The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (11 page)

They had a bathroom—a shower stall with a floor toilet in one corner—and a kitchen area where they could cook their own food in a small oven and wash dishes in a tiny plastic sink. Across the room from the kitchen area, a floor mat big enough for both humans to sleep comfortably lay rolled against the wall.
Cali
had always heard about the advantages of being sold to a
Superior
, and now she started to see them. She had more privacy than she’d ever had, and she only had to share her space with one other person.

She and Shelly delighted over their space, their own private world that belonged—almost—to them alone. “Girl, we’re going to have the most fun here,” Shelly said, clapping his hands. “Oh, I simply cannot wait. In spring, we’re going to pick flowers and put them on the windowsill. We can grow veggies in this garden space outside the window. Imagine, Cali and Shelly’s private apartment! Have you ever dreamed of anything so fantastic?”

“It’s pretty great,” Cali agreed, smiling, too. She’d never imagined she could smile so much. Shelly made her smile even when she wasn’t happy. He made her forget why she wasn’t.

“Great? It’s more than great. Here, let’s both get showers. I don’t smell too pretty, and no offense, but you don’t either. Then I’ll show you how to do your hair up. You’ve got great hair, girl. You could really find you a nice man while we’re here. I bet all the Superiors in this apartment got their own humans. With that face clean and something done about your hair, no one will be able to resist you.”

“Um, thanks, I guess,” Cali said, not sure how to react to this. She wondered why, if she was so irresistible, Shelly wanted to find a man for her. He should be her mate.

After they had both showered and washed their old shifts, they sat cross-legged on the floor, and Shelly pulled his fingers through Cali’s wet, tangled hair.

“Girl, you are so pretty,” he said. “No wonder that Jonathan boy you told me about liked you so much. Sheesh, girl, you should’ve snapped him up while you could.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Master already favored me before I even met Jonathan. He still would have bought me, and then I’d be without my husband.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Some masters are nice about that stuff, and they’ll buy a married pair just to keep them happy.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think our master is one of those.”

“Maybe not. He does look like a total stiff. I mean, can you even imagine that man laughing?”

Cali
laughed at the very thought of it. Their master was about the sourest, most distracted and hurried
Superior
she’d ever seen. She didn’t know what job he had, but it must be something that required an awful lot of haste. He always rushed in and out to feed on his saps. Usually he didn’t even draw from
Cali
now that he owned her. He just bit and left her to fill a cup with blood for him.

She thought about the Man with Soft Hair for a minute while Shelly tried to untangle her knotted hair. Man with Soft Hair always closed up the incisions from his teeth, sometimes too thoroughly. It made her a little uncomfortable how he liked to lick on her arm for much longer than any of the others. But he’d been nice to her. He’d told her his name. Oh well, no use dwelling on that. Now she lived countless lengths from everything in her old home, from the warmth and the dry winds that blew in across the city, the swelling heat so intense she could hardly draw a breath, the months without rain and the months with steamy rains that came every day.

Now she lived in this alien white world where snow fell instead of rain, and where it didn’t sink into the ground but sat on top, piling higher and higher every day that it fell, blowing into strange dips like the sand dunes she’d seen once. In her whole life, she’d only left the city once, although at the Confinement, she’d lived on the outskirts. But once, she’d gotten transported to another area to work on a cotton field for a few months with a big group from the Confinement. Out the window of the train, she’d seen the city go by, millions and millions of apartments that looked exactly the same and then lots of big houses that looked like they could fit as many people as an apartment building. She’d thought of all those Superiors living there who wanted to suck her blood, and it made her skin crowd in on itself. Then she’d seen the sand dunes, the forever of beautiful swells with no houses and no Superiors, just sand the color of her hair.

And now, the second time she’d left the city she’d always called home, she’d come in a closed container and missed all the sights along the way. But this was her home now, this place where buildings didn’t fill the land—she could see lots of space out the window with no buildings at all. The land didn’t roll and dip like the empty sand, but jutted upwards like the earth gods had pounded their fists at it from below, breaking it into peaks and leaving gashes along the bottoms of the mountains.

She’d spend her whole life here with her Master and her one friend, her mate. She would be the good little slave Master wanted. She’d probably never see that other place again, her family, her wreck of a house in the Confinement, her repeat feeders. She had been so rude to that
Superior
who had treated her good—at least sometimes—who seemed to care if she got hurt. Maybe if she’d been a good little sap for him, he would have bought her instead. But she hadn’t, and Master had already bought her, so no use thinking about it now. If she behaved as she should, maybe Master would treat her better, too. Now she didn’t have any other options—she couldn’t change how she’d acted before. She had a new home to make, and the past was a place she’d never go again, full of people she’d never see again.

Chapter 18

Sally woke still dog-tired in the morning and stumbled into the kitchen to get her tea. She’d had to stand guard half the night.

“Nothing happen the rest of the night?” she asked.

“No,” Mama said. “Now that it’s light, we should be pretty near safe, I reckon.”

After breakfast Sally went out to the shed to check on the bloodsucker and see if anybody still sat guard. Her uncle sprawled in the rocking chair, passed out cold. The bloodsucker lay on the floor with his back to the small window. The hair she’d thought looked real soft and feathery when it came out of its hood was matted with blood and stuck to the floor. She had a little twinge of pity for the man. But he weren’t a man, was he? He was a thing. A gross, bloodsucking monster. He might even be the same one that killed Angela. Maybe he’d come back for Sally, colored his hair dark as a disguise. Angela had said hers was real nice looking.

Sally went on back to the house.

“You coming out for the viewing tonight?” Daddy asked, a big grin on his face.

“I reckon I got to.”

“I bet you’d get into the spirit of it. First one’s the hardest. I know my girls is squeamish about bloody stuff, but you get used to it. And I want you there for sure for the killing part.”

“Alright, Daddy. How come Mama don’t have to go?”

“She been to enough to make up her mind objectively, that’s how come. You go see five or six of ‘em get killed, and you can make up your own mind.”

“Alright then. We need to do anything to get ready?”

“Why don’t you go round to the neighbors with your uncle, just in case there’s another one lurking around. We got reason to believe there is.”

“Why’s that?”

“We went through them two backpacks you done found, and one of them is full of girl clothes. There was some canned food in there, too. We think they was gonna try and entice us out with food. Maybe has something to drug or poison us in it. The important thing is, the female one must’ve got away. So y’all be on the lookout and be real careful. She’s probably madder’n hell we got her mate. Probably be coming after us come dark tonight.”

Sally went with her uncle later, and they went to all the other houses. Sally got to tell the story of catching the bloodsucker, and that just about made up for having to spend time with her uncle. She just knew her brother would be steaming mad that she got to tell everyone while he had to stay home with Daddy getting ready for the night’s festivities. It would eat him up to let her take all the glory for finding the sucker. But she’d been the one who wanted to follow the tracks. It seemed only fair she got to tell the story. Every single one of the neighboring families promised to come right at sundown. They didn’t want to miss the thing waking up.

All the neighbors excepting one had caught a bloodsucker at least once. The Henson family had caught four, but only on account of catching two at a time. They had five boys under thirty at home, all of them mean as snakes and dumb as rocks. But they were sure good at sharpening stakes, and using them, too, from what Sally heard. One of them had even staked another family’s bloodsucker first. That was just plain bad manners.

As one of the capturers, Sally would get to stake her bloodsucker first. She weren’t too sure she wanted to. She’d thought the sucker would be vicious and wild, but instead it was just pathetic. It hadn’t fought at all. It only begged for its life and then got the crap beat out of it. Well, not literally. Bloodsuckers didn’t take craps, did they? If they did, the shed would smell pretty nasty come this evening.

When Sally and Tom got back from their neighboring, everyone was busy. Mama and Sissy had started up the cooking for the guests that night, and Daddy was out in the shed constructing some sort of getup to strap the bloodsucker to. Sally found Larry lying on the couch.

“What you doing in here? Just being lazy like usual?” she asked.

“Shut your trap, I’m injured.”

“You don’t look injured to me. I bet soon as it’s time to do something fun, you’ll be just fine.”

“You go on and think that. I’m not even gonna tell you what happened.”

“What happened?”

“Fine, I’ll tell you. What happened is that while you was off gossiping with Tom, Daddy and I had to unwrap the bloodsucker to get his weapons, and he got me fore’s I could get outta the way.”

“What? No way. You look fine.” Here Sally had thought she was having all the fun while her brother moped around, and turned out he’d had the real adventure. Gol-darn it. That always happened. Larry always had to do her one better.

“Well, I ain’t.”

“So what happened? He get you with a knife? He have a fancy gun in there with him?”

“No, you moron, I’d’ve been dead if he had one of those. We had to string him up to get his clothes off, and he kinda kicked out, hit me right here in the ribs. Daddy said they’s surely broken.”

“I’ll be danged.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. It was so…just, wow. You really missed out.”

“I hate you for that.”

“Hell, I’d trade a few broken ribs for getting to see a bloodsucker strung up. We done put a chain around its neck and just hoisted it up over the bars on the cage until he was hanging from it. Then he started to gurgling and thrashing all around, and that’s when his foot got me. I stayed up there to help Daddy, course, but I was in a whole lotta pain, so we just cut the clothes right off him ‘stead of taking them off proper. He didn’t have no weapons at all, just a pocket knife. Not even a good one.”

“Huh. Did you get him down or is he still strung up out there?”

“Sorry, sis, you missed it. He was swinging around so much we had to take him down so as Daddy could have some space to build the platform thingamajig.”

“Where’s the bloodsucker?”

“I reckon he’s sleeping again. I say next time we string him up from his feet like a bat. You know iffen you don’t chain them they can turn into bats and escape.”

“I know.”

“Ah, don’t be so sad. There’ll be lots more fun tonight. And if you really wanna see something now, Daddy cut him up a few times trying to get the clothes off. You can probably still see them cuts. You know, he don’t heal up near as fast as we thought. I thought it’d just close right back up, but he was still bleeding when I left near half an hour after Daddy got the knife in the sucker.”

Sally weren’t too eager to see the bloody creature, so she stayed in the house until evening. It came early this time of year. Pretty soon the sun sank, and the neighbors started crowding around the kitchen and gathering outside talking. They all had stakes.

After most of them had tromped through the house in their snowy boots, leaving wet spots all over the floor, they moved on out towards the shed kind of slow-like. None of them wanted to go right in. Then one of them mean Henson boys went over and opened the door.

“It’s up,” he shouted back to the crowd. Sally came down off the porch. Her neighbors parted to let her through, some of them congratulating her or wishing her luck or patting her back as she passed. One of the elders’ sons gave her a small smile and a nod of encouragement. She felt a little better then. Herman was handsome in the way a man should be, blonde and muscular and built like a ton of bricks, not haunted-eyed and soft-haired like the bloodsucker.

Sally went into the shed. Larry was already in there, along with Tom and Daddy. They’d chained the bloodsucker up so he leaned on a sort of shoddy table her daddy had built that afternoon. The thing held one elbow in his other hand and just looked at them with these ancient-looking eyes. Sally felt kinda sorry for the thing. It looked just about ready to give up. It wore a pair of underpants, the kind that looked like shorts, and its body looked much thinner than Sally would’ve thought. She thought bloodsuckers were all real strong, but this one didn’t look strong. He was smaller than her brother, her Daddy, and most all the men outside the shed.