tongue.
I shoot him twice in the back and he twists off Phil and flings himself at me, raking his nails at my eyes, wrapping his legs around my waist and squeezing, everything too fast for me to stop it.
But some things the Vyrus can’t change. It’s made him strong and fast and desperate, but it hasn’t made him any more a fighter than he ever was.
His elbow clips my shoulder and I feel it dislocate. Blood runs down my face. He licks it, finds it poison to him, and wails and spits. I wrap my left hand around his throat and squeeze and fall forward and land on top of him and jam my knee into his gut-shot belly and choke the air from him and he bucks and roils and tears half my left ear off. And I choke him and choke him and choke him.
When he’s still, I get up and find my gun and hold it.
Phil sits up, rubbing his throat.
– Fuck! What the fuck was that? What the hell was that about, man? That wasn’t cool. That wasn’t cool at all.
I look at the floor, find the Count’s knife and pick it up.
– Yeah, well, I needed some bait to distract him.
Phil is on his feet.
– No shit! I got that. See, don’t know if you missed this part, man, but I was the bait you used. That was so far from cool. That was like, whatever the opposite of cool is, that’s what that was.
I tuck the gun in my belt.
– Uncool.
Phil points.
– Totally uncool!
The Count makes a wet sound, blood sputters from between his lips.
Phil takes a step toward him and stares.
– Fucker’s not dead, man.
He looks at me as I come over.
– Better put a couple in his brain, man, fucker’s not dead.
I look at the holes in the Count’s stomach. They’re not healing.
– Yeah, not yet, but he’s close.
I tap the blade of the knife against my thigh.
– Hey, Phil?
He’s trying to untwist his collar and his bolo.
– Yeah?
I bring the knife up.
– Speaking of uncool, I really need him to live.
He’s looking down, focused on the ends of the tie.
– Hey, go ahead and First Aid away. Think you’re crazy, but do what you gotta do.
I place the tip of the knife on his chest and he looks up.
– What I gotta do, Phil, is I gotta feed him.
His jaw drops, his head tilts.
– No way, man. Seriously uncool! Seriously uncool!
I grab his wrist and twirl the knife.
– Stop being a pussy, man. I’m not gonna take it all.
If it was just a matter of blood, I’d slash Phil’s wrist and stick it in the Count’s mouth and let him suck the fucker dry.
Phil’s lucky it’s more complicated than that.
He’s also lucky I had some blood yesterday and got a healthy stash at home. There’ve been times, after a scrum like that, I’d have tapped him dry. Not that I want to drink Phil’s blood any more than the Count, but the niceties go by the wayside when you’re hard up. As it is, I spill a couple pints in an empty takeout coffee cup and pour it down the Count’s mouth.
No surprise, it rouses him.
No surprise, he wants more.
But I’ve kicked Phil out by then, a fifty in his pocket for his troubles. With nothing to eat in the room, the Count goes haywire and tries to jump out the window so he can get at all the blood he can smell down on the streets where the night owls are taking the air. I’ve got my boot planted on his neck and I throttle him and pistol-whip him until he settles down.
Phil’s blood is keeping him in the game, the holes in his belly and back aren’t leaking anymore, but he’s a long way from out of the woods. And it’s not like more blood is gonna take care of everything that ails him. I want to get him talking straight, I’ll need him healed, fed and fixed. But the fix he needs, I don’t got. The fix he needs, I don’t got time to find. And I never will.
And that leaves one option. Get him clean. And only one place to do that.
– He was going cold turkey.
Daniel casts his eyes on the Count’s body cradled in my arms, half-wrapped in the sleeping bag I stuffed him in before dropping it in the trunk of the cab that brought me to the West Side.
– Really?
He bends and looks at the Count’s crap-smeared face.
He looks at me.
– A friend of yours?
– Hardly.
He scuffs the floor with his foot.
– Well. Bring him in.
He brushes his fingers at the Enclave manning the door and it slides open, revealing the dark cavern of the warehouse.
I stay on the loading dock.
Daniel takes a step toward me.
– Something giving you pause, Simon?
I shift my feet, hating it when he uses my real name, but not wanting to get into it again.
– Yeah, see, I need him alive.
He raises the skin where his eyebrows used to be.
– Alive. In truth, he’s rather close to actual life in this state.
– Daniel, I need him alive in the usual sense. I need him alive and awake and able to talk to me in all the usual senses of the words. I need to know if I bring him in there you’re not going to decide he’s a pariah or some shit and drain him and burn his body and make the ashes into tea or whatever you do.
A smile jumps across his face.
–
– Whatever, I don’t know the lingo.
A frown follows the smile.
– You may as well bring him in, Simon. We won’t sacrifice him to our dark gods or anything. And it’s too late for you to do much else.
I bring him in and pass him to the waiting arms of another Enclave and watch him carried away into the candlelit darkness. White shapes move deep inside the concrete-and-steel chamber. Bodies drawn thin by fasting, paled to ivory, shedding hair.
I think of Evie.
Daniel walks out and drops his mantis body on the edge of the loading dock, legs dangling, hands tucked beneath his thighs, a thin white poncho made from an old sheet draped over his shoulders hanging to his knees.
– Nice night.
