Bloodistan // Vampire Thriller

3.2

The hotel food court looked tomblike. All the lights were off save for one in the middle of the room above the largest table, the orange glow flickering annoyingly off the stainless-steel surface. The windows were drawn shut and none of the bored young kids who made up the service staff were to be seen.

Al was standing in the corner of the room, phone in one hand and steaming coffee mug in the other. He winked at Tasha when she walked in.

"Good morning, Natasha. Did you sleep well?" Kenneth was in a black long-sleeve T-shirt and a pair of grey slacks. Even the T-shirt looked business-like on him.

"I did, yeah. And you?"

"Oh, beautifully. Beautifully. Can I get you some coffee?"

"That'd be lovely." She pulled up a chair and sat down, laying her bag on the table in front of her. Kenneth was nervous, that much she could tell. His ropy arms were taut under the fabric of his shirt and she could see his hands shaking as he placed a chipped ceramic mug under the coffee machine.

Helen walked in, dressed in a black denim shirt and blue jeans. Tasha began to feel very overdressed. She understood the point of the whole thing. Why dress up when you're going to deal with the dead or something like that. They must have discussed this during cigarettes last night. Or maybe she was just being paranoid.

"Good morning, Helen. Coffee for you as well?" Kenneth asked.

"Yes please." Helen pulled a seat up next to Tasha and sat down, huffing. "You used up all the hot water," she said, thumbing through her phone.

"Well we can't all be as hot as you, can we?" Tasha stuck her tongue out.

"Oh, keep fanning, my darling."

"What's that?" Kenneth asked, setting down two coffees on the table and sitting opposite them.

"I was just saying the fans weren't working in our room last night. What about in yours?" Helen's voice was as sweet as always, her eyes adorably inquisitive and her face straight. Tasha covered her mouth with her hand.

"It was pretty cold in our room, actually. I don't think I even noticed there was a fan. Was it hot in your room?"

A snort escaped Tasha and she converted it into a cough last minute.

"Yeah it was, actually. I was in it, wasn't I?" Helen asked.

"Huh?"

Before Kenneth had time to contemplate further, Al pulled up a chair next to him putting his phone on the table between them. "Right, so I just got off the phone with security detail. They should be here by six thirty."

Kenneth checked his watch. "Six now."

"Yeah," Al said. "So, I think we should go over today's itinerary before they show up. Because it looks like it'll just be bang-bang after that." He punctuated each bang by slapping a fist against his open palm.

Tasha took a sip of her coffee. "Sounds good."

"Okay. So..." he scrolled through his tablet. "We start at seven. Broad daylight, I suppose. It'll be a little convoy. Just three vehicles but it's an established route so I don't think it's a problem. Basically, I've been told it's the same route the blood-transport trucks follow. We should reach the fence by seven thirty and after all the formalities there, we'll be in Octopus territory by eight. Contact is scheduled at ten. We can spend a total of four hours with the octopus haemophages and assuming none of them eat us, we'll be back here by teatime."

"I thought Americans didn't drink tea," Helen said.

"That habit's rubbed off. Any other questions?"

"No, I'm just really excited."

All of them turned to Kenneth who sat with an absurdly earnest smile on his face, his slicked back hair glowing in the orange glare.

"Do you really think we'll learn anything?" Tasha asked quietly, her eyes locked with Kenneth's.

"Huh?" He looked taken-aback, like he couldn't even comprehend why she'd ask something so absurd. "Yes, I do. Most certainly. What about you, Natasha?"

Tasha wrapped a curl around her finger and tugged at it. "I don't think so. I don't think it matters, anyway. It's like the Catholics writing treatises and Summas about whether or not the indigenous tribal populations they came across had souls. Whether they did or they didn't, what did it matter? The Catholics were the Catholics. The tribals were the tribals."

"There were more Catholics than tribals. And there are more of us than there are of them. They can speak, right? And like Mister Karim was saying yesterday, their cognition is in some cases even more advanced than ours, right? So, if they're thinking, living creatures, do we have any right to inflict so much pain on them? How would you feel if all the chickens in the coop decided to shoot you with silver slugs when you went to slaughter them?" Kenneth's voice was morphing as he spoke. His bass rumble and his inflections were changing from his clipped, polite conversational tone to the flowing, rhythmic diction he adopted while speaking at the final Security Council session the four of them attended.

Tasha looked him in the eye for a while. Then, she shook her head and finished her coffee. She wondered how she hadn't realized how absurd this whole thing always was. What was the point of talking to the vampires if you weren't born here? Would you see the point in reasoning with something which might have taken your sister or your mother? She also realized how stupid she must have seemed to everyone she had met form the old days. Miss Alghami and Tyador, Chief of Police now. Aunty Gigi and Samira. Even Cihangir. Worse still, she wondered how many of them saw this whole thing as a betrayal.

"You know, Mister Karim also said I looked divine in that hideous purple dress thing I was wearing yesterday," Helen said. "So, I don't know if his claims can be considered one hundred percent valid all the time."

No one laughed.

Thank you for reading this part. If you enjoyed it, please let me know what you thought down in the comments. There'l be a brief two day hiatus till the next part so stay tuned.