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A scuffling announced the descent of the wall straddler, a thud his landing. The boys spread out and converged on Simon. He rose slowly from his perch, muscles tightened. The boys advanced.
“Where you from?”
“You ain’t from here.”
“Nobody here knows you.”
“Yeah,” spoke the wall climber. “And if nobody knows you, you ain’t nobody.” He giggled, a high-pitched, nervous sound, and wiped his hands against a ragged Ozzie Osbourne T-shirt.
Nobody. Even this scum called him nobody. Simon stepped toward the danger, into their net. They’d caught shark this time. He smiled.
“Pretty tough, huh?” said the big one mockingly.
The boy with the leather jacket settled his bottle into the crotch of two bricks. “Pretty stupid, you mean.” He tossed his knife from hand to hand. “You a retard or somethin’?”
“Yeah. He’s too dumb to be scared.”
Simon turned his back on the third boy, the one who had said that. He was a sheep. The big one was a bully, but the leather-clad one was trouble. He was crazy. He didn’t smoke weed, he smoked green. Simon could smell it on him. It reeked like burning plastic and it killed the brain. It made people think they couldn’t die.
“This is our playground, buddy.”
“Yeah, wanna play?”
Simon finally spoke. “Is that what you said to your mother last night?”
“Son of a …” The big one charged him, swinging meaty fists.
Simon stepped aside, quick as thought. The boy stumbled, looked confused, then turned like an angry bear to attack again. Simon stepped aside once more. His opponent breathed heavily. Simon smiled. Get the biggest one, and the rest often run. But he kept the crazy one in his sight all the same. You didn’t know about dusters.
They danced a lopsided waltz on the waste ground, and the big youth’s fury grew and grew. Then Simon stood still. The boy grabbed. He expected to miss but, to his surprise, found that the quarry was his. He panted and grinned. He had Simon’s arm in a crushing hold, as he prepared a blow. And Simon, who didn’t come up to his chin, clutched the boy’s belt with his free hand and lifted him into the air. The boy waved his arms like an insect and gurgled with fear. The boy in the jacket spat an oath but was frozen, enthralled. The other boy trembled but couldn’t move either. Simon threw his opponent then, an impossible distance. The boy sailed the air for a moment, then crashed in a pile of debris. The sound broke the spell, and Simon heard the third boy run.
But the boy with the knife laughed. He slinked forward, steel flickering in the streetlight. He had seen a fight or two, Simon surmised, but probably won through sheer viciousness, not skill. Best to deal with him as a cat does a rat—no play, snap it fast.
The boy was expecting another dance, not for his victim to walk right up to him. He hesitated a second, confronted with craziness greater than his, then he saw something in Simon’s eyes that made him lunge. He slashed wildly in fear, but too late. His knife went flying. His arm, captured for a moment, went limp, and searing, and useless. He backed away.
It was Simon’s turn to laugh; a sound dark and cursed. The blow he landed snapped the boy back and smashed him against the car. The boy started to slide to the ground, but slim white hands reached for him delicately and slammed him once more against the car. The third blow rendered him unconscious and flooded Simon with the sweet warm pleasure of the kill.
“Call me nobody?” he whispered, and his fangs slid from their sheaths. “Call me nobody?” he screamed as if in pain. He hoisted his victim up and tore the boy’s wrist open with a savage scissoring of teeth. He raised the boy’s arm and, with the pulsing blood, wrote wavering letters on the dingy primer of the car’s roof, I AM.
The dark, raw smell of blood intoxicated. He found himself embracing the boy and pulling the damaged wrist up to his mouth. Faintly, somewhere, he felt disgust. A distant echo cried for him to stop. But the blood call was too strong. He had almost placed a reverent kiss upon the hand when sirens screamed too close.
He pushed the limp body from him, but it seemed to cling. For a moment he felt trapped. Then it slid to the ground. But in the midst of panic a perverse whim took hold. He began to strip the jacket from the huddled form, struggling with the boy’s inert bulk, bloodying the lining, ripping a seam until it pulled free. Black and glittering, he had his prize. He clutched it to him, leaving its owner his life.
Then he was running. He fled past his first assailant, now staring with white-faced rictus fear, through the rubble of lost homes, out into the night, on and on through the streets, until he arrived in the quiet yard of a house with a dark green door.
He wrapped the bloodstained jacket about his shoulders and sank down beneath an azalea bush. He stared at her window until dawn.
5
Zoë
Zoë froze in the doorway, her clenched fist to her mouth. Her teeth dug into her knuckles. Anne Sutcliff sprawled over the side of the chaotic hospital bed. Her shoulders heaved. The sounds were unmistakable.
“Dad.” Zoë turned and clutched her father’s arm. “She’s throwing up.” The disrupted IV regulator beeped furiously.
Mom’s friend Carol, who’d come with them, squeezed Zoë’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, hon. I’ll get a nurse.”
Zoë’s father pushed by her and raced the few strides that took him to his wife’s side. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right.” He smoothed back the hair from her face rhythmically.
