Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (4 page)

--Sure.

--He just came in, right?

--Yeah, he's in the crowd up by the door.

I drop another twenty on her tray.

--Do me a favor; take the guy a drink, one of those fancy Scotches is what he likes. Tell
him it's from a chick back here, she wants him to come say hi.

She looks at the money.

--What do I tell him if he asks who she is?

--Tell him she's the one with the Betty Page haircut.

She heads over to the bar. I peek over the crowd and see Philip's pomp towering over the
crowd. His hair is bleach blond, piled about ten inches high into a cliff that sticks out
half a foot beyond his forehead. I see the cocktail waitress walk away from the bar with a
McSomethingorother on her tray. She maneuvers through the press of bodies till she reaches
Philip. His pompadour dips as he listens to what she has to say. She points in the
direction of the back room and he starts to pick his way over. Someone steps out of the
bathroom. I quickly pop in and stand just inside, the door half-open. A guy tries to crowd
in.

--Occupied.

He looks at me standing there clearly not using the can for its intended purpose.

--C'mon, man, I got to take a leak.

--Go piss in your shoe, Jack.

He opens his mouth to say something else and I take a step toward him. I stand six three
and go two hundred and change. He lines up for the ladies' room. Just then Philip sashays
by looking around for whatever kind of chick would be buying him a drink. I grab a fistful
of his pink Rayon shirt with a black cat motif, drag him into the John and kick the door
closed. He spills his Scotch and stares at it on the floor.

--What the fuck!

Then he looks up and sees that it's me.

--Oh, Joe. Jesus, Joe, what happened to your face, man?

And I start twisting his neck, trying to decide if I should pop his head off.

The thing is, it's not as easy to pop off someone's head as you might think. I settle for
forcing his face into the toilet bowl and flushing it a couple times. He comes up gasping.

--The hair, man, the hair!

I slam him against the wall.

--That the only thing on your mind, Phil, your hair?

--Why would I have anything on my mind, Joe? You know me, I don't like to think, it just
gets me in trouble.

--You got that right, buddy. Hey, I ever thank you for that call this morning?

He looks a little confused at my change in tone.

--Uh, no, no you didn't.

--Well, hell, that was sure inconsiderate of me.

I reach in my pocket, grab a few bills and tuck them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

--Well thanks, Joe, but you don't gotta do that.

Automatically, he has pulled a comb out of the back pocket of his painted-on black jeans
and started to poke at his hair, trying to resculpt it.

--No, I do. I owe you one there. That was good looking out, letting me know the heat was on
like that. Too bad I got a call from uptown just about a second later.

His hands are on automatic pilot, crawling over the gooey mound on top of his head.

--Yeah? Sorry I couldn't give you more of a lead there.

--Ya know the real drag about all this, Phil?

--Aw, man, don't call me Phil, ya know I hate it.

--You're right. Philip. I'm sorry. Ya know the real drag about this, Philip?

He's got one hand above his head holding the pomp in place while his Other hand digs in
his back pocket for his can of pomade. He's staring straight up so he can keep an eye on
the overhang while the restoration continues.

--Naw, man, what's the real drag?

I grab a huge greasy handful of his hair and jerk him up onto his tiptoes.

--It's the way they made me crawl up there in the middle of the day. The way Dexter Predo
knew all about the carrier when I hadn't told anyone but you. The way you called me first
thing when you heard about the mess, like you already knew I was involved. That makes me
wonder if maybe you were spying on me. Which makes me wonder if maybe you were spying on
me for Predo and the fucking Coalition.

I let him drop to the floor, his pomp a hopeless ruin, and turn to the sink to wash the
grease off my hands. Philip sits on the floor, hair finally forgotten.

--Jesus, Joe, you crazy or somethin'? Me spyin' for the Coalition? I mean, hey, even if I
would do somethin' like that, you know them tight-asses wouldn't have me on the regular
payroll or nothin'. You know that. I mean sure, maybe I pick up some change from them, I
got a loose piece of information or they got somethin' shitty ta be done or somethin'. But
spyin'? Hell, they got pros for that. And even sayin' I wanted ta spy for the
Coa-fucking-lition, and even saying they would have me, I wouldn't never take a job ta spy
on
you,
Joe. That's just something I wouldn't never do, you know that. Ya got ta know that.

I turn from the sink, wiping my hands on a paper towel.

--So what are you saying, Phil, you saying I'm wrong here? I'm lying?

--Aw, no, man, no. I know you know what you know and all. If you're sayin' Mr. Predo knew
somethin', well, he musta known it. All I'm sayin' is, he didn't never get it from me. I'm
just sayin' I didn't ever call the guy at all. I got off the phone with you I figured
maybe you'd be slipping me some coin later, so I went out lookin' ta score. You know me. I
didn't never even get it in my head to call Mr. Predo or none of them guys. You tell me
there's a carrier? Well, hell, I just figure you must be probably takin' care of it for
the Coalition anyway. No change in it for me if I give them a call, now is there? So why'd
I call them? Huh, Joe, why'd I call them?

He's doing his best to come across sincere, looking me in the eyes, his pupils pinned out
from whatever kind of bennies he got his hands on tonight.

--How much money you got on you, Phil?

--Well, uh.

He pulls the bills I gave him out of his breast pocket and counts them.

--Looks like I got about fifty here.

--What other money?

He pats at his pockets, gives me a hopeless look and shrugs his shoulders. I squat down
and put my face close to his.

--You might be close to getting off the hook here, Phil. I suggest that now is not the time
to start fucking with me.

He nods and starts digging into his pockets, turning them inside out. A handful of change,
his hair goop, a pack of Dentyne, a baggie full of about twenty little black capsules, and
a small wad of cash all spill out onto his lap. I grab the cash and give it a quick count.
Hundred and eighty bucks. I hold the bills in front of his face.

--I'm giving this to Billy, toward what you owe him.

--Sure, sure, I mean, that's what I had it on me for was ta give ta Billy for what I owe
him.

I stand up.

--Yeah, right. Do what you want with the fifty, that's for the phone call. But pay Billy
off before Monday.

--Yeah, before Monday, no sweat, Joe.

I bend over, pick Philip's comb up off the floor and toss it at him.

--Fix your hair, Philip, it looks like crap.

Walking past the bar I get Billy's attention and slip him the buck eighty. He counts it
and smiles. --S'more than I thought he'd cough up.

--Yeah. He'll come through with the rest by Monday. He don't, give me a call.

--Thanks, Joe. Ya gonna stay, start runnin' up that tab? Got some sweet Betties in here
t'night. I could maybe hook ya up.

--Thanks anyway, Billy, I got work to do.

He nods and waves and gets back to shaking martinis. I squeeze through the crowd, out the
door and onto the hot street.

The problem with Philip is, even when he's telling the truth, it looks like lying. But he
has a point. The Coalition wants to keep an eye on me they got better ways of doing it
than him. They really want to keep an eye on me they'll send someone down here far more
subtle and dangerous. Then again, a hundred eighty is a lot of cash for him to be packing,
and he would have needed more to score the speed he was carrying. He got that money
somewhere. Damn it. He's dirty on something, but I don't have time to dig it out right
now. The carrier is still out there and I don't know any more than I did before. Except
that maybe I do.

If Philip is telling the truth, then Predo is keeping an eye on me some other way. Which
means the Coalition is keeping tabs on me personally, or the whole neighborhood, or both.
Which means something is going on down here. And I don't have any idea what it is. My only
move is to try and find the carrier, just like they want me to. So I go home and get my
guns.

Killing a zombie isn't complicated, it's just hard. The first problem is that the damn
things are not quite alive in the first place. Or not quite dead. I'm not really sure
which it is. The way it is, these things, they've been infected with a flesh-eating
bacteria. This bacteria is slowly consuming all their soft tissues, muscle, fat, blood,
cartilage, you name it. But mostly it's eating their brains. The catch is that the
bacteria can only eat living tissue. So more than anything else in the world, this
bacteria wants to keep its host alive and breathing, because once the host dies, I mean
really finally croaks, the bacteria goes soon after. And what this bacteria does to extend
its own life span is it pumps the host body full of endorphins and adrenaline and
serotonin and all kinds of naturally occurring crap that kills pain, induces euphoria, and
keeps a body moving. And to replenish these chemicals the bacteria gives its zombie a
taste for human flesh and, in particular, For brain matter.

So, for the sake of argument, say you have a zombie in front of you and you want to kill
it. Well the best, quickest, and easiest thing to do is sever the connection between its
brain and the rest of its body. This may not in actuality kill the host, but not even the
zombie bacteria can move a host once its brain stem is hacked or its neck is snapped. Now,
say you have two or more zombies standing there and you want all of them dead and you
don't really have any practical zombie-killing experience to draw on. In that case you
might try pulling out your large-caliber hand-gun and shooting them in the heart. You
could try for the face, but unless you hit the brain stem or blow out some really enormous
chunks of gray matter, they're gonna keep coming after you. So just go for the heart.
Explode the heart and the machine can't run no matter how hard the bacteria works. You
could also strangle or drown or burn or blow up or hang or chop up or push from a tall
building your average zombie. As long as you stop the heart or the brain or just cause
massive physical trauma, you're gonna kill the thing. But we're talking about finding a
quick and easy method here. So my advice is use a gun and a lot of bullets, just like if
you were trying to kill your wife or husband.

I keep my guns in a gun safe in the back of my closet down in the secret Vampyre room. Not
that I have any little kids running around I need to keep away from the guns. I had any
kids I'd get rid of the guns. Nothing more dangerous to the life of a child than a house
full of firearms. Nothing more dangerous except maybe a parent. No, I keep my guns locked
up because on bad days, really bad days, it makes it that much harder for me to get my
hands on them and go walking through the streets killing random strangers until the police
come and shoot me down. Not that I get that urge too often. Just when I haven't had blood
for about a week and the alien thing in my veins starts burning me from the inside out and
I start thinking about cutting open my own wrists so I can suck at them.

I'm not one of those guys gets all breathy over his guns. I have two, one is a small,
reliable revolver and one is a big, nasty automatic that holds a lot of bullets. I got
both of them off of dead guys and I know just enough about the guns to shoot them
straight, keep them clean and make sure they never get pointed at me. In the general
course of life these things never see the light of day. And I'm not just trying to be
funny. I mean things like this carrier are pretty rare even in my life, so I don't have
much use for guns and they usually stay in the safe where they belong. The good thing
about the guns is that when you shoot someone, nobody looks twice at the corpse. As
opposed to a dead body with, say, half of its brain gone and its head chopped off.

I load the guns and pocket some extra ammo. I'm on my way back upstairs when I think about
the blood in my fridge. I had a pint last night after my fight with the shamblers and
another today to help with my burn. Normally I keep it to one pint every few days. That's
enough to keep me healthy and take the edge off the hunger, but I'm going hunting and
every little bit helps. Another pint and I'll be primed, the top of my game. I open the
fridge. Eleven pints. I don't like to let my stash get much below ten pints. If I take
another one I'll need to replenish the stock in the next day or two. I think about the
three zombies last night and how close the girl came to cutting my eyes out. I grab one of
the little bags. I suck it dry, standing there in the middle of the room, and it makes me
feel the way it always makes me feel, it makes me feel alive.

There's a patrol car parked out front of the abandoned P.S. on 9th Street. A couple police
barricades fence off the courtyard and the doors are sealed with yellow tape. The crime
scene has been worked already, but the cops will keep it sealed until curiosity dies down
and they don't have to worry about any freaks breaking into the building to party in the
death room. As it is, a few people are on the sidewalk across the street, pointing at the
school and taking pictures with their phones. If the Coalition hadn't fingered the kid
this place would be rabid with cops and newshounds, and I wouldn't be able to get anything
done at all.

I circle around to the 10th Street side of the building. The rear entrance has been long
boarded up. No cops necessary here. A trio of club kids walks loudly west. I wait for them
to turn the corner, then I take three running steps, jump six feet straight up, grab a
window ledge and clamber up the security screen that protects the broken glass behind it.

It takes me less than a minute using the window screens and bricks to scuttle up the wall
to the roof of the school. The two pints I drank today have me peaked. I walk on the balls
of my feet to the roof access door and inspect the lock. Old, rusted, I could force it
easy. Instead I slip the picks from my back pocket. I wiggle the tension wrench into the
lock then tease a hook past it and rake the pins. This keyed up, I can feel and hear each
tiny click as I slide the remaining pins into place. I rotate the wrench, the lock pops
open and I'm inside. Pitch dark. I leave the door ajar to admit the ambient light of New
York City. My pupils grow to the size of dimes. It's not exactly clear as day, but I'll be
fine.

The air is dank and thick with mold. Graffiti covers the walls. I hear a scamper of rat
claws ahead of me, and then the rat freezes, sensing something large and dangerous. It's
right, I am

dangerous, but not to it. Animal blood may as well be salt water as far as the Vyrus is
concerned.

I feel a slight shifting of the air. The door I've left open is drawing the warmer air up
and out of the school. I follow the draft backward and find the stairwell. I descend three
flights to the ground floor, sniffing at the thin trail of air wafting up past me, picking
out details from the last twenty-four hours. I can smell the decay of the zombies, the
urine of Ali Singh, the nameless blood and brains of the other boy. I can smell my own
slightly feral scent and the Ivory soap I use in the shower. Fresher than the rest is a
heavy overlay of sweaty cop, coffee and fingerprint powder, and the excited tang of news
reporters. Under it all, the heavy, damp rot of the building.

I retrace my steps to the room where the killing took place. The door has no lock, but the
cops have sealed it with the inevitable yellow tape, the era's icon for tragedy. I tear it
off and open the door. It reeks inside.

Normally in these things someone would have been here by now with a bucket of bleach to
get things sterile, but I guess the cops want to leave the crime scene intact until they
have a confession out of Singh. Result: taped body outlines, dried blood, dried urine,
dried vomit from whoever found the slaughterhouse, and oh yeah, dried brains.

I pick out the zombie smell from the others and walk slowly around the room separating the
scent into three distinct strands. There's the girl's musky undertone, the rank underarm
stink of the one whose neck I snapped, and the hair product used by the guy I stepped on.
Now that I have the zombie smell isolated into the three individuals I know of, I sniff
for any other signatures hiding in the mix. It's not there. No sign of another zombie, the
carrier.

But the girl's musk.

Why musky? A stale musky sex scent. That's what I smelled on her last night before I got
distracted by Singh. Zombies don't have sex, do they? Shit, I don't know. I walk over to
where the taped shadow of her body is outlined on the floor and take a deep breath through
my nose.

I filter out the other smells and focus on hers. The youth of her flesh. She was young,
maybe seventeen, eighteen. The rot under the living flesh, brought on by the bacteria that
was eating her alive, eating her dead. The acid smell of the cosmetics coloring her eyes
and mouth and nails midnight black. The compost odor when her bladder and bowels released
after I stabbed her in the neck. Perfume, sweat, a fungus in her Doc Martens. All that,
and a sweaty musk. Someone rubbed against her, touched her. Someone fucked her. Not today,
but recently, since she was infected. I try to imagine the sicko that would have sex with
one of these things while it pawed at him and tried to take a bite out of his brain, the
bastard that would mate with the bacteria inside this dead girl.

I take one more deep breath to fix the musk smell in my mind so that I can pick it out
when I find it again. That's when I notice something is missing. I take another whiff, and
I catch it. An absence. Throughout the room, little patches of nothing in the matrix of
odors. Slight erasures sprinkled across the air where something has absented itself from
the catalogue of the room's history. I close my eyes. I inhale and try to capture one of
the absences, to trace it step-by-step across the room and re-create what this thing might
have done here.

And it is this deep level of concentration that allows someone to sneak up behind me and
hit me on the back of the head with a somewhat immature whale.

The sound of bickering wakes me and tells me exactly where I am. I peel an eye open for
confirmation, and sure enough, here I am in the squalid tenement basement headquarters of
the Society. I'm on a dingy cot in an alcove. In the middle of the room three people are
standing around a rickety card table under a single bare lightbulb. The two guys doing the
bickering are Tom Nolan and Terry Bird.

Tom reads about twenty-five, but carries a few more actual years. He's got the blond
dreads and washed-out clothes of the downtown radical, along with the requisite number of
piercings and tattoos. Terry is older looking, say fifty or so. His style is more old
school: ponytail, beard, John Lennon glasses, Earth Day T-shirt and Birkenstocks; that
kind of thing. The third is Lydia Miles. Call her twenty, short dark hair, leather pants,
white tank top, bodybuilder muscles, and an upside-down pink triangle tattooed on her
shoulder. Just another ragtag band of East Village
radical-socialist-anarchist-revolutionaries hanging out and plotting the overthrow of The
Man. Of course this band of revolutionaries also drinks blood.

Lydia stands there watching while Tom goes at Terry and Terry pulls a passive-aggressive
mellow hippie thing in response. Guess who's the topic of discussion?

--I'm telling you he's working for the fucking Coalition. Why else would he be there?