In The Blood (Book 2): The Blood Lies

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  PRESENTS

  IN THE BLOOD

  By

  LEE ISSEROW

  Copyright © 2017 Lee Isserow

  All rights reserved.

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  PART TWO

  THE BLOOD LIES

  1

  Ben Graham had accepted his fate. He knew that he was going to die, and was comfortable with that fact. His last memory was of the warehouse, seeing it through the syrupy crimson sheen of the blood that encased him. A fly trapped in amber, before the darkness took him. When he found himself bolstered awake by a violent cough erupting from his chest, it was more than a shock. He had not expected the blood-driven who attacked him to be merciful, let alone have any interest in keeping prisoners.

  As his lungs cleared, Ben could feel adrenaline start to surge. He tried to rise to his feet, and discovered his legs were weak. His head hit the ceiling, which was lower than he expected. With his body bent over at two thirds his full height, the top inch or so of his head was enveloped by soft, smooth material lining ceiling. He tried to reach for it, and discovered his hands were tied behind his back. Ben tried to pull and twist the bindings, cause friction against his skin, spill some blood to let a 'goblin out to break him free, but the bindings were also soft and smooth, chosen to prevent him from injuring himself.

  He inspected his surroundings. There was a thick stench of burning in the air, but there didn't appear to be any signs of scorch marks in the room itself. The walls were covered with the same material as the ceiling. It was hard to see in the darkness, there was no light in the room but for a thin glimmer coming from under a door. At least there was a door, he reassured himself.

  Feeling around in the dim space, he found the small bed he had been lying on when he woke up. The frame was covered in the same material as the walls and ceilings. He couldn't feel slats or springs under the mattress. There were no other objects locked in the room with him. He was trapped in a padded call, with no means to escape, and no means to bleed.

  The adrenaline rush was over, and Ben collapsed back on the bed. His legs could no longer support his weight. He found his breath weak in his chest, and tried to force long, slow breaths through his lungs. It didn't feel like the oxygen was getting around his body. He tried to recall how much blood he had lost. There was no way to tell, his 'goblins being devoured by the blood dragon was only the tip of the iceberg. The fiend's flames had encompassed him, sucked the blood out through pinprick sized holes across his body.

  He felt his thoughts slowing. His breath slowing even more, and once again he returned to the darkness.

  2

  At first, there was no way to track days in the cell. Ben woke intermittently at various points, discovering polystyrene clamshells of food waiting for him in the dim light under the door. They never left him cutlery, after all, disposable wood or plastic eating implements could be used to draw blood. Not that it would be much use if they did leave him cutlery, for his captors had not unbound his hands when it was time for him to be fed.

  To get to the meal of the day or night, Ben had to kneel on the floor, use his teeth and tongue to nudge the box open. The food was often luke warm or cold by the time he got to it, but any kind of nourishment felt like a godsend to his frail frame, with its scattered half-thoughts. He ploughed his face into the boxes with barely any inspection as to the contents. If they wanted to kill him, he'd be dead already, so they certainly wouldn't have poisoned the food. Every other meal, a disposable plastic cup was placed next to the food with water in it, which he drank with barely a thought about what chemicals it might contain. Survival was the only thing on his mind. Survival, and revenge.

  As the meals continued, and Ben's strength returned, he began to use them as a sundial to tell what time of day it was. The morning meal was always porridge, thick and goopy, unsweetened and too dry. The second meal, and often the third when there was a third, was either a stew or curry, a myriad ingredients thrown in a pot with something to flavour it. The meals were cheap to produce, and not cooked for his benefit, he wagered. Leftovers from when the blood-driven had had their fill, which explained why sometimes there were only two meals rather than three.

  Ben counted five days worth of meals before he actually witnessed the door open for himself. He was lying on the bed when he heard the heavy clunk of the lock, and craned his neck, squinting into the bright light pouring into his padded cage. The shadow of a man stepped into the rectangle of blinding white light, forming a large silhouette that blocked his view of the outside world. The shadow came towards him, ducked into the cell, and crouched on the floor by the bed. The door closed behind him, the lock clunked back into position.

  “How you liking the accommodation?” the man scoffed. His voice was deep, hoarse, words a little muffled. Ben stared at him as his eyes adjusted back to the darkness. The man was speaking through a thin layer of fabric over his face, a balaclava. It hid everything but for his eyes, which gleamed in the darkness through an oval cut in the material. The eyes were dark, irises large, and they looked angry.

  Ben said nothing, turning his head away from his captor. “Got your strength back some, I reckon. Food's been packed with iron and the like to heal you up,” The words were cold, as if the man didn't approve of Ben being fed. “Bloods good like that, replenishing itself. But I'm sure you already know that...”

  The man shifted his weight. Crouching down in the cell seemed to be uncomfortable for him. Ben smiled at the observation, he might not be able to break free or let a 'goblin out, but at least he could make his captor uncomfortable, if only for the brief time he was in the cell.

  “Got some questions we need answering...”

  Ben rolled his eyes. He wasn't going to tell them anything.

  “Who d'you work for?” The man waited for a response. When there was none, he started elucidating, and monitored his prisoner for a reaction. “Police? MI5? Government? Interpol? CDC? CIA?” Ben did his best not to give anything away. Not that he truly knew who he worked for. The Blood Squad might have been based under the MI5 building, but it did not seem directly related to MI5. His experiences there started and ended with Ailes. He had never seen anyone enter the building who appeared to be Ailes' superior, and so as far as he was aware, the Blood Squad was autonomous.

  “Give me something, mate. The others are starting to get riled up, saying you're a waste of space, let alone food. And they like their damn food, I'll tell you that much.”

  Ben continued to say nothing, waiting his captor's patience out. Finally, the man sighed, and grunted as he got back to his feet, his head hitting the ceiling as he did so. He banged on the door angrily, and shouted to someone outside to let him out. The door swung open, and he took a look back at their prisoner before they slammed it shut again, and the lock was put back in place. Ben smiled to himself for having got through a round of questioning without giving anything away. He tried not to picture torture scenes from all the movies and TV shows he had ever watched. Tried to think of anything else other than electrodes on his scrotum and needles pushed under his fingernails. The images came nonetheless.

  Based on the manner of the questions, and the tone of his captor, Ben tried to convince himself that they were amateurs, and would never have the stomach for anything so grotesque. They would continue to question him as they had just done, he convinced himself. Worst they would probably do is stop feeding him, and due to his own poor diet and self-care, he had accidentally starved himself more than a few times, and was certain he could put up with a little malnourishment.

  Unbekno
wnst to Ben, he would be talking sooner than he ever could have expected.

  3

  The questions were posed to Ben every day for the next three days. Each time he said nothing, and as expected, he was punished by having meals revoked. The grumbles and murmurs from his empty belly were nothing compared to how Ben was punishing himself. He had screwed up, and he knew it. Let the whole Squad down. Let Steve down. The speech he imagined MacGaulty giving the two surviving recruits went round and round his head.

  “You four were the best bunch I ever bloody trained,” he pictured the large man saying. “Fastest learners, quick on the draw with a blade, ain't never seen a group more capable... and yet they got the drop on Chris soon as he – sorry, she – walked through the damn door.” Steve had never used the wrong pronoun in real life, but Ben assumed he would, given the situation. 'And Graham, Jesus, that boy had talent. But his bleeding heart got the best of him. Those Blooders killed Chris as a supremely obvious distraction, and he fell for it, went to save the damn tacks, rather than find and kill the bastards responsible. Now, sure, I appreciate having another four recruits,” He could hear Steve's familiar chuckle on those words. “But it don't make up for losing two ready-trained operatives... and to get captured, Jesus, this is a war where it's kill or be killed, how the hell do you become a prisoner of war in a war where there are no prisoners?!”

  Ben's playback of the speech froze. There are no prisoners in the war with the blood-driven. All the missions they had been on were designated kill, not capture. The blood-driven shouldn't have the capacity to decide to capture, rather than kill... so why was he still alive?

  The thought was interrupted by the faint sound of raised voices outside the cell. A man and a woman, arguing back and forth. The flustered conversation appeared to cease. The lock clunked, and the door creaked open, flooding the room with light once again. This time, it was not just the silhouette of the man standing in the way of the blinding white, but other figures too. The woman he had been arguing with was stood a few paces behind him. Further back were more silhouettes, faces obscured by light and shadows.

  “Get up,” ordered the man at the door.

  Ben surveyed the people behind him that were starting to come into focus behind his interrogator. They seemed nervous or anxious at the proposition of letting him out of his cage, and yet they were going along with it. He wondered if this was it, his execution. Whatever they were going to do to him, he wouldn't go down without a fight.

  He rose to his feet, bending his back to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, and walked towards the light. As he ducked under the door frame, his eyes adjusted to his surroundings. There was no blinding light. It had been an optical illusion. From his windowless padded room, whenever the door had been opened it had looked as though it was in direct sunlight, but that was not even remotely the case. The place outside his cell was dark and dank, a thick, fusty scent on the air. The illumination came from work lamps on stands and scant daylight through filthy windows. It was another warehouse, or maybe a former factory. The floor was bare concrete, coated in dust and detritus. Piles of dessicated autumnal leaves and pages of old newspapers were up against the walls, swept away from the centre of the large open space. A camp had been set up, a fire pit in the middle of a circle of battered and torn tents that had seen better days. Next to the pit were a series of cooking utensils. This was where his meals had been prepared, just a few meters away from where he had been held.

  Glancing back at his cell, Ben observed that it was made of metal. The open door had what looked like a layer of concrete at its centre, underneath the layer of padding that had been glued on the inside. It was once some kind of oven or kiln, that's where the smell of burning had come from, years or perhaps decades of fire and smoke absorbed into the walls.

  The man took a step back and to the side, revealing a small boy. The child stared unblinkingly with huge, innocent blue eyes, and smiled.

  Ben recognised that face from the warehouse, from the raid. The boy he saw running, the boy that reminded him of himself, the memory that wouldn't let him shed blood and let a 'goblin out. That boy, and that reluctance to kill, was why he had been captured. But faced with that knowledge, Ben wasn't sure if he would do anything different now. He couldn't harm a child, even if it was harbouring the desire to infect the entire world with the plague that inflicted them all.

  “Thank you,” said the boy. “For not cutting yourself.”

  Ben stared at him. He couldn't imagine himself being so calm about such a thing at that age.

  “You're not like the others,” the boy continued. “There's good in you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife, digging a thoroughly bitten nail into one of the grooves and twisting a three inch knife out of the bright red body.

  He pointed the blade towards Ben, and began to walk towards him. Ben pictured the knife held by James Carter, the glinting chrome that penetrated his gut, slid straight through his digestive organs and pierced a lung.

  The boy's steps circled around Ben, the knife sliding between his hands, cutting through his bonds with a swift movement. Ben could feel the blood rushing through his digits. He clamped his hands down on the knife and wrenched it out of the boy's grip.

  Stepping away from the child, he pointed the blade at each of the blood-driven in the room, as if to demonstrate that he knew exactly where each of them was, then held the gleaming silver point to his wrist. There was movement and murmurs from the shadows, as his captors made to reach for their own blades.

  “Stop it!” Ben yelled. “Stop moving, or I'll cut! I'll cut and my blood'll drink your boy down!” He didn't know if he could do it, was almost certain he couldn't, but he wasn't going to let them know that.

  “Go on then...” said the boy.

  Ben turned to him. There was a calm in his eyes. Not even the slightest notion of fear on the child's face.

  “I'll do it!” Ben said, digging the point of the knife into his skin, not hard enough to cut, but enough to make the skin around the tip of the blade turn white with the pressure.

  “Do it,” the boy said, a smile coming to his lips.

  Ben couldn't take his eyes from the kid, and he couldn't make himself cut.

  “I told you,” the boy said, his smile widening. “There's good in you.” He reached his tiny hands towards Ben. The left grabbing his wrist, the right gripping the knife. He forced the blade down to break through the skin.

  Blood spurted out and began to flow down Ben's arm, but it never reached the ground. It coalesced, pulled itself together, forming a large, angry haemogoblin that grew from the wound. The crimson fiend grew large, brown teeth and gnashed at the air around the boy. Ben was paralysed. All he could think was don't kill the boy, please don't kill the boy.

  The viscous creature opened its jaws wide and loomed over the tiny child. The teeth came down, hard and fast, and clamped shut with a syrupy slap a hair's breadth from the youth's nose. The boy was unphased. Didn't move an inch. His eyes fixed on Ben.

  Sensing there was no meal in the vicinity, the gelatinous beast started receding back into Ben's veins, the wound sealing behind it, a thin strip of bright red blood left on his skin.

  Ben was speechless. He tried to find the voice in his throat, and coughed out a few words. “Did you do that?”

  “You did that,” said the boy, the smile on his lips pervading, even though he had just been only millimetres from death.

  The knife fell from Ben's grasp and clattered to the floor. The threat over, the shadows around the warehouse started encroaching towards him, and as they drew closer, Ben saw each and every one of his captor's faces. He took them all in, comparing them to the child's features. Not only could he not kill the child. He wasn't sure if he could make him an orphan either.

  4

  The fire belched smoke, sparks flying indiscriminately at Ben and his captors as they sat around the flaming pit. There had been an agreement, a vote, that his hands weren't to
be bound again, but he could tell that the decision wasn't anything close to unanimous. Above the fire, a large pot was bubbling away, a stew that had been cooking for close to an hour. Nobody had spoken a word to Ben since his blood had burst forth and almost killed the boy. They eyed him suspiciously in silence, occasionally muttering to one another in hushed tones. Conspiring.

  Ben couldn't get a handle on their motivations for freeing him. He had his suspicions, but they were exactly that; supposition rather than fact.

  A tall, muscular man with a long ponytail of filthy blonde hair moved from his seat, and reached for a ladle, sinking it deep into the pot and stirring. He pulled it out and supped, exhaling sharply as it burned his tongue, then swashed the flavours around his mouth. “Stew's ready,” he said, indicating to the others to pass him containers so he could start serving up.

  Soon, they each had a polystyrene take-out clamshell full of stew, and were eating it with plastic utensils. Ben couldn't help but smile as he held a fork again. He scratched at the beard that had been growing whilst he was in the cell, dusty relics of meals past drifted down towards the hard concrete floor. He put his container down, and looked around. “Is there somewhere I can wash up?” he asked. “I'd like to get rid of the weeks worth of food on my face...”

  The others shot glances back and forth at one another. “I'll go with him,” said an older man.

  “You watch your back,” said the blonde. “Don't take your eyes off him for a second.”

  Ben decided not to point out that 'watching his back' would require the man taking his eyes off him, as he was escorted to a barrel of water sitting behind the circle of tents. It smelt a little stale, and seemed to have been collecting rainwater from a leak coming down the wall. Ben didn't care, water was water, and he was feeling disgusting for having not showered in all that time, let alone having a face caked with dried food. The older man handed him a bar of soap and Ben dipped it in the water, lathering the bar in his hands and cleaning his face.