Every Last Drop jp-4 Read online

— It is strange. That causing fear in others can help produce freedom. But it is also true. It clears a path before one. Creates space, a perimeter within which one can operate with abandon. I am not saying that it is true freedom. But it is a start. And it has given us the space and time to become more dangerous.

  He brings a claw to his temple.

  — I am not the boy I was. I do not crave the material things of MTV culture. I am not the slave I was. I do not crave the attention and occasional kindnesses of Lament. I am not even the savage I made myself after my initial escape. I do not crave blood for blood's own sake. I am a rational man. I have made myself into this. I have read and studied and applied myself. I am clear in my thoughts. And in how I express them. While I cultivate mystery about my person in order to project the fear that frees me, I want none of that mystery in my speech. I am capable now of great subtlety. A word I could not have defined just a few years ago. I am capable of that subtlety, but I prefer bluntness. I am all these things, all my past selves, and my new self, because of one reason.

  He aims the claw at me.

  — Because I have a purpose. And succeed or fail, I have aimed myself solely at that purpose. With no time for anything else. And yet.

  He turns his hand over, shows me his pale palm.

  — Even a man with a purpose can have regrets. My own regret is that I could not convince Esperanza Lucretia to join me. Though I still have hopes that she might. So, seeing that you know her, and that she recommends you to me, I agreed to deviate my attention from my purpose to meet with you. In return, I will need you to do something.

  I wait.

  He looks away. -Tell her I miss her.

  I flick my butt into the water, pull out a fresh one. -Yeah, I know how that goes.

  I light up. -I can do that for you.

  He nods. -Well, then.

  He squats, puts the tip of the blade on the ground, folds his hands over the

  leather-wrapped grip. -What do you want?

  I inhale smoke, killing the smell of the rank water.

  — Like I told Esperanza. I don't know Queens. She told me you two had history. I asked if she could reach out. -You asked Esperanza Lucretia to reach out to the Mungiki. -Not saying I was happy to be looking to talk to you. Just saying I don't know anyone in Queens.

  He looks up at me. -Then what you have to do in Queens must be very important.

  I think about the Cure house, and the blood they need. I think about Terry, and the money he needs. I think about Predo, and the information he needs.

  I think about me, and what I need. Where I need to be. Who I need to see.

  Feel the pull. -Yeah, It's important.

  I look at my burning cigarette.

  Say it out loud and you don't go back.

  Say it in the open air and there's no telling where the words drift.

  Say it. -I'm looking for blood.

  He raises an eyebrow. -Are not we all?

  I look up from my cigarette. -No, man, I'm looking for a whole lot of blood.

  He looks into my eye, nods, stops nodding. -Did I mention, Joe Pitt, that I do not believe in destiny? — Yeah, I remember something like that.

  He rises, looks me up and down. -Serendipity though, that is another matter.

  He glances at the water. -What's the worst thing you've ever seen, Joe Pitt?

  I look at him.

  I could tell him the worst thing I've ever seen. But he wouldn't see it the same as me. Tell someone the worst thing you ever saw was a dying girl being healed, they wont really get it. But I saw it. And it was bad. So I know better.

  He watches me, nods. -So you have seen many awful things.

  I still got nothing to say.

  Menace weighs his machete in both hands. -Have they changed you, do you think? The things you have seen?

  I find my lighter. -How the hell should I know.

  I flick the lighter to life, realize I don't have a cigarette in my mouth for it to light, and snap it closed. -You are who you are. See things. Don't see them. You are who you are.

  He studies the machete in his hands.

  — I was who I was. I saw terrible things as a child. And I was who I was. Taken by Lament, tortured, I saw more terrible things. And I was who I was. Changing, yes, but always who I was. I agree with that. But as I told you.

  He holds the machete tight in one hand, as he runs the palm of his other hand down the blade, cutting deep. -I am different now. Remade. By a purpose.

  He looks at the hand, watches the blood clot over the deep incision.

  — Remade by what I have seen.

  He shakes his hand, flecks of blood spattering the pavement. -You should go home, Joe Pitt.

  He looks at me. -Or risk being a different person when you leave later.

  He shrugs. -//you can leave later.

  I put my Zippo back in my pocket, take hold of my razor. -You saying something?

  His mouth twists down, tries to straighten, stays twisted. -Rope works. Steel caskets. Animal carbon. Glue factory.

  He swallows. -Do you think the swamp draws such industry?

  I slip my other hand in my other pocket, thread my fingers into the hoops of the brass knuckles. -Not following you, kid.

  He breathes deep a couple times, like a man trying to keep down his last ten

  drinks.

  — There are things. Things you have to see.

  Tears start in his eyes. -Go home, Joe Pitt.

  He raises the hand he cut, and the rest of the Mungiki encircle us. -We are Mungiki. Savages. We are born for this.

  He lowers his hand. -It will kill you.

  He bares his teeth. -It will kill us all.

  I lick my lips. -OK.

  I take my hands from my pockets, lighter in one hand, cigarette in the other. -I'm suitably freaked out.

  I light the cigarette. -Now tell me where I go to see this thing.

  He wipes tears from his face, leaving a small smear of his hands blood.

  — Not far.

  He points south. -English Kill.

  He nods at the Creek. -Do you know how to swim?

  The Mungiki don't have guns.

  Not that they have anything against them, just that they don't have much cash to procure them with. Under normal circumstances I'd consider it a bonus for the whole world that these guys are limited to machetes and handmade claws, but it does mean I can't borrow a gun for myself. -Not even a zip gun? — No. No firearms at all.

  I look at the rank water below my feet. -Shit.

  I look back up at Menace. -And you re sure I can't go on land? — No. This is the only way.

  — Shit.

  There's a splash as one of the Mungiki tosses an inflated inner tube, scavenged from one of the truck yards, into the water.

  I look at it bobbing on the scummy low tide. -What's that for?

  Menace squats next to me, angles his machete at the sandbar peeking from the middle of the Creek.

  — Mussel Island. Even at low tide the currents around it are strong. Hidden rocks. You can get pulled down into them and ripped apart. -Shit.

  He picks up a shard of glass between the points of two claws. -I will not see you again, Joe Pitt.

  I unlace my boots. -That's always a chance. -No.

  He drops the shard in the water.

  — I will not see you again. You will not come back. If someone comes back, it will not be you.

  I peel off my socks and stuff them inside the boots, shrug out of my jacket and pull off my shirt. -Do me a favor anyway. -Yes?

  I point at my clothes.

  — Hang on to that stuff. I got a feeling they'll fit the son of a bitch who does come back.

  He was right about the currents.

  The inner tube gets pulled from my arm and I get dragged under, sucking a lungful of contaminated creek water as I go down. I get spun, my shoulder bangs on the rocks, and then the current shifts direction and shoves me away from the tiny island and I break the surface gasping
.

  I knew the water was how I was going out.

  I stroke hard, past the branch where fresh currents try to drag me down English Kill so they can crush me against the rocks below the silos rising above some kind of refinery. Farther down the waterway, I pass under the Grand Avenue Bridge, heavy trucks rattling the steel plates overhead. Ahead, the Creek splits. Disappearing beyond a huge warehouse and around a hard

  angle to my right, where Menace told me it dead-ends at Metropolitan. Crossing an invisible border into Brooklyn.

  Going that way is one of my options. But I don't want to go to Brooklyn. I've been to Brooklyn. And I'm not welcome there.

  On my left the water runs between an abandoned lot and a school bus depot, washing up against wood pilings at the foot of a nameless street.

  I grab hold of the long steel-and-concrete pier that anchors the middle of the bridge, the pivot on which it once swung open, when these waters were used as anything but a garbage disposal.

  Rising between the depot and the warehouse, tons of gravel are drawn up long conveyors, dust floats, hazing bright halogens, a nonstop roar of crushed stone and diesel engines. And a high, white-painted cinder-block wall.

  That's the place Menace told me about.

  The place where he got changed.

  I let go of the pier and swim down the channel to the bus depot, where there is no wall.

  Where I can see what scares the savages.

  Merit Transportation hasn't bothered with a wall or even a fence on the water

  side of their depot.

  Why bother?

  Who's gonna swim up in heavily polluted water to mess around in a bus depot? And what are they gonna mess with? Some tagger is industrious enough to frog-man his way in by this route and spray bomb the side of one of the buses, you may as well give the little fucker a medal.

  No, there's no wall here. Nothing to keep out anyone mad enough to come in this way to do God knows what.

  Dripping, my skin coated in chemically mutated algae, I haul myself onto the slick rocks and crawl up until I can huddle between two buses, the halogens above the grinding yard next door casting deep black shadows for me to hide in.

  All I can see is the tops of those conveyors, raising the gravel high before it's dropped, churned, milled ever more fine.

  I get down on my belly and worm under a bus, keeping my eyes on the dirt, hoping to find an especially long butt that someone may have tossed aside. A butt and a match.

  No dice.

  Ahead, there's a row of buses parked perpendicular to a bare cement

  verge; beyond that, the wall that hides the gravel yard, topped with a long twisted spring of razor wire. Brightly lit.

  A tunnel would be nice.

  Or a shaped but silent charge, to blow a secret hole in the wall.

  Why am I doing this?

  I look at the dirt. I crook a finger and trace a name.

  Evie.

  I'd be lying if I said it gave me courage. I'd be lying if I said it heartened me. I'd be lying if I said it made me stronger, resolved in my intent. Hell, I'd be lying if I said that name did anything but open wounds and grind salt deep into the meat.

  But I get up and run.

  I vault onto the hood of a bus, hop to the roof, sprinting, sheet-metal footfalls on the roof of the bus lost in the din.

  The cement verge is at least six feet broad. The wall eight feet tall, the wire adding nearly two more feet.

  Jumping from the rear of the bus, my bare foot pushing off from the end of the roof above the emergency exit, I have a vision of myself, feet snagged in a tangle of razor wire, hanging upside down inside the perimeter of the wall,

  spotlights pinned on my body, guards closing in from every quarter.

  I look down, see my feet clearing the wall and the wire with inches to spare, then gravity catches me and sucks me down and smashes me into a gravel pile, crushing the air from my lungs and snapping three fingers on my left hand when I stupidly try to brace against the impact instead of going limp.

  Its even louder on this side of the wall. And brighter.

  Mounds of gravel and sand, the tower the conveyor belts climb and descend, a steel blockhouse of grinding machinery underneath, unpaved roads cut by eighteen-wheelers hauling open-topped trailers bringing in yet more gravel, smaller diesels with spinning mixers, painted in spirals, driving away with loads of cement. Everything gray, shot with patches and stripes of pitch-black shadow painted by the light towers above.

  I roll out of the light to the bottom of a gravel pile, into a shadow, waiting to hear a klaxon, the machinery grinding to a halt, commands shouted back and forth between heavily armed guards.

  Nothing happens.

  Machinery roars, lights blaze, trucks roll in low gear.

  I crawl to the edge of the pile and look for the enforcers who must be creeping up on me.

  And see no one but the drivers in the trucks, a couple silhouettes in a small shack near the conveyors, and a uniformed man sprawled in a folding chair at the distant gate, waving the trucks in and out with barely a glance.

  I duck back behind the pile. Wondering if I'm in the right place.

  Maybe Menace meant the warehouse on the far side of the yard. Maybe he meant one of the warehouses I passed along the Creek. Maybe he's a fucking nutjob and I'm chasing my own asshole around Maspeth because he thinks he saw something.

  Maybe he's a nutjob.

  He's fucking named Menace. He's given himself fangs and little handcrafted claws.

  Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

  No maybe about it, he's a fucking nutjob and a half.

  This place is nothing but a gravel yard.

  What am I thinking? What can that insane kid possibly know about the biggest secret the Coalition has? What could he possibly have seen and survived seeing?

  I think about his twisted mouth. His gasping breath as he tried to tell me. The way he swallowed his own bile at the thought of the place.

  Tears and blood on his cheek.

  OK, so maybe there's something here to see.

  I use the razor to cut a strip from the hem of my pants. I straighten the three broken fingers on my left hand, gritting my teeth, then I slip the brass knuckles over them, curl my fingers around the cold metal and use the scrap of dirty khaki cloth to tie my fingers into place. Then I roll around in the gravel and dust, coating my wet skin and pants, making myself muddy gray.

  And I crawl into the light, brass tied to one hand, cold, sharp steel held tight in the other, waiting with my face pressed in the dust at the side of the road that's been graded by the tonnage of trucks and crushed stone. Coming to my feet as one passes, snagging a dangling chain and pulling myself aboard, huddling atop one of the gas tanks as it wheels around the base of the conveyors, circles, and pulls into the notch that runs between them.

  Dust clogs my nose. I cant smell anything except diesel fumes and scorched rubber. The truck moves into the shadows beneath the conveyors. The tower of rust-streaked gray steel that the conveyors pour their gravel into shakes and shudders and sends thunder vibrating through the air. I'm deaf.

  The truck jerks, turns, angles toward a road that leads to the gate.

  Here under the towers, protected from the halogen day, the light is cast by yellow globes in wire cages. Someone coalesces out of the dust and sickly light. I jump from the truck, leading with brass, my broken fist sending a hot

  blast of pain down my arm as it hits the side of the man's face. I land on top of him, knocking his helmet and earphones off, smashing an elbow into his gut. No worry that his screams will be heard here.

  I drag him beneath one of the jittering scaffolds that hold the conveyors and put my face close to his and inhale.

  No Vyrus.

  I scream into his ear, and he coughs, spits up, shakes his head.

  I show him the razor, and he shakes his head again.

  I cut his left ear off and almost hear his scream.

  I yell into
his remaining ear and he sobs and points at the steel tower.

  I cut his throat. I drink his blood. Dust is in the first mouthfuls. Muddy and viscous, I swallow hard to make it go down. After that, it goes easy.

  I don't linger to drink it all. It's not safe here for indulgence.

  I leave his body in the shadows, his dusty jacket on my torso, his goggles, earphones and helmet on my head. I hadn't planned to kill him, but it was the smart thing to do, taking his blood to make me strong for whatever may be inside.

  Things could get ugly in there.

  Its louder. The machinery directly overhead amplifying the racket of pulverizing rock, blasting it down to this small, empty chamber. In the middle of the floor a staircase spirals down an ancient shaft, screwing itself into a deep darkness punctuated by the occasional scarlet glow of a safety lamp.

  I start down.

  Twenty feet below, the noise starting to fade, I come to the first light, a bulb in a cage above an unmarked steel door. I try the handle, it doesn't move.

  I feel watched, look up, expecting to find the mouth of the shaft ringed by Coalition enforcers armed with machine guns, and find nothing.

  Down.

  Another light and another door. Locked.

  Down.

  The light just below me flashes twice, the door opens, pulled inward.

  I tuck my knuckled fist behind my back, collapse my razor and palm it, raise my chin to the goggled and earphoned man coming out the door and dropping something into his jacket pocket.

  He nods, waits, holding the door open.

  And I slip inside, patting his side in thanks, taking the weight of the door

  from him, watching his back as he starts up the stairs, letting go of the door, then catching it before it latches.

  I look at the key in my hand, the key that dropped there when I sliced out the bottom of his pocket as we passed in the doorway. Broad and thick, notched along both edges, I slip it into the lock and check to be sure it will get me out. It turns the bolt.

  I close the door, steel and the sixty-odd feet of stone above finally giving relief from the noise, reducing it to an insistent grinding in the walls. Walls of moisture-seeping limestone, braced by rusting I-beams. Fluorescent corkscrews stick from old ceramic sockets mounted high.

  Doors.

  The first stands open on a room lined with cots. Floor covered in linoleum dimpled by nails driven through it and into the stone. Walls decorated by ragged pinups. A small fridge, a coffeemaker, microwave.