Huh. Phil Sax. My friend. You think the craziest shit when things get all fucked up.
I don’t get a look at it.
Not a good one anyway.
It’s brittle is what I know. Fast, but brittle. Every time I bring the iron down, bits of it snap off and clatter to the ground. So I keep hammering, breaking it down, beating a hole in it, trying to ignore the thing sticking up from its shoulder that looks like another head, until I hit it and it snaps off too. Stuff is running down the bar and my bad hand keeps slipping off when I make contact. It’s come away from Phil to rake its claws at me. Gets my thigh, back of my left arm. Lift the bar over my head and bring it down tip first, jamming it into the wound where the head thing was and there’s a sound like when you pull the neck of a balloon and let the air keen out, only loud, and it runs into a wall, bounces off, runs into the wall again, and again, and collapses into a heap stippled with broken spines, looking like one of the slides Amanda showed me.
I’m yelling at the kid to close the door for fuck sake. He starts pushing it closed. I catch a glimpse of Chubby’s daughter throwing up behind him. Their names come back to me: Delilah and Ben.
I hope Sela doesn’t kill them.
Door closes, locks lock.
I keep still.
– Aw shit.
I move forward a step.
– Aw shit, Joe. I think it ate part of my stomach.
Smells like water ahead. Smells like water and waste and wet rusty metal. Smells like sewer grate.
I know where to go.
Phil’s gonna die.
There’s a hole in his side I can stick my hand in. And that’s what I’m doing, trying to shove his shredded shirt into it to slow the blood. Most of his scalp is gone, an ear. His right foot has been twisted around backward. There are pinholes in his cheek. When he talks, little bubbles of blood pop out of them.
He’s gonna die, but there’s still a lot of blood in him.
Enough to do me right.
– Joe.
Light is coming from a blue safety lamp up at the junction that takes you out of this access duct and into the tunnel. The Lexington line. Somewhere close to a platform I think. I can smell people.
It all smells like fresh air.
After the Cure house basement, even the sewer smells like fresh air.
I found the grate not far from the door. Found it when my heel caught in it and I dropped Phil. He started screaming and I thought the rest of whatever was in there would be on us, but they just howled and pounded walls. The one I killed, the only one that had gotten free of its cell. Too dark to know how many more. Ran my hand down the wall, felt at least seven doors, dead bolts, felt some kind of jury-rigged motors hooked to them, wires. Seven doors I could feel, but it’s a big basement.
I got the sewer grate off and pushed Phil through. He got knocked out when he hit his head. Good for him. Got him shouldered, went against the flow of waste. It spills toward bigger and deeper avenues. Felt some dry cold air and scented it back. Had to use the iron bar to open a hole in rotted masonry.
And here we are.
With him dying.
All that blood just spilling out by the second.
– Joe, you can do it.
Him talking nonsense.
– Infect me.
Why would I do such a thing?
– You can save me. And, hey, OK, we’ve had some problems in the past, some times when I’ve been less on the up-and-up than maybe I let on to be, but mostly, mostly you’ve been able to beat a straight answer out of me when you needed one so. Do you know where my pomade is?
He pats around at his hip pocket.
– Had a can. I. My hair feels like it’s messed up. Can you, Joe, you got a mirror or something?
– Hair looks fine.
– Like you know. This, hair like this, it’s a constant maintenance issue. It doesn’t just, you don’t let it be casual or anything. Got to invest in upkeep. Time and effort. And. Joe. Infect me. It’ll take, I know it will. And. Hey, here’s a happy thought, if I’m, aw shit, I got to try not to laugh, but once I’m infected, and I heal, and, think, think of the beatings you can give me then. Huh? Huh? Pretty good, huh?
He giggles.
– Aw, shit, I laughed. Oh, and, Joe, who’s gonna roll you a cigarette? Right? What asshole is gonna line up for that gig? Joe. Bleed a little is all. Just bleed on me a little is all. Come on, saying, I’m just a fucking wound anyway, bleed on me a little. I know it will take.
More of his blood lost, without me drinking it.
His fingers flutter.
– And I know what you’re thinking and OK, I get it, because you already can’t stand me and why have me around even more, but, Joe, it’s what I’ve been after. Saying, why have I Renfielded around so many years if it wasn’t for a shot at this? Know? So, I won’t hold it against you either way, but, Joe, come on. I. I. Man, saying, man, I don’t want to die, not without trying.
I think about Amanda’s slides. I think about what the active Vyral cells do to a person who isn’t Vyral positive. I’ve seen it. There are worse ways to die, I suppose. But it would be a short list.
– Phil.
– Joe. Joe Pitt. My main man, Joe Pitt.
– Phil.
– Come on, Joe.
– If I infect you, I won’t be able to drink your blood.
He blinks.
– Aw shit! Jesus, I’m saying, Jesus, I’m saying, is that what we’ve come to in extremity, Joe? Is that what we, a team we’ve been, is that what it comes to? You don’t want to try and save my life because it will mean you can’t eat my corpse? Is that, is that how, and excuse the term because I know I’m on a limb here, but is that how friends behave?
– Who said we were friends, Phil?
He looks away.
– That hurt, Joe.
I reach into my jacket.
– Phil.
– Don’t even try to apologize.
– Phil.
– I do not want to hear it.
– Sorry about this, Phil.
– What did I just?
The blade comes out and I pull it across my palm and hold my hand over the hole in his stomach and my blood dribbles into the wound.
He looks at me.
– Hey, Joe, hey.
His eyes go side to side.
– Hey, Joe, thanks.
White mucus starts to well at the edges of his eyes. The blood pumping from his wound blackens. A tremor runs through his bones. And I drop the blade and grab his head and yank it hard to the side and pull up and I don’t know for certain, but I think I broke his neck before he felt too much of it. And he lies there dead.
I get up. Pick up the blade. Find my tobacco, but my fingers are too sticky with blood to roll one. Matches are wet anyway. What else I got? I got some keys to the Cure house. Got some car keys. Chubby’s money and phone. Got my wire saw.
I toe Phil’s corpse.
Asshole. I’m an asshole.
An asshole for wasting all that blood for no good reason at all. No reason at all. Just no damn reason at all.
Start walking. I can’t take a train looking like I look. So I start walking down the tunnel. Then I start running.
I don’t know why.
I just do.
• • •
At Sixty-eighth I stop running.
Platform full of people. No dead tunnel to use to cut around. Coated in blood and stuff that you’d have to call ichor. I plant myself against the wall of the tunnel, pressed into the angle of a beam, and wait. Few minutes pass and I feel the first tickle of a breeze. I wait couple seconds and it turns to wind, pushed ahead of a Six local. And then the train, squealing and sparking, clashing past me and into the station, back of the train about fifteen yards away in the light.
I wait till the doors open, wait as people bump each other out of their way getting on and off, wait for the chimes to sound and the doors to close. Wait for a rush of air from the pneumatics and the lurch of the engine pulling. Then I break cover, run, jump onto the stub of platform at the end of the last car, grab a fistful of chain that dangles from the side, and crouch away from the window in the door so any kids staring out at the tunnel disappearing behind them won’t see the blood-covered monster hitching a ride.