Vampire Redemption

by Phil Tucker

  Five minutes later, a Humvee came roaring up. McKnight parked it savagely next to Selah and gestured for her to get in. Selah did so, yanking open the door and hoisting herself up onto the stiff seat. McKnight tossed her a thick leather jacket with a sheepskin collar and she pulled it on. It was delicious and thick, with a faint tang of cigar smoke mixed in with the rich smell of leather. Well-worn, soft, but immediately warming. She zipped it up and shoved her hands into its pockets.

  "You good? I've received the clearance I need. It's a straight shot from here to the Rockies." McKnight waved her hand and the windscreen came to life, lighting up with a glowing green contour map.

  Selah sat forward and studied the map. The airstrip was central across the glass, long and oblique, and on it a number of neon red and yellow icons were moving, triangles and squares, small series of code numbers listed beneath each.

  "How did you do that?" Selah stared at McKnight's hands. She wasn't wearing tethered FingerTips.

  "Military hardware." McKnight looked at the windshield. "Navigator. Current location to Mountain Sorrel Pass, Colorado." The image on the screen zoomed out smoothly, and a thick red line appeared arching up from California, clipping the upper left corner of Arizona and passing diagonally through Utah into Colorado, where it stabbed into the Rockies and curled at the very end into a tight spiral. 877 miles, flashed the screen,Estimated Drive Time: 15 hours, 10 minutes. McKnight grunted. It was just past eleven at night. She slid into first gear and they rumbled forward.

  Selah stared out the window. She wanted to call Mama B. Wanted to let her know what was going on, hear her voice, see her face. She missed her father, missed her friends. After her experiences with Sawiskera's blood, she had thought herself beyond fear, beyond doubt, thought that she would never feel lonely again. But the threat of the Blood Thralls proved her wrong. The darkness above and outside the base was vast and cold, and she felt small and insignificant before it. They needed her vaccine, now more than ever. That was probably why they had pulled her free, she thought. Somebody had finally realized just how much danger they faced and decided to not throw away the chance at salvation that her blood promised.

  A great hangar bay slid past on her right, and she stared at a platoon of men as they suited up, pulling on armor, pouches, and helmets, locking and loading their guns. Beyond them, more men were studying great screens, pointing out at maps and lines of icons and glowing symbols. Then it was gone and she was staring at the great desert beyond, a vast expanse of unknowable darkness. McKnight drove down the length of the airstrip, and then turned off and onto a two lane road that left all the activity behind. Car after Humvee after covered truck rumbled past, heading toward the strip. They were the only ones driving away.

  Selah felt warmth finally begin to sink into her, building up like a delicate ecosystem under the shell of the jacket. She buried her chin into the sheep fur of the collar, and watched the brief expanse of road before them as it rumbled continuously into sight, a patch brought into bright relief by the powerful headlights. Fifteen hours. A glance at McKnight showed that the Sergeant was in no mood to talk. She sat erect, lower lip stuck out, nostrils flared as she stared balefully at the road. Selah closed her eyes. She spent a few minutes simply feeling the Humvee jostle and vibrate beneath her, and then slipped away into sleep, her thoughts and concerns and panic swallowed up by the vast ocean of fatigue that arose to claim her.

  Selah awoke as the Humvee ground to a stop. Opening her eyes, she blinked blearily at the gas station outside the window. McKnight opened her door and climbed out and Selah struggled to sit up. Her mouth tasted awful and her eyes were almost gummed shut. Yawning hugely, she blinked away tears and peered around. It was early morning. Dry desert extended away toward a rim of scrubby low hills to one side, and toward the horizon on the other, where it was met by a small wall of purple mountains. She pushed the door open and slid out of her seat, down to the ground. The asphalt crunched underfoot, gritty and particulate, and she groaned as she stretched, her body a mass of aches and pains.

  Slowly working her head around, she stepped away from the Humvee and walked to the edge of the station, to where the asphalt died and became desert. There, she stared at the distant rising sun. It was perhaps an inch over the horizon in a peerless sky devoid of cloud. The air was chilly, but the rays of the sun warmed her face, even this early in the day. The sunrise. She thought of Sawiskera, the king of vampires, trapped by the night and endlessly watching sunrises on TV. How for one long night back in LA she had accepted--or thought she had--that she would never see exactly this sight again, doomed to be a vampire forever. Which took her mind to Theo, the vampire who had sacrificed his heart so that she might stand here in the light of day. She shivered. Where was he now? Somewhere back in LA. A dark Chapter in her past.

  Selah placed her hands on her hips and leaned back, hearing a number of sullen joints crack in protest and let out a groan of pain and pleasure. Swinging her arms back and forth, trying to put her thoughts behind her, she walked back to McKnight.

  "Morning," said Selah. The other woman was leaning against the Humvee's flank, arms crossed, chin lowered, eyes closed. The gas nozzle was stuck in the tank, pumping away. "You been driving all night?"

  The Sergeant opened one eye. Her face was drawn with fatigue, but her gaze was sharp. "You think we got here on autopilot?"

  "Military hardware?" Selah tried for a smile, but it withered before McKnight's flat expression. "You want me to drive?"

  "No."

  Selah nodded. She stared at the little gas station mini-mart. She didn't even know where her wallet was. When had she used it last? She had no idea.

  "Heads up." Selah looked over just in time to catch a wallet by reflex. "Go buy me some coffee and some PowerBars. Keep mine black, no sugar. Get yourself something. We've got another nine hours to go, so stock up."

  "Oh, sure." Selah nodded. "Thanks."

  McKnight examined her and then looked away.

  Selah walked past the silent pumps and through the dust-smeared glass door. A bell jangled overhead. It was a small building, just two aisles of goods lined up parallel to the front window, and the counter to the left. A heavyset man with a prodigious belly and a wild ruff of hair around his ears was standing with his arms crossed, staring at a small flatscreen set high up where the wall met the ceiling. The news was on. She drifted up and watched.

  Two news anchors were talking. An Asian lady looking stiff and formal in a red suit and a tanned, middle-aged man with distinguished iron-gray hair. In the upper right of the screen was an inserted video feed flashing different scenes: a candlelight vigil being held by solemn people; an endless line of army vehicles driving down a highway; President Lynnfield speaking behind a podium, his face stern and grave.

  ...more on that shortly. Next up, we have a panel of guests ready to speak on the outbreak of war, and what this means for our government, our relations with the vampires of Miami, and what expectations are for the coming days. Stay with us.

  "Shit," said the man. His voice was gravelly and low. He shook his head. "It's a judgment on us. A judgment. We should just a drop an A-Bomb on all of LA and wipe 'em out."

  Selah stared at him. "And kill millions of people?"

  He rounded on her. "When a limb goes rotten, you cut it off before it infects the rest of the body. I read that once. Gan-grene. Rot. All those people there. Rotten and degenerate. Now look what they spawned. What's come of their sin. We need to cauterize the wound. Cut off the limb." He made a slicing motion across his neck from right to left, widening his eyes horribly and drawing his mouth into a slit as he did so.

  "All right," said Selah, stepping back. She turned and walked down the aisle and then stopped once the man was out of sight. What would he say if he knew the things she had done? Her sins, her... murders? She took a deep breath, fought for balance. Hands shaking, she took up a bar of chocolate, and then set it back. A memory came to her. Of how she had faced down the vampire Arachne
and her followers, and defeated them with ease. She tried to remember that confidence, that surety. It was like trying to grasp at a dream. She took a deep breath and pressed the base of her palms against her eyes. Get a grip, she thought. He's just a weirdo.Before she could help herself, another voice whispered, And you're just a girl. She dropped her hands and stared at packets of chips, seeing right through their garish colors. Just a girl.

  Her heart began thudding. What was she doing hiding at the back of a mini-mart behind the chips? A flash of anger suffused her. She might not have Sawiskera's power any longer, but she was still the person who had lived through those moments. She had made those decisions, suffered pain and loss. She reached up and touched her shaved scalp. The soft fuzz that lay over her naked and angular skull. She thought of the night she had shaved her hair off, how her hair had been matted and clotted with blood. How liberating it had felt, how right. Recalled the way Theo had looked at her, that very last time while he had still been himself. That love, undying, unconquerable. She took a deep breath. Maybe she was just a girl now. But she was still so much more than she had ever been.

  She filled two cups of coffee, grabbed some PowerBars, a bag of granola, and a bar of dark chocolate and walked back up to the counter. She set the items down. The man was staring back up at the screen, where an army officer was being interviewed.

  "Hey," she said. He looked at her. "Ring me up."

  He looked back up at the screen. "Hold on."

  Selah stared at him. "Now."

  Something in her voice caught his attention. He glanced over at her irritably, and then paused. She continued to stare at him, chin raised. He held her eyes, and then blinked rapidly, looked away, and began quickly scanning her items. She bit her lower lip, feeling at once inordinately pleased with herself and amused at how small the victory was. No matter. She opened McKnight's wallet and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. While the man was making change, she studied the Sergeant's military ID. She wore a red beret and looked out sternly, face composed, dress uniform sharp and crisp. REBECCA MCKNIGHT. Affiliation: Uniformed Services. Agency/Department: Army. Expires: 2029JUL06. Pay grade: E8. Rank: 1SGT. A barcode, a holographic tab. No personal data.

  "Here you go." The man handed her the change. She put the bills back in, grabbed the bag, and stepped away from the counter. She flipped over to McKnight's driver's license and froze. It was a California license. She checked the address: 18 Wysteria Drive, Los Angeles. DOB: 04-19-1999. McKnight was smiling at the camera, the expression guarded but happy, her blond hair loose, a thick wave that fell past her shoulders.

  Selah looked up and stared out the glass door. McKnight was replacing the nozzle. She was from LA. She must have been twenty when the first War started. The things she must have seen. Now this. Her Base destroyed, her men killed, and here she was in the desert, shepherding a colonel-killing teenager to a distant mountain base instead of looking for her family, her friends. Selah took a deep breath and walked out to McKnight.

  "Here you go," she said, extending one of the cups of coffee.

  McKnight turned and took the cup and her wallet back. "Thanks." She took a sip and grimaced. "Shit. That's bad coffee." She took another sip, and then took a PowerBar and moved to lean against the front of the Humvee. Selah joined her, sipping on her own coffee. It was bitter and harsh, and she grimaced as well.

  McKnight opened a bar and bit a third of it right off. She crossed one ankle over the other and simply chewed, staring at the rising sun. Selah did the same, examining McKnight out of the corner of her eye.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  McKnight slowed her chewing, grunted noncommittally, and then resumed.

  "My dad. You said he'd been arrested for breaking the censorship laws." Selah tried to keep her voice calm. "Do you know where he is?"

  McKnight washed down her mouthful with a sip of coffee and then shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's classified information."

  Selah bit her lower lip and restrained the urge to raise her voice. "I haven't known if he's been alive or dead for months. He just disappeared. Can't you tell me anything?"

  Something about her voice must have reached McKnight, who was tonguing her lower jaw, dislodging a piece of PowerBar. She frowned and looked away at the horizon. "I didn't learn much. The report was cursory. He's alive though. He'll be held until whatever it was he was going to talk about becomes declassified." McKnight gave her a look that was almost apologetic. "That might take awhile."

  "Oh," said Selah. She felt deflated. "I see." She thought for a beat. "Can I use your Omni?"

  McKnight snorted and turned back to studying the horizon. Selah sipped her coffee and allowed her thoughts to tumble through her mind. He'd be held until the secrets he had been about to uncover were declassified. The connection between Blood Dust, the military, and the government. The mysterious Hybrid Project that nobody seemed to know anything about. She almost asked McKnight, but then stopped. As if the Sergeant would casually disclose something so classified to her. If she could just learn more, somehow, and publicize it, her father might go free. Not at once, sure, but in time. Some sort of process could be put in place.

  In the end, she let her thoughts go. Instead, she simply relaxed and enjoyed the bleak beauty of the view. Silence but for the occasional car rushing down the road. The desert vast and beautiful, the rising sun painting it a shifting palette of variegated hues. The stunted bushes cast long and twisted shadows. The world felt fresh, clean, cool, and scrubbed.

  "Come on." McKnight pushed off the Humvee, having somehow already finished her coffee despite how scalding hot it was. "Let's go." She dumped the empty wrappers on the ground and hauled herself up and behind the wheel.

  Selah turned and got in as well. When she looked out the window, she saw that the gas station owner was watching them. She met his gaze and he looked away.

  Chapter 6

  The military research base was tucked away in a pocket canyon high in the Rocky Mountains. They drove along a winding and freshly asphalted two-lane road, driving uphill and through dense phalanxes of evergreen trees which parted on occasion to give them a view of the valley below. Selah had slept through most of the morning, and now she pulled McKnight's jacket tight about herself, burying her chin in the soft wool that lay thick around the collar. McKnight drove with rugged determination, her jaw set, lips pursed, eyes locked on the road and hands at ten and two o'clock. She had been driving for almost ten hours straight, and beyond looking paler and with some purple under her eyes, she seemed to be none the worse for wear.

  The road rose sharply over a final incline and then curved around a flinty shoulder to penetrate into the miniature canyon, leaving the broad valley behind. The slopes here were steep and furred thickly with trees. Cold air razored in through McKnight's open window. The Humvee's display showed that they were but minutes from their destination, and Selah watched the luminous lines on the windshield as each curve they took corresponded to a turn on the map.

  "Why is this base way the hell out here?" she asked. Proximity was making her nervous. "Must take them hours to get stuff delivered, or go home after work."

  "Isolation is its own form of security," said McKnight, her voice dry, and then suppressed a sudden yawn that seemed to take her by surprise. "And most of the people live on base. Excuse me." She covered her mouth and blinked away tears.

  "Oh," said Selah. "And... what do they research here that's so dangerous?"

  "Before the war it was communicable diseases. Ebola, SARS, the ultra-flu. I think they've been focused on other stuff since then." Another yawn ambushed the Sergeant. "God damn," she said, straightening up in her seat, and then yawned a third time.

  Selah fought down a sympathy yawn, and then stared intently at a square white sign that rolled past on their left that read: USAMRIID.

  "U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases," said McKnight before Selah could ask. "You Sam Rid for short. We've arrived." They drove around the las
t curve, and then slowed at the sight of the security checkpoint. It was light in comparison to what Selah had seen at the LA Base, a standard six foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire and a black and yellow crash barrier in front of a closed gate, a squad of four soldiers standing before it with machine guns slung over their shoulders.

  McKnight slowed down, threaded the Humvee through two sets of cement blocks on the road that forced her to approach in an S-curve, and then stopped before the gate. Another couple of soldiers emerged from the security booth and one of them stepped up to her window.

  The man was young, with skin so pale that Selah could trace the veins beneath his jaw and under his eyes.

  "First Sergeant," he said, straightening and saluting her crisply. McKnight returned the salute and he relaxed and unclipped an Omni from his belt. "Quiet drive?"

  "Quiet enough," said McKnight, handing over her ID. He took it, slid it through a slot in his Omni, and then scrolled quickly through whatever came up. He nodded and peered in at Selah. "This your cargo?"

  "Yep."

  The soldier rounded the Humvee. Selah lowered her window. His eyes were surprisingly beautiful, gray irises flecked with darker spots, his eyelashes long. They seemed out of place in his plain, hard face.

  "Ma'am," he said, holding up the Omni.

  Selah obliged by leaning forward and opening her eyes wide for the retinal scan. There was a slight flash, and then he lowered it and checked the screen. Frowned as he flicked the screen with his finger, scrolling down through her record. She wandered idly what it said. What conjectures, what truths, what lies? He frowned, shot her a quick appraising look, and then nodded and stepped back.

  The gate slid back and the crash barrier rose. The soldiers moved aside and the Humvee rolled gently forward, rocking over the speed bumps. The narrow canyon opened up into a natural bowl, and McKnight drove past a series of two-story buildings that were long and low, gray amalgams of bunkers and cheap residential units. It was a small base, a tenth the size of the one in LA. They drove past housing units, then a couple of three-story office buildings, past a number of generic and unremarkable beige hangars by a small concrete expanse on which a half dozen helicopters sat, rotor blades sagging, and then up to a large four-story edifice at the center of it all.