He puts his mouth close to my ear.
– They will hear you.
I nod.
The hand is taken from my mouth.
I look around.
Predo, a couple of his commandos, another two dozen or so enforcers in various costumes, all jammed into the dead end of the basement, backs against the wall that faces another row of doors. Six. Three are open. Bits and pieces of enforcers are scattered and smeared about. Something that I hope is dead, skin the texture of third-degree burns, underside coated in limp cilia, a row of tiny limbs jutting from its back, lying outside one of the open doors.
From inside one of the open cells comes the sound of flesh ripping, bone breaking, tendons snapping, a giant chicken being dismembered. Grate of teeth on bone.
Predo opens and closes his hands and one of the enforcers gives him a snubbed assault rifle.
He puts his mouth to my ear again.
– She opened the doors when we were driven down here. It appears that not all of the bolts withdrew. It could be malfunction.
I hold up a finger.
– It’s not. She’s fucking with you.
He nods.
– My thought. Yes.
He points at the corner that leads to the central basement, the rest of the cells, the hole, the door.
– Power junction. Cut the lines before she can open any more.
I’m looking at that corner, right in the angle of it, up where the wall meets the ceiling, a tiny dot of red light.
Predo points at the open door that doesn’t have a dead monster in front of it, or a live one beyond it eating enforcer corpses.
– Not all of them are dangerous. Immobile, it seems.
I tap his ear, he puts it close.
– Or not awake yet.
He shows me the assault rifle.
– Do you still want one of these, Pitt?
I nod.
He nods.
The hands release me and he gives me the gun.
– Mind where you point it.
I point it down the basement to the corner.
– How many down there?
He shakes his head.
– In the midst of chaos, I am afraid I did not bother to count. Three. Perhaps.
I point at the open cells across from us.
– Plus one dining and one sleeping.
– It appears.
A cramp grabs me, shakes my innards back and forth, let’s go.
Predo whispers.
– Are you unwell?
– Starving. But I’ll live.
He smiles.
– I’d not have taken you for an optimist, Pitt.
– We have to get out of here.
He nods.
– That would seem wise. Have you any ideas?
I point down.
– Sewer.
A Klaxon sounds and several of the enforcers jerk their triggers, sending a volley of ricochets off the walls. A few of them scream without being struck by bullets. There’s the sudden thunk of a heavy bolt being sucked back by an electromagnet.
One of the closed doors swings open.
Piercing scream, like two voices in one throat, and a low beast, fat and fast, out of the open cell, head prickled with spines, runs into the heart of a fusillade, rams into an enforcer, impales her in twenty places, back into the dark cell, trailing screams.
And fingers ease from triggers, bathed in the relief that it wasn’t them.
I haven’t moved. My mouth is still at Predo’s ear.
He pulls back, blinks, puts his mouth to my ear.
– The sewer. Yes. That had occurred to us. Until we had to retreat to this dead end.
I look up at the tiny red light.
Little girl, punching buttons. Feeding time at her zoo.
I ball my good hand into a fist, show it to Predo.
– Group up, guns out, start moving, shoot the hell out of everything and get down the hole.
Predo looks at his sweating, big-eyed mass of the formerly most dangerous men and women on the planet.
– Yes, I suppose a few might get out. Those at the middle. More if we had cover fire.
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.