Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  I had to hang up. The store clerk was coming through the door.

  “Hey, you can’t be back here,” she said, sweeping her dark bangs out of her eyes. “You could get me in trouble. What are you …”

  But I had already brushed past her and soon was roaring up the highway with my stolen Home Depot cart practically sparking the road. My face burned from crying.

  It was an adventure getting all my stolen junk back to the base. I had to cross a couple of major thoroughfares, jouncing over the uneven pavement and drawing looks you wouldn’t believe. The last trouble spot involved heaving everything over the NASA fence. But I managed it without breaking anything and stashed the orange cart near the bunker after unloading everything back at my tower.

  I scaled my new home, lugging the tools up, and furiously threw myself into action. Anything to keep from thinking about Manda, Mom, all the stupid things I had done. The trouble I’m in.

  I started by stringing what felt like miles of wire around the tower and catwalks, complete with noisy jangly things like metal outlet covers to provide some early warning. The generator I left up on top, and the tools I dispersed at important locations all over the structure, mostly hidden behind posts and beams where they would not be easily seen, but I could get at them in a hurry.

  The rest of the day slipped by faster than I thought it would. I couldn’t help but wonder what all my classmates were doing and if they even wondered why I wasn’t there. Probably not. It felt ridiculously strange and guiltily shameful being outside on a school day. You do things a certain way year after year, it just doesn’t feel right when everything changes.

  The sun marched across my little enclosure, the tower’s ginormous shadow gradually leaning this way and that, almost like a sundial. I wondered if I could figure out how to use it as a way to tell time.

  After hours of hard work, I felt pretty satisfied with my preliminary defenses. I could tweak them some more tomorrow. At least I would sleep a little better tonight. I filled the generator with gas and cranked it. It was kinda noisy, but my ears were so sensitive, it was hard to tell what the noise sounded like to someone with normal hearing. I plugged in the battery charger and the battery pack.

  I was feeling hot and sticky, so I climbed down with soap and headed inside the bunker to clean off.

  The concrete floor of the bunker was submerged two inches deep in cool running water. The faucet.

  I had left it going all this time! I splashed inside and followed the gurgling rush of water to the spigot. All of the brown was gone; I collected a mouthful in my palm, sniffed it, then finally tasted it. It was slightly metallic, but other than that it was okay. I drank my fill, then cut the tap off, praying there wasn’t a sensor going off somewhere that would bring a NASA repair crew.

  I made sure nobody was around, then stripped and hung my clothes over the windowsill. Turned the water back on and bathed. So cold! But so good too. While I drip-dried, I shook my hair out, using my fingers for a brush. It felt so wonderful to be clean again, I hated the thought of putting my filthy pajamas back on.

  Laundry, Emma.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat, hearing my mom’s voice in my head. I retrieved my pj’s, gave them a squirt of soap, and started rubbing fistfuls of material together under the cold water. It was harder than I would have ever imagined. After ten minutes of this caveman stuff, I told myself I would never again complain the next time she asked me to throw something in the washer.…

  The next time.

  What was wrong with me? I never used to cry at all, and now I always seemed to be teetering right on the verge. To distract myself, I watched out the little bunker window. A hawk was circling a distant field and the sun was still a ways above the horizon. As soon as I finished, I would go foraging again—

  Something fell out of the pocket of my pajama bottoms. It was floating on the standing water next to my bare feet. I reached to scoop it up. What in the world? Macaroni noodles painted gold and sprinkled with glitter, glued together to form a small oval … and in the center of the oval, a picture …

  Manda.

  She was grinning at the camera, golden curls on either side of her head. One of her front teeth was missing. I turned the macaroni frame over; on the back was a little heart drawn in now-blurry red marker.

  She must’ve slipped it into my pocket that last time we were reading the Sneetches.…

  I dropped to my knees and stared at the picture as if I could somehow pull my sister through it. Absorbing every line and feature and the points of light in the corners of her eyes.

  Now I couldn’t keep from blubbering. It was as if this frail little thing in my hand, charged with all my sister’s trust and love, was standing alone against the horror of Wirtz. My logical mind knew that if the vampire had found us in that apartment, my family would now be dead. But I couldn’t help feeling I had abandoned them when they needed me most. I will tear her head from her shoulders.…

  I put a wet knuckle to my mouth and bit down. Hard.

  Get it together, I thought. You just need something to eat.

  When I arrived back at the Solar Observatory, it was starting to get dark and there weren’t many lights on in the building. Perfect. Nobody around to bother me. Except now I wouldn’t be able to get in by piggybacking behind some employee with a badge.

  The roof turned out to be the easiest access. I found a metal door that came loose when I put my strength into it, and from there I climbed down a ladder to a closet that locked from the inside.

  The building was harder to navigate than I expected—lots of long hallways with side junctions. I saw acres of cubicles. Most of the offices were completely dark, but one cube was strung with chili pepper lights that gave the whole room an eerie red glow.

  By the time I found the cafeteria, I was ready to eat toilet paper. But the serving lines and warming pans were empty and stainless steel shiny. I hurried back into the kitchen … everything spotless in there too. Not one crumb of food. There were bags of potato chips and cookies behind a plastic shield, but I was looking for something a little more substantial. Like a bucket of chicken.

  I noticed my appetite had been increasing lately. Did half-human non-bloodsucking vampires have to eat every two hours or something? Maybe I was not only the first vampire with epilepsy, but the first with hypoglycemia as well. I laughed out loud at the thought. It felt good to laugh for the first time since … Since the last time I tickled Manda. Stop it.

  I told my stomach to be quiet and rifled through the steel cabinets and overhead bins. There was a walk-in freezer, but it had been turned off and was stacked high with boxes of napkins, paper cups, and plastic utensils. What kind of cafeteria was this?

  I went back out front, ready to rip into the plastic bin full of chips. I raised my hand to smash the plastic shield.…

  “Hey.”

  The voice was not loud, but it made me turn around so hard, I cracked my head on a metal shelf. I cursed and grabbed at my forehead to see if it was bleeding.

  “Oh, man, I’m sorry.”

  A young guy was standing there. Tall and thin with straight blond hair that was parted at the side and came just over his ears. He looked a few years older than me.

  “My bad,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said.

  My second night on the run and I’d already managed to get caught. What was he doing here after everything was shut down, anyhow?

  I slowly straightened up and looked at my hand. No blood. Looked back at the guy. His mouth was wide, nose a little long, eyes large and icily blue. The kind of blue where it seemed like there might not be anybody inside. But so striking. He was wearing khaki shorts, leather slip-ons, no socks, and a T-shirt that said HUBBLE TROUBLE.

  “They bring the food in,” the guy said, coming closer. “Every day. In this big truck with warming pans. Some contractor. It must be a cost-saving deal. My dad says in the old days they had full cafeteria staffs. Now they just bring it in,
sell it for a couple of hours, shoot the leftovers back on the truck, and zoom, they’re gone.”

  “Oh.” I put a hand to my head again.

  “Let me look at that,” the guy said.

  “What?”

  “Your head. You banged it pretty good.”

  “Oh. It’s okay. No blood, no foul.”

  He frowned in a surprised way. “You sure? You want to sit down? Most girls would be wailing after a lick like that.”

  “Most girls?”

  He put his hands up in the air. His fingers were long and thin. “Okay, okay. People. You with the crew?”

  “What crew?”

  “You know. Custodial. Cleanup. You sure you’re all right?” He came even closer, staring at me intently.

  “No, I’m not with the crew.…” I didn’t know what to say I was. I felt completely embarrassed standing there in my damp pj’s and gum boots. At least I was clean.

  “What’s with the Ray-Bans?” the guy said.

  “Huh?”

  “Sunglasses.”

  “Oh. I have … an allergy to sunlight.”

  He smiled. “After dark?”

  I took my shades off. I had forgotten I was wearing them. Now he was so close I could smell the remnants of shaving cream on his cheeks. He had a dark mole along his jawline that was unbearably cute.

  “Oh. I have a cousin with that,” he said. “Breaks out in the worst rashes ever. Sun poisoning …”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, feeling slightly dizzy. “Maybe I will sit down.” I pulled out one of the plastic chairs and plopped into it. “It’s just my eyes. They’re really sensitive. I forget when I have my sunglasses on.”

  “Oh.” He sat down beside me. His eyes were amazing. I felt like I was staring, so I dropped my gaze to his arms. The hair on his arms was golden.

  “You Swedish or something?” I said.

  “Norwegian. Most of my relatives are from Minnesota. Lutefisk every holiday and smother everything else in cheese. I’m Sagan. Sagan Bishop.” He held out his hand and I shook it. His fingers were cool.

  “Sagan?”

  “My parents came up with that. One is an astrophysicist, the other a solar astronomer. They work out here.”

  “Okay?”

  “Carl Sagan? The astronomer?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “One of the co-founders of the Planetary Society? Heavily involved with SETI?”

  “SETI?”

  “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. They use the big radio telescope down in Puerto Rico. Haven’t you seen Contact, with Jodie Foster? Any of this getting through?”

  He moved his eyebrows in a way that made me think he would like to rap me on top of my head with his knuckles. In a sweet sort of way.

  “Oh. One of those guys,” I said. As if I knew what he was talking about.

  “No, not one of those guys. The guy. Carl Sagan was brilliant.

  He helped design the plaques they sent into space on the Pioneer and Voyager probes for aliens to find. Always went around saying, ‘Billions and billions.’ ”

  “So he was rich?”

  Sagan Bishop laughed. I liked the sound of it and started to feel a little less self-conscious. “He was talking about how there are so many stars out there,” Sagan said. “His theory was that it’s a mathematical certainty there are other inhabited planets with intelligent life-forms.”

  I smiled. “Gotcha. So, didja ever meet him?”

  “Who?”

  “Your hero, Cal.”

  “Carl. Nope, he died in 1996.”

  “Well, good God, that was ages ago. How was I supposed to know—”

  “Struck on the skull by a meteorite.”

  “Really?”

  Sagan leaned in closer, grinning. “You’re pretty gullible, aren’t you?”

  I liked how quickly he was able to tilt things back in his favor. But I wasn’t letting him get away with it.

  “Nope, just honest. When I feel like talking at all. Mom calls it blunt.”

  “Ah! So you have a family.”

  “Who you will never, ever know anything about.”

  Sagan mimed being struck in the chest by an arrow and slumped over on the table. “You’re blunt, all right. Anyhow, that’s where my name comes from.” His face was still down on the table. “And you’re …?”

  “Hungry.”

  He sat back up. “I noticed. When I came in, you were about to fracture your arm on that case over there, weren’t you? No, seriously, who are you? Could you at least tell me your name?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll have to report you.” He pointed at my chest and I thought for a second he was looking at my boobs. Guys were always doing that.

  I leaned back in my chair, looking into his eyes again. Ready to run. Part of me would enjoy knocking him down on the way out. Although I had to admit … compared to what I had been through the last couple of days, this was a blast.

  “What are you doing out here so late?” I said.

  Sagan grinned. His bottom teeth were a little bit crooked. “Hey, I’m the one who should be asking the questions.” He pointed at my chest again.

  “What? Is something hanging out?”

  “No badge,” he said. “A big no-no out here. They give us security briefings about it all the time. I’m supposed to ‘challenge’ you, then wrestle you to the floor and wait for security to come.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So how’d you get in the building, anyhow?” Sagan said. “How’d you get on the base?”

  “ ‘Bishop’ doesn’t sound very Norwegian.”

  “It’s not,” he agreed. “Does anybody ever tell you you are great at avoiding questions?”

  “Does anybody ever tell you you’re nosy?”

  “You got me. Okay, so you don’t want to tell me your name or how you got out here. I can live with that. I like mysteries. That’s the reason I do what I do.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m going to be an astronomer. You know, mysteries of the universe and all that?”

  “Not for the billions and billions?”

  Sagan reached over and tugged the hem of my pajama top. “Those are pj’s you’re wearing, aren’t they?”

  “Sleepwear. That’s what they call it these days. The latest thing in high school fashion. Are you an albino?”

  “Only on my father’s side.” Sagan looked down. “And you’re wearing … rubber boots. And … is that gasoline I smell?”

  I couldn’t help it, I giggled a little. I never giggle. “Do you really work here?” I said.

  “I’m a NASA co-op,” Sagan said. “I go to classes at UA–Huntsville by day, then work here after hours. Right now it’s volunteer stuff. But starting in June, I’m going to be a summer intern.” He rubbed his hands together. “The big bucks!”

  “How old do you have to be to do that?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “So how old are you?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  I laughed. “Divided by two?”

  Could this really be happening? I had spent the day preparing to fight a vampire to the death. Now I was joking around with some strange guy as if knowing him was even possible. But it felt so good to think about something else.

  “So you still live at home?” I said.

  “Sure. All of us do.”

  “All who?”

  “I’ve got three sisters.”

  “Wow. Big family. And where are you?”

  “I’m the oldest.”

  “So come on, how old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Please don’t ask, I thought.

  “What about you?” Sagan said.

  “I’m … um … I’m eighteen.”

  “I thought you were always honest?”

  “Okay. Seventeen. But that’s my final offer.” And if you call me a kid, I just might break your
face.

  I got up from the table and walked back over to the chip case.

  “Stand back,” I said.

  Sagan got up too. “Hey, hold on. You don’t have to get violent. We’ll figure out something.”

  I dropped my arm. “No joke, I’m starving. You got anything on you?”

  “Food? Maybe a candy bar back in my desk.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Okay, so I was saving it for later. I have to eat chocolate every 11.3 hours to survive. I’ll split it with you. Just tell me your name.”

  “You’ll give it all to me or I’ll beat you to death with a stapler.”

  “I sense issues with anger,” Sagan said, grinning. “I’m kind of gifted that way. Glimpsing the inner person.”

  I started to grin too. “Let’s go.”

  “So you’re basically homeless,” Sagan said.

  “I didn’t say that,” I mumbled.

  My mouth was full of Snickers. God, it was so good. He was lucky he kept his arm when he offered it to me. We were sitting at a tiny wicker table in Sagan’s cubicle, the kind of wicker they use for outdoor furniture. The cube was micro-sized, just big enough for the table, a desk, and two chairs. We were surrounded by the walls of other cubes. If I stood on my tiptoes, I could see them going on and on into the distance. Most seemed to be empty. And not just because it was after hours, either.

  “Devoid of human habitation,” Sagan said. “They used to use this building for something else, before they built the Solar Observatory. All these long buildings out here are pretty old, most dating back to before the moon landing.”

  “Don’t you ever get creeped out at night?” I said.

  “I’m not the type.”

  “Me neither.” Well, I wasn’t until yesterday, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “Well, actually I might be the type, but … I’m too focused, I guess?” Sagan said. He leaned back in his government-issue chair and kicked his feet up on the table. It started to fall over, so he took them off. His legs were long. “When I’m thinking about something I’m interested in, everything else just goes away,” he said.