Rocket - Chapter 10
Naida - Bisbee, Arizona
Creosote, woven through the canyon air the way it had been woven through every breath she had drawn since the night she clawed out of the ground, that dry bitter signature of the only plant on this side of the border that bothered to smell like anything at all. Old copper from the mines, mineral and metallic and slow, leaching up out of the earth from a hundred years of human appetite already cooled. Desert dust, thin and cold and tasting of distance.
And underneath: gun oil and something else. Something cold. Dead.
Naida stopped mid-stride on Tombstone Canyon Road.
Another predator.
Six nights since the grave. Nearly a week of learning the difference between stumbling through streets scared and moving with purpose. She’d been doing the second one, working her way through Bisbee like someone who understood how territory worked now.
Garfield Park materialized ahead through the dark, sodium-lit and wrong in the way every American park she had ever passed had been wrong, deliberately public and accidentally desolate at this hour, the kind of carved-out civic emptiness that filled itself with whatever the night decided to send into it. Playground equipment, picnic tables, rusted metal shit Gen X probably broke bones on and received third-degree burns from the heat of the cruel southwest sun, all of it sitting under that orange wash like an exhibit nobody had remembered to take down. Sodium lights turned everything orange and wrong, and her new eyes broke the wash apart into its component frequencies the way a prism would, every color the lamps had stolen from the spectrum sitting accusingly outside the cone of light.
A figure sat on a bench near the south edge.
Waiting.
Not casual waiting. Waiting for something specific.
Or someone.
Well, shit. This is either really good timing or really bad judgment.
She approached through the mesquite and palo verde scattered around the park’s edge. No heartbeat. No breathing. No body heat her new senses could pick up.
Just stillness. Patient. Like something that didn’t need to move anymore.
Details resolved as she got closer: male, gaunt, weathered like the desert had been chewing on him for decades. Tattoos covered his arms: prison ink, military maybe, or biker shit. All three probably. Crude cross tattooed on his throat. His hands rested on his knees, casual but ready. Like he knew exactly what those hands could do when needed.
But the way he sat confirmed everything. No fidgeting. No little adjustments. No unconscious movement at all, none of the small accumulated tics a living body produced as the by-product of being alive, the breath cycle and the heart cycle and the thousand smaller cycles that made every human shape on a bench look like a thing in motion even when it was holding still.
Vampire stillness. That supernatural patience of something operating on different principles now, the patience of stone, the patience of water that had decided the canyon would yield in its own time, the patience of a thing that had stopped competing with the clock because the clock no longer applied to it.
He looked up. Desert-pale eyes met hers, cut straight through the bullshit.
“You’re the one from Safeway,” he said. Voice like gravel, matter-of-fact. “Watched me put down that blood-rabid kid.”
Not a question.
Her shoulders tensed. Same armor that had kept her functional through trafficking, through the desert, through everything. But underneath the automatic wariness: something else. First vampire she’d encountered who been able to talk to her, instead of just being some kind of blood obsessed mindless zombie.
“You’re good with a rifle,” she said. Crouched near the monkey bars instead of claiming space on his bench. Distance said caution, not fear. “Headshot. Not spray and pray.”
“Had practice.” Two words. That was it.
Okay, so he’s not immediately trying to kill me. Progress, I guess.
“Can’t spray in town,” he added. “Collateral damage. Waste not, want not.”
Her muscles locked. Miguel’s dad had said that. Right before selling her.
She stepped back. Put more distance between them.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No.” Too quick. Too defensive. She forced herself to breathe. “Just: that phrase. Last jodido cabrón who said that to me sold me to the Coyotes.”
There. Let’s see what you do with that.
He paused, then nodded. “Fair enough.” Didn’t push. Didn’t ask.
The fact that he didn’t press made her more nervous, not less.
“Bisbee,” he said. “The town, and what folks call me anymore.”
“Naida.” It came out automatic, though using it as her name felt weird.
“So, Safeway.” Bisbee said, changing the subject.”
“Yeah, I was watching. Trying to figure out qué chingados is happening to me.”
He didn’t answer right away. Just studied her without making it feel like a threat.
“How fresh are you?”
“Crawled out of a hole with a note, about a week ago.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Bisbee scanned the residential streets beyond the playground. “Can’t talk here. Too many ears. You want answers, we do this somewhere private.”
Every survival instinct she had screamed don’t follow strange men to isolated locations. Those same instincts had told her to trust Miguel.
Different situation. This one just saved a woman from getting torn apart. If he wanted me dead, he would’ve shot me at Safeway like the boy.
“Your place?”
“Unless you got somewhere better.”
The Lavender Pit had concealment but not comfort. Definitely not conversation-friendly.
“Lead the way. But I stay ten feet back, and my hands stay free.”
Approval crossed his face, or close enough. “Smart girl. Let’s go.”
Bisbee’s streets were fucked, the kind of fucked that came from a hundred years of mining money trying to outpace gravity and losing in slow installments. Houses clung to hillsides at impossible angles, connected by staircases that doubled back on themselves like the town had been drawn by someone who hated walking, every porch a little stage built out over a drop, every back yard a slope that ended in someone else’s roof. Everything built up instead of out, defying gravity through pure stubbornness, the way Naida’s grandmother used to say a man defied his fate when he did not have the dignity to lie down and take what was coming for him.
She could see more here than in Managua: vertical terrain gave sightlines up and down the canyon. But none of it made sense. Streets that ran parallel suddenly crossed three blocks later. Houses stacked on top of each other like they’d been thrown against the mountainside and stuck where they landed.
First heavy rain and half this shit would wash downhill. How does anything stay up here? And why isn’t that giant crater a lake? Back home, craters filled with water. Here? Just... dry.
Back in Managua, streets ran predictable. Flat. You could orient by the lake, the volcanoes. Here? No idea which direction anything was.
Naida kept her promised distance. Her enhanced senses tracked Bisbee while monitoring everything else: porch lights, TV screens flickering blue through windows, someone’s music too loud for a weeknight. Normal human sounds that used to mean safety. Now just witnesses. Complications. Potential problems.
The canyon held heat differently than open desert: wood smoke from a fireplace somewhere up the hill, a cooking smell from the one house still lit, the mineral seep of old mine workings rising through cracked asphalt. Her senses filed it all without being asked.
“You always this paranoid, or just when strange men offer help?” Bisbee didn’t turn around. Pace unhurried but purposeful.
“I don’t trust anybody anymore, cabrón.” Her voice came out flat. Hard. “Last time I did, I ended up cargo.”
“Fair point.” He paused at an intersection, checked both directions. “But staying scared forever ain’t much of a life either.”
“Better than no life at all.”
“Is it, though?” He kept walking. “Sometimes I wonder.”
“Jodido pendejo, I just crawled out of the ground a week ago. Ask me about life quality in, in... how old are you anyway?”
“Real years or since it happened years?”
“Real”
“Eighty-five.”
“Fine, ask me in like, fifty years.”
They passed a house where people were fighting in Spanish. Raised voices, slamming doors.
“, no podemos seguir así, we’re already five people in a two-bedroom...”
“¡Es mi hermana! ¿Qué quieres que haga, dejarla en la calle con los niños?”
“I’m not saying that, but we can’t afford...”
“Then we figure it out! ¡Familia es familia!”
Money problems. Space problems. Border-crossing relatives needing shelter, the kind of grim arithmetic that ran every household she had ever known on either side of any border, the calculus of how many bodies could fit in how many beds and still leave food for breakfast. The kind of stress that came from trying to help when you barely had enough yourself, the kind of stress she had been the cause of in someone else’s house once and never wanted to be again, although here in this Bisbee yard the noise of the argument carried something her own family had not bothered to carry, the unmistakable sound of people who were arguing because they intended to find a yes inside the no.
Her aunt’s voice echoed in memory: Old enough to figure it out.
These people were fighting about how to make room. Not whether to try.
Must be nice.
She held back bitter tears of Robert’s blood she couldn’t afford to shed. Her hands had stopped moving without her permission, fingers curled against her palms, pressing into nothing. She forced them open. Changed the subject.
“How long you been doing this?” she asked.
“What, walking?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Helping. Rounding up strays.”
Silence for several steps. “Fifteen years, give or take. Since I figured out I couldn’t just watch kids stumble around until they died or turned feral.”
“And before that?”
“Minded my own business. Pretended other people’s problems weren’t mine.” He turned down a darker street, older houses carved from the mountainside. “Worked real well until it didn’t.”
“What changed?”
“Found a kid about your age trying to eat his own arm. So, blood-starved he couldn’t think straight. Whoever turned him dumped him in the desert and skipped out.”
Her stomach twisted. “What happened to him?”
“What do you think?” No emotion in his voice, but his shoulders carried something the voice was not allowed to, the small constant load of a man who had been keeping a list inside himself for a very long time and had never asked anyone else to help him hold it. “Too far gone by the time I found him. Put him down like a rabid animal. You saw... Safeway.”
She’d closed the distance without realizing. Five feet behind now instead of ten. Part of her brain had decided someone who felt guilt about necessary violence might be worth the risk.
“That’s fucked up,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Not supposed to work that way. Whoever ‘birthed’ you is supposed to take care of you. Train you up, teach you. More and more of us just get dumped by deadbeats any more.”
He stopped in front of a small adobe house. Looked like it had been built in the fifties and maintained just enough to avoid falling down. Small porch, two windows, door that used to be blue.
“This is me.”
Isolated. Neighbors dark. Street dead-ended into the hillside fifty yards past his driveway in that abrupt mountain-town way that turned a residential road into a wall without warning, the kind of dead end that meant either the prospectors had stopped pushing in this direction or the rock had finally said no. Good for privacy, shit for escape routes, and her old habits filed both readings simultaneously the way a person who had been hunted for a week did.
“Cozy,” she said.
“Running water. Electricity.” Bisbee fished keys from his jacket. “Thick walls. Good for privacy.”
That last part made her step backward, toward the street.
“Relax, kid. Privacy for conversations about things that’d get us both killed if the wrong people overheard.” He unlocked the door but didn’t open it. Studied her defensive posture. “Last chance. Once you’re inside, you’re committed to hearing the whole story.”
“Fine.” She glanced at the dead-end street, then back at him. “I need to know what you know. But I keep my way out clear.”
Figure out what he wants for it. Men always want something.
“Wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Functional. Not fancy. Worn leather couch, bookshelves with actual books, the kind of bookshelves that came from someone who had stopped pretending to read and started actually reading thirty years ago, thick walls in the way old adobe was thick, walls that did not so much keep the desert out as let the desert pass through on its own slow timetable. He gestured to the couch, settled into an armchair with clear sightlines to the front door and hallway, the geometry of someone who had walked into too many rooms in too many countries to ever again sit anywhere except where he could see the exits.
“So,” he said. “Questions.”
“The kid at Safeway.” She perched on the couch edge, muscles ready to bolt. “What was he exactly?”
“Wight. What happens when someone gets turned but doesn’t have the ability to adapt. Demon takes over completely, the way a fire took over a building once the structural members started giving up one by one and the roof finally remembered it had wanted to fall down all along. Nothing human left. Just appetite and territorial rage, an animal worse than any animal because no animal had ever needed to perform being human first.”
“How long before someone like you puts them down?”
“Depends how smart they hunt. Smart ones stick to wildlife, transients. Can go weeks, or even months. Stupid ones...” He gestured toward town and Safeway. “Three nights of sloppy kills.”
She’d spent about a week hunting down Coyote search teams. Some planned. Some desperate. The bullet hole in her shirt proved not all of it went smooth.
“What makes the difference? Between what I am and what he was?”
He studied her with the still-water attention of someone who had spent decades learning the difference between a fledgling who was going to make it and one who was already past saving.
“Hard to say. Some people handle it better. Mental resilience, coping mechanisms, circumstances. But mostly: whether you can accept what you’ve become without letting the demon convince you that’s all you are.”
“The demon?”
“Yeah, that angry little asshole voice in your head. Always wanting to kill and eat.”
She nodded slowly.
“You’ll need to figure out when to listen, when to ignore. It’ll tell you it’s all wise and shit, but it’s just your lizard brain trying to bully you around.”
Ignore him.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“About the demon?”
“No, the bullet hole in your shirt. Looks like a nine-millimeter.”
“Uh... Coyotes.”
“You part of that fire near the monument?”
Images flashed. She screams when she has to. Fire. Red foam on her hands.
Fire? No. That wasn’t me.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Weird. You smell like wildfire, chemical retardant, and bad decisions.”
He studied her. Long enough to make it uncomfortable.
“Fire department found accelerant patterns that didn’t make sense. Bodies burned hotter than gasoline should manage.
No signs of accelerant.”
She shrugged, having no answer for that.
“Okay.” He let it drop. For now.
He exhaled. A long breath he may not have realized he’d been holding. Dead lungs, older habits.
“You’ve been tracking me.” Not a question. “Since Safeway.”
“Keeping an eye. New vampire in my territory, no sire, handling herself better than most fledges. Raises questions.”
Territory. The word hit different in this mouth than it had in any of the other mouths that had used it on her, in the trucks and at the safe house and in the desert. Here it was a shape with edges she could stand inside instead of a label fastened to her collar, and the difference between those two things was the difference between being placed and being known.
“Your territory? Like, officially?”
Amusement flickered. “Nothing official. But I’ve been handling supernatural problems around here for what seems like forever. Local vamps check in when passing through. Keeps misunderstandings down.”
Decades of experience. The gulf between her time undead and whatever he was felt massive, a quiet that opened under the conversation the way a mineshaft opened under a town that had forgotten where the workings ran. He had been doing this since before her parents had been born, since before her grandmother had been born, sitting through every kind of fledgling problem the desert had handed him and walking out of every kind of sunrise that should have caught him by now. She had been doing this for a week. The math of that arrived in her chest before her brain caught up, a small humiliation she chose to swallow instead of perform around.
“And I’m a problem that needs handling?”
“Jury’s out. You’re not leaving bodies where humans find them. Not drawing federal attention. Not turning Wight despite zero guidance. She makes promises. But you’re clearly running from something. Coyotes I assume, since you mentioned them. Problems follow people who don’t address them.”
“Nobody left to follow. I think.”
“Don’t think. Know.”
“So,” she said desperate to change the subject. “What kind of guidance are you offering?”
“Depends what you need. Basic physiology, politics, how to feed without attracting attention. Most fledges get that from their creator.”
Red lips. Soft seductive voice. Teeth like needles. A woman who smiled before biting, who turned transformation into performance art. Memories came wrapped in fog, fragmented.
“She didn’t abandon me. Created me for something specific.”
“Kid, you woke up in a grave with a note. That’s textbook abandonment.”
Oh. Shit.
She stared at him, blankly. She had no answer for that.
He nodded. Didn’t push.
“There’s others around here who might help,” he said after a moment. “If you’re interested in community instead of going solo.”
Community. I never had that even when I was alive. Is it even possible now?
“What kind of others?”
“Woman I know in Sierra Vista. Abuela. Runs a sanctuary for vampire kids who got abandoned or escaped bad situations. Lot more popping up lately.”
Right. Because sanctuaries worked out so well before. Miguel’s dad had a “sanctuary” too. Look how that ended.
“A sanctuary.” Her voice came out dismissive. “For vampires.”
“You look to be about fourteen, so you’d be the youngest. Oldest is eighteen. All teenagers.” He said, ignoring her tone. “All got turned in the last six months or so. None of it voluntary.”
“I’m sixteen,” Naida bristled.
“Close enough.” Bisbee shrugged. “Abuela gives them structure. Teaches control. Helps them figure out how to exist without becoming monsters.”
Something harder crossed his face. “Don’t mistake kindness for weakness, though. She’s got rules. Enforces them like Old Testament scripture. Had to stake a kid...” Bisbee paused. “Malik, in the desert recently when he wouldn’t stop hunting locals. He only survived that long because Marigold and Copal were too traumatized to do it themselves.” He shrugged. “Abuela believes dawn handles problems talking can’t fix.”
“The ones there now?” He continued. “Trafficking victims. Abuse survivors. Kids targeted by predators. But they got transformed into a thing that could fight back.”
A whole group of kids like me. Who understand.
“She just takes them in?”
“Asks plenty of questions. Not to shame. Just trying to understand what help someone needs, what structure works.”
“You work with her?”
“Sometimes. Situations that need handling. New arrivals with adjustment problems. I do tactical, she does nurturing. Works out.” He then adds, “I’m not exactly equipped for nurturing or daughters.”
Tactical. She weeds out the ones too far gone. But protection for vulnerable fledglings learning to survive while processing trauma.
“You think I’d fit?”
He studied her the way a man studied a tool he hadn’t been the one to make, weighing what it could do without bothering himself with where it had come from.
“Well... you haven’t tried to bite me. That’s a good start,” he laughed darkly, causing her to grin. “But seriously, you’re functional without guidance. Strategic thinking, not just hunger response. Control your Demon instead of letting it control you. Questions first, assumptions last.” He paused. “More self-awareness than most fledglings manage in a year, let alone a week.”
I guess I’m not a total dumpster fire. Nice of someone to see it.
“What would I need to do? To meet them.”
Here it comes... the cost. He’s going to want something. Everyone does. Plata, favores, lo que sea. Nobody helps for free.
“Nothing complicated. Show up. Be honest. Don’t try to dominate or manipulate. Abuela’s got good instincts: she’ll know quick whether you fit or cause problems.”
Too simple. A week of survival tests, and now just: show up and be honest? This has to be a jodido trap.
When’s the last time someone asked me to be honest without using it against me?
“Where’s Sierra Vista?”
“I’ll take you tomorrow night. Easier if I introduce you proper. Abuela appreciates courtesy. Kids are more comfortable with new arrivals when there’s context.”
Tomorrow night. Close enough to commit. Long enough for him to take payment.
“What should I know? About the group dynamics. Personalities I should watch for?”
“They’re survivors. Different kinds of shit. Each got their own story.” Bisbee’s voice stayed flat. “Not my place to tell, like I’m some neighborhood gossip. They want you to know, they’ll tell you. They’re smart about protecting themselves, but willing to trust when someone proves they’re not a threat. Expect questions. Don’t expect judgment. They understand complicated.”
“Any rules?”
“Don’t feed on anyone under their protection. Don’t bring outside problems without disclosure. Don’t manipulate or dominate. Beyond that: common sense, respect boundaries.”
“I think I can live with that.”
She paused, letting the silence drag.
“Alright. So, tomorrow night. What is this going to cost me? I don’t have anything.... If I need to be the puta...”
“What?”
“Payment. Nobody gives out this kind of help for free. I’ve spent the last... Dios mío, I don’t even know how long, being treated like merchandise. It’s ok. I get it. I’m only valuable for my... para coger. Para acostarme.”
“Fucking hell.” He stepped back, put distance between them. Hands visible, non-threatening. “That what you think this is?”
Neither of them spoke.
“Look, I’m gonna say this once.” His voice came out flat, hard. “Sex is for the living. Once we became this, that plumbing doesn’t work anymore. No amount of Viagra is going to fix that dysfunction. But even if it did?” He paused. “I didn’t fuck the baby-sans in ‘Nam when they were desperate. Sure, as hell not starting now.”
She stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language.
Not interested. No me interesa. First time anyone’s ever said that. So, if he doesn’t want... then why the fuck is he helping me? What else do I even have?
“I don’t.... I don’t have anything else!”
“I’m not charging. This is help. It’s free. No charge.” Bisbee paused. “Look kid, I get it. You’ve been through hell. You got sucker-punched by life. Betrayed and sold like cattle.” His voice carried flat recognition. Someone who’d heard this story too many times. “Trust doesn’t come easy anymore. I don’t blame you. If it were me, teenage girl, I’d feel the same.” He paused. “Totally up to you, Naida. Stay here, shower, get cleaned up. Or go find your spot for the day. No pressure.”
¿Gratis? What the fuck is free? I don’t... I don’t understand.
“You offer me a shower, hot water...”
Nothing filled the space between them, just the small sounds of the small adobe house settling around them, the refrigerator’s compressor cycling on in the kitchen, the wind outside finding the loose corner of an evaporative cooler somewhere on the roof and worrying it the way wind always worried at things in this country. She didn’t know what to do with this. Nowhere to file it. No box it fit into, no shape in any of the rooms her mind had built for storing what men wanted that matched the shape of a man who had said he didn’t want anything.
“Fine,” she said finally. Voice tight, uncertain despite the edge. “I’ll stay. Use your shower. You can watch. If you want.” The offer came out smaller than she meant. She was searching for patterns, for some way to understand. Men always want something. “I don’t mind.”
Let me be useful. Let me earn this. Please don’t just... help. I need to pay for it somehow.
“No.” Flat. Final. Not angry: sad, maybe. Like he’d seen this before and it still hurt to see again. “Kid, I’m not gonna watch you shower. This isn’t some kind of ‘Fifty Shades of Pasty Undead’. You aren’t some underage shower stripper. I’m not that guy.”
He paused. Revulsion crossed his face.
“Seriously, kid. I’m not gonna try anything. I’m not wired that way anymore. Been dead since long before you were born. You don’t gotta earn this help. You don’t owe me anything for it.”
Another pause. His jaw tightened.
“Whoever taught you different...” His voice went hard. Flat with controlled rage. “They lied. And if I ever meet them, they’re gonna wish I just killed them quick.”
She didn’t have words for what that did to her. Stood there, every instinct screaming this was wrong, had to be a trap, but...
“Fine.” Voice barely audible.
Men always want something. Always. I’m so confused right now.
“Won’t be a problem.” His voice stayed steady. Not offended, not angry. Just: clear. “You got nothing to worry about from me. Not like that. Not ever.”
She nodded. First voluntary step toward vampire community. Toward possibility of belonging somewhere that didn’t require constant vigilance or the small daily lies she had spent her life perfecting.
“Can I ask you something?” She caught him as he stood to leave. Every movement economical. Someone who’d learned not to waste.
“Shoot.”
“Why help me? You could’ve eliminated me as a problem. Saved yourself complications.”
Bisbee paused. Considered the question with same deliberate attention he gave tactical assessments.
“Because there’s enough monsters in the world already,” he said finally, the words landing the way a man laid down a hand of cards he had been holding for fifty years and was tired of holding. “No point creating more when you can help create a different path instead.”
She nodded slowly. His tone said he’d seen both sides firsthand.
“Shower’s back there.” He pointed toward the rear of the small adobe with the same economical gesture he used for everything, the kind of pointing a man did when he had spent a lifetime giving directions in places where bullets came through walls and you did not waste a movement on style. “Let me check if I got anything clean you can wear after.”
© 2025 E L Frederick. All rights reserved. Unpublished manuscript — do not reproduce or distribute without permission.