In The Blood (Book 2): The Blood Lies

by Lee Isserow

  “Don't suppose you have a razor?” he asked the man, who said nothing. His eyes were fixed on Ben, unblinking, lines of worry hanging above them. A furrowed brow that held not just anxiety for escorting the prisoner, but fear for himself and his people. Ben sighed, and reached for a towel that was sitting on the floor, drying his face before being taken back to the group.

  Food had never tasted so good. Something about having his hands free again, being able to use a utensil rather than stick his face in the container like an animal. Ben didn't let himself get too caught up in the revelry of such a simple pleasure. His mind was focussed, taking in all the faces of the people surrounding him, memorizing their names as they were whispered in hushed conversation he wasn't meant to hear.

  The tall and muscular blonde, with the ponytail thick with dirt went by Martin, or Marvin. Ben had never met a Marvin, and decided it must be the former. He appeared to have an accent from the East End, but Ben couldn't say for sure at the volume he spoke. His eyes were a sparkling blue that glimmered in the dim light of the camp.

  The older man, who escorted him to wash up was Samuel. He grimaced when the others shortened his name to Sam, and looked as though he should be the group's patriarch. He was the eldest by at least fifteen years, with short salt and pepper hair that was almost bright white along his temples. The lines of worry carved into his forehead aged him. Ben wondered if it was those lines, that innate anxiety written on his face, that meant he wasn't fit to be their leader.

  The identity of their leader was a question on Ben's mind. None of them seemed to be the 'superior' as such. The decision to leave his hands untied was democratically decided by vote, The issue raised by Kat. She was a slim brunette about his height, who had the same deep blue eyes as the boy. Luke, that was his name. He wouldn't take his eyes off Ben, smiling at him with a front tooth missing. Ben hadn't noticed that missing tooth before, and found himself worrying that it was something that happened whilst they had been living on the streets, rather than from the natural loss of a milk tooth.

  Kat seemed maternal to the child, but Ben couldn't say whether they were actually related or not. All the group had a parental way about them when it came to Luke.

  That was troubling, the familial nature of these people, the blood-driven. From what was taught in lessons from the Blood Squad, and the way they talked about them being 'vectors', these people should have been monsters, animals. And yet, now Ben was faced with them, they had none of those rabid traits. It was a ruse, he decided, to make him let his guard down. He stopped thinking, and returned to eating and observing.

  Shauna and Ned appeared to be a couple. They tried to avoid meeting Ben's eyes as they muttered back and forth. She was tall, a little plump, with cheeks that Ben imagined never stopped looking rosy. Ned was tall, thin, with a long mane of red hair and a big bushy beard. There was something about him that reminded Ben of the cowardly lion.

  Rob was the last name he heard. It was only in passing, when Kat asked if he wanted more food. He sat away from the others, trying to hide his face from Ben's prying eyes. Rob was the largest of the group, but the lines of his face looked thin. It was the blood, Ben decided. This man's body was close to three times wider than his face. He was full of the blood from his victims.

  All of these people were killers, Ben reminded himself. Monsters that wanted to infect the world. The child, however, his proportions were normal. As were those of the woman who was most maternal. Ben caught and stopped his thoughts again, admonishing himself. He was, for a moment, considering leaving Kat and Luke's names and descriptions out of his statement when he eventually had the chance to report to the Blood Squad. It would be the humane thing to do, the kind thing to do, and in any other situation it would be the right thing to do. This, however, was not any other situation. These people were terrorists, benign as they appeared, they were infected, and wished to infect more. So they had to die. Even Luke.

  His head filled with images he had seen on the news of child soldiers in Africa and the Middle East. They all looked so innocent, and yet each of them was trained to be a cold-blooded killer. Sure, he told himself, they were forced into that life, but they still did awful things.

  Ben's mind was made up.

  They all had to die, especially the child.

  5

  As night fell, Ben was returned to his padded cell and locked in. They didn't trust him yet, probably because he hadn't told them a thing about the Squad. They were keeping him alive for information, of that he was certain.

  He lay in his bed and began to plan his escape. It would have to be smart, a long game. Con them into believing he was on their side. That was paramount.

  There was a fear that pulsated through his head, throbbing with greater and greater intensity. They killed Chris, beheaded her right in front of him. At least four of the tacks were injured, he didn't even see the other four in the warehouse. Who's to say they didn't kill them, and Nick and Steve, and... His eyes were becoming rheumy, prickling with tears at the thought of Tess being among the victims of the raid.

  He missed her more than he had ever missed anything. She felt like the first woman he had been able to truly connect with in his life. Before discovering his infection, his head was a mess, he was a mess. Ben closed his eyes, breathing deep to try and diffuse the pressure building under his skull. Begging and praying the universe that Tess made it out of the raid unharmed.

  6

  The next morning, Ben's cell was unlocked, and he was allowed free movement around the camp as the day went on. Breakfast was served, porridge as always, but he was thankful that it was first-run porridge rather than the dry leftovers they had been feeding him in the cage.

  “We're not whatever they say were are,” Samuel stammered to him, nervously. “You can see that, right?”

  Ben smiled politely. The older man was giving him the opportunity to sow the seeds of his deception. “I do,” he said, making certain that Samuel caught his eye contact and took in the smile on his lips. “They lied about you, said you were monsters.”

  Samuel looked away, the ripples on his brow undulating as he started taking short, sharp breaths. “Not... a... monster...” he stuttered, between inhales.

  “I know,” Ben said, trying to find the eye contact again, still smiling.

  “You best not be freakin' grandpa out,” Martin shouted from the barrel.

  “He's freaking himself out...” Ben said, as the large blonde walked over, soap bubbles trying desperately to cling to his face in the midst of his swift stride

  “You alright? What he say to you?”

  “I just told him --” Ben started, but he was interrupted.

  “Ain't talking to you,” Martin shouted, as he put an arm around Samuel, and tried to calm him down.

  Ben realised that Sam was an easy mark, he was an exhausted and anxious man, desperate for this nightmare to end. The others would take a lot more work to win over.

  As the day went on, Ben sat in silence as the conversations went back and forth between the group. Martin had suggested they head north, find sanctuary in the bucolic Scottish Highlands. He claimed to know the area well, and that bolstered confidence in Kat and Samuel, who voted in his favour.

  Shauna and Ned raised the idea of stealing a boat, stowing away, or bribing a captain and his crew to take them to France. The two of them finished each other's sentences as they celebrated the virtue of the plan.

  “There are scientists there,”

  “We've heard they're working on a cure,”

  “They need test subjects,”

  “And being a test subject is a hell of a lot better than being on the run!”

  The reaction from the others, the sighs and rolling eyes, made Ben wonder if this was something they had suggested every day since the two of them joined the group.

  After the cases were made, and the ballots cast, no decision was reached. A stalemate, with three voting each way and Luke not being allowed to participate. Ben couldn'
t help but think this was how every day in the blood-driven camp went. Stuck in the same rut, unable to move on because of the split vote, with no leader to decree orders. It was why the Occupy movement never got anywhere, too many opinions, too many potential goals, and nobody at the head to push the movement forward. He almost pitied them. These people had no chance against the organisation and fire power of the Squad.

  As night fell, Kat walked him back to his cell, and Ben couldn't help but ask, “How do you get anything done, voting all the time?”

  “It's the fairest way,” she grunted.

  “But it's not the smartest, why don't you just appoint a leader and follow their decision?”

  “Because democracy isn't about doing what a leader says, that's fascism, you should know that better than us, you're a tool of a damn fascist regime.”

  “What are you talking about? Our government was democratically elected...”

  “The prime minister was, then he stepped down, remember? This PM isn't elected, she's a hateful, spiteful demon, who despises the poor and the sick. We're both of those right now, and is there a government initiative to help us? No! They're just hunting us down like dogs!”

  “That's not what the government is doing,” Ben protested.

  “Isn't it?” Kat spat back. “Last week there were sixteen of us, and now there are seven. A year or so before that, there were thirty of us. Now, seven. You and your people slaughtered my friends, like cattle, like vermin, they were people, dammit!”

  She slammed the door of the cell, almost smashing Ben's nose in the process.

  He ran what she said over in his head. She used the word slaughtered. It was an emotive term for someone who was supposedly driven by their blood.

  Ben stopped the train of thought. As he lay down on the bed, he tried to conjure images of happier times, memories of his childhood, his mother. They were only happy memories for so long. The spectre of her death was there in the background of every moment he could think of. The amorphous crimson fiends that resided in his veins were haunting him from the shadows of those memories. He could feel them, flowing throughout his body. They wanted out, they wanted to feed, they wanted to kill each and every one of the people behind the door of his cell.

  It worried him, his blood's desire for death and destruction. Ben feared it was the first stage of becoming blood-driven, their accelerated infection spreading to him, some kind of silent memetic progression of the disease. He closed his eyes and tried to converse with the blood, with deep breaths and repeated mantras, begging it to calm down, assuring the demons that they would be sated with time.

  The 'goblins seemed to be reassured by his words, and ceased their erratic movements through his body. Ben could no longer feel the creatures under his skin, but he would dream of them, all through the night.

  7

  Luke was the only one of the group that treated Ben with any kindness. There was always a sparkle in the young boy's eyes, and a smile on his lips. Ben couldn't tell if that was just the innocence of childhood, a lack of understanding about the situation he was in. Sometimes, it felt like there was something more going on behind the child's eyes, as if he was mirroring Ben's emotions. Every now and then, Ben would catch the boy looking at him, wearing the expression of whatever he was feeling at the time, but as soon as Luke became aware that he was being watched, the expression faded and the smile returned. Ben tried not to think too hard about it, but the boy wasn't making it easy.

  “Blood knows blood,” he said, after each time he was caught mirroring the emotions Ben was harbouring.

  “What does that mean?” Ben asked him the first time, and the second, and the third and fourth.

  On the fifth occasion Ben caught Luke expressing the feelings he held inside, the boy smiled, and with a whisper, confided in him “Blood knows blood. It speaks to itself. Not with words, blood doesn't need words. It's in all of us, and it's not smart enough to know how to talk proper. But that doesn't stop it trying!”

  Ben had no idea what the child was saying, and didn't get a chance to follow up. As soon as the words left Luke's lips, Kat pulled the child away and sent him off to help Martin start chopping vegetables for dinner.

  “What did he mean?” Ben asked.

  Kat rolled her eyes, and signalled for him to follow her. “Reads too many comics,” she sighed, as she took him to a corner, where a tarpaulin had been hung up on bungee cords. “Ned hooked the shower up, go have one, you smell like a damn sewer.”

  Ben took a look behind the curtain. There was a bucket sitting in a second, larger bucket full of water. The smaller bucket's handle was attached to a rope that had been thrown over one of the girders in the ceiling. Kat demonstrated that once the rope was pulled, the smaller bucket was hoisted into the air. It had holes in the bottom, and rained water down on the occupant of the makeshift shower.

  “That's really smart,” Ben said, surprised.

  “Don't sound so shocked,” Kat said. “We're not animals, we're people. Try and get that through your thick head.”

  She started walking back towards the camp. Ben couldn't help but ask her a question that had been simmering in the back of his mind. “Are you Luke's mother?”

  Kat stopped, looked over her shoulder at him, then turned and looked back towards the fire pit, where Luke was cutting carrots under Martin's supervision. He got a vibe from her, in the scowl that came as she turned back to him and found himself asking “If you're not, what happened to his mother?”

  She exhaled softly, as if she were about to say something. She didn't, sighing long and hard before continuing back to the camp.

  Ben watched her walk away, and remembered that he was their prisoner, not a guest. He had no right to expect a reply to any of the questions he wanted to ask.

  The water in the shower was cold, but that didn't matter, it felt good to be clean again. Ben had started to get used to his own stink, but every now and then he would catch a waft of the aroma of stale sweat and shock himself that his body could make such a foul odour.

  Up until the shower had been put together, he had caught the group using wet wipes to clean themselves. They had never offered him that luxury, but now allowing him to use their shower, after over two weeks in their company, it made him wonder if they were getting closer to considering him as one of their own. He was still being kept at arm's length to some degree, but this was one of many unnecessary kindnesses that had been offered to him since he was allowed to spend the daytime out of the cell.

  He wondered how long it would be until they would no longer locked the cell door at night. That was what he was waiting for, as soon as he had garnered enough trust to have free movement. He would make contact with the Blood Squad, and get this nightmare over with, once and for all.

  8

  Ben was shocked into waking by the shunting of the lock, and the whine of the door being wrenched open.

  “Time to move.” Martin grunted. Unlike the other times he had been standing at the door, this time he was not silhouetted. It was dark in the warehouse, still night. The work lamps were being used elsewhere.

  Ben sat up and stared at his captor in the dull ambient light. Martin was agitated. Not necessarily angry, but certainly flustered. He wasn't being woken because of the bond of trust he had been trying to instil in the group. Something was afoot.

  “Come on, get the hell up!” Martin shouted again, walking away from the door to talk to the others, getting them ready for whatever the night was going to involve.

  Ben wiped the sleep from his eyes, stretched, and ducked out of his cell. There was a flurry of activity from the seven members of the group. Ned and Shauna were taking tents down, Kat and Luke rolling sleeping bags. Samuel was washing and packing up cooking utensils, whilst Martin oversaw operations in between directing a camper van that Rob was backing up into the space.

  He walked over to Ned and Shauna, offering to help them take down the rest of the tents. Ned shot him a glare, and continued his work. Ben
backed away from the couple, and went over to Samuel, who was struggling with the pots and pans.

  “Need a hand?” he asked.

  Samuel glanced to the others, who were busy with their own jobs, and nodded in silence. Ben helped him arrange the utensils in the largest pot, and the two of them carried it towards the van.

  “Put it down!” barked Martin, as the two approached.

  Samuel dropped his side instantly, leaving the full weight of the cooking tools to Ben. The shift of weight was unexpected, and the pot's handle slipped from his hand, clattering to the floor. The others stopped what they were doing and turned. Ben could feel all eyes on him.

  “Hands!” Martin instructed. “Behind your back.”

  Ben did as he was told, and felt a cool, soft material wrap around his wrists. The bonds restored, proof that they weren't even close to trusting him.

  “Sit.” Martin ordered, pointing at a bench in the back of the camper.

  As Ben did so, he saw a bunch of petrol cans lined up, next to a box of thin metal sheets on the floor opposite him. He leaned over, and realised the group was well prepared to relocate their camp. The box was full of stolen number plates, from a series of cars. They were planning to switch them out to fool the Automatic Number Plate Registration system. This felt like it was their big move, maybe the trip to Scotland or France they had been talking about. He knew he had to do whatever it took to stop them.

  Martin attached the bonds on Ben's wrists to the bench he was sitting on, and produced a black sack.

  “Hope you don't get car sick...” Rob scoffed, from the driver's seat, as Martin put the bag over Ben's head.