This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, or any events or situations are entirely coincidental. Some use is made of actual locales, landmarks and institutions. All of these usages are fictional in nature and intent, and are not to be misconstrued as attempts to disparage nor recommend.

Go back to the previous chapter.

Introduction

Gaithersburg, MD - 1991

The two school lunches had been uncharacteristically tasty, if somehow unsatisfying. Lace dumped the plastic trays on the pile by the trash cans as she left the cafeteria, musing.

I've got to keep my weight up somehow, or I'll be disqualified from the competitions... I can't let that bitch Jeanice show me up. Imagine her calling me anorexic! I eat like a pig! I do look kind of starved, though... and I'm so hungry all of the time!

"Lace!" She heard herself called, and broke out of her reverie. It was Ms. Starnes, her athletics coach.

"Hi."

"How's my best gymnast?"

"O.K. How about yourself?"

"Just fine, honey. Look, I saw you tearing into those school lunches like they were your last meals... Are you getting enough to eat at home?"

"Yes, ma'am. I eat a lot. Just about all of the time, in fact."

"Junk food, maybe?"

"Why, no! Health food, mostly. Y'know, protein bars, fruit juice, that kind of thing?"

"You must be about to grow again, then. Do your joints hurt?"

"Some..."

"Well, just take it easy on your calisthenics, and spend more time on stretches than you usually would." Ms. Starnes turned to go, then paused, came back, and whispered to Lace, "Get a lot of sleep."

"O.K." Lace was not about to tell her coach that she couldn't sleep much. She spent most of her night staring around her room, which seemed strangely well-lit. She could see into the darkest corners well enough to read.

"You did really well on the bars and the beam yesterday. Whatever's happening doesn't seem to have affected your co-ordination," continued Coach Starnes.

Or my strength, thought Lace. She seemed to be getting stronger as she got skinnier, and though she looked thinner, she actually weighed more now than she ever had. She was surprising herself often with her own strength; she'd decided to conceal it from even her family. With the strength had come speed, perceptual speed as well as motor explosivity.

"I feel just fine," she said, "But I'm hungry all of the time."

"Well, honey," said the coach, laying an affectionate hand on her shoulder, "Take care of yourself, and make sure you eat right." With that, she took her leave.

Eat right... Those words rang in Lace' ears for the rest of the day. Eat right... and the ringing was ominous. After school let out, she went to the library, and hit the books.

She read up on nutritional disorders, and that led her to the subject of porphyria.

She read up on porphyria, that strange affliction that has given rise to so many legends. The facts weren't all applicable to her case, but there were elements... She hit Dewey Number 137.6, "Occultism", and found even more distressing readings, which contained within reams of superstitious hogwash too many of the facts of her changing existence.

Lace had never been superstitious, unless Unitarian Christianity might be considered superstition. She wore a little silver cross around her neck purely as ornamentation, and read often in the Bible. She had seen, and usually laughed at, all kinds of Hammer Films remakes of the classic Dracula. Vampires. Hah.

There were bits of all that in her present affliction, though. Increasing strength, speed, sensory/perceptual acuity... Her nails were biting deep into the cover of the book she was reading (The Natural History of the Vampire), and seemed to be able to bite deeper with minimal pressure.

She got up, and replaced the books in the stacks as a cold wave of paranoia swept over her. Am I going mad? she wondered. I'd better cover my trail at any rate. If I am flipping out, I don't want anyone to know just which way. I've heard that particular kinds of insanity start this way... Yet there had been no references that she could find to that particular kind of insanity in any of the texts she'd perused.

What if I'm not flipping out? What if this is real, if all of that horror-story shit has some basis in reality? Could some root truth lie obscured within the legends? Oh, fuck it! I'm going home to get something to eat. Some Instant Breakfast in eggnog, for now. Steak and potatoes for dinner...

Time to fill her belly with healthy, normal food. Anorexia? Jeanice was more right than she could know. If any of this vampire shit was true, Lace would starve herself to death.

After dinner, which left her bloated, but somehow still hungry, Lace was studying for her finals. Eleventh grade was almost (thank God) history. She could pass without even taking the finals, but she wanted to be sure of the A. It looked like a cinch. The phone rang.

It was Linda. "Hey, Lace! Want to see Genesis? I've got tickets!"

"Omigod! You bet!"

"Twenty bucks! I'll be by with yours in about an hour."

"Cash! Seeya!"

"Seeya!" Linda hung up.

Two weeks later, school was out. Linda had gotten busted for shoplifting and couldn't go to the concert. Things were getting stranger for Lace all of the time.

She'd just stopped peeling in sheets from a sunburn she'd gotten the day before. She'd laid out in the sun for a half-hour, and had been just about cooked. It was the last straw for her. The agony of sun poisoning as she tossed sleeplessly on mock-satin sheets turned to sandpaper left no doubt in her mind as to her condition. Now she avoided being caught in the hot June sun for more than a few minutes at a time. She wore sunglasses all day, especially inside where the contrast between the dimly lit interior and the glaring sunlight outside could leave her dazzled and headaching.

It baffled her that she could heal so quickly from so bad a sunburn, and where she had gotten the sunburn, she now had a strange tan. She didn't look much darker, but she reflected no light below a certain intensity. When in shadow, she was very dark. It made it difficult to get her make-up right.

She settled for a minimal face tonight. Her clothes would have to make do for allure. She was after John, about the best-looking guy in the world, and she had a lot of competition to beat. She pulled out the leathers. She knew that she looked marvelous in tight leather. She tried them on. The leathers weren't skin-tight anymore, but they weren't exactly baggy; they would (she hoped) suffice.

Lace posed for the mirror. John should be impressed. Time for a snack. She went to the kitchen and made herself a "Rocky Balboa" - Two eggs in a glass of instant breakfast -and gulped it down. She weighed herself in the bathroom. One hundred fifty-five pounds. The scale was off, it had to be. At five-six, medium-slender build (headed towards skinny, she thought), she couldn't weigh that much.

She checked her make-up and hair, rearranged some of her jewelry and bangles. Perfect. Time to go!

She stepped out into the twilight, headed for Jeff's house. Jeff was a good friend of Linda's brother Bob, and was also John's best friend. Bob had gotten Linda's ticket, and Lace was going to ride with Jeff, John, Bob, Chrissie, and Vanessa. Jeff and Chrissie, and Bob and Vanessa were going together, so that meant that she had the whole ride up to the Capitol Center Arena to work her charms on John. Oh, John...

The streetlights came on as she walked, but it didn't seem to be getting any darker out. It never got darker than this for her, anymore; it just wasn't blindingly bright like the daytime. This whole business was much too weird, but it had some mitigating compensations. She wasn't afraid of the dark anymore (no dark!), she could see so well, so sharply. She figured her resolution was about double normal density. Her hearing was so full of even the smallest sounds, but she could scarcely hear her own footfalls as she stepped lightly down the brilliantly street-lit sidewalk.

There were drawbacks, of course. She carried "Sonic Ear Valves" for hearing protection. The new halogen headlights they were putting on all of the import cars burned holes in her night-vision. She absolutely had to wear her mirrored shades to look out of the windows at home during the day. And she was always, always so very hungry.

Jeff's car was pulling out of the driveway as she rounded the corner. Confused, she looked at her watch. Mickey Mouse pointed out six-fortyfive, the same as he'd said twentyfive minutes ago. Damn! She'd forgotten to wind the ancient thing. She ran down the street after the receding taillights, waving her arms like crazy, but she was dressed in fashionable basic black, and barely visible. Her ride continued onto the freeway ramp, and was gone.

Undaunted, she went to the feeder ramp, and stuck out her thumb, squinting against the headlights of the oncoming traffic. Soon a car pulled over.

"Hi!" she said as she got in. "How far are you going?"

"Largo," he said, "Capitol Center."

"Genesis!" she exclaimed. "Omigod!"

They drove down I-270 towards the Beltway. The guy driving was pretty quiet. He turned up his stereo loudly enough to eliminate all possibility of conversation anyway. Lace just rode, and got off on the music.

He gave her a beer, unasked, and she popped the top. She looked in her beltpack and pulled out the hit of acid Bob had sold her, popped it into her mouth and chewed it. It was going to be her first time tripping. It left a tiny metallic taste on her tongue, and made her teeth tingle a bit. Bob had told her that this was pretty light-weight stuff, and would take about thirty minutes to take effect. She assumed that she would be at the show long before then. The guy driving didn't seem to notice, and the miles of the beltway flew by. The driver just cruised, letting the car into and out of holes in traffic, smoothly passing everyone on the road. Soon they drew near Largo, Maryland.

About half a mile before the exit, he turned down the sound, and asked her if she had a boyfriend.

"No," she said, "I liked a guy in the ride I missed. John, oh, he's so..." She trailed off. They were pulling over to the side of the road.

"Ever screw?" he asked.

Shocked, she gasped, "No! What..."

He stopped the car and reached over and took hold of her breast, and said, "Nice!" Adrenaline roared in her head.

She slapped him hard with her nails, opening a large gash in his cheek. "Bitch!" he shouted, and hit her. She hardly felt it as she spun for the door handle, found it and yanked.

It broke off in her hand. As she stared at it, she heard a click and whirled. He was lunging for her face with a knife. As she fell back against the door, her left hand grabbed his wrist, turning the blade away from her, smashing it into the window. He fell on top of her, flailing with his left hand, pinning her down. Her right hand was free, and she knew, just simply knew what to do. Knowledge became motion, and her hand lanced into his throat, rigid, piercing, as if it had a will of its own. She felt something hard between her thumb and palm, clasped and yanked. He stopped thrashing, and blood gushed into her gasping mouth. She swallowed convulsively to clear her throat to breathe.

She stiffened. The taste was heaven. She felt as if she had just had her first sip of water in days. Pinned under a dying man in the car, she swallowed again, breathed through her nose, and, crying, swallowed again, and again.

In a few minutes she pulled herself from the car and backed slowly into the bushes. She knew that she couldn't be seen where she was, and looked at herself in her handmirror. She looked bad. She licked the blood off of her hands, and looking about her, she saw a small stream running under the Beltway. She headed to the stream, and washed herself. The leather jacket wiped clean, and the stream was not so polluted that she could not wash her hair in it. Soon she looked almost presentable.

"Unreal! I guess I'm not a virgin anymore..." She whispered - for now, shock suppressed panic. "Where do I hide? I can't go home now. Shit!"

Capitol Center, she thought. Genesis. Thousands of people my age, probably lots of them fit my description. Cool. She felt the ticket in her pocket.

Genesis would be great. On top of it all, she wasn't hungry anymore.

Lace left the concert dazzled and deafened half-way through the performance.

She was tripping wildly. She was in a state of shock. She had killed a man. He had to be dead. She saw no police beacons flashing through the woods across the parking lot. She guessed that they hadn't found him yet. Well, the police were always pretty busy these days...

She walked down the road, thinking of nothing. Everything was different. No home. Almost no money. No school. No home!

She walked down the edge of the freeway. Cars zoomed past, leaving elaborate strings of light behind them. She kept walking.

"Murderess," a small voice seemed to say, coming from somewhere inside her. She tried to ignore it. It didn't help.

She got to the interchange and crossed under to a shopping mall, looking for a bank machine. It was there. She was pretty worried about the crowds of people, many of whom seemed to be wearing the "uniform" of poverty or drug- dealership, but there were cops stationed near the bank machine, and so she went to the machine and withdrew $300.00, and stuffed a few bills into each of her pockets. Then she headed back to the freeway, and hitched. She got a ride quickly. The guy driving was heading for Ocean City. She rebuffed his attempts at small-talk and sat and stared the whole way.

As they rolled into Ocean City proper, he asked where she was going, for about the eighth time, and this time she responded. She asked him to drop her off at 69th street. She hung out in the McDonald's for a while. The small voice inside her wouldn't shut up. She was exhausted with the effort of keeping herself calm. She couldn't let herself think, or remember, or she knew she would fall apart. She left the McDonald's and walked the few blocks to the beach.

Here at the seashore, the cool offshore breeze saltily whipped her hair around her, and the sea crashed, foaming, brightly under a crescent moon. She walked to the shore to greet the oncoming waves, dancing back as the tide tried to wet her feet. Despite her new fear of memories, one new memory rose unbidden, like a cobra from behind the sink, poising itself to strike.

It hit her hard. She sat sobbing on the sand. She shook as she cried. He had tried to rape her! She remembered for a moment the fear she had felt, and that brought another memory, the memory of how she'd felt when he was suddenly no longer trying to rape her, but instead fighting an already lost battle for his own life.

She had liked that.

She had liked it a lot.

Her body had known just what to do. She remembered the way his body had shaken as she had gulped greedily, helplessly, spasms racking her throat as she clutched him to herself, waves of pleasure radiating throughout her abdomen. She felt that pleasure, but somehow, had felt nothing else. Shock had effectively insulated her from all emotion.

As she had cleaned herself up she had felt warm thrills of energy surging through her. She felt so alive! She moved through the woods towards the Arena, seeing easily even through the deepest dark. She felt incredibly strong. She tried to pick up a log, and was amazed by the ease of the feat. She did a few repetitions. Easy. She walked some more. Soon she was at the edge of the parking lot. She clambered over the chain-link fence easily. When she hit the ground, she was able to absorb the impact so that she made almost no noise.

The crowds around the doors jostled her as she queued up for entrance. She presented her ticket, and went inside.

She stopped at the bathroom, and washed her hair again, grateful for the fashionably short cut she wore, and dried her hair with the hot-air dryer. She soon looked the same as she had looked when she'd left home, and satisfied that she had removed the last traces of blood and the stink of the creek- water, she went to find her seat.

In the aisle, a drunk head-banger staggered and fell against her. She saw him coming, saw him stagger. He seemed to take forever to fall, and she braced herself to take the impact. He bounced off of her as if she had been a wall.

"Like, sorry, y'know?" he said. "No need to get rough!"

"Sorry," she'd responded, pushing her way toward the front of the arena.

She sobbed on the sands. After a while, no more tears would come. She remembered how her friends had been at the seats, pleased to see her and surprised that she had made it. Vanessa had asked her how she'd gotten there.

"I hitched," she said. She sat down next to John.

"Damn," he said.

"You shouldn't have done that, Lace," said Chrissie. "There's all kinds of creeps out there."

"I got here okay."

"What kept you?" Jeff asked. "We waited almost half an hour for you."

"My watch stopped. I forgot to wind it."

"Obsolete technology. Get digital, baby!" John quipped.

"But I like Mickey!" The house lights dimmed. The show was about to begin.

The stage lights came up, blinding her, and the P.A. blared, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Genesis!" The audience stood and cheered. Lace rose with them, and almost broke her hands applauding.

Take it slow, be cool, she told herself. I've got a lot to learn. She felt a funny taste in the back of her throat, a sort of tightness. Her body felt weird...

"Did you take that dose, Lace?" John asked her, during a lull in the music.

"Uh, yeah."

"Is it hitting yet?"

"Yeah, it seems to be. I feel weird," she said. "Things seem to be real, I dunno, focused. Colors are brighter..."

"Yeah. You're getting off. Just kick back and enjoy the show."

Lace did just that. It was great. Soon the music flowed through her, was a part of her. She was caught up in a great flow of sound that seemed to pull her into a trance. She thought only of the moment, past and future were of no concern. Then the music stopped, and she leapt to her feet to clap and cheer. She caught herself in time to prevent herself from leaping over the row of seats in front of her.

John was on his feet with her, and she wanted to hug him, so she did. They kissed, her tongue probing deeply into his mouth, he reciprocating, his hands moving lower down her back to caress her buttocks through her leathers. She squeezed him to her, and was daring herself to feel the front of his thigh (and repressing a strange urge to bite his lower lip) when the next song started, with an eerie wailing from the guitar and synthesizer punctuated by sparse metronomic drumming.

She backed off, and he gazed into her eyes for a moment, then she looked demurely down then at the stage, and as one, they turned and sat. She felt in his lap for his hand as a shiver from the acid passed through her. She was seeing patterns of light around her, and everything was shifting, moving. And then the words came through.

Well I Remember!
I remember don't worry
How could I ever forget
The first time, the last time
We ever met
Well I was there
I saw what you did
Saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin
I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies...

The drum-solo slammed through her like a bus with bad brakes. She tensed, and felt her hands clench. She had the presence of mind to pull her hand away from John. Her nails bit through her skin, and she gasped.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm... God, that solo... wow... what a rush!" she said through clenched teeth. "I'll be fine." She hoped she would be. The way she hurt, she figured she was cut to the bone. The pain was going away fast, though, and she ignored it in favor of the music.

...I can feel it Coming in the air tonight Hold on, Hold on.

The acid was rushing through her mind, leaving trails everywhere she looked. There was no darkness for her in the auditorium, just a glowing, writhing fog filled with people. She looked down at her hands. The cuts were not as deep as she had thought. Her hands looked just as they always had, a bit large for her frame, tendons standing out when she moved them, very strong from all of her uneven parallel-bar work.

John saw her looking at her hands, and took one of them in his own. She looked over at him, and saw a tender, concerned human being of whom she suddenly felt much more than fond. She leaned over and kissed him. They embraced, caressed for a few minutes, as the band played. John was going for second, and was getting it. Lace loved it. It took her mind off of... other things. She had mainly into her gymnastics after school, and this was all fairly new to her, and she felt, right then, like forgetting everything old and drifting in the moment, learning the new.

She held him close. She held him tighter.

He broke off the kiss. "Whew," he said, "ease up a little! that's supposed to be a hug, not a bear-hug!"

Oh, shit! "I guess I don't know my own strength," she said.

"Yeah, I keep forgetting that you're an athlete. You are strong, girl!"

A swirl of acid-patterns broke over her like surf. A laser display scanned the roof of the auditorium, setting up a barrage of afterimages. Yeah, I'm strong, she thought. Too strong. Too damned strong, emphasis on the damned.

She made a decision, and looked up at him with hugely-dilated eyes and said, "Sorry. Look, I gotta go to the bathroom..."

"OK. See you in a minute."

She had gone to the bathroom, gone to the toilet, and washed the blood from her hands where the cuts had been. The cuts weren't there any more. And when she smiled for the mirror, her canines seemed longer. Not much, but it seemed they were growing. Hallucination, perhaps. At any rate, her gums hurt a little bit down near the roots of her teeth. Even through the other changes that the acid was working on her face, she thought she could see an extra millimeter of tooth, top and bottom.

Her nails were a bit thicker at the base. She tried to bite at them as she left, and something... stopped her.

She hadn't quite screamed, as the knowledge that biting her nails would wear down her teeth forced itself into her mind. She merely whimpered. And kept walking. Walked past the portal to her aisle, past the guards at the exit, past the lights of the parking lot.

The ocean's roar calmed her. The acid was leaving her, the trip wound out by the four hour ride to O.C. She looked up from her memories, and the ocean was there, as it always was, always would be. The ocean was never the same twice, it changed from instant to instant. It was so inviting. It would swallow her up if she were to walk into it, if she swam until she could not see land, swam until she could swim no more. The ocean could keep her secret. It was big enough.

I'm only sixteen, she thought. I haven't lived enough. I can't kill myself.

I can't go home either. I'm a... murderess. They'll find out. I'll get busted. I'll go to jail. I'll die there.

I'd better think about how I'm going to stay alive, now that I've decided not to die. And a strange thought came to her then: At least I'm not hungry.

Not hungry. That man. God! Where did I learn to fight like that? What am I? He tried to hurt me and I killed him just like that... and I drank his blood. And I'm not hungry any more. I know what I am. And I don't like it.

I am a vampire. And I don't like it!

Now what the hell am I going to do?

I'm gonna have to hit the road soon, and go far away from here. But for now, I'd better get a place to stay.

She walked down to the YWCA youth hostel, and waited on the porch for the office to open. The sun came up, and she squinted against the harsh morning light. When the office opened, it worked out that she got a bed in a room on the north side of the hostel. It was none too soon. She had been out in the sun, unshielded except for the shade of the porch overhang for almost three hours. She was very red on her face and hands, and she knew she would be peeling later. The nice lady that checked her into the hostel remarked that she'd better stay out of the sun for a few days, and Lace agreed. The nice lady also remarked that she hoped that Lace wouldn't be having any biker friends come over to visit her, against the rules. Lace looked down at her leathers, and blushed under her sunburn - and told the lady that she'd been down in O.C. with her girlfriends and they were just trying to outdo each other. Then they'd gotten separated... and Lace just needed to stay overnight so that her daddy could come and get her tomorrow. That seemed to satisfy the old gal, who nodded and gave her her key.

She went to the assigned room and napped for a few hours. Strange dreams came to her, dreams that she could not remember when she awoke slightly after noon. Though she could not recall the content of those dreams, she was haunted by an aura of doom.

She was peeling at two o'clock, and had finished peeling at five. Her night-tan had deepened somewhat. She watched some TV as she checked the phone books and decided to take the Ocean City bus up to K-Mart.

She walked down the boardwalk towards Route 50, where she'd catch the bus. People were checking her out as she walked. It made her nervous. She felt as if they all knew everything about her, and she realized that for the first time in her life, she was experiencing paranoia - she also wondered if the police were looking for her yet. Lace knew she was cute, knew that she looked good in her black leathers. She didn't know that she had developed a walk that could make a watch tick backwards. Her strength was coming to her in full, now, and the dragging depressive maliase and feeling of weakness she'd felt building for some months before were gone. No longer starving, her body had been furiously rebuilding, making structural changes and healing the damage done by malnutrition, and health was becoming beautiful on her. She strode liquidly down the boardwalk. Young men stared with undisguised lust, and their young ladies with envy... and with every passing moment, she increasingly felt the gazes upon her. She couldn't have felt more exposed if she'd been wearing a bikini.

This had to stop. She endured a number of catcalls while waiting at the bus-stop, mostly just sticking her sunburned nose into the air and pretending to deign not to notice. The bus-driver didn't quite leer, and soon enough, she was at K-Mart... and there was a factory-outlet clothing store right next door. Price-war city! She decided to check out the factory outlet first, and headed for the women's-wear section.

She selected baggy jeans, loose tops, some nice black sneakers, and a lot of socks. She figured it would be best to downplay her physical attractions. She tried on a few things to get the fit right, in a rush, hardly glancing at herself in the dressing-room mirror, and then went to pay the cashier.

The cashier tried not to stare at her as he rang up her order, but she kept looking up at him to see him gazing raptly at her, probably wondering what she was doing by herself all done up in leathers. Somehow, she seemed to feel his puppy lust. He totalled, she paid. He was making change, rather sloppily, and seemed to have a hard time looking at the money, preferring to stare at her. She decided to stare him down, and when their eyes met, she locked eyes with him. He just kept staring at her. His face went blank, and he just stared mindlessly at her. Then she looked away, and he continued bagging her goods, just as if nothing had happened. She was momentarily confused, but recovered quickly. "Let me use your dressing-room, to change, okay?" The cashier nodded absently.

In the dressing room, she decided to quickly change into a pair of jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt, but when she was mostly undressed and rolling up her leathers, she paused to regard herself appraisingly in the mirror. Her complexion practically glowed, and her eyes were clear for the first time in months. And such color! They'd always been a very deep blue-green, but now they were almost startling. She could understand why the cashier might stare like a fool - she was herself almost entranced by her own eyes. Flecks of green on blue seemed to flicker into flecks of blue on green. She brushed off some of the last flecks of peeling skin and noticed that she seemed to have filled out somehow, almost as if she'd expanded like a desert plant taking on water form a rainfall. Still, she hadn't a bit of fat on her. Muscles rippled as she turned about, and she blinked in a sort of dismay at the way she could see all of the tendons and muscles slide beneath her fresh new skin - but no use dwelling on it. So she yawned and stretched, and what a cat-stretch yawn it was! Bones popped loudly in her joints as she pulled herself into perfect alignment. She yawned again, even more deeply, working her jaws, and felt something pop inside her skull. It felt as if the whole lower front of her face had shifted. It was a total head-rush, but it felt good, in the same way that cracked knuckles feel good. She felt good about herself for the first time in months. Her inventory of assets checked "excellent".

Then she smiled for the mirror, and her composure cracked. Her canines seemed to have been extended somehow by the swelling in her gums, and a bit turned outwards as well. Nothing incredible, but still not the same perfectly aligned teeth she'd always had. Her jaw and face tingled now, where it had so disconcertingly popped a few moments ago, and somehow the muscles and joint of her jaw seemed looser. She gaped at her reflection, and her jaw dropped open, her chin almost touching her collarbone.

I'd better shut my mouth before something flies in. Lord knows it would have plenty of room to fly into...

She waved to the cashier on the way out, and it seemed that he hardly remembered that she was the same girl who had walked into his store in tight leatherwear.

She bought a cheap sleeping bag from K-Mart, an aluminized mylar survival blanket, and a serviceable backpack. She got a Boy Scout cook-kit, and a Scout manual. She stopped at a teller machine, and withdrew another $300.00. Her balance now stood at about $1000.00. She wasn't going to be getting a car, now, so she decided that she was going to withdraw as much cash as she could as rapidly as possible.

Her eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs as the sun finally set. She headed up to the beach to say good-bye. The ocean was still there, as it always would be. She returned to the youth hostel and doffed her gear and sat for a while. Thime to think.

Where to? she wondered. How about sunny Florida? No, too much police action there, too expensive. Also too damned hot. How about the midwest? Too mainstream, too insular. Small towns would be too hard to hide in, too many questions, too much curiosity, too many friendly normal people. I've got to go someplace cosmopolitan, someplace big. Someplace where there are a lot of questionable types. California. That's it! Yeah!

She ran her tongue over her teeth. Her gums ached, and she thought she tasted blood coming from her gums. She looked at her gums with her handmirror, and saw that the flesh there was swollen and tender. I'd better not smile a lot, she thought. I'd better spend a lot of time in the woods until I get used to myself - and whatever I may become. With that last thought, she began to wonder, what exactly would she become? - but she was already too full of worry and wonder, and for the moment let that thought drop in favor of immediate decision.

OK. My goal is to winter in California. I'll head south from here to Norfolk, and go west from there.

And so, at midnight, after packing and organizing, she left the hostel. She headed out to the boardwalk, backpack on her back, to get something to eat and to say goodbye to Ocean City. She somehow doubted that she'd be seeing it again, not anytime soon.

On the boardwalk, she moved almost unremarked, and for that she was thankful. She kept walking, and stopped for a burger and some fries. She found a bench and sat and stared at the ocean for awhile. Endless, always changing, never the same twice, and it would always be there. The burger was delicious and she found it filling; a strange feeling after the last few months. She refused to think further about why she had become used to feeling starved, and refused still more to think about why she felt, after a mere single burger, satisfied. She just ate, and watched the waves roll in, and then after a time, rose to tread the boards.

She decided to stop in at an arcade. Pinball had always been one of her games, and there was an Eight-Ball Deluxe game that seemed to be begging for her quarters. "Chalk up!" it voxed as she approached. She fed it a quarter. The machine made chuckling noises as it reset itself and sent up her first ball. Lace decided that she would be very careful as she played, so as not to tilt when she nudged. She launched her first ball. A strange thing happened.

When she concentrated on the ball, it seemed to slow itself. It appeared to crawl up to a bumper, stop, and deflect in slow-motion. It followed the same trajectory that it would have followed at normal speed, so she reasoned that this must be a perceptual phenomenon. She glanced around her, and everything seemed to be happening at a snail's pace.

The game seemed to take forever. She kept fielding the ball each time it approached the flippers. It was getting very boring when she heard a crack from the credit-solenoid. Startled, she tensed, and looked up at the score. One-half million raw points on the first ball. She looked around her. A crowd had gathered. Ignored, her ball drained, and bonuses and multipliers made the solenoid crack again.

"Damn!" said a guy with awe and admiration on his features. "Play much, babe?"

"Haw-haw, Bobby! The girl done skunked ya, and on your favorite damn' machine, too! Hyuk, hyuk!" said a companion.

"Uh, you wanna play the next ball?" Lace asked abashedly.

"Yeah, sure..." Bobby muttered under his breath. He became absorbed in his ball, and Lace snuck away from the arcade.

Walking across the Assawoman Bay bridge, she reflected on the lesson. Conceal your strength. Hide your skills. Appear average. Make sure you know what average is, so as not to blow your cover.

Lines from a Depeche Mode song came to her...


So you had something to hide
Should have hidden it shouldn't you
And now you're not satisfied
With what you're being put through

Well, my looks are something I can't do anything about. That's sure to attract attention. So I'll dress down, and try to not be seen too much. Shit! When I'm reported missing, my picture will be all over the country. I'd better lay real low. I'd better put a lot of distance between myself and home.

She got across the bridge, outside of the Ocean City boundaries, and stuck out her thumb. Soon a trucker came by, and this kind Knight of the Road gave her a lift. She had no idea of how incredible was her luck to find one of the decent ones. He inquired as to her destination.

She asked, "How far are you going?"

"First, to Norfolk, then across to Knoxville, Tennessee. Couple of stops in between."

"Great! I'm on my way to see the wild west."

"Well, you sure picked the best way to go, young'un. You will surely see the world if you travel by truck."

"Well, I guess I'll ride with you as far as you're going," she told him.

"Fine by me. Just keep an eye on me (You bet! she thought) and if I start to doze or weave, kinda wake me up, OK?"

"Sure thing!" she said.

The ride to Norfolk was uneventful, except for the crossing of the Bay Bridge-Tunnel. She was enthralled by the way they just rose up out of the water onto bridges that seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere in the middle of the foggy expanse of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

It was day again when they pulled out of Norfolk. He'd slept a little when they got into town, crawling back into the bed behind the seats. When he woke up, he spent some time unloading his cargo, refrigerated sides of pork, then slept again for a few hours before picking up cases and cases of frozen chickens. They then headed for Durham, North Carolina, en route to Knoxville. It was almost ten-thirty when they got under way. Lace asked if he minded her sacking out for a while. Flambeaux (the driver - she asked him where he got his name... he just smiled and laughed at her) said he didn't mind, she looked a bit worn out. He pulled over to a rest stop, and suggested that she might want to freshen herself up a bit first. Groggily, she started to get out of the truck's cab, and he stopped her.

"You must be new at this, honey," he said. "I ain't gonna leave you here, but just in case, carry your damned backpack with you anytime you leave the vehicle you're riding in. I'm a good ol' boy, but there'll be people who'll be nice as can be to your face who'll rob you blind in a minute soon's your back's turned, and there's as many who'll rob you while you're looking, not to mention cheats an' cons, an' worse. Now you get on in there, and get 'freshed up. I'll be waiting."

He was. From then on, though, she always rode with her hand on her packstrap.

Lace catnapped lightly in the back of the cab. She rested her aching eyes, and listened to the song of the road beneath the wheels of the rig, bouncing to every little crack in the pavement flying beneath the speeding truck. Her skin peeled again where she had been exposed to the sun. She had been feeling tired, almost sick when she had crawled back into the sleeping compartment, but when she crawled out it was getting dark, and the twilight had no debilitating effect on her. Flambeaux remarked that he'd never seen a body for daytime sleeping such as herself.

"I guess I'm just pooped out from staying up all night watching you drive," she said.

"That's OK," he said. "One thing I learned in the Army, get as much sleep as you can, whenever you can. You never know when you will have to stay awake for a couple of days."

"You sure are giving me a lot of good, free advice," she told him.

"Free to you," he responded. "Some of it cost me plenty. You seem pretty innocent to me, and though I may seem like a nice enough fella, I seen a lot of bad in this here world. I put a high value on innocence. I don't know what you're runnin' away from, but... I'd sure hate to see you runnin' into some of the things I know from experience are out there. I'd hate to ruin a trusting, uncynical point of view, and I ain't got a few years to talk, so I ain't gonna tell you just how nasty it all is out there. But!If I see you doing something out of innocence that's bound to get you hurt sooner or later, why, I'll just give you a helpful hint or two.

"We're pulling up on Knoxville, and I'm coming into a company shop here, so I'll have to let you out soon. But listen up... You ain't gotta be all paranoid, wondering what's going to happen next; there's too many possibilities. Even a ol' dog like me ain't seen half of the tricks there is out there... Just a few rules to go by.

"Like I said, don't let yourself and your possessions get separated temporarily even, or it could become permanent.

"Don't get so attached to your possessions that you can't drop at least some of them if you've got a need to run. You might want to separate your things into two bags, one of which you mind dropping less. Sorta like dropping a bone behind for the dogs to fight over.

"Especially, for a young beauty like you, don't ever let anyone get between you and the door, and always keep an eye peeled for another way out in case someone blocks the door from the outside.

"Don't ever depend on anyone else to help you out. I hate to say this, but, you ought to consider anyone acting nice to you as someone to be particularly cautious of. 'Cept'n me, of course.

"And keep in mind, that just 'cause someone ain't done you no harm in the past, don't necessarily mean they won't in the future. They could be just waiting for the right time to make their move."

Lace couldn't contain herself any longer. "How come you're telling me all this?"

"Like I said. I value innocence highly. I had a daughter, she'd be eighteen now, except she run off after a fight with her step-dad. She was comin' to see me. She was fourteen, she was my beautiful baby. She went hitchin', and she got pulled into a damned white-slave ring. They done all kinds of shit to her, and she did get away, but not before she was raped by a pervert with the AIDS. She died. If she'd known some of the stuff I just told you, that might not have happened. I figured I'd pick you up, get you someplace, keep you safe on the way, tell you a few things. By the way..."

He reached behind him, and pulled out his wallet with his left hand. He pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. "Take the damned bus to where you're goin'."

Lace protested, "But I couldn't! You've been too good to me already! Besides, I have money of my own."

"You're on your own, child. However much you got, when you're on your own, you ain't got enough."

She took the bill, her lower lip trembling a bit. She felt like she was going to cry.

"By the way," he said, "If you see anyone reach behind them like I just did, watch out. Don't look away from their hands for nothing. Look on my belt above my right hip pocket." He coasted the rig to a stop at the side of the road, just outside the city limits. She leaned over and kissed him.

She opened the door, and said, "I don't know how to thank you, Flambeaux. May the Lord always smile on you."

"I like to think he will. That's why I do a good turn whenever I can."

She started to climb down. "Psst!" he whispered, "Always watch the hands," and turned so that she could see on his belt, gleaming in an opened sheath, the chromium-steel handle of a butterfly knife.

She took Flambeaux's advice. There was change left over from her bus ticket to Atlanta. It was dated three weeks from the day she bought it.

She spent some time getting back to the nearby National Park. She'd bought a tent, and some trail foods. She spent a lot of time in the park reading the scout manual. She learned to make fires, to fish illegally, to make small-game traps. Long before her food threatened to run out, she was feeding herself. She spent her days lathered with number-fifty sunblock, or lay inside her tent sweltering in the Space Blanket to avoid the radiation.

Her nights in the park were something else. She ran through the woods, with the stars for her lamps. She could see just fine. She went on long walks, up and down the trails. Sometimes, she would see people going for short night-hikes with their flashlights. They would often pass within feet of her, noticing nothing. Often she followed them, paralleling them in the woods, practicing her ever more noiseless walk. Soon she could not hear her own footfalls above the quiet beating of her heart. She climbed trees. She swung from branches at dizzying heights. She found heavy rocks to lift, and delighted in her increasing strength. Her nails grew long and strong, thickening and stiffening. She couldn't bring herself to bite them, and they grew almost clawlike. She shortened them by honing them on smooth slabs of granite, and they grew even stronger. She was reminded of King Nebuchadnazzer in the Bible, though she didn't grow hair all over her body, and she certainly developed no taste for grass, although the entrails of some of her snared mammals began to smell disconcertingly appealing.

The departure date on her bus ticket grew near. She packed her possessions, and headed into town. It seemed that she would do OK in the world, at least as long as she was where there was game, and as long as the weather was nice. She had her freedom, and that was all that really mattered to her at this point. She was getting pretty sick of the woods by now, and she was glad that the time to move on had finally come.

She made it into Knoxville with no problems, walking up to the bus station as the sun was just beginning to rise. Twenty minutes later, her bus came. She got on, headed for Atlanta.

She was halfway there, and at a rest stop, she got off to get a sandwich. She ate it. It wasn't enough. She got another, boarded the bus, and ate it. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough! It was almost a month since she had run away.

The ride to Atlanta was hell. The sun blinded her, the road was bumpy, her nerves were frayed raw by the noise that her fellow passengers made. The smell was driving her slowly mad. Her guts were quietly churning.

One of the passengers had a cut on his arm, almost healed over. He banged it against the arm of his seat as he gesticulated in some discussion or another, and it started bleeding. He went past Lace on the way to the bathroom, and the coppery metallic smell of his blood made her mouth water. She hated herself. The bum in the seat next to her woke up and attempted, in a drunken, fumbling way to make a pass at her. Ordinarily, she would have been loathingly amused, but her tolerance for anything was at an all time low. When he put his hand on her leg, she grabbed him by the wrist, and pushed his hand back. He gasped when she grabbed him, and appeared to faint. She saw that she had grasped too hard; his wrist bent at an unnatural angle. She hated herself more. She hated everybody else, too.

Soon, though it seemed forever, the bus pulled into the station at Atlanta.

She disembarked, put her dispensables bag into a locker, and went to the bathroom. She hoped she wouldn't have to run off without her tent and sleeping bag, but she didn't want the additional encumbrance, if things should get sticky.

In the bathroom, she took a much needed shower.

As she dried herself off, she noticed she was shaking. It wasn't from cold. She was starving, she knew she was. She dressed herself, and went to look around the outside of the bus depot.

A man approached her, and said, in a low, conspiratorial tone, "I gots what you needs, Baby..." He motioned her to follow him around the corner. She realized he thought she was an addict of some kind or another (I guess I am) and wanted to make a sale to her.

She followed him into an alley down the street. She was shaking badly now. Her hands were beginning to clench on their own now. He moved back further into what must have been darkness to him, and said, "We be cool here. Twen'five."

Dully, she echoed, "Twenty-five."

He beckoned her to come closer. She moved towards him, hating herself, hating him, hating most of all the cramps in her stomach, the ringing in her ears, the smell of this human person in the alley before her. A plan leapt into her mind, and she said, "Let's check it out."

Something in his attitude changed. Instead of appearing furtive, he stood up a little straighter. He said, in a voice devoid of street accent, "No. Let's check you out!" He reached for her with one hand, reached behind him to take something from his belt.

She thought, weapon! Her reflexes took over. She grabbed the forward hand and pulled it between her knees as she leapt, pulling him forward as she jumped towards a spot behind him. She spun as she leapt. Her scissoring legs broke his arm, then she landed behind him. She slammed her hands together on his neck, and heard a sound like a football being punted. The tool he'd been reaching for arced through the air - Handcuffs. They rang as they hit the ground.

She grasped his head and turned him to face her. Behind pain and shock, awareness flickered yet, for a moment. As the moment faded, she whispered, "I thought you wanted to hurt me... I bet you just wanted to send me home...". Her arms jerked, and the bones in his neck cracked. His body went limp, and shook.

She hated him. She hated herself. She hated the world. Rage filled her. She tore his throat out with a slice of her hand, and sank her face into his neck. As she gulped, she felt the rage seeping out of her, to be replaced by self-loathing. Still she swallowed. When she released him he was hardly bleeding.

She stood there, freaking out, despising herself. The world was a fucked up place to be in. She couldn't have sinned so greatly, surely, as to be damned to this condition. She sure didn't remember being bitten by Dracula. Yet something made her able to do this to someone, to need to do this to someone.

Warmth and satisfaction radiated from the pit of her stomach. She pulled a Handi-Wipe from the pocket of her disposable raincoat, and wiped her face off. It shouldn't feel this good. Nothing should feel this good, she thought.

Already, her body seemed to be absorbing her meal. She felt less bloated. She felt healthy again. She felt a rush sweep through her as she heard footsteps and the crackle of a police radio.

She looked around her. She was in a dead end. Overhead, though was a fire escape about fifteen feet up. She leapt for it, caught it easily, and brachiated up to the roof as two uniformed cops ran into the alley.

"Jesus Christ!" ejaculated one of the cops. He spat codes into his radio. "And get a chopper out!"

"My God, is he dead! Where the hell could she have gone? There's no other way out... And how the hell could she have done this to Joey? He had a black belt!"

"She must have had one too, I guess," the first cop retorted. "Damnedest thing I seen in years."

Lace heard them give her description over the radio. She changed clothes under the cover of a howling rooftop air-conditioner unit. The helicopter came buzzing by. It began a search pattern. She consulted her road atlas. After a while, the chopper worked its way away from her position, and she ran across the roofs to another alley, and came down to the streets. She hailed a taxi.

"Take me to the airport," she told the cabbie.

In two hours, she was in Houston.

Go on to the next chapter.
Go to the Table of Contents.