I cough.
Lady, if you’re offering me a chance to avoid being tortured twice, just say so. Tell me what you want to know and I’ll spill it. Just maybe one of these guys could get me some rolling papers so I can put my cigarettes back together and have a smoke while I’m talking.
She looks at one of the boys. He comes over and puts a box of Marlboro Lights and a yellow Bic on the table.
I light up.
She takes my empty cup off its saucer.
You may call me Mrs. Vandewater. I prefer it to lady.
I blow smoke.
She slides the saucer in front of me.
I’m afraid I don’t have a proper ashtray.
More smoke.
And now that you have your cigarette, I would like to know what you saw while you were below. How many soldiers, what arms, defenses along the border, these are the details I am most interested in.
I heave out another lungful of smoke and knock ash onto the very-expensive-looking Persian rug that her tea table rests on.
Fuck off. Mrs. Vandewater.
I expect to be given a few good raps on the back of the skull and hauled away to a basement or some other place where the floors aren’t as nice and the bloodstains won’t matter so much. But all that happens is the Vandewater lady gives a little sniff, lets her glasses drop to the end of their neck chain, gets up and walks out, two of her boys trailing her. The others don’t even slap me around. They just stand there and keep me covered, both of them staying on the same side of the room so there’s no chance they might shoot each other if they have to open fire.
I make the most of it, smoking the rest of the Marlboros and grinding the butts into the rug. It passes the time.
An hour goes by. I run out of cigarettes. I stand up and the boys don’t shoot me. I stretch. Still no bullets. I take a step in their direction. They both take their fingers from the safe position alongside the trigger guard and wrap them around their triggers. I take a step back. They unwrap. So I guess this is my side of the room. I take a look.
I had the bag over my head when they brought me in, but I’m pretty sure we stayed on that same block they were driving around. There or very nearby. They drove us down a ramp into an underground garage. The elevator went up express, opening right into the apartment. The way Vandewater talked about the view, figure we’re anywhere from the sixth to the tenth floor. I can’t hear anything from the other rooms of the apartment or the apartment above. Probably prewar, brick walls. The wainscoting and the molding around the ceiling have never been painted over white like in most old Manhattan buildings. Yeah, this is one of those places on Morningside Drive, one of those castles right at the top of the park.
I take a look at the walls: a couple nice prints, some of van Gogh’s sunflowers, a Remington. Nice stuff, but not my style. There are a few plaques, dark wood with brass, the Vandewater name engraved prominently. Awards. Acknowledgments for efforts. Thanks for donations. That kind of thing. Some sheepskins, too. A yellowed diploma from Columbia when it was still King’s College. Several more, also from Columbia. Men and women, all Vandewaters. Most very old, some that are new.
I look at the new ones. All the degrees taken in the sciences. Biology mostly. I think about that. I think about that school right around the block. I think about the kind of people who go there. And I file those thoughts away. I get lucky, I can maybe follow up on them someday. Think I have an idea who one of those thoughts might lead me to.
I look some more.
There are some photos. Silver-framed, sitting on a table at the end of the couch, a shaded lamp illuminating them.
I look. Blink Look again. I pick one up.
Vandewater. Predo. Terry Bird.
The door opens. Vandewater comes in. Her boys come after, a sagging, head-bagged body between them.
She takes the photo from my hand.
I have no idea why I keep this.
She lifts her glasses to her eyes and peers at the photo.
To remind me of happier times, I suppose. Although I hate to think of myself as being nostalgic. Nostalgia rivets you in the past. It keeps you from looking forward. It is good, I think, to be proud of your history, to honor it, but one should never wallow in it.
She taps a very short nail against the glass covering the picture.
That is what I tried to teach those boys.
She has smudged the glass with her finger. She pulls the cuff of her sleeve down and uses it to wipe the smudge away.
I’m not certain Bird ever quite got it.
She sets the photo back in its place.
While Predo, I fear, has taken it much too far.
Have you ever wondered about the name Coalition?
Not really.
It never occurred to you that it was an odd name for an organization that shows such unanimity?
Like I said, never thought about it.
Yes. You strike me as one who does that frequently. Someone who fails to think about things. Some history then, while they prepare.
Two of the boys are moving furniture from the middle of the room. The guy with the bagged head is slumped in a corner.
The Coalition was once just that: a Coalition of smaller groups. Over the years those groups coalesced; they became a single, unified entity. For the most part.
The furniture out of harm’s way, the boys begin spreading a sheet of plastic over the floor.
This is what I mean when I accuse Terry Bird of nostalgia.
She points at the photo.
He was apt at recruiting. And so there he is, Downtown, trying to repeat the lessons of the past. Assembling a coalition of disparate groups, with the goal of creating a single, unified whole. He will fail. The historical moment is different, time has marched, while he remains in the past. What worked once, will not work again.
They begin taping down the edges of the plastic.
Predo, it is true, looks forward. But to what end? He sacrifices territory, maneuvers behind the scenes, probes for weaknesses in the uninfected world that he might manipulate, looks always to the future. To adapting to the future. But only for himself. Only out of a desire for power. He is craven. And he disguises this, hides it from himself, by cocooning himself with influence. But I have seen him cower. From the back of my hand.
They pick up the guy by the wall and carry him to the middle of the plastic.
Bird, at least, went off on his own, attempted to forge his own kingdom. It will crash down around him, but he has a sense of vision beyond himself. Predo is narrow.
One of the boys has a briefcase. He opens it. Inside there are works: needles, syringes, plastic bags, loops of rubber hose.
Predo is selfish.
She walks over to her window. Daylight glows at the edges of the drapes. It hurts my eyes to look at it.
That is why we are caged up here, surrounded by filth. Robbed of our heritage. Unable to exert our influence as we should. Unable to shape the future.
The boy pulls the bag from the guy’s head. It’s a young guy. Hispanic. Close-cropped hair, a hoop piercing his left eyebrow.
Except by using the tools of the past.
One of the boys on the plastic sheet draws a scalpel from the briefcase.
Vandewater moves to the edge of the plastic, standing over the boys who kneel on either side of the Hispanic kid.
She looks at me, sitting over here on her couch, arms once again wired behind my back.
Have you ever infected anyone, Mr. Pitt?
No.
Then this will be an education for you.
One boy opens his mouth. He sticks out his tongue. The other, the one with the scalpel, places the tip of the blade against his partner’s tongue and cuts. He pushes the scalpel until the blade has disappeared inside the healthy pink flesh, then he draws it downward, slicing it open to the tip. Blood begins to gush. The boy with the butterflied tongue bends forward, he opens the Hispanic kid’s mouth, and covers it with his own. Blood seeps out around the seal created by their lips.
Vandewater looks at me.
There are other ways to do it, of course.
The Hispanic kid starts to jerk.
But this is one of the surest.
His heels kick the floor.
Ultimately, it all depends on the subject.
His palms slap the plastic and his fingers clench and unclench.
You see, not everyone can accept the Vyrus.
The boy lifts his mouth away, blood still leaking from his tongue. He looks at Vandewater. She watches the Hispanic kid for another moment as greenish yellow foam begins to erupt from his mouth and nose. She shakes her head.
The boy with the scalpel places it against the Hispanic kid’s neck and shoves it deep into his carotid, cupping his hand around the entrance wound to keep the blood from spraying the room. The Hispanic kid’s tremors subside. In less than a minute he is still.
The boy with the sliced tongue wipes at it with a cotton pad. The wound has stopped bleeding and a scab is forming. The other boy puts his tools aside and the two of them begin to roll the plastic sheet with the Hispanic kid inside.
Vandewater steps out of their way.
And so we will have to try again.
The door opens. Another head-bagged kid is brought in.
A student body is an invaluable resource.
The new kid is laid out on a fresh sheet of plastic. The bag comes off. This one might be twenty. Middle Eastern. Khakis and a button-down.
Away from home for the first time, they become depressed, alienated. Their behavior may be uncharacteristic. They get involved with drugs. Run away from school. Walk into dangerous parks after midnight. Commit suicide.
The two boys prepare to repeat their procedure, switching roles so that the one who last wielded the scalpel will now be cut.