Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood

by Bovberg, Jason

  “Ah,” Michael said, and powered on his docked laptop.

  Just as Steven’s devious chunk of software revved up from the encrypted thumb drive, the man himself made his appearance.

  “Jesus God,” he wheezed. “It’s way too early for embezzlement.”

  “Good grief, man,” Michael said, unconsciously looking about the room.

  “No one else here, boss.”

  “It’s not embezzlement, anyway,” Carol said.

  “Right.” Michael nodded.

  “It’s just skimming off the top.”

  “Sure, no court in the world would bat an eye,” the large man said.

  Carol finally looked up from her system. “Shut up and do your stuff, will ya? I have to get back home and get Sophia ready for a soccer game.”

  “Hey, it’s your own fault you decided to go the suburban mom route.” Carol sent him a withering gaze in response. “Mike, you got Intrepid up?”

  “Yes.” Gritting his teeth at the name Steven had given his little program.

  “Okay, let me get the screen sharing working through the encrypted tunnel.”

  Steven sat his massive bulk at the desk of the latest intern. The chair audibly complained. His pudgy fingers danced across the keyboard, and as Michael watched, several windows opened onscreen, one full of nearly Matrix-like code, the other the company accounting UI, and one more showing Michael’s desktop. Michael looked away then, preferring not to understand any of Steven’s methods and thereby further incriminate himself. Michael entertained an elaborate fantasy that, were they ever caught, he could maintain a comparative innocence in this whole sordid endeavor.

  Network security required that they gather during off hours to initiate these little transfers, and they’d watched the building for months on the weekends to determine the best time to come in for “overtime.” Steven demanded that all three of them actually be onsite for the transfers—no way would he take on the entirety of the risk. All three of them working off hours might raise suspicion, but no other employees ever came in at 6 a.m. on Saturdays. Ever. That made it easy for Steven to cover their tracks in the system.

  There was only the janitor cleaning up the lobby, his first of seven jobs on the weekend. No getting around that, but he didn’t care about anything involving the actual businesses upstairs. Michael always greeted him openly, innocently.

  In his mind, Michael had somehow convinced himself that he really was here for some extra work, doing good by the company. What kind of labyrinthine thought processes could possibly lead to that kind of self-delusion? He shook his head.

  “What do you got planned for the weekend, Mike?” Steven said, as if he sensed Michael’s wandering attention.

  “Headed to Denver for the Rockies game,” he said. “Playing the Dodgers. Should be good. We’ll grab some lunch down there, too. Make a day of it.”

  “Rachel tagging along?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Michael hesitated to talk about Rachel with Steven. He felt that the huge man had developed an unhealthy fascination with her ever since their meeting at the company Christmas party, when Rachel was just freshly 19 years old.

  “Just you and Suze?”

  Steven was just the kind of person to use a casual nickname for someone whom he really didn’t know at all—and even waggle his eyebrows a little. Of course, the whole office knew about Michael’s involvement with and eventual marriage to the former intern, but no one knew how long ago it had begun. At least, he thought so—Steven’s eyebrows notwithstanding.

  He changed the subject.

  “How about you? Encasing yourself in that basement again?”

  “Ah, spoken from a place of deep envy.” Steven shifted his bulk in the chair, still typing. “But yeah, on hot days like this, I like to relax with some cold ones down there and take in a triple feature.”

  “Sorry I’m gonna miss that,” Carol said from her desk. “And by ‘cold ones,’ I’m assuming you mean ice cream sandwiches?”

  “All right, Miss High and Mighty, what are you up to this weekend? And no, my cold ones are frozen daiquiris. If you weren’t already married, I’d ask you to join me.”

  Carol barely glanced at him. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

  The coworkers made up a motley crew, that was for sure. The fellowship began spontaneously one afternoon, when all three of them happened upon each other on the patio—on the heels of an offhand remark muttered by eternally pessimistic Carol. Something about a white-collar crime film she’d seen that weekend. And Steven had cocked his jowly head, a thought occurring to him. “Shit, I actually know a way that could work,” he’d said. And then things had started happening.

  Michael left the details to them: the brains of the operation and the IT guy who secured the process. Michael just provided the keystrokes. The cover. The prestige, you might say.

  It was easy. Far too easy. It just added up and up and up.

  The Saturday before, Michael had brought up the notion of stopping. Quitting while they were ahead. Not tempting the fates.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Steven had been flabbergasted.

  “We don’t want to be greedy.”

  “He’s probably right,” Carol had said.

  “Screw you guys, I want to be greedy.”

  Michael had hoped to come away from that conversation with a hard stop date, but instead they’d floated the possibility out to an undetermined horizon. He wanted to bring it up again. He just needed to find the right opportunity.

  Steven was quiet, waiting for something onscreen.

  “Just five more minutes, then you can pull the plug.”

  Michael sighed and pushed himself out of his chair. He went over to the window and looked outside. The memory of that ribbon of crimson light came back to him. It wasn’t there anymore, at least from this vantage point. The town was waking up. A few vehicles were inching up College Avenue, crossing Harmony.

  The large window strobed with red flickers. Michael backed away from it, but he got the distinct impression that something was falling from the sky.

  Falling light?

  “Whoa, whoa, what the hell is that?” Carol was rising from her seat.

  And then the sound reached them. Like thunder but deeper, more resonant, more all-encompassing. The building vibrated sharply for a moment.

  Light was flowing down, perceptibly, in waves, in columns. It was everywhere, like a drifting rain made of illumination.

  “What is it?” Steven asked from his chair, merely curious.

  Their computer desktops zagged with digital artifacts, and all three working hard drives seemed to go into overdrive simultaneously.

  “The fuck?!” Steven said, his pudgy hands flying up, palms out.

  “I mean, holy shit, what the hell is it?!” Carol cried. “What is th—?”

  Michael, watching this strange atmospheric phenomenon with a kind of muffled dread, heard Carol’s words slice away. He only half-registered the sound of her body slumping to the floor, because he was focused on the vehicles out on College that had suddenly veered in their paths, drifting to the sides of the road, some gently, others somewhat violently. He watched these things with a stunned detachment. He felt his eyes go closed, expecting something—the end, perhaps? Was his body going limp?

  No, it wasn’t.

  He finally turned to face his coworkers. Carol was on the ground, and Steven was slumped backward in the chair, his massive head flung back, mouth wide open. And then Michael was in motion. Swallowing, he rushed to Carol, knelt, felt for a pulse, listened for respiration.

  Nothing.

  “Carol! Carol! Wake up! Steven!”

  The memory begins to fracture, his screams breaking into aural shards—

  —racing to Steven, shaking his large body in his chair—

  —attempting chest compression on Carol, supine on the floor—

  —bending toward mouth-to-mouth—

  —something abo
ut Carol’s mouth … what was it about her mouth?

  —the memory of recoiling—

  —glimpses outside the red-rimmed windows again—

  —the light continuing to fall—

  Everything abruptly motionless, like a jittery pause of a recorded picture. Some kind of tremor at the edge of everything. Or was that just his own delayed reaction, finally spurting him forward into who knew what direction.

  —running—

  —shouting—

  That’s where the memory really breaks up.

  Chapter 12

  Staring at the money in the safe, in the dusty, claustrophobic silence of his bedroom closet, he wonders about Steven’s and Carol’s fates. Steven, who had ribbed Michael constantly about his too-conservative plans for his share of the cash, who had teased him about the way Michael always said, “I’m tucking it away, man, just tucking it away for the future.” Carol had smirked at him too, in her quiet way.

  Are they gone, along with nearly everyone else?

  Michael had never uttered a word about his financial misadventures to his wife, let alone Rachel. The very idea had always seemed ridiculous; he would not be deemed a criminal. His family knew nothing, and yet they were the primary benefactors of all his activities.

  Those dreams are even more fanciful now, aren’t they?

  Michael takes a long last look at the cash. His eyes fall on the holstered .38 Colt that his dad handed down to him before he died. It’s positioned in there next to all the cash, and even in the confines of the safe, it seems to have gathered dust. He remembers when he removed it from its box, higher up in the closet, last year, as if placing it with the money added any real security … as if he anticipated that some kind of Bonnie and Clyde shootout would someday mark the end of this financial misadventure. A stupid, dangerous idea.

  He pulls out the Colt now, along with the single box of cartridges, handling it all delicately. After some thought, he unholsters the weapon. All while staring at the useless piles of cash.

  All that money is just paper now.

  He stands up, securing the .38 in his waistband.

  Gazing upon Susanna’s wrapped corpse, he can’t help but feel that her death was his fault. He wasn’t here when it happened. Could he have saved her, given the chance? He’s still not sure what to make of the scene. All evidence points to the notion that she might have survived the initial event but died in the aftermath. Had he not been stealing from his company, for whatever insane purpose, might he have saved her?

  “Oh god, Suze, I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  He’s rooted to the center of the room, just looking at her.

  After a moment, he curses loudly, knowing the entire world is deaf to him.

  He has lost a second wife.

  Photographs of both wives adorn their dresser. Susanna never really minded them there, and Rachel insisted they remain. He walks over now and studies them. Alive in memory.

  The photos of Cassie look old. Antique, almost. Before the cancer came.

  She discovered the lump in their shower one morning—the shower just beyond the bed on the other side of the room. The shower that he has since shared Susanna.

  Cassie asked him to feel her lump, watching his reaction with a mixture of fear and laughing disbelief. Swallowing heavily, he came upon the swelling instantly, and it felt as if a dark abyss had opened beneath their bare feet.

  But that’s the past. So long ago now.

  The truth is, they weathered the oncological storms of chemotherapy for so long that it became their new normal, and his first wife was never the same. She was never again the woman he had married out of college, seemingly before they’d even flung off their caps and gowns. He hardly remembers that Cassie now. That Cassie is far more present in these fading photographs than in the decaying human being that bore her name in those final years.

  Were he forced to admit his deepest truths, he would have to say that his first wife’s physical deterioration at the hands of her disease disgusted and embarrassed him. He bristled under the outpourings of sympathy that he received at work and from distant family. He couldn’t take it.

  He needed to project a façade of health, not only for his own well-being but also for work, where appearances meant quite a lot.

  Susanna was young and vital, and she never got sentimental. Could he be entirely blamed for responding to her flirtations? He acknowledges that, yes, he could be blamed for that. He had a duty as a husband to remain at Cassie’s side—in good times and bad—and he was adamant with himself and even with Susanna that he abide by that contract. And he did. He held Cassie’s hand through the bitter, soul-rending end, even as he watched her blood pressure plummet and her pulse plunge. And he did the best he possibly could for Rachel, standing by her side for every moment of her mourning. No one could say otherwise.

  But just as he did the morning the world ended, he had been fucking Susanna for a year before his wife’s death.

  He flinches at the blunt way the memory slams through his head.

  He pockets the extra ammo, then takes long minutes to consider how he will carry Susanna’s body and transport her to the hospital, where he can properly—at least, as close to properly as he can manage now—deal with her remains. He’ll do his best, anyway. Out of habit, Michael checks his wristwatch. It is 7:49 a.m. That doesn’t tell him much, except that he’s already a bit later than he promised Kevin.

  He’ll understand.

  Just as he’s beginning to tuck Susanna’s arms more tightly at her sides and get the fabric wrapped more securely around her, the sky lets loose with another roar. It goes on and on, seemingly ripping at the fabric of reality. He settles Susanna’s left shoulder gently to the bed, covers his ears with his hands, and races through the house to the front door. He steps out onto the porch, then down to his lawn.

  Above him, the sky is throbbing. He tries to discern other phenomena in the smoky red haze, searching the horizon, past the smoke, past the sunlight. There’s a distinctive, rhythmic pulse. As in the office that morning, something is cascading downward, but something else is flowing up. The former sight is reminiscent of distant thunderheads shedding rain, gushing clouds spewing across the plains. The latter is not unlike rays of sunlight through clouds, except for the color and the steady upward movement. This is the more subtle of the phenomena; he has to strain his smoke-stung eyes to see it.

  It is the downward-flowing pulse that is making the sound.

  Here in the outdoors, it is a gargantuan, earth-shattering noise.

  It fills Michael with horror.

  He feels himself stumbling backward, back up to his raised porch, slamming against the door. He shuts his eyes and feels as if he is drowning in red noise.

  It seems to last for minutes, and by the time it ends, more tears are streaming down Michael’s face. Shouting his relief, he falls to his butt and crumples onto his side.

  “Jesus!” he screams. “Jesus Christ!”

  When he finally reopens his eyes, the street is as motionless and hazy, just as when he arrived, and the morning heat is already making the scene swelter. As ever, a fine miasma of ash is drifting over everything. His cheek is cool on the weathered boards of the shaded porch. He takes a few moments to catch his breath.

  And that’s when he sees it.

  The movement startles him—just to the east. It is the body of a young man, twisted back on itself like a crab but moving almost confidently on its back-turned hands and feet. Michael raises himself slowly, not wanting to attract its attention. He maneuvers himself to his knees as the thing approaches, its limbs angled, its upside-down head darting left and right.

  Michael feels his limbs go cold.

  Far different from the handcuffed man in the hospital, this is a thing fully realized. In the wild. Michael remains mystified about its purpose, but here it is, in front of him, in this reality, in his own sights. Whatever it is doing, it is doing it with focus and clarity. And it is utterly alien, despite
its human flesh.

  It’s closer now, and Michael judges that it’s the body of an early teen, perhaps a middle-schooler from this neighborhood. The boy was wearing white workout shorts and a blue Nike tee when he was—what?—taken over? The shirt is torn at the shoulders, allowing for freer movement of the bent-back limbs. Even from this distance, Michael can see the evidence of sap at the mouth, and bloody teeth, and now he can hear the thing coughing erratically, hacking out splinters.

  This is behavior he hasn’t seen yet—a body once attached to a tree and now disengaged from it, ostensibly for a new purpose.

  “What are you up to?” he breathes, staying still.

  According to Rachel and the others, two days ago the survivors ventured from the hospital in search of answers, only then discovering the full extent of these things’ purpose, one that was surprisingly non-threatening to the remaining humans.

  So he was safe.

  Right?

  Michael feels the first real twitch of uncertainty.

  He watches the middle-schooler, suddenly feeling very exposed on his porch.

  It’s searching. It’s looking for something.

  A tree? Is it looking for a particular kind of—

  Three houses away, and it’s still wandering in Michael’s direction. He shuffles backward, positioning himself low and concealed behind a post, keeping a wary eye. He withdraws the pistol from his pocket, and its solid grip reassures him, although he wishes he had the shotgun in his fist.

  What is that goddamn thing looking for?

  The boy-thing pauses in its nightmarish, loping crabwalk and stares to its right. Michael follows its weird gaze but sees nothing but a silent, defeated neighborhood. The houses already seem abandoned. The scene does not merely resemble a quiet morning, everybody still peaceful in their beds, but rather a glimpse of the end, the homes’ occupants yanked violently from within. The neighborhood appears bruised, ashen and gray. Sickly.

  The boy-thing cocks its head, its mouth stretched open crookedly, like an afterthought. The eyes move in their sockets, but even from this distance, Michael can sense the deadness there. And now a sound emerges from the thing’s throat—a gaspy, broken call.