Sunshine

I’d never heard or read anywhere that vampires explode when staked. Maybe it’s only when you use a table knife. Vampires aren’t made of flesh and blood quite the way we are…but near kali goddam enough. It was…horrible. The contact, when I drove against him, not just arm’s length with the knife— The sense of the knife going in—maybe I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it either; maybe that was the plan— The texture of the knife sliding into— The way it seemed to know where to go, with my hand on it—

The smell—

The surprise on his face, just before my knife reached his heart and it stopped—being a face—

The sound—

The pressure of the—blast—which made me stagger, which smeared and stained me with—

From the taste in my mouth a few minutes later, I assume I threw up. Maybe I passed out as well, although I was still on my feet when I began to hear someone shouting, “Rae! Rae! It’s over! You’re okay!” and also began to realize there were arms around me and they were trying to stop me thrashing around. There was a lot of other noise; someone screaming; other people shouting; and, coming closer, a siren. The siren should have been reassuring: the sound of approaching authority. Authority would take over and I could relax. Relax, Sunshine.

It wasn’t reassuring. But it did have the effect of sobering me up. I stopped flailing. The arms loosened—not very much—and let me stand on my own feet. It was Jesse, holding on to me.

There was already a crowd. I suppose the screaming brought them. We’re the kind of neighborhood that responds to screams. Jesse and I were in a little alleyway—one alley over from where the corpse husk, the dry guy, had been found a week ago—and from somewhere someone had found a couple of halogen floodlights. This meant you could see…

I started retching, and Jesse turned me round and started hauling me toward—what turned out to be a car, driven by Theo. It’s a good trick, getting anything with four wheels, including a kid’s little red wagon, this far into Old Town. Maybe that’s part of SOF training too. The crowd was still gathering. Maybe they didn’t understand what they were seeing—the dark, dribbling blotches on the ground, stickily trailing down the enclosing walls—the charnel house smell might have been a dead rat or a backed-up drain; Old Town can be like that—but the scene the floodlights illuminated…I managed to look away before I heaved again, not, I think, that there was anything left to come up.

Jesse bundled me into the back seat and was now…wiping me down with a towel. I had…horrible stuff all over me. Did SOF vehicles automatically carry large absorbent towels for…cleanup? This one had hung outdoors on a line. I tried to think about the smell of the towel—laundry soap, fresh air, sunlight. I was crying. Less messy than throwing up anyway. Easier to clean up after. I cried harder. I’d cried more in the last two months than I had done in my entire previous life.

I croaked something. I didn’t understand what I said either, and Jesse said, “Don’t talk now. We’re going to get you some clean clothes and a cup of cof—tea.” He knew me well enough to know I didn’t drink coffee. That should have been reassuring too, that I was with friends—but I wasn’t with friends. I was with SOF. Who had seen me explode a sucker with a table knife. I wondered if they were getting me away so fast, before anyone from the coffeehouse had a chance to intervene. Mel. Charlie. Where were they taking me anyway? And why? I could make a guess and it didn’t make me feel any better.

Jesse’s dark face was invisible in the darkness of the back seat. I was almost desperate enough to ask to turn the dome light on, just so I could see his face. That he had a face. A human face.

I croaked again. “Will she be all right?”

“Who?” said Jesse.

“The girl. The…girl who was screaming. The girl who was…under the dark.”

Jesse said, “She’ll be okay.”

I was silent a minute. We were out of Old Town. I couldn’t figure what we were doing at first; I was used to the front door of the SOF county building—not that I made a habit of going there—of course there would be a back way. Where they parked their cars. Also perhaps where they brought people in they didn’t want to be seen. How soon before the TV van showed up in the alleyway and started panning over those blotchy walls, those gruesomely amorphous lumps on the pavement?

“You don’t know, do you? You don’t know if she’ll be all right.”