Born into so much of that blood and madness, it took quite a bit to push her to overload. But there it was, in the bullet she used to kill her woman, the limit of what she could take and still keep her eyes open.
I’d have liked to help her. Make it a little easier at the end to step out and get all this over with. But I’m still not sure of my own limit. If it exists, where it might be if it’s out there. With more left to do, I couldn’t take the chance that doing for her what I did for her mom would be as far as I could go.
But I keep my eye open for her. And she looks into it. And there’s maybe a smile that passes back and forth between us.
When she pulls the trigger that I can’t, I don’t blink.
What I owe her.
Looking at her dead body, I wonder if I owe her more.
A pyre made of the dead.
A fire to burn them.
Yes, she’d like that.
And I know how to build such a thing.
Because I don’t blink, I see most of what happens when her gun goes off.
Predo raking Hurley’s eyes as he twists from his jacket and spins loose.
Terry sliding to the middle of the room, countering Predo, both of them taking an angle on me.
Lydia backing Delilah and Ben into a corner and standing in front of them.
Hurley, wiping the blood from his eyes as he drops Predo’s jacket and takes a step toward the gun racks at the other end of the room.
And me, lifting my whiskey bottle, two-finger hand wrapped around its neck, and asking the room at large.
—So am I the only one with a gun at this point?
The question draws a little extra of everyone’s attention, and they all take a quick look at the gun I snatched off one of the dead enforcers on my way up here, brandished in my good hand.
—I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who hung onto his when Amanda made the rest of you toss yours out the door. But someone be sure to pipe up if I’m wrong.
Predo combs a lock of hair coated in dry blood from his eyes.
—Shoot Hurley.
Hurley looks at him.
—I beg yer?
—He is by far the most dangerous of us and most likely to kill you. Shoot him now.
Hurley looks at me.
—Ya backstabbin’! I knew it!
I shake the bottle back and forth.
—Easy, Hurl. He’s just trying to start a melee.
—A?
—A brawl. So he can make a move.
—Well if it’s a brawl he wants, den, he can have it. An you, ya. I never figure ya fer a Coalition sap, Joe.
I take a drink.
—Hurley, my lad, you never figured two plus two is four.
—Is it insults den, is it?
I press the cool glass of the bottle to my forehead.
—Hurley, man, I didn’t sell you out. They were just in there. We were trying to join with you guys when you barged in and broke all hell loose.
He scratches his head.
—An I want ta believe ya, but I don’t know.
Terry fiddles his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
—I think we can, Hurl. I think, I don’t know, but I think there was just a little too much chaos down there for it to have been anything that was meant to have a pattern.
I nod.
—That’s right.
I take another drink.
—But it doesn’t mean that shooting you first wouldn’t be the best play.
Hurley waves it off with the back of his hand.
—Truly, den, open fire.
He grins.
—I tink I can just about take yer best shot, make ya eat da gun, an still have somethin’ left over fer Mr. Predo if it comes ta dat.
I look at Predo.
—So much for that. But here’s a thought.
I aim the barrel of the gun against the vial I’ve set on the arm of the chair.
—You can all make a move on me, try and snag this thing, and I’ll pull the trigger and we can all find out just how crazy the little girl was.
—You’re all crazy! You’re all fucking crazy!
Delilah is trying to get out of the corner, but Lydia keeps her pinned there, covering the pregnant girl’s body with her own, doing her best to protect Ben as well.
But Delilah wants none of it.
—Who are you people and what the fuck are you fighting over? Can you just live? Can you just all live and let us be? Let me and my boy and our baby go. We just. What are you thinking, mister? Crazy bitch said that shit would kill everything everywhere. You think that was a euphemism for killing just who you want it to kill? She meant it. You know she meant it. You people don’t want to live, is that it? We do! We do! We! Damn. Damn and fuck. Daddy. Daddy, you made this shit sound so cool.
She runs out of gas about there and Ben wraps her up.
—I told you it’s not like the books, baby. I.
He looks at us.
—I told her there was nothing romantic about this life, but she just got ideas in her head.
I thumb the hammer back on my gun.
—You should stop moving, Terry.
He stops.
—You too, Mr. Predo.
He stops.
Both of them having shifted just a little closer to me.
I settle my aim back on the vial.
—I’m thinking about how this might end.
—If you shoot that, Joe, you’ll never see Evie again.
I didn’t blink when Amanda shot herself, but I blink when that name comes out of Terry’s mouth.
He shakes his head.
—Joe, you had to. Joe, I know who she is. I mean, we met. She. I never made a thing out of it. But she was around the neighborhood, with you. And. I don’t know what you thought or thought you thought or remembered, but she came to me for help when you went missing that time. When I had to send Christian and the Dusters above Fourteenth to scrape you off that sidewalk when you’d been doped. This is like, I know it’s like excavating ancient history, but I did know. So, like, it doesn’t take a psychic, Joe, when you had girl trouble, to know who it was. And I have resources. And patterns are my thing. Intuition is my thing. You played it like you killed her, but things emerged. Changes in the social dynamic. Indications about where you were lurking for a while. In the Meatpacking District. Then we get these rumors out of Enclave. The Count in some kind of power dynamic with a recently infected woman. It’s not math, not my thing, numbers, but it is poetry, vibes, I can make sense of that. And I know, I know from way back what moves you, how you flow. Your play is cold, but your real moves are hot. From the heart. Little Amanda Horde there, you can barely look at her. Joe, that’s not a bad thing, that’s a sign. Yeah. Because, come on, man, you couldn’t kill her yourself. Because you have that strength in you, that humanity in you. And if you couldn’t do that, you won’t be cracking open Pandora’s box and releasing a plague of who knows what. Not, at least, while the world still has Evie in it.
I’m not feeling too good.
Predo is frowning.
—A girl.
I’m feeling tiny cracks appearing in my skin.
—All for a girl.
Splitting in hairlines, fracturing.
—The trouble you have caused for me. All over a girl.
Like the meat inside is overcooked and bursting out.
—The damage you have done to everything. Over a girl.
My muscles are seared.
—How grateful I feel to know.
Cooked by the fire in my bones.
—This girl of yours, Joe Pitt.
Flames I cannot contain.
—How grateful I am to know her name.
I must let them out.
—And to know also where she is to be found.
Or I will burn.
—I am unbearably curious to see this woman whose face has launched a thousand fiascos.
I will burn.
—And to give her my compliments in pers
on.
I burn.
And I start shooting. Wasting a bullet when I pull the trigger too fast as I draw my aim from the vial to Predo, the round going wide left, thinking it’s all over now, that I’ve messed it up, here in the final showdown, with one chance to get it right, I missed the first shot and he moves too fast and I’ll never hit him once he starts moving full speed, an erratic pattern of jumps, impossible to regain my aim, but he comes straight at me, whether herded by Terry and Hurley closing on him from the sides, or driven by the madness of the thought of why I’ve done everything I have, he comes straight at me, and I pull the trigger over and over, and he runs into the bullets, runs through the bullets, or they through him, still coming, too fast to be caught by Terry or even Hurley, only the twitches of my finger are faster, only the bullets themselves are faster, only those are faster than his hate.
And then he’s on me, his hands full of my shirtfront, his forehead pressed to mine. Not immortal at all, his chest and stomach are open wide, his insides are spilling out his back, dragged by the bullets. He still looks young and full of life, the bloom on his cheek undiminished by the speckle of fresh blood drops.
He’s saying something.
—A girl. A girl, Pitt. A girl.
I’ve dropped the empty gun, replaced it in my hand with the amputation blade.
—A girl, Mr. Predo.
I wrap my arm around his neck and do it as he described, one long cut, deep and to the bone.
—But she’s a hell of a girl.
And like he told me, after that, it’s just quick work with a saw and the limb is off.
I burn.
But I don’t die yet.
Sitting in my chair with the whiskey bottle that didn’t quite empty itself when I dropped it. The head of my enemy in my lap.
A body for the pyre, at my feet.
—Hey, Terry. You were saying something about me and how I make my moves. Was that a thought you wanted to finish up?
He’s looking at the floor.
—Tell you, Joe.
I look where he’s looking, at the vial that was knocked from the arm of the chair while I killed Predo, where it rolled to just a few inches from Terry’s toes.
—I’m having very different thoughts right now.
He bends, picks up the vial, and weighs it in his palm.
—Will you get me that gun, Hurl.
—Sure ting, Ter.
Hurley uncurls Amanda’s stiff fingers, gentles her gun loose, and passes it to Terry.
He holds both weapons. Dead girl’s gun. Bottle of apocalypse.
—Without meaning to be flip about the whole thing, I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a redistribution of power here.
—Stop being cute, Terry.
Lydia moves away from Delilah and Ben.
—It’s time to get serious now.
He shows her the vial.
—Is there something more serious than this, I don’t know, something more immediate than pressing this advantage right now?
—Advantage?
He looks up at the ceiling, shakes his head, looks back at her.
—Lydia, I know you have a streak of idealism that is, man, just plain impenetrable, but I didn’t think, and forgive me for the bluntness, but I didn’t think it extended to the thickness of your skull.
I’m patting my pockets.
—Think he just said you’re stupid, Lyd.
She thrusts her palm at me, like delivering a stiff arm on the field of play.
—Shut it, Joe.
Terry makes a rolling motion with the barrel of the pistol.
—Do I need to map this? Is there, I don’t know, confusion, regarding what just happened here?
He points the gun at the head in my lap.
—Dexter Predo is dead. Dozens, several dozen enforcers have been massacred here. Out of just more than a hundred in the whole Coalition. Lydia, I know I said math isn’t my thing, but come on. Add and subtract. They are exposed. Their front line of defense is rotting in the basement here. We, this is, everything has changed.
She’s shaking her head.
—What has? Changed? What do you want to? We have nothing to put on the street. How do we? No. And anyway. We have something we have to do.
He holds up the vial.
—We don’t need to go to the street. Is nobody, is there a lack of vision in the room? The Secretariat, what are they going to do against this?
He holds the vial higher.
—They’re, all they care about is status quo. We threaten everything. We can threaten everything. All we have to do is let them keep living and they’ll do what we want.
Lydia has her hands on her hips.
—Are you? Terry, even if, if we were the kind of people who would use, are we even talking? The kind who would use genocide as a threat. What then? How long does it take then to shut it down? And the kids? What about?
Terry squints.
—Shut down what?
She points east.
—The hole. The damn hole. That was the deal. We come here and then we go to Queens and save those kids. Now. It’s time now. We do it now.
He lowers the hand holding the vial over his head.
—I can’t, I don’t know, the lack of. Is it just too much for everyone to see? This vacuum is going to have to be filled, and we’re set up to fill it. But look what happened here in this place. The starving. Look at how unbalanced the island is right now. Well, come on, we have to, things have to be mellowed out. We have to assert control. We do that two ways. We, has no one read history but me?
He curls his fist around the vial.
—We use force or the threat thereof.
He tilts his head east.
—And we use bread.
—And yeah, sure, we’re gonna shut it down, but it has to be gradual. We can’t just turn off the spigot. We scale back. The breeding, OK, yes, the breeding we can stop that. But the ones who are already there, well, it’s not like we’re equipped to deal with them anyway. So. Sometimes it’s all about expedience.
I find what I’m looking for in my pocket and start fiddling it around.
Lydia’s fists are white, balled at her sides.
—I want you to repeat that.
Terry licks his lips.
—Sometimes it’s all about expedience.
Lydia’s fists come up to the points of her hips.
—That had best not have been meant the way it sounded, Terry.
He sighs.
—Don’t let your naiveté get the best of you here. Try to remember, if you can take a second away from all your self-righteousness, try to remember how recently you were tied up in a closet. Try to remember that the only reason you were let out was because it was, yeah, expedient. Because, I don’t know, because the universe is mysterious and just a few hours ago it looked like the Society was on the verge of collapse and your cooperation was needed to save it. Well now, I don’t know, but things look like they have changed. Some new balance has cycled in and you don’t have any Bulls outside backing you and the Society needs cohesion right now, not your exclusive sexual orientation–based politicking that always gums up the fucking works.
—I have a bomb in my hand.
They look at me.
Hurley shakes his head.
—Tis a cell phone.
I shake my head.
—It’s a bomb. And it’s ringing.
I put Chubby’s phone to my ear.
—Digga. It’s Joe. I just killed Predo. Yeah. And his enforcers were just slaughtered at the Cure house. Yeah. The Secretariat is exposed. Run a fleet of Escalades down there with your rhinos and the whole turf will be yours. Yeah. Kill the fuckers now. Sure. My pleasure. I owe ya for not killing me.
I snap the phone closed.
—See, it’s a bomb. It just blew up Terry’s new balance of power.
Terry points the gun that killed Amanda at me.
—If I didn’t think, I don’t know
, that it would be easier for you if I shot you right now, Joe.
He lowers the gun.
—But I think I’d rather, and I believe I’ve earned this over the years, I think I’d rather have you starve to death. Just because it will hurt more.
He shakes his head.
—That’s the kind of emotion you’ve brought me to.
—Yeah, I know the feeling.
He keeps shaking his head.
—And it’s all so, what a waste of, all so useless, the gesture. It’s not like, what Digga, you think Digga won’t see sense? You think?
I think it’s getting pretty hard to think. I think about the only thing I can think about right now is my hunger and how much it hurts. I think the smell of Amanda’s blood is making us all a little feverish in here. But I try not to think about it too much because it’s making me dizzy and I don’t want that. I want to stay in this chair. Stay here for just the few minutes more that it will take for her blood to spoil in her dead veins, for it to become useless to the Vyrus. I want the stab of that temptation gone. Before I lose out to it.
I rub my eye.
—Sorry. I think? Right. Yeah. What I think. Yeah. Well, what I think is Digga declared war as soon as he heard about the hole. So, expedience, that’s not really his gig. That other.
I point at the vial.
—Yeah, sure, you make him believe it is what it is, and yeah, he may dance your steps. But you’ll never get a chance to make that threat.
He shoots Lydia, one round, stomach, it pushes her back two steps, she sits heavy, both hands over the hole, dragging her heels back and forth over the floor.
—Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He looks at me.
—OK, I don’t know, but if we can all agree now that Lydia isn’t going to be stopping me, and that you, controversial turn of phrase coming up here, that you are effectively crippled right now, then I think we can also agree that I can make whatever threats I deem necessary, whatever means to the end, because I don’t see who, unless you mean Ben over there, and, Ben, if you make any move I’ll shoot you and your woman because at this point your collective symbolic value is about zero and I’m not the superstitious type so I don’t, you know, have high hopes that she’s carrying the savior. So, in the absence of I don’t know what, Joe, I don’t see where anyone here is going to complicate this rearrangement of power and social values within our community.
I point.
My Dead Body Page 21
