She runs out of gas about there and Ben wraps her up.
– I told you it’s not like the books, baby. I.
He looks at us.
– I told her there was nothing romantic about this life, but she just got ideas in her head.
I thumb the hammer back on my gun.
– You should stop moving, Terry.
He stops.
– You too, Mr. Predo.
He stops.
Both of them having shifted just a little closer to me.
I settle my aim back on the vial.
– I’m thinking about how this might end.
– If you shoot that, Joe, you’ll never see Evie again.
I didn’t blink when Amanda shot herself, but I blink when that name comes out of Terry’s mouth.
He shakes his head.
– Joe, you had to. Joe, I know who she is. I mean, we met. She. I never made a thing out of it. But she was around the neighborhood, with you. And. I don’t know what you thought or thought you thought or remembered, but she came to me for help when you went missing that time. When I had to send Christian and the Dusters above Fourteenth to scrape you off that sidewalk when you’d been doped. This is like, I know it’s like excavating ancient history, but I did know. So, like, it doesn’t take a psychic, Joe, when you had girl trouble, to know who it was. And I have resources. And patterns are my thing. Intuition is my thing. You played it like you killed her, but things emerged. Changes in the social dynamic. Indications about where you were lurking for a while. In the Meatpacking District. Then we get these rumors out of Enclave. The Count in some kind of power dynamic with a recently infected woman. It’s not math, not my thing, numbers, but it is poetry, vibes, I can make sense of that. And I know, I know from way back what moves you, how you flow. Your play is cold, but your real moves are hot. From the heart. Little Amanda Horde there, you can barely look at her. Joe, that’s not a bad thing, that’s a sign. Yeah. Because, come on, man, you couldn’t kill her yourself. Because you have that strength in you, that humanity in you. And if you couldn’t do that, you won’t be cracking open Pandora’s box and releasing a plague of who knows what. Not, at least, while the world still has Evie in it.
I’m not feeling too good.
Predo is frowning.
– A girl.
I’m feeling tiny cracks appearing in my skin.
– All for a girl.
Splitting in hairlines, fracturing.
– The trouble you have caused for me. All over a girl.
Like the meat inside is overcooked and bursting out.
– The damage you have done to everything. Over a girl.
My muscles are seared.
– How grateful I feel to know.
Cooked by the fire in my bones.
– This girl of yours, Joe Pitt.
Flames I cannot contain.
– How grateful I am to know her name.
I must let them out.
– And to know also where she is to be found.
Or I will burn.
– I am unbearably curious to see this woman whose face has launched a thousand fiascos.
I will burn.
– And to give her my compliments in person.
I burn.
And I start shooting. Wasting a bullet when I pull the trigger too fast as I draw my aim from the vial to Predo, the round going wide left, thinking it’s all over now, that I’ve messed it up, here in the final showdown, with one chance to get it right, I missed the first shot and he moves too fast and I’ll never hit him once he starts moving full speed, an erratic pattern of jumps, impossible to regain my aim, but he comes straight at me, whether herded by Terry and Hurley closing on him from the sides, or driven by the madness of the thought of why I’ve done everything I have, he comes straight at me, and I pull the trigger over and over, and he runs into the bullets, runs through the bullets, or they through him, still coming, too fast to be caught by Terry or even Hurley, only the twitches of my finger are faster, only the bullets themselves are faster, only those are faster than his hate.
And then he’s on me, his hands full of my shirtfront, his forehead pressed to mine. Not immortal at all, his chest and stomach are open wide, his insides are spilling out his back, dragged by the bullets. He still looks young and full of life, the bloom on his cheek undiminished by the speckle of fresh blood drops.
He’s saying something.
– A girl. A girl, Pitt. A girl.
I’ve dropped the empty gun, replaced it in my hand with the amputation blade.
– A girl, Mr. Predo.
I wrap my arm around his neck and do it as he described, one long cut, deep and to the bone.
– But she’s a hell of a girl.
And like he told me, after that, it’s just quick work with a saw and the limb is off.
I burn.
But I don’t die yet.
Sitting in my chair with the whiskey bottle that didn’t quite empty itself when I dropped it. The head of my enemy in my lap.
A body for the pyre, at my feet.
– Hey, Terry. You were saying something about me and how I make my moves. Was that a thought you wanted to finish up?
He’s looking at the floor.
– Tell you, Joe.
I look where he’s looking, at the vial that was knocked from the arm of the chair while I killed Predo, where it rolled to just a few inches from Terry’s toes.
– I’m having very different thoughts right now.
He bends, picks up the vial, and weighs it in his palm.
– Will you get me that gun, Hurl.
– Sure ting, Ter.
Hurley uncurls Amanda’s stiff fingers, gentles her gun loose, and passes it to Terry.
He holds both weapons. Dead girl’s gun. Bottle of apocalypse.
– Without meaning to be flip about the whole thing, I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a redistribution of power here.
– Stop being cute, Terry.
Lydia moves away from Delilah and Ben.
– It’s time to get serious now.
He shows her the vial.
– Is there something more serious than this, I don’t know, something more immediate than pressing this advantage right now?
– Advantage?
He looks up at the ceiling, shakes his head, looks back at her.
– Lydia, I know you have a streak of idealism that is, man, just plain impenetrable, but I didn’t think, and forgive me for the bluntness, but I didn’t think it extended to the thickness of your skull.
I’m patting my pockets.
– Think he just said you’re stupid, Lyd.
She thrusts her palm at me, like delivering a stiff arm on the field of play.
– Shut it, Joe.
Terry makes a rolling motion with the barrel of the pistol.
– Do I need to map this? Is there, I don’t know, confusion, regarding what just happened here?
He points the gun at the head in my lap.
– Dexter Predo is dead. Dozens, several dozen enforcers have been massacred here. Out of just more than a hundred in the whole Coalition. Lydia, I know I said math isn’t my thing, but come on. Add and subtract. They are exposed. Their front line of defense is rotting in the basement here. We, this is, everything has changed.
She’s shaking her head.
– What has? Changed? What do you want to? We have nothing to put on the street. How do we? No. And anyway. We have something we have to do.
He holds up the vial.
– We don’t need to go to the street. Is nobody, is there a lack of vision in the room? The Secretariat, what are they going to do against this?
He holds the vial higher.
– They’re, all they care about is status quo. We threaten everything. We can threaten everything. All we have to do is let them keep living and they’ll do what we want.