Charlie Huston - Already Dead

I would prefer not to announce myself to anyone lurking down here, but I'm going to have to use some light or this will take all night. From my pocket I pull a tiny Maglite. I close my eyes and switch the flashlight on, twisting the barrel until I know the light has reached its softest focus, and then opening my eyes to little slits. The illumination is sparse and gloomy at best, but to me it might as well be a flood lamp. I hold the light out away from my body so that anyone who might want to take a shot at me will blow my hand off instead of putting one in my belly.

With some visual cues to attach the smells to, it becomes easier to sort the old ones from the new. The gym smells of the boys' locker room get parsed from newer odors. I follow those fresher traces and find an abandoned shooting gallery in a storage room half-filled with broken desks.

The floor is scattered with used needles, candy bar wrappers, empty crack vials and sheets of flattened cardboard that have been used for mattresses. The scents here are fresher than those in the locker room. Chemical tang of heroin and crack, piss and crap in a corner, cheap tobacco from generic brand cigarettes, and dry blood. It's spattered on the floor in a couple spots, but that's not too unusual in a shooting gallery. The cop smells are here as well. They must have been down here when they searched the building. But something else. Hell, it's in here, too. I trace it to one of the cardboard mattresses: that rotting sex-musk from the goth shambler. Stronger here, as if some of the stains on the cardboard might be sexual in origin. As if this was the place where the living fucked the dead.

I catch a glimpse of something on the back of the door; I push it closed. It's a Cure poster. I take a closer look at the walls, and in a couple places I find tacks with the corners of torn-off posters still trapped beneath. I rummage in some crumpled paper stuffed into a bag that someone had been using as a pillow, and come up with a couple more tattered posters. The Dead. Morrissey. That tears it. Your average junkies and zombies aren't too big on interior decorating. Figure this was the same room the Horde girl and her friends were squatting in last year. After they got moved out, the junkies moved in.

I take another look at the blood. Couple days, maybe a week old. This could be where the goth shambler infected the fashion junkies she was with. Hard to say. Maybe she came down here, knew it as a hangout for squatters and campers and came here with some dull message in her brain telling her she could get food here. Maybe the junkies found her here and raped her and… No, it doesn't float, neither of them were carrying that smell. But something happened here. Something worse than the usual. And in a place like this the usual is pretty lucking bad.

Not that any of it gets me any closer to the carrier. Or the Horde girl.

Done with the school, I walk over to Tompkins and dig up Leprosy. He's hanging out in the corridor of benches claimed by the squatters. It runs between the kiddy park and the chess tables where most of the junkies hang out. He sees me and starts to bark at me almost before his dog does.

Dogs are amazing creatures, they can sense things, smell things that people never will. But they can't smell the Vyrus inside me, and Leprosy's dog can't smell shit. His nose is all smashed up from getting it kicked in. No, Leprosy's dog barks at me because he's a mean and vicious bastard that tries to tear the throat out of anyone who doesn't happen to be Leprosy himself.

– Fuck off, fuck face.

– Good to see you too, Lep.

The other squatters check us out. Some of them give me a little nod and some others drift away, hoping I won't notice them. As a rule I don't like squatters, but some I like a lot less than others and they know it. Leprosy jerks his dog's choke chain a few times.

– Shut the fuck up, Gristle!

He hauls on the leash until Gristle is standing on his hind legs, straining to get at me, his barks choked down to bloodthirsty growls. It's a pretty good trick on Lep's part seeing as he's all of five two and weighs in around ninety pounds, while Gristle is the product of some bizarre crossbreeding experiment that matched a rottweiler with a wolverine.

– I said fuck off, you're pissing off my dog.

– I don't know about that, Lep, I think I may be turning him on. Look, he has a hard-on.

It's true. Desperate to eat me, Gristle is still choking himself on the leash, clawing at the air with his front paws, his massive dog wood pointed straight at me.

– Down, Gristle! Put it away!

Some of the other squatters are laughing now and Leprosy is getting more pissed. He looks over at them and lets out some slack on the leash. Gristle lunges again, but this time it's at the squatters. They jump back and Lep gives a thin smile. Truth is they may be more afraid of him than of the dog. He's a scrawny little fuck, but he's probably twice as crazy and dangerous as the mutt.

– Stop fucking around, Lep. Tie the dog up and we'll take a quick walk and then the two of you can be back together.

He looks at me and glares, but he drags Gristle over to the fence, ties the leash to the iron bars and starts walking toward the kiddy park. I stroll alongside of him while the dog barks and whines in the background.

– I told you not to come around here anymore, Pitt, my dog hates you. You keep showing up and I'm gonna let him off that fucking leash one day.

– Your dog hates everyone, and if it ever gets off that leash and comes at me I'll kill it dead and you'll be out your only friend. Now tell me about this chick.

I show him the picture of Amanda Horde. He takes a quick look and passes it back.

– She's OK. I'd do her.

– Yeah, if she'd ever let your nasty ass near her.

– Shiiit. Goth chicks are ill for Leprosy. Goth chicks gotta have what Leprosy's got. Especially campers like that bitch. They gotta hit it with Leprosy. It lends au-then-ti-city to the squatting experience. As it fucking were.

– So you know her.

– Seen her around, she was camping like last fucking summer.

– You hook up?

– Naw. Camper bitches may crave what Leprosy has, but he denies them his shit. I take their money and drugs and might let one suck my dick, but Leprosy won't never luck one of them bourgeois fucking cunts.

– So what about this summer, you seen her around?

He stops walking. We're by the kiddy park now. We stand next to the sign on the gate: NO ADULTS ALLOWED! PARENTS AND GUARDIANS ONLY. This is meant to keep the pederasts outside the fence so they can only watch the action within. It's too late for kids now, but any number of the creeps drifting around the park might be child molesters. If only I could smell that.

Leprosy is staring at the empty playground equipment.

– I used to come here when I was a kid.

Lep is about sixteen.

– Yeah?

– Yeah, before my folks moved us out to Long Island. I loved the park. That's why I came here when my dad kicked me out.

Lep ran away a couple years back to get away from his dad. You guess why.

– Hey, Lep.

– What?

– I look like a piece of toast to you?

– No.

– So stop trying to butter me up. You want money, tell me you want money.

He smiles.

– I want money, fuck face.

I reach in my pocket, dig out a twenty and give it to him.

– So you seen her around or what?

He frowns at the twenty, but stuffs it in his pocket.

– Maybe.

– Don't fuck with me, that's all the cash you're getting tonight.

– I mean maybe I saw her, but I'm really not fucking sure, OK?

– Tell me.

He leans against the rails of the fence and scratches himself under a T-shirt that might have said something once, but now is just the same washed-out gray-green of all squatter clothes.