Cannibal At the West County Blood Drive

Dale hung her head out the van window, tongue lolling like a labrador as she let the highway drag the breath out of her lungs. Even now, even here, it reeked of death. But more importantly, it reeked of rats.

“Roll up the window I hate that sound,” Carolina complained though she barely lifted her gaze from the worn smut paperback she balanced against her knee in the backseat. She popped her gum as she flipped the page. “Ought to be used to it by now, anyway.”

Resisting the urge to throw the door open and tuck and roll out of the pickup altogether, Dale dragged her head back in and hand-cranked the window up until the highway was only a dull whir behind glass. “Like you should talk, Vamp.”

Carolina threw her paperback into the lap of stocky teenage-looking Travis who slept - or at least had been asleep - beside her. Long red fingernails stuck into the shoulders of the front seats, she hauled herself forward and shoved her hung-open mouth in Dale’s face. “Don’t you fucking start with me,” she growled, pointing to the unnaturally long - but filed down - incisors that protruded there. “Not after I let you personally grind my implants to dust.” She fell back with a thud against the old vinyl seats. “Not after you’ve done so much worse.”

Dale only glared back, a quick asshole muttered under her breath before planting her feet on the dashboard and setting her stare on the country road rolling beneath them.

Copeland stirred in the drivers seat, being the only human being capable of dozing while driving. “What are you two on about now,” he drawled in an accent that was neither southern nor anything else Dale had ever encountered. He was the oldest of the four of them, though none of them knew for sure. His muscles were wiry and his skin drooped slightly at his edges, but thick black hair fell over his eyes like a kid.

“Just Vamp-Tramp and Kiddie-Snatcher at it again,” Travis murmured where he feigned sleep against the back window.

“I’m not like that anymore,” Dale and Carolina growled in unison before exchanging glares and falling back into their separate silences again.

Travis shifted in his seat, stretching his hands against the roof of the truck and shoving his untied tennis shoes into the back of Dale’s seat. “And the fresh lilac scent of post-traumatic stress.”

Dale rolled her eyes, tucking her hands further under her arms, pinning them against her ribcage. She wasn’t always this hard to get along with. It’s just the way things were, though. A lot of people changed after it all started. When someone announces to the world that they’ve discovered a way to stay young forever it’s really only a matter of time before everything goes to shit.

The truck AC rumbled pathetically out of the dash, barely chilling her ankles where she had her bare feet planted beside the vents. Even so, Dale shivered as her thoughts drifted back to the alley--and the rats.

She had hated rats even before everything went down, and even though it was technically mice that started it all--as mice tend to do when it comes to these things. It wasn’t the stinking alley rat that a scientist scooped up in a laboratory and pumped full of baby mouse blood. It wasn’t a Miracle Rat that sprang up and ran it’s little mousey maze faster than a rodent half its age. But it was close enough.

“So are we gonna talk about the kid or what,” Copeland interrupted Dale’s personal reverie, speaking for the first time in nearly two hours when they climbed back into the truck.

Dale felt herself falling back into the memory, in a way that had only really started sometime after her fiftieth birthday. She’d hit the age of reminiscence, as her Korean-immigrant grandmother would have said. Only she had the memory of a twelve year old quiz bowl champion. She could hear herself now, her voice thick with the late puberty of a nineteen year old kid,

#

“I hate mice,” she had muttered, wiping her shoe on the brick wall of the Savings Bank - or had it been the Fifth Third Savings and Loan - which sandwiched them in the reeking alleyway. “Like, there are not enough words to describe how much I hate mice.”

“Might do you to show a little respect to our ancestors,” lectured Copeland. He sauntered along with a limp that was more than the put-on swag of a teenage boy. Dale had wondered about him ever since they picked him up alongside a highway in Minnesota last spring, but she had enough respect not to pry. Most people in their line of work didn’t talk about where they’d been; only where they were going.

“Ancestors my ass,” Travis had scoffed. He was the least teenage-looking of the lot of them, even though he was the closest to actually being a teen. He’d stowed away in the bed of their truck after an unnecessary detour to one of Carolina’s sorority reunions. The son of a Sister that Carolina had always hated, she’d seen to reason to return him. Dale suspected what it really was was that Carolina liked the look of him, and Carolina was never one to turn away a pretty face.

“I didn’t descend from a bunch of rats,” he had continued, “and neither did any of you.”

Copeland rolled his eyes so hard Dale could watch it ripple down his flannel-shirted back. “New guy,” he muttered just loud enough to get Travis’ hackles up.

Before the two had a chance to really go at it, though, Carolina interrupted with a dramatic gag. “Oh god what is that stench,” she gasped between wheezes as she dug through her handbag for a scented handkerchief.

Dale stifled a laugh as what was undeniably the aroma of decaying human hit her and even she had to cover her nose to keep from passing out. It had been a long time since they’d uncovered one out in the open like this. “Vamp or Ripper, place your bets now, folks,” she rattled off her in best cheesy announcer voice, muffled through her fingers.

“Ten bucks says Ripper,” Carolina wagered. She pressed the handkerchief daintily below her nose, her other hand wound anxiously through her thick blonde ponytail.

Travis shrugged as he slid a medical mask over his face. Copeland was the - rumored - medical professional, but Travis was always the one to come prepared. He might have been a Boy Scout once. “Considering the stench,” he said. “I put twenty on both.”

“Not a chance,” Carolina insisted. “Vamps never leave a mess.”

Dale glanced back over her shoulder at the other girl, eyebrow hitched. “Excuse me,” she said. “Carolina, I literally found you with your teeth in some guy’s femoral artery. If that’s not a mess I don’t know what is.”

A growl rumbled in Carolina’s throat, but stopped dead as she froze in her tracks. Dale turned slowly, dread hanging over her shoulders. There in the middle of the alleyway, Copeland bent already bent over examining him, lay a fifteen year old kid.

“Well,” Dale said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulders. “All bets are off. Looks like he got Stuck.”

Copland shoved the kid’s sleeves higher up his arms, revealing a haphazard line of pinpricks running along his cephalic veins. “Not even a good one,” he murmured. “Completely disregarded the median cubitals. Clearly beginners.”

“I don’t know what any of that shit means,” Travis groaned. “Can you just tell us whether or not he has anything left in him? Not getting any younger over here,” He paused, adjusting his mask, “but I’d sure as hell like to be.

“Shut up, Travis,” Dale said, though the insult lost something in her distraction as she knelt beside the boy. “Cope,” she murmured, “We can’t keep dodging these beginners, especially if they’re gonna keep fucking it up and killing people like this.”

He only shrugged. “Beginners show up anytime, anywhere. Banks and Drives don’t have the turnaround to really satisfy, and they think if they Stick it won’t hurt so much in the morals. But that’s the thing,” He stood, brushing alley dirt of the knees of his worn out jeans. “Once you mess up once you’re not a Stick anymore. You’re something else entirely.”

Dale frowned, giving the kid another once-over before standing beside him.

“Man this is worse than the Rippers in Wichita,” Travis complained, kicking a broken bottle as he turned around and sulked back toward where they’d parked the truck on the yellow curb of a deserted main city street. No one really came out during the day, anymore.

#

“What’s there to talk about,” Travis grumbled, still feigning sleep in the back seat. “Another kid died because some sick fucks don’t know when to stop.” He paused, and Dale could feel his feet shifting on the back of her seat. “No offense or anything,” he added.

Dale’s forehead dropped against her knees; she pinched the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger and tried to breathe away the anger boiling in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t deny the things she did. It had been so easy when it first started, when no one knew to keep their kids inside and take away their blood donor cards--make it as hard as they could for someone to grab them off the street.

In the end, not as many Snatchers grew a conscience as you would hope.

“It’s not like we’re much better,” Carolina said, nonchalant as she continued to flip through her paperback.

That was the popular argument, at least. Sticks would still grab you off the street, but you’d make it home alive. Your outlook wasn’t quite so bright if a Vamp sunk their black-market fangs into you and dragged your entire blood supply directly into their veins. Sometimes they left enough behind, but Vamps were greedy. Rippers, with their mouths a set of shining metal daggers, would rip straight into you and suck you dry. Didn’t matter if they got all your blood or not when there’s a gaping hole in your carotid artery.

“We’re meant to be better,” Copeland grumbled. His knuckles were curled white around the steering wheel and he leaned forward, squinting as if his vision wasn’t 20/10.

Travis heaved a sigh and pulled himself forward by the back of Dale’s chair. “Dude where are we even going.” He tapped his fingers along Dale’s headrest, peering around her shoulder as if her view of the empty country highway was any better than the one he had in the back. “I mean, I’m sorry, I know we’re all a little rattled and no one hates having to cut town again more than me--I was this close to getting that gas station attendant to let me buy her coffee sometime--but I for one would have appreciated a discussion, or a memo or something before jetting off into the great wide somewhere.”

Copeland continued to squint into the distance. “West County is running a Drive,” he said, his mind clearly elsewhere as he spoke. “Too risky to work with all these beginners around, and I don’t know about you but I’m thirsty.”

This caught Carolina’s attention; she flung herself forward and whacked Copeland in the back of the head with her rolled-up paperback. “Fuck, Cope,” she growled, smacking him again for effect. “I can’t go anywhere near one of those things and you know that.”

He only shrugged. Carolina was an interesting one; her disposition was delicate but she was fierce underneath it all. She’d been crowned Miss America back in the day, and the cash flow that came with that attention was apparently only good as long as you were young and beautiful. When Carolina went Vamp she became notorious in the worst way possible.

“Someone has to hang back and watch the gear,” Travis said, perking up at the thought of the Drive. He went along with the whole Stick gig, but anyone could see he wasn’t the biggest fan of taking someone’s blood against their will. He backed every chance they got at a Drive or a Bank one thousand percent.

She sunk back in her seat, sulking, but not before slamming a red-heeled foot in the back of Copeland’s seat. “You guys are the worst.”

Dale let out a long breath and twisted around in her seat. “If you watch the gear I’ll bring you something back,” she bartered. “What are you into now, AB?”

Arms crossed loosely over her chest, Carolina pouted a second longer before murmuring, “O neg, please.”

Dale nodded, a half-genuine smile tugging at her lips. “O neg it is, then.”

#

As far as Drives went, the West County Blood Drive wasn’t worth the dry grass it had sprouted up on. Half a dozen donor buses - glorified RVs outfitted to service seven or eight donors at a time - had been parked around the kind of big white tent people used to rent out for weddings when large groups of people used to gather outside for things other than blood donation. The tarp was browning and spotted in multi-colored patches like a pathetic kind of circus tent.

The only promising thing about the Drive was the sheer number of bodies. Dale chewed the inside of her lip and surveyed the crowd. It could be hit or miss with these things - Drives tended to draw way more Drinkers than they did Donors - but this one was an even mix.

“Where do we go?” Travis shifted beside her, the unease slight but noticeable in the way he carried his shoulders. He was still new to this. Dale suspected he would always be new to this.

For someone like Travis it would always be impossible to tell the Donors from the Drinkers. He would never pick out the faint desperation in the eyes of a Drinker that aren’t quite as young around the edges as they work for. He would never really know that the youth of a Donor will always be just out of their reach.

Dale nodded toward the clusters of people gathering on the back sides of the donor buses, just out of sight of the Donors sipping their juice boxes under the tent.

Travis eyed them apprehensively, his gaze shifting toward the Donors and the little electric fans buzzing from the support poles of the tent. “Looks a lot better over there,” he said.

Copeland smacked him across the back of the head. “Quit acting like this is your first Drive, beginner,” he grumbled as he started off toward the nearest donor bus. “The only way they can bring themselves past those freaks,” He nodded back toward the mob of protesters marching a lawful thirty feet back along the highway, “is if they don’t have to look at the addicts they’re supporting.”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Dale chimed tiredly. She had long ago given up the dream of living in any sort of peace with the kind of person who didn’t need to be young in the desperate, clawing way she and other Drinkers did. Still, she didn’t think she’d ever really get over it.

Travis heaved a sigh but followed nonetheless. They might still have a conscience, but a beginner was just as much an addict as the rest of them. “You know,” he said, perking up slightly as the cries of the protesters fell quieter with their distance from them, “there ought to be a better way of doing this, don’t you think?”

Dale cocked an eyebrow, amused. “Yeah?” she asked. “What, like holding hands around the campfire and learning to just get along?”

“Nah,” he said, throwing an arm around her shoulder and giving Copeland a playful punch in the arm. “I’m talking medical research. We know how the body works, right? So we should be able to pinpoint what it really is in young blood, manufacture it, and finally get rid of--”

Something exploded behind them, completely cutting out the rallied shouts of the protesters and replacing them with horrified screams. The trio spun around to a plume of dark grey smoke rising from what had been the center of the protester line. Dale tried to ignore the blood splattered across the dry grass, spilling from a banner reading Cannibals in bright red letters; tried to keep herself from thinking what a waste.

Shadowed figures moved through the haze; they were different than the fleeing protesters. Dale watched them, eyes narrowed as the wheels of her mind grinded. More screams erupted behind them, from the Donor tent this time, and that’s when it clicked. The only people running were the young ones.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Dale insisted, grabbing each of her guys by the arm and dragging them toward the east side of the Drive, toward where Carolina waited half a mile away with the truck.

“Why?” Travis demanded. “What’s going on, why are we running?”

“Snatchers,” Dale explained. It was obvious, of course, to her. Even if no Snatcher would have ever done something so drastic, so stupid as to raid a Drive in clear daylight, there was no mistaking their M.O.. The right group of Snatchers, in the right conditions, could be just as brutal and desperate as any hoard of Rippers.

“Fucking beginners,” Copeland cursed, yanking himself free of Dale’s grasp and sprinting ahead. “You better believe the cops’ll show before long and hate to break it to you, son,” he twisted back as he ran, flashing a crazy grin at Travis, “but what we do isn’t exactly legal.”

Dale nodded, pulling harder on Travis’ arm to keep him in stride. “They don’t serve B positive in jail.”

They had almost reached the east bay of donor buses when a hulking white van came careening in front of them. Copeland cursed loudly, tucking and side-rolling out of the way. And with more grace than Dale had ever seen from even the oldest Drinkers he was up on his feet sprinting out of the din.

“Go,” Dale shouted, shoving a shock-stricken Travis around the edge of the van, which had come to a screeching halt directly in front of them. The van doors flew open with an outpouring of young-looking Snatchers. It was always the young ones, the new Drinkers, that Snatching drew in.

She couldn’t help but see herself, nineteen and reckless, in each of their faces. She had seen that look on her face in the mirror every day for fifteen years. It gave her a moment of pause, there at the corner of their van just like the van she had once sped through darkened city streets. What would she have said to herself, if she had seen her then? What would have made her stop?

Before she could fake herself an answer that would calm the guilt spinning in her gut, one of the Snatchers laid her dark, hungry eyes on her. “That one!” she shouted, pointing directly at Dale.

Dale froze. Beginners, she told herself. Even to a beginner she would look too old to be worth anything. “No,” she said, unable to keep the anxiety from creeping into her tone as she stepped backwards, ready to sprint after her friends. “You’ve got it wrong,” she shouted, “find someone else.”

The girl’s ravenous eyes only clung to her harder. There was a ragged smile dragging itself across her thin lips. “Here!” she shouted.

A gang of three or four more Snatchers rounded the front of the van, their collective gaze falling on the tiny half-asian in front of them. To them, she must have looked delicious. To them, she looked young.

Dale backpedaled as they rushed her, falling to her knees in the grass and pushing herself back up to circle the backside of the van. Her short hair clung to the sweat coating her face, but she could see Travis closing in on Copeland a good three hundred yards away.

A hand closed over her shoulder and Dale shrieked, kicking back as hard as she could with a satisfying crack as the heavy sole of her boot connected with kneecap. “Travis!” she screamed, her breathing ragged. “Copeland!” But they were too far away to hear her. Too far away to come back.

Two more hands latched around her, this time taking her by the arm and yanking her backwards. Dale thrashed, kicking her feet over the dry grass as the pair dragged her backwards. They laughed, talking dreamily about her energy the way you would talk about a well prepared steak.

“No!” she shrieked, her voice grating against her throat. Travis and Copeland had stopped now, their distant figures halfway between the Drive and the truck. They watched her, she knew, but there was nothing they could do. Hot tears steamed in her eyes. “This isn’t what I wanted!” she cried, her thrashing pathetic, her energy waning. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

But as they hauled her into the van, wrenching her hands behind her back to bind her wrists and ankles, she couldn’t help but think: but yes, isn’t this exactly what you wanted all along?