Joe Pitt 5 - My Dead Body (5 page)

--You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what you’re thinking.

He looks up at the vents.

--Me buddy? I’m thinking about what I always think about. Daylight.

--Then you’re thinking about dying.

He looks back at me.

--Too late for that.

He takes a step toward me.

--Hey, buddy, know why we burn? Know why we get so damn hot when we finally embrace the Vyrus?

I take a step away.

He comes closer.

--It’s ‘cause of what’s growing inside. Buddy, it’s so cold, it just drives the heat out of you. Tell you, it’s like winter in my bowels.

I’m leaving, I’m walking backward, some lesson about never turning your back on the mad, but I’m leaving.

--There’s nothing inside of you except crazy. Nothing growing except your own stupid death.

He’s still following, shimmering at every step.

--You got one too. Stick around, let it come out. It’s what we’re for. To become what’s real, buddy.

I’m not walking backward anymore, I’m just going, I’m just leaving.

--It’s not in me, old man. I’m infected, not possessed. I’m diseased, but I’m me.

Cat coughs behind me.

--Ain’t that what I’m saying, buddy? Ain’t that the joke of it? It is you. What we are, it’s what we are inside. Just you have to work at it to make it come out.

I’m down the tracks now, looking at the rails to where they fade into darkness ahead of me, meeting at a point I can’t see yet.

He’s crazy. That wasn’t a lie.

It’s dark down here. That wasn’t a lie.

And I didn’t see anything when I looked in his eyes.

Enclave are mad. None madder. And they kicked him out for going apeshit and killing a bunch of his brothers and sisters. The maddest of the mad. What he says carries no weight. Mad and starving and alone in the dark, he’s making up stories to scare himself. The boogeyman, making up ghosts to haunt himself.

Wraiths.

If I saw something once that I can’t explain, that doesn’t make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn’t make them real. And if a madman says what’s at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that’s just one more reason not to believe.

The only killer I’m carrying around is the one I was born with.

I didn’t see anything when I looked in his eyes. I didn’t.

But I see plenty as I run down the tracks.

That memory, it doesn’t sit on top waiting to be picked up and put down. It’s at the bottom. Something digs it up from down there, everything else gets knocked over and spilled about.

Think of the Wraith, think of Amanda Horde and her crazy parents.

The original lost girl. Her mom hiring me to find her. Apeshit daddy Doctor Horde and his biotech millions and his plan to infect people with a fucking zombie bacteria that only he can cure. How I got trailed around on that gig. Something left no trace, left an absence behind itself. Enclave called it a Wraith, I called it bullshit. How I got kicked and stabbed and shot on the gig, starved when the thing with no trace stole my blood bank. Running dry in a basement, I died. Yeah, the real thing. And the Vyrus raised me up. Said, Not fucking yet! Threw all it had left into me, sent me buzz-sawing through dangerous men. But I took too much. The mad doctor had me. Dying the second time in minutes.

And the Wraith.

Black fell over that room and when it lifted, I’m there with a frozen corpse in my hands.

Still pissing myself years later.

Remember that, more comes tumbling.

The Count. Loser rich boy Vampyre causing trouble. Dealing anathema; infected blood getting Vampyres high. Exposing the community. Me taking a job with Terry and the Society for the privilege of putting a proper beating on that punk.

Evie getting sick. HIV sick. AIDS sick. Never knowing what I was. Me never copping to the fact. Never knowing if my blood would kill her or cure her.

Little Amanda coming back around, launching her own crusade. Clan Cure, all comers welcome. Feed the hungry, while the little super genius tries to save them all.

Mad as her father. Twice as smart. Drunk as her mother. Twice as beautiful.

Things heating up with the Coalition.

Me in the middle.

Evie getting sicker, and me making the play.

Taking her to Enclave just in time to see the old master die. Daniel. In the sun. Dying to believe.

Ready to bleed into her myself, and having it taken away. The Count taking my place. Infecting her. Keeping her down there. Taking over Enclave.

Badness.

Running years. The Bronx.

Coming back for a shot at something, and finding … What? A hole. A pit. The secret beneath it all.

Using it, spilling the secret, launching a war. And running to Evie.

Finding some things don’t get forgotten. Forgiven. A killer I may be, but I’m worse. I’m a liar. Lied to the only person I cared about. I can live with the blood, but talk about fucking up.

Into the ground.

Go low.

Hide.

Wait.

Now.

Run.

Coming out the entrance of the tunnel at One Twenty-three, the city almost blinds me. Just like she always has.

Far west side, traffic packed both ways on the Hud. Rush hour they call it, even when it’s never been anything but stuck hour. People coming into the city I understand, people leaving it I don’t get. Then again, I don’t know a thing about what’s out there. Could be paradise, but I doubt it. Other side of the Parkway there’s a little glitter coming off the water between the patches of scum floating down the Hudson River to the sea. Above on my right, the tree line topping Riverside Park gets highlighted by the city glow. G. W. Bridge upriver, all lit up.

Picturesque as hell.

A horn blasts down the tunnel, hits my back like a shock wave, and I step from the tracks to let the train through. I could argue with it, but you have to pick your battles.

Headlights flash in the trees above from the shoulder of River-side Drive. I scramble up the slope and find a black 1978 Riviera parked there. Dallas behind the wheel, Chubby occupying the bulk of the couch-size, black velour bench seat.

His window rolls down.

--All well, Joe?

I lean against the car.

--Just saying my farewells.

--To whom?

--No one you know.

He spreads his hands.

--I know most people.

--Not this guy.

--Why so certain?

--You’re alive.

--Like that, is he?

I watch the traffic below.

--Talking about him, Chubby, is liable to attract his attention. And then you can get to know exactly what he’s like.

He nods.

--Another topic, then.

I push off the side of the car.

--Idea where I might find Percy?

He shakes his head.

--As I said, Percy is absent. Start with Digga.

--Sure, I enjoy climbing in the bear’s mouth. Makes it so he can just chew. Where do I find him?

He purses his lips.

--Commanding the siege.

I look down at the entrance to the tunnel.

--The siege.

--You’d like details.

I look up from the tunnel, up and through the trees, east.

--No. I don’t think I need them.

--You know the place, then?

The empty socket where my left eye used to be itches. I’d like to scratch it, but I’d need an ice pick to dig deep enough to make it stop.

--Yeah, I was there once.

--Ah. On your previous uptown visit.

That itch gets a little worse.

Chubby strokes his goatee.

--Well, there should be no need for you to get too close. I understand the Coalition resistance has been rather intense. Digga will be nearby the park.

He goes in the glove box and comes out with a cell phone and offers it to me.

--My number is programmed.

I take the phone.

--Don’t wait up.

I look for an opening in the traffic on the drive.

Chubby sticks his head out the window.

--Look out for her, Joe. Look out for my little girl.

I see my opening between the cars and start across.

I don’t say anything to Chubby as I go. Promises don’t keep, and he already knows how this is most likely to finish. He wouldn’t have dug me up otherwise.

Middle of the park I hit Grant’s Tomb. Coming out of the trees beyond, I’m just north of Columbia. I look down Broadway toward the campus, but I don’t go any closer.

Siege.

Technically, it’s all Hood turf above One Ten. Water to water it belongs to Digga and his people. But the Coalition, they only give up hard what they got. And what they got up here is the top of the rock: poaching rights on the campus, a few blocks of old money addresses, and a school for training their elite enforcers.

Way I know it’s sideways here is because no one has killed me before I got this close.

But I don’t need to test things any further.

I roll downhill on One Twenty-three, going east, and roll right into more of those riled-up memories. The past likes to haunt you, and I’ve come this way before.

Old city full of my ghosts.

Morningside Park on my right, rising steep to the high ground, empty. Street the same. Wind rattling bare branches. The butt of the pistol cold in the small of my back.

There should be people here.

Early in the evening, there should be students in the park, climbing the steep path winding to the top. Should be a couple drunks on the benches at the bottom, adding up the day’s change, mentally converting it into 40s. But there’s no one.

All parks in Manhattan used to be like this when the sun went down. Straight empty but for two types of people: mean people and the stupid people they loved. But by the time I went under, every inch of the Island had been gentrified. Tots played in the parks at midnight.

Seems the tone is different here.

Seems this park has redeveloped its reputation for being a place to avoid after dark. Or maybe at all hours it’s this empty. That would make sense. With what I smell on the breeze, it would make a lot of sense if no one came near this park unless they were profoundly stupid.

As I’m the one wandering into it now, figure I win the stupid crown.

What I smell on the breeze smells like me. Like my blood. In large quantities. Spilled in puddles, dried and frozen over for someone to slip on and break their neck. The fuckers. The stupid, stupid fuckers. They’ve been fighting in the open. Fighting and killing one another out where it can be seen. Thinking on it, I feel the edge in the air. The one Chubby was talking about. Tension. Radiating from behind closed doors and drawn blinds. Showing in the empty sidewalks. A feeling that people are catching. The city isn’t safe. It’s not theirs anymore, if it ever was.

The path I’m following bends around a boulder. I pass behind it, a guy drops from a thick knot of branches overhead, and I step out of the way. As he tries to recover from hitting the pavement instead of me I loop the wire saw around his neck and pull tight and put my knee in his back and ride his face into some broken glass. I draw the saw once to the right, feel it bite through his windpipe, see the bright red splash on the ground, pull my face back as the acid burn of Vyrus hits my nostrils, tense my muscles to see if I can get through his whole neck in one more good yank and a log hits me in the side of my head and I fly off the guy, the saw still clenched in one hand, wire whipping free along with some of his throat, and I slam into the boulder and feel my right shoulder pop out of its socket. That kills my arm and I go for the gun with my left hand, bringing it out, looking for the guy with the log, but all I see is a man with taste in threads to make Chubby jealous.

--Pull that trigga, make a muthafucka angry.

I don’t want to make a motherfucker angry, so I pocket the piece and work on getting my shoulder where it belongs.

--Should tell your people not to wear perfume on patrol.

--Told my people to shoot first on big white guys is what I told they asses. Muthafucka has a thing for ninja movies. Sittin’ in a tree. Thinkin’ he gonna get all silent assassin on some enforcer ass.

--He might have had me if it wasn’t for the personal scent.

D.J. Grave Digga, president and warlord of the Hood, keeps his eyes on the video screen he’s watching and kicks the seat back it’s mounted in.

--Hear that, Jenks? Boy says your eau de cologne tipped him off. Watchin’ that chop-sockey, how many those ninjas splash on some Calvin Klein before they go out to get they kill on, muthafucka?

The guy sitting in the front passenger seat doesn’t say anything. That being a symptom of having most of your throat torn out. He does make a noise, something between a gurgle and a grate, but the mass of cartilage and skin in the middle of his neck is going to need some untangling before it’s of much use.

Digga takes his eyes from the screen and leans forward a little.

--Muthafucka, you best not brought your bleedin’ in here. I know you finished that shit before you climbed your ass back in my Escalade. Oh shit! Take that nastiness outside! Now, muthafucka!

Jenks and his nastiness climb out and close the door, leaving me and Digga alone.

Digga leans between the front seats, licks his thumb and rubs at a spot of blood on the cream leather.

--Use is it, his throat heals enough for him to breathe if his ass can’t swallow? Answer me that. No use. All that blood he just lost. Starve by the end of the week. Start going batshit in a couple days. Need one more like that is what I need. One more batshit muthafucka starvin’ on our turf.

He drops back into the seat next to me.

--Shit.

He runs his hands down the tops of his thighs, smoothing the black wool of his trousers.

--An like I need another harbinger of how shit is fucked up, your ass comes wanderin’ by. Shit.

He redirects his eyes to the video screen.

--Look at this.

He touches the screen and a control bar appears at its bottom. He rewinds the picture, hits play, and we watch a twenty-second clip of a starving Hood launching herself from a second-story window into the path of a bus on the street below. The bus catches her before she hits the ground and she flies fifteen feet and smashes into the security gate covering a storefront. She gets up, broken bones jutting every direction from her shredded skin, and runs down an alley.