Young Blood

by Brian M Stableford

  I snatched my fingers away, guiltily, but it was too late. The policewoman was studying me carefully, puzzlement giving birth to belated suspicion. She had me down as some kind of screwball.

  'It'll be okay,’ she said, possibly referring to Anne, possibly to me—or possibly meaning nothing at all.

  'Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know. It's cool. All under control.'

  She didn't believe me. Neither did I.

  6

  'Anne's told us a lot about you in her letters,’ said Mrs Charet, by way of introduction.

  It was the sort of announcement which always sounds ominous, and my heart sank as I faced the three of them.

  'She told me a lot about you, too,’ I said, defensively. A reply of some sort seemed to be obligatory, even though we all had one eye on the doctor, who'd come out to explain the situation as soon as Anne's parents had arrived.

  Mrs Charet was an athletic, ruddy-faced woman who'd tinted her hair red to cover up the grey. She wasn't anything like Anne, so far as I could tell. She was very smartly dressed, as though she'd felt obliged to put on her Sunday best in order to race to her daughter's side. Mr Charet was less striking, and gave the impression that he was very easy-going when he wasn't worried. At present, he was worried. Anne's sister, Sharon, didn't look much like Anne's description of her, apart from the black-dyed hair. Her customary uniform and make-up had presumably been abandoned—or maybe banned—in honour of the occasion. Anne had told me that she looked much older than she was, but to me she was very obviously sixteen. She was worried, too. We all were. Even the doctor was perplexed.

  'I'm not sure why she hasn't come round yet,’ the doctor said, addressing himself to Mr Charet, ‘but it's just a matter of time. She's fine.

  'It's not a coma, is it?’ Mr Charet said. ‘There's no damage to her brain?'

  'It's not what we'd normally think of as a coma,’ the doctor replied, failing miserably to conceal the blatant circumlocution. ‘There's no evidence of any head injury, and she didn't lose very much blood from the cut—but she was rather anaemic, so it's possible that her brain was oxygen-depleted for a while. There's plenty of brain activity, and periodic rapid eye movements, so it's not a classic coma. In fact, she seems to be simply asleep—but we can't seem to wake her. She probably needs a little more time.'

  'I've been worrying ever since she left,’ Mrs Charet said to me, in the tone of one offering a serious confidence. ‘You can't keep them at home all their lives, can you? But you can't help worrying when they go, either. I've always been scared that something like this would happen. Always. Every time you switch on the news there's something—rapes, murders. It's getting more like America every day. Nobody's safe. Why do people do this sort of thing?'

  'I don't know,’ I said truthfully, wondering whether I ought to reassure her that this wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence in small-town California. I felt trapped, smothered by her urgent concern.

  I'd been in the hospital for four hours, waiting for Anne to recover consciousness, continually being assured that it couldn't possibly be much longer. But something was wrong—something the doctors hadn't figured on—and I was back to wondering about the mysterious virus and its occult powers, even though I knew how utterly futile it was to wonder.

  I wanted to get out, to get some fresh air, but I daren't go. I felt that I couldn't go while WPC Linton was still there. The arrival of Anne's parents had only served to intensify my sense of imprisonment. I'd had three cups of coffee from the trolley which did the rounds of the wards, and two lots of sandwiches from the dispenser at the end of the corridor, but I still felt hungry and thirsty, and the unassuageable sensation of need was beginning to annoy me. Now that I had rested the tiredness had gone again, but I didn't feel right. The whole situation was out of kilter.

  Mrs Charet turned her attention to the policewoman, and began the rush of hypothetical questions all over again. WPC Linton was much better at inserting the requisite nods and clucks of sympathy than I had been.

  'If we can get a good description,’ said the policewoman, ‘there's every chance that we can catch the man. Every chance. Even if Anne didn't see him clearly, someone else will have seen the bloodstains.'

  'There'll always be more,’ said Mrs Charet, dolefully. ‘It doesn't matter how many you lock away ... there's no safety any more. You can't feel safe even in your own home.'

  Sharon was looking me up and down, appraisingly. I felt uncomfortable under her inquisitive gaze. Her blue eyes were disconcertingly ill-matched to her black hair.

  The doctor, having delivered his uncertain verdict, walked away. Mr Charet turned back to the rest of us. The way he looked at me suggested that he didn't like me much, but I knew it was nothing personal. He was the kind of man who'd look with disapproval at any and all his daughter's male friends, wishing all the while that she hadn't had to grown up, that she might somehow have remained a child for ever. Maybe he thought that I was too old for her, but that was just one extra item to be added to a long list.

  'You'd better stay here,’ he said to his wife. ‘I'll go book into a hotel. Then I'll have to make a few calls. I have to phone the office, to let them know the score. I'll be back as soon as I can.'

  Mrs Charet nodded meekly in reply. She looked as if she wanted to cry, but couldn't. The policewoman guided her to the bench and sat her down. I stayed where I was, standing up. I wanted to get away, but I didn't know how it would look, or how I could excuse myself. The black-haired girl went to sit beside her mother.

  'She was usually so careful,’ Mrs Charet said. ‘She was such a sensible girl.'

  Not according to the sergeant, I said to myself, silently. But even as I said it I knew that I would have made exactly the same judgement. Anne was very nervous, and precisely because of that she was careful; she was sensible. Could it possibly be true that she'd left the Hall before, in the early hours of the morning? And if it were true, what could it possibly signify?

  The policewoman stood up again, and spoke to me in a low voice. ‘I'm sorry, Gil,’ she said, ‘but now that Anne's parents have arrived, I think it might be better if you left. It seems that the doctor's estimate of when she might be expected to come round isn't entirely to be trusted, so we might be in for a long wait. Why don't you phone in tonight to ask whether she's conscious? If she is, you can come to see her then.'

  I was grateful for the suggestion, but I didn't want to show it. I feigned reluctant compliance, trying to make her think that she'd persuaded me against my will. Once I was outside I walked back towards St Saviour's just as fast as I could go. I was still tired and weak, but I didn't want to wait for a bus. I just wanted to get away, to be on the move. I didn't want to have to face Anne's parents. In fact, I didn't want to face anyone. I wanted to be on my own.

  I went to the supermarket to renew my depleted stores. While I walked around the aisles I kept looking round, searching the shelves for inspiration. I felt so hungry, but I couldn't see anything that I wanted to eat. Whatever I looked at, I just felt indifference, and it wasn't just because the supermarket didn't have the same range of goods as the ones back home. I could feel my hunger, like a physical ache in the pit of my stomach, and I couldn't shake off the idea that it wasn't a general hunger at all but a very specific one, which could only be answered by exactly the right food.

  I could still remember my comic-book vampire saying: ‘When the hunger comes, feed it.’ But when I passed by the meat counters, surveying the bright red steaks and the packs of minced beef, I didn't feel any special attraction to them. I remembered vampires’ minions in cornball films pouncing on spiders and flies, cackling all the while, but there didn't seem to be any connection between my unnatural appetite and theirs. I had no compulsion to go hunting live meat—the problem was that I didn't have any specific compulsion at all, just a desire which couldn't or wouldn't reveal itself fully. It was as if it were determined to drive me crazy by refusing to let me know how to answer it.

  I bought the t
hings I usually bought: easy things to prepare, ready meals for a lazy cook.

  Under the bright neon strip-lights of the supermarket my headache was beginning to creep back, so I bought a pack of dispersable aspirin and a small bottle of scotch. If in doubt, I told myself, get drunk. I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that I'd been premature in thinking that I might have recovered, that I might have beaten off the virus. What had gone before had only been round one; there was obviously more to come.

  It was only three-thirty when I got back to the flat, but I set about preparing a meal right away. I had a pizza which would cook in ten minutes once the oven was hot, and a pack of ready-mixed salad. I wanted to hit the hunger with something; I knew all along that it wasn't going to work, but I didn't know what else to do and I didn't want to do nothing.

  The pizza was okay, and I ate the whole damn thing. It helped a little, and it filled me up, but it didn't entirely do the job. Something still felt wrong inside.

  At four-thirty I went to the square again, and used up a couple more of the units on my phonecard ringing the hospital. Anne was ‘stable and comfortable’ but she hadn't woken up yet. I bought another card on the way home, figuring that I was going to need it.

  The thought that Anne wasn't really comatose, just asleep and dreaming, wasn't much of a comfort. Whether she was in the grip of a virus or not, there was no way of knowing what kind of dreams she might be having. I wondered briefly if it might be worth trying to suggest to the doctor that he do some tests, looking for abnormal brain chemistry, but I knew there'd be no point. Even if he could find something that dovetailed with the kind of lab experiments Viners and I had been running, how could it possibly help? What would we actually know about what was going on inside her head? It certainly wouldn't help her to wake up any sooner.

  At five-thirty, I drew the curtains in the flat against the recently descended darkness and stretched myself out on the bed, intending to interrogate my state of body and state of mind as precisely as I could, in order to try to figure out just what the hunger might be that was still gnawing at my guts, and what my vision of the previous day might signify.

  I was still trying to compose myself, planning how to carry out the task before me, when there was a knock on the door. I knew immediately that it wasn't the detective; it was a very different kind of knock, light and tentative.

  I opened the door hesitantly, keeping it half-closed while I looked to see who it was.

  Teresa was standing there, wrapped up warm against the chill of the premature night.

  'Hi,’ she said. ‘Mike told me you weren't feeling well. I thought I'd call in on my way home.'

  She had never been to the flat before, nor had she shown the slightest interest in continuing our relationship—such as it was—outside working hours. She must have got my address out of the files. I was suspicious, wondering whether it might have been a thirst for gossip about Anne that had brought her to my door.

  'Aren't you going to let me in?’ she asked, as I looked dumbly back at her, still holding the door half-shut. I stepped back, and let her through.

  'It's just a cold,’ I said, automatically.

  She had thrown her shoulder bag down beside the leg of one of the armchairs, and was already unbuckling her belt. When she slipped the coat off she handed it to me, expectantly. She looked around the room, taking it all in during a single sweep of her gaze.

  'I'd like a place like this,’ she said. ‘I'm pig sick of living at home. Would you believe that my mother takes twenty-five pounds a week out of my paypacket just for housekeeping? I'd rather pay real rent. I've been trying to save, but you know how it is.'

  'Yeah,’ I said, noncommittally

  'It was your girlfriend who got attacked, wasn't it?’ she said, unable to keep up the polite chatter any longer. ‘Last night—out near that creepy old house.'

  She sat down on the chair, shifting her bag slightly with a pointed shoe.

  'Yes, it was,’ I said, finally moving to hang the coat up on one of the hooks behind the door.

  'Mike suggested that I might like to call,’ she said. ‘He'd have come himself, but he thought I might be better able to reassure you about the cold. I told him you wouldn't need it—that you're far too level-headed to start imagining things—but he said better be safe than sorry, so I thought I ought to. Haven't had any bad dreams, have you?'

  I sat down on the other chair, where Maldureve had appeared to me the day before. ‘One or two,’ I admitted. ‘How about you?'

  'Not lately,’ she said. ‘I suppose I'll catch whatever you've got, if it's going round. On the other hand, I'll probably be all right this time. You get used to it, you see. It's like reading medical dictionaries—you always think you've got the symptoms of something absolutely horrible. Mike told me that everyone who works with pathogens starts wondering whether they've committed accidental suicide every time they get the sniffles. The more you try not to think about it the less you can help it. It's like being told not to think of a white horse, isn't it? So he asked me to drop in, just in case. Have you been winding yourself up?'

  'I've been seeing things,’ I admitted, cautiously. ‘And I've got this funny feeling in my guts. Feels like hunger but won't go away when I eat.'

  'I never had that,’ she said. ‘Just the bad dreams. What're yours about?'

  'Vampires,’ I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  'With me,’ she said, ‘it's more animals. Hairy, sweaty, lots of teeth. Dogs, pigs, monkeys ... Mike said not to worry, and not to bother with a therapist. He doesn't have a high opinion of therapists, the prof.'

  'He wouldn't,’ I commented. ‘The theoretical basis of his research assumes that all mental phenomena have specific physical correlates. He's hardly likely to be a fan of Freud.'

  'You should tell him about the vampires. He'd be interested. He won't tell me what he fantasizes about when he gets het up. He says he still worries, even after all this time, but not much. Honeymoon blues, he called it, when I first got convinced—and I was absolutely convinced—that I'd infected myself. Have you got a drink? It's been a long day—that solvent I've been using stinks to high heaven, and you can't even get a buzz out of it.'

  'I've got some beer in the icebox,’ I told her. I didn't mention the whisky. I thought I might need that later.

  'That'll do.'

  I fetched two cans and two glasses, but she put aside the glass I gave her. After popping the ring-pull she drank straight out of the can. I poured mine out, trying to control the head. I had to do the job in three stages, taking gulps in between. By the time the can was empty I wished I'd followed her example.

  'How's your girlfriend doing?’ she asked.

  'Stable and comfortable,’ I quoted. ‘Fast asleep and showing no sign of waking up, but not technically comatose.'

  'Can't see what you see in her,’ she opined, licking froth from her lips. ‘I suppose you know she's anorexic.'

  'I'd noticed.'

  'Do you like them like that? Pale and thin, like plastic dolls?’ She grinned, as if challenging me to deny it. She was teasing; she was enjoying the fact that she'd been sent forth on an errand of mercy, to quieten my anxieties. She was waiting for me to proposition her, but she was determined to wait. She wanted to be asked. She wanted to be desired.

  'What makes you think you were wrong?’ I asked her.

  She blinked, blank incomprehension on her face.

  'About the virus,’ I explained. ‘When you were absolutely convinced that you'd infected yourself. What made you change your mind?'

  'I got better,’ she said, as though it were obvious.

  'Even if it was one of the experimental viruses, you'd have got better,’ I pointed out. ‘That's exactly what we'd expect—symptoms not too different from a common cold, plus some mild psychotropic effects, then recovery. Maybe you did infect yourself. Maybe I have, too. Maybe you won't catch it from me because you've already had it. You might be immune by now.'

 
She looked at me suspiciously, not sure whether I was serious or just trying to wind her up.

  'Either way,’ she said, ‘it's nothing to worry about. You'll get better. That's what the prof wanted me to tell you. Soothe your fears, that's how he put it. So I'm here to soothe your fears—as your regular soother can't be here.'

  'That's a bitchy thing to say,’ I pointed out.

  'Sorry,’ she said, unrepentantly. ‘So you've got it all worked out, then? You've got it under control, vampires and all?'

  'All except for the restlessness in my gut,’ I told her.

  'You're just thirsting for blood,’ she told me. ‘Maybe I'd better go.’ But she didn't move an inch. She just waited. ‘Or maybe it isn't blood you're thirsting for,’ she added, after half a minute. ‘Maybe it's something else.'

  She was still waiting, still playing games. I took another mouthful of beer and weighed up my options. Then I shrugged my shoulders, thinking: What the hell?

  'Maybe,’ I admitted, cautiously.

  7

  I didn't really want to go to bed with Teresa, but the way she was teasing me I would have felt like a coward if I hadn't. I could have excused myself on the grounds that I wasn't feeling well, but it wouldn't have been entirely true, and she would have known it. In any case, there seemed to be a possibility that what she had said was true: that the insistent appetite that I kept calling ‘hunger’ for want of a better word might be a kind of disguised lust. It sounds improbable, put like that, but I had some reason to believe that my sensations might be distorted, and there did seem to be a real possibility that what I was feeling was sexual desire, subtly altered in such a way as to make it unrecognisable. The thought that I might be able to satisfy the hunger and calm the ache was attractive enough to license the gamble.

  Or so it seemed at the time.