Already Dead

I SMELL THEM BEFORE I SEE THEM. All the powders, perfumes and oils the half-smart ones smear on themselves. The stupid ones just stumble around reeking. The really smart ones take a Goddamn shower. The water doesn't help them in the long run, but the truth is, nothing is gonna help them in the long run. In the long run they're gonna die. Hell, in the long run they're already dead.

So this pack is half-smart. They've splashed themselves with Chanel No. 5, Old Spice, whatever. Most folks just think they have a heavy hand at the personal scent counter. I close my eyes and inhale deeper, because it could just be a group of bridge and tunnelers in from Jersey or Long Island. But it's not. I take that second breath and sure enough, there it is underneath: the sweet, subtle tang of something not quite dead. Something freshly rotting. I'm betting they're the ones I'm looking for. And why wouldn't they be? It's not like these things are thick on the ground. Not yet. I walk a little farther down Avenue A and stop at the sidewalk window of Nino's, the pizza joint on the corner of St. Marks.

I rap on the counter with the ring on my middle finger and one of the Neapolitans comes over.

– Yeah?

– What's fresh?

He looks blank.

– The pizza, what's just out of the oven?

– Tomato and garlic.

– No way, no fucking garlic. How 'bout the broccoli, it been out all day?

He shrugs.

– Fine, give me the broccoli. Not too hot, I don't want to burn the roof of my mouth.

He cuts a slice and slides it into the oven to warm up. I could eat the tomato and garlic if I wanted to. It's not like the garlic would hurt me or anything. I just don't like the shit.

While I wait I lean on the counter and watch the customers inside the joint. The usual crowd for a Friday night: couple drunk NYU kids, couple drunk greasers, a drunk squatter, two drunk yuppies on an East Village adventure, a couple drunk hip-hoppers, and the ones I'm looking for. There are three of them standing around the far corner table: an old-school goth chick, and two rail-thin guys, with impossibly high cheekbones, that have fashion junkie written all over them. The kind of guys who live in a squat but make the fashion-week scene by virtue of the skag they bring to the parties. Just my favorite brand of shitdogs all in all.

– Broccoli.

The Neapolitan is back with my slice. I hand him three bucks. The goth and the fashion junkies watch the two NYU kids stumble out the door. They push their slices around for another minute, then follow. I sprinkle red pepper flakes on my slice and take a big bite, and sure enough it's too hot and I burn the roof of my mouth. The pizza jockey comes back and tosses my fifty cents change on the counter. I swallow, the molten cheese scorching my throat.

– I told you not too hot.

He shrugs. All the guy has to do all day is throw slices in the oven and take them out when they're ready. Ask for one not too hot and you might as well be requesting coq au vin. I grab my change, toss the slice back on the counter and take off after the junkies and the goth chick. Fucking thing had garlic in the sauce anyway.

The NYU kids have crossed the street to cut through Tompkins Square before the cops shut it down at midnight. The trio lags behind about eight yards back, walking past the old water fountain with Faith, Hope, Temperance, Charity carved in the stone above it. The kids reach the opposite side of the park and keep heading east on Ninth Street, deeper into Alphabet City. Great.

This block of 9th between Avenues B and C is barren, as in empty of everyone except the NYU kids, their trailers and me.

The junkies and the goth pick up the pace. I stroll. They're not going anywhere without my seeing it. What they want to do takes a bit of privacy. Better for me if they get settled someplace where they feel safe, before I move in.

They're right on the kids now. They move into a dark patch under a busted streetlamp and spread out, one on either side of the kids and one behind. There's a scuffle, movement and noise, and they all disappear. Fuck.

I jog up the street and take a look. On my left is an abandoned building. It used to be a Puerto Rican community center and performance space, before that it was a P.S. Now it's just condemned.

I follow the scent up the steps and across the small courtyard to the graffiti-covered doors. They've been chained shut for a few years, but tonight the chain is hanging loose below the hack-sawed hasp of a giant Master lock. Looks like they prepped this place in advance of their ambush. Looks like they may be a little more than half-smart.

I ease the door open and take amp; look. Hallway goes straight for about twelve yards then hits a T intersection. Dark. That's OK. I don't mind the dark. The dark is just fine. I slip in, close the door behind me and take a whiff. They're here, smells like they've been hanging out for a couple days. I hear the first scream and know where to go. Up to the intersection, down the hall to the right, and straight to the open classroom door.

One of the NYU kids is facedown on the floor with the goth chick kneeling on his back. She's already shoved her knife through the back of his neck, killing him. Now she's trying to jam the blade into his skull so she can split it open. The junkie guys stand by, waiting for the pinata to bust.

The other kid has jammed himself in a corner in the obligatory pool of his own fear-piss. His eyes are rolling around and he's making the high-pitched noise that people make when they're so scared they might die from it. I hate that noise.

I hear something crunchy.

The chick has the knife in. She gives it a wrenching twist and the dead kid's skull cracks open. She claws her fingers into the crack, gets a good grip and pulls, tearing the kid's head open like a piece of rotted fruit. A pomegranate. The junkies edge closer as she starts scooping out clumps of brain. Too late for that kid, so I wait a couple seconds more, watching them as they start to eat, and listening to the other kid's moaning go up another octave. Then I do my job.

It takes me three silent steps to reach the first one. My right arm loops over his right shoulder. I grab his face with my right hand while my left hand grips the back of his head. I jerk sharply clockwise, pulling up at the same time. I feel his spinal cord tear and drop him, grabbing the second one's hair before the first one hits the ground. The chick is getting up off the kid's corpse, coming at me with the knife. I punch the second junkie in the throat and let him drop. It won't kill him, but he'll stay down for a second. The chick whips the knife in a high arc and the tip rakes my forehead. Blood oozes from the cut and into my eyes.

Whatever she was before she got bit, she knew a little about using a knife, and still remembers some of it. She's hanging back, waiting for her pal to get up so they can take me together. I measure the blank glaze in her eyes. Yeah, there's still a little of her at home. Enough to order pizza and pick out these kids as marks, enough to cut through a lock, but not enough to be dangerous. As long as I'm not stupid. I step in and she thrusts at me with the knife. I grab the blade.

She looks from me to the knife. I'm holding it tightly, blood spilling out between my clenched fingers. The dim light in her eyes gets minutely brighter as something gives her the word: she's fucked. I twist the knife out of her hand, toss it in the air and catch it by the handle. She turns to run. I grab the back of her leather jacket, step close and jam the knife into her neck at the base of her skull, chopping her medulla in half. I leave the knife there and let her drop to the floor. The second junkie is just getting back up. I kick him down, put my boot on his throat and stomp, twisting my foot back and forth until I hear his neck snap.

I kneel and wipe my hand on his shirt. My blood has already coagulated and the cuts in my hand have stopped bleeding, likewise the cut in my forehead. I check the bodies. One of the guys is missing a couple teeth and has some lacerations on his gums. Looks like he's been chewing someone's skull. Probably it belonged to the clown I took care of a couple days ago, the one with the hole in his head who tipped me off to this whole thing. Anyway, his teeth aren't what I'm interested in.

Both guys have small bites on the backs of their necks. The bite radius and size of the tooth marks make me take a look at the girl's mouth. Looks like a match. Figure she bit these two and infected them with the bacteria. Happens that way sometimes. Generally a person gets infected, the bacteria starts chewing on their brain and pretty soon they're reduced to the simple impulse to feed. But sometimes, before they reach that point, they infect a few others. They take a bite, but don't eat the whole meal if you get me. No one really knows why. Some sob sisters would tell you it's because they're lonely. But that's bullshit. It's the bacteria compelling them, spreading itself. It's fucking Darwin doing his thing.

I check the girl's neck. She infected the others, but something infected her first. The bite's been marred by the knife I stuck in her, but it's there. It's bigger than the others, more violent. In fact, there are little nips all over her neck. Fucking carrier that got her couldn't decide if it wanted to just infect her or eat her. Whatever, all the same to me. Except it means the job isn't done yet. Means there's a carrier still out there. I start to stand up. But something else; a smell on her. I kneel next to her and take a whiff. Something moves behind me.

The other NYU kid. Right, forgot about him. He's trying to dig his way through the wall. I walk over to him. I'm just about to pop him in the jaw when he does the job for me and passes out. I look him over. No bites. Now normally I wouldn't do this, but I lost a little blood and I never got to eat my pizza, so I'm pretty hungry. I take out my works and hook the kid up. I'll only take a pint. Maybe two.

The phone wakes me in the morning. Why the hell someone is calling me in the morning I don't know, so I let the machine get it.

– This is Joe Pitt. Leave a message.

– Joe, it's Philip.

I don't pick up the phone, not for Philip Sax. I close my eyes and try to find my way back to sleep.

– Joe, I think maybe I got something if ya can pick up the phone.

I roll over in bed and pull the covers up to my chin. I try to remember what I was dreaming about so I can get myself back there.

– I don't wanna bug ya, Joe, but I figure ya gotta be in. It's ten in the morning, where ya gonna be?

Sleep crawls off into a corner where I can't find it and I pick up the damn phone.

– What do you want?

– Hey, Joe, busy last night?

– I was on a job, yeah. So what?

– I think ya made the news, is all.

Shit.

– The papers?

– NY1.

Fucking NY1. Fucking cable. Can't do shit in this city without them poking a reporter into it.

– What'd they call it?

– Uh, Gruesome quadruple homicide.

– Shit.

– Looks pretty sloppy, Joe.

– Yeah, well, there weren't a lot of options.

– Uh-huh, sure, sure. What was it?

– This thing I'm working on, brain eaters.

– Zombies?

– Yeah, shamblers. I hate the Goddamn things.

– You get 'em all?

– There's a carrier.

– Carrier huh? Fucking shamblers, huh, Joe?

– Yeah.

I hang up.

It's not like I didn't know leaving the bodies over there could cause trouble, I just thought they'd sit till I could clean things up tonight. Now the neighborhood's gonna be crawling with cops. But that's the least of my worries just now, because the phone is ringing again, and I sure as shit know who it's gonna be this time.

Uptown. They want me to come uptown. Now. In broad daylight. I put on the gear.

In winter this is easy, just wrap up head to toe, pull on a ski mask and some sunglasses and go. I'm not saying it's comfortable, but it's easy and you stay inconspicuous. I'll be OK once I get to the subway, but it's four blocks from here to there, and once I get uptown it'll be another few blocks to their offices. It's those blocks between the subway stations and the front doors I worry about.

I know a guy wears a white delivery-boy outfit with white latex gloves, a big wide-brimmed white cowboy hat, and zinc oxide all over his face. It keeps him pretty well covered, but even in Manhattan he gets looks. Me, I use a burnoose.

I pull on the boots, baggy pants and shirt, then the robe. The headpiece always gives me fits and I have to relearn how it wraps every time I do this. Once it's on and feels like it won't unravel and fall off, I slip on white cotton gloves, draw the veil across my face, put on my shades and head out. Sure I get eyeballed a bit, but who gives a fuck, no one can see my face.

What I do care about is getting to First and 14th fast as I can. Even with all this cover, even with it being white and reflecting the sunlight, even though it's only four fucking blocks, I'm still getting the shit burned out of me by the short-wave UVs. And this isn't like the cuts I got last night that close right up and are gone in the morning. This hurts like hell and is gonna take days to heal. And if a patch of bare skin should happen to get hit by some direct rays? Well, I just need to be careful that doesn't happen. So I walk fast and think about aloe and ice-water baths while my skin gets roasted and my eyes tear up behind my shades and I make it to the station and rush down the steps to the sweltering, but dark platform.

The uptown guys are making a point. They could say what they need to say on the phone. They could wait for dark to rip me a new asshole, but they want to make me burn a little. They want to flex and teach me a lesson for getting sloppy. That's what's on the surface anyway. The real reason they're doing it this way is because I still haven't joined the Coalition. And the truth is, I haven't joined exactly because of shit like this. But I did get sloppy last night, and someone is gonna swing for it. So I'll fry a little to keep them happy and to keep myself alive. Because I don't want to die. Except, oh yeah, I'm already dead.

They have this building on 85th between Madison and Fifth. Nice piece of real estate. One of those anonymous brownstones that could be a consulate building or a discreet plastic surgeon's office. And, hey, right around the corner from the Guggenheim and the Met. Everything you want to know about these guys you can tell from the address: old, traditional, wealthy, powerful, and no fun at all.

I take the three steps up to the front door and press the button set in brass right next to the security camera.

– Yes?

– Pitt.

– Who?

– Joe Pitt. I have an appointment.

There's a pause and I slide into the sliver of shade available in the doorway.

– I'll need to see your face, Mr. Pitt.

– Are you kidding?

– I need to confirm your identity, Mr. Pitt.

This is choice. This is fucking brilliant. I hold the robe up over my head to shade my face and use my free hand to pull the veil quickly aside. I can feel the burn scorch my cheek and chin. I'll be bright red for a few days until it peels.

– Thank you, Mr. Pitt.

The door buzzes and I push it open and step into the foyer. It's a hardwood-and-muted-colors kind of a place. The weasel that made me strip is sitting at the security desk. I'd like to say that he's big, but that's just not the case. I'm big. This guy left big several workouts ago and has been living in huge ever since. He comes out from around the desk and looms at me.

– Sorry about the inconvenience, Mr. Pitt. May I take your things?

I pull off the robe and the headpiece and he takes them over to a coatrack while I check out my face in a mirror by the door. Yeah, I can see myself in the mirror, big deal. My face is a little pink just from being out, but there's a violent red streak across it from pulling open the veil. I can already see where the skin is turning white and flaking. It hurts like fuck. The steroid king comes back over and looks at my face.

– Hmm. I could get you something for that if you like. Some unguent or Bactine perhaps?

I stare at him.

– What happened to the guy used to be here?

– I'm sorry?

– What happened to the guy used to be here that knew who I was and didn't need to see my face? -Oh, him.

The giant walks over to his desk and sits down so that he's back on eye level with me.

– He was executed.

No playful euphemisms around here, boy. No. He was retired or dismissed. Just get it out there, He fucked up so we dragged him outside and staked his hands and feet to the ground and waited for the sun to come up and burn him dead from advanced skin cancer in about twenty minutes. How do I know they did it that way? I said they were traditionalists. That's the way traditionalists do it.

– Too bad, he was alright.

Big boy just watches me.

– So any chance I can get in for my appointment? It's a really beautiful day out there and I want to make the most of it before it gets cloudy.

The giant picks up a phone and presses a button.

– He's here. I did. Thank you, sir.

He places the phone back in its cradle and points at the door across the foyer.

– Just up the stairs and to the right.

– Thanks.

I walk to the door and he presses a button on his desk to buzz it open. I stand there holding the door and turn back to him.

– Hey, who they got me seeing anyway?

– Mr. Predo will be meeting with you today, Mr. Pitt. Just up the stairs and to your right.

– Yeah, thanks.

I step through the door and let it swing shut behind me. Dexter Predo. Fuck. Predo is the head of the Coalition's secret police, and party chairman all rolled into one. He's the guy keeps everybody in line. He's the guy in charge of staking people out in the sun.

I take the stairs to the second floor. The stairwell walls are covered with portraits of great Coalition members from back a couple hundred years right up to the present. At the top of the stairs is a photo of the current Coalition Secretariat, the twelve members and the prime minister. But the truth is, most of the faces in this photo are the same as the ones in the first one down at the bottom of the stairs. Not a lot of turnover in the old Secretariat. Not pictured anywhere, Dexter Predo, a man who prefers to remain obscure.

The stairs reach up for three more flights, but I've never been asked beyond the second floor, and I'm not looking for an invitation. The upper floors are for Coalition members only. As it is I'm lucky my appointment isn't in the basement. I walk a short way down the hall to the first door on the right and knock.

– Come in.

Predo's office is modest as these things go. I mean, I'm sure all his little objets d'art are priceless, but it's not like he has a killer view of the park. Not that the shades would be up anyway. He's at an oak cabinet, pulling a file. Three guesses whose it is.

– Pitt.

– Mr. Predo.

– Please. Come in. Have a seat.

I couldn't tell you how old Predo really is, he looks about twenty-five, but he was around long before I was born. He looks up from the file, sees that I'm still standing and points to a chair in front of his desk.

– A seat, Pitt, have a seat. Be comfortable.

I sit, but I'm not comfortable, and it's not just because the chair is too small. Predo remains standing and flips through the pages of the file.

– Rough business last night, Pitt.

– Yes, it was.

– I don't suppose there was any way for you to reduce the damage?

– I don't suppose there was.

– You might have taken the time to destroy the evidence.

I look at my lap for a moment. He taps the edge of the file against the cabinet to get my attention back.

– The evidence, Pitt?

– That's a residential block, Mr. Predo. If I had torched the school the tenements next door would have gone as well. Bird and the Society would have been all over my back. Plus, there was the other kid still alive in there and all.

– I don't much care what Terry Bird and his ragtags have to say. And as for the kid? That was the evidence I was speaking of, Pitt. I'm still wearing the white cotton gloves. I slip them off. The knife cuts on my left hand are just thin white traces now. By evening they'll be entirely gone. Predo gets tired of waiting for me to respond.

– Barring that, you might have rigged the scene. A murder-suicide perhaps.

– I'm curious, which one would have been the suicide? One of the shamblers with a broken neck? The chick with the knife in her brain? The kid with his head ripped open?

Predo pushes the drawer of the cabinet closed and walks behind the desk.

– The real question is how it got that bad in the first place. What was it that kept you from destroying the filth more cleanly?

– They were eating the kid's brain. I wasn't gonna wait until they gobbled the second one and went to sleep. I had to go at the Goddamn things while they were feeding. They fought back. It got sloppy. Next time I'll let them have the kid.

– Sloppy is an apt word, Pitt. It did indeed get sloppy, and has potential to get sloppier. The police are involved. And worse, the press. Such a grisly murder with Satanic and supernatural overtones, how can they resist? It must be quelled, Pitt. It must be hushed before it draws too much attention and there are prying eyes. It is exactly the kind of business we avoid, Pitt. It is exactly the kind of business you are meant to take care of. It is why we tolerate your independence. And am I to understand that on top of this mess, there is a carrier involved? And that you failed to destroy that carrier?

Fucking Philip! I should have known. That prick never calls just to lend a hand.

– I'll take care of it tonight.

– How will you do that, Pitt, with your neighborhood crawling with police and newscasters and the curious?

– I'll take care of it tonight.

Predo stares at me. He drops the file on his desk and finally sits in his chair.

– You will need to. Tonight and no later.

I wait for it.

– We have found a patsy.

– There was a witness, you gonna change what he saw?

– No we are not, Pitt. We do not need to. The witness is our patsy.

I close my eyes.

– The child whose life you saved will now return the favor by paying the price for this horrid crime. He, of course, has not volunteered to do so, but the evidence we have arranged will make his guilt a foregone conclusion by sundown. But for it to stick, you will need to see that there are no further incidents of this nature.

I open my eyes and look at him. He raises a finger.

– Be useful, Pitt. Your value to the Coalition lies in your usefulness. Be useful and nconspicuous. Destroy the carrier.

I get up from my chair.

– I'm more than useful. I take care of my neighborhood and clean up all the trash the Clans don't want to deal with. So unless you've found another slob to handle your business below Fourteenth, stay off my back.

I head for the door.

– Indeed we shall. But for now, be assured that the cleaning of last night's mess will come with a price, Pitt.

– Yeah, just like everything.

I pull the door open.

– One more thing, Pitt.

I stop and stand in the open doorway, my back to him.

– From what I understand, the boy's veins had been tapped. He had been bled. Unusual behavior for zombies, yes?

I stand there.

– Remember what your mother told you, finish everything on your plate.

I walk out and close the door behind me.

He's right, of course. Tap some kid's veins, take a couple pints and leave him breathing? You might as well put up a sign that says VAMPYRES FEEDING HERE, COME AND KILL US. Of course most people who heard about something like that would just think it was freaky, but there are folks out there who know. And those are exactly the ones we don't want around. Which is why my apartment is so hard to get into.

At my place on 10th between First and A, I have to punch a code into the street door to get into the vestibule, then open two locks to get into the building hallway. After that my door is the first on the left. It looks normal, but it's a factory door I salvaged. I had to rebuild the frame with steel bolsters so it could carry the weight, but it was worth it. If you want to bust into my place your best bet is to go through the walls.

I open the three-key lock, turning all the keys in the right order to keep the alarm from going off inside. I step in, close and lock the door and enter the five-digit code into the keypad that rearms the system. No one would hear the alarm if it did go off, not the neighbors or the police or even me. All that would happen is the lights inside would flash on and off to tell me someone was trying to get in, and a beeper I carry at all times would start to vibrate. And if I was at home, I would wait for whoever it was to get in, and then kill them and drink their blood. But that's just me.

I walk down the short hall to the living room, take off the burnoose and toss it on the couch. I want to get cleaned up, but I don't go into the bathroom on my right or through the kitchen to the bedroom. Instead I go to a spot in the living room, bend down, flip up a small square of hardwood and pull on the steel ring hidden underneath. A large panel set into the floor swings up, revealing a short spiral staircase. I go down, pulling the panel closed behind me.

This is the basement apartment that I rent under another name. This is where I live. I have a bed, a bathroom, a dorm fridge, a hot plate, my computer, my stereo and my TV and DVD player. The door down here isn't quite as fancy as the one upstairs. I just sealed it by driving nails directly through the door frame and into the door. But first I installed a kick panel in the bottom half, I can boot it out from the inside and wriggle through if there's ever anyone upstairs I don't want to deal with. I also have a small window at sidewalk level, but I've dry-walled over it so no damn Van Helsing can sneak in here and pull the curtains away and burn me to death while I'm trying to sleep.

I run the tub. While I'm waiting I go to the mini-fridge and check my stash. This is the extra fridge, in the closet, the one with the padlock. I pop it open and take a look. With what I tapped last night I have a dozen pints stored up. That's not a bad stash, enough for a month or more. But like any good junkie I'm always looking to lay in a little extra for the dry times. I don't need it now, I drank one of the kid's pints last night, but it will help with the burns, and I can afford to bogart a little. I take one of the plastic pint bags and go sit in the cool tub.

My entire body is dark pink, just a half shade from red. The strip on my face is fire-engine and starting to peel. I sip from the pint. The taste of the blood uncoils things inside me. It oozes down my throat and I feel an instant tingling rush as the Vyrus that makes me what I am attacks the new blood and begins to colonize it. The burns ease up and I can almost see them lighten as I watch. I close my eyes, sip the blood and think about the zombies and how I'm gonna deal with this mess.

It's not like it's my job to kill zombies for Christ's sake. But the damn things are so sloppy until they fall apart that it's never a good idea to have them around attracting attention. Last week I caught the first sign that there might be a carrier down here.

It's just after sundown and I'm lounging in Tompkins, having a smoke, enjoying a sweltering summer evening. Normal shit, just like people do. I don't have a job at the moment, no money gigs, no errands for the Coalition or the Society, and no Good Samaritan crap. Just me on a bench puffing on a Lucky and thinking I might drift over to the Mister Softee truck and grab a cone. Then this squatter comes stumbling past me stinking to high heaven. Nothing unusual there, squatters all stink, and most of them are junkie freaks and expert stumblers as well. What tips me off on this guy is the bloody hole chewed in the back of his head.

I hop off the bench, wrap my arm around the squatter's shoulders and steer him toward a dark corner of the park. His head bobs around and he looks at me and gnashes his teeth a few times like he'd sure like to sink them into my noggin, but this guy is too far gone, just enough brain left to keep him on his feet for a couple days more. Once we get away from the dog run and basketball courts, I push him down on a bench and take a look at the back of his head. Whoever opened him up wasn't dainty about it. No tools on this job except maybe a rock. There's even a couple teeth lodged in the hole.

Zombies eat brains. It's their raison d'etre. It's the thing that keeps them going. Rather, it's what keeps the bacteria that keeps them going, going.

They feed one of two ways. In the most popular scenario they eat the whole brain and whatever else looks yummy and they leave a corpse. That's not so bad. Zombies don't last long. They're too busy decomposing, their flesh being consumed by the bacteria. A straight-up feeder's gonna eat a couple people and fall apart soon, say a couple weeks at the outside. With a feeder, the worst case is they get distracted halfway through their meal and leave a guy with just enough brain to be able to walk around and cause some problems. Figure that's this guy here. He's leftovers. But sometimes you get a carrier, a zombie who bites their victim without feeding. Why? How the fuck should I know? To sow chaos and fear? To create confusion among zombie hunters everywhere? For fucking company? Figure mostly it's just to make more zombies. Who cares anyway? They're zombies for Christ's sake and when they pop up you got to rub em out quick. The alternative is to let them go around making messes and drawing attention. And the one thing we don't want is attention. And by us, I don't mean the undead or the damned. I mean the Vampyre, folks like me who are infected with the Vyrus. But that's a different can of worms.

So I had a shambler, not quite eaten. Might be a carrier out there, might just be a feeder that let his prey get loose. Regardless, this guy's gonna bum around for a few days until he decomposes or someone else notices the not so subtle gaping wound in his head. So I had a choice. The wound was fresh, very fresh. With a little work I could trace this freak's scent back to where it intersected with the feeder's and then track that bastard down and squelch the whole deal right away. Or I could take the time to get rid of laughing boy before he got himself noticed. I opted for the latter. That was the prudent thing to do. Take care of the problem in front of you, then move on. So I did the prudent thing.

First, I wrap the squatter's head in a dirty bandanna I find in his pocket. Then I get him up off the bench, put my arm around him and start walking him east, swaying and lurching like we're just a couple of Tuesday night drunks out for a stroll. We walk all the way out to the East River Park. I plop him onto one of the benches facing the river and go get a bunch of rocks from the kiddy park just behind us.

It's the end of the exercise hours and people are jogging, biking and rollerblading past his face. He makes little lunges from the bench, but his motor skills are too eroded for him to catch any of that fit prey.

Kinda pathetic watching this chump gibber and drool while he jerks, and grabs at the sleek spandex shapes whizzing past. I'm tempted to trip one of the yuppies so I can watch his face while laughing boy crawls up on his back and starts biting through his scalp. But that's just the reactionary in me. Fucking yuppies are ruining my whole neighborhood.

I get my rocks, take them back over to the bench and start filling up the squatter's pockets. He paws at my head and tries to take a bite. I push his hands away and shove him back against the bench, kind of like trying to get a restless child dressed for school. Soon enough I have his pockets stuffed with stones. I get him up and over to the handrailing between the river and the path. We stand there like we're enjoying the view of Queens and the Domino Sugar sign. I wait for a break in the jogging path traffic. Then I wrap my arm around his waist, lean forward and flip him up and over the railing with a little hip toss. He splashes into the water. Maybe he makes a noise before the stones drag him under, but I couldn't say for sure.

Did he feel anything? Did he panic as the water filled his lungs? Probably. It's not like I'm out here doing mercy killings. This was a sponge job. Wipe up the spill and get rid of it. So I waited to see that he didn't bob up then I trotted over the pedestrian bridge across the FDR and caught a cab. Back in Tompkins I tracked the squatter's scent to a public garden on 12th where it got mixed up with the flowers and plants and children and families and I lost it.

Anyway, that's how I got into this current mess, being prudent.

After I get back from uptown and take my bath, I stretch out on the bed to catch up on the sleep I lost this morning, but my sunburn and memories of the scolding I took off Predo keep me awake. That prick is just like any one of my foster parents, or the youth authority counselors, or the cop of your choice. He likes putting people in their place, gets a charge out of it. And me? Every time one of his kind of prick tells me to shut up or sit down or get up against the wall it just makes my stomach bunch up and boil over and I start saying things that get me into trouble.

Thinking about Predo reminds me that he knew about the carrier, knew soon enough to get a crew down here to rig the scene. And that makes me think about Philip. I slipped up and told Philip about the carrier this morning when I was still half asleep. And that gets me pretty fucking pissed at Philip. And why was Philip calling me first thing in the morning? It was like he already knew the mess was mine. Like maybe he had been following me around and maybe caught at least part of last night's action.

Philip is a turd. He's a toady weasel, likes to hang around and try to get close to the Clans or some of the Rogues. Makes him feel like he's connected, inside the velvet rope. Thirty years ago he would've been sucking up to the Studio 54 crowd. Of course he has no official status, no affiliations. He'd like to be infected, has a hard-on for the Vyrus, but the big Clans don't go in for that kind of thing, and he's too chickenshit to approach any of the small ones. Those small outfits are a little too unpredictable. Some Renfield like Philip shows up looking to be infected, they say sure, and the chump ends up tapped out and floating in the river.

But the Coalition has given him an unofficial sanction. He's just servile enough for them. They hand him some shitty errands that even I wouldn't take and they slip him some cash. He's not a total Renfield, mind you, not a full-blown bug eater. But that's just because a bug would look a little too much like food to this pill-popping, emaciated speed freak.

Anyway, it's Philip's connection to the Coalition that's gonna keep me from wringing his head off when I get my hands on him.

And it's not like the Coalition is all I have to worry about. I haven't even heard from the Society yet. When Terry Bird and that crew find out I was involved in this, there's gonna be hell to pay. And they will find out. Anything busts below 14th and Bird knows.

After the sun goes down I cover my burns in aloe and put on a clean pair of jeans and a loose black shirt. While I'm getting ready I flick on the TV to look at the news, and there he is, the kid from last night, the one didn't get his brain eaten.

Cops are leading him up the courthouse steps downtown. He's surrounded by a press mob. The announcer is telling me his name is Ali Singh and that he's a twenty-one-year-old marketing major at NYU. Ali is being charged with a couple of last night's grisly murders. The authorities suspect the others were committed by his victims. They're looking at the whole mess as some kind of ritual-cannibal-murder-suicide pact. A murder weapon with Ali's prints was found in his room along with Satanic materials and trophies from one of the victims.

Ali looks drugged; slack-faced and dead-eyed. Cameras are crammed in his face and flashes explode at point-blank range.

It'll only take a week or two for him to be convinced that he did it. Another couple weeks of evaluation and the case gets pleaded to insanity and Ali spends the rest of his life in a facility for the criminally insane. Could have been worse. Could have been me.

I turn off the news and walk over to Niagara at the corner of 7th and A. It's about nine and the place is dead, the hipsters won't start crowding in till eleven.

The bartender is a guy named Billy. He's floated around the East Village working the bars for the last nine, ten years. Far as he knows, I'm a kind of local tough guy does work for people who need it; some arm bending and maybe some PI type stuff. While back I bounced for a couple months at a place called the Road-house, Billy was working there at the time and we got to know each other a bit.

He comes cruising down the bar. Good-looking guy, thirtyish, wearing pleated gabardine pants, two-tone loafers, and a silk Hawaiian print shirt. Got his hair slicked back and tattoos of dice and eight balls and bathing beauties on his forearms. And as greasy a greaser as Billy is, he is far from the greasiest that'll be cramming into this greaseball haven come midnight.

– Yo, Joe, whaddaya know?

He stops; his face freezes.

– Jesus fuck! Whad happen ta yer fuckin' face?

– Tanning bed, those things are dangerous.

He blinks, slowly, a grin starting to tug the corner of his mouth.

– Yeah?

– Yeah, industry doesn't want you to know, but there are almost as many tanning-bed-related deaths a year as highway deaths.

– No shit?

– I barely got out, man.

He takes another look at the severe scorch on my face and nods his head.

– Bull.

– Sunlamp?

He squints his eyes. I hold up my right hand in pledge. He shakes his head.

– Hey, man, ya done wanna tell me, ya done gotta, but hey, done fuck wit' me.

I've been working on Billy's accent since I met him, and still don't know where the hell he's from. He claims to be Queens born and bred, but he sounds more like a French Canadian educated in Boston.

I shrug my shoulders in surrender.

– Kitchen accident. No shit, I fell asleep with my head in the microwave.

He laughs and wipes at the bar with the rag he keeps tucked in his belt.

– Yeah, baked ya fuckin' brains too, bub. Whad ya drinkin?

Blood.

– 'Bout a bourbon? Whatever's on the rail is fine.

– Heaven Hill comin' up.

He grabs a rocks glass and fills it with whiskey while I look the place over. The Niagara is skinny around the bar then opens up into a big back room, but that area is kept roped off until the crowd builds up later and the cocktail waitress comes on. No sign of Philip. Billy plops the drink down in front of me.

– There ya go, Mr. Marlowe, one cheap bourbon onna house.

– Thanks. Seen Philip around?

– Naw, not yet. He'll be in later.

– You see him first, don't tell him I'm looking.

Billy nods his head.

– Sure thing. He owe ya money, something?

– Something.

– Well look, guy owes me money, two hundred fiddy and change. Get my coin outta him while yer shakin' 'im down, an I'll wipe yer tab.

– I ain't got a tab here, I pay for my drinks.

– That's right. Get my cash an I'll see ya ain't got no tab the next month or so. Everythin' onna house. Even the top shelf, you start ta feelin' fancy.

– I'll see what I can do.

Billy puts out his hand to shake, then slides back down the bar to work on a little number sporting the inevitable Betty Page cut and fishnets. I check her out. Nice package, round ass peeking over the edge of the stool, low-cut vintage dress with pale white cleavage pushed up out of a red lace bra. Billy makes out well with that kind of action. Hell, Billy makes out well with most kinds of action. Just one of those guys. Me, I haven't had a woman in over twenty-five years. Fooled around some, sure, but the whole deal I haven't had in about a quarter of a century. Long story. I look at the number's ass again then look away. I don't need to do that. I want to torture myself I can call Evie later.

I sip my cheap booze and smoke Luckys and watch the crowd build. Around ten they open the back room and I move there. All the time I'm thinking I should be out looking for the carrier. Instead I'm here in greaser heaven watching all the wannabes compare their latest Sailor Jerry knockoff tattoos while they try to hook up with chicks in vintage dresses and sling-back pumps. I'm here because the only damn lead I maybe have on the carrier is Philip. The toad knows something and I'm gonna get it out of him.

Just before eleven the cocktail waitress drifts over and tries to hand me a fresh drink. I look at the glass she's holding and shake my head.

– I didn't order anything.

– Yeah, I know.

She puts the glass in my hands.

– It's from Billy.

She nods at the little napkin under the glass.

– I think he likes you.

I look at the napkin. It has a note written on it: He's here. I look up. The cocktail waitress is still standing there.

– What?

– You know, you should put something on your face for that burn.

– Great, thanks for the tip.

She snorts.

– Yeah, thank you for the tip, too. Not.

She starts to walk away and I put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off.

– Easy, bruiser.

– Yeah easy. Wait a sec.

I dig in my pocket and come up with a few twenties and put one on her tray.

– That's for the delivery service. You know a tall skinny guy named Philip, hangs out here?

– Sure.

– He just came in, right?

– Yeah, he's in the crowd up by the door.

I drop another twenty on her tray.

– Do me a favor; take the guy a drink, one of those fancy Scotches is what he likes. Tell him it's from a chick back here, she wants him to come say hi.

She looks at the money.

– What do I tell him if he asks who she is?

– Tell him she's the one with the Betty Page haircut.

She heads over to the bar. I peek over the crowd and see Philip's pomp towering over the crowd. His hair is bleach blond, piled about ten inches high into a cliff that sticks out half a foot beyond his forehead. I see the cocktail waitress walk away from the bar with a McSomethingorother on her tray. She maneuvers through the press of bodies till she reaches Philip. His pompadour dips as he listens to what she has to say. She points in the direction of the back room and he starts to pick his way over. Someone steps out of the bathroom. I quickly pop in and stand just inside, the door half-open. A guy tries to crowd in.

– Occupied.

He looks at me standing there clearly not using the can for its intended purpose.

– C'mon, man, I got to take a leak.

– Go piss in your shoe, Jack.

He opens his mouth to say something else and I take a step toward him. I stand six three and go two hundred and change. He lines up for the ladies' room. Just then Philip sashays by looking around for whatever kind of chick would be buying him a drink. I grab a fistful of his pink Rayon shirt with a black cat motif, drag him into the John and kick the door closed. He spills his Scotch and stares at it on the floor.

– What the fuck!

Then he looks up and sees that it's me.

– Oh, Joe. Jesus, Joe, what happened to your face, man?

And I start twisting his neck, trying to decide if I should pop his head off.

The thing is, it's not as easy to pop off someone's head as you might think. I settle for forcing his face into the toilet bowl and flushing it a couple times. He comes up gasping.

– The hair, man, the hair!

I slam him against the wall.

– That the only thing on your mind, Phil, your hair?

– Why would I have anything on my mind, Joe? You know me, I don't like to think, it just gets me in trouble.

– You got that right, buddy. Hey, I ever thank you for that call this morning?

He looks a little confused at my change in tone.

– Uh, no, no you didn't.

– Well, hell, that was sure inconsiderate of me.

I reach in my pocket, grab a few bills and tuck them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

– Well thanks, Joe, but you don't gotta do that.

Automatically, he has pulled a comb out of the back pocket of his painted-on black jeans and started to poke at his hair, trying to resculpt it.

– No, I do. I owe you one there. That was good looking out, letting me know the heat was on like that. Too bad I got a call from uptown just about a second later.

His hands are on automatic pilot, crawling over the gooey mound on top of his head.

– Yeah? Sorry I couldn't give you more of a lead there.

– Ya know the real drag about all this, Phil?

– Aw, man, don't call me Phil, ya know I hate it.

– You're right. Philip. I'm sorry. Ya know the real drag about this, Philip?

He's got one hand above his head holding the pomp in place while his Other hand digs in his back pocket for his can of pomade. He's staring straight up so he can keep an eye on the overhang while the restoration continues.

– Naw, man, what's the real drag?

I grab a huge greasy handful of his hair and jerk him up onto his tiptoes.

– It's the way they made me crawl up there in the middle of the day. The way Dexter Predo knew all about the carrier when I hadn't told anyone but you. The way you called me first thing when you heard about the mess, like you already knew I was involved. That makes me wonder if maybe you were spying on me. Which makes me wonder if maybe you were spying on me for Predo and the fucking Coalition.

I let him drop to the floor, his pomp a hopeless ruin, and turn to the sink to wash the grease off my hands. Philip sits on the floor, hair finally forgotten.

– Jesus, Joe, you crazy or somethin'? Me spyin' for the Coalition? I mean, hey, even if I would do somethin' like that, you know them tight-asses wouldn't have me on the regular payroll or nothin'. You know that. I mean sure, maybe I pick up some change from them, I got a loose piece of information or they got somethin' shitty ta be done or somethin'. But spyin'? Hell, they got pros for that. And even sayin' I wanted ta spy for the Coa-fucking-lition, and even saying they would have me, I wouldn't never take a job ta spy on you, Joe. That's just something I wouldn't never do, you know that. Ya got ta know that.

I turn from the sink, wiping my hands on a paper towel.

– So what are you saying, Phil, you saying I'm wrong here? I'm lying?

– Aw, no, man, no. I know you know what you know and all. If you're sayin' Mr. Predo knew somethin', well, he musta known it. All I'm sayin' is, he didn't never get it from me. I'm just sayin' I didn't ever call the guy at all. I got off the phone with you I figured maybe you'd be slipping me some coin later, so I went out lookin' ta score. You know me. I didn't never even get it in my head to call Mr. Predo or none of them guys. You tell me there's a carrier? Well, hell, I just figure you must be probably takin' care of it for the Coalition anyway. No change in it for me if I give them a call, now is there? So why'd I call them? Huh, Joe, why'd I call them?

He's doing his best to come across sincere, looking me in the eyes, his pupils pinned out from whatever kind of bennies he got his hands on tonight.

– How much money you got on you, Phil?

– Well, uh.

He pulls the bills I gave him out of his breast pocket and counts them.

– Looks like I got about fifty here.

– What other money?

He pats at his pockets, gives me a hopeless look and shrugs his shoulders. I squat down and put my face close to his.

– You might be close to getting off the hook here, Phil. I suggest that now is not the time to start fucking with me.

He nods and starts digging into his pockets, turning them inside out. A handful of change, his hair goop, a pack of Dentyne, a baggie full of about twenty little black capsules, and a small wad of cash all spill out onto his lap. I grab the cash and give it a quick count. Hundred and eighty bucks. I hold the bills in front of his face.

– I'm giving this to Billy, toward what you owe him.

– Sure, sure, I mean, that's what I had it on me for was ta give ta Billy for what I owe him.

I stand up.

– Yeah, right. Do what you want with the fifty, that's for the phone call. But pay Billy off before Monday.

– Yeah, before Monday, no sweat, Joe.

I bend over, pick Philip's comb up off the floor and toss it at him.

– Fix your hair, Philip, it looks like crap.

Walking past the bar I get Billy's attention and slip him the buck eighty. He counts it and smiles. -S'more than I thought he'd cough up.

– Yeah. He'll come through with the rest by Monday. He don't, give me a call.

– Thanks, Joe. Ya gonna stay, start runnin' up that tab? Got some sweet Betties in here t'night. I could maybe hook ya up.

– Thanks anyway, Billy, I got work to do.

He nods and waves and gets back to shaking martinis. I squeeze through the crowd, out the door and onto the hot street.

The problem with Philip is, even when he's telling the truth, it looks like lying. But he has a point. The Coalition wants to keep an eye on me they got better ways of doing it than him. They really want to keep an eye on me they'll send someone down here far more subtle and dangerous. Then again, a hundred eighty is a lot of cash for him to be packing, and he would have needed more to score the speed he was carrying. He got that money somewhere. Damn it. He's dirty on something, but I don't have time to dig it out right now. The carrier is still out there and I don't know any more than I did before. Except that maybe I do.

If Philip is telling the truth, then Predo is keeping an eye on me some other way. Which means the Coalition is keeping tabs on me personally, or the whole neighborhood, or both. Which means something is going on down here. And I don't have any idea what it is. My only move is to try and find the carrier, just like they want me to. So I go home and get my guns.

Killing a zombie isn't complicated, it's just hard. The first problem is that the damn things are not quite alive in the first place. Or not quite dead. I'm not really sure which it is. The way it is, these things, they've been infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. This bacteria is slowly consuming all their soft tissues, muscle, fat, blood, cartilage, you name it. But mostly it's eating their brains. The catch is that the bacteria can only eat living tissue. So more than anything else in the world, this bacteria wants to keep its host alive and breathing, because once the host dies, I mean really finally croaks, the bacteria goes soon after. And what this bacteria does to extend its own life span is it pumps the host body full of endorphins and adrenaline and serotonin and all kinds of naturally occurring crap that kills pain, induces euphoria, and keeps a body moving. And to replenish these chemicals the bacteria gives its zombie a taste for human flesh and, in particular, For brain matter.

So, for the sake of argument, say you have a zombie in front of you and you want to kill it. Well the best, quickest, and easiest thing to do is sever the connection between its brain and the rest of its body. This may not in actuality kill the host, but not even the zombie bacteria can move a host once its brain stem is hacked or its neck is snapped. Now, say you have two or more zombies standing there and you want all of them dead and you don't really have any practical zombie-killing experience to draw on. In that case you might try pulling out your large-caliber hand-gun and shooting them in the heart. You could try for the face, but unless you hit the brain stem or blow out some really enormous chunks of gray matter, they're gonna keep coming after you. So just go for the heart. Explode the heart and the machine can't run no matter how hard the bacteria works. You could also strangle or drown or burn or blow up or hang or chop up or push from a tall building your average zombie. As long as you stop the heart or the brain or just cause massive physical trauma, you're gonna kill the thing. But we're talking about finding a quick and easy method here. So my advice is use a gun and a lot of bullets, just like if you were trying to kill your wife or husband.

I keep my guns in a gun safe in the back of my closet down in the secret Vampyre room. Not that I have any little kids running around I need to keep away from the guns. I had any kids I'd get rid of the guns. Nothing more dangerous to the life of a child than a house full of firearms. Nothing more dangerous except maybe a parent. No, I keep my guns locked up because on bad days, really bad days, it makes it that much harder for me to get my hands on them and go walking through the streets killing random strangers until the police come and shoot me down. Not that I get that urge too often. Just when I haven't had blood for about a week and the alien thing in my veins starts burning me from the inside out and I start thinking about cutting open my own wrists so I can suck at them.

I'm not one of those guys gets all breathy over his guns. I have two, one is a small, reliable revolver and one is a big, nasty automatic that holds a lot of bullets. I got both of them off of dead guys and I know just enough about the guns to shoot them straight, keep them clean and make sure they never get pointed at me. In the general course of life these things never see the light of day. And I'm not just trying to be funny. I mean things like this carrier are pretty rare even in my life, so I don't have much use for guns and they usually stay in the safe where they belong. The good thing about the guns is that when you shoot someone, nobody looks twice at the corpse. As opposed to a dead body with, say, half of its brain gone and its head chopped off.

I load the guns and pocket some extra ammo. I'm on my way back upstairs when I think about the blood in my fridge. I had a pint last night after my fight with the shamblers and another today to help with my burn. Normally I keep it to one pint every few days. That's enough to keep me healthy and take the edge off the hunger, but I'm going hunting and every little bit helps. Another pint and I'll be primed, the top of my game. I open the fridge. Eleven pints. I don't like to let my stash get much below ten pints. If I take another one I'll need to replenish the stock in the next day or two. I think about the three zombies last night and how close the girl came to cutting my eyes out. I grab one of the little bags. I suck it dry, standing there in the middle of the room, and it makes me feel the way it always makes me feel, it makes me feel alive.

There's a patrol car parked out front of the abandoned P.S. on 9th Street. A couple police barricades fence off the courtyard and the doors are sealed with yellow tape. The crime scene has been worked already, but the cops will keep it sealed until curiosity dies down and they don't have to worry about any freaks breaking into the building to party in the death room. As it is, a few people are on the sidewalk across the street, pointing at the school and taking pictures with their phones. If the Coalition hadn't fingered the kid this place would be rabid with cops and newshounds, and I wouldn't be able to get anything done at all.

I circle around to the 10th Street side of the building. The rear entrance has been long boarded up. No cops necessary here. A trio of club kids walks loudly west. I wait for them to turn the corner, then I take three running steps, jump six feet straight up, grab a window ledge and clamber up the security screen that protects the broken glass behind it.

It takes me less than a minute using the window screens and bricks to scuttle up the wall to the roof of the school. The two pints I drank today have me peaked. I walk on the balls of my feet to the roof access door and inspect the lock. Old, rusted, I could force it easy. Instead I slip the picks from my back pocket. I wiggle the tension wrench into the lock then tease a hook past it and rake the pins. This keyed up, I can feel and hear each tiny click as I slide the remaining pins into place. I rotate the wrench, the lock pops open and I'm inside. Pitch dark. I leave the door ajar to admit the ambient light of New York City. My pupils grow to the size of dimes. It's not exactly clear as day, but I'll be fine.

The air is dank and thick with mold. Graffiti covers the walls. I hear a scamper of rat claws ahead of me, and then the rat freezes, sensing something large and dangerous. It's right, I am dangerous, but not to it. Animal blood may as well be salt water as far as the Vyrus is concerned.

I feel a slight shifting of the air. The door I've left open is drawing the warmer air up and out of the school. I follow the draft backward and find the stairwell. I descend three flights to the ground floor, sniffing at the thin trail of air wafting up past me, picking out details from the last twenty-four hours. I can smell the decay of the zombies, the urine of Ali Singh, the nameless blood and brains of the other boy. I can smell my own slightly feral scent and the Ivory soap I use in the shower. Fresher than the rest is a heavy overlay of sweaty cop, coffee and fingerprint powder, and the excited tang of news reporters. Under it all, the heavy, damp rot of the building.

I retrace my steps to the room where the killing took place. The door has no lock, but the cops have sealed it with the inevitable yellow tape, the era's icon for tragedy. I tear it off and open the door. It reeks inside.

Normally in these things someone would have been here by now with a bucket of bleach to get things sterile, but I guess the cops want to leave the crime scene intact until they have a confession out of Singh. Result: taped body outlines, dried blood, dried urine, dried vomit from whoever found the slaughterhouse, and oh yeah, dried brains.

I pick out the zombie smell from the others and walk slowly around the room separating the scent into three distinct strands. There's the girl's musky undertone, the rank underarm stink of the one whose neck I snapped, and the hair product used by the guy I stepped on. Now that I have the zombie smell isolated into the three individuals I know of, I sniff for any other signatures hiding in the mix. It's not there. No sign of another zombie, the carrier.

But the girl's musk.

Why musky? A stale musky sex scent. That's what I smelled on her last night before I got distracted by Singh. Zombies don't have sex, do they? Shit, I don't know. I walk over to where the taped shadow of her body is outlined on the floor and take a deep breath through my nose.

I filter out the other smells and focus on hers. The youth of her flesh. She was young, maybe seventeen, eighteen. The rot under the living flesh, brought on by the bacteria that was eating her alive, eating her dead. The acid smell of the cosmetics coloring her eyes and mouth and nails midnight black. The compost odor when her bladder and bowels released after I stabbed her in the neck. Perfume, sweat, a fungus in her Doc Martens. All that, and a sweaty musk. Someone rubbed against her, touched her. Someone fucked her. Not today, but recently, since she was infected. I try to imagine the sicko that would have sex with one of these things while it pawed at him and tried to take a bite out of his brain, the bastard that would mate with the bacteria inside this dead girl.

I take one more deep breath to fix the musk smell in my mind so that I can pick it out when I find it again. That's when I notice something is missing. I take another whiff, and I catch it. An absence. Throughout the room, little patches of nothing in the matrix of odors. Slight erasures sprinkled across the air where something has absented itself from the catalogue of the room's history. I close my eyes. I inhale and try to capture one of the absences, to trace it step-by-step across the room and re-create what this thing might have done here.

And it is this deep level of concentration that allows someone to sneak up behind me and hit me on the back of the head with a somewhat immature whale.

The sound of bickering wakes me and tells me exactly where I am. I peel an eye open for confirmation, and sure enough, here I am in the squalid tenement basement headquarters of the Society. I'm on a dingy cot in an alcove. In the middle of the room three people are standing around a rickety card table under a single bare lightbulb. The two guys doing the bickering are Tom Nolan and Terry Bird.

Tom reads about twenty-five, but carries a few more actual years. He's got the blond dreads and washed-out clothes of the downtown radical, along with the requisite number of piercings and tattoos. Terry is older looking, say fifty or so. His style is more old school: ponytail, beard, John Lennon glasses, Earth Day T-shirt and Birkenstocks; that kind of thing. The third is Lydia Miles. Call her twenty, short dark hair, leather pants, white tank top, bodybuilder muscles, and an upside-down pink triangle tattooed on her shoulder. Just another ragtag band of East Village radical-socialist-anarchist-revolutionaries hanging out and plotting the overthrow of The Man. Of course this band of revolutionaries also drinks blood.

Lydia stands there watching while Tom goes at Terry and Terry pulls a passive-aggressive mellow hippie thing in response. Guess who's the topic of discussion?

– I'm telling you he's working for the fucking Coalition. Why else would he be there?

– Well, Tom, that may be. But to me, the real question here, and I think Lydia may agree with me, is what were you doing there? I was under the belief that we had agreed.

– Fuck your agreement. You agreed, I didn't agree to shit. This creep is hip-deep in the Coalition. He's their ratfink spy down here and now they have him, they intentionally have him causing trouble on our territory. He's a saboteur, he's a fucking saboteur and we should execute him right now.

Terry pushes his slipping glasses back up his nose.

– Well I, for one, certainly think that would be more than extreme. Even, for the sake of argument, even if it came to the point where we might execute him, I think our first step should be to question him.

– Fucking fine, let's interrogate him then. Let's wake his ass up and teach him a lesson about the revolution.

He picks up a short length of pipe from the card table. Lydia is looking right at me. She's staring me in the eyes just as she has been since right after I opened them. She smiles and turns to the boys.

– He's awake.

They both turn to look at me sprawled on the cot. Tom takes a quick step in my direction, the piece of pipe still in his hand.

– OK, fucker.

Terry reaches out and lays a hand on Tom's shoulder.

– Easy, Tom, just mellow out a little, guy.

Tom stops and squeezes his eyes shut. He turns to Terry as if he'd like to wrap the pipe around his head instead of mine.

__How many times do I have to tell you? How many, man? Don't tell me to mellow out. You be as mellow as you want, but don't tell me what to do. Terry smiles.

– Sure, Tom, no prob. I'm not trying to disrespect you. I just want us all to calm down a little here and find some things out before we think about resorting to violence. There are always options, man, we just need to explore them.

I sit up.

– Yeah, Tom, let's explore some options.

He turns back to me.

– You just shut up, Pitt. You want to stay alive, you just shut up until someone tells you to speak. You got practice shutting up, taking all those orders from the Coalition. I look at Terry.

– Hey, Terry, what are you doing letting this kid run around loose, anyway? People could get hurt.

I look at Tom again.

– He could get hurt.

Tom makes a move at me, but Terry and Lydia pull him back. I sit on the cot being bored. Some people's buttons are so easy to punch it's barely worth the effort. Terry and Lydia get Tom into a chair. Lydia stays next to him while Terry walks over and drops down on the cot, a big smile on his face.

– Tom's a hothead, Joe, we all know that, it only takes the slightest provocation to set him off. But we're adults here, so what say we put aside the immature mind games and name-calling and just have a little communication, air things out?

– How 'bout you buzz off and show me to the door so I can go about my business.

Terry shakes his head sadly.

– In a perfect world, that's what I'd like to do. After all, it was never my plan that you get dragged here, but here you are, and I have to say that as hostile as Tom is toward you, he does raise some valid points. So I think, and this is just me talking, but I think there is a real need here for some open and honest communication.

I start to get up.

– So sit here and communicate, Terry Me, I got places to be, so I'll just be on my way.

Terry puts an oh so gentle hand on my forearm.

– Sorry, Joe, but there really are some questions I need to have answered.

He tilts his head in the direction of the stairs and Hurley steps out of the shadows. How the fuck I missed Hurley is a tribute to my lack of awareness. The guy is a giant. Really. Six eight and over three-fifty. And on top of that he just happens to be one of us. So what you got here is your basic gargantuan Irish Vampyre. Oh, and he's retarded. I shouldn't say that. What I mean is he's dumb as a sack of hammers. Whether he's actually retarded, I don't know.

I sit back down.

– Sure thing, Terry. You got questions. Shoot.

Terry smiles and nods.

– See, man, that's the way it should be, just two guys sitting and talking. People, people talking about their problems with each other, finding solutions. If everybody could do this, if we could get the world together like this, we could change everything, man. Like, for instance, my problem is this thing last night, this whole hassle over at the, well it used to be a community center, man, but pretty soon it's gonna be another yuppie co-op. But anyway, this thing over at the old center, this hassle with the kids and the zombies.

Tom jumps out of his chair.

– That's what I'm talking about, that right there. We rejected that term, man. We voted. They're not zombies. That belittles their status as victims, man. They're infected, not in control of themselves, and creeps like this stooge are still going around slaughtering them.

Terry bobs his head.

– Well, you have a point there, Tom, the term zombie does put the onus for their actions on them and implies blame. So what was the term?

– VOZ. Victim of Zombification.

Lydia finally pipes in.

– I'm still opposed to the use of the word victim. It suggests weakness, helplessness.

Terry holds up his hand.

– I think you may be right there, Lydia. But for now, as regards the conversation I'm having here with Joe, could we agree that VOZ is a valid term?

Tom and Lydia look at one another and nod.

– Good, good. See, Joe, people solving problems. So anyway, this hassle with the NYU students and the VOZs. Something like that happening right in our backyard is cause for concern. We can't really afford that kind of noise when we're trying so hard to integrate into the community, you know? So what can you tell me, you know anything about all this?

I sigh with regret and shake my head.

– Sorry, Terry, wish I could help you, but I really don't know anything.

Tom is back on his feet.

– Bullshit! Bullshit! He was there, man. He was poking around when I got there with Hurley to take a look. So what were you doing there, stooge? What were you doing there?

– He has a point, Joe, what were you doing there tonight?

– Same as you guys, taking a look. I live down here too, and I've done as much as anyone to keep this neighborhood a quiet place; more than my fair share. Do I do some favors for the Coalition? You know I do. Just like I do favors for the Society when you ask me. This thing last night, that kind of mess is bad for all of us. So yeah, after the cops cleared out I went over there to take a look.

– And what did you find?

– Well I don't know, Terry, I didn't really find anything. Which is not to say I wouldn't have found something if this joker hadn't popped up and had Hurley clock me. Far as I know it's like the cops said and that kid Singh did it.

– Really? Does that sound reasonable to you? I mean, knowing what we know about the world and the way it works? I mean, being an open-minded kind of guy, does that sound like a reasonable story?

I look him in the eye.

– Terry, I got no reason to lie. Far as I know the kid did it. But could this be, and this is what I think you're asking, could this be a Coalition deal? A setup? Well you know as well as I do it could be. Hell, it could be a Coalition op all the way down the line from the zombies.

– VOZs, please.

– Right, from the VOZs right down to the frame on the kid. But as far as I know…

– It's just like the cops say.

– Far as I know.

Terry looks down at the floor and nods his head.

– Well, Joe, that's fair enough. I respected you and asked you a straightforward question, and I can only hope that you've respected me and given me an honest answer.

– You know how I feel about you, Terry.

A slight smile visits his mouth and he looks at me from the corner of his eye.

– Yeah, I guess I do at that.

He gets up off the cot and gestures toward the door.

– Well that's it, you can take off.

I get up and brush off the seat of my pants as I head for the door.

– You mind if I get my guns back before I go?

– Hurley has them. He'll walk you out and give them to you on the street.

– Thanks.

Tom is glaring at me.

– That's it? We're letting him go after that lame bullshit?

– We're letting him go because it is not our nature to hold people against their will, Tom.

– But he knows something. Look at him, he's gloating. He knows something and he's making fun of us right now.

I glance at Tom as I walk past him.

– What's eating you, Tom? Still can't find a vegan substitute for blood?

He lunges at me and Lydia throws an arm bar on him. She locks him up tight and looks at me, tsk-tsking her head back and forth.

– Tacky, Joe.

– Yeah, well.

I'm halfway up the stairs, Hurley behind me, when Terry calls after.

– By the way, what happened to your face?

– Rolled out of bed this morning and pulled open the curtain. Don't know what it is, I just keep thinking I'm still alive or something.

– Be careful about that, Joe. Thinking like that, it gets us dead.

– So I hear.

Then I'm through the basement door, into the hallway, and out onto the street, Hurley right behind me. We're on Avenue D between 5th and 6th. Hurley starts walking north toward 6th and I follow him.

– So how 'bout my guns, Hurley?

– Terry says I gotta walk ya a ways first.

– OK.

We turn west onto 6th.

– Sorry 'bout clobber'n ya from behind an all.

– Yeah, sure.

We're about halfway down the block when he stops and turns to me.

– Sorry, Joe.

– So you said, Hurley.

– Naw, I mean sorry bout dis.

– Sorry about what?

– Terry says I got ta rough ya up some.

I blink.

– When the hell did he say that? I didn't hear him say that.

– He told me when ya was still out.

– What the hell for?

– He said it was fer ben a smart mout.

– What the hell? I was out cold, I hadn't even had a chance to smart off.

– Yeah, but he said ya would. He said yer always a smart mout.

– This ain't right.

– Like I said, sorry, Joe, but I got ta do it. It's my job.

– Calling it your job don't make it right, Hurley.

– Whatever.

And he goes to work on me. He's pretty good about it, stays away from my face, and only cracks a couple ribs. When he's done I'm slumped down on the sidewalk with my back against a building. He tosses the guns on my lap and heads back to Society headquarters.

– Keep yer nose clean, Joe.

– Yeah, thanks for the advice.

I could go back, take my guns, kick down the door and blast away. With any luck I'd take out two of them. With a lot of luck I might get them all. But what would be the point? Their people would come after me. And Terry and me really do go back a ways. Hell, there was a time I almost bought all that Society line of crap. Terry's dream of uniting all the Vampyre and taking us public to live like normal people; maybe get the resources of the world to help find a cure for the Vyrus. Yeah, I believed all that. For awhile. Then I figured what I was around for, the kind of jobs Terry handed me, and was gonna keep handing me. So I got out.

It takes over half an hour for me to hobble home clutching my ribs. By the time I crawl into bed it's almost four in the morning and I'm not even thinking about looking for that carrier anymore.

The phone rings about an hour after I fall into a painful sleep.

– This is Joe Pitt. Leave a message.

– Hey, Joe, it's me. If you're in bed don't pick up.

Evie's voice. I pick up the phone.

– Hey.

– You asleep?

– Thinking about it.

– You're asleep, aren't you?

– Just barely. What's up?

– Nothing, I just got off work.

– You OK?

– Yeah, a little lonely.

– You want to come over, watch a movie?

There's a brief silence.

– No. You should sleep. You don't sleep enough.

– I'll sleep when I'm dead. Come over.

– No, I just wanted to hear your voice. I'll be OK now. You get some sleep.

– Yeah, sleep.

– You around tomorrow night?

I think about the carrier still out there and the deadline that I've already blown.

– Think I'm gonna be tied up.

– Maybe you can drop by the bar and say hi.

– I'll do that.

– OK. Sleep tight.

– You too.

She hangs up and so do I.

I met Evie about two years back. She tends bar at a place over on 9th and C. I was there looking for a deadbeat who owed a guy some money. She was behind the bar of this honky-tonk in the middle of Alphabet City. Curly red hair, freckles, twenty-two, wearing an Elvis T-shirt and a pair of Daisy Dukes.

I come in and ask her if she knows the deadbeat. She gives me a fish eye while she digs a couple of Lone Stars out of the cooler and bangs them down in front of a lesbian couple necking at the bar. They snap out of it long enough to pay up, then go back to their alternative lifestyle.

– Who's looking for him?

I peer over my right shoulder, then over my left, and back at her.

– I guess that must be me.

– What you want him for?

– He's a deadbeat and I'm gonna collect on some debts he owes.

She looks me over.

– Uh-huh. You ever seen this guy you're looking for?

– Nope.

She smiles a little to herself.

– Well, you just sit quiet and have a drink and listen to the music. If this guy comes in, maybe I'll let you know. What're you having?

I lean over the bar to look down in the ice bin at the piles of Lone Star bottles, and nothing else. -Guess I'll have a Lone Star.

She pulls one out, pops the cap and slaps it down.

– Man of discriminating tastes.

– Yeah.

She moves off to work the bar and I find a corner a little less crowded than the others. I do like she said, stay quiet, have a drink and listen to the music. And maybe sneak a look at her from time to time. There's a jam session going. Bunch of bluegrass sidemen pick'n and grin'n and playing up a storm. Not my usual bag, but they know what they're doing.

An hour goes by like that before I catch her looking over at me and she waves me to the bar. I squeeze through the hicks and nod. She tilts her head to the opposite side of the bar where a thick crowd of people are stuffed together.

– Over there.

– Where?

– The little guy.

– What little guy?

That's when I realize that a dude I had taken to be over six feet is actually a pudgy midget standing on the bar telling jokes to a group of seven people. She looks at me and gives me a twisted little smile.

– So how you gonna handle this one, tough guy?

I look the midget over, taking note of the large bulge in the back of his pants. I smile at her.

– What's your name?

– Evie.

– Nice name.

– Thanks.

– You got a bouncer in here?

– No, just me.

– Got a policy on fights?

– Why do you ask?

– Well I think I'm gonna have to rough that midget up and I'm trying to figure if I should do it in here or outside.

– Well, you do it in here and you're gonna get eighty-sixed.

– Uh-huh. Well I guess I better take care of it outside.

– Why's that?

– I think I'd like to come back in here sometime so I can see you again. Here's for the beer and the help. My name's Joe by the way. See you around.

I left a fifty on the bar and went outside to wait for the dead-beat. He came out a bit later with some of his normal-sized pals and there was a ruckus. He pulled a gun. I took it away and thumped him a few times. The normal-sized people got outraged and I thumped them. In the end I got the money, threw the gun down a storm drain and went home. The next night I went back to the bar and sat there and listened to the music. Evie did her job and barely looked at me, but when her shift was over I walked her home.

We sat on her stoop for awhile and talked about a book she was reading and a movie I liked. Then she got up to go in and I stood and she moved to the step above mine so she could look at me without craning her neck. She told me she was going up. She told me she'd like to see me again. She told me she had HIV and doesn't have sex with anyone under any circumstances. Then she kissed me hard on the mouth and went in. I never even had a chance to explain to her that I don't have sex either.

It's hard to explain this kind of thing to a person. That this thing called the Vyrus has taken up residence in my body. That it feeds off my blood, scours it of all impurities and weaknesses. That it wants only to survive, and to do that it needs more blood, so it gives me the instincts, strengths and senses of a predator. That if I don't feed it more blood, human blood, it will burn my body and scorch my veins and leave me a dry husk. That exposed to the UV radiation of the sun, it will rack my immune system and tumors will riot through my body in minutes. That it pumps me full of adrenaline and endorphins. That it clots in seconds and knits my flesh and that if you want to kill me you will have to blow up my heart or head or cut me in half or otherwise annihilate my body in one blow before it can heal. That I am a secret in the world and that the greatest defense I have is to remain unknown. For we are few and we are rotted by the light of the sun. That my body is as close to dead as living can get, and is kept moving only by the will and appetite of another organism. That I could walk through a ward of AIDS patients and drink their blood and the Vyrus would eat the HIV and leave me with clean healthy blood. That I could walk through the same ward and infect the patients with my blood, and it would cleanse and heal them, but leave them with a hunger and thirst for more. That I could heal her.

One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye and tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.

In the late morning the phone rings.

– This is Joe Pitt. Leave a message.

– Mr. Pitt, I have a call for you from Mr. Predo. Please pick up if you are in.

Oh, shit. It's the bodybuilder from the Coalition.

– Very well, Mr. Pitt. Please be certain to return this call at the earliest possible moment.

I'm fighting to untangle myself from the sheets, grabbing at the phone. I snatch it off the cradle and drop it on the floor. I fumble with the phone and try to switch off the answering machine at the same time.

– Hello. I'm here. Hello?

The bodybuilder's voice comes over the line and I can hear his exasperation in the way he breathes.

– Good morning, Mr. Pitt, I have a call from Mr. Predo. May I connect you?

– Shouldn't you make sure it's really me, just in case"?

– If I had any doubts, Mr. Pitt, you have just relieved them. I'm connecting you now.

There's a little click and then I hear you know who.

– Good morning, Pitt.

– Morning, Mr. Predo.

– All is well, Pitt? Here it is.

– Well sure, I guess all is well.

– Then you have disposed of the problem and we can expect no further difficulties'?

There are two things you do not want to do with The Coalition.

The first is fail an assignment. The second is He to them.

– Yes, Mr. Predo, all cleaned up. No problem.

– Good. In that case, I think I may have some work for you. Shit.

– Truth is I'm pretty busy right now. Not sure I can take on anything new.

He pauses for a half moment.

– There are two ways to look at this job, Pitt. On the one hand, it is an opportunity, an opportunity you might say yes or no to as you wished. On the other hand, the cleanup we arranged after you bungled things at the school was quite expensive. In light of that, you might look at this job as a favor you owe the Coalition in return for taking care of your mess. I think the latter of these two versions may be the more accurate interpretation. What do you think?

Having just lied to the man I know that this is not the time to let pride have its say.

– I imagine you're right about that.

– That would be yes, then?

– Right.

– I thought that might be your choice.

– Yeah. So what's the job?

– A woman is going to call you today with a problem. You will offer her your assistance. Whatever it is she asks of you, you shall do it. Efficiently and, need I say it, discreetly. Yes?

– Right.

– The woman is of some prominence and breeding. Try to be polite.

– My specialty.

– Yes. Well, once again, my congratulations on taking care of the problem, and my best wishes on the swift resolution of this new endeavor.

– Thanks.

– Good-bye.

– Right.

He hangs up. I sit there on my bed and bang the back of my head against the wall over and over again. Predo thinks the carrier is dead and the fact is I don't have the slightest clue where it is. And if any new zombies start stumbling around before I find the damn thing it won't be hard to figure out where they came from. And after that it won't be long before I'm spiked to the tarmac in some New Jersey parking lot, watching the sun come up.

Joe Pitt isn't my real name. I grew up with a different name, but I changed it when I got infected. Lots of us do. It's not a rule or anything, not like you need to pick your secret-sacred Vampyre name. It's just that most of us leave our old lives behind, and the first thing to go is the name. Anyway, I grew up with a different name.

There are some great parents out there; parents who know a thing or two about loving and nurturing. I had the other kind of parent.

I was born in the Bronx in 1960. By 75 I was on my own, living with a bunch of other punk squatters in the East Village. It was alright. I panhandled and robbed, wore a Mohawk; drank, shot, snorted and sucked anything I could get. I got a rep for being twice as sick as any other punk on the scene. I'd fuck or fight anything that stood still.

In '77 I go to see the Ramones at CBGB. Great show. I get drunk, get stoned, eat speed, and in the bathroom some guy in a suit offers me twenty bucks to let him suck my dick. It was a different time. Suits would come down to slum and check out the scene, and some of them were trolls looking for rough trade. And I liked having my dick sucked; the money was icing.

He gets my tight plaid pants unzipped and goes down on his knees with a handkerchief on the floor to protect his slacks. Through the walls I can hear Joey and the band swing into "Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy" and I come in the guy's mouth. He stands up, pulls out another twenty and offers it to me if I suck him. I say no, but that I'll give him a hand job. He gives me the twenty. My hand is in his pants and he's leaning against me, his face tucked against my neck. I'm jerking him in time to the music pounding through the walls, thinking about the booze and drugs I'm gonna buy with the forty bucks. I'm so fucked up it takes me a few seconds to realize he isn't just trying to give me a hickey. By the time I try to scream he's chewed a hole in my neck.

He was sloppy. He left me folded up on the floor, didn't try to get rid of me or disguise the wound or even drain me and save some of the blood. A fucking slummer out for a cheap thrill. I lay there on the floor while people came in and out of the can, stepping over me to get to the pot. Some guy passed out on the bathroom floor was no big deal at CBGB, not even one that was bleeding. I don't know how long I was there before Terry Bird came in and saw me. He picked me up and carried me out through the crowd. I think he was just planning to dump me, but then he saw how much life I had left and took me home instead.

Terry got me healthy, explained what had happened. I didn't believe him. Big scene, lots of freaking out involved. Then he fed me blood for the first time, and I didn't care about anything else.

I was with Terry for three years. He told me about the Clans, how they run different chunks of territory in Manhattan and make sure things stay quiet, how they keep the Vampyre a secret. He told me about the Coalition.

The Coalition used to run the whole island, except for the West Village; the West Village has always been Enclave. But things changed for the Coalition in the sixties. That's when the Hood seized everything above 110th and Terry formed the Society and took the East Side turf from 14th down to Houston. That left the island's bottom cut off from the rest of the Coalition. Now all that turf down there is run by minor Clans and Rogues. As for the Outer Boroughs: Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx? From what I hear, it might as well be a jungle once you cross a river. Who knows what the savages are doing out there in the bush? And who cares? But the real turf still belongs to the Coalition. They took some lumps in the sixties, got whittled down a bit, but they still control everything river to river between 14th and 110th.

They have the big turf because they have numbers. They find a role in their Clan for any Vampyre who wants to join, and keep all their members supplied with a ration of blood equal to their contribution to the Clan. And that's their real power, all that blood they get their hands on. Somehow. They'll keep you supplied so you don't go Rogue and feed on your own and cause any trouble, but only as long as you toe their line. And their line is invisibility. They cultivate influence in the uninfected world, but only to protect the Clan and its interests. Or, as Terry would say, the interests of the Secretariat.

Terry gave me the history and he explained his own philosophy, his plans to unite all the Clans and bring the Vampyre above ground. How this could never be done until the Coalition's power was broken, and that their ultimate power lay in their control of a vast and secret supply of blood. So I fought the fight, did what I could to bring all of us under one banner so we could step into the public consciousness together; undeniable and deserving the same rights as any uninfected person. I went to the meetings, helped to organize, and to find the new guys before they got themselves killed. Spent a lot of time huddled in basements talking newly infected fish off the ceiling. Spent a lot of time in those same basements hiding out from Coalition agents. Those were rough years at the end of the seventies. The Society was still coming together. The Coalition had lost control of the turf, but that didn't mean Terry had taken control of it. Wasn't until the mid eighties that he had enough of the smaller Clans pulled together into something big enough to be a major Clan. But now that turf is Society through and through. Me, I went my way when I figured what Terry had me lined up for.

Started with a couple jobs taking care of Rogues who were on the turf but didn't want to join the Society. Then there were some new fish that had trouble making the transition and needed to be put out of their own misery. Then there were members of different Society affiliates who maybe didn't always want to do things Terry's way, and they needed taking care of, too. So I took care of them. A lot of them.

One day I show up at a guy's place, a guy I know and like. I'm there to see if he wants to grab a beer, but when he sees it's me, he gets a look on his face; a look like he doesn't want to turn his back. That's when I got it that Terry was turning me into his whip, his cop. And I ain't no fucking cop.

I went Rogue, left the Society and tried to make it on my own. But you can't make it on your own as a Vampyre. You can't because the Clans don't want you out there on your own where you might cause trouble. So I kept running errands for Terry because I wanted to keep living on Society turf.

And when the Coalition came calling with their first little job, I did it. Because I know what's good for me. They knew about me going Rogue just like they know most things. And they knew I could move around below 14th. They figured to get an agent, a turncoat in the Society's house. They offered to pay for it, pay well. I counter-offered. So now they like to pretend they're pulling all my strings, and I like to pretend they're not. Who's to say who has the right idea?

I do favors for the Coalition because they have the juice to get rid of me if they decide they really want to. I do favors for the Society because this is their territory and they'll run me to the Outer Boroughs if I don't. Me, I get to stay Rogue, and that's the way I like it. It's my life, I can live it any way I want. And if I ever get tired of it, all I have to do is open the door and walk outside on a nice sunny day.

When I look in the mirror I see a face about twenty-eight. Under it I know I'm forty-five. I could stay younger. All I have to do is drink more blood. A guy like Predo, who knows how much he sucks down? But then again he has the resources of the Coalition. Sometimes the Coalition pays me off with a few pints, but mostly I scrounge my own blood, and the less I consume the less attention I draw to myself. It is our greatest vulnerability, our thirst. It identifies us and leads hunters to us. It forces us to live in highly populated areas where our foraging and aversion to the sun will draw less attention. Some run to the country and live like hermits, feeding off the occasional stray backpacker. Some move to rural communities, feeding sparingly, becoming emaciated and hiding their true nature behind a facade of eccentricity. The suburbs are hopeless, the population neither thin not dense enough to provide cover. Vampyres in the suburbs last less than a year.

Plus those places are soulless pits. Christ! Strip malls, housing tracts, business parks? Might as well pound a stake through your own heart and save some Van Helsing the work. Talk about a land of the undead.

Anyway, Joe Pitt isn't my real name. I threw away my real name. A guy like me doesn't need a real name.

In the morning I think about having a pint to help with my ribs, but I've gorged the last couple days and I don't want to overdo it. The ribs will take care of themselves. So I just hang out and watch some movies.

I mostly watch horror movies. I don't really like the things very much, but they're good research. Left to my own devices I'd probably take a look at Treasure of the Sierra Madre or maybe Miller's Crossing. Instead I watch about half of The Abominable Doctor Phibes, until I see it's pretty useless, then I pop in Martin. I've seen it a few times, but it's about as accurate as vampire flicks get. I watch some of the best scenes again. Horror movies are how most folks get their ideas about real Vampyres and the whole supernatural world, so I like to keep up on them. I'll see most of the new ones when they come out, even the slasher stuff, and in the meantime I pick up the older ones on DVD.

Couple years back I had some kid Van Helsing come at me with a cross and holy water. A Rogue in jersey had wasted his sister and the kid had seen it all from the bedroom closet. Now he was on a campaign to slay the undead. I don't know how he got onto me, I think he was just hanging around the East Village because there are so many vampire-looking freaks down here. Somehow he locked in on me. In any case he stalked me for a few days and decided I was an evil hell spawn. One night outside Doc Holiday's, he comes charging across the street with this crucifix and a spray bottle full of holy water. I let him chase me down the block a little to get away from the crowds on A, then I took the cross from him and asked him to stop spraying me with water. He freaked, called me Satan's pawn and stuff like that. I acted dumb, drank the holy water and kissed the cross and settled him down. He was pretty embarrassed, ended up crying on my shoulder. I gave him a pat on the butt, told him to see a doctor or something and sent him on his way. Then I followed him to his flop, broke into his room after he was asleep, bled him dry in the bathtub and made it look like a suicide. Guys like that kid are dangerous and you can't let them run around causing trouble.

But I don't blame him, I blame the movies. That's obviously where he got his ideas and dialogue. Maybe if he had never seen Horror of Dracula he would have just mourned his sister and never went looking for trouble. But Evie likes them, the horror movies. I mean for real. So that's OK, we watch them together and every now and then I sneak in some Howard Hawks or Billy Wilder on her.

Around three the phone finally rings and I talk to the woman Predo told me about.

They say the King Cole room at the St. Regis is one of the most beautiful bars in New York. They're right. All that oak and those high-price hotel hookers and that Maxfield Parrish mural behind the bar, it almost makes it worth having to come uptown for the second time in two days. At least this time it's at night so I can leave the burnoose behind. The hostess at the door asks me if I'd like a table and I tell her I'm meeting someone. She smiles and indicates that I should take a look around. I step into the room and spot her right away. She's sitting in a corner of the room at one of the small cocktail tables. She's the only person sitting alone. She rises as I walk over.

– Mr. Pitt?

– Joe, you can call me Joe.

– Joseph. How lovely to meet you.

– Yeah.

She blushes just slightly.

– Oh, yes, you still don't know my name.

– Nope.

She starts to sit and releases a very genuine and slightly embarrassed laugh.

– Sorry, I'm Marilee Ann Horde.

My jaw clenches. Marilee Ann Horde. Thank you very fucking much Dexter fucking Predo. She watches me standing there.

– Perhaps you'd like to sit and have a drink.

I sit.

– You must tell me, Joseph.

– Yeah?

– Whatever happened to your face?

The conversation on the phone was brief. She told me she was uncomfortable speaking in detail over the open line and asked if we could meet. I said sure, but it would have to be that evening. She suggested six and I countered with nine-thirty. She said the Cole and I said sure.

On the way up to 55th I made a plan for myself. Get the woman's story and lay off whatever errand she needs run until next week. Get the hell back downtown, go to the school and pick up where I left off last night before I got waylaid. See if I can pick up that musky sex scent the girl zombie had and find it anywhere else in the building or the streets nearby. That's not a dime-a-dozen scent. And all the while keep my eyes peeled for whoever the Coalition has creeping around. And if all else fails pick up Philip again. Nice plan, should have got me somewhere. Then I found out I was meeting with Marilee Ann Horde.

She's drinking ridiculously expensive designer vodka on the rocks. I accept a glass of the same. -You come highly recommended, Joseph.

– I get the job done. But I'm surprised Mr. Predo would recommend me to you.

She smiles just a bit.

– And yet.

– Uh-huh. Look, Ms. Horde.

– Marilee.

– This isn't really my kind of job.

– What kind of job is that?

– The kind that takes place in your neck of the woods.

– And what is my neck of the woods, Joseph?

I look at her sitting there. Coy and quiet, a stylish thirty-three-year-old beauty. She's wearing a tailored summer suit in a subtle rose shade and a crisp linen blouse, her only jewelry the engagement ring and wedding band on her left hand. The stone in the engagement ring not the usual Upper East Side two-carat-plus rock, but a tastefully sized blue-while in a deco platinum setting. Her hair appears to be naturally golden, and she has its length twirled up and pinned neatly to the back of her head, just three perfect strands dangling to frame her face and accent her ivory neck. Her ivory neck. I take a large swallow from my drink and lean back in my chair.

– Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, Ms. Horde?

– I said you should call me Marilee.

– Yes you did. Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, Ms. Horde?

– Yes.

– What would you say is your neck of the woods?

I look down at myself, the old suit, rumpled shirt and scuffed shoes that I dug up for the occasion.

– And what would you say was mine? And would you say, based on this, that I am the man for your kind of job?

She puts her drink down on the table.

– Actually, I would say this is exactly why you are the man for my job, Joseph. You see, my daughter has run away again, and I believe she is to be found in your neck of the woods.

She leans in, close to me.

– As you put it.

The cocktail waitress comes by and Marilee orders us another round.

This is taking too long. I figured blackmail. I figured drugs. I figured this woman would have some nasty little problem that needed to be swept up. I never figured missing children. I never figured Marilee Ann Horde.

The Hordes are one of New York's original families, one of the few dozen that make up Manhattan's true society. Their money came from the usual sources, oil, timber, and rail, but these days they're better known for their biotechnology holdings and HCN, the Horde Cable Network. Marilee Ann Dempsey's family was more than a few steps down the food chain, quite a bit more I gather. But she apparently made up for it with style enough to draw the attention of Dr. Dale Edward Horde, the only son and heir to the house of Horde, as well as founder and CEO/ Chairman of Horde Bio Tech Inc. They've been married for fourteen or fifteen years and are one of those Manhattan couples who get plenty of publicity, but all skillfully crafted and honed. No Page Six blurbs for the Hordes. What it all means for me is that I can't shine this on. I have to find the damn kid, which means I have to sit here and listen to the whole story instead of being out looking for the carrier. So our second round shows up and I try not to be too fidgety while I listen to her.

She's leaning back now, holding her drink in her lap with her right hand, occasionally stirring the ice with her index finger.

– Amanda has done this before. As a small child, she's only fourteen now, but as a very small child she frequently hid in closets or in the garden until someone found her. A way of getting attention. Not that she lacked, but she enjoyed scaring us. She would do it in public places as well, museums, stores; just disappear. At first we would panic and search high and low. When we realized it was a game to her, we resolved to wait her out, wait for her to get bored or lonely and come out of hiding. But she didn't. I once spent an entire day in Bergdorf's wail ing lor her to come out, and she never did. She stayed hidden inside a rack of dresses until we found her just after the store had closed. But she never ran far, Joseph, just somewhere hidden so she could watch us look for her. Then last summer she ran away for real. Not all that far as it turned out, but farther than before. When we first noticed her missing we were a bit surprised, my husband and I. It had been some time since she had last played her little game. But then we realized she was truly missing. We searched the town house, we had our Hamptons house searched, as well as the Hudson River estate. After two days there was no sign. We thought she might have been kidnapped. We called the police, but no one got in touch with us about a ransom and, frankly, the police were little help. Eventually, after some days, we hired a private investigator my husband has had occasion to employ. He found her almost two weeks later. She was living in the East Village, camping the kids call it. They go down there in their worst clothes and live on the street and panhandle and sleep in the park and pretend to be homeless. I guess.

I nodded. It was true, there were more than a few well-off kids slumming on Avenue A in the summer. When the real squatters found them out they usually kicked the shit out of them and sent them home to mommy and daddy.

Marilee takes a sip and plays with her ice some more.

I make a little grunting noise and she looks up.

– Yes?

– No offense, but you seem pretty calm about your daughter being missing and all.

She nods.

– Well as I say, it's not exactly new to us, and it's only been a few days. But more to the point, we know she's OK.

– How's that?

– She's been withdrawing money from her account.

– That could be anyone with her card and code.

– Yes, she used her card at first, but her last two withdrawals were in person from a teller. It was her. They require photo ID.

– When and where was the last withdrawal?

– The Chase at Broadway and Eighth, two days ago.

– How much?

– Two hundred.

– How much does she have access to?

– She can withdraw up to a thousand a week, but never more than two hundred a day. If she wants more she needs her father or me to cosign.

– And she's taken two hundred every day she's been gone?

– Yes. First with her card, and the last two, as I said, from a teller. Perhaps she lost the card.

– OK. Did you bring a picture?

– Yes.

She lifts a pocketbook that matches her suit from the floor, finds the picture and passes it to me.

Her mother's eyes and neck, but the resemblance stops there. The girl in the photo is decked out in head-to-toe black with white pancake makeup on her face, hair dyed black, black lipstick, black eye shadow and black nail polish. Jesus fuck, she's a goth. Marilee sees something in my face.

– Yes, Amanda does have something of a fascination with the undead. So really, Joseph, you can see why it is I called you.

I look up from the photo, and Marilee smiles ever so sweetly.

I've been outed. Dexter Predo has outed me.

It's a given that a woman like Marilee has some sense of how things work, the exchanges that take place behind, beneath and above the scenes in Manhattan, the give and take of power. It is for that kind of favor brokering that the Coalition is known to a select few outside the Clans. But the fact that I have been outed by Predo indicates that she is operating at a much higher level of awareness, a level of knowledge at which most people are murdered to keep them silent.

There are people that know about us. But they are few and most play a specific role. There are the Van Helsings, the righteous who stumble upon us and make it their mission to hunt us down. The Renfields like Philip, who glom on to us, half servile and half envious. The Lucys, both male and female, who have romanticized the whole vampire myth and dote over us like groupies. And the Minas, the ones who know the truth and don't care, the ones who fall in love. Van Helsings are killed, we use the Renfields and the Lucys to serve us and insulate us from the world. Minas are rare and precious beyond value. There is only one way to know if you have a true Mina: tell her or him what you are and what you do to stay alive. Not many make that final cut.

Then there are the few men and women with true power and influence who know us. These are the ones to be feared. These are the ones the Coalition deals with and the Society hopes to sway. But the Society's goals will never be realized. We will never live in the open unless it is as freaks or prey. The people who might guide us out of obscure myth will never risk their positions and reputations to say to the world, Hey, look, vampires are real!

And Marilee is one of them, a person who knows, and knows I know she knows. And so on. And here she is in the Cole having a drink with me in public. And if I had any doubts before, I now know for certain that if I ever have the opportunity to drag Dexter Predo into the sun, I will do so gleefully.

She fishes an ice cube out of her drink, pops it in her mouth and crunches it.

– You see, Joseph, I know what you are, but I'm still not certain what it is you do. Are you a detective of some kind?

I'm still the deer in the headlights, just staring at her as she chews on ice.

– Joseph?

I blink once, slowly.

– I'm a man, does things, gets things done. I'm a handyman. Someone has a problem they maybe call me and I maybe help to take care of the problem. Sometimes that means I'm a detective, I guess, but I don't have a license or an office or anything.

She nods.

– What about a gun, do you carry a gun?

– Sometimes.

– Now?

– No.

– And what about the other things you do? I know about them in theory, but details are hard to come by. Mr. Predo and the few other Coalition members we have met are so circumspect. I stare at her.

– What about those other things, Joseph?

– We can't talk about that here.

She inhales deeply, exhales.

– It's just that one hears the most fascinating stories. Is it true for instance about your sense of smell? Is it as acute as a dog's? Can you, for instance, tell what scent I used this morning?

– I can smell it.

– Do you know the brand?

– No. But it's lavender oil.

– You'd recognize it if you smelled it again?

– Yeah.

– Hmm.

– If you don't mind, Ms. Horde, I'm not very good at parlor tricks.

– We should talk about these things sometime, we really should.

– Ms. Horde.

– Yes?

– Your daughter?

– What about her?

– She's missing.

– Yes, she is.

– What did you mean that she is fascinated with the undead?

She takes another cube of ice from her drink, just sucking it this time.

– Just that. She is somewhat fascinated by the undead, and the dead for that matter. You have eyes, she's a goth. She and her friends, they are all interested in anything macabre.

– But when you say undead, do you mean in the abstract or in a literal sense? What I mean is…

– How much does she know?

– -Yes.

– Nothing. I don't know what you're accustomed to, Joseph, but it's not as if I make a habit of meeting with… your people. This is an aberration. Dale and I and some others in our circle know, but we would hardly go about sharing that information. It would tend to brand us as something rather more than eccentric.

She smiles and licks the ice in her fingers. I can't quite get her. She's no Van Helsing, definitely not a Renfield, and lacks the proper sluttishness to be a Lucy. But she's something, she is definitely something. I slug down the last of my drink.

– Two more things.

– Of course.

– The name of the PI that found her last time?

– Chester Dobbs.

– Huh.

– You know him?

– Of him. Why didn't you call him again?

– To be honest, we did. He said he would look into it, but then called back the next evening and told us that his caseload was simply too great.

I try to feature a PI turning down a case from a cash cow as fat as the Hordes. I fail.

She's watching me.

– And the other?

– Hmm?

– The other of the two things?

– Oh, where did he find her the first time?

She finally bites down on the cube she's been sucking.

– Some abandoned building, a school I think it was, around Avenue B and Ninth Street. She was squatting in the basement with some other kids.

She looks at my face, which I'm sure looks like I just got kicked in the gut.

– Are you all right, Joseph? Is there something wrong?

I don't shake hands. I don't say goodbye. I take a pass on all the social niceties and get the hell out of there and into a downtown cab.

It's not her. I take a closer look at the picture while I ride the cab downtown, and I'm sure Amanda Horde is not the shambler chick I took care of the other night. Thanks for small blessings.

The school is as it was last night. Cop car parked out front on freak watch, police barricade across the entrance. I go in the same way as before. The wall is a little tougher this time with my ribs still healing from Hurley's beating. The roof door I left open last night is still ajar. I go in. Same graffiti, same rats, same breeze, same smells. I reach the ground floor and go to the killing room.

The scents are slightly faded, but essentially unchanged except for the additions of Hurley's and Tom's. The absences I had been so focused on when I got coldcocked have been lost as the other odors have drifted and diffused within the room. But the musk is still there, that disturbing sweaty aroma with its hint of sex and desiccation. But I'm not here for that. I'm here for the girl.

I leave the room and hunt around until I find a door leading down to the basement. It's black down there. I close my eyes tight and feel my pupils expand in response to the lack of light. I open my eyes and walk down the stairs into the complicated shadows below.

The smells are different here. Dust and damp concrete dominate with an undertone of heating oil, and rank human sweat laced throughout. A thin stream of light trickles in from the door above. Rough shapes emerge from the gloom. I skirt a pile of rotting cardboard boxes stuffed with molding textbooks, turn a corner and pass the open door of what was once the boiler room from which the oil smell creeps out. There are human smells here in thick, stale profusion. Some may be recent, but the chaos of odor keeps me from sorting them. The sweat stink I smelled on the stairs intensifies as I open a door into what used to be the boys' locker room. Most of the lockers have been removed, but in a corner I make out a dingy pile of what smells like cast-off jockstraps.

I would prefer not to announce myself to anyone lurking down here, but I'm going to have to use some light or this will take all night. From my pocket I pull a tiny Maglite. I close my eyes and switch the flashlight on, twisting the barrel until I know the light has reached its softest focus, and then opening my eyes to little slits. The illumination is sparse and gloomy at best, but to me it might as well be a flood lamp. I hold the light out away from my body so that anyone who might want to take a shot at me will blow my hand off instead of putting one in my belly.

With some visual cues to attach the smells to, it becomes easier to sort the old ones from the new. The gym smells of the boys' locker room get parsed from newer odors. I follow those fresher traces and find an abandoned shooting gallery in a storage room half-filled with broken desks.

The floor is scattered with used needles, candy bar wrappers, empty crack vials and sheets of flattened cardboard that have been used for mattresses. The scents here are fresher than those in the locker room. Chemical tang of heroin and crack, piss and crap in a corner, cheap tobacco from generic brand cigarettes, and dry blood. It's spattered on the floor in a couple spots, but that's not too unusual in a shooting gallery. The cop smells are here as well. They must have been down here when they searched the building. But something else. Hell, it's in here, too. I trace it to one of the cardboard mattresses: that rotting sex-musk from the goth shambler. Stronger here, as if some of the stains on the cardboard might be sexual in origin. As if this was the place where the living fucked the dead.

I catch a glimpse of something on the back of the door; I push it closed. It's a Cure poster. I take a closer look at the walls, and in a couple places I find tacks with the corners of torn-off posters still trapped beneath. I rummage in some crumpled paper stuffed into a bag that someone had been using as a pillow, and come up with a couple more tattered posters. The Dead. Morrissey. That tears it. Your average junkies and zombies aren't too big on interior decorating. Figure this was the same room the Horde girl and her friends were squatting in last year. After they got moved out, the junkies moved in.

I take another look at the blood. Couple days, maybe a week old. This could be where the goth shambler infected the fashion junkies she was with. Hard to say. Maybe she came down here, knew it as a hangout for squatters and campers and came here with some dull message in her brain telling her she could get food here. Maybe the junkies found her here and raped her and… No, it doesn't float, neither of them were carrying that smell. But something happened here. Something worse than the usual. And in a place like this the usual is pretty lucking bad.

Not that any of it gets me any closer to the carrier. Or the Horde girl.

Done with the school, I walk over to Tompkins and dig up Leprosy. He's hanging out in the corridor of benches claimed by the squatters. It runs between the kiddy park and the chess tables where most of the junkies hang out. He sees me and starts to bark at me almost before his dog does.

Dogs are amazing creatures, they can sense things, smell things that people never will. But they can't smell the Vyrus inside me, and Leprosy's dog can't smell shit. His nose is all smashed up from getting it kicked in. No, Leprosy's dog barks at me because he's a mean and vicious bastard that tries to tear the throat out of anyone who doesn't happen to be Leprosy himself.

– Fuck off, fuck face.

– Good to see you too, Lep.

The other squatters check us out. Some of them give me a little nod and some others drift away, hoping I won't notice them. As a rule I don't like squatters, but some I like a lot less than others and they know it. Leprosy jerks his dog's choke chain a few times.

– Shut the fuck up, Gristle!

He hauls on the leash until Gristle is standing on his hind legs, straining to get at me, his barks choked down to bloodthirsty growls. It's a pretty good trick on Lep's part seeing as he's all of five two and weighs in around ninety pounds, while Gristle is the product of some bizarre crossbreeding experiment that matched a rottweiler with a wolverine.

– I said fuck off, you're pissing off my dog.

– I don't know about that, Lep, I think I may be turning him on. Look, he has a hard-on.

It's true. Desperate to eat me, Gristle is still choking himself on the leash, clawing at the air with his front paws, his massive dog wood pointed straight at me.

– Down, Gristle! Put it away!

Some of the other squatters are laughing now and Leprosy is getting more pissed. He looks over at them and lets out some slack on the leash. Gristle lunges again, but this time it's at the squatters. They jump back and Lep gives a thin smile. Truth is they may be more afraid of him than of the dog. He's a scrawny little fuck, but he's probably twice as crazy and dangerous as the mutt.

– Stop fucking around, Lep. Tie the dog up and we'll take a quick walk and then the two of you can be back together.

He looks at me and glares, but he drags Gristle over to the fence, ties the leash to the iron bars and starts walking toward the kiddy park. I stroll alongside of him while the dog barks and whines in the background.

– I told you not to come around here anymore, Pitt, my dog hates you. You keep showing up and I'm gonna let him off that fucking leash one day.

– Your dog hates everyone, and if it ever gets off that leash and comes at me I'll kill it dead and you'll be out your only friend. Now tell me about this chick.

I show him the picture of Amanda Horde. He takes a quick look and passes it back.

– She's OK. I'd do her.

– Yeah, if she'd ever let your nasty ass near her.

– Shiiit. Goth chicks are ill for Leprosy. Goth chicks gotta have what Leprosy's got. Especially campers like that bitch. They gotta hit it with Leprosy. It lends au-then-ti-city to the squatting experience. As it fucking were.

– So you know her.

– Seen her around, she was camping like last fucking summer.

– You hook up?

– Naw. Camper bitches may crave what Leprosy has, but he denies them his shit. I take their money and drugs and might let one suck my dick, but Leprosy won't never luck one of them bourgeois fucking cunts.

– So what about this summer, you seen her around?

He stops walking. We're by the kiddy park now. We stand next to the sign on the gate: NO ADULTS ALLOWED! PARENTS AND GUARDIANS ONLY. This is meant to keep the pederasts outside the fence so they can only watch the action within. It's too late for kids now, but any number of the creeps drifting around the park might be child molesters. If only I could smell that.

Leprosy is staring at the empty playground equipment.

– I used to come here when I was a kid.

Lep is about sixteen.

– Yeah?

– Yeah, before my folks moved us out to Long Island. I loved the park. That's why I came here when my dad kicked me out.

Lep ran away a couple years back to get away from his dad. You guess why.

– Hey, Lep.

– What?

– I look like a piece of toast to you?

– No.

– So stop trying to butter me up. You want money, tell me you want money.

He smiles.

– I want money, fuck face.

I reach in my pocket, dig out a twenty and give it to him.

– So you seen her around or what?

He frowns at the twenty, but stuffs it in his pocket.

– Maybe.

– Don't fuck with me, that's all the cash you're getting tonight.

– I mean maybe I saw her, but I'm really not fucking sure, OK?

– Tell me.

He leans against the rails of the fence and scratches himself under a T-shirt that might have said something once, but now is just the same washed-out gray-green of all squatter clothes.

– So, like a week or two back we got a little beer bust going at a squat on C. You know, bunch a us pooled our change for some forties, and Fat Stinky Pete had a sack of hay and we were just getting all fucked up. So you know Yankee Dan, right?

– The skinny Cuban kid always has the Mets hat?

– Yeah, guy loves the Mets like life so we call him fucking Yankee. Pisses him off. Anyway, Yankee is kind of a weasel and nobody can really stand the fucking shit bag and now here he shows up un-in-fucking-vited and he's towing these fucking campers with him. I mean, they got all the right shit on and their hair is five different colors and their lips are pierced, but the clothes are from Urban Outfitters and their piercings are too clean and the dye jobs are two-hundred-fucking-dollar-a-pop deals from some Upper East Side fag salon. So we know what's up even if Yankee is a fucking retard. Like the standing policy on this shit for any self-respecting punk is to stomp these pieces of shit, but we're pretty fucked up and feeling all mellow and besides we're out of beer and campers all have cash. So we give Yankee and these turds a bunch a shit, but we let 'em stay after they go out and grab some more forties and another sack.

– The girl, Lep.

– Yeah, I'm fucking getting to her.

He feels at his pockets for cigarettes that we both know aren't there. I pull out my pack of Luckys, pass him one and we both light up.

– So Lep is feeling good. And one of these camper chicks, she's digging his vibe and starts rubbin' up against it and shit. Now, like I said, these sluts from Uptown are gluttons for the real thing. They want to fuck in the dirt and get come on and shit so they can go back to fucking prep school and tell their friends about all the freaky shit they got into. Like they can all buy whatever the fuck they want, so having the latest Britney Spears CD or this year's Porsche means shit. But fucking some scabby squatter in a basement with ten people watching, that's a fucking social coup. So Lep, he's not gonna give this bitch the satisfaction, but she's pretty hot and I ain't had it for a bit so I tell her she can suck it, and down she goes.

– I can't tell you how charming this is. Now how about the girl, was it her?

He shakes his head.

– No, not that slut, but maybe her friend.

– Her friend?

– Yeah. See she finishes her job and Leprosy does his business and she's still into it, but Leprosy is not, and I repeat, not going to stick it in this cunt. So she says, what if it's her and her friend. Well, Leprosy has been around, but this piques his curiosity. So I ask her what friend and she points to one of the other camper chicks in the room. Well I check out that chick and she's OK, but Leprosy has his principles and I let this slut know it and tell her if she wants to set up a three-way or pull a train there are other guys around who don't have Leprosy's moral fiber. But at the time I think to myself that the other chick, she looked familiar. And now you show me that picture, I'm thinking to myself that that might be it, that chick might be the one in your picture.

– Might.

– Well, the hitch here is that the chick in the squat, she didn't have any makeup on. Now the chick in the picture, I saw her last year no doubt, and she always had all that ghoul shit all over her. But this chick in the squat? Not even nail polish. So it might have been her, but you see my fucking problem.

I nod.

– If she's around and it's the girl from last year, there are people who would know, right?

– Sure.

– Find out, Lep.

He raises his eyebrows.

– How fucking much is it worth?

– It's worth a lot. It's worth saving me a lot of hassles. Which means it's worth keeping me happy and keeping you from getting hurt. So find out for sure if it was her and then call me at Evie's bar. Now go get your dog before it kills itself or eats someone.

I turn and walk away and Leprosy shouts after me.

– Sure thing, Pitt. Hey, me, I'm at your fucking beck and call, right, fuck face? Hey, I got an idea, why don't you go check out Realm? I hear all the hot young goths hang out there.

He laughs and I keep walking. Leprosy is a little fuck, but he'll do as I tell him. He'll do it because he owes me. He remembers the time his father came cruising in here from Long Island to get him. Comes rolling up in his stockbrokers' standard-issue Lincoln Continental and storms into the park like he owns it. Leprosy spots him and tries to run, but his dog gets off the leash and goes after the bastard. Dad doesn't even break stride, that dog runs up and he smashes the toe of his wingtip right into its nose, which is how Gristle lost his sense of smell. The dog drops, bleeding all over the concrete, and dad starts after Leprosy. Me, I'm sitting on a bench smoking, like I do, and maybe this is none of my business, but I got involved anyway. I beat the fuck out of the ass-raping son of a bitch, made his nose match the dog's. I did that for free, but it doesn't mean Leprosy doesn't owe me.

"Bela Lugosi's Dead." It's like their theme song. I'm hip-deep in Realm, watching crowds of black-garbed teenagers with pasty faces "dance" to Bauhaus. Back in my day goths were all these mopey, alienated, semi-suicidal kids. Pretty much your average teenagers, just dressed in black. Back then they were mostly hooked into the music: The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Damned, a little Depeche Mode. Now it's gotten all tangled up in fetishism and S amp;M. So here's what it's like inside Realm. Over here you got your video screens showing clips from Nosferatu intercut with scenes from some tape of people getting their genitals pierced. Over there you got your brass chandeliers scavenged from junk shops around the Tri-State area, draped in black cheesecloth and illuminated with red lightbulbs. Along the walls you got your innumerable mirrors, brass framed and also draped in black cheesecloth. In point of fact, most everything here is draped in black cheesecloth, including half the patrons. Up on that stage you got your fetishist couple performing a rather tame S amp;M act. He's strapped to a big rusty steel X, wearing nothing but a black leather G-string. She's in the obligatory thigh-high boots and corset, and is sticking alligator clips connected to a car battery onto his nipples, shocking him when he fails to call her "mistress." Which is most of the time. Hot, right? Could be, except they're both middle-aged, seriously overweight and balding. Nonetheless, they're drawing a pretty big crowd, so who's to say their booking agent doesn't know what he's doing.

Over by the stage you got most of the new school goths favoring latex and studs. On the other side of the room, grooving on the music and the bootleg bottles of absinthe they scored from some guy that just got back from Brazil, are the old-school crowd. These folks lean more toward velvet and lace with a healthy dose of leather thrown in. And worn close to the heart of each, you'll no doubt find a treasured, autographed copy of Interview with the Vampire. This is the vampire crowd, the ones who really get into the whole undead experience. Half of them have their own coffins and the other half are saving up. These are the ones who think getting turned into a vampire will be just like The Hunger. Lots of hot sex with Catherine Denueve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie followed by a centuries long, lingering, tragic, but ultimately poetic death, which is also filled with lots of hot sex with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. And that's what makes these people such easy pickings for your average bottom-feeding Vampyre, because so many of them dream of being turned. But they don't know shit about the Vampyre, and what a pain in the ass it is to be one.

I grab a beer and eyeball the crowd. If Lep is right, Amanda Horde may have dropped the goth look. I push away from the bar and take a pass through the room. A couple chicks in full goth

Kabuki-face have the right build, but a closer look tells me they're not my girl. I hang out for another half hour, keeping a close eye on the door. No dice. This is a waste of time. It's not like I can flash the girl's picture around or hang up flyers. That would pretty much go in the face of the discreet job Predo and Marilee Horde want. I'll check the basement and blow.

Realm's basement is a dark warren of small rooms, each with its own ambience, as it were. There's the Victorian Room, crammed with old sofas and cast-off end tables, all of it illuminated by oil lamps. Next to that is the Murder Room, decorated like a suburban kitchen, but with fake blood splattered across the walls and ceiling, and body outlines taped on the floor. There's the Dungeon Room and the Padded Cell and the Mad Scientist Room. I stick my head into each, take a quick look at the inhabitants and move on. Suburban goths from Long Island are sitting around the Formica-topped table in the Murder Room playing quarters. The Dungeon Room is hosting an impromptu panel discussion on spanking. And so on. I duck out of the Padded Cell, where a guy is being strapped into a straitjacket by one of his buddies, and head for the stairs. Time to get out of here.

I catch a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, turn to see what it is, see nothing, turn, and then he's right in front of me, blocking the stairs.

He squints through the grimy lenses of his glasses.

– Are you alright, Simon?

I grunt.

– I asked if you were alright, Simon?

– Yeah, I'm fine.

Christ I hate it when people use my real name.

I size him up. He's just a bit shorter than me, but more pale and skinnier than a cancer patient with AIDS and a heavy speed habit. He's wearing baggy white clothes, sporting a shaved head, and I don't know his name. I don't know him at all. But I know where he's from and who he belongs to because he knows my real name. These fuckers always know your real name. I step around him and start up the stairs. He follows.

– Are you alright, Simon?

– I said yes, for Christ's sake. Now will you stop calling me that?

– My apologies, Joe.

I get to the top and make a beeline out the front door. The skeleton stays on my heels as I walk down the sidewalk away from Realm.

– Perhaps you have a moment, Joe?

– Perhaps I have a whole shitload of moments. Perhaps I have moments squirreled away all over the place, and perhaps I plan to keep them for myself. What of it?

He laughs.

– What are you laughing at?

– I've been told about your sense of humor, Joe, how you stumble over wisdom even as you mock it. Moments squirreled away. Indeed, that is how so many treat time, as if it is something to be hoarded rather than a phenomenon to be experienced.

– Are you fucking serious? Is this what you have planned for me tonight? Can I just give you a donation or volunteer at a soup kitchen or something and get you off my back, or do I have to listen to this shit?

– No, Joe, you don't have to listen to anything. You don't have to do anything. But die, Joe, we all have to die. Except one of us.

– Yeah, well I already did that so maybe you can fuck off now.

– There's trouble about, Joe Pitt.

– There's always trouble around. Way I figure it, trouble just runs around this town doing what it wants.

– You are in danger and in need of allies.

– Not as far as I know.

– You do know. You know about the one you cannot smell or see.

I stop.

– Who is it?

– It is not a who.

Oh, Jesus. It's gonna be a ghost story.

– Bullshit.

– It watches you.

Screw this. I start to walk. He doesn't follow.

– Give them my regards then.

– Daniel wants to talk with you.

– You tell Daniel to stay out of my business.

– You are being watched, Simon. Have a care.

– I told you not to call me that.

I turn back around, but he's disappeared. Of course. That's how these Enclave guys are, dramatic entrance, dramatic exit, and a bunch of crap in between. I start walking again, and try not to feel the little tingles on the back of my neck that make me feel I'm being watched.

Evie loves me. I know she loves me because she buys all my drinks for me. I know for lots of other reasons, too, but right now this is the most important one because I want to get drunk. I took a walk around the neighborhood, looking for any indication of the carrier and coming up empty. I cruised back through the park to check on Leprosy, but the other squatters said he had split right after I did. So I heaved a sigh, said fuck it and came over here to see Evie and have a drink.

It's after midnight on a Sunday and the place is just starting to pick up. There's a late night hoedown-jam going on on the tiny stage and a few couples trying to two-step between the tables. Folks that work in the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood are getting off shift and coming in here to blow off steam. Evie likes working Sundays. She says it's the pros' night out. It's not as busy as Friday and Saturday, but she makes more money because these people know how to tip and most of them have Monday off so they're getting good and fucked up. And trust me, these people know a thing or two about getting fucked up.

Right now Evie is setting them up for the midget deadbeat I shook down the night we met. His name is Dixon and he turned out to be a pretty good guy other than being a degenerate gambler. I put another shot of Old Crow down my neck and take a sip off my Lone Star.

I can get drunk. It takes some seriously hard work because the Vyrus treats alcohol like any other poison and works quickly to neutralize it, but if I drink enough and I drink fast, I can get something resembling a buzz. And hey, no hangovers! The virtues of Vampyrism. Evie sidles back over to my side of the bar and refills my glass. She doesn't really need to do that since the bottle is right in front of me, but it's a nice gesture.

Every gesture Evie makes is a nice gesture because she's just that kind of girl. The kind I like to look at, but can't touch. I take another drink. She fills me back up. From the ground up she's wearing cowboy boots, low-cut jeans, a baby-doll T-shirt with the word TITS stretching tight as a drum across hers, and a smile that's all for me. I look her up and down and take another drink.

She fills my glass, takes a pull from the bottle and gives me the smile.

– So, can I come over tonight?

I bob my head up and down.

– Could be, could be.

She leans on the bar and puts her hand alongside my face.

– We could watch a movie maybe. Maybe play a little.

– A movie, hmm?

– Yeah.

She leans closer, puts her cheek against mine and flicks a tongue at my ear. I shiver. I almost cry. But I don't. Someone calls for a drink. Evie smiles at me and walks away down the bar. I watch her ass and take another drink.

This is what we do. This is what we do instead of sex. Not all the time, but some nights this is what we do. We flirt and tease. We slap and tickle. We go home and watch porn and make out. We jerk each other off through our clothes or sometimes we take them off and jerk off ourselves in front of each other. This is what we do because Evie will never take the chance of giving me her sickness, and it makes her feel guilty as hell that she won't fuck me, but that's just because she doesn't know that I'm afraid of giving her mine.

I don't know how to make a Vampyre. As far as I know, nobody really does. The Vyrus is certainly carried in the blood, but like HIV it might be in my come as well. I can't have sex with Evie because I might turn her into one of me, which would cure her, which would mean we could be together for… I take another drink.

Evie finishes up with her customer and wanders back over to me.

– So am I coming over tonight?

– I guess you are, babe, I guess you are.

– Cool. And maybe in the morning I can take you out for breakfast.

– Funny, you're a funny girl tonight.

Evie thinks I'm allergic to the sun. She thinks that because I told her I'm photosensitive and suffer from solar urticaria that would make my skin erupt in boils if I were exposed to sunlight. For that matter, that's what anyone who knows me well enough to know I don't go out during the day thinks. For that matter, I am allergic to the sun when you get right down to it.

She taps the tip of her index finger against the tip of my nose.

– I could make breakfast.

– And I could choke on it and die.

– Fuck you.

– You want breakfast I'll call someone and have it delivered.

– Well that's what I meant when I said I could make it.

– Silly me.

The phone rings and she grabs it off the back-bar. She talks to someone for a second then brings the phone over to me.

– It's for you.

It's Leprosy.

– What?

– Pitt?

– Yeah, what's up?

– I got something.

– What?

– Just come meet me.

– Is it the girl?

– No. I. Just meet me.

– Where?

– That garden on B.

– With the tower?

– Yeah.

– Don't fuck with me here, Lep. Is this solid?

– I'm not. Just meet me. Now.

He hangs up. I hand the phone back to Evie.

– Leprosy?

– Yeah. I got to go.

I stand up and realize I'm not packing. Not even a knife.

– You got that bat you keep behind the bar?

– Sure.

She reaches under the ice bin and comes up with a Frank Thomas edition Louisville Slugger. It's a big bat. She passes it to me.

– What's the matter?

– He didn't call me fuck face.

I walk away. She calls after me.

– I'm still coming over.

I stop and take a practice cut with the bat.

– Goddamn right you are.

And I walk out the door.

I'm pretty sure the guy who built the tower is crazy. At the very least he is amazingly skilled at being a pain in the ass. Used to be there were these little public gardens all over Alphabet City, a bunch of empty lots that people in the neighborhood split up into tiny plots for their flowers or vegetables or whatever. Nice if you're into that kind of thing. So these gardens were on land owned by the city, but Alphabet City was just a pit full of spies, niggers, junkies, queers, squatters, gangbangers and artists, so who gave a fuck. Then came the real estate boom. Pretty soon the city sells off all these lots and the gardens are paved over and another couple dozen yuppies have new condos. And once again, who really gives a fuck. But this garden on B is still there and so is the tower and the nut job who built it.

When they set up this garden they split it up into the tiny plots and everybody started growing geraniums and basil. Except this one guy was a sculptor and he didn't want to grow things on his plot, he wanted to build things. Pretty soon his little area is spilling tools and wood and mess all over the place and the gardeners are all getting pissed and want to kick him out. People are starting to threaten lawsuits and everything. Then they hit on a pretty reasonable compromise. They agreed that anyone who has a plot can do anything they want in that plot, as long as it doesn't reach anywhere outside of the plot. Everybody shakes on it. And then the crazy fucker builds the tower.

It's about six stories tall, made mostly out of wood, and looks kind of like the dilapidated skeleton of a very skinny pyramid. And wedged into every crack and hanging off of every plank and board, nailed to and dangling from every square foot of its surface, is a simply in-fucking-credible collection of crap. Old street signs, toilet seats, a jumbo model of an airliner, toys of every shape and size, a kitchen sink, several effigies, flags, and at least one huge stuffed giraffe. It sits there and looms over the entire garden, dominating the landscape. The one thing it most definitely does not do is reach a single inch outside the borders of its own tiny plot. You got to admire the pain in the ass that built this thing. As for me, I'm just hoping he built it well, because I'm already about ten feet up in the damn thing and if that dog jumps any higher I'm gonna have to go twenty.

It took me just a couple minutes to get over to that garden. No Leprosy. I walked around the fence for a minute, took the scent of the air and climbed on over. It's dark in there and the air is clogged with the rich, growing odors of midsummer, all that loam and sweet blossoms and bursting fruit and crap. Anyway, it wreaks havoc with my nose and as I try to sort it out I hear a little whimpering sound. I edge around a tiny stand of corn into the shadow of the creaking tower. Up against the wall of one of the tenements bordering the garden I see a dog snuffling at something and whining. I step around the corn.

– Hey, Gristle, hey there, boy.

His head whips around at the sound of my voice.

– Easy there, Gristle.

A growl starts up in the back of his throat.

– Let's not have any trouble here, boy. Easy. Where's Leprosy, huh? Where is he, boy?

Why am I asking the dog where Leprosy is? Fuck do I know. Seems like the thing to do. At the sound of Leprosy's name he starts to whine again and turns back to whatever it is he's interested in, and I know things are all fucked up.

– What ya got there, boy?

I take a step closer to get a look. Gristle's head snaps back around and the rest of his body follows. He doesn't growl or bark, just comes straight at me. I hold the bat out in front of me with both hands and his jaws clamp down on it instead of my throat. I hear his teeth crack the wood as he bites down, and his weight sends me flat on my back. He's on top of me, his teeth planted in the bat, jerking it back and forth, trying to tear it from me while he rips at my exposed stomach with his rear claws. I push out with the bat, forcing his body up into the air. He's got the skinny part in his mouth and the fucker might just chew right through it in another second or two. Up in the air, he's lost his leverage and can't get purchase to claw me. Any time now he'll let go of the bat so he can take another crack at my neck. I twist my body to the left and throw the bat, Gristle and all, to my right. He skips and slides in the dirt for a few feet. I follow through with my roll, scramble up to my feet, run three steps, the dog just behind me, and jump up into the tower with Gristle hanging from my ankle. I manage to kick him off before he can sever my Achilles.

And here I am, sitting up in the tower with that dog down below stalking back and forth, taking the occasional jump at me and not making a fucking sound at all.

Me, I'm not what you'd call an animal person. Dogs, cats, wildebeests, it don't really matter, I don't care for any of them. But I'll give animals this over people, they just do what comes natural. Eat when they're hungry, sleep when they're tired, fuck when they're horny, protect their friends and kill their enemies. So I don't really want to hurt this dog, which is why I didn't take batting practice on his head in the first place. But getting down out of this thing without being chewed on is gonna be some kind of trick. I take out a cigarette and give it a smoke.

Gristle hasn't forgotten about me by a long shot, but instead of pacing back and forth just below me he's started covering the ground between the base of the tower and the thing against the wall. I pitch the stub of my cigarette and squat on one of the sturdier-looking pieces of lumber up here. Gristle looks up at me. The refracted light from a streetlamp turns his eyes blazing red. It's a good look for him. He turns to walk back over to the wall. I jump, land on top of him and wrap him up so that his legs are pinned beneath our bodies. He twists and writhes and wrenches his head around and snaps at the side of my face and misses and latches onto my left shoulder. He digs in. I get my hand on his throat and squeeze. He jerks his head a couple times, his teeth tearing my skin. I squeeze tighter and he starts to shudder and shake and finally pops his mouth off my shoulder and keeps it open wide and tries to breathe. I don't let him. It takes a while to knock him out, but he's still alive when I get up, and so am I. Pretty good deal for both of us.

Bruises are starting to form around the holes he put in my shoulder, but the blood has coagulated. I lift my arm over my head and stretch it out. It'll do. I pick up the bat and walk over to the wall to see what Gristle was so interested in. It's an old T-shirt, used to be kind of gray-green, but now it's mostly red. I give it a good smell, and you don't have to be much smarter than dirt to know it's Leprosy's.

In the farthest, darkest corner of the garden, where the walls of the two buildings that border it to the south and west meet, I can see an old steel basement trap. It's open. I drop Leprosy's shirt.

I've been spending a little too much time in basements the last few nights, but hey, it goes with the territory. I choke up on the bat and head down the stairs.

I'm hit with that generic oily-dirt smell that permeates City basements. There's garbage down here and moldy cloth and waterlogged newsprint, and blood. Lots of blood, and it smells just like Leprosy. I follow the blood.

These East Village tenements have been torn down and rebuilt so many times that the floor plans of the original builders have become worthless abstracts. This basement has penetrated far beyond the property lines of the building above. Many of these buildings could have had a single owner in the past and for any of a number of reasons he might have connected the basements into a single maze. Could have helped to hide a sweatshop, escape routes from a drug lab or, in a more innocent time, a speakeasy. Anything. All it means to me is that I'm getting lost down here. But the smell of Leprosy's blood is getting stronger ahead of me.

Every so often I pass a loose-fitting door that leads into someone's laundry room or the storage closet for a bodega and light from a feeble bulb leaks out. But I don't really need that light to tell me when I get to the place where someone must have cut Leprosy open because I just about slip and fall down in the puddle of his blood. He's up ahead of me. In the darkness. Alone. I tuck the bat under my arm, take out the Maglite, twist it on and shine it into the black room just ahead.

– Hey, fuck face.

He's sprawled on his ass, propped against a half-rotted wood post in the middle of the room, his arms pulled back and tied to the post. His chest is covered with dozens of slash marks and the blood oozes out and pools in his lap. My mouth begins to water. I take the bat out from under my arm and stay there in the doorway.

– Hey, Lep. You look like shit.

– Yeah, well.

His voice is choked and tight.

– I think I'm coming down with a fucking cold, so maybe that's why.

– Uh-huh. There anybody in here with you, Lep?

He moves his head around weakly, then turns it toward me and gives a shaky little smile.

– Looks like it's just me.

I take a step into the room, shine the light into the corners and crannies. It's empty. I walk over to Leprosy, drop the bat and kneel down next to him.

– Let's have a look at you.

The cuts on his chest are shallow, put there to inflict pain, not to kill. I take off my shirt and start tearing it into long strips and wrapping them around his skinny torso to bind the wounds.

– You might get lucky here, Lep.

– Yeah, lucky fucking me.

– They tell you what they wanted?

– They wanted you, fuck face. They wanted to know about you. Then they wanted me to make that fucking call, and as soon as I did they fucked off. So you get all of them?

– Who?

– It was a fucking trap, right? They made me call you and fucking jumped you, right?

– The only thing that jumped me was your dog.

– Gristle? You best not have hurt my dog, fuck face.

– Your dog is fine, the only thing that got hurt was my shoulder.

– Heh. He got you, huh?

– Fuck off, Lep.

I finish wrapping his chest.

– They get you anywhere else? They break anything?

– One of 'em stuck me in the back of my neck or something.

I take him gently by the shoulders, lean him forward until he's resting against my body and look at the back of his neck. There's a bite mark. The edges of it are a sickly greenish white. The bite of the carrier, just like I found it on the neck of the shambler chick. He's dead and rotting, and soon he'll be trying to eat me. I lean him back against the post.

– Looks OK.

– Cool. So you think they'll be waiting for us when we go out? Or maybe they wanted to get you out of the way so they could bust into your place?

I shrug.

– Whatever, we'll deal with it.

– You'll deal with it, fuck face. Not my problem.

I tear another strip from my now ruined shirt.

– Let me get another look at your neck. I want to keep your head from falling off.

– Ha fucking ha, fuck face.

I lean him against me again and use the strip of cloth to wipe the blood away from the hole in the back of his neck.

– You get a look at them, Lep?

– Naw, there was a couple of the fuckers, but it was too dark for me to see shit.

– Which one did this to your neck?

– Fuck do I know? One had me facedown on the floor, and I was screaming and shit, and one of them cut my neck with something.

– They ask you anything special?

– Couple questions. Wanted to know what you asked me. About that chick. What you wanted from me.

– What'd you tell them?

– What the fuck you think I told them? They were cutting my chest open. I told them fucking everything, which wasn't a fuck of a lot. Leprosy is no fucking hero, man, not for twenty fucking dollars.

– Yeah.

– You done patching that thing up or what?

– Just about. Hey, Lep, if your dog was sick, real sick, what would you do with it?

– What the fuck does that mean? You hurt Gristle, you shit fuck?

He struggles against me weakly and I hold him still.

– Easy, you'll start bleeding again. Naw, the dog is fine, it's like a puzzle thing, like a joke. If your dog was real sick, what would you do?

His body is leaning up against mine, his blood staining my undershirt. His head on my left shoulder, the one his dog chewed, and I'm looking into a hole chewed in his neck.

– Shit, man, if Gristle was that sick, like in pain kind of sick? I'd kill him, man, I'd just fucking kill him.

– That's what I figured.

– So what's the punch line, fuck face?

I take his head in my hands, one on the back, the other tucked under his chin. I lean him back against the crumbling post and do it while I'm looking him in the eye. It's a bad position, I'm on my knees with hardly any leverage, but I do it clean and his body slumps to the floor, head dangling at the end of his broken neck. It takes me awhile to find my way out of the basement.

Gristle is where I left him. A vicious animal that will try to kill anything that comes near it once it wakes. I could take him to the park and see if one of Lep's friends wants him, but they won't. I could take him to the pound where they'll keep him for a few days until they see the killer inside him and then put him down. I could leave him on the street to wake up and wreak havoc until he's shot by some cop. I could take him home. I could take him home and care for him until he loves me like he loved Leprosy.

But he won't. He'll be a broken thing without his master. A wounded monster. I kneel in the dirt. I kill him the same way I killed Leprosy, the same sharp twist of the neck. Then I drag him down into the basement, through the warped passageways to the black room, and I drop him next to his friend. Let them be found, and let whoever finds them make of it what they will. I'm going home.

Zombies don't torture people. They don't torture and they don't interrogate and they don't set traps. Someone is fucking with me. And my people.

Evie comes by. She sees the blood and I tell her it's not mine before she can freak out. She makes me take a shower. I want a bath, but hadn't realized just how much of Leprosy's blood I have on me. She takes my clothes and stuffs them in a plastic sack while I rinse off, then she runs the tub and we sit in it naked, facing one another. I tell her Lep is dead, that some guys that have a beef with me killed him. She doesn't ask questions, just rubs soap on a washcloth and scrubs my feet.

The Cole is just the same, same oak, same mural, same high-priced clientele, but this time there's someone new.

– What I'd like to make clear to you, the one most important piece of information that you should walk away from this conversation with, is that I'd like you never to be seen with my fucking wife ever again.

I nod. And Dale Edward Horde nods back.

He's older than his wife, early fifties, but just as groomed. I doubt that there are designer tags on any of his clothes, but discrete, hand-sewn labels from a bespoke shop on the Upper East Side. His haircut is flawless, a flop of graying black bangs sweeping across his forehead. He's fit and ready for the cover of Men's Health, but his eyes are subtly ringed and his lean muscularity speaks more of stress and intensity than of a gym.

He takes another sip of his Talisker, then leans back in his chair and taps his wedding ring against the rim of the glass.

– As public places go, this one is less public than most. It's the prices, the prices make it unlikely that you will find very many tourists popping in to gawp at the well-to-do. But they're \not really the problem, tourists. The problem is the people with money, people my wife and I associate with. The problem with those people is that so few of them work, they have too much time on their hands and they like to keep up on what one another are doing. Your coming in here with my wife raised more than a few eyebrows. Honestly, I don't particularly care if they think the two of you are intimate. You wouldn't be the first roughneck from downtown with whom she's taken up. But it is something for people to talk about, and so talk they will. That talk is what concerns me. Talk circulates and becomes gossip and rumor, and gossip and rumor have wings that carry them very far indeed. No, my concern is not that I should be known as a cuckold, but rather that word of your involvement with my wife might reach the wrong ears; ears, that is, which might know about who and what you are. Ears such as those would be greatly interested in knowing that my wife and I were having dealings with you and your… what is the word? Brethren?

I look at my lap some more.

– Not brethren. Let's just say you and your kind. I know it smacks of racism, but there it is.

He swallows the last of his Scotch and sets down the empty glass. A waiter sweeps it away.

– Suffice it to say that you are here now because I need the gossips to see us together, speaking amiably. It will muffle any talk of my wife having an affair with you, and the gossips will quickly find some other tidbit to dwell upon. And thus our association with you will fade from common discourse. You understand my concern, yes?

I nod.

– Good. Now that we have that out of the way, you can join me in a drink.

The waiter returns with a fresh Talisker for Horde and he orders the same for me.

– Is that alright?

I nod. The drink comes and I hold it. Horde points at the glass in my hand.

– Take a drink, it will help with the facade of our knowing one another.

I lift the glass to my lips and take a sip.

– Good, yes?

I nod.

– Then business. My daughter.

I take another drink, a big one this time. It's a heavy Scotch. Wood-smoke and peat fill my nostrils, and for a moment I can't smell the odor of Leprosy's blood that clings to my hair.

– What do you want to know?

– Have you found her?

– No.

He waits for more. I don't give it to him. He tires of waiting.

– A more detailed report perhaps?

– In detail.

I gulp the rest of the whiskey in my glass.

– It looks like your daughter may be in a world of shit. It looks like she's been hanging with her squatter pals in Alphabet City. It also looks like there's some sick shit going on down there that could be very dangerous to anyone living on the street.

He grimaces and nods his head.

– As I understand it, sick shit is what my daughter goes down there seeking. I think it may be safe to assume that if it is about she will find it.

– No, Mr. Horde, it'll find her.

He raises his eyebrows.

– Well, in that case, and seeing as your drink is empty, you'd best go find her.

He stands. I stand.

– My demeanor can be off-putting, Mr. Pitt. People consider me cold. You might perhaps interpret this as an indication that I am less than fond of my daughter. That would be a mistake. Be assured, I love my daughter and I want her back. Unharmed. Get her, and you will be suitably rewarded. Fail, and you will be sorted out accordingly. Which brings me to my final point. I want her delivered into my arms and my arms only. You are not to hand over Amanda to her mother. -Any special reason?

The waiter comes over with a bill, offers it to Horde, and Horde flicks a pen across it without looking. The waiter walks away.

– Yes. For the reason that my wife is a philandering lush and is becoming a singularly unhealthy influence on her daughter. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to shake your hand. It will help to cement our deception for the audience.

I take his hand. It's just as soft as I expect it to be, but strong. He smiles broadly and claps me on the shoulder.

– Unharmed and to my arms. Understood?

He's still holding my hand, his other hand resting on my shoulder, everything about his body language and tone of voice telling the room that I am a trusted and valuable employee. I pull my hand free of his.

– Yeah, sure.

I walk out of the Cole and into the St. James lobby and don't see the stairs in front of me and trip down the first few and have to grab the banister to keep from falling. Sweat breaks out on my face. I feel drunk; very suddenly very drunk. I wipe my hand across the sweat on my face. I smell something, something on my hand, something I've smelled before.

I walk past the front entrance and only realize it when I find myself standing at the elevators. I go back to the entrance and have to watch the revolving door swirl past twice before I can step into it without being crushed.

One of the uniformed doormen helps me down the steps and asks me if I'd like a cab. I shake my head and his face blurs in front of me. I lurch down the sidewalk to the corner of Fifth and 55th and walk right into the moving traffic. Drivers blast their horns and curse at me as I weave my way across the street.

I lean against a pole at the bus stop and look around. The world is made of blurs. I should have let the doorman get me a cab, I'll never make it home like this. I don't even know where home is right now. I need to sit down. Across 55th, people are setting up tents and sleeping bags against the wall of a building. People start crossing the street and I stagger among them and don't stop until I am clutching the wall of the building on the other side. I find an empty patch of sidewalk between a beat-up dome tent and a large cardboard box covered in sheets of plastic. I slump down between them.

The world is riding a Tilt-A-Whirl. I fall onto my side and curl into a hall, my back pressed against the side of the building, against the bars covering a basement window. I ball myself tighter, my hands close to my face, and I smell something again. Something on my hands.

I know that smell.

I'm in trouble.

I try to stand up and my eyes pull themselves closed.

A monster roars. I open my gummed eyes and see a troop of lean, black-topped figures blurring up the street. Old ghosts are coming to haunt me.

The wind whips the sleep from my eyes and the thunder of a dozen Harleys pounds off the buildings lining Fifth Avenue and shatters the predawn quiet. I clutch the leather-jacketed back of the lead rider and look at the Dusters as they gun their bikes downtown. Christ, how do they keep those top hats on their heads?

Terry sent the Dusters for me.

After our bath Evie and me went to bed and didn't wake up till close to two. She ordered us some food from the Odessa Diner and we sat on my bed and ate it. After, I washed my hair again to try and get rid of the smell of Leprosy's blood, but it didn't help much. Blood is a scent that clings. Evie stuck My Darling Clementine in the DVD player to distract me. I sat next to her and stared at the screen, but didn't see anything. I was thinking about the night. How it couldn't come soon enough. How I couldn't wait for the sun to go down so that I could go out on the streets and kill someone. Then the call came, summoning me back to the Cole to meet the husband this time.

When I didn't come back, Evie decided to do something. My coming home covered in Lep's blood was the line for her. After that, she wasn't taking any chances.

She's met Terry a couple times. He's come into her bar looking for me and I introduced him as a player in the neighborhood's community action set. As far as she knows, he's a friend, or as much of a friend as I have. So she called Terry 'cause she didn't know anyone else who might be able to find me. Good girl.

– Bird gave us a ring. Said he wanted us to check something out for him. No biggie, just wanted us to crash Coalition turf and see if we could find you up here.

Christian is yelling over the blast of the bikes' pipes. We're below 24th now, on pretty safe ground, but the Dusters are still riding patrol style: two outriders a block up front, two as a rear guard a block behind, and the rest of the bikes clustered around me and Christian atop his chopped, jet-black 72 Shovelhead. He's hunched over the drag bars and I'm sitting behind him on the buddy seat, leaning against his back so I can hear what he's saying.

– Anyway, I threw together a squad and here we are.

There's more to it, there has to be. The Dusters are one of the small Clans from below Houston. They've managed to carve out some turf around Pike Street under the Manhattan Bridge. They don't have an official affiliation with the Society, but they're allied. The Dusters watch the Society's back door so Terry doesn't get too antsy about them being so close to his turf. But they don't generally go around running Society errands. A deal was cut. The Dusters are either paying off a big debt or getting something big for their trouble; nothing else would make them risk their president and twelve of their best riders by coming onto Coalition territory for a non-member. Whatever price was paid I'll be expected to chip in with something. We cross 14th, back on Society turf, and the bikes start peeling off in twos and threes, each rider saluting Christian with the tip of a top hat before disappearing down a side street. And then it's just Christian and me.

– Bird wants to see you.

I look at the paling sky. If I go to Terry now I'll be stuck with him all day.

– Take me to my place.

– He said to drop you at their headquarters.

– You taking orders from the Society now?

He turns left onto 10th Street. I get off the bike in front of my apartment. Christian sits on the idling machine, takes off his hat and slides his WW I-style goggles up on his forehead.

– Hear you got a problem with some shamblers.

– Where'd you hear that?

– Word gets around.

– Yeah, that's what word does.

– Need any help? That shit's no good for none of us.

– Don't know what you're talking about. Everything's cool with me.

– Yeah.

He slips the goggles down and puts his hat back on.

– Guess that's why Bird's sending us to scoop you off the sidewalk on 55th.

I stick out my hand and he takes it.

– Thanks for the ride.

He keeps hold of my hand.

– I'd say anytime, but I'd be lying. You should drop all the Coalition and Society crap, Joe. You keep playing the ends against the middle, you're gonna get fucked.

I take my hand back and keep my mouth shut.

He shakes his head.

– OK, play it that way. But you don't belong with them, man. You belong with us, down under the bridge. You belong free.

– Nobody's free.

– Just looks that way to you, Joe.

He kicks the bike into gear and blows down the street. I watch him turn the corner onto A, then go inside.

Christian's one of mine. I didn't infect him, best I know I've never infected anyone, but I found him. He and his boys had taken up on that block of Pike not knowing that the Chinatown Wall had claimed it. They rumbled with the Wall. 'Course, they had no idea the Wall were all Vampyre. The Wall savaged his gang, left most drained and walked away from the mess. That's how those animals operated back then. This was 78, 79, and I was still with the Society. I went down there with Terry to clean things up. We pitched the bodies in the East River, but Christian still had some life. Terry figured him finished and was ready to dump him. I figured I owed someone else the same shot Terry had given me.

I took him to a Society safe house and got him through it. He'd seen plenty of weird shit, he'd seen what the Wall did to his friends. That was enough for him to believe. But once he was strong enough to move he split, wanted nothing to do with Terry's peace and love agenda. He tracked down what was left of his old gang and went to work, infecting them. It took him a year to build a new gang and then he went back to Pike Street, and the Dusters wiped out an entire generation of Wall. Only reason those Chinatown bastards are even considered a Clan anymore is because they've been around for so long. Nowadays the Dusters have their turf wired so tight that only the major Clans would think about walking Pike without an invitation.

I need to call Evie and tell her I'm OK. I need to call Terry and tell him I'll talk to him tonight, find out what I owe him for the rescue. I need to get back on the street and find the girl and the carrier. But first I need a drink. I don't know what Horde slipped me, but anything that could put me down that hard would have been lethal to someone uninfected. I still feel weak and sick as shit. So I open my fridge, more than a little concerned about how much I've been drinking, and find out I have more important things to worry about. It's gone. All my blood. Every drop. Gone.

The Enclave is set up in a warehouse on Little West 12th in the Meatpacking District. They don't lay claim to any turf outside their own front door, they don't have to. The Clans and the Rogues observe a no-man's-land that covers the entire West Side from 14th down to Houston. Nobody wants anything to do with them, least of all me. But someone was in my apartment, someone who didn't leave a trace, except for little erasures where his smell should have been. Erasures just like the ones I found in the classroom where I finished the shamblers. So it's time to go talk to Daniel.

I'm out in daylight for the second time in seventy-two hours, back in my burnoose, but I called a car service this time and specified tinted windows. I sit in the middle of the backseat, shifting from side to side as the sun strikes the windows, staying out of any direct rays. The tinting cuts down the long-wave UVs, but the shorts, the ones that really fuck us up, get through. I have the driver drop me at the corner of Little West 12th and Washington and walk down the block, keeping close to the buildings and the line of shade they cast on the sidewalk.

The Enclave warehouse looks like any of the others on this block, except for a total lack of graffiti or any other vandalism. The kids may not know exactly who those guys are in there, but they know they're bad. I climb the steps up to the loading dock and slide the huge steel door open on its tracks. They don't bother locking the door here. No one is stupid enough to fuck with them.

I step inside and slide the door closed behind me. It's dark, very dark. Nice. I take off my sunglasses.

– Simon.

I turn. I think it's the one who talked to me the other night.

– What did I tell you about that?

He smiles.

– I am sorry, it is just that you are so much more a Simon than a Joe. Which is as it should be.

– Just take me to Daniel, will you.

– Of course.

We cross the open space of the empty warehouse and shapes at the far end begin to resolve. At first it looks like rows and rows of white plaster lawn ornaments, and then they become Enclave. It looks like all of them, a hundred at the outside, the most feared of all the Clans. They sit cross-legged on the floor, motionless and silent, each of them dressed entirely in clothes as white as their pigmentless skin. My guide leads me through them. The ones in the back rows still have a bit of color to them and some flesh on their bones, but they get progressively paler and more emaciated as we move toward the front of the assembly. About halfway there my guide sits down in an empty space at the end of one of the lines. I stop, but he shakes his head and waves me forward.

At the front sits a single form, his back to me, facing the same direction as the others, but alone and separate from them. I stop. He's still for a moment, and then turns his head and looks up at me. He smiles and points at my white burnoose.

– Simon, how nice of you to dress for your visit.

Daniel looks like death. Exactly how you would expect death to look if he ever showed at your bedside with a scythe and a long list bearing your name inked in blood. Hairless, bone-white skin stretched tight over the skeleton beneath. He looks like death because he's dying. That's what they're all up to in here, slowly starving themselves to death.

We're walking up the stairs to the loft that runs along the back of the warehouse, and despite his skeletal state Daniel bounces lightly up the steps, radiating verve and barely restrained energy. At the top of the stairs he leads me down a narrow corridor that runs between a series of identical cubicles, each one containing nothing but a floor mat and a water jug. He steps into one of the cubicles on the left and I follow him in. There's an Enclave lying on the mat, shivering and sweating and nearly as wasted as Daniel. Daniel nods at him.

– He's failing.

Yeah, no shit.

Daniel points at the floor in a corner and I go sit there. He settles himself on the floor next to the dying Enclave, placing a hand on his forehead and gently stroking the sickly skin. The Enclave stops shivering.

– Failing, Simon, as we all do.

– All except you, right, Daniel?

He smiles, shrugs.

– Time will tell. But Jorge here, he's failing very quickly.

– Why?

– He's something of a fundamentalist in his beliefs. He chose to stop feeding entirely.

– Jesus. How long ago?

– Oh, several weeks now.

– And he's still alive?

– Well, that's a subject for some debate, is it not?

I watch as Daniel strokes the brow of the dying Enclave. He's right, they do all fail, the Enclave, fail and die. That's what happens when you stop feeding. The Vyrus wants you to feed, needs you to feed. It strengthens you, sharpens your senses and motivates your body so that you will feed and consume more blood that will in turn feed it. Stop feeding and it will begin to consume your own blood, just as your body will eat itself if you deny it food. The Enclave feed only the barest amount. Are they doing it out of principle, denying themselves in order to spare the lives of others? No. They're doing it because they're a bunch of fucking spooks.

Jorge's breath is becoming more ragged, his lips peeling away from his gumless teeth, mouth stretched open, the air whistling in and out of his throat. Daniel leans forward and puts his mouth close to Jorge's ear and whispers to him. Shit, he's gonna croak right now. I start to get up to leave the room, but Daniel waves me back down. I don't want to see this, but you do what Daniel tells you when you're in his house.

Jorge's back arches off the floor and his fingers claw at the sleeping mat, digging little furrows in the thin bamboo reeds. Daniel is lying next to him now, pressing his body against Jorge's, stroking his face, whispering nonstop, chanting something. Crackling sounds are coming from Jorge's mouth, not like sounds he is making, but more as if something were breaking within him, echoing up his esophagus. His eyes fly open and thick white pus begins to ooze from their sockets. The crackling noise gets louder and his skin jumps and twitches as if bugs and snakes are trapped beneath it, struggling to burrow out. He begins opening and closing his mouth, his teeth snapping and gnashing at the air. The white puss is pouring down the sides of his face and one of his bugging eyes pops out of its socket and lolls against his cheekbone, and his head thrashes and bangs against the floor.

– Help me, Simon.

I don't move.

– Help me.

I crawl over, grab his tremoring legs and try to hold them down, but they kick loose.

– Hold him, Simon.

I grab the legs and pin them to the floor. He kicks and jerks and I force the legs back down and lie across them and he almost kicks free again. Daniel has wrapped his arms around Jorge's arms and torso. Still he beats and struggles and nearly bucks us both loose. His other eye has popped free, they both swing at the ends of their cables of nerves and blood vessels as his head shakes and twitches. He arches high in the air once, twice, and again. Each time his back cracks back down against the floor I hear bones breaking in his body. He's making vomiting noises now and it looks like he's spewing up his lungs. He arches high again, tossing both Daniel and me off of him, and smashes back onto the floor, and that's it. He lies there, his body barely recognizable as human, still and dead. Daniel stands up and offers me his hand. I ignore it and get up on my own.

– Thank you, Simon.

I stare at the remnant of Jorge.

– Someone took my stash, Daniel, all my blood.

He gives a slight laugh.

– I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place for a free meal.

The Enclave don't believe in the Vyrus. Or they believe in it, but they don't believe that it's a natural occurrence. Or they believe that it's natural, but not physical. Or something like that. What they believe, what I understand they believe, is that the Vyrus is supernatural in origin, not of this world. They believe in a whole supernatural universe. They believe that when you are consumed wholly by the Vyrus, your physical being becomes matter in the supernatural world, but your conscious-self expires. What they aspire to, what the whole starvation thing is about, is their belief that by starving yourself gradually, you can maintain your consciousness and self, and be made over into a supernatural being that will exist in this world. I don't know why that appeals to them, but it does. Of course, so far they've all ended up like Jorge. For centuries they've been ending up like that. Except Daniel.

We're sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that lead up to the cubicles, watching the Enclave as they go through their exercises. They're doing some Tai Chi kind of thing. So slow and precise you can't see them moving at all.

I look at the wall where they hung Jorge. They spread-eagled his body and spiked him to the cinderblock. Daniel is looking at him, too.

– We'll leave him there until his flesh rots away and his bones fall to the floor. He'll serve as a reminder and object lesson as to the transience of the physical. We'll meditate on his decay.

I could have been a part of this. I could have lived here with these freaks and devoted my life to the discipline of slowly dying. When I left the Society, Daniel sent for me. I had never met him before, never been on Enclave turf, but I went. I had just gone Rogue, if I wanted to survive I needed as many allies as I could get. I thought he might be looking for an errand boy, someone to handle security or something. What did I know? Instead he asked me to join, offered me a place as Enclave. It was kind of flattering, in the way it might be flattering if the craziest, baddest gang on the street offered you their colors. I declined, told him thanks and crossed my fingers as I went out the door, hoping they wouldn't tear me to pieces for turning them down. But that's not how they work. The Enclave don't take volunteers, they handpick new members, and once you're picked you're a part of them for life, whether you like it or not. Daniel says you're Enclave because you are made that way, not because of anything you do.

I say that's all well and good, but I'm still not planning on going out like Jorge did.

– The guy you sent to talk to me said someone was watching me.

– Was that anymore than what you already knew?

– Fuck sake, Daniel, can you just give me a straight answer?

– You haven't asked any questions.

I look away from Jorge.

– You know about the carrier, about what happened at the school?

– Yes.

– 'Course you do, you know everything.

– Quite the contrary, I know virtually nothing.

– Yeah, right, in the big picture we're all fucking retards, but you know what goes down, Daniel. So the school, you know someone was poking around in there, someone who didn't leave a scent?

__Yes.

– Whoever it was is the same person who stole my stash, and I want to know who it is and why they did it. That's my question, Daniel, that's what I want to know.

He runs his spidery fingers over the top of his bald head.

– It's the wrong question, Simon.

– Then what's the right question? Will you tell me that, will you tell me that so I can ask it and get a straight answer?

– The question isn't who, but what.

– Bull.

– Someone has summoned it and bound it and sent it to do their bidding.

I stand.

– OK, time for me to go.

He reaches out and takes my hand. His skin is burning. He's starving the Vyrus, and so it has seized control of his autonomic functions, jacking his metabolism impossibly high as it compels him to feed. Dying slowly, balanced at the edge of starvation, the Vyrus gradually consuming him, he is continually in the grip of a feeding frenzy. It is the last death rattle of the Vyrus, when it empties your system of all its reserves, driving you to hunt. This is the state the Enclave cultivate, it is where Daniel has existed for no one knows how long. As strong as we may be when well fed, we are that much stronger when we are at the brink of starvation. Daniel holds my hand gently. If he twitches hell pull my arm from its socket. I don't move.

– You aren't listening, Simon.

I sit back down.

– How is it your mind can account for your own existence, but resist so stubbornly the idea that there are others like you, beyond you?

– Because I know I'm here and I know what I am.

– What are you?

– I'm a man. A sick man. And I want to know who grabbed my stash so I don't have to kill some jerk on the street and drink him.

– You're more than a man, Simon, much more. Your stash is gone? What of it? Stay with us. This could be a beginning, an opportunity.

I point at Jorge.

He smiles, nods, and lets go of my hand.

– It's a Wraith.

– Say what?

– The thing that was at the school and in your home, it's a Wraith.

Oh, shit.

– I don't believe.

– So you say. But it doesn't care if you believe in it or not. In fact, one is the same as the other. Believe in it, and it will be just as invisible to you as if you did not. Don't believe in it, and it will kill you as easily as if you did.

I close my eyes, rub the sweat from my forehead, and open my eyes. Crap.

– What do I do?

– Against something you say doesn't exist?

He shrugs.

– As I said, you can stay here. That is why I sent for you in the first place, Simon, to offer you the Enclave again. You can't fight the other world, you can only strive to join it.

I think about it, about a life in here. The Enclave are circling up now, two of them walk into the middle of the circle and begin to spar. It looks like a Hong Kong kung fu movie on fast forward. I can't follow the moves of the combatants, I just see a blurred tumble of limbs, hear the whir as their arms and legs cut the air and the loud clacks of their bones striking one another. It lasts only an instant, and then one of them is down with two broken legs. The others clear him from the floor. He may decide to take a little more blood to help heal the legs, or he might not and take his chances that they never knit properly. I think about starving myself, no longer worrying about where my next meal is coming from, spending my days in meditation and martial arts, perfecting my self-discipline. No more hand to mouth. No more being on my own. No more Evie.

No. It's not for me.

I stand up.

– Thanks for the offer, but the answer's still the same.

Daniel smiles.

– That's unfortunate.

– Yeah, well, sorry.

– Nonetheless, you are Enclave, Simon, and you can't be otherwise. And I'm happy to know we have you.

– Whatever.

– That's a healthy attitude to cultivate, whatever.

I turn to go, then turn back to him.

– So, assuming this Wraith thing is real?

– Yes?

– Any idea who might summon something like that?

He watches as another couple of Enclave begin to spar.

– You can't simply call these things into our world and command them. It takes knowledge and power, and one must have something to offer them. There are individuals who have knowledge in this area, and certainly we are acquainted with the metaphysical. But in terms of relevance to you? You might look at the Clans. Ask, what is the motive for the theft? Is it to weaken or to kill you? Perhaps it is meant to punish or to motivate you? Who do you know, Simon, that deals in carrots and sticks?

I nod.

– Thanks.

I head for the door. He calls after me.

– Come again, Simon, the door is always open.

I walk past the sparring Enclave. I think about the hundred of them on the streets one day, and I do mean one day. That's what it's all about, the starving and crossing over stuff. They think that when one of them finally manifests as a metaphysical being in the physical world that not only will he become invincible here, but he will be able to imbue the entire Enclave with similar abilities. Then they will begin their crusade in earnest, take to the streets and cleanse the world of all that is not Enclave. But they won't do it until they have their Messiah. So far Daniel's as close as they've got, and he's not there. Not yet. I walk out the door and close it behind me, hoping I never have to open it again.

I don't believe in another world where boogeymen lurk about and wait for opportunities to cause trouble in our world. I don't believe in any of that shit and I certainly don't believe in Wraiths. But I do believe that someone wants me to think that's the case, someone wants me scared and more than a little desperate. So who do I know that deals in carrots and sticks? Well, that's easy enough, everyone I work for. But I don't figure the Society for a gag like this, it's not really in their interest to have me desperate and hungry on their turf. Besides that, I don't think they have the chops or the subtlety to pull it off. No, this is a sneaky deal, and sneaky deals have one guy's name on them: Dexter Predo.

Figure Predo's not too happy with the way things are going down here. Figure he's caught on that the carrier is still out there. Figure Dale Edward Horde got on Predo's case for letting me hook up with his wife in public. Figure Predo told him he'd set it right and gave him something to plop in my drink, something to keep me down while they pulled the job on my place. Figure now Predo's got me by the shorties. He knows I'll be uptight without a stash. He knows the Society won't put up with me going on a rampage and tapping a bunch of clowns on their turf to restock my fridge. He knows I won't want to expose myself to the other Clans and Rogues by hitting on their turf. He knows pulling a job on a blood bank or a hospital takes time. And he knows I don't have that kind of time. Take all that and figure one last thing. Figure Predo's applied the stick and now all he has to do is wait for me to come to him thirsty and ragged and he can offer me the carrot, and then he'll have me in his back pocket. He can tell me just how to handle the carrier and the Horde kid and he can lock me up for a long way down the line. 'Cause restocking my stash is gonna cost and he'll make me pay with my balls. So I may as well hop on an uptown train and go get it over with. Except I don't.

I rush between patches of shade until I get to the L. I take it back across town and hurry to my pad. I still haven't called Evie to tell her I'm OK. For that matter, I still haven't cleaned up after sleeping on the sidewalk.

Out of the shower I call Evie.

– Hey, baby.

– You OK?

– Yeah, sure, babe, I'm fine.

– Was there any trouble?

Piles of it.

– Could've been, but Terry took care of it.

– Hope that was OK, me calling him. I didn't want to cause a fuss over nothing, but after that stuff with poor Lep I figured…

– No, it's cool. You did right.

We hang on the phone for a second, listening to each other thinking. I'm thinking this is new territory for us. She's always made a point of staying out of my business and I've always made a point of keeping her out. I don't know what to think of her talking to Terry on her own, but I don't like it much. As for her, I don't have a clue what she's thinking about.

I hear her shift the phone, her short fingernails clicking against the mouthpiece as she brushes her hair out of the way.

– I'm off tonight.

Tuesday, one of her nights off. Date night for us.

– Yeah, babe, probably not a good night for it.

She makes a little sucking sound, her tongue pulling down from the roof of her mouth. It's the sound she makes when she's starting to get bugged.

– Right. 'Cause you got the thing you're working on.

– Yeah.

– 'The thing that got Leprosy killed.

– Evie.

– That you won't tell me about.

– Not now, OK?

– Even though I was the one washing Lep's blood off you.

– I said not now.

– OK, then when, Joe? When do I ever get to know what you're up to?

– Just. Not now.

– Not now. Where have I heard that before?

She pushes all the air out of her lungs; it's the sound a person makes when they're trying to keep their cool, the one Evie makes when her cool's already been lost.

– There's only so much a girl will take, Joe. Even a girl you can't fuck.

She hangs up. And can you blame her?

So that's one more thing for me to deal with. I'd like it to be at the top of my list, but it's not. Instead my list reads something like this:

1) Find carrier.

2) Find Horde girl.

3) Find out who is spying on me.

4) Call Terry.

5) Deal with Predo.

6) Make up with girlfriend.

Oh, and at the top of that list you can add, GET SOME BLOOD. But the phone call is the only one that looks doable right now, so I call Terry.

– Joe, I really wanted to talk to you, man.

– We're talking, Terry.

– Yeah, but the phone. Not the same as sitting down face-to-face, you know.

– I could see you later tonight.

– No, no good, I have to go uptown tonight.

– Uptown?

– Above a hundred and tenth.

– Hood?

– Grave Digga is talking war parties again and I want to see if I can mellow him out.

– Tomorrow night, then.

– I may have to crash up there a couple nights. I got transit on a boat, but the pilot can't guarantee a return trip. And the way things are with the Coalition these days, I don't think they'll be laying any passes on me to cross their turf.

He's right about that. At the best of times the Coalition wouldn't be looking to do Terry any favors, but with all the dust being kicked up down here they'll be twice as hardcase about it. And that's assuming they don't know he's going to talk to the Hood.

The Hood is an offshoot of the Coalition. Back in the sixties, about the same time Terry was organizing the Society, Luther X organized all the blacks and Latinos in the Coalition, split them off and took control of everything above One Tenth. A truce was negotiated and the Coalition ceded the territory, but they didn't like it. All the same, things were pretty peaceful between them until last year. Last year someone stuck a couple knives through Luther's eyes and his warlord DJ Grave Digga took over the Hood. He went on a purge and claimed he found Coalition agents in the Hood who had assassinated Luther. Since then he's been sending raiding parties below the border and trying to get Terry and the Society to hook up with him to wipe out the Coalition. Not my problem.

– Then I guess we'll just have to talk now. What do you want?

– Just wanted to talk with you, have a little communication about everything that's been going down.

– I mean, what do you want for getting the Dusters to pick me up?

– Hey, Joe. That was an act of humanity. I know what it's like up there. Your girl calls me and tells me you went to meet some client and you're not back? Then she tells me the meet was uptown? What am I gonna do, not care? And from what I hear, you needed the help. Christian tells me you were zonked out on the sidewalk with a bunch of homeless people, getting ready to work on your tan.

– Yeah, so what do you want?

– What I want, what I wanted, man, was to rap, make sure you're OK. You don't want to come over, that's your business- We're all free to do as we please.

– I don't like open accounts, Terry. What do you want?

He chuckles.

– I know. Joe don't take nothing from nobody, good or bad. I was just trying to do the right thing by a guy who used to be my friend. A guy, by the way, I still think of as a friend.

– Funny, last time this friend saw you, he ended up getting a couple ribs cracked by your mick thug.

– That wasn't personal, Joe, that was politics. I needed to throw Tom a bone to keep him from going radical on us. That was for the greater good. And I'd prefer it if you didn't use terms like mick.

– OK, Terry, you'll let me know when you want to collect. In the meantime I'll throw you this. Tom was right, someone else was poking around at the school, looking into what happened with those shamblers.

– Victims of Zomb-

– The fucking walking corpses, whatever you want to call them. Someone else was taking an interest.

– Any idea who?

– All I know is that it's someone very private, someone doesn't like to leave anything behind, not even a scent. Sound like anyone you know?

He's quiet for a sec. I let it dangle there.

– No, I don't think so, Joe, no one I know.

– You might want to keep your eyes peeled. Because whoever it is, they're creeping around on your turf.

I hang up. Let him chew on that. Maybe he'll poke around and find something out. Be nice to have someone doing my dirty work for a change.

There's still time till the sun goes down, time to kill before I can go looking for the girl and the carrier.

The girl and the carrier.

Something snaps together in my head.

Oh fuck.

I smell my hand. It's not there anymore, I washed it off in the shower. I go to the heap of dirty laundry in the corner. I throw the burnoose to the side, find the black jeans I had to wear to the Cole last night because Lep's blood had ruined my suit. I hold them to my face and sniff, cigarette smoke, the dirty pavement I slept on, my own sweat. Same thing with the shirt I wore. But he touched me, I know he did, shook my hand and gave me that fake hearty slap on the shoulder. Where's my jacket? I slide open the closet door and take my jacket off the hanger. It's the nice one, the lightweight leather sport coat Evie bought me. It's got a scuff on the sleeve from last night's nap on the sidewalk. I put my nose against the right shoulder and inhale.

There it is, that smell. The one I smelled on my hand last night after Horde and I shook. That odor from the school. That musky sex scent that was all over the cardboard mattress and the zombie girl. It was on Horde's hands. It was all over him, but I couldn't smell it because the reek of Leprosy's blood was still in my hair and nostrils.

They have names, the shamblers from the school have names. The boys' were Joey Boyles and Zack Blake. The girl's name was Whitney Vale. That's the one I care about.

She was nineteen, born and raised in Nyack. Her mom says she split as soon as she turned eighteen and she'd only seen her a couple times in the last year when she showed up to ask for money. The dad's been a no-show since she was born. She was working part-time as a bag checker at one of the used record stores on St. Marks. The manager says she hadn't shown up for a week or two. I get all this off my computer when I check the sites for the Times, News and Post. I try Googling her name and get the articles I just read along with the AP coverage, and some creep claiming he has nude pics of her that he's willing to sell.