Bloodsuckers Like Me

Content Warning: References to distressing times, blood, violence, and death. Mention of dead animals, as well. There's no active, gratuitous violence in this story.

Did they get you? Is the sun coming up shortly? If that’s the case, I’d advise you to listen. I, along with… the rest of the world, have been in your shoes. We can all testify that what follows isn’t so pretty. So, if you’d like a remote shot at survival, I’d suggest that you read and read fast. Time flies with a good story.

I want to preface that if they didn’t get you and the infection hasn’t awakened a raging fever and caused your eyes to blur, congratulations. You’ve been spared for now. And though I didn’t write this for the likes of you, don’t think this guide isn’t useful for the living; by the end, you might just find a place or two to avoid the next time you venture into cities like this one.

My name is Donny Blankenship. This squat, two-bedroom apartment has been my home for the past couple of years. Sorry, there’s no food in the fridge. Take the bed if you need to lie down. Assuming you found this manuscript sitting on my writing desk, you’ll also notice the rope tied to anchor in the floor. Follow it to the ceiling and say hello.

Don’t be alarmed. Steel coffin, draped in chains, aside, I’m secured in here by my own design. I can’t hear, see, or smell you. You’re okay until twelve AM, or one if I’m feeling comfortable. Not that I’d take a bite, anyway; the pills make you unappetizing.

Speaking of, there’s a glass capsule upon the table. See those two red pills? Those suckers are what created us, tipped the first domino. If you’re too young to remember, or you’ve just lived under a rock for the entirety of your existence, The Famine Days brought misery and starvation. I’m not one to spew on about environmental-yada-yada, but in my day, we did a number on this planet. Incredible amounts of waste, pollution, deforestation, the works. Being that this is the USA, food-borne illness ravaged our country more than we’d like to admit. Soon, the commonfolk refused to buy any fresh produce or animal product.

This brought hunger. With hunger comes desperation. Soon there were riots, demands for safer food processes, homes raided for product, personal gardens ravaged. Bleak is one way to put it; survival is another. I’m guilty of this. None of us who partook are proud, but at our basest level, we do what we can to survive, yeah?

I think Aceso Inc. noticed this first and brought forth their monopoly before anyone could say boo. Their solution to starvation, the riots, the unnecessary deaths? Those little red capsules on the desk. They called them Hemoxazine, sold in pretty little bottles, with a slogan that read “Hunger no more!” It makes me laugh to think how easily we fell for it. If you’re infected and starving, pop those suckers. Trust me, you’ll need them. If you aren’t bit, leave them where they sit and keep reading.

Those pills do the job; they resolve hunger, suppressing those guts instincts that tell you it needs some fuel. It does include nutrients that keep you going for a bit, until you need the next dose. Seems great right? Well, Aceso Inc. didn’t feel obligated to put ‘CONTAINS ACTIVE VIRUS’ on the ingredients list.

If you’ve taken even just one of those little capsules, congratulations. You’re now the host of the final plague of the twenty-first century. Don’t worry, it’s not that serious… as long as you take the pills. Those capsules keep the bug dormant. They can make you a bit sluggish, I’ll admit, but you won’t be starving or caught in a blinding migraine. Stop taking them however and um… I assume you’ve already seen what happens to good boys and girls who don’t take their twice-daily medicine.

Cease taking the pills, and you’re met with a raging fever, furor, and an insatiable hankering for Filet O’Human. Again, it’s not pretty. It never is. For me, I feel as if I’ve become a marionette. Someone else is working my strings while I just watch, seeing red and crying. You might find this hard to believe, but I was a vegetarian before taking these pills. Ha! You can imagine my horror when I found freshly spilled blood as appetizing as the cherry syrup they used for sno-cones.

Now, I should mention that Hemoxazine is in high demand. If you take it, you’ll have to find more. The first two are on me, but I’m not keen on sharing. I’ve got my own skin to worry about. They’re out there somewhere, possibly the Apothecaries, potentially in abandoned homes, in the pockets of corpses. If you already took the pills on the table, you’ve got a little over twelve hours to find more. Good luck.

If you haven’t set down these papers and I haven’t awoken yet, you’re probably wondering what the rest of these pages hold. I’ve included my daily (nightly?) routine. Where I go, who I meet, what we do, places bloodsuckers like me tend to occupy, the works. Don’t think we aren’t everywhere, because we are; this guide could just potentially help you recognize spots where we might be hiding, save the skin of your neck for another five minutes until you reach a safer place to hunker down.

Don’t mistake this gesture for kindness, either. It’s a warning, more than anything. If you value your life, follow these notes.

12:00 AM: ARISE

I don’t use clocks anymore. My body’s used to waking when the sun goes down. You’re lucky it isn’t winter; we might have already met. Regardless, I slink out of this steel box and take a helping handful of Hemoxazine, wash it down with gin. Liquor doesn’t burn after you’ve started the pills. Can’t explain that one, but I don’t complain. I sit either on the bed or the couch behind you until the headache whittles into a whisper and the hunger recedes. Focus returns; I’m alive -relatively- again. My mornings consist of my old humanistic habits; showering, getting dressed, maybe a little exercise. I will say I miss the days I could eat a breakfast burrito and sip on an espresso without vomiting my bloody guts out five minutes later. The virus represses hunger, but also rejects food that isn’t organic tissue and viscera. Thus, another reason to stick to the pills.

1:00 AM: EMERGENCE

By now, I’ve descended the stairs of my apartment building and I’m jogging to the Apothecary on the corner. If you’ve never seen one, I call bullshit; they’re hard to miss and practically everywhere. Amidst rubble and decaying architecture, you’ll find small wooden shacks painted white, with a single cross at the top crudely drawn with blood. Like everything in our society now, they’re only open at night, but close for nothing but the sun.

The Apothecary on my street is a quaint little shack, with a folding panel on the street-facing wall, like those concession windows that they had on food trucks. It’s open by the time I get there, already servicing several other groggy shamblers. When it’s my turn, I’m met by a lithe man in voluminous white robes, hands and face wrapped in white bandages.

“Edgar,” I say, giving a faint nod. “Got anything for me?” He grumbles under the bandages, fishes something from a bin behind the counter. When he slides the bottle of pills into my hand, I set down a leaky paper bag upon the counter, blood seeping into the bleached wood. He winks from a swollen red eye and drags the bag into the darkness, signaling the next customer to approach while I walk away.

Do NOT approach an Apothecary without something to trade. They don’t give handouts. Medicine men are honest workers, but they still have to work double what we do to find their supply. I can’t tell you what your local dealer’s taste is, but Edgar loves rats. Start there. They’re easy to catch with practice. Also, never tell a dealer that you’re a friend of Donny Blankenship to get your hands on an extra dose. Every dealer knows that Donny Blankenship has one friend. You’re not him.

2:00 AM: SOCIALIZATION

Who is this friend you ask? Go ahead and peek out the kitchen window. There’s no glass so you can put your head through, but please replace the duct tape seal on the cardboard once you’re done. If you saw the Apothecary on the corner, you’d have also seen a block or so behind it looms a massive church, almost a cathedral. Impressive, yes? It’s where Ridley Manger lives, and every square foot belongs to him.

Vampires are big on irony. Any symptom from vampiric mythos that proves false is just another ‘fuck you’ to the universe. So no, we don’t burn when we cross a church threshold, and we can walk into anywhere we please without an invitation. Doesn’t mean we won’t get shot or bit, but we’re free to do so.

NOTE: The only symptom of ‘vampirism’ I’ve noticed is sunlight sensitivity. We don’t disintegrate in the presence of the sun, but it gives us steady headaches, even with the pills. So yes, we tend to become more active at night, but we aren’t afraid of the sun. Just pissed at it.

Ridley’s church needs no security, because A. he is the security, and B. no one but me dares to step beyond the churchyard. Usually a church like Ridley’s is a great attraction, what with its high ceilings, abundance of space, and current lack of holy water. His church could house a few hundred bodies, easy. When I enter the chapel, the floorboards moan with age, followed by a silence quieter than that which lies over the Hangman’s Graveyard (See 4:00 AM entry).

If somehow you get into Ridley’s church and aren’t torn asunder, chances are that he’s in the sanctuary. You can’t miss him; a lumbering hulk of a man, probably once a bodybuilder. The virus did something to him; rewired his genes, mutated him into something more than man and creature. For the most part, he just sits here, on his makeshift cot atop the old stage.

“Grrrm,” he says when I approach. It’s always the same baritone note, but it’s his stamp of approval. He’s got height on me even when sitting, almost a foot of muscly shoulder and neck sloping up to his swollen head.

“How’s this evening, Ridley?” I ask. “Nightmares?” He hangs his head low.

“Grrhmmp….phurrum.” He shrugs, I think, and reaches across his lap, picking up a dead cat by the tail and waving it in front of me. “Geh?”

“I’ve already eaten tonight, Rids, thank you.” I say, politely waving the bloody orange carcass away. As he puts the cat back, I reach under the cot, feel the corner of the heavy book exactly where I’d left it. The faux leather spine crackles as I open the book, pages yellow. “Just relax, mkay?”

Ridley lays back on his cot, kicking up an absurd amount of dust, a rat skittering out from under the alcove, diving for the shadows under the pews. Ridley’s eyes, puffy and purple, lull as I clear my throat.

“Now, where were we?” I ask before I begin to read.

No, I am not a softie for this guy. Sure, he’s a gentle giant with a slight anger management issue, but he’s good company. I can speak my mind without opinionated retort; vamps are snobs. I feel safe around him. He makes for a good guard, and in return, I keep his nightmares at bay. The storybooks seem to help. Don’t ask me how I learned this little trick. You don’t have enough time to hear that story.

4:00 AM: RECREATION

By this point, Ridley should be put to sleep and I’ve got the desperate urge to stretch my legs. What a perfect time to stroll through the cemetery. With grim circumstances come grim fascinations, so despite churches, you can often find guys like me strolling around decrepit hospitals and morgues, graveyards, buildings with spooky looking architecture, and just cozy, dark spaces. Heh, that’s everywhere now, huh? Whoops.

Most nights, you’ll find me at Hangman’s Graveyard. Count the nooses in the trees and you’ll understand the name. Being that the burial site borders another old church, Hangman’s was used as an ‘infected lynching ground’, where uninfected humans would string up sickos like me and burn them to send a message to the rest of us. It worked for a while, until it didn’t. Turns out hallowed ground isn’t so hallow when vampirism comes from a virus instead of divine damnation.

I cruise around, read all the headstones, and play a game with myself. I like to guess who these people were, making a new story every time I’m here. Kathleen Juarez (eighth row, second column) has been a rancher, a nurse, a tattoo artist, and an interior designer. Truman West (seventeenth row, ninth column) has been a scuba diver, librarian, window cleaner, and stand-up comedian. I like to think they’d be my best friends if I’d been born a few generations prior, but imagination only takes you so far.

It’s a key point to pay your respects to the dead, those in the ground and those swaying from the trees, before leaving Hangman’s. Life was life before Hemoxazine. Remember this before leaving any cemetery.

NOTE: I can’t explain my desire to frequent these places over the years. It’s almost instinctual, being attracted to the absence of life. Regardless of the pills, guys like me don’t appreciate company. I think it’s the fever; if you were running a constant 105 Fahrenheit, you’d be pretty snippy, too. In all seriousness, be wary when approaching secluded areas like these. We’re a messy race of people, leaving behind shredded clothing and trails of blood. If you see any of these or hear the occasional screech coming from the other side of that rainbow of carnage leading into the old supermarket, go around. Try the corner store instead.

6:00 AM: RETURN

I’m home by this time, having either picked up something new to read or playing solitaire in the den. Though this might be typical for me, it’s likely atypical for some. A few of these guys stay out as long as they can, seconds before the sun breaches the horizon, just to make sure they didn’t miss a single lick of prey. Hell, some brave the headache and stay out a bit longer. These fools either faint from the sun-inflicted pain or retreat before it becomes unbearable. You’re safer during the day, but not completely.

Before I take up reading or napping, I do make a point to watch the sunrise from the window in the spare bedroom. Just because I’m technically dead doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate natural beauty. I squint hard when I see it, the sun blossoming over the mountains like a flower in early spring. It colors the sky orange and the wasteland below it purple. My eyes are stinging by the time I look away, but it does nothing to blur the image in my mind. It’s the one I can’t get enough of. Told you that vamps are big on irony.

If you’ve come to my place around this time, you’ve got over sixteen hours before I wake up. Please help yourself to my library or try to beat my solitaire score. I’ve kept track by carving numbers into the table. No cheating. I will know. Don’t ask yourself how. I just will.

8:00 AM – 12:00 AM: SLUMBER

Reader, whoever you might be, I’m not the nicest man, but I’m offering you a window of reprieve. This is a safe chance to rest before you’re back on the move. I know it can be exhausting; I did it myself for the longest time. It might sound absurd, but if you’ve not had anyone to talk to in a while, write something back to me. I’ll read it and reply, even if you do not return. Just trust that I know what it means to be lonely.

For those of you who are infected, welcome to the club. Now go find your own apartment. For those who aren’t yet infected, I wish you well when you step back out into the world. Pocket those pills, bundle up and walk in the sun. You’ll be fine.

Get you soon,

-Donny Blankenship

P.S. I lied about one part of the coffin. Unfortunately, I can smell you. Take yourself a shower.