Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (23 page)

--OK.

Sela lowers her arms.

--Let me have the cupcake.

I hold her out. Sela plucks her from my arms and tucks her easily into the crook of one of
her own. I point at the bloody fingerprints on her jeans and shoes, left there when I
finished dressing her.

--See if you can get her into something clean before she wakes up.

Sela is watching Amanda's sleeping face, one Lincoln Log finger brushes loose hair from
her forehead.

--No problem, we'll get cupcake all sorted out. C'mon, ladies.

One of the diesels opens the door and checks the street outside, then signals an all
clear. Sela follows her out and the other diesel brings up the rear, closing the door
behind her. Lydia points at the closed door.

--She'll be fine with them.

--Yeah.

She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob.

--We should get going, sunrise soon.

--Yeah.

We step out of the empty storefront onto Avenue B. Lydia locks the door behind us and we
start down the street. I point back at the storefront.

--That a Society safe house?

--One of mine.

--Hn.

She's burned a safe house. Let someone outside her circle know about it. There'll be skin
to pay for that. There's always skin to pay for something. Then again, chances are she
won't have to worry about anything I know much longer. She looks at me from the corner of
her eye, smiles slightly.

--Tom's been going batshit.

--Yeah?

--Yeah. Told him I went to give you some chow and you sucker-punched me and grabbed the key
to the shackles. He tried to track you, but I had a couple of my people out gumming up
your scent. He's frothing. Says he'll have me
up on charges
when Terry gets back.

--Still not back?

--No. Got a message from the drop, though. The Coalition's raising some kind of stink,
clogging up all passages across their turf. Know anything about that?

--Nope.

She stops on the corner of 9th and B.

--I go this way. What about you?

I point the opposite direction.

--Home.

--Sure about that?

--Nowhere else left.

She nods.

--Anything else?

--Got a smoke?

She shakes her head.

--Give my money to the death merchants at the tobacco companies? You should know better.

--Right.

She stuffs her hands in her back pockets.

--The girl?

--If you don't hear from me tomorrow, wait for Terry. He'll know what to do.

--He usually does.

--Yep.

At home I get cleaned up, and in bed with a cigarette. Every time I take a drag the cuff
still hanging off my wrist bangs against my neck. I could pick the lock, but my wallet
with the picks is on the opposite side of the room. Too far away. I put my cigarette in
the nightstand ashtray and take hold of the dangling cuff. I begin to twist it round and
round. The chain bundles and knots and the cuff still locked on my wrist digs into the
skin. I crank the loose cuff once more and wrench my locked wrist in the opposite
direction and the chain pops, one broken link shooting across the room. I put the
sawn-through cuff on the nightstand and pick up my cigarette. I rub my wrist, massaging
the red skin under the single cuff I now wear like a bracelet. I spin the bracelet around
and around and think about the girl that it had been locked to.

And I lie in the dark, sucking smoke into my one good lung.

When I finally sleep I dream. I don't dream about the girl or her mother or her father. I
don't dream about Whitney Vale or Evie or the wretched things that raised me. I dream
about a darkness. And I see all the details I had only glimpsed in that room.

The way the darkness seeped into the room through a crack in the air. How it cut the space
between Horde and myself. How it passed through Horde, passed through him as he would have
passed through a mist. How it flapped and shivered as with pleasure, gliding up to the
shadows in the corner of the room. The things bulging from within the darkness, trying to
get out. The shapes bulging from it, pressing it outward from the inside, like people
trapped inside a black sheath of rubber. The hole it cut in the shadow. The last shape,
digging from within it, before it inked the shadow black and disappeared.

The shape like an oily black relief of Horde's screaming face.

--Stop screaming, Pitt.

I open my eyes. They're already here.

--Little early, guys.

Predo has set the chair from my desk next to the bed and is sitting in it. He looks at his
watch.

--It is nearly midnight. You have slept all day. Now it is time to get up.

--Yeah, guess you're right.

I sit up in bed and stretch.

--I'd offer you guys some coffee or something, but I don't like you. So. I throw off the
covers and move to get up and Predo's giant holds up a hand.

--If you could just stay on the bed for now, Mr. Pitt.

--Yeah, sure.

I grab my smokes from the nightstand, light up, lean my back against the wall and sit
there in my shorts and undershirt, and smoke. Predo lets it go for a minute, then gets
tired of it.

--Where is the girl?

I take a drag. I think I can feel some of the smoke going into my right lung. A good sign.

--Say, Mr. Predo.

His eyes tighten, but he waits for it.

--Know what I'm noticing?

He waits.

--No? OK, I'll tell you.

I stub my cigarette in the ashtray.

--I'm noticing how you're not asking what happened to the Hordes.

I grab the pack of Luckys and knock a fresh one out.

--When last seen, one of your enforcers was with them. You'd think he'd have called in by
now. But he hasn't. Know how I know he hasn't?

I flip my Zippo open.

--Because I killed him.

I thumb the wheel.

--But I have a feeling you already know that.

I light the butt.

--And that you don't give a fuck.

I close the lighter with a snap.

--Care to comment?

He temples his fingers and presses them to his lips.

--May I have a cigarette?

I pass him one. He taps it against his thumbnail then places it carefully between his lips
and leans forward. I flick the Zippo to life and hold it out. He dips the tip of the
cigarette in the flame, inhales, leans back and exhales with a slight cough.

--Filterless.

I close the lighter and put it back on the nightstand.

--Yeah.

He takes another drag, exhales without coughing this time.

--One of the advantages of the Vyrus. I do not personally take advantage of it often, but
when I do, I prefer filterless. More flavor.

--Yeah.

--You are right.

He picks a flake of tobacco from his tongue.

-My agent did fail to report when expected.

He shakes the tobacco from his fingertip.

--Another of our agents went to the Horde residence and reconstructed some of the action
that had taken place there. Based on that reconstruction, and my knowledge of Dr. Horde's
predilections, I was able to make an assumption as to where he had taken his ... party.
The agent went to the school. Yes, I do know about the Hordes and their man. And my agent.
And you are correct about something else, as well. I do not give a fuck.

He takes another drag, but pulls a sour face this time and shakes his head.

--What does that say as to how I feel about you?

He drops the freshly lit cigarette to the floor and steps on it.

--You see, you are mistaken about what is happening in this room, Pitt. You think you are
maneuvering yourself into position for some kind of bargain. You hope to leave this room
not only with your life, but with information, and perhaps some kind of profit. It is true
that there is a bargain to be struck here, but what lies in the balance is not your life,
but rather the manner of your death.

My cigarette burns a little closer to my fingers.

--You have killed an agent of the Coalition. And so you will die. Put simply, you can tell
us where the girl is right now, and we will kill you in some quick and relatively painless
manner. Or, if you prefer, you may withhold that information, and force us to extract it
from you. After which, we will drive to a location in New Jersey which I understand is
excellent for viewing the sunrise. Need I be any more blunt?

The heat of my cigarette's cherry reaches my fingers. I bring it up to my face and eke out
a last drag before putting it out. I hold the smoke from that last drag, then jet it out
my nostrils.

--I know Horde was the carrier.

I pick up the cigarette Predo crushed on rny floor.

--Yeah, I know, a statement like that is pretty much a conversation killer.

I drop the crushed cigarette in the ashtray.

--Where do you go from there? So let me expound a little bit. Just so you know I know what
the fuck I'm talking about.

I gather my thoughts. And hope they don't fall apart too quickly.

--Say you're a man like Horde. Say that in addition to owning a company like Horde Bio
Tech, you are also its top researcher. And just for the sake of argument, say you also
happen to be a very sick motherfucker who happens to have access to certain facts about
how things work on the darker side. That's our side, Predo. Oh, I'm gonna get dressed now.

I scoot to the edge of the bed. The giant takes a step toward me, but Predo shakes his
head and he stops. Standing is tricky, but I manage. Predo watches as I shuffle to the
closet.

--Not feeling well, Pitt?

--Been better.

I stand in front of the closet for a moment and look at myself in the mirror on the door.

Predo continues to watch the space where I had been sitting on the bed.

--You were saying?

Not surprisingly I look like shit. The bruises around my eyes and nose aren't so bad, but
the tooth Tom knocked out is still gone. The Vyrus will knit bone, but it won't grow new
ones.

--Yeah. So say you're Horde, and everything I've said is true of you. And it is true. We
know that. So that all being the case, who could blame you for taking a professional
interest in something like a very bizarre and dangerous bacteria? A bacteria that, I don't
know, say a bacteria that consumes its host and compels him to eat human flesh.

The wounds in my arms and left leg are corked with plugs of brick-red scab. I pull off my
undershirt.

--It would just make good business sense to look into something like that.

The holes in my belly and chest are scabbed as well and surrounded by angry red skin. If I
can get some more blood they'll be gone in a couple days. If I get out of this room alive.

--Just imagine if something like that were to become widespread. Situation like that, the
first company on the block with a vaccine would clean up. Face it, who's not gonna pay top
dollar to get a shot that's gonna keep them from eating their neighbor's brain?

I open the closet, grab a pair of old jeans, pull them on and get a black T-shirt from the
shelf. I face Predo as I shrug into the shirt.

--But where to start? How do you develop that vaccine?

I go to the desk, scoop up my wallet, keys and loose change, and put it all in my pockets.

--Now I don't know much about this kind of thing, but I'm guessing the first thing you'd
need is someone already infected with the bacteria. The technical term would be
zombie.
Not many people know how to come by a zombie, Mr. Predo.

I go sit back on the edge of the bed and wiggle my feet into a pair of socks.

--You know where to get one?

I reach under the bed for my shoes.

--Sure you do. If anyone knows where to get a shambler, it'd be Dexter Predo.

I lace my shoes.

--But then things get really tricky. Way I hear it, the bacteria only lives in the human
body, and sooner or later it kills its host. So what's a brilliant millionaire researcher
to do? I grab my smokes and get a fresh one going.

--Some people might say,
fuck it, I'll just keep making new zombies.
Every time one is ready to kack, just have it bite a new subject and, presto: new zombie.
Hell, some folks might extend the life of their subject by feeding it some brains. But
really, how long is that gonna work? Gonna be a whole lot of bodies going in and out of
that lab. Might raise a couple eyebrows. And this.

I jab my cigarette at him.

--This is where being a brilliant epidemiologist comes in handy. 'Cause it turns out the
bacteria
can
exist outside a host. How? Fucked if I know. But it can. I've seen it. Which means you can
get it under a microscope and look at it all you like without needing to make any new
shamblers. Unless you have a reason for making new shamblers. Now what could possibly be a
good reason for making new shamblers?

I blow some ash from the tip of my smoke.

--Any ideas?

He stares through me, studying the wall behind me. The giant just stands there like a good
boy and waits for Predo to order him to tear my fingers off for being an asshole.

I point a single finger at the ceiling.

--Here's a thought.

I aim the finger at Predo.

--What if you had the idea to study the bacteria in the wild? What if, now that you had it
isolated, you wanted to see how it spreads, how quickly? For a man looking to cure a
potential
zombie epidemic, that could be valuable information. Especially if you're thinking about
starting the epidemic yourself.

I tap the finger against the side of my head.

--But, can't have something like a zombie epidemic getting out of hand before you're ready
to deliver your vaccine and make your .Ê billions. That would suck. So what do you do? Oh,
you go ahead and make a plan to put it out in the general population. But it needs to be a
very special population. I put the finger away and smoke.

--See, nobody wants that kind of experiment on their turf. That shit gets even a little out
of hand and next thing you know, there's a lot of attention focused on your yard. Nope,
something like that doesn't get tested on Coalition turf. And not uptown, things are too
tense with the Hood. Not on Enclave turf. Nobody fucks with Enclave turf. Sure, things are
pretty open below Houston or in the Outer Boroughs, but it's just about impossible to keep
an eye on things out there. Tough to collect data. And the experiment could fly off the
handle. But what about
Society turf?
Hell, why not? Everybody wins. Horde gets to watch the bacteria move around in a
population, and the Coalition gets to cause a little trouble below Fourteenth. A little
sand in the Vaseline to keep Terry and his crew busy. That'd be good, what with DJ
Grave
Digga trying to stir up trouble. And after all.