Suckers (16 page)

Moss looked at Dan, who closed the door behind him. “What’s going on?”

Dan had no idea what Ray’s plan was. He headed for the couch. Ray could do the talking.

“So do we need some kind of medical license to get it?” Ray asked. He sat on the couch beside Dan, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His frayed shirt cuffs matched how the rest of him looked.

“Nah, you shouldn’t,” Moss said. “If you walk into a medical supply store, they might ask questions, especially after they get a look at you—when’s the last time you slept anyway? But you should be able to order it all online no problem.”

“I really look that bad?”

“Kinda wrung out there, buddy. They’re gonna think junkie right off the bat.”

“We’ll get overnight shipping.” To Dan he said, “Think you can make it till Tuesday?”

“Jesus, I hope so. If this starts coming back in just a day…I’m
fucked
.”

“And when we get the stuff, you can do it?” Ray said to Moss. “You know how to draw blood?”

“It’s been a few years, but if you don’t mind a bruise or two the first time…”

“Yeah, I’ll live.”

Dan said, “Does it sound like
anything
you’ve heard of before?”

“Honestly, it sounds delusional. In my inexpert medical opinion,” Moss said.

“He’s not delusional,” Ray said. “Trust me. I’ve seen the shit in his eyes when he’s caught up in it, and I’ve seen the shit go away after he’s had some blood.”

“Can I see that?”

Ray looked at Dan. The thing Ray was proposing was supposed to keep him from
getting
to that point. Ray said, “What do you think? Just the once, and then no more.”

Dan looked at Moss, who said, “Ray’s the only one who’s claimed seeing anything, and
both
of you were the only ones in the alley that night. I’d like to know you’re not both delusional. Because from where I’m sitting, you guys both seem a little fucked up.”

Dan dragged a hand through his hair, then shook his head. “It’s too fucking dangerous. I don’t ever want to get to that point again.”

Moss regarded him before nodding.

“Okay,” Ray said. “We’ll order the stuff, hang on to it. When Dan needs it, but before it gets out of hand, we’ll call you.”

Dan nodded. That would be okay. It would be even more okay if they found out they could store the blood. He wouldn’t have to rely on getting two other people together when he needed it. What would be
not
okay was if they found the time it took for the blood to get drawn and handed to him was too fucking long. “What if doesn’t work if the blood goes from you to the syringe to me, what if the time involved there is long enough to kill whatever it is I need?” he said. “I mean, I killed the cat and dicked around with the blood before I tried it, so maybe the cat
would
have worked, if I’d—” He swallowed. Jesus, he did not want to do another cat.

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Moss said. “Also, I have to say it’s creepy as fuck you killed a cat and drank its blood.”

“Tell me about it,” Dan said.

“If I didn’t know you guys as well as I do…” Moss shook his head. “Christ. Do you have any idea how crazy you fucking sound?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Dan said.

“Anyway,” Ray said, scratching his face, giving Dan a view of the angry red cut down the middle of his palm. “Can you find out how much blood a person can give on a regular basis? We don’t know how far this thing’s gonna go.”

The frayed cuff of his shirt slipped a little, revealing the edge of a strip of medical tape. Last week’s bite. Dan dragged his eyes away. Jesus, he needed this to work. He couldn’t live with himself if he seriously hurt someone.

“Anemia’s going to be your big worry,” Moss said, “unless this thing goes so far it’s taking all your blood. Then you’ve got bigger problems.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“If he’s just licking up blood from a cut like you showed me, though,” Moss said, “you won’t have to worry much.
My
big fear is that this delusion gets out of hand, he starts ingesting more than he’d get out of a little cut like that, and then we have real health problems on our hands—for him more than you. You know blood is toxic, right? There’s a reason it makes people puke their guts out if they drink any real quantity of it.”

“We’ll worry about that bridge when it comes into sight,” Ray said.

“Well, you’ve got me curious at least. If you’re both out of your minds,
something
happened in that alley.”

“And if we’re not out of our minds?” Dan asked.

“That’s even more interesting. And fucked up. Either way, I’m putting my collar up at night and staying out of alleys.”

† † †

“I’ll be interested to see if it works,” Dan said after Moss left. “Blood from a syringe, I mean, because I keep thinking maybe if I’d taken blood from the cat while it was still alive… I mean, like, right off the cat, instead of—”

Ray scrubbed his eyes. “If there’s one thing I never want to talk about again, it’s that cat.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hands together, hunched over at the other end of the couch. Trying to block the cat back out of his mind. Pretend it had been someone else who’d done that. Because he sure didn’t recognize it as himself. He said, “I’m just wondering how fresh it has to be to work.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

“Yeah.”

Ray fumbled in his jacket pocket, his cheeks dark with stubble.

“So why do you look like shit?” Dan said.

“Spent the past I don’t know how many days on the internet.” He found his cigarette pack, half crushed in an inside jacket pocket. “Every time I lie down, my brain’s running around going,
What if you searched on
this
? What if you searched on
that
?
”

“Did you find anything?”

Ray popped one unlit into his mouth. “I didn’t see the connection till the
second
time you attacked me, but…there’s that astronaut who killed her two kids. Picked them up from their grandmother’s, acting a little weird—agitated and distracted—but not weird enough to not let her take the kids. So she goes home and kills one with her teeth, then the other by suffocating him. Two and four years old. Probably would have killed herself then, too, but the kids’ screaming had brought the cops.”

Dan fidgeted while Ray hunted for his lighter.

“But that could just be coincidence,” Ray said. “So there was this woman who was taking out the trash one night in Spindale, North Carolina, when something flew at her, attacking her.”

Dan’s heart picked up speed. He leaned forward, wanting to hear—finally—about someone else.

“Scared the shit out of her. They called animal control, but no one found anything. Three nights later, she went nuts on husband while he was asleep. Then a homeless guy attacked a woman at a bus stop in Charlotte.”

“This is not comforting,” Dan said.

“Now you know why I look like shit.” He clutched the lighter and cigarette. “The Spindale woman and homeless guy died in jail after attacking a few more people, but what they died of—the woman and the homeless guy—was blood loss.”

Dan’s scalp crawled. He stood quickly, pacing to keep from throwing up.

“And then there are the rest of the astronauts,” Ray said.

Dan turned. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Gone for eight months on a space mission, they come back, pass all the medical tests, go home to their families…dead within weeks, leaving a bloodbath behind.”

“Wait—all of them?”

“Have you not been watching the news?”

He didn’t have a TV, and he’d been wasting his internet time on fucking rabies and
You Know You’re a Vampire When…
“I knew it was that one woman…”

“Dobbs was the only one from the U.S. It took a while for Russia to admit their people weren’t appearing in public because they’d fucking gone nuts and died.”

“And it happened just like these other people?”

“At least you’re alive still,” Ray said.

He paced faster, trying to keep the contents of his stomach in his stomach. “What do doctors think?”

Ray shrugged. “They don’t know. They haven’t found anything. They’re still looking into it. The media’s blaming it on that space mission. My guess is they’re probably right.” He put the cigarette back in his mouth and stood. “The only one we know for sure was even attacked by anything first was the Spindale woman.”

“Where was the astronaut from?” The news had said, he was sure, but he had so many place names in his memory bank, he couldn’t pull that one out.

“Montreat. Not too far from Asheville. I’m gonna go smoke.”

“Yeah.” Asheville. Where the fucking alley’d been.

“Fresh air might do you good too.”

Dan rubbed his neck, looking toward the back door. “Don’t you worry?” he asked. “About going out there?”

“I worry about everything. Like if my best friend is going to be okay.” He was on his way across the kitchen. “If I’m still going to have a band tomorrow. If all this smoking is going to give me lung cancer. I worry all the fucking time.”

“All right,” Moss said. “Roll up your sleeve.”

Ray raised his eyebrows; he’d already pushed it toward his shoulder and laid his arm on Dan’s kitchen table.

“Sorry. Nerves.” He tied a tourniquet around Ray’s upper arm, making it look easy. “Are you watching?” he asked Dan.

Dan paced the floor, trying
not
to watch. He rubbed his palms on his jeans and said, “Yeah.” He put his hands on the cool stove, leaned against it. Even with his back turned, all he could see was Ray’s pale arm on the table.

“Make a fist,” Moss said, then, “Dan.”

“Yeah.” He turned again and came back, his hands shoved in his back pockets.

Moss found and tapped a vein in Ray’s arm.

Dan looked at the ceiling.

“For someone who has no problem drinking blood,” Ray said, “you’re awfully squeamish.”

“Yeah, go figure.”

Moss tore open an alcohol wipe, swabbed Ray’s skin with it.

“Little pinch,” he said with the syringe in his hand.

Ray looked away. A flinch passed over his face.

After a few seconds, with the needle still in Ray’s arm, Moss undid the tourniquet one-handed, and Ray watched his blood spill into the collection tube.

Dan’s nostrils flared. He turned away again—not squeamishness this time. The bees hummed in his neck. His mouth, which had gotten a good taste of blood the other night, ran with saliva.

“Open your hand,” Moss said. “Hold that there for ten minutes or so.” To Dan he said, “All right. Normally there’s no way I’d want to see this, but…I want to see you do this.” He held the collection tube in the air and shook it slowly.

“Go on.” Ray held a cotton ball at the crook of his arm with two fingers.

With a nod, Dan took the tube. He couldn’t manage anything more than a nod because his throat muscles clenched, wanting that blood. It splashed the sides of the tube, streaking the plastic a thick, deep red.

Buzzing filled his ears. Everything around him looked too real. The collection tube felt realer than real against the pads of his fingers.

He closed his eyes and tossed it back like a shot. And kept his head back, savoring the taste.

Savoring the near-immediate silence.

When he opened his eyes, the room was normal again.

Moss lifted his eyebrows.

“I need a cigarette.” Ray kicked back his chair as he got up, still with his fingers on the cotton ball. With his other hand, he tried to reach in his pocket.

“Well?” Moss asked.

“That’s the stuff,” Dan said.

“How long you think that’ll last?” Ray said.

As he stepped up to help him get his cigarettes out, Dan said, “I wish I fucking knew. But that’s definitely the stuff.”

Moss shook his head, and Ray said, “Are you okay with that? Can we do that again if we need to?”

“You know where to find me.” Moss shoved the tourniquet back in the orange medic bag. He peeled off his gloves, wrapped the used needle in them, then sealed them up with medical tape. “I suppose I’m going to have to drop in and visit my buddies at the rescue squad. Dispose of this needle properly. Hopefully without having to answer any questions.”

“Sorry.” Dan watched Ray through the screen door, lighting his cigarette with his free hand, the other still holding the cotton down.

“Don’t worry about it. Listen, call me if you feel sick or anything freaky happens. Not that I can do much about it.”

“Will do.”

He stopped to talk to Ray on his way out. Dan turned the collection tube upside-down over his mouth, getting any last drops.