Every Last Drop

—Or risk being a different person when you leave later.

  He shrugs.

  —If you can leave later.

  I put my Zippo back in my pocket, take hold of my razor.

  —You saying something?

  His mouth twists down, tries to straighten, stays twisted.

  —Rope works. Steel caskets. Animal carbon. Glue factory.

  He swallows.

  —Do you think the swamp draws such industry?

  I slip my other hand in my other pocket, thread my fingers into the hoops of the brass knuckles.

  —Not following you, kid.

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

  —There are things. Things you have to see.

  Tears start in his eyes.

  —Go home, Joe Pitt.

  He raises the hand he cut, and the rest of the Mungiki encircle us.

  —We are Mungiki. Savages. We are born for this.

  He lowers his hand.

  —It will kill you.

  He bares his teeth.

  —It will kill us all.

  I lick my lips.

  —OK.

  I take my hands from my pockets, lighter in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  —I’m suitably freaked out.

  I light the cigarette.

  —Now tell me where I go to see this thing.

  He wipes tears from his face, leaving a small smear of his hand’s blood.

  —Not far.

  He points south.

  —English Kill.

  He nods at the Creek.

  —Do you know how to swim?

  The Mungiki don’t have guns.

  Not that they have anything against them, just that they don’t have much cash to procure them with. Under normal circumstances I’d consider it a bonus for the whole world that these guys are limited to machetes and handmade claws, but it does mean I can’t borrow a gun for myself.

  —Not even a zip gun?

  —No. No firearms at all.

  I look at the rank water below my feet.

  —Shit.

  I look back up at Menace.

  —And you’re sure I can’t go on land?

  —No. This is the only way.

  —Shit.

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

  I look at it bobbing on the scummy low tide.

  —What’s that for?

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

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

  —Shit.

  He picks up a shard of glass between the points of two claws.

  —I will not see you again, Joe Pitt.

  I unlace my boots.

  —That’s always a chance.

  —No.

  He drops the shard in the water.

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

  I peel off my socks and stuff them inside the boots, shrug out of my jacket and pull off my shirt.

  —Do me a favor anyway.

  —Yes?

  I point at my clothes.

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

  He was right about the currents.

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

  I knew the water was how I was going out.

  I stroke hard, past the branch where fresh currents try to drag me down English Kill so they can crush me against the rocks below the silos rising above some kind of refinery. Farther down the waterway, I pass under the Grand Avenue Bridge, heavy trucks rattling the steel plates overhead. Ahead, the Creek splits. Disappearing beyond a huge warehouse and around a hard angle to my right, where Menace told me it dead-ends at Metropolitan. Crossing an invisible border into Brooklyn.

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

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

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

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

  That’s the place Menace told me about.

  The place where he got changed.

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

  Where I can see what scares the savages.

  Merit Transportation hasn’t bothered with a wall or even a fence on the water side of their depot.

  Why bother?

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

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

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

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

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

  No dice.

  Ahead, there’s a row of buses parked perpendicular to a bare cement verge; beyond that, the wall that hides the gravel yard, topped with a long twisted spring of razor wire. Brightly lit.

  A tunnel would be nice.

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

  Why am I doing this?

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

  Evie.

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

  But I get up and run.

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

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

  Jumping from the rear of the bus, my bare foot pushing off from the end of the roof above the emergency exit, I have a vision of myself, feet snagged in a tangle of razor wire, hanging upside down inside the perimeter of the wall, spotlights pinned on my body, guards closing in from every quarter.

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

  It’s even louder on this side of the wall. And brighter.

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

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

  Nothing happens.

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

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

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

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

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

  Maybe he’s a nutjob.

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

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

  This place is nothing but a gravel yard.

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

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

  Tears and blood on his cheek.

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

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

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

  Dust clogs my nose. I can’t smell anything except diesel fumes and scorched rubber. The truck moves into the shadows beneath the conveyors. The tower of rust-streaked gray steel that the conveyors pour their gravel into shakes and shudders and sends thunder vibrating through the air. I’m deaf.

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

  Here under the towers, protected from the halogen day, the light is cast by yellow globes in wire cages. Someone coalesces out of the dust and sickly light. I jump from the truck, leading with brass, my broken fist sending a hot blast of pain down my arm as it hits the side of the man’s face. I land on top of him, knocking his helmet and earphones off, smashing an elbow into his gut. No worry that his screams will be heard here.

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

  No Vyrus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Things could get ugly in there.

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

  I start down.

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

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

  Down.

  Another light and another door. Locked.

  Down.

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

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

  He nods, waits, holding the door open.

  And I slip inside, patting his side in thanks, taking the weight of the door from him, watching his back as he starts up the stairs, letting go of the door, then catching it before it latches.

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

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

  Doors.

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

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

  But there’s more.

  Close my eyes, concentrate, I can smell Vyrus.

  And blood. Lots of blood.

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

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

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

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

  Down.

  Deeper.

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

  And more sounds. And smells.

  Vyrus here. Recently.

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

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

  Another bed.

  Manacles.

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

  —Hey, man, this room is occupied.

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

  He reaches out and pulls the earphones from my head.

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

  The girl flinches when the man’s blood sprays her.

  I find a key on a hook on the wall and unlock the manacles. She lies there, pointing at her mouth, opening and closing it, spreading her legs wider. I sit her up and she tries to grind against me. I pull the man’s work jacket from the floor and a plastic-wrapped snack cake drops from a pocket. The girl looks at it and whines. I hand it to her and she unwraps it and stuffs it in her mouth. There are more in the jacket. I give them to her, covering her with the jacket as she eats, feeling the jutting bones that poke from her skin.

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

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

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

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

  I cut myself again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Vision clears.

  I had her brought up for me.

  I leave the girl, go back to the stairwell.

  Down.

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

  Then he’s dead.

  Low.

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

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

  Low has a ring of keys and a truncheon.

  I take the keys.

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