Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  I looked at him. He was serious.

  “You really think something like that is possible?” I said.

  “Sure. It would knock out satellites. Could fry the utility grid. No power. No communications. No lights. Very little water if you can’t pump it. The food distribution system would break down. People could start to riot. Did you see that story about the bread truck that stalled on the interstate during a bread shortage out west?”

  “No.” I seemed to remember something about it but couldn’t recall the details.

  “People hijacked the truck, stole everything. And not just poor people. People in Mercedes.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, the longer we go without essential services, the worse it would get. Think about when a disaster hits a big city. People come from all over to help. Okay, imagine a hundred cities in trouble at once. There’d be no way to keep up. People would be helpless. And if they started to die …”

  I wasn’t hearing him anymore. A picture of Manda had appeared in my head. All alone, moving through the darkened apartment, crying. Starving. Looking for me, and I’m not there.

  I turned around. No windows in this place, but I could still sense it—the darkness. I swore inside. I’d let myself get sidetracked.

  “Let’s go,” I said, the mood gone.

  “But I haven’t shown you how I hunt for comets,” Sagan said.

  “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Was it something I said?” he asked when we came back outside. I was scanning the woods, the highway. Sagan touched my shoulder, and I pulled away.

  “Huh? Oh.” I tried to smile. “No. It’s not you, Sagan. It’s me. I have to … keep focused. I can’t let myself get too caught up in other stuff right now.”

  “Other stuff? You mean like … me?”

  “Well …”

  “Don’t say it. I hate it when girls say that.”

  “What?”

  He took a long breath. “The F word, you know.”

  I said the F word.

  “No!” Sagan said, starting to laugh a little. “Not the F word. The other one. Friends, you know.”

  “Oh, you’re worried that I—”

  “I said don’t say it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I could drive you,” he said, pointing at a battered Jeep Wrangler.

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Hand-me-down from my dad. One slightly used graduation present. Get in.”

  “Nope. Then you would know where I’m staying.”

  “Yeah, I would. Is that a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  Sagan reached as if to grab my hand, thought better of it, and let his arm fall again.

  “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

  I rubbed my chin. “That depends.… Whatcha going to be eating?”

  Sagan frowned.

  “Oh, come on, I’m kidding. Thank you for the offer. I will … if I can.”

  I walked with him to the main door and made him go back inside the cafeteria before I would leave.

  “You know this is crazy, right?” he said, raising his arm again. He wants to touch me, I thought.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But sometimes crazy is the safest way to go.”

  Now was the time to try it.

  I was back in my little tower room. I would have preferred to do this test outdoors, on the roof, but if Wirtz’s projection showed up, there were too many things up there that might give away my location. Besides, I worried that I could accidentally induce a tonic-clonic. I could all too easily imagine thrashing around until I flopped right over the edge, then zam, doing a gruesome face-plant on the gravel below.

  I was sitting at the crappy old desk. I opened a pack of playing cards I’d snagged from Sagan’s desk and fanned them out in front of me. The desk chair shrieked each time I leaned forward, putting the cards down.

  How big of a risk was I taking? At the worst, it would be frightening, but Wirtz wouldn’t be able to touch me. And there was nothing in this little room that would give away my hiding place. If the test backfired, it might even do some good, showing the vampire I had moved and he had missed out on his chance to get at my family.

  I only knew I was sick of being driven into corners, playing the mouse to the vampire’s cat. I’m the one who does the driving, I thought. Let’s see how you like being the mouse.

  I tilted my lamp toward the cards to increase the glare and studied the pattern. My eyes flitted from card to card, never staying on one card for very long. I heard a siren wailing somewhere on the highway.… Focus, Emma.

  It didn’t seem to be working. I collected the cards again, began shuffling them and fanning the deck before my eyes. Ah, that’s better. I began to feel something soft and warm directly behind my eyes, as if a fluffy rolled-up towel had been tucked there, cushioning them from my brain.

  Wirtz, I thought, picturing the vampire that night in Georgia. His greedy black eyes, his despicable slobbering mouth. Take me to Wirtz.

  I instinctively touched the raised line of flesh on my thigh where his teeth had torn open my leg. Ran my finger along it over and over, feeling the skin get warmer and warmer. Take me to Wirtz. Take me to Wirtz. I repeated the words over and over again, finally just hearing them inside my throat, as if knowing the universe would listen and respond.

  Then, just like the clock numbers in my bedroom, it began to happen. The playing cards became something that was only a shape with color. And then even less than that. I was looking at a chunk of nothingness. I pushed my way into it.

  I could feel something hard pushing back.

  I pushed again. It was like shoving against a door someone else was holding shut. All at once they let the door go and I fell through.

  Oh wow. It had worked.

  The world around me passed into nothingness. When I came back into the light, everything was different. I was there. In a place I had never been before.

  I couldn’t see Wirtz, but I could sense him somewhere close by. I could almost smell his woody leaf-rot scent. It was all so real; I could feel myself standing on a porch in front of a small darkened house. I was looking in through the big picture window in front. Staring at someone inside. A young woman in a kitchen. The light to her stove was on, and she was stirring a wooden spoon around and around in a pan.

  I moved along the front of the house peering into other windows. Lights were on in some of the rooms, but most were dark.

  I looked up and down the street. A sign. Look for a street sign. But there were no signs, only some parked cars and a row of similar one-story houses with old trees in their yards.

  I glanced at the woman in the kitchen; she was still happily stirring. Probably waiting for her family to get home. That’s why I was here, I realized. I had picked her. I had been up and down the street looking for someone alone.

  I crept along the porch to the front door. Could feel my hand on the doorknob. Really feel it—this was no projected image. The knob was cold and hard in my fingers. I turned it—the door was open—and stepped inside. So silent. I stood there a moment looking toward the kitchen. Light slanted diagonally across the living room. I had a moment’s indecision. I didn’t want to cross the triangle of light. Instead I stepped straight down the front hall and turned right.

  I could see the woman from another angle now. She was young and pretty with blond hair pulled back with a blue headband. Her feet were bare. My tongue curled over my bottom lip as I watched her move.

  I smiled. It wasn’t just her blood—though I was aware of every inch of the woman’s circulatory system, almost as if her skin were crisscrossed with a pattern of tiny webs of flame—but I could sense what she was like beneath her clothes. The weight and shape of her breasts, the flesh of her hips, at what depth the blood was swimming in her thighs. Where it was closest to the surface. It felt as if I knew her body, really knew it, even better than she did.

  I stepped closer, making no sound. Strangely, th
e sensation of movement seemed to stop when I was actually moving the quickest. One moment I was in the hall, then I was just there, in the kitchen, my arm draped across the woman’s back.

  The woman dropped the spoon, and spaghetti sauce splattered across the floor. Her mouth opened wide, but before she could make a sound, I had lifted her into my arms and carried her into one of the back bedrooms.

  The bedroom was dark. I threw the woman down on the bed. She looked up at me and started to scream. I fell upon her, putting the back of my arm across her open mouth. I put my hand on the side of her face, bent her head unnaturally to the side—tore at her soft throat with my teeth.…

  My stomach filled like a bag.

  Back in my little room at the top of the tower, I swung my arm in front of me and slapped the cards away. I shoved back from the desk and got up from the cracked chair, still feeling the heaviness of the woman’s warm blood in my belly.

  I staggered back a few steps until I collapsed by the door. I crawled out onto the catwalk and clung to the railing. Because I was in danger not of slipping, but of throwing myself over. I wanted to go over the edge. I couldn’t live with a dying woman’s blood inside me. I vomited into the forest.

  I lay on my back on the air mattress on top of the tower, looking up but seeing nothing. I felt broken in some important way. The experiment had been a success, if you could call it that. I had connected with Wirtz’s mind, but not in the way I had expected. I had thought I would be able to visit him the same way he had visited me. As a projection, an image that could interact with the vampire. But I had done something completely different … and infinitely more disturbing.

  I killed her. Killed that poor woman.

  Hot tears streamed down my face. Yeah, I knew that Wirtz had really done the killing, but it might as well have been me. Tonight there was a family with no mother. A husband with no wife. A lost daughter. Sister. Friend. And it had all started with a long chain that led back to the Georgia mountains and pointed straight at me. She was dead because of my anger.

  No.

  I couldn’t let myself think like that. I hadn’t invited Wirtz to attack me. But I had sure put myself in his path.

  That’s what he wants you to think, I told myself. Screw him.

  I needed that anger if I was going to survive. Besides, I wasn’t going to make it that easy for the vampire to break me down. I reminded myself that I had just learned something here, gained a little bit of an edge. I traveled inside another person’s mind.

  I had briefly experienced life as a full vampire. But more than just the sensation of moving inside Wirtz’s body: I was moving inside his needs, his wants—his perversions too. I had felt the vampire’s excitement at the nearness of his prey. Her beauty. The certainty that she had no chance of getting away. His awful hunger. The horror and yet also the gloating satisfaction of the attack.

  I wanted her blood.

  I had wanted every drop of it until the sickening feeling bloating my body had knocked me out of the vampire’s world.

  What I had done was far more powerful than what Wirtz was able to do. When he came through during one of my seizures, he could see me, yeah. Could guess at my reaction to things. Maybe even find out where I was hiding—if I did something unforgivably stupid, like hang around a sign that said WELCOME TO MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER until I had a seizure.

  But I can go inside his head.

  The problem was, now that I knew what it was like, I couldn’t bear to go there again. I couldn’t. I felt like it might kill me if I tried. But I had to. Not tomorrow. Maybe not even next week. But no matter how awful it was, I had to try.

  I promised myself I would be stronger next time. Strong enough to stay with him, see what the vampire did after feeding. Maybe even learn where Wirtz was hiding. Then I could go over there during the day, take out a mallet and a sharpened stake, and …

  There were just a couple of problems. Even in the midst of his feeding frenzy, I could feel more than Wirtz’s satisfaction. I could feel his confidence, his certainty, that he was on the right track, that he was closing in on me. Killing this woman was just one step closer.

  I closed my eyes against the thought and drew the tarp up over me.

  I woke as soon as the sun came up. The forest was glowing with soft morning light. I sat up and took in a deep lungful of the spring air; my heart expanded with it. The horrors of the night had mostly evaporated. I changed into fresh clothes and climbed down from my tower.

  Today was Saturday. I figured I should start making marks on a stick or something. But did that really matter anymore, now that my weekends were like any other days? I wondered if vampires forgot about time altogether, except for the simplest of observations: day or night.

  I walked up the hill in the breezy air, not really caring what direction I took. I realized where I was when I spotted the dome of the Solar Observatory rising through the trees—and Sagan’s Jeep sitting in the parking lot. He was leaning against the passenger door.

  “Hey,” he said. He was holding a crimped white bag. “Brought you some breakfast.”

  We sat at a little picnic table in the edge of the woods and ate bagels.

  “How did you know I would be here?” I said.

  “Took a chance.”

  “How long have you been waiting?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “Wow.”

  “Astronomers are patient. Want some cream cheese?”

  “Yuck. No thanks. Now a little melted butter …”

  “Sorry.”

  I waved my hand at the observatory. “You work on the weekends too?”

  Sagan took a bite. “Not really. Sometimes. If there’s an event.”

  “Event.”

  “Potential comet stuff. The latest thing is ‘dark asteroids.’ Somebody figured out that most of the sky surveys are skewed toward objects with highly reflective surfaces. But there are thousands of dark ones out there too. They’re harder to find, but they could be every bit as dangerous to the earth as the ones that are easy to see.”

  I bit into a bagel. “You’re kinda like the angel of doom when it comes to this astronomy stuff,” I said.

  “Really?” he said. “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way, sorry.”

  “It’s just hard to think about anything dark on a morning like this. But I wish I had your passion for something.”

  “Okay, so what do you like?”

  “Staying alive.”

  Sagan didn’t smile. “No, really. What about history? You said you and your granddad—”

  “Yeah, but that’s his thing, you know? We like history for different reasons. He loves it because it’s old. I love it because nobody was constantly telling you what you couldn’t do. People just did things.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, women, for sure.”

  I hit him with a wadded-up napkin. “You know what I mean. There was more adventure, excitement. Mystery. Now everything’s supposed to be careful, safe, known. Millions of rules.” I stopped, feeling a knot come up in my throat, thinking about vampires. How my perspective had changed. “Anyhow, I want something of my own,” I said.

  “So what’s holding you back?”

  I considered telling him about my epilepsy for about half a second. But that would only give him one more reason to turn me in. For your own safety, he’d say.

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  Sagan crumpled up the bag and took a shot at a nearby garbage can. Missed.

  “Loser,” I said.

  “I’ve got some surprises for you,” he said.

  “I take it back, then.”

  He walked over to the Jeep and returned holding a large blue gym bag. Sat it on the table and unzipped it. I looked inside. A toothbrush, toothpaste, some baby wipes, a bunch of snacks like granola bars and rice cakes, and …

  “The piece of resistance,” Sagan said, digging into the bag. I giggled. He handed me a small black gizmo that was fitted to a headband so
it could be positioned over the ear. “The latest thing for hunters and hikers. It operates on a radio signal that can’t be traced the way a cell can. Keeps your hands free and has a radius of fifty miles, as long as there aren’t too many obstructions. I can keep the other one in my car and bring it into the observatory each night. In case you need me.”

  “Sagan. It looks expensive.”

  “Only five hundred bucks.”

  I nearly dropped it. “Oh my God.”

  “Happy birthday, Emma.”

  For a moment I was speechless. “Wow. Nobody … nobody has ever given me anything like this. But it’s not my birthday. You have to take it back.” I reached it out to him, but he waved me off.

  “Call it a loan, then. My dad never uses them anyway.”

  “No, really. Please.”

  “Keep it. You’re in trouble, Emma. You won’t tell me what it is, so you have to let me help some other way.”

  “So you’re just going to trust some homeless chick you might never see again?”

  “No. I’m going to trust you.”

  I felt my eyes go wet.

  “Oh, and here’s the charger,” Sagan said, putting it in my other hand. “Assuming you’ve got some kind of power source?”

  “Um, yeah. But—”

  “You won’t tell me where you are living. You won’t tell me who’s after you. It’s driving me crazy. Let me do something. You have to let me do something.”

  I touched the base of my thumb to my eye and didn’t speak.

  “All done?” Sagan said, sweeping away the last of the bagel crumbs. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  “But …”

  “I won’t take you off the base. I promise.”

  We stashed everything in Sagan’s Jeep and took off. The windows in the back were plastic and the seats were rocks, but I was smiling the whole time. I couldn’t believe how good it felt, how normal, to be riding in a car again.

  First stop, a group of five rusting rockets that reminded me of Russian dolls—the smaller ones could fit inside the bigger ones. “Okay,” I said.

  “Hey, this is historical stuff,” Sagan said. I hoped he was kidding. “Steps on the way to building the world’s first—”