Peeps - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,4

Suddenly, I smelled like a predator.

Sarah clung to the bed's spindly frame, which began to shudder. I paused to pull a Kevlar glove onto my left hand and dropped two knockout pills into its palm.

"Let me give you these. They'll make you better."

Sarah squinted at me, still wary, but listening. She had always forgotten to take her pills, and it had been my job to remind her. Maybe this ritual would calm her, something remembered, but not fondly enough to be an anathema. I could hear her breathing, her heart still beating as fast as it had during the chase.

She could spring at me at any moment.

I took another slow step and sat down beside her. The bed's rusty springs made a questioning sound.

"Take these. They're good for you."

Sarah stared at the small white pills cupped in my palm. I felt her relax for a moment, maybe recalling what it was like to be sick - just normal sick - and have a boyfriend look after you.

I'm not as fast as a full-blown peep, or as strong, but I am pretty quick. I cupped my hand over her mouth in a flash and heard the pills snick into her dehydrated throat. Her hands gripped my shoulders, but I pressed her head back with my whole weight, letting her teeth savage the thick glove. Sarah's black nails didn't go for my face, and I saw swallows pulsing along her pale neck.

The pills took her down in seconds. With a metabolism as fast as ours, drugs hit right away - I feel tipsy about a minute after alcohol touches my tongue, and I damn near need an IV to keep a coffee buzz going.

"Well done, Sarah." I let her go and saw that her eyes were still open. "You'll be okay now, I promise."

I pulled the glove off. The outer water-resistant layer was shredded, but her teeth hadn't broken the Kevlar. (It has happened, though.)

My cell phone showed one lonely bar of reception, but the call went straight through. "It was her. Pick us up."

As the phone went dark, I wondered if I should have mentioned the crumbling stairs. Oh, well. They'd figure out how to get up.

"Cal?"

I started at the sound, but her slitted eyes didn't seem to pose a threat. "What is it, Sarah?"

"Show me again."

"Show you what?"

She tried to speak, but a pained look crossed her face.

"You mean..." His name would hurt her if I said it. "The King?"

She nodded.

"You don't want that. It'll only burn you. Like the sun did."

"But I miss him." Her voice was fading, sleep taking her.

I swallowed, feeling something flat and heavy settle over me. "I know you do."

Sarah knew a lot about Elvis, but she enjoyed obscure facts the most. She loved it that his mother's middle name was Love. She searched the Web for MP3s of the B-sides of rare seventies singles. Her favorite movie was one that you've probably never heard of: Stay Away, Joe.

In it, Elvis is a half-Navajo bronco buster on a reservation. Sarah claimed it was the role he was born to play, because he really was part Native American. Yeah, right. His great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee. And, like most of us, he had sixteen great-great-great-grandmothers. Not much genetic impact there. But Sarah didn't care. She said obscure influences were the most important.

That's a philosophy major for you.

In the movie, Elvis sells pieces of his car whenever he needs money. The doors go, then the roof, then the seats, one by one. By the end he's riding along on an empty frame - Elvis at the steering wheel, four tires and a sputtering engine on an open road.

As the disease had settled across her, Sarah had held onto Elvis the longest. After she'd thrown out all her books and clothes, erased every photograph from her hard drive, and broken all the mirrors in her dorm bathroom, the Elvis posters still clung to her walls, crumpled and scratched from bitter blows, but hanging on. As her mind transformed, Sarah shouted more than once that she couldn't stand the sight of me, but she never said a word against the King.

Finally, she fled, deciding to disappear into the night rather than tear down those slyly grinning faces she could no longer bear to look at.

As I waited for the transport squad, I watched her shivering on the bed and thought of Elvis clutching the steering wheel of his skeletal car.

Sarah had lost everything, shedding the pieces of her life one by