Throat (17 page)

“Okay. You’ll never have a better shot,” I said. “Show me everything.”

But Sagan kept going, taking my hand and pulling me with
him. “No, come on. That’s the Vector Magnetograph Facility. There’s a telescope, but it’s not all that huge.”

“Magneto-flidgy what?”

“It gives you views of chromospheric structures. Weblike patterns on the sun caused by bundles of magnetic field lines …”

“Bleh. Enough.”

Sagan winced. But only a little.

“But the observatory—” I said.

“The dome? That’s not really the observatory. The observatory my mom works with is … in a different place. Come on.”

He took me past the dome and let us through a door with his badge and we walked down a long, dark hall to a long, dark room. Sagan began to glow, a nice robin’s egg shade.

“Okay. Let me find the lights.”

I could already see a couple dozen desk chairs perched in front of computer monitors. Most of the monitors were blank, but a few were scrolling some kind of data.

“You probably shouldn’t touch anything,” he said.

“Wasn’t planning to,” I said.

“A guard comes around just about every night. He’s cool. Most of the time he comes in and walks around and we scare each other.”

“And if he caught us?”

Sagan showed a wicked smile. “If he caught you, you mean. We would both be in it pretty deep.”

I must have looked alarmed, because he added, “Don’t worry, we’re fine. It’s usually in the middle of the night when he comes through. And even if he did, you would just have to keep on your toes. Go to the opposite end of the building, duck in and out of places.”

“I’m good at ducking.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

Sagan turned and lifted his hand majestically, as if we were standing before the pyramids.

“This is STEREO.”

I could see an enormous oval conference table flanked with cushy chairs. The table was crisscrossed with wires that went to telephones and a couple of computer keyboards.

“So, play me something,” I said.

“It’s not that kind of stereo.”

He walked over to one of the keyboards and bumped the mouse. The giant screen popped alive, showing a Windows log-in page.

“STEREO is short for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory,” Sagan said. “Actually two nearly identical observatories. One ahead of the earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. Here’s the cool thing about it—for the first time ever it gives us a view of the sun in 3-D.”

He clicked his way deeper into the program. “This is a remote station. Mostly I get to look at what STEREO is looking at. I can’t send it any real commands. With over a hundred million bucks on the line, I’m locked out. But it’s cool just getting to work with the data it collects.”

“Oh. So what do you get for a hundred million?” I said, dramatically stifling a yawn.

Sagan clicked the mouse. “This.”

The screen burst with supercharged greenish light, making me flinch, even with my sunglasses on. I had to step back and turn my head away, shielding my eyes from the otherworldly radiance.

“Pretty amazing, huh?” he said.

When my eyes adjusted, I saw an image of the sun, actually about a quarter of the whole ball, slowly rotating, massive coils of fire shooting out from the edge of the sphere, then turning back in
on themselves. As the coils moved across the surface, they swayed and danced, reminding me of videos I had seen of tornadoes ravaging a pasture. I had never seen anything like it.

“Yeah, now that’s cool,” I said, peeking through my fingers, genuinely enthralled as the flames whipped back and forth.

Sagan’s eyes glittered with reflected green light. “That’s one of the ‘wow’ images they throw at people the first time they come to the facility. You should see their heads rock back when they aren’t ready for it.”

“Except … why is it green?”

“Oh. I toned it down, put it into an easier spectrum for you to handle, knowing your eyes are sensitive. The full spectrum would’ve knocked you over. It’s that intense.”

“Thanks. Hey … what’s that bright spot where so much of the fire seems to be bursting out?”

“A CME,” Sagan said. “Coronal mass ejection. Basically an explosion on the sun. You ought to see a CME in yellow-orange! You’d be blinking white circles for a week.”

“I bet,” I said, but the sarcasm in my tone went right over his head. “So tell me again, what’s it for?”

“STEREO traces the flow of energy and matter from the sun to the earth. The two observatories can show the 3-D structure of coronal mass ejections so we can study ’em. CMEs can seriously mess with satellites and power grids. It gives us more data we can look at, see how we might possibly survive a giant CME. At the very least, give us some advance warning.”

“Survive? Advance warning of what?”

He nodded at the fireball on the screen. A loop of flame was wiggling like an electric charge.

“If you get one big enough, a CME or a flare, it could throw us back into the Dark Ages.”

I looked at him. He was serious.

“You really think something like that is possible?” I said.

“Sure. It would knock out satellites. Could fry the utility grid. No power. No communications. No lights. Very little water if you can’t pump it. The food distribution system would break down. People could start to riot. Did you see that story about the bread truck that stalled on the interstate during a bread shortage out west?”

“No.” I seemed to remember something about it but couldn’t recall the details.

“People hijacked the truck, stole everything. And not just poor people. People in Mercedes.”

“Oh.”

“So, the longer we go without essential services, the worse it would get. Think about when a disaster hits a big city. People come from all over to help. Okay, imagine a hundred cities in trouble at once. There’d be no way to keep up. People would be helpless. And if they started to die …”

I wasn’t hearing him anymore. A picture of Manda had appeared in my head. All alone, moving through the darkened apartment, crying.
Starving. Looking for me, and I’m not there
.

I turned around. No windows in this place, but I could still sense it—the darkness. I swore inside. I’d let myself get sidetracked.

“Let’s go,” I said, the mood gone.

“But I haven’t shown you how I hunt for comets,” Sagan said.

“There’s something I need to do.”

“Was it something I said?” he asked when we came back outside. I was scanning the woods, the highway. Sagan touched my shoulder, and I pulled away.

“Huh? Oh.” I tried to smile. “No. It’s not you, Sagan. It’s me. I
have to … keep focused. I can’t let myself get too caught up in other stuff right now.”

“Other stuff? You mean like … me?”

“Well …”

“Don’t say it. I hate it when girls say that.”

“What?”

He took a long breath. “The
F
word, you know.”

I said the
F
word.

“No!” Sagan said, starting to laugh a little. “Not
the F
word. The other one.
Friends
, you know.”

“Oh, you’re worried that I—”

“I said don’t say it.”

“Okay.”

“I could drive you,” he said, pointing at a battered Jeep Wrangler.

“Nice,” I said.

“Hand-me-down from my dad. One slightly used graduation present. Get in.”

“Nope. Then you would know where I’m staying.”

“Yeah, I would. Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

Sagan reached as if to grab my hand, thought better of it, and let his arm fall again.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?”

I rubbed my chin. “That depends.… Whatcha going to be eating?”

Sagan frowned.

“Oh, come on, I’m kidding. Thank you for the offer. I will … if I can.”

I walked with him to the main door and made him go back inside the cafeteria before I would leave.

“You know this is crazy, right?” he said, raising his arm again.
He wants to touch me
, I thought.

“Yeah,” I said. “But sometimes crazy is the safest way to go.”

Now was the time to try it.

I was back in my little tower room. I would have preferred to do this test outdoors, on the roof, but if Wirtz’s projection showed up, there were too many things up there that might give away my location. Besides, I worried that I could accidentally induce a tonic-clonic. I could all too easily imagine thrashing around until I flopped right over the edge, then
zam
, doing a gruesome face-plant on the gravel below.

I was sitting at the crappy old desk. I opened a pack of playing cards I’d snagged from Sagan’s desk and fanned them out in front of me. The desk chair shrieked each time I leaned forward, putting the cards down.

How big of a risk was I taking? At the worst, it would be frightening, but Wirtz wouldn’t be able to touch me. And there was nothing in this little room that would give away my hiding place. If the test backfired, it might even do some good, showing the vampire I had moved and he had missed out on his chance to get at my family.

I only knew I was sick of being driven into corners, playing the mouse to the vampire’s cat.
I’m the one who does the driving
, I thought.
Let’s see how you like being the mouse
.

I tilted my lamp toward the cards to increase the glare and studied the pattern. My eyes flitted from card to card, never staying on one card for very long. I heard a siren wailing somewhere on the highway.…
Focus, Emma
.

It didn’t seem to be working. I collected the cards again, began shuffling them and fanning the deck before my eyes.
Ah, that’s better
. I began to feel something soft and warm directly behind my eyes, as if a fluffy rolled-up towel had been tucked there, cushioning them from my brain.

Wirtz
, I thought, picturing the vampire that night in Georgia. His greedy black eyes, his despicable slobbering mouth.
Take me to Wirtz
.

I instinctively touched the raised line of flesh on my thigh where his teeth had torn open my leg. Ran my finger along it over and over, feeling the skin get warmer and warmer.
Take me to Wirtz. Take me to Wirtz
. I repeated the words over and over again, finally just hearing them inside my throat, as if knowing the universe would listen and respond.

Then, just like the clock numbers in my bedroom, it began to happen. The playing cards became something that was only a shape with color. And then even less than that. I was looking at a chunk of nothingness. I pushed my way into it.

I could feel something hard pushing back.

I pushed again. It was like shoving against a door someone else was holding shut. All at once they let the door go and I fell through.

Oh wow
. It had worked.

The world around me passed into nothingness. When I came back into the light, everything was different. I was there. In a place I had never been before.

I couldn’t see Wirtz, but I could sense him somewhere close by. I could almost smell his woody leaf-rot scent. It was all so real; I could feel myself standing on a porch in front of a small darkened house. I was looking in through the big picture window in front.
Staring at someone inside. A young woman in a kitchen. The light to her stove was on, and she was stirring a wooden spoon around and around in a pan.

I moved along the front of the house peering into other windows. Lights were on in some of the rooms, but most were dark.

I looked up and down the street.
A sign. Look for a street sign
. But there were no signs, only some parked cars and a row of similar one-story houses with old trees in their yards.

I glanced at the woman in the kitchen; she was still happily stirring. Probably waiting for her family to get home. That’s why I was here, I realized. I had picked her. I had been up and down the street looking for someone alone.

I crept along the porch to the front door. Could feel my hand on the doorknob. Really feel it—this was no projected image. The knob was cold and hard in my fingers. I turned it—the door was open—and stepped inside.
So silent
. I stood there a moment looking toward the kitchen. Light slanted diagonally across the living room. I had a moment’s indecision. I didn’t want to cross the triangle of light. Instead I stepped straight down the front hall and turned right.

I could see the woman from another angle now. She was young and pretty with blond hair pulled back with a blue headband. Her feet were bare. My tongue curled over my bottom lip as I watched her move.

I smiled. It wasn’t just her blood—though I was aware of every inch of the woman’s circulatory system, almost as if her skin were crisscrossed with a pattern of tiny webs of flame—but I could sense what she was like beneath her clothes. The weight and shape of her breasts, the flesh of her hips, at what depth the blood was swimming in her thighs. Where it was closest to the surface. It felt as if I knew her body, really knew it, even better than she did.

I stepped closer, making no sound. Strangely, the sensation of movement seemed to stop when I was actually moving the quickest. One moment I was in the hall, then I was just there, in the kitchen, my arm draped across the woman’s back.

The woman dropped the spoon, and spaghetti sauce splattered across the floor. Her mouth opened wide, but before she could make a sound, I had lifted her into my arms and carried her into one of the back bedrooms.

The bedroom was dark. I threw the woman down on the bed. She looked up at me and started to scream. I fell upon her, putting the back of my arm across her open mouth. I put my hand on the side of her face, bent her head unnaturally to the side—tore at her soft throat with my teeth.…

My stomach filled like a bag.

Back in my little room at the top of the tower, I swung my arm in front of me and slapped the cards away. I shoved back from the desk and got up from the cracked chair, still feeling the heaviness of the woman’s warm blood in my belly.

I staggered back a few steps until I collapsed by the door. I crawled out onto the catwalk and clung to the railing. Because I was in danger not of slipping, but of throwing myself over. I wanted to go over the edge. I couldn’t live with a dying woman’s blood inside me. I vomited into the forest.