Human Revolt 02 - Vampire LA

by Phil Tucker

  “Here we go,” said Cloud, but Selah went ahead and did so.

  “Look,” said the kid, peeling something off the outside of her door. It was a sticker, simple and faded blue. “See?”

  “See what?”

  “You got tagged. This sticker, it means you were picked out. One of the kids, they saw you had good stuff inside.” The kid grinned cheerfully at her. “A few blocks farther down? A couple of guys with guns watch for cars with stickers. They will come up, gun in your window, and take everything you have.”

  Selah looked over at Cloud, who shook his head. “Who’s to say he didn’t stick that thing on there himself?”

  The kid snorted and rolled his eye dramatically. “Ai dios, what, it going to take guns in your face for you to believe? I bet, even then, you will say, ‘Oh, man, that kid is good, these guns look almost real.’”

  Cloud couldn’t help himself—his dour stare slipped and he laughed. Selah grinned. “What’s your name?”

  “Ramonito. I swear to you, I’m not lying. You are in big trouble if you keep going.”

  “Ramonito,” said Selah, testing the name on her tongue. “I’m Selah. This is Cloud. How long you been in LA?”

  “All my life.” He seemed happy to share. “I was born in Pomona during the War, but my father, he moved us up here to get away from the gangs, to make some money. He always said we would leave, go to Nevada, or Utah, but when my mother died, he gave up. Now I work, but one day? I will save enough to buy a bus ticket to San Diego, and move to the Mexican Free States.” He was still walking alongside them, giving the occasional dirty look to any other kid who tried to press in. His looks were vicious; the other kids kept back.

  “There, see? That is the 210 overpass. They wait for you there. They come up, take all your stuff, maybe hit you to scare you, and then run to hide until you drive on and the next marked car comes by. It is a very good system. They work it all day.” Ramonito nodded approvingly.

  Selah and Cloud peered ahead. An overpass soared over the slums, an improbable concrete bridge that arched out over their highway. Homes had been built on it, rendering it useless for traffic, three- or even four-story cinderblock and brick houses and huts from whose bases vines and plants grew down to trail over the tops of the cars that passed beneath. Cloud dug into his pack in the backseat, and pulled out a pair of binoculars. He scanned the bridge, and then lowered it. “I don’t see anything.”

  Ramonito clutched at his head in despair. “You think they stand there waving their guns?” He shook his head. “You are not very quick, are you? You need my help. The way you’re going, you won’t make it in LA for long. Here, I will help you. Leave your car. I will take you on foot. Where are you going?”

  Selah stared at the overpass as it inched ever closer. “We’re heading over the Pueblo Hills, into Buena Park.” She looked at Ramonito. “That’s got to be out of your area, no?”

  Ramonito shook his head, grinning once more. “No way! I know all of LA. OK, maybe not all, but much more than you. How were you going to get there? You weren’t going to just walk?”

  Cloud nodded. “Sure. How else?”

  Ramonito clutched his head again. “You’re crazy! This area up here, Fontana, north Ontario, it’s not really under anybody’s control. Just little pinche gangs, yeah? But when you get down close to Chino Hills, or Diamond Bar, that is getting into the territory of Las Culebras, and man, they are serious. They control everything west of Pomona, right up to the Wall, yeah?” He looked at them, hand resting lightly on the door, checking for understanding. Both Selah and Cloud looked back at him blankly.

  “If you say so,” said Selah. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Our friend Chico said he works with a group called the Buena Park Locos. Said they control the area down there,” Cloud said, driving with one eye on the road.

  “If he’s in Buena Park, he has no choice,” said Ramonito, nodding. “Mira, you won’t get far without my help.”

  Selah looked down the road. There weren’t any blocks to measure distance by, but if there were, it would be about two more to the overpass. Ramonito had peeled off the sticker, but they were bound to get into trouble sooner or later. She studied the kid’s face, met his single intent eye, and saw a spark of intensity deep within that she decided to trust. “Why you helping us out? What’s in it for you?”

  “Money,” grinned Ramonito. “You pay me much more for help like this than for water. I bet you get real generous if I help you get to Buena Park, like two hundred dollars, no?”

  Selah laughed again. “Maybe.” She looked at Cloud. “What do you think? I say we give him a shot.”

  Cloud frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you ever just read somebody? Get a good feeling? He obviously knows what’s going on around here. We obviously don’t. A guide is a good idea. And I do believe him about that sticker. Which means he already saved our asses.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Cloud looked like he could argue some more, but then he nodded. “All right. Let’s give him a shot.” He gave Ramonito a thumbs up. “You’re on, kid. What do we do with the car?”

  “Sure,” said Ramonito. “People do it all the time. Somebody will jump in and drive it for you, no problem.”

  Cloud snorted. “Figures.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel once more, a restless and complex tattoo of sound, and then smacked his hand down on the dash, the sound one of finality. “All right. Good luck in the chop shop, Baby Blue. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Two

  Ramonito shook his head. “You will get too much attention. You can’t wear that.”

  He was staring at their backpacks. Brand new, expensive, and purchased in Vegas, they held everything they needed and were light, durable, and perfectly balanced. They also sported neon red-and-yellow trim and the Gore-Tex fabric gleamed in the sun. Cloud pursed his lips. Back in Vegas they hadn’t given a thought to how these packs might make them stand out.

  “Well, we’ve got nothing else,” he said.

  Ramonito shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shaking his head. “OK. Well, maybe we find you a nice trash bag to wrap them in. Still, even that is no good. Everybody will know that you’re hiding something.”

  Selah took off her pack, and dropped it unceremoniously on the ground. She crouched down beside it, and rolled it around in the dirt. When she picked it up, most of the gloss was gone. “Better?”

  Ramonito snorted, and shrugged. “I guess? We’d better avoid attention like crazy. Come on.” He set a fast pace. “It’s pretty far,” he called over his shoulder, clapping his hands as if motivating them to hustle. “But I know all the shortcuts. We can try to stick to old Charity Avenue. It goes straight south! Mostly. Some parts aren’t safe, but I know the best way.”

  Selah hitched her hiking pack up onto her shoulders, moved the straps into comfortable positions, and cinched the buckles around her hips. She looked over to Cloud, who was doing the same. She took a deep breath. Nothing they could do about it now. Cloud nodded to her, and she slipped her thumbs under the straps and crossed the highway’s shoulder, leaving their car and the I-15 behind, into the alleyway where Ramonito had disappeared.

  She felt immediate relief as the concrete-spackled walls cut the light of the sun, casting them into cool morning shadow. Her tolerance for sunshine had been dropping. The buildings rose two stories high on both sides, roughly built, edges and corners of cheap brick sticking out where the concrete hadn’t been smoothed right. The ground was raw dirt, carved deep with a flash flood gulley and choked with trash. Selah picked her way carefully, and realized from the stench of human waste that half the mud here wasn’t mud at all. She wrinkled her nose and shot a look at Cloud over her shoulder, whose own face contorted in disgust. He stuck his tongue out and shook his head, and Selah laughed.

  “Oye, vamonos! We need to go fast or it will take all day, OK? Come on already!” Ramonito was barely visible, the alley as crooked as a politician’
s heart, kinked and jacked by the many buildings that butted into its length.

  The smell of burning smoke grew stronger, masking the stench of sewage. Selah pursed her lips and refused to flinch when a sleek-coated rat slipped out from under a pile of trash at her feet and scuttled down the length of the wall before slipping into a crack. “This is disgusting.”

  “Yeah,” said Cloud, striding right behind her. “Makes you wonder what else the government is turning a blind eye to.”

  Selah didn’t bother responding. She looked up at the sky, a twisted crack of blue above them, and saw a flimsy kite jerking fitfully in the wind, tail looping sinuously in the air. It was truly high up, and for a moment she simply watched it, not minding where she placed her feet till her toe nearly caught and she staggered, arms outstretched to catch herself. Cloud grabbed her by the back of her pack and steadied her. “Hey! Careful.”

  “Got it,” said Selah, but when she risked another glance up, the kite was gone. Ramonito was an elusive ghost, always ahead, always turning to beckon impatiently, slipping just out of sight each time so that she kept thinking they’d lost him. Their alley intersected with two others, formed a tiny polygon plaza in which the lower half a palm tree stood, desiccated and reeking of urine. They continued, and other people walked by them, not meeting their eyes, slipping past like eels. Easy and relaxed, laughing and talking amongst themselves, they reacted not at all to Selah and Cloud, seeming to not see them.

  They passed shops inserted into closet-sized spaces: little beauty salons with magazine cutouts tacked to the walls, repair shops, tiny bars with stools lined up alongside a single open window. Grocery stores selling all the junk the kids had been hawking on the street, including yellow-wrapped NGO provisions and more stolen military rations.

  They broke out of the crooked mess of alleys into a broader street that ran straight, a length of faded and cracked asphalt. Ramonito was waiting for them where they stepped out from the almost tunnel-like final alley into the daylight once more, an eye patch now over his missing eye. “Charity Avenue. Now we can go faster. It used to be big enough to drive a car down, but now, not so much.”

  Selah placed her hands on her hips, leaned back. The street ran straight enough but was crowded in by shacks, huts, buildings that had been inserted around what had clearly been older, pre-War homes. Music played from a set of old speakers wired up on a telephone pole, a salsa tune that no doubt her friend Maria Elena back in Miami would’ve known. Selah tried to take stock. It was as if a tidal wave had washed a thousand shacks of timber and brick, of cloth and metal roofing over the land, and then retreated, leaving them all junked and piled on top of each other, burying these older buildings in their midst.

  “Hey,” said Selah, stepping up to Ramonito. “You mentioned Blood Dust earlier. What do you know about it?”

  Ramonito cut a wary look her way and shrugged. “Enough to leave it alone. You still looking to score some?”

  Selah shook her head. “No. I’m just curious.”

  Ramonito snorted. “Sure.”

  Selah frowned, but pressed on. “I’ve heard it comes from here. There a lot of it going round?”

  Ramonito nodded, casting looks around them, watching the alleys. “Yeah. Too much.”

  “Too much?” Cloud stepped up. “A lot of people do it?”

  Ramonito sidled a few steps to the left, not wanting to be pinned between them. “Yes. Sometimes? It feels like almost everyone I know is on it.” He shook his head. “When it gets dark, if you’re smart, you go inside and lock the door.”

  “When it gets dark? Because of Dusters? Or vampires?” Selah tried to control herself. She wanted to ask Ramonito everything, grill him on every particular. All the frustration she’d felt in Miami came rushing to the fore.

  “Vampiros? No. They stay in the Core. Dusters? Yeah. They think they’re vampires.” Ramonito circled his finger around his temple. “Crazy. But they will mess you up. Some get so high they bite you and try to drink your blood.” He shook his head again. “It’s crazy! And it’s making life here really bad. One more reason to go to Mexico!” His smile came back as if clouds had drifted clear of the sun.

  Cloud took the next question. “When did Dust first hit the streets?”

  “When?” Ramonito furrowed his brow in thought. “Two years ago, maybe?”

  “Two? We only heard about it out east maybe six months ago.”

  Ramonito shrugged. “I don’t know. It started real small. First it was just something people said was awesome, but nobody ever saw. It was all like, I know a guy who knows a guy who did some. Then, well, the gangs started selling it. The Culebras, the Locos, all of them. And when that happened, suddenly it was everywhere, and cheap too. Depending on the quality.”

  This was it. This was the exact kind of information she needed. Had her father learned all this? Had he become mixed up with the vampires and not the government as she had always thought? “The quality? You said something back when we met about dark Dust. That what you meant?”

  “Yeah. The darker the color, the bigger the hit, you know? It can be light pink, which means it’s no good, or almost black, which means it’s too pure and needs to be cut. Unless you are really gone, then you just sniff the blackest stuff you can get.”

  Cloud kicked a bottle out of his way, sending it clinking to the side of the road. “That happen a lot? People go too far?”

  Ramonito nodded. His spark grew muted, and he stared at the road as he walked. “Yeah. You do too much, it’s all you think about. It’s like you stop being you, and become this vampiro wannabe. Some friends of mine, the ones who liked it back in the beginning? Some of them ended up that way. It was really sad. They became like animals, living together, taking people’s money so they could buy more Dust. In the end they were just straight up killing people. Real bad. Neighborhood got together and killed them all.”

  “No shit,” said Cloud. “I’m sorry.”

  Ramonito shrugged. “That’s life. It’s one of the main reasons people don’t mind the gangs. You know, beside their bringing food and water into the barrio. These days? There are so many nests, only the hombres from the gang can wipe them all out.”

  “Wait,” said Selah. “You saying the gang supplies the Dust, and then kills the people who use it when they get too far gone?”

  Ramonito laughed, a bitter sound. “Welcome to LA, you know? Come on. We’ll never get there if we don’t go faster.” He skipped ahead, escaping any more questions.

  They hiked on. Selah took frequent sips from her water bottle and tried to watch her footing. People were everywhere, talking and singing within the houses and shacks lining the old Avenue. They sat in doorways, chatting or simply watching the world, or ran by, intent on some private business. Most had the same dusty, worn look of Ramonito, an endless mixture of dark skin tones ranging from blue-tinted black to the lightest of nutty creams. Almost no whites, Selah noted without surprise. Cloud stood out as the palest guy around.

  “Here,” said Ramonito, pausing at an intersection at the end of an hour’s hike. “We’re getting close to Culebra territory. Another ten minutes, I think, and we reach the old freeway. We get off the Avenue, cross somewhere quiet. From now on, we have to be very careful. But if you want, we can rest for a bit?”

  “Sure,” said Cloud. Selah leaned against a concrete wall. The intersection was more open than the street had been, and she rolled her head about her neck, loosening the crick that had grown from watching her feet the whole time. Over the top of the closest buildings rose a crucifix, white and startling against the blue sky. Must be an old church a stone’s throw away, thought Selah. A horizontal metal pole ending in a dead traffic light extended incongruously out of the window of a second-story building, busted sneakers and shoes hanging from knotted laces along its length.

  Cloud dropped his pack to the ground and stretched, his shirt riding up so that Selah caught a glimpse of his smooth stomach. Then he raked his hair back, scruffed at it w
ith the tips of his fingers, and sat down on an abandoned crate, pulling his pack between his knees. “So Ramonito. You know of any local people trying to change shit? Get people together?”

  Selah tuned out as they began to talk. She knew she should listen and learn, but her mind drifted. There were too many rivers of emotion and pain flowing through her, streams of fear and hope. Her thoughts were like leaves carried along in the currents.

  One moment she was formulating her next question for Ramonito, elation and determination mingling as she focused on getting more information from him about Dust, and the next a wave of despair would wash over her, a sense of futility given how little time she might have left. She summoned her father’s face, and found that she could only picture him with vampire eyes. She recoiled, and forced herself to think of Mama B instead. She needed to call her, let her know that they had arrived in LA.

  Could her blood really hold the potential for a vaccine? The words of Sawiskera came back to her, the now-dead vampire king of Miami: My brother’s blood flows through your veins. You are a child of Teharonhiawako, and though his blood has been diluted by countless generations, it still protects you from the dark. We are family, you and I.

  Selah shivered. Much good Teha’s blood had done her. Still. It meant she couldn’t quit, ever. The thought of her blood providing the cure to vampirism was too surreal to believe. She needed to cleanse herself of Sawiskera’s taint. She had to.

  Ramonito said something that made Cloud laugh, and she blinked and looked over at them.

  “What?”

  Cloud stood. “This kid. He’s smarter than I am.”