The Product Line (Book 1): Product (11 page)

Ernie pulls back on the door and shears it from its hinges. Without pausing he runs from room to room, a wraith, a blur of fury. The shocked faces of the men are priceless. Ernie grabs the two near the door and smashes them head first into the wall, knocking them out. He turns to the man in the living room, who reaches for the gun on the makeshift coffee table, still in pain from his already broken wrist. Before he has time to take his first step, Ernie is on top of him. He shoves the palm of his hand into the center of his back. Vertebrae crumble under the force of the impact. The man collapses, spitting blood onto the floor.

Ernie turns toward the bathroom where the last banger is still located. The toilet flushes, and he walks out mid statement.

--I was like, well, trouble wanted you, some cold-ass John McClane shit…

The boy sees Ernie and falls back against the wall. Ernie watches as he takes in the scene in the apartment, the silent carnage that happened in moments. Ernie can begin to taste the metallic flavor of blood as bleeding lesions start to form inside his mouth. His mind and mouth salivate. He doesn’t have much time. He shoves the man against the wall, then with one hand whips his body onto the ground and straddles his chest, placing one knee on his arm and his other knee on the man’s throat. He quickly fumbles through his back pocket and pulls out his works. A shit needle he has used far too many times.

--You got something I need. You don’t mind though, right?

His voice rumbles and crackles. Blood drips from his lips on to the boy’s face and chest. Ernie finds a vein on the boy and draws out a full needle’s worth of deep red. Ernie’s nails shred through the skin of the boy’s arm as he holds it steady. The boy’s pulse thumps through his head like a drum, its terrified adrenaline-filled beat pushing Ernie to drink deeply.

Ernie fights it using all his strength and personal resolve. He lines up his own vein and pushes the needle into his arm. As the first drops enter his bloodstream, his body convulses and cramps in a mix of pure agony and ecstasy. This is not the bliss he has felt before, it is stronger and more potent—it is not only pleasure, it is pain.

Ernie slumps over, awash in this painful joy. So much so that he does not notice when the boy pushes him off and on to the floor. He does not notice when the boy runs out and into the night, covered in Ernie’s blood. Ernie remains there, unable to move, the Virus finally pacified by blood.

***

When Ernie finally comes to, Claude is crouched over him, pulling what remains of the needle from Ernie’s arm. Apparently in Ernie’s haste he crushed the syringe in his hand as he shot up, leaving the shattered remains stuck in his arm as the bliss put him on the nod.

Ernie’s return from the bliss is jarring. He falls into reality as if dropped in ice water while in the midst of a dream. He sits up with a gasp, his mind bombarded with senses a hundred times stronger than before, his muscles and senses screaming.

--I told you, you needed to take your treatment. The fuck are you thinking?

--Stop it. Stop shouting.

--I’m not, you asshole.

The room is alive with sounds and smells, waves of synesthesia, crashing on him with overwhelming sensory input and emotion. He can smell cooking food at the end of the complex, rotting trash from the dumpster a block down, hear television programs, crying babies and whispered phone calls. He can see dust glinting off the moonlight cutting in through the window, smell the mold and mildew and cocaine particles in the carpet, the dog piss stains from the previous tenant.

Time has almost stopped; it has no meaning. Each second that passes sends a lifetime of sensory input.

It is almost crippling…

Almost.

Ernie takes a deep breath, tries to get ahead of his senses, shut them out from his mind. He turns to Claude.

--What happened?

--We got them. Well, we got all of them but one.

Nathan chimes in.

--Come on, we need to go.

Ernie pushes himself to his feet. He is stronger than before and he ends up pushing so hard he almost falls back over the other direction.

--You OK?

--I’m fine. Let’s get out of this slum.

Ernie’s equilibrium is shit, his body is buzzing and unfamiliar to him. He walks as well as he can toward the door, becoming more familiar with his appendages after each step. As he approaches the front door he catches his reflection in a mirror. He looks like hell. Blood-drenched shirt, bullet-riddled clothing.

The men all exit through the back door, quickly maneuvering between the dark shadows of the buildings until they reach Nathan’s parked van. Six bangers are inside, their hands bound behind their backs and canvas bags over their heads cinched at the neck. Nathan has already gone through the motions to sedate them, but most are so injured they wouldn’t have had much heart for struggling anyway.

--Ernie, you sure you OK? You really look like shit!

--Yeah, I’m OK.

Ernie hops into the back of the van. Nathan closes the door behind him and latches it. Ernie can hear each footstep as Nathan moves in to the driver’s seat, feel the engine rumble to life and the van lurch forward toward “intake.”

Ernie reaches into his pocket and withdraws his now mangled pack of cigarettes, takes out the least smashed one, with only a small circle of blood on it, and lights up. As he draws the smoke in the scent is almost overwhelming. He swallows his disgust and forges ahead, equating the process to just more of his own brand of immersion therapy.

He sits in the back of the van as it rolls quietly out of Morris Heights and starts to take notice of more peculiarities. His night vision, already amazing, is even more improved. The men in the back with him all give off a luminous glow, and with each heartbeat Ernie sees what can only be described as the pulse of their blood. Millions of illuminated channels flowing like incandescent estuaries out from a pulsing hub in the center of their chests, branching out into capillaries in their limbs.

Ernie shakes his head, rubs his eyes, and the effect goes away. As he is rubbing his eyes he notices his hands, perhaps for the first time since he awoke from the bliss. They are no longer the delicate-looking hands of new skin but rather a more weathered and leathery texture. He strokes the lines of his finger and palm prints. The texture of his palm is more like stone than skin, calloused and coarse. His nails are slightly longer and far stronger than before.

Realizing that he is clothed, he wonders to himself what else may have changed, desperately hoping that his member is not a calloused lump now as well. He never gets to use the thing these days—well, really he hasn’t had a proper fuck in a decade, at least not one that he wants to remember. But still, it would be hard to explain to a willing participant should the opportunity arise in the future. Never considered to be a man of overwhelming modesty, he proceeds to check on the status of his dick. He is relieved to find it shipshape and not a calcified caveman club.

***

Ernie finishes three more cigarettes before they get back into the city, each subsequent one declining in quality. He raps on the panel behind Nathan and asks if he can be let out here.

--Ernie, you sure you don’t want me to let you out by your place? You got a solid two-mile walk from here.

--If you don’t mind? I need the fresh air, and these fucking losers aren’t going anywhere.

Nathan reluctantly obliges and Ernie steps out, carefully ensuring that the doors to the van don’t open too wide or allow any wayward eyes to see the back filled with handcuffed and bagged gangbangers. He walks up to Nathan and thanks him for the lift. Nathan hands him another few dram vial filled with product.

--Here you go. You’re going to need this. Get home. Dose up and get on the mend. You really don’t look so hot.

--Thanks. I’m fine, and I will.

--And let’s not have a poor showing like this again in the future, eh?

--I think I probably doomed myself to two years of “told-you-so’s” from Claude.

--Ernie, you’ve done us all in.

The two smile as Ernie slaps the door of the van and turns, starts making his way south, figuring that if he is going to find out anything about this other group, this will be the place to start looking.

As he cranes his head around he is simply amazed at the world. All around him, nested throughout the city, are the faintly glowing circulatory systems and beating hearts of the city’s inhabitants. He can hear their conversations. Everything is clear and simultaneously jumbled. The more he strains to see the glowing systems the clearer they become. The less he focuses, the more the glow fades.

Ernie sits at a bench on the west edge of the Park. He sniffs the air around him; it is alive with the smells of food and sweat and garbage and breath. Like a bloodhound he is able to discern each note of each smell, each ingredient.

After a few moments concentrating, he begins to pull out the unmistakable scent of the infected. The sweet venom wafting through the air hidden in the other smells of the city. It isn’t much, but it’s a start. Ernie rubs his coarse palms together like two large pumice stones, huffs into his hands and starts to walk.

Realizing that his bloodstained outfit looks a bit suspect, he decides to change up his outfit on the fly. He slips into a Duane Reade one block over and pulls down one of the shirts hanging on a modest endcap near the register. A grey slim-fit T-shirt with the slogan I ♥ NYC. He sets it on the counter.

--Lemme grab a pack of smokes, whatever you got. It don’t really matter.

The girl responds without ever lifting her gaze.

--We have over forty types.

Ernie shrugs.

--Just grab something, whatever. It doesn’t really matter. They all taste like shit, right?

The girl reaches for a pack of Virginia Slims 100s and then changes her mind at the last second and grabs a pack of Camel instead.

--Here, these aren’t that bad.

He catches the eye of the young girl at the register, who’s clearly less put off by the bloody and bullet-riddled dress shirt than she should be. He can smell the cheap Canal Street knock-off perfume she has hosed herself with to hide the musky scent of recent sex. Ernie still forgets sometimes that he looks as young as the rest of “the kids these days.” He can easily hit on a girl in her twenties without there being any issues or concerns about age difference.

Ernie decides to explain the carnage on his shirt.

--Indie zombie film. Shooting up the road. My big break hopefully.

She nods, lets out a meager smile.

--That’s cool. I like your contacts.

Not knowing how to respond to the statement, he looks above the register to catch a glimpse of his eyes in the mirrored glass angled around the store to help prevent shoplifting. The outsides of his iris are drawn in a thin line of red, with tiny bloodshot wisps stretching out from the edge of his iris to the far corners of his eyes. As he focuses more on the reflection to get a clear zoom on the image the thin angel’s hair-fine wisps grow and pulsate. Under his breath he huffs, stops focusing as hard and the wisps recede back to the edges of his iris.

--You got to be fucking kidding me.

--Excuse me?

--Nothing, just… here add these to it.

Ernie throws out a cheap pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from the small display on the countertop. The cashier scoops them up and scans them. Ernie pays and takes his change, walking toward the door, when the cashier calls out to him.

--Good luck with all that.

Even though he’s used to the pain, the bliss, the need for the product, his new enhancements as one of the infected, his ability to heal, he still has the most trouble understanding or dealing with kind words from others. He simply can’t accept that he is indeed attractive to the opposite sex.

He grumbles his frustration and as his feet hit the concrete sidewalk outside he pulls off the old blood-drenched shirt and tosses it into an open-topped wire garbage can on the corner. A woman passing by admires his muscular frame and comments on the dog tags nesting between his chiseled pecs, which he has developed without any effort of his own.

--Looking good, soldier boy.

Ernie nods uncomfortably and quickly throws on the new t-shirt. Aside from the bloodstains on his dark pants he looks no less presentable than the rest of the mopes out this late wandering the street. To hide his creepy new eye effects he throws on the aviators.

--The perfect douchebag.

He mumbles to himself as he catches his reflection off a passing car’s window. After a moment, he pulls the sunglasses off and tosses them in the trash too.

--Fuck it.

Ernie stands at the corner for a second and waits for the scent to catch his nose. After a few moments it hits him, the unique scent of the venom, the Virus. It starts his blood pumping and tickles at his insides like a first kiss. Ernie starts walking, following the scent and its origins, whatever or whoever the scent is coming from. As he walks toward the source, he hopes that it will have some answers.

Chapter 12

Romania, 1739

Poor Antonios lies dying slowly in a room with the other victims of Eliska. Their muted moans and whispers fill the small earthen hut, quivering bodies being taken over by fever and pain. Hearts and bodies shattered.

He has awoken for the first time since the attack, scared and heartbroken. Evidence of the horrors that claimed most in his village and his beloved mama surround him.

Little Antonios reaches to feel the hole in his face. He knows it is there, but his probing fingers do not find it—instead he feels the scruff of previously non-existent facial hair. He is fevered but somehow still alive. Alesh, an old woman and herbalist from the village, enters the hut carrying a clay pot filled with water; she takes it around the room, offering it to each person. Antonios remembers Alesh from the illness a year prior, how she helped all those afflicted with illness and provided comfort to the dying.