The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood (7 page)

Before she could offer a reply, he walked away.

“Thanks, Tyra, for the hookup,” said Chast.

“Yes, dude, we totally owe you,” said Tulliver.

“Excuse me…,” said Murphy.

Chast and Tulliver turned to look at their third partner.

“Did either of you digest a single word that guy said?” Murphy’s face was flushed red and covered in beads of sweat. “He called the plan a ‘suicide mission’.”

Murphy enunciated the last two words with as much emotion as he could sum up while still whispering. But his dramatic enunciation still fell on deaf ears.

“Jesus, Murph, you’re freaking me out,” whispered Chast.

“I know. What the fuck?” seconded Tulliver.

Chast took a deep breath, then threw his arm around his former business associate, hoping it would chill him out.

“Listen to me, Amigo, how many times did the three of us hear those exact same words – ‘suicide mission’ – before we ended up working together at the company’s paintball-team tournament?”

“About a thousand times,” Tulliver immediately answered in case Murphy was not going to come up with the answer.

“Exactly,” said Chast. “And now tell me, Amigo, how did each one of those tournaments turn out…?”

Chapter Twelve

The veteran prisoners in the camp referred to it as the dairy farm. And now the entire prison population of the CCC facility stood in a single-file line waiting to enter into the building.

Standing in line, Matt watched some activity going on at the infirmary building. He saw Dietz walking with two of the camp’s guards as they loaded a body bag into a van. After they shut the doors, the van drove past all of the other prisoners standing in line.

“’Meat Wagon’ right?” Speaking up was Lee Chong, an Asian-American who was blind. “I can smell the dead body.”

“Yeah, Lee, you called it,” said Tyra.

“All I can smell is the exhaust from the truck,” said Juarez.

“So who’s the one getting the ride in the hearse?” asked Chong.

“One of the goons thought he had a shot at the batting title and went too far with a newbie,” said Barrett. “He died this morning in the infirmary.”

Matt was standing nearby and could hear their conversation. He had a strong feeling about who it was that had died, but hoped he was wrong.

“I think Dietz said his name was ‘Bunny’.”

None of the prisoners that were talking seemed to recognize the name.

“Where are they taking the body?”

All the prisoners involved in the conversation were shocked to discover the source of the question.

“Who just spoke?” asked Chong

“The shithead I was telling you about… I’m sorry, I meant to say one of the newbies,” answered Barrett.

No one stepped up to answer Matt’s question, until Tyra finally spoke up.

“We made requests to bury our dead here in camp, but they turned us down. The vampires insist on burying the dead in the woods about two miles from here.”

“Does anyone know why?” asked Matt.

“Apparently the bloodsuckers can’t stand the smell of rotting cadavers,” answered Chong, “even if the body is buried. Can’t say I blame them. It’s hard for me to put up with the way Juarez smells even when he’s downwind from me…”

Juarez pretended to be offended, and shouted, “Yeah, well, you may have to smell me, but I have to look at your ugly face, so that makes us even…”

The main doors to the dairy farm flew open, and a dozen of the goons holding batons filed out and surrounded the line of prisoners.

Spector was the last to emerge. He stood in the doorway, looking out to the line of prisoners like he was the king of the castle addressing his serfs.

“Okay, juice boxes, most of you know the drill, and the rest of you should just follow along so we can all make the entire process run as smooth as possible. That would make me very proud… ”

The interior of the building was very similar to a dairy-farming facility. There were hundreds of stalls with complex machinery that looked like it was meant to extract milk from a cow, however, what was being extracted was not milk, but blood.

Matt was part of a single-file line of prisoners, who were led across the building floor and positioned in front of their own stall.

Stepping into his pen, Matt took too long looking at the machinery and felt the tap of a baton to his backside.

“You can daydream all you want once you’re wired up,” said the goon standing behind him. “Get in there. Now.”

The goon shut the door behind him. He looked around and the last thing he discovered was a hook attached to the pen door. Apparently that was where he was supposed to hang his clothes before he wired himself up to be milked.

Spector’s voice came over the building’s loudspeaker system. “Since we have some new juice boxes joining the party today, I will run through the procedures of your blood donation.”

He looked around for Spector, but all Matt saw was a control center on a platform in the middle of the building manned by dozens of black-shirted goons.

“Everyone is to strip, then begin hooking yourself up to the donor machine in your containment area. There are instructional cards posted on the walls above your donor machine. One of my men will come by to make sure you are properly hooked up. C’mon, ladies and gentlemen, let’s not make this into anything more than it has to be; the sooner you give two pints, the sooner we can all get out of here…”

Matt stared at the stainless-steel, blood-donation machine. It had six connection pads, each attached to six long, twisty, plastic tubes that eventually flowed together and became a single thick, plastic tube, which then connected to the mouth of a steel container.

The noise in the building helped camouflage the whirling noise coming from the first pad Matt held up for observation. But when he held it closer to his ear, he could hear the almost silent running of the extraction needle moving below the surface of the pad.

He waved his finger directly over the middle of the pad, and almost immediately the tip of his finger was ripped up by a translucent spike whirling in every direction, like a weed whacker, as it tried penetrating the surface of his skin.

The voice of one of the goons advancing toward his stall prompted Matt not to delay the inevitable, and he slapped the first donor pad to his right arm, exactly where a nurse would have stuck an intravenous needle before the takeover.

Matt flinched as the weed-whacking spike tore aside the surface of his skin, drilled toward the nearest vein, which it then penetrated. It wormed at least another inch before resting and embedding itself, and then the process of extracting blood commenced. He turned to see his blood shooting through the clear, plastic tubing toward the steel canister.

The first goal of every system of torture is to strip the victim of their humanity.

After he was completely wired up, and one of the goons had signed off on all his connections to the donor machine, Matt was left completely alone in his pen to contemplate what the vampires had achieved.

They had come up with a form of torture with the assumption that their victim had already been stripped of their humanity.

Chapter Thirteen

Ian hung from the barracks’ ceiling, staring down at Matt as he slept.

Anyone who might have looked up, if they noticed him at all, would only have seen what appeared to be a shadow cast from the moonlight streaming through one of the two barracks’ building skylights.

He had shared a room with his little brother until Matt was twelve. Ian would often lie awake and stare at his brother, who always slept like the problems of the world could wait to be dealt with until morning. It was this specific image – content, almost “clueless” about the problems that lay around him – that kept Ian anchored to the bedroom, their house, even though every fiber in his body screamed to escape.

At twelve, their parents agreed to allow Matt to have his own room. It was a huge concession. Ian and his parents all knew that leaving Matt alone in his own room would only make it easier for him to dream about being further away.

As Ian stared at his brother from the ceiling, he couldn’t believe the irony of the situation. He had stayed behind at the house because he was afraid of what would happen to Matt if he abandoned him. Now here he was, years later, once again looking over his youngest brother, and his greatest fear was that Matt would abandon him.

***

Winston Gaiman had his eye on a computer screen that spewed out the latest directory notes released by the Vampire Committee. When he finally looked up, he was dismayed to only see Ian standing before him.

“Where is Julian?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered Ian.

“Certainly he knew I needed to speak to both of you?”

It had been awhile since Ian had seen Winston looking so exasperated and irritated. The fact that Julian Macy had missed so many previous meetings, and that somehow his latest absence was causing his mentor distress, was troubling to Ian.

“I saw him an hour ago, moving along the perimeter of the camp. I mentioned to him that we would be meeting with you later, but he did not respond in any way.”

There was the noise of another directive coming through, and it grabbed Winston’s attention. As he stared at the computer screen, a look of concern took over his face.

Ian was sure that if Julian
had
attended the meeting, Winston would not be so open about expressing his emotional reaction to what he was reading.

The CCC commander looked up to Ian and picked up the conversation where he had left it… more than a few minutes ago.

“Are you saying he did not respond to what you said…?’

“No, sir, what I meant to convey was that Julian did not respond to my very presence.”

The commander shook his head in dismay.

When Winston was assigned command of what turned out to be CCC197, the first decision he made was to select who would serve as the head of operational control. He could have gone outside his bloodline and chosen someone else. But he stayed loyal to the two he had turned – first Julian, then Ian.

Both of his scions would share the duties of operational control of the facility. Ian would focus on the outreach beyond the perimeter, while Julian would handle all of the issues associated with running the camp.

“It was obvious Julian was not pleased with my decision to divide supervision of the facility, which I anticipated. However, that was months ago. How would continuing to harbor such ill will be a productive course of action?”

“Sir, what would you have me say?”

“I would want you to say something…”

“I don’t agree with him… sir.”

“Then why aren’t you doing something about it…?”

Winston’s words shocked Ian, and he did not bother to hide his reaction.

There was another directive coming in from the committee, and Winston turned his attention to his computer screen.

The two had been bonded in blood for years, but Ian had always felt the two were even closer in spirit as well. And yet now that the takeover plan was in full swing, it appeared that the events of the last several months had ruffled Winston’s normally calm disposition. Perhaps the frustrations of dealing with the VC had started to wear him down.

Several more minutes passed before Winston looked up from his screen, but Ian did not give his mentor the chance to speak first.

“Julian does not consider my existence worthy of acknowledgment. More than two hundred years separates us in age, and perhaps that’s what prevents the two of us from ever achieving a bond that goes beyond the inherited bloodline we share. Sir, with all due respect, what exactly would you have me do?”

“Remind him that you share my bloodline.”

He waited for clarification, but when he remained silent, Ian had no choice but to run with what he assumed Winston had implied by his remark.

“Are you suggesting that I remind Julian by spilling his blood, the one thing that binds the three of us...?”

“I suggest you do what is necessary. I believe even without my counsel, Julian will be seeking the same.”

Ian was speechless. All he could fathom was that the turmoil of the takeover had somehow driven Winston to suggest such a repulsive course of action.

“I’ve never told you about the circumstances surrounding my decision to turn Julian?”

Ian shook his head, hoping his continued silence would invite Winston to speak freely about a subject he’d been curious about for as long as he could remember.

“Of course you know Roland Elridge’s old adage – ‘the living often declare the world has changed, but what remains the same is the changing faces of the living who utter those words’.”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

The camp commander nodded, stood up, and moved from behind his desk to the window that overlooked the main compound.

“The world has not changed. It has always been the same. But before the takeover, what the living were doing was cruel and horrific, beyond our wildest imagination...”

Winston stopped and chuckled to himself.

“I know. Not much of a statement, because every vampire knows …”

“… those of our kind do not have much of an imagination,” said Ian.

He knew his mentor would receive his interruption and completion of the adage as a compliment of his teachings.

“But try to imagine that the world I plucked Julian from was the cruelest I had ever seen… until recent events. At the time I believed an escape from such horrific circumstances would free him so that he could start anew. But my observation of Julian all these years…”

Winston fell silent, as if he was playing back in his head every moment they had spent together.

“… my observation has led me to conclude – those who are turned can’t help but reflect the circumstances at the time of their rebirth. The echoes of our past life stay in our heart… even though the heart no longer beats.”

He turned to look at Ian.

“My loved one, please understand; the music that has played in your brother’s mind has been playing for centuries. It has managed to overwhelm any other notes that he has had the opportunity to hear. Elridge was wise in his words when he said – ‘The world changes, the living remains the same, and vampires will’…”

“…‘see both the world and the living through eyes forever open’.”

The final part of a commonly known phrase, shared for thousands of years amongst their kind, was spoken by the two of them together.

The sound of another VC message coming through on the computer interrupted the silence.

Winston moved quickly to his desk and began reading the communique.

He knew it was not Winston’s intention, but after waiting more than ten minutes, Ian decided to accept the circumstances as a silent dismissal.

“Ian…”

He was about to close the door behind him when Winston called out to him.

“Yes, sir…”

“The three of us must talk.”

Winston’s words were spoken without once turning away from the computer monitor.

“I understand, sir.”