by Chris Vola
As he moved toward the bathroom door, Nicki was stuffing the money into her purse, trying hard not to grin. “So how does this work for next time?” she asked. “Do I call you or—”
He didn’t stay for her to finish the sentence.
He needed to make it to Prospect Park before dusk. He had to talk to Frank.
Ryan walked out of Starbucks, took the collection bag out of his satchel, and ripped it open with his teeth. He chugged as much as he could, feeling some excess blood running down his cheek and neck. He wiped his mouth, not caring if the tattooed woman in the window or anyone else on the street was watching.
He stuffed the bag in his satchel and ran.
2
Moving south on Washington Avenue through the tree-lined, gentrified enclaves of Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights, Ryan didn’t slow down to consider the brownstones that had remained more or less unchanged since his childhood—those once-mysterious castles of the ruling class whose air-conditioner-filled windows now looked down on locked Vespas and fixed-gear Schwinns instead of surly carriage drivers. But the time for nostalgia, both pleasant and painful, had passed.
He was running at a speed that could only be reached in the first few hours after eating, floating on effortless bursts. Normally, he would try to savor the feeling of the world moving in slow motion around him, a sprinter in the zone letting his mind immerse itself in pure, energized focus, but now his thoughts moved in time with his feet, maybe faster.
The stylized M was an old letterhead used by members of the Manhattan tribe, that much was obvious. But as far as he knew, it hadn’t been used since the telephone and all of its faster, electronic offspring had made stationery obsolete. And, as far as he knew, an act of aggression between boroughs was not only unprecedented but physically impossible.
The simple fact was that you couldn’t cross the boundaries of the area where you’d been turned without sacrificing all that being turned meant, without returning your body to its original dying condition. Sure, you could send humans across the river, but unless they knew exactly what they were looking for, had the element of surprise and an insane amount of military-level training, the odds of their survival, let alone success, would be close to zero. Especially against Seamus, a cauliflower-eared, bare-knuckle boxer from Windsor Terrace in an era when the Irish fought for much more than money, whose early feeding sprees on Protestants were epic, as well as his predilection for using future meals as training bags, regardless of their denomination.
For a moment an almost-forgotten image appeared in Ryan’s mind. It was the early twenties, a putrid tenement in Brownsville cramped with five or six families, fresh off the boat and screaming in Yiddish and German, unable to comprehend what had happened to them, what was going to happen. While Frank and the others were gorging themselves on the meals they’d rounded up on the ground floor, Ryan had gone up a rickety wooden staircase to forage. The first one-room apartment he entered—unlit, poorly ventilated, and clogged with the stench of sweat, human waste, and too-old meat—seemed empty until he felt a small body rush past him and crash against the stained floorboards before escaping out the door. She was maybe six or seven, wild brown hair, a dirty gingham dress, her mouth frozen and gaping in terror. As he approached she lifted both of her shaking hands, palms facing him and fingers splayed, a plea for him to stop, maybe a prayer, or maybe she thought he was there to help. Before he could do anything Seamus was on top of her, tearing her apart from belly to neck, burying his face in the wetness, a red smile for Ryan when he paused to take a breath. The hands stayed open, still trembling, reaching for something they’d never touch.
A second later the hands were gone and Ryan was back in the present, trying to process the pictures he’d been sent. How were they able to find Seamus, he wondered, and how was he connected? How did they get my number? And most importantly, why?
Any further self-questioning was interrupted by a ringtone from the phone he was still clutching in his hand. He slowed his pace and looked at the name on the screen. Jennifer. As much as it frustrated him, as much as he felt the sudden urge to see her now, to tell her everything, she would have to wait.
He silenced the phone, put it on vibrate, and scanned the major intersection that opened up just ahead of him, the crunch and hiss of traffic. Across Eastern Parkway loomed the classical Beaux Arts pillars and modernist glass pavilion that composed the Brooklyn Museum’s main façade. Clusters of people were posted up in front of the large building taking selfies and group shots while joggers, skateboarders, and hand-holding couples entered and exited the leaf-shaded paths that formed the northern boundary of Prospect Park to the right.
Ryan had always found it intriguing that for the past few decades, Frank had insisted on working either in or adjacent to the park. Maybe it was because the manicured meadows, hills, ponds, and groves of chestnuts and oaks reminded Frank of a time that only he could recall, when most of the borough consisted of bucolic villages and long stretches of uninterrupted farmland. But then why, with more than 580 acres to choose from, did he always seem to set up shop in the park’s most high-traffic area, where you were far more likely to hear the incessant bass thumps of a soon-to-be-archaic sound system or the incomprehensible hum of ten different languages spoken at once than the piercing cry of a hawk making its first kill of the day? With Frank, nothing was ever easy to figure out. And unless you wanted a far-from-simple answer, it was better to keep your theories to yourself.
But any hopes for simple answers had already been extinguished, which was why Ryan was here. He crossed the parkway, continuing down Washington Avenue where it bisected then paralleled the park’s eastern border. Half a dozen brightly painted food trucks were idling in a row on the street, swarmed by the last of the postmuseum crowds, offering a standard selection of tourist-trap fare: vegan ice cream, gluten-free Belgian waffles, fair-trade coffee, Korean-Mexican barbecue.
“Now I know this motherfucker wants a kimchee burrito!” boomed a familiar voice from the Seoul Survivor truck’s service window as Ryan approached. Raj was in his late thirties but looked younger, jovially plump, his jowls concealed by a formidable black beard that would have made him look like an aspiring guru from the Sri Lankan province where his parents had been born, if he hadn’t been wearing a grease-stained apron and matching baseball cap. He handed his lone waiting customer a paper bag, took the cash from her, and extended a latex-gloved fist for Ryan to bump.
“Looks like you’ve been eating enough burritos for both of us,” Ryan said.
“Damn, that’s cold,” Raj replied, grinning. “But for real, these bulgogi tacos are like meth, man. Can’t get enough of them.”
As Raj turned to put the money in an unseen register, Arianna appeared in the service window, wearing the same grimy uniform, her long black curls reined in by a hairnet. “That’s why Frank won’t let him near the grill anymore,” she said, big green eyes reflecting the last dying rays of sunlight. “Profit margins are shitty enough with the way this tank soaks up gas.”
A portly South Asian and a cute Venezuelan toiling in a failing multiethnic food truck sounded like the start of a bad joke or a soon-to-be-canceled sitcom, but Ryan knew there was nothing intentionally funny or random about it. Raj and Arianna were both AB negative, the rarest blood type after B negative, and Frank’s beverage of choice. For years they’d been his donors, employees, drug mules, roommates, factotums, whatever you wanted to call it, the only two sentient beings—mortal or otherwise—that he fully trusted. Hiding the truth about yourself and what you valued in plain sight was more than a cliché, it was how you stayed alive. In that respect, Raj and Arianna were the perfect extensions of Frank.
“I was in the area and figured I’d stop by and pay my respects to your boss,” Ryan said. “It’s not a big deal, but I have something I wanted to ask him about before you all went home for the night. You know where I can find him?”
“Ooh,” Arianna cooed, faux-dramatically. “Mysterious. If he’
s not heading back this way already he’s probably still hanging out at that lawn a couple blocks south of here in the park. There’s a bunch of benches and a jogging path.”
“You know,” Raj added, “where the hipsters are always playing their guitars and bongos and shit.” He started banging his palms on the service counter and doing a dance that looked more like a minor seizure. Arianna rolled her eyes.
“Thanks, guys,” Ryan said as he turned to leave, not in the mood for Raj’s usual brand of bullshit. “Always a pleasure.”
Raj stopped gyrating and fiddled with something under the counter. “Hey, wait,” he said. He tossed Ryan a packet of sanitary wipes and added, with what sounded to Ryan like the faintest hint of condescension, “Looks like you got something on your neck, bro.”
Ryan reached up and ran his fingers across a few small streaks of Nicki’s crusted blood. Embarrassing, he thought, and potentially dangerous. But he didn’t have time to be patronized by someone whose facial hair reeked of cabbage. He waved at Raj and Arianna and left.
A few seconds later, wiping the blood off as he walked, he felt a sudden tremor shoot down his spine, sort of a chill, though he couldn’t exactly remember what it was like to be cold. And a strange gripping, something magnetic and shapeless trying to pull him back toward the trucks. He stopped and turned around. A thin, pale man with a shaved head, wearing aviator sunglasses and a midnight-blue European-cut suit, was hoisting what looked like a small duffel bag onto the Seoul Survivor’s service counter. He said something to Arianna, who unzipped the bag and inspected its contents. She nodded and Raj handed the man a thick, bill-sized envelope. Raj said something and the three of them laughed.
The truck’s real purpose. Hiding in plain sight.
The chill he’d felt was gone. He picked up the pace in the direction he’d been going, not looking back again.
* * *
Ryan entered Prospect Park just east of the Botanic Garden’s main ticket kiosk. He followed a winding, slightly uphill trail for a few yards, passing a mostly vacant playground and public restrooms. The trees on either side began to thin, the ground leveled, and he found himself at the edge of a large grassy space that was ringed by several long, semicircular benches. It was past dusk and the streetlights had been turned on, illuminating the remaining inhabitants of the lawn—a few teenagers tossing a Frisbee, a pair of dozing brown-baggers sitting cross-legged on a blanket of garbage bags—in a synthetic orange glow. Frank reclined alone on the bench closest to the path, wearing jeans and a black tank top and smoking what looked like an e-cigarette. His shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper dreadlocks framed his angular, mahogany-toned face and rested on wide, muscular shoulders. His skin was smooth, almost glistening except for a small X that had been branded onto his left cheek and the gouge marks crisscrossing his back and arms that would look like shrapnel wounds to the casual observer but were actually whip scars. That complexion, and the unblinking gold eyes that were staring straight into nothing, made Frank look as ageless as he actually was, a permanence that had once been a source of comfort and a goal for Ryan when he’d been interested in discovering what he had become, when he’d considered Frank much more of a father figure than Jonah, the gin-rotted bricklayer who caught tuberculosis when Ryan was nine.
But during the few instances that Ryan had made physical contact with Frank in the last couple of years, those eyes always seemed increasingly predatory and desperate, confirmation that the exile’s life Ryan had chosen had been the right one, or at least a little more stable than Frank’s version.
“Raj says you aren’t a fan of my burritos,” Frank said, stone-faced, a whiff of cannabis vapor exiting his mouth as Ryan sat next to him.
“How did he—”
Frank motioned at the blinking phone on his lap. “It’s the future now, get with it or die,” he hissed.
“That’s probably what you told everyone when the telegraph came out,” Ryan said, repeating the beginning of a very bad and very old joke.
“More or less, the vernacular might have been a little different,” Frank said, unable to hold back a smile. He handed Ryan the vaporizer pen. “You have to admit, though, there’s some pretty cool shit out there now, like this. It uses butane wax, far more concentrated than your standard hydroponics or hash and without the impurities, totally portable and easy to refill. You charge it with a USB cable. Push the chrome button halfway down the stem, try a hit.”
“No thanks, not really my thing,” Ryan said, handing the pen back to Frank. “Does it even do anything for you?”
“I don’t think so, not really, I just like the taste. Arianna says it knocks her out. Takes her to outer space or somewhere equally unimaginative.” Frank took another hit, long and deep, closing his eyes.
“Is that what was in the gym bag that wannabe Reservoir Dog handed over to your minions a couple minutes ago?” Ryan asked. “The suit’s a cute touch, Frank, but not the most subtle wardrobe choice for a, what is he, a wholesaler or something?”
Frank was silent for a few seconds, then chuckled. “Tony,” he said. “He’s a forensic chemist. Works in a medical lab in Bushwick that has a contract with the DEA. He hooks us up with a few pounds of levamisole every three months. I’m not sure what’s going on with the suit, but if it makes him feel a little more badass, so be it.”
“Levamisole. There was an article about that in the Times. It’s a cutting agent in cocaine, really nasty stuff. Destroys the immune system. It’s supposed to be used as a cow dewormer or something. Jesus, Frank, is your blow really that bad?”
“I’m impressed you’re keeping up so well with current events,” Frank said sardonically. “It also causes a significant spike and later a major crash in dopamine levels, which basically guarantees repeat customers in the short term.”
“And in the long term?”
“It’s not hard to find new customers.”
Though Ryan was focusing on the dimly lit lawn and the hills and rock formations fading to gray in the distance, he could feel Frank’s stare, really sizing him up for the first time. “You didn’t come here for my food or my drugs,” Frank said, “and you didn’t come to ask me to find you another donor because I can tell by the glow you’ve got going that you’ve enjoyed a satisfying meal today. You’re welcome. And you’re also not here because you were in the neighborhood and felt the urge to sit with a dear friend and reminisce about old times, because that’s definitely not your style. Do you want to change your name again? It’s been what, seven or eight years now? Ryan Driggs—it has such a nice ring to it, alliteration that doesn’t sound forced, WASPy and unassuming, strong masculine consonants.”
“I think you need to look up the definition of alliteration,” Ryan said. “I was born on Driggs Avenue. I wasn’t going for style points.”
“Oh well. I can get you a new driver’s license and the necessary documents, but it’s going to take longer this time. And it’s expensive. The new security features—holograms, embedded cryptoprocessor chips, RFID tags—they’re a real pain in the ass to replicate. I have a guy, but … the impatience you’re trying to hide under that pretty-boy face tells me you aren’t interested. So, why are you here?”
“Because we’re living in the future,” Ryan said dryly, taking his phone out of his pocket. He pulled up the picture messages on the screen and handed the phone to Frank. “Someone sent me these less than an hour ago.”
Frank studied the images for a few seconds, then sighed. “Goddamn it, Seamus,” he whispered, his voice tinged with more disappointment than concern.
“What is this shit, Frank?” Ryan asked. “The M is Manhattan, that much I get, but how could they—”
“It’s not Manhattan,” Frank said, cutting him off. “At least not directly. It looks like someone trying to impress them. Or maybe a few people, groupies from one of the message boards.”
“Message boards?”
Frank handed Ryan his phone. “How would you describe your level of curiosity whe
n you’re on the Internet? And I’m not talking about foot fetishes or amputee porn.”
Ryan shrugged. “I’m curious about my stock portfolio, any potential subway delays, who’s pitching for the Dodgers. I don’t know. I go into Wikipedia black holes, I play Call of Duty, and I read the news. I check my e-mail.” And Jennifer’s social media pages and her work’s website and the pages that come up when I Google her name.
“But not about the tribes, the people who know about them. Your tribe.”
Ryan shook his head.
“You’ve done your own thing for a long time, had stretches of isolation longer than any one of us that I can remember, and that’s fine, I respect that,” Frank said. “You outgrew the old way of doing business before we did, found yourself a consistent source of food and a way to make and save money when most of us were still taking what we needed when we needed it and burying the remains. In a way, most of us still are. But you need to understand how things have changed. Our world’s gotten bigger.”
Ryan let out a sarcastic snort, louder than he’d meant to. He braced himself for another of Frank’s crackpot philosophy sessions, another argument without a point.
“Obviously I’m not talking geography,” Frank continued. “The G train still sucks. What I mean is that there are underground web forums, off-the-grid chat apps, subreddits, blogs that no one reads anymore, all dedicated to us, to those like us. You’re already familiar with the Craigslist personals section.”
“Come on, man,” Ryan sneered. “Nerds who have read too many comic books in their moms’ basements come up with some pretty entertaining stuff, I’m sure, but you’re telling me you actually pay attention to that garbage?”
“You’re right, a lot of these places are bogus, the products of nutjobs looking for Bigfoot and interdimensional wormholes, but a few are legit. They’re great for finding donors, people who want to be donors, people who think they want to be turned. I’ve been in contact with members of tribes—or what’s left of them—in Connecticut, Delaware, Quebec. You’d be surprised how much accurate information is available to anyone who knows where and how to look. It’s really kind of fascinating. But like anything else, you have to be careful. We have a higher profile than ever before.”