The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood Read online

  “What’s in it for me?” asked Matt.

  “You live.”

  Matt audibly scoffed at Dietz’s words.

  “Why would they go to all the trouble to bring you here… just to kill you?” asked Dietz. “Killing you is the last thing they want.”

  “I hope you’re not talking about me becoming one of them?”

  “No, they don’t want that either.”

  He still wasn’t sure and refused to release the doctor’s wrist.

  Dietz nodded toward the glass-encased wall above them.

  “If you don’t let me go, in about ten seconds, maybe less, the guards will be here to make sure you do. And there’s no telling what will happen to you after that…”

  Matt finally let go of the doctor’s wrist.

  Dietz began checking his blood pressure.

  Then he stuck a needle into Matt’s arm, extracting some blood. He read the digital summary and raised an eyebrow.

  “AB negative. The rarest blood type. I'm betting you already knew that...”

  The doctor performed some more tests and then motioned for Matt to proceed.

  “Now what happens?”

  “I’m not allowed to spoil the surprise. But I will see you on the other side.”

  Still naked, Matt and the other prisoners were led to the largest area in the building. In a single-file line, they were spaced out until each of them stood in front of their own small, empty room.

  Over a loudspeaker came the voice of one of the CCC guards.

  “When you hear the whistle, you are to step forward and enter the stall in front of you.”

  The sound of a whistle was piped over the loudspeaker.

  Most of the prisoners did exactly as they were told and entered their individual holding pen.

  A few of the newbies ignored the sound and stood in place.

  Matt was one of those reluctant to move forward.

  One of the CCC guards rushed up and shoved a baton into his back, which sent him sprawling headfirst into his stall. The access door slammed shut behind him.

  Matt stood up and looked around his pen. Even in almost pitch blackness, he could see that the walls, like the floor, were solid concrete. But there was no ceiling. He could see all the way to the top of the building, which had been made of glass. Matt could see that it was now nighttime outside.

  There was a loud voice from a few stalls away. “You go to hell! I’m a lawyer for Christ’s sakes! You can’t treat me like this!”

  Matt had no trouble recognizing Bunny’s voice… or the unmistakable noise of several baton blows to his body.

  Eventually, the screams from Bunny and the other resisting prisoners fell silent.

  One of the concrete walls in Matt’s holding pen slowly rumbled open, revealing a completely pitch-black void on the other side. Whatever rays of moonlight were streaming through the glass ceiling were not shining on the other side of the stall opening.

  Just as Matt decided to brace himself for the worse, three shadows streaked across the stall. He managed to throw a kick in the direction of the shadows, but that only made it easier for him to be taken down when his head slammed against the solid concrete.

  Pain from the impact radiated through his body.

  He then felt a jabbing sting coming from his throat and wrist.

  His reaction was silenced before it could emerge from his mouth.

  Then all of the pain that had been shooting through his body was silenced as well.

  From that point on, Matt felt disconnected from his body.

  He was still aware of what was happening, but it was as if his head had been severed from his body, and was floating above the pen like a balloon, allowing him to see the rest of his body being assaulted by three vampires.

  Chapter Eight

  Once again Matt had a grip on Dr. Dietz’s wrist.

  “You need this shot.”

  “Like I needed three vampires draining me of my blood?!”

  “The alternative was your execution… and maybe mine.”

  “I guess the sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship was a casualty of the takeover.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. You’re alive... and you’re not one of them. Taking your blood and turning you are two different processes.”

  Matt finally let go of Dietz’s wrist.

  The doctor had to wiggle his fingers to get some feeling back.

  As soon as he felt the sensitivity returning, Dietz plunged the needle into Matt’s bicep and injected a B-vitamin supplement.

  “If it makes you feel any better, what you went through won’t be repeated. The experience was meant to make you more compliant the next time you donate blood.”

  Matt just stared at him without responding.

  Dietz grabbed one of the Blood Donation Center’s “welcome packages.” It contained a towel, a wash cloth, an orange jumpsuit, and small toiletry kit that included soap, toothpaste/toothbrush, and deodorant.

  The doctor set the package at Matt’s feet.

  “Okay, so you’ve been a great audience. I play in this lounge every week, but I’m hoping that the two pint cover charge will discourage you from ever coming again…”

  Then he left Matt alone in the stall to change into his new clothes.

  “Shit!”

  It was hard to believe that Tyra Redmond still felt the jolt of pain when something sharp penetrated her skin.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sorry about that, Tyra. Still trying to get the hang of this new needle.”

  Tyra had twenty-six different tattoos covering her chest, arms, and neck. Her upper body had become what she called a “tatimony” to her run-ins with the vampires. Every pair of fang marks got their own tattoo, each one carved around the incisor scars.

  Just a few days ago Tyra was caught with a shank by one of the goons. She was immediately taken to the grey building, where that night she acquired another pair of fang marks to go with the others.

  Her latest tattoo was a spider carved around the vampire tracks.

  Ralph, the CCC prison tat artist, was an aging hippie snatched three months ago on one of the patrol sweeps. He once had his own tat shop in Venice, California, but had given up the trade over twenty years ago. Now he was doing what he could, utilizing his skills as a tattoo artist so that the other prisoners of the camp wouldn’t see him as a weak link.

  Tyra used her index finger to swipe up the blood oozing from the cut on her arm. She was about to wipe it on her jumpsuit, but it suddenly occurred to her, that after more than six months of captivity, not once had she tasted her own blood.

  She swished it around her mouth like her father used to do while tasting fine wine.

  Then Tyra spit it out.

  “I hear it’s an acquired taste,” said Ralph.

  The doors to the grey building flew open.

  Tyra immediately stood and watched as the camp newbies began filing out.

  “Waiting for someone?”

  She didn’t answer him. Tyra liked Ralph, but other than the fact that he had carved almost a dozen tattoos on her body, she didn’t know anything about him.

  “Got a rag on you?”

  Ralph gave her the wash cloth in his pocket. She used it to wipe off the blood as she continued to stare across the compound.

  The guy Tyra was looking for emerged from the grey building. He was almost one of the last prisoners to exit before one of the goons closed the door behind them.

  She started off in the direction of the “juice stand”; the table the goons had set up to offer orange juice to all the newbies.

  “Tyra… my rag,” Ralph called after her.

  She stopped and looked at her tattoo. The spider only had four legs.

  “I’ll be back later to get the other half of my tattoo.” She then tossed Ralph his rag.

  Matt was in the middle of downing a plastic cup of orange juice when he heard a voice that seemed to be directed toward him.

&n
bsp; “I know you, right?”

  After he had drained the juice from the plastic cup, Matt looked over to see a woman, about thirty years old, staring at him. Like all the veteran prisoners, she appeared to be alert and adequately fed.

  He threw the empty cup in a trash can but didn’t say anything to Tyra as he walked right past her.

  Tyra shook her head, and followed after him.

  “Yeah, you're definitely the guy in the Green Zone that night. You were working for the Frontline Security Firm, right?”

  Matt not only stopped walking, he turned, then took a step toward her.

  “What did one of my colleagues do? Steal a Humvee? Fuck one of your translators? Look I wish I could help, but I'm not responsible for any of the assholes I worked with back in the Green Zone. Especially not now.”

  He was off again, as if their conversation was finished.

  Once again, Tyra followed after him.

  “So you don’t remember being at the McAlister International hotel?”

  “Sorry, I don’t,” replied Matt.

  His response was too quick for Tyra, as if he had taken no time to think about it.

  “You just donated two pints of blood, perhaps that could have impaired your memory?”

  “Sorry. Not ringing a bell.”

  Despite his answer, she kept walking with him. After several seconds of silence, her persistence eventually triggered another response from him.

  “I was drinking a lot while working for FSF. That could have something to do with it.”

  “Those of us who worked in the State Department used to say that the letters FSF stood for ‘Fuck you, Stop looking at me, we don’t Fucking work for the military’.”

  “I guess the State Department doesn't make it a priority to brief their employees on the use of acronyms...”

  “Perhaps you’re right. But they do allow us to attend parties put on by private security firms like FSF. That’s how I wound up meeting you in the basement of the McAlister hotel.”

  Matt stopped walking and looked at her.

  “We were doing vodka shots…?”

  “That’s right…” Tyra tried to smile, but she was sure her effort was similar to what she looked like as a teenager when her parents tried to take a picture of her.

  “So it’s all coming back to you?”

  This time he looked like he was making a real effort to recall more details.

  “Nope. Drawing a blank after the vodka shots. What did I do; skip out on the bill?”

  “There was no bill. It was a party.”

  He thought some more, but eventually just shook his head.

  “Around midnight you got this call from your mobile phone. After you hung up you took one more shot, then said something about ‘your package’ being on the move and… you needed to leave.”

  She revealed her words gradually, like she was providing clues to someone suffering from amnesia and that any clue might trigger total recall of the event.

  “Yeah, right… I needed to leave,” he said. “Now I remember: the ‘package’ was the Vice President of the United States. The phone call came from the point man on the security detail with a change of plans. The VP needed to fly back to the States that instant because…” It was there his memory came to an abrupt halt. Matt wasn’t surprised. He never gave a shit about such details.

  He started walking again. “Look, whatever reason the client had to leave, it meant I had to leave. It was my job.”

  “Just so you know, while you were jetting around on Air Force Two with the Vice President, I stayed behind in the Green Zone. That was my home for the next three years, dodging mortar attacks and insurgent bombs.”

  “Sounds horrific. Thank god you received the appreciation from a grateful nation,” said Matt.

  “Yeah, it was a real victory parade. For weeks I was removing confetti that had lodged underneath my nails.”

  He stopped walking. The last thing he wanted after being sucked dry by three vampires was some government employee yammering on about how bad things had gotten in Iraq.

  Like he hadn’t been there.

  Like he hadn’t experienced some of his men getting killed there.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name…?”

  “Tyra.”

  “Tyra, in case you didn’t notice, it’s the end of the world. Why don’t we pick up this conversation the next time we’re both standing in the basement of the McAlister hotel?”

  “That would be great. Except that the hotel is gone. Along with everything else in the Green Zone.”

  He looked away. Took a deep breath, then turned back to her.

  “Why don’t you spill whatever you’ve got to say about what I’ve done.”

  “You took my last pack of smokes.”

  He looked around the compound as if their whole discussion was being shot by hidden cameras. “Is this like some vampire reality show and I'm being jerked for more than just my blood?”

  She was not deterred by his reaction.

  “When you fled the party at the McAlister hotel, you asked for a cigarette, and you ended up taking the entire pack. Taking someone's last pack of cigarettes in the middle of a war zone is a fucked-up thing to do.”

  He started to respond, but instead shook his head and started walking again.

  “Maybe if you were a real soldier you'd understand what you did.”

  He stopped immediately and wheeled around to respond –

  “I did two tours as an Army Ranger. One in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan.”

  “My father and my brother were both Marines.”

  “Really? Marines? Impressive. Where's your father now? Your brother?”

  Her face froze and the color drained away.

  Matt was instantly ashamed of what he said. But instead of admitting his mistake, he started walking again.

  This time she did not follow.

  With every step he took, his words continued to play back in his head like an endless audio loop. He stopped walking and turned back around.

  “That was… wrong… disrespectful… what I said.”

  Before Tyra could respond he started walking again.

  Tyra needed to almost run to catch up with him.

  “Where did the bloodsuckers track you down?”

  He wasn’t excited that she had decided to continue the conversation, but he was relieved that she had let go of his remarks about her father and brother.

  “Not far from here. I was checking out my ex-wife's house when one of the blood patrols cornered me.”

  “Why in the world would you be checking up on your ex-wife?”

  He shook his head and refused to respond, but his response to her question came at the exact time they were walking past a CCC guard, and the goon interpreted Matt’s impatience with Tyra.

  “Were you just now eyeballin' me, juice box?”

  Matt knew enough to stop walking, cast his eyes to the ground, and look contrite before responding.

  “I was not looking at you disrespectfully, sir. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

  Satisfied with his reaction, the CCC guard resumed his patrol.

  The two resumed their walk across the compound.

  “So who made those guys boss?”

  “The vampires. Those sellouts manage our entire day, making sure the blood donation twice a week goes well. Then at night the goons turn things over to the vampires.”

  They had arrived at the prisoners’ barracks building.

  Matt tried to enter, but before he could even grab the handle, she stepped between him and the door.

  “It appears the greedy-dick chip embedded in your hard drive is still fully functioning. But I’ll be honest with you; I believe our only realistic hope is to rely on guys… like you. Almost everyone has been in this place for at least three months; most have been here twice as long. That’s why I've decided to go ‘all in’ and bet that you're still capable of being a ‘team player’ and will be some
one who could help us with a plan to escape."

  Tyra concluded her pitch by extending her hand toward the newbie.

  “That was a hell of a recruitment speech. For the record, you had me at ‘greedy’ and ‘dick,’ but you lost me at ‘team player’.”

  The thought of using her hand to strike the asshole across the face crossed Tyra’s mind before she simply lowered it.

  “To be honest with you, I only have two items on my ‘to do’ list – grab a bunk, and keep to myself.”

  She stood there staring at him, shaking her head.

  “And by the way, you got a lot of blood dripping from you neck. I’d take care of that before the sun sets.”

  Tyra slapped her hand up to her half-tattoo.

  He motioned to the door.

  She stepped aside and let the newbie enter the building.

  Chapter Nine

  The moment Matt stepped through the barracks door, a football was spiraling toward his head. It would have hit him square in the forehead if Juarez had not snatched the football out of the air just a few inches from Matt’s face.

  “Nice throw, jackass,” Juarez shouted out to whoever had thrown the pass before turning around to address Matt.

  “Sorry about that. Not exactly how we want to greet any of the new prisoners.”

  “No problem,” Matt answered, without looking at Juarez. He was more interested in the rest of the building.

  The man who had tossed the football had enough manners to come over and apologize for almost causing an injury. “Wow! Almost got you with that one,” said Barrett. “I’m blaming the elbow I injured in high school for that lousy pass…”

  “No problem,” answered Matt.

  Juarez laughed. “Is that the only two words you know?”

  “I also know, ‘where is the john?’ ‘where do we get our food,’ ‘fuck you.’ And ‘leave me the fuck alone‘. And I know all those phrases in eleven different languages.”

  Then, without another word, Matt stepped around Barrett and Juarez to check out the rest of the building.

  “Was it the way I smelled?” asked Barrett as soon as Matt was out of earshot.