Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (34 page)

Isaac floats up the corridor to the next compartment, the one containing Willows, the flight engineer. Her vital signs are normal. He peers through the porthole. Willows is on her back with her hands clasped across her belly. Peaceful. As he watches, he becomes fixated on the tube running into her neck. If he pulled it out, droplets of blood would appear at the puncture site and form perfect globules as they drifted into the air. He runs his tongue across his upper lip and discovers, to his amazement, something pointed at either end of the traverse. His incisors are pronounced and razor sharp.

Spinning around, he seeks the closest washroom, presenting himself to the mirror for inspection. Though the room is dark, he can clearly see, in its reflection, the metallic grey wall behind him. No matter how long he floats before it, the mirror remains innocent of his presence.

His scientific mind processes the facts and arrives at two possible explanations. He prefers the stasis nightmare option. The only alternative is too cruel. The woman in the dive. How the others shied away from her. They knew what she was — and said nothing.

The irony of his situation doesn’t escape him — he’s 200 million kilometers from Earth and his only source of sustenance is a handful of people. He’s the first vampire in space, but he’ll also be the first to perish in space unless he comes up with a plan — fast. Stasis must have slowed his transformation, but now that he’s awake he needs to feed. Needs in a way he’s never needed anything before. He flashes back to Willows, supine in her chamber, completely vulnerable for the next two days.

Then what?

He doesn’t have time to take in the magnitude of what has happened to him. He’s been altered, turned into a creature people fear and despise, but he can’t dwell on that. His life expectancy may have increased from a few decades to forever, theoretically, but only if he can figure out how to survive. He can contemplate the implications later.

Time to put to use the problem-solving abilities that helped get him selected for the Hundred Year Starship in the first place. He sabotages his monitors to make it look like they malfunctioned, explaining why he’s awake. Then he contemplates the food situation. There’s blood in cold storage in the sick bay. How long will it last? Depends on how much he needs to survive. He’s tempted to log a request for information via computer. What would they think at Mission Control if the first communiqué they received from the
Ferdinand
was a query about the dietary needs of vampires?

He navigates the narrow corridors by pushing off the walls until he reaches sickbay. The room is empty and immaculate. Isaac goes straight to the refrigerator. Rows of plastic bags of whole blood line several shelves. The crew has to be prepared for any eventuality. Almost any. No one foresaw what happened to him. He rummages through drawers until he finds a 14-gauge IV needle, inserts it into a bag, and drinks from the attached tubing. He knows the blood must be cold, but warmth permeates his body instead. He feels energized, powerful.

Dangerous.

When the bag is half empty, he stops. His thirst is quenched — for now. He reseals the bag and returns it to the shelf. This supply will sustain him for a while, but it will run out eventually. The others have provisions in the orbiting freighters, and the biosphere is already producing food. What’s he supposed to do? Hitch a ride on the Russian ship that arrived before them? The Russians, who opted for a more traditional round-trip mission, are scheduled to return to Earth shortly after the
Ferdinand
arrives. Even if he could convince them to take him along, which he doubts, there wouldn’t be enough blood for the journey. He needs to find a way to survive on Mars with the supplies at hand. That or perish.

He transmits a report to Mission Control, feeding them his cover story about faulty monitors. The response is a simple acknowledgement. It takes over twenty minutes for radio transmissions each way, so they can’t exactly have a conversation.

For the next two days, Isaac roams the ship. His compulsion seems quelled for the time being, but soon, he suspects, the bloodlust will overtake him again. If he feeds from the others, he might convert them, too. The competition for their limited blood supply would be too much. He considers draining them mechanically, but that would be short sighted. Each holds about five liters but, unlike the storage bank, they can replenish themselves as long as they’re properly nourished and healthy. He needs to keep them alive and producing, his own personal biospheres.

The main trick will be overpowering seven people, including the four aboard the
Isabella.
He can’t do anything until they’re on Mars — he needs them to land the ship. Will they notice anything about him when they awaken? Besides the whole lack-of-a-reflection thing, what might betray him — other than his compulsion to drink blood? A fact he intends to keep from them.

As he wanders the corridors, drifting past portholes that reveal blackest space outside and no hint of his reflection, he develops a plan. It will be risky, but it’s the only way he can imagine surviving this seemingly impossible situation.

Isaac uses his time alone to make preparations and cover his tracks. He stashes the open bag of blood in his quarters in case he needs to feed again prior to landing. He then tinkers with the equipment the medical officer will use to check their vital signs so it will register his non-existent pulse.

When the rest of the crew wakes, Isaac greets them at their pods and explains why he’s out of stasis early. No one questions his story or comments on his appearance. In the artificial light, they all look pale. Dyer’s review of their vitals is perfunctory — after all, they’ve been monitored constantly since launch. Because they don’t have a formal dining schedule, the others aren’t aware that Isaac isn’t eating or that he doesn’t need to sleep.

After the
Ferdinand
enters Mars orbit, Captain Morrell gets the green light from Mission Control to begin landing manoeuvres. Isaac takes his place, strapped into his seat behind and to the left of Morrell. His months of training kick in, despite the change he’s undergone, and he performs his assigned tasks as required. The
Ferdinand
breaks through the thin upper atmosphere at a predetermined angle of 14.8 degrees and, less than ten minutes later, they reach their designated landing zone near base camp.

The instant they touch down, Morrell flips the switch to kill the engines. While his fellow crewmembers are busy congratulating each other, Isaac produces three syringes filled with a powerful sedative he pilfered from sickbay. In quick succession he injects Willows, Dyer and Morrell through their flight suits. The drug acts so fast that no one has time to cry out. Their suits are designed to repair punctures automatically, so he doesn’t need to worry about compromising them. The drug should keep them out long enough for Isaac to transport them into their new home. He has more syringes in his pockets in case the move takes longer than anticipated.

Briefly, he considers destroying the ship’s com unit, but there are too many redundancies, including systems in the base camp and on the orbiting freighters. Instead, he sends a message to Mission Control and to the
Isabella
that cosmic radiation is interfering with communications. There’s nothing the people off-planet can do, but the longer he can keep them in the dark the better.

He drags the three unconscious crewmembers from the
Ferdinand
into their base camp. It’s hard work, but the reduced gravity — barely more than a third that of Earth’s — helps. Once inside, he strips them of their flight suits and restrains them.

When he’s finished, he returns to the
Ferdinand
for a well-deserved drink of blood. Apparently he can manage a few days without feeding, and he only needs a fraction of what he consumed after emerging from stasis. He files that bit of information away for future use.

For the time being, he decides to return the crew to stasis while he figures out what to do next. That way he won’t have to worry about them getting free while he’s dealing with the crew of the
Isabella.

He transfers the equipment he needs from the
Ferdinand
and sets up a communal stasis center in what was supposed to be the biosphere’s lounge. He’s not a doctor, but he received medical training as part of preparations for the trip. While inserting IV lines into his crewmates’ wrists and necks, he has to stop for another quaff of blood to allay the temptation to sink his teeth into their succulent veins.

The supply of drugs required to keep the crew subdued and nourished will last no more than a few months. That’s how much time he has to come up with a way to keep them alive, restrained and docile for as long as possible. Though his muscles atrophied and he lost bone mass during the long trek from Earth, he feels strong. He’s probably a match for any one or two of his former colleagues, but if they all managed to get free at once, he’d be in trouble.

The
Isabella
arrives on schedule. Isaac communicates with the ship sporadically after it enters orbit, allowing the link to go in and out at random, filling the feed with bursts of static.

His most interesting discovery over the past two days is the fact that he doesn’t need to wear his flight suit outdoors — just his weighted boots to help keep him rooted to the planet’s surface. Though atmospheric pressure is only a few percent of what it is on Earth, he doesn’t require oxygen any more. An extra couple of hundred million kilometers apparently reduces his susceptibility to sunlight, too.

Without the suit, his mobility and range of vision are much greater than those of the arriving crew. He darts around their ship, hides beneath its struts and leaps out to overpower and sedate them one at a time. After they’re all unconscious, he drags them into the lounge and strips the stasis equipment and blood supplies from their ship. Soon he has seven ‘factories’ lined up in a neat row. He strolls among them, admiring his handiwork.

The biosphere’s computer has a database designed to supply the colonists with information. Though it can link to Mission Control computers, it needs to be self-reliant. For up to two weeks per year, communication with Earth will be impossible. He researches Total Parental Nutrition, the type of IV used to feed comatose patients. It requires inserting central lines into his subjects and maintaining the injection sites to prevent infection. He’ll have to spend a lot of time in the lab preparing the solutions, as well as mass producing the drugs required to keep them unconscious. He’s doomed to become both an extended caregiver to seven vegetables and a pharmaceutical factory. The life of a vampire never seemed less glamorous.

He remembers reading that pairs survive better in the wild. A companion would make his existence more tolerable. He has seven candidates, but he gravitates toward the one who tempted him first: former flight engineer Willows. He’s not sure of the process involved in converting her into a vampire, though. Their computer database offers no help. All he knows is what happened with him on that surreal night at the bar, and much of that is a blank. Does he need to feed on her just once, or are multiple feedings required?

When science fails him, Isaac turns to their extensive electronic library of literature. Even that is contradictory and vague. If biting Willows on the neck and sucking her blood doesn’t work, he’ll have to force her to drink some of his blood.

He stops the flow of sedatives to rouse her from stasis. When she begins to stir, he brushes aside her auburn hair and sinks his fangs into the vein pulsing just beneath the surface of her neck. Thick, warm blood fills his mouth, mixing with his saliva. He swallows, more invigorated than after any of his blood bank meals. The sensation is electrifying. He feels intimately connected to her. Willows moans and arches her back, pressing her neck against his mouth, as if urging him to take more.

He does.

Then he waits. She lapses back into unconsciousness. Her breathing slows, then halts. The color fades from her body, though she still seems vibrant and alive. When her eyes open again several hours later, they are dark embers burning in the dim light. She turns in confusion until she finds him watching her. Slowly, she rises from her gurney, her features etched with hunger and desire. She moves toward the others, prepared to pounce, but Isaac stops her. “We need them alive,” he says. “Take this instead.” He offers her a small beaker of blood from the bank. She swallows it in a single gulp and holds it out for more. He refills the beaker. The second draught appears to satisfy her.

He explains his plan for their survival, but Willows has doubts. It will work in the short term, she says, but eventually these frail human bodies will fail. What will they do then? There will be other missions to Mars — the Chinese are scheduled to send a ship in a couple of years — but the radio silence from the biosphere may cause NASA to suspend operations.

“We have the Russians,” he says. “They’re scheduled to leave in a few days.”

“Not enough,” she says.

Before the Russian ship leaves, it attempts to establish contact with the biosphere on behalf of Mission Control. Isaac ignores their hails. The cosmonauts don’t have time to send an exploratory expedition, however. Any delay would cause them to miss their Hohmann Transfer Orbit launch window and the next one won’t occur for twenty-six months.