Chapter 13: Wasteland

Not long after the sun went down, the fat cop showed up and stood at the door to the cell, gesturing at Fresco. Unsure of what to expect, he uncoiled from his seat and limped to the bars. At the same time, the guard, now engrossed in a basketball game, heaved the same sigh he did whenever he was interrupted and hauled himself to his feet, keys jingling.

The door opened and Fresco was free. They never told him why and he didn't bother to ask. He exchanged one look with Joey who shrugged and grinned his terrible grin before they led Fresco away. He felt like he was floating by the time he reached the front desk. A bored uniform, a new one but with the same expression, handed him his backpack and showed him the door.

He found himself standing on the street, breathing fresh air in the cool of the new evening. Worried, despite what Joey told him, they made a mistake and let him go instead of some other kid, Fresco threw on his backpack and hurried away.

After a few blocks, he ducked into a dark alley between a pizza shop and a shoe store. He desperately rifled through his bag, heart sinking. It only took a moment for him to discover the truth. All of his food was gone. His bottles were empty of water. And the money Coach gave him had vanished.

Furious, Fresco threw the now empty and useless bag across the alley and slid down the wall, sinking to the dirty pavement, stomach churning with ordinary hunger at the smells coming from the pizza place. He drove his fists into his pockets. His fingers brushed over the tiny tube.

He pulled loose the vial of Wasteland and held it up. It sparkled like a jewel from the City in the light of the street lamp. In a surge of anger, he threw it across the alley, seconds later crawling on his hands and knees in the stinking runoff from a damaged dumpster to retrieve it. He stared into its depths, a part of him screaming in horror at the hold it had over him. He agonized, forcing himself to remember the image of Joey collapsed in the cell, caught up in the throes of Wasteland, ground himself into it in an attempt to regain control. But, even though the flicker of strength told him he would not end up like Joey, Fresco waged a losing battle. The hold of the drug was so complete he didn't stand a chance. With no other prospects and the emptiness taking him over, hope and faith a distant memory, Fresco's shaking fingers moved without his consent, knowing exactly what to do somehow, popping the seal from the tube and bringing it to his lips. In one swift motion, he emptied the contents into his mouth.

***

Molten joy runs through him as the drug instantly enters his system and fills him up. Fresco shudders in delight, all pain gone, all fear. He floats in the sea of ecstasy that is Wasteland, a blue tinted pool of heaven loving him like a mother, holding him like a father, and making him feel so good he never wants it to end.

He doesn't know how long he lies there in the alley, stretched out in a puddle of rotting garbage, submerged in the greatest pleasure he has known outside the Diamond City. But when it is over, he cries at the loss of it, a broken child who lost his mommy and daddy and just wants to feel such love again forever.

This time when the urge comes back, Fresco knows what he needs.

Unlike Joey, however, Wasteland triggers a far deeper reaction in him. At least Joey has been able to function in the real world. Whatever Wasteland does to Fresco, it completely tears down his humanity and throws him into an endless quest for the shining blue drug.

This new Fresco goes hunting.

Time is lost in a blur of days and nights spent in search of Wasteland. Nothing matters, nothing, only the glow of sweet love and light flowing in with the honey of the blue liquid. At first he isn't sure how to get more, but the hunger is an excellent teacher. The term "sugarpop" penetrates Fresco's animal mind. He staggers from corner to corner, from shady dealer to sleazy pusher until he realizes Joey was right. As he nears his target, his soul sings with the presence of Wasteland. But, without money for a fix, Fresco is forced to resort to other methods to keep his desire fed. He will never know how many sugarpops he takes down in those horrible days, how often his fists buy his fix. He takes what he wants, the strength of the want pushing him past his humanity.

The first time his need takes him and a sugarpop isn't near, he stumbles over a Wasted kid lost in his own journey to joy. Fresco easily relieves the vacant boy of his juice and slinks away. Knowing those like him are easier targets, Fresco's methods change. He finds and follows other Wasters, a task made simple by their shared addiction. He can smell the drug on their skin. He watches them buy their load and follows them to where they hide and waits for them to go to the blue. Occasionally one fights back, the instinct to protect their link to joy stronger than the grip of the drug itself. But Fresco's simple approach of threats and blows serve him well against any resistance. Battle and theft are his existence, punctuated by blue ecstasy.

He is so lost he makes a mistake. He tries to steal from the one person Joey warned him about. He finds himself on his side at EMZee's feet, being beaten over and over. He knows when they strip his clothes he needs to get away but his Wasted body doesn't have the power. All he wants is the drug.

"Beg for it." EMZee's face is a twisted mask of horror, a demon face. Fresco hears himself pleading.

"Please... please..."

They laugh, the pusher and his two bullies.

"Not good enough, waster boy," EMZee tells him. He is dropped into a puddle of filth, naked and bleeding. "Not nearly good enough. You don't want it, I guess."

Fresco knows his knees are being shredded by the dirty pavement, the burning in his cuts isn't good, but he can't bring himself to care. A tube of blue joy dangles before him. He snatches at it, only to have it pulled away to the sound of more laughter.

"Work for it." EMZee's words come out as a snarl.

Fresco falls on his face and licks the pusher's proffered boots.

"I'll be seeing you again, waster boy," EMZee's voice fades as he leaves Fresco there in the filth. He sobs into the night, unable to breathe fully as his ribs ache, rolling over just enough to see the tube of blue shining in the puddle next to him. He lunges at it, wailing in despair. The top is off, the contents draining into the dirty water. He empties the tube into his mouth and laps the spilled jewel drops from the ground.

It gives him enough strength to find what is left of his clothes and pull them on, while his Wasted brain churns with only one thought-find more blue joy.

His life becomes the drug, for how long he cannot say, but it consumes him so completely he spends more time with it in his system than not. He vaguely recalls encounters with EMZee, bearing torment and torture for the deep pleasure of the drug, but the haze it creates saves him from the deepest and most traumatic of the memories.

To his frustration, it is beginning to take more and more of it to keep him in the joy. He hides on instinct, avoiding other people as much as he can, preying only on the weak and helpless. His existence devolves further, punctuated by brief intervals of awareness in which he huddles where he finds himself. He sobs in horror at what he is becoming and what he is capable of doing to other people for his addiction before the hunger takes him and he is off again.

Luckily or not, Fresco manages to elude the police for the duration of his wasted madness. A flash of light is enough to bring back the memory of Len and his threats, sending Fresco scuttling for safety and saving more than one of his kind from attack.

But it is the fire within that terrifies him the most. The familiar pressure he felt the night of the accident, the burning tearing him up at school and in his room just before everything went to hell, is growing. With every dose of the drug he takes, he knows he is feeding it. It makes him very afraid, but he can't resist those fleeting moments of liquid peace. And so, his power grows and he hunts and the drug fills his system with light...

***

Days or weeks later, in one of those times of awareness, Fresco came back to himself suddenly. He was so hungry, the pain of it gnawing, gnawing and he sensed there was some close by, the healing honey, the forgetful elixir, and he needed it, had to have it at whatever cost and no one would keep it from him. For whatever reason, whether his system was wanting too much to sustain him or his soul simply shook him awake, Fresco found clarity on a filthy strip of gravel under a crumbling bridge with his hands around another kid's throat, his focus pummeling the boy to death.

The stench of rotting fish and waste slapped him in the face. His hands unclenched as if of their own volition. The unconscious boy collapsed to the ground. Fresco stared down at his hands, filthy and scarred with horrible scabs covering the backs of them and a painful jabbing in one wrist where he unknowingly cracked a bone.

He peered into the face of his victim and the worst of the horror stuck him. No stranger, this boy, but Joey, small and fragile Joey with the brittle grin who gave him his first dose of the blue joy. Little Joey, no more than a boy, lay at his feet.

Fresco's stomach clenched. He fell to his knees in the filth and garbage and threw up into the softly lapping waves of the harbor.

He heaved for several minutes, only a sickly blue bile rising as he hadn't thought of or ingested any food for who knew how long. The addict in him despaired at the loss of the drug while the rest of him shuddered at the sight of the film of Wasteland scumming up the surface. He finally wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, catching his reflection in the moonlight over the gently undulating water. A distorted stranger looked back at him, a creature of evil with sunken eyes and matted, filthy hair, dressed in a tattered sweater he barely recognized as the one Coach gave him. The animal in the reflection sneered back. Fresco lurched to his feet, staggering away from the proof of what he was. He collapsed on the bank, his heart breaking.

"Daniel!" He screamed his brother's name, instinctively reaching for the sibling he missed and the memory that saved him once. "Daniel!"

But his brother was still dead, and Fresco was so horribly alone not even the sliver of a memory helped him. Unable to come to grips with what he had done, Fresco crawled to Joey, so terribly still, and emptied the boy's pockets of Wasteland.

Pushing his ruined body as far back into the darkness under the bridge as possible, he stared down at the eight vials of the brightly shining drug, insides aching with need. He still wanted it so much, too much, despite everything. The craving was so strong and he was weak. His mind screamed at him, madness closing in around the edges, the demon trying to protect itself. But Fresco's despair was stronger and his decision was a surprisingly easy one to make.

Six was the most he ever took at once and it almost killed him, at least as far as he remembered. Eight would definitely do the trick. He only had one choice, one way out. The world was much better off without him. He would join Daniel and maybe, just maybe, he would be allowed back into the City when it was all over.

Deliberately, with great calm, Fresco opened the eight tubes and drank them all at once.

The familiar euphoria was missing as he faded into darkness. No floating in a sea of blue, no love and light. Bitterly, Fresco realized by choosing death he was denied the City after all.

As the lights went out in his mind, he felt a hand in his and heard a soft voice he recognized, the husky voice of the beautiful girl who tried to save him. She called to him, but she was too late.

Fresco slipped into death, disappointed he never learned her name.

***