My Dead Body

  —Percy. Why the hell did you get me involved?

  He looks at the roof of the car.

  —Percy said I should.

  I groan.

  Chubby shakes his head.

  —When I first called, the children were actually with him. I was prepared to go uptown and attempt to speak some form of reason to them. Ferry them to an underground location somewhere away from Manhattan while the troubles here sorted out. I am not without resources. I could have found means to keep Ben supplied. And the baby, whatever its needs may turn out to be. I was to go and fetch them myself.

  He lifts his hands from his knees, drops them.

  —At the last moment Percy called and told me it had become more complicated. The children had run off. Delilah had been disillusioned by what she found in both Percy and the Hood. She was talking about shelter in the dragon’s very den. Well, that was clear enough. Still, I said I could go myself. But Percy said he’d heard troublesome rumors about the Cure house. Unsafe.

  He scrunches the material of his slacks.

  —He told me to send you.

  He looks over at me.

  —Honestly, Joe, I had no idea where to find you. I doubt it would have occurred to me to look for you at all. But Percy said it needed a tough hand. Said you were the fit for the job. And I could hardly argue.

  —How’d he know where to find me?

  —I can’t say for certain. He said he knew someone keeping tabs on you down there. You mentioned someone watching us when we were in the tunnel. Perhaps?

  I think about the old man of the underground. I think about Percy. Enclave and Enclave.

  —Yeah, that fits.

  He pats his ‘fro.

  —Still, I told him I didn’t think you’d help.

  He looks out the side window.

  —And he mentioned a girl. Sketched a few details. Gave me a name. Mentioned Enclave.

  He turns to me, tears, trembling chins.

  —Joe, if it hadn’t been my daughter, Joe. If it hadn’t. I would never have. Not just because I have more sense than to cross you. But because. I wouldn’t want to lie to a man about something like that. Not a man I know. Not a friend. Joe.

  He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

  —Just. My daughter. That’s why.

  He catches a sob, huffs it out.

  —I didn’t want to cause you all this trouble.

  He draws a loose shape in the air with his fingers.

  —I’m sorry, Joe.

  I look out the windshield. We’re coming up on Gansevroot. I move my feet around, making sure I can still do that. Legs seem to work. Arms. My brain keeps drifting in and out of fog banks. But that’s hardly new. I could keep myself clear, I’d never have fallen for this deal.

  Too late now. I was reeled in, cut open, gutted, and there’s nothing left but the grill. No reason not to just put myself on it. It’s only fire. And you can only burn once.

  I stick my head a little farther out the window.

  I point.

  He sees it, taps Dallas.

  —Here.

  Dallas wheels us around the corner of Little West Twelfth Street.

  —You sure, Joe?

  I lean against the door.

  —Make those calls, Chubs.

  —Of course.

  I pull the door handle.

  —I’m glad you got to see your daughter, Chubby.

  He nods, half laughs.

  —Yes. Precious minutes.

  I push the door open an inch.

  —See you around.

  —See you, Joe.

  Dallas cuts the wheel, rubber breaking traction on the cobbles as he makes his U-turn, and I tumble myself from the car, rolling off the momentum until I rest in the gutter, watching Chubby’s Riviera whip around the corner back onto Greenwich and out of sight.

  Alone again. I close my eye to enjoy it for a second.

  Got any regrets?

  The thing you did? The thing you passed on doing?

  I never played that game much. I take something back here, take a little extra there, next thing you know I’m watching one set of bodies rising from their graves, and another set going into the ground. Been a long time since I did anything that mattered when it didn’t involve dying for someone. Some folks I’ve been happy to put away. Some I’ve been OK with seeing them get another day or two. Most I don’t having feelings one way or the other. So why go back and tinker with things that can’t be changed anyhow.

  But, sure, I got regrets.

  Most all of them are tangled up with this lady. Got one in particular that sits on me. Like to get it off.

  Means opening my eye and crawling out of this gutter and finding out if she’ll talk to me long enough to hear what I got to say.

  Thought of it, it almost makes me wish I was back in the basement with the monsters. I was scared then, but it was just my life I had to lose.

  • • •

  —Oh, man, you OK, man?

  I open my eye and look at the club kids, boy and girl, matching androgyny to go with their matching homburg hats plastered with Gucci logos and matching bug-eye pink-tint sunglasses and matching loops of fluorescing plastic around their wrists and necks.

  —Oh, man, G, they laid a pounding on you.

  One of them holds up a camera and snaps a picture.

  —I’m putting this on my page.

  She looks at me.

  —That cool with you?

  The other one is dialing.

  —Hang on. 911 on the way.

  —Give me a cigarette.

  He stops dialing.

  —G, you probably don’t want to smoke messed up like that.

  The girl is crouching next to me, holding her phone at arm’s length so it gets us both in frame.

  —Could kill you, a cigarette right now.

  —Yeah, a cigarette could kill anyone. Jam a lit cigarette in someone’s eye, it could leak infected pus back into their brain and they could go crazy and die eating their own shit.

  They both stare at me.

  I put out my hand.

  The girl hands me a cigarette, pinching it between finger and thumb, holding it as far from herself as possible. I take it and put it in my mouth.

  —Light.

  The boy finds a Bic in his pocket and lights me.

  —Now fuck off. They do.

  It’s a fucking American Spirit Light. Tastes like my ass. I tear off the filter and it tastes like half my ass.

  I get out of the gutter and pull the piece from under my jacket and drag myself up the steps of the Enclave warehouse loading dock and, dispensing with a polite knock, I grab the handle on the outside and pull the big white door open, rolling it to the side in its tracks, and I step inside.

  Grateful again to Predo for the fingers he left me. Index and middle. The smoking fingers. Letting me take the butt from my mouth and carry it comfortably. Leaving my other hand free for the gun.

  A gun and a smoke.

  Ask for more, you’re a greedy bastard.

  I don’t get to keep the gun for very long.

  While I have it, I take in some of the sights. Such as they are. Rows of mats on the floor. Workbenches against the walls. Some big industrial sinks. Kitchen area where I happen to know they boil the bones of their dead before sucking out the marrow. Staircase leading up to the loft where their sleeping cubicles line a long center aisle. Small balcony up there overlooking the floor dotted with the light of scattered candles. Lockers where they store whatever kinds of goods they own. Rags. Cups. Marrow-sucking straws, maybe. Weapons. The cutting and cudgeling variety; they’re not big on firearms here. Couple big drains in the floor. Sewer cap in the corner where they dump the occasional dead body or apostate. Took a ride down the tube once myself. Mostly for being an unlikeable asshole.

  All that stuff is much as it always has been. More of everything these days. More than when Daniel was running the show. Signs of all the new Enclave since the Count s
tarted expanding the ranks. Geeking them up for the revelation.

  Whatever shape that might take.

  Supposed to be, one of them will achieve a final adaptation, perfect consumption by the Vyrus. All earthy cells eaten and replaced by Vyrals. The Vyrus understood by them to be from somewhere else. Other than this universe. Another plane.

  Whackoness.

  Supposed to be, the one who starves himself in perfect discipline and doesn’t die of it, that one will show the others how to do the same. And, made into creatures from another plane, nothing, not even the sun, will harm them.

  Cue the crusade.

  You die, I die, everybody dies.

  Except Enclave.

  How it is my girl came to be here is, well, I brought her here. Wanted to keep her from dying of AIDS. It worked, but it created issues. Complicated issues. And I got turned out for being a lying sack of shit who barely told her a word of truth from the night we met.

  Speaking of regrets.

  So I take in the place, trying to figure what I might say. Trying to figure how long I have to say it before I fade to black. Trying to figure if I’ll get a crack at settling just one more score.

  And I almost trip over part of someone’s rib cage and catch myself before I fall and stumble across a hunk of someone’s thigh and just get my balance and have to jump to keep from stomping on a pile of seven livers and that’s all the grace I can muster and I go down with a tangle of gristled spines under me and find myself looking up at the beams crossing under the shallow peak of the sheet-metal roof where an upside-down forest of chains have sprouted, each carrying the flower of a dead and rotting Enclave.

  —We’ve been separating the chafe.

  I roll toward the voice, gun first, and that’s when I lose it, something white winking close, taking it from me, and winking back into the dark.

  I open and close my hand on the emptiness that used to be the gun, then bring my other hand to my face and take a drag and thank fuck they took the piece and not the smoke.

  —Hey, Count.

  Spindle thin, wearing just the slacks from his white suit, a belt wrapped almost twice around his waist, and a matching vest that slips half off the high point of one of his shoulders, the Count strolls into the light of one of the candles.

  He’s carrying a twenty-inch bush blade from the end of a scythe, bringing it like a blood-crusted talon to his forehead; the tipping of a hat.

  —Joe.

  He lowers the blade, sniffs the air.

  —You smell like you’re just about ready for the pot.

  I’m one of them.

  Not by choice, just how Daniel called it.

  Daniel said you were Enclave, that was a sealed deal. It doesn’t wear off. Even if you don’t want to play, you’re in the game. Can I say it another way?

  When you’re a Jet …

  Like that.

  I never had any use for it. Gave me room to tap Daniel for a little news of the world. Gave me a bolt-hole once or twice. Mostly it was just strange baggage to be hauling around.

  But if not for the Enclave thing, Daniel never would have baited me years back. Starved me out. Drew me to the edge and pushed me into the deep end. Never would have cared to find out if I could cope. Never would have sent the Wraith to make a killing and keep me alive. And if none of that had ever happened, I wouldn’t know just how close I am to over, and what to do when it happens.

  Course it also means they’ll be eating my marrow pretty soon.

  Just hoping to keep one fucker from tucking in.

  He grazes my forehead with the tip of the scythe blade.

  —What did I tell you, Joey Joe Joe Joe?

  He drags the tip from brow to brow, scraping bone.

  —Told you never never come back. Utterly clear on the concept, man. Nothing vague.

  He strikes a pose, pointing the blade in the air.

  —I remember it like it was yesterday, man. Said, You go out, you don’t come back. Pretty sure I put a distinct verbal period at the end of that sentence. But, hey, give the benefit of the doubt. You tell me, did I mumble?

  I got about two inches left on my smoke. I suck away a quarter of that.

  —No, you were clear enough, just that I don’t take you seriously. You being a bad cliché and all.

  He nods.

  —Yeah, OK, yeah. I’ll bite.

  He squats next to me, resting the point of the blade on my chest.

  —Tell me how it is I’m a punch line? Cuz I live for this kind of shit.

  I suck a little more smoke.

  —You’re a punk kid who got infected and named himself Count. Textbook asshole.

  He smiles.

  —Ever tell you the last name I picked for myself?

  I wave my butt.

  —Vlad?

  He shakes his head.

  —Count.

  I study the last of my cigarette.

  —OK, I’ll give it to ya, that shows a little sense of humor.

  —Count Count. You get it, right? You’ve seen Sesame Street?

  I lift a hand.

  —I get it. It’s not bad.

  —Cuz I can laugh at myself, is the point.

  —Sure.

  He taps his own chest with the blade.

  —I’m not the type takes himself all serious.

  I nod.

  —So laugh at this.

  I jam the cherry of my last cigarette into his eye.

  Nasty little hiss, drip of blood and something else rolling over his cheekbone, and him just sitting there and staring at me from the eye that I haven’t turned into an ashtray.

  Then he opens his mouth wide, drops his head back.

  —Ha! Ha! Ha!

  He brings his head up and plucks the butt from his eye, looks at it, and flicks it away.

  —You know.

  He reams drippings from his eye socket with a knuckle.

  —Truth is.

  He wipes the knuckle on my jacket.

  —I barely even use my eyes anymore.

  He closes the good one. The other has blistered over, covered in a cluster of tiny bubbles of skin.

  —Everything is so lit up at this point. My senses? I feel, like, micro-changes in air pressure on my skin. Hear things. Smell like a hunting dog. My sense of taste, man, I wish I had a couple bottles of nice wine in here.

  He runs a fingertip over the concrete floor.

  —And the tactile. Telling you, I had any kind of sex drive left, it would blow away any crazy rave ecstasy orgy I ever got my ass into at college. On the subject of the senses, let me ask you.

  He stabs the tip of the scythe blade into my biceps, through, until it tinks against the floor.

  —You feel that?

  I look at the blade, no blood welling around it, like a giant scalpel stuck in a corpse.

  He pulls it out.

  —No.

  He rises.

  —You are faaar gone, my main man. But that’s not news.

  He points the blade down at me.

  —You got fat. Old. Tired. Beat. You are beat. I’m not just talking about you being all cut to chunks, I’m talking about how tired your story is. Man alone. Yojimbo. Get out of the middle of town and let the big boys do business. Only big enough for one operation. We aim to be that operation.

  He swings the blade.

  —Time to cut down the old and make way for the new. Know what the new is.

  He runs his fingers down the ripple of his ribs.

  —The new is lean and sleek. It is hungry. It is wild. It is dangerous to the old. New is always dangerous to the old. And you, Joe Pitt, you never read the headline. You met me and you just saw punk kid. What you should have been seeing is what the dinosaurs saw when they looked at the sky and spied that big meteor dropping on their heads. Know what they thought when they saw that rock?

  He points up.

  —Thought, That is gonna hurt.

  He raises the scythe blade over his head.

 
—What you thinking now, Joe?

  He brings the blade down and puts it in my stomach.

  Goes through, pins me to the concrete, don’t feel the cut, but I feel the cold of the steel, feel that because it’s the only thing colder than the meat of my dead body.

  And what I’m thinking is, Man, I’m glad I died before he did that.

  I died about the time he started talking about how old I am. Was. Whatever. It’s hard to figure what tense to use. Mix in the fact this is the second time I’ve died, it could get confusing in a hurry if I tried to think it all the way around.

  So I don’t.

  I don’t think around. I don’t think up, down, in, out, over or under. My thoughts, they become a straight line. He’s talking, and his words, what I’m seeing, the past, any kind of future, the concrete under my back, it all collapses into a sheet of black that becomes a horizon before it drops over my body and sucks me inside.

  And I think just one last thing.

  Damn, I didn’t get to see Evie.

  And I fall up and out the other side of the black sheet.

  Everything expands until it is touching me everywhere and I feel the Enclave back in the shadows, watching, count their numbers by the way the air shifts when they breathe. All sound amplifies until I can separate the vibrations in the air as they strike my eardrums and name the key to which each is tuned, harmony and dissonance of the Count bragging, city waking outside, wax melting from a candle across the warehouse. Smells untwine, each has a color, fabric, leads to a source that I can see in my mind. I taste the rotting meat dangling overhead, the flaking rust on the upper curve of the Count’s blade, the night’s accumulation of grime on my clothes. I see into the dark, how the Enclave move without the purpose and control they used to own, jittery, gnashing, I see there are more of them hanging from the rafters than walking the floor. But that’s not for me, the pot, a dangle from the ceiling. I’ve got better ways to die.

  My eye is open, looking at the blade in my middle, and I raise it and see the Count, and I look at the stairs that lead to the loft, and I see the beautiful ivory girl sitting on a step at the middle of the stairs, a cluster of Enclave around her.

  And I tell her what’s on my mind.

  —Hey, you look great.

  She smiles.

  —Kill him for me, Joe.

  The Count looks at her.

  —Get back in your place, bitch.