I look down at the three I got fastened, all in the wrong holes.
—Rather have the gun, but I’ll take what you’re giving.
She comes over, undoes the button on the old black corduroy, starts to do them up straight.
She’s looking at the buttons, focused.
—I’m wondering.
She pops another button into its hole.
—Do you think you have a plan? Because I look at you sometimes, and that’s the feeling I get. Joe, he’s got this all worked out. But when I see you like this, carved up like this, like you’re trading body parts for time, I think, Joe, he’s just thrashing in the water, drawing the sharks.
She does the top button.
—But as if maybe you’re drawing them away from someone else.
I take a step back, use my good hand to undo that top button.
—Trying to choke me, Lydia?
She’s not looking at the buttons anymore, she’s looking at my eye.
—Whatever you’re after, Joe, it doesn’t have to be just the one thing.
I pull out my tobacco.
—Don’t suppose your charity extends so far as to roll me one?
—What I’m saying, I think I know you have something you want, something you care about.
I pull out a paper.
—I care about getting a smoke rolled.
—And if that’s true, if I’m right about that, you caring about something, then there could be room for more.
I shake out some tobacco.
—Sure, I care about maybe having a drink too.
—Chubby’s daughter.
I roll it up.
—She’s running on Anne Rice and crystal power. You won’t like her.
—That baby she’s carrying.
I put it in the corner of my mouth.
—Kid will probably take after her mom, pop out with fairy wings, stardust on its eyelids.
—Those kids in Queens. That hole.
I bend to the propane stove and light up.
—Funny.
—Another joke?
—No. Just funny how I’m the one went down that hole and everyone else is always trying to tell me what has to be done about it. Like maybe I had my hands over my eyes down there. Just peeked through a crack between my fingers, and ran. Like somehow I missed something. You think I missed something, Lydia? Something you can fill me in on?
She draws a line in the air with the edge of her hand.
—There’s a chance here, Joe, to do something that tells people who you really are. A chance to do more than just thrash around. You can do better than make it up as you go along and hope you land on your feet. You can fight for something more than just what you want. You can save people who deserve saving. You can show what you’re made of. For once.
I’m looking under the table, in the corners of the room, under a couple chairs.
—Lydia.
—Joe.
I take a drag.
—Lydia, you see what Terry did with that ball he took from your mouth?
I blow it out.
—’Cause I’d really like to stick it back in there.
She doesn’t move.
—It’ll come down to making a choice. Whether you want it or not. You’ll have to show what you are.
I sit on one of the chairs, pick up my boots, the worst of the blood and crud scraped off them.
—Interesting you should put it that way. Earlier tonight, had a little chat with Amanda Horde. Crazy twist that she is, she’s finally got the thing nailed down. Sounds like it anyway.
She folds her arms.
—What thing?
I put on one of the boots, start to do the laces.
—The Vyrus. The thing. You know.
She stands there.
I put on the other boot.
—So she had quite a lot to tell me about what I am. What we all are.
Lace up.
—According to her, what I am is what I’ve always been. According to her, I wasn’t infected, I was activated. What was already inside me was just switched on. I wasn’t turned into a blood-drinker, I was one all along.
I rise.
—Which, if I follow her right, means the same for all of us.
I step to my jacket, hung on a nail next to the radiator, just about dry from the sponging I gave it.
—No one made us Vampyres, we were Vampyres all along.
I slip it on.
—What I’m doing, Lydia, is just what comes naturally for what I am.
I step to her.
—And what I am is the same thing as you.
Past her.
—You want to fight it, be my guest.
I open the door.
—I got better things to take a swing at than myself.
The corridors are full of Terry’s partisans and Lydia’s Bulls. They give one another the hairy eyeball as they put edges on machetes, load battered sawed-offs, work the actions on a few Tech 9s, and put the finishing touches on a satchel full of Molotovs.
I think about the black-market military ordnance the enforcers were prepping in the uptown garage. I think about a few of those guys getting a drop on us as we come through a door. I think about how high the bodies would have to pile before they’d stop the bullets and let me and whoever else might be hanging at the rear make a run for it.
Ugly things is what I’m thinking.
I find Terry in a second-floor room. Smells like cedar incense and mimeo ink. Posters of Lennon and Lenin staring at each other from across the room. Frameless mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag on top. Camp stool at an old school desk in the corner. Turntable playing a track from Exile on Main St. “Ventilator Blues.”
Terry’s sitting in the chair, changed into combat boots, faded Levis, and a Vietnam-era U.S. Army field jacket with an American flag peace sign on the back, worn open over a Che Guevara T-shirt.
He’s cleaning a vintage AK-47.
I give him a nod.
—Time to free the people?
He hefts the assault rifle.
—That’s the idea, Joe. Always has been.
I walk over to the turntable and pick up the album jacket, listen to the song.
—Mood music.
He withdraws a cleaning rod from the barrel, dragging out a scrap of cotton.
—There are times when aggression is sadly in order. This is a song that has always helped me to psychologically prepare for the onset of violence.
I put the jacket down.
—Makes you feel like killing.
He shoulders the gun.
—Nothing in this world, Joe, nothing at all.
He dry fires, listening to the snap of the pin.
—Nothing makes me feel like killing.
—Not even me?
He fits a banana clip to the receiver, slaps it home.
—You’ve tempted my weakness on more than one occasion, but I’m, I don’t know, I’m not a man who contemplates killing, even in anger, who contemplates it with pleasure.
I walk to the window, lean against the plywood nailed over it.
—Who said anything about contemplation. I’m talking about doing it.
He lays the gun across his lap.
—What can I tell you, man, it’s just not my thing.
I nod.
—Still, you got moves, Ter. May not use them much anymore, but you got ‘em.
He takes a black watch cap from the desktop, puts it on, tucks his ponytail up inside.
—Some skills, you just acquire them. Doesn’t mean you revel in them or anything. The times taught me what I had to do.
—Funny, I got the idea old lady Vandewater taught you what to do back when you trained to be an enforcer.
He rests the butt of the gun on the floor, barrel against his knee.
—History makes us, forges us, we hone the edge. I was shaped to be a weapon for the Coalition, but I chose to cut the other way. You take what is given you, and you u
se it. Chubby’s daughter and her baby.
—Yeah, how’d you get along with her?
He rubs his forehead.
—I’ll admit she, you know, taxed the limits of my sense of humor.
—Relentless with that shit.
—Totally relentless.
—But you talked it right back at her, didn’t you? He smiles.
—Dear lady, urgency is on the wind. We must act.
—Nice.
—It didn’t help. She, I don’t know, got it in her head that she’d be better off somewhere else. I think running is just in her, you know, her personal script. Part of her drama. A shame. Infected and uninfected. That baby. There is real potential in that kind of narrative. I’m sure she’ll see it.
—Or maybe she’s already sensed you’re a two-faced asshole.
He pings a fingernail off the barrel of his gun, but doesn’t say anything.
I find my tobacco.
—Me, I’m not worried about you selling us out, Terry. I figure you’ve done that at least a half-dozen times over the years. Made some backdoor deal with Predo. That’s the way of the world. Like presidents and prime ministers, right? In the end, they all went to the same schools, speak the same lingo. Us peons, we just don’t understand how it’s done. So they do it for our own good. Screwing us, I mean. You and Predo, studying together with Vandewater, once I had that figured, I knew where you stood. Mean, I knew from way back you’re full of shit, but it was only the last couple years I knew you’re just another player.
He pokes his index finger in the barrel, pulls it out with a little pop.
—If there’s a point here, Joe, I have a ton of details to take care of. You know.
I got a cigarette rolled. Lighting it with a punk of incense makes the first drag taste foul, but it improves after that.
—Just that things seem to be closing out is all. And, like you said a while back, I’m a curious type. Things left unanswered, they make me itchy. Speaking of which.
I pick a flake of tobacco from my tongue.
—I was thinking how the Horde kid’s crazy dad isolated the zombie bacteria.
He purses his lips, makes the gun barrel pop again.
I smoke.
—That whole deal where he made those nutty dentures that injected the goop into someone and infected them. You know, to start a zombie plague. Bonkers, that guy. No wonder his daughter is short a few cards.
Pop goes the barrel.
I raise a finger, one of the few.
—Come to think of it, after I got my hands on those chompers, didn’t I lay them off on you?
I push off from the plywood and stroll toward the door.
—Tell ya, those teeth, in the wrong hands, they could start some serious trouble.
I stop at the door and look back at him.
He looks up, no movement in his face.
Dead face.
I smile.
—Hey, Terry, I didn’t know any better, I’d say for sure you were in the mood to kill someone.
Pop.
I wave as I make my way to the stairs at the end of the hall.
—Thanks for the answers on that one, Terry. That itch, been driving me nuts.
Thrashing.
Where’d Lydia get an idea like that?
Me, I’m miles from land, clinging to a scrap of wood, hoping to see a sail on the horizon. Someone at the rail to throw me a rope. Get me on deck, I can kill the crew and take the helm and point the damn thing where I want to go.
Meantime, I hold fast, pick a direction, and kick.
Headway.
Because didn’t you know, the worm can swim?
—What do ya hear, Hurl?
He rolls his pant leg a little higher.
—I hear tis a brutal an a unfair world out dere, Joe. One not fit fer da likes a me an you. Gentlemen as we are.
I’m not bothering with my own pants, not being a delicate soul like Hurley.
—Mean, how’s it stacking up out there? I’m back just a few hours. Lost at sea.
He rises, pants rolled to above his knees, brown socks peeking out of the tops of his thick-sole leather boots.
—Well, an is it any surprise at all you’d be lost in it? Ya hardly spend any time around us a’tall anymore.
Terry comes up from the rear of the line, edging in and around the partisans and Bulls, patting shoulders, lending words of encouragement. Bucking up the troops before a slaughter.
—Joe.
—Terry.
He looks at his watch.
—You said Predo would hit sometime after midnight.
—What he said.
—It’s midnight.
—Guess we better get up there.
The basements of the Lower East Side are a warren of code violations that date back to the days of the Whyos and Tammany Hall. Excavated, hollowed-out, chopped, extended, dug deeper than safe, pushed far beyond property lines. A little time spent poking at a flaking brick wall with a crowbar will usually reward you with passage into someone else’s labyrinth. Poke at a sweaty wall and you’ll either find yourself peeking in at an old drainage or cut in half by a knife of water set loose from a pipe pressurized to lift thousands of gallons six stories up. Best way to avoid that second fate is to put your ear to the wall. Listen for the thrum of water in a pipe. Don’t hear it, you can start swinging.
This wall here, seems like I don’t hear anything but maybe a soft gurgle on the other side. Then again, I don’t feel my best. That uncertainty being what it is, I step aside and gesture to Hurley.
—After you, Hurl.
He pats the head of his sledgehammer.
—Not dat I’m shy, Joe, but the first blow is all yer own.
Terry moves back.
—Your show, Joe.
I look at the wall I picked out for this after breaking us into a basement adjoining the Society safe house and following an eastward read on the compass Terry loaned me.
—My show. And me without a curtain to raise on it.
I use my lame hand as a guide, right arm swinging the crowbar at the wall, stepping into it, like breaking the rack for a game of eight ball.
And come up dry.
I point at the spot.
—Give it a bash.
Hurl spins the sledgehammer, a delicate thing in his hands, winds up, and lets loose. Bricks fly, we all get peppered with chips and dry mortar, and there’s a jagged hole the size of a trash can lid.
Hurley points at the water pipe on the right-hand edge of the hole.
—An dat was a close one weren’t it?
I look at a dent in the side of the pipe.
—Almost a quick trip.
—Are you masters of engineering ready yet?
We look at Lydia, come to join the fun.
I hook a thumb at the hole.
—Just measuring how close we came to dying.
She shakes her head, kicks a few bricks from the bottom of the hole, and steps through into the ankle-deep sludge in the spillway beyond.
—Make a habit of that and you won’t get out of bed.
I look at Hurley, he looks at me, we both look at Terry.
He nods.
—Destined to rule the world.
He follows her.
Hurley shakes his head.
—An more’s the pity fer us all if it should come ta be.
He follows.
I think about turning the other way and getting myself lost. But the girl and her baby are north, so I hit the spillway.
—Did ya ever hear of Montaigne?
—Don’t think I knew him.
—Well ya wouldn’t have, would ya, him bein’ dead so long before yer own time wit us. But did ya ever hear of him?
—Nope.
I stop at a sluice. The sludge washed out a ways back and we’ve been in water to our calves the last half mile or so. Terry and Lydia drifted back to their troops. Neither one much comfortable around the other without a passel of guns at their
beck just now. Hurley’s stayed on point with me. Not so much for the company, more to be on hand to kill me fast if I make a crooked play. A powerful deterrent Hurley is.
I take a look at the compass, light from a couple dozen flashlights scattered between the crew behind me. The north read lies with the sluice. A six-foot drop to water that could be over a tall man’s head.
I’m a tall man.
I look at Hurley.
—Hold that story.
I jump.
I’m under, water up my nose, in my empty eye socket, feet kicking, they find something solid and I put it under me, stand, water to my waist.
I look up.
—Gonna have to roll your pants a bit higher, Hurl.
—Montaigne, he was a torpedo wit one a da cannonball gangs back when.
I check the Ziploc I put my tobacco in before this jaunt. Still dry. There is a god.
—Like you’re speaking French, Hurl.
He frowns.
—Don’t know a word of da lingo.
I tuck the tobacco away, push on through the water. Cold. It actually makes the Vyrus-burn in my belly feel a little better.
—Torpedo I follow, but never heard that cannonball gang before.
He nods, hikes a leg and sloshes after me.
—Righto, righto. Cannonball gangs were a bit o ruff back when me an Terry were first settin’ shop. Back den, before all dis mass media an da like, tings were a bit looser. What we could get away wit, it was murder it was. Cannonballs. Did ya ever do one?
I search my memory.
—I haven’t got a clue, Hurl.
He wraps his arms around himself, awkward as he still has the sledgehammer, and jumps up, coming down with a splash.
—You know, cannonball.
—Like the dive?
He waves the hammer.
—Like da dive. Just a clumsy ting ya do ta make a splash. Just fer da fun. Ta make a, well, a spectacle of yerself. An dat’s what da cannonball gangs were up ta. Making spectacles of demselves. Go inta a place, say a speakeasy, someplace off da cops’ usual beat. Places were mostly soundproofed purty good. Underground an such. So no one would be bothered by all da drinkin’ an da music an da like. Ya missed out on New York ya did, Joe, not bein’ around in da old days.
I’m draggin’ my bad leg along through the water. Now the cold’s in my stomach deep and it doesn’t feel better at all. Feels like ice water and acid in my bowels.