Vampire Miami (35 page)

Selah shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Not good enough.” He drove on, brooding. “What.
People cut a twenty-dollar check to the Red Cross, donate some
canned food to their local church, and that makes this all right?
How many millions are rotting right here? Begging on the streets?
Dying without medicine, without anybody giving a shit? Does anybody
know?”

Selah reached out and placed her hand on the
back of his neck. She squeezed at the tense muscles. He resisted
her, but she knew him, worked at the tension, the anger. He rolled
his head from one side to the other, and then finally closed one
eye and stared at her sidelong. Selah blew him a kiss, and he
snorted, looked away. Keeping her hand on his neck, Selah watched
the world outside her window. She felt a pinprick of guilt. Just a
few months ago she’d been one of those people Cloud was railing
against. Up in Brooklyn, living her high school life, concerned
with her own priorities and ignoring what was going on here, going
on in Miami.

As they eased farther down the I-15 into the
valley, the density of the shacks turned the area beyond the
shoulder into an outright slum. It looked like a giant child had
dropped a collection of brick and concrete blocks onto the side of
the road, allowing them to lie where they fell, chaotic and piled
in places to two or even three stories in height. Winding lanes and
alleys disappeared between them, as crooked as the architecture,
and thin plumes of smoke choked out of tin pipes that speared the
dawn sky.

People were already working the cars, hawkers
moving slowly up the lanes with hanging trays heavy with wares.
Others held aloft plastic bottles of water, which Selah could see
had broken seals as often as not. Children with scrubby faces, eyes
solemn or quick, moved between the cars with the energy of birds
fishing amongst the waves, crying out that they had gum, they had
tools, they had batteries and even secondhand Omnis. Selah watched
them, lips pursed, and slid on her sunglasses as the first
approached.

He was young, perhaps eleven or twelve, and in
the washed-out morning light his skin was a dusty brown, rising to
rich ruddy copper on his cheeks and brow. His hair fell in thin
braids, each ending in a small metal shape that as he stepped
closer she saw were miniature bells. It was his missing eye,
however, that drew her attention, the dry socket that he made no
attempt to hide. A jarring crater in an otherwise untouched face
that weaponized his brilliant white smile.

“Water? I have water, fresh water, each bottle
treated with iodine, safe to drink. Cold water? No? I have food,
protein bars, meat paste stolen from the military only days ago,
very good, very rich—no?”

He walked alongside the Cadillac, easily keeping
pace, one hand holding a plastic bottle without label, its contents
vaguely clear, while the other held up what indeed looked like
military-issued rations. His grin was constant, his energy obvious
as he kept pace with sidestepping hops.

“No thank you,” said Selah. She couldn’t help
but smile back.

“It will get very hot soon, you will dehydrate.
Very dangerous, you can get dizzy, headaches, dry mouth, tongue
bubbles, see spots, get brain fever, fall over, all without knowing
you are thirsty, yeah?” His smile grew only more enthusiastic as he
listed the maladies, and Selah laughed, shaking her head again.

“Then maybe I can get you something else? Do you
need anything? I know everybody. I can get you gasoline, I can get
you new Omni—well, pre-owned Omni—I can get you maps, or Blood
Dust, the darkest Dust in all LA?”

Cloud looked over at him for the first time. The
kid blinked, but he was tough. Cloud’s leopard stare didn’t faze
him long.

“Blood dust?” Selah sat up. She’d heard back in
Miami that LA was where the drug came from. The drug that her
father had been investigating—and it’s connections to the US
government—when he disappeared. It had been why she’d allowed
herself to be deported to the vampire city of Miami in the first
place, placed in her grandmother’s custody, all to learn more about
this drug and its world. Miami had turned out to be a huge dead
end, but here, in LA, maybe she could finally get some answers. She
stared at the kid. “You sell it?”

The boy’s expression changed subtly, as if he
were mentally recategorizing her. “I don’t have any on me, but I
know people who do. You want some? Only …” He paused, thought
quickly, “fifty dollars for a packet. I can get it so dark it’s
almost black.”

“No. Thanks,” said Cloud. Selah turned to him in
annoyance and surprise, eyebrows raised, but he ignored her.

“OK,” said the kid, not missing a beat, “last
offer. For a dollar, I can save your life. No joke. If you keep
driving, they will come at you with guns. Take that Omni there,
take everything.”

Cloud looked past Selah to stare at the kid.
“Enough. Get out of here.”

“No problem,” said the boy. “You wait, I’ll show
you.”

Her window rolled up and the sound of hawkers’
cries and the distant yells from within the slum grew muted. “That
kid was starting to annoy me.”

“I was asking him questions,” said Selah.

“Yeah? And just how trustworthy do you think he
is?” Cloud shook his head. “We’re better off waiting to ask
Chico.”

Selah looked ahead. The number of people moving
between the car lanes had grown. The sun had cleared the low line
of hills behind them, and more people were stirring in the shacks
and homes lining the interstate. A curtain was drawn back and an
old lady with a brightly patterned headscarf and gummed lips
appeared, blinking rapidly as she looked down upon the cars that
passed right below her window. They met eyes for a moment, and
Selah felt as if the woman were looking at her through a window
from another world, her eyes ancient with dull pain and
resignation.

Other kids approached their car and knocked on
the windows with curled fingers, displaying more goods they didn’t
want. Selah searched for a moment and then spotted the boy with one
eye. He was keeping pace along the highway’s shoulder, and as their
eyes met he gave her an exaggerated wink.

Cloud shifted impatiently in his seat. “We’re
still thirty five miles out. I say we take the car in a little
farther, see if we can’t get past the 210 intersection. Then we
ditch it and head out on foot. What do you think?”

“Sure,” said Selah. The valley was opening up,
the last of the hills peeling back and out of sight, barely visible
over the shacks. There wasn’t much of a view before them, but up
ahead on the left she saw an old tower displaying signs to a
long-defunct shopping mall that had been engulfed by ramshackle
buildings: Party City, Chase Bank, Del Taco. “Though we could
probably already go faster on foot. This looks like it just grinds
down into a permanent jam.”

They had been warned back in Barstow that this
would happen. A couple of young guys getting high in the shade of a
Seven Eleven had told them to catch the bus to the city limit and
not bother with driving, that every car that forced its way into
the heart of San Bernardino was inevitably abandoned as it crawled
unwittingly into the maw of the greatest chop shop on earth. “It’s
awesome,” the guy with the blond dreads had said, his stubble
glowing like sparks on his pale, pocked jawline. “Human ingenuity
at its best. A whole bunch of dudes with guns just turned the whole
I-15 and I-10 intersection into one massive processing complex, you
know? Every car gets confiscated and driven into the old Ontario
Mills mall to be taken apart. You don’t want to make it that far,
guys. Take it from me. I know.” And then he’d shared a look with
his half-conscious buddy, and both of them laughed, blowing
metallic smoke into the dry desert air as they shared an inside
joke.

More kids pressed at the car’s windows, peering
in, offering Selah and Cloud junk. They crawled forward, following
the interminable descent down into the valley below. The one-eyed
kid walked alongside, a constant shadow against the fronts of the
shacks. Fifteen minutes passed, the smell of burning rubber and
garbage returning now, the air heavy with dust and coal. The kid
stepped forward again, and knocked on Selah’s window.

“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.”