Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor (22 page)

Chapter Thirteen

            He slept poorly. 
Harold managed to sneak a meal from his hidden stash before heading to bed. 
Still no Vlad, but he’d been in the bathroom all night with the dry heaves from
attempting more of Donald’s blood substitute at group earlier. The blood
Mephisto gave him had a wonderfully settling effect on Harold’s stomach and he
thought he’d be able to sleep like a baby.  Not so.

            Harold tossed and
turned, not able to find his zone and get a good night’s rest.  His thoughts
turned to Skellie.  He didn’t know the skeleton very well, but he felt kind of
sorry for the guy.  No one knew what the skeleton was infected with, they only
knew he’d been starving himself for Donald since joining group.  His efforts
were about to pay off, but Harold knew enough to be concerned.  As the feds
said, group members had a way of disappearing.  This even bothered Mephisto,
whom Harold couldn’t quite figure out.  Mephisto was crazy, but even that
couldn’t convince Harold couldn’t turn down a lifetime supply of blood.  Not
when his own efforts in securing food paled in comparison. 

            Sleep finally
came in the form of vats of warm, fresh blood to sooth his tortured soul.  It
didn’t feature Orlen or the feds and it was wonderful. 

            His anxiety
followed Harold when he came into work the next evening.  David sat in his
usual place and greeted him as an old pal.  It felt good to have David back on
his side again.  Tension in the workplace led to unwanted accidents. 

            Halfway through
their shift, the supervisor came in to let them know they had finished their
investigation of the department and everything looked normal.  David looked
both relieved and trapped.  Harold guessed David still had a debt to pay off,
but David knew what he’d been walking into when he started gambling his
lifesavings away.

             Too many people
around him were being sucked into this thing.  Either the feds got you,
reformers got you or the infection got you.  Harold wanted to see some light at
the end of the tunnel. 

            Skellie had been
working so hard to get out of the program, starving and groveling and conning
to get away from the group.  Now, Donald was more than likely going to do
something insidious to the poor sap.  

            The skeleton was
one of those who couldn’t go out in the daytime.  He’d be a fright anyway. 
Donald would be coming over at five to set him free, but to what?  The
remaining hours of work had Harold feeling antsy and David yelled at him twice
for screwing up slides.  Clocking out at four was a relief.

            He booked it back
to the halfway house and parked the phantom in front just after four thirty,
hunching down low behind the wheel.  Harold stayed there for twenty minutes
before his screaming joints made him sit up again.  He lacked great
surveillance skills.  After spending a few minutes fumbling with the bucket
seats he opted to lie down in back.  Donald’s Landrover and distinctive
footsteps were easy enough to discern by sound. 

            About a half hour
passed before Harold heard the vehicle rumbling down the street.  He almost
pissed himself when it parked right behind his car.  All he needed was Donald
poking his head through the window to ask what he was doing.  Just great. 

            Luckily, Donald
hopped out and walked by with nothing more than a whistle and a literal skip in
his step.  It was disturbing on a middle-aged man who mentored creatures of the
night.

            Donald slipped
into the halfway house.  Harold craned his neck up at an awkward angle to watch
the door.  Some tense and painful minutes later Donald reappeared with the
skeleton.  He carried the skeleton’s suitcase and looked relatively jovial. 
Hell, the skeleton looked jovial too.  The bastard ought too.

            Harold dropped
his head and lay prone as the two got closer.  He could sense the skeleton and
Donald without seeing them.  As always Skellie gave him a feeling of
hollowness, of hunger.  It made him want to reach for the nearest pint.

            Skellie hesitated
at the phantom, as if registering Harold's presence in the car.  Harold
remained very still, eyes closed, hoping he gave the impression of someone
sleeping off a bender.  If Skellie knew the fake he didn’t let on with Donald
and the two got into the landrover.  Donald thoughtfully held open the
passenger door for the skeleton and even buckled the seat belt for him.  All
the while he kept up this inane chatter about graduating the program and how
proud he was about Skellie’s choices.

            Harold scrambled
to the front of the car as the landrover pulled away.  Panicking when he
couldn’t find the keys, he jabbed blindly in the dark, scraping knuckles and
bruising fingers on the dash, the gear box, the ice scraper in the floor.  They
were driving away fast, almost to the end of the street now.  The backseat only
held a pair of Maria’s panties.  He pocketed them.  Harold checked his coat,
jeans, shirt.  Finding nothing, he yelled in frustration, slamming the wheel
with his open palm.  The ignition jingled.  Oh.

            Harold started
the car, resisting the urge to turn on the headlights and pulled out to the
street in time to see the landrover turn left at a stop sign.  Harold gunned it
to the end of the street.  He felt kind of guilty for driving fast without his
lights on, but this baby had kicking brakes.  Just in case.

            The landrover
only remained a couple hundred feet ahead so he turned at the sign and
immediately slowed, eased up some more.  Donald’s granny driving nearly caused
Harold to hit the back of the man’s car.  Harold felt fairly confident the
darkness would cover his phantom, but he didn’t want to risk getting too close
and being seen.

            They drove to the
warehouse district across town, where group met, but they passed the meeting
place by in favor of a nondescript, several stories high, office building. 
Harold worked himself into a tizzy during the drive.  Every stop sign, every
red-light, every time Donald slowed down he knew he was made.  He fought the
urge to drive away when they turned into the parking lot.  Knowing where they
went was enough for the feds, right? 

            He sighed,
parking down the next street.  Harold ran back to the building, sticking to the
shadows on one hell of an annoyingly well-lit street.  By the time he got
there, they’d already gone in.  He recognized the name of the building from its
sign over the front entrance.  Phenochem, maker of that hated fake blood
concoction.  Harold followed their scent inside. 

            A bevy of odors
confounded him at first.  The wide, open space of the first floor with,
untended receptionist’s area on the far side, carpeted floor, waiting chairs,
even a few potted plants gracing the corners, titanium white walls and strong
underlying antiseptic odor gave the familiar impression of a medical facility. 
Is this what Donald meant by graduating?

            On top of this
hospital flavor were a range of other smells, both human and infected.  Some
were a little off to him.  Many businesslike and anxious, some fear, anger,
excitement.  It took a good minute of serious concentration for Harold to
identify Donald and Skellie in the mix.  Their scent leading off to a stairwell
past the receptionist’s desks.  Donald’s scent reeked of growing excitement,
his trail well laid along the path.  He’d been here before, going back and
forth with many others.

            Down the stairs,
he found a heavy basement door with keypad locks.  A normal guy would have
reached his dead end here.  Luckily, Harold was a vamp.  He sniffed the keypad,
detecting with his nose the different keys Donald pushed and in what order.  A
good skill, not only for sneaking into places, but also for detecting when
Maria wanted to get busy.

            Inside, it was a
crazed scientist’s dream laboratory.  Doctor Jekyll would have been right at
home mixing odd concoctions and drinking potions of his own making. 

            Harold stuck to
the wall.  No Donald or Skellie in sight, but he could hear them.  Skellie’s
nervousness pervaded the room.  Many ‘graduating’ members of group probably
started to sense something wrong about here.             

            The lab was laid
out in a large L-shape, the vertical length of which Harold was in and could
easily observe even though many of the lights were off.  The bottom part of the
‘L’ that he couldn’t see, worried Harold.  Donald and Skellie were down there
now.  Feeling none of the compulsion which had driven him to go forward in
Mephisto’s casino, Harold inched his way along the wall of the lab.  One hundred
feet, sixty feet, he was close enough to hear them speaking clearly.  Well,
Donald spoke.  He told Skellie how sorry he was things hadn’t quite worked
out.  Skellie kind of gurgled and clanked in a way which made Harold think of
the Aquarium.  Maria dragged him to visit it last winter when the sun went down
before businesses started closing up for the day.  The only time of year they
could go out on live dates.

            On one trip, the
tanks were being cleaned by staff and the long squeegee they used to scrape the
inside glass of pond scum made that gurgling, clanking noise.  Harold slowed to
a stop, afraid of what he might see down there.

            Donald’s words,
the sound, the building, all of this reeked of a Hitchcock movie.  He’d never
believed Donald’s group could give a second chance at normal life, but going
down that corner meant facing the truth about his world.  It meant admitting to
himself and that there were no lights at the end of the tunnel.  He was
starting to realize why the werewolf stayed in denial.

            He could turn and
go back or he could continue on.  In a way it was the ultimate question, to be
or not to be.  Would he claim life as it stood or would he turn tail and return
to the darkness?  He’d been hiding for so long.  So many year spent in the dark
while the world went on around him.  Harold didn’t want to hide anymore. 

            He continued
forward another few dozen yards.  Around the corner, Harold saw Skellie,
trapped behind thick glass in a chamber filled with water.  Donald’s pale,
vested figure stood in front as a child admiring some unique aquatic life form
might.   The skeleton twisted and writhed, clawing the glass with his bony
fingers, making the clanking squeegee sound. 

            “I’m sorry,”
Donald said, “everyone fails in the end.  No matter what I do, none of you gets
any better.  I should have realized… it’s in your nature.”

            Donald walked
over to a panel on the side of the chamber and fiddled with it.

            “I got tired of
it you know, the chase,” Donald whispered.  Besides that, the clicking of the dials
punctured Harold’s ears with each turn.  “I thought, settle down, change
tactics, see if they can be fixed.  It’s still exactly the same with every
single one of you.”

            He stopped
turning the dials and placed a hand on a large lever in the panel. 

            “Although, I must
say you all are being very creative in your attempts to fool me.  I mean,
starving yourself, because you knew you wouldn’t die.”

            Donald chuckled,
shaking his head.  He pulled the switch.  At first nothing happened, then
Skellie’s body tensed, arched so severely Harold thought his back might be
breaking.  Skellie didn’t come out of the shape.  Instead his arms and legs
joined in extending the arch, moving further, impossibly further towards each
other.

            Donald watched
this with a placid face.  His right arm draped over the lever.  Harold clung to
the corner of the wall.  His fingers digging into the plaster and sheet rock. 
He couldn’t stop himself from looking on as Skellie cooked.

            The water around
the skeleton filled with rising air bubbles.  Tiny streams became larger rivers
of bubbles boiling up steadily and turned into large, slow bubbles making their
way to the top of the chamber beyond Harold’s view.

            All the while
Skellie’s body remained arched in a sharp, sad manner.  Harold and Donald moved
not an inch during the process.  Skellie’s body changed.  Perceptibly the skin
darkened from candle wax yellow to a dark orange red, as the water cooked him
alive.  Long moments passed, so long and Harold couldn’t move for the horror in
sight.

            Donald flipped
the switch and the watery chamber stopped roiling as suddenly.  Skellie’s body
remained locked in that shape as it slowly drifted down to the chamber floor. 

            Donald pushed a
button and the chamber drained of water with swirling, sucking sounds.  Harold
turned and fled the room, flight instincts kicking in with the jarring noise.

            He tore out of
the facility on hell’s wheels, sounds of the chamber draining following him out
of the laboratory and up the stairs, where he didn’t bother to soften his
slapping footfalls.  Signs of life teased Harold’s nose as he ran from the
hallways to the lobby where Harold felt certain others, workers coming in for
the day had passed moments before.  He bumped into several chairs on his way
out, leaving traces of his scent, but Harold didn’t care.  He wanted to get out
of there as quickly as possible.