The guy sitting in the front passenger seat doesn’t say anything. That being a symptom of having most of your throat torn out. He does make a noise, something between a gurgle and a grate, but the mass of cartilage and skin in the middle of his neck is going to need some untangling before it’s of much use.
Digga takes his eyes from the screen and leans forward a little.
– Muthafucka, you best not brought your bleedin’ in here. I know you finished that shit before you climbed your ass back in my Escalade. Oh shit! Take that nastiness outside! Now, muthafucka!
Jenks and his nastiness climb out and close the door, leaving me and Digga alone.
Digga leans between the front seats, licks his thumb and rubs at a spot of blood on the cream leather.
– Use is it, his throat heals enough for him to breathe if his ass can’t swallow? Answer me that. No use. All that blood he just lost. Starve by the end of the week. Start going batshit in a couple days. Need one more like that is what I need. One more batshit muthafucka starvin’ on our turf.
He drops back into the seat next to me.
– Shit.
He runs his hands down the tops of his thighs, smoothing the black wool of his trousers.
– An like I need another harbinger of how shit is fucked up, your ass comes wanderin’ by. Shit.
He redirects his eyes to the video screen.
– Look at this.
He touches the screen and a control bar appears at its bottom. He rewinds the picture, hits play, and we watch a twenty-second clip of a starving Hood launching herself from a second-story window into the path of a bus on the street below. The bus catches her before she hits the ground and she flies fifteen feet and smashes into the security gate covering a storefront. She gets up, broken bones jutting every direction from her shredded skin, and runs down an alley.
Digga shakes his head.
– Fuckin’ YouTube. Muthafucka caught it with his phone an shit. Had it posted in minutes. See the title? Crazy PCP Bitch Won’t Die.
– What’s YouTube?
He looks at me, shakes his head.
– Muthafuckin’ Joe Pitt.
He points at the screen.
– This your fuckin’ fault, this shit is.
I lean forward and look at the screen, shake my head.
– Never saw the crazy bitch before.
He has me by the back of the neck, bounces my forehead off the screen, the picture fractures, screen goes black. I don’t see anything else for the moment because of the gun stuck up against my remaining eye.
– Tell you about that crazy bitch. She a lady. Good lady. Got a high school diploma. College degree. She a pillar of our community. Works with young people new to the life. Helps with they get adjusted to how things is. Loves them kids. Loves them kids so much, when shit gets tight up here last few months an I got no choice but to institute rationing and a strict policy of no more killing the normal muthafuckas till further fuckin’ notice, she lays off her rations on some of her kids. So that they be more comfortable an shit. That who that bitch is. Was. Cuz now that bitch put down with a bullet I had to lodge in her fuckin’ skull on account of this crazy shit we see here. Muthafucka! Muthafucka!
He pistol-whips me a few times. My nose breaks. Again.
He stops. Looks at his gun. Reaches over and wipes the blood onto my jeans.
– Shit.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and force it into place.
– Hey, Digga.
He doesn’t say anything.
I go in my pocket for my tobacco and start rolling a smoke.
– Just like old times, huh?
Digga’s suit is black. Trousers, jacket, shirt, tie, socks, shoes and cuff links. Solid black. Just that much blacker than himself. A good color for hiding the blood that sprinkled him when my nose broke. Still he doesn’t like it.
He dabs at a blood spot with a damp paper napkin.
– Had to make noise, didn’t ya, Pitt? Keepin’ yo mouth shut just a lost art where your ass comes from, is it?
I keep my mouth shut.
He looks at me.
– You bein’ cute?
I shrug.
He shakes his head.
– Cute. Know what happened? You went off half-cocked last year? Know what the result of that action came to be?
He balls some used napkins and throws them into the footwell.
– Society emissary comes up here. Lydia Miles. Comes up here, secret communiqué from the Society. My ears only. Whisper-whisper. Some shit about how they finally found where Coalition gets they blood. How it is they asses always got enough. How they supply the masses between Fourteen and One Ten. Do tell, says I. Thinkin’ this is gonna be some valuable shit to know. Years now we been relyin’ on Coalition to supplement what we got up here. Years we have to put up with they asses holdin’ top of the rock. Payin’ what price they set. Market monopoly. Twistin’ my tits. Then this chick, she leans to my ear and she tells me where they get it.
He’s stopped blotting, scrubbing now, little white bits of paper tearing off a napkin and sticking to his jacket.
– Says some shit about Queens. Says some shit about a hole in the ground. Asks me, all drama like, Know what’s in that hole, Digga? Shit!
He throws the napkin into the front seat.
– Like I’m supposed to know that shit. Asks like maybe I know. Muthafucka! Like she’s checking my shit out to see how I jump. Thinkin’, Did he know or didn’t he? Like it’s a fuckin’ question if I knew or not.
His hands are fists now, he shakes them in front of his face.
– Like there was a question what I’d have to say on that shit.
He pounds the fists into his thighs.
– War! War, I say, muthafucka! War on they asses! War! War! War!
I’ve got a cigarette rolled. I put it in my mouth and light it and inhale some smoke, then blow it back out.
– Yeah, well, that was kind of the point.
• • •
That hole.
About that hole in Queens. Not trying to be coy or anything. Just some things I don’t feel like talking about much. And some people, they get uncomfortable thinking about some things.
Veal.
Veal makes some people uncomfortable to think about it. Baby calves in pens so tight they can’t turn around. Milk-fed, tender-muscled, raised to young slaughter and the table. Put a plate full of it in front of someone, don’t say a word, most folks tuck right in, rub their tummies and say mmm. Same plate, same person, tell them a little about those big-eyed calves and their short and miserable existence, and they’re like as not to go off their appetite.
I go into too much detail on this, I’m liable to get distracted. Start thinking about things I can’t change. So take the above as context, and see what kind of picture gets painted when I mention the following:
Hole in the ground.
Chains.
Breeding cells.
Anticoagulants.
Incubators.
I.V. hose.
Truncheons.
Vampyres.
Veal ranch.
Rape factory.
Paints a vivid picture don’t it? Illuminates some of the strong feelings people might display. But, yeah, guess I kind of buried the lead at the beginning of the story.
• • •
We’re only human. At least that’s what I think. Just people got infected with this thing that needs blood to survive. We’re not evil. No more than other folks. We’re not soulless creatures of the night. Sure, yeah, mostly anyone can get used to mostly anything if that’s what it takes to survive. And sure, tap enough veins and you start to get a little casual about the process. Still, when I look at the people around me, I don’t feel like I’m looking at cattle. They’re people, sure enough. The fact that I’m looking for a person who’s an easy mark doesn’t mean I think any less of them.
Pretty damn hard for me to think any less of humanity than I already do.
Digga, he’s plenty human himself. He’s a vicious thug, but he likes dogs and children and all that usual stuff. No wonder he took it hard when he found out what he’d been drinking hadn’t been given up by Vampyre-loving volunteers or bled off packs of kiddy-fondling Klansmen.