Cemetery Strike

by Christopher Orza

  Once on the street, I realized I had nowhere to take him. Because of me, and because of Crystal, Peters, Mr. City, Armando, Alyssa Alliano, Sonny, the Hole of a Bitch, the Chinese delivery guy, the president, and every huffer and Moe out there, danger existed everywhere. So I brought the kid to the only other place I knew, my only real home during all this, Woods Edge Cemetery. Definitely not the safest place, but at least a place without Armando. A place where I knew one quiet pocket of space existed where no one would think to go.

  I ran-shuffled my feet all the way to the front gate, only realizing it would be locked when I saw the gate closed. The kid hadn’t moved the whole time. He just looked paler and paler, with a slight yellow-green tinge to his skin. I stood outside the gate, shifting the boy in my arms, pumping out whatever little blood he had left.

  Do you know what it’s like to not care about anything? To not have anything to lose? For as long as I can remember, I never cared about people. Not really. Not enough to help when I could. The kid, though. Chris. Playing games with him. Feeding him. Him taking care of me by throwing out the peanut butter. Not even knowing him that long, I cared enough to admit that I loved him. Now, do you know what it’s like to not care about anyone ever and then suddenly love someone? It’s the birth of a soul. It’s a light inside the darkness of your bloody organs. But with the kid draped in my arms, finding importance in another person was just like my father’s box of books. You open something up and right away someone makes you have to close it. You stay long enough to take off your coat, and right then someone tells you it’s time to leave.

  I stood at the gate with the boy in my arms, gnats the size of people circling all around us, looking for the perfect time to land so they could get a little taste. Two huffers came in close. I put the kid down, tucked the sheets under him, and stood there prepared to protect him. The huffers circled a few feet away on both sides of the gate. I swung my slashed palms at the closest ones.

  Then an old man came up, a baseball bat in hand. Sonny. The way he walked, he probably couldn’t have swung that bat if he really needed to. He looked a thousand years old.

  When he saw it, Sonny flinched at the floral bed sheet. His wife’s bed sheet. Probably the one they slept in as husband and wife. And I was there, in front of his cemetery, a reminder of the grief I’d caused him.

  “Another soul you’re gonna suck out?” Sonny said to me.

  I couldn’t do anything but take in the words––the idea that I had invented a way to suck out people’s souls.

  A huffer buzzed in and grabbed at the bed sheet. Sonny halfheartedly swung the bat at him. I don’t know if he was trying to help me and the kid or if he was protecting his wife’s floral sheets, but he helped, nonetheless. The huffer retreated.

  Sonny said, “What are you doing here? I told you never to come back.”

  “It’s the kid. He’s bleeding. I need to help him. I just. I need to put him down somewhere safe.” I looked inside the gate. “Get him some water. Stop the bleeding.”

  A human fly buzzed down from the top of the gate and landed on me. I swatted at him, but he kept flapping, putting his weight on me.

  Sonny swung the bat at him, smashing the huffer’s back. The guy got up and ran away.

  “I didn’t huff your wife,” I said, still from the ground, trying to convince Sonny of my humanity. “I left her alone. I did. And I got high. I dug up my father’s dead body and I huffed him. I’m a piece of shit, Sonny. But I gotta save the kid.”

  “Get him out of the city, fool,” Sonny said.

  “I will. But right now I need to stop the blood from coming out of him. And me, too.” I showed Sonny my hands. I said, “I need to use the trailer.”

  Sonny stared at me, like to see if I had any juice left in my brains. He said, “This is a terrible idea,” and put his key into the gate, unlocking it.

  As the living zombies heard the creaking lock twist, as they heard a sign of life that could be death, they swarmed in around us.

  Sonny said, “I hope people learn something from all this.” And he slapped the ring of keys in my hand. “Get that kid in the trailer, quick.”

  “Thank you.” I picked up the kid. He felt cold, plasticine, stiff.

  I shuffled my feet up the path, huffers falling in on each side. Behind me I heard what sounded like a baseball bat clinking against metal. And I heard Sonny grunting and cursing.

  Chapter Ten

  The keys Sonny handed me jiggled in my fingers, advertising life to the rest of the cemetery. I could see the trailer far up the path. To me, it felt like home base, even though I didn’t know what I was going to do once I got there.

  As my feet pulled themselves up the path, two rat-faced huffers clawed the boy from my arms, ripping him from me, as if alleviating me of a massive burden.

  “Kids!” I yelled, dropping to the ground. “Kids!” It was all I could get out.

  The two huffers carried him a few feet away, laid him in the brown grass.

  I’d lost everything, an addict with nothing to count on. I wondered why the day was never worth the night, and night never worth the day. Armando could’ve given me something that God wouldn’t even have granted, and I ran from him. Crystal could’ve given it to me, too, but I brought her to the Hole of a Bitch instead.

  Completely empty, I laid down.

  Then I heard the kid moan, and I knew I had to live. It changed that quickly.

  “Chris!” I screamed. My body infused itself with numb energy. Before even standing, I was running to the kid, pulling off huffers. They had the floral bed sheet spread like a picnic blanket, the kid in the middle as the main meal. I had to keep swatting back the huffers while they stabbed at me with their metal stingers.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Just, fucking, wait.” I kept shoving them off, kicking at them, circling around the boy, accidently stepping on him. “If you huff this kid,” I said, “I’ll kill you while you’re high.”

  That got them to stop for a second, to think.

  Behind the huffers I could see Sonny limping his way up the path, still holding his bat.

  I said, “Just. Please. Listen to what I have to say.”

  They stared, waiting, probably figuring out how to get rid of me in the quickest way.

  I said, “Huffing kids doesn’t get you high.”

  Right away Huffer One snarled. He said, “That’s bullshit. I huffed some fat teenager with his mouth still full of chocolate bars and got high.”

  “That’s a teenager,” I said, trying to talk calm so they believed me. “This is a kid. Really. Listen. It doesn’t work. It’s like purity, or something. It’s like some kind of light they have in their souls. Or some kind of protective chemical they get every time they smile.”

  I was trying my best to talk slow, because Sonny was making his way to help. I could see it in the way he moved toward us.

  “Please don’t huff him,” I begged. “He won’t get you anything. I promise. There’ll just be one less good person in the world. That’s it. Just less. Not more.”

  “Sorry bro,” Huffer Two said, “I’m not buying it. And really, I don’t know why I’m standing here sober talking to you instead of getting in on one of those crispy lungs.”

  I had to keep talking until Sonny could at least bash in one skull. Sonny was walking so slow, though, dragging the bat like a body, sometimes using it as a cane.

  I said, “You’ll be killing him for nothing. Kill the right person at least. Someone that’s worth it.”

  “Bro, the kid’s already dead,” Huffer Two said.

  “No he’s not,” I said. “I heard him talking.”

  “You’re hallucinating, dude,” Huffer One said, and as he said it, Sonny lifted the bat like a sledgehammer and let it fall. The bat touched Huffer One on the shoulder, tapping him like a friendly greeting.

  Huffer One turned, pulled the bat from Sonny, and smashed him in the face with it.

  Huffer One and Huffer Two then began bashing Sonny
bloody. I didn’t even scream. I didn’t stand there, either. As they dined on the only older man I ever respected, I used all my energy to pick up the kid and drag him to the trailer. Sonny struggled and to survive long enough to get me and the kid to safety. At the trailer, I looked back to see Sonny one last time. They had him laid out on his back, on his wife’s floral bed sheet. His face was full of mountains and caves of bone.

  Unlocking the trailer door, I kept having to hoist the kid back into my arms so I didn’t drop him. Finally I turned the key, but before I went in I heard the huffers talking.

  “What the fuck?” Huffer One said. “What the fuck is this?”

  “You pierced him wrong,” Huffer Two complained. “You wasted good lungs.”

  They wasted good lungs. Think about it. Think. There are just people that don’t work. People who are genuinely good people.

  Huffer One said, “And that fuck was talking about kids not working. This guy’s like a hundred.”

  I slammed the trailer door, locked it. I laid the kid on the table, the same table used for the union/board meeting. Right away Huffer One and Huffer Two started pounding a hailstorm on the door.

  I straightened the kid. He looked like he’d been trapped in ice his whole life. His skin––a strange blue, yellow, green, ivory––felt an even stranger mixture of dry, pasty, and cold.

  I wrapped him up in a tarp that I’d gotten from the floor. Then I poured a glass of water for him, brought it to his lips.

  “So thirsty,” the kid whispered, but he just gurgled out the water.

  It was his heart that was thirsty. The kid needed blood. Most of it had bled out.

  The huffers stopped pounding the door by then, but I could still hear them talking outside the trailer, wolves at the front door. I needed to steal a few pints of blood from a hospital, but I couldn’t leave the kid with them outside. They’d find a way in. They’d huff and they’d puff, and then the kid would be stuck in the cemetery forever.

  I looked all around the room for ideas. But it was blood that I needed. I kept looking anyway, searching for even a shard of glass so I could stab myself and let him drink. But he wasn’t a vampire. He needed it in his veins. In his heart. Anyway, I didn’t have that much blood left in me myself. And just thinking of slicing my own skin made me weaker than I already was. Still, I kept looking.

  I started to cry silently, but the kid knew.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  How did the kid care so much, with all the adults around always passing him off so quickly? He had a life without a mother or a father or anything his own. It was a miracle he wasn’t already following me around at night, stabbing dead bodies, cursing like a maniac. How could he care about people so much? How’d he care about me? I should’ve been telling him not to worry, and here he was soothing me.

  As Huffer One and Huffer Two argued outside, I kept looking around the trailer for solutions. On the far wall hung a first aid kit, one of those white plastic boxes with the red cross on it. No doubt Sonny put it there in case one of his boys got hurt.

  I took it down from the wall, laid it next to the kid, opened it up. Inside was a bunch of cotton and gauze and bandages. Fine for stopping the bleeding, but most of his stomach had already turned to a dry black pudding. No, I needed to get more blood into him. I kept looking. Iodine, scissors. I could cut myself with the scissors, cut him, pour it in. Of course, that wouldn’t work. So I kept looking, keeping the scissors on the table. I tore up the whole container. Lubricant, thermometer, duct tape. The kid needed a hospital. He needed blood. I kept looking.

  The huffers pounded on the door again, and every time they shook it, I could see the boy’s closed eyelids twitch. Plastic bags, tweezers, a first aid manual. I threw all the shit onto the floor. I went to the door to kick it back.

  “He won’t get you high anyway!” I yelled. “Fucking geniuses!”

  Huffer One yelled back, “But you would!”

  I went back to the first aid kit, and, right at the bottom of it, right before I thought the kit couldn’t have any more useless shit inside, I found a packaged syringe.

  Seeing the needle made me lose all control of my muscles. It’s so ironic. I’m the biggest addict I know, and I can’t stand needles. But the kid needed blood inside of him. For that, though, I needed some strength back in my fingers. The pussy that I am, I couldn’t even pinch the syringe package strong enough to tear it open.

  So I put the package in my mouth, bit down, pulled. The thing opened up, and now I had it in my hands, fumbling between stiff bones of fingers.

  I held the syringe between the cut up flaps in my palms. I had to be smart. I was rushing it, but I had to. I put the syringe down. Then I took a long piece of gauze and a rubber band and wrapped it around my bicep. I pumped my fist until a few veins popped out. Then I stabbed myself, shrieking the whole time worse than the kid ever did. My entire body cringed. I must’ve hit nerves, because my thumb went numb and has stayed numb ever since. But I filled the syringe with my blood. I did it.

  “Kid,” I said, feeling too dizzy to talk. “I know my blood isn’t the purest thing out there, and I don’t know anything about blood types, but I think I have to do this. Just to give you a chance.”

  The kid wasn’t talking anymore, so I found the vein in his arm, and, for the whole rest of that night, until I was throw-up-nauseous and had a hollow lump in my stomach and throat and didn’t even care about stabbing myself with that syringe, I pumped the kid full of my blood, 12 cc’s at a time.

  It’s so demented. I didn’t want the kid to turn into me, but I put all of myself into him that night in the middle of Woods Edge Cemetery. By morning, his skin finally looked alive and mine was the one that looked pasty white.

  With the sun pouring through a window onto his face, the kid said, “I’m thirsty.”

  I poured him some water. He drank it while still laying down, just lifting his head a little. And he laid there, looking at every part of the trailer his eyes could reach.

  “You need anything else?” I asked.

  The kid, he didn’t just say whatever came to him right away the way most people do. Or, at least, the way I always do. Instead, he changed the words around in his head before they came out. He said, “I’m hungry, but I can’t move, and I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Alright. I won’t leave unless you want me to. Or unless we both can.” But I wasn’t even sure if I could do any traveling. It was really hard to think clear. It was difficult even standing.

  By afternoon, my hollow stomach, empty veins, burning eyes, stinging gashes, and dry brain needed something. The kid did, too. I looked for bugs on the ground, but they were all outside. I filled my stomach with water from the faucet. I even ate some coffee grinds, but all that did was make me heave it back up.

  By late afternoon, we both had to eat something.

  The kid said, “My stomach hurts so bad. I feel weak.” The kid tried to sit up, but he couldn’t.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  The kid moved his eyes around while he thought. He said, “You have to get us food. You can lock me in here. Do any of the bad guys have a key?”

  “All the bad guys are out there.”

  “Okay.” He sounded uncertain. “Okay. Be quick.”

  “I will.”

  I looked out the window, saw no one there, and slipped out into the sun, locking the door behind me. The brightness cancelled out the little bit of adrenaline I had. It burned my eyes. It closed my brain. After a full minute, I could see blurry light, and after that I saw the cemetery with haloes around everything, like the whole place had gone to heaven. I wanted to bend over and put a handful of dirt into my mouth, the hunger hurt so much.

  Walking, I kept thinking I heard my name from behind. It came from the ballerina at first. Then it sounded more like a guy. Like my own voice.

  “John.”

  I just took more steps and laughed.

  “
Aye Moe.”

  I turned fast. I wanted to catch the fucker whispering in my ear. But turning whipped all my remaining blood away from the parts that needed it most, and I fell to the ground.

  “John Wall.”

  I crawled to a headstone, pulled myself up.

  Voices said other things from behind me now, but this time I didn’t make the mistake of turning to find them. I knew they were invisible.

  “John.” It was Dr. Moe. I could hear him chewing the pen in his mouth. “You know,” he said, “there’s much to say about a name. There are peer-reviewed, quantitative studies about how the name a person is given has the ability to shape his entire life.”

  “So?” I said, out loud.

  “John.”

  “John.”

  “For example,” Dr. Moe said, “there are names with strong, confident connotations. There are others that have undercurrents of timidity. There are even names that can steer one to a certain profession, while others lead you toward a certain type of significant other.”

  “So?” I fell again, licked the dirt, crawled on.

  “Take your name, for instance,” Dr. Moe said. “John Wall. What do you think your last name suggests?”

  “Stick that pen in your dick.”

  “And risk another back injury?” Dr. Moe said. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s just a name.”

  “Nothing’s just another anything, John. You should know that by now. Names have importance, like people. Your name, for instance, John Wall, suggests that you might have a tendency to put up barriers. That you have a predisposition to shield yourself, to wall yourself off, if I may, from the world.”

  “I’m outside now,” I said.

  “All the same. You hide your true self from others. It’s pathetic, John. It shows you have something to hide, which accounts for why you will never reach your full potential.”

  I said, “This isn’t the same conversation we had.”

  “No, it isn’t. Wake up, John. This is real life.”

  I opened my eyes. For some reason I was on the ground, my cheek in the dirt. I got to my knees. Other voices came from behind me now, but these weren’t human. They tasted more like demons. Angel-faced demons, if I heard them right.