Half the Blood of Brooklyn

high. Bums live down there mostly. Couple of ’em will get scared out by the crew. Crew loves to shove the bums around. Bums, buddy, bums in all the dead tunnels. ’Cept mine. Nothing lives in my tunnel but me and the rats, buddy. Me and the rats.

He starts off again.

– Daniel was the one bled into me. That meant somethin’. Not to me. Did to him. Tried not to make a big deal of it he did, but it mattered to him, buddy. All us he put the Vyrus in, we were kind of special to him. Didn’t make much difference. I never took to it.

He stops again and squats and I lean against a girder, not wanting to bend my leg.

– The quiet’s what got to me, buddy. Ever notice how quiet it is in there?

– Yeah.

– Too fucking quiet. Everyone meditating. Pondering. Thinking on the Vyrus. Fuck. I wanted some chatter. Buddy, I tell you, it drove me just about out my fucking head.

He spreads his arms.

– Now look at me. Know how often I get to have a conversation, buddy? Just about never. Talk to the rats, buddy. Tell them everything on my mind. Know what’s on my mind?

– No.

– What’s on my mind is the fuckers finally drop someone down that hole doesn’t kill himself first chance he gets, someone a man might expect to have a word with, and I end up with a monosyllabic son of a bitch like you, buddy. That’s what’s on my mind.

– Huh.

– Yeah.

– I was a discipline problem, buddy. Same way I was in the army. Know how many times I got the stockade? One time, buddy. Just the one time after I got drunk and cut my bunkmate’s ear off with my bayonet. When I got out of the stockade it was just in time for me to get kicked out. Buddy, that warehouse, it’s a fucking miracle I lasted a day. As it was, I made it a couple years. But only because of Daniel. You know the old man well, buddy?

He climbs up on a dead platform and reaches down to me.

I take his hand and he pulls me up.

– We talked some.

– Riddler he was, wasn’t he?

– Yeah.

– The sun, huh?

– Yeah.

– Crap.

He leads me to a rusted gate and yanks on it and it scrapes open.

– Down this way.

I follow.

He looks back at me.

– You need the flashlight?

The blue and yellow and red lamps of the tunnels fade behind us.

– Yeah.

– Here.

He passes it to me and I point it straight down, the reflected light more than enough for my eyes.

He kicks a pile of rags from his path.

– If the old man hadn’t had a feeling for me, I never would have lasted. Tell ya, buddy, sure seemed as though he liked the trouble cases. Seemed to have a taste for the ones that didn’t fit right in there. What would he make of me now, huh? Tell ya, he wouldn’t recognize me at all, buddy. Not at all.

He touches his stomach.

– I was fat. I mean, by Enclave standards, I was a damn pig. Fasting. I came from an ass-poor family. Why I went in the army the first place was to have all I wanted to eat. They wanted me to not eat on purpose. Know what kind of sense that made to me?

– None at all.

– Yeah, you got that one, buddy, none at all. But. Here I am.

He runs a fingertip down his ribs, like raking a washboard.

– I didn’t grow up with any religion to speak of. But I got a feeling, if I had, it would have stuck deep. Would have been one of them people strays hard from the way, only to come back to it twice as hard in the end, buddy. ’Cause living down here, with no one and nothing to keep an eye on me, with hot and cold running bums wandering around ripe on the vine, with no reason to do anything but feedfeedfeed, I found faith. How’s that for a pisser?

He stops.

– Yeah, you tell me that Daniel went out in the sun, my first thought is, Shit, that sad sorry fuck finally went and did it and got himself burned. But what I’m really thinking under that is, Please let it be real. Please let him be the one who makes it. Please bring me home. Buddy, I am one lonely fucking man.

He takes out the cigarettes I gave him and puts one in his mouth and I flip the Zippo open and it lights this time.

He blows the smoke down into the cone of light at our feet, watches it swirl.

– In the end, buddy, I’ll do it too, ya know. When I can’t hold it in anymore, when the Vyrus says, Shit or get off the pot, I’ll climb up there and take a crack at it. Daniel, he probably thought he’d make it. Right till he cooked, that SOB probably thought he was gonna cross. Me, buddy, I’ll do it knowing I’m gonna burn. So you tell me.

He offers me the smoke.

– Which of us is crazier, buddy, me or him?

I take the smoke, drag and give it back.

– Got me.

He taps ash.

– Yeah, it’s a puzzler. Crap. Always had a hope I’d see the old man again. Show him that I turned out OK. Show him that I took it to heart in the end. That I believe. Even if I don’t want to. Wish I could tell him I was sorry for the trouble I caused him. Buddy, I tell you, in the end, when I blew, I blew hard. Went spastic and grabbed a blade and started cutting. Killed half a dozen Enclave. Half a dozen of my own, buddy. Know how many killed half a dozen Enclave?

He taps his chest.

– Me. That’s how many.

He smiles.

– Not that I’m proud of it or anything.

He loses the smile.

– And it made a pile of problems for Daniel. As he’d been nursing me along all the while.

He drops the butt and grinds it under a bare leathered foot.

– Bitch’s bastard, I wish I could have a word with the fucker. I really do, buddy. Still. You never know.

He squints at me.

– Ever seen one of them things, buddy?

I play the light over the floor, don’t say anything.

He nods.

– Yeah, you seen one. Scary as all hell, yeah? Know what’s scarier? Nothing. Nothing in this world scarier than a Wraith, buddy.

He moves closer.

– I watched it happen once. Watched Daniel and a couple other of the old-timers sit and meditate for days, none of us allowed a drop of blood while it was goin’ on. Watched a crack open. In the air. A crack in the air.