Night Road

by A. M. Jenkins

  “So, has the aesthete yet indulged himself?” Frederick asked Cole as Cole got up and took a seat next to Nell.

  “He did last night,” Mitch said helpfully before Cole could answer.

  “How enjoyable. I refuse to go on the road,” Frederick announced to no one in particular. “I’m much too greedy. I could never deny myself for more than a few hours.”

  “Nell,” Johnny said from the doorway, “would you help Helene to get inside?”

  Cole saw that the other omnis were gone. Now there wasn’t a single item of clothing that would have drawn a second glance in a mall, on a campus, or on any suburban street.

  Nell eased Helene to her feet, and the two slowly made their way inside. Cole looked around at all the familiar faces. So far it wasn’t much of a meeting; he and Sandor were the only ones who didn’t keep their territory close to the Building.

  “Is anyone else coming?” he asked.

  “No,” Johnny said. “You were the only one I called in.”

  “Ah.” Cole nodded, but he was suddenly uncomfortable. He scrutinized Johnny’s face—it showed nothing, of course. “Then why am I here?” he asked.

  “In a word,” Johnny said, “Gordon.”

  “Gordon?”

  “Yes. The lad’s been with us a fortnight,” said Johnny. “We’ve been talking, Cole. We’ve agreed that Sandor should take Gordon on the road for a few months and begin teaching him how to get along outside the Building.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Cole told him.

  “So far he’s only been exposed to what amounts to a teenage boy’s picnic.” That was Mina. “All he’s been doing is lying around, feeding, and having sex. He needs to start seeing some of our responsibilities.”

  Cole nodded. He noticed that everyone was looking at him. “It sounds reasonable to me,” he said out loud. “More than reasonable. It’s necessary.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Johnny said. “Because we feel that you should go with them.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT took a moment to sink in.

  “Did you say—me?” Cole asked, shifting in his chair.

  “Yes.” Johnny eyed him calmly. “You and Sandor would make a well-rounded team.”

  “Please take the Accident out of here,” said Frederick. “He’s practically an omni.”

  “But…me?” Cole asked.

  Sandor chuckled. “We’ve been round on this subject already, Cole. It has been agreed that the boy may benefit from a firmer hand than mine from time to time.”

  But that wasn’t what Cole had meant. “I—I do not have a…good track record with this sort of thing,” he reminded them.

  “That was an entirely different situation,” Johnny said, “and it was long ago. You’ve become very controlled. Cautious. Observant. And extraordinarily conscientious. You do see this, don’t you? And together, you and Sandor make one perfect teacher. He’s a bit of an extrovert, which is good. He’s impulsive, affectionate, softhearted. Wonderful qualities, but even he agrees they need some balance. Besides, we feel it’s best that there be two of you keeping an eye on things. Consider it a safety net. The entire responsibility won’t fall on you, lad. It will be shared.”

  “It’s natural that you would view this through a certain emotional…curtain,” Alice put in. “But look at it logically. You live outside the Building, outside the city, among omnis, in fact. Your experience is practical and deep.” Her voice was placid, factual. “You have always adjusted quickly to changing situations. And I have to say, that whole unfortunate episode with Elizabeth—”

  “Alice,” said Johnny.

  “He’s the one who brought up his track record.”

  Nell opened her mouth to say something but seemed to change her mind.

  “All I was going to say,” Alice continued mildly, “was that what Elizabeth did was not in his control. If he thinks it was, he’s being ridiculous. Really, Cole. I knew you were upset at the time, but I thought you’d have gained some perspective by now.”

  Cole shook his head, unable to think of anything to say. He was the only one of the whole group who had perspective. The only one who had failed on not one but two counts. The second failure was the one that was more pertinent now.

  He had already shown himself to be inadequate in training a new heme.

  It had been long ago—more than a hundred and twenty years. Of course, he’d been failing miserably for decades before that with his sympathetic, ineffectual attempts to help her become resigned to her new life. She’d rejected his kindness, his teaching, and finally his presence. But the defining, crystal clear culmination of his failure had taken place when she showed up in New York again, back when the Building was one of the new apartment houses scattered among the shanties and lots, bound by equally new grids of paved streets and sidewalks.

  It was the pristine new sidewalk outside the Building that had broken her body. Everyone else had been sleeping in the afternoon hours when she’d climbed the ladder from the top floor to the roof. The hatch was heavy, and it must have thudded shut behind her when she stepped onto the roof—but Cole hadn’t heard it. No one had. No one heard any cries when the sun pierced her skin, or when she jumped from the roof’s edge. No one heard her body hit the pavement.

  No one had known at all till the police came.

  “Look around you, lad,” Johnny was saying now. “Who has sharper skills? None of us, I’d say. You’ve been on the road for a century.”

  Johnny was the one who’d gotten her back. Cole had been nothing but a raving mess, burned in his own turn from trying to get out to the sidewalk. Cole hadn’t been strong enough, had turned back on the stoop with his skin a sheet of pain, his eyes digging sharp wheels of flame into his brain. His sight had come back in a couple of hours, enough to see his skin as it healed. And while he was laid up, unable to move without agony, Johnny had taken care of everything that could be taken care of—the questioning authorities, the curious omnis—and had gotten her back from the morgue.

  Cole didn’t like to think what Johnny had risked—or what he had done—to accomplish all that.

  “We’ve discussed it,” Johnny was telling him. “Hands down, we think you’re the best choice.”

  “You know,” said Sandor, “we haven’t even asked Gordon if he wants to go on the road.”

  “Who cares what he wants?” Frederick said. “Two weeks ago he was eating cooked animal flesh and downing six-packs. He’ll do as he’s told.”

  “What say you, Cole?” That was Johnny.

  “I say…” As he hesitated, he happened to look up, and for the first time he saw the way that some of the hemes—Nell and Sandor in particular—were looking at him. With kindness and pity.

  He suddenly realized that everyone could see his surprise, his hesitation. His doubt.

  He drew a deep breath, and let his face relax till he was sure it showed nothing.

  “I need to think,” he said calmly. “Give me a few minutes.”

  Johnny nodded. There was a short silence, and then the others began to converse in low murmurs.

  All right. He must be logical: The question at hand was not whether he had gained perspective or whether he’d once been upset. Dwelling on past mistakes served no purpose. He normally didn’t even allow himself to think about them. Would not have now if he hadn’t been taken by surprise.

  The fact was, Gordon did need to go on the road. It was in the best interest of everyone here. Someone had to take him out and train him.

  If Cole said no—if he shirked—the burden would fall to someone else. Who would be best for the job? Johnny, obviously—but it wouldn’t be right for Johnny to leave all his other duties behind to work with this one boy.

  What about the other hemes in the Building?

  No candidates came to mind. Look at what had happened just in last night’s small, easily contained emergency. Of the hemes who lived here in the Building, only Johnny had reacted quickly and with decision. Everyone
else had seemed content to let someone else take care of it. Mitch had sat and watched from a distance. Seth had followed directions—Cole’s directions.

  And no one—out of all the hemes living in the Building—had yet bothered to supervise the kid. He’d been here for two weeks, and no one had tried to ease him into the difficulties and nuances of independent feeding.

  Gordon had picked up bad habits. Who knew how deeply they were ingrained or how difficult it would be to rid him of them?

  Cole looked around the group. “How well does Gordon listen?” he asked. “How obedient is he?” It was a simple question, but no one answered. “Sandor?”

  “You saw him last night—he’s moody, still in a bit of shock. I haven’t wanted to push him too much.”

  So no one had any idea whether the kid would catch on quickly or have to have his lessons pounded home. No idea how difficult this might or might not be.

  “Has Gordon fed tonight?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Sandor said. “He’s been low-spirited, poor boy, since last night. I left him lying on his bed watching game show reruns.”

  “Let’s take him out.”

  “You mean outside the Building?”

  “Yes.”

  “To feed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this the beginning of his training, or is it a test to see whether you want to train him?”

  “A test.”

  “Well, then, we’ll hope he passes. There’s a coffee bar on the corner—shall we try that?”

  “Maybe not coffee bars just yet,” Cole said. “We want the feeds to be a bit sluggish, not hopped up on caffeine.”

  “A bar then? Dance club?”

  “Either’s fine.”

  “Seth told me about a nice bar down Broadway,” Sandor said, rising from his chair. “You and Gordon and I can go check it out.”

  “No,” said Cole. “Let’s you and I get ourselves taken care of first. That way there will be no distractions.”

  “Just feed here then,” Frederick suggested.

  Sandor shook his head. “I hate to see these poor omnis pale and drained all the time. Shall we go to Seth’s bar, Cole?”

  “You go ahead, Sandor. I need to finish a couple of chores here, and I’ll catch a quick feed somewhere. Then we’ll take Gordon out.”

  “As you wish.” Sandor paused to pull the neck of his sweater up high around his ears, and then with a muffled “I’ll be back shortly,” he was gone.

  Cole rose with a glance at Johnny: I’ll make a decision tonight.

  Johnny regarded him steadily. It was clear that he had already weighed the choices and was sure Cole was the best one.

  Johnny’s sureness was no small thing.

  But as Cole slipped through the patio doorway into the apartment, he suddenly remembered how he’d failed to plan for the subway last night. Not a big deal, when it was just him.

  However, slackness of that kind could be a very big deal if he had to deal with another person’s safety as well as his own. Anything he let slide, anything he was lenient or careless about—any tiny particular could mean disaster, not only for the Accident, but for the Colony. If the boy Gordon got even a little bit out of control, he might draw the attention of omnis. Of police, of hospitals, of newspapers. Of mental institutions. Of funeral homes.

  If Gordon got a lot out of control—but there was no point in thinking about that right now. No point in borrowing trouble.

  First things first: He’d see how the kid did tonight.

  Cole headed down into the basement; it was musty at the bottom of the wooden steps. The sides of the room were crowded with trunks, boxes, and artifacts left over from past wanderings of the New York City hemes.

  When he’d come here earlier to start his laundry, he’d thought about digging around to see if he could find any of his old sketchbooks. Now he just wanted to finish the laundry and get going.

  A single bare lightbulb hung in the center of the room, making a circle of light that dimmed before it reached the corners. He stood in the ring of light while he pulled his wet clothes out of the washing machine and loaded them into the dryer. A nice change, to have a dryer. A change from hanging things out in hotel rooms.

  He did not want to take the kid on the road. He did not want traveling companions, even ones that didn’t involve worry and care. Not that Sandor was so bad; Cole had traveled with Sandor before. It was just that Cole had grown used to being alone. And even if Gordon were an angel of a student—even if he were slavish about following directions and eager to learn—traveling with him meant that every word out of Cole’s mouth would have to be some kind of direction, or correction, or advice.

  He had just started the dryer when he heard someone coming downstairs from the first floor. He turned as a pair of black heeled shoes appeared and, rising up from them, bare legs. Next a short black skirt, then a black lacy top, and last of all black hair streaked purple and red in front.

  At the bottom of the steps, Mary Kate hesitated. In that moment Cole suddenly blanked out on her name, so he just smiled a greeting—which was a mistake, because now she came over, slouching like some kind of cat into his cozy circle of light.

  She stopped between him and the clothes dryer, so close that he could see her skin through the black lace of her blouse.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in a pouting voice as she leaned back against the dryer. Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “I haven’t let anybody else touch me since last night. I’ve saved it all for you. I thought we could combine.”

  Cole had never been on the omni end of combining sexual pleasure with the feed; but even after all these years he remembered how it felt to be fed on, even though there had been nothing sexual about it.

  Those were the days when one had to go longer between feedings if one wasn’t in a city. Now every heme took care to feed nightly, but Cole could remember a time when he left most of his feeds fainting, back when a meal came only a few times a week. Back when Johnny, too, was still a wanderer.

  The way Johnny told it, one night he’d been arrested along with the drunks he was about to feed on after three nights of fasting. When the police then thought Johnny was attacking his fellow inmates, he’d been locked up alone in a dark jail cell. By the time they released him it was after sunrise, and he’d had to break into a nearby cellar, huddling there to painfully nurse his newly made burns and wait for night. Cole had been on his way home as the sun was going down on that fifth evening, just as Johnny’s Thirst had surpassed the need to protect his skin. That was the last time Cole had seen a sunset.

  Well, he hadn’t actually seen the sun itself—or if he had he didn’t remember it. What he remembered were the colors, the violet wisps and gold and pink swirls. But what he recalled most vividly was the way he’d felt, as if he were part of the swirls and they were part of him, and as if he were floating in a glorious dream—perhaps to do with sunsets?—that got more and more satisfyingly intense as he died. Of course, he hadn’t realized at the time that he was dying. But when he was half drained—the point at which omnis died—and Johnny had pulled his face away from Cole’s neck, gasping, all Cole had felt was sharp regret, and anger at Johnny, not for what he had done, but because he had stopped.

  Once the dream was gone he had only a pale memory of it. And then, almost immediately, his Thirst had taken shape, and Johnny’d had to look sharp to keep Cole from killing in his turn.

  So had started the endless landscape of the years.

  Remembering that floating dream he could well imagine that the omnis enjoyed combining feeding with sex even more than he did.

  “You do want to combine, don’t you?” The words slid out silkily, and Mary Kate tilted her head so that the hair fell away from her neck, baring it as she peered sideways at him.

  Before he thought, his eyes were sliding over that bare skin, down to the black lace and back up again.

  It was tempting. And he did need to feed.
>
  He could pull her into the shadows and take advantage of everything she was offering, all at once. It was what she wanted, and there was so much temptation here. The open feeds, the omni’s reactions. Seeing the girl slide to the couch, limp and vulnerable. The exposed curve of Mary Kate’s neck.

  Here in the Building anything he wanted was his, and he wouldn’t even have to ask for it. He could let his usual caution slip even more than it already had—there was no hurry; he and Sandor didn’t have to take Gordon out tonight.

  He could wait, and make Mary Kate wait, till Thirst began to uncurl inside his body. He could wait till even the sight of any one of the omnis sent him quivering and he could smell the faint salt and metal through the thin skin over a pulse. Then he could let himself have her.

  He could. But he knew he wouldn’t. He needed to get out of the city as soon as possible. The tantalizing atmosphere of the Building had already begun to seep into him. Just being here took the edge off his thinking.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Kate. I would like to feed. But that’s all.”

  She peered up at him for a moment and apparently saw something in his face that told her he meant it, because she dropped the subject.

  The dryer was set for thirty minutes, so he did allow himself to take his time. There was a metal folding chair leaning against a trunk; he pulled it into the ring of light in front of the machines and sat on it. Then he took Mary Kate’s hand and pulled her onto his lap. And this time he used his teeth, but carefully; she offered her wrist, but he held it in his fingers and instead concentrated on the tender skin in the inner crook of her arm. He kissed and sucked on it for a few moments, enjoying the sound of her breath and the scent of her skin and clothes. When he nipped the skin she instantly grew still, and he listened to her breathing and counted the pulses of her heart while he fed slowly, intermittently, thinking of that long-ago dream, always careful of the time and her pulse: not too much, not too little, and with absolute self-control.

  When he was done, the dryer wasn’t quite finished. Mary Kate’s head rested on his shoulder, her arms draped around him. It made him feel as if he was smothering under a blanket, but since she liked it, he let her stay. It was little enough to do.