by S. K. Een
and tugs free a small leather holster.
“Zombie?” Steve says in a choking rasp, his brow furrowed, but he turns his head to look over Abe’s shoulder. “Where?”
Abe lowers the thing to the ground in hands that almost shake. The idiot goes to a club with a fucking handgun—and he’s not going to think about dancing with an armed man at all—but doesn’t think to take his fucking meds? Is there a brain at all inside that cute head? “Steve. Do you have an inhaler? An EpiPen? Any medicine you take for asthma or allergies?”
The blazer, maybe, lying tossed over the chair at the bar. Isn’t he supposed to not stash things in the pockets of removable clothes just to avoid this problem?
Steve jerks his head upright before slumping further to the ground. His eyelids flutter closed for a moment before opening them again. Is it a trick of the light, or does his face seem swollen? “I ... I’m not...” His eyes widen further, but whatever he would have said is lost in a struggle for air, his limbs and hands as tense as strung fencing wire. His breaths come in and out in a series of frantic, panicked whistles, and he can scarcely manage the next two words: “I ... don’t...”
Whether he means he’s forgotten or he doesn’t own anything of the sort is a moot point.
Abe plucks the phone out of Steve’s right hand and dials.
“Port Carmila Emergency—oh, hi, Steve. What is it, where are you and were you hunting it?” A warm, grandmotherly voice speaks on the other end of the line. “I thought you were supposed to be celebrating your birthday? I gave Jack fifty dollars, you know.”
Abe is so taken aback he checks to make sure he dialled the correct number, but, yes, Port Carmila’s Emergency Services switchboard apparently not only recognise Steve’s phone number but are used enough to him calling that they can treat it like a casual fucking conversation! Hunting it? “Um. No. I’m Abe Browning, we’re at Feeders on the corner of Bay Road and Main, and we need an ambulance—”
“Can you tell me about the zombies, dear? Are they temporarily secured? Do you need reinforcements?”
Steve, Steve with his spikes and his blazer and his politics and his flirting, is a zombie hunter? Abe thought Port Carmila’s zombie hunters looked like—well, like Steve’s friends, maybe, or the armed, vodka-shot-swilling cargo-pant-clad locals who hang out at the Serif’s Shotgun.
“No zombies,” Abe says, and he draws a breath in a ridiculous attempt to calm himself, but Steve can hardly breathe at all and stares at him with eyes that are somehow both wide and swollen all at once. “None. Anaphylaxis, I think. Steve is struggling to breathe—whistling—and hives, but I can’t find a—”
“Steve? Steve?” The butch girl tears down the street, Steve’s blazer over her arm; her zombie girlfriend follows at a much slower pace. “What the hell did you do to him?”
The terrible switchboard operator says something Abe doesn’t catch.
Steve makes a desperate, gasping grunt, but he can’t seem to get enough breath to speak.
“We need an ambulance to the corner of Bay and Main,” Abe says again to the phone, hoping that’s enough to get her to stop talking and start doing, just as the breather girl reaches behind her back and unholsters a small black handgun of her own. Abe’s dead heart leaps into his throat—he fancies it even beats, once or twice—as soon as he realises what this must look like. A vampire on his knees; a breather in shock. He drops Steve’s phone and curses fucking Stoker and every fucking author of every fucking bullshit vampire novel ever written. “No! I didn’t—this is an allergy! I didn’t bite him! See? Don’t shoot!” He jerks his hand at Steve’s neck—although, really, why would he want to bite anyone’s neck as opposed to a discrete place easily covered by clothing?—and then at the blazer. “Does he have anything in there—inhaler, meds, EpiPen?”
The girl, thank heavens, doesn’t waste time on questions. She slips the safety and slides the handgun into the waistband of her jeans. “He’s not allergic. I’d know. The only meds he takes is his antidepressant. Did you ring Emergency?”
Steve jerks his chin, which Abe guesses is confirmation.
He picks up the phone and shoves it up at the girl. “Make sure they’re sending someone,” he says, trying to think this through. How far away is the fire and ambulance depot from Bay Road? Yesterday Abe could have told anyone where all the main facilities of Port Carmila are located; today he can’t think. How long can Steve wait? Is there anything here that will help him? There’s cars, the bouncers, the club— “The club will have a first-aid kit. Get it.” He snaps his fingers at the zombie as she shambles up and stares down at Steve. “And get the bouncers, or maybe the bartender—someone there must have done a first-aid course.” He should have thought of that first, he realises, but who knew the switchboard operator would be an absolute idiot? “Can you do that?”
“Aggie! There are no fucking ferals—are you or are you not sending a fucking ambulance?” The girl rolls her eyes and sits down on the footpath. “No, Steve was kissing a vampire, which—yes, at Feeders. Yes. Aggie—no! What do we do now?”
The zombie jerks her head, hitches up her skirts and runs—a fast shuffle, which Abe knows is a zombie in full sprint—back towards the steps, only to meet Louis halfway down the block. Good. Abe looks away and back down at Steve as he pulls off his trenchcoat; he snaps his fingers and the girl hands him the blazer before hitting the end-call button on the screen and putting down the phone. He can’t remember, now, if anaphylactic shock should be treated in the same way as hypovolemic shock, but better to play it on the safe side given that Steve is shivering: elevate feet, keep him warm.
“No point in staying on the line,” the girl says as she unbuttons her shirt and vest, revealing a plain singlet top underneath. “She just kept asking if I knew that meant Steve was kissing a vampire at a gay bar. Anyway, Greg’s coming, Steve. He’ll give you hell because we’ve called him out for the one dare that’s supposed to be safe, but he’s coming. Here.”
Steve’s lips, strange in a distorted, misshapen face, creep ever so slightly upwards.
“We’re just going to cover you up a bit, okay?” Abe glances at the girl. “Put his feet up on your lap, maybe.” He arranges the trenchcoat and blazer over Steve’s legs and torso, the shirt and vest under his head, while she arranges his feet. “Hey. Steve. You’re going to be okay, right? Someone’s going to be here in, like, two minutes. That’s not long. Even if you stop breathing right now, you can survive about four minutes without breathing, so we’ve got ages. I’m just going to cover you up a bit, okay? Keep you warm.” He takes hold of Steve’s hand and rubs gentle circles on his palm with his thumb. “We’ve got ages and ages, so don’t worry.”
It occurs to Abe that, all things given, Steve is giving calm a valiant shot: he’s not trying to speak and his breath is becoming more congested and ragged with every moment, but he’s lying still and letting the girl and Abe do the work, even if there’s nothing relaxed in the rigid set of his limbs or the panic in his half-swollen eyes.
“This isn’t worse than when the feral did you on the hip,” the girl says, although she gives Abe a brow-furrowed look. “I mean, at least we’re on the main drag, right?” She pats Steve’s trenchcoat-covered leg. “Steve, I’m going to ring Deb, although if she’s in at the cop shop she might’ve heard already—”
Steve’s phone vibrates in the girl’s hand as it sounds the chorus from a shockingly-feminine pop song Abe only knows because of the time he spent hovering around the iPod dock, in lieu of talking to the people he didn’t know or the family members he did, at Valentine’s 90s-themed 30th birthday bash: “Under the Water”.
Merril Bainbridge, journalism and a handgun.
He’d want to get to know this contradiction of impressions if Abe were not the cause of that whistling breath.
The girl doesn’t even blink as she snatches up the phone. “Deb. It’s Johanna. Aggie says Greg’s on his way.” She pauses, frowns. “No, not like that—he kissed a vampire. The vampire says
—yeah.” She angles her head and looks at Abe. “Venom?”
The only thing Abe can do is nod. How can it be anything else? Like a bee sting, Abe said, and that’s the absolute truth in all respects: annoying for most, potentially lethal for some. Why didn’t he finish warning Steve? He said he kissed a vampire once, which is worse than never kissing one at all, so why didn’t Abe stop to think about that instead of stupid bullshit about the gender of said vampire? Didn’t Great-Aunty Lizzie include this in her tirade as one of the reasons vampires should, despite the allure of blood and breath, not indulge the desire for intimacy with breathers?
“Is this irony?” he asks, not sure what to say but the first thing that comes to mind, something to give Steve to hold onto—Lizzie did that for him, when Abe lay dying from the venom sending his body into shock, the venom that left him gasping in the same way Steve does now, the venom that damaged and changed every organ in his body. He died in that bed, his own breaths becoming quick and desperate as his organs shut down—but it didn’t end there, of course, thanks to a process medical science still can’t quite explain to any reasonable satisfaction. He stopped breathing but kept living—in a way, and Lizzie, his sire, talked him through it, even though Abe can’t remember what she