Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book One

“Please, no more…I’m begging…end it…please…end it…” the vampire forced out, its voice not much more than a hoarse whisper.

Metcalf looked up and made a shushing noise to the vampire before moving on to check on other experiments. Although some of the vampires were made into these “guinea pigs” to teach the others in the compound a lesson, Metcalf took no sadistic pleasure in what he did, but neither did he feel the slightest hint of remorse. As far as he was concerned, these creatures didn’t even rate as lab mice, and he felt the same compassion towards them that a scientist might towards bacteria that was being examined under a microscope. These experiments allowed Metcalf to understand the virus at a more practical level, and that was all that mattered to him.

Smiling, he thought about how he could write a book on the subject…

Hell, make it a set of encyclopedias…

Early on he discovered that vampires could be killed fairly easily, at least easily for him, by cutting off their heads. Other than that method, which few other vampires had the strength to do without very sharp blades, they were damn hard to kill. Like goddamn cockroaches. Suffocating them, whether by drowning, gassing or simply sealing off a vampire’s nose and mouth, didn’t kill them; it only caused them to slip into a comatose state until oxygen became available. Metcalf had kept experiments submerged for months in tanks of water only to have them revive within seconds of being removed, and showing no discernable damage from their oxygen deprivation. He could burn them to death, but only after he had bought a cremation oven and was able to get the temperature to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking a vampire long enough in a microwave oven also did the trick, but again, like requiring a cremation oven, it was impractical. The virus created a kind of super-immunity to lethal viral infections: Ebola, bubonic plague, hantavirus, and all the other viruses Metcalf exposed his test subjects to had little effect. Neither did exposure to deadly bacteria like meningitis or anthrax, nor any of the poisons that Metcalf had so far injected into their blood systems. Ingesting poison caused the same short-term violent reactions that ingesting any food would cause, but nothing more than that.

Metcalf stopped in front of one of his test subjects. Two days earlier he had injected the vampire with an ounce of venom from an Australian Brown Snake, which was enough to kill over ten thousand people. Outside of being somewhat dried out, the vampire looked no worse for wear.

“Would you like to be fed?” Metcalf asked it.

The vampire nodded glumly and Metcalf squeezed an ounce of blood into its mouth. After that ounce, the vampire appeared the same as before the snake venom injection. Metcalf scribbled notes on the clipboard next to the test subject. Over the course of a year, Metcalf had injected snake and spider venom, arsenic, cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, and numerous other poisons into this subject, all with little if any damage. As with viruses and bacterial exposure, poison seemed to have no real effect against the super-immunity caused by the vampire virus.

“You are a monster. A monster,” drifted in from behind him, a seemingly disembodied voice, barely a whisper. “You will burn in the fires of damnation. What you are doing to us will be done to you a million times over.”

Metcalf strained to hear where the voice was coming from and followed it to one of his vivisection experiments. Mildly disappointed, he understood why the test subject dared to speak out. It had nothing left to lose, or little, anyway. Metcalf had months earlier cut the vampire open and spread the skin apart so its insides were exposed, and over time had removed most of its organs. Spleen, liver, kidneys, esophagus and stomach were gone. Not much was really left other than its heart and one of its lungs.

The vampire’s jaundiced eyes held steady on Metcalf’s.

“You think you are a God?” it asked, its voice haltering, ghostlike. “You are nothing. Less than dirt, that’s what you are. Some day there will be justice and you will suffer worse than you’ve made all of us suffer.”

“That may be true,” Metcalf said. “But you know something, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion.”

Metcalf reached into the vampire’s chest and squeezed its heart in his fist. A sick gurgling noise escaped the vampire’s lips and its eyes rolled up into its sockets. Metcalf decided to alter his experiment. He took a loose spike and drove it into the vampire’s heart. Unlike the supernatural myth associated with a vampire, a spike through the heart didn’t kill it. The virus would cause the damaged heart to regenerate its tissue as it tried to heal itself. From personal experience Metcalf knew the pain would be excruciating. If the spike were removed, the heart would completely regenerate in seconds and be as healthy as before the injury, but with the spike in the way the newly generated tissue would wrap itself around the metal in a fruitless attempt for recovery. No, one spike through the heart wouldn’t kill a vampire, but maybe more than one would. Overtime Metcalf would discover how many it took, but he planned to stretch this experiment out and make it last years. He watched while the vampire writhed in agony, its mouth twisting as it tried to scream but in too much pain for any noise to escape. Satisfied that his point had been made to the other “guinea pigs”, he turned to the room and addressed them, asking if any of them had any other comments they’d like to share.

“Well?” Metcalf asked. “Most of you still have your tongues. Come on, if you have anything to say, let’s hear it.”

All he got back in response were a few soft moans.

He moved his gaze slowly around the room. Like the “cattle” in the feeding pens, the vampires pinned and chained around the lab looked away from him, none of them willing to meet his eyes.

“No complaints, huh? That’s good. I like to think I treat my lab rats as humanely as any other scientist. But I am always open-”

His phone interrupted him. The compound was thirty feet underground, but he had it built with a network of antennas and signal enhancers so that it allowed for cell phone reception. He took out his cell phone and saw that Serena was calling him.

“Jim was in Kansas City four days ago,” Serena said breathlessly.

Metcalf lowered his head into an open hand and rubbed his eyes. Christ, he wasn’t in the mood for this.

“So?” he asked.

“So? What do you mean so? We’re only four days behind him! We’re finally going to catch up to him!”

Metcalf rubbed his eyes some more. “Four days is a long time, Serena. He could be half way across the country by now.”

“Always the eternal optimist, huh? Let’s say he is. It doesn’t matter. My little private eye has a spectacular idea on how to flush him out.”

Metcalf’s patience was quickly eroding. He never liked the idea of having a private detective snooping into their business, but he agreed to let Serena hire one a year ago. He didn’t think anything would ever come of it and at the time it seemed the best way to mollify her.

“Serena,” he said, trying hard to keep his annoyance in check. “This obsession you have with Jim is not healthy, and this whole private eye business-”

“Metcalf, darling, who the fuck are you to talk to me so condescendingly? Fuck you, my darling! Aren’t you the one who’s constantly harping on how we need to keep the virus contained? That we can’t afford as much as a single rogue vampire or we’ll all end up starving to death? Isn’t that the tune you keep singing?”

“Serena-”

“Answer me!”

“Okay, yes, that’s the deal, but Serena, let’s be reasonable. Jim isn’t out there spreading the virus-”