My Dead Body

  Meanwhile, my own personal monster, my Vyrus, goes at my intestines with its teeth. I stutter-step, trip up the guy behind me. Predo yanks me along.

  —Pitt!

  I try to keep moving my feet, but it feels like I’ve been bit in half at the waist, no legs to move, innards dragging on the ground.

  Then they’re back, teeth pull out, feet are under me, and I’m moving for the hole, ready to make my play when something explodes underneath. Stone and mortar and shards of rusty iron blasted into the air as Hurley erupts from the hole, sledgehammer in one hand, .45 in the other, landing on his feet next to the widened hole, screaming to the troops now visible below.

  —Tis da double cross i’tis!

  And the vibrations that have been hanging in the air waiting to break, the Klaxon sounding, the doors opening, the yellow blur that bursts from one of them zeroing in on Hurley’s chest. Size of a large dog, it will chew a hole through his lungs when it hits him, but it never gets there, hammer snapping mid-shaft as Hurley smashes it from the air, a blow so hard the thing splits in half, each part whirling across the basement spewing yellow blood that smells of rotted Vyrus, smacking against the wall and falling to the floor.

  Hurley brandishes the broken handle of his hammer.

  —Holy shite!

  And then more monsters.

  And then everyone shoots at everything.

  The tiny red dot overhead, the camera watching, Amanda Horde upstairs. We’re not defenseless, was what she said.

  I shoot at something that tries to kill me. What it is, someone with a name I know, or a thing that isn’t supposed to be, I can’t say. I just start killing my way toward the pile of bodies blocking the door.

  It would have been good to know what Predo meant when he said him and his enforcers had been driven to the basement. It was a heady time when that word passed his lips and I didn’t bother to notice it. Or its implications.

  In the basement, I have one thin slice of something resembling an advantage. That being that I don’t care about killing Coalition or Society. I don’t much like anyone down there, but I haven’t been trained to hate the other side. Or anyway, it’s a long time since I stopped believing there were sides. Monsters or no, most of these grunts finally have a clear target and a piece in their hands and they want to run up a body count. Once the first one uses the distraction of Amanda’s experiments to take a potshot at the other team, any idea of sticking it to the mutual enemy evaporates and it’s a free-for-all.

  When you’re used to going it alone, a free-for-all is just your natural environment. If the people around me weren’t at one another’s throats most of the time, I’d never have survived, starting with my mom and dad.

  People may hate me, they just sometimes hate one another even more, but the monsters don’t care one way or the other. That’s why first thing I do when it all goes sideways is I turn around and shoot the guy behind me in the stomach a couple times and drag him toward the door. He catches a couple more bullets as we pass the hole, but he’s still alive enough for a good scream when something broadsides us and plows us to the ground, him on top. Feels like the thing that took us down is trying to dig through him to get to me, but it’s just as likely trying to get inside so it can lay a clutch of eggs in his liver. I worm out from under and belly-crawl into a thicket of legs, shell casings raining down, getting stomped.

  When a taloned limb appears in the mix, I unload the clip in my gun, bullets severing it from whatever it’s attached to, bullets gone astray taking out the legs of a few of the enforcers.

  Claws reach into my back, grab my spine, and try to rip it out.

  In the time I think it’s really happening that way, I’ve rolled to my back, screaming. But it’s just the Vyrus again. Inopportune timing.

  Someone steps on my stomach. Someone else steps on my bad knee. The claws let go of my spine and I roll again and move, realizing that the person who stepped on my knee was one of Terry’s partisans.

  The stupid fuckers are coming up.

  There’s a pile of bodies in front of me. Can’t tell anymore which way I’m pointed. Could be the pile of enforcers that was blocking the door, could be a brand-new pile. My cheek is lashed open by a whip. I look and see that mass of quivering tentacles. So at least I have the right pile of dead people. I start digging into the pile and something has my ankle. I look back, expecting to see one of those tentacles has me, but it’s a partisan, one of those shaved-head semi-anarchist fucks that all look alike. Some son of a bitch I don’t even know his fucking name, he’s missing half his left arm and his jaw, but he’s using his last breath on this earth to fuck with me, when he could be looking for someone’s dropped gun to shoot himself and die quicker.

  Me, I dropped my empty gun a few seconds ago, haven’t found a replacement yet. So I swing the wire saw at his wrist, snag the free end as it wraps around, yank back and forth, and he’s got no hands to pick up anything anymore.

  I’m digging into the pile of dead people again, going under, feeling the weight of them on top, hoping the door is ahead of me, hoping I don’t pop out the wrong side of the pile and have my head snatched off. The pile thrums around me as it’s raked by bullets. I dig deeper, my hand feels steel plate, I reach down, find a crack at the bottom of the door and start to yank and push, but it’s either locked or the dead are too heavy to move. I get the two fingers of my left hand in there and pull and push, looking for something to give.

  Just a little.

  I’m just looking for a little room. A little room to move. Someplace I can use to make more time. Looking for a little crack to edge through and slip away. One more time. If I can get away one more time I might have a chance. Even if it’s a chance I don’t deserve, I want it anyway.

  The door moves, a tiny bit of give, and I take it. Jerk the fucker back and forth, pushing myself up out of the cover of the dead, bodies tumbling off me as I rise for leverage, grabbing the edge of the door as it clears the jamb. Pull, push, pull.

  —Fooker, ya are!

  I know who it is, so I don’t waste time looking.

  I just pull harder, pull and jam myself into the gap I’ve opened, skinning my face trying to push through.

  —Ya backstabber, ya are!

  He hasn’t shot me. Either for lack of bullets or because he wants his hands on me.

  Someone on the other side shoves the door, pushing it an inch farther open against the bodies, I heave myself, the slightly jutting ends of those two broken ribs snagged by the edge of the door, cracking, and I don’t care because I’m through and the monsters are back there and I’ve got a step on Hurley and I just need to get my feet under me and start up the stairs and all I need to do is run.

  And I’m on my feet.

  And I remember someone just got me through the door.

  And I look up and see one of the starving infecteds of Cure. One of the howlers trapped behind the doors along the stairwell. One of the Vyrus-mad Vampyres Amanda released and set on the enforcers when they breached the building.

  An explanation of how they were driven down here.

  I’m trying to bring the amputation blade up, get it in the starved fucker’s eye, hoping it will cut something in the brain that will instantly sever communications with the body before it can start ripping me limb from limb, but it’s all happening too fast. Man or woman, I can’t tell what it is, how it was born. Mommy’s little boy, daddy’s little girl. Perfect angel or shitty little brat. The years between. Bum or banker. Loved or hated. Ruthless feeder and killer, or helpless infected who lived off Coalition dole. Whatever humanity is worth, this thing is far beyond it. It is hunger and the pain of being hungry, and anything that can’t give relief is either a hated foe or invisible, depending on whether it gets in its way. Maddened not by any hunger for my infected blood, but purely by the sight of something that moves and sounds like prey, it’s on top of me, feet in my stomach, hunched, hands on my neck, howling at the scent of my undrinkable blood.

&nbs
p; And I go limp. Arms at my sides, blade cradled in my good hand.

  It crushes my throat, I feel cartilage crack. Its toes dig into my belly, like the claws of the Vyrus. Shriveled, sexless face in mine, sniffing, sniffing. The stink out of its mouth making me gag, but there’s nothing to come up, and nowhere for it to go while I’m being choked to death. Speckles at the edge of my vision, spreading. Blackening. My hand opens and closes on the taped hilt of the blade, wanting to stab of its own will.

  That darkness irising down the scope of my vision, swallowing the stairwell from the outside in, is there something in it? Something moving in the dark.

  Is there something cold coming for me?

  God I hope not.

  It lets go of my neck and climbs off me. My windpipe uncrinkles a bit, but there’s a definite rasp in my breath. Darkness recedes.

  The starving infected paws at the bodies of dead enforcers. Jumps up and down on one. Looks at me. I don’t move.

  I can smell something. I can smell it. Its smell clinging to me. But no, that’s wrong. It’s me I smell. My own dying. Not as potent, but it’s only a matter of time. The smell that comes out of its gullet is in my own now. Rotting inside.

  To emphasize the point, the Vyrus pours hot lead down the middle of my bones and sets me shaking. The starving jumps up and down higher, points at me, opens its mouth, and I’d swear it fucking laughs. Delighted to see someone else in pain.

  Then the screams and gunfire beyond the door raise in volume as it is pushed open again and I’m no longer the center of attention.

  —Joe, ya fooker!

  I’m off the floor.

  —Hurley, watch out.

  Half through the door, struggling to pull it wide enough to fit his massive frame, the starving is on him. And Hurley, not close to starving himself, his smell is all wrong, and he puts up a fight. A sudden obstacle, the starving tries to kill him. I’m crawling up the stairs, watching, unable not to watch. Hurley’s arm reaching through the blur of the starving’s whirling limbs as it tries to rend him. Like a man reaching slow into a barrel of thrashing eels. Until Hurley has its neck, and squeezes, and slams the head against the door that still has him pinned between monsters. The head is dented, crushed, spilling down the door. Its arms and legs still windmill. Hurley jerks it back and forth, harder, harder, and the head comes off and he tosses the body aside and it flops and gets to its feet, runs into a wall, falls down, legs churning the air.

  Through the blood congealed on his face and in his eyes, Hurley looks up at me, where I’m almost at the door at the top of the stairs.

  —A word wit ya, Joe, when ya got a sec.

  He looks back into the shit storm in the basement.

  —Terry! Here an now, Terry boy!

  The heat has run out of my bones and I’m out the door at the top and making for the main stairwell. More dead enforcers about. A second to spare, I pick up a gun. It feels useless in my hand, but I keep it anyway.

  Bottom of the stairs, I look up.

  Starvings on the stairs.

  Misery trying to die.

  Turning their heads to look at me as I come into view.

  Down the hall is the front door. A short walk out of madness. More enforcers out there? Probably. Ordered to snatch anyone who comes out of the building? Probably. And so what. Them I might kill with a couple well-placed bullets. Here in the asylum, Hurley is the only safe bet to get out alive. And he’s trying to kill me.

  —C’mon, Joe, tis just a little chat I’m looking fer! An Terry would like a word as well I tink!

  I push the door closed. Look for something to block it with, but there are no trucks handy that I can park in front of it.

  The starving closest to me on the stairs pulls itself onto the banister and scuttles down it a half flight closer.

  I take a step toward the front of the building.

  Hurley will be up here in a second. I should leave. No one can tell me I shouldn’t be gone from here and taking my shots on the street. Everything is dead here anyway.

  Except Amanda. And Chubby’s daughter. And her baby.

  Maybe.

  I close my eye for one heartbeat. Picture Evie. Telling her I was too late. The kids were dead, them and their baby. I tried but I was too late. I really tried.

  I open my eye.

  My girl, I’ve lied to her too many times. She knows what it looks like when I pull that shit.

  So I start slow up the stairs.

  The time I died, I starved to death. Went one step further than these sad pieces of work. Went to the place the Enclave go. Differences. Enclave go there willfully, exercise some kind of discipline, do it in a warehouse of like-minded crazies. All of them holding one another’s hands as they go through it. When I went, I just went. Starved and beat, I tilted, heart stopped, air froze in my lungs, brain blacked. And the Vyrus brought me back. Like a built-in heart shock and a stab of adrenaline between the eyes. These, they’ve been dragged to this stage. Amanda feeding them what she could, until she realized she didn’t have enough to really keep them alive. Until they crossed over in her brain and became more valuable like this than like people. Until the idea of someone being better off dead didn’t make sense to her work.

  Long-starved like Enclave, but without the training to cope. Not quite as far gone as I was when I slipped, but just as unhappy to be there. They know they can’t eat me. But that doesn’t mean that killing me wouldn’t make them feel better. Or just make them feel something other than their own bodies eating themselves.

  Half-up the first flight, the one squatting on the banister huffs. Tongue stuck out like it’s testing the air for humidity. Or for the taste of blood that isn’t infected.

  Coated in a thick layer of sewer sludge, enforcer blood, monster slime and the dead Vyrus stink starting to rise from my pores, I set its teeth to chattering. A high tone in its throat, crying alley cat. It shifts up the banister, staying with me. Not sure what the fuck to do at all. Looking tempted to go at me just to resolve the confusion.

  The others above are starting to rock back and forth, one rising and walking down and up the same three steps, flickering. Another, higher up, poking its head over the third-floor landing, keeps slapping its own face. Regular sharp smacks that are like a metronome set against irregular bursts of gunfire fading below me.

  The one pacing me pulls up, lifts it face, croaks, shakes its head into a blur, freezes, and huddles into itself, eyes closing, seeming to fall asleep clutching its perch on the banister.

  New gunfire breaks out in the basement stairwell behind the closed door, and its eyes open and it looks down and even as the door is opening and Hurley comes through with one arm wrapped around Terry, it has let go of the banister and dropped itself at them. The others suddenly flee, swarming down the stairs, focused on something loud and fast and violent and much warmer than me. Something that at least appears to be food. Something to at least satiate a hunger for hunting.

  Hurley’s curses echo up the stairwell behind my running heels, his precise choice of words drowned out by the crack of his .45, punctuated by the occasional meaty whap of a dumdum round mushrooming as it hits flesh, underscored by the chatter of Terry’s AK-47.

  I’m not looking down to see who will come out on top. I’m too busy looking at the steps in front of me, trying to find each one at the far end of the tunnel that my eye has retreated into. I’m at a distance to my own body, operating it by remote control, but feeling every thrum of pain that vibrates the string tied to the pain knotted in my forehead.

  I’m trying to climb without falling.

  I’m trying to remember this pain from years back. Did I feel this then? How long before dying did I feel this? Will I die soon? If I do, will I stay dead this time?

  Please, asks a part of me that I instantly disown, please can I stay dead this time?

  No, I answer. Evie wouldn’t like that. Or maybe she would. I don’t really know. But if she wants me dead she can tell me herself. If I’m th
ere to hear it, I might just oblige her.

  I want to look up and see how many more stairs to the top, but I think I’d fall back down to the bottom where the sound of Hurley and Terry’s guns has stopped. Out of bullets or out of things to shoot at? Not my problem. Stairs are my problem.

  Climb.

  Climb, motherfucker.

  And don’t die.

  If you die, it will come and take you away. If you die, the black cold will come and suck you into its heart and you’ll be ice forever. If you die, the Wraith inside will come out and be you.

  I don’t believe it’s true, but I fear it all the same.

  I don’t want to be a monster. Not for real. I want to know what I do in this world. I want to know who I hurt. I want my dead to have faces I remember. I want to know what I’ve done and the price of it all. I know I’ll never have what I want. I know I’ll never be where I want. I know I’ll never hold who I want to hold. Just that when all doubt is gone and there’s no trick left I can play on myself to make me believe that maybe I’ll get her in the end, I want to remember everything I did along the way, and know that there had to be an accounting. And her saying no is the price.

  I just want to be there to remember it’s my own fucking fault.

  I can live with that.

  Someone takes my hand.

  I look up.

  At the top of the stairs. Amanda has me by my wounded hand, holding it in both of hers. Frowning at me.

  —You never told me before that you killed my mom.

  I open my mouth, words crack as they come out of my twisted throat.

  —Long story.