It was almost normal to me when I was taken. I had been adjusting tremendously well, all things considered. But it was still… new. We couldn’t have known everything.. we couldn’t have known how deep this went, because it hadn’t stopped mutating. It’s still getting worse, but I am feeling less and less surprised with each fresh hell we are offered.
It no longer matters what I did and who I was. That life is dead and buried.
It’s been 5 years since the outbreak. Life seemed only gently adjusted at first. It started with the addicts. It got into the drug supply and ravaged intravenous drug users. They opened clinics to support them.. But then it became profitable, and it spread to the dealers and the dabblers. It climbed through the population like wildfire. It was weaponized, used to coerce and hold power over those forced to be infected with vampirism. It became population control, in every sense of the word.. because without money and power, it was a death sentence. With money and power? It gave more money and power.
With one dirty needle, you’d become anemic, slowly over time. Your body would slowly eat away at your red blood cells. Your bone marrow would stop producing more. Without an external support system… your body would die. You’d become dependent on daily injections and monthly transfusions. You require daily doses of blood mixed with iron and other supplements to sustain you. The kicker though? It gets you high as a kite. Or so I hear. You keep feeding that disease. It delights in the blood offerings and releases a combination of brain chemicals that cause profound euphoria, and a sensation of understanding the universe. Think opioids mixed with MDMA. You crave your next hit. You need it. And daily doses aren’t enough for the hungriest of them, and highs aren’t high enough anymore.
We all had to be screened monthly for blood diseases and viruses. We were rounded up and slowly relocated. The infected were set up in the quarantine zone, heavily guarded from escape, but not so heavily guarded within. Those of us who were not infected could return to the city, but we had to be tested and had to donate. We had all had the cards. Our blood types were to be carried on us at all times. The need for blood was rising, and it was less and less voluntary to donate for the cause. Particularly certain blood types. Without money or support, it was a death sentence.
My friend, let’s call her Debbie, and I were walking home from work one evening before curfew. A man came out of nowhere as we passed the shops. He’d been waiting, lurking in the doorway of a darkened exit staircase. He had her by the throat, held in front of him. The scary part was that he looked so.. normal. An average guy, with nothing but desperation in his eyes. He held a needle to her throat. A syringe containing a clear fluid. “Show me your cards” he growled. I shakily removed mine, and watched Debbie do the same. Her eyes were filled with tears. She wasn’t going to be okay. Nothing was going to be okay ever again. “Run!” Debbie cried to me, but I dove for him. He sliced her with the uncapped needle, but he fell to the ground. I stomped on his face, and we ran like hell.
After that day, Debbie was forever changed. I stayed with her through the start, and even direct donated to her at the clinics on a regularly cycle.
Being in the community was eye opening. This new virus was changing the world. An astounding number of the population are requiring monthly transfusions. There are donation carts outside most work places for people to stop in and donate their blood. There were incentives for doing it, and repercussions for refusing.
Debbie lived in the quarantine zone, but was on a work release as many were able to do. She had earned her right to leave five days a week for work, while reporting in. She had an implant testing her blood levels to ensure she wasn’t using outside the clinic. For a while, it worked. We went and worked cleaning a government office building.
But after three months, she changed. She started acting off, her movements furtive, her conversations darker. She seemed scared, and urgent. I thought maybe she was being threatened in the quarantine zone. She started writing her crazed ramblings down, and one night I found a note in my pocket. “They’re not finished.”
The next day, she wasn’t at work. I didn’t see her again at work, or at the clinic. I wasn’t able to designate some of my donations to her directly anymore, either. I knew better than to ask around for her, though.
I noticed I was being followed and watched, but there was nothing I could do. I kept to myself, I changed jobs, I moved homes. I thought I was safe.
Three months later I saw Debbie again.
Something clattered in the night and I woke with a start. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my bat from beneath my bed. I saw a shadowed figure begin to approach from down the hall, but something stung me in the neck.
I awoke in a dark room. The first thing I noticed was the feeling of dampness, of cold. I saw a concrete ceiling. I tried to lift my head and arms but I was strapped down in every way. As my eyes adjusted and the grogginess left my head, I noticed an IV bag above my head, dripping into my arm. I couldn’t speak, so I tried to scream. A figure appeared in my peripheral vision and added something to my IV line, and the world went fuzzy again.
When I awoke for the second time, I wasn’t really awake. It felt like a dream. I was tied to a chair in what appeared to be a ballroom. My body felt warm and disassociated from my mind at the same time. I watched people walk by me and I smiled at them. Someone was talking about me to them, but the words were garbled nonsense. Then I saw her. I saw Debbie. She was dressed up and her hair was done, but her face was unrecognizable - she looked broken. A sunken husk of the girl I knew. She didn’t look at me, but it seemed pointed. Then I blacked out again.
When I awoke for the third time, Debbie was still there. She was talking to a man in front of me. They noticed my eyes were open. Debbie said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for them to find out.”
But they did. They found out I’m a universal donor. They found out my blood is gold, and they’re never going to let me go. I’ll be tapped like a sap tree. They inserted IV catheters into my jugular vein, and my femoral vein. They take bits at a time. They give me things. They control the infected with their drugs and keep us all at their whims. The problem is, blood isn’t enough after a time. They need your organs next. Your kidney, your liver. Skin grafts. Your bone marrow.
They take us. They take us from our homes, our jobs, the streets. They hit you with anesthetic and dissociative agents, then keep you on it while they drain you. Once the bag is full, they hang it and get their hit, but they get even higher with the drugs they gave you. You’re too high to move, you can’t feel pain or sadness. You’re tapped daily, sometimes a syringe at a time. Between sessions, you crave the sessions. To be free of pain and fear. They take and take, until you’re on the brink of death. They’ve taken a kidney, they’ve taken half my liver, my skin, my hair… They’re coming for my heart and my lungs next.