Vampire Uprising

Chapter Nineteen

Carle Foundation Hospital Urbana, Illinois The past

Paige awoke several times after the attack, but this was the first instance when she had the strength or desire to keep her eyes open. The room was well lit, warm and quiet, enveloped by multiple sets of footsteps, hushed voices and a few blaring televisions in other rooms. In every aspect other than the square arrangement of its four walls and ceiling, it was the antithesis of the residence hall where Wes had thrown his party.

His name fluttered through her brain like a horsefly with hairs bristling on its body and wings cut from dirty plastic wrap. She closed her eyes, shifted in the bed, and took enough comfort from its clean sheets and sterilized pillow to give the whole waking up thing another chance.

She finally did open her eyes, and immediately wanted to close them. Then, as that desire soured into weakness, she choked it down and raised her lids, no matter how much it hurt or what was beyond them.

Someone was visiting whoever occupied the other bed in the room. The figure stood there, fussing with the sheets, straightening them until they were perfect. The back of his head was covered in coarse, salt-and-pepper hair. There were deep wrinkles along his neck, which could have been scars. When he reached for the other patient’s head, he did so with such recklessness that Paige sat up to see what he intended to do with the pillow he’d just grabbed. “Hey!” she said.

The man turned around, gripping the pillow in both hands. It might have been a more threatening image if there had been a face at the head of the bed or a person beneath the sheets. Now that she was sitting up, she could tell that the other patient she thought she’d seen was just a trick of shadows being cast by the light pouring through the window and the haziness within her own mind. A few more blinks cleared her vision enough for her to see that what she’d mistaken for feet was actually a bundle left at the foot of the bed.

“There a problem, miss?” the man asked. He wore simple blue pants that were too smooth to be jeans, too loose to be tailored, and too cheap to be anything but mandatory hospital issue.

“Do you work here?”

“Yes I do. Can I get you anything?”

“No, I don’t want anything. Were the police here?”

“Were you expecting them?”

She turned away, suddenly ashamed of the disappointment that made her feel like a kid who’d just discovered the sad truth about who hid the eggs on Easter morning.

The man walked over to her bedside, tossing the pillow so it landed exactly in its place. “You look like you’re doing pretty well.”

“Yeah? Maybe you should look again.” When he took another step toward her, she tensed and added, “Forget it, guy. If you think I’m helpless just because I’m in this bed, then you’ll really be surprised when I jam that IV stand up your ass.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“And if you say you like a little fight in your women, I’ll jam another IV stand up there to keep the first one company.”

“I wasn’t about to say it quite that way,” the man told her, “but your point’s been made. My name’s Ned.”

“I know.” Seeing the flicker of surprise on his face, Paige eased back against her pillows and told him, “It’s written on your shirt.”

“Oh, that’s right. It sure is, isn’t it? Normally someone in your condition isn’t so quick on their feet. Actually, many of them don’t get back onto their feet at all.”

“My condition,” Paige huffed. “I’m a little bruised, but I’ll be out of here soon.”

Ned walked over to the door, took a quick look to the hall outside and eased the door shut. “That,” he said while walking over to the bundle he’d left at the foot of the other bed, “isn’t exactly what I meant.”

“So what did you mean?” she asked as her hand drifted toward the call button hanging from her bed frame.

Although Ned looked at her long enough to see what Paige was doing, he didn’t make a move to stop her. Instead, he carefully unrolled the bundle, to lay it on the unoccupied bed, and began sifting through its contents. “You weren’t attacked by just some bunch of drunken idiots. That fella, Wes, had some very unusual friends that put you and your friends through hell on earth.”

“Don’t try to tell me what happened.”

“I know what happened to your friend with the glasses. I also know what happened to the pretty, quiet little one, and the girl who turned up missing.”

“You mean Amy?”

Ned nodded and turned around to face her. In his hand was a syringe the size of a little pencil. It wasn’t the cloudy liquid in the narrow plastic tube or the needle at the end of it that frightened her as much as the calm certainty in Ned’s eyes regarding what was going to happen next.

“The police say Amy’s missing,” he said. “Everyone around this hospital caring for the patients from that party along with other kids from the university all say the same thing, but you know better. Amy’s not missing, is she?”

Paige’s eyes narrowed as she sat up in her bed. The muscles in her legs tensed in preparation of unleashing a flurry of kicks. Her fingers clenched around the sheets and the edge of the mattress as if she could somehow pull those things up and use them as weapons. “What’s in that needle?”

“It’s an antidote for what may be running through your system.”

“The doctors already put enough into me. Get that crap away before I call someone.”

Ned stopped, lowered the needle and looked at her with a contemplative expression. “Those Nymar left you alone for a reason. I think I see what that could be.”

“Namor?”

“No. Nymar. It’s what the vampires call themselves.”

And there it was.

Paige had heard people talk about life-changing moments. Most of those were soldiers or survivors of catastrophes, or maybe even people who were critically ill. She might have had a moment like that during the attack, but her brain had done a pretty good job of wiping those memories away like hot breath from a cold window. Not only did Ned’s words bring the memories back, but they convinced her that she hadn’t simply exaggerated things to cover a more earthly violation. If she’d been beaten or raped, it was something she could comprehend. There were support groups she could visit, doctors to comfort her, others who might understand her pain. There were no support groups for victims of vampire attacks.

Or maybe there were. Somehow, she figured Ned might know about such things.

“You saw the vampires,” he declared. “You saw what they did to your friends. They killed one and most likely fed on the others. More than one of them must have fed on you. That’s why those wounds haven’t closed yet. If just one bit you, there wouldn’t be much of a trace left. When their saliva mingles, that gets messed up.”

There were bandages wrapped around Paige’s left forearm, a few taped to her shoulder, and a thick chunk of gauze attached to her neck. When she moved, she could feel the twitch of pain beneath the antiseptic wrappings. “I don’t know for sure what they did. They knocked me out when I tried to fight back.”

“See, that’s the difference. You fought back. More than that, I’m guessing you fought back real well. Did you wound one of them?”

“I don’t think so. Grabbed a corkscrew and tried stabbing him, but it didn’t do much of anything.”

“Where did you stab him?”

Tapping into her reserve strength, she lifted her chin and arched her back so she was almost standing up in the bed. “Right on those fucking moving tattoos. I mean,” she added as her posture slipped, “the thick black tattoo on one of them.”

Ned smiled warmly. “No, you’re right,” he told her while calmly patting her shoulder. “Those black markings moved. They’re not tattoos.”

“Is that why they came for me? Because I can see that kind of thing?”

“I can’t say for certain, but I doubt they came for you. That one fella, Wes, lives on campus and has been feeding on students because they’re easy pickin’s. The others are friends of his, and I’m pretty sure one of them is the leader of the group.”

“Was it a woman named Hope?”

For the first time since he’d made his presence known, Ned seemed shaken. “Is that really her name?”

“That’s what I heard the others call her.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes!” Paige snapped. “How the hell could I not be sure about what a bunch of freaking vampires called each other while they were tearing me and my friends apart?”

Ned sat down on the edge of her bed. “Most people in your situation would have been too frightened to remember such a thing or too affected by the Nymar to remember. Either that or they’d just keep their mouths shut, pretending to forget what happened or force their brains to push it out. This is what I’m talking about. You’ve got a strength that separates you from the rest.”

“My name’s Paige.”

“I know.”

“Then call me that. Don’t just talk about me. Talk to me.”

A trace of amusement crossed Ned’s face. “All right, Paige. Since you seem capable of handling the truth, that’s what I’ll give to you. The serum in this syringe is poison to Nymar. If they left anything in you, this will kill it. If they infected you in any way, this should get rid of that as well.”

“Infected me with what? Will I become a vampire?”

“I could examine you, but I’d want to give you the injection no matter what. Considering all the examinations you’ve endured, I figured I’d just skip the middleman. Hold out your arm.”

Paige got as far as tensing a few muscles, but stopped well before her arm rose above the sheets. “How do I know you’re doing what you say you are?”

“I’d inject myself with the syringe, but that would waste some serum and wouldn’t be very sanitary.”

“I got chewed on by Namor and you think I’m worried about getting an infection?”

“You should always be worried about infection,” Ned replied with a face that was as straight as the plastic tube in his hand. “And it’s ‘Nymar.’ ‘Namor’ is the Sub Mariner from those comic books.” Before she could say anything to that, Ned added, “Lots of people make that mistake. Are you ready for this or not?”

She pulled in a deep breath, held onto it and let it out. “Guess I don’t have anything else to lose.” When Ned extended his hand, he almost got close enough to push the needle into her arm before she said, “What about the others? My friends? You said you knew what happened to them.”

“I know Amy Crabtree is dead. We saw the Nymar drag away the body. Jennifer Walsh was discharged after being treated for blood loss. She recovered quicker than expected, which is normal for someone who’s fed upon normally. The one with the glasses must’ve slipped away.” He then held up the needle and raised his eyebrows as though asking her to proceed without forming the words.

Fixing a stern glare on him as if certain that would be enough to hold him back, Paige asked, “Who are you?”

“Ned Post. I’ve been working at this hospital since about a month or two after Wes and those other Nymar set up shop at the university.”

“Unless the Carle Foundation has some sort of vampire ward, there’s more to it than that.”

Someone walked by the door to Paige’s room. The footsteps stopped, but moved along once Ned nodded toward the door’s little square window. Keeping the same casual, vaguely bored expression on his face, he said, “I’m a Skinner.”

“A Skinner? Is that another comic book thing?”

“No. It’s just what we’re called. The condensed version is that we know about creatures like Nymar and hunt them down.”

“So if you know about Wes, then why aren’t you hunting him down?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Ned hissed. “We need to stay as discreet as possible. There’s no telling what could happen if something is handled sloppily. All of us could be compromised. There could be other Nymar that we don’t know about. If they’re confronted and we don’t have all our bases covered, things can get very bloody very quickly.”

“You mean like what happened to Amy? Like what happened to me?” When she held up her arm to illustrate her point, Ned grabbed her wrist. She tried to pull it away but was held fast within the grip of his rough, thickly scarred hand. Even so, she continued to make it difficult for him to accomplish his task. “You’ve known about these assholes for a month and that’s not enough time to get them?”

“Like I said before, there’s a lot to it.”

“Maybe you Skinners aren’t good for anything but standing around and watching people get hurt.”

Ned jabbed the needle into her arm and injected the serum into her. Then he turned and walked over to the bundle he’d left on the other bed. “You want to do something to the things that did this?” he asked. “You can help us get closer to Wes. Find out how many of them are in town and where they are.”

“You don’t even know that much? Fuck you. I’m calling the cops.”

“They’ve already been here and filled out a missing persons report on a dead girl.” He took the chart from the foot of her bed, quickly looked it over and put it back. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

Those words slapped Paige in the face hard enough to keep her quiet.

After putting the syringe away and rolling the bundle up again, Ned tucked it under his arm and approached the door. He stood with his hand on the knob and his foot against the bottom edge in a way that would allow him to keep it from being opened if anyone else tried to join them. “We’ve killed three of those Nymar since we arrived,” he said. “And still, whenever they show themselves again, there’s three in the group other than Wes. Until now we’ve had the leader pegged as a man who looks to be in his thirties with slicked-back hair. He leads the charge on nights like the one you experienced, but that woman always follows. We never thought she was the leader.”

“Why? Because she’s a she?” Paige rubbed her arm, which now warmed as the serum passed through her system. “If you guys aren’t wise to that trick by now, your Skinners might as well pack it up and go home. This stuff kinda burns. Are there any side effects or anything? What if I’m allergic?”

“The only side effect to one dose is the burning. At least, as far as we know. If the Nymar had gotten too deep into you, you would’ve known by now.”

“How?” Paige asked.

“You’d be dead.” Smirking at the way he’d knocked the attitude from her, he added, “You’re fine. Get up, stretch your legs with a walk over to that bed and pick up my card. Don’t bother with the address. If you want to call me, use the phone number, but dial the last four digits in reverse order.”

Paige wasn’t about to take her eyes off of him. She continued nursing her arm, trying not to let the discomfort from her wounds show on her face. After giving her another approving nod, Ned opened the door and left.

Once she’d lost sight of him through the door’s window, she pulled her burning arm in close to her body. Her neck hurt. Her side hurt. Her back hurt where she’d been knocked against the wall. Her head hurt for the same reason. Thoughts of scooting under the covers and curling into a ball drifted through her mind, accompanied by memories of random faces, songs, or anything else that had comforted her over the years.

Suddenly, everything hit her stomach like a load of rancid meat. She hated being pushed into a spot where there was nothing left to do but cry. “Fuck that,” she angrily grunted as she pulled herself up and struggled to free her legs from the snare of intricately tucked sheets and blankets. “Fuck that and fuck them.”

Her legs ached but she moved them anyway.

Everything else ached, but she clenched her teeth against it and turned the pain into kindling that made the flame in the center of her body burn even hotter. The first step she took was crooked and would have become a stumble if she hadn’t clenched her hand into a fist and pounded it against her upper thigh. She reached for the bandages at her neck with every intention of ripping them off, but paused before digging her nails into her skin. Instead, she left the gauze alone so she could snatch the business card from where it was lying at the foot of the other bed.

“You’re up?” someone said at the same time as the door was hastily opened. “That’s so great!”

The young woman who rushed through the door wasn’t wearing her Damn Yankees shirt anymore, but still had the same bouncy curl in her straw-colored hair. Oversized glasses would have dominated a cute face if not for the wide, beaming smile beneath them. She clutched her purse tightly until she got close enough to toss it onto a chair and tackle Paige with a hug.

“Still a little sore, Karen,” Paige grunted.

“Oh, sorry!” Backing away, she shrugged and placed a hand over her mouth as she lowered her voice and said “Sorry” again.

“It’s okay. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I feel terrible about what happened. When I heard, I rushed down here as fast as I could. Did Amy really take off somewhere?”

Paige looked at Karen and saw more than a friend dressed in new jeans and a faded peasant blouse. She saw a girl who still lived in the world that might as well have stopped existing for her a few nights ago. It was a warm, friendly place where the worst things that could come after you were other human beings. Even those tended to keep their distance more often than not. There was an openness to Karen’s face that looked like a childhood home as seen in the rearview mirror of a car speeding in the opposite direction.

“You just now heard about this?” Paige asked.

Karen folded her hands and nodded timidly. “I … I never liked those kinds of parties, but I wanted to be with you guys. I stayed for a while, but it just got to be too much so I left early.” Lowering her head only lined up her eyes with more of Paige’s bandages, so she turned to the side as she said, “I snuck out and had someone drive me back home. When I heard about what happened, I felt horrible. I should have been there with you.”

Before Paige knew what she was doing, she had Karen wrapped up in a hug that strained several of her bandaged wounds. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried, but felt the tears coming now. Clenching her eyes shut against the bitter droplets as she loosened her hold, she said, “Don’t apologize for missing out on what happened. I’m just glad one of us made it out of there as … as the same person that went in.”

“You’ll be the same too, Paige,” Karen replied while gently embracing her friend again. “All you need is time to heal. I’ll help any way I can. You and Tara will be better.”

“I don’t even know where Tara is, sweetie.”

“She’s in a room on the second floor.”

“What?”

Karen nodded. “She’s being examined.”

“Examined?”

“They were looking at some marks on her neck.”

Holding Karen at arm’s length, Paige asked, “What marks? What did they look like?”

“They were just lines. I couldn’t see much, but her skin was pale. The nurses were looking at her then, so the doctors are probably with her by now.”

“What room is she in?” Before Karen could answer, Paige spun her around and pushed her toward the door. “Never mind that. Just take me to her.”

“Hey! Watch what you’re—”

“You need to take me to her!” After nearly charging through the door before allowing it to open, Paige asked, “Did you see some other guy with her? An older man with rough skin and—”

She stopped as soon as she saw Ned at a nurse’s station farther down the hall. Karen was headed in that same direction, walking toward a bank of elevators a few paces away from Ned’s spot. Grabbing her once again, Paige redirected her almost hard enough to send her staggering into a wall. “Not that way.”

“Should you even be out of bed?”

“I’m fine. There’s the stairs. You said Tara was on the second floor?”

“Right, but take it easy!”

Paige didn’t let her go until they’d gotten past the heavy metal door leading to the stairwell. They had a few flights of stairs to negotiate, and Paige descended them as quickly as she could. The first time she stumbled, she felt Karen’s hands on her back and shoulder for support.

“What’s the hurry? Tara’s not going anywhere. You probably shouldn’t either.”

“Just take me to her, okay? Please?”

Karen’s sigh echoed within the concrete stairwell, and Paige kept up with her. As they approached the second floor and she heard the slap of her feet hitting the floor along with the sound of Karen’s flats, she realized her feet were bare. Looking down, she prayed she wouldn’t find one of those terrible, backward paper gowns wrapped around her body. Instead, she saw lilac pajama pants bearing the hospital logo and a plain gray T-shirt. Someone put her in those clothes soon after she’d gotten to the hospital, and she didn’t even remember it.

The door at the next landing was a heavy one that opened to a hall similar to the one they’d left behind. Rows of larger windows to her right looked in on examination rooms filled with families going through either the best or worst days of their lives.

“She was over this way,” Karen said as she marched down the hall. Most of the people they encountered had enough on their minds to overlook the two young women. “But we might not be able to see her. The man outside her room said she wouldn’t be able to have visitors.”

“What man?” Paige asked. “Was it an older guy named Ned?”

“I don’t know,” Karen replied.

“His name was on his shirt. He works here. Did he try to inject you with something?”

Karen didn’t know what to say to that, so she slipped into a soothing tone as she assured Paige everything was all right. That tone couldn’t have had a less soothing effect as Paige stomped along beside her. The hall bent around a corner, widening into a row of doors being visited by several nurses, orderlies, and people in street clothes trying to find their relatives as quickly as they could. Karen stopped to check a few of the rooms and eventually found the one she was after. Before she could step inside, however, the door opened and Paige was confronted by Tara, although her friend’s face was only vaguely familiar.

Tara’s skin was pasty and had a wet sheen that glistened beneath the stark hospital lights. Thin black markings stretched up from beneath the collar of a shirt bearing the hospital logo and stopped a few inches under her ear. They weren’t nearly as large as the markings on Wes, Hope, Evan, or Hector, but were just as dark and trembled excitedly beneath her flesh.

“Tara?” Paige said. “Are you okay?”

“There were doctors,” Tara replied drearily. “They wanted to tell me something.”

When her friend’s voice faded into a strained version of the one she knew, Paige got frustrated and anxious. “What’s wrong with you? What are those markings? Talk to me!”

Karen peered over Paige’s shoulder and tried to say something but was overcome by sobs that made it difficult for her to breathe.

“Not now, damn it!” Paige said as she wheeled around to deal with her. “We need to think before—”

But Karen wasn’t looking at either of her friends. She stared past them both, through the doorway and into Tara’s room. There were four bodies in there, stacked like bundles of soiled laundry between the two beds. Paige only saw the heads and feet at first, so she stepped farther into the room, to stand next to Karen, who had wandered in to look down at the gruesome find with both hands clasped over her mouth. Two of the bodies were dressed in white coats and the others wore baggy scrubs. All of them were covered in blood, un-moving and staring at different angles through eyes glazed over and frozen in an expression of terror.

Tara wandered past the other two girls and knelt beside the bodies. Reaching out to swipe her fingers against the coat of a woman who had a thin face and stringy blond hair, she scraped off some of the blood that had dried there and brought it to her lips. “Paige,” she said as she opened her mouth to reveal a set of fangs sprouting from her upper jaw. “I think I’m in trouble.”