Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  We started into the woods behind the Steinhaus, skirting a small brook that tinkled over a long curved bluff face. I could hear the water striking on rocks below, and the path trended gradually downhill.

  After all the excitement, it dawned on me. I know someone born before the Civil War. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on End.… I could ask her questions and get firsthand accounts of things no non-vampire human being had ever seen. Well, that was alive to ask, anyhow. Where to start? I practically swooned at the possibilities.

  We didn’t walk far. The trail circled around to a place that brought us down in front of the little waterfall. A few feet away there was a long, overhanging ledge. Lena and the others ducked beneath the ledge. It went farther back under the lip of the mountain than I realized. It wasn’t exactly a cave.…

  “I would not live in a large cave,” Lena said. “Not with the possibility of missing the next Sonneneruption.”

  A long shoulder of stone protruded from the wall. Lena lifted her dress above her knees as we crawled forward on hand and foot. We came to a place where a stone was wedged into an opening—moving it would be way beyond human strength. It looked like a dead end. Lena and the others dug their fingers into the dirt beneath the stone and hauled it out, revealing another low opening just wide enough to get our bodies through.

  They replaced the boulder behind us. I thought about spiders and cave crickets, but the low ceiling quickly opened into a broad room with a ceiling tall enough to stand. At the far end of the room I could plainly see a long notch like a natural window opening onto the rest of the forest. To my super-eyes the light was nearly as bright as day, though I knew from checking my watch that sunrise was still at least an hour or so away.

  “You can’t see the notch in the wall from the outside,” Anton said, walking over to it. “It’s too high up, and it curves into the stone face of the mountain, right? It’s our lookout place.”

  “Doesn’t the sun ever shine through?” I said.

  “No.” He pulled a cord next to the opening and a thick rug unrolled down the wall, blocking out the night. The room filled with the lavender glow of the vampires’ bodies. “We always leave it open after dark,” Anton said, rolling the blanket back up. “We don’t want to miss the next Sonneneruption.”

  “We live our lives outdoors as much as possible,” Lena said. “It is another part of the Sonnen way of life. Besides, where else could we stay? The Verloren, always on the move, must constantly find new living quarters, most often in abandoned buildings lost in the wilderness—a blanket of fresh earth covering most of their bodies—or deep in the bowels of the city. Underground. Below concrete structures, whatever they can find. You will find shelter is one of the most difficult parts of our predicament, Emma.”

  “But in books and movies, vampires—I mean, people like us—they’re always showing them in huge old houses or castles,” I said. “Lots of times they’re rich.”

  “Impossible,” Lena said. “Think about it, Emma. We cannot own homes or land because we have no history.”

  “No social security numbers, no birth certificates, work records, fixed addresses, none of that, hey?” Anton said. “Even if we had those things, imagine trying to carry out all your business transactions after dark?”

  “What they’re trying to say is, Emma, that stuff you see in the movies, read in the books … the glamour, the romance, fabulous clothes …” Donne’s voice trailed away. She stuck three fingers through a hole in her jeans and gave a nasty little laugh. “I had to steal these, and it’s not getting any easier.”

  “No clotheslines anymore, huh?” Anton said, touching Donne’s arm affectionately.

  “I’ve got a social security number,” I said.

  “Sure you do,” Donne said. “It’s useless to you now.”

  I felt a tinge of sadness in her words and thought of all the things I had always taken for granted: cooked food, shelter, utensils, hot water for bathing.… The list went on and on.

  “We do not mix with them often,” Lena said. “The ones down … below.” She lifted the hem of her tattered dress. “Anywhere we go, there is a constant danger of exposure. Here at least we have a warning because it is so easy to detect someone advancing on our home.”

  Home.

  Lena lit an oil lamp. “I like it for the memory of the sun,” she explained.

  I looked more closely at the room. There were three mismatched chairs, all sitting at awkward angles because of the unevenness of the floor, and a small wooden table. Several battered cardboard boxes were grouped in a corner; the one on top was open and a threadbare sweatshirt and some white socks that had gone gray were spilling out. There was a smaller plastic bin that contained things like hand sanitizer, more gauze and antiseptics, baby shampoo, soap, and little metal tools that I couldn’t identify. A large jug of water sat against one wall. Three sleeping pallets were arranged on raised frames of saplings with cushions for pillows. And against one wall flat planks served as shelves for … books?

  I stooped to look, interested to know what a vampire would read.

  “Anthony Adverse?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Donne said, nodding at Lena. “She’s the bookworm.” She yawned again, pointedly. “I’d rather be … sleeping.”

  The books were thick and old, with white Dewey decimal stickers on their spines.

  “So they give out library cards to vampires?” I said.

  “Easiest to steal,” Donne said, looking slightly offended.

  “I deny this!” Anton said. “I’m no thief. They wanted to give me a library card. But only if I signed my name … in blood.” He burst into peals of stupid laughter.

  “Nobody else thinks you’re a bit funny,” Donne said. She crooked her arm around his neck. “But we love him anyway, don’t we?” She kissed him briefly on the mouth.

  I felt like an intruder watching them. Did they share a bed? I couldn’t help thinking of Sagan.

  “So how long have you been here?” I said to break the awkwardness.

  Donne and Lena exchanged glances. “I honestly do not know,” Lena said. “Perhaps three or four years? That is why I prefer the longer books. What else am I to do? When time is relatively … meaningless … you stop marking it.”

  “Except for sunup,” Donne said. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, Emma? Where are you staying? Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

  Lena looked at me. “You are welcome to share our home for the day, if you like. You are welcome to my bed. I was going to do some reading anyhow.”

  Donne frowned.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a place,” I said, taking the hint. “It’s … not real far away. It won’t take me long to get there.” I turned to Anton and Donne. “Thanks so much for taking me on my first … what did you call it?”

  “Blutjagd,” Anton said. “You’re welcome. It was fun. Thank you for not getting too angry at us, huh?” He kissed Donne again as if trying to shut her mouth before she said something snarky.

  I knew I should go, but so many questions were broiling in my mind.

  “Why do you use so many German words?” I said.

  “It depends on the region,” Lena said. “If you travel farther south, down into Florida, the words tend to be Spanish. In Louisiana and parts of Mississippi, French. It just so happens that German tended to predominate here. I myself have a French background, but it all depends on what was being spoken in your area at the time of the last Sonneneruption. The last Cleansing. I would think that many of the old words would go away following the next one. Except among the Verloren, of course.”

  Lena settled into one of the chairs with a book, kicking her shoes off and folding her legs beneath her.

  “Can I … can I come back? Can I see you again?” I said.

  She lifted her emerald eyes from the book and smiled. “I will leave that up to you. But I am hoping so much that you will! It has been … a very long time for us.”

  “There are so
many things I want to ask,” I said. “The war. How you live. What you have been doing all this time.” Oh please, God. Especially that.

  “Good. Then I am hopeful you will join us,” Lena said, and went back to her book.

  Join us? Come live with them? I thought. And then I understood.

  She wants me to become one of the Sonnen.

  On the way down the mountain, my thoughts were racing almost as fast as my legs. Mostly about how much I wanted Sagan to be able to meet my new friends. Which was completely insane. Hi, this is Sagan, please don’t eat him, I thought, laughing to myself. He didn’t even know about me yet. And I wondered, how would the Sonnen react? Was it even possible for vampires to be friends with someone who basically represented a midnight snack to them? Someone … normal?

  Donne wouldn’t like it if she heard me say that. I was hardly normal myself. I felt an overpowering sadness about how they were forced to live. Like animals. No, insects. Insects that came out at night to bite you and suck your blood. And how could anyone spend years in that grungy little room?

  I was blazing around a hard, sloping curve, turning it all over in my mind, when a possible answer to both problems came to me: Hey, that’s the perfect idea, I thought. Maybe Sagan could come up with a better place for the Sonnen to live? Somewhere out on the Space Center! We could help them, earn their trust, really get to know them. Then …

  Oh God.

  I didn’t see that there was something in the road ahead because the long turn vanished into the trees. A police car was angled across one lane of traffic, its blue strobes flashing crazily. Another cop car was parked farther down. In between the two was a small green Honda that was missing a big chunk of its front end. A young guy in a T-shirt and shorts was sitting on the shoulder, head between his knees.

  I say I didn’t see it, but suddenly I did. I saw all of it in an instant of bright photographic detail, a microsecond before I hit the first car.

  Spzzzt! Spzzzt!

  Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was in pain. A strange hissing noise was coming from somewhere close by. I was lying on something hard—I could tell that much too. Where?

  I was under a scratchy blanket that had been pulled up to my shoulders. Something lumpy was beneath my head. I finally managed to turn slightly and felt my heart thump: I was stretched out on the pavement not too far away from the first cop car. The driver’s door was heavily dented and skid marks showed where the car had bucked sideways several feet. But at least it was still resting on all four tires. My vampire reflexes must’ve kicked in at the last moment—as fast as I had been traveling, it’s a wonder I hadn’t rolled the vehicle over.

  I could see the legs of people coming and going, could hear the wail of an ambulance in the distance. A police radio kept spraying out little bursts of crackly voices.

  Spzzzt! “Monte Sano Boulevard.” Spzzzt! “Two vehicles. EMTs en route.” Spzzzt! Spzzzt!

  The first cop, the one whose car I had rocked, was sitting in the front seat, hunched over something, arms moving. Probably writing on one of those steel clipboards. I could see his face clearly, head tilted in concentration. Above that I could see the blue strobes of the bubble gum lights cycling back and forth.

  I ran my hands over myself under the blanket. I felt pretty much okay, except for a sharp twinge in my right elbow. I must’ve thrown my forearm up at the last moment to shield myself from the crash. I tried sitting up, then lay right back down: the inside of my skull felt like an oily lump of pizza dough sliding around in a ceramic bowl.

  Okay, rest a minute, let your head settle, I told myself.

  My eyes focused on the flashing lights, the angry blue roaming back and forth like a neon finger on piano keys. I stared at the lights, feeling their intensity pounding the backs of my eyes. But instead of causing pain, they were making me feel … Comfortable. So comfortable. Just rest, I told myself. Rest a minute. Then you can run.…

  Wirtz was standing next to me.

  “Sehr gut,” the vampire said in his earthquake voice. “Very good.”

  At first I couldn’t look at him, it was so hard to tear my eyes from the comfort of the blue lights. But then I did, and now I was looking up the length of his body at his awful smirking mouth. But he was staring at something else. One of the cop cars.

  “Huntsville city police,” Wirtz said. “So you ran away from home. I expected it.” His shoulders rose as he heaved a heavy sigh. “You ran because you would rather save her, the little one, than save yourself.”

  Manda, he’s talking about Manda, I thought.

  “And now you are hiding somewhere in Huntsville, Ala-ba-ma. You have made quite a mistake, wouldn’t you say, Mädchen?”

  Can’t you see him! I wanted to yell at the cops. He’s standing right there!

  I tried to move, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed again. The air around my body felt like foam rubber, encasing me within its grip. I wanted to cry out, to accuse him. “I know what you are! Verloren.”

  “Oh, do not worry,” Wirtz said. “No speeches tonight. I am not in the mood to implore. It is beyond that. It is plain you will not come to my Call. I have what I need. For now.” He gestured at the police car. “Please go with them, if you like. It would make it so much easier for me to find you. But truly I don’t care one way or the other. I’m coming, and I will so much enjoy the end of it, either way you choose.”

  At last I managed to get my arm out from under the blanket. Swung my fist at him. My hand passed through his leg. The vampire had dissolved.

  I sloughed off the blanket and sat up. This time my head was feeling better. One of the cops noticed and came over. He had a thick porn ’stache and his eyes were blue. Square jaw. Almost no hair on his head.

  “Whoa, you need to take it easy, darling,” the cop said. He took hold of my hurt arm, making me wince, trying to get me to lie down again. “EMTs are on the way. Can you tell me the car you were riding in? Make and model? Who was driving?”

  I pulled away from his grasp, grimacing at the pain. “I … I wasn’t in a car.…”

  He grinned like I was delirious or on drugs and nodded over his shoulder. “Well, sugar, something hit this officer’s vehicle at a high rate of speed. I’m not trying to get your friends in trouble, but leaving the scene of an accident is a serious offense … so if you’ll just tell me who was driving, maybe we can …”

  I struggled to my feet. “I can’t stay here. I need to go.”

  “Darling, you need to listen to me. You’re going to be okay.” The cop was trying to force me down, but I wasn’t letting him. He had a surprised look on his face. “You’ve been in a car accident. The emergency folks need to check you out before you can go anywhere.…”

  Other people were starting to come over, and I could hear the honking screech of a fire engine siren. The young guy I had seen sitting on the shoulder was now leaning against the smashed green car. An ambulance had pulled up next to him, and several guys were hustling out either door.

  I couldn’t go down the road now, too many people. I looked over the edge of the mountain at the lights of Huntsville twinkling below. The officer’s grip on my arm went slack a moment. I tore loose from him, took a couple of long running strides and flung myself over the embankment.

  I landed harder than I expected but was able to keep my balance. I barreled through thickets of vines and small, twisted trees and leapt over bush-choked gullies. Finally, after a lot of jouncy running, the ground started to even out again. I could still hear the cops’ shocked voices calling from far above. The blue lights I could see for miles after that.

  I was pretty scratched up by the time I found my way home. I got a drink at the faucet in the bunker and washed a little, then wearily climbed the rocket tower. The sun was starting to rise when I stretched out on the air mattress, cradling my injured arm.…

  He knows I’m in Huntsville, I thought.

  I wrapped myself in the tarp, shivering at the thought. Okay, got to do something, Em
ma. Figure this out. From what I remembered, there were a quarter-million people in this town. Besides, I wasn’t technically in Huntsville at all, was I? The Space Center was its own little world, like the Vatican. With any luck, Wirtz wouldn’t know to look for me here.

  I had slipped up, let myself get distracted by all the crazy stuff that had happened with the Sonnen. I never would have run into that cop car otherwise. Couldn’t let anything like that happen again. If I was really careful, I could still make myself a very small needle in a pretty large haystack. And hey, if it came down to it, what was stopping me from just keeping on running? Moving from city to city, finding new places to hide each time? Then maybe, just maybe … I could—

  No.

  I swore and kicked the stupid tarp off. That’s what the vampire was after, trying to get me out in the open. Wirtz had me going at this whole thing backward. That’s not me, I thought. Not anymore. I had run away three times in my life, and I was sick of it. I never ran away from trouble on the soccer field, did I? What happened to that warrior chick who had stood on top of the chimney at the Stone House and shouted at the darkness? How had I forgotten so quickly?

  I want the monster to come.

  I needed him to come. I couldn’t spend the rest of eternity jumping at shadows. A showdown with the vampire … it was the only way I could ever be free. The only way my family would finally be safe. I remembered something Coach Kline liked to say.

  You’re best when you’re bold.

  I lay back down and plunged into a dreamless sleep.

  I don’t know how long I had been out of it when something close to my ear screeched. I jumped up, my hand on the ax, but the sun was well up in the sky. I didn’t know what was making the sound until I remembered the headset Sagan had given me. I fumbled for it in my bag.