’m going to die,” she whispered.
“Oh no, dear,” the nurse said. “Just three more days and you’ll be right as rain.”
“Three more—”
“Your procedure, remember? We had to wait for the swelling in your brain to ease.”
Roslyn closed her eyes and swallowed. Her throat hurt. How long had it been since she’d fed? Then she frowned. “Swelling?”
“Why yes. You took a tumble. Hit your head. We had to put off your procedure until the swelling eased.” She walked to Roslyn. “Can’t you remember?”
Actually, she couldn’t, but she was not letting the nurse know that. “The drugs are muddling my head,” she replied, using the young girl cadence in her voice that seemed to calm all meat. “But I remember now.”
“Just rest,” the nurse said. “Soon, you’ll be back with the rest of us. Dr. Erickson is a miracle worker.”
“Yes, I’m sure he is.” Roslyn muttered, trying to keep the smile on her face until the nurse finally left the room.
As soon as the door clicked shut, she kicked off the blankets and got out of bed. She was weak, but not debilitated. And her foot didn’t hurt anymore. Healed. Maybe her head had healed too.
She closed her eyes and focused on connecting. She tried not to think how much she needed it, just cleared her head and waited for the warmth. She thought she felt something, but couldn’t be sure; her head was still fuzzy from the drugs.
Anybody there?
Is that really you? The thoughts winding into her head were so weak she barely believed they were real. But they had to be.
Yes, it’s me.
A flood hit her. Thoughts, from all over the country. All of them saying, Thank god you’re back! We can’t lose any more!
Gina? Roslyn hadn’t felt her thoughts in the cacophony. You there?
The sudden silence made her panic. Had she been cut off again? One small taste, then back to black?
Are you still there? she thought-screamed. Please be there!
Finally, a Yes, but it sounded like Mandie Lee from Spokane.
Where’s Gina? More roaring silence, and she thought-yelled, What the hell is going on?
She’s dead, Roslyn.
Roslyn felt as though she’d been caught between two breaths, felt the moment stretch and become impossibly long.
She can’t be dead, she finally thought. She’s just hiding again. Spying on the doctors.
No.
Maybe her implant was removed.
No! Stronger this time, but still Roslyn refused to believe.
How can you be so sure?
We watched. Her husband killed her.
She was married? Stupid thoughts jumped into her head, but all she had were stupid thoughts. Gina was dead.
Yeah. Mandie’s thoughts rolled through Roslyn’s mind like a flood. She was caught spying on the doctors and they put her on the extraction list. She begged them to let her see her husband before they took out the implant. Said she had to make him understand that it wasn’t her fault.
What wasn’t her fault?
She killed her kids.
There was nothing more to say. It was like Gina had said a million years before: they’d all killed somebody.
Roslyn looked down at her hands and her feet. They felt like wood again, and she didn’t know if she wanted them to come alive this time. Gina was dead.
We’ve all decided something, Roslyn.
What?
We’re going to get strong and get out, just like Gina wanted. She was right. We have to stick together.
Their collective thoughts warmed Roslyn, and she sat up, clenching her hands before slowly pulling herself to her feet. Gina was dead, but Roslyn wasn’t alone. She had the rest of the Link patients. She wasn’t alone.
Dr. Erickson walked into her room just after sunset on the night they had all decided to leave. She stared at him for a long cold moment, as though trying to remember exactly who he was.
“What do you want?” she finally asked.
He looked taken aback, and she realized she’d forgotten her usual questions about blood and a computer.
“Tomorrow’s your procedure,” he said. “We need to talk about next steps.”
“Oh.” She’d forgotten that, too. “Yeah.”
“There will be changes, after the extraction.” He looked so small, so weak. “Once you’re stabilized, you’ll be moved to a different facility.”
“Really? Where?”
“It will be … more secure.”
“Like a prison?” She smiled. “Or where Gina is?”
“Gina?” His voice flattened. “Do you mean Gina Wilson? She … didn’t make it.”
“Is that so?”
His face stiffened and he took a half step away from her bed. He looked afraid, like meat should look, and she hoped he’d run. It would be more fun if she could get him to run.
“You’re upset,” he said, and she smiled. He was the one who sounded upset. She could almost hear his heart beating in his chest. “A sedative will calm you.”
He took another step toward the door and she caught a whiff of iron. Her mouth flooded and she kicked the blankets away. “Did you cut yourself shaving?” she asked. “It smells like it.”
He gasped and ran, tripping over the walker and falling heavily to the floor. Before he could kick himself free, she was on him.
She tried to think of something memorable to say before she pulled his head back and bit out his throat, but nothing came to mind.
She didn’t completely drain him, though. She stopped herself while he was still moving, though she figured he wouldn’t last long. Not with his throat shredded the way it was.
She grabbed him and easily swung his body up over her head, slamming it down onto the IV pole beside her bed, giggling when the curly metal ends sprouted from his mouth like grotesque, dripping flowers. He tried to scream, but produced only a faint whistle through the jagged hole she’d ripped in his neck.
“I am Roslyn the Impaler!” she laughed, and linked with the rest.
I’ll be with you soon, she thought as she watched the doctor’s feet, barely touching the floor on either side of the stand, jerk spasmodically, like he was trying to run away.
Just one quick stop to make, she told the V-Link. I want to say good-bye to my mother.
* * * * *
Eileen Bell lives in Edmonton, Alberta. She won the 2010 Aurora award for her novella “Pa
wns Dreaming of Roses” in the Women of the Apocalypse anthology published by Absolute XPress, and has had several other short stories published. Her inspiration for “V-Link” was twofold. She wondered whether future vampires would fit into society or revert to their roots, and she had nightmares about online networking. She is happily at work on several other projects, and when she’s not writing, she’s living a fine life in a round house with her husband and her daughter’s cranky cat.
Six Underground
By Michael Lorenson
“We owe respect to the living;
To the dead, we owe only the truth.”
—Voltaire
At a command from the bailiff, a door slid into the wall with a soft hiss and the jurors filed into the deliberation room. Connor noticed that there were no other exits in the room and that the far wall was solid stone, rough and brown, flaked with black. This room was at the back end of the courthouse, which had been built into the very edge of the underground. Connor imagined that he could feel a kilometer of metal and rock and people pressing down on him from above. After forty years of this life the depth still caused him to panic at times. Unless you were born to it, you never got used to the feeling of living underground.
Overhead lamps flooded the room with soft white light, and a blue glow emanated from the outdoor view displayed on the false window in one wall.
“All right, let’s get this vote done with so that we can all go home.” The foreman handed out pencils and small slips of blank paper. He hadn’t even bothered to wait until all the jurors had taken their seats.
“Why the rush?” Connor asked, taking a seat at the opposite end of the long table from the foreman, his back to the false window. “The trial only started this morning. Shouldn’t we discuss the evidence before we vote?” Connor examined the pencil he’d been given. All the pencils on the table were shorter than his thumb and about as sharp, as though they’d had problems before with violence in the deliberation room and weren’t taking any chances. Connor wasn’t inclined to complain over the lack of long, pointed bits of wood, but he thought that bolting the table and chairs to the floor was a bit excessive.
The foreman paused in his distribution of writing materials and looked at Connor without raising his head. “Let’s vote first. If we’re not unanimous, then we can discuss the evidence. Everybody write either guilty or not guilty. No doodles, no knock-knock jokes, no yes or no. When you’re done, fold it up and put it in the bowl.”
The jurors silently obeyed their instructions and deposited their folded votes into the stainless steel bowl in the middle of the table. It wasn’t bolted down but it didn’t look extremely heavy. Connor guessed that any past violent confrontations in the deliberation room must not have involved the blunt object or it would have been replaced.
The foreman collected and unfolded the ballots, dealing them like cards, all but one into a single pile. “One guilty, and eleven for acquittal. All right, which one of you is the hold-out?”
Eleven faces turned towards Connor, clued in to his vote by his suggestion that they examine the evidence. He had hoped that he wouldn’t be the only one to vote guilty. This would be difficult.
He leaned back in his chair, bringing one ankle up to rest on his other leg. “I voted guilty because I believe that they are guilty. And if we vote again, then I will vote guilty again.”
A collective groan filled the room. The juror three seats to his right was the only one who seemed sympathetic, and she was the first to speak. “The prosecution didn’t prove their case at all. Their closing arguments just went over the evidence of the beating, they didn’t even address any of the defense’s claims. You can’t tell me that there’s no reasonable doubt.”
Connor tsked at the woman, but was happy to hear that at least one person was open to discussion. He had heard all their names, but after such a long life he found names difficult to retain. He preferred to name people himself, because the ones he made up for people were more likely to be remembered, and he decided to refer to this one as Mrs. Rational. “The prosecutor was a robot,” he said. “Each side thought they had the case in the bag so they agreed to an expedited trial and that meant the government wasn’t going to assign a flesh and blood lawyer to the case. I have to say, though, the defense didn’t prove their case either. Those boys admitted to beating that girl. There’s video evidence of it. We can watch it again if you want.” He pointed to the wall behind him, occupied almost entirely by the false window.
The woman’s expression soured. “No thanks, once was enough.”
The man to her left cleared his throat. He was very large, with no neck. “But she was found, exactly where they left her, dead with clear traces of vampirism in what little blood she had left.”
“And some serious drugs, too,” said Connor, “but yes, death by blood loss. None of that means that she was a vampire when they beat her.”
“No,” agreed the other juror. “But if we’re not sure, if there’s any possibility that she was already dead when they got to her, then we have to let them go free.”
“Those boys beat her to death for absolutely no reason,” said Connor. “It shouldn’t matter whether she was already dead or not.”
“The judge disagrees with you,” said the foreman. “And so does the law. If she was a vampire when they beat her, then she was already clinically dead and she didn’t have the same rights as you and me. If she was a vampire, then they were within their rights to defend themselves.”
Connor spun his pencil on the table. It stopped, stubby point facing him. He left it where it lay and crossed his arms across his chest. “So that’s what we’re deciding, then. Not whether or not those boys beat her, but whether or not this girl was a vampire when they did what they did.”
“You got it.” The foreman nodded.
Connor wasn’t certain if that would make it easier or harder for him to win them over.
“Okay, so what do we know about vampires?”
“Oh God,” said the foreman. “We know whatever we know. We know what that expert witness told the court. Weren’t you there for that?”
Connor spun the pencil again, this time with more force than he intended, and it skittered over the edge of the table and into his lap. “Of course I was there. I heard the same things all of you heard. I just want to go over it again, see if we can spot any holes.”
“The only hole here is the one in your head,” said the juror to Connor’s left, sounding agitated. “Did any of us really need an expert witness to tell us that vampires are dead, strong, fast, and that they drink blood? Why do you care so much about this girl anyways?”
“Because we’re here to do a job and I’m going to do it right. Why don’t you care about this girl?”
“Because my brother was turned into a vampire. Drove him crazy until he lit himself on fire just to die, said he didn’t want to live that way and couldn’t understand why anyone else would want to.” The juror leaned back in his chair, took a deep, sighing breath. “There was nothing we could say that would convince him otherwise. He knew that he was a monster. He knew that he didn’t belong with real people anymore and some monster forced it on him.”
Connor stared back at the man, trying to judge his age. The body was fifty-ish, but that meant nothing. All through the trial this juror had maintained an angry expression, and it hadn’t faded in the deliberation room. “Well,” said Connor, “I’m sorry for what happened to your family, and I can understand the kind of pain this trial brought up for you, but I have no doubt in my mind that this girl was not a vampire when those boys did what they did. In a trial like this, both sides probably glossed over details. I think we need to go through the evidence that was presented and look for any mistakes.”
Again a collective groan. Again Mrs. Rational spoke up. “Isn’t that the prosecutor’s job? To go through the evidence and challenge the defense’s claims?”
“Again, the robot?” Connor slammed his open palm onto the table. “It�
��s a court-appointed machine. It knows the law and presents evidence but it can’t play the jury’s emotions like a real lawyer can, and because of that it can’t fight fairly against the defense when they use those tactics.”
“You’re saying that the prosecutor didn’t do the same kind of job that a paid lawyer would have?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Connor. “And any one of you who thinks a real person wouldn’t have challenged the defense’s claims is deluded.”
Lips were chewed, pencils were drummed on the table, and there was a lapse in verbal communication.
“So, what do we do now?” The foreman was folding and refolding one of the small slips of paper. “There are eleven of us who think there’s a reasonable doubt, that these boys should walk, and you’re the only one who says they shouldn’t. I don’t think anybody’s going to convince anyone else they’re wrong.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Connor. “I think a lot of the evidence presented would have looked different if the prosecution had actually done its job, but I won’t waste your time just for me. You guys vote and I’ll abstain. If the vote is still eleven for not guilty then the boys can walk. If at least one of you agrees with me that the robot could have done better, then we look at some of the evidence again.”
Ten faces were turned down to their papers so Connor locked eyes with the only juror who was looking in his direction — a muscular man to his left, halfway between himself and the foreman. He held the stare for a moment but broke it off, not wanting to make the man uncomfortable. Connor turned and paced to the corner of the room while the others voted. He took great pains not to look at any of the jurors, and instead stared into the fake window — a viewscreen recessed into the wall which showed a scene of a sun-drenched corn farm, thin clouds floating through the clearest of blue skies. ‘Windows’ like this were a staple underground where there was no sky.
There were nine guilty votes and two in favor of reviewing the evidence. Most of the nine cursed. Some threw up their arms in exasperation. Mrs. Rational and Mr. Muscles looked calmly at Connor. At least now he knew who his potential friends were.