3: Race the Sun
“Grandpa.”
Hubert looked up from the computer to see Terry leaning in the doorway. As she always did when on duty, she’d made an effort to look younger than she was; her complicated braid and garish makeup were in fashion with the younger teens these days, and combined with her slightly-too-large Children’s Militia uniform and the impatience in her bearing as she leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, she looked closer to fifteen than her actual seventeen years. Older members of the Militia often did that, tried to make themselves look as young as possible. Hubert had never really been sure why. They retired at eighteen regardless, and the uniform alone was enough to broadcast their age to the vampires.
He glanced out the window, at the sun dipping towards the horizon. “It’s that late already?”
“It’s winter. Let’s get you home, unless you want to spend the night bunked down in this office?”
“It’d certainly help with the workload,” Hubert grumbled, switching the computer off. Numbers and maps seemed to linger behind his eyes regardless, after hours and hours of analysing blackwater contamination over the different farms in the area. The Eastern winds had brought cleaner rain with them, resulting in less contamination in the open farms all along the East coast, which was a relief but also somewhat of a surprise; the meteorological predictions had expected higher contamination from off the coast and nobody was entirely sure where the lower levels came from. It might be some unexpected change in ocean currents bringing cleaner seawater through, or the nearby islands might have experienced better-than-expected decontamination results… it was all somewhat of a mystery, if a happy one.
Or it might mean that there was something wrong with their monitoring equipment. That’s what Hubert’s boss had thought was the most likely scenario, and that was why he was in late doing a whole lot of the data analysis she normally did while she went out to physically check and verify every rainfall and groundwater monitor herself.
“Penelope still out?” Terry asked as Hubert shouldered his bag.
“It’ll take another day or so for her to get back. There’s been a rail delay and she’s insisting on checking the far Western monitoring stations too, even though we’ve gotten nothing surprising from them.”
“Very thorough. Like someone else I know.”
“Hey, you’re the one being so by-the-book about curfew.”
“I don’t want my beloved grandpa to be sucked dry by a rogue vampire.”
Hubert rolled his eyes, but followed her out of the building. Rogue vampires were extremely uncommon in Lakeview City; the Scarlet City below them was always very careful about that. They monitored who was allowed out and how often, and anyone who caused too much trouble for the humans was simply denied passage out again until they learned to behave themselves. The relationship between Lakeview and Scarlet was both stable and friendly, or as stable and friendly as a relationship between vampire and human cities could be. Hubert had heard of other places that were somewhat less stable; areas where vampires ran rampant and gorged themselves on humans whenever they wanted, areas where humans imprisoned vampires in huge underground factory farms where they had no freedom, no entertainment and no contact with anyone except the vampire next to them. Both systems tended to collapse, one way or another, as soon as the exploited party managed to luck into some opportunity to fight back. Lakeview and Scarlet had found stability in compromise.
Which was why there wasn’t a very large chance of Hubert getting into trouble should he walk home alone after dark. But there was some chance, since some vampires would probably be out and about. And which was why they had the Children’s Militia, to keep everyone safe.
Hubert both lived and worked in the inner city, an area that was practically dead once the sun went down. People who wanted a night life went to the bars and clubs on the edges of the city, scandalous places that carried the thrill of a vampire encounter, or met their friends inside diversion-rich hotels that vampire-proofed themselves by the simple method of locking down between sunset and sunrise – you arrived in the sun and you didn’t leave until it was sunny again. Hubert had never been a fan of either, even in his youth, and at seventy, the main thing he wanted to do when the sun went down was go to sleep.
There were other Children’s Militia members out early, ferrying various older relatives home or attending to errands before they officially went on duty. Terry nodded to a couple of little girls, maybe about ten years old, looking all serious and businesslike in their fairly new uniforms, and gave a shy wave to a passing boy about her age who gave her a smile. Hubert clamped down on the natural instinct to enquire about his granddaughter’s romantic life and concentrated on keeping pace with her. Even when consciously slowing down out of consideration for her grandfather, there was a vitality and impatience to Terry’s strides that kept her walking a little bit faster than she probably thought she was walking. Terry, Hubert knew, loved the Militia, and he often wondered what she would do with her life after retirement. He was worried that she might stay in the same general line of work and become a cop. The last thing he wanted was for any granddaughter of his to be a cop.
His apartment building wasn’t far from the office. Few people lived far from work in Lakeview. He scanned his access card and the building door unlocked without issue; the nighttime high security protocols hadn’t kicked in yet. “When’s your shift start?”
“In ninety minutes.”
“Time for a cup of tea with your old grandpa, then.”
Terry hesitated, a token protest, but followed him inside. Hubert knew she would. Terry could always be bribed with a good cup of tea, and Hubert, being so senior in such a critical career, had a pretty sizeable luxury allowance that meant he always had some in the house. Within minutes, his kettle was on and his granddaughter collecting cups.
Hubert’s watch beeped. Work message. He ignored it. Nothing so time critical happened in contamination monitoring that it couldn’t wait until work hours. He poured the water – clean, uncontaminated city water, which most of the city’s residents probably never thought about, not spending their days looking at contamination reports – and waited for the tea to steep.
“You ever been outside of Lakeview, Terry?”
Terry blinked. “Not recently? We went on a field trip in primary school, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. The day you were almost rained on.” The school had gotten into a lot of trouble over that, even though the weather forecast had been clear. Hubert thought they’d overreacted. City folk tended to treat rain as a deadly force, but plenty of people lived their whole lives outside the city just fine. Well, not completely fine; the life expectancy out there was below fifty, a result of the slow buildup of blackwater contamination in the body over time. But a single rainshower wouldn’t have hurt the kids.
“They’re quite beautiful, you know. The farms and villages. The wind and water is unpredictable out there, and they have the space to just grow things in a single layer in the dirt, no stacked hydroponics.”
“We didn’t go out that far. We just went to the solar farms. I do remember the wind. Wasn’t a fan.” She sipped her tea. “You’re worried about your boss.”
“Penelope can look after herself. What makes you think I’m worried?”
“Why else all this talk about the outskirts? She’s getting old. If there is some kind of contamination surge and she ends up in it…”
“Hey! She’s my age!”
“Like I said. Old.”
Hubert sighed. “She would’ve taken water with her. But she should’ve sent one of the youngsters out. I’ll never understand that woman’s need to put her own eyes on everything all the time.”
“She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Hubert sipped his own tea. “And then she can finish the work you dragged me away from.”
“You work too hard. You should retire.”
Hubert chuckled. “And give up my luxury credits? How would I bribe you with tea then?”
Terry couldn’t stay long, and was soon saying goodbye and heading off on patrol. Hubert watched her go. She was a good kid, and in a couple of years, she wouldn’t be a kid any more. That was frightening. Kids sometimes didn’t take well to losing the freedom of the night as they grew, and more than one twenty-something rebelling against curfew and collecting in the nightclubs had met an unpleasant end.
It was tolerated, was the thing. There was some level of flexibility in the relations between Lakeview and Scarlet, a certain lenience where vampires could visit the city above with the permission of their own city, and a certain level of ‘hunting’ for blood and new recruits involved. It wasn’t officially condoned, but new vampires had to come from somewhere, and relying entirely on the blood donations that made up the bulk of a vampire’s diet with no free range hunting of their own was not considered psychologically or diplomatically acceptable by the Scarlet City. Turning a blind eye to a small, token level of hunting was the long-standing compromise, with the understanding that Scarlet would limit the number of vampires leaving and keep the behaviour of their people in check. And that meant that there needed to be humans for the vampires to interact with, so the nighttime gathering places were never officially banned and everyone turned a blind eye to the more reckless Lakeview citizens who chose to visit them in defiance of curfew. Problems were rare and deaths accidental; most of the losses came in the form of humans becoming vampires. But accidents could happen, and Hubert had to admit that he didn’t think becoming a vampire was a tragedy in itself.
Children were safe. Vampires didn’t touch anyone under the age of nineteen. It wasn’t a morality thing; there had been vampire serial killers in the past, and they never laid finger or fang on anyone below nineteen. A few six-year-olds could subdue the more vicious vampire without a weapon, because no vampire would hurt them; if given the option, they tended to ignore children entirely. It was a chore and a half for a child to just get a vampire to acknowledge them enough to hold a conversation.
It wasn’t just a Scarlet City norm, either; it was some sort of psychological block, universal to vampires the world over, and nobody knew why. But it meant that the children were safe after dark and the adults were not, and young adults, reckless and chafing at their sudden loss of accustomed freedoms, were at the highest risk of all.
Terry would be fine, though. She was a good kid. She was clever, sensible, principled. Hubert told himself that he didn’t need to worry so much. Nobody was in danger.
His watch beeped – another work message. He could take just a peek, and deal with it properly at work tomorrow.
The first message was from Penelope. The rail delay had cleared up and she’d taken an early train back into the city. Good; that’d reduce his workload. Most of the message was about some rumour that the lower contamination in the East was due to some revolutionary new decontamination method, which he didn’t bother to read; rumours like that cropped up every time there was an unexpected fluctuation. In the thousand-plus years since the Outsiders had left, only one method of decontaminating the blackwater had been discovered, and that was vampires. Every so often there was some rumour about a new water treatment technique that would rid humanity of their dependence on the vampires, or a new lab-grown blood cell generation technique that would rid vampires of their dependence on humans, and surely war and chaos would follow, et cetera, et cetera. It never panned out.
The second message, the one he’d just received, had been sent through his work account but was, curiously, from the Lakeview police. Had they turned up something illegal in an audit? Why would they tell him about it, instead of Penelope? He skimmed the message.
Then he sat down, quickly, before he could fall over, and read it again, more thoroughly.
They wanted him to go and identify a body.
Penelope had been found dead at the train station.
Derin Edala 