Metcalf’s private lab was
reminiscent of some nightmarish scene from the Island of Dr. Moreau, and like Moreau’s laboratory, was a place of
pain and abomination. For Metcalf, the lab served dual purposes; it helped him
gain insights into the effects of the virus, and it acted as a deterrent to the
other vampires in the compound from thinking about challenging his authority.
The test subjects were all infected with the vampire virus. Some were
originally brought in as “cattle” and had the misfortune of being chosen for
this capacity—which was a fate far worse than being milked until illness or
anemia set in; others were members of the compound who needed to be made
examples of. All of the test subjects had their arms and lower halves removed;
which made them appear like grotesque doll-like creatures. Some were pinned to
their tables by spikes through their shoulders, others were chained along the
walls. All of them were in the midst of experiments that would’ve made even the
infamous Joseph Mengele cringe in horror.
Metcalf strolled casually around
his lab examining his experiments. Those that were capable of screaming out
fought hard to hold their tongues; they knew their situations, however
horrific, could be made worse. Moans escaped from a few of them, whimpers from
a few others, but most kept quiet. Metcalf stopped at a table where a test
subject had reached six months without being fed. The subject had shriveled to
the point of looking more like a prune than anything that could’ve ever been
human. Its eyes appeared dead, its mouth gaping open. Metcalf pulled the spikes
out from its shoulders and carried it to a scale. Only thirty-four pounds.
Before the experiment was started, the subject had weighed more than double
that. Metcalf brought it back to its table and pounded the spikes back where
they’d been. Not even a whimper. Metcalf had doubts whether it was still alive.
If it were dead it would be the first time that he witnessed a vampire dying
due to starvation. Using an eyedropper, Metcalf squeezed a drop of human blood
into the thing’s gaping mouth. A sucking sound came from it.
“Still alive, huh?” Metcalf noted.
He squeezed the remaining blood
from the eyedropper into the gaping hole. The glaze over the vampire’s eyes
faded and a flicker of life shone in them. Metcalf slowly fed it an ounce of
blood, and as he did so, the vampire plumped out like a raisin that had been
dropped in water. It stirred slightly, its tongue pushing out, then choking
noises rattled from its throat as it pleaded for more blood. Metcalf continued
to feed it blood until it was restored to its former condition. Four ounces of
blood had brought the vampire fully back. The vampire lay with its chest
heaving, sucking in oxygen. Metcalf scribbled notes on a clipboard that hung on
the edge of the table.
“Please, no more… I’m begging…end
it…please…end it…” the vampire forced out, its voice not much more than a
hoarse whisper.
Metcalf looked up and made a
shushing noise to the vampire before moving on to check on other experiments.
Although some of the vampires were made into these “guinea pigs” to teach the
others in the compound a lesson, Metcalf took no sadistic pleasure in what he
did, but neither did he feel the slightest hint of remorse. As far as he was
concerned, these creatures didn’t even rate as lab mice, and he felt the same
compassion towards them that a scientist might towards bacteria that was being
examined under a microscope. These experiments allowed Metcalf to understand
the virus at a more practical level, and that was all that mattered to him.
Smiling, he thought about how he
could write a book on the subject…
Hell, make it a set of
encyclopedias…
Early on he discovered that
vampires could be killed fairly easily, at least easily for him, by cutting off
their heads. Other than that method, which few other vampires had the strength
to do without very sharp blades, they were damn hard to kill. Like goddamn
cockroaches. Suffocating them, whether by drowning, gassing or simply sealing
off a vampire’s nose and mouth, didn’t kill them; it only caused them to slip
into a comatose state until oxygen became available. Metcalf had kept
experiments submerged for months in tanks of water only to have them revive
within seconds of being removed, and showing no discernable damage from their
oxygen deprivation. He could burn them to death, but only after he had bought a
cremation oven and was able to get the temperature to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cooking a vampire long enough in a microwave oven also did the trick, but
again, like requiring a cremation oven, it was impractical. The virus created a
kind of super-immunity to lethal viral infections: Ebola, bubonic plague,
hantavirus, and all the other viruses Metcalf exposed his test subjects to had
little effect. Neither did exposure to deadly bacteria like meningitis or
anthrax, nor any of the poisons that Metcalf had so far injected into their
blood systems. Ingesting poison caused the same short-term violent reactions
that ingesting any food would cause, but nothing more than that.
Metcalf stopped in front of one of
his test subjects. Two days earlier he had injected the vampire with an ounce
of venom from an Australian Brown Snake, which was enough to kill over ten
thousand people. Outside of being somewhat dried out, the vampire looked no
worse for wear.
“Would you like to be fed?” Metcalf
asked it.
The vampire nodded glumly and
Metcalf squeezed an ounce of blood into its mouth. After that ounce, the
vampire appeared the same as before the snake venom injection. Metcalf
scribbled notes on the clipboard next to the test subject. Over the course of a
year, Metcalf had injected snake and spider venom, arsenic, cyanide,
formaldehyde, ammonia, and numerous other poisons into this subject, all with
little if any damage. As with viruses and bacterial exposure, poison seemed to
have no real effect against the super-immunity caused by the vampire virus.
“You are a monster. A monster,”
drifted in from behind him, a seemingly disembodied voice, barely a whisper.
“You will burn in the fires of damnation. What you are doing to us will be done
to you a million times over.”
Metcalf strained to hear where the
voice was coming from and followed it to one of his vivisection experiments.
Mildly disappointed, he understood why the test subject dared to speak out. It
had nothing left to lose, or little, anyway. Metcalf had months earlier cut the
vampire open and spread the skin apart so its insides were exposed, and over
time had removed most of its organs. Spleen, liver, kidneys, esophagus and
stomach were gone. Not much was really left other than its heart and one of its
lungs.
The vampire’s jaundiced eyes held
steady on Metcalf’s.
“You think you are a God?” it
asked, its voice haltering, ghostlike. “You are nothing. Less than dirt, that’s
what you are. Someday there will be justice and you will suffer worse than
you’ve made all of us suffer.”
“That may be true,” Metcalf said.
“But you know something, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion.”
Metcalf reached into the vampire’s
chest and squeezed its heart in his fist. A sick gurgling noise escaped the
vampire’s lips and its eyes rolled up into its sockets. Metcalf decided to
alter his experiment. He took a loose spike and drove it into the vampire’s
heart. Unlike the supernatural myth associated with a vampire, a spike through
the heart didn’t kill it. The virus would cause the damaged heart to regenerate
its tissue as it tried to heal itself. From personal experience Metcalf knew
the pain would be excruciating. If the spike were removed, the heart would
completely regenerate in seconds and be as healthy as before the injury, but
with the spike in the way the newly generated tissue would wrap itself around
the metal in a fruitless attempt for recovery. No, one spike through the heart
wouldn’t kill a vampire, but maybe more than one would. Over time Metcalf would
discover how many it took, but he planned to stretch this experiment out and
make it last years. He watched while the vampire writhed in agony, its mouth
twisting as it tried to scream but in too much pain for any noise to escape.
Satisfied that his point had been made to the other guinea pigs, he turned to the room and addressed them, asking if
any of them had any other comments they’d like to share.
“Well?” Metcalf asked. “Most of you
still have your tongues. Come on, if you have anything to say, let’s hear it.”
All he got back in response were a
few soft moans.''
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