Still Thirsty (Sequel to The Thirst)

Raymond “Ray” Givens followed the bloodmobile for 11 miles before he realized he had absolutely no fucking idea what he planned to do when it stopped. That bothered him. Not the following part. He had already crossed whatever moral boundary separated normal people from men who tailed Red Cross vans through central Missouri because they could smell the contents through two layers of steel, refrigeration equipment, and 70 yards of highway. Ray had accepted that particular problem somewhere around mile six.

               The lack of a plan bothered him.

               Ray had once employed over 20 people. He had built hotels, restaurants, banks, medical offices, and enough commercial shitboxes along Highway 54 that he could drive through half of Missouri and point at buildings he had either constructed, renovated, bid on, or lost money trying to build. He had coordinated concrete crews, electricians, plumbers, inspectors, architects, owners, subcontractors, and one structural engineer Ray remained convinced had earned his license from the back of a cereal box.

               Planning had been one of the things he was good at. Before bourbon. Before mornings started requiring three fingers just to make his hands stop shaking. Before his company became smaller and smaller until eventually it consisted of one employee, one truck, several unpaid invoices, and a man drinking alone in a house he'd built back when his daughter still answered the phone.

               Now he was sober. That should have been the good news. Instead, Ray was following refrigerated human blood down Interstate 44. He laughed. There wasn't anything funny about it, but lately that didn't seem to matter. The van took the next exit. Ray followed. It turned onto a frontage road lined with chain restaurants and hotels, then pulled behind a squat brick building with a sign advertising a community blood drive. Ray drove past without slowing. He made it another quarter mile before turning into a gas station.

               He parked beside an ice machine. His hands were shaking again. Not withdrawal. He knew the difference. The thirst sat beneath his tongue like something alive. Ray closed his eyes. "Fuck." The word helped exactly as much as he expected. He looked toward the convenience store. Coolers covered the back wall. Water. Gatorade. Soda. Energy drinks. Probably 50 gallons of liquid within 30 feet of him.

               None of it mattered. He had learned that already.

               Water filled his stomach and left the thirst untouched. Coffee tasted normal but accomplished nothing. Gatorade made him nauseous. He had tried orange juice once because Emily used to insist he drink it when he was hungover 20 years ago.

               Nothing.

               Bourbon was worse. That still surprised him. For over 20 years, bourbon had been the answer to practically every question Ray asked his body. Hungry? Bourbon. Shaking? Bourbon. Couldn't sleep? Bourbon. Needed to work? Bourbon. Needed to forget he wasn't working anymore? Bourbon. Now the smell turned his stomach. Three months earlier, Ray would have called that a miracle. He supposed technically it still was.

               Miracles, apparently, had fine print. Ray looked into the rearview mirror. He looked better. That pissed him off too. His face had filled out. The yellowish cast was gone from his skin. The broken blood vessels around his nose had faded. His eyes were clear. Even the dark circles beneath them had nearly disappeared. Emily had noticed immediately. "You look really good, Dad."

               He'd heard something in her voice he hadn't heard since she was a teenager. Hope. That was the worst part. If she'd stayed angry, Ray could have handled it. He understood anger. He had earned every ounce of hers. Hope was different. Hope came with responsibility.

               Ray looked back toward the blood drive. A woman in blue scrubs carried a red cooler from the building. His mouth flooded with saliva. "No." She loaded it into the van. The thirst sharpened. Ray gripped the steering wheel. "I'm not killing anybody." He waited. The thirst did not negotiate. "I mean it."

               A man pumping gas two islands over glanced toward him. Ray stared back. The man looked away. "Mind your business." Ray started the truck. He drove home.

               Six months later, Ray stood on the roof of a half-finished medical office outside Osage Beach while a 23-year-old apprentice named Cody Marks tried very hard to fall 30 feet onto a concrete parking lot. Ray saw the mistake before Cody did. "Don't step there." Cody stepped there. The sheet of plywood shifted. Cody disappeared. Ray moved. There wasn't time to think about it. One second he was 10 feet away. The next his knees hit plywood and his right hand closed around the back of Cody's safety harness. Cody screamed. His body slammed against the edge of the roof. Ray held him. For several seconds, neither man moved. Then Cody looked down. "Jesus fucking Christ."

               "Probably wasn't him."

               Cody looked up. Ray pulled. He hauled the younger man over the edge almost one-handed. Cody rolled onto his back. Ray sat beside him. Workers were running toward them. "What happened?"

               "You okay?"

               "Call somebody."

               Cody stared at Ray. "You fucking caught me."

               Ray flexed his right hand. "Apparently."

               "You were over there."

               "Apparently I wasn't."

               "I saw you."

               "Then why'd you ask?"

               Cody opened his mouth. Closed it. Ray stood. "Next time an old man tells you not to step somewhere, try not stepping there."

               Cody continued staring. Ray walked away before anyone could ask another question. His heart wasn't pounding. That was the problem. It should have been. He had just crossed 10 feet of roof faster than a man his age had any business moving and stopped roughly 180 pounds of falling apprentice with one arm. His shoulder didn't hurt. His back didn't hurt. His knees didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. Ray walked toward the roof access and tasted iron on his tongue. He stopped. There it was.

               That warm satisfaction spreading through his chest. The same feeling he'd experienced the first time Emily's blood touched his tongue. Only weaker. Controlled. Ray descended the ladder. Inside the unfinished building, he found the nearest restroom. There was no mirror yet, only drywall and plumbing rough-ins.

               He locked the door anyway. From his shirt pocket, Ray removed a small insulin syringe. He stared at it. "This is fucking ridiculous." Then he rolled up his sleeve and thought “but it is fucking magical.” The vein in the crook of his arm had become easy to find. Practice. Ray drew less than a teaspoon. He didn't need much anymore. He squirted it into his mouth. The thirst disappeared. For a moment, everything became quiet. Ray leaned against the wall. Six months. That was how long he'd been learning the rules.

               His own blood still worked occasionally, but never for long. Animal blood worked better. Human blood worked best. He had not killed anyone. He repeated that fact frequently. Sometimes aloud. He had not killed anyone. He had not attacked anyone. He had not hurt anyone.

               The bloodmobile had turned out to be useless. Ray had followed it to two more stops before realizing that even if he could somehow break into the thing, stealing donated blood meant stealing something meant for a cancer patient, trauma victim, premature baby, or somebody else who probably needed it more than the alcoholic vampire following the fucking Red Cross around Missouri.

               Ray didn't like the word vampire. For one thing, sunlight didn't bother him. Garlic was fine. He'd checked. Twice. Crosses didn't do anything either, although his experience with churches remained limited enough that he considered the research incomplete. He still had a pulse. He still ate food. He still slept. He simply needed blood. Ray preferred condition.

               Doctors liked conditions. Conditions could be managed. And Ray had managed worse. He disposed of the syringe in the small sharps container he kept in his tool bag. Someone knocked. "You shitting in there?" Ray recognized Cody.

               "Yeah."

               "Okay."

               Ray waited. Cody didn't leave. "What?"

               "Nothing."

               "Then go away."

               Another pause. "Ray?"

               "What?"

               "Thanks."

               Ray looked at the locked door. The irritation left him. "You're welcome."

               Cody's boots moved away. Ray looked at the tiny red smear remaining on his thumb. For almost 30 years, almost everything he'd put into his body had made him worse. This was different. Blood made him stronger. Faster. Sharper. It had saved Cody's life. Ray wiped his thumb on a paper towel. Maybe that mattered. Maybe whatever had happened to him wasn't entirely bad. That was the first mistake.

               The second arrived three weeks later in a dark metallic gray Hummer H2. The color and vehicle specifically designed to sell like hotcakes to the douchiest of men. Ray was driving to work on Highway 54 when it came up behind him fast enough that he saw the chrome grille before he noticed the headlights. "Where the fuck are you going?" The Hummer moved left. Passed. Then immediately cut back into Ray's lane. Ray hit the brakes. His coffee launched out of the cupholder and hit the passenger-side floor. "Motherfucker!"

               The Hummer missed his front bumper by maybe six feet. Ray laid on the horn. The driver responded by braking. Not hard. Just enough. Ray felt something old and familiar wake up inside him. It wasn't thirst. It was the part of Raymond Givens that had spent 27 years making bad decisions because somebody had pissed him off. "Don't."

               He wasn't sure whether he meant the Hummer driver or himself. The Hummer accelerated. Ray followed. Not intentionally. That was what he told himself. They were going the same direction. That happened. At the next light, Ray pulled alongside. The Hummer's window was down. The driver looked over.

               Silver hair.

               Not gray.

               Silver.

               Cropped short like a Marine Corps private but enough gel and wax to look like the man had spent 40 minutes making it appear he'd spent none. Maybe 50 years old. Mirrored sunglasses. Expensive ones. White polo shirt. Tan skin. The kind of face Ray instinctively disliked. The man smiled. Then raised two fingers from the steering wheel in a tiny apologetic wave. Not an apology. Worse. Acknowledgment.

               Yes, I did that.

               The light turned green. The Hummer drove away. Ray sat still long enough for the car behind him to honk. He looked in the mirror. "Fuck you too." Then he drove to work. By 9:00am, he'd mostly forgotten about it. By 6:00pm, he'd forgotten completely.

               At 7:30pm, Ray walked into the basement of St. Mark's Lutheran Church for his Tuesday night AA meeting and saw the silver-haired man sitting in the second row. Ray stopped. The man was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Of course he was. "Ray."

               He looked toward the voice. Tom Becker waved him over. Ray had been attending meetings for four months. Emily had suggested it. Suggested was the word she used. Ray understood what she meant. He hated AA. Not sobriety. Sobriety was fine. He hated AA. He hated the slogans. He hated the folding chairs. He hated shitty coffee. He hated the phrase my sobriety journey. He quit drinking. That was what happened. But apparently quit drinking wasn't spiritual enough, so everybody needed to act like sobriety was a fucking pilgrimage. Most of all, Ray hated being told alcoholism was cunning, baffling, and powerful. Bourbon wasn't cunning. Bourbon had never tricked him. It sat in a bottle. Ray drank it. Responsibility seemed fairly easy to assign. Still, Emily liked that he attended. So Ray attended. He privately called it the cult. Nobody needed to know that. Ray sat beside Tom. "Who's the asshole?"

               Tom looked around. "You're going to have to narrow it down."

               Ray nodded toward the silver hair. "Oh. Rusty?"

               "His name is Rusty?"

               "Rusty Piper."

               Ray considered this. "Of course it is."

               Tom laughed. "You know him?"

               "No."

               Rusty stood. Apparently, it was his turn to speak. "Hi, everybody. I'm Rusty, and I'm an alcoholic."

               The room responded. Ray did not. Rusty smiled. Ray recognized the smile from the Hummer. And suddenly he remembered every inch of the man's face. He didn't know yet that three months later Rusty Piper would be lying in a hospital bed with steri-strips across his abdomen. He didn't know Rusty would need help. He didn't know Ray would volunteer. And he certainly didn't know that the first time he smelled Rusty Piper's blood sitting in a baseball sized hematoma right over one of the incisions, every rule he'd spent nine months building would become completely fucking useless.