I point down again.
– Terry and Lydia and a few dozen partisans and Bulls.
He draws his brows close.
– Pitt?
I shrug.
– Am I supposed to not be trying to betray and kill you at this point?
– Yes. No. Of course. Terry and Lydia and a few poorly armed, ill-equipped rebels. A shame that cannon fodder is not what the occasion demands.
– Hurley’s down there.
His eyebrows go up.
– Yes. That might turn the tide.
His eyebrows drop again.
– Now you simply need to crawl to that drain and tell them to pop up here, lay down some cover fire, and not kill us as we come around the corner.
I make the fist again, show it to him.
– All or nothing.
He thinks.
I point at the cells that are still issuing chewing noises.
– Monsters, Predo. Real monsters.
He nods.
– How silly of me not to notice.
He frowns, nods again, circles a finger in the air to draw the eyes of his people. A few sharp hand gestures later and we’re balled up like a porcupine, guns facing out, tight. Two ranks deep on each side. Front rank squatting and scuttling, second rank on their feet, hunched. Give Predo credit, he’s not at the middle. We’re both frontline, far end, where the mass will round the corner first.
Into the teeth of battle.
Or maybe the teeth of the worm.
Predo holds a hand in the air, counts down one finger at a time. Must be nice, being able to do that kind of thing with both hands.
First finger and I’m thinking about when I came to after I was infected. Terry trying to explain things to me. How I was checking the angles of the room, looking to see where I could dodge past this psycho. He never used the words Vampyre or monster. I did. A joke. So you’re telling me I’m a vampire? Yeah? Fucking cool, man. Monster. Fucking cool. Looking for something to hit him with. He offered me a suck off a loose pint he had. Thought it was Karo Syrup and red food dye. Trying to humor him. But once I had that suck, I knew it was no sick joke. Cool, I thought, I really am a fucking monster.
Second finger and I’m remembering when I heard about zombies the first time. Terry again, explaining these poor unfortunates. Thought it was a turn of phrase. Like he was describing one of the underclasses he always went on about. Like it was a metaphor. Didn’t get it till one showed on Avenue D. Back then, it was like Digga’s Harlem, death wagons rolled in the morning to pick the corpses out of the gutters. Some had split skulls, no one looked too hard to see if all the brains were still in there. No one but Terry. We did dead patrol. Looking at the corpses before they got hauled away. Looking for signs of rogue feeding. Found a guy with teeth marks all over his face, neck, what was left of his scalp. Head split with a tire iron, not much inside. Terry took the scent and led us to one of the abandoned tenements that made up the better part of the neighborhood in those days. Found the shambler drifting up and down a staircase, just enough of his own brain left to keep him moving and feeding. Terry got him down and taught me how to break the neck and cut the brain signals running to the autonomic systems of the body. Stepped back and watched it die slow as it stopped breathing and its blood stopped circulating. Thinking to myself, OK, man, now that is a fucking monster.
Third finger and I’m thinking about the Wraith. Squirming mass of black and cold. Servant to Enclave. Nightmare Vampyres use to scare each other. Saying, Don’t fuck with Enclave or they’ll send a Wraith on your ass. Something to laugh at, till you find yourself half-mad in a basement, about to die, and something so black you could fall into it whips across the room and kills the man about to kill you. Tell yourself, I don’t know what I saw. I saw nothing, I was dreaming bad. Awake in the middle of the day, can’t sleep, sun outside, beating at the walls, trying to get in through the cracks and kill you, the brightest hour, most fearsome, and tell yourself then, Monster. I saw a fucking monster. Come the night again, you don’t know what to believe.
Fourth finger and I’m thinking about the hole in Queens. Standing at the top, looking down a shaft that dropped away under my feet, down, down, down, work lights at every level, burning at every level, smaller and smaller, until they disappeared in the depth of the thing. The wax skin on a naked girl with an I.V. needle riveted to her arm. Cooler full of cords. Nursery. The men I killed and wished I had the bullets back out of their bodies, so I could kill them again, slow and proper. ‘Cause dead is dead and anything they had coming to them I wasted when I did them quick. Standing at the top of that hole and hearing from down deep, breathing, gasping, one breath taken between each bite. The worm down there at the bottom of that hole, eating itself, spreading its sick madness. Thinking, No monsters in this world. Just us people.
Fifth finger and I’m thinking about being up in Amanda’s office looking at her slide show. Her explaining to me the origins of life. Vyrus mates with bacteria. How long an idea like that needs to circle around and around in my head before it makes any kind of sense to me. What they call the implications. That HERV thing she talked about. All of us with viral scraps in our DNA, just not all of us have Vyral material as well. That idea finally catching up to me. If it all really started with the Vyrus, then it’s not just in us, in people, it could be in anything. Inactive Vyrus cells in any DNA. Waiting to be activated. And then who knows what the hell you end up with. Phil saying to me, experiments. Little Amanda in her lab, seeing what happens when you activate the Vyrus in all god’s creatures. Thinking now, She’s making monsters.
And no more fingers to think with.
We move around the corner, facing that long arm of the L-shaped basement, row of doors, a few of them open. The thing I killed against one wall, just outside an open cell door, another dead monster by the opposite wall, that thing under the pile of dead enforcers still quivering. Light from the Mini Maglites some of the crew have clipped under the barrels of their weapons. Quiet except for our shuffling feet and rapid breathing. Clear shot to the hole in the floor where we can trickle down into the sewer one at a time. No one wanting to be the short straw, last man on top. Edging closer, waiting for that Klaxon to sound, all the doors to slam wide. Feels like the vibration of the bell is hammering the air already, but it’s just heartbeats. Closer to the hole. Ready to go flat and stick my head down there and tell Terry something that will keep him from opening fire on Predo’s crew. No time to be picky about joining up with anyone who has a gun, Ter. The more the merrier. Few more steps and I’ll just start talking, hope the right thing comes out. Something like, Don’t shoot! Monsters!
Meanwhile, my own personal monster, my Vyrus, goes at my intestines with its teeth. I stutter-step, trip up the guy behind me. Predo yanks me along.
– Pitt!
I try to keep moving my feet, but it feels like I’ve been bit in half at the waist, no legs to move, innards dragging on the ground.
Then they’re back, teeth pull out, feet are under me, and I’m moving for the hole, ready to make my play when something explodes underneath. Stone and mortar and shards of rusty iron blasted into the air as Hurley erupts from the hole, sledgehammer in one hand,.45 in the other, landing on his feet next to the widened hole, screaming to the troops now visible below.
– Tis da double cross i’tis!
And the vibrations that have been hanging in the air waiting to break, the Klaxon sounding, the doors opening, the yellow blur that bursts from one of them zeroing in on Hurley’s chest. Size of a large dog, it will chew a hole through his lungs when it hits him, but it never gets there, hammer snapping mid-shaft as Hurley smashes it from the air, a blow so hard the thing splits in half, each part whirling across the basement spewing yellow blood that smells of rotted Vyrus, smacking against the wall and falling to the floor.