“I won’t be using pepper spray,” Poe muttered under her breath, shoving the spray in her pocket.
Shooting would be too easy for leeches. In many ways they were worse than vampires. Humans who did the bidding of vampires, including bleeding cattle and storing blood during the day, deserved to be pistol whipped and castrated at the very least.
“What was that you said?” Sister asked, cocking her head toward Poe.
“Just saying you’re right as usual, Sister.” Poe forced a mirthless grin and concentrated on packing incendiary materials more carefully into her new pack.
She could see nothing godly about the nun at that moment. A ruler-wielding school principal, yes, but Sister Ann was no sweet, old bride of Christ.
Goss gave her a “be patient” squeeze on the shoulder, which lightened Poe’s mood ever so slightly, but she was still sore at them. Her extremely tall friend could always be counted on to douse water onto heated moments.
“Now, Sister,” he began in a very eloquent TV
commercial voice. “Remember that it will be Poe’s 22nd birthday a few hours from now.”
20
Rono/That Which Bites
“Hmph,” was Sister Ann’s only reply. The smile that transformed her heavily lined face belied her grumpy pretense.
It had been nearly eight years since she had met Sister Ann and Goss who slowly coaxed her out of her safe underground world of cinematic fiction. Poe had already known how to read, write with both hands, view movies “borrowed” from the Black Yella Bruthas video store two buildings down, play video games, and forage for food during the day. Of course, she also knew a handful of Japanese, Spanish, and Tagalog words she had learned long ago from her irascible cousins who were probably all dead. And yes, she was good at hiding. Burrowing like an animal was how she survived without her parents all those years Goss and the Catholic nun introduced her to the life of vampire killing and cattle running. These activities gave her a smidgen of self-worth and fired up a palpable desire to seek revenge for all the years alone underground – with nothing but the replay of her parents’ and siblings’ deaths for company. The nun had to teach her to handle guns, distinguish between flashbang and fragmentation grenades, make bullets and bombs, and understand the evils of nudie films.
Rounding off her education, Goss had brought some proper jujitsu, tae kwon do, jeet kune do and a dollop of other no-holds-barred martial arts DVDs to learn from. The training was hard going since her bunker had limited space from wall-to-wall stacks of movies, books, toys, dead chia pets, and magazines.
Having had no sparring partners to practice difficult maneuvers with didn’t help either.
Goss, who was a tree compared to Poe and most everyone for that matter, was of no use as a partner as he could just sit there like Kareem and kick out his long legs at her stunted ass. Fortunately she had a sharp 21
Rono/That Which Bites
mind, keen imagination, and was a quick learner. Her senses were quick and shooting skills honed, all from years of playing video games. If Sister Ann and Goss hadn’t come along when they did, Poe believed that she would have lost the ability to speak as well as the will to live.
(((
Her mind often revisited what happened the first hours when the world became a cesspool of vampires.
Shortly after watching her brother and sister’s insides turn to mush outside the Museum of Neon Art atrium, puss oozing out of every orifice as they suffered morbid deaths, Poe had to endure her parents’ screams as they tried, futilely, to fend off a gang of starved, newly turned vampires. What a time to find out she was immune to the poison in the air.
“Run, Julia, run!” her mother shouted while overzealous bloodsuckers tapped every artery.
Hiding behind a deformed, glowing metal slab that had once been referred to as an acclaimed plug-it-in sculpture, Poe was far too small and unappetizing to be of interest to the sated undead as they tore her parents apart. Perhaps a lingering paroxysm of guilt kept them from making her into an after-dinner mint.
She ran and kept on running while the unfortunate folks around her convulsed their last breaths.
Theories abounded about what the Gray Armageddon could have been: The last world war.
Germ warfare gone awry. Alien crafts unloading their septic tanks. Who knew? The point was, nobody cared anymore. The survivors of the poison were too busy trying to fight off anemia from their