Charlie Huston - Already Dead

The Enclave warehouse looks like any of the others on this block, except for a total lack of graffiti or any other vandalism. The kids may not know exactly who those guys are in there, but they know they're bad. I climb the steps up to the loading dock and slide the huge steel door open on its tracks. They don't bother locking the door here. No one is stupid enough to fuck with them.

I step inside and slide the door closed behind me. It's dark, very dark. Nice. I take off my sunglasses.

– Simon.

I turn. I think it's the one who talked to me the other night.

– What did I tell you about that?

He smiles.

– I am sorry, it is just that you are so much more a Simon than a Joe. Which is as it should be.

– Just take me to Daniel, will you.

– Of course.

We cross the open space of the empty warehouse and shapes at the far end begin to resolve. At first it looks like rows and rows of white plaster lawn ornaments, and then they become Enclave. It looks like all of them, a hundred at the outside, the most feared of all the Clans. They sit cross-legged on the floor, motionless and silent, each of them dressed entirely in clothes as white as their pigmentless skin. My guide leads me through them. The ones in the back rows still have a bit of color to them and some flesh on their bones, but they get progressively paler and more emaciated as we move toward the front of the assembly. About halfway there my guide sits down in an empty space at the end of one of the lines. I stop, but he shakes his head and waves me forward.

At the front sits a single form, his back to me, facing the same direction as the others, but alone and separate from them. I stop. He's still for a moment, and then turns his head and looks up at me. He smiles and points at my white burnoose.

– Simon, how nice of you to dress for your visit.

Daniel looks like death. Exactly how you would expect death to look if he ever showed at your bedside with a scythe and a long list bearing your name inked in blood. Hairless, bone-white skin stretched tight over the skeleton beneath. He looks like death because he's dying. That's what they're all up to in here, slowly starving themselves to death.

We're walking up the stairs to the loft that runs along the back of the warehouse, and despite his skeletal state Daniel bounces lightly up the steps, radiating verve and barely restrained energy. At the top of the stairs he leads me down a narrow corridor that runs between a series of identical cubicles, each one containing nothing but a floor mat and a water jug. He steps into one of the cubicles on the left and I follow him in. There's an Enclave lying on the mat, shivering and sweating and nearly as wasted as Daniel. Daniel nods at him.

– He's failing.

Yeah, no shit.

Daniel points at the floor in a corner and I go sit there. He settles himself on the floor next to the dying Enclave, placing a hand on his forehead and gently stroking the sickly skin. The Enclave stops shivering.

– Failing, Simon, as we all do.

– All except you, right, Daniel?

He smiles, shrugs.

– Time will tell. But Jorge here, he's failing very quickly.

– Why?

– He's something of a fundamentalist in his beliefs. He chose to stop feeding entirely.

– Jesus. How long ago?

– Oh, several weeks now.

– And he's still alive?

– Well, that's a subject for some debate, is it not?

I watch as Daniel strokes the brow of the dying Enclave. He's right, they do all fail, the Enclave, fail and die. That's what happens when you stop feeding. The Vyrus wants you to feed, needs you to feed. It strengthens you, sharpens your senses and motivates your body so that you will feed and consume more blood that will in turn feed it. Stop feeding and it will begin to consume your own blood, just as your body will eat itself if you deny it food. The Enclave feed only the barest amount. Are they doing it out of principle, denying themselves in order to spare the lives of others? No. They're doing it because they're a bunch of fucking spooks.

Jorge's breath is becoming more ragged, his lips peeling away from his gumless teeth, mouth stretched open, the air whistling in and out of his throat. Daniel leans forward and puts his mouth close to Jorge's ear and whispers to him. Shit, he's gonna croak right now. I start to get up to leave the room, but Daniel waves me back down. I don't want to see this, but you do what Daniel tells you when you're in his house.

Jorge's back arches off the floor and his fingers claw at the sleeping mat, digging little furrows in the thin bamboo reeds. Daniel is lying next to him now, pressing his body against Jorge's, stroking his face, whispering nonstop, chanting something. Crackling sounds are coming from Jorge's mouth, not like sounds he is making, but more as if something were breaking within him, echoing up his esophagus. His eyes fly open and thick white pus begins to ooze from their sockets. The crackling noise gets louder and his skin jumps and twitches as if bugs and snakes are trapped beneath it, struggling to burrow out. He begins opening and closing his mouth, his teeth snapping and gnashing at the air. The white puss is pouring down the sides of his face and one of his bugging eyes pops out of its socket and lolls against his cheekbone, and his head thrashes and bangs against the floor.

– Help me, Simon.

I don't move.

– Help me.

I crawl over, grab his tremoring legs and try to hold them down, but they kick loose.

– Hold him, Simon.

I grab the legs and pin them to the floor. He kicks and jerks and I force the legs back down and lie across them and he almost kicks free again. Daniel has wrapped his arms around Jorge's arms and torso. Still he beats and struggles and nearly bucks us both loose. His other eye has popped free, they both swing at the ends of their cables of nerves and blood vessels as his head shakes and twitches. He arches high in the air once, twice, and again. Each time his back cracks back down against the floor I hear bones breaking in his body. He's making vomiting noises now and it looks like he's spewing up his lungs. He arches high again, tossing both Daniel and me off of him, and smashes back onto the floor, and that's it. He lies there, his body barely recognizable as human, still and dead. Daniel stands up and offers me his hand. I ignore it and get up on my own.

– Thank you, Simon.

I stare at the remnant of Jorge.

– Someone took my stash, Daniel, all my blood.

He gives a slight laugh.

– I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place for a free meal.

The Enclave don't believe in the Vyrus. Or they believe in it, but they don't believe that it's a natural occurrence. Or they believe that it's natural, but not physical. Or something like that. What they believe, what I understand they believe, is that the Vyrus is supernatural in origin, not of this world. They believe in a whole supernatural universe. They believe that when you are consumed wholly by the Vyrus, your physical being becomes matter in the supernatural world, but your conscious-self expires. What they aspire to, what the whole starvation thing is about, is their belief that by starving yourself gradually, you can maintain your consciousness and self, and be made over into a supernatural being that will exist in this world. I don't know why that appeals to them, but it does. Of course, so far they've all ended up like Jorge. For centuries they've been ending up like that. Except Daniel.

We're sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that lead up to the cubicles, watching the Enclave as they go through their exercises. They're doing some Tai Chi kind of thing. So slow and precise you can't see them moving at all.

I look at the wall where they hung Jorge. They spread-eagled his body and spiked him to the cinderblock. Daniel is looking at him, too.