Half the Blood of Brooklyn

They lower the dead body into the grave. They put his long knife and his bow and his little axe in with him. And they put their shovels aside and begin to pray.

Selig joins them.

They pray a long time.

Then they turn to the Strongman and start working to pull their other friend free of the arrows that pierce them both.

That takes much longer.

Deep inside Washington Cemetery, they’ve left us bound at the edge of one of the roads that wanders back and forth between the fenced burial plots. Off blessed earth. Or whatever the fuck they call it.

Now, all the stiffs six feet under and on their way to wherever, they come for us.

Axler and Selig, a half dozen others in black coats and wide-brimmed hats. Some limping or cradling limbs that took shells from Lydia’s gun. A couple others waiting in the cars, the headlights dark.

Time for Selig to get his wish.

Axler bends and rips the leather strap that winds over Stretch’s face.

Stretch snaps his bare gums.

Axler reaches into a pocket and pulls out the steel dentures.

– Looking for something, old man?

– Fuck you, punk.

Axler puts the teeth back.

– You, old man, you should have known better than to keep what’s ours from us.

– They ain’t yours.

– They are. And they know it. That’s why she came back.

– Vendetta doesn’t want to be here. She wants her sister and her own life.

– She wants her home and family, her own kind. That’s why she betrayed you and signaled for us.

Stretch tries to spit, can’t without his teeth and it dribbles on his chin.

– Fuck, we signaled you. We came to you. We came for Harm.

Axler reaches inside his vest and brings out a long sheathed knife.

– Don’t lie now, old man, of all times.

– We signaled you for a swap. For Harm.

Axler draws the blade from its sheath.

– You have nothing to trade. And we don’t deal in flesh.

Stretch’s eyes shoot at me.

– I have him.

Axler sets the sheath aside and lays the long blade at Stretch’s throat.

– No, we have him. And he’ll die just like you. Easier, actually. He’ll simply die for having killed Chaim. You, we’ll divide you together with your bones in twelve pieces, and we’ll send you into all the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. So they’ll know we’re coming.

– Asshole, he’s not from Brooklyn.

Axler’s fingers shift on the handle of the knife.

He looks at me.

He looks back at Stretch and presses the knife into his skin and draws blood.

– Where?

– Kid, what do you think you can cut on me that will make me tell you shit if I don’t want to?

Selig steps up.

– We have to kill them, Axler. Now.

– Shut up.

Stretch bares his neck further.

– Yeah, kill us. Kill me, the one guy who can tell you who he is and where he’s from and what he wants. Then kill him, the guy from Manhattan. And see what kind of hell comes down. Your papa will be so proud. ’Course he’s gonna be pretty pissed as it is if I know the man at all. But I might be able to put a spin on the deal that’ll make things shine a bit brighter for you.

Selig touches Axler’s shoulder.

– Don’t listen to him, we have to do it now. And we can’t lie about it. We have to accept the punishment we have earned. We’ve sinned, Axler.

Axler pulls the knife back.

– Put them in the cars.

– Axler!

He sticks the long knife in Selig’s throat just below the chin and pushes and the point rips out the back of his neck at the base of the skull and he holds him in the air while his legs dance for a moment and then he drops him from the blade to the ground.

A couple of the others take a step back. None step up.

He wipes the knife.

– And we must dig another grave. For Selig, who died bravely with his brother Chaim.

And they do as he says.

But his mom is pissed.

– Axler, Axler, what did you do to the car?

– It’s nothing, it’s some Bondo.

– Look at it, it’s a cavern. It’s a crevasse. That dent, it’s an abyss in the fender. You can’t fill that with Bondo.

– You pull it out, you put some Bondo in there, you sand it and you primer it and paint it and it’s as good as new.

– What are you talking about, new? It’s not like new. It’s ruined. Look at it, look at it. How did this happen?

– We hit his van.-You hit his van? This is what comes of driving on Sabbath. Accidents. God’s judgment on you.

– It wasn’t God. We drove into him on purpose.-On purpose? You did this to my Cadillac on purpose?

– And I wasn’t driving. Rachel was driving. -Rachel drove the car? You steal my car and you give it to Rachel and you tell her to drive it into a van?

– I didn’t steal it.-Didn’t steal it? You call it what, when you don’t ask to take my car and you take it and you let someone else drive it and you wreck it? You call that borrowing?

– Ma, please.

The big old lady raises her hands, turns and walks into the house.

– Yes, of course, you have things to do. What business of mine is it what you do in my house or how you stole my car and what you did to smash it up? Do what you have to do.

Axler watches her with his hands on his hips.

– Fuck.

He kicks the crumpled fender of his mom’s car.

– Fuck.

He looks at me lying between the two cars on the concrete garage floor.

– Are you smiling at something?

I don’t say anything, my mouth still being gagged by leather straps.

He points.

– Get that off him.

Someone cuts the straps around my head.

I work my jaw, but I don’t bite anyone.

Axler looks at me again.

– I asked were you smiling at something?

I tongue a thick scab at the corner of my mouth.

– Naw, I wasn’t smiling at nothing.

– Good.

– Just kind of surprised.

He pushes his hat to the back of his head.

– About what?

I look at the door into the house where his mom disappeared.

– About how all those Jewish mothers jokes are so dead-on.

He starts kicking my face.

OK, figure talking about someone’s mama is never a good idea.

– Axler!

He stops kicking my face.

– Papa.

Through the blood in my eyes I see the man in shirtsleeves who has come out of the house, a wreath of dark curly hair around the bald spot not quite covered by his yarmulke, a book in his hand, index finger tucked between pages to mark his place.

He looks at me and Stretch on the floor. He looks at the blood-spattered young men shifting from foot to foot. He looks at the ruined fender of his wife’s car. He looks at his son and rubs his forehead with the back of his wrist.

Axler opens his mouth.

His father holds his hand out.

– No. Not now.

He points at Stretch and me.

– Cover their heads and bring them to the temple.

He looks at the fender again and shakes his head.

– Your mother’s car, of all things.

Harm is already in the temple in an ankle-length skirt, loose blouse and headscarf, sitting erect on a bench. Vendetta’s head is in her lap, the healing bones back inside her skin.

Across the aisle with the other men, I shake my head, trying to do something about the itch under the small circle of black felt they pinned to my hair.

I look at one of the young men that bracket me.

– Buddy, could you scratch my head?

He looks at his partner. His partner shrugs. He looks to the altar where Axler and his father stand in front of the arc, whispering.

– Rebbe?

Axler’s father turns.

– Yes?

– He wants me to scratch his head.

The Rebbe pats the top of his own head.

– A man with his hands tied has an itch on top of his head and asks you to scratch it for him. This needs a Rebbe to tell you what to do?

The kid raises his hand toward my head, hesitates, looks again at the Rebbe.

The Rebbe throws his arms up.

– Scratch. Scratch. Give the man some relief.

The kid scratches my head.

The Rebbe watches.

– You’re from Manhattan?

My head stops itching. I move it out from under the kid’s hand.

– Yeah.

Axler steps to his father and starts whispering again and his father waves him off.

– Axler, I’m talking to the man. Where in Manhattan?

– He’s from the Coalition.

The Rebbe looks at Stretch.

– Did I ask you?

– You don’t gotta ask me, I’m telling. I’m the only one in this room knows the guy’s story.

– Except the guy himself, of course.

Stretch snorts.

– Like he’s gonna tell you. Like the guy’s from the Coalition and he’s gonna tell you what he’s doing here.

The Rebbe comes down the aisle, stops next to my bench.

– The Coalition, is that right?

I don’t say anything.

– You didn’t hear the question?

I shift, try to find a way of sitting on the bench with my wrists and ankles bound that doesn’t make the hole in my thigh throb or my ribs grate or my face ache.

– Sorry, got lost in a little déjà vu there.

– This seems familiar to you? The temple? Us?

– No, being beaten and tied up and listening to some asshole try to frame my ass seems familiar. Swear I’ve gone through this shit before.

He taps one of my escorts on the shoulder and the kid gets up and the Rebbe takes his place.

– You’re not from the Coalition, then?

– Fuck is he gonna say?

The Rebbe shakes a finger at Stretch.

– You want me to have them gag you again? Yes? No? No. So be quiet for a moment. What my sister saw in you, all the talking without ever listening. A midget, I could almost be proud she was blind to such a thing, loved you despite your infirmity, but the talking and the cursing and never waiting to listen to anyone else, it’s a frustration.

– Fuck you, Moishe.

The Rebbe looks at me.

– See the mouth on him. With or without those grotesque teeth, the mouth. My sister, God love her and comfort her, she thought he was funny. She thought he was clever. To say fuck is clever? This is wit?

I look at Stretch, look back at the Rebbe.

– Fuck do I care.

He purses his lips, covers them with his fist, nods.

– Yes, you’re from Manhattan. It’s in your voice, your accent. And in your attitude. And an attitude like that, I would not be surprised if you are from the Coalition.

– He is, man, that’s what I’m telling you.

The Rebbe bangs his fist on the back of Stretch’s pew.

– Abe! If I have to ask you again to be quiet in the temple while I am speaking. I will be very upset if I have to do that. I did not tell these boys to do what they did.

He looks at his son, still by the Torah and the arc.

– I did not tell my son to abuse the Sabbath in this way.

– Dad!

– Shht! The things they’ve done, they raise grave questions. But they are done. Too late to change them. You are here. The girls are here. This man is here. Now there is nothing but to determine how best to proceed. And when you talk out of turn, you cloud the matter. And when you speak, Abe, it makes me think that perhaps you wish to cloud the matter. And that makes me regard you with doubt. So be quiet, Abe. For the sake of whatever passed between you and my sister. For the sake of my nieces. Be quiet.

The kid who scratched my head holds up a finger.

– There’s also the other girl.

The Rebbe looks at him.

– What?

Axler comes down the aisle.

– It’s nothing, Dad, a shiksa. She was there.

The Rebbe stands.

– Where is she?

Axler looks at the guy who opened his mouth and slits his eyes.

– She’s at my place. With the Lucys.

– What have I told you about that word? I raised you to use that word?

– No.

– Name them with respect.

– She’s with Rachel and Leah of the Tribe of Benjamin of the Chosen.

– Get her, bring her here.

Axler points at one of the other guys.

– Go on, get her.

The Rebbe steps to his son, looks up at him.

– No, you. You go and get this woman and cover her head and bring her here. You.

Axler bites the inside of his lip, nods, walks around his father and leaves the little temple built just behind his father’s house.

The Rebbe comes and sits next to me again and sighs.

– It won’t be long. His place he calls it. A room above our garage and he calls it his place.

He looks up at the ceiling, talks to whatever lives up there.

– No hurry, but he could move out soon, God? Anytime you see fit, but soon perhaps?

He drops his face, looks at me, smiles.

– The prayers of a father.

I’ve seen worse, but Lydia looks bad.

Someone’s removed the arrows from her abdomen and legs and done a shit job of it. They left the one in her throat, afraid they’d take her esophagus out with it, I suppose. Or maybe they like the way it looks there.

The Rebbe watches as they lay her on the pew behind Harm and Vendetta, a scarf tied round her head. He gets up and walks over and bends and inspects the raggedly bandaged wounds and the arrow in her neck.

– This was poorly done.

Axler rubs the back of his neck.

– She’s dangerous, Papa. She shot Matthew and David and Hesch.

Three of the boys touch holes in their black garments.

Axler takes his hand from the back of his neck.

– And she killed Selig.

He points at me.

– This one killed Chaim. And she killed Selig.

The Rebbe puts his index finger on the notched end of the arrow.

– Chaim and Selig. Selig was with you?

– Yes.

– Selig. His brother, I am not surprised, but Selig is a scholar.

He looks at me.

– A smart and a gentle boy. Promising. More than promising. A Rebbe born.

I glance at Axler.

– Not my problem, I killed the other one.

The Rebbe walks to a cabinet on the far wall.

– Always you are like this when you have killed? Lighthearted? Making jokes?

I ignore him, not having made a joke.

He comes back to Lydia with a small black doctor’s bag, sets it on the bench next to her head and opens it.

– I’ll need a cutter.

He opens and closes his hand as if squeezing something.

– In the garage, with the garden tools, there should be something.

One of the boys hurries out.

Axler puts a hand on his father’s shoulder.

– Papa, you shouldn’t. Let me do it. I’ve already broken the Sabbath.

The Rebbe pats his son’s hand.

– Yes, you have. Good of you to say so. And you think it will make it better now if you spare me the same? I have never broken Sabbath? Talked on the phone? Turned on a light? God will understand this. Will he understand what you have done, my son? Without studying the Moed, I cannot say. But this, helping a girl, he will understand.

The boy comes back with the bolt cutters.

Rebbe Moishe takes them, looks again at the arrow, holds it steady where it sticks from Lydia’s skin, fits the cutter around the shaft and firmly snips off the tip.

He takes two large paper-wrapped pads of gauze from his bag and rips them open.

– Some blood?

Axler shakes his head, points at Vendetta.

– We gave it to Hannah.

Harm turns in her seat and looks at him.

– Her name is Vendetta, dickface.

– Fuck off, slut.

– Better a slut than a mama’s boy.

– Whore, if it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened!

– Sure, fucking blame us for wanting to have our own lives instead of being little baby factories for you small-dicked godmonkeys.

– The temple!

They look at the Rebbe.

– A little peace in the temple? Yes? Please? And if not peace, the imitation of it? And less of this language? A little respect.

Harm turns away.

– Fuck you too, Uncle Moishe.

Axler points at her.

– See, see, that’s how she is. I don’t even want her, Papa, I don’t even want to marry her, let alone have a child with her.

Harm gives a bark.

– Not to worry, cousin, you won’t be marrying me. And you sure as fuck won’t be doing anything with me to make a baby.

– Enough! Yes? Enough? Now. Enough. Axler, you said Leah and Rachel are here, yes?

– Yes, Papa.

– Can either give blood?

– Leah is on her period. Rachel gave some to David and to Matthew.

– How much?

– A pint.

– She is a healthy girl. She can give more. Bring her here.

One of the boys leaves and Axler goes to the altar for a small wood box with a bit of cloth wrapped around it.

Moishe presses one gauze pad around the shaft of the arrow where it emerges from Lydia’s neck, takes the other end of the arrow in his right hand, and draws it out in a long, smooth motion and drops it and claps another pad at the opposite end of the wound. Both pads are quickly stained red.

He cranes his neck and looks at me.

– She is something to you?

– Not much.

– Too bad for you. A beautiful girl. And strong. As much as she has bled out, she should be dead. But a little fresh blood, she will be heartened. She’ll be weak, but well enough.

He looks back at Lydia.

– That you should care so little for this woman. A shame. They are everything to us, our women. Everything comes from them. Our blood. Our faith. The Tribe of Benjamin would have died long ago. The women in our tribe, they can trace back to Benjamin, one of the sons of Jacob. Grandfather of the twelve tribes. Without the women, none of this is passed on.

Axler comes down the aisle with the box.

The Rebbe peels the gauze from the wounds on Lydia’s neck.

– See how strong she is? Wounds closed. So little blood, still strong enough to heal that much.

He takes the box from his son, unwraps the piece of cloth, drapes it over his shoulders, kisses the top of the box, says a prayer, opens it and takes out a small single-edged knife with a silver handle.

– This is why Hannah and Sarah are so important to us, yes?

Harm looks at the ceiling.

– Our names are Vendetta and Harm.

Moishe shakes the knife.

– Call yourself what you like, young lady, your names are Hannah and Sarah.

– Whatever.

He sets the little box aside.

– My sister’s girls. Is it a surprise they are as willful as she was? No.

He presses the knife to his forehead, mumbles another prayer, takes it away.

– My sister, running off to join the circus, of all things.

– It ain’t a circus, Moishe, it’s a freak show.

He faces Stretch.

– What did I say, Abe? About being quiet and listening, what did I say? Did I say to try doing that? I did. I’m certain I did.

Stretch lets out a long sigh and leans his head against the back of the pew and closes his eyes.

– Fine, I’m listening. Tell me when you want to stop fucking around and let me and my girls out of here.

The kid comes back with one of the Lucys that drove them around. A big girl, dark complexion, dark hair mostly hidden by a scarf, a plain long skirt and a blouse that matches the ones they put on Harm and Vendetta. She smells fresh, alive, the only thing I’ve smelled here that doesn’t carry the Vyrus. All the blood I’ve lost, my mouth starts to water.

She goes to Moishe.

– Rebbe.

He cradles her cheek in his palm.

– Rachel.

He looks at me.

– This girl, a treasure. Pure faith in God.

– And in you, Rebbe.

– Shht, nonsense. A sin to even say it.

– I’m sorry, Rebbe.

He smiles.

– Don’t be sorry. I tease, I’m teasing. See, a good girl. She understands. Rachel. A wife of Jacob. And Leah, another wife, yes? Mothers of the twelve tribes.

He bares the girl’s forearm, revealing a long series of scars, white slash marks down the length of her arm.

– The word my son used, Lucy, a disrespectful word. These girls are of our tribe. A sacrifice, a great sacrifice they make to keep their blood sanguine. And kosher?

He grins.

– These girls have never seen a pig, let alone eaten any part of one.

He kisses her forehead.

– Blessed and washed and dieted as proper Jewesses. Blood like this, it is all that will do for us. She is not the only one, of course. But still, there are not enough like her. We’re forced to hunt in Bensonhurst and Borough Park and Bay Ridge. But these girls are the only way to be certain the blood is truly kosher. From one who keeps kosher. We’ve tried buying. Of course we have. But the market is an unsure thing, yes? One is never certain of what one is getting, yes? And not all merchants understand the importance of this to us. Rachel, she is a blessing. A true daughter of Benjamin.

He sits her on the bench with Lydia.

– The Tribe of Benjamin, the tribe we descend from, was cursed, yes? You know this?

I scoot so I face him.

– Christ, no.

He drops his head.

– About being a smartass, what can I say? Other than it is rude, what can I say? It is rude, yes?

– Sure, yes. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop.

– Yes, I’m not surprised. Yes. Benjamin. Cursed. The whole tribe. It’s a story from the Bible. Well known.

He places the knife to Rachel’s skin and slices deep and she gasps and he presses the open wound to Lydia’s mouth and Lydia’s lips wrap around it and she begins to nurse; a baby at her mother’s tit.

I flinch when the scent of the blood hits the air. Sweat on my brow, a small erection in my pants, I watch Lydia feed and think about ripping free of the straps binding me and tearing her from the girl and clawing the wound in her arm wider and filling my belly till I vomit blood.

The Rebbe places a hand on Lydia’s throat, feeling the contractions as she swallows.

– Not too much, Rachel. Just what she needs.

Rachel has her eyes closed.

– Whatever I can give is yours, Rebbe.

He looks at me, and then at his son and the boys and Stretch and Vendetta and Harm.

– See, this is instructive, what she says. The story I mentioned, from Judges nineteen and twenty and twenty-one: a man travels with his concubine. Coming to Gibeah in the land of the Benjaminites they could find no lodging. No one would take them in, you see? All doors were closed. Windows sealed. No welcome as night came. None would even speak to them. None but one old man. He took them in, yes? And that night, men of Gibeah, they came to the old man’s house and demanded the stranger. The old man, fearing for the stranger’s life pleaded for them to leave. They refused. And the old man he offered them his daughter to do with as they pleased if they would leave the traveler in peace. But the men would not harken to this. Then the traveler offered to the men of Gibeah his concubine, and the men of Gibeah knew her and abused her all night until the morning. Our tribe, the Tribe of Benjamin did this.

He looks in Rachel’s eyes.

– And she died of it, the concubine. But she did not complain. Sacrificing herself. And because of this sacrifice, the traveler took the body of his concubine, a woman who, it must be noted, had been infamously unfaithful to him, and he divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

He looks away from the girl’s eyes.

– And the message was not lost on the other tribes.

He looks down, takes a firm grip on Lydia’s jaw and on Rachel’s wrist and pries them apart, Lydia’s throat continuing to work, her tongue swiping blood from her own lips.

– Four hundred thousand men they sent to Gibeah. A city whose men numbered seven hundred. Seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at hair breadth, and not miss. And beside these seven hundred stood twenty-six thousand other men of the Tribe of Benjamin.

He’s gone back into his bag for more gauze, and begins to bandage Rachel’s wrist.

– So, twenty-six thousand, seven hundred against four hundred thousand, yes? Not good odds. Roughly, it’s what, sixteen to one, yes? Not good odds.

He ties off the ends of the bandage.

– In the first battle, just the first, the men of Benjamin killed twenty-two thousand of their enemies.

He pulls the sleeve of Rachel’s blouse back into place.

– Somewhat better odds, now, but still not good. Not a betting man’s odd, I think. Not at all. And, on the second battle, after the men of Israel had prayed to God for guidance and drew the sword, the men of Benjamin destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand.

He rises.

– And the children of Israel, not surprisingly, were troubled. But they went up to the house of the Lord and they fasted and they burnt offerings and they prayed for what they should do and God said, Go up into battle; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hands.

He steps into the aisle.

– And God kept his promise, yes? Of course he did. And the children of Israel destroyed twenty and five thousand of the Benjaminites that day and a hundred men more.

He walks toward the arc. -All these drew the sword.

He reaches the arc, opens it, touches the scrolls of the Torah.

– There was more killing, of course. No surprise again, yes? The children of Israel chased the Benjaminites to the walls of Gibeah and trod them down. And they entered the city and put it to the sword and burned it.

He turns, his hand still on the Torah.

– In the end, six hundred men fled to the rock of Rimmon in the wilderness. And that was all that remained of the tribe. And it would have died, the Tribe of Benjamin. Except that the children of Israel knew this would have been a great sin. An unpardonable sin, yes? There is such a thing. So, they were driven out, they had no kingdom, but four hundred virgins were taken from the slaughtered tribe of Jabesh-Gilead and given to the Benjaminites as wives. And more were taken dancing in the fields from the daughters of Shiloh. To keep their tribe alive, yes? You see it, yes, the women? The women. How precious. Some few were descended from Benjamin, children of mothers who had married into other tribes. And so the Benjaminites survived.

He looks at me.

– But none of the men of Gibeah.

He comes toward me.

– The men who at night encircled the old man’s home and demanded the stranger. The men who knew and abused all night the two innocent girls and went away with the dawn, yes? The seven hundred chosen men left-handed; and everyone could sling stones at an hairbreadth, and not miss. The seven hundred men of Gibeah who led the Benjaminites against the four hundred thousand children of all the rest of Israel and killed in two battles forty thousand men.

He spreads arms to take in his son and the other boys.

– But the men of Gibeah are here. Their blood is here in our veins. You see that, yes? The blood of Gibeah is in you. Not the blood of Benjamin, but, yes, Gibeah is even in you.

He waves Rachel over and she comes to him.

– A child of Benjamin, the blood of Gibeah is owed to her, for her fathers came to our assistance when we needed them. But she for-goes having Gibeah in her. To sacrifice her blood to Gibeah. To keep our tribe alive. The lost Tribe of Gibeah.

He comes to my pew and looks down at me.

– The descendents of the seven hundred.

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

– So if you are from the Coalition, yes? If you are truly one of the spies we have seen at the edges of our land, one of the skulkers hiding in Queens? Yes, if you are one of them?

He takes the freshly healed skin on my mangled ear between his fingers and rips it off.

– You would do best to remember we were defeated only once.

He drops the bit of skin in my lap and wipes his fingers on my shirt.

– And only then when God intervened.

– Holy hell, will you can it with all that superstition?

We all look at Lydia, sitting up on her pew, a hand massaging her throat.

– It’s like I’m with my dad talking all that crap at Seder all over again.

– The little person is lying. We’re from the Society.

– Little person? Little person? Bitch, I get my hands free and drop trow, you’ll see how little I am. Keep that politically correct shit, I’m a midget.

He leans forward.

– And you’re the one who’s lying. Telling you, Moishe, these are Coalition whaddayacallims? Fascists!

Lydia looks up from inspecting the puncture wounds in her stomach.-Fascists? Are you? Alright, this is too much. This is just. Me? A fascist?

She looks at the Rebbe.

– We’re from the Society. I am a serving member on the Society’s directorate council.

She points at me.

– Joe is the head of Society security. We’re pledged members to a Clan devoted to unity and equality among all rational living things and. Fascists? We’re, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but we’re freedom fighters. We’re fighting for your freedom and you. We’re trying to create an atmosphere in which this woman.

She points at Rachel.

– Won’t have to be indentured and used like a hamster feeder. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate what you did giving me your blood, but believe me, you shouldn’t let yourself be used like that by these men. And.

Her jaw drops.

– Fascists? Forgive me for harping on this, but I’m just dumb-founded that you could even try to. Do you know?

She looks at the Rebbe.

– Do you know we’re here at his request? Did you know that? He and his Clan made contact with us and requested a meeting because they wanted safe passage into Manhattan. An alliance. And now he’s. I just. I’m, OK, I’m not making much sense here so I better be quiet for a moment and gather my thoughts because I am just at a loss for words as to how I should respond to that kind of ignorance and blatant disregard for the facts and. Well, I just have nothing to say.

She pulls up her sleeve and points at the upside-down pink triangle on her shoulder.

– Do you even know what this means?

Stretch nods.

– Means you’re another bitch doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut.

She gets to her feet and lurches in Stretch’s direction.

– Motherfucker, I’m going to fucking kill you, you fucking half-wit half-pint half-man, say one more word like that and I’m going to fucking kill you and kill you!

Moishe puts a hand on her arm.

She looks at it.

– Get it off me.

He removes his hand.

– Of course, this is not meant in disrespect, yes? Is it? No. Just that you are injured. Better to sit, yes? Sit. Please.

She sits, looks at me.

– You planning to join in, Joe?

– Hey, you’re the diplomat.

Stretch opens his mouth and the Rebbe puts a finger to his lips.

– No. No, Abe, no more. You’ve made your case, yes? They are from the Coalition, you say. You know why they are here, you say. You will tell me what they are here for if I turn Hannah and Sarah over to you. This is what you have to say. I do not need to hear it again. These two, they say what? They say you are a liar. They say they are from the Society. Like that should mean something to me they say it. What does it mean? If they are telling me the truth this should make me feel better? Safer? To know more outsiders are involving themselves in our concerns should make me at ease? No. This is what I know.

He closes his eyes and puts fingers to his temples.

– The Coalition, they have been here.

He opens his eyes and looks at Lydia.

– You did not know this? Yes? No? They have been here. Offering alliances. Assurances. Promising Brooklyn to us. As if it were theirs to give. If you are one of theirs you may know this. Or not. What can I tell them? Brooklyn is already ours. This is our land. The land of the Benjaminites. The city of New Gibeah. This is ours. And they say yes, OK, yes. They leave. Very civilized. But they have been seen. Just north. In Queens. The Coalition. Many of them in Queens. What does this mean?

He folds his arms.

– If you are Coalition, I would like to know this. And if you are not? And if you are? Does it matter?

Axler puts a hand over the knife sheathed inside his vest.

– We should kill them, Papa.

– Did I ask you, Axler? Did I ask you anything but to be quiet?

– Wherever they’re from, they’re here to make trouble. We have to make a lesson of them. The people, Papa, the rest of the tribe, we told them we would keep them safe. This is how we do it.

He takes the knife out and points it at Vendetta and Harm.

– We keep the women of the tribe for increase.

He points it at Stretch.

– We kill the enemies of the tribe for safety.

He points it at me and Lydia.

– And we kill invaders to protect the borders of the tribe’s land.

He points the knife at himself.

– You may not like the way I did this tonight, Papa, but it had to be done. The rest of the tribe will not want to know it was done this way, but it had to be done. They can sleep safely in Gravesend only if we make these choices. I sinned. I broke the Sabbath. But someone has to.

Rebbe Moishe pulls down the corners of his mouth, raises his eyebrows, unfolds his arms and hoists his shoulders.

– Sometimes, not always, but sometimes my son can talk sense.

I clear my throat.

He drops his shoulders.

– Yes?

– Would it be possible for me to ask a question?

– These manners, where have they come from? Yes, of course, a question, ask it.

I look at Axler.

– I was wondering if that’s the knife you used to kill Selig?

No one says anything. So I carry the conversation for the moment.

– In the cemetery? It was just a little while ago? You stuck it through his throat and cut his brain stem with it. Was that the one you’re waving around there?

He comes in my direction.

– Axler!

He stops and looks at his father.

– A filthy lie! Do you need any more proof, Papa?

I lean into the aisle.

– Hey, I’m not asking anyone to take my word for this, Rebbe. Try grilling one of his lameass posse here. Based on the spine they showed when he was waxing their friend, I’m guessing they’ll spill the beans in about a second.

I look at the kid who scratched my head.

– What about it, buddy, you and Selig close? Got any regrets about not stepping up when junior lost his cool and killed the promising young rabbinical student?

The head scratcher opens his mouth, stands, sits, closes his mouth, looks at the Rebbe, looks away.

– He’s lying, Rebbe.

I shrug.

– Well, that’s it, looks like I’m screwed. Testimony like that, how can I not be lying?

Axler’s fingers are white on the handle of the knife when he waves it at me.

– He’s lying. He killed Chaim.

He waves it at Lydia.

– And she killed Selig. She killed Selig.

Lydia straightens.

– Hold on, hold on. I admit I fired indiscriminately and can’t account for every round, but I didn’t stab anyone. I’m certainly not prepared to accept the blame for a death I can’t say for certain I had any involvement in.

Stretch goes red faced.

– Will someone please shut that cunt’s mouth before I go crazy?

Lydia comes off the bench.

She careens across the aisle and throws her shoulder into Stretch and knocks him to the floor and grabs him by his bound ankles and lifts him and swings him high in an arc over her head and brings him down and his skull shatters three of the large white tiles that cover the floor, sending a spiderweb of cracks across them and gouts of blood and shards of bone through the air.

She falls to her knees and drops his ankles and watches him jerk twice and stiffen and we all smell his bowels go and the blood stops pumping and the one eye that still has a socket to hold it in rolls around and stops and glasses over.

Lydia looks at the dead midget, looks up at us all.

– I told him I’d kill him if he talked like that again.

Harm goes berserk.

Vendetta goes berserk too, but all she does is grab her dad and howl and shake. Harm wants to make Lydia dead. And she makes a living doing the nail act with her sister. And the rest of the crowd is trying to get her down without killing her.

Fucking fiasco.

I do the smart thing and roll off my pew and squirm under it and watch. Lydia just sits on the floor and stares at Vendetta with her dead father in her arms.

Harm gets close, but Axler’s boys keep wrestling her down. They have to break a few bones to do it, Rebbe Moishe all the time telling them to be gentle.

When they try to get Stretch from Vendetta’s embrace, she bites someone’s thumb off. They get smart and let her hold the dead guy and just lift them both from the floor and carry them out to wherever they took Harm and Rachel. Axler’s place, I guess.

And in the middle of all this, Axler comes for me.

Knife out, chaos behind him, he reaches under the pew and pulls me out and I twist my wrists and the straps hold and I kick my legs and the straps hold and he pulls my hair and stretches my throat and when his father hauls him off me and throws him to the other side of the temple he takes hair and scalp with him.

And soon after that, it’s pretty quiet. The girls are gone with the escort of boys, which leaves me bound on the floor, and the Rebbe sighing deep, and his son dragging himself to his feet and looking for his knife, and Lydia, still staring at the door where they took the dead father and his crazed daughters.

Lydia looks at Moishe.

– I did warn him.

He crouches next to her.

– Yes, you did. No one said otherwise.

– I’ve never done anything like that before.

– Of course not, why would you have? He tasked you. You are wounded and exhausted and in danger and he tasked you.

– I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve killed before. But in self defense. I. I’ve never. In anger. I’ve never done that before.

– You were raised well, then. You said your father kept Seder? You were raised in a proper house? He was Jewish? Yes?

She looks at the cracked tiles.

– What? Yes. Jewish. All that nonsense. All of us. Yeah, yeah, but California Jewish is different from New York Jewish.

– Shht. Nonsense. There is only Jewish. Look at us, yes? I came from Poland. Do you believe this? It is true. Deep in the dark holds of ships. Smuggled out. From Poland. Over the sea. Are we different from New York Jews? Perverse as we are, are we not Jewish? Yes, we are. Your father raised you Jewish, you are Jewish. And your mother?

– Yeah, like I said, all Jewish. Bat mitzvah, the whole thing. Till I was old enough to think for myself.

– Well, they must have raised you well and loving. You’ve been blessed. In this our life, only to have killed in self defense. Never until now in anger. Never from greed or hunger. That I could say the same.

He stands, he stands and takes a step and puts himself in the path of his son, who has recovered his knife and has crossed the temple and is coming for me.

– Axler.

– Move, Papa.

– Boy.

– Move.

Axler sweeps his arm at his father to knock him aside.

And the Rebbe grabs his son’s wrist and twists it and cranks it down and behind his back and pushes it up and kicks him once behind each knee and Axler goes down and throws his free hand out to catch himself and the knife flies from his fingers and his father forces the arm high and his son bends until his forehead touches the ground, his face rubbed in the pooled blood of his uncle.

– Boy, you have done enough. Enough. And is there no length you will not go to cover your sins? Laying hands on your father? Your Rebbe? Piling bodies on bodies to hide the ones beneath? Invoke the safety of the tribe to excuse your shame? Shht.

He releases the arm and straightens. But Axler stays as he is.

– My son.

He walks to the fallen knife and picks it up.

– My pride and joy.

He comes to me with the knife.

– Do you know how many older brothers he had, this one?

He slips the blade between the straps on my ankles and parts them.

– Six. Six boys older. And perhaps wiser, yes? How could they not have been?

He slips the blade between the straps on my wrists and parts them.

– But only this one survives. When he reached the age when I could pass the blood of Gibeah, only he had the strength for it. Of seven, only this one of my sons.

He tucks the knife in his belt, crosses to Lydia, puts a hand under her arm, helps her to her feet, leads her to a pew and seats her.

– It’s not carried in birth, the blood of Gibeah. Even though his mother and I both have it, our children were born without it. The act of love, it will not carry this warrior’s blood.

He finds a handkerchief in his trouser pocket and wipes spots of Stretch’s blood from Lydia’s hands.

– But the ones who have the strength, they take the blood young. After the bris, of course.

He tucks the handkerchief away and looks at me as I sit up on the floor.

– Imagine, if we put the blood in them before the bris? The mohel’s dismay. Wait, didn’t I just cut that off?

He smiles with half his face.

He gets up again, goes to his son, rests a hand on his back.

– Get up, Axler. Get up. There is shame in what you have done, but there is also pride. You are my son, yes? Nothing you do, nothing I do changes this. We cannot change this.

Axler lifts his face from the blood, looks up, raises his hands, holds his arms to his father.

– Papa.

– It’s OK, boy.

– Papa.

The Rebbe takes a step forward and presses Axler’s face to his stomach and Axler wraps his arms around him.

– Papa, I killed Selig. And Chaim. Chaim died. And their bodies. Chaim was burned and. Fletcher. Fletcher was also killed. Pieces of him were lost. And Elias, his body. And another. We didn’t know what was his and. And the others, they came because I told them it was alright. That if the girls drove and we didn’t use guns, the sins would be less and. I killed Selig, Papa.

– Shht. Shh.

He holds his son’s head and looks at me and Lydia.

– This is what war does to us, yes? Our principles, our love, everything is tested. We find out everything there is to know about ourselves in two things only. In war. And in love.

He puts a hand under his son’s chin and lifts his face and looks at him, tear tracks cut through the blood on the boy’s cheeks.

– My son has just learned that he is not so strong as he thinks.

He glances at Lydia.

– As have you.

Axler sobs, coughs.

– I’m sorry, Papa.

Moishe shakes his head.

– No, no, don’t be sorry to me, be sorry to God. To God you owe your apologies. Apologize now to God.

Axler nods and closes his eyes and begins to whisper.

The Rebbe looks down at him.

– And, you see, tonight you find out more than that you are weak in war. You find out you are strong in love. The love for your friends. It was too strong for you to lie. When the time came, your love was too strong not to do what you had to. Not to face the truth, yes?

He runs his fingers through his son’s hair, straightens his yarmulke.

– This is the nature of love, to shine a light. To show us all what we really feel and want.

He looks at the ceiling.

– We have only to open our eyes and look, to see what love demands of us.

He slides the knife from his belt, pulls his son’s head back, baring his throat, and he pushes the knife through his neck, much as Axler did to murder his friend; a killing stroke he must have learned from his father.

I’m about to come off the floor and grab the Rebbe’s head and twist his neck and drag Lydia the hell out of this madhouse when the boys come back in and I have to put that particular plan on hold.

– And so we are diminished. Four sons of Benjamin. All with the blood of Gibeah in their veins. All killed in one night. And Abe as well. We must not forget Abe, yes? Not a Benjaminite, true, but he carried Gibeah in him. And he fathered two girls both strong enough to carry Gibeah themselves. A rare thing. Here, lift him.

He tucks the tail of the shroud around his son’s body and gestures to two of the boys and they lift Axler and carry him to the front of the temple and lay him at the foot of the altar.

Another boy comes back from the errand he was sent on and places a large bucket of soapy water and a pile of rags where the Rebbe points.

– There. No, leave them. All of you. Just. Sit please, yes? And be quiet for a moment. If this is not too much to ask? Yes? Thank you.

The boys take seats in the last row of the temple.

Rebbe Moishe takes one of the rags and dunks it in the water and starts to wipe up the blood of his son and his sister’s husband.

– And now the girls are of more importance than ever, yes? Daughters of their mother and of Abe. We’ll need them not only because they can produce true sons and daughters of Benjamin, but because they come of such strong stock. With luck, perhaps one or both of them will give us a boy who can carry the blood of Gibeah.

He twists the rag over the bucket and it rains red.

– But, this doesn’t matter to you, yes? You have heard enough of our problems. This our life, to sustain a history and a people that we trace back before Christ and Moses. What is that to you? Nothing. To you there is one question, yes? Coalition or Society, What is to be done with us now? is your only question.

He scrubs the temple floor.

– What is happening here, here in our land, in New Gibeah, this is for us, not for anyone else. If some others here who carry the blood of Gibeah do not wish to remain in the city, they may do as they please. They may leave. Provided, this is no surprise by now I think, provided that like Abe they do not try to take our daughters with them. But to leave is one thing, yes? To bring outsiders here is another. It invites misunderstanding and chaos.

He holds out his arms, the rag dripping.

– Chaos. War. Death.

He wrings the rag and bends to clean.

– We do not want these things brought here to our doorstep. Nor do you, I think, want them brought to yours. The Gibeahans, the seven hundred left-handed warriors we can muster, brought to your house, would not suit you.

He looks at us.

– Yes?

He cleans.

– Shht. Of course not. So a message must be sent. A message clear and without ambiguity must be sent.

He drops the rag in the bucket and comes to his feet.

– You remember the message that was sent, yes? When Gibeah was destroyed by the children of Israel, you remember? The concubine, divided together with her bones into twelve pieces and sent into all the coasts of Israel.

Lydia and I are on our feet, the boys are on theirs.

The Rebbe raises his hands.

– No. No. That will not be the message tonight. No. There has been enough. No. Not tonight. If you come again, if any of you come again across the river, yes, that is the message we will send. That is the warning we will send, the promise we will make and keep.

He looks at the body at the altar.

– But not tonight. For love’s sake we are done with that tonight.

He walks to me and holds out his hands.

– Come.

I don’t move.

He takes my hands and squeezes them both.

– Go to your home, tell your people this is our land, our home. Ours to defend and do with as we wish. No one else’s to give. We don’t ask for permission to do the things we do. We do them. For our protection, for God, we do them. Tell them the strength of our resolve, yes?

He looks over his shoulder to his dead son.

– The lengths we will go to here. Tell them the story of what we do here to be certain the tribe is safe. The sacrifices we make. Our willingness to cull our own herd of the weak to make the strong stronger.

He squeezes tighter.

– Yes?

I nod.

– Sure.

The boys start down the aisle.

– They’ll take you to the edge of Gibeah. From there you find your own way home.

I nod.

Still he holds my hands.

– The lecture on war was wasted on you, yes? You know what war is already. But perhaps not the one on love? I think not.

He squeezes tighter.

– Know what you love best before you sacrifice on its behalf.

He looks at the boys, and they are on Lydia, one on each limb, another to bind her while they hold her down and she screams.

I jerk my arms back and the Rebbe turns them under and lifts them and I freeze.

– Think what you love best.

Lydia is on the floor.

Screaming.

– Joe! Joe!

I relax my arms.

Moishe eases his grip.

– Good, yes? Think, yes? You know this is as it must be. Her mother was Jewish, she said, yes?

– Joe! Don’t you let these fucking lunatics keep me!

– Her mother was Jewish. Perhaps not of Benjamin, but a woman of Jewish blood, descended of a woman of Jewish blood. And she has the blood of Gibeah. She is ours. You know this, yes. Even if she does not, you know this.

– Fucking, Joe! Joe!

– Her children will make the tribe stronger. Her children will be clean. Can carry blood for the sons and daughters of Gibeah.

– Oh no, fuck no!

Her arms and legs are bound. One holds her head, another gags her. She twists and struggles and keens through the gag.

The Rebbe raises a finger.

– Know what you love best, and what you are willing to sacrifice for it.

I look at all the blood smeared in this temple. I look at Lydia.

And I know what I love best. The only thing I love. And what I will do for her. And how little time I have left to do it.

I stop looking at Lydia and look at him instead.

– Hey, man, I barely know the chick. All I’m interested in is a ride home.

The boys hoist her high and bear her out of the room.

They keep my blade and my works and my guns, but they give back my money and my keys, and they let me ride in the backseat instead of the trunk.

One of the boys on either side, two more up front, they drive me in Axler’s mom’s beaten Caddy.

Out Ocean Parkway to the Prospect expressway and the BQE, we trace back the route I took with Lydia through Red Hook. No one says anything. The car smells like the blood we’ve all spilled. Dry and crusted to our clothes. It burns the nostrils, as if someone had spilled a can of paint thinner in the car. One of the boys keeps his window down and rides with his face tilted into the wind.

At Hicks, the driver swings off the expressway and pulls to a corner and one of the boys gets out and holds the door for me as I climb out. It’s the head scratcher. He avoids my eyes, but I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at the ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, the walkway that spans its length, the dark sky above it, starless.

He gets back in the car.

I rap a knuckle on the door before he can close it.

– Got any idea what time it is?

He looks at me, looks away.

– Just go around to the other side of the ramp. Some stairs are there. You have plenty of time to walk back.

– Sure, but do you know what time it is?

He closes the door and they drive away, the right front tire grinding against the crumpled fender when they turn at the corner.

The ice air off the river burrows into the wound in my ribs and the holes in my leg and arm. I pull my coat closer around me and walk a block to Cadman Plaza West and limp across it in front of some traffic and follow a path around a little park and hit the sidewalk on the other side and walk down it and find the staircase cut into the stone footing of the bridge and I go up and stand on the wood planks of the walk and look at downtown Manhattan about twenty minutes away. At the other end of the bridge somewhere is a yellow cab waiting for a fare, waiting to take me the fuck home.

I turn around and go back down the stairs.

Jesus loves me and I find a 24-hour deli on Henry Street.

A crackhead skips from foot to foot in front of the door. He skips a little farther to make room for me.

– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I walk inside.

– Catch me on my way out.

He skips and smiles toothless.

The beer cooler is locked. I look for the clerk, see that no one is in the store. I think about breaking the glass, remember the precinct house we passed as we came off the expressway just down the street. I smell something and walk to the counter and lean over it and see the guy on his knees, curled over, his forehead touching the prayer mat that covers the floor. I wait a minute while he chants.

He stands, rolling the mat and putting it and a copy of the Q’uran on a shelf above the condoms and hangover cures.

– Sorry. These hours. I have to sneak it in when I can. My imam would shit.

He looks up and sees my scab-crusted face and the blood-soaked shirt stuck to my chest and his eyes drift down and he sees the hole in my pants and the bloody denim.

– Uh.

– The cooler’s locked.

He looks up.

– Uh.

– It’s not mine. The blood.

– Uh.

– In an accident. Driver got messed up bad. Most of it’s his.

– Uh.

– I could use a beer.

He nods.

– Right.

He comes from around the counter.

– Sorry. Have to lock it while I’m at prayer.

He unlocks the cooler.

– Chester out there would come in and try to clear out every forty in the place if I didn’t.

I reach in the cooler and grab a six of Bud and a 40 of Old English 800.

At the counter he bags the beer and tosses in the two packs of Luckys I ask for.

– That it?

There are some odds and ends hanging on wire hooks above the candy racks. Scotch tape, blunted scissors, notepads, sewing kits, playing cards, a spatula, toilet plunger, screwdriver. I take down a sewing kit and a serrated kitchen knife shrink-wrapped to a piece of cardboard and he rings it up.

– Thirty-seven, eighty-nine.

I dig the crumpled bills from my pocket and give him two twenties and he gives me the change.

– You OK?

I pick up the bag.

– I’m gonna be.

– You live around here?

– I live around.

– You need a ride, there’s a car service up the street.

– Thanks.

I go out.

– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I pull the 40 out of the bag and show it to Chester and tilt my head up the street and he follows me away from the storefront. I hand him the 40 and watch while he unscrews the cap, gives the mouth of the bottle a wipe with the greasy XXL sweatshirt that hangs off his skin and bones, puts it to his mouth and watercoolers half of it.

I put one of my beers down my throat.

Chester swirls the beer at the bottom of his bottle.

– Lookin’ fera rock?

I nod.

He tilts his head back, goes at the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing, drops the empty on a littered patch of dirt at the foot of a sick tree and skips toward the corner.

– C’mon.

I follow him onto Orange Street and in the middle of the block I punch him in the back of the neck just at the base of the skull and his head snaps forward and he takes another step and then his feet stop moving and I fist a wad of his sweatshirt before he can face-plant on the pavement and drag him to an iron fence and hoist him up and throw him over into the small churchyard it encloses.

I drop the plastic bag between the bars and climb over and jump to the ground, the holes in my body bitching at me. I grab Chester and my bag and drag them into the darkness at the foot of a statue of someone who was probably really important once, but now he’s just dead.

I crack a beer and take a sip and set it aside and get the kitchen knife from the bag and tear it from the plastic and cardboard and thumb the serrated edge. It’s dull. Sharp enough for bread, but little else. I pull up the sleeve of Chester’s shirt and spill a little beer on his wrist and mop it away with the paper napkins the clerk tossed in the bag. I open the sewing kit and thread a needle and set it close by.

And I pick up the knife and put it to his skin and cut quick and deep, the blade sharp enough for this.

My mouth is over the wound, and Chester’s diseased and ravaged blood is pumping into me and the Vyrus goes into it and feeds on it and I don’t feel the cold anymore and I don’t feel my wounds and the hairs on my stomach and chest stand up and my eyes roll up in my head and I almost laugh at myself for buying the sewing kit.

He’s not empty when I’m done. Not for lack of trying. But after I start gagging up blood for the third time I drop his arm and find more of the napkins and wipe my mouth and rinse my face with beer.

I look at Chester. There’s still blood in there, but none of it’s coming out, his heart having stopped pumping after the first three or four pints ran down my gullet.

I pick up the knife and hack his arm with it a couple times, creating something that might look enough like stress cuts to make the cops shrug and say junkie suicide and not give a fuck. I wipe the knife handle and wrap his fingers around it.

I squat there and drink another beer and smoke and try and remember if there was a video camera in the deli. If there was, I should go back and make the clerk show me where the recorder is and take the tapes and kill him. But I don’t think there was.

I collect my empties and butts and the sewing kit and stand and look at Chester again and put my foot on his chest and pump it a few times to force more blood from his wound so there will be some pooled on the grass when he’s found.

It looks like shit. Looks like a shit kill by an asshole who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Fuck do I care? I’m a new fucking man.

The holes in my body are sealed tight and they flush warm and tingle as they heal. I can smell the crisp night in every detail. I can see the stars that were invisible before. I can hear the tics and fleas that infest Chester’s clothes start to suck at the blood I’ve left for them. I can feel the vibrations of the cars climbing the ramp to the bridge blocks away.

I leap to the top of the fence and perch there.

I’m a monster in the city at night. And I can do what I fucking please.

It’s Brooklyn. Burn it to the ground and see if anyone pisses on the fire.

Two drivers and the dispatcher at the car service sit behind a Plexiglas partition playing dominoes on a card table with a crooked leg, filling the office with smoke.

The dispatcher looks at me and the mess I am and shakes his head.

– No cars.

I go in my pocket and come out with more of the Society’s cash and put four twenties on the counter and slide them under the partition.

He shakes his head again.

One of the drivers calls domino and slaps down and they total their points and the other driver curses and looks at my money.

– Where?

I tell him and he takes the eighty bucks and gives sixty to the guy who just skunked him and pulls on a parka and the dispatcher buzzes him out of the booth and we walk into the cold and he unlocks his Lincoln.

I start to get in and he holds up a hand and gets a blanket from the trunk, spreads it across the backseat so I don’t get blood on his cracked and faded leather.

I get in and pull a beer from the bag and put a fresh smoke in my mouth.

He turns in his seat and looks at me.

– No smoking. No drinking.

I hand him my last twenty and a beer and he pockets the money and opens the beer and drives.

He drops me off next to the Field and I walk across it drinking my last beer and toss the empty can at the bottom of the fence and jump it and hit to the ground on the other side and weave through the headstones.

I find the freshly dug graves of Chaim and Selig and Fletcher and Elias and whatever parts of the Strongman that made it into the ground here. I have to dig with my hands, but the dirt is loose and I’m strong and it doesn’t take long. I get to the corpse I want and I take his long knife and his little axe. I brush dirt from them and test their edges and find them honed.

Cypress Ave. cuts through the cemetery. I walk along it and settle into some bushes at the base of a tree where I can see the end of 57th Street and the lighted upper windows at the rear of the house with the small temple in its backyard, and the young man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat walking back and forth next to the fence that separates it from the cemetery.

I think about Lydia and what a pain in my ass she is.

I think about Predo and Terry and the way it feels when they jerk my strings and my arms and legs jump and I dance dance dance to their tune.

I think about Daniel and things he’s said to me over the years about what Enclave is and what they want and how I’m one of them.

I think about Rebbe Moishe and what he had to say about love.

I think about love and what you sacrifice for it and what you do to keep it in your life.

I think about Evie.

I think about the only way you can stay with the person you love forever. How you have to die to do that. I think about how close Evie is to death. And what it will be like when she’s gone.

I think about what’s expected of me. How little.

I think about seven hundred left-handed warriors.

And I walk out of the bushes and use the long knife and the axe to kill one.

He fights quiet.

Mostly he fights quiet because I come at him from behind and he smells me too late and when he turns the axe cuts through his windpipe. After that his screams don’t do much except whistle and spray blood. He reaches for something riding on his hip and I stab the long knife through the back of his hand and into his gut. His right hand comes at my throat, but I’m bringing the axe back around and I imbed it in his shoulder and I know I cut something important because his fingers won’t squeeze when he gets them on me. I push him up against the fence and he gurgles and leaks all over the place. He jerks his left hand free of the knife, losing his thumb as he does it, and goes for my eyes. I pull the axe and the knife from his body and looks like I was the only thing holding him up because he slides down the fence and onto his back and his limbs pedal at the air like a dying bug.

I leave him where he is, close to all the other dead people in the cemetery, and go over the fence and the guy on the other side is waiting for me and I find out what the Rebbe was talking about when he said they can sling stones at a hair breadth, and not miss.

The half-inch steel bearing this guy whips from his sling hits me in the left kneecap and the bone turns to a fistful of gravel and I swing the leg out in front of me and step on it and it makes me want to scream but I won’t do that and I walk on the fucking thing and it makes me pay for it, and it looks to me like the problem with a sling is that after you fire your first shot you have to get another stone or whatever cradled in that little pocket and spin the thing up to speed and if the asshole you just nailed keeps coming at you and chops your arm off before you can do all that, you’re fucked.

So that’s what I do.

This one makes some noise, until I put him on the ground and stomp on his head a couple times.

My knee hurts like something my dad did to me once when I was too young to know that pain stops. But I’m older now. And one way or another I won’t have to worry about the knee much longer.

Two more boys come out of the house.

One has a spear. The other one is in his underwear and his yarmulke and doesn’t have shit.

I worry about the one with the spear.

He rushes me and plants his feet and thrusts just like someone has trained him to do and I drop the long knife and grab the spear shaft behind the point and it slips through my fingers and about three inches of steel slips into my stomach and I bring the axe down and the shaft splinters and the guy who had a spear now has a stick and I have the axe and the business end of a spear and I pull it out of my belly and flip it in the air and catch it and hold it out and the guy in his underwear has already leapt into the air and is coming down at me and can’t do shit about it and the shock of the impact tears the spear from my hand and he hits the ground and starts trying to pull it out of his chest but it’s in deep and lodged tight in his breastbone and he rolls around and dies and the guy with the stick turns to go back in the house and trips over the arm of the boy who had the sling and I limp over and swing the axe once and swing it a second time and the second time does the trick and I go inside the house with the axe in one hand and a head in the other.

The door leads into the kitchen. The boy in the kitchen is the head scratcher.

And he has a bow.

His hands shake as he tries to knock an arrow into the bowstring.

I hold up the head.

– Hey.

He flinches and the arrow slips loose and the string twangs into his forearm.

– Uh.

I point the axe at the head.

– Where’s the girl?

He points at the floor.

– Uh.

– Basement?

He nods.

I lower the head.

– You can run if you want.

He drops the bow and turns and runs through the doorway into the livingroom and I throw the head at his legs and he goes down and I walk over with the axe and put my foot in his back and raise the axe to get my second head.

– A message is meant to be heeded, yes?

The Rebbe stands halfway down the stairway in his trousers and slippers and untucked shirt, a prayer shawl draped over his shoulders, a Colt Defender in his hand. I notice a black cloth draped half over a mirror on the wall next to him. A basin of water at the end of the hall near the front door.

The Rebbe tugs the cloth over the mirror, but it falls away again.

– For my son.

He looks at the head scratcher.

– Coward.

He shoots the head scratcher and I throw myself up the stairs and swing the axe in a high arc and I crash into the stairs and the blade rakes his leg and hooks in the meat of his thigh and I heave and the leg folds under him and he’s falling backward, two rounds punching through the ceiling, and I pull the axe from his leg and put it in his stomach and pull him down the stairs toward me and the gun comes at my face and the barrel smashes my cheekbone and it goes off and the muzzle flash sears my eye and the bullet splinters the banister and I pull the axe free and put it in his chest and pull him closer and I’m on top of him now and his face is in front of me and I know what I love and what I’ll sacrifice for it and I don’t care when he fires again and the bullet tears my neck open and I pull the axe free and I bring it down and I bring it down and I bring it down.

– Moishe.

His wife stands at the top of the stairs.

Covered in her husband’s blood, I pick up his gun and shoot her dead.

I pull off the Rebbe’s shawl and wrap it around my neck. The wound is growing hot as the Vyrus clots the blood. My left eye is blind and blistered. I sit on the stair and smoke, my head listing to the side where the bullet ripped a hole in the thick muscle that connects it to my body.

When the cigarette is finished I go to work, dividing the Rebbe together with his bones into twelve pieces.

I don’t bother to send the pieces into any place. I’m pretty sure his people will get the fucking message.

– Where is that fucker?

Lydia takes the long knife from me and cuts the bindings from her feet and sits up on the cot in her basement cell.

– Where’s the fucker that thought he was gonna turn me into a rape slave?

I pick some dead skin from my blind eye.

– I got him.

She stands, totters, puts out a hand to brace herself and grabs my shoulder.

– I want to see.

I flick the skin from my fingers.

– No, you don’t.

She looks me over, standing crooked on my one good leg, dressed in one of Axler’s too-tight black suits and my sticky leather jacket, the rest of my clothes up in the house, soaked in half the blood of Brooklyn.

She grits her teeth.

– He deserved it.

I cough up some blood. I don’t know whose.

– No doubt.

She looks at the hand on my shoulder, pulls it away.

– You OK?

– No.

She nods.

– OK. Let’s get going.

I push off the wall and we both limp out the door and she stops and looks at the other cell across the basement.

She steps that way.

I don’t.

– Lydia, I need to get out of here.

She looks me over.

– You’ll hold up a little longer.

She walks, holding her belly.

– Fucking arrows. Who uses arrows, Joe? Savages, that’s who. I mean, no disrespect to any native peoples intended, but arrows are for savages. These people are savages. They have the same superstitions as savages. And they treat women like savages. And I’m not leaving these women here to be baby incubators for savages.

– Open that door and untie them and they’re just gonna try and kill you.

I come up behind her.

– You killed their father, Lydia.

She looks at the lock.

– All the more reason that I won’t leave them here, Joe. If that means we carry them out of here hog-tied, then that’s what we’ll do.

She looks at me.

– Do you have anything to get the lock off?

I hand her the axe.

– Try this.

She brings it down on the lock and it tears loose and she pushes the door open and light hits Vendetta and Harm, hanging from the water pipe that runs across the ceiling, nooses tied from their head-scarves knotted around their swollen necks.

Lydia stares at them.

I make for the stairs, glad that something was easy for a change.

– I don’t know how they did it.

I steer Axler’s mom’s Caddy up onto the bridge.

She rubs her forehead.

– They must have hung there forever.

I push the dash lighter in and put a cigarette in my mouth.

– They were tough little tarts. And they knew what they wanted. Want it bad enough and you’ll do anything.

She watches me take the lighter from the dash and use it.

– Fuck you, Joe.

I push the lighter back in its socket and drive.

– Yeah, fuck me.

Over on the horizon, something a little like dawn shows upriver.

I pull to the curb, back on Society turf.

– Where’s this?

– I got things to do. You can keep the car.

Lydia looks out the window.

– No. Absolutely not.

I open my door.

She grabs my arm.

– I thought we talked about this. I thought I was clear about where I stand with this kind of thing.

I pull loose and step out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition.

She comes around from her side and stands in front of me.

– This is not OK. You are not thinking straight. And it’s not even remotely the time to have a debate on the subject. We have to go to Terry and tell him what happened. Regardless of who was to blame, what happened out there was a fiasco and there will be consequences, and we have to begin to prepare for them right now.

I jam the Rebbe’s Defender into her stomach.

– Lydia, get out of my fucking way.

She looks down at the gun.

– Don’t be ridiculous, Joe.

I shoot her.

She goes down on the sidewalk and I scoop her up and stumble into the emergency entrance screaming and we’re mobbed and they pull her from me and I cling to her and someone tells someone to get rid of me and I let them drag me to a little room down the hall past the security desk and a guy tells me I have to be calm and I punch him and he goes down and I limp out of the little room and to the elevators and go up and the night nurse is behind the desk with her wrist in a brace and she looks at me and I look at her and she looks back down at her computer and I walk into the room and there’s my girl.

She comes out of the drugs a little when I’m detaching all the wires and hoses, and looks at me and touches my face.

I put a finger over the end of her trache tube and she smiles and her voice scratches its way out of her throat.

– Hello, handsome.

– Hello.

– You don’t look good.

– Yeah.

– You should go to a hospital.

– I should.

I pull the blankets and sheets away and she winces as I pull out her catheter and air whistles from the trache.

I help her to sit up.

– Sorry.

She covers the end of the tube.

– I’m gonna make a mess now.

– That’s OK.

I go to the closet and find her big leather jacket and tuck her into it.

– We going somewhere?

– Yeah.

She points at the bed table.

– My present, my present. I want to wear it.

I pick up the candy necklace and rip the package open with my teeth and stretch it and put it over her head and around her skinny neck.

She cocks her head and touches it with her fingertips.

– Am I beautiful?

– Hell yeah, baby.

I pick her up and put her in the wheelchair at the foot of the bed.

And the night nurse is gone from her desk, hiding. And the intern in the elevator ignores us and leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes. And the security guards on the ground floor are all outside looking for the gutshot woman who climbed off her gurney and threw one of them into a wall and ran out the door and drove off in an old Cadillac and must be on more PCP than the devil. And the cabby that stops for us doesn’t know how to fold the wheelchair and neither do I so we leave it at the curb and when he drops us off on Little West 12th Street I carry Evie in my arms to the door and kick it until someone slides it open and I stagger in on a ruined leg and someone catches me and takes my girl from me and I try to take her back and Daniel cradles her gently and smiles.

– Simon, you made it.

– L’chaim.

I take the Dixie cup of blood from Daniel.

– Is that supposed to be funny?

He hands the small pitcher of blood back to the Enclave who gave it to him.

– Sorry. Was that in bad taste? After your story, I couldn’t quite resist.

I drink the blood and tear the cup in half and run my finger over the insides and stick it in my mouth and suck it clean.

– Glad I could lighten your load.

He blows out his sunken cheeks. -Lighten my load.

He holds a hand to the candle that sits between us on the floor and his skin goes translucent.

– My load is amply light these days.

I crumple the cup and drop it.

He points at my knee.

– Any better?

I give it a poke with my index finger and the pain jumps up my spine.

– Feels like a hot-water bottle stuffed full of broken seashells.

His eyebrows rise.

– Oddly, I have no idea what that would feel like. May I?

I shrug.

– It’s your place.

He pokes my knee. I flinch. He smiles.

– You know, I think you’re right. A hot-water bottle full of broken seashells. You’re showing a touch of the poet this morning, Simon.

– Want me to stick a finger in the hole in my neck and come up with a nice simile for that sensation?

– No, no. I’ve had my hands in plenty of open wounds. I know well enough what they feel like. But let’s take a look in any case.

He picks up the candle and holds it close to the crusted bullet hole. He hums and taps the side of my head and I tilt it away from the wound and the scabs crack and ooze.

– Well, I won’t say I envy you, but it will heal.

He points at the knee.

– This could be more of a problem. The bone will knit, but it won’t reform itself. You’ll have a nasty limp.

I look at the swollen purple mass.

– Care to take a crack at it?

He sets the candle down and places his hands on the knee and probes it, and waves of pain and nausea roll over me and he digs his fingers in and shoves and presses, and chips and flakes of bone scrape and snap into a new arrangement and he takes his hands away.

– Not as designed, I’m sure, but a little better. Maybe.

We sit.

Around us the Enclave are moving about. The blood is being passed up and down a seated line of them. Some taking a slight drink, others fasting. A few push big brooms across the floor. I pick up my crumpled cup and toss it into the heap of dust one of them is moving down the length of the warehouse. A couple of them descend the steps from the loft that runs the back of the building.

Somewhere up there, that’s where they took Evie.

– So how about it, Daniel?

He’s picking at an old spot of dry paint on the concrete floor.

– Hm?

I dig a finger into the wound on my neck. Feel it hurt me.

– How about we go take a look at my girl?

He drops his head far back and stares up into the darkness above us.

– There are skylights up there. We painted them black, of course. But we never covered them over. It was discussed. Common sense suggested we should lay some sheets of plywood over them. Tarps at the very least. But someone, it may have been me, argued against it. Our home is so ordered. Disciplined. By necessity. We starve ourselves to the edge of reason. Beyond. Without structure, rigidity of manner, it would devolve to chaos and bloodshed here. Very quickly. But it’s not natural. Proper, yes. But not natural. An element of the random, danger, no matter how remote, seemed like a nice touch.

He rises, still looking up.

– So every once in a while, a bird dies in midflight. An owl, of all things, once shattered two panes and landed at my feet just a few yards from this spot. Snow and ice built up another time and brought down an entire skylight. A bullet someone had fired into the air. The wind. A flaw in the glass suddenly exposed. All these have happened. Each time we’ve repaired or replaced the broken glass, painted it black, and left it uncovered. Each time it causes great excitement. Most every other physical aspect of our lives being all but utterly predictable.

He looks at me.

– And you know, not once, never, have any of the accidents occurred by the light of day.

He looks up again.

– I don’t know what that means. But I find it a bit of a disappointment.

He bends at the waist and puts a hand alongside his mouth and whispers.

– There have been more than a few Enclave over the years who I would have given my eyeteeth to see hit with a sudden blast of sunlight.

He straightens and looks around at the white figures bustling about.

– Prigs most of them. Unseasoned. So little sense of proportion. That’s one of the dangers of the cloistered life. An expansive sense of the universe, sure, but try having a conversation about art or music or a woman’s legs and they have nothing to contribute at all. You’ve been around. You’ve seen a thing or two.

A strand of tendon in his neck starts to jump and he claps a hand over it.

– Hm. Yes. Seen. Things.

He takes the hand away. The tendon is still.

– Do you remember, do you remember the Wraith, Simon?

I look elsewhere.

– I was out of my skull, man. I don’t know what I remember.

– Don’t lie. It’s beneath you.

I almost laugh at that one.

He does laugh.

– Alright, yes, lying is far from beneath you. Little is beneath you except the floor. I surrender. But. The Wraith. Something for you to think about. It came from somewhere.

– If you say so.

– I do. It came from somewhere. I know. We asked it here. From somewhere else. But, Simon, that doesn’t mean I know what it is. I do have a theory.

I get my good leg under me and lever myself to my feet.

– Daniel.

– Yes? What?

– You’re acting kind of weird. I mean, even for you. Are you OK?

He spreads his arms wide, lets them drop to his sides.

– Simon, if only I had the time to answer a question like that.

– Well, if you’re done spacing out here, how about we go look at Evie?

An Enclave comes near, hovers just off Daniel’s shoulder.

Daniel looks at him, holds up a finger. The Enclave stays there. Daniel brushes at him with the finger. The Enclave takes a step back, but doesn’t leave.

Daniel nods, looks at me.

– I’m sorry, you asked what?

– Evie. My girl, Daniel. I need to know.

He raises a hand.

– Right, yes. The girl. You want to know who she is.

– No, I know who she is, man, I want to-

He lays a hand on my chest. It burns.

– Simon, you want to know who she is. Not her name. Not where she was born. Not what her parents do or where she went to school or if she ever wore braces. You want to know who she is. What she is.

He raises his hand and cups my chin, the heat from his skin is intolerable.

– You want to know if she’s like you.

The Enclave shuffles his feet.

Daniel moves his hand to my cheek.

– What will you do, Simon? What the hell will you do?

I swallow some spit and the muscles contracting in my neck pull at the wound.

– I. If she. I’ll, I’ll save her, Daniel. She’s dying and I want to. So.

He drops his hand.

– That’s not what I meant.

The Enclave moves closer again and Daniel nods. He tugs my sleeve.

– Come on, I’ll help you.

He moves next to me and I put a hand on his shoulder and we walk.

– Thank you for coming by and telling me what you’ve been up to, Simon. Your stories always serve as a reminder. Of how pitifully banal most of the world’s concerns are. And how hilarious the contortions most people go through to make themselves believe any of it matters.

– Sure. My pleasure.

More Enclave are coming near, clustering, walking behind and around us.

The door is in front of us.

We stop.

I take my hand from Daniel’s shoulder.

– Daniel, I’m not leaving, man. I’m not going anywhere until you look at Evie and tell me.

He takes a step toward the door, places a hand on it, runs his fingers across the even white paint that covers the steel.

– You, you are well seasoned. You I could talk to about a woman’s leg. But I wish you had some little of the other, a concern for things larger than yourself. It would have made our conversations more fruitful. You might have learned something. You might have. Well. Who cares, really? Not you. Not even me. Not anymore.

I look at the Enclave arrayed around us. All of them.

I tug at the waist of Axler’s pants.

– Daniel, I’m not going out there without her.

He puts his other hand on the door, lays both palms flat and leans his forehead between them.

– If you’d ever listened once. If you’d ever observed for the slightest moment what happens here, you’d know what an ass you’re making of yourself.

I reach for him and I am pinned suddenly to the door and it takes a moment to realize that Daniel has taken me by the throat and snatched me to his side.

– Look, Simon, look around and what do you see? What do you ever see here?

I look. I see Daniel. I see Enclave.

I try to move. His grip tightens, threatens to tear off my head.

– Yes. You see always one thing. Enclave. In here. Always the same. Enclave. Nothing else comes in. Nothing else leaves. Only Enclave.

His fingers loosen.

– And you ask if the girl is like you. She is as much like you as I am or any of us here.

He takes his hand away.

– You are Enclave.

Tears, viscous and white are filling his eyes.

– As she is here, as I let her in, so she is Enclave too.

I break for the stairs.

And am in the grip of Enclave. Held fast.

Daniel wipes the back of his hand over a cheek, smearing the tears. He shakes and his teeth chatter and he clenches his fists and a bone breaks in the back of his hand and juts from his skin and he exhales slow and stops shaking. But the tears keep coming.

– As for leaving. She’ll have the chance to make that decision for herself.

He looks up at the black skylight.

– For the moment, I’m the only one going out.

He turns to the southward-facing door and takes the handle and pulls and it slides open on well-greased tracks and the light washes in and the Enclave rustle back from it and Daniel walks out onto the loading dock and steps off and drops to the street and walks across the cobbles that peek through the worn tarmac of Little West 12th and the sun crests the tops of the tenements at the east end of the street and hammers him and he turns into it and lets the thin white robe fall off his shoulder and to the ground and the light reflects off his white skin and he smiles and his head turns our way.

And watching him there, smiling in the sun, for a moment I believe.

Then purple blossoms like the ones that cover Evie climb over his face.

Cancers boil out of his nostrils and his ears.

His eyes swell and puss drains from them and steams.

The Enclave release me as they scuttle farther from the sunlight and I tear a white shawl from one’s shoulders and the bones Daniel shifted in my knee come loose and I drag my leg outside and into the street and wrap the shawl around my head and when I grab Daniel’s wrist the skin slips off the bone and I get my arms under him and scoop him off the cobbles and for the second time I lurch into the darkness with a diseased and wasted thing in my arms.

But no one takes this one from me.

Noises come from the misshapen clot of tumors that used to be his face and I put my ear to a bloody and bone-rimmed hole and he reeks poison.

A mass that used to be a hand touches my face. -Be seeing you, Joe.

And he laughs and coughs his throat out on the floor and he dies.

The room is quiet except for the sound of the door rolling shut. As the light is cut off, glass breaks, and a large black bird falls dead a few yards from us, pinned to the ground by a shaft of morning sunlight.

– OK, man, now that was just plain freaky.

I look up and watch as the Count comes down the stairs, dressed all in white.

– I don’t know about you, but I have had one weird fucking night. I mean, no shock there, right? Not in this place. I’m guessing nothing that passes even remotely as unweird has happened in this joint for a loooongass time. But look who I’m telling. Oh, oh, man, do they always do that?

I watch as the Enclave that has placed the bucket under Daniel’s hanging corpse slits its throat. Nothing comes out of the gash.

I pat my pockets. Find my cigarettes. I put one in my mouth and try to find my lighter. Stop looking. Watch as the Enclave begins to cut Daniel open from crotch to neck.

The Count leans over and snaps a Bic in front of my face.

I flinch. Blink. Lean in and light my smoke.

He takes the lighter away.

– Are your hands shaking, Joe?

I put the cigarette in my mouth and tuck my hands into my armpits.

– I’m cold.

He feels his own skin.

– Tell me about it. Like an icebox in here.

The Enclave begins pulling viscera from the corpse.

The Count turns his head and whistles.

– Oh, man, that is rude. I mean, who needs to see that shit? Nasty.

He takes a seat on the floor next to me.

– But that’s the way they rock it here. One of them dies, doesn’t matter what they were before they went out, they get gutted and nailed to the wall. Some kind of lesson thing. That’s what the guy told me when I asked.

– They’ll boil his bones and eat the marrow.

He looks at me.

– No shit?

I pull a hand from my armpit. It’s stopped shaking. I take the smoke from my mouth.

– Yeah. That’s the deal.

– Whoa. Man. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

He nudges me with his shoulder.

– Then again, check this out. You know the bones, that’s where blood gets made. In the marrow. Like, by the time we’re adults, it’s only made in a few places. Your spine, sternum, pelvis, some little patches in your upper arms and legs. That’s where you get your good old, controversial pluripotential hematopoietic stem cells. Try saying that shit five times fast. Stem cells manufacture blood cells, determine that they will be blood cells. So think about this. Drink another Vampyre’s blood and get sick as hell. Unless it’s super freshly infected and has been made into anathema. In which case you get high as hell. So what happens when you eat a dead Vampyre’s marrow, man? His stem-cell factories?

He licks his lips.

– I’m guessing you get some weird deep Amazonian Carlos Castaneda shaman fungus high.

He shakes his head.

– I’m not saying I’m gonna be thinking about where that shit came from, but I’m dying to try me some of that soup.

The Enclave pulls a wad of tumors from Daniel’s body.

The Count turns his head again.

– What say we move this conversation?

He stands.

I watch pieces of Daniel hit the floor.

I stand. The Count reaches to help me and I pull away and stumble, but I keep my feet.

He raises his hands.

– As you wish, man. Just trying to help.

I follow him.

He limps on that foot I ruined for him. I limp on the knee Daniel tried to fix for me.

– Wanted to thank you, by the way. I don’t remember too much about what went down at my place. But from what I can put together, probably would have been easiest thing just to waste me.

He grins.

– ’Course, knowing I still hold the purse strings on my trust fund, that was unlikely. I mean, experience has taught me you can knock me around if it amuses you, but Terry would be steamed if you ever kacked my ass before he can get his hands on those accounts.

He stops, blinks a few times, takes a couple deep breaths.

– Sorry. Whew. Shit I went through the last twelve hours, wrung me out, man. Going cold turkey on the anathema. Bleeding the Vyrus dry. That was some extreme shit. I mean, I knew I was asking for trouble, but damn.

He snaps his head from side to side.

– Whammywhammywhammy! Shit had me on the ropes. Oh, check this out.

Ahead of us two Enclave are sparring.

A whirl of blurred white limbs.

Crack of bone on bone.

The Count makes karate hands and chops the air.

– That’s the shit I’m really looking forward to. Getting my kung fu on. I know I’m not the kind of guy you expect extreme patience and discipline from, but if it means coming out the other side with moves like these guys, I will meditate until my ass bleeds. I mean, whoa that shit is badass.

The stairs are close by. I turn and look at them.

The Count comes over.

– Me, I’m a little surprised they can get it up to do that shit. Losing Daniel, way I gather it, that’s like a major setback, yeah?

– I guess.

– Guess nothing, man. You’ve been hanging out at this place for a few years now, right?

– I come by sometimes.

– Sure. So he was the man. I mean, I only spent a couple hours with the guy while he was helping me get straight last night, but even I could see he was righteous beyond the ken of normal men. If you follow.

– I follow.

– So now, the way he laid it out, one of them is always on point, leading the way toward what he tried to do. Toward the whole transmutation thing they’re into.

– Something like that.

– And he was way ahead of the pack. He was, like, the best hope they’d have for, like, forever. Now, man, it’s like they are at square one or something. Got to pick up with whoever’s been fasting the longest. What I hear, the dude in second place is way back from where Daniel was. But here they are, carrying on, doing their thing. And on top of that, they’re getting ready to eat their Dalai Lama’s marrow. Telling you, these are some well-adjusted citizens.

– Count.

– Yeah.

– You’re talking a lot.

– Well, I do do that, don’t I?

I face him.

– I have something I need to do. So get to the point.

He scratches his head.

– The girl. Right.

He points at the stairs.

– Come on, I’ll show you where.

He starts. I don’t move. He looks back.

– C’mon, man. Not like it’s a secret or anything. Place isn’t that huge. There’s a sick girl in the house. Everyone knows it. So come on up.

He leads me up.

– Daniel kind of filled me in. Not that he was gossiping or anything, but he was just talking. He always spacey like that?

– No. He wasn’t.

– Was last night. Don’t get me wrong, man was like a fucking magician with me. Like, I don’t know what, like Zoltan the Mind Master or something.

He stops on the stairs and looks into my eyes.

– Dude locked eyes with me, put a hand on me, was like he, man, went into me. Which I know is just the gayest thing you’ve ever heard, but that’s what it was like. The Vyrus, it was tearing me apart. Eating me. Was like he told it to chill. Got me to balance with it. And I did. A-fucking-mazing. Only lasted for a couple seconds maybe. But I was there. This perfect point where the Vyrus was kind of at its most pure and raging, and I was, I don’t know what, riding it or something. Talk about a high? That is something I will feel again.

He moves his eyes from mine.

– After that, he gave me a little blood. Knew I couldn’t contain that shit. Vyrus settled. I mean, I am starving here, but it settled. Best thing? It worked.

He inhales deep, lets it out.

– Like, all my thinking about anathema, and how you hooked me on the bad dose, and the way that…man. The way that felt. Wanting to get out from under that more than anything. And the reading I was doing for Terry. Learning about regular viruses and shit. I knew there had to be a way to burn that shit out of your system. I knew it.

He taps my chest.

– And, Joe, I knew you were the guy to turn to.

He starts back up the stairs.

– Not that I thought you’d nurse me through if I asked or anything. I just figured me and my money are too valuable to lose. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t ready to die, man. Was I ever.

We reach the top of the stairs and he puts a hand on the wall and closes his eyes.

– Hang on a sec, man. Still rocked. You see things, Joe. When you dose like that, you see things. I’m not saying they’re real, but you see them.

He opens his eyes.

– I saw shit. All that stuff on the walls and the floor. I mean, that was no act. I started flippin’. I thought something was coming for me. Started reading Crowley and shit online. Wicca.com. I mean, lame. But I was scared. Once I stopped feeding. Once I poured out the last load of anathema Terry sent by, I went somewhere else. I was ready, man. I was ready to die.

He takes his hand from the wall.

– Then you came. Well, you had to. You and Phil are the only ones who ever came over. Phil to drop off blood and anathema. You to tell me how much money Terry wanted transferred into the Society account. Knew Phil would call you if he found me first. Only real risk far as that went was if I would drink him.

He makes a face.

– Still can’t believe you put some of his blood in me. Nasty.

He bites his lip.

– Anyway, thing is, none of it, none of it was an act. Want you to know that. I definitely made a play to put you in a position where you had to help me, but none of it was an act. So. Thank you, I guess.

I don’t say anything.

He nods.

– Yeah, fuck me. I know.

He starts down the hall that runs between the cubicles where the Enclave sleep.

– Will say, I never figured I’d end up here. Heard about these guys. But never thought for a second you’d bring me here. Never had this in mind. Did you know?

– What?

– That they only allow Enclave inside?

I put my hand to the wall, taking some weight off my knee as we go down toward the end of the hall.

– Never thought about it.

– Just brought me over here. Didn’t even know what it meant when they let me inside. Just random.

– Or something.

– Yeah, think about that. Or something. Like, is anything random, right?

He stops again, turns and faces me, the last door beyond him.

Her scent in the air.

– Like, how about this? You dose me on anathema. I mean, hook me on the bad dose. And I see things. And I can’t take it. And I, just on instinct and whatever I’ve learned from what I’ve been reading, I try to burn it out by starving the Vyrus. And you bring me here. And I happen to be Enclave. Daniel looks at me and knows. Which is part of what being him was all about, I guess. And he lays the whammy on me. And I trance out. And he brings me back. And here I am. Up and about. And, like, I was up almost right away. And he was impressed. I mean, they were all impressed. The dose I was on, the way I went head-to-head with it, the way Daniel got me to do that dance with the Vyrus and then I just snapped to, turns out that’s some heavy shit. I mean, Joe, it’s not just that you brought me here. I got potential. Real potential. How’s that for or something?

I push him to the side and walk.

– Fuck do I care.

I walk into the room and she’s there. On a mat on the floor, a thin blanket over her, face sweaty, shivering. An Enclave seated at her feet, one hand holding her toes, whispering.

The Count comes in behind me.

– Tell you, Joe, I can see it. Even all fucked up as she is, I can see what you got there.

I walk over to her and kneel on the floor and run a hand over her head and come away with sweat and hair.

I touch my pockets. I don’t have a blade. Only Rebbe Moishe’s Defender.

The Count crouches at my back.

– A girl like that, what’s a man to do? How can you have a girl like that and not try everything to save her?

Her eyes open. She looks at me. She smiles. A hand comes out from under the blanket and touches the candy necklace and her lips move and she’s asking me a question but can’t speak past the hole in her throat.

Am I pretty?

I nod.

Her eyes close again.

I put my fingers at the clog of scab and new flesh that has grown over the wound in my neck.

A girl like this, how can I not try everything to save her? How can I keep myself from trying every last cruel and desperate trick to keep her with me?

Simple.

I can’t.

I tear open the wound in my neck and lean close and place it against her mouth and the Count grabs me and pulls me away and my hand goes to the Defender and the Enclave has it and I am across the room and more Enclave are there between me and Evie and I try to go through them and I cannot.

The Count leans over her and mops at her mouth with the cuff of his white shirt.

– Hey, man, what’s up, you trying to kill the girl? I mean, dude, imagine if her throat wasn’t swollen shut. She’d be spewing foam all over the place right now.

I try to get to her.

They stop me again.

The Count stretches his arms, hands pushed out at me.

– Joe, man, cool it. You’re gonna get all fucked up by these guys if you don’t cool it. I can only do so much here. Sure I got potential. But potential only gets you a little ways. You got to deliver if you want your shit to stick.

He opens his shirt.

– Now, I know Daniel told you the girl’s like you, but he just meant that she’s Enclave. Or Enclave potential, I guess. Enclave enough to get in here. That doesn’t mean you can infect her. That takes a special touch.

He peels his shirt from his skinny torso.

– Check it. The Vyrus changes when it comes into us. That’s what Daniel said. That’s common sense. That’s why one Vampyre’s blood can infect some people, but kills most others.

An Enclave hands him a short silver tube, one end cut on a bias and honed to a point.

– Thanks. But then, it reasons, some can’t infect anyone. And some, they can infect lots of others. Like carriers. Daniel, he was a carrier. Know what he did? Part of what made him who he was? This is so cool, he told me about this last night, right up here. He infected new Enclave.

He sits down next to Evie.

– Like, if they saw the potential in someone out there, they brought them here. No questions asked. No choice. And Daniel bled into them. And it didn’t always work. Mostly it didn’t, but it worked more than for most Vampyres. Or infecteds. Or whatever you like.

He’s handed a small hammer.

– So we’re talking, me and him. He’s impressed with the way I handled that shit last night. He’s also whacked as hell, you saw him at the end there. Who knows where he was on the inside? But he wanted to talk. Lots of things. Mostly Enclave, but wanted to talk about music too. All kinds of stuff. Women. Kept asking about how high the hemlines are this year. Trippy. And I told him about my girls. Remember my girls?

He raps the hammer against the floor.

– Sure you do. Three sweet little things, wanted nothing but to party, have a good time, give a man some comfort. Well, how could you forget, what with the way you shot them down?

He puts one end of the tube at his eye and looks down it at me.

– That was not cool.

He takes the tube away.

– But I’m off topic. Check it. Daniel was even more impressed that I’d infected all three on my own. Hey, granted I broke a few eggs before I had my girls. There were definitely some that didn’t make it on the way to that ideal three, but it was still pretty unusual. The fact that I could infect three out of a pretty small fucking sample was beating the hell out of the odds.

He taps his temple with the tube.

– And here I am, dropped on Daniel the night before he’s going to try and take the next big step in his evolution? Well, he was a man who believed in signs and that kind of shit.

He looks at Evie.

– And then there’s her.

He holds up his index and middle fingers.

– Two new Enclave. Coming in, just like that. Bang and bang. I don’t need Daniel to tell me that’s got to be some kind of record. That’s got to mean something. That’s got to be an opportunity for something. To learn something.

He pulls Evie’s blanket down.

– ’Cause a man can have all the potential in the world.

He places the pointed end of the tube at his heart.

– But that’s just meaningless.

He hefts the hammer.

– Unless he does something with it.

He strikes the end of the tube and it pierces his chest and blood shoots from the end and he bends and places it over Evie’s trache and the blood fills it and it spills over her neck and face and her heels bang against the floor and her arms tremor and her throat works.

And she’s swallowing.

And she doesn’t die.

She doesn’t die.

And I try to get past the Enclave to kill the man doing what only I ever should have done. But I can’t. I’m too weak.

So I fail.

– That was doing it old school.

He’s balled his shirt and uses it to mop blood from his chest, carefully circling the hole he’s tucked a finger into.

– Mean, you don’t have to do it that way, but from what I gather it’s something they respect around here.

He drops the bloody shirt and puts his back against the wall and shakes his head.

– Which stands to reason, right? I mean, if punching a hole in your own heart doesn’t say something about who you are, I don’t know what will. Shit hurts, I can tell you that.

I sit across the room from him, watching the place on the floor where Evie was before they took her away.

– Heart’s blood. No reason why it should make a difference, but Daniel mentioned it a few times. Said it made for a closer bond between whoever was spilling their blood and whoever was drinking it. What do you think? Me, I can’t see why that’d be. But who knows. Mothers say they can tell when their kids are in trouble and shit, even when they’re hundreds of miles away. Maybe it’ll be like that. Maybe I’ll know when she’s in trouble. Or happy. Or sad. Maybe I’ll just kind of always know what she’s feeling. What about that?

I touch the finger I’ve stuck in the wound I reopened in my neck, the scabs have sealed tight against it. I ease it out and some blood leaks and then stops.

The Count pokes at his own wound.

– About that time, huh? Well, let’s see.

He draws his finger free and the clean edges of his unscarred flesh suck closed.

He looks around the empty room, hushes his voice.

– Truth, I didn’t hit my heart. Fuck that. Sometimes a little medical training comes in handy, let me tell you. Hey, would I have been surprised if my aim was off and I stuck myself in the fucking aorta? No. But there was no way I wasn’t gonna try and miss. We can theorize all we want about what the Vyrus will heal and what it won’t, but that was a chance I wasn’t interested in taking.

I put my hands on the floor and push myself up and work my back up the wall until I’m standing on my good leg.

The Count gets himself up.

– Yeah, getting late here, isn’t it? Probably time to call it a day. Things are gonna be plenty interesting for me. Should be getting my beauty sleep. Sure you don’t want to stay and see how this is all gonna work out?

I head for the door.

He walks behind me.

– Yeah, kind of what I thought. You got places to go, things to do, people, no doubt, to fuck up. Too bad. Things are gonna be getting very interesting around here, Joe. I mean, they got no one. I mean, no one on deck to take Daniel’s place. And here am I. Just arrived out of the cold dark. Overcoming terrible struggles in my first night. Representing by sticking a fucking pipe in my heart and successfully bringing a new Enclave to the Vyrus. Got the inside track, man. Got influence already. Like, the king is dead, long live the king, right?

At the landing we look down. The Enclave at meditation, arrayed on the floor below, seated and silent, the most withered at the front, the robust at the rear.

The Count points.

– I’ll have to start in the back with the guys who are still kind of getting the hang of fasting and all, but that won’t last. There’s no seniority here. Just willpower. Whoever can take the most, push the Vyrus the furthest, and live, they go to the front row. After that last year riding the bad dose, I can take a lot.

He places a hand on my shoulder.

– Thanks for that, Joe.

I ignore his hand.

I inhale. Smell her. Her new smell.

Knocking his hand away, I go past him. I smell her again. There’s a door between us. I make it go away.

She’s in there. Sitting, back against the wall, legs sprawled in front of her. She’s pulled the trache tube from her throat and holds it and stares at it, as she fingers the already healed incision just above the candy necklace that is speckled with blood. She looks up at me and shows me the tube.

– It itched.

– Sure it did.

She drops it and touches her head.

– My hair feels weird. It feels like it’s growing.

The sores on her face have started to fade. Purple to pink.

It hurts lowering myself to the floor, but I do it.

She wrinkles her nose.

– You smell funny, Joe.

She sniffs.

– Everything smells funny. It all smells bad here.

I look at her neck.

Thinking.

You don’t change things by wanting them changed. You change them by knowing what to do and when to do it. And by doing it.

I never seem to know what to do until it’s too fucking late.

She pinches her nostrils closed.

– I don’t like it here. I want to go home. Can you take me home?

I nod. But I’m lying.

I’ll never get her out of here. I’ll never get her past the maniacs down there. I’ll never get her away from the psycho setting up to take over this madhouse.

I touch her neck.

– Hey, baby, know what?

She covers my hand with hers.

– What?

– I love you crazy.

She smiles at me and opens her mouth to say something and I start to squeeze and this is what I know how to do and this is what I have to do and it is not too late to make this better and she looks at me like she suddenly doesn’t know who I am and grabs my fingers and I can do this I can do this and she looks at me and I can do this and Enclave come into the room and pull me from her and my fingers hook the strand of candies around her neck and it snaps and they scatter over the floor and she screams at me.

And I’m gone.

The Count looks down at me.

– Know much history, Joe?

I sit in two feet of dirty water at the bottom of the sewer shaft where they threw me and look up at him.

He points at himself.

– Not my best subject, but there’s stuff you connect with, right? Like even in the lamest class, there’s bound to be something you get a rise out of. History of Western Civilization was like that for me. That class was like nap time.

There is no ladder. No way back up.

– Monday, Wednesday and Friday, one to two-fifty for an entire year, man. Professor Hocker would start droning and, like, fifty undergrads would simultaneously nod off. You could sell that guy’s lectures on CD and make a fortune from insomniacs.

A feeder runs through here, washing the cold water around me, the occasional clump of waste getting lodged against my back.

– Only time I perked up and took notice? When he started getting into the Roman emperors.

I sit in the water, it soaks my clothes and makes my knee hurt worse.

– Those guys, once they got rid of the senate, know how they ruled? They ruled by caveat. Know what that means? Means they ruled by fear. Means they did whatever the fuck they wanted to.

The water is dirty. Does that mean it’s on its way to the river, or away from it? I don’t know.

– Hey, you know that fear rules the brain? Seriously. Our brains, this is amazing, they devote more space to dealing with fear than to any other emotion. Because, hey, fear is what makes us learn shit and survive. It’s fucking key. Know where it lives? Fear lives in this little thing, ’bout the size of an almond, called the amygdala. Fear in the brain. Something bad happens to you, you got no choice but to be afraid of it happening again. Until it happens so many times that you get used to it.

Iron grates on concrete as he drags the shaft cover to the edge of the hole.

– So tell me, how many people who you love do you think you have to have taken away from you, before you stop being afraid that it’ll happen again?

He looks over his shoulder, looks back down at me.

– Oh, hey, and can you guess which of the emperors was my favorite? No? Give up? OK, I’ll tell you.

He sticks his head into the shaft.

– Caligula.

He laughs through his nose and shakes his head.

– Yeah, sick but true. I am so fucking predictable, right? But I tell ya, once I get my thing going up in here, that’s gonna be the scene. I’m gonna introduce a whole new way of doing things around here. I mean, everybody is scared shitless of these dudes, how can I not find a way to make use of that?

He pulls his head back.

– So anyway, one last thing about fear in the brain. When you fuck up around here, like say you maybe try and strangle a fellow Enclave or something? They don’t kill you. No beheadings or getting put out in the sun. Instead they drop you down this shaft into the sewers. Maybe it’s symbolic. I don’t know. Doesn’t happen often. I mean, really rare. What I gather, mostly when they get cast out they just kill themselves.

I hear something splash in the water. Rats.

– But the story is, at least one of them is hanging on down there. Has been for years. Lone ex-Enclave looney wandering the sewers and living off God knows what. Could be like that alligators being flushed down toilets thing. Urban Vampyre legend. If you get me.

He starts to move the cover over the mouth of the shaft, stops and puts his face into the last remaining gap of candlelight above me.

– Still, pretty fucking scary, huh?

The cover slides and drops into place.

Whatever moves in the water isn’t a rat.

It’s fast and it’s strong and as soon as the darkness is total it’s on me and I’m being dragged through the water, banging off the tunnel walls, hauled up black shafts and flung across chasms I know are there only by the echoes of my screams.

– Hey, buddy, hey, buddy, hey. Got a smoke? Man. Got a smoke?

I can’t see anything. My eyes are open, but I can’t see a fucking thing.

But Jesus I can smell.

Stench. A river of sewage flowing somewhere below where I’m huddled. The stink of the city. Raw. Crackling taint of electricity from the subway train that rumbles past somewhere behind thick concrete. A puff of warm air carried out of the MTA tunnel brings oil and diesel fumes from a service train. Wet, meaty rat fur. Rot in too many hues to separate. And the Vyrus. Boiling and thin as steam.

– Asked do you have a smoke, buddy? A cigarette? Parlez vous?

I don’t say anything. I don’t move.

– Buddy. Buddy. I know you’re alive, buddy. You tryin’ to possum me? Huh? Want me to come over there so you can get a bead on me and grab me by the balls and rip them off, buddy? That what you got goin’ through your head? That’s it, ain’t it, buddy? Don’t bother to deny it, nah, don’t bother. I know that’s what you’re thinking. I know it is. Cuz, buddy, I can see it, I can see just exactly what you’re thinking. And you’re ’bout as interesting as last month’s fucking Post.

Something moves.

– Here, let me make it easy on you, buddy. Let me get up close.

He comes close. I feel him first. The heat. He smells like the sewer. And the Vyrus. Burning.

– How’s that, buddy? Better? Want to take a shot?

Water dribbles out of my hair and into my eyes. I wipe it away.

– No.

He shifts.

– Yeah, right. Good thinking. Sharp. You’re a sharp one, buddy. So?

– What?

– You got a smoke or what?

I reach in my pocket and find the Luckys.

– They’re soaked.

– That’s OK, buddy. I forgive you. Pass ’em here.

– I can’t see.-Can’t see. Can’t see. ’Course you can’t fucking see, buddy, it’s darker than a nun’s virgin anus down here. Just hold the fucking things out.

I hold out the pack.

– Filterless? Hell, buddy, what you trying to do, kill yourself?

He gurgles.

– That’s a joke, buddy. Ah, never mind. These’ll do. These’ll do.

He shuffles. -Can’t see. Right, right. Well, we’ll see if we can do something about that.

Light explodes.

I cover my eyes, a purple burst on the inside of my lids.

– Whoops. Got you by surprise there. Sorry ’bout that, buddy.

I take my hands away, crack my lids.

He’s across from me on the shelf of brick that juts from the mouth of a dry spill tunnel over the river of shit below us. Hunkered on spider legs, white to the point of transparency, bald and huge-eyed, he thrusts his face into the beam shooting from his flashlight and bares his teeth.-Gollum.

He gurgles.

– That’s another joke, buddy. Another joke. Read that in a book. That one kills ’em. Kills ’em every time, buddy.

He tucks the wet pack of Luckys into one of the pockets of the vest that hangs open over his withered torso and waves the light down the tunnel.

– C’mon, buddy, I ain’t carrying you this time.

I keep close to the jet of hot air blowing from the louvered slats at the bottom of the switch-room door.

– Cold? Sure you’re cold, cold as hell down here, ain’t it? Not that I feel it. Not that I feel it a’tall, buddy.

He reaches over and moves the cigarettes around, rotating them in the hot air, helping the tobacco to dry.

– Yeah, just about right, yeah. Just about there.

I rotate myself, straightening my bad knee in front of the vent. The bone is knitting, it grinds when I move it.

He plucks at my damp slacks.

– What’s with the getup?

– Dead guy’s clothes.

He strokes his neck, his skin reflecting the blue of the light above the switch room.

– Didn’t ask from who, asked what’s up. Where’s your whites, buddy?

I look at his own clothes, the soiled cargo vest and painter’s pants. Both were once white, I suppose.

I rub my knee.

– Never wore whites.

– Never, huh?

His arm snaps out and he lays a finger along my chin and turns my head.

I don’t flinch.

He looks me over.

– Yeah, but you’re Enclave. Way you’re looking at me, you’re too fucking mean to be anything else.

He drops his hand.

– Didn’t take to the warehouse, huh, buddy?

– Never tried.

He fingers the cigarettes.

– Good call, that. Yeah, sure, sure, good call, buddy. This one’s done. That thing working?

He points at the open Zippo next to the smokes.

I pick it up and flick the wheel and sparks jump, but no flame.

– Still too wet.

He digs fingers into one of his pockets and comes out with a folder of matches.

– Hate to waste these things. But the need is urgent, buddy.

He tears out a match and lights it and brings the flame to the dirty, bent cigarette in his lips and inhales.

– There you go, that’s it, sister, come to papa.

He drops the match and holds the smoke for a second and blows it out.

– Well, tastes like shit, but that comes as no surprise, buddy. Here.

He offers it to me and I take a drag. He’s right, it tastes like shit.

I take another drag and pass it back.

– Daniel went out in the sun this morning.

His hand freezes. He takes the smoke, looks at it.

– He make it?

– Fuck do you think?

He sucks smoke.

– I think he got burned and died, but a man can hope, buddy. Even down here, a man can hope.

A train blasts past just beyond the alcove that hides the door, and I watch the real people flick past inside.

– They got me off the street. Long time gone, long time, buddy. Know how long?

– Nope.

– Neither do I, buddy. Neither do I.

He puts a hand out and we drop back between girders and wait as an MTA service crew in orange vests and helmets crosses the tunnel dragging tool bags over the tracks and cursing and telling dirty stories.

He waves and we start walking again, following the line of the third rail.

– Saw I was Enclave one of them did, buddy. Saw me wandering out of a saloon down the Bowery and saw it in me. Well, Vyrus don’t lie. So I was told.

He stops and points at the tunnel where the service crew disappeared.

– That’s a dead tunnel. Probably, buddy, they’re scrapping something down there. That or goin’ off to get high. Bums live down there mostly. Couple of ’em will get scared out by the crew. Crew loves to shove the bums around. Bums, buddy, bums in all the dead tunnels. ’Cept mine. Nothing lives in my tunnel but me and the rats, buddy. Me and the rats.

He starts off again.

– Daniel was the one bled into me. That meant somethin’. Not to me. Did to him. Tried not to make a big deal of it he did, but it mattered to him, buddy. All us he put the Vyrus in, we were kind of special to him. Didn’t make much difference. I never took to it.

He stops again and squats and I lean against a girder, not wanting to bend my leg.

– The quiet’s what got to me, buddy. Ever notice how quiet it is in there?

– Yeah.

– Too fucking quiet. Everyone meditating. Pondering. Thinking on the Vyrus. Fuck. I wanted some chatter. Buddy, I tell you, it drove me just about out my fucking head.

He spreads his arms.

– Now look at me. Know how often I get to have a conversation, buddy? Just about never. Talk to the rats, buddy. Tell them everything on my mind. Know what’s on my mind?

– No.

– What’s on my mind is the fuckers finally drop someone down that hole doesn’t kill himself first chance he gets, someone a man might expect to have a word with, and I end up with a monosyllabic son of a bitch like you, buddy. That’s what’s on my mind.

– Huh.

– Yeah.

– I was a discipline problem, buddy. Same way I was in the army. Know how many times I got the stockade? One time, buddy. Just the one time after I got drunk and cut my bunkmate’s ear off with my bayonet. When I got out of the stockade it was just in time for me to get kicked out. Buddy, that warehouse, it’s a fucking miracle I lasted a day. As it was, I made it a couple years. But only because of Daniel. You know the old man well, buddy?

He climbs up on a dead platform and reaches down to me.

I take his hand and he pulls me up.

– We talked some.

– Riddler he was, wasn’t he?

– Yeah.

– The sun, huh?

– Yeah.

– Crap.

He leads me to a rusted gate and yanks on it and it scrapes open.

– Down this way.

I follow.

He looks back at me.

– You need the flashlight?

The blue and yellow and red lamps of the tunnels fade behind us.

– Yeah.

– Here.

He passes it to me and I point it straight down, the reflected light more than enough for my eyes.

He kicks a pile of rags from his path.

– If the old man hadn’t had a feeling for me, I never would have lasted. Tell ya, buddy, sure seemed as though he liked the trouble cases. Seemed to have a taste for the ones that didn’t fit right in there. What would he make of me now, huh? Tell ya, he wouldn’t recognize me at all, buddy. Not at all.

He touches his stomach.

– I was fat. I mean, by Enclave standards, I was a damn pig. Fasting. I came from an ass-poor family. Why I went in the army the first place was to have all I wanted to eat. They wanted me to not eat on purpose. Know what kind of sense that made to me?

– None at all.

– Yeah, you got that one, buddy, none at all. But. Here I am.

He runs a fingertip down his ribs, like raking a washboard.

– I didn’t grow up with any religion to speak of. But I got a feeling, if I had, it would have stuck deep. Would have been one of them people strays hard from the way, only to come back to it twice as hard in the end, buddy. ’Cause living down here, with no one and nothing to keep an eye on me, with hot and cold running bums wandering around ripe on the vine, with no reason to do anything but feedfeedfeed, I found faith. How’s that for a pisser?

He stops.

– Yeah, you tell me that Daniel went out in the sun, my first thought is, Shit, that sad sorry fuck finally went and did it and got himself burned. But what I’m really thinking under that is, Please let it be real. Please let him be the one who makes it. Please bring me home. Buddy, I am one lonely fucking man.

He takes out the cigarettes I gave him and puts one in his mouth and I flip the Zippo open and it lights this time.

He blows the smoke down into the cone of light at our feet, watches it swirl.

– In the end, buddy, I’ll do it too, ya know. When I can’t hold it in anymore, when the Vyrus says, Shit or get off the pot, I’ll climb up there and take a crack at it. Daniel, he probably thought he’d make it. Right till he cooked, that SOB probably thought he was gonna cross. Me, buddy, I’ll do it knowing I’m gonna burn. So you tell me.

He offers me the smoke.

– Which of us is crazier, buddy, me or him?

I take the smoke, drag and give it back.

– Got me.

He taps ash.

– Yeah, it’s a puzzler. Crap. Always had a hope I’d see the old man again. Show him that I turned out OK. Show him that I took it to heart in the end. That I believe. Even if I don’t want to. Wish I could tell him I was sorry for the trouble I caused him. Buddy, I tell you, in the end, when I blew, I blew hard. Went spastic and grabbed a blade and started cutting. Killed half a dozen Enclave. Half a dozen of my own, buddy. Know how many killed half a dozen Enclave?

He taps his chest.

– Me. That’s how many.

He smiles.

– Not that I’m proud of it or anything.

He loses the smile.

– And it made a pile of problems for Daniel. As he’d been nursing me along all the while.

He drops the butt and grinds it under a bare leathered foot.

– Bitch’s bastard, I wish I could have a word with the fucker. I really do, buddy. Still. You never know.

He squints at me.

– Ever seen one of them things, buddy?

I play the light over the floor, don’t say anything.

He nods.

– Yeah, you seen one. Scary as all hell, yeah? Know what’s scarier? Nothing. Nothing in this world scarier than a Wraith, buddy.

He moves closer.

– I watched it happen once. Watched Daniel and a couple other of the old-timers sit and meditate for days, none of us allowed a drop of blood while it was goin’ on. Watched a crack open. In the air. A crack in the air. Know what that looks like, buddy? Looks like nothin’. Looks like what nothin’ looks like. Watched one of them things squirm out of it.

Closer.

– And then I stopped looking. ’Cause I didn’t want to see anymore.

Closer, whispering.

– Know what they say? Say about them? What Daniel said they are, buddy? Know what they are?

He licks his lips.

– They’re what happens. They’re what happens when the Vyrus is done with us.

He points at himself.

– They’re what’s gonna happen to me.

He points at me.

– And they’re what’s gonna happen to you, buddy.

He leans his mouth close to my ear.

– They’re what we become.

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

– So you never know, buddy, we both may get to see Daniel again.

He leans away and looks me in the eye.

– Boo!

I jump.

He laughs.

– Sorry, sorry, buddy, it’s the prankster in me. I may be a true believer now, but I still got discipline problems.

I crack a knuckle.

– Yeah. I can see that.

He stops laughing.

– Buddy, they call it a sense of humor. Look into it.

– Sure, as soon as you show me how I get the hell out of this place.

He points up.

– There. Up the ladder, buddy.

I rake the light up the wall and see the rungs bolted into the concrete, leading to a trap.

– It’s an alley up there. Might be a couple garbage cans on top of the trap, but no lock. That work for you?

I shine the light back at the floor.

– Yeah, that’ll work.

He reaches out and takes the flash and switches it off and we’re in darkness again.

– Well, up you go, then.

I climb.

At the top I put my shoulder against the trap and heave and some cans crash to the ground and it swings open and flickering Manhattan night light fills the narrow sky above the alley.

– Buddy, hey, buddy.

I look down into the black tunnel.

– Yeah?

– You sure about that, goin’ up there, you sure? ’Cause think about it, what’s gonna happen sooner or later?

– What’s gonna happen?

– Buddy, what’s gonna happen is that sooner or later they’re gonna find us out. Shit, buddy, they may already know about us. Seems kind of far-fetched to think they don’t, huh? And when they’re ready, when they got things set up for us exactly how they want, they’re gonna hunt us all down. Right, buddy, that sound about right? Sure it does. My religious zeal aside, I got no illusions. Why do you think I stay down here? Up there, what you got? Think. It’s not even natural. Trying to live a life that isn’t yours anymore, right? That’s all it is, buddy. Down here, I’m safe as houses. No one hunting me down here. I hit a bum for some blood, no one cares. No one calls the cops. Buddy, down here, I’m the top of the food chain. Down here, I can last forever. If I want to. Think about it. Down here is where you belong. It’s where we all belong, buddy.

I look up at the sky.

– I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I got someone up here.

– Huh. Well, that’s different, then.

I look back down into the hole.

– What’s your name, old man?

– Joseph. Yours?

I blink.

– Simon.

I hear his feet padding away.

– Be seeing you, Simon.

I climb out into the alley and close the trap.

I make for home, my stink clearing the sidewalk ahead of me.

I make for home.

Where I have blood and guns.

I want them so bad, I want blood in my gut and a gun in my hand so bad that I don’t even see Lydia’s bulls coming for me. Just the tattoo across the biggest one’s knuckles before her fist lands in my face.

FURY.

– I try, Joe. I try harder than most to take your smartass bullshit and not lose my cool. I try to understand that something made you the way you are, but there are limits to my compassion and my patience.

Lydia points at a chair and her bulls drop me in it.

– You push and you push and you push. You do just enough to make me think you might have an ounce of decency, and then you fuck it all up.

She leads the other women to the kitchen door and ushers them out. She closes the door behind them and turns to face me.

– What I really can’t stand is that you insist on engaging in behavior that forces me into taking actions that aren’t part of my nature. I end up doing the kind of things Tom would have done. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Unhealthy. That’s how. I hate it. But let me tell you.

She crosses the room.

– Shooting me was the fucking limit!

She’s spent a day getting straight. Drinking from some crazy stash of cage-free, no-hormone-injected, organic blood that she keeps around so her sensibilities won’t be offended. She took too much hurt in Brooklyn and from my gun to be a hundred percent. But she’s close enough. The fist she plants in my gut tears something in there. Something that hurts a lot. Her next punch might just put a hole in my stomach and go right out my back.

Fortunately Hurley comes in and pulls her off me.

Hey, I’m a lucky guy.

She jerks free of him.

– Don’t, Hurley, don’t ever touch me.

He rubs a hand over his whiskers.

– Sure, Lydia, don’t mean nuttin’ by it, I know I ain’t yer type a feller an’ all. Just dat Terry asked I should see ya don’t kill him none. An’ looked fer a moment dat der might be some danger of ya gettin’ carried away some.

From the floor I look up at her.

– Hey, Lydia.

She looks at me.

– What?

– I could have swore you told me never to threaten you again. I didn’t think actually shooting you would be such a big fucking deal.

Hurley shakes his head.

– Shut the fook up, Joe.

And his boot puts me out.

– This is getting a little old, isn’t it, Joe?

– Don’t know what you mean by that, Terry.

– Us sitting around the table. You with your back to the wall. Me and Lydia spelling out how things are. You finding a way to live with that and get a little of what you want from the situation. How many times we been through this?

– Put it that way, a few.

– More than a few, Joe. Many more than a few. And let me tell you, I am getting, man, I don’t know, weary of the dynamic.

Lydia stops staring at her hands resting on the tabletop and looks at him.

– Weary of the dynamic, Terry? Come on. Can we cut through the crap?

Terry rubs his forehead.

– Yeah, yeah. I’m just trying to create a little context for the discussion. I just want us all to understand that we’ve been this way before and maybe we won’t be able to sort things quite the same as we have in the past. Things change, you know, and it may be that there’s a sea change happening here that won’t allow us to deal with this situation in the same manner as we would have in the past.

– I said, Cut through the crap, Terry.

– I know what you said, Lydia.

– Well then?

He starts to raise a finger, drops it.

– OK. OK. The direct approach. That’s really your style anyway, isn’t it, Joe?

I’m on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, Hurley seated on a stool next to me. Not that he needs to keep an eye on me. Not that I’m gonna do anything. Not that I can do anything.

I touch the welt Hurley left on my forehead. I think I can feel the pattern of his boot tread impressed in torn skin.

– Sure. The direct approach.

I take my hand from my forehead.

– You sent me to Brooklyn and I got all fucked up and caught in the middle of some crazed holy war, and I killed a bunch of people and chopped a Rebbe into pieces so they’d know not to fuck with us. And if you didn’t want it to turn out that way you should have sent someone else.

Terry clears his throat.

– Well, yeah, man, that’s all, I don’t know, good as far as it goes. Lydia covered that part for me already. Except, you know, the chopping into pieces stuff. But I can see that. I can see how that will be effective. But, you know, having done all that, and having, and this was impressive, having saved Lydia, you, well, man, you shot her.

I look at her.

– She got in my way.

Terry folds his arms.

– Thing is, Joe, it’s not the first time you’ve shot a member of the Society council. And, sure there were extenuating circumstances the last time, but it’s not the kind of thing we can let roll by. And then there’s this other thing Lydia mentioned.

He looks at her.

She looks at me.

– Where is she, Joe?

I count heartbeats, get to twenty before Lydia gets tired of waiting.

– What did you do with your friend, Joe?

Terry has his elbows on the table, he leans his forehead into his hands.

– Did you infect her, man? Did you do that, Joe? Did you consciously and willfully go into the uninfected community and infect someone with the Vyrus?

I count fifteen this time.

Get tired of counting.

– I didn’t infect her.

Lydia and Terry look at each other.

Terry rotates the little gold hoop in his earlobe.

– Tell me you didn’t try, man. Just, please, man, tell me you didn’t try.

I count one heartbeat.

– I did try.

– Ah, fuck.

Lydia stands.

– You killed her. You. You tried to infect her and you screwed up and you fucking killed an innocent woman, you stupid little. Joe. You. Damnit. Damnit.

Terry takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, slips them back on.

– Did you do it? Is that how it happened?

I don’t count anything this time. But I don’t say anything either.

Lydia comes around the table and makes for me.

– What are you? What are you? We’re trying to change things. We’re trying to change and you. You.

Hurley is in front of her.

She stops. Looks at the floor. Walks back to the table and sits.

Terry watches her. Waves Hurley to the side. He taps the tabletop.

– This is a big deal, man. So, you know, I need you to tell me, Joe, is that what happened?

I think about what happened. I think about the Count’s blood in Evie. Instead of mine. I try to think of a way of saying it out loud. But I don’t have to. Because what happened is so very simple.

– I tried to infect her. And it didn’t work.

He takes off his glasses again and covers his eyes.

– Ah, fuck.

Lydia walks to the door. Stops with her hand on the knob.

– The sun.

And walks out.

Terry takes his hands from his eyes and looks at Hurley.

– Hurley?

Hurley stretches his neck.

– Whativer you say i’tis, Terry, so i’tis.

– Not this time, man, you got to make the call for yourself.

Hurley looks at me, shrugs.

– Sun i’tis.

Terry nods.

– Yeah. The sun. Unanimous.

Hurley rises.

– Ya want I should lock him away till mornin’?

– No. That’s cool. Leave us alone for a bit. We’ve got stuff to kick around.

– Sure.

He gets up and tips his hat at me.

– Too bad ya fooked up like dat, son. Fer a woman an’ all. Still, nuttin’ personal.

And he’s out.

Terry stands.

– Joe. Man. What can I say? I mean, it’s not like you gave me any choice. I make an exception on something like this, well, where’s it gonna end? Lydia? How long do you think I can keep her loyal to the Society if we start bending on basic principles? No. It’s greater-good time, here. Time to. Ah, shit.

He walks to the door and stands there for a moment with his ear against it and locks it and stuffs his hands deep in his pockets.

– When I found you, Joe. Man. You were. I don’t know, you were an animal. You were.

He smiles.

– Such a classic punk. Like, you know, like you had invented attitude and had to show it off. Pure promise. Made for those days. All that rough and tumble. I never regretted bringing you in. Even after you left the Society. Even then I.

He comes away from the door and crosses toward me.

– Well. You know. And when I got you to come back in last year? That was, that was like a dream come true. But. Then. I guess you could say I was living in the past maybe. Well, no maybe about it. I was living in the past. You can’t go back. That is the truth. It’s a cliché, but it’s the truth. All that stubbornness you had when you were a kid, all that attitude, I thought you’d outgrow it.

He laughs.

– Wow, was I wrong.

He’s in front of me. He looks over at the door. Looks back at me.

– I want to do something for you here, man. But you got to tell me something.

He takes his hands from his pockets.

– Where’s the Count, Joe?

I almost laugh. But it would hurt too much.

– Took you long enough, Terry.

He squats.

– Uh-huh, and now I’m asking. Where is he?

I look around the room.

– Notice you waited till we were alone to get into this.

– Joe.

– Still hiding the delicate inner workings of the ecosystem from your nearest and dearest.

– This is, man, this is very serious. So I’m, you know, clinging to my cool here and asking politely. Where?

– Hey, man, here’s a question for you.

– Not now, man.

– What was it like when you were in the Coalition? What was it like being all cronied up with Dexter Predo, you fucking fraud?

He puts a hand to his temple and rubs.

– I’m wondering, Joe. I’m wondering if you can possibly be as stupid as so many people think you are. I’m wondering if I have been wrong about you all these years and you really are the idiot people talk about you being, you know, behind your back.

He picks me up and throws me across the kitchen and I smash into the cupboards and hit the floor and shattered dishes rain over me.

He comes for me.

– I mean, hey, man, do you really think anyone would give a shit about that crap?

He grabs me by the ankle of my bad leg and swings me around and my back hits the table and it explodes around me and I keep going and I put a dent in the refrigerator door and eight of my ribs break.

He comes for me.

– Think about it, man, you know, the Society, it was created by a revolution against the Coalition. You know who starts revolutions? Citizens! Yes, I was in the Coalition. Everyone was in the Coalition. You think that’s a secret?

He takes me by the hair and punches me in the face twice and shakes his bloody fist.

– It’s not a secret. Yeah, I was an enforcer for the Coalition. I don’t, you know, go advertising it around or anything, but it’s not a secret. How do you think I learned about power, Joe? How do you think I learned about corruption? And when I learned those lessons, know what I did? I, you know, matured and changed. Like a normal fucking person. You think Lydia doesn’t know? She knows. But that’s because she bothered to learn some history. That’s because she knows something about Hegel and revolutionary dynamics. She knows that every thesis has an antithesis and that if you want to get anywhere you have to, man, you have to create a synthesis. And that, you know, that doesn’t just, like, happen. That takes work. And you need tools to get it done. So I’m asking you, Joe, seriously now, to drop the crap before I lose my cool.

He jerks my head from side to side.

– Tell me where the Count is.

Somewhere inside the fridge a bottle broke and OJ is leaking out onto the floor. I watch it drip.

– Yeah. Alright, I get it. I get it. I’ll tell you.

I look at my oldest friend through the blood in my good eye.

– He’s gone Enclave on you, Terry. So, you know, all you got to do is run over there to their turf and grab him.

He lets go of my hair.

He rocks back on his heels and drops to his ass.

He looks at the floor between his legs.

– Joe. Oh, man. Oh, man. Man. Do you?

He looks up.

– Do you not get it at all? Has it all just gone over your head, man?

He waves a hand above his own head.

– Is it all just up here in the ether? Because let me break it down. There’s a war. There’s a war being fought and it’s heating up, man. The new faces from Brooklyn, why are we trying to sort through all those rejects for the ones we can use? Because we’re gonna need them. It’s getting unstable. The Island is getting unstable. And it can’t last like this. We have to have, man, this is the deal, we have to have something new. It can’t go like it has forever. We have to try something new. And we need every resource. We need, God, I wish it were not so, but we need money. We need the Count’s money. And. More than that.

He touches the blood on his knuckles. The Vyrus.

– They are trying to figure this out.

He shoves his hand at me.

– Predo and the Coalition. They are studying this. And they have resources that we don’t have. The Count. We needed him to learn shit. We needed his, you know, expertise. Such as it was. We can’t. If you want synthesis to happen, man, if you truly want two things to become one new stronger thing, the two have to be balanced and equal. Otherwise you just get one thing eating up the other. And shitting it out.

He lowers his hand.

– So please, man, please, tell me, you know, tell me you’re fucking with me.

I look him over. This man. He took me in. He found me dying on the floor of a toilet and took me in and kept me alive. He taught me what I needed to know. Without him, I would have died that first night. Without him, I would have died a hundred times. Without him, I’d have been dead years ago and Evie would be in a hospital bed right now.

Like that’s his fault or something.

I want it to be, but it’s not.

Like it would change something about where we are now.

– I’m not fucking with you, Terry. He’s in the warehouse. He’s Enclave. They got him.

He flops on his back and stares at the ceiling.

– Shit. Shitshitshit.

– And Daniel is dead. So things are likely gonna get much more fucked up over there very soon.

He levers himself up on his elbows. Looks at me. Shakes his head. Gets to his feet and toes some of the wreckage from the table.

– OK, Joe. I guess that covers it.

He bends over and picks up the broken halves of his glasses.

– This, man, this is so perfect.

He drops them.

– Shit. Well. We’re gonna put you in the sun in the morning.

He walks to the door.

– I’ll see you, then.

Alone again. Which is actually nice. Because I am so fucking tired.

Naturally, I dream about Daniel.

Or a thing that used to be Daniel.

A black tendril of it worms from a split in the air and it shivers and peels its way from one world into this.

The old man of the subways points and laughs.

– See, buddy, see? Like I said. Looks like nothing, that rip in the air. Nothing a’tall, huh, buddy?

I study the rip. It’s doesn’t look like nothing. It looks like a rapidly healing scar in the throat of a sick girl.

Evie folds her arms on her chest.

– Why’d you lie to me, Joe? Why’d you lie about everything?

She cries a little and wipes the tears and puts a hand on my face.

– You didn’t have to lie like that.

Purple sores rise across my face and over my scalp and my hair falls out and the Wraith shudders from the scar in Evie’s throat and leaves her empty and it goes through me and freezes my blood and its passing whispers to me.

Be seeing you, Joe.

– You saved my life, you asshole. You saved my life and got me away from those animals and. I would have called it a wash. I would have said, Yeah, the asshole shot me, but he also saved my life. I would have said, Let’s just call it even. Where’s your humanity, Joe? Where is your damn humanity? You had to infect that poor woman? She wasn’t sick enough? You had to try and do that?

I open my eyes and look at Lydia sitting in the dark kitchen on one of the chairs from the ruined table.

– You gave her no chance. No choice. Just made it for her. Just. Look how small it makes us. Look how small our lives are. Look what we’re fighting over. The things we do to one another. You chose this for her? This little life, or an awful death. Awful.

I uncurl from the ball I’ve twisted into on the floor and my knee snaps loud twice and I wince and put my hands behind my head.

– Lydia. Do me a favor, go whine somewhere else.

She doesn’t go.

– I already saved your life once, Joe.

– Sure. Why else would I come back for you?

– Right. Was there ever any question. So, debt’s all paid up? All square up? The way you like it?

– Far as I’m concerned.

– Except maybe I owe you a bullet.

I shift, try to find a position where something on me doesn’t hurt.

– You’re gonna have to hurry if you want to get that in.

She stands over me.

– They would have used me. They would have raped me and made me have babies they could bleed.

– Yeah, so what?

– Never occurred to you?

– Just evening accounts.

– And now they’re even.

– Yeah. You’re doing nothing wrong. So stop wringing your hands and let me get some sleep.

I roll back onto my side.

She stands there for a minute, then I hear her walking to the door. Stopping. Turning back.

– I saved you once already. I don’t owe you anything.

I tug my shit-stained jacket closer.

– Lydia.

– Yeah?

– You’re an alright chick. Too bad about the whole dyke thing.

– Fuck off and die, Joe.

– Sure. In the morning, babe. In the morning.

When she’s gone I think about getting up and going to the window over the sink. The nails she pulled out when I was smoking are still on the sill. I think about pushing it open and rattling the security gate accordioned across it.

Then I try to get up. And I can’t. I try again. Terry did a new number on my knee when he threw me. And the ribs. And everything else.

I look at the door.

I drag myself over to it and try the knob. It’s unlocked. I ease it open.

Hurley is on a chair in the hall, reading the funny pages.

– Joe.

– Hurl.

– Ya wanta be gettin’ back in der?

– Not really.

He pulls a.45 from inside his jacket and points it at my hand.

– Bang.

I close the door a little.

– Got a smoke, Hurl?

– I said, Bang.

I close the door.

I look at the nails way up there on the sill. I get a grip on the counter and pull myself up and snatch the nails and fall back to the floor. I wrap my fingers around the nails. When they come for me I might get lucky. I might get to put someone’s eye out before Hurley shoots me in the legs and drags me in the sun.

I think about the usual.

I sit in the dark kitchen and think about killing things.

Evie.

Oh, baby. I’m sorry.

An hour later there’s gunfire and screaming in the hall and then silence and then Hurley backs through the door and drops his.45s on the floor and puts his hands in the air and looks over his shoulder at me.

– Someone ta see ya, I tink.

And Sela walks in with a machine gun.

I look at the machine gun.

– Jesus, where the hell did you get that?

– You coming?

I get to my feet. And I fall back down.

Sela waves the gun.

– I’m gonna pick him up, Hurley. Don’t move.

I point at him.

– Fuck, just shoot him.

She looks at me, and Hurley makes his move, and she jerks the trigger and rakes him with bullets and sidesteps and he hits the floor bleeding from a dozen holes.

– Fook, ah fook. Not again.

Sela grabs my hand and hauls me up and I wrap an arm around her and she gets me in a hip carry and we make for the door.

Hurley writhes.

– Gah, shite. Mither. Ah, mither, does it got ta hurt so?

I drag my feet.

– You should kill him.

Sela looks out the door into the hall, looks back at Hurley.

– He’ll die soon enough.

– No he won’t.

But we’re in the hall, passing the ripped-open bodies of three dead Society partisans, and Terry is stepping out of the room where we slaughtered the Docks Boss.

– Stop, Sela.

Sela doesn’t stop.

– Get out of the way, Terry.

I try to pull free of her.

– Shoot him.

He holds up one hand, the other is hidden by the edge of the doorway.

– Let’s just all, you know, cool it here before this goes too far.

Sela doesn’t stop.

– Back off.

I point.

– His hand, what’s he got in that hand? Shoot him!

He starts to bring the other hand out.

– It’s all cool.

Sela shakes her head.

– Don’t bring the hand out.

I wrap my fingers around her gun hand and squeeze and she mashes the trigger and bullets rip the hall to splinters as we fight over the gun and Terry dives back into the room and the door slams shut.

Sela pulls the gun away.

– Hell. Hell. Hell.

She drops me and ejects the empty clip and takes a full one from her pocket and snaps it home and opens up on the door and Terry comes through the wall next to the door in a cloud of plaster and lathe and Sela turns toward him, but it’s too late as he brings up the fire axe Hurley used on the Boss and I’m still on the floor so I shove one nail in his inner thigh and rip open the artery and I put the other one in his foot and the axe swings wide and hits the wall and Terry goes down with empty hands and Sela has me again and makes for the door as Terry pulls his foot free of the floor and tries to stop the jet of blood from his leg and she takes me out and down the steps and throws me in the waiting white-on-white ’78 Thunderbird, ignoring my screams.

– Killhimkillhimkillhimkillhim!

– Joseph, you look like you could use something to drink.

Amanda scoots across the huge rear bench seat.

– Of course, you also look like you could use a bath.

She opens the compartment built into the middle of the seat back and takes out a glass and pours bourbon into it from a full bottle of Wild Turkey and puts it into my hand and wraps my fingers around it.

I try to bring it to my lips and the glass slips from my fingers and spills over my lap.

Amanda picks it up.

– Lightweight.

She refills the glass and holds it to my mouth and I drink and the alcohol burns the cuts in my lips and tastes good.

Sela opens the driver’s door and climbs back into the car.

– No one coming after us.

– Good job, baby.

Amanda takes the empty glass from my lips.

– More?

But she’s already put the glass aside.

– Not what you really need, is it?

She eases closer, her thigh against mine.

– No, not what you need at all.

She reaches a hand into the front seat and Sela places a butterfly knife in her palm.

I shove myself into the corner of the seat.

Amanda puts a hand on my wounded knee.

– No, it’s OK, Joe. It’s really OK.

She flips the knife and twirls it and the blade and the handles flutter and she snaps the handles tight under her fingers and shows me the blade.

– Sela taught me that. Cool, huh?

She looks at Sela.

– Is there time?

– There’s time.

Amanda lifts a black denim-wrapped leg and swings it over my lap and settles there.

– That OK? Hurt anywhere?

I pull my face back, away from her and her smell.

She twirls the knife and stabs it into the white leather upholstery I’ve already smeared filth over. She grabs the bottom of her sweater and pulls it off and tosses it aside and draws the knife free of the seat back.

She adjusts the strap of her black tank top and looks down at the knife.

– It’s not that weird, Joe. It isn’t. You did something for me once. I just want to do something for you. I just want. Well. Just let me do this for you. Please.

She puts the blade to the palm of her hand and slices across it and the blood comes and she puts it in front of my face.

– Please, Joe. I’ll beg if you want. Please.

But she doesn’t have to beg, I’m already drinking.

And when I start to bite and try to widen the wound and she gets scared and pulls free and tumbles off my lap, it’s only because Sela is in the car that I don’t break her in half and drink the rest.

Amanda plays with the ivory cameo hanging from the black velvet choker around her neck, the bandage Sela applied wrapped tight over her hand.

– She must have a thing for you. Lydia must have a thing for you.

I look forward and catch Sela’s eyes in the rearview and she looks back out the windshield, starts the T-bird and pulls out of Shinbone onto Great Jones.

Amanda reaches out and squeezes Sela’s shoulder.

– Laugh if you want to, baby, but dyke or no dyke, she just must have a thing for Joe. I mean, come on, this is what, like the second time she’s bailed him out? And that’s not even counting when she hid me from Dexter Predo. She’s got a total straight crush on him.

Sela pats the girl’s hand.

– Sweetheart, the woman wouldn’t know what to do with a man.

Amanda takes her hand away.

– That’s just stupid. She would too. And you can act like she’d never go there, but people are weirder than that. I mean, look at us. And I don’t mean me. I’m a poor little rich girl orphan whose father was a pederast and whose mother was a tramp, of course I fall in love with a chick with a dick. But all you ever wanted was a boyfriend who’d treat you like a woman and instead you end up with a little girl who treats you like, well, Joe doesn’t want to hear what I treat you like.

She ruffles her hair.

– Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is she likes him. Whether she wants to or not. That’s how it works. I mean, come on, would you have fallen for me if you could have helped it? Please don’t tell me it didn’t fill you with just a little self-loathing when you first realized you had a thing for me. The little lost girl. The innocent you had vowed to protect.

Sela maneuvers the long car around a double-parked delivery van.

– I got over it.

Amanda scratches the back of Sela’s neck with her fingernail.

– Yes you did.

She takes a jar of olives from the bar compartment and twists the lid off.

– Me, I never had any question about what I felt. First time we were in the sauna together I knew I had to have you.

She plucks an olive from the jar and pops it in her mouth.

– My God, Joe, have you ever seen her naked? You are missing out.

Sela ducks her head.

– Stop it.

Amanda wiggles her finger into the hole of one of the olives.

– Am I embarrassing you, baby?

She leans forward and wraps her arm around Sela’s neck and puts the olive at her lips.

– Are you blushing?

Sela sucks the olive from her finger and Amanda giggles and falls back in the seat.

She holds the jar out.

– Olive?

I don’t say anything and she shrugs and closes the jar and puts it away.

She moves close and leans on me.

– You’ll get over it.

She perches her chin on my shoulder.

– Not just drinking my blood, I mean.

She puts her cheek to my arm.

– I mean family. I mean what it’s like to have family. That’s what we’re gonna make, Joe. Family. Sela and me, we talk about it all the time. Right, baby?

– That’s right, hon.

– Like, how the Clans, they’re just organizations. They treat everybody like they need the Clans more than the Clans need them. Which you don’t even need to think about to see that it’s so wrong. But we’re gonna be different. We’re gonna treat everybody like family.

Sela has the car pointed east, taking us back the way we fled, heading for the avenues that will run us to the Upper East Side.

She brakes for a stoplight.

– It’s true, we’re going to start a new Clan. No dogma. No enforcers. No racial barriers. No superstitions. Just support. Just a place for everyone who needs family to have it. Know why it’s gonna work? Because Amanda and me are going to be running it. Infected and uninfected. Together.

Amanda tilts her head back to look up at me.

– It’s going to be called Cure, Joe. That’s what we’re calling the Clan. So everyone will know what we’re doing. What we’re working for. Cuz there’re so many that need it. And not just for the obvious reasons. Think about it. Sela, if she ever went to go post-op and get her equipment changed. And I am voting against that. If she ever did, know what would happen? They’d cut her dick off and do all that work and the Vyrus would treat it like a wound and heal it. Not, like, grow her a new one, just close up the hole between her legs. Leave her with, like, a patch. Gross. So, yeah, infecteds want a cure. Lots of them. But they also want other things.

She wraps her fingers around my arm and squeezes.

– We’ll be a family. We’ll all take care of each other. And I’ll have more money than God pretty soon and can make sure everyone has the blood they need. And in a few years, I’ll have a cure. Because there has to be one. It’s just a virus. No matter how you spell it. It’s biological and science can explain it. And I can cure it. You just have to isolate it and study it. You have to know it. Be with it. Get inside it. I can do that. Daddy couldn’t. But I can.

She reaches up and runs a finger over the healing cuts that cover my face.

– Lydia told Sela what you did. That you tried to save your girlfriend. That’s got to suck. And now you’re alone again. But you don’t have to be. Nobody should be alone if they don’t have to be. So what if we’re not normal? Normal bites. We can have our own kind of family. All we have to be is strong enough. I think you’re strong enough, Joe. I really do. And you don’t have to be my daddy or anything. Just, whatever, my big brother or something.

She plants her face tight against my arm.

– I just, gah, I love you no matter what.

I look at her.

She’s young and healthy and rich and brilliant and beautiful. And her blood is tonic. She’ll spoon-feed it to me if I ask because she’s as crazed as her parents ever were and I helped her once and she thinks that’s love.

Shit. Maybe it is. Like I’m a fucking expert.

It would be easy. An easy life. Can you imagine such a thing?

But Evie would still be in the warehouse.

And I’ve had a family. One was enough.

I shrug off the girl and push the passenger seat forward and lean and yank the door handle and the door swings open and Sela is rounding onto Park Avenue South and I roll from the car onto the pavement and find my feet and limp into Union Square and hide in the tent city of the homeless until Sela pulls the crying girl back to the car and drives off with her.

On the border of Society and Coalition, the park is not safe.

I walk back onto Society turf.

No one will be looking for me. I couldn’t be so stupid as to come back here after what happened at the Society safe house. They’ll be locking up tight and stripping the house and piling out the back, leaving wreckage that cops will read as a drug deal gone bad. They’ll be busy setting up shop at one of the buildings Terry bought with the Count’s money. The money he no longer has.

I have time.

I believe that right up until I stand at the corner of Second Avenue and 10th Street and see the fire engines two blocks away and the flames pouring out the windows of my apartment.

Exile, I head south, away from home.

– A nail in the leg?

I take the beer Christian offers me and suck half of it down.

– And one in the foot.

A few Dusters move around the clubhouse garage. One cracking the gearbox on his Indian, another throwing knives at a paper cutout of bin Laden, two are rewiring an old component stereo system they found scrapped in a dumpster.

Christian sits down on the edge of a fat, balding tire from an old dune buggy he’s been tinkering with for a year.

– And she really shot Hurley?

– Yeah.

– And took a crack at Terry?

– Yeah.

– And left them both alive?

– Yeah.

He drinks some beer.

– Jesus. Dead she-male walking.

– Yeah.

The guys with the stereo twist a last couple wires together at the back of a speaker and open the clamshell top of the turntable and drop a vinyl disk on the spindle. It’s Television’s Marquee Moon. “See No Evil” plays.

We listen to the song.

Christian taps the heel of his boot.

– The classics.

– Sure.

He stops tapping his heel.

– A nail.

– Two nails.

– Fuck me.

– Yeah.

He works a hand inside his leathers and pulls out a pack of Marlboros and offers it to me. I take one and break the filter off and find my Zippo and light up.

He takes a light from me and blows a smoke ring.

– You’re fucked.

– Yeah.

– Tenderhooks made a run up to Fourteenth right before dawn. Said the fire was out at your place. Said partisans were out.

– Yeah. No doubt.

He’s not wearing his top hat. The crown of his head is bald and weathered. He scratches it.

– Seem to you like it’s getting weirder out there, Joe? Scarier?

I look at the big roll-up doors that block out the killing sun on the other side.

– It’s getting weirder. Scarier? I don’t know.

He spits between his boots.

– Feels scarier to me. Like shit that’s been building up is about to cut loose.

– Terry says there’s war coming.

He smears the saliva across the floor with the toe of his boot.

– Shit.

– Yeah. Shit.

He looks over at me and smiles.

– He mention that before or after you stuck the nails in him?

– Must have been before. He wasn’t waxing too conversational after.

He leans in and clinks his bottle against mine.

– Tell you, man, I would have liked to see that. Smug bastard that he is. I would have liked to see his blood.

– Just like anybody else’s.

– Would have liked to see it for myself.

We drink another couple beers and someone flips the album.

I flex my knee and it hurts like hell, but not as bad. The ribs are burning as the Vyrus heals. Some are gonna knit crooked. The cuts and holes are all coming together, along with whatever Lydia did inside my gut, and I’m starting to see some blurs from my burned eye. Still, I only got two pints off the girl. Enough to get me going and to make her talk crazy talk, but I could use some more.

Who couldn’t use some more? We all want more.

I think about her. Young and hungry. I know how that feels. Even if it was a long time ago.

Clan Cure.

God I hope the name is all about what she’s trying to do and not about the fucking band. I hate that band.

Like the name matters.

They’ll never let her get away with it.

But.

More money than God. Business and legal hooks deep in the straight world. Knowledge of things she has no right to. That no one has a right to. And a woman like Sela at her side. Love at her side.

No one will be able to take them head on.

So maybe they’ll make a run.

Figure once word gets out what she’s planning, what she’s selling, the bill of goods, they’ll get plenty who’ll want to pledge. Young and desperate and feeble and alone, they’ll take in the dregs. And the sly and the lazy who smell a good thing in her money, and her promise to feed everyone.

Yeah, figure they’ll make a run.

Figure they’ll run till everyone realizes that a cure is a dream and she’s out of her skull. A run till Predo and Terry start sending in their people to infiltrate and fuck shit up.

Figure it will end bad.

Like there’s any other kind of ending.

Christian takes two more beers from the case and cracks them open and hands one over.

– A war. That’s a hell of a thing. Think we’d all be together, what with how much we have in common.

He blows across the mouth of his bottle.

– You think about it much, Joe?

I tap my Zippo against my bottle.

– What part?

He points at a scabbed gash on the back of my hand.

– What it is. If any of the looneys are right. Like maybe it’s not a virus at all. Maybe it’s a chemical. Something the government experimented with and lost control of. Or maybe they are in control of it, and they’re watching us all the time to see how we cope with it. Or a curse. Not like some Dracula bullshit, but a real curse from a real God. Like in the Bible. In the Bible, a curse is usually a test. So maybe it’s a test. And the ones that pass it are the ones who don’t give in to it. Like the only way to win is to let yourself die. Or the Enclave and that stuff. What if they’re right? Or is it the next step in evolution or a failed step or is it because somewhere in our past all our grandmoms took the same medication or we stood too close to an X-ray machine or all screwed the same monkey. Shit, I don’t know.

He makes a fist, loosens it.

– Do you ever think about what we are?

I finish my beer.

– Well, Christian, way I figure it, either you’re a Vampyre created by the Vyrus, or you’re a vampire created by a something else. It makes any fucking difference which it is, I haven’t noticed.

He looks down the neck of his bottle, drains it.

– Yeah, guess that’s so.

He tosses the bottle into a garbage can against the wall and it shatters.

– But still, I’d like to know someday.

I toss my bottle after his.

– Don’t hold your breath.

More beer. More good music. The sun is moving across the sky out there. Things will be happening soon.

Things are already happening.

He points at the knife-thrower’s target.

– Remember that?

I look at the photocopied face of the Arab on the target.

– Sure.

He shakes his head.

– That smell. When they went down. Man, that smell. Blood. Gallons. Everyone went berserk. Rogues. Clan members. Losers came out of the woodwork and swarmed down there for days. Man. Looking at the missing-person posters after, I used to wonder how many went in the towers and how many just got taken off the street. Chaos.

– It was a mess.

He nods.

– But you were righteous. You and Terry. Saw right away it had to be stopped. Went down there and cracked skulls. Closed it down. All the cops and emergency services, they had come across a couple of us feeding in that rubble, first thing we would have been rounded up and thrown in camps. Man.

He laughs.

– Would have been all the proof they needed which side the devil was on. Would have thought we were flying the planes.

He stops laughing.

– But it was a mess. You came and told me you needed us down there. We rode. But, man, that was some killing we had to do, wasn’t it?

I pick at the edge of my beer label.

– That was some killing.

He looks at me.

– You can’t stay here, Joe.

I take a drink.

– I know.

– Hate to have to make it that way.

– I get it.

– Kind of always thought you’d end up down here with us. Just didn’t think it’d be after you shot Lydia and stabbed Bird. We can stand some heat. The local odds and ends down here below Houston, they cause trouble, we can hold our own against any of them. But a real Clan? We just don’t have the soldiers for it, man.

– Sure.

He points the neck of his beer bottle at the guys goofing in the garage.

– And I’m club president, man. I got a responsibility to the members. I say we’re riding into war, they ride. But there has to be a reason. Has to be some profit. You had joined up back when I offered, it might be different.

– Sure.

He looks at me.

– A war, man. Bird tells you there’s a war coming, I have to take that serious. Sure, man, we like to crack skulls. We want to ride free and do what the hell we please, but there’s shit I don’t need to see again. You, Joe, trying to keep you here, at the Society’s back door, that’s gonna raise things to an instant boil. There’s a war on the way, I can’t stop it. But I have no percentage in hastening it along. Or asking it in.

I get tired of hearing what I already know and take him off the hook.

– I’m not asking you for anything. Sun goes down, I’m gone.

He lets some air out.

– We’ll give you some wheels. Something to wear doesn’t smell like shit. That’s about all we got to spare.

– I’ll take them.

I stand up.

– Mind if I use the phone?

– All yours. You remember how?

– Yeah.

I limp over to the old pay phone mounted on the wall next to a collage of Hustler pinups. I take the handset from the cradle and hit the side of the phone a couple times until I get a dial tone.

I punch in some numbers.

Tenderhooks takes the tarp off a well-used ’75 850cc black Norton Commando.

– Gonna beat your kidneys to hell.

I feel the broken ribs in my back.

– Great.

We get some gas in the tank and dribble a little in the carb and Tenderhooks kicks it a few times and it coughs black smoke and shudders awake. He revs it up, twisting the gas with the chrome pincers at the end of his prosthetic arm, and it settles into a nice, even idle and he lets it run for a minute and kills it.

He wipes some dust from the tank.

– She’ll do ya.

– Thanks.

I finish my last beer and tuck the empty bottle in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. Even after a good sponging and a spray with Lysol it’s rank and stained. But Evie gave it to me, I won’t leave it behind.

The only guy big enough to give me some pants is nicknamed Tiny. So it’s a given I have to cinch the belt tight around my waist to keep the jeans from falling down. I opted for one of Tenderhooks’s sweaty thermals. It’s snug and smells almost as bad as the jacket. But someone had some old combat boots my size. So there’s that.

Christian comes back with the piece of rubber hose I asked for.

– You don’t want a full can? We can stick it in the saddlebags.

I stuff the tube into one of the jacket pockets.

– This is fine.

– Got a couple pieces in the armory, you want one.

– Keep ’em.

Tenderhooks hauls on a chain and it rattles through a pulley and the door rolls up.

I push the bike out to the street and lean it on its stand.

Christian hands me a pair of goggles.

– Hey, man, the Van Helsing. You ever figure that?

I swing a leg over the seat.

– Yeah. That was a bunch of crazy Hebrews out in Brooklyn.

– Brooklyn? No shit?

– Yeah. Way I clock it, Solomon was selling them blood that wasn’t kosher. They found out.

– Serious?

– Yeah.

– What was with all the chopping?

– They like to cut people into twelve pieces. It’s a thing they do.

He shakes his head.

– Some fucking people, man.

– Yeah.

I kick the bike and trip it into gear and ride.

I ride Pike to Division and veer south into Chinatown. Wall turf. Not that there’s much left of the Wall. At Confucius Place I cut down to Pearl, and from there under the Brooklyn Bridge to Water and Slip.

The limo is there.

I pull up behind it and wait for a hail of bullets. It doesn’t come. I let the bike idle and climb off and put it up and limp over to the car and a tinted rear window zips down and Dexter Predo looks at me.

– You look worse for wear, Pitt.

– You look like a rat-faced shit fucker.

He nods.

– Well, now that we’ve exchanged secret passwords to assure each other of our real identities, we can converse freely.

He gets out of the car and the driver’s door opens and his giant squeezes out.

I light one of the Marlboros Christian gave me and blow smoke in his direction.

– Fuck you.

He flexes the muscles in his nostrils.

Predo points down Slip toward Front.

– Shall we?

– You gonna take my arm?

He rakes his fingers across his forehead, brushing aside the sweep of his bangs.

– It’s a busy evening, Pitt. One that promises no end of complications. Most, I have already gleaned, having to do with you. Well, that comes as no shock. But I am pressed. You offered information. Very well. I am intrigued. We can proceed, or Deveroix here can thrash you for bringing me out under false pretenses, and I will depart.

I look at the giant.

I look back at Predo.

– Yeah, sure, let’s talk. I’ve been beat on enough.

He raises an eyebrow.

– Well, you were bound to reach your limit sooner or later.

So we walk.

And I spill.

I give him the whole thing.

The Docks. The Freaks. The Chosen and the lost Tribe of Gibeah. Shooting Lydia. Daniel in the sun. My death sentence. Sela and her machine gun. Stabbing Terry.

I give him everything but Amanda and her plans.

And Evie. I don’t give him Evie.

And when I’m done he looks up at the underside of the bridge.

– A compelling tale. One I can’t help but feel has gaps. Sizable gaps.

He looks at me.

– Still, value given.

He nods and I follow him back to the car where he waves at Deveroix, who touches a button on his key chain and the trunk eases open, and Predo reaches inside and takes out a small leather case and flicks the clasps and shows me the contents.

– As agreed.

Several tight bundles of cash. Several pints of blood. And a loaded.38 Detective Special. All of it nestled in smoking dry ice.

– Value paid for value given, yes, Pitt?

I take the case.

– Yeah.

He closes the trunk lid and waves Deveroix down and the giant crams himself back into the car.

I take the revolver and tuck it in my belt and put the case in one of the saddlebags.

Predo comes over.

– And now?

– None of your fucking business.

He pinches his lower lip.

– But it could be.

I wait.

He cocks his head at the limo.

– Deveroix. I think you were right about him. And his ambitions.

– And?

– He’ll have to be replaced.

I get on the bike.

– I just quit a job.

– I know. It amused me to ask more than anything. And to imagine the look on Bird’s face if you had been smart enough to accept.

He turns and walks toward his long black car.

– But you’re not smart enough, Pitt. And that’s almost a pity.

– Predo.

He stops with the door open.

– Yes?

– Just wondering, when I came to see you and you let it slip that you knew exactly how many pints the Candy Man had in stock, was that on purpose? To test how smart I am?

He’s perfectly still, nothing moves, not an eyelash.

I move my mouth.

– Or was that a mistake? ’Cause you’d rather no one know you were supplying him?

He blinks.

I don’t.

– Where do you get all that blood, man? Where do you guys get all that fucking blood?

He touches the knot of his tie.

– Don’t overreach, Pitt.

He slides into the car.

– Good night.

The door closes and the engine starts and the lights come on.

I rumble the bike up alongside the driver’s window and knock on it.

The giant tightens his lips and rolls it down.

I shake my head.-Deveroix? You made that up, right? Come on, you can tell me. I mean, Joe’s not my real name.

He squints.

– You’re on the outside now, pissant.

He makes two fists and places them end to end and twists them apart like he’s ripping something in half.

– Watch your back.

– Yeah, yeah.

I pull the revolver and empty it in the giant’s face.

I look at the shadow in the backseat.

– That was a freebie.

I toss the gun in the limo and ride up Slip to Pearl and north.

A guy like that, it doesn’t pay to have him around when you’re out in the cold. Besides, not like I didn’t tell him I was gonna do it.

A couple miles away I park the bike and unscrew the cap from the gas tank and slip the hose inside and suck on the other end until the gas flows. I fill the empty beer bottle and raise the end of the hose and the rest of the gas runs back into the tank. I toss the hose aside and screw the cap into place and walk over to a dumpster and find a rag and stuff one end into the neck of the bottle.

Back on the bike, I ride around the corner and stop in the middle of the block and straddle it. I look up and measure the distance as I remember it and light the rag and heave the Molotov in a high arc up over the Enclave warehouse, and above the sound of the Commando, I hear shattering glass.

Fire.

It will do little.

But I want him to know.

That I’m alive. That’s it’s not over.

And that I’ll be coming back for her.

Thirty minutes later I’m crossing the Broadway Bridge at the northern tip of Manhattan. Onto original turf. Unhallowed ground. Home.

The Island is done with me. Closed its doors and cast me out.

That’s just fine. I wasn’t born there. Only made.

And soon enough the city will be burning.

And I’ll be going into the flames.

To get my girl.

Dreaming of fire and love and an enemy’s blood, I ride into the Bronx.