“She’s holding crosses, sure enough.”
The older woman sniffed.
“This isn’t any of your business, outsider. A vampire’s bit my son, and we must do what must be done.”
“But he can be vaccinated!” sobbed Tangerine. “Within twenty-four hours of a bite, it still works.”
“We don’t hold with vaccination,” answered Amos’s mother. She looked at her husband. “Do it.”
“No!” shrieked Tangerine. She threw herself over Amos as Jan raised the stake. Amos put an arm around her and shut his eyes again.
“I said do it, Jan!”
Amos opened his eyes. His father was looking down at him with an expression that he had only ever seen once before, when Jan had broken his favorite chisel, broken it beyond repair.
“My phone is still connected to the 911 operator,” said Tangerine desperately. “Listen!”
She held up the tiny gold object. There was a distant voice speaking from it.
Jan looked at it for a long, long second. For a moment Amos thought he would throw it away, or crush it beneath his heel, but instead he reached out and took it gingerly between two of his thick fingers, as if it was a bug to crush. But he didn’t. Instead he lifted it to within six inches of his face and spoke slowly and heavily.
“This is Jan Korgrim, from New Rufbah. We need an ambulance for a vampire-bit boy. He’ll be by the mailbox. ”
The voice spoke from the phone, urgently.
“No, the vampire’s dealt with,” said Jan. He looked at Tangerine, and a dark, angry tone crept into his voice. “I reckon it was an old family one, let loose.”
The 911 operator spoke again, but Jan dropped the phone on the ground and left it there, squawking. His wife looked at him with eyes sharper than her silver knife and turned away. The other villagers followed watchfully, lanterns held high to illuminate the fog, stakes and knives still kept ready.
Only Jan remained, looking down at Amos and Tangerine, all tangled together in the dirt.
“Father, I — ”
Jan raised his hand.
“There’s nothing to be said between us, Amos. You’re an outsider now.”
“But Father, I don’t want — ”
Jan turned away and strode quickly up the hill, toward the fuzzy, fog-shrouded lantern light that marked the way home.
Tangerine rolled off Amos and got to her feet. He looked dully up at her and saw that she was weeping uncontrollably, tears streaking her face.
“My name’s not. not really Tangerine,” she sobbed. “It’s Jane.”
Amos shrugged. He didn’t want to know this — he didn’t want to know anything.
“And I’ve got a steady boyfriend.”
Amos just wanted to lie on the ground and die.
“Grandmother wanted me to find someone she could drink. Someone unvaccinated. She was tired of reheated treated plasma. She promised she wouldn’t kill you, but then when I saw her. I saw her go full vampire. I’m sorry, Amos. I’m sorry!”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Amos. “You’d better go, though.”
“Go? I’ll help you down to the road, to meet the ambulance.”
“No,” said Amos. He got up on his knees and then slowly stood, pushing Tangerine. Jane. aside when she tried to help. “I’m not going down to the road.”
“What?”
“There’s a cold lake in a kind of hollow near the peak,” said Amos. He staggered forward a few steps and almost collided with a tree. “The fog sits there, day and night. I’m going to take a rest there. Just for a few days, and then — ”
“But you’ll turn,” exclaimed Jane. She tugged at his arm, trying to drag him downhill. “You’ll be a vampire!”
“I’ll be a vampire,” agreed Amos. He smiled at the thought. “And then I reckon I’ll go home and. despite crosses and silver and everything, I’ll — ”
“No,” said Jane. “No! You don’t want to be a vampire. Grandma. Grandma hated it, she could never see the sun, she could only see daylight through fog. and she was always cold, so cold — ”
“Cold,” agreed Amos. He was cold, too, chilled to his heart. Who needed the sun anyway?
“I’ll help you,” said Jane. “You’ll get better. You can watch television!”
Amos looked at her with dead, unfeeling eyes. He couldn’t even cry for everything he’d lost.
“Help me to the lake,” he muttered as he stumbled into another tree. He couldn’t see properly or work his legs. “That’s not too much to ask, is it, after what you’ve done?”
“No,” whispered Jane. “No. Here, take my arm.”
Amos held on to her arm, though it was hot, so hot he thought it might sizzle his skin. But she held him up as he staggered on, mumbling about drinking the blood of girls with names Jane had never heard of, like Hepzibah and Penninah, and killing someone called Young Franz.
He was so intent on this litany that he barely noticed when they reached the mailbox and Jane sat him down against it.
“What?” he groaned as she lowered him to the ground. “What?”
“Rest a little,” said Jane. “Just for a while.”
She tried to stroke his head, but he flinched away, and she bit back a sob as she saw that her fingers had branded red streaks on the pallid flesh of his forehead.
The ambulance came a few minutes later, accompanied by two police cars. The police spoke to her briefly before driving on up the road to the village. The paramedics gave Amos a sedative and the antivampire shot, then began the transfusion of blood plasma. After a brief conversation with Jane, they gave her a sedative as well and put her on a stretcher next to Amos. She lay there, looking at the unconscious boy, wreathed in the fog that had extended its twining fingers into the back of the ambulance.
One of the paramedics, the older one, looked out the back and took a deep breath before he pulled the door shut.
“Ah, I like a lungful of mountain fog,” he said. “Sometimes you just can’t beat a touch of vampire weather.”
Late Bloomer
by SUZY MCKEE CHARNAS
The vampires showed up the summer that Josh worked at Ivan’s Antiques Mall.
The job wasn’t Josh’s idea. He hadn’t asked to be there.
Ivan’s side of the family were all fixated on material stuff, and what is an antiques mall about if not stuff? Josh’s side were the talented ones. His mother, Maya Cherny Burnham, was a well-known landscape painter. His father taught higher math at the technical college. Upward strivers both, they had never been shy about letting him know that they expected great things from him.
That was okay; everybody pushed their kids. Josh wasn’t the only one taking extra science, math, and creative writing electives. In fact, he was doing pretty well. He even liked the writing work. The teacher was giving him A minuses and B pluses, and he was really getting into it.
Then he broke his leg. And then Steve Bowlin’s crazy dog bit him, two surgeries’ worth. Then he got mono (better than getting rabies, ha ha). A whole parade of pain. No wonder he messed up on his SATs.
His father said, “Josh, you should hear this from me first: If you had major sciences talent, we’d have seen it by now.”
His mom said, “Okay, you’re not the next Richard Feynman or Tom Wolfe — so what? You’ve got more creativity in your little finger than that whole high school put together!”
So, on to after-school classes at the Community Arts Center: oils, clay, watercolor, printmaking, even a “fiber arts” class that (despite strong encouragement from the instructor) he bailed on early. The retards at school were already spreading a rumor that he was gay. He eased out of team sports around that time, too. You do not want to be the weediest guy on the field with a bunch of Transformers who think (or pretend to think, just for the fun of it) that a guy who does any kind of art must be queer.