The Rhesus Chart (10 page)

“Yes, but that wouldn’t be—” Janice shuts up as a harried-looking bloke in blue scrubs marches briskly towards them.

“You can’t wait here, you’re blocking the—” he begins, then stops as Janice stares into his eyes.

“Health and Safety Inspectorate spot-check. We’re here to verify that your unit is following approved hazardous waste disposal procedures during non-core business hours,” she informs him.

“But you—”

“
Believe
it,” she emphasizes.

The A&E nurse blinks a couple of times as he assimilates this new information. “You need to go and talk to janitorial services, then. Not here, this is the triage and control post. You’re in the way, we have ambulances—”

“Which way?”

“There.” Their unwitting informant points along the corridor, past curtained-off bays and an empty stretcher. “Turn left past the crash cart, through the double doors, third on your right.”

“Thanks. Forget we were here.” Janice hauls Evan along behind her, hurrying to clear the area lest a real emergency blow in, trailing too many medics and relatives and police officers to subdue by force of will alone.

“Now what?” mutters Evan.

“We ask more questions. Let’s see, we’re looking for the blood transfusion duty registrar. They’ll be on-call and the internal phone book will take us to them. They’ll know where the blood components are stored; probably a special refrigerator in a hematology lab, but there’ll be supplies close to A&E.”

“Where did you figure that out from? Did you work in a hospital before—”

“I used Google. Duh.”

Badges, clipboards, and self-confidence will get you past the human gatekeepers in a hospital, but they won’t help you with the combination locks on the doors. But if you have a vampire’s talent for convincing people that they want to help you, you can move around relatively easily: just wait for someone to come along, then get them to invite you in. Over the next twenty minutes Evan and Janice inveigle themselves into the hematology lab, and corner the duty hematology technician: forty-ish, maternal-looking, and very surprised to see them standing in the doorway to the lab office.

“We’re here to do a spot-check on the blood fridge,” Janice announces forbiddingly. Evan, standing behind her, holds his clipboard before him like a weapon. “We are auditing supply levels and expiration compliance throughout the primary care trust, and we’ve been tasked with making spot-checks on hematology services to monitor wastage. Where’s your supply manifest? We need to do a stocktake against it.”

The tech looks surprised. “Can I see your ID, please?” she asks. “Nobody told me to expect—”

“Here’s my ID,” Janice says, holding the faked-up laminated badge. “You will recognize this as valid. There’s no need to confirm it with management.
Everything is in order.
”

“Yeah, baby.” Evan leers over her shoulder.

“Supplies.” The technician shakes her head. “What do you mean?”

“Plasma. Platelets. Whole blood to hand for transfusion.”

The technician frowns. “Whole blood? Someone’s misinformed you. There’s a single unit of screened O negative blood in the blood fridge by Theatre One, strictly for emergencies, and about six units of various types in the Resuscitation Ward on A&E, but we don’t handle bulk supplies here; we handle immunohematology testing and order in supplies from the blood bank on a per-patient basis, as needed. And if they don’t have enough, there’s a blue light taxi service from the nearest NHSBT center. We don’t just keep units of whole blood hanging around unused! The stuff’s too valuable, and it has a short shelf life—”

“You’re telling me you run a fractional reserve blood bank?”

“What?” The technician is perplexed by Janice’s incredulity. “But you can’t possibly imagine that—”

“Leave her,” Evan suggests.

The hematologist shakes her head and blinks at them, leaning away. “Let me see your badges again. Who did you say you were from?”

The mind control thing clearly isn’t working too well. Janice sighs, leans nose to nose with the woman, and slams the full force of her willpower into her: “Get a syringe and draw a sample from your left arm. I am a vampire and I
vant
to suck your
blood
.”

 • • • 

“WAS THAT STRICTLY NECESSARY?”

“Shut up and drink.”

“Prosit. Pro—oh.” (Pause.) “Oh!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Oh.”

“You’re disgusting.” (Pause.) “Please tell me you haven’t wet yourself.”

“N-no. Bitch.” (Pause.) “Look, there’s a drop left in the tube, I can’t lick it out . . .”

“Rinse.”

“Jesus Fuck, that was, that was amazing. Better than smack.”

“Better than sex.”

“Guess you’ve never had good sex, then.”

“Animal.”

“Dyke.” (Pause.) “It felt amazing. But I need more. There’s one tube left. Can I have—”

“No, it’s for Oscar and Mhari.”

“Come on, there’s twenty mils, we can split it, tell them there wasn’t—”

“You’re not thinking this through, Evan.”

“What?”

“We’ve got a problem. According to Google the NHS prices blood internally at £120 per unit, and a unit is only about a third of a liter. They never have more than about ten days’ supply in the Blood and Transplant service’s stores and she just told us they track it to the individual unit, on a per-patient basis. And I don’t know about you, but I could get used to this stuff.”

“Shit. You know what that means, then?”

“Yes. We’re going to have to convince Oscar to buy us a hospital. Which is why you’re not to drink the rest of the merchandise. Shit’s
expensive
.”

 • • • 

A PAIR OF VAMPIRES WITH CLIPBOARDS WALK INTO THE BACK
of a church in time for evening mass.

They do not burst into flames. Nor does the sight of the crucifix on the altar cause them to cringe or convulse, but the incense gives Alex a sneezing fit, at which point an elderly parishioner turns and glares at him with muted outrage. That is the worst reaction that makes it into the task tracking grid on Evan’s clipboard.

“Dude, not cool. Try to look like you’re praying.”

“How?”

“Copy the peeps in front of us. Them over there, they seem to know what they’re doing.”

The building is cold and dimly lit, the air dank with the chill of autumnal stonework. It seems almost deserted, but for a small cluster of officiants around the altar and pulpit at the front, and a scattering of worshipers, mostly old. The music sounds doleful and strange to Alex’s ears. As with many other natives of the British Isles, he has grown up in a family that fills in the “religion” question on the census forms with “Church of England” but only bothers with the institution itself when they want something: an impressively traditional venue for a wedding, or a place in a highly rated C of E school for the offspring. Consequently, he has only the vaguest grasp of the format and running order of a service, much less the audience participation bits. Evan, for his part, is no better off: he clutches the dog-eared Book of Common Prayer with both hands, trying to make sense of the card with its cryptic list of hymns and page numbers.

“This makes no sense,” Alex complains, but help is at hand: Evan pulls out his phone—a ridiculously hypertrophied slab of black glass—and googles. After a moment he shoves it under Alex’s nose: “Follow this,” he whispers. They peer, shoulder to shoulder, through the narrow window onto churchofengland.org’s website, gaping in perplexity at an alien universe of liturgy and prayer.

The service proceeds. There are prayers; there are hymns. There is a reading from the Holy Scripture. More prayers follow, and then the ritual preparation of the table. “Are you up for the free booze?” Evan asks as he prepares to join the queue of communion participants forming in the aisle.

“No, I’ll just keep track in case you burst into flames or something.” Alex, to be honest, is somewhat bored: the religious symbols at the front of the church are no more cringeworthy than they would have been a week ago.

“Coward.” Evan heads towards the queue. A few minutes later he’s back. “Cheap wine, and not enough of it,” he says.

“And the, um, Eucharist?”

“Tastes like chicken.” Evan elbows Alex in the ribs. “Incoming collecting plate! Let’s roll.”

 • • • 

A PAIR OF VAMPIRES WITH CLIPBOARDS WALK INTO A BUTCHER’S
shop . . .

Actually, it’s not a shop: it’s a stall in the central hall at Smithfield Market. It’s a few minutes past four in the morning, and the wholesale market is already bustling with butchers, fishmongers, and restauranteurs filling up crates and pallets with the day’s meat produce. This is London’s main wholesale meat market—no longer a live cattle market surrounded by abattoirs, but nevertheless a bustling hive of early morning commerce. The vampires have swapped their suits for jeans and suspiciously new white coats, purchased for the occasion from a work outfitter’s: they slip effortlessly through the crowd of costermongers and their customers. But they have a dilemma.

“What exactly are we looking for?” asks Alex.

“Blood. Fresh blood.”

Alex’s sigh is intended to be withering but it’s so much water off Dick’s duck’s arse hairstyle. Dick is clearly in his element here: with his protuberant eyes and green plaid jacket he fits right into place in the meat market, in a way that makes Alex wonder if there isn’t something to the old legend of Fae changelings. Despite being predestined for a life as a butcher, the baby was swapped at birth to fill the empty crib of a banker . . . “Pig’s blood?” he asks. “Or sheep? Or cow juice?”

“Don’t be daft, cow juice is milk—”

“Look, let’s just fucking ask, okay? Excuse me, yes, you sir—”

“Eh, what d’you—” The balding middle-aged bloke in the white coat and rubber boots turns a suspicious expression on Alex.

Alex stares into his eyes and grabs his attention. “We need blood,” he says simply, holding out the aluminum drinking bottle from his bicycle. “Fresh blood. Preferably from a cow. Can you sell it to us?”

“Wuh—Wuh—”

Dick raises a grubby finger: “No questions, mate.”

They have discovered that there is an interesting drawback to the mind control talent: it only works if you can supply a rationalization that the victim can make sense of. Tell a banker to get lost after a hard day’s work and they’ll tell themselves that it’s about time they ditched the high-stress job and went to live in a Buddhist monastery for a year. Tell an aspiring model in a club that you’re a rich investment banker and she wants to shag you, and her mind’s eye will fill with Ferraris. But a blunt assault on the senses, with no wheedling wedge to crack the doors of cognition apart, will result in some fight-back. Alex realizes this, and sends a quelling glance in Dick’s direction. “Heston Blumenthal sent us. We’re with his TV production company, and we’re sourcing material for a documentary on foods made with blood.”

False enlightenment dawns on the victim’s face: “
Oh.
Awright, mate. Come wiv me, I’ll sortcha out!”

Fifteen minutes later, Dick and Alex stagger out of the market, lumbered down with the weight of sloshing gallon containers of the red stuff—pig, sheep, cow, and goat. Alex walks with one arm crooked protectively around his pocket, within which nestles a filched 20ml medical sample tube filled with the most exotic of sanguinary products—venous blue human blood. (“Mr. Blumenthal specifically wants to try a recipe for Tiet canh that the Viet Cong are rumored to have made using their own blood while besieged by the Americans . . . yes, I know it’s disgusting: would a hundred quid help?”)

“I can’t believe you tried to force him with no explanation.” Alex pauses to put down a gallon jug in order to wipe his forehead.

Dick looks around nervously. “Hurry up! We can’t stop here; this is black pudding country!”

Alex raises his jug again. “After you.”

“It was much easier in the club,” Dick complains after a minute, as they round the street corner and head for where he’s left his car.

“Did it occur to you that if you go to a club and chat someone up, there’s a good chance that they’re there to pull? Or to serve a minor reminder of their pull-ability on their boyfriend?” Alex has been thinking about this subject a lot lately.

“Bah.” Dick raises his car key and pings the button to open the doors on his Porsche Boxster. “Hey, these won’t fit under the bonnet . . .”

“So? Put ’em behind the seats.” Alex walks around to the passenger side and begins to load his jugs into the back of the sports car.

“But if they leak—”

“You’ll just get blood on the carpet. Right?”

“Ah, fuck it. Okay, next stop: the office.”

Alex glances out of the windscreen nervously. There are still a couple of hours to go until sunrise, but this is London, and the traffic is capricious and potentially deadly to vampires. “Hit it. I can’t wait to try this . . .”

 • • • 

LATER:

“Aaaugh.”

“Jesus fuck, that was disgusting!”

“Gurrrrgh. Aaaugh.” (Spitting sounds.)

“Have you finished there?”

“Gimme a minute, I need to floss my teeth.
Again.
That was
gross
.”

“How are we scoring?”

“Nil for three. Pigs, don’t make me puke. Cows, essence of fragrant bullshit. Sheep, well . . . I kind of
like
mutton, but not like that, you know?”

“And the black pudding . . .”

“Tastes a lot better deep-fried, doesn’t it?”

“You are not shitting me. Um. That leaves the goat, and the control sample. Um. Oh dear.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I don’t know. Are you thinking, goats are kind of like sheep with bad attitude? I’m not a fucking chupacabra, man. And maybe we should use the control sample just to be sure that, well, you know . . .”

“Blood works?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

“Okay. Let’s see, we get about two teaspoons each: human blood, two hours old.”

“Oh.”

“Oh
Jesus
.”

“Oh.”
(Pause.) “Well, fuck me sideways.”