Charlie Huston - My Dead Body

– 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 use 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.