“Nothing, it’s just not something I think about too often. Life expectancy is not very long for us right now. The drug wars are taking their toll.”
Atl had always known what her life would be like. Mostly it would consist of supporting her older sister. At one point she’d marry, likely one of her second cousins. Izel had spoken about Javier, who was a year her senior. But that milestone was still far off; their mother had said any planning in this regard was premature. Her sister had been pushing it, though. She had been worried about the stability of their position in Sinaloa, and she said maybe Atl could wed and head to Encinas, their home in Baja California.
At the time Atl had felt it was a way for Izel to punish her. She realized now it was an attempt to protect her.
She’d never see Encinas, or what remained of her family. If some remained.
A dog and a human companion, that’s what Atl had. Not much.
“Sorry,” Domingo said.
“No, it is what it is. It’s life. It’s a better life than many other people have,” Atl said as she looked to the train doors and shook her head because there was no point in crying over these things.
The doors of the subway car opened. The peanut vendor got off and more people climbed on. The car was getting fuller now, but it wasn’t rush hour yet. A man with a guitar boarded last and began strumming the instrument, singing a popular ditty. A corrido. She stared at a girl wearing a bracelet made of yellow beads, counting the beads in her head. This compulsion to count things was common of several vampire subspecies, an anxiety-reducing behavior that could assist the vampire in coping with the loud noises, sounds, or smells around them. It got worse when she was tired, the need to count. It wasn’t a good sign.
“… Atl?”
“Yes,” she whispered, trying to pull herself back and focus on him.
“It’s two more stops. Hey, are you okay? You seem a bit weird.” Domingo said, frowning.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
“Your hands are trembling.”
So they were. Atl clutched one hand with the other. The emptiness in her stomach was increasing, the ache of the hunger building. She should have brought sugar cubes. They helped take her mind off the hunger. The lack of blood lowered her glucose levels, driving her close to what humans called hypoglycemia.
She was starting to lose her shit. Just like in Guadalajara. She’d faced off with Godoy’s men, managing to escape, though suffering a few scrapes. She ran. She jumped a barbed-wire fence to land on an abandoned property where a hobo was sleeping under a few newspapers. He wasn’t young. He was an old guy, his face wrinkled. But she had been hungry … and she’d attacked him. Ripping his throat open with her talons. A few minutes later she had puked the blood out, a sticky, dark, smelly mess that had splattered over the ground.
She had barely managed to drag herself back to her hiding place, back to Cualli. And then she’d gotten lucky. Because a girl was walking back home from a party as the sun edged the sky, dawn announcing itself.
And she’d fed. She’d fed well.
She couldn’t do that shit in Mexico City. It had been sloppy. Stupid killings, the bodies like markers pointing to her location in neon. No honor in it, either. Just fury and hunger.
“You don’t have gum, do you?” Atl asked.
Domingo patted his clothes and handed her a pink strip of bubble gum.
“Do you want something else? Do you need us to step down and go to a bathroom?”
“No,” Atl said. “I just need this.”
Focus. It wasn’t really that bad. It’s just that she was a pussy who had never worked for a meal, never spent a day—never mind several—eating but her fill, never mind hungry. At a biological level, though, she could take it. Her body could take it. Psychologically? It was getting weird.
Though that was perhaps not that uncommon. Atl had never expected to be in this position, half-starving, hiding in Mexico City.
The subway car moved jerkily and she clasped his shoulder, steadying herself, glad he was with her.
Aw, come on, her sister said. Are you going to faint in his arms?
“How’d you end up collecting garbage?” she asked him. There were definitely some psychological issues at this point and she didn’t want to dwell on them.
“I just kind of fell into it. When I left home I wandered around the city and met a group of kids living on the street. They washed car windows at the stoplights or sold candy to people on the street.”