Vampire Redemption

by Phil Tucker

  She stiffened. Mama B had to have told General Adams by now that she was turning herself over to the military. The General had hidden himself away in Miami as a form of penance, but he still had clout. He knew what her blood could do. The potential it carried. He'd be reaching out already, fighting to find her, to get her freed. That was what she had to latch onto. Even now, he was probably making phone calls from his office in Miami. She took a slow, steady breath and nodded. They were going to come for her. They were.

  Eventually, fatigue overcame her. She tried lying down, but couldn't get comfortable with her arms tied behind her back. Instead, she finally scooted back against the bars and leaned against them. Her head sank and she drifted off into uneasy sleep.

  Selah awoke as her cell door clanged open. She jerked her head up, trying to see what was going on, but of course couldn't. Footsteps marched up to her, hands slipped under her arms and lifted her to her feet.

  "Hey! What's going on? What's happening?"

  They didn't respond. She was marched out of the cell, and then out of the room. Down a series of halls, and then she heard a door slam behind her. She was dumped into a chair again, and the tie around her neck was loosened and the hood yanked off.

  Selah took a deep gasp of fresh air. Sweat was smeared across her face, and she blinked several times as the lights blinded her. Squinting, she looked around and saw that she was back in the small interrogation room with leaden walls with McKnight.

  Selah stared at the Sergeant, who ignored her completely. Instead, she was reading a tablet, lips pursed, a thin line between her brows. A minute dragged out slowly. She had to bring up the vaccine. She hadn't had time during their first meeting, but that was what counted--that's what McKnight had to understand mattered.

  "Selah Brown," said McKnight at last, and flicked her fingers across the tablet, sending the data to the wall to her right. The leaden surface gleamed to life and Selah saw a magnified version of her old driver's license appear on the wall, her sixteen-year-old face looking happily out at nothing. "Seventeen, five-foot-six, 125 lbs. Daughter of Mary Brown, deceased in 2022. Died in a car accident during the first War, death unrelated to vampire activity. Father is Anthony Brown, currently detained for violating censorship laws." Both of her parent's licenses appeared next to hers.

  "What?" Selah jolted forward. "Detained? You know where he is?"

  McKnight slid her eyes up to Selah, studied her for a moment, and then looked back down at her tablet. Selah sat back, euphoria rushing through her. He was alive! Sweet confirmation, a factual statement. Alive! She'd been right, he was out there--not dead, not killed, not gone forever. She smiled, eyes filling with tears, and looked at the ceiling, thrilled. Then the rest of it sank in. Violation of censorship laws?

  The Sergeant flicked her fingers again and a military court order appeared on the wall, replacing her driver's license and those of her parents. "You chose to be deported earlier this year to Miami after your father was arrested, instead of being placed in a foster home, and placed under the custody of your grandmother, Agatha Brown. Citizenship revoked, passport annulled, social security number cancelled." Each of those documents appeared on the wall. Selah blinked, and her happiness abated. Was she in trouble for crossing into the US illegally? She hadn't even considered that angle.

  McKnight wiped her hand across the screen and all the documents disappeared. She looked up at Selah again. "You claim to be human."

  "Yes. I mean, obviously. Look at my eyes. How could I be awake right now if I wasn't?"

  "Hmm," said McKnight, unimpressed. She touched something on her tablet and a video feed appeared on the wall.

  Selah stared at it and recognized it immediately. The interior of the Miami Arena. The image was frozen and showed the packed stadium seats, the great cage in the center of the floor, and Cloud on one knee as he looked up at the approaching fighter whose name Selah couldn't remember. The Sergeant pressed something on her tablet, and the feed came to life. The sound of cheering, an announcer's voice excitedly describing the anticipated last blow. Cloud forced himself to rise to his feet, shaking on unsteady legs.

  Then. There. Selah watched herself leap impossibly high over the heads of the men around the cage's perimeter to tear open the door and step inside. She was moving too fast to follow, but then the other fighter was down, collapsed against the far wall of the cage, and Selah was helping Cloud, holding him as he leaned down and kissed her.

  A knife twisted in her gut and she looked away. Cloud.

  The Sergeant paused the video feed and set the tablet aside. "Later that night, Sawiskera was killed. The next time you show up is when you killed Colonel Caldwell. We don't need to watch that. So..." She laced her fingers on the table and leaned back. "Completely human? I don't think so."

  "I--I can explain. My blood, it's special, it has this unique property that when a vampire drinks it--"

  But McKnight cut her off with a wave of her hand. "These are the facts. You demonstrated vampiric abilities in Miami while your eyes were human. You appeared in Los Angeles two weeks later and murdered Colonel Caldwell. Then, for reasons I don't claim to understand, you turn yourself in, believing we wouldn't put two and two together."

  "No. Listen. Please, just listen to me. There was another vampire here in LA, Arachne. She died last night, I killed her. She killed the Colonel. She looked exactly like me. I came to LA to find a cure for being infected with vampirism in Miami, and last night I found it. I'm cured--I'm totally human now. But there's more, my blood can be used to make a vampire vaccine. Please, you have to believe me."

  McKnight stared at her without expression, and then shook her head. "You realize that there's never been a case of being partially 'infected' with vampirism? And while I'm aware there was a vampire called Arachne in LA, your having her die so conveniently last night makes it a little tricky to verify your story."

  Selah shook her head. "My blood's really rare. I know it sounds strange, but the vampires told me that people like me only occur every few centuries. Sawiskera tried to do an ancient ritual that would swap my humanity for his vampiric powers and ... you don't believe a word I'm saying."

  The Sergeant crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Selah. "Fact one, you have manifested vampiric powers while human. Fact two, you appeared in a video feed, murdering Colonel Caldwell. Fact three, your alibi is ridiculous. Fact four--"

  "That's not a fact! That's your opinion!" Selah almost rose out of her seat, but controlled herself at the last minute. "At least investigate further! You'll see that I couldn't be Arachne, that I've been in Brooklyn up until a month ago, and then in Miami. I couldn't have been in two places at once."

  McKnight stood up. "Investigate further? There's a war going on. Outside these walls, millions are hitting the road with nowhere to go but six feet under. If you think we have either the time or inclination to launch an investigation, you are sadly mistaken. As a citizen of the vampire nation of Miami, you are not even entitled to trial by military court. Instead, you'll be sentenced by my commanding officers." She leaned forward, hands on the table, and stared Selah full in the face. "Did you really think you'd get away with murdering a Colonel?"

  "You don't care about the truth, do you?" said Selah. "Call General Adams. In Miami. He'll back me up."

  "General Adams?" The Sergeant stopped, halfway to the door. She looked back over her shoulder. "The General that signed the Peace Treaty? He retired. Nobody's spoken to him in years."

  "He's alive!" Selah stood and then struggled against the two soldiers as they fought to restrain her. "He's in Miami! I spoke to him! You have to get in touch, he can prove--" Selah doubled over as one of the soldiers rammed the butt of his rifle into her solar plexus. Her entire chest seized up and she gasped, unable to breathe, eyes wide as she stared at the closing door.

  It was too late. The Sergeant had already left.

  Chapter 3

  The night passed slowly. For the first time in what felt like an etern
ity, the setting of the sun did not draw forth Sawiskera's power. Selah didn't feel her eyes change, didn't feel her blood quicken. There was no slow build-up of power, no sense of burgeoning immortality. Just fatigue. Just pain. Just a grim resolution to not give into despair.

  Sitting with her back to the bars, she tried to find a comfortable spot, but soon gave up. The soldiers had cinched her hands tightly behind her back and they were already throbbing, swollen once more.

  "You there?" It felt strange, questioning the dark. Like throwing pebbles into a well.

  "Silence." A new voice, harsh, older. More forbidding. Damn.

  "Could I get some water?" Nothing. Selah waited then tried again. "Hello? I'm thirsty. Could I have some water please?" Still nothing. She licked her dry lips and shifted her weight. "How are things going outside--" And then flinched as the bars over her head clanged shockingly.

  "Shut your pie hole. No talking." Footsteps as they returned to their post.

  Gritting her teeth, Selah forced herself to relax, to lean back against the bars. She took a deep, careful breath within the hood and fought the prickling of tears, unable to wipe at her face.

  She had given up on hoping for fairness a long time ago, but to have fought through all of Miami, to have survived LA, and to have undone Sawiskera's curse only to end up in the hands of an uncaring military was a particularly bitter twist. Worse, alone in the confines of her hood, unable to hide from her thoughts and guilt, she couldn't convince herself that this wasn't a deserved fate; she had killed Colonel Caldwell. The image of her nails raking through his throat flickered before her mind's eye, no matter how she tried to turn away from it. No matter the justifications, the excuses, nor the fact that he had been a heinous drug dealer who was poisoning millions. His blood was on her hands. Shouldn't she pay the price?

  Other faces passed before her mind's eye, faces of those she had killed. That drug dealer who had refused to take her to Louis, who had threatened to leave her and Cloud behind. The numerous Culebras she had brutalized for Armando as she had sought to drive them back. The soldiers who had been escorting her convoy. Padrino Machado as she had tossed him through the window. Countless vampires. Who was she to argue her innocence?

  Conflicted, distraught, exhausted, and terrified, she finally fell asleep. Somehow she drifted off, though her sleep was plagued with nightmares. She awoke often, shifting about to ease the pain in her shoulders and the compact numbness of her ass, listening for a moment to some pre-recorded message blaring out of the speakers before lowering her head once more and closing her eyes.

  Voices woke Selah. She stirred and sat up. Her body was a cacophony of aches and pains, so she leaned forward to stretch out her hips. She was exhausted, her eyes gritty, her mouth tacky and foul. New soldiers had arrived. Or a new soldier. The guard was being changed. She listened carefully, hoping to eavesdrop on an exchange of news, but they kept it professional. Sighing, she sagged back, resigned to wait.

  It was the longest day of her life. Between the pain, the dark, cloying claustrophobia of the hood, and waiting for some word as to her fate, she felt each minute crawl by with slow agony. She tried walking back and forth, tried working her body through a limited series of stretches. Tried working slowly through her favorite movies, or imagining what was happening to each and every person she loved. But her thoughts rebelled. Inevitably, they came swirling back to her predicament, to futile speculation on what was going to happen next, to what she could have said differently to the Sergeant.

  She was brought lunch, and for a glorious twenty minutes was allowed to remove the hood so as to eat. She examined the room around her, studying it hungrily as she spooned the mush into her mouth. Beige-painted bars rose from the cement floor to the ceiling overhead. A literal cage. The floor was painted a dull gray, gleaming wetly in the heavy lights, and the room outside the cage wasn't much larger and was without adornment. A large communications panel was set in the wall by the door, and the two soldiers stood next to it staring impassively at her as she ate, waiting for her to finish before demanding she slide the tray back out through a slot in the bars and then turn so the hood could be replaced.

  More agonized waiting. Finally, the door to the outer room opened and Selah heard the soldier on guard bolt to his feet. She rose to hers unsteadily. Change of the guard?

  Footsteps marched slowly up to the bars. A lighter tread. "Your case has drawn a lot of attention." It was McKnight. She sounded different. Quieter, pensive. "I've been receiving conflicting orders as to your fate. For a while, it looked like you were going to be transported to the USAMRIID in Colorado." You Sam Rid? "A number of highly ranked officers seem to put a lot of weight behind your version of the events." Selah held her breath. McKnight continued, "But that faction has been overruled. You have been found guilty of Colonel Caldwell's murder, as well as a long list of suspected atrocities committed while under the name of Arachne. I wanted to tell you in person that your execution is slated for tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred hours."

  Selah felt the blood drain from her face. She desperately wished she could see McKnight, read her expression. "Wait. You can't do that. If you kill me, you destroy the vaccine."

  "If ordered to, I will. I've ... this has been a very irregular case." She paused and Selah heard a strange hesitancy in her voice. "I'm sorry."

  "No." Selah shivered with anger. "You don't understand. We need to test my blood. Just test it. Please. Ask for more time. Ask to review my evidence. They're asking for me to be transported to Colorado because they know what my blood can do. You can't do this!"

  Silence. "I'm sorry. I have my orders."

  Selah could only shake her head in despair. Footsteps sounded as the Sergeant walked away, and then the door opened and closed and she heard the soldier sit down once more.

  She sat bonelessly. So that was it. Tomorrow morning, General Adams be damned. She felt empty, gutted. Hollowed out by how casually somebody was ordering her death. Was it Plessy? Some insane General? She rolled out onto her side and rested her head against the floor. It was too much. She stared at the black nylon mesh, and then closed her eyes and succumbed to a deep sleep.

  Another change of the guard. Selah awoke, stiff, sore, bitter. The two men spoke briefly and she recognized the voice of the first man she had spoken with, nasal and sounding as weary as she felt. The door opened, there were footsteps, and then the door closed. A familiar creak as he sat down on the cheap metallic chair.

  Selah counted to a hundred and twenty, and then fought for a casual tone as she said, "Good evening."

  "Evening." Another yawn. "And please don't talk."

  She nodded, wriggled around a little more to face him. "Long day?"

  "Are we going to do this again?"

  "No. It's just that you sound pretty tired. You been out on patrol?"

  "Yeah." A beat. She could imagine him rubbing his face. She tried to picture him. A long face, and narrow, she thought. Curly brown hair, big Adam's apple, skin a pasty white from too much time spent under fluorescents. "It's ... yeah. Things are rough outside."

  Selah nodded again and tried to wait. To not push the conversation too hard. Casually, "What's going on out there?"

  His chair squeaked. "Silence, all right?"

  She stared stonily at where she thought he sat. An oppressive anger settled around her shoulders. "You heard about my verdict? I'm going to be executed tomorrow morning. I've got maybe, what, another ten hours left? You can at least talk to me like a human being."

  An awkward silence greeted those words. Finally, "Shit. Well..." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, things outside are FUBAR. Last night was... I don't even know. We lost an entire platoon and five squads." She could hear the fear under his words, the weariness. It cut through her own anger and grief.

  "And ... the people? Are they still running?"

  "Yeah. What a nightmare. I don't know where they think they're going. We've had to call in major reinforcements from 29 Palms out in the desert.
So many people are already dead. Huge riots everywhere. We're almost in as much danger from civilians as we are from the fucking vamps. As if we can do anything overnight. Shit."

  She absorbed this. It was strange to think that while she had been sitting here in silence, the world had been going mad outside. "What are the vampires trying to do? You think they just want chaos?"

  The soldier laughed. "Me? I'm not paid to think. I'm just paid to go out there and kick ass. If it will sit still long enough for my boot to connect. Shit." A drawn out pause, and then in a quieter tone, "I don't know. Last night was pretty insane. The vampires were everywhere. It was like a hundred foxes in the world's biggest hen house. You ever actually see that happen? I did. Back home, in Ohio. Heard this awful racket from the chickens, so my brother and I went back there with our shotguns. Opened the door and we couldn't see for all the feathers in the air. All the hens were going ape shit, and in the middle of it all was this fox. Just killing and tearing heads off. We tried to shoot it, but ended up just killing chickens. Damn thing got away."

  Selah listened intently, and it was the wonder in his voice when he spoke next that chilled her more than anything. "That's what it's like out there. But instead of one fox, it's thousands. And the chickens have nowhere to go."

  They sat in silence. She tried to imagine the crowds outside, the ocean of faces as they trudged along the interstates, fleeing the rotten heart of LA. The hundreds of thousands that had no doubt burst out of the Core. Everybody abandoning their homes, their neighborhoods, and trying to get the hell out. She could almost hear the children crying, sense the terror. She shook her head.

  "We've got serious reinforcements en route. And our Base isn't going anywhere. It'll take more than a handful of vampires to mess with an entire infantry battalion."