Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (18 page)

He wanted to cough, but found he couldn’t. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t. She was even closer to him now. She smiled and said, “All men die. The world dies.” She reached out and took his hand, holding it in her cool flesh. She looked at his palm, at the streak of red there and on his wrist, and bent her head towards the blood.

That girl from Canada — he’d liked her. But she went missing. They said she went crazy and ended up dead in some forest near Mount Fuji. Sometimes that happened to people … they came to Japan and freaked out. She’d never seemed to be one of those, but…

The woman’s tongue touched his palm. He felt the rough tongue licking his skin and he felt weaker.

Jesus, he thought, why can’t I move?

Her hair had been the color of wheat, the girl from the prairies. A girl who talked about legends and demons, about the
kitsune
that fed on souls, that moved between this world and the next, guarding the way between but feeding on the bodies of the helpless.
Just like a vampire,
the girl said.
Every culture has a vampire story.

The woman stared up at him, smiling. “All men dying,” she said. “You, too.”

Sometimes the demons will eat people, the girl had told him. Sometimes they suck the soul out and the blood.
Sometimes they strike bargains — they can help people, if they feel like it.

“I’m sick,” he said, and his voice sounded impossibly weak and thin.

She shook her head. “Not die sick. I save you. You want?”

He thought for a moment that she was crazy. Some chick walking around in her
obasan’s
best
kimono,
out for one last spin around the neighborhood before the whole fucking world came crashing down around her. But as she gazed at him, he found himself lost in those black, black eyes. And instead of the fetid smell of shit and rotting bodies, he thought he smelled the prairie girl’s perfume. The fragrance of jasmine came flooding back to him. He closed his eyes. He wanted to remember her perfume as long as he could, wishing that the memory would last, would overtake the smell of the shit forever.

“I don’t want to die,” he said, the memory of the tall girl with the legs still drifting through his mind. She’d been found in the forest; he’d heard about it from somebody who knew her. She’d taken the train and headed out to Mount Fuji and wandered into the forest to die. The people here had a thing about walking through forests.
Shinrin-yoku.
Forest bathing. Something about getting out into the forest air for a walk. He’d always thought it was crazy — hell, the people here were half-crazy. Back home, people went for hikes. None of this forest-bathing shit.

Shit. He thought about the shit bucket — just for a moment — and the people huddled back in the lobby of the embassy. The stink of the place — the foul, fetid smell of the shit, the sweat and the vomit. The odor of blood so thick he could taste it when he inhaled. It hung all around him, was embedded in his clothes.
I wish I’d left,
he thought.
I wish I was in a forest right now.
He wished he could wash himself clean, bathe in clean air and walk through the trees
.
He thought about how badly he wanted to go home, to be in his own bed, be near his family and friends, and as he thought of this, the woman nodded and sighed again.

“Nobody wants,” she said. “Nobody wants, but all men die. The world dies. Then I die.” She lifted a hand to touch his face. “No men, I die. No people, I go, too. From this place to the other.” She smiled wanly, with a tired half quirk to her lips that he thought must mirror his own. “We go now? To other place. I take you. Not stay here.”

He felt the release in those words, and found himself nodding. “I’ll go.”

“Oh,” she said. And she nodded, too. Then she leaned in close, touching her face to his neck, and he felt the warmth of her lips. “I take you there,” she whispered. “I help you.”

The sharp sting was blazing heat and white agony. He closed his eyes. The smell of shit filled his nostrils and mouth, so strong that he gagged and choked. Instead of pushing him away, she held him tighter. He opened his eyes and stared fixedly at the sky. The woman murmured something and the rank odor of rot and decay grew stronger, overpowering him. She lifted her head from his throat, her lips stained an even darker red.
Blood? His
blood, he realized, but he felt quietly numb. Dead inside.

“I bring the forest here,” she said, “take you to the other place.”

He thought he could hear the rustle of leaves and birdsong. She bent down again, and there was the pain, but with it came the fragrance of something sweet: jasmine. And then the smell that came just before the rain and when grass was freshly cut, of earth and damp moss. Then, wonderfully, blessedly, nothing more.

* * * * *

Heather Clitheroe lives and writes in Alberta, Canada. Her fiction can be found in
Hobart, Awkward Press,
and
Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
When she’s not cubicle-bound in Calgary, she can be found on the banks of the Bow River or at the Banff Centre for the Arts, tucked away in a studio. “Forest-Bathing” is a continuation of the world created in her short story, “Come to Me”, which appeared in the first
Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead.

The Deal

By Erika Holt

“Thanks for springing me.” Tau slid the passenger seat in Linh’s Hyundai Accent back and reclined with a jerk as they screeched out of the alley across the street from the Foothills Hospital.

“Here, put these on.” Linh tossed him a bag of clothes. Naked, he’d draw attention. Especially with a bandaged, seeping wound on his upper thigh, where he’d been bitten.

“They tried to knock me out with morphine.” Tau pulled a pair of shorts over his bandage, and then scrubbed his fingers through his woolly hair, trying to hold it together. “Felt a bit stoned, but that was it. Lucky for us though, eh? What would you’ve done if I was out?”

He didn’t give her time to say she would’ve used a wheelchair or gurney, dragged him if necessary, all 104 kilograms, 190-some centimeters. They had a deal, and he would do the same for her.

“Guess they don’t make allowances for experienced livers,” he continued, rubbing his wrists where the restraints had chafed. He laughed, raw and forced, unlike his usual easy chuckle.

Of course, there were bound to be changes. Perhaps this was just the first.

“Okay, dude. You’re free. Can we just talk about something pleasant?”

Linh didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if she hadn’t found him in time. If the Containment Squad had transferred him to Zir Corp’s lab where infectees, “Toxics,” were kept in morgue drawers, the conscious ones thrashing against metal for twenty-four hours until their transformation, and then thrashing all the more when they realized they were trapped, would serve as specimens for experimentation, existing in some in-between state, unable to die, always ravenous. Still able to suffer.

No, Linh didn’t want to think about this, or that her time with her best friend — safe time — was coming to an end. She glanced at the dash clock. 6:06 a.m. His toe-tag said he’d been infected around 11:00 p.m. Seventeen hours left. Max.

Linh clicked on the CD player. Heavy bass cut by angry, operatic wailing erupted from the speakers. Chaos Monkey, one of her and Tau’s favorites. Too much. She pressed another button and the lighter strains of the Ambrosiaks took over. Good old-fashioned road-trip music. Better.

Nondescript office buildings passed in a blur and more cars appeared on the roads, mostly two-seater electric models. Linh’s Accent was old by comparison, her mechanical skill and stockpile of parts allowing her to squeeze extra life out of the relic now clocking in at over 240,000 kilometers. Thankfully there were still a few other big gas guzzlers out there, so they wouldn’t stand out too much. Anyway, “Midnight Gray” was the sort of color people forgot instantly.

Tau stretched to reach for a vodka Chill from the back seat cooler, in its usual place and stocked with Pomegranate Prodigy, his usual flavor. The least she could do was ensure he got one last, good buzz. A sharp pop as he opened the can followed by an eruption of fuchsia foam. Nothing the charcoal, fabric seats hadn’t absorbed before.

“Shit shit shit!” then his mouth was over the hole, sucking down liquid.

Linh giggled. Pretty soon they were both laughing. Tau snorted Chill out his nose, causing fresh bouts of hysterics, even though it wasn’t that funny. Sometimes there were other reasons to laugh. Like when you’d kidnapped an infected friend and were fleeing Calgary, hoping to avoid Containment Squads long enough to kill your best friend proper, and deliver his ashes to his Aunt Lesedi in Arborg, Manitoba. It turned out there was something insanely comical about this.

After a few, heady minutes joy evaporated and they both went quiet. Tau crunched the can flat and grabbed another. He offered Linh a sip and she took it, though she didn’t like Chill. Had she thought of herself during last night’s frenzied preparations, she would’ve brought a Coke bottle filled with Shiraz.

“You look hot, by the way,” Tau said. “Never thought I’d see you in pastel flowers.”

He grabbed her knee before she swatted him away.

He was always like that. Flirty. Not that anything had ever happened. It wasn’t like that between them. He
claimed
he was bi, but that was only because he once banged some electrofunk slut when messed on crash. But he’d never had a relationship with a woman and out at clubs and parties Linh saw his gaze pulled exclusively towards men. Extremely slender, blond-haired men with multiple piercings usually, who at some point or other he proclaimed to love, attempted to date, and cried to Linh about after. He never chose a woman, only bad, blond boys who broke his tender heart.

But, that was okay; kept things between them less complicated.

“Wearing dirty hospital laundry is not my idea of ‘hot,’” Linh said. “There’s a blood stain—”

Blood.

She changed the subject. “Can you believe it actually worked? I mean, do I look like a nurse?” She twirled a finger in the long, blue hair of her dangling mohawk and smirked. “The only one who confronted me was some ancient janitor. Told him I was from the Rockyview, covering someone’s shift. Ha!”

But of course it worked. No one wanted to go
near
Toxics, let alone
help
them. Guards were unnecessary. Left unsaid were thoughts of what would happen to the janitor if the Containment Squad found out.

“That’s my girl.” Tau grabbed her pale hand on the steering wheel and enclosed it with his much darker, much larger hand, causing the car to swerve momentarily. “I never had a doubt you’d pull it off, if it came down to it.”

Intense camaraderie flared then faded out. Again, silence.

When they’d made plans for what to do if one of them ever got infected, she’d never thought it would happen. Just one of those silly, late-night discussions you have while high. The odd Toxic was around, of course, sneaking into seedy after-hours clubs or costume raves, but avoiding one wasn’t difficult. Just don’t go to
those
parts of town. Don’t associate with people with the telltale pale, starved look; the perfect, pointy-white smile. And if you felt an irresistible pull,
run like hell.
Easy. But Tau must’ve gone. Why?

Those weren’t his types of places. Of course, he
had
been with Chen, and Chen was bad-ass. Not even the fact that it’d been Chen who called to say Tau had been hospitalized, and his attacker beaten to death by a mob, could raise her opinion of him. It was Chen who’d once dragged an intoxicated Tau to a scarification shop and convinced him to get a unicorn outline burned onto the pristine, black flesh between his shoulder blades. Somehow she was sure it’d been Chen’s idea to go to some freaky fetish club.

If only Linh hadn’t been with her sister last night.

She didn’t bother asking questions. Nothing Tau said now would make a difference.

9:40 a.m. They were out of the city and traffic was light. Hardly anyone traveled by highway anymore; there were better ways and the scenery was depressing. The occasional mega grain terminal or reeking livestock complex distracted from endless fields of dull green or faded yellow, overarched by rolling metal contraptions, alternately spraying pests, irrigating, or fertilizing, depending on their programmed schedule. Best to keep the windows closed.

Tau slept. Seven crushed cans littered the rubber mat at his feet and a dense, alcohol fog permeated the close air. He didn’t snore — never snored — so Linh waited until his breathing took on a rhythmic pace and his lower jaw drooped, before reaching into her pocket. Capsules rattled against a plastic container. She shot a glance his way. Still out. She couldn’t so much as take an aspirin without sharing, let alone something stronger. But she didn’t need him hopped up on drugs just now. Not these drugs. She summoned spit in her dry mouth and shook two amphetamines onto her tongue. The sticky things skidded down her throat. Tau wasn’t the only one who was tired.