James Herbert - ‘48

The half-naked man, who was settling onto the tablecloth on the floor, gazed up at him like an acolyte at a god.

‘He’ll die,’ I promised.

‘He’s prepared to do so. But really, Mr Hoke, aren’t you aware that even centuries ago the South American Incas regularly carried out blood transfusions with far more primitive instruments than we have, and, so history informs us, most occasions proved successful. All we need to do is make two small punctures in the correct veins and allow gravitation to do the rest.’

Wilhelm Stern was close enough to be easily heard. ‘But it was also outlawed in Europe in the seventeenth century because of the many deaths transfusions caused.’

I was glad of his intervention, but wondered if it was for my sake, or because he didn’t like the idea of being the next guinea pig.

‘Nobody knew about blood types in those days. To them, blood was blood and there were no differences,’ he reasoned. ‘Transfusions were successful only between people who, by chance, belonged to the same grouping. Mein Gott, they even used the blood from pigs and sheep at that time. Muriel – Miss Drake – you must make this man understand, you must explain that what he is about to try is impossible.’

‘But I’m not a doctor. How can I tell him what I don’t even know?’

Cissie’s eyes were wide and pleading. ‘You saw for yourself what happened at the sanatorium, you know how their experiments failed each time.’

‘We didn’t know anything at all! They wouldn’t even discuss individual cases with us, they kept us in the dark about everything.’

‘If different blood types could be mixed, then the doctors would have saved themselves!’ Cissie reasoned.

Hubble, irritated by the squabbling, smacked the side of my chair with his cane. He got our attention.

‘There is one thing I’m sure they didn’t try,’ he said in that creepy faraway voice of his. ‘They did not take all of the donor’s blood and transfer it into the recipient’s empty system.’

It was breathtaking in its flawed logic and now I knew he was completely insane. I wondered if his mental state had always been shaky, or if the disease itself was rotting his brain.

‘That’s ridiculous, you fucking lunatic!’ Couldn’t help it, had to make him aware of my considered opinion.

This time his cane bounced off the side of my skull. The blow was too weak to hurt much, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him stagger, only McGruder at his side preventing him going down all the way. A chair was quickly brought over, and when they’d settled him into it, facing me, about two yards away, I noticed that every part of him – his hands, his legs, shoulders, head – was trembling. His chest was heaving as he tried to regain his breath.

‘No, it is not ridiculous,’ he insisted between gasps, as if I were the lunatic. ‘The recipient’s blood will be slowly drained as blood from the donor will be slowly used to fill the veins.’

I laughed. Maybe it was hysteria, but I honestly appreciated the humour of his twisted reasoning. It was so outrageously and brilliantly simple.

‘You will kill both persons.’

For once I didn’t mind the ‘vill’. After all, Stern was speaking up for my benefit as well as his own. They’d kill me anyway, whether they carried out the transfusion or not, but I preferred a fast bullet to a leisurely bleeding.

‘Your man will have died from blood loss before his body will accept the new blood.’ Stern spoke quietly, authoritatively, a teacher explaining a difficult problem to a child. ‘Conflicting blood types will not even be the cause: you will kill this unfortunate man just as surely as if you had slit his throat with a knife.’

‘His blood will be replaced as quickly as it is lost!’

The shout set Hubble wheezing again and McGruder watched over him anxiously. The Blackshirt leader held a handkerchief to his mouth, his body doubled-up in the chair, his shoulders jerking as spasms ran through him. When he straightened and took the handkerchief away I could see it was specked with blood. He took in a long, deep breath and I heard a peculiar faint whistling sound from inside his chest. His eyes were blurred with dampness now, the lustre in them dimmed.

‘We’re wasting time,’ he said weakly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Someone grabbed my shoulders from behind and the goon who’d been rummaging around in the bag on the floor held up both ends of the rubber tubing, a stupid grin on his face.

‘Wait, wait a minute.’ I was out of laughter and getting more desperate by the moment. ‘Listen. There are only four of us with the right kind of blood to resist the disease, five counting the fink here.’ I nodded towards Muriel, but she wouldn’t even look at me. ‘Don’t you get it? Even if the transfusions did work, you could only save a handful of your people. The rest are gonna die.’

‘Ah, then you admit the transfusions could be successful?’ The notion seemed to please Hubble.

I shook my head violently. ‘Not a chance in hell. I’m just applying common sense.’

He smiled at me. Bared his yellowed teeth and smiled. ‘This first transfusion will be our test, and it will be successful. By our second or third attempt, the procedure will be perfected.’

I understood now why Hubble was prepared to wait: let any mistakes be made on the first couple of mugs, so that any problems would be ironed out by the time it got round to his turn. Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all.

‘After that we will move out of the city into the suburbs and surrounding countryside where we will find others like you. Eventually every one of us will be saved.’ He barked the order, eager to proceed. ‘Attach the tube to him! Miss Drake, will you be so kind as to assist – I’m sure you must have learned something about transfusions during your stay at the sanatorium.’

I wasn’t sure of the expression I caught in her downcast eyes as she leaned over me. Was it fear, or plain old-fashioned misery? Was she beginning to regret double-crossing her friends already?

‘Listen to me,’ I whispered as she turned my wrist beneath the rope, exposing the veins of my forearm. Our heads were close. ‘Tell them it isn’t gonna work. Think of us, Muriel, think of Cissie. D’you want her to be killed?’

Her voice was low too. ‘She’s a Jew, isn’t she?’ she said.

My head straightened, knocking against the high back of the armchair. I don’t know why, I should’ve expected it, but I was shocked. Under that sweet veil of English genteelness beat the heart of a viper. And in the three days I’d known her, telling her of my folks, the reason I’d joined in the bloody war long before my own country had been forced to come off the fence, making love to her, sleeping with her, I’d never once suspected the hatred she nurtured for her fellow man, the prejudices that had twisted her soul so that she believed her allegiance lay with a Fascist bigot who had been prepared to betray his own country. And I realized she hadn’t concealed a thing. The plain truth was that none of our conversations had ever drawn close to the darker side of her nature. I hadn’t asked – and presumably neither had Cissie in all the time she’d known Muriel – her opinion of Jews, niggers, gypsies, of Adolf Hitler and his Master Race ideology, Fascism, Nazism, hadn’t even mentioned it. And nobody had asked her if she’d be prepared to turn in her friends to the people who meant to steal their blood. You see, she hadn’t lied. She just hadn’t been honest

And then I wondered again about the look I’d caught in her eyes. It was fear, not regret, I was sure of that now. So what did she have to fear? I suddenly had the answer.

‘You realize it’s gonna be your turn sooner or later, don’t you?’