Immortality Is the Suck
Page 13
Yeah. All the time, it seemed. “I'm going to try to climb the hill from
Marengo street,” I told him. “Wait here for me.”
I jogged down the stairs to the street, suddenly very aware of my loping
stride, my “wolflike” movements. My senses were unnaturally tuned. Especially
my sense of smell. I could smell the exhaust raining down from the freeway,
the burning rubber scent from so many EMT vehicles. I slowed to a hump-
shouldered, shambling walk as I passed the unmarked vehicle. Hoping to look
like just another random homeless man. Then I picked up speed, jogged left at
the corner and climbed the Hurricane fence, jumping into the mass of fire-
retardant coated vines holding the slope in place.
I could easily climb a fence and jump the ten feet to the ground with
grace. Fact number three hundred and whatever the fuck. It was starting to
seem almost natural. Well, not natural, but something I presumed upon.
From there, I hopped up onto the cement overhang and swung open the
glass doors leading to the front desk. About four security cameras swiveled to
record my entry. Well, there was nothing I could do about those, I reasoned,
but I could avoid the guard who seemed absorbed in the sports pages as I
zipped by him and around the corner. Unnaturally fast and quiet. Adrenaline
pumping, hearing and sight ramped up so that I could almost feel the click of
digital clocks, the beep, beep of lab equipment, the slight crinkle of the guard's
fingers as he held up the newspaper.
I waited, heard nothing to indicate he'd noticed my passage, then slid
down the first flight of stairs to the lower level. Security cameras noted my
passage down the stairwell. From there, I entered the elevator, taking it
straight down to the subbasement where the new intakes were held. It looked
as it had the night I'd died, except the only corpse was Freeway's.
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And he looked exactly as he had on the floor of the shed in Hollenbeck.
Right down to the big black holes in his neck. I shook him and whispered,
“Freeway, 'mano. Wake up.”
He didn't move. I wondered if there was some trick to this. Of course I'd
been there when I'd woken, but I didn't know what had transpired beforehand.
For lack of any better ideas, I tried a little CPR, pressing my mouth to
Freeway's clammy cold lips and recoiling in disgust at the fetid air that exhaled
from his mouth when I paused.
Maybe he needed some blood?
I found one of the slim metal tools the coroner used and pricked my
thumb. Only one blob of blood fell out before the cut closed again, but I
managed to get that blob to fall on Freeway's open mouth. It trickled over his
lip and part of it slid down his chin but nothing happened.
Repelled by the idea, but having none better, I pressed my mouth to
Freeway's again.
He stirred under my hand. His lips opened, his chest heaved upward. One
of his hands moved. Then, all at once, he was awake, spitting and sputtering
and shoving me away violently, yelling, “Puta, you fucking marcena, what the
fuck you trying to fuck me?” He looked down at his naked body and cursed
again, struggling to get off the table and away from me.
“Freeway! Hold on, amigo. I brought you back from the dead.”
That stopped him. He swayed, as if feeling that massive headache that I
had also felt. Freeway's head swiveled slowly as he took in his surroundings.
Then he sat his scrawny ass down on what must have been the freezing cold
cement and covered his face.
“Mi dios. Me maldicen al infierno.” He rubbed at his mouth and spat. “You
took advantage of me, maldita puta, Goddamn you.”
“No I didn't.”
“It's a fucking sin. Swear you didn't fuck me,” he said. “Swear, Adam.”
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This from a man who I knew for a fact had killed at least one man in cold
blood. “I'd rather fuck a pig,” I informed him curtly.
“You kissed me.”
“Trust me, 'mano. I did not kiss you.”
He sighed miserably and, after a time, pulled himself up to standing
again. “I'm fucking naked. Stop looking at me.”
“I wish I could. There's clothes in the next room.”
We found what we needed and suited him up.
“Parezco un grifo.”
“They probably came off a drug addict.” I shrugged. I handed him a pair of
sneakers. “Here.”
The hollow sound of steps in the hallway; Freeway and I both froze.
Someone outside tried the handle of the room we were in, and Freeway and I
both dived for cover.
The door opened a crack. “I can't look at him.” I'd swear that whisper was
Betsy's.
“Go on.” A man's voice. Also whispering.
Some hissed arguing and then the silhouettes of three figures entering the
room. I glanced over at Freeway. I'd been able to get behind a heavy tall
refrigerated unit, but he huddled under a table. If anyone came around the
counters, they'd clearly see him. I held up both of my hands and pointed my
thumbs in two opposite directions. East and west. He nodded and readied
himself.
I found a glass beaker and threw it to my left, away from Freeway's hiding
spot.
Betsy, Caballo, and a man I didn't recognize converged on the sound of
the crash. Freeway ran to the right, around the counter from the other side and
was at the doorway before they'd seen him.
“Hey!” Caballo pointed.
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They ran back toward the door and gave chase, Betsy wailing
“Freeeeeewayyy…” loud enough to wake the dead, or any bored security guards
lounging about waiting for something living to chase.
Dammit.
I made it to the door and was three feet out when somebody tripped me. I
literally flew through the air and crashed into the wall opposite. I kept my feet
moving and came up from the fall, running full tilt. I didn't even take the time
to look behind and see who might be chasing me, but reached the fire stairs in
three long strides and almost knocked the door off its hinges bursting through
it.
Up the stairs, hand over hand and then leaping the corners. Feet barely
touching the steps as I went, I kept going to the third floor, then came out a
door onto the roof and ran for the northernmost corner. On the ground below I
saw a black-and-white uni, its lights on and cycling. Damn, somebody must
have heard something and tripped an alarm. I backpedaled and saw Caballo's
head emerge through the roof door. So I ran for the opposite corner of the roof.
Twenty yards away, across a six-foot-wide expanse of space dropping to sheer
concrete, another building with fire escape stairs zigzagging down its sides. I
barely considered the consequences of my instinct, but hit the asphalt harder,
coiled all of my muscles, and sprang off the lip of the roof.
I landed on a stair with such momentum I smashed into the brick surface
of the building itself. Apparently my jump had contained an element of overkill.
I'd barely regained my senses and started ascending the stairs, when Cabal
lo
landed nimbly on the stairs below as well. He was in full “monster” face. Green
eyes like a wolf's. Pointed teeth and everything. He hissed.
He pursued me the six stories to the roof, which I ran across, thinking I
could reach the Children's Hospital parking garage, where Albert waited, from
the roof. Unfortunately, that was when I heard his bike below. He'd pulled into
the coroner's parking lot. His round bald head tipped back to gape at Caballo
and me chasing across the rooftops.
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Fuck. I couldn't get back to the stairs, so when I reached the edge, I
jumped for the nearest safe surface and landed on a building four stories lower.
At one point in my descent I actually had the eerie sense of floating. Then my
feet hit the tar paper roof and I rolled hard, only stopping when my body hit the
concrete lip of the roof.
Alarms were going off all around us now. A black-and-white and what
looked like a white coroner's vehicle circled Albert who, as I watched, crashed
his bike down a narrow sidewalk, hung a left, and went screaming past
everyone, losing himself behind the thrift store in front of the main building
and into the scant traffic on Mission Boulevard.
Now that my ride was gone, I needed to find cover.
Hanging from the lip of the building, I kicked and bashed window glass
with a booted foot, then pitched myself in through the opening and ran across
a dark office at full tilt. Running smack into a closed and locked door.
A closed and locked metal door, as it happened, and I reeled back. I'd
barely registered what was happening when a hard knee landed in my back
and I did a belly flop onto linoleum. Unbelievably strong hands held my head
by both ears. I grabbed the wrists attached to those hands and tried to break
free. I bucked. I kicked with both feet. The man was immobile on top of me.
Like a boulder.
“Why shouldn't I kill you, cop?” Caballo's voice said.
“Those bastards you're running with would sooner kill you than not. I
know people. I can help you.”
His hands tightened on my jaw. “Why would you do that?”
“I need blood,” I said. “I think you know where I can get it.”
I could hear us both, breathing hard from exertion, and maybe something
else. His erection pushed into my vertebrae. I'd not noticed before, but I was
hard too.
“And you're kinda hot,” I said.
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A shaky laugh. Caballo's hands slid around to my face, his callused
fingers touching my lips.
I licked a finger.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can think of a couple reasons.”
Caballo let go of my head and jumped up, grabbing one of my hands and
bringing me with him. We swayed there for a minute, staring at each other.
From a distance we could hear Betsy screaming and a man's voice yelling.
Then, unmistakably and deafening, an alarm.
“Get the fuck out of here,” said Caballo.
“What do you want with Freeway?” I asked him. “Where do you get your
blood?”
He grinned, shaking his head and covering his lips with one long finger.
“You stay and they'll dust you,” he said.
“Dust?”
Caballo slid across the floor and kicked the knob on the metal door, hard.
The knob flew off and across the floor like it had been shot, the door reverbed
then, slowly, swung open.
“Look it up, man,” said Caballo. And he ran. I don't know which way he
went after that because in the two seconds it took me to get to the door, he had
completely disappeared. The elevator door pinged, which meant this building's
alarms were probably part of the din I was hearing, so I ran opposite their
direction. At the end of the hall, though, instead of the stairs I saw that I was
only two stories up and on a level with the parking garage in which I'd left
Albert. So I kicked out the window and, a running jump and a leap, I was
rolling across the cement garage. I leaped to my feet, running, coming around a
corner in time to see someone beating the hell out of Albert. His Harley lay on
its side and he was screaming.
I ran up and grabbed the man who was attacking him, who, of course,
was the unknown vampire that I'd seen with Caballo and Betsy. I pulled him
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back by the shoulder. He turned on me as fast as an animal might, but I was
souped up and in the zone and fast also. I put my fist right in the middle of
that ugly, evil dead visage and felt his teeth tear my knuckles as he went down.
“C'mon.” Bloodied and terrified, Albert tried to lift his chopper. I helped
him before the vamp had regained his feet. We sped down a level and through
the “out” area, once again skirting the metal spikes, just in time to hear the
squeal of wheels traveling at high speed and coming toward us.
A black Hummer lurched and pitched and sped up onto the sidewalk on
which we stood. Albert gunned his engine and I leaped aboard as he took off,
wheels skating crazily on the pavement before he regained control. I looked
back and saw them pick up their fallen comrade.
“Albert, we have to follow them!” I screamed in his ear.
He spewed forth a string of words in return. Luckily, all I could hear was
“… loca…” but he made the wide arc in the middle of the four-lane road and
headed back toward the Hummer, which had also turned and was heading
straight toward the on-ramp.
This would be easy, I figured. The maximum speed a Hummer can reach
is around ninety mph. Albert could get his old chopper over a hundred easily.
“Stay with them!” I yelled in his ear as he followed them onto the 110.
It wasn't hard. Whoever was driving the Hummer decided to take it into
the diamond lane, barely reaching speeds that would keep it ahead of the
Mercedes Sportsters bearing down on it. I memorized the license plate number
while Albert cruised in a spot near the rear fender where we could clearly see
Betsy's face in the extended mirrors on the passenger side, watching us.
And then the damned CHP's got us in their sights.
Albert hunched over and went for it, and I grabbed him around the waist
as we leaned into each long curve, leaving the Hummer far behind us. At the
101 interchange, Albert darted across sparse oncoming traffic, rode the
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shoulder for fifty feet, went down the on-ramp, crossed traffic illegally again,
and lost us in the herd of empty buses in the immense Metro bus yard.
We heard the sirens screaming as they passed our corner and went on.
We'd lost the cops, but also the Hummer. Albert slid his bike in a space
between two buses and killed the engine.
“They got the blood,” I wailed.
“Blood?” Albert kicked the stand down and pushed me off his bike.
Searching his pockets with shaking hands and bringing out a fat splif. “Did you
say blood?”
“Fuck. Never mind.” I staggered a few feet and sat on the fat bumper of a
double-deck bus.
“No, 'mano, I think you need to explain.” Albert's hand
was shaking too
much to light his joint. He flipped the lighter closed and pocketed it. “I saw you
jumping buildings, man. I saw your face and that other asshole like a
monster's. I didn't even know you.”
“Shit's been happening,” I said. “I don't know myself. But I thought
Freeway could explain a few things.”
“And which one was he?”
“The dead guy.” I waved my hand. All I could think about was the lost
blood. The cravings were already starting to burn. Like an incipient ulcer in the
pit of my belly. Albert's expression was noteworthy, though, and I reconsidered
my last statement. “The guy I was going to meet at the morgue,” I said. “Those
bastards kidnapped him. Did you see anything?”
“No, 'mano. I just saw you flying through the air like a squirrel. You looked
like Rocky and Bullwinkle, man.”
Not the most macho image I could think of. “I still need to find them,” I
said. The craving in my belly was spreading through my body. It felt like low
blood sugar, with a testosterone kick to it. Like, you ever feel willing to kill for
chocolate? Like that. I held out my hand toward Albert. “Gimme your phone.”
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With a dark look, Albert dug out his cell phone and passed it over. I
punched in the number for Peter's office line.
“What?” Peter hasn't the most gracious phone manner. Comes from
spending your life talking to shitbags.
“I need you to run a set of plates for me,” I said.
A pause. “Where'd you see these plates?”
“On a fucking rerun of Miami Vice, Peter. Just take down the number?” I
rattled it off.
“Adam, you are still at the condo, right?”
“I'll call you,” I said. And disconnected, tossed the phone back to Albert.
“You'd better block that last number,” I told him.
“Was that a cop? You asshole, did you just call a cop on my Blackberry?”
“I'll buy you a new one,” I said. “Albert, had you heard what happened to
Paolo Spence?”
Albert was trying to light his spliff again. “I might have. He's in Mexican
prison, sí?”