by Ian McCain
Antonios looks at Ernie’s eyes.
-- Tell me, Ernie, you weren’t a child when you were infected, were you?
Ernie shakes his head. Antonios leans closer to Ernie, pulls up his chin with his fingers and sensually slides the hair from his brow, parting it delicately to the side. He pulls his thumb from Ernie’s brow to the edge of Ernie’s eye and tilts his face up toward Antonios. The whole thing feels uncomfortable and gay to Ernie, but it passes quickly. And Ernie knows full well that he has done far more that would be considered gay on the streets.
--Hmm. Did your eyes always look like this?
Ernie looks around the room, at Antonios who is gently sipping sweet ambrosia, and Gareth who is clearly standing guard at the doorway to ensure that Ernie doesn’t run out.
--Look, you mind telling me what exactly is going on? I feel like I keep getting put in this situation. Some old vamp sitting me in a nice chair, speaking in cryptic codes and shit. If you are gonna kill me you mind just sparing me the jaw-flapping and get it over with?
Antonios lets out an honest laugh. Ernie continues.
--No offense, but really it’s like I am watching some kind of Worst Of episode from Dark Shadows. So go on, Barnabas, stake me or whatever.
--Ernie, I have no intention of killing you. I just want some answers to a few questions, and then you are free to go. Fair enough?
Ernie is puzzled, certain that he can’t trust this Antonios character.
--I guess.
Antonios pulls a picture from his desk and shows it to Ernie. It is the exterior of the Organization’s main building.
--Your F
arm, this is where it is?
Ernie pauses for a moment. Antonios immediately recognizes that Ernie is looking for a way to lie. Antonios signals to Gareth who steps out of the room and dials a number on his phone. He can faintly hear the voice on the other end and Gareth say, “Silas, it’s confirmed, go ahead.”
--Ernie, it’s not nice to eavesdrop.
--Why do you need to know where the Farm is?
--Gideon took something from me once, even after I was incredibly generous with him. I am just evening the scales.
Antonios flashes a wicked and unsettling smile, his teeth still painted in red, finishes his goblet of blood and leans back on his desk. He grabs the decanter and the other goblet from the tray brought in by Gareth. The similarity between Antonios and Gideon is striking. The whole event feels like déjà vu of déjà vu.
--Ernie, now there is just one more thing I would like to know about.
--My eyes, right?
Antonios nods as he pours out a full goblet of thick, sweetly scented blood. Its bouquet blooms from the glass, exciting Ernie’s pulse and filling his mouth with saliva. The Virus is pushing Ernie to comply, to do whatever is asked of him, whatever it takes to ingest that blood. He has felt this compulsion before as his mind weighed the consequences of stealing booze just so that he could have a taste. For all his strength he is still very much a weak man.
--I had been shot a couple dozen times and I guess the Virus was pissed or whatever. I could feel myself starting to lose control. Before I was completely lost, I was able to get a needle in his arm and pull a syringe full of blood from that gangbanger punk kid. I slammed it in my arm, and it brought me back.
--Very interesting. You didn’t just bite him, drink him dry?
Ernie shakes his head.
--And you passed on the dark gift to this boy?
Ernie laughs to himself. Dark gift. Great. This guy is another fucking asshole Gothic.
--I guess. I mean he was definitely infected. He was strong and fast like us, he healed from everything.
--Gareth says that you took his head?
--It was the only way to stop him, and he was not very excited to part with it.
Antonios hands the goblet to Ernie to drink. Ernie lifts it to his mouth, but before he drinks it, he pauses.
--Do you have a needle? I just don’t want to get all out of hand and I know that me and drinking—well, we never really went well together. Actually, maybe we went too well together.
--Ugh, how gauche. You needlers, being given a fine meal and you choose to eat it off the floor. We were made to drink from people, to take what we want, not to poke our arms like junkies.
--Hey, just wondering, what about that thing on the roof? The thing Blondie over there was chasing. What was that? It smelled like one of us but different.
--There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
--What does that mean? I mean I get the reference, but what was it? Shit, can’t any of you fucking people be straight with me for once?
--Ernie, I am a bit of a tinkerer. The virus, it has many possibilities. Things that you, and Gideon have not seen… yet.
Antonios tips the goblet up to Ernie’s lips, spilling warm thick crimson into his mouth. Ernie swallows it down in ravenous gulps. He is a man in the desert taking in the last drops of water ever. The blanket of pain and bliss wraps around him, his muscles knotting and tightening, while his mind paints away reality and leaves only joy and comfort. The last fragmented words Ernie hears fall from Antonios’ mouth before his ears are wrapped in the warm blanket of love.
--…impotent… have his daughter…
As Ernie fades away from the present, Antonios signals to Gareth again, who walks over to Ernie in his state of joy.
Ernie is so enthralled in the all-encompassing bliss that he does not realize he is being immobilized and that Gareth has run an IV into his arm and is leeching out several blood bags full of Ernie’s essence. The sting of the bliss is such a pleasant pain that he cannot tell when he is withdrawn from the office and transported back into the waiting sedan.
***
The bliss finally fades from Ernie. As the warm glowing blanket pulls itself from his vision, revealing the real world behind, Ernie begins to make several realizations. It is night-time. He can see the light of a million stars and galaxies as they ignite the sky with luminous pinpoints of pulsing red and white. He lowers his eyes down from the sky to see where exactly he is. The world around him is brilliantly illuminated as if the sun still hangs in the sky.
Whatever Antonios has given him, it is more than just blood, it is like super blood. It’s amazing in every way, most notably that he doesn’t feel the need to keep feeding endlessly—and because he knows his body is completely restored. Even though the Virus has always been able to heal him, it has never restored his mind from feeling as if it is done spinning. That gap in time when eyes close and the mind stops. It has never afforded him the brief respite his subconscious so desperately craves. But now, after just a glass of this amazing, refined new product, it is as if he has slept for a thousand years. He is alert and focused and strong and energized, and for the first time in over a year, over a decade really, he feels rested.
Ernie takes in his surroundings and realizes that he is on a bench in Battery Park. His arms are individually chained to the wrought-iron armrests of the bench with a pair of standard police-issued handcuffs on each side that he quickly and easily snaps apart and slips off of his wrists and arms. He becomes aware of another of his senses. Smell. Hanging in the air is the acrid scent of fire.
He looks up from the bench. Black and grey smoke billows up from Midtown. The skyline is glowing orange as a massive fire burns intensely in the distance almost too brightly to look at. Thousands of people are gathered in the park looking out into Midtown. Their terrified voices chirping about terrorists and how afraid they are that the fire might spread and cut them off from family or catch up to them.
Ernie can hear the distant sounds of police and fire engines as if they are right next to him, frantic feet drumming on the pavement as people run scattershot to flee the growing and terrifying inferno. He listens to the fear-filled cries of people on their phones warning friends, telling relieved family members that they “are safe.” The buzz of simultaneous tear-filled conver
sations mirror one another.
Ernie walks closer to the edge of Battery Park where State Street and Battery Place join to form Broadway. Amidst all the chaos he can hear a person’s old single-speaker radio as the local FM station updates all its listeners with current information about the fire raging through Midtown.
--… believe the five-alarm blaze to have originated from an abandoned Midtown medical facility just one block west of the Lexington Express Station. All pedestrian, street and subway traffic has been diverted and authorities are advising all citizens in the area to evacuate to the north and south of the island. Unconfirmed reports of burnt individuals attacking support workers have been coming in, however, no officials have commented on these rumors.
Ernie slumps over on the ground, his mind flooded with associations as grey and black ash begins falling from the sky like snow, landing on everyone in the park and the ground. The charred flakes break apart into dust when they hit Ernie’s face, while the pieces that land on the ground turn the puddles of standing rainwater into black ink.
Ernie doesn’t need to hear confirmed reports on anything. The blaze in the distance and the symphony of hysterical tears of the people all around him is more than enough. This Antonios character has just burned down the Farm. Lit it up like a Roman candle, and in the process has knowingly cut off the food supply for the Organization, the entire known infected community in NYC.
Maybe Gideon and the others made it out. Maybe they got burned and hurt so badly they went into a rage. Maybe they are all dead. Whatever the details are, the reality is that all the needlers and all the drinkers are going to be without any product, so starting with the Gothics, the killing is going to be coming back to the city.
If the residents think that this fire is terrifying, wait until they see what happens when a hundred infected go without food for a week. He puts his hands to his head, not knowing what to do or where to go.
--Fuck!
-The End-
(The story continues in book two: Byproduct.)
From the Author
Thank you for reading Product. I truly hope that you enjoyed the book, and if you did, I would greatly appreciate if you could help spread the word. Also, feel free to friend me on Facebook www.facebook.com/Ismcrazy or visit my website at www.iansmccain.com, and if you have a hankering to email me, I can be reached at [email protected].
If you are interested in seeing any of my short-film projects with my long-time film-making partner-in-crime, Krystian Lagowski, they can be found on the “Interwebs” by going to http://vimeo.com/klagowski
Not a Trace of Tracey (Writer, Director, Co-Producer)
In Pieces (Producer)
Hemispheres (Producer)
Hereditary Misfortune (Writer, Co-Director, Producer)
Dusk (Writer, Co-Director)
Mr. Gnobody (Writer, Co-Producer)
Table of Contents
Copyright
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Dedications
PRODUCT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
From the Author
