Martins woke around sixteen hours later with the pencil still in his hand and the journal lying open. He looked to find his last entry complete, but the page heavily blood-stained. He reached down opening another drawer in his desk and removing a small mirror from inside he looked to find his face covered in dried blood.
He gently rubbed the blood from his forehead in order to see his injury, but there wasn’t one. All that remained was a slight almost invisible scar, and touching the back of his head he found no tenderness or lump, it was as though nothing had happened to it.
He moved over to the sink to wash his face but before reaching it a tremendous feeling of anxiety overtook him. He knew immediately what he felt; it was a severe attack of hydrophobia. What he didn’t understand though was why.
He thought back to his experiments with the rats, he remembered a day or two ago the treated rat not eating or drinking, and also remembered he attached little importance to it. Reaching for the tap his hand began shaking and he felt his heart rate increase.
Twisting its top he began to fill a glass, but as it neared its maximum his shaking caused a trickle of water to run over his thumb. Martins felt it immediately burning and dropped the glass smashing it in the bottom of the sink. He then examined his injury; a shallow groove had formed around half the circumference of his thumb.
Twisting the tap in the opposite direction he stifled the flow until it only dripped. He reached out again and touched the dripping water, and again it burned.
Martins became worried, very worried. He began to think aloud. ‘Is that why the rat didn’t drink? Is that why the woman felt a sudden fear of thunder?’
He remembered her saying she felt thirsty, and now he’d begun to thirst, but how could he slake it without injury? If she hadn’t have tried to escape and forced him to shoot, he could have used her to fathom it out. He went over to the test rat and noticed neither food nor water had still been touched.
He returned to the sink but didn’t bother to remove the broken glass; the following experiment didn’t require it. He plugged the hole and filled it to within two inches of the brim. Then putting his hand into the test rat’s cage he half expected to be attacked again, but this time he was simply ignored. As he carried his test rat over to the water it became more and more agitated. Struggling to get free but was reluctant to bite him.
Martins simply tossed the rat into the sink and listened to it squeal as it attempted to swim. Only a matter of seconds passed before it sank to the bottom. The water had turned dark red and Martins could see nothing through it.
The cool air of the basement now smelt of burnt flesh and singed fur. He pulled the cord attached to the plug and the sink slowly began to empty. Looking down he saw the rat half dissolved, he had no idea why it only half dissolved and he didn’t much care. He needed to find out why it dissolved in the first place.
He went over his notes again and again in the hope of finding a solution, but he couldn’t see where the problem lay. He lifted a small shovel from beside the fireplace, and removing the rat’s remains from the sink he managed to salvage enough blood to start running some tests. Before long had a blood-smeared slide under his microscope.
The first of the anomalies he noticed were how much bigger the red blood cells had become, but the second anomaly had him perplexed. A large number of red blood cells seemed to have something attached to them, some growth, almost as big as the blood cells were themselves.
After further analysis of the rat’s blood Martins found the stem cells he’d modified actually replicated the minute amount of potassium he’d introduced also. He knew the normal amount present should be 0.2% of body weight, but according to his calculations the rat’s mass contained almost 8% potassium. With an imbalance of that magnitude the rat should never have survived, but now the stem cells were making the body’s chemical decisions anything could happen, he wondered what else could possibly change.
He withdrew a sample of his own blood and placed that under the microscope calculating his own potassium level to be 10.8%. Much higher than the rats, but then again he’d been injected twice. With this amount of potassium in their systems Martins fully understood why a violent reaction occurred when they touched water.
He worked out the potassium had filtered through to their skin and become a permanent part of their system. And he knew only too well what happens when potassium is mixed with water. However; knowledge of the problem wasn’t going to cure it, or quench his raging thirst.
He carefully filled another glass with water and poured it over Lucy’s face, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen. No smoking. No hissing. He first thought it to be because he’d had two injections, and she only the one. But if that was the case the rat should have survived its swim.
He took a sample of Lucy’s blood and placed that under his microscope, the blood cells were slightly above normal size but nothing like his, but what he couldn’t fathom was why her potassium level had almost returned to normal. And by now Martins’ thirst had increased beyond all comprehension, but he daren’t drink.
He’d urinated what little he had onto a towel and managed to clean the blood from his face. It seems at least for now his own bodily fluids were safe for him to handle.
He looked at the remaining rats sat in their cages and felt his thirst multiply.
Martins began questioning his thoughts, incredulous as they were. ‘Is this tremendous thirst willing me to take one? Urging me to… to actually devour one of these rats? ’
He had to know for certain; he opened one of the wire cages and choosing the biggest of the rats he picked up a scalpel and proceeded to cut its throat. Then taking three deep and meaningful breaths he sucked feverishly at the gaping wound.
When he’d finished he fell back against the bars of the cell, coughing and gasping and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The taste was sour but his thirst slightly abated. He did the same to a second rat, and again it tasted sour, but he felt it nourishing him, giving him energy.
With his head now in turmoil Martins sat at his desk wondering what he should do next, he’d just savagely killed and drank the blood of two rats and to some degree, he'd enjoyed it. He needed to find out why.
Again he took a sample of his own blood and placed it under the microscope. Next he took a sample of the test rat’s blood and introduced the two. He had no expectations as to what would happen, and if he didn’t see it himself, he would not have believed it.
The blood cells from both samples moved slowly toward each other, and then to his utter disbelief they seemed to be greeting one another, like attendees at a reunion. He took a blood sample from another rat and introduced that to a fresh drop of his own blood. Peering down the microscope once more he looked on as his oversized blood cells literally attacked and absorbed the blood cells he’d taken from the rat.
He knew then it wasn’t his brain telling him he needed the intake of blood, his now mutated blood cells were literally craving for it, needing to assimilate it. After recording his findings he had to get out of the house.
Martins walked the streets of South Charleston trying to figure things out. He knew some bats survived by drinking the blood of cattle, so he went to the lending library to find out more. What he read didn’t ease his anguish any. ‘Is that what I have become,’ he thought. ‘A vampire?’ he stood, and slowly he closed the library book.
