Chapter 81: Reborn

The door to the morgue had been locked and the soldier standing guard outside thought nothing of the two piles of body bags lying in the cold darkness in the room behind him.

One pile of bodies was decomposing.

The other twelve bodies were regenerating.

The pool of blood that had gathered in each body bag was slowly reducing in size. Vampire blood was finding its way back into the open wounds of the dead soldiers, which closed and new skin grew over the top, sealing wounds within seconds and removing all sign of scars. To look at them, no one would know they had been bitten.

No one would know they were now servants of the undead. Even the soldiers themselves didn’t know why they had awoken. The last image in their minds was of a vampire bearing down on them and sinking its teeth into their neck.

One by one their eyes flicked open and quickly closed again as they gripped their stomachs with both hands and moaned in pain. Their insides were on fire. It felt like their internal organs were dissolving, sending intense heat to all corners of their bodies. The body bags shook as the newborn vampires writhed in agony.

They could sense each other’s presence. Each soldier lying in a zipped-up body bag knew he had eleven blood brothers in the room. They all ripped open the body bags with little effort and felt a powerful warmth spread down their legs as they struggled to their feet.

Each one of them was being driven by one desire. The need to ensure their survival.

They had to feed.

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Chapter 80: Defection

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Agent Simpson demanded, ‘Any dead bodies recovered from battle sites are treated so they will burn if they turn into vampires.’

‘The guy you chopped up is the one who treated them,’ said the soldier, ‘he was supposed to shoot the bodies with silver bullets but we switched the ammo with regular bullets.’

‘So why do you want to help us if you’re ready to set vampires loose in here?’ asked Doctor Owen.

‘I was carrying out my orders because I didn’t know any better. As a vampire, I didn’t think I had a choice. Now I’ve met you three and seen what you can do, I want to help. You’re not like everyone else here.

‘I had heard of Doctor Owen’s work but the message I got was different. We were told that you wanted to kill all of us. I always hoped there was someone out there that could help us and now that I know there is, I want to be part of it. I don’t want to be part of this pointless war any more.’

Agent Simpson thought to herself for a second and turned to Doctor Owen. ‘That makes two of us.’

‘I was hoping you were going to say that,’ he said, ‘I’ve had more than enough of these macho assholes.’

‘Okay,’ I piped up, struggling to get my words out, ‘now we’re all friends, what do we do? I’m lying here with my guts turning into mush, we’ve got masses of vampire bits to sort through and a squad of vampires in the morgue down the hall are starting to get hungry. How the hell are we going to get out of here?’

‘We need to take care of those vampires first,’ said the doctor, ‘Private…?’

‘Skinner, sir,’ said the soldier.

‘Private Skinner: go down to the morgue and finish off the vampires. I take it you can pilot one of the helicopters on the roof?’

‘Yes, I’ve got one fuelled and ready to go.’

‘Good. Agent Simpson and I will pack as much equipment and as many samples as we can fit into the steel cases we brought back from Hartley House. Detective Ryder: unless Private Skinner here tells us otherwise, you’re just going to have to ride it out for now.’

That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. The thought of getting an injection and waking up far away from The Brotherhood a few hours later was very appealing to me.

‘You said the pain would go away, didn’t you?’ I asked hopefully.

‘It certainly won’t get any worse. It’ll subside in a while. As soon as we get out of here, the doctor can give you a shot.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ I said, remembering last night’s dreams and questioning whether I would rather be unconscious or not.

Private Skinner checked his gun was loaded and made his way to the door, but was stopped by Captain Stein who bounded into the lab, followed by a pair of soldiers.

‘Where the hell are you going, Private?’ Before he could answer, Captain Stein spotted me perched on the edge of the bed clenching my stomach. ‘Jesus Christ, he’s turning, isn’t he?’

‘I can’t say for sure,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m just going to have a look at him now.’

‘Bullshit! Look at the state of him. He’s turning into a bloodsucker and you know it!’ Captain Stein’s rage knew no bounds. Only he really knew what he was capable of.

‘Then leave us alone to treat him!’ the doctor shouted.

‘Not a chance, Doc,’ said Captain Stein, ‘Strap him down.’

‘What?’ Agent Simpson exclaimed.

‘Detective Ryder is your next subject, Doctor Owen,’ said Captain Stein as he drew his gun and pointed it at the doctor, ‘The son of a bitch is a vampire. Chop him up.’

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Chapter 79: Hunger

I fell to the ground and rolled over, trying not to scream or do anything to alert the soldiers outside the lab to my suffering. The pain in my stomach was excruciating. I had never been stabbed but I suspected that having knives thrust into my guts over and over would feel something like this.

Agent Simpson was the first to my aid. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s my stomach. I don’t know what’s wrong, it just started this second,’ I stammered.

‘It’s the hunger,’ I heard Doctor Owen say, ‘I feared this would happen.’

‘Give me another shot,’ I pleaded.

‘It’ll probably knock you out for a few hours again,’ the doctor said, looking very concerned.

‘I don’t care how long I sleep for. The longer the better. Just do it,’ I pleaded.

‘No, wait!’ shouted a voice that I didn’t recognise.

I looked up and saw the soldier who had been left in the lab by Captain Stein walking over to me. He lifted me up and sat me down on an empty bed.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘Fight through it, Detective. The hunger will subside,’ the soldier said to me.

‘What do you know about it?’ asked Agent Simpson.

‘Listen to me, I know what I’m talking about,’ said the stranger.

‘You’re a vampire, aren’t you?’ said Doctor Owen, more calmly than the situation dictated.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I want to help.’

In a flash, Agent Simpson drew her gun and pointed it at the soldier, who raised his hands and took a step back. ‘Look, I just want to help,’ he said, without a hint on insincerity in his voice.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been a member of The Brotherhood for almost a year. I’m not the only one, you know.’

‘We know there have been infiltrators. How many of you are there?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve sensed another two or three here but we’re never told who they are. We have our missions and we carry them out, that’s all.’

I’ve sensed another two or three, he said. I cast my mind back to the line-up of eight soldiers and my suspicions about the vampire infiltrator.

Do I have the same power to sense the presence of other vampires?

‘What is your mission?’ she demanded as I screamed again. It felt like my insides were burning away to nothing. The doctor walked over to me, carrying the syringe that I hoped would take me away from this agony.

‘Don’t give him the treatment, Doc,’ the soldier said.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ I shouted, ‘I’m dying here. I know you want to help me but I can’t take it any more.’

‘This will hold back the effects of the virus,’ the doctor said, ‘why shouldn’t I give it to him?’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Agent Simpson, ‘he wants him to turn into a vampire.’

‘No, it’s not that. You said it would knock him out for a few hours,’ said the soldier.

‘So what?’ The doctor stopped to listen to the soldier for a moment. I really hoped everyone would get to the point so I could get the injection and go off to sleep.

‘If you want to get out of here, I can help you, but we have to keep him awake and leave now.’

‘How do we know we can trust you?’ shouted Agent Simpson, still pointing the gun in the soldier’s face.

‘I guess you can’t, not one hundred percent, but you have to have faith in me. I’ve already told you who I am. All you need to do is say the word and the Captain will come back in and force you to chop me up like you did to him. I take it you lot aren’t here of your own free will? Don’t you want to leave?’

Agent Simpson looked at the basins full of internal organs. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘the doctor will give Detective Ryder the treatment and we’ll get out of here after he wakes up.’

‘We can’t wait that long,’ the soldier said, raising his voice. He had an air of urgency that Doctor Owen and Agent Simpson weren’t picking up on.

‘Why not?’

‘Because any minute now, the dead bodies recovered from Hartley House will turn into vampires and they’re going to be just as hungry as your friend.’

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 78: Second Thoughts

Private Skinner was shocked. Standing in the medical lab with the recovery crew, he had witnessed the death of one of his brothers, but for the first time he believed the death wasn’t in vain. He had witnessed the massacre of many humans and vampires, all of them killed for no good reason that he could fathom. Every battle was a futile exercise that resulted in a pile of dead bodies without any advancement for either species.

This time the death seemed to have some value. The people doing the experiments wanted to help everyone, not just the humans. They wanted what was best for all species. Private Skinner was a sworn enemy of The Brotherhood but these people weren’t like the others.

These people, Doctor Owen, Detective Ryder and Agent Simpson, weren’t bloodthirsty animals. They had a measured approach towards these experiments. Not once had they mentioned the primary treatment.

He had only been a vampire for a relatively short time and could still remember life before his rebirth. He hadn’t chosen this life. It had chosen him one drunken night when he fell over on the long walk home and passed out in the street. When he woke up in hospital he had a bandage on his neck and a splitting headache. The hunger set in and he fought it for a few days, thinking he was just suffering from the worst hangover of his life.

Then one day he had a craving. No amount of Alka Seltzer or full fat milk could quell the burning in his stomach. Without thinking, he went to the fridge, took out a large beef steak, ripped open the packet and started to feast on the raw meat. The old Skinner, somewhere in his head who liked his steaks well done, was repulsed at the thought of what he was doing. The new Skinner finished it off within seconds but the pain did not subside. He wanted more.

From that day forward, he had a compulsion to eat only raw meat, but while this felt natural to him, it failed to keep the hunger at bay. Visits to the doctor were fruitless: they couldn’t diagnose his problem. It had been the height of summer but he seemed to suffer from sunburn a lot more than he usually did and he decided to change his shift as a security guard and work nights instead. He stayed inside all day, either sleeping or searching the internet for people with similar problems.

Eventually he made contact with a mysterious character on a chat room who said she could introduce him to hundreds of people just like him and make the pain go away. He had no choice.

Roxy was her name and she was very welcoming. She showed him a new life with people of his own kind. She showed him the superiority of his brothers and sisters and he bought into the whole way of life. She had given him his first taste of human blood. Part of him had been repulsed but it was the only thing that could satiate his hunger.

The new Skinner had ruled his head ever since but in the past few minutes, the old Skinner had started to talk to him again.

Help them, said the voice in his head, you have to help them because they can help you. It’s what you really want.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

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Chapter 77: 'Butcher Him'

The vampire soldier’s eyes darted around maniacally in their sockets then locked onto mine. He opened his mouth to reveal extended canine teeth. The muscles in his arms and legs tensed but the straps tying him down were holding him to the bed. For now.

‘Jesus Christ! He’s woken up already, shoot him!’ Captain Stein exclaimed and the armed soldiers clicked the safety catches on their rifles.

‘No, wait!’ shouted the doctor as he reached across me, picked up a syringe full of anaesthetic and injected it into the soldier’s neck. Within a few seconds, the soldier’s eyes and mouth closed and his body lost its powerful energy.

‘This is too dangerous, Doc,’ said the Captain, ‘if that happens again, I will shoot him.’ The doctor turned to Captain Stein, ready to start an argument but soon realised that he wouldn’t have a chance of winning. Instead, he turned to me once again.

‘We’d better do as much as we can before he wakes up again. My original estimation of four to five hours of unconsciousness was way out. I now estimate around twenty to thirty minutes before he wakes up.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked.

The doctor thought to himself for a few moments. ‘We butcher him. As fast as we can.’ He turned to the soldiers. ‘Gather up all the basins and buckets you can find.’ They all turned to Captain Stein for guidance.

‘Don’t look at me,’ he said, ‘Do what he said. You heard him, we haven’t got much time.’

Doctor Owen leaned over the body of the undead soldier with a scalpel and reopened the chest cavity. As the soldiers ran around the labs gathering together all the vessels they could find, the doctor was dipping conical flasks into the chest cavity one after another, collecting as many samples as possible, and putting corks in the tops of the flasks to stop the vampire blood making its own way out. He knew this soldier would die very soon and wanted to get as much data for further examination as possible before our time ran out.

The basins piled up on the bench next to us and the doctor ordered me to stand by and hand him a new basin for each organ that he was going to extract. I held the first basin in front of me. In one quick move, the doctor yanked the soldier’s stomach out of his abdominal cavity and sliced it free from the rest of his digestive tract. It landed in my basin with a watery splat, followed by the order: ‘Get ready, here comes the liver!’

For the next few minutes I managed to catch all the organs that Doctor Owen threw at me. The organs were all drenched in blood and splashed drops onto me as they landed in each basin. The doctor stopped and we both looked at the organs lined up on the bench next to us. He had extracted the stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, heart and lungs.

‘Very interesting,’ he commented.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘If we assume that a vampire’s body turns into ash when it dies, we can therefore assume that this man is still quote-unquote alive, even though all of his vital organs are sitting over there. Look, the blood is still active.’

He was right. This was a very unsettling experience. In each of the basins, the drops of blood that had splattered around the organs were making their way back into their host. Every drop of blood was alive, with a mind of its own dictating its movements.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Captain Stein.

‘It means that this man has no use for his internal organs. The biological processes required to sustain human life cease to be relevant once the virus has consumed the body. It is safe to assume that the muscles are still required by the limbs in order for them to function but it appears this body runs almost solely on blood. That must be why vampires feed on human blood: nothing else provides them with the sustenance their bodies need. It is as if the virus has taken control of the blood completely and is using the body as a home.

‘When we saw the blood drain from the chest cavity, it must have been moving to the brain to provide the energy necessary to overcome the effects of the anaesthetic.’

Everyone in the lab stood in silence. Doctor Owen had just delivered a bombshell. As long as the human race had walked the Earth, vampires had always been the enemy and now, for the first time in recorded history, we had biological evidence of the differences between them and us. The first step on the path to rid them from our world.

Something else occurred to me. What if vampires are the superior species? Are we trying to rid the world of the next step in human evolution? The anatomy of a vampire seemed so much simpler, so much more elegant than that of a human body.

I looked at the body of the soldier and saw the blood start to drain away from his chest cavity. Just as it had before, the chest cavity closed like an invisible zipper was being done up.

‘Doc, he’s going to wake up again.’

Captain Stein picked up his gun but the doctor stopped him.

‘No sense wasting another bullet,’ said Doctor Owen as he picked a bullet up from the petri dishes and casually lobbed it into the soldier’s wound just before it closed completely. As the soldier’s eyes opened, smoke started to rise from his chest and the burning spread around the body.

The soldier screamed and tried to shake himself free. The bed rattled and he managed to rip one of the straps and release one of his arms but it was too late. As he tried to reach over to free his other arm, it turned to ash, along with the rest of his body. Within seconds, nothing was left of the soldier other than a thick layer of ash.

‘Good work, Doctor,’ Captain Stein conceded, ‘keep at it. Looks like you’ve got a lot of samples to get to work on.’ He marched most of the soldiers out of the lab, leaving one volunteer behind to keep an eye on us.

Doctor Owen, Agent Simpson and I looked at each other and assessed our surroundings. We were faced with a bed covered in ash from a dead vampire and a row of basins filled with live organs. The organs had not turned into ash. They looked exactly the same: fat, moist and full of vampire blood.

‘Very interesting,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘the organs haven’t died, even though the vampire’s body has died.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Agent Simpson.

Doctor Owen smiled. ‘To be honest, I’ve no idea. It feels like we’ve discovered penicillin, cracked the human genome and discovered the triple helix all on the same day. I think we’ve earned a five minute break.’

We all nodded in agreement. Unfortunately, it was that very second that I felt a burning in my stomach like nothing I had ever felt before but I instinctively knew what it was. I gripped my stomach with both hands and doubled over in agony.

Like the doctor had predicted and I had feared, I was suddenly unbelievably hungry.

Rebirth is available from the following online retailers:

Amazon UK - £7.99
Amazon US - $16.95
Barnes and Noble - $15.25