Civil Blood_The Vampire Rights Trial that Changed a Nation

by Chris Hepler

  The drive back is quiet. Davis's body, even though it took a bullet to the head, is held to the gurney by Kevlar straps. This much restraints can do.

  We watch for signs of consciousness. The body jerks when we hit a pothole, and I flinch. The pistol is gone, and I have a long, thin knife we keep in the van. If the bullet has not done its job, I will direct the blade into Davis's eye.

  This procedure has not emerged from a particular incident but by van consensus.

  "Dispatch, hot van one-oh-three, coming in with a spayed dog and papers." The radio squawks back, and we make for the drop-off point. In a few hours, Simon Walter Davis will advance the cause of scientific research.

  After a few kilometers, I turn off the stimweb, and the ongoing functions surrounding my hand and head cease. The others in the van see me as I am, knife-hand gloved, hair long and silver, still bound up to prevent evidence from falling to the floor. My eyes, green now instead of gray, are fringed by metallic lashes, changed in the same accident that colored my hair. I stretch my legs and lay my bare hand across them. Gradually, the hand cools to its normal temperature.

  Without the adrenaline, exhaustion settles in. Breunig passes me a bottle of water, knowing I have run too hot. I glance every now and then at the collection kit and Berman's sample. A few minutes' work online reveals Berman is a personal trainer. If he turns out positive, a bereavement specialist at BRHI will call his clients and let them know he will not be keeping any future appointments.

  Breunig catches me staring off into space. "Hey," he says, "buck up. We did a genuine save just now."

  I shrug. "We'll find out in three days."

  "You had Shakespeare and surgery in the same night,” Breunig says. “It doesn’t get any better."

  I watch the body and try to recall the few lines I heard. Then, I give up. They cannot be as important as the cold face I see in front of me. His name was Simon Walter Davis, and he was a victim of VIHPS. I have to remember that.

  3 - INFINITY

  August 5th

  I'm pretty sure I break my tenth commandment in Buckeye, Arizona.

  I got eight of them when I was a young little thing and thought getting all of them would be hardcore. I mellowed a bit, then got adultery by accident. That just left number six, the one that graduates you from hot mess kinder-rebel to what-the-hell-did-you-just-do?

  It's not supposed to happen like this, but then, very little in my life happens like it's supposed to. I'm not supposed to be stuck on the freeway when the Santa Ana winds whip up a wildfire. The world smells like smoke and ozone as the too-bright sun sits directly ahead, making me angry. I'm not supposed to have a stabbing, cramping pain in my gut, and when I stop to grab graham crackers and ginger ale with my meager funds, it's supposed to help.

  I don't puke, for which I'm grateful. I sit in the car at the gas station, trying to keep body and soul together. When the asshole behind me honks, I nearly get out of the car and drag him into the street right there.

  What I can see of him through the back windshield, I like. A teenager driving his grandfather's gas-guzzler. Young enough not to know how to fight back, young enough not to be on medication that would spoil the taste.

  I shake my head. It doesn't clear up shit. Another honk. I pull out and consider options.

  I take back every irreverent comment I have ever said about the stupidity of vectors. I've called them vipes, biteys, rabies babies—watching them make every mistake. How any of them managed to plan an attack when their body was shooting raw want through every nerve, I'll never know. That is, I'll only know when I do it.

  The first hurdle is the no-brainer. Find a secluded place. Interstate 10 has its share of sprawl, but once you get far enough out in the desert, you get rest stops where people are few and far between. I pull off the freeway into two of them but chicken out each time. I need somewhere alone, somewhere I won't be digipixed. That rules out gas station pumps, ATMs, and anywhere with a drone corridor or stoplight camera. So, I get on the road again and find myself driving all the way to nowhere. Before I know it, I'm on the endless string of asphalt between L.A. and Phoenix. I scan the side of the road looking for broken-down cars.

  The hunger builds. It grabs me. It squeezes me. I consider faking a breakdown myself, but what do I do if a cop pulls up to help? Instead, I tough it out with teeth-grinding denial and then stop dead in Buckeye, when I can't stand it anymore.

  Behind the trucks of a Fuel N' Fix, I meet my mark.

  How do you choose your first? Some vipes still have it confused with intimacy and see who responds to flirting. Some look for repulsive ones, to make the deed an act of hate.

  Me, I can't think straight, so I pick a big man with a child's face, a long-rider doing a machine's job. Automated trucks are what make Cali go, but guys like him can still make an end-of-the-week stipend for riding along and checking the convoy every five hundred klicks. I make interested noises and find out he won't be missed for three days.

  The proposition is easy. People come to Fuel N' Fix for the gas and the almost-spa. Some bright entrepreneur, whose name is a household word in other people's houses, stuck together a gas station, motel, and massage machines to work out long-ride backaches. My act is to play too-poor-for-the-rub.

  He offers. I don't even remember his name.

  I recommend we make a picnic of it, and we walk over the hillside and into the endless scrub. Deserts are living places, filled with dirt, dry grasses, and bugs. With some distractions and a blanket from his truck cab, we begin to massage, then make out.

  He rubs my shoulders inexpertly. Instead of relaxing, I go cold. I get a whiff of his sweat, and my stomach stops stabbing me like it knows what's happening next. I turn and put my mouth on him, kissing his warm flesh on the cheek, the neck, even the places still covered with clothing. My buried fears come to the surface, of course, because this is one of those situations your sensei tells you never to get into. But I am dead certain this isn't going to end with my clothes off. I can't tell you why because there is no I. My body feeds all by itself.

  My lips move down his bicep, close to the stained armpit of his T-shirt. I wind my arms around his, fingertips tracing his skin in a light touch. My left elbow cushions his. My hands wrap his wrist, coming together in a prayer as I lick the inside of his arm.

  My shoulders jerk. His arm snaps. The open fracture is in my mouth.

  I suck just a little, thinking I can swallow the way you drink a soda, but the blood fills my mouth in a warm, red, cocaine fountain. The guttural sounds he makes are distant and secondary, half-hearted attempts at a scream that comes in loud and clear once his blood hits my brain.

  The trucker struggles, trying to push me off with his free arm, but I dig in with my knees and pretend it's a roller coaster. The victim ride will make sounds shocking to small children. Your restraints will come over your arms, and there will be no exits once we begin. My feet hook his legs, and all he can do is rock and roll without the leverage to get me off. Without leverage, all he has is strength, and I'm an anaconda in cycle boots.

  He lurches one last time. I have a free hand and send his head into the dirt. The sound is like an apple dropped from two stories up.

  Oh, shit. I watch him for signs of life. Assault and battery are one thing; cops don't try too hard solving that. Straight-up manslaughter can follow you around forever.

  I take another lick, trying to think. My gut feeling is to stay and relax, because guts don't understand criminal charges. They no longer feel like a tube of needles, more like a warm flower just opening up. At least my victim's brain is in neutral, so he isn't making noise anymore.

  I sit up, wiping the drops from my chin. My hands are sticky, and in my first sober thought, I remember paper towels. I should have packed them. Did I say I was sober? No. I shouldn't have to worry. Why bother? I'm magic and can't even feel my right hand.

  No. Plan.

  He probably won't bleed out, not from an arm wound, right? It's the carotid ar
tery that turns vipes into killers. They chomp down like they see in the movies, and when they're done taking a liter or whatever, the prey keeps on gushing. Here, I can fold his arm, apply pressure, wrap him in the blanket, hope the shock doesn't kill him.

  I wipe my face on his shirt—which will leave skin cells behind—so I tear it off and take it. I wrap him a little, then I take out his wallet. Robbery. It'll look like a robbery, sort of. I make it a few steps away from the body before looking back.

  A traitor's look. That's what my father called it. He knew whenever I'd try to lie that the remorse would give me away. So, I got better at lying and then better at running. Not that tonight is my best showcase. He's bleeding. Unconscious. In shock.

  I go back, grab his phone using only my fingernails, and click it on. "Emergency," I say. The screen brightens—phones are cued to do this now. No password needed. "Call 911, ambulance." I turn and walk away before it connects and shows the dispatcher a face full of red. GPS will do the rest, or maybe it won't. I don't have a father anymore, and that means I can run. Freedom isn't fear.

  I slide into my car seat. Makeup wipes get the stain off my chin, and I let my smile crest with the high. Little me would have frozen in fear when a man's hands were on me. Adolescent me would have stayed and gotten caught. The thought that carries me onto an endless strip of highway is that I can do this.

  Phoenix, say the signs I follow, 30 mi/48 km. As good a place as any to start over.

  4 - KERN

  August 7th

  I'm not sure who brought the gift of pliers to the ten-dollar meeting, but I make a note to use them later. I know the safehouse has its own set somewhere; the F-prots believe in preparedness. Usually, I use one of those little blowtorches powered by a cigarette lighter, but you have to open a window or else deal with the smell of the torch doing its business on plastic.

  "Okay, let's get to it," I say to the five people filling up the oatmeal-colored living room. Most of them are in casual wear; it is one of the few creature comforts they enjoy during brain sessions. Ranath sports long hair; others, neat beards, and one, Jackson Yarborough, has enough tattoos to outdo the rest of them put together. All the F-prots are in good enough shape to pick me up and carry me if they have to. They have never done so, but the day is young.

  "I'll start by saying congratulations are in order. With the removal of the vector Simon Davis, our map is looking much better." I click a button on my phone, and the wallscreen projector flashes an image with a few animations to keep it lively. The green web of connections leading from Davis turns black and shuts down. "You just got our sanitization rate back up to a healthy eighty-eight percent, and you have officially finished off the Corus family."

  "Is there cake?" asks Yarborough. He's the youngest and most irreverent.

  I respond with a smile. "I resorted to praise in the quarterly reviews that determine bonuses. I didn't know how many candles should be on the cake."

  "Wait, no joke. Don't you have a body count?" It's Mukhtar al-Ibrahim, our driver. He gets a chorus of boos. "It's just candles," he adds defensively. "It's not like evidence someone could see."

  I'm patient by necessity. "I guess I have to say this again. This meeting is to give you need-to-know information on vectors you still need to isolate. The methods you use are determined by Dr. Cawdor and Mr. Breunig on an as-needed basis. I do not know what you do or how often you do it."

  Al-Ibrahim holds up his hands. "I'm clear. Wrong words, that's all. Who's left? Did Davis get anyone?"

  "Berman, the man with Davis, was just cleared. All test results negative."

  Ranath is leaning against the counter separating the safehouse's living room from its kitchen. He straightens up. "Fantastic."

  Softening up: achieved. "Davis had co-workers and relatives, though, and our lead says he had contact with a few. That means interviews." There are groans. I hit a few buttons, and icons with question marks pop up around Davis.

  "Where are all the hermits and the basement dwellers?" says Olsen, the medtech. She scrapes the shaved part of her scalp with her fingers. "I swear we did twenty interviews to isolate that last girl, and Roland had to shut all of them up."

  "We only know of three this time. I wish I could say they're not worth bothering, but I don't believe in deceiving co-workers."

  Yarborough coughs into his hand. "BRSHRT!"

  I only like humor when it's accurate. He gets a scowl. "Do you want to have a discussion? Because you can list your problems to me, and I will address them."

  Yarborough's peeved but not confrontational. "Just saying, a second qi guy would help."

  "Biomancer," says Olsen. She sounds tired of correcting with the technical term.

  "Hitmage," says Yarborough. "Speak-and-spell. Whatever. Get one."

  "I believe Roland considers memory altering a trade secret."

  "I can speak for myself, thanks." Ranath regards me with a stare. This is normal. It's been Ranath's habit to stare people in the eyes as far back as our undergraduate years.

  "Sorry, but a large portion of managing this team is based on me allocating what people know and what they don't know."

  "Cushy," Yarborough says. "You got a list of all the shit he can and can't do?"

  Eloquence fails me. "Not… written down…"

  Ranath examines his fingernails. "This I want to hear."

  A few smiles break out. The F-prots look at me expectantly. I can't freeze longer than half a second. If I fail to match up, I'll never control them again.

  "It's basically 'hide, seek, heal, harm,'" I say, holding finger number one. "Hide. You can alter others' perceptions so they ignore you or forget you. But other biomancers can counter it." Finger two. "Seek. You can track a vector. If he's farther than fifty yards, it doesn't work without a DNA sample." A third finger. "Heal. You can speed up blood clotting, tissue repair, the works. Can't bring back the dead."

  "And?"

  I put up a fourth finger. "You’ve done research on hitting someone with pure yin qi, about which I know more than I legally should."

  "Given how rarely he uses it on vipes, you're safe," says Olsen.

  Yarborough frowns. "Way to sell him on our urgent needs. We're talking about lightening the load."

  "He only listed four things. If we could get someone with each of those skills—"

  Enough chatter. "Did I pass?" Ranath nods. "Okay, everybody visualize your candidate. If he or she's like most people, they'll talk a good game right up until you tell them what the job really entails. Then, when we have trusted them with that information, they will leave. If the new hire is a biomancer, it creates a degree of uncertainty when it comes to how well they resist the memory cramp. So, I hope you understand that without Roland's methods of making our new hire permanently silent, we will have to resort to yours."

  The room quiets down. I might not have them all on my side, but for now, the questions stop. It's time to present them with a problem to solve.

  "Now, it has come to my attention that an important date has slipped." I tap the screen and close in on the image of a fortyish woman, an all-American mix of Belarusian and Han Chinese. Her hair hangs loose, all the way down to her cocktail dress. She's smiling and giving a thumbs-up to the camera with her stimwebbed hand.

  Al-Ibrahim shakes his head. "I still can't get over that choice of mug shot."

  "Company ID photo," says Ranath.

  I continue. "I know that we've been head-down in our work, but I felt this deserved acknowledgement. We are now in our fourth year since Dr. Ulan first got infected. The bad news is we've got no reliable leads going to her. The last vector that we know had direct contact was tied off in June. Roland took care of the information-gathering on that one, but the vector's family didn't know anything. The good news is that with the Corus family removed, we can now concentrate on Jessica more than before. If anyone has a brainstorm about how to locate her, you have my full attention."

  "Didn't she write extensively on qi theory?"
Olsen asks. "Are we not hammering her publisher to see where her royalty checks go?"

  "We know her publisher quite well now. They're clueless. Other ideas?"

  There is silence for a second. "All my ideas involve law enforcement," says Yarborough. "Not letting them in on it," he adds, "but like a bait and switch. Say she's wanted for theft of our property, ask for FBI help for an interstate search."

  "If a vipe gets arrested," I explain, "the prison is going to see some very odd behavior. If two vipes get arrested, a cop or a prison doctor is going to ask questions, and those questions will uncover the symptoms of VIHPS. And given how good forensic folks are at genetic fingerprints and comparative techniques, that won't lead anywhere but this room. Are we clear?"

  Yarborough is unfazed. "I didn't say they were great ideas."

  Breunig, who has been sitting quietly as his talkative team monopolizes the floor, finally speaks up. "It seems to me that whatever routine she's got for feeding and hiding, she's perfected it. If we're going to find her, she'll need to make a mistake."

  Ranath doesn't look pleased. "Jessica's self-discipline was… notable."

  "Are we talking about the same witch doctor?" says Yarborough. "The first thing she did when she discovered there was magic in the world was to start bombarding viruses with the shit."

  Kids. "You're off by about fourteen years, and the decision to modify viruses was actually quite conservative. They were the simplest forms of life, and we followed strict protocols—"

  "C'mon, she could have magicked up, like, the common cold, not freaking bat flu."

  "She did plenty of harmless ones, and if we could refrain from calling qi sciences 'magic'…"

  Yarborough rolls his eyes. "One of these days, Roland is gonna shoot lightning out of his ass, and then you're totally going to stop refraining."

  "I think the point is," says Ranath, "our current strategy to catch Patient Zero is flawed."