Blood Cell (11 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

One of the many luxuries denied to prisoners is time. One might think that prisoners have “all the time in the world,” but often the opposite is true. Prisoners don’t have watches, nor do the walls have clocks. Time is marked by the guards’ whistles and shouted calls, not by pouring sand or by clockwork. While the inmates knew that the riot had started at dinnertime, and the guards’ attempts to retake the pod had lasted several hours, they did not actually know the time. Only Santos, who had taken a watch from a dead C.O., had the time. And Santos had gone running with the rest of them when the monster showed up.

The rest of the inmates didn’t have a clue about the time; they just knew it was dark out now.

There was a thing. A human-shaped thing. It came from a fog. It killed people, it ate pieces of them, and it licked up the blood. And when that thing went on its rampage, the surviving members of the motorcycle club, namely Ox Werden, Frankie Frisby, and Sonny Ramsden, ran and hid under the counter inside the kitchen.

But without the luxury of time, they had idea how long they had been hiding. It took a while for the real noise to stop. They heard men scream and shriek, heard the ripping sound of muscles being separated from bone, and they heard the sounds of that thing out there, laughing and chewing. Sometimes it would loudly sniff, like a dog.

Each member of the gang felt a certain automatic response build up inside when they heard the men shrieking in pain and fear. They each wanted to boast. They wanted to call the dying men pussies and brag about how they would never scream like that. Sonny wanted to mention the time he skinned his leg in a crash and never cried about it. Ox wanted to remind his followers that he’d once been gut-shot without shrieking like that. Frankie was reminded of his own bravado in knife fights and bar brawls. And while each man had the thought that the men dying out in the mess hall were pussies, not one of them actually spoke up. Because speaking might attract the monster.

So time passed, silently. Slowly. And a long, long time after the screaming had stopped, Ox came out from under the counter, crawling around to face his friends. It felt to Ox’s frayed mind and sore battle-worn body that he’d been crammed under the counter for hours, but it was likely a matter of minutes.

“That thing was a vampire, right?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“What?” Sonny sort of sighed rather than speak.

“It turned into fog, drank people’s blood—I watched those movies, man...”

Frankie nodded. “He’s right, it’s a goddamn vampire.”

“We gotta find a way to kill it,” said Ox. He looked around the kitchen at the knives and equipment.

“In the religion room upstairs,” said Frankie, “They got crosses and holy water and stuff.”

“You wanna walk up there? In the dark?” asked Sonny, still whispering. “Half the people in here didn’t make it outta that mess hall.”

“We don’t need no fuckin’ religious stuff,” Ox said. “We got what we need right here.”

“There ain’t no wooden stakes in a goddamn kitchen and knives don’t hurt vampires. We need crosses and shit.” Frankie was adamant.

“I don’t mean stakes. I mean garlic. Check the fridge.”

The other men climbed out from their hiding place, and moved through the kitchen. The fridge was actually a room, like a meat locker, kept a couple degrees above zero Celsius. While they went for the fridge, Ox started checking the cupboards.

Inside the fridge there was a lot of ground beef, a case of bell peppers, and a large box of apples. No garlic. There might have been garlic in some of the plastic containers, but in the total darkness of the meat locker, Sonny and Frankie couldn’t read the labels.

“Hey,” said Frankie to Sonny as he popped the lid on a container, “that smell like garlic to you?”

Sonny shook his head and stepped back into the kitchen. Ox was still rifling through the cabinets.

“No garlic in there. You find any, like, garlic powder or anything?”

“No but I got something better,” Ox told them from behind an open cupboard door. “I found this.”

With an exhale and a heave, Ox lifted a heavy one-gallon can of tomato sauce out of the cabinet. Setting it on the counter, he spun the can toward the light so the other guys could see. It read: Extra Herb & Garlic Tomato Sauce.

“I figure we can smear this stuff all over ourselves, make it so Mr. Fangs out there can’t even touch us, then we can go lookin’ for him. Maybe help him meet Mr. Sunshine in the morning.”

Ox and Frankie high-fived. Sonny was busy looking around the counters.

“Sounds good, Ox. But how we gonna get the sauce out of the can?”

“Easy.” Ox picked up the can opener, and behind it trailed the short black electrical cord. Ox realized: “no power. Fuck! Well they gotta have a regular hand-crank one. Just look in all the drawers.”

All three men set about tearing the kitchen apart in search of a can opener. They were making more noise now. The clattering of drawers and cutlery was audible well past the body-filled mess hall.

“I got this,” offered Frankie, holding an old-time beverage can opener. The kind that comes on the back end of a bottle opener, with a triangular point and a little hook to grab the lip of the can.

“That’s not good enough. Use your head,” Ox was getting frustrated. He wanted that can open, and he wanted his plan to work, and he wanted to grind the monster’s body under his heel. He’d killed a lot of men in his time, but an honest-to-God vampire would be a new notch on his belt. Hell, they might have to redesign the motorcycle club’s logo to reflect their new level of kick-ass.

They kept looking for several minutes, wreaking havoc on the kitchen but not finding a manual can opener. Sonny, sweating and with his heart still in overdrive from hours before, got tired of looking. He picked up a large pot, and set it on the counter. He was at the far end of the narrow kitchen. The room only had three doors. One was at this end, which led to the secure hallway, and was now blocked off by the barricade erected on the other side to stop the guards from getting into the pod. The other two were, starting with the closest, the door to the fridge, and the door to front kitchen where inmates in the mess hall picked up their food. The only actual way out now was through that door, where they’d be fully visible to anyone still lingering or alive in the mass hall.

Sonny pushed past Ox to pick up the old-time can opener that Frankie had found, and the large can of sauce. Returning to his spot at the very end of the room, Sonny started to puncture holes into the top of the can. The smell of sauce slowly wafted out. Smelled like garlic. Then, Sonny turned the can upside-down and started pouring the sauce into the pot.

“That’ll take forever.” Whispered Ox, watching the thick sauce slowly drain out of the can.

“Faster than looking for something else,” responded Sonny. “Just watch the door.”

Ox didn’t like it when someone gave him an order, but he didn’t have time to correct Sonny. Instead he handed a meat cleaver to Frankie and nodded toward the mess hall. “Watch the door.”

Frankie crept up to the doorway, which was an opening that actually did not feature a door. It was door-shaped and if you had to talk about, you’d call it a door, but really this was just the spot where the wall ended. Frankie didn’t want to step out from behind the superb cover the wall provided. Didn’t even want to peek his head out. In Frankie’s mind, they were totally hidden and safe inside the kitchen and the dumbest thing anyone could do is stand in the doorway advertising that there was fresh meat inside.

But he came up with a solution. Across from the door, there was a row of pots and pans hanging from hooks. The pots were about eye-level and stainless steel. They acted like mirrors, reflecting the front kitchen and the mess hall beyond it. Frankie could stay in the darkness of the back kitchen, and still see anyone coming, just by watching those pots and pans.

It wasn’t perfect. The pans were all angled, showing different parts of the kitchen and mess hall. The pots were better, but the curved side gave a fish-eye bend to everything. Still, it was better than sticking your neck out.

Frankie’s view was less gruesome than he’d expected. The bottom half of the reflection was just the front kitchen. There was a half-wall that had a counter where the trays of food were placed by the prisoners as they filed through. Above this wall there were heat lamps, so the view into the mess hall was mostly obscured. Still, the emergency lights in there made it a lot brighter than anywhere else, and Frankie could plainly see that large puddles of dark red that stained the floor, even the walls.

“Are you done yet?” Frankie called to Ox and Sonny.

Sonny was still shaking the can, trying to get the sauce to flow out of the little holes. Ox turned back to Frankie and saw him hiding next to the doorway.

“I said to watch the door.”

“I am watchin’.” Frankie pointed to the pots and pans opposite himself.

“That won’t work.”

“What do you mean this won’t work?”

“Vampire don’t have reflections, dumbass. You gotta look with your own eyes.”

Frankie muttered to himself. “Don’t got reflections? Reflections are science. They’re like a scientific fact. Ain’t no vampire gonna change the way mirrors work.” Still, Frankie always followed Ox’s orders, so he checked the reflection to make sure the doorway was clear, clutched his cleaver tightly, stood tall, and turned out into the doorway. The breath went out of him.

The vampire was standing right there, maybe six inches between his chest and Frankie’s. Frankie needed a moment before his brain even processed what was happening. The vampire let him take the moment, smiling contentedly with sharp teeth and most of his face stained with blood like a toddler on spaghetti night.

Frankie turned his head to see the pots again. The reflection showed only Frankie, standing in the doorway. Then he turned back to see the pale, blood-soaked man. Frankie screamed. It wasn’t one of those pussy fear-soaked wails that the men had heard before. Frankie’s scream was a battle cry. And as he screamed, summoning all of his power, Frankie swung the cleaver at the creature’s neck.

But the vampire was too fast. It caught Frankie’s wrist in its left hand, and with a twist of its own wrist, snapped Frankie’s ulna and radius bones. The cleaver dropped away, clanging on the floor. This time, Frankie wailed in fear.

With its right hand, the vampire grabbed Frankie’s chin and lifted him off the ground. Frankie felt his jaw break but his feet stayed off the floor, all of his weight held up by his agonizingly shattered jawbone. Then the creature abruptly swung Frankie’s body to the side, slamming him into the cinderblock doorway, holding his head to the side. And it bit his neck. Frankie felt hot, wet blood soak the side of his neck, and his shoulder.

Then Sonny Ramsden jammed a handful of garlic sauce into the vampire’s face and it was the monster’s turn to scream. The creature instinctively pulled away, as if it had been burned. Frankie fell, limply, to the floor. Sonny grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him back into the kitchen.

“Let me see,” Sonny said, kneeling to hold his friend up.

Frankie, now very close to sleep, lolled his head to the side. Sonny saw that the side of Frankie’s neck had been shredded. There was a little tube in the flesh like the sheath from around a copper wire, and every time Frankie’s heart beat, the little tube squirted out a blast of hot red blood. Sonny reached into the wound hit his thumb and forefinger and pinched the artery. He turned to Ox, still all way at the far end of the room. “You gotta help.”

Ox had taken over shaking the sauce out of the can. He shook his head. “He’s already dead.”

Sonny looked at Frankie, who was still trying to saw something through his shattered mouth. He had only dragged Frankie a few feet but that small distance was a wide blood trail, and the spot where Frankie now lay in Sonny’s arms was rapidly becoming a pool. Sonny was kneeling in Frankie’s blood. He’d lost at least a couple pints of blood, and Ox was right, Frankie was going to die regardless.

“It’s OK,” Sonny said, “just close your eyes.” Frankie did, and within ten seconds his breathing dropped so quiet you couldn’t hear it. Sonny let go of Frankie’s artery, and after a weak dribble, there were no more squirts of blood.

“Mother fucker!” Sonny screamed out the doorway. “How’s your face feel? We got more of that for you. We’re gonna keep you soaked in garlic until the fuckin’ sun comes up!”

His words echoed back from the mess hall. And then, from somewhere close to the other side of the doorway, there was a quiet but vicious growl.

Sonny hadn’t thought about it, but the sauce on his hands had been wiped away in his efforts to save Frankie. Now, kneeling on the floor, covered in slippery blood, Sonny was a lot more defenceless than he thought. He stared at the doorway, still on his knees, at this eye level he saw a pair of shining animal eyes. In the darkness maybe five feet past the doorway, Sonny thought he saw a wolf. Then it was gone.

An instant later, he saw a flash of light shoot in from the doorway and Sonny felt his stomach slice open. He looked down to see Frankie’s meat cleaver half-way embedded in his stomach. He screamed Ox’s name.

Ox called back, “Don’t pull it out!”

But that’s what Sonny did. He yanked the massive blade from his belly and held up the cleaver like a weapon he very much intended to use. He tried to stand. Sonny was struck by the worst pain he’d ever felt as bile and stomach acid poured into his wound. He fell back to his knees and doubled over in pain. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t have enough breath for that.