Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (12 page)

No.

“God damn it!” Connor stood up so quickly that he strained the bolts which held his chair to the floor. “Don’t you even care about doing what’s right? Doesn’t it matter to you that these kids beat a girl for no good reason, maybe beat her to death? They punched her, they kicked her, they threw her down, and they beat her with a piece of wood they’d been carrying around since they found it at a construction site. When it broke they jammed it into her chest!”

Blood rushed to Connor’s head, but the flow left him unsteady. He was running out of energy and he could feel his rationality being pushed aside by instinct. He forced down the feelings of confusion and hunger as best he could.

“The girl was a nobody!” Mr. Angry stood too, his face red. Connor could see veins straining against the skin of the man’s forehead, could almost taste the pulse of the arteries in his neck. “And if she was a vampire then she was less than nobody! I’m not saying these kids are angels, but we’re here to uphold the law, and the law says that if she was a vampire then they aren’t guilty. I don’t know that she was, but she might have been, and if we can’t prove for sure that she wasn’t, then we have no choice! It’s not our damned fault that there isn’t enough evidence!”

He swept a hand across the table, sending his pencil flying as he sat back down, one hand rubbing the left side of his chest, under the armpit. “Fuck the girl
and
the piece of wood to the heart. All of this yelling is making
my
heart hurt.”

Connor stared at the man, forcing aside thirst and focusing on one coherent thought. “That’s not where your heart is,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I said, that’s not where your heart is.” Connor walked over to the viewscreen in the wall and ordered it to show him the evidence menu again. He selected the video footage of the beating, obtained from a security camera. He skipped to the point where one of the boys thrust the shaft of wood into the girl’s chest. It penetrated on his third attempt.

“You sly bastard,” he said.

“Who’s a sly bastard?” asked the foreman.

“The defense attorney.” Connor jabbed a finger at the image of the girl lying on the bloody pavement. The action brought up a menu with her name and a list of the evidence attached to her.

“When he was questioning the expert witness about vampires, he asked him what was the effect of someone slamming a piece of wood, a stake if you will, into the heart of a vampire. The expert said that that was one of only a few ways of killing a vampire, the others being fire and sunlight. The attorney asked if a stake to the heart would explain someone’s sudden lack of movement when they had withstood a massive amount of damage without falling down, damage that should have been enough to bring down a normal human. He asked if that was a good indication that someone was a vampire.”

“What’s your point?”

“He never once showed the witness the wounds the girl suffered. Not the video, not the coroner’s report, not even the weapon. He never once asked if
her
wounds were consistent with what was required to stop a vampire.”

Confused faces turned to face him, and they were all starting to look the same to him. He was losing control. A voice in his head told him that he had been stupid to worm his way onto this jury, that he had taken too great of a personal risk. He repeated silently to himself that he needed to finish what he had started. He closed his eyes and steadied his pulse.

“Listen, we know the girl was modded, like most of us are. Her bones were engineered from before she was born to be denser and stronger than normal, many times more so. There’s no way anybody anywhere is driving a piece of wood through engineered bone. That’s why the boy with the wood had to try three times and eventually…”

Connor called up the evidence of the girl’s wounds. Zoomed to her chest. Zoomed to her left breast where a ragged wound was visible between her ribs, to the left of her sternum. To the description beside the wound stating that it did not extend to any vital organs but had severed an artery. Death by blood loss, not by heart trauma.

“That piece of wood never went through her heart. If she
had
been a vampire, this wound here wouldn’t have stopped her. She just went into shock. She was just a girl. That weasel made sure never to specifically mention in court that the stake went through her heart, meaning that the prosecutor-bot wouldn’t object to the evidence. Everything he said was a fact, but he twisted everybody’s perception so that we would draw our own conclusions and that damned robot was too prehistoric to reason it out.”

He looked at the faces around the table. A few had the decency to look ashamed.

“The prosecutor saw a wound,” said Connor. “The defense saw an opportunity.”

Connor stepped out of the courthouse onto a poorly lit sidewalk. There were few people about and he could hear the constant hum of the underground city’s air circulation system. Someone placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” said Mr. Angry. “Guilty for murder. I never would have thought.”

Connor nodded. “Well, it was you who pointed out that by abandoning her, the boys were accountable for any attack she sustained afterwards. Are you okay after what happened in there?”

“Yeah, I’ll be all right.” The man’s shoulders drooped as he thrust his hands into his pants pockets. “It just brought up a lot of memories I thought were long gone. Ancient history, you know?”

“I understand,” said Connor. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the other man, withdrawing a hand from his pocket long enough to gesture dismissively before hiding it away again. “Ancient history, like I said. You should have met my brother. You remind me of him a little, just a bit smarter than everyone else around. Ever thought about becoming a lawyer?”

“Thanks, but no.” Connor could feel his canines pressing into his tongue. His stomach knotted and his vision was shrinking to a tunnel. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold out for long. “Hey listen, I need a drink like you wouldn’t believe. You want to join me? You won’t have to pay a thing.”

* * * * *

Michael Lorenson was born and raised in Montreal where he still resides with his wife, two sons, and cat. He recently rediscovered a love for writing after a long hiatus. His work has recently appeared in the
Tesseracts 14
anthology of Canadian speculative fiction, and he is looking forward to many more years of letting his imagination carry him where it will.

Outwitted

By Sandra Wickham

I wake to pain in my arm and across my chest that makes me want to scream and curl into a ball, but I can’t do either. Panic rushes through me as I try to open my eyes. They don’t respond.

“It’s the drugs,” a woman’s voice says, close to my ear. “Just relax.”

Relax? Why can’t I move?
The words are only in my head, I’m unable to speak. I’m lying on my back. Was there an accident? I can hear other people moving around me but no one speaks to me again. I feel something pulling me under, the pain or the drugs. The sounds fade.

I’m with my family, in the house my brother, sister and I grew up in. It’s spring. Today is warm, sun kissed with the promise of summer.

My sister and I are laughing and playing with our dolls in the backyard, trying to sit them on the swing so we can push them. My Dad and brother are in the driveway working on their bikes, fixing and adjusting, acting like mechanics.

Mom isn’t home from work yet, but she’ll be back soon and we’ve planned a family barbecue.

Something pierces my arm and the vision of my family spins away. This time my eyes snap open but I see only a yellowish blur.

“It’s awake again.” This, a man’s voice.

My eyes won’t focus and my mind feels trapped in a heavy fog. My senses seem cut off, dulled. I know someone is laying fingers on my arm at the wrist, but their touch is cold.

“We can’t keep her like this.” It’s the woman from before.

There’s a loud click, then a filtered voice fills the room. “I don’t need to remind you how important this is. Keep it under until our colleagues arrive.” There’s another click.

Keep me under?
I fight to move any part of my body, anything at all, but it’s useless.

“We’ve taken as much blood as we can,” says the man close to me.

Click.

“Then we wait.”

Click.

My blood? Is there something wrong with my blood? Sounds and feelings slip away from me once more.

I’m in the cafeteria, eating an overflowing sandwich with one hand, holding a highlighter over a text book with the other. Lettuce falls onto the book and I set the sandwich down to pick it off. I look up and see a male student crossing the room. He catches me staring and I quickly look down at my text. It’s too late, he’s coming my way. I know I’m blushing, I can feel the heat in my face. Why is he making me feel this way? I’ve never even seen him before. He’s at my table so I have to look up.

“Hi,” he says. “This seat taken?” I shake my head and he sits down, throwing his backpack on the chair next to him. He holds his hand out across my book. “I’m Tom.”

I take his hand and swallow the last bit of food in my mouth. “I’m Sarah.”

“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”

Before we know it, we’ve both missed classes and have talked non-stop for nearly three hours. After exchanging phone numbers and email addresses, we agree to get together again soon. It seems corny, but in my gut I know this could be the beginning of something amazing.

This time it’s my dry, swollen throat that brings me back. I feel I’ll choke if I don’t get something to drink. I cough, and then realize I’ve made a sound. “Water, please,” I manage to say. I don’t know if anyone is around me to hear. I open my eyes, but my vision is still blurred. “Hello?”

I can’t move my head and my heart clenches. Am I paralyzed? Maybe I’m dying. Someone lifts my head and places something against my lips. My vision goes from blurry yellow to blobs of white and blue. I can make out the shape of my own body and an arm by my face as I feel water pass into my mouth. It hurts to swallow, but I take in all I can. It doesn’t seem to help the thirst. My head is lowered back down.

“This will all be over soon,” the woman whispers close to my ear. “They’re filing to their seats. Then this whole thing can be finished.”

Who? Finished, how?
I cough again. “Where am I? Where’s my husband?”

“It’s delusional.” The man’s voice is close and assertive. “It’ll be pointless if it’s incoherent the whole time.”

I spiral downwards again.

We’re on the beach at sunset, Tom, Vanessa and me. It’s like something out of a movie, Vanessa giggling with delight as her father chases her along the water’s edge. I have our dinner laid out on a blanket, the one I was so excited about finding online. Grinning, I take video of my husband and beautiful daughter with my phone.

Click.

“Then revive it so it can speak,” the voice commands.

“But sir—”

“It’s drained of blood and restrained, what’s it going to do? We need it to speak.”

Click.

More needles poke me and gradually I can feel my body again. I feel weak, but my mind is clearing.

I can smell them. The woman is young, healthy. The man is older and has a taste for wine and illegal cigars. I can hear their hearts beating, his, a regular rhythm, hers faster. She’s nervous. The last of the drug-induced confusion dissipates like an extinguished candlewick.

No! My entire being screams it again and again. No, I want to go back. I
need
to go back. Let me stay with Tom and Vanessa. A tear threatens to slide from my eye. The pain in my heart is greater than anything they could inflict on my body. I haven’t cried in many decades.

At first I’d cried every day, even after seeking out and killing the one who changed me. It didn’t ease the pain of having to leave my family. If I’d stayed close, I would’ve killed them too. They smelled too enticing, as though my love for them sweetened my desire for their blood. They thought I was dead, killed by the one who attacked me. At least, for them, there’d been closure.

I continued to exist in utter loneliness, long after my grandchildren’s children would have died. I found no solace in finding others of my kind; around them, my instincts were like those of a wild animal — kill or be killed.

I hear the click again. Whoever is giving the orders is tucked away somewhere safe, not in the room with me. “Welcome, Doctors, Honorable Officiates and Hunters. We will now begin.”

Click.

I know that voice. He is the reason the others are gone. For years he has organized those who hunt and kill us, campaigning over the Net Waves, encouraging government officials to give them access to the latest technologies in order to wipe us off the earth. After almost a hundred years of being the hunter, I became the hunted when the human population banded together to exterminate us. But, I’d avoided the riots and the wars. Until now.