Rocket - Chapter 4
Naida - US/Mexico Border
Sunset woke her.
The earth let her go the way a tide returns a swimmer it has temporarily decided to keep, dirt flowing around her like she was swimming up through it instead of buried, every grain politely rearranging itself out of her path with a patience nothing alive had ever shown her. Naida broke surface in the wash between two ridges, shaking off soil that smoothed itself back to normal behind her, the desert closing the door of her day-bed without leaving any sign of which door it had been or who had used it. No trace she’d been there at all, no scent line, no settled disturbance for thermal optics to find at first light, the country itself complicit now in the small cold business of hiding her from people who still thought of her as recoverable.
One night since the grave. The second night of this new existence, and the desert already felt more like home than anywhere she’d lived before.
But tonight something was different. The wind carried smells that made her freeze: gun oil, the chemical stink of tactical gear, and underneath it all, men. Lots of them. Men who’d been hunting too long in the desert heat.
Mierda. Time to figure out who’s actually running this shit show. They didn’t listen when I told them to leave me be. Time to make it too expensive to continue.
The stars were so bright they hurt to look at, each one sharp enough to cut. Every sound layered itself in her ears like she was wearing headphones with the volume cranked, wind through branches, something small scuttling over rocks, an owl hunting in the distance.
And woven through it all: radio static. Boots on stone. The click of weapons being checked by nervous fingers.
They’d brought reinforcements.
She smelled them before she saw them: sweat and Chemical Blue cologne. That truck stop shit one of the coyotes had worn during the journey north, like it could cover the stink of unwashed bodies and violation. And equipment that had no business in the desert.
Shit. How many this time? And how do I fight actual soldiers or whatever?
She was eighteen and way out of her depth, but something hungry and patient whispered that she’d been underestimated before. That worked out pretty well for her last time.
Naida checked her stolen gear with hands that still shook when she wasn’t concentrating. Combat boots from last night’s kill, a size too big and loose at the heel. Tactical knife. Small radio with earbud, frequency still active.
Of all the coyotes in the world, I had to kill someone with feet larger than my father’s.
They were talking. Broadcasting their positions like they’d never considered their target might be listening.
“Alpha team, report status on grid seven-seven.”
“Grid seven-seven clear. Moving to seven-eight. Motion sensors negative.”
“Copy,” Command acknowledged. “Bravo team, what’s your twenty?”
“Bravo at checkpoint delta. No contact.”
Grid patterns and checkpoints... they think I’m just some random escaped prisoner or whatever. They have no idea what they’re dealing with.
The smile that crossed her face wasn’t the practiced one she’d learned in the trucks. Sharper. More honest. The kind that showed teeth.
She listened to the radio paint pictures of their operation. Six teams, two men each, sweeping north from the border. Someone on high ground running command. Professional setup. Competent execution.
Wrong species, pendejos.
Pick them off one by one. Make them afraid.
The voice felt familiar now, like a friend giving advice. For once what it wanted matched what she wanted: make them pay for thinking she was still cargo to collect.
The landscape rolled out in front of her in shades of silver and black, moonlight showing details human eyes would miss. Rocky outcroppings, narrow washes carved by flash floods, thorny bushes casting shadows that welcomed her.
She could smell everything: javelinas that had passed through sometime ago, coyotes marking territory near water, the chemical traces of equipment that didn’t belong.
Okay, so I can hear them, smell them, and they have no clue where I am. Plus I’ve got this thing amplifying what already worked fine when I was human. These pendejos are so screwed.
She was trying to convince herself more than anything. Not confidence, not even close. Desperate hope that she had enough advantages to survive men with guns and training.
Naida moved southeast toward Bravo team’s coordinates, her vampire senses mapping terrain ahead. Every step landed on earth that recognized her now, not quite liquid like during the underground thing, but responsive. Quieter than it should be.
The desert helped her hunt. The ground muffled her footfalls, the bushes released bitter-sweet smell to hide her scent, the rocks whispered under her boots like settling bones instead of crunching.
It had taken her two nights to understand that the desert was not neutral about her, that the same country which had spent a year trying to kill her on the way north, the heat and the thirst and the men, had changed its mind the moment she stopped being something that could die of any of it, and now it moved its shadows and hushed its ground and bent its scrub around her the way a house goes quiet for someone who has finally learned where every loose board lies.
Twenty minutes of careful movement brought her to a boulder field. The first target appeared against the stars, silhouetted like he was posing for her. His partner hung back fifty meters: too far to take both at once, close enough that isolated kills were possible.
Perfect. Time to see what happens when I do this on purpose instead of by accident.
She knew the work. She’d known it since she was twelve, since the cousin taught her that a boy would hand over anything for a girl who looked at him the right way, and maybe hate himself for it after. He’d meant to break her. He’d built her a trade instead.
So she set up the way she’d been set up a hundred times, except this time she chose the room. Right approach angle, so the partner fifty meters back couldn’t see. Close to the ridge for the sightline. Far enough from the rally point that no one would reach him in time.
Last night I killed two because I had to. Tonight I kill as many as it takes to make this operation cost more than I’m worth. Simple economics, pendejos.
She arranged herself between two stones and let the moonlight do what moonlight did, finding her throat, the torn shirt, the skin that caught light wrong now, brighter than living skin should. Vulnerability and the suggestion of more. Men who’d spent weeks moving girls through this desert would read both without being told.
Then she reached for the heat.
It came the way it had come once for Mateo in a courtyard what felt like a hundred years ago, except there was something under it now she hadn’t found the bottom of, something that moved through the air like a smell and answered the instant she decided to spend it. It felt like breathing out, but the breath had weight. A hand she’d grown without noticing, reaching across the dark to press soft against the parts of a man already prone to listening. She watched it leave her from half a step behind her own eyes, clinical, mapping the pulse in his throat while the rest of her went soft and lost and grateful.
She could not tell where the conditioning ended and the new thing began. Both used the same body. Both ran without asking. She’d stopped expecting an answer.
His approach faltered. His breathing changed. The trained sweep of his weapon dropped a few degrees, his eyes catching on her instead of the terrain.
“Jesus.” He’d stopped moving. “What the fuck?”
The radio crackled. “Ramirez, what’s your status?”
“I... there’s something up here. Someone.”
“Armed?”
He moved closer, the weapon lowering as the thing she pushed at him overrode the thing they’d trained into him. “Negative. Looks like... looks like the target. Young female. Injured, maybe.”
Come on, pendejo. Two more steps.
She stepped into the light and gave him the shape she’d been built to give, shoulders curling small, chin down, the torn shirt sliding off one shoulder like it was the breeze and not her own hand that had loosened it. When she spoke it came breathy and broke in the right place.
“Please... are you here to help me? I’ve been lost for days...”
True enough. She’d been lost since the trucks. The cold part of her set the words down like bait and watched him take the hook; the warm part meant every syllable; she’d long since stopped trying to pull the two apart.
“Easy, chica.” He came closer, the radio forgotten in his hand. “I’m here to help. What’s your name?”
His heartbeat climbed. The smell of his sweat shifted where the wanting started to outrun the training. Carotid right there, a finger’s width under the skin, jumping.
“Naida,” she whispered, and let something real leak through, because the real thing was the best lure she had. “I don’t know how long. Days. I’m so scared. And hungry.”
You have no idea what kind of hungry.
“Hungry?” He was close now. Close enough that she watched him decide she was a gift. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“I can’t remember.” She closed the last of the distance herself, exactly as the choreography wanted it, leaving him the half-step so he’d believe he was the one crossing it. “Everything’s confused. There were trucks. Men who hurt me. Then dark.”
He reached for her shoulder, fingers trembling. “It’s okay now. You’re safe. We’ll take care of you.”
Safe. Take care of you. I know exactly which care you mean, cabrón. They all say the soft words first.
His hand was still on her shoulder. She let it stay, and let her own hands drift to the waist of her stolen jeans. She didn’t take them off. Didn’t even touch the button. Just the zip, dragged down slow, the denim parting a few inches over her hip, a shadow of an invitation, deniable enough that he could tell himself later he’d never asked.
Her hands had done it on their own. The cold part of her watched them do it and felt nothing, the way you feel nothing watching your own reflection lift a glass.
Then one of those hands went to him, found the hard heat of him through the fatigues, and closed.
He flinched.
It was the cold. Her hand was the temperature of the ground she’d slept in, of the dead thing she’d become, and it closed over the one part of him running hottest, and his body understood before his mind did, the small animal recoil of flesh meeting something it should never have touched. For half a second the fog cleared, and something behind his eyes started to ask the right question. Then her grip shifted, and the wanting closed back over the question like water over a dropped stone. He pushed into the cold anyway. Whatever was wrong with her hand, it wasn’t wrong enough to make him give up what the hand was holding.
And there it was, the whole game, the same as it always went. A dead girl’s cold hand wrapped around a fistful of him, and his complete, undivided attention. The rifle, the body armor, the radio still calling his name, the partner fifty meters back, the whole professional machine he’d walked into the desert with, all of it gone somewhere very far away. There was the hand, and what it held, and nothing else in the world worth a single thought.
There you are, cabrón. Got you by the only thing that was ever really running you. Now you’ll tell me anything I want.
“So tell me.” Her voice was almost nothing, the hand not moving. “Who sends men into the desert to die over one girl?”
“I... we can’t.” The words came slow, swimming up through fog. “Orders.”
“Whose orders?” She didn’t care about the answer. She cared that his mouth was still working and his hands were not.
“Carlos Mendoza,” he managed, voice thick. “Runs this whole corridor. Personal interest in your recovery. You’re expensive, cost him too much already.”
The name hit like a fist to the stomach. For a half-second she was back in concrete walls painted cheerful yellow, the sharp-sweet burn of Lucas lollipop chili powder on her tongue trying to scrub away the bitter residue Carlos had left in her mouth, his soft voice praising her for being such a good student...
No. Not going there. Not now.
She shoved the memory fragment down hard, hands suddenly shaking for reasons that had nothing to do with cold or the kill ahead.
The scared girl went out of her all at once, like a light cut. He felt it go, and felt the cold hand close, harder than any girl’s hand had a right to, harder than he had a prayer of pulling out of. The softness gone from her face, the dead strength arriving in its place, both in the same half second.
“What the fuck,” he got out, “are you?”
Hungry. Drink him. Drain him to the rind. Take back what the night cost.
The true answer. The smart one. She gave him neither. She gave him the knife.
It went into his throat before he finished the question, vampire coordination setting the blade exactly right, supernatural strength making it nothing. He folded without a sound, the question still open on his face, and dropped to the caliche at her feet.
She looked down at him and spat it after him, low, for no one but the dead.
“Not cargo anymore.”
His feet were a normal man’s size. She crouched, pulled his boots, and swapped them for the oversized pair she’d been sliding in all night, leaving the big ones beside him. The new ones held her heel when she flexed. Small mercy, and she took it.
Blood poured from the wound in warm streams that her vampire senses found intoxicating. The metallic sweetness called to her like chocolate when she was pequeña, like salvation when she was dying. Her teeth ached with frustrated hunger.
Feed. Now.
Not now. Can’t lose focus with another one coming. Need to stay tactical.
Take what is yours.
Cállate. I can’t think with you screaming about every drop I don’t drink. First threat, then hunger. Priorities.
The second scout approached with weapon ready, concerned by his partner’s silence. Professional caution couldn’t protect him from supernatural speed that made human reflexes obsolete, but her attack lacked smooth efficiency.
She came out of shadow fast enough to seem like teleportation, but the strike felt clumsy, enhanced strength compensating for inexperience rather than skill. His collarbone shattered under vampire force she couldn’t quite control, sending him down hard with weapon clattering across limestone.
He keyed his radio frantically with his injured arm, the damage serious but not fatal yet.
“Command, this is Bravo! Under attack! Target...”
She crushed his windpipe, ending transmission before vital information reached other teams. But radio chatter suggested someone had heard enough to know Bravo was in trouble.
Good. Let them be afraid. Maybe if they’re scared enough, they’ll just... leave me alone.
Radio chatter exploded across frequencies as remaining teams responded:
“All units, converge on Bravo’s last known!”
“Command, request immediate backup and medical!” another voice shouted.
“What the fuck did she do to Ramirez?”
Hunt them all.
But Naida was already seeking underground concealment, vampire instincts recognizing withdrawal over continued engagement. The earth welcomed her body with liquid cooperation, flowing soil that embraced her descent while maintaining structure above.
From underground, she listened to search teams sweeping the kill site with methodical thoroughness. They maintained visual contact, established overlapping coverage, communicated constantly.
“Jesus Christ.” The voice had gone very quiet. “Look at Ramirez’s throat. What kind of knife work is that?”
“Professional. Precise. This isn’t some scared trafficking victim.”
“Command, we need extraction and complete operational review.”
If they only knew I have no idea what I’m doing. I got lucky. Hell I’m just making it up as I go.
Hours passed before search teams moved beyond her position. She emerged silently, leaving no trace, enhanced senses painting detailed pictures of terrain where five teams now tried to establish perimeter around space where their quarry might hide.
Wrong strategy. She wasn’t hiding; she was hunting, and the hunger was hunting her. One team after another came apart in the dark, and every man she left in the caliche without drinking pulled the ache another notch tighter, until it had stopped being something she could set down between kills and started shaking her hands when she wasn’t watching them.
Feed.
Just a little longer. Finish the job, then I can...
Now. Take it.
The fourth kill almost broke her. She stood over the body, blood pooling around boots, teeth fully extended, hands trembling with need rather than nerves. It took everything she had to pull away, to keep moving, to maintain tactical focus when every instinct screamed feed feed FEED.
Mierda. Don’t know how much longer I can... fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
By dawn’s approach, she’d eliminated five of six teams through tactics that felt less like natural evolution and more like barely controlled desperation. The surviving team had barricaded themselves on high ground, radio transmissions painting pictures of soldiers encountering threats beyond briefing parameters.
“Command, we need immediate reinforcement and mission review. Target demonstrates capabilities exceeding briefing. Requesting withdrawal to base camp for strategic reassessment.”
The reply didn’t come from their command. It came in Spanish, and whatever patience the voice had started the night with was long gone.
“¿Retirada?” The word came out strangled. “¿Cinco equipos? ¿Cinco putos equipos contra una sola escuincla y me hablan de retirada? ¿Dónde chingados los entrenaron? ¿Hicieron la cartilla los sábados y ya se creen soldados?” The voice climbed, cracking. “Don Carlos pagó por profesionales y me mandaron payasos. Tráiganme la mercancía viva, o el próximo cuerpo que deje esa arena va a ser de ustedes. ¿Quedó claro, pendejos?”
Somebody up the chain is losing his shit. Five teams, one little girl, and now he’s screaming about whether these pendejos were ever real soldiers at all. They want me alive, and they’re scared of what I’m costing them. Good. Let him scream.
They’re starting to understand I’m not what they thought.
From underground she listened to the helicopters come for the survivors and the bodies, and to the chatter that promised the next operation would be bigger, better armed, built for whatever she was. Ten kills. A name. Their whole grid in pieces. And none of it touched the hunger, which had stayed quiet through the killing only because the killing was a slow way of putting it off, and was done being quiet.
Carlos Mendoza. Time to pay you a visit, cabrón. Time to show you exactly what your merchandise became.
Dawn took her down into the caliche, stronger than she’d risen the night before, more at home in the desert that wanted her, and more afraid of what the strength was costing. The organization that used to own her was about to learn that some cargo bites back.
But first she needed blood. Soon. Before it stopped asking and started taking control.
© 2025 E L Frederick | Published by Veridian Studios