by Unknown
“It’s the drugs,” a woman’s voice says, close to my ear. “Just relax.”
Relax? Why can’t I move? The words are only in my head, I’m unable to speak. I’m lying on my back. Was there an accident? I can hear other people moving around me but no one speaks to me again. I feel something pulling me under, the pain or the drugs. The sounds fade.
I’m with my family, in the house my brother, sister and I grew up in. It’s spring. Today is warm, sun kissed with the promise of summer.
My sister and I are laughing and playing with our dolls in the backyard, trying to sit them on the swing so we can push them. My Dad and brother are in the driveway working on their bikes, fixing and adjusting, acting like mechanics.
Mom isn’t home from work yet, but she’ll be back soon and we’ve planned a family barbecue.
Something pierces my arm and the vision of my family spins away. This time my eyes snap open but I see only a yellowish blur.
“It’s awake again.” This, a man’s voice.
My eyes won’t focus and my mind feels trapped in a heavy fog. My senses seem cut off, dulled. I know someone is laying fingers on my arm at the wrist, but their touch is cold.
“We can’t keep her like this.” It’s the woman from before.
There’s a loud click, then a filtered voice fills the room. “I don’t need to remind you how important this is. Keep it under until our colleagues arrive.” There’s another click.
Keep me under? I fight to move any part of my body, anything at all, but it’s useless.
“We’ve taken as much blood as we can,” says the man close to me.
Click.
“Then we wait.”
Click.
My blood? Is there something wrong with my blood? Sounds and feelings slip away from me once more.
I’m in the cafeteria, eating an overflowing sandwich with one hand, holding a highlighter over a text book with the other. Lettuce falls onto the book and I set the sandwich down to pick it off. I look up and see a male student crossing the room. He catches me staring and I quickly look down at my text. It’s too late, he’s coming my way. I know I’m blushing, I can feel the heat in my face. Why is he making me feel this way? I’ve never even seen him before. He’s at my table so I have to look up.
“Hi,” he says. “This seat taken?” I shake my head and he sits down, throwing his backpack on the chair next to him. He holds his hand out across my book. “I’m Tom.”
I take his hand and swallow the last bit of food in my mouth. “I’m Sarah.”
“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”
Before we know it, we’ve both missed classes and have talked non-stop for nearly three hours. After exchanging phone numbers and email addresses, we agree to get together again soon. It seems corny, but in my gut I know this could be the beginning of something amazing.
This time it’s my dry, swollen throat that brings me back. I feel I’ll choke if I don’t get something to drink. I cough, and then realize I’ve made a sound. “Water, please,” I manage to say. I don’t know if anyone is around me to hear. I open my eyes, but my vision is still blurred. “Hello?”
I can’t move my head and my heart clenches. Am I paralyzed? Maybe I’m dying. Someone lifts my head and places something against my lips. My vision goes from blurry yellow to blobs of white and blue. I can make out the shape of my own body and an arm by my face as I feel water pass into my mouth. It hurts to swallow, but I take in all I can. It doesn’t seem to help the thirst. My head is lowered back down.
“This will all be over soon,” the woman whispers close to my ear. “They’re filing to their seats. Then this whole thing can be finished.”
Who? Finished, how? I cough again. “Where am I? Where’s my husband?”
“It’s delusional.” The man’s voice is close and assertive. “It’ll be pointless if it’s incoherent the whole time.”
I spiral downwards again.
We’re on the beach at sunset, Tom, Vanessa and me. It’s like something out of a movie, Vanessa giggling with delight as her father chases her along the water’s edge. I have our dinner laid out on a blanket, the one I was so excited about finding online. Grinning, I take video of my husband and beautiful daughter with my phone.
Click.
“Then revive it so it can speak,” the voice commands.
“But sir—”
“It’s drained of blood and restrained, what’s it going to do? We need it to speak.”
Click.
More needles poke me and gradually I can feel my body again. I feel weak, but my mind is clearing.
I can smell them. The woman is young, healthy. The man is older and has a taste for wine and illegal cigars. I can hear their hearts beating, his, a regular rhythm, hers faster. She’s nervous. The last of the drug-induced confusion dissipates like an extinguished candlewick.
No! My entire being screams it again and again. No, I want to go back. I need to go back. Let me stay with Tom and Vanessa. A tear threatens to slide from my eye. The pain in my heart is greater than anything they could inflict on my body. I haven’t cried in many decades.
At first I’d cried every day, even after seeking out and killing the one who changed me. It didn’t ease the pain of having to leave my family. If I’d stayed close, I would’ve killed them too. They smelled too enticing, as though my love for them sweetened my desire for their blood. They thought I was dead, killed by the one who attacked me. At least, for them, there’d been closure.
I continued to exist in utter loneliness, long after my grandchildren’s children would have died. I found no solace in finding others of my kind; around them, my instincts were like those of a wild animal — kill or be killed.
I hear the click again. Whoever is giving the orders is tucked away somewhere safe, not in the room with me. “Welcome, Doctors, Honorable Officiates and Hunters. We will now begin.”
Click.
I know that voice. He is the reason the others are gone. For years he has organized those who hunt and kill us, campaigning over the Net Waves, encouraging government officials to give them access to the latest technologies in order to wipe us off the earth. After almost a hundred years of being the hunter, I became the hunted when the human population banded together to exterminate us. But, I’d avoided the riots and the wars. Until now.
“Yes, thank you, Ambassador.” The man in my room launches into a well prepared speech, congratulating himself and his team for my capture.
He outlines their plans to discover how I was able to survive while most of my kind were not. Most. So I am not the only one left. That would explain the Hunters.
The man relays the findings of their tests and experiments. My chest feels as though it’s been stabbed repeatedly, my arms and legs are restrained by straps and some sort of energy field. There are several needles in my veins. I feel like I haven’t fed in weeks and I can tell they’ve taken almost all blood from me.
I doubt this is a human hospital, more likely an isolated facility to house the dangerous. Me. I’d thought my latest sanctuary secure, that I wouldn’t be discovered. They must have sent more advanced machines to track me, ones I couldn’t detect. They’d swarmed me — I remember now.
According to the man’s speech, there’s nothing about my blood, tissue or brain that would indicate I am any different from the others. He intends to interrogate me, though, for answers to his questions.
Bring it. I know one thing: they’ve underestimated my strength, drained or not.
Ironically, survival of the fittest meant more to me once I was dead. While others of my kind lived for the moment, I learned to be the fittest, the fastest, the deadliest. Never again would I be the victim, or so I thought. Once the Hunt began, it took everything I had to deal with the Hunters and the machines. Most of the others had grown delusional, believing themselves gods to be feared and worshipped — they had died first.
I open my eyes but remain silent, keeping my recovery to myself. My vision clears.
The yellowish blur above becomes a paneled ceiling with powerful lights which cause me pain at first, but I’ve trained myself to adapt to pain. In my peripheral I can see the man, dressed in the blue uniform of the human doctors. I can’t see the woman, but I can tell from her scent she isn’t far. The table I’m on hovers at the height of their waists. Several machines are close to the table, silently scanning and analyzing my system.
Click.
“Ask it where it got the technology to deceive the machines.”
There are voices in the background coming through the intercom. The Hunters want to know how many of their number I’ve killed. I suppress a smile. I lick my lips.
The man comes closer and bends over me, holding a precision laser tool. “We know almost everything about you. But there’s more to learn. Tell them what they want to know or this is going to get very unpleasant for you.”
Every part of my being wants to break free of my bonds and rip out his throat. “You humans are quick to advance your technology,” I say, loud enough for them all to hear. Without moving enough for their eyes to see, I test my restraints. “But you fail to think things through.”
There’s laughter from the Ambassador through the intercom and others join him. “We have you. You are the one who failed,” he says.
I wait for the laughter to subside. “I, however, think things through. For example…” I lower my voice to a whisper.
“What’s it saying?” The viewing room is anxious. I can feel it.
The man leans in closer. “Speak up, beast.”
In one movement I snap the alloy restraints on my right arm and punch through the energy field to grab the man by the throat. I pull him toward me. The woman screams.
“For example,” I snarl in his ear, “I’ve trained for capture and blood loss.”
Fangs find flesh and I drink sweet life force. It charges my body like an electrical current. Energy returns to my muscles.
Click.
I feel panic from the viewing room and it heightens my senses. I drop the man to the ground, dead. With much less effort I pull my other arm free. I realize they’ve strapped me down with a row of silver spikes in my chest. One smooth motion rips the strap with the spikes free, tearing flesh with it, but I don’t cry out. I rip the needles from my arms, kick my legs free and am on my feet.
“Please…” The woman backs up, away from me, reeking of terror and panic. “I have a family. A daughter. Like you did once.”
I tilt my head and step closer. “Then you should have thought of that before getting involved.”
I lunge and stop, fangs inches from her face. The clearest image of Vanessa I’ve seen in over eighty years flashes before me. I laugh. “Fine, my little one. I will spare her.”
The woman cries hysterically and falls sideways onto the floor, curling into a ball. I grab her up with one hand and set her on her feet, bracing her against the wall. “Tell the humans it ends here or more will die.”
I turn to the viewing deck and see the humans fighting each other to get to the door. There is only one who remains where he is and our eyes lock. In a fluid motion, I jump onto the hovering operating table, bend my legs and spring before he can even blink.
My forearms hit the glass first, shattering it and forcing him to fall back. Glass shards slice my arms and legs but that doesn’t stop me. I tuck and roll to standing. Jumping over the ones still clambering for the exit, I slam the door shut and destroy the door controls with my fist.
The three Hunters reach for their weapons: an old fashioned crossbow, a plasma gun, an energy-enhanced sword. I launch at the one holding the plasma gun before he can pull the trigger and burn me to death. He needs both hands to hold the weapon which leaves him vulnerable. My hands grip his head and I snap his neck.
The one with the sword is skilled and fast, but it’s a dance I’ve executed before. The secret is in knowing how to control the choreography and I outmaneuver him with only a few steps, and then move in for the kill.
A wooden missile hits me from behind, but not close enough to my heart to matter. I turn and rush the Hunter as he works to reload the crossbow. Grabbing his throat, I lift him off his feet and smash him against the wall; he dies on impact.
The others in the room — the bureaucrats — crouch together in terror in one corner. I turn away. I’ll get to them soon enough.
The Ambassador is on his feet.
“You see,” I say as I close in on him, his fear tickling my nostrils with the red promise, “your kind never thinks things through.”
He opens his mouth to speak and I dart forward, clasp one hand over his mouth and grab the back of his head with my other hand. “It’s not your turn, it’s mine.”
His eyes remain wide as I tilt his head back. Careful not to kill him too quickly, I tear bits of flesh from his neck. He is alive as I bite again and again. When he is near death, I release him to die in a painful, crumpled heap, alone.
Most of the rest scream at my approach. Feeding without mercy, I leave none alive.
The night welcomes me in a cool embrace and I don’t look back. I will withdraw to a new sanctuary to heal, then will seek out the few of us remaining.
My kind must survive. It’s time to put aside natural instincts and band together. Leaders will teach survival skills, and how to fight back. Makers will build our army, our new family.
Humans will continue their attempts to exterminate us, but the past is gone, for them, for us. For me. They are strong, but we are stronger — we think things through.
* * * * *
Born and raised in Ontario, Sandra Wickham now lives in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two cats. Sandra has been a coach and fitness trainer for over twelve years and is new to the writing world. Her friends call her a needle-crafting aficionado, health guru and ninja-in-training. Sandra’s story “Mama’s Boy” appeared in the anthology Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, and was her first publication. She’s thrilled to be included in this new vampire anthology and hopes this means she’ll get to dress up as a vampire again.
Toothless
By Peter Sellers
Hot. Sunny. No chance of rain even though it always felt like I was walking through a fish tank. It was the same forecast as yesterday. For that matter, it would be the same for tomorrow. They tell me that weathermen used to get it wrong more often than not. Now they’re always bang on. Everyone hates people who are right all the time.
I was working days for the third week running. I hated days. Every cop did. Only a few more shifts, though, and then the switch to blessed nights, with temperatures that we’d all conned ourselves into believing were cool.
There were still a few people around who remembered what it was like before the meltdown. Most of them worked in the suicide clinics. If you were feeling down you went in and they’d talk about how it was and show you photographs, or maybe a film. If you were lucky you got slides — those had the best resolution. After seeing that presentation, people went out and threw themselves off bridges. A lot of people I used to know had killed themselves but, bad as things were, I figured what came after just might be worse.
I’d even heard that once upon a time cities used to send out tanker trucks full of water to wash down the roads. Such profligacy made me shake my head. They tell me it isn’t like this in Scandinavia. But I haven’t seen for myself, and no one I know can afford the flight either.
When I got off shift I headed to Alan’s place. There were eight of us staying there this time. Couch surfing was a way of life for most people these days. The government turned on the air conditioning by zones, one week at a time. So every Sunday morning you saw people clutching toothbrushes and sweat-stained pillows and moving from an apartment in one zone to an apartment in another. Most people had worked out a sharing arrangement among a group large enough to make sure you could sleep with air every day, but not too large so as to become unwieldy. Of course, you had to have a couple of spares so you could ki
ck someone out if he became too obnoxious or smelly.
Police work was not much about deduction and forensics and solving baffling crimes anymore. Mostly, we protected property: water, zinc and Vitamin D. Zinc was the only thing that really worked to keep the sun from turning you into a walking tumor. Needless to say, it got expensive and that made it a popular item for theft and lucrative for black market sales.
The meltdown had hit everybody hard. But to the vampires, it was like a crucifix to the nuts. It took the night away from them. Science is not my strong suit, so I may have got some of this wrong, but here’s how I understand it: When the ozone burned up, the radiation that hit the earth pervaded everything. Turns out it wasn’t sunlight that made vampires fall apart like lepers on fast forward, it was the radiation, and all of a sudden radiation was everywhere. Even at night, vampires were no longer safe. The radiation after dark wasn’t strong enough to kill them but it sure made them sick. They went from invincible to weak, ill and tired most of the time. That was no different from the rest of us, of course, but for them it was one hell of a come down. They went from social paragons to pariahs overnight. Needless to say, this decline stripped them of their charisma. There’s nothing charming about an emaciated vampire bent over and coughing up blood in an alley.
The effect of radiation combined with the fact that the quality of blood was poor. With depleted D levels, human blood was not as nutritious as it had once been and vampires began to suffer from malnourishment. With their exotic appeal gone, there wasn’t much left. Vampires weren’t used to working for a living and resented having to do it, kind of like exiled royalty. They tended to take a lot of sick time, which made employers hesitate hiring them. Some vampires took night jobs, like driving cab and waiting tables. A lot of them, though, became hookers, drug mules, petty thieves — anything to find the money to afford the high-priced artificial plasma that, like margarine, was not the original but would do in a pinch. From a cop’s standpoint it was a good thing because there were a lot of snitches around, too. A desperate vampire would sell out anybody for a pint.