“I am merely reminding you that this is apparently not your first time around this particular block.” He sat back, crossing his legs and arms, in the manner of a debater with supreme confidence in his side of the argument. “This is not an unusual situation for you to find yourself in.”
“Wow,” said Nora. “You really are the imbecilic bigot I always thought you would be …”
Barnes smiled, unfazed. “I think your choice is an easy one. Life in the camp or—potentially, if you play your cards right—life here. It is a choice no sane person would deliberate over very long.”
Nora felt herself smiling in disbelief, her face twisted uncomfortably. “You dirty fuck,” she said. “You are worse than a vampire, you know that? It’s not need for you, just opportunity. A power trip. Real rape would be too messy for you. You’d rather tie me up with ‘luxuries.’ You want me grateful and compliant. Appreciative for your exploitation of me. You’re a monster. I can see why you fit so well into their plans. But there are not enough plums in this house, or on this ruined planet, that would make me—”
“Perhaps a few days in a harsher environment will change your mind.” Barnes’s eyes had hardened while she was dressing him down. Now suddenly he appeared even more interested in her, as though feeding off this power disparity. “And if you do indeed choose to remain there, isolated and in the dark—which is of course your right—let me remind you of what you have to look forward to. Your blood type happens to be B positive, which, for whatever reason—taste? some vitamin-like benefit?—is most desirable to the vampire class. This means that you will be bred. Since you have entered the camp without a mate, one will be selected for you. He will also be B positive, in order to increase the chances for birthing more B-positive offspring. Someone such as myself. That can easily be arranged. Then, for the rest of your fertility life cycle, you will be either pregnant or nursing. Which has its advantages, as you may have seen. Better housing, better rations, two fruit and vegetable servings per day. Of course, if you should have any trouble conceiving, then after a reasonable amount of time, allowing for numerous attempts using a variety of fertility drugs, you will be relegated to camp labor and five-day bloodletting. After a while, if I may be completely candid, you will die.” Barnes wore a tight smile on his face. “In addition, having taken the liberty of reviewing your intake forms, ‘Ms. Rodriguez,’ I believe you were admitted to the camp with your mother.”
Nora felt the skin on the back of her neck—where she once had hair—tingling.
“You were apprehended on the subway while trying to hide her. I wonder where you two were going.”
“Where is she?” said Nora.
“Still alive, in fact. But, as you might know, due to her age and obvious infirmity, she is scheduled to be bled and then permanently retired.”
These words clouded Nora’s vision.
“Now,” said Barnes, unfolding his arms in order to select a white-chocolate truffle, “it is entirely possible she could be spared. Perhaps … this is just coming to me now, but perhaps even brought here, in a sort of semi-retirement. Given her own room, possibly a nurse. She could be well cared for.”
Nora’s hands trembled.
“So … you wanna fuck me and you wanna play house?”
Barnes bit into his treat, delighted to find sweet cream inside. “You know, this could have gone much more congenially. I tried the soft sell. I am a gentleman, Nora.”
“You are a son of a bitch. That’s what you are.”
“Ha.” He nodded in enjoyment. “Your Spanish temper, right? Feisty. Good.”
“You goddamn monster.”
“You said that, yes. Now, there is one more thing that I want you to consider. You should know that what I should have done the instant I saw you there in the detention house was identify you and turn you over to the Master. The Master would be only too pleased to learn more about Dr. Goodweather and the rest of your band of rebels. Such as their current whereabouts and the extent of their resources. Even simply where you and your mother were headed on that Manhattan subway car—or where you were coming from.” Barnes smiled and nodded. “The Master would be extremely motivated to learn such information. I can say in total confidence that I believe the Master would
enjoy your company even more than I would. And it would use your mother to get to you. No question about that. If you go back to the camp without me you will eventually be discovered. I can assure you of that, too.” Barnes stood, smoothing out the creases in his admiral’s uniform, brushing away the crumbs. “So—now you understand that you have a third option as well. A date with the Master, with eternity as a vampire.”
Nora’s gaze blurred into the middle distance. She felt lethargic, almost dizzy. She believed that this was something like what it must feel like to be bled.
“But you have a decision to mull over,” said Barnes. “I won’t keep you any longer. I know you want to get right back to the camp—to your mother, while she is still alive.” He went to the double doors, pushing them open out into the grand hallway. “Do think it over, and let me know what you decide. Time is running out …”
Unseen by him, Nora pocketed one of the butter knives at the table.
Beneath Columbia University
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HAD been, Gus knew, a big-shot school. Lots of old buildings, crazy expensive tuition, mucho security and cameras. He used to see some of the students out trying to mix with the neighborhood, some for community-minded reasons, which he never understood, and others for more illicit reasons, which he understood very well. But as for the university itself, the derelict Morningside Heights campus and all of its facilities, there was nothing much worth his time.
Now it was Gus’s base, his headquarters and his home. The Mexican gangbanger would never be made to leave his turf; indeed, he would blow it all up before allowing that to happen. As his sabotage and hunting activities dwindled in number and became more regimented, Gus started to look for a permanent base. He really needed it. It was hard to be efficient in this mad new world. Sticking it to the man became a 24/7 occupation, and one that was less and less rewarding every time. Police and fire departments, medical services, traffic surveillance—everything had been co-opted. When searching his old Harlem haunts for a place to coop, he’d connected with two of his La Mugre gangbangers and fellow saboteurs, Bruno Ramos and Joaquin Soto.
Bruno was fat—no other way to say it—fed mostly with Cheetos and beer. Joaquin was tight and lean. Groomed, tattooed, and full of ’tude. They were both brothers to Gus and they would die for him. Born ready.
Joaquin had done jail time with Gus. They’d done cell time together. Sixteen months for Gus. They’d watched each other’s back and Joaquin had done solitary for a good stretch after elbowing the teeth out of a guard, a big black guy named Raoul—what a fucked-up name for someone with no teeth: Raoul. After the vampires’ arrival—what some called the Fall—Gus had reconnected with Joaquin during the looting of an electronics store. Joaquin and Bruno helped him carry a big plasma TV and a box of video games.
Together they had taken the university and found it to be only slightly infested. Windows and doors were boarded and sealed with steel plates, the interiors razed and desecrated with ammonia waste. The students had all fled early, trying to evacuate the city and get back home. Joaquin guessed they never got very far.
What they found, in prowling around the deserted buildings, was a system of tunnels below the foundation. A book in the display case at the admissions office tipped Joaquin off to the fact that the campus had originally been erected on the grounds of a nineteenth-century insane asylum. The university architects had leveled all the existing hospital buildings except one and then built upon the existing foundations. Many of the linking tunnels were used for utilities, steam pipes generating scalding condensation, miles of electric wiring. Over time, a number of these passages had been boarded up or otherwise sealed in order to prevent injury to thrill-seeking students and urban spelunkers.
Together they had explored and claimed for themselves much of this underground network linking almost all of Columbia’s seventy-one campus buildings located between Broadway and Amsterdam on New York’s Upper West Side. Some more remote sections remained unexplored, simply because there wasn’t enough time in the day or night for hunting vampires, sowing chaos throughout Manhattan, and clearing musty tunnels.