Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (8 page)

She slips a couple of bills into his hand.

“Atl,” he says.

“Keep the dog,” she replies, handing him the leash. “It’ll slow me down.”

She takes a couple of steps. The dog whines.

“Stay with him,” she orders.

“Atl,” he repeats.

She walks away. She doesn’t turn her head. He tries following her, but the square is crowded at this time of the night and he loses her quickly. She must have flown away. Can vampires fly? He’ll never know.

She’s gone.

A trio sings “
La Cucaracha
” while the rain begins to fall. He sniffles, eyes watery.

Domingo pulls his plastic bag from his pocket and ties it above his head. He’s out of chocolate. He’s out of luck. He pats the dog’s head.

* * * * *

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s stories have appeared in publications such as
Fantasy Magazine, Tesseracts Thirteen
and
Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction.
She is the owner of Innsmouth Free Press, a micro-publishing venture specializing in horror and dark speculative fiction, and through Innsmouth she has co-edited the anthologies
Historical Lovecraft
and
Candle in the Attic Window.
She has written a couple of stories set in a near-future Mexico where vampires are real and hopes to write a novel which takes place in the same universe.

V-Link

By Eileen Bell

I love Vlad the Impaler!

The words floated in, a warm spot in Roslyn’s mind. It was Gina, with information.

Roslyn pretended to pay attention to Dr. Erickson, who was standing right by her bed. She watched his lips move as Gina’s voice crawled around in her head, giving her the up-to-date about the U-Link implant patients. Everybody was getting weaker by the day. Roger and Cassidy were still off the grid. In other words, no good news.

She muttered “uh huh,” like she was listening to the doctor, then felt the small warm spark in her brain as she responded to Gina.

Can’t talk long, Erickson’s here. Who’s Vlad?

Original vampire or something. A real bad ass, apparently. But anybody with Impaler in his name couldn’t be all good, now could he?

Gina was being held in a university and actually had access to a library, so she could look stuff up. Dead tree technology, but at least it was something.

The rest of them were in hospitals all across the country, with no access to the outside, or to each other. At least, that’s what the doctors believed when they shut down the wireless network to disconnect everyone fitted with Version 1.0 of the U-Link implant.

U-Link. Before their surgeries, Roslyn and the rest had been told it would be the next great networking system.

Roslyn touched the IV cannula sprouting from her chest, into which would soon spew the latest chemical stew, and wondered if maybe this time she should have waited for Version 2.0. The one that
didn’t
shut down all your internal organs one by one until all you had left was your brain.

Dr. Erickson grabbed her foot and she jumped. Not that it hurt — it didn’t, her nerves didn’t carry pain messages the way they used to — he had just surprised her. She cut the connection to Gina and glared at him. “What?”

“Are you having difficulty focusing?” He looked anxious. “Maybe another CT scan—”

“No,” she snapped. “My brain’s not shutting down. I’m ignoring you. I only ever asked for two things, Dr. E. Saying no about the blood, all right, I get that, but no computer? That’s BS and you know it.”

She almost added that the V-Link — the name Gina had coined when the U-Link patients spontaneously reconnected — wasn’t enough anymore. That she missed her old friends, and her mother, and her life. But she clamped her mouth shut before those words slipped out. He didn’t need to know about the V-Link. That was
their
little secret.

His expression went from anxious to almost angry. “Those are the rules. You know them as well as I do. Now, pay attention, please. We are going to change your regimen—”

“Again?” she whined, hating the weak sound of it. “Why?”

“Remarkable advances were made at the New Hampshire facility—”

“What advances?” Roger and Cassidy were in New Hampshire.

She clawed at the blankets until Erickson helped her sit upright. “Have you been out of bed today?” he asked.

“No. Tell me what happened in New Hampshire.”

“You must exercise.” He pointed to the hated walker, the scorch mark visible on the side. “Your muscles are atrophying—”

“Thinner’s better,” she quipped. When he didn’t laugh, she went serious, too. “I’m not taking the chance. Not after Melissa.”

“You don’t have to go outside. Just up and down the halls.”

“But I have to do it during the day, when the physio staff’s here. You know that, Dr. E.”

She closed her eyes and saw Melissa stepping out through the front door of the hospital like it was happening at this moment and not three months before. The late afternoon sun touching her. Igniting her. Her screaming and screaming as Roslyn fell backwards into the safety of the shadows. And then Roslyn screaming as Melissa finally fell, finally silent, to the sidewalk, and burned to ash. “I’m not doing that again.”

“But you have to walk.”

She shook her head. “Tell me what happened in New Hampshire.”

For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer her.

“Please?” She let her voice wander up to little girl young, because it worked on him sometimes.

“They removed the implants from two of the patients there,” he finally said.

A chill, like a puff of winter, and she pulled the blanket up to her chin before she realized it was fear and not cold. “Successfully?”

“More or less.”

The chill trickled over her like ice water. She shuddered. “What does that mean?”

“The good news is, both survived, this time. And it appears that some of their internal organs are regaining viability.” He smiled. “We are very hopeful.”

“Their hearts?” she asked.

“No. The appendix. But it’s a start.”

“And the bad news?” There was always bad news.

“There was some loss of brain function—”

She touched the scar that ran along her hairline. “How much?”

“Some cognitive ability, and for some reason, scent recognition.” He shook his head, as though that was the real puzzler. Then his eyes slid from hers and settled on the thin blanket covering her belly. “They only lost a few IQ points, though. Nothing to worry about.”

“How many’s a few?”

“Not many.” Erickson’s eyes did not leave her midsection. He was lying. “The results were positive enough to warrant phase two. A slight variation on the chemical mixture. And then extraction.”

“So, who’s your next victim?”

Erickson’s face tightened and his eyes swung up to hers.

“Not me,” she whispered.

“You don’t have a choice.”

“But that’s not fair!” Roslyn looked around the room as though trying to find something in all that sterile white with which to protect herself. She clicked on the V-Link and thought/screamed
911, 911, 911,
as if it would do some good.

“We’ll start the next round of chemical therapy tomorrow night,” Erickson said. “It’s for your own good.”

The V-Link came alive. Through the noise of everyone asking what was wrong, she tried to focus on him, on his words.

“I don’t want to die,” she finally whispered. “Please tell me I’m not going to die.”

“We won’t let that happen, Roslyn.” He smiled, and she tried to smile back. “I won’t see you until the day before the extraction, but I want you to be brave. Think of it. You’re about to get your life back.”

He patted her hand and walked out of the room. As the door swished shut, she was left alone with her own thoughts and those of the twenty-eight people left of the Link experiment. She was so afraid; all she could do was cry like a little girl.

She was next. They were going to disconnect her next.

Before she was hooked up to the blood/heart machine to pump the new chemical stew through her system, some of the other Link patients almost convinced her that having the implant taken out could be a good thing. If she went through with this, she could go back to normal. So what if she lost a few IQ points, and the only organ working in her body was the hugely useless appendix? She could go back to her life. Her friends. Maybe even her mother.

The machine clicked and slurped to life beside her and she tried to hang on to that thought. Then the toxic liquid boiled through her veins and she couldn’t think anymore. All she could do was scream.

After the nurses disconnected her and wheeled her back to her bed, she struggled against her tightly tucked blankets until Gina’s voice rippled through her consciousness.

How do you feel?

Weak.
She tried to pull her arms out from under the blankets, but couldn’t.
A lot weaker, actually.

We were strong before they started all this. Very, very strong.

I know. But we can’t go back to that. It’s against the law.

The laws need to be changed.

Roslyn snorted laughter.
Yeah. I’ll get right on that. Maybe run for office — if I could get out of bed!

I’m not kidding.
Gina’s thoughts read deadly serious.
They shouldn’t be treating us like this. We are real.

Of course we’re real.
Roslyn thought about disconnecting. Gina was going to go into one of her conspiracy theory rants, and she didn’t feel up to it. Not after the blood-heart machine. Not after the screaming.

Don’t shut me down!
Gina’s thoughts slammed into Roslyn’s head, bringing more than warmth. Heat — almost pain.
I found an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. They are calling what happened to us an unintended side effect of the Link implant.

You think?

Just listen. Somehow the implant flipped a switch — a genetic switch in all of us. I don’t know how — hell, I don’t understand half the words they used. But that’s what all the experimentation is about. They want to make the Link work, without turning the users from human to — whatever we are. That’s why there are only twenty-eight of us left.

She wished Gina would shut up. She was too tired.
The others aren’t dead or anything. They just disconnected from the V-Link when the implant was removed.

I think we got that wrong. In the article, they talk about brain biopsies after extraction. Brain biopsies, Roslyn.

Roslyn shuddered. Gina was lying. She had to be.
They’re trying to save us!

I don’t think so.

Roslyn fought against the blankets, listening to her choked gasps and wondering if her lungs, somehow, had restarted. She was, for the first time, afraid it was all a lie.

We need to get strong, Roslyn. That means getting blood. Real blood. Not this plasma shit they’ve been feeding us.

She stopped fighting. Stared up at the ceiling.
I won’t kill anyone.

Probably be better if you didn’t,
Gina replied, and laughed her smoky, angry laugh.
But we need to build our strength. Blood’s the only way.

Are you sure?

Yes.
Gina broke the link, and Roslyn was alone.

She wriggled one arm free and pulled the sheets back from her body. Exhaustion overtook her, and she almost gave up, but then mentally kicked herself. Get up now!

She pulled herself upright, then grabbed her right leg and swung it over the edge of the bed. She almost fell to the floor, but gained control. She grabbed the other leg and moved it next to the first, like so much dead wood. Focusing on her legs, she tried to convince them to move. She couldn’t tell if she felt more like cheering or crying when she saw her right foot twitch. And then another twitch. And then, almost without thought, she was standing beside the bed, staring through the gloom at her walker. So far away.

“I can do this,” she whispered, hoping she wasn’t lying to herself. She shuffled forward a step. Her eyesight darkened, but she waited it out. Another step and another, clutching first the bed, and then the chair no one ever used, and then the cupboard that held everything she had left from her other life — the clothes in which she had been caught. She wondered if they were still covered in Terry’s blood and tried not think of that. Two steps. She grabbed the walker and clung to it like an old friend. After a pause, she wheeled herself to the door and opened it.