AfterAge (27 page)

C.J.'s expression was rigid. "Get your stuff."

"I refuse to be a burden!" Louise said hotly. "I'm not so stupid I'd go where I'm not wanted!"

"Oh, he wants you to go, all right." Jo's voice was smooth and sweet, like warmed honey. "He's just too shy to say so."

Louise was about to retort when she realized that despite his fighting stance and protectively folded arms, C.J.'s face was deep red. "I–I'll get my backpack," Louise stammered. "Here, Beau! Come on, boy!" She fled to the small confessional office where her dog and small cache of belongings waited; as the door closed behind her she could hear the tinkling of Jo's laughter, the sound light and not at all cruel.

A few minutes later and they were on their way, Beau tucked safely in his customary place inside Louise's jacket as the trio wound through the downtown streets. They were only four blocks from St. Peter's when the snow began to fall in thick, clinging clumps that immediately began to gather in small piles. Louise stopped. "We should go back," she said, struggling to make herself heard above the wind; when she halted, Beau poked his nose inquisitively from a fold in her jacket, then quickly retreated. "Before we leave tracks. It won’t matter if they lead back to the church." She looked at Jo knowingly. "We'll still be safe."

Jo shook her head and her companions gaped at her in disbelief. "No. Come on." The young girl resumed her steps, leaving small telltale depressions in the growing layer of snow. Louise and C.J. followed, knowing it would be useless to disagree, petrified about the footprints marking their progress like huge blotches of black paint on a white canvas. In the cold—something that apparently didn't affect Jo—their prints were becoming more defined with each quarter block. How much would it snow? It was barely past noon now; what if it snowed
all day
?

When the crystal-shrouded front of Water Tower Place was finally less than a block away, Louise shivered as C.J. planted his feet firmly on the snow-covered sidewalk and refused to go any farther. "I can't do this." The snowfall that had seemed so pretty now swirled ferociously around them and the sidewalk was crusted over with ice, leaving perfect depressions with each step. "The tracks will lead the vampires right to the front door."

Louise's voice was grim. "He's right." Although she was only three feet away, Jo seemed to blend into the harsh weather and Louise could barely see the white-haired girl.

"What tracks?" Jo asked gently.

Anger twisted C.J.'s dark-complected features. Are you completely crazy?" he demanded. A clot of snow tried to stick to one cheek and he slapped it away. “We might as well hang flags, for Christ's sake!" His black hair was sodden beneath a crown of quickly accumulating snow. When Jo smiled and touched his arm, he snorted in disgust and whirled to point at the indentations marking their passage, but his sound of derision ended in a shortened gasp.

There were no tracks
.

The snow stretched along Michigan Avenue, unbroken and startling in its magnificent blanket of purity.

The blood drained from Louise's face and an absurd thought occurred to her: she and Jo must look like winter sisters right now, Jo, with her flowing mass of colorless, strangely
dry
hair, and Louise, with her snow-covered brown hair and shock-white skin.

"You two go in." Jo's voice was kind. "Louise was ill yesterday and shouldn't be out in this weather."

"What about you? Aren't you coming?" Louise grabbed

Jo's hand and clung to it; even without a coat in the subfreezing temperatures, Jo's skin was pleasantly warm. "But you'll die out here!" C.J. protested. "You'll—”

“I'll be fine."

C.J. and Louise stumbled after Jo as she crossed the final steps to the glassed-in entrance and pulled open the door.

"That's supposed to be
locked
!"

"It was." Jo brushed a new clump of snow from the young man's cheek and Louise's flesh crawled when she saw Jo's eyes darken again to that terrible, brooding shade of gray. For a moment the girl stared at them, then she turned back to C.J. "You just have to accept that. Sometimes you have to accept a lot of things." She glanced at Louise, and the brown-haired girl felt as though she'd been
touched
by a flash of love and . . . regret. Terror swept her for a second. Why would Jo look at her like that?

"Both of you be in Daley Plaza tomorrow at noon," Jo said suddenly. "Don't come earlier or you’ll miss him."

"Miss who?" C.J. demanded. He looked ready to explode. "
What are you talking about?
"

Jo's perfect smile, even in the midst of the surprise snowstorm, blanketed them with warmth.

"The key to the Mart."

Louise blinked at C.J. and his return gaze was perplexed. Both teenagers turned back to Jo—

She was gone.

And there were still no footprints.

REVELATION 13:14

And deceiveth them that dwell on the

earth by the means of those miracles. . . .

~ * ~

"I wonder if C.J. found that girl."

McDole's voice was loud and startling, but he had to say
something
to break the silence; he and Calie had been sitting there for nearly two hours watching Bill Perlman stare into a contraption he claimed was a microscope. McDole was amazed the doctor had gotten the thing to work, and if he hadn't believed the results would someday be worth it, McDole would've protested about the number of batteries used to provide power for all the lights and equipment the physician needed. He looked at Calie, but she only sat on her stool, rotating slowly and watching the men, occasionally glancing into the darkened hall of the basement where they'd hastily moved the laboratory after the tissue sample had started to disintegrate in the bright lab at Northwestern. They hated being in this dismal part of Water Tower Place, but it couldn't be avoided.

"Damn," Perlman said. He stepped back from the microscope.

"What?" McDole said. "Do you need something?'

Perlman shook his head. "No, but thanks for offering. You two have been very capable assistants. I couldn't have gotten this far without your help—and C.J.'s, too." Still, he looked tired and discouraged. "But today's great experiment was a bust."

Calie rose and peered uncertainly at the slides. "What was the experiment?" The doctor started to answer and she held up a finger. "Keep it simple. Doctors run in your family, not mine."

The younger man looked rattled by Calie's comment, then began to speak as McDole leaned forward. "Well, I'm trying to . . ." Perlman frowned. "The vampires are dead," the doctor began again. "Or they're supposed to be. We don't know what animates them and probably never will. Maybe, and I'm very hesitant to say this, it takes place on a spiritual rather than physical level. However, the only arena in which we have experience is the physical, so that's where we have to try and tie the two together." His gaze stopped briefly on Calie and Perlman looked as though he would qualify his words, then decided against it. "So these dead creatures get up and walk around—"

"They do more than that," McDole interjected.

"Sure"—Perlman nodded—"but again, you're going into a new realm." He motioned to them. "Look here. What do you see?"

Calie positioned herself and studied the view through the microscope, then McDole took a turn. There wasn't much to see: a spattering of light and dark shapes around something that looked brown and dried up. Nothing moved. "Not much," McDole admitted. "Cells, I guess. But I didn't see anything alive."

"What were we looking at?" Calie asked.

Perlman scrubbed at his face with both hands without speaking. McDole could see weariness and frustration etched in the lines beneath the doctor's light beard stubble. Finally he answered. "Clostridia, one of the most common bacteria found in dead animals. This bacteria—which causes decomposition—is a major factor in the cycle of life. The brown spot was a microlayer of vampire flesh taken from our friend in the bomb shelter"

"But they don't decompose," McDole said.

"Exactly!" Brief excitement broke through Perlman's tiredness. "But if I could develop a bacterium or fungus, or mutate a clostridium that could survive introduction into a vampire's body and reproduce, maybe the decomposition process could finally begin, as it should have when the body first died."

"Like giving them a big dose of the flu," Calie suggested.

"Not at all. Influenza is a virus, not a bacteria. A virus always requires a
living
host; without one, it ceases to function, although it may not die per se. On the other hand, certain bacteria can exist in either living or nonliving environments."

"I'm out of my league here," McDole said, "but I didn't see anything moving under that microscope."

"You wouldn't have anyway," Perlman told him absently. "I haven't had time to isolate the substance which makes the vampire's body a hostile environment, either by indirectly attacking the bacteria or by being highly toxic to the organism. Besides, it's a moot point."

"Why is that?"

"The way I see it—and this is open for discussion, so let me know if you have any ideas—the vampires are not technically
dead
. Although life-force functions—cell division and activity—have stalled, enzymatic action doesn't take place."

McDole shook his head. "I'm lost. One minute you're talking about trying to make them rot like they're
supposed
to, the next you're saying they're not dead, which to me means they're
not
supposed to."

Perlman spread his hands. "I never said it would be easy to use technology to destroy what seems to be supernatural." He gave McDole a wry smile. "Remember the name for them in the old movies?
The undead
. Whether that's legend or someone's imagination, it's very appropriate; they're not alive, but they're not dead. They're like people-sized viruses, parasitically using a host for sustenance and reproduction."

"So what about today?" Calie asked. "What were you doing?"

Perlman powered down the microscope. "I cultured a bacteria in the
Clostridium
genus," he told them. "Nothing spectacular; just a little stronger. Then I gave it vampire tissue. It should have gone wild feeding and replicating."

Calie twined her fingers. "But it didn't."

"I didn't expect it to—not on the first try, anyway.”

“But you seem so . . . disappointed," she said.

"I am," the physician admitted. “And a little flabbergasted, too." His fists clenched briefly, then relaxed. “I can work with cells and living and dead organisms, but I'm not sure what to do here." He stepped toward his equipment as though debating continuing his work. "Every time I put the bacteria or any living organism anywhere near a vampire cell . . . did you notice the brown cells of the vampire flesh extending past the cell membrane and into the cytoplasm of the bacteria? The bacteria are literally being
transformed
into vampire flesh in an instantaneous, yet invisible, metamorphosis. Not dead, but not alive."

"But how can that be?" McDole demanded.

"How can a vampire
be
?" Perlman shot back. "The problem is understanding a new biological function that I simply don't have the resources to research. That's what's happening here—like when two living animal heart cells are placed in proximity to each other and they synchronize almost immediately."

"Synchronize?" Calie asked.

"Heart cells
beat
," the doctor explained. "Literally. Two of them will gravitate to each other and find the same rhythm. The heartbeat of a sleeping human will synchronize with a dog's if he falls asleep with a hand resting on the animal."

McDole looked perplexed. "What's that got to do with the vampires?"

"Maybe nothing," Perlman said wearily. “And I have no idea why blood would affect the kind of rejuvenation it has on these creatures. In a man it would be understandable—"

"
Blood?
" Calie looked dismayed.

"Don't think of it as blood, Calie," Perlman pointed out. "Think of it fundamentally as
food
. Feed a malnourished person and the body begins to repair itself by using the vitamins and energy supplied by the food source. But a vampire's body isn’t living, so how does it convert food to energy? Not only does it obviously do so, but apparently a constant food source causes an amazing and rapid improvement in physical condition."

"So you're saying," McDole cut in, "that every time you feed that kid in the bomb shelter he gets stronger, while the person donating the meal . . ." His voice trailed off as he recalled the woman who'd offered her arm and a half pint of blood this morning, their prisoner's second easy meal.

Perlman nodded solemnly. "Yes. And while I'd love to have a healthy vampire for my research, the risk is too great. The strength these things possess is immense. Calie can verify that getting the tissue sample this morning was far worse than yesterday, even though you and Ira were there." Calie nodded unhappily. "If we feed him tonight, trying to get a piece of him tomorrow could be disastrous. We simply can’t let that happen."

Calie choked and both men turned to look at her. The young woman's expression was grim in her pallid face. "So you're suggesting that we stop feeding him? Isn't that like starving a caged animal?"