VAMPIRE

Johnny Smith
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Johnny Smith

Other titles from Timekeeping on Mars at Smashwords.com by Johnny Smith
 (free on Smashwords)
 (free on Smashwords)
  (free on Smashwords)
 (free on Smashwords)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

2239?

The gown had opened in the back, and the metal of the gurney was cold against my ass. The nurse slapped hard at the underside of my arm, the latex of her glove smacking smartly against my skin.

“Oi, batch! Dat dem hurt me arm!”

The nurse was large and faceless. A mound of flesh. Her breasts drooped lifelessly from her chest. She didn’t bother replying. They never spoke to donors. Failing to get any of the collapsed veins to rise, she dropped my arm disdainfully and rounded to the other side of the gurney to examine the long blue lines spreading from the crook of my elbow.

I leaned back and looked up at the high ceiling at least twenty meters up. The polyethylene coating shimmered in the glow of the fluorescent lamps. The hot white light, framed perfectly by the top of the tiny cubicle, burned down on me like a magnesium flare. And on the other side of the shield, the sun fumed and spat. I tried to imagine it, hanging there red and full in the sky, spewing lethal radiation into the atmosphere and dooming us to an existence under radiation shields.

I felt the prick of the needle against thick scar tissue where the nurse finally found a suitable spot. I closed my eyes as the spurt of hot blood gushed out of my arm and down the plastic tubing. The plastic bag hanging above filled quickly with syrupy ochre. Two bags and then food.

The nurse changed out the blood bags, and the second filled slower than the first. My blood trickled along the catheter, sluggish and reluctant. The nurse gestured a squeezing fist in my face, but I pretended to not understand. The nurse shook her fist at me, and I imitated her with the wrong hand. She slapped the flat of her pudgy palm across my bare thigh making me yelp.

 “Batch! OK, OK!” 

I pumped my hand into a little ball and the blood began to run faster into the bag. I looked down at my thigh to see the red outline of her fingers rise on my pale skin. I imagined slapping the nurse back across her plump, dull face and smiled at the thought. I closed my eyes again and listened to the litany of public service announcements droning from the loud speakers though I understood little of them.

 “All medical personal are reminded to maintain quarantine codes while in the donor area.”

“Any suspected case of HHV-11 should be reported immediately to the nearest Containment Supervisor. Symptoms include: pyrexia, erythema multiforme major, hemoptysis, posterior epistaxis, lymphadenitis, cephalalgia, and petechia.”

“Solar luminosity is at lethal levels until 20:54.”

The loud speaker blurted only one curt warning in donortalk.

“You cough so you look blood, run tell di pass-all doctor now now.”

Finally, after several long minutes the bag had filled, and the nurse pulled the needle from the purplish bruise in my arm.

 “Say, gonna give me some nosh, grazie?”

The nurse handed me a flimsy, clear bag of brown mush from the locked cabinet under the gurney. Amino acids, proteins, and sugars. A thick plastic straw jutted out of the plastic. 

“Look like me shit, na?” I shook the bag at her, but she remained impassive and unperturbed. She had already turned back to her workstation to begin the process of extracting the antibodies from my blood. I slurped down the dark sludge quickly before the nurse finished processing and packing the blood and ushered me out, knowing without more sugar I was going to get the shakes.

“Say, gonna give me mo, na?”

The nurse ignored me.

“Oi, batch! Me dem gib twice measure dis day! Dat two nosh, na!”

Without acknowledging me at all, the nurse slid back the curtain to reveal a line of seven or eight donors. Ragged and bony all of them. Desiccated skeletons. The enormity of the donor hall loomed behind them, piled with hundreds of curtain-shrouded cubicles each with a donor being bled to provide the life saving antibodies the population needed to stay alive. 

An anxious looking girl stood at the front of the line. Young and slight. Her head shaved and marked with the tell-tell Hong Kong Pox scars of a donor. I tried to glare the nurse into giving me another bag of foodstuff, but she was already motioning in the next donor.

“Fuckin cunty batch!” I screamed at her and banged my fists on the gurney; the tinny clang of it made the anxious looking girl scream and jump. Two uniformed guards materialized almost immediately in the line. They each held a nightstick. I tried to back down.

“OK, OK. I go now.” I cowered and moved towards the opening of the cubicle.

The taller of the two did not hesitate and jabbed me in the gut with the billy. I crumpled to the floor. Then a blow to the base of my spine knocked me forward into the gurney. I heard the crash of something metal hitting the concrete floor and the anxious girl scream again. Then the guards jerked me to my feet. I had no energy to struggle or fight. My head lulled against my chest. The last thing I saw before passing out were the scrawny legs of the anxious looking girl climbing up onto the gurney. I tried to smile at her.

****

I woke in my dormitory cot, pulled the threadbare sheet over my head, crossed my arms over my chest, and cupped my breasts in my hands. I had the shakes. Made all the worse by what was probably a concussion. Ghostly florescent light crept through the flimsy cotton. Shapes moved across the sheet like a shadow play. I focused on holding my body rigid. Voices from my dorm mates seeped through the thin sheets. 

 “Dey dem near bleed me arm dry, I chrisswear! Now on twice time dis day.”

“Dey say me gonna cut me leg gone. Dey say me it got bad blood in it.”

"Shit, us da special ones. Us make antibody. No us, de die!”

“Shut up you’s cunty faces, batches!” I screamed through chattering teeth. The sound of my own voice crackled inside my head like electricity. I heard muffled giggles and then I passed out again.

****

I dreamed of a large lamp burning like a miniature sun above me. I closed my eyes against its blaze. But it filtered through my eyelids and into my skull. I tried to turn my head from its glaring brilliance, but I couldn’t move. It beat down on me. I could feel my skin cracking and peeling from the heat. My nose turned cancerous with melanoma and caved into my face, revealing the open cavity underneath. My brain boiled inside my skull.

I was dying.
 
****

I woke in the near dark of the dormitory. The wheezing of a hundred sleeping donors filled the room. Someone coughed purposefully, and I opened my eyes. A guard stood over me, the dim light of the overhead night globes illuminating his face. His eyes milky and sterile and bloodshot. Bloodshot with my blood. Keeping him alive. Pumped into him daily. Staving off the infection that would otherwise eat his flesh.

The pants of his guard’s uniform were unzipped, and his dick hung small and flaccid nearly hidden in a bush of a messy pubic hair. Rolls of flab settled around his middle like a robe of flesh while beads of sweat chased each other into the creases of his bulk. His breathing was loud and labored. I thought of a beast trapped in a cage, bloated and gross. Fat on scraps thrown into its cage by gawking children. Once lean and dangerous, but now dull and obese. 

He climbed onto the cot and leaned in close to my face. I resisted the urge to bite savagely at his lips with my teeth. I wanted to rip them from his face. I wanted to claw at his eyes with my nails. He moved closer. I could smell the stink of his skin. I swallowed and tipped back my head. His fingers gripped the back of my head and he pulled me near. I dug my nails into the palm of my hand and closed my eyes.

When he finished, he pushed himself up off of me, leaving a smear of cum and sweat on my thighs. I clinched the muscles of my pelvis, trying to squeeze out the memory of him. He grunted once and then shambled down the aisle between the cots, lurching forward like a stumbling drunk.

****

The dormitory lights flickered to life and a stream of guards filed through the sliding glass doors of the main entrance, each wearing heavy padded vests and brandishing a billy. The donors, hunched and sleepy, all stood at the foot of their cots, waiting for work assignments to be handed out. The cots lined both sides of the long dormitory hall, fifty on either side.  Across the aisle and down a number of cots, I recognized the anxious, young girl from the other day. Scrawny and pale. Her lower jaw protruding in a deep under bite.

In the cot next to hers, the donor had not moved to get up. One of the guards walked over and banged his billy against the thin frame of the cot. The donor still did not move. The guard reached across the prone donor and jerked his head around by the chin. The donor’s tongue, blackened and swollen, lulled out of his mouth. It leered at the room.

The guard backed away from the body his arms held out in front of him as if halting a crowd of people and yelled as he fell over the cot behind him. He flopped comically on the ground trying to find his feet before finally leaping up and shouting incomprehensible commands to the other guards.

In an instant, an alarm blared into the room. The donors stood dumbfounded, gaping at each other. The guards scurried back through the main entrance of the dormitory, many covering their mouths and noses with their hands.

****

Every two hours, two guards and a pass-all doctor would enter the dormitory in bio-suits. The green, rubbery material of the suits gleamed slickly under the fluorescent lights of the dormitory. The pass-all doctor would take samples of the air, choose two donors and draw their blood into thin plastic tubes which he would shake vigorously before stealing them away into small pockets in his bio-suit. Sometimes he would gesture towards the guards, and the donor he was examining would be taken from the room. Most went quietly, stricken with terror, their legs trailing along the floor as they were dragged by their arms out of the dormitory. Some cowered or cried out and were quickly beaten. 

One, a elderly man, dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around the legs of the doctor begging not be taken. The guards beat him severely, left him bleeding on the floor of the dormitory, and escorted the pass-all doctor to the sliding exit doors. One guard returned to the inert body of the old man to kick him hard in the groin and looked around pointedly as the other donors watched. After he left, several donors moved the old man to his cot where he whimpered quietly for several hours before finally going completely silent. Two guards later returned and removed the body, throwing it limply on a gurney.

“What you think?” I ignored the question and picked mindlessly at a scab on my knee.

“Oi, oi! What you think, Marielly? We gonna be sick?” 

“What yous think we gonna be sick for?” I looked up from my knee, now bleeding, at the circle of women surrounding my cot.    

“Jhons was dead, but you dem seen.”

“Shit. Jhons was dem weedy fucka. He sick every time. What you think Jhons dem Hoppas sick for?”

“Merielly dem tell true. Jhons no cough blood. It not dem Hoppas. And Jhons had Hong Kong Pox. Look his face, an ugly fucka was!”

Everyone laughed.

“I know I true. Jhons just dem weedy fucka.” I looked at the large wall clock hanging at the end of the dormitory and marked our twenty-fourth hour in lock down.

****

After three days of being locked in the dormitory, the guards returned to hand out work details. One donor asked if we were going to get sick and was repeatedly slapped across the face by a guard. No one else spoke as the colored chits indicating our work assignments were handed to each donor. 

I groaned as a dull looking guard with pustuled acne spotting his face handed me a blue plastic card and pointed in the direction of the doors. Cremation detail. I slipped on my plastic sandals and made my way out.

Outside the glass doors, a guard ushered me into a small waiting area with four other donors. The anxious looking girl stood in the corner hugging herself and shivering in the chill of the unheated room. No one spoke for fear of being beat. After four more donors joined us, a guard came in and motioned for us to follow him.

He led us down the hallway away from the dormitory. He walked with a limp, dragging his right leg behind him and causing the billy hanging from his belt to bounce against his thigh. I imitated his awkward gait and the other donors giggled. He turned to glare at us and then cuffed the anxious girl twice across the face. She cried out only once. He turned his back on us and continued his hobble down the corridor. We trailed behind him in silence towards the crematory.

The smell hit us hard. Putrid and rank. It gathered around us as we got closer, choking the air like a thick fog. The guard opened the door to the crematory holding his arm across his nose in a feeble attempt to block out the rushing stench of the dead. The anxious girl gagged and retched. I felt bile and puke rise in my throat and swallowed hard, and then spat to rid my mouth of the taste. The guard motioned us into the room and then shut the door behind us.

The crematory was a long hall with four large retorts on the far wall. The retorts were ancient, the ceramic bricks of the furnaces chipped and blackened.  Each stood at the end of a thirty meter charger for conveying the bodies. Stacks of corpses were piled along the length of the conveyer belt. Men, women, and children, all in complete disarray. 

The ones dead from Hoppas were the most obvious. Their fleshy bulk was tattered and rent. Dried blood gunked at the corners of their months and under their noses. Amongst this corpulent and diseased dead, a donor's body looked wizened and sucked dry, but peaceful.

I took charge and walked over to the wall controls that powered the chargers.

“Jasonetti and Renad, number one. Sall and Tomms, number two. Mirance and Jenniun, number three. You girl,” I pointed at the anxious girl. She looked up uncertainly.

“Name,” I barked at her.

“Rosemalee.”

“You, me, number four.” I pushed a large green power button on the control panel. Rosemalee came to stand next to me as the chargers whirred to life in a fit of screams and wheezes. We watched the retorts light and begin to glow.

“Fifteen. Twenty minute. And dey gonna be hot hot. You like de hot hot, girl?” I looked to Rosemalee for her answer, but she was staring at the body of a young, female donor, no more than fifteen years old. Her head was shaved and her eyes had the glassy sheen of the dead. Her lips had pulled away from her teeth giving her the ghastly grin of a clown. She would have been pretty when she was alive.

Rosemalee was crying.

“What you cry for, girl? Dey lucky. Don't you know? Dey gonna be happy now now. Dey see dem good sun. Dey see dem pretty day every day. No fatty guard gonna stick 'em dick. No fatty nurse gonna stick 'em needle. All day, dey gonna be fat and happy. So, no cry. Dey lucky. You see, girl?”

Rosemalee nodded slightly. And then we started working.

****

That night, the donors slept heavy, worn out by the work details. Guards patrolled the room from hour to hour, disturbing the light sleepers with the heavy steps of their boots. 

I woke and watched the guard with the limp shamble into the dormitory and down the aisle. He flicked on a flashlight as he walked and dragged the beam across the ranks of the sleeping donors. It paused on the pockmarked face of Rosemalee. Her eyes held shut, feigning sleep. Her bottom lip seemed to quiver slightly as the guard made to move towards her. whimpered and curled into a ball. He started to reach for his billy. 

I screamed and leapt up from my cot and onto his back, wrapping my heads around his face and digging my nails into his eye sockets. His eyes were soft and wet and felt like the goo of foodstuff. He bellowed and swatted at my head with the billy. I bit into the flab on the back of his neck. The wet iron taste of blood filled my mouth. He reared up and grabbed my hair, ripping chunks of it out from the roots. I pulled my fingers from the gaping holes of his eye sockets and wrapped them around his throat digging at his Adam’s apple. He reached over his head, grabbing at my face. He yanked hard at my ear. I felt it tear away. I bore my fingers deeper until the hot wash of blood poured over my hands. He fell forward gasping, my hands still in his throat. I lay atop of him panting; he shuddered once then laid still.

Only then did I notice the other donors. They stood on the cots around me gaping and cheering. And then the lights were on and guards were swarming the room swinging their billies wildly at the crowd. The donors scattered and threw themselves on the floor. The guards beat anyone they could grab, smashing jawbones and skulls. From under the cot, I watched as bare, emaciated ankles and heavy, booted legs sparred and collided in a frenzy. A male donor lay dead in the middle of the room, his nose draining blood onto the white tile around him. His forehead had split, and I could see spider-webbing cracks in the white bone of his brow. The stench of his bowels emptying themselves filled the air. A guard dragged another donor roughly to her feet by her hair. She had pissed herself and urine smeared the floor where she had been lying. A guard slipped in a pool of a blood and fell heavily. Anyone who spoke or stood was pummeled savagely by the guards into a bloody mess of flesh. 

I slumped forward off the dead guard and slid lifeless onto the floor. A klaxon droned sluggishly over the pain. Like a thick balm oozing through the air. I tried to block out all sound: the guards beating back the donors, the screams of a girl next to me, her face terrified and bleeding. I was numbed to all of it.  

All, but a repeated whisper, penetrating like a thin needle inserted into my brain. Its sound shook me out of my haze. My cheek against the floor, I opened my eyes slightly to let in a crease of light. The glare forced its way into my pupils dragging the room and pain and reality in with it. And there was the scrawny, anxious face of Rosmalee whispering thank you again and again and again into my ear.  Then she was ripped away.

And then they were dragging me across the floor, beating and kicking the whole of my body. In front of me, Rosemalee was being shoved roughly towards the dorm exit. She tripped, fell, and was pulled back to her feet. They hauled us both through the door and down a maze of corridors. The hallways were dingy and cold. I tried to struggle in the arms of the guards only to be slapped and beaten whenever I moved. I could hear Rosemalee crying behind me. Her sobs echoing in the corridors. The guards did not speak at all.

We were taken to a large room I had never been in before and locked inside. Three guards in thick, rubbery radiation suits were waiting at one end in front of a large metal door. Weighed down by their air canisters, they swayed hypnotically in front of us. One walked over and stripped us both. I fell and I hobbled back to my feet. Blood streaked my breasts and stomach. Rosemalee stood beside me, desperately trying to cover herself with her hands. The gate suddenly swung up and over and the cold rush of dawn spilt into the room.

I gaped into the great expanse of outside. The empty and scarred plain stretched forever into the distance. A great nothingness I had never imagined. I breathed in its air and held it deeply in my lungs feeling it push down past my guts and into my soul. 

I stood tall and smiled.

A guard pushed us forward, naked and bleeding, into the frostbitten morning, and then moved back inside. The metal gate clanged shut and locked behind us. I looked towards the west where the sun had already begun to rise in the distance. Its coppery glow traced the outline of the horizon. 

“It dem beautiful. It dem so beautiful,” I whispered.     

Rosemalee wept and closed her eyes. We clung to each other, there. A waiting offering to the sun.

If you liked this, look for other stories from the collection Timekeeping on Mars at . You can also find Johnny at .

Johnny Smith is all bile and spleen and deflated lung. He enjoys unnecessary surgeries and backgammon. He lives in Brisbane, QLD.