Dark Moonlighting (12 page)

Norton snorted in disgust as a bailiff came
to take him away. I ignored him and walked out of the courtroom
with Christina in tow.

“Why didn’t you shake his hand?” Christina
asked after swallowing a hunk of mu shu pork.

“What?” I asked as I broke my gaze from her
chest.

“After the trial,” she clarified. “Norton
wanted to shake your hand, but you ignored him.”

I drank a few gulps of iced tea as I thought
about my answer. “I got him off for the good of society,” I
started. “I played my part in the justice system… but that doesn’t
mean I have to like it. I didn’t want him to confuse a sense of
duty for respect.”

Christina nodded her head in understanding
before saying, “Do you want to have sex?”

I turned my head to our diminutive Asian
waitress as she passed by. “Check please.”

The conversation between us was awkward on
the drive back to my apartment. I suppose it would be more accurate
to say that it was awkward for me. I attempted to make small talk
and she responded in the same way she always did.

She changed immediately when we crossed the
threshold into my home. I was in the process of introducing her to
Oliver XLVIII when she lunged at me. I reacted quickly to the kiss
and tried to press forward, but ended up slamming my teeth into
hers. She winced in pain but was not slowed down any. She tore my
suit coat off and then pulled me towards the stairs. I was stunned
by her uncharacteristic passion but also very excited by it.

“I think I should warn you,” she said as she
grabbed my hand and shoved it onto one of her breasts. “I haven’t
had sex in almost six months.”

“That’s okay,” I said as I awkwardly groped
her. “It’s been a long time for me too.”

I felt there was no need to be too specific.
In truth, she had not yet been born the last time I had been with a
woman.

Chapter Six: Condo

The next morning, I walked into my laboratory
in the basement of the hospital while popping antacids like they
were Tic Tacs. The Chinese food from the night before had not
agreed with me. Of course, no food ever agreed with my body.
Vampires do not need to eat like other humans. We extract all the
nutrients we need from our victims’ blood. There were times when I
had to eat solid food in order to properly blend into society. At
the Chinese restaurant, with only a short table between me and
Christina’s unwavering stare, it had been impossible to hide the
fact that I was not eating. My body was capable of consuming normal
food, but it had no use for it. As such, it made a point to expel
the unneeded material as quickly as possible.

The emergency trip to my bathroom at 5:00
A.M. had ended my night of passion with Christina. She awoke after
I emerged from the bathroom, and I was thankful that she had not
seen my mad dash to the toilet. She greeted me with a quick nod of
her head before dressing and heading for the bedroom door. I
thought she was simply heading downstairs until I heard my front
door open and close.

I was not particularly concerned by her
abrupt departure from my apartment. Though I was very much out of
practice, I was confident that my centuries of experience in the
bedroom were adequate. Leaving in the early morning without saying
a word seemed somehow fitting for her. She had left me with an
aching stomach and unpleasant feelings to think about, and so I had
decided to go to the hospital early to distract myself.

I did not feel guilt for the casual
encounter. Christina was younger than me, by over half a millennia,
but she was hardly a naïve schoolgirl. Besides, she had come on to
me and had certainly not been subtle about it. No, my feelings of
regret came from the fact that I had not been thinking about her
when we were together. It was an admittedly strange thing to feel
remorse for given that I had no problem killing an average of fifty
people per year. However, I felt very sleazy for not sharing the
moment with her exclusively. I was even more puzzled that, during
the peak of my ecstasy, I had been thinking about a certain young
medical intern who I barely knew.

Faced with unpleasant emotions and
introspection, I made the cowardly choice to ignore everything and
focus on my work. My laboratory was across the hall from my office
in the bowels of the basement. The space was reserved exclusively
for me, which was essential for my research. Had any of my
colleagues shared the space and done even a cursory inspection of
my experiments, they would have easily determined that I was not
really researching various forms of anemia.

My excitement about a possible cure for
vampirism had grown considerably over the last few months. After
over a century of research, I had finally started to develop my own
antiviral medications to try to cure my condition. I was
progressing nicely, and I was very optimistic that my animal
testing would soon produce positive results. However, there were
1238 dead laboratory mice that likely would have disagreed with
me.

Turning another creature into a vampire is
actually quite a difficult task. I only successfully turned two out
of the three humans I tried to infect. I learned the hard way that
a vampire must not feed off a human if he wishes to turn the human
into a creature of the night. Once the fangs pierce the neck and
the bloodlust begins, it is impossible to stop before the victim is
dead. To turn a human the vampire must artificially drain the
victim of their blood until they are almost dead. Then the victim
must be forced to drink a good amount of the vampire’s infected
blood. It is only in this weakened state that the virus can spread
and take over a human’s body.

It is even harder to infect laboratory mice.
Through trial and error I learned the proper amount of blood to
extract with a syringe from the animals. However, since I was a
different species, my blood was not compatible with their
physiology. I was forced to extract the virus from my body,
concentrate it into mouse blood and then give the drained mice a
blood transfusion. It was quite an ordeal given that my subjects
only lived for about three days after being infected. The vampire
virus evolved to use human beings as its perfect hosts. The virus
forms a symbiotic relationship with humans since it strengthens the
host in exchange for a comfy body in which to live. For other
species, including the rodents I was testing, the virus was as
destructive as Ebola was to humans. I had not created an army of
evil vampire mice in my laboratory. The rodents I infected always
collapsed and started dying a few hours after I finished the
procedure.

On that day, I was not going through the
tedious task of infecting mice with an extremely deadly virus. I
came to my laboratory to check on a batch of thirteen animals that
I had infected over the weekend. The baker’s dozen had all been
injected with my latest antiviral concoction. I tossed the bottle
of antacids I had been carrying onto my desk, retrieved a digital
recorder from the pocket of my lab coat and headed for the row of
cages lined up against the far wall of the room.

“Begin recording for trial number 102,” I
said dispassionately into the tape recorder. “Subject 1239
expired.”

I double checked the mouse in the first cage
to make sure it had no pulse. That step existed in my experiments
only because of my desire to be thorough. The vampire virus left
clear indications when it killed its non-human victims. The blood
that had leaked out of the mouse’s eyes, mouth and rectum made it
obvious that my latest attempt at a cure had failed. I gently
placed the creature back in the cage on the off chance that I would
need to do a necropsy on the mouse. However, the dead animals
usually went straight into the incinerator to make room for the
next batch.

“Subject 1240 is expired as well,” I said as
I moved to the next cage down the line. “Subject 1241 is dead as a
doorknob. 1242 is no more, it has ceased to be. It’s toe tag time
in Mouseville tonight for subject 1243. 1244 has reached the
undiscovered country. 1245 is worm food— scratch that,” I finished
in shock.

In my haste to amuse myself with deathly
clichés, I had pronounced Subject 1245 prematurely. There was dried
blood around all of the creature’s orifices, but I felt a very weak
pulse when I inspected the mouse. My heart began to race as I
examined the animal more thoroughly.

“Subject 1245 is still alive, although not
exactly kicking,” I said in disbelief.

I checked my wristwatch to confirm the time
and then ran back to the desk near the entrance of the laboratory
to boot up my laptop. My knee bounced in irritation as I leaned
over the desk and waited for the computer to start. When it finally
did, I furiously double clicked the appropriate icon on the desktop
to open my research files. My notes confirmed the exact date and
time I had begun the experiment on this batch of mice. I dashed
back to the cages and inspected the remaining mice without
bothering to record my findings.

“Subject 1247 is also still alive, but just
barely. The other eleven mice are all dead,” I said into the tape
recorder in disbelief. “No animals have ever lasted this long after
being infected before. There may be something to trial 102. Conduct
necropsies to determine—”

“Whittier!” a ghoulish voice screamed at me
from outside the laboratory.

The voice sounded so demented that at first I
worried that a victim or former patient of mine had returned from
the dead to exact their revenge on me. I stopped the tape recorder,
tossed it onto the desk and cautiously exited the laboratory. The
door to my office was open across the hallway, and I popped my head
inside to see what sort of vile creature was haunting me. Instead I
found the Chief of Medicine in a terrible state. He had a brown
paper bag in his left hand and an IV needle inserted into his right
arm.

“There you are. It’s about goddamn time,”
Robert Little muttered at me.

“Jesus Bob,” I exclaimed as I looked him
over. “You look terrible.”

“You ain’t exactly George Clooney,” he
responded. He started to laugh, but abruptly stopped in order to
throw his face into the brown paper bag. He clutched his stomach in
obvious agony after about twenty seconds of dry heaving. “Oh God
that hurts. Get your ass up to the E.R.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “What the hell
happened?”

“They had their department banquet dinner
last night. I made the mistake of coming along for the free…”
Robert’s cheeks expanded as he recalled the night of horror.
“Shellfish. Everyone has food poisoning except for the skeleton
crew that was manning the E.R. last night. And most of them have
already been working for at least twelve hours. I’m trying to pull
competent doctors from other departments, but so far you’re the
only one who wouldn’t just get in the way.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said sincerely. “So
who is in charge of the E.R. right now?”

If it was possible, Robert looked even sicker
after I asked the question. “Dr. Condo,” he answered
sorrowfully.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” I
complained.

“What do you want from me?” he shouted.
“Nobody wanted Condo at the dinner, so I made him look after the
E.R. while we were gone. How was I supposed to know the entire
department was going to contract food poisoning? It’s all the more
reason you need to get up there. Go, quick like a bunny.”

“Sir,” I hesitated. “You look
very
pale. Why don’t I take you up to a bed and get you a nice new bag
of fluids to—”

“I can get my own bag,” he muttered as he
pointed to the IV pole he was dragging around. “Get up there before
Condo murders half of Starside.”

I reluctantly left Robert Little to fend for
himself and jogged towards the elevator. The timing of the crisis
could not have been more inconvenient for me. After years of
research my latest trial had finally produced positive results. I
wanted to ignore everything else and focus on the potential cure,
but I knew the patients in the E.R. needed my help. The chaos I
found as the elevator door opened on the first floor was a sharp
contrast to the soothing muzak I had listened to on the ride
up.

The emergency room was flooded with patients
in varying degrees of distress. All the beds were occupied, and
patients who could not find a seat in the filled waiting area were
lining the hallways. Three individuals, who saw me emerge from the
elevator in a lab coat, begged for my help as I scurried down the
hallway. I relayed my sympathies to them as I made my way to the
nurse’s station to check on the triage situation. I found a
colleague of mine there scribbling furiously into a patient’s
chart. His eyes were red with fatigue.

“Dr. Berkowitz,” I said in surprise. “You
weren’t at the banquet?”

He glanced at me with a look of mild relief
before returning to his notes. “Thank God you’re here, Nick. No, I
went to the dinner.”

“Then why aren’t you…” I began. “Oh, right.
Shellfish, duh. What’s the situation?” I asked.

“For now it’s just you, me and a couple of
nurses. Thankfully we’re closed to traumas, and they’re rerouting
as many patients as they can to other hospitals. As you can see,”
Berkowitz said as he motioned around the chaotic scene. “We still
have plenty of walk-ins. Feel free to dive in.”

I nodded my head and grabbed the next chart
in a very large stack. “What about our fearless leader?”

“Condo started on his
patient
about
half an hour ago,” he snorted. “He’s still on phase one as far as I
know. I don’t really have time to babysit him.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll try to check on him if
I get a chance.”

I jogged to the first examination room while
forcing myself to ignore the desperate pleas of the sick and
injured patients who I passed. The room was designed to fit two
patients, but I was not surprised to find six elderly men and women
crammed into it. Evidently they had gotten bored from the long wait
to be seen by a doctor. Five of them were sitting in chairs around
the sixth who was still bedridden. They had playing cards in their
hands, and there was an assortment of cafeteria food in small piles
on the bed.