– Mood music.

He withdraws a cleaning rod from the barrel, dragging out a scrap of cotton.

– There are times when aggression is sadly in order. This is a song that has always helped me to psychologically prepare for the onset of violence.

I put the jacket down.

– Makes you feel like killing.

He shoulders the gun.

– Nothing in this world, Joe, nothing at all.

He dry fires, listening to the snap of the pin.

– Nothing makes me feel like killing.

– Not even me?

He fits a banana clip to the receiver, slaps it home.

– You’ve tempted my weakness on more than one occasion, but I’m, I don’t know, I’m not a man who contemplates killing, even in anger, who contemplates it with pleasure.

I walk to the window, lean against the plywood nailed over it.

– Who said anything about contemplation. I’m talking about doing it.

He lays the gun across his lap.

– What can I tell you, man, it’s just not my thing.

I nod.

– Still, you got moves, Ter. May not use them much anymore, but you got ‘em.

He takes a black watch cap from the desktop, puts it on, tucks his ponytail up inside.

– Some skills, you just acquire them. Doesn’t mean you revel in them or anything. The times taught me what I had to do.

– Funny, I got the idea old lady Vandewater taught you what to do back when you trained to be an enforcer.

He rests the butt of the gun on the floor, barrel against his knee.

– History makes us, forges us, we hone the edge. I was shaped to be a weapon for the Coalition, but I chose to cut the other way. You take what is given you, and you use it. Chubby’s daughter and her baby.

– Yeah, how’d you get along with her?

He rubs his forehead.

– I’ll admit she, you know, taxed the limits of my sense of humor.

– Relentless with that shit.

– Totally relentless.

– But you talked it right back at her, didn’t you? He smiles.

– Dear lady, urgency is on the wind. We must act.

– Nice.

– It didn’t help. She, I don’t know, got it in her head that she’d be better off somewhere else. I think running is just in her, you know, her personal script. Part of her drama. A shame. Infected and uninfected. That baby. There is real potential in that kind of narrative. I’m sure she’ll see it.

– Or maybe she’s already sensed you’re a two-faced asshole.

He pings a fingernail off the barrel of his gun, but doesn’t say anything.

I find my tobacco.

– Me, I’m not worried about you selling us out, Terry. I figure you’ve done that at least a half-dozen times over the years. Made some backdoor deal with Predo. That’s the way of the world. Like presidents and prime ministers, right? In the end, they all went to the same schools, speak the same lingo. Us peons, we just don’t understand how it’s done. So they do it for our own good. Screwing us, I mean. You and Predo, studying together with Vandewater, once I had that figured, I knew where you stood. Mean, I knew from way back you’re full of shit, but it was only the last couple years I knew you’re just another player.

He pokes his index finger in the barrel, pulls it out with a little pop.

– If there’s a point here, Joe, I have a ton of details to take care of. You know.

I got a cigarette rolled. Lighting it with a punk of incense makes the first drag taste foul, but it improves after that.

– Just that things seem to be closing out is all. And, like you said a while back, I’m a curious type. Things left unanswered, they make me itchy. Speaking of which.

I pick a flake of tobacco from my tongue.

– I was thinking how the Horde kid’s crazy dad isolated the zombie bacteria.

He purses his lips, makes the gun barrel pop again.

I smoke.

– That whole deal where he made those nutty dentures that injected the goop into someone and infected them. You know, to start a zombie plague. Bonkers, that guy. No wonder his daughter is short a few cards.

Pop goes the barrel.

I raise a finger, one of the few.

– Come to think of it, after I got my hands on those chompers, didn’t I lay them off on you?

I push off from the plywood and stroll toward the door.

– Tell ya, those teeth, in the wrong hands, they could start some serious trouble.

I stop at the door and look back at him.

He looks up, no movement in his face.

Dead face.

I smile.

– Hey, Terry, I didn’t know any better, I’d say for sure you were in the mood to kill someone.

Pop.

I wave as I make my way to the stairs at the end of the hall.

– Thanks for the answers on that one, Terry. That itch, been driving me nuts.

Thrashing.

Where’d Lydia get an idea like that?

Me, I’m miles from land, clinging to a scrap of wood, hoping to see a sail on the horizon. Someone at the rail to throw me a rope. Get me on deck, I can kill the crew and take the helm and point the damn thing where I want to go.

Meantime, I hold fast, pick a direction, and kick.

Headway.

Because didn’t you know, the worm can swim?

– What do ya hear, Hurl?

He rolls his pant leg a little higher.

– I hear tis a brutal an a unfair world out dere, Joe. One not fit fer da likes a me an you. Gentlemen as we are.

I’m not bothering with my own pants, not being a delicate soul like Hurley.

– Mean, how’s it stacking up out there? I’m back just a few hours. Lost at sea.

He rises, pants rolled to above his knees, brown socks peeking out of the tops of his thick-sole leather boots.

– Well, an is it any surprise at all you’d be lost in it? Ya hardly spend any time around us a’tall anymore.

Terry comes up from the rear of the line, edging in and around the partisans and Bulls, patting shoulders, lending words of encouragement. Bucking up the troops before a slaughter.

– Joe.

– Terry.

He looks at his watch.

– You said Predo would hit sometime after midnight.

– What he said.

– It’s midnight.

– Guess we better get up there.

The basements of the Lower East Side are a warren of code violations that date back to the days of the Whyos and Tammany Hall. Excavated, hollowed-out, chopped, extended, dug deeper than safe, pushed far beyond property lines. A little time spent poking at a flaking brick wall with a crowbar will usually reward you with passage into someone else’s labyrinth. Poke at a sweaty wall and you’ll either find yourself peeking in at an old drainage or cut in half by a knife of water set loose from a pipe pressurized to lift thousands of gallons six stories up. Best way to avoid that second fate is to put your ear to the wall. Listen for the thrum of water in a pipe. Don’t hear it, you can start swinging.

This wall here, seems like I don’t hear anything but maybe a soft gurgle on the other side. Then again, I don’t feel my best. That uncertainty being what it is, I step aside and gesture to Hurley.

– After you, Hurl.

He pats the head of his sledgehammer.

– Not dat I’m shy, Joe, but the first blow is all yer own.

Terry moves back.

– Your show, Joe.

I look at the wall I picked out for this after breaking us into a basement adjoining the Society safe house and following an eastward read on the compass Terry loaned me.

– My show. And me without a curtain to raise on it.

I use my lame hand as a guide, right arm swinging the crowbar at the wall, stepping into it, like breaking the rack for a game of eight ball.

And come up dry.

I point at the spot.

– Give it a bash.

Hurl spins the sledgehammer, a delicate thing in his hands, winds up, and lets loose. Bricks fly, we all get peppered with chips and dry mortar, and there’s a jagged hole the size of a trash can lid.

Hurley points at the water pipe on the right-hand edge of the hole.

– An dat was a close one weren’t it?