Half-Resurrection Blues

by Daniel José Older

  I want to find the thing, but my vision’s blurred and I’m having trouble walking a straight line. The basement is what you would expect: a long dank room, all cluttered with dust-covered furniture. Two of the four overheads are busted and the two left are uncovered; sharp shadows clash with sudden fits of brightness. The ngk could be anywhere—all I can do is stumble toward wherever the horrible is more horrible. Hopefully, Moishe won’t decide I’m nuts and haul me out of there first. Also, hopefully, I won’t drop dead in the thick of it.

  I make my way through a narrow aisle, squeeze my body between an old file cabinet and some wooden chairs, and then the screeching-nausea-death feeling stops altogether again. Which I suppose is good—my body is certainly grateful—but I don’t know how I’ll find the thing without my rapidly decomposing soul to use as a compass.

  “Mr. Delacruz.” It sounds like he’s been saying it for a long time. He’s not pleased. I can almost hear his salesman’s need to be nice clash against his irritation that this particular customer is stumbling around the basement in a deathlike frenzy. “You may need medical attention. And, either way, we should really leave this basement, okay? Come.”

  I would like to. I really would. I’ve just about had it with this wild-ngk chase, and I don’t like pushing Mr. Moishe’s kindness further than necessary. But I also have to see this thing. I need to confirm, with my own eyes, that there is in fact a second ngk here. I turn toward Moishe, and I’m about to spit out some bullshit explanation, when something, something that I was absolutely sure was just a piece of furniture, detaches itself from the shadows in front of me. I don’t have time to unsheathe my blade. I barely catch my breath before the thing bursts past me, rushing toward where Moishe stands on the stairwell with his mouth open.

  He can see it. The thought flashes through my mind as I watch the Hasid hurl his massive frame over the banister and clutter into the shadows. The thing moves too fast to make it out. It’s just a pale flash of something vaguely humanoid with long black hair, definitely upright but somehow hunched over, and then it’s up the stairs and gone. Moishe yells a barrage of what I have to assume are the vilest of Yiddish curse words. It’s enough to let me know he’s alive and relatively unhurt, so I make for the stairs. Maybe I can at least get a glimpse of the thing. I might’ve made it, too, if the damn ngk’s screeching didn’t start searing through me just as I was lunging toward the doorway. I’m caught off guard this time and collapse on the steps in a heap.

  Things get dim. Those stupid Cheerio-shaped bubbles float across my view of the open door in front of me. For a second, I think I’m gonna make a comeback. The ngk’s screech still shreds from inside, but I’m strong. I’m trained for this. I’m—

  CHAPTER NINE

  Someone is wailing. It’s an intense, reverberating howl, then a yelp. It surges out from just above me.

  I’m lying on my back. There’s a slightly chubby Latino guy looking down at me. He’s holding a metal scythelike tool a little closer to my face than I’m really comfortable with. “Oh!” he says when I open my eyes. I wrap one hand around the arm holding the scythe and the guy gets the point and puts it down. He slides two fingers against my neck and frowns. Then we hit a bump and the guy cascades forward, grabbing something for support at the last minute before he utterly crushes whatever’s left of me. He settles back in and takes my pulse again. “You’re . . .”

  “What’s the deal, Victor?” someone yells from behind him. The driver. We hit another bump. Victor’s face disappears for a second, and I just see the plain gray ambulance ceiling. There’s a clear bag of fluid dangling from it that’s probably attached to me somehow. I try to shake the bleariness out of my head, but it turns out I’m strapped down hard to something.

  This can go nowhere good.

  “I have to go.” I rip the taped contraption from my forehead and pull myself upright, straining against all the crap that’s holding me down.

  “No!” Victor yells, maneuvering around the stretcher and trying to push me back down. “You shouldn’t even be alive, man!”

  “Well, I am.” I undo another strap.

  “You have no pulse! How is that even possible?”

  This is exactly why I won’t be going to no hospital. I cannot abide by all these ridiculous questions. Anyway, I have no answers. It just is what it is. “I have to go,” I say again, putting a little growl into it this time. Victor sits down on the bench and just looks at me. The driver lets out a few yelps of the siren and keeps barreling down the street.

  “What . . . the fuck . . .” Victor says. It’s not a question, just a general observation.

  I shake my head, sit up all the way. “I don’t know, Victor. But I won’t be accompanying you to the hospital, so you can tell your friend to pull this deathmobile over and I’ll be on my merry way, thank you very much.”

  Victor’s having a lot of thoughts right now. They’re tangled and confused, a briar patch of curse words and years of street experience coming loose in his mind. “Can I just . . . ?” He reaches out to take my pulse one more time, and I let him, if nothing else because I’m still woozy and he seems like a decent guy.

  “It’s there,” I say. “Just very slow.”

  He nods, staring at me.

  “But look, I’m okay. Okay? You want me to sign something?”

  He does, but he can’t find the words to express that, so instead he shakes head slowly and then, without taking his eyes off me, says: “Rudy, pull over.”

  “Huh?” The siren stops wailing.

  “Pull. The fuck. Over. Rudy.”

  Rudy swerves the ambulance to the side of the road and slows to a halt, mumbling a few curses along the way. Victor and I hop out, and Victor immediately puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. He could learn a thing or two from Baba Eddie about appreciating his vices. I guess I need to get my bearings, because instead of running off, I just stand there next to him. Then dizziness sweeps over me, so I sit my ass down on the bumper of the ambulance and light a Malagueña.

  “Five-seven William,” Victor says into his radio. After a scratchy reply, he spits out some numbers that I assume mean their patient went AWOL and then sits on the bumper next to me. It’s surprisingly peaceful here, after the madness of the basement and then the rush of the ambulance.

  “The Jewish guy called?” I say after a few minutes of quiet smoking.

  “Mm-hmm. Said you collapsed. That’s why we hadta tape you to that backboard, in case you broke your neck or something.”

  “Right.”

  “But basically”—he takes a drag and lets it out—“you were dead. You had no pulse. You were unresponsive. I was about to put a tube in you that would not have been pleasant to wake up with.”

  “That was what that blade was for that you were poking at my face?”

  Victor grunts an affirmative.

  “I see.” It’s turned into an unseasonably warm afternoon, and I suddenly remember I’d been planning to go to the Red Edge to see about Sasha tonight. Also, I have to let Riley know we’re dealing with more than just one ngk, that something foul is lurking.

  I stand up.

  “Wait,” Victor says. “What are you?”

  I shake my head.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s hard to explain. But I don’t do hospitals. Too many stupid questions.”

  Victor frowns.

  “I mean, they’re not stupid. But you know. I don’t have answers.”

  He nods like he understands, which is endearing even though he obviously has no clue what’s going on. He stands up and shuffles through his pockets for a moment before handing me a business card. “Take this. My girlfriend, Jenny, does natural healing. You know, herbal crap and all that. Doesn’t stand up too strong when you’re in cardiac arrest, but she’s pretty good at what she does.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t really know what the hell he’s talking about, but he seems genuinely concerned. I pocket the card, nod at Victor, and tru
dge off to find Riley.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There’s what?” Dro doesn’t look too good. He’s the guy who’s always got that unshakable thing about him—pretty much glides on through whatever shit may come. He must still be shook from the ngk, because the fact that he can raise his voice above a calming whisper is a novelty to us. “Get me another drink.”

  I signal Quiñones, the surly one-eyed bartender at Burgundy, and he places three more shots of rum in front of me. We exchange a nod that might mean all is understood and might mean he thinks I’m out of my fucking mind. Doesn’t matter either way. I put one down my throat and place the other two in front of the empty seats on either side of me for Riley and Dro to sip.

  “The way I see it,” I say as the alcohol runs burning circles through my bloodstream, “it’s still not an infestation. We can’t panic yet. I mean, sounds like these guys do show up here and there and it still doesn’t wind up as a full hive of them.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dro says. He’s straining the way some drunks do when they’re convinced no one will ever grasp the simplest possible concepts. “The shit I’ve been reading . . . The ngks don’t just precipitate disaster: they are disaster. There was this plague, one of those nasty European ones back in the fifteen-whatevers, right?”

  “Mad meticulous with your details, huh, Dro?”

  Dro plows past Riley’s comment without noticing. “The numbers of little people sightings right before and in the early days of the outbreak were startling. Even this local pastor commented on it in one of his journals. And then I started looking . . .” He waves his hands and widens his eyes to dramatize “looking.” “It wasn’t the only time. There was another one, Amsterdam, I think, and it was the same thing: people see these strange little men and then horrible Black Death shit happens. Bubonic and whatnot.”

  “Brooklyn’s full of strange little men,” I point out. “But ain’t nobody gone bubonic yet.”

  Dro narrows his eyes at me. “You know what I—”

  “Look.” I cut him off before he can go into another rant. “I’m just saying, it’s not like every time an ngk shows up, shit goes haywire.” I say it, but his disorganized little presentation has given me something to think about. “Anyway, what I’m more worried about is whatever that thing was that was down there with us.”

  “You didn’t get a good look at it?” Riley asks. He’s been pretty quiet this whole time, mostly scowling and grunting as I relayed the past few hours to them.

  “It was fast and caught me off guard. Plus the basement was pretty dim.”

  “Dead or alive?” Dro asks.

  I’ve been tussling with this one since it happened and haven’t come up with a good answer. And I’m the one who’s supposed to know these things. “I’m not totally sure.” Riley grunts irritably, and I ignore him. “The Realtor saw it, so either he’s got the Vision, or the thing’s alive.”

  “Or the third possibility,” Riley says.

  I get all cold and uncomfortable. I hadn’t wanted to think about that possibility, so I hadn’t. But I knew it’d come up one way or the other.

  “That it’s a Carlos?” Dro says unhelpfully. Riley nods.

  “I don’t think . . . I mean . . .” Words are not my friend right at this moment. I want to express that that’s probably not the case, even though it very well might be the case. Instead I just shut the fuck up and order another shot of rum.

  “It’s a possibility we need to explore,” Riley says. “Especially considering you just bagged a halfie on New Year’s.” I can’t stand that he’s being so professional and quiet right now; it’s really bugging me. “Might be related.” He’s not even bothering with his shot.

  “Fuck,” Dro says. He’s bothering plenty with his shot, and I’m a little worried some of the less completely demolished drunks will start to notice.

  “Either way,” I point out, “there’s no need to get all shook.”

  “Yeah,” Dro says as if I were talking about someone else. “True.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Thing is, I dress pretty slick. Comes naturally to me, actually. I like the way the crease in my pants feels, the certain swagger that goes with knowing everything fits just right, the perfect puzzle. All that. No matter what kinda supernatural fuckshit is going on, I take my time getting dressed in the morning. Not to the point of obsessing over it all, mind you, certainly not in any kind of teenybopper way at all. But I relish sliding each button into place, feeling the whole package that is me come together.

  Tonight I take special pleasure in it. I’m a little extra slick from the three rum shots taken straight to the head. A sultry rumba blazes from my little stereo. My shoes are shiny; my hat fits just right. Each element complements the other, and when I hit the street, the weirdly warm end-of-winter wind seems to carry my dapper ass along down the block. When you come dressed correct, the whole world moves with you on whatever divine mission you set out on, even if that mission is making time with some fine forbidden piece of ass that you should really know better than to mess with.

  The Red Edge is a classy spot. True to its name, the inside is all varying shades of dark crimson; it’s mostly candlelit and full of long, flowing curtains and surly bar maidens. Fortunately, David’s not here—probably will never come back again, now that I think about it. I strut in feeling good, great actually, and there’s Sasha, perched like a sad and gorgeous little bird at a table in the corner. I order a rum and Coke and a red wine and sit at her table, ignoring the little rumbling of uncertainty in my stomach.

  She looks down at the wine and then up at me. She’s more beautiful than she was in the picture. The smile has been replaced with a pout, and a miasma of sorrow is on her like a fancy perfume. It stays there for about two seconds after we make eye contact, and then there’s nothing, and I remember: she’s like me. She immediately knows what I am. And she knows I can see her, see all the spinning satellites of her fears and pleasures dance through the air. And what’s more, she can see me and mine.

  For half a beat, I trace the tangled web that stretched between us before we even met—the one that begins and ends with me murdering her brother. Then I come to my senses and suck it all back inside me and it’s gone.

  I search her eyes, hopefully not with the frenzy I feel, to see what she has seen, but she gives me nothing. Or perhaps that glow that I want to drink into me and succumb to has blurred my senses. Either way, the next thing that happens is we both smile. It’s a true smile, an admission of the explosive awkwardness that just passed between us, and it makes me happy in a way I’m not even sure what to do with. The bar spins around us: bad nights and mediocre nights and epic life-changing nights—they all play out like tiny television shows, sending their scattered bursts of light into the atmosphere.

  I could give a fuck.

  This woman, this woman, is looking back at me and truly seeing me. Even if it is in a way that requires both of us to put up all of our guards and retreat into our innermost sanctums—what a feeling: to be seen. Acknowledged. Finally, the pulsing between us settles into a more manageable kind of awkward, and she takes a sip of her wine and says, “Mmmm, why, thank you, sir.”

  I raise an eyebrow in a bid to look dashing and nod. “It is my pleasure.”

  I want to tell her everything.

  I want to swash it all onto the table and let it do what it does, all the unruly, troubling information, because I can’t bear the thought of holding on to it for another second. But I also can’t bear the thought of this moment right here mutating into some horror show. I can’t. There will be trouble ahead; this is certain. But I want this right now to be what it is: two people find each other in a crowded room, in a crowded world, and connect.

  I let the moment pass, allow the confession to die on my tongue, and then I smile at her.

  Sasha rests her chin on one hand and says, very slowly, like she’s weighing each word as it comes: “Maybe . . . we should agree . . . not to . . . look to
o deep . . . for now?”

  Yes. I chose correctly. This is not the time. Plus, she clearly has her own secrets to keep, which gives me some sense of balance at least. I nod. “Agreed.”

  Another silence follows. It’s one I could just sit and simmer in for days. A warm glow may or may not be emanating from our table, and I wonder if other people will start to notice. She’s wearing a loose red top, one of those amoebaesque female fashion thingies that somehow hangs just right, revealing just enough but never enough. Seems to flow with her movements—a mostly solid, teasing little cloud more than an article of clothing. Her skin is a few shades darker than her brother’s with only the slightest hint of gray. Her mouth starts small, when she’d had it squeezed into the mourning pout, but when she smiles, the damn thing expands all the way across her face and looms large like the moon. Her black hair is pulled back beneath a headband and then explodes out and down to her bare shoulders in twirly strands. A blue necklace wraps around her slender neck and dangles between her breasts. Her breasts. The top slopes peek out from behind her swirling shirt, and I imagine them bouncing in front of my face while she rides me.

  “Are you looking at my breasts, sir?”

  I look up at her. She’s smiling. “I was, yeah. Were you looking at mine?”

  “No!”

  “Because you can if you want to.” She laughs and swats me off. It’s stupid, really, and I’m pretty terrible at flirting, but somehow, it doesn’t matter. We’re flowing along like two leaves in a river. It’s a corny river, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to be here and that she’s my other leaf. The twisted universe has conspired to give me this moment and this night and those eyes looking back at mine, all amid the hurricane of infestations and betrayals and possibly imminent doom, and I will take what’s mine. I’ll be Baba Eddie and this’ll be my death stick, and I’ll milk it for every sweet, lethal drag.