Every Last Drop

— The way you left us, that big bang you went out with, that required a great deal of effort on my part to, well, not so much to cover up, but to keep in perspective. That story had circulated too widely, it would have destabilized things. Not a situation we can afford in already unstable times. Yeah. So. When we took it to the street, the picture that was painted was very much of our making. But based on your own work.

He folds and unfolds the arms of the glasses.

— So, your failed attempt to infect your girlfriend, that was retouched a bit. That became a, I don't know, a situation where you fed on her to save your

own skin. The thing is.

He puts the glasses on.

— You have down here, or, you know, had, kind of a folk status. You may have been the security arm of the Society, but people felt like they could depend on you for a fair shake. Plus everyone likes a badass. Everyone likes telling stories about a badass. And everyone likes the idea that their badass is badder than everyone else's badass. And people, turns out, had this idea that you were their local badass.

He shrugs. -We needed to change that, whatever, that perception.

He scratches his shoulder.

— So we let it be known you'd iced and drank up your own girl. That wed put you in custody. And that before your trial, you backstabbed a couple partisans and slipped out on your belly like a snake and ran north to the Coalition.

He shakes his head.

— Turns out, people hate nothing like they hate a fallen folk hero. So when someone caught sight of you down here on the Bowery, they didn't think twice before making the call. And granted.

He holds a hand flat, wiggles it side to side.

— That's a chancy call to receive. People are so, I don't know, eager to lay you to rest, they see a big guy with dark hair and a leather car coat and they're placing the call. We've followed up on more than our share of bad numbers.

He steadies the hand.

— But someone seeing a guy fitting your description coming here, to Philip Sax's flophouse? That needed immediate executive attention.

He gestures at the window. -As it was, we just made it over before things got dicey with the dawn.

He sits, looking at the garbage between his feet, lips pursed.

I flick some more ash, look down myself. I can't see the half of the room on my left. The other half of the room is pretty much filled with Hurley, leaving a scrap of space on the floor for Phil to occupy. Hurley d barely need to move to grab me if I started something. Grab me and hoist me up so my head either flattens against the ceiling or pokes through it into the room above. Or he could just pull one of the two.45s he's always got on him and blow a few chunks out of my brain. My other option, jumping out the window, seems similarly unwise.

The whole burn the place to the ground with everyone in it idea is picking up

serious traction. I scan the floor for any tinder that looks especially flammable.

Terry unpurses his lips and looks up from the garbage.

— Anyway, the tone of things being what they are, your unpopularity with the masses being what it is, this isn't so much a matter of trying to find the most miserable way to send you to your death. I wanted to do that I could just call a general assembly of the Society and toss you in the middle of the room and watch the madness of crowds take over. No, Joe.

He stands. -This is simply a case of expediency.

I watch as he moves to the farthest corner possible in the tiny room. -Phil, you may want to cover your eyes.

Phil covers up.

Terry looks at me. -He can be smart when he needs to be.

He gives a slight, sad wave. -Hurley.

Hurley grunts.

Terry nods.

— Kill Joe.

The bratwurst hands come out of the gunny-sack pockets of Hurley's overcoat and go around my throat. I am levitated from the floor, trying not to thrash, knowing the torque might snap my neck.

I wheeze through the pinhole Hurleys grasp has reduced my larynx to. -Huuuneee.

Terry squints at me.

Phil peeks from between his fingers. -Jeez, oh jeez, oh shit.

He covers his eyes back up.

I force the last bit of air in my lungs up past the crushing fingers. -Uuhhhnneee.

Phil peeks again.

— Man, that's so fucked up. Is he calling you honey? Is that normal for this kind of shit?

Terry raises a finger.

Hurley relaxes his thumbs just enough to let some more air slip down and out of my throat.

— Muhhnneey. Muhhney, Thhheery. Muhhneee.

Terry nods, Hurley squeezes, Phil re-covers his eyes.

My legs thrash, I can't stop them, my body twists, I have my hands on Hurleys fingers, trying to pry them loose, but I may as well be trying to bend the barrel of one of his guns. I try aiming a kick at him, and graze his thigh and he holds me at arm's length, putting me out of range.

Terry watches me dying, tucks his toe under a mashed pizza box, flips it, watches roaches scurry for cover.

He looks up. -Take Phil out, will you, Hurley. You can let him go.

Hurleys hands open and I drop. -Sure ting, Terry, whatever ya say.

He collars Phil and hauls him up. -C'mon, ya wretched piece oh shite, it's some fresh air yer wantin'.

Phil writhes.

— Aw, man, it's my fucking room, man. How come I'm the one that's gotta take a stroll? I mean, so OK, obviously you guys can't take a walk right now, but how come I gotta? Not like I'm any friend of the daytime either.

Hurley shakes him once. -Yer takin a walk cuz the alternative is ya take a dive offa da roof.

Phil pumps his legs.

— Hey, a nice refreshing stroll, a perambulation, yeah? Sounds good. Do me good.

They go out.

Terry comes and stands over me. -Tell me exactly why I should care about the money you mentioned.

I inhale, smoke rasping over the raw inside of my throat and down into my still-parched lungs. I exhale, cough long and hard, and draw a trembling one and a two in the air with my cigarette. -Twelve pints.

I look at Terry.

Terry watches the numbers drift. -Yes?

I exhale again, blowing the numbers to scraps. -Twelve pints. Contents of a human body. As close to exact as possible.

What you were offering for my head.

I rub the bright red finger marks on my neck.

— Out of character for you, Terry, offering a blood reward. Out of character for the Society. Especially a number like that. Suggests someone s gonna die for you to pay off on that bounty. Kind of contrary to your whole thing about coexisting with the uninfected community. Places a certain kind of value on me. Also sends a different kind of message to the troops than you like to. Me.

I put a finger in my own chest.

— I figured you d offer money. Don't want the members thinking about blood as a commodity, after all. Then I remembered.

I snap my fingers. -Moneys a little tight for you these days, isn't it?

Terry nods, combs his soul patch again. -Yes, losing the Counts income has been a blow to our liquidity.

I turn my head side to side, listen to hear if anything grinds that shouldn't. -Sure, hard to keep fighting the good fight without some greenbacks in your pocket.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, shrugs.

— So, OK, Joe, you have my attention. Hurley is at bay for the moment. Here's your big reprieve. Yes, we, sad as it is to say, we in the Society need money as much as anyone else. Would it was not so. Yes, the resources we had on hand before we lost the Count had allowed us to expand the kind of support we offer to our members, better housing, improved medical care. We were, if you can believe it, we were able to put one of our members who had been a grief counselor before she was infected, we were able to pay her a salary, keep her from having to take a night job, make her available full-time to counsel the newly infected and help them to make the adjustment. It was a real boon, putting the Counts family's petrodollars to good, healing work. So, OK, so we've gotten by on far less than we have now, but its a hard time to be cash strapped. So, yes, there's something to talk about here, but it's going to be a very brief dialogue if you don't have something substantial to offer in the next, I don't know, the next half a minute. And I'm sorry if that sounds unreasonable.

I nod, use some of my thirty seconds taking a drag, use a few more blowing out the smoke, and offer something substantial. -The Horde girl.

Terry takes his hands from his pockets, looks at them. -Yes, that's substantial.

— It's not so much that I don't trust you, it's more that I'm not sure that money, even a great deal of it, will be of more value to the Society in the long run than your death.

I shift on Phils mattress, moving myself from one collection of broken springs poking me in the ass to a different collection of broken springs poking me in the ass. -No argument out of me, Terry, it's a conundrum.

Terry, on the floor, his back against the dresser, shifts his legs away from the line of daylight that continues to track across the room. -Yeah, that's it, Joe, a conundrum. Well put. Certainly, I don't doubt Miss Hordes affection for you. I think the chance she took abetting your escape last year speaks volumes about her, I don't know, feelings. And her resources are well known. I am as certain as a person has a right to be certain of anything in this life that I could send her word that you're in our custody again, and that she'd be more than happy to open several large offshore accounts accessible by the Society's not-for-profit corporation. -But then you can't kill me.

He juggles his hands. -Well, yeah, sure we could still kill you. It might cause some problems, but

lets not split hairs. Lets just say it's the, forgive me this, its the money or your life.

I grimace. -Jesus, Terry.

He holds up a hand.

— Pun unintended. I swear. Cheap humor when talking about a persons life has never been my style. You know that.

I look at the collection of water stains on the ceiling. No, joking about killing has never been Terry's style. His style has always been more about making declarations regarding the greater good, and then telling me who needed to die for it this time.

Interesting, the shoe being on the other foot, my death being the one supposed to promote the greater good. Who knew I had it in me?

I open my flip-top and look at the butt ends of my last couple smokes. -Doesn't matter anyway, you cant make a deal with her nohow.

He raises his eyebrows.

— I cant? That's an odd point to make. Doesn't really seem to speak in your favor.

I put a smoke in my mouth, light it. -Bargaining a ransom. Kind of a serious business proposition. So tell me.

I light up.

— You start cutting deals with Cure, how's that gonna sit with the rest of the Clans? I mean.

I pick a flake of tobacco from my tongue.

— The minute you enter into that kind of negotiation, it gives them legitimacy, yeah? Can't imagine that'd go over with anyone. Least of all the Coalition. Seems unwise. Things being as unstable as you say they are.

He smiles.

— I'm anything but close-minded, Joe. Tell me what you re suggesting. -Let me go, III make the arrangements. You'll get your money.

He pushes out his lower lip.

— Like I say, I'm not what you'd call close-minded. Always looking to see the bigger picture in life, my whole forest-and-trees thing, but this is a tough one for me to wrap my head around, man. So, just for fun, because I like a good theoretical discussion, tell me how it is I can trust you in this scenario you're spinning.

I grin. -Fuck, Terry, who said shit about trust?

He extends an index finger like a saber. -Touche.

I drop my grin.

— But you're missing a big piece of things, man. For a guy who likes the big picture, you're missing a big fucking piece of things. -Please, I love nothing more than to be educated.

I point at the door. -Terry, what the fuck am I doing here?

He cocks his head.

I point at him.

— Strange, yeah? Why, of all places, come down here? Am I that stupid? I want to die that bad?

He temples his fingers, put the tips at his lips. -OK, yeah, I follow. Go on. -Terry, there is one reason, and one reason only for me to be here.

I point north.

— The Bronx sucks. There's no infrastructure for us. Hell, there's no structure at all. Its a bunch of free agents, with life spans preset to a couple months, running around trying to get all they can lay their hands on before they burn out. Its a place for dying fast. And so maybe I've always looked to have as much leeway as I could get away with, but turns out I maybe didn't know what that meant. Turns out maybe I didn't know just how much the Clans do to make life possible for a guy like me. Maybe I didn't know how good I had it.

I rise.

— I want back. I want back in the world. I want civilifuckingzation, man. And you want to know why I'd get the girl to shovel some serious cash your way and come back down here and be at your fucking mercy? Well that's why, man. I am tired of living with the savages. OK, so maybe it's gonna be hard to rehabilitate my reputation, but it's got to be better than what I was doing up there.

I plant myself in the middle of the room.

— I want to come home, man. I'm not saying it will be like it was, I know that can't work, but I want to be back downtown. Find me a corner, somewhere out of sight, just get me back down here, man. That's all. That's all.

I let all my air out, deflate. -That's all. I just want to come home.

Terry considers me from the floor, touches the tip of his nose. -Well, I won't deny it, Joe, I'm a sucker for a good redemption story.

He pulls his legs in, rises easy, stands in front of me. -But I'm not a sucker.

I look him in the eye. -I know that. -Sure you do. Well. Cards, then.

He fans an imaginary poker hand.

— We need the money. Negotiating with the girl would be bad for business. You can get the money. And.

He drops the cards. -I believe you need to be down here.

He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear.

— I don't believe your sob story about wanting to come home, but I do believe that you want to be down here.

He inspects my face.

— Why is that, Joe, huh? What's down here, besides familiar ground, that you have to be so close to it? You leave a score unsettled? It that old story?

I hold his gaze.

— Just what I told you, Ter, just that I need to get out of the jungle. -OK, OK, that's cool. I can play it like that. Just, if it is a revenge thing, be careful about who you take a bead on. Your slack is played down here. You go up, get the money, come back, and yeah, I can figure something. We can find a corner for you. But it'll be a quiet corner, man, and you'll have to keep it that way. -All I'm asking for is a second chance.

He gets tired all of a sudden. -Yeah, you find one of those, you tell me how I can get one for myself.

I smile. -Yeah. I find where they keep them second chances, III share them around.

I get rid of my smile.

— Speaking of second chances, or second bananas I guess, cant help but notice you're making policy decisions without Lydia around.

The tiredness that came over him a moment before stakes a claim on more of his face.

— Well, man, III tell you, that's true, she's not here for this. Which, if you put a little, I don't know, a little thought into it, it might become clear why that is. I put some thought into it, Joe. I'm not claiming to be cerebral by nature, instinctive moves are more my style. I like to think that energy, personal energies, are a medium I have a small talent for reading. But that's maybe not the point. The point is, once you think about it, her feelings of animosity toward you aside, you cant help but notice that when you've had your back against the wall with the Society and managed to find your way to, forgive the pun, to daylight, that Lydia always seems to be in the know in a certain kind of way that suggests, I don't know what, involvement of some kind. So maybe it's an intuitive leap on my part, or maybe it's just obvious as hell, but I thought, seeing as I was coming over here to have Hurley kill you, that it would be best to leave her out of the loop this time.

He tugs his soul patch.

— Lydia has always operated her Lesbian, Gay and Other Gendered Alliance with a fair amount of independence within the Society. Always swung that bloc of votes to wherever she felt, I don't know, justice was best served. These days, she's, and this is her right, she's started going it alone more than in the

past. She's, this is, this is a real strength of hers, the narrowness of vision thing, so she's really pushing for more direct action. For the Society to move more aggressively toward making the Vyrus and the infecteds public. She's talking timetables and benchmarks and action agendas for taking the final step and putting ourselves out there and seeing if people are ready to accept us. Me, I'm still trying to keep mouths fed, trying to keep us all together and on message so we can have unity before we make that push. Needless to say, there's some distance between us right now. And I admire her moral and ethical solidity, the strength of that structure of values she's built her life on, but that woman, she can be a real pain in the ass when its time to get our hands dirty.

— She's a ball breaker. -Not how I would put it myself.

He blows out his cheeks. -But I wouldn't argue too much over it.

I wave a hand.

— Yeah, Lydia, always a stickler for procedure and due course and all that crap. Woman like that, she just has a way of screwing up a good old-fashioned political assassination.

The tiredness leaves his face, replaced by something a bit sharper and less inclined to take my shit.

— True is true, Joe, and we've made a deal here and all that, but this is a bit of a sensitive subject. So you might want to put a sock in it. -Sure, man. Just sorry to hear the two of you aren't getting along.

He touches his thigh, where I drove the nail into his flesh. -I'm not a fool. You know that. And I know Lydia was involved. And it hurt, Joe. In more ways than one. -I know you re not a fool, Ter. And it wasn't supposed to tickle.

He taps the edge of the left lens of his glasses. -What happened to the eye?

I shake my head.

— Peeped one too many keyholes. -Well, bound to happen the way you get around. Speaking of which.

He goes to the door to let Hurley back in.

— While you re working on getting some money out of the girl, you might, I don't know, take a look around her operation. I hear they're having some tough times over there. Dealing with some crisis management issues.

— Where you hear that?

He shrugs.

— Just something I hear. But I'd be curious to know how she's going about things. How she's handling keeping things, I don't know, keeping things afloat. Idealistic causes always take a hit when there's not enough loaves and fishes to go around. After all, not like I'm against what she has to say. The idea of a Clan that supports all its members equally, that's not far from our charter, I'm just concerned about her larger goals. The whole idea of a cure is outstanding in theory, but it's a real disruption. That kind of thing has to be planned, coordinated, not just dropped like a bomb. What I'd really like.

He puts his hand on the knob.

— Is for her to know she has more of a friend down here than she maybe thinks she does. Certainly, you know, more of a friend here than she has in the Coalition. That kind of thing, Joe, she should hear that.

He looks at me over the tops of his glasses.

— She should hear it from someone she trusts. Someone not in any kind of official Clan hierarchy.

I take the penultimate smoke from my pack, regretting that Terry already cut Phil loose and that I can't send him out for more.

I light up, shake out my match, nod at Terry. -Sure, Terry, I follow. From someone she can trust.

He looks at the slash of light that's crept to the wall. -Guess there's nothing for it but to wait. -Guess so.

I flick the extinguished match into the piled mess on the floor.

Now all I got to do to survive the day is listen to a few more hours of Terry's bullshit. I touch my neck.

Maybe I should have let Hurley break it.

I get an escort.

— Ya ought ta do sumptin bout dat eye, Joe.

— What do you recommend, Hurley, a contact lens?

I point at the smoke shop on Second and St. Mark's. -Mind?

He looks at the scratched face of his ancient wristwatch. -Naw, don' mind. Just ya be quick bout it. Terry said nae fookin' bout.

He waits by the door, casting his eyes about for sudden moves on my part while I buy a couple packs of Luckys. Down here in civilization, they actually have the ones without filters.

The guy slides them to me and I knock the plastic case next to the register. -And I need a lighter.

He sticks his hand inside the case — Want one with the titties?

His hand hovers over a Zippo with a bare-chested pinup girl enameled on the side.

— No. And I don't want one with a Jack Daniels label either. Just give me the plain one.

He takes one of the plain ones out, sets it next to the smokes. -Anything else? — Flints and some fuel.

He takes a yellow plastic tab, laddered with tiny red flints, from a hanging rack of them behind the counter, reaches below the counter and sets a yellow and blue Ronsonol squirt bottle with the rest of the stuff.

I give him some cash and fill my pockets.

On the street Hurley steers us north. -Naw, ain't contact lenses I'm talkin1 'bout, Joe.

I look up from the delicate work I'm doing in my hands, unscrewing the little shaft in the bottom of the lighter to slip in a flint. -Huh?

He points at his own eye.

— Yer eye. It's a bit what dey call conspicuous. Doesn't do fer us, ta be standin' out ina crowd.

I drop the flint in the shaft and use my thumbnail to screw the cap back into place, reflecting on the idea of this semi-retarded Irish behemoth in the double-breasted overcoat and fedora lecturing me on the topic of standing out in a crowd.

I flip open the nozzle on the Ronsonol bottle and send a stream of fluid into the exposed wick folded into the body of the lighter.

— Well, I tell ya, Hurley, I had a pair of sunglasses that hid it pretty well, but they got crushed when you grabbed me and yanked me into Phils room. -Ach.

He shakes his head.

— I'm sorry bout dat, Joe, truly I am.

I close the bottle, drop it back in my coat pocket and slip the lighter into its brushed-chrome sleeve.

— Not a problem, Hurl, you've done worse by me and it's never interfered with our relationship.

He touches the brim of his hat. -Sure an dafs true. Dat's true.

I thumb the lighters wheel, a spark jumps and a large flame trails greasy black smoke from the new wick. I touch the flame to a cigarette and inhale the mixed flavors of smoke and burning cotton and lighter fuel. I snap the lighter shut, bounce it on my palm once, feeling the warmth of the just-extinguished flame, and drop it in my pocket to clink against my arsenal of brass and sharp steel.

He stops as we reach the south side of Fourteenth. -Well, dis is it fer me. On yer own from here.

I linger, looking south down Second. The marquee at Twelfth Street advertises a midnight double bill of The Killer Elite and Soylent Green.

Date night at the old Jewish vaudeville theater.

Hurley taps my shoulder.

— C'mon, Joe, no time ta reminisce, yu'v got miles ta go till ya sleep n all dat. -Yeah, miles to go.

I look at him. -By the way, Hurl, you're looking a lot better than the last time I saw you.

He rubs his stomach.

— Sure, an why wouldn't I be? Tell ya, only ting hurts worse den all dem bullets goin' in is pickin out da ones dint come out da udder side. -Yeah, well, sorry about that.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

He waves a hand, shakes his head.

— Come now, wasn't yer doin'. Ya didn't pull da trigger. An like ya say, me an you, we always bin professional wit one nother. -Yeah. Sure.

I look north. -Know something? — What's dat?

I look over my shoulder at him.

— People down here who thought I was the badass, they must never have met you.

He smiles, showing me horse teeth. -Well an1 its nice o1 you ta say so. -Ta, Hurl. -Ta yerself, Joseph.

I start across the street. -An, Joe.

I look back.

Hurley covers his left eye. -Tink bout a patch. It'd suit ya, it would.

How you know if you've successfully ditched a tail by going where you were supposed to and then where you were not supposed to, is you show up someplace where you really don't fucking belong. If they're there, your ruse has failed. The best way to avoid having your ruse busted in this fashion is to never reappear where your tail can follow you.

Figure Hurley marching me right to the Coalition border at Fourteenth, and

standing there watching until I cross over, effectively blows that part of my plan.

I need a cab.

I need to get my distinctively one-eyed face into a fucking cab right away before the Coalition spotters that roost about Fourteenth make me. Naturally, my need being desperate, there's not a fucking cab in sight.

I start trotting, making for Union Square. I should be able to score a cab. Worst case, I can jump the L train to Eighth Avenue.

Border of no-man s-land.

All I need is a little shard of luck and I can cross back over the border and onto turf where no one goes, before Predos tails pick me back up.

Unfortunately, God has no luck to spare tonight.

So when the limo pulls to the curb in the middle of the block and the back door swings open, I don't wait for anyone to point a gun at me before I climb

— Was I unclear about both the urgency of this assignment and the need for utter discretion? Did I in some way fail to communicate to you that your only

option was to go directly to the Horde girl? Did I leave any room for confusion as to what the consequences would be if you failed to execute precisely as I told you?

— No, you were actually very fucking clear about all of that. Did I do something that suggests otherwise?

Predo makes a gesture taking in the downtown streets were leaving behind. -Does this detour not suggest otherwise?

I lean forward from the rear-facing seat.

— No. What it suggests to me is that I'm doing my fucking job. And, for the record, almost getting throttled in the fucking process.

My shaking hand spills more cigarettes into my lap than even I can smoke at once. -Fuck.

I shove them back in the pack, breaking several. -Fuck.

Predo observes. -Nerves, Pitt?

I get an intact cigarette in my mouth and light it.

— Nerves? Hell yes. You ever had Hurleys paws around your neck? — I cannot say that I have.

I spew smoke. -Well count yourself well fucking blessed.

He leans forward, touches a slightly depressed square of leather on the bar to my right, it eases open, revealing a gleaming and perfectly unblemished ashtray. -Perhaps you should explain.

I blemish the ashtray.

— Ill explain. Ill explain that Horde is as nutty as her father. Ill explain that as nutty as she is, she knows to listen to Sela. III explain that only a fucking moron would see me on their doorstep and not have some questions about my loyalties.

He looks out the window, watches as we glide past snarled taxis and buses, the limo apparently obeying some other set of traffic and physical laws. -Did you tell them about my mole?

— How do I do that? How do I walk in the door and expose a mole in the first hour? How do I know something like that unless I'm around for a while to

poke? No. What I did was tell them to put me to the test.

— And?

— And.

I lean back. -And Amanda Horde told me to go downtown and talk to Terry Bird.

Night outside.

His face is doubled by the dark glass.

Does he know the nervous beat of my heart is telling a story different from the one my mouth is? — And?

I rub my forehead.

— She's looking for an alliance. She's looking for one of the Clans to acknowledge her. She's looking for legitimacy. So where's the first place she's gonna look?

It's possible that we turn a corner, but It's impossible to say for sure from within the infinite smoothness of the car.

Predo's hands are folded in his lap, he unfolds them, looks at his manicure. -And you saw him?

— Yes.

— And he let you go?

I wave a hand at all the expensive leather and wood. -Well here I am, right? — Yes.

His eyes flick to my face and away. -Here you are.

He touches the glass, leaving a fingerprint on his reflection, where a good Catholic would receive a smear of ash before Easter. -Tell me what you told Bird. -I told him the truth.

His mouth opens as if to laugh, and closes without making a sound.

I shrug.

— Yeah, funny. But its what I did. I told him Horde wants a sit-down. -What else? — That's it.

He studies the reflected set of his own blue eyes.

— He wasn't curious as to how you effected your escape from the Bronx?

— He didn't ask. And why should he? Far as he knows, I'm with Horde now.

She's got the cash to get anyone out of anywhere.

A slight nod allows this point. -And so.

He blinks slowly. -What is it he wants?

He looks away from his own reflection. -Hurley had his hands on your throat.

He indicates the fading marks on my neck.

— I can see that much is true. But what was it that compelled Bird to release you? I know him well enough to know he would not seriously consider formally acknowledging the girls organization. So what offer did you make to secure your freedom? Why are you not dead, Pitt? You did not, by any chance, sell me out?

He tilts his head. -Did you?

I stub out my smoke.

— He wants money.

I light a new one. -Your enemy is in the red, Predo.

He makes a sound, could be amusement. -And you are to get it from Horde.

— Yeah, funny how everybody's needs always seem to dovetail. -Funny.

He watches me smoke. -Very well. Things shall proceed. Only.

I let him watch me smoke, not trying to hide the sweat or the slight tremble in my hand, knowing I have ample reasons to fear. Not knowing which reasons he may be able to read, but incapable of hiding any of them. -I am curious.

He leans forward. -What are you after, Pitt?

We both watch smoke tremble from the end of my cigarette.

He squints.

— Something. A return to the Island, certainly.

He leans back into his seat. -But why so desperate?

Returns his gaze to the brightly lit night outside the dark glass. -I should like to know that. But, of course.

He smiles at his face in the glass. -Of course I will know.

He closes his eyes. -Before this is over.

Dropped into the masses in Times Square, where my appearance is least likely to be noticed, I feel gravity's pull, again from downtown.

Turning north, I strain away from it.

Too many forces in play now. Too many tiny uncharted objects flying on random trajectories. An obscure path is best. Travel by the course others have plotted.

Look for the chance to veer back to your own.

My return is hardly unexpected. -Back so soon?

I go to the liquor cabinet and get a glass and the bottle I'd started emptying during our last chat. -Looks like I'm a little more persona non grata than I thought I was.

Amanda joins me at the bar. -That come as some kind of surprise?

I raise my chin, display the almost faded bruises on my neck. -Didn't expect the fatted calf to be slaughtered. But I also wasn't figuring on having to face down Hurley my first hour back on the turf.

Sela juts her jaw. -How's he look?

I pour myself a drink.

— Hurley? You know, looks like a guy you should have shot in the head when you had the chance.

I raise my glass in her direction. -Seeing how happy he was to see me, I'd say you're best staying off his

beat.

She puts her hands on her hips. -Hurley never scared me. -Then, lady, you re a better man than me.

I take a drink.

Amanda scoops some ice into a glass of her own and pours vodka over it.

Sela frowns. -You shouldn't be drinking. You're worn to the bone.

Amanda clinks her glass against mine. -Joe's come home. I have to drink to that.

She drinks to that.

I drink, but not to anything at all.

She crosses to Sela and gives her hand a squeeze. -Just chill a little bit, baby.

Sela keeps a grip on the girls hand. -I'm trying to look out for you.

Amada touches her cheek.

— And you're doing a great job. But right now I need a drink. And I need you to be my girlfriend for a few minutes and not my fucking nanny.

Sela takes a step back, removing her face from the girls touch. -It doesn't switch on and off. I do not work like that. I don't go from one to the other. Being your lover, that's not separate from being your bodyguard. And I can only keep you safe and healthy if you listen to me.

Amanda sighs. -OK, I'm listening.

She pulls on an attentive face. -What am I doing wrong now?

Sela bares her teeth, covers them.

— Aside from running your body down with stress and lack of sleep and too much booze and not enough exercise, aside from putting everything were working for at risk, putting all these people here who believe in you at risk by not taking care of yourself, aside from all that, you are inviting a major security risk into your confidence.

She points at me. -He. Cannot. Be. Trusted.

She points at Amanda. -And that is more true now than ever.

She looks at me, shakes her head.

— He just skipped down to see Terry Bird? Just went down there, had a little run-in with Hurley, and skipped back up here? How's that compute? Ill tell you how. It does not. First he's spying for Predo. Drops that gem on us and then, fa-fa, and he's gone.

I raise my hand. -I never said ta-ta.

She shakes her head.

— Uh-uh, hold that shit in, Pitt. Don't get cute with my ass. You say I should do the smart thing and kill one of our own, kill that poor, starving, desperate son of a bitch in the basement? OK. Tell you what sounds like a smart move to me.

Her long muscled arm extends and she points her fist at me. -Killing you sounds like a smart move to me.

Amanda looks into her glass. -Don't say that, Sela.

Sela slowly uncurls her index finger from her fist, taking a bead on my face.

— He is dangerous. I said it before, He gets people dead. He's working both fucking sides. We don't know what they really want. We don't know what he really wants. And there's no way to be sure anything he tells us is the truth.

I clear my throat and pick up the bottle. -Predo, he says he wants to know what your research plan is.

I start pouring bourbon, decide I got no reason to stop, so I pour till my glass is full.

— Wants to know, are you going to go public with the Vyrus, ask for help finding a cure? Or are you going to do like you said to me, keep it in-house? Says he wants numbers of members, security, layouts. Stuff he'd need if he decides he needs to send a crew in here. That's what he says.

I drink.

— What he doesn't say is that all he's really interested in knowing is if you can do It. What he really wants to know is if you're making any progress. He wants to know if a cure is possible. He wants to know if you can actually find it in this century.

I get a smoke up and running.

— Terry Bird, he let me go, said he'd let me back on Society turf if I came up here and poked around. Said he wanted me to arrange some back-channel

communications. Said he wants to start a dialogue. See if there's common ground.

I take my bottle and my glass and my cigarette and go to a chair and take a seat.

— What he really wants is the same damn thing that Predo wants. And he wants it for the same reason.

I point my cigarette at her.

— Because, bottom line, if there's a cure, if the Vyrus is destroyed, it all goes away. The Coalition. The Society. All the alliances and backdoor deals and spycraft and manipulations go away. All the power, it goes away. They don't want that. And if there's a scrap of a chance you can come up with a cure.

I drink whiskey. -They'll both want to know the best way to kill you yesterday.

I take the picture Predo gave me from my jacket and drop it on the desk. -Name on the back of that is the last mole Predo has in here. I don't know for sure who Bird has on the inside, but he definitely has someone reporting to him on conditions in here. I was gonna take a guess.

I point at the floor. -I'd pick that fat comic book geek you got living in the hall. He come over from

the Society?

Sela blinks.

I nod.

— That's what I thought. He's got it written all over his lazy fucking ass. Yeah, he's your man. So.

I drink some more.

— I guess that's two more people I'm gonna get dead. What / want, little miss junior psycho. Is for you to tell me what you meant before when you said business arrangement. As in, I want to know how much of your money you're going to give me if I help you feed the starving people in this building before they realize you re more valuable to them as a meal than as a savior.

Amanda folds her arms, sets her jaw.

— I'm Joe Pitt, and I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum.

I wait.

She unfolds her arms.

— OK, Joe, well, I'm going to give you a whole lot of money. Enough to make you super wealthy. And really, you don't even have to do that much for it.

She points east.

— All we need you to do is take a quick trip to Queens and find out where the Coalition gets their blood.

They have it, everyone knows they have it, she says.

I don't argue with her.

Why argue when someone s right? They do have it. And everyone knows they have it.

Biggest Clan on the Island, and then some. And the only one that has enough blood to supply all their members. Only one can keep them fed well enough that they don't have to worry about someone going berserk and hitting the street to make a spectacle like the one Amanda and Sela are trying to keep under wraps. No secret that they got it. Hell, get down to it, its pretty much advertised.

Best advertising you could ever have to attract Vampyres is a well-known reputation for keeping your members in the red.

Why keep it a secret.

But there is a secret. There is a big secret. There is the biggest secret.

Where the hell does it all come from?

Enough blood to keep hundreds, maybe over a thousand, members alive and kicking.

You figure that some Vampyres are more equal than others, figure that guys like Predo are getting quite a bit more in their fridges than the average infected slob on the street, and then figure a minimum of a pint a week to keep the rank and file happy.

I didn't pass math. Shit, I didn't pass anything. But I can figure that number in my head.

Know what that number equals?

Equals: Where the fuck do they get it a!!?

A question most folks dwell on from time to time. But most definitely not a question folks like to ask out loud. Ask that kind of question out loud and someone might hear you asking it. And whether you're Coalition, Society, Hood or Rogue, you don't want to be heard asking that question.

See, figure everyone comes up short from time to time. Everyone has their off quarters when they don't make quota. Which means everyone goes to the bank for a little extra now and again. Society, the Hood, they get pinched hard, can't keep their people healthy, they might be known to make a call, cut a deal.

Only in emergencies, mind you, but shit happens.

Don't it?

So who wants to rock that boat?

Answer: no one.

Coalition doesn't want anyone to know where it comes from. You had the lockdown on what everyone wanted, what everyone needed, would you want to share where it came from?

Don't lie. You're not that altruistic. No one is.

Society and Hood need a little help now and again, they can't afford to look nosy. Can't afford to have their people look nosy.

And Rogues? They cant afford to do anything makes anyone notice their unallied asses are hanging out in the wind waiting for someone to take a shot at them just because it will take one more mouth off the market.

It's there. We all know it's there. It's the thing that just about the whole fucking Clan structure spins around.

And we all pretend it doesn't exist.

Shhh.

Only someone crazy would poke into this shit. Lucky me, I know someone really fucking crazy.

I sit there.

I sit there some more.

I look at Sela.

— Shouldn't part of keeping her safe involve telling her when she's talking about doing something that will kill everyone?

I hold up my hand.

— No, never mind, I totally fucking forgot that your whole fucked-up Clan is based on trying to do something that's going to get everyone killed. -They have it, Joe.

I look at Amanda. -You already said that.

She turns in place, holding her drink over her head, rattling the ice cubes. -OK, OK, I know it's this total secret hush-hush thing. I know we're not supposed to talk about the hundred-pound pink poodle in the room.

She stops turning and spreads her arms. -But the whole point is that were seriously trying to change things.

She takes a sip.

— And you don't change things by doing what everyone has always done before.

She comes over and perches on the edge of her desk.

— So here's the deal: We need more blood. Plain and simple. I can get a lot through the lab, from medical supply houses, but not as much as you d think. They mostly deal in plasma and other blood components. And the Vyrus only feeds on whole blood. Did you know that? Tried it. Tried using plasma. Tried using platelet serum. Not what it wants. So we need more blood.

She blows out her cheeks.

— But the Coalition wont deal with us. We could pay like way over market price, but they won't even open a fucking dialogue. Which is super funny considering how they kissed my parents' and my asses for so many years before I started Cure.

She empties her glass. -So the thing is, we have to do something.

Sela steps forward. -If you tell anyone about any of this, Pitt.

I look at her.

— Sela, if I decide to commit suicide, III do it with a gun like normal people. I won't do it by telling people about little chats I'm having to plot a raid on the Coalitions fucking reservoir.

Amanda shakes her head.

— It's not a raid. Were not even talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about just some surveillance. Intelligence. That's all.

She taps her own forehead.

— I mean, think about it. They have to get it from somewhere. They cant just make it. They have to have a supplier. Maybe they have a bunch of them. I know that's, like, the most reasonable possibility. They've been around forever. So they've, like, built up these weird relationships. Totally backdoor stuff that no one can get in on at this point. They must get it from dozens of places. Hospitals. EMT workers. Blood banks. They bring it into a central warehouse or something. All we know is that when it comes in, it comes in from Queens.

She leans.

— What we need to know is, who some of those suppliers are. If we know, like, who to talk to, we can totally outbid the Coalition. Or we can force a deal. Tell the Coalition that they can either sell to us or they can face some competition in the market. See what they do when I throw some real cash into the supply

and demand equation and their suppliers start driving their trucks to our door. That's all.

That's all.

Just go to Queens. Just leave the Island right after I got back. Just go poke around the Coalitions biggest secret. The biggest secret.

Just leave again.

Just leave.

Gravity pulls. Pulls at the center of me. Pulls at a part that I didn't know was there till I took it off the Island.

If I pull too hard in the opposite direction, will it snap?

Jesus. Who am I?

I move the girls hand from my knee, I look at her. -Its going to cost.

She does the eyeroll, letting me know again that I shouldn’t bother talking about things that she doesn't give a shit about.

I nod, stand up. -OK. Maybe we should start by asking some people some questions.

I look at Sela.

— And then making them dead.

Amanda slips off the edge of the desk. -See, baby, I told you he was the man for the job.

Sela turns away.

When the math is done, it's not two people I get dead, its three people I get dead. Amanda suggesting, not unreasonably, that maybe I could deal with the slob in the basement who caused all the problems for them the other night.

One more. Sure. Why not? Who's counting at this point?

Terry's mole, he cops to it. I don't have to touch him or even threaten to tear up his back issues of Amazing Spider-Man to get him to cop to it. I just let him watch while I deal with the others. Then I tell him I'll do him different, more easy, if he tells me if he's the one been making calls to Terry.

He says he is.

Could he be lying?

Sure. Why not? I watched someone do what I do to Predo's mole, and / got given a chance to say something might let me avoid the same discomfort, I might lie myself.

But I don't think he was lying.

And if he was?

If he was, then I guess it makes what I did to him that much worse. And if there's someone watching the things I do, watching and judging, that's one that will go against me. Assuming there's any more room in the AGAINST column.

Doesn't matter, I couldn't let him live no matter what. Not after he watched. Not after he heard the questions I asked Predo's pawn.

Far as that guy goes, mostly it's too bad he didn't know anything. Makes life that much harder for me. Certainly made death that much harder for him.

But I'm not worried about it. Because no one is watching me. No one is judging me. No one is weighing my actions and making book on where my soul is gonna finish when the race is over.

I'm the only one watching these things I do. I'm the only one counting. I know the number.

And I've known for a long time what I've got coming someday.

I'm not trying to get out of anything.

I kill the guys. And I don't make it easy for them on the way out. Because I got no doubts they deserve it.

Only maybe not as much as I do.

Tough luck how that works out sometimes.

— Hey. -Who? — It's Joe Pitt.

I hear salsa music doppler in and out of the background. -What? — Joe Pitt. -Yeah? — Yeah. -And?

I clear my throat.

— Remember how you said you d rather I owe you one for when you need someone to have your back? — Yeah. -How d you like to make it two?

I hear catcalls in Puerto Rican-accented Spanish, and her own retort: something about someone's dick and a knife and their throat. But my Spanish

isn't good enough to get the subtler nuances.

The catcalls fall silent. -You still there?

I nod, even though she cant see it. -I'm here.

The phone carries the sound of a train crashing and screeching on overhead tracks. -You ask a lot, Pitt. -Yeah.

— I got ex-boyfriends, kind of guys never have a fucking job, you know? — Sure.

— Kind of guys, they let a girl pick up every check, pay for their new Nikes, give them walking-around cash they're gonna use to take their shorty out later. Know what I mean? — Sure. -But you. You I never even broke off a piece, and you got them all beat.

I shift the phone to my other hand so I can get at my smokes easier. -Yeah, I like to go that extra mile.

— Yes, you do.

— Yeah. So, not to waste anyone's time, I don't have anything to add to the

pot. You want to help out or not?

Esperanza grunts.

— Girl likes maybe just a little sweet talk sometimes. -How bout that. -Yeah. OK. What is it?

I get a cigarette in my mouth.

— What it is, is it's funny you brought up ex-boyfriends. -How's that funny? — Funny like maybe I'd want to meet one of them.

Silence. I look at the screen of the phone Amanda gave me to make my call, making sure the connection hasn't been broken. It hasn't.

I put it back to my ear. -Hear me?

— I heard you, Pitt. I'm just trying to figure out how to say ha-ha without it sounding too sarcastic.

Getting me out is also on the tricky side.

Seeing as the Cure house is smack in the middle of Coalition turf, getting anyone out is a trick.

Figure that under normal circumstances the Coalition would weed out anyone tried to put roots in their turf. But there's nothing normal about Amanda Horde. Nothing normal about her or her big brain or her money or the Horde family name. She was right about the way Predo used to kiss her and her parents' asses.

Before he plotted to have them all assassinated.

Plot didn't work out.

Someone got in the way.

Chalk that up as yet another reason on the long list that Predo has for looking forward to the day he gets to watch me boil in the sun.

But back before that little misunderstanding took place, the Coalition was neck-deep in dealings with the Horde family. And Horde Bio Tech, Inc. Far as I know, they still have holdings in the company. But the little girl holds all the important strings.

Still, it's too late in the day for them to make a sudden move on her. She's

too well connected for something like that. Too bright a star on the map of the sky. Not the Page Six fixture her mom was, but definitely someone the Manhattan gossip mill has an ear and an eye for.

Poor little orphaned rich girls who run their family's biotechnology holdings and are always accompanied by their sexy but suspiciously muscular black female bodyguards tend to be a hot item from time to time.

Figure the Coalition couldn't do much when she decided to open housekeeping on their doorstep. But figure they keep as many eyes on that house as they possibly can.

Predo knew when I went in the first time.

And he found out that I left.

So I have to use an alternate route this time.

— Don't be particular, Pitt.

— I don't think I'm being particular. I think I'm being perfectly fucking

reasonable.

— There's no time for this shit. Just bag it and get in.

— Oh, that's funny.

— I wasn't trying to be funny. Shut up and climb in.

— Fuck.

But I shut up and climb in.

Because Sela was right when she spelled out how it'd work. This is the best bet on short notice. But knowing something is the best bet, that's doesn't make it a sure thing.

I lie down on the greasy, shit-stained, olive-drab sleeping bag on the floor. Sela kneels at the foot and pulls the zipper up. -Bunch up a little, Pitt. -Fuck.

I pull my knees up, hunch my shoulder and duck my head.

Amanda steps closer. -Hang on.

Sela stops with the zipper at my chin.

Amanda puts a hand on Sela's shoulder and bends to look down at me. -Hurry back, Joe. We need you.

I wriggle deeper into the sleeping bag. -Yeah, and it's so nice to be needed like this.

Sela yanks the zipper, catches some of my hair, and gives it anther yank, tearing the hair out and sealing me inside the reeking mummy bag.

Then she grabs the top of the bag and drags me down the steps behind the building and out to the alley. -Hey. Hey, you could carry me, couldn't you?

Her heel clips the back of my neck. -Shut up.

I hear a gate squeal open, sounds of the street, an idling diesel.

Then she hoists me high, and shoves, and I feel air beneath me, for a second, then a bunch of hard stuff.

The tone of the diesel changes, gears grind, there's a jerk and the load in the back of the truck shifts and some more hard stuff tumbles on top of me.

And we roll, the driver of the Waste Management truck hauling the construction Dumpster that had been parked in front of the Cure house, doing his best to hit every fucking pothole and divot from the Upper East Side, across the Queensboro, and down along Dutch Kill and Review Avenue to Maspeth.

By which time I have found the zipper tabs are stuck on the outside and cut my way out with my straight razor, so I'm ready to vault out when we wrap

around the back side of New Calvary Cemetery.

Twenty-four hours?

Not even that. Not one full day on the Island. And somehow, somehow I find myself someplace worse than the Bronx.

You don't have to work hard to land in this kind of shit. You just have to let go of whatever you re hanging on to. The shit is right down there under our feet, waiting for anyone who cant keep their grip.

The next bit, the next bit is the tricky part.

Keeping your mouth closed when you go under.

Maspeth.

One of those names comes from an Indian word that got all fucked up. Someone told me once it means something like At the bottom of the bad water place.

Swamp.

Swamp and landfill.

And the choicest landfill groomed, sodded, planted with nice trees, and filled with dead people.

I lived in Maspeth, I'd look at those massive cemeteries lining the L.I.E.,

Calvary, New Calvary, Mount Zion, Mount Olivet where they buried the unclaimed dead from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, I'd look at them, and I'd look at the dust and the muck where the row houses and the tenements took root, and I'd start digging up dead people and dropping them in Newtown Creek.

But I don't live in Maspeth.

Finally, something going right.

Standing at Fifty-fifth Ave. and Fiftieth, where my meet is supposed to take place, I get to celebrate that little fact for about a second before a dozen gibbering cannibal warriors with filed teeth and machetes come boiling over the fence from the truck-filled lot behind one of the warehouses that choke the dry land on either side of the Creek.

Know what's funny?

Nothing.

No. Really what's funny is what I forgot.

See, what with all the hubbub and urgency, all the need for me to speed on my way because shit is coming unhinged at the Cure house and this needs to be done last fucking year, what with all that, I forget to ask for a gun.

How funny is that?

Not funny at all.

Not if you're the clown who just took a job to cross the water again. Not if you're that sad fucker who just made a call to make a date with some savages.

Still, I almost laugh when I remember I forgot.

Almost.

Instead of laughing, I run. I make it across the street before the bare slapping feet catch me, and fingers capped with chrome claws drag me down.

— She's a special lady. -I'm not arguing. -That's wise.

I don't tell him that wisdom isn't a virtue I've often been credited with.

As for him, he keeps his own counsel, clinking the honed tips of the claws on his right index finger and thumb against one another, in time to a drum no one else hears.

— If I were a better man. If I had been a better man, she might be here.

I let my eye take in the stifling abandoned shipping container we're all crowded inside of. Only Menace has a chair. The rest stand or sit on the piles of old books and newspapers that fill the whole container. -Think what she's missing.

His claws stop clinking. -I do not care for sarcasm.

I think for a moment, come up with nothing better, shrug. -I could try not talking at all. -That sounded like more sarcasm.

I scratch my head. -Like I said, I could try not talking at all.

He holds his hand high over his head, light from the candles illuminating the container reflected in points on the bias-cut sections of sharpened silver pipe fitted at the end of each of his fingers.

— I could flay you and wear your skin as a cloak, and caper in the streets in the moonlight.

He lowers his hand.

— But some might consider that crass treatment of a guest.

I nod. -Well, some people got no sense of humor, do they?

He brings his hand to his chest, dimples the tight, brown skin over his sternum with the point of a claw. -I am one of those people.

I take a good long look at Skag Baron Menace. The claws, the filed teeth, the bare feet with soles calloused to leather, the bracelets of finger bones, the broad blade of the machete leaned against the leg of the camp stool he's sitting on.

I get a cigarette from my pocket. -Kid.

I light up. -Why would I think you have a sense of humor?

He nods. -Yes.

He looks at his crew, all kitted out pretty much like himself. -Yes.

He looks at me. -I see your point.

He rises, picks up his machete. -We'll take a walk.

He gestures and the candles are snuffed, dropping us into a black pit. Only light coming from the tip of my smoke.

Breathing. Shuffle of bare feet. Claw scratching steel. Steel grating on steel as the lock-bar is unlatched and the door swung open by the sentry outside.

In the starlight that filters in, Menace sweeps his machete in an arc, waving me ahead of him.

I get off the floor and walk toward the door, waiting for the bite of the machete blade in my back, the rake of claws on my neck.

But they don't come.

Yet.

Put your money on something happening down by the water. That's where I'd do it. So much easier to get rid of a body when there's some water at hand.

Wedged into an angle created by the Kosciuszko Bridge, Fifty-sixth Road, and

the Newtown and Maspeth Creeks is a fish-shaped bit of land. The tail occupied by yet another warehouse. The body of the fish an open plain of concrete and asphalt, broken by empty foundations, corpses of abandoned refrigerators with the doors still on, swamp grasses pushing through the pavement, and a glittering sheen of broken glass that seems to pebble the whole surface in nearly even perfection.

Menace walks on the glass, leading us toward the water. -I cannot say for certain, but I think this was once the home of Cord Meyers Animal Carbon Plant.

I kick at some of the glass, rearranging the huge, senseless mosaic. -What the hell was that?

He shakes his head.

— I am not certain. But I believe this is where it was. Whatever it was. I simply like the name. It sounds ominous. Like much of the industry that found a home here after the American Revolution.

He points with his machete at a truck yard over Fifty-sixth. -Cating Rope Works.

Indicates a warehouse up the water. -Fisk Metal Casket Company.

Another industrial mass. -Alden Sampson Oil Factory.

Another. -And Peter Cooper's Glue Factory.

He lowers the machete. -No need to wonder where the sinister quality in that name comes from.

A damp, stinking breeze blows off the water. -Yeah, sure. Boiling horses. Dreadful.

He stands at least a head shorter than me, looks up, shakes his free hand, rattling bones.

— Esperanza said you had trouble with Lament. -I did.

— She said you cut a deal with him to get away. -I cut a deal.

The machete flickers through the air, cutting the tops from a thick tuft of grass shoved up through a crack in the concrete. -Not something to recommend a person, having cut a deal with Lament.

I look at the distant lights of Manhattan, wonder if Maspeth is where III finally die. -Yeah, he seems to have a great fondness for you too.

He balances the machete. -He mentioned me?

— Yeah. Seemed a favorite topic. I was to judge, I'd say he goes to bed mumbling your name, and then dreams about nailing your head above his door.

He smiles, moves the tip of his tongue from pointed tooth to pointed tooth, realizes what he's doing and closes his mouth. -Yes. I am certain he does.

He looks north toward the Bronx.

— And considering the roll he played in educating me, I do not imagine it is any coincidence that I have similar visions regarding his own head.

I spit in the oily water we walk along. -He has one of those heads people think about cutting off. -Yes. He does.

He rests the flat of the machete blade on his shoulder. -When he took me off the street, I thought it was the greatest piece of luck. I

was finally going to be part of a crew. Make some money. Other kids, they would join crews. Soon after they would be showing up at school in fresh K-Swiss, And1. Hilfiger jeans. Burberry caps. Soon, the ones who lasted would have cars. Leased Escalades and Mercedes. Tricked-out Nissans.

He frowns.

— I wanted to be in a crew. Everyone I knew wanted to be in a crew. That was how you got things. Kicks. Clothes. Wheels. Respect.

His frown deepens. -All the things a boy desires. That is a skill of Lament's.

He catches his lower lip between the points of two teeth. -To know what young people desire.

His teeth draw a bead of blood from his own flesh.

— After I was infected by one of the older boys, I felt less as if I had been lied to, and more as if I were being invited deeper inside something special. Of course.

He wipes the drop of blood away with the back of his wrist. -By then Lament had taken my name, christened me Menace. A process of physical starvation had begun, soon followed by a more intense deprivation when he withheld blood. And physical abuse. And emotional abuse. The

easiest thing, the thing most of us did, was to surrender. After all.

He drops the blade of the machete from his shoulder and angles it to catch a bit of the sliver-moon.

— Once you have been told that you are worthless, and treated as if you are worthless, put in a place where you are all set against one another in a contest for one person's approval, approval that is never consistent in how it is rewarded, it is the easiest thing in the world to succumb to that conditioning and believe yourself to be worthless.

He brings the blade up, touches it to his own forehead, like a warrior knighting himself. -But I am not worthless.

He lowers the blade.

— He had me cleaning. Digging out the piles of papers and magazines he had accumulated.

He shakes his head.

— I have no idea why the word caught my eye. I do not believe in destiny. For whatever reason, I saw it, and I needed to read about it. And so I did. I do not even remember the magazine. National Geographic? Time? It does not matter.

He inhales, exhales a word.

— Mungiki.

He nods.

— Kikuyu farmers. They banded together in defense squads against Nairobi government forces during a land dispute. The government was dominated by the Kalenjin tribe. Enemies of the Kikuyu. The Mungiki prevailed. And thrived. They moved into the cities, the slums. Provided protection, brought down crime rates. They did this through violence.

He nods again.

— Beheadings. Amputations. Vicious beatings. Torture. And they became a source of terror. Blood drinkers. Madmen. Savages so brutal, neither the police nor the military would go into their slums.

I look at the long flat span of empty cement around us, the other Mungiki scattered about. I look at the water. Water's the way out. Whether I have to jump in it, or that's where they dump my body, it looks like that's where I'm going.

He stops nodding. -They inspired me.

He shakes his head. -Not that I knew anything about the Kikuyu. Not that I did, or do, have any

care about the Kalenjin. I was simply inspired that these put-upon people, outnumbered, the lowest, rose. Made of themselves something to be reckoned with. Regardless of their methods. They made me realize that I could fight back. I could leave. So I did.

He shrugs.

— Physical security is not a concern of Laments. He relies on his personality to keep his captives with him. Until he is ready to send them on their way. Escaping was relatively easy. But freedom. That was most difficult. I had already seen the uses of fear in my own conditioning.

He tinks a claw against a bone that dangles from his wrist. -So. I set out to make myself fearful.

He indicated the black leather vest worn open over his bare chest, the combat fatigues cut off at the knees. The outfit his crew sports as well. -I designed a uniform for myself and the friends I convinced to join me. And we did things. Engaged in acts modeled on the Mungiki. Are they still afraid of us in the Bronx?

I flick ash. -They are.

He points north.

— And we are not even there.

He lowers his arm.

— It is strange. That causing fear in others can help produce freedom. But it is also true. It clears a path before one. Creates space, a perimeter within which one can operate with abandon. I am not saying that it is true freedom. But it is a start. And it has given us the space and time to become more dangerous.

He brings a claw to his temple.

— I am not the boy I was. I do not crave the material things of MTV culture. I am not the slave I was. I do not crave the attention and occasional kindnesses of Lament. I am not even the savage I made myself after my initial escape. I do not crave blood for blood's own sake. I am a rational man. I have made myself into this. I have read and studied and applied myself. I am clear in my thoughts. And in how I express them. While I cultivate mystery about my person in order to project the fear that frees me, I want none of that mystery in my speech. I am capable now of great subtlety. A word I could not have defined just a few years ago. I am capable of that subtlety, but I prefer bluntness. I am all these things, all my past selves, and my new self, because of one reason.

He aims the claw at me.

— Because I have a purpose. And succeed or fail, I have aimed myself solely at that purpose. With no time for anything else. And yet.

He turns his hand over, shows me his pale palm.

— Even a man with a purpose can have regrets. My own regret is that I could not convince Esperanza Lucretia to join me. Though I still have hopes that she might. So, seeing that you know her, and that she recommends you to me, I agreed to deviate my attention from my purpose to meet with you. In return, I will need you to do something.

I wait.

He looks away. -Tell her I miss her.

I flick my butt into the water, pull out a fresh one. -Yeah, I know how that goes.

I light up. -I can do that for you.

He nods. -Well, then.

He squats, puts the tip of the blade on the ground, folds his hands over the

leather-wrapped grip. -What do you want?

I inhale smoke, killing the smell of the rank water.

— Like I told Esperanza. I don't know Queens. She told me you two had history. I asked if she could reach out. -You asked Esperanza Lucretia to reach out to the Mungiki. -Not saying I was happy to be looking to talk to you. Just saying I don't know anyone in Queens.

He looks up at me. -Then what you have to do in Queens must be very important.

I think about the Cure house, and the blood they need. I think about Terry, and the money he needs. I think about Predo, and the information he needs.

I think about me, and what I need. Where I need to be. Who I need to see.

Feel the pull. -Yeah, It's important.

I look at my burning cigarette.

Say it out loud and you don't go back.

Say it in the open air and there's no telling where the words drift.

Say it. -I'm looking for blood.

He raises an eyebrow. -Are not we all?

I look up from my cigarette. -No, man, I'm looking for a whole lot of blood.

He looks into my eye, nods, stops nodding. -Did I mention, Joe Pitt, that I do not believe in destiny? — Yeah, I remember something like that.

He rises, looks me up and down. -Serendipity though, that is another matter.

He glances at the water. -What's the worst thing you've ever seen, Joe Pitt?

I look at him.

I could tell him the worst thing I've ever seen. But he wouldn't see it the same as me. Tell someone the worst thing you ever saw was a dying girl being healed, they wont really get it. But I saw it. And it was bad. So I know better.

He watches me, nods. -So you have seen many awful things.

I still got nothing to say.

Menace weighs his machete in both hands. -Have they changed you, do you think? The things you have seen?

I find my lighter. -How the hell should I know.

I flick the lighter to life, realize I don't have a cigarette in my mouth for it to light, and snap it closed. -You are who you are. See things. Don't see them. You are who you are.

He studies the machete in his hands.

— I was who I was. I saw terrible things as a child. And I was who I was. Taken by Lament, tortured, I saw more terrible things. And I was who I was. Changing, yes, but always who I was. I agree with that. But as I told you.

He holds the machete tight in one hand, as he runs the palm of his other hand down the blade, cutting deep. -I am different now. Remade. By a purpose.

He looks at the hand, watches the blood clot over the deep incision.

— Remade by what I have seen.

He shakes his hand, flecks of blood spattering the pavement. -You should go home, Joe Pitt.

He looks at me. -Or risk being a different person when you leave later.

He shrugs. -//you can leave later.

I put my Zippo back in my pocket, take hold of my razor. -You saying something?

His mouth twists down, tries to straighten, stays twisted. -Rope works. Steel caskets. Animal carbon. Glue factory.

He swallows. -Do you think the swamp draws such industry?

I slip my other hand in my other pocket, thread my fingers into the hoops of the brass knuckles. -Not following you, kid.

He breathes deep a couple times, like a man trying to keep down his last ten

drinks.

— There are things. Things you have to see.

Tears start in his eyes. -Go home, Joe Pitt.

He raises the hand he cut, and the rest of the Mungiki encircle us. -We are Mungiki. Savages. We are born for this.

He lowers his hand. -It will kill you.

He bares his teeth. -It will kill us all.

I lick my lips. -OK.

I take my hands from my pockets, lighter in one hand, cigarette in the other. -I'm suitably freaked out.

I light the cigarette. -Now tell me where I go to see this thing.

He wipes tears from his face, leaving a small smear of his hands blood.

— Not far.

He points south. -English Kill.

He nods at the Creek. -Do you know how to swim?

The Mungiki don't have guns.

Not that they have anything against them, just that they don't have much cash to procure them with. Under normal circumstances I'd consider it a bonus for the whole world that these guys are limited to machetes and handmade claws, but it does mean I can't borrow a gun for myself. -Not even a zip gun? — No. No firearms at all.

I look at the rank water below my feet. -Shit.

I look back up at Menace. -And you re sure I can't go on land? — No. This is the only way.

— Shit.

There's a splash as one of the Mungiki tosses an inflated inner tube, scavenged from one of the truck yards, into the water.

I look at it bobbing on the scummy low tide. -What's that for?

Menace squats next to me, angles his machete at the sandbar peeking from the middle of the Creek.

— Mussel Island. Even at low tide the currents around it are strong. Hidden rocks. You can get pulled down into them and ripped apart. -Shit.

He picks up a shard of glass between the points of two claws. -I will not see you again, Joe Pitt.

I unlace my boots. -That's always a chance. -No.

He drops the shard in the water.

— I will not see you again. You will not come back. If someone comes back, it will not be you.

I peel off my socks and stuff them inside the boots, shrug out of my jacket and pull off my shirt. -Do me a favor anyway. -Yes?

I point at my clothes.

— Hang on to that stuff. I got a feeling they'll fit the son of a bitch who does come back.

He was right about the currents.

The inner tube gets pulled from my arm and I get dragged under, sucking a lungful of contaminated creek water as I go down. I get spun, my shoulder bangs on the rocks, and then the current shifts direction and shoves me away from the tiny island and I break the surface gasping.

I knew the water was how I was going out.

I stroke hard, past the branch where fresh currents try to drag me down English Kill so they can crush me against the rocks below the silos rising above some kind of refinery. Farther down the waterway, I pass under the Grand Avenue Bridge, heavy trucks rattling the steel plates overhead. Ahead, the Creek splits. Disappearing beyond a huge warehouse and around a hard

angle to my right, where Menace told me it dead-ends at Metropolitan. Crossing an invisible border into Brooklyn.

Going that way is one of my options. But I don't want to go to Brooklyn. I've been to Brooklyn. And I'm not welcome there.

On my left the water runs between an abandoned lot and a school bus depot, washing up against wood pilings at the foot of a nameless street.

I grab hold of the long steel-and-concrete pier that anchors the middle of the bridge, the pivot on which it once swung open, when these waters were used as anything but a garbage disposal.

Rising between the depot and the warehouse, tons of gravel are drawn up long conveyors, dust floats, hazing bright halogens, a nonstop roar of crushed stone and diesel engines. And a high, white-painted cinder-block wall.

That's the place Menace told me about.

The place where he got changed.

I let go of the pier and swim down the channel to the bus depot, where there is no wall.

Where I can see what scares the savages.

Merit Transportation hasn't bothered with a wall or even a fence on the water

side of their depot.

Why bother?

Who's gonna swim up in heavily polluted water to mess around in a bus depot? And what are they gonna mess with? Some tagger is industrious enough to frog-man his way in by this route and spray bomb the side of one of the buses, you may as well give the little fucker a medal.

No, there's no wall here. Nothing to keep out anyone mad enough to come in this way to do God knows what.

Dripping, my skin coated in chemically mutated algae, I haul myself onto the slick rocks and crawl up until I can huddle between two buses, the halogens above the grinding yard next door casting deep black shadows for me to hide in.

All I can see is the tops of those conveyors, raising the gravel high before it's dropped, churned, milled ever more fine.

I get down on my belly and worm under a bus, keeping my eyes on the dirt, hoping to find an especially long butt that someone may have tossed aside. A butt and a match.

No dice.

Ahead, there's a row of buses parked perpendicular to a bare cement

verge; beyond that, the wall that hides the gravel yard, topped with a long twisted spring of razor wire. Brightly lit.

A tunnel would be nice.

Or a shaped but silent charge, to blow a secret hole in the wall.

Why am I doing this?

I look at the dirt. I crook a finger and trace a name.

Evie.

I'd be lying if I said it gave me courage. I'd be lying if I said it heartened me. I'd be lying if I said it made me stronger, resolved in my intent. Hell, I'd be lying if I said that name did anything but open wounds and grind salt deep into the meat.

But I get up and run.

I vault onto the hood of a bus, hop to the roof, sprinting, sheet-metal footfalls on the roof of the bus lost in the din.

The cement verge is at least six feet broad. The wall eight feet tall, the wire adding nearly two more feet.

Jumping from the rear of the bus, my bare foot pushing off from the end of the roof above the emergency exit, I have a vision of myself, feet snagged in a tangle of razor wire, hanging upside down inside the perimeter of the wall,

spotlights pinned on my body, guards closing in from every quarter.

I look down, see my feet clearing the wall and the wire with inches to spare, then gravity catches me and sucks me down and smashes me into a gravel pile, crushing the air from my lungs and snapping three fingers on my left hand when I stupidly try to brace against the impact instead of going limp.

Its even louder on this side of the wall. And brighter.

Mounds of gravel and sand, the tower the conveyor belts climb and descend, a steel blockhouse of grinding machinery underneath, unpaved roads cut by eighteen-wheelers hauling open-topped trailers bringing in yet more gravel, smaller diesels with spinning mixers, painted in spirals, driving away with loads of cement. Everything gray, shot with patches and stripes of pitch-black shadow painted by the light towers above.

I roll out of the light to the bottom of a gravel pile, into a shadow, waiting to hear a klaxon, the machinery grinding to a halt, commands shouted back and forth between heavily armed guards.

Nothing happens.

Machinery roars, lights blaze, trucks roll in low gear.

I crawl to the edge of the pile and look for the enforcers who must be creeping up on me.

And see no one but the drivers in the trucks, a couple silhouettes in a small shack near the conveyors, and a uniformed man sprawled in a folding chair at the distant gate, waving the trucks in and out with barely a glance.

I duck back behind the pile. Wondering if I'm in the right place.

Maybe Menace meant the warehouse on the far side of the yard. Maybe he meant one of the warehouses I passed along the Creek. Maybe he's a fucking nutjob and I'm chasing my own asshole around Maspeth because he thinks he saw something.

Maybe he's a nutjob.

He's fucking named Menace. He's given himself fangs and little handcrafted claws.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

No maybe about it, he's a fucking nutjob and a half.

This place is nothing but a gravel yard.

What am I thinking? What can that insane kid possibly know about the biggest secret the Coalition has? What could he possibly have seen and survived seeing?

I think about his twisted mouth. His gasping breath as he tried to tell me. The way he swallowed his own bile at the thought of the place.

Tears and blood on his cheek.

OK, so maybe there's something here to see.

I use the razor to cut a strip from the hem of my pants. I straighten the three broken fingers on my left hand, gritting my teeth, then I slip the brass knuckles over them, curl my fingers around the cold metal and use the scrap of dirty khaki cloth to tie my fingers into place. Then I roll around in the gravel and dust, coating my wet skin and pants, making myself muddy gray.

And I crawl into the light, brass tied to one hand, cold, sharp steel held tight in the other, waiting with my face pressed in the dust at the side of the road that's been graded by the tonnage of trucks and crushed stone. Coming to my feet as one passes, snagging a dangling chain and pulling myself aboard, huddling atop one of the gas tanks as it wheels around the base of the conveyors, circles, and pulls into the notch that runs between them.

Dust clogs my nose. I cant smell anything except diesel fumes and scorched rubber. The truck moves into the shadows beneath the conveyors. The tower of rust-streaked gray steel that the conveyors pour their gravel into shakes and shudders and sends thunder vibrating through the air. I'm deaf.

The truck jerks, turns, angles toward a road that leads to the gate.

Here under the towers, protected from the halogen day, the light is cast by yellow globes in wire cages. Someone coalesces out of the dust and sickly light. I jump from the truck, leading with brass, my broken fist sending a hot

blast of pain down my arm as it hits the side of the man's face. I land on top of him, knocking his helmet and earphones off, smashing an elbow into his gut. No worry that his screams will be heard here.

I drag him beneath one of the jittering scaffolds that hold the conveyors and put my face close to his and inhale.

No Vyrus.

I scream into his ear, and he coughs, spits up, shakes his head.

I show him the razor, and he shakes his head again.

I cut his left ear off and almost hear his scream.

I yell into his remaining ear and he sobs and points at the steel tower.

I cut his throat. I drink his blood. Dust is in the first mouthfuls. Muddy and viscous, I swallow hard to make it go down. After that, it goes easy.

I don't linger to drink it all. It's not safe here for indulgence.

I leave his body in the shadows, his dusty jacket on my torso, his goggles, earphones and helmet on my head. I hadn't planned to kill him, but it was the smart thing to do, taking his blood to make me strong for whatever may be inside.

Things could get ugly in there.

Its louder. The machinery directly overhead amplifying the racket of pulverizing rock, blasting it down to this small, empty chamber. In the middle of the floor a staircase spirals down an ancient shaft, screwing itself into a deep darkness punctuated by the occasional scarlet glow of a safety lamp.

I start down.

Twenty feet below, the noise starting to fade, I come to the first light, a bulb in a cage above an unmarked steel door. I try the handle, it doesn't move.

I feel watched, look up, expecting to find the mouth of the shaft ringed by Coalition enforcers armed with machine guns, and find nothing.

Down.

Another light and another door. Locked.

Down.

The light just below me flashes twice, the door opens, pulled inward.

I tuck my knuckled fist behind my back, collapse my razor and palm it, raise my chin to the goggled and earphoned man coming out the door and dropping something into his jacket pocket.

He nods, waits, holding the door open.

And I slip inside, patting his side in thanks, taking the weight of the door

from him, watching his back as he starts up the stairs, letting go of the door, then catching it before it latches.

I look at the key in my hand, the key that dropped there when I sliced out the bottom of his pocket as we passed in the doorway. Broad and thick, notched along both edges, I slip it into the lock and check to be sure it will get me out. It turns the bolt.

I close the door, steel and the sixty-odd feet of stone above finally giving relief from the noise, reducing it to an insistent grinding in the walls. Walls of moisture-seeping limestone, braced by rusting I-beams. Fluorescent corkscrews stick from old ceramic sockets mounted high.

Doors.

The first stands open on a room lined with cots. Floor covered in linoleum dimpled by nails driven through it and into the stone. Walls decorated by ragged pinups. A small fridge, a coffeemaker, microwave.

I plug each nostril in turn and blow hard to dislodge the dust and grit. I inhale. Room smells of men living in close quarters. Smell like a barracks or firehouse.

But there's more.

Close my eyes, concentrate, I can smell Vyrus.

And blood. Lots of blood.

I open my eyes. Menace may be crazy, but something is here.

I leave the room and start down the hall. Find a bathroom with showerheads sticking from the ceiling, a couple dirty urinals, empty stalls. It reminds me of the bathroom at the Whitehouse.

At the end of the hallway, a storeroom, canned foods, cases of beer, economy-size cartons of snack cakes and candy bars, pallets of toilet paper.

I leave the room, go back to the shaftway door.

Down.

Deeper.

The key opens the next door. I go inside. A similar hallway. More doors.

And more sounds. And smells.

Vyrus here. Recently.

First door. No dormitory this time. A single bed with a mattress. Blood on the mattress. Dried spots and streaks. I kneel. At the four corners of the steel bed-frame, manacles. My own blood beats hard in my temples, each pulse blurs my vision. I open my razor and cut my thumb deep and the pain sharpens me.

Next room, the door is shut, my key opens it.

Another bed.

Manacles.

The naked girl held to the bed by the manacles looks at me. She opens and closes her mouth, makes opening and closing gestures with her cuffed hands, spreads her legs. -Hey, man, this room is occupied.

I turn and look at the man behind me, stripped to shorts and T-shirt and boots, gravel dust deep in the creases of his face and hands. I look at the clothes piled in the corner.

He reaches out and pulls the earphones from my head.

— You hear, man? I'm off shift, I had her brought up for me. Get one of your own.

The girl flinches when the mans blood sprays her.

I find a key on a hook on the wall and unlock the manacles. She lies there, pointing at her mouth, opening and closing it, spreading her legs wider. I sit her up and she tries to grind against me. I pull the man's work jacket from the floor and a plastic-wrapped snack cake drops from a pocket. The girl looks at it and whines. I hand it to her and she unwraps it and stuffs it in her mouth. There are

more in the jacket. I give them to her, covering her with the jacket as she eats, feeling the jutting bones that poke from her skin.

Trying to slip her arm into one of the sleeves, I touch something hard, find a plastic IV catheter attached to her forearm, hoops of surgical steel, body-piercing rings, riveting it in place.

I look at the floor, the dying man has dragged himself into the hall, the blood pouring from his open stomach smeared in a single broad swipe like a giants brushstroke.

He's lucky, dies before I can cross to him and make him hurt.

The girl eats her cakes, a pleased hum coming from deep in her throat. A sound comes from my own throat. I choke it. The room blurs, shivers, I can't catch my breath.

I cut myself again.

Again.

Again.

Vision clears.

/ had her brought up for me.

I leave the girl, go back to the stairwell.

Down.

There's a guard when I open the next door under a red light. He turns to look at me, sees my face, freezes, his mouth slightly open under his thin moustache.

Then he's dead.

Low.

If the kid had never seen me before, he might not have been so surprised, he might have been able to do something to stop me from punching him in the temple five times, shattering his skull and crushing his brain. Instead he sits dead on the floor.

The brass knuckles came dislodged with the fourth blow. The bones in my fingers, that had started to reknit when I drank the mans blood on the surface, are broken again. I tie them back into place.

Low has a ring of keys and a truncheon.

I take the keys.

The noise from above is all but mute here, just a dull thud in the stone. But there are other sounds. Rustling, grunts, coughing, the occasional angry shriek.

First door opens on a white-painted room. Layers of paint, thick on the

stone, the floor marked by boot scuffs, dry maroon stains. Steel tables with blood gutters down their sides, running to drains at their feet. Steel trays filled with used needles, some bent, some broken. Meters of looped plastic hose.

Down the hall.

Another storeroom.

Cardboard boxes filled with empty, paper-wrapped blood bags. Unused needles. Clean tubing. Gallons of bleach. Buckets of white paint. A dusty and broken autoclave, decades out of date.

An incubator.

The noise starts in my throat again. It's harder to stop this time.

The last door. Sounds are louder. Smells of feces and disinfectant and decay.

My key doesn't fit the lock. As I'm trying the keys from Lows ring, the door is opened from within. -What the fuck, Low, it's the key with the piece of tape on it.

A scrappy kid with a Bronx accent.

He looks at my jacket and helmet and the earphones and goggles now hanging from my neck.

— What the fuck. You know your ass ain't allowed down here. You want a piece, call down and we'll send something up.

I don't see him anymore. I see the room behind him. I see the ranks of bunk beds. I see the skinny bodies filling the beds. I see skin waxed to albino paleness. I see a chemical pit at the back of the room that they squat over. I see bedsores and muscle atrophy. I hear their hisses and grunts and caws, their imitations of speech.

The Bronx kid pokes me with his truncheon.

— Motherfucker, time to go. You don't get to window-shop, asshole. You fuck what we send up.

I look at him.

Something crosses his eyes. He looks down. Sees my bare feet.

My hands are on the back of his head and my knee is pushing the bones of his nose back through his brain and I twist his neck and it breaks and I think I start crying.

But it's not why you think.

It's not why you think.

It's not why you think.

I'm simply angry at myself for killing him so fast, so easy. I'd have liked to take my time.

But in the whole universe there is not enough time. There are not enough minutes and seconds for what I'd like to do. For the things I could dream up if I had more time.

The things I could do to this world to make it pay for being the way it is.

I stare at the things that might have been people had they not been raised to slaughter. I look at the dead body I'm still holding. I drop it. There's a sound when I drop it, metal on stone. I kneel and find the gun under the kid's arm. I take it.

This gun. I love this gun. There are so many wonderful things I can do with this gun. So many people I can kill.

I turn and leave, eager to begin.

I kill two more workers on the stairs, at a total cost of two bullets. Two bullets for two human lives. I laugh to think that something as tawdry as a human life should come at the cost of something so precious as a bullet.

Climbing, I come to the second door I passed on my way down.

I don't need to go inside and look. I know what III find.

A key lets me in.

And I find it.

Another of Laments creations is guarding this room. She's whippet fast and far more alert than the two I've already killed. Maybe its what she's been charged to watch that makes her so present.

I don't care.

She takes three of my bullets. And snaps off the long scalpel blade she sticks in my right armpit before she dies. If I were left-handed, the blade would be in my heart.

Standing at the door of the room she guarded, I ask myself if I've seen enough.

Tiny things.

In my life I never think about them. Helpless, squirming, bundles of nothing but pure need. They have no place in my world.

Why are they suddenly here?

I turn as the steel door at the end of the hall opens, and I walk toward it, shooting, using the last of my bullets to kill the man in the black suit who is coming through the door.

I have to finish him with the razor, the body armor beneath his jacket having stopped the first two bullets I hit him with.

Groomed, manicured, fit.

Enforcer.

His gun is better than the one I took from the kid. I take it. I take the extra clips in the nylon pouches snapped to the back of his belt.

A fold of papers sticks from his inner breast pocket. I look at them.

Vouchers. Signed.

Nearby, a cooler rests on the floor, waiting, a number written on its top in black Sharpie matches a number on a voucher. I open the cooler.

Purple coils, thumb-thick, nestled in ice packs.

I go up the stairs with my new favorite gun. Ignoring the last door, the one closest to the surface, having no need to see the commercial refrigerators I know are behind it, or what is inside them.

Having no desire to be tempted.

There's a car outside the surface door, a low, black SUV. I open the passenger door and shoot the black-suited man behind the wheel. I take his gun, twin to the one I already have.

On my way across the yard, my feet cut again and again by the sharp rocks under them, I shoot the drivers of three trucks. I shoot the men in the shed.

I stand in the light and shoot the sky and the earth.

Then I run, I tear myself going over the wall and the wire, and I fall into the water and I let myself sink to the bottom, bullets thrumming around me, leaving white trails of bubbles.

On the bottom, clinging to the rusted-out shell of an oil drum, I open my mouth and let it fill and let the water run down my throat.

Only when it hits my lungs and I start to choke and my hands let go of the drum and I thrash toward the surface do I know.

Its not time yet.

Someone s still waiting for me.

— It is what he made us for.

Menace drops a dusty packing blanket over my shoulders. -The final lie of Lament.

He pokes the coals with his machete and drops another dry, broken plank from an abandoned pallet onto the fire.

— We were baited with the promise of being a part of a crew.

The plank catches fire and crackles and spits sparks and Menace shoves it deeper into the blaze.

— Then, when he had prepared us, the secret was revealed. We were infected. Told we would be more than simple gangsters. We would be soldiers in a cause. Enforcers. Specially recruited and trained. Better than the others. Special. If we were worthy.

He thrusts the blade through the handle of an old enameled coffeepot and lifts it from the fire. -And, of course, none of us was worthy.

One of his boys hands him a chipped mug with World's Greatest Dad painted on the side, framed by the stenciled outline of a football. -And one by one we were all sent away.

He fills the cup and passes it to me.

— So when I found myself, and escaped Lament, I followed a trail. Rumors and scents. And it led here.

He puts the pot back in the fire and squats next to me. -Getting in was not difficult. I was, after all, exactly what they were expecting.

Another of Laments products. A street child, strong and vicious. And with a regard for himself so low that he could never be expected to have regard for anyone else.

The firelight reflects off his claws, burnishing them red and orange. -Once inside, I saw.

He looks into the fire.

— Laments creatures, we are meant as herdsmen. To fodder and tend the beasts. Milk them. See that they are bred outside the herd. To keep the line hearty. See the whelps nursed. In exchange, feed at our will.

He closes his eyes. -Though I saw signs that even our appetite can be fed to surfeit.

The fire has yet to warm me, the cold creek water deep in my bones. I drink some of the coffee and it scalds my throat. -Where?

Menace opens his eyes. -You know where, Joe Pitt. You know where they come from.

He points at my eye. -You saw.

He opens his hand. -And now.

He rises. -Will you join us?

His boys come closer, into the firelight, ringing him.

— Will you stay with us, Joe Pitt? Will you file your teeth to bite out the throat of the world? Will you have claws to rake its hide?

I set the cup next to the fire and shrug the blanket from my shoulders. -Where are my things?

Menace comes close.

— You are not the same. You cannot go back now. -Are you planning to keep me here?

He shakes his head. -No. -Then where are my things?

He looks to one of the boys, and my jacket and shirt and boots are dropped at my feet.

Menace watches as I dress. -Wear the same clothes, they will not hide your new skin.

I lace the boots. -There's nothing new about me, kid. Nothing under the sun.

One of the boys dumps a bucket of water over the fire and it hisses out.

Menace stands in the rising steam and smoke. -You cannot go back.

I pull on my jacket.

— Yeah, you keep saying that, and watch me walk out of here, back to where I came from.

He raises a hand, claws against the night.

— You died in there, Joe Pitt. We all die in there. Go where you came from, go to your friends, but it will not be the man who left that they see. It will not be a man at all.

I pull a smoke from my pocket. -Who ever said I got friends to know whether it's me or not?

I start across the glass-covered concrete plain where the Mungiki haunt, smoke trailing from my mouth.

And its me who goes west. I am not changed. I am not.

I have Predo's money in my jacket. I use it when I get to Vernon, waving down a cab that cuts past the parking lot above the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel. The hack boxes the compass from Vernon to Jackson to Fiftieth to Eleventh, and were lined up, paying the toll, and underwater, traveling the exhaust-filled hole that will take me back.

I lost one of the enforcers' guns in English Kill, but the other rests in my pocket. I touch it.

Its good to have a gun again.

— What the hell are you thinking?

I make for the bar. -I'm thinking I need a drink.

Sela follows me.

— We go to all that trouble to get you out with no one seeing you, and you just come to the goddamn front door and start banging on it? You think Predo

suddenly got tired of keeping an eye on us over the last few hours? You think he wont want to know how you got out and where you went?

I pour a drink in a glass then pour it down my throat. -It doesn't matter.

Amanda is still behind her desk, still holding the sheets of paper that were in her hand when I came through the door. -You haven't been gone very long, Joe.

I pick up the bottle again, start to pour it in the glass, realize what a waste of time that is, and pour it in me instead. -Thought you'd be happy. Thought you said there was a big hurry.

She sets the paper down. -Well yeah, we're in a hurry. But I mean.

She gives a big shrug. -That was really fast.

I look at the bourbon still in the bottle. Even if I drink it all at once, it's not enough to get me drunk, not with the Vyrus cleaning my blood. -Fuck. -Something the matter?

I take a drink. -More than the usual? Not that I know of.

She flicks the edge of a paper.

— I don't want to rush you or anything, Joe, but I am kind of totally busy. I mean, if you have anything?

I look at the rug. Swirling mandalas. Rust background. Gold and white. Curls of thumb-thick purple.

I take another drink. -You're right, Sela.

She clears her throat. -Excuse me?

I wave the bottle. -I fucked up coming in the front way. But.

I take another drink.

— Maybe Predo did pull off. That's what I was thinking. Maybe he wants to give me room in here. He told me he would. -And?

— Be good to know for sure if I'm wrong about that. Someone should take a look. See if his peepers are out there. Not seeing them wont prove anything, but if they're visible, be good to know for certain that they spotted me coming in.

She doesn't move. -What are you playing? — Go take a look, Sela.

Sela looks at Amanda. -What?

Amanda stands.

— Joes right, go take a look, see whatever. -Bullshit — Sela. -This is bullshit. What the hell are you playing at?

Amanda comes around the desk and crosses to her lover. -Baby, I'm not playing at all.

She points at the door.

— I'm saying go downstairs and take a look outside.

Sela's mouth tightens.

— Little girl, if you want to be finished with me, this is the fast track to getting there.

Amanda raises herself on her toes and kisses Sela's lower lip. -Big girl, I'm never gonna be finished with you.

She lowers herself. -I just think you should go take a look.

Sela looks at me, looks daggers. Looks sabers and spears. -She trusts you, Pitt. I know better.

I wave the bottle. -So you re a well-educated lady, go take a look like you re told.

She makes for me.

Amanda gets in her way. -Baby, he's working your nerves. He's totally trying to get under your skin.

Sela grits her teeth. -I know. He's doing a good job of it.

Amanda's fingers tangle with Sela's. -Except you're way better than that.

Sela pulls her fingers free. -No. No, I'm not.

She goes to the door.

I raise the bottle. -Sela.

She doesn't stop. -What? — Make it a long look around.

She doesn't bother to reply. She also doesn't bother to come back across the room and kill me. Watching her slam out the door, I can't help but think I got off easy on that one.

I lift the bottle high, empty it in my mouth, and steel scrapes a nerve under my arm and I drop it, spilling the last of the bourbon.

Amanda comes over and picks up the bottle. -Something bothering you, Joe?

I stick my left hand inside my jacket and poke around in my right armpit. -I got a scalpel blade stuck in here that needs digging out.

Amanda nods, goes through a door on the other side of the bar, snagging a bottle of scotch as she goes.

— Come on then. I know this isn't your usual flavor, but it should get you through, toughguy.

She pushes the door open on a bathroom.

— And while I'm cutting, you can tell me what you saw that you don't think Sela can handle.

Sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom behind the bar, my hand held behind my head so the girl can dig into my armpit with a long pair of tweezers, after cutting the wound back open with my straight razor, I take slugs from the bottle of scotch. Not that it does anything for the pain, but it helps to wash out the taste of creek water still in my mouth. -OK, OK, don't move.

I grit my teeth. -I'm not moving. -So don't breathe, OK? I cant get a grip on it cause it's slippery as hell.

I stop breathing.

She bites the tip of her tongue and yanks and pulls the scalpel blade free, along with a nice bit of my flesh. -Wow. That is nasty, Joe.

I crane my neck to get a look under my arm. -Could have cut a little cleaner.

She drops the blade and the tweezers in the sink, passes me a washcloth. -Put that under your arm.

I put it under my arm, take another drink.

Amanda stands at the basin, looking at the blood on the thin rubber gloves she took from a first-aid kit and rolled onto her hands before slicing me open. -Cord blood.

I drink some more.

She peels the gloves off.

I point at her bare hands. -Be careful.

She frowns.

— It's dead, Joe. I mean, how many times do you have to be told? The Vyrus dies outside its host. It's a pussy bug.

She runs water over the bloody steel in the sink.

— The umbilicals you saw in that cooler. The Coalition must want the cord blood.

I watch the blood swirl, turn pink in the water, and run down the drain.

She stares at her reflection in the mirror over the sink.

— Amazing stuff, cord blood. Very rich in stem cells. Not like bone marrow rich, but really useful stuff. I mean, as soon as you start thinking about the Vyrus, really thinking about it and what it does, right away you have to start thinking about white blood cells. I mean, blood cells in general, because you know it cant have too much to do with plasma. And you don't think too much about platelets, either. I mean, sure, you can get caught up in them if you want to study clotting factors and stuff.

She turns and takes the cloth from under my arm.

The bleeding has stopped, the wound sealed. -But that's not the essence of the Vyrus.

She squeezes the cloth, and my blood drips into the sink.

— The essence is that it consumes. It attacks. So it makes sense, I mean, this is so obvious, but it makes sense that it goes after white blood cells. Not just to attack them before they attack it, but to invade them. Make them do what it wants them to do. I mean, the T cell counts in infected blood is off the chart, especially cytotoxic Ts. Memory T cells, also out of whack. But suppressor Ts, like, barely there. Which means the cytotoxic Ts, the ones that fight invaders, should be going berserk and fighting the whole body. Killing everything. But they don't.

She drops the towel.

— Cause the memory T count is so high. They keep the cytotoxics from getting out of hand. They, right, they remind them what to attack and what not to attack.

She looks at me in the mirror.

— Until you haven't fed. Then the memory Ts start to die. Poor little cytotoxic Ts don't know what to do. They go totally crazy.

She runs water over her hands, washing away the blood from the towel. -But they all start as little baby stem cells. They all start the same. Nothing but potential.

She turns off the water.

— Like the babies you saw in that nursery.

She blinks.

— I'm not saying they know what they're doing. But if the guys at the top are saving cord blood for themselves to feed on, it's probably really, really good. I mean.

She licks her lips, frowns. -The rich have a habit of saving the best for themselves. / ought to know.

She swallows.

— So if they like it so much, if it makes them feel so good, I mean, maybe it s the stem cells. All those.

She tries to smile, falls far short. -All those babies.

She holds up a hand. -Excuse me.

She throws up in the sink.

I watch as she rinses her mouth and spits it out. -Sorry. Grass. I guess.

She splashes water in her face, blots with the bottom of her shirt. -I guess.

She keeps her face covered. -I guess.

She pulls her face out, smiling sick as she cries. -I guess I'm not as tough as I think I am.

I take a drink. -Here.

I offer her the bottle. -Get tougher.

I stand behind her, looking at one of her monitors.

She taps on her keyboard, tears dried. -This fair?

I shrug. -There's no such thing as fair. But its enough.

She hits Enter.

— Need me to write it down? — III remember.

She looks up at me. -I mean, how could you forget? — Yeah. How could I forget.

She looks at her desk, moves a few papers. -Fuck.

I look at a clock. -Yeah, fuck.

I go to the chair and pick up my jacket. -Guess you got some work to do.

She picks up several of the papers, shuffles them, drops them in a shredder, listens to it whine. -Yeah. I mean, new priorities. I mean, Cure is still about a cure, but.

She looks at the floor, at the people on the floors below it. -We'll need to start being a whole lot more selective.

I put on my jacket.

— And you'll need to buy guns.

She looks at me. -Yeah. I mean, so many guns.

She comes around the desk and walks with me to the door. -Thanks for, like, getting Sela out of here before you said anything. You were right about that. She would have freaked out. Sela, she's, I mean, so moral. Something like this, coming from you, she would have, I mean, she would have needed to blame someone. So. I mean, she totally would have killed you for not trying to save them. Or something. And that would have sucked.

I open the door and go out.

She grabs the tail of my jacket. -It's not your fault, Joe. You couldn't save them by yourself.

I pull loose. -Never crossed my mind to try.

Figure.

Figure it how you want. Figure it goes back. Way back. Don't lie to yourself about it. When Menace says, You know where they come from, he's right. I

know where they come from. They come from that hole in the ground. Figure no one needs to stick a needle in their brain to make them dumb and docile. Figure they've been bred that way. Born in a hole, live in a hole, bleed in a hole, die in a hole. And when they're dead, figure their bones ground up with the gravel and mixed into cement.

Look at this city. Look at your city. Look at the sidewalk under your feet. Look at the foundations under the buildings.

You're walking on their bones. You're living in their skeletons.

Figure that's the story.

Figure that's the whole story and there's no changing it.

Figure life goes on and doesn't care.

That's how I figure it. Out the front door of the Cure house, down the steps and into the car Amanda called and has waiting for me. Staring out the window, not bothering to look for the tail I know is behind me. Looking at the streets where I live. Or do my little imitation of life. I figure it all the way down.

The advantage of one eye?

Brothers and sisters, you just fucking see less of what's going on.

Enough of a blessing to make a man think about putting out the other one.

I have a phone number.

It belongs to someone whose life I saved once. That might count for something, if she hadn't saved mine twice.

Borrowing the driver's cell, I call it. Not sure if I want it to still work. Not sure if I want anything but to be hung up on when my voice is recognized.

It still works.

And I'm not hung up on.

So in the spirit of poking out my remaining eye, I tell a story.

A story told, you cant untell it. It has to run its course to the end. The story I tell, it ends bloody. Or it will, anyhow.

Like I know any other kind of story.

Car lets me off well below Fourteenth.

Deep in Society turf. Far from the border. Far as possible from the blade that's coming for my head and all the things it now knows.

Moves to make.

People to see.

Stories to tell.

– 'Lo, Joe. Long time no see.

I come up the tenement steps. -Just saw you earlier tonight, Hurl.

He pushes up the brim of his hat. -Sure, an1 so it was. Still an all, seems some time ago. Funny dat, ain't it?

I put my hands in my pockets.

— Well, put it that way, does seem a long time. But I don't see anything funny in it.

He hooks a thumb in a suspender. -Well, humor is a funny ting. Ta each his own.

I point at the door behind him. -Terry in? — Sure he is. -Can I see him?

— Sure ya can, Joe. Nobody Terry d like ta see more den yerself. C'mon in and be at home.

He raps hard on the door and It's pulled open.

Just inside are three skinny guys in faded fatigue jackets, light bouncing off their shaved heads and the barrels of their shotguns.

I look at Hurley. -Not the kind of we're all one greeting I'm used to getting at a Society house.

He nods. -Well, since dat last time.

He rubs his belly where the machine gun nearly cut him in two that last time. -Since dat last time, Terry gave me charge of security.

I scratch my cheek. -Gone back to the old-school ways, have you?

He shakes his head.

— It's a complicated world, Joe. I spend more of my life confused den clear. But some tings don't seem ta me ta need changin. An bein smart bout who ya let in yer house is one a dem.

I check out the three partisans and their guns. -They itchy types?

He frowns.

— I'm a professional, Joe. Dese are my boys. Dey know how ta hold dere water and do as dere told.

I hold up a hand. -Didn't mean to imply anything different.

He smiles.

— Course ya didn't. Ya have some manners. Weren't born inna barn, was ya? Not dat dered be anyting wrong if ya had been.

He gives me a shot with his elbow, almost breaking a rib. -Seein' as I was. Born inna barn. See.

He guffaws.

I rub my ribs. -Sure, I see, Hurl. Real rib tickler.

He points at me and roars.

— Rib tickler! I get it, Joe! I get it! You go on in now. Hell be eager ta see ya, Terry will. Go on in.

I go in, leaving him to chuckle over the comic implications of our witty little exchange.

Hurley. Just when you start thinking he's maybe not as dumb as mud, he

trips you up and sucks your shoe off and leaves you stuck in it.

The partisans eyeball me.

I flick a finger at the door at the end of the hall. -Shall we?

One of them backs off and lifts his gun and points it at my face. -Pat-down.

I raise my hands. -Sure thing.

I turn to face the wall.

— Best make sure I don't got any nails on me. I go in there with a couple of those, and your boss is gonna be pissed as hell.

— I tell you, Joe, I didn't expect to see you so, I don't know, promptly.

I pick at some dry creek-scum on my pants.

— Everyone's so surprised with me being on time tonight. My reputation must be worse than I thought.

He fiddles his glasses. -I just thought it might take you a little longer to work something out. Sure, the

girl is fond of you and all, but I just thought you d have to do something more nuanced than to walk in to her and ask for a bunch of money. Relationships, I've mostly found, are, I don't know, bruised by money talk. It's a shame really, that something as disconnected from real life as money, something that's just purely this monolithically theoretical concept that we've plastered onto life, that something fictional should be able to harsh our personal relationships the way it does.

He lifts his hands in surrender to market forces.

— But there it is. The stuff is everywhere. And people, they've, for better or worse, they've agreed we need it to get by.

I look at a poster on the wall. The Concert for Bangladesh. -If it makes you feel any better, I had to use some nuance. Had to finesse it some, working the whole thing out.

He raises his eyebrows.

— I like that idea, I like the idea of you using some finesse. A quality like that, it could make all the difference for a person like you, Joe.

He lowers his eyebrows.

— A shame it, lets just say it, a shame it's too late for that kind of thing to change how we interact. Some of our conversations over the years, they

would have benefited from a little finesse. -So you say.

He takes off his glasses, folds and opens the arms a couple times. -Yeah.

He puts them back on. -So I say. For what its worth, and all.

I point at the glasses. -Something I wanted to ask. -Yeah? — Why do you wear those things?

He purses his lips. -Urn.

I nod.

— Yeah, um. Me, I never wore the things, but still I notice the Vyrus sharpened my eyes. Strange it didn't fix whatevers wrong with yours.

He takes them off again, looks at them. -Yeah, well, yeah, sure. Honestly. These are just, you know, glass. Just. Well

I'm not the only one with this, you know.

He puts them on.

— This affectation. I wore them before I was infected. Always felt weird without them. Even though they don't make me see any, I don't know, any more clearly. -Hnuh.

He sits there, looking out from behind his play glasses. I look at the room some more. His little office. A bedroom squirreled away at the back of a tenement. Typical Society digs. Street-salvage furniture, rock and protest posters, books by Noam Chomsky.

Terry pushes a button on the oscillating fan that's moving the dead air around and it kicks up a gear.

— I try not to use it. The things burden the grid almost as much as an air conditioner. That's as much for our finances at this point as it is for the environment. So.

He watches me.

I let him.

He shakes his head. -So, money. Joe.

— Not much finesse in that transition, Terry.

He leans forward, elbows on knees. -Money. Joe.

I point at a coffee cup filled with pens that sits atop his press-wood desk. -It's an account. You'll want to write down the number and password.

He picks up a pen and a piece of notepaper with a little circle of green arrows on it to let you know that no new trees were killed to make it. -Shoot.

My hand twitches. But the partisans took my gun.

So instead of putting a bullet in him, I give him the numbers. I tell him how much Amanda put in the account.

He looks at the numbers on the sheet of paper.

— She must really care about you. No joking around, Joe. I may not like the idea of money as an expression of affection, and she may, I don't know, have it to spare, but this seems like someone trying to make a point about how much they value you. Not that I'm advocating using dollars to put a value on human or any other kind of life.

I wave a hand.

— Like I said, I used some nuance.

He looks at me over the lenses of those glasses that don't let him see any better.

— Tell you, man, I'd sure like to know what that was like. -Well, Terry, seeing as this money is supposed to put me back on the map down here. Get me a place out of the way, some kind of privileges if I want to move around a little.

He nods. -Sure, man, that was the deal.

I stand.

— Well seeing as that's the deal, and seeing as were maybe on the way back to being on something like friendly terms, why don't I tell you what it was like.

He sets the paper and pen aside. -Something on your mind, Joe?

I shake my head.

— Just like I said, just want to explain what it was like. Working some nuance for the girl.

I look at the floor between my feet, a long gash in the wood where

something heavy was once dragged over it.

— What it was like was, it was like going down a hole and finding dozens of stupid, mute, starving kids with hoses stuck in their arms to make it easy to get their blood out. It was like going down that hole, and looking down it, and seeing a string of red lights, going deep, lights letting you know that there were hundreds more of them down there. And I'm wondering.

I look at him.

— That sound like something you might have seen at one time or another, Terry?

He takes off the glasses, looks at them, puts them aside. -Yes.

He rubs his eyes. -Yes it does.

I nod. -Man. Were you smart.

He looks at me. -How's that? — Having your boys take my gun before I came in here. That just saved your

life.

— Its interesting. In a way. Being able to talk about it. The terrible thing about a secret, its that, I don't know, that pressure it creates. Right? That internal variance. Like with laws of diffusion, how a liquid or a gas is always seeking to spread itself evenly through a medium, yeah? So you exhale smoke, which I still wish you wouldn't do in here by the way, but you exhale, and rather than it doing what I wish it would do and just kind of cling to you, it gradually spreads, diffuses into the air. And like, I've thought this before, how a secret is kind of the same. It wants to, this is pretty spacey, one of my spacey ideas, but how it wants to spread itself. Like smoke. Diffuse into the atmosphere until its evenly distributed. Yeah? And that, if the secret is bottled up in you, that creates pressure. Man, secrets, they just want out. Want to get everywhere. Especially, and this isn't always the case, but especially if the secret is the truth. Get me? Cause the truth wants to get out there, get into all the nooks and crannies, get into everyone's heads. The truth doesn't want to be bottled up, it wants to be free. And I'm down with that. You know I'm down with that. That's what the Society is about, getting the truth out.

He keeps rubbing his forehead, pressing his fingertips deep into his temples, eyes closed. -But not all at once. Not like, you know, like when something is under extreme

pressure and you release it, it just, man, it explodes out. Yeah? People get hurt. And, our life here, our life with the Vyrus, that's not like can-of-soda pressure. You release this truth you don't get some mess sprayed on the wall. The Vyrus, that's bomb pressure. That's, and I don't think this is hyperbole, but that's nuclear-device pressure. That's an explosion that rocks the world to its foundation. And.

He stops rubbing, rests his head in his hand, eyes still closed. -And this, this secret were talking about. That, that instillation in Queens, that's pressure on a whole different order. That's like, like, if the Vyrus is a nuke, that place is like a doomsday device.

He opens his eyes. -That place, Joe.

He lifts his head, looks at me. -That place is like a bomb that kills us all.

He points east, without looking there.

— People know about that, and there is nothing, nothing short of, man, nothing short of Jesus-Mohammed-Buddha-Gaia-Jehovah itself that saves us.

He wipes his mouth. -So, to talk about it, man, something that exerts that kind of pressure, to talk

about it for the first time in decades, that's just blowing my mind here. That's, the whole thing, its like a mirror being held up, when you take something like that out of the box and look at it after so long. Its a, man, its trip and a half.

He stares at his trembling hand. -A trip and a half.

He moves his hand, reaches for his prop glasses, slips them on. -But a thing like that, it belongs in its box.

I study that gash in the floor a little more.

— Well, I know you re no fool, Terry. Me the jury's still out on. Even so, I think I read this one pretty clear.

I lean down, pluck a stray splinter from the edge of the gash. -This thing, it doesn't even need to get out in the real world for it to raise hell. This thing, it spreads in our community, our people will go berserk.

I roll the splinter between my fingers.

— Dog with a parasite, chewing at its own insides. Ugly. Ugly things will happen. Hard to keep a wrap on the whole deal once they start happening.

I look at the ceiling. -Something like this gets out, like you say, people gonna start looking at

themselves in the mirror.

I shrug.

— Lots of them, they're gonna figure, in for a penny, may as well go for the whole pound. Been living off blood already, so why start worrying now about where some of it comes from. Some others.

I shake my head.

— This would be the line. Down here especially. Types get drawn to your turf, they hear about this, they wont want to go on staying undercover. Not if it means that pit in Queens stays full of bleeding kids.

I poke the tip of my index finger with the splinter.

— So yeah, I get it. Something like this, it needs to stay a secret. I know the score. I've kept your secrets before. Your backdoor deals with the Coalition. That thing with the shamblers a couple years back. All those bodies I've put in the river. I can keep a secret. And I sure as shit know one that needs to be kept when I stumble into it.

I draw blood from myself. -Something funny about it. Know what I mean?

He shakes his head. -No, man, I don't know anything funny about it.

I lick the bead of blood from my fingertip. My own personal Vyrus. -Funny thing is, for a while now, I've had it sussed that you're not just looking to find some kind of accord with the Coalition. Not just looking to get on an even footing so you could pressure them into going public alongside the Society. Use all those connections they have to smooth the way. Some time now, I've had it figured how you were never too happy about having to leave them in the first place. All your history with Predo, I've had it figured how maybe he leapfrogged you into running the enforcers and all that. How that was a bitter pill for you. How you went off and started your revolution. A revolution, you always call it. Not like you were looking to do your own thing and let bygones be bygones, but like you were looking to overthrow something. And it stands to figure, once something gets overthrown, someone's gonna have to step in and take control. Me, I've been figuring for a while now that that's what you're about, Terry. All that building a better world for everybody bullshit. I've had you figured for some time as Predo s flip side. Just looking to run the fucking show. Settle some scores. Like everyone else.

I point the sliver at him.

— But looking at the way you're trying to keep that hand from shaking, I'm figuring a little different now.

I lean toward him.

— You've been thinking about knocking off the Coalition alright. You've been thinking about sitting in Predo's chair. And not just bis chair, but one of those chairs on the higher floors, where the show gets run. Not so you can teach Predo who's top man, and not so you can even past scores.

I lean back, pick something from between my teeth with the splinter. -You, Terry Bird, you've been thinking about that hole in the ground. You've been thinking about what's in it. And you've been thinking about filling it in, stopping it up, and getting it out of the world. You've been thinking about being a savior.

I spit. -And that only works if it stays a secret till you're in charge.

He presses the bridge of his glasses tight to his face. -Only you, Joe, only you.

He shakes his head.

— Only you could describe a, you know, describe a man striving to do the right thing, and make it sound like he was, I don't know, like he was running the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Only you.

I flick the splinter away.

— Whatever.

I stand.

— Anyway, I get it. You need this thing to stay secret. The world Isn't ready. Infecteds aren't ready. No one is ready. When they're ready, you'll tell them they're ready. And you'll march in and make everything OK. I get it. I get it. I know this is how it has to be. I get it. Motherfucker. I get it.

He studies me.

— I know you get it, Joe. When it all shakes out, you're pretty dependable in one way.

He slips the hand he's been trying to keep still from between his legs. -You're no boat rocker. Truth is, and I don't want to say you don't get the job done in your own way, but the truth is, you're no revolutionary. If you d been around in the early days, at the barricades, I have a feeling you'd have been on the other side, man. Your own back is all you've ever really been out there looking to take care of, and the best way to keep, I don't know, to keep safe, is to keep things the way they are. Just maintain that old status quo.

He holds up his hand, looks at its new steadiness.

— Just the old tried and true for you, man. Steady as she goes. Never any question that you can be trusted to keep a secret when the alternative would

be, you know, bringing the whole world down around your head and changing everything.

I get a cigarette from my pocket. -Yeah, keeping earth-shattering secrets, its my specialty.

I put it in my mouth.

— Give me time to think about my own self-interest and I can be counted on to jump to that side of the room every time.

I light it. -Too bad there was no one to spell it out for me this time around.

He stops looking at his hand.

I suck on my cigarette. -I told the Horde girl, Ter.

His mouth hangs open in a way I've never seen before. -What the hell, Joe?

— It's how I got your money. Its what she wanted. To know where all the blood comes from. So I found out. And I told her. And you got paid. Nice when everyone gets what they want. -Oh. Jesus. Did you, Jesus, Joe, did you tell Sela?

— No.

— Thank Christ for that.

— But the girl will have told her by now.

He sits there, staring at me.

I blow smoke.

— Not that big a deal. Get your buddy Predo on the phone. You guys move fast, you can contain it. Cure has no contacts in the life. Horde cant spread the word. You can cap that one.

His eyes are scanning side to side, reading the immediate future. -We'll need to. Yes. OK. I. OK. You should stay close, Joe. I may need you for something. And it goes without saying, you know, that this changes things, you stick here where you belong and well find a place for you again. A real place, not some corner to hide in. It'll take a few days to, you know, to contain this, but once that's done, once you've helped out with that effort, well have a spot for you down here.

I watch the smoke from my cigarette drift.

— Sure thing. Only you might want to wait on that until you talk it over with Lydia.

His eyes stop moving, draw a bead on my face.

I diffuse some smoke to his side of the room.

— I called her on my way over. Told her about the hole. Told her what I saw down there.

He doesn't move.

I shake my head. -She didn't really believe me.

He licks his lips.

I nod. -Yeah, funny, right?

I take a drag.

— But she started believing me more when I told her I found out while doing some special reconnaissance for you. Told her she was supposed to meet you over here. Told her how messed up you were when I told you. How you started immediately drafting a statement and an action plan. How you asked me to tell her to get together her bulls and come here so you can fill her in on the plans for dealing with this monstrosity.

I blow a smoke ring.

— Should be here soon. Her and her bulls. Fury and that bunch. Ready to hear how the Society is going to start changing the status quo. Today.

I flick some ash on the floor.

— No. No status quo this time around for any of us. The Horde girl, she was already talking about investing in some guns. Bright kid, that girl. She sees the writing on the wall. Everyone's gonna have to pick a side. Especially seeing all the bodies I left lying around Queens. Not that I was trying to make a point or sign my work or anything, but Predos gonna know I was there. Figure he's already got his people arming up and closing the gates.

I wave some smoke from between us.

— No filling that hole in, Terry. No sealing it up like it was never there. Its there. And whether I walk out of here or not, too many people know now. I got no idea if the truth wants to be free, but its out of the cage. And its gonna kill some people. Anyway. You told me once there was a war coming. Looks like it's here.

I scratch my chin.

— So. You want to call those tough boys and Hurley into the room and make a mess of me and try to get me to change my tune when Lydia gets here?

I point at the door.

— Or you want me to get lost so you can start making a plan to change the world?

He looks around the room, a man suddenly across a border, not sure how he got there. Then he nods. Claps his hands once. Stands. -Yeah. OK. You better take off.

He bounces his head up and down.

— Yeah, man. Brave new world. Brave new world. Change. Embrace it or get swept aside. That's the, you know, the deal. Like a wave, change is. This one, this one will be like a tsunami. And I think I need to have some alone time to get my balance for this.

He points at the door.

— Yeah, you do your thing, Joe. Probably better you're not here for this. I need to do some clear thinking. Look at myself in an unadorned light and come up with some truth.

I drop my smoke, grind it on the floor.

— Fine. You change your mind and want your boys to kill me, you got between here to the front door.

He reaches for me.

— You know, man, I'm just wondering. I'm just wondering if I shouldn't thank you for this. This is, you know, this is a unique opportunity for us all. And I'm not sure I shouldn't thank you for bringing it on.

He squeezes my shoulder. -But you're gonna die for it, Joe. Not tonight. But, you know, pretty soon.

He lets go of me. -As soon as someone has a second to spare, they're going to kill you.

I head out. -Your hand is shaking again, Terry.

— An1 how was it, Joe? All knitted up between the two a yas?

I stop on the stoop to light a fresh one.

— Well, you know how it is with old pals, Hurley. You have your fights and your disagreements, but in the end, you're too far under each other's skin to really hold a grudge. -Glad ta hear it, Joe, glad to hear it.

He takes my gun, knuckles and razor from a pocket. -An will ya be needin' dese?

I take them from his hands. -Thanks. Hate to need them and be caught without.

I go down the steps.

— Keep the welcome mat out. Sounds like Lydia and some of her girls are coming by.

He raises a thick finger.

— Dem ladies, ya know dey don't like ta be called girls. -So I hear. So I hear. -Take care den, Joe.

— Thanks. And a piece of advice for you, if you like. -Sure, an why not? — Think about rolling up your trouser. -An why would dat be?

I walk down the street, trailing smoke. -What I hear, there's high water on the way. And everyone's gonna get wet.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

How you get what you want is, you make sure no one knows what it is you want.

Now, the world full of new hazards, everyone charting new courses to avoid collisions that are inevitable, I give in.

Pulled, I go west. To where forces draw me. I have time now. To take what I want.

But a new gravity catches me on Eighth Avenue. Catches me and smashes me down and drops me in an alley with my back to a wall and my ass in a pile of trash.

It bears down, rage distilled.

And stops, hovering over my head.

I cough up some of my own blood and spit it at his polished shoes. -Christ, Predo, don't you have more to keep you busy right now?

The two enforcers make a move toward me, and something comes out of Predo s throat that makes them stand down and hang back at the mouth of the alley by the car that Predo burst out of to grab me and throw me into this pile of garbage.

I give him a look.

— Did you just growl?

He stands, rigid, sweep of bangs hanging over his lowered forehead, drops of my blood falling from the knuckles of one of his black leather-wrapped fists. -I have no end of things to keep me busy, Pitt. No end of worries and concerns.

He bares his teeth.

— On the best of nights, I have an endless list of tasks that must be accomplished. And with each following sunset, it is replenished. And now.

He draws a finger across his forehead, pushing his bangs aside, leaving a smear of my blood on his skin.

— That list will be torn to bits. Rendered irrelevant. Those concerns and details relating to the security of the Coalition must now be cast aside for a matter more pressing. Wartime policy.

His head snaps back and he looks at the night sky above the alley. -Do you know what concerns me most, Pitt?

I put a hand out and brace myself against a Dumpster and get myself to my feet, trying to figure what hurts me most. -Got me. The health of your portfolio?

He points at the sky. -Satellites. Antennae. Wireless signals.

He looks at the ground, points at the concrete. -Fiber optics.

He looks at me.

— The wealth of data and information around us, that is what concerns me. The ease with which it is collected and transmitted. But most of all, Pitt, I am thinking about cellphones. And their little cameras.

He takes a step toward me, oblivious to a bottle underfoot and the glass that scatters about when it explodes.

— I am thinking of war between the Clans. Now. In an age when children scamper about with digital cameras in hand to snap pictures of their nannies sneaking drinks from the liquor cabinet. I am thinking about how long it will take before there is a visible confrontation between opposing Clan members. I am thinking of photographs and video of such an encounter, of men and women fatally shot, but still fighting, uploaded to the Internet. Aired on cable news. Analyzed by law enforcement and the military.

He takes another step, the shards of glass ground to powder. -I am thinking of the brink. The final precipice I have used my influence and

resources to steer us away from time and again for decades. I am thinking of the abyss we can all now clearly see between our feet as we stand at that brink with only our heels on the final edge of land.

He stops taking steps.

— Yes. I do have more to keep me busy. I have thousands of people, a way of life that goes back centuries, a culture threatened with extinction by self-immolation, I have all that to tend to and attempt to preserve. But none of it, I assure you, is so pressing that I cannot spare the moment it will take to kill the childish mercenary covered in years of blood who has pushed us all here because he caught sight of where his food comes from and he doesn't like the way the ranchers treat the cattle.

His fingers flex.

Keeper of secrets. Master of spies and murder.

Fed on infants blood.

If he gets his hands on me, my bones will shatter like rotted wood. My flesh will tear. And my blood will wash across the alley like dirty water.

He's old and strong and fast and I cannot beat him.

But I don't care to die easily at his hands.

My hand flicks beneath the tail of my jacket and the gun appears in it like a

magic trick. I raise my arm, inhaling, and in the space between inhaling and exhaling, everyone and everything in the alley frozen in that instant, I pull the trigger, the gun aimed at his face.

A drop of blood hanging from my eyebrow falls into my eye.

I blink.

And when I open my eye he is in front of me, the bullet meant for him has put a hole in the brick of the alley wall. His hand slaps mine down and away, the gun flying.

But I'm OK with that. That's OK by me. Because I may not have the gun anymore, but I do have the straight razor in my other hand. And he's close enough now for me to use it.

I cut, the blade cleaving the space between us, flaring in the shifting light cast by a TV in one of the windows overhead, arcing at his throat.

And then the razor isn't in my hand.

I flinch, looking for it between Predo's fingers, expecting to feel it across my own neck.

Down the alley, the brief flash of light on the straight razor's blade is echoed in twin blurs of white passing in front of the enforcers, leaving behind matched headless corpses, wavering before the final fall.

— You're in the wrong place to be settling your disputes.

The skeleton wrapped in its white shroud is next to us.

It places the blade of the razor under my chin. -You should know that, Simon.

I don't move, not even to lodge my usual objection to being called by my real name.

Keeping the razor as close to the end of my life as possible, it turns its sunken eyes on Predo.

— You. Your Clan observes treaties and laws. Rules of behavior modeled on the ones those sheep out there follow. To humor you once, we looked at a line you drew on a map. We agreed it would be a very bad idea for any of you to cross that line. And here you are. On the wrong side of your line.

Predo licks his lips. -I am a representative of the Coalition.

The skeleton shakes its head. -You're a policeman outside his jurisdiction. You're where you don't belong.

The skeleton pushes his face close to Predo s. -You're not Enclave.

He lifts the blade, forcing my chin higher. -This one, what he is can be disputed.

The razor folds away from my skin.

The skeleton shows it to Predo. -But you are meat. Ignorant and unclean and in need of purging.

Predo sweats. -Killing me will be considered an act of utmost aggression.

The skeleton coughs laughter. -Yes. And then? Will your Coalition send more of those to threaten us?

It waves a hand at the two headless corpses being loaded into the trunk of the car by another skeleton.

It shakes its head. -Killing you would be a mercy. But there will be none of that for you tonight.

It points at the car. -Go on.

Predo backs away, watching my eye. -A final word, Pitt.

He smooths the length of his tie. -Do you know you've tipped your hand?

I don't move.

Predo stops, hand on the open door of his car. -I still don't know what it is you're after.

He waves an arm, taking in the neighborhood. -But I know where it is.

He drops the arm. -You'll be dead soon.

He gets into the car. -But I'll be certain to find what it is you value so much. Before you die.

The door closes, the engine hums to life, and the car rolls away onto Eighth, not at all burdened by the dead it carries.

I look at the skeleton. -Do I know you?

He offers me the razor. -We've met, Simon.

I take the blade from his desiccated hand. -Yeah, I wasn't sure, you guys all look alike to me.

I drop the razor in my pocket and take out a smoke. -But seeing as you've met me, you maybe know my name's Joe.

The other skeleton joins us. This one, he's less of a skeleton than his boss, but he's on his way. All of them, all Enclave, they're all a bunch of withered tendon and bone held together by bleached skin. No surprise, that's what happens when you spend all your time starving yourself.

The first one shakes his head, looking like the gesture might snap his twig neck. -Your name is what Daniel said your name is. Simon.

I walk a few steps, kick some garbage aside and find my gun. -Daniels dead.

He coughs that laugh of his. -So you say, Simon. So you say.

He points at the mouth of the alley. -You're wanted.

He starts to walk, I follow.

What's the point of running? If they want to, these guys can just pull my legs off and carry me.

Besides, they'll be taking me where I was headed in the first place.

It's not easy, but if you close your eyes, you can remember a time before the Meatpacking District became a vomitorium for clubbers and people with too much fucking money to spend on dinner for two anyplace that doesn't have a six-month waiting list for a reservation. A time when the cobbles here weren't quaint, when they were walked by tranny hookers and teenage hustlers, and cruised by limos looking for rough trade. Course the Enclave settled in their warehouse over here even before that scene. They settled here when those cobbles drained the blood of livestock, and white coats and meat hooks were the only fashion statements being made.

Still, the crowds waiting in line to get into the after-hours joints that are just now opening their doors are full of enough clowned posers that the all-white look the Enclave sport doesn't raise an eyebrow as we cut down Little West Twelfth to the final block before the water. Maybe a few club kids watch as we climb the steps to the loading dock and the door slides open to let us in, but none of them scurry over to find out what the scene inside is like. They know it's not for them. They can read it. The total lack of graffiti on the place, the

silence, that chill that rises from it, the scraps of street rumor that adhere to it.

Bad shit goes down in there.

They know it. They feel it. So they stay in line like good little robots and wait their turn to flash a fake ID at the doorman so they can go inside some carefully padded pleasure dome and pretend they're living on the edge for a few hours.

Inside the Enclave warehouse, it's all edge.

A hundred-odd fanatics, weaning themselves from the blood the Vyrus demands, pushing their metabolisms to the crazed point Amanda Horde described, when memory T cells will stop reminding their own immune systems what not to attack.

The Vyrus, pushed to starvation, jacks their nervous systems. Desperate, it hammers on them to feed. At the edge of death, it empties its hosts of all resources, strengthening them for the kill.

Strong, fast, impervious to pain; blow a limb off one and they'll pick it up to beat you to death with it.

They vibrate with insanity.

That's what the kids on the street feel.

I feel it too. It goes to my guts, the madness in this place. The clattering of

their bones striking one another as they endlessly spar, honing killing skills. The numb and complete silence that falls when they meditate on the Vyrus, focusing their wills to resist its hunger. The whisper of dry lips and tongues when they break their fasts and sip spoonfuls of blood to appease the Vyrus.

The fasting, its not a rejection of the Vyrus1 hunger, its a supplication.

They are not its enemy. They are its acolytes.

Suggest to one of them that the Vyrus is a virus, an earthly thing, and they'll laugh in your face. Or chew it off.

Heresy is something they take pretty seriously around here. And rejecting the Vyrus as a supernatural agency of redemption is about as heretical as it gets for these guys.

All they want, all they starve for, is to be like the Vyrus, to let it gradually feed on them, creep into their bones and tissue, and transform them into something other, something that will stay in this world, while being entirely of another.

Fanatics to the ground, when they've found one who can complete that transformation, and he's taught the others to do the same, they think they'll become immune to sun and all the weapons of this world. And then, like all true believers, they II go out and kill everyone not just like them.

It's weird shit.

I don't follow it.

And I don't like coming here.

But I used to be welcome all the same. The old boss, he had it in his head I was really one of them, that I just didn't know it yet.

But he died.

Daniel. Old man. Crazy old man.

I stop thinking about how he died, how the weight of his corpse was nothing in my arms, I put it away where you keep the things you don't want to think about. That place, It's goddamn crowded at this point.

I put it away so I can focus on the Enclave, mind myself so I don't end up dead.

The two that brought me inside leave me as soon as the door slides shut behind us and darkness cover drops. I can hear more of them around me, breathing, barely breathing, meditating. I can hear others softly grunting, the whip of their limbs through space, the crack as they strike one another, a splinter of bones. I can smell their decaying flesh and the special taint of starving Vyrus that clings to them.

My pupils open, gathering light from candles scattered across the huge

space. It looks the same as the last time I saw it. I figured that would be the very last time I'd see it at all. The last time I'd see it before I came back to burn it down.

But the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

I had to come back without a torch.

I want to see my girl, after all. -Simon.

I look at him, coming out of the gloom, wrapped in white like the other Enclave.

I nod. -Nice suit.

He stops ten feet from me, fingers a lapel of the spotless white three-piece. -Yeah-huh, right?

He tilts his head at the lines of squatting Enclave deep in meditation. Beyond them others spar, flickering, frozen for an occasional heartbeat as they study the others defense, looking for a weakness before striking again. -Like, I had no problem with the color scheme and all, but there was no way I was gonna be sporting a toga or a shawl or something.

I'm not paying attention to him, I'm paying attention to the others, watching them as my pupils widen and take in more light and the warehouse stretches and I see how many of them there are. More than a hundred. Many more. Twice that. At least.

I look at him.

He nods. -Oh yeah, man, I been busy.

— Truth to an old friend, it ain't easy. This shit ain't easy at all. Like, let me tell you, man, that meditation shit, that is some boring-ass shit. Just sitting there, trying to get into the Vyrus and all that. And the sparring. At first I was so down with that. I wanted to get up and go kung fu. But that shit is hard work. And it fucking hurts, man. Enclave, there's no such thing as a pulled punch with Enclave. You have to, what you have to do is, here, let me show you. Punch me as hard as you can.

He comes close, crossing the small chamber he led me to in the lofts above the warehouse floor. -Seriously, man, just hit me as hard as you can.

I look at the two Enclave sitting on the floor just outside the open door.

He waves a hand.

— No, man, don't worry about them, they won't do shit I don't tell them to do. They're cool. Just take a poke at me. You know you want to. -Count, why the fuck would I hit you when you're expecting it?

He shakes his head.

— Same old Joe Pitt, no fun at all. Here I am, full of all this new knowledge, all these new skills, changed and wanting to share, and there you are, grumpy as ever, a total fucking drag.

He does a karate kick, pummeling the air with one of his bare feet, the one with the twisted bones jutting from it, the one I mangled for him.

He lowers the foot and smiles.

— But it's cool, it's cool. All I'm trying to do is say that this shit ain't easy. Being Enclave. I mean, sure, I understand that the Vyrus chooses you for this shit. You're either Enclave or you're not, that's what your boy Daniel used to say, yeah? Shit, but, I wouldn't even be here if that wasn't the case. Come to it, you wouldn't be here if that wasn't the case. Daniel hadn't given us both the Enclave stamp of approval, we couldn't come into this place except to get executed. But the point I'm weaving around here is, even if the Vyrus says you're Enclave, this shit is still damn tough. Like, I know this may come as a

shock considering what you think of me, but like this shit is transformative. Really transformative.

He slaps a fist into his palm.

— OK, and I know that sounds redundant. Sure, like, because if the Vyrus doesn't transform you in the first place, then what the hell? But check it. Cause the Vyrus doesn't make you a different person. Yeah? So like me, I didn't suddenly stop being a spoiled-rotten, rich brat just because I needed to drink blood to live. More like, the fact I was already so self-absorbed just made it easier for me to make the transition. Like the rich already live off the fat of the land, so why not the blood as well, yeah? So, but, this stuff, to get it, to really get it, you have to work at it. Well, talk about new concepts for me. Work? Whoa! Not on my agenda.

He leans in. -But being in charge here after Daniel cracked it, that was on my agenda.

He pushes his eyebrows way up.

— And that meant playing a role. Like, putting on the grave face, being all somber and talking in portentous sentences and shit, like so many of these guys do. It meant squatting in lines and pretending to think about the Vyrus. It meant learning that if someone was gonna swing at you, and really try to punch your rib cage out of your chest, that you needed to learn how to go with

the punch.

He stretches his arms at me and points with both index fingers. -Which you would have got to see I can do now if you d taken a shot like I asked, man.

He drops his arms.

— But the point is, you start to do all that, even if it's a total front, even if you've made a life out of doing just enough work to get by, even if all you re really thinking about is how cool its gonna be when you're in charge and get to call all the shots and cut this hard shit from the activities list, you keep doing it for all the wrong reasons, and it doesn't fucking matter. Because, dude, you are doing it.

He spreads his arms. -I'm saying, Look at me, man.

I look at him. White skin to match the suit. Bald. His once skinny frame, now a coat hanger for the designer threads.

He claps.

— I was trying, I was trying to front, and the whole time, what was really happening was I was becoming, man. I'm saying, to play the role, I had starve the Vyrus, yeah? And that required some effort. So next thing, I'm in the

meditation down there, and I'm really thinking about it. And all that shit I learned about it before, when I was studying it from the scientific angle, using my med-school chops to try and break it down, all that started to fade.

He puts his hands on his head.

— Cause I'm telling you, if this shit can really change an asshole like me, then it is not of this earth. Hear what I'm saying?

His hands shoot over his head. -I am a believer, man! I am in! And I love it!

He cocks a grin.

— And, Joe, all our shit, all our background and complication and all that shit, I am over it.

He reaches for me. -And I want you to join us, man!

I punch him.

And he rolls with it. Falls away from the blow, tumbles backward, and comes to his feet still grinning, and points at me. -I love you, man!

He comes at me faster than I can do anything about and wraps his arms

around me.

— I love you, Joe Pitt!

Put a crazy man in an asylum, then lay your money on the odds he gets worse. Closest thing to a sure bet.

— It's not like I'm just filled with crazy Vyrus-love and I want everyone to feel it, yeah? This is about something more tangible. Take a look and see if you get it.

We stand at the rail of the lofts, looking down at the pairs sparring in the middle of a circle of kneeling Enclave.

I look at them. I don't say anything.

Why bother? You want to know what's on the Count's mind, you wait for him to inhale before he blows the next load of words at you. -OK, so you're looking. And you re seeing it. There's way more of us.

He shows me five fingers, then shows me five more.

— We're doubling in size. It's crazy in here, all the new Enclave. We can barely find room for the new believers. Even with fasting as our primary tenet, we still have problems getting enough blood in here.

He points at a far corner where an Enclave has pulled the cover from a large sewage drain and another drops a sagging body down the exposed hole.

— Fast as we can drain one and toss it down there, we need another. Growth comes with costs, man. I learned that in school.

He shakes his head.

— But that's not the point, I'm getting off it again, the point. The point is all these new people were getting in. This new belief and energy. These people who need something in their lives, what we can give them.

I find a crack to fit a word in. -Thought the Vyrus did the choosing and the giving.

He looks around.

— Well, yeah, man, sure. But situations, they evolve. So in the past it was Daniel who saw when someone was Enclave or not, now someone else has to fill that role.

I look at him.

He gives a modest head shake.

— Hey, I didn't nominate myself. But like I said, I'm a changed dude, and I got some credibility around here. And, OK, I don't want to dis the big man's memory, and I'm not, but I'm saying that maybe in Daniels case that when he was looking for the Enclave in someone and there was a shade of doubt, maybe he gave them a pass. And maybe me, maybe I'm more inclusive. Like I

want these people to have what they need. Belief, change, newness. Transmutational experiences like mine.

He holds a hand parallel to the ground and waggles it. -And maybe, OK, maybe some around here don't feel this is the way.

He makes a fist and pops his thumb out of it and at the sky. -But there's more that do. Daniel, he was the man forever, and he was loved, still is, but he was on the conservative side. A lot of these brothers and sisters, they've been waiting to grow, they want change in their lifetimes. Sure they want to meditate and learn the nature of the Vyrus, but they also want to be here when it's time for the purge. When the world is remade to the Vyrus. They don't want to miss out. And I am down with that. It's a matter of how you come at your faith. I come at it like we need to spread it, we need to make it happen, that's what the Vyrus wants from us, that's why it makes us feeders, aggressors. It wants us to be aggressive. Yeah? So I say to these guys, Let's fucking aggress, man\

He points at the street door.

— Action like that tonight? Sending those hitters out to pick you up, giving them a weapons-free license to take care of any shit out there? That wouldn't have happened with Daniel. And they like that new attitude in here. They like that we stepped out and took care of some business on our own doorstep.

I raise a finger.

He bobs his head.

— Yeah, yeah, man, questions. Fire em up. -Just wondering how you got wind of me.

— Easy, man. Had an eye out for you the whole last year. You hit downtown, that news got to me in a hurry.

I grind my teeth. -Fucking Philip.

— Yeah, man, fucking Phil. That guy, again, there's a dude Daniel would never have had anything to do with, but me, having had a history with him, I was prepared to make use of his eyes on the street. He saw you, gave me a call. After that.

He leans his arms on the rail.

— Well shit, Joe, after that I knew it was a matter of time before you crossed no-man's-land to come here. Only thing I had trouble with was figuring out why it was taking you so long.

I watch another body go down the hole. -I had some things to do.

— Hey, don't we all?

He puts a hot, dry hand on mine. -But here you are, man. And that's good. That's good. That's really good.

I pull my hand away. -How's that, Count?

He scoots closer, smiles.

— Wanting you to come inside with us, man, that's not just about spreading the joy. Like I said, yeah? Like, Daniel fingered you as Enclave. That means something. That's credibility. So, things are going on here. Like.

He frowns.

— Like, sure, most of us are down with expansion, down with action, down with bringing on the purge. Like, in my interpretation of everything, maybe the final transmutation were supposed to make, maybe that's already happened. Maybe that's not supposed to be literal and physical like they've been thinking, maybe it's more a spiritual thing. And if that's the case, well, man, like I said, I've made that transmutation and then some.

He purses his lips. -It's a puzzler, and I don't want to sound full of myself, but I may just be the

Vyrus messiah.

He shakes his head. -I don't know for sure. Have to meditate on that shit some more. Anyhoo.

He snaps his fingers.

— Some others, a few, they don't believe in a need for speed, they think were going too fast. They think Daniel would disapprove. And that, that just causes all kinds of fucking problems. So having a guy like you, with Daniel-cred behind him, that's always a help. In this case, you can help big-time with a particular problem. But there's more to it. Like that's a surprise in our world, yeah?

He strokes his bald scalp, watching as one of the sparring Enclave below has his jaw shattered.

— These guys, when they go out as a force, once they start smelling the blood out there, they could go a little over the top. And that's not the point. We don't want a bunch of random spastics launching themselves into crowds and going off like bombs, rending folks limb from limb till the SWAT bullets take them down. The whole point is, this is a crusade; when Enclave kill, it's not like a retribution thing, it's a cleansing. And not just cleansing the world, but cleansing the people who get killed. So it needs to have some order to it. So to keep the warriors that go out in line, Joe.

He sidles very close. -I'm gonna need a field general.

I poke the barrel of my gun into his ribs.

He looks at it.

I look at him.

And I ask the only thing that matters. -Is she alive?

He looks up, rolls his eyes. -is she alive? Dude, have you been listening to me at all?

The hand of one of his bodyguards whisks between us and takes the gun from me.

The Count bugs his eyes. -Whoops! Whered that go?

He laughs.

— Yeah, so anyway, dude, is she alive? Like, that's the whole point here. The tension I'm talking about. Old-school attitudes versus new-school attitudes.

He looks at me.

I look back.

He sighs. -No comprehension at all, huh?

He takes my arm. -Come here.

He pulls me to the corridor that runs the length of the loft, between rows of cubicles.

— The rest of this shit, the field-general gig and all that, well sort that out later. For now.

He points at the end of the corridor where four Enclave stand outside a closed door. -For now, you go have your reunion.

He gives me a shove in the back.

— Do me a favor while you're at it and try and talk some sense into fucking Joan of Arc for me, will ya?

He turns, heads down the stairs to the floor below.

I look at the door.

Legs like stilts, holding me wobbly ten feet above the ground, I walk to the

end of the hall.

These Enclave are a little on the beefy side. Looking like maybe they've only been in a concentration camp one year instead of five. They stand back from the door, one of them knocking before pushing it open.

I go in.

She's sitting on the floor, holding a little cup in her left hand, eyes gliding over the handwritten pages of a book lying open in her lap.

Her eyes stop moving.

Her finger marks a spot on the page.

And she looks up.

She's sitting on the floor, like the last time I saw her, but everything else is different. Then shed just got over being about to die. Withered and hollowed out by AIDS and the chemo they'd pumped into her, red hair falling out in fistfuls. A fading ghost.

And look at her now.

All bones and alabaster skin, freckles bleached away, hairless.

Vibrant.

She looks back down at her book.

— Hey, Joe. Come to try and kill me again?

— It was hard. Of course. And I thought I was crazy. I thought they were all my hallucinations. This whole place. Like it was the pain medication. Then I thought, and it was probably all the white clothes they wear, I thought that maybe I was dead. And this was like a test or something. It took a long time.

She flips a couple pages in her book.

— That was why they started paying attention to me. Because I went so long before I tried it.

She shakes her head. -Blood.

She bites her lower lip.

— Its funny to think how long I waited. Cause I was never religious. But I thought, What if the second I try the blood I get sent to hell? It was too weird to be real. But whatever I was thinking, they thought I was special, for fasting so long right after infection. And then I couldn’t hold off anymore. I'd smell it when they all broke fast. And it smelled so damn good. And then I thought, This is bullshit. This isn’t real. I'm on a morphine drip and I'm never waking up and I'm gonna try some of that. I'm not going to hell. And I tried it.

She shakes her head. -And after that, I didn't care if I went to hell.

She looks into the cup in her left hand, the few tablespoonfuls of blood it bears. -Do you think were going to hell, Joe?

I take a drag, think about Queens. -Yeah, seems that way to me.

She sighs. -Yeah. I think maybe we are too.

She looks up.

— He thought about you. Daniel did. -I doubt that. -No, he did, a lot.

She flips a couple pages in the book, reads.

— Simon. Again. An endless distraction, that young man. Adding up the time I've wasted trying to drill some kind of sense into his head. Pointless. No. Its not pointless. Simply tiring. My own shortcomings again. Impatient. Who was it that said it was my greatest weakness? Someone dead now. It could be the reason I

keep trying with Simon is that it gives me an excuse to talk occasionally with someone different than the ones I've been talking to for so long. The Vyrus may be endlessly fascinating in and of itself, but talking about it all the time is boring as hell. Something interesting today. I feel hungry. Odd.

She flips more pages. -That's toward the end of this one. The last one. But there's lots more.

She points at the bracket-mounted shelves that cover two walls of the cubicle, every inch of every shelf lined with journals, notebooks, diaries. -Lots more. I started just pulling them at random. Then I pulled one from toward the end and saw your name. Simon.

She nods at the door.

— A couple of them had used it when they were talking about you. So I knew who he meant. Also, the way he described you. Sullen. Childish. Temperamental. Funny. That all rang a bell. So I found the first one I could with your name.

She points at a red-spine notebook on the shelf. -That one. From the late seventies.

She looks at me. -How old are you?

I scuff the floor. -Closing on fifty.

She nods. -Funny. Id never have picked you for the type to lie about your age.

I glance at the door.

— Look, baby, I want to get all caught up and all, but we should really think about getting out of this place as soon as possible.

She presses the tip of her index finger into the middle of her forehead and closes her eyes. -You know what I hate?

She opens her eyes.

— What I hate is that I feel so stupid sometimes. I think about it. I think about you telling me you couldn't go out in the sun because of solar urticaria. That the blood bags and biohazard coolers were because you were an organ courier. That secret room in your basement.

She closes her eyes again.

— I think how it was so easy to convince you that I wouldn't fuck you because I didn't want to give you HIV. How you never argued with me about it. Never

said it was a risk you would take.

She knuckles her eyes, pressing away a couple stray tears. -Fuck.

She wipes her fingers on her white skirt.

— I think about all that, and think about all I know now, and I think, How could I have been so stupid? How didn't I see that he was a fucking vampire?

She makes a fist and hits the floor.

— And I hate that. Like I should have figured this shit out. Like somehow I should have put all the pieces of your weirdness and our fucked-up relationship together, mixed them up, and spilled them out and they should have come up vampire. Like that isn't utterly insane.

I lower myself to one knee. -Baby.

She jabs a finger at me. -Don't! Don't you call me baby.

I reach, put a finger on the sole of her bare foot. -Baby.

She presses her lips together.

— Damn it! Damn you. You fucker!

I squeeze her foot. -Baby.

She slaps the floor. -You absolute fucking fucker!

I squeeze her foot a little tighter.

— Baby, listen, I know I got a lot to answer for. I know I. I know. But this isn't the time. We need to go now. Because in case you hadn't noticed, you're living in a madhouse.

She's on her feet, standing over me.

— in case i hadn't noticed? I noticed, you son of a bitch, I noticed that you fucking left me in this madhouse!

I look up at her. -I'm back for you now.

She claps her hands together three times, slowly. -Hail the hero, returned to rescue the damsel.

I stare at her foot. Beyond pale. Nails covered in chipped red polish.

— Look. I know. I know this is. Hard. I. I never told you. I thought. You'd think I was crazy. And you'd run. Or. I'd do something to prove it. And you d be more scared. And you'd run. And I'd never see you again. And.

I paw the floor, looking for some kind of traction for my words. -And so I didn't tell you. And. But there's no time now because all hell is going to hit the streets and we need to get gone before it does. We need to.

I look at her, lift my shoulders, drop them.

She puts her hands on her hips. -Does it bother you the Count was the one infected me?

I look around the room, anyplace where she isn't. -Yeah. -Yeah. Me too.

I let myself look at her, see the anger, look away.

— My blood probably would have killed you. It's special, the way it works. Only some can infect some others. I don t know.

— Yeah. I read some stuff like that in Daniels diary. But I didn't say I wish you'd been the one to infect me. I just said I wished it wasn't that prick.

I pull the smokes from my pocket, stare at the package.

— I know. I know this isn't what you wanted. To live like this. To be infected at

all. I know. I tried to protect you from. I. I'm. Shit.

— You.

Half of an ugly laugh escapes her. -You fucking idiot.

Her fist hits the side of my neck and I go down and my skull bounces off the floor. -You think this bothers me?

She picks up the cup of blood. -You actually think this bothers me?

She puts the cup to her lips and drains it.

— I was dying, Joe. I was really dying. It hurt so bad. And I was so scared. And I wanted to live. I prayed. I swore that if I could live I'd do anything. If I could just fucking live. If the pain would go away and I could not be scared and I could live. Anything. I swore I'd do anything.

She squats in front of me, grabs my chin. -And I'm alive.

She forces my face up, my eyes to hers.

— And I don't ever want to die. I want to live forever, Joe. And I never want to be scared like that again.

She holds the cup in front of my face. -And if this is what it takes, well, I swore I'd do anything.

She lets go of my face and rises.

I look at the pack of smokes I've crushed in my hand. I tear it open and pick a broken Lucky from the shreds. I put it between my lips. Take it out. Put it back. And take it out again. -I didn't know.

She leans into the wall of books, presses her face into them. -Joe. Why would you? How could you? If It's crazy for me to feel stupid for not knowing what you are, it's just as crazy for you to feel shitty for not knowing I'd want to be the same thing if it could save me. Its stupid. It's all crazy and stupid.

She looks at me. -And it could get worse.

She splays her hands over several of the books. -He had doubts, you know. He had doubts about what the Vyrus is. He had

doubts about it all. And he was starting to think, toward the end, he was starting to think that the world didn't need to be remade in the image of the Vyrus, made so there are only Enclave. He had doubts. But that asshole. He's taking what Daniel believed, what was passed down for so long, and he's making it ugly and mean and dangerous.

I shake my head. -You never met Daniel. You don't know what dangerous is.

She pulls one of the books down and opens it. -He wanted a crusade. Of some kind. I know that. But he had doubts.

I get up. -Baby, we should really.

She snaps the book closed.

— The Count, he doesn't have a doubt in his empty head. He's narrow and spoiled and, Joe, he's such a prick. And he's halfway to sending those fanatics of his into the streets to start it. All he needs is something to tilt out of balance and he'll do it. Then what? People will be killed. And this place.

She holds out her arms. -It'll be destroyed.

She slides the book back onto the shelf.

— I don't want it destroyed. I don't want people killed. I don't want my friends here killed. I don't want to be killed, Joe.

She faces me. -I just came back to life. I don't want to die.

She folds her arms.

— And some of them, they believe in me. Because I was the last Enclave Daniel found, they think I'm special. And because I fasted so long. And because I'm so fucking tough. Because I am tough. I can fast longer than anyone in here. I can take the pain. I can take the cravings and the cramps. I can go deep into the Vyrus and let it deep into me before I have to feed again. So thanks, AIDS and chemo, thanks for teaching me how to be tough. Because of that, there are enough Enclave who believe in me so that the Count cant just start a holy war whenever he wants.

I nod, shake my head, nod. I look up and down.

— Baby, that, all that, it doesn't. Matter anymore. What the Count wants, what these fuckers are all trying to get, power, whatever, it doesn't matter anymore. It's all going to hell no matter what they do now. And.

I look at her, I try to cross the room to her.

And stay where I am.

— I could. I don't know. If I had a chance, the things I did, or didn't do, I could make it up to you. I could. I want. Just.

I reach. -Just come with me. Just. Now. Come with me.

A sound comes out of her, the kind of sound she made when she was dying in the hospital.

— Years. Years of my life. Years while I was dying. I spent them with you. And you, you weren't who you said you were. You weren't what you said you were. You. You. You.

Tendons jump in her neck.

— The rest of it. I could go! This place, I could leave this place. This life, I could live it with you. I could.

She grits her teeth. -But you lied to me so much.

Drops are falling around her feet. -I know what you are now.

Her fists clench, and a whiter shade shows at her knuckles.

— But I don't know who you are.

She points at the floor. -Goddamn you, Joe Pitt. Goddamn you.

She charges me, slamming me into the wall, books raining down around us. -Goddamn you, I don't know who you are.

I could say I struggle with that one, but it's not really a struggle. When there's only one thing to say, you just say it. -Baby, I'm just the guy who loves you. Same as always.

She closes her eyes, leans her forehead against my chest, my heart stops beating. -Well that counts for something, Joe.

She opens her eyes and looks up at me. -But not enough.

She pushes away. -Not now.

She kneels and starts to pick up the books. -You better go.

I watch her, sorting the books, finding their places on the shelves, reordering Daniels thoughts.

I think about the streets.

Piled high with bodies.

Back rooms crammed with them. Trucks hauling away the dead. I think about Coalition and Society and Hood and Cure at one another's throats. I think about it spreading to Brooklyn and the Bronx. I think about hunting parties of Van Helsings drawn by the chaos. And then organized hunting parities of soldiers and police.

I think about the future.

You cant hide from it. Dig a hole of your own, climb in, pull the dirt in over you, and the future will burrow up beneath you and pull you deeper.

You can't hide from the future.

But like most everything else, if you hate it enough, you can kill it.

And I hate it plenty right now.

I take off my jacket and go through the pockets, moving my few possessions to my pants. -Yeah, I got to go.

She doesn't look away from the books. -Yeah.

I hold out the jacket, the one she gave me on a fake birthday years ago. -Hang onto this for me?

She looks at it. -Seen better days.

I snap my Zippo open. -I still like it.

She takes the jacket from me.

I light up. -And I'll be back to get it.

She shakes her head. -Joe, you shouldn't bother.

I blow smoke. -Baby, you don't want me now, III go. But I'm coming back.

She shakes her head again.

Smoke gets in my eye, blinding me for an instant. -Evie. I started a war so I could see you.

I rub the smoke from my eye. -You being pissed at me Isn't gonna keep me away.

She almost smiles. But doesn't, not really.

Instead she tears some of the lining from inside the jacket. -Come here.

I go there.

She reaches up and ties the strip of black cloth so that it covers my dead eye.

— Now, go Arrghh. -Arrghh.

She nods. -There. You're a pirate.

And she kisses me.

Bitter.

But a kiss all the same.

— Whoa, whoa, that's it, you're just walking out?

I stop walking out and look at the Count. -You want to make something of it, now s the time.

He points up at the lofts.

— After all the time you spent up there with her nibs, I thought you might have got her to see some realities.

I look up there. -She sees the realities.

I shrug. -She just doesn't like them.

He frowns. -Then why doesn't she just get out?

I adjust the patch she put over my dead eye.

— Near as I can figure it, she thinks you're a psycho and she wants to stick around to make sure you don't do anything too fucked up.

He flexes his toes. One of the bones jutting from his bad foot scrapes the concrete floor.

— Make sure I don't do anything too fucked up. Bitch is begging to see some fucked-up shit she don't get out of my face in here.

I look at that ruined foot. -Know what I think every time I see you, Count?

He puts his hands on his hips. -What's that?

I scratch my head.

— I think to myself, Why the hell haven’t I killed this asshole already? And then I remember, Oh yeah, there's no rush, I can always do It another time.

He nods, cocks his head, cups a hand to his ear. -Hear that? You hear that, man? That ticking sound? Know what that is?

He takes his hand from his ear and starts swinging it back and forth like a metronome. -That's your time running out.

He slows his finger.

— Now, I don't know exactly how much is left on it, but it's close. See, you got exactly two uses to me. Once those are done, so's your time.

He holds up his other index finger.

— One, you crapped out on. I mean, why the fuck do you think you're here, man? That crazy bitch is your chick. If you cant talk some sense into her, then I don't know what. So that's Use Number One down the shitter.

He holds up another finger.

— Use Number Two is what I said before, about a field general. Which, from what attitude I'm getting here, is a job you re clearly not interested in. -Always quick on the uptake, that's you.

His finger stops swinging. -Ding!

He shakes his head. -Time s up.

I find a cigarette.

— Is that the sound it makes when your time is up? Ding? Talk about an anticlimax. -You should have just collected your chick and got out, man.

I put flame to cigarette. -Count.

I drop my voice to a whisper.

— You might want to stop talking shit before it gets you in too deep.

He puts his face in mine.

— You can't take me, man. Not anymore. III have your heart in my hand and be chewing on it before you stop breathing. -No doubt, no doubt. But let me tell you a secret.

I put my mouth next to his ear. -That girl up there, she still loves me.

I lean back and nod. -Yeah, hard to believe, huh?

I raise a hand.

— Now I'm not saying she's all weak-kneed about me, but she still has the feeling. I can tell.

His eyes flick at the lofts.

I take a drag and nod.

— That's right. You kill me, she's likely to stop just sitting up there keeping an eye on things. She might decide that this is the right time to come down here and settle some shit.

If he had eyebrows, they'd be pulled together.

— Doesn't matter. She's only got a handful behind her.

I tap my forehead. -You sure of that?

Our eyes meet up.

— What I'm asking is, You sure when push and shove go at It that you got your supporters all locked down? You sure some of them might not go over to the other side if things came to the big chop-sockey in here? Mean, when the limbs start flying, there's no telling which way some people might jump. And saying you carry it off, what do you lose? Daniel, he was top dog here for how long? Ever hear about internecine bloodshed on his watch? How long after that before serious doubts are raised about the quality of your leadership, O chosen one? Speaking of which?

I tap his chest with my fingertip.

— I ever tell you about how Daniel was always hinting that I might be the right guy to follow him?

I look over at the Enclave away in the shadows. -Some of these guys know. Maybe, here's an idea.

I point at the stairs to the lofts.

— Maybe I should stay. Might be cozy. Me and her up there, you down here.

I drop my smoke on the floor between us. -Or maybe you should back the fuck off.

I grind the cigarette under my boot.

— Before you embarrass yourself in front of your people, making threats you re not gonna move on just now.

I turn away and start for the door. -Don't lose the suit, Count, it's you.

He starts after me. -Uh-uh. Hang up, toughguy. You don't get last words in this place.

He raises an arm, circles it over his head.

— This is my house. And there are rules. And you need to be schooled in one of them.

He raises his voice, the sounds of sparring dying as his words echo. -Like, OK, you don't want to make the scene. You don't want to stay and add your name to mine. You don't want to lead the troops when they hit the streets. Basically, you just don't want to help me. OK, cool. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised. Like, I thought you'd take your girl with you, but I know she's

changed and so maybe she doesn't do it for you anymore. OK. But leaving here, that's not a casual thing. You're either Enclave, or you're not. You're either in here with us, or you're not. The open-door policy, that is closed. No in-and-out privileges anymore. No one gets their hand stamped with a big E and gets to come and go as they please.

I'm at the door.

He arm-bars me.

— Like you got banished once, down the sewer, and how you got out I do not know, but this time It's final. You go out, you don't come back.

He shakes his head.

— Not for her. Not for no reason. Gone. And how we settle our differences in here, the chick and me, that will happen without your help either way.

I scratch the back of my neck.

— The way I know that girl, anyone's gonna need help in here, it's gonna be you.

We stare.

And he blinks first.

Which is a relief to me and my handful of bluff.

The last of the clubbers are inside. Daylights trying to catch me out.

What the fuck now?

A rat rattles some trash cans and I sniff the humid air and smell the rat and kick the cans aside and pick it up by its scruff. -Hey, Joe, what's up? — Phil.

I let him go.

— Funny place to find you.

— Well, just a coincidence. I happened to be in the area to conduct some business.

I put an arm over his shoulder.

— Strange you should mention this business that you were conducting. It seems someone ratted me to the Count.

He shivers with outrage. -What? A rat? Who, Joe? Tell me who it is and III take care of it for ya.

I pat his arm. -It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't want you to go jumping in the river with

your neck tied to a sewer grate on my account.

He flinches.

— Urn, yeah, that, that's not my style. Urn, Joe? — Yeah, Phil?

He puts his palms together.

— There something I can do to get this over with quick? Like, can I just run in front of a cab and take my lumps and we call it even? As opposed to you cutting off my nose and all, I mean.

I give him a little shake. No old ladies purses fall out of his pants legs, which is a bit of a shock. -Cut you? Not gonna happen.

He wipes his forehead. -Honest? No cutting? — No cutting.

He smiles, pats me on the chest. -Ah, that's great, that's just great.

He grins, skips a couple times. -Well ain't that a beautiful thing.

He plucks a cigarette from the pack I offer him, winks.

— Ya mind me askin what ya been up to, Joe? Not that I'm being nosy, just that I'm always curious about what my friends are up to.

I light his cigarette for him. -I've been getting into trouble, Phil.

He laughs.

— So the usual, huh? — Yeah, the usual.

He swallows.

— Say, Joe, ya don't mind me sayin1, you're acting kind of weird. Like, not cutting me and all. Makes a man think that maybe you're waiting to lower the boom on him.

He bites the tip of his tongue. -You sure we're OK here?

I pat his shoulder. -Yeah, were OK. See, you got something I need, Philip.

He clutches his throat.

— Aw no, Joe, not that.

I shake my head, curl my arm around him again. -Easy, easy. All I'm talking about is your big fucking mouth.

His hand covers his mouth.

— Joe, no, I swear, I never sold you out, not once never. -You sold me out so many times, Phil, you should be paying me royalties.

He makes to talk again and my razor flips open. I hold it across his mouth. -Just hush a minute and listen.

I smoke. -I'm going away, Phil. I came back, and now I'm going away.

I tap the middle of his forehead.

— And I want you to make sure everyone knows it. See, I made a mistake coming back. There's nothing for me here. Nothing but trouble. And I don't swing the weight I used to. Cant take the heat. So I'm going away. Joe Pitt is out of play. Gone. Crossing the water and taking his chances. Anyone has a score to settle, they missed their shot. Color me gone, Phil.

I take him by the ear. — Cause the only thing that will bring me back is if I hear you didn't do as I

said. III come back and we'll assume this position again. And III make your big mouth a whole lot bigger.

He starts to nod, scrapes his lips on the blade, freezes.

I shake my head. -Now I'm gonna hit you.

He rolls his eyes.

I nod.

— I'm doing it to knock you out so you don't see where I head off to. Not so hard that III break your jaw or any teeth, but I'm gonna put you to sleep.

I fold the razor away.

He wipes his mouth. -Jesus, Joe, I could just close my eyes.

I flick my butt away. -Shut the fuck up, Phil, you're getting off easy.

He covers his eyes with his hands. -If you say so. Just get it over with.

I cock my fist.

— Hey, Phil, is that your dealer?

He uncovers his eyes. -Where, where?

I punch him in the face and break his jaw and a couple teeth and he's down.

I wipe his blood from my fingers as I walk to the middle of the street and look to the next block. I see what I want and head that way.

I keep my feet moving, my eyes forward, fighting the draw of the building behind me, a force that drags on me, pulling open a wound as I move farther away.

Figure it's life. Figure we all got one. Figure how you gamble yours is nobody else's nevermind.

She says she doesn't know who I am.

Well I can't help her on that score.

Figure the wound is just as raw whoever I am.

Figure I could have said more. Told her where I came from. Who birthed me. What I was like when I was a kid. What school I dropped out of. My whole curriculum vitae.

Figure I could have gone over all the years we had together. Cut open

every one. Told her what I was thinking and when. Why I told every lie. What they cost me to tell. What I hoped they were buying me.

Who's got time to waste in that? A catalogue of lies.

Bottom line.

You want something to be safe, you pay a price.

And that's the deal in the end. She's safer in there than she is out here.

In there, she's got people who got her back. Out here, she's only got me. And once Predo starts sniffing after what I'm here for, he'll find her. He'll smell her like my blood in the water, and go straight to her.

And I won't be able to stop him.

She's safe inside. Safer, anyway. And anything I could have said to talk her into leaving would just have dragged her into the middle of something out of all control.

But that doesn't change a fact.

Letting her tear loose leaves a wound.

That wound don't close. No reason it should.

Wound like that, if you want to not feel it, you better have something planned to keep your mind off the pain.

I come to the next block and kneel in the street and work my fingers into the slots at the edges of a manhole cover and pull it free.

I look down the hole, and I think about the other hole.

A war.

Such a thing, you got to be on one side or the other. You got to know what you want, or get caught in the flames.

I smoke, kick a bottle to the gutter, spit, and smoke some more.

Kill the future.

Save the lost.

Choose a side.

I start down the hole. Burying myself. Away from what I want. But close enough. Close enough to protect it.

Close enough to feel it.

Love above me, shuttered away, pulling, pulling me still.

A gravity that cant be broken.

No matter who I am.