The Immune System, page 5
“Yes, yes,” she says. “But we’ve got nowhere else to go. You can help us. We need supplies.”
Heavy breathing to prevent any vomiting. “The fuck makes you think I’m helping anybody? What you know about me? I’m evicting all you all is what I’m doing.”
I can’t see her in the gloom but it sounds like she’s smiling as she says, “Bleach. Just plain old household bleach, for drinking water. And the DPT vaccine. If you’re truly with the Department of State, I’m certain you can secure these small things.”
“Miss Marcia,” I respond, my broken robot hand starting to vibrate now, “what on fucking earth have I done to suggest I would help you in any way shape or form—”
“Your heart is on your sleeve.”
“Excuse me?” I’m trembling. It’s not unpleasant.
“I’m a pretty good judge of character. I’ve seen a lot of kids grow up. And I get the feeling you’ve got a soul in there somewhere. Behind that mask, perhaps.”
I recoil, because I don’t like how this is unfolding. As in—now I’m not wholly sure she said that last bit out loud. My peripheral vision begins to darken like the end of a silent film.
Backing up. The woman is a witch, projecting witchy X-rays, scanning a brother with ill magic.
No, I don’t like it.
Don’t like people poking around in my psyche, foraging for data, intuiting shit about my nature. Wanna come with something clever but I’m stalling out.
I’m a killer. I got no country save Hades. Don’t speak of the soul with me.
Can’t recall what I say or do at this point, but Miss Marcia dissolves.
Bam: I’m crashing though the sticky underbrush, dirty water in my eyes—
Wham: in vehicle southbound—
Slam: somehow back at the library, scrabbling at the massive stacks . . . but even this image evaporates as a full Freddo bodychecks me.
_________________
Again there’s the dream, as common a thing as I know, and every element, every aspect, every movement, is cut deep into my muscle memory.
South Bronx housing project in winter. My perspective is, as always, from the parking lot, which is sparsely occupied. The details change but their nature is the same . . . a Department of Housing vehicle, a stripped cop car, a Honda held together with duct tape, a spanking-new Audi . . . but these are not important.
Ghost playground. Upended Dora the Explorer tricycle, unnaturally colorful against the grays and whites, the ash and the frost, steering chassis removed. Popeyes bags, a Papa John’s pizza box, a couple loose Twizzlers. These objects.
I’m right about my companions. They’re burly dudes, each one of them outweighing me by a bunch. I can see their breath. Again: here, at the door, caught by a gloved hand that does not appear to be mine. In the metal, piss-infused elevator, we are a tight fit, the three of us. We are uncomfortably close together, and it occurs to me I do not want to be near these men.
Exit the elevator into the hallway. Key in hand.
Something new here, because I falter and stop. There has been a failure. There has been a failure on my part. I have welched on some kind of deal. That’s why we’re here.
I’m asked if there’s a problem.
Yes, there’s a tremendous problem. Its size and depth are beyond me. Its scope is such that the problem itself is impossible to grasp, because just when you think you’ve seen the end of it, there’s more.
I proceed, reasoning there must be something we can do to help correct the problem. What we do now, and what we will do in the apartment.
Check my pistol and disengage the safety. Listen at the door.
There are a woman and child inside, though I imagine they’re holding their breath, the woman’s finger to her lips, praying that we’ll continue down the hall.
But no. My key is in the lock. Our entrance is unrushed. Cause after all: it’s my place.
_________________
Come to on the street in an entirely different part of town, hours and hours later, waves of familiar yet unpleasantly exotic smells washing over me. Somebody saying, “Fuck off me, get the fuck off me . . .”
Occurs that I’m the speaker, and I clap my yap. My suit’s a damn mess, overcoat heavy with wet, mud-streaked. Spitting sand and rainwater . . . think: Gastroenteritis, gram-negative pneumonia . . .
Panicky pat-down, still got my guns, my hat . . . fuck fuck fuck, the C-4, with great caution I smooth my pockets until I bump up against the egg, thankfully intact. My PurellTM, my pills. This is all far better news than I deserve.
Try to pinpoint myself on my internal grid, and I do it on smell alone: Chinatown, Chinatown proper.
Rain has tapered into a needle-fine drizzle. My shoes scrape at the film of grime on the concrete as I attempt to stand, actually gasping at the hurt that whips through my chicken-bone body.
Find myself down a short staircase leading to a basement-level store of some kind, and despite my disorientation, my mouth and nose are filled with a cocktail of smells and textures that are specific to one area in such intensity.
In Chinatown’s very colon, at 5:53 a.m. by my watch. This is where the death-dealing chickens and livestock reside, vessels for unnamed viruses . . . like myself, potential asymptomatic carriers of anything.
Chinatown: it’s only really here, in this section of the island triptych, that one can nearly see all the shapes and colors of what once was. Entire blocks remain virtually untouched, which makes the speed at which the rest of the city was deleted all the more sinister. Fuck, how did that happen? Within the space of a single year, it’s all changed.
But the organic matter. The filth. It’s a horror show. I would never knowingly be here . . . but then I see it. Dead across the street, I dig it all now: 154 Hester Street, the Oversea China Mission building.
My brother Dos Mac’s work/live laboratory, and the site of his murder.
Innately I reckon it’s good and proper that I’m here, despite the risks . . . I’m in freaking Chinatown, for fuck’s sake, unsanctioned. Should a randy patrol happen by I could be shot on sight.
And damn if these freezes are getting progressively more disturbing.
Pull some PurellTM, choke back a pill, aim to piece it together . . . Come on, Decimal. Back it on up. Focus. Rewind.
_________________
MIDTOWN, TWO HOURS AND THREE MINUTES EARLIER
Me shaken by my bump-up with the hippie schoolteacher/sorceress, shaky in my ride with Chip at the helm, woozy and wobbly, watching a benighted 5th Avenue rip past, feeling the good logic of the grid, feeling my head begin to track once more . . . the attendant relief.
System—I have Chip making all proper left turns, not that there are many to be made.
Jump cut. As we get south of the park I am at about 80 percent normal function.
Jump cut. Incongruously, an old pop song playing the car, or perhaps only internally, I mumble along unsure about the lyrics:
Yellow cab gypsy cab dollar cab holla back
For foreigners it ain’t fair, act like they forgot to add
Eight million stories out there, and they’re naked,
Cities is a pity, half of y’all won’t make it . . .
Chip deposits me at the library per my instructions, 3:50 a.m. . . . Manically, I vault out the vehicle, in the grips of the euphoria that can follow a true Freeze . . . wildly saluting the white boy, me grinning wide, so goddamn happy to be back, do my traditional System-mandated caress of the northernmost lion’s ass, jauntily mount the steps as my head gets to the chorus: “Concrete jungle, where dreams are made, oh . . .”
* * *
Forty-five seconds later that’s me stumbling south down 6th Avenue, the Freeze rushing back in, wide sheets of rain wafting off the boulevard, throttling my hands with that good PurellTM, even this cold comfort, my long jacket saturated, throat tight, sand on my tongue, heart choked with dread.
I’d had my bad flipper on the door to the library when I saw my home for what it was: an obscenely outsize tomb, a gargantuan crypt worthy of the pyramids, vessel for the long-dead and dying.
With nauseating clarity, I envisioned myself, already so like a corpse, laid out on my bedroll in the Rose Reading Room, black garbage bags full of paper, pages torn from my beloved books, prepped for incineration.
And lo, I beheld the devils, the wraiths, the phantoms, men, women, and children, perched in the great chandeliers, salivating, primed to pounce and strip me of my papery flesh.
It was this last vision that stopped me cold, and in doing so saved my sorry, careless ass . . . because through the glass of the double doors, I dig two pinpoints of red light, blinking in tandem.
Didn’t clock the shots, but as I dropped sideways, bullets whizzed and popped behind me, ricocheting off the marble archway . . . me falling painfully on my shoulder, thinking, Fool, get up and go go go.
Interloper in my home. Intent on gunning me down. A cheap, shitty ambush. Highly fucking uncool, y’all.
I’m deeply indignant, and then I’m cheek-beating like a little bitch, as my synapses unspool afresh.
Moving south on foot, and from there it’s a slow steady fade to black.
_________________
. . . AND NOW IN CHINATOWN, 5:54 A.M.
Two hours? Maybe two lost hours, leading me here now, to Chinatown, with its distinct brand of rot.
Mount the stairs onto Hester, back in the moment, poking at my implant.
So. Some unconscious part of me reckoned I’d deliver word of Sergeant Ferguson’s dispatch in the flesh, to the man who the late sergeant did in. As if any aspect of Dos Mac were still present here in this hole.
Well, why not? I’m this far south as it is.
A passing trip of beat-looking comfort girls in school uniforms, giving me the stink eye, huddled together under a broken umbrella.
Hellllll no. I learned a year back that to fuck with the Koreans is to court mad pain, especially the females. Trust me on this.
Strictly left turns before eleven a.m. Crab it on over to number 154 . . . the metal door is intact, I give it an elbow and unsurprisingly it pops open simple as that. I look at the old-tech CCTV pointed at my dome. Unsubstantiated sense that I’m being observed, causing me to glance around like an amateur. Seem to be fucked up a lot of late. The whine of a massive drill starts up somewhere to the east.
Elbow my way inside, working from memory here, running my arm along the wall (left) in search of the mains. I’m betting on power cause the Chinese have their own grid down here, best in the city, beating out the Coalition’s patchy setup, if you ask me . . . What they have down here runs off that much-contested behemoth they plopped down near the Manhattan Bridge at Pike Slip. Main thrust of protestation was and is the juice would be Chinese alone, no share-sies. In the end indigenous New York couldn’t say shit about the issue, so up it went.
And here. I throw the switch, pop, banks of overhead lights come to life, sure enough.
Turn and scope it. Not that I expected anything more, but my gut dips a touch when actually faced with my man Dos’s former digs, or rather the absence. Between Cyna-corp cleanup crews, the Chinese military itself, and the expected looters, the bones have been picked Cascade clean. In essence I’m looking at what could be any other disused warehouse.
All that remains is a pair of antique computer monitors in a couple states of busted, shoved into a corner. Even the heavy furniture I recall is history.
Think: black mold. Stachybotrys chartarum. Might at first just feel a little run down. Then your peepers get itchy. Then, as your lungs fill up with blood and fluid . . . from there—well, you get the general flavor.
Also reckon: Damn, Dos, I could really talk to you, son.
“Ferguson’s on ice, Dos,” I say out loud, into nothing. “Went out hurting too.”
There’s the hum of the fluorescent overheads. Feeling foolish I spoke aloud. Na. Fuck this mopey noise. The Reaper preys on the slow, the fearful. Picks ’em off leisurely.
Kill the electrics, stepping back out into the street, sideways, left, left, left. Step straight into six space-ninjas, their fossil Humvee purring at the curb. No way to ID them, as they’re fully geared up. I groan.
“Come on, y’all. I got nothing for you. Let’s just forgo this, save everybody some drama.”
The largest of the group is up on me in a heartbeat. “Hey, faggot. Forgot your ass-plug at your boyfriend’s place? Thinking about the way it was, bring some flowers by, reminisce?” Voice-scrambler so it comes out sounding vocoded, but by the man’s size and shape I can pretty safely ID him, the man I know as Scratch. Their organization seems more and more chaotic but as far as I can ascertain this dude is one of the shot-callers in the Cyna-corp hierarchy.
“Na,” I say, “somebody done told you wrong, Scratch.”
“How you figure that?” asks the helmet.
“Heard your mom was back in business down here servicing Chinamen, figured I’d get my dick sucked, relax . . . you know how I do, scout.”
Somebody hits me, hard, across the kneecap. One of those sharp-looking extendable truncheons. These cats still have the choice gear, for real.
The bad knee, no question these motherfuckers know my architecture. My leg gives and I hit the cold pavement.
“Know what I think?” says dude through that Cylon bug head.
Don’t say shit, but homie kicks me in the teeth anyway with those weighted boots. Feel a couple loose ones in front give, and I know he didn’t put much into that kick either.
“I think you’re that nigger returning to the scene of the crime. Huh? Your boy is pushing up faggot roses, and that’s 100 percent on you, you copy?”
“Hard copy,” I manage through my teeth.
Dude two takes his whip to my crotch, which I was half-expecting and manage to deflect slightly, but even so, the thin oxygen is sucked out of my lungs, and I retch.
Man saying to his comrade, “Hey, Ace, I got a feeling. Mind you, it’s just one of those feelings.”
“Like a hunch, something like that,” says Ace, straight man, his junk all cyborged out too.
“Yeah. Hey, what gives with Jimmy Ferguson? Sarge doesn’t wanna answer his ’com, and that ain’t like him.”
“No, that’s the kinda deal makes you concerned,” says Ace.
“Fucking A. Then finding this sack of shit here. Gets you thinking. Right?”
“Sure, sure. Makes you wonder,” echoes Ace, followed by some R2-D2 bleeps.
Main man returns his attention to me. I’m trying to determine if my jaw is broken.
“But hell, I don’t wanna go talking aspersions.”
I can’t help it. “Casting.”
“The fuck you say?”
“Casting aspersions, you fucking caveman. Can’t talk an aspersion, ya heard?”
The dude is quiet for a moment. Digital clicks and pops from within his helmet. Then he kicks me again, harder this time.
I twist my head so he catches my cheekbone, which for positive breaks like a twig. The sound is shockingly loud, at least to me.
“One of these days you’re gonna have to teach me to read, Professor Faggot. Feel like it’s really held me back, not knowing how to read.”
“Yeah, I imagine that’s a handicap in your racket . . .” I slur. I’m courting further damage, but these gents are done.
“Have a nice fucking day, Decimal.”
The guys clamber in and the Hummer drifts off. A small crowd of Chinese drones had gathered and now wanders off, chattering and chittering.
Blood and sand in my mouth, I don’t even bother to get up. Flat on my back watching the sun wrestle with the atmosphere, attempting in vain to make itself known, as another beautiful morning graces the island of Manhattan.
The rain picks up, slightly. I’m alone here.
Me thinking: Bleach. A box of that DPT vaccine. How hard would that be to get my hands on? Me thinking: Fuck it. I’m gonna help those people. Save a beautiful little girl.
Leave, at least, one small sliver of light to mark my haunted fall through the black bloody fucking hole that is this life.
_________________
Local hero at thirteen, that was me. Yeah, I wasn’t always trash, y’all . . . For a shimmering, transient moment the city raised a collective glass to my tiny black ass.
Some confusing, nuanced shit for a ghetto star child, however well read, however street-hardened. I wasn’t given space to wrestle down the complexities of what had actually put me in that position, and I certainly couldn’t have been prepared for the postscript.
At the Main Branch, in the Rose Reading Room, it’s all there in the microfiche. Crank through the headlines. The dailies ran with all the minutia of the story for at least two months solid:
New York Daily News, June 12, 19__
BRONX BABY-NABBER GRABBED
South Bronx: Yesterday, the NYPD took one Leroy Dubois, a Bronx native, into custody, and formally charged the 46-year-old public housing superintendent with three counts of first degree murder, 17 counts of aggravated sexual assault, and a host of additional charges. Mr. Dubois is being held at an undisclosed maximum-security facility pending trial. Bail has been denied.
Leroy Dubois is thought to be the individual behind the heinous crimes attributed to the locally coined moniker “The Boogie Oogie Man,” and is believed to have been responsible for the disappearances, rapes, and epidemic of murders of many 11-16-year-old boys since the grisly killing of 13-year-old Deshawn Wilkins in May of 19__.
In a news conference yesterday, NYPD Captain Nick Deluccia said, “This is a monster whose many evil crimes will very likely keep coming to the surface as time goes on. There’s no telling how much terror he brought to the neighborhood in which he operated, and it seems as if the more we learn, the bigger this story is. This guy has probably been active for 10 or 15 years, and it’s thanks to some great police work and, crucially, the cooperation of the public, that we’ve got this killer off the streets.”
