To the Very Edge

A few seconds later, Sally shook her head to clear it. She couldn’t be making noise like that. Rolling over, she looked around. Same room she’d scouted: storeroom in an old, ugly building.

She took stock. She’d picked up a few scratches in that last jump and she felt a nice lump on her head from where the nurse had hit her. (Of course an old man would still have an encyclopedia!) She’d used up most of her prep except for one last trick. When she pulled out her phone and looked at the map, she knew that if that last trick didn’t work, she had no hope. She had two blocks to go and the next street to cross was Main Street, too wide to jump.

Slowly she picked up the crossbow she’d left in the corner by the door. This was where she would probably get killed. She had to break into an apartment facing Main Street, open a window, fire a rope, hit something usable and pull herself across fast. It didn’t sound likely.

The vampires on the fire escape called to her, their whispering voices unrelenting, maddening.

She thought about KerriAnne, her sister, and felt that uprushing of love and annoyance she always felt. KerriAnne, who was going to die if she failed. KerriAnne, always big-eyed and innocent, the one who had knuckled under to their father every time and yet found ways to rebel.

And thinking of her father, she burned. A little Hitler, a strutting martinet, powerless in the world but by God

he ruled in their house. He’d dominated their mother and her sister but outside their house, she’d seen him smile and kiss ass. Until the day he fell apart. Cancer diagnosis and it destroyed him before the disease could. He’d died a disgusting drunk and she felt no pity for him.

As she thought about KerriAnne’s visit, just three days ago, she sank back to the floor, cradled the crossbow and trembled.

♦

KerriAnne, adorable and charming as always, was tense and unusually pale, her baby eyes haunted. She wore gold and red silk with slanting stripes and a jade bracelet but had an unfashionable metal band around her neck which must have nearly strangled her.

Sally made tea and they sat cross-legged on the floor facing each other.

On the wall behind KerriAnne’s head was Sally’s print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. She’d bought it partly because she’d been exploring her Chinese heritage and, embarrassingly, hadn’t realized the artist was Japanese. But it also reminded her of Pearl Buck’s The Big Wave

, which she’d loved in fifth grade. In the story Jiya’s family was killed by a tsunami but he built his new house by the ocean again. In the front room he put a sliding panel so that he could see the ocean and face the big wave if it ever returned. Sally admired that.

The Great Wave made a swash above KerriAnne’s head like a Tintin curl or a rooster’s comb.

“Master of all masters, how shall I call this cup?” KerriAnne began, referring to their old joke: Sally was the old sailor from the Hans Andersen story who had a strange word for everything and KerriAnne was the serving girl who had to learn each one. They’d played that many times, little Carrie Yan and Sally, but Sally was always the Master. She was better at making up odd words and KerriAnne was better at stringing them into a mouth-busting sentence.

“That cup thou holdest is not a cup but a, um, a Gondola-Ride,” she said, smoothly reaching for the silliest name she could think of. Kerri looked into the cup, murmured “Gondola-ride,” then asked, “And how shall I call the floor on which we sit because thou art too cheap to buy furniture?”

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Sally was as easily charmed by KerriAnne as everyone was. “That is called Great-Silver-Flat my humble servant. And sitting upon it humbles the spirit, calms the soul and thy little tush art none the worse for it.”

KerriAnne pounced as soon as she saw Sally feeling the old affection. “Boss, I need a favor, bad.”

It hurt

, slamming into defensive mode again. But KerriAnne turned her 300-Watt smile and lost-kitten eyes full on Sally and said, “It’s about my guy.” Nervously, she touched the band around her neck.

But when she explained what the band was and exactly what help she needed, it was Sally whose eyes went wide.

♦

Sally climbed painfully to her feet. Not knowing why, she walked to the window where the vampires still called. They hissed louder, reached claws up to the invisible barrier. She gave them the same blank stare she’d given Bunt.

Just a simple step and she would be theirs.

She imagined the agony and ecstasy of being alive one moment and torn into shreds of flesh the next. The choice was hers: until she took that step, she was safe. Like the icy sea they writhed and rushed before her.

She reached out a fingertip to the boundary.

They went silent. The gaps between them disappeared. Vampires from other fire escapes flitted over and crowded her window two, three, maybe four deep.

But she turned and walked out of the storeroom, ignoring the screaming, yowling rage.

Thinking about KerriAnne, she stomped angrily down the corridor. Doors on either side of the poorly lit hall flowed by in a dark stream. A right turn and down another corridor along the side of the building facing Main Street. She was tempted to just smash down somebody’s door, walk into their apartment like a demon of vengeance, and get shot as a burglar. (She saw the pretty nurse, so like KerriAnne, so terrified.)

Apartment 242. This one should do. Later she would try to think if anything special had drawn her to this door. For now, she knelt with her tool kit and in five minutes was carefully turning the doorknob.

The apartment was lit only by streetlight through half-open drapes. She saw hippy knick-knacks, peace medallions, photos of a dark-haired glum-looking young woman standing in front of a VW van with her arm around a gender-indeterminate biker type who smoked a cigarette, another of a dirty-faced little dark-haired girl with a big toothy grin.

The window wasn’t swarming with vampires so she kept away from it for the moment. No use calling their attention until the last second. If this was going to work at all, she had to know exactly where she was and then move fast. From the side of the rounded table in the middle of the room she could see the well-lit street. No traffic, of course, not until dawn.

A flicker of movement caught her eye. Through the slats of the fire escape she saw the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Something moved along it which wasn’t a vampire. She walked closer to the window. Was it Bunt, hopping along like a – there it was again! She almost had it, the image of a stiff white hopping man, but again it dissolved when she tried to see it.

Frustrated, she focused on what was out there. There was only time for a glimpse before white undead flesh blocked her view and the usual hissing and pleading started. What she’d seen hadn’t made sense. A tent, walking down the street, swarmed with maggot-like vampires?

And now the vampire voices brought someone in from another room, a sleepy woman in a white nightgown, her long hair in a tangle. Sally slipped behind the partially-closed drapes and held still. She heard muttering and feet padding. A horrible thought came to her: if she pushed the woman out the window, it might distract the vampires enough for her to aim and fire. She clenched her teeth and pushed the thought away.

Suddenly the sleepy woman pulled aside the drapes and she and Sally were face to face.

Sally was, of all things, embarrassed to be facing someone she’d just thought of killing. The woman jerked back like she’d touched an electric wire.

Sally saw her mouth open, heard the suck of breath.

She slapped her hand over the stranger’s mouth, spun her around and whispered into her ear, “I’m not a burglar, I’m a Home Runner, I won’t hurt you.” The woman burned in her arms, electric, intense. She shook her head: I won’t give you away.

Tentatively, Sally released her.

Just then they both heard a scream of anguish from outside. “Whuh the fuck?” muttered the dark-haired woman. She had a husky voice and a thick Brooklyn accent. They both ran to the window, the woman taking care not to let Sally get behind her. The undead pressed so thick against the window that nothing else was visible. But Sally knew.

“One of the other Runners just lost,” she whispered.