Cemetery Strike Read online

  Chapter Nine

  I moved back in with Crystal, leaving my father’s box of books and the suit Mr. Peters gave me with Armando at the safe house. By then the kid lived with Crystal fulltime, since institutions like government-run foster homes and public schools had closed indefinitely because not enough people showed up for work.

  With the kid there all day and night, I needed me and Crystal to never go back to huffing. But I knew we couldn’t do it successfully unless body huffing stopped working. Unless it didn’t exist. Crystal was especially having a hard time. She hadn’t had an eye-opening tripout the way I had, and I could sense the desire for dead lungs radiating from her all the time.

  I began thinking. I had started it all. I could stop it, too. God and the Devil in one. Heaven in Hell, like the drug itself. I thought about how Armando huffing the Chinese delivery guy didn’t work. At that point, I was pretty sure Sonny’s wife didn’t work, either. Both had something special in them. I just needed to find out what it was. And then I needed to get that something into everyone else on the planet. Easy, right?

  All along there’d been huffers running the streets saying that sometimes huffing didn’t work. That priests had blessed themselves so they couldn’t be used. That elementary teachers were easy to hunt down and kill, but wouldn’t melt stars into your eyes. There was even this terrible nursery rhyme going around the cemeteries: Kids, kids, easy to catch. Kids, kids, a high they won’t fetch. Most people worked, but knowing this gave me hope.

  In between thinking harder than I’d ever thought before and locking myself in the bedroom every time I fiend for a body, I entertained Crystal and Chris. I got them laughing as car alarms blared outside. I got Crystal hugging and loving on her kid. The three of us even played games like a small happy family.

  Sometimes we watched TV while ignoring a huffer banging on the front door, just quietly putting the table and chairs up against it for some reinforcement. Those commercials were running on every channel, the ones about the crematoriums that the government installed. Stock images of green pastures, calm oceans, farmland. Heartfelt shit, all in a woman’s raspy voice with soothing music in the background. “If one of your loved ones is at the end of their journey, bring them to your local depository to receive fresh milk, bread, fruits, and vegetables. Help end this epidemic. Do your part today.” Ha! Trading dead and dying relatives for food rations. All to get huffing to stop. And people did it, too. I’m sure there were even a few who killed Grandma just to get that gallon of milk for the baby.

  During that time, there was something else on TV that actually helped me figure out something, or at least start to think about it. In between those government-run commercials, they ran some longer programs. One was an interview between Alyssa Alliano and a panel of specialized scientists who had been studying how huffing worked. These scientists were commissioned to experiment on dead people of all races and ages to find whether or not there were any differences among them.

  You probably remember this, unless your electricity was off by then. The head lab coat sat there next to Alyssa Alliano explaining that they couldn’t find the chemical compound in dead lungs that got people high. They also couldn’t find any recognizable differences between the age groups, even though there definitely was a major difference, because huffing babies never worked, huffing kids mostly didn’t work, and huffing adults almost always worked.

  “Because adults deserve it,” I thought to myself. And, even though it was just another one of my glum thoughts, with that, I had the first useful idea that I ever had in my life.

  ––––––

  Then there was a setback. One day Crystal insisted on being the one to raid the corner stores for food. I should’ve known not to let her go. That’s how much tension strained her voice as she convinced me she’d be safe out there.

  Half a day later, when she finally got back, I knew right away something was wrong. Me and the kid were on the couch playing thumb war. Crystal came into the room and darted her eyes from me to the kid, a knife in one hand, her pink huffing cross in the other.

  “Mom?” Even the kid sensed it. It was the first time I ever heard him call her that. The first time he ever said Mom and she had two weapons pointed at him.

  I’m not proud of the next thing I said, and I’m definitely not proud of what I did, what we did, me and Crystal. But it was survival. She had us backed up all the way inside the couch cushions.

  “Huffing the goddamn cat wasn’t anything,” Crystal Meth said. “Johnny, I need it now!”

  “I know. I know. But not like this.”

  She was leaning toward the kid. She had been all along. Kids, kids, easy to catch.

  She kept darting her eyes back and forth between me and Chris. I think she just kept looking at me to see if I was going to stop her.

  I didn’t sing that demonic nursery rhyme to her then to warn her that kids didn’t usually work anyway. I don’t think she would’ve believed me. But I did try to reason with her.

  “You’re not fucking killing anyone here,” I said. “I won’t let you.”

  That’s when Crystal started slicing the space between us.

  The boy kept trying to swallow a breath. He just blinked like a strobe light while gulping the air, the youngest kid ever to have a panic attack.

  She stepped closer.

  “We’re your family, Crystal.” I tried to say it as genuine as fuck. And I’m telling you, I’m not bragging about using the kid. But I gotta get it out, what happened. It’s a big part of what all this is about: telling you the whole story. The next time she brought that knife closer, I picked up the kid and held him in front of me, but close, and with my arms wrapped around his chest, guarding his lungs, guarding his heart.

  And that’s when Crystal sliced across his stomach.

  The kid’s breathy silence turned to shrieks, screams, and cries that brought the apocalyptic sounds from outside in. His wails spread like blood over tile. His squeals filled every wall.

  And Crystal kept slicing his stomach, making these torn red smiley faces in his white shirt. I just held the kid tighter, but in front of me. I really didn’t know what else to do. Finally, I thought enough to drop the kid on the couch and roll on top of him.

  Then, “Okay!” I yelled. “Wait! Crystal. Fucking wait!” She couldn’t hear me over the boy screaming. She kept slicing, and I had my foot up now, kicking at her, crushing the boy with my weight. And she just kept slicing my foot, stabbing at it, getting it stuck in and pulling it out again.

  I guess she saw enough blood to make her think she should get even closer and finish one of us. As she stepped in, I kicked her in the chest, and, as small as she was, a hundred pounds with her baggy jeans on, she got right up and sliced at my legs as I kicked and kicked with the boy’s blood dripping all over me and his howls in my ears.

  I yelled, “Fucking wait! I’ll get you a body. I got one. I’ve been saving it. Fucking wait!”

  She stopped, like the body was right in front of her. “Show me,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “Wait. Just fucking wait. Chris is bleeding. Your son is bleeding.”

  “Show me!”

  I said, “Let me see how hurt he is.”

  “Fucking now!” and she pointed the knife and her pink cross at us.

  “I have someone,” I said, calm, like some kind of hostage negotiator. “He’s alive, and he’s probably alone. He’ll answer the door for me. I know he will.”

  “I’m not goddamn fighting Armando. He’ll kill us both.”

  “No. Not Armando. It’s some bitch. He’s fucking skinnier than you. Dresses better, too.”

  “We have to leave now,” Crystal said, lifting the knife, pointing it at me, pointing it at the kid.

  It didn’t make sense leaving the kid bleeding like that. If we weren’t gonna help him––give him a towel or tell him to put some pressure on his stomach––then we may as well have just waited and huffed him after all the blood poured out. Ma
ybe that’s what Crystal wanted, if she was thinking that clearly, because she stabbed the knife at me and demanded that we leave the apartment immediately.

  “I’ll goddamn slice him again if you don’t walk right out that door,” she said.

  So I didn’t even look back to see the kid’s clothes and skin torn up and his life draining out of him.

  I really wish I could’ve shattered Crystal’s face to save the kid. I should’ve at least tried to pull the knife out of her hand to fuck her throat with it. I know that now, but I still don’t think I would’ve gotten the knife from her. She had that strung out crackhead superpower. And, as soon as she sliced those watermelons into my feet, seeing all my own blood like that drained my strength. It made me woozy and on the verge of passing out. Also, I could barely walk. Each step was a delicate balance to keep the weight off both feet.

  Still, I limped down the flights of stairs, out the building door, and towardt Hole of a Bitch’s apartment with Crystal pointing a knife into my back the whole time.

  In the street, huffers circled us. High and sober, they ran around us, jumping off cars, talking to stop signs. None of them tested us, though. Probably because they saw the manic desire dripping off Crystal’s knife.

  I limped toward killing a good friend and away from nursing a child who was just like the child I once was, only a kinder one in a wickeder world. Shuffling my feet, I only thought about getting there and getting back.

  The Bitch lived in a ground floor apartment with his front door right on the outside. I knocked with my forearm, the only part of my limbs not bleeding. I could see him look out the window through his fancy curtains. His eyes creased at Crystal Meth standing behind me.

  Once I saw his face, I couldn’t go through with it. “Help,” I mouthed.

  The Hole of a Bitch opened the door, but only slightly. He said, “What’s going on?”

  “Huffer. They’re close by. Too close,” I said, with true terror in my eyes, screaming through my eyes.

  He looked out into the street, to where no one was chasing us. Then he looked at Crystal. He said, “Why’s this bitch with you?” He spit the word bitch. “Please don’t tell me you’re still fucking her. Oh my god! You’re bleeding.”

  Silently, Crystal stuck the knife into my back, the way someone would point a gun at someone’s back to inch them forward, slicing the skin that protected my lungs, pushing the tip.

  “Can you let me in?” I said, gritting my teeth, shaking my head no ever so slightly. I widened my eyes to hell, trying to give him clues that Crystal was the huffer chasing me. He wasn’t getting it, though, or I wasn’t doing a good job of hinting.

  Now that we were there, the reality of Crystal killing him attacked me. I didn’t want it to happen. That night I told you about me and the Bitch opening bodies, that wasn’t the only night we did that. And when I watched him get drunk off mimosas the next morning, that wasn’t the only morning we’d done that, either. He was a real friend. But I knew he was the only person in this crazy world who would open the door for me. And now I have to live with the decision I made to sacrifice him for the kid.

  As one last attempt, I said, “I’m hurt real bad. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

  That’s when he opened the door. And, right in the Bitch’s beautiful foyer, without even coaxing him to sit down or letting him offer us coffee, Crystal started swinging. The Bitch immediately punched me in the face, probably because I was closer, or, more likely, because it was my fault Crystal stood there with a knife in her hand.

  With that one punch, the Hole of a Bitch knocked me to the ground. Dazed, I could hear him say, “Johnny! Oh my god! Johnny! My god!” And those were the fitting last words of the Hole of a Bitch, alternating between my name and God’s.

  Getting to my feet, I watched Crystal stab the only real friend I ever had. The only person I didn’t hang around just to chase drugs with or fuck.

  Crystal Meth sliced down his ribs, not even careful to keep his lungs from getting punctured. When he got stuck good, the Bitch let go of her to hold his side, to keep all that precious red goo inside. That’s when Crystal began sticking his stomach over and over.

  As I finally got my weight under my feet, the Bitch fell to the floor. Crystal jumped up and down, cheering for herself, laughing. I could see through her sweater how hard her nipples were.

  Before taking her hit from his lungs, she grabbed me and kissed me, pulled my hair, pushed her pelvis into mine, getting blood wherever she touch. Then she let go, found her huffing cross.

  “Come on,” she said. “Do this one with me. A lung for a lung.” She was already down at his side when she said it.

  I backed up to the door. She stabbed his chest, sucked in, and, hunched over his body, said, “Make your words liquid so I can drink them. That’s how I’ll understand.” Then she absently walked to a wall and started climbing up it like a roach.

  While Crystal Meth chased sparks of darkness, I hobbled back to the kid. Running and hopping on my slashed feet, falling every time I landed on a slit the wrong way, I had to watch out for all the other death addicts that I’d created. Now that I was alone, without a fellow huffer behind me brandishing weapons, and severely wounded, the huffers on the street all eyed me and circle in close to check out how hurt I really was.

  When I saw a small group of them swarming ahead of me, I squeezed down behind two cars and waited there for them to pass. While I crouched down in the street, two huffers came in, looming over me, crowding me. The bigger one said, “Long way from home, huh?”

  “Fuck you,” I said, getting to my feet. And I shoved through them, having something far too important to do than stand there and die.

  I finally made it up the steps of the apartment building. The last time I’d lumbered up that stairwell in that much pain, I had wished for death. This time I wished for life.

  At the apartment, the kid was passed out on the couch, blood gluing him to the cushions. I just looked at him, thinking of what to do. Even if I could safely get him through the streets and to a hospital, right out front was one of the most dangerous places in the city. Teams of vultures hovered at every exit.

  But we couldn’t stay at Crystal’s apartment, either. At some point, she’d make her way back. Whether it was sooner or later, she’d need another body to huff. So I decided to get him the hell out of there, for better or worse.

  Without any good options, I scrambled into the bedroom to get a sheet, the floral bed sheet that already had dirt and blood and dried pieces of Sonny’s wife on it. I wrapped the kid with it, like a flowery Halloween ghost. I picked him up, held him as gently as possible. With him in my arms, I twisted the doorknob and opened the front door, glad to leave the apartment one last time.

  “Mi hermano! Que abrió la puerta para mí.”

  Fucking Armando walked into me, walking us back into the apartment, back toward the already bloody couch. He had a large metal pipe in his hand. From body hunting with him, I knew he had a box cutter in his pocket, too. But with all the running I’d done that day, with all the gashes I’d gotten from Crystal, and with all the boy’s blood spilled out of him, the pipe was enough. At that point, Armando’s fingers alone could’ve ripped the boy from me.

  He looked at the kid in my arms, a six year old miscarriage. Then Armando said, “El dia de los muertos es todos los dias.”

  “Armando, I have to get to a doctor.”

  “Hay médicos.”

  “Whatever the fuck. Me and the kid have to leave here. You can wait here. For Crystal. Take her. Do whatever you want with her.”

  The kid moaned then, and from the way Armando flinched, it surprised him that the kid had some life left in him. Like I was lying about the doctors and just going to huff him myself.

  I saw the smile in Armando’s face. I said, “Armando, kids don’t get you high. No functionado. This boy: no functionado.”

  But Armando was already going into his pocket with his free hand. Slowly, he took o
ut the pocketknife, flipped it open. He kissed the blade, just as he’d kissed the photo of his Latinas. He stepped closer, paused, savoring the time, collecting all his thoughts and feelings so he could excite himself with them later.

  So I resorted to singing, “Kids, kids, easy to catch. Kids, kids, a high they don’t fetch.” It was all I had left, singing a clownish rhyme to a grown man who didn’t even speak English.

  Armando took his next step toward us, stopped, and stabbed the knife deep into the kitchen table. It didn’t make me feel any safer, him not having a blade. Without the knife, he wasn’t less dangerous. It just meant it would take him longer. I’d seen him literally tear skin and bones with his hands, laughing the whole time, loving it as much as the high, maybe more, at least the same.

  “Ven aquí, jefe.”

  I squeezed the kid closer and blood dripped to my feet.

  Armando stepped in. Again he paused, holding the moment in his lungs for as long as he could. I pressed my eyes closed, not wanting to witness this murder that, ultimately, I’d caused, all along praying to a God I didn’t believe in.

  It was taking so long for him to finish us. I just kept clenching my eyes shut, holding the boy as tight as I could.

  Then I heard Armando yell, but from further away. I opened my eyes. Naked legs the size of arms were wrapped around his hips from behind. There were also arms grabbing his neck. Armando rocked back and forth, twisting to free himself. I could see Crystal Meth, completely naked, dry blood streaked all over her, humping Armando’s back, grinding her bald pussy all over his shirt, red juices dripping to the floor.

  So, with the kid in my arms, I skirted around them, hobbled away. Slamming my torn feet down the stairs, I asked the kid to make a sound for me. It would’ve at least meant he still had enough blood in his heart. He didn’t make a sound, though. He didn’t move at all.