Long-starved like Enclave, but without the training to cope. Not quite as far gone as I was when I slipped, but just as unhappy to be there. They know they can’t eat me. But that doesn’t mean that killing me wouldn’t make them feel better. Or just make them feel something other than their own bodies eating themselves.
Half-up the first flight, the one squatting on the banister huffs. Tongue stuck out like it’s testing the air for humidity. Or for the taste of blood that isn’t infected.
Coated in a thick layer of sewer sludge, enforcer blood, monster slime and the dead Vyrus stink starting to rise from my pores, I set its teeth to chattering. A high tone in its throat, crying alley cat. It shifts up the banister, staying with me. Not sure what the fuck to do at all. Looking tempted to go at me just to resolve the confusion.
The others above are starting to rock back and forth, one rising and walking down and up the same three steps, flickering. Another, higher up, poking its head over the third-floor landing, keeps slapping its own face. Regular sharp smacks that are like a metronome set against irregular bursts of gunfire fading below me.
The one pacing me pulls up, lifts it face, croaks, shakes its head into a blur, freezes, and huddles into itself, eyes closing, seeming to fall asleep clutching its perch on the banister.
New gunfire breaks out in the basement stairwell behind the closed door, and its eyes open and it looks down and even as the door is opening and Hurley comes through with one arm wrapped around Terry, it has let go of the banister and dropped itself at them. The others suddenly flee, swarming down the stairs, focused on something loud and fast and violent and much warmer than me. Something that at least appears to be food. Something to at least satiate a hunger for hunting.
Hurley’s curses echo up the stairwell behind my running heels, his precise choice of words drowned out by the crack of his.45, punctuated by the occasional meaty whap of a dumdum round mushrooming as it hits flesh, underscored by the chatter of Terry’s AK-47.
I’m not looking down to see who will come out on top. I’m too busy looking at the steps in front of me, trying to find each one at the far end of the tunnel that my eye has retreated into. I’m at a distance to my own body, operating it by remote control, but feeling every thrum of pain that vibrates the string tied to the pain knotted in my forehead.
I’m trying to climb without falling.
I’m trying to remember this pain from years back. Did I feel this then? How long before dying did I feel this? Will I die soon? If I do, will I stay dead this time?
Please, asks a part of me that I instantly disown, please can I stay dead this time?
No, I answer. Evie wouldn’t like that. Or maybe she would. I don’t really know. But if she wants me dead she can tell me herself. If I’m there to hear it, I might just oblige her.
I want to look up and see how many more stairs to the top, but I think I’d fall back down to the bottom where the sound of Hurley and Terry’s guns has stopped. Out of bullets or out of things to shoot at? Not my problem. Stairs are my problem.
Climb.
Climb, motherfucker.
And don’t die.
If you die, it will come and take you away. If you die, the black cold will come and suck you into its heart and you’ll be ice forever. If you die, the Wraith inside will come out and be you.
I don’t believe it’s true, but I fear it all the same.
I don’t want to be a monster. Not for real. I want to know what I do in this world. I want to know who I hurt. I want my dead to have faces I remember. I want to know what I’ve done and the price of it all. I know I’ll never have what I want. I know I’ll never be where I want. I know I’ll never hold who I want to hold. Just that when all doubt is gone and there’s no trick left I can play on myself to make me believe that maybe I’ll get her in the end, I want to remember everything I did along the way, and know that there had to be an accounting. And her saying no is the price.
I just want to be there to remember it’s my own fucking fault.
I can live with that.
Someone takes my hand.
I look up.
At the top of the stairs. Amanda has me by my wounded hand, holding it in both of hers. Frowning at me.
– You never told me before that you killed my mom.
I open my mouth, words crack as they come out of my twisted throat.
– Long story.
She pulls me down the hall.
– All we have is time, Joe.
Feet are pounding up the stairs. One set? Two sets? Yes. At least. Maybe more. Maybe more than Hurley and Terry got out of the basement alive.
We’re at the door of Amanda’s penthouse. I’m coming back to my body. Vision coming to the mouth of the tunnel, opening up.
– Sela.
Amanda doesn’t look back at me.
– What about her?
– We need her. Hurley. Terry. More.
She shakes her head as she leads me in.
– Oh them. Never mind them. And Sela.
Inside, she tugs my hand, pulls me to her side, points at the sheet covering a body in the middle of the floor, stains soaked through, drenched.
– Sela can’t really help anymore.
She gives my hand a squeeze.
– What a gift you have, Joe.
She pushes the door closed and fastens the locks.
– For hurting the most important people in my life.
– You returned for us as you promised.
– Technically, I mean, yes, technically, you didn’t kill her.
– And Benjamin and I and our child, we are ready to depart.
– If we want to get specific here, and seeing as she’s dead and all that, I suppose we can get as specific as we want.
– Whenever you urge.
– So, specifically speaking.
– Shall we leave now?
– Deli-lah.
Amanda squeezes her forehead.
– Could you please let me talk to Joe without interruptions, please.
Standing near the locked door with Ben, hands on her belly, Delilah raises a finger.
– You may have imprisoned us, but no longer.
– Delilah. Dear.
Amanda pulls out the very large pistol that’s been weighing one of the pockets of her lab coat.
– I have some issues with you right now. So if you don’t, I mean, please be quiet for a few minutes, I’m going to shoot Ben.
Ben raises his hands to his shoulders.
– Hey, whoa.
Delilah shakes her finger back and forth.
– Mere bullets will not slay him.
Eyes still on the covered corpse of her lover, Amanda raises the gun and points it at Ben.
– Dear, I know more about the Vyrus and Vampyres than anyone else on the planet. I mean. Trust me, I know where to shoot him to kill him.
She bites the tip of her tongue.
– Or were you not paying attention to what happened with Sela?
Delilah opens her mouth and Ben drops a hand on her shoulder.
– Baby, be cool.
She pulls back.
– Benjamin?
He raises his hands in higher surrender than when Amanda pointed the gun at him.
– Hey, hey, I’m just saying, Mr. Pitt said he’d come back. And here he is. So let’s just sort it out calmly now.
Out in the hall Terry pounds on the door again.
– Time to open up, Joe!
Ben points at the door.
– Because just walking out there right now may not be the best thing as far as we know.
He looks at me.
– Right, Mr. Pitt?
In a chair, bottle of whiskey in my hand, I lift it as far as my mouth and spill a little inside.
– Having a hard time seeing where to go right now myself.
I lift the bottle toward the door.
– I got Chubby’s daughter tied up in front of the door, Terry! Knock it down or shoot through it and you’ll kill your symbolic baby of the future!