Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

trash bin and opened it with nimble fingers. He proceeded to drag out the motions of rolling a cigarette while he studied the bread line, attempting to look as aloof and indifferent as possible.

What he saw there disturbed his freedom-loving sensibilities, but it wasn’t necessarily hellish or horrific by any means. He watched in mild disgust as each human citizen at the front of the line offered up their arm to the vampiric tenders of the process, tilting their heads to allow their neck tattoo to be inspected and scanned in, like a barcode upon a pre-Storm grocery shop’s inventory.

The tenders took the offered arms without so much as a word and plugged a large catheter-like needle into the citizen’s port; the blood tax paid. Quick and painless, and Ratt only saw a few dozen people faint from dizziness, while the majority simply finished paying their toll and received a small bag of maize and a bottle of milk for their trouble and were sent on their way.

So that’s how things work around here, huh? Blood for food. Freedom for security. Well, I think I’ve seen enough of my fellow humans treated like a commodity. Time to head back to the palace.

Ratt popped his freshly rolled cigarette between his lips and, cupping his hands, lit it up.

He took one last lingering look at the blood-line, then, turning to leave, exhaled a cloud of blue-tinged smoke into the night air.

He arrived back at the palace’s front entrance without any further adventure and was allowed in by the same pair of human guards who had let him out earlier.

Sheesh. These guys not only roll over for, but also serve and protect their overlords. Makes me sick, man.

As he wandered through the darkened corridors, lit here and there by decorative Colonial-style wall sconces, he began to ponder if there were any citizens whatsoever who weren’t so willing to give up their blood to a class that lived at such a higher standard than them, especially when the lower class seemed to be doing all the work.

From what Ratt had seen, it was the humans that made repairs to the roads the vampires provided. They were granted space to make their dwellings, but only the most basic of raw materials were available to them, while all the fine stone and lumber—those materials more rare in this post-Storm world—were saved for the vampires, who then used human labor to build the mansions and human labor to guard the same by daylight.

It was the humans that toiled in the garden plots, the humans that grew and then harvested the maize with which they were paid. The land was within the walls of the vampire-ruled, vampire-owned, and vampire-protected city, and so it was accepted as fair. As he continued to ponder, it seemed more and more to him that the entire system was based on and supported by acceptance alone. Acceptance and belief in the “rightness” and “fairness” of the ruling class and working class. On the surface, it would seem that despite having access to the means of production, and in actuality being the ones who produced the food and maintained the infrastructure, the thought of turning against the ruling class that lived in luxury was as alien to these people as anything that ever crawled from a Drop.

Maybe they accept the situation because they get protection from whatever might come from those Drops…

But what lies on the surface and what probes the depths of men’s dreams are two different things entirely. Ratt pondered this deeply, no longer paying attention to where he was going, but simply walking along the palace corridors, lost in his musings.

Surely they must resent their situation but feel too scared to act… Surely some among them wish to avoid this blood tax and better their lives… but maybe not. Maybe, as ugly as it is, we need to leave these people to sleep in the bed they’ve made? Bending the knee to the bloodsuckers may seem abhorrent, but in this broken world, full of potentially worse monsters, say, Harvesters for example, perhaps living under the yoke of the vamps is worth the protection they receive…

Lost in his thoughts, Ratt failed to recognize that his steps had gone awry three turns ago, and he was nowhere near the suite. He had also failed to notice that the ornate sconces no longer decorated the walls. In their places were ancient, medieval-looking torches in iron brackets, burning loudly with snaps and pops, dripping small flaming bits of tallow to the stone floor.

It wasn’t until he reached the end of the hallway that he realized he was in the wrong place.

Uh-oh. Way to not pay attention, Ratt. Where did I get to?

Where he had expected to find the stairs that led up to the suite, he instead found a set of older, sinister-looking stone steps that curved downward, not upward. They bent toward his right as they disappeared into darkness, the path appearing to be swallowed by shadows. He felt a wave of cool air rising from below, a too-chilly-to-be-refreshing draft.

He was then suddenly struck with that familiar feeling one gets when doing something they shouldn’t or being somewhere they shouldn’t. Ratt glanced over his shoulders, first left, then right. He was alone.

“How did this happen?” he wondered out loud, his spoken voice giving a tactile quality to his circumstances.

For a moment, he thought it best that he turn around, seek out the suite, and apologize to any vampire he might accidentally come across—for it was wise, he thought, to be polite to the wolves when you were the new sheep in town. And turn around he almost did, until he heard a woman’s sobs from down below, the absolute and complete terror in the sound causing goosebumps to rise all over his body.

Silence.

No, he could now hear the crackling of the torches behind him. And his breathing.

The deathly stillness of the hall was interrupted by another scream, the kind of scream that was all