Once a person was bitten, symptoms appeared within twelve to forty-eight hours. Sometimes people were rescued before a bite could be completed and experienced minor symptoms, but didn’t actually go Cold.
A very small number of people had immune systems able to fight off the infection. Ms. Baez told the story of an Indonesian bounty hunter who’d been bitten on eight occasions, and even though his skin was mottled by scars from the attacks, he didn’t get infected. He swore by the cocktail of snake blood mixed with a drop of infected human blood and plenty of arrack that he drank each morning—his recipe for staving off infection. He considered himself immune until he was bitten for the ninth time and succumbed to Cold, turning soon after.
Pearl noticed Tana rubbing her arm, where Mom had hurt her. She had a big scar that sometimes she hid and other times she showed off, as though she was daring people to ask her about it. Grandma and Grandpa had taken Pearl aside years ago and told her that Tana was going to be messed up in the head because of Mom and that Pearl was going to have to watch out for her. Pearl wasn’t sure what that meant except for times like right then, when she leaned over, took Tana’s hand, and squeezed.
Tana squeezed back.
What Grandma and Grandpa didn’t understand was that Tana wasn’t messed up because of Mom, she was messed up because of Dad. If Dad had just given Mom some blood, instead of locking her up, none of the bad stuff would have happened. Mom wouldn’t be dead and Tana wouldn’t be scarred and no one would be sad. Maybe they’d all live in Coldtown now, or maybe they would have emigrated to Amsterdam or something, where it was still illegal to be a vampire, but no one cared.
“It can happen very fast,” Ms. Baez was saying. “Even before the symptoms appear, the vampire blood is preparing the body for turning—so once that person drinks human blood, they’re going to become a vampire. It takes less than an hour to die and as soon as fifteen minutes they can be back up again, with new teeth, denser muscles, and that newborn vampire hunger.
“Uses up a lot of energy to change the way they do, so until they feed, they’re not going to be able to control themselves too well. You got to stay away from the newly turned, no matter how well you knew them in life.”
Ms. Baez walked to the edge of the stage. “How about a fun exercise? I am going to teach you a big word. Does anyone know what an apotropaic is?”
Pearl didn’t, but some boy called out that it was stuff vampires didn’t like.
Wild roses. Garlic, called “the stinking rose.” Holy symbols. Running water. Hawthorn. Pearl knew all those already; Hemlok explained about them on his bounty-hunting show. According to Ms. Baez, though, some of them didn’t work. She’d used a holy symbol twice while she was in Coldtown and neither time did it have any effect.
“I bet they won’t let her talk about all the creepy stuff,” Pauline said under her breath. “All the people drinking animal blood to stay human, even drinking their own blood. People staying drunk for months to reduce the hunger.”
“Is that true?” Pearl whispered back. “Does it work?”
Tana shrugged.
“People even drink vampire blood, if they can get it,” Pauline went on, low-voiced, talking as though she were telling a ghost story. “They say a couple of the bounty hunters in Europe are pretty much addicted to the stuff. But you don’t get better—you just don’t get worse. It’s like resetting the infection from day one.”
“Time for questions,” Ms. Baez said from the stage. “I can’t promise I have all the answers, but I’ll be as honest as I can.”
“Why don’t they just let people out of Coldtown if they want to go?” a girl asked. “If they’re not infected, what’s the difference?”
“Money,” Ms. Baez said. “It costs the government a lot of money to run Coldtowns and a lot of money to test people for release. That money has to come from somewhere, so it comes from the budget for bounty hunters. Plus, the government doesn’t want all the people to get out. If they did, what would the vampires eat? Each other? The quarantine would break down.”
“Look at Principal Wong,” Pauline whispered to Pearl. “She almost blew a gasket at that answer.”
“Aren’t you mad you were stuck there?” one of the boys asked.
Ms. Baez shrugged. “I left mad behind a long time ago. The world is the way it is. I can only fix my little piece of it. And I choose to do that by telling kids the facts, so they don’t believe everything they hear on the Internet.”
A pulse of laughter rose up from the teachers at that.
Tana stuck up her hand suddenly. Pearl’s heart started to thud, afraid of what she was going to say.
“Yes?” asked Ms. Baez, pointing to her.
Tana stood up. “Can’t they drink each other’s blood?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, if all the humans were dead or if they ate everyone in every Coldtown and they couldn’t get out, what would happen?”