Precious Blood

by Jonathan Hayes

  And when he calmed to quiet sobbing, he heard another sound, a sound he’d never heard in any of the projects. A sound he hadn’t heard since he was a boy.

  She was laughing at him.

  Jun was waiting for Jenner on the gantry landing, catching his breath, when they heard a gunshot, clear and sharp.

  Jenner ignored it and kept climbing, the muscles on his side shrieking from the effort.

  Jun knelt and reached out to Jenner, pulling him up onto the landing. “You hear that?”

  Jenner nodded. “I’ll go across first.”

  They had made their way to the top of the steps to the gantry crossbeam when they heard the screaming.

  “Christ, Jenner! What is that? Is it her?”

  “Just keep moving. If it can take my weight, you’ll be fine.”

  His heart was racing. The screeching cut through the throb of the engine, echoing through the archway like some Halloween-house sound effect.

  The gantry in front of him was badly rusted, but it had hefted thousands of pounds in the past. Besides, if he fell, it was a twenty-foot drop into water, not onto the glass-strewn rubble on the bank.

  The howling ringing in his ears, he edged out onto the span girder, steadying himself against the curve of the arch overhead as he moved, shimmying sideways, telling himself the screaming was a man. The air near his head reeked of Precious Blood

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  damp and ammonia.

  He moved along the gantry over the slip, his feet sending scatters of rust pelting down into the water.

  “Keep going, Jenner. You’re almost there.”

  The girder rim felt soft underneath his foot as he passed the halfway point.

  “Jun, shine your flashlight at my feet. It’s rusted pretty bad.”

  The screaming stopped. The engine sounded louder as he crossed, thicker.

  The beam at his feet revealed flaking leaves of rusted iron, barely held together by a peeling layer of paint. He scuffed at it with his foot, then pressed softly.

  “It’s rusty, but I think it’s solid—maybe you should cross on the other side of the girder.”

  He wrapped his arms around the chest-level upper girder and continued, placing his feet carefully before gingerly easing his weight down.

  When he reached the gantry deck on the far side, he turned and was surprised to see Jun already almost halfway across behind him. He stood on the deck, catching his breath as he lit Jun’s path.

  Jun eased past the central girder, clinging to the upper girder tightly as he edged across.

  “Damn. It’s even more rusted here. I’m going to cross over.”

  He pulled himself onto the upper girder, hugged it with his arms, and slipped over onto the other side, gently letting his feet down onto the girder rim.

  He breathed out, gave Jenner a nod, and continued.

  With his first step, a broad slab of rusted iron broke from the girder beneath him, pitching him down into the abyss.

  Jenner saw him hit a crossbeam, then spin off, hitting the water with a huge splash, and disappearing under the surface.

  Jenner clambered down the gantry anchorage as quickly 422

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  as he could, dropping the last ten feet.

  “Jun!”

  He shone the beam of light over the water. Nothing. How deep could it be?

  “Jun! ”

  He tore off his coat, and was about to dive when Jun broke the surface, choking and gasping, spewing water, blood flowing freely from his head, black and glossy in the night, brilliant red under Jenner’s bare light.

  Jenner knelt at the edge to reach for him.

  “Over here! Jun!”

  Jun swam toward him, then shook his head violently, turned, and began to swim away.

  “Where are you going? You’re bleeding . . .”

  Jun put his hand to his head.

  “My head hit something.” His breath was a mist over the surface of the water. His teeth were chattering. “I think I’m okay . . . fucking coat almost drowned me.”

  He brushed a hand to his head, saw more blood.

  With some effort, he paddled back toward Jenner’s outstretched arm, but before he reached him, he stopped.

  “Take my hand! Come on!”

  Jun shook his head, spitting out the foul water as he struggled with his waterlogged coat. He finally pulled free; he lifted his arm and pushed the pistol up onto the landing.

  “Jenner, take the gun! I’ve got to get out of the water. I’m going to try to swim back past the fence here, get the police.

  You have to go ahead.”

  Jenner watched his friend as he swam unevenly toward the far side of the loading dock. From somewhere in the building behind him, he heard more gunshots, the reports echoing over the loading dock.

  Jenner turned to the sound of the shots, took a step, and then looked back to Jun; he seemed to be slowing.

  Jun yelled, “Go! I’ll be all right. Find Ana! ”

  Jenner moved toward the courtyard, trying to decide Precious Blood

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  which way he should head.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the water and spun around, the gun in his hand raised.

  Lashed to the pilings of the landing was a body, waist deep in the water, rolling with the slip’s soft current.

  Ana.

  In the light of his flashlight he saw the body of a young adult, the face and upper torso nearly skeletonized, the skull spackled with putrid white flesh where the skin hadn’t rotted through, the scalp hair short and black.

  It wasn’t her.

  He stepped backward, staring at the piling. The body was loosely tied, perhaps deliberately, so that it could move with the tides and the waves. The dead reanimated.

  No time for this. He turned and went into the courtyard, toward the gunshots, the pistol clenched tight in his fist.

  She couldn’t win. She couldn’t win. She was going to die now.

  She barely heard the shot as another nail hit her thigh.

  Almost unconsciously, her body twitched and began to move, dragging her with it.

  She must be pretty messed up. Her elbows were raw, the skin of her back scraped bare against the trusses, raked by nails, her scalp and hair crusted with blood. And God only knew how her legs looked! She giggled at her vanity, the tears building in her eyes.

  There was another bang, the burn of another nail, her left calf this time, she thought. Again her body lurched forward.

  Dragged a few more inches, then slumped.

  She was done. She had nothing left. It was all gone, spent on trying to escape this fucking monster and his fucking castle.

  Her eyes burned.

  She lay half-conscious, waiting for the next nail, unable 424

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  to move. She couldn’t hear him anymore, couldn’t feel the vibration of his approaching steps—she was close to the engine now, and the noise was deafening.

  She wished she could turn over, so she could die on her back, looking up through the floorboards, through the roof, up through the sky to heaven.

  She let her cheek down into the filth—what did it matter now? The cold helped her body fall away from her.

  She said her prayers. God bless everyone she knew. Mom and Dad. Gram. Uncle Douggie. Rad and Joey. Andie. The tears were back. Jenner. She told herself she’d see her mom and dad soon. And Ana; God bless Ana.

  Who was left to go to her funeral? Jenner. Would he visit her grave? Kneel down in the cemetery, put flowers there or something? He’d do that. He was good. Jenner was good. He would kneel down by her grave, a hand on the headstone.

  Here lies Ana de Jong, born . . . Wait . . . when did she die?

  She snuffled a little, and slid her wrist, painfully slowly, in front of her face, fumbled at the button.

  The orange light flared in her face, blinding her for a second.

  Her eyes adjusted slowly.

&nbs
p; Twelve-oh-three a.m. December 25.

  Wait . . . Still holding her watch in front of her, she pressed the button again to make sure.

  Yes, Christmas.

  She straightened her arm, and the orange glare lit up the face of Robert Farrar, lying right next to her under the floor, bloody teeth smiling through what was left of his mouth.

  wednesday,

  december 25

  Jenner knew the building as soon as he stepped into the quadrangle—sheets of clear plastic covered the windows on the top floor, while all the other courtyard windows either gaped empty or were sealed with sheets of painted plywood.

  To reach the main entrance, he had to clamber over the heaped debris in the courtyard. There was a big handcart leaned up against the sealed doorway; he tipped it aside to climb through the large hole smashed through the concrete block.

  He took the stairs as quickly as he could, wary that his footsteps might be heard above the engine. He was out of breath; he would take a couple of seconds to pull himself together on the first landing where the stairs turned to the left.

  He stepped quietly onto the landing, one hand on the balustrade. The floor immediately collapsed, his legs dropping out from underneath him, his hip slamming onto broken flooring, sliding down into darkness. The gun spun out of his hand as he slipped, desperately trying to anchor himself on the stairs with his elbows. He grabbed hold of a railing in the dark, legs kicking the air wildly as he swung by one arm, then gradually pulled himself up onto the remains of the stairs. He crawled upward on his belly, checking that the runners underneath him were solid, before pulling himself to a kneeling position.

  He lay there stunned and breathless, his left arm throbbing as if it had almost been torn out of its socket, tears in his eyes. He’d lost his gun.

  The flashlight beam spread across the step in front of him; he picked it up and shone it onto the landing.

  It hadn’t been an accident: the floorboards near the continuation of the staircase were intact, and the boards that had col-428

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  lapsed had fallen as a single panel. He shone the light inside the hole: under the stairs, a handful of stakes and metal poles bristled upward, their crudely sharpened tips pointing up, ready to impale anyone who tried to climb the staircase.

  Jenner looked down at his leg and saw blood soaking through near his left calf. Christ.

  He had to keep moving.

  He scanned the floor around the spikes, looking for the gun. No sign of it, nor on the stairs. He pulled himself closer to the railing and shone the light down onto the floor below.

  The pistol lay on top of the rubble.

  He stepped awkwardly over the gaping landing and limped slowly down the stairs to pick up the gun. Then he went back up again, this time testing each tread with his hands before stepping on it. On the top floor, he pressed himself against the wall, unsure whether Farrar could see him, unable to trust his footing, wondering what other little surprises the man had in store for unexpected visitors.

  The shooting had stopped.

  Jenner knelt, and peered cautiously around the corner.

  The factory floor stretched away in front of him. He could see no movement.

  The vast room had been partitioned off with clear plastic sheeting framed clumsily with two-by-fours; a flap of un-tethered plastic stirred at his approach—the entrance.

  The inner room was ringed with lit candles, the flames flickering with the breeze as the plastic flap slipped shut behind him. On the floor near the entry lay a wooden assembly; coming closer, he saw that it was a human-size cross.

  He held the gun, felt warmed by its weight, by how solid it felt in his palm, pointing, ready to kill. He pressed the button, and a red dot magically appeared on the floor in front of him; he aimed at the wall in front of him, the fine red beam faint but reassuring. It occurred to him that he didn’t know if the safety should be in the forward or back position; too late now.

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  A gas-powered air compressor rattled away in the opposite corner; maybe his arrival hadn’t been noticed.

  He quietly took another step forward. He paused, listening. He could hear nothing over the compressor engine; but then, if Farrar was around, neither could he.

  Jenner moved slowly across to the far side of the room.

  The floor was pockmarked with large holes. Immediately to his right was an unlit room, an unlocked padlock dangling from the open metal latch, the door ajar. Beyond it, a wall of windows looked out over the river.

  He breathed in, held the gun up, and stepped quickly back as he pushed the door forward.

  Nothing.

  Pointing the muzzle of the gun into the pitch-black cell, he leaned forward, then directed the beam into the tiny side room. It wasn’t much more than a closet, on the floor a bowl with water, a filthy mattress, and a couple of threadbare blankets. He stepped inside. Just beyond the mattress was a large hole in the floorboards near the outer wall—no wonder the room was so cold.

  Turning to leave, he was stopped by an array of photographs nailed to the door. They were all there—Andie Delore, Katherine Smith, Barbara Wexler, and Lucy Fiore, each image wreathed in dense Coptic text.

  Holding the gun tighter, he stepped back into the main room. The bead of his laser sight skipped from surface to surface. To his right was a workbench, scattered with tools and unusual objects; lined up neatly on a small tray was a set of antique scalpels, and behind them a small case with what appeared to be lancets. Next to the tray were several peacock feathers and a small box of hunting arrow tips. There was a loaded homemade crossbow and some assembled arrows, and a vise of the sort used for tying trout flies.

  There were actually two engines running, the air compressor and a more raucous gas-powered generator at the end of the bench. The workbench had a familiar smell, dry and 430

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  powdery with a metallic tang; in the middle of the clutter, a slender soldering iron emitted fine wisps of white smoke.

  Next to it, fitted together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, were the remaining fragments of the original Coptic manuscript, now just flaked fragments of tan parchment.

  Where were they?

  Maybe Farrar was out, foraging for supplies; from the looks of it, he seemed to be getting by mostly by scavenging. But he wouldn’t leave the soldering iron on like that, let alone the generator and compressor.

  No, he was here.

  Jenner turned to face the empty room.

  Could they have left the building? He walked over to the windows and peeled back the plastic to peer down on the ground below. This wing, too, was surrounded by a rubble-strewn wasteland.

  He turned back to the room, uncertain.

  He shone his beam around the room. Then he heard a grunt.

  He turned off the flashlight immediately and pressed against the wall in the shadows, squinting into the space, trying to find the source of the sound. There was another grunt, and a silhouette began to take shape in front of the compressor, swelling up from the floorboards.

  It resolved itself into the shadow of a man, but instead of standing, he remained bent, worrying at something at his feet. Slowly, the man dragged another body out onto the floorboards, then stood straight.

  Farrar turned and immediately saw Jenner.

  He took a step toward him, uncertain.

  Jenner said, “Don’t move. I have a gun. I’ll kill you if you give me an excuse.”

  He held his arm forward a little so that Farrar could see the pistol.

  Without a word, Farrar dipped to one side and began to run at Jenner.

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  Above the noise of the engines, he heard Ana shout, “He’s got an ax!”

  He squeezed the trigger, but it wouldn’t budge, and Farrar kept coming. Jenner fumbled for the safety, couldn’t shift it, threw the weapon down, grabbed the crossbow from the desk, and spun a
round to pull the trigger.

  The crossbow bolt shot into Farrar’s chest, near his left shoulder. He staggered in surprise, stopped and coughed.

  Jenner frantically searched the bench top, hands tearing up the surface, feeling for another bolt, but all he could see were arrows. His scrambling fingers tipped a narrow box, spilling stubby crossbow bolts across the bench. Jenner grabbed a bolt, pushed it into the groove, and started to pull the bowstring back.

  Farrar was standing halfway across the room, staring at the shaft of the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, his breath coming in fast gulps. He coughed again, spitting blood.

  The bowstring bit deep into Jenner’s fingers as he pulled.

  He pointed the weapon down, pinning the small bar at the tip to the floor with his foot, then leaned back, putting all his weight into dragging the string back to cock the crossbow.

  Farrar straightened with difficulty. He grinned as he watched Jenner struggle with the crossbow, then lifted his hand to show Jenner the hatchet. He steadied himself and stood staring at Jenner, tossing the ugly little ax effortlessly back and forth between his hands. He sprinted at Jenner, the hatchet held high.

  He lunged, swinging the hatchet down, but stumbled as his foot plunged into one of the holes in the floor, the hatchet sweeping short of Jenner. Jenner brought the crossbow up, squeezed the trigger and shot a bolt into Farrar’s flank, then ran past him to the other end of the room, to the girl.

  He knelt by her, touched her face, felt her move.

  Turning, he saw Farrar moving toward them, the crossbow bolt protruding from his chest, the second dangling limply from his side, the small ax held low.

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  Jenner backed up, deliberately drawing him away from Ana. Farrar veered wide around her, cutting off Jenner’s route should he try to make a run for the stairway, then came straight at him, pushing him back.

  His hands bleeding, Jenner hurled the useless crossbow at Farrar, missing him. Jenner grabbed an old wooden chair, lifted it, and pointed it toward Farrar.

  Farrar swung at it hard, the blow of the hatchet reverberating up through Jenner’s arms as the chair cracked open.