Vampires Never Get Old, page 14
Jude did and Diwata didn’t, but then the rationing began and none of that mattered anymore.
“So,” Jude said, “who’s next? The penguins? The seals?”
“They’re all next. Them and their habitats. We’ve got to get everything in this place cleaned up.”
“With what? Mojo Joe?”
“With whatever we can find. The shindig’s this Saturday.”
“Shindig,” Jude repeated.
“Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“How could I?” Jude said. She side-eyed the little gaggle of suits taking pictures of the various habitats, drawing up plans on their tablets. Party organizers hired to put up lights and tables and decorations. One of them, a young, dark-haired man with coppery skin, stared at her so boldly and for so long that Jude flipped him off. He laughed and took a picture of her, then pouted when he got nothing but a blur.
Diwata said, “You should come to the party.”
“Right.”
“Seriously.”
Jude stopped walking, almost tripping over herself. “No way in hell I’m going to a ‘shindig’ for the asshat who turned off the water.”
Diwata stopped walking, too, turned to look at Jude, one gray and fuzzy eyebrow arched. “It’s the board’s position that the asshat didn’t technically turn off the water; he simply raised the price of said water.”
“That’s the same thing when no one can afford it.”
“Either way, they’re not going to say no to the CEO who could turn on the water, you get me?”
Though she wasn’t in the least bit cold, Jude rubbed her bare arms. “Is he going to turn it on now so that we can clean the place? Where are the water trucks we were promised?”
“And they’re not going to say no to all the cash he’s giving them,” Diwata went on. “He’s renting the whole damned park for a whole damned day. There will be fancy bands and fancy food and hundreds of fancy people. When was the last time we had that many people here at once?”
“This is a public park. As in, for the public.”
“That’s cute. This place is no more public than the water is.”
Diwata was right, Diwata was always right. Long ago, the zoo used to be free, but now it took twenty-five dollars to get in, more for parking. At the Safari Café, french fries cost eight dollars, a bottle of water ten. Now, just past dawn, the zoo was cold and deserted, a stray napkin twitching under the café tables, moved to dance in the chilly lake wind. But the place wouldn’t be much more populated at opening, or at lunch, or at dinner. There would be no laughing crowds of children piling into the Macaque Forest, no families bursting from the Lionel Train Adventure, and the AT&T Endangered Species Carousel would twirl around and around all by itself, imagining the species that might join it one day, if there was anyone left to carve a polar bear or cast a tiger.
The old, fruitless anger rose in her, souring her guts. Though she’d pay for it, Jude drank down the rest of the coffee in one long pull, crushed the cup in her fist. It didn’t help. Only one thing would, but she wasn’t doing that ever again.
She tossed the crushed cup into the nearest trash can. “Score,” she said. The flies and the ants and the other insects burrowing inside the garbage protested with the bug equivalent of WTF, we’re trying to eat here! But Jude had too much practice to flinch at language only she understood.
Diwata’s face went soft anyway, the lines smoothing out. “Listen, kid. Maybe this party won’t be so bad.”
Jude hated when Diwata felt sorry for her. She scratched at the phone in her pocket as if she suddenly had to answer a call, take a meeting, make a reservation. “Stop.”
Diwata sighed, sounding a lot like Lolo. Old and sore and disappointed. “I just meant that maybe there will be some people for you. Young people. Not asshats.” Her eyes cut to the young man with the copper skin and then came back to rest on Jude’s face. “I know you don’t think so, I know how much you love Lolo and Olive and Nell and the rest, but you’ve got to find your own pack.”
“Lolo is my pack. Olive and Nell are.”
“I’m talking about humans, here.”
“Humans are animals, too,” said Jude.
“Knock it off.” Diwata waved a veined and gnarled hand. “Everybody needs someone.”
“I have you.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Find some girlfriends. Find some boyfriends. Find some friend friends. Have some fun. You must have had fun once, right? You remember what that feels like.”
She did.
There was an animal that threw up its own stomach to distract predators, but Jude couldn’t recall which it was. Diwata was the furthest thing from a predator and the closest thing to a pack that Jude had, but Jude vomited the Mojo Joe all over their boots anyway, one more mess they had to clean up.
* * *
Find Disney movies.
How many days since I’ve eaten?
When did all the ice melt?
Play some blues.
Are we there yet?
Text Brett I’ll be late.
After a long day of feeding animals, mucking out stalls, and scrubbing what they could with the little water they had left in the zoo’s rainwater catchment system, Diwata and Jude tucked in the critters, locked up the gates. Across the street from the zoo, security guards welcomed rich residents into grand buildings with solar panels on the outside and marble foyers on the inside as Jude and Diwata trudged the five blocks to the nearest bus stop. Because of low ridership and competing fleets of self-driving cabs, the city had axed all but a few bus routes. That meant that the buses were always packed with people. They waited as first one graffiti-covered bus and then another drove right past the stop. Diwata unzipped her army coat, reminiscing about how frigid Chicago falls and winters used to be—“So cold your breath froze in the wind! Snow up to there! Everyone in coats so puffy they looked like bears!” Now, the sky was the same angry purple as it had been at dawn, the air dry enough to electrify Jude’s hair. When she tried to smooth it down, she zapped herself, jumped.
Diwata laughed. “We’re a pair.”
They were. Diwata, pushing seventy, hunched and small in the olive drab jacket her wife had gotten while fighting in some war or another, and Jude, pushing infinity, gangly and tall, in nothing but a ragged T-shirt and jeans, long black strands of hair sticking to her moon-pale cheeks. Another woman, still wearing a surgical mask due to the last bird flu outbreak, joined them at the stop, only daring to look at them once. When Jude grinned at her, the woman’s eyes dialed wide. She hurried off without waiting for the next bus, boot heels hammering the sidewalk.
“That was mean,” said Diwata.
“All I did was smile.”
“Uh-huh.”
They waited another ten minutes in silence. But no matter how long the bus took, Jude wouldn’t let Diwata wait by herself, and Diwata had stopped objecting the day she’d scooped Jude out the Lion House—an unspoken pact. Most of the time, Jude’s fearlessness alone was enough to ward off would-be muggers. Most of the time.
A third bus lumbered by without stopping. Outside a bodega, a stooped old man held out an empty cup to customers coming and going. “Something to drink, ma’am? Sir?” Even when the people shook their heads no, the man said, “Bless you.”
Diwata said, “What if you could do something about all this?”
“All what?” said Jude. “What do you think I could do?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a lot Diwata didn’t know. She didn’t know that, not too long ago, Jude lay down in the woods, hoping to feed hungry coyotes with her own flesh. She didn’t know Jude had waded into the lake and tried her best to drown. Diwata didn’t know what the lionesses had done to save her.
Finally, the bus rumbled up to the stop. Before she got on, Diwata said, “You want to come with me? Vivian’s making chicken adobo tonight. Not fake—the real thing.”
“Rain check,” Jude said.
At this lie, Diwata nodded, and then she climbed aboard. Jude watched the bus drive away and started the long walk home. Head down, hands jammed into her jean pockets, she dodged commuters and messengers, students and criminals. The occasional dog barked frantically at her—Not food, not food, NOT FOOD—until she murmured that they were safe, that she wouldn’t hurt them or their humans.
“Girl,” said a Latino kid with a faint pubescent mustache, dragging his mutt away from her shoes, “you’re seriously creepy.”
“Right?” she said.
Night fell over the city, and still she walked. This was the only thing that had carried over from before, this night-walking. It used to be she walked so that she didn’t have to go home to the little house in Jefferson Park, the brick bungalow that was so adorable on the outside and so awful within. Her mom needed her dad but her dad needed his oxy; their fights could be heard for miles. Jude started drinking in middle school to dull the punches and drown out the noise. Later, she used boys to pass the time. When the country was gripped with bird flu terror and the boys’ parents kept them home, Jude found herself in basement clubs with other lost souls, daring Mother Nature to take her best shot at them. Hers came in the form of another boy, prettier than Jude ever was, shiny and gold. He told her he loved her. And he had, in his way, though his love had ruined them both.
Also a ruin: Buckingham Fountain. The city didn’t have the water to spare to keep it operational, so the basins sat empty, the sculptural dragons as thirsty as everyone else. The pretty golden boy had had a thing for magical beasts: unicorns, basilisks, griffins, chimera, and other creatures of all kinds.
“You’re the magical beast,” she’d told him.
“Yes,” he said, pushing her back onto a dirty mattress. “Yes, I am.”
Now, the lights from the buildings downtown stared at her like so many yellow eyes: What if you could do something about all this? What if?
Some questions you can’t ask. The familiar queasy thirst clenched her stomach, pulsed at the root of her tongue. If she didn’t keep moving, the thirst would permeate the air like a perfume, call to the people around her. They would come to her whether she wanted them to or not, offer themselves, even if their eyes rolled in confusion and terror as they did.
So she kept moving, the proverbial shark in the water, swimming so as not to die. As if she could. But she didn’t make eye contact with anyone, she didn’t linger anywhere long enough to reveal her desperation. An hour went by. Then two. The crowds of people dwindled to nothing. Jude was left with only the cataract moon, a murky smear in the sky.
She heard the man long before she saw him, so much more desperate than she. Though she could have sidestepped him easily, she didn’t bother. He showed her his knife, a sad little thing, and demanded her money.
“I don’t have any,” she said.
His eyes got a hungry look that she had seen before. “You got something.” He tried to drag her off the path to take what he could. He didn’t appreciate her loud bray of laughter, the flick of her wrist that sent the knife flying.
“I’m going to hurt you for that,” he growled. And charged.
She grabbed him by the sweatshirt, spun him around and around until he squealed in queasy protest. Then she pulled him in close, let him see the shiny daggers of her teeth, let him smell the desiccation on her breath.
“If you want,” she said. “I can give you something to scream about.”
He did not want.
She thrust him away, left him panting on the pavement. He was no special kind of beast. And neither was she. She ended up in the same place she’d begun: the zoo. She scaled the outer fence and then coded into Lolo’s indoor enclosure. Lolo was sleeping in the man-made cave in the corner. Jude crawled inside and snuggled against Lolo’s chest, her big bear heart ticking off the minutes till dawn.
* * *
When did the Florida Keys disappear?
How do augments work?
How long can the human body survive without water?
How much blood loss is too much blood loss?
Play whale songs.
Morning came, and with it two water trucks.
“We were promised five trucks,” Jude said.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Diwata.
“What does that even mean?”
“Means that you should go to the Raptor House. Raul needs help with Peaches. Something about her wing.”
Peaches the snowy owl had a bit of an attitude. Which was putting it nicely. Peaches would take out your eyes if you weren’t careful. Raul wasn’t careful. Raul—skinny Raul, brown skin gray with fear or just neglect—was running around the raptor enclosure, swearing, as Peaches flapped brokenly after him.
“Get out of there, Raul,” Jude said. “I’ll do it.”
“Thanks,” said Raul, ducking out of the habitat. “She almost took a chunk out of my face.”
Inside the raptor cage, Jude answered the bird’s cries of PAIN, PAIN, PAIN with “Shhh, shhhhh. Calm down, you silly monster.” Peaches let Jude pick her up, examine the bent wing. She had no idea how the bird could have injured it. Jude remembered the golden boy telling her about the caladrius, a white bird that would eat the sickness out of a person and then fly away, healing that person and also itself.
Peaches tucked her head under Jude’s arm. Jude said, “Poor girl. What kind of sickness did you eat?”
“Whole world’s sick,” said Raul, watching through the mesh. “What’s that got to do with a broken wing?”
“World’s broken, too,” Jude said.
“Same thing.”
Behind Raul, two party organizers appeared. “Hey! Hold up the bird so we can get some photos!”
“She’s not a turkey and this isn’t Thanksgiving,” Jude said, cradling Peaches closer.
“Oh. She’s hurt.” It was the dark-haired, coppery-skinned guy, who looked much younger than Jude had thought he was.
“So?” said the white guy next to him. He had his finger on the side of his neck where his computer implant connected with the piece in his ear and the lens in his eye. So, augmented then. And another jackass. “Shit. These pictures aren’t coming out.” He pressed the side of his neck again. “Shit.”
“Come on, man. Leave her alone,” said the coppery-skinned guy. His eyes were large and dark and wet. “Sorry to bother you, miss.”
“Miss?” said his friend, incredulous. “Jesus, Sanjay. She’s knee-deep in bird poop.”
“Hello, Sanjay,” Jude said, and smiled.
He should have been scared, everybody was scared. But Sanjay didn’t seem scared. He said, “Maybe we’ll catch you later?”
“Maybe,” Jude said. Her voice sounded strange, even to her.
* * *
Launch Photos.
Should I bring my umbrella?
Tell me the story of Judith.
Play my dance mix.
Text Brett I’m on my way.
Later, Jude found herself back at Buckingham Fountain, perched on the back of a stone dragon, as if it could fly her to a place where she made sense to herself, where she could scare people when she wanted to, where the thirst wasn’t drying her to a husk.
And because she sat there far too long, they came. The girls. Five of them, stumbling through Grant Park, a gaggle of teased hair and short skirts, pleather shit-kickers and crappy tattoos. Jude’s heart ached along with her stomach. Not so long ago, she might have been one of them, lost and lonely, declaring herself a bad seed before anyone else could do it first.
“The fuck you looking at, bitch?” said the leader, a big, solid girl with white skin and striped hair.
“The stars,” said Jude. “You?”
“Listen to this one,” the stout girl said. “What are you smoking? You got weed for us? You got candy?” The girl inched closer, pulled in by Jude’s thirst.
Jude licked her dry lips. “You should go home, if you have one.”
The girl spread her arms, “This whole city is our home. Maybe you should go.”
Jude had thought about leaving so many times. But where would she go? And who would take care of Lolo and Olive and Nell and the others? Who would watch over Diwata? The world might be dying, but shouldn’t she stay around, even if the only thing she could do was to ease the pain a little?
“Hey! I’m talking to you,” the stout girl said. The other four girls crowded behind her with a chorus of “Yeah, bitch” and “We’re talking to you, bitch.”
“I’m not smoking anything, and I don’t have candy for you,” said Jude.
The stout girl laughed a stout laugh, sidled nearer. “What about that phone in your pocket? Someone will pay a few bucks for that.” She was so close now that Jude could have traced the lines of her muscled thighs, thick and firm under fishnet stockings. The pulse quickened at the girl’s white neck, the blood beckoning from beneath the skin.
“Really,” said Jude. “You should go while you can.”
“Go?” the girl said. “I don’t…” A crease appeared between her brows, betraying her.
“Hannah?” said the girl farthest away. “What do you want us to do?
“Do?” said Hannah. Hannah’s feet lurched her forward. She was nothing but a rabbit, nothing but prey, beautiful in her sacrifice.
One of the other girls plucked at Hannah’s arm. “Are you okay?”
Hannah shook off the other girl, chest heaving, wild eyes not leaving Jude’s. “I feel you,” she breathed. “Your teeth.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Hannah?” said another girl, and then watched her own shoes in horror as she took a step toward Jude.
To Jude, Hannah said: “I’m … I’m ready. Please.”
Jude reached up and laid her hand on Hannah’s cheek. Hannah turned her head. Jude leaned forward, thirsty, so bloody thirsty, but Hannah was thirsty, too. All these girls were.
The space between Jude’s shoulder blades itched, then burned, pain so deep Jude couldn’t reach it even if she tried. She could take Hannah, she could take them all, but what would it change?
