Symbiosis Read online

  SYMBIOSIS

  Louise Atkins

  © Louise Atkins 2017

  Louise Atkins has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press Ltd., an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Forty Four

  Forty Five

  Forty Six

  Forty Seven

  Forty Eight

  Forty Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty One

  Fifty Two

  Fifty Three

  Fifty Four

  Fifty Five

  Fifty Six

  Fifty Seven

  Fifty Eight

  Fifty Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty One

  Sixty Two

  Sixty Three

  Sixty four

  Symbiosis

  1. Biology A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may, but does not necessarily, benefit each member.

  2. A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

  One

  Let’s be straight. Right from the start. I am a killer. The killer. I will take lives. Whose? Why? You’ll find that out. You’ll find out who I am too. Eventually. You might even guess. What I hope is that you’ll understand me. Sympathise. You see, I’m not indiscriminate. No out of control massacre for me. I’ll be careful. Considered. Reasonably anyway.

  So, for now… come join my world.

  Come kill with me.

  Two

  The office clock ticked. Emily Gregory, sitting at her desk, watched it. Any minute now. Three. Simon Jones had just assumed his ‘serious journalist about to impart serious information’ pose. Two. He titled back in his black leather office chair. One. Feet on his desk and… go.

  ‘You know Emily,’ he began, fingers now templed beneath his chin. ‘You’re wrong about the vampires. You, and the rest of the population. You’ve all been manipulated.’

  Surreptitiously Emily drew her notebook towards her. There was no one else in the office, no one to look to for sympathy, to share a roll of the eyes. The room that was their office section of the Entertainment Times was as empty as it usually was on a Friday afternoon. The paper went to press and Net on a Friday at 12. Without fail. This was a lull. And if Simon was starting on vampires, it was a lull he was clearly intending to fill.

  ‘Not that you could’ve avoided it. They’ve been clever. No doubt about that. Even before the HaemX epidemic rather depleted their food source and forced them into the open.’

  Emily eyed the list of calls she wanted to make before she went home. They were all important advertisers and she wanted to reel them in before she handed over. This rant was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but she liked Simon. Mostly. She’d play her part.

  ‘How do you figure that then?’ A required response. Keep it short. It didn’t seem to matter what she actually said.

  ‘Before HaemX, suckers were just a nasty story. Good entertainment. Comedy, horror. Take your pick. Something creepy to make you look over your shoulder on a dark night. But they existed all right.’

  ‘Good job they did.’ Had she actually dared to interrupt? ‘Our kind needed them in HaemX. And what few humans were left post epidemic wouldn’t have survived without their help either. With the clean up. Ninety per cent of the population dead was an awful lot of bodies. We’d never have got back on our feet without the vampires.”

  ‘Yes, very helpful apparently, if you read accounts from back then.’

  ‘And, don’t forget, HaemX made them sick too.’

  ‘Only if they were unfortunate enough to attack someone who was already incubating the nasty little bug. A double death sentence. Virus or vampire. No. If it wasn’t for HaemX, they’d never have come forward.

  And, it’s the lies, even before then, that everyone very handily forgets. Lies that we just bought without question.’

  ‘Like what?’ This bit was new. She was interested despite herself. Simon had risen and crossed to the window. Their office, which seemed crammed during their normal shifts, suddenly felt too large. She watched him brooding. Handsome? Yes. Did he know it? Only too well. As if to reinforce her thoughts, Simon ran a hand through his dark hair, flicked it back into place.

  ‘Where do I start? Pre-HaemX, they killed us. Used us for food but hid in the darkness. And if you can manage to get away from that, there are all the other bits of supposed lore. All just set up to fool us. All that crap about garlic, no shadows. All rubbish. They can tell who we are, tell their own kind and we have to rely on them to tell the truth.’

  ‘Don’t forget the whole no reflection,’ said Emily. “That was made up too. Bet they’re glad that’s not true. How would they ever do their hair? Nightmare.’

  ‘Emily, I’m being serious.’

  ‘So am I. And they’re not supposed to alter at all once they’ve been changed – imagine if you’d had a bad hair day, or a dodgy cut – it’d be like that eternally, especially if you couldn’t look in the mirror to sort it out.’

  ‘Yeah, very funny, Emily.’ Simon stood up and crossed to her desk. She couldn’t help but smile at him.

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t just accept that vampires are part of our society and a valuable one,’ she said.

  ‘I know that’s what the Joint Government tell us, but I’ll never accept it.’

  ‘You’ve got no choice.’ Emily shrugged. ‘From what I know, it sounded awful before HaemX. It’s so much better now. No humans work night shifts, productivity’s increased, standards of hospital care have gone through the roof because doctors and nurses aren’t pulling long shifts. I really don’t know what you object to.’

  ‘The fact they drink human blood?’

  ‘You eat animals,’ Emily countered.

  ‘Not my own species.’

  ‘Vampires don’t kill people now. The donation service ensures that.’

  Simon shook his head,

  ‘I can’t understand why you don’t question it, Emily.’

  ‘Perhaps because I only work in advertising and you’re the journalist,’ Emily offered.

  ‘I don’t buy that. You’re intelligent.’

  ‘Thank you, I think.’

  ‘And yet you’re not bothered,’ Simon persisted.

  ‘No. Me and most of the rest of the population. Some of my best friends are vampires. They’re no different to us. They were us once. HaemX happened over a hundred years ago. It’s a different world. I trust it. Perhaps you should, Simon.’

  ‘Don’t think so. I’ll be right in the end. Maybe not now. But eventually, something will happen, and I’ll be right.’

&nbs
p; Emily shook her head and heaved a sigh.

  ‘Don’t you have any important stories to investigate? I don’t understand why you hang around here on a Friday anyway. Surely your work’s done?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better go and investigate them then?’

  Simon gave her a mock salute and Emily felt the atmosphere lighten.

  He sat back in his chair and went into his thinking pose, one hand scrunched into his hair, elbow on the desk, the other hand just resting under his chin. He could sit for ages like that. Emily turned back to her work. At least she’d managed to shut him up. Round one to her. She picked up a pen and reached for her phone.

  Calls made, deals closed in a most satisfactory way, Emily quickly tidied her desk and gathered her bag and coat. Simon looked up from hammering on his keypad.

  ‘Emily, I’ve been thinking for a long time that we should go out for dinner.’

  ‘Have you?’ She wheeled round on her chair, unable to hide her surprise.

  ‘Yes. Would you like to?’

  Would she?

  ‘Tonight?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I can’t tonight.’ She could, she had no definite plans, but no.

  ‘How about tomorrow? I know it’s short notice…’

  ‘Tomorrow’s good for me.’ The words were out before she could stop them.

  ‘Excellent. I’ll book somewhere – give you a call in the morning.’

  ‘That’d be fine. I mean great.’

  ‘Brilliant. Night Emily.’

  Outside the building, Emily paused and took a deep breath of frosty winter darkness. The chill sharpened her brain. What had she just done?

  Three

  ‘Oh come on.’ Lucas Harrington pressed the door buzzer again. He stamped his feet, blew on his hands. Not that he felt the cold, but it was winter and, even now, he still enjoyed going through the motions. He leant on the buzzer for flat 20 again. No doorman today. He raised dark eyebrows. Things were slipping. ‘Oh come on, Gabriel. I don’t want to be late.’

  He stepped forward. Tried to see if he could spot any moving bodies made alien by the tinted glass of the entry door. Nothing.

  He looked down at his watch. He needed to go. Stepping back onto the pavement, he joined the hubbub of people heading towards their evening’s work.

  How bizarre to measure time, especially for vampires. Before HaemX, his kind had only marked their time by sunrise and sunset. Daylight their only master. He smiled ruefully and matched his pace to those around him. His human time, before HaemX, all three decades of it, seemed almost a million years ago some days, and some days it was like yesterday. Once he’d been changed, time had taken on a whole new meaning. Being faced with eternal life seemed to do that.

  He raised his eyes from their contemplation of the pavement to muse on the scene he was part of. He felt isolated from the drag to work this evening. Everyone moved in the same direction, at the same speed. Some were alone, some in pairs, chatting laughing, some just silent, a conveyor belt carrying them to their place in society. Fill the gaps left by the humans and their need to sleep through the dark hours.

  ‘Lucas! Luke! Wait for me!’ He halted, but did not turn instantly. Gabriel. Late, but just in time, as usual. Just in time to save him from death by contemplation of life. He turned. Gabriel. Late, but impeccable. Blond hair styled so perfectly that if one hadn’t known the hours spent teasing it into such an unkempt style, one could be fooled into thinking he’d just got out of bed. Black dinner jacket, bow tie clutched in hand, no doubt ready for some all too willing female to tie for him. There was no doubt. Gabriel was ready for his big night.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Gabriel clapped Lucas on the back. ‘Cheers for waiting.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Gabriel grinned, ‘True.’

  ‘Are you ready? For the opening I mean?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘As ready as I’ll ever be, provided the day staff have followed their instructions.’ They slowed their space and joined the queue at the tram stop.

  ‘I’ve had some new cards printed, especially for the occasion.’ Gabriel pulled one from his inner pocket and handed it to Lucas. The density of the black card was punctuated by gold lettering.

  ‘‘Gabriel Black. Black’s Gallery. Fine art. True style’,’ read Lucas. ‘Not exhibiting your own work then?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  They both flashed their credits cards into the tram’s reader.

  ‘You should come along after work,’ Gabriel said as they slumped onto the shiny red leather seats of the tram. Everyone on, some standing already, Lucas hesitated before replying. There was the slight lurch as they started, as man-made electricity dragged against the forces of nature to get them moving. He always took the time to notice that. It reminded him of his own humanity. Still there, despite over a century and a half passing since his death. No one else ever seemed to notice. The rest of the commuters in this metal box simply carried on conversations, stared out of windows freshly cleaned by the human day shift. That no one else seemed to afford it any importance pleased him even more.

  ‘Come on. It’ll be great,’ Gabriel insisted.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘There’s some fantastic pictures, human and our kind. Side by side, all styles, all sizes.’

  ‘All prices, no doubt. Save your sales patter. I’ll come.’

  The pair lapsed into silence. A few more stops and starts saw them near the wall – the boundary between their housing district and the humans. It was old news now. Put up when society had first begun to rebuild itself, when there had been less integration, when all had been learning to trust. In his vast collection of photographs, this was the subject that Lucas had captured the most. The beauty of their side of the wall, with its disguise of flower beds, trailing ivy, all highlighted by the softest of lighting, was such a stark contrast with the human side.

  They were through the barriers now. The security information collected from their credits cards already transferred back to the district’s Security Force.

  And now the human wall. No attempt to disguise the purpose here. Curls of spiky barbed wire flowed like cursive script across the top of the wall. There was the usual mess of graffiti, relating mostly to burning the vampires. Someone had even scrawled out Nightworkers on the official sign. RAGE’s handiwork no doubt. They were a small, but irritating minority. Lucas knew that the Security Forces put little effort into cleaning anything off. If they did, it soon reappeared.

  His eyes scanned for something new to immortalise with his camera. And there it was. A huge spray painted cross. He shook his head. The cross held no power over anyone these days. A lack of faith in Faith had put paid to that.

  ‘Lucas, are you listening?

  ‘What? No. Sorry.’

  ‘I was saying about this new artist. You’d like her. Harriet Giles. Very pretty, and pretty fit too.’

  ‘Any artistic talent?’

  ‘Only the best get to exhibit in Blacks – you know that.’

  The tram stopped. For those working just outside the centre, in the hospital district, the research industry, those needing connecting trams to the factory areas to the north, this was the place to catch the trams that spiralled out from the hub of the city. Everything planned in symmetrical detail. All the districts were laid out like satellites in orbit around a planet. HaemX had given the clean slate and those who survived had been cautious in writing on it. Had planned first, taken the time that the new vampire society had so much of. The result worked.

  For all those that got off, others took their places like waves on a beach. One side for exit, the other for entry.

  He smelt her before he saw her.

  The trams were normally one bundle of scents moulded together, skin, shampoo, freshly washed clothes mingled with dirt, mud, the ingrained grease of the factory workers. It all mutated into one grey ball of smell.

  But this, her smell, cut through the blandness. It was s
harp, clearly defined. It bit at him, not in an unpleasant way but in a teasing, tempting way that was impossible to ignore. Closing his eyes, he drank her in. She was the sharpness of salty whipped sea spray but with the elaborate smooth darkness of melted chocolate tempering the edge.

  His senses were united in a desire to find her. There. With her back to him. Perfectly upright. Fingers curled around the back of a chair for support. He could not see her face but he read her nonetheless.

  Long, black woollen coat, reasonably expensive. Black dress, longer than the coat but just the right length to show fishnet clad ankles and high heeled shoes. Her hand reached up to check her hair, revealing a silver chain with a teardrop crystal.

  Her hair was perfect, to his eye, for him at any rate, it was perfect. Long tresses held in place with pins to pile it up. It could have been chiselled from midnight diamonds, it was so sleek and dark and well-placed.

  No rings, but she was meeting someone. A lover? No, a potential lover he decided, foot tapped too often, watch viewed too many times, hands back to the hair again. Too nervous for familiarity.

  He felt Gabriel rise next to him. Readjusted his focus. What was the point? She on a date, him off to work.

  ‘Look, I don’t know what’s got into you this evening mate, but snap out of it. Life is too short.’

  It was an old joke between them and provoked the ghost of a smile. Lucas looked up at his friend as Gabriel continued,

  ‘This is my stop, Lucas. Entertainment District.'

  ‘Good luck with the exhibition.’

  ‘Thanks. See you later. Introduce you to Harriet if you’re lucky,’ Gabriel called from the door.

  She was there too. Lucas had known she would get off here. The tram stopped. Doors slid open. He saw Gabriel brush against her. His insides twisted. The scent of her would be on him. Doors closed. The tram moved on. She was gone.

  Four

  Emily stepped off the tram into the cold darkness. She pressed her hands to cheeks made flushed by the confines of the transport.

  Meeting Simon at the restaurant had been a good idea on her part. Having spent much of Friday evening pondering why she’d agreed to the date, what she did know was that she didn’t want to let Simon, let anyone for that matter, totally into her life.