"Course I do. H o w you doing?"
Stupid question, but it was out of my mouth before I
thought about it.
"Same as y o u " Red said, "Cut down to n o t h i n g by
that filthy bastard surgeon, and wishing I was dead."
I looked around the room again, trying to see how
many other beds were filled.
"I can hardly see, Red, are Bill Smith and W h e e l s
here too?
"Nope. Just us. Wheels was for a while but he died in
his sleep. I think they took too much blood out of him.
Lucky bugger. Haven't a clue what happened to Bill
Smith, though. Never saw him again."
"Maybe Bill made a run for it and got out of here. I
tried that myself."
"Me too," Red Beard said. "That's how I ended up in
here. Piss Dr. Marshall off and this is where he sticks
you, I think. Oh, and don't worry about y o u r vision.
Your eyes will get better accustomed to seeing in the
dark once you've been here a while longer. You've only
been here for about three weeks. Give it,some time."
Three weeks?
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "This is my
first day, isn't it?"
Red laughed at that. "No, 'fraid not, my friend. They
brought you in at least two weeks ago, but I think it was
closer to three. They keep the new arrivals pretty
drugged, to keep the pain down and let y o u r wounds
heal without you moving around. You were probably in
a recovery room for a few days too."
Son of a bitch,
I guess that explained the killer headache—they'd
had me out like a light for weeks. It dawned on me then
that I had no idea what the date was, or how long I'd
been here at the castle. I didn't even know what m o n t h
it was.
"What's the date, Red? Any idea?"
"Does it matter?" he asked. "None of that makes a dfference anymore, so forget about it. Around here there
are only two days of the week you need to worry about.
Bad days, when they drain our blood, and good days,
when they leave us the fuck alone. That's it, good or bad.
N o t h i n g else matters."
We lay in silence for a long time, and I felt myself
starting to nod off again. I was sleepy but I had to ask.
"Hey, Red?"
"Yeah?" he answered, sounding tired as well.
"What day is tomorrow? "
I heard him take a deep breath; then in a soft whisper
said, "Bad. Get some sleep."
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T W O
Apparently I slept in. I woke up at the crack of dawn,
the sunlight j u s t starting to chase the darkness away,
but everyone in the room whose mind was still intact
was already wide-awake and starting to get nervous.
The nurses and the orderlies would be coming through
the door soon.
"It can't be that bad, can it?" I turned to ask Red
Beard, but it was old Lucas, on my left, who answered.
"You ever donated blood before?" Lucas asked.
"Sure," I said. "Lots of times. It was never that big of
a deal."
"Yeah, I agree with ya. W h e r e did they take it from?"
"What?"
"The blood. W h e r e did they take it out of y o u ? "
"Oh, my arm."
"Right. W h i c h arm do you want them to take it out
of today? Oh, that's right, you don't have anyfrtggin'
arms, j u s t like the rest of us, ya damn fool. They'll be
takin' it out of your head, for Christ's sake. Ever had a
big needle jabbed into your head, Mike?"
Lucas was obviously hot u n d e r the collar, but I wasn't
sure if he was genuinely mad at me for not killing him
when I'd had the chance, or if he was j u s t on edge,
nervous about what was about to happen. Probably a
bit of both, so I bit my tongue and didn't say anything
back.
"Relax, Lucas," Red Beard j u m p e d to my defense.
"He's new, it's not his fault he doesn't know what's hap¬
pening."
"I know," Lucas sighed. "It was j u s t such a stupid
question, and I feel like crap today. I j u s t want it all to
end, Red. I can't take much more of this, I really can't."
"I know, Lucas," Red commiserated. "We all want it
to end."
I felt a bit like a spectator at a tennis match, turning
to my left, then right, as my roommates talked back
and forth. W h e n they lapsed into silence for a moment,
I j u m p e d into their conversation.
"First of all, Lucas, I'm really sorry I didn't finish the
j o b , back when you wanted my help. You don't need to
forgive m e , but understand something. I wanted to
help, I tried to help, but I fucked up. I got scared and
ran to save my own ass. N o t that it did me much
good."
"Ah shit, Mike," Lucas said. "I don't hold it against
ya. I'd have done the same. It's j u s t this awful place. It
drives ya crazy. They torture us again and again, and
there's nothin' we can do about it. Wears a man down
after a while. Wears him until he snaps. Remember
Charlie, the guy who started screaming and brought
the guards r u n n i n g that night?"
"Yeah, I remember," I said, t h i n k i n g about how I
couldn't get him to quiet down and shut up.
"Well, he finally snapped. His body's still over there,
third bed on the right, but his mind has shut down and
gone bye-bye. God, how I envy him!"
"Don't say that, Lucas. You gotta keep fighting. We're
not dead yet."
He j u s t glared at me with that sad look on his face
again, as if he pitied my optimism, then turned his
head the other way and refused to talk anymore. I tried
a few times, but Red Beard told me to save my breath.
"Forget it, Mike," Red said. "He can get like this
before we get hooked up. He'll be fine in a while. It's
always better once t h i n g s are underway. You'll see."
"So tell me what to expect." I asked. "What are they
gonna do to us?"
"Okay. Here's the deal. Dr. Marshall goes through a
shitload of blood around here, keeping all his experi¬
ments going. He gets some of it shipped in from a few
legal blood banks, but most of the blood comes from
right here in this room.
"Take a look around, Mike. Counting you, we have
fourteen warm bodies strapped in tight and waiting for
the nurses. Fourteen! That's it to fill the demand for all
Dr. Marshall's experiments. You do the math."
"You can't be serious?" I asked. "He'd have to take a
bathtub of blood out of each of us."
Lucas chose this m o m e n t to decide he was in a talk¬
ative mood again. "Exactly! They damn near drain us
dry."
Red Beard quickly added, "Well, not exactly. It j u s t
feels that way. They take way more than they should,
that's for sure. I heard one of the nurses say the average
h u m a n body contains around ten to twelve pints of
blood, depending on their weight. Something like that,
anyway. Lose half your blood and you can kiss your ass
good-bye. Trouble is, with our limbs removed, we must
have less blood than an average human, right? Say seven
or eight pints, tops. They take two and a half pints out
of each of us, sometimes a bit more."
"Leaves you completely drained of energy and feel¬
ing like a sack of shit," Lucas said. "You'll be so tired,
you'll sleep the whole day away. Then they'll let us rest
tomorrow, so we can build up a new supply for them to
do it all over again."
I remembered something from the last time I'd been
in this room. "Why were some of you hooked up dur¬
ing the night, then? I remember seeing more than one
of you with the drain needles still in your head."
"Don't remind me," Lucas said, shuddering at the
thought. "We were working overtime. Getting punished.
It happens every now and then. Dr. Marshall accuses us
of holding out, as if we could, and he'll put us on the
slow drip all night long. The needles hurt like hell, and
it's j u s t his way of abusing us and keeping us scared of
him."
A few minutes later, two nurses and two large, mus¬
cular orderlies stormed into the room. They were all
business and went straight to work. The nurses set the
needles, and the orderlies hooked up the auto-siphon
machines beside the bed and were also available to beat
a little cooperation into any of us that dared to scream,
cry, or turn our heads away from the needle.
N o n e of them looked into any of our eyes or said a
single word of encouragement or commiseration. You'd
think they'd have at least some pity for us, but I never
witnessed even a trace of compassion as they went about
their cold methodical business.
How can these people be so cruel?
I don't know how much Dr. Marshall was paying
them, but it must have been bundles. There's no other
way anyone would be able to stomach doing this j o b
every second day. Unless—were they j u s t as fanatical
about the doctor's work as he was? N a h , had to be the
money.
Surprisingly, the long needle inserted into a vein
r u n n i n g along the left side of my face didn't hurt as
much as Fd been expecting it to. Going in, at least. It
wasn't until the orderly turned on the siphon machine
that things started getting bad.
Really bad.
All the previous times I'd donated blood in the outside
world, I can't say I remember ever feeling the blood com¬
ing out. You j u s t lay down on a bed, or sat on a chair,
waiting for the little bag to fill so you could head for the
dessert tray to claim your snack. Sometimes it might
take half an hour to complete your donation.
That wasn't the case for us Bleeders. They turned up
the juice on the machines, actually sucking the blood
from our veins instead of waiting around for Mother
N a t u r e and gravity to do the j o b . W i t h every pull of
the machine, I felt like I was going to pass out, the
blood surging within me as it was forced out the clear
plastic tube attached to my head.
W i t h i n minutes, it started to hurt. H u r t like a bas¬
tard, in fact, the pain steadily growing with every throb
of the machine. It might have been my nerves, or my
imagination, but it felt like it was pulling blood from
me harder and harder. I had this strange thought that
the next time the machine pulled, it was going to suck
my brain right from my skull out the tube like a big
scrambled lump of pureed jelly. It didn't happen, but
man did I get a splitting headache. Just as bad as the
drug-induced pain I'd experienced after waking from
my last surgery.
Headache or not, they kept sucking my life fluid out
of m e , taking more and more until I was sure they in¬
tended to bleed me to death.
Just like Wheels. Probably how they deal with all the
troublemakers, sucking the life out of us with a big straw.
I started to become delirious, screaming for someone
to help me, to stop them killing me like this. I thrashed
around in bed, fighting against the thick straps that held
me down,panicking,coveredinsweat, and three-quarters
out of my mind from having lost so much blood.
My screams brought the orderlies r u n n i n g and one
of them mercilessly ripped the needle from my head to
end my first session as Dr. Marshall's new blood donor.
W h e n he yanked it out, the needle scratched against
my skull j u s t above my ear. That set fireworks of agony
flashing down the entire left side of my body, tiny pin¬
points of light dancing in my glassy, unfocused eyes.
A nurse stepped forward and bandaged me u p , but by
this point I was so out of it, I barely knew what was go¬
ing on. I couldn't figure out who these people were, or
why they were standing around looking at me. Before I
could attempt to ask, the lights went out again and I
was plunged into a deep, dark, semidead sleep.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E
I was r u n n i n g down the center of the street, rain soak¬
ing me from above, plastering my hair to my head as I
willed my legs to move faster and faster. I was dream¬
ing, of course, and fully aware of where it was my dream
legs were taking me, but I had no way of waking up or
the dead bodies of my wife and son and the badly in¬
j u r e d body of my daughter certainly wasn't a pleasant
experience but at least I would see them again and that
counted for something.
My dream was always a bit fuzzy at the start, but
usually it started with the phone call. I was halfway
through my beer, t h i n k i n g how wonderful it was I was
ahead and sure to win the silly chug game when the
phone rang. I know now that it's for m e , but back then
it was j u s t a distraction that made me slow down enough
that my buddy beat me. We had a dollar on the line—
which seemed pretty important at the time—so I was
asking for a rematch when the bartender, Ronnie, tapped
me on the shoulder with a pallid, blank expression on
his face that made me think he'd seen a ghost.
"It's the police," Ronnie said. "Lookin' for you. You'd
better come take this."
"Hello?" I asked, reminding myself to keep my sen¬
tences short so I wouldn't slur my words.
Sometimes the dream played out in full; me swaying
on my feet as I tried to understand what the police of¬
ficer was telling me. Jackie, Arlene, and Daniel had
been in a car accident, a bad one, and things weren't
looking good. There was an ambulance on the way and
Jackie had told the cops where to find me before pass¬
ing out; the last words she'd ever say, and I wasn't there
to hear them.
Sometimes I got lucky, like tonight, and the dream
skipped ahead a few minutes to my mad dash in the
rain-drenched street
toward the twisted piece of metal
and plastic that had once been our family's silver Honda
Civic. The car was upside down, the entire front end
gone, wrapped around a wooden telephone pole on the
soft shoulder of the road.
As I ran closer, I could see the windows were all
smashed out and it's right here I usually want to wake
up because I know from experience that in a few more
strides I'll be able to see Daniel's body still trapped in
the backseat, his blood-covered little arm waving in the
air for help. I'll run even harder to get to the car, but by
the time I make it there I'm always too late. Daniel is
still alive and looking at m e , but the light is fading in
his beautiful blue eyes and he dies before we can say a
word to each other. I don't even get to touch his offered
hand before he goes, and I'll hate myself forever for not
being able to run faster.
Something was screwy with tonight's dream, though,
something different, because when I ran up to the car
Daniel wasn't in the backseat. He wasn't in the car at
all, and neither was his mother, who by all rights should
be slumped over the wheel, partially impaled on the
broken steering column, as I'd actually found her. Arlene was there in the passenger seat, but she wasn't
covered in blood and screaming the way I remember.
N o , she was j u s t sitting there, quiet as a mouse, staring
at me with black empty eyes filled with hatred and ac¬
cusation.
There was a cop standing near m e , and I turned to
him and asked, "What's going on? Where's Jackie and
Daniel? They're supposed to be here, waiting for me in
the car like all the other times."
The policeman looked at me kind of funny, but
said, "The ambulance arrived about ten minutes ago.
They've taken y o u r wife and son to the closest medi¬
cal facility."
This was news to me. It certainly never happened
like that with the real accident so I wasn't sure how to
react or what to do.
"Are they dead?" I asked. Of course they were, but I
had to say something.
"No, sir. From what I understand, they're both busted
up pretty badly but the paramedic treating them said
they should make it if they get to the hospital in time."
"Which hospital?" I asked, feeling like a jackass for
getting my hopes up. I know I'm dreaming and they
both died years ago but none of that mattered right
now. If they're still alive, even j u s t in this crazy dream,