Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (21 page)

--To think.

Then he shrugs, wipes his fingers on me and he, too, disappears.

I would like to have felt the blade pierce my cheek. It might have assured me that I am
still alive, that the exterior world can still affect me. But I have no such evidence.
Just a body that feels shot full of novocaine, immobilized and without sensation. On the
outside, anyway. The inside is another matter. The inside is a cauldron of something
bubbling and viscous, something that I think may be now burrowing into my bones, seeking
out some last refuge of blood.

Someone tugs at my arm and my head rolls slightly to the left. I can't make my eyes focus
beyond a foot or two, but I see the two men. One of them has his knee planted on my wrist,
pinning it to the floor. The other kneels across from him, crouched over a blurred range
of small hills on the horizon of the carpet. The girl. His picks something up from the
floor, applies it to the girl's arm. Metal rasps on metal again as he hacksaws the cuffs
from her wrist.

Horde stands over them, observing.

--Don't cut her.

--Like I said, be easier if we went through his wrist.

--No.

--He's not long for the world. Far gone as he is, he won't be coming back.

--No. He has a role to play, and a severed appendage will not suit.

--OK.

--I'll kill you if they hurt her, Dale.

Horde turns toward the other end of the room, where his wife was sitting when we came in.

--Something, dear?

--I'll kill you.

--I think it's safe to say that these gentlemen won't be harming our daughter in the least.

--Kill you.

Her words badly slurred.

--Have another drink, wife.

I watch the man with the hacksaw, the same one who had the stiletto. His movements are
sharp and strong and he works the saw with an unnatural swiftness. My sense of smell has
been dulled to near uselessness. I can't smell the man with the saw, but his movements
give him away. He has the Vyrus. He could be a Rogue that Horde has somehow dug up, but he
has a look I know. The expensive black suit, the conservative haircut, the carefully
knotted tie, all say Coalition. One of Predo's enforcers on loan to Horde. The other has
the beefy look of a stock bodyguard. One of Horde's own company men.

There's a little ping as the hacksaw parts the steel of the cuffs. The enforcer puts the
saw aside, frees Amanda's wrist and starts to lift her from the floor. Horde puts a hand
on his shoulder.

--I'll do that.

The enforcer and the goon stand and step out of the way, out of my view, as Horde kneels
and tucks his arms under his daughter's back and legs and lifts her from the floor. Only
his lower body is in focus for me now, but I can see the obscure shade of his head as he
cradles the girl and puts his face close to hers.

--Home again, home again, my dear.

A glass shatters over by the couch. The smudge of Horde turns.

--Be careful, wife, you'll hurt yourself.

--What did you do to her?

--Gave her something to make her sleep, love. She was hysterical. She needs sleep after her
ordeal. Imagine the trauma of being abducted by this filth.

--She wasn't.

He rocks the girl from side to side.

--Yes, love, she was. She was plucked from the streets by this man. This man who you then
hired to find her.

--
I?

--Strange coincidence that. Except that it was no coincidence.

Was it, love?

--Dale, what are you?

--Very clever of you. Hire the same man you paid to abduct your daughter to then find her.

--No.

He's putting on a show for her now, rehearsing a story for more official recitations at
later dates. I'm happy for the distraction. Anything is better than the thing with teeth
inside me.

--Yes, I assure you that is exactly how it happened. How naive of me not to have seen it
when I met with him to discuss the case.

--Kill you.

Something crashes.

--Gentlemen, if you would please keep my wife from hurting herself.

There is a rush of movement and the slightest of scuffles.

--Don't harm her, please.

--Fuck you, Dale, fucking fuck you!

--If one of you could simply inject her with a half cc from the vial I used to calm my
daughter? You'll find a clean syringe in the case there. Intramuscular will suffice.

--No! Fucking no!

She shrieks. Horde passes the time cooing at his daughter. I pass the time dying in
horrible agony. Then Marilee is quiet.

--Better, yes? In any case, the humorous part of the whole tale is that I simply suspected
you of cuckolding me with your hired hand. It was only when the men I had following you
witnessed your visit to Chester Dobbs's office that I suspected the truth. I can only
assume that you originally paid him off the case to make room for your own man. But as to
what happened next? Did Dobbs threaten blackmail or some such?

A slight moan from the couch.

--No, do not answer, just relax. I will assume blackmail. Why else would you feel so
compelled to kill him?

I'm listening to the frame Horde is building around us, around his wife and me, trying to
stay a step ahead of it, trying to figure out what picture the frame will surround. His
wife and I in cahoots in the kidnapping of the girl, his wife as Dobbs's murderer. I'm
trying to imagine the picture such a frame would suit. It's a good problem, complex and
detailed. It distracts me. But not enough.

Pain is becoming.

--The tragedy. The real tragedy of it all is that I couldn't save you from yourself. The
tragedy is that, despite what you had done, trying to take my daughter from me, I still
loved you and wished to save you from your own weakness. But I was too late. Too late to
save you from a brutal murder at the hands of your hired thug turned lover.

Pain is eclipsing.

--How fortunate that I should remember Amanda's little hiding place from last summer. And
how clever of your partner to have used the site of a recent massacre as his hideaway. Who
would ever have thought to look there? Too bad, though.

Pain is not what I thought it was.

--Too bad we were not in time to spare you from your fate. But thank God.

I have never before felt pain.

--Thank God we were in time to save Amanda. Save her before he could abuse her, more than
he already had. Was that it?

Pain is a new thing.

--Was that why you quarreled? Because you saw how he had misused her? I like to think so. I
like to think that at the very end, your mother's instincts took over and you tried
desperately to save

our little girl. How brave you were to fight him. How awful it must have been when he slid
the needle into your skin and left you helpless. Pain lives.

--Helpless to do anything for your daughter as he touched her again, right in front of your
eyes. Helpless as he turned his attentions to you. What a terrible end you had. If only we
had arrived a few moments earlier, we might have been able to do more than to simply
avenge your demise.

Pain breathes.

--But it's all over now. All over. Perhaps you'll have peace knowing that your daughter is
safe now. Safe at home in her father's loving arms.

Pain has a home inside my body.

A grunt, and tumble of clumsy footsteps as Marilee stumbles into view clawing at her
husband's face. The enforcer materializes, pulls her away and throws her to the floor.
Horde nods as if she is reacting as he knew she would, reacting childishly to his story.

--Turn her over.

The enforcer flips Marilee to her stomach as Horde sets his daughter gently in a chair.

--Bare her neck.

The enforcer sweeps Marilee's hair from the back of her neck and pulls the collar of her
blouse down. Horde steps out of view, and then back, now holding a small black cube with
rounded corners. He kneels next to his wife and holds the cube in front of her face. It
splits opens like a jewelry case. He shows her the contents.

--I finished.

She moans. He takes something white and pink from the case.

--I've even tried it out already.

He sets the case aside.

--Twice.

He holds the white and pink object, pinched between his thumb and middle finger.

--First on Whitney. Which was, naturally, somewhat by design. He shifts the white and pink
object to the palm of his hand, letting it rest there.

--And later, in a spontaneous moment, on a downtown ragamuffin.

The white and pink object springs open slightly, like a clamshell.

--And now it is time for another trial. With a considerably larger dose I think.

He lifts the white and pink object to his face, opens his mouth wide and slides it inside.
He bites down hard on the dentures, setting them in place. Marilee begins to thrash her
head from side to side.

--Hold her still.

The enforcer pins Marilee's head to the floor. Horde leans over the back of his wife's
neck, his mouth stretched open, muscles I and tendons popping from his own neck, and he
bites her.

I have found my carrier. But it is too late to do anything about it. I am pain. And a
black shroud drops mercifully over my life.

I am dead.

And so I am free to remember my life.

I remember being small and helpless in the house of my parents. How they took advantage of
that helplessness, my mother and father. Hands in dark rooms, probing me. Belts like
whips, lashing me.

I remember the marks on my body that would be healed years later when the Vyrus took up
residence and cleaned house. The marks discovered by sympathetic schoolteachers.

I remember my mother and father struggling in the arms of the police. The last memory of
them. And then the others.

New sets of parents, none for more than a year, none a particular improvement over
biology. And I remember the street where I taught other children the lessons I had learned
at home. The grasping hands, the lash. I remember seeing fear in someone else's eyes, and
that it made me feel larger.

I remember running the streets, warlord of my tiny tribe. And then being found and being
poisoned. And fear and helplessness returned. And then Terry and the Society and something
new. A reason. And years of work and learning, as I am taught how to be in the world. Then
the discovery that I have become Terry's favorite tool. His sharpest instrument when it is
time to apply fear. When it is time for the lash. Then not wanting any longer to be the
whip.

I remember being alone and doing the job.

The Coalition and the Society and their dirty little errands. The job that is just
survival. And then Evie. And I remember her whispering to me in the dark of my room while
the day was bright outside, telling me what she felt. And having nothing to say to her in
return except lies about who and what I am, but telling them all the same. To keep from
being alone. And then the years since, years close to the edge. Balancing between Evie and
the job. Every step closer to the edge of ... something. I remember Whitney Vale. The
almost human look in her eyes when I took the knife from her, the cough when the blade
went in. And Leprosy, the bite in the back of his neck reeking of rotting. And the picture
of the girl, alone somewhere, helpless. And her mother's breast pressed against me as she
kissed the edge of my mouth. And Philip babbling over Dobbs's strangled corpse. And Daniel
asking for my help as Jorge vomited his life into the room. And Dale Edward Horde,
arrogant and cruel, experienced in the use of the hands and the lash. And Amanda's hand
chained to mine, close by one another, covered by cloth. And the scouring acid in my
veins. And a smell that isn't there, describing something that cannot exist. And the
basement of the school, scene of a crime no one has defined, but one I can too easily
imagine.

And screaming. People screaming. Someone I know screaming.

And I am not dead.

Not dead.

But not alive.

The basement of the school, illuminated by a hissing camp lantern.

Marilee is screaming. She has a reason to.

--Use the condom.

--I don't like 'em.

--I gave it to you for a reason. Use it.

--Fucking. Can't feel anything.

--Neither will you leave any traces of
your
semen.

--OK.

--We can afford a certain level of contradiction in the evidence we leave behind, but let
us not bow to hubris and become, dare I say it under the circumstances, cocky.

--OK, OK.

Horde's goon opens the foil packet. He's kneeling next to Marilee, his pants and drawers
pushed down his thighs, struggling to roll the rubber onto his semi-hard penis. Marilee is
on her stomach, skirt torn half off, panties around her ankles. She's bound and gagged and
drugged, but the bacteria is running in her now and her screams pierce the room as she
struggles against the belt looped around her wrists.

I am spilled against a pile of junked desks. Thrown here to be dealt with soon enough.
When Horde is done with his wife and daughter.

He's naked, standing above the sheet of cardboard where I smelled the residue of his rape
of Whitney Vale, his rape of the dead. His daughter sleeps peacefully at his feet. Her
shoes and socks removed and set neatly to the side. He watches the goon put on the condom,
tug the panties from Marilee's ankles and position himself between her legs.

--Not yet.

The goon looks at him, dick in hand.

--What?

--Wait. Turn her head. I'd like for her to see this. And keep your hand away from her
teeth.

The goon shakes his head, grabs a fistful of Marilee's hair and twists her face toward her
husband. Horde is roped with lean muscle and pelted with graying hair. He squats next to
Amanda, his penis sharply erect between his knees, and he begins to undo the button and
zipper of her jeans.

--Self-control is a virtue. I always told you that, wife. With every one of your
infidelities I would remind you that your inability to control your appetites was a
weakness for which you would eventually pay.