Plagues

That weekend I made good on my word to purchase a disposable cellphone. I went over to a Best Buy on Saturday a short bus ride north of where I live, and got the cheapest, most durable, and simplest phone they had on a pay-as-you-go. On Monday, the start of exam week, I exchanged contact info with Kali. We proceeded ahead with our plan to try to contact Darwin over the phone and internet before trying in person. I left a message with him informing him of my purchase.

Exams breezed by without too much trouble. I had exams Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Kali had the same. There were also news reports about a string of home invasions and brutal murders in Kali's neighbourhood over the later part of last week and the newly passed weekend. The only other news that came that week regarding our situation was from Kali on Wednesday. After our respective exams that day, she led us over to a park at the top of Sackville Street, on the north of side King Street. We sat on some benches near an empty playground.

“I think it's working,” Kali said, her voice unsteady. “I think the vamps have managed to reign in the mutts.”

“What?”

“They're using the mutts like sniffer dogs in my neighbourhood. They started out sniffing out cars, alleys, parks for people or animals or whatever, and then they'd push on with the vamps lurking and following in the shadows. They've found and killed lots of prey, human and animal, by doing this. But now there's been lots of break-ins going on where nothing but the guns and ammo is being taken, and the occupants of the home are left mutilated beyond recognition. BIOTRANS has been first on-scene to every single break-in and murder. They're stepping up to breaking into homes and probably, if not already, apartment buildings.”

“I heard about this on the news,” I said, furrowing my brow, the feeling of a violent vacuum in my stomach. “Didn't think it was this bad.”

I started thinking about all the ways I wanted to protect Kali and how I wanted to exterminate every infected even more now. This sifted me onto the thought of the large pocket of infected territory that is the old Beaches area, as well as the other neighbourhoods and Red Zones where infected activity is high. Flashes of the immediate aftermath of the Sneaky Dee's attack, and the murders in New York sparked up anxiety.

“So they're testing an army,” I said.

“Maybe Marcus is behind this,” Kali said.

“Maybe he's preparing for another big move.”

“But, like, what?”

“Who knows? Maybe they're gonna start attacking training facilities here. It was effective for them in New York for killing all those people.”

“Did you warn your friend at the place you go?”

“Yeah.”

Kali scrunched her mouth to one side.

“I haven't heard from Darwin,” she said.

“Same. I wasn't expecting to hear from him this soon though. It'll take some time and effort to wear him down. We should just keep going ahead as planned.”

“Okay.”

Talk about vamps around school was becoming more and more common and prevalent. People, mostly students, couldn't make heads or tails of them. A vast majority of the students surmised that because of this lack of knowledge, it'd be prejudiced and “racist” to assume the vamps are dangerous. Over the passing days, people pulled out random, stupid facts they found online about vamps: vampires and bats are unrelated; vampires are immortal; stuff about the mythological character Lilleth, the alleged first vampire. All were things most people already knew from pop portrayals of vampires. Some of the more active students proposed staging demonstrations at constituency offices to promote vamp rights, while others proposed going to find and talk to an actual vamp. For some others, that wasn't enough, and they suggested that, if we close all the blinds in the school, we should have a vamp in as a guest speaker and we'd bring them in here before sunrise. I just hoped they did some actual research before seriously considering any of this.