The Hematophages

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  Not looking me in the eyes, Tina crouches down less than a meter away.

  “Cover me,” she says, pointing her face in Nia’s direction but still not looking at me.

  Nia crosses the corridor and puts the business end of the beam rifle directly to my ear.

  “This seems…” I start to say.

  “Quiet,” Nia growls, shoving my head with the barrel of the weapon.

  Tina unpacks her kit and pulls out a second object I never thought I’d see a nurse carry: a teaspoon. Finally, she’s forced to look at me. She looks first at my blind eye and then at my good one, and seems to decide this is the one she’s going to operate on. I’m suddenly leery about what I fear is coming next, but Nia, seemingly sensing my nerves, helps to calm them by tapping the side of my face with the beam rifle to remind me it’s there.

  Tina administers three shots, two below the eye and one above. I’m not sure what they’re for until she grabs my lower eyelid and secures it to my cheek with what appears to be a safety pin. I’m only vaguely aware of this as I feel no pain. The shots were, apparently, some kind of local anesthetic. She then pins my upper eyelid to my eyebrow.

  I know I’m breathing harder than is strictly healthy, but I’m unreasonable worried about what’s coming now, and as she sterilizes the spoon before my eyes, a funny inversion of a drug fiend holding a flame under a spoon, I’m beginning to seriously panic.

  “Look down.”

  “Couldn’t you do this to my bad eye?”

  She seems to become herself again for an instant, at least the Tina I remember.

  “Sorry, Paige.” Then the coldness returns. “If you are Paige.”

  She glances up at Nia and they nod at each other. My breaths are coming like a steam engine. And then the spoon is in my eye socket. The pain is dulled by the narcotics, but the sensation is still horribly invasive and grotesque. I try to look up at the spoon digging me out of my own field of vision, but it’s so painful that I understand now why Tina told me to look down and I comply, just in time for my ocular orb to pop out with a sickening squish. Luckily (if that’s the right word) it only falls a few centimeters into Tina’s waiting, latex-gloved hand. I’m now completely blind, my one eye scratched to bits and the other “safely” ensconced in a nurse’s palm. My breaths are still flying, fast and shallow, and I guess from the warm sensation and the seemingly endless seconds passing that Tina is shining a light into my empty eye socket with the hand that is not clasping my evacuated eyeball.

  She is very gentle in replacing it, far more gentle than she has been at any other point in this procedure. My eye rolls around, sore and painful, but luxuriating in being back in the healthy womb of its socket. The lack of freedom feels like a tincture.

  Tina wraps her arms around me. I suppose I should be comforted, but this is more for her right now. I pat her gently on the back.

  “Worm-free, I take it,” Nia sneers.

  I look up at the skin-wrapper and hope my eye isn’t too swollen to give the evil glare. Tina releases me, and I’m surprised to see her wiping her nose. Had she really cared that much about me?

  “We thought everyone else was gone. We thought there was no one else left. You’re alive and uninfested. It’s like a miracle.”

  Oh. It’s not me, then. It’s just the idea of me.

  “I’m not going to be alive for much longer if I don’t get some food and medicine.”

  She analyzes my wrecked body with a clinician’s eye.

  “Shit, but you’re a mess. I’m sorry. And that trauma to your eye isn’t helping matters. But it is necessary. You see, there are these eels…”

  “Yes, I’m caught up on that part,” I say through clenched teeth.

  She pulls out a neurostim pack, a cardiac pack, and, to my surprise, what looks like a medical version of a crank armband. She even hooks in a saline pack after gauging how low my blood is. (I worry that in this brave new world of hematophage infestation, exsanguination is such a major concern that the nurse just carries around saline packs.)

  I must be worse than I thought. Even when Helena was shot and left unconscious she hadn’t rated this level of medical attention. Tina straps me in three ways from Sunday and finishes off by handing me a bland, oaten protein bar. It is an orgasm crossing my lips.

  All is now well with the world. Well, not really, obviously, but my tit and my eye and my cheek are slowly mending, I’m full of dope and saline, and I’m finally filling my belly. I’m even off my knees and among friends… well, a friend and a temporary ally, if I’m being generous.

  “What’s been going on?” I ask, after taking the full requisite thirty seconds to luxuriate in my recovery.

  Nia and Tina exchange a glance.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Asking you for advice.”

  I briefly bring them up to speed on what happened to me with Zanib, and the long period of lost time. They nod in sympathy at my every description of battling with the hematophages, and they both seem interested to note that when I slapped my armband on Zanib, it affected the hematophages as well.

  “This is interesting news,” Tina says. “I suspected as much, but we haven’t really tested using drugs on the infested.”

  “It’s been our experience up until now, that killing the host give the eels the means to escape to reinfest others. We lost a lot of good people before we got wise to that.”

  “Which is why they granted you parole, I take it?”

  “Yes, actually,” Nia replies, ignoring my sarcasm or perhaps simply unfazed by it. “At this point it’s a war between the infested and the clean. Any other distinction is… trivial.”

  I guess it’s heartening to know that in the human experience there are still some situations that can force you to trust a person who, less than a day ago, attempted to murder you and all of your friends.

  “What happened while I was out? I gather things went a bit… sideways.”

  I gesture at the strange alignment of the ship.

  “Cute,” Nia says.

  “Something happened over… there,” Tina explains, gesturing in what I take to be the direction of the Manifest Destiny. “Something bad. Prosser didn’t come back. But Helena and Tampa did. And they called for immediate demolition.”

  I stretch back. Between the food and the medicine, I feel halfway human again.

  “And the explosion turned us on our side?”

  Nia tugs on Tina’s sleeve.

  “We need to get back. Is she stable?”

  Tina nods and crouches down to help me up. I could use another few hours sitting there, resting, but I don’t exactly feel safe hanging out in the hallway. The Borgwardt looks like a warzone. The bulkheads are riddled with scars from beam rifles.

  “Actually, we made it clear of the explosion,” Tina says, punctuating the sentence with a grunt as she hauls me to my feet. “Everything was by the book, just like clockwork. But then the engines failed. We hadn’t even broken the atmosphere.”

  “Sabotage,” I say. It’s not a question. Tina nods anyway. She helps me down the hallway toward the galley.

  “And we landed like this. Sideways.”

  “At least now we know how the infestation got on board,” Nia growls, “this one’s girlfriend.”

  Tina nods and looks at me. I don’t say anything. Sure, it was Zanib’s fault. But it wasn’t really her fault. She was doing her job. She had taken all the appropriate precautions. And, perhaps most important in my eyes, she had suffered more than anyone for her mistake. I would defend her to the end.

  “Up until now there’s been a lot of…tension. Most of the crew blames the colonists for bringing the infestation on board. I keep telling everyone they all came up clean, but there’s still a lot of mistrust. I…know you probably don’t want to drag Zanib’s name through the mud, but this information will make things better.”

  “I understand.”

  We’re standing outside the hatch to the galley. With the s
hip’s new alignment, the hatch is a hole in the deck we have to clamber down into. Tina pulls out her paint gun a second time.

  “Stand there against the bulkhead. Er… the deck. You know what I mean.”

  I nod and put my back to the bulkhead. Tina trains the paint gun at my shoulder and fires a pellet. It doesn’t sting much, and I’m left with a small green X on my shoulder.

  “Here’s what you need to know,” Tina says, and the canned speech she gives next is so emotionless and rote that I’m sure she’s given it a hundred times before now. “The galley is a safe zone. I’ve cleared everyone who’s inside. When I clear them, I give them a green mark. The paint guns have all been confiscated and they’re all accounted for. All the green paint, too. Right now, the only person on board who has access to green paint is me. And by Diane’s orders, only I can use it. When I use it, it will be in this hallway. We call this the green room.

  “The green room serves the same purpose as a prophylactic airlock. I don’t want to conduct the test inside the galley safe zone. If there are eels, I don’t want anyone clean exposed to them, or their eggs. I don’t know enough right now about how the infestation starts to risk that. If you go outside the green room, you will have to get checked again before re-entering the galley. I know it’s unpleasant, but it’s the only method we’re sure of right now.”

  “If I have to leave again, I’m just going to wear a boom suit, like her.”

  Nia smiles grimly behind the plasteel.

  “Sorry, this is the only one in the uninfested zone. The rest have been jettisoned.”

  “Let me guess,” I say, “saboteurs.”

  “You got it. I was the only soul on board wearing a suit when they were jettisoned. So, my eyeballs get to stay safely in my head.”

  “Any questions?” Tina asks.

  I’m about to shake my head, but one pops, unbidden, out of my lips.

  “Is Becs in there?”

  Nia and Tina exchange a look. I’m starting to get tired of them doing that.

  “No,” Nia states flatly.

  It’s clear they don’t want to elaborate, so I clamber down into the galley. The place is, surprisingly, less of a disaster area than the rest of the ship. The tables are all dented and many of the chairs have twisted legs, presumably from when the office turned on its side and it all came crashing to the new deck. However, the survivors have mostly righted all the furniture, and cleared it to the sides. I spot Diane just as I think to myself that this is probably her doing. So, she survived. I feel weirdly relieved by that.

  I scan the rest of the room. I don’t recognize too many of the others, but I’ve only been on board for the better part of two days, and I haven’t worked with a lot of my office mates. Grace and Jaime are here, and their people. Tampa is, too. And Helena is standing and walking towards me.

  She promptly wraps her huge hands around my neck and begins crushing my windpipe.

  Twenty-Eight

  If I hadn’t already had my eyeball popped out today, not to mention being attacked by hematophagic parasites, and nearly killed by my zombified roommate, this would be the worst experience of my life. As it is, being choked out by Helena only really rates the fourth or fifth worst experience of the day.

  “Helena!” I hear Diane shout, as the blood rushes out of my brain.

  I can feel someone else’s fingers vainly prying at the security goon’s. This is Tina, I’m vaguely aware of, though I feel more like I’m observing the situation from a corner in the ceiling where I’m safely floating above it all rather than experiencing it directly.

  “Helena! I will not raise my voice again!”

  The shaking and choking halts. For a moment, I think Helena is feeling ambivalent, but slowly she unwraps her fingers from around my neck. She shoves me away from her, but it’s not an angry shove, it’s dismissive. Tina starts to fuss over me, but I shake my head. I’m fine. Not really. But I want to seem fine. The medi-packs are still working me over. I’m sure they’ll fix up my semi-collapsed trachea the same way as my cheek and eye.

  Diane is standing in front of me now on her crutches, surveying me as though I am a budget report.

  “I think you’d better go cool down,” Diane says to Helena, without taking her eyes off of me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Helena says, the most dismissive I’ve ever heard her treat Diane.

  “Let me know when you’ve gotten hold of yourself.”

  Helena says nothing. She clambers up onto a table and starts pulling open a hatch on what is now the far bulkhead of the galley, which was formerly perpendicular to its current horizontal position.

  “Where are you going?” the director asks Helena’s receding back.

  “The freezer,” the goon replies, without looking over her shoulder, “you know, to cool off.”

  I can’t tell if it was supposed to be a bon mot or if Helena just can’t even stand to be in a room with me anymore. She goes through some acrobatics but manages to pull herself into the sideways walk-in freezer.

  “I’m so sorry, Paige. Obviously, we can’t tolerate this sort of inappropriate behavior, even in times of distress. Perhaps especially in times of distress. Would you like to file a report or speak to worker’s compensation?”

  I stare at her, aghast. Is she really still worried about all that?

  “Uh… no.”

  She nods.

  “Well, it’s your right to do so for the next 90 days. Please do not feel pressure to forget this. I certainly won’t.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Diane stands there, silent for a moment, as if gauging how long is appropriate before launching right into business talk. The director sits down with Tina, Nia, and I (I still can’t get over how quickly everyone’s come to trust the skin-wrapper, but I guess needs must as the devil drives.) I don’t feel much like talking, certainly not like reliving the pain of losing Zanib by recounting it a second time. Luckily, Tina and Nia are unusually eager to tell my story on my behalf. I don’t feel obliged to correct them on a whole lot, though they’ve jumbled some of the details. Mostly they’re interested in the information I’ve brought them about how I overdosed Zanib to stop the hematophages and how Zanib brought K.P. on board, who must have taken control of her and started bringing others on.

  “It all seems quite obvious now in hindsight, doesn’t it?” Diane says, shaking her head ruefully. “The worms were Patel’s project. Meanwhile, uneven heads have been blaming the colonists. Ladies, could one of you please give me a hand?”

  Nia and Tina assisted Diane in clambering up onto the tabletop. She clears her throat, and I never heard a room fall silent so fast.

  “Ladies, can I have your attention please? Thank you. There’s been a great deal of…shall we say…rumor-mongering of late. We’ve finally managed to confirm the origin of the outbreak. It seems that one of our own scientists brought the worms on board in the course of her normal duties.”

  “Who?” someone shouts, attempting to sound angry though the fear in her voice is palpable.

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate to say at this time. Suffice it to say, she has paid with her life. I was aware of what she was doing and approved it. Ultimately the responsibility is mine. Therefore, if you must have a target for your animus, make it me.”

  Diane pauses, waiting for more outbursts from the cheap seats, but thankfully she has shamed them into silence.

  “I would like to take this moment, therefore, to offer a public apology to Jaime and her crew. It’s clear now to anyone who was still in doubt, that the infestation was not brought on board by your people, but rather by our own intemperate actions. I apologize for any discomfort or loss of esteem this may have caused you or your personnel. Hestle takes such slander very seriously, and we will work hard with you to see that it is made right as soon as we have returned to corporate space.”

  Jaime rises, seemingly unflustered.

  “Thank you for your kind remarks, madam director. While we expected no trus
t from your people, we have, instead, been greeted with great kindness and compassion, excluding a very few bad apples. I accept your gracious apology in the spirit with which it was given, and we will seek no further remuneration for any intemperate words.”

  “Then that will be the end of it. Thank you, Jaime. And thank you everyone else for listening. You can return to your duties.”

  Everyone’s “duties” seem to consist of muttering rumors in hushed tones and the occasional card game, but they return to them, nevertheless. With the help of the others, Diane retakes her seat. She seems to notice me again, as though for the first time.

  “You’re sure you’re going to be all right, Paige? After what Helena did?”

  It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes.

  “I’m not worried about it,” I say, and I genuinely mean it, “But why is she so pissed at me?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain,” Diane says, though I can tell she’s equivocating.

  It’s pointless. Nia blurts out the truth in her own usual, tactless manner.

  “She’s still pissed about what happened to the cook.”

  I look up sharply.

  “Becs? Why? What happened to her?”

  The others fall silent, even Nia.

  “Why won’t you tell me? Fuck, what could be so much worse than parasites crawling out of people’s eyes?”

  “It’s… worse,” Diane states flatly.

  “Tell me.” I’m starting to feel like a broken record.

  Diane takes a deep, thoughtful breath.

  “I suppose you have a right to know. Have you got your jotter?”

  I pull it out and place it on the table.

  “We put all of the communications systems into emergency lockdown, for obvious reasons. No need to give the worms any advantage. However, I’ve had all the ship’s computing rerouted to the galley terminal over there.”

  She points at the cash register Becs had previously manned. It had fallen along with the rest of the furniture, and been returned to an upright position. It seems funny, running an entire massive office’s computers out of a cash register, but there’s nothing normal about this situation anymore.