AfterAge (4 page)

A quick examination now showed her the entrances were unscathed, and she finally felt safe enough to return to the auditorium and use the Port-o-Potty. As she changed from one heavy cotton jumpsuit to another, an ache spread through her stomach and she flinched. She'd have to go to the library soon and read up on ulcers; the mirror showed the same clear blue eyes and curly black hair spilling down her shoulders, but the growing pain in her gut mocked her healthy appearance.

Deb pocketed her keys and let herself out the Michigan Avenue doors, testing them to make sure the latches caught. A year ago she would've never guessed locks would be such an important part of her life. Standing on steps leading down to an empty world in the morning was nearly as frightening as the coming of each dusk. She had worked in the Art Institute since graduating from college and had seen it overrun with employees and visitors—maybe that was why she had chosen to live here; good memories, the images of a thousand people and times captured on canvas, in photographs, bronze, and marble. Outside, nothing moved for as far as she could see: no people, no cars—not even a single squirrel, once so common along the boulevard and in Grant Park. Only the birds remained; safe in their ability to fly, God alone knew where they roosted. She wondered longingly if the animals in the rural areas had fared better.

If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could still remember mornings at her parents' house not so long ago, still hear her little sister Janet calling her to
Get out of bed, Mama's got breakfast on the table!
Dad's laughter booming out of the kitchen at some wisecrack made by seventeen-year-old Mark. And Mom . . .

The familiar loneliness settled heavily around her, amplified in silence broken only by the occasional twittering of an unseen sparrow. She hoped the sparrows and pigeons would become more plentiful as spring progressed, but for now most probably still huddled high atop the skyscrapers. A few more weeks and maybe the silence wouldn't be so damned . . .

loud
.

REVELATION 3:2

Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain.

~ * ~

"What's he doing?"

The man, his white hair the only testimony of age, shrugged as they looked to the sidewalk from a window high in Water Tower Place. He could think of no logical response as the teenager pressed one cheek against the window in an effort to see better.

"Should I go down?" C.J.'s eyes, usually so hard and suspicious in his unlined face, brightened with the prospect of contact with someone new. Although he smiled to himself, Buddy McDole's expression remained outwardly bland as he watched the thin man below struggle with a small stretcher on which he had obviously tied a vampire. Even from here McDole could see the plastic-like covering ripple as the sleeping creature instinctively tried to escape the sunlight. But the man had done his task well; the vampire wasn't going anywhere—at least not until tonight.

The guy was limping badly and McDole's first impulse was to send someone down to help. They'd certainly seen him enough—many times before the sentries had alerted McDole to the knocking at the main doors this morning. It had been a point in his favor that the stranger hadn't broken in, and if it weren't for one nagging question, McDole might have indeed sent C.J. to greet him—probably scaring the shit out of him in the process.

But . . .

What the hell was he doing with a vampire?

REVELATION 3:10
I will keep thee from the hour

of them that dwell upon the earth.

~ * ~

"Up and at 'em, Beau," Louise told the little dog. "Time to move out." Beauregard's ears perked, though the cataract-filmed eyes never wavered. She scratched the tiny graying head, wondering how much he really heard.

This morning's hotel was the top apartment of a four-story walk-up in East Rogers Park in the fancier section along Sheridan Road just north of the park, not far from where she'd been a student at Senn High School. New sunlight blazed across its front room through the triple picture windows; the chilly air was warming and old Beau crawled from her lap and stretched unsteadily, working the stiffness from his pencil-thin legs. Copying him, Louise crossed her arms and massaged the night tension from her shoulders, then stared out the windows at the Lake Michigan shoreline and the calm, deep waters. Two miles south there would still be ice chunks bobbing in the colder waters of Montrose and Belmont Harbors, but if the weather stayed warm, the ice would disappear in another two days . . . she smiled. Warm weather at last! More important than that: shorter nights, longer days. More hours in which to . . . what? Louise shook her head and wandered back to the bedroom to gather her sleeping gear from the dusty bed. It would take another twenty minutes to pack up and haul the furniture away from the front door so they could leave.

Breakfast was a can of peaches for her and a packet of burger-like dog food for Beau. It wasn't until she automatically carried their trash to the kitchen that she realized they'd shared the night's hideaway with a corpse.

The peaches tried to come up but Louise locked her throat until the urge passed, then opened her clenched fist and dropped the garbage in the wastebasket. The dried-out body, curled in a fetal position, was crammed into the space between the refrigerator and stove by the back wall. Either the eyeballs and lids had rotted away or cockroaches—those indestructible insects—had feasted before moving on to a fresher kill. It was impossible to tell what had killed the person or whether it had been a man or woman—something Louise didn't care to know anyway. What counted was that they'd been lucky: the corpse had
stayed
a corpse.

Her scalp tightened at the enormity of her carelessness—in her haste to find shelter, she'd barricaded herself and Beau in an apartment she hadn't checked thoroughly, only glancing hurriedly through the rooms before dusk. Her luck had held—this time. Being trapped with a bloodsucker was
unthinkable
. How could she have done this?

Her legs carried her back to the bright front room before they began shaking. When she sank onto a once-plush leather sofa, Beau tilted his grizzled face toward her, then padded across the carpeting until he bumped her ankle, where he curled up with a contented snuffle. But even the comforting sunlight couldn't overthrow the knowledge of the cadaver one room away. The kitchen, she now realized, had no windows. She had stupidly not seen the body to begin with; it was even more unlikely she would have noticed it had it been intentionally covered by something to block out the sunlight, and she was alive this morning only by the wildest of odds—Jesus! She and Beau had developed a pattern this last year: wake, eat, and wander, always looking for better things to eat and better places to sleep. They stayed put only during the heavy snows when footprints made travel impossible. In the small buildings they frequented, it could be easy for the vampires to pinpoint the prolonged presence of warm flesh, so they moved on. And on. Easing into a comfortable routine with the coming of spring's longer hours and the thinning vampire population, Louise had pushed the travel time to the limit the last couple of weeks, stretching each day as far as she could.

Then . . . last night. How many other bodies hadn't she noticed over the last month?

She stared moodily at her roughened hands. Long-fingered, pianist's hands, her grandmother had always said. What would the old woman say now? These thin fingers had sewn canvas sleeping bags, hammered ten-penny nails and learned to load a rifle, even once used an ax to sever a night creature's head—back, she thought in disgust, in the days when she'd checked their sleeping quarters more carefully. Perhaps the constant running had become too much and she had developed an unconscious death wish . . . still, she'd strangle the dog and put a bullet through her own head before she'd become food for one of
them
.

Her gaze traveled to the bony wrist beneath her baggy sweatshirt. Maybe she and Beau just needed a rest, somewhere safe to call home for a couple of months. Or . . . why not? A home to safeguard over the summer and hibernate in during winter, when the frigid temperatures and snow— the earth's tattling white carpet—left no alternative but seclusion. A place in which to fatten up and where poor old Beauregard wouldn't have to bump into different furniture every night. But where? Louise rose jerkily and went back to the picture windows. From there, it was easy to see the city sprawling to the south through the glass, the hundreds of trees in Lincoln Park still bare of the season's coming growth. With each block the buildings grew, from small brownstone flats to the bigger buildings holding twenty-four, then forty-eight apartments, until the tall condominium complexes crowded along the curve of the Drive. Her eyes followed the sweep around the lake, then stopped on the far-off cluster of skyscrapers fringing downtown. Her brow furrowed.

Downtown. . . . Maybe the place she needed was in one of those huge office buildings, in some lawyer's suite with a thousand windows to let in the light, a newer one where the sealed glass was practically unbreakable. She and Beau could sleep in the center at night, where they couldn't be seen if one of those creatures crawled up the side of the building—or could they even climb that high?

The possibilities seemed suddenly endless: walls of windows; up as high and safe as she wanted. There were even sporting goods stores in the north loop, which meant easy access to supplies and warm gear. She looked again at her grimy, improbable survivalist's fingers, then back at the skyscrapers sitting silent sentinel over the city. Each past month had been a bleak little eternity; now, hope finally flared. If she, of all people—seventeen-year-old Louise Dorsett and a feeble dog almost as old as she was—had lived, maybe others had, too.

Nothing was impossible, right?

God knew that was certainly true.

REVELATION 2:28

And I will give him the morning star.

~ * ~

At noon Nicholson found the white dress he thought the woman had been wearing. After donning warmer clothes and locking up, he'd spent all morning searching for her; he hadn't seen people for months, and the few he'd glimpsed in the fall had disappeared during winter's long grip on the city. He had spotted no one since the snow melted; if they hadn't frozen, no doubt they'd become vampires. The number of vampires had dropped, too; the cold made the weaker ones sluggish, and dawn often caught a bloodsucker that had stupidly wandered too far from safety. Every so often Nicholson found their smelly, liquefying remains.

But the woman was another matter. He wanted desperately to find her—to
talk
to her, dammit! Now that he knew she existed, the thought of being alone yet another day was unbearable. Fascinated, he examined the dress lying on the sidewalk at Lake and LaSalle, four blocks northwest of the attack. There was no blood on it. He touched the charred collar curiously, then sniffed it. When he'd been twelve, he and a few buddies had picked through the remains of a burned-out apartment building, nosing around the crumbling ruin of wood and ashes, furniture and rags. The cindery smell of this collar brought the memory back clearly. Had she been wearing it when it burned? The dress was a tiny thing and he was still amazed that a woman with her own blood flowing in her veins, not blood stolen from another at the expense of a life, had worn it just today. He draped the garment over his shoulder and glanced around; no sign of her now. Maybe she was hurt and had gone back to wherever her home was. The enormity of downtown suddenly loomed; like himself, if the woman didn't want to be found, she never would be. He could search for . . . forever, really—even if she wasn't
trying
to hide. Besides that, what could he do? Take out an ad in the personals? How about a big sign on the sidewalk? His lips pulled into a small, bitter smile. That was good; for starters it could say
Vampires: This Way to Dinner!

Dejected, he headed back toward the Daley Center and eyed the buildings towering above the empty streets; the machete hanging from his belt made a dull, lonely-sounding slap against his leg with each step. It occurred to him that in the vastness that was downtown there could be ten, twenty, or more people sequestered away at night like him, foraging for supplies during the day and purposely avoiding contact with others out of paranoia. There were literally hundreds of buildings within walking distance of the Daley Center; if only a fraction had people holed up inside . . . an entire
community!
Possibilities whirled again and he doggedly tried to cap them. Time enough for grandiose plans; a more intelligent start would be to pay more attention to his surroundings instead of wandering around in this fog of self-pity. Maybe he just might find some of these people he was actually beginning to believe existed.

~ * ~

Nicholson was so accustomed to solitude that he never really expected to find anyone. As the hours passed, he grabbed a flashlight and weak batteries from Woolworth's and went to Marshall Field's to find something out of the ordinary to eat. Nicholson’s tastes were pretty conventional and he existed on whatever he found in the restaurants close to the Center; his groceries had initially come from the basement cafeteria of the Daley Center, which he had investigated after welding shut the doors that led to the subway and the Bank of Tokyo Building. The cafeteria had turned up items like Minute Rice and jars of Cheez Whiz, a quick fix on his small camp stove and a feast compared to his early diet of Spam and sardines. In time he'd discovered the gourmet section on the seventh floor of Field's, and he went there now, climbing the stilled escalators effortlessly on legs conditioned from endless trips up the Daley Center stairs. This morning Nicholson had eaten dry cereal chased with bottled water—he couldn't stand powdered milk—but here he could browse among shelves stacked with oddities. He fetched a bag from behind the counter and let his beam pick out the easy-to-cook delicacies: saffron pasta, canned white clam sauce, dried Romano cheese, cans of Pepperidge Farm soup. He studied a can of bacon-lettuce-and-tomato-flavored soup doubtfully.
Canned lettuce?
His mind supplied a picture of crisp green leaves and his mouth watered; he tossed the can in his bag.