Sixteen Small Deaths (8 page)

It’s almost as if only the strong survived. Only those who were willing to become monsters stepped outside of the boundaries of decency and planted their teeth into the soft flesh of a human. For some, it was just too hard. Even I found myself sitting in dark days during those years. It was only when I learned to stash, learned to make the right connections did I find myself fed, satisfied, and, until now…
safe.

Cale was well-connected within the East Coast societies. He knew the leaders of local clans. He knew how to get the right quantities of fuel without causing a stir or raising attention. And, most importantly of all, he hooked me up with Mickey, who kept me well-fed and well-paid with a gig at the December Club.

It’s very rare now that I sniff out a fellow infected soul in the public realm. We’re an endangered species, whittled down to the smallest number in decades. If you’re not like me and you live in
the rural areas of the country, I can’t imagine you’d be anything but fucked. Only the powerful ones survived the worst, and now the few of us left have to deal with something even more violent than starving the virus.

Everything before this week was perfect. I lived day-to-day with the same routine, the same bittersweet emotion of eternal life. I stay off the radar. My driver’s license is under a different name. I don’t have credit cards or bank accounts. I deal in cash and blood. I don’t have many friends. It’s a simple life, but it’s a life I’ve been used to for so long. And now that all seems to be crashing down around me. For once, I’m not worried about my next meal. For once, I’m not worried about finding a woman who I can share my terrible secret with.

Because now, all I’m worried about is
death.

#

Davey switches the radio station with a quick twirl of his perfectly-manicured fingers. Hard rock, jazz, then silence. He can’t settle on a station. He finally puts his hand back on the steering wheel and we continue into the night. We reach the Ink Station and Cale’s already standing on its doorstep, plum cherry tip of a cigarette dangling from his lips. Davey rolls down the window and smiles. “Two hours and we’re not stopping.” Cale nods and opens the back door, tosses his duffel bag between mine and Davey’s and hops into the truck with a sigh. He looks back at the trail of fog and exhaust, as if the tattoo shop is his home.

I lean against the passenger’s side window, cool glass pressing into my cheeks. Before long, I’m dreaming of the life I lived before all of this.

#

Night burns into a smoldering trail of haze and moonlight. I
wake to Davey’s voice. “We’re here, partner.”

I’m out the truck and surrounded by the woods, far different from the world two hours ago. Cale tosses my duffel bag at me and I catch it with both arms. He looks around and shakes his head. “Thirty years and it comes down to this,” he says. “Thirty goddamn years.”

I can’t do anything but look away, listen to the speckles of rural nature tickle the innermost portions of my mind. It’s beautiful up here and dangerous at the same time. Only a few yards from us are the booming echoes of misplaced laughter and other voices. Drips and drabbles of other clans, souls lost and wandered into a place where we all might die. Davey motions for us to follow him up to a bleak and gray building that’s oddly out of place up here in the woods.

“This place was once used to store my group’s supply,” he says, dragging his bag over a hefty shoulder. “For years I’d make trips up here with my guys and fill up. Local government thought it was a waste management facility. Never would have thought we’d have to use this place for a safe haven.”

The voices grow louder as we approach the entrance, some of them familiar, most of them new. Davey holds the door open for us and we’re greeted with a dozen different sets of fiery eyes. These are the hunted brethren, the fellow lifers that have come here as a last resort. I find my place at a table in the corner of the lobby where I recognize Betty, a black-haired raven that once tended bar at the December Club. Her face lights up when she sees Cale and I, arms outstretched and gripping my shoulders with the force of a burning memory.

“Charlie,” she says, lips as red as Christmas. “Long time.”

A single peck on the cheek. “I know, Betty. Too long.”

Before we can start a conversation, Davey’s standing on the counter of the makeshift bar in the corner. His words cut through the thick stench of ammonia and fear.

“My friends. We are not here because we are afraid. We are
not here because this is a final stand.
We have not come here to die.
For the last hundred years, we’ve lived as we’ve wanted and along the way there’s been bumps. We’ve seen our share of misfortune. We’ve seen our share of hardship. And tonight, my friends, is just another hurdle that we have to approach with caution. We’ve lived this long and tonight is not the last time we’ll see each other, you can mark my words.”

He hops down from the corner of the bar and greets a group that has just walked into the building. I look around, see a set of doors and I imagine this place is not equipped as a bunker or even as a home.

Cale grabs my arm. “I’m not in the mood to socialize. I can’t believe what we’re doing here.”

“I know, I know. But this is the only way we’re going to be safe, or so says Davey. I’ve seen what they can do, Cale. I’ll never forget those moments. I’ll never forget what they did to Abel.”

Cale looks away, sighs. Davey approaches from the corner, two beers in one hand. “Drink, my friends. I refuse to realize the fear.”

I can’t help but smile. Long sip of alcohol and my nerves subside with a groan. Ten or so minutes pass and I feel just as Cale did. I set the bottle on the edge of the table and slide away into the opposite side of the room. I open the door next to the bathroom and find a storage room, dozens of large boxes stacked perfectly along the walls. It’s cool and dark and perfect. Cale’s right behind me.

“Don’t feel like socializing?”

“Not tonight.”

“Me too.” He plants his backside against a stack of boxes and lets out a deep breath. He unscrews the top of his beer and flips the bottle to his mouth.

I sit cross-legged on the cool tiled floor, stomach mixing alcohol and the whispers of the virus. It’s hard not to ignore its siren but there’s enough fear careening through my mind to keep
it at bay for at least the rest of the night.

Cale finishes his beer and rolls the bottle along the floor. He burps and tilts his head back. “Jesus, Charlie…we really should be at the club, you know? Mickey booming with laughter, tearing through a bottle of scotch with everyone. This just doesn’t feel right.”

Before I can speak, the familiar rumble of broken glass and bursting explosions echoes from the room outside the door. Cale’s eyes widen, black and blue drops that radiate with dread. I stand up and my brain flutters, wonder quickly if I’m dreaming the sounds on the other side of the wall. Before I can turn the knob the door dents and cracks into a million sprinkles of wood and gray paint. One of the group’s bodies is bloodied and beaten, tip of his skull scalped around his temple. Mushy squiggles of brain and flesh goop onto the floor and it only takes me three total seconds to grab Cale’s arm and jump out of the broken entrance in the storage room door. I push my way through smoke and screams, quick glance of black-and-blonde hair swooshing into the wind. I don’t take the time to find Davey or anyone else involved in the slaughter. I can hear Cale’s words close behind me.
The truck…the truck…

In a squeal of seconds I find the open wall that once stood solid before the angel burst her way into the building. Moment of freshness from the cool night air, soon dissipating into a frantic run for Davey’s truck. Cale reaches the driver’s side and flips open the door. I jump into the passenger’s seat and breathe again while he plucks the keys from the visor. Loud roar of the engine and we’re off. I take a single second to look behind me, long wispy trail of smoke and fire spinning from the building.

The truck careens along the dirt road, Cale pressing hard on the gas pedal. The speedometer rifles with glee and soon enough I can’t hear the disparate voices in my head. He doesn’t anticipate the curve at the end of the road and time freezes as we’re spun upside down.

Crank of metal and wood, gush of red from the open wound in my forehead.

#

The stars blush and smile, bits of glitter exploding into long streams of hazy purple liquid. I can’t feel my arms or legs and I imagine this is where my soul is trapped. The virus robbed me of my soul and forever I’ll be a part of somewhere that has no depth, no air.

I look down and see my boots are level with the sea. I’m walking on water, the glistening edges of violent waves crashing against each other in a fit of winter storm. Snow and ash fall from the sky. When I close my eyes I fall backwards into sand. She’s standing above me, hair floating in the wind like a cloud of black snakes.

“The angels form the demons,” she says.

I can’t speak, can only watch a whisper of smoke escape from my lips. She raises a white-painted fingernail and I’m drawn to the ground, an unseen force pulling me below the sand and into darkness. When I finally shout, my voice is beaten and broken. I hear the murmur now, like a million dead souls singing with their final breaths.

The angels form the demons.

#

I wake to the sounds of blood sloshing against my chest. It’s wet and painful and I don’t know where I am. Blurry vision gives way to an aura of broken light. I wince when Cale’s head is thrown onto my lap. I’m lying at the side of the truck, steady downpour of rain dousing the goosebumps trailing across my arms and legs. I claw along the ground, fingernails digging against a mix of dirt and grass and mud. It’s only when I bring my hands to the air that I can see the two events unfolding before me: the rain is my best friend’s blood and the light is coming from the fire in her eyes. A suicide angel, the same one from the beginning of my
downfall. Leather pants as tight as latex paint. Pale skin, two tattoos now drenched in the blood of her kill.

She stands above me, the rest of Cale’s body floating in the air. On the horizon, the last breaths of night slip into the distance. The trees beyond the fence shudder in the wind. I kick off Cale’s lifeless head from my legs, his face locked in a cold, dead stare. My breaths are erratic and as she nears closer to me, every inch of every hidden memory of my life before all of this flashes in the corners of my eyes, each scene and every bit of dialogue muddled by the sparkling cigarette burns popping into view with every drop of my eyelids.

I can’t see the sun, but I know it’s in the distance. I know it’s there. She kneels next to me, traces a finger alongside my arm. Her touch anesthetizes me for a moment, leaves my blood in a standstill. The angel opens her mouth and I can hear her words. They swing past the curves in my brain, past the memories and past the consciousness of my mind. Lost and back again. Lost.

She straddles her wet frame over mine. I can barely feel the weight of her backside. She leans forward, lips that could kill with a single bloody kiss. The thrust of a million blind souls drives my body to slide against the mud. She pushes me back down without moving. A long trail of icy breath slips from my mouth and into the air, caught between the moon and the sun. The center of my shirt splits and the fabric snaps. Her face curls into a smile and I know that it’s only a matter of seconds before it’s over. She closes her eyes, eyelids as dark as wet mulberry. My body throbs and each jolt from her hands twists my veins until they pop and collapse. Her hand stuck to my bare chest, she slides it down to my pelvis, leaving a path of gashed skin and boiling blood. The virus is frightened and subdued. Even its powerful grip can’t stave off execution at the hands of the angel.

The hair dangles in front of her face like charred icicles, her cheeks as white as virgin snow. The other hand digs into the new chasm between my chest and stomach. She pulls out a handful of
my insides, steaming hot blanket of angry blood slithering away from the mess. She shows her teeth and in only three seconds does she stand up again. My hands wobble in the mud before the bone erupts from below the skin. She lifts a finger to the air and my body slides along the grass until the sound gives out to a wall of black noise.

The curves and lines of a miscible disk of light penetrate my final visions. My eyes follow the comet trail of red dust dancing above my face. Night burns into a cavern of lost echoes, breaths swept away in a muddle of melting static.

A sparkling crackle of wind bursts through the open window in a short fuse of firecracker pops and rogue waves of moonlight. I count to four and tip the barrel of my gun to the sky, watch the cherry tip of her hair fall to the sidewalk like a glowing cigarette spinning downward into a concrete ashtray. Deep breaths slither through my lungs with the force of dozen dying angels. I drop the gun on the carpeted floor and sit in the corner of the bedroom, close my eyes and wait for the broken universe in my head to split through the center of my skull.

Her name was Delilah and she’s one of three people that are responsible for killing my wife.

I light a match and watch a twisted trail of gasoline and dust flicker into a dancing ray of fire and crimson. The apartment door slams behind me and for only a second can I hear Delilah’s final words echo in the empty crevasse of lies and gray ash under my boots. Quick stomps and I hurry down the staircase to the lobby, past the doorman with a wink and a smile. He has the eyes of a wounded soldier. In only a few minutes he’ll hear something pop and explode and forget who I am.

Night tosses a tidal wave of cool air into my face, a blanket of burgundy clouds twirling in the sky like comet trails of blood. I fetch a smoke out of my jacket pocket and light its tip with the final match in the box. Nicotine swirls in my lungs and the moment is gone, behind me like a river floating out to sea. I won’t take my chances hailing a cab this late at night but I can smell the oncoming storm of rain and thunder. It sticks to the air like burnt sugar.