by Lee Isserow
“Don't smile yet,” Steve said, glancing over his shoulder and catching Ben's grin. “Not 'til this guy is good and drained.”
His recruits followed behind at a distance, each of them reaching for blades of their own, none of them sure that they would have the confidence to use them if it came to it.
Steve stopped, holding his fist up to signal for the others to stop too. There was squeaking, loud grunts and squeals, from both a man and a woman. They tiptoed across the apartment to the origin of the sound. A door at the far side of the living room. He looked back at the four new recruits and mouthed “Three, two, one,” before reaching for the handle and flinging the door open. None of them were prepared for what was waiting for them in that room.
34
For weeks after they burst into the bedroom, Ben would try and recreate what he saw in his imagination. He could never do it justice.
It was one thing to see to lithe, sweaty strangers in flagrante, They were standing, her leaning her weight on a closet, him rhythmically pounding from behind. The girl was slim, a little older, and a few shades darker than Subject One Twenty Seven, with short pink and green hair that spiked intermittently atop her head. Her public hair was thick and coloured the same. The top of it was intricately gelled into spikes, whilst the lower down it went, the more in was matted with her own juices. Not just the natural wetness from their intense sexual activity. It was thick with blood.
He too was bleeding, from wounds that looked to be shielded by her buttocks, somewhere around his groin. A pack of razor blades sat on the bed, one separated from the others, the one used to break his skin.
None of the home invaders moved an inch. They were frozen, speechless, as it wasn't just the two naked strangers that were in the midst of copulation. It appeared that their blood was also participating in the activity.
The room was filled with an intricate network of webs, gossamer threads of thin, silken blood coming forth from their loins, his and hers flowing back and forth along the strings that floated in the air, connecting the ceilings to the floors to the walls. It brought images to Ben's mind of spiders mating, and he wondered if in this instance, it would be Subject One Twenty Seven that would devour his mate.
The blood in the air stopped flowing as the couple became aware they were being watched. They moved, as if speaking without words, and both rolled over the bed. The webs hanging in the air suddenly engorged, and grew sharp spikes, whipping towards Steve like a cat-o-nine tail s, who grabbed hold of the door and pushed the others back, closing it just in time to hear the thud of the bloods' impact. He grabbed a knife and cut open a wrist as he kicked the door back open. The couple had grabbed hold of razor blades, and were standing other other side of the bed. As his blood coalesced and started gnashing its scabby teeth, they slit their throats open in unison. The two gushes of blood joined together, forming a solid base at the front that looked almost like a fist. The crimson battering ram knocked Steve clear out of the room, sending the fat man flying head over heels, crashing to the living room floor with a thud that seemed to make the whole building shake.
The couple pulled their blood back into their throats, the wounds closing up as if they were never there. They grabbed their clothes as Ben and the others stared at their fallen mentor. He was breathing, but only softly.
“I'll go get the tacks!” Nick said, running for the stairs.
Ben turned to the door. He wasn't convinced they'd be able to deal with the couple. A hand wrapped around his wrist. It was Tess. Her eyes had a burning intensity. She wanted to hurt these guys as much as he did for sending their friend flying. They glanced over to Chris, who was way ahead of them, she already had a knife in her right hand, its point sitting on the palm of her left. Ben clicked the blades on both gloves open and held them to the top of both wrists. Tess pulled out two knives and held them ahead of her. They took slow, purposeful steps towards to bedroom door.
Inside, there was the sound of frantic movement. They caught sight of the two aggressors getting dressed quickly. The woman froze, seeing the three of them in the doorway. Subject One Twenty Seven turned, as if hearing her unspoken warning. They reached for their blades, but the three new recruits were faster.
Chris drove the blade so deep into her palm that she could feel it grazing against the bones in her wrist. She tore the blade out and raised her hand up in a 'stop' motion. The blood started pouring into the air, jaw forming, lunging towards the girl, who darted out of the way. A giant red fist slammed Chris's 'goblin into the wall. It lost its integrity and splashed up against the cream paint. The fist burst open before it could coalesce again, and a long tongue emerged, lapping up the wall, slurping down all the fluids.
Chris fell to her knees at the sudden loss of blood and Ben stepped ahead of her. He dug the claws into the soft flesh in the pit of his elbows and tore through all the way down to his hands, throwing his arms out, flinging the blood at the mighty fist. Two globular bloods formed, giant jaws gnashing straight through the arm of the lapping ruby hand. A shadow flew across the room. Ben was able to pull one of his bloods clear, but the not the second. It was bitten clean in two by massive alligator jaws that made a sloshing sound as they snapped shut. The surviving blood turned and bit at the mouth of the alligator, but its skin had hardened to a thick brown, and the teeth bounced off it as if it were barely a small nuisance. The alligator snapped once again and tore a piece out of the remaining blood.
Tess's blood burst into the room, its jaws opened wide and came down hard with a clap, not on the alligator, but on Ben's injured bloods. Tess's blood grew in size and stature, and hardened to a thick black as it wrenched its jaws open once again and brought it down on the alligator, cracking through the hardened shell as if it were merely biting though chocolate to get at the gooey centre.
Ben watched from just outside the doorway, pale and weak, as she entered the room to see the girl fall to the floor. Subject One Twenty Seven caught her, holding her close.
“You didn't have to do that...” he whimpered.
Something about his cries didn't sit right with Tess. She pulled her blood back towards her, seeing a thin trail of red thread coming from the Subject's foot.
“I'm sorry,” she said, trying to keep him talking as she followed the trail in her periphery. It snaked its way through the plush fibres of the rug. “I truly am,” took a b-line towards the wall and made its way up to the ceiling. “We don't have to fight,” she lied. Subject One Twenty Seven could see it was a lie.
Tess jumped towards the bed as a shadow fell at her from the ceiling. A large, black, spiky portcullis slammed into the floor, burying itself in layers of chipboard and wood. As Subject One Twenty Seven struggled to wrench his blood out and change its shape, Tess's 'goblin was already on him. Its teeth buried themselves deep into either side of his chest and started slurping him down like a milkshake.
When his body was drained, she left the room and helped Ben to his feet. She held him by the hand and brought him into the bedroom. He couldn't help notice that her grip was thicker and fuller than the hand he had held earlier. She sat him on the bed opposite the girl and sliced a blade along the side of his thumb. A small bead of blood formed. It started growing, and she took his hand to find the weakened girl's body. As soon as the blood sensed that he approved of the food source, it launched itself from his wound, slurping her fluids down, sending them back to Ben by a long, thin strand of blood that grew bigger and bigger, like a cartoon hose that was being stepped on.
Once colour had returned to his cheeks, she tore one of Chris's veins open, followed by one of her own, and let Chris's blood bite clean through her own, supping until it had its fill.
Ben watched as Tess seemed to shrink back down to just a little larger than her normal size. She turned to check on him and caught the smile on his lips. It was the same smile that she had on hers.
“Nice work,” Steve grunted, as he tried to pick himself up. “Where'd the other one go?”
; The three new recruits helped Steve to his feet and they walked back to the steps, where the four tacks were trying to wake Nick up after he slipped down the stairwell and knocked himself out.
“Well, three out of four ain't bad,” Steve said, as he heaved his wide frame into the back of the van. The suspension groaned as he stepped inside, and he groaned as he sat and nursed his bruised body.
Nick was laid on the floor, whilst the tacks and other new recruits were driven back to Thames House. Tess and Ben were barely able to shed their grins, and as soon as they got close to losing them, they caught each other's eye, and their smiles returned, full and wide.
35
The following week, the whole Blood Squad was awash with activity, but Ben was barely aware of any of it. He and Tess had been spending a lot of time in the white room. They took turns in cutting themselves, creating bloods, making them hard and then soft, supping at one another's fluids. There was something magical about it, beyond sexual, they were carrying a physical part of one another everywhere they went. They were more connected than either of them had felt with any partner previous.
Ben didn't have a particularly broad selection of exes to compare to. Through his teens and twenties he had been so full of anger and desire for vengeance that other that a few short-lived romances, he barely dipped his toes into the dating pool.
Tess was the opposite, she had had three long term boyfriends, each lasting between five and seven years before each broke her heart in one form or another. The first cheated on her with someone he worked with. The second of them only cheated emotionally, falling in love with a girl he chatted to on World Of Warcraft. After they broke up, Tess was given a small catharsis by hearing that the girl the ex had left her for turned out to be a softly spoken man playing a female character, the ex not taking the time to actually query gender before the breakup and meet. The third ex she wouldn't speak about, and Ben supposed that he was the reason she was here, a man she loved, that she accidentally killed. It was the polar opposite of his origin story; accidentally killing a man that he hated more than anything in the world.
The two of them held hands as they walked through the corridors, sat next to each other during every lecture, and couldn't help but reach out and touch one another during the briefing that they were called to at the end of the week, ignoring the scowls from Ailes as he tried to give them information of the impending operation.
They were sat at the back, with Nick and Chris to their left, Steve to their right. The four tacks from the previous operations were now joined by eight others they had never seen before.
“Subjects two twenty six through two forty two have surfaced once again,” Ailes said, grimly. “You may remember them as the escapees from an operation fifteen weeks ago that left us in dire need for new recruits...”
This was news to Ben. He had assumed that Steve's last batch of recruits were operating at his level, on their own operations. None of them had asked what happened to them, and they were all a little taken aback to discover that they died on a mission. Ailes did not seem to register this, and continued the briefing none the wiser.
“Analysis suggests that they're still grouping for a larger scale infection, something bigger than anything we've seen before.” Ben couldn't help but think of the ant video Ailes had shown them, its head bursting open, sinewy goop pouring out as the spores flew on the breeze to infect countless others. “Given that we are facing sixteen potential hostiles, this is going to require all our new recruits – assuming they can all stay conscious this time out?” He glared at Nick, who sunk down in his chair. “Griffiths, you're on point, breaching the front. Mason, you're taking the east entrance. Philips, you're round the back on the north entrance. MacGaulty is going through the front, two newbies a piece through the other entrances, Steve, split 'em up any way you want.”
Steve nodded, the wide smile still fixed on his face. Ben felt the pressure growing again in his head and tried to ignore it. It was the physical representation of his anxiety at the notion of taking out sixteen infected. It took three of the five of them to take just two of them down, and they barely survived that.
He caught Steve's eye, and registered his smile. There was a warmth of reassurance that radiated off him and pulsed through Ben's body, as if their blood was talking, transmitting good vibes. Ben took a deep breath, and noticed there was a wide smile on his face. He knew he could do this. They all could. They were a team, and nothing was going to stand in their way, knock them back or break them apart.
In the weeks to come, Ben would look back on that overconfidence, and hate himself for how foolhardy it was.
36
The Blood Squad were dispatched in three separate vans. Steve, Chris and Nick in the first, Tess and Ben in the second with four of the tacks, the remaining tacks in the third.
“Bet you're glad not to be driving with that fat bastard for once!” said one of the tacks, nudging Ben in the side. The other tacks all laughed.
“Used to be maybe eleven stone, y'know. Blown up like a balloon, ain't he,” Griffiths said, adding to the insults aimed at their friend and mentor. “Must have the blood of twenty people in him by now. Bet he shits the stuff!”
“He might shit it out,” said the first tack. “But I bet it just climbs back up when he's done!” This brought more laughter from the armed goons. Ben was feeling uncomfortable, he could see Tess was too. Neither of them could wait for the journey to be over.
The van finally pulled up and they swung the doors open. Ben was glad to get a breath of fresh air after spending the journey inhaling the thick stench of testosterone that filled the van, even from the female tacks. They assembled outside the large abandoned building. The facade was constructed of metal sheeting riveted together at various points where it met the girder skeleton of the building. The metal was old and unloved, rusting, and there was the remnants of old paint above the main entrance, stray letters that were no longer legible. Ben turned from the building and looked at the view. They were on the banks of the Thames still, but he didn't recognise any of the landmarks. They were either way east or far west from their Westminster base.
“Ben, you ready?”
He turned, Steve was about to address the troops in a hushed tone.
“Alright. You heard that Ailes. I'm going through the front. Gonna split you up; Chris and Ben, you're going through the east. Nick and Tess, you're round the back, north side. Any questions?”
Ben opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. He was going to ask if he could go in with Tess, and knew it was dumb, based out of nothing more than the growing connection between the two of them, rather than a tactical advantage. If anything, the way he cared for her would probably put them at risk. A part of him knew Steve had split them up intentionally, and he wasn't going to be able to say anything to change his mind.
“Alright. Fan out, get to your spots. Breaching on my mark.”
The new recruits did as instructed, walking around the grand expanse of the warehouse together. The tacks were already waiting at the door they were going to breach on the east side. Tess and Nick continued past them round to the back of the building. He watched her walk away, returned the smile she shot back over her shoulder before turning the corner.
Ben took a deep breath as they waited for the call to come across the radio. His fingers passed over the knives hidden in the armour across his chest. He inhaled slowly as he tried to mark the positions down on an imagined map, locations his hands needed to return to as and when required.
“Three.” MacGaulty's voice chimed out across the radio. Ben could hear the smile that accompanied the word. He was looking forward to what was coming. “Two.” Ben thought back to what the tacks in the van had said about Steve's weight ballooning up with all the blood his 'goblins had drunk. His own weight had been pretty much the same since he was seventeen, he couldn't even picture what he might look like with that much blood sloshing through his veins. “One.” The images faded from
his mind as a chill took over. He watched the tacks raise the battering ram one last time and bring it down on the door.
The crash reverberated around the surrounding area as all three doors were brought down simultaneously. He tried to walk towards the dank darkness of the warehouse, but found his feet stuck hard to the paving stones. It was fear.
He knew that fear well, it was the same paralysing feeling that haunted his recurring dream, accompanied by the all too familiar growing pressure in his head. Chris stepped ahead of him, glancing back over her shoulder as she passed “You ok?” she whispered.
Ben reminded himself that he was the master of those monsters now. There was nothing to fear from them. Not any more. He smiled at Chris and pulled his feet from the ground, reclaiming control of his body, joining her at the mouth of the darkness and smiled. “All good,” he said.
She didn't have a chance to respond. Her head was severed clean from the shoulders by a blade of darkest black, that swung through the air with the softest of sighs. Ben watched Chris's body as it began to fall to the floor. As it dropped, blood flowed out of her neck, hanging in the place where she once stood. It turned to Ben and growled an angry gurgle. The bright red monster sniffed at the air around him, its body undulating and pulsing as it continued to grow with the fluids leaving Chris's corpse. It then pulled its gelatinous form back. He was not it's prey. But the tacks were.
The creature shifted form, the majority of bulk moving to its base momentarily, before throwing itself past Ben to the uninfected men behind him. In mid-air, the creature sent out four spiked arms from its mutated jelly bean body, each with hardened tips that pierced through the armour at their necks with ease.