Charlie Huston - Already Dead

The sweats got bad just as the cab pulled up to the Hordes' brownstone. I had to ask Amanda to pay the cab because Tom took the last of my cash. She looked at me like I was lame, but I've gotten used to that. She got a key out of her hip pocket and let us into an entryway that was similar in every way to this foyer. Then she led me into an elevator to take us the two flights to the floor her mother occupies. This accompanied by one of many sideways glances to see what I think of her folks keeping separate quarters. I notice the glances, but I'm not giving much back, focused as I am on the simmering fluid hissing through my organs, I'm starting to wish the cramps would return.

– Mom!

No reply.

– Come on, she's probably passed out.

She storms ahead of me, dragging me by the cuffs as I stumble clumsily behind her. She looks back at me.

– You want to try walking for a change?

I don't say anything.

– I knew it. You are a junkie, aren't you?

I don't say anything.

– Well come on, junkie. Get paid and then you can get rid of me and go fix.

She hauls me down the central hallway that runs the length of the brownstone. I catch peripheral glimpses of a bathroom, a kitchenette, a large bedroom. All done up in the not too style. At the end of the hall we come up against a closed door. Amanda slaps her knuckles against it once, then shoves it open.

– Hey, Mom, I'm hooome.

She gives my arm a jerk and I take a lurching step into the room and she holds her cuffed hand up in the air.

– And look what I found. Can I keep it?

Marilee Horde looks up from the glass in her hands. She's sitting on a couch that matches everything in her little sitting room perfectly. Her red-rimmed eyes flick dully from Amanda to me to Amanda.

– Oh. Oh, Amanda. I'm. I am sorry.

Amanda drops her arm.

– You got that right, Mom.

Marilee's head drops back down and she stares deep into her glass.

– Sorry.

Amanda takes a step into the room.

– Mom?

The guy who knocks me out doesn't hit me half as hard as Hurley did. Then again he doesn't have to, I'm already halfway there. I go down and out. Sorry thing is, the Vyrus doesn't seem to care whether I'm conscious or unconscious. It just keeps hurting me.

Metal is rasping on metal.

– How much longer?

– Little while. Quicker if we go through his wrist.

– Just the cuffs, please.

I can hear them talking, but I can't see anything. My eyes must be closed, but rather than darkness, they peer into a pale gray abyss. Then something bobs up out of the abyss, something dark that suddenly resolves into a man's face.

– He's awake.

The rasping stops and another face appears looking down at me. Something waves in front of my face. A hand.

– Uh-uh. His eyes are open, but he's not awake.

Yes, he's right, my eyes are open. The gray abyss is the ceiling of Marilee Horde's sitting room. I try to shift my eyes to get a look around. They don't move. I try to blink. Nothing. I am frozen. The hand that was waving in front of my eyes slaps lightly at my cheeks.

– He's out.

A third face appears. I know this one, Dr. Dale Edward Horde.

– Not to tell you how to do your jobs, but is he, perhaps, faking it? The hand flourishes and an instrument materializes between its fingers: a stiletto long and thin, a rainbow glittering along its well-honed edge. The blade dips close to my right eye and the point hovers there, eclipsing half of the world.

– I'd say no.

– I'd like a more conclusive test.

The blade darts down and I hear the faint sound of steel entering flesh and feel the slightest tug in my cheek. No pain, but the taste of my own dead blood runs down the back of my tongue.

– He's not home.

– Very good.

The stiletto reappears, blade now lacquered with crimson. A handkerchief flutters and wipes away the blood. Then handkerchief, blade, hand, and two of the faces exit from sight. Horde remains above me, gazing down, inspecting me. He purses his lips and pokes a finger at my cheek. It comes back into view with a smear of blood on its tip. He looks at the precious drop, rubs it between his thumb and finger, sniffs at it.

– To think.

Then he shrugs, wipes his fingers on me and he, too, disappears.

I would like to have felt the blade pierce my cheek. It might have assured me that I am still alive, that the exterior world can still affect me. But I have no such evidence. Just a body that feels shot full of novocaine, immobilized and without sensation. On the outside, anyway. The inside is another matter. The inside is a cauldron of something bubbling and viscous, something that I think may be now burrowing into my bones, seeking out some last refuge of blood.

Someone tugs at my arm and my head rolls slightly to the left. I can't make my eyes focus beyond a foot or two, but I see the two men. One of them has his knee planted on my wrist, pinning it to the floor. The other kneels across from him, crouched over a blurred range of small hills on the horizon of the carpet. The girl. His picks something up from the floor, applies it to the girl's arm. Metal rasps on metal again as he hacksaws the cuffs from her wrist.

Horde stands over them, observing.

– Don't cut her.

– Like I said, be easier if we went through his wrist.

– No.

– He's not long for the world. Far gone as he is, he won't be coming back.

– No. He has a role to play, and a severed appendage will not suit.

– OK.

– I'll kill you if they hurt her, Dale.

Horde turns toward the other end of the room, where his wife was sitting when we came in.

– Something, dear?

– I'll kill you.

– I think it's safe to say that these gentlemen won't be harming our daughter in the least.

– Kill you.

Her words badly slurred.

– Have another drink, wife.

I watch the man with the hacksaw, the same one who had the stiletto. His movements are sharp and strong and he works the saw with an unnatural swiftness. My sense of smell has been dulled to near uselessness. I can't smell the man with the saw, but his movements give him away. He has the Vyrus. He could be a Rogue that Horde has somehow dug up, but he has a look I know. The expensive black suit, the conservative haircut, the carefully knotted tie, all say Coalition. One of Predo's enforcers on loan to Horde. The other has the beefy look of a stock bodyguard. One of Horde's own company men.

There's a little ping as the hacksaw parts the steel of the cuffs. The enforcer puts the saw aside, frees Amanda's wrist and starts to lift her from the floor. Horde puts a hand on his shoulder.

– I'll do that.

The enforcer and the goon stand and step out of the way, out of my view, as Horde kneels and tucks his arms under his daughter's back and legs and lifts her from the floor. Only his lower body is in focus for me now, but I can see the obscure shade of his head as he cradles the girl and puts his face close to hers.

– Home again, home again, my dear.

A glass shatters over by the couch. The smudge of Horde turns.

– Be careful, wife, you'll hurt yourself.

– What did you do to her?

– Gave her something to make her sleep, love. She was hysterical. She needs sleep after her ordeal. Imagine the trauma of being abducted by this filth.

– She wasn't.

He rocks the girl from side to side.

– Yes, love, she was. She was plucked from the streets by this man. This man who you then hired to find her.

– I?

– Strange coincidence that. Except that it was no coincidence.

Was it, love?

– Dale, what are you?