Charlie Huston - Every Last Drop

angle to my right, where Menace told me it dead-ends at Metropolitan. Crossing an invisible border into Brooklyn.

Going that way is one of my options. But I don't want to go to Brooklyn. I've been to Brooklyn. And I'm not welcome there.

On my left the water runs between an abandoned lot and a school bus depot, washing up against wood pilings at the foot of a nameless street.

I grab hold of the long steel-and-concrete pier that anchors the middle of the bridge, the pivot on which it once swung open, when these waters were used as anything but a garbage disposal.

Rising between the depot and the warehouse, tons of gravel are drawn up long conveyors, dust floats, hazing bright halogens, a nonstop roar of crushed stone and diesel engines. And a high, white-painted cinder-block wall.

That's the place Menace told me about.

The place where he got changed.

I let go of the pier and swim down the channel to the bus depot, where there is no wall.

Where I can see what scares the savages.

Merit Transportation hasn't bothered with a wall or even a fence on the water

side of their depot.

Why bother?

Who's gonna swim up in heavily polluted water to mess around in a bus depot? And what are they gonna mess with? Some tagger is industrious enough to frog-man his way in by this route and spray bomb the side of one of the buses, you may as well give the little fucker a medal.

No, there's no wall here. Nothing to keep out anyone mad enough to come in this way to do God knows what.

Dripping, my skin coated in chemically mutated algae, I haul myself onto the slick rocks and crawl up until I can huddle between two buses, the halogens above the grinding yard next door casting deep black shadows for me to hide in.

All I can see is the tops of those conveyors, raising the gravel high before it's dropped, churned, milled ever more fine.

I get down on my belly and worm under a bus, keeping my eyes on the dirt, hoping to find an especially long butt that someone may have tossed aside. A butt and a match.

No dice.

Ahead, there's a row of buses parked perpendicular to a bare cement

verge; beyond that, the wall that hides the gravel yard, topped with a long twisted spring of razor wire. Brightly lit.

A tunnel would be nice.

Or a shaped but silent charge, to blow a secret hole in the wall.

Why am I doing this?

I look at the dirt. I crook a finger and trace a name.

Evie.

I'd be lying if I said it gave me courage. I'd be lying if I said it heartened me. I'd be lying if I said it made me stronger, resolved in my intent. Hell, I'd be lying if I said that name did anything but open wounds and grind salt deep into the meat.

But I get up and run.

I vault onto the hood of a bus, hop to the roof, sprinting, sheet-metal footfalls on the roof of the bus lost in the din.

The cement verge is at least six feet broad. The wall eight feet tall, the wire adding nearly two more feet.

Jumping from the rear of the bus, my bare foot pushing off from the end of the roof above the emergency exit, I have a vision of myself, feet snagged in a tangle of razor wire, hanging upside down inside the perimeter of the wall,

spotlights pinned on my body, guards closing in from every quarter.

I look down, see my feet clearing the wall and the wire with inches to spare, then gravity catches me and sucks me down and smashes me into a gravel pile, crushing the air from my lungs and snapping three fingers on my left hand when I stupidly try to brace against the impact instead of going limp.

Its even louder on this side of the wall. And brighter.

Mounds of gravel and sand, the tower the conveyor belts climb and descend, a steel blockhouse of grinding machinery underneath, unpaved roads cut by eighteen-wheelers hauling open-topped trailers bringing in yet more gravel, smaller diesels with spinning mixers, painted in spirals, driving away with loads of cement. Everything gray, shot with patches and stripes of pitch-black shadow painted by the light towers above.

I roll out of the light to the bottom of a gravel pile, into a shadow, waiting to hear a klaxon, the machinery grinding to a halt, commands shouted back and forth between heavily armed guards.

Nothing happens.

Machinery roars, lights blaze, trucks roll in low gear.

I crawl to the edge of the pile and look for the enforcers who must be creeping up on me.

And see no one but the drivers in the trucks, a couple silhouettes in a small shack near the conveyors, and a uniformed man sprawled in a folding chair at the distant gate, waving the trucks in and out with barely a glance.

I duck back behind the pile. Wondering if I'm in the right place.

Maybe Menace meant the warehouse on the far side of the yard. Maybe he meant one of the warehouses I passed along the Creek. Maybe he's a fucking nutjob and I'm chasing my own asshole around Maspeth because he thinks he saw something.

Maybe he's a nutjob.

He's fucking named Menace. He's given himself fangs and little handcrafted claws.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

No maybe about it, he's a fucking nutjob and a half.

This place is nothing but a gravel yard.

What am I thinking? What can that insane kid possibly know about the biggest secret the Coalition has? What could he possibly have seen and survived seeing?

I think about his twisted mouth. His gasping breath as he tried to tell me. The way he swallowed his own bile at the thought of the place.

Tears and blood on his cheek.

OK, so maybe there's something here to see.

I use the razor to cut a strip from the hem of my pants. I straighten the three broken fingers on my left hand, gritting my teeth, then I slip the brass knuckles over them, curl my fingers around the cold metal and use the scrap of dirty khaki cloth to tie my fingers into place. Then I roll around in the gravel and dust, coating my wet skin and pants, making myself muddy gray.

And I crawl into the light, brass tied to one hand, cold, sharp steel held tight in the other, waiting with my face pressed in the dust at the side of the road that's been graded by the tonnage of trucks and crushed stone. Coming to my feet as one passes, snagging a dangling chain and pulling myself aboard, huddling atop one of the gas tanks as it wheels around the base of the conveyors, circles, and pulls into the notch that runs between them.

Dust clogs my nose. I cant smell anything except diesel fumes and scorched rubber. The truck moves into the shadows beneath the conveyors. The tower of rust-streaked gray steel that the conveyors pour their gravel into shakes and shudders and sends thunder vibrating through the air. I'm deaf.

The truck jerks, turns, angles toward a road that leads to the gate.

Here under the towers, protected from the halogen day, the light is cast by yellow globes in wire cages. Someone coalesces out of the dust and sickly light. I jump from the truck, leading with brass, my broken fist sending a hot

blast of pain down my arm as it hits the side of the man's face. I land on top of him, knocking his helmet and earphones off, smashing an elbow into his gut. No worry that his screams will be heard here.

I drag him beneath one of the jittering scaffolds that hold the conveyors and put my face close to his and inhale.

No Vyrus.

I scream into his ear, and he coughs, spits up, shakes his head.

I show him the razor, and he shakes his head again.

I cut his left ear off and almost hear his scream.

I yell into his remaining ear and he sobs and points at the steel tower.

I cut his throat. I drink his blood. Dust is in the first mouthfuls. Muddy and viscous, I swallow hard to make it go down. After that, it goes easy.

I don't linger to drink it all. It's not safe here for indulgence.