Charlie Huston: Every Last Drop

themselves drunk from the herd and wander down the wrong long street, into an absence of light where any old bad shit can take place.

I can be patient. Wait till he starts moving in a straight line. That will be the sign, when he stops blundering back and forth leaving trail after trail, that'll be the sign he's found what he wants. The idiot, out here making a spectacle of himself, hunting in the open like a bag-snatcher.

Or.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, who's the idiot now?

Right. Me.

It’s not a single trail zigzagging the crowd.

It's trails.

A pack. A fucking pack in the crowd. A fucking pack of young-bloods working the crowd after a game. Cocky in numbers, ignorant of fear, dumber than dirt.

Christ, does that ring a bell.

Like my own bell tolling away before I learned a thing or two.

I can't tell how many. Their lines are all stirred together in the dead air by the shuffling herd. But the scent is strong. So make it three. Maybe make it

four. No more than that. Four together is pushing any kind of balance. Four can't last together for long. Tear each other apart.

No more than four. More likely three. Two?

That's wishful thinking.

But Christ, let it be no more than three.

More than three and I just won't have enough bullets. Three bullets being all I have at the moment. Three bullets, a likewise amount of dollars, and maybe that many days I can get through healthy before I need to get my hands on some more blood of my own.

Well, not blood of my own. More like blood of someone who can maybe spare a couple pints. Those people, they tend to be a rare commodity. Most people need all they got. And some of us, some of us need all we can get our damn hands on.

Every last drop.

— Now! Now! Clear the fuck off now! — Fuck you! — Yeah, fuck you! — Not your fuckin' street!

— Gonna meet the street in a second. Gonna be assumin the position gangsta style, face in the gutter in a second.

— Man, fuck you!

I swing round and watch some cops dealing with four kids whipping through the crowd on bright little pocket bikes, knees jutting high from the two-foot-tall cycles, engines rising and falling as they give little pulses of gas to keep themselves in motion.

The cop on point adjusts his gun belt.

— Say that word to me again! Say it again! Taser your ass right off that bike. Know what happens I hit you with a Taser? Make you shit your pants, kid. Lie there crying mami, mami and your pants full of shit just like when you were a baby.

One of the kids guns his bike, the tails of his do-rag flapping behind him. -Man, Taser you mama. -What? Say what?

The kids cut back and forth between cars and pedestrians, never losing balance, staying just far enough from the cops that if the officers get serious the kids know they can get away. -Say you mama need a Taser for her stinky pussy.

The cops are half smiling as they walk slowly, herding the kids away from the heart of the Stadium outflow. Enjoying the distraction. But clearly not

above busting a little skull if they can get their hands on the fuckers.

The point cop fingers the handle of his baton and tilts his chin at his partner. -Kid's clearly never met your mama, Olivera, otherwise he'd know how sweet her pussy smells.

Olivera hoists a middle finger at him. -Not as sweet as your mama says my dick is.

Do-rag rises on his pegs.

— Cops be all in each other mama's pussies. I wait till you at it and fuck you daughters.

The point cops fingers curl on his baton. -That ain't fuckin' funny, you little shit.

Olivera adjusts his hat. -I ain't even got a daughter and I don't think it's funny.

Do-rag shrugs, weaves around a clot of baseball fans watching the scene play. -No problems, man. I fuck you wifey instead.

And the two cops run at the kids and the two other cops that had been working their way over from the north end of the street where the new Stadium

is going up run at the kids and the kids hit the gas, the tiny 49cc engines whining and the crowd scatters and the cops scream and when the dust settles the backs of the kids flick out of sight around the corner, one of them waving the cap he snatched from the head of one of the cops.

The crowd rustles back into its former rhythm and shape, everyone avoiding eye contact with the cursing cops. The cops stand in a circle and ask one another if they've ever seen those kids before, what block they maybe live on, what building they maybe live in, discussing how much ass they're gonna kick when they catch up to them.

I wander across the street, crossing the path the kids took as they rode off, knowing the cops will be lucky if they never see that particular group of little shits ever again.

Poison in the air.

Poison left hanging by that pack.

Kids no older than thirteen. Could they be older? Sure they could. If they were heavy feeders they could be old men on the inside. But they're not. Old men wouldn't make a spectacle like that. Old men wouldn't bait cops. No, they're new.

New to the life.

Jesus, thirteen, they're new to everything there is. And destined to never get old to it. Not the signs they're flashing. Big signs, neon and bright: KILL ME NOW!

I cross to Gerrard, the crowd thinner, the traffic for the CBE and the Triborough heavy, past the long low bunker of the parking garage.

Thinking.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the kids. But I got other things on my mind as well. Like I'm thinking about who made them that way. Who bled into them. And how many must have died ugly on the way to infecting those four.

And I'm thinking how life isn't an easy thing. Nasty, brutish and short, so they say. And how you got to take your pleasures where and when you find them. Because they may not come again.

And I'm thinking just how much pleasure I'm gonna take from scalping the guy who infected those kids. How much fun it's going to be to peel his skull and shove the rag of skin and hair down his throat to muffle the screams while I figure ways to make him live as long as possible as I yank his ribs out.

Any wonder I'm so distracted I don t register the stink of them as I pass the gated mouth of an alley until I'm twenty feet past it?

I pull up and walk back. The alley is right next to Cassisi and Cassisi

Accident Cases. Se habla espanol. Like any of the ambulance chasers in these parts don't habla espanol.

I look between the red-painted bars of the gate, down the narrow space between buildings where old stone walls topped by curls of razor wire separate good neighbors. There's a concrete staircase climbing to the backs of buildings that face on Walton. A splash of red much brighter than the paint on the gate at the foot of those stairs.

I push the gate open, the chain that's meant to keep it closed dangles, links snapped clean. At the end of the alley, a sound. Reminds me of a cat I saw once, had its hindquarters run over by a bus. Cats forelegs kept reaching out, claws rasping the asphalt, trying to get purchase, pull itself away from the pain. People stood on the sidewalk, stared at the mutilated cat. I stepped on its neck and it stopped moving. Way people reacted, you d have thought I did the wrong thing.

She's where they left her, on the pavement, blood bubbling from her lips, red fake fingernails raking the ground. Her eyes roll as my shadow falls across her. Looks at me, wheezes, says something. -Ee iunt aigh ee.

It takes a second, but I get it.

She's right. They didn't rape her. A hard thing for her to fathom about a gang

of rabid kids who just bit her tongue out.

Her eyes roll again, up into her head this time, and she's out.

I look around. Lights in the back windows of the tenements. A collection of overfull garbage cans with a chain running through their handles. The kind of alley where people steal fucking garbage cans. Up the stairs it's darker, a little alcove huddled at the bottom of one of the buildings, a door leading into a basement.