Page 8 of Heathens

Makeup and perfume are hot commodities these days, given production is effectively non-existent, at least in Santa Cruz. I give a vamp some extra blood, or an enterprising human a stack of cash, and they give me a few tubes of lipstick and some powder. Sometimes I wonder if things are as fucked in the other cities.

As I’m dragging the eyeliner across my lid to make a wing, a knock on the door makes me jump out of my skin.

“Shit!”

Close to five years of disease, famine, and spending practically every night in hiding made me more than a little nervous. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t dream of dying, each time in some increasingly horrific way.

Luckily, when I gather my nerves to look up, all that’s in the doorway is my business partner, Ruby. She’s pulled her long dark hair into a high ponytail, and she’s sporting a black spandex dress that’s so short I can see her underwear from this angle.

The sluttier we dress, the more the vamps like it. Sure, the world’s practically come to an end, but some things never change.

“Sofie, you’ve got to loosen up. You look like a mess!” She laughs.

“And you’ve gotta learn to knock quieter.”

“Yeah, sure, it’s my fault you’re so on-edge knocking on a door gives you a heart attack.”

I flip her off and she cackles, sauntering toward me as I pick up the eyeliner pen and finish my wing.

“You need me out there? Another fight?”

“Nah. We’re fine on that front. But wearealmost out of A negative. O negative, too.”

“Again?” I sigh. “We opened like two hours ago.”

“That last batch you got is popular. I don’t know what’s different, but they’re going fucking crazy over it. Greg tried to suck it off of my goddamn fingers.”

She shudders and I follow suit. Some of them are disgusting enough to make the money seem less enticing.

“Well, there should be more in the fridge in the back. We always have extra stock.”

Ruby shakes her head.

“Checked it. Nothing.”

“Basement?” I ask with a wince, already knowing the answer.

“Gone,” she replies, reaching into my desk drawer and pulling out a pile of papers to get at the pack of cigarettes she knows I’m hiding.

She drops the papers on my desk as she lights up a smoke. I glance down at them, and can’t help but feel nostalgic. My dissertation, abandoned before I could even get started on it. Sometimes I still rifle through it and wonder what I could have been if everything hadn’t come crashing down around us. Usually I just hide shit underneath it.

Ruby takes a drag, a look of calm rolling across her face. I wouldn’t have survived any of this without her. She’s like liquid sunshine, or she would be if sunshine had the foulest mouth on earth. She’s sweet with customers, but she’s got the kind of bite that lets people know not to fuck with her. Hell, just last week I saw her shove a gun down a vamp’s throat. No mercy.

“Hey, save some for me, you leech.”

She strikes a playful pose, lazily gesturing with the cigarette in her hand.

“You know, Sof, you shouldn’t smoke so much. It’s bad for your health.”

“Says the asthmatic. Gimme that.”

I make a quick grab for it, but she easily steps aside.

“Fuck you!” She laughs, her dark blue eyes shining in the low light. “I’m stressed out, this is my therapy!”

“The blood problem? Can’t we just offer them something else? Since when did these fuckers get so picky?”

“Nah, that’s just it. We’re running out of pretty much everything. I don’t know about you, but a vamp bar running out of blood doesn’t sound like a great time to me, especially with sunrise 6 hours out.”

---