Dead Before Dawn: The Vampire Curse

Chapter 2 - Body and Blood

The second time Max woke up he was on his back. The first thing he realised with any clarity was that he was very firmly strapped to the trolley on which he was lying. He could barely move.

As best he could he looked down at himself. There were reinforced leather straps over his chest, pelvis and thighs and there were cuffs on his wrists and ankles. He had also been stripped to the waist. One of his arms was strapped down to his side and the other was at about 45 degrees to his body. It was on some kind of padded board, apparently for ease of access because there were tubes sticking out of the crook of his arm. The tubes appeared to be carrying blood.

"Welcome back," said a voice that sounded far too cheerful for the situation, "Zhanna tells me your name is Max."

He turned his head, about the only part of his body he could move, and found himself looking at a woman in a white coat. He barely remembered to nod.

"I haven't had a long term patient for a while," the woman said in impeccable English and smiled, "so my bedside manner is a little rusty, I'm afraid you'll have to forgive me."

"What's going on?" Max asked.

It was hard to speak as his voice cracked with fear.

This was not what he'd imagined; crosses and holy water had been more like it, not machines and mad scientists. The room was tiled white on all walls, and he couldn't see the floor, but he could see the camera looking right at him.

"I'm Dr Ivankova, but you can call me Yulia," the woman told him. "We're giving you a complete transfusion at the moment to try and get as much of the contaminant out of you as possible. The vampire infected your blood and it has started to infect the rest of you as well, but the less of it there is the better."

"It is working?" he asked, desperate for some sort of hope.

"You're not rejecting the new blood, which is a positive sign," Yulia told him as she walked up beside him and checked the machine.

Max didn't feel quite so fuzzy this time, but everything still had a kind of surreal edge to it. He also felt rather warm even though he wasn't wearing a shirt. Yulia had a jacket and a roll neck sweater on; it clearly wasn't warm.

"How long will I be here?" he asked, since he couldn't think of any other question that wouldn't have a bad answer.

"It's impossible to tell," Yulia said, not unkindly, but the woman seemed to be a little short on empathy, "it differs from individual to individual. You appear to have a very strong will and, I'm not going to lie to you; what I'm doing is only an aid to your own body. This is ten percent scientific and ninety percent metaphysical; a lot of it will be down to you. Whatever you do, do not give up."

It was hard to have hope when the world had just gone mad, but Max gave a little nod.

"How long have you been doing this?" he asked, trying to distract himself a little from his own position.

Being forcefully strapped down was not his idea of fun; he hated being confined.

"Twenty years or so," Yulia replied, checking the readout on another machine that Max neither understood nor recognised. "I was in medical school when my brother was taken by a vampire. Michal and his team saved the rest of my family, and when I qualified I offered them my services. I have been studying vampire contamination ever since, although I very rarely have a chance to see a patient before it is too late."

Not exactly the greatest prognosis.

"Ever saved anyone?" Max asked next, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea.