Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

“So, this transfusion,” he said. “How soon can you try it?”

“I just need another hour or two in the lab. Then I'll have the serum ready.”

“But we're surrounded by ice,” Michael said, still fearful.

“Which they're never going to touch. They're going straight from the infirmary and the meat locker into the body bags. What's the alternative? You plan to oversee the procedure on your own, in Miami?”

That, Michael knew, would never work.

“If they're going to have a bad reaction,” Darryl went on, “we'd better know it now, before they're zipped into the bags and shipped out.”

“Eleanor first?”

“Sure,” Darryl said. “From what I know of Sinclair, he may need more in the way of persuading.”

Darryl was already turning away, when Michael took his elbow to stop him. “You think it will work?” he said. “You think Eleanor will be cured?”

Darryl hesitated, as if weighing his words carefully, then said, “If all goes well, I think that Eleanor-and Sinclair-will be able to live reasonably normal lives.” He held Michael's gaze, as Murphy had earlier held his, and added, “But that's only if you consider living like a snake, who has to warm itself by lying in the sun, to be normal. With the help of an occasional booster shot, Eleanor will no longer feel the need she does now. But she will carry this contagion to the end of her days.”

The words weighed like stones on Michael's heart.

“But so will Sinclair,” Darryl added, as if that made things better. “They'll pose no danger to each other.”

Michael mutely nodded, as if he, too, saw the wisdom and symmetry in that. But it didn't make the stones any less heavy.

December 26, 11:20 a.m.

“Under assumed names,” Sinclair was saying. “We always traveled under assumed names, and changed them with some regularity. It became a game of sorts, choosing who we would be called in San Remo, or in Marseilles, or wherever it was we stayed after that.”

Lawson was transfixed, and Sinclair had taken some pains to relate the more dramatic episodes from their journey-the midnight rides through mountain gorges, the narrow escapes from suspicious authorities, the high-stakes card play that had generally paid for their travels. But he had carefully skirted the more appalling aspects-most notably the constant quest for a fresh supply of blood. Certainly no need to go into that. And time was running short, anyway. In a couple of hours, the watch would change, and the more-wary Franklin would come back on duty. If Sinclair was to make his move, and gain the maximum amount of time before anyone had discovered his escape, he had to act now.

“From Marseilles, we continued west. In Seville, Eleanor fell ill, and I thought the sea air might revive her, so we traveled to a small town on the Gulf of Cadiz. Its name escapes me, but if I heard it again…”

“Was it Ayamonte?” Lawson said, consulting the atlas.

“No, that wasn't it,” Sinclair said. “It was something longer. And it was on the way up the coast, toward Lisbon.”

“Isla Cristina?”

“No,” Sinclair said, tilting his head to one side, as if straining to remember. “But I do believe that if I saw it there…”

Holding the book open to the correct page, Lawson got up from the crate and came toward Sinclair-who readied himself.

He laid the book across Sinclair's lap, and before he was able to stand back again, Sinclair said, in his most innocent tone, “Where exactly are we on this map?”

“Right here,” Lawson said, pointing to a yellow line that he had traced across the page, and while his eyes were trained on the book, Sinclair lifted the beer bottle he had been concealing and cracked him smartly across the back of the skull.

Lawson went down onto his knees, but if Sinclair was hoping for him to be knocked out cold, he was disappointed. That damned kerchief must have interfered. He cracked him again, and the bottle smashed, leaving a bloody gash, but Lawson was still conscious and trying to crawl away. Sinclair had to act quickly; his chain was fastened to the pipe on the wall and he had only a few feet of slack. Looping his cuffed hands over Lawson's head, he dragged him backwards toward the cot; fortunately, the man was sufficiently dazed by the blow that he could not put up much of a fight. Sinclair tightened the cuffs around his windpipe and pulled up. Lawson's hands went to the metal around his throat and he tried desperately to claw it away, but Sinclair only leaned back harder, holding on and choking him until his feet-in the boots that Sinclair had been admiring-stopped scrabbling at the floor and his hands dropped limply to his sides. Even then, Sinclair held on for several seconds more, just for good measure, before easing up on the cuffs and letting Lawson's head loll forward.

The atlas, oddly, had remained open on his lap the whole time.

As the body slumped to the floor, Sinclair pushed the book away, and knelt. He put his ear to the chest and heard the heart still pumping; he had been in this position before, and for a moment the terrible urge to take advantage of the moment rose up in him like a blood tide. But he had neither the time, nor the desire, to kill the man. He put his mouth to Lawson's, and blew into it, just as the seamen had done with the soldiers who had drowned in the botched landing at Calamita Bay. Then he pushed down gently on the abdomen until he saw it rise, then fall, then rise again. Before Lawson could come to again, Sinclair rifled through his pockets and dug out the keys to the shackles. It was tricky work, undoing them all, especially as Sinclair's own heart was already beating faster at the prospect of freedom, new boots… and finding Eleanor.

December 26, 11:30 a.m.

“Are you trying to dissuade me?” Eleanor asked, looking into Michael's eyes.

“No, of course not,” he said, inching his chair closer to the bedside where she sat, and clutching her hands more firmly. “It's just that there's a risk involved-a considerable risk-and I'm afraid for you.”

She was deeply touched by his concern, but her life, for so long, had been nothing but risk and mortal danger that this was nothing new. She lifted one hand up and placed it against his cheek. “The choice is mine, and I accept it. If I'm going to live on, I don't want it to be in the shadows anymore. I want a life I'm not ashamed of. Can you understand that?”

She could see that he did understand, but he looked, if anything, more apprehensive than she felt herself. After all that she had been through, over such a span of time, even death held no great fear for her. With everything she had ever known-her family, her friends-already gone, how much lonelier could her life become?

And as for Sinclair… even if they were reunited, what would become of them? All that they could really do-she knew this in her very bones-was share their own profound loneliness and isolation from the rest of humanity.

“Should I go and get Darryl and Charlotte then?” Michael asked, and she nodded her agreement.

Michael left, and Eleanor remained, to sort through a tumult of emotions. Despite herself, she recognized that some sense of hope, of redemption, had been rekindled in her. And though she was reluctant to admit it, she knew it had something to do with the way that Michael Wilde looked at her.

And the way she found herself looking back.

A few minutes later, the door to the sick bay opened again, and this time Michael was accompanied by the others. Darryl, with his red hair sticking up like the comb on a rooster, was carrying a clear bag of fluid and Charlotte had a tray with several items on it-cotton balls, needles, alcohol, and a kind of bandage that conveniently adhered to the skin. Eleanor had seen the tray several times and knew the protocols by heart.