It's no great secret that everything is for sale, that everything has a price -- because everything is desired. We are consumers and therefore it's our duty to wish for possession. Of land. Objects. People.
Emma Larson is worth $50. It says so on the sign that sits next to her under the old bridge downtown, the one that she painted herself.
I bring my camera's lens to bear on it, resting the crosshairs on the wooden placard that so devastatingly reduces life to dollars.
"I've made us something to eat," she tells me and I turn, retaining the camera to my eye. The lighting under the bridge is minimal but she has candles burning in little pots and wine bottles she has scavenged so it almost looks like an altar and the steaming bowl she holds some sort of religious offering.
There are fly posters for Bill Hicks' gigs pasted and pinned to most of the walls and a pirated CD of his plays in the background.
She has the build of a swan, beneath the rumpled combats and hooded top. It's been six days now since I first met Emma Larson.
The man takes off his jacket and tie, rolls up his sleeves. The air seems full of static as if one of the giant broadcasting pylons that straddle the land above the underpass has collapsed and bleeding electricity. A few have gathered to watch but Emma tells me this is a weeknight and that things will get much livelier at the weekend.
She has removed her hoodie and stripped down to an athletic vest and martial arts trousers, her small, broad feet bare. I've brought in some extra lighting borrowed from Russ who had taken his little anarchist mob to Prague for one reason or another and pan down the patchwork of reds, yellows, blues and blacks that cover her skin. I want to see her training. I want to see her contorting herself, the shape of her muscles as they move beneath her skin, the ripple of cartilage and tissue that I know would be so exquisite on her.
She limbers up and the man stares straight at her, cracks his knuckles. He's about one hundred and fifty pounds heavier than her and from the looks of it most of it sits around his waist but I know from experience that it doesn't take skill to cause damage. The pair of them stand within a loose chalk square that has been marked on the ground, Emma taking in several deep breaths as the man unclips his watch strap, slips the device up to his knuckles, then clasps it again. The gold band glitters across the broad side of his hand and he tells her, "Okay."
And suddenly they are moving like boxers, circling each other in an uneven spiral that brings then closer then draws them away and Emma's raised hands go to her side as she straightens, muscles taught, and the man delivers the first blow. He cracks her across the face cleanly with his makeshift knuckleduster and Emma stumbles backwards, abruptly wrongfooted. Before she can right herself the man has kicked away one of her legs, bringing her to one knee, then delivers another blow to her head with the watch, and another.
She has already told me what would happen her, what they were paying their money for, but seeing her being beaten into the ground like that was something I could never have prepared myself for.
She doesn't raise a hand to defend herself, instead using them to scramble away from him along with whatever other parts of her body she can call into order to complete the manoeuvre -- elbow, shoulder, hip.
The crowd surges around me and the two fighters as if subconsciously contemplating, as a single entity, joining the fray. I have to fight against them to retain the clear view I have had of her and feel strangely naked without my camera. I know that if I had it I would be afforded an opening by the crowd as they bowed to the authority of the mechanical eye but she wasn't going to let me film one of the events, not yet. I felt insanely anxious at letting all this slip by without recording it, my fingers twitching for the curve of the camera's body and the sound of its inner workings next to my head like a second pulse.
By this point Emma has managed to get to her feet again and the crowd shout to the fighters -- not words of encouragement for there was no question as to whose efforts were being supported in the battle, but instead instructions on where to attack her next and how. With their increasingly loud and frenzied cries Emma seems to be growing smaller and smaller. Everyone is against her.
I pointlessly urged her in my mind to fight back.
But I knew that that wasn't what the man had paid fifty bucks for.
"His name is McLaren," she tells me and this is later that night, or early the next morning depending on your point of view and body clock. Whichever, the sky is grey with the first attempts at sunlight, watery beams penetrating the smog clouds at irregular intervals. My mind is still on the night's events, framing what is happening over and over from different angles, different distances. I couldn't film it as it happened so this was the closest I had.
"Pierce McLaren. He was a client of mind back when I was on the game. He started off like a lot of the others, wanting a little rough but soon I realised it was more than that with him. Soon enough we were wrestling and fucking at the same time, then not longer after that we were just wrestling. It was around about the time -- oh -- wait--"
In my head I was watching her tumble backwards into one of the bridge's slimy walls, bouncing off of it in slo-mo and back into McLaren's bloodied fist. It took me a moment to realise she had interrupted herself.
"What?"
She raises a finger to her swollen lips, the disinfectant-soaked rag hanging limply in her other hand.
"Wait."
"The House of Senate says that pornography is anything of no artistic merit that causes sexual thought," the tape player says. The speakers were rusted and semi-fused but Hicks' southern drawl was clear. "No artistic merit, causes sexual thought? Sounds like every fucking commercial on TV…."
Emma smiles to herself, shakes her head lightly. "Anyway, you were asking about the people that come to me. McLaren, he's a classic. Don't know how much he must have given me by now between this and hooking."
"What do you mean, a classic?"
She glances briefly at the camera sitting on its tripod between and behind us, suddenly reminded of its presence by the whirr of the autofocus. I think it was one of the things that attracted me to her those first few times we spoke, her reticence to be put in front of the camera. It was a rare thing now, to find that in a person and it intrigued me just what it was that made her nervous. I had managed to get her to agree to me setting it up and running it remotely for now in the hope that she would get used to it.
"I mean he's realised what I've realised -- that violence is the new sex. We're all so fucking saturated with dicks and vaginas in every possible combination that nothing stimulates us any more. There's nothing left. People are beginning to look elsewhere."
"Beating the shit out of you turns them on?" I ask. It's almost painful for me to look at her face all puffed up and oil-coloured as it is. At this point I'm obviously not one of Emma's classics. "No, no. It's not like that. This isn't about sex -- you have to get away from the idea that the only true stimulus is sexual. This is different. There are all these holes inside us and if you can't fill one of them, then maybe you just have to move on and try filling another."
"Sounds sexual to me," I say, then smile to try and soften the atmosphere. It takes a moment but then she smiles too, pressing a stone to her face in lieu of an ice pack to stem the swelling. And as I watch her I realise that already she has forgotten about the camera watching us. "What about the rest?" I ask quickly as if worried that she too might pick up on her lack of anxiety and necessitate its reversal.
She shrugs and inhales the joint she has rolled, hands it to me. "Frustrated husbands fantasising about assaulting their wives or secretaries. Young guys that still can't comprehend what they've paid fifty bucks for even as they land the first blow. Executives looking for a new toy, a new stimulus that doesn't lie between the legs of some teenage office junior."
"They're all men? You never get any women?"
She shakes her head, takes another toke on the spliff. "Not so far. Just guys. You'd be amazed how much aggression men have inside them towards women."
"You're never scared it might go too far? That they might beat you too hard or molest you?"
She lets out a small laugh. "Hah. Look, I already told you this isn't about sex. Guys looking for a fuck don't get this far. Plus I can sense them a mile off. And I can handle myself if need be. I wouldn't do this if I weren't in full control."
"But how can you be sure of that control? There was two dozen guys there tonight. If they had turned on you, what would you have done?"
She throws the rag to the ground and stands up stiffly, dusting herself off. "You don't believe me? Fine. If you're that concerned you can come with me later, see for yourself."
"Come where?"
Her back is turned to me as she opens up a small tin and begins to roll another joint. "You'll see," she says. "And turn that fucking camera off."
I won't deny the fact that the first time I saw her the thought crossed my mind about what it would be like to fuck her. My introduction was to her legs, draped over the low concrete wall she sat on near the underpass she called home, and my eyes had followed the tiny, dancer's feet up the muscled calves, rounded knees and sturdy, pale thighs.
I thought of all the wonderful shapes she could put herself into and that's why I stopped and watched her on the rare occasions I was downtown.
Kobe and I had broken up in that way we had which was more just a case of boredom with each other than any real problems in our so-called relationship. I would go back to him soon enough but for now life had other kinds of fulfilment for me.
As she sleeps, I take the camera from its cradle on the tripod and heave it quietly onto my shoulder. Only one of the studio lights are still on, pointed away from us and illuminating the bricked-up rear end of the underpass. I pan across her prostrate form, her posture designed to avoid the uncomfortable spots created by McLaren's attack. (I know that 'attack' is the wrong word but can think of nothing else more appropriate right now.) I let the pixellating screen absorb the contours of her neck and shoulders for me, the shadows of her spine and the smooth slope where her torso twists into her hips.
I recognise the man as he reaches out a hand to me so hesitatingly take it in my own. "You were at the fight last night," I say suspiciously.
His body is toned in such a way as to suggest his muscles are born of gymnastics or yoga rather than weightlifting, his bright blue eyes locking onto me beneath a small explosion of darkly curled hair. "Fight? That was no fight," he says, glancing at Emma and I can't tell whether he is smiling or grimacing.
"That's a fight."
I look to where he is pointing, two men wrapped around each other and ravaging blows on one another. Their grunts echo around the warehouse we are in that is nothing but four enormous walls with windows lining the very tops of them and a thinly-plated flat roof lying across them. The same scene is repeated a half-dozen times across the dusty concrete floor as if it were the scene of an illusionist's trick, mirror upon mirror reflecting each other.
"Brody," the man says and I realise we are still holding hands. He reminds me of Kobe slightly, possessing similarly beautiful forearms. "Brody Villenueve".
"Elizabeth Afterlife," and he releases my hand slowly, poetically. Emma has left our side, walking across to some old gymnastic equipment that had been set up in one corner and standing between a pair of suspension hoops.
"What's with the camera?"
"I'm a docu. Freelance."
"Anything I might have seen?"
"I'm not exactly prime time."
"Aahhhh," he says, placing a hand on my back and leading me towards Emma, now hanging from one of the rings. "We're talking about the pirate stations, right? The Media Virus guys?"
"Sometimes. Whatever pays."
"Whatever pays, right," he says, then shouts up at Emma, "Your lady here says whatever pays, Em. That's they what its about, right? Whatever pays?"
"That's right, Brode. Life's just a ride. It doesn't matter."
She was heaving herself up and down on the ring and I imagined that her freshly damaged muscles must still have been screaming in pain.
"Ain't nothing that's not for sale, right Em? Dignity, pride, self-respect. It all has it's price. Right?"
I was aware that the fights have slowed or stopped, that attention was on us and that something was probably brewing.
"Right, Em?" Brody shouts up at her again.
But before the sentence is out she has spun from the hoops, pirouetting in the air and landing on top of the man, her knees tucked in so that the full length of her shins connect with his chest and force all of the wind out of him. Despite the surprise Brody manages to grab her ankle and pull her down with him as he crashes to the ground, lashing out with one clenched fist but Emma is too quick, ducking out of the way of the blow and scissoring her arms together around his elbow then connects her hands at his wrist so that his entire lower arm is encased and bends it abruptly back at the joint. He seems to bite down on the pain, reaching around and grabbing her by the waist, spinning her around. The other fighters are slowly converging on us and instinctively I draw the camera onto my shoulders and begin filming.
Brody rolls backwards, throwing his torso across Emma's, his arm still locked tight in her grip as she uses her legs to defend herself, kicking him once on each side of his head even as he stabs his fingers into an exposed bruise on her chest then forces her heel into his thorax. Despite his relative bulk she manages to throw him up off of her with a thrust of her hips, simultaneously releasing his arms as he spins and then forcing them behind his back as she landed on top of him and punched him once, hard, in the face. Brody lets out a massive grunt as if he has been holding in his breath the entire time, spits blood from his mouth. There is a smile on his face as Emma climbs off of him and I notice her grimacing as she limps away, sucking in deep breaths, her tired limbs noticeably quivering.
"There's a couple of events next week, Em," Brody calls out after her, coughing halfway through the sentence because of his bruised larynx. "You're welcome to come along -- like old times?" She demonstrates for him the latest advances in middle-finger technology, mumbling irritably to herself as she stalks towards the trays of medicinal supplies stacked by the warehouses's sole fire exit. And I realise I have been allowed a glimpse into just how much Emma Larson can look after herself.
It'd taken me three weeks of watching and filming her discreetly as I walked by the bridge she lived under to finally go talk to Emma. And it had taken me about seven minutes of her company for me to realise I had a brand-new obsession going here. It is my personality, and always has been, to be obsessive about things and more than once it has caused me problems. On the other hand, more than once it has brought me great pleasure.
And two nights after witnessing her tussle with Brody, an event I now saw as more akin to two puppies play fighting than anything more serious, I am able to add another notch to the latter category.
She is as enthralling during sex as I have imagined her to be -- beguiling and gentle and playful in that way that only women can be with each other. We are so far removed from the brutality that surrounds her normally, from the threat of masculinity. She traces my tattoos with her fingertips and at times I forget to involve myself in the act, instead leaning back and watching her move, observing the ripple of tissue beneath her skin and the shape of her bones as if it were a ballet of flesh -- until she pulls my mouth onto her and everything is forgotten.
Even the camera, recording quietly behind us.
Afterwards I rise and go to the exposed water pipe that she has fixed a rusted tap head to and wash off the smears of her blood from her opened wounds. Her medicine bottles and needles lie in a long metal box that she has only recently begun left open and unlocked, a sign of her growing willingness to reveal herself to me as well as the camera. The bottles are small and made of glass with pinpricks in their plastic lids where she sucks the fluids out, a variety of hypervitamins, nutrients and painkillers that she doses herself with regularly so that she might go on doing what she is doing just that little bit longer.
I turn and she is asleep, her back to me. The single contour of her spine, like a brushstroke, engraved onto the pale skin, her hip a sharp crescent rising away from her. I find myself wondering how much more space there is on her body for more damage and what will happen when it runs out. Arizona Bay is still looping quietly on the stereo as it had been through the entire sex act and I watch her silently as Hick tells me for the sixth or seventh time that life was just a ride.
Several days later I sit patiently as the underpass is readied for another night. Brody and three others whom I also recognise from the crowds from previous fights are busy clearing a space and delineating uneven borders on the grounding chalk. Brody himself is talking with Emma in the opposite corner and I can tell just by looking at the them that there's been something between them. He notices me watching then places a hand on Emma's shrinking waist.
We'd had a small argument earlier after I found her injecting a third dosage of painkillers, asking her to stop just for a few nights but she had refused to hear my pleas, particularly when I could provide no good reason as to why she shouldn't.
The others move around me, joking with each other about fights they have had as if in a deliberate attempt to exclude me and so I retreat to my camera, secure, at least, behind its mechanical eye. Near the time when it all starts Emma come across to me and I notice how her skin seems to hang on her in places as if the muscles beneath was so battered it was collapsing in on itself.
"You okay?" she asks me. She barely seems to notice the camera now even with it nestled between our intimacy like a dog between a married couple. "Fine."
"I'm not going to call it off, so don't bother asking."
"I wasn't going to."
She nods. "I promise you I won't get hurt. You know I can take care of myself. Just let me do my thing and maybe in a couple of days I can afford to take a night off."
"'Kay," I say somewhat unenthusiastically. She touches my arm with a hesitancy that only seems to taint her actions when Brody is around. As she turns I stop her. "You're bleeding."
She looks down at the tear of blood and its accompanying slug trail running down her forearm out of a fresh needle hole, quickly grasps it more in shame than any attempt to stop the meagre leak, then leaves me alone. Over her departing shoulder Brody fixes me with a flat stare.
Over the following half hour a small crowd gathers, nervously crowding into the underpass like shell-shocked cockroaches. They each lay a minimal fee in the jar that one of Brody's friends is watching over, the odd one leaving his details so that an appointment can be assigned. It's one of the few occasions when my camera feels like a hostile entity amongst them rather than a welcome one and I find myself standing next to Brody as he watches Emma limbering up. She seems to be fighting her own body with each stretch, arguing with her tired and damaged muscles.
"She shouldn't be fighting tonight," I say to Brody, using his broad shoulder as a rest on which to support the camera. "We both know that."
"Why don't you just leave that decision up to her," he replies calmly without looking back. "She doesn't need you getting all maternal on her."
"Is that what she thinks?"
"She's had enough people telling her what to do, including me when she first started this shit. Let her have what time is left to herself."
Brody ducks away from me and I have to catch the camera's extra weight as it is transferred back into my hands. I spend the rest of the time leading up to the fight standing atop the bridge that runs over the overpass, trying to find poetry in the way the smog clouds from the factories disperses in the air. I hear the cheers begin and listen through the concrete to the muffled sound of blows landed and Emma's few possessions clattering around as she is thrown into them.
I feel like I am walking backwards and forwards at the same time, my head straining under the pressure of whether I should go watch over her and just leave to her to die like she so obviously wanted. As I descend the rubble that has been arranged into a small set of steps the voice of the crowd changes and I sense that something is wrong. I force my way through the collection of overweight white collar workers, spaced out body builders and bruised rednecks and Emma is swaying strangely before us, as if suspended from a wire too thin to see.
Her legs are half-collapsed beneath her, the man who has been unleashing himself upon her looking uncertainly at her, trying to assess whether he could or should hit her again. Emma's eyes are completely unfocused and there is a stream of blood running from her head, down her neck and between her breasts. When she falls, its happens in slow motion. I see the individual particles of dust that rise into a cloud around her and the flecks of blood that splatter across the stone.
I find myself entranced by her prone form, unmoving as Brody and his friends force everyone out including the fighter and I think to myself this is what she'll look like when she's dead. I'm bumped to one side as Brody goes to her, kneels down. She's like scrap in his arms as he lifts her towards the mattress she calls her bed, as if someone has made a plastercast of her body and lifted her from it, leaving the limp bandaged shell behind.
Brody issues instructions to one of the others, who retrieves Emma's metal box.
As I see him suck liquid from one of the bottles into a needle I snap out of my reverie and collapse to my knees beside him, grabbing his arm. "What the fuck are you doing? The last she needs is more goddam drugs."
Brody snaps his hand away, glaring at me. "Don't be fucking stupid. Of course she needs them." I make another grab but his reflexes are lightning fast. "But look what they're doing to her! Look how thin she's getting!"
"Is that a joke? Are you trying to be funny?"
The words confuse long enough for him to place the needle in Emma's shoulder and squeeze its glutinous contents into her. "Of course I'm not trying to be funny. What do you mean?"
He looks at me and something seems to pass through him, a realisation. "Fuck," he says, disbelieving. "She never told you did she?"
"Told me what?" Brody sighs, caressing the point on Emma's arm where he injected her. She groans lightly and I notice that her entire arm is quivering minutely. "Fuck it. If she hasn't told you by now she never will. It's her issue. None of my business."
He stands, throwing the needle at a plastic bag full of them in one corner but missing. The glass chamber shatters against the wall. One of the fighters is in the archway of the underpasses entrance, his broad chest and shoulders and shaven skull lined with silver moonlight.
"We're ready to go," he says, dangling keys in the air.
Brody reaches down and scoops Emma into his arms and despite his strength I know the ease with which he does it means she is in an even worse state than I first suspected.
"Brody? What are you talking about? Where are you taking her?"
"She needs to go to a hospital," he says, brushing me aside and I'm still too confused to do anything. "We knew this would happen sooner or later. Just look at the bottles."
Then he is gone and I am still standing in the middle of the underpass, alone, listening to the sound of a car speeding off. I stare at the footprints in the concrete dust, the specks of Emma's blood against the wooden chest where she keeps all her clothes and the metal pharmaceutical box. I bend down and pick up one of the 15cc bottles, turn it over in my hand.
Codeine.
I pick up another bottle, examine it next, wondering why Brody pointed me to them -- then notice that one of them has a label that is peeling partially at one edge I carefully pull it the rest of the way, revealing another label beneath and its far more than a simple painkiller. I don't recognise the brand name but I know the compound from a piece I worked on a few months back about viral infections. There are only a few drops of the clear, shiny liquid left inside. And I know without examining them that Emma has replaced the labels on at least some of the other bottles in the box, her opening up to me merely a charade; a gesture.
I put away the bottles, slam the lid of the box shut, and leave the underpass wondering what else she has lied to me about.
If Kobe hadn't chosen that night to page me for help I probably would have gone to the hospital soon enough despite my decision to let Emma Larson die if that's what she wanted. But he did and so for a week and a half I was several hundred miles away from the web I had become entangled in. He and his crew had raided an animal laboratory but things had quickly gone balls up and it had taken us a while to get things safe enough for him to leave the city. He had wanted me to stay but by that time my anger had faded to nothing and all I wanted was to get back to Emma and so I had made my excuses and promised to catch up with him later.
On the train back I had wondered if I would make it in time.
Now I sit uselessly on the steps of a building near the underpass, amidst the clatter of skateboarders grinding and kick flipping off of the railings, staring down at the sign that first attracted my attention.
Emma Larson. $30.
The virus is not only eating away at her, but her value too, it seems.
Brody and a few of the others are milling around, getting things ready and I amn't surprised she is still offering herself up to anyone willing to pay.
Finally I stand and walk down the embankment that leads to her home. We see each other at the same time and both hesitate. Brody nods at me then says something to the others and they all disappear into the shadows of the underpass.
"You're back," she says, an accusation, an expression of relief. Her arms are wrapped around her as if she is trying to hold herself together. There are goose bumps on her skin despite the temperature being in the high 90s.
"A friend of mine got in some trouble. I had to go help him."
She nods. "Brody told me. You left your camera. I kept it safe for you. But I don't want you to use it anymore."
There is a moment of silence and I take another couple of steps towards her, aware of how tentative I was being with her. "Shit, Em. You look like you should be on the cover of fucking Vogue or something. How much weight have you lost?"
She shrugs. "I'm not keeping a chart. Call it seven pounds for every day you were away."
"Maybe if you'd told me in the first place I wouldn't have gone away."
"I don't need you to look after me. What would you do anyway? It's strain-6, resistant even to the third-generation drugs."
"I've got contacts. Kobe, he knows people that have raided labs working on chemicals that we won't see for thirty years --"
"It doesn't make any difference. It's going to happen. I'm just lucky enough to have a better idea of time and place than most -- what would I give that up for?"
She turns and leaves me in the scorching chemical winds and like the self-replicating virus that is consuming her each day I have been away from her has turned into a lifetime.
Until the event starts assembling itself I wasn't sure if she actually still fought or if the sign was just a piece of bravado. Now I am in that terrible place again, any pleasant memories of us making love now buried under concrete dust and spray paint, standing like a ghost as people move around me and through me. She watches me from across the room as a young woman with bleached hair and bad skin wraps bandages around her calves and knees to give her weakened legs extra support. The woman wears a lab coat and is most likely the drug-dealing med student that Brody has mentioned in the past where Emma gets all her medicines from.
Once the crowd starts gathering I can sense that its not only her body that has changed. They seem angrier, more filled with bloodlust and whatever rage has brought them here. I wonder just how many people there are out there that are willing to pay $30 to beat the shit out of a dying woman and where that anger comes from. And I know that the only thing stopping her destroying herself is the growing number of street fighters asked or hired by Brody to watch over the crowd.
I'm no longer scared that she cannot control the fights -- I'm scared that she might be tempted not to bother trying.
I follow her over to the metal box, now filled with empty bottles and cracked needles. "Let me," I say and take one of the hypodermics, squeeze it full of the biological agent that has prolonged her thus far. She holds an arm out for me that is littered with bruises and welts, constantly bleeding scratches and brilliant white scars.
Somebody turns up the stereo, increasing the sound of Bill Hicks' machine gun preaching to the most the battered old system can handle.
I had a great time on drugs. Never robbed anyone, never shot anyone. Never beat anyone, never stole a car -- got rreeeeaalll fuckin' high...
She turns for me and lifts her shirt, presenting me with a relatively clean piece of flesh near her left kidney. "I can't believe you're still fighting," I say, and inject her. She sighs with the pain of her now hyper- sensitive nerve endings. "You're dying, Em."
"We're all dying. We're all dead. We just haven't realised it yet. Emma Larson is dead. Kobe Nihilis is dead. Brody Villeneuve is dead."
She looks straight at me with eyes that seem twice as big because of the immense dark rings that circle them. And as she walks away from me, she holds both hands to her breast, to her heart, and tells me, "Even Elizabeth Afterlife is dead."
Watching her fight after my return is like sitting by someone on life support. Each movement is the spike of a pulse beat; each grunt the hiss of a pneumatic lung; each drop of fibrous blood a few cc's of morphine or saline.
She seems to be clenching herself so tightly that each muscles wraps itself around the next in a vain effort to keep her standing. She moves into the punches and kicks, the headbutts and elbows, chasing them down, at times lurching after her opponent, always demanding more. I become aware of the crowd's own frenzied state rising alongside her as they make some secret pact to tear her to pieces. Brody's men are bustled and jogged and I wonder how much longer they can hold it all back.
I take what time I can with her during the days because I know I would regret it if I didn't. We longer have nights because she offers herself each time the sun goes down. She keeps taking her medicine not because she thinks it will help but because she knows it won't.
And each time I hold her she gets smaller.
When Hannah, the renegade med student, doesn't turn up with more stolen bottles of drugs for a few days Emma can't even get out of bed. Brody comes by one day and says the girl had been shot in the head by one of the others she dealt to and was currently receiving a stately dosage of her own medicine, so to speak. He acts differently towards me now and I wonder what Emma has said to him since I've been away. He waits outside the underpass all day every day except when there are streetfights taking place, I suppose protecting our privacy in the damp shadows of the bridge.
Emma constantly asks me to get her more medication and I know it is because she wants to stand again. She wants to be on her feet when it comes. I contemplate giving her just enough to keep her going yet not so much that she can bring herself to fight but I know this would be a cruelty beyond that of which I was capable.
"Tonight," she tells me. "Please."
I hesitate, now that we have finally got our nights back and her sign has been put to one side. Now I know how necrophiliacs must feel, clinging to the corpse of their lover or child, believing it to be the real thing; or better.
"I want to be with you again."
Her eyes are bright and clear, a dizzying reflection of her mind. "Please."
It doesn't take me long to find a dealer.
As I walk back I can't resist the creeping feeling that Armageddon is upon me. I imagine the sky is darkening not because of twilight but because we have suddenly become detached from the solar system like an errant vertebrae. I start noticing how all the buildings seem to be in a half-state -- either unfinished or falling apart. Those that are complete architecturally are vacant and silent, stillborn monstrosities of concrete and iron. The roads are cracked, the pavements torn open in places by the roots of trees long since felled. And then there all the junkies, the drifters, so many that it seems there is nothing else in the city. Has everyone found themselves a place in this vast crumbling framework? Inside great rusted tanks like giant lungs or in the cradle-holes of skyscraper foundations? Or in disused parking lots, layer upon layer? I'm walking along the ridge of an aquaduct when my pager goes off.
It's a message from Brody. I need to talk to you. Now.
I think of Emma and of how time has taken on the form of a chemical filter lately, squeezing the seconds through at an ever-quickening pace into finer and finer points. But I know the sedatives I gave her before leaving will be enough to keep her still for another few hours and so I make the slight diversion necessary to get to the training warehouse.
The walls have been tagged since I was here last, bright green and blue lettering that sparkles like metal, warping along the walls and ending in a dragon's mouth where the door lies open. Brody is sitting within it, long legs stretched out in front of him. His broad, tight shoulders are kinked up around his neck as he leans back on his beautiful, gymnast's arms.
"How is she?" he asks, moving over to make room for me beside him. His body smells exquisite.
"She wanted me to get her more medication."
"You left her by herself?"
"She's sedated. Until I bring this to her I don't think she could move if she wanted to. Her wounds are no longer healing anymore. There's just nothing left."
The wind that blows is strong and warmed by the heat of the factories. You can always hear them in the distance as if they are a single great machine under our feet.
"You think I should have stopped her long ago don't you?" he says.
"It doesn't matter any more."
"She's lyrical, Elizabeth. She's like a poem -- or a prophet. She can convince you that anything is the right thing to do, that it's the only thing to do, and she doesn't even realise she has that power. I could never resist her. Never. She sees past all the shit. We're all dead? Yeah. Maybe just some more than others."
"She thinks she's providing an outlet for all that aggression but you can tell she's just stoking it. But it's not about the ones who fight is it?"
Brody sighs. I can see in his eyes how much he cares for her and I suddenly feel like a thief, like an impostor, for taking him from her this last month or so.
"You know, there are others now. That's why she dropped the price to thirty bucks. Motherfucking competition."
We smile awkwardly because there is nothing funny about it.
After a short while I asked, "What was it you wanted to see me about?"
"You came to me, Elizabeth."
"I know but your page --"
He's staring at me and his eyes are a weapon, a knife thrust into my forehead to the hilt.
"What page?"
"The -- page--"
I begin to show him the device but pause in mid air.
"Where the hell would I get you pager number from?"
And he doesn't even need to say it.
We take one of the fighters' flatbed trucks, Brody shouting for the small handful of fighters to follow and drive straight to the underpass, cutting through a caravan of eighteen-wheeler oil tankers and the accompanying military escort. When we arrive the first thing I see is the sign posted at the foot of the steps leading down to the bridge.
Emma Larson is dead.
And beneath it, in smaller text -- It's just a ride.
The crowd is roaring, vicious, mercenary -- I can feel it even before I have descended the steps. They spill out of the bridge's shadowed archway, jostling with each other and I'm horrified to see blood splatters on some of them as I force my way in. Brody follows, shouting for Emma, elbowing men in the face and chests when they don't move for him. We converge on a lump of limbs sprawled on the concrete like something out of Lovecraft and pull it apart until Emma is visible underneath.
"Back the fuck up!" Brody screams and it then that the other fighters arrive and one of them must have had a gun for there followed the cataclysmic explosion of a shot being fired in the tunnel's confines. Like a nailbomb that has been set off they scatter almost immediately but still there are sporadic, confused tussles going on.
I grab one short balding man wearing a uniform of some sort and drag him backward by the neck, squeezing his trachea between thumb and forefinger to stop him struggling, then dump him to one side. I glimpse Emma's face as another punch is landed upon it, her features dowsed in blood that is both her own and of others. I know she has invited this chaos upon herself and I hate her for it.
Finally we free her, Brody liberally applying unnecessary force to spectators and participators alike and suddenly I am doing it to, stamping on their faces a they lie prone, revelling in the sound of their nose- and cheekbones breaking as if it were a cheap orgasm. Emma is torn from her own execution and yet for almost a minute she lies there, untouched, as we lash out at those who have done this to her because we know, deep down, that the one person responsible is the one person we wouldn't dream of attacking. Then I go to her side, her clothes torn from her, her matchstick body mapped with cuts and gashes and puncture marks. All of her trackmarks have reopened as if in celebration of the event, purging her system of the final few millilitres of drugs and I almost can't stand the beauty of the plasmic tattoos thus created. I lift her to me but her eyes have already settled back in her head.
The underpass has been cleared and only Brody stands with me, two-stepping in argument with himself about whether he should leave us alone or not -- until I look up at him and he sees in my eyes that its okay.
"It's just a ride -- it's just a ride --" the stereo says and it's the first time I even notice it has been playing that same endless loop.
Brody kneels next to me, close enough that I can smell the rage like chloroform on him, places his beautiful hands around me in substitution for touching Emma's corpse.
"It's just a ride -- it's just a ride .. it's just --"
Stops when it is smashed by the brick I throw at it, a brick loaded with blood. Brody starts crying and I feel like I should to but I don't. I'm looking at my camera set up on the tripod in the far corner, the tape inside clicking away rhythmically.
The hospitals have been raided; the morgues ransacked. Every inch of pavement is a grave if you want it to be.
We stand before the pyre, a miniature one of the all those of infected cattle burning on the horizon, and I wonder, is it still just a ride?
We've put all her stuff, the needles, the Bill Hicks CDs and tapes and posters, her training gear into the flames, piece by piece, setting her life on fire. All that is left is her sign pinned to the top of a metal pole protruding from the centre of the pyre. Neither Brody nor I know why we put it there exactly, it just seemed appropriate -- or, at least, what she would have wanted.
We just stand there in silence as she drifts into the air, now so much grey dust, and I think that is as close Emma Larson would ever get to having wings. Eventually Brody walks away without saying anything and I listen distantly to the sound of his truck revving them driving off. I'll never see him again.
Daylight trails off in tandem the withering smoke as the fire dies down and still I can't leave. In my hands I hold my camera, the on-board miniature screen frozen with the image of Emma. This is the pixellated gift she made for me over the week or so I was away. It was why she had refused to let me record anything else over it but had been unable to say why and with that realisation comes a further one -- that even the she was initiating her plan. I can tell from the timecode that the recording takes place over a number of nights right up until her last, when she had sent me away then retrieved the drugs she had been stockpiling as part of her plan.
She has left this for me and I'm still not sure whether it is a loving gift or an accusation of some sort. I haven't been able to watch it yet, instead leaving it on pause perhaps with the vague notion that the cassette inside will jam.
Emma Larson is dead the sign reminds me and through the oily air I see my own name flicker through it.
Elizabeth Afterlife is dead it tells me and I whisper back, "I know, I know."