Pain has a home inside my body.
A grunt, and tumble of clumsy footsteps as Marilee stumbles into view clawing at her husband's face. The enforcer materializes, pulls her away and throws her to the floor. Horde nods as if she is reacting as he knew she would, reacting childishly to his story.
—Turn her over.
The enforcer flips Marilee to her stomach as Horde sets his daughter gently in a chair.
—Bare her neck.
The enforcer sweeps Marilee's hair from the back of her neck and pulls the collar of her blouse down. Horde steps out of view, and then back, now holding a small black cube with rounded corners. He kneels next to his wife and holds the cube in front of her face. It splits opens like a jewelry case. He shows her the contents.
—I finished.
She moans. He takes something white and pink from the case.
—I've even tried it out already.
He sets the case aside.
—Twice.
He holds the white and pink object, pinched between his thumb and middle finger.
—First on Whitney. Which was, naturally, somewhat by design. He shifts the white and pink object to the palm of his hand, letting it rest there.
—And later, in a spontaneous moment, on a downtown ragamuffin.
The white and pink object springs open slightly, like a clamshell.
—And now it is time for another trial. With a considerably larger dose I think.
He lifts the white and pink object to his face, opens his mouth wide and slides it inside. He bites down hard on the dentures, setting them in place. Marilee begins to thrash her head from side to side.
—Hold her still.
The enforcer pins Marilee's head to the floor. Horde leans over the back of his wife's neck, his mouth stretched open, muscles I and tendons popping from his own neck, and he bites her.
I have found my carrier. But it is too late to do anything about it. I am pain. And a black shroud drops mercifully over my life.
I am dead.
And so I am free to remember my life.
I remember being small and helpless in the house of my parents. How they took advantage of that helplessness, my mother and father. Hands in dark rooms, probing me. Belts like whips, lashing me.
I remember the marks on my body that would be healed years later when the Vyrus took up residence and cleaned house. The marks discovered by sympathetic schoolteachers.
I remember my mother and father struggling in the arms of the police. The last memory of them. And then the others.
New sets of parents, none for more than a year, none a particular improvement over biology. And I remember the street where I taught other children the lessons I had learned at home. The grasping hands, the lash. I remember seeing fear in someone else's eyes, and that it made me feel larger.
I remember running the streets, warlord of my tiny tribe. And then being found and being poisoned. And fear and helplessness returned. And then Terry and the Society and something new. A reason. And years of work and learning, as I am taught how to be in the world. Then the discovery that I have become Terry's favorite tool. His sharpest instrument when it is time to apply fear. When it is time for the lash. Then not wanting any longer to be the whip.
I remember being alone and doing the job.
The Coalition and the Society and their dirty little errands. The job that is just survival. And then Evie. And I remember her whispering to me in the dark of my room while the day was bright outside, telling me what she felt. And having nothing to say to her in return except lies about who and what I am, but telling them all the same. To keep from being alone. And then the years since, years close to the edge. Balancing between Evie and the job. Every step closer to the edge of ... something. I remember Whitney Vale. The almost human look in her eyes when I took the knife from her, the cough when the blade went in. And Leprosy, the bite in the back of his neck reeking of rotting. And the picture of the girl, alone somewhere, helpless. And her mother's breast pressed against me as she kissed the edge of my mouth. And Philip babbling over Dobbs's strangled corpse. And Daniel asking for my help as Jorge vomited his life into the room. And Dale Edward Horde, arrogant and cruel, experienced in the use of the hands and the lash. And Amanda's hand chained to mine, close by one another, covered by cloth. And the scouring acid in my veins. And a smell that isn't there, describing something that cannot exist. And the basement of the school, scene of a crime no one has defined, but one I can too easily imagine.
And screaming. People screaming. Someone I know screaming.
And I am not dead.
Not dead.
But not alive.
The basement of the school, illuminated by a hissing camp lantern.
Marilee is screaming. She has a reason to.
—Use the condom.
—I don't like 'em.
—I gave it to you for a reason. Use it.
—Fucking. Can't feel anything.
—Neither will you leave any traces of your semen.
—OK.
—We can afford a certain level of contradiction in the evidence we leave behind, but let us not bow to hubris and become, dare I say it under the circumstances, cocky.
—OK, OK.
Horde's goon opens the foil packet. He's kneeling next to Marilee, his pants and drawers pushed down his thighs, struggling to roll the rubber onto his semi-hard penis. Marilee is on her stomach, skirt torn half off, panties around her ankles. She's bound and gagged and drugged, but the bacteria is running in her now and her screams pierce the room as she struggles against the belt looped around her wrists.
I am spilled against a pile of junked desks. Thrown here to be dealt with soon enough. When Horde is done with his wife and daughter.
He's naked, standing above the sheet of cardboard where I smelled the residue of his rape of Whitney Vale, his rape of the dead. His daughter sleeps peacefully at his feet. Her shoes and socks removed and set neatly to the side. He watches the goon put on the condom, tug the panties from Marilee's ankles and position himself between her legs.
—Not yet.
The goon looks at him, dick in hand.
—What?
—Wait. Turn her head. I'd like for her to see this. And keep your hand away from her teeth.
The goon shakes his head, grabs a fistful of Marilee's hair and twists her face toward her husband. Horde is roped with lean muscle and pelted with graying hair. He squats next to Amanda, his penis sharply erect between his knees, and he begins to undo the button and zipper of her jeans.
—Self-control is a virtue. I always told you that, wife. With every one of your infidelities I would remind you that your inability to control your appetites was a weakness for which you would eventually pay.
He opens his daughter's fly slowly, then butterflies it and pauses, gazing at the triangle of white cotton beneath.
—Giving in to one's passions on a constant basis weakens the individual, as well as the passions themselves. Self-control, willpower, not only strengthen the individual, but also sharpen the appetite.
He inserts his index fingers at the waistband of Amanda's jeans and begins to tug them down over her slight hips.
—Self-control allows one the time to fully contemplate one's desires, and to imagine detailed scenarios in which those desires might be fulfilled. It also allows one the time to arrange circumstances so that the most favored of these scenarios might come to fruition.
The jeans are off now, and he folds them carefully and places them atop Amanda's shoes and socks.
—-And if you look back, I think you will see how it is that your lack of self-control, and my own ample supply of this virtue, has led you to be in your current position, and me to be in mine.
He runs a finger over the elastic waistband of his daughter's panties. He nods his head.
—Now you may begin. But make sure she is watching me.
The goon grunts and clumsily tries to shove his now utterly limp penis into Ma
rilee while still forcing her to watch her husband. Horde tucks his fingertips into the panties and begins to slide them down. I close my eyes. I can close my eyes. And I can feel my body. And it is not filled with pain. I open my eyes.
—Hey.
No one hears.
—Hey!
They hear this time. The goon, with a handful of Marilee's hair and something less than a handful of limp dick. Horde, with his daughter's panties pulled just past the tops of her hip bones. They both stop and turn their heads to look at me where I stand leaning crookedly against the pile of desks.
—Stop that.
Horde purses his lips.
—He was supposed to be finished?
—I've got it.
The enforcer is on me. He appears before me from whatever corner he has been lurking in, seizes my throat and shoves me through the pile of half-rotted desks. The wood tops of the desks splinter and crack and he pins me to the wall, fingers digging into my neck.
Horde holds up a hand.
—Don't kill him. He needs to be shot.
The enforcer keeps his eyes locked on my face.
—I know. He's strong.
Predo keeps them gorged on blood. That's what Terry told me. He said that short of the Secretariat, the enforcers are rationed the largest shares of Coalition blood. They feed to surfeit, their appetites always appeased. Predo keeps himself lean, hungry and subtle, but his instruments are often blunt and hard. I have likely never fed as well as this one feeds daily. He is strong, trained and experienced in the use of that strength.
Which is the advantage he retains when my heart explodes. But first it stops.
Death has truly and finally arrived.
Good.
I have failed. Failed as a child; failed as a man; failed as a revolutionary; failed as a lover; failed as a goodguy. My only success in life has been as a pawn. Fuck it, I never asked to be any of those things. And my life was over by rights long ago. I've just been waiting to catch up to it.
Then my heart explodes, beating a manic rhythm, and I realize my life is not over. Hell. The world shivers and splinters, vibrates at a frequency beyond my senses' range of reception, and then resolves into clarity.
I feel the room. Cracks in the concrete walls etched in sharp detail; fecal and delicate odors both, articulated and singular; sounds enunciated perfectly, from Marilee's scream to Amanda's peacefully drugged inhalations; the taste of my own tongue; the whorls of the fingerprints on the hand gripping my throat. My heart trip-hammers, trying to dig its way from my chest. And all of it; cracks in the walls, smells of shit and Horde's French milled soap, sounds of scream and breath, taste of my own flesh, unique identifying ridges; all of it pales beside my hunger.
I grab at the enforcer's wrist. The movement jars the world. The room shivers again, bright trails of light tail from every object, and I miss the enforcer's arm entirely. It's too fast, I'm too fast. I try to breathe, realize I am already breathing, air desperately chugging in and out of my lungs in an attempt to keep up with my heart's need. I wait for the shock of the enforcer's clutch on my neck. But it doesn't come. He is frozen, stunned by the speed of my attack, not yet certain what has happened. I grab at him again, slowly this time. My hand clips his forearm, knocks his hand from my throat. He drops into a crouch, the thin stiletto blade sprouts from his hand, and he waits, poised for my next move.
But I am not interested in him. He has nothing for me. I can smell what is inside him and it will not nourish me or feed my hunger. But the others, three of the others in the room have what I spoil for. They are bursting with it.
The enforcer waits for my attack, but I do not attack. I charge, sweeping my left arm at him as I go past, launching him into the discarded desks, a wrecking ball through crumbling brick. The goon is the closest. I am nearly upon him before he or Horde have registered what has happened. I will drink their blood and they will die before they know death has begun.
The air at my back thrums as something passes through it.
I spin, see the enforcer leaping at me, sidestep and catch only half his blow. Still it drives me to my knees. The stiletto arcs down, a glitter that winks at my neck. I bring up my arm to block the blade. I am too fast again, my arm whistles in front of his, but misses entirely. He is again startled by my speed, and the angle of the glitter changes and it draws a line along the edge of my jaw. I jump up and he dodges back. What I need is behind me. I cannot be bothered with him now. I turn.
The goon is on his feet, pants bunched around his calves, penis shriveled inside its latex wrapper. He is holding his jacket, trying to pull something from one of its pockets, something that has snagged and will not come free. I reach for him, and instead of grabbing his shoulder I shove it. There is a dull snap as his shoulder pops out of its socket and he is sent reeling and crashes to the floor by the door. I look at the bound and half-naked woman at my feet. But she smells wrong. She has been polluted and will poison me if I try to drink her. I crouch, ready to leap on the helpless goon who now struggles with his one useful hand to pull free whatever weapon is concealed in his jacket.
The enforcer lands on my back.
One arm snakes around my throat and the stiletto thrusts at my face. I bring my hand up, the stiletto pierces the palm and juts out the back, the point halted an inch from my eye. I fall backward, lift my feet from the floor and land on the enforcer. He makes a noise and the arm around my neck loosens. I roll to my left, tumbling free of him, wrenching my hand from the blade and coming to my feet.
There is a tingling along my jaw and in my hand. I can feel the flesh knitting, the Vyrus in overdrive, closing my wounds as they are inflicted. The enforcer is up. He is between me and the goon now. No matter. There is more food here.
I turn to face Horde and his unconscious daughter. The stiletto enters my back, is plunged into my liver twice before I can seize his arm, hunch forward, and toss the enforcer to a far corner of
the room.
The pain is more persistent this time. The healing tickle not such a balm. The Vyrus is fighting a losing battle against the damage I'm absorbing. I must feed.
The enforcer is on me again, charging from the corner. He crashes into me and we sprawl on the floor. He straddles my chest, pins my arms with his knees. The stiletto comes down, drives through my left forearm and sticks in the crumbling concrete below. He covers my eyes with his thumbs and starts to gouge them out of their sockets. I wrench my head to the side and catch his wrist between my teeth.
His blood is acid. It fills my mouth, scorching my tongue. I close my throat against it. The small bones of his wrist crunch between my teeth and he howls and rips himself free and off of me. I gag and spit his torn meat from my mouth and yank the stiletto from my arm. I roll to my knees. The wound in my arm stays open, streaming blood. The Vyrus is dealing with my more mortal hurts. Ignoring that which will not kill me outright. The enforcer is between me and the others again. He comes in low, in a wrestler's crouch, the blood clotting at his wrist.
I see the Enclave in my mind. Their disciplined sparring. The control they exert over the Vyrus gone berserk in their veins. It can be controlled, this power. I have seen it.
He feints at my right arm, the arm that now holds his blade. I dodge to the left, away from the feint and into the real attack he had planned for my wounded left arm.
He cranks the arm up and back and pain explodes in my shoulder as he tries to snap it before I can react. But I am already reacting, twisting to my left, bringing the stiletto around in an arc behind his legs, and drawing it back, the blade raking the tendons just above the tops of his knees. He drops, his legs folding like marionette limbs beneath him, my arm falling from his grasp. I plant the heel of my left hand beneath his jaw as he comes down and force him back, his legs powerless beneath his body. I climb onto his stomach, still shoving his head back, baring his throat, and stab him in the neck. Over and over. Blood sprays, and air whistles from a dozen holes. I shove the blade in one final ti
me, fixing it at the far point below his jaw, and then heave it over to the other side. I leave the stiletto lodged in his twitching corpse and stand up.
The woman on the floor has freed her hands and is clumsily trying to get to her feet, but the bacteria is still finding its place and she is delirious with it. The goon is by the door, whimpering and trying to get at his weapon.
But there is blood here at my left hand.
I turn to kill Horde and his daughter, and he shoots me in the stomach.
The gun is small, the slender European automatic of the well-to-do. The pain flares and disappears in the same instant. The tingle of regeneration fills my belly. I move at Horde, knowing I can pluck the weapon from his hand before he can fire it again.
Two vicious insects latch onto the back of my neck and I am knocked to my knees by 50,000 volts.
I open my mouth and howl silently and piss myself. Two wires run from my neck to the black box in the goon's hand. I flail at the wires, yank them from my skin and scramble to my feet. The goon is screaming, banging his head against the wall, fumbling one-handed with the Taser, trying to insert another charge. I take a step toward him.
Horde shoots me again. The bullet rips through the meat of my left thigh. I stumble but don't fall, and turn to face him again. And am stung by the 50,000 once more.
Steam wisps from the holes in my arm, leg and stomach, and Horde adds a new hole, this one punched through my chest. I feel my right lung collapse and I echo it, keeling and folding to one side until I am supported by my right knee and hand, left hand clamped over the gasping hole in my chest. No tingling now, and no vibrant clarity of senses. The Vyrus has run its course. I am an empty and useless vessel that is beyond repair.
Naked and still erect, Horde steps over his daughter and comes close to me, the gun declined at my head.
He glances about the room, at his lost and struggling wife, the fear-crazed goon, the nearly decapitated enforcer, and his sleeping child. Then to me.
—I will not lie to you, Pitt; that was unexpected.
He tilts his head at the enforcer.
—And rather spectacular. Honestly, I've never seen the infected in action. I had no idea of the ferocity. Or the reserves you can call upon. Was your recovery typical? Or are you unique in your constitution?
Already Dead Page 19
