Vampire Miami

by Philip Tucker

  “Hell, yeah,” said the guy. “We all did. It received something like a couple of hundred thousand views before the original got deleted from your Garden. But copies have already been made and it’s still out there. Mostly because of what’s going on between two girls on a couch to the left, but hey. You’re kind of a star right now. People are all wondering what happened to you.”

  A star? Tim stood. “Selah, I have to go. Can I have my Omni back?” She glanced up at him. His face had grown tight and annoyed.

  Back to the screen. “I have to go. They took my Omni. This is somebody else’s.”

  “OK. Well, we just wanted to check in and make sure you’re safe. Nice meeting you.” The window began to close.

  “Wait!” It paused, opened again. The guy looked at her with raised eyebrows. Selah tried to phrase the wild desire that had burst into her chest as carefully as she could. “I want to meet you guys.” He stared at her. Unconvinced. “You said I’m a star right now, right? Maybe I could help you somehow. Use this attention for something.”

  He thought it over and then shrugged. “I’ll have to double-check, but yeah. Sure. We can at least meet. How about tonight at ten? 2312 NW 2nd Ave. That work?”

  Selah opened her mouth to say no, that didn’t work, she couldn’t be out past eight, but Tim reached down and tore the Omni from her hands. Before she could say anything, he closed down her browser and shoved it in his pocket. “Excuse me. I have to go back to work.”

  “But—I was just—I wasn’t—”

  “I’m sorry for interrupting your chat. But I don’t want to get fired. Excuse me.” He turned and began making his way out.

  “Tim!” Selah stood up. He didn’t stop. She had really pissed him off. She wondered how she would react if somebody had done that with her Omni. Winced. “Hey, I’m sorry!” He kept walking, went down the steps and out of sight.

  Selah sat back down. Below, Mama B was laughing over a loud joke, crunching down on a cracker covered in cheese or something. Selah stared down at her. Ten p.m. She had just made peace with her grandmother, with her new life. Resolved to start settling down and behave. Still. Could she pass up a meeting with the Resistance?

  Chapter Eight

  Selah was quiet the whole way home. She felt a stirring uneasiness that she didn’t know how to reconcile. Watched the city go by. It was so much more complex than she’d expected. The shattered shells of homes, the downed telephone cables, the few people sitting in the sunshine in their deck chairs watching cars roll by.

  When they got back, the whole building turned out, excited to see what Mama B and Laura had brought home, calling out their requests as they gathered in a thick crowd around the jeep. Selah slipped away and wandered around the Palisades, peering into apartment doorways and pondering the different people that had been gathered here by fate to make this place their homes. She tried to imagine the building as it had been before the war, filled with strangers, nobody knowing their neighbor’s name. Eventually, she returned to her room, still unsure about what she would do that night, and passed out.

  She awoke at dusk. She’d slept poorly, slicked in sweat and without even a fan to stir the thick, humid air. Sitting up, she felt stale, scruffy, in need of a shower. She rose, and entered the living room. Mama B was reading a report of some kind in her armchair, holding the papers up to the dim evening light that filtered in through the western window, squinting as the text disappeared into the gloom.

  “What do we do about showers?”

  Mama B looked at her over the rims of her narrow glasses. “Most people swim in the Miami River when they need to wash. That’s not too far from here, but it’s too late and we tend to go in groups. So you’d probably best use the communal shower. It’s right downstairs in the yard, by the drainpipe. Don’t know if there’s any water in it right now. People usually take turns during a storm.”

  Selah grabbed some clothes, a towel, and a bar of soap and headed downstairs. People were out and about, sitting together in a relaxed fashion, playing cards or dominoes. She already recognized a few faces, and returned nods stiffly, but didn’t pause to say hi. Instead, she made her way down to the courtyard and to the water pipe corner, skirting the goats and staring at the dim lines of vegetables. A couple of old men were lighting the fires in each corner of the yard, and they greeted her sociably enough. Mama B hadn’t been kidding. The shower bag was a bright yellow affair, suspended by nylon cords from the first floor balcony and ringed by a shower curtain that was currently pulled open.

  “Don’t use all the water.” A young boy stared up at her with large eyes. “I did and people got mad at me, so don’t do it too.”

  “All right,” said Selah. “I won’t.”

  “It helps if you get all wet first real quick and then stop the water. Then you can use the soap and when you are all soapy, you can use a little water to rinse off. That’s my method. It works.”

  “OK,” said Selah. “Um, thanks.”

  The little boy stared at her for awhile longer, then let out a yell that sounded like a war cry and ran off, waving a stick he’d held all along behind his back, rattling it along the wall. Selah couldn’t help it—she smiled, shook her head, and turned back to the shower.

  Showering and putting on clean clothing distracted her from making a decision, but she could put it off no longer. What was it going to be? She felt torn; she had resolved to learn more about Miami before pursuing her investigation, to not make any more amateur mistakes that could get her killed. Still, when she thought of Mama B at the embassy, surrounded by like-minded community figures, trying to make a difference, work with the system, she felt something within her balk. She studied her nails and worked some dirt out from under them. The idea of all that paperwork and talking and politics didn’t seem like the way to go, either.

  Then what? The Resistance. She thought of Cloud. Of his eyes, burning bright with a fevered passion, his mocking laugh. She wondered what he looked like under the scarf that always covered his face. All anybody ever saw was his Asian eyes. Was it possible that she might work with him? Join the Resistance? Might they not know more about Blood Dust, the connections between vampires and the government?

  Selah stood and went to the little bookcase in the corner of her tiny room. Three shelves. She looked at the titles, and then snatched out a ratty book of maps. Miami-Dade, it read. The date was 2019. Only a couple of years before the war. He’d told her 2312 NW 2nd Avenue. She flicked through the pages, saw that several were missing. Checked the index, flipped back and found it. Stared at the little squiggles, then worked on finding the Palisades. She was about twenty-five blocks away. Say it took her two minutes to walk a block, being careful. That would be just under an hour. If she was careful, if she drew no attention to herself, if she was just a little bit lucky, she could still make it.

  Without thinking it through further, she tore out the relevant map and folded it into her jeans pocket. Grabbed her passport and entry papers, and shoved them in her back pocket and went out into the living room. Mama B was in the kitchen. Silently, Selah walked over to her handbag and peered inside. The pistol gleamed dully. Before she could change her mind, Selah took it and slipped it under her belt at the small of her back and dropped her jacket over it.

  “Where you going?” asked Mama B in a neutral voice.

  Selah turned, heart hammering. “Going to get to know the folks in here,” she said, the lie coming smoothly. “Be all neighborly.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” said Mama B. Her face gave nothing away.

  “Bye now,” said Selah, giving a little wave and stepping out before anything else could be said. She hurried down the hall, thought of trying to find Maria Elena, and quickly discarded the idea. She hurried downstairs and into the front lobby. Please, let it be before eight, she thought, over and over again. Please.

  It was. The door was not yet locked. Before the two guards could say anything—Tyler and Burnel, the same guys from last night—she skipped lightly through
the lobby and out the door, giving them the most charming smile she could, and stepped out into the dusk.

  The air was cool, for Miami, at least. The skies above were once again filled with an orchestral arrangement of majestic clouds, vast and epic and catching fire as the sun set. She took a deep breath and began to walk, striding down the broad and buckled pavement, under the palm tree where the parrots had called so loudly that morning. They were silent now, and she crossed the street and continued south. Memories of her wild run the night before came back to her. She recalled her fear and panicked elation. What a difference a night made—this time she felt a determined calm with an undercurrent of deeper excitement. If she had her Omni, she’d post something to her Shrine, tell only her very best friends that she was on her way to meet the freaking Resistance.

  She grinned. They would flip their shit. Energized, she broke into a light jog for a few blocks and then slowed down. No sense in drawing attention to herself. A group of young men detached themselves from the side of a building and began to follow her, so Selah drew her pistol and allowed it to hang by her side as she walked on. She didn’t look back, but sensed them slow and stop. Relief flooded her, and she bit her lip. Careful. For crying out loud, remember where you are.

  Shadows were merging, pooling into each other, growing velvety and menacing as the city grew dark. The rooms behind shattered windows became ominously obscure, and a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades made her feel as if she were being watched.

  Four men rode by on bicycles, rifles slung over their shoulders. They were clean cut, and examined the street around them with wary disdain. Heading home, thought Selah. She almost entered a block where a long line of hungry looking people were filing up to the back of a large truck, where two men were handing out cartons of food and water. One World NGO read the logo on the truck’s side. Selah slowed, stopped, and then turned around. No sense in walking past all those people and drawing the wrong kind of attention.

  She passed a condo building similar to the Palisades eight blocks south, all storm-shuttered up and leaking lights around the seams. The faint sound of voices drifted out along with the smell of cooking food and wood smoke. Her stomach gurgled at the rich aroma, and she immediately regretted not grabbing something to eat before going. But, ah well. Live and learn.

  Selah tried to move quickly but cautiously. She paused at street corners and examined the intersections, searching for movement. Kept glancing behind her. At one point she heard footsteps echoing her own, overlapping with hers briefly before becoming discordant once more. She whirled around but had seen nobody. Heart hammering, she stepped into a doorway and strained to hear something, any sign of pursuit. Silence. She tested the door behind her and found it to be unlocked. Tentatively, she cracked it open and from within the small little house stole a rich, rotten smell, something meaty and spoiled. She closed the door carefully, and then sprinted from the doorway, running for two blocks before spinning around again. Nothing. Paranoia fought terror in her heart, and she spent five minutes standing still, a fine sheen of sweat on her brow, until, with great reluctant, she continued on. She didn’t hear the footsteps again.

  It was fully dark when Selah reached the address. She had no idea as to the time—she could even be early. Her nerves were taut, and she crouched in a doorway for a good five minutes that felt like thirty, just studying the area as best she could in the dark. There were no streetlights here, and though the moon was visible just over the horizon to the east, it was still too low to help out.

  Her destination was a beautifully painted building across the street set next to a tiny park. The building was a blocky single-story rectangle, and she could barely make out the dim mural that had been painted across its front, a psychedelic imagining of blues that might’ve been the ocean, might’ve been the weave of a doll’s hair. A small boat floated on it, filled with absurd-looking people.

  This was it. Time to go in. Everything was silent. Taking a deep breath, Selah ghosted forward, across the street and then down the sidewalk to the front door. It was once glass, but the panes were shattered and only the black iron frame remained. Glass crunched underfoot. She peered inside. It was like looking down a well, pitch black with a sense of depth, of high ceilings and distant walls. Nervous, mouth dry, she pushed open the iron frame and stepped inside, into the dark. It was like stepping off the edge of a cliff and into the void.

  “Hello?” Her voice echoed slightly. Her eyes, already used to the night, began to acclimate to this deeper darkness, and she saw glass glinting along the far left wall, bottles and perhaps mirrors arrayed behind a bar. The depths to her right extended far away. “Anybody here?”

  A lighter flickered to life, and a long tongue of yellow flame sprang into existence to her left. She started and stared, eyes wide, and felt a wave of relief as she recognized the face illuminated from beneath in a Halloween-special kind of way. It was the guy from her Garden, her Resistance connection. He looked serious, solemn, and behind him a dozen bottles set on glass shelving glimmered as they reflected the light of his flame.

  “Hey,” he said. “Selah. You sure you weren’t followed?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  He nodded and gestured for her to approach. She did so, reaching out blindly with her hands, knocking a chair over as she did so, bumping around a square table. At last she reached what turned out to be a bar, found a high seat, and sat.

  “My name’s Fox,” he said.

  “Fox?”

  Fox looked annoyed. “It’s my codename. We’ve all got one. It helps keep us safe, you know. In case one of us gets grabbed and is forced to talk.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Should I have one?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But let’s hold off on that.” He leaned against the bar, arms folded. He was skinny, she saw, and not as tall as she’d imagined. He studied her face. “So tell me what brought you here.”

  “Here tonight?”

  “No, to Miami.”

  “Oh,” said Selah. “Um.” She held onto the bar and spun her seat a little from side to side until she caught him watching and stopped. This was it. She was almost too scared to ask. To hit another dead end. “I’m from Brooklyn. My father disappeared about two months ago. He’s a reporter with the New York Times, and I think he was arrested for investigating something he shouldn’t have. I did everything I could think of to find out what happened to him, but nobody would tell me anything. It’s like he just vanished. But I found these files of his that told me what he had been investigating, and so instead of going into foster care, I decided to follow the Treaty’s extradition laws and asked the court to assign me to my grandmother’s custody here in Miami. So they flew me down and bused me in. My grandmother’s in a building called the Palisades. You know it?”

  He nodded, though she thought he might simply be trying to look knowledgeable. “Sure, I know it. But why did you come here? What was your dad investigating?”

  Selah took the plunge. “Blood Dust. You heard of it?”

  Fox pursed his lips, and then nodded. “Sure.”

  “You do?” The relief was giddying. “What do you know? I’ve got some names I want to learn more about, like a Colonel Caldwell? I figure, if I can find the person who dad pissed off, then I can start working my way—“

  “Whoa, hold up. Slow down. Let’s take this one step at a time.” Fox shifted uneasily. “What exactly happened last night?”

  Selah reined in her enthusiasm. One step at a time. So she told him. Maria Elena, the ride to the Beach, dancing with the Dragon, recording with her Omni. How the Dragon had possibly bailed her out despite Hector’s wishes. What had sounded outrageous last night by the ocean with Maria Elena sounded terrifying tonight here in the dark, especially when Fox recoiled at her mention of the Dragon.

  “No shit. He helped you out? That’s a freaking first. He’s a monster. He’s responsible for killing a whole bunch of us.”

  “Really?
” Maria Elena’s words came back to her. “Have you guys thought about killing him?”

  “Well, no,” said Fox. “Not really. We’re not into violence. Cloud’s all about electronic rebellion. He says that violence begets violence, and that if we started killing off vampires, they’d just crack down on us and make everybody’s life hell. So we just try to avoid him.”

  Selah nodded. She’d studied Gandhi and Martin Luther King in school. “I guess peaceful marches wouldn’t cut it here.”

  “Not so much.”

  “I want to help.” The words just slipped out. Fox didn’t react, clearly having expected something similar. “I mean, I’m willing to help out in exchange for learning everything you know about the Dust trade. You said that people are paying attention to my recording from Magnum, right? Maybe we could capitalize on that. Maybe I could promote a recording of yours with my next feed, use my popularity to get whatever you want promoted out there?”