He stared at the hulk of his car. Stripped. Picked over like a mollusk after the gulls had been there. A lifeless sh.e.l.l.

s.h.i.t. He couldn't believe it. He'd let this happen to the family car. It was a ton or so of pure, raw, undiluted symbol. Sitting on the hardened dirt of a towaway lot.

That f.u.c.ker Dwayne. It wasn't Dwayne's fault, ultimately, he knew that. It was his fault. Dwayne was just a drug addict who'd seen an opportunity that Jim Diggins had stupidly dropped in his lap. But, nevertheless, Dwayne had preyed on him. It was like stealing from a blind man. A r.e.t.a.r.ded blind man. Dwayne was raw, undiluted symbol, too.

And Jim wanted to kill him.

Thursday Night, 10:07 P.M., Oakland A sultry night at Winston Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Lots of goods going around. Joleen and Binda turning toss-up tricks to get their blasts. Dwayne pacing in front of the rockhouse. Thinking: two hundred forty-five dollars. For all that stuff I got out of that Acura. Could have gone to the joint for stealing a car. Five to ten years in prison for two Cs and forty-five f.u.c.king dollars. n.o.body wanted to buy a hot car. All that risk for an hour's worth of rock...

Then here came Samson Ramirez in a new BMW that looked carved out of a single block of snow and ice. So new it didn't have the plates on it, just a sticker in the windshield.

Samson was half white, half Mexican, but he'd been on the street so long Dwayne thought of him as just another homeboy. He was a hard motherf.u.c.ker, and getting harder as his biz got bigger. He was supposed to be pulling down even more money than Doc now, which was what his white BMW was about, Dwayne figured, to advertise that.

Samson was pulling up in the white BMW, parking across the street and a ways down, not wanting to a.s.sociate the car too obviously with the rockhouse. He had long, wavy brown hair in a fancy unis.e.x perm, a brown leather jacket and brown leather pants with just a touch of a Latin flare about them. He was small but good looking, with his white Mama's green eyes and his Mexican Daddy's perfect white teeth. Perfect, but he'd had an incisor replaced with a gold tooth, to go with his thick gold chains and maybe just for the flash of wealth in his patronizing smile. They said he didn't do his own product, but some combination of crystal meth and Demerol instead. You could see it in the way he moved. Real fast, but real smooth.

Raiders came out of the rockhouse to meet Samson on the sidewalk. Raiders was a tall black man in a red jogging sweatsuit that he never changed or washed, a gold Raiders' medallion around his neck and a blue waistpack slung around his hips. The pack hung like a s.c.r.o.t.u.m because of the snub-nosed pistol in it. They called him Raiders because when his talk wasn't about grinding it was always about the Oakland Raiders; he held the team in reverence like they were G.o.ds.

Dwayne thought: Maybe I do it now. I could walk up to Samson when he's talking to Raiders and ask for the delivery work, talk him up good.

But he didn't have the nerve yet. The man didn't know him.

Dwayne stepped back into a doorway, where he wouldn't be noticed. He waited, listening in.

"'nother one died," Raiders was telling Samson, "and 'nother one killed with his head busted in."

"Same as old Hobey?" Samson asked.

"Same as Hobey. Head busted in like a melon."

Dwayne felt a strange contraction in his stomach. Hobey was dead? He hadn't heard. It was never a surprise to hear that someone he knew had died. He'd seen his father beat his mother with piece of pipe and he wasn't surprised when she died in the hospital. And two of his homeboys had died within a year of each other, one fighting over base and the other from heroin. And he had an aunt was a wh.o.r.e, died of pneumonia that was probably from AIDS. But Hobey had seemed like a survivor, like he was too careful to get himself popped.

It was kind of scary, Hobey being dead. Made Dwayne remember what Uncle Garland had said about Essy.

"They think dogs are gettin' into them," Raiders was saying. "Somebody bust their heads in, then wild dogs come along . . ."

"You making me sick, I don't need to hear this," Samson said, grimacing. "What makes you think it was the silver cap that did the other ones?"

"I sold it to them both, half an hour before. One of them went right here, died in the house, other one out in the alley."

"You get rid of them?"

"What you think?"

"So what you want me to do about this s.h.i.t?"

"Maybe it's the bug spray."

"Everybody uses bug spray for bonding."

"Not this industrial s.h.i.t we been getting. They use Black Flag or something. We oughta go back to it, maybe it's this stuff that's been-"

"Shut up. It's not us, pendajo. Okay? This bug spray I got makes the stuff go farther, people like it, they come back for more, that's bueno."

"Reporters was hanging around the 'hood, s'afternoon. n.o.body told 'em s.h.i.t. And The Man be coming around. Asking s.h.i.t."

"They connect it to us?"

"Not yet."

"Then f.u.c.k 'em. It's not us anyway." Samson made a dismissive motion, a hummingbird blur of his hand, and started toward the front steps that led up to the old two bedroom stucco place that was the neighborhood rockhouse.

Dwayne started to go after Samson. Froze when he saw Raiders glare at him. They'd already had a run-in. Come back when you got the green, Raiders had said, we not hiring. You come around with money or we hammer your whole f.u.c.king body.

Samson was going into the house. Opportunity walking away. Dwayne rubbed his Bic-thumb callouses with a forefinger, could almost feel a dove there, between his fingers. Could picture putting the dove in a pipe, firing up. Could almost taste it.

Once Samson was in his "office" there'd be no getting to see him. Not from where Dwayne was at in the pecking order.

Dwayne smelled base, someone smoking somewhere. Turned and saw Joleen in the front seat of a beat-up van, her head bobbing over some guy's lap. The guy firing a blast in a broken-off stem, the glow pulsing, lighting up a little blue skull tattoo on the guy's cheek, and showing his face. He was a big, dirty yellow-haired white guy, a biker type, with an overgrown beard and matted hair; a biker who'd had to sell his bike for crack.

Dwayne smelled the burning base. Watched the flare of pipe. Heard the biker grunt as the blast rocked him.

f.u.c.k it. Dwayne couldn't stand it. He started up the stairs, after Samson. "Yo, Samson-!" he called after him. "Yo, my bro, wait up-"

But then Jim White Guy stepped out of the bushes with a gun. A .45 automatic. He was grinning. Motherf.u.c.ker was real proud of himself.

10:15 P.M.

"You f.u.c.king with me, right?" Samson said.

Raiders shook his head. "While I was out. Ramon told me. Three more dead, just all in the last half hour, right here in this f.u.c.king house."

Samson and Raiders were in the pipe room, which had once been someone's living room. Now it was a big box, just a place to sit and smoke crack with a couple of burn-pocked mattresses on the floor and a smell like a s.h.i.tty diaper from the plugged-up toilet in the bathroom off to one side. Naked bulb, windows double boarded over, linoleum curling up off the sagging wooden floor. Intricately calligraphed posse graffiti on the walls next to the mattresses. One broken stem in a corner.

Samson swore in Spanish. "What you do with them?"

"Some of the posse taking them to the dumpster behind the Pioneer Chicken place. I f.u.c.king don't know. I ain't smoking none of that silver cap."

"You don't be smoking at all around here. I go off on you, I catch you. Don't smoke at work." But he was thinking about something else.

"We use up this batch, then maybe we switch to Black Flag for the bonding agent in the stuff-who's making it up?"

"The base? Ramon."

"He get sick?"

"Hard to tell with Ramon."

"Okay, we get rid of the Bug Deth now, but we use up this batch of the cooking. That's forty, fifty thousand dollars, Raiders."

Raiders looked like he was about to argue when Ramon and Buzzy came running in, yelling, and Ramon was missing half his face.

10:18 P.M.

Jim stared at Dwayne. Jim wasn't sure how he was going to do this. Or what exactly he was going to do. Should he really do it, go ahead and kill him? Or maybe just kneecap him? Bust his knees open with a bullet. f.u.c.king change his life for him. Ruin his transportation.

"How much you get for that s.h.i.t you took off my car, Dwayne? More'n four hundred bucks? Probably less. Pretty pathetic, a.s.shole."

Dwayne just stared back at him. "You got me confused with somebody, man." Maybe if he kept saying it, the guy'd buy it. Just keep saying it, make him doubt himself.

"No. Uh-uh. I was f.u.c.ked up but I remember you vividly, Dwayne, and Joleen. I found her. See, I figured she wasn't in on it, so I didn't shoot her, and she told me you'd be here eventually."

They were standing in the thick shadows by the dark green bushes, standing amidst dog c.r.a.p in the balding front yard at an angle where n.o.body could see them but they could see most everybody. Jim White Guy had picked the spot carefully.

Inside the house. Ramon on his knees clutching his face, blood running down his arm, and twining through the links of the gold chain on his chest. Sobbing.

Samson trying to get a coherent story from him.

"The bodies in the dumpster what?"

And then the naked, filthy guys came stinking and stumbling into the piperoom and when Ramon saw them he screamed and scurried away on his hands and knees. Samson thought they were some kind of homeless lunatics until he saw that one of them was dragging his guts behind him on the floor.

Outside, Dwayne saying, "You mixed up, man, you piped up or something, got me mixed up wid somebody. It dark out here, too. Let's go in the light, over there, you see if it really me. Come on, put your gun in your pocket." All of this was halfhearted. Dwayne realized he was hoping Jim White Guy would shoot him. Put a hole in the hole.

"You lying sack of s.h.i.t," Jim Diggins said.

Dwayne took a step back, into the streetlight shine. Jim took a step toward him. Aimed the gun.

Then they heard the screaming from the house, and the gunshots. Three seconds of Dwayne and Jim gaping at the house. Another thirty seconds of uncertainty, staring at one another. Dwayne saying, "We better get the f.u.c.k-"

That's when the naked, coughing man with brains on his fingers came staggering out of the darkness by the bushes, coming from the back door.

Coming at them.

Dwayne knew it was brains on the naked man's fingers, because of the head the dude was carrying under his arm. It was a handsome head with a lot of hair that waved like a jacket fringe as the naked guy moved. A big gouge taken out of the skull. It was Samson's head.

"Oh f.u.c.k," Dwayne said. Recognizing Samson's still-twitching face on the severed head. Seeing that the naked motherf.u.c.ker lunatic had one nasty, filth-caked hand in the hole in Samson's head, was scooping out the brains, eating them, using his fingers like a kid eating the frosting left over in a bowl...

Jim and Dwayne stared at the naked guy. A white guy with a bloated stomach and snaggly brown teeth. The naked guy was staring back without blinking, his milky eyes not moving. Standing there, swaying like he might fall over any second.

Jim was making a choking sound down in his throat.

The naked guy dropped Samson's head. Thump. It rolled a little, in the gra.s.s.

The naked dude thrust his head out a little on his neck, like a cat, and sniffed at them. Sniff. Sniff again. Then he made a croaking sound, his mouth exuding a stink that made Dwayne want to puke. He took a step toward Dwayne. Sniffing. Made another sound. A word this time.

"Base."

He reached his hands up toward Dwayne's head.

Dwayne backed away and fell over. The guy dropped to his knees beside Dwayne and gnashed his teeth at him, reached for his head and...

Dwayne yelled hoa.r.s.ely: "Jim, help me, man!" This wasn't the way to die. Not this way. Uh-uh, no.

Jim hesitated. Then he fired the .45 at the naked guy. Blam. The flash strobe lighting up the yard for a tenth of a second, a flame licking out, the dead man staggering- Oh yes, Dwayne knew it was a dead man.

Staggering, turning toward Jim, all his movements like flinches. The dead man with a hole right through its heart.

Jim felt unreal, looking at the walking dead man. Like he should lean back in his chair and reach for the popcorn and just let things happen on a screen. He fought the feeling, thinking: this is happening to me. Aiming the gun this time as the corpse came at him, aiming at the dead man's head. Blam, flash, right between the eyes. It went down like a puppet with its strings cut.

Then it started thrashing, kind of floppy-sideways on the ground, like a landed fish. Making sputtering sounds, s.h.i.t and blood running down its leg from its b.u.t.t. One of its eyes swelling up, popping out with yellow and red fluid, as it began to crawl with one arm, pulling itself toward them.

"Base," it rasped. "Crack. Rock. Silver top. Base."

There were three more coming around the other corner of the house. Two more on the street, coming down the sidewalk. Mostly naked. One of them didn't have any eyes, and it had a rusty piece of metal through its middle, its head moving hurky-jerky. All of them coming toward Jim and Dwayne.

One of them was carrying Joleen's head. Her head raggedly torn off at the neck. Holding her head up to its face, biting into Joleen's forehead. The naked men coming at them sniffing, snuffling...

Dwayne and Jim ran up the stairs, into the house.

Both of them yelling the same thing so much in synch it sounded rehea.r.s.ed: "f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k FUUUUUUCK!"

10:35 P.M.

They found two freshly killed women in the front hall, one with her head missing, the other one with her head only half attached. The top gone from that head. Scooped out. Part of the brain. Just part of it. They only wanted...

Jim threw up in the pipe room. Samson's body was curled up in one corner, a puddle still spreading out from it, Ramon dead beside it, face down. The back of his head gone. One of the naked guys was clawing feebly at a closet door. Strings of entrails had dragged behind it, leaving a rancid trail on the floor, the top of its head shot off. It was sc.r.a.ping like a cat at the closet door, and they could hear someone sobbing in there, someone hiding in the dark closet.

The naked bulb lit the room brightly, every corner of it. Stark and sharp.

Jim straightened up, feeling like he was going to hyperventilate, and walked over to the crawling thing at the closet door (thinking about what it was, with quiet amazement: a human being gone literally rotten, dead meat dragged around by hunger like an empty cart dragged by a rabid horse. It was entropy that could feel hunger; sc.r.a.ping at the door in a tape loop of robotic stupidity, a thing that had once been a person, someone whose picture had appeared in some high school year book...) and shot it twice in the back of the head, near the spine. It twitched and slumped, then started moving again-but weak now, like a dying roach. Probably have to incinerate the son of a b.i.t.c.h to really kill him, Jim thought.

Feeling numb, Jim dragged it away by the ankle and shoved it in the bathroom, crammed a board under the doork.n.o.b to lock the thing in. It made faint scrabbling sounds behind the door.

Jim went back to the closet. It was a long way across the little room. "Come on out, man, I shot the f.u.c.king thing," Jim said to the guy in the closet. He wanted living people around him.

Dwayne was pushing bodies up against the door to the hall. Samson's headless body, Ramon's body. Dwayne was crying without tears, his face contorted like a little kid's. Jim looked at him and thought: He's no more criminal than I am. Just another guy on a street corner. Used to be a kid watching Sat.u.r.day morning cartoons.

Dragging mattresses up against the door, dumping them on the bodies, now. That wouldn't work for long. Those things could pull people's heads off. They were strong.

Jim opened the closet door. A black dude in a grimy jogging outfit was crouched in there, hugging his knees, shaking. An Oakland Raiders medallion on a heavy gold chain around his neck. There was a little snub-nosed gun on the floor between his feet. Probably used up all the rounds in it.

"Raiders, tha's Raiders," Dwayne said.

"There a phone here?" Jim asked Raiders, tasting vomit in his mouth.

"They gone?"

"No. They're outside," Jim said. Fighting panic. Fighting the urge to shove the guy out of the closet and get in it himself. "I said, 'Is there a phone here?'"Don't lose it don't lose it don't lose it...