Suffer the Children

by Craig DiLouie

  The alternative was to let them stay dead. Which was no alternative at all.

  “Are you with me here?” Doug was glaring at her. “It’s a bad time to get depressed, babe.”

  Joan blinked at the sound of his voice. She’d been drifting again.

  “I’m not depressed. I’m just really, really tired.”

  “We need to present a united front. Demand what’s right. Be tough.”

  The air smelled like smoke. He’d lit one of his cigarettes.

  “Take that outside. You know better than that.”

  He either didn’t hear her or pretended he hadn’t. He puffed away in a rage while he paced. “What we need is the good stuff.”

  The good stuff.

  Nadine had promised she’d come. It’s not just you, she’d said. The same thing was happening with her other patients. Maybe all the children who’d come back. It wasn’t only Joan’s blood that wasn’t working right. She found a morbid sense of comfort in this.

  “She’ll be here soon,” said Joan. “We’ll make it right. They’ll be back with us.”

  “It’s a scam, babe. You know that, right? We’re on the hook now. She’s going to charge us even more money we don’t have.”

  “She’s not charging us anything. At least that I know about.”

  Doug stared at her. “She’s not?”

  “It’s a public service or whatever.”

  He nodded as if to say, Good, but he was clearly even more worried now. If it were a scam, that would make sense to him. He’d pay through his ass to get his kids cured. That was how his world worked; it sucked, but it was predictable. And at least he’d eventually get the outcome he wanted.

  This was much, much worse.

  He’s realizing the cure might not work at all. It’s out of his control.

  Joan wondered how he was going to react when Nadine opened her vein and the bag swelled with blood. She’d thought she would give some blood and the kids would come back, and that would be the happy ending and her secret. He was already afraid of the children. What would he do when he found out they’d become, well, vampires?

  She’d have laughed at that word—vampire—if she weren’t so scared. Doug was a big man and frightening when he got his dander up. It was what gave her the strength to tell him to quit drinking. When he drank, she was a little afraid of him.

  Somebody knocked on the door. It jangled her nerves.

  “That’s the nurse,” she said. “You be nice to her. I mean it, Doug.”

  Her husband marched to the door. “I’ll be peaches and cream,” he growled.

  Nadine entered, took off her coat, and handed it to him to hang up.

  Joan sat up on the couch. “Sorry about the mess. We’re normally tidier than this.”

  They were somewhere at the bottom of the middle class, but she’d always been proud of the fact that she kept an orderly home. A doctor’s wife like Nadine probably had a big fancy house.

  Nadine didn’t appear to notice or care. She saw only what she wanted to see and gave it extreme focus. Joan envied her. As for herself, she saw everything.

  “Excuse me for not getting up,” Joan said.

  Nadine nodded and said quietly, “You’re tired.”

  When Doug returned from the coat closet, the nurse introduced herself and extended her hand. He stared at it, shook it warily. Joan felt like laughing. Seeing this slight, poised woman intimidate her big husband struck her as hilarious.

  “The children,” Nadine prompted.

  “They’re dead again,” said Doug.

  “They’ve had a relapse,” Joan said, correcting his language.

  The nurse sat on the couch and put her hand on Joan’s leg. “Tell me everything.”

  Joan did. Nadine listened attentively. The bright smile the nurse had worn yesterday was gone, making her look older, more tired. But the intensity in her eyes was still there.

  “Right now, you have two options,” Nadine told her. “Neither may satisfy you.”

  “I’m not expecting miracles,” Joan said.

  “We can give Nate and Megan more medicine or wait and see what happens.”

  Joan shook her head. “I’m not going to just lie here and do nothing.”

  “What the hell?” said Doug. “You got medicine, right? Just give it to them!”

  Nadine kept her eyes on Joan. “I wouldn’t recommend another draw for you again so soon. Your system needs time to recover. I could take a pint at most, but it would leave you feeling much weaker.” She turned to Doug. “You may want to consider making this donation.”

  “What’s she talking about, Joanie?”

  “I didn’t tell him,” Joan told Nadine.

  “Tell me what?” His face turned red. “Whatever it is, somebody had better tell me right now.”

  “The medicine I told you about—”

  “Right, right.”

  “It’s blood, babe.”

  “Blood? You mean like a transfusion?”

  “Of a sort,” Nadine chimed in. “But taken orally.”

  “Jesus Christ, you mean the kids drink it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Doug laughed harshly. “Uh-uh. No way.”

  “Nate asked me for it,” Joan told him. “While you were sleeping.”

  He paced the living room several times. He was trying to puzzle it out. He stopped. “There’s no cure from the CDC? You made it up.”

  “Yes, I made it up,” said Joan. “I’m sorry—”

  “Or you’re making this up. How am I supposed to know what’s true and what isn’t?”

  “I’m sorry, Doug,” Joan said. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. I thought I would only do it once, and it would cure them, and you’d never have to know. I was wrong.”

  “You want to know what I think? I think you’re both fucking nuts.”

  “Doug—”

  “My kids do not drink blood!”

  He stomped into the kitchen. To have a drink. Nadine threw Joan an inquisitive look. Joan shook her head. Wait.

  He came back. “Joanie, please tell me what’s going on. The truth. Please.”

  She said nothing. He turned to go back into the kitchen and stopped. His shoulders sagged. “I thought drinking blood made you sick.”

  “That’s normally true,” Nadine answered. “The human digestive system does not like blood, which contains a great deal of iron. The stomach can’t handle it. Too much, the stomach rejects it. The children are different. We don’t know why. We honestly don’t know much at all.”

  “Then maybe the best thing is to wait. Wait until the scientists figure it out.”

  Joan cut in. “By the time they do that, it could be too late for Nate and Megan.”

  “But how do we know—”

  “Doug, this is how it is. I need you to be with me on this.”

  He said nothing for a while. At last, he nodded.

  Joan could always count on him to take her side.

  He watched with alarm as she rolled up her sleeve. “Joanie?”

  “This is how I make them better, Doug.”

  “The risks are higher than last time,” Nadine warned her.

  “I don’t care. Do it.”

  “Your husband would be a better donor.”

  The nurse glanced at Doug, who turned away with a frown.

  “You lost your son, right?” Joan asked her.

  Nadine frowned. “Yes.”

  “Then you know I have to do this. You understand.”

  The nurse opened her bag and took out her phlebotomy kit. She inserted a needle into Joan’s hand and plugged a tube into it. The tube snaked to a plastic bag filled with a clear solution.

  “What’s that?” said Doug.

  “It’s a saline drip. Do you have a nail or a thumbtack? I need to hang this on the wall.”

  Doug pulled a framed print off the wall. Nadine hung the bag on the hook.

  The saline solution, Nadine told Joan, would replace the blood vol
ume she was about to lose. Replacing the blood volume would help her remaining red blood cells oxygenate her blood. Without it, losing another pint of blood would be a lot tougher on her body.

  The solution felt cold as it penetrated her bloodstream. It chilled her up to the elbow. The nurse swabbed her other arm for the bloodletting.

  Joan gasped as the needle went in.

  Doug watched the blood flow down the tube into the bag on the floor. He chewed his mustache. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s going to feel a bit rough around the edges,” Nadine answered. “Make sure she eats something and gets her rest.”

  Doug knelt next to her. “You okay, Joanie?”

  “I’m cold.”

  Doug threw another log onto the fire. Then he got her a blanket and wrapped her legs in it.

  “For a transfusion to work, doesn’t she have to be the same blood type as the kids?” he asked the nurse.

  “That’s normally the case,” said Nadine. “But again, the normal rules don’t apply to the children. Medically speaking, we’re on new ground here.”

  Everything speaking, we’re on new ground here, thought Joan.

  She’d done her homework. She’d fired up the family PC and stared wide-eyed as Google suggested blood after she’d typed how do I get, based on the popularity of the phrase. She learned there were basically eight blood types, differentiated according to whether the blood had certain antigens. Antigens were substances that reacted against foreign substances in the body, part of the immune system. Some antigens made the system attack transfused blood. Besides A and B antigens, one had to account for Rh factor, which could either be present, marking the blood type as positive, or absent, marking it as negative.

  Joan was A positive, which meant she could donate red blood cells to people who were A or AB positive. Doug was type O, the most common type among Caucasians, which marked him as a universal donor; his blood could transfuse anybody’s with the same Rh factor. Nate was A and Megan O, but none of that mattered anymore.

  The children drank blood and didn’t seem to care what type it was.

  “The Japanese believe blood type is linked to personality,” Nadine was saying. “It’s as popular as astrology. People with type A blood are well-meaning, quiet, and responsible, but also antisocial and tense. People with type O are friendly and optimistic but vain, arrogant.”

  “I think they’ve got it wrong,” said Doug. He took Joan’s hand and squeezed it. “Joanie’s the social one. She’s all those good things you mentioned, in fact.”

  Joan offered a tired little smile.

  Nadine went on, “Asking someone their blood type is common in Japan. There are matchmaking services set up around it. It’s grounds for bullying in school. In some Asian countries, Facebook allows you to put your blood type in your profile. It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? That who we are resides in the blood?”

  Right now, part of Joan was leaving her and entering a plastic bag.

  Doug studied her face. “She’s not looking too good.”

  “We’re almost done,” Nadine told him. “The best thing you can do is feed her some juice and a little food. Something iron rich, such as steak, would be best.”

  “We got some leftover pot roast. Listen, are you sure this will work?”

  “It worked yesterday. It should work today.”

  “Maybe we should give them more this time. See if that makes it stick.”

  “You could try that.”

  “Yes,” Joan whispered. “More, Doug.”

  He looked at her with concern. “Don’t talk, babe. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

  “I’m going to be okay,” she said dreamily.

  “I love you, Joanie.”

  Doug was a provider. He knew what to do. He rolled up his sleeve to expose his muscular arm, the veins already bulging.

  “I want you to do me next.”

  David

  2 days after Resurrection

  David found the orange shoe box where he’d put it at the top of his bedroom closet. He took it down and raised the lid to inspect the gun inside.

  The Beretta compact nine-millimeter had a sleek design. He removed the gunlock and hefted it. A confusing mix of comfort and alarm washed over him. He released the magazine to confirm it was empty and checked the firing chamber. The safety was in the safe position. When it switched to the fire position, a little red dot appeared.

  Red means dead, he remembered from the firearm safety course he’d taken.

  When Paul was born, David had given in to a primitive urge to fortify his home. Global warming, resource depletion, environmental collapse—it was all happening, and nobody was doing anything about it. Having a child had forced him to look around and realize the world was getting worse instead of better. He’d bought the Beretta for home defense and built an emergency food larder in the basement. But Nadine, who hated guns, wouldn’t let him near it. He became overwhelmed with the demands of his practice and helping Nadine raise their baby, and the gun sat forgotten in the closet while the cans of food gathered dust in the basement. After Paul died, he didn’t care about any of it anymore. His priorities switched from worrying about the future to getting through the day. If the world wanted to end, he was all too happy to end with it.

  The gun and its little box of bullets sat on his bed while he dressed. He considered carrying the weapon concealed but dismissed the idea as soon as it popped into his head. There was no need for that. He put the lock back on and returned it to the shoe box along with the illusions it offered. He then picked up the box and brought it to the car.

  David still thought it strange that Ben asked him to bring the gun. But he’d known the man for years; Ben wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t important. He was one of the few people who’d kept their wits when Herod’s struck. There was no reason to doubt him now.

  He drove slowly, massaging his leg at the stoplights. He didn’t need the cane this morning but didn’t want to push his luck. There were even fewer drivers out and about today. Lansdowne appeared to have retreated into itself. Life went on behind drawn curtains.

  When he arrived at Ben’s house, Gloria answered the door with a handful of tissues pressed against her face. She let out a little scream at the sight of him and burst into tears.

  “Oh, David. I’m so glad to see you!” She turned and called out, “Ben, it’s David!”

  He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. She looked like she needed it. “What’s wrong?”

  “Ben will tell you everything. He’s in the living room.”

  Ben lay propped up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket with a phone and handgun on his lap. An intravenous tube linked his arm to what appeared to be a saline drip. The man looked terrible. His skin was so pale it glowed. He was sweating. He rubbed his arm as David entered.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” he wheezed. The room smelled like his sour breath.

  “Are you all right? Would you like me to examine you?”

  “That’s not necessary. I know exactly what’s wrong with me.”

  “Tell him he needs to go to the hospital,” Gloria said.

  Ben shook his head. “I’m not leaving this house until I’m back on my feet.”

  Gloria tried to fight off another round of tears, a battle she quickly lost. She excused herself to put coffee on. David sat on the easy chair across from Ben and placed the orange shoe box on the coffee table. He heard Gloria crying in the kitchen.

  “I brought my gun like you asked,” he said. “I see you have yours.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mind telling why I need one? What’s going on?”

  “You any good with that thing? Can you shoot?”

  “I haven’t fired it in years, to be honest. Since that time we went to the range together. Remember that?” David leaned forward. “Tell me what happened. I was there when they evacuated The Children’s Hospital. I heard the police took you into custody.”

/>   “You heard right. What else did you hear?”

  “I was told it was for your protection.”

  “Protection, my ass. I was arrested, David.” Ben tried to push himself up farther on the couch but gave up, panting for air. “I spent the day sitting alone in an interrogation room. No one seemed to know what to do with me or even why I was there. I wasn’t allowed my phone call.”

  “I called Gloria when I got home.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that. She hired a lawyer, who went down to the station. They said I’d been released.”

  “That’s it? You came home?”

  “They lied. I was put in a holding cell with a bunch of scumbags. This one big cop, Officer Stellar, had a child who’d been autopsied at the hospital. Oh, he really had it in for me. The asshole actually called me Dr. Mengele, can you believe it? I think he was expecting the others to hurt me. But you know me.”

  “Yes.” David smiled. “You have a way with people.”

  “They thought I was a general practitioner. Right there, I diagnosed an ulcer and a fungal infection, which bought me some protection. Twice a cop walked past and noticed me in the cell and asked what the hell I was doing there, but nobody let me go. I didn’t even get a meal. It was like I didn’t exist.” He reached for a glass of water on the coffee table and took a sip. “Last night, the good Officer Stellar and two of his friends woke me up and brought me back to the interrogation room. Stellar told me they’d let me go if I did something for them. If I gave a donation.”

  “They asked for a bribe?”

  “They took my blood.”

  “God, you’re anemic! That’s what’s wrong with you.”

  “You got it. I told them to let me call my lawyer or put me back in my cell. Next thing I know, I had a gun pressed against my head.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Honest to God.”

  “I’m sure they were just trying to scare you.”

  “It sure as hell worked! I doubt if someone ever put a gun to your head, but I assure you, I was scared out of my mind. A part of me knew they wouldn’t dare shoot me in the middle of a police station, but the rest of me was shitting my pants.”

  “So they took your blood.”

  “One of them had some phlebotomy training, but not much; he did a sloppy job on the procedure, and now I’ve got shooting pains up and down my arm, and burning, like it’s resting in a vat of hot needles.”