In The Blood (Book 3): The Blood Flows Read online

  YouTube had a digitized VHS tape, a date stamp on the grainy footage dating it as 1987. It was only a few seconds long, a bright red slick of a tail going down a sewer grate.

  “Where's that from?” Ben asked.

  Kat scrolled to the description. “Brighton. Did your dad work in Brighton ever?”

  “No idea... he was away for most of my childhood, maybe he was working in a lab there, there's no way to know.” Ben sighed, the sudden burst of enthusiasm waning. “And even if he did, there'd be no point going there, that was thirty years back, the Squad probably know about it, if it's still around they've probably been all over it.”

  Kat wasn't going to let his slump affect her investigation, and she started searching for haematology labs in Brighton, then going through image search of photos of staff at the labs.

  “Is this him?” she asked, turning the phone to Ben.

  Staring back from the screen, was Ben's father, just as he remembered him. Thirty years younger than he would be now, standing next to another man. The caption beneath it read 'Doctor Michael Graham and Doctor Rene Lafayette', and was dated 1981. Ben couldn't take his eyes off it. He would have been twelve months old then. Even at that age, his father was away it seemed, apparently working down in Brighton, whilst he and his mother were living in London. Once an absent father, always an absent father...

  He thoughts back to what Steve said, that he was patient zero. The questions came hard and fast; did his father infect him? Did he infect him intentionally? Was he sick as child, like Kat? He had no memory of being sick, but if he were born sick then he'd have no memory. He had been inoculated, was almost certain of it, could remember receiving vaccinations, so he couldn't have been born infected, the doctor and his parents would have ended up being torn apart like Luke's doctor and aunt. 1987 was the first sighting they could find of a free blood. His mother died in 1986. A year after a 'goblin took her life, one was seen outside a body. That either meant that he had spent his childhood infecting people... or, it meant that his father was spending all his time away from the family experimenting on blood, on people, and if he wasn't the only test subject, that meant he wasn't necessarily patient zero.

  Kat could see by Ben's furrowed brow that he was awash with questions he was asking himself. “What If he found a cure,” she said. “For thalassaemia, or for something else, something that you and however many other people had.” None of this was fact, she was speculating, thinking out loud. But the more she talked it out, the more it made sense. “But he had to test the cure, go through clinical trials. In Britain at first, then it spread, whether that be by people travelling or infection or mother to child or sexual transmission or whatever... Thirty-some years of infection. That's thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people out there, infected with probably no knowledge of the creatures they're living with symbiotically.”

  “What are you saying?” Ben asked, she had lost him.

  “I think there are probably more of us, of the infected, than there are people hunting us down... If we can find a way to rally the troops, we might have a fighting chance.”

  10

  The next morning, Ben woke to short, sharp prods in his back. He looked around, his head spinning with the remnants of alcohol still flowing through his veins. He was lying on the bed, fully clothed, spooning Kat. Turning, he saw Luke's beaming face, and sat up with a start, embarrassment creeping under his skin.

  “Morning!” the child said, cheerfully.

  “Yeah,” Ben said, flustered, sitting up.

  Kat looked back over her shoulder and smiled at the boys, glad that the night had been a success, even if it had involved more drinking than she would have preferred.

  “Coffee?” Ben asked her. She nodded, and he went over to a plastic tray that was glued to the dresser, removing a tiny white plastic kettle and filling it in the bathroom. There were only two cups, but that was for the best, he didn't deem it a good idea to pump caffeine into a five year old. The coffee on offer was two sachets of instant, one regular and one decaf. He huffed, and tore them open, mixing half of each into the cups. It wasn't even close to as much coffee as either of them required, and instant wasn't really coffee as far as he was concerned, but it would have to do for the moment.

  As they sat on the bed drinking the coffaux, Ben tried to explain their hypothesis to Luke, who was already many steps ahead of them.

  “I can feel them,” the child said, with a big smile on his face. “All of them, the ones like us.”

  “What do you mean?” Ben asked.

  “I can tell, when someone else has blood like ours, like a tingle in my head. They don't always know, but I do, y'know?”

  Ben didn't know, but suddenly their late night drunken scheming seemed a whole lot more possible that it did when they were talking it out at the bar.

  “How do you tell someone,” Kat said. “That the blood flowing through their veins is alive... and that it has a proclivity for eating other people...”

  “You don't,” Ben said, remembering all too clearly what Steve had told him about the blood-driven. “If it's possible for people to be led by the blood... and I've felt it under my skin, felt it take control of my body...”

  He paused. It wasn't just what Steve had told him, and it wasn't just that feeling under his skin, taking control of his legs and making him walk down the stairs when MacGaulty walked into the house and killed Kat's group. It was the dream he had on the boat. The roaring crimson tidal wave, it had felt as if it wasn't just a mindless tsunami, but an army. It was an analogy, he decided, for all the infected blood out there. Not just all the blood, but all the infectees, each of them a part of the same organism, just as the free blood felt and acted towards them as if they were kin. Thousands of them. An army of that scope, with control over their blood, they would be unbeatable.

  “If It's possible,” Ben continued. “Possible for them to become blood-driven, or have the blood control them, on a wider scale... People fighting on our side with the blood in the driving seat, then you don't have to explain anything.”

  “What, just kidnap people from their lives, bring them here, and just treat them like cannon fodder?”

  “No, we'd use them as... backup, or as a distraction. Nobody would have to get hurt...”

  “But you can't promise that, can't promise anything, can't even say for sure that it even works like that... These are innocent people we're talking about!”

  “The Squad wouldn't necessarily know they're infected, and whatever we do, if we do it in public, they won't execute civilians in broad daylight... they're not going to start a massacre... probably.”

  “Probably...” Kat scoffed. “This is all conjecture, we still don't know where your father is, it doesn't matter if we can call in the cavalry of thousands of blood-driven, if that's even possible.”

  “So we find him,” Ben said, feeling revitalised about the hunt for his patriarch. “The researcher he used to work with, Lafayette, the website said he was still in Brighton.”

  “That's insane.” Kat said. “You want to go back to England? We're safe here.”

  “We don't know that, we don't know how recently the Squad was here, they could be tracking us down right now...” he sighed, his eyes dropped to the floor as he took a moment, a breath then looked back up to them. “And if they do know we're here, going back to England is the last thing they would ever expect.”

  11

  Ben went with the captain to get more fuel, apologizing as best he could for putting him out. The captain did not take the apology as intended, and was certainly not forgiving about being taken captive.

  The blood that had been guarding him had grown weaker, even with Ben's infusion, but had been putting on a good show of being fierce and strong whenever the captain laid eyes on it. Unbeknownst to him, the old man could have very easily escaped, outrun it, called the authorities, were he to have taken that chance.

  As they prepared to set off back onto the water, Ben picked the fr
ee blood up, throwing it over his shoulder as he climbed the ladder. Its skin felt thin, like an overloaded water balloon that might burst at any moment. He took it to the sewer grate, where the other bloods that came with them were waiting for their brother, taking his mass into their own to help him recover.

  As they took the yacht back out on the river, the skies were darker than when they arrived, a storm was coming, but they could not wait or waste time. Answers lay across the sea, and they would not let anything get in the way of reaching them. The North Sea was choppier on the return journey, the boat fighting heavy winds, its fibreglass pelted with rain that rat-a-tated above the living room and kitchen. Much to the captain's behest, they fought through the storm. He would not be allowed to sleep until they reached their destination.

  12

  A day and half later, they were coming round the Channel, the twinkling lights on the coast glimmering and shimmering, welcoming them back. They moored the boat a little ways off a main thoroughfare, and Ben looked out on the city.

  Their plan was flawed, and he knew it. There was no way to know for sure that they could encourage or force other infected to become blood-driven. The entire concept was based on a lie told by MacGaulty, an experience he had felt whilst frozen in a state of panic whilst those around him were slaughtered, and of all things; a dream. The thoughts slid from his mind as he saw movement coming towards them, a slick of deep, dark red that reflected street lights as it drew closer. A myriad free blood reinforcements.

  Kat showed him the screen of the captain's phone, a story from a website entitled Weird World News, that spoke of several sightings of blood red blobs swimming along the canals heading south from London. He couldn't help but laugh. This was probably the first true story the website had ever published.

  As the blood came to them, Ben asked one of them to stay with the Captain, apologizing to him once again for continuing to keep him captive. The rest of the bloods slid along the ground as the three of them went through the streets, looking for a suitable vehicle to borrow.

  Coming across a camper van, Luke taught Ben how to pick a lock by fashioning a key, and opened up the back for the bloods to load in. They took seats in the front and Ben fired up the engine, driving through the streets, following the signs to the university. Hoping, and praying that answers would be waiting for them there. But the answers they would discover would be far from what they expected.

  13

  The staff at the university were rueful to tell them that Lafayette had moved on, sneering as they spoke of his new position, selling out to a private lab deeper in Sussex.

  “Road Trip!” Luke screamed with glee, unaware of how close the lab would turn out to be.

  As they drove, Ben took a moment to relish the peace, his head cleared by the white noise of the van's engine, allowing him to enjoy the beauty of nature once more. Sun kissed skies awash with orange and pink hues, darker clouds hiding behind them out of the sun's rays, harbouring shadows, harbingers of heavy rainfall to come.

  Ben took his eyes off the road, Luke was passed out, a blood had come up over the back of the passenger seat and was acting like a pillow for his little head. He wished he could do more to repay these creatures, that had saved them, that continued to help them. But he could not imagine how to do such a thing, other than to keep them fed.

  He parked up the camper just as the lab was in sight. It was not at all what he expected. A fence lay around a wide perimeter. There were armed guards, that looked a little too much like Blood Squad Tacks, who patrolled the grounds, and walked along the length of the fence. Ben and Kat watched their routines, their routes. There only appeared to be fifteen guards, they could probably take them with the bloods in the back of the van, or try to call more down from London if they wanted to totally overpower them. But there was no way to tell how many more guards there were inside the facility, or whether this place had a direct connection to the Squad, and their manpower.

  Ben knew that Kat wouldn't let Luke step into the firing line, nor would he want the child put in harm's way, even if he was the most adept at using and shaping the blood. He wouldn't risk the boy's life like that, and didn't want to put the child in a position where he might have to take a life. Ben hadn't witnessed the child take anyone's life thus far, only injure those attacking him or those he loved. He couldn't bare the thought of the boy being made to kill.

  Ben didn't have to worry about putting any lives at risk, for as he started formulating a plan of attack, the phone in Kat's hands rang. It registered the call as being from an unknown caller. They glanced at one another anxiously. It could be anyone, their captive's friends or family, or maybe the Squad got to him, and were using the call to trace his phone, track them down.

  It continued to ring, and a silent agreement was made between the three of them. Kat answered the call and put it on speaker phone.

  “Mister Graham?” asked the caller. His voice deep, enunciation pointed and sharp, received pronunciation. “My name is Rene Lafayette, and for some reason, damned if I know how, I believe you wish to speak to me.”

  14

  Lafayette couldn't say how he knew they were trying to get in touch with him. He had a compulsion, the number repeated in his head, the name traced through his thoughts. Ben glanced at Luke, who looked particularly guilty. Kat put her arms around her son with a beaming smile on her face, proud of his surreptitious use of the blood to communicate with the doctor.

  “I believe you knew my father,” Ben said.

  “Oh I know him, and know of you all too well.” Lafayette said, with what sounded like a tone thick with lament.

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Alas, I do not. Haven't seen him for quite some time.”

  “But you know what happened to me, how I became... infected.” Ben was becoming resentful of the word, it had negative connotations. And whilst the blood was, to some degree a bane on his life, it was also the greatest gift he could ever ask for.

  “I do,” Lafayette said, taking a breath. “I suppose you don't remember, you were so young, barely able to walk when you first cut yourself, when you bled. Your father rushed out of a lecture he was teaching at the time when the call came through from your mother, saying you fell, weren't clotting... Your father vowed to do whatever it would take to remedy your condition. He changed specialities, got funding, God knows how. Brought in people like myself and other to work on his project. Geneticists, nanotechnology researchers, all manners and disciplines coming together.”

  “I want names,” Ben said.

  “Would that I could, my boy. Your father oversaw it all, kept us separate. I was with him when we began the phase zero trial on a single subject... then the phase one, where we had ten participants. It was all going rather splendidly as I remember, but as we were beginning to recruit subjects for the phase two trial, the project was abandoned...”

  “Why?”

  “My doing, I'm afraid... I oversaw a routine visit from the Phase zero subject, the nurses were busy and thus I decided to draw blood myself. The bastard launched itself out of the syringe, skewered me in the damn hand!”

  “It infected you...”

  “Yes,” Lafayette spat. They could almost hear his scowl on the word.

  “Do you know what it is, the blood, what it can do?”

  “I don't know a damn thing, take bloody drugs to degrade my platelets, reduce my red and white count to keep the demons at bay, straight-jacketed.”

  “A cure?” Kat asked.

  “Not a cure, a treatment. A treatment that's degrading my damn organs in the process.” His voice trailed off, a scuffling sound over the phone's microphone. “I have to go,” he said, in a whisper.

  “Are you a prisoner?” Ben asked. “We can break you out if you - -”

  “I'm here voluntarily, I was self-medicating for decades and they came to me, asked me if I wanted to work on a genuine cure with the staff here... we're all infected...”

  “So, it's a
n internment camp, a work camp...”

  “We're the best chance there is for a cure. I don't know where your father is, but this is his bloody mess, and I've dedicated the rest of my life to cleaning it up. If you see him, if you find him, tell him that on top of all the dead, there are eight people who have more conviction than he ever did to fix his damn mistake.

  The phone beeped as the call was cut off. The three of them stared at the handset in silence. Their only connection to the truth, and to finding Ben's father, was thoroughly disconnected.

  15

  “Your dad wasn't great at making friends...” Kat said, through a sigh. “So, we're still at square one.”

  “There were trials though. Maybe you were the result of them, your mother one of the test subjects.”

  “But it doesn't make sense, I can't control the blood like Luke does.”

  “So, maybe it got easier in the second generation... We're here because of you, you said we should track the movements of the blood.”

  “Are you're saying... you want to meet my mother?” she asked, stifling a chortle that came from a place half-way between humour and apprehension.

  “Is that okay?” Ben asked.

  “Nobody has ever asked to meet my mother before, and with good reason...”

  “Grandma is icky!” Luke offered.

  The discussion was cut short, floodlights bursting to life around them, a massive beam shining down on the camper van from a helicopter that hung in the air ahead of them in near silence. Black vans screeched to a halt, surrounding them from every direction.

  “Get out of the van!” shouted a voice on a loud-hailer. The words hissed and squawked through the speaker.

  Ben, Luke and Kat looked at one another. The call had been tracked, they were surrounded, there was no escape. The bloods in the back of the van gargled and growled.