23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(62)

“This one is worthy of James Bond,” he said, and got a few laughs. He was about fifty years old and handsome. The majority of the students in his class were female and he certainly didn’t lack for attention, though of course Clara didn’t swing that way. He handed the flashlight to Clara with a smile. “Turn it on,” he said.

She flipped its switch and a beam of light, barely visible under the shade of the tree, lit up the side of the classroom building. She waved it around for a second to show all the students it was on.

“Notice anything about it? Anything different from a normal flashlight?”

Clara studied it carefully. “This part is kind of strange,” she said, not sure what you called the front end of a flashlight. There was a thick ring of metal around the lens, which was divided into two pieces separated by a strip of rubber.

The professor nodded. “Very good. Now, touch it against my arm, here.” He rolled up his sleeve.

Clara raised one eyebrow, not sure where this was going, but she did as she was told, leaning over to tap it against his bare skin.

“Goddamn it!” the professor swore, jerking his arm away from the flashlight.

Some of the students laughed. Some gasped. Clara jerked the flashlight away from him and then dropped it on the grass.

“My apologies for startling you, Miss Hsu,” the professor said, smiling again. He looked a little pale. He picked the flashlight up from where it had fallen. “What we have here is a stun gun built into a police-grade flashlight. Pretty cool, huh? We’re going to talk today about electroshock weapons. It’s important you know about them because they’re being used more and more in police work and you need to understand how they work and what effect they have on the bad guys. We’re also going to take turns shocking each other so you all know what it feels like.”

There were a few unhappy murmurs. Then the professor insisted that the student next to Clara take the flashlight and shock his neighbor. That student jumped up to his feet and staggered backward a few steps before laughing and sitting back down. Then he got to shock the girl next to him in the circle. It looked like Clara would be the last in line and that the professor would be the one to shock her. She pulled her knees in tighter in anticipation.

“This is actually a very weak shock, as they go,” the professor said, raising his voice to compete with the giggles and stifled screams. “A real stun gun doesn’t just sting. It causes involuntary contraction of every muscle in your body. You fall down. You bend over at the waist. You get muscle spasms in your arms that make you drop any weapon you’re holding. You can see why the police like this. If someone is resisting arrest or threatening a civilian, one good solid shock can just… remove the problem.”

One of the students raised her hand and the professor nodded at her. “I’ve heard there are problems with them, though. That there have been some deaths,” she said.

The professor nodded agreement. “Yes, there have. The manufacturers of these weapons claim they’re perfectly nonlethal as long as they’re used according to strict instructions. But police officers in the field can never guarantee perfect conditions when they’re using a new weapon they’ve had only a few hours’ training in. The main thing you need to know about this is that every human body is different. A football linebacker in perfect physical shape is going to have a very different reaction to a stun weapon than an elderly woman suffering from a heart condition. The electric shock is low in amperes but extremely high in voltage: some electroshock weapons can deliver over a hundred thousand volts over a multisecond pulse. Most people will experience some muscle paralysis, a great deal of pain, and a desperate need to lie down. But the duration of those effects varies widely from individual to individual. The general rule of thumb is that a young, healthy, well-rested person will be incapacitated for a few seconds, while an older, sick or physically unfit, tired person can be out of action for several minutes. Now, Miss Hsu. Would you mind taking off your jacket?”

Clara looked up. She hadn’t noticed that the flashlight had come all the way around the circle. She took off her wind-breaker, then pushed up the sleeve of her sweater. “Does it hurt a lot?” she asked. The professor leaned toward her.

She opened her eyes. Her mouth was full of hair, and it wasn’t her own.

Coughing it out, she forced herself to sit up, though it hurt like hell. Every muscle down her side was sore as if she’d been working out for hours but only exercising her left arm and left leg.