Free 30 Days of Night: Light of Day by Jeff Mariotte

and gesturedbehind her. “Couple blocks that way, just keep going the way you are.”
    As she spoke, he kept closing the distance between them. “Okay, thanks,” he said.
    “No prob.”
    Walker was wearing a dark nylon Windbreaker, a T-shirt, and khaki pants, with a backpack strapped over the jacket. In the pocket of the Windbreaker he kept a straight razor. He whisked it out and open with a single smooth move, which he had been practicing almost nonstop for days. He took two more steps toward her, and as she returned the earbuds to her ears (he could hear, as if from a great distance, a Slipknot tune he recognized) his arm snaked toward her, blade out. She saw it at the last second and tried to block it, but too late, he was already there, and the blade was very sharp.
    So sharp, in fact, that for a second he wasn’t sure he had actually cut her. Then she opened her mouth and tried to scream, and that was all it took. The wound gaped open and blood jetted out. She clamped her hands over it, her shopping bag falling to the sidewalk. Blood flowed between her fingers like a creek running over rocks. As her knees buckled, Walker scooped her up in his arms.
    She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-five pounds, but Walker grunted with the effort, breathing through his mouth, unable to form words. With Mitch guiding him, Walker carried her to the lot’s lowest point. Precious blood trickled to the ground as theywent; he felt it soaking his pants and was glad he’d brought a change of clothes in a backpack.
    At the low point, he put her down on a broken concrete slab. He had given up trying to use a glass. She was still moving, squirming and twisting and pawing in vain at the sidewalk when he knelt beside her. He had rigged a suction device using a breast pump and some rubber tubing, and he had a collapsible two-gallon jug. He pressed the pump against the wound and started working it. Blood ran through the hose, expanding the sides of the plastic jug. It would take a few minutes, and during this part of the process he felt the most vulnerable to being seen and caught. But he and Mitch figured a real vampire wouldn’t leave any blood in the body, or not much, at any rate, so they had to draw out as much as they could.
    While the pump worked, he opened the backpack. He got out some individually wrapped towelettes to wipe their hands with, and their clean clothes. He shoved the bloody ones into zippered plastic bags and put them into the backpack. “Is it clear?” he asked.
    “Looks like it,” Mitch said.
    “Let’s get out of here, then.” The blood in the tube had slowed to a trickle, so Walker disconnected the pump and sealed the big jug. He sucked out what was left in the tube, getting a good drink of salty-sweet blood. He was getting used to it.
    More than that, he was starting to like it.

    They were still a couple of blocks from the car when they saw someone walking toward them. He was a big guy, a block away and across the street, but nearing. He passed into the glow from a street lamp, but he was wearing a black hoodie, with hood up, and his face was lost in shadow. They couldn’t tell if he was white or black, young or old.
    “You think he saw what we did?” Walker asked. He was nervous, the jug suddenly almost too heavy to hang onto. He realized that cold sweat was running down his sides and into his jeans.
    “I don’t know. No way to tell from here.”
    The guy crossed the street. He kept coming their way, as if he had a destination firmly in mind and they were it. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie. He was at least a head taller than either of them, and he moved with an athlete’s sinewy grace.
    “Let’s just get to the car,” Walker said. “Get out of here.” Walker and Mitch tried to ignore the guy, but it was hard. He was headed toward them, as certainly as if he was locked on by some sort of targeting system. Walker thought he heard the guy whistling, but the wind was