ABSTRACT. The historical condition vampirism is found to be caused by a microorganism which revamps the host's physiology and metabolism through negentropic processes. Evolution of the organism is conjectured and potential uses of the discovery suggested.
TITLE. Haematophagic Adaptation is Homo Nosferatus, with Notes Upon the Geographical Distribution of Super-gene-moderated Mimicking Morphs in Homo Lycanthropus.
I'd forgotten the pitch black of a country road at night. Overhead, between the aisles of trees, you can see the stars; but otherwise it's the same as being blind. Totally different from the hospital where I'd just completed my residency, an oasis of fluorescent light in an urban jungle. You couldn't walk down the best lit streets in safety there. It felt good to be home, even just for a short vacation.
I walked by the feel of the asphalt under my feet. At the bend there'd be an almost subliminal glimmer of starlight on the mailbox at the foot of the drive to my family's farm. The halo of an approaching car rounded the bend, illuminating the road. I discovered I was standing directly in the center, and moved to the side of the road. Headlights washed over me. I shut my eyes to keep my nightsight.
The car hung a sharp left into the driveway of the old Riggen place, and stopped.
City-conditioned nerves made my heart pound faster.
The car door swung open, the overhead lighting up a seated man in his late twenties. He had dark hair and a bushy moustache.
"Are you lost?" he asked.
"No, I'm close enough to home to call the dog."
He chuckled, and his smile turned him handsome. "Don't be so paranoid. Hmmm… you must be the Sangers' famous daughter who went to the Big City to become a doctor."
"Guilty as accused. And you must be the Mad Scientist renting the Riggen spread."
"No, I'm just a humble master's in microbiology. Kevin Marlowe. My boss Auger is the mad scientist."
"The Auger?"
He flashed another grin. "Ah. Why don't you come to tea tomorrow, Doctor, and see."
AUTHORS. Alastair Auger, Ph.D.
Kevin Marlowe, M.A.
Mae Sanger, M.D.
Asterisk. Funded by a grant from the Institute for the Study of Esoterica.
INTRODUCTION. Recent advances in medicine have necessitated differentiating between clinical death, or cessation of heartbeat, and biological, or brain death. The distinction has been further complicated by the increasing use of heroic life support methodology.
History reports rare cases in which clinical death was not followed by biological death, but was maintained in status. The affected undead individuals were called Nosferati, or vampires. The authors' investigation of this phenomenon has led to the discovery of a causative microorganism, Pseudobacteria augeria.
"Dr. Sanger, Dr. Auger."
"Charmed." The great Professor Alastair Auger smiled down at me. He was tall, gray-haired but with dark eyebrows, somewhat out of shape, a couple of decades older than Marlowe and I. He had the cupped words, riveting eyes, and radiating intellect of the perfect lecturer.
He continued, "At last we meet someone in this semi-civilized intellectual backwash who at least aspires to the level of pseudo-science."
"You must come by sometime and see my herb-and-rattle collection," I replied.
He raised an eyebrow. "I understand that you've heard of me."
"Sure. Everyone knows about Professor Auger, brilliant—"
He preened.
"But nuts."
Auger said, "You see, Kevin? She has retained the delightful candor of the local rednecks, untempered by her exposure to the hypocritical milieu of higher education. She'll do fine."
My turn to raise an eyebrow.
The doorbell rang. Marlowe looked out the window and groaned. "Hell. It's Weems."
I followed his gaze. Leaning on the bell was a small ferret-faced man, with a gray suit and a loud tie.
Auger grimaced with pain and clutched his abdomen for a few seconds, then recovered. "I'll get rid of him. Take her on a tour of the lab."
METHODS AND MATERIALS. The Pseudobacteria augeria was stored in isotonic saline solution kept at 37°C, at which temperature it is inactive. Titers of inactive P. augeria were injected into host animals, which were then sacrificed. After a critical period, depending on the number of injected pseudobacteria and the generations (Graph 1) necessary to achieve the species specific ratio of pseudo-bacteria/kg body weight (Table A), the dead host animal was reanimated. The mean latency was three days. The dotted line indicates the threshold number of primary infecting pseudobacteria necessary to replicate sufficient progeny in order to reanimate the body before irreversible decay occurs. In vivo, a number of vampiric attacks or "bites," ensuring a large founding colony, would increase chances of postmortem revivification.
"Vampires?" I repeated, petting a white rabbit. "Come on, we did that one in med school. Funniest gag since Arlo left a piece of his cadaver in a confessional."
I looked around the lab, believing my eyes as little as Marlowe's story. They'd turned an old farm house into a modern-day Castle Frankenstein. Cages of lab animals faced a small computer, nestled amongst the centrifuges, particle counters, electron microscope, and spectrometers. Automatic stirrers clacked away in the background.
Marlowe handed me a stethoscope. "First, assure yourself that it works."
I put it over my fifth rib and heard a reassuring lub dub lub dub.
"I'm alive."
"Try the rabbit."
No heartbeat.
I stared at it, snuffling in my hands. Marlowe put out a saucer of what looked like blood. The fluffy little bunny tore free of my hold, dove at the bowl, and began lapping up the red liquid.
"Okay, I believe you. How? I mean, its brain is obviously getting oxygenated or it wouldn't be hopping around. But how does the blood circulate if the heart's not pumping?"
"We're not sure." He waved at a garbage can. There was a former rabbit inside.
"Were you dissecting it or dicing it?"
"Auger's a biochemist, and me… well, neither of us can even carve a roast."
"I see. You need someone who feels at home with a scalpel, right? Look, this is my first real vacation in seven years, and I have a job that starts Back East in a month…"
Weems and Auger entered the lab.
"I am certain, Mr. Weems, that even you will notice that we have not had recourse to the pawnshop," Auger said, gesturing expansively.
Weems pointed to a coffee mug sitting on the infrared spectrometer. "Is that any way to treat the Foundation's equip—Who's she?"
"Our new associate," Auger said.
Weems looked at me contemptuously.
"You wanna see my credentials?"
He sneered. "I think I see them."
I said, "You boys just got yourselves a surgeon."
The progressive effect of vampirism upon host physiology was studied in rats. One group was injected with a threshold number of P. augeria, sacrificed, and placed in an incubation chamber held at 15°C to hasten replication. Ninety-seven percent of the infected rats reanimated between 54 and 73 hours post-mortem. Specimens were sacrificed at intervals of 0, 6, 12, 24, etc., hours post-revivification, and the gross anatomy, pathology, and serology studied.
Another group of control rats was injected with normal saline, sacrificed, and placed in the 15°C incubation chamber. These under-went classical necrotic decay, and were disposed of on the sixth day.
"Whew. Smells like a charnel house," Marlowe said. "How do you stand it?"
"It's obvious you never worked in an inner-city clinic, Kevin. Or lived on a farm." I pointed to the rat I had pinned open on the table and was dissecting under red light.
"See that? They may not be using the heart as a pump, but it's still the crossroads of the circulatory system. That must be why the old stake-in-the-heart routine works."
"Only as a temporary measure," Marlowe said. "The microorganisms seem able to repair tissue. Remember, the classical method of killing vampires is staking, followed closely by decapitation or burning."
"Mmm. Stake, season well with garlic, and place in a hot oven until thoroughly cooked. Look at those little buggies move."
"Please do not call my Pseudobacteria augeria 'buggies,' " Auger said, walking in on us. He was good at that.
"Oh, you'll want to see this, sir," Marlowe said, handing the taller man an electronmicrograph.
"Beautiful!"
I stood on tiptoe to see. The micrograph showed the bug, with its bacteria-like lack of a nucleus, its amoeba-like pseudopods and irregular cellular borders, and its just-plain-weird ribosome clusters and endoplasmic reticulum, plus some things not even Marlowe could identify. There was a smooth, anucleate disc attached to the outer membrane.
"Wow! That's got an erythrocyte hooked on!"
"I let them settle out instead of centrifuging," Marlowe said proudly. "The spinning must dislodge the red blood cells from the surface."
"Well, that explains how the blood is transported," I said. Auger lifted his eyebrow slightly, to signify intellectual condescension.
We heard a car drive up.
"Hell and damn!" Auger said "It must be Weems again." He scowled and left the room.
"How about seeing the movie in town tonight, Mae?" Marlowe suggested.
"We've seen it, twice, unless you mean the new Disney over South-County."
"Lord, what a dull area. How do you stand it?"
"Well, in three weeks—when I'm in a Manhattan emergency room and up to my ears in blood—I'll cherish these nice quiet memories. Why don't we take a day off and drive down to the city—"
"Idiot!"
Outside in the garden, Professor Auger was shouting. We heard Weems shouting back. Marlowe and I ran out.
"It's revoked," Weems was yelling. The little man had ducked behind his car for protection. Auger looked mad enough to throttle him. His face was livid, and he was breathing as if he'd just run the four-minute mile. I didn't even want to imagine what his blood pressure was up to.
"Calm down, you'll give yourself a stroke," I said.
Weems turned to us triumphantly. "The Foundation's revoked the grant. We'll want a total accounting."
"You bastard!" Auger bellowed, and lunged across the car at Weems. He halted in mid-stride, a confused expression on his face, grabbed his stomach, and collapsed.
I leapt over and began examining him. He was pale and breathing rapidly, with a weak, racing pulse. Shock.
"Is it a heart attack?" Weems asked. The little rodent sounded happy.
Marlowe knelt on the other side. "What can I do?" he asked. I ripped open Auger's shirt and felt his abdomen. It was hot, pink and firm. Internal hemorrhage.
"Oh, Christ." I reached inside his pants and felt for the femoral pulse. There was none. "Well, that's it. Damn." I realized I was crying.
Auger stopped breathing, and Marlowe began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I reached to the neck and felt for the carotid pulse. It fluttered weakly and then faded.
"It's no use, Kevin. He's dead."
Weems chortled gleefully, jumped in his car, and sped up the driveway in reverse. Marlowe began external heart massage, anxiously doing it 'way too fast.
I pulled him off and shook his shoulders. "Stop it, Kevin. It won't help. Remember those stomach pains he had? It was an aneurysm, a weakness in the wall of his abdominal aorta. It burst, Kevin; he's bled to death internally. CPR won't help, dammit, nothing can."
"Ambulance, call a—"
"Listen. Even if they could get here within a half-hour, it wouldn't do any good. Look, Kevin, five minutes ago, if I'd had him on the table in a fully equipped operating room, with a good team, we could have tried a DeBakey graft. But the chances of saving him would have been maybe five percent."
Marlowe stood and stared down at the body. Then he turned and ran inside the house, leaving me with the corpse. Dead, Auger was devoid of charisma. His features were bloodless white; he looked like a horror waxwork. I closed his mouth and rearranged the clothes to give him more dignity.
Marlowe returned with a huge cardiac syringe and a bottle of milky liquid.
"You're crazy."
"It would work, Mae. We can bring him back. I centrifuged them down to a concentrate. There are enough pseudobacteria here to repair the damage and reanimate him almost immediately."
The implications were terrifying. Vampire rabbits were bizarre enough, but he was preparing to do it to a human being.
"You can save his life! Come on, do it."
Typical Marlowe, always leaving the decisions to someone else. I filled the syringe and plunged the six-inch needle deep into the blood-distended abdomen. Marlowe looked ill, and turned away. It was hard work pushing in the fluid. I pulled the needle out, and a small amount of blood welled up through the puncture. Two more syringes full and the bottle was empty.
We carried the body into the lab and packed it in ice to lower the body temperature quicker. Marlowe went away to vomit. I brewed some coffee and added a stiff jolt of medicinal Scotch.
"Here's to a fellow future inmate of Sing Sing," I toasted Marlowe.
Half an hour later we were feeling no pain.
"We'll have to buy him a black cape," I was saying. "Lessons in Transylvanian diction, too."
"I vant to suck your blood," Marlowe said, and leapt on me. We collapsed on the floor together, laughing.
The doorbell rang. Weems had returned with a sheriffs deputy.
"Hey, Fred!"
"Uh, hi, Mae. Long time no see." The deputy looked embarrassed.
"We went to high school together," I announced to no one in particular.
"Sorry to have to disturb you, but this guy says you've got a stiff here."
Marlowe giggled from the floor. "A body? I don't see anybody." He adopted a stern voice. "The only thing dead around here is the night life in town."
Weems piped up with, "They're drunk."
"Brilliant, Weems, an astonishing deduction," I cried.
"They've hidden the body! Alastair Auger was dead. She even said so." He pointed at me accusatorily.
"Remove your finger."
The deputy stepped between us. "Uh, I'm sorry, Mae, uh, Doc, out I have to make a report."
"Professor Auger's not feeling well, Fred; he shouldn't be disturbed. Hey, you can believe me when I say he's alive. I'm a doctor. We're trained to know these things."
"They're faking. I won't leave until I see Auger's body."
"Yes, it is awe-inspiring. But I'm afraid you're just not my type, Weems."
Weems's face blanched at the sight of Auger, leaning in the doorway to the lab, and smiling malevolently at us all. He was glistening from the ice, and was wearing a towel.
"She's done something to him," Weems stuttered. "He was dead."
The deputy took Weems's elbow and propelled the little man out the door. "Sorry, Mae, Professors—" He headed for the patrol car, saying, "Okay, mister, there's a little matter of making false reports."
Marlowe laughed hysterically.
"If you hadn't woken up right then," I said, "you'd have woken up in the county morgue."
Auger said, "If you'll excuse me, this light is most unpleasant and I'm starving."
I offered to fetch him a pint of blood.
"Yes, please, please, Doctor. I'm finding myself uncomfortably attracted to your neck."
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The vampire is traditionally considered a body occupied by a demon. We may now modify that picture to encompass a mammal, dead in that its heart does not beat and its body temperature is abnormally, indeed fatally, low, but still functioning as an organism due to the presence of a colony of symbiotes. The pseudobacteria function as metabolizers and as transporters of oxygen, nutrients, and wastes, functions assumed in uninfected organisms by the circulatory and digestive systems. P. augeria is a weak infective agent, requiring the special environment found after death, and susceptible to most common antibacterial drugs. Folklore documents the vampire's aversion to game, a mild antibiotic.
The host physiology undergoes changes which seem to eliminate unnecessary systems and increase efficiency for vampiric adaptations. These changes appear to be progressive, but must await long-term studies.
The first major change is the atrophy of the digestive tract. Nutrients pass directly from the stomach to the blood-stream, with the concurrent necessity that only isotonic solutions be ingested, to avoid the osmotic destruction of the blood cells. As the only isotonic solution available in nature is blood, the vampire's fluid intake has traditionally been in this form. An external blood source is also necessary for other reasons. Because blood transport is pseudobacterial rather than hydrostatic, and hence much slower, the body requires more red cells than can be produced by the host's bone marrow.
"All the great men are dead—myself, for instance."
"Breathe in," I replied.
Marlowe walked in, saw us, and blushed. The longer I knew Kevin, the more I realized how anal retentive he could be.
"Am I interrupting?"
"Yes," Auger said! When he spoke, I could see his sharp canine teeth.
"No. Pass me that, yeah, the sphygmomanometer. You don't realize what a pleasure it is to have a patient who doesn't complain about the stethoscope being cold."
I joked as I put on the blood pressure cuff, trying to hide the creepy feeling Auger gave me. Intellectually, I knew he was the same man I a met a week before, but emotionally I had problems relating to a patient with a current body temperature of 30°C—midway between what it should be, and the temperature of the room. And because of the vagaries of his circulation, even in the warmest room Auger's hands felt like he'd been out in a snowstorm without his mittens.
"Must we do this again?" Auger winced as I pumped up the cuff. I nodded, and listened with the stethoscope. I just couldn't get used to the fact that his heart didn't beat, and that he had no blood pressure.
"No diastolic, no systolic," I said. "Sir, your b.p.'s holding steady at zero over zero."
"Ah, normal," Auger said, reaching for his shirt. "Enough time wasted. Shall we return to the lab?"
He hated medical exams (and, I was convinced, doctors as well). I argued in vain for the opportunity to take him to a hospital and run some real tests on him: X-rays, metabolic studies, EEGs…
"It's three in the morning," Marlowe complained. "I need some coffee."
"Can't get used to working graveyard shift?"
He acknowledged my joke with a weak smile. This nocturnal living was tough to get used to. Auger had acquired the vampiric dislike of daylight. Another thing that needed more study: was it because of the temperature, or the infrared radiation? In any case, my parents seemed to think my new hours were the result of an affair with Kevin Marlowe, and this made things fairly uncomfortable on the home front.
Auger accepted a cup of coffee, and stirred in a spoonful of salt, to make it osmotically similar to blood.
"There aren't enough metabolites and nutrients in the blood you drink to sustain you, Professor. Where the hell do you get your energy?"
"It's a negentropic process, similar to the one which allows my Pseudobacteria augeria to be dormant over 35°, while ordinary enzymatic processes become accelerated," he told me. "How much calculus have you had, Dr. Sanger?"
"Two semesters."
"You'd need at least four to understand. Hadn't we better return to work?"
As human populations grew, they tended to eliminate competing species, creating a niche for a predator. It may be possible to remutate Pseudobacteria augeria to its hypothetical ancestor, P. lycanthropica, which could survive at normal body temperature and changed its hosts into carnivorous animals. The body type was probably mediated by a supervene complex similar in principle to those found in butterfly mimicry, resulting in discrete morphs with a lack of intermediate types. Examination of the literature suggests the morph adopted was that of the major natural predator of the geographical area, leading to werewolves in Northern Europe, were-bears in Scandinavia, and were-tigers in India. Some cases have been reported of werewolves becoming vampires after death, suggesting either concurrent infection, or evolution in progress.
I was driving back from town when I saw police cars lined up along the road. I slowed up and yelled out the window.
"Need a doctor?"
My deputy friend Fred flagged me in behind a patrol car. "Remember the wimp who accused the big guy of being dead?"
He led me through a swarm of cops, down the gully to the creek.
Weems lay with his arm dangling in the creek. His wrist had been slashed, and he had bled to death.
"Not much blood," I finally commented. "It usually gets all over when someone exsanguinates."
"Washed away downstream," the sheriff said. "They always have to come on my territory to kill themselves. How long would you say he's been dead?"
The body was cold. Rigor mortis was complete but not yet passing off. I estimated twenty hours, maybe less allowing for the cold.
"Damned suicides," the sheriff muttered.
"Big goddamn nuisance." I agreed, and we all stood around for a few minutes swapping gross-out stories.
Then I sped home, parked the car, and walked over to the lab. It was dusk when I arrived.
Marlowe was in an elated mood. "We've started on the last draft of the article. We'll submit simultaneously to Science and Nature. Well, Mae, start working up an appetite because I hear they have great food at the Nobel awards."
I stomped past him to Auger's bedroom. Auger was lying on his bed, absolutely straight, like a corpse already laid out. As I stood there, clenching my fists, he awoke and sat up.
"Well, Dr. Sanger. To what do I owe the honor of—"
"You killed him."
"Whom?"
Oh he could be suave.
"You were clever making it look like suicide. The cops have swallowed it."
He gave me his most charming smile, not realizing how his long teeth spoiled the effect. "I had no alternative. The man was our enemy. He convinced the Foundation to revoke our funding."
"His death won't get the grant back, Auger. You just killed him out of spite."
He laid a cold hand on my arm. "Calm down. By next week we'll all be famous. You won't have to take that cheap job in New York. You'll be the most pre-eminent witchdoctor in America."
"You're making me sick." I wrenched my arm away and walked out. "Good-bye, Kevin. It was swell while it lasted. Leave my name off the article. I want to forget that any of this happened."
Marlowe had a hurt-little-boy look on his face. "But you can't just leave."
"Watch me," I muttered.
It was pitch black already, but I'd walked it a dozen times. When my feet felt asphalt instead of gravel, I turned right and headed uphill. A passing car lit up the road, and I moved to the side. The tail-lights dwindled in the distance, and in their faint afterglow I saw a tall figure come from the driveway.
Auger.
Following me.
Then it was black again. I saw two eyes, shining like a deer's, only red. They were all I could see: the stars above, the two red eyes. They stared right at me, the nightsight of the predator.
Auger spoke softly, his voice carrying in the stillness.
"It won't hurt. You know you want it."
I panicked and started running, going by the sound of my feet on the blacktop, my hands outstretched as I ran blind. My heart was pounding with fear and cold sweat poured down my body, but the supercharge of adrenalin Kept me going.
I saw the glimmer of light on the mailbox. I could turn down the driveway, run the quarter-mile to my home. Home, light, safety…
Something cut off the glow of the mailbox; and I knew it was Auger, in front of me now, blocking the driveway. Six feet above the ground, two red eyes.
I swerved and plunged into the forest. Branches whipped against my face and caught in my clothes and hair. I tripped and fell in the stream, got up and kept running.
Hands caught me from behind and pulled me against a body, invisible in the dark. I was conscious of an inhumanly strong grip, and a coat smelling of wool and chemicals. I started pounding and flailing, but he ignored my blows.
He caught my hands and held them in one ice-like hand.
"Don't fight it," he whispered. "You'll enjoy it."
I felt his breath on my neck, and tried to scream, but I couldn't. I was too scared.
This can't be happening to me, I thought. Not me.
The bite was sharp and painful, followed by a warm sensation as my blood welled up through the punctures. I started struggling again, but he was oblivious to everything but the blood he was greedily sucking in.
My mind went clinical on me. Two pints equals fifteen percent blood volume. Moderate shock will set in. I could feel the symptoms start. He's killing me.
My knees gave out and I sank to the ground, Auger still drinking from my left jugular. Over the roaring in my ears I could hear my gasping breath and the vampire's gross panting and slobbering. I was too weak to fight any more. The summer constellations gazed down uncaring, and became part of a light show as lack of oxygen brought hallucinations, and a strange feeling of euphoria.
The dying started to feel good.
CONCLUSIONS. Throughout history the vampire has been maligned as a villain and demon. Now that the etiology of the condition is understood, there is no reason why the vampire cannot take his place as a functioning member of society. With prescription availability of blood, the disease will be limited to present victims. Under these conditions it need not even be classified as contagious.
I woke up under an oak tree. A spider had used my left arm to anchor its web, and earwigs were nesting in my hair.
"Ohhh. I must have tied one on good," I groaned, and pulled myself into a sitting position, leaning against the oak. I felt like hell. Weak, cold, splitting headache, and hungry. Never so hungry in all my life. The feeling of hunger seemed to fill every inch of my body.
Absently, I put two fingers to my wrist to take my pulse.
There was none.
I reached up to check the carotid. Every movement hurt.
My heart wasn't beating.
I withdrew my hand and stared at my fingers. They were pale: dead white.
I was dead. I was a vampire. I tongued my canines and felt their new sharpness.
Auger did this to me. I remembered it all, and felt nauseated.
He'd be in the lab.
And blood. They had blood there. Whole refrigerators full. Rabbit blood. Rat blood.
Human blood.
The new moon is still a sliver in the sky, but I can see in the dark now. A deer crosses my path and freezes in terror until I pass. As I approach the house I can hear Marlowe typing the article the damned article.
It will even be possible, through a controlled infection of Pseudo-bacteria augeria, to conquer death, allowing us to revive and preserve indefinitely great minds and
"Kevin. Get me some blood. Quick, before I bite you."
I clutch at a chair to control myself. When I look down, I see that my new vampiric strength has crushed the hard plastic.
Marlowe tremulously hands me a liter of O-negative. I gulp it down. It's cold, cramping my stomach.
"More."
It takes six liters before I can look at Marlowe without wanting to attack him. Then I clean up some, comb my hair, cover my filthy clothes with a lab coat, and slip a filled syringe into the pocket.
"Where is he, Kevin?"
"You're alive, Mae, that's what counts. Let's not—"
"He sucked me damn near dry. Where is he?"
"It didn't hurt you. He said it wouldn't—"
I grab his arm, and he flinches at the touch. "Feel it, Kevin, dead flesh. Is a Nobel going to keep either of us warm at night?"
"Add this to the conclusion, Kevin: 'Where there is no longer any death, murder must be redefined.' Welcome back, Dr. Sanger."
Auger stands in the lab doorway. I realize that I'm shaking.
He can't hurt me now, I repeat over and over. But I want to flee. Or else cry.
"Refrigerated blood is nothing. Wait until you've drunk warm, pulsing, living blood."
"Shut up," I whisper.
"And the power. The strength. You've always admired strength. You'll enjoy being a vampire, Dr. Sanger."
"No. No, I won't become power-crazy. I won't kill, I'm trained to save, to heal… I won't be like you!"
He laughes.
"Biology isn't destiny!" I scream.
He laughs more. I almost don't blame him.
"I thought we'd give you a chance. All right, Kevin, stake her."
I spin around. Marlowe has a wooden stake and a mallet, but he's vacillating, as usual. I pick him up and toss him to the floor before Auger.
Auger curses and snatches up the stake.
"Am I to assume this won't hurt either?" I ask.
"I've always admired the late doctor's resilient sense of humor," he says.
I pull the syringe from my pocket, duck in close, ram it into his side and push the plunger.
"Admire that—twenty cc of tetracycline."
He roars and throws a table at me. I duck, and it crashes into a shelf of chemicals.
"You're cured, Auger. I've killed those little bugs, the ones that are keeping you alive."
He picks up a 200-pound spectrometer and tosses it at me. It bowls me into the cages, liberating a half-dozen specimens. Vampire rabbits scurry about underfoot. I get up and dust myself off.
"Temper, temper. That's Foundation equipment."
Marlowe watches dumbfounded as Auger throws the gas chromatograph at me. It shatters on the floor, sparks igniting the spilled chemicals. A brisk fire begins, punctuated by explosions of bottled reagents.
Auger closes in and grabs me, but this time I push him back, pick up the wooden stake, and shove it into his heart.
He looks surprised.
"Why me?" he asks, and dies again.
"Kevin. Come on. The place is burning up."
"Get away from me," he yells. "Don't touch me, vampire!" He pulls open his shirt to show a cross on a chain.
"Don't be stupid, Kevin."
The fire has reached the chemical stockroom. I run for the window, and plunge through in a cloud of glass. The lab behind me explodes.
Marlowe's screams die out.
Charred paper blows away as heated air rushes out the shattered windows. The plastic on the typewriter melts and runs, laying bare the sparking wires inside. The metal letters writhe and bend and wrap around each other, and then melt into an indistinguishable lump.
I go home and clean up, and get back in time to watch the firemen. Not much is left of the old farmhouse.
"I'm a physician. Can I help?"
"They're beyond help, Mae." The fire chief remembers me from 4H. "Think you could identify the bodies?"
They've covered them with yellow plastic blankets, two gross, body-shaped chunks of charred meat. The fire chief looks at me sympathetically.
"I guess their own mothers wouldn't know them… you're pale, Mae. Johnny, you better walk her home."
A husky young fireman takes my arm and steers me up the path, away from the lights and smoke.
"They were scientists?" he asks. "What were they doing in there?"
"Working on things man was not meant to know," I say. He doesn't recognize the quote.
I stare sideways at my escort.
He's young and strong and healthy.
He won't miss a pint at all.