Vampire Miami by Philip Tucker Page A

a fact that
Angelo won’t wait. You ready?”
    “Yeah,” said Selah, getting up. She felt dizzy
suddenly, and tripped on something. Maria Elena steadied her. “I’m
good,” said Selah. “Just tired.”
    “ No te preocupes . Let’s get you home.
Come on.” So they walked back, Maria Elena’s arm around Selah’s
waist, along the sidewalks, through the sparse crowds, back down
Lincoln and then out to where the car was parked, and where it
turned out that Angelo was waiting for them after all.

Chapter Seven

    Selah and Maria Elena arrived back at the
Palisades at around five in the morning, just as the eastern sky
was beginning to lighten. The guys dropped them off, and Maria
Elena led her to an abandoned shack where she always hid while she
waited, checking it out with her gun drawn. When she decided it was
clear, they sat down, heads resting against the wall and Maria
Elena told Selah about a small place that had once stood just two
blocks away that had sold the best cortaditos , or little
Cuban coffees. The trick, Selah was told, was adding plenty of
sugar. As Maria Elena spoke tiredly but with nostalgic enthusiasm
for the croquetas and empanadas and the crotchety old
men who’d sit on Calle Ocho playing dominoes, Selah sensed how her
friend used to love this city. Perhaps loved it still.
    They had an hour to kill, and Maria Elena spoke
fondly of the illegal bonfire parties she’d once gone to on the
beaches of Key Biscayne, of friends long gone, people Selah
should’ve met, would’ve loved. She even spoke of the old corruption
with a certain wry fondness, recounting outrageous stories of graft
and money laundering, vote robbery, and outright bribery. An old,
bad, wonderful Miami that she’d known and understood. A city of
human excess and vanity that’d made sense to her, that’d been hers
and that she’d been a part of.
    The sun rose slowly, and Maria Elena began to
ask her about the outside world. What life was like in New York,
what people thought of Miami, what high school was like. Explaining
to Maria Elena about her old life, Selah found that her new friend
already knew it all from watching old movies and going online—it
was just that she didn’t seem to quite believe it was real. That
everybody owned their own car, went to restaurants, or that
electricity was readily available everywhere.
    Not that life had ever returned to normal after
the War; it had simply changed, adjusted. People tended to avoid
going out alone at night, even though it was now safe. Everybody
was fascinated with the vampires, and the media constantly focused
on them. President Lynnfield had extended Martial Law and refused
to allow Congress and the Senate to convene. There were a lot of
civil protests, but they always resulted in mass arrests and the
riot police moving in.
    Maria Elena didn’t care about the politics, the
big picture. She was greedy for descriptions of football games, of
what it was like to hang out in the food court, go shopping for
clothes. Selah indulged her, laughing as her friend tried to
imagine what it was like to sit bored in class or take a hot shower
every morning.
    Eventually they dozed, and Selah came in and out
of consciousness. There was a great palm tree on the street corner,
and it was infested with birds that twittered and cried out to each
other with great vigor and stridency. Parrots, Maria Elena informed
her. Selah looked up at the mess of fronds through the window from
where she sat, marveling, trying to see a colored feather, but
failed to make out a single bird.
    The darkness lifted by gradual degrees, dawn
stealing across the streets as lightly as the finest Brooklyn cat
burglar. Restless, Selah stood and moved to the empty window. She
watched as ruined cars slowly changed from shadowy hulks into
defined objects with shattered windows, faded paint and flat tires.
Past a chain-link fence that ran along the far side of the train
tracks, tucked behind a two-story warehouse. A huge mural