Charlie Huston: Every Last Drop

He takes his hair in fistfuls.

— And who must then negotiate with the savages? Who must settle them in their place? And at what price?

He puts his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and pushes himself up on twisted legs; frozen at the waist, he stands cocked at nearly ninety degrees, waving arms as warped as his legs, all the bones of him corkscrewed. -Mere seconds in the sun, yes? Cancers in my bones, yes? Mad growths, yes? All because I went out to negotiate, to compensate for failures and oversights that were none of my own.

He drops back into the chair, sending it rolling a few feet across the moldering room. -Mr. Lament.

— A misstep, did I say? On my own part, yes? Surely it was a misstep. The misstep was loyalty. Listening to the simple caw and cries, yes? I should have

followed truer stars. My own heart and mind I should have followed! — Mr. Lament.

He heaves air in and out, wipes spittle from his mouth, fingering the blisters that pebble his cheeks.

— A life in service. For me, who should have been a prince in my own right. This is the price of sacrifice. This is the price of loyalty, Shiftless. The wages paid by an ignorant sovereign. -Mr. Lament.

He turns to Low, the boy standing in the open door.

— You have something to say, idiot boy? Something that cant wait till your better concludes his business? Come here, thing.

Low doesn't move.

Lament crooks a finger. -Come here now, Low. Or risk my displeasure.

Low comes slowly into the room, his tongue probing the ends of his moustache. -Sure, Mr. Lament.

Laments hand ducks into the pocket of his robe and comes out with a

honed carpet knife. It flashes once as he uses it to hook the underside of

Lows upper lip.

— Something to say? Something pressing, yes? Say it, boy! Say it while you

still have lips to make human sounds! Say it before I cast you into your proper

station as a maker of animals mewling!

— Honestly, Alistair, the boy is simply doing as I asked. You might try an ounce

of civility just now and again. We are none of us above the use of good

manners and simple kindness.

Lament and I look at the door where the old woman stands between an efficient-looking young man and woman in matching black suits, holding matching machine pistols that look every bit as efficient as they do. -We are not savages, after all.

She takes a step into the room, into the light, luster on the single strand of pearls she wears at the neck of a white cardigan with buttons that match the necklace, a faint greasy sheen on the warty gray orb that's half grown from the scarred pit that used to be her right eye socket. -Put the knife down, Alistair. Try to effect the gravity of your years.

Lament removes the blade from Low's mouth. -This is my domain, Maureen. How I conduct affairs is my business.

She places a hand on Low's head and looks at his face. -How you conduct your business has proven ineffectual. At best.

She shakes her head. -A dismal failure is a far more accurate assessment of your affairs.

She pushes Low toward the door. -Go out there with your friends.

Low looks at Lament.

Lament bares his teeth, snaps his fingers, and Low goes out the door.

He looks up at the old woman. -A dismal failure? I think not.

She inclines her head at the two young people and they come farther into the room.

— Fear as a control is limited, Alistair. Your instrument is dulled by it. Incapable of independent actions. They will never serve as anything but your lackeys. Sad prison wards. A pathetic, if necessary, fate for them. Truly, it's as much as mongrel races can or should aspire to, but the added indignity of being lorded by yourself seems all but cruel.

He grunts, opens his mouth.

She shakes her head. -No. No further comment is required.

She lifts a hand and the young man takes the handles of the wheelchair and pushes it to the door. -Go join your proteges.

He twists about in the chair, looking back at her as he is wheeled out. -This is my place, Maureen! This conclave is my doing and I should be present.

The old woman looks about for a place to sit. -Yes, Alistair. Yes, yes.

His further comments cut off as the young man closes the door behind them.

The young woman finds a folding steel chair with a cracked plastic seat cushion, wipes dust off it with a few tissues from Lament's box, and places it for the old woman.

She takes a seat, runs her hands over the legs of her light wool slacks, then folds them in her lap and looks at me. -And tell me, Mr. Pitt, how have you enjoyed Alistair Laments hospitality?

I shrug as best I can.

— He's not quite up to your style, Mrs. Vandewater.

I glance at the door and then back at her. -I mean, he only let me bite his toe off. You let me take a whole eye.

— He was, hard to imagine, a quite remarkable student. Attentive, frighteningly able, insightful in a manner quite unique. An eye for weakness. A sense, if you like, for frailty. Vulnerability. Not a virtue, I admit, in the normal course of things, but essential to certain ends.

She looks at the floor, raises the glasses that hang by a chain from her neck, and brings the discarded pigs feet into focus. -Over the years, obviously, he has rather deteriorated.

She lets the glasses hang free. -His eye is no less keen, but he himself is blunted. Become vulgar.

She looks about the filthy backroom.

— The isolation. He seemed to have inward reservoirs. No lack of self-confidence, I'm sure you have noticed, but more than that. Or so I believed. A mind and spirit suited to independent action. Bold initiative. Yet still responsive to authority.

She allows a small sigh.

— Wrong on many counts it seems.

She rises, looks behind herself and brushes at the seat of her slacks. -More willful than independent. When I dispatched him here to see if he might find suitable subjects for infection, I never dreamed how far he'd stray from my prescriptions. Recruiting, identifying those who might take most naturally to the Vyrus, has always required an acceptance of the fact that those most isolated from typical social supports are most likely to embrace an utter change in their circumstances. Offer the unwillingly solitary the opportunity to elevate themselves, to become a part of something larger than themselves, and they will find reserves of emotional and mental resilience they never knew existed. Resilience that can make them capable of the most basic of our compulsions.

She bends and picks up the cat-o'-nine-tails from where Lament had discarded it.

— After all, if a prospective recruit cannot come to terms with the implications of the Vyrus thirst, what use can we possibly make of them?

She weighs the lash in her hand, shakes her head, places it on the TV tray. -Crude.

She pulls a tissue from the box and wipes her hands. -So like Alistair.

She looks at me, wound in barbwire, my clothes scabbed with my own dry blood, the marks of the whip on my face barely closed, a crust of tangled meat grown over the stump where my toe was.

— At this moment, you could serve as the perfect visual referent for Alistair s methods and mindset. Vulgar and base. And, truly, a fair indication of just how far he has strayed.

She places a hand at the high collar of her gray blouse.

— Set to find loners and outsiders, he went too far afield. These delinquents and hoodlums. What use can they come to? He enticed them with blunt offers of power and money. Suggested they were involving themselves in criminal enterprise.

She sniffs. -Narcotics, no less. A context, so he claims, they could understand.

She opens the door of the fridge, the corners of her mouth pulling down. -And he implied a dark rite of initiation. Evoked voodoo. Santerla. Again, a context he thought they could embrace.