Bruises are starting to form around the holes he put in my shoulder, but the blood has coagulated. I lift my arm over my head and stretch it out. It'll do. I pick up the bat and walk over to the wall to see what Gristle was so interested in. It's an old T-shirt, used to be kind of gray-green, but now it's mostly red. I give it a good smell, and you don't have to be much smarter than dirt to know it's Leprosy's.
In the farthest, darkest corner of the garden, where the walls of the two buildings that border it to the south and west meet, I can see an old steel basement trap. It's open. I drop Leprosy's shirt.
I've been spending a little too much time in basements the last few nights, but hey, it goes with the territory. I choke up on the bat and head down the stairs.
I'm hit with that generic oily-dirt smell that permeates City basements. There's garbage down here and moldy cloth and waterlogged newsprint, and blood. Lots of blood, and it smells just like Leprosy. I follow the blood.
These East Village tenements have been torn down and rebuilt so many times that the floor plans of the original builders have become worthless abstracts. This basement has penetrated far beyond the property lines of the building above. Many of these buildings could have had a single owner in the past and for any of a number of reasons he might have connected the basements into a single maze. Could have helped to hide a sweatshop, escape routes from a drug lab or, in a more innocent time, a speakeasy. Anything. All it means to me is that I'm getting lost down here. But the smell of Leprosy's blood is getting stronger ahead of me.
Every so often I pass a loose-fitting door that leads into someone's laundry room or the storage closet for a bodega and light from a feeble bulb leaks out. But I don't really need that light to tell me when I get to the place where someone must have cut Leprosy open because I just about slip and fall down in the puddle of his blood. He's up ahead of me. In the darkness. Alone. I tuck the bat under my arm, take out the Maglite, twist it on and shine it into the black room just ahead.
– Hey, fuck face.
He's sprawled on his ass, propped against a half-rotted wood post in the middle of the room, his arms pulled back and tied to the post. His chest is covered with dozens of slash marks and the blood oozes out and pools in his lap. My mouth begins to water. I take the bat out from under my arm and stay there in the doorway.
– Hey, Lep. You look like shit.
– Yeah, well.
His voice is choked and tight.
– I think I'm coming down with a fucking cold, so maybe that's why.
– Uh-huh. There anybody in here with you, Lep?
He moves his head around weakly, then turns it toward me and gives a shaky little smile.
– Looks like it's just me.
I take a step into the room, shine the light into the corners and crannies. It's empty. I walk over to Leprosy, drop the bat and kneel down next to him.
– Let's have a look at you.
The cuts on his chest are shallow, put there to inflict pain, not to kill. I take off my shirt and start tearing it into long strips and wrapping them around his skinny torso to bind the wounds.
– You might get lucky here, Lep.
– Yeah, lucky fucking me.
– They tell you what they wanted?
– They wanted you, fuck face. They wanted to know about you. Then they wanted me to make that fucking call, and as soon as I did they fucked off. So you get all of them?
– Who?
– It was a fucking trap, right? They made me call you and fucking jumped you, right?
– The only thing that jumped me was your dog.
– Gristle? You best not have hurt my dog, fuck face.
– Your dog is fine, the only thing that got hurt was my shoulder.
– Heh. He got you, huh?
– Fuck off, Lep.
I finish wrapping his chest.
– They get you anywhere else? They break anything?
– One of 'em stuck me in the back of my neck or something.
I take him gently by the shoulders, lean him forward until he's resting against my body and look at the back of his neck. There's a bite mark. The edges of it are a sickly greenish white. The bite of the carrier, just like I found it on the neck of the shambler chick. He's dead and rotting, and soon he'll be trying to eat me. I lean him back against the post.
– Looks OK.
– Cool. So you think they'll be waiting for us when we go out? Or maybe they wanted to get you out of the way so they could bust into your place?
I shrug.
– Whatever, we'll deal with it.
– You'll deal with it, fuck face. Not my problem.
I tear another strip from my now ruined shirt.
– Let me get another look at your neck. I want to keep your head from falling off.
– Ha fucking ha, fuck face.
I lean him against me again and use the strip of cloth to wipe the blood away from the hole in the back of his neck.
– You get a look at them, Lep?
– Naw, there was a couple of the fuckers, but it was too dark for me to see shit.
– Which one did this to your neck?
– Fuck do I know? One had me facedown on the floor, and I was screaming and shit, and one of them cut my neck with something.
– They ask you anything special?
– Couple questions. Wanted to know what you asked me. About that chick. What you wanted from me.
– What'd you tell them?
– What the fuck you think I told them? They were cutting my chest open. I told them fucking everything, which wasn't a fuck of a lot. Leprosy is no fucking hero, man, not for twenty fucking dollars.
– Yeah.
– You done patching that thing up or what?
– Just about. Hey, Lep, if your dog was sick, real sick, what would you do with it?
– What the fuck does that mean? You hurt Gristle, you shit fuck?
He struggles against me weakly and I hold him still.
– Easy, you'll start bleeding again. Naw, the dog is fine, it's like a puzzle thing, like a joke. If your dog was real sick, what would you do?
His body is leaning up against mine, his blood staining my undershirt. His head on my left shoulder, the one his dog chewed, and I'm looking into a hole chewed in his neck.
– Shit, man, if Gristle was that sick, like in pain kind of sick? I'd kill him, man, I'd just fucking kill him.
– That's what I figured.
– So what's the punch line, fuck face?
I take his head in my hands, one on the back, the other tucked under his chin. I lean him back against the crumbling post and do it while I'm looking him in the eye. It's a bad position, I'm on my knees with hardly any leverage, but I do it clean and his body slumps to the floor, head dangling at the end of his broken neck. It takes me awhile to find my way out of the basement.
Gristle is where I left him. A vicious animal that will try to kill anything that comes near it once it wakes. I could take him to the park and see if one of Lep's friends wants him, but they won't. I could take him to the pound where they'll keep him for a few days until they see the killer inside him and then put him down. I could leave him on the street to wake up and wreak havoc until he's shot by some cop. I could take him home. I could take him home and care for him until he loves me like he loved Leprosy.
But he won't. He'll be a broken thing without his master. A wounded monster. I kneel in the dirt. I kill him the same way I killed Leprosy, the same sharp twist of the neck. Then I drag him down into the basement, through the warped passageways to the black room, and I drop him next to his friend. Let them be found, and let whoever finds them make of it what they will. I'm going home.