by Lee Isserow
Ben said nothing, he stared at her with calm eyes, a sympathetic smile on his lips. No words would help, and he was getting the impression that she needed to tell her story, feel the catharsis from hearing the words said out loud.
“When I found out I was pregnant, when I told my boyfriend at the time, he freaked out, walked out the door, never saw him again. I couldn't tell my parents, knew they would be so disappointed. Every night I dreamed of them, looking down on me, appalled, angry, as if I had ignored everything they ever told me, done it on purpose. My sister was the only person I could bring myself to tell. She moved in with me, stood with me through everything... But after Luke was born, so healthy and so happy, I took advantage of her kindness. I was still young, still an idiot, kept going out to clubs, met a guy who was into the party scene, every night there was a different thing to go to, so much drinking, so many drugs.”
She stifled a laugh, rolled her eyes at the thought of her former self. A girl she appeared to despise to some degree. But the humour faded almost instantly as she glanced into middle distance, picturing all too clearly what came next. “And then one night, or early morning, we were driving back from a club. We were drunk, stoned, music blaring, magic still in our veins, and we didn't see him. A drunk, stumbling into the road. His body made this ungodly crack as his legs were taken by the car's grill, his face exploding in a mess of blood on the wind shield. He stared at me, I'll never forget those eyes. Then the car screeched to a stop. The body whipped away, rolling across the road, settling in a heap.”
The tears were now flowing freely down her cheeks. She wiped them with a sleeve and slunk her head down between her shoulders, staring at the wooden deck. She traced her fingers along the grain, changing directions at knots, tracing out twists and turns, following one path then another. It looked to Ben as though she was wishing her story to take a different trajectory, that she might be transposed to some tangent timeline which might hold some semblance of salvation.
“He got the max for it, a pathetic fourteen years for drunk driving and manslaughter... I got two because he kept on driving and I was in the car with him... When I got out, Luke was walking, he was talking. He didn't recognise me, and was calling my sister 'mum'... I couldn't face it, telling him the truth, turning his world upside down, he deserved so much better than that... so much better than me... and then I had to be an idiot... go an make her get him vaccinated, and screwed up his life anyways..”
She took her fingers from the decking and shrank in on herself. The story was told, the story she thought she'd never tell again, of foolish choices that led her down this path, that led her son to a life on the run rather than the blissfully innocent life a child his age should live. Ben put his arm around her, took her hand in his.
“You're here for him now,” he said. “That's all that matters.”
“Here for him in a boat!” she spat. “With a hostage! On the run from a government! With... blood monsters for pets!” The last of her list made her snort with laughter, and Ben found himself laughing to. Their situation was ridiculous, and it was only now that he truly appreciated how much. After all, only a few months previous he had been a primary school teacher, and the closest he had got to any kind of pressure or stress was marking the most basic of maths and English tests.
The laughter subsided, the smile slinking off her face. Ben turned from her to Luke, who was still hugging the exhausted bloods. There was a tingle under his skull, ripples of pressure. A knowing. It was a feeling he had had before, but he couldn't place it.
“He knows,” he said.
She turned to him, as he continued to watch Luke.
“Like he says, 'blood knows blood'.”
“He doesn't mean it like that,” she said. “He's talking about the blood, not familial blood...” She shook her head, rolling her eyes at him as she got to her feet and walked below deck, past Luke, hands over her face, hiding her red eyes from him as she turned into her cabin.
Ben watched her disappear into the bowels of the ship, and wondered if he had overstepped. She had only just started to trust him enough to tell that story, and there he was, offering some pearl of BS wisdom that sounded like it came out of a damn fortune cookie. It wasn't his business. Her personal life and her relationship with her son was nothing to do with him. And yet, after all they had been through, he was starting to want to be a part of it.
8
The captain slowed the vessel as he took it into the mouth of the Elbe. The water began to take on a darker shade, licking up against slim rocky beaches on either side of them as they passed a lighthouse at Brunsbüttel, before the port proper. It was a hub of activity with massive nautical behemoths being loaded up with brightly coloured, slightly rusting shipping containers. They continued down, the width of the river shrinking the deeper they went. Passing between two slim islands, that gave way to more islands as the port of Hamburg lay up ahead.
“Slow down,” Ben instructed.
The captain did as he was told, moving the boat closer to the bank. They wouldn't be coming in to the port of Hamburg, he was certain of that. But where they were to moor was yet to be decided.
They passed a series of old, rusting cranes that sat, seemingly abandoned. Beyond them, there was a ladder up from the water that led up to a set of white rails. Behind them, there was a street that followed the path of the river, with alleys and roads between the buildings, leading deeper into Hamburg.
“There.” Ben pointed to the ladder riveted to the wall, It was out of sight of the port, and under the shadow of the cranes, you'd have to pass right by the boat to spot it.
“We can't moor there,” stuttered the captain. “Someone will see us – I don't have my passport...”
“You'll do as you're told.” Ben said, coldly. His eyes were thin slits, brow furrowed, lips curling into an angry grimace. He was playing the part of a vicious kidnapper, hoping that his tone would remind the captain of all that he had witnessed whilst he learned to control the blood. Sure, the old man might have seen him at ease as they sailed across the North Sea, but now that they were arriving, he wanted him to know he was deadly serious.
The captain bowed his head, muttered to himself, and pulled the yacht up to the ladder. Ben grabbed a rope from the nose of the ship, and tied it around the lowest set of rungs. He smiled as he twisted and turned the rope. Right over left, then left over right, a reef knot, one of the few things of use he learned in boy scouts.
Luke and Kat came round to the front of the boat, and made their way up the ladder. “We'll be back,” Ben said, glancing over his shoulder to the captain. “We're going to leave one of our friends with you, to make sure you stick around...” Four of the free bloods slunk their way up the ladder, whilst the fifth stayed on board, gargling a growl at the old man.
“We need to get them something to eat...” Kat said, surveying at the exhausted 'goblins. The climb, let alone the trip, had taken it out of them. Their movements were sluggish, skin a pale pallor and looking all too thin, almost watery, as if they might collapse into a puddle at any moment, and not have the strength to pull themselves back together. The free blood they left on the boat wasn't doing much better, but it was putting on a good show for the captain.
“Get to the sewers,” Ben told them, out loud as much as in his head. The bloods looks up at him, checking he was sure he wanted to continue unescorted.
He nodded, and they slid through a grate. Ben found himself worrying about them. They were not just pets, they were friends, they had proven themselves as much. He hoped that beneath the city streets they would find sustenance, much as they had in London. Gazing back to the water, Ben looked out across the river. Great big wind turbines turned on the bank opposite, cranes moved lethargically, factories belched white smoke into the air that disappeared into the clouds. It dawned on him, that this was a foreign city, with a foreign language, foreign money (that they had none of) and foreign roads. He was out of his depth. Way out of his depth. But they had
no other options, they had to keep moving forward, because going back meant certain torture and probably death.
Ben bit through his tongue, the blood forking out, snaking through the air, forming a DNA helix that whipped towards the remaining free blood on the boat. He transferred a half pint of his own, oxygenated blood into the creature. Its skin became thicker, colour deeper, and it formed a wide grinning mouth to show its appreciation.
“Thank you,” Ben said, under his breath, before turning and joining the others.
“Which way?” Kat asked.
“First things first, let's get you guys some food...”
Shoplifting, Ben discovered, was much easier when extraneous limbs can do most of the work. He bit through his tongue and hid round the corner from a cafe, thin silks of blood slipping under the door and into the kitchen, wrapping themselves around breads, cheeses, meats, and whipping them out and into his hands as soon as the staff had their backs turned.
The three of them ate on a bench just by the boat, throwing some bread and cheese down to the captain, so he would retain some strength for the journey home. Whenever that might be.
When they had their fill, they ventured north and east through the Altona-Altstadt, crossing cobbled streets, hoping to find some kind of tourist information station somewhere en route. When Ben last heard from his father, it had been from a university in the city, a medical school of some kind, and he hoped that as soon as he came across the name, it would jump out at him.
They came to a main road and followed it along. Whilst in London, a road that wide would be something the would have avoided, but none of them saw much in the way of CCTV cameras. It was a breath of fresh air, coming out of the surveillance state of Britain. For so many years the country had been getting increasingly intent on spying on its citizens, whether that be with cameras or online, but Hamburg, at least aesthetically, seemed to have none of that Big Brother paraphernalia.
Coming through to the St Pauli, they saw a sign for Beatles-Platz. That had to be a tourist attraction, Ben was certain of it. He could recall having read or heard about The Beatles' visit to Hamburg. As they walked around the plaza, a circular area that was paved black, like a giant vinyl record, they finally found a dank little hotel, and walked into the lobby.
The carpet underfoot was sticky, making smacking sounds with every step as they walked along it, worn thin and barely holding itself together. There was a path of white cross-hatch of its bones that led up to the reception desk, the path most trodden on over its years of service. Kat found a display of tourist leaflets and flyers for attractions, and went through them all until she found a map. It wasn't particularly detailed, but had street names and points of interest. And there it was, just under six kilometres from their current location, through Karolinenviertel and Eimsbuttel, The University of Hamburg-Eppendorf.
The walk was long, over an hour, but there was something about the journey that felt relaxing. The architecture of Hamburg, perhaps, or the fact that they weren't presently being hunted down by violent government thugs. Either way, they arrived at the university with a spring in their step. Their goal, the truth, feeling legitimately within reach.
Walking in to the main entrance, they asked for directions to the medical centre, and were shown through to an adjacent building. There were signs for every possible derivation of medical practice, albeit in a foreign tongue. Ben stared at the signs, he wanted to follow the one for neurology, prove Steve wrong. But in his heart, for whatever reason, he knew that his father lied, that he had worked on blood all this time. As they followed the directions for the haematology lab, they stopped en route. A door grabbed their attention. 'Michael Graham' painted on the frosted glass.
Ben glanced to Kat and Luke, forced a smile, took a deep breath as he turned back to the door, and knocked.
There was no response. He knocked again, then tried the handle. It came away in his hand, and the door swung open, the strike plate in the door frame a mess of warped metal and splintered wood. The room itself was dark, curtains drawn, books and papers strewn across the floor, desk drawers open, contents ransacked. The Squad had beaten them there.
A chill came to each of them in turn. There was no way to know whether the place had been broken into hours, days, weeks or months previous. Nobody the university had noticed, that was for sure. The door had remained closed since the incursion, the wanton destruction hidden in plain sight beyond its threshold. The Squad had been here, perhaps recently. Suddenly, Hamburg didn't seem as safe as it had only minutes earlier.
Ben stepped over the papers and files that littered the floor, reaching down, picking up handfuls, each of them awash with words, jargon, diagrams, images of cells and genomes. None of them made a damn bit of sense, and none of them were any indication of where his father might be – assuming the Blood Squad hadn't already captured him.
“What do we do now?” Kat asked, shielding Luke by the door as Ben tore through the detritus in search of something – anything – that could help.
Ben threw the papers to the floor, and kicked at the desk. “We give the hell up,” he shouted. Not angry at her, so much as the situation. “If they didn't find him here, then he probably doesn't want to be found... this has all been a waste of God-damn time, the idea that he would be any use, he was never there for me as a kid, why the hell would he be here for me now...”
He stormed past them, stomping down the corridor and out of the building. Kat looked down at Luke, and put on a smile for his benefit. “He just needs to think.” she said. What she was thinking was; he just needs a drink. He had become their de facto leader, much like Martin before him, and Steve before Martin. Never wanted to lead, never wanted to be responsible for her or her child. She couldn't be angry at him, even though she wanted to. It would be up to her now, to keep them safe, to make things right.
9
Ben had found a bar, and had found money, albeit by using his blood to slip notes out of the cash register when nobody was looking. He knew it was wrong, but didn't give a damn. Whisky felt good, burning the back of his throat, but it wasn't doing much for diluting the hopelessness that had overcome him.
“Feeling any better?” A voice from beside him. He turned, Kat taking a seat next to him.
“How'd you find me?”
“Blood knows blood...” she said, with a knowing smile.
“Luke told you where I was,” he reasoned.
She nodded.
“Where is he?” He looked around, there was no sign of the boy, and this stinking dive bar was no place for a child anyway.
“At a hotel, watching cartoons.” She signalled to the bartender and pointed at Ben's glass, rolling her finger in the air, asking in some made-up sign language for another.
“We can't give up because we've hit a hurdle,” she said.
“A hurdle?” Ben spat. “You call this a hurdle? This is the end of the line. The one chance we had at answers gone up in smoke...”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “You don't know that they got him, there's no way to know, not yet.”
“It doesn't matter. He doesn't want to be found.”
“Well there's got to be someone who knows where he is, a friend or partner or something.”
“The Squad would have been to all of them already.”
“Well, then...” She trailed off, suddenly realising something they hadn't talked about before. “They must be tracking the spread, right?”
“What?”
“Give me the captain's phone,” She instructed.
He slid it across the table, with a laboured sigh.
“We might not be able to track the infection, how it spreads to people - -”
“Vectors,” he corrected.
“Whatever, that'll be sealed up in some official site somewhere, but we could track the free blood.” She pulled up a browser on the phone, and started typing away manically.
“What? How?”
“You ever seen those 'and finally' stories
on the news? The ones that come out ever couple of months, weird or unexplained creatures found, three headed sheep or giant slug monsters...”
“I guess? On like, io9 or whatever.”
She turned the phone to him, a news story on The Daily Mail with the headline 'Sea Monster Washed Up On Brighton Shore'. Under it was a picture, a blurry photo of a slimy creature, the head of a fish and the body of a squid, that looked three metres long when compared to the people standing around it.
“Now, how many of those kinds of stories do you think are going to turn out to be describing free blood, slugging or snaking around?” she was already typing in the description of the 'goblins, and soon they were spinning through the small number of results. Ben looked over her shoulder, not entirely invested, but his interest was at least starting to be piqued.
“Denmark, 2007,” she said, showing him the article.
“Oh seven?” he said, not sure whether or not he should be surprised that there were free bloods roaming around a decade previous. “Scroll down,” he said, leaning over her and doing it, hitting the 'site information' button at the bottom of the page. “Site's only been up since 2004, someone else has to have more sightings...”
A smile came to Kat's face, he was engaged, she backed up to the search results and they hit the next one. The Mirror had a sighting in its archive from 1998, but only the one though, and it was in Amsterdam. The Daily Record had one back in 1991 in Glasgow. The spread of the bloods was all over the map, across Europe, but the further back they went, the more they were sure they were homing in on the original location of the first infection.