The Starry Rift Part 34

I dug a pen out of my jacket and wrote my phone number on his hand.

"I guess we could hang out," I said. "Fellow Armenians and stuff like that."

Jarel smiled.

After that I went "home."

For the first time ever, Salsa the cat rubbed against my legs.

I went into the kitchen and washed my hands. Tracey was at pottery cla.s.s; she'd left a note and some pizza. As I was microwav-ing it, I heard the garage door open. Dave (sniff!) was home from the gym. I wondered whether he'd notice the limp. And the blood. The blood could be a problem.

There was a precalculus test tomorrow. I hadn't studied because I hadn't thought I'd still be here.

Full of surprises, that life.

I took my bottle of Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi out of the fridge door. I ached all over. My face felt like a fried egg.

"Maja, you forgot to put the garbage out before you went to your track meet." Dave was climbing the stairs. "Now, I'm not making a big deal about it but that's"-sniff-"a really important job. We can't just let it pile up." Sniff!

I looked at my reflection in the s.h.i.+ny black surface of the family's fridge.

My old face was back. I even had a zit next to my nose. I put the bottle to my lips. I'd just saved the world from M-self. My old face and I smiled at each other.

TRICIA SULLIVAN was born in New Jersey in 1968 and studied in the pioneering Music Program Zero at Bard College. She later received a master's in education from Columbia University and taught in Manhattan and New Jersey before moving to the UK in 1995. Her first novel, Lethe, was published that year, and was followed by science fiction novels Someone To Watch Over Me, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Dreaming in Smoke. She has also written fantasy as Valery Leith, including The Company of Gla.s.s, The Riddled Night, and The Way of the Rose. Her most recent novels are Double Vision, Maul, and Sound Mind Her Web site is www.triciasullivan.co.uk.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

The idea behind this story was to take the concept of ancient Greek "champions" and stand it on its head. The irony is meant to lie in the fact that in the story the champions are not heroically risking their own lives to save others', but risking millions of lives in the name of more efficient warfare. Somewhere in the back of my head I guess I was thinking about PGMs, the technologization (that's probably not a real word) of warfare, and the tendency of the political leaders of our time to lead from the rear, safely.

I had two problems when I started writing. First, although I started out trying to write a far-future s.p.a.ce story, I kept finding myself writing about ordinary suburban America-and in the past! My other problem was that my battle was going to happen between a girl and a guy. I can tell you from personal experience of reality-based martial arts that there are major problems for a girl coming up against a big, trained guy who's out to hurt her. I didn't want to resort to the Buffy-style kung fu fighting that we see way too much of in the movies. I wanted to give an accurate portrayal of a male versus female fight, but without my girl getting pulverized.

Luckily, this is a science fiction story, so I was able to fabricate the M-ask, which solves both of my problems and helps to give the story its focus.

INFESTATION.

Garth Nix.

They were the usual motley collection of freelance vampire hunters. Two men, wearing combinations of jungle camouflage and leather. Two women, one almost indistinguishable from the men though with a little more style in her leather armor accessories, and the other looking like she was about to a.s.sault the south face of a serious mountain. Only her mouth was visible, a small oval of flesh not covered by balaclava, mirror shades, climbing helmet, and hood.

They had the usual weapons: four or five short wooden stakes in belt loops; snap-holstered handguns of various calibers, all doubtless chambered with Wood-N-Death low-velocity timber-tipped rounds; big silver-edged bowie or other hunting knife, worn on the hip or strapped to a boot; and crystal vials of holy water hung like small grenades on pocket loops.

Protection, likewise, tick the usual boxes. Leather neck and wrist guards; leather and woven-wire reinforced chaps and shoulder pauldrons over the camo; leather gloves with metal knuckle plates; army or climbing helmets.

And lots of crosses, oh yeah, particularly on the two men. Big silver crosses, little wooden crosses, medium-sized turned ivory crosses, hanging off of everything they could hang off.

In other words, all four of them were lumbering, b.u.mbling mountains of stuff that meant that they would be easy meat for all but the newest and dumbest vampires.

They all looked at me as I walked up. I guess their first thought was to wonder what the h.e.l.l I was doing there, in the advertised meeting place, outside a church at 4:30 P.M. on a winter's day while the last rays of the sun were supposedly making this consecrated ground a double no-go zone for vampires.

"You're in the wrong place, surfer boy," growled one of the men.

I was used to this reaction. I guess I don't look like a vampire hunter much anyway, and I particularly didn't look like one. I'd been on the beach that morning, not knowing where I might head to later, so I was still wearing a yellow Quiksilver T-s.h.i.+rt and what might be loosely described as old and faded blue board shorts, but "ragged" might be more accurate. I hadn't had shoes on, but I'd picked up a pair of sandals on the way. Tan Birkenstocks, very comfortable. I always prefer sandals to shoes. Old habits, I guess.

I don't look my age, either. I always looked young, and nothing's changed, though "boy" was a bit rough coming from anyone under forty-five, and the guy who'd spoken was probably closer to thirty. People older than that usually leave the vampire hunting to the government, or paid professionals.

"I'm in the right place," I said, matter-of-fact, not getting into any aggression or anything. I lifted my 1968-vintage vinyl Pan Am airline bag. "Got my stuff here. This is the meeting place for the vampire hunt?"

"Yes," said the mountain-climbing woman.

"Are you crazy?" asked the man who'd spoken to me first. "This isn't some kind of doper excursion. We're going up against a nest of vampires!"

I nodded and gave him a kind smile.

"I know. At least ten of them, I would say. I swung past and had a look around on the way here. At least, I did if you're talking about that condemned factory up on the river heights."

"What! But it's cordoned off-and the vamps'll be dug in till nightfall."

"I counted the patches of disturbed earth," I explained. "The cordon was off. I guess they don't bring it up to full power till the sun goes down. So, who are you guys?"

"Ten!" exclaimed the second man, not answering my question. "You're sure?"

"At least ten," I replied. "But only one Ancient. The others are all pretty new, judging from the spoil."

"You're making this up," said the first man. "There's maybe five, tops. They were seen together and tracked back. That's when the cordon was established this morning."

I shrugged and half unzipped my bag.

"I'm Jenny," said the mountain climber, belatedly answering my question. "The . . . the vampires got my sister, three years ago. When I heard about this infestation, I claimed the Relative's Right."

"I've got a twelve-month permit," said the second man. "Plan to turn professional. Oh yeah, my name's Karl."

"I'm Susan," said the second woman. "This is our third vampire hunt. Mike's and mine, I mean."

"She's my wife," said the belligerent Mike. "We've both got twelve-month permits. You'd better be legal too, if you want to join us."

"I have a special license," I replied. The sun had disappeared behind the church tower, and the streetlights were flicking on. With the bag unzipped, I was ready for a surprise. Not that I thought one was about to happen. At least, not immediately. Unless I chose to spring one.

"You can call me J."

"Jay?" asked Susan.

"Close enough," I replied. "Does someone have a plan?"

"Yeah," said Mike. "We stick together. No hotd.o.g.g.i.ng off, or chasing down wounded vamps or anything like that. We go in as a team, and we come out as a team."

"Interesting," I said. "Is there . . . more to it?"

Mike paused to fix me with what he obviously thought was his steely gaze. I met it, and after a few seconds he looked away. Maybe it's the combination of very pale blue eyes and dark skin, but not many people look at me directly for too long. It might just be the eyes. There've been quite a few cultures who think of very light blue eyes as the color of death. Perhaps that lingers, resonating in the subconscious even of modern folk.

"We go through the front door," he said. "We throw flares ahead of us. The vamps should all be digging out on the old factory floor; it's the only place where the earth is accessible. So we go down the fire stairs, throw a few more flares out the door, then go through and back up against the wall. We'll have a clear field of fire to take them down. They'll be groggy for a couple of hours yet, slow to move. But if one or two manage to close, we stake them."

"The young ones will be slow and dazed," I said. "But the Ancient will be active soon after sundown, even if it stays where it is-and it's not dug in on the factory floor. It's in a humongous clay pot outside an office on the fourth floor."

"We take it first, then," said Mike. "Not that I'm sure I believe you."

"It's up to you," I said. I had my own ideas about dealing with the Ancient, but they would wait. No point upsetting Mike too early. "There's one more thing."

"What?" asked Karl.

"There's a fresh-made vampire around, from last night. It will still be able to pa.s.s as human for a few more days. It won't be dug in, and it may not even know it's infected."

"So?" asked Mike. "We kill everything in the infested area. That's all legal."

"How do you know this stuff?" asked Jenny.

"You're a professional, aren't you?" said Karl. "How long you been pro?"

"I'm not exactly a professional," I said. "But I've been hunting vampires for quite a while."

"Can't have been that long," said Mike. "Or you'd know better than to go after them in just a T-s.h.i.+rt. What've you got in that bag? Sawn-off shotgun?"

"Just a stake and a knife," I replied. "I'm a traditionalist. Shouldn't we be going?"

The sun was fully down, and I knew the Ancient, at least, would already be reaching up through the soil, its mildewed, mottled hands gripping the rim of the earthenware pot that had once held a palm or something equally impressive outside the factory manager's office.

"Truck's over there," said Mike, pointing to a flashy new silver pickup. "You can ride in the back, surfer boy."

"Fresh air's a wonderful thing."

As it turned out, Karl and Jenny wanted to sit in the back too. I sat on a toolbox that still had shrink-wrap around it, Jenny sat on a spare tire, and Karl stood looking over the cab, scanning the road, as if a vampire might suddenly jump out when we were stopped at the lights.

"Do you want a cross?" Jenny asked me after we'd gone a mile or so in silence. Unlike Mike and Karl, she wasn't festooned with them, but she had a couple around her neck. She started to take off a small wooden one, lifting it by the chain.

I shook my head and raised my T-s.h.i.+rt up under my arms, to show the scars. Jenny recoiled in horror and gasped, and Karl looked around, hand going for his .41 Glock. I couldn't tell whether that was jumpiness or good training. He didn't draw and shoot, which I guess meant good training.

I let the T-s.h.i.+rt fall, but it was up long enough for both of them to see the hackwork tracery of scars that made up a kind of T shape on my chest and stomach. But it wasn't a T. It was a tau cross, one of the oldest Christian symbols and still the one that vampires feared the most, though none but the most ancient knew why they fled from it.

"Is that . . . a cross?" asked Karl.

I nodded.

"That's so hardcore," said Karl. "Why didn't you just have it tattooed?"

"It probably wouldn't work so well," I said. "And I didn't have it done. It was done to me."

I didn't mention that there was an equivalent tracery of scars on my back as well. These two tau crosses, front and back, never faded, though my other scars always disappeared only a few days after they healed.

"Who would-" Jenny started to ask, but she was interrupted by Mike banging on the rear window of the cab-with the b.u.t.t of his pistol, reconfirming my original a.s.sessment that he was the biggest danger to all of us. Except for the Ancient Vampire. I wasn't worried about the young ones. But I didn't know which Ancient it was, and that was cause for concern. If it had been encysted since the drop, it would be in the first flush of its full strength. I hoped it had been around for a long time, lying low and steadily degrading, only recently resuming its mission against humanity.

"We're there," said Karl, unnecessarily.

The cordon fence was fully established now. Sixteen feet high and lethally electrified, with old-fas.h.i.+oned limelights burning every ten feet along the fence, the sound of the hissing oxygen and hydrogen jets music to my ears. Vampires loathe limelight. Gaslight has a lesser effect, and electric light hardly bothers them at all. It's the intensity of the naked flame they fear.

The fire brigade was standing by because of the limelights, which though modernized were still occasionally p.r.o.ne to ma.s.sive accidental combustion, and the local police department was there en ma.s.se to enforce the cordon. I saw the bright white bulk of the state Vampire Eradication Team's semi trailer parked off to one side. If we volunteers failed, they would go in, though given the derelict state of the building and the reasonable s.p.a.ce between it and the nearest residential area, it was more likely they'd just get the Air Force to do a fuel-air explosion dump.

The VET personnel would be out and about already, making sure no vampires managed to get past the cordon. There would be crossbow snipers on the upper floors of the surrounding buildings, ready to shoot fire-hardened oak quarrels into vampire heads. It wasn't advertised by the ammo manufacturers, but a big old vampire could take forty or fifty Wood-N-Death or equivalent rounds to the head and chest before going down. A good inch-diameter, yard-long quarrel or stake worked so much better.

There would be a VET quick-response team somewhere close as well, outfitted in the latest metal-mesh armor, carrying the automatic weapons the volunteers were not allowed to use-with good reason, given the frequency with which volunteer vampire hunters killed each other even when armed only with handguns, stakes, and knives.

I waved at the window of the three-story warehouse where I'd caught a glimpse of a crossbow sniper, earning a puzzled glance from Karl and Jenny, then jumped down. A police sergeant was already walking over to us, his long, harsh limelit shadow preceding him. Naturally, Mike intercepted him before he could choose whom he wanted to talk to.

"We're the volunteer team."

"I can see that," said the sergeant. "Who's the kid?"

He pointed at me. I frowned. The kid stuff was getting monotonous. I don't look that young. Twenty at least, I would have thought.

"He says his name's Jay. He's got a 'special license.' That's what he says."

"Let's see it then," said the sergeant, with a smile that suggested he was looking forward to arresting me and delivering a three-hour lecture. Or perhaps a beating with a piece of rubber pipe. It isn't always easy to decipher smiles.

"I'll take it from here, Sergeant," said an officer who came up from behind me, fast and smooth. He was in the new metal-mesh armor, like a wetsuit, with a webbing belt and harness over it, to hold stakes, knife, WP grenades (which actually were effective against the vamps, unlike the holy water ones), and a handgun. He had an H&K MP5-PW slung over his shoulder. "You go and check the cordon."

"But Lieutenant, don't you want me to take-"

"I said check the cordon."

The sergeant retreated, smile replaced by a scowl of frustration. The VET lieutenant ignored him.

"Licenses, please," he said. He didn't look at me, and unlike the others I didn't reach for the plasticated, hologrammed, data-chipped card that was the latest version of the volunteer-vampire-hunter license.

They held their licenses up and the reader that was somewhere in the lieutenant's helmet picked up the data, and his earpiece whispered whether they were valid or not. Since he was nodding, we all knew they were valid before he spoke.

"Okay, you're good to go whenever you want. Good luck."

"What about him?" asked Mike, gesturing at me with his thumb.

"Him too," said the lieutenant. He still didn't look at me. Some of the VET are funny like that. They seem to think I'm like an albatross or something. A sign of bad luck. I suppose it's because wherever the vampire infestations are really bad, I have a tendency to show up as well. "He's already been checked in. We'll open the gate in five, if that suits you."

"Sure," said Mike. He lumbered over to face me. "There's something funny going on here, and I don't like it. So you just stick to the plan, okay?"

"Actually, your plan sucks," I said calmly. "So I've decided to change it. You four should go down to the factory floor and take out the vampires there. I'll go up against the Ancient."