Chapter 29

29

It’s a long drive, which provides me with the unfortunate opportunity to think. There’s an awkward silence in the back of the camper that everyone else seems to think is a comfortable one. Nobody attempts to break it.

The van’s faint grumble grows increasingly loud, but no one comments. No one seems to notice except me.

“Is that normal?” I ask when the noise is accompanied by the reek of exhaust.

Ilie and Henry exchange a look.

“What is it?”

They don’t answer. More time passes. Henry turns around, pulls back the curtain an inch, and peeks out the window.

“Elisa,” he says, his tone startling. Urgent.

“I know,” she says, making a sudden, sharp turn.

Naomi almost rolls onto the floor. “The fuck!”

“Put your seat belt on,” I tell her.

“I thought we were invincible,” she says, sitting back and folding her arms over her chest, annoyed that I scolded her. “What’s happening?”

The tires squeal as we take another tight turn, and the grumbling becomes beastly.

“Is something wrong?” I ask Henry.

He gets up and goes behind the curtain at the front. I hear him and Elisa whispering, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.

“Ilie,” Naomi says, “what’s going on?”

“Sounds like problem,” he says with a shrug. “It will be okay.”

“Has this happened before?” Naomi asks. She ducks her head under the curtain to look out the window. “We’re on a bridge.”

There’s a loud bang , and it reminds me of the gunshots, the woman with the bite taken out of her face shooting at us, and I think of what Henry said about how as you get older everything has context—only, what if the context is unwanted? What if the context is composed of experiences you want to scrub from your memory with steel wool?

Elisa pulls the camper over. I join Naomi under the curtain and see train tracks. A short row of brick buildings, of abandoned storefronts. A ghost town.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“When are we?” Naomi says. “It looks like 1915. Do we have the right to vote here?”

“You know something? Everyone says now is bad time, but now is much better,” Ilie says, getting up and opening the camper door. “There were worse times to be alive.”

Naomi turns to me. “Well, fuck.”

Everyone gets out of the camper. Across the tracks there’s a coaling tower with a worrying lean, and beyond that nothing but woods. Spiky, winter-bare trees piercing the backs of rolling hills.

Elisa and Henry stand in front of the camper, which is now smoking.

“Wonderful,” Tatiana says flatly, and I wonder why she didn’t go with Miri and Costel, or anywhere else. She lowers her voice to a whisper, and I think she says, “Not here. Not this place again.”

Ilie, who is typically brimming with happy-go-lucky enthusiasm, grows tense. He looks over his shoulder, pivots, looks, pivots, looks. His nervousness is severely unsettling.

“Is there…” Naomi starts, pawing at her throat, and suddenly I feel the pinch in my own throat sharpen. I’ve been thirsty for the last hour or so but have been too shy to ask for the blood that I know is in the cooler.

I imagine some do-gooder at a blood drive thinking they were saving innocent lives. I suppose in a way they were, by satiating our thirst. Still, I doubt this is what they had in mind.

Ilie scales the side of the camper and retrieves the cooler from the storage up top.

“We drink first,” Tatiana says, slipping her arm into the cooler and taking out a bag of blood. “The new ones won’t be able to stop once they start.”

Henry tosses her his spile, and she punctures the bag, then takes only a sip before passing it to Elisa, who also takes just one sip. Naomi pants beside me, shuffling from side to side, forward and backward. She can hardly contain herself. Her thirst.

It is difficult to be patient when it’s right there. When you can smell it.

Ilie takes two gulps, then Henry. He watches me while he drinks. Holds eye contact.

He passes it to me, and I want it—I want it badly—but Naomi’s practically whimpering, and the last time I drank first, things ended poorly.

So I hand the bag to Naomi. She falls to her knees as she sucks it dry.

“What did I tell you?” Tatiana says, flipping her hair over her shoulder like a high school mean girl.

Elisa, Ilie, and Henry begin speaking to one another in a language I don’t understand. Tatiana goes up to one of the storefronts, puts her face to the window. Naomi remains on the ground, clinging to the empty bag of blood. I turn toward the train tracks, which go on and on until they vanish into the night. I start to walk them, gravitating toward something, or to the nothingness. Toward the quiet. Away from the tension orbiting the smoking camper. Away from the cooler. Away from Naomi, the satisfaction of her bloodlust somehow amplifying the denial of mine.

I balance on one rail like I’m walking a tightrope. Focusing on not falling means I’m not focusing on my thirst. On how much I regret passing the bag to Naomi. On how my skin itches because it’s dry. Because I’m dry. My insides feel brittle.

The voices and the smell of smoke fade behind me. I keep walking. I hold my arms out to help me balance. I watch my feet.

The rustle of branches catches me off guard and I slip, stumble off the tracks.

I look around. The trees sway. Only some of them, which means the disturbance isn’t from the wind. There’s something out there.

“Henry?” I say, though I know in my bones it’s not him. The night coils around me. My heart plummets. “Naomi?”

She would answer. If it were her, she would say so.

I slowly turn on my heel, prepared to walk fast in the opposite direction, back toward the camper, but I’m met with an obstruction. Way down the track, between me and the ghost town and the vampires and Naomi, there’s a pair of red eyes glaring out from the dark. Just floating there.

I go rigid.

For a moment I let myself believe that the eyes are not eyes but something else. For a moment I let myself believe they belong to an owl. For a moment I feel no fear because I remember what I am, but then I realize, if I am what I am, if I exist, what else does?

The eyes move toward me, two floating red orbs coming closer and closer until they belong to a face, until the face belongs to a body. Until there’s a very old woman before me.

She smiles, her eyes no longer red but a watery blue. “Are you lost, dear?”

She speaks with a thick Southern accent.

“Um…”

“Let’s not stand on the tracks. Wouldn’t want to tempt fate. Not after we’ve already spat in her face. Suppose I should introduce myself,” the woman says. “I’m Ms.Alice. What’s your name, little bird?”

“It’s, um, Sloane.” My name comes out more like a question than like a statement. I’m not sure how to interact with this woman, if she’s friend or foe. “Hi.”

She’s a little taller than me, though her spine and shoulders curve in at the top like a candy cane. Her hair is white and flossy, and her sweet face is deeply lined. She wears a red flannel shirt tucked into cargo pants, which are tucked into some rugged snow boots.

If it weren’t for the red eyes that I watched magically turn blue, I might wonder why she isn’t wearing a coat. But I know she’s not cold because she’s not human. If the eyes didn’t give her away, her smell would. She doesn’t smell human.

“Are you…” I start the question but find it’s too ridiculous to finish. And maybe rude?

“I work for the park service,” she says in her sugary drawl. “A volunteer. That’s what I tell people, anyway. Ordinary people. This land is managed by the National Park Service. It’s a historic landmark. Get the occasional visitor. The curious. The adventurous. They come out here, and some of ’em get lost. Some of ’em just don’t ever find their way home. Such a shame.”

Since she knew what I was getting at, a simple “yes” would have sufficed.

“I’m figuring you’re not out here alone, are ya, birdie?”

“No,” I say, but the word lodges in my throat. I cough.

“Poor dear,” she says, putting her hand on my back as she starts to walk me toward the camper. “I’ll take care of you. Always nice to have visitors.”

It’s bizarre to watch someone who looks so fragile move so nimbly.

The smell of smoke lets me know we’re getting close to the camper, and soon I hear Elisa’s and Ilie’s and Henry’s voices.

Ms.Alice clucks. “Now, where are my manners? Would ya like a drink?”

“I—I’m fine,” I stutter.

“Come on, now. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.” She points to the coaling tower. “You can go on and help yourself if you don’t like an audience.”

She starts to rub my back, her bony hand pressing into me.

“I’m not…” I start, but my voice won’t lie on my behalf. Its allegiance is to my throat, which aches in need.

“But you are, aren’t ya, birdie?” she says. “I can tell.”

“We have some. At the camper…Can we— Let me, um, ask Henry.”

She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me around. “Oh, I’m sure he won’t mind. Ilie. Elisa. All of ’em. We’re old friends. Besides, whatever you have will only get you so far. Trust me, birdie. If someone’s offering, you take it.”

I don’t resist. If she knows them, then it’s okay…right?

She leads me to the tower, to a rickety fire escape that she floats up, her boots hovering just above the steps. I cling to the banister, fearful that the whole thing is about to separate from the building and crash down to earth. Or that the building itself will collapse.

“No one thinks to look up here,” Ms.Alice says, dipping into a window. “Don’t dawdle. Not polite to keep an old lady waiting, and I am very old.”

She laughs this horrifying, soul-demolishing cackle. It singes my eardrums, burns into me like acid, makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I’m tempted to jump from the fire escape, just to get as far away from the sound as possible. But I’m thirsty, and I’m a servant to my thirst. It compels me to follow Ms.Alice into the tower, to follow the promise of blood.

The inside of the tower is mostly open, a crumbling shell full of giant machinery, rusty chains and pipes, rotten wood. There’s a narrow platform, and all that’s beyond it is a three-story fall into industrial guts.

“Over here,” Ms.Alice says, disappearing into the dark. I take a cautious step forward. The clang of metal echoes throughout the tower. “Why ya draggin’ your feet? You want someone to drink or not?”

Not some thing . Some one .

I walk slowly in the direction Ms.Alice went, toward the clanging.

“Come closer,” she says. “Closer, dear. Closer.”

There’s a click, followed by the fizz of electricity. She holds up a lantern, illuminating the scene.

There are three bodies chained up in a corner. They’re naked, pale, emaciated, but not like the skeletal man. He looked unnatural. These people look like people. They’re human. Or they were.

Two of them are silent and still, but the one in the middle is clearly breathing. I can practically see his lungs pulsing through his skin, which is pulled taut across his rib cage. His mouth is open, jaw slack. He’s missing teeth and his tongue is shriveled and gray.

“The other two are almost empty. Scraps. Unless you want the marrow. You’re welcome to it,” she says. “But this one has plenty left. And as I’m sure you know, they taste better alive.”

I now notice that all of the bodies are missing parts. The one on the left doesn’t have arms. The one on the right has arms, but only one leg. And no foot.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Ms.Alice asks me, bending down and snapping a finger off the body on the right. She presents it to me, holding it out on her open palm. “I’m all alone out here. I can’t afford to be wasteful. I’m offering you something. Being a gracious host.”

“Thank you,” I say, my bottom lip trembling. “But I’m not…I don’t…”

“You don’t what?”

“No…no, thank you. I’m fine.”

“Have you ever tried?” she asks, her eyes sparking red. “The taste of flesh? The crunch of bones between your teeth? Blood is one thing, but over time…well, I developed other appetites.”

She bites into the finger like it’s a stalk of celery.

“I think you should,” she says, chewing with her mouth open. “I think you’ll like it. It’ll quench your thirst. Fill ya right up.”

I shake my head. I’m thirsty—I’m so thirsty—but seeing what’s in front of me, I’d rather starve. I’d rather die. I won’t participate in this.

“Have a taste,” she says, once again offering me the finger, now half-eaten.

“Alice.” Henry appears beside me, his big eyes alert. His expression unmoors me.

“What about you, handsome? So kind of you to join us. Can’t interest you in anything?”

“What are you doing, Alice?” he says, stepping in front of me, putting himself between me and Alice and the bodies. Shielding me.

“Getting your new bird some sustenance.”

“We’re not here for that.”

“Let me guess. Car trouble again,” she says. “And here I thought y’all might have come around to see me. Stopped being so uptight. It’s been so long. You promised you’d come visit.”

She deposits what remains of the finger between her lips, goes on talking with her mouth full. “You’re lucky you weren’t turned any later, birdie. I’m out here all by my lonesome in these woods. Can ya blame me for getting myself some company?” She gestures back to the bodies.

“You’re alone because of the company you keep, Alice,” Henry says. “The company you choose. What you do to them.”

She clucks. “I like what I like. Why should I apologize for it? Why should I deprive myself? Anyone who sees me, they think nothin’ of me. Treat me like I’m fragile, or stupid. Or they’re repulsed by me, by this body. This body I’ll have forever and ever.”

She gets close to me. “So I take gooooooooood care of it. Of myself. My body.”

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, then walks past us. “Go on. Cast your stones. But you, birdie—you should know, to live as a woman in this world, you can give and give and get used up, suffer the emptiness, or you can start taking. And I ain’t suffering. I already done mine, my fair share. So I fill myself up. Num num num num num. ”

I wince, and she cackles.

“You’re lookin’ at me like I’m some kind of monster, but we’re the same, you and me. You just ain’t ready to admit it to yourself. The sooner you accept what ya are, the better. Because maybe you’re fooling yourself, but you ain’t fooling me. You want this. You’re scared of how bad you want it. Afraid of what would happen if you tried a bite of flesh. Of how much you’d like it.”

She steps out of the window onto the fire escape. “Come on, now. Don’t try my patience.”