Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

considered going home sick, but without his help the Animals would never be able to finish the truck before morning. A lump of fear rose in his throat. He couldn't use the order books. Simon McQueen couldn't read.
    "Let's get to it then," Tommy said.
    The Animals threw themselves into their work with an abandon they usually reserved for partying. Razor box-cutters whizzed, price guns clicked, and cardboard piled up in shoulder-high drifts at the ends of the aisles.
    In addition to throwing the extra-large load, they had to allow an extra hour to write their stock orders. Normally the orders were done with a bar-code scanner, but with the scanner down, each man would have to go through a huge loose-leaf order book, writing in items by hand. By 5 A.M. they had most of the stock on the shelves and Simon McQueen was considering letting his box-cutter slip and cutting his leg so he could escape to the emergency room. But that might reveal a secret worse than illiteracy.
    Tommy came into Simon's aisle carrying the order book. "You better get started, Sime." He held out the book and a pencil.
    "I still got a hundred cases to throw," Simon said, not looking up. "Let someone else start."
    "No, you've got the biggest section. Go ahead." Tommy bumped Simon on the shoulder with the book.
    Simon looked up, then dropped his cutter and slowly took the book from Tommy. He opened the book and stared at the page, then at the shelf, then at the book.
    Tommy said, "Order light on the juices, we've got a lot of stock in the back room."
    Simon nodded and looked at the book, then at the shelf of vegetables before him.
    Tommy said, "You're on the wrong page, Simon."
    "I know," Simon snapped. "I'm just finding my place." He flipped through the pages, then stopped on a page of cake mixes and began looking at the shelf of vegetables. He could feel Tommy's gaze on him and wished that the skinny-little-faggot-book-reading-prick-bastard would just go away and leave him alone. "Simon."
    Simon looked up, his eyes pleading.
    "Give me the book," Tommy said. "I think I'm going to order everybody's section tonight. It'll give you guys more time to throw stock and I need to get more familiar with the store anyway."
    "I can do it," Simon said.
    "I know," Tommy said, taking the book. "But why waste your talent on this bullshit?"
    As Tommy walked away, Simon took his first deep breath of the night. "Flood," he called, "I'm buying the beers after shift."
    Tommy didn't look back. "I know," he said.
    Jody stood by the window in the dark loft watching the sleeping bum who lay on the sidewalk across the street and cursing under her breath. Go away, you bastard, she thought. Even as she thought it, she felt a measure of security in knowing exactly where her enemy was. As long as he lay on the sidewalk, Tommy was safe at the grocery store.
    She had never felt the need to protect someone before. She had always been the one looking for protection, for a strong arm to lean on. Now she was the strong arm, at least when the sun was down. She had walked Tommy down the steps and waited with him until the cab arrived to take him to work. As she watched the cab pull away, she thought, This must be how my mother felt when she put me on the school bus that first time – except that Tommy doesn't have a Barbie lunch box. She kept an eye on the vampire lying on the sidewalk across the street.
    Hours passed at the window and she asked the same questions over and over again, coming up with no solution to her problem, and no logic to the vampire's behavior. What did he want? Why had he killed the old woman and left her in the dumpster? Was he trying to frighten her, threaten her, or was there some kind of message to it all?
    " You're not immortal. You can still be killed ."
    If he was going to kill her, why didn't he just do it? Why pretend to be a sleeping bum, watching her, waiting?
    He has to find shelter before daylight. If I can just outlast him, maybe… Maybe what? I can't follow him or I'll be caught in the sunlight too.
    She went to the bedroom and dug the almanac Tommy had given her out of her backpack. The sun would rise at 6:12 A.M. She checked her watch. She had an hour.
    She waited at the window until six o'clock, then headed out of the loft to confront the vampire. As she went through the door she instinctively reached out to click off the lights, only to realize that she hadn't turned any on. If I live through this, she thought, I'm going to save a fortune on