Huddled close to the steel, my face turned from the lighted platform, I got no way of knowing if anyone will see me. They do, there’s a good chance they’ll chalk it up at thrill-seeking kids and not bother telling the station master or Port Authority cop. Got no choice either way. No time to do this on foot.
Evie wants me to find Chubby’s kid.
Mission accomplished. But somehow I don’t think I’ll get a break from her if I show up and tell her where I left the girl.
So, more to do.
Always more to do.
At Fifty-ninth I jump off the train as it eases to a stop. I find a service ladder up an air shaft to the yellow line above. Hopping a line can only help if someone saw me on the Six train. Five minutes’ wait gets me an R going downtown. I take another break at Fifty-seventh, jumping tracks to the express side, and hunker down. Seven minutes and a Q rolls in. Expressed past Forty-ninth, and held up at Times Square. I jump off again, waiting deeper in the tunnel this time. Some kids at the end of the platform are throwing snappers up the track. Little bundles of black powder and sawdust wrapped in white tissue, tiny flat cracks when they hit.
The Q jerks forward, I run, coming out of the dark, the kids jump up and down, peppering me with snappers, screaming almost as loud as the things in the basement of the Cure house, pointing as I jump onto the back of the train and grab hold, people all along the platform turning to stare as I roll past and back into the dark at the far end of the station.
They won’t stop between stations, I don’t think. They won’t want to chase some loon through the tunnels. At Thirty-fourth we roll, slowing just slightly to pass through, and I think I see a couple cops at the end of the platform, craning to get a look at the end of the train, but I’ve moved to the roof already. Using my seven fingers and a stub to find a grip in the grooved steel, trying not to skid to the edge and over on the curves. Twenty-third and we roll.
Fourteenth Street next. Big station. Trying to figure if they’ve had time to clear the platform before we pull in. Won’t want to try and deal with a guy riding the open back of a train with people around. Guy that crazy could be any kind of trouble.
I don’t know. And that’s not good enough. So I jump off.
No good way to do it. I just try not to stab myself with my blade as I hit and tumble. And make a point of jumping away from the third rail. Not too bad all in all, but those ribs break one more time. Got a feeling they won’t be knitting again. Not soon, anyway. Not unless I get some more blood.
I get up, go through my pockets to make sure I haven’t lost anything, and something stabs me in the gut and stirs around. I sit, hold my middle, grit my teeth and wait for it to pass.
It does.
I’ve felt it before, the jabs the Vyrus gives you, telling you to kill something and drink it. I just wasn’t expecting it so soon. Just yesterday I took care of the guy who killed the cripple. Should have lasted. Would have lasted if I hadn’t spilled so much of it all over the place. And the healing. Puts a strain on the Vyrus, all that clotting and growing new cells.
I get up and turn around and look back up the tunnel and think about Phil.
Should have never listened to him.
Even dead he’s fucked me again.
I know what I’m doing.
It’s simple.
I’m trying to stay out of the worm’s mouth.
Not forever. The worm always gets you in the end. I’m just trying to stay ahead of its mouth for a little longer. The way you do that is you run up the tail as fast as you can. Real question is how you’ll play it when you come back around and find yourself standing on its neck. Jump again and you’ll be right where you started, mouth about to snap down on you. Stay where you are, and it’ll be there soon enough to do the same.
Jump in its mouth and get it over with.
Stay still and let it get to you in its own time.
Or keep running in circles until it takes that last bite of itself, you included.
The worm gets it all in the end. Lucky man has options about the how and the when, but that’s really all that’s in your hands. How and when.
I’m playing for fast and in just a little while longer.
Just long enough.
Truth is, I get that part of it, keep the worm off me just long enough for that last thing I’m gaming for, I’ll give ground on the how and take it however it comes. Fast, slow, easy, hard. In the worm’s mouth is in the worm’s mouth.
I feel its teeth in my gut again. Telling me how close it is.
OK. I got moves left. I’ve run this circle before. Jumping at the last second to clear its open jaws, landing and sprinting. Around and around. I know the route.
I know what I’m doing.
Really.
I do.
Tell myself that as I come out of a storm drain at the end of an alley off Avenue C. Tell myself that as I walk from the alley into the middle of the vomitorium the bar hoppers and college kids have turned my old neighborhood into. Stinking filthy drunk, limping and shuffling, trying to roll a cigarette from a damp paper. Getting plenty of berth on the sidewalk, right till I pull myself up a stoop at the end of the block and find a couple skinheads blocking the door.
They move to shove me back. Then they get a whiff of what’s under my stink and hands go inside the vintage peacoats they both wear.
I raise my hands.
– You wouldn’t shoot a cripple, would you?
– Ta, an sure dey would, Joe, sure dey would.
I look up at the monolith standing in the open doorway at the top of the stoop.
– Hey, Hurley. You look good. Huge. As usual.
– An you, Joe, you look a little worse fer wear. As usual.
I lower my hands.
– I’m a creature of habit.
He pushes the brim of his hat a little higher on his forehead.
– Well come inside, ya sorry fooker. Force of habit an all, I suppose you’ll be wantin’ a severe beatin’.
I go up the steps.
– Don’t waste it on me, Hurl, it never seems to do any good.
He pats my shoulder as I pass inside.
– Not ta worry, Joe, I got one ta spare fer an old friend like yer-self. Not ta worry a’tall.
There was a time I was a very bad person.
If you can imagine.
Funny thing is, that time of my life, I was never so sure I was doing the right thing as those few years.
Soldier in a cause. Society. Soldier in the Society. Front lines, pushing back the dark. Making the world a safe place for infecteds to live openly. A goal like that requires unity first. Everyone has to be pointed in the same direction. Can’t have Vampyres going around killing indiscriminately. That kind of thing creates the wrong impression.
You have to have rules. Rules about where and how you feed. Who you feed on. How often you can get away with it. Strict policy of non-infection. Don’t want to be perceived as spreading a plague or anything like that. Since you’re trying to preach this gospel against the Coalition’s dominant philosophy of keeping a lid on all things Vyrus-related at all times forever, you also have borders to secure. The occasional incursion to deal with. Advents of diplomacy.
Fine detail work. But that wasn’t my bag. I didn’t make policy, I rammed it down throats. More often than not, I simply tore out the throat in question. Anything more complicated would mean I’d have to understand something. Explain it. Might have required nuance.
Terry did the explaining. Explained to me when he picked me up off the floor in the can at CBGB. Told me what had happened to me. Told me what my choices were. Offered the Society to me.
So let’s just say I hadn’t been offered too many chances to be a part of anything. Not that I was last picked for softball games, just more that I was likely tied up by my wrists and hanging from a steam pipe in my folks’ bedroom closet, somewhere between a good solid belt beating and having some scalding water poured over my feet, when the sides were being chosen up.