Charlie Huston - Already Dead

– Joe.

Light.

– Joe.

In my face.

– Joe.

I can only tell because it brightens the darkness behind my clenched eyelids.

– Damn it, Joe.

I don't steel myself for Tom's next thrashing. The cramps are on me hard, and having my face busted some more is the last thing on my mind. My mind barely exists now except as a place for the signals from the nerves in my gut to land and wreak havoc.

– Joe, get the fuck up.

He grabs me under my arms and yanks me to my feet. It makes it hurt worse.

– Auuuggh!

– Shut up.

He shoves me and I land in a chair. I pull my knees up and roll back onto the floor.

– Stop being such a wimp.

He grabs my hands and pulls them away from where they are clutching my stomach.

– Auuugh!

He grabs the cuff chain and yanks my arms out straight.

– Such a wimp. You know the pain of childbirth is worse than the cramps?

I open one eye a tiny bit. Lydia.

– And that's not just feminist propaganda. I know infected women who gave birth, they told me.

She sticks a key in one of the cuff locks and it snaps open. She looks at my face.

– I see Tom came by.

– Ung-hungh.

– Give me your ankle.

I roll on my back and lift my feet off the floor. The cramps lurch.

– Augh.

– Shut. Up.

I close my eyes and nod as she unlocks the shackles then pulls me up and puts me back on the chair.

– Can you walk?

– Ungh.

– Fucking wimp.

She grabs my shoulders and pulls me to my feet again.

– Can you walk?

I don't answer, just put one foot in front of the other. And fall down. She kneels next to me.

– Joe, this is it. This is the only shot you get. Tom's crashed and Hurley's hunting and the sun will be up soon. Get up.

She reaches inside my jacket, takes out the picture and sticks it in my face.

– Get up and go get the girl, Joe.

She's pulling on me again. I get up.

– Come on.

She holds my arm and walks me across the room.

– I'll rig it here, make it look like you smashed the door and blindsided me and got the keys.

We're at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the sidewalk trap. They're steep.

– It won't hold, but Tom can't make a serious move on me. He knows I can take him.

– Hurlehungh?

– Hurley won't do anything without Terry. Come on.

I crawl up the steps and she pushes the steel door open.

– Bloohnd?

– No, I don't have any here. Hit your stash, but don't stay at your place, they'll be looking there. Go on. Go.

She shoves me up onto the street, then reaches up through the trap and grabs my pants leg. I look down. Her face and one arm are stuck up through the trap, the picture of Amanda Horde in her hand.

– Take it. I wrote a number on the back. Use it if you have to.

I groan as I bend to take the picture from her.

– Help that girl, Joe. I find out different, or find out you were lying to me, and I'll come after you with my people. We'll firebomb your house and then we'll dog you through the streets.

– HoKugh.

– So fucking run.

I do, lurching and stumbling down the sidewalk, the loose cuffs still dangling from my wrist, the girl's picture in my hand, and no place to hide.

I make it ten yards before the heaves grab me. I bend over the hood of a parked car and choke up bile until I'm empty and gagging on air. When it stops I look around, trying to find a dark corner to creep into. But nothing will be dark for long. Home, Lydia said. Go home and hit my stash. She doesn't know there's no stash to hit. I pitch myself off the car and reel down the street. At the end of the block I lean against a street sign: 3rd and C.

Evie lives on 3rd. Just a block and a half away on 3rd between A and B. Evie will look after me, she'll take care of me.

And she has blood. Over five quarts of it.

I shake it off and take the right onto C, away from Evie and the blood that's killing her.

Christian and the Dusters would take me in, but there's no way I can make it to Pike before the sun is up. I need a hole. I need a deep hole in the ground where I can ride out the last waves of the cramps. I look up at the sky; it's already bright enough to burn my eyes and make them tear.

I need a hole.

The blue sawhorse barricades are still in front of the school on 9th, but the cop car is gone. Five-thirty A.M. traffic is on the streets, but I can't worry about that; I'm less than an hour from getting burned down. I edge between two of the sawhorses and walk hunched over to the door. There's a new chain and padlock. I'm far too weak to break it or to force the thick double doors. I won't be scaling the side of the wall, either. Maybe if I didn't have the cramps I could shimmy up a drainpipe. If I try it as I am I'll probably get hit with a cramp halfway up and fall a couple stories onto my head. That might be just enough to solve all my problems. Instead I start checking the ground floor windows. The steel screens on almost all of them have suffered some form of abuse over the years. It doesn't take long to find one where the lower right bracket has been wrenched from the brickwork.

The corner of the screen can be pulled up, but only a few inches, not enough for me to squeeze through. I squat, get a grip on it with both hands and push up with my legs and arms. The screen is made from heavy-gauge steel that's gridded in a pattern like chicken wire, the edges sharp prongs. They dig into the palms of my hands, popping holes through the photograph I hadn't realized I was still holding. The screen starts to bend. From down the street I hear the rumble of a sanitation truck. Just a few yards away from me on the sidewalk is a huge mound of trash. A cramp hits and tries to cut my legs out from under me. My knees buckle slightly and the screen starts to spring back. The truck's air brakes blast and squeal as it slows, approaching the abandoned school. I squeeze my eyes shut, muscling the screen upward, and its spiked edge pops through the skin of my hands just like it did the photograph. The cramp bundles my organs, trying to curl me into myself. The screen wrenches upward, leaving a gap perhaps large enough for me to wriggle through. I pull my hands free of the prongs as the truck grinds to a halt behind me, smash them against the window, grab the jagged-edged sill and pull myself up. Broken glass digs at my belly, offering awful relief from the cramps. My upper body flops inside and my pants get caught on the screen. I tear them loose, using my forearms to pull myself along the floor and into the empty schoolroom. I writhe to my knees on broken glass and peek out the window at the sanitation guys climbing off the truck. I reach out and lace my fingers through the holes in the screen and pull. It's easier to drag back down than it was to push up, and I get it close enough to the window that maybe it won't be noticed from the street. That done, I stick my fingers past the broken shards of glass and pull the bloody photograph from the bloody barbs.

Then I fall down.

The cramps have become a huge hand that tangles its fingers in my intestines and balls itself into a fist. I crawl, leaving bloody smears on the floor from my oozing hands, and find the basement door. I look at the stairs, then let gravity tumble me down. I want to stay at the foot of the stairs in a tangled mess of blood and glass and cracked bones. Instead I take advantage of the fist relaxing for a moment and get to my feet. Anyone coming into the school will see the bloody handprints on the floor and follow them to the basement. I need my hole. I stuff my hands into my armpits to keep more blood from dribbling on the floor, and memory leads me through the rank blackness. I make it to the old storage room, shoulder the door open and fall behind a pile of the broken and graffitied desks, just as the fist squeezes closed.