by Lee Hayton
Finally, I risked a glance in my rearview mirror. No flashing. No lights. The siren still shrieked a warning, but it was fading with distance.
One chance. They’d catch up soon.
Instead of continuing to the main road, I slowed the car and nosed into a driveway. The bright yellow paint job that was my nemesis also looked the same as any other vehicle parked along this semi-suburban street.
No chance that I’d be able to get into a garage. I twisted the wheel and eased the car into a tiny gap to park on the back lawn of the house.
When Jimmy didn’t move, I hit him in the shoulder. “Get out. Now. They’ll be here soon.”
I opened my own door in demonstration, ripping the car keys from the dash and tossing them into a hedge. The house lights came on, lighting a clear path across the backyard.
Yelling at Jimmy to hurry up over my shoulder, I sprinted across the yard and launched myself at the fence. My hands objected to the splintering wood under my palms, but I gritted my teeth. My toes caught at the crossbeam, slipped, then found it again.
Up and over.
I used the crossbeam of the fence for leverage and rolled over the top, dropping down the other side. A dog growled at me from somewhere in the darkness. In my panic and desperation, I growled back.
Jimmy landed heavily beside me, calling out in pain as his ankle buckled under his weight. I tried to help him along, getting under the arm on his injured side. Still, we weren’t making good time.
The neighbor over the back was making a lot of noise. For some reason, discovering the gift of an old-fashioned shopping cart of a vehicle parked in his backyard was a shock.
Even if the police hadn’t followed our car, they’d soon be called out. It wouldn’t take much to put two and two together.
We needed to get the hell out of there, now.
The dog ran at us as we stepped into the driveway of the new property. The growl had been scary—this sudden silent charge was worse. I put my arm up, and the beast smoothly jumped up and sank his teeth in. The pain shot off fireworks, an explosion inside my head.
Letting go of Jimmy, I tried to wrestle with the canine. Fuck knows what type of breed it was. Big and mean, at a guess.
I dug my fingers into its snout, feeling the wet heat of its nose and shuddering. My fingertip slid over one of its large teeth, slippery now with my blood.
Jimmy grunted and grabbed a handful of the animal’s pelt. For a second, its jaw opened wider, offering a small promise of relief. Then it bit down again, harder, an eye-tooth scraping the bone.
I bit down on my tongue. To add my screams to the situation would just bring more danger. The pain tore me down to my knees, dragging me low. Some old instinct had me draw my chin in, tucking away my throat from the dog’s vicious teeth.
Jimmy punched it on the side of the head.
Again, its jaw briefly opened. This time, I hauled my arm back. Free. As the animal turned in rage toward the new threat, Jimmy hit it again. This time, his massive fist struck it dead on the nose.
It howled and shook its head, backing up a step and lowering its shoulder for a new charge. I launched my weight at its back, holding it down long enough for Jimmy to land one more punch. This time, he knocked it out.
As we clutched each other for support and ran down the driveway, Jimmy looked back over his shoulder. “I usually like dogs.”
With the car gone, our time to seek shelter had drastically reduced. The chase had taken us so far off target that Jimmy was having trouble working out where to go. I looked up at the hillside, revisiting my original plan. At least that gave us a clear sense of direction—toward the big lumpy thing—and then hopefully luck and good odds would lead us to shelter.
When Jimmy protested the move, I countered with some common sense, “If someone up there has an open internet account, we can look up a path to your old house.” I slung my arm—the non-mauled one—around his neck in a man-hug. “I promise, it’ll be easier that way. Besides, if you’re not sure now where to go, you don’t want us to stumble about until it’s daylight and too late.”
I tried to calculate the time. Between being cooped up in an apartment for years and being thrown in the pit, my sense of passing hours was hopelessly out of whack. Luckily, Jimmy had a watch on him. It looked suspiciously like something a girl named Erika Blumenthal would wear, but who was I to point fingers?
“Just before two o'clock,” he said, showing the face to me in case I wanted to check.
I nodded and did a quick series of calculations. “We should jog, even though we’re tired. Better to arrive exhausted and hungry than to miss out by a few minutes on the wrong side of sunup.”
There wasn’t much talk after that. Even Jimmy couldn’t keep up his penchant for conversation when we were traveling along at that speed. As the miles between us and possible safety started to close, I found myself relaxing for the first time since the hotel.
That came to an abrupt halt when the road began to meander upward. I went from not having enough breath to make small talk to just flat-out not having enough breath.
I pulled at Jimmy’s arm, asking for a rest. He glanced over my shoulder with a frown. When I followed his gaze, I saw why. The edge of the horizon was starting to grow lighter. Just a bit, nothing to worry about. Not if you were close to home.
Stuck out here, with any house on the edge of the city a possible death trap from complaining residents, the sight wasn’t so benign. We had to get under cover fast or soon there’d be nothing of us left to seek shelter.
I turned back and tried to increase my pace again. Jimmy tapped me on the shoulder, and then crouched down with his hands held in a cupping gesture.
Why not?
Apart from wounded pride, there wasn’t any downside I could see. Bracing my hands on Jimmy’s shoulders, I jumped up and let him give me a piggy-back.
To my chagrin, he continued to jog at the same pace that I’d been going. It made it pretty evident that for the past few hours, I’d actually been holding him back.
A wave of affection flowered in my chest as I bumped against his spine. To think that I’d considered just driving off and leaving him. Unthinkable.
But then, I’d always been a terrible judge of character. Especially of my own.
“Try that path to the right, there,” I said a while later, pointing. It was just the sort of overgrown driveway I’d been hoping to see.
When a family was in residence, the grass growing between the stretches of gravel would be kept neatly mown. To be as straggly and unkempt as it looked now, hopefully meant that nobody was home.
Jimmy let me down a few yards away from the silent property. Together, we walked on tiptoe to peer in through the windows. Nothing in the kitchen. No sign of the detritus of toys or cast-off clothing that showed a family was in residence.
I reached out my hand to turn the handle on the side door. Then Jimmy launched himself at my back. The wind was driven out of my lungs as he threw me to the ground.
Chapter Six
“What the hell?” I called out after I lifted my face out of the dirt. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jimmy pointed back at the house. “There are lights on the floor. You can see them in the corners.”
With a glare, I got back up to my feet and brushed the dead grass of a long summer off my trousers. As I peered in the window, I was alarmed to see how easily I could make out the furniture inside. The sun was creeping steadily higher. Soon, my skin would start to glow as though with a sunburn. Ten minutes after that… Well, that was something that I wanted to avoid.
The house was empty, but it was a no-go. Jimmy was right. For all that I’d thought I was the smart one in the relationship, he kept proving me wrong.
That was a harder pill to swallow than our narrow escape.
The low red beams shining across the floor were an alarm system ready to be tripped. If only Asha were beside me, she’d sort it out in a few second’s flat. She’d have a cha
t with the control box and come to some mechanical arrangement. As far as I could work out, it usually sounded something like, turn yourself off or I’ll turn you off permanently. Nice and threatening, just like Asha always was.
With a quick glance at the horizon, we walked down to the shed to check that next. The garage had a light blinking in the corner—another no-go—but the old shed composed of rotting timbers at the edge of the backyard was accessible.
When I opened the door, it disturbed some of the residents. Bats hanging upside down from the rafters began to shriek in distress. Jimmy put his hand up to his ears, but I could have told him not to bother. I’d come across their striking sonar before. When a bat got going, the sound emanated from the center of your head.
“Just let them settle, it’ll be okay,” I whispered. When Jimmy didn’t respond, I pulled a hand away from his ear and repeated it.
“Why does it hurt so much?”
“I don’t know, but it won’t be for long. The bats sleep during the day, just like us. When they’re calm again, they won’t mind us dossing down in the corner of their shed.”
When the dog whistle pitch noise splitting my skull open lowered to an occasional squeak, I ventured further in. Even though I realized it would probably set the bats off again, I pulled the door tightly shut behind us. No use getting comfy if the sun was just allowed to seek us out with its laser rays.
My mind insisted for a second that it could see an echo of the red lights from inside the house. I shook my head and the vision went away. I must be more tired than I’d thought.
“How about this hay?” Jimmy asked, standing over where a large bale had been pulled apart. “Do you think it’s okay to use this as bedding?”
“Yeah,” I replied, coming over to stand next to him. A squeak from overhead reminded me to be more cautious. From the smell of the loose grass, it had been pulled apart a long time ago. Mustiness rose up from it like a cloud.
A few sneezes, I could handle, though. With Jimmy’s help, we quickly dug our way into the middle of the loose pile. With the gaps present in the boards making up the walls, the more cover we could get under while we slept, the better. Who wanted to wake up with a sun tattoo?
“This reminds me of camping out when I was on the road,” Jimmy said. “I used to travel around with a circus, feeding the animals. When the staff numbers increased, I was given a choice to move on or doss down in the hay.”
“I remember seeing a circus once.” I snuggled down into the moldering grass, seeking the most comfortable angle I could manage. “They had a whole lot of clowns that ran around the ring pulling each other’s pants down.”
“I loved the clowns,” Jimmy said, a winsome note in his voice. “Once upon a time, I thought that I could work my way up to be one. Then I met Sue—my wife—and I started work in the factory because I had to stop traveling and earn a regular paycheck.”
“When was that?”
“Back in the thirties. I suppose I was lucky. I never went too long out of work, not like some of them back then.”
“I was turned in the thirties,” I said. When I closed my eyes, I could see the vampire leaning down over me, his long teeth glistening, his breath like rotted meat. “I wanted to grow up to be a scientist. Instead, I never grew up at all.”
“I had some good times back then. Even before Sue, it was grand but afterward?” Jimmy sighed, and I could hear a lifetime of satisfaction in that one noise. “When my little Jessica was born, I thought that I would burst open with the pride. She was the best-looking baby on the whole ward.”
I could hear rustling in the hay. Tiny creatures were sheltering in there, the same as us. I hoped that we hadn’t disturbed them too much, certainly not so much that they had to come calling to sort us out.
“Why did you turn, if you had a wife and baby?” If I’d been fully conscious, I probably wouldn’t have asked that question. It was one of those things you never talk about, not when the act had led you into slavery. Maybe in other pits, that information wasn’t so sacrosanct, but where I’d been stuck, before and just this last time, it was uncouthness in the extreme to ask.
Jimmy didn’t seem to care, either. Perhaps he was just as lulled by the nearness of sleep as me. “Got my leg stuck in the tractor,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It had one of them plowing things hooked up to the back of it, and I fell off the side when I tried to see out behind me when I was turning.”
He paused for long enough that I thought Jimmy might have fallen asleep. Then his voice came drifting out of the hay again. “It mulched me up, and nobody could stop the bleeding. The doctor was an hour away, but a farmboy knew a vampire who lived in a house only two minutes from our farm. They dragged me there, and he turned me. Just in the nick of time, he said.”
My hunger died down at the thought of what Jimmy must have endured that day. Flesh seemed so strong and resilient until it met the gnash of metal.
“How about you?”
“Leukemia,” I said. Sadness welled up inside me, along with the grinding pain of how unfair illness was. “The doctors tried, but they couldn’t do a lot. Not back then. They gave me blood transfusions every fortnight. I’d perk right up, and then the life would just fade out of me again.”
To my surprise, Jimmy laughed.
“What?”
“You were getting into the blood bags even before you were turned,” he said.
Even through my indignation, I caught the thread of humor and offered up my own weak laugh. “My parents called the parish priest in to administer last rights. Instead, he told them there was another way. I don’t think they even thought about it twice.”
“They asked you, though, no?”
To be honest, I couldn’t remember. The last few weeks before being turned were hazy. Between the pain medication that the doctors gave me instead of a cure, and cancer sliding about in my blood, everything blurred.
“I guess so,” I said, as truthfully as I could. I wanted to be honest since Jimmy had offered up his own truth so readily. “The vampire who came scared the shit out of me. I think if you’d asked me at the moment he showed me his fangs, I would’ve said, ‘No, thanks, I’d rather be dead.’”
Another laugh from Jimmy, but his sleepiness turned it into a giant yawn. “I don’t remember my vamp. I’d passed out from the pain and loss of blood.”
“Probably for the best.” I think I said those words, or at least I thought them very loudly.
Even with everything in my life that’s been there to frighten me, every derogatory remark from an uncaring guard, every day of toiling in slavery, the vampire who turned me is still the thing that scared me most.
When I wake from a nightmare with every cell in my body screaming for mercy, his was the face that terrified me into consciousness.
Still, he saved my life. That turned out to be a shit move, considering what happened not too long after. No one knew that back then. I could hardly hold it against my parents when nobody saw it coming.
I heard the rustling again as tiny creatures stirred into wakefulness, on the opposite schedule to ours. The patter of their tiny feet still sounded in my ear as I drifted into sleep.
I woke to further strange noises. It took my tired mind a long time to work out where I was, and even more time passed before I started into full wakefulness. When I did, I sat upright, pushing the loose strands of hay away from my mouth.
Even as I tilted my head to hear better, all of the strange sounds ceased. For long moments, I sat utterly still. My eardrums insisted there was a whole cacophony of noises, but I knew from experience they were just aural hallucinations fashioned out of silence. I was about to give up and settle back down to sleep when I heard a sound again.
The soft hum of a car motor coming to a stop. The bang of a car door while someone desperately tried not to let it make any noise at all.
Shit! The police were outside. Either that or the owners had returned home and called in even stronger reinforcements.
/> Jimmy muttered a low sound in his sleep. I turned to him, tracking him from the soft red glow on his wrist. It came from the watch that he must have taken from Erika. As I reached out to grab his shoulder and shake him awake, I stopped, staring. My mouth fell open as I realized my stupid mistake.
I’d seen it in the early morning and dismissed it because my mind was too tired to cope. The tiny beam of light, so similar to the rays of the alarm that shone across the floors inside the house.
I grabbed Jimmy’s wrist, ignoring his small cry as I looked at the watch. The light pulsed, emitting a low beam every ten seconds or so. Easy enough to miss when you were tired, hungry, and wanting to go to sleep.
With a shaking hand, I took it off Jimmy’s wrist and turned it over. A tiny black sticker, no bigger than the fingernail on my pinky, was fixed to the back. As I stared, it flashed with the red light, sending a thin beam out to strike against the wall.
A tracker.
It made sense. The piece of jewelry was probably worth upwards of three months’ rent. Not the kind of expensive item that you wanted to replace, but also the size of something that a frequently drunk girl might easily lose.
Erika may be an alcoholic, but she wasn’t dumb.
The police outside would be tracking a jewelry thief, but it would take all of three seconds to figure out that the prize was more significant than that. Jimmy’s pale face stared at me, a quizzical expression furrowing his brow.
“We need to get rid of it,” I said. I pointed at the tiny pulse of light but didn’t keep looking at Jimmy long enough to see if it registered. My eyes were too busy trying to find an escape hatch in the dim light of the barn.
Already, the sun was spreading out lethal fingers of light where the rotting boards had cracked, shrunk, or splintered. It wouldn’t be possible for us to make a run for it. If the police caught us there, we’d have nowhere to go.
