Throat (14 page)

“Yeah, yeah.”

“They didn’t know if the gators got him before or after.”

“Before or after what?”

“The drug deal. But like I was saying, maybe you came in by the river—that’s a possibility. But I think they have fences down there too. I haven’t been in a while.”

“You act like you know this place.”

“You’d be amazed,” Sagan said. “I practically grew up here. My parents have taken me all over. I’ve seen stuff most people never get to see. It was much easier back before 9/11.”

“Nine-eleven?”

“Yeah. You could just zip through the gate barely waving at the guard. No barriers or anything. When I was a little kid, they brought me out here just about every Sunday to watch kid flicks in the auditorium at Building 4200.”

“I didn’t know the buildings were numbered.”

“4200 is the most famous. That’s where they planned the moon landings.…”

I made the nodding-off sound again.

“Okay, okay. No more space stuff.”

“Thank you.”

“At least for tonight.”

I didn’t say anything, and he kept waiting for me to. “Is that … okay?” Sagan said, touching my arm. “I mean, that I want to see you again?”

“Well, I don’t know. My schedule is pretty jammed.”

He started laughing.

“No, it’s true. I’m really, really busy,” I said.

I suddenly remembered the little generator chugging merrily away on top of the tower. How long had I been gone? Night had closed in, and I hadn’t even blown up my bed. The vampire would be up and about now.

“Doing, um, what?” Sagan said.

I stood up. “Huh?” I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about. The huge empty cafeteria suddenly felt too close.

“I need to go,” I said.

Sagan stood up too. “Okay, no joke. Let me shut up the observatory for the night and I’ll give you a ride home. That way you don’t have to … um, walk.”

“Sagan. I am home.”

“Here?”

“Well, no. Of course not. Not here. I mean—it’s here. On the base.”

“The Space Center?”

“Yeah.”

“No, really.”

“Really.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. I would have liked watching it fall back into place, but …

“I thought you were joking,” Sagan said. “That this whole time you were just having some fun.”

“I told you, I’m honest to the bone,” I said.
At least I used to be
. “And I have been having fun. The most fun I’ve had in a while.”
A
good long while
. “But I need to be ready.… I mean, I need to get some stuff set up so I can get to bed.”

“But you can’t … It’s impossible. Where will you sleep? This place is huge, but it’s just not fixed up for camping out—come on, are you being serious?”

“Deadly.”

Sagan stared. “But it’s dangerous! There are so many ways to get killed out here. Industrial chemicals. Buried army stuff. Scary machinery. All kinds of electrical hazards. Radiation, lasers. Take your pick.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You know, all it would take would be a phone call. They would come get you. Escort you off the base. That’s what I should do … to keep you safe.”

I almost said, “I’d like to see them try.” For once I caught myself. Instead I did something that wasn’t easy for me because I didn’t like giving people the wrong idea. I took his hand and said, “But you won’t, will you?”

“How do you know I won’t?”

“I just do.”
Because if you do, you’ll never see me again
, I wanted to say.

“How will I know you’re okay?” Sagan said.

“You don’t know me. Why would you care?”

He sighed. “You’re right. I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name. Do you have any food? Real clothes?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Like you managed tonight?”

I felt my face flush. “Hey, when do most people get out here? What’s the regular schedule?”

“My parents get here at seven. But they’re the exception. Most
people, it’s probably around eight or eight-thirty. The base is mostly empty after five-thirty.”

“Good.”

“Why, so you can do more breaking and entering?” Sagan was smiling, but it was a serious smile with concerned eyes. “The next person who catches you might not be so cool with things. Most of these people are engineers. Not even green toes will save you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said.

Now he looked anxious. “Look, really, let me go close down. Then I can at least take you somewhere so you won’t have to walk.”

“You’re not getting me in a car.”

I left the room and started walking up the hall with Sagan following.

“Okay, so let me just walk with you,” he said. “But I have some applications running that I need to shut down. Come on, I can show you things.”

We stopped close to the air lock that led outside. “No thanks, I’ll just wait for you here.”

“You will? Great! It’ll just take me a few minutes.… Some routines I left running …”

I leaned against one of the columns and patted my mouth, showing how sleepy I was. All of a sudden I did feel sleepy. I yawned.

“Okay. Be right back.” Sagan started to go, then stopped again. “Look, sometimes guards come around the buildings late at night, checking the exits and stuff. If you see headlights coming up the drive …”

“I’ll duck into the bathroom.” I genuinely needed to.

“Great.” He pointed. “The closest one is about halfway down that hall on the left.”

He headed outside and kept looking back over his shoulder all the way up the sidewalk to the observatory. As if he was afraid I was going to run out on him.

He was right.

Even with the thought of Wirtz being awake somewhere out there, I walked back. I just didn’t feel like running. Something was bothering me, and the vibe only got worse once I climbed up to my hideaway in the rocket tower. The feeling of decay matched my mood. The sense that the room had gone feral and my asking it to be a room again was somehow wrong.

I did my best to make things more comfortable. I didn’t really need a light, but I lit a small battery-powered lantern just for the gleam. I took a can of Lysol and sprayed it all over, then shoved my remaining Home Depot loot into a corner. I spread out a tarp that covered most of the floor—the thickest Home Depot sold. The electric air pump didn’t work so well—it seemed to be missing a part—so I blew up the air mattress the good old-fashioned way. Something that would have once taken me hours, if I could’ve done it at all, now was over in minutes. Turns out vampires have extra-powerful lungs as well.

I lay down and pulled the excess tarp over me.
Crap, no pillow
. I would have to fix that tomorrow. It’s funny all the little things you miss.

Speaking of—I still needed to go to the bathroom.

In the end I decided I couldn’t stand sleeping in the little room at the top of the tower. Aside from the creepy factor, I didn’t like feeling cornered. If Wirtz showed up unexpectedly, he could trap me in there.

I moved the air mattress to the roof and laid my head on my
arm. It was breezier and much more comfortable. I had the ax next to me, my hand on the handle.

What if I fell off? There were no guardrails and it was a long ways down. A really long ways. Maybe vampires bounced?
Go to sleep, Emma
.

The dark does weird things to you, even when you can see in it. I lay on my back looking up at the stars trying to think about anything but Manda. A knot of guilt lodged itself in my stomach—I wondered if she was missing me right now? I thought of her lying in her little bed, the Sneetches book beside her, worrying about the pale green pants.

I squeezed the handle of the ax and forced myself to think about Sagan Bishop instead.
Cool name
. Now I wished I had told him mine. I wondered if I would ever see him again. I guess that was really up to me. Who knows, he might be calling security right now to run me off the base. Still … he didn’t seem like someone who would do that. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about him. His image ran round and round in my mind. I kept coming back to the same place: wondering what it would be like to kiss that mole on his jaw.

I exploded awake sometime in the middle of the night—one of the trip wires was jangling.

I was instantly up on my knees on the air mattress, heart slamming the inside of my chest, both hands gripping the ax. I looked around crazily. A half-moon was riding on a raft of clouds, moonlight filtering through the trees below. Wind lifted my hair. I was someplace very high.
Outdoors
.

The strange noise shattered the quiet again and I remembered. Wirtz, the tower, my alarm system. It sounded as if someone was caught in the wire and trying to get untangled.

I threw myself across the top of the tower on my stomach,
landing on toes and fingertips as silently as I could. Peeked over the edge.

Nothing there. The sound came again, and I realized the intruder was on the north face. I slipped over the edge of the east face and dropped to a catwalk. I shifted the ax to my right hand and padded barefoot toward the corner of the tower where the east face met the north. The catwalk ran out about two feet shy of the corner. I stepped to the end and put my belly against the railing, leaning over as far as I could. Just as I was about to poke my head around the corner, the jangly noise stopped.

I drew my head back and flattened myself against the side of the tower, my cheek pressing the cold, rusty iron.

I gulped. This was it.
It’s really happening
. All my nerve endings came alive, giving me the sensation of fingers being dragged over every square inch of my body.
I could die
, I thought.
I could die right now
.

I fought to keep my brain from locking up. Looked stupidly at the ax. Should I climb back up and crank the chain saw?

No time
. The vampire hit the trip wire again. I glanced at the shiny forest below and wanted to jump. Anything would be better than this. But I had to do it, had to take a look.

I lay against the railing a second time and let my body hang out into space. Stretching my neck, putting my head closer and closer to the corner. Exposing my throat to whatever was on the other side.

Please …

All of the air rushed out of my lungs. I could see it now: a long piece of old black pipe was hanging down the north face of the tower. The wind was causing it to sway back and forth, banging against the wire.

I slumped against the catwalk, swearing. Slid down until I was
sitting on the cool steel mesh. Finally I got to my feet again and slowly climbed back to the top. I went to the north side of the tower and used the ax to chop the old pipe loose, watching it fall over the side. I lay down on the mattress again and pulled the tarp over myself. As if I could actually sleep.

But I did. I woke up several more times during the night, but not because of the trip wires. I don’t know what woke me until the last time, when I was awakened by a dream. I could see the vampire, Wirtz. He had his long arm outstretched toward me. He was holding my sister’s head.

Crap
. It was raining!

I blinked and jumped up and hauled my things back inside the little room one floor below. The room smelled even mustier in the rain, as if the humidity and the rot were mating.

I put my sunglasses on and poked my head out—
overcast, duh
—trying to gauge what time it was. It didn’t feel like I had been asleep long. The slanting gray light over the hills to the east told me it must be barely sunup.

Now that I was completely awake, no way could I go back to sleep. Not in here. Besides, I didn’t really want to—that was enough scares for one night.

I wrung out my pajamas as best I could, shivering. This was getting ridiculous. I had to find something better to wear.

The rain kept falling. Perfect. But then I realized that the dim light would make it harder to see me and fewer people would be out in the weather at this time of day. Time for another “shopping” expedition.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing behind Madison Square Mall, the closest one I could find. There was one car in the parking lot, a clunker so far away, it might as well have been in the next county.

I was looking for a particular kind of store. I walked along outside the building, checking the names stenciled on the gray back
doors. The Gap?
No
. Dillard’s?
Nah
. Parisian?
Double nah
. Aéropostale?
Nope
.

United Outfitters sounded promising, but after I ripped open the door and battled my way through cardboard boxes, empty racks full of clattering hangers, etc., it turned out to be more froofy than the name suggested. I didn’t hear an alarm, but that didn’t mean that one wasn’t going off down at the police station.

I found a stack of fluffy towels and—
thank God
—an overstuffed throw pillow. I mopped my dripping hair and jammed everything into a bag. On the way out I also snagged a fancy toiletry kit with hand soap and shampoo.

I went back outside and raced on to the next store. American Barn. Suncoast Video. Spencer Gifts. Pac Sun. I didn’t strike pay dirt until I came to a place called North Creek.