Blood (First Draft)

When there is civilization, there are epidemics.  The year is XXXX and a brand new epidemic has broken out.  A new pathogen, dubbed Blutungen Tod, or simply BT for short.  Discovered by a German pathologist, the term translates into “Bleeding Death” and it circulates through the body and destroys the blood cells, leaving the body to die out from Oxygen deprivation.  Nobody is certain where Blutungen Tod originated, they just know that appeared one of the blue one night and very rapidly evolved into an epidemic.  It seemed Earth’s population was going to die out completely, but the world’s governments came together and created a cure, or at least a method of containing it.  The solution came in the forme of a new synthetic blood, simply known as “New Blood”.  Buildings were put up in every town, several in cities, where the residents go in weekly, are hooked up to a transfusion machine, and the New Blood is fed into the body as the infected blood is removed.  Seemed like perfection at first with all of the countries working together and a cure for what was thought to bring about human extinction, but with new government ideas comes new government enforcement to enforce payments and other things.  The governments had created a special branch of police, officially titled Blood Enforcement Officers, but based upon their policy for stolen blood or other offenses, they are known to the public as “Vampires”.  A fitting term considering when caught with any offense, they remove the offender’s port and allow the pathogen to take hold again.
Several years after the rise of the Blutungen Tod pathogen, a man is waiting for his weekly transfusion.  He stands in the clinic mindlessly looking about the room.  He sees a couple of nurses carrying several bags of New Blood to and fro.  As he stands waiting, he hears some commotion followed by a man’s yell.  The man to whom the yell belonged came bursting out of the back room running and is followed by a couple of Vampires.  They catch him and take him back.
“What did he do?”  Inquired the man to the nurse.
“It’s best for you to mind yourself,” she responds, “now, Edsel Church, I presume?”
“Yes, I am.  Here’s my Blood Card.”
The nurse quickly types the seven digit ID number.
“Here’s your card.  Please enter the door to my left.”
“Alright.”
“Have a wonderful day, Mr. Church, and we shall see you next week.”
He walks into the room and the doctor in the room takes a glance at the ID number on the computer and the sees that it matches the ID number on Edsel’s port, grabs a blood bat, and hooks Edsel up.  The transfusion begins and Edsel watches as the tubing changes from empty and clear to crimson and filled.  The blood flows into the machine as he watches, half dazed.  After the blood has completely entered the machine, Edsel faints due to his body’s being without blood and the doctor picks up the designated blood bag and places it into the machine, where it begins to flow in reverse in order to replace the vacancy inside of his body.  Edsel’s pale flesh begins to return to colour as the blood begins to set in and flow throughout his body.
He awakes several minutes later to doctor writing up a follow up appointment card for the following week to repeat the process all over again.  Edsel stands up and exits the room so that the next patient may enter.
When he gets outside of the operating room, he sees another man being chased down by the Vampires.  Edsel tries to keep walking, remembering what the nurse had told him, but his curiosity got the best of him.  When all of the patients in the clinic were distracted watching the Vampires detain the man, Edsel slipped into the back where he saw them take the last man.  Once he gets into the back, he hides as the Vampires come with the man.  Edsel watches as they strap him onto a table.  One of the doctors walks into the back and asks,
“So, who have we got here?”
“He is a repeat offender.  We have detained him for several other reasons prior to this.  Shall we terminate?”
“Do as you will,” replied the doctor.
The Vampires, then, remove the man’s IV cable, which Edsel noticed had been removed and replaced several times.
“Commence euthanization of the convict.”
A Vampire comes over next to the man and places a laceration on either side of the man’s throat and tilts the table so the blood runs out into a collection bin on the ground.  Edsel releases a gasp out of horror.  This catches the Vampires’ attention.  Edsel sees that they have discovered his presence, and he darts for the door.  The Vampires proceed to pursue him, quickly catching up and detaining him.  They drag him into the back room.
“This man is a first time offender.  What shall our course of action be?”
“Just disappear this one.  We still have the last man tethered up to the table.”
Edsel feels his IV cable being removed by the Vampires, then, feels a bag being placed over his head.
He hears subtle commotion and feels the uneven pattern of travel.  They are no longer on the road he thinks to himself.  The next thing he knows, the restraints on his wrists has been removed and the sound of a vehicle driving off in the distance.  Edsel removes the bag from his head and sees that he is on the outskirts of the city.  He has been banished, disappeared, left for the BT to set in and leave him dead.
Edsel wanders around the desert outside of the city.  As he wanders about, Edsel realizes he had been thrown out almost five days ago.  He has only two days left of this blood circulation before the Blutungen Tod takes hold completely and he dies.  Perhaps even less do to the blood loss.  He feels weak and nauseous due to the BT taking effect in his blood stream once again, and due to the blood loss from where the IV cable was, which he thought was weird.
“Why is my arm still bleeding?  It should have coagulated by now and scabbed over.  It must be one of the effects of the BT on my system.”
The nausea finally takes its toll on him.  Edsel collapses down to his knees and begins to black out.  As he slips from consciousness, he sees the blur of a figure approach him.  Edsel mutters something that even he does not know or understand.
Edsel comes to.  He looks about the room curiously.  He does not recognize any of his surroundings.  There are empty blood bags stacked up next to a trash bin, a random assortment of medical books and journals, and several interesting taxidermy works of animals that he remembered seeing in a book of species that used to roam Earth and a skeleton display.  It was not until almost ten minutes of gazing about the room that he began to wonder how long he had been out and, more importantly, how he is still alive due to his blood.  A nurse approaches him.  She looks thin, but not malnourished, well coloured in the skin that he could see, and about average height.  Edsel is slightly frightened, for he does not know if he had been captured by the Vampires or not.  She removes her mask and in a gentle, almost motherly, voice says,
“Well good morning!”
“Wh-where am I?  Who are you?”
“Oh, my apologies, my name is Elizabeth and I found you out in the desert without an IV.  I brought you in to my house and hooked you up to a new IV that I had lying around and hooked you up to a blood bag I also had lying about.”
Edsel looks over to the blood bag and notices the number.  L135.  The number of his usual blood bags.
“How did you have my blood?” Edsel asked.
“Well, let me start from the beginning of where you are.  I was once one of the nurses working at the clinics that I’m sure you’re well familiar with now.  I was caught disobeying the Blood Enforcement’s laws and I was to be banished, but instead I grabbed a large box full of varying blood types and left out here where I could live into my old age and try to find a cure for Blutungen Tod.  There are only four different sets of numbers so all I had to do was take a sample from you and match it with what I had stored.”
“Well, thank you very much.  You’ve saved my life.  My name is Edsel, by the way.”
“It’s the least we could do for a fellow outcast, Edsel,” said an unknown voice.
The owner of the voice walks into the room.
“Hi, my name is Isabella.  I have been studying this pathogen almost since the day it began.”
Edsel, Elizabeth, and Isabella talk and become acquainted.  They seem to be living on their lives alright, with Isabella studying the Blutungen Tod, Elizabeth transfusing Edsel, and Edsel explaining what Dystopia society had become since the Blutungen Tod got way out of hand.
Two days later, late at night, Isabella runs into Edsel’s room waking him up.  She, in a panic, yells to Edsel,
“Come on, Edsel, we need to leave now!  The Vampires found us.”
Isabella, then, unhooks Edsel from the operating table where they were studying his blood and they run to their escape.
“Wait, what about Elizabeth?”
Almost as if on cue, Elizabeth comes around the corner and says,
“I’ll distract them.  You and Isabella need to leave now, and remember to mind the letters on the blood bags.”
As Isabella and he rushes out of the house to safety, they both witness Elizabeth’s head being bagged by the Vampires and, then, her being dragged away.  Edsel and Isabella both hold back tears for their fallen friend.
Edsel and Isabella run for quite a while, but then end up at a midsized house.  Isabella assures Edsel,
“We will be safe here.  The Vampires neither know of this area, nor is it in their jurisdiction.”
She opens the door, and inside is a massive laboratory.
“Welcome to my lab, Edsel.  This is where I usually spend my time.  Until the day Elizabeth and I found you in the desert, we thought we were the only ones to escape with our lives, she saved me as well as you, and she will be missed.  She was a good teammate and friend.  But her sacrifice shall not be in vain, for now in my laboratory I can study and try and find a cure for Blutungen Tod, using both you and me as subjects, if you are alright with that, of course.”
“Absolutely.  I will do anything I can to help put an end to this epidemic.”
Isabella, then, proceeds to take a sample of Edsel’s blood and over the night attempted to create a clone of the blood so they have as much as needed.  Isabella hooks Edsel up to the new product to test it out.  Edsel watches the crimson liquid flow through the dialysis tubing into his body.  Everything seems great.  No issues showed up, until, all of the sudden Edsel’s eyes turn bloodshot, and he begins to cough up blood, then, Edsel throws up a large quantity of blood.  Panicked, Isabella unhooks Edsel from her synthesized blood and set him back up with the normal New Blood and Edsel returned to normal.
“Now, why did your body react that way to this blood?  For all intents and purposes it is your blood.”
“Well, maybe it was too thin or something?”
“No, there is something more to it than that.  I’ll look into it.”
She goes and studies a sample of Edsel’s blood bag and a sample of her clone solution.  She studies the two and then, suddenly, she finds her solution.
Edsel was sitting in the living room just thinking about all of the events that have been happening when, all of the sudden, Isabella comes into the room.
“The New Blood Company has been poisoning us in order to sell their blood.”
“What are you talking about, Isabella?”
“Well, I was studying the two samples of blood, and I found in the Company’s version, there were dormant Blutungen Tod strains.  The New Blood contains an inhibiter that keeps the Pathogen dormant.  They introduced the pathogen through the very thing they were saying was saving us from it.”
“So, that would explain why people die when taken off of the New Blood, because the strains that took hold in our bodies now activate, and why when you put me back onto the New Blood I saw immediate results.”
“Exactly!  And that’s not all I found.  I also found a cure for Blutungen Tod.”
“What?!  Really?!”
“Well, in theory at least.  I need you to be a guinea pig for me.”
Edsel mulls over the idea for a moment and then responds,
“I’ll do it!  Even if I die, it will help ultimately to find a cure!”
“Alright, you have about a day left on that New Blood so I will test out the cure on you tomorrow.”
The next day comes along, and Isabella leads Edsel into the laboratory and sets him up in a scene that seems very familiar.  It seems almost like when he would be receiving the New Blood.  She hooks him up to a dialysis machine and instead of a New Blood bag she hooks Edsel up to a clear liquid.  Edsel does not even ask what it is composed of, he just knows that if it works, could mean an end to this horrid pathogen and the corrupt New Blood Company.
“Edsel, are you ready for transfusion?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Alright, commencing transfusion of the blood cleanser.”
Edsel watches the blood flow out of his body into the transfusion machine, and the clear liquid flow into him and then vice versa again.  Edsel feels a tad nauseous during the process, but Isabella assures him that would be normal due to his body readjusting to his natural blood.  Finally though, the process comes to an end.  She unhooks Edsel from the dialysis machine and asks,
“How do you feel, Edsel?”
“I feel great.  Actually, the best I have ever felt my entire life.”
“That’s a good sign.  I guess tomorrow will be the ultimate judgment, though.  We shall see if you live or die.”
The following day comes, and Edsel is still alive and well.
“Now, Isabella, we tell the world of this.”
Edsel returns to the city with Isabella, with the mission to inform the city of what the Company had done.  As they walk past places Edsel used to go daily, the people were astounded by the fact that he was still alive after months of exile without access to New Blood.  Edsel sets up a rally in the square.  He walks up to the microphone and speaks.
“Ladies and gentlemen hiding in the shadow of New Blood and the Vampires.  The Company may be supplying you with blood to negate the effects of the Blutungen Tod, but they have neglected to mention that they were the ones to give it to you in the first place.”
“I thought it was discovered in Germany!” yells a crowd member.
“It was.  The pathogen was tiny and easily containable, until the New Blood Company found the pathogen in their hands.  They put it in the New Blood to infect us and make us their puppets!”
As Edsel talks, some people nod in agreement and others scoff the very notion.  The Company must have heard word of this plan because Vampires arrive at the square and threaten to exile anybody who follows Edsel’s views.  Many people rise up into a riot and fight back against the Vampires, some being detained, some running away, and others bringing them down.
While all of this chaos was going on, Edsel manages his way into the Company to talk to the president of the New Blood Company.  He finds the president overlooking the square and witnessing the events that are transpiring.
“You have managed to stir up quite a ruckus haven’t you,” said the President.
“Mr. President, you have poisoned us and expect us to take that lying down?” Edsel pulls a gun on the President, “you must be truly naïve.”
The president pulls out a gun himself and says,
“You make it sound like I’m evil.  All I merely am is a man who saw a pathogen taking over the world and sought to cure it.  New Blood is the future of mankind because it is clean and keeps out the Blutungen Tod, but seeing as how you have gone and made a mess of things, you need to be dealt with.” The president points the gun at Edsel and cocks it, “now since exile didn’t kill you, I have to do it myself.”
Blam!  Off goes a gun.  The president of the Company falls dead.  Edsel was a quicker shot.
Edsel appears on the big screen that once used to broadcast the president,
“All of you who are willing, step into the Company’s main clinic in order to be cleanses like I have.”
The people are hesitant, then, a Vampire steps out behind Edsel.  Everybody observes in terror as they expect the Blood Enforcement Officer to kill Edsel, but instead, the Vampire removes his helmet and badge and asks,
“Please will you allow me to be cleansed?”
With this, the people began to flood into the clinic for cleansing, Isabella filling in for the nurses and Edsel for the president.  Life was beginning to return to normality.  No more worrying about getting to a clinic on time, no more worrying about the Vampires coming after anybody.  Life was returning to its former self.
The End