~ - ~ - ~
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to Christina Adams. Without her motivation, this book would not have been conceived or written.
Thanks also to Mount Zion United Methodist Church, Bel Air Maryland for the generous use of their facility.
Also by Thomas Porter
Mutant Blood
When the sun swallowed the solar system whole, there were only mutants and those who depended on mutant blood for daily survival. The liquid power of mutant blood was supreme, and new power structures grew around this brutal truth. Maya, a mutant, came of age in the new world, spoiled by the power she held over others. But as she grew her eyes opened until, as a woman, her blood freed the world.
Chapter 1
Maya woke up slowly and comfortably, her bald head cradled in three of her favorite pillows. She leisurely opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, painted in cheerful yellows and greens.
As she had instructed.
Her eyes followed the curves of paint while she remembered. She was in sixth grade, five years ago. First there was a soundless flash of yellow-green outside the window, then she woke up on the floor.
At times like these, in the morning when the beach house was quiet, she tried to remember, to understand. This morning, like all others, she failed.
The intense flash of light, which glowed in the atmosphere for months afterward, remained vivid in her memory. And she could not forget waking to the silence of the other kids lying on the floor, all dead. Some were twisted horribly, as if writhing in agony before death. Most emptied their stomachs and bowels and the memory of the smell was her constant companion.
Was she doing something, saying something, thinking something, that saved her? Why did she survive but everyone else died?
But whatever, she thought.
She rolled on her side, pulled a tablet computer onto the bed and pressed the ON button. As the character on the screen jumped from platform to platform and floating gems disappeared, so did her desire to remember the old world. The battery indicator showed three bars. That should last at least six more hours.
Three hours later thirst drove her to put the tablet down and get out of bed. She picked up the tablet carelessly, descended the stairs, and went to the kitchen. She poured a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. The radioactivity in the water, collected for her from a hand pumped well behind the beach house, was deadly to most. But Maya seemed to thrive on it.
With a tablet computer in hand, she walked into the room with wall-to-ceiling glass which overlooked the ocean, her favorite room in the house, and sat in the oversize couch. She called it her "window room."
Much like those animals in the Galapagos which survived due to a quirk of nature that endowed them with just the right mutation needed to survive, Maya did not feel lucky or unlucky. She just felt the desire to take, to get what she wants, to be served.
And after the power of mutant blood was discovered, the power of her blood, she wanted for nothing.
And so, as her body needed water, she drank. As she needed protein, she cut off another piece of deer or salmon. If the supply was low, she ordered more fetched. If her computer battery was dead, she ordered another.
If Maya wasn't wearing headphones while playing, she would have heard the gun shots outside. Instead, her gray finger tapped on the tablet screen as she chewed, lost in her game.
~ - ~
In the gravel road outside the north wing of the beach house, Abel and Pryce fired their Remington rifles into the tree line. The grass was dry and about knee high, lower than usual but this was an unusually hot summer. During the years of peak radiation four and five years ago, the grass easily grew to 5 feet and taller, thriving in the diffuse sunlight and increased rain caused by the disruption of the Earth's atmosphere. Grasshoppers and cicada populations boomed during those years and now they filled the air with their sounds. Seasons, including long hot summers, had returned three years ago with a vengeance.
"Are you sure that was a deer?" Abel asked, fired again, and chambered another round. The hotter summers increased the bug population, even higher than what it had been, but mutant deer were becoming harder to find. Abel feared they may have stopped breeding and were dying off. At their peak, Pryce didn't need to leave the porch to collect meals. He would prop his rifle on the stone banister to help him aim, but even that was unnecessary. They ran in herds and were hard to miss.
"Pretty sure. I didn't see its white tail either. I don't think it saw us," Pryce said. Grasshoppers bounced off his pant legs. "Stop firing. Let's go check it out. I'm out of ammo. "
They leaned their rifles against a tree, pulled mosquito netting down from their hats, and stepped into the grass.
Abel, who had his transfusion yesterday, reached the trees well ahead of Pryce, who had skipped his. He stopped to let his eyes adjust to the relative darkness and to give Pryce a chance to catch up.
"Can I have some of your water?" Pryce asked when he reached the trees.
"Sure thing. You need to get a transfusion today. Skipping another one is not an option. I think I see it over there," Abel said and pointed into the trees at a gray mound about 50 feet off. They reached it a couple minutes later, bleeding from several places but definitely dead. Like all mutants, human and otherwise, the deer was perfectly hairless and gray but otherwise kept its pre-radiation form. Pryce kneeled next to the deer and looked it over.
"This one is smaller than last week's," he said casually as he scratched at the yellow tag on his ear and absent-mindedly traced the outline of the embossed letter "R" on it.
Abel, several yards farther into the woods, was also kneeling down. He put is face close to the ground and examined some dark spots on the light brown underbrush. Then he stood up but continued to examine the underbrush, moving his hand from his ear to the thinning whiskers on his chin. He took a few more steps into the woods and knelt down again. "Hey Pryce. Check this out. It looks like blood, maybe a blood trail, but what's it doing here? I'm pretty sure the deer didn’t run into the woods this far."
"No, I think you're right. It didn’t run that far. Let's get this thing dressed and see where this trail leads. Maybe we got two-for-one on deer today."
~ - ~
The registration scout from Mutant/Resource Communal Control pressed his brown uniform shirt onto the wound in his gray and hairless right thigh. One of the bullets passed through it cleanly, missing his major arteries and bone. He limped and hopped away from the sound of the shooting then dropped into a depression in the forest floor and waited. His goal on this, like previous trips, was to identify potential “resources” to serve the mutants. He also had a new mission, one he considered dangerous, but getting shot was not in his plans.
Blood continued to drip onto the dead leaves. His worry, instead of dissipating, continued to grow. James had not been injured this badly since he was found four years ago in a grocery store warehouse by other mutant scouts of the M/RCC office. They found him as they searched what remained of the country for survivors. Mutant survivors like himself were brought back to health and assigned to a collective. Non-mutants were collected as “resources” and put to work.
He gingerly rolled on his right side and pulled his HF radio from his left thigh pocket. He flipped it on and keyed the PTT button.
“Anyone? Anyone? They shot me! They shot me!”
Sandra, on duty at the M/RCC Scout Operations Desk Work Unit, located across three rivers and 100 miles away, replied instantly, “Who is this?”
“Yes...um...James. James Shuh. Recon Scout 237. I’m in Dutchess County Boonville Township. Checking out a group of people in a house on the beach. I’m not sure how many but they look like resources. Maybe resources. Definitely hairy, not mutants. They shot me!”
“Shot you? Okay, James, take a breath. We can send someone for you but you’ve got to be more specific abo
ut where you are. Do you know your coordinates?”
“Let me check. Give me a sec,” James said. He set his radio onto the leaves and pulled his map out. “Yeah. Desk, are you still there? Sandra?”
“Yes. Do you know your coordinates?”
“Yes. 38.955 74.851. Can you get someone here?” This is the furthest James had ever traveled to find resources. When the solar flare engulfed the Earth, most people died within minutes. Some survived for days but some lasted months. When it was discovered that a transfusion from a mutant could keep a non-mutant alive, some managed to live for years by collecting blood from willing mutants. But even these resourceful non-mutants were rapidly dying off and a good find, one worth collecting as a resource and putting to work, was becoming a very rare event. By next summer M/RCC estimated they might all be gone.
There was a pause of about a minute before Sandra came back. “That’s pretty far. We don’t have anyone within 24 hours of you. The vehicle is picking up some resources and isn’t scheduled to be back until late today, then it needs 12 hours charging minimum. Problem is it will have to hit the bridge 80 miles north before heading back down. Since when do you stray from the bridges anyway? Can you find shelter and wait?”
“Okay, okay.”
Sandra asked, “Try to calm down, Mr. Shuh. I've heard good things about you. Everyone has. I'm sure you can handle this. What about the resources? How many did you see?”
“Two. Both males. Ages approximately 20. Look, I’m bleeding here. I’m signing off now but I’ll check in later, about 60 minutes. Two three seven out.”
~ - ~
Maya miscalculated how long the tablet battery would last. The screen went black just as she reached level 9 of her game.
“Crap,” she muttered out loud. She walked onto the cement patio outside the door and flung the tablet into the pool like a Frisbee. It skipped across the water twice, hitting a few grasshoppers on the way, then sank. She went back inside and walked up to the third level of the house where her supply was kept, plucked an unopened box off the top of the pile and went back downstairs.
Downstairs she heard the glass door slide open then closed. Abel and Pryce must be back, she thought. She descended the stairs, sat back down at the table, and tore the tablet out of its packaging. She tossed all the cardboard and plastic into the massive fireplace. It will burn tonight when it gets colder.
If she wasn’t poking at the screen to access the setup parameters she would have seen the trail of blood leading across the tile floor and into the north wing of the house.
Poke, swipe, poke. Maya played the pre-loaded game a few minutes more. Then the software locked up, frozen and probably in need of a reboot. Maya threw it onto the floor. She watched it rattle across the marble and skitter across, what? Is that blood? She stood up to take a closer look. It really looks like blood, she thought as she followed it with her eyes back to the sliding glass door. The trail seemed to enter from there, drip across the floor along the wall before heading into the back of the house. She followed it. It turned into the first bedroom on the left and she walked to that doorway. Inside the bedroom, sitting on the bed and holding what appeared to be a brown shirt to his thigh, was....someone.
"Who ARE you? What are you doing here? Is that a scout radio?" she asked, looking at the HF radio on the bed next to him.
"Yes, I’m a scout. Two three seven. There are two non-mutants outside and I’m calling them in for registration……"
"Who is that? What's going on?" Abel said from the end of the hallway. "Is that a scout?"
"Yes, I'm a scout. I've already contacted M/RCC and they will have someone here within 24 hours so running is useless," the scout said. He pronounced “M/RCC as “merk”.
"Who is running?" Abel asked.
Pryce had also stepped into the hall and stood listening. "Is this guy really here to register us? Does he not see the ear tag?" He turned to James. "We are dependents. Registered. Do you not see the ear tag?"
The scout said, "I do now."
Maya told him, "These guys are with me and they were registered like months ago. Years ago. Whatever. Since when does M/RCC register dependent servers and then register them again? You need to call your boss and confirm this. Abel and Pryce are resources assigned to me. Didn't you see their tag?"
"No. I mean, I didn't even see them clearly before they shot me in the leg. Why would they do that, anyway?"
Pryce casually leaned on the door frame and said "We were shooting at that deer? Didn't you see it? We didn't even see you. We DID see a trail of blood and now we know who made it. Here's a piece of advice: if two guys are shooting at a deer don't stand near it, okay?"
"Yeah, got it. Give me a minute to call off the collectors," Scout said. He picked up his radio and said, "Sandra, Sandra! Are you still online? Cancel the collectors. Cancel the collectors."
The radio said in response, "This is Sandra. This is James, right? Did I hear you correctly? Call off the collectors? Over."
"Yes, there is one mutant with two dependents assigned to her already. I thought these guys hadn't been collected yet but I was wrong." The scout turned to Abel and Pryce and said, "Give your numbers to Sandra so she can confirm this. Here," he said, handing the radio to Abel.
"You're talking to Abel 245-23-981. Also here is Pryce 548-58-865."
After a pause, Sandra answered back "Confirmed. Mr. Shuh, is everything there in order?"
"Everything's okay except I have a wound in my thigh and have to stay here for a while to heal before I can make it back there."
"Negative. You are to collect a pint of blood and leave before sundown. We will send a car to pick you up at 38.955 74.851 by midnight tomorrow. How copy, over,” Sandra said, using the radio terminology as she was trained to do.
"Yeah, I got that," James said, sounding disappointed. There goes his hope of spending the night indoors and in a bed. "So you heard the boss," James Shuh said to Maya. "But before I go do you have any bandages? Anything I can wrap my leg up in? And some pain killer wouldn't hurt either."
"Follow me," Pryce said and headed down the hall.
“Follow you? Do you mind if I, uh, wait here? Kind of injured, you know.”
“What’s this about a pint of blood? More people want my blood? What the?” Maya asked.
“Yes, new policy. All mutants are to pay tax, one pint of blood every three months. Is that a problem?”
“Whatever,” Maya said. “But let’s get it over with, okay?”
Two hours later, James was gone. The fresh pint of Maya’s blood was topped off with some sodium citrate for preservation and tucked into his mail bag and covered by dry ice. Collecting it was easier than he expected and Maya did not resist.
Pryce, after fetching a fresh tablet computer for Maya, had joined Abel outside to dress the deer.
Maya pressed the talk button on the intercom. "Pryce, remember about the salmon okay? Are you ready for your transfusion?"
"Very ready," he responded.
"Okay. I'll see you in a few minutes in the transfusion room."
"Give me a few to get there. I'm overdue, kinda moving slow."
~ - ~
She relaxed on the litter and offered her right arm to Pryce. He placed the rubber ball in her hand and she began to squeeze it. Pryce skillfully pricked the blue vein, visible just under the gray skin in the crook of her arm. He watched the vial fill. Another 10 seconds passed and Maya pulled the needle out, picked up the tablet computer and resumed tapping its screen.
"Pryce, I'm kind of sick of deer meat lately. I need you to get some salmon and smoke it. You know I like that stuff and you haven't gotten any lately."
"Yes, Maya," Pryce said reflexively. As a sailor, he had been conditioned to take orders, whether he respected the person giving them or not. And this service to her, like all the others
he and Abel provided to her every day, was a small price to pay for her life-giving blood.
"Salmon, Pryce. Remember. Before next transfusion."
The Power to Live Page 12