Every Last Drop

by Charlie Huston

  First door opens on a white-painted room. Layers of paint, thick on the stone, the floor marked by boot scuffs, dry maroon stains. Steel tables with blood gutters down their sides, running to drains at their feet. Steel trays filled with used needles, some bent, some broken. Meters of looped plastic hose.

  Down the hall.

  Another storeroom.

  Cardboard boxes filled with empty, paper-wrapped blood bags. Unused needles. Clean tubing. Gallons of bleach. Buckets of white paint. A dusty and broken autoclave, decades out of date.

  An incubator.

  The noise starts in my throat again. It’s harder to stop this time.

  The last door. Sounds are louder. Smells of feces and disinfectant and decay.

  My key doesn’t fit the lock. As I’m trying the keys from Low’s ring, the door is opened from within.

  —What the fuck, Low, it’s the key with the piece of tape on it.

  A scrappy kid with a Bronx accent.

  He looks at my jacket and helmet and the earphones and goggles now hanging from my neck.

  —What the fuck. You know your ass ain’t allowed down here. You want a piece, call down and we’ll send something up.

  I don’t see him anymore. I see the room behind him. I see the ranks of bunk beds. I see the skinny bodies filling the beds. I see skin waxed to albino paleness. I see a chemical pit at the back of the room that they squat over. I see bedsores and muscle atrophy. I hear their hisses and grunts and caws, their imitations of speech.

  The Bronx kid pokes me with his truncheon.

  —Motherfucker, time to go. You don’t get to window-shop, asshole. You fuck what we send up.

  I look at him.

  Something crosses his eyes. He looks down. Sees my bare feet.

  My hands are on the back of his head and my knee is pushing the bones of his nose back through his brain and I twist his neck and it breaks and I think I start crying.

  But it’s not why you think.

  It’s not why you think.

  It’s not why you think.

  I’m simply angry at myself for killing him so fast, so easy. I’d have liked to take my time.

  But in the whole universe there is not enough time. There are not enough minutes and seconds for what I’d like to do. For the things I could dream up if I had more time.

  The things I could do to this world to make it pay for being the way it is.

  I stare at the things that might have been people had they not been raised to slaughter. I look at the dead body I’m still holding. I drop it. There’s a sound when I drop it, metal on stone. I kneel and find the gun under the kid’s arm. I take it.

  This gun. I love this gun. There are so many wonderful things I can do with this gun. So many people I can kill.

  I turn and leave, eager to begin.

  I kill two more workers on the stairs, at a total cost of two bullets. Two bullets for two human lives. I laugh to think that something as tawdry as a human life should come at the cost of something so precious as a bullet.

  Climbing, I come to the second door I passed on my way down.

  I don’t need to go inside and look. I know what I’ll find.

  A key lets me in.

  And I find it.

  Another of Lament’s creations is guarding this room. She’s whippet fast and far more alert than the two I’ve already killed. Maybe it’s what she’s been charged to watch that makes her so present.

  I don’t care.

  She takes three of my bullets. And snaps off the long scalpel blade she sticks in my right armpit before she dies. If I were left-handed, the blade would be in my heart.

  Standing at the door of the room she guarded, I ask myself if I’ve seen enough.

  Tiny things.

  In my life I never think about them. Helpless, squirming, bundles of nothing but pure need. They have no place in my world.

  Why are they suddenly here?

  I turn as the steel door at the end of the hall opens, and I walk toward it, shooting, using the last of my bullets to kill the man in the black suit who is coming through the door.

  I have to finish him with the razor, the body armor beneath his jacket having stopped the first two bullets I hit him with.

  Groomed, manicured, fit.

  Enforcer.

  His gun is better than the one I took from the kid. I take it. I take the extra clips in the nylon pouches snapped to the back of his belt.

  A fold of papers sticks from his inner breast pocket. I look at them.

  Vouchers. Signed.

  Nearby, a cooler rests on the floor, waiting, a number written on its top in black Sharpie matches a number on a voucher. I open the cooler.

  Purple coils, thumb-thick, nestled in ice packs.

  I go up the stairs with my new favorite gun. Ignoring the last door, the one closest to the surface, having no need to see the commercial refrigerators I know are behind it, or what is inside them.

  Having no desire to be tempted.

  There’s a car outside the surface door, a low, black SUV. I open the passenger door and shoot the black-suited man behind the wheel. I take his gun, twin to the one I already have.

  On my way across the yard, my feet cut again and again by the sharp rocks under them, I shoot the drivers of three trucks. I shoot the men in the shed.

  I stand in the light and shoot the sky and the earth.

  Then I run, I tear myself going over the wall and the wire, and I fall into the water and I let myself sink to the bottom, bullets thrumming around me, leaving white trails of bubbles.

  On the bottom, clinging to the rusted-out shell of an oil drum, I open my mouth and let it fill and let the water run down my throat.

  Only when it hits my lungs and I start to choke and my hands let go of the drum and I thrash toward the surface do I know.

  It’s not time yet.

  Someone’s still waiting for me.

  —It is what he made us for.

  Menace drops a dusty packing blanket over my shoulders.

  —The final lie of Lament.

  He pokes the coals with his machete and drops another dry, broken plank from an abandoned pallet onto the fire.

  —We were baited with the promise of being a part of a crew.

  The plank catches fire and crackles and spits sparks and Menace shoves it deeper into the blaze.

  —Then, when he had prepared us, the secret was revealed. We were infected. Told we would be more than simple gangsters. We would be soldiers in a cause. Enforcers. Specially recruited and trained. Better than the others. Special. If we were worthy.

  He thrusts the blade through the handle of an old enameled coffeepot and lifts it from the fire.

  —And, of course, none of us was worthy.

  One of his boys hands him a chipped mug with World’s Greatest Dad painted on the side, framed by the stenciled outline of a football.

  —And one by one we were all sent away.

  He fills the cup and passes it to me.

  —So when I found myself, and escaped Lament, I followed a trail. Rumors and scents. And it led here.

  He puts the pot back in the fire and squats next to me.

  —Getting in was not difficult. I was, after all, exactly what they were expecting. Another of Lament’s products. A street child, strong and vicious. And with a regard for himself so low that he could never be expected to have regard for anyone else.

  The firelight reflects off his claws, burnishing them red and orange.

  —Once inside, I saw.

  He looks into the fire.

  —Lament’s creatures, we are meant as herdsmen. To fodder and tend the beasts. Milk them. See that they are bred outside the herd. To keep the line hearty. See the whelps nursed. In exchange, feed at our will.

  He closes his eyes.

  —Though I saw signs that even our appetite can be fed to surfeit.

  The fire has yet to warm me, the cold creek water deep in my bones. I drink some of the coffee and it scalds
my throat.

  —Where?

  Menace opens his eyes.

  —You know where, Joe Pitt. You know where they come from.

  He points at my eye.

  —You saw.

  He opens his hand.

  —And now.

  He rises.

  —Will you join us?

  His boys come closer, into the firelight, ringing him.

  —Will you stay with us, Joe Pitt? Will you file your teeth to bite out the throat of the world? Will you have claws to rake its hide?

  I set the cup next to the fire and shrug the blanket from my shoulders.

  —Where are my things?

  Menace comes close.

  —You are not the same. You cannot go back now.

  —Are you planning to keep me here?

  He shakes his head.

  —No.

  —Then where are my things?

  He looks to one of the boys, and my jacket and shirt and boots are dropped at my feet.

  Menace watches as I dress.

  —Wear the same clothes, they will not hide your new skin.

  I lace the boots.

  —There’s nothing new about me, kid. Nothing under the sun.

  One of the boys dumps a bucket of water over the fire and it hisses out.

  Menace stands in the rising steam and smoke.

  —You cannot go back.

  I pull on my jacket.

  —Yeah, you keep saying that, and watch me walk out of here, back to where I came from.

  He raises a hand, claws against the night.

  —You died in there, Joe Pitt. We all die in there. Go where you came from, go to your friends, but it will not be the man who left that they see. It will not be a man at all.

  I pull a smoke from my pocket.

  —Who ever said I got friends to know whether it’s me or not?

  I start across the glass-covered concrete plain where the Mungiki haunt, smoke trailing from my mouth.

  And it’s me who goes west.

  I am not changed.

  I am not.

  I have Predo’s money in my jacket. I use it when I get to Vernon, waving down a cab that cuts past the parking lot above the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel. The hack boxes the compass from Vernon to Jackson to Fiftieth to Eleventh, and we’re lined up, paying the toll, and underwater, traveling the exhaust-filled hole that will take me back.

  I lost one of the enforcers’ guns in English Kill, but the other rests in my pocket. I touch it.

  It’s good to have a gun again.

  —What the hell are you thinking?

  I make for the bar.

  —I’m thinking I need a drink.

  Sela follows me.

  —We go to all that trouble to get you out with no one seeing you, and you just come to the goddamn front door and start banging on it? You think Predo suddenly got tired of keeping an eye on us over the last few hours? You think he won’t want to know how you got out and where you went?

  I pour a drink in a glass then pour it down my throat.

  —It doesn’t matter.

  Amanda is still behind her desk, still holding the sheets of paper that were in her hand when I came through the door.

  —You haven’t been gone very long, Joe.

  I pick up the bottle again, start to pour it in the glass, realize what a waste of time that is, and pour it in me instead.

  —Thought you’d be happy. Thought you said there was a big hurry.

  She sets the paper down.

  —Well yeah, we’re in a hurry. But I mean.

  She gives a big shrug.

  —That was really fast.

  I look at the bourbon still in the bottle. Even if I drink it all at once, it’s not enough to get me drunk, not with the Vyrus cleaning my blood.

  —Fuck.

  —Something the matter?

  I take a drink.

  —More than the usual? Not that I know of.

  She flicks the edge of a paper.

  —I don’t want to rush you or anything, Joe, but I am kind of totally busy. I mean, if you have anything?

  I look at the rug. Swirling mandalas. Rust background. Gold and white. Curls of thumb-thick purple.

  I take another drink.

  —You’re right, Sela.

  She clears her throat.

  —Excuse me?

  I wave the bottle.

  —I fucked up coming in the front way. But.

  I take another drink.

  —Maybe Predo did pull off. That’s what I was thinking. Maybe he wants to give me room in here. He told me he would.

  —And?

  —Be good to know for sure if I’m wrong about that. Someone should take a look. See if his peepers are out there. Not seeing them won’t prove anything, but if they’re visible, be good to know for certain that they spotted me coming in.

  She doesn’t move.

  —What are you playing?

  —Go take a look, Sela.

  Sela looks at Amanda.

  —What?

  Amanda stands.

  —Joe’s right, go take a look, see whatever.

  —Bullshit.

  —Sela.

  —This is bullshit. What the hell are you playing at?

  Amanda comes around the desk and crosses to her lover.

  —Baby, I’m not playing at all.

  She points at the door.

  —I’m saying go downstairs and take a look outside.

  Sela’s mouth tightens.

  —Little girl, if you want to be finished with me, this is the fast track to getting there.

  Amanda raises herself on her toes and kisses Sela’s lower lip.

  —Big girl, I’m never gonna be finished with you.

  She lowers herself.

  —I just think you should go take a look.

  Sela looks at me, looks daggers. Looks sabers and spears.

  —She trusts you, Pitt. I know better.

  I wave the bottle.

  —So you’re a well-educated lady, go take a look like you’re told.

  She makes for me.

  Amanda gets in her way.

  —Baby, he’s working your nerves. He’s totally trying to get under your skin.

  Sela grits her teeth.

  —I know. He’s doing a good job of it.

  Amanda’s fingers tangle with Sela’s.

  —Except you’re way better than that.

  Sela pulls her fingers free.

  —No. No, I’m not.

  She goes to the door.

  I raise the bottle.

  —Sela.

  She doesn’t stop.

  —What?

  —Make it a long look around.

  She doesn’t bother to reply. She also doesn’t bother to come back across the room and kill me. Watching her slam out the door, I can’t help but think I got off easy on that one.

  I lift the bottle high, empty it in my mouth, and steel scrapes a nerve under my arm and I drop it, spilling the last of the bourbon.

  Amanda comes over and picks up the bottle.

  —Something bothering you, Joe?

  I stick my left hand inside my jacket and poke around in my right armpit.

  —I got a scalpel blade stuck in here that needs digging out.

  Amanda nods, goes through a door on the other side of the bar, snagging a bottle of scotch as she goes.

  —Come on then. I know this isn’t your usual flavor, but it should get you through, toughguy.

  She pushes the door open on a bathroom.

  —And while I’m cutting, you can tell me what you saw that you don’t think Sela can handle.

  Sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom behind the bar, my hand held behind my head so the girl can dig into my armpit with a long pair of tweezers, after cutting the wound back open with my straight razor, I take slugs from the bottle of scotch. Not that it does anything for the pain, but it helps to wash out the taste of creek water still in my mouth.

 
—OK, OK, don’t move.

  I grit my teeth.

  —I’m not moving.

  —So don’t breathe, OK? I can’t get a grip on it ’cause it’s slippery as hell.

  I stop breathing.

  She bites the tip of her tongue and yanks and pulls the scalpel blade free, along with a nice bit of my flesh.

  —Wow. That is nasty, Joe.

  I crane my neck to get a look under my arm.

  —Could have cut a little cleaner.

  She drops the blade and the tweezers in the sink, passes me a washcloth.

  —Put that under your arm.

  I put it under my arm, take another drink.

  Amanda stands at the basin, looking at the blood on the thin rubber gloves she took from a first-aid kit and rolled onto her hands before slicing me open.

  —Cord blood.

  I drink some more.

  She peels the gloves off.

  I point at her bare hands.

  —Be careful.

  She frowns.

  —It’s dead, Joe. I mean, how many times do you have to be told? The Vyrus dies outside its host. It’s a pussy bug.

  She runs water over the bloody steel in the sink.

  —The umbilicals you saw in that cooler. The Coalition must want the cord blood.

  I watch the blood swirl, turn pink in the water, and run down the drain.

  She stares at her reflection in the mirror over the sink.

  —Amazing stuff, cord blood. Very rich in stem cells. Not like bone marrow rich, but really useful stuff. I mean, as soon as you start thinking about the Vyrus, really thinking about it and what it does, right away you have to start thinking about white blood cells. I mean, blood cells in general, because you know it can’t have too much to do with plasma. And you don’t think too much about platelets, either. I mean, sure, you can get caught up in them if you want to study clotting factors and stuff.

  She turns and takes the cloth from under my arm.

  The bleeding has stopped, the wound sealed.

  —But that’s not the essence of the Vyrus.

  She squeezes the cloth, and my blood drips into the sink.

  —The essence is that it consumes. It attacks. So it makes sense, I mean, this is so obvious, but it makes sense that it goes after white blood cells. Not just to attack them before they attack it, but to invade them. Make them do what it wants them to do. I mean, the T cell counts in infected blood is off the chart, especially cytotoxic Ts. Memory T cells, also out of whack. But suppressor Ts, like, barely there. Which means the cytotoxic Ts, the ones that fight invaders, should be going berserk and fighting the whole body. Killing everything. But they don’t.