The Vampire (THE VAMPIRE Book 1) (24 page)

They took a taxi from the train station. Jason was perspiring as he walked up the three steps to the front door, feeling as if that small effort took an extraordinary amount of energy. He weakly lugged his one carry-on bag inside the door and then collapsed on the floor just inside the foyer.

He awoke sometime later, lying in his bed. He had no recollection of what had happened, nor of how he had gotten to his room, much less to his bed. Thoughts and sensations came to him as if through a dense fog. He was very thirsty. His throat was sandpaper; too dry and scratchy to try to talk. He had a throbbing headache. He was lying on his back, and he was partially undressed: wearing underwear, T-shirt, socks. His whole body ached. He felt as tired as if he had just run a marathon. He tried to lift his head slightly and the whole room began to spin. A voice spoke rapidly somewhere. His ears were making a crackling sound. Was someone speaking to him? He could not tell. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep. He had never been so exhausted. He felt a sudden chill and weakly pulled the covers up to his chin. The voice spoke a little louder now, or closer maybe, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t understand; the words sounded foreign to him. It hurt to open his eyes. He turned partly on one side. He vaguely realized someone was speaking in English and French. He opened one eye to take a look.

Augere was pacing in the room talking on a cell phone. Jason closed his eyes again. Why was Augere here? He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming this. He just wanted to sleep; his eyelids felt heavy. He pulled the covers up closer to his head over his ears. He felt something close to him—too close and his eyes opened suddenly. Augere had noticed his movements and seemed to be handing him something. Jason’s responses were very slow and uncertain. He closed his eyes.

He heard a voice saying something to him; it sounded like “take this.” He opened his eyes and slowly realized Augere was handing him a cell phone. A far away sounding voice was saying his name. He brought the phone to his ear.

“Jason? Jason! Are you all right? What happened?” He thought it might be Genier’s voice.

Jason tried to speak and his voice came out hoarse and squeaking. He did not recognize it as his own. “Not sure. Guess I must have fainted maybe.”

“Yes. Mr. Augere said you collapsed suddenly. He thinks maybe you are dying. He said you need an ambulance and that you should to go to the hospital right now. But you aren’t unconscious now—”

“No. I really don’t remember everything.”

“How do you feel? Do you want me to have an ambulance sent for?”

“No. Don’t…think so.”

“Are you hurt anywhere? What are your symptoms? My wife is right here; she is a nurse. She can advise us…”

“Head and throat hurts…whole body aches. The room is kind of spinning. I feel really tired, just exhausted…” Jason managed to squeak out the words while his eyes remained shut.

“My wife says she thinks you might have the flu. If you go to the hospital you will sit in the waiting room for hours, and be very uncomfortable. Then they will probably send you home and tell you to rest and take fluids. Jason, do you have any pain or fever medication on hand?”

“I…I think so. Bathroom.”

“Okay then. I am going to reassure Mr. Augere. He should be able to offer some help and comfort at least. Do you have juice on hand? Soup? That sort of thing?”

Thinking was an effort. “I think so, yeah,” he replied weakly, his voice trailing off as his eyes closed.

“Good. And I will tell Mr. Augere this also: if your symptoms get any worse, or if at any time you want to go to the hospital we will do that immediately. Okay?”

“Sure,” Jason replied sleepily, struggling to reopen his eyes.

“Okay. Give the phone to Mr. Augere. I will explain what is needed.”

Jason blindly handed the phone out from among the covers with his eyes closed. Augere’s hand grasped it.

He had almost drifted off to sleep in those few moments before he heard Augere speaking loudly in French. He seemed quite upset. His voice sounded pressured as it grew louder and then softer. Angry one moment and seemingly pleading the next. In English, then in French, and then English again. “No—I cannot.
Je ne peux pas
.” Jason opened one eye to see him pacing the room again. “
Non—il faut que tu l’aider!
I cannot do this!” And then he suddenly threw the phone down onto a nearby chair—where had the chair come from? Jason wondered—with such force the phone bounced off of the chair and onto the bed, landing alongside Jason. And then just as suddenly, Augere was gone. Jason blinked several times. How had he disappeared so quickly? Jason could hear Genier’s voice on the phone. He felt around for it and picked it up.

“Hello?” Jason said into the phone.

“Oh…Jason. I thought maybe he hung up on me.”

“No…he threw the phone…”

“Not at you?”

“Uh…no… it bounced…here. Next to me. I’m…sorry—to make so much trouble…so angry…”

“Oh, no, he’s not mad at you, Jason. He’s very worried about you. He wants you in the hospital. He is mad at me for not taking care of this.”

“Not necessary…” Jason managed to croak. His voice was fading faster than his energy.

“I told him that. That’s why he is so angry with me. I told him he can bring you some juice, some tea with honey, and some soup. He can do this. He didn’t like that I had to remind him he has had medical training. For god’s sake! He’s triaged soldiers in battle…He can handle this. He is just acting helpless.”

The words washed over Jason; he tried to hang on to them as they passed over him, but it was hard to do. He was trying to focus. What was going on was intriguing. If only he could stay awake. If only his body didn’t ache so much everywhere, and his throat…

“Okay, Jason. I will call later to see how you are doing. Don’t worry. It will be okay. Get some rest.”

“Thanks, Mr. Genier…” his words trailed off sleepily. He drifted off with the phone beside him.

Jason must have slept a while. Five minutes? An hour? He couldn’t tell. Suddenly he was awake. As soon as Augere saw Jason’s eyes open he rose quickly from the chair beside the bed and handed Jason a glass of cold orange juice without a word.

Jason drank the whole thing down in seconds. He tried to thank him, but words would not come out, so he tried to nod. Then Augere presented him with a tray full of medications. Jason blinked several times. It looked like the entire contents of his medicine cabinet. Jason stared at the array of meds. He had to squint to read some of the labels but luckily he recognized most of them. He selected liquid cold and flu medicine; cough drops, pain and fever medication. He really hadn’t the strength to open the childproof bottles but he selected a few and pointed at them, nodding. Augere seemed to have some difficulty getting the caps off also, but he managed it. Jason took the meds with more of the orange juice, propped up on one elbow, finishing off the remainder of the juice carton. He nodded at Augere then and closed his eyes, quickly falling off to sleep.

Jason drifted in and out of a light slumber. Sometimes he thought he heard Augere speaking softly nearby but when he would open one eye to look the chair would be empty. Other times he turned on his side, believing he was alone and would look to see Augere sitting there in a chair by the bed silently watching him.

Jason awoke later in the night and was able to drink a large glass of ice water with more of his medication. He soon went off to sleep again.

He awoke the next morning, his throat still scratchy, his voice hoarse. He was more thirsty than hungry. There was no more orange juice when he asked for some. Augere looked very worried. As if it were suddenly life or death.

Augere got on the phone with Genier. There was a lot of tense conversation, and what sounded like desperate words in French from Augere who then handed the phone to Jason.

“He is going out to get some more—stuff for you. I gave him a list. He will be gone a short while but you will have the phone beside you, if you need to call for any reason. Okay?”

Jason nodded, then realized speaking was required. He was still in a fog. He never seemed to be able to keep his eyes open for too long and he felt like he could easily sleep the entire day away.

****

Things had not gone well for Augere in the kitchen. It was a foreign place to him. Now he needed to buy more food items for the assistant. He suspected this was going to be difficult. But it seemed it could not be helped. Genier was not being useful. He already knew this was going to be a very trying situation for him.

He called for a taxi and then asked to be taken to a place to get provisions, specifically food and liquids.

The cab driver turned around to look at him. “A restaurant?”

“No. Where there is a lot of different foods.”

The cab driver stared at him for several moments. “You mean—a food store?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Well, which one?”

Augere gave him a blank look.
How should I know
.

Then the taxi driver named several. None of the names meant anything to Augere. “Just select one,” Augere told him in an exasperated tone. An odd name for a food store, Augere thought, when he heard the choice. What did it matter? He was anxious to have this over and done. He nodded hesitantly.

They arrived in the large parking lot of big grocery store chain and Augere instructed the driver to wait for him.

He removed from his pocket the list Genier had dictated to him. Then he stood at the front of the store and observed to see how this was done. He had never been in such a place as this before.

People entered and selected a rolling cart. There were varying sizes of these carts. Perhaps he did not need one of those. They assembled in lines with their item-filled carts and waited in turn until someone could look over each item purchased. It seemed a needlessly tedious process. Then the goods were tallied. And then paid for directly to the person who had checked their goods. Then the people left with their purchases. It seemed easy enough.

He walked slowly down the many aisles. At first all of it seemed so remarkable. So many different things; such variety. It soon wearied him though. He became perplexed at the sameness of everything. Was all of this variety really necessary? Twenty-two different kinds of the same paper goods? What was wrong with all of these people? He did not understand it, when all it was only going to be used for—

A small child came careening past him, nearly upsetting the display of goods next to him. He snarled behind the child’s back, looking for an errant parent but there was none to be seen. He decided to move to a safer aisle. It was best not to risk causing an incident here.

He finally found the aisle containing the soup. He had had much difficulty opening those containers at the house. He had wasted a number of them, impatiently trying to force them open. Again there far too many to choose from. Genier had suggested chicken varieties. Chicken broth. Augere looked for those among the shelves. How much chicken could possibly be squeezed into those quite small containers? It was a somewhat appalling thought, and not something he especially wanted to find out. He suspected it would look grotesque.

He found two varieties of cans. One had a metal ring on the top and one did not. He frowned. Opening the ones with the metal thing had not gone well. He had pulled at the rings and they had broken, so he had squeezed them, causing an ungodly mess. He had been forced to discard several of those. Perhaps the other variety? A store clerk walked by and Augere asked for a demonstration of how the metal containers worked. The young man stared at him for several long moments. Then he provided instruction on how to raise the metal ring on the top and then to slowly and carefully peel it back. He went through the motions pretending to do so, to show him how it was done.

“Then what?” Augere asked. “It is consumed like this?”

The young man stared at him again. “No. You would have to put this plastic cover back on to cook it in the microwave or empty all of it into a pan and heat it up.” Augere gave him a single uncertain nod.

Once the young man had left the aisle, Augere tried several of the cans. Apparently too much force caused the contents to fly in all directions when one used the ring at the top. He had squeezed several of the other kind of containers at the house, without much success either. It took carefully opening several of the ring topped containers to convince him he had perfected the technique. He left the practice ones on the shelf, selecting a dozen new ones. Then he found the orange juice and selected two containers identical to the one back at the house. He balanced the items with difficulty, juggling them back and forth as he waited in the long lines with the others. He had to keep a safe distance by changing lanes constantly. His energy field could drop them to the ground if he remained too close to them for any length of time. After a while, he was considering dropping a few of the shoppers just to create a diversion so he could get out sooner; he was bored with all of this. There were a few of them he considered dropping to the floor, just because they were annoying.

An elderly woman, seeing all that he carried, allowed him to pass in front of her metal cart which held more items than he had.

And at last it was his turn to have his items examined. A young checking girl handled each item and then placed them into several bags. They were tallied and he was told how much to pay. Then the young girl asked if he had his shopper’s card. And then, for just a moment, he had an experience rather unique for him: a sense of panic.

“Is it…necessary?” He stared at her.

“Well, a lot of the stuff you bought today is on special with the card.”

He gave her a blank look. His brow furrowed then and the corners of his mouth slowly deepened into a frown. This was not going to work as planned. Apparently he did not have the proper documents. He lacked what was required.

“You would save $4.83 today if you had the card.” The young checking girl said brightly. It appeared she was not going to let him have the goods. He wondered what he should do next. Perhaps he should just leave. No. These items were needed right now. He would have to go somewhere else and start over if he left. He considered dropping the required amount of money in front of her and then just disappearing with the items.