Every Last Drop (24 page)

I'm not the only one with this, you know.

He puts them on.

—This affectation. I wore them before I was infected. Always felt weird without them. Even though they don't make me see any,  I don't know, any more clearly. —Hnuh.

He sits there, looking out from behind his play glasses. I look at the room some more. His little office. A bedroom squirreled away at the back of a tenement. Typical Society digs. Street-salvage furniture, rock and protest posters, books by Noam Chomsky.

Terry pushes a button on the oscillating fan that's moving the dead air around and it kicks up a gear.

—I try not to use it. The things burden the grid almost as much as an air conditioner. That's as much for our finances at this point as it is for the environment. So.

He watches me.

I let him.

He shakes his head. —So, money. Joe.

—Not much finesse in that transition, Terry.

He leans forward, elbows on knees. —Money. Joe.

I point at a coffee cup filled with pens that sits atop his press-wood desk. —It's an account. You'll want to write down the number and password.

He picks up a pen and a piece of notepaper with a little circle of green arrows on it to let you know that no new trees were killed to make it. —Shoot.

My hand twitches. But the partisans took my gun.

So instead of putting a bullet in him, I give him the numbers. I tell him how much Amanda put in the account.

He looks at the numbers on the sheet of paper.

—She must really care about you. No joking around, Joe. I may not like the idea of money as an expression of affection, and she may, I don't know, have it to spare, but this seems like someone trying to make a point about how much they value you. Not that I'm advocating using dollars to put a value on human or any other kind of life.

I wave a hand.

—Like I said, I used some nuance.

He looks at me over the lenses of those glasses that don't let him see any better.

—Tell you, man, I'd sure like to know what that was like. —Well, Terry, seeing as this money is supposed to put me back on the map down here. Get me a place out of the way, some kind of privileges if I want to move around a little.

He nods. —Sure, man, that was the deal.

I stand.

—Well seeing as that's the deal, and seeing as were maybe on the way back to being on something like friendly terms, why don't I tell you what it was like.

He sets the paper and pen aside. —Something on your mind, Joe?

I shake my head.

—Just like I said, just want to explain what it was like. Working some nuance for the girl.

I look at the floor between my feet, a long gash  in the wood where

something heavy was once dragged over it.

—What it was like was, it was like going down a hole and finding dozens of stupid, mute, starving kids with hoses stuck in their arms to make it easy to get their blood out. It was like going down that hole, and looking down it, and seeing a string of red lights, going deep, lights letting you know that there were hundreds more of them down there. And I'm wondering.

I look at him.

—That sound like something you might have seen at one time or another, Terry?

He takes off the glasses, looks at them, puts them aside. —Yes.

He rubs his eyes. —Yes it does.

I nod. —Man. Were you smart.

He looks at me. —How's that? —Having your boys take my gun before I came in here. That just saved your

life.

—Its interesting. In a way. Being able to talk about it. The terrible thing about a secret, its that, I don't know, that pressure it creates. Right? That internal variance. Like with laws of diffusion, how a liquid or a gas is always seeking to spread itself evenly through a medium, yeah? So you exhale smoke, which I still wish you wouldn't do in here by the way, but you exhale, and rather than it doing what I wish it would do and just kind of cling to you, it gradually spreads, diffuses into the air. And like, I've thought this before, how a secret is kind of the same. It wants to, this is pretty spacey, one of my spacey ideas, but how it wants to spread itself. Like smoke. Diffuse into the atmosphere until its evenly distributed. Yeah? And that, if the secret is bottled up in you, that creates pressure. Man, secrets, they just want out. Want to get everywhere. Especially, and this isn't always the case, but especially if the secret is the truth. Get me? Cause the truth wants to get out there, get into all the nooks and crannies, get into everyone's heads. The truth doesn't want to be bottled up, it wants to be free. And I'm down with that. You know I'm down with that. That's what the Society is about, getting the truth out.

He keeps rubbing his forehead, pressing his fingertips deep into his temples, eyes closed. —But not all at once. Not like, you know, like when something is under extreme

pressure and you release it, it just, man, it explodes out. Yeah? People get hurt. And, our life here, our life with the Vyrus, that's not like can-of-soda pressure. You release this truth you don't get some mess sprayed on the wall. The Vyrus, that's bomb pressure. That's, and I don't think this is hyperbole, but that's nuclear-device pressure. That's an explosion that rocks the world to its foundation. And.

He stops rubbing, rests his head in his hand, eyes still closed. —And this, this secret were talking about. That, that instillation in Queens, that's pressure on a whole different order. That's like, like, if the Vyrus is a nuke, that place is like a doomsday device.

He opens his eyes. —That place, Joe.

He lifts his head, looks at me. —That place is like a bomb that kills us all.

He points east, without looking there.

—People know about that, and there is nothing, nothing short of, man, nothing short of Jesus-Mohammed-Buddha-Gaia-Jehovah itself that saves us.

He wipes his mouth. —So, to talk about it, man, something that exerts that kind of pressure, to talk

about it for the first time in decades, that's just blowing my mind here. That's, the whole thing, its like a mirror being held up, when you take something like that out of the box and look at it after so long. Its a, man, its trip and a half.

He stares at his trembling hand. —A trip and a half.

He moves his hand, reaches for his prop glasses, slips them on. —But a thing like that, it belongs in its box.

I study that gash in the floor a little more.

—Well, I know you re no fool, Terry. Me the jury's still out on. Even so, I think I read this one pretty clear.

I lean down, pluck a stray splinter from the edge of the gash. —This thing, it doesn't even need to get out in the real world for it to raise hell. This thing, it spreads in our community, our people will go berserk.

I roll the splinter between my fingers.

—Dog with a parasite, chewing at its own insides. Ugly. Ugly things will happen. Hard to keep a wrap on the whole deal once they start happening.

I look at the ceiling. —Something like this gets out, like you say, people gonna start looking at

themselves in the mirror.

I shrug.

—Lots of them, they're gonna figure, in for a penny, may as well go for the whole pound. Been living off blood already, so why start worrying now about where some of it comes from. Some others.

I shake my head.

—This would be the line. Down here especially. Types get drawn to your turf, they hear about this, they wont want to go on staying undercover. Not if it means that pit in Queens stays full of bleeding kids.

I poke the tip of my index finger with the splinter.

—So yeah, I get it. Something like this, it needs to stay a secret. I know the score. I've kept your secrets before. Your backdoor deals with the Coalition. That thing with the shamblers a couple years back. All those bodies I've put in the river. I can keep a secret. And I sure as shit know one that needs to be kept when I stumble into it.

I draw blood from myself. —Something funny about it. Know what I mean?

He shakes his head. —No, man, I don't know anything funny about it.

I lick the bead of blood from my fingertip. My own personal Vyrus. —Funny thing is, for a while now, I've had it sussed that you're not just looking to find some kind of accord with the Coalition. Not just looking to get on an even footing so you could pressure them into going public alongside the Society. Use all those connections they have to smooth the way. Some time now, I've had it figured how you were never too happy about having to leave them in the first place. All your history with Predo, I've had it figured how maybe he leapfrogged you into running the enforcers and all that. How that was a bitter pill for you. How you went off and started your revolution. A revolution, you always call it. Not like you were looking to do your own thing and let bygones be bygones, but like you were looking to overthrow something. And it stands to figure, once something gets overthrown, someone's gonna have to step in and take control. Me, I've been figuring for a while now that that's what you're about, Terry. All that building a better world for everybody bullshit. I've had you figured for some time as Predo s flip side. Just looking to run the fucking show. Settle some scores. Like everyone else.

I point the sliver at him.

—But looking at the way you're trying to keep that hand from shaking, I'm figuring a little different now.

I lean toward him.

—You've been thinking about knocking off the Coalition alright. You've been thinking about sitting in Predo's chair. And not just bis chair, but one of those chairs on the higher floors, where the show gets run. Not so you can teach Predo who's top man, and not so you can even past scores.

I lean back, pick something from between my teeth with the splinter. —You, Terry Bird, you've been thinking about that hole in the ground. You've been thinking about what's in it. And you've been thinking about filling it in, stopping it up, and getting it out of the world. You've been thinking about being a savior.

I spit. —And that only works if it stays a secret till you're in charge.

He presses the bridge of his glasses tight to his face. —Only you, Joe, only you.

He shakes his head.

—Only you could describe a, you know, describe a man striving to do the right thing, and make it sound like he was, I don't know, like he was running the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Only you.

I flick the splinter away.

—Whatever.

I stand.

—Anyway, I get it. You need this thing to stay secret. The world Isn't ready. Infecteds aren't ready. No one is ready. When they're ready, you'll tell them they're ready. And you'll march in and make everything OK. I get it. I get it. I know this is how it has to be. I get it. Motherfucker. I get it.

He studies me.

—I know you get it, Joe. When it all shakes out, you're pretty dependable in one way.

He slips the hand he's been trying to keep still from between his legs. —You're no boat rocker. Truth is, and I don't want to say you don't get the job done in your own way, but the truth is, you're no revolutionary. If you d been around in the early days, at the barricades, I have a feeling you'd have been on the other side, man. Your own back is all you've ever really been out there looking to take care of, and the best way to keep, I don't know, to keep safe, is to keep things the way they are. Just maintain that old status quo.

He holds up his hand, looks at its new steadiness.

—Just the old tried and true for you, man. Steady as she goes. Never any question that you can be trusted to keep a secret when the alternative would

be, you know, bringing the whole world down around your head and changing everything.

I get a cigarette from my pocket. —Yeah, keeping earth-shattering secrets, its my specialty.

I put it in my mouth.

—Give me time to think about my own self-interest and I can be counted on to jump to that side of the room every time.

I light it. —Too bad there was no one to spell it out for me this time around.

He stops looking at his hand.

I suck on my cigarette. —I told the Horde girl, Ter.

His mouth hangs open in a way I've never seen before. —What the hell, Joe?

—It's how I got your money. Its what she wanted. To know where all the blood comes from. So I found out. And I told her. And you got paid. Nice when everyone gets what they want. —Oh. Jesus. Did you, Jesus, Joe, did you tell Sela?

—No.

—Thank Christ for that.

—But the girl will have told her by now.

He sits there, staring at me.