The Zompire (5 page)

“ Enough of this bullshit questioning….I want to sleep,” said the vampire.

Mabel was pissed by what it said.

“ Oh so you intend to sleep huh? Well don’t let me change my mind and put you into a permanent sleep state you hear me!” Dr Mabel said angrily.

At this the vampire recoiled staring with pity into Mabel’s eyes. Mabel walked out with two of the officers from the state security service to have a word. They gave him specific instructions from the President and handed some written documents to that effect to him. The President had ordered that the vampire be kept alive by every means possible. He had also directed that they extract every piece of information possible from the vampire to better arm the state for future attacks. They returned to the lab and went on to carry out a whole lot of other tests on their specimen’s blood with the help of the many additional hands that were now available.

By evening they made a couple of other discoveries. They found that the chemical changes that occur in the brain to help humans rise and shine in the morning was reversed in vampires. This explains their dominant period of activity was during nightfall.

As darkness set in, the vampire became restless. It was rustling around and struggling to get itself loose. Whenever they looked at it, it would stop. They had been monitoring it since the night before when it had been brought in. It had not fed since then. They wanted to know for how long the vampire could go before it felt the need to feed again. Its restlessness was probably from a need to hunt. Mabel injected it with a sleep inducing drug. Some men brought in an observation chamber. Mabel carried out a very short surgery, implanting a small chip which was to monitor brain chemical activity. He stitched the cut he made and was unrolling the bandages for sealing the wound on the creature’s head when he noticed that the lines of the cut were already clotted.

“There goes that marvelous healing power,” Dr Mabel said to himself.

He decided to bandage up the wound anyways. They unbuckled the thick leather straps and lifted the heavily sleep induced vampire off the table, putting it into an observation chamber. They locked the chamber . The only entrance into the chamber was via a thick metallic door that was only accessible via fingerprint recognition and breath analysis recognition. Mabel went to his computer and launched the application he intended to use. He turned on the chip and across the screen was an internal model of the creature’s brain all in view. The prevalent chemical activities in each section were also shown. Someone tapped Mabel on the shoulder and he turned around and collected a mobile phone being handed to him.

“A call for you, Doctor” was all he was told at that moment.

He put the phone to his ear and listened for a few seconds, then saying hello into the mouth piece. The voice on the other end of the line introduced himself as the President of the United States Of America. He was shocked, he stuttered and could not get the right words to say out.

“ Well hello Mr President,” he said at last.

He stopped Mabel from going into the long protocols of greeting him.

“Mr Mabel, I hear you are doing a good job and I just want to commend you on that.”

“Thank you sir,” he said eagerly.

“ Yes, you and that man, Dr Lenzo have done well and I heard about his injury. I hope he is getting some rest as I heard he was injured.”

“ Well Mr President, I already advised him to take some time off but he wants to stay. He is a stubborn son of a gun!”

The president laughed on the other end.

With that the president asked that he hand the phone back to the officer that had given it to him earlier. Lenzo spoke with the president who commended him for his great courage and asked that he come to Allington and spend some time off work. He instructed that the helicopter pilot who had come with the SSS take him. Though Dr Lenzo was not really eager to go, he honored the President’s request. He bid Dr Mabel and the other staff goodbye for now and they left for Allington.

That left Mabel with the men that came with Lenzo, their pilot with the VCA helicopter and men aligned with the state’s security service. All casually dressed, they went out and had dinner. Lenzo’s men wanted to hang out and enjoy the evening. It was only one of the very few nights which they could say it belonged to them. They had developed this “Live your life while you can” attitude knowing that they knew not what fate held for them the next second and could one really blame them?

When they returned to the lab, it was some eighteen minutes on Mabel’s timer left for the effect of the drug administered to wear off. He switched on the system which he had earlier hibernated when they were leaving. They settled to the sofa and were just chatting among themselves. Mabel however was tapping his foot silently waiting for the time to elapse. Three minutes to time, he told one of the medicals who had been working with him before then to go to the mammalian section of the facility and bring him a rat named Louise. He went for it. Mabel went to the chamber that held the vampire and banged on it with his fists. After some tries, it moved and eventually got up. Not noticing the glass, it made for Mabel but met with the five inch thick glass. Mabel was even thrown aback by such aggressiveness. He imagined what would have been had the restraining glass not been there.

The rat was brought just then and as Mabel went back to his computer he asked the man to through it in. Opening a small hole in the door of the chamber, he allowed the rat to crawl out of his hand and through this hole. As soon as the vampire saw the rat, an alert popped up on the system that Dr Mabel was monitoring. Dopamine levels were increasing and as it landed inside the compartment floor, the vampire gave chase. The rat ran around frantically. Mabel had a reason for choosing that specie of rat. He knew it was more likely to be able to run around a few times before being caught, giving him ample time to gather as much data as needed.

He found that upon the sight of their next meal, vampires experienced a brain wave of impulses which caused the release of dopamine, a chemical responsible for euphoria, excitement and frenzy that is associated with their hunting. They continued running further tests as they saw need to on the vampire till late in the night when Dr Mabel had to leave for his quarters after closing for the day.

On the next day, the specimen was securely fastened to the surgical bench when Dr Mabel arrived at the lab. The attendants who worked on the night shift updated him on the report of their night’s observations and handed him the records for the night. As he perused the records, he found that the activity level of the vampire dropped. It would seem its activity level was at an average compared with how active it acted and reacted to different stimuli in the afternoon. It was not clear to him why this was so, especially as it was meant to be the other way round; the vampire was expected to be fully active at night.

                                   
Chapter 5

At the canal construction camp, it was the second night after the vampire attack that the VCA foiled. The rest of the team, in the absence of the VCA chief, had earlier gone further ahead to invade the abode of the vampires in the cave of rocks that they were found to now stay but they were however surprised to discover that they were not there. They were still at the camp keeping watch as directed by Lenzo, their chief who was back in Allington for a break necessitated by injuries he sustained in the last operation. It could’ve however be said that they had let their guards down a notch after taking the war to the enemy and finding that they had seemingly abandoned their home and ran for safety. They had their round-table coffee as they usually did when Lenzo was around. They chatted loudly and ranted about their different experiences, which seems to have boosted their morale and reminding them of what a worthy cause their rather dangerous and hazardous occupation was.

About two hours before midnight however, they were all asleep, except for the officer whom Lenzo had left in charge of the rest. Though he was not fast asleep like the rest, he was nodding and fighting sleep in an effort to stay awake. It was at this moment in time that he saw something move in the dark. He usually wouldn’t have taken that for granted, but against his better judgment, he decided it might’ve possibly been the shadow cast by the tent tarpaulin swaying in the cool night breeze. This wasn’t to be though! Seconds later, six vampires rushed in on them from all directions. He was so startled and caught off guard that he couldn’t take up his gun properly let alone get a good stance to take an aim before they were upon them. All he was able to do was shout and not for long either as he suffered the first attacks from two of the freshly converted vampires. Being quite blood thirsty and vicious, they drained him dry of most of his vital fluid and he was unconscious in seconds. Similar attacks were meted out to his team mates who were startled out of their sleep and running around outside like headless chickens, hardly being able to compose themselves to put up much of even a slight defense. They could hardly put their acts together and in no time they were all lifeless ….bodies strewn all over the place. The workers who were alerted by the noise of the attack and that had earlier thought coming out to help would not have been a good idea were filled with fear and fright when they finally decided to venture outside to join a rather devastated VCA group of officers.
They were all visibly shaken up and stood there in horror at the bodies strewn all over the place, all lifeless. Some made into the bushes for safety while the courageous among them stood their ground and fought, mostly those of them that had a gun or otherwise machetes. The attack went on for a couple of minutes because even though the vampires were largely outnumbered by the workers, the humans were simply no match. Those who fought the vampires as they tried to kill their colleagues found that shooting vampires with their rifles only drew their attention to them, in which case, they left the person they were about to finish with and viciously attacked them instead. Only one of the creatures was killed, and it wasn’t from a bullet either. It was by Mr Smith’s hand that they first saw the death of one of the vampires. He was being chased around the corner of a tent by one of the vampires but just as the vampire made its way around the corner of the tent, he was surprised and came under the wielding machete of Mr. Smith. It was what really changed the course of the fight as the other vampires saw their dead friend and dealt with most of the remaining outside humans accordingly. They retreated and left the camp hastily, their faces and fangs covered with blood. There were thirty one dead bodies which comprised eight VCA officers and 23 so called normal workers. There was just one dead vampire, the one that Smith had hacked his head off. Engineer Roberts had survived the onslaught. The first thing he had done was to call his company’s safety and control office, requesting the earliest fifty-five seater passenger plane booked and sent down to the cargo service airport that was built during the offset of the project to facilitate the movement of heavy machinery to the site. Only after he made that call, did he call the VCA to notify them of the terror that had paid them that nightly visit. Moments later, his director of operations who was to authorize their movement called.

He was expecting that call and while he knew that ordinarily, he would have been the right person to call, he had purposely called the safety and emergency unit so that when they called him for authorization he would be able to comprehend the full extent of the situation.  Mr. Gibson only called to let him know that the flight was already on its way to the landing strip and that he and the rest of the workers should load up their personal belongings and head out. Engineer Roberts was also able to explain what had happened to him in his own words. Mr. Gibson had a lot of confidence in Engineer Robert’s judgment and though he never openly told him this, he trusted that if Roberts had called for emergency suspension of a project and evacuation of staff, then the situation at hand must be pretty serious. All he now had to do was call the government and inform the minster of works of what measures they have had to take given the events of the past few hours.

The workers all parked their tools and belongings into their heavy duty construction vehicles and four wheel drive pick-up vehicles, undid their tents and left the camp with fear, but with some sigh of relief they were leaving that wretched place behind…….for now anyways. Another truck was laden with the bodies of all those that died that night. After about a twenty minutes drive, they got to the miniature airport and were let into the lounge where they waited for the flight to arrive. It arrived a couple hours later and they all boarded and left.