The skeleton shakes its head.
—You’re a policeman outside his jurisdiction. You’re where you don’t belong.
The skeleton pushes his face close to Predo’s.
—You’re not Enclave.
He lifts the blade, forcing my chin higher.
—This one, what he is can be disputed.
The razor folds away from my skin.
The skeleton shows it to Predo.
—But you are meat. Ignorant and unclean and in need of purging.
Predo sweats.
—Killing me will be considered an act of utmost aggression.
The skeleton coughs laughter.
—Yes. And then? Will your Coalition send more of those to threaten us?
It waves a hand at the two headless corpses being loaded into the trunk of the car by another skeleton.
It shakes its head.
—Killing you would be a mercy. But there will be none of that for you tonight.
It points at the car.
—Go on.
Predo backs away, watching my eye.
—A final word, Pitt.
He smooths the length of his tie.
—Do you know you’ve tipped your hand?
I don’t move.
Predo stops, hand on the open door of his car.
—I still don’t know what it is you’re after.
He waves an arm, taking in the neighborhood.
—But I know where it is.
He drops the arm.
—You’ll be dead soon.
He gets into the car.
—But I’ll be certain to find what it is you value so much. Before you die.
The door closes, the engine hums to life, and the car rolls away onto Eighth, not at all burdened by the dead it carries.
I look at the skeleton.
—Do I know you?
He offers me the razor.
—We’ve met, Simon.
I take the blade from his desiccated hand.
—Yeah, I wasn’t sure, you guys all look alike to me.
I drop the razor in my pocket and take out a smoke.
—But seeing as you’ve met me, you maybe know my name’s Joe.
The other skeleton joins us. This one, he’s less of a skeleton than his boss, but he’s on his way. All of them, all Enclave, they’re all a bunch of withered tendon and bone held together by bleached skin. No surprise, that’s what happens when you spend all your time starving yourself.
The first one shakes his head, looking like the gesture might snap his twig neck.
—Your name is what Daniel said your name is. Simon.
I walk a few steps, kick some garbage aside and find my gun.
—Daniel’s dead.
He coughs that laugh of his.
—So you say, Simon. So you say.
He points at the mouth of the alley.
—You’re wanted.
He starts to walk, I follow.
What’s the point of running? If they want to, these guys can just pull my legs off and carry me.
Besides, they’ll be taking me where I was headed in the first place.
It’s not easy, but if you close your eyes, you can remember a time before the Meatpacking District became a vomitorium for clubbers and people with too much fucking money to spend on dinner for two anyplace that doesn’t have a six-month waiting list for a reservation. A time when the cobbles here weren’t quaint, when they were walked by tranny hookers and teenage hustlers, and cruised by limos looking for rough trade. ’Course the Enclave settled in their warehouse over here even before that scene. They settled here when those cobbles drained the blood of livestock, and white coats and meat hooks were the only fashion statements being made.
Still, the crowds waiting in line to get into the after-hours joints that are just now opening their doors are full of enough clowned posers that the all-white look the Enclave sport doesn’t raise an eyebrow as we cut down Little West Twelfth to the final block before the water. Maybe a few club kids watch as we climb the steps to the loading dock and the door slides open to let us in, but none of them scurry over to find out what the scene inside is like. They know it’s not for them. They can read it. The total lack of graffiti on the place, the silence, that chill that rises from it, the scraps of street rumor that adhere to it.
Bad shit goes down in there.
They know it. They feel it. So they stay in line like good little robots and wait their turn to flash a fake ID at the doorman so they can go inside some carefully padded pleasure dome and pretend they’re living on the edge for a few hours.
Inside the Enclave warehouse, it’s all edge.
A hundred-odd fanatics, weaning themselves from the blood the Vyrus demands, pushing their metabolisms to the crazed point Amanda Horde described, when memory T cells will stop reminding their own immune systems what not to attack.
The Vyrus, pushed to starvation, jacks their nervous systems. Desperate, it hammers on them to feed. At the edge of death, it empties its hosts of all resources, strengthening them for the kill.
Strong, fast, impervious to pain; blow a limb off one and they’ll pick it up to beat you to death with it.
They vibrate with insanity.
That’s what the kids on the street feel.
I feel it too. It goes to my guts, the madness in this place. The clattering of their bones striking one another as they endlessly spar, honing killing skills. The numb and complete silence that falls when they meditate on the Vyrus, focusing their wills to resist its hunger. The whisper of dry lips and tongues when they break their fasts and sip spoonfuls of blood to appease the Vyrus.
The fasting, it’s not a rejection of the Vyrus’ hunger, it’s a supplication.
They are not its enemy. They are its acolytes.
Suggest to one of them that the Vyrus is a virus, an earthly thing, and they’ll laugh in your face. Or chew it off.
Heresy is something they take pretty seriously around here. And rejecting the Vyrus as a supernatural agency of redemption is about as heretical as it gets for these guys.
All they want, all they starve for, is to be like the Vyrus, to let it gradually feed on them, creep into their bones and tissue, and transform them into something other, something that will stay in this world, while being entirely of another.
Fanatics to the ground, when they’ve found one who can complete that transformation, and he’s taught the others to do the same, they think they’ll become immune to sun and all the weapons of this world. And then, like all true believers, they’ll go out and kill everyone not just like them.
It’s weird shit.
I don’t follow it.
And I don’t like coming here.
But I used to be welcome all the same. The old boss, he had it in his head I was really one of them, that I just didn’t know it yet.
But he died.
Daniel. Old man. Crazy old man.
I stop thinking about how he died, how the weight of his corpse was nothing in my arms, I put it away where you keep the things you don’t want to think about. That place, it’s goddamn crowded at this point.
I put it away so I can focus on the Enclave, mind myself so I don’t end up dead.
The two that brought me inside leave me as soon as the door slides shut behind us and darkness’ cover drops. I can hear more of them around me, breathing, barely breathing, meditating. I can hear others softly grunting, the whip of their limbs through space, the crack as they strike one another, a splinter of bones. I can smell their decaying flesh and the special taint of starving Vyrus that clings to them.
My pupils open, gathering light from candles scattered across the huge space. It looks the same as the last time I saw it. I figured that would be the very last time I’d see it at all. The last time I’d see it before I came back to burn it down.
But the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.
I had to come back without a torch.
I want to see my
girl, after all.
—Simon.
I look at him, coming out of the gloom, wrapped in white like the other Enclave.
I nod.
—Nice suit.
He stops ten feet from me, fingers a lapel of the spotless white three-piece.
—Yeah-huh, right?
He tilts his head at the lines of squatting Enclave deep in meditation. Beyond them others spar, flickering, frozen for an occasional heartbeat as they study the other’s defense, looking for a weakness before striking again.
—Like, I had no problem with the color scheme and all, but there was no way I was gonna be sporting a toga or a shawl or something.
I’m not paying attention to him, I’m paying attention to the others, watching them as my pupils widen and take in more light and the warehouse stretches and I see how many of them there are. More than a hundred. Many more. Twice that. At least.
I look at him.
He nods.
—Oh yeah, man, I been busy.
—Truth to an old friend, it ain’t easy. This shit ain’t easy at all. Like, let me tell you, man, that meditation shit, that is some boring-ass shit. Just sitting there, trying to get into the Vyrus and all that. And the sparring. At first I was so down with that. I wanted to get up and go kung fu. But that shit is hard work. And it fucking hurts, man. Enclave, there’s no such thing as a pulled punch with Enclave. You have to, what you have to do is, here, let me show you. Punch me as hard as you can.
He comes close, crossing the small chamber he led me to in the lofts above the warehouse floor.
—Seriously, man, just hit me as hard as you can.
I look at the two Enclave sitting on the floor just outside the open door.
He waves a hand.
—No, man, don’t worry about them, they won’t do shit I don’t tell them to do. They’re cool. Just take a poke at me. You know you want to.
—Count, why the fuck would I hit you when you’re expecting it?
He shakes his head.
—Same old Joe Pitt, no fun at all. Here I am, full of all this new knowledge, all these new skills, changed and wanting to share, and there you are, grumpy as ever, a total fucking drag.
He does a karate kick, pummeling the air with one of his bare feet, the one with the twisted bones jutting from it, the one I mangled for him.
He lowers the foot and smiles.
—But it’s cool, it’s cool. All I’m trying to do is say that this shit ain’t easy. Being Enclave. I mean, sure, I understand that the Vyrus chooses you for this shit. You’re either Enclave or you’re not, that’s what your boy Daniel used to say, yeah? Shit, but, I wouldn’t even be here if that wasn’t the case. Come to it, you wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case. Daniel hadn’t given us both the Enclave stamp of approval, we couldn’t come into this place except to get executed. But the point I’m weaving around here is, even if the Vyrus says you’re Enclave, this shit is still damn tough. Like, I know this may come as a shock considering what you think of me, but like this shit is transformative. Really transformative.
He slaps a fist into his palm.
—OK, and I know that sounds redundant. Sure, like, because if the Vyrus doesn’t transform you in the first place, then what the hell? But check it. ’Cause the Vyrus doesn’t make you a different person. Yeah? So like me, I didn’t suddenly stop being a spoiled-rotten, rich brat just because I needed to drink blood to live. More like, the fact I was already so self-absorbed just made it easier for me to make the transition. Like the rich already live off the fat of the land, so why not the blood as well, yeah? So, but, this stuff, to get it, to really get it, you have to work at it. Well, talk about new concepts for me. Work? Whoa! Not on my agenda.
He leans in.
—But being in charge here after Daniel cacked it, that was on my agenda.
He pushes his eyebrows way up.
—And that meant playing a role. Like, putting on the grave face, being all somber and talking in portentous sentences and shit, like so many of these guys do. It meant squatting in lines and pretending to think about the Vyrus. It meant learning that if someone was gonna swing at you, and really try to punch your rib cage out of your chest, that you needed to learn how to go with the punch.
He stretches his arms at me and points with both index fingers.
—Which you would have got to see I can do now if you’d taken a shot like I asked, man.
He drops his arms.
—But the point is, you start to do all that, even if it’s a total front, even if you’ve made a life out of doing just enough work to get by, even if all you’re really thinking about is how cool it’s gonna be when you’re in charge and get to call all the shots and cut this hard shit from the activities list, you keep doing it for all the wrong reasons, and it doesn’t fucking matter. Because, dude, you are doing it.
He spreads his arms.
—I’m saying, Look at me, man.
I look at him. White skin to match the suit. Bald. His once skinny frame, now a coat hanger for the designer threads.
He claps.
—I was trying, I was trying to front, and the whole time, what was really happening was I was becoming, man. I’m saying, to play the role, I had starve the Vyrus, yeah? And that required some effort. So next thing, I’m in the meditation down there, and I’m really thinking about it. And all that shit I learned about it before, when I was studying it from the scientific angle, using my med-school chops to try and break it down, all that started to fade.
He puts his hands on his head.
—’Cause I’m telling you, if this shit can really change an asshole like me, then it is not of this earth. Hear what I’m saying?
His hands shoot over his head.
—I am a believer, man! I am in! And I love it!
He cocks a grin.
—And, Joe, all our shit, all our background and complication and all that shit, I am over it.
He reaches for me.
—And I want you to join us, man!
I punch him.
And he rolls with it. Falls away from the blow, tumbles backward, and comes to his feet still grinning, and points at me.
—I love you, man!
He comes at me faster than I can do anything about and wraps his arms around me.
—I love you, Joe Pitt!
Put a crazy man in an asylum, then lay your money on the odds he gets worse. Closest thing to a sure bet.
—It’s not like I’m just filled with crazy Vyrus-love and I want everyone to feel it, yeah? This is about something more tangible. Take a look and see if you get it.
We stand at the rail of the lofts, looking down at the pairs sparring in the middle of a circle of kneeling Enclave.
I look at them. I don’t say anything.
Why bother? You want to know what’s on the Count’s mind, you wait for him to inhale before he blows the next load of words at you.
—OK, so you’re looking. And you’re seeing it. There’s way more of us.
He shows me five fingers, then shows me five more.
—We’re doubling in size. It’s crazy in here, all the new Enclave. We can barely find room for the new believers. Even with fasting as our primary tenet, we still have problems getting enough blood in here.
He points at a far corner where an Enclave has pulled the cover from a large sewage drain and another drops a sagging body down the exposed hole.
—Fast as we can drain one and toss it down there, we need another. Growth comes with costs, man. I learned that in school.
He shakes his head.
—But that’s not the point, I’m getting off it again, the point. The point is all these new people we’re getting in. This new belief and energy. These people who need something in their lives, what we can give them.
I find a crack to fit a word in.
—Thought the Vyrus did the choosing and the giving.
He looks around.
—Well, yeah, man, sure. But situati
ons, they evolve. So in the past it was Daniel who saw when someone was Enclave or not, now someone else has to fill that role.
I look at him.
He gives a modest head shake.
—Hey, I didn’t nominate myself. But like I said, I’m a changed dude, and I got some credibility around here. And, OK, I don’t want to dis the big man’s memory, and I’m not, but I’m saying that maybe in Daniel’s case that when he was looking for the Enclave in someone and there was a shade of doubt, maybe he gave them a pass. And maybe me, maybe I’m more inclusive. Like I want these people to have what they need. Belief, change, newness. Transmutational experiences like mine.
He holds a hand parallel to the ground and waggles it.
—And maybe, OK, maybe some around here don’t feel this is the way.
He makes a fist and pops his thumb out of it and at the sky.
—But there’s more that do. Daniel, he was the man forever, and he was loved, still is, but he was on the conservative side. A lot of these brothers and sisters, they’ve been waiting to grow, they want change in their lifetimes. Sure they want to meditate and learn the nature of the Vyrus, but they also want to be here when it’s time for the purge. When the world is remade to the Vyrus. They don’t want to miss out. And I am down with that. It’s a matter of how you come at your faith. I come at it like we need to spread it, we need to make it happen, that’s what the Vyrus wants from us, that’s why it makes us feeders, aggressors. It wants us to be aggressive. Yeah? So I say to these guys, Let’s fucking aggress, man!
He points at the street door.
—Action like that tonight? Sending those hitters out to pick you up, giving them a weapons-free license to take care of any shit out there? That wouldn’t have happened with Daniel. And they like that new attitude in here. They like that we stepped out and took care of some business on our own doorstep.
I raise a finger.
He bobs his head.
—Yeah, yeah, man, questions. Fire ’em up.
—Just wondering how you got wind of me.
—Easy, man. Had an eye out for you the whole last year. You hit downtown, that news got to me in a hurry.
I grind my teeth.
—Fucking Philip.
—Yeah, man, fucking Phil. That guy, again, there’s a dude Daniel would never have had anything to do with, but me, having had a history with him, I was prepared to make use of his eyes on the street. He saw you, gave me a call. After that.