23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(71)

“You want some of this?” Jen asked, after she’d had the first serving.

Clara had to admit she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten anything since before her visit with Laura the day before. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

“Too f*cking bad,” Jen said, and laughed, spraying bits of wet noodle in Clara’s face. “There ain’t enough to go around.”

Clara had been wondering who this woman was, who had the discipline and willpower to master a martial art and the natural leadership abilities to form a gang out of women of different races and backgrounds, and yet still had been desperate enough to resort to criminal activity for her livelihood. Now she was beginning to see.

Guilty Jen was a sociopath.





38.

Gert’s finger strayed along a row of boxes on a high shelf. She had a playful, quite innocent expression on her face.

It was not lost on Caxton that they were holed up in the prison’s pharmaceutical dispensary nor that Gert had a history of substance abuse. Caxton was a cop and she knew all about people with drug problems. “Don’t,” she told her celly and got back to work.

Gert shrugged. Whistled a few notes. And then went back to browsing the shelf. “There’s some good stuff in here.”

“I’m sure it’s fantastic. You don’t need it. Why don’t you come over here and help me? It’ll make it easier not to get distracted.”

Gert thrummed her lower lip. Then, as if she were just playing with it, she picked a box off the shelf and closed her hand around it.

“Did you think I didn’t see that? What have you got?”

Gert pouted. “Like I said, good stuff. As in, good for you. It’s just Excedrin, okay? That’s like aspirin, and I have a really bad headache.”

“There’s real aspirin over on this side,” Caxton said. “Excedrin is full of caffeine. Anyway, if you do have a headache it’s just because you haven’t eaten in a long time. Have some of this.” Caxton had found a brown bag in the bottom of the dispensary freezer, under all the bottles of insulin. At first she’d been wary to open it, but when she had she’d found inside a green salad, a soggy hamburger, and a beautifully ripe, non-rotten apple. One of the doctors or nurses who worked in the dispensary had apparently brought their lunch to work and never had a chance to eat it. Caxton had been ravenous, enough to eat it all herself, but she’d been very careful to only take half and leave the rest for Gert. It remained untouched on a table next to Caxton’s elbow, beckoning to her.

“I’m not hungry. Anyway, what’s wrong with a little caffeine now and again? Millions of people all over the world drink coffee all day long and nobody gives them shit for it. You’re one of them, aren’t you? I bet you got a real Starbucks habit, Caxton. I bet you’re just jonesin’ for a double tall frothy latte mocha grandecino, or whatever.”

Caxton had never been much of a coffee drinker. She would, in fact, have given one of her weapons in exchange for a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. She wasn’t about to admit it.

“So how is it fair, huh? I need a little help sometimes. I got clinical depression and shit, um, chronic fatigue syndrome. I got drains on my energy you could not believe, and out of all the people in the whole world, I am the one, the only one, who can’t have a goddamned motherf*cking Excedrin?”

Caxton sighed. She remembered the sign posted on their cell door. STIMSON, GERTRUDE. NO STIMULANTS.

“And besides, we’re not exactly in the middle of chill time, here. We are in one bona fide emergency situation. You and I could both benefit from getting amped up right now. It improves your reaction speed. Makes you stronger and faster and it helps you think. I could really use something right now to help me think, how about you?”

Caxton sighed again.

Gert had a point. A very good point. Which was always the problem with junkies. They weren’t insane. They were quite rational. They just needed something their bodies couldn’t supply on their own. Needed it enough that they felt that need, all the time, in the back of their heads. Like a little man back there, a quiet, unassuming little man who just every once in a while would raise one finger in the air and say, “Excuse me, but if you aren’t too busy…” Junkies could develop extremely convincing reasons why they needed their fix. They could explain those reasons patiently to anyone who was listening, at great length, and eventually, always, they could wear down the resistance of whoever it was they needed to get past, whoever it might be who had access to the drugs.