Blood Day

by J. L. Murray

  “Hey, long time no see,” he said. He was wearing jeans and a sweater. “I know this is weird, but I wondered if we could talk.”

  “Talk?” said Viv, as though it was an alien concept to her. No one really talked any more.

  “Well,” Tom said, running a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, “this might be weird. I just thought...maybe you wanted to get a drink with me some time?” He met her eyes and smiled in a sheepish way.

  “A drink?” said Viv. “Like, what? A date?” She suddenly laughed.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “It was a bad idea.”

  “No!” she said. “A drink.” She weighed the idea on her tongue. She couldn't go on a date. She was married. Sort of. “I don't know,” Viv said finally. “To be honest, I'm kind of a mess.” Her somber expression made Tom's smile falter. She shrugged. “Really. A mess.” She looked down at the floor because as she said it, she felt it. The pain. The loss. She bit hard on the insides of her cheeks and tasted blood. It hurt, but it kept her from crying. She’d learned so many tricks that taught her not to cry.

  “Who isn't?” he said, suddenly mirroring her seriousness. “We're all broken, aren't we? Come for a drink. As friends, if you like. I know you drink. I've seen the wine bottles.” The charming grin was back in place. Tom had a way of disarming her. He got her to let down her guard.

  “One drink, maybe,” said Viv finally.

  “I'll take that,” said Tom. “Tomorrow night?”

  “I have my blood day tomorrow.”

  “Afterwards, then. You'll need liquids anyway, right? At the pub on the corner?”

  “Which one?” said Viv. “The Irish one or the hole in the wall?”

  The Revs encouraged drinking. It was all they had left any more. Drinking and sex. People still got married, though it was a tired, sullen affair now, not the lavish ceremony it used to be. Funerals were few and far between, as people were disappeared by the Movers, clearing away their existence in the night. But the Revenants decided that humanity needed to drink watered-down booze in somber, smoky dive bars. Often there were pairs of Revs, watching the humans from a dark corner, stirring old fashioned drinks but not sipping them. Just stirring, stirring all night until closing time, at which point they would slink into the shadows.

  “Your choice,” he said, his green eyes crinkling attractively.

  “I'll take Irish,” she said. “Seven?”

  “See you then, Viv,” he said, giving her a smile and turning to go.

  She closed the door, her heart suddenly pounding. What the hell was she doing? She had stolen equipment from work in her apartment, and she was going on a date.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” she said. But she found herself smiling as she walked back into the kitchen. She lifted the cloth that covered the new apparatus and stared at it. She took out The Book and flipped through it.

  It had been Griff’s favorite book, and she had often seen him taking it from the shelf and flipping through it. Back when he’d still been himself, a man who read and worked and loved. Before the Slack, before Hunter disappeared. Before he left, Griff loved this book.

  Viv stopped on a page and read the words aloud.

  “Lips that would kiss,” Viv said, her voice quavering, “Form prayers to broken stone.”

  Before leaving work with the model, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d prayed, even to broken stone. Viv closed her eyes. Had it been just before Hunter was taken? Did she cower in the darkness, listening to screams, and pray for some unseen entity to save her? Or was it before Griff became addicted to Slack? Viv knew it was long before that. Long before Slack was introduced as a miracle drug: A cure for cancer, a cure for the common cold, a cure for everything. She had been so sure that all she ever needed in her life was science. Maybe she was right. There was no point in praying to a god she didn’t believe in. Even after Ambrose Conrad announced that Slack was made of processed blood. His own monster blood. The humans had inadvertently become every bit as addicted to blood as the Revs. They just craved it a different way.

  Viv flipped the book to a different page. The page with Griff's notes. Griff was in charge of a government project before the Blackout. He’d worked for the CDC testing samples, but that was all he was allowed to tell Viv. He had told her that fantastic discoveries were being made. He was doing work that would change the world. In his fugue of Slack, after the Revs had taken over, he mumbled a confession to her.

  “It was them, Viv. The whole time, I was testing their blood. And it was changing too fast to document. It was wiping out every disease, every germ we set it against, but…it was changing, too. It was as if the longer we used it, the weaker it became.”

  Viv looked down at the writing in the margins of the book. Griff’s handwriting. Viv touched it with her fingers. There were lists of numbers, of figures that she didn’t understand. Code for genetic markers that Griff had tracked on his own, just in case. He didn't think his wife would need to decipher it until the very end. Viv traced over the words, the last words that her husband had scrawled along the bottom of the page. The handwriting was shaky here, drug-addled, no doubt, but readable, all the same.

  The blood has to be purified, else it quickly mutates, resulting in fatalities, the line of writing said. And underneath that, two words: I’m sorry.

  Viv wiped tears from her face and closed the book. She had to get her head right. Hunter. She had to always think of Hunter when she planned. It was all for him, after all.

  “Now,” she said. “Let's see what you’re about.”

  She traced the tiny glass tubes on the replica of the machine. She filled it with colored water and plugged it in, watching it filter out even the food coloring. She inspected all the levers and ways to take the machine apart, until she understood. At the very end of the machine was the answer. The blood needed to be pure, just as Griff had written.

  Using two fingers, she opened up the tiny hatch on the end of the machine and added a single drop of blue food coloring. She went through the whole process again, watching the red-colored water filtered out drop by drop into the tiny copper vat at the end. It was clear by the time it passed through the last tube, but when it dripped out of the stopper, it was blue. Viv felt the tears on her face as her heart swelled.

  All she had to do was poison the blood in her own facility. She knew how, and she knew that she had access. If the blood had to be pure, how could she hurt them? Poison? Diseases?

  Viv remembered her coworker Mark’s face when she said she felt unwell.

  You’re not sick, are you? You know how they feel about that.

  “Oh,” said Viv aloud. She looked down at the blue water dripping out of the machine. And then she looked at her own hand, paltry, minuscule veins under her skin. But still pumping blood.

  “They have to purify the blood,” she said. It was all so obvious now. The Revs kept getting paler, sicklier, a sluggish reflection of what they’d once been. She thought of Mr. Freen, with his expensive coat and constant hunger, always rushing off to get an injection.

  Viv smiled her first genuine smile since the Blackout, holding her hand up to the light.

  “All I have to do is bleed,” she said.

  Thirteen

  “What you are about to see will shock you, Sia,” said Mathilde, leading her down a hall that Sia had never seen before. “I must ask you to keep your emotions in check. Everything we do here is for a very good reason. I will offer explanations for every question that you ask.”

  “Where are we going?” Sia said, gasping to keep up with Mathilde. The woman had insisted that Sia put on the corset for their outing, and Mathilde laced it up so tightly that Sia had to work to breathe. When she asked why she had to wear it, Mathilde laughed and said, Know only that you must learn to play your part.

  “Usually I would suggest we start at the beginning, as all things should start,” said Mathilde, not bothering to slow her pace as she spoke over her shoulder to Sia. “But I bel
ieve we should save A-block for another day. You are not ready for it. Instead, we shall explore K-block today. It is the surgical ward.”

  “But I thought there were no more surgeries. Everyone is healthy now. Isn't that the grand idea?”

  “It is,” said Mathilde, “however, these are not surgeries to improve the human race. These are surgeries to explore. To expand the Revenants' knowledge of the world they have inherited.”

  “The world they stole,” Sia said under her breath. She nearly bowled into Mathilde as she suddenly stopped and turned to look down at Sia.

  “You will watch your tone, Ms. Aoki,” said Mathilde, the polite, carefree lilt of her voice gone. Sia could see her eyes glittering from behind her veil. “The ward that we visit today is a dangerous place for a human such as yourself. You will be quiet unless you are asked a direct question. You may ask questions yourself, but only direct them at me. You will not speak to the Revenants. Do you understand?”

  “Revenants?” Sia said weakly.

  “Yes, many of their kind work or reside in K-block. You will be surrounded.”

  “Oh,” said Sia.

  “Is this a problem?”

  Sia thought of her music.

  “No,” she said after a moment. “I'm sorry.”

  “Let's continue, shall we?” Mathilde said, her voice cheerful again, the danger passed. For the moment. Mathilde drew a massive skeleton key on a chain from her pocket and unlocked a door. Sia followed her ridiculous black lace form into a cold hall with bare bulbs swinging gently in the outdoor breeze that seemed to stream through some high windows. Sia saw beams from a watery sun, irradiating dust motes high above. Mathilde moved as though she had walked this route a thousand times. Her skirt swayed gently around corners, up stairs, and through a set of double doors, where she had to use the key again. She slipped the chain around her neck, and the key disappeared into the lace. There was a large letter K on the door, Sia saw as she walked through.

  And then it was as if they were in a completely different world.

  Sia remembered that the hospital used to be a mental institution, and now she believed it. The hall they entered was bleak, the walls a dull, grayish white that made the eyes blur under the flickering orange lights. Arrows formed with blue tape on the floor offered directions. The putrid smell of urine and shit filled Sia's nose and mouth, and she exhaled to keep from gagging. Sia saw doors much like her room when she first arrived. But these windows contained fencing or crisscrossed bars, and the doors had a small slot at the bottom to slide food trays. Sia heard screaming and looked to Mathilde, who was watching her silently, her eyes glittering.

  “Welcome to K-block, Sia,” she said. Then she turned and walked down the hall. Sia's mouth had gone dry, so she swallowed. Eyes followed them down the hallway. Sia didn't look in the little windows, but she could sense that she was being watched. A male voice screamed, My name is General Davies. They’ve taken my legs, as they passed, but Mathilde was undeterred. Sia wrapped her arms around her own waist and tried not to step in the puddles of liquid that dotted the hall floor.

  They arrived at another set of doors, and again Mathilde used her key. With a quiet click, the doors unlocked and they pushed into yet another world. The screams grew silent as the doors latched behind them, and the smell of clean surrounded Sia. She breathed deeply. She could smell iodine, faintly, but otherwise it seemed like the lobby of any other office, with a cheap, though clean, pale blue carpet. A desk was set off to the side, behind which sat an attractive woman with bright red hair. She smiled widely with deeply red lips and big square white teeth. She looked like someone Sia had seen on television long ago, before the Annex.

  “Madame Briar, welcome,” the woman said. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “That will not be necessary, Celeste,” Mathilde said. “I am here on another matter. This is Sia Aoki. She is my protege.”

  The million-watt smile was then directed at Sia.

  “Welcome, Miss Aoki. My name is Celeste, so if you need anything, just go ahead and ask.”

  “Thank you,” said Sia.

  “Can I get you ladies something to drink?” Celeste said, looking at Mathilde.

  “No, thank you, Celeste,” said Mathilde shortly. “We will be going into room 16. Please do not disturb us.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Celeste said, suddenly looking nervous. Mathilde turned, skirt brushing the desk and walked toward a hallway.

  “Thank you,” Sia said to Celeste. The woman smiled, but there was something like fear in her eyes. She blinked at Sia like she'd forgotten she was there.

  “Please take your time,” she said, taking care to smile perfectly.

  Sia followed Mathilde. Next to the door to each room in this hallway was a large window lined with sparkling clean glass. Sia turned her head to look through a window and started as someone looked back at her.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Don't worry, he cannot see you,” said Mathilde, pausing to look with Sia. The man was standing in front of the window and looking at a wound riddled with thick black stitches on his side. Another scar across his belly appeared to be healing. He seemed to be looking in a mirror and Sia realized the window was a two-way mirror.

  “What's wrong with him?” said Sia.

  “It's the opposite, actually,” said Mathilde, tipping her head as if studying the man. “He is immune to Salcoric Acid, more precisely, Slorcorum 151. You call it Slack. ”

  “Slack?” said Sia, looking at the man. He had scars everywhere, as though he had been sliced open dozens of times. As he turned to move toward a small bed against the wall, Sia saw that part of his head had been shaved and there was a nasty purple scar.

  “We wanted to know why the drug did not affect him, you see,” Mathilde said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “So we are taking samples. Kidneys, liver, brain. Even prostate. We want to know what part makes him immune. Do you understand?”

  “Is he here against his will?” said Sia.

  “Shall we continue?” said Mathilde.

  “Yes,” said Sia, taking one last look at the man before following Mathilde.

  Many of the rooms were dark, or had the shades drawn so they couldn't see in. The ones that didn't...Sia didn't want to look but couldn't seem to help herself.

  “We wanted to see how large we could make her,” Mathilde said, as they stopped in front of a woman who appeared to be covered in skin grafts, her body too large, too round to be natural. Her upper arms were so swollen she had to hold them at an angle, her belly looked as swollen as a pregnant woman and just as taut, the scars from the grafts making her look like a crazy quilt of skin. “To see how much blood one human could possibly contain, one must make a larger human. We have added to her as she heals, but the blood gain is not as excessive as we’d hoped. And she is too large to work now.”

  “What will happen to her?” said Sia.

  “She will be taken to become a full time donor.”

  “A Bleeder?” said Sia. “What has she done?”

  “Nothing,” said Mathilde. “That’s the point. She cannot work. She must be worth something.”

  Sia moved on, trying not to look at the woman’s face.

  “The blood must be purified after it is taken,” Mathilde explained outside of a young girl's window. “Blood day, you see. We take the blood, and then we purify it so the Revenants can use it. Soon it will all be done here in one centralized plant. Isn't that grand? But I digress. This young lady was the subject of an experiment to purify the blood while it still flows through her veins. It was not successful. I apologize, I was not involved in this project, so I do not know the particulars. Perhaps some sort of chemical reaction?” As Mathilde looked into the window at the poor girl, Sia imagined that she considered her nothing more than a lab rat. Sia watched the girl, trying to move her hand to grasp a glass of water. The gray stone of her skin covered her legs, arms and neck. The pebbled skin made her unwieldy and she knocked the
cup onto the floor. Sia saw her face crumple as she started to cry. Sia fought the urge to put her hand to the glass.

  “Come along,” Mathilde said, moving down the hall. Sia followed, a cold weight in her belly. She didn't look through the windows until Mathilde stopped at one and looked in.

  “Two people, one body,” she said, and Sia could hear the smile in her voice. Sia forced herself to look. Thankfully they were sleeping. Two men were connected, their heads on one wide set of shoulders, the scar down the middle of them barely healing. An IV drip ran into each man's one arm.

  “You did this?” Sia said.

  “Well, not me alone,” said Mathilde. “But the experiment was extremely successful. Twins, you know. Identical. They grew together like they were meant to be that way.”

  “But why?” said Sia.

  “Well, imagine the amount of blood they will produce,” said Mathilde. “And we wanted to see if we could. Besides, one of them was dying before the procedure. We saved his life by joining him with his brother.”

  Sia nodded and tried to smile, but Mathilde was already on her way again. It seemed to Sia that the hall went on forever.

  They went through a silver set of doors, dotted with rivets and containing a set of padlocks in addition to the main lock. Red letters proclaimed the area Restricted. Mathilde drew a second set of keys out of her skirt and opened the padlocks, hanging them on a hook to the right of the door as she opened them. She slid her key back over her head and turned it in the old, iron lock set under a brass doorknob.

  Mathilde held open the door and motioned for Sia to enter. She took a tentative step inside, looking around. Everything seemed to be made of chrome. There were drains set into the floor and Sia saw a hose hanging coiled, like a thick white snake on the wall. The doors clicked closed behind Mathilde and she brushed past Sia and started down a hall on the other side of the room.

  The layout was exactly the same as the surgical wing, with more security. Each door had a thick bolted lock, and the windows were reinforced with thick metal bars that gleamed under the bright lights.