Charlie Huston - My Dead Body

He turns to Lydia.

She looks at me, jabs a finger.

– Time’s almost up.

And works her way through the water back to her Bulls.

Terry tugs the edge of his watch cap.

– Getting late. Another thirty minutes and the risk and reward elements on this will have seriously eroded. We’ll have to turn back and, I don’t know, negotiate some kind of settlement. Me and Lydia, I mean. You.

He looks at the water.

– To be honest, Joe, you’ll be staying down here. Metaphors aside, saying it like it needs to be said, get us the fuck up into the Cure house or Hurley is going to beat you to death with his hammer.

A few yards away, Hurley turns. Shows me his hammer.

– If it must be, Joe, so it will. An nothin’ personal.

I nod.

– Yeah, sure, I’ll play the nail. No problem. Just give me a shot at this with no one on my back.

Terry raises his hands and backs away.

– Hey, I’m the last one to want to get on anyone’s back, man. That’s not my thing. Just that we have a timeline. Structure is tough, but once you get into it, you have to stay there.

Another moment when it might be better I don’t have a gun, but I’d still be happy to see one come floating by on a raft of shit. Nothing pops up, so I close my eyes, try to ignore the ache that’s creeping into my marrow, try and find a scent of dry air.

Something sears my cheek.

I open my eyes.

A flicker of white at the edge of my vision, down the tunnel.

I look back at Hurley, leaning against the far wall, hammer cradled in his arms, whistling Irish war ballads to himself.

The heat wavers in the air. I touch it, feel it dissipating, but know the course.

I raise my arm and point.

– This way.

Seven minutes later we’re in the Second Avenue line above Sixty-eighth. Minutes after that we’re in the access shaft, making our way past Phil’s corpse.

Terry looks at the mangled body.

– Sela did that?

I walk away.

– I did that. Finally had enough of his double crosses.

Could be I hear a chuckle in the dark. Crazy old man chuckle. Laughing at what I said, or at what he’s leading me back to. Or could be I hear nothing at all. Nothing but me laughing at myself.

Hurley widens the hole I made when I came this way before. Hunched to make our way up the sewer line, we straighten when we reach the storm vault, looking up at the drain hole I shoved Phil through.

We study it, picked out in crossed flashlight beams.

Grate I removed is still off. Still dark as hell up there.

Quiet.

Terry stands directly under the hole, sniffs, pulls a face, steps back and waves us to him.

– What is that?

I shake my head.

– What’s what?

He points at the hole.

– Smell.

I step under the hole, make a show of raising my face and scenting, come back to Terry, Lydia and Hurley.

– Smells like a lot of dead people to me.

He frowns.

– Joe, without this meaning to sound like a brag, because I wish it wasn’t the truth, but I’ve smelled piles of dead in my life.

He points at the hole again.

– That’s not what they smell like.

I find my tobacco, unseal it and start to roll.

– And when was the last time you smelled over a hundred Vyrus infected who all died of starvation?

I seal up my smoke.

– ’Cause that’s what’s been going on in there.

I pat my pockets, looking for a light, and realize I never grabbed a dry pack of matches before we set out.

– Shit.

Lydia goes to the hole herself, gets a whiff, comes back.

– It’s Vyrus. Dead. Something else.

I fiddle with the unlit smoke, holding it between my fingers like it might make me feel a little better.

– Could be the shit-smeared walls you’re smelling. The bile they puked up when they died. Could be the wood rot in the walls. Wait a little longer and all you’re gonna smell is Predo’s boys coming through the front door.

Hurley is under the hole now. He inhales, flinches, pinches his nostrils closed.

– A proper reek it tis, whatever it may be.

He unpinches his nose, takes another whiff.

– Hard to say an all, but could be a hint o gun powder as well.

Terry pulls a whisker from his soul patch.

– I don’t like to be overly suspicious in a team endeavor like this, but, I don’t know, I just don’t like climbing into a dark basement when I can’t really smell what’s in it.

He points at me.

– You first, Joe.

I look up at the hole.

– As if there were any doubt.

The ache is in my fingernails now.

Cramps haven’t hit the point where I’d rather die than feel the next one, but I can sense them stacking one after the other like waves ready to pound the shore. Bones alternate between freezing and scorching.

I shiver, sweat, stand under the hole rubbing my stomach.

Lydia kneels a few feet away, an old wood-stocked carbine in her hands, aimed at the hole.

– Sooner you go up, sooner you might eat.

I wipe sweat.

– Feel like I’m gonna puke. Cramps. Hot flashes. Cold flashes.

I point at myself.

– Sure I’m the guy you want on point?

She jerks her gun at the hole.

– Jump on up there and stop whining, Joe. Doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong with you that most women don’t deal with once a month.

– Calling me a pussy?

She drops her aim till it’s on my legs.

– Need some motivation here, Joe?

I hold up my half a hand.

– Leave a little for the vultures, lady.

She tilts her chin at the hole.

– Show us how safe it is.

I rub my chin.

– Sure. Safe as houses. Nobody up there but the chickens. I jump.

Full fed, I’d just about be able to hop straight up and land straddling the hole. Like I am, I get as good a grip on the edge as I can with one thumb, and haul myself up and through.

Nothing kills me.

Light from below shows me the corpse of the thing I did in a couple hours ago. Seeing it twists my stomach in another direction. Looks like someone crossbred a cactus with a manatee and turned it inside out. Only worse.

Amanda. Crazy little girl. What the hell are you doing?

I can’t see much more, my eyes not cutting the dark all that well. But it does smell thick with Vyrus. Thicker than I remember. And might be Hurley was right about that gun powder. Did the girl and her boy have a piece? Did they maybe use it on Sela out in that stairwell?

Hell. She’d have killed them both. Might explain the extra Vyrus smell if she killed the boy. Especially if she tossed his body in here.

From below, Terry.

– You dead, Joe?

I stick my head in the hole, shade my eyes from the flashlight beam, look at Lydia and Terry, their guns trained on me.

– That a trick question?

Terry circles his finger at me.

I look over my shoulder at the basement, look back down.

– Let me finish checking it out. And throw me up a flashlight.

One of them tosses the light, I miss it and it sails up through the hole, hits the floor, goes dark and skitters away, a little tinkle of sound trailing it.

I use the light from below as best I can, crawl out of it, into dark, feeling the floor. Put my hand in something wet and knobby-soft, feels like a handful of warm pig fat. I pull my hand back and fingertips skim something on the ground and it makes that tinkle sound as I scatter it.

Broken glass from the flashlight.

Fucking thing better work.

The beams from below are still shooting up through the hole, dancing on the cobwebs overhead. Just ten feet away, but they do me no good. A cramp grabs my guts. Yank, yank, yank. I put my hands down, scatter more glass, hear more tinkles. Feel more warm wet under my knees, soaking through the cold wet clinging to my jeans.