Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (11 page)

I lean against a pole at the bus stop and look around. The world is made of blurs. I
should have let the doorman get me a cab, I'll never make it home like this. I don't even
know where home is right now. I need to sit down. Across 55th, people are setting up tents
and sleeping bags against the wall of a building. People start crossing the street and I
stagger among them and don't stop until I am clutching the wall of the building on the
other side. I find an empty patch of sidewalk between a beat-up dome tent and a large
cardboard box covered in sheets of plastic. I slump down between them.

The
world is riding a Tilt-A-Whirl. I fall onto my side and curl into a hall, my back pressed
against the side of the building, against the bars covering a basement window. I ball
myself tighter, my hands close to my face, and I smell something again. Something on my
hands.

I know that smell.

I'm in trouble.

I try to stand up and my eyes pull themselves closed.

A monster roars. I open my gummed eyes and see a troop of lean, black-topped figures
blurring up the street. Old ghosts are coming to haunt me.

The wind whips the sleep from my eyes and the thunder of a dozen Harleys pounds off the
buildings lining Fifth Avenue and shatters the predawn quiet. I clutch the
leather-jacketed back of the lead rider and look at the Dusters as they gun their bikes
downtown. Christ, how do they keep those top hats on their heads?

Terry sent the Dusters for me.

After our bath Evie and me went to bed and didn't wake up till close to two. She ordered
us some food from the Odessa Diner and we sat on my bed and ate it. After, I washed my
hair again to try and get rid of the smell of Leprosy's blood, but it didn't help much.
Blood is a scent that clings. Evie stuck
My Darling Clementine
in the DVD player to distract me. I sat next to her and stared at the screen, but didn't
see anything. I was thinking about the night. How it couldn't come soon enough. How I
couldn't wait for the sun to go down so that I could go out on the streets and kill
someone. Then the call came, summoning me back to the Cole to meet the husband this time.

When I didn't come back, Evie decided to do something. My coming home covered in Lep's
blood was the line for her. After that, she wasn't taking any chances.

She's met Terry a couple times. He's come into her bar looking for me and I introduced him
as a player in the neighborhood's community action set. As far as she knows, he's a
friend, or as much of a friend as I have. So she called Terry 'cause she didn't know
anyone else who might be able to find me. Good girl.

--Bird gave us a ring. Said he wanted us to check something out for him. No biggie, just
wanted us to crash Coalition turf and see if we could find you up here.

Christian is yelling over the blast of the bikes' pipes. We're below 24th now, on pretty
safe ground, but the Dusters are still riding patrol style: two outriders a block up
front, two as a rear guard a block behind, and the rest of the bikes clustered around me
and Christian atop his chopped, jet-black 72 Shovelhead. He's hunched over the drag bars
and I'm sitting behind him on the buddy seat, leaning against his back so I can hear what
he's saying.

--Anyway, I threw together a squad and here we are.

There's more to it, there has to be. The Dusters are one of the small Clans from below
Houston. They've managed to carve out some turf around Pike Street under the Manhattan
Bridge. They don't have an official affiliation with the Society, but they're allied. The
Dusters watch the Society's back door so Terry doesn't get too antsy about them being so
close to his turf. But they don't generally go around running Society errands. A deal was
cut. The Dusters are either paying off a big debt or getting something big for their
trouble; nothing else would make them risk their president and twelve of their best riders
by coming onto Coalition territory for a non-member. Whatever price was paid I'll be
expected to chip in with something. We cross 14th, back on Society turf, and the bikes
start peeling off in twos and threes, each rider saluting Christian with the tip of a top
hat before disappearing down a side street. And then it's just Christian and me.

--Bird wants to see you.

I look at the paling sky. If I go to Terry now I'll be stuck with him all day.

--Take me to my place.

--He said to drop you at their headquarters.

--You taking orders from the Society now?

He turns left onto 10th Street. I get off the bike in front of my apartment. Christian
sits on the idling machine, takes off his hat and slides his WW I-style goggles up on his
forehead.

--Hear you got a problem with some shamblers.

--Where'd you hear that?

--Word gets around.

--Yeah, that's what word does.

--Need any help? That shit's no good for none of us.

--Don'tÊ know what you'reÊ talking about.ÊÊ Everything'sÊ cool with me.

--Yeah.

He slips the goggles down and puts his hat back on.

--Guess that's why Bird's sending us to scoop you off the sidewalk on 55th.

I stick out my hand and he takes it.

--Thanks for the ride.

He keeps hold of my hand.

--I'd say anytime, but I'd be lying. You should drop all the Coalition and Society crap,
Joe. You keep playing the ends against the middle, you're gonna get fucked.

I take my hand back and keep my mouth shut.

He shakes his head.

--OK, play it that way. But you don't belong with them, man. You belong with us, down under
the bridge. You belong free.

--Nobody's free.

--Just looks that way to you, Joe.

He kicks the bike into gear and blows down the street. I watch him turn the corner onto A,
then go inside.

Christian's one of mine. I didn't infect him, best I know I've never infected anyone, but
I found him. He and his boys had taken up on that block of Pike not knowing that the
Chinatown Wall had claimed it. They rumbled with the Wall. 'Course, they had no idea the
Wall were all Vampyre. The Wall savaged his gang, left most drained and walked away from
the mess. That's how those animals operated back then. This was 78, 79, and I was still
with the Society. I went down there with Terry to clean things up. We pitched the bodies
in the East River, but Christian still had some life. Terry figured him finished and was
ready to dump him. I figured I owed someone else the same shot Terry had given me.

I took him to a Society safe house and got him through it. He'd seen plenty of weird shit,
he'd seen what the Wall did to his friends. That was enough for him to believe. But once
he was strong enough to move he split, wanted nothing to do with Terry's peace and love
agenda. He tracked down what was left of his old gang and went to work, infecting them. It
took him a year to build a new gang and then he went back to Pike Street, and the Dusters
wiped out an entire generation of Wall. Only reason those Chinatown bastards are even
considered a Clan anymore is because they've been around for so long. Nowadays the Dusters
have their turf wired so tight that only the major Clans would think about walking Pike
without an invitation.

I need to call Evie and tell her I'm OK. I need to call Terry and tell him I'll talk to
him tonight, find out what I owe him for the rescue. I need to get back on the street and
find the girl and the carrier. But first I need a drink. I don't know what Horde slipped
me, but anything that could put me down that hard would have been lethal to someone
uninfected. I still feel weak and sick as shit. So I open my fridge, more than a little
concerned about how much I've been drinking, and find out I have more important things to
worry about. It's gone. All my blood. Every drop. Gone.

The Enclave is set up in a warehouse on Little West 12th in the Meatpacking District. They
don't lay claim to any turf outside their own front door, they don't have to. The Clans
and the Rogues observe a no-man's-land that covers the entire West Side from 14th down to
Houston. Nobody wants anything to do with them, least of all me. But someone was in my
apartment, someone who didn't leave a trace, except for little erasures where his smell
should have been. Erasures just like the ones I found in the classroom where I finished
the shamblers. So it's time to go talk to Daniel.

I'm out in daylight for the second time in seventy-two hours, back in my burnoose, but I
called a car service this time and specified tinted windows. I sit in the middle of the
backseat, shifting from side to side as the sun strikes the windows, staying out of any
direct rays. The tinting cuts down the long-wave UVs, but the shorts, the ones that really
fuck us up, get through. I have the driver drop me at the corner of Little West 12th and
Washington and walk down the block, keeping close to the buildings and the line of shade
they cast on the sidewalk.

The Enclave warehouse looks like any of the others on this block, except for a total lack
of graffiti or any other vandalism. The kids may not know exactly who those guys are in
there, but they know they're bad. I climb the steps up to the loading dock and slide the
huge steel door open on its tracks. They don't bother locking the door here. No one is
stupid enough to fuck with them.

I step inside and slide the door closed behind me. It's dark, very dark. Nice. I take off
my sunglasses.

--Simon.

I turn. I think it's the one who talked to me the other night.

--What did I tell you about that?

He smiles.

--I am sorry, it is just that you are so much more a Simon than a Joe. Which is as it
should be.

--Just take me to Daniel, will you.

--Of course.

We cross the open space of the empty warehouse and shapes at the far end begin to resolve.
At first it looks like rows and rows of white plaster lawn ornaments, and then they become
Enclave. It looks like all of them, a hundred at the outside, the most feared of all the
Clans. They sit cross-legged on the floor, motionless and silent, each of them dressed
entirely in clothes as white as their pigmentless skin. My guide leads me through them.
The ones in the back rows still have a bit of color to them and some flesh on their bones,
but they get progressively paler and more emaciated as we move toward the front of the
assembly. About halfway there my guide sits down in an empty space at the end of one of
the lines. I stop, but he shakes his head and waves me forward.

At the front sits a single form, his back to me, facing the same direction as the others,
but alone and separate from them. I stop. He's still for a moment, and then turns his head
and looks up at me. He smiles and points at my white burnoose.

--Simon, how nice of you to dress for your visit.

Daniel looks like death. Exactly how you would expect death to look if he ever showed at
your bedside with a scythe and a long list bearing your name inked in blood. Hairless,
bone-white skin stretched tight over the skeleton beneath. He looks like death because
he's dying. That's what they're all up to in here, slowly starving themselves to death.

We're walking up the stairs to the loft that runs along the back of the warehouse, and
despite his skeletal state Daniel bounces lightly up the steps, radiating verve and barely
restrained energy. At the top of the stairs he leads me down a narrow corridor that runs
between a series of identical cubicles, each one containing nothing but a floor mat and a
water jug. He steps into one of the cubicles on the left and I follow him in. There's an
Enclave lying on the mat, shivering and sweating and nearly as wasted as Daniel. Daniel
nods at him.

--He's failing.

Yeah, no shit.

Daniel points at the floor in a corner and I go sit there. He settles himself on the floor
next to the dying Enclave, placing a hand on his forehead and gently stroking the sickly
skin. The Enclave stops shivering.

--Failing, Simon, as we all do.

--All except you, right, Daniel?

He smiles, shrugs.

--Time will tell. But Jorge here, he's failing very quickly.

--Why?

--He's something of a fundamentalist in his beliefs. He chose to stop feeding entirely.

--Jesus. How long ago?

--Oh, several weeks now.

--And he's still alive?

--Well, that's a subject for some debate, is it not?

I watch as Daniel strokes the brow of the dying Enclave. He's right, they do all fail, the
Enclave, fail and die. That's what happens when you stop feeding. The Vyrus wants you to
feed, needs

you to feed. It strengthens you, sharpens your senses and motivates your body so that you
will feed and consume more blood that will in turn feed it. Stop feeding and it will begin
to consume your own blood, just as your body will eat itself if you deny it food. The
Enclave feed only the barest amount. Are they doing it out of principle, denying
themselves in order to spare the lives of others? No. They're doing it because they're a
bunch of fucking spooks.

Jorge's breath is becoming more ragged, his lips peeling away from his gumless teeth,
mouth stretched open, the air whistling in and out of his throat. Daniel leans forward and
puts his mouth close to Jorge's ear and whispers to him. Shit, he's gonna croak right now.
I start to get up to leave the room, but Daniel waves me back down. I don't want to see
this, but you do what Daniel tells you when you're in his house.

Jorge's back arches off the floor and his fingers claw at the sleeping mat, digging little
furrows in the thin bamboo reeds. Daniel is lying next to him now, pressing his body
against Jorge's, stroking his face, whispering nonstop, chanting something. Crackling
sounds are coming from Jorge's mouth, not like sounds he is making, but more as if
something were breaking within him, echoing up his esophagus. His eyes fly open and thick
white pus begins to ooze from their sockets. The crackling noise gets louder and his skin
jumps and twitches as if bugs and snakes are trapped beneath it, struggling to burrow out.
He begins opening and closing his mouth, his teeth snapping and gnashing at the air. The
white puss is pouring down the sides of his face and one of his bugging eyes pops out of
its socket and lolls against his cheekbone, and his head thrashes and bangs against the
floor.