Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (7 page)

I point at a pile of textbooks and back issues of quarterly medical journals heaped within
the circle.

--Been keeping up on your studies?

--Yeah, yeah, good question. Yeah, I have. More, more, give me more like that.

I watch the pulse jumping in his neck at death-metal tempo; feel the heat coming off his
body; smell the sweaty tang under the shit and blood that speaks of a metabolism careening
brakeless.

--When's the last time you ate?

He purses his lips.

--Ooooh, toughie, toughie. Good one, stumper. But I can get it, I got this one, I got it.
Uuummmm. Two weeks? A little more? Yeah, yeah, two weeks, a little more than two weeks.
Maybe three?

Two weeks, maybe three. Fuck. Two weeks with no fresh blood. And he's been painting the
place with his own. He's beyond starving.

I look at the closed bathroom door where the tune has changed to Summer Wind.--Why didn't
you drink Phil?

He scratches his balls with dirty cracked nails.

--Phil? Phil? Jesus, drink Phil? Who'd drink Phil? Guy's a Renfield. Total Renfield. I
don't want any of that. Nononono.

--Bull. You're far enough to try drinking me.

He gives his fingers a sniff.

--Don't wanna drink you, Joe. Don't wanna drink Phil. Don't wanna drink anyone.

--When's the last time you fixed?

A shudder runs up his body, his bowels open and try to void, but nothing is left in them.

He coughs.

--Sorry about that. Pretty gross. Pretty impolite. Not myself today.

--When'd you have your last anathema, Count?

He bites the air, clacking his teeth.

--It's bad in there. The anathema is cold, man. It shows you things. I'm on the inside now,
man. I don't wanna be. I don't wanna know. Want out. Gotta get out. No more on the inside.
No more blood, no more blood. Out! Out! Get it out!

He jabs the tip of the knife into his thigh, poking a few holes and watching a sluggish
welling of blood before the Vyrus seals them, coveting what little it has left.

I grab his wrist.

--Cool it, man.

He stops jabbing, looks at my hand, looks at the point where I've reached across his
circle, tries to twist free.

--You've broken it! It's broken! Things get in! No more! Out! I want out! Get it all out!
Get out! Get out!

--I'll get it out, Count, I'll get all the blood out of you. Listen, cool it and listen.

He jerks and twitches and the muscles in his belly writhe.

--Listen? Listen? I hear it all, man, all of it.

His skin is burning my hand. Air whistles over his teeth and down his throat. Starving the
Vyrus, he's driving it to the edge, pushing it into a corner, forcing it to defend itself.
Anytime now, it'll frenzy and attack.

I put my free hand on the butt of my gun.

--Hear this, man. I need to know, Is it possible? If someone had the resources, is it
possible, could there be a cure?

He stops twisting, just his stomach crawling beneath the skin.

--A cure? A cure? Yeah, yeah, yeah, easy one, the old one. Just gotta get it all out, just
gotta get the blood out.

I pull the gun, show it to him.

--Sure, gonna cure you, man, but tell me first. A cure? A real cure, could that happen?

His eyes lock, his breath falters, his body goes rigid.

I hear his heart stop beating.

Fuck.

--Phil!

The bathroom door doesn't open, but the humming stops.

I stand, gun pointed at the Count.

--Philip! Get out here!

The door stays closed.

--Um, kinda busy in here right now.

I back away from the Count.

--Philip, get your fucking ass out here!

The door swings open and he comes out, tugging his slacks up over his skinny ass, a scrap
of toilet paper stuck to the sole of his shoe.

--What, what? Jesus, man, you send a guy to the john to meditate, you can't blame him when
nature calls.

--Come here, Phil.

He's crosses the room, looking at me pointing my gun at the Count.

--Jeez, you shoot him or something? Not that I heard it or know anything, seeing as where I
was and all.

He comes alongside me.

--Why you still drawing down on him if he's stiff?

I hear something move in the Count's chest.

He jerks erect as if strings had pulled him.

Phil takes a step back.

--Oh, oh, shit, I gotta go.

I reach out and grab the leather strands of his bolo tie and yank them up, hauling him to
his tiptoes.

He chokes and gurgles.

The Count vibrates, his nostrils flare, his eyes find Phil's stretched neck and stay
there. He takes a step, a flicker, his foot landing outside the circle, and he howls.
Another step, speed blurred. Another howl. He shakes all over, every spasm strobed by the
impossible flood of adrenaline the Vyrus has released.

I give the bolo a jerk and it scrapes Phil's skin and the scent of blood hits the air.

The Count comes for him.

He's too fast to follow, so I don't try. I keep the gun aimed at a point he'll have to
cross to get to Phil's blood, and I start pulling the trigger.

Two bullets hit him before he hits Phil and drags him from my grasp, the thin cord of the
bolo cutting twin stripes across my palm.

Phil is silent, beyond screaming, eyes wide, mouth stretched, tongue stuck out.

The Count ignores the holes in his stomach and opens his own mouth and lunges to bite out
Phil's jutting tongue.

I shoot him twice in the back and he twists off Phil and flings himself at me, raking his
nails at my eyes, wrapping his legs around my waist and squeezing, everything too fast for
me to stop it.

But some things the Vyrus can't change. It's made him strong and fast and desperate, but
it hasn't made him any more a fighter than he ever was.

His elbow clips my shoulder and I feel it dislocate. Blood runs down my face. He licks it,
finds it poison to him, and wails and spits. I wrap my left hand around his throat and
squeeze and fall forward and land on top of him and jam my knee into his gut-shot belly
and choke the air from him and he bucks and roils and tears half my left ear off. And I
choke him and choke him and choke him.

When he's still, I get up and find my gun and hold it.

Phil sits up, rubbing his throat.

--Fuck! What the fuck was that? What the hell was that about, man? That wasn't cool. That
wasn't cool at all.

I look at the floor, find the Count's knife and pick it up.

--Yeah, well, I needed some bait to distract him.

Phil is on his feet.

--No shit! I got that. See, don't know if you missed this part, man, but I was the bait you
used. That was so far from cool. That was like, whatever the opposite of cool is, that's
what that was.

I tuck the gun in my belt.

--Uncool.

Phil points.

--Totally uncool!

The Count makes a wet sound, blood sputters from between his lips.

Phil takes a step toward him and stares.

--Fucker's not dead, man.

He looks at me as I come over.

--Better put a couple in his brain, man, fucker's not dead.

I look at the holes in the Count's stomach. They're not healing.

--Yeah, not yet, but he's close.

I tap the blade of the knife against my thigh.

--Hey, Phil?

He's trying to untwist his collar and his bolo.

--Yeah?

I bring the knife up.

--Speaking of uncool, I really need him to live.

He's looking down, focused on the ends of the tie.

--Hey, go ahead and First Aid away. Think you're crazy, but do what you gotta do.

I place the tip of the knife on his chest and he looks up.

--What I gotta do, Phil, is I gotta feed him.

His jaw drops, his head tilts.

--No way, man. Seriously uncool! Seriously uncool!

I grab his wrist and twirl the knife.

--Stop being a pussy, man. I'm not gonna take it all.

If it was just a matter of blood, I'd slash Phil's wrist and stick it in the Count's mouth
and let him suck the fucker dry.

Phil's lucky it's more complicated than that.

He's also lucky I had some blood yesterday and got a healthy stash at home. There've been
times, after a scrum like that, I'd have tapped him dry. Not that I want to drink Phil's
blood any more than the Count, but the niceties go by the wayside when you're hard up. As
it is, I spill a couple pints in an empty takeout coffee cup and pour it down the Count's
mouth.

No surprise, it rouses him.

No surprise, he wants more.

But I've kicked Phil out by then, a fifty in his pocket for his troubles. With nothing to
eat in the room, the Count goes haywire and tries to jump out the window so he can get at
all the blood he can smell down on the streets where the night owls are taking the air.
I've got my boot planted on his neck and I throttle him and pistol-whip him until he
settles down.

Phil's blood is keeping him in the game, the holes in his belly and back aren't leaking
anymore, but he's a long way from out of the woods. And it's not like more blood is gonna
take care of everything that ails him. I want to get him talking straight, I'll need him
healed, fed and fixed. But the fix he needs, I don't got. The fix he needs, I don't got
time to find. And I never will.

And that leaves one option. Get him clean. And only one place to do that.

--He was going cold turkey.

Daniel casts his eyes on the Count's body cradled in my arms, half-wrapped in the sleeping
bag I stuffed him in before dropping it in the trunk of the cab that brought me to the
West Side.

--Really?

He bends and looks at the Count's crap-smeared face.

He looks at me.

--A friend of yours?

--Hardly.

He scuffs the floor with his foot.

--Well. Bring him in.

He brushes his fingers at the Enclave manning the door and it slides open, revealing the
dark cavern of the warehouse.

I stay on the loading dock.

Daniel takes a step toward me.

--Something giving you pause, Simon?

I shift my feet, hating it when he uses my real name, but not wanting to get into it
again.

--Yeah, see, I need him alive.

He raises the skin where his eyebrows used to be.

--Alive. In truth, he's rather close to actual life in this state.

--Daniel, I need him alive in the usual sense. I need him alive and awake and able to talk
to me in all the usual senses of the words. I need to know if I bring him in there you're
not going to decide he's a pariah or some shit and drain him and burn his body and make
the ashes into tea or whatever you do.

A smile jumps across his face.

--
A pariah?

--Whatever, I don't know the lingo.

A frown follows the smile.

--You may as well bring him in, Simon. We won't sacrifice him to our dark gods or anything.
And it's too late for you to do much else.

I bring him in and pass him to the waiting arms of another Enclave and watch him carried
away into the candlelit darkness. White shapes move deep inside the concrete-and-steel
chamber. Bodies drawn thin by fasting, paled to ivory, shedding hair.

I think of Evie.

Daniel walks out and drops his mantis body on the edge of the loading dock, legs dangling,
hands tucked beneath his thighs, a thin white poncho made from an old sheet draped over
his shoulders hanging to his knees.

--Nice night.

I tug my jacket close.

--It's fucking freezing.

He looks up at me.

--Still a nice night.

He pats the concrete.

--Have a seat.

I stay on my feet, light a smoke.

Daniel looks away from me and to the gray glow above the rooftops.

--What's his name?

--Calls himself the Count. Don't know what his real name is. I told you about him before.

--Did you? Hm, I've forgotten.

I blow smoke and steam into the cold air.

--You don't forget shit, Daniel.

He closes his eyes.

--Don't I?

He opens them.

--It seems to me that's all I do these days. And what a relief it is. All the nonsense
washing out on the tide. I'm a bit confused by the common perception that it leaves one
cloudy, old age. I've found a great deal of clarity. The years refining my mind, focusing
it on a single thought.

I sidelong him.

--A bit past old age, aren't you?

He swings his legs, bounces his heels off the painted front of the loading dock.

--Well, it's all relative. I'd be inclined to say that I'm pretty damn young as this all
goes.

He waves a hand at the universe.

--But that's a sorry clichŽ. Overused. And maybe not even accurate.

I tap some ash from the tip of my cigarette.

--How old are you, Daniel?

He ducks his head.

--Old enough to know better. At least that old. And old enough to forget. So remind me. The
Count?

I spit a flake of tobacco from my tongue.

--Spy. Coalition spy. Got sent down to the Society to cause trouble. Terry flipped him.
He's got a load of money in some trusts. Terry flipped him to get at the money.

--And the state he's in?

--I didn't like some things he did. So I hit him with a heavy shot of anathema. Hooked him
to the bad dose.

The corners of his mouth drop down, drawing the skin tighter over his skull. If you can
draw skin tighter over a skull when it looks painted there in the first place.

--And the procurement?

--Not my problem.

Not my problem. The going out and finding some slob to infect, someone who the Vyrus
doesn't kill outright, and harvesting his infected blood and getting it to the Count while
it's still fresh enough to shoot, the entire manufacture of anathema, not my problem. But
it's been happening anyway. After I declined, Terry had to have someone doing it. Hurley,
I'd imagine. Keeping the Count alive and on the bad dose, keeping access to his fat
accounts open.

Daniel keeps his frown.

I drop my butt.

--It bothers you?

He looks at his feet.

--Not the deaths. The useless cattle the Vyrus rejects aren't to be mourned. I pity them
perhaps, for the half-lives they've been given. But the ones harvested for the anathema,
the ones the Vyrus takes and doesn't cast off, they have been wasted. It all smacks of
waste. And manipulation of the Vyrus. I know that's my own perception, and a limited one,
but I feel it nonetheless. Even though I know the Vyrus cannot be manipulated. It uses us,
not the other way around.

I grunt. At a loss for anything else to say.

He taps my thigh with a finger.

--But no lectures tonight, yes?

--Fine by me.

He stretches his neck.

--I'm tired. Finish the story. Why do you need him?

I look at him, see Evie again, wasting in her bed.

--He was premed in school. Terry loaded him up with medical books. Had him studying. Trying
to maybe figure out some stuff about the Vyrus.

He sighs. --
Medical books.
Poor Terry. He's soÉmaterial.

He brings his feet up on the dock and rises.

--And if that's what you need from him, his medical knowledge of the Vyrus, you should have
let him die. In the usual sense.

I look at the litter in the gutter.

--I have to ask him some stuff.

--Well, whether you had
stuff
to ask him or not, we'd help him.

--Didn't know ministering to the weak was your new line.

He gestures at the darkness in the warehouse.

--It's not, but he's Enclave.

--The fuck?

He scratches his head.

--Not that I knew him before, but, yes, he's one of ours.

--So, what, you look at him and you just know he's in the club?

He shrugs.

--That's all it took when I first met you. You're either Enclave or you're not, it can't be
hidden or mistaken. Believe in Enclave or not, it believes in you. And the Vyrus tells me.

--The things you believe, Daniel, I don't know how you remember how to stay out of the sun.

--And what do I believe, Simon?

--Got me, man. Got me.

He shakes his head.

--It wasn't a rhetorical question. I'm asking for you to articulate it, my beliefs. You
want my help, this is what I'm asking for. Tell me what I believe.

I look around, at everything but him.

--It's, man, it's complicated.

--No, it's simple.

--You, you guys, Enclave, you believe the Vyrus is, what, spiritual? Supernatural. You
believe it, man, it consumes us and when we die we pass into its world. You believe that
if you starve it, take in just enough blood to keep it alive as it consumes you, that you
can be made, Jesus fuck, I don't know, into something like it, but stay in this world. For
what reason you'd want that, I do not fucking know.

He stares at the ground.

--One by one, Simon, all Enclave test their limits. Wean themselves from this world, give
up more of their physical selves to the Vyrus by forcing it to consume more of its host
than it would do were it fed well. One by one, reaching their limit, they fail, wracked by
their own insufficiencies, dying in the dark. But it will not always be that way. This is
what will happen, Simon.

He puts his mouth close to my ear, the heat off his body far more intense than what I felt
from the Count, his burning unlimited.

--One day, as many have before, one of us will open the doors of this place and in the
bright light of morning, will walk out naked. And not be burned. The Vyrus having consumed
entire its vessel and made of it something not earthly. When it happens, when one of us
crosses into the Vyrus' plane, but retains corporeality, that one will guide the others
through the same path. And we will be true vessels for the Vyrus. Uncorruptible to the
sun, intangible to the weapons of this world, able to project the Vyrus through our
physical selves at will. We will bring it to all, the great and the meek. And make the
world Enclave, make it Vyrus. As it is meant to be. As it already truly is.

He's at my side, burning me and crazier than fuck.

I don't move.

--There's only a hundred of you.

He steps away, raises his hands.

--Well, we'll just have to see what we can do.

He turns to go.

--Daniel?

--Mmm?

--The way you know the Count is Enclave?

--Yes?

I watch his back.

--The way you say the Vyrus told you that? Does it tell you other stuff?

His shoulders rise and drop.

--How so?

--If you met someone, could you tell, by looking, could you tell if the Vyrus would kill
them? Or, the other thing, infect them? Make them like us.

His head tilts back. I can see the seam of bone where the quarters of his skull meet under
the skin.

--Yes. Actually, yes, I can do that.

--If I brought someone here?

He lifts a hand.

--Come back in the morning, Simon. Your friend will be sensible by then. Come in the
morning and talk to him. Ask him questions. And anything you'd like me to look at, bring
it with you.

He walks into the darkness.

I take a step toward the doorway.

--The morning?

His white shade is fading.

--Just before sunrise. I'll be going out after that.

I take another step.

--Going out?

A candle flame reflects a last flicker of him.

--I'm done here, Simon. I kept telling you I was failing. Did you think I could hold out
forever? Time for me to find out what the Vyrus wants from me. And the sun will show the
way.

I step close to the darkness, but I don't go in there.

Instead I walk east, headed out of the no-man's-land that surrounds Enclave turf. Turf
I've always crossed alone, because no one else wants anything to do with it. I think about
coming back across it before sunrise.