by Lee Hayton
If the police caught us there.
I looked above my head at the slumbering bats. Keeping the same alarm clock, they’d be snoozing for much of the rest of the day. The lucky things didn’t have to worry about the sun killing them in a flash fire or being shackled and dragged away to the slave pits. For all that our species were lumped together, they had an easier time of it, overall.
Time for a bat to lend a hand to a vampire. I flicked off the tiny sticker, having to work under it with my fingernail before the heavy glue separated from the watch. That, I threw back at Jimmy. He could keep it. If we made it out of this mess, it would be his prize.
The shed had a mezzanine loft filled with old machinery and overturned feeding troughs. I clambered up the ladder, careful to keep the sticky tracker out of harm’s way. As I walked closer to their rafters, some of the bats started to stir. More than once, I saw the deep reflection of light shining off the large pupils as one stared at me, questioning the strange presence moving among them.
A man ran down the side of the outside of the shed. When he leaned against the wall at the corner, probably ducking his head around to check the way was clear, the boards sagged inward, groaning under his weight.
We were running out of time.
I reached out for a bat, making a soft clicking noise with my tongue like I would if Miss Tiddles was pondering whether to jump up into my lap. I’d no idea of what bats liked, or could hear, but even if it didn’t help, it didn’t hurt, either.
The nearest bat shuffled out of reach before I could grip its tiny body in my hand. I tried again on the next rafter over, this time seizing a bat around the middle.
Immediately, it began to strain and protest against the captivity. The shrill whistling pierced through the center of my skull.
I pressed the small sticky square against its wing as hard as I dared. When I moved my finger away, the square stayed in place. I hoped that it stuck long enough that the signal drew the police outside away.
The next part of the plan required me to get the bat outside. In the loft area, a small window was set to one side. Although I’d stayed clear, and was grateful that the bats didn’t like it any more than I did, now I needed to get it open and fling the bat out to fly away.
If it flew away. Even then, odds were good it would just return to where it had started. I edged as close as possible to the side of the window. Holding the bat tucked up against my chest with one hand, I attempted to shift the window with the other. No luck. The handle was stuck tight.
“Jimmy?” I whispered. He waved to me with a big grin on his face, unaware of how much trouble we were in.
The side of the barn creaked again as the man outside shifted his position. It was too late. Jimmy couldn’t get up to give me a hand in time. I reached out, ignoring the burn from the edge of the light, and wrenched the handle again. This time it budged a little. With my feet planted solidly on the floor, I gave it one last try. This time it popped open, all the way, tossing me onto my ass.
I lost control of the bat. The distressed creature flapped free of me, circling above my head.
Chapter Seven
The pain of the bat’s sonar cracked through my skull, a wrench of agony that rose goosebumps over every inch of my skin. I curled into a ball, tucking my burned hand against my chest and raising the other to my splitting forehead.
After one more circle of the barn roof, sonar screeching, the bat found the window and flapped free, out into the sunlight.
I stared for a split second, mouth agape in disbelief. Then I recovered and dove for the window, closing it as quietly as I could so the creature couldn’t turn around and fly straight back in.
Jimmy was still staring at me from the ground, a question etched into every line of his face. I held my finger up to my lips and pointed back at the pile of hay. He disappeared into the tangled strands, giving me one look back over his shoulder. I gave him a thumbs-up, and he pulled the grass over top of himself, gone from view.
With the police or trackers still waiting outside, I hid as well. Even if the bat flew off into the distance, they might yet check in here.
I ducked behind something that looked like it might once have been a mower. I would have preferred the shelter of one of the overturned drinking troughs, but they were too slim even for my boyish frame.
Hidden away, I waited to see what the men outside would do next. After a minute or two, I heard a gasp.
“It’s up there!” a man cried out. The one who’d been leaning against the side of the shed moved at the words. The boards creaked as they started the slow move back into place.
“What is it?”
“The tracker’s up there in the sky. Don’t you see it?”
“Don’t see nothing but a bat.”
“That’s it. The lady who called this in said a vampire stole it from her. Vampire. Bats. Don’t you get it?”
“I thought that was just a rumor.”
“Well”—I heard the sound of a shotgun racking—“you can now see it for yourself.”
The blast was louder than I expected. Even though I’d been bracing for it, I jerked at the sound, banging my head against the side wall. Outside, there were the sounds of commiserations.
“That was always going to be a difficult shot,” one man gamely said. “But I think you might have winged him.”
I wouldn’t allow myself to smile until I was sure the men were packing up to go. When ten minutes had passed since the last time I heard a car, I took in the first deep breath I’d had since waking.
When more than twenty minutes had elapsed, I let myself down the ladder with shaking arms and joined Jimmy back in the pile of hay.
“But you said that we could find directions up here,” Jimmy protested. “That was why I let you take me miles off-course.”
“I can’t make the internet appear out of thin air,” I grumbled back. “How was I meant to know that holiday cabins had turned into Fort Knox?”
Both of us were tired and cranky. Now on the third day without blood, it was to be expected. That foreknowledge didn’t ease the hunger any. If it got any worse, then soon we’d be able to feel the cells in our brains starting to disintegrate, one by one. Our skin would feel one size too large and then flip to being too small.
After a week of going without, we’d both be rabid. Nobody wanted that.
“If we break into one of these houses, the police will be on us like a shot.” I’d already explained this to Jimmy, but I went through it again. Sometimes he got things on the second try. Or the third.
“If we can find a place with less security, then we can hopefully find a device lying around that will let us check.”
It was a blessing that maps were still part of the free internet. So much stuff had been locked away behind a government wall of “public health” that the connection became close to useless.
“How about the shed? We got into that okay.”
Yup. The first brain cell was starting to die, shriveling up and popping out of the world forever. Jimmy’s voice triggered it to give up hope and choose death.
“A house, not a rickety old shed. Let’s try there.” I pointed at a small cottage at the end of the lane. Mostly out of desperation to get Jimmy to stop asking the same set of whining questions again.
Like it was my fault he didn’t know the route to his old homestead from a place he’d never been before.
“I think we should just head down to the suburbs and wander around until I recognize something.”
Ah, yes. How could I have forgotten Jimmy’s solid plan B? Wandering at random. “It’s going to be difficult enough to talk your way into the home as it is now,” I said. Although I’d tried to warn him that there might not be a warm welcome from whoever lived there now, it had bypassed normal functioning and gone straight to ignored. “If we waste half the night trying to find it, we might end up trapped.”
“We’re wasting half the night wandering around up here, instead.”
&nbs
p; Good point, Jimmy. Could have kept that one to yourself.
“Let's just try a few more places. We can always switch to plan B tomorrow night.” I strode up the driveway toward the small cottage as though I was confident it would solve all our problems. “Plenty of time for us to get this wrong,” I muttered under my breath.
The small property was a godsend for burglars as useless at breaking into places as Jimmy and I. The owners hadn’t bothered with the fancy security—no red beams swept their evil eyes across the floor.
“Try under the mat,” I instructed Jimmy when he walked up to the back door and wriggled the handle. No luck. That really was too much to be expected.
Jimmy stood on tiptoes and swept his hand along the top of the jamb instead. “Here,” he said.
I looked around me, searching for a camera. This had to be a set-up. Who the hell actually left their key in such an obvious hiding place in this day and age?
But I couldn’t see anything to suggest the house was monitored. From the length of the back lawn, the last visit had been a few weeks ago, before the easterly wind that swept up the side of the hill carried any real bite.
I shrugged. “Give it a go, then.”
Jimmy inserted the key and turned it, a wince twisting up the side of his face.
My muscles were locked in anticipation of a nasty surprise, too. When it didn’t come, I relaxed and followed Jimmy in through the back door.
Four rooms. The cottage was simple and unassuming. A moment after we walked through the door, I realized that this wasn’t the sort of place we were searching for. Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen. Lounge. The box setup indicated a couple’s retreat, not the kind of place where a kid would leave a connected toy lying around.
Still, we were inside, and there was a sliver of hope.
“You start in the bedroom, then search the bathroom. I’ll take the lounge and kitchen.”
Jimmy nodded and walked through. The TV seemed the most likely thing to be connected and I flicked that on first. A small image projected on the wall. Not even good quality. Just a second-hand item that a middle-income family chucked into their retreat.
It was also auto-blocked from the internet.
That made sense—who wanted an extended bill for something they barely used—but logic didn’t help the knot in my stomach to unwind.
None of the extended features worked. I couldn’t even check on the weather. After a second of channel surfing and frustration, I turned the telly back off.
What next?
The sofa didn’t have anything trapped down the back of its cushions. The dining table set up in the corner—just big enough for two—didn’t even have secret places that a device could hide in.
The kitchen cupboards were useless. The fridge was still connected to the power grid, but practically empty. It definitely didn’t have beautiful red packets of life-giving blood. I even tried the freezer compartment, staring vaguely at the trays of ice-cubes, some full, some empty. There was a joke one with a fly in it—that or a lack of kitchen hygiene on display.
The fridge beeped at me, insistent that I closed its doors. It had a job to do, and I was making that harder.
“Find anything yet?” I called out to Jimmy.
“Nope,” came the sullen answer back.
Crockery, cutlery, glasses. One of the cupboards held a supply of barbecuing equipment—a lighter, a selection of long-handled tools—but nothing more revealing than that.
I spun around in a circle again. The cottage would make an excellent base for operations if we needed somewhere to stay during the day. Unlike the shed, the light wouldn’t filter in through random cracks. On the other hand, closing the curtains might be noticed from outside.
Best not to chance it. Here, there would be nowhere to go if the owners came back unexpectedly. At least with the shed, chances were that nobody would even check.
I looked at the panel display on the fridge. Apparently, my stint in the freezer compartment had caused a temperature rise of two degrees. Naughty boy. Creating extra work. I tapped on the LCD screen, and it popped up with a shopping list. Lemons, milk, cereal. Mm-mm.
Still, I paused on the screen, an idea tugging at the back of my mind. Nobody wanted a shopping list on their fridge? It wasn’t like they could lug it in their purse down to the store.
I tapped on a few more buttons. Synching came up on the display.
Of course. It would send the information to whatever app or reminder program the owner used to keep track of their grocery purchases. Or would just dispatch the list straight to the store, so the owner wasn’t tasked with actually leaving the house at all.
To do that, it needed an internet connection. Packets of data didn’t just fly randomly through the air, they sailed on the ordered strands of the interwebs.
I pressed more buttons, trying to find a way into that connection. There was a keyboard, there must be a place on it for me to type and search.
Asha would have this done in a second my mind gleefully pointed out. For all that you treated her like shit, she actually knows how to do a lot of things.
I didn’t need a mind lecture right now, thanks. There was enough space being taken up by my increasing hunger—lessons on appreciation would have to wait.
Finally, I clicked through to an open server connection. Presumably built so the owner could handily check on who starred in that movie—you know, the blonde one out of that thing—without having to return the whole four steps to the lounge.
“Bingo,” I whispered, then repeated it louder. Jimmy walked to the connecting door, eyebrows raised. I nodded.
“What’s the street address?”
“2240 Handlery Avenue.”
I typed it in with the onscreen keyboard then held my breath as a circle whirred on the screen. A map appeared a moment later, and I gave a shriek of triumph. I turned to high-five Jimmy, but he was staring out the window instead.
“It’s getting close to light.”
My tiny triumph fell away again, disappearing into the whirl of anxiety. Another night, fine. We’d both make it through. But tomorrow, we’d better get something to eat or our days would rapidly spiral downhill.
“Hand me that pad, will you?”
Jimmy passed it across, and I quickly sketched down the location. The map wasn’t great, but it would have to do.
“Okay, let’s get back to the shed for the night, then.”
Before we left, I stretched up to replace the key on the top of the back door.
I insisted on talking to the house owner the next night. The fight lasted the long walk down from the hills and across the leafy streets of suburbia. It was still going as we turned into Handlery Avenue and started to look at house numbers.
“They’re going to give you a harder look than some teenager,” I insisted. “Teens are meant to dress up as goths.”
I didn’t know that for sure. Goths arrived a long time after I’d started being a teen and could easily have disappeared into the mists of time. That got in the way of a good point, though, so I wasn’t about to check. “If you walk up to the front door, they’re going to take one look, think vampires, and then slam the door and call the police.”
“My grandbaby will recognize me,” Jimmy insisted. “I haven’t changed at all since I saw her last.”
An excellent point but useless. “We don’t know that your granddaughter’s still living there. Chances are she’s moved on sometime during the last seventy years. Better I do it. If she answers the door, you can always jump forward out of the shadows.”
I wouldn’t have won the argument, except Jimmy suddenly turned shy as we neared the property. His eyes darted in all directions, apparently recognizing the shapes and signs of home.
“Okay,” he said at the last minute, standing out on the driveway. “You go up the path and ask for Esme. If she’s the one who answers, turn and give me a nod and I’ll be up there with you in a second.”
Jimmy disappeared into the shadow of a lar
ge tree, leaving me alone. Doubts started to pinch at me, then. Maybe teased out by Jimmy’s sudden uncertainty.
My walk up the path to the front door was slow. If a stranger opened up the door, he might start to wonder what on earth a teenage boy was doing out at night alone. It wasn’t too late for an adult—though knocking on the door at this time would still be strange—but for me?
My hand shook as I stretched out a finger and placed it on the doorbell. It rang for a few seconds, and I took a step back, letting my long fringe fall down to shield my pale face.
“What’s it?” a man asked, opening the door.
He already had a frown of annoyance on his face. It deepened into anger as he saw me standing there.
In a second, I burst into tears.
“Hey. What’s going on?” The man took one step out, then hesitated. He looked back over his shoulder, calling out, “Anne?”
“Sorry,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “Just, do you know a woman called Esme Hammond? She used to live here.”
A woman came to the door beside the man, her face broadcasting worry.
“Esme? That’s a while back.” Anne turned to the man I presumed was her husband. “Wasn’t that the name of the lady who sold it to us.”
“Becky,” he said firmly.
“Not the real estate agent, silly.” She turned back to me. “Who’s Esme to you, kid?”
“She’s my grandma. My mother’s in trouble, and this is the only address I had for her.”
Anne took a step outside, reaching out her arm to lay a hand on my shoulder. I flinched away from the touch, and she withdrew, glancing back at her husband with concern. “If it’s who I think it is, then she’s long gone,” Anne said. “Just a moment, I’ll see if I can find her in the listings.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. The movement seemed to trigger another wave of sympathy from the woman on the doorstep, but I was really just feeling foolish. The listings were available online for every person in the city. If I’d bothered to think of it back up the hill, we could just have looked the woman straight up.