Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (36 page)

I shake my head. Even if she nicked one of her veins, I’ll bet you she’s already regenerated. “We need to move her.” I can hear the other ambulance coming.

She’s being moved and two cops keep their guns on her as I
try to clean her airway. Blood; I can smell it through my respiratory mask. Then there’s black stuff – bile? Something to help her digest blood? I shouldn’t be so aware of the emergency room, but everyone clears the way for us as we wheeled her through emergency, right into a room. The guy she was feeding off of should be unconscious. They wheel him into the same room. We’re separated by a thin sheet.

“
The bitch tore off my face!”

“
You’re relieved,” a nurse tells me, but I wait until someone’s got my suction before I step back. I hate hand-offs; Henri says get another profession. I’m not supposed to look at the other guy, but no one cares. He’s still haemorrhaging, his lips are blue, and it’s not his face he should be worried about. They’ve ID’d him already. Dennis Curleill, Beta Code. Has a violent criminal record, high risk to reoffend. Probably an attempted rape, or mugging. It’ll be funny, later.

I hear startled shouts, and look back at my former patient. The vampire seizes, and the silver cuffs dig into her hands. I can almost smell the burning. The cops tell the nurses to back up. No one fires a shot. She stops. A doctor shows up, but he’s on the guy through the curtain. Before I regroup with Henri, they’re toe-tagging her. Someone makes a joke about bringing in the dead.

“
I’ll fill out the PCR,” Henri tells me, “try to find some me some coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s coming out of a donkey’s arse.”

~*~

I’m hoping the vending machine coffee is better than the swill they serve in the cafeteria. I can get a decade-old candy bar while I’m at it. My ID vibrates, and the sleepy janitor takes three steps away from me.

I go to decon to pee and sneeze in the respective containers and figure maybe my job’s not so bad. A chemical shower and a new uniform later, I’m back in the ambulance, plastering my hair into a bun and contemplating going pixie.

I check my messages while I restock the ambulance and check out cold storage. I’ve never thrown a patient on ice, and Henri’s got two more bags, laced with sedative-hypnotics if he’s labelled them right. I just wanna know where he got it from; I don’t ever remember waking up with a new bandage.

“
Bee, it’s mum. You said you’d call yesterday. We’re worried, Bee. They know you’re clean; they should let you out of the city. Call me as soon as you’re off shift, okay? Shannon says you haven’t been calling her…” She starts to talk about my little sister’s wedding – hint hint, tick tock, so I skip to the next message.

“
Hey Beatrice, it’s Ike.” Huzzah! “I know I said I’d be available for your sister’s wedding, but, I just found out my grandmother’s supposed to be coming in that weekend. You’re a bridesmaid anyway, so you won’t even remember I’m not there, right? Call me after this weekend.”

The next message better be about some devilishly handsome voyeur who’s secretly been in love with me and wants to take me
away from my overbearing mother and my underbearing near-fiancé. Come to think of it, that’s just creepy. “Bee, it’s Chelsea. Can you go on nights for me next week?” SKIP. “
End of messages. Low battery.
” I dump the soiled linens and plug in my handheld and start to download the Stegarzki interview.

Sitting on it, I remember that I forgot to clean out the Skin Sampler 3000. It says her tissue’s dead, but it probably said that when it was reading her. I know I’m not supposed to look at her information after I hand her off, Henri can use the information for his report– not that I can even tell how accurate it is; it’s calibrated for human tissue.

The readings are actually pretty on par with human readings – I mean, we get vampires from the basic
human prototype, right? Blood oxygen level is way down, but I’ve heard other medics say they don’t need to breathe. A new heading gets my attention.

Vampire, 4rth level.

Since when do vampires have levels? I take out my handheld and do a quick search. Most of the results are trying to sell me something: Oil of Venom, promising to take a potential century of my face, and a website where I can chat with a real vampire, or at least some virgin doused with baby powder sitting in his mom’s basement.

Henri’s back, but I can’t hear him as I’m too busy being shocked that my patient just tested positive for Kyoli-4.

“
Beatrice! Sleep when you’re off shift! You’re not a fireman!”

“
Henri,” I start, but the slayer’s right beside him. “You need me to talk to the cops?”

“
You really want to?” he asks. He waives so-long to the slayer; I can’t help but wonder if she’s one of his many ex-wives he’s always complaining about “Are we ready to roll? We need to gas up before next shift.”

“
Replaced everything,” I say quietly, sliding over to the driver’s seat, “besides some laced blood.”

“
Don’t start,” Henri says, getting in.

The rain’s let up, and the early sun’s peaking through the clouds. “At least those things are all back at home, hey?” I ask. Henri’s using my handheld, and changes the channel before my program can finish downloading. “Hey!”

“
You can’t drive and watch this at the same time,” he says. “Don’t say anything about that blood to anyone.”

“
Isn’t everyone doing it?” I ask, but don’t wait for him to finish. “Henri, are there different levels of vampires?”

“
Are you ditching that loser and becoming a necrophliac?”

“
I got a reading when I took a sample of her blood,” I tell him, handing him the Skin Sampler. “How did they call her death?”

“
Vampires
are
dead, Bee,” he says.

“
They’ve changed the definition of death a few times…”

He’s not listening, he’s looking at the readings. He fumbles in the glove compartment for his sunglasses. “Kyoli? Vampires aren’t supposed to…” he pauses. “You took this on our last call?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Head back to the bay,” he says.

“
We’re not off for-”

He’s on my phone, arguing. He looks at me, and goes in the back so I can’t eavesdrop. Boring drive back to base, but at least we miss the morning rush, with the exception of the early coffee line-ups at the local donut shops, and he won’t stop.

“
Leave the unit,” he says. I grab my bag and head for the locker, but he says. “Hold this. We’re going for a drive. My car.”

Even though he’s got kids he gets to see like once a month, his old blue gas-powered abomination smells like he’s got a bunch of kids in elementary and they’re with us, dropping raisins and have their muddy feet on the seats. “Where are we going? Shouldn’t we at least report-”

I look down at the Skin Sampler. It’s bagged. “It’s fine, Bee. Let’s both try to have lives and get this done, alright?” he asks.

“
You want me to drive?”

“
Nah.”

I know our medical office, but I try to avoid the place. I’ve never been past the main floor, and he won’t even tell me where we’re going.

The secretary’s obviously been in for plastic reconstruction – she looks younger than me, but she’s chipped so I can pick up her life story if I feel like it. My reader says she’s pushing fifty. “Henri, you’re not due back for another week. Are you unwell?”

“
Is Kravera in?” he asks. “We need to talk to her.”

“
We?” a woman behind me asks, chuckling slightly, clutching a steaming mug of caffeinated goodness. I can almost feel the heat suck from my body as she walks by. She’s short, kind of reminds me of my grandmother, especially with that
Oh really?
tone. Not chipped, and no longer human. She flashes her fangs at me when I try to scan her. “If you’re unwell, go see your personal doctor. I’m not dealing with patients.”

“
I think we have something you’ll be interested in,” Henri says, and gestures to me. “Tell her where you got that.”

“
We responded to a mugging turned bad last night,” I say, unsealing the Skin Sampler and handing it to the doctor. “Our patient was a vampire.”

Kravera frowns. “These are designed for humans. I’m surprised there’s any reading at all.”

“
I think you want to look it over,” Henri says, “in your office.”

The halls look more administrative than laboratory and doctor’s office. Doctor Beverly Kravera’s not chipped, but her ID’s got most of the same information and I can easily scan it without her noticing it. She doesn’t look 63 – I’d say early forties, and the glasses add five years.

“
These machines look for common patterns. Interesting. How did you get a sample?” Kravera asks.

“
I told the vampire I needed it, so she bit the back of her hand,” I tell her. “I swabbed, and let the machine do its thing. Couldn’t save the vampire, though.”

“
Kyoli?”

“
That’s why we’re here,” Henri says. “I ain’t seen anyone fully transformed carrying a virus that can compete with vampirism.”

“
Now now, Henri. You know that not all vampiric infections are viral in nature,” Beverly says.

“
Why would you know?” I ask.

Henri smiles, and shows me his teeth. I back up. I’m in a room with two of Them.

“
Calm down, Bee. Why’d you think I was carrying laced blood?” Henri asks.

“
To save your partner if one of those things ever came near us while we were on scene!”

Henri laughs a bit. “Doctor, you have any questions?”

Kravera’s transferring the sample and labelling it.

“
You mind if we go for a coffee, and we’ll come back in a few minutes? Make sure we’re not wasting your time?” Henri lets himself out. I follow because I don’t want to be in the same room as her by myself. “I got bit by a kid playing dead about six months ago. I’m on suppressants.”

“
You got fangs,” I say.

He shoots me a look and I shut up as we pass the secretary. She smiles, and ignores us as we proceed to the hallway. “How long are we going to leave her?” I ask once we’re clear.

“
She’ll find us.”

It’s almost 07:00 – no way I’ll be off before shift change. The cafeteria’s open, and I’m so tempted by the egg-by-product and seaweed soy shakes that I join Henri in powdered donuts and fresh java, and promise myself I’m going on the treadmill as soon as I get home. “This why you’ve been on night shift?”

Henri stirs his coffee, then looks up at the ceiling. “Just don’t tell Nina.”

“
Which wife is Nina?” I ask.

“
The first one – she’s got her claws on my pension and I want it to be something for her to remember me. Vampires are technically dead…”

“
How long you got?”

Henri shrugs. “The drugs are experimental. Could be a week, could be a year. Could be ten. They can only slow it down. I’m on borrowed time.”

“
That why you wanted to see Kravera?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I ain’t got no love of any speciality group, Bee.”

“
How’d she get infected?” I ask.

“
You got me. Story they tell us is that she infected herself,” Henri says. “Wanted to study it first-hand.”

“
So Kyoli’s so deadly, it’s able to kill vampires,” I said. “Make you feel more or less mortal?”

“
Nope,” he says.

Henri doesn’t look like the vampires we see on the billboards advocating undead rights or the historic monster of legend. He looks like the same guy who tells me not to sweat it when I give the wrong drug but gives me heck for leaving the unit running. “I’m sorry.”

“
Don’t be,” he said. “Though, if you wouldn’t mind making a donation; I want to have blood on hand, and I can’t give them my own. They can smell it if you’re a vampire, or if you’ve been bit.”

“
In case you ever lose it?” I ask. “You gonna be able to work for that much longer?”

He shrugs, and starts commenting about a commercial on the nearest projector, and how much it’s costing to put his oldest through college. Henri says it shouldn’t be long before Kravera’s ready to see us and I shouldn’t bother going home. I’ve got a bathroom to paint and laundry to fold, not to mention a bed I’d like to sleep in. I go to the lounge, stream in with my handheld and for the Stegarzki interview, but I fall asleep on the uncomfortable couches before it’s done downloading. Henri pours water on my head.

“
You shouldn’t fall asleep in the medical building,” Henri says. “You’ll wake up a test subject.” He’s got my handheld, and is watching golf.

“
Turn that off,” I told him. I don’t know why, but of all his vices, I hate the golf the most.

“
I still think they should clone Woods,” he says. “See if he can beat himself, so to speak.”

I check my watch. 11:43, 04/10/32. “Shouldn’t you be bursting into flames?”

“
I’m on suppressants, Bee. Now, get me a coffee before I mark you.”

“
Get your own coffee.” I see why all his wives left him, but can’t figure out why they married him in the first place.