“Did what?” Jack asked.
“The thing that changed all of our lives forever. The thing that might change the world eventually. He completed the ritual and did the Taking for the first time.”
SIXTY-THREE
Max sipped the last of the bourbon from his glass. He considered the ice leftover as if perplexed where all the booze had gone, then, defeated, sat the glass on the table beside him.
“Huckley reached out with a finger and wiped the blood off the wall. I remember holding my breath, thinking the substance might start burning him, that maybe it was acid or poison. But Huckley knew what he was doing. He held the finger up to the Boss, showing off a little, then held out his other arm for us all to see. Huckley, like the rest of us, had scratches all over his body from the hard climb down to the cave. He located a fresh cut and wiped the blood on his finger into the wound. We thought he was crazy and cried out to stop him, but he just kept rubbing it. Then he wiped away the blood on his shirt and held his arm back up for to see the results for ourselves. The cut was gone. It had healed completely. That’s when we started to understand what we had found. The cave was the Source of healing. The Source of eternal life.”
“The only catch is that you have to murder innocent little girls to get it,” Lonetree said.
“And that’s quite a catch, isn’t it? Everything has its price. It seems almost fitting that something so miraculous should come so expensively. The carvings and the skeletons in the cave made it clear that women were the desired sacrifice. It was over a week before we could capture one and bring her down to the cave. The Taking went the same way but the life-giving blood that had trickled after poor Jeter was killed now gushed from the rock after the girl was sacrificed. This time Huckley drank from it, suckled the hole in the rock wall like it was a teat. No one else dared until we saw what it did to him.”
“Which was?”
“You still don’t get it, do you? This stuff is the cure-all. The ultimate antibiotic. The fucking fountain of youth. No disease or virus can touch us. The cells in my body don’t break down. I don’t age. Watch.” With surprising quickness, Max grabbed the glass on the table and smashed it with his hand. It shattered, sending shards of glass deep into his skin. Max held up his hand and pulled out the glass, wincing as he did so. “Still hurts like a bitch though.” Blood gushed from his wounds, running down his forearm. Slowly, the flow of blood tapered off, then stopped altogether. He held the hand out toward Jack. “See, look at the skin. It’s already growing back.”
Jack leaned forward and saw what he was pointing to. The wound closed in on itself. Within seconds it was completely sealed.
“Dear God,” Jack breathed.
“Neat trick,” Lonetree said. “Want to see how you do with a bullet through the chest?”
Max nodded. “He’s right. We’re not immortal, not by a stretch. Cut off my head, or shoot me through the heart, and I’m as dead as the next guy.”
“I guess the movies about vampires were right, huh? A wooden stake through the heart and all that,” Lonetree said.
“You might laugh,” Max said, “but I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if the myths about vampires don’t have some truth to them.”
“Come on,” Jack said.
“No, I’m serious. Not flying bats, pointy teeth and that bullshit, but the root mythology. The idea that beings exist who are biologically capable of transforming the energy of other living things into a reusable resource. And that blood is the bridge to make it happen. The myth is all over the place when you start looking for it. Think about it. Isn’t this really about the blood being transformed into life? What do you think Christians do every time they take communion? Doesn’t the catechism talk about the blood of Christ being the source of life and salvation?”
“I think it’s a stretch,” Jack said.
“Maybe, but there are other cases. The statues of the Virgin that cries tears of blood. Healing tears, Jack, just like the blood from the Source. The Aztecs sacrificed hundreds of people a day to their gods. They ripped still-beating hearts from the chests of their victims. Wasn’t that blood cult the same thing? The same mythology of giving blood to a god in return for life?”
“So what are you trying to say? That the Source is a god?”
Max lowered his head into his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. I’m just trying to make sense of it, you know. Maybe if there was a higher purpose then it would all make sense.” Max was still coherent, but it was obvious he was having trouble focusing. Jack wondered how much time they had left before their source of information passed out.
“You mean the killing you’ve done would make sense,” Lonetree said.
Jack tried to move Max’s attention away from Lonetree. “If you’ve already had this serum, why go on killing?”
“The Source always wants more sacrifices. And we need to drink the transmuted blood regularly for it to work.”
“And Sarah. Why her?”
Max shook his head. “I’m not sure. Huckley and the Boss have been working on some project together for years. Maybe Sarah has something to do with that. One thing I can tell you is that Huckley’s psychic abilities have gone to a different level recently. I mean, over time, each of us developed something almost like a mutation. Kind of like a gift from the Source. For Huckley, it was his special abilities.”
“What was yours?” Lonetree asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You said you all changed from Taking. How about you? What was your gift?”
Max’s eyes drifted to the back of the room. Both Lonetree and Jack checked over their shoulders to make sure no one had sneaked in behind them, but there was nothing there. When Jack turned back he recognized Max’s expression as the same one he had seen at Piper’s when they were talking about Jesse’s heart disease. Max was in a different time and place, somewhere far away, before his girl was sick, before his world came to an end.
“Max?” Jack said.
Max jerked his head back as if he had been slapped, as if the force of his return to the here and now was more physical than emotional. “My gift? It was nothing. Nothing important.”
Jack decided to leave the obvious lie alone. He was getting impatient. Every minute spent trying to coax information out of Max was a minute lost in the race to save Sarah. “Huckley then. Tell me more about Huckley.”
“I never really understood his powers. Honestly, I never tried. I’d like to tell you I was curious about all the odd things that happened, but I can’t. If anything, I prayed to know less than I did. Maybe that makes me a coward, but it’s the truth. I never asked for this. Not even back then.”
“But that didn’t stop you from Taking, did it?” Lonetree said.
Max nodded, “Eternal life. Life without sickness or disease. The temptation is too great. You can both sit there and judge me all you want, but you weren’t there. It wasn’t offered to you. And until it is, you can’t ever understand the power of it. Immortality is a narcotic; it lures you in and makes you a slave until you’ll do anything to have it.” Max looked away again. “You’ll do things you wouldn’t believe.”