Scott Westerfeld - Peeps

But what now?

I gazed out onto the river. On either side of me, the timbers of abandoned piers rose up from the water like rotting black teeth. More pieces of my memory were falling into place, like a blurry picture downloading in waves, gradually becoming clearer.

Then I saw the dark hulk of a building across the Hudson, its three giant maws open to the river. The Hoboken Ferry Terminal. Without knowing it, I’d had a glimpse of my future that night a year before.

My peep-strength eyes caught a flicker of lights in its second-story windows. Dr. Rat was still up there, probably with a dozen or so of her colleagues from Research and Development, studying the nesting habits of Sarah’s brood. Weighing and measuring poisoned alpha rats and punks. Maybe looking for a rare “rat king”—a bunch of rats with tangled-up tails who travel in a pack all tied together, like dogs being walked by a professional dog walker, ten leashes in hand.

With Sarah gone, her brood would be disintegrating over the next few days, scattering into nearby alleys and sewers like runoff from an autumn storm. I wondered if the rats would miss her. Did they get something more than leftovers from their peeps? A sense of belonging?

The thought of all those orphaned creatures depressed me, and I turned back toward Manhattan.

My heart drunkenly skipped a beat.

Before me, just across the highway, a razor-thin high-rise stood.

Buildings get their personality from their windows, just like people express themselves with their eyes. This building had a schizophrenic look. Its lower floors were cluttered with tiny balconies, but along the top floor stretched floor-to-ceiling windows, wide open with surprise. I remembered Morgan pointing the building out to me, giggling and squeezing my hand…

“That’s where I live!” she’d said, thus marking the exact moment when I had been absolutely positive I was going to get laid.

How the hell does anyone forget a moment like that ? I wondered.

Shaking my head in amazement, I stumbled back up the pier.

The first trick was getting in.

Funny. I hadn’t remotely remembered that Morgan lived in a luxury building: river views and duplex penthouses, a lobby encased in marble and brass, the uniformed doorman watching six TV monitors.

Give a boy the loss of his virginity and much else is forgotten.

I watched from across the street, hiding behind a cluster of newspaper boxes, waiting for just the right bunch of residents to follow through the door—my age or so, a little bit drunk, and enough of them for me to follow along unnoticed.

Of course, if I was really lucky I’d see Morgan herself. But what was I going to say to her? Hey, do you know you’re carrying vampirism? What’s up with that ?

The minutes passed slowly, the night growing steadily colder. The wind roaring off the river stopped being invigorating and veered over into cruel. My Bahamalama-Dingdong buzz began to wear off, and soon my system started demanding more blood sugar. It occurred to me that the only solid food I’d had for dinner was seven frozen bananas, not enough for my voracious parasites.

Bad host. Hungry parasites can provoke crazy behavior.

Worst of all, I felt like I was being the stalker now, stuck between anathema and obsession.

Just after midnight, I spotted my ticket inside.

They were three girls and two guys, college-aged, dressed for a night out. They shouted jokes at one another, their voices still pitched for whatever loud bar they had spent the evening in.

I left my cover and started across the street, timing my move to reach the outer door just as they did.

They hardly noticed me, still arguing about what kind of pizza to order. “Lots of cheese. Hangover helper,” one guy was saying. The others laughed and voted their way to a split ticket of two large—one mushroom and one pepperoni, both with extra cheese. Sounded pretty good to me, after all those drinks. As we approached the door, I tried to look interested in the conversation while hanging at the back of the pack.

Through the glass, the doorman looked up with a smile of weary and indulgent recognition, and the inner door buzzed as one of the women reached for its handle. Warm air rushed over us, and I was inside.

As we crossed the lobby toward the elevators together, the woman who’d opened the door glanced back at me. A questioning look troubled her expression. I returned her gaze blankly. With four friends around her, she shouldn’t be so nervous about a stranger, but sometimes normal humans get a weird feeling from us predator types.

Of course, I was getting a weird feeling about her too.

She wore a leather jacket over a short plaid dress that left her knees bare to the cold. Her hair lay across her forehead in a jet-black fringe that had grown out too long, ending just above her dark brown eyes. It took me a moment to realize that in the days before I lusted after all women all the time, this girl would have been my type.

She kept watching me as her friends prattled on, her expression more thoughtful than suspicious. When she ran her tongue between her lips in a distracted way, a little shudder went through me, and I tore my eyes away.

Bad carrier , I scolded myself, snapping a mental rubber band against my wrist.

The elevator dinged and opened, and the six of us crowded inside. I tucked myself into the corner. The pizza consensus had become unglued, and everyone besides the girl in the leather jacket was arguing again, the reflected sound from the shiny steel walls sharpening their voices.

Then a smell reached me—jasmine shampoo. I glanced up and saw the girl pushing her fingers through her hair. Somehow, the fragrance cut through the cigarette smoke clinging to their clothes, the alcohol on their breath; it carried her human scent to my nose—the smell of her skin, the natural oils on her fingers.

I shuddered again.

She pressed seven, glanced at me. “What floor?”

I stared at the controls. The array of buttons covered one through fifteen (without the thirteen), in three columns. I tried to imagine Morgan’s hand reaching out and pressing one of them, but my mind was in turmoil over the smell of jasmine.

The Bahamalama-Dingdong memory injection had finally let me down.

“Any particular floor?” she said slowly.

“Um, I uh…” I managed, my voice dry. “Do you know Morgan?”

She froze, one finger still hovering near the buttons, and the rest of them fell into a sudden silence. They all stared at me.

The elevator meeped away a couple of floors.

“Morgan on the seventh floor?” she said.

“Yeah … I think so,” I answered. How many Morgans could there be in one building?

“Hey, isn’t that the—?” one of the boys asked, but the other three shushed him.

“She moved out last winter,” leather-jacket girl said, her voice controlled and flat.

“Oh, wow. It’s been a while, I guess.” I lit up a big fake smile. “You don’t know where she lives now, do you?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not a clue.”

The elevator slid open on the seventh floor. The doors stirred the air, and I caught something under the cigarettes and alcohol on their breath, an animal smell that cut through even the jasmine. For a moment, I smelled fear.

Morgan’s name had scared them.

The other four piled out efficiently, still in silence, but leather-jacket girl held her ground, one fingertip squashed white against the Open Door button. She was staring at me like I was someone she half recognized, thinking hard. Maybe she was trying to figure out why I set her prey hackles on fire.

I wanted to drop my eyes to the floor, sending a classic signal from Mammal Behavior 101 I don’t want to fight you . Humans can be touchy when they feel threatened by us, and I didn’t want her telling the doorman I had snuck in behind them.