Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor (6 page)

            The patrolman
leaves the Taser on far too long in Harold’s opinion before running up to the
guy.  His partner is behind him, Taser gun also drawn. 

            Zeke gets one
more quick shock for not rolling over fast enough for the cop’s preference.  He
finally gets on his belly, gasping for air, eyes wide and they slap cuffs on
his wrists, pulling him up on wobbly legs and dragging him back to his bed.   

            Seconds later,
the patrolman comes out of the partition and calls to Harold.  “You.  Blood
samples.”

            The emergency
room returns to its former quiet chaos.  A drunken and sedated Bill sleeps it
off, while handcuffed to the bed.  Nurses and doctors disappear back into the
woodwork from where they’d just appeared.  An orderly is called to clean up the
mess Bill made. 

            Harold took a
deep breath and retrieved his kit.  He followed the cop to the next partition
where Zeke sat on the bed, sobbing.  No recognition showed in man’s dull eyes
and no marks showed on his neck.  He was too focused on the fate those
confirmed blood tests would bring.  A vampire, in an accident with a recently
bit man and running from the cops.  It didn’t take a genius to connect the
dots.

            Harold drew the
blood.  He finished up with the man and told the cops a report would be ready
in about half an hour. Harold left, eager to get away from Zeke.

            The husky cop
nodded at Bill’s prone form on the bed, “You know, it is strange the guy
reacted so strongly to having his blood drawn,” he rubbed his scraggly chin
with a hand, “almost like he was scared to death of you.”

            Harold tucked his
gloves into a hospital waste bag.  “He’s probably afraid of needles.  You know
how people get.”

            “Vamps, you
mean.  Not people.”

            “Yeah.”  He left
the emergency room before the deputy could continue the conversation, blood
samples in hand and a cold sweat trickling down his back. 

            Harold slipped
down the hall, making random turns, not stopping until he reached the
administrative offices, with their dark rooms and locked doors.  Sweat
continued down his back and under his arms, staining the pits of his scrubs a
dark blue.  No one chased Harold from the ER.  No voice came over the intercom
signaling a hospital emergency in code.  Nothing, but a man crying in the ER a
few hundred feet away. 

            He was an
incredibly lucky bastard. 

            After the
adrenaline stopped pulsing through his veins and his pits were mostly dry, Harold
backtracked to the lab.  The immediate danger to himself over, but every person
who passed him in the hallway seemed to give him a distrustful look or wide
berth.  By the time he got back to the office where David played solitaire, a
new anxiousness had taken hold.

            It took twenty
minutes to test the blood.  Both were positive for infection antibodies to
Vosanguvirus
of the subfamily:
Creuviridae
, of the family:
Human Abeoviridae;
generally
called Abeos.  The blight of humanity, affecting people by changing them in
many different, strange and terrifying ways, depending on the particular
virus.  Harold held the remains of Zeke’s blood sample up to the light.  He had
Vampirism.  The dark fluid hid its secrets from the average observer.  Without
a bite mark and with fangs retracted, Harold looked like everyone else.  Just
as that man down in the ER did.  Harold didn’t know the entire story with Zeke
and Bill, but he did know both were fucked.  Bill would end up in a treatment
facility until doctors deemed him suitable for release.  Zeke, well, once the
coppers got these test results they’d investigate more thoroughly.  Test the
DNA of the infection in both men.  Draw their own conclusions. 

            David now worked
laboriously over a series of biopsies for the surgical department.  His back
was to Harold and he was completely absorbed.  Harold made a split second
decision. 

            He went into the
freezer and grabbed a bag of whole blood with the same blood type as Zeke. 
Quietly skewered the bag with a syringe and drew a clean sample.  He slipped
the pint back into the case sideways for later retrieval and went back to his
workstation.  Harold tossed Zeke’s true sample and results out, reset the
centrifuge and ran a new test with the clean sample. 

            Twenty minutes
later Harold delivered the results to the highway patrolmen waiting
downstairs.  One clean and one infected.

            Harold finished
up his shift feeling a little bit on edge.  David came back from break a few
hours later with news from one of the nurses about the same scene Harold
endured earlier.  David talked on that the rest of the night while Harold
played indifferent to the topic and tried to start up game of poker, but the
man was all over the story.  He spent the rest of the shift speculating about
what happened, tossing out everything from willing victim to late night snack. 
Harold only said they’d probably know more after the report came out in the
news. 

Chapter Four

            Harold slid into
the booth at the all night diner where Zork the slug sat stuffing itself with
blueberry pie.  A pretty waitress tried to give Harold a menu.  He waved her
away.

            On the wall, A
Time to Dine Clock, brightly announced the current time to the diner crowd so
they could flip their menus to breakfast, lunch or dinner by its calculations. 
Waitresses, brisk and professional, click-clacked across the tiles with
platters full of plates.  Underneath, the black and white tiles shined from a
recent waxing and Harold wondered how those brisk women could hurry so without
slipping and sliding all over the floor.  A unique geometric arrangement to the
tiles had Harold’s eyes following them along the restaurant’s layout.  They
traversed through the ins and outs of the dining area.  It felt nostalgic to be
in one of these places again.  The retro theme was very similar the diners of
old.  Too much music and fluorescent lighting and the clothes weren’t right,
but it was almost as the same.

            Large by most
diner standards, this place was filled to the brink with normies and a few
other questionables.  Every booth boasted two or three folks and every booth
featured a glittered red and grey chevron on plastic vinyl.  The red repeated
itself in the soft backlight reaching across the ceiling.  Classic big band
songs familiar to Harold from his younger days, played softly in the
background.  Blinds on the wide windows only accented his view of those rushing
to do late night holiday shopping.  

            The restaurant
even plastered its walls with framed photos and posters of famous Hollywood
stars from the good old days.  Authentic looking, but not real, none of the
posters featured warmest wishes to the diner from any star, long dead or
alive. 

            The jukebox in
the corner playing CDs, but not records dressed in red plastic.  The sugar,
salt and pepper shakers on the table appealed to Harold with red enameled
lids.  Bright chrome coated the place in a mirror finish.  Classic brass
ceiling fans pulled the air up from the floor with a slow, easy rhythm.  Nice
enough and clean and filled with so much lovely red that Harold could have been
chilling in bliss were it not for his current mood. 

            “Have something
to eat,” Zork muttered clearly while not moving its mouth from the food on its
plate.  Sitting next to Zork and opposite Harold in the booth were silent men
in dark grey, off the rack suits.  Men Harold recognized as soon as he walked
in.  It almost made him turn around and walk back out again, but a part of him,
feeling dour in light of recent events and all the holiday cheer figured things
couldn’t get much more unpleasant.  Besides he was curious how the G-men knew
Zork. 

            Agent Bergstrom
asked Harold for some identification, giving no indication he knew the vamp. 
So, they were going to pretend not to know him.  Two could play this game, he
thought  Harold raised his eyebrows at Zork. 

            The slug pulled
its face out of the plate of food, “Go ahead and show ’em.  They’re my
government buddies, right?”  He turned his question to the G-man sitting next
to him, who nodded. 

            Getting the
distinct impression a gun was being pointed at him from underneath the table,
Harold hurried to pull out his wallet and handed it to Potts beside him. 

            All of this cat
and mouse stuff was starting to irritate him.  Not a week ago, he’d seen more
of authority than he wanted to ever encounter again.  That night he vowed to go
straight, stop playing about, maybe even put some effort into this program the
very feds sitting in the booth pushed him into, but eventually he got hungry
again and it dulled his memory of Tasers and handcuffs.  So he ate, from the
blood bank, but he couldn’t look at a pint without first flashing to Zeke’s
face when he realized he’d find no help.

            Zork didn’t
notice the tension.  It continued to dive into its blueberry pie.  Zork eating
human food surprised Harold.  He knew some infecteds could eat regular food,
but Harold barely knew anything about this slug buddy of his, let alone knowing
Zork and the feds were
good
buds.  He started to wonder if maybe he
wouldn’t have been better off with Rufus the werewolf. 

            The G-man looked
at Harold’s license and handed it back with a nod to his partner across the
table.  Bergstrom returned the nod and Harold sensed the gun being put back in
its holster.  As if
he
were impersonating himself.  Who would want to
impersonate him right now?

            Zork finished his
meal with a belch.  “They know you’re a vampire.  Just checking your
identification,” Zork smacked its lips, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t
already have someone tailing you.”

            Harold’s stomach
dropped.  He glanced between the two solemn agents.  Would they have followed
him earlier at work?  If they knew what Harold had done they weren’t letting
on. 

            “What is this?”
He asked. 

            Zork’s eyestalks
twisted around themselves and untwisted again.  “These guys keep an eye on me. 
It’s a long story.”

            Bergstrom held up
a hand.  “Top Secret.  You don’t have the clearance.” 

            A series of harsh
grating sounds erupted from Zork and it took him a moment to realize the slug
was laughing in its own strange way. 

            “Yeah, totally
top secret.  You’d flip if you knew the truth,” Zork managed to grate out along
with its disturbing laughter.  The G-men remained stone faced, they were
apparently used to Zork but Harold wasn’t.  The laughter made him
uncomfortable. 

            Zork sure drew a
lot of attention for a bloodsucking or possibly flesheating monster which
should
really
shun the attention of others.  Didn’t it know what
happened to those like him?  Horror stories of getting staked, burned and
having heads cut off filled popular culture and the nightly news.  At the very
least, creatures like the werewolf wouldn’t be able to get jobs if  people knew
what they played around at every twenty eight days or so.  Harold didn’t know
what the hell it was, but a three foot slug probably wasn’t welcome anywhere in
the first place.  The slug’s crap still stubbornly refused to leave Harold’s
trench coat despite repeated washing and a trip to the dry cleaners.  Maybe
Zork had the G-men for protection from angry dry cleaners.

            Were Harold to
hazard a guess, he’d peg the slug as some mutation created in a government
laboratory gone bad.  Rumors persisted that the government was working with
Abeos to create a kind of bio-weapon.  Harold didn’t really subscribe to
conspiracy theories, but he couldn’t debunk a talking slug sitting right in
front of him.  The slug ate people.  It’s slimy.  It had a bad attitude.  Zork
had B-rated horror movie written all over it.

            Harold held his
hand to the side of his face to hide from curious onlookers in the pie joint. 
“Shut up!”  He muttered at Zork.  Agent Bergstrom, sitting next to Zork,
finally jabbed it in the side with an elbow.  Zork’s laughter ceased. 

            “Right, listen
boys, why don’t you go enjoy your coffees at the bar while my group buddy and I
get our bonding out of the way.”  Zork’s eyestalks motioned meaningfully
towards the bar.  Harold stood up to allow Agent Potts to squeeze out of the
booth as they both quietly left with their drinks, but not before Agent
Bergstrom’s very meaningful glance at Harold. 

            “That was easy.”

            Zork deftly
reached an eyestalk around the handle of its coffee mug and lifted it to an
open mouth for a sip.  “Eh, not really.  They’ve got me on a pretty tight
leash.  Try anything in the least suspicious they’d be back over here in a
flash, guns blazing and all.  Tell me, are they looking?”

            Harold glanced at
the two agents and saw one openly watching.  He avoided Potts gaze.  “Yeah.”

            “Okay,” Zork
shifted around on its side of the booth and changed position.  “Slide your
hands around under the bottom of the table.”

            “What?”

            “Just do it kid. 
I’m looking for something.”

            Harold
tentatively pressed his hands against the particle board under their dining
table.  His fingers encountered dried gum and other unpleasant substances.  “Anything
in particular you’re looking for?”

            “Bugs, they
always bug me to record what I’m saying.”

            Something slimy
crossed the tips of his fingers and he drew back from the table.  His hand
covered in slime, again.  This was going to be a recurring problem with Zork,
he could tell. 

            "Ah ha!”
Zork muttered triumphantly.  Grunting, it shifted around again.  “Can you tell
if they’re suspicious?”

            “Aren’t they
supposed to be?”

            The slug’s bottom
half slid up on top of the table.  Or was it a tail?  Two small round dots were
stuck to the end of the appendage.  Zork dropped them on the table.  Harold
watched as Zork wrapped an eyestalk around the sugar jar at the table and
firmly crushed the two bugs with it.

            Zork saw Harold’s
face. “You should see what I can do with this in bed.”  It pulled its mouth
open to reveal those long, needle teeth and Harold didn’t think he really
wanted to know.

            Zork sat back,
“So what are you in for?”

            “I got picked up
for assault.  Got me in the act.”

            “Sucks for you.”

            “It’s not so
bad,” Harold muttered, eyeing the two feds at the bar, “I could have gone to
the slammer.”

            The slug blew out
from a set of air holes on the side of its body, making a soft blubbering
sound.  “You don’t want to go.  I’ve been and it’s no cake walk.”

            “Is that why
you’re in FEBs,” he leaned forward, “and why you’re hanging out with government
agents?”           

            “Long story,” the
slug whispered, looking over Harold’s shoulder at the G-men, “the short of it,
I’m from outer space.  Get used to it.”

            Harold snorted. 
He grinned at the creature.  “You’re a space slug.”

            “Yep,” Zork
said.  It lifted the coffee mug with an eyestalk to take a sip. 

            “Well?”

            “What?  I can’t
tell you the whole messy story.  If I did, they’d have to kill you.  Besides,
we have about five minutes of uninterrupted conversation before my escorts
realize I’ve crushed their bugs again.  Maybe less.  So get talking.”

            Harold leaned
back.  “I don’t know what to say.”  He didn’t really.  His mind was still stuck
on “space slug.”

            “I’m in FEBS as a
kind of parole.  The touchy-feely guy, Donald, claims a one hundred percent
success rate for members.  Says he can make anyone better.  Get rid of the
unnatural urges to eat and drink humans.” 

            “Do you think he
can?”  Harold asked.  He hadn’t paid much attention to the reading material
presented to him.  One hundred percent cure rate… Was it possible?

            “Those that
graduate don’t come back.  ’Course it’s possible they just decide to quit and
leave the zip code.  They,” Zork gestured to the men at the counter, “have been
watching Donald’s progress with the group and seem to approve of his results. 
It’s why they’ve stuck me in the program.  It’s conditional on my being able to
move about fairly easily in public.”

            Harold glanced at
the two G-men straining their heads over the crowded booths to watch him and
Zork.  He hadn’t really considered it possible to go back.  Since he realized
he was a vampire, he’d sort of adjusted.  Dropped out of sight, got a different
job and kept on living anyway he had too. 

            “So anyone know
you got into the program?”

            “Yeah, my girl. 
She said I’ve been out of control lately.”  Harold sighed now that they were on
the topic of Maria. 

            Zork let out one
harsh grating bark of laughter.  “Does she think this is something you can get
rid of… Sounds like a normie to me.” 

            “I tried
explaining I need blood to survive.  She thinks it’s a choice.” 

            Zork’s eyes
nearly popped out of their stalks.  “She’s one of them.  That is a real
conflict of interest.  She must be what you people call hot.”

            “It is not a
conflict of interest.  You’re the only person at this table who isn’t human. 
I’m dealing with a severely life-altering condition.  You are apparently from
outer space.”

            “She’s hot.  I’ve
got to see this girl.  Is she as stupid as she is pretty or does she just make
you stupid?“

            “We're changing
the subject now.”

            “Did I hit the
wrong button?”

            “Maria is very
smart.”