Hurley coughs, spits a mouthful of blood on the floor, takes another step, another, and grabs Terry by the shoulders, gun pinned between them.
– Before ya do somethin’ ye’ll regret, Terry, why don’t ya hand me dat bottle o nasty? Just fer me ta put away someplace safe. Where ya won’t tink on it an get confused. We’d not want to overstep da bounds of our friendship here, now would we?
Terry tries to pull back, twists, but Hurley’s lost one man from his paws tonight. He doesn’t ever lose two.
– Hurley.
– Terry now.
– Hurley, this is just, I don’t know, man.
– Isn’t it now? Isn’t it just that.
The gun goes off five more times, two of the bullets come out of Hurley’s back, the others trapped inside the mass of him.
He grunts, wraps his arms around Terry, and squeezes.
When he stops squeezing he drops what’s left of Terry.
He looks down at the mess. Plucks the gun from it. Pops the clip.
– Empty now. Shame. He drops both.
Bends and picks up the vial, and walks to me and offers it.
– Joe, would ya mind?
I take it from his hand.
He keeps it out.
– An if I might?
I hand him the whiskey and he walks to Terry’s body and lowers himself slowly to the floor and takes a drink that finishes the last three inches of bourbon.
– Damn it all.
He looks at the empty bottle and flips it away to roll across the floor.
– Damn it all.
He folds himself over Terry’s body.
– An I never expected to live forever.
He closes his eyes, head resting on his folded arms.
– But damn it all da same.
His barrel chest pumps a few more times, but that’s all he has left in him.
• • •
Time was, you’d have told me I was gonna be in the room when Terry died, and I’d have told you that would never happen on my watch. Now here it is, and most I feel is maybe that I wish I’d had a chance to get a crack at him myself. Figure, as unwell as I am, Vyrus going all haywire, dying already started, I got about a thousand reasons why I should feel this bad. None of them having anything to do with Terry Bird being dead and gone.
But that don’t mean I’m gloating.
I look at Predo’s head, still in my lap, and roll it to the floor.
No, I’m not gloating. Things got to die sometimes. That’s all.
So I wipe the smile off my face.
– Did it go through?
Lydia feels at her back.
– No. Shit.
She lost her fair share of blood in the basement and on the stairs. That big old gun put a hell of a hole in her gut. Wound has closed over, no more blood leaking, but she’s having trouble finding her feet. We could start a stumble club her and me.
– Someone’s gonna have to dig it out.
– I have people for that.
– Lose more blood when it happens.
She stops trying to rise and lowers herself until she’s lying on the floor.
– Need to get up.
Footsteps.
– I can help.
We’re both looking at her, Delilah, gazing down at Lydia, over the rim of her belly.
– I can help.
– Now, baby.
Ben comes over.
– I’m not sure.
She doesn’t look at him.
– Benjamin, I want to get out of here. You know how to do that?
He points at the door, scratches his head.
– I’m not sure what’s out there.
She nods.
Lydia is shaking her head.
– No, no, no, no. No way. Never.
I lever myself out of my chair, the cramps keeping me bent, and find a few things to lean on till I get to Lydia.
– Here.
I get a hand in her armpit and pull.
– No, I won’t, I won’t.
Even with the bullet in her, she’s in better shape than me.
I look at Ben.
– Kid.
He gets her by her other arm and we pull her off the floor and start hauling her across the room.
– No, Joe. I won’t take a mother’s blood. I won’t, given or not. I won’t.
I get her where we’re going.
– Here.
She looks at Amanda.
– Joe. No.
I point at the lab.
– Girl wanted to find a cure, wanted to help. Think she’d care? She wouldn’t. Go on, before it goes bad.
Her nostrils are flaring, just this close to all that spilled blood, smelling that it’s still fresh inside.
– She said not to.
– She was being pissy and temperamental. She wanted to help. Whatever. Stop talking about it. Do it.
It takes her another second to get over her qualm, and she gets to it.
I leave her there, walk away from the desk, find my chair and sit back down, and try not to look at what she’s doing, or drown in my own saliva.
Delilah comes over.
– What about you? You’ll be more help if you can fight.
The Vyrus rages at the nearness of all that blood.
I wave her off.
– Look who’s the realist all of a sudden. None for me. Dilutes my bodily fluids. Need my strength for later. But I tell you.
I take out my tobacco.
– If one of you kids could roll one of these and find a light somewhere, I think I’d be OK.
Ben takes the packet, unseals the bag, looks inside.
– You’re out of rolling papers.
I wave a hand at some books in the lab.
– Improvise.
He goes looking for a book.
I grunt.
– Hey, see if she’s got a Bible over there. Those onionskin pages at the front work best.
– Classy, Joe.
Lydia is on her feet. Still with a wobble, but shiny-eyed and loose-shouldered.
She wipes her mouth.
– Ready to go to Queens?
Ben comes back with a smoke rolled in a bit of printed paper, and a butane igniter.
– Mister Pitt.
– Yeah, hit me.
I stick the double wide smoke in my face and he burns the end off it and I cough up a chunk of my lung on that first paper hit, but it’s worth it.
I look at Lydia.
– Why the hell would I want to go to Queens?
She’s at the gun rack, pauses in her inventory and points at Terry.
– Know what that is?
I squint at the body.
– Dead people?
– Karma.
She returns to looking for a gun that will suit her mood.
– That was Terry’s bullshit karma finally catching up to him because he delayed and deferred doing the right thing for too long.
– Uh-huh.
– I’m not saying there’s anything mystical about it, just that he sowed and he reaped. Being a selfish asshole gets you nowhere.
– Uh-huh.
She turns to look at me, hefting something that looks designed to efficiently kill people in large numbers.
– Are you on the phone?
I hold up a finger.
– Hang on, this will be fast.
– Who are you calling now? Digga has his hands full. Joe? Who are you?
I get my connection, my voice sounding so strangled through the pain in my gut and my half-crushed windpipe that I don’t even have to act to make myself sound freaked out.
– Yeah, I want to report a shooting. A murder. A cop, a cop was just shot over here. Where they make cement. Queens, I’m in Queens. English Kill. Next to the bus depot, where they make cement. I work. Oh my god. There’s a, some kind of sex slave thing. In the factory, the main building. Chains and. Please, please, they killed a cop and they know I’m here.
I hang up the phone, drop it, stomp it into shards.
– Really, Lydia.
I take a drag.
– If you wanted to change the world.
I blow smoke.
– That was all you had to do.
Lydia kills the thing on the stairs.
Opens the door, starts shooting, keeps shooting, empties a clip into it, pops a fresh one in the gun and empties that one too. Whatever it was, it had finished off the last of the starvings. Monsters out of the way, we spend more time than reasonable getting down the stairs. Mostly that’s my fault. Ben tries to carry me to make things go faster, but I go into a fit of convulsions and the arm wrapped around his neck almost throttles him and he decides he’ll just let me lean on him so he can drop me if it happens again.