Hurley nods.

– Well an dem, dey do have dere own problems just now an all. Not dat I don’t say it’s time fer ‘em to stand up and pick a side, but dey do have dere hands full wit dat udder stuff.

I raise my eyebrows.

Terry flicks eyes from Hurley to me to the coin.

– Something out in Brooklyn is causing problems. The Chosen, they’re having internal conflicts. Seems that when you were there, you did serious damage to their power structure. Left a vacuum. And, you know, I don’t know, nature may abhor a vacuum, but chaos loves one. Infighting. Someone, we get very little information from that quarter, but from what I gather, someone over there, one side or the other, has used a nuclear option.

The coin goes to its side, he watches it wind down this time.

– Making golems.

I can’t help myself.

– What the fuck?

Terry shakes his head.

– I said the same thing. I don’t know, all that East European mythology, mixed with all that biblical mythology. Mixed with, you know, us. Anyway, seems the confusion is just a matter of semantics. What they call a golem, we call a zombie is all.

Hurley pulls down the corners of his mouth.

– Nasty creatures. Imagine, usin’ such a ting ‘gainst yer fella types. Be a special punishment waitin’ fer dem when the final horn blows an all dat. Zombies. Detestable is what it is.

Terry spins the coin, stops it, looks at Hurley.

– No telling what pressures they were under. Not for us to judge a course of action. Right and wrong, absolutes, that gets us nowhere. Some liberality of mind, some flexibility of spirit, it all helps to keep us out of outmoded practices. Thinking forward, that’s where we need to be. Condemnation is a losing proposition.

Hurley shrugs.

– Say what ya will, Terry, an ya know I know ya know an all. But still, zombies. Dere’s a limit ta what civilized folks should be will-in’ lay hands to. Dat, I’d have ta say, dat would be my own.

Terry looks at the coin, rubs his thumb over it.

I tilt my head Hurley’s way.

– Got to say I’m with you on this one, Hurl. Making shamblers, that’s a scummy business to be in. Let alone sicking them on anyone. Open the door to brain-eaters, it’s all downhill from there. How you figure that, Terry, someone making zombies?

Terry raises his eyes to me, looks back at the coin between his fingers, nods, gives it a spin.

– It’s all theory, anyway. I think, and this is the theory, I think someone caught a zombie and stuck it in a basement and kept it alive. A process that, I don’t know, I don’t want to think about. And they used it like a deterrent. Like, Don’t fuck with me or I’ll start making more golems and sending them onto your turf. So, again the biblical thing, they did it. Now they got them over there, golems in Brooklyn, started in Gravesend, but, these things, now a couple have wandered over the Manhattan Bridge. Duster turf.

Hurley raises a finger.

– It’ll end poorly fer dem dat done it. Mark me. Bound ta pay against ‘em. An it should if dere’s any justice a’tall.

Terry puts a finger in the spinning path of the coin and it bounces off and falls.

– Anyway, as if we didn’t have enough complications. I don’t know, you know, our visibility factor now, we’re just below the skin of things, one pinprick away from a gigantic pop that blows it wide open and just this chaotic mess with no sense of control, no order, and I am a big fan of things taking their course, but I’m trying to forge, you’ve heard this, trying to make a dialectic here. That’s what we’re about. We’re a counter-argument to the Coalition. We’re antithesis. For this to work, for us to achieve a synthesis, there has to be a degree of control in the conflict. Otherwise everything is destroyed. No synthesis, just a fucking mess. So. Here I am, consulting the I Ching, looking for clarity of thought, trying to illuminate my consciousness and see a way out of the fog, what they call the fog of war, and, as if you’ve been summoned to add darkness, you come and knock at the door.

He taps the edge of the coin on the tabletop.

– And what is especially, I don’t know, ironic, about your timing is, I’m, in my search for clarity, in this time of multiple crises for all Vyrally infected, I’m asking the book a question about how to deal with this new threat, like I said, yeah, and, the threat is, I’m asking the book, I’m asking it, this leads back to something you mentioned, about Lydia and her unwillingness to think before she speaks, part of what I’m asking the book is, How the fuck did Lydia get the idea that I know the location of the blood farm?

He stops tapping the coin.

– And you walk through the door. As if.

He taps once.

– As if, man, as if there was any doubt about it in the first place, man.

He drops the coin.

– As if.

He takes off his glasses, rubs the lenses with a tail of his faded madras button-down.

– Hurley, will you get Lydia in here, please?

Hurley tsks again, walks to a closet door at the far end of the basement apartment, opens it, reaches in, and drags Lydia out. Wrapped in twenty yards of coaxial cable, a racquet ball stuffed in her mouth, dried blood from her ears and nose.

Terry rises and points at her.

– We’re all responsible for our own actions, Joe, I do believe that, but I have to say, I don’t know, but I have to say, in my opinion, and this is regressive, in my own opinion, this is your fault.

He sits.

– Though Lydia may disagree with me on that interpretation.

I can only assume that Lydia won’t be saving my life this go-around.

Shame.

Especially seeing as I’d been kind of banking on setting her and Terry against each other and using the fireworks as cover to get what I wanted. Old dog needs new tricks. I’d put an ad in the paper, but I don’t have time.

Time.

Shit.

Time.

– Remember that time, Joe, when I asked you to, this is many years in the wayback machine I’m talking about, I asked you to take care of Selby Lovelorn? Do you remember Selby?

I shrug.

– His name was Lovelorn, Terry, how’s a man forget something like that?

– Sure, yeah, yeah, right. So, I asked you to deal with him because, and memory is subjective, but I remember it was because he’d been warned a few times to stop mooning around that Goth club on Houston, stop hanging out there with the blood-letting crowd. He was getting too cocky about it is what I remember. Dropping too many hints to those kids that he was the real thing. Der Vampir, and all that crap. Do you remember?

– Yeah, I got it.

– And you, I don’t know, took it lightly because, I don’t know, because you did. Things were, this was right before you left the Society is what I remember, and you and me, we were having, communication was not at its clearest for us. Lots of information flying over each other’s heads. Missed cues about the disrepair of the relationship. So what I’d intended was, I’d hoped what was clear was that Selby was a terminal. And you, Joe, you gave me, you were sullen at the time. It was, I felt like I had a teenager, I mean a real teenager on my hands. You still looked like a kid, but you were old enough to, age does not always bring wisdom, but you were old enough to have grown up a little. At least. And I got all that, yeah, no, yeah, no stuff from you all the time. So you go out to visit Selby. To fulfill your roll within the Society, use your natural skill at the best of your ability for the betterment of all. And what did you do? Do you remember this part?

I remember. But I keep it to myself.

Terry illuminates everyone else.

– You, he, Joe there, what he did was, he went and talked to Selby Lovelorn. He told him he was on, what you told me was, you said to him he was on thin ice and he needed to lay low.