Every Last Drop

higher. —This one, what he is can be disputed.The razor folds away from my skin.The skeleton shows it to Predo. —But you are meat. Ignorant and unclean and in need of purging.Predo sweats. —Killing me will be considered an act of utmost aggression.The skeleton coughs laughter. —Yes. And then? Will your Coalition send more of those to threaten us?It waves a hand at the two headless corpses being loaded into the trunk of the car by another skeleton.It shakes its head. —Killing you would be a mercy. But there will be none of that for you tonight.It points at the car. —Go on.Predo backs away, watching my eye. —A final word, Pitt.He smooths the length of his tie. —Do you know you've tipped your hand?I don't move.Predo stops, hand on the open door of his car. —I still don't know what it is you're after.He waves an arm, taking in the neighborhood. —But I know where it is.He drops the arm. —You'll be dead soon.He gets into the car. —But I'll be certain to find what it is you value so much. Before you die.The door closes, the engine hums to life, and the car rolls away onto Eighth, not at all burdened by the dead it carries.I look at the skeleton. —Do I know you?He offers me the razor. —We've met, Simon.I take the blade from his desiccated hand. —Yeah, I wasn't sure, you guys all look alike to me.I drop the razor in my pocket and take out a smoke. —But seeing as you've met me, you maybe know my name's Joe.The other skeleton joins us. This one, he's less of a skeleton than his boss, but he's on his way. All of them, all Enclave, they're all a bunch of withered tendon and bone held together by bleached skin. No surprise, that's what happens when you spend all your time starving yourself.The first one shakes his head, looking like the gesture might snap his twig neck. —Your name is what Daniel said your name is. Simon.I walk a few steps, kick some garbage aside and find my gun. —Daniels dead.He coughs that laugh of his. —So you say, Simon. So you say.He points at the mouth of the alley. —You're wanted.He starts to walk, I follow.What's the point of running? If they want to, these guys can just pull my legs off and carry me.Besides, they'll be taking me where I was headed in the first place.It's not easy, but if you close your eyes, you can remember a time before the Meatpacking District became a vomitorium for clubbers and people with too much fucking money to spend on dinner for two anyplace that doesn't have a six-month waiting list for a reservation. A time when the cobbles here weren't quaint, when they were walked by tranny hookers and teenage hustlers, and cruised by limos looking for rough trade. Course the Enclave settled in their warehouse over here even before that scene. They settled here when those cobbles drained the blood of livestock, and white coats and meat hooks were the only fashion statements being made.Still, the crowds waiting in line to get into the after-hours joints that are just now opening their doors are full of enough clowned posers that the all-white look the Enclave sport doesn't raise an eyebrow as we cut down Little West Twelfth to the final block before the water. Maybe a few club kids watch as we climb the steps to the loading dock and the door slides open to let us in, but none of them scurry over to find out what the scene inside is like. They know it's not for them. They can read it. The total lack of graffiti on the place, thesilence, that chill that rises from it, the scraps of street rumor that adhere to it.Bad shit goes down in there.They know it. They feel it. So they stay in line like good little robots and wait their turn to flash a fake ID at the doorman so they can go inside some carefully padded pleasure dome and pretend they're living on the edge for a few hours.Inside the Enclave warehouse, it's all edge.A hundred-odd fanatics, weaning themselves from the blood the Vyrus demands, pushing their metabolisms to the crazed point Amanda Horde described, when memory T cells will stop reminding their own immune systems what not to attack.The Vyrus, pushed to starvation, jacks their nervous systems. Desperate, it hammers on them to feed. At the edge of death, it empties its hosts of all resources, strengthening them for the kill.Strong, fast, impervious to pain; blow a limb off one and they'll pick it up to beat you to death with it.They vibrate with insanity.That's what the kids on the street feel.I feel it too. It goes to my guts, the madness in this place. The clattering oftheir bones striking one another as they endlessly spar, honing killing skills. The numb and complete silence that falls when they meditate on the Vyrus, focusing their wills to resist its hunger. The whisper of dry lips and tongues when they break their fasts and sip spoonfuls of blood to appease the Vyrus.The fasting, its not a rejection of the Vyrus1 hunger, its a supplication.They are not its enemy. They are its acolytes.Suggest to one of them that the Vyrus is a virus, an earthly thing, and they'll laugh in your face. Or chew it off.Heresy is something they take pretty seriously around here. And rejecting the Vyrus as a supernatural agency of redemption is about as heretical as it gets for these guys.All they want, all they starve for, is to be like the Vyrus, to let it gradually feed on them, creep into their bones and tissue, and transform them into something other, something that will stay in this world, while being entirely of another.Fanatics to the ground, when they've found one who can complete that transformation, and he's taught the others to do the same, they think they'll become immune to sun and all the weapons of this world. And then, like all true believers, they II go out and kill everyone not just like them.It's weird shit.I don't follow it.And I don't like coming here.But I used to be welcome all the same. The old boss, he had it in his head I was really one of them, that I just didn't know it yet.But he died.Daniel. Old man. Crazy old man.I stop thinking about how he died, how the weight of his corpse was nothing in my arms, I put it away where you keep the things you don't want to think about. That place, It's goddamn crowded at this point.I put it away so I can focus on the Enclave, mind myself so I don't end up dead.The two that brought me inside leave me as soon as the door slides shut behind us and darkness cover drops. I can hear more of them around me, breathing, barely breathing, meditating. I can hear others softly grunting, the whip of their limbs through space, the crack as they strike one another, a splinter of bones. I can smell their decaying flesh and the special taint of starving Vyrus that clings to them.My pupils open, gathering light from candles scattered across the hugespace. It looks the same as the last time I saw it. I figured that would be the very last time I'd see it at all. The last time I'd see it before I came back to burn it down.But the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.I had to come back without a torch.I want to see my girl, after all. —Simon.I look at him, coming out of the gloom, wrapped in white like the other Enclave.I nod. —Nice suit.He stops ten feet from me, fingers a lapel of the spotless white three-piece. —Yeah-huh, right?He tilts his head at the lines of squatting Enclave deep in meditation. Beyond them others spar, flickering, frozen for an occasional heartbeat as they study the others defense, looking for a weakness before striking again. —Like, I had no problem with the color scheme and all, but there was no way I was gonna be sporting a toga or a shawl or something.I'm not paying attention to him, I'm paying attention to the others, watching them as my pupils widen and take in more light and the warehouse stretches and I see how many of them there are. More than a hundred. Many more. Twice that. At least.I look at him.He nods. —Oh yeah, man, I been busy.—Truth to an old friend, it ain't easy. This shit ain't easy at all. Like, let me tell you, man, that meditation shit, that is some boring-ass shit. Just sitting there, trying to get into the Vyrus and all that. And the sparring. At first I was so down with that. I wanted to get up and go kung fu. But that shit is hard work. And it fucking hurts, man. Enclave, there's no such thing as a pulled punch with Enclave. You have to, what you have to do is, here, let me show you. Punch me as hard as you can.He comes close, crossing the small chamber he led me to in the lofts above the warehouse floor. —Seriously, man, just hit me as hard as you can.I look at the two Enclave sitting on the floor just outside the open door.He waves a hand.—No, man, don't worry about them, they won't do shit I don't tell them to do. They're cool. Just take a poke at me. You know you want to. —Count, why the fuck would I hit you when you're expecting it?He shakes his head.—Same old Joe Pitt, no fun at all. Here I am, full of all this new knowledge, all these new skills, changed and wanting to share, and there you are, grumpy as ever, a total fucking drag.He does a karate kick, pummeling the air with one of his bare feet, the one with the twisted bones jutting from it, the one I mangled for him.He lowers the foot and smiles.—But it's cool, it's cool. All I'm trying to do is say that this shit ain't easy. Being Enclave. I mean, sure, I understand that the Vyrus chooses you for this shit. You're either Enclave or you're not, that's what your boy Daniel used to say, yeah? Shit, but, I wouldn't even be here if that wasn't the case. Come to it, you wouldn't be here if that wasn't the case. Daniel hadn't given us both the Enclave stamp of approval, we couldn't come into this place except to get executed. But the point I'm weaving around here is, even if the Vyrus says you're Enclave, this shit is still damn tough. Like, I know this may come as ashock considering what you think of me, but like this shit is transformative. Really transformative.He slaps a fist into his palm.—OK, and I know that sounds redundant. Sure, like, because if the Vyrus doesn't transform you in the first place, then what the hell? But check it. Cause the Vyrus doesn't make you a different person. Yeah? So like me, I didn't suddenly stop being a spoiled-rotten, rich brat just because I needed to drink blood to live. More like, the fact I was already so self-absorbed just made it easier for me to make the transition. Like the rich already live off the fat of the land, so why not the blood as well, yeah? So, but, this stuff, to get it, to really get it, you have to work at it. Well, talk about new concepts for me. Work? Whoa! Not on my agenda.He leans in. —But being in charge here after Daniel cracked it, that was on my agenda.He pushes his eyebrows way up.—And that meant playing a role. Like, putting on the grave face, being all somber and talking in portentous sentences and shit, like so many of these guys do. It meant squatting in lines and pretending to think about the Vyrus. It meant learning that if someone was gonna swing at you, and really try to punch your rib cage out of your chest, that you needed to learn how to go withthe punch.He stretches his arms at me and points with both index fingers. —Which you would have got to see I can do now if you d taken a shot like I asked, man.He drops his arms.—But the point is, you start to do all that,