“I’ll have to arrange a babysitter. Paula already said she’d do it; I just have to find out when she’s available.”
Zach nodded. “Cool.” He held out his hand. “Welcome to the team, Nurse Jordan.”
TWENTY-THREE
Alek awoke to a darkened room. The only light came from a digital clock sitting next to the bed. It was well after sunset. He could hear Hannah in the next room, singing to the baby. He rolled out of bed and padded out into the hall in his bare feet. The nursery door stood slightly ajar, and he could see her sitting in a rocking chair with her brother. He was tempted to go in there and listen. She had a sweet voice, high and soft. But he feared that would be too much of an intrusion, so instead he made his way to the living room.
He spotted his gift sitting on the mantel and smiled. He looked around, wondering how the house would look once the rest of her things arrived. That’s when he spotted the upright piano. At the sight of it, he became briefly lost in time, and for a moment he was nothing more than a school-boy, sent to take lessons from Irina’s mother. As he sat down on the bench and uncovered the keys, he remembered sitting next to Irina. She had been just a girl, shy and bashful, as they practiced together. She taught him the only song he’d ever been able to successfully play, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” As they played together, she used to blush beet red any time their fingers touched.
He smiled at the memory as his fingers caressed the keys, coaxing the tune from its resting place in the back of his memory. He missed a few notes before it all came back to him, but he closed his eyes and imagined that she was there showing him how, guiding his fingers to the right keys, and the song came.
When he finished and opened his eyes again, Hannah stood beside the piano, her face a mix of surprise, wariness, and a touch of awe. “That was so sad,” she said, her voice hushed.
“It’s the only thing I know how to play.”
“It was beautiful. Where did you learn it?”
“From someone much more talented and patient than I. But that was a very long time ago.” He pulled the cover back over the keys and turned to face her. She looked amazing, in a floral sun dress with her hair cascading over her shoulders in loose waves. She had been gaunt and pale when he’d first met her, but she was already starting to fill out and regain her color. She truly was beautiful. It made it hard not to stare. He looked around the room instead. “This is a nice house,” he said. “It suits you.”
“How do you know what suits me? You barely even know me. And I barely know you.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “Would it help you trust me more if you knew me better?”
She gave him a sly look. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then ask me a question. Any question.”
Hannah pursed her lips as she seemed to think it over. Then she asked, “How old are you?”
That surprised him. He’d expected something more personal. “Do you mean how long have I been around, or how old was I when I was changed?”
“Both.”
“It happened just a few months past my thirty-second birthday. That was sixty-eight years ago.”
She seemed to let that soak in. Then she opened her mouth to ask another question, but Alek held up a hand. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Every time you see me, you can ask me one question, until you run out of things to ask.”
“That might be a long time,” she said. “You’re kind of an enigma.”
He smiled. “As long as you have questions for me, I’ll be here.”
She returned his smile. It was the first time he had seen a sincere smile on her face that was directed at him. “What are you doing for dinner?” he heard himself asking. The question spilled almost unbidden from his mouth, but now it was too late to take it back.
She seemed almost startled by the question, and immediately he regretted it. But instead of shooting him down, she asked, “Do vampires eat food?”
“We can. Small amounts. It usually doesn’t stay down for very long, but,” he shrugged, “it still tastes good.”
She frowned, and he wished he’d left out the part about not keeping it down. That certainly didn’t make for an attractive mental image. “Sorry,” she said, “but I already have plans tonight.”
Of course. She hadn’t gone to any trouble over her appearance for him. He kept the disappointment from reaching his face, and made himself smile. “Maybe some other time.” In hope of fleeing an awkward moment, he stood up. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I’ve imposed on you long enough. I should go.” He started to slip past her toward the bedroom, to retrieve his shoes.
“Oh, hey,” she said, causing him to turn back, “I wanted to thank you for the picture.” She pointed to it on the mantel. “How did you get it?”
“Carl flew up to retrieve your belongings. He brought the picture back. The rest will arrive by truck.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Because I sent him.”
“But, why?”
He tilted his head, as though to study her. “Why. That’s your favorite question, isn’t it? I sent him to get your things because I thought you might enjoy having them, to make you feel more at home here. Must everything have an ulterior motive?”
“Most things do.” She sighed. “I know I can be a little paranoid sometimes. I get that from my dad. But it’s not like I don’t have good reason to question people’s motives these days.”
She means vampires’ motives. The thought made him sad and weary.
“Anyway,” she said, “thank you. And thanks for the job, too. I start tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh. So then you’ll still be there in the evening.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Someone knocked on the door. As she went to answer it, he grabbed his shoes from her bedroom and carried them back to the living room, where Paula and her son met him with looks of surprise and uncertainty. “I didn’t know you already had company,” Paula said to Hannah. “Hello, Doc.”
He nodded. “Paula. Christopher. I was just leaving.”
“Oh, don’t hurry off on our account.”
“Mom,” said Chris, “I’m sure the doc has things he needs to do. We shouldn’t keep him.” The boy eyed Alek’s bare feet as he spoke.
“You’re absolutely right,” said Alek. “I really do need to go.” He turned and nodded to Hannah. “Thank you for letting me stay here. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He squeezed past them and out the door, and sat down on the porch to put on his shoes.
He had the first one tied when Hannah and Chris came out behind him. “See you around, Doc,” the boy told him. Alek nodded. Hannah said nothing, but she looked back at him as they went down the steps, her face unreadable. He held her gaze until she looked away, careful not to let his face betray the sadness he felt as he watched her go. As he put on his other shoe, he thought about following them. Even with the fence and the vampire patrols, it could still be dangerous to wander around. If the boy took her too close to the fence, if there was somehow a breach…
But he knew there wouldn’t be. They were safe enough, and his worry was just a pretense for what he really wanted. Besides, if she caught him skulking after them, stalking them, it would confirm every suspicion she had about him, at least in her mind.
Behind him, the door opened. “Oh, you’re still here,” said Paula.
Alek got to his feet. “I was just about to go.”
“You don’t have to rush off, Doc.”
He smiled. “I really should go. I have a lot of work to do.”
“Well, all right. But…” she stepped out onto the porch and smiled at the young couple strolling down the street, illuminated by the soft glow of the street lamps. “As long as you’re still here, I wanted to thank you. For bringing her here. She makes my son light up like a lightning bug, and that’s not something I’ve had the pleasure of seeing for a very long time.”
He looked back at the young couple. They leaned in close to each other as
they walked, talking animatedly. Hannah looked happy, at ease for the first time since he’d met her. He should draw satisfaction from that. Better for her to find happiness with a boy her own age.
“I’m glad I was able to bring them both some happiness,” he said. Maybe if he said it often enough, eventually it would be true. He told Paula good night, and made his way back to the lab. He took care not to draw attention to himself as he slipped past the happy pair.
TWENTY-FOUR
Chris’s mom had packed them a picnic dinner. When they reached the historic section of the base, they found a grassy spot beneath a lamp post and spread out a blanket. “Let’s see,” Chris said as he pulled foil-wrapped packages out of a mini cooler. He peeled back the foil to peek at its contents. “We have some quiche.” He unwrapped it and set it before them before reaching back in.” And here’s the good stuff.” He pulled out another lump of foil and unwrapped it before presenting it to her. “My mom’s homemade peach cobbler.”
“Oh my God,” Hannah exclaimed as she got a whiff of the still-warm cobbler. “That smells like Heaven.”
“Wait’ll you taste it.” He reached back in and pulled out two bottles of Budweiser. “I know it’s the cheap stuff, but the good stuff’s a little harder to come by these days.” He twisted the top off of one of them before handing it to her. “You do drink beer, right?”
“I’m a college student, aren’t I?” she said as she took it from him. “Or at least, I was.” She took a swig. Cheap beer or not, it was one of the best things she’d tasted in a long time.
Chris grinned as he handed her a fork. “What were you in school for?”
“Nursing. I was studying to be an RN.”
“Where were you going?”
“I was at Northern State. What about you?”
He shrugged as he opened his own beer. “I was at the junior college.”
“So you weren’t in the Army?”
He laughed. “No. No, my dad would’ve loved that too much.” He reached for his cobbler, and Hannah smiled.
“Do you always eat dessert first?”
“Whenever I can get away with it.” He shoved a bite in his mouth and closed his eyes in obvious pleasure. It was too tempting. She tried her own bite of cobbler. Instant food-gasm. Forget the beer, this was the best thing she’d tasted in recent memory.
“Anyway,” said Chris, “I was an Army brat growing up. We moved all over the place, and I was sick of it. I just wanted to settle down and stay in one place for more than a couple of years. Of course, that thrilled my mom. She said it was bad enough having to worry about Dad going off to war without having to worry about me, too.”
“Can’t say I blame her. What were you in school for?”
“I hadn’t decided yet. I was also working at Walmart, trying to save up enough money to transfer out to UCLA. My girlfriend — my ex-girlfriend, I mean.” The amendment had a touch of bitterness to it. “She got a scholarship out there. We tried to do the long-distance thing until I could go join her, but then last winter she e-mailed me to tell me she wanted to date other people.” He took a drink before adding, “Now I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“That’s terrible.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Don’t you just love it when you go out with someone and all they can talk about is their ex?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just part of your story.”
“What’s your story?”
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t really have one.” She didn’t want to talk about what happened to her parents. She was having too nice a time to go there. “I didn’t date much,” she said. “I was too focused on school. My mom was only 18 when she had me, and she always made me promise not to let boys get in the way of finishing school.” She laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. “Of course, here I am anyway, twenty years old with a baby to raise.” She took a long pull on her beer.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you thought about giving him up? I know there are people here who would be glad to be able to adopt him.”
She stared at him a moment before answering. “No. I mean, I haven’t had time to think about anything like that. Since the day he was born, I’ve just been doing my best to keep us both alive.” She looked around at their peaceful surroundings, and shook her head. “We haven’t even been outside the shelter for a whole week. Just a few days ago we were in prison. And now all of a sudden we have a house, and I have a job, and here I am on a date… just the idea of having options is something I have to get used to again. But no. I wouldn’t give him up. He’s my brother. I don’t want him to be brought up by strangers.” She picked at her quiche. “Anyway, he’s all I have.”
“That’s not true anymore,” said Chris. “You have friends now.”
She smiled. “I had a friend at the prison, too. At least, I think she would have been a good friend if I’d stayed.” She frowned, thinking about Phyllis. She hoped she was still okay. “I wish there was a way to bring her here.”
“Maybe there is. Have you asked the doc about it?”
“No. Not yet.”
They ate in silence for a moment, before Chris said, “Speaking of the doc, I don’t want to pry, but, well, a guy goes to pick a girl up to take her out, and there’s another guy in her house looking kinda like he just rolled out of bed… it’s a little awkward.”
Hannah laughed. “He came by early in the morning. He was just going to leave a note, but I had insomnia, and when he saw my light on he decided to knock. Anyway, we just got to talking and lost track of time. I couldn’t exactly kick him out into the daylight.” She shook her head. “I almost didn’t let him in to begin with.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know. The movies and stuff all say that you shouldn’t invite a vampire inside, because then they can get in whenever they want.”
“I don’t think that part’s true. I mean, I think if they really want to get in, they’re not going to wait for an invitation.”
“I know. It was stupid.”
“Hey, no.” He reached over and placed a hand on top of hers. “It’s not stupid to be careful.”
She looked down at their hands. It felt nice, the human contact. The warmth of his hand was in stark contrast to the coolness of Alek’s touch. She turned her hand over and clasped his. “Thanks,” she said.
He smiled and squeezed her hand, and didn’t let go. “So why’d you decide to let him in?”
“Curiosity, mainly. I mean, I didn’t actually invite him. I wanted to see if he could come inside without an invitation. Obviously, he can.”
“So, you’re not afraid he’ll come back in the night while you’re sleeping and have his way with you?”
Chris was laughing, but his question summoned a mental image of herself with Alek that startled her, and that was totally inappropriate to share with her date. “Um.” She tried to think of a way to change the subject. Chris was still looking at her, smiling, and as she locked eyes with his, he started to lean closer. Hannah’s heart sped up, and she closed her eyes. She could feel him getting closer, only a breath away. Then she heard a low, moaning sound, muffled, but close by. Her eyes snapped open and she jumped to her feet.
“What— what’s wrong?” Chris stared up at her in confusion.
“Shh!” She listened, and heard it again. It seemed to be coming from inside one of the buildings. “Did you hear that?” She looked around for something to use as a weapon. Her best bet seemed to be either a fork or a beer bottle, both of which would require getting too close.
“What, you mean Bob?”
She looked down at him. Why wasn’t he on his feet yet? “Bob?”
“It’s okay, it’s just Zach’s pet shambler. They keep him locked up in the old jail house.”
“Why?”
“They use him in their research. Come on, sit back down. It’s okay. We’re safe, I promise.”
Warily, Hannah lowered herself back to her knees, but her eye
s roamed their surroundings. She stayed tense, ready to spring. “What is this place, anyway?”
“It’s the old fort. It was originally a cavalry post, back in the late 1800s.” He pointed to the building where the moaning came from, a squat, white stucco structure with a broad porch. “That was the jail, where they used to keep outlaws and Native American prisoners. And back there,” he pointed behind her, but when she looked it was too dark to make it out, “is the old stockade. They used to take cover in there whenever the fort came under attack. That’s where we holed up when the outbreak reached the base. We camped out in there for weeks.”
“Yeah, your mom told me.”
Chris nodded. “That thing’s at least a hundred years old, but it’s still formidable.”
Like Alek, she thought, but she pushed the thought away. It bothered her that her mind kept straying to the vampire. “We’d better head back,” she said. “It’s getting late, and I don’t want to impose more on your mom than I have to.”
“You’re not. I mean, she’s doing it for me. Well, for her, too. She loves babies, can’t get enough of ’em.” Still, he stood up and offered a hand to help her up. She took it. “You’re really shaken up,” he said.
She hugged herself. “Sorry. I guess I’m still pretty jumpy, after everything that’s happened.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s understandable. I think probably the entire human race has post-traumatic stress, so it’s not like you’re alone.”
“You seem to be fine, though,” she said as she watched him pack up the remains of their picnic.
“Well, I’ve had more time to get used to the idea of safety. But it’s not like I don’t still have nightmares or anything.” He handed her the cooler while he folded the blanket. “You just need time. Like you said, this is all still new for you. But you’ll adjust.”
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