The Source (28 page)

My eyes widen. What the hell? I can’t even silently
lie to him? How am I supposed to go through life without being able to fake my
feelings and thoughts? Everyone does it, just like putting a mask on to fit any
given situation so that you don’t give too much of yourself away. Vampires
change the whole stage of presenting yourself in every day life. Can society
bear the weight of not existing with the interconnected lies that make it work?
Honesty will make it implode. I can’t think about this right now. I don’t know
if I can continue on if I’m constantly forced to be 100% honest in thought,
feeling and deed.

I turn from him and lower my head. In a moment of
self-reflective insanity, I walk over to the glass cell and peer up at Thalia.
She is sitting in the corner, twirling her matted hair. She looks up at me and
begins to slowly crawl over to where I am standing. She sits back on her heals
and looks at me. She has bloody scratches all over her face that look as if
they’re suspended in the healing process, getting no better, no worse. I
maintain eye contact with her because after everything, regardless of what she
has done, I think that I deserve to give her at least that. Neither smiling nor
frowning, I just hold her gaze.

She raises her left wrist to her mouth and bites. She
then smears some of the blood on the fingers of her right hand and slowly
writes HELP on the glass.

“She’s playing on your emotions.”

I jump and turn to face Rick. Clasping my hands to my
chest, feeling confused I ask, “What?”

Rick dips his head toward Thalia. “She can sense what
you’re feeling and she’s trying to use it against you. She thinks if she can
make you feel badly enough, you might try to stop this, stop her from dying the
death she deserves.”

A loud thud resounds through the room as the glass
vibrates. Thalia has hit the glass and smeared the red HELP into a jagged slash
across its surface. The most eerie thing is that with the way she is sitting,
the slash-like mark appears to go right across her neck as if her throat has
been slit.

My granny would’ve said that it’s an omen that this
individual will die for sure. I don’t know if I believe that because I know
that it only looks that way because of my perspective, my height and the angle
at which I’m looking at her in conjunction with the angle to which she is
sitting. Although I logically know that, the hairs on my arms and the back of
my neck still stand on end. I get this itching feeling at the back of my throat
that tells me that our experiment will be successful and she will die.

She bares her fangs at me and again hits the glass
with her fist. I jump although I had somewhat expected it. I give her one final
glimpse of my recomposed face, and then turn my back on her. In some ways
that’s more insulting than anything, especially when she and I both know her
fate.

The assistant returns with a medium-sized piece of
equipment that, joking aside, does look like a leaf blower. Mr. Caulfield looks
at her and nods. She hands the piece of equipment to me. I take it into my
arms, but fail to say thank you. It just doesn’t seem appropriate at a time
like this.

Rick looks at me and firmly whispers, “Please get over
it.”

Taken aback I exclaim, “Excuse me?”

He steps closely to me. “You are mentally upset over
this, I get it. If you continue to allow your mind to focus on it, you will
lead yourself down a path where you will make a mistake and possibly cost both
of us this project. I sympathize, I do. But buck up or just let me finish the
project on my own.”

Feeling warm wetness prick the corners of my eyes, I
blink multiple times, willing myself not to cry. I purse my lips and look at
Mr. Caulfield over Rick’s shoulder. “Will we be given any instruction on how to
use this thing?” My words come out a lot more caustic than normal.

Mr. Caulfield’s lips twitch. I think he’s trying not to
smile, but I could be wrong. “Daniel,” he motions to the male assistant,
“please show Dr. Burcham the appropriate functionality.”

The young man comes over and gives us a brief
over-view of how to work the government-rigged leaf blower. There is a receptacle
that will hold the powder and once the switch it turned to “On,” the contents
of the receptacle will be blown from the end of the tube. The machine suddenly
went from leaf blower to death blower - not by design, but by intent.

Rick kneels and rests the box containing the vitamin D
powder on the floor. I kneel with him and lay the receptacle in my lap. I open
the top and prepare for the powder to be emptied into the bay, trying not to be
distracted by Thalia’s rhythmic thumps against the glass. It’s almost as if
she’s beating out her own death march. I shake my head to clear it.

Rick opens the box and angles the corner over the bay
opening. He slowly begins to shake the powder into the receptacle until it’s
nearly full, leaving enough remaining that we could go through the experiment
two more times. Waste not want not I guess.

Once he’s finished, I place the top back on the bay
and tighten it as much as I can. I shakily stand up, still holding the machine
close to my body. Rick stretches his long frame to his full height, looking at
Mr. Caulfield, “We will need for Thalia to be more boxed in so that there’s
less of a possibility of her moving and us wasting our sample.”

Mr. Caulfield looks at the assistants and tilts his
head toward Thalia’s cell. The male assistant, Daniel, gets suited up in some
protective gear while the female assistant waits patiently by the control
panel. When Daniel is dressed, he signals to her and she pushes a red button. A
small opening along the vertical length of the back wall opens close to the
door of the cell. Steel bars extend out all the way to the other side of the
glass, creating a wall of bars.

Daniel opens the cell door and begins typing furiously
at the control panel on the bars. The new wall begins to move across the space
of the cell, effectually enclosing Thalia into a smaller space. She begins to
look back and forth, running here and there, banging her forearms against the
metal. Daniel types more into the control panel and the ends of the steel wall
quickly fold in on its sides and slam against the opposite wall, creating a
much smaller barred cell within the glass cell.

Mr. Caulfield motions to the female assistant who
rushes from the area only to return with a crane-like ladder contraption that
can elevate a person up to the space between the ceiling and the top of the
cell.

Mr. Caulfield looks at us. “I am guessing that
projecting your sample from above, with a freer range of motion, is preferable
to trying to do so through the bars. Correct?”

Rick nods, “Yes, sir, thank you for that forethought.”

I take a deep breath and start walking toward the
mechanized ladder. Rick grabs my arm. “What are you doing?” he asks as quietly
as possible.

I look at him as if he has asked me the stupidest
question ever. “I’m doing my job.” I firmly pull my arm from his grasp and
continue toward the ladder. Once I’m on the platform, Daniel presses a button
on the side of the contraption and I begin to ascend toward the ceiling. Once
my waist is parallel with the top of the cell, the ladder stops.

I take a deep breath, stealing my nerves, right before
the female assistant asks, “Ready?”

I wait for one, two, three heartbeats then nod. I
realize that I probably need to say something. “I’m ready.” I position the
death blower so that it is aimed toward Thalia. I hear the grating sound of
wheels turning and the top of the cell begins to slowly slide open from my
side. I have to tell myself over and over again not to close my eyes.

As soon as there is an opening big enough for the end
of the hose, I insert it into the cell, sighted right at Thalia. She attempts
to run back and forth but doesn’t have much room to move. I hesitate long
enough that Rick yells, “Now, Emma!” I jerk, but manage to squeeze the trigger
on the death blower. White powder begins to shoot out the end of the tube and
rain down on the panicked vampire. She becomes covered in it as if a blizzard
has suddenly blown over the minimal space she occupies.

She begins to groan as I continue to spray the
contents onto her. Her groaning turns into a growl before becoming an ear-piercing
yowl. The white powder turns pink as the vitamin D begins to eat away at her
flesh. I stop spraying the powder onto her and watching in amazed dread as she
begins flinging herself all over the bars and glass, trying to get the powder
off of her.

The pink turns to red and I begin to see what looks
like bone. Suddenly, Thalia throws her head back in a guttural scream before
her body explodes into hundreds of meaty chunks all over the glass, through the
bars onto Daniel and up to the ceiling all over me.

I drop the blower and collapse, falling from the
ladder toward the floor. The last thing I remember is a whistling in my ears as
empty air rushes past me.

Later, how long I’m not sure, I open my eyes to see Rick
peering into my face. I’m lying on a bed in what not so oddly feels like a sick
room.

“What happened?” I ask.

The corner of his mouth twitching, Rick responds, “You
fell.”

I scowl at him. “But why don’t I hurt? I just feel
weird, almost weightless, but I don’t feel any pain.”

“I caught you.”

I stare wide-eyed at him.

“Well, sort of,” he admits. “I caught you, but we both
ended up on the floor. I took most of the impact, so you might be a little
sore, but no major injuries.”

“How?”

He shrugs. “That pesky vampirism and its effects of
heightened speed and strength.”

I give him a small smile. I slowly sit up and look
down at myself. There are still bloodstains on my clothes, but my skin is
remarkably clean.

“Angela, the female assistant, got a nurse to check you
out to make sure you were okay,” he explains. “The nurse cleaned you up the
best that she could.”

I exhale in relief that it wasn’t Rick who had to bear
the work of digging vampire chunks from my bra. You know how you tend to find
loose rice in various places after attending a wedding? I have nightmarish
visions of the same thing only with pieces of Thalia. Shudder.

“What happens now? Do we have to present the results
to the other teams?” I ask.

Rick shakes his head. “There is a concern, so we still
have work to do.”

“A concern?”

“Yes. With the way Thalia responded before she, um,
died, there’s a concern that a vampire would be able to harm as many humans
within striking distance as possible before actually expiring. The possibility
of that would actually make the solution, in its current form, impractical to
say the least.”

“So we have to think of a way to destabilize the
vampire while the vitamin D has time to, um, eat away at the vamp’s body?”

“Right,” he states. “We can think more about it
tomorrow.”

“It’s time to go home? How long was I out?”

Rick looks at his watch. “It’s close enough to
quitting time. You were only out for about twenty minutes. Part of that was
because of the sedative the nurse gave you.”

“Why would she give me a sedative if I had passed out?
That doesn’t make sense.”

“You came to at one point, but you were hysterical and
your blood pressure shot up. She did it to calm you down long enough to get
your system back under control.”

I lean forward and cover my face with my hands. I
don’t know which is more embarrassing, the fact that I passed out or the fact
that when I regained consciousness, I
flipped
out. I rub my hands over
my face and look up at Rick who is peering down at me, a look of concern on his
face.

“Well, I guess I should go home then.”

“WE should go home. I’m spending the night, remember?”

“What? Still?”

“Yes, still,” he responds. “I’m sure Tucker is still
lurking around out there. Plus your nerves are probably shot to the point that
even if he isn’t, you won’t feel safe unless you have company. All of it is
really moot anyway because after the sedative, you can’t drive. So I’m driving
you home.”

I swallow and look down into my lap, knotting my
fingers together. Rick stands up and waits in front of me. He holds his hand
out to me. I look back up at him and slowly place my hand in his. He uses his
other arm to gently help me stand. We start to walk to the door and he
continues to keep his arm around me, bracing me as if I might fall again.
Honestly, I can’t say that it won’t happen, so the help is appreciated although
I hate it. Well, I hate needing help, not having Rick’s arm around me.

When we get back to the other facility, we put the
container of the remaining vitamin D powder in a temperature-controlled locker
down the hall from our research suite. We pick up my jacket and purse from our
suite then walk to the car. Rick still insists on keeping his arm around me,
which is good because I feel dazed. It’s like I have to concentrate on the
simple task of walking, reminding myself to place one foot after the other.

He gently squeezes my shoulders with this arm as we
stop in front of my car. He holds out his hand, “Keys.” I get my keys from my
purse and drop them into his hand. He then escorts me to the passenger side and
opens the door, actually helping me to sit in the seat. In my mind-blurred
state, I still have to smile to myself at how caring and gentle he is being.