This Darkness Got To Give

by Dave Housley

  The girl nodded. She sat down next to him, crossed her legs. “So there are some things you should know,” she said. “Especially given that this could be, you know.”

  “I do,” he said. “I mean, I guess I’m ready for a change. You know, ready for this to get better, back to what it used to be…” He flashed on that feeling, standing in the middle of the crowd while the band played “China Cat” or “Women Are Smarter” or “Box of Rain,” that feeling of conducting a symphony, of riding an avalanche, in harmony with ten thousand strangers who had nothing but peace and love and joy in their hearts. In the next instant, he remembered that it was gone now, all of it. What was left was like the body of a zombie, lumbering across the country, wasted and mean, gate-crashing and nitrous-sucking and pushing its way to the front of the line. There was a quote he remembered from somewhere: the past is gone, the future is not yet here. All that is left is the present.” Something like that.

  “If I lose,” he said. “And I’m kind of assuming I lose…”

  “Wait,” the girl said. “there are lots of…

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “If I lose, will I die? Is this over?”

  She sat and thought. He had the impression that she was trying to gauge what answer he was looking for, or at least measuring her response. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing,” he said, “if that was the case. That’s what I’m asking.”

  She stood up and stretched, looked off in the distance for what he assumed must be the kid. This was not how she expected it to end, he knew. “Getting closer?” she said.

  Cain gauged the pull, like an ache in his back. His fingers were buzzing and it had begun to work up to his arms. “I really need to know the answer to that question,” he said. His right arm flexed and slowly raised. He tried to fight it but the more he tried to pull it back down, the steadier it moved right up.

  “The dose you took,” she said. “The extra one. It…well, it would have worked better before Peter left, but—wow, I still can’t believe he left.” She trailed off, looked in the direction the kid had wandered.

  “So this dose then?” Cain said.

  “Basically, we just ramped up the amount of receptors in your body and hopefully… Fuck, I mean, I’m not, like, a real scientist.” She said the last few words with scare quotes and Cain realized exactly what his chances, what their chances were. Maybe it would be nice to just be over with it, once and for all.

  “So that’s a yes, then,” he said. He tried to speak normally but his breath was labored, it took all he had just to form the words. Pushing them out was like riding a bicycle into a headwind.

  “Yeah.” She lit a cigarette and watched the Deadheads stream by on either side of them. “That’s a definite yes,” she said.

  Cain felt himself take a step forward, and then another. His arms raised. He tried to speak, to warn her, but he couldn’t get the words out. It was like what he remembered of dreams, the bad ones, the loss of control ones he would have whenever he would come down off a bender. The girl exhaled and turned away from him, she took a step and his own steps quickened. She threw out the cigarette and his arms were around her, picking her up, throwing. He watched as she sailed through the air and landed a few feet away, her legs crossed and coming down at a bad angle, a cracking sound, and a scream.

  Chapter 58

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Jenkins let the old federal feel like he was in control, like he was buying everything the guy was telling him, as they moved through the parking lot over to where the man’s electronics told them the kid would be. Very little about it added up. If this was a legit operation—two men down, even if one of them was a vampire, even if he was signed out of restriction and hadn’t worked for years—the place would still be swarming with CIA. They might call in the National Guard, the way things were going.

  But they hadn’t. Nutter had shown up, irrespective of the twenty uniforms who were responding to the murder. He had shown up alone and talked to the kid and then sat in his car pretending to file reports and communicate with somebody on his car phone.

  Now Nutter was continuing on, filling the air with official-sounding language. He walked slow and pushed confidence out in front of him the way some poker players sat up in their seats when they tried to bluff, literally puffing their chests out.

  “Federal jurisdiction is tricky, of course,” the guy was saying. “This kind of case. I mean, we’ve been doing this for years. Decades. I’ve been on this beat since the late sixties, you want to know the truth. Since this hippie stuff started up in San Fran.”

  “That long?” Jenkins said. This seemed unlikely.

  “There was, what would you call it? Crossover.”

  Jenkins stopped walking and turned to face Nutter. “Crossover between who? I was in the partner program, remember.”

  “That time?” Nutter said. “Jesus. Everybody? The hippies and the Hells Angels and fucking rock stars. Heard of the Rolling Stones?” he said. It was a joke but the way he told it just made him sound more out of it. Jenkins had finally found a cop more out of touch than himself. They continued walking. “And the vampires,” Nutter said. “They came in from the cold a little bit. The hippies were up for anything—races, creeds, states of being—it was all one big party. But you know that. Everybody knows that.”

  “Why don’t you tell me something everybody doesn’t know,” Jenkins said. He had a feeling Nutter wanted to talk, to show off, even. You can never have too much data, Tibor had said, and Jenkins had always found it to be true.

  Nutter stopped again. He put his hand on Jenkins’ arm. “You think you want to know things, but I don’t know if you really do,” he said.

  “I lost two partners this week,” Jenkins said. “Try me.”

  The guy nodded. He adjusted his hat and squared himself as if he was addressing a military squadron. “We started it,” he whispered. His voice had changed so much, the surety stripped right out of it, that Jenkins was taken aback.

  “Started it?” he said.

  Nutter nodded. “Hippies. We started the whole goddamn thing.”

  “I’m following,” Jenkins said.

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying,” Nutter said. “We gave it to them. LSD. We gave it to them. The government. The C-I-fucking-A. We’re the ones who started the whole thing. Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary and the Pranksters and the hippies and the Grateful Dead and who knew how fucking long that was going to go on. Who would have guessed we’d be standing here.” He waved his hands around at the parking lot and the Deadheads walking, weaving, selling, haggling, dancing and hugging. “Who in their right mind would have guessed we’d be standing here thirty fucking years later?”

  “Look,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know about any of that. All I know is I lost two partners this week. I’ve seen too many bodies this past month. This thing is sick and it’s not getting better.”

  Nutter shook his head. “So much bigger than that,” he said.

  Chapter 59

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Padma stood. Pain shot through her left ankle. She had heard the pop when she landed, even through her scream and the gasps from the kids who were now scurrying around her, retreating to the relative safety of their cars. The biker was pacing, hitting himself in the head with an open fist, muttering something she couldn’t hear with the ringing in her head. Every cell in her body wanted to run, to do what Peter had done and be rid of this entire scene once and for all. She was a government employee. What kind of job got you into this situation?

  She tested the ankle and pain shot up her leg, all the way to the knee. It was amazing, she thought, how the body worked. Even more amazing was how the mind worked. The biker hadn’t wanted to hurt her any more than she wanted to be thrown in the air. Of course, that was what it had been about all along—what Doctor Portis and Nutter had been at the entire time—controlling minds, especially those of the most dangerous. Control a normal person’s
mind and you could do normal things. Control an extraordinary person’s mind and you could do an extraordinary amount of damage.

  The biker was coming toward her again, clearly fighting it and not winning. Portis was near. She fumbled in her pockets. If Peter had stayed, she may not have had to do this, but with him gone, with Portis closing in, it was the only choice she had. The biker grabbed her arm and yanked, and then he let go and stumbled away, punching himself in the head again.

  She didn’t have much time. That was clear. She put the doses on her tongue and sucked.

  Chapter 60

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Cain concentrated on his arms and legs, on controlling them, fighting the Dealer’s attempts to make him harm the girl. She was limping, backpedaling, but not running away. The Dealer was trying to move him closer to the girl. He pushed his feet into the ground and wasn’t sure whether he was really seeing his feet move a half inch into the dirt or whether he was still tripping. Maybe this whole thing was just a trip. But he could feel the burn in his legs, every single fiber fighting to stay rooted in the ground, and he knew that it was real.

  Letting go would feel so wonderful. He would just relax, let his body do what it wanted to do, let somebody else call the shots, make the decisions for a little while. He would be a vessel, no more and no less. But no, he couldn’t think about letting go, couldn’t give in to—what was it called?—the natural state. He forced his arms to cross and then held them in front of his chest. He had lifted weights with Angels in Huntington Beach, and the feeling was not unlike a reverse bench press. He had never liked lifting weights.

  Portis was getting closer. Soon he would be within view and Cain didn’t know whether this would make the man’s control over his body and mind more pronounced or less. He felt the pull of his command, heavy like a headache. There was a buzzing in his ears and all he could think about was giving up, that feeling of release, how wonderful it would feel to put down the weight of fighting back, to take that first step, then the second, then sink his teeth into the girl’s throat.

  He could feel another frequency in the mix—not the kid, not the other vampire, but something else, a weak signal growing slightly stronger, helping him push back, like a small engine at the back of a train. He remembered an old book his mother had read him—could he still picture her face? No. All he remembered was brown hair falling down over her maid’s outfit, the way she smelled like cleaning liquid and sweat. It had been a long time since he’d thought of those days.

  “Stand down!” Cain opened his eyes slowly, careful to maintain his concentration. If he let it down now, he would be ripping the girl’s throat out before he could even register the distance between them. But was that what he wanted, what he should want? The natural state. It sounded like a hippie thing, a goal, the halcyon days of the natural state. Cain had never liked hippies much before the change.

  “Stand down!” It was the cop, the plainclothes whose partner he had killed. He wasn’t surprised, but when he thought of the partner, he almost lost his concentration and was propelled a few steps toward the girl. The plainclothes was standing between them now, a gun pointed at Cain’s temple, a stake tucked into the waistband of his shorts. “There’s silver in the gun and the stake I used to kill my partner—the one you didn’t kill—and I’m more than happy to use them,” he said. “Now just take a few steps back. Now.”

  Cain forced a step back, then another. He wanted to speak, to explain the entire thing—Portis, the dose, the girl. The girl. She was standing to the side, arms crossed at her chest and eyes shut. She was the other frequency he was feeling, the one that was pushing back, increasing his energy. The older cop in the hat, the one who looked like a federal agent in a movie, was standing near her, shouting a series of orders that she didn’t seem to be hearing. He was holding up a folder and gesturing at the parking lot, at Cain, at the plainclothes, as if he was a movie director who was unhappy with how a particular scene was being staged.

  Cain felt the girl’s frequency increase, layering over his own efforts. In his mind they were merging, gaining power, increasing momentum.

  “I will shoot,” the plainclothes said. He took a step forward. “I’m going to count to three,” he said. “One. Two.”

  Cain braced for the sound of the gun. That too would be relief.

  Chapter 61

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Jenkins didn’t want to shoot anybody. The guy was sick. More than that, even—he was being controlled by forces, Nutter and Portis and this girl who seemed to be on all sides at once. The vampire was responsible for the murders, yes, but in the same way a car is responsible for an accident. Still, he had sworn an oath to protect the public and if that meant putting a silver bullet into this thing and stopping these murders once and for all, or even for the time being, he was ready to do it.

  “Sorry,” he said under his breath as he squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 62

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Nutter saw what was happening and did it without even thinking. He wasn’t even sure it would work. He focused on the gun, on moving it quickly out of Jenkins’ hand, imagined it flipping into the bushes. And then it was happening. The gun flying. Jenkins’ hand pulling back as if he was being electrocuted. The gun landing in the very bushes Nutter had been thinking about. He’d done things before, a pen rolling off the table, a spoon bent, a thought put into the kid’s head on that first spring night at Chandler University. It had been thirty years studying the art of mind control, five that he’d been actively using the professor’s solution without his knowledge. But still, he hadn’t been sure it was going to work.

  Now, he had saved them a moment, a poor result, but he would have to focus on Portis in order to clean up this mess for the long haul, to get into his pension with a Meritorious Achievement Award and not a congressional investigation. Jenkins was scurrying around in the bushes. The biker was moving toward the girl. Portis walked closer, steadily. He was smiling.

  Nutter focused on the biker. He was grimacing, fighting Portis and losing. The girl backed up, one step, then another, slowly and carefully. She maintained eye contact with the biker and Nutter could feel her own wavelength, the curious static that indicated somebody was tied into the energy, that they had the chemicals in their system and the ability to access the connection.

  The girl had it up to a point. Her line was weak, fizzling. He guessed that she’d just taken the chemicals. She was smart, but had neither the heft nor the experience to push Portis. She looked back and was making her way slowly toward him. Nutter focused on the biker, on keeping him where he was, moving him back. His progress slowed, but still he advanced, one stagger at a time.

  Chapter 63

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Jenkins fished in the bushes, a mess of beer cans and wrappers and cigarette butts. At any moment, he expected to feel the puncture of sharp teeth in his neck, a bullet in his back. If this is how it ends, he thought, so be it. He flashed on David, that smile. What did they say? Have a good show. He hoped David had a good show, that for once he was able to shrug off the Jenkins family weight—depression, awareness, whatever it was—and just have a good show.

  There, nearly covered by a Big Gulp cup, was his service weapon. He picked it up and turned.

  The biker was staggering toward the girl, making his way slowly, like a drunk walking into a terrible headwind. The girl was walking back carefully, looping toward where Nutter stood. On a hill, Portis advanced, smiling. Jenkins wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but he thought he heard a low electric hum, could almost see the line connecting Nutter to the biker to Portis. The girl was an ancillary item, a spoke that had broken off. She was careful, walking toward Nutter, firming the line between them. She caught his eye and gave him a look, then continued moving the biker closer to the federal.

  Chapter 64

  July 9, 1995. C
hicago, IL. Soldier Field

  When Cain had let go, finally, he was surprised to find that he was not moving forward, was not tearing into the girl’s throat, but was actually being pushed back from the front with nearly the impact he felt from behind. The result was like stepping through a cloud, a slow lurch forward, two forces conducting themselves through him.

  He had tried to make his life on the edge of society, to live among but not with the rest of the world. He had managed for a while, until he made his mistake, and now here he was, no longer in control of anything, reduced to less than the natural state, to some other state where he was nothing more than flotsam blowing through a battlefield, a stake being pushed between two adversaries. He had lived two ways, as a careless man and a more careful vampire. Now he was some third thing without so much as agency.

  Chapter 65

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  It was a geography problem, the need to get them arranged in a line. She hoped at first that once they were close, they would conduct through the biker, but that didn’t seem to be happening. There was one other way. She caught the cop’s eye and nodded. She hoped he would understand.

  Chapter 66

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Jenkins nodded back at the girl. He had an idea of what she was doing, even if he wasn’t exactly sure. He hated to do it—the data was unclear, and he had never made this kind of decision without being more than ninety percent sure. There didn’t seem to be alternatives. Before Nutter or Portis could push it out of his hand, he raised the gun and fired.