Throat (18 page)

I lay on my back on the air mattress on top of the tower, looking up but seeing nothing. I felt broken in some important way. The experiment had been a success, if you could call it that. I had connected with Wirtz’s mind, but not in the way I had expected. I had thought I would be able to visit him the same way he had visited me. As a projection, an image that could interact with the vampire. But I had done something completely different … and infinitely more disturbing.

I killed her. Killed that poor woman
.

Hot tears streamed down my face. Yeah, I knew that Wirtz had really done the killing, but it might as well have been me. Tonight there was a family with no mother. A husband with no wife. A lost daughter. Sister. Friend. And it had all started with a long chain that led back to the Georgia mountains and pointed straight at me. She was dead because of my anger.

No
.

I couldn’t let myself think like that. I hadn’t invited Wirtz to attack me. But I had sure put myself in his path.

That’s what he wants you to think
, I told myself.
Screw him
.

I needed that anger if I was going to survive. Besides, I wasn’t going to make it that easy for the vampire to break me down. I reminded myself that I had just learned something here, gained a little bit of an edge.
I traveled inside another person’s mind
.

I had briefly experienced life as a full vampire. But more than just the sensation of moving inside Wirtz’s body: I was moving inside his needs, his wants—
his perversions
too. I had felt the vampire’s excitement at the nearness of his prey. Her beauty. The certainty that she had no chance of getting away. His awful hunger. The horror and yet also the gloating satisfaction of the attack.

I wanted her blood
.

I had wanted every drop of it until the sickening feeling bloating my body had knocked me out of the vampire’s world.

What I had done was far more powerful than what Wirtz was able to do. When he came through during one of my seizures, he could see me, yeah. Could guess at my reaction to things. Maybe even find out where I was hiding—if I did something unforgivably stupid, like hang around a sign that said
WELCOME TO MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
until I had a seizure.

But I can go inside his head
.

The problem was, now that I knew what it was like, I couldn’t bear to go there again. I couldn’t. I felt like it might kill me if I tried. But I had to. Not tomorrow. Maybe not even next week. But no matter how awful it was, I had to try.

I promised myself I would be stronger next time. Strong enough to stay with him, see what the vampire did after feeding. Maybe even learn where Wirtz was hiding. Then I could go over there during the day, take out a mallet and a sharpened stake, and …

There were just a couple of problems. Even in the midst of his feeding frenzy, I could feel more than Wirtz’s satisfaction. I could feel his confidence, his certainty, that he was on the right track, that he was closing in on me. Killing this woman was just one step closer.

I closed my eyes against the thought and drew the tarp up over me.

I woke as soon as the sun came up. The forest was glowing with soft morning light. I sat up and took in a deep lungful of the spring air; my heart expanded with it. The horrors of the night had mostly evaporated. I changed into fresh clothes and climbed down from my tower.

Today was Saturday. I figured I should start making marks on a stick or something. But did that really matter anymore, now that my weekends were like any other days? I wondered if vampires forgot about time altogether, except for the simplest of observations: day or night.

I walked up the hill in the breezy air, not really caring what direction I took. I realized where I was when I spotted the dome of the Solar Observatory rising through the trees—and Sagan’s Jeep sitting in the parking lot. He was leaning against the passenger door.

“Hey,” he said. He was holding a crimped white bag. “Brought you some breakfast.”

We sat at a little picnic table in the edge of the woods and ate bagels.

“How did you know I would be here?” I said.

“Took a chance.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Wow.”

“Astronomers are patient. Want some cream cheese?”

“Yuck. No thanks. Now a little melted butter …”

“Sorry.”

I waved my hand at the observatory. “You work on the weekends too?”

Sagan took a bite. “Not really. Sometimes. If there’s an event.”

“Event.”

“Potential comet stuff. The latest thing is ‘dark asteroids.’ Somebody figured out that most of the sky surveys are skewed toward objects with highly reflective surfaces. But there are thousands of dark ones out there too. They’re harder to find, but they could be every bit as dangerous to the earth as the ones that are easy to see.”

I bit into a bagel. “You’re kinda like the angel of doom when it comes to this astronomy stuff,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way, sorry.”

“It’s just hard to think about anything dark on a morning like this. But I wish I had your passion for something.”

“Okay, so what do you like?”

“Staying alive.”

Sagan didn’t smile. “No, really. What about history? You said you and your granddad—”

“Yeah, but that’s his thing, you know? We like history for different reasons. He loves it because it’s old. I love it because nobody was constantly telling you what you couldn’t do. People just did things.”

He smiled. “Yeah, women, for sure.”

I hit him with a wadded-up napkin. “You know what I mean. There was more adventure, excitement. Mystery. Now everything’s supposed to be careful, safe, known. Millions of rules.” I stopped, feeling a knot come up in my throat, thinking about vampires. How my perspective had changed. “Anyhow, I want something of my own,” I said.

“So what’s holding you back?”

I considered telling him about my epilepsy for about half a second. But that would only give him one more reason to turn me in.
For your own safety
, he’d say.

“I’m working on it,” I said.

Sagan crumpled up the bag and took a shot at a nearby garbage can. Missed.

“Loser,” I said.

“I’ve got some surprises for you,” he said.

“I take it back, then.”

He walked over to the Jeep and returned holding a large blue gym bag. Sat it on the table and unzipped it. I looked inside. A toothbrush, toothpaste, some baby wipes, a bunch of snacks like granola bars and rice cakes, and …

“The piece of resistance,” Sagan said, digging into the bag. I giggled. He handed me a small black gizmo that was fitted to a headband so it could be positioned over the ear. “The latest thing for hunters and hikers. It operates on a radio signal that can’t be traced the way a cell can. Keeps your hands free and has a radius of fifty miles, as long as there aren’t too many obstructions. I can keep the other one in my car and bring it into the observatory each night. In case you need me.”

“Sagan. It looks expensive.”

“Only five hundred bucks.”

I nearly dropped it. “Oh my God.”

“Happy birthday, Emma.”

For a moment I was speechless. “Wow. Nobody … nobody has ever given me anything like this. But it’s not my birthday. You have to take it back.” I reached it out to him, but he waved me off.

“Call it a loan, then. My dad never uses them anyway.”

“No, really. Please.”

“Keep it. You’re in trouble, Emma. You won’t tell me what it is, so you have to let me help some other way.”

“So you’re just going to trust some homeless chick you might never see again?”

“No. I’m going to trust you.”

I felt my eyes go wet.

“Oh, and here’s the charger,” Sagan said, putting it in my other hand. “Assuming you’ve got some kind of power source?”

“Um, yeah. But—”

“You won’t tell me where you are living. You won’t tell me who’s after you. It’s driving me crazy. Let me do something. You have to let me do something.”

I touched the base of my thumb to my eye and didn’t speak.

“All done?” Sagan said, sweeping away the last of the bagel crumbs. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

“But …”

“I won’t take you off the base. I promise.”

We stashed everything in Sagan’s Jeep and took off. The windows in the back were plastic and the seats were rocks, but I was smiling the whole time. I couldn’t believe how good it felt, how normal, to be riding in a car again.

First stop, a group of five rusting rockets that reminded me of Russian dolls—the smaller ones could fit inside the bigger ones. “Okay,” I said.

“Hey, this is historical stuff,” Sagan said. I hoped he was kidding. “Steps on the way to building the world’s first—”

“I know,” I said, giving him a fake scowl. “Don’t push your luck.”

We motored on. Next on the agenda was something Sagan called “high bays” where engineers once tinkered with
Saturn V
rocket boosters. I tried to feign interest. “So what’s inside there now?”

“A bunch of basketball courts with a ceiling two hundred feet high.”

Next, the “world-famous Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, where the astronauts practice underwater to simulate weightless conditions,” Sagan explained. It was a giant white tank shaped like a sphere with little portals around the sides.

The swamp was more interesting. I asked him to park and we walked down to the water’s edge. Black and brackish and still as a painted picture. Every once in a while a dragonfly buzzed by or bubbles rose from the bottom, making concentric circles.

“Swamp gas,” Sagan said. We didn’t see any alligators.

“Any snakes?” I said. I wondered if vampires were vulnerable to moccasins and rattlers but didn’t want to test the theory.

“All you can eat,” Sagan said. “Come on, I saved the best for last.”

“The wastewater treatment plant?”

“Funny. Get in.”

We drove back in a big circle. It almost looked as if he was taking me to …

“The Solar Observatory? Why are you bringing me back here? No dark asteroids, Sagan. I’m begging you.”

“Relax, grasshopper.”

Instead we continued along the river. At last we came to a beaten-down gravel road with two iron posts standing on either side of the entrance, a rusty chain stretched between them.

I looked at Sagan. “End of the line?”

“No way.”

He backed the Jeep up a little, then left the paved road and drove right around the post on the far side.

“We’re not supposed to go here, right?” I said, a feeling of worry tickling my stomach. “Won’t we get in trouble?”

Sagan grinned. “Nope. Security never comes out here. Why would they? No secrets. Nothing to steal. I used to come out here with my dad all the time. I never once saw the road actually open.”

“So … where does it go?”

“You’ll see.”

We wound along in silence, zipping around saplings that had sprung up through the gravel and easing over fallen timber. The trees began to thin, and suddenly I started to recognize the clearing. He was taking me to my tower.

The Jeep rolled to a stop not fifty feet from where I had vomited the night before. I climbed out, trembling slightly, wondering how good a job I had done at hiding my defenses.

“Why … why are we here?” I said, deliberately turning my back to the tower. “You don’t expect me to climb that thing, do you?”

“Huh? Naw. There’s really not much to see. I’ve been up there a million times. That’s the old test stand they were going to use to test-fire liquid oxygen rocket engines back in the sixties—that big flue-looking thing at the bottom is where the exhaust and fire came out. That was before they realized they couldn’t use it and had to build a new one farther away.”

“How come?”

“Too dangerous. Because of what it was built on top of.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

He unzipped the back of the Jeep and brought out a small knapsack and two flashlights, handed me the red one and kept the blue.

“Okay?” I said.

“Follow me.”

We marched over to the bunker.
My bunker, the one where I bathe
, I thought. There was still a little water standing on the floor.

“Huh, looks like somebody’s been messing with the faucet,” Sagan said.

I followed him inside, feet sloshing almost as loudly as my heart. Had I left anything lying around? Shampoo? Soap?

We walked past the faucet and came to the metal net at the back that I had seen before. Sagan knelt at a corner and flipped up a little flap of metal that I never would have noticed. There was a sturdy padlock hidden beneath it holding the screen in place. He took out a key and undid the lock. Slowly pushed the heavy net over far enough for us to get through. I could feel that same subterranean breath blowing in my face, and now there was nothing between me and it.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We had to step carefully. Here and there were little chunks of concrete rubble and something that looked like pieces of brownish wasp nests but were hard like stone to the touch.