Gavin turned away and sat on the step beside her row, put his face in his hands, and wept again. Not as hard this time, but longer. The minutes crawled over him like ants.

  -5-

  As soon as he trusted his legs to carry him, he got up and staggered out of the theater and stood in the concrete yard out back. The big dumpster was near to overflowing and he could hear rats moving inside of it. He heard them crunching on discarded popcorn. They were movie-house rats, though, and he didn’t mind. If they ever snuck in, though, he’d catch them and then they’d be sorry.

  It was a bright day and the sun seemed nailed to the blue sky. He had plenty of time before he had to be back at work. Gavin walked around the dumpster to where his big white commercial van waited for him. It was gassed up because he always did that before he came home. And, because he was anal and was okay with it, he opened the back doors and made sure he had everything he needed. On the left-hand wall was a pegboard covered in hooks from which his many rolls of duct tape were hung. Below those were knives, clubs, brass knuckles, hatchets, a sledgehammer, bone saws, a scythe, a fire axe, coils of rope, and several canvas hoods with Velcro neck bands. On the right-hand side were sturdier hooks and some eyebolts, along with a huge bundle of plastic zip-ties for restraining wrists and ankles. There were boxes of big black industrial trash bags, a stack of rubber body bags, and a pile of precisely cut pieces of cloth and leather belts. He always wrapped the leather belts in T-shirt cotton because he was mindful of comfort. Gags did not have to be nasty.

  He also had a wheelbarrow and a decent hand-truck, both of which were fitted out with bungee cords. He’d learned from experience on that. As he had with all of it. Everything was a work in progress for Gavin. But he was smart and patient and diligent and focused.

  The last thing he checked was his toolbox. It was a big red Craftsman, stocked with excellent tools for any task. Drills, hammers … all of it.

  He closed the doors, patted them for luck, got behind the wheel, used the remote to open the gates, and drove out. Being careful. Always careful. Last thing he wanted to do was get caught.

  The city was always quiet on Sunday mornings. He saw some people, but even though they looked at the big white van he just kept going. He didn’t know any of them, and he had no interest in inviting total strangers to one of his marathons. He had a big one planned for Wednesday. Wacky Wednesday, as he thought of it. Always a hodgepodge of movies. He had a totally eclectic blend in mind. Start off with trailers and a bunch of cartoons. Even the cartoons were a blend—old Woody Woodpecker, an episode of Lippy the Lion and Hard-de-Har-Har; then a Porky Pig one, some Disney stuff, and wrap it up with one of the earliest Popeye shorts he could find. It was a good thing his theater had been renovated a few years ago to show high-definition Blu-ray DVDs instead of actual film. There were two big multi-disc banks. That was great for archived funnies and old trailers. But the real heart of his projection room was the digital streaming capabilities. He had thousands of hours of movies on an Apple MacBook Pro networked to an eight-terabyte external drive. Plus, software that would keep the movies playing endlessly until he turned it off. Gavin could play movies until the cows came home.

  After the trailers and cartoons, he’d start soft, with kind of a retrospective of cinema history. First up was a digitally remastered and ultra clean version of The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplain’s masterpiece. After that he’d jump to an early Marx Brothers flick, then on to Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. From there it was John Wayne in She Tied a Yellow Ribbon, and the Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds classic, Singing in the Rain. He had a lot of variety after that. Comedies by Mel Brooks, one of Orson Welles’s lesser-known pieces, a John Houston adventure, and on to William Friedkin, and so on. The marathon would be an education as well as a celebration. The monster movies wouldn’t start until sunset, and would again go silent with 1927’s Nosferatu, through some of the Universal and RKO catalog, onto the Hammer flicks, more of the George Romero oeuvre, and through the darkest hours of the night. He had Silence of the Lambs inserted in the block of horror rather than mystery because Gavin considered it a horror film and could go toe-to-toe with any film history snob who argued otherwise.

  He smiled to himself, and his heart thumped happily as he thought about the marathon. It was going to be the last word in such showcases of cinematic artistry.

  Gavin put in his earbuds, turned up the music—Adele this time—and went about his business.

  -6-

  Gavin drove up Route 5 to the Shell station in Carlsbad. The day before he’d rigged a small generator to power an electric siphon. He checked to make sure no one was around, then got out of the van and went over to view the gauge on the single-tank truck. The needle was buried in the green and the generator was silent, its automatic shut off triggered by the anti-spillover float in the tanker. He climbed up onto the truck and double-checked with the big stick he’d set there for that purpose. The whole tank was filled to capacity. Three thousand gallons.

  Smiling, he climbed down and uncoupled the vapor and fuel hoses. He went over the whole truck to make sure every setting and fitting was correct, then climbed in and drove it back to the theater, waited until the street was clear, opened the gate, and backed it in.

  He took his mom’s old Honda back to his van. She wouldn’t need it again, so he left the keys in it and got back into his old vehicle.

  It didn’t take long to get to Solana Beach, where his two sisters lived in a beach cottage. Connie owned it and rented a room to Gail. They called the place Party Central, and it was indeed that. A steady stream of buff surfers or bearded hipsters. The kinds of parties Gavin would never have been invited to. The kind he only ever saw when he peeked through windows. Connie was the most promiscuous, but Gail was hardly a nun.

  He spent an hour looking for them. They were not at home. Not at the Starbucks down the block. Not in the taco bar on the beach. They were nowhere. It saddened him. He was hoping they could join the movie marathon. He wanted the whole family there. He sat in his van and stared at their cottage, feeling the loss of them. Connie and Gail were always a bit silly. Flighty, Mom often said. But he loved them. They both seemed to find something funny in any situation. They even shared some giggles behind their hands at Dad’s funeral, which had made that afternoon somehow bearable.

  “Damn,” he murmured. The pain and weariness in the sound of his own voice hit him like punches. Not jabs, but deep blows to the chest and stomach. Fresh tears tried to burn their way out of the corners of his eyes, but he pawed them away. He didn’t want to cry again. Gavin was afraid he might not stop this time.

  He realized that it was Gail more than Connie that did this to him. She was the baby. She was the one who seemed to be filled with life and sunshine. As a little girl she was always smiling. At everything. A falling leaf, a snoring dog, a hummingbird. She wasn’t beautiful but she’d always been pretty. Gavin understood the difference. People didn’t necessarily fall in love with her, but everyone wanted to be around her. Strangers wanted to know her. You felt good when Gail was around, and when she laughed then everyone laughed. Even the real sticks-up-their-butts types had to smile. Gail was always alive. Gail was life.

  If she was gone—then there was always going to be a Gail-shaped hole in the world through which sunshine and happiness and optimism would be slowly sucked away.

  He sat there for a long time. Hands locked around the steering wheel. Fingers constricting tight on the knobbed leather. Eyes burning as he stared and tried not to cry.

  Gavin sat there for a long, long time.

  And Gail was not there.

  -7-

  Until she was.

  -8-

  It took a lot for Gavin to drive back to the theater.

  Too much effort.

  Too much pain.

  Too much time.

  The sun had somehow rolled across the table of the sky and then tumbled off behind a wall of twilight clouds. There were shadows seeping out from under every car, and leaning out from the sides of homes and stores. The streetlights did not push back against this tide of darkness because they had lost that fight more than a year ago. Instead, they stood in a silent vigil as the day burned down like a dropped match.

  Gavin knew that he’d lost time. Hours.

  It was like that sometimes, but never as bad as this. No. Not even with Mom.

  Gail, though.

  As his mental circuits came back online with great reluctance, he turned to look behind him, into the bay of the van. With the doors closed everything back there was muted to vague shapes.

  He could see Gail, though.

  He could hear her.

  She was strapped to the hand-truck by a dozen bungee cords. Her wrists and ankles were secured with duct tape. Not pink. He hadn’t been able to think things through enough for that. When he saw her simply walk up to his van, Gavin lost most coherent thought. He’d managed to grab her, though. To wrestle her down to the ground, put the hood over her, tie her up, attach her to the hand-truck, and get her into the van. The hand-truck was locked in place against one wall, held by industrial metal clips. It wouldn’t fall over. He didn’t want Gail to get hurt.

  All of that had been done, but it must have been sheer autopilot because Gavin could not remember any of it. Not one bit. There was nothing in his head from the moment he and Gail locked eyes through the windshield of the van and now, waking up out of whatever it was. A fugue? Maybe. He thought that was the word. Even now he wasn’t entirely back to himself. Not even close.

  He was almost all the way back to the theater before he realized that he was hurt.

  Gavin slowed and stopped for a moment in the middle of a side street and looked down at his hand. It was covered with dried blood. Not actively bleeding, though, which was something. But Gail must have fought. They always fought. Even family. Or maybe especially family. Aunt Joan had really put up a fight. So did Mom.

  He hadn’t expected it from Gail, though. Not her. Not sunshine and smiles Gail.

  He flexed his hand. It hurt, but everything seemed to be working. The bite wasn’t bad, and it hadn’t bled that much. No major arteries cut. Or maybe there were no arteries in the hand. He wasn’t sure. But the bones weren’t broken, and the muscles didn’t seem to be damaged.

  So, Gail had fought back, had gotten him—probably when he was trying to get the gag on. He had to accept that the smiling, laughing mouth had turned savage in defense. Maybe in his fugue state he hadn’t been able to reach her, to explain what he wanted from her. Maybe he’d been so messed up that he forgot to tell her that Mom was there, and Aunt Joan, and the others.

  “Damn, Gail …” he said, and heard the whine in his voice. Like how he used to say that when she played a prank on him when they were little. Before her smile made him smile back.

  The sun was almost down now. He should have started tonight’s movies already.

  But he lingered a moment, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. She’d bitten him. Gail had bitten him.

  It was so unfair. So wrong.

  She’d never once been mean to him her whole life.

  The bite, though.

  That was very mean.

  “That wasn’t very nice, you know,” he said, and the words rose to a shout.

  Gail thrashed and howled and definitely would have done worse to him if she could.

  “No,” he said as he lifted his foot from the brake and pressed on the gas, “that wasn’t very nice at all.”

  He drove the rest of the way to the theater, feeling the hurt burn through him, like acid in his veins.

  That wasn’t very nice at all.

  -9-

  He parked in back and had one hell of a time getting the hand-truck down from the van. His hand was hurting now, and it was starting to throb.

  Crap.

  He nearly dropped her, and it would have served her right for what she did. But Gavin was quick and caught the handle of the hand-truck just in time, steadied it, and saved the day. Then he wheeled her inside.

  There was some real drama getting her into a good seat. Gail was a lot younger than either Mom or Aunt Joan, and even though she lived like a slacker, she had surfer muscles. Gail fought him every step of the way. He tried to reason with her but gave it up and saved his breath for the task of getting her from the hand-truck to the seat. It took forty minutes and about a gallon of sweat.

  Then he staggered over to an empty seat and collapsed into it. He was aware that every eye in the place was on him. Including Gail, now that the hood was off. Those big blue eyes. Even the spray of sun freckles across her nose and cheeks looked somehow angry, despite how pale she was. Her suntan was faded to a pale yellow.

  “Not exactly a bronze sun bunny, are you?” he yelled, then felt immediately ashamed of himself. That was unkind. She couldn’t help that. Not anymore.

  None of them could. Mom was so pale she looked gray. Or … maybe was gray. The house lights in the theater were too weak to show clearly. Aunt Joan looked positively jaundiced. The rest were a mix of milk white, ash gray, pee yellow.

  Gavin looked down at his hand. Wrestling with Gail had opened the wound and it bled sluggishly. He lifted his arm and angled it into the spill of light. The blood wasn’t exactly red. Too dark, and too thick. Brick-red at best.

  Even though he knew what Gail was—what she had to be—it was a shock.

  Or maybe it was the last thread holding up his denial. His hope.

  He looked around the theater. There were eleven members of his nuclear and extended family here. And about thirty other people. His favorite teacher from the eighth grade. His neighbors—the nice Muslim couple from upstairs who were always sweet to him. The two guys from the game store. The cute girl who ran the concession stand in this very theater. Others. The people who mattered to him. The people who filled his world. All of them seated in chairs. Held in place. As comfortable as he could make them.

  But …

  Not all of them.

  Connie wasn’t here. Some of his favorite cousins weren’t here. His niece, Emma, wasn’t here. He missed her a lot. So tiny. Seven weeks old when this all happened. There wasn’t enough of her left to bring to the theater. Not after Aunt Joan had …

  Well.

  He’d hoped to find more of the family.

  To keep him company. And for the marathon.

  The marathon.

  Damn.

  He looked at his hand. There were small black lines radiating out from the bite. At first, he thought it was just lines of dried blood, but now he knew. Gavin fished around inside his own feelings, looking for evidence of the change. It was there.

  A small thing, but there. His hands and feet were cold, and he was never cold. He rarely even slept with blankets. But they were like ice.

  Is that how it would be? Just getting colder and colder until there was no warmth left in him? He hoped not. This was sunny San Diego and people came here because it was warm all year round. Not really hot, just nice. Gavin didn’t want to be cold forever.

  He got up and stood there, swaying a little, feeling sad and lost.

  Everyone looked at him.

  He saw the same hunger in their eyes that was always there. But now, for the first time, he thought he understood it. A little.

  Gail tried to snap at the air between them, but the gag didn’t permit it. Would she chew through it eventually? Mom did that once. She even ate part of the leather. It was cow, after all. Maybe they’d all have a last meal together. Leather. Cotton, too, but so what?

  An ache opened up in his stomach. That was the best way to describe it. Opened. As if his whole body was a mouth. He thought about the popcorn and the Milk Duds. No. He didn’t really want those anymore. Maybe not even the beef jerky.

  He knew what was happening. Gavin understood what he was getting hungry for. It was happening so fast, though. Or … was it fast? How long had it really been since Gail bit him? Hours. He closed his eyes and in the darkness behind his lids he saw his veins drain of their redness and go dark. His face was starting to get cold, too.

  He felt two tears break and roll down his cheeks, but when he wiped them away and looked at his hand, he saw red-black smears.

  The hunger was getting bigger. It was becoming insistent.

  Gavin looked at his family and friends.

  “I’ve got some stuff to do,” he said thickly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He turned and hurried out, and he only fell twice.

  -10-

  It was dark out, so he turned on the exterior lights. He rarely did that because it drew other hungry people. That didn’t matter anymore, though.

  Gavin worked as fast as he could, attaching the hoses from the tanker truck to the line of generators he’d networked together. They chugged and hummed and poured electricity into the cables that ran like snakes across the ground and into the back of the theater. A lot of power to operate the industrial projector. He tested the system and checked the redundancies. Everything was working perfectly, and he managed a smile. Or, thought it was a smile. It felt weird, though, and his teeth clacked together.

  As if biting.

  That frightened him, so he hurried. His fingers were so cold, and his feet were blocks of ice. Walking was getting hard because the cold was in his knees and hips now. It hurt, too. All his joints did.

  Gavin set up the laptop in the projection room, opened the master file and started the software running. Then he peered out at the house, saw the screen display appear, announcing a few trailers. Another smile. Another clack.

  “Hurry,” he told himself, but the word didn’t sound like a word. Just a sound. A moan.

  He double and triple checked everything, then he dimmed the house lights and shambled down to the theater. He picked up one of the big rolls of duct tape. Blue. Nice. His favorite color.

  Gavin shuffled sideways along the row and sat down in the empty seat next to Mom. She stared at him but now her eyes were different. No hate anymore. It startled him and he looked around. Everyone was studying him. No one was glaring. No one was thrashing as if trying to lunge at him. No one was trying to bite.