AfterAge

by Yvonne Navarro

  Anyelet studied him thoughtfully. "Perhaps we could use some new blood." Her black gaze slid briefly in Rita's direction.

  "All right!" Gabriel swiftly buried his fingers in the woman's curly hair and yanked her head back, exposing her white throat with its richly filled arteries. Vic's huge hand shot out and covered Gabriel's wrist in a crushing hold. Gabriel yelped and released the woman; her head thumped to the floor and she gave a soft moan as Gabriel cried, "Hey!"

  Anyelet glanced at Vic sharply and he released Gabriel. The younger vampire rubbed his wrist in bewilderment. "What the hell's your problem?"

  "I just thought the Mistress might want to . . ." Vic couldn't bring himself to say it and a play of thoughts crossed Anyelet's features, then she smiled slyly.

  "No. I think she should be yours, Vic."

  "Why him?" Gabriel protested.

  Anyelet cut him off with a glare. "Because that's what I want." She smiled again. "I think Vic could use a companion."

  Companion? It was something Vic had never considered and his eyes sought the woman collapsed at his feet. Impossible—she'd probably despise him as much as he despised Anyelet. Yet . . . she might enjoy the new "life," as had hundreds of thousands of others. He shied away from the threat of Rita's ugly temperament and remembered instead the lonely nights in the echoing, empty Mart and on the city streets before the outcasts had become such a danger. Could the time stretching ahead be shared with someone?

  He had to try it.

  Vic picked her up in one smooth movement, feeling her warm skin and already regretting that it would soon be as bloodless and cold as his own. The life within her ebbed and swelled with each heartbeat, her pulse surging against the insides of his arms. Gabriel's envious stare and Rita's more vicious one followed him as he quickly carried his burden down the steps and out of the auditorium, grimacing and averting his eyes from Rita; the wreckage of her face was indescribable and far too great to ever heal. Following Anyelet's instructions, Gabriel swung the woman's weapon over his shoulder, then went to help Rita; in another few seconds, the group joined him at the Columbus Drive exit. Outside the locked doors the snow gleamed, white and unbroken beyond the driveway overhang. Gabriel gave one set of doors a petulant kick and they shattered; in vies arms the woman mumbled something, trapped in her own ominous dream.

  "Unless you want her screams to draw every outcast for miles," Anyelet commented, "I suggest you get her to the Mart as quickly as possible. Gabriel will run with you in case you're attacked. Rita and I will follow."

  Gabriel frowned. "What about the outcasts?"

  Anyelet’s smile was a dull red slash in the night. "They don't dare challenge me."

  Gabriel nodded and looked at Vic. Without bothering to speak, Vic held the woman close and began to run.

  ~ * ~

  It was done.

  Vic would have liked to have thrown up, but there was no way his body would allow him that cleansing luxury. He'd learned a lot during the melding of minds as he'd feasted, the least of which was her name—Deborah Nole—and more important, that she'd had a lover as recently as last night, a man called Alex. Still, even as her human body died, she'd fought the meld and kept his location so buried within her that Vic couldn't get to it, and the will such resistance entailed was beyond his comprehension. Now she slept beside his own sated and lazy form. He'd forgotten the feeling of fullness, of completion, that changing someone brought; it left in him a desire for more, and he hated it, and hated himself, too, for sacrificing the life of this splendid, strong woman on the oh-so-vague chance that his loneliness might be eased the slightest bit. He told himself that he was saving her from worse—Siebold—but what was Vic himself, really? Only another rapist, of a more unspeakable kind. At least in death she would've found whatever eternal peace awaited humankind. Now she simply had . . . hell.

  And what of Deb's lover, Alex"? The determination with which she'd protected him even in death told Vic that the woman sleeping unwillingly within his arms, her porcelain-pale flesh forever chilled, would probably detest him from the instant she opened her eyes and felt The Hunger.

  Vic sighed and pushed a curl of blue-black hair off her forehead. It was a waste that her sky-blue eyes would turn eventually to black, though at least the bruises his bloodkiss had left on her neck would be faded by dawn. Deborah Nole had never even opened her eyes. What a shame.

  He would have liked to have seen her soul before it turned to the nightside.

  ~ * ~

  Three A.M.:

  In an alcove of St. Peter's, her face a shining, hopeful oval in the dimness, Jo knelt before the rack of votive candles. She'd lit them all half a hundred—as she'd voiced her prayers for Deborah Nole, and now they flickered like the winking red eyes of tiny nightthings, forever seeking freedom from their metal cradles.

  Like Deb.

  Deborah Nole had died an hour ago. Jo had known when it was happening, had felt the life-force drain as surely as her own knees felt the stone floor at the foot of the altar, helpless and bound to the church by a Will not her own as her neck experienced the agony of the beast piercing the other woman's neck. Now Deb, too, was bound.

  Jo rose and stood before the basin at the foot of Christ's statue, a stone bowl that had in its time held Water that had kissed the heads of thousands of babies as it cleansed them of original sin and sent them on their way to Jesus. It still held the True Water, and always had; while Jo washed with and drank river water, this basin filled sometime each day of its own accord. Jo drew her hand gently across the width of the basin just below the Water's surface, leaving a tiny, bubbling wake. The church was cold tonight, as was the world beyond its protecting doors; the True Water was always body temperature.

  She looked beseechingly at the marble face of the Savior and He gazed back without comment, His expression at once stern and compassionate. Once Jo had seen a music video in which the statue of the Son of God had come to life at the kiss of a prayerful young woman. But there would be no frivolous miracles in the real House of the Lord.

  The battle approached.

  IV

  March 26

  Coming Together

  1

  REVELATION 6:8

  And power was given unto them to kill with hunger,

  and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

  ~ * ~

  Two hours since sunup.

  Alex pressed a hand against the cold window at the juncture of the south and east corners of the building. Was the glass really warmer? Or did it just feel that way because he so desperately wanted to get over to the Art Institute? He stared at the plaza below and sucked his breath in with disappointment. The tracks of his night visitor were still clearly defined, even from the thirteenth floor. When the edges started to blur and the first small puddles of moisture spotted the white-covered concrete, then he could go. He cracked his knuckles and grimaced; did "watched" snow ever melt?

  Alex forced himself to eat, though the combination of heated water and instant oatmeal looked and tasted like badly mixed wallpaper glue, the powdered coffee like the oven-burned spillover of cheap TV dinners. Both scalded his tongue; neither drove away the ice in the pit of his stomach. At least thirty minutes had passed when he lifted his eyes from the study of an old carpet stain. Wasn't it actually warmer in the room? He pushed to his feet and went to the window, then grinned. Small circles of wet sidewalk finally poked through the snow, like muddy paw prints across the plaza's white blanket. His watch said only eight-thirty or so; by afternoon the rest of the snow would be gone. If he left now, any tracks of his own wouldn't matter.

  ~ * ~

  He'd been so sure the doors would be unlocked as promised that he hadn't even brought a tool as simple as a crowbar. But they weren't unlocked, and now Alex stood on the concrete steps amid his own trampled footprints and considered the problem. He'd knocked but gotten no response; maybe he was simply too early. Alex shivered and stamped his feet, leaving wet dots on the stone veranda. He
certainly wasn't doing any good here, and he was freezing his butt off besides. Better to walk around the building and pump up some body heat, he decided, go down to the south gardens, then around to the rear and Columbus Drive. By the time he got back, she'd be up and waiting.

  He started out and tried rehearsing what he'd say when he saw Deb. She was ferociously independent and he didn't want to be too pushy; Alex was reluctant to admit how insecure he really was, how much he craved company. Perhaps

  Alex wanted to swallow but his throat seemed to be trying to work around a chunk of chalk that had lodged at the base of his tongue. In front of him was the Columbus Drive entrance and overhang, its length relatively clear except for a sprinkling of blown-in snow. In front of the doors was a sparkling sunburst of fractured glass. His gaze swept the walkway and halted where the overhang no longer protected the sidewalk from the weather; a riot of melting footprints lasered into his vision like the harsh pop! of an antique camera flash.

  He ran, slipping and stomping, through the wrecked entrance, backtracking along the trail of black blood and stench until he found the open doors of the auditorium, still reeking of candle soot and gunpowder accented by the unbearable smell of slowly rotting meat. Machete in hand, Alex picked his way down the aisle, gazing dully at the softball-sized holes torn across the seats and small chunks of decomposing flesh, finally prodding a soggy mess he assumed had once been a vampire.

  "Good for you, Deb," he muttered hoarsely. A small cot peeped from behind a shredded length of drapery on the stage and he glimpsed metal beneath it; when he pulled it out he found a fully loaded Winchester. He sniffed the barrel; whatever Deb had used to fight, it wasn't this shotgun. He swung it absently over his shoulder and wandered among the seats until he was satisfied that Deb's body wasn't stuffed in some forgotten crevice in the huge room. Then, numb and empty, he simply . . .

  . . . left.

  When Deb had gone the day before, he had admired her confidence, her trust in what she'd believed the future held—though he wondered now how much of that trust had been an act. She had made him think that he could do more than just admire that certainty, that he could believe. Walking in the slowly warming air, Alex believed, all right. He had every faith in the world that in no time at all pain would fill the empty space that had once been his heart.

  2

  REVELATION 20:14

  This is the second death.

  ~ * ~

  I'm so cold.

  Who was this hard, oversized man sleeping beside her? Not Alex; though both men were dark, her lover was lean, with the sinewy build of a runner rather than weightlifter.

  He must be one of the Red Things.

  There were Red Things in Deb's dreams now. The landscape of her mind welcomed them, sheltered them, hid them from her probing sleep-eyes. They flitted in a vast, shadowy chasm below a strip of brilliant, aqua-colored light, eternally separating her from the peace and warmth of the light itself. The stranger at her side tried to stop her as she reached for it, and she realized that he was doing her a kindness because the light would surely kill her. Still she wrenched free, ignoring his loss and sadness as she went to the light anyway.

  Her fingers brushed it and a piece . . . cracked away, hung suspended in space for a moment, then hurtled toward her with frightening, inescapable speed.

  3

  REVELATION 10:6

  And there should be time no longer.

  ~ * ~

  "Damn it!"

  Bill Perlman stopped just short of hurling the culture across the room. He sucked in a breath and held it, trying to still the thought that sang in his head on a continual, inescapable basis.

  I'm not getting anywhere.

  There has to be some way to accelerate the mutation process, he insisted mentally, find the stimulation, the catalyst, more quickly. His mind kept veering toward the people trapped in the Merchandise Mart. Suppose he did start the decomposition process again how would the vampires react? What if instinct propelled them into a feeding frenzy in the belief that their disease could be stalled or arrested by a massive intake of sustenance? Then those people would die and become vampires themselves, a useless and deadly transition. No, they had to be freed first. Turning back, he inserted another slide under the microscope, though he didn't need it to show what he already knew: the bacterium was dead, though it had been alive when he'd added the vampire flesh to the culture. By all the laws of science, Clostridium should have begun to feed immediately, as it had on the tiny slice of his own skin that had proved the culture was active. But once again nothing moved beneath the lens of his microscope. While Perlman could easily tell the dry, corky structure of the vampire cells from the global-shaped spheres of Clostridium, the quivering, twisting movement of only seconds ago had disappeared before he could even readjust the focus. Already the bacterium was forming the same woody, plantlike walls that apparently comprised the entire structure of the childbeast.

  Perlman sat back and sighed. Even if he added blood, the vampire flesh absorbed it faster than he could get the slide into position. Nothing changed the view under the lens, and now even his subject was gone, since this morning he'd allowed the dangerous childbeast to be killed—a terrible thing to witness—and carried out into the sun. He told himself they were being merciful, though the boy's screams still rang in his mind and refuted his self-righteousness. Now he needed another subject but McDole was hedging, hinting that Perlman’s capture of the boy had been an amateur miracle. The doctor would've gone out alone again, but the bitter truth was that he thought the older man might be right. In the end, he had no subject.

  And no progress, either.

  4

  REVELATION 8:11

  And many were made bitter.

  ~ * ~

  11:30 A.M.:

  Hours and hours until the bloodsuckers came out. And come out, they will, Alex thought. He waved the bottle of Smimoff's, then toasted the unseen sleepers of the city

  Come to Papa.

  He held up the vodka; only a fifth of the bottle was gone, not much considering that fourteen months ago he could've easily put away two six-packs. Two more inches of booze would make him pass out, but he wanted to do it right, so when he started feeling drunk, really blasted, he would guzzle the liquor like a cold lemonade at a company picnic. He shivered and took another swig, then made it two. He had to make sure he drank enough to keep him unconscious past dark. He didn't want to feel it when they got him.

  A gust of wind hit the branches of the small trees surrounding his bench, making them shake as if in reproach. Fuck it, he thought. Let's be honest. I'm sitting in front of my house and Deb knows where it is. I'm not waiting for some unknown bastard to come and bite me in the neck. I'm waiting for Deb to come and bite me in the neck. He giggled. Love at First Bite . . . do I look like George Hamilton?

  Hell no. I don't even have a tan.

  "So," he said. His voice sounded loud and hollow as it floated across Daley Plaza. "Who did you think you were? Fucking Adam and Eve?" He regarded the plaza sourly and drank again. Sad little spots of moisture were all that remained of the freaky, one-day snow. "Shit. Like you were going to repopulate the world, asshole." Where was Deb? Was she a vampire? Or . . . dead? He couldn't decide which was worse, and it frustrated his muddled mind that there was a decision in there somewhere that he could have made instantly had he been sober. But not now Long black hair, ice-blue eyes. What color were her eyes now? Maybe they were . . . red.

  He frowned at his bottle, wishing he had some o.j. He didn't want to get drunk as fast as it seemed to be happening, because quick wasn't necessarily thorough. Maybe he could do a better job if he had a mixer, which would mean he could drink longer, something that made perfect sense to him. A thought flared in his brain: What if she didn't find him down here and something else did? Time to go upstairs.

  She won't be Deb anymore, a vague voice in his head reminded him.

  "Who said that?" Alex glanced around and stood, then laugh
ed at how his eyesight was warping. "And so what if she isn't? Who the hell am I?" He gulped another mouthful of liquor as he staggered past the Picasso. Rage hit him as he made the corner closest to the door, and if he'd had two bottles, he would've hurled one at that ridiculous, looming statue.

  "I'll tell you who I AM!" he screamed. He whirled haphazardly, the bottle flailing wildly and barely missing the metal doorframe as he fumbled through. "I'm no-fucking-BODY, that's who!" His voice choked off until it became a sob, then a gurgle.

  "Nobody," he said again.

  He slid down the cold frame, propping the glass door open with a booted foot. Sure, he toasted the open door with a numb wave, I'll drink to that. He turned his head with an effort and studied the Picasso statue swaying unsteadily across his vision. Wasn't it supposed to be a woman? Sober, he'd always thought it looked like an abstract horse; drunk, it didn't look like anything for which he could find a word.

  Being drunk, he decided, was okay. He felt as if he'd been given a gigantic shot of Novocain, though certain parts of his body remained strangely sensitive. For instance, the muscles surrounding his mouth seemed to have frozen and words were becoming a real mess. He shrugged; without Deb, there was no one to talk to anyway. Other parts still felt normal, like his rump and his spine, which were freezing against the doorframe. And there was the shotgun he'd been dragging around since his visit to the Art Institute, digging into his side and making his ribs ache. Don't need it anymore, he realized; don't want it. He pushed it away with a nerveless hand, ignoring the clatter as it fell beside him. He scrunched up his face to see how much was numb as he inspected the Smirnoff's bottle; nearly half of its contents had disappeared. Had he really drank all that?