She looks up.
– It has a smell, the Vyrus. Even inactive. Not strong like the way you smell one another. Like subtle. Pheromone almost. I mean, to someone who was sensitive to it, they could pick out Vyrally inactive subjects and infect them at will. That idea is in there too. What’s not.
She taps the USB.
– What’s not in there is a sample. Obviously. Runaway replicators like this, they just burn out a host. I have dead matter, but no live samples. So what is in here is an address book. Me and Sela, we interviewed all the Cure applicants, and, I mean, this wasn’t the plan, but there’s a list in here of every safe house, Clan headquarters, bolt-hole, residence, pretty much every place someone who wanted to find Vampyres could start looking and have a pretty good shot at getting a live one.
She shrugs.
– Not like it’s a threat I’m making, because I totally don’t care anymore, but it’s in there.
She closes her eyes.
– But no cure.
She covers the USB with her hand.
– No cure.
She opens her eyes.
– No cure at all.
She looks at Sela’s body.
– I’m sorry, baby.
She looks at me.
– Joe. You killed my mom?
I nod.
– She asked me to.
She crinkles the corners of her mouth.
– Is that what it takes?
I shake my head.
– No.
She raises a hand.
– Joe.
I shake my head again.
– I’d like to help, kid. I get it and all. I just.
I look into the whiskey bottle in my hand.
– I just don’t got it in me for that.
She bites her upper lip.
– It’s OK, Joe. Caring is hard.
She looks at Sela again.
– I mean.
She looks at me.
– We’ve known each other a long time.
She sets the vial on her desk next to the USB drive.
– And I don’t think I could kill you either.
She takes the gun from her lab coat pocket.
– Just do me a favor?
– Sure.
She waves the gun at everyone in the room.
– These assholes.
She picks up the vial.
– Don’t let any of them have this.
She tosses it to me and I juggle it with my lame hand and only keep it from hitting the floor by cradling it against my chest.
She nods.
– That’s only for you.
She looks at Sela.
– And don’t let them have any of my blood.
She puts the barrel of the gun under her chin.
– That’s for you too.
I’ve wondered from time to time if there’s a limit to what you can take. Is there a little gauge somewhere in your brain that slowly rises toward the red, measuring when you’ve gone beyond your capacity to endure? Blood and madness and death and cruelty. Pouring into you. And at some point, does it just overflow and flood the whole system and everything shuts down?
I’ve wondered.
It’s no lie, I killed Amanda’s mom because she asked me to. She asked me to because she was sick and she was about to kill Amanda if someone didn’t kill her first. Follow it back around that way and you could say that I killed Amanda’s mom to save Amanda’s life.
Which strikes me like something close to irony.
As I sit there.
Having refused to kill Amanda so she can exit the misery of all the things she’s seen and done in her short life. I watch her do it herself.
Clearly having reached her limit.
Born into so much of that blood and madness, it took quite a bit to push her to overload. But there it was, in the bullet she used to kill her woman, the limit of what she could take and still keep her eyes open.
I’d have liked to help her. Make it a little easier at the end to step out and get all this over with. But I’m still not sure of my own limit. If it exists, where it might be if it’s out there. With more left to do, I couldn’t take the chance that doing for her what I did for her mom would be as far as I could go.
But I keep my eye open for her. And she looks into it. And there’s maybe a smile that passes back and forth between us.
When she pulls the trigger that I can’t, I don’t blink.
What I owe her.
Looking at her dead body, I wonder if I owe her more.
A pyre made of the dead.
A fire to burn them.
Yes, she’d like that.
And I know how to build such a thing.
Because I don’t blink, I see most of what happens when her gun goes off.
Predo raking Hurley’s eyes as he twists from his jacket and spins loose.
Terry sliding to the middle of the room, countering Predo, both of them taking an angle on me.
Lydia backing Delilah and Ben into a corner and standing in front of them.
Hurley, wiping the blood from his eyes as he drops Predo’s jacket and takes a step toward the gun racks at the other end of the room.
And me, lifting my whiskey bottle, two-finger hand wrapped around its neck, and asking the room at large.
– So am I the only one with a gun at this point?
The question draws a little extra of everyone’s attention, and they all take a quick look at the gun I snatched off one of the dead enforcers on my way up here, brandished in my good hand.
– I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who hung onto his when Amanda made the rest of you toss yours out the door. But someone be sure to pipe up if I’m wrong.
Predo combs a lock of hair coated in dry blood from his eyes.
– Shoot Hurley.
Hurley looks at him.
– I beg yer?
– He is by far the most dangerous of us and most likely to kill you. Shoot him now.
Hurley looks at me.
– Ya backstabbin’! I knew it!
I shake the bottle back and forth.
– Easy, Hurl. He’s just trying to start a melee.
– A?
– A brawl. So he can make a move.
– Well if it’s a brawl he wants, den, he can have it. An you, ya. I never figure ya fer a Coalition sap, Joe.
I take a drink.
– Hurley, my lad, you never figured two plus two is four.
– Is it insults den, is it?
I press the cool glass of the bottle to my forehead.
– Hurley, man, I didn’t sell you out. They were just in there. We were trying to join with you guys when you barged in and broke all hell loose.
He scratches his head.
– An I want ta believe ya, but I don’t know.
Terry fiddles his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
– I think we can, Hurl. I think, I don’t know, but I think there was just a little too much chaos down there for it to have been anything that was meant to have a pattern.
I nod.
– That’s right.
I take another drink.
– But it doesn’t mean that shooting you first wouldn’t be the best play.
Hurley waves it off with the back of his hand.
– Truly, den, open fire.
He grins.
– I tink I can just about take yer best shot, make ya eat da gun, an still have somethin’ left over fer Mr. Predo if it comes ta dat.
I look at Predo.
– So much for that. But here’s a thought.
I aim the barrel of the gun against the vial I’ve set on the arm of the chair.
– You can all make a move on me, try and snag this thing, and I’ll pull the trigger and we can all find out just how crazy the little girl was.
– You’re all crazy! You’re all fucking crazy!
Delilah is trying to get out of the corner, but Lydia keeps her pinned there, covering the pregnant girl’s body with her own, doing her best to protect Ben as well.
But Delilah wants none of it.
– Who are you people and what the fuck are you fighting over? Can you just live? Can you just all live and let us be? Let me and my boy and our baby go. We just. What are you thinking, mister? Crazy bitch said that shit would kill everything everywhere. You think that was a euphemism for killing just who you want it to kill? She meant it. You know she meant it. You people don’t want to live, is that it? We do! We do! We! Damn. Damn and fuck. Daddy. Daddy, you made this shit sound so cool.