Charlie Huston - Already Dead - A Novel

A few blissful red minutes pass. They might be seconds or hours; over far too soon, a pleasure greater than their brevity would suggest. And when the man is empty and I am full and my face is rinsed in his gore, I feel as I always do when I feed, like I want more. I go for the girl.

And I am pummeled to the floor by her mother.

— Joseph.

I am fed, but weak. The Vyrus is replenishing itself, repairing its host. It wants more. I stand. She brings her doubled fists down on me again.

— Joseph!

Behind her I can see the girl's eyelids flutter. I must have her. I stand. And am hammered down again.

— Joseph.

I try to crawl past her. She is on my back and we are a pile of struggling limbs on the floor. I try to free my arms, to pull myself across the few yards between us and the child. The mother twists her legs around mine and binds my arms in the circle of her own.

— Joseph. Please, Joseph.

Her lips are on the back of my neck, and then her teeth, gnawing gently, experimenting with biting, but not breaking the skin. The girl's eyes open blindly, close, open again and close again. Her teeth are on my neck.

— Joseph. Help me. Teeth carrying poison.

I forget the girl, flex the muscles in my shoulders and back, and feel Marilee's grip fail. I writhe loose of her arms and legs and scuttle away from her. She sits in the middle of the floor, arms slack, looking at me. Then she looks at her daughter. And crawls to her.

— Ms. Horde.

She kneels next to the child.

— Ms. Horde.

She touches the skinny bare legs.

— Marilee.

She picks up the folded jeans and starts fussing them back onto the girl. She gets them as far as her knees and stops. She looks up at me.

— I'm hungry, Joseph.

Her hand rests on Amanda's naked thigh, gripping it too hard, dimpling the skin.

— I'm so hungry.

She looks at her daughter.

— Help me, Joseph.

The holes in my body are all closed, blood trapped inside, but I can feel that only one lung is inflating, and poisons released from my pierced intestines and liver are pooled in my gut. The Vyrus will deal with it, given time it will make me whole. But if the woman attacks me now, with the bacteria fresh and strong in her, she will finish me.

I stand and walk to her. She reaches a hand up to me. I take it and help her to her feet. She puts a hand alongside my face, and presses her mouth against mine. When she pulls away her lips and chin are smeared with the dead man's blood.

— I had a feeling about you, Joseph.

I bring my right hand up to the back of her head.

— From the first moment I saw you, I had a feeling you were special.

I bring up my left hand, the cuffs, one bracelet sawed through, still trailing from my wrist, and cup her chin.

— Special. Like you were someone I could trust.

Her eyes drift to her daughter and back to me.

— Can I trust you, Joseph?

I run a tongue over my lips, taste the blood.

— Yeah, sure.

— Good.

And I break her neck.

It's not easy. It's very hard. I am drained and weak and she flinches at the last moment. I heave once and her spine crackles and she starts to tremor. Then I heave again and feel the clean snap and she goes still.

I lower her to the floor, and as I do I meet Amanda's open staring eyes, see her mouth gaping in a silent nightmare scream, and then her eyes close again. This moment, I hope, to be lost with the rest of her terrors.

Lydia brings three of her hammers. Two of them are diesels, beefier than her but not nearly as cut. The other is a pre-op tranny a huge chick with a dick, shoulders and tits the size of bowling balls.

— Is she OK?

— They shot her up with something. I don't know what.

— They who?

I look at Amanda, limp in my arms.

— People who aren't around anymore.

Lydia nods.

— What now?

— She needs a safe place.

— How long?

— Don't know. Couple days maybe.

She looks at the tranny.

— Sela?

The tranny nods and answers in a throaty rumble.

— Sure, I can take care of the sweetie.

Lydia looks at me.

— OK?

I look at Sela.

--People may come.

Sela lifts both her arms, flexes them bodybuilder style and her biceps just about pop out of her skin.

— Their problem.

I nod.

— OK.

Sela lowers her arms.

— Let me have the cupcake.

I hold her out. Sela plucks her from my arms and tucks her easily into the crook of one of her own. I point at the bloody fingerprints on her jeans and shoes, left there when I finished dressing her.

— See if you can get her into something clean before she wakes up.

Sela is watching Amanda's sleeping face, one Lincoln Log finger brushes loose hair from her forehead.

— No problem, we'll get cupcake all sorted out. C'mon, ladies.

One of the diesels opens the door and checks the street outside, then signals an all clear. Sela follows her out and the other diesel brings up the rear, closing the door behind her. Lydia points at the closed door.

— She'll be fine with them.

— Yeah.

She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob.

— We should get going, sunrise soon.

— Yeah.

We step out of the empty storefront onto Avenue B. Lydia locks the door behind us and we start down the street. I point back at the storefront.

— That a Society safe house?

— One of mine.

— Hn.

She's burned a safe house. Let someone outside her circle know about it. There'll be skin to pay for that. There's always skin to pay for something. Then again, chances are she won't have to worry about anything I know much longer. She looks at me from the corner of her eye, smiles slightly.

— Tom's been going batshit.

— Yeah?

— Yeah. Told him I went to give you some chow and you sucker-punched me and grabbed the key to the shackles. He tried to track you, but I had a couple of my people out gumming up your scent. He's frothing. Says he'll have me up on charges when Terry gets back.

— Still not back?

— No. Got a message from the drop, though. The Coalition's raising some kind of stink, clogging up all passages across their turf. Know anything about that?

— Nope.

She stops on the corner of 9th and B.

— I go this way. What about you?

I point the opposite direction.

— Home.

— Sure about that?

— Nowhere else left.

She nods.

— Anything else?

— Got a smoke?

She shakes her head.

— Give my money to the death merchants at the tobacco companies? You should know better.

— Right.

She stuffs her hands in her back pockets.

— The girl?

— If you don't hear from me tomorrow, wait for Terry. He'll know what to do.

— He usually does.

— Yep.

At home I get cleaned up, and in bed with a cigarette. Every time I take a drag the cuff still hanging off my wrist bangs against my neck. I could pick the lock, but my wallet with the picks is on the opposite side of the room. Too far away. I put my cigarette in the nightstand ashtray and take hold of the dangling cuff. I begin to twist it round and round. The chain bundles and knots and the cuff still locked on my wrist digs into the skin. I crank the loose cuff once more and wrench my locked wrist in the opposite direction and the chain pops, one broken link shooting across the room. I put the sawn-through cuff on the nightstand and pick up my cigarette. I rub my wrist, massaging the red skin under the single cuff I now wear like a bracelet. I spin the bracelet around and around and think about the girl that it had been locked to.

And I lie in the dark, sucking smoke into my one good lung.

When I finally sleep I dream. I don't dream about the girl or her mother or her father. I don't dream about Whitney Vale or Evie or the wretched things that raised me. I dream about a darkness. And I see all the details I had only glimpsed in that room.