Strain-V

Quietly, he took a new route, walking down streets that few people used, taking a long, looping itinerary that crossed in on itself and took her around in circles. There was no doubting that she was following him. At last, he went round a corner and then suddenly stopped, pressing himself against the wall of the chemistry lab block, waiting for her.

Sure enough, she wondered around the corner and saw him there. It was clear that she wasn't expecting him to be there: he made her jump, in fact.

"Why are you following me?" he asked her calmly.

"You - " She was dressed all in black – her suit formal, but attempting to make her look insignificant, to blend in with the crowd. It didn’t do it very well, though.

"You weren't exactly subtle about it," he said. "Who are you?"

"I - " she said, and suddenly gasped as he swung her around and pressed her hard against the wall of the building, padding her down to check her pockets. She was clearly a little shaken up by his treatment of her: and as far as he was concerned, he was glad. She was a menace – and, possibly, much worse than that. There were a lot of sick people on the streets of America, after all, and colleges were by no means safe from them.

In one of her pockets – her inside jacket pocket – he found a black leather case - little more than the size of a wallet - inside which were four silver and glass syringes, full of a transparent fluid.

"Hmm… I believe we've found some evidence," Miles said.

"You don't understand," she said, and he could see something like fear in her pretty blue eyes.

"No, apparently I don't."

"I just wanted to talk to you," she said, looking around her, clearly to see if anyone else might come to her aid.

"Talk to me... or fill my blood stream with whatever... chemical you've got there?"

"Look," she said, trying to dispel her fear in order to show him she meant business. "You don’t understand. I work for the government…”

The words of Jake were ringing in his ears now - she's been hanging around campus for a while, now - since your sister died – and he felt the tears welling up around his eyes. Had this strange, sick, twisted girl managed to inject something into his sister?

What he was going to do he did not know, but the girl took advantage of the emotions suddenly overwhelming him – she somehow wriggled free before he could get a grip on her in that smooth suit. He took a few paces to try and catch her, but she was quick – athletically quick – her short skirt helping her in her desperate dash for freedom.

In his hands, he still held the set of syringes.

He did not go to the doctor. For some reason, he felt the sanatorium would not have the capacity to find out what the fluid inside the syringes was. Thing was, he felt he really needed to get to the doctor – he was quite worried about the way he’d been feeling, that weakness and photosensitivity. The truth was, he was confused, not really knowing what was going on, nor what to do about it.

So without really thinking about it, he found himself heading over towards the Fraternity.

“Jesus!” said Jake when he laid eyes on the syringes.

“I found them in one of her pockets,” he explained, still feeling a little nervous though it was obviously all over.

The Frat house was a little empty that morning, seeming oddly quiet and perhaps a little ghoulish as the heavy curtains were drawn across all of the windows. The darkness was comforting to him, however, what with his sensitivity to the sun. The inhabitants of the place were no doubt still sleeping in after a night full of fooling about.

“She must’ve been trying to stick you, too,” Jake said as they both lounged about on the couches in front of morning TV. Jake himself was still wearing a terrycloth night robe. “Man, you gotta be careful. What you doing today?”

“Oh, you know,” he said, “I have a French class after lunch and a few things to take care of before that.”

“Welcome to stay here, dude. I’m sure Vanessa and Jess are around here somewhere…”

“Now there’s an idea,” he said, and Jake grinned, knowing what he was referring to.

“Those girls are very obliging,” Jake said, “and I here they’re quite taken with you.”

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that – maybe this afternoon, huh?”

The truth was, the very extent to which he felt comfort in remaining in the darkness was disturbing him greatly. If he had some kind of virus or disease, it would hardly be a good idea to go passing it around his new friends.

“Look, I’ll be back, huh?” he said, pulling himself to his feet once again.

“Hey, whenever,” Jake said with a mock military solute. The guy seemed somehow stoned – clearly he wasn’t much of a morning person, either.

He felt the pangs of regret tearing at him as he left the soothing confines of Omega-gamma-alpha – it would have been nice to roll around with those two girls again – but he had to prioritise the important things in life. Now he’d pulled back from that suicidal ledge, he was genuinely interested in his health once again.

Striding purposefully towards the sanatorium, he thankfully saw no sign of the blonde girl. But still, he did not feel safe, and took great care to keep an eye all around him for the first signs of her.

Who was she? Why was she after him now, after he had apparently saved her and received oral sex as a reward from her? It just didn’t add up. If she was pure evil, looking to stick syringes into random men, why had she behaved that way with him on that first night? Did she really have anything to so with Sophie’s death? Or was he willing to accept that she was because it added some explanation to the entirely unknown circumstances surrounding his sister’s end.

His contemplation made him take his eye off the ball for a moment or two, and the next time he came to the end of a block, looking this way and that to check for traffic, then in front and behind as he remembered to check for the blonde girl, he received something of a shock.

The black guy who had been sitting with the blonde girl in Sophie’s memorial service was behind him - some yards away, but still, he was there.

“Shit,” he said aloud to himself and received an awkward glance from an old lady who had been standing next to him.

With the white man on the lights signalling that it was safe to walk, he hurried on across the street before taking another twisting route towards the sanatorium. After ten minutes’ walk, it was clear that the man was following him.

Looking back, now, a bead of anxious sweat creeping down his temple, he saw the African-American speaking into some kind of radio or communications device. It wasn’t a mobile – clearly there was something going on here.

Risking it, he belted through moving traffic to flee his pursuer while the man was concentrating on speaking to whoever it was on the other end of the line. On the other side of the street, he saw the guy express silent frustration as the traffic sped up and the street once more became uncrossable.

Miles turned and double backed on himself a few more times to make sure he had lost the guy before making a more resolute path towards the doctor’s office. The exhilaration of losing his tail soon wore off, and he felt that slight feeling of nausea and exhaustion return – the effects of the sunlight. With a deep breath, he focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, desperate to get medical help.

At the back of his mind, he was genuinely worried that the girl had somehow got to him with that syringe.

But his route to the doctor was, quite suddenly, blocked. As he came to a halt by another pedestrian crossing, a black sedan slowed to a halt in front of him, the shaded window winding down to reveal the passenger: the old man who had also been sitting with the blonde in the memorial service.

“We just want to have a talk with you, Mr Scott,” the old man said, his voice sounding so cool, calm and collected, as though he really wasn’t bothered if they had their little talk or not.

Miles saw that the blonde girl was driving the vehicle, and he backed away slightly, but behind him now, he saw the black guy drawing near to close him off. The man was out of breath, clearly having had to run to catch up with him.

“Who the hell are you,” he said. “What the hell do you want with me?”

“That’s what we would like to explain,” the man smiled genially, like a favourite uncle or something. Freak. His skin was pale, almost greyish, somehow inhuman-looking.

“Why the hell does she keep trying to stick syringes into people?” Miles demanded, referring to the blonde girl sitting calmly behind the wheel of the automobile.

“Get in,” the man replied, as if it was the most natural suggestion in the world. “Get in, and we’ll try to let you understand what all this is about.”

Miles looked at the black man now standing next to him. He raised his eyebrows at Miles, in a manner that silently suggested following the old man’s offer. He wanted to follow the old man’s offer – ignorance was tearing at Miles now, the deep and ingrained feeling that nobody was giving him the full facts, that the events over the last few days just didn’t quite make sense.

“If any of you come near me, I’ll break bones,” he warned them all with quiet menace in his voice, correctly assuming the blonde girl had informed them of his abilities in unarmed combat.

“You’ll not be harmed,” the old man promised, “we’ll do nothing to you that you do not specifically agree with, I can assure you.”

Still, Miles was suspicious. “What do you mean, nothing I ‘specifically agree with’?” he asked.

“You’re ill, Mr Scott,” he replied, the uncannily accurate statement startling Miles substantially. “You are, aren’t you? You feel weak, sick, nauseous when you’re exposed to sunlight.”

“How did you – “ Miles was aghast.

“You’re going to feel a lot worse soon enough, I can assure you.”

“What have you done – “ he hissed angrily. “What has she done to me?”

“It’s not us that have made you feel this way,” the old man said without a trace of emotion. “Get in, Mr Scott. We can help you.”

The African-American man opened the back door of the sedan for him, and feeling that he had no option, that this was the only way he was going to find answers – whatever kind they might be – he stepped into the vehicle.

“Good,” the old man said as black man sat beside Miles, closing the door again before the blonde girl pulled away into the main flow of the traffic. “My name is John Graham,” the old man said before introducing the blonde girl and the African-American. “You’ve already encountered Bailey Donovan, of course, and this is Paul Taylor.”

“Hi,” Miles said warily to the others, then asked: “So what’s all this about?”

“How much do you know about the man called Jake, and the people he associates with?” John Graham asked.

“Not much,” he shrugged. “They knew my sister quite well – but she must have got to know them while I was abroad.”

“You were in Japan for just under a year,” Graham said, indicating that they certainly knew more about him than he about them.

“The first time I ever met him – any of them – was in that memorial service the other day.”

“They’re Strain-Five,” Graham said, and Miles did not know what he was talking about.

“What?” he asked.

“They are infected with a kind of virus,” the old man said – although of course, he wasn’t all that old in reality. Perhaps late fifties at the most.

“A virus?”

“Mr Scott, there’s an awful lot you don’t know about this – very few people know about it. That is the way we like to keep it, understand?”

“I suppose so.”

“The virus is very rare, and tends to be passed on only when the carrier intends to pass it to another person,” he explained. “Tell me: have you come into contact with another person’s blood over the past few days?”

“No, of course not, I – “ and then he remembered. The fight. Should he say anything?

“No matter,” Graham said, cutting off his chance to reply. “At some point, you must have. The virus is beginning to take a hold on you. We can cure it – don’t have any fears about that. But we have a slightly different proposition for you than just that.”

And with that, the car pulled into the driveway of a suburban house – quite a nice affair – and the three of them got out, with Miles doing likewise. As they walked inside, he couldn’t stop looking at the blonde girl – Bailey, wasn’t that her name? Her beauty was incomparable.

“This is purely a temporary home,” Graham said as they entered the building, an oddly residential building for the offices of whatever outfit this was, whether temporary or not.

“What does this virus do?” Miles asked, wanting – needing – to know. It was more than a little disturbing to hear he had the kind of virus that drew the attention of these weird types.

“It won’t kill you, Mr Scott,” Grahame said. The four of them came into a living room and found seats on floral couches – clearly, this place was a fully-furnished, rented residential property. “You have Strain-Five of the virus. Basically, it attaches itself to your DNA, altering the properties of your cells very slightly. That’s what viruses do, generally.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your cellular processes will change,” the African-American spoke now – Paul Taylor. He had a pleasant baritone voice, intelligent and somehow trustworthy. “The virus slows the ageing process down to virtually nothing. Your entire body will be strengthened to quite some extent, your cells will regenerate quickly in the case of injury.”

“Sounds perfectly okay to me,” Miles said, his eyebrows raised. This was all a little unbelievable. Perhaps that was why the past few days had seemed so strange.

“There are side-effects,” Graham said.

Bailey took up the briefing now, her voice sultry and seductive – like her entire appearance. Miles felt that if she asked him to do something – anything – a man might find it extremely difficult to resist if he wasn’t careful. She said: “You’ll feel ill when you are exposed to sunlight – the longer you have the virus, the more weak and sick you’ll be when exposed to ultra-violet rays.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“You’ll no longer require just food to survive,” she went on. “You’ll need to feed on the life force of others in order to continue to live much more than a few days.”

“What on earth are you talking about, life force – “

“When Strain-Five kicks in fully, you’ll feel a massive hunger for blood,” Graham said now, and Miles couldn’t help but snigger.

“Blood? What are you, Van Helsing?” he chuckled. “So Jake and the Frat boys are vampires, huh? Why didn’t you just come out and tell me, you jokers? You’re just like a bunch of basketcase cultists who can never admit they’re in a ‘cult’.”

“The virus is exceedingly old, Mr Scott,” Graham said seriously, his face neutral still. “Years ago, it was called vampirism. But not all the myths related to those old stories are true.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Miles shook his head. “That’s just a load of crap.”

“It’s not the blood they feed on, it’s the life force within the blood, Mr Scott. Strain-Five will cloud your mind soon, and you will see ordinary uninfected humans as little more than a food supply, Mr Scott.”

“I’ve heard about people like you, you need to get out more.”

“You look like they’ve already drunk from you, Mr Scott – do they know you’re infected yet? The grey hairs on your head – “

But Miles was up, on his feet. It was all too much. How could any sane man believe all this rubbish, the Bram Stoker, Anne Rice crap which was all very well on the pages of a book but was never more than pure fantasy.

“Keep away from me,” he said, and none of the three even moved from where they sat. “You just keep away from me.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Miles walked out of the building. He didn’t know what the hell they had done to him, but there was no way he was going to believe all that crap. The sun was making his head ache now, he felt drunk somehow, really sick. He had to get back to the Fraternity before he threw up.

Back at the Fraternity, there was no sign of Jake, no real sign of life either, for that matter. Miles took a seat on one of the couches, feeling relief coursing through his veins now that he was out of the sunshine. Thank God.

But why did it feel so good? Why was he so ill? Who had made him ill? Had someone made him ill, or was he just ill? What the hell were those guys talking about back there?

So many questions racing round his mind. They were enough to make him feel dizzy, sickness or not. He felt awful even apart from the illness. He just didn’t feel he could trust anyone now – those guys were plainly crackpots, but they had somehow sown the seed of suspicion in his head about Jake and the other Frat boys.

No, that stuff was ridiculous. Vampires! Wrap it up in all the scientific bullshit you wanted – virus Strain-Five, indeed – it was still bullshit.

“Oh hi, you’re back!”

Suddenly, Jessica bounded over the back of the couch and virtually landed in his lap.

“I missed you,” she purred, squeezing herself against him and kissing his mouth.

She was wearing a man’s shirt, which was entirely unbuttoned. Underneath, her supple breasts were bare and she wore nothing but a pair of white cotton panties. Miles couldn’t help but smile: she wasn’t particularly shy, though they were technically in public.

She giggled and began nuzzling into his neck. Miles smiled and soon found himself in something of a dreamy daze as her sweet perfume filled his nose and his finger caressed her warm, moist pussy through her soft cotton panties.

“Come on…” she whispered, “come upstairs…”

And he did, back to that same room where they found Vanessa, the darker-haired girl who was dressed now in a pink silk kimono and little else.

“Are, you found him!” she said.

In no time at all, they lay, one girl either side of him, now wearing just their panties, writhing on the bed. He found himself kissing Vanessa’s breasts, Jessica’s lips, then the faired-haired girl was astride him, his hard cock protruding from his pants and embedded inside her tight, wet pussy.

As before, it didn’t quite seem real, he felt weak and a little dizzy again, but so charged up by the raw physical contact with the girls. He felt another soft pair of lips gently caressing his throat now, and in his dreamy state, her didn’t realise at first that it was yet another girl. A red head…

“Who are you?”

The stern voice came from the door, and after a brief moment, Miles realised it was addressing him. The girls suddenly broke away from him, the mood shattered as was his dream-like state.

It was Jake, and behind him the Frat boys he’d first come up against were standing there like henchmen behind a James Bond supervillain, their arms folded and expressions grim.

“A friend of the Fraternity saw you getting into a car with those… those freaks,” Jake said bitterly. “Who the fuck are you, man?

Miles felt suddenly confused and a little horrified. “What – “ he said, but didn’t really know what to say. Damn it. How could they think that?

“What are you, undercover?” Jake said angrily. “You’re going to wait until we’re not looking and stick us with one of those syringes you just happened to ‘find’?”

“No – of course not!” Miles insisted, feeling himself blush a little for some reason. “I don’t know what they wanted – they tried to tell me this wild story that you guys are vampires or something – “

“You never went on exchange to Japan, did you? You were probably off training with them.” Jake wasn’t buying his plea of innocence. “We thought you were one of us – we were going to let you join the Fraternity, too. Become a full brother.”