Bloodbank (Monterey Shorts) Read online

  Using Lilac as a poster girl worked famously. People said that if this little old lady—who looked as though she could barely walk—was willing to offer her best efforts to the program, how could any healthy, vibrant member of the community refuse to donate the gift of life? The nascent campaign soon established what would become a tradition: Saturday evening blood drives.

  In the months that followed, Lilac attended special Red Cross training for blood volunteers, and began to register and interview potential blood donors. After the blood was collected, she helped nurses log the units. The post was ideal. Using creative inventory methods, no one noticed the occasional missing bag. The program was such a success that—even after Lilac secretly appropriated her meager rewards—more blood was donated per capita than in most similar programs throughout the country.

  Lilac took care not to ingest too much of the pilfered blood at any one time, lest it cause her appearance to change too drastically (each pint she sipped smoothed at least a year off of her). Thrilled to have found a way to ease her thirst without succumbing to the Flash or having to find corpses, she gave unspoken thanks to Henri Dunant.

  One evening in December 1973, after an especially successful drive, Lilac decided to undergo a full transformation. People had begun to wonder how she kept on going, year after year, so Lilac arranged for a cooler full of bags to turn up missing. In the small fiasco that ensued, Lilac claimed she had lost track during a senior moment. Soon after, she announced her retirement as a volunteer, and the local legend disappeared forever.

  ***

  A few weeks after Lilac’s “retirement”, Jeannie appeared at the doorstep of the Chapter House. She announced her presence by knocking loudly. A woman opened the door, at which time the visitor said, most promptly, “You must be Dee. I’m Jeannie, Lilac’s granddaughter.”

  Jeannie spoke rapidly and with a youthful exuberance. “I’ve heard so much about you from my grandmother,” she smiled, ignoring the woman’s outstretched hand, and stepping inside immediately. “Lilac never stopped talking about the good people down here. She felt so badly about misplacing that old batch of blood.”

  Ignoring the woman’s somewhat dubious look, Jeannie took measure of the office, applying great care in lingering over everything as if it were her first time there.

  Dee gestured for Jeannie to enter her office and sit down. “Oh, how is Lilac, the poor dear? We miss her. After all, she helped us get our blood services program off the ground.”

  “She’s not well.” Jeannie sat and saw a wave of concern wash over Dee’s face. “Grandmother’s health is failing, I’m afraid. And she was doing so well, too, thanks to the new lease on life this place gave her. She wanted me to come down and let you all know how much she missed the crew.”

  Something about that satisfied the woman. She smiled, and said, “How sweet. Well, you be sure to tell her not to worry about that blood incident. We all felt so badly for her. Will we be seeing her again soon?”

  “I don’t think that will be possible, but she’ll be thrilled when I tell her how well things are going here at the Chapter House.”

  They chatted for half an hour and by the time Jeannie left, she had exerted enough influence over Dee that the older woman believed the idea for Jeannie to volunteer was hers. When the next blood drive came— the crew wearing red ribbons in honor of the memory of their dearly departed friend—Jeannie filled Lilac’s shoes as though they were made to fit. She suggested that blood donations to the Red Cross in her grandmother’s name would be an appropriate condolence.

  With the arrival of the 1980s, the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) started their bloodbank, and soon replaced the San Jose Blood Center as the beneficiary of the Carmel Chapter’s Blood Services donor base and volunteer network. Jeannie wasted no time securing a part-time position at the hospital and became a night shift employee. Most of the job benefits were of no use to her, but she took full advantage of the one resource that kept her looking and feeling as young as she had the night she crossed over into her life of eternal darkness.

  It became her responsibility to account for and dispose of any blood that was rejected or had outlived its shelf life—a simple matter of tried-and-true creative inventory and accounting kept more than enough fresh blood in her possession. Since she had so much extra, Jeannie began to share it with other vampires with whom she had become acquainted during her long years of earthbound wandering; those who she knew to be interested in an alternative to killing—as donated blood lacked any psychic link to the donor.

  More came, and then more—all unnoticed to the Chapter House admin staff—and eventually, the mortal lives Jeannie preserved by redirecting donated blood to those with the Thirst equaled those saved by the traditional medical use of blood.

  Jeannie reduced her own blood intake incrementally over time to simulate the normal course of aging, but still managed to look better than anyone else “her age”. She continued to work at the CHOMP Blood Center, and remained a Red Cross volunteer. She served several terms as Chairman of Blood Services for the Carmel Chapter, helping the donor program flourish into the twenty-first century. Over the years a few of her own kind even began to fill the ranks of the dedicated volunteers committed to helping the American people “Give the Gift of Life”, while purloining some for themselves.

  ***

  Kamil turned away from his stargazing, stepped into the tiled shower at Bernardus, and closed the glass door to the sunken basin. He turned the hot water on and stood under it waiting for the warmth of the stream to penetrate his time-hardened skin, taking the edge off the perpetual chill of his cold, undead body.

  Barely a month had passed since he had last swallowed blood, but the cravings were back and had grown to almost consume him. He rubbed his elongated upper incisors as he contemplated the purpose of his visit to Carmel. It certainly wasn’t recreational—say a round of golf or a tour of scenic vistas. No, it was a matter of life and death for the mortals who would fall victim to him if he didn’t find a less lethal way to quench the Thirst.

  Shutting off the water, Kamil shook the moisture off himself in the shower stall. He did it with the motion of a dog, but at the speed of a hummingbird, and then stepped out and looked toward the mirror: it revealed nothing—no sign of his olive Mediterranean skin, no sign of his kinky black hair; no sign of his muscular frame; no reflection at all.

  That didn’t bother him, although it seemed a shame that he couldn’t see his own features beneath the finery he had draped over himself, the most attractive items garnered from a myriad of past victims. Tonight he wore a red silk shirt and gabardine slacks from a successful London businessman; a vintage tie from a nineteenth-century Italian noble; patent leather shoes from a Chicago mobster, and fine silk socks from a Burmese banker.

  Kamil placed a handsome tip on the mahogany bedside table and left the room, hunger gnawing at him. Summoning his strength, he sped off through the shadows toward the village district of Carmel-by-the-Sea, where the nightlife was underlit, if not subdued.

  Where might Lilac be?

  By the time he had reached the damp darkness near Eighth Avenue off Lincoln, just a block or two from downtown, Kamil had yet an inkling of how to find the woman who might offer him salvation. He did, however, find another.

  At first he tried to ignore her by averting his senses. But it was too late—he had seen it and it was irresistible.

  She wore a snakeskin jacket that was to die for.

  Kamil’s desire for the jacket overwhelmed his willpower to stifle his instincts and he gave in to the Thirst: slip, skip, and slide into the shadows, a hundred paces in mere seconds, no mote of dust disturbed. Now, mere inches behind his oblivious victim, he placed his hands on her shoulders. She flinched, but he soothed her with the power of his mind and hushed her softly as he turned her toward him.

  He caressed the snakeskin that she wore. Her eyes met his and she seemed to recognize something in his look.

  �
�You can’t resist it, can you?” she asked knowingly.

  He leaned toward her and, as if captured by a secondary thought, brushed his cheek against the coat’s lapel while fondling the hem with one hand and stroking the back with the other. She heaved a sigh of pleasure at his touch and closed her eyes, fading off into whatever imaginings might be hers. When Kamil sensed her full surrender he pulled back her short black hair, exposing her pulsing artery, and bit down, opening the vessel, drinking in the warm liquid life pumping out of her. He spilled not a precious drop until her heart failed, and the Flash overtook him. In it, he came to know a shy woman from Modesto, who had come to Monterey in a hideous little yellow car to attend University. He experienced the profound influence of the snakeskin jacket upon her. He felt, with intensity, how she had desired it; her satisfaction the first time she wore it; the liberation that swarmed her soon after. It was as if it had transformed this meek woman into a huntress, helping her shed the social conditioning that had once repressed her impulses, setting free her latent urge to kill.

  He “watched” as she waded through the murky waters of El Estero in Monterey, dragging along with her, just beneath the surface, a small victim she had abducted near Dennis the Menace Park. Kamil knew it was one of several who had fallen victim to her unshackled appetite.

  Kamil also knew that the woman had welcomed her death. Guilt from the murder of innocent children raged through her, consuming her, as unrestrained as the murderous instincts that had been set free within her.

  She might have made a better vampire than I.

  He let go of her body. As she crumpled to the ground, he held onto the jacket, slowly peeling it off of her as if she were molting. He realized then that it was the first kill he had made in a long time that wasn’t boring. That he had relished this one final Flash, unlike the mediocre recollections he had amassed over the centuries. It made him think he didn’t want salvation. That perhaps it was just a matter of being a little more selective about whom he consumed.

  Kamil looked at the scaly coat that hung from his clenched pale fingers. He turned each sleeve right side out before slipping his arms in. The woman’s attachment to it lingered in his mind, memories that enriched the experience even more. As he pulled it on over his shoulders and it formed around him, he realized that, indeed, he had been driven to take her by more than the Thirst.

  “This garment mus-s-s-t have been made for the likes of me,” he hissed, gathering it around his waist. First he thought, It’s found a fitting home. Then: How is it affecting me?

  He contemplated the experience and began recollecting feelings and thoughts he had nearly forgotten. He recalled life before his resurrection, and understood that he had not been a natural killer like the woman whose body lay before him.

  He found the revelation dizzying and sped off without thinking.

  ***

  At an undetermined time later, Kamil found himself beyond the village, in the midst of something substantially less charming called the Crossroads Shopping Center. From just beyond a drug store window, he watched a pair of men with his keen black eyes. The sun having now dipped well below the horizon, florescent lights lit the scene brightly. It played out before him as mute—if low-brow—theater.

  He could easily read their lips.

  “Hey there, Willie,” he watched the checkout clerk say as he straightened his green uniform shirt with the “Longs” logo. “How’s your rich Uncle Sam treatin’ ya this month?”

  “He’s cheatin’ me again, Frank,” a rather derelict-looking man replied. With one thinly gnarled hand, he put a U.S. Treasury check on the counter. With the other he scribbled an endorsement on its back.

  Kamil stepped back, somewhat overwhelmed by the realization that he had so enjoyed his last Flash that he was immediately contemplating another—even without a strong thirst. He watched the episode inside the store with rising interest.

  The clerk took the box of wine from the basket and ran it through the scanner.

  “Will that be all for you today?”

  “Got some meat and vegetables there, too,” the ne’er-do-well pointed at his basket, wiping his nose with his other forefinger. He began to cough, but it didn’t stop him from talking. “They’re slowly stealing all of what they owed us, Frank! Each month the check comes a day later. I got it all worked out.”

  The clerk—“Frank”— turned away until the coughing ended. Then he continued to tally the groceries. Willie wiped a line of drool off his lip with his sleeve, and continued. “They put it off a day each month. Then after thirty-one months we lose one check, all of us, Frank, every loyal veteran who fought for this here old country!”

  “No way, Willie,” Frank asserted, while continuing his bagging. “You come in the first week of every month with that check.”

  “What day is it, Frankie?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “No it ain’t, Frankie. It’s the fifth. Last month I came in on the fourth, and the one before, it was the third. I tell you Frankie, the government’s filled with blood sucking fiends! I’d bet my life on it!”

  Kamil smiled.

  “Here’s your change, Willie.” Frank gently closed the other’s dirty fingers around the bills before letting go of his hand. “Now make sure it lasts you the rest of the month.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, Frankie, I’m ready for ‘em. But if I’m not back soon, it’s because they found out I caught wind of their schemin’ and they had to shut me up.”

  “I won’t tell, Willie . . . I promise. Just don’t be spreading it around too much yourself.”

  The old fool made the sign of a zipper across his lips and ducked out into the parking lot, looking over his shoulder with rapidly darting eyes.

  Against a background of occasional car noise floating down from Highway 1, Willie headed beyond the shopping mall property, passing through cars dusted with yellow pollen, until he hit the river bed near the Highway 1 bridge that spanned the Carmel River. There his pace slowed as he began to watch his footing.

  ***

  Kamil tensed in anticipation. He watched the bum from the store stumble haltingly up and over the bank down into Carmel’s little publicized, but widely known, riparian ghetto.

  Despite his lust after the Flash, Kamil wondered why he had been attracted to this quarry. The man was simply wretched, and appeared to possess nothing that Kamil—who liked to think of himself as an artist— would want to add to his selective composition of mortal mementos.

  So, why am I drawn to him? He admitted he hadn’t felt a hunger like this before. It was much different from the Thirst that spread from the teeth to every cell in the body. This one burned in his belly and stayed there, a fire of excitement for the hunt itself. It added a fascinating dimension to the experience.

  What’s this?!

  The jacket seemed to tug, snugly at his mind. Kamil thought of the great snake, its owner, and its death at the hands of Amazonian poachers. Those images departed, replaced by a sequence of visions of life and death, but mostly death. One after another they hurtled at him, with enough intensity that anyone but Kamil would have been repulsed. What he felt was much different.

  He felt the snake’s final struggle for life, and he felt it as if he were the snake. Before he knew it, an appreciation of the fragility of life seeped into him in a way it hadn’t since he’d resurrected from the life of mortal men. He hesitated; for what he wasn’t sure of at first, until he realized he was rapidly losing his enthusiasm for the hunt and lacked the Thirst to overcome it.

  Then, something underneath, something centuries old within him, took over and ignored that realization. With nary a thought, he slithered in front of the homeless man and laced the fingers of his left hand through his greasy hair. He pulled slightly, while placing his right palm on the man’s chest. A pungent, but intoxicating odor emanated from the bag of filth.

  The deliciousness of life!

  “Hey! What’ya doin’? You from the Government or somthin’?�
�

  Kamil tilted the man’s head back and prepared to sink in his teeth, but first he let his mind touch the victim’s. The sensation always greatly enhanced the Flash, and this time proved no exception. Kamil shared Willie’s thoughts of how good it was to be alive, to have one’s pockets full of cash, to have all one’s life’s pleasures within the confines of a grocery bag. Stepping into the Flash from here was the ultimate.

  Without warning, remorse crashed in, laying waste to previous feelings. It seemed to have entered from the jacket. Kamil gave the creature in his grasp a light shove away from him.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

  An instant later Kamil was back in the shadows, trying to figure out what had just happened to him.

  An instant after that, something slammed into him from the side, like a cannonball, sending him in the opposite direction of his would-be victim. A hundred paces to the rear he landed, flat on his back. He opened his eyes to see a youthful stranger straddling his chest. At least, the features were those of a stranger. What lay behind them was anything but. Kamil realized it immediately, a clench in his bowels.

  “Lilac?”

  The very creature he had sought out had, apparently, sought him out. She appeared—now, at least—to be in her mid-twenties, with bobbed yet wavy umber hair and bangs that fell to her eyebrows. Her black eyes looked into the empty place inside once occupied by his soul. Her deceptively delicate fingers dug into his brawny biceps.

  They linked, a habit, and it was as if they were back standing in the pile of butchery at Solferino. Kamil felt as if he were lying back in a sea of carnage, his old adversary towering over him.

  “’Lilac’ is a name not currently mine,” she replied, sounding amused, fangs gleaming in the moonlight. “I go by Jeannie now.”

  “Well, Jeannie, I can see that drinking the blood of the dead hasn’t put any lead in your britches.” The comment was intended to be glib, but underneath he was struggling, as he had just realized he couldn’t break out of the Solferino scene, or pry her from atop him. She controlled everything, had taken it out from under him, and now held him within it—a vampire half his size!