Leprosy.

– You're getting greedy and sloppy. Must be all the time you're spending uptown. Shit, everyone knows you used that kid to run your errands. And everyone sure as shit knows that little neck snap is your specialty. Terry finds out you did a kid, did him sloppy like that on our turf? He won't care anymore how long you guys known each other.

I don't bother denying it. Besides, he's right, I did kill Leprosy and I should have cleaned it up. Doesn't matter if he's an idiot about everything else.

– Problem is, Terry's got that mercy streak. Someone's got to go, he likes to just put a few in the back of the head. Doesn't believe in sending a message. So me, I got to get my licks in now.

He punches my face a few more times. Stops.

– Oops. Getting late.

He rises from his squat.

– Time to make the coffee for the next shift.

He starts to close the closet door.

– Don't worry, I'll be back on in a couple hours. Maybe I'll bring a little blood. Keep your strength up. After all, Terry may not be back for days.

He closes the door, locks the chain. My face is swollen and broken. I don't have to worry about it for long. Soon enough real pain comes to call.

And Tom's right about the crying, but the tears have nothing to do with anything he did to me.

It's hard to say what the Vyrus is doing to me. Because not only do I have no idea what it's doing, but neither does anyone else. Terry spelled it out for me a long time ago. What it boils down to is that investigating and isolating a virus, even a simple one, takes a shitload of resources. Not even the Coalition has the kind of resources necessary. If the Vyrus were ever made public there would be no end of research fellows out there trying to make their name breaking open one of the strangest freaks of nature to come gibbering out of the asylum. Also no doubt that all the infected would be herded into sterile-environment camps so as to protect the general population. I was around when AIDS first dropped. I haven't forgotten how quickly human compassion flies out the window. Not that I'm looking for compassion, just that I know better than to assume it exists.

In the absence of any real knowledge about what the thing is doing inside of us, we're forced to go by what we see and feel. I know the Vyrus wants blood because I feel its thirst. I know it makes me stronger because I feel it in my muscles. I know it heals me and slows my aging because I can look in a mirror. I know it has fashioned me into a predator because I hunt and I kill. But I don't know what it is doing to me now. Terry thinks the cramps are like a cattle prod, little jabs to get you off your ass and out there feeding. He also thinks they might be the last gasp as the Vyrus scrapes the bottom of the barrel and consumes the last un-infected blood in your body. The long aching pain that follows is maybe the Vyrus beginning to feed on itself. That's what Terry says anyway. Doesn't much matter to me, all I care about is that it won't hurt quite as much as the cramps when it comes. But it hasn't come yet.

– Joe.

Light.

– Joe.

In my face.

– Joe.

I can only tell because it brightens the darkness behind my clenched eyelids.

– Damn it, Joe.

I don't steel myself for Tom's next thrashing. The cramps are on me hard, and having my face busted some more is the last thing on my mind. My mind barely exists now except as a place for the signals from the nerves in my gut to land and wreak havoc.

– Joe, get the fuck up.

He grabs me under my arms and yanks me to my feet. It makes it hurt worse.

– Auuuggh!

– Shut up.

He shoves me and I land in a chair. I pull my knees up and roll back onto the floor.

– Stop being such a wimp.

He grabs my hands and pulls them away from where they are clutching my stomach.

– Auuugh!

He grabs the cuff chain and yanks my arms out straight.

– Such a wimp. You know the pain of childbirth is worse than the cramps?

I open one eye a tiny bit. Lydia.

– And that's not just feminist propaganda. I know infected women who gave birth, they told me.

She sticks a key in one of the cuff locks and it snaps open. She looks at my face.

– I see Tom came by.

– Ung-hungh.

– Give me your ankle.

I roll on my back and lift my feet off the floor. The cramps lurch.

– Augh.

– Shut. Up.

I close my eyes and nod as she unlocks the shackles then pulls me up and puts me back on the chair.

– Can you walk?

– Ungh.

– Fucking wimp.

She grabs my shoulders and pulls me to my feet again.

– Can you walk?

I don't answer, just put one foot in front of the other. And fall down. She kneels next to me.

– Joe, this is it. This is the only shot you get. Tom's crashed and Hurley's hunting and the sun will be up soon. Get up.

She reaches inside my jacket, takes out the picture and sticks it in my face.

– Get up and go get the girl, Joe.

She's pulling on me again. I get up.

– Come on.

She holds my arm and walks me across the room.

– I'll rig it here, make it look like you smashed the door and blindsided me and got the keys.

We're at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the sidewalk trap. They're steep.

– It won't hold, but Tom can't make a serious move on me. He knows I can take him.

– Hurlehungh?

– Hurley won't do anything without Terry. Come on.

I crawl up the steps and she pushes the steel door open.

– Bloohnd?

– No, I don't have any here. Hit your stash, but don't stay at your place, they'll be looking there. Go on. Go.

She shoves me up onto the street, then reaches up through the trap and grabs my pants leg. I look down. Her face and one arm are stuck up through the trap, the picture of Amanda Horde in her hand.

– Take it. I wrote a number on the back. Use it if you have to.

I groan as I bend to take the picture from her.

– Help that girl, Joe. I find out different, or find out you were lying to me, and I'll come after you with my people. We'll firebomb your house and then we'll dog you through the streets.

– HoKugh.

– So fucking run.

I do, lurching and stumbling down the sidewalk, the loose cuffs still dangling from my wrist, the girl's picture in my hand, and no place to hide.

I make it ten yards before the heaves grab me. I bend over the hood of a parked car and choke up bile until I'm empty and gagging on air. When it stops I look around, trying to find a dark corner to creep into. But nothing will be dark for long. Home, Lydia said. Go home and hit my stash. She doesn't know there's no stash to hit. I pitch myself off the car and reel down the street. At the end of the block I lean against a street sign: 3rd and C.

Evie lives on 3rd. Just a block and a half away on 3rd between A and B. Evie will look after me, she'll take care of me.

And she has blood. Over five quarts of it.

I shake it off and take the right onto C, away from Evie and the blood that's killing her.

Christian and the Dusters would take me in, but there's no way I can make it to Pike before the sun is up. I need a hole. I need a deep hole in the ground where I can ride out the last waves of the cramps. I look up at the sky; it's already bright enough to burn my eyes and make them tear.

I need a hole.

The blue sawhorse barricades are still in front of the school on 9th, but the cop car is gone. Five-thirty A.M. traffic is on the streets, but I can't worry about that; I'm less than an hour from getting burned down. I edge between two of the sawhorses and walk hunched over to the door. There's a new chain and padlock. I'm far too weak to break it or to force the thick double doors. I won't be scaling the side of the wall, either. Maybe if I didn't have the cramps I could shimmy up a drainpipe. If I try it as I am I'll probably get hit with a cramp halfway up and fall a couple stories onto my head. That might be just enough to solve all my problems. Instead I start checking the ground floor windows. The steel screens on almost all of them have suffered some form of abuse over the years. It doesn't take long to find one where the lower right bracket has been wrenched from the brickwork.