The Hunger (27 page)

Being fourteen, she had known nothing of the ways of time. Soon her father had been transferred by International Paper, next stop Des Moines. And Bobby Dewart? She had no idea.

At this moment, as she crossed East End, drawn by the sensuality of the night park, she remembered that love in all its timid eagerness. It had been young and doomed — and yet hadn’t it also in a sense been eternal?

There came into her heart a painful longing for all her lost secret places: night and empty benches and abandoned paths. She went slowly down the tarmac sidewalk, recalling with this same delectable pain her great loves, Bobby and the others, and yes, Tom too. He ranked as a great love, she could not deny it. She went through the park until she came to the esplanade that stretches beyond it. Bordered on one side by buildings and on the other by the East River. The current, always swift, hissed in the darkness below. Far out in the river a small boat was defined by its bobbing lights. Along the esplanade the benches gleamed, still wet with rain. Immediately behind the benches rose the apartment buildings. The terraces of the lower floors jutted out perhaps ten feet above the walk. In their darkness these buildings acquired something that they did not possess during daylight hours. Sarah could not define it exactly. Certainly it wasn’t menace. More a sense of mystery.

Their blank windows were . . . interesting. It didn’t seem impossible, the way she had begun to feel, that she could climb to one of those terraces.

Then what would she do?

She could taste a peach breaking in her mouth, its juicy sweetness filling her with delight.

People lay sleeping in those buildings, thousands of them, each locked in his own dreams, vulnerable and quiet.

Sarah walked softly along, full of an obscure and subtle longing. She felt a lust for all things beautiful, reflected that there was no such thing as an ugly human being.

She wanted to get into one of their apartments, to touch their belongings, to listen to their soft breathing.

She found herself standing on one of the benches. With her arms raised to their full length the lowest balcony was three feet above her. She crouched down on the bench. By springing straight up she might just be able to catch the edge of the balcony.

Do
what?
This was absurd. Aberrant behavior. Psychopathic. Still, her muscles were tensing, her hands stretching to grasp, her eyes measuring the distance. There wasn’t a trace of psychopathic behavior in her personality. If anything, she was too civilized.

Then she was hanging on the edge of the terrace, her fingers grasping, her legs swinging. It was impossible and yet she had done it.

Her arms and fingers did not ache as they should. Rather they felt like steel. She raised herself to the edge and looked onto the terrace itself. There was a barbeque, a couple of canvas chairs, a tricycle. Her right hand grasped one of the iron bars that formed the railing of the terrace.

She was beginning to feel a strange aggressive anger, an eagerness to get in there and —

She dropped to the ground, the thud echoing up and down the esplanade. The image that had made her release her grip now made her hunch her shoulders and clasp her arms around herself, hugging herself against its ugliness.

She didn’t feel things like that! She loved mankind, that was the foundation of her life. How could she possibly, even for an instant, have wanted to kill innocent human beings, to crack them open like — like she had imagined.

It was as if somebody else was living in her body, some wild being, driven by needs of which she herself was ignorant.

“Has this always been in me, deep back behind the me I know?”

Yes. Hidden, but there.

Now given life. Something enormous was stirring and waking in her, she felt. It was as old as life, perhaps, but also new. It was what had driven her out here in the middle of the night, had converted a simple thing such as hunger into a gluttonous lust, had made her so abnormally interested in the people in the apartments.

She began to walk quickly along the esplanade, seeking a more open area, a place where she would be less tempted to this behavior.

As she moved she had the uncanny sensation that somebody or something was moving with her, walking as she walked, breathing as she breathed.

Something not quite of this world.

It was tall and pale and as quick as a hawk.

She started to run. Her footsteps whispered on the pavement; the sneakers deadened the sound. But not the fear: she grasped her hands over her head and crouched low.

Great wings seemed to rise into the sky.

Hallucination.

Abruptly, the needle mark came to mind. That was, of course, what it was. Not an insect bite or some other innocent wound. Miriam had given her something with a needle.

The pale thing moving, rubber tubing, blood packs, red blood —

Dark-red blood, like that of a reptile.

Sarah ran wildly through the park, passing the motionless swings, the places where children played ball, the slides, the sandbox, the tall dripping trees.

‘I’ve been infused. She gave me blood. Her blood.’ Memory: Miriam drawing blood from her own vein with a primitive catheter.

Sarah unable to move. A voice, Miriam’s voice, saying again and again, you cannot move, you will not remember, you cannot, will not.

But the voice did not come from Miriam. It came from that strange unhuman creature, the statue with the catheter in its arm, the catheter that led to a blood pack.

When it was bulging with black blood it had been applied to Sarah’s arm. She had watched it go in, the warmest, most delicious feeling making it impossible for her to stop it, impossible to pull out the needle.

Help!

She was in the streets now, running through familiar intersections, past stores she knew well, but also through a strange and unfamiliar world, a planet of the dead that was also this planet.

She stopped, suddenly winded. Her heart was knocking, her breath was coming in gasps. ‘I’m not meant to know this,’ she thought. ‘This is unbelievable. But it’s true, it must be true.’ She felt her arm, could feel the hard knot of tissue where the needle had entered. When she pressed, it hurt.

It was real.

Right now, this moment, Miriam’s blood was in her veins, mixing with her own.

Black blood? A hideous thing with Miriam’s voice? A nightmare? Some kind of trick?

There were a hundred desperate questions, and at the moment not a single clear answer.

For example, it could be that her mind had broken through a hypnotic block, but it could also be that the block was meant to come down.

She tried to calm herself. Breathe deeply, remember your own strengths. She could think, she could apply reason and science to the situation. She could save herself with her knowledge.

Her first impulse was to get home as quickly as possible, get Tom, and go over to Riverside for some tests. But instead she sat down on the curb. To do this right she was going to have to collect her thoughts, organize her mind. If she wasn’t careful it was all going to come across to others as some kind of irrational aberration.

There was peace here in the empty street. A nearby building had planted tulips and they glowed in the light from the streetlamps. Trees spread new leaves overhead. This little corner of New York could have been a small town, so quietly did it sleep, so sweet did it smell.

Sarah looked up. Clouds moved past, glowing yellow-red with the lights of the city. Here and there a star shone through. To the west the moon rode in the rushing sky.

There was a stirring in the air all around her, like the sound of enormous wings.

Hallucinatory phenomena again.

It recurred, as if a large bird were flying restlessly back and forth just overhead. Suddenly, Sarah had a vivid impression of Miriam, her face utterly serene —

She jumped up, stifling a cry. That face had been
real
. But it wasn’t here. Sarah was alone. It was only another symptom and would have to be accepted as such.

Methuselah’s dying howl filled the air.

Sarah clapped her hands over her ears, feeling in her right arm a sharp stab of pain from the needle mark. Another symptom. In fact, all of the night’s experiences were nothing more than symptoms, from the vomiting to the hallucinations to the cloying hunger. And all could be dealt with once the parameters of the problem were known.

She set off, this time walking with resolute intention. She would not fall victim to transient psychosis. She would approach this as a professional and overcome it with the assistance of one of the best research institutes in the world.

Miriam’s motives, whatever in heaven’s name they might be, could wait until later.

They would have to take that one well in hand. She was dangerous, she needed careful observation. Fine, there were involuntary commitment procedures for just such situations.

When she reached the Excelsior Tower, she had more or less regained her composure. She fumbled for her keys rather than wake poor Herb at such an hour. He was huddled, a snoring bundle, on one of the lobby couches. Poor guy probably held down two or three jobs.

Despite the urgency she felt, she found Herb curiously interesting. He looked so helpless. But when she drew near she found his smell overpowering, like rotting meat. She went on to the elevator bank and rode to her floor.

The apartment was silent. From the bedroom came the faint sound of breathing. Obviously Tom hadn’t missed her. Sarah went into the bathroom and turned on the light.

It was definitely a needle mark, and slightly infected. The first problem must be to test for type-incompatibility. If Miriam’s blood did not interact normally with her own she could easily lapse into irreversible shock.

They would have to act fast. The fact that nothing had happened during the past eight or ten hours was cause for hope but it proved nothing. Shock could set in at any moment.

“Tom!”

He shifted in the bed, groaned. She put her hand on his shoulder to shake him.

It was like an electric shock. Lights flashed before her eyes, an agonizing thrill ran through her body. She staggered back, astonished by the furious clash of sensations.

His skin was so good to touch. A strange, evil tickling made her break out in gooseflesh. Her nipples swelled against her sweater. There came a feeling not unlike the one she had experienced hanging on the terrace, a sort of aggressive longing, something related to her new lusty appetite.

She noticed a strong — quite wonderful — smell. It wasn’t food but at the same time it was. Had he gotten up and taken some food to the bed? That would be just like him, to get up for a snack and never even notice that she was gone.

Tom woke to the sound of excited breathing. Startled, he sat up. At first he was afraid. His eyes could not penetrate the darkness.

“Sarah?”

“Yes.”

What the hell was going on? “Are you up?”

She turned on the bathroom light. Not only was she up, she was fully dressed. He couldn’t see her face with the light behind her, but her hair looked wild.

“Sarah, are you OK?”

When she didn’t answer he got out of bed and grabbed for her. She moved, it seemed very quickly, back into the bathroom. “Give me a second,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“You sound funny.” He didn’t add that she also looked very strange now that she was under the light: eyes wide and glistening, face smeared, sweat shirt smeared, muddy sneakers. “What the hell have you been doing?”

She seemed about to run as he moved toward her. He went into the bathroom, held his hands out to her, stood over her reasserting himself if only by their difference in size.

Suddenly, she sank to the floor, clapped her face into her hands and twisted back. A choked sob. He went down beside her.

“Darling, are you in pain?”

“My arm!” The sob became a moan, warbling and crazy. Tom touched the proffered arm, looked at the ugly mark just below the crook of the elbow. A needle track. Sarah’s eyes searched him. “She infused me with her blood. Now I’m hallucinating.”

“Fever. Transfusion reaction.”

She nodded, tears popping out from behind her tightly closed eyes. He took her by the shoulders, his own heart pounding. A transfusion reaction, caused by blood of an incompatible type, could range from nothing more than mild discomfort to vascular collapse and death. “Let’s get over to Riverside.” He went to the phone, called Geoff’s home number. They would need the best blood man available. Geoff’s voice, sleepy and a little confused, sharpened when Tom told him what had happened. They agreed to meet at the blood analysis lab in ten minutes.

Tom phoned ahead to send Herb scurrying out after a cab. By the time he had gotten some clothes on and Sarah in a coat, a Checker was waiting at the door.

They hurried through Riverside’s main lobby, at this hour empty and quiet. With a wave to the night guard, Tom propelled Sarah to the elevators, jabbed at the eleventh-floor button.

Geoff was waiting, his face sallow and tired. As they entered the lab Phyllis Rockler rose from behind a workbench where she had been preparing the necessary glassware. She took Sarah by the hands. “Let’s get you in a pressure cuff,” she said, her voice urgent.

“Do you live here?” Sarah asked. Tom was reassured to hear strength, even a touch of acerbic humor.

“Geoff and I —”

Sarah smiled softly, looked a moment at Tom. Phyllis pushed up the sleeve of Sarah’s sweater and applied the blood pressure indicator as Geoff examined the other arm. The four of them waited while Phyllis took her reading. “One hundred and twenty over eighty. We should all be so lucky.”

“My pressure’s always been good.”

Tom closed his eyes, felt some of the tension creep out of his neck. The blood pressure would have been abnormal if vascular collapse had been imminent. Phyllis then counted Sarah’s pulse and read her temperature with a digital thermometer. “Here’s something. One hundred and one degrees.”

“There’s a slight subcutaneous infection connected with the lesion,” Geoff remarked. “The fever could be from that.”

Sarah closed her eyes. “Aside from the fever and the lesion, my gross symptoms are psychological. Extreme restlessness. Odd hallucinations.”