by Karen Payton
The hive had erected the compound with haste and little imagination when Mother Nature had redefined ‘eternity’ and given it an expiration date. In a bitter irony, the humans housed here were the genetically strong specimens who survived a pandemic which killed eighty percent of their fellows. Their only obligation now was to live, continue to stay healthy, and feed the undead community of the City of London.
Connor made the final approach to the human farm, crossing the last mile of potholed grass at speed. He focused on his reason for being here and hoped his medical students would pass the test. The grade was black or white. Flying colors, or crash and burn.
The first perimeter fence loomed as a time-wasting obstacle. Connor sprinted forward. Leaping more than ten feet in the air, he grabbed hold of the meshed-wire fence and hung on. As the metal links rattled, he swung his legs upwards and vaulted over the top. Landing soundlessly on the soft earth, he loped the twelve yards to the foot of the next fence.
He waited this time, because the compound guard appeared at the same moment.
“Doctor Connor.” The guard nodded as he opened the gate and stepped back in one fluid motion. “I trust you have clearance.”
Connor delivered his familiar dead-pan refrain. “About two inches, I think.”
The guard shook his head slowly and smiled. “The students are ready and waiting for you.”
“Excellent,” said Connor as he walked away.
The guard fell into step beside him. “Do you think this class will pass the final test?”
Connor studied his companion’s sixty-something year old face. Drawing in his scent, he reminded himself that the gatekeeper was young, in vampire terms. Forty immortal years to my one hundred. He smiled. “Honestly? I think maybe two will make the grade. Resisting a human when they bleed is not something we’re designed to do.”
“You seem to manage it easily enough.”
“Ah well, I was a surgeon when I was alive and there is not a squeamish bone in my body. Maybe that’s the secret.”
But Connor knew it was more than that. He had quickly learned that by flexing his diaphragm, he could slam his vocal chords shut and create an airlock which kept human scents at bay. Sadly, like the ability to be a world-class athlete, it was a natural talent which could be honed, but not one he could teach.
Out of curiosity, Connor asked, “Have you thought of enrolling? See if you can pass the grade as an intern? Work in the siphoning sheds would be more rewarding than walking the perimeters night after night.”
The guard laughed gently, mimicking Connor’s words, “Ah well, I was a mailman when I was alive, and there are a number of squeamish bones in my body.”
Connor laughed too. “Fair enough.” Passing through the final gate and into the compound, he waved a hand in farewell.
The brushed steel exteriors of the siphoning annexes burnished in the glare of the floodlights, bathing the clearing between the human barracks and the siphoning sheds in an illusion of daylight.
The atmosphere reminded Connor of the Nazi concentration camps where he passed time during the Second World War. They were invaluable training grounds, and he still found comfort in chaos, and in maintaining control while those around him lost it. The decades when the undead were in hiding, he remembered as a gift of gluttony. I fed on humans with breath-taking frequency, going unnoticed because men were Hell bent on fighting each other.
He hadn’t known then, that the human form you possessed when you were turned became your raw material, to be enhanced or wasted. Having a quick mind and a towering muscular frame upon which to build, Connor’s thirst acted as a survival tool, instinctively honing his daunting acuity and lethal strength.
Posing as a surgeon, and operating on humans in the makeshift hospitals on the battlefields in France during the First World War, he became adept at resisting the thick scent of human blood and could choose when to kill. It was not until eight decades later, when the hive emerged to round up the dwindling human population and herd them onto the farms, that he discovered his control was exceptional.
Tapping into that control now, Connor set his sights on the loading bay doors of the nearest siphoning shed and moved quickly down the wet concrete path.
As he stepped inside, the subdued lighting draped his shadow over the polished floor. The frequent passage of trolleys used to transport the less cooperative humans had worn tire tracks into the ramp running up into the building; it was a reminder that there were still some who thought giving blood was a choice and fought to keep their nine pints to themselves.
The human spirit never fails to amaze me. Connor shook his head, walked into the large storeroom which served as a training area, and greeted his students.
“Good evening, gentlemen. So, this is it, your final test. The patient today needs a new siphoning tube. I removed the valve from the collapsed vein yesterday. Today, we will insert a new catheter and glue it in place until it heals over. You will then take samples of blood from the human, as a test.” Connor took in the three determined faces. “The best piece of advice I can give is, use your sleep centers.”
Over the centuries, vampires had evolved a way to rehydrate the brain after feeding without the need to lose consciousness, taking them further away from the age old urban myth. Connor reminded the group it was a mixed blessing. “If you are to work here on the farm, it’s critical you become expert in controlling your impulses, and the way to do that is through revival sleep.”
Connor referred back to his favored analogy of a multiple personality disorder. “Think of it as having three locked compartments inside your head. You have one key and only one door can be opened at a time.” He visualized his own compartments, and each of the inmates which vied for attention. One enjoyed killing, the other resembled a volatile drunkard, and the third, and the one they needed to tap into when near humans, was chilled-out and mellow.
As part of their training, the students practiced unlocking their sleep centers daily, until it became instinctive. Of the twenty who had enrolled, hoping to become interns on the farm, Connor was inclined to trust only these three. Even for himself, preparation was everything and after his encounter today, his lecture was tinged with irony. I messed up today. The uneasy feeling of having a hole punched in his own armor mocked him.
“You all know how to unlock the door to the relaxation of revival sleep. Put your masks on and do it now,” he said mildly. Satisfied, as glazed gazes softened their expressions, Connor stopped breathing and slipped on his own flexible transparent plastic mask.
The door to the room sprang open, and a porter entered, wheeling in a middle-aged human male laid out on a metal examination table. The man’s eyelids were half-closed in drug-induced sleep. His blood sample would be tainted and undrinkable, but in Connor’s book, easing suffering was more important.
Connor selected a catheter tube from a metal tray and offered it to the student who stepped forward.
Taking hold of the thin tube, the student inspected the man’s arms and considered the marks which tracked the path of collapsed veins. With a deft sweep of his cold fingertips, he located an unscarred vein and steadily pushed the catheter underneath the skin until it flooded with blood.
“Careful, you must advance it enough so that he cannot pull it out once it has knitted in place, but we want him as comfortable as possible,” Connor said quietly.
The student nodded, fed more of the tube into the vein, and then applied the surgical glue to fix the valve in place. He stepped back with a grimly satisfied smile.
Connor nodded his approval and gestured to the next student.
The tall wiry vampire retrieved an I.V. bag from a crate, slipped it over a hook where it hung below the level of the patient on the trolley, and then he connected a coil of thin transparent tube to the catheter valve in the patient’s arm. Twisting the tap open, he flicked the tube until blood snaked lazily along its length, before attaching it to the I.V. bag.
A thick sweet scent p
lumed to fill the room, and every eye, apart from Connor’s, was fixed onto the meandering path of oozing warm blood.
As the wiry student shifted his weight to withdraw, Connor surged forward and shoved him aside. In two seconds, Connor had the remaining student pinned to the wall by the throat. The vampire’s panting breath misted up his mask until Connor’s firm grip strangled the growl rattling in his throat and cut off his windpipe.
Connor stripped away his own mask with his free hand and said, “It’s okay. Relax, and I’ll take you outside.”
The student slumped in his mentor’s grasp, and Connor lifted him bodily out through the door.
Returning to the room alone, Connor dismissed the remaining pair with a tight smile. “He will be okay now. I’ll tell Supervisor Matthew you are both ready to work in the siphoning sheds. Well done.”
When the porter collected the sleeping patient, Connor followed him out, walked along the hallway, and made his way outside into the glare of the floodlights to where the supervisor waited for him.
“Doctor Connor,” he said. “Did they pass?”
“Sad to say, only two. Walk with me, Matthew,” said Connor casually, settling into a relaxed stride. “So, Charles, in the blood dispensary, tells me that there are clots in some of the blood bags you are sending out.”
Connor grinned when the supervisor bristled.
“Let’s go and take a look, shall we?”
They moved in silence between the sheds, which were numbered like hospital wards, but there the similarity ended. Inside, instead of beds, rows of steel tables, each with a drainage gully running around the outer edges, performed only one function. We don’t want to waste a drop. Humans provided blood, and restraining straps made it clear they had no choice. Connor grimly wished his synthesized blood trials had succeeded this time around, and that he could see an end to this.
True, humans were fed, clothed, provided with reading materials, and their hobbies indulged, although most were too tired to rouse themselves to do more than just sit. Connor remembered the spark of life in the human girl’s eyes when he had laid his hand on her outside the hospital, and he found admiration sneaking in through that hole in his armor. To reduce her to this would be tragic.
Inside siphoning shed number two, Connor pushed his mask into place, but even through the plastic, the full-bodied aroma of stored blood swelled the capillaries inside his nasal passages and the scent wafted into his brain. His nose wrinkled at the disconcerting marriage of distaste and excitement.
Frowning with renewed purpose, he burst through the doorway into the ward.
As he expected, row upon row of human donors greeted him, each one laid out and strapped to the stainless steel beds in a parody of the living dead.
“Well, Matthew.” Connor’s grin was empty. “Nice place you have here. The bad news is, in one day, Charles reported that two of the hive suffered seizures due to blood clots. I’m thinking deep vein thrombosis or a platelet clotting disorder. So, we just need to find the human and treat him.”
The supervisor was indignant. “Why did they drink it?”
Connor laughed harshly. “You know better than that. If the blood was warm and beneath human skin, they would have detected disease. But, cold and in a vial? They just downed it and suffered the consequences.” He flexed his lungs, filling them with the heavy aroma of human bone marrow being pushed to its replenishment limit. “I must say, I prefer the more optimistic setting of my hospital.” He pinned the supervisor in his gaze. “One that I control.”
The supervisor stared back with resentment printed upon his face.
“Let’s get started.” Connor shot a glance at his watch. “I want to be back at the hospital before the eleven p.m. blood delivery comes in.”
“What do you suggest?” Matthew waved his arm to indicate the sea of reclined bodies. “Help yourself.”
Connor pulled off his mask and grabbed a clutch of pinprick tests from a nearby storage chest. He made his way down the line of humans, moving quickly, gripping each wrist, pricking the skin and collecting a smear of blood. He spent but a moment rubbing it between his fingertips, checking for the gritty texture which would reveal blood clots to his heightened sense of touch, before moving on to the next.
Panic rippled through the ward like a stiff breeze flattening the grass in a meadow. Connor’s attentions were like a bird strike. With their inferior senses, the humans didn’t see him coming. They felt the unexpected shock of his icy grip, but the examination was over before they registered it.
The twenty-third patient halted Connor in his tracks.
“This one.” Connor detached the three-quarters full bag of blood and turned the tap to seal the end of the catheter, wasting only two drops onto the floor. “Tag him, and cease siphoning until we run a full blood work-up and begin treatment,” he barked.
Behind his own plastic face shield, Matthew’s features tightened with reluctant respect.
Connor returned to the supervisor’s side, after having found two more patients with clots floating in their bloodstreams. His jaw clenched. “You are failing in your duty here, Matthew. The vampires’ suffering is not the issue, losing one of our humans is a far more serious price,” said Connor, sternly. “Don’t get complacent. If these humans have deep vein thrombosis, then it’s because they are immobile for too many hours. I want you to make sure the humans exercise, and pay more attention to their health, do you understand?”
Supervisor Matthew nodded. “Yes, Doctor Connor.”
Connor met his defiant stare. “Let’s make this clear, if one of them dies, then you will face the consequences. I will see to it.” His icy tone left no room for doubt. “I’ll drop by in a few days with the blood test results. For now, I have to get back to the hospital. Goodnight.” He turned on his heel and disappeared from the shed before he gave in to the temptation to shake some sense into the supervisor.
With the scent of human desperation and defeat still fresh in his mind, arguments raged inside Connor’s head as he made the return journey to the hospital. He almost headed south over the River Thames and followed the same route along which he had carried the human girl.
He felt like an alcoholic being lured into a bar. Vampires had stopped hunting for human survivors of the pandemic a long time ago, smugly assuming that they were all now in captivity. Humans are nothing more than livestock. Their siphoned blood was delivered to the hospital daily, like groceries for distribution.
When the human food supply plummeted to critical levels, the hives formed, and rationing began. The last fifteen years have been a steep learning curve.
Some vampires refused to bow to a chain of command. And they did us a favor when they tried to survive on animal blood. It revealed an inescapable truth; animal blood alone cannot rehydrate the thirsty tissue of an undead brain. The price is an eternity of dementia. Having once been human, we need a daily dose of human blood to remain healthy. So, immortals had accepted their fate. They come in, collect their quota, and think no further than that.
The inmates of the human farm supported the London hive numbers for now, but the cloud on the horizon was that humans age and die. And it will be sooner, rather than later, with Supervisor Matthew in charge. Breeding humans was tough, especially with the stock comprising of many more men than women. And the females will do anything not to deliver a baby into our hands. His smile was bitter.
The last attack by a ‘feral’ cost the hive four humans. The undead who succumbed to dementia had no concept of fear. Thought process crumbled and they ‘hunted’ in the most primitive, mindless sense of the word. Ferals were like wolves circling a chicken coup, but the last sweeps of the overgrown countryside around London had not flushed any out. It looks like they are dying out at last.
Connor’s efforts to find a synthetic substitute for human blood isotopes had, so far, come to nothing. Any chance to increase the human herd could not to be missed. I’m obliged to report this girl for capture and farming, but..
. He darted a glance at his watch. She will have moved out already, if she has any sense, and I’ll not see her again. He stopped short, rubbing the palm of the hand that had gripped her arm along the length of his thigh, as though trying to remove her stain. Distaste flooded him, and he thought, LIAR.
Chapter 4
Connor felt relief when he arrived back at the hospital.
Erasing the girl from his mind, he moved along the corridor following the smell of blood as though he could see it. He pushed aside the jellied-plastic doors leading into the human blood dispensary and scanned the dozens of vampires waiting silently in line.
With gray ceiling tiles, pristine white walls, and a slick wet-look linoleum floor, the room appeared bland, until Connor glanced left and took in the wall of tall glass-fronted storage cabinets. Shelves filled with vials of blood in every shade of burgundy and claret were like a siren call, and the room of happy victims all faced that direction as though considering the choices on offer.
Connor purposefully threaded a path between the rows of vampires. Arriving at the front of the queue, he slipped behind the dispensing desk and stopped beside the slight frame of Charles, the dispensary clerk.
Unfazed by the sudden intrusion, Charles silently watched Connor open up a cooler box and drop the I.V. bags from the farm patients inside.
“Run coagulant tests on these samples, Charles. I gave Supervisor Matthew a rocket. He should up his game, now.”
“Good,” said Charles. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”
Connor smiled. The clerk was a small terrier of a vampire. His sandy hair refused to lie down and his brown eyes gleamed with a sharp intellect.
“How’s it going?” said Connor, gazing out over the sea of faces.
“All under control. Should be about another hour.”
“You’ll have two hours then, to unload the blood delivery from the farm and test it before the next cluster arrives. Is that enough time?”
Charles jerked his head towards the waiting vampires. “This is the last working party. They’re going out to service a fleet of trucks tonight. After that I only expect to see the ones dropping by before they go down to Exeter to hunt on Dartmoor.”