by Bones Monroe
“Tell me what else she said,” Valfred demanded.
“She said she got a message. From others. There are other groups of inhumans banding together to fight against the humans. They are underground and have contacted us because they think we have reached critical mass.”
“What? And we knew nothing of this?” Valfred began pacing. “How can we contact these inhumans? Did she tell you? Did she?” He glared into Squatch’s eyes, newly agitated. “We must talk to them now. We cannot allow CURE to destroy us. We will wait no longer. We will fight to avenge Lamia and Vionica and the rest.”
“Vionica said they would contact us. They have eyes and ears and know of our efforts,” Squatch said, backing up to the window.
“With or without them, we’re going in. If we stay here, we will just die one by one.” Valfred stopped pacing and turned to Squatch with a new resolve in his eyes. “Tell the others. It’s go time.”
Chapter 20
Canary in a gilded cage, Grace thought. And the gilding is flaking off.
They made her cell out to look like a bedroom. A sparse bedroom but comfortable.
CURE was crafty. They prettied up the cells in case reporters came in for a story. “Look at how well we take care of our little inhumans,” some director or other would gush. “They have a TV, free Wi-Fi and three square meals a day. We here at the Center for Undead Relations and Education even treat the worst of the inhumans with compassion and humanity.”
Worldwide, humans who had either insulated themselves from the reality of inhumans, or who didn’t bother to research them, gobbled up these stories and touted the magnanimity of CURE
CURE was supposed to foster goodwill and work toward improving relations between humans and inhumans. These cells were intended to be temporary holding facilities for violent inhumans and other undesirables. Like the inhumans who took part in the rush from a few days ago.
Only when the camera stopped rolling, could you see the insidious truth. Grace’s cell had a TV but there was no power. She had free Wi-Fi, and they’d written the password on the wall, but they allowed no cellular phones in the cells. Three square meals? Just a cheap dollar store knockoff of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blood’. It was mostly white blood cells and platelets. They put just enough red blood cells in there to give it the semblance of blood. Nasty stuff.
Grace didn’t feel like an undesirable; she was just sick and in a little pain, but because of CURE craftiness, no bruises showed. With her newfound undead vampiric strength, Grace had tried to escape her cell. She tried pulling the reinforced steel cell bars apart. They should not have posed much of an issue. The issue was the barely visible, odorless, thin oily paste that covered the bars.
After a few seconds, her hands burned. At first, she thought it was because of the pressure of her pulling on the bars, but the pain intensified quickly. She let go of the bars in a hurry. She looked down at the bright red palms of her hands. They felt as if they were ablaze.
Garlic! Some new stealth garlic compound that CURE developed, she hypothesized. Invisible and odorless, she could not detect it, but it had the same effect as regular garlic. Grace made a note that if she got out of here, she would have to tell everyone back home. Stealth garlic, nefarious and deadly stuff if someone used it as a weapon.
The surprises weren’t over. As she stood near the bars studying the substance but not touching it, a faint mist fell around her.
Ohh that’s nice, she thought. This is like what they do for football players—AHHHHHHHH. She howled in pain while jumping back from the dastardly liquid.
Holy Water spray. That wasn’t for her spiritual comfort but to make sure she stayed put.
She heard a chuckle and Captain Bob strode in front of her cell. He watched her wipe her hands frantically on her pants while rubbing her cheek on her shoulder, trying to get the holy water off.
“You look like a bad dancer on the set of Thriller,” he said with a smirk.
“You’re evil,” she said, trying to get the foul stuff off.
“I see you’re feeling better. Full of vim and vigor, aren’t you? Saw you trying to escape. What did you think?” the Captain asked, waving his hands at the cell bars. “The holy water spray releases after five seconds by a motion-triggered switch. The new Goil we put on the bars is an invention of ours.”
“Goil? That’s a stupid name.”
Bob shrugged. “Hey, I just work here. That’s what they called it. Said it was a combination of garlic and oil. Cool part is that we can precisely calibrate the strength. They set the compound on the bar to burn in the few seconds it would take one of you vamps to pry open the cell. And even if you succeeded, the cross traps would sear you to a cinder.”
“I’m not sick anymore,” Grace said, sticking up her chin defiantly. “Like you said, I’m full of vim and vigor. It was just a twenty-four-hour bug. Can you let me go?” she pleaded.
“No can do. Vamps don’t get twenty-four-hour bugs. You’re dead, remember. We’re processing your paperwork to relocate you.”
Grace sucked in a breath, an old habit. “Relocate? Where? Why?” She sidled over to Bob but immediately backed away, remembering the traps set near the bars.
“It’s for your own good, really,” Bob said with a sneer. There’s too many of you close to human homes. Conflict will be inevitable. It won’t be pretty. Moving you away to CURE lands will keep you with your own kind. Nothing wrong with that, right?”
“That’s not fair. The undead have rights! We pay taxes like the rest of you humans. I used to be human until a few days ago. I’m no different from you, except that my heart stopped beating … and I am sensitive to light … and I need to drink blood … and I might be stronger and faster … and I can’t go to church … and no more Italian food for me.” She paused, relishing the memory of the heavenly garlic pesto shrimp she used to love. “But apart from those minor things, I am the same person!”
“You don’t eat much, you don’t get sick, you don’t need light to see by, you don’t even need to brush your teeth. And honestly, you aren’t contributing that much to society,” Bob added.
“So what? They base the only value a person has on how much they spend? That’s a sick worldview.”
“Capitalism, baby, that’s how the world works.”
“Where’s my father?” Grace asked to change the subject. “Where did you take him?”
Captain Bob tapped a few times on his CURE supplied cellphone and turned it around so Grace could see.
“Dadddyyy! Get me out of here please!” she screamed when she saw her father on Bob’s phone.
“He can’t hear you. I wanted you to see that he is relatively unharmed.”
Grace tentatively approached the bars but stayed at a distance where she thought the infernal holy water spray wouldn’t be triggered.
“You’ll be safe where you are,” Bob said, “but don’t come any closer.” He held the phone steady for Grace.
In the tiny screen, she saw Ban alternate between pacing in a similar cell to hers and screaming at the walls. At least she thought he was; she couldn’t hear him. He pulled at the bars ineffectually. She saw that he also got the Goil on his hands, but it hadn’t burned him. He wiped it off and paced again.
She noticed his substantial welts, bruises, black eye, and a bloody lip. In a fit of rage at seeing her father like that, Grace’s fangs sprang out. She lunged at Bob. “What did you do to him?”
Bob jumped back, but Grace grabbed the corner of his sleeve. She tried pulling him closer, like a fish. All she needed was one good swipe at his neck. She could break the wimp’s spine like a toothpick.
Bob pulled away, but she held fast.
Then, in an instant, everything changed.
A pair of panels sprang open in the wall, lights flared, blanketing Grace. The damn holy water sprayed again and to add insult to injury, the floor immediately outside her cell opened at regular intervals and silver crosses popped out on springs like a jack-in-the-box.
“AIEEEEEEEE,” Grace wailed in agony. She released Bob and scurried back to the relative safety of the back wall of the cell. The randomly waving crosses shining in the light stung her eyes like wasp bites. She had to squint to see anything.
“Turn the lights off. Turn them off. Please!!” she pleaded.
The lights came off at Bob’s signal. “That wasn’t a smart thing to do. We work on a system of merits and demerits here. You earned yourself a few demerits for that little stunt. But you’ll learn how things work around here soon enough.”
“Those were artificial lights. Why did they hurt so much? They hurt like sunlight.”
Bob tapped his left temple with an index finger, “Solar panels.”
“I should’ve guessed,” Grace said. “Why did you hurt my father? He’s beat up!”
“He tried to kill me. Think of it as just desserts. We—”
“Captain?” A young agent interrupted them. He pushed a cart of steel canisters that Grace thought looked suspiciously familiar. “Where do you want these?”
“Ahhh, the latest Goil batch. Good, good. Put them in the warehouse bay. We need to make a delivery tomorrow.”
The agent went on his way.
“It’s been nice talking to you. I’ll pass by later and explain exactly what your next steps will be. Until then, I suggest you behave and stay away from the bars. Maybe you can watch some TV? We have free Wi-Fi, you know,” he said walking away with a smirk.
Grace put two and two together.
Chapter 21
“I’m glad you’ve come to your senses Mr. Coleman,” Captain Bob said from the other side of the steel bars.
Ben glanced at Captain Bob. This was the last person he expected to see. When he heard someone approach the door, he thought this was yet another CURE agent coming in to beat the crap outta him, to ‘teach him a lesson’ they always said. They called him a species traitor. That he should stick with his kind. Then they beat him some more.
“Are you going to beat me up again?” Ben asked sourly. “Go right ahead. That’s what they want. Give them a show.”
Bob chuckled. “You’re crazy. This isn’t a show. You don’t remember, do you? I was the first one to put a pounding on you. Don’t worry, I got my fill.”
“Did you? Are you sure? I’m an injured, helpless captive at your disposal. You sadistic bastards like to think humans are so kind and magnanimous. I used to think that, too, but you know what? I’ve changed my mind. We’re not all that great. We don’t even treat each other kindly, so how are we expected to treat those beneath us any better?”
Bob scoffed and gave him a dismissive laugh. “You’ve been hanging around the inhumans for too long. They got to you, didn’t they? Just because you lost your daughter doesn’t mean you have to turn your back on the living. You’re a young man; you can find a wife and start over. I’ve seen it happen.”
The scene Bob painted appealed to Ben. And then it enraged him.
Grace wasn’t replaceable. She was my daughter. Still had all her memories. Her smile was the same, and she was still stubborn as Hell. She was still Grace. Wasn’t she? His thoughts raced.
His conscience piped up. She has no heart. Just a dead muscle where a once living, beating organ once thrived. Now? Nothing there. Mere sawdust. With no heart, how can she love? Does she still love you? Or is she pretending?
Ben shook his head, trying to dislodge the intrusive thoughts that plagued him. Where were these thoughts coming from? But no answer came to him. As soon as he looked at captain Bob, he was reminded that she was gone. She might exist physically, but her soul was absent. She was just a shell of the girl she used to be. A dried husk that pretended to be his daughter.
Ben grabbed the corner of the chair and pounded his forehead against it. He got a few good licks in. The corner hit him square in the forehead and he reeled back.
Bob shouted for backup.
Before Ben could recover, Bob led a team of CURE agents swarming into the cell, and they pinned Ben down on the floor. They quickly hog-tied him and set him in the corner like an old, used up, discarded rag doll. The team left, leaving only a medic checking Ben’s latest self-inflicted injuries. Bob hovered behind, watching him work.
“What on Earth has gotten into you? You attack a CURE agent and now you attempt suicide?” Bob said in disbelief. Ben but before he could answer Bob asked the medic, “Is this crazy loon going to be ok?”
“Yeah, he didn’t do much damage. We’ll move him to a safety cell,” the medic replied, standing up and observing Ben on the floor.
Ben started rambling. “They’re watching us. All the time. They see everything we do, and you know what? They don’t care. They want amusement. We are nothing to them. NOTHING, I tell you. NOTHING!”
Bob and the medic glanced at each other and shook their heads in unison. “The stress of losing his daughter has cracked him. I’ve seen it happen before,” the medic commented.
“Is it permanent?” Bob asked.
The medic shrugged. “Can’t tell. Everyone’s different. We’ll have to keep him under close watch. But we need to move him now.”
“Roger that,” Bob answered.
The agents fetched a wheelchair, strapped Ben into it and wheeled him to another cell. It was sparse, nothing but a steel toilet and a bare cot bolted to the floor. They’d padded the walls with heavy-duty canvas and foam. The proverbial padded room.
“Welcome to your new abode. None of the sweet amenities you had in the old room,” Bob announced. “But hey, you asked for it, and we aim to please,”
“Sweet,” Ben answered sarcastically.
“Nice to see that you’ve kept your sparkling sense of humor, Mr. Coleman,” Bob answered with a sneer. “You know, this room has one more thing you’ll enjoy.”
“What’s that?” Ben asked.
“Tell you what, I’ll just show you.” Bob pulled Ben away from his new cell and rolled him a few doors down.
Grace heard them before they appeared. She cowered in the furthest corner of her cell.
What now? she thought bitterly.
When Bob and an invalid appeared at her cell, it took her a second to register that the invalid in the wheelchair was her father.
“DADDDYYYY!!!” she screamed and rushed to him. In the heat of emotion, she completely forgot about the traps and was showered with the holy water spray.
She retreated to safety.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” Bob tsked. “You gotta watch out for that. All the noobs get hit a few times until they learn. Maybe the undead neurons are slower to absorb new information?” he said philosophically.
“My neurons are doing just fine, thank you very much,” Grace said with more than a plentiful amount of snark.
“But can you learn new things? I mean, your neurons are dead. They can’t develop new synapses. So, you are stuck at your present level of knowledge … forever,” Bob mused.
Grace ignored Ben. She had more pressing concerns than Bob’s undead biological theories. Her father was right in front of her and he looked bad. Swollen nose, bruises everywhere, a black eye. They had shackled both wrists to the wheelchair’s armrests.
Ben lifted his wrists a few inches and waved at Grace. “Hi, Gracie girl, are you ok?” he asked.
“Ohh, this?” Grace said brushing off nothing from her upper arm, “Just a little holy water. Nothing to be afraid of. But what about you? Are you ok?”
“Ohh this?” Ben said awkwardly pointing to his injuries. “These are nothing. Just a few CURE agents having fun. Anyway, nothing serious can happen to me. I have the Author to piss off.”
Grace looked confused. “Author? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know either,” Bob interrupted. “He’s been saying crazy stuff like that lately.”
“You two just don’t get it. Open your minds and then you’ll see. Reality is stranger than you think.”
“Your father is on suicide watch. I wanted you to have a small family reuni
on before I put him back into his padded cell.”
“Daddy, what has gotten into you?” Grace asked with deep concern.
“You.” Bob pointed at Grace. “Your turning into a vampire has cracked his hold on reality. I’ve seen it happen. They don’t recover. I hope you’re happy with yourself.”
“No.” Grace threw some attitude back at him. “I hope YOU’RE happy with yourself. I figured it out. That Goil you put on the bars and the flavor boost we serve on the ice cream, it’s the same thing. You lower the strength so we won’t taste it. You’re poisoning all of North Wellon.”
A satisfied smile came over Bob’s mangled face. “Mix in a pinch of wolfsbane and you have an all-purpose inhuman eradicator,” Bob admitted. “We’re still working on the zombies. We’re thinking an appropriate level of spiciness might do them in by chemical burns. Not sure how to hide that though.”
Ben stared at Bob from his chair, taking in their cunningly clever scheme. Feed the inhumans in North Wellon something that everyone loved and spike it with the seeds of their destruction. He was simultaneously aghast and amazed at the cruelty and underhandedness of the plot. His attitude about these inhumans had started to change. They didn’t deserve this. They were just trying to make it one day at a time (or night, in case of the vampires, or next full moon for shifters) just like the rest of the humans.
We are more alike than different, Ben thought.
“I knew she was a smart cookie,” a familiar voice said a split second before Oliver waltzed into view.
“You were behind this all the time?” Grace asked incredulously. “You’re a traitor to your own kind?”
Oliver shrugged. “Humans are parasites. No offense, Bob,” he said to the captain. “They have this tenacity that inhumans leave behind. Their pathetically short lives give them this drive that inhumans don’t have. You know the curse inhumans have? Procrastination. Why hurry and do something when you have all eternity? ‘There’s always tomorrow’ is the worst thing that an inhuman can say. Humans don’t have that luxury. The specter of Death drives them. Against that, we have no chance. I might as well side myself with the winning team,” Oliver explained.