Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (19 page)

--Damn it, Joe.

I don't steel myself for Tom's next thrashing. The cramps are on me hard, and having my
face busted some more is the last thing on my mind. My mind barely exists now except as a
place for the signals from the nerves in my gut to land and wreak havoc.

--Joe, get the fuck up.

He grabs me under my arms and yanks me to my feet. It makes it hurt worse.

--Auuuggh!

--Shut up.

He shoves me and I land in a chair. I pull my knees up and roll back onto the floor.

--Stop being such a wimp.

He grabs my hands and pulls them away from where they are clutching my stomach.

--Auuugh!

He grabs the cuff chain and yanks my arms out straight.

--Such a wimp. You know the pain of childbirth is worse than the cramps?

I open one eye a tiny bit. Lydia.

--And that's not just feminist propaganda.Ê I know infected women who gave birth, they told
me.

She sticks a key in one of the cuff locks and it snaps open. She looks at my face.

--I see Tom came by.

--Ung-hungh.

--Give me your ankle.

I roll on my back and lift my feet off the floor. The cramps lurch.

--Augh.

--Shut. Up.

I close my eyes and nod as she unlocks the shackles then pulls me up and puts me back on
the chair.

--Can you walk?

--Ungh.

--Fucking wimp.

She grabs my shoulders and pulls me to my feet again.

--Can you walk?

I don't answer, just put one foot in front of the other. And fall down. She kneels next to
me.

--Joe, this is it. This is the only shot you get. Tom's crashed and Hurley's hunting and
the sun will be up soon. Get up.

She reaches inside my jacket, takes out the picture and sticks it in my face.

--Get up and go get the girl, Joe.

She's pulling on me again. I get up.

--Come on.

She holds my arm and walks me across the room.

--I'll rig it here, make it look like you smashed the door and blindsided me and got the
keys.

We're at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the sidewalk trap. They're steep.

--It won't hold, but Tom can't make a serious move on me. He knows I can take him.

--Hurlehungh?

--Hurley won't do anything without Terry. Come on.

I crawl up the steps and she pushes the steel door open.

--Bloohnd?

--No, I don't have any here. Hit your stash, but don't stay at your place, they'll be
looking there. Go on. Go.

She shoves me up onto the street, then reaches up through the trap and grabs my pants leg.
I look down. Her face and one arm are stuck up through the trap, the picture of Amanda
Horde in her hand.

--Take it. I wrote a number on the back. Use it if you have to.

I groan as I bend to take the picture from her.

--Help that girl, Joe. I find out different, or find out you were lying to me, and I'll
come after you with my people. We'll firebomb your house and then we'll dog you through
the streets.

--HoKugh.

--So fucking run.

I do, lurching and stumbling down the sidewalk, the loose cuffs still dangling from my
wrist, the girl's picture in my hand, and no place to hide.

I make it ten yards before the heaves grab me. I bend over the hood of a parked car and
choke up bile until I'm empty and gagging on air. When it stops I look around, trying to
find a dark corner to creep into. But nothing will be dark for long. Home, Lydia said. Go
home and hit my stash. She doesn't know there's no stash to hit. I pitch myself off the
car and reel down the street. At the end of the block I lean against a street sign: 3rd
and C.

Evie lives on 3rd. Just a block and a half away on 3rd between A and B. Evie will look
after me, she'll take care of me.

And she has blood. Over five quarts of it.

I shake it off and take the right onto C, away from Evie and the blood that's killing her.

Christian and the Dusters would take me in, but there's no way I can make it to Pike
before the sun is up. I need a hole. I need a deep hole in the ground where I can ride out
the last waves of the cramps. I look up at the sky; it's already bright enough to burn my
eyes and make them tear.

I need a hole.

The blue sawhorse barricades are still in front of the school on 9th, but the cop car is
gone. Five-thirty A.M. traffic is on the streets, but I can't worry about that; I'm less
than an hour from getting burned down. I edge between two of the sawhorses and walk
hunched over to the door. There's a new chain and padlock. I'm far too weak to break it or
to force the thick double doors. I won't be scaling the side of the wall, either. Maybe if
I didn't have the cramps I could shimmy up a drainpipe. If I try it as I am I'll probably
get hit with a cramp halfway up and fall a couple stories onto my head. That might be just
enough to solve all my problems. Instead I start checking the ground floor windows. The
steel screens on almost all of them have suffered some form of abuse over the years. It
doesn't take long to find one where the lower right bracket has been wrenched from the
brickwork.

The corner of the screen can be pulled up, but only a few inches, not enough for me to
squeeze through. I squat, get a grip on it with both hands and push up with my legs and
arms. The screen is made from heavy-gauge steel that's gridded in a pattern like chicken
wire, the edges sharp prongs. They dig into the palms of my hands, popping holes through
the photograph I hadn't realized I was still holding. The screen starts to bend. From down
the street I hear the rumble of a sanitation truck. Just a few yards away from me on the
sidewalk is a huge mound of trash. A cramp hits and tries to cut my legs out from under
me. My knees buckle slightly and the screen starts to spring back. The truck's air brakes
blast and squeal as it slows, approaching the abandoned school. I squeeze my eyes shut,
muscling the screen upward, and its spiked edge pops through the skin of my hands just
like it did the photograph. The cramp bundles my organs, trying to curl me into myself.
The screen wrenches upward, leaving a gap perhaps large enough for me to wriggle through.
I pull my hands free of the prongs as the truck grinds to a halt behind me, smash them
against the window, grab the jagged-edged sill and pull myself up. Broken glass digs at my
belly, offering awful relief from the cramps. My upper body flops inside and my pants get
caught on the screen. I tear them loose, using my forearms to pull myself along the floor
and into the empty schoolroom. I writhe to my knees on broken glass and peek out the
window at the sanitation guys climbing off the truck. I reach out and lace my fingers
through the holes in the screen and pull. It's easier to drag back down than it was to
push up, and I get it close enough to the window that maybe it won't be noticed from the
street. That done, I stick my fingers past the broken shards of glass and pull the bloody
photograph from the bloody barbs.

Then I fall down.

The cramps have become a huge hand that tangles its fingers in my intestines and balls
itself into a fist. I crawl, leaving bloody smears on the floor from my oozing hands, and
find the basement door. I look at the stairs, then let gravity tumble me down. I want to
stay at the foot of the stairs in a tangled mess of blood and glass and cracked bones.
Instead I take advantage of the fist relaxing

for a moment and get to my feet. Anyone coming into the school will see the bloody
handprints on the floor and follow them to the basement. I need my hole. I stuff my hands
into my armpits to keep more blood from dribbling on the floor, and memory leads me
through the rank blackness. I make it to the old storage room, shoulder the door open and
fall behind a pile of the broken and graffitied desks, just as the fist squeezes closed.

Fuckmefuckmefuckme . Please! Makeit! Stop!

--Hey?

Stopstopstopstopstop !

--Hey.

Pleasepleasepleaseplease !

--Get out of here.

Nonononono !

--This is my place, you got to get out.

--No. Just. Just fucking leave me aughhhlone!

--No, asshole, you have to get out. I ... Shit, you're fucked up.

The fist starts to relax, my intestines slowly slipping from its fingers. I open my eyes.

She's squatting a few yards away, shining a flashlight on me; the girl whose picture is
clutched in my lacerated hand.

She points at my face.

--The cops do that to you? '

--No.

--No?

--No.

She points at the top of my head.

--What's that?

I reach up to feel whatever she's pointing at and the loose cuff hanging from my left
wrist knocks me in the chin.

She shakes her head.

--But the cops didn't do that to you.

--No.

--
Uh-huh.
Well, whatever. You still have to get out of here.

--You got the lease on the place?

--Yeah,
right. No,
I
don't
have the lease. But it's my hideout. Find your own.

I touch my face.

--Can't really see myself walking around much right now.

--Why? You
said
the cops aren't after you.

--I need to stay here.

She stands up.

--You are being
such
an asshole. Look, you can't stay here.
OK?

--I. Hungh.

The fingers start to tighten again. I pull my knees up against my chest.

--Oh,
maaan.
You're a
junkie
aren't you? You starting to jones? Here.

She pulls something out of her pocket and holds it out to me. A twenty-dollar bill.

--Go get a bag and fix. Just do it somewhere else.

--I. Uhn. I'm not. Augh.

She takes a step back.

--Don't throw up in here. Do
not
puke in here!

I clench my teeth, shaking my head back and forth; not at her but at what's happening
inside me. She steps closer, shoves the toe of one of her Nikes under my ass and starts
trying to shove me toward the door.

--Out. Get
out\

My gut ripples and I heave up a final dribble of bile that lands on her sneaker.

--
Grossl
So gross! Get
out\

She's kicking me now. The point of her toe hitting the side of my stomach is a new agony.
I reach out to block her foot and the picture falls from my hand and cartwheels to the
floor. She looks down at it, at the blood-smeared image of herself. I hold a hand up.

--Aughm! Amandahungh.

She bolts for the door. I grab the cuff of her jeans. She stops, lifts her other foot and
steps on my arm.

--Let
go!

I keep my grip and she tries to rip her leg free and trips herself onto the floor.

--I'm gonna
scream!
I'm gonna!

She starts screaming and reaches down, clawing at my hand, trying to pry my fingers loose
from her jeans. I grab her wrist.

SNAP!

She stops screaming and stares at the cuff I have ratcheted onto her, chaining her right
wrist to my left.

--That is so
wrong.

--Take it off.

--I don't have the key.

--
Gaaaud. So
lame.

We're sitting next to each other, our backs against the wall. The cramps haven't hit me
for five minutes and I'm starting to hope I might be in the lull.

--Let me see that.

She reaches for the photograph still lying on the floor.

--Don't touch it.

Her hand stops.

--Why not? It's of
me.

--The blood, don't get it on you.

--Whatever.

She picks it up by the edges. It doesn't matter, really. The Vyrus can't survive outside a
host. But it bothers me, seeing her fingers graze the blood, knowing what was recently
living in it.

--I can't
believe
they gave you this.

She drops it on the floor.

--How'd you find me? You talk to that Dobbs creep?

--Sort of.

--Talk about
lame.
That guy doesn't have a clue.

--No, he doesn't.

--Doesn't matter. I'm
not
going back.

I rattle the cuffs.

--Yeah, you are.

She rolls her head to the side and looks at me.

--You ever try dragging a screaming teenage girl down the
street?

I remember a night over twenty years ago: a young girl screaming, a hunger I didn't know
how to control. But it doesn't matter. The past is a dead thing. I can't change it.

--You ever been knocked out and hauled around in a sack?

--No
way.
My dad would
freak
and you would
never
get paid.

--Not taking you to your dad.

She bugs her eyes at me.

--Oh,
no\

She laughs.

--
Her?
She sent you?

She picks up the picture.

--Of
course
she gave you this one. She
knows
I hate it.

She tears it in half and drops the pieces to the floor.

--
Bitch.
So what's she
want?
There a junior
deb ball
I'm supposed to go to or something?

I pick up the pieces of the picture and put them in my jacket pocket.

--She doesn't want you to end up like Whitney Vale.

She starts to say something else, closes her mouth instead. She looks at her shoes,
rubbing the toe of one against the bile stain on

the other.

--Whitney got what she
deserved.

Whitney Vale, eighteen, jamming a knife into the back of a kid's skull; her body being
eaten by a germ.

--For what?

--I don't
know.
Maybe for fucking my
dad"?

--Like I said, your mom doesn't want you to end up like Whitney.

--Oh. My.
God.
She told you that? She is such a
freak.
I
know
what she says about him. But my dad has never touched me. The only reason he fucked
Whitney is 'cause she was all over him. So gross. The only guy who ever touched me was one
of mom's creepy
boyfriends.
So what's she want to do, kidnap me to protect me from my dad? She is
so lame.

She stands up.

--Let's go.

--Huh?

--Take me home.

I look at my watch, it's just after sunrise. She yanks on the cuffs.

--You got me,
toughguy,
now take me in.

--We can't go yet.

--Look, I'm not going to
spaz
or anything. I mean, the sooner you take me back there, the sooner I can run away again.
So let's just get it
over
with.

--We have to wait.

--For
what?

--For the sun to go down.

--
Why?

--Because I'm allergic to it.

She stares at me.

--You are
such
a loser.

--
Because.
It's hard to pee when you're handcuffed to some ass-
hole
and you're both just waiting for the pee.

The door is swung open. I'm squatting on one side of it with my arm stretched out, and
she's on the other side. Our hands grip the edge of the door, mine just slightly above
hers.

--So say
something.

--For a girl who has some experience living in squats, you're awfully pee shy.

--Fuck
you.

I chew on my split lower lip, sucking at one of the cuts, trying to ease the prickles
inside me with the dull copper taste of my own blood. It doesn't help. All it does is whet
my appetite, as if I need it whetted. I stop sucking.

Blood still fills my veins and pumps through my heart and carries oxygen to my brain, but
as far as the Vyrus is concerned it might as well be dust. My blood has been occupied and
harvested, whatever it is that the Vyrus consumes has been stripped away. But there's more
of what I need right on the other side of this door.

--Hey!

--What?

--Don't pull on the cuffs.

I look. She's right, I've been tugging her toward me from around the door.

--Sorry.

--Yeah you're sorry. And stop being so quiet, I
told you
to say something.

--Like what?

--
Anything.
Tell me who busted up your face. Not that I don't think there's like a line of people
waiting
to bust it up.

--Guy doesn't like it.

--Your face?

--Yeah.

--
Well.
Can you blame him? Are you going to kick his ass?

--Hadn't thought about it.

--
Maaan.

--What?

--For a big guy.

--Yeah?

--For a big guy, you're kind of a
pussy.

--You pee yet?

__
Damn it.
I was almost there. Why'd you have to say
that?
Now talk about something else.

--How'd you get in here?

--There's like an alley around back, off of Tenth? The gate's not locked. Whitney showed me
last summer. Go through the gate and there's the basement door. Squatters busted the lock
off that

couple years back, I guess.

My legs hurt from squatting. I'm pretty sure I fractured something in my right ankle when
I came down the stairs. I shift to keep it from aching and I lose my balance for a second.
Our wrists tug-a-war before I steady myself. I grab the edge of the door and accidentally
touch her fingers. --Don't
touch
me.

A moment's silence.

--Talk.

Jesus fucking.

--Why'd you run away?

Now it's her turn to get all silent.

--If it's like you say and your dad isn't messing with you?

--None of your business.

--OK.

More silence.

--Are you
jerking off
back there?

--No.

--Then stop getting all quiet, it's
creepy.

--OK. Why'd you run away?

--I
told you,
none of your business.

--Fine.

Silence.

--Fuck do you
care?

--I don't. I just want you to piss so I can stretch my legs.

She laughs.

--Stretch your legs, I just went.

She digs through her little backpack looking for something. She's holding her flashlight
in her cuffed right hand as she searches with her left. She jerks my left hand this way
and that as she rummages.

--Why'd you have to cuff my right hand?

--If I'd cuffed your left you would have to walk around backward.

She stares at me.

--Yeah,
right.
Like I would have done that.

Our hands bump.

--Your hand is all cold and
sweaty.

She gives me a fish-eye.

--Are you sick? 'Cause if I
catch
something from you I am going to be
so
pissed.

--Just clammy by nature.

--
Gross.

I
am
cold and sweaty. The Vyrus is downshifting, trying to save energy, storing up for its last
big push. But sick is not a big enough word for what I am.

She pulls a few things out of the pack; some extra clothes, an MP3 player, batteries, a
bottle of water, and finally comes up with what she's looking for: a handful of diet bars.
She holds one in her left hand and tears the wrapper open with her teeth. She catches me
watching her.

--You
want
one?

I do want one. I haven't eaten for awhile and I usually eat like a pig. You have to, just
to keep up with the high revs the Vyrus usually runs your metabolism at.

--Sure.

--There's peanut butter or chocolate and coconut.

--Peanut butter.

She hands me the bar and we eat by the dim light cast by her flashlight. She finishes
hers, throws the empty wrapper on the floor, and picks out another.

--So my mom was the one who called you?

I chew for a couple seconds. The peanut butter was a mistake, it's hard and sticky and
hurts my sore jaw as I chew.

--Yeah.

--What'd she say?

-Said you were missing, said she wanted to find you.

She's picking at her second bar, pinching tiny pieces of the chocolate coating between her
fingernails and nibbling them.

--What about my dad, you talk to him?

--Yeah.

She huffs.

--
Aaand?

I think about my meeting with Dr. Dale Horde, the way he casually put me in my place like
it's something he does ten times a day. The way he mickeyed me so Predo's spook could rob
my stash.

--Said he wanted me to find you.

--Yeah,
right.

She's peeled about half the chocolate off her second bar, leaving the coconut underneath
untouched.

--Mom says he wants to fuck me. Least that'd be
something.

Looks at me all the time like he can't figure out
where
I came from. Only time he pays any attention is when one of my
girlfriends
comes over. Then he tries to be all
supercooldad
so he can impress them.
Lame.

--That why you split?

Knowing I'm a fool for asking, knowing I don't need to know any of this stuff, knowing
this stuff just makes the job harder.

--I
don't know.
Maybe because my
mom
gets drunk all the time. Maybe because she
told me
my dad wants to fuck me. Maybe because I think that makes her
jealous.
Maybe because my dad
is
creepy with my girlfriends. Maybe because I stole a pair of my mom's earrings and to
punish me
she took my
computer away
and I snuck in my dad's office to use
his computer
and I found all this
porn
on it that Whitney did and that
grossed me out.
Not that she
did it,
because I knew about that, but because
my dad
was looking at it. Maybe because I looked in his drawers and found
pictures
of him
fucking
Whitney. Maybe because I was
pissed
at Whitney and came down here to kick her ass.
I don't know.
I just
ran away.

She folds the torn ends of the wrapper around the mutilated bar and shoves it back in her
bag.

--
God.
Hate it when I do that. Just eating 'cause I'm bored. Whitney says that's how you get fat.

She pulls up the bottom of her Che Guevara T-shirt, looks at her flat stomach and pinches
a quarter inch of skin.

--
Fat.

I look the other way, not wanting to see her healthy tanned skin and the flush of blood
that rises as she pinches herself.

--So
she
call you after Whitney got. . . whatever? That freak her out?