LIFERS Chapter Forty Three

Ella checked her watch to see twenty minutes had elapsed since she attached the first of the drip-bags to Thomas Martins, and already she noticed a change in his condition. The heart monitor beeped at a more determined and more regular pace, his body temperature had dropped four degrees, and his breathing was a lot less shallow.

She stood from the chair and was about to retrieve a second bag from the refridgerator when a distant, dull boom, caused the room to vibrate. Everything loose rattled including a half dozen glass beakers that tinkled against one another for two or three seconds before the rumble died-off.

Ella slammed the refridgerator door and ripped the surgical gloves from her hands and tossed them to the floor where they landed with an audible slap. She climbed up to the basement to see a faint haze of dust just above the wooden hatch and opened it. Then more dust entered the room, and with it, the smell of spent gunpowder.

Something very worrying had just taken place and she had an idea the investigator was back and no doubt behind it, but what was it he was trying to accomplish? Was he after destroying the whole town? Was he trying to weed them out? And if so, was he going to blow up every building until he’d achieved that? The hatch dropped like a lead weight and once more the bolts were driven home.

She went to the ground floor to check on the others to find they were left undisturbed by the noise, each of them stood in silence as they stared at the rain from the window; statuesque in the midst of their own private oblivion.

She wondered if the investigator was some kind of omen. A sign telling her enough was enough because since Thomas first succumbed to the leukemia, she’d often considered the fate of Martinsville and how long its ever-decreasing populace would endure without him. She could lead them, she knew that, but wasn't sure all of them felt the same. Those that didn’t would refuse to stay and attempt to survive any way they felt suitable, which would mean releasing them to feed on the outside world, but that was something she couldn’t allow to happen.

So if the transfusion failed to do what Thomas said it would do, she saw no point in prolonging Martinsville’s existence and would relinquish her ban on the blood stored down the street. She’d tell them it was safe for consumption and they had no need to worry, and that would put a slow, but perminant end to the curse that held the town in its grip.

She looked from the window the others stood before and saw much more of the street than she did earlier. The rain had eased, almost stopped. Perhaps a different omen.

When she returned to the chamber to see how her patient and his donor were doing, Thomas stirred and raised his head from the pillow. In passing, she picked up the gloves she tossed to the floor and threw them into the waste bin under his bed. She donned another pair and went to stand by him. His eyes were open, almost clear, almost red again.

‘I know you have her,’ he said, his voice now stronger. ‘I feel her coursing through me. She burns but it feels good.’ He coughed harder this time and his nose produced another, thicker track of blood.

Ella pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe it clean, but as she reached out he took it from her.

‘You’re stronger, Thomas,’ she said.

He wiped the blood and discarded the handkerchief to the floor. ‘How much have I taken so far?’

Ella looked at the apparatus. ‘I was just about to put the second bag up.’

‘I’ve only had half a litre?’

‘Yes, are you surprised?’

‘Where did you find her, Ella? I know she’s from here, I feel that in her, but she’s far different from the rest of us.’

Ella sat in the chair by the bed and readied for an explanation she hoped she wouldn’t have to make. Telling lies to Thomas Martins was something she’d never been good at, but if her secret was to remain a secret, she would have to lie now, and sound convincing with it.

‘Do you recall Alexander McCauley and his wife Susan?’ she asked, but didn’t wait for a response. ‘If you remember they were among the first to be struck down, like you.’

Thomas blinked a number of times before he answered. ‘Yes, I remember them.’

Ella continued. ‘Thirty years ago, Susan gave birth to a daughter she named Anna, and when Anna turned fiftee─’

‘No,’ he said, and thumped the bed. ‘That’s nonsense. What do you take me for, Ella, some kind of fool? The McCauleys’ never had children because Susan was barren. Now tell me the damn truth. Who the hell is she?’

That was the first time Thomas had ever raised his voice to Ella and she didn’t much care for it. So she told him in a stern voice of her own, the truth he demanded to hear.

‘Her name is Marianna, Marianna Brontrose. Her mother is Celia Brontrose, or to give her her real name, Alice Robertson.’

Thomas lay silent, she could see as he recollected the past, pieced it together, his eyes flicking left and right.

‘That’s impossible,’ he said. ‘Alice Robertson was killed in a fire along with two other breeders over seventy years ago.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Thomas, because I helped her escape. The remains you found in her bed the following day were those of a taken one.’

She stood to change the drip bag.

‘Why would you even consider such an idiotic act? You know once they’ve been turned there can be no life for them outside Martinsville.’

Ella removed the empty bag from the apparatus and retrieved a second from the refrigerator; she attached it to the tube in his arm and then resumed her seat. ‘Alice was not turned,’ she told him. ‘I said I’d done it so you wouldn’t. But it made no difference; she’d always been one of us.’

‘Nonsense, how can that be?’

‘You really have no idea, do you?’

‘You’re speaking in riddles, woman. How the hell can you possibly expect me to understand what you’re rabbling on about?’

‘Okay, Thomas, you want the truth? Well here it is. Alice is our daughter. The name Robertson I plucked from the air when you said you didn’t want to know of the twins’ placement, remember? You were almost a recluse at the time and said you were far too busy with your research to be a worthwhile parent, and that I should consider my position at your side if I was thinking of rearing them myself. I almost left you that day, and to be brutally honest, I often wished I’d had the courage to do so. Immediately after giving birth I handed my children over to Monique DuPont and made her solemnly swear never to tell you. So you see, Alice already had our genes and was doomed from the day of her conception, as was her brother Harold, but because of your ways he was injected before I could save him from it.

‘I knew it would eventually turn him evil, just like the other children who were born here and turned all those years ago. But I wasn’t going to let that happen to Alice, and then Monique let you into her room and you raped her in the furtherance of your experiments. The eventual product of that rape is lying behind this curtain.’ Ella ripped most of it from its rail. ‘Giving you life. She’s our … no; she’s my granddaughter, but your daughter.’

‘Why do I hear hatred in your voice? Is it because I harmed someone I knew nothing about? Do you think I would have done those things to them had you told me who they were prior to all of that?’

‘The fact that you didn’t know who they were was no others fault but your own, though I doubt that would have made a difference, Thomas. Do you not remember what you did to their unborn brothers and sisters in the guise you saw as research?’

The heart monitor increased. ‘That was their purpose, their one and only purpose.’ Again blood seeped from his nose; it entered his mouth and stained his tongue purple-black.

‘Yes, Thomas, there is hatred in my voice, deep hatred, but not for you or what you did. This hatred is for me alone because I was blind enough to stand by and watch, blind enough to allow it all to happen and say nothing.’ She stood and snapped off the gloves. ‘By the time this second bag has drained you should be strong enough to change it yourself.’

‘What? Where are you going?’

‘I’m releasing my granddaughter, you have what you need.’

‘Don’t do this, Ella. I need her; she’s my only chance, our only chance. Just think of the opportunity. Think of what you’re throwing away. Think about all the things that I … that we can achieve with her.’

‘No, Thomas, she’s not staying here so you can use her for your experiments. It’s over. Take what you already have and be thankful … be thankful I don’t rip it from your arm.’

She threw aside what was left of the plastic curtain and began to unbuckle the restraints that held Marianna to the gurney. Then picked up her clothes and cradled her like a child as she carried her from the chamber.

Thomas continued to protest but Ella ignored his pleas as she opened the steel door to the basement and climbed out. On the other side she stopped after the door closed and locked and looked down at his only means of escape. She then lifted a hefty boot and stamped on the key-pad until it produced sparks and blue smoke. And, as she still held Marianna, she crouched and entered the sequence of numbers required to open it again, but the hatch stayed shut.

Ella carried her granddaughter up to her private room and placed her on the bed. She put her clothes on a nearby chair and then covered Marianna with the sheets. On the other side of the bed was a well-used rocker, Ella sat in it, and there she’d wait for Marianna to wake, and then release her.