“Do you like being here? Do you ever want to get out of this room?”
“I like it here. Tracy and Fiona are wonderful and the people who come to visit are mostly very nice.”
“Mostly, but not always. Who hasn’t been nice? Cabal?”
Johnny shrugs.
“He tried to be nice, but I don’t think it’s in his nature. I think he’s a very troubled person.”
“Did Cabal want to take you out of here and away from Tracy and Fiona?”
“No. We just talked.”
“About what?”
“I don’t remember.”
Is this how I’m going to end up if the Stark part of me dies off? Like a psych patient drooling on Thorazine. Or will I be something else? I’m already something else, I think. Not that that helps much. The stronger this angel vision gets, the deeper I can see inside things. But I still can’t be sure if Johnny is a well-spoken Drifter or a P. T. Barnum scam.
Allegra leans over and hands me the photo. The anima-scope built into the camera can catch the life essence on film. Johnny’s isn’t there. The photo is a normal shot of a boring room except for the Johnny-shaped black hole in the middle. It’s true, then. Johnny is as dead as corn dogs.
What would that camera show if I let Allegra shoot me?
“Did you ever bite anyone, Johnny? Did you ever kill anyone and turn them into something like you?”
“That’s completely out of line,” says Tracy.
Johnny raises a hand.
“It’s all right. The truth is I don’t know. I think I was dead for a long time before I woke up and became what I am now. I suppose I might have hurt some people back when I was a zed.”
I didn’t expect him to even know that word, much less use it.
“No one’s taken you out of here recently? Even if it was just for a little while?”
“That I would remember. Why would I go? I have everything I want right here.”
“Not free-range flesh. You like Tracy and Fiona and you’d never hurt them, but what about a stranger? What if someone took you out of here and let you loose on someone you didn’t know?”
He looks at the floor. Crosses his legs and shifts in his seat like it’s suddenly uncomfortable.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But as I said, I haven’t left the apartment in a long time.”
“Maybe it’s time to take a break,” says Tracy.
“Just one more thing. If a regular person like Tracy here got bitten by someone like you, or maybe a zed, is there some way to fix her?”
“You mean so she doesn’t die and return?”
“Yes.”
“No. There’s nothing for that.”
Tracy comes over and stands between Johnny and us.
“That’s it for now. Let’s let Johnny have his snack, and if he feels like it, he can answer a few more questions.”
As Tracy talks, Johnny takes off the top of the cooler and looks inside. He goes to a dresser and takes a plastic sheet from the top and spreads it on the floor like a picnic blanket. He rips off the top of one of the bags of jelly beans and pours the candy into the pig guts and blood, stirring it with his fingers. He looks at us and grins.