“things” were, and had no idea how to avoid them. This lose/lose created a buzzing in his head that was something he had previously been able to needle away, and the fact that his addiction was no longer an option made him feel his dislocation and anxiety all the more acutely. As he struggled to keep it together, he realized that the drugs had been an artificial, but highly reliable, horizon for him, a far-off land that was always available whenever he felt boxed in or cornered—which had been, and continued to be, most of the time.
No more travel for him, though. His passport had been revoked.
When his boots finally halted, he was surprised, and he looked down at them with the expectation that they would explain themselves. There was no answer coming, however, and when his brain gave them a nudge to keep going, they stayed where they were.
It was as if he were on autopilot, and the person in charge of his remote had punched a button—
His head tilted up, sure as if there was a puppet string attached to his eyebrows and the guy running this Muppet version of himself was getting him ready to say a line of dialogue.
Well. What do you know. He was on a narrow street that was littered with big trash: soiled mattresses, a kitchen sink, a refrigerator with the door removed. Somebody had clearly decamped out of an apartment and wanted the city to take care of their shit. Or maybe it was a renovation job, although in this kind of zip code, demolition was more likely.
In the dim light, which did not compromise his vision at all, a figure stepped out of a shallow doorway two blocks down. Mr. F immediately recognized them, though they were a stranger: It was like seeing a distant family member, one who you couldn’t put a name to, but who you recalled from weddings and funerals when you were young.
He knew this other man. This other man knew him.
Not that either of them were men anymore.
And the one controlling Mr. F was insisting they interact. They hit Mr. F’s Go Forward toggle, and like any battery-powered device, his body was ready to do what it was told. Meanwhile, the other lesser seemed to be waiting for him to do something, say something—and that was when Mr. F got real with himself. He hadn’t actually been pacing in random directions all day long. He’d been avoiding the others, shifting among the streets in a defensive fashion so there was no chance of intersection.
Like the asphalt grid of downtown was a radar screen and the other blips warships he had to steer clear of.
As his right foot started to lift, he forced it back down onto the pavement, and when the boot came up again, it was bizarre to find himself not in control of his own body. Then again, after years of heroin addiction? Like he wasn’t used to being a servant to a master outside of himself?
Forcing his body to obey his brain, not this external will, he took a step backward. And another.
The other slayer seemed confused at the retreat—
The attack on it came from the left, the airborne vampire pile-driving into the lesser, taking it down so hard, there was a crack that had to have been its skull or spine.
The impulse to join the fight, to defend, to conquer and kill, was as foreign as sobriety, and as compelling as the promise of a nod, but Mr. F fought to back himself out of the way, flattening his shoulders against whatever building he bumped into, gripping the bricks, holding himself in place against the draw to intercede in some hand-to-hand he had not been trained for and had no experience in.
The conflict did not go well for his comrade.
The vampire took control of the ground game, pinning the slayer in place, a length of chain swinging out to one side. But instead of strangling the slayer with the links, the attacker let the momentum wrap them around his fist. Then the beating began. That reinforced set of knuckles pounded down into the face of the lesser over and over again, black blood splashing the killer as bones were crushed and features gave way.
Mr. F stayed where he was, even as the vampire finally sat back and caught its breath. After a moment of recovery, the thing turned to its shoulder and spoke into a receiver of some sort, the words too